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    ‘Ted Lasso,’ Season 3, Episode 5 Recap: Anthology

    Rebecca, Nate, Ted, Keeley, and Zava all move forward.Season 3, Episode 5: ‘Signs’This episode of “Ted Lasso” was a bit disjointed — what Raymond Chandler would have called “passagework” — following individual stories that were only loosely connected. But it did push forward several important subplots.The episode opens with the news that despite the heroics of Zava, AFC Richmond is on an epic losing streak that dates back to their loss to West Ham last episode. I’ll have more to say about Zava below, but first let’s address the arcs of a few of the show’s central characters.RebeccaThe predictions of the psychic she visited in Episode 3 continue to materialize. First it was the green matchbook. Now it’s the spoonerism for “knight in shining armor,” i.e., “[expletive] in nining armor.” (This is a family newspaper, even when the swears are distinctly British.) At the coffee shop where Rebecca dumped the unfortunate John Wingsnight last season, she runs into him with his new fiancée, who immediately blurts out that precise inverted phrase. Rebecca is, understandably, more than a little freaked out.The remaining question regarding the “nining armor” phrase is whether it has any meaning beyond its repetition in the coffee shop. The green matchbook, for instance, doesn’t seem to have any significance beyond the fact that its appearance was foreseen by the psychic.If the phrase does have further significance, it seems all but certain that it will involve Jamie, who sharper observers than I am quickly noted wears the No. 9 on his jersey. (It is typically the number worn by the striker on a Premier League team, which Jamie was until Zava showed up and surely will be again now that Zava is gone.) And here I can see two obvious possibilities, one more appealing than the other. It could mean that Rebecca is going to hook up in some way with Jamie, but that would be bizarre, given that it’s very difficult to believe either would be remotely attracted to the other. It would also be, forgive me if you must, gross. After Sam, Rebecca really can’t date another 20-something subordinate, or we are entering the territory of a damaged psyche and probable lawsuits.A far better — and more plausible — reading is that under the 4 a.m. tutelage of Roy, Jamie emerges as a true star and begins leading Richmond to wins again. This, in fact, seems to be where we’re headed, psychic prediction or no psychic prediction.It’s perhaps worth noting here that so far the psychic’s predictions have occurred in the order she predicted them: the matchbook first, and the nining armor second. Does this mean that her third prediction — “Thunder and lightning, and you, and you’re upside down, and you’re drenched” — is imminent? Time will tell.But Rebecca is obviously far more interested in the psychic’s final prediction: that she will become a mother. So she heads to a doctor who gives her hope that her age might not be an obstacle to pregnancy and then, after tests, dashes that hope. Rebecca will not have a baby.There has been much speculation, here in the comments and elsewhere, about how and for whom Rebecca might become a surrogate mother. Put me in the camp that thinks Bex will leave Rupert (presumably after learning of his affair with Ms. Kakes) and that Rebecca will somehow help to raise her awful ex-husband’s infant child. But feel free to offer alternative theories.Hannah Waddingham offers a magnificently subtle performance here, some of the best acting she’s done on the entire show. And she is at her peak when she is not speaking at all, when her face oscillates seamlessly between hope and disappointment, sometimes conveying both at once. Her work during the devastating call from her doctor and immediately afterward is beautiful and heartbreaking, and the choice of music, “Quiet,” by Rachael Yamagata, is perfect.NateNate is oscillating too, as he has been for a few episodes now, between his true self — decent but hopelessly insecure — and the mask of the bullying egotist he keeps trying to wear, with limited success. After a nice bit in which he calls his mum to practice how he will ask the supermodel Anastasia on a date, he does in fact call her, and they go out for dinner.Nate being Nate, of course, he takes her to the relatively downscale restaurant where he and his family have celebrated special occasions for years. With Anastasia in tow, he tries once again to impress the hostess, Jade, and she is once again entirely unimpressed.Anastasia is unimpressed, too, but with the restaurant itself. If Nate were truly the big shot he is trying so hard to be, he would have foreseen this and taken her someplace “cool.” But he didn’t, and Anastasia, worried that she might appear on social media in a place “so dumpy and sad,” makes a quarter-hearted excuse and flees the premises.At which point Jade sees the true Nate, wounded and vulnerable, and joins him at his table, where we see them drinking wine and laughing easily. The mask is off, at least for now. I found it a lovely, if perhaps improbable, twist. It is certainly further evidence that in the battle for Nate’s soul, Good Nate is gaining the upper hand over Bad Nate.TedLast episode, we saw signs that Ted was tiring of his own mask of perpetual affability when he voiced his displeasure about Dr. Jacob to his ex-wife, Michelle. This episode, he has to contend with the news that his son, Henry, has been involved in a bullying incident at school.The immediate assumption is that Henry was the one bullied, leading to a hilarious scene in which Coach Beard suggests that they fly to Kansas and burn the bully’s house down, before Roy offers the sensible advice that the “best thing you can do with bullies is ignore them.” This advice is not quite what it seems, however, as Roy goes on to paint a late-at-night vengeance scenario, involving a heavy rope soaked in red paint, worthy of a Bond villain. (I can’t be the only one who was reminded of a particular scene in “Casino Royale.”)But it turns out that Henry was not the bullied but the bully. And as much as Ted is upset at this news, it’s clear that he is equally upset that he is not there, in Kansas, to be a father to his son. Despite Ted’s absence, though, Henry is still a Lasso, and he corrects his error in the most Lasso manner imaginable: “I let him know I was sorry by doing an apology rap in front of the whole class.”Ted, too, is gaining firmer control of himself. He begins to have a panic attack before his call with Henry, and it becomes full blown after he gets off the phone. He envisions the last time he saw Henry in person, as he vanished down an escalator at Heathrow on his way back to Kansas. But he gains control of himself, whispering, “He’s OK, he’s OK,” and to his own apparent surprise, the panic attack is over.I don’t know whether Ted will reunite with Michelle, or whether he should. But I have a very difficult time believing he will not wind up back in Kansas to