A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

  Grace Yoo (top, center) as Hillary Clinton at America's most famous restaurant in  Soft Power  at Signature Theatre. Photo credit: Daniel Rader. Signature Theatre’s current offering,  Soft Power , is a musical with book and lyrics by David Henry Hwang (a Tony-winner for  M. Butterfly ) and music and additional lyrics by Jeanine Tesori (who won Tonys for  Fun Home  and  Kimberly Akimbo ). Part satire, part fantasia, even part homage to the classic American musical  The King and I , and often based on real-life events,  Soft Power  defines its own genre. As the program note tells us, “soft power” is a political strategy in which cultural influence is used to achieve diplomatic results. Think, for example, of China lending pandas to American zoos. In this instance, a Chinese theatre producer tries to convince a Chinese American playwright (known in the script simply as “DHH”) to create a show to be staged in a new theatre built in Shanghai’s Fuxing Park. (DHH is a not-very-subtly-dr

  Stephen Pasquale as Guido Contini in the Kennedy Center's production of Nine . Photo credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman. From the time that Nine was announced for this season’s Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center, I have been looking forward to it. Then when Steven Pasquale was announced as the star, I became even more eager, since he made such a strong impression in the KC production of Guys and Dolls in October 2022. After seeing Signature Theatre’s production of The Bridges of Madison County a year ago, I sought out the cast recording, which starred Pasquale and beautifully demonstrated his vocal expertise. Nine is a musical based on what many consider to be Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, “8-1/2” (1963). Playwright Arthur Kopit created the libretto to accompany Maury Yeston’s Tony-winning score (both music and lyrics), which incorporates a variety of musical styles. I haven’t seen the film, but I was fortunate enough to see the ori