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    Mbongeni Ngema, Playwright Best Known for ‘Sarafina!,’ Dies at 68

    Before the fall of apartheid, his plays, which also included “Woza Albert!” and “Asinamali,” challenged the South African government’s racial policies.Mbongeni Ngema, a South African playwright, lyricist and director whose stage works, including the Tony-nominated musical “Sarafina!,” challenged and mocked his homeland’s longtime policy of racial apartheid, died on Wednesday in a hospital in Mbizana, South Africa, after a car accident. He was 68.Mr. Ngema was a passenger in a car that was struck head on when he was returning from a funeral in Lusikisiki, in Eastern Cape Province, according to a family statement cited in the South African news media.“His masterfully creative narration of our liberation struggle honored the humanity of oppressed South Africans and exposed the inhumanity of an oppressive regime,” President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa said in a post on X after Mr. Ngema’s death.In the decade before the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and the dismantling of apartheid in the early ’90s, the South African system of institutionalized racism was an overwhelming concern to Mr. Ngema. During that decade he cocreated the play “Woza Albert!,” wrote and directed the play “Asinamali!” and wrote the script and collaborated on the music for “Sarafina!”“Sarafina!” evolved out of a conversation he had in the 1980s with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, a prominent anti-apartheid activist who was then married to Mandela.“I was sitting with Mama Winnie Mandela, and I started thinking, ‘This country is in flames,’” he told the South African television show “The Insider SA” in 2022. “So I asked a question. I said, ‘Mama, what do you think is finally going to happen to this country?’“Mama looked at me, and she said, ‘I wish I had a big blanket to cover the faces of the little ones so they do not see that bitter end.’”Mr. Ngema soon began to envision young people, running and singing “Freedom Is Coming Tomorrow,” a song that he would write for “Sarafina!,” a musical that follows Black high school students in the township of Soweto in 1976 during the uprising against the government’s imposition of Afrikaans, rather than Zulu, as the official language in schools.Mr. Ngema wrote the book and collaborated with the trumpeter and composer Hugh Masekela on the score.Mr. Ngema, left, with former President Nelson Mandela in 2002.Lewis Moon/Agence France-Presse“Sarafina!” opened in Johannesburg in 1987. It moved that fall to the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center and then, in early 1988, to Broadway, at the Cort Theater, where it played 597 performances.In his review of the production at the Newhouse, Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote that Mr. Ngema had “brought forth a musical that transmutes the oppression of Black townships into liberating singing and dancing that nearly raises the theater’s roof.”The score, he added, “evokes the cacophony of life in a Black society both oppressed and defiant, at once sentenced to hard labor and ignited by dreams of social justice.”“Sarafina!” received five Tony nominations, including three for Mr. Ngema: for best direction of a musical (won by Harold Prince for “The Phantom of the Opera”), best original score (won by Stephen Sondheim for “Into the Woods”) and best choreography, which he shared with Ndaba Mhlongo (won by Michael Smuin for “Anything Goes”).“Sarafina!” was also nominated for best musical and best featured actress in a musical.It was adapted as a film in 1992, starring Leleti Khumalo, who had starred in the South African and Broadway productions, with Whoopi Goldberg as an inspirational teacher and the singer-songwriter Miriam Makeba as Sarafina’s mother.Mbongeni Ngema (pronounced mmm-bon-GEN-i nnn-GAY-ma) was born on June 1, 1955, in Verulam, a town north of Durban.According to his official biography for the film “Sarafina!,” he was separated from his parents at 11, then lived for a time with extended family in Zululand and later on his own in the poor neighborhoods around Durban. From age 12, he taught himself to play guitar.“When I grew up all I wanted to be was a musician, and I was influenced greatly by the Beatles,” he said on “The Insider SA.”Working in a fertilizer factory in the mid-1970s, a fellow worker asked him to play guitar to accompany a play he had written.“And then I fell in love with the part of the lead character in the play,” he told the magazine Africa Report in 1987. “When he was onstage, I would mimic him backstage — making the other musicians laugh.” One night, when the actor did not show up, he played the role.Mr. Ngema and the playwright began to collaborate, which led Mr. Ngema to start directing and writing his own small pieces. In 1979, he began working in Johannesburg with Gibson Kente, a playwright and composer, to understand the magic in his productions. After two years, he left and began working with the performer Percy Mtwa.He, Mr. Mtwa and Barney Simon created “Woza Albert!,” a satire that imagines the impact of the second coming of a Christ-like figure, Morena, who arrives in South Africa on a jumbo jet from Jerusalem, through the lives of ordinary people, vigorously played over the course of 80 minutes by Mr. Ngema and Mr. Mtwa.The white government tries to exploit Morena, then labels him a Communist and locks him up on Robben Island, where Mandela and other political prisoners were incarcerated.The play opened in South Africa in 1981 and was staged over the next three years in Europe, Off Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theater and around the United States.In The Washington Post, the critic David Richards wrote in 1984 that “Woza Albert!” “tackles such harsh realities as injustice, poverty and apartheid in South Africa, but does so with far more spirit, humor and, yes, hope, than the subject generally inspires.” He added that “with only their wonderful, wide-eyed talent,” Mr. Mtwa and Mr. Ngema “can summon up a landscape, a society, a history.”The trumpeter Hugh Masekela, third from right, with members of the cast of “Sarafina!” during a rehearsal at Lincoln Center in 1987. Mr. Masekela and Mr. Ngema collaborated on the score for the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Ngema then wrote and directed “Asinamali!” (1983), in which five Black men in a single South African prison cell describe — through acting, dancing, singing and mime — why they were incarcerated and how they were victimized by racist laws, unemployment and police violence.The play’s name (which means “We have no money”) comes from the rallying cry of rent strikers in 1983 in the Lamontville township.Mr. Ngema said that “Asinamali!” was alarming enough to authorities in Duncan Village, in the Eastern Cape, that they arrested the audience for attending a performance.“They said it was an illegal political gathering,” Mr. Ngema said in an interview in 2017 on a South African podcast.He called “Asinamali!” a celebration of resistance.“It shows that no matter how bad things get, victory is inevitable,” he told The Times in 1986 during rehearsals before the play opened in Harlem at the New Heritage Repertory Theater. “The spirit of the people shall prevail.”Later that year, “Asinamali!” was part of a South African theater festival at Lincoln Center.Information on Mr. Ngema’s survivors was not immediately available. His marriage to Ms. Khumalo, the star of “Sarafina!,” ended in divorce. Mr. Ngema, who wrote several other plays, was involved in a controversy in 1996 when his sequel to “Sarafina!,” “Sarafina 2” — commissioned by the South African Health Department to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic — led to a government corruption investigation over accusations that its cost was an excessive “unauthorized expenditure” and that its message was inadequate.He defended the show’s price tag, saying it was necessary to bring Broadway-quality shows to Black townships.“People have said it’s a waste of government money,” Mr. Ngema told The Associated Press in 1996. “It think that’s a stupid criticism.” More

