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    How a Kentucky Man Trapped in a Cave Became a Broadway Musical

    Floyd Collins was pinned under a rock while exploring a cave in 1925. That history, recounted in song, is now on Broadway.When Roger Brucker heard that the story of a trapped Kentucky cave explorer who slowly starved to death was being turned into a musical, he was doubtful. “Aren’t musicals supposed to be fun?” he thought.Brucker, 95, knows more than most about the doomed explorer Floyd Collins. He co-wrote the book “Trapped!,” which is considered the definitive history of the events that unfolded during the so-called Kentucky Cave Wars, a period of rapid subterranean exploration in the 1920s when the state commercialized its extensive cave systems for tourism opportunities.Collins was an accomplished spelunker in 1925 when he entered Sand Cave alone, only for a 27-pound rock to pin his ankle and trap him underground. Over the course of 14 days, he died of thirst, hunger and exhaustion, compounded by hypothermia.Turning that story into “Floyd Collins,” which made its Broadway debut at Lincoln Center Theater this week, was an exercise in bringing a bleak history to life through song.Tina Landau, the show’s director, bookwriter and additional lyricist, was an undergraduate student at Yale University — decades before she conceived “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical” and “Redwood” — when she came across a blurb about Collins in an anthology on American history. It focused on the media circus around the failed rescue, one of the most prominent national news stories between the two world wars.Landau, 62, said her perspective on the story was different from when she wrote the show, which premiered in 1996 at Playwrights Horizons, in her late 20s. She understands it now as an individual confronting his mortality.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Kimmel Mocks Pete Hegseth’s Rumored Pentagon Makeup Studio

    “Nothing sparks fear in the hearts of our enemies like a defense secretary who puts foundation on his face,” Kimmel said.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.All Dolled UpPete Hegseth denied reports this week that he requested a makeup studio built at the Pentagon to prepare for television interviews.On Thursday, Jimmy Kimmel said Americans wouldn’t even recognize the former secretary of defense, as opposed to Hegseth, who “is on TV now more than Ryan Seacrest.”“This is Lloyd Austin, he is a four-star general. He was the previous secretary of defense. You ever seen him before? No. You know why? He was inside the Pentagon doing his job — he was not on TV.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He has strongly denied this. He called it a ‘totally fake story,’ and a Defense Department official added that — he said it makes no sense because Pete does his own makeup, which is more embarrassing.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I don’t know why he would be ashamed of this. A lot of warriors wear makeup. You ever see Mel Gibson in ‘Braveheart’? He’s got it all over.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Nothing sparks fear in the hearts of our enemies like a defense secretary who puts foundation on his face and a big palm full of Suavecito Pomade in his hair every day. It’s the warrior ethos.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The defense secretary has a makeup room, the vice president wears eyeliner, and yet somehow this administration spends all day, every day complaining about trans women ruining sports.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Take Your Kid to Work Day Edition)“So today was Take Your Kids to Work Day, which I admit I misunderstood — I didn’t know it had to be my kid.” — GREG GUTFELD“It is a day that got started in 1992 as a way for children to learn why their parents are so depressed all the time.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It used to be Take Your Daughter to Work Day — remember that? — and it encouraged women in the workplace. Then over time it changed to Take Your Son or Daughter to Work. The rule is you have to pay your son 22 percent more than the daughter.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“At the White House this morning, Elon Musk brought a few of his kids to work — not all of them. He brought him to meet President Trump. See, that’s what happens when you get them wet — they multiply.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingThe singer Jelly Roll discussed his 200-pound weight loss on Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutA young Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, as seen in “Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie.”Ed Caraeff/Keep Smokin’David Bushell’s new documentary, “Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie,” celebrates its stars’ enduring friendship, on-screen and off. More

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    ‘Game Changer’ Is a Fun and Unpredictable Game Show

