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    Tyler James Williams Lifts His Spirits With bell hooks and Tom Ford

    The “Abbott Elementary” star keeps nourished, body and soul, with D’Angelo’s music, Earl Grey lattes and early 2000s rom-coms.Tyler James Williams has had a winning season.A Screen Actors Guild award that he and his “Abbott Elementary” castmates won for their work on the ABC mockumentary about an underfunded public school in Philadelphia.A Golden Globe for best supporting actor for his own performance in the series, as Gregory Eddie, a substitute teacher who finds a sense of purpose and permanence in the job.And, as he took the Globes stage, a standing ovation from Eddie Murphy.“The award is great — I appreciate it. But that did more for me than anything ever could,” Williams admitted in a video call from Los Angeles.The actor, 30, has also morphed into something of a heartthrob in the role, which the “Abbott Elementary” creator Quinta Brunson, whom he’d met on “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” wrote for him after they became lockdown pals.All of the accolades don’t overshadow what he considers his most significant achievement.“We haven’t seen characters like Gregory and Janine” — a teacher played by Brunson with whom Gregory has a slow-burn kind of thing — “exist on television,” Williams said.“There’s not a heavy trauma story line. It’s just Black people living everyday lives and seeing the beauty in that,” he added. “Very rarely do we see that recognized in the awards platforms, so that for me is what I hope that win does.”Still, Williams, who has Crohn’s disease, may have never arrived at this moment had he not had a near-fatal flare-up when he was 23.“When I came out of the other side of it, I realized I had a choice,” he said. “I could be really busy and try to make a bunch of money. Or I could do things that felt like my heart was just bathed.”A few days after wrapping the second season of “Abbott” last month, Williams talked about his deep dive into bell hooks’s work, how D’Angelo captured the feelings of his youth and the Burberry trench he can’t leave behind. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1bell hooksIn 2020, when it became apparent that we were going to be locked down for some time, I was getting book recommendations from people. I had just finished “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” and Miss Lawrence, who was a castmate, had recommended “We Real Cool” by bell hooks. I read it and fell in love with her voice, and felt seen in a way I had never felt seen before, and understood things about myself I didn’t know. Then everything she had ever written, I was just diving through. To me they really question masculinity standards, particularly Black masculinity standards, which, with Gregory, I try to dismantle as many of those as I can.2‘Voodoo’ by D’AngeloI had to be 8 or 9 the first time I heard that album played in my house. And I was like, “Who did this? Who took my insides and made it sonic?” I listen to that album once every day, usually at the top of the day. D’Angelo, he’s kind of everything to me.3CinemaSinsIt’s a YouTube channel that points out all the tropes and archaic things that happen in our industry, where everything is so austere and we make art. It’s usually how I end my night when I’m in bed and winding down. Just to have some guy somewhere break it all down and dismantle it is really funny to me.4Earl Grey LatteDue to Crohn’s, I had to stop drinking coffee when I was younger, and I was a big latte person. So I got this great combination of Earl Grey teas that you mix together. Froth up the milk. It feels like a coffee, but you have the flowery notes that are in the tea. In the wintertime, you could do a dash of nutmeg, even some cinnamon, and a single sugar. And if it’s one of those days where it’s like, “This is going to be a heavy lift,” you do two tea bags.5Skywalker MarijuanaThat’s my favorite strain. Also Crohn’s-related, my doctors wanted me to eat more. My appetite response isn’t the same as everybody else’s — I need something to tell me that I’m hungry. And they were like, “Hey, there’s marijuana.” It seems to do all the things we need it to do.6Tom Ford CandlesI was shooting a show called “Whiskey Cavalier” in Prague, right before “Abbott,” and I stumbled on this candle at one of the stores on Parizska Street. There’s notes that are very masculine, but then there’s this soft powder behind it that’s feminine and light. I was like, “This is what I want my house to smell like at all times.”7‘Brown Sugar’This movie felt like a story that could happen to me: Two New York kids who love hip-hop could essentially just fall in love over that. It was simple. I’m a huge fan of the ’90s/early 2000s rom-com. I feel like we peaked as a society right there.8GoldThere’s something about it aesthetically that has always brightened my day. I’ve tried to get into silver, but it doesn’t really do it for me. There’s something about the way sun hits gold that the world gets brighter. It’s kind of like when you take sunglasses off. Everything becomes more vibrant.9Black Burberry Trench CoatI don’t buy a lot of things, and my closet’s very small. I just have stuff that I’m absolutely in love with. And Burberry has always done the trench better than everybody else. It’s something that I pull out literally all the time. It goes so perfectly with everything, always. I left it in New York when I came back from Christmas to finish shooting, and I was like, “What am I doing? I have to go back and get this.” I need this everywhere I go.10DuragsDuring the pandemic, my hair was really long. I couldn’t see a barber, so I ordered a durag and would put it on. I would compress over and over and over again and just kind of brush it out because I didn’t have any other choice. By the time we had shot the pilot of “Abbott,” I had been wave brushing for almost a year, and that became Gregory’s look. More

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    Review: ‘History of the World’ Repeats, as Farce

