Eliana Willis

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    There’s Always Room in the Clown Car

    For centuries, clowns have mostly been men. A new group of talent is changing that.AS A YOUNG woman in Mexico City, Gaby Muñoz, a 43-year-old performer known onstage as Chula the Clown, recalls, putting on makeup with her friends was always a fraught experience. “There was this whole idea of how to be a woman. They had this beautiful hair and these divine bodies, and I would look in the mirror and think, ‘Well, I guess not in this life.’ That made me laugh,” she says. As Chula — her round face washed white, her lips a tiny red heart, her eyebrows painted into inquisitive asymmetry — Muñoz, who this spring will begin touring through Europe and Central and South America, has played a jilted bride and a doddering old lady. She’s used her open, expressive face and antic physicality to joke wordlessly about loss, aging in a woman’s body and other concepts that have long been overlooked in the male-dominated world of clowns. For Muñoz, laughter isn’t an end in itself but rather, she says, “a way to connect.”Clowns, jesters, harlequins and fools have, of course, played a similar role throughout history. In ancient Greece, they served as ribald choristers in epic dramas, while emperors in Han dynasty China delighted in the buffoonish exertions of the court paiyou. Shakespeare’s world-weary wags spoke truth to King Lear and other royals, while the heyoka, the holy fool of many Sioux tribes, inverted day-to-day logic to provoke healing laughter. The emblematic sad clown that we know today evolved from the melancholic, talc-dusted Pedrolino of 16th-century Italian commedia dell’arte, while the contemporary circus clown, with his exaggerated face paint and physical wit, debuted on a London stage around 1800. (The one dressed in an ill-fitting suit and oversize shoes emerged as his clumsy foil seven decades later.) Though ritually and physically distinct, clowns have always been, as the heyoka John Fire Lame Deer writes with Richard Erdoes in their 1972 book, “Lame Deer Seeker of Visions,” “sacred, funny, powerful, ridiculous, holy, shameful, visionary.” They were also almost always men.During her childhood in Estonia, the 29-year-old London-based clown Julia Masli dreamed of acting in tragedies for exactly that reason: comedy, she assumed, was a man’s game. When, in 2017, she watched the legendary English clown Lucy Hopkins perform in Brighton for the first time, “seeing a woman do something so absurd and free felt like a revolution,” she says. In Masli’s show “Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha,” which debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023 and has since toured internationally, she appears onstage as a doe-eyed Victorian vagabond who asks audience members to share their problems. As she offers solutions both genuine and absurd — enlisting a bored office worker to record the show’s minutes; duct-taping a lonely young woman to a group of strangers onstage — she transforms the emotional labor so often foisted on women into a source of laughter and catharsis.OTHER RISING FEMALE clowns, like the 26-year-old English actress Frankie Thompson and the 32-year-old Swiss Mexican theater artist Paulina Lenoir, use womanhood itself as a source of humor. In the former’s “Body Show,” performed with her collaborator the 29-year-old trans masculine anarchist clown Liv Ello, Thompson forgoes exaggerated makeup and costume, combining lip-syncing and confrontational bouffon (an approach to clowning that emphasizes absurdity and shock) to discuss her history with anorexia. Small and blond — “people treat me like this tiny-angel special little bird to be protected,” she says — Thompson makes herself grotesque by, say, licking the stage or choking down Marmite, eliciting laughter that implicates the audience in the humiliations of body dysmorphia. Meanwhile, Lenoir’s persona Puella Eterna feminizes the physical exaggeration of the classic male clown by wearing a corset, a flamenco skirt and a giant Minnie Mouse bow in lieu of a bulging nose. As master of ceremonies at her Fool’s Moon cabaret, Puella displays the kind of unearned self-assurance that usually wins praise for men and scorn for women.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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    ‘Mid Century Modern,’ Plus 8 Things to Watch on TV this Week