    Now in its seventh season, the show puts its comedian contestants through a weird and wide-ranging variety of funny and endearing challenges.“Game Changer,” on Dropout, is in many ways the hip, scrappy heir to “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” Each episode features three comedians, and the host, Sam Reich, feeds them various prompts. The nature and purpose of the prompts vary; one episode might require a strange physical challenge, and another the impromptu creation of an impassioned Civil War-era love letter.In its seventh season, which premiered earlier this month, “Game Changer” is also landing closer than ever before to “Taskmaster,” and in the best ways. The season premiere, “One Year Later,” gave the comedians Jacob Wysocki, Vic Michaelis and Lou Wilson — already among the show’s all-stars — a year to complete a list of oddball challenges. Who can get this cardboard cutout to the most remote location? Who can perform the best magic trick? Who can find the coolest free item from Craigslist? Most episodes of the show are about 30 minutes, but this one clocks in at over an hour.The season’s second episode, “You-lympics,” also toys with a longer time frame. Contestants jump as high as they can, hold a cat for as long as the cat will tolerate and eat as much grated Parmesan as possible while wearing a cone-of-shame pet collar — and then they return a week later to try to top themselves. And then an hour after that, they try one more time.As with “Taskmaster,” there is a loopy, discursive interpretation to just about everything, and festive rules-lawyering abounds. The most consistent feature across all seasons is a radiating sense of mutual adoration among participants. Wilson even got a custom watch to aver his friendship with Wysocki and Michaelis.Starting with Season 5, “Game Changer” also includes behind-the-scenes companion episodes — true manna for the nerdy, if ever there were. (I did, in fact, wonder who created the elaborate diorama of a rock n’ roll bar for insects.) Segments like these used to be common place as DVD featurettes but are pitifully rare on streaming. Netflix could have bloopers if they wanted to! That’s part of the appeal of a smaller, independent, somewhat niche streamer like Dropout, the sense that it is more attuned to and has more fun with the wants of its subscribers. More

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    With ‘Étoile,’ Amy Sherman-Palladino Gives Ballet Another Whirl

    Her “Bunheads” and other ballet shows were canceled quickly. This new series, created with her husband, centers on fictional companies in New York and Paris.The dancers streamed across the stage of a historic Paris theater, leaping and turning, the women lifted high into the air and whirled aloft, before aligning to bow on the final chords of the music. “Bravo! Bravo!” cried the enthusiastically applauding audience.Then Amy Sherman-Palladino, sporting a white baseball cap, walked onstage with a Steadicam operator, consulted the choreographer Marguerite Derricks, and clapped her hands sharply. “Let’s go!” she called. Moments later, the cameraman was running frantically amid the dancers as Sherman-Palladino peered at a monitor, watching the way their movement was captured from inside the groupings.“That was great, you guys were fabulous,” she called out at the end. She turned to the audience “What do you think?” Much applause. The cameraman took a little bow.It was last May at the Théâtre du Châtelet, where Sherman-Palladino; her husband and creative partner, Daniel Palladino; and their team were filming “Étoile,” a new Amazon Prime Video series debuting on Thursday.The show (the title means “star” in French) tells the story of two major ballet companies — the Ballet National (a thinly veiled Paris Opera Ballet), and the New York-based Metropolitan Ballet Theater (a mash-up of American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet) — collaborating on an exchange of artists in order to boost sales and drum up publicity.Charlotte Gainsbourg, center, stars as a French ballet company director who “pretends to be a very strong boss but on her own is vulnerable,” she said. “It spoke to me, that double face.”Philippe Antonello/Amazon MGM StudiosWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Hold Me in the Water’ Review: Smitten, and Primed to Flirt

