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    What Was That Strange Asian Child Doing in the ‘Severance’ Office?

    This season introduced Miss Huang — and used her as a visual shorthand for a longstanding American anxiety.Pity the American office worker: overworked, undervalued and kept in the dark about the true intentions of his employer, which are somehow weirder and more odious than he could possibly know. The beauty of the corporate-culture satire “Severance” lies in just how universal, how quotidian, its protagonist’s gripes are. On some cosmic level, Mark Scout wants to investigate the aims of his mysteriously tight-lipped company. Day to day, though, he must slog away at unsatisfying and impenetrable tasks, browbeaten by a series of cold, uncaring bosses. Who hasn’t been there?This season made a curious new addition to that line of Big Bad Bosses — a puzzle-box of a character, more loaded with menace than any of the middle managers who came before. Introduced, without fanfare, in the season’s premiere, “Miss Huang” is a steely Asian girl who, despite not looking old enough to enter PG-13 movies on her own, is apparently responsible for managing Mark and his adult colleagues. “Why are you a child?” someone asks, to which she only replies: “Because of when I was born.” Miss Huang is given no further explanation. She orders employees around, unsmiling, in her prim adolescent voice and middle-schooler knee socks, then plays with a hand-held water-ring-toss toy at her desk, all the more chilling for her lack of justification.But we are meant to make some assumptions. Miss Huang is orderly, diligent, quick-witted. She shows not a pinch of personality, so her talents must lie in sheer intelligence or efficacy. We can infer by her position that she has excelled beyond her years in some way — that she is precocious, perhaps even a prodigy. Standing quietly in the corner, eyeing the staff, she occasionally looks forlorn, a kind of executive waif, yet the overall effect is of sinister vigilance. You suspect coiled ambition, backstabbery in waiting. “When I played her, I didn’t feel very scary,” the actress Sarah Bock said in an interview. “But at the end of the day, crew members would come up to me like: ‘You freaked me out. You’re terrifying.’”The threat Miss Huang poses is more spectral.Watching this strange corporate poppet float around all season long, injecting scenes with an aura of ominous efficiency and little else, I kept having the thought that I knew her, somehow.And we have seen Miss Huang before — shades of her, at least. We have seen her in model students like Sanjay Patel on “Modern Family,” Cho Chang in “Harry Potter” (a Ravenclaw, naturally) and all the nameless TV Asian kids who effortlessly win spelling bees or chess tournaments. We have seen the top-of-their-class Asian doctors of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “House” and “E.R.” We have seen punchlines of ultracapability like “Asian Annie” on “Community” — the only person able to usurp the already-overachieving white Annie — or the high-ponytailed Joy Lin on “Girls,” who gets picked for a job over Lena Dunham’s Hannah because, while less personable, she knows how to use Adobe Photoshop. There is the corrupt accountant Lau in “The Dark Knight,” to whom Gotham’s mob bosses outsource their money laundering because he is “good with calculation,” and the geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, whose brilliance unleashes the hell of “Jurassic Park.” These are all wildly different characters in wildly different entertainments, but their Asianness is deployed to the same effect: as a shorthand for intellectual ability and über-proficiency.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 ‘Severance’ Actress Who Plays Natalie On Those ‘Terrifying’ Scenes

