My Little Garden Zoo 2024: Australia

 While the zoo officially opens on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend, this year a collection of Animals from Down Under are available to see for a early bird discount admission.  Nine species endemic to Australia have had their habitats prepped for the 2024-2025 season.  They include: Eastern Grey Kangaroos, Koalas and Dingos among 9 species.

Eastern Grey Kangaroo

Macropus giganteus

Short-nosed Echidna

Tachyglossus aculeatus

Common Wombat

Vombatus ursinus

Dingo

Canis lupis dingo

Quokka

Setonix brachyurus

Tasmanian Devil

Sarcophagus harrisii

Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby

Petrogale xanthopus

Numbat

Myrmecobius fasciatus

Koala

Phascolartos cinereus

Prologue Theatre: Marjorie Prime

 Because I don't go the movies (no interest in such things), I was completely unaware that this play is an adaptation of the 2017 movie by the same name: "Marjorie Prime".  What little I did know suggested a show about a women ailing from Alzheimer's disease, and her family's struggle to cope with the range of inevitable psychological and physiological conflicts.  

It didn't take too long for me to realize that the conversation between Marjorie--who's memory was failing, and a handsome younger man named Walter was not at all what it appeared to be on the surface.  Honestly, a surface that was shattering with every turn of the conversation.  While this play is about the ravishes of dementia on the person and the family, it takes a decidedly SciFi turn with AI companions.  Walter is the android embodiment of Marjorie's long dead husband, and now companion.

Enter her daughter, Tess, and son-in-law, Jon.  Tess is full of unresolved pain in her relationship with her mother, and Jon is the quintessential glass half full good guy.  The negative energy triumphs and in their turns Marjorie, and then Tess die, leaving only Jon surrounded by artificial facsimiles of the others.  Once he sees the contents of the glass for what it really is...we are left with well-meaning androids attempting to carry on.

The acting was wonderful across the board, with the lion share of the story resting on the able shoulders of Kimbery Gilbert as Tess.  She's a solid local actress, and when I saw her name associated with the play, I was certain it would be an interesting experience.  The set was also amazing--a interior with chunks missing.  Simple and yet profound.  It's just starting and will be gone before you know it--if you live in the DMV, do go.  You will experience thought-provoking, professional theatre.  Take a friend and go to Mozzeria for a pizza afterwards!

As a teacher, I could have paid just $15, but I chose to pay full-price $25, because I am such a fan of this Theatre.  I'm also a sustaining member to the tune of $120 per year.  Peanuts, I know.  

The cast: Gabriel Alejandro (Walter), Kimberly Gilbert (Tess), Rosemary Regan (Marjorie), and Sam Lunay (Jon)

Rosemary with Tess

Rosemary alone in her elder home as time passes and her memory continues to fade.

Arena Stage: Unknown Soldier

 Modern Musicals can be very unfulfilling.  They reach for unconventional themes and often the music seems like more of an afterthought.  You realize this when you reach a point where you can't tell if the present number is rehashing the melody from the previous song, or some other song, or maybe its a reprise of some other song... In the moment there's nothing wrong with the song.  And once the moment is gone so is the song.

As to the story...Let me start with a quote from one of the authors: "When Michael Friedman and I set out to write Unknown Soldier, we were interested in figuring out how the past and the present merge, how objects trace through time, and how your history is more fluid than you think and your futures less of a mystery than your past." - Daniel Goldstein  It opens with a little girl writing a report on WW I.  She is being raised by her cruel and embittered grandmother, her father having disappeared and her mother having died in childbirth.  Suddenly cut to the present, this same little girl all grown up 40-something, having just inherited the home she grew up in as her grandmother has died.  In cleaning, she discovers an enigmatic old newspaper clipping from 1920, that her grandmother had saved and on a whim contacts an archive help line at Cornell University where she makes the acquaintance of a repressed, nerdy research assistant.  As he agrees to help her solve the mystery of the photo, the dead and former self swirl in and out of the picture in a dizzying contra-country dance of hopes and fears and lies and revelations and mostly just disappointments. I mean, how on earth could you go wrong?

