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    Review: ‘Flex’ Hits the Right Rhythms on the Court and Off

    The writer Candrice Jones and the director Lileana Blain-Cruz show a mastery of the game in this play about a girls’ basketball team in rural Arkansas.Their knees are bent, palms outstretched, eyes darting and alert.The young women of Lady Train, a high school basketball team in rural Arkansas, are training for every possibility on the court — which, in the beloved tradition of sports-powered coming-of-age stories, also means preparing for adult life.Perhaps it should be no surprise, then, that in the first scene of “Flex,” which opened at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse on Thursday, all of the players appear to be pregnant. As this tip-off to a slam-dunk New York debut makes clear, the playwright Candrice Jones excels equally in sly, sitcom humor and in the swift-tongued rhythms of teenage and athletic talk.The lumpy bumps beneath Lady Train’s various fly-casual printed tees (it’s 1997, and the spot-on costumes are by Mika Eubanks) are obviously fake, contraband from a home-ec class. But for April (a tender Brittany Bellizeare), the prospect of childbearing is no joke; she’s been benched since the team’s zero-nonsense coach (Christiana Clark) learned of her pregnancy. The bumper-belly drills are both a protest and show of solidarity.Threatening that bond is the requisite rivalry between two top players: the scrappy and headstrong team captain, Starra (a glowering Erica Matthews), who is trying to prove her mettle to her late mother, and Sidney (Tamera Tomakili, delightful), an eye-rolling, hair-flipping transplant from Los Angeles who talks smack with a smile. There’s a delicate romance, too, between the even-keeled Donna (Renita Lewis, the show’s subtle M.V.P.) and Cherise (Ciara Monique), a youth minister whose faith is at odds with her desires, and with April’s consideration of an abortion.Jones and the director Lileana Blain-Cruz (both former high school basketball players) demonstrate a dexterous mastery of the game, not only in narrated action sequences on the blond-wood, half-court set (by Matt Saunders), but also in the pass-or-shoot dynamics that bind these friends and teammates.The teammates bond while driving around in a dusty-blue Chrysler convertible and singing along to Aaliyah.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThere’s even an alchemy to “Flex” that conjures ardent home-team affinity from the audience (whoops and applause escalated in enthusiasm throughout the performance I attended). Maybe that’s inspired by Lady Train’s spelling-bee cheers (“big,” “bad” and “boss” are prominent), or their Aaliyah singalong with the top down on Donna’s dusty-blue Chrysler convertible (another impressive feat of design).But the special sauce is also in the careful economy of Jones’s character development, which offers just enough detail to inspire curiosity about who these women could become without claiming to know exactly who they are. (They’re teenagers, after all.) Whether Starra ascends to the W.N.B.A., she’ll have to wrestle with her ego. And Cherise doesn’t seem likely to let go of God, but what will happen if her devotion comes to feel like a trap?That “Flex” manages to garner such interest in its characters’ potential is a testament to the extraordinary synergy among Jones, Blain-Cruz and the cast members, who are as present and engaged in dialogue as they are nimble at the net.Tropes of the sports genre trotted out here — a betrayed purity pact, competition for scouts’ attention — are attended by the broader considerations that make young people and team sports such fraught and fertile ground. What do we owe ourselves, and at what cost to one another? Why learn the meaning of fairness when life is so unfair? To rebound when it knocks you down, and to savor the moments when it delivers on your wildest dreams.FlexThrough Aug. 20 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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    A Star of ‘Camelot’ Is Transmitting Shakespeare to the Next Generation

    On a recent Wednesday, a dozen members of the cast of “Camelot” gathered in a circle in a rehearsal room in the basement of Lincoln Center Theater. Fergie Philippe, who plays Sir Sagramore and understudies as King Arthur, sat on a chair in the middle, staring quizzically at a sheet of paper with a monologue from Act V, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus.”Next to him stood Dakin Matthews, who plays both Merlyn and Pellinore, dressed in cargo shorts and a purple polo. As Philippe began speaking, Matthews squinted his eyes shut and silently mouthed the words.“Even now I curse the day——” Philippe said before he was quickly cut off by Matthews, who jabbed a finger in the air.“You went down on ‘day,’” Matthews said, referring to Philippe’s incorrect inflection.Over the next two hours, Matthews paced the room coaching the group through monologues from “Julius Caesar,” “Henry IV” and “Macbeth,” interrupting a performer to correct the pronunciation of “doth,” or to help find the “internal shape” in a text.“I feel like I’m a monk in a scriptorium keeping something alive,” Matthews said.Matthews, right, with Fergie Philippe, who plays Arthur in the Lincoln Center Theater production of the musical “Camelot,” practicing lines from “Titus Andronicus” between shows.