Eliana Willis

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    What if the Disabled Characters Were Just Going About Their Day?

    Madison Ferris and Danny J. Gomez star in the meet-cute “All of Me” — proof that depictions of disability onstage don’t have to be “a buzz kill,” as Ferris puts it.A bizarre thing happens when the actors Madison Ferris and Danny J. Gomez are out and about in public together, using mobility aids to get around: she a scooter, he a wheelchair. Inevitably, she said, strangers approach, presuming that the two are somehow in distress.“People will be like, ‘Are you OK? What’s going on?’” Ferris said the other afternoon at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan, where they are starring in the New Group’s Off Broadway production of Laura Winters’s romantic comedy, “All of Me.”And if several wheelchair users should roll down the street together, Gomez said, “then it’s like the circus is in town.” Such as the night a few friends of his from the Los Angeles dance team the Rollettes came to the play, and he and Ferris left with them afterward.“Everywhere we went,” he said, “just stares, left and right.”To Gomez, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a mountain-biking accident in 2016, that kind of othering underscores the need for theater, television and film to depict more disabled people, and do it more matter-of-factly.“Then it wouldn’t be so weird in real life,” he added. “It would just be people going about their day. Like, I don’t stare at you when you’re with your group of friends.”Not that “All of Me” is intended as pedagogical, but he does think it could help.In “All of Me,” Ferris and Gomez play characters who rely on electronic text-to-speech devices to talk. Kyra Sedgwick, left, plays Ferris’s mother.Richard Termine for 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

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    in Television

    How Some ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Tips Turned Into $50,000 in Prizes

    The Upshot’s guide helped a New Jersey man, who has some good tips of his own.Last December, the Upshot published a guide to Wheel of Fortune strategies, using data from more than 6,000 bonus-round puzzles. Our guide has influenced the behavior of at least one contestant. Scott Menke, a data analyst from New Jersey, won $52,690 in cash and prizes on an episode last month after creating a strategy based on our article, he said.Some of Mr. Menke’s preparation, and his calmness under pressure, is not easily replicable. It came from experience: He had been a semifinalist on the “Jeopardy!” college championship, won $20,000 on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” and banked $50,000 on “The $100,000 Pyramid.”When competing on “Wheel,” he said, he hardly had any nerves.But much of his preparation is a practical case study for future contestants. He went beyond our guide and came up with a good set of tips for blank words.Here’s Mr. Menke’s final bonus-round puzzle (with the letters R, S, T, L, N and E already given and B, G, H and O selected). Feel free to pause and consider possible solutions. Then read on to see how he prepared for the moment.Once Mr. Menke learned he was going to be on “Wheel of Fortune” in February, he had just 20 days before taping. To study for the main game, when he would be up against two other contestants, he downloaded old puzzles from the fan-created Wheel of Fortune Puzzle Compendium. But given the unpredictability of the main game, he decided that “95 percent” of his prep would be on the bonus round. He found our article on bonus-round strategy and began training. More

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    Book Review: ‘The Playbook,’ by James Shapiro

    In “The Playbook,” James Shapiro offers a resonant history of the Federal Theater Project, a Depression-era program that gave work to writers and actors until politics took center stage.THE PLAYBOOK: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War, by James ShapiroA week before Election Day 1936, when a landslide vote would keep Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House for a second term, the antifascist play “It Can’t Happen Here” opened nationwide: 21 productions in 18 cities, from Los Angeles to New York. Adapted from Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel of the same name, the show became a hit for the Federal Theater Project, a jobs-for-artists division of Roosevelt’s Depression-era Works Progress Administration.But it was a chaotic scramble to get the play onstage. Long before the advent of email or even fax machines, the show’s text was still evolving as opening night approached, the script changes mailed cross-country to the various companies. The Federal Theater, meanwhile, was so nervous about being perceived as partisan that it had prohibited the play and its publicity materials from directly mentioning fascism or real-world political figures. Posters in Detroit depicting a military man resembling Hitler were ordered, by telegram, to be destroyed. Ambitious, civic-minded and self-sabotaging, the whole enterprise moved fast, fast, fast. The Federal Theater, which lasted just four years, spent its brief life in that mode. Its final months were devoted to trying to fend off the wild accusations of a Communist-hunting congressman, who in headline-grabbing hearings smeared it baselessly, ruinously, as un-American.With the American theater struggling to regain the vitality it had before Covid-related shutdowns, some creators and critics have called for a new version of the Federal Theater to come to the rescue. The U.S. government is hardly a spendthrift with arts dollars, but what if it were to pony up for the industry again?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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    Audra McDonald to Star in ‘Gypsy’ Revival on Broadway This Fall

