Eliana Willis

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    The Nation’s Politics Are Dramatic. Now Its Dramas Are Political.

    For the second year in a row, a play about the Constitution is the most-staged in America. And a farce about a terrible president is also pretty popular.The United States is in the final stages of a dramatic election year, with an unexpected change of candidates, two assassination attempts, and a remarkably close contest. Now it turns out that many of the nation’s theaters are leaning into the politics of the moment, programming shows that explore, or mock, the state of affairs.For the second year in a row, the most-staged play in America will be “What the Constitution Means to Me,” Heidi Schreck’s look at this country’s fundamental legal document, seen through the lens of gender and autobiography. Further down the list: “POTUS,” Selina Fillinger’s farce about a group of women caught up in a male president’s scandals.An annual survey by American Theater magazine finds that there will be 16 productions this year of “What the Constitution Means to Me,” which ran on Broadway in 2019. There will be 14 productions each of “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’s Pulitzer-winning riff on “Hamlet,” and “King James,” Rajiv Joseph’s buddy drama about two LeBron James fans. And not far behind, with 13: “Primary Trust,” Eboni Booth’s Pulitzer-winning play about loneliness, kindness, and a man who loves mai tais.The survey found 11 local productions of “POTUS,” and of the musicals “Jersey Boys” and “Waitress.”The most-produced playwrights around the country will be Joseph, whose “Guards at the Taj” is also popular, and Kate Hamill, who has written adaptations of works including “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility.” (The survey does not include work by Shakespeare, or productions and adaptations of “A Christmas Carol,” because those would swamp the list each year.)One striking result of the magazine’s survey: The overall number of shows being staged at nonprofits that are members of the trade organization Theater Communications Group (which publishes American Theater magazine) is continuing to fall, as cash-strapped regional theaters cut back productions to try to control costs. The survey found 1,281 productions planned this season, down from 1,560 in last year’s survey, and 2,229 in the 2019 survey, before the pandemic, according to Rob Weinert-Kendt, the magazine’s editor in chief. More

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    Roundabout, With 3 Broadway Theaters, Finds Leader in California

    Christopher Ashley, the artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse and a Tony winner for “Come From Away,” will run the large New York nonprofit.Roundabout Theater Company, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit theaters and a major player on Broadway, has chosen Christopher Ashley, a Tony-winning director who runs an influential theater in California, as its next artistic director.Ashley is a prolific director, particularly of musicals with commercial aspirations, many of which he has developed at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, where he has been the artistic director since 2007.He won a Tony Award for directing “Come From Away,” an inspirational heartbreaker about a Canadian community that welcomed thousands of passengers from flights that were grounded on Sept. 11, 2001. He received Tony nominations for directing the musical “Memphis” and a revival of “The Rocky Horror Show.” He has also directed some high-profile flameouts, including “Diana,” “Escape to Margaritaville” and “Leap of Faith.”Just last week, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation, an offshoot of the labor union representing American directors and choreographers, announced that next spring Ashley, who is 60, will be given the organization’s Mr. Abbott Award for his contributions to the American theater.“I have loved my time at La Jolla Playhouse, and it’s a very hard place to leave, but the opportunities and possibilities of the Roundabout are impossible to deny,” Ashley said in an interview. “The possibility of programming in their five amazing spaces is exhilarating, and they have an amazing education program, and at a moment when theater is tremendously stressed, Roundabout is, and can continue to be, a real beacon.”The transition will be gradual: Ashley plans to remain artistic director of La Jolla until Jan. 1, 2026, and to start full-time at Roundabout on July 1, 2026. Scott Ellis, who is Roundabout’s interim artistic director, will continue in that role until Ashley’s arrival and the two will collaborate during the 2026-27 season.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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    Festival d’Automne in Paris Honors Rabih Mroué and Lina Majdalanie

    A retrospective in Paris honors Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué, whose theater works have examined the region’s troubles for decades.The theater-makers Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué have grown accustomed to life in exile. In 2013, the duo, who are creative as well as life partners, left their home country of Lebanon, to settle in Berlin — out of “fatigue,” Majdalanie said recently.The corruption and the frequent crises that rocked the Middle Eastern country had become too draining, she added. “When you see the same problems repeating themselves over and over again, you need distance to find peace,” she said.The move worked — until the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel last year. Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza had a devastating knock-on effect on its relations with Lebanon, which is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.Majdalanie and Mroué, who have long investigated Middle Eastern conflicts onstage, were critical of Israel’s retaliation. That made life uncomfortable in Germany, where many artists who find fault with Israel have, since Oct. 7, faced an increasingly hostile environment and accusations of antisemitism.“Lebanon was home, then Berlin was home for a decade,” Majdalanie said. “Now, every day, we ask ourselves: Where to go now? Because we don’t know where home is anymore.”For the next three months, they will have a temporary refuge in France. Through December, the Festival d’Automne à Paris, a long-running multidisciplinary event, is hosting a retrospective that showcases Majdalanie and Mroué’s longstanding commitment to grappling with contested political narratives.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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    Desi Lydic: Donald Trump ‘Really Knows How to Flatter a Lady’

