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    Late Night Bids Adieu to Mike Pence’s Presidential Campaign

    Stephen Colbert said he was surprised to learn that the former vice president had been running for the White House. “It hadn’t registered,” he said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Prayers AnsweredFormer Vice President Mike Pence ended his presidential campaign on Saturday, telling a crowd of supporters in Las Vegas, “It’s become clear to me that this is not my time.”On Monday, Stephen Colbert said that Pence’s time was 1692. “His place: Salem. His job: Man Who Shoves Woman Into River to See if She’s a Witch,” Colbert joked.“Now, I don’t know about you, but I was very surprised … that Mike Pence was running for president. It hadn’t registered.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Over the weekend, Mike Pence officially suspended his 2024 presidential campaign, right? Which raises an interesting question: Can you stop something that never started?” — JIMMY FALLON“Mike Pence dropped out to spend more time in a separate bedroom from his wife.” — CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD, guest host of “The Daily Show”“I will say, though, is it really ending your campaign when your campaign never got off the ground to begin with? It’s like turning down sex when you have erectile dysfunction, like, the choice was made for you already, my guy.” — CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD“Pence said he prayed over the decision, which is not surprising. After all, he titled his campaign launch memoir, ‘So Help Me God.’ God responded with his own book, ‘New Phone, Who Dis?’ Not very nice. He got ghosted. He got ghosted by the Holy Ghost.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Mike Pence made this announcement from the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. I didn’t know Mother even allowed him to go to Las Vegas.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Sioux Close Edition)“While speaking at a campaign event yesterday in Sioux City, Iowa, former President Trump mistakenly referred to the South Dakota city of Sioux Falls. Well, that’s it, he’s got to be done now, right? I mean, 91 felony charges is one thing, but you can’t mix up the Siouxs.” — SETH MEYERS“Ooh, Sioux close, yet Sioux far away.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Biden was like, ‘Someone help that poor old man. He’s confused and disoriented.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Even the biggest Trump supporters are thinking, ‘Maybe those gag orders are a good idea.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It makes sense that he was confused: It was the first time in months he’s been in a room without a jury.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe comedian Nelson Franklin played George Santos for a segment poking fun at the disgraced House representative on Monday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightDepeche Mode will perform on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.’Also, Check This OutGeorgette SmithIn her new memoir “The Woman in Me,” Britney Spears reclaims her life, her story and herself. More

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    ‘I Can Get It for You Wholesale’ Review: Rag Trade Revival, Recut for Today

    A story considered too dark for Broadway in its time is too much of a patchwork in ours.What a shame that the 1962 musical “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” a critique of vulture capitalism disguised as a rag trade comedy, is now best known as the Broadway show that gave Barbra Streisand her start at 19. No matter how good she was — and the recording of her big number, “Miss Marmelstein,” overflows with stupendous, youthful invention — hers was only a small, comic role in a much darker story by the novelist Jerome Weidman; her song a bauble in a fascinating and multifaceted score by Harold Rome.A clash of styles probably contributed to the show’s meh run. In Weidman’s novel, the main character, a garment industry climber named Harry Bogen, is an impenitent snake, a moral bottom feeder who knows no bottom. (On his way up, he breaks a strike, lies to his mother, dupes his pals, two-times his girlfriend and embezzles from his partners.) Despite the antiheroes of “Pal Joey” and “Carousel” in the 1940s — and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” a recent hit when “Wholesale” opened — Bogen was apparently deemed too awful for Broadway, so Weidman softened him. Casting Elliott Gould further dialed up the twinkle.The revisal of “Wholesale” that opened on Monday at Classic Stage Company was meant, in part, to address the tonal problem, and who better to do it than Weidman’s son John, himself a fine musical librettist. (Two great Sondheim shows are among his credits: “Pacific Overtures” and “Assassins.”) He has restored some of the novel’s first-person narration, so that Harry (Santino Fontana) gets to work