be a father to Henry. This is a show, after all, supremely concerned with the failures of fathers: Ted’s, Nate’s, Jamie’s, Rebecca’s. (Sam’s is the exception that proves the rule.) Ted is surely not eager to join that list.Later, after the brutal loss to Man City — Beard’s joke that it has the same name as the strip club he worked at in college is priceless — Ted addresses the team about the things we let bring us down: “Crap like envy or fear or shame. I don’t want to mess around with any of that [expletive] anymore.” It’s an admission of something we’ve already seen: Ted has been suffering from all three of those feelings. But there’s hope. Ted is committed to “believing that things can get better, that I can get better.” This, again, appears to be Ted’s trajectory for the season: Becoming a better man and a better father. This doesn’t mean being a less generous person. But it may mean stashing away at least a little of his perpetually chirpy, upbeat facade.KeeleyPlease tell me we have seen the last of Shandy. Her character arc was evident from the moment Keeley hired her, and the decision to play it for broad laughs (“condoms for balls”!) just made it feel like a weekly dose of last season’s “Led Tasso” misfire. She seemed to have walked in from another, much worse sitcom. Her over-the-top tirade on the way out the door — and subsequent experiment in animal husbandry — served only as a reminder of what a feeble character she has been from the start.Jack, on the other hand, is kind of awesome, at least from what we’ve seen so far. “Compliment sandwich,” “talent dysmorphia,” sex with a birthday clown in a car with 30 of his clown buddies? Sign me up. Essentially trading Shandy for Jack could improve the Keeley story line by an order of magnitude. I’m not sure I fully buy the sudden romantic attraction. But I’m not sure I care.Even the dour chief financial officer Barbara gets in a worthy zinger upon Shandy’s departure.Barbara: “Well, I’m not going to say it.”Keeley: “But you’re going to think it.”Barbara: “Yes. Often and forever.”There may be hope for this subplot yet.ZavaHe was in only three episodes meaningfully, but Zava was a pleasant surprise. The obvious way to present him was as an astonishing egomaniac and horrible teammate — indeed that seemed to be how they were setting him back in Episode 2. (It also captures the real-life superstar he is based on, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is famous for his many verbal and violent physical altercations, many of them with teammates.) But the show went with something weirder and at least a bit more interesting. Egoist? Sure. Messianic? Definitely. But not the living nightmare we were led to expect. And his retiring, as opposed to being kicked off the team or demanding a trade, was a pleasantly unexpected exit as well.I confess I found his description of his love for his wife modestly adorable. And even though it doubled as a semi-dirty joke (more on this category later), his line at the end of the video he posted captured the Ted Lasso ethos about as well as anyone has: “If you put your energy into the things you truly love, the universe puts its thing back into you.” Yet another hint that Ted will return home to Henry?Odds and endsI loved it when Colin noted that “She’s All That” was based on “My Fair Lady,” and Sam one-upped him by noting that the latter was itself based on “Pygmalion.” Now that’s a locker room where I could feel at home.I enjoy watching Jamie’s progression, which I’m sure we’ll see on the field as well now that Zava is gone. “Hey, enough of that negativity,” he scolds his teammates. “Stop acting like a bunch of little bunny rabbits and let’s [expletive] do this.”Poor Coach Beard, whom Gina Gershon evidently left to meet her soul mate.Anyone else notice that when, in his big speech, Ted mentions, “Maybe we’ve hurt someone else,” the camera immediately fixes on Roy? Of course you did. We still don’t know precisely why he broke up with Keeley. But I’m quite certain it goes well beyond “we’re both too busy.”Was Higgins’s early reading of a cellphone note about the team’s poor play — I’ll omit the setup for obvious reasons, and cite only the punchline — “This is a text from my father” the dirtiest joke that has yet appeared on Ted Lasso? I say yes, but anyone who wants to offer an alternative candidate should go right ahead. Although watch your language if you want to get it past the moderators. More

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    Late Night Reacts to the Official End of the Covid Era

    Jimmy Kimmel joked that President Biden declared the pandemic’s end “about a year after the rest of us did.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.The End of an EraPresident Biden signed a congressional resolution into law on Monday, officially ending the U.S. national emergency response to the Covid-19 pandemic.Jimmy Kimmel called it “the dawn of a new era,” joking that Biden declared the pandemic’s end “about a year after the rest of us did.”“I’m not sure what it means for our health, but here this means that we here can finally get back to some of our favorite prepandemic ‘Late Show’ segments, like ‘subway blind taste test.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I have to say, I learned a lot during the pandemic. I learned that people who are most resistant to the government telling them what to do also happen to be the people who most need the government to tell them what to do and ironically are the same people who are most supportive of the government telling other people what to do.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But it wasn’t all bad. There were some positives. People helped each other. We found out who in our communities care about others, and maybe most importantly, we now have enough toilet paper to last the rest of our lives.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The end of the Covid era is surprisingly kind of bittersweet. This morning, I did something — I wiped down my groceries just for old-time sake. I actually bought a bottle of Purell and wiped it down with Purell.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Biden Goes to Belfast Edition)“Then this morning Biden was off to the emerald Ireland. The trip is part diplomacy and part homecoming, because Biden’s ancestors came to the U.S. from Ireland in the mid-1800s, when Biden was just a teen.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Biden is a proud Irish American. He’s planning to visit relatives over there from the Blewitt family — that’s his family’s name — and I really hope the visit goes well, because if Biden blows it with the Blewitts, Fox News is going to have a field day tomorrow.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Biden is making the trip to discuss Brexit, address Ireland’s parliament, and, if he’s got time later in the week, to meet with Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell to see if he can’t just patch up all of this silliness.” — JAMES CORDEN, referring to the plot and stars of “The Banshees of Inisherin”The Bits Worth WatchingTuesday’s “Late Show” guest Jennifer Garner recalled how she once landed Jennifer Coolidge’s dream role, playing a dolphin.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday Night“Mrs. Davis” star Betty Gilpin will appear on Wednesday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutAlison Goldfrapp in London. The singer, best known for her duo, Goldfrapp, is going solo in May.Rosie Marks for The New York TimesAlison Goldfrapp’s new solo album, “The Love Invention,” is a disco-tinged departure from her usual. More