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesMatthews, an 82-year-old veteran of the theater, has performed in over 200 shows around the world — from Broadway to the Teatro Español in Madrid. His life has become inseparable from the stage: In addition to acting, he has directed, translated and written numerous plays of his own, many of which have been performed on the West Coast.But his colleagues know Matthews best as a maestro of the intricate world of Shakespearean drama, the man who can tell you exactly how to untangle a thorny text from “Henry IV.” And when he appears in shows, he often hosts workshops where younger members can learn Shakespeare.“There’s this complete understanding that there’s somebody in this room who has way more experience than us, who has put the work in, and on a different level performs at a caliber different than us,” Philippe said, “and we all agree and know and decide, ‘Yes, please teach us.’”Born in Oakland, Calif., in 1940, Matthews grew up surrounded by an extended Irish family. He was a sophomore at a Catholic high school when he was introduced to Shakespeare’s “Henry IV.”Wanting to enter the priesthood, he moved to Rome to continue his religious education.One summer in 1962, he traveled from Rome to Stratford, England, where he saw his first professional Shakespeare production. It was Peter Hall’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Matthews, 21 at the time, was transfixed.“I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” he recalled. “It was really like entering a portal, like entering a different world.”A seed was planted. “This is something one could actually do,” he realized.Back in Rome, he rallied the other priests-in-training, purchased costumes from a theater shop and directed two student plays, “Julius Caesar” and “Henry IV.”Matthews, center right, in the title role in a 1963 student production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”via Dakin MatthewsMatthews returned to the Bay Area and later earned a master’s in English from East Bay, where he became a professor. While in graduate school, he won the role of Falstaff in “Henry IV” at the Marin Shakespeare Festival in 1965.For the next two decades, Matthews taught and rehearsed during the day, and starred in shows around the Bay Area at night, darting around in his green Volkswagen beetle. (He met his wife, Anne McNaughton, in 1967 at the Santa Clara Shakespeare Festival.)In 1990, he retired from teaching and moved to Los Angeles, where he continued working in theater and began performing in movies and TV, including “Down Home,” “Soul Man” and “The Jeff Foxworthy Show.”Matthews made his Broadway debut in 2003 in “Henry IV.” Ethan Hawke, who played Hotspur, remembered watching in awe as Matthews argued with Kevin Kline, who played Falstaff, over minutiae in the text.“It’s like listening to Thoreau and Emerson bicker about the state of mankind,” Hawke said. “It was life and death for them.”The earliest of Matthews’s Shakespeare workshops for fellow cast members was in 2001, for the actors in Peter Hall’s “Romeo and Juliet” in Los Angeles. He also held the classes for the Broadway production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and has led them for the Actors Center in New York. As the July 23 closing night of “Camelot” approached, Matthews resumed the workshops.Philippe said learning from Matthews has made his “Camelot” performances more versatile.“It gave me the opportunity to play a bit more. I was able to find some new things in the character every night,” he said. “It just makes you a smarter actor.”Matthews has no plans to stop acting, but he said he has lost 20 pounds while performing in “Camelot” and has started to feel his age. His knees creak, and his voice can’t project as it once did.“For the first time it felt like work,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seriously thought about retiring.”For now, he plans to keep performing and to continue mentoring a younger generation of actors. “We’re bridging a gap, a chasm,” he said. “And someone’s got to keep something going somehow.” More

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    The Grenfell Tower Fire, Now Onstage at the National Theater

    Six years after 72 people died in a fire at a London high rise, artistic projects, including a verbatim play, have been made about the blaze.“I remember my knees giving way, thinking, ‘This is it now,’ because I cannot take another breath.”On Monday night, the actor Ash Hunter stood onstage at London’s National Theater portraying Nicholas Burton, one of almost 300 people who, six years ago, found themselves trapped inside a burning London apartment block. Hunter spoke Burton’s own words.“Every breath was just hot black smoke,” the actor said, visibly sweating and breathing quickly.On June 14, 2017, a refrigerator caught fire in a 24-story London high rise called Grenfell Tower. That blaze should have been easily contained, and residents were advised to stay in their apartments. But within minutes, flames had engulfed the structure, which lax building regulations had allowed to be clad in a flammable material. It became Britain’s deadliest fire in more than a century.That night, Hunter said in the play, Burton fell asleep while watching a DVD, near his wife, Pily, who had Alzheimer’s disease. He woke to banging on his front door, which he opened, causing thick smoke to billow into the room. Burton knew he couldn’t carry his wife down dozens of flights of stairs, so he took her into the bathroom, where they waited for help.Burton thought he was going to die, Hunter said onstage. Later, his wife did, becoming the fire’s 72nd, and final, victim.Burton is one of 10 Grenfell residents whose stories are told in Gillian Slovo’s “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors,” a verbatim play running through Aug. 26 at the National, one of Britain’s most significant playhouses. On Monday, some audience members shook their heads as they listened to the survivors’ experiences and the