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    ‘Dinner for One,’ a German New Year’s TV Tradition, Moves Online

    The British comedy short has aired annually in Germany and other European countries for decades. Now, members of Gen Z are having fun with it on social media.“OK, the butler’s setting the table,” the YouTuber Ryan Wass begins, skeptically.In his video “American Reacts to ‘Dinner for One’ (First Time Watching),” which he uploaded 11 months ago and now has 180,000 views, Wass takes a look at the beloved cult comedy short on the recommendation of one of his followers. It’s part of a longstanding tradition for the creator: On his YouTube channel “Ryan Reaction,” Wass films himself being introduced to local German idioms, customs and old movies and TV programming from the perspective of an unwitting American viewer who responds with confusion and awe.But “Dinner for One” is no ordinary slice of quirky German culture. The 18-minute, black-and-white comedy of manners, filmed in 1963, is about a quintessentially British butler orchestrating a solo birthday celebration for his 90-year-old employer, the cheery Miss Sophie (May Warden), whose closest friends and customary guests have all long since passed away. (The butler, James, played by the comedian Freddie Frinton, is obliged to fill in for the missing attendees, including quaffing each of their drinks.) It’s very British in style and setting, and, apart from a brief German introduction, the action plays out in English.“I have more questions than I did before it started,” Wass says as the screening comes to an end, burying his face in his hands. “Like, how is this a German tradition?”

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    @beac_basti Was sind so eure Vorsätze fürs neue Jahr❓ #silvester #neujahr #dinnerforone #dönerforone ♬ Originalton – Sebastian 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?  More

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    Bobby Rivers, Witty VH1 Host, Dies at 70

    After getting his start as an entertainment reporter and film critic, he went on to host a show on the Food Network and establish a presence in the blogosphere.Bobby Rivers, an affable and playful television host, entertainment reporter and film critic, died on Tuesday in Minneapolis. He was 70.The cause was complications of cancer, said his brother, Tony. He died in a hospital.Bobby Rivers got his start on television on “Good Morning Milwaukee” in 1979. “That was huge,” his brother said in an interview. “It was a wonderful springboard for him. People got to see his talent, his wit, his humor, his ability to turn a phrase, and I think that blew people away.”He moved to national TV in the early days of the VH1 cable music channel, where he had his own talk show, “Watch Bobby Rivers.”That show was hailed by the critic Stephen Holden in The New York Times. “Mr. Rivers is a disarmingly sweet, quirky personality who exudes a benign sense of mischief as he joshes with stars,” Mr. Holden wrote in 1988. “A nerdy, post-collegiate Eddie Murphy with no axes to grind, he is a master interviewer with a gift for light, impromptu banter.”Mr. Rivers’s interview style was friendly, and he always seemed to be joking with his guests. But that didn’t prevent him from bringing up tough subjects, and his amiability could draw out revealing responses. In the late 1980s, for instance, he called Norman Mailer to account for sexism with such a big smile that Mailer almost didn’t notice.In the 1990s he became an entertainment reporter for local stations in New York, appearing on “Weekend Today in New York” on WNBC and “Good Day New York” on WNYW.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?  More

