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    Review: Delia Ephron’s ‘Left on Tenth’ Treads Lightly

    Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher star in this quasi romantic comedy adapted from Ephron’s memoir, which went deeper into her illness and grief.The website for “Left on Tenth,” Delia Ephron’s new Broadway play, is approximately the last place I would have expected to encounter a content advisory, but there one is. From a marketing standpoint, it’s a sensible move — a tip-off, for anyone expecting pure romantic comedy, that the show also deals with life-threatening illness.What’s strange is that, having warned us, the play doesn’t nearly go for broke. Unlike Ephron’s 2022 memoir, “Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life,” which deals affectingly with her widowhood and leukemia as well as her tripping headlong into new love, the stage adaptation gives the impression of being desperate not to bum anyone out.So an anodyne rom-com is for the most part what we get from this play, which opened on Wednesday night at the James Earl Jones Theater. Julianna Margulies stars as Delia, an anxious, bookish denizen of Greenwich Village, still grieving her husband’s death. Peter Gallagher plays the widowed Peter, the calm Californian psychoanalyst for whom Delia falls by email, so suddenly that it feels fated.Shades of “You’ve Got Mail,” the 1998 classic rom-com that Ephron wrote with her older sister, Nora, but what can you do? That’s how their romance sparked in real life.It all started with an essay that Ephron wrote for The New York Times in 2016, the year after her husband Jerry’s death, about the particular circle of phone-tree hell she entered when she asked Verizon to disconnect his landline. In response, she heard from a lot of readers, one of whom was Peter, noting in an email that Nora once set them up when they were college students.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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    Ron Ely, Who Played an Updated Tarzan in the 1960s, Dies at 86

    He later built a career as a reliable TV guest star. His life turned tragic in 2019 when his son killed Mr. Ely’s wife and was then shot to death by the police.Ron Ely, a veteran television actor best known for his role as an educated, urbane vine-swinger on the 1960s show “Tarzan,” died on Sept. 29 at the home of one of his daughters near Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 86.That daughter, Kirsten Ely, announced the death on Wednesday on social media. It had not been previously reported.A tall, muscled Texas native, Mr. Ely (pronounced “EE-lee”) had made his name by the early 1960s as a reliable supporting actor on popular TV shows like the sitcoms “Father Knows Best,” “How to Marry a Millionaire” and “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” before landing the lead role on “Tarzan” in 1966.The show, which ran on NBC for 57 episodes across two seasons, featured a Tarzan updated for a modern audience. Gone were the semi-verbal grunts of previous iterations; in this version, Tarzan had left the jungle and learned the ways of modern civilization before deciding to return to the creature comforts of his former home.Gone, too, was Jane, Tarzan’s traditional love interest, though Cheetah, his chimpanzee sidekick, remained.Mr. Ely performed almost all his own stunts, which left him with two broken shoulders, a torn back muscle and two lion bites.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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    Danny Amendola’s ‘DWTS’ Lift Inspires TikTok Dance Trend

    Danny Amendola’s smooth lift on “Dancing With the Stars” spawned numerous imitators (with varying results). TikTok cautions users that it can be dangerous.Katie Fraser and her fiancé, Amandeep Sandhu, woke up the other day feeling sore and experiencing mild pain. They hadn’t fallen out of bed or exercised vigorously, though it felt that way. Rather, they had tried to recreate a move done by Danny Amendola on the ABC show “Dancing With the Stars.”On an episode that aired on Oct. 15, Mr. Amendola, 38, a former N.F.L. player, and his partner, Witney Carson, a dancer and choreographer, performed a sexy routine set to the song “Unsteady” by X Ambassadors. At around the 45-second mark, Mr. Amendola lifted Ms. Carson, who was laying on the ground, by pulling her up by her ankle.The pair, who performed the move seamlessly, drew immediate cheers from the studio audience. They also unwittingly created a trend on TikTok as others have tried to recreate the move, which apparently is so difficult that TikTok added a disclaimer to some of the videos. “Participating in this activity could result in you or others getting hurt,” it reads.“I had seen their dance posted online and I thought it was absolutely beautiful,” Ms. Fraser, 28, wrote in an email. “Then I saw the TikTok trend going around of other couples trying and begged my fiancé to try it with me.”Like Johnny’s iconic lift of Baby in the movie “Dirty Dancing,” Mr. Amendola’s lift of Ms. Carson has proved appealing for many, but is considerably harder than it looks.