Over-layed upon this amorphous, colorless landscape is a cast of actors honestly as deep and as amazing as any I have seen.  Among them: Kerstin Anderson who lead the most recent national touring companies of Broadway revivals of "My Fair Lady" (she played Eliza Doolittle) and "The Sound of Music" (yup, she played Maria).  Adam Chanler-Berat as the nerdy research assistant, his Broadway credits include originating roles is "Next to Normal," "Peter and the Starcatcher," and "Amelie."  Lora Lee Gayer as the little girl all grown up, whose Broadway credits include: "Holiday Inn," "Doctor Zhivago," and "Follies."  But the feast de la resistance for me was experiencing the amazing Judy Kuhn as the cranky granny.  Judy's credits could double the size of this paragraph, and perhaps most salient of all, she was a longtime collaborator with Stephen Sondheim.  And on and on I could go!  The eleven member cast not only brought their A-game to the stage--the are A-game actors.

So while the larger picture of the production left me wanting, the moment by moment execution was a delight.  And given the fact that I only purchased the ticket last evening when a 50-off discount offer popped up in my feed; it's not like I'd given the show much thought or really can to the theatre with any great expectations.  In other words, to experience a cost of this talent, or even just an evening with Judy Kuhn, singing the damned phone book--would have been well worth $45.  

So I will close with another quote from the Dramaturg's notes: "Yet I have wondered sometimes whether, for example, we have truly taken seriously that the intricate web of connections that characterizes any event of problem is the story." - Avery Gordon, "Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination"

Grandma Lucy Anderson (Judy Kuhn)

Ellen Rabinowitz (Lora Lee Gayer), Lucy Lemay (Kerstin Anderson), and Andrew Hoffman (Adam Chandler-Berat)

All the generations together: Lucy Anderson, Young Ellen/Lucy (Riglee Ruth Bryson), Lucy Lemay and Ellen Rabinowitz

Ellen and Andrew finally meet one another--it does not go well.

The Ensemble: Candice Shedd-Thompson, Sumie Yotsukura, Taylor Witt, Ronald Joe Williams

The Unknown Soldier (Perry Sherman)

The ensemble with the Doctor (Nehal Joshi)

The Unknown Soldier and Lucy meet.

Breakfast: Cinnamon Oat-flour Waffles with Michigan Maple Syrup and Florida Blueberries

 

1st Stage: The Nance

 "The Nance" is a play written by Douglas Carter Beane that premiered on Broadway as the perfect vehicle for Nathan Lane.  In the role of Chauncey Miles, the tortured gay burlesque actor, Lane was nominated for a Tony, but did not win.  Which seems to sum up the general critical sense of the play, worthy of note by not a winner.  Ever grateful that I never do research on shows before I go, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

To begin with the "Nance" of the title is a reference to a specific member of a vaudeville comedic team.  Gag folk well practiced in the art of the double entendre who would slip on and off the stage between strip tease acts.  One character was the exaggerated effeminate man, the "Pansy," the "Nancy," the "NANCE."  Chauncey is the person on and off stage and a time in the late 30's when New York City went through a prudish paradigm shift in mores and passed laws to outlaw men performing this role (unless they were in drag...?! No shit!)  It's a role that many comedians we might know played like Milton Burl or Bob Hope.

Into this rising moral correctness, wrapped in his misplaced faith in Republican political cynicism, and a practiced habit of one night stands, comes Ned--a unhappily wed farm boy from up-state who's set off to find himself in the Big Apple and finds Chauncey instead.  The cast is rounded out with Efram the Jimmy Durante-esque emcee at the Elgin Club and three of it's Strippers/Actresses named Joan, Sylvie and Carmen.

The cast is wonderful.  Michael Innocenti is always amazing, and no less so here as the erasable emcee/manager of the burlesque house that is under pressure to close.  He's funny as hell and when at last he lets his hard shell crack just a little, I swear, I was ready to cry.  Of the women, Natalie Cutcher as Sylvie is the stand out as a liberal Communist sympathizer, she get to take on Chauncey at his most vulnerable, his political beliefs that Republicans will return things to the status quo after the up-coming election.  But the real fun was had by Michael Russotto as Chauncey.  One of the challenges in this role is the present the arc of the Chauncey the gay man character's journey off stage as he both fights for what is comfortable and toys with what he feels he does not deserve, while keeping his stage character ever ebullient and innocently campy--fiddle, so to speak, while Rome burns.  Because no matter how bad life gets, the role of the "Nance" is his forever refuge.  Michael's performance was simply wonderful.  Back before the pandemic I had seen Russotto in a couple of things "Death of a Salesman," "The Book of Will," and "Twelve Angry Men" and enjoyed his acting very much.  It's good to see him continue to work and grow and delight audiences with his talents.

