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    How Steven Soderbergh and Ed Solomon Straightened Out ‘Full Circle’

    Their gripping new crime thriller for Max is loaded with twists and layers. But it is actually much simpler than what they originally conceived.The first time the director Steven Soderbergh and the screenwriter Ed Solomon worked together was on the murder mystery “Mosaic” (2017), which could be watched as a choose-your-own-adventure-style story using a smartphone app or as a six-episode HBO mini-series.“Mosaic” drew mixed reviews, but the two men learned a lot doing it. For their next collaboration — what eventually became the six-part series “Full Circle,” debuting Thursday on Max — they envisioned another show that would have two distinct, separately shot versions: one told in classic, linear fashion and another that would present the same events told from different perspectives and whose meaning changes depending on which path the viewer chooses.The idea was greenlighted in 2021, and Solomon started writing two versions that would tell the same story differently. Then last spring, reality hit.“When I got the schedule and I saw the number of days and the page count of just the linear, I was like, ‘This is physically impossible,’” Soderbergh said in a recent joint interview with Solomon. He added: “I had visions of ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ — that this was going to become a legendary folly.”Soderbergh decided to jettison the branching version. But then he had to tell Solomon, who had already written 175 pages of it in addition to the six linear episodes.“That was not a lunch that I was looking forward to,” Soderbergh said. It turned out, though, that Solomon already agreed with him. “It was just too much,” he said.There are few better ways to spend an afternoon than talking about film and television with these two men, who love making and watching stories. Soderberg’s résumé careens among blockbusters (“Ocean’s Eleven,” “Magic Mike”), daring oddities (“The Girlfriend Experience”) and the odd Liberace biopic (“Behind the Candelabra”). Solomon’s often has comic undertones, with films including “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “Men in Black.”Together, their efforts have had a decidedly noirish bent — sandwiched between their two series is the 1950s crime feature “No Sudden Move” (2021), for HBO Max. The premise of “Full Circle” follows suit, inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s suspenseful 1963 film “High and Low”: What if there were a kidnapping but the wrong child was taken?Even without branching, the story delivers plenty of twists and layers, toggling between two families in an unlikely entanglement: One is the Manhattan family of a celebrity chef played by Dennis Quaid (with Claire Danes as his shot-calling daughter and Timothy Olyphant as his son-in-law with a mysterious past); the other, led by a criminal matriarch (CCH Pounder), is rooted in a Guyanese community in Queens. In the middle stands a rogue Postal Service inspector played by Zazie Beetz (“Atlanta”).Timothy Olyphant and Claire Danes, right (with Lisa Janae), play a wealthy Manhattan couple who become entangled in a botched kidnapping of their son.Sarah Shatz/MaxCCH Pounder (with Phaldut Sharma) plays a crime boss based in Queens; she has mysterious historical links to the wealthy Manhattan family. Sarah Shatz/MaxSoderbergh and Solomon’s methods and history of close collaboration helped them turn on a dime and adapt the show as they went along.“Scenes were being rewritten, lines were being thrown in while we were doing it,” Phaldut Sharma, a Britain-based actor who plays Pounder’s right-hand man, said in a recent video call. “It was my first my first experience of doing a job in America and I thought this must be the norm, but members of the crew told me this is not really the way it normally goes.”Soderbergh, 60, and Solomon, 62, sat down for a lengthy chat at Soderbergh’s office, in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Steven works famously fast, editing himself at the end of every day on a shoot. How does the writer factor in?ED SOLOMON Most weekends we would meet, usually on a Sunday. I would get a text: “Are you around?” Which meant “I’m going to be in the office for the afternoon.” [Laughs.] And we would just talk through: “Where’s this going? And what does that mean for what we’ve got?” We were constantly reassessing — the writing continues as the shooting starts, and it continues as the editing is happening. I really appreciate how fluid you are with that.STEVEN SODERBERGH It has to swing both ways. I can’t say to Ed, “Rethink this,” or, “Rejigger that,” without looking at my own work and going, “I’m throwing out stuff that I worked hard on trying to figure out and shooting.”SOLOMON Sometimes the show outgrows your original idea, which is part of what’s exciting.“Full Circle” relies more on detail than on back stories — Quaid’s character, Chef Jeff, has a ponytail that speaks volumes about his personality. Was there a deliberate effort to be lean?SODERBERGH There can be a tendency to spoon-feed the viewer about the back story of the characters before you’ve even really gotten into the story. That’s something that I resist as a viewer, and it’s something that I’ve tried to resist as a filmmaker. Most things that I see, both movies and television, are too long. My motto is, if it can be pulled out and it still works, it should be pulled out. I want this thing to be all marrow as much as possible.Dennis Quaid plays a celebrity chef whose empire has some unsavory ties.Sarah Shatz/MaxThe loose, sometimes shaggy atmosphere recalls the noir movies of the 1970s. Were they part of your influences?SODERBERGH I’m after a sort of discovered precision. I want the construction of something that’s been considered, but I want it to feel like it’s happening right in front of me for the first time. I was looking at “The French Connection,” the Sidney Lumet cop films from the ’70s, because I did want that kind of feeling.What draws you to noir?SODERBERGH It’s just a very cinematic form of storytelling. The conflicts are clear, they’re interesting. They inevitably lead to some burst of violence, either physical or emotional, because the pressure builds up in the clash between people’s dreams and desires, and reality, and shifting loyalties, mistrust, all of these things. It’s a very sexy genre to work in as a director.SOLOMON When people are hiding their truth from others, and then the circumstances pressurize them and they’re trying harder and harder to keep that from coming out — to me that’s an exciting place to write from.SODERBERGH Genre is just a great and efficient delivery system for ideas. It’s built