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    Review: Arson, Snowmen, Avian Attacks in ‘Regretfully, So the Birds Are’

    A family of adoptees reckon with Asian American identity in this surreal play from Playwrights Horizons and WP Theater.There’s something amiss in this story of a New Jersey family.You might say it’s the sibling love affair, or the parent who’s an arsonist and murderer, or the parent who’s a racist snowman. You could guess that it’s the birds that have been dying because of the recent earth-to-sky migration by humans. You’d be right on all accounts, because the Playwrights Horizons and WP Theater’s coproduction of “Regretfully, So the Birds Are” is equal parts chaos and absurdity.In the new play, which opened Tuesday night at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, a large family portrait hanging above a living room couch immediately clues us in to the Whistler family’s dynamic: the father, at the far right of the photo, and the wall beyond the frame, is obscured in a black cloud of scorch marks.A half-seared portrait is just one piece of the collateral damage of the dysfunction in this family, whose white matriarch, Elinore (Kristine Nielsen), is incarcerated for immolating her husband, Cam (Gibson Frazier), a former Asian studies professor, in his home office. Their three adult children, all Asian American adoptees, have their own issues: Mora (Shannon Tyo), a self-professed disaster, embarks on an overseas journey to find her birth mother just before her 30th birthday but falls prey to a woman posing as a family member (Pearl Sun).The youngest, 25-year-old Illy (Sasha Diamond), is a successful musician who has just bought real estate in the sky, the newest trend among billionaires looking to somehow build houses among the clouds. She’s also dating her daft 28-year-old brother, Neel (Sky Smith), to Mora’s horror; the couple says the romance is fine because the siblings aren’t related by blood. Neel then has a revelation about his musical abilities that leads him to Nebraska to find himself. Cam is reincarnated as a snowman who shares facts about Pol Pot and makes racist assumptions about Asia. And above their heads, the birds are conferencing to decide how to stop the human colonization of the sky.The script, by Julia Izumi, and direction, by Jenny Koons, emphasize the work’s quirkiness, but the anemic plot and feebly drawn characters are thrown together to unclear ends.Still, Nielsen and Frazier do what they can with the material, which includes casual quasi-incest, bird puppets wielded by the cast and, again, a racist snowman. Nielsen nearly runs off with the show as Elinore, a former opioid addict with dementia who has the play’s best lines. Her delivery is full of surprises, from aloof non sequiturs about, say, the usefulness of salad spinners, to her blunt appraisals of her children when they visit her in jail (“You may not be my best-liked but you are objectively the most responsible,” she says to Illy).Frazier gives a delightfully droll performance as the snowman, who offers the clearest keyhole view into how one of the show’s most compelling themes could have been executed. Though Cam’s Frosty incarnation comes across as little more than a gimmick, his misguided exposition on Asian history and culture make him a punchy satire of white Americans who fetishize a whole race of people.Because otherwise the siblings’ arcs fail to resolve or complicate the play’s flimsy interrogation of what it means to have an Asian American identity or to be Asian in America but feel bereft of a heritage. The sky homes seem to be the beginning of a class critique and the angry birds seem to be nods to environmental catastrophe. Or maybe they’re a metaphor for racial or social identity. Or maybe they’re just birds.Even the set design, by You-Shin Chen, reflects the play’s confusion. The small stage is awkwardly trifurcated: the half-singed living room, a treehouse with a sky backdrop and a yard with the snowdad. There’s little to identify the play’s other settings — Elinore’s jail cell, an airport in China, someplace in Nebraska, a bird council meeting, a funeral altar.“Regretfully, So the Birds Are” resembles its title: initially intriguing but ultimately incomplete.Regretfully, So the Birds AreThrough April 30 at Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan; wptheater.org or playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    ‘Covid Vortex Anxiety Opera’ Review: Gloom, Zoom and a New Bloom

    The veteran performance artist Karen Finley leads the audience through the troubles that plagued New York City at the peak of the pandemic.Restlessness, fear, despair, loneliness, exhaustion, worry, anomie: Remembering the peak of the pandemic in New York City, the performance artist Karen Finley takes the audience through a maelstrom of feelings in her new solo show, “Covid Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco.” That, of course, is after her grand entrance, wearing a white hazmat jumpsuit and a surgical mask zhuzhed-up with sequined fringe, she sashayed through the Laurie Beechman Theater to a mix of the disco classic “Don’t Leave Me This Way” and a chorus of pot-banging like the one that cheered frontline workers in 2020.Yep, she’s still got it.Even though she has long ago abandoned the shock tactics that made her a habituée in the culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Finley, who is also a poet and visual artist, remains as unwieldy and messy as ever. A scene in which she enacts a vintage Betty Crocker commercial by trying out a “recipe” onstage, mixing it in a plastic bucket, has an old-school sloppy, feral energy. At a time when the tiniest Off Off Broadway shows can have a soulless professionalism, this rawness feels like a jolt.Also unchanged are Finley’s obsessions: with art as salvation, with the incantatory power of words, with the issue of agency over our bodies, and with our often misguided, often awkward attempts to communicate with other humans. You can see how she would have a field day tackling an epidemic that kept New York residents at home and allowed communication only through masks or video calls.The evening is divided into short sequences organized around themes of sorts and accompanied by costume changes and projections of Finley’s videos and illustrations. (Her daughter, Violet Overn, oversaw the production design.)Reading her text from