his charm directly on the audience. (Fontana being a charmer, he almost succeeds.) Weidman has cut a song, moved two, added three from Rome’s archive and trimmed several others. He’s excised any hint of redemption at the end.That the show, directed by Trip Cullman, still doesn’t hold together is unfortunate. Its bones are too big for the 196-seat Classic Stage space, which makes the story feel as if it were stuffed into a dress several sizes too small. Likewise, the music is too complex for six players weirdly doubling. The violinist naturally enough plays viola, but also percussion, occasionally at the same time.This doesn’t matter when the show’s best singers are given its best songs: Judy Kuhn, as Harry’s Yiddishe momme, offers an exquisite “Too Soon”; Rebecca Naomi Jones, as his long-suffering girlfriend, a touching “Who Knows?”; and Joy Woods, as the gold digger he trades up to, a cynical duet called “What’s in It for Me?” (with Greg Hildreth as a salesman). And Julia Lester’s clarion honk in “Miss Marmelstein” recalls Streisand without being a copy. Still, the lack of orchestral texture makes the songs, dotting the highly episodic book, feel like one-offs, not a score.Rebecca Naomi Jones, center left, and Fontana as a couple in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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    Matthew Perry’s Cause of Death Remains Under Investigation

    Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his house in Los Angeles on Saturday, the police said. It could be weeks or even months before the cause of his death is established, experts said.As the authorities continued to investigate the death of the “Friends” actor Matthew Perry, experts cautioned Monday that it could take weeks or months for the cause to be determined.Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his home in Los Angeles at around 4 p.m. on Saturday, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement. The Los Angeles City Fire Department responded to the scene and declared Perry dead, the statement said. He was 54.Because of Perry’s “celebrity status,” detectives from the robbery homicide division conducted a preliminary investigation, the statement said.“Although there were no obvious signs of trauma, the official cause of Perry’s death is pending the coroner’s investigation,” the statement said. The police have said they had seen no indication of foul play.Earlier on Monday, the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner said on its website that Perry’s cause of death was “deferred,” which usually means that further investigation was needed. Later on Monday, Perry’s case was not listed on the website at all.The department said in an email on Monday afternoon that it had “not yet concluded its investigation.” It gave no further information.Experts cautioned that it could take weeks or months to conduct a toxicology screening and examine other evidence.Perry had spoken openly about his struggles with addiction, which sometimes led to hospitalizations for a range of ailments. By his own account, Perry had spent more than half of his life in treatment and rehab facilities.In his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” Perry also described some of the health challenges he faced over the years. In 2018, he faced a series of medical episodes including pneumonia, an exploded colon, a brief stint on life support, two weeks in a coma, nine months with a colostomy bag and more than a half-dozen stomach operations.Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist unaffiliated with the investigation, said in a TikTok video about the case that it would be important to determine if Perry’s nose and mouth were below the water line when he was found, indicating that he may have drowned.If he drowned, it would be important to know why, she said. Was heart disease a factor? Or intoxication? Test results can take weeks because of a lack of qualified toxicologists, funding and equipment, Dr. Melinek said.Investigators should also look for home security footage that could shed light on the case, she said, and they should investigate the hot tub itself to make sure it was properly grounded and wasn’t heating the water beyond the temperature indicated. If the water was hot but not scalding, she said, it could lead to heat exhaustion and dehydration, which can cause a person to drown.