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    Tom Smothers, Comic Half of the Smothers Brothers, Dies at 86

    Though he played a naïve buffoon onstage, he was the driving force behind the folk-singing duo’s groundbreaking TV show.Tom Smothers, the older half of the comic folk duo the Smothers Brothers, whose skits and songs on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in the late 1960s brought political satire and a spirit of youthful irreverence to network television, paving the way for shows like “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show,” died on Tuesday at his home in Santa Rosa, Calif., a city in Sonoma County. He was 86. He died “following a recent battle with cancer,” a spokesman for the National Comedy Center announced on behalf of the family.The Smothers Brothers made their way to network television as a folk act with a difference. With Tom playing guitar and Dick playing stand-up bass, they spent as much time bickering as singing.With an innocent expression and a stammering delivery, Tom would try to introduce their songs with a story, only to be picked at by his skeptical brother. As frustration mounted, he would turn, seething, and often deliver a trademark non sequitur: “Mom always liked you best.”Hoping to reach a younger audience, CBS gave the brothers creative control over “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” a one-hour variety show that made its debut in February 1967. For the next three seasons it courted controversy as it addressed American policy in Vietnam, religious fundamentalism, racial strife and recreational drug use.Running features like Leigh French’s “Share a Little Tea With Goldie,” replete with drug references, either delighted or scandalized, depending on the age and the politics of the viewer.“During the first year, we kept saying the show has to have something to say more than just empty sketches and vacuous comedy,” Mr. Smothers said in a 2006 interview. “So we always tried to put something of value in there, something that made a point and reflected what was happening out in the streets.”Tom, more liberal than his brother and largely responsible for the production of the show, brought in writers attuned to the thinking of the Baby Boom generation — among them Rob Reiner, Steve Martin, Pat Paulsen, and Mason Williams — and stretched the boundaries of taste at every turn.Steve Martin, left, who had been a writer on the original “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” rejoined Tom, center, and Dick on a 20th-anniversary reunion show in 1988.CBS, via Getty Images“Easter is when Jesus comes out of his tomb, and if he sees his shadow he goes back in and we get six more weeks of winter,” Tom said on one show.Far more combative than his mild-mannered brother, who survives him, Tom fought network executives and censors until CBS, tired of complaints from its rural affiliates, especially in the South, abruptly canceled the show in April 1969 and replaced it with “Hee Haw,” a corn-pone counterpart to the fast-paced (and often controversial) “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” that featured country music stars.“In any other medium we would be regarded as moderate,” Tom Smothers told reporters at a news conference the day after the show was canceled. “Here we are regarded as rebels and extremists.”An Army FamilyThomas Bolyn Smothers III was born on Feb. 2, 1937, on Governors Island in New York Harbor, where his father, a West Point graduate and Army major, was stationed. The family relocated to Manila when Major Smothers was reassigned. Shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the family moved again, to the Los Angeles area, where Tom and Dick’s mother, Ruth (Remick) Smothers, had grown up. She found work in an aircraft factory.Major Smothers remained on Corregidor in Manila Bay to fight and was taken prisoner on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines. He survived the Bataan death march, but in 1945 he died of injuries sustained when American planes mistakenly bombed the prison ship transporting him to a camp in Japan.Tom attended an assortment of schools as his mother descended into alcoholism and moved from husband to husband. In 1955, he graduated from Redondo Union High School, where he was a state champion on the parallel bars.While in high school, he and Dick, two years his junior, sang in a barbershop group that won second prize on “Rocket to Stardom,” a local talent contest broadcast from the showroom of a Los Angeles Oldsmobile dealer.At San Jose State College (now University), where Tom studied advertising, the brothers decided to ride the folk music wave and formed the Casual Quintet. In early 1959, by then a trio with Bobby Blackmore as lead singer, they began performing at the Purple Onion in San Francisco, a popular showcase for folk singers and comedians, billed as the Smothers Brothers and Gawd.Gradually, the brothers introduced comic patter into their act, satirizing the folk music scene and turning their sibling rivalry — which was genuine — into shtick. The act “slowly evolved to be a running argument between two brothers who sang but never finished a song,” Mr. Smothers said in 2006.Audiences loved it. Their two-week engagement at the Purple Onion was extended to nine months, and in 1961 the Smothers Brothers, now a duo, were booked into the Blue Angel in New York.Robert Shelton, reviewing the show in The New York Times, compared Tom’s delivery to “a frightened 10th grader giving a memorized talk at a Kiwanis meeting.”He added, “He speaks in a nervous, distracted sort of cretin double-talk that has him stumbling over big words, muffing lines with naïve unconcern, singing off-key, committing malapropisms, garbling lyrics and eternally upstaging his younger brother.”The brothers became regulars on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar, “The Garry Moore Show” and “The New Steve Allen Show.” They signed with Mercury Records and recorded “The Smothers Brothers at the Purple Onion,” the first of several successful albums. They toured college campuses nonstop.In 1963, Tom married Stephanie Shorr. The marriage ended in divorce, as did his marriage to Rochelle Robley. In addition to his brother, he is survived by his wife, Marcy Carriker Smothers; their son, Bo, and daughter, Riley Rose Smothers; and a grandson. His son from his first marriage, Thomas Bolyn Smothers IV, died this year.In a statement, Dick Smothers said, “Tom was not only the loving older brother that everyone would want in their life, he was a one-of-a-kind creative partner.”In 1965, CBS gave the brothers their own sitcom, “The Smothers Brothers Show,” produced by Aaron Spelling. It did not play to their strengths: Tom played a probationary angel sent back to earth to move in with and watch over his brother, a swinging bachelor played by Dick.The ratings were strong, but it was a miserable experience. Deprived of their instruments and a live audience, and saddled with a laugh track, the brothers struggled.