Some of the nicest touches at the 2012 SAG awards broadcast were the segues mentioning local actors who had appeared in movie shoots based in their home town.
The Tony Awards could learn a thing or two from these shout-outs at the SAG ceremony. Local theater productions benefit greatly from casting homegrown thespians.
We in Washington D.C. have Ed Gero, known principally for his fine work in Michael Kahn’s Shakespeare Theatre and currently for his brilliant run as Mark Rothko in John Logan’s "Red" at the Arena Stage in colaboration with Goodman Theatre in Chicago.
Amidst a stage dressed as the abstract painter’s studio, Gero does a spectacular job of venting a playwright’s personification of a talented artist’s vision of the sacredness of painting.
In this two-man show, Rothko rants about his artistic vision to his assistant Ken, performed by Patrick Andrews, while never bothering to find out about his young aide’s life. The narcissistic painter also anguishes about whether his works should hang at the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York.
Gero rises to the complexity of the tormented artist while delivering a riveting performance. Rothko never sits on his laurels while anguishing over his family being persecuted as Jews in Latvia or the art scene’s fickle fluctuations in taste.
As an extra bonus of seeing the play in D.C., one can then go view some of the Rothko murals at the National Gallery of Art or behold the Rothko Room at the Phillips Collection the next day.
Gero is our local Meryl Streep with 14 nominations, including four wins, for the coveted Helen Hayes Awards. Gero has not only performed Shakespeare for the past 28 years but he also played the lead in such varied works as "Sweeny Todd," "The Chosen," "A Christmas Carol" and "Skylight."
Why does a talented actor like Gero remain in D.C.? In an interview he recalls coming to D.C. to perform at the Folger Theatre in 1981.
Gero said he was “happy to perform what I had been classically trained for. I could work in D.C. or go to New York where I would have to look for work. So I never left D.C. and now great actors come here to perform.”
He also teaches at D.C.'s George Mason University.
Recently the Washington Post described Gero as one of the performers that attracts a following of “Ed groupies” in town.
He's living proof that D.C. theatergoers don't have to travel to Broadway to see a first-rate play — and actors.
"Red" runs through March 11.