    Mel Brooks’s human comedy gets a ‘Part II’ for streaming TV, with a sketch-star cast and a sharp makeover.Before his many lives as America’s tummler-in-chief — movie star, director, Broadway producer — Mel Brooks was a TV guy. He wrote for Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” the Big Bang from which much of the TV comedic tradition exploded forth. His 1981 film, “History of the World, Part I” (in which Caesar appeared as a cave dweller), applied an episodic approach, as if it were meant to be a sketch-comedy series.Now, with a little help and a few changes, it is. The eight-part “History of the World, Part II,” which debuts two episodes a day from Monday through Thursday on Hulu, is a screwball tour of civilization that gives the Brooks formula enough contemporary updates that you could think of it as “Evolution of TV Comedy, Part I.”And in an era of dutiful brand extensions and pointless revivals, it turns out to be history that’s surprisingly worth repeating.The 96-year-old Brooks is a writer and producer of the new series and assumes the narrator role performed by Orson Welles in the film. He has limited screen time now — the heaviest lifting is done by the writer-producer-performers Ike Barinholtz, Nick Kroll and Wanda Sykes — but he is responsible for the show’s first sight gag, in which he’s digitally altered into a young, musclebound hunk.Like that image, “Part II” aims not simply to reproduce the Mel Brooks of the last century but also to bring his comedy into 2023. It’s a collaborative production (the cast is so vast it might be easier to list TV-comedy fixtures who don’t appear) that is more diverse in both faces and comedy styles. Beyond the callbacks to the movie and affectionate recreations of Brooks’s slapstick and Jewish humor, the series combines elements of “Kroll Show,” “Drunk History,” “Documentary Now!,” “Sherman’s Showcase” and more.“Part I” was less a parody of actual history than of movie history. Its ancient Rome was lifted from swords-and-sandals epics; its French Revolution was, as the New York Times critic Vincent Canby wrote, very much the one imagined in M.G.M.’s “A Tale of Two Cities.”“Part II” is thoroughly made of TV and pop-media references. The story of Jesus Christ begins with a dead-on parody of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” with Kroll as a Larry Davidian Judas riffing with J.B. Smoove as the apostle Luke; later it becomes a drawn-out sendup of the Beatles documentary “Get Back.”“Part II” is hit-and-miss, much like “Part I” and nearly every sketch comedy ever made. When it hits, it’s an almost perfect marriage of style and subject. The strongest extended sketch stars Sykes as Shirley Chisholm — the Black female congresswoman and 1972 presidential candidate — in a note-perfect sendup of a ’70s sitcom. It’s not just impeccably executed and detailed, it’s sharp, smart history, accented with the laughter of a “live Black audience.”When the show misses — well, another advantage streaming has over the movie theater is the fast-forward button. A running bit about Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (Barinholtz) trying to kick his booze habit starts off strong with Timothy Simons as a cranky Abraham Lincoln but becomes a grinding war of attrition. The limp gag of imagining historical figures on social media (Galileo, Typhoid Mary, Princess Anastasia) doesn’t improve with repetition.The many guest stars include, from left, Rob Riggle, Richard Kind and Zazie Beetz.Aaron Epstein/HuluThere’s also the occasional reminder of the changed cultural sensibilities that “Part II” was made for. Brooks was a yukmeister provocateur, who made fun of the horrors of the 20th century (and beyond) while trusting his audience to get the absurdity. His “The Producers” — about the making of a deliberately offensive musical about Hitler — was about that kind of trust backfiring, and it generated backlash in real life.But as Brooks said on “Fresh Air” last year, “If we’re going to get even with Hitler, we can’t get on a soapbox because he’s too damn good at that.” (I guess I should note that Brooks is Jewish, even if that’s news only to Homer Simpson.) In that spirit, the closing credits of “Part I” tease a sequel including the segment “Hitler on Ice.” It’s assumed that the audience, without nudging, sees the ridiculousness of showing a genocidal monster pirouetting on skates.The first episode of “Part II” turns that brief joke into a full sketch with Barinholtz, Kroll and Sykes as sports announcers. Through the routine, their insults of the Nazi skater — “He’s a thug and bad for the sport” — grow sharper and more vulgar, as if to make clear that the depiction does not equal endorsement. It’s a funny bit, too, but funny for a more cautious, earnest time that prefers its problematic comedy more clearly underlined and bracketed.One advantage “Part II” has over its movie predecessor is the freedom of small scale. It can execute a one-joke premise and get out fast, as when it has Johnny Knoxville play the famously hard-to-kill czarist adviser Rasputin as the star of a Russian “Jackass.” (This also distinguishes it from Netflix’s “Cunk on Earth,” which can be screamingly funny but is condemned to repeat its Ali G-esque joke a little too long.)Still, “Part II” doesn’t entirely forget where it came from. A series of musical sketches featuring Kroll as a Jewish peasant selling mud pies during the Russian Revolution is the most Brooksian in style and setting. In a showstopping number, Kroll and Pamela Adlon fend off a murderous Cossack neighbor and duet about the trade-offs of city vs. shtetl life. (“Why seek out death and fear? / We’ve got plenty of it here!”)It’s just the dish to celebrate Mel Brooks’s legacy: Mud pie, à la mode. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Perry Mason’ and The Oscars