The set was relatively simple with walls that would slide out or drop down to reconfigure, reveal or obscure the action.  A musical ensemble performed that incidental music to the vaudeville routines which was a delight as well.  The costume were beautiful, and many.  At one point after the character of Ned went from homeless newbie in the Big City to live-in companion with the Nance, his costumes suddenly looked like they'd come straight of the rack from the bumbling farmhand Eb Dawson's closet in the TV comedy "Green Acres".  To make such a random connection--it was more than derivative--just sayin'. 

I didn't realize that this was the final performance and it was sold out, something else I had never experienced before at 1st Stage.  I had a nice, if enigmatic conversation with the gentlemen sitting to my left.  He was friendly enough, but I felt like he had some deeper connection to the play or someone associated with the play that he wasn't feeling the need to reveal.  As I was leaving along the outer balcony, sliding glass doors were opened to the adjoining commercial space to expose a large room set up for a party.  The man next to me left just before me and had bee-lined into that room.  As I approached a young woman caught my attention as said, "Would you like to join the cast party?  You're more than welcome to."

Unprepared and generally speaking very awkward in events like this where I would just love to go, but then would feel hard-pressed to meet strangers, and would want to speak to the actors, but then would feel weird about that, too... I dunno, it's complicated.  Fate has put me in a similar place twice before, and now as then, I politely declined.

Chauncey (Michael Russotto) and Ned (Patrick Joy)

The "Nance"

Efram (Micahel Innocenti and Sylvie (Natalie Cutcher)

The Stippers: Carmen (Sally Imbriano), Sylvie, and Joan (Day Ajose)

Getting Ned for his sudden debut on the vaudeville stage.

A lovely chemistry between these two actors.  After final bows, they left the stage side-by-side one embracing the waste and the other the shoulder on one another.  Actors are people, too.

Kennedy Center: National Symphony Orchestra - Saariaho, Mozart, and Strauss

 A friend gifted me a ticket to Saturday evening's National Symphony Orchestra concert at the Kennedy Center.  If you think that Classical Music isn't for you, then you've never been to a live performance.  No matter the piece being played, there is a vibrancy to the collective efforts of such a large group of musicians that is electrifying.  And in the hands of a gift maestra, it's magical.

The three works chosen for this concert were varied spanning three-and-a-half centuries.  The Guest Conductor, Simone Young, was born in Sydney, Australia and in her relatively short life, she's packed a helluva lot of credits onto her dance card.  Watching her conduct was pure joy.  She is in it to win it!  Her whole body moves and jerks and rises on the fullest extent of her toes as she swings her shoulders and waves her arms and uses her fingers to guide the players performances.  It's as if the cobra where in charge of the flutist.  To extend the metaphor, she was dressed all in black with a smock that pulled from her elbows to tug at the sides looking a times like a kite about to go airborne!

The first piece was "Orion" by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023).  To be honest, I had never heard of her before--and shame on me.  This piece was dynamic in tone and rhythm launching the audience from one place to another like a bug caught in a jar that someone was shaking.  The practical effect kept me on the edge of my seat, even as moments of melodic clarity shifted to dissonant pounding cacophony. A moody, wild ride.

The second selection featured the renown pianist, Lise de la Salle.  She entered that stage wearing white slacks and a top covered in large, silver sequines.  My first thought was, a female version of Liberace?  The piece before her was Mozart's Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major for Piano and Orchestra.  The moment the first movement (Allegro) began, I recognized it well.  Sitting before the Grand Piano sideways, as she played beneath the spot lights, suddenly her arms began to glitter like some artistic electrical flow running down her arms from her shoulders to the keys of the piano!  (That's called outstanding costume design).

Perhaps due to the way that classical radio stations mince up compositions to fit time constraints, the second, Andantino movement was unfamiliar to me, and a revelation in the hands of Madam de la Salle.  At the end of her performance, she received a mostly majority standing ovation.  Her encore was a love little piece by Franz Schubert.  I could not hear the title from my seat.  It was utterly new to me, and sweet--like a lullaby.  She dedicated it to her desire for peace in the world.

The final work was by Richard Strauss, "Also Sprach Zarathustra" opus 30.  Short of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, I would be hard pressed to find a more recognizable introductory movement to a major orchestral piece.  And sadly, the intro was all that I knew of it.  Turns out there's another 30 minutes of music on the other side.  Turns out that much of it is romantic in style and sprinkled with melodic references to folk tunes and nature.  And as loud and dynamic as the introduction is, the ending is as soft and uncomplicated... which makes the intro that much more stunning.

