Willkommen? NOT. What Won't Be Playing Ric's Kennedy Center

"RIC. WELCOME TO SHOW BUSINESS" President Donald Trump trumpeted to Richard Grenell on Monday when he appointed the out Republican operator and former ambassador to Germany as head of the Kennedy Center.

But doesn't what Trump wrote scream camp? I mean, is there a gayer way of spelling Richard than "Ric?" (Well, "Dic," perhaps.")

But was this a way for Trump to put a loyal, if insistent, aide into a largely ineffectual position where he will spend time policing drag shows? Grenell, it should be noted, auditioned for Secretary of State by hiring a public relations firm to promote his nomination. That job went to Marco Rubio. Trump offered him Director of National Intelligence, which he declined. As to why he accepted the Kennedy Center post is a bit of a mystery for a politico as power hungry as Ric. When your political opposition ends up being RuPaul and the queens from Drag Race, you are hardly welding much power in the DC scheme of things.

Nor do we have much insight into Grenell's aesthetic tastes. Does he love Maria Callas? Would he institute a retrospective of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals just as the Kennedy Center did famously with Stephen Sondheim a decade ago? Will he rename the Center's largest auditorium, the Grand Ole Opry House?

And in the five days since the announcement, there have been changes to the Kennedy Center's announced line-up. Comedian, actress and content creator Issa Rae canceled her sold-out show, becoming the first major celebrity to decline from appearing at the center. On Friday, the Washington Post reports on the chilling effect the administrative changes have had on the institution. Some have been voluntary, such as musician Ben Folds and opera singer Renée Fleming who said they were stepping down as artistic advisers with the center, as did the treasurer of its board of trustees, TV producer Shonda Rhimes. And some have been not: "The center terminated its general counsel and the head of its public relations department, according to people with close knowledge of the Kennedy Center who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal," the Post reports. "The center's new public relations staff did not immediately respond to questions about firings or most of the show cancellations."

And the tour of the children's musical "Finn," which the Center commissioned and hosted a successful four-week run, has been scrubbed. The Post writes: "A creator of the show said it could be read as a metaphor for LGBTQ+ experience, though there is nothing in the musical explicitly about the community."

Looking at upcoming bookings, one that will likely come under Ric's scrutiny is "Chris Grace: As Scarlett Johansson," scheduled for July. In the show, the star of NBC's "Superstore" uses Johansson's infamous performance as a Japanese cyborg in "Ghost in a Shell," to hilariously explore the bounds of an artist's identity.

But judging from the President's recent edicts, don't be surprised is Grace is axed.

And, looking forward, here are some plays, musicals and personalities we will NOT expect to see on any of the Kennedy Center's three stages any time soon. Interestingly, some have already played the venues.

'CATS. The Jellicle Ball'

"Bring it to the runway," read the tagline to last summer's re-imagined version of "CATS" that played off-Broadway to much acclaim. In this version, the fight as to which cat will be crowned winner of the Jellicle Ball is framed around drag Ballroom culture. It counted amongst its many admirers Andrew Lloyd Webber, who called the audience response "electric." "CATS" is no stranger to the Kennedy Center, having played there three times since 1982, but this one may be a bridge too far for Ric's re-imagined Kennedy Center to host if should ever tour, though it would likely fit nicely in the complex's smallest auditorium.



'Oh, Mary!'

Is there a Broadway hit better suited for a DC run than "Oh, Mary!," Cole Escola's runaway hit that has defied all odds to become a huge hit? A lunatic comedy about Mary Todd Lincoln and her dreams of becoming a cabaret star is a natural for the nation's capital. How this small show moved from off-Broadway to becoming a Broadway sellout without a celebrity at its helm is one of the happiest theatrical success stories of the past few years. And its success simply says that the time for drag on Broadway is now. Not so much at the Kennedy Center when the show goes out on a National tour, which it will eventually. Producers will have to look beyond the Kennedy Center for a venue with Ric in charge. He may laugh heartedly from his $350 seat at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre, but such camp shenanigans are verboten on the banks of the Potomac. Is Ford's Theatre available?

