If you want to sample the productions of Southwest’s premiere professional theater in the next little while, you will have to leave Southwest. Arena Stage, that landmark institution on Sixth Street and Maine Avenue, has temporarily relocated while their campus undergoes a massive renovation and expansion into what will be called “Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater.”

For now the pleasures of Arena’s work will be on display just over the 14th Street Bridge in a 460-seat venue that is a converted lecture hall and convention facility which has also been a movie theater. It is located in the space below a hotel’s swimming pool in the modern-architecture complex of offices, shops, restaurants, apartments and hotels called Crystal City.

The venue would not be great as the sole space for Arena for a long time – it has significant limitations that would prevent Arena from mounting many of the larger, more complex shows that have been so successful in Southwest. But it will suffice while construction keeps them out of their home space.

The show that kicks off Arena’s stay in Crystal City is well suited to the temporary venue. It is a bio-musical in the form of a concert appearance by its subject: The great jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald.

“Ella” offers a glimpse into the personality of the normally very reserved Miss Fitzgerald, while at the same time, recreating some of the music for which she was so famous. The show is slated to run through Feb. 24, with tickets ranging from $53 to $76, although Arena has a number of special price deals that can be explored on their website, www.arenastage.org.

At least for this month, “Ella” is Tina – Tina Fabrique, that is. She recreates both Fitzgerald’s personality and, in a highly enjoyable fashion, her music. No one could actually duplicate the incredible ability that seemed to come so naturally to “The First Lady of Song” at the peak of her career, and Fabrique is wise enough to avoid trying to be a slavish imitation. Instead, she performs “in the style of” Ella Fitzgerald, using the same arrangements, phrasing and even the scatting that was unique to her.

One of the things that marked any appearance by the real Ella was a deep delight in the popular American songs of the first half of the 20th century: the material often called “The Great American Songbook.” She did a great deal to elevate that catalogue from the status of mere popular entertainment to a serious art form receiving nearly universal recognition. Her recordings, including the landmark series of albums devoted to the work of a single song writer such as “The Cole Porter Songbook” or “The Irving Berlin Songbook,” were the standard by which the performance of standards was judged.

Fabrique manages to imbue her performance with that same obvious appreciation for those wonderful songs. During the show she performs such Ella-blessed songs as “How High The Moon,” “Night and Day,” “That Old Black Magic,” “’S Wonderful” and “Oh, Lady Be Good” along with specialty numbers specifically identified with Fitzgerald such as “You’ll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)” and her own “A-Tisket, A-Tasket.” With each, you get the same feeling that you got at an Ella concert, the feeling that this vocalist loves this material above all else.

The play by Jeffrey Hunter imagines a night in 1966 when, mourning the death of her sister, Fitzgerald was nonetheless expected to appear on stage in France for an appearance that had long been the sold out centerpiece of a jazz festival. Her manager, the legendary Norman Granz, tells her to mix more “chatter” into her act and this stimulates a flood of reminiscences from the normally reserved songstress.

Fabrique is backed by a jazz quartet duplicating much of the feel and sound of musicians who played with Fitzgerald such as Paul Smith who worked with her in Berlin, Tommy Flanagan who accompanied her in Switzerland and Roy Eldridge with whom she performed at the French jazz festival at Juan-les-pins.

Trumpeter Elmer Brown takes the spotlight for a few minutes in each act of the two-act evening, at one point filling in for Louis Armstrong on a recreation of a famous duet between Ella and Satchmo. He’s not particularly convincing as a vocalist, but his trumpet is highly enjoyable throughout the evening, as is the piano of George Caldwell.

The evening offers a great deal of pleasure as a jazz concert as well as a dramatization of the biographical story of the great vocalist. Partly, this is because of the quality of the music being played. But it is also due to the venue, especially its sharp and clear acoustics augmented in this case with a quality sound system.

Arena has spent a million dollars to make the facility workable for both the artists who will perform there and the audiences that will venture across the Potomac either by car or by Metro. The entrance to the theater is a short, all-indoor walk from the Crystal City Metro station, and there is ample parking for those who drive – along with clear signs telling you where to go.

What has that million dollars bought? Well, for one thing, it has converted the rather blah lecture hall into a well-equipped legitimate theater with great acoustics, clean and clear sightlines (at least in the first 15 of its 19 rows) and fabulous leg room for everyone in the audience. Backstage there are new dressing rooms, while across the street there are new administrative offices for the theater company.

Not everything could be accommodated in Crystal City. Productions which will play in Virginia will be rehearsed first in Arena’s facility at 14th and T Streets in Northwest, and their sets and costumes will be constructed in rented space in Arlington.

The limitations of the space are significant, however. While the stage is big enough to accommodate this single-set production, there is no room for large and elaborate scenery and no room on the sides or above to accommodate scene changes. Arena is attempting to finalize arrangements with another temporary venue they hope to use for larger productions in the next two seasons. That venue is the venerable Lincoln Theatre on U Street NW. With 1,200 seats and comparatively commodious fly and wing spaces for larger scenery, The Lincoln would allow Arena to mount some of its more ambitious works in the two seasons during which the renovation work is underway in Southwest.

Still, there are already interesting productions slated for Crystal City. Next month they open a mini-festival of two works by Arthur Miller – “Death of a Salesman” and “A View From the Bridge.” In June, Brad Oscar and J. Fred Schiffman take on all the characters in the spoof “The Mystery of Irma Vep.”

When Arena moves back to what will then be a three-theater Mead Center for American Theater, they will leave the Crystal City facility for the County of Arlington to use as one more of the county’s group of publicly-owned theaters available for use by community and professional theater groups throughout the county. That’s called making a contribution to the wider Washington community!

Making a Night of It:
Dining In Crystal City
Patrons of Arena Stage are in for a treat during Arena’s temporary residency in Virginia. A night at the theater can be an adventure in dining as well.

Crystal City boasts nearly a dozen full-service restaurants and over 30 “food specialty” shops ranging from familiar fast food stops like McDonalds and Subway to more specialty operations like Au Bon Pain and Frank & Stein and even sushi and Cold Stone Creamery ice cream shops.

The restaurants range from the beef-specialty chains of Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Morton’s The Steakhouse, to Jaleo Spanish Tapas, Neramitra Thai and grills like Ted’s Montana Grill and Bailey’s Pub & Grille. There’s Bebo’s Trattoria, and for the hamburger lovers around, what used to be Hamburger Hamlet is now simply Hamlet.

High on any seafood lovers list would have to be McCormick & Schmick’s, the specialty house featuring poultry, meats and steaks as well as shellfish, fresh water and ocean delicacies and not a few things served on the half shell. Their Crystal City site is open for dinner seven nights a week and is a short outside stroll, or if it is cold or wet, a slightly longer walk through the connecting tunnels to the theater.

Arena has a page on their website listing special deals in Crystal City for diners with tickets to Arena Shows. Go to www.arenastage.org, click on “Arena Restaged” and select “Dining Options” for offers such as discounts, free appetizers or desserts or even pre-theater specials like the $25 meal at the Crystal City Bistro at the Crystal City Marriott.

Brad Hathaway is the editor/reviewer for Potomac Stages, a website and e-mail service covering theater in Washington, Maryland and Virginia (www.PotomacStages.com). He has covered theater for Theatre.Com, Musical Stages Online, The Connection Newspapers and such magazines as Show Music, The Sondheim Review and American Theatre. He and his wife live on Capitol Hill. He can be reached by e-mail at Brad@PotomacStages.com.