to have a sort of superficial narrative layer and then this subterranean thematic space that you can put anything you’re interested in, and that’s what makes it fun.Zack Ryan’s score is interestingly jarring. Why did you set a gritty thriller to such lush music?SOLOMON We talked about Douglas Sirk at the very beginning.SODERBERGH I like the juxtaposition of that visual aesthetic and the sonic aesthetic of a ’50s melodrama. I didn’t want a hip, trendy score — I wanted something very classical and emotional. Which is not typical for me, to be this in your face or in your ears with the music, trying to enhance the emotional state of the character you’re watching.SOLOMON I never told you this: I had a theory that the score was doing the work that the original branching narrative was going to do, which was all about inner life and people’s emotional experience, while this other crime story was going on.It’s always a risk when form and content don’t gel.SODERBERGH I’ve seen extremely skilled filmmakers whose style is so developed and so detailed, you can feel the intelligence and the work. It exposes the fact that the script they’ve shot isn’t as good at its job as they are at their job. Your talent has to match your ambition — you need both, but if they’re out of whack, it’s not going to happen for you. I’ve seen talented people who are not ambitious enough. We see many more people who are more ambitious than they are talented. The universe eventually tends to catch up with them.Too much back story is “something that I resist as a viewer,” said Soderbergh (right, with Solomon, middle, and Olyphant). “And it’s something that I’ve tried to resist as a filmmaker.” Sarah ShatzDo you feel the writers’ strike is making people think harder about how movies and TV are made? Are you reflecting on the way you create?SODERBERGH It’s something I think about a lot. My entire career has been a test of my ability to improve and optimize my work process, which is about getting to the best version of something as quickly as possible with the least amount of drama and ego. I don’t feel that the work we’re doing is necessarily important with a capital I, but it’s also not meaningless. I want to be in that space of taking it as seriously as it needs to be taken to be good. Because if you take it too seriously, it tips over into indulgence, and that’s not what I want.SOLOMON I think art made by human beings has a feel that cannot be replicated. The problem is, the people making decisions on the highest level that are all about bottom line and “How can I get rid of as many human beings as possible?” don’t have the ability to judge what is good art and not good art. My fear is, if we don’t draw a line in the sand now, we’re going to continue to a place where a lot of people are out of work.What keeps you on your toes?SODERBERGH I need a pocket of fear to keep me alert.Where was that pocket on “Full Circle”?SODERBERGH The complexity of the story, of the schedule. You need that sense that this could go sideways if I don’t execute at the best of my ability. You’ve got to find this balance of being self-critical without being paralyzed. You have to make decisions but you’ve also got to be willing to say to yourself: “That can be better. It has to be better.”SOLOMON I want to be a better writer on the other end of it. I want to know that I will have learned a lot about myself, about this project. I will push myself to a degree that when I come out the other end of it, I’m moving forward, I’ve learned stuff. More

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    Maggie Siff Stars in a Rare Revival of Williams’s ‘Orpheus Descending’

    “Orpheus Descending,” a rarely revived play about the treatment of outsiders, has only become more meaningful for its star and its director.After Maggie Siff’s husband died of brain cancer in 2021, the last thing she wanted to do was a play about a woman with a husband dying of cancer.But then, after initially pondering whether to commit to the show in 2019, she reread the script — and reconsidered her hesitation.“I was like, ‘Oh, no, I have to do it,’” Siff, 49, said of starring in the Theater for a New Audience’s revival of Tennessee Williams’s “Orpheus Descending.” Now in previews, the play is scheduled to open July 18 at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn.Williams’s play — a modern retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, in which a man has the opportunity to get the woman he loves back if he can just follow one simple rule — is set at a small-town dry goods store in the Deep South. The writing was revelatory to Siff, especially after she had attended to her own sick spouse, Paul Ratliff, for a year.“It has that quality of living at the edge of what’s real and realistic, and what’s mysterious and beyond our comprehension,” she said.Siff, who is best known for her starring turn as the strong-willed psychiatrist Wendy Rhoades in the Showtime series “Billions,” plays Lady Torrance, a middle-aged storekeeper’s wife who becomes infatuated with a wandering young guitar player, Val, as her elderly, bigoted husband lays dying in a room upstairs. As the two lovers navigate their doomed tryst, they confront the ecstasies of reawakened passion, the racism of an insular community and the gradual erosion of sensuality into newfound resilience.“It’s like sitting at the deathbed of a loved one,” said the play’s director, Erica Schmidt, who directed a New Group production of “Cyrano” for the stage in 2019, and then for the screen in 2021, both of which starred her husband, the actor Peter Dinklage.Members of the cast rehearse “Orpheus Descending.” Pico Alexander, center, plays the roaming musician who attracts the attention of Lady Torrance.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesThe show, which is a rewrite of Williams’s 1940 play “Battle of Angels,” was first staged on Broadway in 1957. It was a flop, running for only 68 performances. (The New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson called it a “second-rate play” by Williams, though he praised the “lyric intensity” of its dialogue and “tender writing that recalls the delicacy of ‘The Glass Menagerie.’”)“Orpheus Descending” has rarely been revived, but Schmidt, who saw the 1989 Broadway revival and a 2019 production at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London as well as the 1959 film adaptation, “The Fugitive Kind,” said she was drawn to its exploration of how outsiders are treated in the United States. She felt the theme would resonate in 2020, when the play was originally set to be staged before the pandemic forced a postponement — even more so now, amid a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment nationwide.