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    Review: In ‘Breaking the Story,’ All’s Unfair in Love and War

    Maggie Siff plays a war journalist facing the most dangerous assignment of her life: domesticity.“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired.” So Chekhov instructed playwrights, and so they are taught in drama schools everywhere.But perhaps there should be a corollary: If you start your action with a bang, a gun had better follow.In Alexis Scheer’s “Breaking the Story,” which opened on Tuesday at Second Stage Theater, the initial bang is an earsplitting doozy: an explosion that throws a war journalist and her videographer to the ground. Nor is it the first life-threatening attack that the journalist has experienced. We quickly learn that in her 20 years on the front lines, Marina (Maggie Siff) has been knocked down, knocked out, cut up and resewn many times over. A scar runs up the right side of her face like a cherry gummy worm.Arresting and alarming though that is, it sets up an impossible comparison with the rest of the play, which, despite the director Jo Bonney’s efforts, is woefully light on dramatic ammunition. A rom-com is no match for a war.That’s not just the play’s problem, but also Marina’s. The slim thread of story concerns her attempted retirement from conflict journalism and sudden engagement to the videographer, Bear (Louis Ozawa). But on the weekend of the wedding, it turns out she isn’t so sure she wants (or can even survive) the safe, domestic life she has spent her career avoiding. Danger was not merely a risk she took in choosing to be a war correspondent but the reason for the choice in the first place.Thrill-seeking disguised as high-mindedness might be an interesting idea to explore, and indeed Donald Margulies’s “Time Stands Still,” about a war journalist likewise returning to regular life, explored it movingly in 2010. But Scheer’s framing, in which a flock of comic and undermining kibitzers descends for the wedding on Marina’s new estate in Wellesley, Mass., is too lightweight to support much content. For most of the play they treat Marina’s war-lust as an endearing character trait, already factored into their love for her.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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    ‘House of the Dragon’ Cast Celebrates Its Season 2 Premiere

    At the Season 2 premiere of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” prequel, the cast mingled over cocktails as early clips from the series suggested that “war is coming.”Where does the story pick up this season on HBO’s fantasy epic “House of the Dragon”?“So,” the actor Tom Glynn-Carney told a reporter on Monday night at the Season 2 premiere at Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom, everything “hits the fan.”His character in the “Game of Thrones” prequel, the newly crowned King Aegon II Targaryen, holds a grip on the throne that is tenuous at best. His brother has just killed their nephew in what could best be described as death by dragon chomp. And his sister Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen is on the brink of going nuclear — as Targaryens tend to do — likely with more dragon chomping.Even as Mr. Glynn-Carney, Matt Smith and other “Dragon” actors laid out the violence in store for the new season — which returns June 16 — the show’s impending civil war stood in stark contrast to the evening’s cocktails and joviality, with not a single silvery wig in sight.“I think nothing is black and white with Daemon Targaryen,” Matt Smith said of his character.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesEmma D’Arcy, who plays Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, in Celine.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesGayle Rankin plays Alys Rivers in “House of the Dragon.”Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesMatthew Needham, who plays Larys Strong.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesSome actors have struggled to recognize each other without them, said Phia Saban, whose character, Queen Helaena Targaryen, plays a critical role in an early episode. (There were 114 wigs used this season, HBO’s chief executive Casey Bloys said at the premiere, and — back to the dragon chomping — 33 gallons of fake blood.)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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    Alec and Hilaria Baldwin and Their 7 Children Get a Reality TV Series