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    Mike Nussbaum, Celebrated Chicago Theater Actor, Dies at 99

    He appeared memorably in “American Buffalo” and in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” but gave up a career on Broadway for one in Chicago.Mike Nussbaum, an actor known as the dean of Chicago theater who found success during his early association with David Mamet, the Chicago-born playwright, died on Dec. 23 at his home in Chicago. He was 99.His death was announced by his daughter Karen Nussbaum, a labor organizer.For the last decade, Mr. Nussbaum has also been known as the country’s oldest working actor, a distinction that mildly irritated him. (For admiring journalists, he gamely performed his daily regimen of 50 push-ups, a practice he kept up until he was 98.) He often said he would have preferred to have been recognized solely for his acting skills, not the age at which he was acting.Mr. Nussbaum came up in Chicago’s community theaters, notably Hull House, an incubator of talent in the 1960s, while also running a successful exterminating business. When he was 40, he was tackling a wasp nest when he fell off a roof, smashing a kneecap and breaking a wrist. While he stewed on the couch recuperating, he decided it was the right moment to pursue acting full time.A pivot point in his acting career came in 1975 when Mr. Mamet, then a fledgling playwright, cast him in the role of Teach in an early production of the celebrated play “American Buffalo,” about a trio of hapless, double-crossing hustlers. The pair had met at Hull House, where Mr. Mamet had worked as a gofer when he was a teenager.“It was, for those of us who saw it, kind of an overwhelming, definitive experience,” Robert Falls, the former artistic director of Chicago’s Goodman Theater, told Chicago magazine in 2014. “Over the years I’ve seen actors like Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall play that part, and no one has ever played it the way Mike Nussbaum did. There was a Chicago quality to it in its voice, in terms of attitude, a sense of pathos and danger that he brought to it that’s never been really equaled.”Mr. Nussbaum won a Drama Desk Award for his role as George Aaronow, a beaten-down salesman, in “Glengarry Glen Ross.”When Mr. Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” another tale of desperate hustlers, opened on Broadway in 1983, Mr. Nussbaum, along with fellow Chicagoan Joe Mantegna, were cast as two of the play’s striving, venal real estate agents. Mr. Mantegna earned a Tony for his role as the slick Ricky Roma; Mr. Nussbaum won a Drama Desk Award for his role as George Aaronow, a beaten-down salesman with a nascent conscience; and the play would win Mr. Mamet the Pulitzer Prize in drama.“There’s particular heroism in Mike Nussbaum, whose frightened eyes convey a lifetime of blasted dreams,” Frank Rich wrote in his review for The New York Times. “and in Joe Mantegna, as the company’s youngest, most dapper go-getter.”The pair had performed years earlier in Mr. Mamet’s “A Life in the Theater,” a slight but biting two-man play about a young actor and an older one, goading and guiding each other, ego to ego. Mel Gussow of The Times praised their performances as effortless. “As the cynical old poseur, Mr. Nussbaum is a Jack Gilford with a touch of John Barrymore,” he wrote.Mr. Mantegna, speaking by phone, said that Mr. Nussbaum was “the role model for what everyone considers the Chicago actor.”“He wasn’t doing it for the end game,” Mr. Mantegna said. “In New York, there’s an end game: Maybe I’ll get to Broadway, get a shot at TV. It’s an industry. L.A. is an industry. In Chicago it was never an industry, we were doing it for the love of doing it.”He recalled Broadway producers urging Mr. Mamet to cast “Glengarry Glen Ross” with stars, and Mr. Mamet pushing back. “He said, ‘I’m going to do it with my kind of guys.’ Then there we were, this pack of unknowns, doing what would ultimately win the Pulitzer Prize.”Then Mr. Nussbaum walked away from it all.B.J. Jones, artistic director of the renowned Northlight Theater, in Skokie, Ill., which Mr. Nussbaum helped found in the 1970s, phoned Mr. Nussbaum during his run on Broadway to ask him to play the lead in a work by the English playwright Simon Gray.Mr. Nussbaum called out to his wife at the time, Annette, for advice. “Do it,” she said. “I’m tired of New York.”“Mike left Broadway to perform in a play for which we probably paid him a few hundred bucks,” Mr. Jones continued. “And when he did, they were scalping tickets in the lobby to see him. He was a Broadway star but he came home.”As Mr. Mantegna said, “We were on the carousel, and there was the brass ring and he could have grabbed it, but he decided he liked the carousel.”A slight man with a bushy mustache, Mr. Nussbaum could seemingly play anybody: He was a fierce Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” and a bawdy witch in “Macbeth,” two of his many roles for the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. He also worked steadily in film and television. He was a pompous school principal in “Field of Dreams,” the 1989 baseball fantasy starring Kevin Costner, and a chillingly gentle jewelry store owner in “Men in Black,” the 1997 sci-fi comedy with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith.A scene from the film “Men In Black” (1997), in which Mr. Nussbaum played a chillingly gentle jeweler.Columbia Pictures, via Alamy“Mike was the consummate ensemble player,” Mr. Jones said. “And he had an inherent warmth that infused all his characters.”Mike Nussbaum was born Myron G. Nussbaum on Dec. 29, 1923, in New York City, and grew up in Chicago. His father, Philip Nussbaum, was a fur wholesaler; his mother, Bertha (Cohen) Nussbaum, was a homemaker. Mike was a skinny, unhappy child, beaten and demeaned by his father, “a man I did not admire,” he told Chicago magazine.He was 9 and at summer camp when he discovered acting,though he froze during his first performance and had to be carried off the stage. He attended the University of Wisconsin before dropping out and enlisting in the Army during World War II.He worked as a Teletype operator in France, first in Versailles and then Reims, and was on duty on May 7, 1945, the day of the German surrender. He sent out the announcement declaring the end of the war in Europe, signing it not with his initials, as was customary, but with his full surname. He kept a framed copy as a memento.He returned to Chicago in 1946 and married Annette Brenner, who later worked in public relations for the American Civil Liberties Union and elsewhere. He went into the exterminating business because he wanted a home, a family and a stable life, which he knew he couldn’t have as a professional actor. “I wanted the American dream,” he said. Mr. Nussbaum in 2019. “I’m lucky,” he once said of his long career. “Chicago has given me chances that I don’t think I would’ve gotten in New York.”Neil Steinberg/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated PressHis first wife died in 2003. In addition to his daughter Karen, Mr. Nussbaum is survived by his son, Jack, a writer and activist; his second wife, Julie (Brudlos) Nussbaum; seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Susan, a playwright, novelist and disability activist, died last year.“I’m lucky: Chicago has given me chances that I don’t think I would have gotten in New York,” Mr. Nussbaum told Patrick Healy of The New York Times in 2014. “There’s no real fame here, not like in New York. And your salary doesn’t go up when you win a Jeff” — otherwise known as The Joseph Jefferson Award, an honor given to the theater arts in Chicago — “not like when you win a Tony. But I’ve gotten steady work, great work, and all I ever wanted to do was act.” More

