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    ‘Dead Outlaw,’ a Mummy Musical, Is So Strange It Can Only Be True

    The creators of “The Band’s Visit” reunited to tell the story of an outlaw whose body toured carnivals for decades.When the composer David Yazbek approached his “Band’s Visit” collaborator David Cromer in 2019 about directing “Dead Outlaw,” a high-energy song cycle that he was developing into a musical, Cromer wasn’t sure he was the right fit.“One of the first things he said was ‘I don’t tend to go out just to hear music; I want more than that,’” said Yazbek, who envisioned a show with an onstage band, interstitial narration and a minimal set. “‘And so maybe I’m the wrong person for this.’”“No, no, no,” Yazbek reassured him. “That makes you the right person. We’ve already got the rock-band-sounding-great part nailed down.”Unlike “The Band’s Visit,” the gently comic, Tony Award-winning tale about an Egyptian band stranded in an Israeli town that takes place over a single night, “Dead Outlaw” is a rollicking thrill ride about a bumbling turn-of-the-20th-century outlaw whose body becomes a traveling, decades-long sideshow exhibited across the country.It also happens to be true.“It’s what I’ve been calling documentary musical theater,” Itamar Moses, who wrote the books for “The Band’s Visit” and “Dead Outlaw,” said over dinner in Greenwich Village with Yazbek, Cromer and Erik Della Penna, who wrote the music and lyrics for “Dead Outlaw” with Yazbek.The rockabilly musical, which is scheduled to run through April 14 at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village, tracks the ineffectual, booze-filled career and subsequent death, in a 1911 shootout, of Elmer McCurdy, whose involuntary second act has inspired books, plays and a BBC documentary.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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    Bill Jorgensen, Authoritative New York TV Newsman, Dies at 96

    Getting his start in the Midwest, he was best known for leading the New York broadcast “The 10 O’Clock News.”Bill Jorgensen, a serious-minded broadcast journalist who for 12 years anchored the pioneering, street-smart 10 p.m. newscast on New York’s Channel 5, died on March 13 at his home in Franklin, N.C. He was 96.His daughter Rebekah Jorgensen confirmed the death.Mr. Jorgensen, who came to New York from Cleveland in 1967, had some of the traits of a veteran anchor: a mane of graying hair, a deep, measured baritone and a tendency to lean into the camera with an intense gaze, as if to meet viewers head-on.“He was kind of a giant, aloof, powerful figure,” Victor Neufeld, who rose from production assistant to producer of the program, said in an interview. “He was the model of the Walter Cronkite style of anchoring — he carried himself with deep authority.”“The 10 O’Clock News” on WNEW-TV (now Fox 5 New York) was a gamechanger. As an independent station owned by Metromedia, it is believed to have been the first news program in the New York market to compete in prime-time against the entertainment programs on network stations. (WPIX, Channel 11, a rival independent station that had long started its newscast at 11 p.m., moved it to 10 clock in late 1967.)When “The 10 O’Clock News” debuted in March 1979, Channel 5 ran a full-page newspaper ad that proclaimed, “Jorgensen Can’t Wait To Give You The News,” and promised, “This man is going to change TV viewing habits.”And it did. With hard-hitting tabloid stories, with a significant focus on crime, covered in just 30 minutes by savvy reporters like Bob O’Brien, Chris Jones and Bill McCreary, “The 10 O’Clock News” found a strong audience against network shows and eventually expanded to an hour.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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    ‘Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV’: 5 Takeaways