    “We’re inviting you into our home,” the actor, who is set to stand trial next month on an involuntary manslaughter charge, said as he announced a show about his family on TLC.Speaking with Alec Baldwin on his podcast last year, the talk show host Kelly Ripa made a pitch for him and his wife: “When I think about you and Hilaria and your seven young kids — now, I know what you’re going to say, but just go with me — this has reality TV written all over it,” she said.He didn’t dismiss the idea. In fact, he said the couple had already received pitches, and made one or two themselves.And on Tuesday, Baldwin, who is scheduled to stand trial next month on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust,” announced that a reality show featuring the couple and their “seven growing kids” would be coming next year to TLC. Its working title is “The Baldwins.”“We’re inviting you into our home to experience the ups and downs, the good, the bad, the wild and the crazy,” Alec Baldwin said in a video announcement with Hilaria that he posted to Instagram on Tuesday, interspersed with footage from inside their busy home.The announcement of the new show comes at a delicate time for Baldwin, 66, as he prepares to go on trial in New Mexico in the “Rust” shooting. Baldwin, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, has denied responsibility for the death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, who was killed when a gun that he was rehearsing with, which was not supposed to be loaded with live ammunition, fired a real bullet that struck her. Baldwin’s lawyers are continuing to seek the case’s dismissal, placing blame for the tragedy on the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was convicted in March of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison.Lawyers for Baldwin, who had a starring role in the western, have written in court papers that the tragedy has made it difficult for the actor to get work.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 Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in June

    The final season of “Sweet Tooth” and a Richard Linklater rom-com highlight this month’s slate.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of June’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Sweet Tooth’ Season 3Starts streaming: June 6Based on the writer-artist Jeff Lemire’s acclaimed comic book series, this fantastical drama has for the past two seasons followed a plucky human-animal hybrid named Gus (Christian Convery) as he has journeyed through a postapocalyptic America with the burly nomad Tommy Jepperd (Nonso Anozie), making new friends and enemies. Following Lemire’s plot (with some variations), the “Sweet Tooth” writer-producer Jim Mickle has repeatedly raised the stakes for Gus, Jepperd and all the mutant children and helpful humans they’ve picked up along the way. Season 3 will wrap up their story, as our heroes seek a safe haven from all the world’s violent, pitiless ravagers while also looking for the root cause of the devastating plague and mass mutation event that upended the social order.‘Hit Man’Starts streaming: June 7Glen Powell co-wrote and stars in this shaggy romantic comedy, based loosely on a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth. Powell plays Gary Johnson, a New Orleans college professor who moonlights with the local police department as an undercover operative, posing as a killer-for-hire in order to catch the kind of people who would hire a hit man. When he falls for Madison (Adria Arjona), one of his would-be clients, Gary risks crossing over to the other side of the law. The “Hit Man” co-writer and director Richard Linklater is known for the laid-back vibes of his movies like “Bernie” (also based on a Hollandsworth article) and “Dazed and Confused.” Though the plot here takes some classic film noir turns, Linklater and Powell are just as interested in hanging out with Gary and Madison, watching closely as their passion for each other leads to some questionable decisions.‘Bridgerton’ Season 3, Part 2Starts streaming: June 13Each “Bridgerton” season so far has adapted a different Julia Quinn novel, each telling a story focused primarily on the romantic ups and downs of one member of a Regency-era London family. Season 3 — which debuted its first four episodes in May and is debuting its final four in June — is no exception, covering the love life of Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton), as recounted originally in Quinn’s book “Romancing Mister Bridgerton.” But the season’s true main character thus far has been the woman Colin is slowly circling: Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan), an often overlooked spinster who throughout the series has secretly been the scandal-mongering gossip columnist Lady Whistledown. The season’s second half will resolve this complicated love story, while also potentially setting up Season 4 via a subplot about the brainy, witty, romance-averse Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie).‘A Family Affair’Starts streaming: June 28Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman play unlikely lovers in this romantic comedy, written by Carrie Solomon and directed by the rom-com vet Richard LaGravenese (the screenwriter of “The Fisher King” and “Water for Elephants”). Efron is Chris Cole, a middle-aged action movie superstar feeling increasingly cut off from the real world. Kidman is Brooke Harwood, an older writer who feels an immediate and thrilling connection with Chris from the first time they meet. The complication? Brooke’s daughter Zara is Chris’s frazzled personal assistant, who was on the verge of quitting before her mom and her boss hooked up. These three people are under a lot of pressure in their personal and professional lives, and “A Family Affair” is about how they have to learn to be honest with each other about what they really want.‘The Mole’ Season 2Starts streaming: June 28Though it is technically the seventh season (counting the five that ran on ABC in the early 2000s), the latest edition of the reality competition “The Mole” is the second since the American version of the show moved to Netflix in 2022. Based on a Belgian series that has been copied around the world, “The Mole” has a dozen strangers working together to win money by solving puzzles and performing feats of physical strength — all while one member of their party is covertly trying to sabotage them. The new season is set in Malaysia and hosted by Ari Shapiro, who also administers a quiz at the end of every challenge and sends one underperforming player home. As always, a big part of the show’s appeal is that the audience can play along at home, trying to guess the identity of the Mole before the final episode.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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    Jez Butterworth’s ‘The Hills of California’ to Open on Broadway

