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    Nicole Scherzinger to Star in ‘Sunset Boulevard’ on Broadway in the Fall

    The revival, birthed in London, is a radically reimagined version of the 1993 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on a 1950 Billy Wilder film.Jamie Lloyd’s radically reimagined revival of “Sunset Boulevard,” in which Nicole Scherzinger plays the faded film star Norma Desmond, will come to Broadway this fall after a rapturously received run in London.Earlier this month, the revival was nominated for 11 Olivier Awards, including best musical revival, best actress in a musical for Scherzinger and best director for Lloyd. The Broadway production is scheduled to begin previews Sept. 28 and then open on Oct. 20 at the St. James Theater.The musical, a dark thriller based on a 1950 film by Billy Wilder, features music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton; Glenn Close starred in both previous Broadway productions, in 1994 and 2017. (The stage role was originated by Patti LuPone in London; the film starred Gloria Swanson.)Lloyd, a British theatermaker, has carved out a distinctive niche by staging starkly spare productions of classics with a focus on psychological drama. The new production, which ended its London run in January, is stripped down in many ways — two songs have been cut, there is no grand staircase or turban and Scherzinger doesn’t even wear shoes.“It’s much more about the psychological and emotional journey as opposed to huge, elaborate sets,” Lloyd said in an interview. “It’s very much a kind of psychological chamber piece.”The show, set in midcentury Los Angeles, is about a forgotten star of the silent film era who latches onto an aspiring young screenwriter in the hopes of rebooting her career.Scherzinger, 45, has had a varied entertainment path — as a musician, an actress and a television talent show judge. The critic Matt Wolf, reviewing the London production for The New York Times, called this “a career-defining performance” for Scherzinger; the New York production will be her Broadway debut.“I guess I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” Scherzinger, who studied theater in high school and college, said in an interview. “I can’t believe that it’s finally about to happen.”Scherzinger, who was born in Hawaii and raised in Kentucky, said she was eager to have another go at the role in the United States. She said she will set aside the script for a few months — she just spent three weeks visiting with her grandparents in Hawaii — before reimmersing herself in the character.“I’ll be back in America, my home, and I’m going to want to try and up my game even more,” she said. “There’s certain places I can make stronger choices, and I’m excited to play around with that to see where it can go — it’s great to be able to explore even more and go deeper.”Scherzinger, who said she has committed to nine months in the role, will be joined on Broadway by her three Olivier-nominated co-stars, Tom Francis, Grace Hodgett-Young and David Thaxton. More

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    Kevin Hart Receives the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

    The prolific comic was honored at the Kennedy Center for a 25-year career that has included movies, TV series and many live events.The Kennedy Center honored the comedian, who said he “fell in love with the idea of comedy” as something he could do for the rest of his life.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesKevin Hart stepped into the spotlight on Sunday night with his usual swagger to accept the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, occupying a stage lit up with his signature pyrotechnics.“Can I pee?” Mr. Hart said after a heartfelt tribute from his friend the comedian Dave Chappelle, before waddling offstage at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. He then reappeared to accept a bust of Mark Twain from David M. Rubenstein, the retiring chairman of the Kennedy Center.Mr. Hart, 44, is the 25th comic to receive the prize from the Kennedy Center, an honor given annually to the greatest humorists in American comedy. Mr. Hart was joined by his wife and four children, and grinned broadly even as he teared up at bitingly funny roasts and emotional tributes from friends and colleagues in the industry.“I played arenas with Chris Rock, and I would never play an arena before I saw you do it,” Mr. Chappelle said, crediting Mr. Hart with changing the business of stand-up comedy after a career selling out arena tours and even a football stadium in his hometown, Philadelphia. “You made me dream bigger, and you’re younger than me — it’s humiliating.”Over a roughly 25-year career — it was noted that he had been doing comedy since the inception of the Mark Twain Prize in the late 1990s — Mr. Hart has sold millions of tickets. He has built a loyal fan base through movies, TV series and many live events — some enhanced by fireworks — including eight comedy specials on relatable narratives, physical comedy and goofy re-enactments. But even when he rags on the cast of characters who file in and out of his life, he is usually the punchline of his own jokes.His peers also lauded him on Sunday for his work ethic, which includes appearing and casting friends in a slate of Hollywood movies, like the “Jumanji” sequels, dramedies such as “Fatherhood” and “Night School,” and a number of comedic action films.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 Bachelor’ and ‘The Truth vs. Alex Jones’

