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‘Fall River Fishing’ Review: So She Dated an Axe Murderer
28 February 2023, 19:10
A casually absurd play about the infamous Lizzie Borden, presented by Bedlam, cleverly undercuts the central dramatic event.There will be blood. And meat sauce. And dancing corpses. And Sharon Tate. Clarity? Not so much.Though, to be fair, if you aren’t ready for madness, perhaps a play about Lizzie Borden, presented by a theater company named Bedlam, isn’t your best bet.“Fall River Fishing,” written by Zuzanna Szadkowski and Deborah Knox, who also star, is a Rube Goldberg machine of a play: an entertaining spectacle of seemingly disparate parts that are actually interconnected. Yet this ornate display winds up feeling like a lot of show for an unimpressive payoff.But let’s begin with Lizzie Borden (Szadkowski), the woman from the gruesome children’s rhyme, who in 1892 took an ax and served 40 whacks in a double parricide that claimed the lives of her father and stepmother. Well, not an ax exactly, but a hatchet, as Bridget (Knox), the Borden family’s maid — and Lizzie’s kind-of lover — describes it. The weapon doesn’t actually appear until late in the first act, which comprises a series of domestic scenes in the Borden home, including interactions between Lizzie, Bridget, Lizzie’s father (Tony Torn), her young stepmother (Susannah Millonzi) and Uncle Nathan (Jamie Smithson), on the day of the murders.From left, Susannah Millonzi as Lizzie’s young stepmother, Jamie Smithson as Uncle Nathan and Tony Torn as the Borden patriarch in “Fall River Fishing.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesInstead of opting for an “American Psycho”-style gorefest, “Fall River Fishing,” directed by Eric Tucker, cleverly undercuts the central dramatic event, making the infamous real-life murders the anticlimax and continuing on from there. So from the start, we see onstage the bloodstained couch, the puddle of blood on the floor and red stains on the bed, though the characters sit and walk around the space as though everything is perfectly normal. Perhaps there is a touch of Bret Easton Ellis in this casually absurd play, which is packed from beginning to end with dark ironies. The most obvious being that the Bordens, despite wearing 19th-century fashion and sitting on 19th-century furniture, don’t just speak in contemporary English, but also make rather contemporary cultural references: to Cabbage Patch Kids, to the appeal of Greek yogurt, to the O.J. Simpson verdict.The dialogue is a constant stream of random quips, anachronisms, expletives, awkward gaffes and surprising non sequiturs. All of which is very funny — if that kind of quirkiness and drollery is your cup of tea. If not, you’ll struggle with the play’s humor, which may wear thin even for those enjoying it. After all, the play prioritizes its high-concept, heightened comedy over character building, plot or any of the usual forces behind a work’s momentum — so its engine runs out of steam almost immediately.It’s because of the no-holds-barred work of the cast and the director, however, that “Fall River” manages to stretch its charms for as long as it does (a nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time could have been cut by a full 60 to 90 minutes). Szadkowski proves to be an expert of deadpan humor from the first (unprintable) word she utters as Lizzie, who is both an insecure outcast and a selfish flirt with an endless need for attention. And, to make things worse, Lizzie is an aspiring actress who declares her performance as Nora in “A Doll’s House” — watch out, Jessica Chastain — her greatest feat.Knox’s Bridget makes a perfect pair with Szadkowski’s Lizzie, who strings the earnest maid along; Bridget follows Lizzie’s whims and bizarre scene studies, donning a wig and a pregnancy belly to play Sharon Tate (who makes an additional appearance). The Borden patriarch played by Torn is an unbearable misogynist, who wistfully recalls his first polyamorous marriage and the appeal of “foreign genitals, novel genitals,” courtesy of Tinder, with entertaining crudeness. Millonzi, as Lizzie’s alternately meek and vicious stepmother, performs her role with such otherworldly abandon that the character seems to have stepped out of her own universe, even within this already curious realm of weirdos and fools. Her physical performance is most impressive: She’s constantly draping herself over furniture, folding over suddenly and slouching around like a wet noodle. And Smithson is an utter delight as Uncle Nathan, a living, breathing cringe in the form of an adult man.After all of the jokes and the bloodshed and a brief waltz between the deceased, the play turns into a less interesting thought experiment in its second act, with Szadkowski and Smithson now playing a modern-day Nora and Torvald as they entertain some very bizarre guests. Soon everyone is digging into a bowl of spaghetti, hands-first, and rubbing it over their faces. By then “Fall River” has not only lost its steam, but also its appeal, and its last bit of sense.“This is nonsense!” Torvald/Nathan declares near the end of the production. True, but a little nonsense offers laughs and flights of imagination. Too much, and you leave the theater feeling mad.Fall River FishingThrough March 9 at the Connelly Theater, Manhattan; bedlam.org. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. More