behind a lectern, Finley is in turn impassioned, mocking, beseeching, goofy, coy. The effect lands halfway between haunted sermon and ramshackle TED Talk — Finley has been a professor of art and public policy at New York University for several years now, so she has acquired a tiny bit of polish, but not all that much.The show is not as corrosive as “Unicorn Gratitude Mystery,” in which Finley covered politics a few months before the 2016 presidential election, but it is just as angry. Because if one thing has not dulled over the years, it’s her rage — at all those deaths in the early days of the pandemic, at a city in agony, at the breakdown of social rules and responsibilities. In a hallucinatory segment, Finley instructs people to put on a mask or, if they have one on, to at least wear it correctly. “I’m saying it nicely,” she insists. Sure, if “nicely” means exuding furor.A few beats later, Finley boogies to “Disco Inferno” while a video of men dancing in a club plays behind her. In one canny move, she ties together generations of deaths in New York caused by AIDS and the coronavirus, with a reference to the falling twin towers quick enough that it doesn’t feel exploitative but still pierces the heart.Like the most inspiring religious services, “Covid Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco” ends on an optimistic note, with Finley pivoting from shock and horror at the lost lives, access and control over one’s body into hope — for change, peace, courage, love. And art. Always art.Covid Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope DiscoThrough May 6 at the Laurie Beechman Theater, Manhattan. Running time: 1 hour 5 minutes. More

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    To Become Oscar Levant, Sean Hayes Revisited His First Role

    The version of Sean Hayes who arrived at a Midtown Manhattan rehearsal space on a Wednesday morning last month was the one everyone knows from his years as a television star on the series “Will & Grace” and as an entertainer. The effervescent Hayes tossed off a quip about the perceived snobbishness of the Hamptons. (“It’s like Shake Shack,” he said. “Anybody can go. It’s not that fancy.”) With similar ease, he sat at a piano and played a few measures of “Rhapsody in Blue.”But the Hayes who a short while later entered through the door of a set made to look like a 1950s-era TV dressing room was markedly different. His eyes were squinted and his posture was hunched. He occasionally twitched his head or shook his hands. He spoke with the defeated voice of a jowly man, sometimes dropping a one-liner (“Gee, I wonder who died,” he said, contemplating the flowers in his room) and sometimes becoming so vehement that his face turned red and a vein bulged from his neck.This is how Hayes alters himself to play Oscar Levant, the pianist and raconteur, in the new Broadway play “Good Night, Oscar,” which opens on April 24 at the Belasco Theater. Levant, who died in 1972, was as renowned for his interpretations of George Gershwin’s music and his roles in films like “An American in Paris” as he was for his dyspeptic appearances on TV game shows and talk shows, jesting ruefully about his struggles with mental health and prescription drug addiction.The play, written by Doug Wright and directed by Lisa Peterson, imagines Levant on a fateful day in 1958 when he has finagled his way out of a psychiatric hospital to be interviewed on Jack Paar’s “Tonight Show.”Beneath its Eisenhower-era period details, “Good Night, Oscar” sets out to comment on enduring ideas about the burdens of celebrity and creative genius. Whether it succeeds will depend largely on Hayes’s ability to embody the dour Levant, a sort of public neurotic who may no longer be familiar to contemporary audiences.Oscar Levant circa 1947. He’d crack wise about the fragile state of his mental health, and once said, in answering a question about what he did for exercise, “I stumble and then I fall into a coma.”FPG/Archive Photos, via Getty ImagesBut as Hayes explained, these kinds of challenges are exactly what makes the play compelling to him.“If you’re not scaring yourself as an actor, what are you doing?” he said. “If everything’s safe, then the results will show that.” With this play, he added, “I’m going to swing for the fences. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, I’m still alive, right?”Hayes, 52, was sitting in a small room at the rehearsal space. He wore a zip-up sweatshirt and playfully shook his hair, a mixture of copper and silver strands, which he has grown out so it can be styled like Levant’s wavy coif.Though he rose to fame in his Emmy Award-winning role as Jack McFarland, the irrepressible “Will & Grace” sidekick, Hayes has his own complicated history as a pianist. When people in the industry are surprised to discover his musical roots, Hayes reminds them — with mock chagrin — that he played piano when he hosted the 2010 Tony Awards. “I’m like, did you not watch the Tonys?” he said. “I thought we all watched them together.”The youngest child of a mother who raised him on her own, Hayes started receiving piano training at age 5 from a neighbor in Glen Ellyn, Ill. (When his mother asked if he wanted lessons, Hayes said he replied, “I’m not doing anything else.”)By his teens, Hayes was playing Mozart sonatas and performing in competitions. But during high school and college (and a stint as music director at a dinner theater), he could feel himself being pulled away by the allure of acting — and weighed down by the pressure of classical performance.During concerts, Hayes said he found himself thinking: “The notes are the notes. These are the notes Beethoven wrote. These are the notes Chopin wrote. These are the notes Rachmaninoff wrote. And if you miss one of those notes, everybody notices.”With acting, he said, “I released myself of that pressure — and found a new pressure of always having to deliver on good material.”Similar anxieties — though amplified — prey upon the Levant depicted in “Good Night, Oscar.” Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of “I Am My Own Wife,” described his incarnation of Levant as a Jazz Age Salieri, in thrall to George Gershwin and crushed by a self-imposed perception that he never measured up to his idol.Levant’s interviews with Paar are their own little sliver of TV history — shocking to audiences in their day and still potent for their candor. Levant would crack wise to Paar about his hospitalizations, the prescriptions he was taking or abusing, and the fragile state of his mental health. In a 1963 appearance, Paar asked him what he did for exercise. Levant answered, “I stumble and then I fall into a coma.”When Levant returned to the program a few months later, the host opened the show by telling his audience that Levant was “much better now” and that he would never “use or bring somebody out on this stage who was not completely well.”During that interview, Levant said his recent behavior had been “impeccable”: “I’ve been unconscious for the past six months,” he explained. “I’ve been doing extensive research in inertia.”Hayes starred with Debra Messing, left, and Eric McCormack, center, in “Will & Grace,” playing the irrepressible Jack McFarland.THOUGH FRIENDS HAD SUGGESTED he consider playing Levant, Hayes was not especially familiar with the pianist. As it emerged in 2009 that DreamWorks was developing a possible Gershwin biopic, intended for the director Steven Spielberg, in which Levant was a minor character, Hayes said he went so far as to commission his own hair and makeup test to see if he could at least look like Levant. (The film was not produced.)As he learned more about Levant, Hayes said he began to feel an affinity for him. “The mental health issues are in my family,” Hayes said. “Addictions are in my family. I thought, maybe I can wrap my head around this thing. As an actor, that’s what we do.”After Hayes’s Tony-nominated run in the 2010 Broadway revival of “Promises, Promises,” he and the show’s executive producer, Beth Williams, began discussing a possible Levant project for the stage. They later brought in Wright, who had been the screenwriter of the Gershwin film.Wright said he, too, was fascinated by Levant, having grown up with “a really entertaining, outrageous, brilliant father who was severely bipolar and refused medication, so Oscar’s mood swings were really familiar to me.”After a lunch meeting where Hayes demonstrated how he would play Levant, Wright said, he left “more passionate about it than ever before.”Asked how he gets himself into character, Hayes told a story of himself as a novice actor, playing an elf in a Kenny Rogers Christmas stage show. As the director increasingly asked the elf-actors to take on more of the duties of stagehands, Hayes said he told her, “You know we’re not really elves — we’re just playing elves.”In similar fashion, Hayes said, “I’m not really Oscar Levant. I’m playing Oscar Levant. This is my interpretation of Oscar Levant.”Long before the play’s 2022 debut at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, Hayes said he had been working on Levant’s voice, mannerisms, tics and physical bearing. He continues to refresh himself on those elements even now, though Hayes said he is not one of those actors who remains in character outside of rehearsals and performances.Reviewing that production for the Chicago Tribune, Chris Jones wrote that Hayes “displays talents here most of his fans will have no idea he had at his disposal,” adding that he delivers “a stunner of a lead performance: moving, empathetic, deeply emotional and slightly terrifying.”The announcement last year of the play’s Broadway transfer drew a rebuke from the playwright David Adjmi, who wrote in a Facebook post that he had persuaded Hayes to take on Levant and was commissioned by Williams to write a play for the actor.When Adjmi refused to “lighten the material,” he said Williams and Hayes replaced him with Wright while using their option on Adjmi to prevent him from further developing his play.At that time, the “Good Night, Oscar” producers said Hayes and Adjmi had parted ways over “different creative visions.” Hayes, in his interview, declined to revisit the matter. “We’ve already responded to that,” he said.Wright said that he had spoken with Adjmi “to ensure that it would not be awkward if I proceeded with the project, and he couldn’t have been more generous.”“I have to now perform in front of a live audience,” Hayes said of playing the piano onstage. “But it’s different this time. Because I don’t care if I miss a note.”Luisa OpaleskyAdjmi wrote in an email that though he felt Hayes and Williams’s actions were “morally objectionable,” he told Wright that “it was not my place to tell him or any writer what job to take.” Adjmi said he later learned from his agents that Wright had taken the job.THERE REMAINS THE QUESTION of whether Hayes felt a personal connection to Levant that made him want to play him, but the actor seemed comfortable cultivating this air of ambiguity.Jason Bateman, a longtime friend of Hayes’s and a co-host of their popular SmartLess podcast, said he did not necessarily notice that Hayes was striving to play damaged dramatic figures.“If you’re asking, have I sensed a darker, more mysterious side of him, I would say no,” Bateman said. “Being able to sincerely be in a place of joy, openness and honesty already takes a great deal of emotional and spiritual intelligence.”Having made his own transition from comedies like “Arrested Development” to thrillers like “Ozark,” Bateman said it can be sufficiently satisfying for an actor “just sticking around long enough to show audiences the rest of what’s in your trick trunk.”Wright proposed an explanation rooted in a connection he felt he shared with Hayes. “We both have cultivated some pretty affable, convivial exteriors,” Wright explained. “But I think that’s a survival mechanism, being gay men in a hostile world and needing to be liked, to keep ourselves safe a lot of times. That conviviality conceals some darker waters, and that’s how he accesses Oscar.”Hayes remained coy. “In order to play the darker side of Oscar, I do tap into certain aspects and experiences of my life,” he said, “but those are between me and Oscar.”In the rehearsal studio, Hayes said he found it fitting and illuminating that, having set aside his musical career so long ago, he should choose a role that requires him to play piano in the guise of someone filled with self-doubt about his own proficiency with the instrument.“I have to now perform in front of a live audience,” he said. “But it’s different this time. Because I don’t care if I miss a note.”If Hayes makes a mistake, he can always say that he was doing it in character. “It’s organic to the material in the play,” he said. “And I’ve finally realized, nobody’s perfect.” More

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    ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Takes Its Final Curtsy

    In its final season, the pioneering Amazon hit wanted to go out the way it came in: fabulously, in heels and with a dizzying words-to-minutes ratio.Rachel Brosnahan during filming for the final season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” As the hit Amazon comedy wraps up, her character finally makes good.Heather Sten for The New York TimesOn a morning in mid-October, on the set of the Amazon comedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” set dressers readied the grimy Midtown office of Susie Myerson, the talent manager played with a newsboy cap and signature glare by Alex Borstein. An animal wrangler oversaw a flock of pigeons outside a false window as a scenic artist painted on their droppings. In a haze of herbal cigarette smoke, the actors — Borstein, Alfie Fuller and Rachel Brosnahan — ran the scene again, again, again, until the pauses vanished and the dialogue sang.If you have seen “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” the first streaming show to win an Emmy for best comedy series (one of 20 Emmys overall), you will suspect, correctly, that the lighting was gorgeous, the costumes sumptuous, the hair and makeup luxuriant. Each pigeon gleamed. (The fake excreta looked very nice, too.) A show that has never met a situation it couldn’t prettify and frill, that’s “Mrs. Maisel.”In this scene, Midge, Brosnahan’s exuberant comedian, receives news of a long-awaited break.