Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Theater

    All in the Details: Tony-Nominated Set Designers on Getting It Right

    What are all those buttons for?That’s one of the many questions David Zinn is frequently asked about the sound console that spans nearly the length of the set he designed for “Stereophonic,” David Adjmi’s backstage drama about a band’s discordant recording sessions in the 1970s.“I think that,” he said, laughing. “What are all those buttons?”A music studio, a Harlem hair salon, a church sanctuary: These were a few of the worlds that Broadway audiences were whisked away to this season courtesy of the Tony Award nominees for best scenic design of a play. Zinn received two nominations, for “Stereophonic” and “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.” Derek McLane was nominated for the revival of “Purlie Victorious.”In its second year working on Broadway, the design collective dots (Santiago Orjuela-Laverde, Andrew Moerdyk and Kimie Nishikawa) was nominated twice, for “Appropriate” and “An Enemy of the People.”Ahead of the Tony Awards on Sunday, the nominees talked about the inspirations and challenges of playmaking with make believe.‘Appropriate’The design collective dots aimed to create a “realistic feeling” of a plantation house in “Appropriate.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt’s a cliché to say a house is a character in a play. But that is eerily the case in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s dark comedy about the racist legacies of a white family and a grand plantation home that feels alive and haunted. Lived in too, but by a dark spirit with the power to make sure a photo album of lynching victims finds its way into the family’s hands.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

  • 100 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    Late Night Riffs on Hunter Biden’s Guilty Verdict

    “Wow, frankly, I’m shocked — we’re actually enforcing gun laws in America,” Jordan Klepper said on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”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.Check Out These GunsHunter Biden was convicted on three counts tied to a 2018 handgun purchase on Tuesday.On “The Daily Show,” Jordan Klepper referred to President Joe Biden’s son as “one of the most dangerous criminal masterminds in American history.”“He’s gotten away with being Joe Biden’s son for years, but today he faced Delaware justice.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Wow, frankly, I’m shocked — we’re actually enforcing gun laws in America.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“What has been wild is watching how eager Republicans have been to hold a gun owner accountable. Of course, it’s only because he’s Joe Biden’s son, but that’s an opportunity: All we need is for Joe Biden to adopt every single person in America, and we can finally have some responsible gun control in this country.” — JORDAN KLEPPERThe Punchiest Punchlines (Gun Show Edition)“Hunter Biden was found guilty today on all counts in his federal gun trial and now faces up to 25 years on ‘Hannity.’” — SETH MEYERS“Evidently, in America, there is a wrong way to buy a gun.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He was found guilty on all three counts. His father did a terrible job of rigging this.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Hunter was convicted on three felony gun charges, which means he’s now only 31 felonies away from being the Republican nominee for President.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump heard and was, like, ‘I’ve always said our legal system is fair and just.’” — JIMMY FALLON“What was Hunter guilty of — lying about being on drugs while buying a gun? I mean, when did that become a crime?” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJulia Louis-Dreyfus joined Seth Meyers for another installment of day drinking on Tuesday’s “Late Night.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe pop singer Tinashe will perform her hit single “Nasty” on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutThe Bluestockings Cooperative bookstore in New York City provides, among other free services, food to homeless people and English lessons to asylum seekers.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesFrom Los Angeles to Baltimore, bookstores with a social mission are finding success as collective-run community spaces after the pandemic. More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    ‘Presumed Innocent’ Review: Jake Gyllenhaal Steps In for Harrison Ford

    Jake Gyllenhaal steps in for Harrison Ford in a new, highly strung adaptation of Scott Turow’s legal thriller for Apple TV+.Scott Turow’s first novel, the 1987 best seller “Presumed Innocent,” is a clever murder mystery and courtroom drama with an 11th-hour twist. Before that denouement, it throws out red herrings to distract us, paralleling the strategy of its protagonist, Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor accused of killing the female colleague with whom he was having an affair. The 1990 film adaptation starring Harrison Ford necessarily condensed Turow’s plot but stayed true to its outlines and to the identity of the killer, a closely guarded secret through most of the story.It’s possible that the new “Presumed Innocent,” premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+ and starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Sabich, ends up at the same place, with the same killer. But after watching seven of its eight episodes, I didn’t really care. The claustrophobic atmosphere, the emphasis on psychology and trite family drama over well-made mystery and, especially, the crescendoing melodrama that makes a mockery of Turow’s courtroom credibility (even though he is credited as a co-executive producer) had done me in.The book is narrated in the first person by Sabich, and its most striking stylistic feature is his continual, detailed analyses of his professional and personal lives. Those passages are not there just for their own sake — Turow uses them to ground us in the milieus and the motivations of the courtroom and the prosecutors’ office. He cares about the inner life of Sabich, but he cares just as much about providing the framework for a page-turning mystery.Onscreen, the emphases have been different. Alan J. Pakula’s film was a chilly affair, elegantly assembled (with cinematography by the great Gordon Willis) but lacking the juice of a real thriller. It was more interested in the ethical and philosophical ramifications of Sabich’s situation, favoring judgment over action. (It was fun to watch once the case got into the courtroom, though, thanks to the performances of Raul Julia and Paul Winfield as defense lawyer and judge.)David E. Kelley, the veteran television writer who created the “Presumed Innocent” series, has the opposite temperament from Pakula — he’s all about the juice. He’s a master of taking material with a lurid or sensational edge and slickly packaging it for a mainstream TV audience. When he’s in his relaxed mode, on “The Lincoln Lawyer” for Netflix or the risibly pulpy “Big Sky” for ABC, the results can be entertaining, summoning distant memories of his days as chief writer on “L.A. Law.”When he takes things more seriously, though, he gets in trouble (though it doesn’t necessarily affect his success, as “Big Little Lies” demonstrated). Like Pakula, he makes “Presumed Innocent” more about Sabich than about the presumably less interesting question of whether Sabich is guilty of murder. But all he has to offer are tortured psychology and transgression, presented slickly and repetitively, with head-scratching surprises in place of new ideas. Meant to be provocative, it’s just wearying.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