    “That’s the great thing about being an adult,” says Sydney Cole Alexander, who plays Natalie, the liaison with a wide smile and a cold gaze on the hit workplace thriller.As Natalie, a devoted spokeswoman for the shadowy Lumon Industries on “Severance,” Sydney Cole Alexander has an exacting morning routine. It starts with that tightly coiled updo.Ben Stiller, one of the Apple TV+ drama’s executive producers, “has a reputation for being very particular about hair,” Alexander said. After she was cast in the series, which follows workers who sign up for a procedure that bifurcates their personal and professional lives, she sat for a camera test. Stiller had asked her to repurpose the freeze-dried smile she flashed in a Crest commercial she’d booked the same day as “Severance,” and she encouraged him to let Natalie, the headset-wearing “conduit to the gods,” as she puts it, go blonder.“Every curl on my head was curled,” Alexander recalled. “And I just thought it was so Lumon, because that would take forever. I think it helped me to think about: What is this woman’s morning like? How committed is she to perfection and this company, and representing them perfectly?”In Season 2, which had its finale on Friday, the facade slips momentarily in a charged, nearly wordless exchange when Natalie presents Seth Milchick, a Black department chief and fellow Lumon true believer, with “inclusive” paintings from a tone-deaf board. “I did feel a little bit of sympathy with Milchick, which I think is terrifying for her,” said Alexander, who is biracial. “Because this is her prize, that she’s not sympathetic; it’s why she’s so good at her job.”In a video interview this month from her Brooklyn apartment, Alexander opened up about another dream role, the Jim Carrey movie that gets her choked up, her incurable sweet tooth and more. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Vintage ShoppingAs a teenager in New York City, a social activity was going to Beacon’s Closet or No Relation. I started furnishing my apartment with vintage things. There’s something so fun about the story of an item and that something can last, not even decades, but centuries.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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    ‘Love Life,’ the Lost Great American Musical, Returns Over 75 Years Later

    Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s pioneering “Love Life” was thwarted by circumstance. Now, it is coming to Encores! at New York City Center.For some people, seeing the musical “Love Life” in 1948 was an eye-opening experience.As a new show with music by Kurt Weill, and a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, it was a major Broadway event. So Stephen Sondheim got himself a ticket, as did his future collaborator Hal Prince. One night Fred Ebb, of Kander and Ebb, was in the house; another night, Bob Fosse.All of them would be influenced by “Love Life,” which tells the story of an American marriage over 150 years through a series of vaudeville acts. It’s by no means a classic, but its form pioneered the concept musical, a genre that would blossom a generation later in shows like Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret” and “Chicago,” and Sondheim’s “Company” and “Follies.”Ebb would look back on “Love Life” as “a marvelous piece of theater.” Yet it hasn’t been seen in New York since that original run. Because of a musicians’ union strike, it was never recorded, nor was it published. Some songs lived on, but eventually it gained a reputation as the lost great American musical.The 1948 production (with Nanette Fabray, center) was inspired, in part, by Alan Jay Lerner, who was recently divorced and interested in writing “a cavalcade of American marriage.”Billy Rose Theater Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsThat is about to change. “Love Life” is finally returning to Manhattan on Wednesday, after decades of neglect and a five-year pandemic delay, for an Encores! production at New York City Center, directed by Victoria Clark and starring Kate Baldwin and Brian Stokes Mitchell.“It’s always seemed that ‘Love Life’ was jinxed,” said the scholar Kim Kowalke, who runs the Kurt Weill Foundation. “Maybe the jinx is off now.”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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    Takeaways From the ‘Severance’ Season 2 Finale

    Our critics and editors assess the new conflicts introduced by the Season 2 finale and whether it cleared up enough of the show’s many mysteries.The second season of “Severance” just wrapped up with its longest episode yet. We have thoughts. Spoilers abound.Whose Side Are We On?There are endings that give you what you want. There are endings that don’t give you what you want. There are endings that give you what you don’t want.Then there are endings that make you wonder what exactly you should want, which was what the “Severance” Season 2 finale did.The first season of “Severance” gave us some clear rooting interests. We wanted Mark Scout to find his not-dead-yet wife, Gemma. And we wanted Mark S. and the rest of his innie colleagues to find freedom, self-determination and love. But the finale hit a realization that the season had been building to: These two wants might not be compatible, at least not easily.The two Marks having the world’s weirdest Zoom conversation at the birthing cabin laid the conflict out. The series has shown them to date as twin protagonists wronged by the mighty Lumon corporation. But there’s a power dynamic between the two of them as well, as innie Mark says with growing frustration.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’ Season 2 Finale Recap: Mark vs. Mark

