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    ‘Is Betty Buckley Still Alive?’ Trump Asked. She Certainly Is.

    “What’s happening these days,” the singer said at the start of a Joe’s Pub residency, “is weird, and not cool.”An hour into Betty Buckley’s first set at Joe’s Pub, she began the aching ballad from “Cats” that has won her legions of fans. Among them, she now knows, is President Trump.Ms. Buckley, 77, who regularly reposts social media content critical of the Trump Administration, did not mention the president when she tore into “Memory,” which brought the reverent Thursday evening crowd to its feet, whistling and whooping. She didn’t mention him when she finished the number, either.But then she pivoted to Paul Simon’s “American Tune” — with lyrics like “I don’t have a friend who feels at ease” and “I wonder what’s gone wrong” — and called it “particularly perfect for what’s happening these days, which is weird, and not cool.”This has been an odd few months for Ms. Buckley, who has known for years that Mr. Trump loved “Memory,” but did not know her version, from the 1982 Broadway production, made her his favorite Grizabella, the once glamorous but now shunned feline whose plea for connection is the musical’s emotional high point.“I didn’t know he knew my name,” Ms. Buckley said of Mr. Trump. “It left me really gobsmacked that my name actually resides in his consciousness.”Graham Dickie/The New York TimesHow does she know now? Well, in March, Mr. Trump reminisced about seeing Ms. Buckley in that Andrew Lloyd Webber show while addressing the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where his handpicked trustees had appointed him chairman. “The place went crazy,” he recalled of the “Cats” performance, before musing, “Is Betty Buckley still alive?” He continued: “Of all the great voices and stars, bigger stars than her, she had the best voice.”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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    Eurovision 2025 Final: Time, Running Order and How to Watch

    It has never been easier, no matter where in the world you are.The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest final will be broadcast live at 9 p.m. (3 p.m. E.S.T.) from the St. Jakobshalle arena in Basel, Switzerland. You can watch it from pretty much anywhere on a variety of platforms.The contest is run by the European Broadcasting Union, an umbrella organization of public-service broadcasters around the world. If you’re in the United States, you can stream the contest on Peacock because it is owned by NBCUniversal, and NBC is an associate member of the union.In Britain, you can watch on various BBC outlets (or listen to it on the radio). In Italy, tune in to RAI and in Spain, head to RTVE. The European Broadcasting Union’s members are mostly in Europe, but can also be found in such countries as Israel and Algeria.Australia has been competing at Eurovision since 2015, and there you can watch on SBS. Many people do in that pop-mad country, despite the contest airing at 5 a.m. on the Australian East Coast. If no broadcaster in your country of residence holds the rights to show the contest, you can check out the livestream on the Eurovision Song Contest channel on YouTube.Each broadcaster supplies its own commentary, and many of the pundits have followings of their own: Graham Norton’s fantastically funny play-by-play has led people in many countries to install a VPN so they can access the BBC coverage. And then there are nods to regional languages: SVT offers commentaries in Swedish and in two Sámi languages through a collaboration with the Finnish public broadcaster, Yleisradio.In other words: Nowadays, watching Eurovision is easier than ever, no matter where you are.The acts will appear in the following order on Saturday:1. Norway2. Luxembourg3. Estonia4. Israel5. Lithuania6. Spain7. Ukraine8. Britain9. Austria10. Iceland11. Latvia12. Netherlands13. Finland14. Italy15. Poland16. Germany17. Greece18. Armenia19. Switzerland20. Malta21. Portugal22. Denmark23. Sweden24. France25. San Marino26. Albania More

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    Theater to Stream: ‘Yellow Face,’ Joaquina Kalukango and More

    Watch the Tony nominee Daniel Dae Kim in David Henry Hwang’s comedy, and take in cabaret at 54 Below, all from your living room.‘Broadway’s Best’Watch on PBS, online or on the PBS app.At this year’s Tony Awards ceremony, on June 8, the PBS series “Great Performances” will be honored for excellence in theater. Its spring slate alone should remind everybody why “Great Performances” has been a theater gateway for so many people. Already available is a 2024 recording of the London premiere of the Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt musical “Next to Normal,” starring Caissie Levy as a woman whose bipolar disorder has a ripple effect on her family. The New York Times’ review praised Michael Longhurst’s production for giving the show “a renewed sting.”Next, you can catch the Roundabout Theater Company’s recent revival of the acidic David Henry Hwang comedy “Yellow Face,” starring Daniel Dae Kim and Francis Jue — both nominated for Tonys this year. The glorious Bob Dylan jukebox musical “Girl From the North Country,” set in 1934 Duluth, Minn., arrives May 23. A week later, American audiences can discover last year’s London production of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate” — a very funny twist on “The Taming of the Shrew” — with Stephanie J. Block as the fiery diva Lilli Vanessi and Adrian Dunbar (yes, Superintendent Hastings from the procedural “Line of Duty”) as her egotistical ex-husband, Fred Graham.‘The Other Place’ and ‘Vanya’Rent them on National Theater at Home.The National Theater at Home’s catalog is a veritable treasure trove, and a recent addition well worth checking out is “The Other Place” from the writer-director Alexander Zeldin (“Love”). Loosely based on the Greek tragedy “Antigone,” it is not driven by a high-concept staging like Simon Stone’s “Yerma” or Robert Icke’s “Enemy of the People,” which are also drastic reworkings of classics. Rather, Zeldin slowly builds a stifling sense of impending doom until an ending that hits as hard as it is quiet. Emma D’Arcy (“House of the Dragon”) appears haunted by bottled-up pain as the disrupter at a family reunion, while Tobias Menzies portrays a seemingly even-tempered uncle.Compared with that tragedy, Andrew Scott’s solo interpretation of “Uncle Vanya” feels almost cheery. If you missed the critically acclaimed, very sold-out recent run of “Vanya” in New York, you can watch an excellent capture of the original London version here. Sam Yates’s production offers not just a modernized take on the Chekhov classic but, as Jesse Green wrote in The New York Times, “a new way of seeing into the heart of its beauty.”‘Friends and Romans’Stream it on Tubi.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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    In ‘Sirens,’ Meghann Fahy Sounds the Alarm