    A new comedy starring Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer comes to Hulu, and this season of “The Bachelor” wraps up.Dive into dating.“The Bachelor” franchise has had a couple of explosive seasons in recent years, but for better or worse, Grant Ellis’s journey to find love has been pretty uneventful. With two women left vying for his attention, the three-hour finale will reveal who receives the final rose, if he gives one at all. Afterward, ABC often debuts its next female lead of “The Bachelorette,” but earlier this year the network announced that it would be skipping this season. Instead, we’ll have the more fun, raunchy and relatable “Bachelor in Paradise” coming back sometime this spring or summer. Monday at 8 p.m. on ABC.After writing a book of essays entitled “Survival of the Thickest,” Michelle Buteau created a Netflix series in which she stars as Mavis Beaumont, and it is returning for a second season. The first installment saw Mavis catch her partner in bed with another woman and deal with that fallout while receiving support from her crew of besties. Season 2 will continue to follow Mavis’s dating journey as a plus-size woman of color. In an interview, Buteau also noted that the show is her love letter to New York City, where it’s set. Streaming on Thursday on Netflix.Some international favorites.The third season of the British comedy “Big Boys” is coming stateside this week. The series, loosely inspired by the creator Jack Rooke’s university days, follows Jack (Dylan Llewellyn), a gay student who’s closeted and mourning the death of his father. He forms an unexpected bond with his roommate Danny (Jon Pointing), who is most often found chatting up girls but is also hiding his mental health struggles. The third season got rave reviews when it premiered in Britain in February — The Independent called it “one of the finest British comedies of the past decade.” Streaming on Tuesday on Hulu.The French show “Bref” started out as a YouTube series in 2011, with its one- to two-minute episodes amassing 131 million views. Now they have lengthened to 30 minutes, which allows the protagonist, played by Kyan Khojandi, to explore different facets of all his relationships. Streaming on Wednesday on Hulu.In “Caught,” a new Argentine series based on a book of the same name by Harlan Coben, Soledad Villamil plays an investigative journalist with a knack for exposing criminals who are often able to avoid justice. She’s faced with a dilemma when the prime suspect involved in the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl is someone she knows. Streaming on Netflix on Wednesday.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 ‘Othello,’ Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal Are Prey and Predator

    Shakespeare’s leanest tragedy gets a starry, headlong production that embraces the action but misses the mystery.Just moments earlier, he was an infatuated new husband, and she his “gentle love.” Now, in Act III, Scene 3 of “Othello,” he vows to kill her.What has happened? Why does Othello, the great Black general, the savior of Venice in a war with the Ottomans, resolve to murder Desdemona, the pearl of the white aristocracy he has won at great risk?The scene in which this strange alteration occurs is one of the most gripping, baffling episodes in Shakespeare, and it remains so in the starry Broadway revival of “Othello” that opened on Sunday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater.We can be grateful for that — and yet, in Denzel Washington’s commanding performance, what’s especially gripping is perhaps too baffling. As in his many movies, he leads with action, giving us a general whose psychology is as obscure to us as it is to him. Speaking very fast, with a slight mid-Atlantic accent, and stiffened by his ramrod military bearing, he betrays little evidence of the sorrows and injuries that moved Desdemona when he wooed her. Speed and decisiveness (“to be once in doubt is once to be resolved”) seem to matter more than emotion.Usually the obscure one is Othello’s ensign, Iago. Though Shakespeare provides many possible reasons he might have wanted to poison his commander with lies about Desdemona, awakening the famous green-eyed monster of jealousy, we are typically still in the dark at the end, when the cur is sent to his punishment. “I am not what I am” is his paradoxical, irreducible credo. Then what is he?Yet in a fascinating reversal, this “Othello” offers an Iago far more legible than his master. Jake Gyllenhaal’s eely take, with a physical wiggle to match his moral one, is a little bit mad scientist, a little bit Travis Bickle. His blue eyes pierce the atmospheric murk as he tracks all possible routes to his goal, like a rat in a maze, in the process allowing us to see how a twisted man thinks. He is a calculator of grievance; havoc is the carefully tabulated result. He adds up.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 6 Recap: The Morning After

