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    Podcasters as TV Heroes? We’re All Ears

    Why have podcasters emerged as the rumpled protagonists of numerous television shows? We’ll discuss after the break.Gilbert Power, a public radio veteran and the host of the podcast “On Record,” went to a small town in Ireland to make a show about a 20-year-old missing-persons case. The podcast, he explained, was meant to be “a bit of fun, something to listen to on your drive home. I didn’t understand then how much power a story actually has. But stories can change us.”Gilbert, played by a grinning Will Forte, is the lightly inane hero of “Bodkin,” a seven-episode series that premiered last week on Netflix. And as the fictional host of a fictional podcast, he has plenty of onscreen competition.In the past five years, podcasters have emerged as the rumpled protagonists of numerous television shows (“Based on a True Story,” “Truth Be Told,” “Only Murders in the Building,” “Alex Inc.”) and films (“C’mon C’mon,” “Vengeance,” “Monolith,” “Bros”). Even the trendsetting Carrie Bradshaw was onboard; in “And Just Like That…,” she moved from print journalism to the advice podcast “X, Y and Me,” before going solo.Some of these works are comedies, some dramas. Many of them involve one or more mysteries in homage to or parody of true-crime podcasting. In these shows and movies, podcasters fill the roles once occupied by journalists or amateur sleuths, as tyros desperate for answers. These protagonists are often bumbling, and their relationship to ethics is distinctly off-and-on. But characters like these help fulfill a very particular fantasy: that we can tell the truth while also telling a good, possibly even powerful, story. And maybe land a mattress sponsorship while we’re at it.From left, Selena Gomez, Martin Short and Steve Martin in “Only Murders in the Building,” which revolves around a true-crime podcast.Patrick Harbron/HuluWe 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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    Darren Criss to Return to Broadway as a Robot in Love

    The actor will star in “Maybe Happy Ending,” an original musical set in a future Seoul. It will begin previews in September.Darren Criss, who parlayed a breakout role on “Glee” into a multifaceted career in television, theater and music, will return to Broadway this fall in a new musical that is nominally about robots but is also about life, love and loss.The show, “Maybe Happy Ending,” is a rarity for Broadway: a fully original musical — not adapted from a pre-existing story or song catalog. Criss will star alongside Helen J Shen and two other actors in the musical, which is set in Seoul in the late 21st century and is about two outmoded helperbots who meet at a robot retirement home and forge a relationship while grappling with their own obsolescence.The musical, by Will Aronson and Hue Park, had an initial Korean-language production in Seoul in 2016, and an English-language production in Atlanta, at the Alliance Theater, in 2020, where Jesse Green, a New York Times chief theater critic, called it “a charming, Broadway-ready new musical about robots in love.”The Broadway production, announced Tuesday, will be directed by Michael Arden, who also directed the Atlanta production, and who last year won a Tony Award for directing a revival of “Parade.” “Maybe Happy Ending” is scheduled to begin previews Sept. 18 and to open Oct. 17 at the Belasco Theater.“It’s a strange, futuristic look at love, with a beautiful score that feels quite classic,” Arden said in a telephone interview. “When I first read it I found it absolutely devastating and heartbreaking and beautiful — it was one of the most human stories I’d come across, even though our leads aren’t human.”Criss, an Emmy winner for “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” last appeared on Broadway in a 2022 revival of “American Buffalo”; he had previously starred in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”“Maybe Happy Ending” will be the first Broadway show for Shen, who is currently in “The Lonely Few” at Off Broadway’s MCC Theater. Criss and Shen will play the robots; the cast will also include Dez Duron, a onetime contestant on “The Voice.”“Maybe Happy Ending” is being capitalized for $18.25 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The musical’s lead producers are Jeffrey Richards and Hunter Arnold, who on Friday announced that they are also among the producers of a new Off Broadway play, “N/A,” starring Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe. That play, written by Mario Correa and directed by Diane Paulus, is to begin previews June 11 and to open June 23 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. The play, described in a news release as inspired by real people and events, is about tensions between the first female speaker of the House and the youngest woman elected to Congress; the characters have parallels to Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. More