“That’s possibly why it hasn’t been so successful in the past,” Schmidt, 48, said at a rehearsal on a sweltering Wednesday last month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “It’s grappling with these issues that maybe we don’t want from our Williams.”In a conversation during their lunch break, Siff and Schmidt — unintentionally twinning in all black — discussed the play’s appeal, how it speaks to the modern moment and what has surprised them in their now years of wrestling with the work. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Why did you want to do this play?ERICA SCHMIDT The play is shot through with desire; this need to really live life and to cling to what matters to you with both your hands until your fingers break, as Carol [an eccentric aristocrat character] says. It reminds me of when Thornton Wilder says in “Our Town,” “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”MAGGIE SIFF I was drawn to it because of the size of life and the dark, liminal space of the world. I was also incredibly scared of it. It felt like an undeniable piece of work that one would need to throw oneself into. And then a lot of life happened — my husband passed away, and I didn’t think I would be able to do this play, but I picked it up again, and these are people who are living right on that line. It’s heaven and hell, living and dying. Being alive but dead inside. And then being alive, but coming into life.What has surprised you about the text?SCHMIDT Williams is very prescriptive in his stage directions and his punctuation, but there is an emotional size or participation that is necessitated by this play in certain moments. The question is how you get there without just being dramatic for the sake of being dramatic.SIFF The thing about the play that always made me the most anxious was the hysteria. For the longest time, whenever I’d read it, the third act, I was just like, “I don’t know how this happens.” And the surprise to me in working on it is how organically it happens. While it’s very difficult to earn those states of being that are so heightened and so large, it’s really masterfully built into the play.The other surprise is that while the play is very grim, dark and tragic, there’s so much in it that is really life-affirming and joyful to perform.SCHMIDT The subtext of the play is live, live, live.After rehearsals at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the play has now begun previews at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesThe original was a flop. What are you doing differently in this production?SCHMIDT Williams talks a lot about the vast expanse of darkness outside the door. When you look at “Battle of Angels,” the hanging tree and cotton fields are described as being right outside the door. So this is the hell that Orpheus — Val — is descending into, Two Rivers County, Mississippi, this vast, racist, sexist 1950s hell. And so, working with the set designer, Amy Rubin, we decided to put the store in the middle of the stage so we can create the vast expanse. And that’s not something I’ve seen in other stagings. Why is now the right moment to revive this?SCHMIDT The play demands that you pay attention to how complicit and complacent you are. Lady is essentially sleeping next to the man who wears a white hood in the night. And the legacy within the play of the Choctaw Indians who were driven from Mississippi in the Trail of Tears and the crimes of the slave trade and the legacy of all that blood on the ground. In our current cultural moment, it feels like only by looking at the past — by really looking at it — are we able to understand it and move forward, hopefully. We can’t pretend there isn’t blood on the ground.SIFF The play takes a mythic frame that it puts on top of a very political setup.SCHMIDT How we get out of hell?SIFF What is hell? What is the nature of heaven?SCHMIDT Can one person save another?SIFF Can people change? What does it mean to be corrupt in your soul? Is love redemptive?SCHMIDT Is love real?SIFF These are the questions that galvanize the play, and they’re questions we’ve been asking for centuries. And he’s not afraid to be like ‘Yes, I’m going to take these,’ and he throws all of those things at the wall. Maybe too many!“She’s lived through a lot to be in a place where she can come alive, which is, I think a feat,” Siff said of her character, Lady Torrance.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesMaggie, what do you admire about Lady Torrance? And what frustrates you about her?SIFF She reminds me of some of the women in my family. She’s such a survivor — I want to say tensile, is that the right word? It’s also the thing that’s her undoing — her pride.SCHMIDT [Reading from a dictionary app on her phone] Tensile, relating to tension, capable of being drawn out. A tensile rod.SIFF I think of it as like the thing that supports bridges, right? She’s lived through a lot to be in a place where she can come alive, which is, I think a feat.SCHMIDT Oh, it is a feat.She’s reminiscent of Williams’s other strong female characters who try to bring about change in a male-dominated society but fail. Or even your “Billions” character, Maggie, who’s similarly sharklike.SIFF She would be a mean — I don’t know, what would she be in this day and age?SCHMIDT The owner and proprietor of a really fancy club, like some kind of massively successful Italian wine garden.SIFF She might also be a singer.SCHMIDT Yeah, and a mandolin player.SIFF She’d be some kind of fabulous diva.What do you hope people walk out of the theater thinking?SIFF Like all great pieces of theater that have tragic endings, I hope an audience will be able to walk out and still feel somehow more expanded, rather than “Oh, why did I put myself through that for three and a half hours?”SCHMIDT Oh, no! It’s not three and a half. It’s going to be two and a half, with intermission. And it’s funny.SIFF There’s a lot in it that’s very life-affirming. More

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    Kristen Kish Chosen as Next ‘Top Chef’ Host

