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    Review: In ‘The Apiary,’ the Bees Have a Troubling Tale to Tell

    Worldwide colony collapse is the subject of a bright, strange, upbeat thought experiment about insect hives, and our own.Here’s a pitch you haven’t heard before. It’s 2046. Bees in the wild have succumbed to a planet-wide die-off, taking almonds, avocados and honey down with them. But in a subterranean lab, three women doing “palliative care” with four remaining broods make a hopeful if gruesome discovery.Also, it’s a comedy. Call it “Little Hive of Horrors.”That’s the setup, if nowhere near the payoff, of the “The Apiary,” a bright, strange and mesmerizing marvel by Kate Douglas, making her professional playwriting debut with this Off Off Broadway production. Unlike most such debuts, though, “The Apiary,” which opened on Tuesday at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, is receiving a nearly perfect, first-class staging under the almost too good direction of Kate Whoriskey.I say “almost too good” because a staging so sensitive yet confident could disguise whatever flaws may lurk in the text. So be it: “The Apiary” flies by with so much good humor and novel eye candy (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bee lab represented onstage before) that you barely register the way the playwright’s thematic focus comes dangerously close to obsession.The insects are everywhere. To begin with, Walt Spangler’s set is dominated by four hive boxes and a gigantic gauze-walled chamber filled with little prop bugs I could swear were swarming. The backdrop features a honeycomb pattern. The floor, the railings and even the paper in the beekeepers’ desktop inboxes are bumblebee yellow.It’s not just the visuals, though. The characters talk bees, live bees, dream bees. Gwen (Taylor Schilling) is perhaps the least emotionally attached: As the lab’s manically insecure manager, she’s freaked out by the decline of the broods under her care less because it might mean ecological collapse than because it might mean funding cutbacks from “upstairs.” Countering her, the relentlessly optimistic Pilar (Carmen M. Herlihy) fully stans the critters: They are “very sensitive and so so smart,” she explains merrily to a newcomer. “They dance! They tell jokes.”We don’t hear those jokes, but between scenes we do see Stephanie Crousillat, in yoga wear and a gas mask — the costumes are by Jennifer Moeller — performing Warren Adams’s creepy bee choreography.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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    Shakespeare to Hit the Road While Central Park Theater Is Closed

    The Delacorte is being renovated, so this summer will instead bring a mobile production and then a filmed play to outdoor sites in the city’s five boroughs.Free Shakespeare in the Park, one of the longtime treasures of summer in New York City, will be smaller-scale and itinerant this year because a gut renovation of the program’s Central Park home is underway.The Public Theater, the nonprofit organization that presents the annual Shakespeare festival, announced Tuesday that, instead of its usual large-scale productions at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, this year it would send a smaller production of “The Comedy of Errors” to parks and plazas around the city between Memorial Day and the end of June, followed by outdoor screenings of a filmed production of “Much Ado About Nothing” in July, August and early September.The production of “The Comedy of Errors” is a 90-minute bilingual musical adaptation from the director Rebecca Martinez and the composer Julian Mesri that the Public staged last year at city parks and recreation centers as part of the theater’s mobile unit. This summer’s five-week touring production will have a slightly larger company, and will visit some larger venues than last year’s production. It will start in Manhattan, with a week on a plaza in front of the New York Public Library’s flagship building in Bryant Park, followed by a series of dates at Hudson Yards and other locations in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island. All performances will be free.“It’s not a replacement for the Delacorte — it’s not intended to be a replacement — but my hope is that it will be successful enough as an experiment that this expanded version of what the mobile unit does can keep going indefinitely,” Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public, said in an interview.The filmed production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” directed by Kenny Leon and starring Danielle Brooks and Grantham Coleman, was shot during a run in Central Park in 2019; it will be screened outdoors, free, at sites in all five boroughs.“Much Ado About Nothing,” filmed for the PBS series Great Performances, will also be among four Shakespeare in the Park productions that can be streamed online during May and June. The others are a 2023 production of “Hamlet,” a 2022 production of “Richard III” and a 2021 production called “Merry Wives.” Streaming the Great Performances films will be free.The Delacorte has been closed since last fall for a $78 million renovation. A groundbreaking was held in October and the project is scheduled to finish sometime next year, and the summer of 2025 is expected to include Shakespeare back in Central Park. More

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    Jon Stewart Returns to ‘The Daily Show’ Telling Jokes You Might Not Want to Hear