    @mollythemom @Dancing with the Stars #DWTS HERE WE COME! Dance by @Witney Carson ♬ original sound – Walmart Amy Adams

    @madismellie Why is this all I want to do now😂💃🙈 @Dancing with the Stars #DWTS @Witney Carson #leglift #husband #witneycarson #dannyamendola #mykindofdatenight ♬ Unsteady – X Ambassadors 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 We Do in the Shadows’ Returns One Last Time

    One of TV’s few great funny ha-ha comedies begins its sixth and final season this week on FX and Hulu.One of my absolute favorite shows, FX’s “What We Do in the Shadows,” is back for its sixth and final season, with three new episodes now streaming on Hulu. The show, set within a household of vampires on Staten Island, remains goofy and grotesque, full of warped zingers and silly asides.Only the first three episodes of the season were made available to critics, and they introduce a few new facets, including a long-dormant additional roommate, Jerry the Vampire (Mike O’Brien). His fellow vampires were supposed to wake him in 1996, and he’s peeved to discover that not only did they let him oversleep for so long, but they also haven’t achieved any of the world-conquering goals they’d all set. Elsewhere, Guillermo, the lovable familiar, has re-entered the regular human work force — first at Panera and then at a financial firm (where they keep odd hours … hmm…).In the wake of Jerry’s disapproval, Laszlo (Matt Berry) feels motivated to get back to the lab and take another crack at one of his hideous experiments. Colin (Mark Proksch) tags along, and lo, he too has a knack for freaky discoveries. “Another young scientist inspired,” Laszlo crows. “First Mr. Oppenheimer, and now Colin Robinson.”“Shadows” faces the most vexing question for both vampires and sitcoms: Does anything change? It’s the curse and comfort of immortality and comedy alike, that everything tends to — has to? — reset and reset and reset to the norm. Even when “Shadows” stretches itself with format, as in Season 4’s brilliant HGTV episode, or in season-long surprise arcs, as with Colin’s gleefully bizarre death and rebirth, everything finds its way back to how it always was.My fondest hope is that “Shadows” has a few final tricks up its sleeve, but even its waning fifth season brought me plenty of joy last year. At a time when funny ha-ha comedies are rare, losing one of our jokiest shows stings extra hard. More

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    ‘Franklinland’ Review: A Founding Father, but Not the Best Dad

    Lloyd Suh’s nimble period comedy about Benjamin Franklin examines a timeless struggle: the unmet expectations that divide parents and children.Lloyd Suh’s “Franklinland,” now running at the Ensemble Studio Theater in Manhattan, finds Benjamin Franklin (Thomas Jay Ryan) at a crossroads: balancing his roles as a founding father of a young nation and floundering father to his naïve son, William (Noah Keyishian). In six tight scenes, Suh whisks us through three decades of their turbulent relationship, starting in 1752 when William is an eager young adult and ending with the men at odds in 1785.The result is a nimble period comedy — with enough spoonfuls of droll humor to help the history lessons go down — but Suh’s play is just as concerned with a more timeless struggle: the friction of unmet expectations that can divide parents and their children.“Franklinland,” developed through the EST/Sloan Project in 2011, had its premiere in 2018 at Chicago’s Jackalope Theater. It shows the playwright’s early fascination with great historical figures and movements and the personal wreckage left in their wake. These themes resurface in works like “The Chinese Lady” and “The Far Country,” a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama.Suh paints a narcissistic portrait of Benjamin. His obsession with progress — first scientific, then political — is exemplified by his purchase of 20,000 acres in Nova Scotia (the real Franklin did own land there), with the intent of building a “playground of imagination and possibility” he calls Franklinland.Though Benjamin’s inventions — harnessing lightning for electricity, creating bifocals, adding flexibility to the urinary catheter — are undeniable societal improvements, his work sessions with William consist of bullying jokes at his son’s expense. This is not your grandmother’s Benjamin Franklin. In Ryan’s mischievous hands, the old man is downright sassy — quick with an eye-roll and oozing condescension. The actor’s antics convey a man obsessed with control, but blind to the familial cost.As a young William, Keyishian is an awkward goof who begins the play unexceptional and prosaic. But by the middle of the show, Suh levels the playing field. William — now in his 30s — is appointed royal governor of colonial New Jersey, though his moments of self-empowerment are weighed down by spurts of pedantic dialogue. Veering away from the playfulness we’ve enjoyed so far, the script resorts to playing out a melodramatic truth we’ve already gleaned: life is cold in Benjamin Franklin’s shadow.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: A Reverse Angle on Arthur Miller in ‘A Woman Among Women’

    Julia May Jonas’s compelling play, opening the Bushwick Starr’s new theater, explores how a story written about men looks from the other side.Ian McKellen sure knows how to baptize a stage. In 2007, at the recently opened Times Center in Midtown Manhattan, adhering to what he described as his tradition, he capped an evening of public conversation by kneeling to kiss the spotless new boards. Then he rose and recited a speech attributed to Shakespeare.The birth of a theater is always a miracle and a joy, never more so than when the herd is thinning. But the harder work comes after the kiss. Whose words will be spoken there? How smartly, usefully will the space be filled?The Bushwick Starr, a home since 2001 to original and often out-there work, can celebrate on both counts: It has given birth to an adorable new theater and opened it with a healthy new play.The theater, after 23 years in a dim, janky, jury-rigged space on the second floor of a former doll factory, where God forbid you had a bum knee or claustrophobia, has moved three stops farther into Brooklyn on the L train to a former dairy on Eldert Street. The place is still not fancy, but it is bright and welcoming without having sacrificed the invitation of wildness. It honors and improves on the company’s institutional past and the building’s industrial one.And though “A Woman Among Women,” by Julia May Jonas, which opened there Friday in a co-production with New Georges, is likewise a response to an older work, it is nevertheless that rare thing onstage: a fresh story freshly told.The work it responds to, but only generally, without overdrawn parallels, is Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” In that 1947 drama, a pillar-of-the-community type — “a man among men,” as Miller describes him — knowingly sells defective airplane parts to the Air Force, resulting in the deaths of 21 pilots. The collateral damage as the blame is shifted to a business partner drives the plot; the conflict between personal and communal responsibility is the theme.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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    Seth Meyers Isn’t as Nice as You Think He Is