catalog of mismanagement that led to the blaze. Others were in tears at the end of the minimally staged production.Ash Hunter, portraying the Grenfell Tower resident Nicholas Burton in “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors” at the National Theater in London.Myah JeffersA scene from Steve McQueen’s 24-minute film “Grenfell,” shot using a helicopter. “I was determined that it would never be forgotten,” McQueen said of the tragedy. via Steve McQueenYears after the fire, Grenfell continues to cast a shadow over British life. Most of the units in Grenfell Tower were a part of Britain’s social housing system and the blaze drew attention to neglect within that system and to unsafe building practices across the country. An official inquiry into the blaze is ongoing, as is a police investigation.With so little resolution for the bereaved, some of Britain’s major cultural institutions and artists have started making works about the tragedy. In addition to the National Theater’s production, the BBC earlier this year announced plans for a TV drama about the fire, and in April, the artist and director Steve McQueen presented a 24-minute video work at London’s Serpentine Galleries. Filmed using a helicopter, McQueen’s “Grenfell” shows the burned tower block as it stood in December 2017, days before it was hidden behind white plastic sheeting.“I was determined that it would never be forgotten,” McQueen said in a statement accompanying the piece.Survivors of the tragedy and local residents have had mixed responses to these projects. Shortly after the BBC’s TV drama was announced, Cecilia Corzo, a resident of the housing project that includes Grenfell Tower, started an online petition calling for the show to be canceled. The petition has more than 61,000 signatures.Corzo wrote in an email interview that she found the idea of anyone wanting to watch a dramatization of the fire “overwhelmingly disgusting.” Survivors have been waiting years for justice, she wrote, and in that time “the only thing that seems to be moving quickly is plans to make entertainment” from the tragedy.Slovo, the playwright, said in a recent interview at the theater that she understood such reactions, but hoped the play’s critics would “come and see what we’ve done.” Her aim was to “amplify” survivors’ voices, Slovo said, adding that the fire was an important example of how governments and businesses were “putting profit over people’s lives.” Grenfell “stands as a lesson to us all, not just in Britain,” she said.Gillian Slovo, who assembled the play “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors” from around 80 interviews, said the fire showed how governments and businesses were “putting profit over people’s lives.”Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesSlovo, a South African-born playwright who has made several previous verbatim plays including one about British riots, began work on “Grenfell” six months after the fire. She said she was shocked that the blaze could happen in a city as rich as London, and by how the survivors’ voices were missing from most media coverage and official discussion of the tragedy. Instead, tabloids were filled with uninformed theories or articles portraying the bereaved as “poor, or as asylum seekers,” Slovo said.Over several years, Slovo conducted around 80 interviews, sending survivors their transcripts so they could remove anything they didn’t want performed onstage. She bolstered those interviews with transcripts from the official government inquiry.Turning that material into the play had its challenges, Slovo said, including “not wanting to turn this into a melodrama in any way” and making sure the play wasn’t traumatizing.To try to guarantee that, “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors” is being performed in unusual conditions. The production opens with the house lights up and the actors introducing themselves and the survivor each is portraying. The cast then reassures the audience that the play won’t include any images of the actual fire and that theatergoers are free to leave the auditorium at any point and return when they’re ready. During previews, therapists sat in the audience to provide additional support.Pearl Mackie, who portrays Natasha Elcock, a woman who used bath water to extinguish flames and lost her uncle in the blaze, said she was angry at the horror of the event before reading the script. Even after being cast, Mackie said, she “worried that my own personal reaction was something that would come across every night, and it wouldn’t be serving the truth of the person I’m playing.”After meeting Elcock, though, Mackie said she realized she could depict the community onstage in full, rather than defining Elcock by this one tragedy. The play is “the most important thing I’ve ever done,” Mackie said.All the survivors portrayed have been invited to see the play, and some have done so. Ed Daffarn, who lived on the 16th floor, said in a recent interview that he couldn’t find the words to describe how he felt while watching it. “Almost as a defense, I kind of distanced myself,” he said.He knew other survivors couldn’t bring themselves to go, Daffarn added, but he insisted that the play, and other creative Grenfell projects, were vital to keeping the tragedy in the public consciousness. Homes across England were still encased by flammable cladding, Daffarn said, adding “we haven’t had a single clink of handcuffs.”After a performance, the audience gathered outside the National Theater near the green heart placards. Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesAt the end of Monday night’s performance, a short film was shown featuring survivors and bereaved family members — including Burton — discussing their lives today, and what they wanted the audience to take from the play.The cast then gave audience members placards shaped like green hearts — a symbol that’s associated with Grenfell — with words like “Justice” written across them, and asked everyone to follow them outside.Silently, the audience did as asked: Hundreds of people carrying those placards high into the London night. For a moment, the evening became more than theater. It became a call for change. More