    The Investigation Discovery documentary takes a look at accounts of a problematic working environment at Nickelodeon.The Investigation Discovery documentary “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” is a four-part series about working at Nickelodeon, including the environment under the former producer Dan Schneider, and what some described as harmful situations that child actors and adult employees were put in. It premiered on Sunday and is streaming on Max.Schneider, who parted ways with Nickelodeon in 2018, doesn’t appear in the docuseries, but former writers, child stars, staffers and journalists paint a picture of the environment at the network starting in the 1990s, through his departure.Schneider responded to the series in a video on Tuesday. “Watching over the past two nights was very difficult, me facing my past behaviors, some of which are embarrassing and that I regret, and I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology,” Schneider said in a nearly 20-minute video posted to his YouTube channel.In response to producers’ questions, the documentary said, Nickelodeon stated that the network “investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace” and has “adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience.”Here are the biggest takeaways from the series.Drake Bell publicly speaks about his abuse for the first time.Drake Bell, in 2018. He has spoken publicly about his sexual abuse for the first time, in “Quiet on Set.”Slaven Vlasic/Getty ImagesBrian Peck, a dialogue coach for Nickelodeon, was convicted of sexually abusing the “Drake & Josh” star Jared Drake Bell. Peck was arrested in 2003 in connection with the sexual abuse of a teenager over a four-month period. In 2004, Peck pleaded no contest to two felonies, according to public records. At the time of the abuse, Bell was 15 and Peck was 41; in court documents, Bell was identified as John Doe.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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    Ramy Youssef Mixes Vibes and Politics in His New Special ‘More Feelings’

    In “More Feelings” on HBO, the comic takes a nuanced look at his own role as a Muslim celebrity and at the American response to conflict in the Mideast.In his new special, “More Feelings,” a captivating comedy that speaks fiercely to this political moment, Ramy Youssef maintains a mannered tentativeness, tiptoeing from setup to punchline, becoming quieter as the laughs grow. Underneath his gentle cadence hides a firm conviction, one fed up not just with the horrific tragedy in Gaza, but also with the conversation in America in response to it.Because this is an election year, he can feel the pressure coming his way. “I know Biden is going to call me,” he says in the special, debuting Saturday on HBO. He means the campaign will be asking for help, but he makes it sound more intimate, like an annoying friend checking in.The comic Hasan Minhaj told a similar story on his recent tour about the peculiar anguish of being a Muslim celebrity asked to help get out the vote. They both mock their own momentary vanity of thinking a comic could save the country, but Youssef is a different kind of performer. He approaches his subject more indirectly, leaning into confusion and abstraction. His stories blur into and echo off one another. He describes himself as being at a loss in an argument, because while others have facts, “I just have vibes.”This sounds overly modest, the old comedian trick of playing dumb, but it’s not only that. The most effective tools of political art are different from those of an op-ed. And artfully expressed vibes can be a powerful thing.Youssef, the child of Egyptian immigrants, grew up in New Jersey where he filmed this intimate special. He begins by saying the proceeds from his shows will go to humanitarian aid for Gaza, before complaining about supporting charities. Then he describes the unrealistic expectations put on him, including knowing the right way to speak out on Instagram (it’s trickier than you think) and finding a way to convert Taylor Swift to Islam. (Her attendance at Youssef’s show in Brooklyn led to a minor right-wing controversy.)Then there are the appeals from establishment contingents like the Biden campaign looking to win Muslim and Arab votes in Michigan. The emotional turning point of the special comes when Youssef remembers a call three days after the Oct. 7 attack from a friend casually asking where he stands on Hamas.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: In Charles Busch’s ‘Ibsen’s Ghost,’ a Widow’s Work is Never Done

