by contributor Donna Shor
Photo credit: intern Haley Schiffer
If the Annual Harman Center for the Arts Gala, hosted by the Shakespeare Theatre Company – (STC) – had been a Broadway show, Variety would have hailed it as “Boffo!”
It was a three ring winner beginning with the cocktail reception in the Harman foyer, next came the stunning program, continuing with the whole audience heading two blocks away to dinner at the National Building Museum followed by dancing into the night.
There were two honorees. The KMPG LLC received the Sidney Harman Award for Philanthropy in the Arts. The company was recognized as a leading arts advocate by Michael Kahn, the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s artistic director and guiding light.
He spoke of their work “supporting theatres stretching from Chicago’s Goodman Theatre to London’s National Theatre, including their generous support of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s mainstage shows, previous galas and matching funds campaigns.
It was Elizabeth McGovern’s choice as recipient of the 2013 William Shakespeare Award for classical acting that set the theme for the evening, not least because she now lives in London and for the fourth season will be starring in Television’s “Downtown Abbey.” She arrived in Washington with her husband, director Simon Curtis.
Nice note: STC actors garbed as the downstairs staff of the Abbey welcomed us into the dinner.
In presenting her with the “Will” award, Michael Kahn, hailed her mastery of classic acting. He said “The deep roots she has laid as a classically trained actor is evident in each of her roles on stage, screen or television.”
When she joined the pre-performance crowd in the foyer, onlookers marveled at her youthful beauty and easy laughter, in contrast to her rather rigid self as Cora, the Countess of Grantham, mistress of Downton Abbey.
As a 19 year old girl, she was swooped from her classes at Julliard for a role in the film “Ordinary People” followed by her work in “Ragtime,” which garnered her an Academy Award nomination. She went on to appear in films as well as a score of plays here and abroad.
With her Will award, she joins other actors of the caliber of Sir Ian McKellen, Kevin Spacey, Dame Judi Dench and her “Downton Abbey” fellow actress, Dame Maggie Smith.
Interestingly, her distinguished father William Montgomery McGovern is a whole story in himself and has been considered a possible model for Indiana Jones. An adventurer, university professor, anthropologist, war correspondent and teacher of military strategy at the Navy, Air and Army War Colleges he also lectured on government at Harvard.
By age thirty he had explored uncharted reaches of the Himalayas and the Amazon River. He studied at Oxford and the Sorbonne, became a Buddhist priest in a Japanese monastery, and during World War II at Guadalcanal he was able to use his knowledge of the Japanese language (he knew 12 languages in all) to interrogate Japanese prisoners of war.
The program opened with a jolly British music hall song, included a magnificent cello interlude, a pas de deux that in itself would have been worth coming out for and received thunderous applause; some beautifully done songs, a skit involving four actresses who wove together passages from some of Shakespeare’s best-known plays, and a Beatle tribute by a vigorous Fab Four who brought down the house and reminded us that as musicians, those four British boys really had it.
