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    ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 4 Recap: Party Time

    The gal pals finally moved out of their hermetic bubble this week in search of a little fun. The results were questionable.Season 3, Episode 4: ‘Hide or Seek’There is something about the experience of being on a luxury vacation that can get into the vacationers’ heads. Mike White understands this. Through three seasons of “The White Lotus,” he has focused on the nagging dissatisfaction of the privileged — especially when they are supposed to be at leisure. Are they really enjoying themselves? Are they getting the escape from the everyday they needed? Most important: Are they getting their money’s worth?White seems to love characters who are earnestly searching for something, who could be on the precipice of a real change in their lives if they could just get past their doubts, their fears, their patterns of behavior, the general sense that they are being cheated. White clearly empathizes with these people. He also manages to make them hilarious.With that in mind, I want to start again this week with the gal pals, who have been this season’s most reliable source of pure, pitiless comedy. In this episode, the ladies finally move out of their hermetic bubble of giggles and gossip and start trying to engage more with their surroundings. The experiment does not go well.Jaclyn, as always, drives the action. Frustrated that her husband is not responding to her texts, she decides to do a little misbehaving. The resort is too staid, too serious. She asks Valentin to suggest someplace she and her friends can go that has “more of a vibe.”Valentin directs them to what seems to be a more party-friendly hotel. The music is loud, and the drinks are large and colorful. But when Jaclyn gets roped into a conversation with two very un-“posh” Australian widows who recognize her from TV, she senses something is off. They appear to be at “a bargain hotel for retirees.” They return to Valentin, feeling insulted.Valentin next recommends a fun club that will open in the evening for the local community’s full moon celebration. But when the ladies try to kill time by shopping in the marketplace, they are chased by hordes of children armed with water pistols. Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie take refuge in a convenience store. The children lurk outside, like ravenous zombies.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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    in Theater

    Athol Fugard, South African Playwright Who Dissected Apartheid, Dies at 92

    In works that included “Blood Knot,” “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” and “The Island,” he exposed the realities of racial separatism in his homeland.Athol Fugard, the South African playwright whose portrayals of intimate relationships burdened by oppressive racial separatism exposed the cruel psychological torment of apartheid to an international audience, died on Saturday night at his home in Stellenbosch, a town near Cape Town. He was 92.His wife, Paula Fourie, confirmed his death after a cardiac event. Over a long and productive career, Mr. Fugard (pronounced FEW-guard) was both repelled and fueled by the bond he felt with his homeland.For decades he was considered subversive by the government; at times productions of his work, with their integrated casts, were considered illegal, and his co-workers in the theater were jailed. In 1967, after his early play “The Blood Knot” appeared on British television, his passport was revoked, so that for several years he could not leave the country.He eventually spent many years abroad, including in the United States — he worked on many productions of his plays at Yale and taught at the University of California, San Diego — yet he could never let himself leave South Africa for good. Even before apartheid was officially revoked in 1994, he maintained a home near Port Elizabeth, the city on the country’s southeastern coast, where he grew up.“I think I actually need the sustaining provocation of being in South Africa when I’m telling a South Africa story,” he said in an interview with The New Yorker in 1982.Viscerally powerful for audiences, their roles written with the muscle and idiosyncrasy that are candy to actors, Mr. Fugard’s more than 30 plays were presented widely in the United States and around the world. Six have appeared on Broadway, and in 2011, Mr. Fugard received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.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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    ‘S.N.L.’ Imagines an Oval Office Meeting With Trump, Rubio and Musk

    This week, the opener described a conflict between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio. Lady Gaga proved to be a capable joke-teller as both the host and the musical guest.Following a report in The New York Times about a White House meeting where Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had clashed in front of President Trump, it was up to “Saturday Night Live” to imagine how they might make peace — and to let us listen in on their inner monologues.This week’s “S.N.L.” broadcast, for which Lady Gaga was both the host and the musical guest, began with a voice-over that described the conflict between Musk and Rubio as a stain on “an otherwise remarkably cool and smooth start to the Trump presidency.”Inside the Oval Office stood James Austin Johnson, in his recurring role as President Trump, and Marcello Hernández, playing Rubio.Johnson said he forgave Hernández for “being under a lot of stress,” but told him, “I need you to be my good little Marco.”“If you think I’m going to stand here and let you call me that,” Hernández replied, “you’re right.”Johnson added, “Unfortunately, I just made English the official language. So now your name is Mark Ruby.”Hernández said he objected to Musk “having total access to our government,” but Johnson praised the billionaire for his management of SpaceX, which he said was “doing incredible things in terms of explosions, and with regard to rocket debris.”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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    Zahn McClarnon on the New Season of ‘Dark Winds’

