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    ‘Eurydice’ Review: Maya Hawke in the Underworld

    The actress stars in Sarah Ruhl’s reimagining of this classic myth, with a focus on a daughter’s reunion with her beloved father after death.The young couple on the beach are coltishly enamored — snuggled up close, their long limbs entangled. When he ties a string around her left ring finger, to remind her of his love, she squeak-squeals with pleasure and agrees to marry him.She is Eurydice and he is Orpheus, legendary musician nonpareil, and the handed-down myth about them says their union will be short. She will die abruptly, he will be bereft, and it will not go well when he descends into the underworld and tries to lead her back to the land of the living.Their relationship does figure in “Eurydice,” Sarah Ruhl’s tear-dappled masterwork, yet the play’s primary grief is Eurydice’s own — for her dead father, a gaping, missing presence on the day she and Orpheus wed. In this poetic, heightened comedy of mourning and oblivion, the surest, most steadying love is between parent and grown child.Les Waters’s marvelously burnished revival, which opened on Monday night at Signature Theater, stars an instantly likable Maya Hawke as a self-possessed Eurydice, cerebral but with a romantic streak, and a beautifully understated Brian d’Arcy James as her mild father, funny here in a dadly way and immensely moving, too. Caleb Eberhardt plays Orpheus, gentle and determined, pouring his misery into music and writing to his dead wife.“I’ll give this letter to a worm,” he tells her, signing off. “I hope he finds you.”Waters’s breathtaking 2006 staging of “Eurydice” was my introduction to Ruhl’s slender play, which she and the composer Matthew Aucoin have more recently adapted into an opera. This Off Broadway revival is similar to that earlier Waters production, yet even more eloquent in execution — the work of a director who by now knows the play’s every ripple and depth.Crucially, he has brought along two members of the crack creative team from that production: Scott Bradley, whose glamorous, slant-walled set is all watery blues and greens, part painted tiles, part forlorn grid of handwritten letters; and Bray Poor, whose often delicately musical sound design evokes the near-omnipresence of water in this very liquid play.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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    Jonathan Joss, ‘King of the Hill’ Voice Actor, Is Fatally Shot by Neighbor, Police Say

    A neighbor in San Antonio who opened fire on the actor during a dispute was charged with murder, the authorities said. Mr. Joss also appeared in “Parks and Recreation.”Jonathan Joss, the actor best known for his voice work on the animated television show “King of the Hill,” was shot and killed by a neighbor on Sunday night during a dispute in San Antonio, the authorities said.Mr. Joss, who was 59, voiced John Redcorn on “King of the Hill” and also appeared in “Parks and Recreation,” “Ray Donovan” and “Tulsa King.”The neighbor, who was identified by investigators as Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez, 56, was taken into custody shortly after the altercation and charged with murder, the San Antonio Police Department said on Monday.The police did not say what had led to the dispute, which happened around 7 p.m. on the south side of San Antonio.But in a post on Mr. Joss’s Facebook page on Monday, his husband, Tristan Kern de Gonzales, described the shooting as a hate crime and said that the two of them had been repeatedly harassed because they were gay. He wrote that they had returned to a property where Mr. Joss’s home had burned down earlier this year when the shooting occurred. “He started yelling violent homophobic slurs at us,” he wrote in a statement. “He then raised a gun from his lap and fired.”Mr. Kern de Gonzales said that he and Mr. Joss had reported the harassment several times in the past to the authorities, but that it had continued.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 Island USA,’ Plus 7 Things to Watch on TV this Week

    This reality competition show picks back up for its seventh season, and the Tony Awards celebrate Broadway on Sunday.Between streaming and cable, there is a seemingly endless variety of things to watch. Here is a selection of TV shows and specials that are airing or streaming this week, June 2-8. Details and times are subject to change.From yachts to villas.“Below Deck Down Under” just wrapped, and luckily for those of us who can’t get enough of life and drama at sea, the new season of “Below Deck” is setting sail with Capt. Kerry Titheradge at the helm this week. Fraser Olender is also back as chief stew on the show that follows the crew of a luxury charter yacht. In a preview released by Bravo, we already saw a crew member calling the maritime police and, well, everyone making out with everyone. Monday at 8 p.m. on Bravo.Toooonight (said in Iain Stirling’s voice): “Love Island USA” is back for its seventh season. Though there may be some flawed logic in sending a group of hotties to a remote island villa in an attempt to form long-lasting relationships, it does make for ridiculously fun TV. New episodes arrive every day of the week except Wednesdays, with Ariana Madix back as the host. Things are sure to be messy. Streaming starting on Tuesday at 9 p.m. on Peacock.Warning: If you watched the original seasons of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” this new show might make you feel a little old. Teresa Giudice’s daughter, Gia, who was 8 years old when she first appeared on that series, will be in “Next Gen NYC,” alongside adult children of other “Real Housewives” franchise stars, with some New York City influencers mixed in. As the cast members of other Bravo shows like “Summer House” and “Vanderpump Rules” age out of their hard-core partying days, maybe this new cast will fill those roles. Tuesday at 9 p.m. on Bravo.A big week for theater.From Tom Francis’s “Sunset Boulevard” walk to Cole Escola’s Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!” and Audra McDonald’s return to the stage in “Gypsy,” there has been a lot of theater to celebrate this season. And that is exactly what will happen at the Tony Awards. Alongside the usual performances from this year’s biggest shows, it was announced last week that original “Hamilton” cast will reunite for a performance during the broadcast. The New York Times theater critic Jesse Green saw all of the 42 eligible Broadway productions and ran through his predictions for the show. Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBS.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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    This ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Star Knows She’s Intimidating