    Kish, who will bring considerable TV experience to the role, succeeds Padma Lakshmi, who hosted the show for 19 of its 20 seasons.Kristen Kish, an acclaimed chef who won the 10th season of “Top Chef” more than a decade ago, will return as the next host of the long-running culinary competition, Bravo announced on Tuesday. She will succeed Padma Lakshmi, who said last month she would be departing the show, which she had hosted for 19 of its 20 seasons.Kish, who has hosted several other food-related series, will take the reins for Season 21, which the network has said will take place in Wisconsin. She will join the food writer Gail Simmons and the chef Tom Colicchio at the judges table.“‘Top Chef’ is where I started my journey — first as a competing chef, then a guest judge and now as host, I have the honor of helping to continue to build this brand,” Kish said in a statement. “It feels like coming home.”Kish, who was adopted from South Korea and grew up in Kentwood, Mich., attended Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago. She then spent a decade working at restaurants in Boston, rising through the ranks to become the chef de cuisine at Barbara Lynch’s crown jewel restaurant, Menton.As The New York Times reported in 2014, Lynch had encouraged Kish and another young chef from her restaurant group to compete on “Top Chef.”Kish won Season 10, and has become a familiar face on the show in recent years as a guest judge. She has also opened her first restaurant, released a cookbook and has hosted or starred in several shows including “36 Hours,” a Travel Channel show that is a collaboration with The Times; “Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend,” and “Restaurants at the End of the World.”Ryan Flynn, an NBCUniversal senior vice president, said in a statement that Kish was “the perfect host for the next chapter of ‘Top Chef’ as we take on a new region of the country we haven’t explored.”Both Colicchio and Simmons published posts on Instagram Tuesday afternoon applauding the choice of Kish.“She is an excellent chef, brings a world class perspective and most importantly, having been a past contestant and judge, she knows what it takes to win @bravotopchef,” Colicchio wrote.“Psyched beyond words to have her pull up that seat at Judges’ Table,” Simmons said.In a statement to The Times on Tuesday, Kish added that she was already “overwhelmed by the amazing outpouring of support by the fans of ‘Top Chef’ embracing this new chapter.”“I am eager to get started!” she said.Maya Salam contributed reporting. More

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    Award-Winning ‘Cabaret’ Revival Plans Spring Broadway Bow

    The production opened in London with Eddie Redmayne in a starring role; the New York cast has not yet been announced but he is expected to join it.Willkommen, bienvenue, Broadway!“Cabaret,” the ever-popular (and portentous) musical set in a Berlin nightclub on the eve of the Nazis’ rise to power, will return to Broadway in the spring in a new production that has already won raves in London.The producing team on Tuesday morning announced a plan to transfer the show to Broadway, and said it would open at the August Wilson Theater, where a revival of “Funny Girl” is scheduled to close Sept. 3.The “Cabaret” producers did not announce any other details, but it is widely expected that Eddie Redmayne, the film star who played the nightclub’s Master of Ceremonies when this revival opened in London, will reprise the role on Broadway. The show’s other big role, Sally Bowles, the nightclub’s star singer, was initially played in London by Jessie Buckley; that role has not yet been cast in New York.“Cabaret,” with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Joe Masteroff, originally opened on Broadway in 1966, and that production, directed by Hal Prince and starring Joel Grey, won eight Tony Awards, including for best musical, and ran for three years. Grey went on to star in a 1972 film adaptation that won eight Academy Awards, including one for Grey and one for his co-star, Liza Minnelli.The musical was revived on Broadway in 1987, again with Prince directing and Grey as the Emcee. Then in 1998, a new production directed by Sam Mendes and starring Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson, came to Broadway via the Roundabout Theater Company; that production closed in 2004 and then returned in 2014 for another year, opening with Michelle Williams opposite Cumming.This latest revival, directed by Rebecca Frecknall, opened in London in 2021, and won seven Olivier Awards, including one for best musical revival. Its run is continuing. The critic Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, called the production “nerve-shredding,” and said, “Frecknall pulls us into a hedonistic milieu, only to send us out nearly three hours later reminded of life’s horrors.”The lead producers are Ambassador Theater Group, a British company that owns and operates theaters around Europe and the United States and has become increasingly active in producing on Broadway, and Underbelly, a British company closely associated with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.“Cabaret” will join multiple shows on Broadway this season that deal with antisemitism, among them “Just for Us,” a one-man show from the comedian Alex Edelman, which is now running, as well as “Harmony,” a musical by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman that is opening in the fall and “Prayer for the French Republic,” a play by Joshua Harmon, which is to open in the winter. Last season’s Tony-winning best play, “Leopoldstadt,” which closed earlier this month, and the winner of the Tony for best musical revival, “Parade,” which runs until Aug. 6, are also about antisemitism. More

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    Jack Goldstein, a Savior of Broadway Theaters, Dies at 74

    He helped secure landmark status for more than two dozen theaters in the 1980s, then initiated the design competition that led to a new TKTS booth.Jack Goldstein, a preservationist who in the 1980s reacted to the razing of several venerable Broadway theaters under a Times Square redevelopment plan by helping to organize a successful campaign to give landmark status to more than two dozen other theaters, died on June 16 in Cold Spring, N.Y., in Putnam County. He was 74.The cause was a heart attack, said Tom Miller, his executor.Over 30 years, Mr. Goldstein established himself as an effective behind-the-scenes player on Broadway.He was the executive director of the nonprofit Save the Theaters, which was formed to prevent the future destruction of playhouses. He was an executive at Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union, and with the Theater Development Fund, where he initiated the design competition that led to the creation of a new TKTS discount ticket booth in Duffy Square, topped with a dramatic cascade of 27 ruby-red structural glass steps that rises above West 47th Street.