    Joey Graziadei hands out his final rose on ABC, and HBO airs a documentary about the trial of Alex Jones.For those like myself who still haven’t cut the cord, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, March 25-31. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE BACHELOR 8 p.m. on ABC. After an especially fun and rowdy women-tell-all special last week, it is finally time for Joey Graziadei to hand out his final rose and potentially get down on one knee. The host, Jesse Palmer, keeps teasing that the finale will be like nothing fans have ever seen. But the show is famous for constantly using hyperboles like “the most shocking season” or “jaw-dropping,” but no episode has been that wild since Colton Underwood jumped over a fence to get away from producers and cameras in 2019. I’m still hoping Graziadei gets a happily ever after.Tuesday“The Truth vs. Alex Jones.”Courtesy of HBOTHE TRUTH VS. ALEX JONES 9 p.m. on HBO. On Dec. 14, 2012, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 children and six adults. Before long, the radio host Alex Jones started broadcasting conspiracy theories about the shooting that inspired some of his listeners to harass family members of the victims. In 2018, Jones was sued by some of the Sandy Hook families, and in 2022 Jones was ordered to pay eight families a total of nearly $1.5 billion. This documentary talks to parents involved in the lawsuit and chronicles the trial.WednesdayGROWN-ISH 10 p.m. on Freeform. The friends at Cal U are back for one more hurrah. About a year ago, Yara Shahidi, a star of the comedy, announced that Season 6 would be its last, and after a midseason break, a few episodes will tie up the loose ends as Junior (Marcus Scribner) wraps up his college career. Some of the original cast members (including Emily Arlook, Jordan Buhat and Luka Sabbat) will guest star in the final episodes alongside Kelly Rowland, Lil Yachty, and Anderson .Paak.ThursdayFrom left: Darlanne Fluegel, Robert De Niro, James Woods and Tuesday Weld in “Once Upon a Time in America.”Program Content, Artwork and Photography (c) 1984 The Ladd CompanyWe 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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    ‘3 Body Problem’ Season Finale Recap: Absolute Power

    The show’s first season ended with unwanted appointments, buzzing cicadas and flying brains.Season 1, Episode 8: ‘Wallfacer’“3 Body Problem” started out as the television equivalent of a Hans Zimmer composition: a steady crescendo, growing ever more menacing and spectacular. By the time of its bloody, brilliant fifth episode, with its repulsive boat massacre and staggering eye in the sky, it felt like a show capable of going anywhere, doing anything.Then things simmered down. People spent their time reacting to the crisis. They worked or played hooky, they hid or revealed their feelings, they participated or declined to participate in the war to come. Will spent an episode dying, his friends grieving. (Also inserting his brain into a jar to be fired at an alien fleet, but definitely grieving.) Even so, given the relentless ante-raising of the show’s first five hours, the whole thing screamed “the calm before the storm.”Well, the season finale has come and gone, and there’s no storm in sight. It wasn’t the calm before the storm. It was all just … calm.Not that the characters would necessarily recognize it as such. They keep plenty busy, primarily in unpleasant ways; the one exception there is Auggie, who’s begun distributing free nanofiber water filters to poor areas in Mexico. That’s one way of saving the world a bit at a time. A young Mike Evans, determined to dedicate his life to saving a single species of bird, would approve.Jin’s life is comparatively disastrous. Will’s deathbed confession of his feelings for Jin have given rise to passionate feelings of her own. Whether or not she reciprocates his romantic interest is unclear, but I used the present tense of “reciprocate” there on purpose: To Jin, Will is very much alive, even if he’s a disembodied brain in a space capsule.Things end between her and Raj over his failure to grasp this. “You loved him,” he says, bitterly.“I love him,” she insists. “He’s still alive.” And it’s her job to keep him that way for two centuries, until a hostile alien fleet can find him and revive him to do god knows what, at which point he’s supposed to relay intel on them back to Earth god knows how.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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    ‘3 Body Problem’ Episode 6 Recap: Man with a Plan

