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    Review: ‘Merrily We Roll Along,’ Finally Found in the Dark

    Jonathan Groff, supported by Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, is thrillingly fierce in the first convincing revival of the cult flop Sondheim musical.To be a fan of the work of Stephen Sondheim, as Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times, is “to have one’s heart broken at regular intervals.” He meant not only that Sondheim’s songs are so often crushingly poignant but that the experience of loving them can feel unrequited. The shows they are in — he was reviewing the original production of “Merrily We Roll Along” — don’t always love you back.That was in 1981, when “Merrily,” with a problematic book by George Furth, suffered an ignominious Broadway debut of just 16 performances after 44 previews. No matter that Sondheim, responding to the story of a songwriter, had written his most conspicuously tuneful score to date, prompting pop recordings by Frank Sinatra (“Good Thing Going”) and Barbra Streisand (“Not a Day Goes By”). It was universally deemed a debacle.The debacle ended the working relationship between Sondheim and the director Harold Prince, whose five shows together in the 1970s — “Company,” “Follies,” “A Little Night Music,” “Pacific Overtures” and “Sweeney Todd” — had redefined the American musical. With “Merrily,” they thought they were taking the form even further, with a complicated backward chronology and a cast of mostly inexperienced actors who played 40-ish adults at the start and grew into themselves at the end.After the show’s death by a thousand pans, Sondheim, saying he’d rather make video games, threatened to leave the theater entirely. Luckily, that didn’t happen — and “Merrily,” too, refused to give up, instead undergoing a seemingly endless series of unsatisfactory “improvements” that only seemed to confirm the hopelessness of making it matter.But with the opening of its first Broadway revival, after 42 years in the wilderness and the death of Sondheim in 2021, “Merrily” is no longer lost. Maria Friedman’s unsparing direction and a thrillingly fierce central performance by Jonathan Groff have given the show the hard shell it lacked. Now heartbreaking in the poignant sense only, “Merrily” has been found in the dark.When we meet him after the uplift of the gleaming overture, Groff, as the composer Franklin Shepard, is alone in an empty and unappealing liminal space. (The deliberately ugly sets, perhaps uglier than necessary, are by Soutra Gilmour.) He is wearing, and will throughout the show, a solemn undertaker’s outfit — black pants, black tie, white shirt. Even as everyone else changes with the times, in vivid costumes (also by Gilmour) that mark each notch on the timeline from 1976 to 1957, Frank always remains what he was: a one-man show. “Merrily” is the funeral he throws for his own ideals.Groff, right, with Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe as friends whose relationship sours in the Sondheim-Furth musical, which is getting its first Broadway revival.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe contrast between the pleasures that music can provide and the damage obvious in Frank’s demeanor immediately frames what follows as a solo psychodrama. Yes, Charley Kringas, who writes the words, and their friend Mary Flynn, a novelist turned theater critic, are there throughout, trying to encourage his better angels and corral his worse ones. But despite high-wattage, laser-focused performances by Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, they have no effect on him; they are clearly Frank’s pawns, willing or otherwise.How he destroys Mary, and nearly Charley as well, not without their assistance, is revealed as the musical’s formerly absent spine. In the first scene, a 1976 party for “Darkness Before Dawn,” a hack hit movie Frank has produced now that he no longer writes music, Mary is dispatched with barely a blink, or drunkenly dispatches herself.In the next scene, as Charley enumerates Frank’s misplaced priorities in a 1973 television interview — Radcliffe handles the song “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” superbly — Groff’s coldblooded rage is terrifying. Collateral damage along the way includes Frank’s first wife, Beth (Katie Rose Clarke); his second, Gussie (Krystal Joy Brown); his probable third, Meg (Talia Simone Robinson); his producer, Joe (Reg Rogers); and even his adorable young son. Who but a monster would betray such a punim?“Merrily” is thus no longer, as it seemed in 1981, the story of the gradual, almost inevitable dimming of youth’s sweet illusions but rather the story of their falsity in the first place. Frank is only devoted to Mary and Charley when he doesn’t have access to anyone more useful. To think he turned into that monster is a mistake: He always was one, as Sondheim clearly understood. “That’s what everyone does,” Mary sings once the three-way friendship has collapsed. “Blames the way it is/on the way it was/On the way it never ever was.”Friedman has thrown in her lot with the coruscating insight of the songs, making a tactical decision — successful but not without consequences — to deprioritize everything else, including the score’s brassy élan. “Merrily” Kremlinologists will want to know that the version onstage at the Hudson Theater, though slightly bigger than the Off Broadway version that opened at New York Theater Workshop in December 2022, is still somewhat underscaled for Broadway. It has a cast of 19 instead of 17 and an orchestra of 13 instead of nine.In Maria Friedman’s unsparing production, our critic writes, the trajectories for the secondary characters at last make some sense.