    Ryan J. Haddad follows up his Obie-winning “Dark Disabled Stories” with a rom-com.In a lake off a beach, on a sun-warmed afternoon somewhere in upstate New York, Cupid was practicing his archery. An arrow, when it flew, pierced a young man’s torso, lodging firmly in his heart.Now, technically, there is no mention of the Roman god of love in “Hold Me in the Water,” the deliciously funny romantic comedy from the playwright-actor Ryan J. Haddad, but there doesn’t need to be. Watching his solo performance at Playwrights Horizons, we sense that arrow strike just as surely as if we’d been there with him, the summer he was 26 and taking a dip with his hot new crush.“This boy who’s holding both of my hands and facing me … Well, he never let go,” Haddad tells us in this slender memoir of a show, in which he plays a version of himself called Ryan. “Not for the entire hour. He held me in that water.” Then, lightly, he adds the crucial fact: “He made me feel safe.”Haddad, who has cerebral palsy, means physically safe; a lake, with its uncertain footing, poses dangers for him. But this attractive acquaintance, whom he has just met at an artists’ residency, seems to understand intuitively what his body needs. The day before, when an already interested Ryan asked for assistance up the steps into a bookshop, the guy (whose identity he blurs: no name, few particulars) knew exactly how to help, as if he had been doing it for years.“No questions had to be asked,” Haddad says. “No mishaps. The trust between our bodies — my hand, his hand — was magnetic and instinctual.”Swoon.Thus begins an exhilarating infatuation, physical trust leading quickly to emotional investment, along with palpable chemistry. But this is a rom-com, so there must be obstacles, separations, mixed signals — and agonizing over all of it, which Ryan does once he is back home in Manhattan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jimmy Kimmel Skewers Elon Musk’s Plan to ‘Get Out of DOGE’

    “Musk says that he will dial back his work with the government so that he can spend more time with all 10 of his families,” Kimmel said.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.Getting out of DOGEOn Tuesday, Elon Musk said he would soon spend less time in Washington and focus on running Tesla.Jimmy Kimmel called Musk “Mr. Congeniality” on Wednesday, saying the mogul “wants to get out of DOGE.”“Musk says he will dial back his work with the government so that he can spend more time with all 10 of his families.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“People forget, Elon — he can’t spend all his time in Washington. He has a company to run into the ground.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In the first three months of this year, Tesla’s profits have fallen 71 percent. Which I guess is what happens when your CEO turns into white Kanye before your eyes.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I’m really not sure going back to Tesla is going to help anything at all. The reason Tesla is tanking is because people hate him and they don’t want to buy his stuff. Him being back is not going to make it better.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Pope Jokes Edition)“Even though they have their differences, Donald Trump said he will attend the funeral of Pope Francis. And, out of respect, he will delay slapping tariffs on communion wafers.” — GREG GUTFELD“President Trump plans on eulogizing the pope by saying, ‘He was a great pope except for the times he was a sucker and a loser.’” — GREG GUTFELDThe Bits Worth WatchingThe actress Ayo Edebiri read her Letterboxd review of “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney” during the show on Wednesday.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightJelly Roll will join Brandon Lake for a performance of “Hard Fought Hallelujah” on Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutMaggie & Terre Roche, sisters from Park Ridge, N.J., released their album “Seductive Reasoning” 50 years ago this month.Columbia RecordsTurning 50 this month, Maggie & Terre Roche’s little-known 1975 album “Seductive Reasoning” is a forgotten revelation. More

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    ‘Andor’ Season 2, Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Recap: Rebel Rebel

