Eliana Willis

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    Christopher Durang, the Surrealist of Snark

    In works like “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” the playwright would force you to laugh, not to dull the pain but to hone it.Pickpocketing Chekhov for dramatic capital is almost a rite of passage among playwrights, but only Christopher Durang invested the loot in beefcake.In his play “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” Vanya and Sonia are more-or-less familiar transplants from the Russian hinterlands to Bucks County, Pa., dithering so much about the purpose of life that they neglect to have one. Masha, though a movie star, is a Chekhov type, too: endlessly fascinating, especially to herself.But you will not find Spike anywhere in the canon; a jovial, amoral, ab-tastic himbo, he is apparently unfamiliar with the function of clothes. They keep coming off.Durang, who died on Tuesday night at 75, was likewise a stripper, peeling the pants off serious theater, both to admire and ridicule what it was packing beneath. When “Vanya” won the Tony Award for best play in 2013, it was the culmination of a writing life spent remaking the respectable precedents and characters of the past in the snarky image of his own times. Drama became comedy, but then — surprise! — swung back toward drama, then swung back again, never quite settling. In making us laugh and then demanding a retraction, Durang became an absurdist Neil Simon for a post-great generation.Billy Magnussen as Spike, with Genevieve Angelson as Nina, in Lincoln Center Theater’s 2012 production of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOften enough, the laughing was of the can’t-catch-your-breath variety, further dizzying the ambivalence of the culturati by punching both high and low. I didn’t see any of the plays and sketches he wrote while a student at the Yale School of Drama in the early 1970s, often collaborating with pals like Sigourney Weaver, Meryl Streep, Albert Innaurato and Wendy Wasserstein, but the titles tell you a lot: “Better Dead Than Sorry,” “The Life Story of Mitzi Gaynor,” “When Dinah Shore Ruled the Earth,” “The Idiots Karamazov.”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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    As ‘Ripley’ Revives the ‘Talented’ Con Man, Here Are Earlier Versions

    “Ripley” on Netflix is the latest riff on the con-artist character the author Patricia Highsmith invented in the 1950s. Here’s a look at the earlier versions.One of fiction’s most famous impostors returns on Thursday with the debut of Netflix’s “Ripley,” the latest adaptation of a character invented in the 1950s by the author Patricia Highsmith. In eight episodes, all written and directed by the Oscar-winning screenwriter Steven Zaillian (“Schindler’s List,” “The Night Of”), a classic chameleon changes colors yet again, returning to a few core elements of Highsmith’s original creation while also boosting the creepiness quotient.Over nearly seven decades, Tom Ripley has appeared in five books by Highsmith, five films, multiple television episodes and even a radio show. He has been played by interpreters as varied as Matt Damon, Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, John Malkovich and now, Andrew Scott. What has made him so enduring?The details change, but the foundation of the character remains the same: a con artist who becomes a killer, someone so enamored by upper-class comfort that, once he experiences it, will do anything to hang on to it. Ripley dreams of a better life for himself, which makes him relatable. What makes him fascinating is his willingness to go to murderous lengths to secure it.As a new version of Tom Ripley arrives, here is a look at how this grifter has evolved over the generations.The BooksThe character debuted in Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” in 1955.By the time Highsmith created Ripley, she was already an accomplished writer. She burst onto the scene in 1950 with her first novel, “Strangers on a Train,” which would be adapted into the Alfred Hitchcock film a year later. Other acclaimed Highsmith works include “The Two Faces of January,” made into a 2014 film starring Viggo Mortensen; and “Deep Water,” adapted into a 2022 film starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. Using the pen name Claire Morgan, Highsmith also wrote “The Price of Salt,” renamed “Carol” for Todd Haynes’s 2015 film adaptation.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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    Two Shakespearean Triumphs in Paris, or a Plague on Both Their Houses?

    New productions of “Macbeth” and “Hamlet” follow a French tradition of adapting familiar works. The results are innovative, and sometimes cryptic.Two Paris playhouses, both alike in dignity, putting on rival new Shakespeare productions.Thus expectations were high for a springtime face-off — with contemporary stagings of “Macbeth” and “Hamlet” — between the Comédie-Française, France’s top permanent company, and the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, the Left Bank’s most venerable theater.The results certainly felt French. The country has long been a haven for concept-driven theater-makers, and the two directors involved, Silvia Costa and Christiane Jatahy, have no qualms about cutting and splicing the Bard’s plays in experimental, sometimes cryptic ways.At the Comédie-Française, Costa’s “Macbeth” edits the two dozen named characters down to only eight actors and leans heavily into religious symbolism. In “Hamlet,” Jatahy goes so far as to keep Ophelia alive. Far from going mad, Ophelia climbs down from the stage and exits through the auditorium after declaring: “I died all these years. This year, I won’t die.”Jatahy, a Brazilian director who has a significant following in France, has performed this sort of bait-and-switch with classics before. Her adaptations of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” (“What If They Went to Moscow?”) and Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” (“Julia”) reworked the plays’ story lines and characters from a feminist perspective, lending greater weight to female roles.At the Odéon, Jatahy also cast a woman, the outstanding Clotilde Hesme, as Hamlet, explaining in a playbill interview that her goal was to refocus the story on three female characters: Hamlet, Ophelia and Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. And while a female Hamlet is hardly news — the French star Sarah Bernhardt performed the role back in 1886 — Jatahy’s premise looks promising for the first few scenes.Slouching on a couch, Hesme cuts a grave figure as she rewinds a video: the message Hamlet receives from her murdered father, here projected on a large scrim. After the ghost blames his brother, Polonius, the scene transitions seamlessly into a wedding — that of Polonius and the widowed Gertrude, who seals her new life with a karaoke rendition of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”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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    Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph Just Want You to Like Them