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Jimmy Kimmel Responds to Reports He Caused a ‘Trumper Tantrum’
28 February 2023, 05:55
A report said Donald Trump tried to get Disney to reprimand Kimmel for making fun of him. “In other words, President Karen demanded to speak to my manager,” 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.‘Trumper Tantrum’On Monday night, Jimmy Kimmel addressed a Rolling Stone report that said in 2018, then-President Trump asked White House officials to call Disney and demand that Kimmel stop making jokes about him. Disney owns ABC, which broadcasts Kimmel’s show.“The report says at least two calls were made from the Trump White House to ‘convey the president’s anger regarding Kimmel’s monologues and jabs,’” Kimmel said. “In other words, President Karen demanded to speak to my manager.”“You’d think the guy who fathered Eric and Don Jr. would know how to handle jokes, but I guess not.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“You know what, maybe this is why Donald and Melania sleep in separate bedrooms — she was laughing too hard at my monologue at night.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But really, joking aside, this is a blatant abuse of power. I wonder if Fox News — you know they’re always screaming about censoring comedians — will they defend me on this? I doubt it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I wonder what it was specifically that sparked this, his Trumper tantrum.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Low Confidence Edition)“The U.S. Energy Department just released a new report that said the Covid pandemic might have been started by a Chinese lab leak. Americans heard and were like, ‘Hey, thanks for that three years too late information. Any “Game of Thrones” spoilers?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, they think Covid started in a lab, but said, ‘They only have low confidence in the report.’ ‘Low confidence,’ which is just one notch above, ‘We have no freaking idea.’” — JIMMY FALLON“How can you conclude something with low confidence? That’s not a conclusion. I think the word you’re looking for is ‘guess.’” — HASAN MINHAJ, guest host of “The Daily Show”“I mean, low confidence — that’s like me saying, ‘I think I can bench 3,000 pounds, but I have low confidence.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, you could tell by the way they delivered the news: ‘Um, maybe it was a lab leak? That’s stupid. Forget I said anything.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The conclusion had low confidence. But honestly, once the ‘Queer Eye’ guys get ahold of it, give it a new haircut, teach it how to make guacamole, it’ll be a whole new conclusion, you just wait.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth Watching“Neil Young” performed the new viral hit “Angela Bassett Did the Thing” on Monday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe actress Rebel Wilson will appear on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutRachel Brosnahan and Oscar Isaac in Anne Kauffman’s revival of “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan star in a rare revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.” More
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‘Elyria’ Review: The Past Catches Up to Them, Outside Cleveland
28 February 2023, 01:00
A microcosmic tale of the Indian diaspora, Deepa Purohit’s new play centers on the tangled history of two women and the man in between them.Watching an actor steal a show is one of the absolute thrills of live performance — but the purest method of that thievery has nothing to do with scenery-chewing, grand solo moments or sparkly razzmatazz. It’s nimble and cat-burglar quiet, not demanding attention, not meaning to upstage.As a doctor named Charu in Deepa Purohit’s new play “Elyria,” set in 1982 Ohio, Bhavesh Patel has the element of surprise very much in his favor. Charu is a mild, conformist, ordinary man — and in his muted earth tones, outfitted for obscurity. In his first scene, he arrives home from the hospital, pours himself a bowl of cornflakes, takes the last of the milk, has an unremarkable conversation with his homemaker wife. He’s a remote presence, lost in his own thoughts. Yet every beat and pulse of him has, for the audience, a subdued magnetism.It’s a genuinely exciting performance, layered and full, flecked with the driest comedy. The only trouble with such standout excellence is that it shifts the axis of the play, so that it seems as if Charu is at its center. “Elyria” in fact revolves around two women and