    The six-time Tony-winning actress will play musical theater’s most famous stage mother in a production directed by George C. Wolfe.Audra McDonald has been dreaming of “Gypsy” since she was a 10-year-old in Fresno, Calif., with a small part in a dinner theater production of the musical. She played one of the children in a vaudeville act called “Uncle Jocko’s Kiddie Show,” and ever since, she said, “Gypsy” has remained “very much alive in my brain.”McDonald, who has won more competitive Tony Awards than any other performer in history, has for years been thinking about the show’s main character, a domineering stage mother named Rose. She has even sung from the musical’s score at some of her concerts.Now, McDonald, 53, will play Rose in a Broadway revival of “Gypsy” opening later this year.“It’s one of the great roles in musical theater, and I’ve always thought maybe some day I could try it,” McDonald said in an interview. “It scares me to death, but I certainly feel old enough now, and having experienced motherhood, perhaps I have what is needed to dive in and explore her and all that she is.”The production, directed by George C. Wolfe and choreographed by Camille A. Brown, is to begin previews on Nov. 21 and open Dec. 19 at the Majestic Theater, which has been under renovation since last year’s closing of “The Phantom of the Opera.” (That show ran there for 35 years.)“Gypsy,” first staged on Broadway in 1959, is inspired by the memoir of Gypsy Rose Lee, a stripper who reflects on her relationship with her mother. The musical’s Rose is ravenously hungry for fame for her daughters, or maybe for herself. The role was originated by Ethel Merman, and has since been played on Broadway by Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Linda Lavin, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone, on film by Rosalind Russell and on television by Bette Midler.McDonald said she sees “Gypsy,” which features music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Arthur Laurents, as “a perfect musical” and called Rose a “deeply flawed and brilliantly alive character.” She recalled that in a 1989 review in The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote, “‘Gypsy’ is nothing if not Broadway’s own brassy, unlikely answer to ‘King Lear.’”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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    Review: For ‘Molly Sweeney,’ Not Seeing Was Never the Obstacle

    The Irish Rep ends its season-long Brian Friel survey with the story of a blind woman who undergoes an operation to try to restore her sight.Molly Sweeney can identify dozens of plants by touch, catch a lie in a familiar voice and dance ecstatically through a crowd without disturbing a hair. Because she lost much of her eyesight when she was 10 months old — except, crucially, her ability to discern light from dark — Molly has developed keen powers of sensory perception.Sure-footed though she is, the title character in “Molly Sweeney,” now running at the Irish Repertory Theater, is treated like a pawn by two men who can’t see beyond their own self-interests. That’s one of several conspicuous paradoxes explored in Brian Friel’s 1994 confessional drama, the final installment of the theater’s season devoted to the playwright’s work.Like Friel’s more often revived “Faith Healer,” “Molly Sweeney” is told through a series of monologues addressed to the audience. All three characters, who remain onstage throughout, narrate their subjective recollections of a six-month span (the year is unspecified; the setting is Ballybeg, Friel’s fictional Irish hamlet). But only one of them can speak with unbiased clarity on the central occurrence: what happened when a doctor tried to restore Molly’s sight.Friel’s extraordinary hand with vivid prose is especially evident in Molly’s version of events. Played with a poised sense of wonder by Sarah Street, Molly recalls relishing in the beautiful details of a world she had no need of seeing. The idea for an eye operation came from her husband Frank, played by John Keating with the frazzled intensity of a mad scientist. A dilettante prone to colorful tangents, he sees Molly as an object of fascination and a personal cause. Molly’s egocentric ophthalmologist, Mr. Rice (Rufus Collins), considers her a potential miracle patient who might revive his career.Directed by Charlotte Moore, this production is faithful to the author’s stated preference for minimal staging (the program quotes Friel’s disinterest in “concept or interpretation”). That puts the focus squarely on the three actors, who do fine work illuminating Friel’s descriptive language, particularly Street and Keating as spouses who gravely misjudge each other. The performers are confined to their thirds of the stage, sparse but for a chair and window each (the set is by Charlie Corcoran), while mottled blue-and-violet lighting (by Michael Gottlieb) creates an impression of a developing field of vision.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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    No Sophomore Slump for ‘We Are Lady Parts’