    The HBO legal drama, starring Matthew Rhys, returns, and ABC airs the 95th Academy Awards.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Mar. 6-12. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE VOICE 8 p.m. on NBC. The singing-competition show that discovered Cassadee Pope and Morgan Wallen is back, and one of the judges, Blake Shelton, is gearing up for his 23rd and last season. Niall Horan, Kelly Clarkson and Chance the Rapper are joining him in the memorable red-spinning chairs as judges. The series starts with a “blind audition” round, as always.10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU (1999) 8 p.m. on Freeform. This teen romantic comedy is Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” if it took place in the late 1990s. Julia Stiles plays Kat Stratford, a girl who tends to scare off any male suitors with her bad attitude. Because her younger sister cannot date until Kat does, a mission is set forth — get Kat a date. Enter the very handsome Patrick Verona, played by Heath Ledger, who might be the solution to Kat’s dating problem.PERRY MASON 9 p.m. on HBO. Set in 1932 Los Angeles, this legal drama is based on stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, and follows the titular defense lawyer during the Great Depression. This second season will likely be a little different from the first because Jack Amiel and Michael Begler replaced the Season 1 showrunners Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald. The series stars Matthew Rhys as Perry Mason alongside Shea Whigham and Eric Lange.TuesdayFrom left: Julia Michaels, Kelsea Ballerini, Jimmy Fallon, Nicole Scherzinger and Jason Derulo on “That’s My Jam.”Evan Vestal Ward/NBCTHAT’S MY JAM 10 p.m. on NBC. If you were not able to score Kelsea Ballerini tour tickets, you can see the singer team up with Julia Michaels against Nicole Scherzinger and Jason Derulo in musical games like Air Guitar and Launch the Mic in this competition show, hosted by Jimmy Fallon for a second season.WednesdayTHE CHALLENGE 8 p.m. on MTV. In the “World Champions” edition of this long-running reality competition show, winners and MVPs from Argentina, Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. are paired together for the opportunity to win $500,000.ThursdayLES MISERABLES: THE STAGED CONCERT 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Before Anne Hathaway sang “I Dreamed A Dream” or Hugh Jackman stole bread in the film version of “Les Miserables,” the popular musical, set in 19th-century France, had been staged in London’s West End since the mid-1980s. To celebrate, a filmed 2019 performance from the Gielgud Theater is airing on Thursday.TOP CHEF 9 p.m. on Bravo. The chopping, sautéing and seasoning we see on this cooking-competition show might be more impressive than usual this year. For its 20th season, the host Padma Lakshmi is bringing back “Top Chef” all-stars from all over the world. The head judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons will be joined each week with guest chefs.FridayTHE 12TH VICTIM 8 p.m. on Showtime. In late January of 1958, the 19-year-old Charles Starkweather and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, went on a killing spree that left 10 people dead. This four-part documentary series with archival footage looks at the events that transpired and how the justice system has changed since then, through the lens of Fugate’s guilty verdict: She is the youngest female in U.S. history to have been tried and convicted of first degree murder.SaturdayRichard Beymer and Natalie Wood in “West Side Story.”Everett CollectionWEST SIDE STORY (1961) 10 p.m. on TCM. It’s a two-for-one modern adaptation of Shakespeare week: a 1960s version of “Romeo and Juliet” set in New York City. Tony (Richard Beymer), a member of the Jets gang, falls for Maria (Natalie Wood), the younger sister of the leader of the opposing Sharks. Chaos, romance and musical numbers ensue.SundayTHE OSCARS 8 p.m. on ABC. The 95th Academy Awards are back this Sunday at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles and will be broadcast live. The sci-fi movie directed by Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” is up for the most awards with 11 nominations. “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” are tied for second with nine nominations each. See a full list of nominees here and follow along live with our culture reporters on Oscars Sunday.Scott Shepherd and Bella Ramsey in “The Last of Us.”Liane Hentscher/HBOTHE LAST OF US 9 p.m. on HBO. This post-apocalyptic show, based on the video game of the same name, might hit a little close to home as we enter yet another year of the pandemic — but that hasn’t stopped it from being a hit. In the show, a fungal infection turns people into quasi-zombies. This Sunday’s episode will wrap up the first season (HBO just greenlit Season 2), so it is likely that some of the loose ends won’t tie up until next season. More

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    ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1, Episode 8 Recap: There But for the Grace

    This week’s episode offered a different perspective on who the good guys and bad guys of the story are. But only briefly.Season 1, Episode 8: ‘When We Are in Need’You know that old saying about how history is written by the victors? Something similar could be said about fiction. The heroes of any story are the people the author wants us to follow; and the villains are anyone standing in their way. But another storyteller with another focus might have flipped that perspective on the same story.Two episodes ago in “The Last of Us,” Joel and Ellie were startled by what they assumed was a roving band of raiders on the fictional University of Eastern Colorado campus. One of these men ran at them while they were trying to mount their house and gallop away. Joel wrestled with him and broke the man’s neck, after taking a puncture wound in the gut.This is a clear-cut case of right and wrong, right? Some rogue tried to kill the good guys and suffered the proper consequences.This week though, we get a different angle on what happened. In a small, struggling community of survivors in Colorado’s former Silver Lake resort, the residents are mourning the loss of Alec, the man Joel killed. They considered him to be a hunter, who was out looking for food for his starving people when he was viciously murdered. When they find out Joel and Ellie are hiding out in a house just a few miles away, the group turns to their leader, David (Scott Shepherd), for justice — which, from their perspective, is wholly justified.This episode — this season’s next to last — is at once the show’s simplest to date and also the one that digs deepest into the larger themes. On one level, the story this week is one of pure suspense, set in just a few locations, and with not a lot of action in comparison to what we have seen before. It’s about a recuperating Joel and a terrified Ellie trying to fend off the Silver Lakers, whose intentions remain suspicious no matter how gracious David appears to be. (Give a lot of credit to Shepherd’s perfectly pitched performance, which makes David seem at once kindly and creepy.)Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.Ellie first meets David out in the woods with his right-hand man, James (Troy Baker), where they are all chasing the same deer — which Ellie ends up killing. She gets the drop on the men and makes a deal at gunpoint. They can share the meat if James brings her some penicillin to treat Joel’s gut wound, which is red and swollen with infection. And while Ellie waits, David talks.The story he tells about where he came from seems credible. David is a religious man now, but he used to be a nonbeliever, before the plague. He and his flock left the Pittsburgh Quarantine Zone when the Fireflies toppled FEDRA in 2017; and they gradually made their way west, losing some people to raiders but gaining others.David firmly believes everything happens for a reason, as he has expressed on a banner hung in the Silver Lake steakhouse where his group gathers: “When we are in need, He shall provide.” He thinks God delivered Ellie to their settlement to be a potential leader and provider. (Ellie: “You inviting me to your hunger club? Thanks.”)But while David insists that what Ellie calls “some weird cult thing” is actually “pretty standard Bible stuff,” there are indications that something is amiss. For starters, David seems strangely hesitant when Alec’s daughter asks when they are going to bury her father. Even stranger: Though their pantry had only about a week’s supply of meat before the excursion to the Eastern Colorado campus, everyone at dinner gets a bowl of “venison” in tomato sauce. (Some of the savvier Silver Lakers seem hesitant to eat it, though they eventually do tuck in.)Then there is the question of whether David honestly wants Ellie to be part of his team. (“I’m a shepherd surrounded by sheep and all I want is an equal,” he says to her at one point.) James certainly seems eager to kill Ellie outright whenever David is not around. “If we bring her back she’s just another mouth to feed,” he grumbles. When David warns that if they leave her on her own she will likely die, James suggests, “Maybe that’s God’s will.”This debate over who gets saved and who gets culled — or eaten — raises some uncomfortable questions, making this episode especially provocative.Consider Joel again. All season long, we have heard about the terrible things he has done to survive, though we have seen only brief flashes of what he is willing to do when necessary. This week, though, we see him at his most merciless. When the Silver Lakers are closing in on the house where Joel is convalescing, Ellie leaves him with a knife and jumps on the horse to try and misdirect the hunters. She ultimately is captured; but it does not matter. Even a weakened Joel is strong enough to choke one man, tie up two others, torture his prisoners to get information on Ellie’s whereabouts and then viciously kill them. He behaves like the enemy they believe him to be.In the end, this episode comes down on Joel and Ellie’s side — and not just because they are the show’s main characters. David’s turn to cannibalism crosses too many lines. Once you start seeing everyone as either friend or food, you have lost the moral high ground.Even worse, it is strongly implied that David is just a sicko, through and through — and that he has been since before the end times. After his people cage Ellie, David’s low-key, rational-sounding conversations turn into fervid rants. He talks about how human beings are animals. He says Ellie has “a violent heart,” adding, “and I should know.” He praises cordyceps because “it secures its future with violence, if it must.” When Ellie escapes by breaking his finger, burns down the steakhouse (banner and all), and stabs him in the gut, David appears to be excited by her aggression. Later, as David pins her to the ground, his voice turns dark. “I thought you already knew,” he says. “The fighting is the part I like the most.” (Yikes!)The episode concludes with one horror after another. Joel arrives in Silver Lake, where he is appalled to find his horse dead in a cold storage facility where three headless human corpses have been cleaned, dressed, and hung on hooks. Back in the burning steakhouse, David seems to be on the verge of sexually assaulting her before she gets her hands on a meat cleaver. She practically turns feral as she hacks him to death.Yet even during such a grim and bloody day, there are glimmers of hope. The original sin of “The Last of Us” — in Joel’s eyes, anyway — is that he failed to save his daughter when the plague started raging. On this day, Ellie has already saved herself by the time he arrives; but at least he gets to give her the reassuring hug he never gave Sarah. This, in itself, is a kind of heroism. As a traumatized Ellie sobs, Joel holds onto her, tightly. “It’s OK, baby girl,” he says. “I got you.”Side QuestsThe actor who plays James in this episode played Joel in the video game. Although Baker did not act opposite Bella Ramsey in the original “The Last of Us,” it still must have been strange for him to play a character so hostile to Ellie’s existence.I appreciated the realism of seeing Ellie bring the penicillin back to the unconscious Joel and having no idea how to give it to him. (Just injecting it straight into the wound seemed to work OK.)On the one hand, a world overrun by mushroom monsters seems pretty bad. On the other hand, the survivors get to live out their lives in swanky resorts. Maybe worth it? More

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    Review: Mining a Whimsical Absurdist Vein in ‘The Trees’