“Jack had a great artistic eye and a deep commitment to good government,” Gretchen Dykstra, the former president of the Times Square Business Improvement District, said in a phone interview.Mr. Goldstein arrived in Manhattan in the spring of 1982, during a difficult financial period for Broadway andaround the time of the wrenching demolition of the Helen Hayes and Morosco Theaters — the most distinctive of the five theaters between West 45th and 46th Streets on Broadway that were leveled to make way for the towering New York Marriott Marquis Hotel.The sites of the Hayes and Morosco Theaters had become the center of protests by actors, playwrights and others until the wrecking balls began swinging that March.The actor Jason Robards speaking at a rally in 1982 in an unsuccessful effort to preserve the Morosco Theater. Others on the platform included the actor Christopher Reeve, second from left. Mr. Goldstein joined the Broadway preservation effort that year. Marilyn K. Yee/The New York TimesMr. Goldstein told a conference at the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan in 2014, “The destruction in the center of Broadway of beloved, important and, from the actors’ point of view, irreplaceable instruments of their art form and communication, was an affront.”Mr. Goldstein, who had a background in historic preservation, was initially a volunteer with the Committee to Save the Theaters, which had been formed by Actors’ Equity. He soon shifted to join and then run its spinoff organization, Save the Theaters.“Since it was clear that the city no longer recognized the value of the Broadway theaters,” he told Metropolis, an architecture and design magazine, in 2004, “No. 1 on the agenda was to bring to bear whatever legal disincentives to demolition were available and apply them to the historic theaters.”For six years, Mr. Goldstein and other preservationists focused on getting protection for theaters from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.Part of the process was examining theaters’ interiors and exteriors to determine which might be designated landmarks. He brought actors to the commission’s hearings to impart their knowledge of the theaters. And he collaborated on a report with an architect, Hugh Hardy, that stressed the full geometry of the theaters — their shape, layout and acoustical properties — rather than just their decorative detail, as standards for landmark designation.Speaking to the Skyscraper conference, Mr. Goldstein cited, for example, the “spatial relationships and building techniques behind the walls” that allowed actors to speak without a microphone, or in a whisper, and be heard by 600 to 1,400 theatergoers.Workmen cutting away steel from the roof of the Helen Hayes Theater in 1982.Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times“He was well spoken and enormously energetic,” Kent Barwick, a former chairman of the landmarks commission, said in an interview. “He was doing what needed to be done at the time. Was he always right in his judgment? No. Was he always fair? No. Was he dramatic? Of course — he was coming out of Actors’ Equity.”In 1987, the commission designated 28 theaters as landmarks — some for their exteriors, some for their interiors, some for both. (The sale of the Mark Hellinger Theater to a church in 1991 brought the group to 27.) The city’s Board of Estimate, a powerful governing body at the time, approved the designations in March 1988.Theater owners objected to the landmarking “as a confiscation of the value of the building because it limited its use to live theater,” Rocco Landesman, a former president of Jujamcyn Theaters, said by phone. He said of the buildings: “You couldn’t tear them down, and it was difficult to build above them if you didn’t have the rights. Value was taken without compensation.”The owners sued to overturn the landmarking of 22 of the theaters, but in 1992 the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case after the State Supreme Court and the Appellate Division had upheld the designations.Mr. Goldstein in 1997. Looking back with satisfaction in 2014, he said he thought he had made an impact on Broadway. “I feel, ‘job done,’” he said.TDFJack Lewis Goldstein was born on March 5, 1949, in Jersey City, N.J. His father, Joseph, was an Army officer and a physician whose work took him and his family to Maryland, Germany and other postings. His mother, Thelma (Ginsberg) Goldstein, was a homemaker, potter and political activist. The couple eventually divorced.Jack’s maternal grandmother took him to his first Broadway show, Lionel Bart’s musical “Oliver!,” which opened at the Imperial Theater in 1963.“‘Oliver!’ was the first time I experienced that suspension of disbelief,” Mr. Goldstein told Crain’s New York Business in 1998. After attending the University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Goldstein graduated from George Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in English literature in 1972. He worked in Manhattan at the National Design Center, which exhibited home furnishings, before moving to Washington, where he was an assistant to the director of programs at the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, a small federal agency that would play a role in persuading him to go to Broadway.While he was in Washington, the Interior Department, responding to a petition from preservationists, determined that the Morosco was eligible to be included on the National Register of Historic Places, and that if the developer of the Marriott Marquis wanted to tear it down, the company would need a waiver from the advisory council. Mr. Goldstein contended in an affidavit that Lyn Nofziger, an aide to President Ronald Reagan, had told the council to grant the waiver or lose its government funding — an assertion Mr. Nofziger denied.Frustrated, Mr. Goldstein soon left Washington to join the Broadway preservationists, whose efforts to save the Morosco were by then doomed to fail.After leaving Save the Theaters in 1988, Mr. Goldstein was a special assistant for government affairs to Ron Silver, the actor and president of Actors’ Equity, and the project director of the Broadway Initiatives Working Group, which was formed to evaluate Broadway’s future. He was the executive director of the nonprofit Theater Development Fund, which makes theater more affordable and accessible, from 1998 to 2001.When he announced the competition to design a new TKTS booth in 1999, Mr. Goldstein recognized how beloved and important the slapdash, pipe-and-canvas structure had become to theatergoers over 26 years. But, as he told The New York Times, “time and weather have taken their toll.”The new TKTS booth was not completed until 2008, a year before Mr. Goldstein returned to Actors’ Equity as its national director of governance policy and support.In 2012, he became an antiques dealer in Cold Spring. He previously owned a seasonal antiques store in Rehoboth, Del.He is survived by a brother, Leonard.Mr. Goldstein acknowledged that he had made an impact on Broadway.“I think I’ve made a contribution when I walk through Times Square and see theaters filled — many would have been swept away,” he told The Highlands Current of Cold Spring in 2014. “I feel, ‘job done.’” More