“It was a nothing show,” Tom told The New York Times in 1967. “There was no point of reference, nothing meaningful, no satire in it.”After “The Garry Moore Show” failed to challenge “Bonanza” on Sunday nights, Michael Dann, the head programmer at CBS, took a chance on a Smothers Brothers variety show.Connecting With the YoungExpectations were low, but “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” connected with viewers, especially younger ones, and outperformed “Bonanza” in the ratings. The humor was irreverent, the writing was sharp, and musical guests like the Who and Jefferson Airplane broke the variety-show mold.The Smothers Brothers looked like clean-cut collegians, but their comedy could bite. They were at war with CBS almost from the beginning of their show’s run.CBSThe brothers looked like clean-cut collegians, but their cheery, up-tempo songs could bite. “The war in Vietnam keeps on a-ragin’,” one began. “Black and whites still haven’t worked it out./Pollution, guns and poverty surround us./No wonder everybody’s droppin’ out.”A war with CBS executives began almost immediately, and a pattern quickly developed. The censors would cut words, lines or entire sketches. Mr. Smothers would fight tooth and nail to have them reinstated, often successfully. When thwarted, he would complain loudly and publicly.After CBS cut the words “breast” and “heterosexual” from an early sketch, written by Elaine May, about two professional censors (played by Tom Smothers and Ms. May), Mr. Smothers told The Times: “The censors censored the censorship bit. It’s a real infringement of our creative rights.”He lost the first round of his campaign to have Pete Seeger, absent from television after being blacklisted in the 1950s, perform his antiwar ballad “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” The segment was pulled in 1967 but broadcast a year later.“Television is old and tired,” Mr. Smothers told McCall’s magazine in 1968. “Television is a lie. The people who censor our shows are all conditioned to a very scared way of thinking, which is reflected in the kind of programs the networks put on. Television should be as free as the movies, as the newspapers, as music to reflect what’s happening.”CBS began insisting that an advance tape of each week’s show be sent to the network and its affiliates for their review. In April 1969, when the tape of a show that included a satirical sermon, delivered by the comedian David Steinberg, failed to arrive on schedule for the second time, CBS informed the brothers that they had broken their contract and that the show, whose option had been renewed two weeks earlier, would be canceled.The move was not a complete surprise.“Tommy has been sticking pins in CBS ever since he started feeling his oats when he found he could command good ratings,” Percy Shain, the television critic for The Boston Globe, wrote. “He has been at times snide, ugly, resentful, bullheaded. In his various arguments with the network he has refused to compromise one iota. Every deletion meant a battle.”TV Guide, in a stern editorial, deemed the cancellation “wise, determined and wholly justified.”For the rest of his life, Mr. Smothers remained convinced that President Richard M. Nixon, who had assumed office just three months earlier after defeating Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, had pressured CBS to cancel the show.“When Nixon said, ‘I want those guys off,’ they were off,” he told “Speaking Freely,” a television program produced by the First Amendment Center, in 2001. “If Humphrey had been elected, we would have been on.”The brothers briefly returned to network television in 1970 with the tepid “Smothers Brothers Summer Show” on ABC. The next year Tom, increasingly outspoken on politics, starred, without his brother, in “Tom Smothers’ Organic Prime Time Space Ride,” a syndicated half-hour variety show that was long on relevance and short on laughs.“I lost perspective, my sense of humor,” he said in the 2006 interview. “I became a poster boy for the First Amendment, freedom of speech, and I started buying into it. It was about three years when I was deadly serious about everything.”The brothers’ careers took some twists and turns after their TV show was canceled, including an appearance on Broadway in the comedy “I Love My Wife” in 1978.Hollywood and BroadwayTom pursued a career as an actor, in “Serial,” “The Silver Bears” and other movies. With his brother, he appeared in the comedy “I Love My Wife” on Broadway in 1978 and on a national tour.The brothers reunited on television in 1975 for a new, tamer version of “The Smothers Brothers Show,” broadcast on NBC, and a 1988 reunion show. They also appeared (not as brothers) in a short-lived 1981 drama series, “Fitz and Bones.” But their career ended as it had begun, in concert performances.Tom added a new comic persona to the act, Yo-Yo Man, performing dazzling yo-yo tricks that he learned after falling in love with the song “(I’m a) Yo-Yo Man.” In 2010, Tom announced that he and his brother were retiring as an act.Plans for a 2023 tour were announced last year, but the tour was canceled.At the 1969 Emmys, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” received an award for outstanding writing achievement in comedy, variety or music. Mr. Smothers had removed himself from the show’s list of writers on the ballot, worried that his name might alienate voters. In 2008 the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences gave him a special commemorative Emmy for the show, presented by Steve Martin.In an interview for the Archive of American Television in 2000, Mr. Smothers looked back on the show and its impact. “It was the ’60s that we reflected,” he said. “The country was going through a revolution — a social revolution, a political and consciousness revolution, about government and its part. We tried to reflect that.”Alex Traub More

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    Love a TV Show? Now You Can Live It.