    In Agnes Borinsky’s latest play, a brother and sister returning from a party suddenly find their feet stuck in the earth. But to what end?Change implies movement: from here to there, from then to now, from one thing to another and perhaps back again. But in Agnes Borinsky’s new play, “The Trees,” it is represented by immobility. After all, the two central characters are physically rooted to the ground. They do not evolve much over the course of the show — it’s those around them who do.Returning from a party with her brother, David (a one-note Jess Barbagallo), Sheila (the ever-engaging Crystal Dickinson) jokes that they should just stay where they are — that is, a Connecticut park — for 10 years, or maybe even 100. Suddenly, a drunken flight of fancy becomes reality as the pair sink into the floor down to their ankles and stay there for the entire show, stationary fixtures watching the friends, lovers, family members and even strangers drawn to their orbit.As fraught as the situation might conceivably be, Borinsky (“A Song of Songs,” “Ding Dong It’s the Ocean”) stays clear from existential dread à la Samuel Beckett, whose apocalyptic “Happy Days” famously centers on a woman half-buried in a mound of earth. Rather, she attempts to mine a whimsical absurdist vein that feels like a creaky Eugène Ionesco plot device filtered through the sensibility of the writer and performer Taylor Mac, whose queering of theater aesthetics and quasi-spiritual questioning of community looms large over “The Trees.”More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.The show, which opened Sunday at Playwrights Horizons, does not tell us much about David and Sheila besides the fact that she had been visiting from Seattle and he makes movies — sorry, “films,” as he is prompt to remind her and everybody else. Poor Sheila, stuck next to this humorless pedant. You can see why David’s boyfriend, Jared (a scene-stealing, amusingly arch Sean Donovan), would jump on this unexpected opening and break up with him. Well, sort of, because like several others, Jared keeps being pulled back to the siblings’ orbit — he even helpfully suggests they be classified as trees so they won’t be evicted for staying on public land overnight.The production by Tina Satter (“Is This a Room”) can be cryptic, from Enver Chakartash’s boldly colored costumes to a set, by Parker Lutz, evoking a Greek amphitheater stripped of adornments and thus left as a characterless husk.Similarly, practical details about David and Sheila’s daily existence are brushed aside like inopportune reminders of reality (so normie), including a fleeting reference to inheritance money and an even zippier one to how the siblings eat and defecate. Somebody mentions a Kickstarter campaign to help them, though one of the visitors, Tavish (Pauli Pontrelli), is critical of offering perks for donations: “It’s this fake-polite capitalistic masquerade and a total perversion of the spirit of mutual aid,” they say.An astute point from Tavish, but it is brought up and abandoned as quickly as, say, the references to the environment. Rachel Carson this is not.As a diverse ecosystem can thrive around trees, an ad hoc family of blood and affinity grows around Sheila and David. Borinsky alludes to a kind of utopia in which the world’s pedestrian rules are kept at bay, but mostly leans on a vagueness that might claim to be poetic but ends up noncommittal. The siblings did not choose their fate, or maybe they did. They are miserable in their spot, or maybe they’re weirdly thriving in their new community. You could say their grandmother (Danusia Trevino), who speaks only in Polish and Yiddish, represents a different type of rootedness, in this case to the past, just like a child (Xander Fenyes) embodies a young leaf off a tree that is hope in the future. Borinsky invites guesses; the problem is that we might not care enough for any of the people or ideas onstage to bother hazarding them.The TreesThrough March 19 at Playwrights Horizons; playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour and 40 minutes. More

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    ‘S.N.L.’ Imagines How ‘Fox & Friends’ Might Cover the Dominion Suit

    The cast and writers stepped in to fill the gap in Fox News’s coverage of its own election lies scandal, in an episode hosted by Travis Kelce.Fox News has so far been wary in reporting on a defamation lawsuit brought against it by Dominion Voter Systems, and on the many private messages the suit has surfaced from high-ranking Fox News personnel, expressing their disbelief at falsehoods and conspiracy theories the network promoted after the 2020 presidential election.So “Saturday Night Live” strode right into that gap, kicking off this weekend’s show with a sketch that imagined how the “Fox & Friends” morning show might cover this news. (Short answer: awkwardly.)“S.N.L.”, which was hosted by the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and featured the musical guest Kelsea Ballerini, opened on a sendup of “Fox & Friends” with Mikey Day, Heidi Gardner and Bowen Yang playing the hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade.Day, as Doocy, set up the segment by saying, “You may have heard that Fox News is currently facing a $1.6 billion lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems.”Yang, as Kilmeade, said he was surprised by the suit “because I’m such a fan of Dominions — the little yellow guys with the overalls.”“Not the Minions,” Day explained. “We’re talking about the Dominion voting machines lawsuit. And our boss, Rupert Murdoch, gave some pretty shocking testimony in the case.”“This whole trial has been so unfair,” said Gardner. “They are raking him over the coals. Rupert Murdoch would never murder anyone. They sent him away for life.”Day corrected her, too. “That’s not Rupert Murdoch, that’s Alex Murdaugh,” he said.