Eliana Willis

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    ‘A Different World’ Hits the Road to Help Historically Black Colleges

    The beloved series was set at a fictional historically Black university. Now, cast members have reunited to visit and support real-life schools.Picture a pampered socialite ostentatiously putting her generational wealth on display. Or an outspoken teenage activist leading a climate change protest. Or a charismatic opportunist luring people into his latest scam.These descriptions apply equally to characters from “A Different World” — a sitcom that ran from 1987 to 1993 — and to today’s social media influencers. So it’s little wonder that the show, which streams on Amazon and Max, resonates with Gen Z.The series began as a spinoff of “The Cosby Show” centered on Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet), and it became a hit in its own right.“A Different World” broke ground by giving high visibility to an ensemble of aspirational Black young adults, following an eclectic cross-section of coeds attending Hillman College, a fictional historically Black university. There they dealt with typical collegiate growing pains — studying, partying, falling in love and stumbling into adulthood — and also with more serious subject matter, including racism, domestic abuse, gun violence, homelessness and mental health struggles.“These things mattered, and these are issues which are still relevant today,” said Darryl M. Bell, who played the Hillman huckster Ron Johnson.Now, more than three decades after the series finale, Bell and other core cast members, including Charnele Brown, Jasmine Guy, Kadeem Hardison, Dawnn Lewis, Cree Summer and Glynn Turman, have reunited for a campus tour of historically Black colleges and universities. Their mission is to raise awareness and enrollment for such institutions, to establish a “Different World” scholarship fund and, of course, to give newer, younger fans a chance to see their parents’ hand-me-down TV idols in person.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    2024 Olivier Awards: The Snubs and Surprises

    Our theater critics and a reporter discuss the big winner — “Sunset Boulevard” — and the rest of the honorees at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.On Sunday night, the Olivier Awards — Britain’s equivalent to the Tonys — took place in London. As expected, “Sunset Boulevard” took home the most trophies (and will have a Broadway run later this year), but there were also some surprise winners. Matt Wolf and Houman Barekat, The New York Times’s London theater critics, joined the reporter Alex Marshall to discuss the winners, the snubs and the last year in British theater.Jamie Lloyd’s stripped-back “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, took home seven awards. Do you think it deserved to dominate?ALEX MARSHALL I saw “Sunset Boulevard” from the cheapest of cheap seats in the back row, but it was still my most memorable night in a theater last year. I’m not surprised that Andrew Lloyd Webber responded to the show’s wins by writing on X that it was “a highlight of my career.”For me, the only downside to its sweep is that Nicholas Hytner’s “Guys and Dolls” failed to win any major awards (it picked up one for choreography). If Lloyd’s reimagining of “Sunset” was brutal and stark, Hytner’s revamp was all exuberance and joy.Scherzinger in “Sunset Boulevard.”Marc BrennerMATT WOLF I loved everything about “Sunset Boulevard,” so, yes, I do think it deserved to dominate. That said, it must have been galling for the “Guys and Dolls” company to open that show to universal raves last spring, only to have “Sunset” come along and blindside them. The radical daring of Lloyd’s “Sunset” doesn’t happen every day, and “Guys and Dolls” was the unfortunate victim of that fact.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: The WNBA Draft and ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’

    The highly anticipated draft for professional women’s basketball airs on ESPN. The 16th season of RuPaul’s Emmy-winning competition series concludes on MTV.For those who still haven’t cut the cord, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, April 15-21. Details and times are subject to change.MondayWNBA DRAFT 7:30 p.m. on ESPN. It’s been a thrilling and buzzy season for women’s college basketball. Largely driven by the star quality of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, the viewership for the title match between Iowa and South Carolina peaked at a staggering 24.1 million, making it the most-watched basketball game (men’s or women’s, college or pro) on ESPN since 2019. On Monday, Clark is expected to be the first pick, but which team she’ll join will be a mystery until then.TuesdayKerry Noble interviewed in “American Bombing: The Road to April 19th.”Photograph by Courtesy of HBOAN AMERICAN BOMBING: THE ROAD TO APRIL 19TH 9 p.m. on HBO. A new HBO documentary examines the lead-up and aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, which remains one of the largest terrorists attacks in the U.S. The film, which features interviews with the likes of Bill Clinton and the journalist Jeffrey Toobin, goes into the anti-government motivations of the bomber Timothy McVeigh, who sought revenge on the 1993 federal siege of the Branch Davidians’ compound in Waco, Tex. For companion viewing, check out the fictional Showtime series “Waco: The Aftermath.”WednesdayFAMILY GUY 9:32 p.m. on Fox. Season 22 is ending after just 15 episodes, but don’t fear: This animated family sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane has already been renewed for another. While it’s not yet as long-running as “The Simpsons,” it has clearly proved its staying power — if largely living in out-of-context clip compilations floating around the internet.ThursdayTHE THIN MAN (1934) 8 p.m. on TCM. Though the title may sound like a sinister horror movie, this is actually a charming comedy-mystery, starring the husband-and-wife crime-solving duo Nick and Nora Charles (plus their adorable terrier Asta). The power couple’s flirty repartee — not to mention a style of cocktail glasses named after them — is as essential to the movie as the clues. If you’re like me, you’ll also recognize the couple’s names from the deliciously twee 2008 rom-com “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.” Though there’s no Vampire Weekend in this one, there’s plenty of the magnetic romance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Norman Lear’s Art Goes to Auction