    Streamers and networks are creating live experiences to promote series like “Squid Game” and “Only Murders in the Building.” But do they amount to anything more than just marketing?On a sun-nuzzled morning in Los Angeles, 25 people filed into a narrow, windowless room. They were about to participate in “Squid Game: The Trials,” an interactive experience based on the popular, dystopian Netflix franchise.A South Korean series about an indebted man who enters a deadly tournament, “Squid Game” was a surprise hit for Netflix two years ago. In November, Netflix released a companion reality series in which 456 players competed, less lethally, for a $4.56 million prize. Now anyone with $39 — or $99 for a V.I.P. pass that includes parking and coat check — can play along in real-time. A ticket is an entree to a 70-minute roundelay of dire versions of children’s playground games, with Korean snacks, claw games and shopping to follow.The original “Squid Game, ” a savage anticapitalist satire, delights in blood sport. The reality version, though gentler, takes a dim view of human nature. But in the rooms of the interactive experience, housed on the former soundstage of “The Price Is Right,” the mood was cheerful, even giddy. “Squid Game” fans — dads and sons, friend groups, couples, a grandmother celebrating her birthday — thrilled to each callback and Easter egg. Many of them had come in tracksuit costume. Once the trials were complete (the grandmother had won, via light cheating), they happily browsed the snack stalls.Some players came to “Squid Game: The Trials” in tracksuit constumes.Jamie Lee Taete for The New York TimesThe event was held in the former home of “The Price Is Right,” but its games were much gorier.Jamie Lee Taete for The New York Times“Squid Game: The Trials” is the latest in a trend of immersive experiences designed to lever an imaginary world into our real one. Referred to as brand activations or brand experiences, these events transform television shows (and films and sometimes consumer products) into multidimensional happenings.“It’s moving and it’s organized and it’s becoming a lot more expected,” Fri Forjindam, whose company Mycotoo specializes in immersive design, said of the trend.This past year, in New York City alone, fans could snuggle on the couch during a “Friends” experience, wander through an opulent theater during an “Only Murders in the Building” experience, solve a murder at “Welcome to the Continental: The Hotel Bar Experience,” dance the night away at a ball out of “Bridgerton” or sip cocktails while ogling Carrie Bradshaw’s shoe closet. Really, the options are legion. (In 2017, the FX series “Legion” rated an experience, too.)“We are bringing a theme park to people,” Marian Lee, Netflix’s chief marketing officer, said. “We are going to where the fans are.”These participatory and walk-through experiences have been part of the media landscape for more than 20 years, but until recently they have been rare and exclusive, the province of events like Comic Con or the South by Southwest festival or some of the splashier premieres. An amalgam of theater, commerce, viral marketing and fan service, they were intended to publicize shows in ways more forceful and creative than a Sunset Boulevard billboard.“You don’t hear from people necessarily about billboards that they see,” said Barrie Gruner, Hulu’s executive vice president of marketing and publicity. “But these types of activations are what really help drive word of mouth.”In recent years, these experiences have multiplied, particularly for prestige shows. “The Walking Dead” has sponsored a zombie-ridden obstacle course. “Game of Thrones” has birthed an interactive studio tour. The pandemic accelerated the trend. Many viewers consumed unusual amounts of television during lockdown. When live events returned, marketing and publicity departments looked for innovative ways to engage those fans. Hulu debuted a “Nine Perfect Strangers” activation in 2021. The next year Netflix created elaborate experiences in multiple cities based on three of its most popular properties: “Bridgerton,” “Money Heist” and “Stranger Things.”“We’ve seen an acceleration, post-Covid, of people wanting to be out,” Lee said. “This is how fans are engaging.”Not every show or movie lends itself to an experience, but many do: Walking away from the “Squid Game” immersion, I stumbled across a lollipop-filled “Wonka” pop-up that had taken over part of a nearby shopping center.An experience based on the Netflix period dramedy “Bridgerton” was styled as a ball.NetflixAn amalgam of theater, commerce and viral marketing, the activations are designed to publicize shows and keep fans engaged.Federico Imperiale/NetflixThese activations offer titles another way to stand out, literally, amid a crowded mediascape. For series, specifically, they offer a way to retain fans between seasons.“A lot of shows can get hot for a season or two, but we’re really looking and interested in sustained success,” Gruner, from Hulu, said. “In order to do that, you need more than fans, you need advocates.”These brand extensions take different forms, which typically gesture toward older varieties of entertainment. Some resemble museum exhibits. Others, which can involve dozens of actors, resemble plays.