Eliana Willis

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    The Stuff They Strut on the Jellicle Catwalk

    From the first solo to the euphoric final bows, dance is essential to the world-building of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” Watch four standout dancers from the reinvented classic.Before anyone steps onto the catwalk in “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” the wildly popular reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, a dancer’s silhouette appears at the back of the stage, darting across a row of windows. At first, his movement recalls the limber ballet-jazz of the original 1982 Broadway production, accented with tricks like a split leap and a back walkover. He has two little ears, a tail. He could be prowling on a rooftop at night.But then something shifts. The silhouetted dancer strips away his tail, and vintage musical theater gives way to elements of vogue: the circling wrists of hand performance; the crouched legs and flashing arms of a duckwalk; the whirl and dramatic fall of a spin and dip.“It’s arguably one of the most important moments in the show,” said the dancer Primo, to whom the silhouette belongs. “All of that represents exactly what you’re about to see: the marriage of the old with the now.”This wordless overture, choreographed by Ousmane Omari Wiles, introduces the seemingly incongruous and yet surprisingly seamless collision of worlds at the heart of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” Extended three times since its premiere in June, and now running through Sept. 8, the show reinvents the classic musical in the context of queer ballroom culture, replacing cats with people who have come together to walk a ball, battling for trophies on a nightclub runway.Ousmane Omari Wiles, left, and Arturo Lyons, the choreographers of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” Wiles said he wanted “to celebrate queer club culture itself and all the dance styles we embody within that.” From that shadowy first solo to the euphoria of the final bows, dance is essential to the storytelling and world-building of “The Jellicle Ball,” which is directed by Bill Rauch and Zhailon Levingston and choreographed by Wiles and Arturo Lyons. Not limited to the catwalk stage, the movement often spills into the audience, with performers buzzing among the front rows and cocktail tables that flank the runway. The ornate, extravagant costumes by Qween Jean create physical possibilities, too, becoming playful extensions of the choreography.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Mitzi McCall, Comedian Who Confronted Beatlemania and Lost, Dies at 93

    She and her husband had the bad luck to make their “Ed Sullivan Show” debut the same night as the Beatles. They bombed. But their careers would recover.In the decades after they made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” on Feb. 9, 1964, the comedy team of Mitzi McCall and her husband, Charlie Brill, had a successful career. They performed in nightclubs and on television; both individually and together, they acted on television, in films and onstage.But that single appearance remained an indelible memory for the couple: It was also the night the Beatles made their American TV debut, and that was all that the screaming young fans in the audience cared about. Their nearly three-and-a-half minutes in the national spotlight came moments before the Beatles returned for their second set. They bombed — in front of 73 million viewers.“We just about wanted to kill ourselves,” Ms. McCall told The Washington Post in 2004.“I think it’s hysterical,” Mr. Brill said in a phone interview. “We laid the biggest egg of all time.”Ms. McCall died on Aug. 8 in a hospital in Burbank, Calif. She was 93. Her death was confirmed by Mr. Brill.When their manager, Mace Neufeld, told Ms. McCall and Mr. Brill that they were going to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show” — a Sunday night staple that at the time was often a steppingstone to stardom — it seemed like the type of break a young act needed. And when Mr. Neufeld told them that they would be on the bill with the Beatles, Ms. McCall later recalled, “We weren’t really sure who they were.”Ms. McCall and Mr. Brill in a 1967 publicity photo. They performed together until the mid-1980s.via Brill familyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Inside the N.F.L.’ and ‘The Bachelorette: Men Tell All’

    The CW airs their annual show. Jenn Tran confronts her past suitors on ABC.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, Aug. 26-Sept. 1. Details and times are subject to change.MondayU.S. OPEN TENNIS 7 p.m. on ESPN. It’s that time of year when there is a crisp in the air, and some of the greatest names in tennis — Coco Gauff, Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz — are back on the courts in Queens, though Rafael Nadal will be noticeably missing. On Monday, the first rounds will begin, and games will continue every day through Sept. 8 for the finals. We can only hope they will be as thrilling as the scenes from Phil’s Tire Town game in “Challengers.”TuesdayJenn Tran and Devin Strader on “The Bachelorette.”Disney/John FleenorTHE BACHELORETTE: MEN TELL ALL 8 p.m. on ABC. If you are an avid watcher of this franchise, you know this is one of the best nights of the season. Directly following the fantasy suite dates, which will air the day before on Monday, the Bachelorette Jenn Tran is going to gather all of her former suitors into one room so they can bicker and throw jabs. There has been lots of fighting this season, so I wouldn’t expect this night to be any different. To get the full experience, I recommend watching it with a crowd of friends.FIRING LINE WITH MARGARET HOOVER: COUNTING THE VOTE 9:30 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). With the presidential election now weeks away, Margaret Hoover will break down the basics of voting and emphasize the reliability of the country’s voting systems, addressing former President Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in 2020.WednesdayHud on “Claim to Fame.”DISNEY/Christopher WillardWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How to Survive (and Maybe Conquer) the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