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    Carlin Glynn, Actress Whose Comeback Brought Her a Tony, Dies at 83

    After putting her career on hold to raise children, she won the part of the madam in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” — and then a statuette hailing her performance.Carlin Glynn, a stage actress who, after a long hiatus spent raising a family, stepped back into the footlights, sang onstage for the first time and walked away with a Tony Award for her performance as the madam in the 1978 hit “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” died on July 13 at her home in upstate New York, in the Hudson Valley. She was 83.Her daughter Mary Stuart Masterson, the actress, said the cause was lung cancer.Ms. Glynn’s breakout performance, at 38, came about almost by accident. Her husband, the actor and director Peter Masterson, had read a 1974 article in Playboy by Larry L. King about the closing of a Texas bordello and saw the ingredients for a musical. He and Mr. King began working on a script and brought in Carol Hall to create the music.For the early readings, Ms. Glynn, though she had been largely out of the acting business for at least a dozen years, covered the role of Mona Stangley, the strong-minded but sensitive madam at the center of the story. She was still holding down the role in a workshop production mounted by Mr. Masterson and his collaborators at the Actors Studio in 1977. And when the musical opened Off Broadway in April 1978. And when it moved to Broadway that June.“I initially worked on the play only to help out,” Ms. Glynn told The New York Times in July 1978. “Peter was hesitant to force his wife on his collaborators. Finally, all four of the organizations who wanted to take the show to Broadway wanted me to stay in the part. So then I stopped worrying about nepotism.”It was her Broadway debut, and she won the Tony for best featured actress in a musical. She played the role for almost two years on Broadway and for another six months in a production in London. Michael Billington of The Guardian, reviewing her there, wrote, “Carlin Glynn endows the madam with the refined good breeding and slight romantic forlornness of the head of a very classy, fee-paying American girls’ school.”Although “Best Little Whorehouse” was Ms. Glynn’s only Broadway appearance, her acting career continued for decades. She appeared in productions by Second Stage and Signature Theater Company in Manhattan, Hartford Stage in Connecticut, the Alley Theater in Houston, the Goodman Theater in Chicago and more. She also landed roles in more than 20 television series and films, including “Continental Divide” (1981), “Sixteen Candles” (1984), “The Trip to Bountiful” (1985, directed by Mr. Masterson) and “Judy Berlin” (1999).The Tony Award, she told The Times in 1979, was a game changer for her.“It means I’ve been invited to hundreds of places by people who offer to send their cars to pick me up,” she said. “It also means I’m not just the girl who does the Texas madam in a musical; I’m someone who’s considered an actress.”Ms. Glynn with Henderson Forsythe holding their Tony Awards after she won as best featured actress in a musical and he as best featured actor in a musical, both for “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” Bettmann, via Getty ImagesCarlin Elizabeth Glynn was born on Feb. 19, 1940, in Cleveland to Guilford and Lois Wilkes Glynn. Her father worked at Union Carbide but, when Carlin was 9, moved the family to Texas, where he had bought a gas station in Centerville, north of Houston. Later the family moved to Houston, where, at Lamar High School, Ms. Glynn first met Tommy Tune, who years later would choreograph “Best Little Whorehouse” as well as direct it with Mr. Masterson.Ms. Glynn and Mr. Masterson met when both were apprenticing at the Alley Theater. They married in 1960 and settled in New York. Both became members of the Actors Studio, but Ms. Glynn spent much of her time taking care of their three children while Mr. Masterson built his career. She acted in the occasional television commercial, was co-host of a syndicated television program called “Today’s Health” in the mid-1970s and had a small role in the 1975 film “Three Days of the Condor.”A film version of “Best Little Whorehouse” was being planned when, in the 1978 Times interview, Ms. Glynn said she would love to play Mona onscreen, though she acknowledged, “I probably won’t be asked.” She was right; a bigger marquee name, Dolly Parton, got the part. The movie came out in 1982.Ms. Glynn, left, with Marsha Mason in 1998 in an Off Broadway production of “Amazing Grace,” a play by Michael Cristofer. Ms. Glynn continued to act for decades after her Broadway debut in “Best Little Whorehouse.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Masterson died in 2018. In addition to her daughter Mary Stuart, who starred in such films as “Some Kind of Wonderful” (1987) and “Fried Green Tomatoes” (1991), Ms. Glynn is survived by another daughter, Carlin Alexandra Masterson; a son, Peter Masterson; a brother, Philip Glynn; and six grandchildren.Mary Stuart Masterson recalled spending weekends backstage at “Best Little Whorehouse” watching her mother from the wings. One night Ms. Glynn started a song an octave too high but smoothly acknowledged the mistake mid-song, not only slipping in the impromptu lyric “I think I’m off key,” but also doing so in a spot where it rhymed.“The audience was in the palm of her hand after that,” Ms. Masterson said by email. “Well, they already were. She had a kind of authority onstage that you can’t learn. She always made everyone feel they were in good hands.” More