their tangled history with each other, though they both also have a history with him: Dhatta (Gulshan Mia), who married Charu two decades ago, back in Tanzania, as their families had arranged; and Vasanta (Nilanjana Bose), who fell in love with him when they were young and had his baby, though he never knew.The sprawling “Elyria” is a microcosmic tale of the Indian diaspora, crisscrossing continents from Africa to Europe and North America. Directed by Awoye Timpo for Atlantic Theater Company, the play finds Dhatta and Vasanta in Elyria, Ohio, not far from Cleveland.Dhatta and Charu have lived there since 1969, parents to a college-age son, Rohan (Mohit Gautam), who is all-American in his preppy rugby shirts. Vasanta, who works in a hair salon at J.C. Penney, and her husband, Shiv (Sanjit De Silva), a would-be entrepreneur, are newly arrived after 20 years in Nairobi.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.“Not many of us East Africans here in these parts, no?” Shiv says when the two couples run into each other at the movies.Shiv, though, is the only one of them who has no idea that this is a fraught reunion, let alone that Vasanta’s presence in town feels to Dhatta like a betrayal and a threat, even a trauma.For almost all of Act I, the audience is left in the dark, too, about what is going on between the women, which makes the first half of the play feel in retrospect like prolonged throat-clearing.The story of “Elyria” revolves around two women, played by Mia, left, and Nilanjana Bose, whose pasts follow them from Tanzania to Ohio.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA spoiler, then, because there’s no discussing “Elyria” without it: Rohan, Dhatta and Charu’s son, is Vasanta and Charu’s biological child. Both women have always known it. Once the audience does, too, the many threads of the play begin to form a more taut, less enigmatic tapestry.But there are so many threads, and Purohit, attentive to her characters, wants to follow them all: the two marriages, the parent-child relationships, and Rohan’s charming, might-it-be-romance friendship with Hassanali (Omar Shafiuzzaman), a British exchange student. Memory sequences are also woven through, involving Vasanta and Dhatta’s younger selves, and there’s some lovely Indian dance. (Choreography is by Parijat Desai.)The muchness dilutes rather than intensifies. There isn’t time to give the history between the women the weight and tension that it needs if the audience is to invest in it.Jason Ardizzone-West’s geometric set, though, is a thing of spare beauty, the square stage (not raised, as it usually is, in the Linda Gross Theater) surrounded by the audience on all sides and elegantly lit by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew. The costumes, by Sarita Fellows, have some fun with 1980s fashion, despite a few misses, like Rohan’s jeans, which aren’t Levi’s but should be, and the way women wore leggings then versus now.But Patel’s Charu is perfect — even his too-long sideburns, a relic of the ’70s: as if the nation had slipped from the Me Decade into the Reagan era while he was distracted at work. Charu is comic and reckless, selfish and decent, myopic and real. It’s an exhilarating performance, a work of actorly alchemy.ElyriaThrough March 19 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More
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‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window’ Review: The Sin of Apathy
28 February 2023, 00:00
Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan star as Village bohemians in a rare revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s indictment of liberal inertia.It’s hard to imagine how someone dying of cancer could write, as Lorraine Hansberry did in a hospital journal, that “comfort has come to be its own corruption.” Despite her condition, she thought she should be on the front lines again, resisting decline and fighting injustice.But actually, she’d never stopped doing those things. “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” which opened on Broadway in October 1964 and closed the following January, two days before her death at 34, is proof. An indictment of what one of its characters calls “ostrich-ism” — “the great sad withdrawal from the affairs of men” — the play was, and remains, as brilliant and pugnacious a punch against liberal inertia as any thrown in real life.What it isn’t, quite, is coherent, as the revival that opened on Monday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music makes clear in making just some of it work. Its hailstorm of ideas remains stunning — and aptly painful if, as a proud progressive, you’re struck in the face by the ice of its wit. But as human drama goes, and despite fine performances by Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan, it’s hard to discern a satisfying emotional shape in all the weather. It’s blurry.That might seem surprising, coming from the author of the almost translucently earnest “A Raisin in the Sun,” which five years before “Sidney” was the first play by a Black woman ever produced on Broadway. The follow-up, rarely seen onstage since its premiere, takes a much broader, and often satirical, view of the problem of living right in a world that’s wrong.The focus of the satire is Isaac’s character, Sidney Brustein, a progressive Jew who progresses from failure to failure. His ludicrous nightclub, called Walden Pond, has just gone under as the action starts in the cramped Village apartment he shares with his wife, Iris. And now, to her chagrin, he’s finagled himself the ownership of a neighborhood newspaper.