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    Review: In ‘Malvolio,’ Hope (and a Title Role) for a Damaged Heart

    The Classical Theater of Harlem follows up last year’s winning “Twelfth Night” with a sequel that feels like a sweet summer frolic.Poor old Malvolio. Amid the comic romance of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” he is the imperious steward who gets cruelly pranked for sport, duped by a band of smart alecks who forge a love letter seemingly addressed to him.Believing that the missive is from the countess he adores, and thinking he is following her wishes, he dresses garishly in yellow stockings with cross-garters and behaves as if he’s come unhinged. Then he is locked away in darkness, where his tormentors continue to mess with his mind.It’s a rancid kind of meanness, but the playwright Betty Shamieh has turned it into a hero’s origin story with her clever, winking new play “Malvolio.” And the Classical Theater of Harlem, whose “Twelfth Night” last July was an effervescent delight, has fashioned this sequel into a sweet summer frolic, with the sympathetic Allen Gilmore reprising what is now the title role.Twenty years after the end of “Twelfth Night,” Malvolio is long gone from the island of Illyria. A respected military general in a stubborn war, he is the leader of the Legion of the Cross-Gartered. (Fabulous name, that; fun uniforms, too, by Celeste Jennings.) But his past mistreatment festers in him.“My humiliation made me reckless,” he says. “Reckless men make great soldiers.”The fleet-footed production, featuring a very funny John-Andrew Morrison, center, as a bored king, is now at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park.Richard TermineIn Ian Belknap and Ty Jones’s fleet-footed production at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, most of the old gang from “Twelfth Night” is still back on Illyria, living not so happily ever after. The marriage of Viola (Perri Gaffney) and Orsino (René Thornton Jr.) totters on despite his infidelity — and his preference for seeing her disguised as a boy, as she was when he fell in love with her.It’s Volina (Kineta Kunutu), their strong-minded daughter, who takes up the mantle of romance and adventure. Betrothed against her wishes to Prince Furtado (J.D. Mollison) — a misogynistic nitwit and sole heir to the uber-bored King Chadlio (John-Andrew Morrison, so funny that you will root for the king to survive various attempts on his life) — Volina slips out of Illyria and meets Malvolio by chance. She falls instantly, persuasively in love with him.Critical of war, skeptical of marriage and astute about the warping effect of defining oneself through trauma, “Malvolio” regards its characters from a distinctly female point of view. Paying close attention to the women, Shamieh has fun with callbacks to assorted Shakespeare plays; Volina’s nurse (Marjorie Johnson) was once Juliet’s.With a color palette that pops, and choreography (by Dell Howlett) that does, too, this is a visually and aurally enticing production. (The set is by Christopher and Justin Swader, lighting by Alan C. Edwards, video by Zavier Augustus Lee Taylor and music by Frederick Kennedy.) If the characters’ tangled relationships are a bit complex for the uninitiated, that’s also true in “Twelfth Night.” The big picture here is perfectly clear.Does Malvolio have enough hope in his damaged heart to risk loving Volina back? Will she even be free to choose him if he does? Well, it is a comedy — with last-minute reveals that are entirely in the spirit of Shakespeare, and utterly charming.It’s free, by the way. Treat yourself.MalvolioThrough July 29 at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, Manhattan; cthnyc.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    in Television

    Timothy Olyphant Is Back for a New Chapter of ‘Justified’

    “I like to think there’s been some growth.”This was the actor Timothy Olyphant in New York last month, musing on the trajectory of his career from a TriBeCa sidewalk. He was referring specifically to the task of resurrecting past roles, which he first did a few years ago in the 2019 movie revival of “Deadwood.”Now comes “Justified: City Primeval,” an eight-episode limited series premiering on July 18, on FX. It features Olyphant returning to what is arguably his signature character, Raylan Givens, the Stetson-sporting deputy U.S. Marshal who anchored the Kentucky crime drama “Justified” for six seasons.The new show follows Raylan to Detroit for a fish-out-of-water adventure with a murderous baddie (Boyd Holbrook) and a sharp-elbowed but alluring lawyer, played by Aunjanue Ellis. The creators describe it as the existential evolution of a character, invented by the crime fiction grandmaster Elmore Leonard, who is starting to realize that he can’t chase killers forever and that he is running out of chances to connect with his teenage daughter.“It’s a mature, grown-up version of the show that we did,” said Michael Dinner, who created the limited series with Dave Andron. Both are former writers and executive producers on “Justified,” which ended its run on FX in 2015.The creators and Olyphant, who is also an executive producer on “City Primeval,” hope to bring back Raylan for at least one more series after this one. But first, they are going to find out if people are still interested in the character or “Justified” without the original show’s evocative backwoods setting and colorful criminals, played by the likes of Walton Goggins and Margo Martindale.“Justified: City Primeval” moves the action from Kentucky to Detroit, where Olyphant’s character, Raylan, joins a sharp-elbowed lawyer played by Aunjanue Ellis.Chuck Hodes/FXOlyphant (left, with Claire Danes and Dennis Quaid) plays a man who marries into the family of a celebrity chef in the Max series “Full Circle,” directed by Steven Soderbergh.Sarah Shatz/Max“With all due respect to our original cast, who I loved, adored and miss, it was really a fun experience being with all these new cast members but still feeling like we were doing our show,” Olyphant said. “This feels right in the sweet spot, but I don’t know, it could be a total failure.”If he didn’t seem particularly bothered by the possibility of tainting the legacy of his most famous creation, this is partly an effect of his affect. In conversation Olyphant is easygoing and quick-witted, qualities he brings to his work that also belie another of his defining traits: a simmering intensity.That combination proved perfect for the darkly comic, morally murky world of “Justified.” Olyphant’s performance in the series shifted his previously hit-and-miss career into a higher gear, which in turn has made his future prospects less dependent on the success of the “Justified” revival.As it happened, Olyphant was in New York for a screening of a different twisty crime thriller: “Full Circle,” in which he plays a Manhattanite with secrets who has married into the wealthy family of a celebrity chef, played by Dennis Quaid. (Other stars include Claire Danes, Jharrel Jerome and CCH Pounder.) Premiering Thursday on Max, the gripping six-episode serial revolves around a botched kidnapping with international repercussions.