    Drinks were drunk, decisions were made. This week’s episode was all about the consequences.Season 3, Episode 6: ‘Denials’This “White Lotus” season moved at a lulling pace early on, putting the viewers in the same head space as the vacationers, feeling equal parts enchanted and dazed by an exotic, sun-splashed locale. The show’s creator, Mike White, then cranked up the energy considerably over Episodes 4 and 5, in which several characters made sudden, fateful choices — perhaps without fully understanding what they were doing.This week? It’s hangover time.In terms of narrative progress, this episode inches along. It ends just before three significant events begin. Saxon and his parents (and maybe Belinda?) are about to attend a dinner party hosted by the dangerous Gary. Rick and Frank are walking into their meeting with Sritala’s husband in Bangkok, which could very well turn violent if Rick follows through on his need for revenge. And Piper and Lochlan are spending a night at the Buddhist temple, at Victoria’s request.But while there is more anticipation-building than action this week, White does develop the season’s major themes in ways that help them strike a little deeper. Over and over, as they face crises mostly of their own making, many of these characters find themselves asking: Is there a better way to live?The Ratliffs are the most in need of a new path. When last we saw Tim, he had Gaitok’s pistol by his side and had just finished writing a suicide note. By the end of this day, he still has not pulled the trigger. But he does imagine shooting himself, and he perhaps stops himself from doing it for real only because he also imagines Victoria and Piper finding his body. Later, he imagines shooting Victoria and then killing himself, thus sparing his wife from having to live on in shame and poverty.At the moment though, Tim is leaving his options open. He stashes the gun in a chest of drawers and spends the day on an assignment handed to him by Victoria. She wants him to check out Luang Por Teera (Suthichai Yoon), the senior monk whom Piper is planning to spend a year following. (“He better be the best Buddhist in China,” Victoria harrumphs.)Victoria expects that Tim — her confident, successful, morally upright husband — will give this phony guru a good dressing-down. But instead, Tim is captivated by Teera’s thoughts on the inescapable pain of everyday existence, which he blames on an insatiable hunger for self-gratification born of a spiritual emptiness and a loss of connection with nature. Teera also describes death as the end of suffering (“a happy return, like coming home”). Which may not be the best thing to say to a suicidal man.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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    ‘Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light’ Review: No Century for Old Men

    In the long-awaited sequel to “Wolf Hall,” Henry VIII’s royal fixer pays the price for success. (It’s his head.)“Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light” picks up where “Wolf Hall” left off, amid the gruesome beheading of Anne Boleyn in 1536, which we get to see this time in even more gruesome detail.In real life, however, there has been an unusually long gap between series and sequel. It has been 10 years since the release of “Wolf Hall,” based on the first two novels in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell series. This means that in “The Mirror and the Light,” based on the final novel, the actor Mark Rylance is a decade older than the 50-something character he is playing.And it works, because the Cromwell in the new six-episode series (beginning Sunday on PBS’s “Masterpiece”) is haunted and beaten down by his work as Henry VIII’s political and matrimonial fixer, a job that included fabricating the evidence that led to Boleyn’s murder. In that first scene both we and Cromwell are reliving the beheading (necessary, from Henry’s point of view, because Anne, his second wife, had not borne a son).“The Mirror and the Light” is very much of a piece with the earlier “Wolf Hall,” written and directed by the same men — Peter Straughan and Peter Kosminsky — and with many actors returning to their roles, including Rylance and, as Henry, Damian Lewis. Among relatively recent historical costume dramas, the shows set a standard for polish and seriousness.But as the story of the commoner Cromwell’s decline and abrupt fall, “The Mirror and the Light” has an entirely different feel than the up-by-the-boot-straps, grimly celebratory “Wolf Hall.” The mood is nervous and ominous, as Cromwell begins to make errors and give in to his emotions. And it habitually casts its eye back in time, as Cromwell reassesses the often dirty work he has done. Picking up on a device from the novel, “The Mirror and the Light” continually drops in snippets of Cromwell’s guilty memories in the form of bits of film we have already seen across the two series.His guilt even has a supporting role in the form of the dead Cardinal Wolsey, the beloved master and mentor whose downfall Cromwell was unable to prevent. Cromwell now has late-night conversations with Wolsey’s slightly diaphanous ghost, scenes that are a little cringey but that do us the favor of keeping Jonathan Pryce and his archly disapproving eyebrows in the show.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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    A Meghan Markle-Approved Doll That Gives Toddlers a Taste for Finer Things

    Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is a fan.“With Love, Meghan,” the Netflix series starring and produced by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, immerses viewers in her world of at-home luxury. But for the most part, it diligently avoids mentions of specific brands.Certain episodes offer glimpses of brand-name items in Meghan’s universe. In one, while describing the outfit she is wearing, Meghan names three labels (Loro Piana, Zara, Jenni Kayne) to telegraph a preference for mixing high and low. In a later episode, she identifies another product — a doll belonging to Lilibet, her 3-year-old daughter — that, by Meghan’s description, comes across as squarely luxurious.It has “a little baguette and a little cheese,” Meghan says, “and the name of the doll is Stella Al Fresco.” (Its full name, in fact, is Wee Baby Stella peach Al Fresco.)These plush dolls, which are marketed for toddlers, are from a line called Love, Stella. They have a Cabbage Patch quality thanks to features like round faces and chubby arms. Stella dolls are very popular among customers of the Acorn Store, a toy store in Santa Monica, Calif., which is about 80 miles down the coast from where Meghan and Prince Harry live in Montecito.As are other toys involving breads and cheeses.“Baguette toys have been trending like crazy,” said Heather Hamilton, 53, who owns the store. “It’s rampant across Southern California: the baguette, the charcuterie, the cheese boards. Kids really like imitating life, and if this is what they’re seeing on their parents’ patio, then they just pretend play.”Stella dolls, which start at around $20, take various forms: Some look like toddlers, others look like newborns and all come with pacifiers that magnetically attach to their mouths. The line also includes a variety of clothing and accessory sets, like an extravagant picnic collection that costs $35 and comes with a checkered blanket and snacks including a plush sandwich and watermelon wedge.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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    ‘Severance’ Finale: Which Theories Were Correct?

    Some fans correctly predicted some of the episode’s biggest revelations. But other mysteries remain, and many more were introduced.This article is almost entirely made up of spoilers.The “Severance” rabbit hole online is deep, with fans sharing theories about the meaning of the notes used for elevator dings, the true nature of the Lumon Industries office (is it actually a hospital?) and other arcana. Would any of them pay off in the Season 2 finale?Yes, as it turned out. In fact, one of the most popular predictions prevailed in the explosive episode: The numbers Mark S. had been diligently sorting on his terminal were indeed the building blocks of his wife Gemma’s mind. With every file he completed, a new consciousness — or “innie” — of hers was created to be tortured on the testing floor.The effort culminated in Cold Harbor, his 25th and final file, which Mark S. completed as part of a greater scheme and collaboration between his innie and outie to free her.This work, which relied on Mark S.’s gut instinct, was — as Harmony Cobel confirmed — tied to “the four tempers,” a philosophy developed by the Lumon founder Kier Eagan: woe, frolic, dread and malice. Hats off to the “Severance” enthusiasts who saw that coming!And while the big Cold Harbor revelations will satiate devotees for a moment, many other questions remain, and many more were introduced.Yes, we learned that the goats serve some sort of ceremonial and sacrificial purpose. “This beast will be entombed with a cherished woman whose spirit it must guide to Kier’s door,” the Lumon fixer Mr. Drummond tells Lorne, of the Mammalians Nurturable department, as he hands her a bolt gun to kill the animal.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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    ‘Severance’ Finale: Which Fan Theories Were Correct?

    Some fans correctly predicted some of the episode’s biggest revelations. But other mysteries remain, and many more were introduced.This article is almost entirely made up of spoilers.The “Severance” rabbit hole online is deep, with fans sharing theories about the meaning of the notes used for elevator dings, the true nature of the Lumon Industries office (is it actually a hospital?) and other arcana. Would any of them pay off in the Season 2 finale?Yes, as it turned out. In fact, one of the most popular predictions prevailed in the explosive episode: The numbers Mark S. had been diligently sorting on his terminal were indeed the building blocks of his wife Gemma’s mind. With every file he completed, a new consciousness — or “innie” — of hers was created to be tortured on the testing floor.The effort culminated in Cold Harbor, his 25th and final file, which Mark S. completed as part of a greater scheme and collaboration between his innie and outie to free her.This work, which relied on Mark S.’s gut instinct, was — as Harmony Cobel confirmed — tied to “the four tempers,” a philosophy developed by the Lumon founder Kier Eagan: woe, frolic, dread and malice. Hats off to the “Severance” enthusiasts who saw that coming!And while the big Cold Harbor revelations will satiate devotees for a moment, many other questions remain, and many more were introduced.Yes, we learned that the goats serve some sort of ceremonial and sacrificial purpose. “This beast will be entombed with a cherished woman whose spirit it must guide to Kier’s door,” the Lumon fixer Mr. Drummond tells Lorne, of the Mammalians Nurturable department, as he hands her a bolt gun to kill the animal.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