    “People underestimate melon,” the actress Meghann Fahy said. ”I don’t think they give it a chance.”Fahy was speaking on a drizzly morning in April, two weeks before her 35th birthday, in an Edible Arrangements outlet on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. In the first episode of “Sirens,” a Netflix limited series, Fahey’s character receives an arrangement, the deluxe Party Dipped Fruit Delight, which weighs as much as a toddler.“I dragged that arrangement around for weeks,” Fahy said. Now Fahy had come to make her own, a gesture that felt a little like homage, a little like revenge.With some help from the store’s owner, she set about crafting a more modest assemblage. She combined cut pineapple and melon balls to form daisies, then speared honeydew and cantaloupe onto plastic skewers above a kale base. “And that’s how she stabbed herself,” she said, narrating the activity. “Sad.”Meghann Fahy stars in “Sirens” as a protective sister with self-destructive tendencies and, in early scenes, an enormous fruit basket.Macall Polay/NetflixFahy knows what it’s like to be underestimated. She performed on Broadway as a teen in 2009 and then barely worked until 2016, when she landed a role on the go-getting Freeform show “The Bold Type,” the rare series that makes a career in journalism look fun. She didn’t properly break out until 2022, in an Emmy-nominated turn in the second season of HBO’s “The White Lotus.”This year, she has her first proper leads, as an imperiled single mother in the date-night thriller “Drop,” which premiered last month, and as a class-struggle chaos agent in “Sirens.” Created by Molly Smith Metzler (“Maid”), the series premieres on May 22.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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    Darren Criss Does the Robot

    Darren Criss stood up, fast asleep, his head heavy. When he awoke, he reverse body rolled, slowly turned his head from side to side, then brushed his teeth, mechanically moving his toothbrush — left, right, left — like a cartoon character.But this was no cartoon come to life (that would be “Boop!,” playing a block away). This was a scene from the Broadway musical “Maybe Happy Ending” in which Criss and Helen J Shen play Oliver and Claire, android attendant robots called Helperbots.Playing a character onstage comes with its own process of world building. But playing a nonhuman character requires a different — or additional — calculation. Where is a robot’s center of gravity?As Claire, a Helperbot 5 with a defective battery (and heavy dose of sarcasm), Shen moves as a human would. As Oliver, a Helperbot 3, an earlier model, Criss moves stiffly, his reflexes stilted. He’s all elbows and knees and sharp lines. Her limbs move in bell curves. The challenge of playing an aging robot has been a field day for Criss, an opportunity to draw upon his formal training in physical theater.“In many ways I joke that Oliver is my excuse to overact for two hours,” Criss said, adding, “the joke being how beep boop bop are we going here without it feeling too, frankly, ridiculous.”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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    Tonys 2025 Predictions: Who Will Win? And Who Should?