    The play, about a group of English sisters who reunite at their mother’s deathbed, plans to open in New York in September. It ends a London run this month.“The Hills of California,” the latest darkly comedic drama from the acclaimed English playwright Jez Butterworth, will transfer to Broadway this fall after a well-received five-month run in London.The play, directed by Sam Mendes, is about a group of singing sisters — well, they sang together as kids — who have gathered at their childhood home in northwestern England because their mother is dying of cancer. The play is set in the 1970s, with flashbacks to the 1950s.The British press gave generally high marks to the play, which garnered five-star reviews in The Financial Times and The Stage, and four-star reviews in The Telegraph, The Evening Standard, The Observer and TimeOut.The London production is scheduled to end its run June 15. The New York production is to begin previews Sept. 11 and to open Sept. 29 at the Broadhurst Theater. Casting has not yet been announced.Butterworth’s last Broadway venture, “The Ferryman,” was also directed by Mendes, and won the Tony Award for best play in 2019. His first play on Broadway, “Jerusalem” in 2011, is a favorite among theater critics. He also wrote “The River,” which opened on Broadway in 2014.Mendes has worked frequently on Broadway, and won Tony Awards for directing “The Ferryman” and “The Lehman Trilogy.” He is also a film director, and won an Oscar for directing “American Beauty.”The lead producers of the Broadway run of “The Hills of California” include Sonia Friedman, a prolific and enormously successful British producer who also led the producing teams for Butterworth’s three previous plays on Broadway. The play’s other lead producers will be No Guarantees, which is led by Christine Schwarzman; Neal Street Productions, which is Mendes’s production company; Brian Spector; and Sand & Snow Entertainment. More

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    ‘The Acolyte’ Review: ‘Star Wars’ an Even Longer Time Ago

    The franchise’s latest series on Disney+ is set before there was even an empire to strike back.“The Acolyte,” the latest product off the Lucasfilm assembly line (it premieres Tuesday night on Disney+), enters territory unfamiliar to the casual follower of “Star Wars.” It is set during a prehistorical period known as the High Republic, until now depicted primarily in short stories, novels and comic books read only by serious fans. (The High Republic stories are to George Lucas’s central works somewhat as “The Silmarillion” is to “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”)Moving a “Star Wars” story out of the main time stream — no Empire, no R2-D2, a century before Luke Skywalker — has not liberated it from the franchise’s oldest conventions and clichés, however. “The Acolyte” tweaks the formulas here and there, but, to a greater degree than other Disney+ shows like “The Mandalorian” and “Andor,” it falls back on signature moves: the electronic whoosh of the light saber; the outstretched hand summoning the Force; lovable droids and fuzzy holograms; dark masters and chosen children.Created by a newcomer to the franchise, the writer and director Leslye Headland (“Russian Doll”), the show is focused on twin sisters in their mid-20s, Osha and Mae, both played by Amandla Stenberg. They share a tragedy in their childhoods that has left them with very different feelings about the Jedi knights, who in the High Republic time frame are comfortably ascendant across the galaxy, before their later tribulations in the “Star Wars” films.That critical moment, revealed in the season’s first half (four of eight episodes were available for review), involves one of Headland’s more noticeable creations: a coven of witches who tap into the Force with a holistic, communitarian ethos. (They feel borrowed from an early episode of “Star Trek,” with a swerve into unintentionally hilarious musical theater when they perform one of their ceremonies.) The nature-principle witches and the power-principle Jedi converge, spawning a vendetta plot centered on the grown twins that allows for plenty of planet hopping action. The fights are copious, and in another new twist for “Star Wars,” many of them take the form of balletic martial arts face-offs.But the storytelling force is not strong. Putting more female characters, and a stronger female point of view (even if it is sometimes redolent of 1960s earth mother), into an otherwise traditional “Star Wars” framework is worth the attempt. “The Acolyte” doesn’t bring enough energy or invention to the task, though.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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    Public Theater Takes Shakespeare in the Park Out on the Town