'The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show'

For the past seven years, "RuPaul Drag Race" alumni Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme have toured with their annual Christmas show, with each version getting bigger than the last and playing larger venues. But there appearances in DC have not been at the Kennedy Center. There most recent appearance as last year at the Lincoln Theater. We don't know if Ric is a fan, if so, he'll likely be heading across town to see them next year.

'RuPaul's Drag Race: Werq the World Tour'

This isn't much of a surprise – the numerous tours of RuPaul's Drag Race that have occurred since 2009 have not stopped at the Kennedy Center, so don't expect "RuPaul's Drag Race: Werq the World Tour" to be booked under Grenell's tenure. On the other hand, RuPaul has had some fun with the Kennedy Center Honors, notably (according to ChatGPS) Notably, in a 2022 episode titled "The Kennedy Davenport Center Honors Hall of Shade," contestants participated in a roast challenge, with the title being a humorous nod to both the Kennedy Center Honors and former contestant Kennedy Davenport. And Chad Michaels, winner of "RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars," Season One, has also performed there.

Most Any Play by Charles Busch

In the mid-1980s, playwright and performer Charles Busch drew large crowds to bombed out Alphabet City to the Limbo Lounge on the Lower East Side with his one-act comedy, "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom." It was paired with another of his plays, "Sleeping Beauty or Coma," and transferred to Greenwich Village where it played for five years. Subsequently he had off-Broadway hits with "Times Square Angel," "Psycho Beach Party," "Die Mommie Die!", and "The Divine Sister," in which he starred in drag as each's lead. His Broadway success "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife" played DC National Theatre when it toured in 2002, but not the Kennedy Center. It could play there in the future since none of its characters are played in drag, though its titular character was based on one that Busch had developed in drag.

'Chicago'

The Kander and Ebb musical has been a frequent visitor to the Kennedy Center, having played there five times, including a tour of the original 1976 production. The four other occasions were of the lean and mean current Broadway production, now near its 30th year. If a musical can be called Trumpian it is this cynical take on crime and celebrity, but it will likely be canceled from the line-up of any upcoming Kennedy Center shows due to the pesky character of Mary Sunshine, the saccharine newspaper reporter who in the show's big reveal is shown to be a man in drag. In the show's program, the actors first name is represented only its first letter as to not spoil the reveal. When Varla Jean Merman played the role his real name, Jeffery Roberson, was listed as J. Roberson. And drag has extended to other roles as well, such as "RuPaul's Drag Race" winner Jinkx Monsoon, who took over the role of prison matron Mama Morton for two engagements in 2023 and 2024, selling the show out in the process.

'Cabaret'

There was some drag in Harold Prince's initial 1967 staging of another Kander and Ebb classic, but it wasn't until Sam Mendes' sensational 1993 version with Alan Cumming as the ambisexual MC did it expand on its drag and queer content. It is presently on Broadway in an even more environmental production with copious drag content that would be verboten at the Kennedy Center if it should tour. The Kennedy Center is no stranger to the musical, having hosted numerous productions over the years, including the tour of Mendes version.

'& Juliet'

What may be the last musical with drag content to play the Kennedy Center is this smart and delightful British import that reworks the plot of "Romeo and Juliet" if she had lived and moved to Paris. The national tour finished its run there in early January. The jukebox musical, with songs by pop wunderkind Max Martin, is likely too woke for Ric's new Kennedy Center, if only for its non-binary character May and her romance with a French playboy (obviously not in Shakespeare).

'La Cage aux Folles'

In 2012, the hit Broadway revival of "La Cage aux Folles" played the Kennedy Center; but if revived today Kennedy Center honoree Jerry Herman's 1983 hit would have to seek a stage elsewhere. That is because this adaptation of the cult French film features two men - one a star of a popular French Riviera drag revue – at its center, and its radical notion that a gay couple is really not much different than a straight one. That it was a hit during Ronald Reagan's presidency is proof that drag can transcend politics, at least back then. Not that Reagan was much of friend to the queer community. The show opened during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, but Reagan would not mention the acronym until his friend Rock Hudson would die from it in 1985. We do not know if Reagan attended a performance of the musical when its first national tour played Washington, DC the same year as Hudson's death, but in his diaries he wrote how he and Nancy saw the original French film in 1986 and thought it amusing.