    Our chief theater critic looks at this year’s nominees and weighs in on the plays, musicals and artists he thinks will — and should — take home trophies on June 8.Tony voters do not have it easy. As the quality of (some) shows on Broadway improves, so does the difficulty and futility of ranking them. Yet not fully futile, at least for me in my fictional Tonys: A long look back at the 2024-25 season, during which I saw all 42 eligible Broadway productions, offered a chance to recall, reorganize and enjoy in memory the work of thousands of very talented artists.Thus, below, my take on the likely winners (marked with a ✓) and my personal “shouldas” (marked with a ★) in 17 of the 26 competitive categories. I hope your own Tonys, no doubt different from mine, prove as rewarding.Best PlayCole Escola, left, and James Scully in “Oh, Mary!”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“English”“The Hills of California”“John Proctor Is the Villain”✓ ★ “Oh, Mary!”“Purpose”It’s a strong season when five new plays (with options to spare) all deserve their nominations — and one of them, “Purpose,” won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama, while another, “English,” won in 2023. But though both, like the other nominees, are startling in some way, Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!,” in which Mary Todd Lincoln’s dreams of becoming a cabaret star are nearly foiled by her very Gaybraham husband, is almost freakishly so, barely containing its demented story in the very disciplined frame of a super-tight production. As good as the other nominees are, this comedy trumps them by ripping open the notion of what camp — and Broadway — can be.Best MusicalDarren Criss and Helen J Shen in “Maybe Happy Ending.”Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“Buena Vista Social Club”“Dead Outlaw”✓ “Death Becomes Her”★ “Maybe Happy Ending”“Operation Mincemeat”Despite its brand-extension birth, “Death Becomes Her” is a classic Broadway musical in at least this sense: It brings home the laughs. That’s no mean feat, but my vote usually goes to shows that advance Broadway instead of compromising with it. In their intimacy, their delicacy, their seriousness and faith in themselves, “Maybe Happy Ending” and “Dead Outlaw” both do that. For me, “Maybe Happy Ending,” by Will Aronson and Hue Park, has the slight edge because, on top of all that, it’s shattering (in the quietest way possible).Best Play RevivalFrom left, Amber Gray, Bill Irwin, Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz and Jessica Hecht in “Eureka Day.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times★ “Eureka Day”“Romeo + Juliet”“Our Town”✓ “Yellow Face”In this season’s death match between “Our Town,” the quintessential American drama, and “Romeo + Juliet,” the everlasting English tragedy, the Thornton Wilder revival won by a knockout. (Nobody really seemed to die in the Shakespeare.) But “Yellow Face,” by David Henry Hwang, complicating its story about colorblind casting with piquant ironies, will likely defeat them both. Still, I’d go for Jonathan Spector’s “Eureka Day,” a satire of vaccination politics that skewers both sides: anti-science know-nothings and trip-on-your-tongue progressives. It lets every kind of American cringe.Best Musical RevivalFrom left, Charlie Franklin, Jeremy Davis and Dwayne Cooper in “Floyd Collins.”Richard Termine for The New York Times★ “Floyd Collins”“Gypsy”“Pirates! The Penzance Musical”✓ “Sunset Boulevard”So sue me, I disliked “Sunset Boulevard,” which did everything in its considerable power to bury the property’s many shortcomings. That doesn’t seem to me to be a worthy goal in reviving a show. But you know what is? Getting to see our era’s biggest musical theater star (Audra McDonald) play one of the canon’s greatest roles (Rose in “Gypsy”). And though I’m loath to vote against a stage mother and a gaggle of strippers, for me, “Floyd Collins,” by Adam Guettel and Tina Landau, is the necessary revelation. It’s like “Our Town” in a cave: cosmic, brutal. (Since I worked with Guettel’s mother, Mary Rodgers, on her memoirs, I refrained from reviewing the show, but I do think it should win.)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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    Stephen Colbert on the President’s Trumped-Up Birthday Plans

    A military parade marking the anniversary of the Army’s founding will be held on the president’s birthday. “He wants overwhelming force,” Stephen Colbert said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Never Have I EverPresident Trump will soon return from his Middle East trip, and he already has big plans for June — specifically, the 14th.On Thursday, Stephen Colbert remarked that Trump might be leaving “his autocratic buddies behind, but he’s going to bring a taste of dictatorship back home when he does, ’cause he’s throwing a military parade on his birthday, featuring 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles and 50 helicopters.”“He wants overwhelming force, because this is more important than D-Day: It is his B-Day.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It also happens to be the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Army, so to honor the troops, soldiers will be housed in a former government warehouse, where they will receive one hot meal a day and have been told, ‘Bring your sleeping bags.’ [imitating Trump] ‘It’s my birthday slumber party! OK, fellas, let’s play Never Have I Ever. I’ll start. Never have I ever served in the military.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And before you ask, yes, there will be costumes. Service members will be wearing period uniforms from the Revolutionary War to the present. Yes. It’ll be June in one of the most humid cities in America, and they’ll be dressing them in wool pants.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Wrong Man for the Job Edition)“When asked yesterday if he would vaccinate his own children against the measles today, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said ‘Probably’ and then added, ‘I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.’ Yeah, not what you want to hear from the Secretary of Health and Human Services. That’s like if your pilot got on the P.A. and said, ‘We’re about to hit turbulence and I’d love some suggestions!’” — SETH MEYERS“Well, guys, R.F.K. Jr. just testified before Congress, and he said, ‘I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.’ It’s ironic, because it’s actually some great medical advice.” — JIMMY FALLONWe 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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    CNN to Livestream George Clooney’s ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’

    In June, the news organization is planning a live broadcast of one of the final Broadway performances of “Good Night, and Good Luck.”George Clooney’s Broadway debut, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press.Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.“We were looking at taking the play on the road, and taking it to London, and taking it to Paris,” Clooney said in an interview on Thursday, adding, “but we also thought it never is going to be exactly what it is right now, with the same cast, and we thought it would be nice to have a record of it.“And then we thought, because the newscasts are all done live, it is the perfect thing to try to create on live television, which is always exciting — there no safety net, and it’s a fun thing to do.”Clooney said that he expects the play will be available to stream after the live broadcast, but that he does not yet know where. “That’s what we’re still working on right now,” he said. “The question is, where does it go from here, and we’ve had three different offers and we’re negotiating to find out what the best position is.”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