tuesday, august 24, 2010 TELEVISION


Emmys invasion Skillfully scripted shows will compete for awards against reality programs such as “Dirty Jobs” and “Top Chef.” C5


BOOK WORLD


A driving ‘Rain’ Bruce Murkoff’s Civil War-era novel offers a chilling but compelling vision of 1864 America. C2


Style ABCDE C S RELIABLE SOURCE


Snooze island The Obamas’ vacation on Martha’s Vineyard is drowsy compared to the Clintons’ fun times in the Hamptons. C2


MUSIC REVIEW


A far-out Bonnie Bonnie “Prince” Billy, a.k.a. Will Oldham, right, sang with dramatic effect in front of soft Americana at Rams Head. C3


3LIVE TODAY @ washingtonpost.com/discussions Tom Shales on all things TV noon • Janet Bennett Kelly and Holly Thomas talk fashion noon • Paul Farhi explores pop culture 1 p.m. THEATER REVIEW


‘Twelfth Night’ gags fall flat this


time, too Shakespeare Theatre replicates over-the-top ’08 production for Free-for-All


by Peter Marks


In retracing the steps of an over- blown production concept, a director sometimes finds a more felicitous path on the second go-round. And at other times, the flaws just become more apparent. The latter is what occurs in Shake- speare Theatre Company’s remount- ing of its 2008 offering of “Twelfth Night.” Presented as the summer’s Free-for-All event — 22 free-admis- sion performances in Sidney Harman Hall — this yuk-yuk treatment of Shakespeare’s subtle comedy favors only the most obvious styles of humor and treats the romantic underpin- nings as love matches of a flippant and silly variety. Director Rebecca Bayla Taichman’s version for the most part has been faithfully restaged by Alan Paul, the company’s new associate director (succeeding David Muse, who is tak- ing over as head of Studio Theatre). Several of the original actors return for the run, and others prove to be es- timable replacements, most notably the delightful Sarah Agnew as a young countess besotted with a man who is really a woman. The play consists of two plots of di-


vergent temperatures. The warmer one involves the disguise of Viola (Christina Pumariega) in the court of Duke Orsino (Gregory Wooddell) af- ter the shipwreck involving her and twin brother Sebastian (Randy Harri- son). The chillier story is set in the household of Agnew’s Olivia, where her uncle, Sir Toby Belch (Chuck Coo- per), and his confederates unleash a vicious practical joke on Olivia’s snooty and clueless steward, Malvolio (Philip Goodwin). “Twelfth Night” works best when a harmony is struck between the plots, when the gentle sexual confusion among the aristocrats cushions the impact of the abuse heaped on Malvo- lio. This version, however, achieves none of the desired equilibrium. It simply goes consistently for an easy sight gag or laugh, whether that en- tails a repetitive visual effect or a character passing wind.


All of the redundant conceits lac- quered onto the 2008 version have been retained, and they are even more intrusive now. The practice, for instance, of dropping rose petals onto any character in the throes of a sexual swoon feels like cartoonish window dressing; it fails to illuminate any of


theater continued on C2


BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST A GAMBLE: CNN is betting Candy Crowley’s focus on substance will win Sunday talk show viewers who are used to flashy graphics and raised voices. Anchored in nuance by Ellen McCarthy


They are celebrities, meticulously drawn on-air characters who may or may not bear a re- semblance to their off-camera selves. Anderson the Great. Glenn of Conspiracyvilles. Rachel, Puckish and Left. They can present news, sure, but they’re really here to provoke. Viewers should be fired up as much as informed. Guests will be either aggran- dized or antagonized, based on party alignment and time slot. No segment can run more than a few quippy minutes, and everyone’s blood pres- sure must rise.


T RECORDINGS Katy Perry’s ‘Dream’: You’ll sing along, but hate yourself by Chris Richards


So fine. So fresh. So fierce. For an en- tire summer, it refused to leave us alone, tumbling out of cars, gyms, nightclubs and shopping malls as if on a mission to melt every last popsicle. To avoid Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” was to live un- der a rock buried beneath a pile of bigger rocks — a summertime megahit so over- played, it made the ice cream truck song jealous.


But summertime megahits rarely feel


this good. That rubbery bass line, those taffy synthesizers — all arranged with such expertise, Perry’s insipid shout- outs to palm trees, short shorts and the Beach Boys seem like mere after- thoughts. And that chorus. So buoyant!


CAPITOL RECORDS


So brainless! You’re probably still sing- ing it right now. We all are. Now, in a curious stroke of marketing,


Perry’s summery new album, “Teenage Dream,” arrives in the death throes of August, giving us the opportunity to hear “California Gurls” for the kerzil- lionth time, along with 11 other songs that would be foolish to dream of eclips- ing it. And where “California Gurls” is an Everlasting Gobstopper of a tune, the rest of Perry’s bubble gum loses its flavor fast. That’s because the harder the 25-year-


old pop star works to cultivate her im- age, the more faceless she becomes. Is she a good girl gone bad? A bad girl gone worse? It’s hard to tell when Perry’s


recordings continued on C3


‘Versus,’ a misstep: Usher’s mid-career


blues. Page C3


And as the host of its Sunday morning talk


show, a marquee program in a hyper-competi- tive hour, CNN picked Candy Crowley — who embodies absolutely none of that formula. She is 61 and not gorgeous. She trades on lay- ered, nuanced conversations expressly devoid of personal bias. Her dusty voice never lifts above a lecturer’s tone, and if she walked into any given beyond-the-Beltway restaurant, she might not


here’s no secret about what works on cable news these days. Flashy graphics and raised voices burst through the screen to jostle into our agitated, unfocused, Twit- terized minds.


Anchors are loud, beautiful and opinionated.


CNN’s Candy Crowley takes a provocative talk-show stance:


Focus on facts, not flash


be asked for an autograph. This is a woman who has been a vegetarian for 15 years and kneels to meditate twice a day, every day. In an era of un- relenting interruptions, she’s a self-deprecating anchor who hates to interrupt. Crowley is beloved inside the halls of CNN and roundly respected in official Washington, a veteran political reporter who works hard and knows her stuff. Friends and colleagues describe her as brilliant and hilarious. But as the host of “State of the Union,” she’s a gamble. It’s not just that the network’s executives are


betting she can do the job; they’re taking long odds we’ll sit still long enough to watch. And if early ratings are any indicator, we might not.


‘She reads everything’ 1983 PHOTO BY JAMES M. THRESHER/THE WASHINGTON POST


VETERAN: Crowley has worked in news for years; in 1983, she was a radio reporter for the Associated Press.


Candy Crowley has been in our living rooms for more than a quarter-century now, first as an NBC reporter and since 1987 as a CNN corre- spondent. Until this year, she was relegated to the supporting cast, a perennial smart lady some well-lit anchor would conjure via satellite to ex- plain Washington. She’d talk, he’d nod. Then the cameras would turn away; he’d move on to a hurricane watch or pop-star update, and she’d blink back to political Neverland. There was no reason to ponder whether or not she really lived there — which, in fact, she did. It


crowley continued on C8


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56