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    Ncuti Gatwa Is the Newest ”Doctor Who.” Here’s How He Stacks Up.

    As Ncuti Gatwa makes his proper debut, we take a look back at the recent history of those to inhabit the TARDIS.With most TV shows, a major casting change is a dreaded event. But for fans of the long-running British series “Doctor Who,” big casting changes are expected, even anticipated. With the show’s latest Christmas episode, which premiered Monday on Disney+, we got acquainted with the newest Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa (“Sex Education”) — the 15th Doctor and the first Black, openly queer one in series history.The arrival of a new Doctor, the show’s titular time-traveling, space-wandering alien, is always a buzzy occasion. But although the Doctor typically dies and is regenerated in the final minutes of some climactic episode, it is the one immediately following that truly establishes the new incarnation and what kind of flavor he or she will offer. These first full episodes with a new Doctor, including this year’s Christmas special, “The Church on Ruby Road,” can reveal a lot about how that Doctor’s tenure will go.Here’s a look back at the first post-regeneration episodes of every Doctor since the show’s 2005 revival.David Tennant and Billie Piper from 2005 in “Doctor Who.”BBC10th DoctorActor: David TennantFirst Full Episode: “The Christmas Invasion”Writer: Russell T. DaviesFirst Words: “Hello. OK. New teeth, that’s weird. So, where was I? Oh, that’s right! Barcelona.”After a successful revival in 2005 — with one tight season of Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper as the Doctor’s plucky shopgirl companion, Rose Tyler — the series hit its stride with the next three seasons, starting with what is perhaps the best reincarnation episode since the series’s return, “The Christmas Invasion.” The episode was an auspicious start to the show’s new Golden Age, led by the showrunner and writer Russell T. Davies, with David Tennant as the Doctor.The 10th Doctor delivers a rambling monologue full of queries about what kind of man he is, like Shakespeare refracted through some prism of intergalactic and temporal mysteries; but Tennant’s performance never allows any doubt that he knows who his Doctor is. In a scene near the end of the episode, Tennant’s Doctor firmly declares, “No second chances; I’m that kind of man,” while sending an enemy to his doom. The scene offered a preview of how perfectly Tennant’s Doctor would embody the duality of this hero through his three-plus seasons in the TARDIS — a masterly balance of stillness and chatter, heft and levity.Karen Gillan with Matt Smith, who became the youngest Doctor in the show’s history.BBC11th DoctorActor: Matt SmithFirst Full Episode: “The Eleventh Hour”Writer: Steven MoffatFirst Words: “Legs! I’ve still got legs!”It’s fitting that Matt Smith’s playful young Doctor (the youngest, in fact; Smith was just 26 when cast for the role) begins his tenure in a state of chaos, hanging out of a spinning TARDIS. Known for his fast talking, ebullient charm, the 11th Doctor is manic and wide-eyed in the manner of a precocious kid on a sugar high.Crashing into the yard of a young Amelia Pond (Karen Gillan), who is independent and fearless but for the menacing crack in her bedroom wall, the Doctor arrives ready to step into the role of savior, though he is frazzled dealing with a resetting TARDIS and the aftereffects of his regeneration. Popping back into his TARDIS and promising Amelia he’ll be back in five minutes, the Doctor returns to find that little Amelia has grown up into Amy, who spent years waiting for a man everyone doubted was real.Amy’s life is shaped around the absence of a magical man whom she clings to with a strangely unflappable faith. Her emotional arc with the Doctor is her learning to become independent from the Doctor. But the 11th’s moments of tenderness — as when he grabs the young Amelia’s hand, anticipating the danger — presage the familial relationship that the Doctor will develop with the older Amy and her boyfriend and future centurion husband, Rory (Arthur Darvill).Peter Capaldi, center, as the 12th Doctor.BBC12th DoctorActor: Peter CapaldiFirst Full Episode: “Deep Breath”Writer: Steven MoffatFirst words: “Kidneys! I’ve got new kidneys! I don’t like the color.”In Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor and Jenna Coleman’s Clara Oswald, Moffat created another cute, flirtatious pairing for the TARDIS. The rapid-fire repartee and seamless synergy between the two got a harsh shake-up in the form of the Doctor’s regeneration into the 12th, played by Peter Capaldi.This post-regeneration episode — which starts in Victorian London, where a dinosaur spontaneously combusts in the Thames, and ends as an organ-stealing cyborg tries to escape in a hot-air balloon made of human skin — was a brooding start for the 12th, whose tenure signaled a sharp tonal shift