    The “Daily Show” host said the former president had been so unpopular with women that he was now trying to turn on “the old Trump charm.”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.‘The Old Trump Charm’Former President Donald Trump continued to relay his plans to “protect” women at a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, saying that women are “poorer” and “more stressed and depressed” than they were four years ago.On Tuesday’s “Daily Show,” Desi Lydic said that Trump had been so unpopular with women that he now had to turn on “the old Trump charm.”“Maybe it’s because of his legally adjudicated record of sexual assault; maybe he forgot their birthdays — it’s hard to say.” — DESI LYDIC“Oh, that is the perfect way to appeal to any woman. There’s no better way to start a first date than saying: ‘Diane, I am your protector. I want to be your protector. You will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. I will be with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, looking at you. I’ll never let you out of my sight. Oh, you need to go to the bathroom? OK. I’ll wait. Waitress? I want to protect you.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Uh, I’m actually meeting someone here. I have a boyfriend. Thank you so much, though.” — DESI LYDIC“I love how he’s acknowledging that we’re stressed out, as though he’s not the one stressing us out. This is like Boeing being like, ‘Weird how people seem so freaked out about air travel these days.’ “ — DESI LYDIC“You really know how to flatter a lady. Please tell me more about the bags under my eyes.” — DESI LYDIC“Although, it’s not true that all women are poorer. E. Jean Carroll seems to be doing pretty well.” — DESI LYDIC“But Trump is a master marketer. That’s how you sell things to women: You convince them they have a problem, and then you say, ‘Here, buy these vagina gummies.’ And yes, in this analogy, Trump is the vagina gummy.” — DESI LYDICThe Punchiest Punchlines (Biden’s Last Stand Edition)“Earlier today, President Biden attended the General Assembly and delivered his final U.N. address. Biden called on nations to band together amid world conflicts and growing concerns over China’s influence. Then he added, ‘Or do whatever you want. What the hell do I care? I don’t care anymore.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He warned his fellow leaders to ‘never forget some things are more important than staying in power,’ which got a huge laugh from the Russian delegation.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Biden’s address was a big deal. It’s the most important speech he’s delivered in front of a 1990s kitchen backsplash.” — JIMMY FALLON“Well, New York City officials actually said drivers should expect the slowest traffic of the year. Yeah, you know traffic is slow when even Biden is like, ‘You know, I’m just going to get out and walk.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingWe 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: What’s Eating Trump? The Singing ‘Ghost of John McCain’

    The former senator haunts the former president, or vice versa, in this sophomoric musical satire.Usually, critics wait until a show is running to slam it, but Meghan McCain broke the embargo. By more than five months.“This is trash,” she posted on social media on April 2. “Nothing more than a gross cash grab by mediocre desperate people. I hope it bombs.”Perhaps she can be forgiven her haste for distaste. “Ghost of John McCain,” the show she was pre-emptively attacking, is about her father, who died in 2018. A musical satire that pictures him in purgatory — bedeviled by Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton and a pole-dancing Lindsey Graham in a studded pink dog collar — probably seemed unlikely to be reverent.If only irreverence were the problem! But the show that opened on Tuesday at SoHo Playhouse turns out to be, in its muddled way, something of a love letter. It’s just a bad one.Start with the title, which promises a posthumous haunting of America by the former Arizona senator but mostly delivers a familiar and unfunny indictment of Trump. McCain and the other characters are figments of 45’s fevered imagination, imprisoned in his brain (depicted as a three-star hotel) until they admit that he is “the greatest president who’s ever lived.” For McCain that means abandoning what he considers his legacy as a principled politician and maverick Republican.This baroque and entirely internal conflict puts the title character in a dramaturgical purgatory even worse than the theological one. He’s essentially stuck playing Trump’s game, with no agency of his own. It’s Trump who thus scores the few smart zingers in Scott Elmegreen’s unruly book: “You started Trumpism,” he tells McCain. “When you picked Sarah Palin.” Palin, McCain’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election, then shows up shooting an already dead wolf at close range with a shotgun.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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    Rufus Norris, Creator of Broadway Hits, to Leave the National Theater