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.But The Village Crier, as it’s called, is no Village Voice. Disappointed in politics and convinced that his editorial stance should thus be apolitical, Sidney refuses to endorse anything. At the start of the play, he won’t even hang a sign in his window for Wally O’Hara (Andy Grotelueschen), a reform candidate for local office. Reformers, experience tells him, eventually turn into the bosses they’ve unseated.Aligned in various ways against that cynical view are his friends (all men) and his kin (all women). Alton Scales (Julian De Niro) is the most passionately anti-apathy; in part because he’s biracial, justice is no abstraction to him. “You don’t care if I’m ‘blue, green, purple or polka-dot,’ right?” he observes. But “those don’t happen to be the options.”Village bohemians: Isaac, center, with Julian De Niro, left, and Raphael Nash Thompson.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlso maintaining the struggle against the status quo are Max (Raphael Nash Thompson), a beatnik artist who designs the newspaper’s perversely inscrutable cover, and David Ragin (Glenn Fitzgerald), a gay playwright in the Edward Albee mode whose latest work takes place in a refrigerator. David is engaged “in the supreme effort of trying to wrest the theater from the stranglehold of Ibsenesque naturalism,” Sidney mocks.Anne Kauffman’s production, following one she directed in 2016 for the Goodman Theater in Chicago, is engaged in a similar effort. Especially in its treatment of the play’s women — three sisters representing three different maladaptations to male expectation — her staging moves the story toward its surreal edges in an attempt to give breathing room to Hansberry’s complexities.The approach is successful at first. Brosnahan hits all the right notes as Iris, a would-be actress whose quasi-mystical Appalachian upbringing constitutes an important part of the Brustein marriage’s erotics. (Sidney calls Iris, who is Greek, Irish and Cherokee, his “mountain girl.”) Brosnahan is also compelling when Iris’s autonomous ambitions emerge, and the domestic comedy (along with the lighting by John Torres) turns stranger.But as the contrasting energies that joined the Brusteins — Jew and gentile, sophisticate and bumpkin — begin to go haywire, Isaac, otherwise deft and charming, cannot find a way to merge Sidney’s laissez-faire liberalism with his period-typical yet vile sexism.And it’s not just Sidney who’s the oppressor; all the men are vile that way. “A woman’s place is in the oven,” one character jests.Nor is Iris the only victim: Her two sisters are belittled as well. Gloria (Gus Birney), who says she’s a model, is the object of salacious speculation and then cruel disdain. Mavis (Miriam Silverman), an uptown matron, is roundly jibed as a dopey square. True, she’s racist and antisemitic, but Hansberry allows the character humanity nonetheless — and Silverman, demonstrating that “everybody is his own hipster,” steals every scene she’s in.From left: Miriam Silverman, Isaac and Glenn Fitzgerald in the play, with period-nailing costumes by Brenda Abbandandolo.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYou might have guessed that what’s under attack here is the patriarchy; Hansberry rewrote what she at first called “The Sign in Jenny Reed’s Window” so she could make the point more fully.And if the atavism of progressive men were her only target, however complicated and ornately she painted it, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” might land with a more satisfying thwack. But with so many other bull’s-eyes to aim at — political machines, Bohemian pretensions, the ethics of sex work and the false equivalencies of Black and Jewish despair — the play too often feels overwhelmed with itself. Kauffman literalizes that feeling during the production’s second half by having some characters leave the set — a multilevel marvel by the design collective dots — to watch the action as if they were part of an exhausted audience.Despite that touch of whimsy, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” is no surreal “refrigerator”; it’s an old-fashioned, Ibsenesque oven, working best when allowed to cook the original recipe. Perhaps that’s why the period-nailing costumes by Brenda Abbandandolo are so successful. So too is the period music, much of it specified by