    In Charles Busch’s satire of Henrik Ibsen’s plays, a widow faces a rather catty fight to save her husband’s legacy.Like “Oh, Mary!,” Cole Escola’s hysterical take on Mary Todd Lincoln, Charles Busch’s “Ibsen’s Ghost” follows a notable woman of yore — Suzannah Ibsen, the wife of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen — whose corseted unknowability is mined for mischief. Subtitled “An Irresponsible Biographical Fantasy,” this Primary Stages production, in association with George Street Playhouse, at 59E59 Theaters takes what few details are known about Suzannah, a driving force in the playwright’s productivity, and turns her into a campy diva.The show opens with a widowed Suzannah, saucily played by Busch, mourning the loss of a “conjugal partner of inexhaustible pyrotechnics.” She soon learns how inexhaustible he really was: Hanna (Jennifer Van Dyck), one of Ibsen’s many apparent lovers, emerges and announces her intention to print her scandalous diaries.Let the catty turmoil commence.An affair is one thing, but Suzannah can’t abide Hanna’s claim that she — not Suzannah — inspired Ibsen’s feminist icon, Nora Helmer, in “A Doll’s House.” Hanna’s plan also interferes with Suzannah’s attempt to publish 50 years worth of the couple’s personal letters. But, in another blow, Ibsen’s publisher (Christopher Borg) finds their domestic contents too boring to print.Busch, a master of clutching pearls and fluttering eyelashes, has great fun playing varying states of dismay. Manic, glitch-like tics betray his Suzannah’s matronly composition, and she shocks herself with her indignity. As Hanna’s crusade moves forward, Suzannah becomes even haughtier, hurling vintage insults (“You brazen jezebel!”) across Shoko Kambara’s tasteful, turn-of-the-century drawing room set.Ibsen’s dramas, heavy on ruinous secrets his characters try to conceal, turn out to be perfect for Busch to cherry-pick in sketching this show. There’s a little bit of “Ghosts,” with the appearance of an illegitimate child (Thomas Gibson) and a bawdy, scene-stealing maid (Jen Cody) whose spinal disorder causes her to walk with a ridiculous pelvic thrust.Even Ibsen’s lesser known “Little Eyolf” receives some love when Borg returns as another character, a mysterious figure known as the Rat Wife. Pulling from Suzannah’s actual biography, Busch turns her stepmother (Judy Kaye, beautifully at home with Busch’s affected dialogue) into a vamp, a calculating governess who puts the moves on Suzannah’s father. And between the maid’s almost Transylvanian accent, Hanna’s British lilt and the publisher’s Swedish Chef garbles, a treasure trove of tonal absurdity fills the air.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: ‘3 Body Problem’ Is a Galaxy-Brained Spectacle

    The Netflix sci-fi adaptation has done its physics homework, even if it sometimes falls short on the humanities.The aliens who menace humankind in Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” believe in doing a lot with a little. Specifically, they can unfold a single proton into multiple higher dimensions, enabling them to print computer circuits with the surface area of a planet onto a particle smaller than a pinprick.“3 Body Problem,” the audacious adaptation of a hard-sci-fi trilogy by Liu Cixin, is a comparable feat of engineering and compression. Its first season, arriving Thursday, wrestles Liu’s inventions and physics explainers onto the screen with visual grandeur, thrills and wow moments. If one thing holds it back from greatness, it’s the characters, who could have used some alien technology to lend them an extra dimension or two. But the series’s scale and mind-bending turns may leave you too starry-eyed to notice.David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, partnering here with Alexander Woo (“The Terror: Infamy”), are best known for translating George R.R. Martin’s incomplete “A Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy saga into “Game of Thrones.” Whatever your opinions of that series — and there are plenty — it laid out the duo’s strengths as adapters and their weaknesses as creators of original material.Beginning with Martin’s finished novels, Benioff and Weiss converted the sprawling tomes into heady popcorn TV with epic battles and intimate conversations. Toward the end, working from outlines or less, they rushed to a finish and let visual spectacle overshadow the once-vivid characters.In “3 Body,” however, they and Woo have a complete story to work with, and it’s a doozy. It announces its sweep up front, opening with a Chinese scientist’s public execution during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, then jumping to the present day, when a wave of notable physicists are inexplicably dying by suicide.The deaths may be related to several strange phenomena. Experiments in particle accelerators around the world suddenly find that the last several decades’ worth of research is wrong. Brilliant scientific minds are being sent futuristic headsets of unknown provenance that invite them to join an uncannily realistic virtual-reality game. Oh, also, one night all the stars in the sky start blinking on and off.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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    ‘Game of Thrones’ Star Liam Cunningham Is Now in ‘3 Body Problem’