    Good friends and “Saturday Night Live” alumnae, the actresses are each headlining an Apple TV+ comedy of wealth and status.Sometimes Maya Rudolph will watch a movie and marvel at how miserable an actor looks. “They’re covered in fake blood and broken glass, and they’re crying the whole time,” she said. “I don’t know how people do that for work! That looks so hard and stressful.”“And how do you get all of that glass off your skin?” her friend and former colleague Kristen Wiig said.“Listen,” Rudolph said, “glass seems tough.”This was on an afternoon in late March, and Wiig and Rudolph, who specialize in lighter, glass-free fare, were perched high over New York in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel with a zillion-dollar view — rooftops, rivers, the Statue of Liberty in the distance. They were dressed in natural fabrics and neutrals, a far and elegant cry from the demented spandex and polyester they so often wore during their years on “Saturday Night Live.”Acquaintances since their early days in the comedy scene (they met at a bridal shower hosted by Melissa McCarthy), they were both members of the famed comedy troupe the Groundlings before they found their separate ways up the 30 Rock elevator to “S.N.L.” And they have wound in and out of each other’s lives and careers ever since: as co-stars in “Bridesmaids” (Wiig was also a writer of the movie); popping back into “S.N.L.” together; jointly presenting an Oscar. Now they are both leading Apple TV+ shows, each a comedy of wealth and status.In “Palm Royale,” which premiered on March 20, Wiig stars as Maxine, a frenzied social climber in 1960s Palm Beach. In “Loot,” which returns for its second season on Wednesday, Rudolph plays Molly, a divorcée with a multibillion dollar settlement.During a brisk chat, they discussed laughter, likability and what “Bridesmaids” taught the world. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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 Chides Trump for Ignoring Expanded Gag Order

    Colbert said that after the order was amended, the former president “paused, listened to his critics and launched another attack on the judge’s daughter, this time with photos.”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 Friends and Family Ban’The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial over a hush-money payment to a porn star expanded his gag order on Monday.Stephen Colbert said the expanded order made sense: “Because for me, the order goes ‘Think about Trump, then gag.’”“Specifically, the judge expanded the order to bar Trump from attacking his family members because last week, Trump went after the judge’s daughter on Truth Social, and he got a lot of heat for this despicable personal attack. So he paused, listened to his critics, and launched another attack on the judge’s daughter, this time with photos.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The D.A. and the judge are still fair targets for Trump, but the new order does now cover their families. ‘[imitating Trump] Challenge accepted.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Donald Trump thinks a gag order is what Melania does when she sees him get out of the hot tub.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He signed him up for the friends and family ban.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump has been going after the judge’s daughter, which is just nuts. So the judge ordered him to stop and he declined. This morning, he did it again — he wrote a whole diatribe on Truth Social, and guess what happened to him? Nothing, nothing happened again. Are laws real? Because I’ve been stupidly following them my whole life now, and it doesn’t seem to matter.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Repo Man Edition)“Donald Trump pulled a rabbit out of his MAGA hat. He managed to post that $175 million bond he couldn’t get. He got one courtesy of the Knight Specialty Insurance Company, which I’m guessing did not Google the phrase ‘Who is Donald Trump?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Don Hankey, he sells loans to people with less than exceptional credit. Forbes said his company repossesses about 250 cars a day. Our former president got a loan from a repo man.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“You know their slogan: ‘Turned down by the banky? Don’t get so cranky. Call me, Don Hankey. You’ll say ‘Why, thanky!’ Don, good luck with the porn star spanky.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe guest host Desi Lydic highlighted the newfound popularity of women’s basketball on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightJerrod Carmichael will talk about his new HBO reality show on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutThe conductor Klaus Mäkela.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAt 28, the Chicago Symphony’s new conductor, Klaus Mäkelä, is the youngest music director to lead a top American ensemble. More

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    Joe Flaherty, ‘SCTV’ and ‘Freaks and Geeks’ Actor, Dies at 82