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    Enhancing Broadway, by Any Bodily Means Necessary

    The choreographers nominated for Tony Awards this year have a broader vision than usual of the possibilities of dance in theater.In the Broadway musical adaptation of “The Outsiders,” something shocking keeps happening. It isn’t that the characters throw punches, or not exactly. These are teenagers who rumble, so it isn’t surprising that they’re violent. What’s shocking is the kinesthetic impact. You seem to feel the blows yourself.The impact is electrifying, but it doesn’t operate alone. It serves the storytelling and engages the emotions of an audience by bodily means. This is what choreography at its best can do, and it isn’t limited to what you might think of as dancing.The choreographers of “The Outsiders” and of the four other shows nominated for the Tony Award in that category this year understand this. None dole out the usual stuff. This broader vision of theatrical choreography is worth noticing and applauding.Hell’s KitchenMaleah Joi Moon plays the lead role in “Hell’s Kitchen,” which has choreography by Camille A. Brown.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA loosely autobiographical jukebox musical of songs by Alicia Keys, “Hell’s Kitchen” takes place in the 1990s, in the Manhattan neighborhood of the title. Camille A. Brown’s choreography fits the setting. It looks, delightfully, like dancing that the people who live there would do, like regular folks getting their groove on.But it’s also a throwback to an older, neglected mode of integrating dance into a musical, the tradition that Agnes de Mille inaugurated with shows like “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel” in the 1940s. Like de Mille, Brown individuates the ensemble with detail: This guy is extra flamboyant; that gal pops her gum bubbles on the beat. Moving like this, the dancing chorus becomes the appealing community that draws the show’s 17-year-old protagonist, Ali, into the world — and out from the apartment building where her mother wants her to stay sheltered.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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    Watching the New ‘Doctor Who’ With 5 Superfans

    Five British fans gathered to watch the premiere, wondering what a new Doctor and Disney+’s co-production would mean for their favorite show.“Doctor Who,” the BBC’s beloved sci-fi series about an alien time traveler and his human companions, has had 875 episodes over 61 years. The show first ran between 1963 and 1989 on the BBC, was revived in 2005 and has been airing ever since.As a result, the TV shows has one of the most diverse a fan bases when it comes to age. It appeals to older people who sat down to watch the first broadcast on black-and-white televisions, as well as to children watching on their iPads in 2024.On Friday, a new season started airing, featuring Ncuti Gatwa — the 31-year-old Scottish actor who was previously best known for his role as Eric on “Sex Education” — as the latest Doctor. Russell T Davies, who was the showrunner between the reboot in 2005 and 2010, is back at the helm. The show also has a new home on Disney+, the first time the BBC has produced “Doctor Who” in partnership with another company in the show’s history.On a recent evening, Richard Unwin, a 44-year-old writer and actor, gathered four other “Doctor Who” fans at his apartment in East London to watch the first two episodes. They were a little nervous about what the Disney influence, and the need to cater to a new, international audience, might have done to their favorite program.“I am worried that they will Americanize it,” said George Norohna, a 61-year-old retired civil servant, who remembers the show as the first thing he ever saw on a color television. They were joined by the fantasy author Janelle McCurdy, 28, Francis Beveridge, a 27-year-old neuroscience researcher, and Beth Axford, 26, who writes for “Doctor Who Magazine,” a fan publication.Surrounded by shelves packed with “Doctor Who” memorabilia, the fans helped themselves from a platter of vegetarian sandwiches as they watched the episodes: the first about a baby farm in space and the second about a villain who steals the world’s music. From one corner of the room, a full-size replica Dalek watched over the scene.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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    Tony Awards 2024: Who Will Win (and Who Should)