“It’s appropriate for it to take long,” Dr. Melinek said in an interview on Monday. “Sometimes it takes months to do a proper investigation.”Dr. James Gill, Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, said it would be important to know if a person found unresponsive in a hot tub had intentionally gone underwater, indicating a suicide, or if they were unable to get out of the water.A person who was unable to get out of the water may have had a heart attack, he said, or may have taken alcohol or drugs, causing a loss of consciousness.Medical examiners in such cases will often list the cause of death as “pending,” he said, allowing them to release the body to a funeral home so the family can proceed with a burial or cremation while toxicology tests are being conducted. Those tests, he said, can take weeks to complete.Dr. Kathryn Pinneri, a former president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, noted in an email that the authorities haven’t said if Perry drowned.But she said: “Hot tub drownings are usually associated with an underlying heart or neurologic condition or alcohol and/or medications/drugs. So the cause and manner of death are usually pending until the results of those tests come back.”Perry was 24 when he was cast as the quirky and self-deprecating Chandler Bing on “Friends,” a show that changed his life and firmly planted him in the limelight alongside his co-stars Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston.The sitcom ran from 1994 to 2004. Perry went on to star in television shows and movies, some of which — like “Almost Heroes” (1998), with Chris Farley, and “Three to Tango” (1999) — failed to capture audiences at the box office.Matt Stevens More

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    Matthew Perry’s Most Memorable TV Shows and Movies to Stream Now

    Perry will always be remembered as Chandler Bing. But he had a long and varied career that included films and many other series.Matthew Perry, who died Saturday at 54, was one of the biggest TV stars of the past three decades thanks to his role on “Friends,” the blockbuster NBC sitcom that continues to be enormously popular in the streaming era.The show looms so large and Perry’s performance as Chandler Bing was so indelible that it can be difficult to think of him in any other context. But Perry had a long and varied career that included films, many other series and the occasional play. Here are some of his most memorable performances and how to watch them.‘Friends’(1994-2004)Raised largely in Canada, Perry moved to Los Angeles as a teen. He found early success as an actor, appearing in some of the 1980s’ most popular sitcoms (“Charles in Charge,” “Silver Spoons,” “Growing Pains”) and dramas (“Highway to Heaven,” “Beverly Hills, 90210”). But his life changed forever when he was cast, at 24, as one-sixth of what would soon be TV’s most famous group of attractive young Manhattanites.As Chandler, Perry was the sharpest, funniest Friend. His instantly memorable quips and cadences were endlessly imitated by fans and sometimes co-stars. (Each of the Friends had a “Could I be any more …” punchline at some point.) Perry’s well-known struggles with addiction are unavoidably linked to his time on the show — for instance, he said he went to rehab right after filming Monica and Chandler’s wedding. But his performance remains mostly hilarious.Stream it on Max.‘Fools Rush In’(1997)The “Friends” stars all tried to make the jump to the big screen, with mixed results. Perry’s first big movie role was as the lead of “Fools Rush In,” a romantic comedy in which he plays a New York developer forced into a shotgun wedding with a photographer played by Salma Hayek. The New York Times called it a “lackluster comedy” but other critics, including Roger Ebert, saw some sweetness beneath the one-liners.Stream it on Amazon; YouTube; and Tubi.Perry with Michael Clarke Duncan in “The Whole Nine Yards.”Pierre Vinet/Warner Bros., via Associated Press‘The Whole Nine Yards’(2000)Perry leans into his nebbishy side in “The Whole Nine Yards,” a crime caper in which he plays a put-upon dentist who becomes entangled with an ex-gangster. The tough guy is played by Bruce Willis, part of a deep cast that also includes Amanda Peet, Rosanna Arquette, Michael Clarke Duncan and Kevin Pollak.Reviews were middling when it was released — The Times called it “underwhelming, amusing only in fits and starts” — but the cast keeps things light and entertaining and the film’s reputation has improved over time. (You can give the sequel, “The Whole Ten Yards,” of course, a pass though.)Rent it on Amazon; Google Play; and YouTube.‘Go On’(2012-13)During and after “Friends,” Perry guest-starred in acclaimed series including “The West Wing,” “Scrubs,” “The Good Wife” and “Cougar Town.” His post-“Friends” starring vehicles were more of a mixed bag, including the Aaron Sorkin misfire “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” and “Mr. Sunshine,” which Perry also created.The best was “Go On,” an NBC sitcom starring Perry as a freshly widowed sports-talk host who goes to group grief therapy. Created by the former “Friends” writer and producer Scott Silveri, it’s funnier than it sounds.Buy it on Amazon.Thomas Lennon and Matthew Perry in CBS’s remake of “The Odd Couple.”Sonja Flemming‘The Odd Couple’(2015-17)Perry teamed with Thomas Lennon for a remake of one of the most famous sitcoms in history, which seems like a bad idea until you consider that the original was itself an adaptation of the 1968 film (which was based on the 1965 Neil Simon play).As the rumpled, irritable Oscar Madison, Perry plays yet another sports-talk host, with Lennon as the finicky Felix Unger. A slightly naughtier update of the old formula, it worked well enough to last for three seasons on CBS, making it one of Perry’s longest TV runs after “Friends.”Stream it on Paramount+. More