    Mr. Flaherty was known for playing a series of oddball characters on the sketch series “SCTV” and for his role as the father of two teenagers on “Freaks and Geeks.”Joe Flaherty, the comedic actor best known for his performances in the influential sketch comedy series “SCTV” and as a father on the short-lived NBC ensemble series “Freaks and Geeks,” died on Monday. He was 82.His death was confirmed by his daughter, Gudrun Flaherty, who said that Mr. Flaherty died after a “brief illness.” She did not specify a cause, or say where he died.Mr. Flaherty played a variety of characters on “SCTV” as part of an ensemble that included John Candy, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara. The concept of the series, which aired in the 1970s and ’80s, was that its sketches were “shows” for a low-rent TV station in a fictional town called Melonville.Former “SCTV” cast members at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., in 1999. From left, Dave Thomas, Mr. Flaherty, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy and Martin Short.E Pablo Kosmicki/Associated PressAmong Mr. Flaherty’s characters were Guy Caballero, the sleazy president of the station, and Sammy Maudlin, an unctuous late-night talk show host. His character Count Floyd wore a cheap vampire costume while hosting a horror movie show, “Monster Chiller Horror Theater.” The joke was that the movies the program showed — such as “Dr. Tongue’s Evil House of Pancakes” — were seldom very scary, leaving Floyd holding the bag and often having to apologize to viewers.Gudrun Flaherty said in a statement that her father had an “unwavering passion for movies from the ’40s and ’50s,” which influenced his comedy, including his time on “SCTV.”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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    Nicholas Galitzine Wants to Prove He’s More Than Just a Pretty Face

    Known for playing princes and their modern equivalents, this British actor hopes his steamy new drama, “Mary & George,” will change how Hollywood sees him.“I’ve often found that the way people see me is very different from how I see myself,” Nicholas Galitzine said. “People attribute a pristineness to me.”This was on a recent morning in a rococo hotel room, just west of Madison Square Park. (How rococo? Imagine Fragonard macrodosing on psilocybin.) Galitzine, who recently relocated from London to Los Angeles, was in New York for a few days to promote “Mary & George,” a steamy historical drama in which he stars as George Villiers, the ambitious lover of King James I. It premieres Friday on Starz. Next month, he will also appear as Hayes, a boy-band sensation in an age-gap romance, in the giddy Amazon rom-com “The Idea of You.”Boyishly handsome, with lips like plumped throw pillows and a jawline that is frankly ridiculous, Galitzine, 29, is often cast as princes (“Cinderella,” “Red, White & Royal Blue”), straight and gay, or as modern-day prince equivalents — a pop phenom, a football star. That’s how Hollywood has seen him: patrician, elegant.“Refined, maybe, is a word,” he said. (That upmarket English accent? It helps.) But refined is not an adjective he applies. He described himself instead as “chaotic,” as “messy,” which princes aren’t always allowed to be.“That’s a tricky thing sometimes, playing princes and people expecting that,” he said. “The reality is very different.”In the Starz period drama “Mary & George,” Julianne Moore and Galitzine play a scheming mother and son.StarzWe 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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    ‘Shogun’ Episode 7 Recap: Death Wish

    As the walls close in around Lord Toranaga, his vassals and family look for ways out.Season 1, Episode 7: ‘A Stick of Time’“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Few cinematic genres have had as fruitful a conversation with one another as the samurai film and the western, so it’s only fitting to use an epigraph from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” to sum up the central conflict in this week’s episode.It begins in full “print the legend mode,” as the director Takeshi Fukunaga brings us a dreamlike flashback depicting the aftermath of Lord Toranaga’s first victory in battle, achieved before he’d have been bar mitzvah’d. The rogue warrior whose forces he defeats calls for the young Toranaga himself to serve as his second in the ritual of seppuku. An overhead shot shows us the lad preparing to strike the deathblow from a point of view that feels a million miles away, less a bird’s-eye view than a god’s.But looks can be deceiving. Ask Saeki (Eita Okuno), Toranaga’s estranged half brother, upon whose support the lord of Edo is counting if his fight against Lady Ochiba and the Regents is to be successful. He’s happy to tell Toranaga’s adoring son, Nagakado, that his pops severed the head of the rebel with a single stroke at the tender age of 12. No such thing occurred — Toranaga hacked away nine times like a miniature ax murderer before finally decapitating the man.But Saeki isn’t doing this to flatter his older brother. He’s doing it to taunt him. He knows Toranaga’s sense of honor will make hearing exaggerated accounts of his exploits uncomfortable. And he knows that by elevating Nagakado’s image of his father, he can send it crashing back down all the more easily. So he tosses in the tale of how young Toranaga soiled himself when he was sent away as a hostage. That’s not the kind of story that makes it into the legendarium.It’s also not the kind of story you tell if you plan to ally yourself with the boy who fouled his breeches. Indeed, despite initially giving every appearance to the contrary, Saeki has no intention of taking up his older brother’s cause. He announces that he has accepted Lord Ishido’s offer of membership on the Council of Regents, and has been dispatched to summon Toranaga to his impeachment and execution. It takes everything the lord has left in him to prevent his Nagakado from blindly accepting Ishido’s order to commit seppuku over the cannon attack he ordered in Episode 4.The Toranaga of decades past wasn’t fit to deliver the coup de grâce to the rebel lord, and the Toranaga of today refuses to do the same to his country. He could defend himself, issue the order for Crimson Sky, make war on Osaka, declare himself shogun — but he won’t. “No one has the right to tear the realm apart,” he tells his assembled vassals as he agrees to surrender to the Council.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