from the 11th’s. Capaldi’s Doctor is rude and pretentious, quick to condescend those around him and snap a quick “shut up.” He is more reminiscent of the Ninth in temperament: He shows more disgust and self-hate, and he is more haunted by his past actions. The 12th appears harsh on the surface but is no less dedicated than previous doctors to keeping everyone safe and alive at the end of the day.Capaldi was 55 when cast in the role, nearly 30 years older than his predecessor, and the show appeared to spend the whole first episode trying to appease fans who might have opposed the big change. In fact, the episode baldly uses the out-of-place dinosaur as a symbol of this much older, out-of-place Doctor. It’s not the most elegant or subtle move, but Capaldi still manages to wring honest emotion from the symbol — something he would continue to do throughout his tenure as Doctor, especially in his later episodes. The 12th never showed the same humanity as the 10th and 11th did, but he had a streak of wisdom that neither could match.Jodie Whittaker, center, presided over a disastrous run as the 13th Doctor.BBC13th DoctorActor: Jodie WhittakerFirst Full Episode: “The Woman Who Fell to Earth”Writer: Chris ChibnallFirst Words: “Oh, brilliant!”“Doctor Who” writers are all guilty, at one time or another, of throwing too much at the wall. But usually a fair percentage sticks. That was not at all true of Chris Chibnall’s writing during Whittaker’s disastrous run as the Doctor.Usually the Doctor’s first episodes are more pared down; there’s no need to get over the top with a Predator-type alien who cheats at his human-hunting exam by using biotech to tag his human — and in the process installs DNA bombs in the collarbones of the Doctor and her new friends.And speaking of friends, the episode is chock-full of them, overcrowding Whittaker’s performance, which remains at a steady level of earnestness and enthusiasm but fails to give nuance or variety. The first episode in a season-long attempt to replicate the more syrupy, wholesome quality of the old “Who” episodes, “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” can’t pull off any sense of menace or stakes, even when some characters begin dying.David Tennant returned as the 14th Doctor.BBC14th DoctorActor: David TennantFirst Full Episode: “The Star Beast”Writer: Russell T. DaviesFirst Words: “I know these teeth. … What? What? What?!”In many ways, the return of Davies and Tennant after the exploding TARDIS disaster that was Seasons 11 through 13 felt like an emergency rescue maneuver. With a few keystrokes, Davies could have undermined or overwritten the 30-plus episodes of the previous Doctor’s arc, but the episode graciously makes a few nods — both comedic and sentimental — to the show’s attempt at telling more progressive and diverse stories during Chibnall’s run, joking at one point that the Doctor’s reversion to cis-male form was clearly a downgrade.“The Star Beast” which begins the abbreviated three-episode return of Tennant’s 10th Doctor, now considered the 14th, is a refreshing return for the show. But even Davies’s captivating dialogue and engaging plots can’t make up for the tissue-thin logic behind this repeat Doctor regeneration.That said, the performances, the reunion of these old faves, the digestible story and the addition of an absurd new alien to the Whoniverse in the form of the Meep (a Furby-type creature that speaks like Yoda), all make “The Star Beast” a solid entry in the “Doctor Who” catalog.Ncuti Gatwa made his full “Doctor Who” debut with the latest Christmas episode. BBC Studios/Bad Wolf15th DoctorActor: Ncuti GatwaFirst Full Episode: “The Church on Ruby Road”Writer: Russell T. DaviesFirst Words: “No way.” “You’re me!” “No, I’m me. I think I’m really, really me!”Another Christmas premiere, “The Church on Ruby Road” is the first full outing for Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor. The plot — involving mischievous, baby-thieving goblins — gets too cutesy at times (a goblin musical number takes things too far), but it tidily connects the Doctor’s complex origin story with that of Ruby, a lively young woman and adoptee who is searching for information on her birth family.Gatwa’s Doctor truly feels like a Doctor Who for the 21st century and a fitting follow-up to Tennant’s Doctor. The 15th is stylish and liberated, with a vibe that is sensual and unbuttoned; he’s a Doctor who seems much more at home than the others in his body. He is chipper but not frivolous, and he is capable of depth that isn’t limited to darkness. At one point in the episode, the 15th Doctor cries — full, drip-down-the-face tears — over the abduction of someone he just met and how that abduction has hardened those implicated in the loss. Gatwa’s Doctor shows a great deal of humanity, which isn’t always a given for the character, who often understands humans intellectually but closes himself off to a more comprehensive human experience. More