    Zahn McClarnon, who plays a Navajo cop in AMC crime drama, talks about the coming third season, which is moodier and more mystical than previous ones.“Dark Winds,” the AMC desert-noir drama centered on a Navajo Tribal Police force in 1970s New Mexico, has been widely acclaimed since its debut in 2022, and viewing numbers have also been solid. An average of 2 million people tuned in for each episode, AMC said, good enough for the second season to rank among the 10 most-watched cable dramas in 2023. Then last year, the series received the well-known Netflix bump after its first two seasons arrived on the service in August, landing in the Top 10 of Nielsen’s overall streaming chart.Now AMC will see how many new fans follow “Dark Winds” back to its home platform: The third season premieres Sunday on AMC and AMC+ — it has already been renewed for a fourth — with more murder and mysteries for the stoic tribal cop Joe Leaphorn, played by Zahn McClarnon, to investigate.Leaphorn has been a noble figure in the series, and critics have given particular praise to McClarnon’s performance as well as the show’s evocative mix of crime drama, poignant family dynamics and authentic portrayals of Navajo traditions and culture. But at the end of Season 2, Leaphorn left his foe to die in the desert, and the new season finds him grappling with the consequences of that decision.“Joe is definitely struggling quite a bit with a lot of fear and anxiety over some of the choices that he’s made in the past, specifically last season,” McClarnon said in an interview.Season 3 in general is darker and more mystical than the first two. Leaphorn’s sidekick, Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), is haunted by past traumas and abandonment. (“Dark Winds” is based on Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee novels.) The former deputy Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) is now a Border Patrol agent investigating a human trafficking ring. Back on the reservation, two Native boys have disappeared, leaving behind only a bicycle and a patch of blood. And as Leaphorn investigates the harrowing case, he is pursued by — and pursuing — a demonic, mythical Native monster known as Ye’iitsoh.Other potential bad actors include a fifth-generation oilman who may have a sinister side hustle, played by the veteran character actor Bruce Greenwood. Jenna Elfman is another notable addition to the cast, as a visiting F.B.I. agent investigating the disappearance of the man Leaphorn left in the desert.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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    in Theater

    A Play About Segregation Tries to ‘Ride a Fine Line’ in Florida

    A production partly aimed at students that highlights Tampa’s history in the civil rights movement lands at a time when the state is changing what schools teach about race and history.Given the chance, Arthenia Joyner would have ordered a bacon and egg sandwich with a glass of orange juice. Instead, workers inside an F.W. Woolworth store in Tampa, Fla., declared their lunch counter closed to her and other high school students 65 years ago.The students refused to leave without being served. The protests did not carry the national prominence of the Greensboro sit-ins, Montgomery boycotts or Selma marches. “What I found out is damn near nobody knows what happened,” Joyner, 82, said recently. But the acts of resistance produced results. Within months, Tampa’s counters were desegregated. Other public areas like beaches and movie theaters followed.Joyner hopes more people will learn of Florida’s contributions to the civil rights movement through “When the Righteous Triumph,” a play that dramatizes the 1960 protests. After a small debut in 2023, the play will be performed at the Jaeb Theater inside Tampa’s David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts over the next two weekends, with its audiences including students from around 40 local schools.The play arrives at a moment when arts and educational offerings are frequently in dispute nationally, and regional arts venues are left navigating shifting terrain.Several arts organizations sued the National Endowment for the Arts this week over a new mandate that says grant applicants must comply with the Trump administration’s executive orders barring the promotion of “gender ideology.” President Trump recently signed an executive order withholding funding from schools that teach that the United States is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory.”Clay Christopher and Von Shay in the production, which depicts an oft-overlooked moment in the civil rights era.Octavio Jones for The New York TimesWe 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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    For the Actors of ‘Sumo,’ Learning Lines Was Just the Half of It

    Two men, barefoot and wearing traditional loincloths around their waists, tussled with each other on a stage transformed to look like a sumo ring.A fighting consultant, who had been observing the rehearsal nearby, stepped in to offer advice: The men’s arm movements were too straight; their motions needed to be smoother and more circular. Moments later, the two actors were at it again: reaching out, shifting their weight and then pushing off each other in a grappling exchange.New York theatergoers have seen it all, including shows about sports — which are not uncommon. But rarer, nonexistent even, is a theatrical work about sumo wrestling. Now, Lisa Sanaye Dring’s “Sumo” is transporting Off Broadway audiences at the Public Theater to an intimate sumo wrestling facility in Tokyo — known as a heya, or wrestling stable — where bare-chested actors fearlessly slap into each other in a heap of flesh and sweat.“I’m interested in people who use their bodies differently than I use my body,” Dring said, reflecting on what led her to write “Sumo.” “It feels very much linked to me — the fighting and the human story — because their humanity is inside how they fight.”The play itself tells the story of Akio, a newcomer to the heya who, because he’s considered rather small by sumo standards, isn’t taken seriously at first. An unranked wrestler trying to prove himself, he endures brutality as he goes about sweeping up rice, bathing the highest-ranking wrestler and doing other servant-like tasks that he has been relegated to performing. Before long, though, he quickly proves himself and rises to become one of the group’s strongest combatants.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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    Randall Park on the Kendrick Lamar Track He Loves to Drive to in L.A.