    Born and raised in Dublin, Liam Cunningham speaks in Joycean streams of consciousness that often have no discernible beginning, middle or end. He talks with his hands and taps his feet, salting his anecdotes with friendly F-bombs, catching his breath only long enough to take a puff of his distinctively scented e-cigarettes. They aren’t very popular on the set.“They smell like if you took the cardboard that comes with a dry cleaned shirt and held it over a burner,” said D.B. Weiss, who, with his production partner David Benioff, has given Cunningham choice roles in “Game of Thrones” and now “3 Body Problem.” A heady new science-fiction series, based on a trilogy of novels by the Chinese author Liu Cixin, “3 Body Problem” premieres Thursday on Netflix.In it, Cunningham plays Thomas Wade, the no-nonsense spy master who leads a team of physicists chosen to save the world from a very slow-moving but ominous alien invasion. Unlike Davos Seaworth, the emotionally vulnerable knight Cunningham played in “Thrones,” Wade is gruff, bellicose and secretive, an enigmatic authority figure whose back story left even Cunningham with questions.With Benedict Wong, right, on “3 Body Problem,” Cunningham plays a no-nonsense spy master who leads a team of physicists.Ed Miller/Netflix“So little about him is known, and everybody you talk to that’s seen this thing is like, ‘What’s his story?’” Cunningham said on an Austin hotel patio during the South by Southwest Film Festival, where the series had its world premiere. “He’s got the U.N. Secretary General on the end of the phone, and people do what he tells them to, and you go, ‘Who’s giving him this authority?’ And the funny thing is, I never felt the need to talk to the boys” — Weiss and Benioff, that is — “they never offered, and I never asked, which probably is not a good thing to say, I should probably say to everybody, ‘Oh, I know everything about him, but I’m not telling you.’”Breath. Puff.Cunningham, 62 with salt-and-pepper hair and bright blue eyes, came to acting relatively late in life. He worked as an electrician until he was 29, spending a chunk of his 20s in Zimbabwe bringing electricity to rural communities. “You know the song ‘Wichita Lineman’?” he asks, referring to the ’60s country hit by Glen Campbell. “That was me, except I was the Zimbabwe lineman. For an Irish, pale-skinned elf from Dublin, it was mind-blowing.” For a time he worked in a national park, “the size of Belgium and with 16,000 elephants.”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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    ‘Game of Thrones’ Creators on Their New Show, ‘3 Body Problem’

    In an interview, David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo discuss their latest fantastical epic, the alien space saga “3 Body Problem” for Netflix.The “Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were finishing off their hit HBO series after an eight-season run and wondering what was next. That was when the Netflix executive Peter Friedlander approached them with a trilogy of science-fiction books by the Chinese novelist Liu Cixin called “Remembrance of Earth’s Past.”“We knew that it won the Hugo Award, which is a big deal for us since we grew up as nerds,” Benioff said of the literary prize for science fiction. Barack Obama was also on record as a fan.Benioff and Weiss dipped in and were intrigued by what they found: a sweeping space invasion saga that begins in 1960s China, amid the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, and involves a superior alien race that has built a rabid cultlike following on Earth. A heady mix of science and skulduggery, featuring investigations both scientific and criminal, it felt utterly unique. “So much content right now feels like, ‘Oh, here’s another forensic show, here’s another legal thriller,’ it just feels like it’s a version of something you’ve seen,” Benioff said. “This universe is a different one.”Or, as Weiss added, “This is the universe.”Those novels are now the core of “3 Body Problem,” a new series that Benioff and Weiss created with Alexander Woo (“True Blood”). It premiered on opening night at the South by Southwest Film Festival and arrives Thursday on Netflix. The setting has changed along the way, with most of the action unfolding in London rather than China (although the Cultural Revolution is still a key element), and the characters, most of them young and pretty, now represent several countries. But the central themes remain the same: belief, fear, discovery and an Earth imperiled by superior beings. Among the heroes are the gruff intelligence chief Thomas Wade, played by the “Thrones” veteran Liam Cunningham, and a team of five young, reluctant, Oxford-trained physicists played by John Bradley — another “Thrones” star — Jovan Adepo, Eiza Gonzáles, Jess Hong and Alex Sharp. Can they save the world for their descendants?In an interview in Austin the day of the SXSW premiere, the series creators discussed life after “Thrones,” their personal ties to “3 Body Problem” and the trick to making physics sexy. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.The series is quite different from the books, particularly the settings and characters, both of which are a lot less Chinese. How did this come about?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