“Full Circle” was directed by Steven Soderbergh, the latest on a list of talented people with whom Olyphant long wanted to work and now has. Others include Quentin Tarantino, who cast Olyphant as the 1960s TV cowboy James Stacy in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019), and David O. Russell, who hired him to play a disfigured thug in “Amsterdam” (2022). Kenneth Lonergan made him the center of his acclaimed play “Hold On to Me Darling” (2016).“You can throw Larry David on the list,” Olyphant said, referring to his appearance as a smarmy groom in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in 2020. “I don’t know how long I’ll keep doing this, but I’ll show up every day for that guy.”There was also a brief run as a “Star Wars” lawman in “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba Fett,” and a longer one as a Mormon U.S. Marshal in “Fargo.” He played a zombie’s husband in the horror comedy “Santa Clarita Diet” and himself in two different sitcoms: “The Good Place” and “The Grinder.” Earlier this year he had a memorable turn as a grizzled tour manager with terrible hair in “Daisy Jones & the Six.”Soderbergh, who said he had wanted for years to cast Olyphant, called him “the best example of an experienced professional, in that he can give you anything that you want.”“That is the best thing I can say about somebody,” he added.The afternoon after the “Full Circle” screening, Olyphant reclined in a metal chair outside a TriBeCa cafe and marveled at the company he is keeping these days.“I had a blast working with the writers,” Olyphant said of the “Justified” revival. “They picked up where we left off except for this time, there wasn’t anyone throwing things.”Philip Cheung for The New York Times“Being with Steven Soderbergh last night watching something that he’s made that I’m a part of, it just means the world,” he said. “I don’t know why it took me so long to get there, but it’s really nice to be there now.”Now 55, Olyphant retains an athlete’s physique — he had just come from swimming at Asphalt Green in Battery Park — but his hair has gone mostly gray. As he has revived old roles, he has entered a new phase of his life: His three children with Alexis Knief, his wife of over 30 years, are now grown, and one has followed her father not just into show business but also into the world of “Justified.” Vivian Olyphant plays Raylan’s daughter, Willa, in the revival. “Nepotism, you can’t beat it,” he cracked.Olyphant wasn’t sure he wanted to reprise his “Deadwood” role as Sheriff Seth Bullock. (Bullock got a promotion for the movie, adding yet another marshal to Olyphant’s résumé.) Once on set, however, he realized how much the show meant to him. It also gave him a final opportunity to work with David Milch, one of television’s greatest writers, whom Olyphant deeply admires. (Milch has since entered an assisted-living facility for Alzheimer’s care.)“I don’t know what I was so afraid of,” he said. “It was quite moving for everybody involved.”But Olyphant always figured he would play Raylan again. “It seemed like the kind of character that could age well,” he said.The new series updates Leonard’s 1980 novel “City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit,” one of his most beloved books. As Raylan joins the Detroit police in a case that encompasses a string of murders, a psychopathic aspiring singer, Albanian gangsters, corrupt cops and a crooked judge, he is frequently the odd man out in his own show.“I think they wanted that collision, which is why they sent him to one of the Blackest cities in the country,” said Ellis, who plays a defense attorney at the heart of the story. Other stars include Victor Williams, Vondie Curtis-Hall and Marin Ireland.During the original run of “Justified,” Olyphant was known as an occasionally demanding Leonard purist, insisting that the show stay true to the author’s dry wit and sneaky emotional complexity. That hasn’t changed — Ellis said Olyphant carried around a tattered copy of “City Primeval” on set “like it was the Bible” — though Olyphant suggested that the terms of engagement had evolved.“I had a blast working with the writers,” he said. “They picked up where we left off except for this time, there wasn’t anyone throwing things. They were all used to my [expletive].” (Dinner, who also directed multiple episodes, said that “he was a great collaborator.”)“The game has gotten simpler,” Olyphant said of his acting career. “I realize it’s all kind of a joke, just getting away with it.”Philip Cheung for The New York TimesAll productions have highs and lows, but this show’s were more extreme than most. In the plus column, Olyphant called working with his daughter, who studies acting at the New School in New York, “one of the greatest experiences of my adult life.”“So special and challenging, walking that line between trying to get a scene and trying to be a parent,” he said. (“He definitely did give a lot of notes,” Vivian, 20, said. “But in between takes, we would have a lot of fun.”)Less great: the night when the show, shot mostly in Chicago, was filming in a park and the cast and crew found themselves in the middle of an actual shootout. They all dove for cover as two cars tore down the street toward and past them, trading sprays of automatic gunfire.“You could hear the bullets kicking off the back bumper of the front car: tink, tink, tink,” Olyphant recalled. No one in the production was injured, but everyone was left shaken.“My heart goes out to the people that live in those neighborhoods because that is just not any way to live,” he said.So does Raylan age well? Is there growth? Viewers will have to draw their own conclusions.“The road in front of him is a lot shorter than the road behind,” Dinner said. “We get him into a place by the end of the story where he makes some decisions about his life.”Olyphant’s road is getting shorter, too, but the trade-off is that “the game has gotten simpler,” he said. “I realize it’s all kind of a joke, just getting away with it.” His co-stars say that whatever his penchant for downplaying the job, his enthusiasm for it is apparent.“He’s obviously very experienced now,” Danes said. “But there’s still that sense of giddiness and searching, which is wonderful.”Olyphant in turn takes inspiration from those with even more experience, from their example that growth can be its own reward. Co-stars like Quaid, he said, “seem to be having even more fun than I’m having.”“So if they’ll have me and keep inviting me to the dance,” he said, “I think I’ll keep showing up.” More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ and ‘Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge’