Hansberry, some of it played live by Isaac on banjo.But Hansberry was too sick during the original production’s rehearsal period to make revisions that might have accommodated the vastness of her vision to the clutter of her structure. And though Robert Nemiroff, her ex-husband and literary executor, did make revisions later, and the creative team of this revival has made additional ones as well, a satisfactory solution has not yet been found.Perhaps it’s a problem built into Hansberry’s point. The progressive slicing of identity into finer and finer factions eventually leaves you with factions of one. No traditional play, with its sofa and sink and succession of neat scenes, can house that story, at least not in three hours. If only Hansberry had lived (she’d be 92 now) to turn her tantalizing version of the “well made” drama into what it might have been: a great unmade one.The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s WindowThrough March 24 at the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn; bam.org. Running time: 3 hours. More
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Rattlestick Theater Names Will Davis as Its Next Artistic Director
27 February 2023, 21:13
Davis will be the rare transgender theater artist to lead an Off Broadway nonprofit.Rattlestick Theater, a well-regarded Off Broadway company in the West Village, has decided to name Will Davis, a freelance director and choreographer, as its next artistic director.Davis will succeed Daniella Topol, the artistic director since 2016, who has decided to leave theater administration to pursue a career as a nurse. Davis, 40, is transgender, a distinction that he views as noteworthy.“One of the most important things I can do, as a very intentionally, very visible trans person, is offer a mirror to other emerging artists in all disciplines who may not feel like there is a space for them,” he said. “I’m very excited to be part of the group of people who can push this door open and leave it open.”Davis, who is particularly interested in developing new plays, previously served as artistic director of the American Theater Company in Chicago. He programmed experimental work there and box office revenue declined; his tenure ended with the shuttering of the theater company.Jeff Thamkittikasem, the chairman of the Rattlestick board, said the nonprofit had considered Davis’s experience in Chicago and was confident that the situation in New York was different.In Chicago, Thamkittikasem said, Davis “did what he could and produced great art.” In New York, Thamkittikasem said, “We are in a safer and stronger position that will allow him to flourish.”“Will is just an amazing artist with a beautiful eye, and we’re so excited for that aesthetic to be used for developing the culture of Rattlestick,” Thamkittikasem said.Davis said he was proud of the work he did in Chicago, and looking forward to the opportunity to lead in New York. “Rattlestick has always been a home for experimentation, and that has definitely been a part of what my work has been about,” he said. “There’s every possibility for us to make work that is exciting, that pushes the form, and that also feeds and sustains the theater.”Rattlestick, founded in 1994, is a small company with a penchant for adventurous work by emerging writers. This past week, the Obie Awards said it would honor a show the theater staged in 2021, “Ni Mi Madre,” by giving a prize for performance to the show’s creator and star, Arturo Luís Soria.The company has an annual budget of about $1.5 million, with five full-time and five part-time staffers. The company operates out of a theater, rented from a church, with about 93 seats; a $4 million renovation project is scheduled to begin at the end of this summer, and the company plans to stage its next season at locations around the city.Davis will start working alongside Topol in the coming weeks, and will assume the artistic director position full-time on May 1. More
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Review: In ‘With No Fanfare,’ Things Fall Apart
27 February 2023, 17:46
The play, a hit at the Avignon Festival, explores the twists and turns of a breakup through a whimsical mix of musical numbers and dreamlike vignettes.While romantic drama fuels much of the theatrical repertoire, what happens after a catastrophic breakup isn’t nearly as easy to translate onstage. In “With No Fanfare,” a French musical theater production directed by Samuel Achache, it takes a set that literally falls apart to establish the slow process of picking up the pieces.The metaphor is transparent, but it isn’t overblown. “With No Fanfare” (“Sans Tambour”) centers on a nameless couple, a man and a woman who have already reached their breaking point when the play starts. The man (Lionel Dray) frantically washes the dishes in a small sink; the woman (Sarah Le Picard) accuses him of caring only about clogged drains. As they trade barbs, they punch the kitchen walls, or whack household items at them. One by one, the walls collapse like a house of cards.And that’s just the first 15 minutes. What comes next — mourning and rebuilding — is told through a whimsical mix of musical numbers and dreamlike vignettes. One character lands at an imaginary clinic for broken hearts. Later, the cast re-enacts the medieval story of the star-crossed Tristan and Isolde. The process is unpredictable, tragicomic, slightly messy — and thoroughly touching.