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    Union for Broadway Crew Members Reaches Tentative Deal, Averting Strike

    The agreement would cover a subset of workers, including about 1,500 stagehands, hairdressers and other crew members on Broadway and in touring productions.The union representing a segment of Broadway crew members reached a tentative agreement for a new contract with theater owners just as its members were voting on whether to authorize a potential strike, the organizations announced Thursday.The deal involved a subset of Broadway workers who are covered by what is known as the “pink contract,” including roughly 1,500 stagehands, wardrobe personnel, makeup artists and hairdressers. A strike of those workers — who are involved in 45 theatrical shows, including touring productions, and 28 shows on Broadway — would have had the potential to shut down much of the industry, especially if other unionized theater workers joined in solidarity.The tentative agreement was announced in a joint statement between the union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, and the Broadway League, a trade association representing theater owners and producers. Disney Theatrical, which is behind shows such as “Aladdin” and “The Lion King,” is also part of the deal. It covers crew members who carry a pink traveling card that shows that they’re able to do union work in different jurisdictions.“The strike has been averted,” Jonas Loeb, a union spokesman, said in a statement, “though the contract must be approved by the membership.”Loeb said that the union has been negotiating about two months, including a marathon 19-hour session this week, and that one of the major sticking points was minimum payment rates for Broadway crew members.A walkout by theater workers would have added to the labor unrest roiling the American entertainment industry, as Hollywood writers and actors continue their strikes. More

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    ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 2, Episode 6 Recap: Hey Stranger

    In an episode with multiple explicit callbacks to the original series, Charlotte sets a progressive example and Miranda confronts painful consequences.The O.G.s know this isn’t the first time Carrie has fanned old flames with Aidan via email. Way back in Season 4 of the original series, Carrie created her first ever email address (shoegal@aol.com!) solely for the ability to reach out to Aidan post-breakup in some way other than the phone.“I miss you. Do you miss me?” it read.This time around, her email says essentially the same thing, but is tied up in a more devil-may-care bow. “Was thinking of you the other day … and I wondered how you were doing.” That ellipsis is loaded. Pair it with the slightly sexy but nonchalant “Hey Stranger …” (another loaded ellipsis!) and it’s not hard to see what she is doing.And why not? Google is free and Carrie has used it. She knows Aidan lives in Virginia, is sitting on a fat check from West Elm, and most importantly, is divorced. It’s almost surprising it took her this long.It’s not the only callback to “Sex and the City” we see in this episode. In another scene, Seema “proposes” to Carrie that the two of them rent a summer house together in the Hamptons. Carrie giddily agrees, which is funny only because, just a couple of decades ago, she, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha all thought that as 30-somethings, they were too old for a shared Hamptons house, calling it “pathetic” and likening it to being “the oldest kid at summer camp.”But now, in their 50s, Carrie and her gal pal can afford a luxury rental on the beach with more bathrooms than occupants. Nothing pathetic about that.Alas, in this episode, summer is but a far away dream. It’s the dead of winter, and it’s snowing hard, which causes major issues for pretty much everyone.MoMA is honoring Lisa as a Black woman filmmaker on the same night that Herbert has a campaign event. The two tussle over whose event should take precedence, but Lisa makes no bones about the fact that she’s going to “do me,” and Herbert can kick rocks. Then, her car service cancels. Herbert offers to drop her off, but Lisa’s pride won’t let him “save” her. She trudges in fabulous stiletto boots to the event and makes it to the stage with no help from anyone. She is pleasantly surprised, though, when Herbert shows up in support.Similarly, Carrie absolutely can’t no-show “WidowCon,” where she will be reading from her latest memoir, “Loved and Lost.” This is partly because she couldn’t bear to let down the mass of grieving ladies, but really it is because her old writing partner, Karen (Rachel Dratch), whom Carrie apparently ghosted long ago before a critical meeting with a big studio (though Carrie has no memory of this), is the organizer, and Karen would never let her live it down I guess? How Karen wields this kind of power over Carrie is a mystery, but considering Carrie coughed up six figures to Enid because Carrie felt bad about a misinterpreted sext kind of indicates how big of a motivator shame can be for her.In any case, Carrie is particularly anxious about this gig and needs a sidekick of sorts to keep her nerves at bay, and she decides Che is just the person for the