    Our chief theater critic names the shows and artists he thinks will win, should win and should have been nominated — and suggests a few new categories.The 2023-24 Broadway season was rich with new plays and, let’s say, crowded with new musicals. Revivals were rarer — not a bad thing, necessarily. But the combination of factors makes for quite a horse race as the Tony Awards presentation approaches. So take my annual Tonys “ballot” with the usual caveats, listed below, and with a grain of salt for my highly unscientific commentary within each category. As always, that includes a plea for the addition of new awards; if we can change, why can’t the Tonys?1. I’m not an oddsmaker. I don’t actually vote. Prizes for artistic merit are silly. You could probably do better by flipping a coin.2. The people and productions listed in the “Should Win” category are not necessarily more deserving than those in “Will Win.” There’s often little if any excellence gap between the two groups.3. The “Should Have Been Nominated” category obviously includes Broadway work that was eligible but spurned. Less obviously, it also includes work from Off Broadway and beyond (indicated by an *asterisk*) that’s totally ineligible for the Tonys, just because.Best PlayWILL WIN“Stereophonic”Should win“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”“Mary Jane”Should have been nominated“Primary Trust”*“Infinite Life”*“The Comeuppance”*“Jonah”*Four cheers for Off Broadway, where so many Broadway plays start — including this year’s “Stereophonic, “Mary Jane,” “Appropriate” and “Prayer for the French Republic.” And a fifth cheer for “Primary Trust,” which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.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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    ‘Bridgerton’s’ Nicola Coughlan on Her Season 3 Glow Up

    The stars of the Shondaland series, streaming on Netflix, are given very different looks when they’re promoted from the supporting cast — a phenomenon fans have dubbed “the Bridgerton glow-up.”When the actress Nicola Coughlan joined the cast of Shondaland’s period costume drama “Bridgerton,” as the young socialite and secret gossip pamphleteer Penelope Featherington, the hair and makeup artist Marc Pilcher informed her that the creative brief they had for her character was only one word: “dowdy.”Penelope, the demure youngest daughter of the domineering matriarch Lady Portia Featherington, was to be done up in garish pastel dresses and gaudy jewelry, with a hairdo clogged with curls — none of it particularly flattering. “For the first two seasons, the objective, in the nicest way, was not meant to make me look nice,” Coughlan said in a recent interview. “A lot of the Featherington aesthetic was a ‘more is more’ approach.”A supporting player through the show’s first two seasons, Penelope is the main character of Season 3, which begins streaming May 16 on Netflix. And as she has moved into the spotlight, her entire style has been altered: a transformation that fans of the show refer to as the “Bridgerton glow-up.”Gone are the canary-yellow gowns and tacky headpieces. She’s now wearing milder colors and less ostentatious jewelry, and her hairstyles are looser and more elegant. In short, she is no longer dowdy. “At the first fitting for Season 3, I got teary-eyed,” Coughlan said. “It felt like a ‘Pretty Woman’ moment. They were finally going to let me shine.”In Season 1, the brief for Nicola Coughlan’s character was a single word: “dowdy.”Liam Daniel/NetflixIn Season 3, as the leading lady, Coughlan gets a romantic look that showcases Penelope’s growing confidence.Laurence Cendrowicz/NetflixThis kind of stylistic reinvention has become common practice on a series known for rotating actors in and out of its sweeping ensemble, and adapting their appearances accordingly. “When the transition is made from side character to leading character, we think a lot about what story it is we’re trying to tell,” the showrunner and executive producer Jess Brownell explained. When it comes to styling, she said, “it’s a lot more heady when it comes to the main characters.”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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    Stephen Colbert Finds Donald Trump ‘Past His Expiration Date’

