Barely a week after the timeless musical "The Sound of Music" came to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, seats were nearly filled on Friday night. Despite earlier cancellations of long-scheduled performances of other shows to protest President Donald Trump's new team at the 54-year-old Kennedy Center, early signs are that the site long considered Washington, D.C.'s hub of entertainment and culture is in strong shape.
"So many people — including a senior member of Congress — have told me they see a different crowd at the Kennedy Center," Richard Grenell, interim president of the center, told Newsmax. "It is less elitist and more everyman. And I would say that's because we are working to make the arts accessible to all."
Grenell, who was ambassador to Germany in Trump's first term, added that performances coming to the Kennedy Center included "Giuseppe Verdi's [opera] 'Aida,' 'West Side Story,' and the Stuttgart Ballet. There will be shows focusing on the birth of Christ during the holiday season in December. And we have already had big, common sense shows such as 'Les Mis' and now 'Sound of Music.'"
"Ric Grenell is not trying to politicize the Kennedy Center," said Kari Lake, acting CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. "He understands that the Kennedy Center belongs to the people."
Grenell was named interim president by President Trump in February. His appointment was coupled with the naming of a fresh group of trustees of the Kennedy Center by Trump — to which several longtime patrons of the Center, according to Washington Classical Review, "have considered or are actively boycotting all performances there. Worse, longtime subscribers of the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera, and the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts series may not renew their subscriptions."
But at least while "The Sound of Music" was being performed on stage, this did not seem to have any noticeable effect on the crowds of enthusiasts coming to the Kennedy Center.
"I had another lady at my book club make a bad scene because I was not giving up my season membership [at the Kennedy Center]," the wife of a federal employee from Silver Spring, Maryland, who requested anonymity, told us. "But that's the wrong attitude to have. This is not about politics but about performances. And I like what's here and what's coming."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Click Here Now.