“They’re not theater,” said Sarah Bay-Cheng, an academic who studies the intersections of theater and media. “But they are theatrical.” And now some of them are in fact theater, as in the case of “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a prequel that recently opened in London.Not every activation invites or demands absolute fidelity to its source material, though an experience risks disenchanting fans if it deviates too far. While streamers and networks typically outsource activations to external marketing farms, those firms tend to work closely with writers and producers to preserve the spirit of the work.“We’re all making sure that we’re coming to it from a place of authenticity,” said Forjindam, who has helped to design experiences for “Stranger Things,” “The Mandalorian” and “Westworld.” “And then from there, you break all the rules.”An “Only Murders in the Building” activation included props and costumes from the show.Mo DaoudGuests were invited to solve the mystery of the most recent season.Mo DaoudA recent “Only Murders in the Building” experience, held in September at Upper Manhattan’s United Palace theater, where the show had filmed, was a faithful, playful recreation of the show. Guests could wander onstage, backstage and through the lobby, surveying actual props and costumes from the show. Using special flashlights to illuminate clues, they could attempt to answer the most recent season’s whodunit just days before the finale aired.A week later and a few miles downtown, at “Welcome to the Continental: The Hotel Bar Experience,” fans would encounter all-new characters and an original mystery, inspired by the Peacock series “The Continental,” a prequel to the “John Wick” franchise. Inside the Beaver Building, which had lent its facade to the movies, ticket holders, who were encouraged to dress as assassins, were free to move from room to room, engaging actors at will. Or they could congregate at the bar and swallow some very strong cocktails.“We wanted guests to feel like they were the main character in their own show,” said Ollie Killick, whose company, Fever, designed the experience.But is the show really about them? Or are activations like these merely a means to a marketing end? If an experience delights fans, those fans, by documenting and posting, often in meticulous detail, become part of a show’s advertising campaign.An event to promote “The Continental,” a “John Wick” prequel, included an original mystery and cocktails.Bryan Bedder/Peacock“We do look at social buzz,” said Shannon Willett, the chief marketing officer at Peacock. “We want people to have a great time, have that great experience, post on social, talk about that experience to other people.” Though expensive to produce, such immersions will have a greater impact on fans and will likely lead to more social media impressions than a traditional billboard or print ad.Netflix’s Lee put the emphasis elsewhere. “For us, it’s about the fans,” she said. “We don’t approach it as advertising.” Netflix recently announced a plan to open destinations known as Netflix Houses, where fans can engage in rotating live experiences while also eating branded food and shopping for souvenirs.Though perhaps not conceived as an advertising ploy, a venue like this achieves some of what advertising intends, building brand identification and loyalty. And they may lack the intellectual and emotional nourishment that theatrical or museum experiences might offer.Last year, in Toronto, Bay-Cheng attended the “Bridgerton” ball. She was named the diamond of the season, which involved confetti, glitter and great fanfare. “It was just this amazing moment of totally unearned adoration,” she said.While she enjoyed the ball and understands these activations as reflecting the desire for a live experience, she worries that the form is inherently limiting, feeding fans more of what they already enjoy rather than challenging them with something new.There were true challenges at “Squid Game: The Trials.” (The marbles were nearly impossible.) And if the experience could not be reasonably mistaken for theater or art, it did provide moments of exhilaration, affection, collaboration and joy, which is more than most billboards can say.Had it felt like living inside the show? “No,” a woman said after the final challenge. “But it was fun.”Why would a person pay to immerse herself in a dystopia, albeit a fun dystopia? Mike Monello, whose company, Campfire NYC, designed the “Only Murders” experience, has one theory. If you love something, he believes, then you must want to share it, even if the thing you love, as in “Squid Game,” is a caustic drama with an alarming body count.“Opportunities like this offer people a chance to get together with your tribe and experience something unique,” Monello said. “We have the need to share in the things we love. And it’s a lot more fun to do it in person.” More