    The comedian returned to “The Daily Show,” claiming the prerogative to tell his audience jokes they don’t want to hear.“Why am I back?” asked Jon Stewart, returning to “The Daily Show” chair as Monday night host after leaving the program in 2015. It was a fair question.He was there in part because Comedy Central ended a yearlong search unable to pick a full-time replacement for Trevor Noah. He was there because his Apple TV+ show “The Problem” ended, after Apple discovered that when you hire a famous political comedian, he’ll want to talk about topics that upset people.And he was there because his fans — including a studio audience that greeted him with a standing ovation — have spent eight years and change wondering what he would have said about all the hell that broke loose since he left.His timing was so sharp, his comic exasperation so familiar, you’d think he’d been away for a long weekend instead of more than two presidential terms. Now he was back to tell us that the two likely candidates for president are super, super old.It was not exactly the most daring, outside-the-box topic. Stewart, who has adopted a plant-based diet, apparently has a particular taste for low-hanging fruit.More interesting, however, was the implicit message his first new monologue built to. You may have spent years wishing that Stewart would come back to dunk on your antagonists, but he considers himself free — and maybe obligated — to joke about things you wish he wouldn’t.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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    ‘Izzard Hamlet New York’ Review: A Solo Show That’s More Noble Than Wise

    Eddie Izzard is a wildly witty ad-libber, but a play straitjackets this gift — especially in this new staging that is short of ideas.To laugh, or not to laugh? That is the question.Or at least one you may consider early in Eddie Izzard’s “Hamlet,” in which the comic portrays all the roles herself.Something is certainly a little silly about dramatizing Hamlet fighting with his mother by having a left hand wrestle with the arm of the right, evoking Peter Sellers’s scientist who struggles to restrain himself from raising his arm in Nazi salute in “Dr. Strangelove.” And solo sword fights have possibilities that a brilliant comedian like Izzard might exploit.Yet, as Izzard darts around the stage, from role to role, hopscotching in and out of the audience declaiming speeches, what becomes clear is this frenetic staging is earnest, surprisingly traditional and deadly serious. A wildly witty ad-libber, Izzard can make two-hour monologues feel like a stream-of-conscious eruption. A play straitjackets this gift. Except for a few flourishes, this staging, directed by Selina Cadell, is short of ideas. (Imagine sock puppets without the socks and you get an idea of her Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.)Inside a modern, minimalist set (designed by Tom Piper) with no props, Izzard, who mounted a solo theatrical adaptation of “Great Expectations” last year, sometimes represents changing characters by spinning, other times by just moving a few feet. If there is method here, I did not detect it. If you don’t know “Hamlet,” there is no chance you are going to follow the play within a play. If you do, you might wonder why Izzard doesn’t spend more time playing the characters watching, not talking.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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    How Taylor Tomlinson Nailed the Closing Joke in her Netflix Special

    Images: The New York Times (Taylor Tomlinson in Boston, Dallas, Tucson and Seattle); Margaret Norton/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images (Bob Newhart); Martin Mills/Getty Images (Shelley Berman); Cable Stuff Productions (George Carlin “Complaints and Grievances”); Columbia Pictures (Richard Pryor “Live on the Sunset Strip”); Netflix (Taylor Tomlinson “Have It All”).Produced by: Tala Safie and Josephine Sedgwick. Video editor: Caroline Kim. Senior video producer: Jeesoo K. Park. Production manager: Caterina Clerici. Additional production: Shane O’Neill, Rumsey Taylor, Josh Williams and Lucky Benson. Cinematography: Allie Humenuk, April Kirby, Stephanie Rose and Emily Rhyne. Additional cinematography: Manuel López Cano and Alex Miller. Additional editing: Stephanie Goodman and Alicia Desantis. More

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    Inside a ‘Hadestown’ Star’s Home in Harlem

    ‘I’ve been here a while,’ said Lillias White, who plays Hermes in the Tony-winning musical. ‘Hence the clutter.’Lillias White may pay the rent, but her rescue dog, LaKee, is inarguably the host and star of the house, a very packed one-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a building in Harlem.LaKee (pronounced “Lucky”), a Chihuahua mix, is the first to respond to a knock on the door — way ahead of Ms. White or the resident Bengal cat, Mr. Jaxson Ifya Nasty. And she is first in the entryway to greet visitors. Effusively.To be clear, Ms. White, 72, a star of the Tony-winning musical “Hadestown,” is warm and welcoming. (See the show now; she’s leaving March 17.) But it’s a daily battle not to be upstaged by LaKee, even considering Ms. White’s many Broadway credits (“Fela!,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” “Once on This Island” and “Chicago,” among others); her awards, notably a Tony for her performance as a streetwise hooker in the 1997 musical “The Life”; and her experiences as a solo act (she’ll be teaching a cabaret master class at the 92nd Street Y in early March).Ms. White moved into the apartment more than 30 years ago, at a difficult time in her life. “My two kids and I were living with my mother in Coney Island, because I’d lost my apartment in Brooklyn,” she said. “I’d gotten divorced, and I lost everything.”That’s Mr. Jaxson Ifya Nasty, the cat, next to a statue bequeathed to Lillias White by the proprietor of the Hell’s Kitchen bakery Amy’s Bread.Tony Cenicola/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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    Jon Stewart Returns to Form on ‘The Daily Show’

