Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 88 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    Richard Lewis and Larry David’s Lifelong Friendship

    The two comics were born three days apart in the same Brooklyn hospital, and their paths never stopped crossing. They became the best of friends — in their own way.If ever a Hollywood friendship was destined to be, it might have been the one between the comics Larry David and Richard Lewis, who died from a heart attack on Tuesday at 76. They were born just three days apart in 1947 at the same Brooklyn hospital. When they were 12, they met at summer sports camp, and instantly detested each other. That would set the tone that would define their friendship — and their onscreen relationship — for the rest of their lives.“I disliked him intensely,” Lewis told The Spectator last year, calling the young David cocky and arrogant. “When we played baseball, I tried to hit him with the ball. We were archrivals. I couldn’t wait for the camp to be over just to get away from Larry. I’m sure he felt the same way.” (He did. “We hated each other,” David said during a 2002 interview.)About a decade or so later, they found themselves performing at the same New York comedy club — both honing their similar brand of neurotic humor — but didn’t recognize one another at first. Later that same night, something clicked inside Lewis: “I looked at his face, and I said, ‘There’s something about you, man, that spooks me.’” With that, their memories were jogged.“We became instant best friends,” David said of Lewis during that 2002 interview, at the Paley Center for Media. In 2010, talking with Howard Stern, Lewis said, “When I became a comic, he loved my work, and I loved his work.”“For most of my life, he’s been like a brother to me,” David said of Lewis in a statement on Wednesday, shared by HBO. “He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest. But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never forgive him.”David was not available for questions on Thursday morning.Last month, Lewis spoke to The Times’s Melena Ryzik about those early days. “Without sounding too pompous about it, I always dug comedians who were the same onstage as they were offstage,” Lewis said, referring to David. “There wasn’t too much fake stuff going on, they didn’t create a character, they were just who they were.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 113 Shares169 Views

    in Theater

    Cast Album Roundup: ‘Sweeney Todd,’ ‘Parade,’ ‘Camelot’ and More

    Recordings of Broadway musicals are often better than the shows they preserve. Here’s a ranking of last year’s crop, with samples and bonus tracks.The best theatrical songwriting barely requires a theater. Which is a good thing when so many shows close so quickly.Of the 16 musicals that opened on Broadway in 2023, only four are still running. That’s live theater, perpetually dying.Yet not entirely. Like loved ones who leave behind scrapbooks or tchotchkes, many shows leave souvenirs of themselves in the form of cast albums. And sometimes, shorn of annoying context, they’re better than what was once seen onstage.Below, my highly subjective ranking of the nine 2023 musicals that released cast albums. (One more — “Gutenberg! The Musical!” — is expected, this spring.) And because no year is complete without a bunch of Stephen Sondheim marginalia, I’ve added a few bonus tracks, including a snippet of a surprise, in his honor.All the recordings are good, and some are sublime, as you can let your ears decide. But close your eyes if possible. Let the theater be inside you.1. ‘Sweeney Todd’The glorious score is largely unchanged. The orchestrations are only slightly tweaked. So what’s the added value of this nth recording of the Sondheim masterwork? As you might expect from a cast headed by Josh Groban as the vengeful barber, the answer is the beautiful singing. Groban’s slight stiffness and somewhat meek interpretation, which worked against the role’s terror in the huge stage production, are utterly absent on the album, turning numbers like Sweeney’s “Epiphany” into murderous arias as big as any in opera. Under Alex Lacamoire’s musical supervision, the performances — not just Groban’s but the ensemble’s — go for the throat, over and over.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Theater

    Forbidden No More: ‘Forbidden Broadway,’ Scrappy Spoof, Bound for Broadway

    The long-running parody show, which has been staged in New York and on tour, will open this summer at the Hayes Theater.For more than four decades, “Forbidden Broadway” has lovingly mocked the songs, stories and stars of Broadway from afar — in performance spaces at bars or diners as well as in theaters in New York and beyond.This summer, the show will for the first time be staged in the belly of the beast: on Broadway. A version of the long-running, oft-altered revue, now titled “Forbidden Broadway on Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song,” is planning to begin previews July 29 and to open Aug. 15 at the Hayes Theater.“Everything else is getting bigger, so why not ‘Forbidden Broadway’?” said Gerard Alessandrini, the show’s creator and author. “I haven’t done a whole new edition of ‘Forbidden Broadway’ since before Covid, so I thought this would be a good time to come back — we need to laugh more, and with all the activity on Broadway, there will be plenty of good targets.”“Forbidden Broadway” is a satirical production, consisting mostly of melodies from well-known or currently running shows, rewritten with lyrics that mock something about the production or its artists. The audience’s basic familiarity with the material is crucial, so the show’s targets are often rotated to reflect whatever is most in the public eye.“Going to a ‘Forbidden Broadway’ is for me like sitting down and schmoozing with a friend who shares an obsession,” the critic Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times in 2019.The show has had some near-death experiences, but, at least so far, each hiatus has been followed by rewriting and rebirth.The subtitle of the Broadway version is a confession as well as an allusion to one of the season’s biggest hits, “Merrily We Roll Along,” which has a score by Stephen Sondheim. “Forbidden Broadway” has long parodied Sondheim works, and this iteration is expected to spoof not only “Merrily,” but also several other classics by the great composer, including “Sweeney Todd,” “Into the Woods” and “Company.” That doesn’t mean this season’s other offerings will be spared — a news release cites as possible examples “Hell’s Kitchen,” “The Great Gatsby,” “Back to the Future,” “The Notebook” and “Water for Elephants.”The plans to bring “Forbidden Broadway” to the big stage were previously reported by the newsletter Broadway Journal. The production, with four actors, a pianist and rotating guest stars, will be directed by Alessandrini, who created “Forbidden Broadway” in 1982. The producers are Broadway & Beyond Theatricals (Ryan Bogner, Victoria Lang and Tracey Stroock McFarland) in association with John Freedson and Harriet Yellin. More