    The “Star Wars” series, back for its final season, shows how a revolution takes hold and how even in times of radical change, people have to keep living their lives.Episodes 1-3: ‘BBY 4’Want to escape from the real world by watching a “Star Wars” TV show? Can I interest you in Season 2 of “Andor,” which begins this week with stories about refugees being evicted from a safe haven, resistance fighters tearing each other apart, and the obscenely powerful plotting to destroy a whole planet?Maybe a touch too real? I get it. But let me add that the first three episodes of the season, the show’s last, are remarkably entertaining and thoughtful television. It’s provocative stuff, but satisfyingly stirring.This series is about how a revolution takes hold, in fits and starts, with a lot of disagreement about how to proceed. Season 2’s first set of episodes also shows how even in times of radical change, people have to keep living their lives.In Season 1, the show’s creator, Tony Gilroy, divided his saga into multiepisode arcs, each presented in a slightly different style. Gilroy and Disney+ are retaining that structure for Season 2 and leaning further into the “movie of the week” concept by releasing three episodes at a time.But the first thing fans may notice about the opening three episodes (of 12 total) is how they jump around between locations and genres, to tell essentially four different stories, all set over the course of a few days one year after Season 1 ended. The date is “BBY 4,” four years before the Battle of Yavin, the big space-fight in the original “Star Wars” that ends with the Death Star exploding. Reminder: That triumphant rebel attack was made possible by the events of the film “Rogue One,” for which “Andor” is a prequel. (Rampant franchise expansion can make for confusing timelines.)The series’s namesake, the mercenary-turned-rebel Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), bounces between two of these stories. The new season gets off to a strong start in its opening sequence, in which Cassian steals an imperial fighter ship, posing as a test pilot. After a lot of dramatic buildup to him getting into the pilot’s seat, Cassian pushes the wrong button and goes rocketing backward instead of forward. He then accidentally engages the ship’s blasters, shooting laser bolts indiscriminately around the hangar. It’s a funny bit of slapstick, but also exciting, filled with the fine design and special effects “Star Wars” is known for.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    After ‘Sunset Boulevard’ Malfunction, Nicole Scherzinger Sings With Bullhorn

    The “Sunset Boulevard” star briefly entertained the crowd when “a technical malfunction on the sound side” forced the cancellation of a matinee performance.In one of those moments that is likely to become Broadway lore, the actress Nicole Scherzinger grabbed a bullhorn to sing “With One Look” from “Sunset Boulevard” when the sound system failed on Wednesday afternoon at the St. James Theater.The packed matinee crowd had settled into the seats and was awaiting the start of the performance, which had been delayed for unspecified technical reasons. When it became clear backstage that the issues could not be resolved, Scherzinger, the show’s much-praised star, was not going to send the fans home empty-handed.So Scherzinger, a former Pussycat Doll, grabbed a bullhorn, and took the stage to sing one of the show’s best-known songs.“When it became apparent they couldn’t do the show, it was her idea to go out and speak to the audience, so she and Tom Francis came out,” said Rick Miramontez, a spokesman for the show, referring also to one of Scherzinger’s co-stars. “She asked stage management for a bullhorn, and she gave them a performance of one of the show’s biggest numbers.”The show was then canceled, and audience members were given a letter offering them a refund.“It was very disappointing, because we booked this a long time ago,” said Emily Feurring, a nutritionist who was in the audience, “but it was also kind of exciting because it was a New York moment, and no one else will ever get that.”“It was very sweet in a way,” she added. “And we live here, so we’ll get to go again.”Miramontez called the problem “a technical malfunction on the sound side,” and said the show’s producers were hopeful, but not certain, that the Wednesday evening performance would proceed as scheduled.The moment is reminiscent of others in which Broadway stars have vamped for audiences when technical issues have forced delays or cancellations to shows, many of which are dependent on electricity not only for voice amplification but also for automated set pieces, projections and building safety.On Tuesday, Darren Criss, Helen J Shen and Dez Duron, three of the lead performers in the musical “Maybe Happy Ending” entertained the crowd with songs when a medical emergency in the audience forced a lengthy pause in that show.And earlier this year, at the first preview of the new musical “Redwood,” a mid-show delay was caused by an issue with the set’s LED screens. Idina Menzel, the star, spent the time fielding questions from the audience, which was filled with fans looking for stories about her experiences performing in “Wicked” and “Rent” and as a voice actor in the “Frozen” films.But these incidents go way back — in Atlanta in the late 1990s, an early performance of the Disney musical that became “Aida” had to be stopped because of a technical problem, and the cast did the rest of the show concert-style. More