    There was a hole in Seth Meyers’s office at “Saturday Night Live” for seven years.A sketch he’d written was cut for someone else’s piece, and in a fit of what Meyers described as “door-slamming petulance,” he threw the dressing room entrance open so hard that the door handle went through the wall. Michael Shoemaker, a producer on the show who has become perhaps Meyers’s closest professional partner, refused to get the crater fixed.“I want you to see it every day,” Meyers recalled Shoemaker telling him. “I want you to remember how small of a thing it was.”Shoemaker said his response to Meyers’s tantrum was a little simpler: “Stop it,” he told him. Then Shoemaker quoted Meyers’s father, whom he had gotten to know: “When something goes wrong, you have to think, what is it that you did that you could have done better?”Aggravated pettiness might seem at odds with the persona Meyers has crafted over more than two decades on television: 13 years on “S.N.L.,” with the final eight as an anchor of Weekend Update, followed by a decade as the comedically precise but genial host of “Late Night With Seth Meyers.” He struck a similarly charming note in 2019 in his first stand-up special, “Lobby Baby,” about the birth of his second child in the unexpected location the title suggests.Seth Meyers at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan, where he has a monthly stand-up residency with John Oliver.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesHowever, when Meyers’s new HBO special, “Dad Man Walking,” premieres on Saturday, the idea that he could be an antagonist — even if only of the most benign and humorous type — might make more sense. It’s about parenting, specifically the reality that “good parents have moments where they really hate what their kids are doing,” Meyers said. And while the broadly cantankerous tone of the special seems like a departure, it actually reflects a facet of Meyers that has always been there.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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    Angela Merkel Is Solving Crimes on TV

    This fall on TV from the rest of the world: a German small-town murder show called “Miss Merkel,” an Italian “Citadel” and an Israeli act of witness.Plucked from the bountiful fall harvest of international series, this selection of notable shows travels from the sheerly fanciful — Angela Merkel whiling away her retirement investigating small-town murders in “Miss Merkel” — to the achingly real, as survivors of the Oct. 7 attacks tell their stories a year later in the Israeli series “Picture This.”‘The Tower’Gray and quiet in tone, this British cop show is a little like a more serious, less amped-up “Line of Duty” and a little like a simpler, less emotionally walloping “Unforgotten.” Situating it between two of the most absorbing British crime dramas of recent years does not do this modest series (its four-episode third season concluded last week on BritBox) any favors, but it holds its own as a character piece in genre clothing.Gemma Whelan (the seagoing Yara Greyjoy in “Game of Thrones”) stars as Sarah Collins, a by-the-book detective sergeant in a working-class, racially mixed district of south London; the show’s title refers to the apartment building from which a Muslim girl and a policeman fall to their deaths in the first season. Collins is variously allied or at cross purposes with a cocky inspector (Emmett J. Scanlan), a nervous rookie (Tahirah Sharif) and a tough, stoic constable (Jimmy Akingbola) in stories involving agonizing questions of personal and professional conduct; all four are excellent.‘Miss Merkel’Angela Merkel, free of her duties as chancellor of Germany and retired to the fictional Klein Freudenstadt (Little Happy Town), stays sharp by solving the occasional local homicide in two German television movies that premiered Tuesday on MHz Choice. This Merkel, played by the veteran stage actress and director Katharina Thalbach, is a gossipy, evidence-stealing, slightly smug 70-ish pixie whose stern East German upbringing gives her the wherewithal to run rings around feckless local cops in the former West.That attention-grabbing twist on the cozy-village mystery (the films are based on novels by David Safier) does not entirely make up for some lackluster direction and a Teutonic propensity to deliver even sharply written laugh lines with as little expression as possible. But Thalbach’s running patter of political in-jokes and jabs at Merkel’s contemporaries and successors is consistently amusing, even accounting for the number of references that are most likely opaque to American viewers. “How do you manage to exploit me for your own goals against my beliefs?” Mike (Tim Kalkhof), her young bodyguard and reluctant crime-solving partner, plaintively asks, speaking for a generation of European politicians.Matilda De Angelis stars in “Citadel: Diana” as an operative caught between rival spy organizations.Marco Ghidelli/Prime VideoWe 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