    As she exits the stage door of “Buena Vista Social Club,” the Broadway actress Natalie Venetia Belcon can see it in their eyes. The waiting fans thrust Playbills and pens into the hands of her co-stars, but when Belcon comes down the line, she senses their shyness, their wariness.“They’re afraid,” she said. “It’s so weird. I’m like, ‘You guys, I’m pretending!’”Onstage, Belcon, 56, plays the middle-aged version of Omara Portuondo, the famed Cuban singer known as “the queen of feeling.” (Isa Antonetti portrays the teen version.) Belcon’s Omara is stately, imperious. “You’re not the kind of woman one forgets,” a bandmate in the show tells her. She can dismiss a person with a tilt of the head, a wave of the hand. The role has earned Belcon a Tony nomination, her first, for best performance by a featured actress in a musical.Natalie Venetia Belcon as Omara, with members of the onstage band, in “Buena Vista Social Club” at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBelcon is, she insists, not Omara, but some of this same majesty was evident even over a casual afternoon snack of calamari and plantains at Cuba, a restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village neighborhood. The waiter seemed honored to shake up a mojito for her. Belcon, dressed like some expensive, resplendent bird in a blue-and-yellow skirt and matching jewelry, looked regal as she sipped it.Then she pointed to the stalk of sugar cane in the glass. “Oh, I love sugar cane!” she said delightedly. “I grew up chewing on it. Then you catch yourself in the mirror, like, ‘That doesn’t look sexy!’”Belcon insists that in her downtime, offstage, away from journalists, she is an everyday sort of woman who prefers oversize T-shirts and yoga pants. She loves to put on her bunny slippers and watch the UFC.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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    Patti LuPone Apologizes for Comments About Audra McDonald and Kecia Lewis

    LuPone said she was “deeply sorry for the words” she used in her criticism of Kecia Lewis and Audra McDonald when asked about a dispute over Broadway noise levels.Patti LuPone, a three-time Tony-winning actress, has for years been known, and generally celebrated, as one of the most outspoken performers on Broadway. Her reprimands of poorly behaved audience members have made her a folk hero of sorts in the theater business, and her grudges and grievances have had a certain real-talk charm.But this week she crossed a line for many in the theater community with her criticism of two fellow Tony-winning performers in an interview with The New Yorker.LuPone responded sharply when asked about responses to her concern that noise from the Alicia Keys jukebox musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” was bleeding into the theater where LuPone was performing in a two-woman play, “The Roommate.”The criticism — LuPone referred to Kecia Lewis, who plays a piano teacher in “Hell’s Kitchen,” with the word “bitch” and described Audra McDonald, Broadway’s most-honored performer, as “not a friend” — prompted a backlash from many of LuPone’s colleagues, and on Saturday she issued a 163-word statement responding to the furor.“I am deeply sorry for the words I used during The New Yorker interview, particularly about Kecia Lewis, which were demeaning and disrespectful,” she wrote in a statement posted on Instagram and Facebook. “I regret my flippant and emotional responses during this interview, which were inappropriate, and I am devastated that my behavior has offended others and has run counter to what we hold dear in this community. I hope to have the chance to speak to Audra and Kecia personally to offer my sincere apologies.”LuPone’s offending comments came while discussing an incident last year when she had become concerned about distracting noise levels inside the theater, the Booth, where she was performing. (This is a frequent phenomenon on Broadway, where noise from the streets, and sometimes from adjoining theaters, can be audible.)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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    Cory Michael Smith Burns Through ‘Mountainhead,’ by the Creator of ‘Succession’