“Are you serious?” Midge asks once Susie fills her in.“I’m ‘Antigone’ without the laughs,” Susie replies.As always, the final season features remarkably detailed production design. “We leaned into the vibrancy of the time,” said Amy Sherman-Palladino, the show’s creator.Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesSo yes, in its final season, which premieres on Friday and is set in 1961, Midge Maisel, the only Upper West Side doyenne to work blue, finally makes good. (Just when, where and how? You’ll have to ask a pigeon.) Amy Sherman-Palladino, who created the show, and her husband, Dan Palladino, an executive producer, always imagined that it would end this way — brisk and bouncy and dressed to thrill.“Everyone knew Midge was going to be famous,” Palladino said. “This would have been a very disappointing journey for people to take if she just decides to be a housewife.”“A very funny, fabulous housewife,” his wife amended. “But that wasn’t the ride.”The ride, instead, was an ascending swirl of jewel tones and kick pleats and a chirpy soundtrack (three of those Emmys were for outstanding music supervision), a midcentury fever dream in candy coating. Underneath that coating was the story of a woman — actually two women, including Susie — triumphing in a male-dominated industry through moxie and native skill.The pilot for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” was shot in 2016, not so long ago as the calendar goes but a lifetime in terms of streaming content. Even while making it, Sherman-Palladino and Palladino (“Gilmore Girls,” “Bunheads”) thought they might have a hit.“It was a show that was kind of popping off of our monitors while we were shooting it,” Palladino said. But a couple of decades in the business had taught him that all the popping in the world couldn’t guarantee that executives would OK it or that an audience would find it.The series tracked two women triumphing in a male-dominated industry: Midge and her manager, Susie Myerson, played by Alex Borstein. “It was exciting to see a three-dimensional female character and not just an empty sidekick,” she said.Heather Sten for The New York TimesBrosnahan, then 26 and best known for a multiepisode arc as a doomed call girl in “House of Cards,” also had doubts. After years spent, as she put it in a recent interview, “crying and dying,” she could hardly believe that the creators had trusted her to play a standup comic.“It felt daunting and impossible, petrifying and exhilarating,” she said. But she worried that a pilot about a woman who knew her way around a sweetheart neckline and a casserole dish would be perceived as too niche.“I remember finishing it and going, ‘But who’s going to watch it?’” she said.People did watch the pilot, though because Amazon keeps its viewing numbers secret, the creators have never known how many. Enough, anyway, for Amazon to give the show a two-season order, its first ever multiseason commitment. Its Prime Video service has gone through several paradigm shifts since, but year after year (and Emmy after Emmy), the company kept faith with “Mrs. Maisel.”“You would expect, at some point, someone to go, ‘Do they really need that many skirts?’” Sherman-Palladino said. “It never happened.”Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesThe creators said they had been given whatever they needed to create the world of the series. “We felt a very strong sense of pride about this project that we never experienced before,” said Dan Palladino, an executive producer. Heather Sten for The New York TimesBut all skirts have to come to an end sometime. Palladino described the decision to conclude the show with its fifth season as a mutual one.“It became a mutual decision once we were told it was the last season,” his wife clarified. In these last episodes, while tying off any dangling plot strands, they wanted to give viewers a sense not only of how Midge finally breaks into the big time but also what that break ultimately means for the show’s main characters. The nine-episode final season is larded with flash-forwards, designed to show what becomes of Midge and her extended family.These time jumps lend the show a gravitas it has not always offered. “Life is a series of choices, and some of them are stupid choices and some great choices,” Sherman-Palladino explained. “Part of what those flash-forwards did for us is show the consequences of the choices that she did make.”Until now, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has largely presented Midge’s arc as a dauntless upward climb. When her marriage shattered like so much dropped Fiestaware, she pulled herself onto a nightclub stage and she has stayed onstage ever since.Midge’s marriage ended early in the series but her former husband, Joel, played by Michael Zegen (left, with Joel Johnstone) remained a key character.Heather Sten for The New York Times“I have found her resilience inspiring and her courage to keep confronting change inspiring,” Brosnahan said. But did that resilience and that courage come at some cost? This final season, however breezy, confirms that it did.Earlier seasons have glossed over Midge’s neglect of her children. This final one strips some of that gloss away, even as it emphasizes the robust support system — an engaged father, a hypercompetent housekeeper, two sets of devoted grandparents — that the youngest Maisels enjoy.And yet, according to the creators, Midge’s success or failure as a mother wasn’t especially important. “I wasn’t setting out to do a story about a mother,” Sherman-Palladino said. “This was a story about a woman discovering her own ambition in a time when women were not supposed to have ambition.”Brosnahan echoed this. “I don’t know that it matters what kind of mom she is,” she said, noting that the go-getting men of prestige television have not been subject to the same critique. “We just didn’t have this conversation at this volume about Don Draper or even Walter White.”The show allowed many people beyond Midge to fulfill their personal ambitions. Borstein, who won two Emmys for the show, had nearly quit the business when she received the script for the pilot. She admired Susie’s toughness and also her vulnerability.Luke Kirby during filming. The final episodes will reveal both how Midge breaks into the big time and what that break ultimately means for the show’s main characters.Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York Times“It was exciting to see a three-dimensional female character and not just an empty sidekick,” she said. And she saw parallels between her own career and those of Susie and Midge.