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    Matthew Perry, ‘Friends’ Star, Dies at 54

    He was known for playing the sarcastic but lovable Chandler Bing and for his struggles with drugs and alcohol, which he chronicled in a memoir.Matthew Perry, who gained sitcom superstardom as Chandler Bing on the show “Friends,” becoming a model of the ability to tease your pals as an expression of love, has died. He was 54.The death was confirmed by Capt. Scot Williams of the Los Angeles Police Department’s robbery-homicide division. He said the cause was not likely to be determined for some time, but there was no indication of foul play.Several news outlets reported, without a named source, that Mr. Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his home in Los Angeles. He had publicly struggled with drinking and drug use for decades, leading to hospitalizations for a range of ailments. By his own account, he had spent more than half his life in treatment and rehab facilities.“Friends” ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004. It chronicled the never-too-dramatic dramas and in-jokes and exploits of a group of six young friends living in New York City. Chandler was the yuppie of the group, with a well-paying white-collar job his friends did not entirely understand. He wore sweater vests but also moodily smoked cigarettes.Other “Friends” characters generated humor through their goofiness or haplessness; Chandler cracked jokes. He was often inspired by the airheadedness of his roommate and best friend, Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc), a struggling actor, and by the blunders of another buddy, Ross Geller (David Schwimmer), a paleontologist more competent in science than everyday life.During one episode, for example, Ross joined the group looking bizarrely tan and said he had gone to a tanning place that one of them had suggested. “Was that place the sun?” Chandler asked.The cast of “Friends” in the 1990s. Clockwise from bottom left, Courteney Cox as Monica Geller; Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani; Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay; David Schwimmer as Ross Geller; Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing; and Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green.NBCUniversal via Getty ImagesThat speech pattern — the sarcastic rhetorical question asked in a tone of mock disbelief — was typical of Chandler. He was known on the show for wondering things like “Could she be more out of my league?”Mr. Perry himself brought this bit to the show, and it became a familiar way for Americans to talk — proof of the status of “Friends” as one of the most popular shows in sitcom history.For a while Chandler was in a secret romance with another core member of the “Friends” group, Monica Geller (Courteney Cox), a chef. Ultimately, the two achieve happily stable monogamy, marry and move to the suburbs. (In the spirit of the show, distilled into its theme song, “I’ll Be There for You,” Chandler’s new home has a “Joey room” for his old roommate.) Their steps toward adulthood helped bring an end to the group’s post-adolescent idyll and, with that, the story of “Friends” itself.Mr. Perry, like his co-stars, eventually earned $1 million per episode. He was rich, famous and handsome. But behind the scenes of “Friends,” his substance abuse was already an issue.In his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” Mr. Perry recalled Jennifer Aniston, who starred in the show as Rachel Green, coming to his trailer one day and saying, “in a kind of weird but loving way,” that it was clear he had been drinking too much. “We can smell it,” she added.“The plural ‘we,’” he wrote about that moment, “hits me like a sledgehammer.”The whole cast confronted him at one point in his dressing room.A Jet Ski accident in 1997 helped set in motion Mr. Perry’s addiction to pain killers. A year and a half later, he was taking 55 pills a day. He checked into a rehab facility weighing 128 pounds. “Of course, ‘Matthew Perry is in rehab’ became a huge news story,” he wrote.Mr. Perry testified before a House subcommittee in Washington in 2013 in support of federal funding for drug treatment programs, including those for military veterans. His own struggles with addiction were well known. Paul Morigi/Associated Press for the National Association of Drug Court ProfessionalsIn the years to come, his addiction would lead to a “medical odyssey,” The New York Times wrote in a profile last year, including an exploded colon, a stint on life support, two weeks in a coma, nine months with a colostomy bag and more than a dozen stomach surgeries, among other travails.Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay on “Friends,” wrote in her foreword to Mr. Perry’s memoir that the single question she was asked most about “Friends” was “How’s Matthew Perry doing?”Matthew Langford Perry was born on Aug. 19, 1969, in Williamstown, Mass. His mother, Suzanne (Langford) Perry, worked as a press secretary for the Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. His father, John Bennett Perry, was a character actor.His parents divorced when he was a baby, and Matty grew up largely with his mother and stepfather, Keith Morrison, in Ottawa. He was one of Canada’s top-ranked junior tennis players.When he was 15, he moved in with his father in Los Angeles, hoping to devote more time to tennis and leave behind unhappiness he felt about his place in his mother’s second family.After a couple of years in Los Angeles, Matthew decided that he had figured out what would make him happy.“Fame would change everything, and I yearned for it more than any other person on the face of the planet,” he wrote in his memoir. “I needed it. It was the only thing that would fix me. I was certain of it.”Mr. Perry in about 1988. “Fame would change everything, and I yearned for it more than any other person on the face of the planet,” he wrote in his memoir.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesIn 1988, still a teenager, he made his film debut, starring alongside River Phoenix in “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon.” He appeared on several sitcoms. It was clear that he was an up-and-coming actor — but he remained that way for several years. One day, when he was 24, alone in his small Los Angeles apartment, he got on his knees and prayed to become famous, no matter what else would happen to him in the process.Three weeks later, he was cast in “Friends.”Early on, Courteney Cox, whose career to that point had outpaced her fellow cast members’, announced to the group, “There are no stars here,” Mr. Perry recalled in his memoir. “This is an ensemble show. We’re all supposed to be friends.”Mr. Perry continued: “So we did what she suggested. From that first morning we were inseparable. We ate every meal together.”During his years on “Friends,” Mr. Perry starred in a number of movies that flopped commercially, like “Almost Heroes” (1998), with Chris Farley, and “Three to Tango” (1999). He got good reviews for his supporting role as a likable, beleaguered dentist in “The Whole Nine Yards” (2000), starring Bruce Willis.After “Friends,” Mr. Perry starred in a few more TV shows, like “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” (2006-07), written by Aaron Sorkin, and an adaptation of Neil Simon’s play “The Odd Couple” that ran on CBS from 2015 to 2017.In his memoir, Mr. Perry poignantly described struggles with self-esteem and commitment through several romantic relationships, including some with prominent actresses, like Julia Roberts. He never married or had children.He had several half siblings from his parents’ remarriages. Information about his survivors was not immediately available.Since “Friends” went off the air, its fan base has only grown. The show has even helped people around the world learn English.Two years ago, Mr. Perry, by his own account newly sober, appeared in a televised reunion of the “Friends” cast, in which its stars revisited some of the show’s most famous sets, like the Central Perk coffee shop, to reminisce about old episodes.That came after years in which Mr. Perry resisted talking about “Friends.” He wrote in his memoir that he admired Kurt Cobain’s refusal to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” a hit for Mr. Cobain’s group, Nirvana, and Led Zeppelin’s aversion to their anthem “Stairway to Heaven.”He did gain a new attitude toward publicly recalling his past thanks to writing, he told The Times last year. In a single interview, he spoke again and again about the idea that his confessional stories might help fellow addicts.“Whenever I bumped into something that I didn’t really want to share,” he said, “I would think of the people that I would be helping, and it would keep me going.”Elisabeth Egan More

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    Mourning Matthew Perry at the ‘Friends’ Museum in New York