    The season ended with a bizarre but moving episode that found the Lumon employees’ inner and outer selves at cross purposes.Early in the Season 2 finale of the acclaimed, much-memed Apple TV+ series “Severance,” a man has a spirited debate that ends up encapsulating much of what keeps the show’s fans watching. The person he is talking to? Himself, via an old video camera. Mark (Adam Scott) records messages for Mark. And Mark replies.Created by the writer Dan Erickson in collaboration with the producer and frequent director Ben Stiller, “Severance,” which was just renewed for another season, is centered on a cultlike company named Lumon that allows employees to “sever” their work lives and their home lives via a chip surgically inserted into their brains. The people who clock in every day — the “innies” — have no idea what their “outies” do after quitting time, and vice versa.At the end of Season 1, Mark’s innie led his office-mates Dylan (Zach Cherry), Helly (Britt Lower) and Irving (John Turturro) in a mini-rebellion, executing “the overtime contingency,” which allowed them all, very briefly, to live their outies’ lives. This is how Mark learned that his outie’s wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) — presumed dead in the outside world — was still alive as an innie at Lumon.Season 2 has been primarily driven by outie Mark’s efforts to reintegrate his consciousness with innie Mark, in hopes of rescuing Gemma from Lumon. In the finale, the two Marks argue over whose needs are more important: If Gemma leaves Lumon, will outie Mark terminate his employment there — and in the process terminate innie Mark?“Severance” Season 1 arrived not long after the pandemic, at a time when people were questioning how much of their lives were being spent in an office — and how much needed to be. As the story has expanded into more existential mysteries, it has spoken more to the “rise and grind” mind set sweeping through much of the modern world, where having relationships or hobbies — or even a good night’s sleep — is considered somewhat suspect. The Season 2 finale brings to a head some of the story lines inspired by our increasingly out-of-whack work-life balance.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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    8 New Shows Our Theater Critics Are Talking About

    A British satirical comedy, a Tennessee Williams classic, a soundscape of Havana: These are productions worth knowing about.Critic’s PickAndrew Scott, Andrew Scott, Andrew Scott …‘Vanya’Directed by Sam Yates and adapted by Simon Stephens, this one-man “Vanya” — in which Andrew Scott delivers a tour-de-force performance — arrives Off Broadway after a run in London, where it won an Olivier for best play revival. Though faithful to the original material, the production offers not just modern touches, but also “a new way of seeing into the heart of its beauty,” our critic wrote.From Jesse Green’s review:What makes the production exemplary, like the play itself, is the emotion. I hate to think why Scott is such a sadness machine, but the tears (and blushes and glows and sneers) lie very shallow under his skin. He only rarely raises his voice. As the feelings are evidently coming directly and carefully from his heart, he narrowcasts them directly and carefully at yours.Through May 11 at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Read the full review.Critic’s PickThe lush sounds of Havana.“Buena Vista Social Club” at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater features choreography by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘Buena Vista Social Club’The joyous horns and full-bodied voices that make up the beloved 1997 album come alive in this Broadway musical, with a book by Marco Ramirez, direction by Saheem Ali and choreography by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck. Though the show offers a fictional back story for these veteran Cuban musicians who shot to global fame after recording the album, the thrill here is the music, exuberant and expansive, which fills in the beats of Cuba’s history, both in sorrow and in revelry.From Elisabeth Vincentelli’s review:The spirit of the musical “Buena Vista Social Club” is evident in its opening scene. … The music is center stage, and we immediately understand its power as a communal experience that binds people. Therein lies the production’s greatest achievement. For a place where music so often plays a crucial role, Broadway hardly ever highlights the thrill of music making itself.At the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. Read the full review.A ferocious Paul Mescal in a Tennessee Williams classic.Downhill with no brakes: Patsy Ferran as Blanche and Paul Mescal as Stanley in “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘A Streetcar Named Desire’Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran dance with violence and desire as Stanley and Blanche in Rebecca Frecknall’s gritty revival of Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In the absence of beauty, brutality pervades in Frecknall’s darker production, which features a utilitarian set and exhilarating performances that ratchet up the fury. From Jesse Green’s review:Mescal is best known and deservedly praised for excruciatingly sensitive portrayals of hurting hunks who can barely acknowledge their pain. (I can’t speak for “Gladiator II,” but he is superb in “Normal People,” “Aftersun” and “All of Us Strangers.”) It was therefore not immediately evident that he could do justice to a character, first played by Marlon Brando, that Arthur Miller described as a “sexual terrorist.” I am sorry to report that he can.Through April 6 at the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music. Read the full review.Critic’s PickThe vicious nature of the truth.Andrew Barth Feldman (on the floor) with Joanna Gleason in “We Had a World.”Jeremy Daniel 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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    ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3, Episode 7 Recap: ‘Barbecue’