“It rang really true for me,” she said. “I’ve always had to machete my own path.”Palladino and Sherman-Palladino never had to resort to machetes. But they did describe “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” as the first project on which they had been given every resource that they needed, the chance to realize nearly every dream.“We felt a very strong sense of pride about this project that we never experienced before,” Palladino said. They are particularly delighted with the show’s exhaustive, spirited production design.“We leaned into the vibrancy of the time,” Sherman-Palladino said. “The cars were beautiful. The [expletive] toasters were gorgeous. People really did dress like that.”To walk through the production studio, even during the final weeks of the shoot, was to feel immersed in this fictional world. A bar set included custom-printed matchbooks on the hostess stand. There were coordinated dishes on kitchen shelves, signed photos and engraved awards in the offices of a late-night talk show.Reid Scott, who plays the host of that show, marveled at the level of detail. A new addition to “Mrs. Maisel,” he noticed during his first day on set that every piece of paper in every typewriter had custom letterhead.“The camera is never going to focus on what this person in the secretary pool is typing, yet they went all the way,” he said in a phone interview. “It infuses the entire production, and it makes everyone really step up.”Even stars of the show were surprised by the level of detail. “It infuses the entire production, and it makes everyone really step up,” Reid Scott said.Heather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesHeather Sten for The New York TimesSaying goodbye to all of that letterhead wasn’t easy. The creators arranged for the final week to require the entire cast. Borstein said that there was a bet going to see who would cry first. (She lost.) There were tears in rehearsal, tears walking to rehearsal, tears at the coffee station.“Grown men crying all over the place,” Sherman-Palladino said. Brosnahan said that even on days when members of the main cast weren’t required, they would show up anyway, just to be together.The final day was especially wrenching. “We didn’t want to wrap,” said Tony Shalhoub, who won his own Emmy for playing Midge’s father, Abe Weissman. “We didn’t want to finish that last shot.”There were wrap gifts, too many. (“Because I believe in buying love,” Sherman-Palladino said.) And wrap parties. But it still hurt, though sometimes in a bittersweet way.“The end of the show, it leaves a hole in my heart,” Borstein said. “It’s difficult, but it’s also a wonderful empty space. Because I know what once filled it, and I know what I’m capable of.”Sherman-Palladino and Palladino feel that same poignancy, even as they’re working on a new show. (They might have talked more about it, but an Amazon publicist came on the line to politely dissuade them.) Mostly they feel grateful — for the cast, the crew, the skirts, the sense of shared endeavor.“Many people have lovely careers and never get to experience this kind of unity,” Sherman-Palladino said. “We’re very lucky. If we get hit by a bus right now, we’re fine.”She kidded that this was how “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” actually closes — with style, with flair and in multiple vehicular homicides.“Giant buses come out and run over everybody,” she cracked. “It’s just a blood bath.”“It’s the ending we dreamed of,” Palladino said.In the end, “this was a story about a woman discovering her own ambition in a time when women were not supposed to have ambition,” Sherman-Palladino said.Heather Sten for The New York Times More

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    Jamila Norman From “Homegrown” on Why She Recycles Nearly Everything

    Jamila Norman — a.k.a. Farmer J from the Magnolia Network series “Homegrown” — has a simple home-décor philosophy: “I don’t like buying new stuff.”Jamila Norman has a few houseplants, for the record, all thriving, at her home in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta. But although she has room out back, there is no garden.“My friends shame me for it,” Ms. Norman said. “They shame me for it all the time.”Is she ashamed? She is not. Are those friends kidding? Let us hope.Ms. Norman, 43, a former environmental engineer for the State of Georgia, is the owner of Patchwork City Farms, a 1.2-acre spread in the middle of the city that produces organic fruit, vegetables and herbs flowers for restaurants and local farmers’ markets.She has brought her knowledge and can-do spirit to full flower as the host of the Magnolia Network series “Homegrown.” On each episode, Ms. Norman, also known as Farmer J, helps someone transform an often wild-and-woolly outdoor space into a beautiful, functional backyard farm. (The show’s third season premiered on April 1.)Ms. Norman spent her early years in Queens, New York, eventually moving with her family to Connecticut, then to Georgia. When she got to the University of Georgia, in Athens, Ga., she volunteered with a Boys and Girls Club, sometimes assisting with planting projects.When Jamila Norman is not helping families transform outdoor space into productive gardens, she plants herself at her century-old Craftsman house in Atlanta. “I was looking for an older house, high ceilings, fireplaces, all that good stuff,” she said.Dustin Chambers for The New York Times“I did not grow up gardening at all,” she said. “But while we were living in New York, we spent extended periods of time in Trinidad, where my father is from. That experience taught me to love the outdoors.”A couple of Ms. Norman’s friends at college had property out in the country, where she’d go to “have some hippie moments.”“So I had always kind of dabbled in nature,” she said. “And I’m a double earth sign.” (Specifically, Taurus sun and Taurus rising.)Astrological imperatives notwithstanding, things didn’t go beyond dabbling until 2008, a few years after Ms. Norman moved to Atlanta from Athens — a long-deferred dream — and began helping out in the garden of a church. Later, she leased land for a farm at a middle school. In 2016, she bought the allotment that became the home of Patchwork City Farms. Conveniently, it’s a five-minute drive from her house.“I knew I wanted to be in the West End,” Ms. Norman said. “I was in the neighborhood a lot when I was in high school, because they had a lot of awesome cultural festivals there.”She and her husband (they have since divorced), looked at an array of properties. One place, a Craftsman house built in the 1920s, captivated Ms. Norman while she was sieving through the internet.“I Googled it and sent a link to my Realtor and said, ‘Hey, can I see this house?” she recalled. “I fell for it online, and when I saw it in person, l was like, ‘This is my house.’”Ms. Norman “gravitates toward turquoise,” as the slipcovers on the sofas make clear. Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesJamila Norman, 43Occupation: Farmer, food activist and host of the television series “Homegrown”D. I. Why: “I was like, ‘I’m going to strip the molding all over the house.’ It took months just to do my bedroom using nontoxic stuff like the stuff that’s made from orange peels. Then I was like, ‘Let’s paint everything white.’ So much for all my ambition.”What made it so were the high ceilings and oversized windows, the three fireplaces, the crown and chair molding, and the big, open rooms — plenty of space for her three sons, now young adults. The new roof and the updated electrical and plumbing systems added to the appeal.It’s no big deal that the nails in the old oak floorboards in the living room sometimes pop up, requiring Ms. Norman to knock them back into place. She relishes the sense of history and continuity. “You can tell the house was built in stages,” she said, “because the floors in the newer parts are tongue and groove.”Ms. Norman is also decorating in stages. She has hung the panel of Kuba cloth that she bought years ago from a vendor at a street festival. Also on display are shells from Jamaica, rocks from Greece and artwork by her children and one of her sisters.But her attic bulges with the rugs and lamps and tables she has been collecting over the past decade or so and holding back until the moment is right. “I have boys, and when you have boys, you can’t do all your good things until they’re gone,” she said. “I tell them, ‘As soon as you move out, it’s going to be a new house.’”Ms. Norman makes her own soap. “We grew up as natural as possible, so I make all my own body products,” she said.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesTo put it in horticultural terms, Ms. Norman’s philosophy of home décor tilts more toward perennials than annuals. “I don’t like buying new stuff,” she said. “I like to find stuff that’s already out there and still useful. It’s about finding value in old things. It’s a hodgepodge, but it’s cute.”An engineering drafting table that Ms. Norman found on Craigslist, for example, was repurposed as the countertop for the kitchen island. The spiral-shaped coat rack near the front door was a vintage sale find. The table, chairs and rug in the dining room were sourced at an estate sale. A friend who was moving passed down the curio cabinet. The desk cabinet sits on a desk that belonged to Ms. Norman’s former husband.Some while back, she spotted three steamer trunks sitting on a neighbor’s porch and made a successful offer. The trunks now store pieces of the quilt she is taking apart to reassemble (when she can find the time) and the essential oils she uses for the homemade skin-care and hair-care products she makes for herself and a few fortunate friends and relatives.“When people in my neighborhood see me, they say, ‘Oh, there’s the farmer girl,’” Ms. Norman said.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesOne of the two pullout sofas in the living room came from a friend; the other was a rare store purchase. Thanks to Ms. Norman’s mother, Raabia, both were recently refreshed with turquoise slipcovers.“She said, ‘Your couches are looking raggedy. I got you something.’ She comes in and arranges things and rearranges them,” Ms. Norman said fondly.This regard for the old and well used is elemental. Ms. Norman connects it to the land that is her livelihood and her love.“It’s about tending to things,” she said. “The oak floorboards came from somebody’s forest. The bricks — they’re from the earth. It’s an extension of nature in a built environment.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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    Stephen Colbert Isn’t Fazed by the News About Clarence Thomas

    “‘Wow, I can’t believe Clarence Thomas did something inappropriate,’ said a woolly mammoth reanimated after being frozen in the Siberian permafrost,” Colbert joked.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Red Flags on the S.S. MoneybagsClarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice, has come under fire for accepting lavish trips and gifts from Harlan Crow, a wealthy conservative donor, without disclosing that he had done so.“‘Wow, I can’t believe Clarence Thomas did something inappropriate,’ said a woolly mammoth reanimated after being frozen in the Siberian permafrost,” Stephen Colbert joked on Monday.“Crow’s relationship with Justice Thomas was more than just a few voyages on the S.S. Moneybags. These luxury trips happened virtually every year for more than two decades, including trips around the world on Crow’s superyacht, flying on Crow’s G5 jet, and visits to Crow’s various estates, including one in the Adirondacks, which has a three-boat garage. Well, yeah, a busy family’s got to have three boats — what if the kids sleep late and miss the school yacht?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Thomas insists that these gifts from Crow don’t count because of their personal relationship, saying, ‘We have been friends for over 25 years.’ OK, but you’ve been on the Supreme Court for 31 years. ‘Oh, it’s not a bribe — he’s my friend.’ ‘Oh, how’d you guys meet?’ ‘Oh, he was bribing me.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He’s your close personal friend that you know everything about, so I guess it would be really embarrassing to learn that Harlan Crow has a collection of Adolf Hitler artifacts and Nazi memorabilia, including two paintings by Hitler. Ladies, take note. That is a red flag.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Crow also has a display of swastika-embossed linens. Yeah, yeah. It all comes with the Monsters of History fine dining set: You get the Nazi Napkins, the Pol Pots and Pans, and the Osama bin Ladle.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Easter Monday Edition)“At the White House this morning, the Bidens hosted the annual egg roll. Why they do this the day after Easter, I don’t know. Jesus is like, ‘I have to rise again again?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s a tradition going back over a century, to when children were invited to search for treats in Chester A. Arthur’s muttonchops.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Once again, this year’s theme was ‘Egg-ucation,’ although Biden also made time to address the Egg-conomy.’” — JAMES CORDEN“But this is not the first time they’ve repeated themes. You know, when Trump was president, the Easter theme was ‘Eggomaniac’ for three years in a row.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn the “Late Show,” Brian Cox shared some thoughts on his character, Logan Roy, after this week’s explosive episode of “Succession.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe comedy legend Carol Burnett will appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Tuesday.Also, Check This OutMarilyn Minter at her studio pictured with “Mickalene Thomas,” 2022-23, with large enamel on metal painting at right.Thea Traff for The New York TimesAt 74, the artist Marilyn Minter’s ambitious new show includes portraits featuring women she admires, such as Gloria Steinem, Monica Lewinsky and Mickalene Thomas. More