  • 138 Shares149 Views

    in Theater

    On Broadway, ‘Suffs’ Has a New Tune (and 6 Tony Nominations)

    A reworked opening number, less historical bulk and a general push to “have fun with these women” helped a musical find its way.Two ambitious overhauls are on Broadway right now: the Palace Theater and the musical “Suffs.”When “Suffs,” a show about the suffragists’ crusade for the right to vote, staggered to its Public Theater premiere in April 2022, few people would have bet that it had much of a future. Yet here we are with “Suffs” on Broadway, where it received generally positive reviews and six Tony Awards nominations, two for Shaina Taub’s score and book.What happened? The director Leigh Silverman (who also received a Tony nomination) recalls struggling with supply-chain issues and having to cancel 18 performances, including opening night. “No theater maker, no artist of any kind I think anywhere was able to do their best work in any circumstance coming out of Covid,” she said.Silverman and Taub (who also portrays the suffragist Alice Paul) said they immediately began tinkering. “We were working on it before it was even closed,” Silverman said in a joint interview in Taub’s dressing room at the Music Box Theater. Taub, laughing, added: “Sometimes people are like, ‘Oh, you went back to the drawing board.’ But we never left the drawing board.”The original score has been whittled down from 38 songs to 34. But numbers are a poor indicator of the extensive renovation that took place in the past two years (some songs have the same title but different lyrics, for example). Here are five ways “Suffs” changed on its journey to Broadway.More book“The biggest substantive formal change has been book,” Taub said. While the show’s earlier version was essentially sung-through, the story was so dense with historical material that she realized she needed spoken scenes to “tee up” the songs, as she put it. Taub revisited some of her favorite book musicals, like “Ragtime” and “Into the Woods,” to study how they handled those passages. One of the most apparent changes in “Suffs” is the number “The Young Are at the Gates.” Taub described the first version, which previously closed Act I, as “a 12-minute sung-through odyssey”; now it opens Act II and incorporates brief book scenes. “I felt free, finally, of the confines of having to musicalize everything,” said Taub, who called book writers “the unsung heroes of the American musical.”From left, Ally Bonino, Nadia Dandashi, Kim Blanck and Taub in the musical on Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    Late Night Rips Trump’s First Meeting With Probation Officer

    “Things got off to a rough start when Trump offered the probation officer $130,000,” Jimmy Fallon joked.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.First ImpressionsOn Monday, former President Donald Trump met with his New York probation officer for the first time after his conviction last month.“Things got off to a rough start when Trump offered the probation officer $130,000,” Jimmy Fallon joked.“Unlike the vast majority of felons out there, Trump was allowed to do his interview at Mar-a-Lago over a video conference call. Must make the mandatory drug test kind of difficult — hard to get the pee right into the USB port.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Trump met with his probation officer over Zoom, which was great because Trump’s lawyer could hit mute whenever he started talking.” — JIMMY FALLON“Let’s make something clear: If a probation officer is basing their sentencing guidelines on remorse, mental state and character, and the recommendation is a day less than 1,000 years, Donald Trump is getting off easy. And if the probation officer meets with Trump and their takeaway is, ‘He seemed really sorry, supersharp and an all-around good person,’ that should be their last day at work.” — SETH MEYERS“The final probation report will remain sealed, but one thing probation folks usually ask convicts is about their employment. [imitating probation officer] ‘OK, Mr. Trump, it says here you got fired from your last job for being, uh, terrible at it and for — is this correct? This is right here — and for trying to kill a Mr. Mike Pence? Oh, but I see down here you are actually currently applying for a new job, which is the same job. OK. Have you thought about learning to code?’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Hot in Vegas Edition)“Former President Trump held an outdoor rally yesterday in Las Vegas, and temperatures exceeded 100 degrees. It was so bad, Trump began exhibiting symptoms of heat stroke 10 years ago.” — SETH MEYERS“It was, by his own report, 110 degrees, so, naturally, Trump held an outdoor rally at noon.” — STEPHEN COLBERTWe 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