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    ‘The Curse’ Season 1, Episode 8 Recap: Exhausting

    In a series full of painful-to-watch interactions, this week’s episode might be the most excruciating yet.Season 1, Episode 8: ‘Down and Dirty’This week’s episode of “The Curse” is about friendship. Or maybe, more accurately, it’s about the concept of friendship and the trouble our protagonists seem to have with grasping it. Asher and Whitney call people “friends,” but that’s just empty language to them. They have no true sense of what it means to be a friend to someone else.The backbone of the hour consists of one night in which Whitney and Asher have divergent outings. Whitney goes to a party that Cara is attending in a beautiful home hosted by an art collector, who also happens to be a military contractor. Naturally, there’s an ulterior motive to Whitney’s excursion: She has a camera trailing her to capture footage for the show of what her life is like away from Asher. At the same time, Asher and Dougie have dinner — a sort of apology meal on Asher’s part for having neglected their friendship.The episode brings into focus just how transactional Asher’s and Whitney’s relationships are. Even their marriage is one of convenience. And we’re confronted once again with just how poisonous Asher and Whitney are to the people in their presence.Dougie, who is so mired in loneliness and self-hatred that he craves whatever companionship he can find, has clearly come to despise Asher for what he sees as a dismissal of his feelings. So he has taken to torturing him with the barely concealed glee of a schoolyard menace. Cara, meanwhile, is starting to realize just how soul sucking it is to be beholden to Whitney at any price; indeed, taking Whitney’s money in last week’s episode has only tightened her bind, forcing her to pantomime her way through her revulsion. In a series full of painful-to-watch interactions, this week’s episode might be the most excruciating yet.In some ways, Whitney should be at ease at the art collector’s gathering. These are her people: rich capitalists who use their interest in art to help mask their exploitation. But she doesn’t want to recognize herself in them. She needs to believe she is like Cara — an artist. So she tells her camera guy not to film the host, and she balks when she introduces herself to a group and a man tells her he works in private security.Whitney parades around the room with a drink in hand, posing as she examines the art in the room, making sure the camera captures all of her angles. She approaches other guests hoping for interactions that will make her look good. Some play her game. Cara’s friend Brett (Brett Mooswa), having clearly heard about Whitney from Cara, decides to play the role of the wise and mystical Native American, and she eats it up. “That was so beautiful,” she says after his speech. “Can I give you a hug?” She’s unaware that when he turns away from her he is giggling to himself.But Cara doesn’t find Whitney’s cluelessness as funny as Brett does, especially when Whitney tries to goad her into performing for the camera. Cara seems to know that she has put herself in an impossible position: Whitney’s money has obligated Cara to be cordial, but at a price that seems to exceed the $20,000 she received. Pretending to be Whitney’s friend helps Whitney believe they are artistically on the same level, which Cara and we as viewers know is not true. And while Cara’s good word, even if it’s fake, lends value to Whitney’s work, the association risks having a negative impact on Cara’s own standing in the art world and in her community.Whitney feeds Cara lines she wants her to say about how she’s proud to have her work displayed inside Whitney’s homes, and Cara dutifully repeats them. Finally, however, she gets the opportunity to tell Whitney a little bit about how she really feels when Whitney asks her to explain her performance piece in the tepee way back in Episode 2. Whitney still wants to know if she was supposed to eat the turkey Cara sliced.“The slicing of the meat is me giving pieces of myself to people, whether I want to or not, and as a Native person that’s basically what you are doing every day,” Cara says. She adds: “Whether people choose to eat it is totally up to them. And you ate it.” As Whitney, Emma Stone’s face changes from an understanding smile into a grimace. Someone finally called her out to her face. Maybe that’s just what friends do.While Whitney is learning some hard truths about herself, Asher and Dougie are engaged in an emotional battle of performative friendship. In a way, their date starts with Dougie’s interview with Asher, where he is quite evidently trying both to unnerve him and to catch him in linguistic traps that will make him look terrible in the edit. Dougie brings up details we have never heard about Asher before, among them that he came to New Mexico for another relationship, which ended before he got together with Whitney.Although Asher is uncomfortable during the interview, he leans into congeniality at dinner with awkward attempts at niceties, saying things like “I’m happy you’ve been such a good friend to me” as Dougie throws back beers. And Dougie is hardly a victim. He is also a bully. During the interview, he brings up Asher’s embarrassing sexual proclivities; during their meal, he secretly orders chicken to the table, just to freak Asher out.When Asher has to go to Abshir’s to change the battery in a smoke detector, Dougie comes up with a plan. He wants to see if Nala will curse him with the same chicken-related fate as Asher. If the chicken they have taken home from the restaurant — Dougie’s joke — disappears, then it worked. Asher is resistant, but Dougie forges ahead, essentially barging his way into Nala’s room under the ruse of needing to do housework. As he asks Nala to curse him, he grows desperate, crying. She screams for her father, terrified by this strange man weeping beside her bed.It’s a sequence that’s almost hard to parse. Is Dougie genuinely sobbing? Is he doing this for Asher? Maybe he needs to believe in curses so he can have something to blame his awful life on? Regardless of his motives, Nala doesn’t fulfill his request.When Asher and Dougie get back into the car, they start to fight. It leads to perhaps the most brutal exchange of the series so far. “Does this get exhausting,” Dougie asks, “cosplaying as a good man?” Asher replies, “Like you’re one to talk.” Dougie wants to know what that’s supposed to mean. Asher then coup de grâce: “I don’t know, ask your wife.” He quickly apologizes, realizing the cruelty of his blow. But something has shifted. Even the score sounds different. It is harsher and less eerie, like something out of a sci-fi movie.As Asher moves to exit the car, he tries again to make amends. Dougie coldly agrees, saying, “We need more friends than enemies in this world, right?” His cute little axiom sounds like a threat, and at this moment Asher really doesn’t have any friends. Neither does Whitney.And now Asher has two curses on his back: One from Nala and one from Dougie, who curses him as soon as he gets out of the car. While Nala’s might have been mostly child’s play, there’s deeper malice behind Dougie’s hex.Notes from EspañolaIt’s always a jolt when an episode begins with entirely new faces. This one started with some local kids who have learned that they can steal jeans with no repercussions. There might, however, be some repercussions for Asher and Whitney in the form of Fernando, who sees them as enabling crime.Whitney has spent about $14,000 on the stolen jeans. Jeez.Whitney’s baby voice as she whines to Asher after Fernando leaves is one of the most haunting, grotesque things I have ever heard. Props to Emma Stone for that.Once again, Whitney has an interaction with the Española Sikh community, this time in the form of a man at the party who flirts with her. I’m starting to wonder if this is all going to end with her joining.“Exhausting” is a term that keeps coming up. The experience of being Native in this country is “exhausting” to Cara; Dougie asks Asher if cosplaying as a good person gets “exhausting.” The performance of life is tiring, and “The Curse” is digging into that. More