“Well, we just blew the case wide open,” Gardner replied. “They got the wrong guy.”The hosts shared text messages from Fox News hosts that they said the news media had presented out of context. For example, Yang showed a text message from Sean Hannity that read: “Rudy Giuliani is insane.”However, Yang said, the full message actually read that Giuliani is “insanely hot. I just want to lick that head dye right off.”Day added that text messages reading “Mind blowingly nuts” and “off the rails” had been sent to their fellow Fox host Laura Ingraham in response to her question, “What should I put in my Tinder bio?”The hosts then introduced an interview with the MyPillow founder, Mike Lindell (James Austin Johnson), warning him not to say anything outrageous about Dominion.Saying that he understood, Johnson immediately disobeyed the instruction. “Every Dominion machine has a Venezuelan Oompa Loompa inside that eats the votes with its little mouth,” he said.Following a further admonishment, Johnson broke the rule again: “Dominion voting machines give triple votes to Democrats, illegals and that lady M&M that stopped shaving her pits,” he said.Toy story of the weekWhen you’ve got an “S.N.L.” episode hosted by a star athlete like Kelce, a two-time Super Bowl-champion, of course you’re going to put him in sketches that puncture traditional notions of masculinity. Like this one, which found Kelce’s neatly attired character dining at an American Girl Café, with no other companions at his table besides his two dolls, Claire and Isabelle.Kelce proved pretty deft with wry descriptions of his dolls (“Isabelle just had her period and she thinks she’s a woman now”) and in parrying the suspicions of a waiter, played by Day, who asked if his name might turn up on any court documents or government lists. “The only list you’ll find me on is the hungriest customer list,” Kelce responded.Fake ad of the weekYang got the spotlight in this filmed segment, explaining to the camera that, as a gay man, he loves his female friends but sometimes finds them overwhelming. When he needs relief, he turns to Straight Male Friend, a product he describes with the same calm detachment you would use to summarize a prescription drug: “A low-effort, low-stakes relationship that requires no emotional commitment, no financial investment and, other than the occasional video-game related outburst, no drama.”Kelce played that product, an easygoing bro who barely reacted when Yang told him he was thinking of moving to Europe for seven years. “Just hit me when you’re back,” Kelce responded.But be careful: As an onscreen graphic warned, “Three or more straight male friends may result in a trip to Atlantic City.”Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on a drag performance ban in Tennessee; a conclusion from the Department of Energy on the cause of the coronavirus pandemic; and the fallout from a racist rant by Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip “Dilbert.”Jost began:Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has signed a new law banning public drag performances with a six-year prison sentence for repeat offenders, as first predicted in the now documentary “Madea Goes to Jail.” A Tennessee state senator said the bill will prevent kids from being “blindsided by a sexualized performance in public.” What are you talking about? Drag shows don’t just pop up like flash mobs and sprinkle gay dust on your kids. I never accidentally happened upon a drag show, and I grew up in New York City. Now, I have been blindsided by a sexualized performance a few times, but that’s just what you get when you take the bus.Che turned to Covid news …The U.S. Energy department concluded that Covid likely originated from a Wuhan laboratory leak and not a wet market. So I gave up eating bats for nothing?… and then pivoted to “Dilbert”:Newspapers around the country dropped the cartoon strip “Dilbert” after creator Scott Adams said he chose to live in a community where no Black people live. So he lives in your building, huh, Colin?Jost (after denying it was true) picked up the thread:Newspapers dropped the cartoon strip effective immediately. And to rub it in, they’re replacing “Dilbert” with “Peanuts: Oops All Franklin.” “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams’s racist rant was in response to the results of a poll that asked respondents the question, “Is it OK to be white?” Oh, I’d say it’s more than just OK. [His screen showed a photo of Jost holding wads of cash in his hands.]Weekend Update desk segment of the weekExtending its mockery of the comic-strip controversy, Weekend Update featured a visit from Dilbert himself: He was played by Michael Longfellow, who wore some horrifying prosthetics that all-too-realistically depicted what the character might look like if he were human.Longfellow told Che that, although he was oblivious to Adams’s racism: “I knew he was bad. He made me go into the office every single day during Covid and he knows I’m autoimmune.” When Che responded with disbelief, Longfellow said, “Do I look like somebody who’s not autoimmune? Yeah, I’m a real athlete. My hair is skin, Michael.”He went on to describe Adams as “the funny guy” and “the Trump-supporting cartoonist who did magic in his spare time — had a great Kevin Hart impression.” Che said, “Well that sounds like a racist to me.”Longfellow replied: “Well, it turns out he was a racist. And I’m his prize creation. I mean, what does that make me?” More

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    Tennessee Law Limiting ‘Cabaret’ Shows Raises Uncertainty About Drag Events