    The comedy about a Muslim punk band returns for a raucous encore.For the early punks, many of them white British blokes, their music was about declaring themselves outside the larger society. The Sex Pistols dreamed of “anarchy for the U.K.” The Clash howled for “a riot of my own.” To be punk was to give offense, to make one’s self unpalatable, to choose to stand apart.But what is punk when your society has already made you an outsider? This is the musical question that the raucous, cheeky comedy “We Are Lady Parts,” returning Thursday for its second season on Peacock, seeks to answer.The first season, back in 2021, introduced Lady Parts, a punk band of Muslim women in London: Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), the caustic lead singer; Ayesha (Juliette Motamed), the fearsome drummer; and Bisma (Faith Omole), the earth-motherly bassist. Together with their manager, Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse), a savvy Malcolm McLaren in a niqab, they recruit a reluctant lead guitarist, Amina (Anjana Vasan).Amina is no one’s idea of a rock star, least of all her own. She is an introverted microbiologist who worships Don McLean, with a severe case of stage fright that causes her to heave her guts while performing — and not in a defiant, Iggy Pop way. (Vasan gives Amina an engaging nerd-hero energy, similar to Quinta Brunson in “Abbott Elementary.”)Over the six-episode season, Amina finds that Lady Parts gives her a way of defining herself rather than being defined, whether by the conservative suitors who tell her “Music is haram” or by her free-spirited mother (Shobu Kapoor), who wishes Amina would wait to seek a husband.The root conflicts of “We Are Lady Parts” are familiar rock-band woes — having no money, having no gigs, being judged by family and by hipsters. This is where making the series about Muslim women rockers accomplishes more than representational box-ticking: It makes an old story new and nuanced.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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    ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ Goes Back to the Beginning

    Her new “Star Wars” show is a dream come true, but she knows it carries enormous expectations. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared,” she said.Leslye Headland has been telling “Star Wars” stories onscreen since she was a teenager. Ostracized at school for being different, she retreated inward, making stop-motion films starring her action figures.So when she found success as an adult in Hollywood — Headland helped create “Russian Doll,” the 2019 Netflix comedy starring Natasha Lyonne — and got the chance to create an actual “Star Wars” show, it was the realization of a lifelong dream.And a chance for humiliating failure. On a galactic scale.“I essentially cold-called Lucasfilm and, after a lot of conversations, found myself pitching a show — utterly elated, my ultimate career goal, the culmination of my fandom,” Headland said. “At the same time, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. There is so much pressure. It’s extreme. I had never done anything this big before.”Headland’s show, “The Acolyte,” will debut on Disney+ on June 4. Costing roughly $180 million (for eight episodes) and taking four years to make, it attempts two feats at once: pleasing old-school “Star Wars” fans — who can seem unpleasable — while telling an entirely new story, one that requires no prior knowledge of “Star Wars” and that showcases women and people of color.For the faithful, “The Acolyte” serves up scads of Jedi, a franchise fundamental that the other live-action “Star Wars” TV shows have depicted sparingly or not at all. The opening scene in “The Acolyte” takes place in an eatery crowded with colorful aliens, a callback to the Mos Eisley cantina from the first “Star Wars” movie, in 1977.Other shout-outs to core fans — we see you, we haven’t forgotten about you — are sprinkled into the dialogue: “May the force be with you” and “I have a bad feeling about this” makes an early appearance.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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    A Show That Makes Young Japanese Pine for the ‘Inappropriate’ 1980s

    A surprise television hit, now on Netflix, has people talking about what Japan has lost with today’s changed sensibilities.The younger generation has frequently called out Japan’s entrenched elders for their casual sexism, excessive work expectations and unwillingness to give up power.But a surprise television hit has people talking about whether the oldsters might have gotten a few things right, especially as some in Japan — like their counterparts in the United States and Europe — question the heightened sensitivities associated with “wokeness.”The show, “Extremely Inappropriate!,” features a foul-talking, crotchety physical education teacher and widowed father who boards a public bus in 1986 Japan and finds himself whisked to 2024.He leaves an era when it was perfectly acceptable to spank students with baseball bats, smoke on public transit and treat women like second-class citizens. Landing in the present, he discovers a country transformed by cellphones, social media and a workplace environment where managers obsessively monitor employees for signs of harassment.The show was one of the country’s most popular when its 10 episodes aired at the beginning of the year on TBS, one of Japan’s main television networks. It is also streaming on Netflix, where it spent four weeks as the platform’s No. 1 show in Japan.“Extremely Inappropriate!” compares the Showa era, which stretched from 1926 to 1989, the reign of Japan’s wartime emperor, Hirohito, to the current era, which is known as Reiwa and began in 2019, when the current emperor, Naruhito, took the throne.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