    After five escalating episodes, the series took its foot off the gas for its sixth.Season 1, Episode 6: ‘The Stars Our Destination’It had to let up at some point. After five escalating episodes in which each ending was more spectacularly grim than the last, “3 Body Problem” took its foot off the gas for its sixth outing. It’s hard to begrudge an eight-episode literary adaptation a bit of breathing room.This installment launches the bulk of its fireworks in its opening minutes, a montage reactions to the so-called “the Eye in the Sky Incident,” when the San-Ti revealed their intention to conquer the planet. Global chaos. Worldwide rioting. Doomsday cults. Food shortages. Alien worshipers. Bad comedy. Sloganeering politicians. A tasteless fund-raising effort called The Stars Our Destination, in which everyday people can pitch in to help billionaires purchase other solar systems, which will help … someone, somehow, supposedly.In short, it is an all too plausible nightmare world. Contrary to the argument made in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s classic graphic novel “Watchmen,” the existence of an alien threat does nothing to bring humanity together.To the extent that anyone has their eyes on the prize, it’s Wade. On a show that keeps its heroes’ clay feet firmly on the ground, he strides around like Nick Fury, recruiting a Nobel-laureate Avengers and building bases on the moon. He gives Jin license to devise a mind-bogglingly complex and expensive “staircase” of nuclear bombs in space to propel a probe into the heart of the alien fleet. He then reveals that the probe will be a human being; dollars to doughnuts he’s referring to Jin’s boyfriend, Raj. Seriously, the guy is spy-fi movie mastermind stranded in a prestige TV drama.For now, however, even the almighty Wade isn’t capable of ginning up some bogus charge by which to keep the San-Ti cult leader Ye Wenjie under lock and key. She goes free, and immediately begins attempting to communicate with her Lord, saying she holds the key to thwarting humanity’s attempt to fight back, which might well be successful otherwise. Her desire for a global tabula rasa outstrips that of even the most fanatical Red Guards, who still dominate her mental landscape.Elsewhere, Will’s concerns remain down to earth, at first. He is convinced by his friends to profess his feelings for Jin, Raj be damned. But he chickens out at the last minute, not realizing their relationship is strained and it is the best shot he’d ever have.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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    ‘3 Body Problem’ Episode 7 Recap: Brain Drain

    Wanted: One intelligent human brain, body not required.Season 1, Episode 7: ‘Only Advance’Wanted: One intelligent human brain. Dying donors preferred. Serious consideration of whether or not aliens should just go ahead and take over a plus. Must survive 300 nuclear explosions in outer space. Estimated travel time: 200 years. Return transportation not provided. Full human bodies not allowed.This is the tempting offer at the center of the penultimate episode of the first season of “3 Body Problem.” Reuniting the “Game of Thrones” team of the director Jeremy Podeswa and the writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, it is another low-key affair compared to the mounting menace and chaos of the first five episodes. Granted, it is about a scheme to remove Will’s brain, freeze it, and blast it into space at unprecedented speeds so it can be intercepted and studied by the San-Ti. Will’s doubts about the project, says boss Thomas Wade, are what make him so valuable: If he were a true believer in the fight to the death against the aliens, they might simply let him drift past.Some people’s doubts are stronger than others’. Though she designs the nanofiber sail required to accelerate the probe through space, she walks away from it all when the idea of sacrificing Will as a glorified space monkey is brought to the table. She also takes her nanofibers off the market and out of the realm of exclusivity permanently, by uploading all the data she has on them to the internet and making them accessible to everyone for free.The problem is that compared to a Cyclopean eye in the sky or a boat getting sliced to pieces by an invisible web out of Stephen King’s “The Mist,” none of this is all that interesting. From the very first episode, it was apparent that ideas and images, not compelling characters and a novel plot, were the strength of “3 Body Problem.” Leaning into the characters makes the whole thing lopsided.Look at Wade, for example. At first just a gray eminence working behind the scenes while Clarence pounded the pavement, he gradually grew in prominence, reaching a fun spy-movie throwback sweet spot last episode. Now, however, it feels like Benioff and Weiss have overshot the mark with him into cliché.There’s only so much even an actor like Liam Cunningham can do with dialogue like “The Doomsday Express just pulled into the station — you can all queue up behind me” or “The future’s not as far as it used to be.” The man is talking about having himself cryogenically frozen like a C.G.I. chimpanzee and revived annually so he can personally oversee humanity’s defenses for 400 years. He’s a bit too “a Jerry Bruckheimer production” to fit in with the show’s more psychologically realistic characters, i.e. all the rest of them.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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    Cynthia Nixon Knows What Poem She Wants Read at Her Funeral