  • 150 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    Tom Sandoval’s Interview Shows the Perils of Doing PR for Reality TV

    Publicists who work with “unscripted” people say it presents several challenges.Tom Sandoval, a star of “Vanderpump Rules,” has shared a lot in the decade that he has appeared on that reality TV show, the 11th season of which began airing on Bravo in January. But in a recent interview with The New York Times Magazine, Mr. Sandoval, 41, said things that surprised even people who were well familiar with his penchant for shocking behavior.Speaking about the public interest in an affair he had with a co-star while he was dating another co-star, a tryst known as “Scandoval,” Mr. Sandoval said that he was not a historian of pop culture, but that he “witnessed the O.J. Simpson thing and George Floyd and all these big things, which is really weird to compare this to that, I think, but do you think in a weird way it’s a little bit the same?”Mr. Sandoval also said he felt that he received more hate for his affair than the actor “Danny Masterson, and he’s a convicted rapist.” He spoke in the presence of a member of his publicity team, which to some was as astonishing as his comments.The writer who interviewed Mr. Sandoval for The Times Magazine wrote that a representative for Bravo contacted her after their conversation took place and before it was published to relay concerns about what he had said.Alyx Sealy, a publicist for Mr. Sandoval, declined to comment for this article. Bravo declined to participate. Adam Ambrose, a publicist who represents reality stars and who has represented Mr. Sandoval in the past, said in an emailed statement that working with people on reality TV could present unique challenges because of the nature of that genre.“Unscripted stars portray and are their authentic selves, so at times the lines can be blurred for them to discern between being in front of the camera and speaking to the media,” said Mr. Ambrose, the founder of Brand Influential, a public relations company in Los Angeles, who emphasized that he was speaking generally and not about any specific client, past or present. “Sometimes they may be perceived as uncoachable, making it more challenging to manage their media presence from a P.R. perspective.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Theater

    René Pollesch, Provocative Force in German Theater, Dies at 61

    His avant-garde work, short on character and plot but long on verbal high jinks, could be irreverent, even goofy, but it was always intellectually serious.René Pollesch, a prolific playwright and stage director whose work — intellectually serious yet irreverent, chatty, goofy and riddled with pop culture references — made him one of the most significant forces in German theater of the past three decades, died on Monday in Berlin. He was 61.His death was announced by the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz theater, where he had been artistic director since 2021. No cause was given.Mr. Pollesch (pronounced POL-esh) wrote roughly 200 plays and directed virtually all of them himself, often at leading theaters in the German-speaking world. But while his plays lit up stages in places like Stuttgart, Hamburg, Vienna and Zurich, he was most closely associated with the Volksbühne, a publicly funded playhouse in what once was East Berlin, that had a reputation for daring and provocative theatermaking.Mr. Pollesch took over leadership of the theater after years of managerial turmoil set off by the dismissal of the company’s longtime artistic director, Frank Castorf, in 2017. When Mr. Pollesch arrived, two others in the top post had come and gone, and the theater was craving stability.In his two and a half seasons at the helm, he staged nine original plays, eight of which remain in the theater’s repertoire. The most recent, “ja nichts ist okay” (“yes nothing is okay”) premiered on Feb. 11.A scene from “ja nichts ist ok” (“yes nothing is okay”), the most recent play staged by Mr. Pollesch at the Volksbühne. It had its premiere on Feb. 11. Thomas Aurin, via Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-PlatzWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Television

    ‘The Regime’ Review: Kate Winslet Will Make You Love Her

    Kate Winslet is commanding (and funny) in HBO’s screwball sendup of rising authoritarianism.Of all the recent reboots of 20th-century franchises, among the hottest and most terrifying is populist authoritarianism. It is playing in revival halls on multiple continents, drawing a wide range of performers and cultivating a rabid fan base.History may be repeating in real life as tragedy. But HBO’s lightly-yet-darkly entertaining “The Regime,” a six-episode series beginning on Sunday, plays it as full-on farce.“The Regime,” written by Will Tracy (“The Menu,” “Succession”), deposits us in a palace somewhere in “Middle Europe.” Chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet), who rules her small country through surveillance, violence and telegenic charisma, has developed the debilitating fear that the residence is infested with deadly mold spores.Whether the mold is real is immaterial; her retinue of advisers, oligarchs and sundry quacks must behave like it is. And the fear underlying Elena’s paranoia is clear. Seven years after taking power in the “free and fair election” that ousted her left-leaning predecessor (Hugh Grant), she senses that her kleptocratic state is rotting from within.Her deliverance arrives in the form of Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts), a soldier reassigned to palace duties after putting down a workers’ protest a touch too enthusiastically. (The press nicknames him “The Butcher.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    The Comedy, and the Horror, of the Infertility Plot