    Michael Cohen’s testimony gave the host plenty of fodder, especially when he described Donald Trump speculating about going back “on the market.”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.‘Only One Way to Get Paid’Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, took the stand on Monday in the former president’s hush money trial.“Now, you never want to be the middleman between your boss and a porn star,” Colbert said of Cohen. “Sure, it sounds titillating when they ask, but eventually it’s just a tangle of limbs, and you’re just kind of watching.”“Michael Cohen testified today that former President Trump once said that he wouldn’t be single for very long if former first lady Melania Trump were to leave him. So, yeah, he wrote his own vows.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, Michael Cohen testified today that Trump once asked him how long he’d be single if Melania were to leave him and said, ‘How long do you think I’d be on the market for? Not long.’ On the market? You’re a 78-year-old psychopath with massive debt. That’s not a market, that’s a lost-and-found bin.” — SETH MEYERS“Coincidentally, ‘not long’ is how Stormy described it.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But it’s true — he would be off the market soon. I mean, he is clearly past his expiration date.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“During his testimony today, Cohen also said that he was never paid for early legal work he did for Trump. Of course not! He doesn’t pay his lawyers, he doesn’t pay his contractors. There’s really only one way to get paid by Donald Trump, and it is not worth it.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Hannibal Lecter Edition)“At this rally, Trump talked about the ‘Silence of the Lambs’ character Hannibal Lecter and said he was a ‘wonderful man.’ First of all, Hannibal Lecter isn’t real. He’s a character played by Anthony Hopkins, a wonderful man who is real. Second, the character Hannibal is not a wonderful man, he’s a cannibal who murdered a bunch of people. And third, please tell me this is not your VP announcement.” — SETH MEYERS“What is going on? I’m no political expert, but maybe don’t keep saying, ‘the late, great Hannibal Lecter.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Oh, I love ‘Silence of the Lamb.’ It’s one of my favorite movies right up there with ‘Star War,’ “Dance with Wolf’ and ‘Jaw.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“‘Late great’? In none of the stories does Hannibal Lecter die, and Sir Anthony Hopkins is very much still alive. Does Trump just think a character dies when he turns off the T.V.?” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingSnoop Dogg and Jimmy Fallon wore matching American tracksuits on Monday to celebrate the upcoming Paris Olympics.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe “All Fours” author Miranda July will appear on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutIn “Appropriate,” Sarah Paulson aims to present “a fully realized person up there that you can have some connectivity to.”Matthew Leifheit for The New York TimesThe actress Sarah Paulson received a Tony Award nomination for her return to Broadway in “Appropriate.” More

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    Review: A New Lens on Auschwitz in ‘Here There Are Blueberries’

    Archivists are the heroes of a documentary play about a photograph album depicting daily life among the perpetrators of the Holocaust.You do not expect a camera to be the first thing you see in a play about the Holocaust. Yet even before “Here There Are Blueberries” begins, a spotlight illuminates a Leica on a pedestal. A period advertisement projected behind it promotes it as “the camera of modern times.”That’s apt for a dramatized documentary that looks at its subject from an unusual angle: the discovery of photographs taken at Auschwitz and the archivists who brought them to light.“Blueberries,” which opened on Monday at New York Theater Workshop in a co-production with Tectonic Theater Project, focuses on the so-called Höcker album, which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired from an anonymous donor in 2007. Uniquely, none of the album’s 116 photographs depict victims of the Nazis — only the Nazis themselves, going about the banal daily business of living and enjoying their lives at the camp.That the play takes a similar approach, keeping the victims mostly out of frame, is a blessing and a problem. A blessing because in so doing it avoids both active horror and the cynicism of Holokitsch, in which the murder of six million Jews is appropriated to zhuzh some emotion that might otherwise be absent.But in backgrounding the tragedy, even with the noblest intentions, “Blueberries” (conceived and directed by Moisés Kaufman; written by Kaufman and Amanda Gronich) gets caught in a different dramatic problem: a problem of moral scale. What it’s about, however worthy, is so much smaller than what it insistently isn’t.It’s not just that the album at the center of the story, being the keepsake of an assistant to the commandant of Auschwitz in 1944, makes no reference to major atrocities in its portrayal of minor pleasures like the title blueberries. We do not see — as we do in the film “The Zone of Interest,” which features some of the same characters and locations — smoke from crematories or glowing evil light at night. In keeping with the museum’s efforts to “avoid undue attention to the perpetrators,” the play’s Nazis are characterized almost as little as their victims.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