    The measure is part of a wave of legislation by conservative lawmakers across the country against drag performances. Many are wondering how it will be applied.NASHVILLE — A bill signed into law this week in Tennessee makes staging “adult cabaret” on public property or anywhere a child could see it a criminal offense. The law forbids performances in those places by topless, go-go or exotic dancers, strippers, or male or female impersonators who, as the law defines it, provides entertainment that is “harmful to minors.” The word “drag” does not appear in the legislation. And to some legal experts, the description provided in the letter of the law would not apply to drag as they know it. But many in the state are still trying to grasp how the measure will ultimately affect drag events, theater performances that involve drag, and even transgender and gender nonconforming people as they go about their lives.The law is part of a cascade of legislation across the country fueled by a conservative backlash to drag events, which has also spurred protests from far-right groups and threats directed at performers. Now that it is one of the first to succeed, with lawmakers in other states pursuing legislation with similarly ambiguous language, the law has prompted concerns about how it will be enforced and the implications it could have.“The murkiness of this law is causing a lot of people to be on edge,” said Micah Winter, a performer and board member of Friends of George’s, a theater company in Memphis whose shows are often centered on drag.Proponents of the legislation have described it as a way to safeguard children, asserting that drag events can have sexualized language and suggestive performances that may be too mature for younger viewers.“This bill gives confidence to parents that they can take their kids to a public or private show and will not be blindsided by a sexualized performance,” Jack Johnson, the Republican state senator who sponsored the legislation, said on Twitter.Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee giving his State of the State address in February. Mark Zaleski/Associated PressStill, the legislation figures into a campaign by conservative lawmakers across the country to curb the rights of people in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. In Tennessee, one proposal would block transgender people from changing the gender listed on their drivers’ licenses, and on Thursday, the same day Gov. Bill Lee signed the adult cabaret bill, he approved legislation that prevents all puberty-delaying treatment, hormone therapies and referrals for transgender children to receive gender-affirming medical care in the state.Drag has become more mainstream in Tennessee, as in much of the country. Performers in vibrant costumes that upend gender assumptions could simply be reading a book, promoting acceptance and literacy. Or they might be “reading” — that is, playfully mocking — tourists piled onto buses rolling through Nashville or lip-syncing in variety shows in boozy brunches in Memphis or Chattanooga.“Not one of our performers on this bus has ever shown more skin than a Titans’ cheerleader on a Sunday afternoon,” David Taylor, an owner of the Big Drag Bus Tour in Nashville and bars that host drag events, said in a hearing on the legislation.Legal experts said the equivocal wording meant that the adult cabaret law was not exactly a ban on drag but could still have consequences.“It’s an anti-drag law,” said Kathy Sinback, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, “because they passed it intentionally to try to chill and prevent people from doing drag, but that’s not really what the law says.”“It should not even touch any drag performances,” she added. But after watching public commentary and a series of legislative hearings debating the merits of the bill, she said, “it’s clear that some people think that drag in and of itself as an art form is obscene and that it should not be viewed by children.”But Ms. Sinback said the parameters set in the legislation should not apply to most drag performances, given that they would have to be considered extremely sexual or violent, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific values, and be considered broadly offensive and obscene to a child to warrant charging the performer with a crime.Mr. Johnson said that the law was not meant to target drag performances in general or discriminate against the L.G.B.T.Q. community. “It simply puts age restrictions in place to ensure that children are not present at sexually explicit performances,” he said in an interview with CNN.Critics said the legislation reflected what many in the gay and transgender community have described as a bleak and dangerous climate in Tennessee, threatening people who are often marginalized and already uniquely vulnerable. The law over medical care has provoked the most alarm. The Tennessee chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics opposed the law, saying in a statement that it will “significantly limit our ability to practice to the standard of care established by numerous national medical organizations.”Sruti Swaminathan, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal, which is working with other civil liberties groups in mounting a legal challenge to the legislation barring gender-affirming care, said, “This is clearly an effort to villainize us and isolate us because they fear our resilience and our self-love and our collective power.”People protesting against the bill on cabaret restrictions in Knoxville, Tenn., in February. Jamar Coach/News Sentinel, via ReutersTennessee is one of more than a dozen states where conservative lawmakers, focusing on issues of gender and identity, have pursued legislation that explicitly or otherwise seeks to impose restrictions on drag events.Some of the bills would require venues to register as adult entertainment spaces or “sexually oriented businesses,” and others would forbid performances at schools or libraries. A proposal in Arizona would outlaw drag performances within a quarter-mile of public playgrounds and schools.The law in Tennessee has not yet spurred a legal challenge, but activists and lawyers were prepared to start one as they watched to see how it is applied. Those who violate the law will be charged with a misdemeanor or a felony for continued offenses.The drag performer Poly Tics attending a rally in Kentucky on Thursday. Bruce Schreiner/Associated PressIn Kentucky, where the State Legislature has advanced a sprawling bill to curtail health care access for L.G.B.T.Q. children, lawmakers had also considered restrictions that included prohibiting what the state classifies as “adult performances” from operating within 1,000 feet of child care facilities, schools, public parks, homes or places of worship. The legislation was amended on Thursday to limit such performances from taking place in public places or a location where the performance could be viewed by a child — a step that critics of the legislation took as a victory.