'RENT'

Jonathan Larson's historic Gen X musical took Broadway by storm in 1996, in part because of Larson's untimely death as it moved from off-Broadway to Broadway. It was a phenomena due to its timely look into the lives of the young underclass living in New York's East Village who must come to age under the shadow of AIDS. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and continues to be one of the most revived musicals of the past quarter century; but don't expect it at the Kennedy Center anytime soon due to the non-binary character of Angel, despite having played the venue a number of times, most recently during its 20th anniversary tour.

'Angels in America'

Arguably the greatest American play of the second half of the 20th century, Tony Kushner's two-part, eight-and-a-half-hour drama offers a searing portrait of New Yorkers struggling with the AIDS epidemic during the mid-1980s, one of whom – lawyer Roy Cohn – was Donald Trump's lawyer prior to his death from the virus in 1986. Kushner's visionary work, which travels from the hospital rooms of the inflicted to Heaven, never minces words in saying who the heroes and villains (need I say the Reagan Administration) were in the way America dealt with the crisis. Its scathing portrait of Cohn is reason enough for Ric to keep it off the Kennedy Center roster as not to infuriate his boss; but there's also Kushner's use of drag throughout that would also damn it from a Kennedy Center stage. Though as recently as 2018 a celebrated revival, from London, played the complex.

'I Am My Own Wife'

Wearing a string of pearls and a simple black frock, actor Jefferson Mays became German antiquarian Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in Doug Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning one-hander back in 2003. Taken from interviews Wright had with Charlotte, it weaves a mesmerizing story of this trans icon who killed her father, and survived both the Nazis and the Communists in her Berlin home-turned-museum. The play was developed with Moisés Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project, with Kaufman acting as director. Mays won a Tony award for playing some 30-characters, and his performance was filmed for PBS. He also toured in the show that played the Kennedy Center in 2004; But don't expect Charlotte and her fabulist story-telling to return there any time soon with any other actor in the role.

'Hedwig and the Angry Inch'

Where to begin with Hedwig? Put simply, John Cameron Mitchell's iconic trans character is sister to Charlotte. She also survives the Communists and escapes to the United States during the waning days of the Cold War, but at a price. Stranded in Kansas, she becomes the muse of a petulant young rocker, who rockets to stardom at Hedwig's expense. All of this is told by Hedwig in amusing, deadly ironic patter and one of the great pop scores in musical theater history. Her humble stage beginnings were in a Welfare hotel on the West Side of Manhattan in 1998 with the extraordinary Mitchell; and she eventually made her uptown (with Neil Patrick Harris), She even has a history at the Kennedy Center: in 2017 the musical appeared there during the Broadway production's national tour. We have no idea if Ric is a fan.

'Where's Charley?'

In 1892, three years before "The Importance of Being Earnest," another Victorian-era comedy rocked London.Called "Charley's Aunt," it would run for just under 1,500 performances, a record for its time. And while it had no character as imposing as Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell, it has one considered far more dangerous, at least by Donald and Ric's standards – a man disguised as his friend's matronly aunt. It was all in good, heterosexual fun, which is how drag pretty much was defined throughout the 20th century either in British pantomime or on American television, thanks to Milton Berle and Flip Wilson. "Charley's Aunt" successfully transferred to the American musical stage as a vehicle for dancer Ray Bolger in 1948 as "Where's Charley?"with a score by Broadway newcomer Frank Loesser, choreography by George Balanchine, and direction by George Abbott. Bolger later filmed the musical. Though it pretty much has been forgotten, a revival could bring attention to its historic place as a musical that showed drag as the harmless fun it is.

'The Drag'

If there's a play that may be worth looking at, if only for historical value, it is Mae West's highly controversial 1927 play "The Drag" that provided proof that drag culture and gay life were alive and thriving during the Gatsby era. It also made West a lot of money during its brief tenure on Broadway and a stint in jail. She famously laughed it off with the quip, "A few days in the pen 'n' a $500 fine ain't too bad a deal". West then donated to the women's prison and established the Mae West Memorial Library. It certainly would have lasted longer than its two week run had The Society for the Prevention of Vice had not threatened to investigate all the shows running on Broadway that year – its biggest ever with 260 shows. That it has never been given a major revival make it a queer curiosity, but one that will have to look elsewhere than the Kennedy Center if it wants a DC home.