    The Delacorte Theater is being renovated, so a musical version of “The Comedy of Errors” is touring some of the city’s outdoor spaces.On a small stage, three actors practiced a sword fight — slowly, then faster. Behind them board operators ran a sound check and a wardrobe assistant shook out costumes.“This is the part of theater you never get to see,” Rebecca Martínez said.Martínez was speaking on Saturday in the southeast corner of Bryant Park. Behind her, the cast and crew of the Public Theater’s bilingual musical version of “The Comedy of Errors,” performed in Spanish and English, accomplished their preshow rituals. Martínez, who adapted the production with Julián Mesri, is also the show’s director and choreographer. Typically, routines like these are performed backstage, out of sight. But at Bryant Park, amid the birders, the tourists and the library patrons, a backstage was not available.With the Delacorte Theater closed for renovations, the Public is taking its summer production of “The Comedy of Errors” to parks and other outdoor sites in the city.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesFor over 60 years, the Public Theater has offered summer Shakespeare in one place: Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. This year, the Delacorte is closed for renovations (it plans to reopen next summer, with “Twelfth Night”), so the Public has taken this free show to the streets, parks and plazas of the city’s five boroughs.This “Comedy of Errors” was seen last year, as a production of the Public’s Mobile Unit, which brings high-energy, low-tech versions of Shakespeare to venues like libraries, correctional facilities and community centers. The Unit travels light, with a rug in place of a set, which allows a simple set up and strike.“Like, boom! Rug! Let’s go!” Martínez said.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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    Vanderpump’s New Sandwich Shop Is One of Los Angeles’ Anticipated Openings

    The most hotly anticipated opening in the city this year might be a sandwich shop from two Bravo stars.The fans control everything in the “Vanderpump Rules” multiverse, and lately what the fans want are crisp, pressed turkey sandwiches and prebiotic sodas under the soft glow of shabby-chic chandeliers in West Hollywood.Something About Her, a new sandwich shop from the Bravo stars Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney, is a two-hour drive from Kim Mykitta’s home in Huntington Beach, so she took the day off from work as a social media manager and copywriter to turn up on its first day of business.Arriving an hour before the shop opened, Ms. Mykitta settled in as the 15th person in a line that grew steadily throughout the day, snaking down the block. And it wasn’t just a line, but a cultural phenomenon, tourist destination and social event covered in detailed play-by-plays in news stories, blog posts, podcast episodes and social media reels.Katie Maloney and Ariana Madix are fan favorites who opened their new sandwich shop in May.Dylan RileyMs. Mykitta runs Bravo Breaking News, an Instagram fan account that’s part of a complex cottage industry built around Bravo’s cultish reality shows and their stars. “We are die-hard and we are dedicated,” said Ms. Mykitta, who had been reporting on the ups and downs of the opening for about two years.It might seem hard to square the devotion of these crowds with a restaurant industry in crisis. The Los Angeles Times called 2023 “the year that killed L.A. restaurants.” The article mentioned, among the dozens and dozens of notable departed, the closing of Jean-Georges Beverly Hills and three spots from the acclaimed restaurateur Nancy Silverton.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