job. When snow pummels the streets of Manhattan on the big day, Che tries to weasel out of the commitment, but Carrie uses her own status as a grieving widow to rope Che back in. In what is probably the genuinely funniest scene of the episode, dare I say the entire season so far, Carrie lumbers through the blizzard all the way to the Sheraton in what amounts to a fabulous down comforter, attempting to remain composed as Charlotte shrieks on the other end of a phone about condoms.Yes, Charlotte desperately needs condoms, though not for herself. She needs to buy them for Lily and her boyfriend, Blake, who are about to do the deed for the first time. The snowpocalypse has shut down every drugstore, so Charlotte calls to ask Carrie if she has any spares. (Carrie does not.)Despite what some of us may have predicted based on the “Sex and the City” version of her character, it turns out Lily and Rock are being parented by “Woke Charlotte.” She is a bona fide sex-positive mom, so much so that she makes sure her daughter knows to prioritize her own pleasure as much as her partner’s.Eventually, Charlotte obtains a smorgasbord of condom options and drops them off at Blake’s parent’s house, giving Lily a quick hug before her daughter runs upstairs. It’s a little awkward, sure, but at the same time, it’s a surprisingly tender moment. Many of us born before the Clinton administration can barely fathom having this kind of exchange with our parents. Charlotte says as much when she tells Lily her parents made sex seem unmentionable. Maybe, just maybe, Charlotte doesn’t want her children growing up with the same stuffy ideas about sex that she had. Charlotte may be a traditionalist in so many ways, but this is progressive parenting.Over in Brooklyn, Steve and Miranda find themselves alone in their old house, and Miranda takes the opportunity to do the dirty work she knows she can’t put off forever. She presses Steve about moving out, and almost immediately, they spiral.Steve insists, loudly, that it is his house. He built the kitchen, he redid the floors, he put up the bookshelves. But Miranda’s money bought it, she reminds him. The jab sends Steve over the edge, and he cuts Miranda in the deepest way possible, screaming that she never wanted to move there, never wanted him, and never even wanted Brady.There is suddenly far too much truth in the room.Miranda nearly leaves, heaving sobs and she puts on her coat, but Steve manages to stop her, apologizing profusely. The two end up lying next to each other affectionately in bed, with Miranda apologizing in turn for causing Steve so much pain.That moment, too, is surprisingly tender, at least until Miranda finds a condom wrapper on Steve’s end table. While she has been agonizing about whether or not he will ever be able to move on, Steve, apparently, has been sleeping with a girl from Whole Foods. Miranda immediately releases the guilt she has been shouldering for months and walks out, heading home to her true love, Che. (While Miranda and Steve finally have real closure, it’s still unclear who is going to find a new place.)Except Che isn’t there to receive her with open arms. Che, it turns out, believes things with Miranda have taken a turn, and won’t get better. Miranda’s eyes well up, but she agrees.It’s surprising how well Miranda takes the Che breakup, actually. Che’s magnetism was so powerful to Miranda that she blew up her entire life so they could be together. Then, Che’s pilot flops and their ego takes a hit, they spend a few weeks in the doldrums living on Pirate’s Booty, and that’s just it? The whole relationship has to sink with the “Che Pasa” ship? And Miranda just lets it all go?For all those who missed the colder, more cynical version of Miranda, maybe she is on her way back. RIP, love-dovey Miranda. We hardly knew ye. More

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    In ‘Twisted Metal’ Series, Killer Clowns Come With Class Commentary

    Peacock’s new show indulges in the same ultraviolence as the video game that inspired it. But this time it has a message about the haves and the have-nots.When Stephanie Beatriz likes a script she enjoys reading it aloud at home to get a better feel for the character and story. She warmed up quickly to “Twisted Metal,” the new Peacock mayhem machine based on the popular PlayStation game series that first burned rubber in 1995. But as she turned the pages, encountering psycho clowns, murderous religious cults, cannibalism and other manner of good times, she had to pause. Her 8-month-old daughter was in the room.In a June video interview she recalled what she told her husband: “I’m going to take a break and stop because I’m not sure that this is great for her subconscious.”Her concern was well-founded. Premiering July 27, “Twisted Metal” is nothing if not extreme. Fast and profane, it is fueled by what “A Clockwork Orange” once called a bit of the old ultraviolence. It is blood-soaked, bullet-ridden and chaotic. In one early scene, two men sit in massive tubs, waiting to be cooked and served. One of them is sprinkled with a generous portion of lemon pepper spice as a human foot dangles from a line; Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” (“Ooh, baby, I like it raw”) blares on the soundtrack.Starring Anthony Mackie as John Doe, a wiz behind the wheel hired to deliver a mystery package across a hazardous, postapocalyptic America, and Beatriz as Quiet, his no-nonsense, vengeance-minded passenger, “Twisted Metal” stakes out a sometimes-queasy intersection between terror and glee. It’s a little like “Mad Max” on laughing gas.