    The day after the actor’s death, fans paid tribute at a storefront re-creation of the sitcom’s famous sets.Every night, Marnie Stein, an elementary school principal from Montreal, falls asleep to the lullaby of “Friends” streaming on her TV.At school, the decorations in the teachers’ lounge reference Central Perk, the Manhattan coffee shop where the show’s main characters held court. “All we do is quote ‘Friends,’” Stein said of her and her colleagues.So on Sunday afternoon, while on a trip to New York City with her daughter and best friend, Stein took a pilgrimage to a storefront at East 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue, where sets from the long-running sitcom have been recreated for fans in a two-floor tourist magnet that is part museum, part photo opportunity.After the news on Saturday night that Matthew Perry, one of the show’s lead actors, had died suddenly at his home in Los Angeles, the trip to the “Friends” Experience turned into a moment to pay tribute to the 54-year-old star, who had been open about his long battle with drug and alcohol addiction. No official cause of death has been released yet.“He was in pain and he had so many demons and he suffered for so long,” Stein said as “Friends” clips flashed on a screen behind her. “As I’m trying to come to terms with it, I hope he’s at peace.”Stein, 49, watched “Friends” from its early days, when it premiered on NBC in the mid-1990s and quickly became a pop culture touchstone, with its portrait of a close-knit group of 20-somethings navigating friendship and relationships. The show has maintained its cultural cachet into the streaming era, producing a legion of Gen Z fans who are just as eager to take a photograph alongside a recreation of the “Friends” fountain as their parents’ generation is. (Stein’s 22-year-old daughter, Maggie, is a fan, too.)A sardonic jokester with a mysterious job and a sometimes painful awkwardness when flirting, Perry’s character, Chandler Bing, was a central pillar of the show during its 10-season run, and his relationship with Courteney Cox’s character, Monica Geller, is one of the most beloved romantic arcs in TV history.A re-creation of the “Friends” Central Perk coffeehouse.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesOutfits worn by the cast of “Friends.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesIn his recent memoir, in which he chronicled his road toward sobriety, Perry described the show as a “safe place” and a “touchstone of calm” for him. “It had given me a reason to get out of bed every morning,” he wrote.He also described the character as deeply personal to him. Chandler’s trademark way of talking — “Could she be more out of my league?” and “Could I be more sorry?” — came from a speech pattern he and his brothers took on in grade school.“From the day we first heard him embody the role of Chandler Bing, there was no one else for us,” the show’s creators, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, and an executive producer, Kevin Bright, said in a statement on Sunday.There was a sense of shock among fans, who had seen the cast together as recently as 2021 when they got together for a much anticipated reunion special. To those who have watched and rewatched the 10 seasons, often streaming them in the background of daily life, the actors have become reliable companions.“You know when you get that kind of sinking feeling?” said Olivia Freer, 28, a tourist from England who had bought tickets to the museum with her friends after learning the news. “I feel heartbroken. You don’t know them so you don’t think it’ll affect you, but it does.”The broad and enduring loyalty to the show has fueled enough demand for “Friends” pop-up shrines not just in New York, where the show is set, but in Miami and Salt Lake City, as well as around the world in Melbourne, Dublin and Amsterdam. Like many so-called immersive experiences, the event revolves around getting photos in the show’s trademark settings, including the orange couch at Central Perk and the blue cabinetry of Monica’s kitchen.Fans can recline in a La-Z-Boy chair like the ones Chandler and his pal Joey were known to sit in, and pose as though trying to finagle a sofa up a staircase, as Chandler did with Rachel and Ross in Season 5. Glass cases display props and costumes from the series, including Chandler and Monica’s wedding invitation and vows, as well as the outfit Chandler wore in a Thanksgiving episode in Season 8 in which Brad Pitt guest starred.So what is it about this show that turns props into precious memorabilia and faraway actors into what start to feel like cherished companions?For Amy Taylor, who was traveling with Stein, it’s the sense of comfort and ease that episodes of “Friends” give her — it was a balm for her during the pandemic in particular, she said. And it’s the common language it provides her and her loved ones. (In a reference to a running joke in the series, Taylor has a chick tattooed on her leg, and her cousin has a duck tattoo.)“I just hope he knew,” Taylor said of Perry, “that his character brought so much comfort to people.” More

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    ‘Lempicka,’ New Musical About Art Deco Artist, to Open on Broadway