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    For a Times Critic on Deadline, a Dramatic Reversal

    Stories evolve. But a recent review proved to a theater critic that people can change even more.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do my job.That’s usually not a problem. As the chief theater critic for The Times, I enjoy the ritual of seeing plays during previews, thinking about them for a day or two and writing opening-night reviews.But after Second Stage Theater announced in June that it would produce a revival of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Appropriate,” I dithered for months about covering it. True, it would be the play’s Broadway debut — and the playwright’s. Both are important milestones for the paper to acknowledge with a thoughtful response.On the other hand, I’d seen “Appropriate” before, when it premiered Off Broadway in 2014. Other critics welcomed it as a serious play by a serious playwright.I hated it.That surprised me. The play’s subject — the legacy of racism in America — is something I care about deeply. And the plot is clever: Three white siblings bicker over the horrible souvenirs of slavery they find in their father’s plantation home. But the tone seemed too hectic and self-consciously outrageous to suit the subject.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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    ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 7: Not Your Puppet

    Gator takes matters into his own hands. Dot takes a drive. Wayne takes a trade-in.Season 5, Episode 7: ‘Linda’After eight episodes of frolicking in a Coen-ized version of gangland Kansas City in the early 1950s, the last season of “Fargo” shifted audaciously to a black-and-white homage to “The Wizard of Oz,” complete with a tornado as deus ex machina. Having already moved the show out of the Coens’ Minnesota and North Dakota, its creator, Noah Hawley, gave himself the license to claim another patch of Heartland terrain, as if advancing across a Risk board. The Coens had ended “A Serious Man” with a tornado, too, so it wasn’t even that off brand.Now in the homestretch of the new season, Hawley returns to Oz again with an extended fantasy sequence that addresses Dot’s back story more deftly than a standard monologue or flashback ever could. It’s also a subtler homage than running a tornado through Kansas in black-and-white: Not until Wayne improvises a story for Scotty around “Dorothy” and rainbows does the connection become blazingly apparent. And even then, the episode is graced with a sense of the uncanny, as Dot’s past is illustrated with the punch of a particularly vivid dream. Such is the power of the “Fargo” pancake.A fuller reckoning with Dot’s history with Roy and Gator is forthcoming, but on the way out of town in her Kia with DLR plates, Dot pauses at a truck stop for coffee and pancakes and drifts off into a reverie. (She first stares at a recipe for chicken piccata that is posted to a billboard, which perhaps nods to the recipe-trading that Deputy Olmstead’s husband wanted her to do in order to be a “real wife.”) After stopping to unearth a cryptic postcard from “Camp Utopia” from a woman named Linda, Dot continues on her way until she passes a sign for the place and her car stalls out on the side of the road.The path to Camp Utopia is covered in untrodden snow leading into the forest, so it comes as a surprise for Dot to discover a large cabin filled with women, seated raptly before a puppet show. Yet it’s not the sort of whimsical performance associated with a sleep-away camp; it is a dramatization of domestic abuse, so triggering to Dot that she passes out. (This is the rare example of someone continuing to stay in a dream after passing out in it.) When she comes to, Dot announces that she is looking for a woman named Linda, only to learn that everyone is named Linda. This is women’s shelter, one Linda (Sorika Wolf) explains to her, and the generic name is a starting place from which to rebuild the identity of its residents. All these Lindas make Camp Utopia sound like a bizarro-world Barbieland.But there’s only one Linda who matters to Dot: Linda Hillman (Kari Matchett), Roy’s ex-wife, whom Dot needs to help clear some things up so she can resume her current marriage. Linda refuses to go until Dot’s story is adjudicated by the rest of the women through another puppet show, and she has to make a puppet first, which she is told will “expel the trauma” by attaching it to this representation. What it does, in practice, is lend a strange vibrancy to Dot’s back story that recalls the stop-motion existentialism of Charlie Kaufman’s “Anomalisa” in how it uses a familiar technique to unfamiliar ends.Despite the unreality of Camp Utopia, it seems safe to believe that the tragic story Dot tells about herself is real: Linda discovered her as a wayward 15-year-old named Nadine and brought her into the Tillman home with Roy and Gator, but Linda subtly nudged the abusive Roy in Nadine’s direction. As Roy directed sexual attention toward the teenager, Linda used the opportunity to flee, leaving Nadine trapped in her place. Dot has reason to blame Linda for condemning her to this terrible fate, but the episode is really about her recognizing that Roy deserves the fullness of her wrath.When “Fargo” clicks its heels together and snaps back to reality, it pulls a nasty twist on “there’s no place like home.” A freak (or not-so-freak) accident lands Dot in the hospital and back in the care of the wrong husband, Roy, who appears to have needed fate to do the job Munch and Gator couldn’t pull off. The episode ends on this cliffhanger, but knowing Dot’s back story throws Gator in a different light, casting him less as an inept baby-faced henchman than as an impressionable child who was the collateral damage in his father’s relationships. Gator is now stuck trying to impress daddy by wiping out Munch, which is almost poignant in its impossibility.There may be some scenario in which Gator understands his father’s culpability in his traumatic upbringing and aligns himself with the abused women who have passed through their house. But Roy has a talent for pitting his victims against one another. And with Munch now waiting in the weeds, Gator may not have a shot at redemption.3 Cent StampsWe finally get some clarity on the old woman who has been boarding Munch. It doesn’t seem as if any formal agreement was reached between them; Munch appears to have viewed himself as a guard dog, offering protection in lieu of rent. This means hacking her terrible son with an ax exactly the way his “Fargo” movie analog, Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), takes out his partner, Carl (Steve Buscemi).Wayne’s neurologically challenged state has made him more of a softy than usual, which pleases his daughter, Scotty, who needs the companionship, and leads to incredible trade-in deals on his Kia lot. Having Wayne agree to a one-to-one trade-in for new car is a clever reversal of the scene in the movie where Jerry pretends to ask his boss for a discount he knows he will not get for a disgruntled customer.In another Coen callback, the specific tracking device Gator uses on Munch’s car is the same one Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) uses to locate Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) at a motel in “No Country for Old Men.” The show can’t come close to matching the film’s suspense, but it raises the temperature a bit. More

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    Review: This ‘Night of the Iguana’ Is Williams Without the Excess