    Onscreen, assisted reproductive technology is a double-edged device, representing women’s empowerment, or their exploitation.“Scrambled” is a romantic comedy about a woman who falls in love with her decision to freeze her eggs. Nellie, a 34-year-old perma-bridesmaid, is wasted and alone at yet another wedding when she is struck by the fear that her fertility may peak before her romantic situation is resolved.The conventional romantic comedy may culminate in marriage, but “Scrambled” leads Nellie toward a procedure that extends the timeline of her own marriage plot. Nellie (Leah McKendrick, who also writes and directs the film) gets her happy ending from an embryology lab. “You were no accident,” she tells one of her cryogenically preserved eggs. “You were one of the most intentional things that I have ever done.”Reproductive technologies are increasingly assisting in human conception (even as the Alabama Supreme Court has complicated their use), and they have become familiar narrative devices, too. Their meaning is double-edged. “Scrambled,” with its oddball cheer, gives fertility treatments an empowering gloss. But an emerging horror genre sharpens the same technologies into instruments of exploitation, turning clinics into torture chambers and doctors into demons. The deus ex machina of assisted reproduction can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the god who sent the machine.After swigging from the sentimental techno-optimism of “Scrambled,” I chased it with a wave of recent downers: I watched “False Positive,” the 2021 horror movie in which Lucy (Ilana Glazer) is subdued by a creepy fertility clinic; “Dead Ringers,” the 2023 limited series in which Rachel Weisz plays a pair of twin gynecologists; and “American Horror Story: Delicate,” the latest installment of the FX horror anthology series about an actress (Emma Roberts) who attempts to secure a baby and an Oscar with the help of her ambiguously sinister publicist (Kim Kardashian).As I watched these horror stories, I found myself counting their clichés on both hands. In the standard fertility-horror plot, a wealthy white couple will report to a an experimental clinic. Its staff will forgo scrubs for bespoke costumes resembling clerics or Stepford wives. An inscrutable and potentially supernatural ultrasound reading will occur. A woman will struggle to conceive, and this difficulty will be blamed on her careerism. She will be instructed to ingest strange tinctures and coached to mistrust her own mind. Her terror will be dismissed as “pregnancy brain” or “hormones.” Her pain will be denied. Her male partner will collude with a male doctor behind her back. Her female friend will be in on it, too. In the end, her pregnancy will be simulated, sabotaged or terminated without her knowledge or consent.In “American Horror Story: Delicate,” an actress (Emma Roberts, right) attempts to secure a baby and an Oscar with the help of her sinister publicist (Kim Kardashian, left).Eric Liebowitz/FXWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 88 Shares169 Views

    in Television

    Richard Lewis and ‘The (Blank) From Hell’

    The comedian, who died this week, said he coined the ubiquitous phrase. An episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” about a “nanny from hell” recounted his efforts to get credit for it.Go ahead and call Richard Lewis the comedian from hell. You’d be paying him a compliment.The stand-up comedian, who died on Tuesday, was known for his dark clothes, dark sense of humor and a recurring role as a, yes, even darker version himself on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He was a fixture in the comedy world for over half a century. But his most indelible legacy could be one simple phrase, spoken so often that its origin might never be questioned.“The (insert hated thing here) from hell.”It’s a phrase that seemingly has been around since time immemorial. The flight from hell, the day from hell, the lunch from hell. We’ve all been there, and we all know what it means, but where did it come from?According to Richard Lewis and the “Yale Book of Quotations,” it came from him.Posting on X, known then as Twitter, Mr. Lewis asked, “Where was my Nobel Peace prize?” and linked to a 2006 UPI article about his appearance in the “Yale Book of Quotations.”In a 2008 interview with Interview Magazine, Mr. Lewis said that “the truth of the matter is that whatever gift I have as a comedian, most of it was in the phrase ‘from hell.’”“I’m credited with popularizing that phrase because I felt victimized by everything,” he said.Mr. Lewis elaborated in a 2014 interview with the Nashville Scene.“I totally popularized the phrase in the late ’70s,” he said. “If you go on YouTube, you can see on Letterman, David would cut me off, and go, ‘You mean it was the bar mitzvah from hell?’ ‘That’s right!’ And I stopped saying it. I felt self-conscious. I was getting applause for it. I guess subconsciously I thought I was a victim of everything.”Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations” did not give him credit for the phrase, which became a story line in the episode “The Nanny,” during season three of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”The episode, which aired in 2002, weaves in Lewis’s attempts to get into Bartlett’s.“It was a real solid for Larry to do that for me,” he said. “That really immortalized it in some respects.” More