    Rachel Chavkin of “Hadestown” will direct the show, which had developmental productions in Massachusetts and California.“Lempicka,” a new musical about the painter Tamara de Lempicka, will open on Broadway next spring after a decade in development.The show will join a Broadway season crowded with new musicals — at least a dozen are expected — at a time when the industry is facing smaller audiences, and higher costs, than it had before the coronavirus pandemic.An Art Deco portraitist who was married and had female lovers, Lempicka was born in Poland in 1898 and lived in Russia, which she fled because of the Russian Revolution; France, which she fled because of World War II; and then the United States and Mexico. Though her art and her social life glittered for a period, she later faded from prominence, and died in 1980. In recent years, her art has sold strongly; contemporary collectors of her work include Madonna.The show, scheduled to begin performances March 19 and to open April 14 at the Longacre Theater, features music by Matt Gould and lyrics by Carson Kreitzer, who also collaborated on the book. The director is Rachel Chavkin, the Tony Award-winning director of “Hadestown,” and choreography is by Raja Feather Kelly.“This is a massive epic, in the company of ‘Les Mis’ or ‘Evita,’ about this incredible artist who has been, for a variety of reasons, dismissed from our history books,” Chavkin said. “It’s fierce and queer and traces the first half of the 20th century through the eyes of this very complicated and ambitious and visionary woman.”Eden Espinosa, a onetime Elphaba in “Wicked,” will star in the title role. She is currently appearing in a new musical, “The Gardens of Anuncia,” running Off Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater. The rest of the “Lempicka” cast has not yet been announced.The musical has had two previous productions, at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts in 2018 and last year at La Jolla Playhouse in California, as well as several workshops and presentations over the years. (A previous effort to dramatize Lempicka’s life, a play called “Tamara,” ran in New York in 1987.)“Lempicka” is being produced by Seaview, a production company founded by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea, and Jenny Niederhoffer. It is being capitalized for up to $19.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More

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    Review: In ‘Stereophonic,’ the Rock Revolution Will Be Recorded

    David Adjmi’s riveting new play, with songs by Will Butler, is about a ’70s band that nearly destroys itself making an epochal album.It’s an imperfect rule of thumb that musicals lift up and dramas drill down. So what do you call David Adjmi’s “Stereophonic,” which does both?You could rightly say it’s a play with music, emphasis on the “play”: In a little more than three hours it features just six songs, some of them fragmentary.But that would be to shortchange the ingenious way Adjmi weaves sound and story into something as granular as it is operatic. Granular because the songs (by Will Butler) are not decorations but are elemental to the plot, in which the five members of a rock band spend a year of the mid-1970s writing and laying down tracks for an epochal new album while bickering over each riff and tempo. Operatic because what they wind up recording, however refracted through a commercial pop lens, inevitably expresses their heartache, betrayal and fury.There is plenty of each in “Stereophonic,” which opened on Sunday at Playwrights Horizons in a relentlessly compelling production by Daniel Aukin that has the grit of a documentary. In a way, it is one: If you know anything about the year Fleetwood Mac spent making the 1977 album “Rumours,” you will grasp the template at once, even though Adjmi has said he was inspired by many bands of the era after listening to Led Zeppelin on a flight to Boston.Nevertheless, the bones are Fleetwood Mac’s. Like Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, the play’s Diana and Peter are an American couple, she on vocals, he on vocals and guitar. Like John and Christine McVie, the fictional Reg and Holly are British, he on bass guitar, she on keyboard and vocals. And like Mick Fleetwood himself, Simon is the drummer, playing Daddy to the others while missing his wife and actual children back home.That they all behave childishly once aesthetic arguments arise is a given of the milieu. The constant drinking, toking and dipping into a big bag of cocaine don’t help, even if it’s part of the job of the two overwhelmed engineers (Eli Gelb and Andrew R. Butler, hilarious) to keep the sessions going at any cost.Daniel Aukin’s relentlessly compelling production has the grit of a documentary, and David Zinn’s studio set is a multitrack wonder, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut something is already wrong when the band arrives at the studio in Sausalito, Calif.: The intimacy and blend so riveting in their music has not worked out as well in their lives. Reg (Will Brill, heartbreakingly unhinged) and Holly (Juliana Canfield) are evidently on the skids. Indeed, Reg is so cataclysmically strung out by the third day of recording he can barely walk; he looks like a drowned rabid squirrel. Holly and the rest of the band, who all live together in a house nearby, are past the breaking point of patience and exhaustion.Drugs and sleep deprivation are the