  • 100 Shares129 Views

    in Theater

    How ‘The Outsiders’ Staged a Broadway Fight Club

    In a park, at night, as a train screams nearby, the teenagers punch, kick and grapple. They roll over and over, gravel sticking to their rain-soaked clothes, in a terrible embrace, beating one another bloody. “We didn’t want to romanticize it or sugarcoat it or make it easy,” the director Danya Taymor said of this scene in the Broadway musical “The Outsiders.” “It felt really important that these moments of violence be terrifying, be brutal.” More

  • 113 Shares99 Views

    in Theater

    ‘Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’’ Review: A Bittersweet Premiere

    An Arabic production of Wajdi Mouawad’s 1991 work, planned to open in Lebanon, was canceled because of his perceived ties to Israel. It found a home in France.What happens when the roots you long for keep eluding you? This question has long been central to the work of the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad, and never more so than in a new production of his 1991 work “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’.”Currently the director of Théâtre National de la Colline, a high-profile Parisian playhouse, Mouawad was born in Lebanon. In 1978, he fled the country’s civil war with his family, at the age of 10. As a writer, he has returned to his Lebanese heritage over and over — and this year, he went back to the country to stage his first production with local actors, an Arabic-language adaptation of “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’.”But in April, just weeks before the premiere, Le Monnot playhouse in Beirut was forced to cancel all performances of the play over Mouawad’s perceived ties to Israel, which Lebanon considers an enemy state. Several Lebanese lobbying groups had called for the show to be stopped, with one, the Commission of Detainees Affairs, filing a legal complaint with the country’s military courts and demanding Mouawad’s arrest.According to a report in the French newspaper Le Monde, Mouawad was accused of allowing the Israeli Embassy in France to pay for three plane tickets in 2017 to bring two Israeli actors and a translator to the country for his production “All Birds.” In another perceived transgression, last season Mouawad programmed a work by the Israeli artist Amos Gitai at the Théâtre National de la Colline.Mouawad quickly left Lebanon. In a public statement, the Beirut venue blamed “unacceptable pressure and serious threats made against Le Monnot as well as some artists and technicians.”It was an astonishing turn of events for a playwright who has always asserted his Lebanese identity, regardless of his childhood exile, and dissected it onstage. In the end, in lieu of Beirut, “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’” premiered over the weekend at the Printemps des Comédiens, a theater festival in Montpellier, France, ahead of an international tour (whose dates remain to be confirmed) with the cast that was scheduled to perform in Lebanon.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

  • 163 Shares119 Views

    in Theater

    A Cave Explorer Died 99 Years Ago. Now His Story Is Broadway Bound.

    “Floyd Collins,” a musical about a trapped spelunker and the media circus surrounding his failed rescue, had a brief Off Broadway run in 1996.In 1925, a spelunker named Floyd Collins got trapped in a Kentucky cave and the unsuccessful efforts to rescue him became a media sensation, with print and radio reporters breathlessly tracking the endeavor.Now a musical about the tragedy is heading to Broadway, three decades after it was first performed and a century after Collins’s death.Lincoln Center Theater, one of the four nonprofits with Broadway houses, said on Monday that it would stage a revival of “Floyd Collins” at its Vivian Beaumont Theater next spring, with previews beginning March 27 and an opening on April 21.The musical features a bluegrass score by Adam Guettel and a book, as well as additional lyrics, by Tina Landau, who will direct the production. No cast has been announced.The show debuted in Philadelphia in 1994, and then had a generally well-received Off Broadway production in 1996 at Playwrights Horizons; it won an Obie Award for music, has periodically been staged at theaters in the United States and Britain, and has fans thanks to an Off Broadway cast album.Guettel, a Tony winner for “The Light in the Piazza,” is experiencing a bit of a renaissance. He is a Tony nominee again this year, for “Days of Wine and Roses.” And next spring, in addition to “Floyd Collins,” his new musical “Millions,” adapted from the novel and film of the same name, will have an initial staging at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta.“Floyd Collins” will be one of two Broadway shows staged by Lincoln Center Theater this season, which is the final season of its longtime producing artistic director, André Bishop. The nonprofit previously announced that this fall it would stage a Broadway production of “McNeal,” a new play by Ayad Akhtar, starring Robert Downey Jr. as a novelist.The theater also announced on Monday that it would stage Off Broadway productions of “The Blood Quilt,” written by Katori Hall and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, and Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” revised by Mark O’Rowe and directed by Jack O’Brien.They join an already announced Off Off Broadway production of “Six Characters,” a new play by Phillip Howze, directed by Dustin Wills. As a fund-raiser in December, the theater is planning a one-night reunion concert of its Tony-winning 2008 revival of “South Pacific.” More