    Nearly nine years after signing off as host of the late night show, Stewart returned to his seat. “We’re going to have so much we are going to talk about this year,” he said Monday.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.‘Now, Where Was I?’Jon Stewart returned to “The Daily Show” on Monday, nearly nine years after he signed off as host.“Welcome to ‘The Daily Show.’ My name’s Jon Stewart,” said Stewart, who will host Monday nights for the foreseeable future. “Now where was I?”“Why am I back, you may be asking yourselves. It’s a very reasonable question. I have committed a lot of crimes. From what I understand, talk show hosts are granted immunity — it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but take it up with the founders.” — JON STEWART“We’re going to have so much we are going to talk about this year. Obviously, the elections, maybe we’ll talk about China, maybe we’ll talk about A.I., maybe something a little lighter, Israel-Palestine. Who knows?” — JON STEWARTStewart, who received a warm welcome from the studio audience, addressed the state of the presidential election, with a focus on differentiating between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, who both face questions about their age and ability to lead. The next nine months, Stewart said, “they’re going to suck.”“Look, Joe Biden isn’t Donald Trump. He hasn’t been indicted as many times, he hasn’t had as many fraudulent businesses or been convicted in a civil trial for sexual assault or been ordered to pay defamation, have his charities disbanded, or stiffed a [expletive] ton of blue-collar tradesmen he hired.” — JON STEWART“We are not suggesting neither man is vibrant, productive or even capable, but they are both stretching the limits of being able to handle the toughest job in the world. What’s crazy is thinking that we’re the ones, as voters, who must silence concerns and criticisms. It is the candidates’ job to assuage concerns, not the voters’ job not to mention them.” — JON STEWART“I’ve learned one thing over these last nine years, and I was glib at best and probably dismissive at worst about this: The work of making this world resemble one that you would prefer to live in is a lunch pail [expletive] job, day in and day out, where thousands of committed, anonymous, smart and dedicated people bang on closed doors and pick up those that are fallen and grind away on issues until they get a positive result, and even then, have to stay on to make sure that result holds. So, the good news is, I’m not saying you don’t have to worry about who wins the election. I’m saying you have to worry about every day before it and every day after, forever. Although, on the plus side, I am told that at some point, the sun will run out of hydrogen.” — JON STEWARTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Super Long Super Bowl Edition)“Last night was just the second Super Bowl to ever go into overtime. Yeah. Once the game passed four hours, everyone hosting a party was like, ‘This was a mistake.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Last night’s game was over four hours long. Fans were like, ‘Who directed this, Martin Scorsese?’” — JIMMY FALLON“This was only the second overtime in Super Bowl history. It was a disappointing night for the 49ers and their quarterback, Brock Purdy, who played very well, especially considering the fact that Brock Purdy is only 12 years old. He really wanted to go Disneyland, but it was not to be.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The game was so long that people were drunk in the first quarter and hung over by the trophy presentation.” — JIMMY FALLONWe 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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    Jon Stewart Returns to His Old ‘Daily Show’ Seat

    On Monday night, the longtime host of the Comedy Central news satire kicked off his new tenure in classic form.Jon Stewart returned on Monday night as host of “The Daily Show,” the Comedy Central news satire he turned into a cultural force before leaving in August 2015. It was the beginning of a plan, announced in January, that will bring Stewart back to the show on Mondays through the presidential election. He will also serve as an executive producer.“Why am I back?” he said. “I have committed a lot of crimes. From what I understand, talk show hosts are granted immunity — it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but take it up with the founders.”Stewart’s first night back found him grayer — at one point he used his own wizened face as a prop in a joke about the presidential candidates’ ages. But he was otherwise in classic form.Opening with “Now where was I,” Stewart mixed silliness and absurd, often self-deprecating, jokes with righteous indignation as he kicked off the 2024 edition of one of the show’s signature franchises, its “Indecision” election coverage. Proposed titles, he said, included “Indecision 2024: American Demockracy”; “Indecision 2024: Electile Dysfunction”; and “Indecision 2024: Antiques Roadshow.” He riffed, from his familiar left-leaning perspective, on the Super Bowl and the Taylor Swift conspiracy theories that surrounded it.“It’s almost like the right’s ridiculous obsession with politicizing every aspect of American life ruins everything,” he said.Later he anchored a bit that found the show’s correspondents Ronny Chieng, Desi Lydic, Michael Kosta and Dulce Sloan reporting from the same diner, a goof on the campaign coverage trope. They and Jordan Klepper, who did a desk bit, will take turns hosting the show Tuesdays through Thursdays. The guest was Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor in chief of The Economist.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