“With No Fanfare” first made a splash at the Avignon Festival last summer, and it has now reached the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, where it feels right at home. When the director Peter Brook brought this dilapidated music hall back to life in the 1970s, he didn’t hide the visible wear and tear on the walls. The set, a two-story house designed by Lisa Navarro, has a similarly ramshackle quality, with peeling paint and a hazardous stairwell.Lisa Navarro’s set suggests a ramshackle, two-story house.Christophe Raynaud de LageOver the past decade, Achache has developed a quirky brand of musical theater, often in tandem with a co-director, Jeanne Candel. The company he founded in 2021, La Sourde, employs both musicians and actors, and “With No Fanfare” takes advantage of that as it weaves compositions by cast members and the musical director, Florent Hubert, on top of a series of lieder by Schumann.The soprano Agathe Peyrat sings many of these numbers, and acts almost as a shadow for the actors, expressing their grief-stricken feelings. Along with her, five musicians are onstage nearly throughout, and they also take smaller acting parts.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.The back-and-forth between drama and music lends “With No Fanfare” much of its power, because the show’s dreamlike logic can be hard to follow. The part in which characters play Tristan and Isolde doesn’t quite land, for instance: A relationship built on a mythical love potion isn’t an ideal point of comparison for a modern couple.“With No Fanfare” is stronger when Achache and his cast (who all get a writing credit) let their imaginations roam freely. Once the central relationship has crumbled for good, the woman suddenly reappears at a treatment center where doctors offer remedies for heartbreak.There, the woman meets a third character, a writer named Spinel. Played by the actor and singer Léo-Antonin Lutinier, Spinel is a test patient for the clinic’s offbeat, metaphorical procedures. On doctors’ orders, he swims in his own tears. Later, he has surgery to remove the last remaining traces of love from his brain.“With No Fanfare” weaves a series of songs by Schumann into the narrative, as well as additional compositions by cast members.Christophe Raynaud de LageLutinier brings a dryly burlesque quality to the proceedings, and Spinel is in some ways the most affecting character, even though his relationship with the others isn’t fully fleshed out. Many scenes in “With No Fanfare” rely on plain physical comedy, as when Spinel tries to reach a piano that is hovering above the stage. He looks at it, and then brings a ladder that doesn’t reach; when he tries to climb it despite this, the steps give out under him, a Buster Keaton-style digression.Yet even the most absurd scenes have a melancholy quality to them. Achache somehow connects them to the long, frustrating process of rebuilding a life when the world you had imagined with someone collapses. As the nameless central man, Dray — an actor with over-the-top energy — spends much of the show standing precariously on a half-destroyed stool, a hammer in hand.It makes little sense on paper, yet onstage what you see is a man struggling to re-establish a sense of normalcy. Achache doesn’t aim for a tidy narrative. The characters don’t get a happy ending, or any real ending at all, but that lack of resolution rings true.At the end, Dray sits alone on the upper level of the set, dangling his legs over the edge, and surveys the ruins underneath. “And still, I coped with it,” he says, looking bemused. Mourning is a mental journey, and “With No Fanfare” makes a fitting visual and musical response to its twists and turns. More
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SAG Awards 2023: Complete List of Winners, Led by ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’
27 February 2023, 05:44