“It’s a very weird apocalypse,” Marc Forman, an executive producer, said. “It’s crawling with cannibals and weird cults. What’s great is that you never know what’s around the corner.”The series stars Mackie as an ace wheelman on a cross-country mission and Beatriz as his vengeful passenger.Skip Bolen/PeacockThere’s very little that is old fashioned about “Twisted Metal,” yet it has a fair amount of nostalgia in the tank — for both the pre-apocalyptic world, and for an earlier age of gaming. The story is set in the wake of a hazily defined, world-destroying event that occurred in 2002, freezing culture as the characters know it in that year. An evil interrogator uses the late ’90s Europop earworm “Barbie Girl” to torture his prisoners.As Mackie’s John drives his beat-up 2002 Subaru through a dilapidated shopping mall, he’s excited to see the remnants of a Foot Locker (he grabs some kicks as he races by). A Twisted Metal game cartridge falls onto his windshield; he looks at it quizzically.Mackie, 44, recalled playing the earliest versions of Twisted Metal. “I remember it just being destruction,” he said in a June phone interview as he sat, ironically, in traffic. “The game was just demolition derby, and I loved it, but it was impossible to play. You couldn’t control the cars — you were just flying past each other, shooting missiles and hoping they hit.”The playing experience advanced, along with the rest of the gaming industry, through subsequent iterations. Now “Twisted Metal” is just the latest TV series hoping to translate gaming popularity to small-screen success, following in the footsteps of series like Netflix’s “The Witcher” and HBO’s abundantly Emmy-nominated hit “The Last of Us.”In gaming circles, “Twisted Metal” belongs to the genre of “vehicular combat.” The game isn’t big on narrative. The series’s creative team, including the showrunner Michael Jonathan Smith and the writer-executive producers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (both writers on the “Deadpool” movies), were charged with expanding the game’s world to the scale of a TV show — to take it beyond, in Mackie’s words, “just being destruction.” (PlayStation Productions and its corporate cousin Sony Pictures Television produced the series along with Universal Television.)Sweet Tooth, a macabre killer clown, is played by the body of the wrestler Joe Seanoa paired with the voice of Will Arnett.PeacockSome characters exist in both Twisted Metal mediums, including the psychotic clown Sweet Tooth, perhaps the show’s most macabre creation. A bare-chested hulk with a leering clown mask — he is played by the body of the wrestler Joe Seanoa paired with the voice of the actor Will Arnett — Sweet Tooth controls what is left of Las Vegas, driving what appears to be a refurbished ice cream truck and wielding a machete that he uses to slash open all comers.At one point he assembles a ragtag army of outcasts to do his bidding, giving him a literal insane clown posse. But Sweet Tooth has one thing in common with John and Quiet: an enmity for Agent Stone (a platinum-dyed Thomas Haden Church), a petty tyrant who essentially runs the country.Somehow, amid all the mayhem, “Twisted Metal” finds room for contemporary class consciousness. John has been tasked with a cross-country trip, from New San Francisco to New Chicago and back, with the promise of a cozy life by the bay if he succeeds. New San Francisco is a walled urban paradise where the swells dwell, while throughout most of the country, it’s a mad scramble to survive. Inside the wall you can eat dinner. Outside, you might be dinner.“The metaphors abound,” Beatriz (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) said. “It is silly, it is violent, it is funny. But so much of the show is about who has and who doesn’t. There’s an argument to be made that there’s a certain kind of cannibalism happening now, within our society, at all times.”“The metaphors abound,” Beatriz said, but the series is also a chaotic blood bath.Cedric Angeles for The New York TimesBut fans of the Twisted Metal game needn’t worry that their beloved bedlam has gone highbrow. The series’s bread and butter remains people shooting and slicing each other to pieces, often while driving cars equipped to do the same. This is car culture at the end of the world, a land of last resorts. So it seems appropriate that John drives not a souped-up sports car but a true beater, modified to handle the wear and tear of the apocalypse. John’s true love in “Twisted Metal” isn’t Quiet, but Evelyn — or, as her license plate reads, EV3L1N.Mackie can relate. After his breakout performance in “We Are Marshall,” from 2006, he was able to purchase his dream car: a 1964 ½ Ford Mustang (as the earliest Mustang models are known by enthusiasts). He’s been tinkering with it ever since. The car’s name is Marshall.“Me and Marshall are always cruising and enjoying our time together,“ Mackie said. “Before I had my sons, Marshall was like my best friend. Some people talk to their plants, some people talk to their cats. I would talk to my car.”Beatriz had a slightly different automotive coming-of-age. She was acting in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival when she started thinking of moving to Los Angeles. One problem: She didn’t know how to drive, and a car is a must in L.A. So she learned from a friend and fellow Shakespearean, Catherine E. Coulson, perhaps best known as the Log Lady in “Twin Peaks.” Coulson would take Beatriz around Ashland, Ore., where the festival was located, in her Prius, a far more fanciful image than any you will see in “Twisted Metal.”Beatriz’s maiden voyages with the Log Lady have given way to faster adventures: She was grand marshal for the Indianapolis 500 in May. As part of the gig she got to ride shotgun in an Indy car before the race, hitting speeds of 190 miles per hour. “Could have gone faster, would’ve been great,” she said.All that fun, and not a killer clown in sight. More