    A new revival directed by Emily Mann and starring Tim Daly leans into its flailing characters’ confusions.While not his most elegant work, Tennessee Williams’s “The Night of the Iguana,” about a group of lost souls at a coastal hotel in 1940s Mexico, is not without its misty pleasures. Even as his characters stumble tragically in search of meaning, their convictions carry the sharp-tongued certainty of soap opera idols. But a new revival from La Femme Theater at the Signature Center mires itself too deeply in its characters’ confusions to let the edges of his language shine.It’s an issue of confidence, with Emily Mann directing her cast away from Williams’s assured dialogue and toward their characters’ flailing. And this play, with a defrocked minister who now leads Baptist church ladies on unreliable bus tours at its center, already has plenty of flailing.Plagued by nervous breakdowns, the Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon (Tim Daly) is grasping at straws when he brings his ersatz flock to the cheap hotel run by his friend, the sultry Maxine (Daphne Rubin-Vega). Calling God a “senile delinquent” during a mid-sermon lapse in belief got him fired; his statutory rape of a 16-year-old on the trip could mean worse, and the girl’s chaperone (Lea DeLaria) is already rushing to phone the authorities.Like many of the playwright’s antiheroes, Shannon is disheartened by the world’s hypocrisy while also contributing to it. These contradictions are typically enlivened by the kind of fiery speechifying an actor can chew heartily, but “Iguana” is Williams in bold, underlined red ink: Shannon goes on about feeling hopeless and at the end of his rope, then later says as much about the panicking iguana caught and tied to a post by two hotel workers. No need for SparkNotes.His pleas need spirit, if only of desperation, and Daly, in a verbally stumbling performance, does not convey someone with the power to seduce with ease. This hesitation extends to most of the ensemble, who struggle with the cadence of Williams’s writing, except for the unflinching DeLaria and, as a hippie-ish painter named Hannah, Jean Lichty.Like Shannon, Hannah is a hustler with lofty spiritual ambitions, traversing the world trading watercolors and recitations for hotel rooms with her aging poet father (Austin Pendleton, whose adequacy with the play’s rhythms is undermined by the brevity of his time onstage). Shannon and Hannah’s near act-length conversation in the show’s second half, as she attempts to calm him down from the ledge, comes closest to achieving its intended discourse on freedom and redemption thanks to the surety with which Lichty imbues her character.It might be that, in trying to demystify Williams’s extravagance to get at its emotional core, Mann has thrown the priest out with the holy water. It’s possible to strip away the surfaces of the playwright’s worlds — a revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” last year did away with its Old South glamour and still got its point across — but not the excesses they need to reach their delicious boiling points.Traces of those remain, like Jeff Croiter’s tropical lighting, Beowulf Boritt’s stilted, shabby-chic set, and Rubin-Vega’s unshakable earthiness. But they don’t compensate for the play’s weaker elements, like two giddy German tourists (Alena Acker and Michael Leigh Cook) whose sporadic, Nazi-praising appearances are a thudding example of the duplicity Shannon rails against, in this case aimed at Maxine for renting them rooms.Williams wants it both ways in those moments, validating his protagonist’s gripes even as he condemns him. The gambit is not impossible, but is one that needs a production more convincing, more drunk on its own pretensions, to really win over a congregation.The Night of the IguanaThrough Feb. 25 at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Manhattan; iguanaplaynyc.com. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes. More

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    Best Arts Photos of 2023

    Peter Fisher for The New York Times2023 in Retrospect: 59 Photographs That Defined the Year in ArtsDeadheads, ballerinas and Mick Jagger: As 2023 winds down, revisit a memorable handful of the thousands of images commissioned by our photo editors that capture the year in culture.Marysa Greenawalt More

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    in Theater

    Sondheim Was a Critical Darling. Since His Death, He’s a Hitmaker, Too.