The film took the top prize, as well as lead actress and two supporting trophies. “Abbott Elementary” and “The White Lotus” were named the top TV shows.The Screen Actors Guild handed its top award for outstanding cast on Sunday night to “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the hit sci-fi comedy that recently dominated the Directors and Producers Guild Awards and now appears to be a strong best picture front-runner at the Oscars. Three of the four individual acting trophies went to “Everything Everywhere” cast members, too.But will they also prevail with Oscar?The safest bet to repeat is “Everything Everywhere” comeback kid Ke Huy Quan, who won the supporting-actor trophy from SAG and has been collecting statuettes in that category all season. During Sunday’s show, which aired live on YouTube and will stream exclusively on Netflix next year, the 51-year-old Quan delivered his most touching speech yet.After rising to fame as a child actor in popular films like “The Goonies” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” Quan found few roles available for Asian actors and moved behind the camera, working in stunt choreography. Still, he paid his SAG dues every year, hoping and biding his time for the resurgence he’s finally experiencing.“To all those at home who are watching, who are struggling and waiting to be seen,” Quan said, “please keep on going because the spotlight will one day find you.”In an upset victory, Quan’s co-star Jamie Lee Curtis won the supporting-actress statuette over Golden Globe winner Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) and BAFTA winner Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), suggesting that this may be the season’s most fluid acting race.“I know you look at me and think nepo baby, and I totally get it,” said a thrilled Curtis. “But the truth of the matter is I’m 64 years old and this is just amazing!”Later in the night, “Everything Everywhere” leading lady Michelle Yeoh won a crucial best-actress prize over “Tár” star Cate Blanchett, whom she acknowledged as a titan from the stage.“Thank you for giving me a seat at the table because so many of us need this,” Yeoh told the crowd. “We want to be seen and we want to be heard, and tonight you have shown us that it is possible.”Though the SAGs have honored Asian performers from TV shows, Yeoh was the first Asian woman to win best actress in a movie category, and Quan was the first Asian male actor to win for movies as well.The only film actor to win who didn’t hail from “Everything Everywhere” was Brendan Fraser, who mounted a best-actor comeback with his transformational performance in “The Whale.” Though “Elvis” star Austin Butler earned best-actor prizes at BAFTA and the Golden Globes, Fraser wasn’t expected to win at the latter show, since he had publicly accused the former Globes head Philip Berk of groping him in 2003 and had said he wouldn’t attend the ceremony. (Berk denied the accusation.)Like many of the night’s winners, Fraser spoke about the ups and downs of a Hollywood career: “I’ve rode that wave lately, and it’s been powerful and good,” he said, “and I’ve also had that wave smash me right down to the ocean floor.”SAG’s track record with the Oscars is suggestive but spotty. Last year, all four SAG winners triumphed at the Oscars and Jessica Chastain’s SAG win for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” helped her vault to the front of a wide-open best-actress category. But the year before that, only two of the four SAG winners repeated at the Oscars.But the strongest takeaway from this year’s SAG ceremony is that “Everything Everywhere,” which cost only $14.3 million and took in more than $100 million worldwide, is almost certainly headed for a best-picture victory: Of the films that earned top honors at the DGAs, the PGAs and the SAGs — that is, all three major guilds — only Ron Howard’s “Apollo 13” (1995) failed to go the distance with Oscar.When the season began, the “Everything Everywhere” directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan were surprised that their quirky film was generating awards chatter. But with two weeks left until Hollywood’s biggest night, the real surprise would be if anything but “Everything Everywhere” becomes the Oscars’ ultimate victor.Here’s the complete list of SAG winners:FilmOutstanding Cast“Everything Everywhere All at Once”Actor in a Leading RoleBrendan Fraser, “The Whale”Actress in a Leading RoleMichelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Actor in a Supporting RoleKe Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Actress in a Supporting RoleJamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Stunt Ensemble in a Movie“Top Gun: Maverick”TelevisionEnsemble in a Comedy Series“Abbott Elementary”Ensemble in a Drama Series“The White Lotus”Actor in a Comedy SeriesJeremy Allen White, “The Bear”Actress in a Comedy SeriesJean Smart, “Hacks”Actor in a Drama SeriesJason Bateman, “Ozark”Actress in a Drama SeriesJennifer Coolidge, “The White Lotus”Actor in a TV Movie or Limited SeriesSam Elliott, “1883”Actress in a TV Movie or Limited SeriesJessica Chastain, “George & Tammy”Stunt Ensemble in a TV Series“Stranger Things”SAG Life Achievement AwardSally Field More
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What’s on TV This Week: ‘True Lies’ and ‘Black Girl Missing’
27 February 2023, 05:00