    The actor isn’t sure he’d make a great F.B.I. agent, though he’s playing one again in the new TV series “The Residence.”When Randall Park was first approached about playing an F.B.I. agent in Netflix’s new murder mystery series, “The Residence,” his first thought was: Another one?“I just didn’t want to do the same thing,” said Park, 50, who has a recurring role as Agent Jimmy Woo in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in “WandaVision,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and its sequel, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”After he read the script for “The Residence,” which begins streaming on March 20, he reconsidered. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” he said. And when he found out that Uzo Aduba would be starring in it, “I was like, ‘Oh gosh, yes, I know I want to do this for sure.’”He’s not sure he’d be a good secret agent in real life, though.“Well, maybe, because I am pretty calm under pressure,” he said. “But then again,” he added, “I’ve never held a real gun.”In a phone conversation from his home in Los Angeles’s Studio City neighborhood, where he lives with his wife, the actress Jae Suh Park, and their 12-year-old daughter, Ruby, Park shared a list of favorites inspired by his native Los Angeles. It includes his go-to Korean place, his favorite running routes and the locally made condiment he puts on absolutely everything. These are edited excerpts.Los AngelesIt’s been on my mind a lot because of the recent fires, and also because I’ve just been traveling a lot and missing home. L.A. gets a bad rap in a lot of ways. People label it as superficial, or too Hollywood, but L.A. is so much more than Hollywood. It’s a big city with different enclaves and different experiences.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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    In ‘The Seagull,’ Cate Blanchett Outshines a Director’s Tired Tropes

    Thanks to Blanchett’s charismatic turn as a fading actress, this new Chekhov adaptation in London hangs together in spite of Thomas Ostermeier’s antics.It is all too easy to be cynical when movie stars turn to theater — not least because, of late, they haven’t always been very good at it. In recent weeks, London’s stages have played host to several slightly iffy productions of classic plays featuring big-name screen actors: Sigourney Weaver in “The Tempest,” Rami Malek in “Oedipus,” and Brie Larson in “Elektra.” So when Cate Blanchett rolled into town for a new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” at the Barbican Theater, a little trepidation could be forgiven.But Blanchett is different. Though she is best known for her film work, the Australian actress has graced the stage to acclaim throughout her career, playing lead roles in “Hedda Gabler” and “A Streetcar Named Desire.” And she is no stranger to Chekhov, having starred in the Sydney Theater Company’s “Uncle Vanya,” and the same company’s 2017 adaptation of “Platonov,” called “The Present.” She met her husband, the playwright Andrew Upton, while performing in a 1997 production of “The Seagull.”In this modern dress production of “The Seagull,” adapted by Duncan Macmillan and Thomas Ostermeier (“Who Killed My Father,” “Returning to Reims”), Blanchett plays Irina Arkadina, a famous older actress whose pathological self-obsession alienates her son, Konstantin Treplev (Kodi Smit-McPhee), to the point of despair. He’s a young writer struggling to find his voice, and disaffected with the risk-averse banality of the artistic mainstream. (“We need new voices, new perspectives, new forms!”)Arkadina’s lover, Alexander Trigorin (Tom Burke), is a successful author of middlebrow fiction who represents everything Konstantin wants to tear down. So when the older man effortlessly seduces Konstantin’s sweetheart, the aspiring actress Nina Zarechnaya (Emma Corrin), the blow is doubly crushing.Chekhov conceived Arkadina as a “foolish, mendacious, self-admiring egoist,” and Blanchett realizes this vision with exuberant brio from the moment she first appears onstage. Her Arkadina, wearing a purple jumpsuit and large sunglasses, channels the vapid can-do spirit of an online wellness influencer; inordinately proud of her well-preserved appearance, she tap dances and does splits to show off her litheness. She’s the life of the party — her diva-level prancing recalls Joanna Lumley’s Patsy in “Absolutely Fabulous” — but emotionally she’s withholding. When Konstantin puts on an avant-garde play, she dismisses it as “indulgent, adolescent crap.” Even in rare moments of tenderness her language is glib, cooingly manipulative. (“Poor little crumpet!”)Tom Burke, left, as Trigorin and Emma Corrin as Nina in this new adaptation of “The Seagull” at the Barbican in London.Marc BrennerWe 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