    The musicals of Stephen Sondheim often struggled at the box office during his lifetime, but since his death several have become huge hits on Broadway.Stephen Sondheim, the great musical theater composer and lyricist, was widely acclaimed as a genius, but during his lifetime he had a bumpy track record at the box office, with many of his shows losing money.In death, however, his shows have flourished.A revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” — which was so unpopular when it debuted in 1981 that it closed 12 days after opening — is now the hottest ticket on Broadway. A lavish revival of “Sweeney Todd” that opened in March is already profitable, and at a time when almost everything new on Broadway is failing.Meanwhile, Sondheim’s unfinished and existentialist final work, “Here We Are,” is now the longest-running show in the brief history of the Shed, a performing arts center in Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s West Side, where luminaries like Steven Spielberg and Lin-Manuel Miranda signed up as producers to make sure no expense was spared on the Sondheim send-off.“There just seems to be an unbounded appetite for him,” said Alex Poots, the artistic director of the Shed.The posthumous Sondheim bump appears to have resulted from a confluence of factors.The big Broadway revivals feature fan-favorite talent — the “Merrily” cast includes Daniel Radcliffe of “Harry Potter” fame, while “Sweeney” is led by the celebrated baritone Josh Groban — reflecting a desire by top-tier entertainers to champion, and tackle, Sondheim’s tricky but rewarding work.The revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” with, from left, Lindsay Mendez, Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff, is one of the hottest tickets on Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlso: The outpouring of praise for Sondheim upon his death, when he was hailed as a transformational creative force, seems to have spurred new interest in his work. And his shows, some of which felt challenging when they first appeared, are now more familiar, thanks to decades of stage productions and film adaptations. Plus, according to most critics, the current revivals are good.“Sondheim went from being too avant-garde to being a sure bet, like you’re doing ‘A Christmas Carol’,” said Danny Feldman, the producing artistic director of Pasadena Playhouse, a Southern California nonprofit that won this year’s Regional Theater Tony Award. The playhouse devoted the first half of 2023 to Sondheim: A production of “Sunday in the Park With George,” a show once seen as esoteric, became one its best-selling musicals ever, and a production of “A Little Night Music” was not far behind. “The interest was shocking,” Feldman said.One side effect of his popularity: Ticket prices are high. “Merrily” is facing strong demand from Sondheim lovers and Radcliffe fans, but its capacity is limited; it is playing in a theater with just 966 seats. That has made it the most expensive ticket on Broadway, with an average ticket price of $250 and a top ticket price of $649 during the week that ended Dec. 17. “Sweeney” is also pricey, with tickets that same week averaging $175 and topping out at $399. (Both shows offer lower-priced tickets, particularly after the holidays.)“We shouldn’t be criticized for being a hit and paying back investors who have taken a big punt in New York,” said the “Merrily” lead producer, Sonia Friedman. “Most shows right now are not working, and therefore when something comes along that does, let’s get the investors some money back.”In life, Sondheim was often seen as more of an artistic success than a commercial one — a critical darling with a passionate but finite fan base, leading to short runs for many of the shows whose scores he composed, especially during their first productions. A few shows, particularly “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” were hits from the start, but some musicals that are now viewed as masterpieces, including “Sweeney Todd” and “Sunday in the Park With George,” did not recoup their costs during their original productions.“It’s not like he fell out of favor and has been rediscovered. He’s always been revered and valued and prized by everybody who loves theater, but we also have to recognize that several of his shows, when they first premiered, were not understood and were not embraced,” said Jordan Roth, the producer who brought “Into the Woods” back to Broadway in the summer of 2022, seven months after Sondheim’s death. Now, Roth said, “The grip on our hearts seems to have tightened.”“Into the Woods,” a modestly scaled production, featured the pop singer Sara Bareilles and a troupe of Broadway stars. It recouped its costs and then had a five-month national tour.The original production of “Sweeney Todd” did not recoup its investment, but the current revival starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford is making a profit.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn February, seven weeks after “Into the Woods” concluded on Broadway, “Sweeney Todd” began previews. It’s a much bigger production — big cast, big orchestra — that was capitalized for up to $14.5 million. It has sold strongly from the get-go (during the week that ended Dec. 10, it grossed $1.8 million) and has already recouped its capitalization costs.“I’m sorry that I can’t call him and say look at these grosses. He definitely would have had a sarcastic statement in response, but he would have liked it secretly,” said the show’s lead producer, Jeffrey Seller. “Who doesn’t want to be affirmed by the audience?”Groban and his co-star Annaleigh Ashford are ending their runs in the show on Jan. 14; the show’s success has prompted the producers to extend the run, with Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster taking over the lead roles on Feb. 9.“It has morphed into being under the umbrella of an enormous and deserved celebration of Sondheim’s work and legacy and life,” Groban said. “All of a sudden there’s grief involved, and wanting to do him proud, and what-would-Steve-do feelings.”“Merrily,” which began previews in September, is the biggest turnabout, given that its original production is one of Broadway’s most storied flops. The current revival, capitalized for up to $13 million, has been selling out.“Of all the things he wanted, he wanted as many people as possible to be in the theater watching the shows, and he just missed it,” said Maria Friedman, the director of the “Merrily” revival and a longtime Sondheim collaborator.In November, 10 members of the company of the original ill-fated “Merrily” attended the revival and marveled at the reversal of fortunes.“It’s thrilling to see the show finally get its due,” said Gary Stevens, who was an 18-year-old in the original “Merrily” ensemble, and who is now 60 and works an executive at a chauffeuring company in Florida. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t say there was a sense of bittersweetness. We look at this revival’s success as, in some ways, our success, because the day after closing, even with how exhausted we were and how sad we were, we recorded a kick-ass album that kept that show alive, so that it became a legendary flop and cult classic that kept going and going, and now this.”Another member of the original “Merrily” cast, the actress and singer Liz Callaway, was nominated this year for a Grammy Award for a live album of Sondheim songs, one of two collections of Sondheim songs nominated in the 2024 Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album category. “I think a new generation is falling in love with Sondheim now,” she said.“Here We Are” is a little different. It is not expected to recoup its costs, or to transfer to Broadway, but both the leadership of the Shed and the commercial producer who raised money to finance the production proclaimed it a success.“It was always about honoring Steve’s legacy,” said the producer, Tom Kirdahy. “And we hope that it has another life, in London or on the road.”In London, there are also two Sondheim shows running. “Old Friends,” a revue of Sondheim songs with a cast led by Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, is in the West End. And at the Menier Chocolate Factory, a revival of Sondheim’s rarely staged “Pacific Overtures” opened earlier this month to critical praise.“For those of us who wanted to do right by him, this is a year I’ll never forget,” Groban said. “I just hope he’s smiling down.” More