An action series premieres on CBS, and a new film on Lifetime highlights how missing Black women are treated by the police and the media.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, Feb. 27-March 5. Details and times are subject to change.MondayAlhajji Sharif, a former prisoner, in “Attica.”SHOWTIMEATTICA (2021) 5:45 p.m. on SHO2. This Oscar-nominated documentary from the director Stanley Nelson explores the enduring violence and racism of the prison system, and the ongoing need for reform, through the lens of the Attica prison revolt of 1971. Using archival footage and interviews with survivors of the uprising, reporters and government officials, the documentary takes the viewer through the events as they unfolded, building to “a powerful final half-hour that makes the case that the brutality used in ending the riot was excessive, criminal and racist — a show of force closer to revenge,” as Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review.TuesdayClockwise from left, Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton in “Apollo 13.”Ron Batzdorff/Universal StudiosAPOLLO 13 (1995) 7:55 p.m. on Syfy. Adapted from the 1994 book “Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13” by Jim Lovell, the astronaut who commanded the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970, and Jeffrey Kluger, this Academy Award-winning film follows Lovell (Tom Hanks), Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and what happened during their failed Moon landing mission. In a 1995 article about the film for The Times, John Noble Wilford, the science journalist who covered “the ill-starred flight” in 1970, attests to the film’s authenticity. The story “evokes a time when people took risks to reach grand goals,” Wilford wrote, adding that “perhaps the retelling of the Apollo 13 story will remind Americans of who we were and who we want to think we are.”WednesdaySURVIVOR 8 p.m. on CBS. This Emmy Award-winning competitive reality television series returns for its 44th season. Hosted by Jeff Probst, the season premiere introduces the 18 contestants who will compete in a series of games and challenges until only one person remains to claim the show’s $1 million prize.TRUE LIES 10 p.m. on CBS. Inspired by the James Cameron action film of the same name, this new series follows the suburban Tasker family as Helen (Ginger Gonzaga), a language professor, finds out that her husband, Harry (Steve Howey), is a spy for Omega Sector, a U.S. intelligence agency. The show follows the couple as Helen is recruited by Omega and the pair begin working together, all while keeping their double lives a secret from their children.ThursdayBREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961) 8 p.m. on TCM. This Grammy and Academy Award-winning romantic comedy, adapted from Truman Capote’s 1958 novella of the same name, follows Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), a country girl turned socialite, as she falls in love with Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a struggling writer in the same apartment building. “It is a completely unbelievable but wholly captivating flight into fancy composed of unequal dollops of comedy, romance, poignancy, funny colloquialisms and Manhattan’s swankiest East Side areas captured in the loveliest of colors,” A.H. Weiler wrote in a 1961 review for The Times.FridayThe poet Ruth Stone’s work explored the nature of creativity, grief and family dynamics.Ruth Stone TrustRUTH STONE’S VAST LIBRARY OF THE FEMALE MIND (2021) 9 p.m. on PBS WORLD. The poet Ruth Stone’s work explored the nature of creativity, grief and family dynamics; she died in 2011 at 96, and wrote for much of her life in obscurity. Through interviews with Stone at different points in her life, interviews with her family and colleagues, readings of her poetry and an animation by her granddaughter, this documentary, premiering on PBS for Women’s History Month, is an intimate look at Stone’s legacy and art.SaturdayBLACK GIRL MISSING (2023) 8 p.m. on Lifetime. A part of Lifetime’s Emmy Award-winning public affairs campaign, “Stop Violence Against Women,” the movie “Black Girl Missing” highlights how missing Black women are handled by the police and the media. The film follows Cheryl (Garcelle Beauvais) as she tries to find her daughter, who has been labeled a runaway while the police and the media are too busy following another missing person: a white girl. The movie is accompanied by “Beyond the Headlines: Black Girl Missing,” which tells the true stories of missing women of color through interviews with their families.SundayFrom left, Tameka “Tiny” Harris, Kandi Burruss, LaTocha Scott and Tamika Scott, members of Xscape, in “SWV & XSCAPE: The Queens of R&B.”Phylicia J.L. Munn/BravoSWV & XSCAPE: THE QUEENS OF R&B 9:30 p.m. on Bravo. Two of the best-selling ’90s R&B girl groups are brought together for a one-night-only concert event in this six-part limited series. Viewers will follow the Grammy Award-nominated, multiplatinum trio SWV and the quartet Xscape as they explore the dynamics of sisterhood in music groups on and off the stage. Each episode will capture the highs and lows of these seven women’s journeys as they work together — and against one another — to put on a massive concert. More

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