    Nadia Quinn had been warned about bringing her show of wacky comic songs to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. Facebook groups, Reddit posts and friends suggested that taking on the 77-year-old festival as an unestablished performer was too daunting.One episode of “Baby Reindeer,” the hit Netflix series that took off at the 2019 Fringe, mines the humiliation that Richard Gadd, the show’s creator, faced performing there in a pub. With nearly 3,500 shows and with comics and clowns vying for attention throughout the month of August, how would Quinn find a venue, housing and people to fill her seats for even a week? She had never even been to the festival, which has the potential to turn unknowns into stars.“Everyone is telling me you can’t understand the Fringe until you go to the Fringe,” Quinn said earlier this month before flying to Scotland from New York. “I’m hoping to make the right decisions and I’m very excited, but I also feel like throwing up every day, which I guess is part of the process.”You may have seen Quinn, a vibrant, vocally gifted actress in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” or on Broadway in the 2010 production of “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.” Maybe you’ve seen her on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” or in TV commercials, or at 54 Below, the Midtown cabaret venue. She has worked in New York for 22 years, performing original songs with Aaron Quinn, her husband. (A recent one, about making bongs out of just about anything, was a huge hit on TikTok before censors took it down.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Hannah Gadsby: Woof’ Review: A Comic’s Pet Themes

    In a soul-baring new show at the Edinburgh Fringe, the Australian stand-up leans once again into fears, anxieties and mental health worries.The title of Hannah Gadsby’s new stand-up show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is “Woof,” but the Australian comic has a very specific type of dog bark in mind. It sounds like something between a burp and a cough. It’s impossible to spell, but if you had to, it might go something like “peuh.” Gadsby says it typically signals that the animal is about to go into a frenzy. As a metaphor for Gadsby’s state of mind, it’s inauspicious. Should we be concerned?Well, yes and no. For the most part, Gadsby’s new routine, at the Underbelly through Aug. 25, is a chill affair. Gadsby is on genial form, taking acerbic pot shots at Taylor Swift (“a can of Coke masquerading as a sorority cult”) and social media (“where neurotypical people go to experience the worst of autism”). There’s some pleasingly risqué material about the sex lives of lesbian soccer players that is too graphic to discuss here.But when the focus turns inward, the vibe shifts. Gadsby describes a sense of discombobulation and a kind of existential vertigo that comes with having achieved fame and fortune relatively late in life.“My bed is so comfortable,” Gadsby says, “and that keeps me up at night.”This is, of course, nothing new — there is always a lot of Hannah Gadsby in a Hannah Gadsby show. “Nanette,” the 2018 Netflix special that catapulted Gadsby from relative obscurity to stardom, drew heavily on harrowing personal experiences of gendered violence. “Douglas” (2020) explored Gadsby’s autism diagnosis. An online run-in with Netflix bosses, over a routine by Dave Chapelle that critics described as transphobic, cemented Gadsby’s status as a culture war lodestar, and inspired the 2024 comedy showcase, “Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda.”The story of that career trajectory is inextricable from the oeuvre itself, making Gadsby something like the Rachel Cusk of comedy. This inevitably brings a certain anxiety about shelf-life, and the specter of demise haunts this set. Gadsby, who uses they/them pronouns, notes that this is their first Fringe appearance in seven years, and playfully suggests that returning to the festival — known for showcasing up-and-comers — is a fall from grace. Later, Gadsby imagines angry Swifties ending their career. “There’s nothing more feminist,” they quip, “than getting canceled by other feminists.”Gadsby also fears they might be too low-key, or too idiosyncratic, to command sustained attention. “I’m not the right person for this success,” they say — but most famous people have felt this way at some point. Besides, that whimsical nature is precisely what people like, and in our increasingly fragmented mass culture it doesn’t really matter if your material doesn’t work for everyone. There are many publics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    At Edinburgh Festival, Sometimes Simpler is Better