    The series about Staten Island vampires is back for a fifth season on FX and HGTV premieres a “Barbie” themed show.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 10-16. Details and times are subject to change.MondayUNBREAKABLE (2000) 8:10 P.M. on HBO. Starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, this M. Night Shyamalan film follows a security guard, David Dunn (Willis), who is the sole survivor of a train wreck and doesn’t seem to have sustained any injuries. On his journey to figure out what happened he runs into Elijah Price (Jackson), who tells him about how some people are “unbreakable.” “Mr. Shyamalan shows that ‘The Sixth Sense’ was no accident,” the critic Elvis Mitchell wrote in his review for The New York Times. “Deadpan melancholy has quickly become his signature.”TuesdayA still from “Iconic America.”Courtesy of Show of ForceICONIC AMERICA 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This episode, part of an eight-part documentary series hosted by David Rubenstein, explores the symbolism behind the Statue of Liberty and how it relates to the current values of the United States, with the help of historians and experts. Other episodes in the series include Fenway Park, the Golden Gate Bridge and American cowboys.Wednesday2023 ESPYS 8 p.m. on ABC. This annual ceremony, which celebrates individual and team achievements in sports, is being co-hosted by LeBron James and Jimmy Kimmel and broadcast live from the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles this year. Awards include best athlete for both men’s and women’s sports, best team and best play. The United States women’s national soccer team are set to receive the Arthur Ashe Award for their fight for equal pay.ThursdayTHE BLACKLIST 9 p.m. on NBC. This series, following ex-government agent Raymond “Red” Reddington (James Spader), is wrapping up its 10-season run this week. As Red’s journey comes to an end, there are two big loose ends to tie up. The first is to figure out what is going to happen to the ongoing task force. The second is, What is going to happen to Raymond Reddington? With the end of the series, the show will have to answer the question: Will he live or will he die?WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS 10 p.m. on FX. This mockumentary, about four vampires who live together on Staten Island, is back for a fifth season. In the first episode of the season Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and Laszlo (Matt Berry) discover the joys of a mall. Also this season, they help throw a pride parade and Colin (the energy vampire, played by Mark Proksch) runs for office.FridayFrom left: Linda Cardellini and Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde.”MGMLEGALLY BLONDE (2001) 7:30 p.m. on Bravo. This movie taught us that having knowledge of how hair treatments work could win you a legal battle — and more important, that “girlie” doesn’t mean incapable. Reese Witherspoon plays Elle Woods, a sorority girl who makes it her mission to get into Harvard Law School to prove to her ex-boyfriend that she is marriage material. Along the way she finds a real passion and ability for practicing law. Jennifer Coolidge, as Elle’s manicurist-bff Paulette Bonafonté, and Luke Wilson, as her love interest and colleague Emmett, round out the cast of this fun movie that still packs an emotional punch.FINAL DESTINATION MARATHON various times on POP. Beginning at 8 p.m. you can cozy up, pop some popcorn, and brew some coffee since you could be up until 6 a.m. watching all five “Final Destination” movies. The general plot of every movie in the franchise is that some people narrowly escape death, except they didn’t escape death, it was a premonition for a future death. To jog your memory of some of the horrific deaths in store: There was the swimming pool incident in the first movie, the tanning bed incident in the third movie, and the botched eye surgery in the fifth movie.SaturdayALMOST FAMOUS (1990) 8 p.m. on TCM. This coming-of-age film is a semi-biographical story inspired by the director Cameron Crowe’s own story. Set in 1973, a 15-year-old William (Patrick Fugit) gets an assignment to write a profile on an up-and-coming band for Rolling Stone magazine. Crowe himself wrote for Rolling Stone in the 1970s. In the film version, William ends up following the band, Stillwater, on tour. Kate Hudson and Billy Crudup round out the cast, as a groupie and the lead singer of the band, respectively. Crowe “has made a movie about sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll that you would be happy to take your mother to see,” the film critic A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times.SundayBarbie in a 2012 version of her dreamhouse.Bethany Clarke/Getty ImagesBARBIE DREAMHOUSE CHALLENGE 8 p.m. on HGTV. If you haven’t noticed, pretty much everything is “Barbie” themed these days (she’s been collaborating with Coldstone Creamery, Xbox, Gap and many, many more), and houses are apparently no exception. Hosted by the model Ashley Graham, this four-part series will have eight teams of HGTV personalities, and one Food Network chef, work to turn a house in Southern California into their best recreation of the Barbie Dreamhouse.MS. MATCH (2023) 9 p.m. on E! Since the 2010s ended, the airwaves have been seriously lacking new romantic comedies. This week, E! is doing us a favor by releasing their new original movie. It follows Athena, who works as a dating coach at a company that teaches people how to better date — but with all that fake dating, what she really misses is a genuine connection. When her college ex-boyfriend comes back into the picture, Athena has to try to address what she actually wants and how to prioritize herself.REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW YORK CITY 9 p.m. on Bravo. Even though we love our OG RHONY stars, there’s a new cast in town. The revamp of this classic Bravo show features housewives Sai De Silva, Ubah Hassan, Erin Dana Lichy, Jenna Lyons, Jessel Taank, and Brynn Whitfield. Andy Cohen, the producer of the Real Housewives franchise, teased on his show “Watch What Happens Live” that “it’s going to be a different show” than the first iteration. “It’s so hard because everyone is going to compare it to RHONY, which was so perfect. And I hope this is perfect in a totally different way,” Cohen added. More