    Cory Michael Smith was disappointed. “I’m a big fan of pepperoni with a little more constitution,” he said, looking down at the slice of pizza on his plate. “These are tired. They’re tired cups.”This was the day after the premiere party for “Mountainhead,” the Jesse Armstrong movie that premieres Saturday on HBO. A Vantablack comedy of wealth, power and moral negligence, it evokes Armstrong’s earlier fable of the megarich, “Succession,” but is more explicitly attuned to current anxieties about Silicon Valley oligarchs.Smith stars as a social media mogul named Venis (rhymes with menace), a pampered edgelord holed up in a cartoonishly swank chalet (the Mountainhead of the title) with other tech machers, played by Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman and Ramy Youssef. Venis’s content creation tools have destabilized much of the global South, but he remains mostly unbothered.“Nothing means anything, and everything is funny and cool,” he tells his fellow founders, as they swipe past scenes of chaos.In person, Smith, 38, was not quite so nihilistic, though he had dressed the part, a man in black on black on black — pants, coat, shirt, tie, shoes. Offscreen, Smith is abidingly polite, with a wide smile that narrows his eyes to slits.He lives in the West Village, though increasingly work keeps him away. He had flown in for the premiere and soon he would fly out again, to Alaska where he is shooting a film that he was forbidden to discuss. Smith (“Gotham,” “Carol,” “May December”) is suddenly so in demand that he had to miss Cannes, at which “Sentimental Value,” a movie in which he co-stars, was awarded the Grand Prix.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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    5 Animated Political Satire Series to Stream

    From Ramy Youssef’s latest to a long-running series from Seth MacFarlane, these shows tackle the hot topics of their time.The state of American politics can feel so exaggerated and far-fetched that one of the best ways to represent it is through a medium made for such absurdity. Animated satirical series can depict our country’s political figures and moments at their most bizarre, sometimes taking aim at a particular party or politician, and sometimes lambasting the general idea of America as a fair, free and democratic nation. What follows is a guide to animated satires of American politics and politicians from the first Bush administration to the Biden administration.#1 Happy Family USA (2025- )This new series, created by the comedian Ramy Youssef and the writer Pam Brady, depicts a Muslim Egyptian American family in New Jersey who must learn to properly code-switch and project the image of a nonthreatening, properly assimilated family in order to carry on in the midst of the prejudice and jingoism of post-9/11 America.Much of the series focuses on the exploits and misadventures of Rumi (voiced by Youssef), who tries to find his place among his middle school peers. But beyond the more standard adolescent story lines, “#1 Happy Family USA” hilariously skewers the likes of Fox News and George W. Bush, and also offers a stringent critique of how American beliefs and values shifted at the expense of many Muslim citizens and people of color after 9/11.Streaming on Amazon Prime.American Dad! (2005- )The series creator Seth MacFarlane (who also created “Family Guy”) has said that “American Dad!” was inspired by his frustration with the 2000 presidential election and the Bush administration. The sitcom stars the Smith family, the patriarch of which, Stan, is a jingoistic far-right Republican who works for the C.I.A. Conservative politics take many of the satire’s hits, but characters like Stan’s hippie daughter and her boyfriend then husband represent leftist targets that get mocked regularly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    In ‘Dead Outlaw,’ Andrew Durand Has the Role of a Lifetime. And After.

    An hour before a Wednesday evening show, the actor Andrew Durand clambered up to a platform on the stage of the Longacre Theater and began doing jumping jacks. “When I walk onstage I never want to feel like I walked in off the street,” he said between jumps. “I want some sort of elevation physically.”Durand, 39, a Broadway regular, is a first-time Tony nominee this year for his role in “Dead Outlaw,” a new musical that tells the improbable true story of Elmer McCurdy, a bandit fatally shot by a sheriff’s posse in 1911. Because his preserved corpse went unclaimed, McCurdy spent the following decades as a sideshow attraction and an occasional movie extra before ending up as a prop in an amusement-park ride.McCurdy’s unusual life and afterlife mean that Durand spends the first 40 minutes of the show leaping on and off tables, climbing up and down ladders, and hanging upside down. He spends the next 40 minutes standing still, barely breathing when the lights are on him. Before each performance, he puts himself through a 30-minute workout to prepare for all that motion, all that stillness.Andrew Durand plays the motionless corpse of Elmer McCurdy for most of the second half of “Dead Outlaw.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I have all this crazy stuff to do in the show,” he said. “I don’t want my body to go into shock.”Durand, who has wavy brown hair, a wide forehead and the jawline of a cartoon superhero, grew up in a churchgoing family in a suburb of Atlanta. He saw his first play at 10, at the local community theater. He returned to act, to paint sets, to sell concession stand popcorn. He loved the openness, the silliness and the reverence he felt there. Eventually he recruited his whole family for the annual production of “A Christmas Carol.” An arts high school followed, then a theater conservatory, and not long after he graduated Durand was on Broadway in 2008, as a replacement cast member in “Spring Awakening.”During that show, Durand didn’t pay much attention to workouts or warm-ups. “I think I had some injuries that I didn’t notice or deal with,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I tore a rotator cuff doing some choreography, but we were kids. We were just partying after the show, hanging out, sleeping in.”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