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    in Television

    ‘The Crown’ and What the U.K. Royal Family Would Like Us to Forget

    Netflix’s sprawling drama has never been about revealing anything new, but instead speaks to several furtive truths about the British monarchy.Over the last seven years, “The Crown” has been criticized by numerous prominent Britons on behalf of their royal family.After former Prime Minister John Major described the show as a “barrel-load of nonsense,” and the actress Judi Dench — who is friends with Queen Camilla — accused it of “crude sensationalism” in 2022, Netflix labeled the show a “fictional dramatization.” But these complaints misunderstood the sprawling drama’s appeal for many British fans and, for the real royal family, its usefulness.The show has never been about revealing anything new. Instead, it has resurfaced what the royal family would most like us to forget. “The Crown” has, over six seasons, spoken to several furtive British truths: the public perception of the monarchy, the self-preservation strategies of a family preoccupied with becoming irrelevant and the family’s rigorous quashing of internal dissent.In Seasons 1 and 2, Matt Smith played Prince Philip and Claire Foy was Queen Elizabeth II. Des Willie/NetflixThe glossy dramatization of these truths is partly why the popularity of “The Crown” has endured, finding an audience in Britain even among people who want to end the monarchy or are indifferent to it. I am one of the former.On the show’s premiere in 2016, I was captivated by Claire Foy’s depiction of a young Elizabeth thrust onto the throne prematurely following tragedy, entertained by Olivia Colman’s more confident queen who had more challenging relationships with her prime ministers, and have stayed loyal to her story as Imelda Staunton closes off “The Crown” as a pious matriarch and meddling parent.Much of the show has been devoted to the royals’ romantic woes, but over the years I have been more interested in its depiction of the extent the crown will go to protect its power and traditions.In Season 4, Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin) begins her unhappy marriage to Prince Charles. Des Willie/NetflixThis was clear in episodes in which Elizabeth, as a princess, traveled to Kenya to try to counter the country’s independence movement (Season 1); the family hid the queen’s disabled cousins, Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, in an institution (Season 4); and a 20-year-old Diana becomes trapped in a loveless marriage so that the future king can have a chaste-seeming bride (Season 4).Still, the show has often neglected to explore the monarchy’s true wealth and political influence. The crown’s real estate portfolio is valued at 16.5 billion pounds ($21 billion), and the monarch enjoys a broad exemption from most taxes, as well as many other laws. Under official rules, members of the royal family must not be criticized in Parliament, even as, according to a report from The Guardian, Charles has written directly to the country’s top politicians to ask for changes to national policy.In June 1981, members of Britain’s royal family gathered on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London after attending an annual parade to celebrate the monarch’s birthday. Bob Dear/Associated PressIn Britain, what the public sees of the royal family is carefully stage-managed: We are presented with recorded Christmas broadcasts and gentle waves from chariots and balconies to fawn over as we wave our little Union Jacks. The “Palace,” as the royal institution is known, would like us to know the family through their carefully curated charity work, patronage, garden parties, weddings and jubilees.So there is something thrilling about the depiction of such a powerful family onscreen without their control. It’s the same pleasure that many of us will have gotten from watching Oprah’s interview by Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, or reading Harry’s memoir, “Spare.”Britons eager for an unvarnished view of the royal family have, in previous decades, pored over the intrusive paparazzi shots of Princess Diana on a yacht or Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, having her toes sucked on vacation. But because “The Crown” is a “fictional dramatization,” it can be enjoyed guilt-free, without having to engage with the sleaze of Britain’s tabloid newspapers.Prince Charles (Dominic West) and Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams) in Season 5.Keith Bernstein/NetflixPerhaps it is no surprise that anonymous sources have relayed accounts of the royal family being upset by a show that dramatizes moments they would rather forget. But this doesn’t take into account the degree to which “The Crown” has humanized the people sitting at the top of Britain’s rigid class system.Louis Staples, a Harper’s Bazaar columnist and frequent commenter on “The Crown,” points out that, these days, “intimacy is one of the most valuable currencies in our culture. When people share with us deeply enough — their flaws, their failures, their ups and downs — we form a connection with them.”Queen Elizabeth was famous for not sharing the messy, human and emotional parts of herself with her public, and for encouraging the rest of her family to do the same. The public relations strategy “never complain, never explain,” considered a core principle of her reign, holds that silence is dignified and public expression damaging.In the final season, the queen asks Prince William (Ed McVey), left, and Prince Harry (Luther Ford) for their thoughts on whether Prince Charles should be able to marry again. NetflixBut story lines on “The Crown” — like the suggestion of infidelity between Prince Philip and Penelope Knatchbull or young William and Harry’s heartache after losing their mother — may have served to humanize people generally kept at a distance from the public.Given that the real existential threat to the royal family is not public hatred, but total irrelevance — especially since the queen’s death — “The Crown” has given the Windsors an invaluable kind of outreach, even if they have had to swallow it like bitter medicine.Once the show has ended and viewers are no longer gripped by discovering the (yes, fictionalized) stories of the real people behind the onscreen characters, the royal family might find themselves wishing for one more season. More