    “I love ‘I heard a Fly buzz — when I died,’” said the actress, currently performing Off Broadway in “The Seven Year Disappear.” “That one gets me every time.”Cynthia Nixon hadn’t been onstage since 2017, when she and Laura Linney alternated the roles of Regina and Birdie in “The Little Foxes.”She wasn’t expecting her comeback to be “The Seven Year Disappear,” playing an artist who also re-emerges after seven years.“It was really startling to me and a weird, uncanny echo of the play,” Nixon said. The Jordan Seavey production runs through March 31 at the New Group, and four performances, from March 29 to 31, will be live-streamed.Nixon is a two-time Tony Award winner, including one for “The Little Foxes,” but she is widely known for her work in television, including as Miranda Hobbes in “Sex and the City” and in “And Just Like That …” and as Ada Brook in “The Gilded Age.” This summer, she plans to begin shooting the third seasons of those latter two series, volleying from one to the other.“I can see in some ways it being fun,” she said. After all, she’s pulled off something like it before.“I did this thing when I was 18 where I was in two Broadway plays at the same time,” said Nixon, who ran back and forth between “The Real Thing” and “Hurlyburly,” both directed by Mike Nichols, and even made the curtain calls.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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    With ‘Tommy’ Revival, Pete Townshend Is Talking to a New Generation

    He’s also still working through his childhood trauma. Considering his musical’s legacy, he sees a story about how “we prevail ultimately, by turning toward the light.”As he entered a suite at the Carlyle hotel in Manhattan, Pete Townshend mentioned that an afternoon meeting had been canceled. “So,” he added, “we have lots of time to talk.”Townshend is one of rock’s great singers, songwriters and guitarists, and he’s also among music’s pre-eminent talkers. Since the Who first took the stage 60 years ago, he has considered interviews to be an adjunct to his music, a parallel way for him to clarify or interrogate the ideas he pours into songs.In 1969, the Who released “Tommy,” a rock opera written mostly by Townshend, although the bassist John Entwistle contributed the songs “Cousin Kevin” and “Fiddle About,” and the drummer Keith Moon suggested the premise of “Tommy’s Holiday Camp.” Townshend expected the double album to fade quickly, in the way of most records. Instead, it took root in pop culture, and in short succession was adapted by a ballet group in Montreal, the Seattle Opera and the London Symphony Orchestra. Then, most memorably, it was a delirious 1975 film directed by Ken Russell.The “Tommy” hoopla had faded before it was adapted for Broadway in 1993, with a book by Townshend and the show’s director, Des McAnuff. In a review in The New York Times, Frank Rich called it “stunning” and “the authentic rock musical that has eluded Broadway for two generations.” It ran for two years, and garnered Tony Awards for McAnuff’s direction and Townshend’s score.Ali Louis Bourzgui, center standing at a pinball machine, as Tommy in the Broadway revival of “The Who’s Tommy” at the Nederlander Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLast year, the pair revived “Tommy” in a reimagined version at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, where it drew candescent reviews, and on March 28, it opens at the Nederlander Theater, with Ali Louis Bourzgui making his Broadway debut in the title role.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