accelerants here, exacerbating Reg and Holly’s flip-flops of affection while undoing the couples who at first seem properly glued. Diana (Sarah Pidgeon) and Peter (Tom Pecinka) have been a couple for nine years, held together by mutual admiration and complementary flaws. (He’s a control freak and she’s insecure.) Even so, they too begin to crack. Peter’s volcanic temper erupts as Diana, gradually emerging as the group’s breakout star, gingerly tries to assert more independence.By the time Simon (Chris Stack, suavely coiled) announces that his wife has left him, we begin to adjust to the depths toward which Adjmi has quietly been leading us, beneath the expert polyphony of his overlapping dialogue, the keenly imagined naturalism of the setting — David Zinn’s studio set is a multitrack wonder — and the nervy patience necessary to let characters come to their own boil.Pidgeon and Pecinka are riveting as a couple whose relationship begins to crack during the protracted recording session.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat deep story is about the disaster of maleness, and thus of mating, behind the pop-rock revolution of the period. (The Bicentennial vibe is firmly established by Enver Chakartash’s late-hippie costumes, including some wild peacockery for Simon.) And though Adjmi’s depiction of the men as stunted adolescents at first seems lightly satirical — the casual thumbing of Playboy in the control room, the engineers high-fiving each other over shared fantasies of oiled-up women reclining on Corvettes — the atmosphere eventually turns menacing.When challenged, Peter, who fancies himself (and may be) the band’s best musician, rigidly defends a fraying idea of what you might call monaural masculinity. Women are accomplices, not equals: incomprehensible witches, strange in their sisterliness (the men are Cains and Abels) and artists only accidentally.To the extent that “Stereophonic” dramatizes a victory of any kind it is in the way Diana (Pidgeon is riveting in all aspects of the role) inches herself away from Peter (Pecinka, too, is riveting) and at last defies him. Not without a price, of course. Another of Adjmi’s main interests here is in the tricky duality of music and, by extension, of art. However cathartic, writing and performing do not fix anything, the soul being too complicated for that. “I thought I was getting things out with the music because it’s so expressive and exhausting, but you don’t,” Diana laments. “It’s just a trick, all the conflict gets like submerged and hidden in some other weird pocket of your psyche.”Or as Holly, beguilingly cool in Canfield’s portrayal, sums up: “It’s a torture to need people.”Adjmi, first known for plays like “3C” and “Marie Antoinette” that push satire past the gates of surrealism and then push even further, works a new path here, after some years away from the stage. He is still very funny but now without the quotation marks, devoting himself in every playwriting way — thematically, dialogically, structurally — to real things emerging in real time. “Stereophonic” may even be slightly attenuated by its refusal to take shortcuts; I wouldn’t have minded a 20-minute trim, if only to keep the material from falling, as it does occasionally, into the gap between drama and mini-series. (It would make an excellent mini-series, though.)The discipline is otherwise unexceptionable. Aukin’s staging, which carefully tracks the different worlds of the control room downstage and the sound room, protected by glass, behind it, supports the variations on revelation and concealment that make the play so compelling. Sometimes the control room is silent and we hear only the sound room, sometimes it’s the other way around; sometimes there’s dialogue between them on mics and sometimes a mic is surreptitiously left live to spy on people in an isolation booth. And though superior work from the sound designer, Ryan Rumery, and the lighting designer, Jiyoun Chang, help direct our ears and eyes, we have to assemble the story ourselves.I don’t really understand how the cast (under the music direction of Justin Craig) did the same, but backward and from the inside out, all while playing their own instruments and singing richly enough to sell Butler’s songs. Whether barnburners with chunky hooks or dreamy reflections with rangy lyrics, those songs sound every bit like the pop hits they are meant to be — perhaps not a surprise from a former member of Arcade Fire, but a joy nonetheless.So however you want to categorize “Stereophonic” — perhaps a playical? — the great thing is that it doesn’t founder, as most theatrical treatments of the artistic process do, on either side of the genre divide. The music justifies the long buildup, and the play, Adjmi’s best so far, is as rich and lustrous as they come. You could even call it platinum.StereophonicThrough Nov. 26 at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan; playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 3 hours 5 minutes. More