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    in Television

    What to Watch This Weekend: Comedy Morsels Galore

    The holiday season means an overcommitted social calendar and low-commitment viewing. Our TV critic has several great suggestions.If the traditional Christmas meal is a feast, the traditional New Year’s Eve fare is hors d’oeuvres. To that end, this weekend is all about tidbits, the only kind of viewing that fits during a time of both busyness and vacantness, of being both off and on.Perhaps no medium operates more like devouring a tray of appetizers than immersing oneself in a TikTok channel. To that end, the soapy spoof “Sylvanian Drama” works beautifully in its one-minute chunks but becomes its own slangy mindset after an hour. I first wrote about the series in 2022, and since then my adoration for its deranged perfection has only grown.In each episode, little flocked animal dolls — you might know them as Calico Critters — enact a sort of “Euphoria” by way of Weird Twitter; one recent episode includes a wizard advising a cow that the purpose of life is “to go on Instagram (and vaping).” Little outrageous thrills abound, and you don’t even need to have the sound on. (You can also watch it on Instagram.)Just as distinctive but in a completely different vein is “The Mask,” now available on YouTube, a 24-minute short from the comedy auteur Conner O’Malley that follows an aspiring improv comedian from his cemetery job in Illinois through a descent into a conspiracy-fueled crisis in Los Angeles. Satirical horror tragedy is an underpopulated genre, but I’m not sure how else to describe this; it is specific, mesmerizing, strange and just on the edge of realism, like catching something out of the corner of your eye. O’Malley’s other work includes “Joe Pera Talks With You” and “How To With John Wilson,” and while “The Mask” does not share their more sanguine sensibilities, it does share their fascination with the minutiae of personhood and their ability to shade in certain kinds of rarely depicted masculinity.Let’s call that more of an acquired taste, though. If you want something explicitly ha-ha funny and more appealing to a wider group, the stand-up comedy special “Born on 3rd Base” (on Max), from Gary Gulman, is fantastic. Some comics cultivate intimacy through a relaxed, faux-spitballing casualness, but Gulman has a refined precision, like an opera singer or elite athlete who turns a lifetime of effort into what looks miraculously like effortlessness.But maybe you just want to graze all day. For something silly, easy and low-commitment, Season 16 of the British panel show “Would I Lie to You?” is now on BritBox. Think Two Truths and a Lie, but dorkier. Seven seasons of the show are on BritBox, and one is on FreeVee, and you can’t really go wrong — but if you must optimize, pick any episode where Bob Mortimer is a guest. More

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    David Mamet Names the Books That Explain the Real Hollywood

    What’s the last great book you read?“A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States,” by Frederick Law Olmsted. Also note: “The Life of George Brummell, Esq., Commonly Called Beau Brummell,” by Captain Jesse, and “A Diary in America,” by Frederick Marryat. Enjoy.Can a great book be badly written?If it were badly written how could it be a great book? Perhaps if it contained Great Ideas? According to whom? The writer? Who died and left him boss? In the estimation of the reader? If I am he, nope, for why should I credit any ideas of a lox who didn’t realize he couldn’t write? Reading great prose is one of my chiefest joys. When I find myself rewriting the book I’m reading, I not only throw it away, I do not recycle it. What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?“The Wallet of Kai Lung,” by Ernest Bramah.Which novels or novelists do you admire for their dialogue?George V. Higgins.Which books best capture Hollywood and the challenge of making movies?The best book about Hollywood is my “Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood.”Here please find its like:“A Girl Like I,” by Anita Loos. She was the first of the great Hollywood screenwriters, and in it from the days of the silents. Her “Lorelei” stories became “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” See also “The Honeycomb,” an autobiography of Adela Rogers St. Johns. She started in journalism before writing for silents, and wrote many of the great “women’s” pictures of early sound.Jim Tully was a “road kid,” riding the rails, and washed up in Hollywood, where he worked, in various capacities, for Chaplin, of whom he wrote a short unauthorized biography. Also please read his “Jarnegan,” a roman à clef about a thug and criminal who comes to Hollywood, and becomes a great director.Another must read is Ivor Montagu’s “With Eisenstein in Hollywood.” He and Sergei wandered in, in the 1930s. They were flogging a screenplay for “An American Tragedy” and a gold rush drama, “Sutter’s Gold.” They had a few drinks, and had their lunch handed to them, and went home.Bob Evans, once head of Paramount, wrote “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” which is a laugh a minute, but one must read between the lies (sic). Scotty Bowers, a fixer, wrote “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars” with Lionel Friedberg. Are his accounts true? He only “outed” the dead, which indicates his intelligence, but gives no clues to his veracity. Hollywood has always been about sex, until just recently. Now it is about Attack-Decency; and, as with anything, those who know don’t tell, and those who tell don’t know. A note to those who might buy my book. In it I recount a talk I had with my old friend Noma Copley. She worked for Disney in the late 1940s, and told me, at their first meeting, he invited her into his inner sanctum, which was covered with murals depicting his characters in an orgy, and said, “Call me Walt.”What book would you most like to see turned into a movie that hasn’t already been adapted?The only book not adapted to the screen is the phone book. I tried, but only got as far as the title: “Funny Names, No Plot.”What’s the last book you read that made you laugh?”The Berenstain Bears Get Cancer.”The last book that made you cry?“Bambi.”The last book that made you furious?“The Wealth of Nations.”Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?My wife once threw a book at me.You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?Great work is a mystery to us, and, as it’s mysterious, we have no vocabulary for discussing it, really, let alone discussing it with its creators. The fortunate ones are dead, so that, for example, we could not ask of Winslow Homer, “What induced you to put that shark there…?” The best thing I could say to a writer is the best thing he or she, or you, could say to me: “Pleased to meet you.” More