    As Rufus Norris prepares to leave the London playhouse he has led since 2015, he reflects on his quest to make the theater represent the audience it serves.When Rufus Norris became the director of the National Theater in 2015, he said he had one main aim: to make the playhouse representative of Britain.Almost a decade later and as Norris prepares to leave the role, he said he had made progress toward that goal, especially by prioritizing new works. Many of the theater’s most acclaimed recent productions have centered people of color, including an adaptation of Andrea Levy’s “Small Island,” directed by Norris, about Caribbean immigrants to Britain.On Tuesday, Norris, 59, unveiled a typically diverse final season, including “Inter Alia,” Suzie Miller’s follow-up to her hit legal play “Prima Facie”; Shaan Sahota’s “The Estate,” about a British Asian politician’s downfall; and a revival of Michael Abbensetts’s “Alterations,” about immigrants struggling to establish a tailoring business in 1970s London.Norris will be hoping some of those shows transfer to Broadway, following National Theater hits like “The Lehman Trilogy” and “War Horse.”From left: Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley in “The Lehman Trilogy.” Mark DouetIn a recent interview, Norris said the demands of the job had meant he hadn’t found time to reflect on his leadership. But an hourlong exchange gave Norris the opportunity to discuss his work at the National, the playhouse’s changing relationship with New York and his plans to step away from the theater world — at least for a while. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.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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    Ellen DeGeneres Drops New Netflix Special ‘For Your Approval’: Review

    In the most insightful part of “For Your Approval,” she says that she was a poor fit to run a workplace but that women leaders are judged differently.It takes a peculiarly modern chutzpah (or obliviousness) to say — on a Netflix special — that you were kicked out of show business.To be fair, it might feel that way to Ellen DeGeneres, 66, whose hit daytime show, “Ellen,” ended in 2022 not long after reports claimed it had a toxic workplace. This followed years of people online pointing out that she was not as friendly as her television persona suggested. Leaving a successful talk show and ending up on the biggest streaming service in the world is not the worst trade, but these days, everyone receives 15 minutes of fame and an hour of cancel culture notoriety. DeGeneres handles hers with pointed offhandedness and light sarcasm, saying on her new special that she was kicked out of show business because she was mean.“You can’t be mean and be in show business,” she adds flatly. “No mean people in show business.” Then she pauses just long enough for audiences to register the absurdity but not too long to test their patience. “I’m out,” she mutters.Our social media-driven culture incentivizes phony likableness but makes maintaining that facade difficult. DeGeneres, who preached kindness on her talk show, has long been trying to escape this niceness trap. Her previous special, “Relatable,” positioned her as the kind of person who doesn’t want to hold your baby because it would mess up her sweater. This follow-up, “For Your Approval,” premiering Tuesday, mixes observational jokes with a newly confessional style.We learn about her O.C.D. and A.D.H.D. and her arthritis and childhood neglect and how her need for approval damaged her mental health. It’s a messy, revealing self-portrait whose feathery jokes mask a heavier tone. In an old attention-getting gambit, she says this will be her last special, but it’s hard to believe. (Remember when Hannah Gadsby retired?)One of the most gifted low-key comics who ever picked up a microphone, DeGeneres is part of the family tree of patient pausers like Jack Benny and Bob Newhart. She still gets a lot out of a little. Who else receives applause for a modest joke about the parking brake?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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    The W.N.B.A. Wanted More Attention on TV. It Got Headaches, Too.

    As ratings for women’s basketball soared, the league was confronted with the divisive language of sports debates.When star prospects like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese were set to become professionals this year, the W.N.B.A. said it was ready.The league beefed up its marketing efforts, and its television partners devoted more time to covering the sport. They all hoped to capitalize on momentum from the collegiate tournament as women’s basketball inched closer to the round-the-clock coverage devoted to other major sports.The W.N.B.A.’s ratings did soar, but the additional attention also magnified intense conversations on television shows, podcasts and social media. Pundits passionately clashed with colleagues, players described racism they had experienced, and the players’ union openly rebuked the league’s commissioner.Here are some of the most memorable moments of media dialogue during this W.N.B.A. season, which entered the playoffs this week.Physical PlayDuring her record-breaking career at the University of Iowa, Clark, who is white, was often heralded as the future face of the W.N.B.A., a league where about 70 percent of players are Black. After the Indiana Fever drafted her first overall, she certainly became the center of attention.In one notable on-court encounter, the Chicago Sky guard Chennedy Carter shoulder-shoved Clark to the floor. Carter, who was later charged with a flagrant foul and declined to answer questions about the encounter after the game, later took a swipe at Clark on social media.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