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    BroadwayCon Panelists Tackle Diversity and Representation Onstage

    The eighth annual fan event will host a variety of discussions about how to diversify stages, songs and scripts. Here are six to look out for.It’s the most musical time of the year, the weekend when thousands of fans from around the world descend on Midtown Manhattan for costume contests, Playbill swaps and theater idol meet-and-greets.This year’s BroadwayCon, which takes place July 21-23 at the Marriott Marquis hotel, gives fans the chance to preview new Broadway shows like the “Back to the Future” musical and the “Jaws” comedy “The Shark Is Broken,” catch up with original cast members from the not-exactly-family-friendly puppet musical “Avenue Q” and the storied rock opera “The Who’s Tommy.”The schedule also features thoughtful panels, many focused on issues of representation on Broadway, such as a planned discussion on roles for disabled actors, featuring the “Cost of Living” Tony Award nominee Katy Sullivan.Here are six you won’t want to miss.Celebrating Female and Nonbinary VoicesA group of female and nonbinary songwriters, among them Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the Oscar, Grammy and Emmy Award-winning co-writer of Disney’s “Frozen” (both the film and Broadway musical) and “Remember Me” from Pixar’s “Coco,” will spotlight recent achievements by female, nonbinary and gender-expansive composers and lyricists and discuss how the industry might open more doors to them.“Spotlight on Women and Nonbinary Musical Theater Writers,” Friday, 10 a.m.Diversifying StagesA panel of playwrights, composers and actors of color will discuss how to bring more work to Broadway that represents perspectives from beyond white American culture. Among them will be Jordan E. Cooper, who was recently nominated for two Tonys for writing and starring in the biting race comedy “Ain’t No Mo’” on Broadway; Helen Park, the first Asian female composer on Broadway, who earned a Tony nomination for “KPOP”; and Kristoffer Diaz, whose new musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” written with the singer Alicia Keys, is slated to open at the Public Theater in November.“What Is the Future of Broadway? A Dream Session with Global Majority Playwrights and Musical Theater Writers,” Friday, 11:15 a.m.Restaging Problematic ClassicsA panel of directors, writers and producers will discuss how to revive musicals like “Miss Saigon,” “South Pacific” and “The King and I” with troublesome structural or political elements (or both). Participants will include Lear deBessonet, the artistic director of Encores!, a longstanding, popular New York City Center series that stages short-run productions of decades-old musicals, and Schele Williams, who is directing the upcoming Broadway revival of “The Wiz.” “That Wouldn’t Fly Today: The Art of Revising Revivals,” Friday, 3:45 p.m.Discussing Disability on BroadwayPerformers with disabilities have become a more common sight on Broadway stages lately, appearing in productions including “Cost of Living,” “A Doll’s House” and “Grey House.” For Katy Sullivan, who was recently nominated for a Tony for her performance in “Cost of Living” as the feisty wheelchair user Ani, it’s not just the presence of disabled actors in recent productions that is encouraging — it’s the types of roles they’re being cast in.“I would love to see a world where even more performers with disabilities are utilized within characters who aren’t necessarily written as disabled,” Sullivan said. The panel also includes Gregg Mozgala, her “Cost of Living” co-star; Madison Ferris, who became the first wheelchair user to play a lead role on Broadway when she starred in a 2017 revival of “The Glass Menagerie” opposite Sally Field; and David Connolly, who became the first amputee to perform on Broadway in a 1989 revival of the Civil War musical “Shenandoah.”“Ready, Willing and Very Abled,” Saturday, 3:45 p.m.Zachary Noah Piser was the first Asian American actor to play the lead role in “Dear Evan Hansen” on Broadway. He will speak on a panel about Asian American representation in theater.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesApplauding Asian American StoriesThe New York theater landscape has changed radically since Ali Ewoldt made her Broadway debut as Cosette in a revival of “Les Misérables” in 2006.“We for a long time had a very homogeneous way of telling stories,” said Ewoldt, who in 2016 became the first Asian American actress to play Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway. “So it’s exciting to me when Broadway and theater and TV reflect the world we live in, in all its complexity and diversity.”She and five actors of Asian American and Pacific Islander descent — among them Zachary Noah Piser, who in 2019 became the first Asian American actor to play Evan Hansen on Broadway — will celebrate recent representation in shows like “Here Lies Love,” “Camelot” and “Life of Pi” and discuss how to see even more of their communities’ stories portrayed onstage.“Telling Our Stories — Breaking the A.A.P.I. Box on Broadway,” Sunday, 11:15 a.m.Building a Latino FutureSix songwriters, playwrights, directors and actors, including Luis Salgado from “In the Heights” and the playwright Christin Eve Cato, will discuss the importance of creating, sharing and producing Latino-written works of musical theater, as well as the challenges they faced on their journeys to Broadway and the strategies that helped them break through.“El Futuro es Latiné: Dreaming of A More Diverse Theater Industry,” Sunday, 11:15 a.m. More