Sunset over the Potomac River from the Veranda of the Kennedy Center in DC

Detroit Zoo: National Amphibian Conservation Center

 Leaving the Arctic Ring of Life we considered the final area of the zoo and we considered the LONG walk back out to the parking lot...The long walk beat out the possibility of seeing a Bison, or a wolf, or a prairie dog.  And so we bargain the long walk out.  We used the path on the opposite side of the Fountain and as we were just over about two-thirds of the way back to the entrance, we stumbled upon the National Amphibian Conservation Center.  Wasn't even sure what it was at first, but when I stopped to get a closer look at the architecture, I saw the signage and decided to check it out.

I'm glad I did.  The design is very organic with lots of arching and round elements.  The habitats are well appointed with a nice variety of frogs, toads, newts and salamanders.  It was the perfect last focus visit at the zoo.  

The National Amphibian Conservation Center at the Detroit Zoo.

Emperor Spotted Newt

Neurergus kaiseri

Lake Titicaca Frog

Telmatobius culeus

Smooth-sided Toad

Rhaebo guttatus

Mimic Dart Frog

Ranitomeya imitator

[left] Golfodulcean Poison Dart Frog

Phyllobates vittatus

[right] Black-legged Poison Dart Frog

Phyllobates bicolor

Japanese Giant Salamander habitat.

[left] Striped Newt

Notophthalmos peristriatus

[right] Narrow-striped Dwarf Siren

Pseusobranchus azanthus 

Wyoming Toad

Bufo baxtera

Once thought extinct, a small colony was discovered in the late 1980's by zoologist George Baxter,  Members were rescued and a captive breeding started at the Thorne Williams Wildlife Research Center in Sybille Canyon, Wyoming.  Once the population had increased to about 10,000--Seven Zoos that are members of the AZA received breeding stock to continue the efforts to save this animal from extinction.  Today, efforts to reintroduce the toad to the wild continue, but due to the volatile nature of the work, the Wyoming Toad is still listed as EW (Extinct in the Wild) when as little as 50 years ago the population was stable and plentiful in the Laramie basin region of Wyoming.

Time for overall impressions.  

• Bigger than it needs to be:
• Which is an advantage that a lot of zoos like Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco would wish for.
• The plus side, the habitats where the animals reside can be HUGE by comparison to others zoos
• The down side, you walk you ass off to get to the things that you've come to see.
• A Diamond in the ruff:
• At present, the zoo feels very mish-mashy.  There's a sort of animals go together by region, but there's also a species completely out of place if that were the plan.  Asian Forest has African monkeys, African Savannah has South American jungle creature.  Mongolian horse in North American Wilderness, etc.  
• Golly, I wish I had $150,000,000.00 laying around, I would utterly transform the place.
• Volunteers:  
• I counted 10 different, red shirted, unmistakable volunteers.  Four were clustered together chatting at the entrance of the zoo.  NOT greeting guest, just hanging out.  I went up and asked questions which the gentleman that I made eye contact with first was happy to answer.  And even then, other guests stepping up to the kiosk map and the other three volunteers just kept chatting amongst themselves.  Two others were raking leaves.  The other four were just walking around.  I saw one of them twice in their laps and another one three times.  I never saw a single one engage with a guest, and in fact, I attempted to say hello to one, and unless they were deaf, my kindness was completely ignored.
• To my MD Zoo friends, it's one thing to be a volunteer when the AZA convention is in town, it's another on mid-April Tuesday with sparse visitors.  And what was any of their purposes?  I never saw a keeper or a volunteers doing any sort of interpretation.  I never say a single sign indicating any sort of schedule for a keeper chat.
• Just in general; here are the zoos I've visited in the last decade: Maryland Zoo, Smithsonian National Zoo, Brandywine Zoo (DE), Philadelphia Zoo, Elmwood Park Zoo (PA), Lehigh Valley Zoo (PA), Pittsburgh Zoo, ZooAmerica (Hershey, PA), The Metro Richmond Zoo (VA), The Virginia Zoo, The Lincoln Park Zoo (Chicago), The Great Plains Zoo (Sioux Falls, SD), The Kansas City Zoo, The Denver Zoo, The Woodland Park Zoo (Seattle), The Turtle Back Zoo (West Orange, NJ), The Cape May Zoo (NJ), The Salisbury Zoo (MD) The Toledo Zoo, and the Detroit Zoo.  When it comes to seeing and engaging with Volunteers in a way that is anything close to the Maryland Zoo, only the Turtle Back Zoo need apply.  I've had great encounters with Keepers at the Brandywine Zoo and the Elmwood Park Zoo, two zoos I've visited multiple times and the encounters have been consistent every time.  My recent encounters with a keeper and an education department staff member at the Toledo Zoo would put in the plus column for paid staff.