    The event’s best theater production avoided the gimmicks of other shows in favor of well-drawn characters and well-written dialogue.If you say “Edinburgh Festival” to most people, they’ll probably think of the Fringe. But the Fringe — primarily a showcase of up-and-coming acts from English-speaking countries — is actually an offshoot of the more global, highbrow and judiciously curated Edinburgh International Festival, and the two events run side-by-side.The theater offerings in this year’s International Festival showcase the brightest Scottish talent alongside shows from around the world and fall into two categories: While the international plays are overtly political, encompassing disability rights, antiracism and ecology, the homegrown works explored the more personal terrain of addiction, recovery and self-care.One of the most eye-catching items on the bill was a metafictional spin on “Hamlet” by the Peruvian company Teatro La Plaza, which ran at the Royal Lyceum Theater Edinburgh earlier this month. This production, performed by eight young actors with Down syndrome, charts the journey of a similar, but fictional, group as it prepares to put on a production of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. The actors perform snatches of “Hamlet” — there’s a murdered father, a ghost, a play within a play — and try to connect its story line to disability: Polonius’s protectiveness toward Ophelia, we are told, echoes society’s tendency to infantilize people with Down syndrome.But there isn’t much thematic overlap, and this “Hamlet” is mainly a cipher for the power of storytelling. In a key scene, Álvaro (Álvaro Toledo) sees Jaime (Jaime Cruz) trying to replicate Laurence Olivier’s famous performance in the 1948 film adaptation, which plays on the screen behind him. Álvaro upbraids Jamie for trying to play the part “like a statue.” The message, that people with Down’s must carve out their own paths rather than assimilating to normative expectations, is later reiterated in a defiant punk rock routine.Jaime Cruz in Teatro La Plaza’s “Hamlet.”Jess ShurteThe cast appears in casual rehearsal attire, but a dazzling selection of spotlights (by Jesús Reyes) injects a sense of magic. The actors are capable and immensely charismatic, and there are a number of funny moments including a fake Skype chat with Ian McKellen. But Chela De Ferrari’s script fades toward the end as the concept drowns out the story and the play lapses into a cloying mushiness that sits uneasily with its anti-condescension message.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Kamala Harris’s Main-Character Energy

    Accepting the nomination, the vice president completed a whirlwind ascent — and sought to finally supplant Donald Trump at the center of America’s political drama.There were a lot of big names at the Democratic National Convention. Night 1 had the unprecedented send-off of a sitting president. Night 2 had not one but two Obamas (plus a raucous roll call of states feat. Lil Jon). Night 3: You get Oprah! And you get Oprah!There were whispers and reports all day on Thursday that the biggest, most special secret guest of all would appear at the climax. Was it Beyoncé? Taylor Swift? Mitt Romney?At the end of the night, after a typical program of endorsements and character witnesses, Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, wrapped up and yielded the stage to …Kamala Harris?The rumors, it turned out, were just that. Ms. Harris was the surprise star of her own show.But in a way, that had been the theme of the entire convention. As a TV production, the event was designed to build on the Kamalanomenon and magnify it. It expressed not a platform but a vibe.Ms. Harris’s ascent was of course politically extraordinary, a whirlwind of less than a month from replacing President Biden to the convention. But it was also unprecedented as a media phenomenon — at least in politics, where images are usually built over years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    In ‘Shogun,’ Anna Sawai Drew On the Power of Silence. And Mozart.

    “It gives me confidence,” she said about her first Emmy nomination, for best actress in a drama. “I have such bad impostor syndrome.”This interview contains major spoilers for Season 1 of “Shogun.”When Anna Sawai was preparing to die, she listened to Mozart.In a key scene of the FX series “Shogun” — in which Toda Mariko, the disgraced but defiant noblewoman and samurai she plays, meets her fiery demise — Sawai delivers a rebellious speech to the sinister Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira). Lady Mariko knows it doubles as a death sentence. To prepare for this pivotal moment, Sawai said, “I was listening to ‘Requiem K. 626’ — ‘Lacrimosa.’”The music, she said, gave her power. “It really helps you build,” she said in an interview last week. Referring to the director of the episode, Frederick E.O. Toye, she continued: “I remember Fred coming to me multiple times and asking, ‘Do you still have a couple more takes in you?’ I was like: ‘Yeah, this is totally fine. I feel good. Let’s do it.’”Set in feudal Japan and based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell, the first season of “Shogun” focuses largely on the relationship between Sawai’s Lady Mariko and John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), the temperamental English navigator whose arrival in Japan triggers the conflict that drives the series. That conflict tests Mariko’s Catholic beliefs and her fealty to traditional Japanese customs against her desire for Blackthorne — and for justice against her oppressors. It also leads directly to her death.“People are always like, ‘It must have been tough to prepare for that episode,’” Sawai said. “But I’ve been holding it in for 10 months, and I finally get to let go.”It was the end for Mariko but not for Sawai’s relationship to the character: Her performance, almost entirely in subtitled Japanese, landed her an Emmy nomination for best actress in a drama. A fearless exploration of the emotional chasm between Mariko’s duties and her desires, it is all the more haunting for how much it leaves hidden.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More