    The television producer’s prime pieces will be featured in a special evening sale at Christie’s in May.Norman Lear was best known for what he created on television, but he also appreciated the kind of art you can hang on the wall and collected his fair share over the years.Lear died in December at 101. On May 16, his wife, Lyn, is selling seven of the producer’s prime pieces of artwork at Christie’s with a total estimate of more than $50 million.The artworks will be featured in the auction house’s evening sale of 20th-century art, with additional works offered in the postwar and contemporary art day sales and subsequent auctions.“It will be like letting go of old friends and moving on to make new friends,” Lyn Davis Lear said in a telephone interview, adding, “Norman’s philosophy was buy what you love, don’t buy anything thinking you’re going to make a lot of money.”Norman Lear — whose string of hits included “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” “Good Times” and “Maude” — mostly collected works from the 1950s through the 1980s and was particularly drawn to artists who blossomed in California, as he did.“This is where he really flowered and was able to express himself,” Davis Lear said. “There was freedom about being in L.A.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Review: It’s No Sunday in the Park With ‘Lempicka’

    A musical about the groundbreaking Art Deco painter is vocally thrilling but historically a blur.Having dismissed her work as merely decorative, a fierce Italian gives harsh advice to an ambitious young painter: “You need to be a monster,” he brays. “Or a machine.”The painter, Tamara de Lempicka, didn’t take the advice in real life because it was never given. But “Lempicka,” the new Broadway musical about her, which opened on Sunday at the Longacre Theater, certainly did, and then some. It’s a monster and a machine.A machine because it argues, with streamlined efficiency, that in her groundbreaking portraits of the 1920s and ’30s, Lempicka forever changed the representation of women in art, and thus changed women themselves. The volumetric flesh, aerodynamic curves and warhead breasts that so titillated Jazz Age Paris became, the show suggests, today’s template for glamazonian feminism.As for “monster,” well, efficiency is not always pretty. Among the values compromised in the grinding of the musical’s gears are subtlety, complexity and historical precision. Yes, that fierce Italian existed; he was Filippo Marinetti, the founder of Futurism, and later a fascist. But the scene in which Lempicka studies art with him is, like many others, made up.Does that matter in a musical that admits it is “inspired” by life, not faithful to it? Are there perhaps greater values than truth in play?Natalie Joy Johnson, left, as Suzy Solidor and Iman as Rafaela in “Lempicka,” directed by Rachel Chavkin.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ Heading to Broadway, Wins Big at Olivier Awards