    Our new arrivals smell something sizzling in the woods. Here comes a meal with all the fixin’s.Season 3, Episode 7: ‘Croak’R.I.P. Edwin. We hardly knew you.The timid herpetologist (Nelson Franklin) who finds the Yellowjackets dancing by the fire in their cannibalistic ritual meets a quick end this week.Almost immediately after his cheery greeting — followed by his revulsion upon discovering Ben’s decapitated noggin — Lottie creeps up behind him and whacks him in the back of the head with a hatchet. That’s what the Wilderness wants, she declares. All the other Yellowjackets are rightfully upset. Finally, they have contact with the outside world, and she immediately goes and murders someone? What gives?But Edwin wasn’t the only visitor to the Yellowjackets camp. He arrived with two other souls who end up in the Yellowjackets’ custody: His girlfriend and fellow scientist, Hannah (Ashley Sutton), and their guide, the mysterious loner Kodiak (Joel McHale, even more sardonic and surly than usual). If the end of Episode 6 was a thrilling tease, Episode 7 is the confirmation that “Yellowjackets” is moving its plot forward both in the past and the present.All of that revolves around the arrival of these new figures, whom we’re introduced to in a prologue of sorts that begins three days before they meet our deranged soccer team. Edwin and Hannah are deep in the woods studying the mating habits of “Arctic banshee frogs.” The hilariously-named Kodiak is their guide.Hannah is intrigued and somewhat aroused by Kodiak. Edwin is deeply suspicious of him. One night, after smelling what he thinks is “barbecue,” Edwin goes wandering off looking for other souls in this forest. He finds the Yellowjackets.He instantly dies thanks to Lottie. Kodiak shoots Melissa with one of his arrows and he and Hannah start running, pursued by our girls and Travis with torches. Their hunt for Kodiak and Hannah has a double purpose. On one hand, they can’t leave any witnesses behind; on the other, they need people to get back to civilization.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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    ‘Operation Mincemeat’ Review: The Stiff Who Saved Europe

    A proudly silly British musical comedy about the “Trojan corpse” of World War II comes to Broadway.In 1943, in wartime England, a homeless person dies in the street after ingesting rat poison. Given a fake postmortem identity by British counterintelligence officers — no effort to find his family is made — he is dressed in a military uniform, sealed in a cooler, then ejected from a submarine near the coast of Spain. The papers planted on his corpse eventually make their way to Hitler, convincing him that the Allies will begin their invasion of Europe in Sardinia, when in fact they plan to do so in Sicily. As a result, Axis troops are diverted to the wrong Italian island.In short, Operation Mincemeat, as this real World War II operation was called, works.But is it funny?Whether “Operation Mincemeat,” the diverting if irksome musical comedy about the plan, works as well will depend a lot on your answer to that question. A hit in London, it has come to Broadway, where it opened on Thursday at the Golden Theater, having paid close attention to differences in accent, dialect and usage between British and American audiences. (Public school there is private school here.) But neither the authors, a collective called SpitLip, nor the director, Robert Hastie, appear to have given sufficient thought to our different senses of humor.Theirs you will recognize. It combines Oxbridge snootiness with panto ribaldry to create a self-canceling middlebrow snark. You may detect in the show’s DNA elements of Monty Python, Benny Hill, “The Play That Goes Wrong” and the Hitchcock stage spoof “The 39 Steps.” But if those influences have made you laugh, even as much as they have made me, you may still experience diminishing returns in the nonstop tickling of “Operation Mincemeat.” The Pythons kept their satire sharp and their sketches quick.Not so here. At more than two-and-a-half hours, the show is hardly svelte. Nor, with its aim so scattershot, is it clear what it is satirizing.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