“This version is much more narrowly tailored to just explicit sexual content,” said Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in Kentucky, who acknowledged that much of his organization’s limited energy was focused on challenging the legislation on restricting gender-affirming health care.Compared with other proposals on L.G.B.T.Q. issues that advocates contend will have immediate and damaging impact, the ones that are tied to drag stir worries rooted more in uncertainty.For transgender and gender nonconforming people, who face a heightened threat of violence, some fear the law could be wielded as a tool to further discriminate against them.“The language is vague enough that it leaves it in the hands of each individual jurisdiction to define what counts as a ‘male or female impersonator,’” said Dahron Johnson, who works in community outreach with the Tennessee Equality Project. “They could say I, just going about my daily life, am an ‘impersonator.’”In theater, there is a long history of performance featuring cross-dressing and drag — Shakespeare famously employed male actors to play female roles — and many touring shows feature some variation on the practice: “The Lion King” (a male meerkat, Timon, dons a dress to dance the Charleston), “Hairspray” (the protagonist’s mother is often played by a man in drag) and “1776” (now touring with a new production in which all the male characters are played by female, transgender and nonbinary actors).“Hairspray” and many other theater productions feature drag performances.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“We’re absolutely opposed to any legislation that restricts the rights of our producers to present stories we’ve been presenting for 4,000 years,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade association representing producers and presenters around the country. Ms. Martin said the league is “very concerned” about the legislation under consideration in multiple states.Brett Batterson, the president and chief executive of the Orpheum Theatre Group in Memphis, said that on Friday, he paused conversations about bringing to Memphis a solo show, “Dixie’s Tupperware Party,” a small, long-running and popular touring production that has played all over America and is performed by a man in drag.“We decided we would pause our discussion to see how some of the language is interpreted,” Mr. Batterson said. “I think the law will be challenged, and we want to see how it plays out.”For now, Friends of George’s was not ready to change any of its plans. “We think it’s outrageous, but we’re forging ahead with our next production in spite of everything,” said Ty Phillips, the nonprofit’s vice president.Yet uncertainty remained. Mr. Winter noted that over the years he has played Mother Ginger in “The Nutcracker” and the mother in “Hairspray.”“Can I still do that?” he asked. More

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    ‘1 + 1’ Review: She Just Wants to Be His Plaything

    Stale views of gender dynamics power Eric Bogosian’s play about an aspiring actress caught in the clutches of a duplicitous man.The actor and playwright Eric Bogosian blazed a career on Off Broadway stages in the 1980s and ’90s by mucking around in mankind’s basest instincts. In plays like the 1987 Pulitzer Prize finalist “Talk Radio,” about a self-destructive shock jock, and in monologue collections including “Drinking in America,” Bogosian dared audiences to face the darkest recesses of masculinity even as he compelled them to recoil. But his latest play is more likely to induce a cringe.As the title might suggest, Bogosian’s schematic three-hander “1 + 1,” which opened at the SoHo Playhouse on Wednesday, is a kind of thought experiment. First performed in 2008, and now receiving its Off Broadway premiere in a co-production with The Black Box, “1 + 1” asks what happens when a man encounters a woman who embodies his most obvious fantasies and fears. The answer seems to be that desire is a source of weakness that makes the man into a fool. And the woman who is destroyed in the process? Consider her collateral damage.Phil (Daniel Yaiullo) is the type who orders steak alone at lunch in Los Angeles, which is how he meets Brianne (Katie North), an aspiring actress waiting tables, a job she calls “something I have to do while I’m waiting for my life to begin.” He says he’s a photographer; she asks if he does headshots. Soon they’re back at his place, where he offers her a joint, asks whether she’s ticklish and persuades her to pose nude. “You’re such a tough cookie,” he coos, inaccurately, as she proves both impossibly gullible and exceptionally game.They rapidly escalate to producing internet pornography and smoking crack, but Phil’s exploitation of Brianne is all too easy: She comes across as little more than a ventriloquist’s doll responding in kind to the men she attracts, including her manager at the restaurant, Carl (Michael Gardiner), who fawns over her and is standing by when her relationship with Phil inevitably goes south. Fast-forward five years, and Phil is sitting pretty with an office job, expecting a son with his wife, while Brianne’s life is in shambles. This is the part where she pivots from pinup and good-time girl to a family man’s worst nightmare.Despite the play’s overload of clichés, it’s possible to imagine a production of “1 + 1” that takes into account the dramatic shift in public consciousness about gendered power dynamics over the past 15 years, but the director Matt Okin resists applying much of that hindsight. North’s performance chafes in vain against the material’s ick factor, to curious and frustrating ends. Brianne purrs and preens even as she expresses skepticism, and whines and demurs when she might bare real claws.At least one part of the equation seems to hold: Lechery does make monsters and mincemeat of men, even if the ones depicted here face few consequences. But to imagine a woman who wants little more than to be desired and consumed is a stale and hollow provocation.1 + 1Through March 19 at the SoHo Playhouse, Manhattan; sohoplayhouse.com. Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes. More