    The musical, which stars Nicole Scherzinger, won seven awards at Britain’s version of the Tonys. And Sarah Snook won best actress for “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”A reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, the long forgotten silent movie star who descends into madness, was the big winner at this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The musical, which will open at the St. James Theater on Broadway this fall, was honored Sunday during a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London with seven awards, including best musical revival, best actress in a musical for Scherzinger, best actor in a musical for Tom Francis, as the screenwriter who falls for Desmond’s charms, and best director for Jamie Lloyd.The number of awards was hardly a surprise. After the musical opened last fall, critics praised Lloyd’s stark production, especially highlighting its contemporary twists that included using cameras to zoom in on characters’ faces, then beam their emotions onto a screen at the back of the stage.Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, said that Lloyd’s production belonged firmly “to the here and now.” With this show, the director “takes an established musical by the scruff of the neck and sends it careering into the modern day,” Wolf added.Sarah Hemming, in The Financial Times, was among the critics to praise Scherzinger’s magnetic performance. “She’s not afraid to look scary or ridiculous,” Hemming said, “but there’s also a strung-out vulnerability about her. And when she sings, she pins you to your seat with the harrowing intensity of her delivery.”“Sunset Boulevard” beat several other acclaimed productions to the best musical revival award, including “Guys & Dolls” at the Bridge Theater and “Hadestown” at the Lyric Theater.Sarah Snook in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a solo version for which she won best actress at the Olivier Awards. Snook plays 26 roles in the show.Marc BrennerA host of musicals and plays shared the night’s other major prizes. “Operation Mincemeat,” a word-of-mouth hit about a bizarre World War II counterintelligence plot that is running at the Fortune Theater, won best new musical. While “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a prequel to the Netflix show, now at the Phoenix Theater, was chosen as best new entertainment or comedy play.The best new play award went to James Graham’s “Dear England,” about the English national soccer team, which transferred to the West End from the National Theater.In the hotly contested acting categories, Sarah Snook (“Succession”) was named best actress for “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a solo show running through May 11 at the Theater Royal Haymarket. Snook plays all 26 roles, often interacting with recorded projections of her characters.Before Sunday’s ceremony, some critics had expected the best actor award to go to Andrew Scott for a similarly dazzling solo performance: a one-man “Vanya” at the Duke of York’s Theater. In the end, the prize went to Mark Gatiss for his role as the revered actor and director John Gielgud in “The Motive and the Cue,” a play by Jack Thorne that dramatizes the fraught backstage relationship between Gielgud and Richard Burton as they worked on a Broadway show. Like “Dear England,” that play ran at the National Theater before transferring to the West End. More

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    Lincoln’s Murder Is Often Re-enacted, but Not at Ford’s Theater

    The theater says that allowing the assassination to be recreated there would undermine the gravity and significance of Abraham Lincoln’s death.Since Ford’s Theater reopened as an active theater in 1968, no one has staged a dramatic re-enactment of Abraham Lincoln being shot to death there on April 14, 1865.“Manhunt,” the Apple TV+ series, said it recently asked for permission and was turned down. Robert Redford considered it at one point but was dissuaded, an executive at the theater said.The theater’s website explains the reasoning.In a posting titled, “Why Ford’s Theatre Doesn’t Stage Assassination Re-enactments,” the historian David McKenzie, who worked at the theater for nine years, wrote in 2021:“For us at Ford’s, in the place where the tragedy actually happened, a re-enactment of the Lincoln assassination would take attention from the gravity of the event and its impact on our society at large,” adding that “it would focus attention instead on the macabre details of one night. It could prove kitschy, downplaying the event’s significance. It would also give John Wilkes Booth the prominence he desired in his quest to topple the United States government and preserve a system of white racial superiority.”Paul Tetreault, the Washington theater’s veteran director, said that, despite the resolute tone of McKenzie’s posting, the rationale against such a re-enactment is not a formal policy, but more a matter of “common sense.”“So the reality is,” he said, “there is nothing written that says no re-enactments. It’s just that it’s just respectful. You know, at Ford’s we have an obligation. We have an obligation to the facts. We have an obligation to truth, we have an obligation to, you know, be respectful and be reverential. This is a memorial site. It’s a national historical site.”Tetreault said Robert Redford considered using the theater in his 2010 film “The Conspirator,” and even toured the space to mark camera angles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Saturday Night Live’ Can’t Keep it Together

    Ryan Gosling hosted an episode that included appearances by Caitlin Clark, Emily Blunt and Kate McKinnon, another Ken song and multiple sketches full of people laughing at their own jokes.If an entire Oscars ceremony full of Barbenheimer jokes and a killer Ryan Gosling performance of “I’m Just Ken” didn’t give you sufficient opportunity to say goodbye to the pop cultural phenomenon of “Barbie,” “Saturday Night Live” is here to make sure that you’ve had Kenough.Gosling, who hosted “S.N.L.” this weekend with the musical guest Chris Stapleton, began his monologue by vowing that he was there to promote his coming movie “The Fall Guy.”“So don’t worry, I’m not going to make any jokes about Ken,” he said. “Because it’s not funny. Ken and I, we had to break up. We went too deep and it’s over. So I’m not going to talk about it.”Gosling paused and added, “I actually am going to talk about it a little bit. I have to, because when you play a character that hard, that long, letting go just feels like a breakup. And for processing a breakup, there’s really only one thing that can help: the music of the great Taylor Swift.”Taking a seat at a piano, Gosling began to sing a variation on Swift’s “All Too Well” that began like this:I shredded Venice Beach, it’s true.My clothes were tight,But something about that spandex felt so right.I left my Rollerblades in that big pink house,But I’ve still got that fur coat and I’ll wear it right now.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More