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt takes more than even those larger numbers to deliver the Golden Age thrill that is, after all, the show’s milieu. (The original orchestra had 20 players.) Other than the costumes, the minimal design is more practical than inspiring; the sound of the band (playing new orchestrations by Sondheim’s longtime collaborator Jonathan Tunick) is especially unbalanced. The choreography by Tim Jackson too often seems charades-like. Some of the solo singing could be more effective, technically and thus emotionally.And then there is, as always, the book. Friedman has apparently made her peace with Furth’s final Frankensteined version; though its pieces are coarsely sutured and don’t quite line up, at least the thing walks. If in seeking to sweeten the main story it still leans too heavily on thin satire for laughs — morning news shows, Hollywood sycophancy — the trajectories for the secondary characters, especially Beth and Gussie, who are now more than cannon fodder, at last make some sense.In this production, though, it wouldn’t matter much if they didn’t. Radcliffe’s wit and modesty, combined with Mendez’s zing and luster, provide perfect settings for what is now (as it has never been previously) the inarguably central performance. Groff, always a compelling actor, here steps up to an unmissable one. With his immense charisma turned in on itself, he seems to sweat emotion: ambition, disappointment and, most frighteningly, a terrible frozen disgust.I don’t know whether that’s what Furth intended, but Sondheim is brutally clear about the insidiousness of great talent. In Frank, it eats everything it can find, eventually including itself. “Who says ‘Lonely at the top’?” he sings amid the end-stage cynicism of his loveless Bel Air party. “I say, ‘Let it never stop.’”What a strange and daring thing for the great and greatly missed Sondheim to dramatize, and for Friedman to forefront. I’d call it heartbreaking if the result weren’t finally such a palpable hit.Merrily We Roll AlongThrough March 24 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan; merrilyonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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    Well-Made, and Massively Weird: A New Theater Season in Berlin

    Recent premieres in the city ranged from a spare take on the recent Broadway hit “Prima Facie” to a dose of sheer artistic lunacy.It may be less polished and more rough-hewed than in New York, London or Paris, but Berlin’s theater scene is uniquely diverse, unpredictable and boundary-pushing. Buoyed by lavish public subsidies and boasting a fleet of remarkable actors and daring directors, it is also uncommonly accessible, thanks to low ticket prices and the growing popularity of English surtitles.This season, Berlin’s five main repertory theaters will present a total of 87 premieres, 29 of them at the Deutsches Theater, a storied playhouse that opened in 1883. Its new artistic director, Iris Laufenberg, opened her tenure by programing the German-language premiere of Suzie Miller’s “Prima Facie,” a recent hit on Broadway and the West End that won Tony and Olivier Awards, including for its star, Jodie Comer.The Hungarian director Andras Domotor stages the one-woman play as a chamber drama, with minimal props, stark fluorescent lighting and lots of empty space for his star, Mercy Dorcas Otieno. While the staging embraces a degree of abstraction rarely seen in commercial theater in London or New York, the show is also a vehicle for a prodigious and fearless actress.Otieno, who was born in Kenya, delivers a sweaty and emotionally naked performance as a lawyer who defends men accused of sexual assault, and then finds herself the plaintiff in such a case after she is raped by a colleague. She carries this intense 100-minute-long show on her capable shoulders and commands our attention long after the absorbing drama of the play’s first half gives way to clunky speechifying toward the end of the evening.A more compelling and disquieting exploration of sexual assault and trauma is “In Memory of Doris Bither,” written and directed by Yana Thönnes and running at the Schaubühne. The play is based on the true story behind the 1982 film “The Entity,” a hit horror flick that starred Barbara Hershey as a woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted by a malevolent spirit occupying her house in Los Angeles. In 1974, Bither, a single mother living with her four children, was at the center of a sensational investigation into paranormal activity that Hollywood later served up for entertainment.Performed in a mix of German and English (with surtitles in both languages), “In Memory of Doris Bither” does not so much recreate the alleged haunting as examine how the case — and the success of “The Entity” — reverberates. On Katharina Pia Schütz’s sparse set, the interior of a sterile suburban home, a wash of pink wallpaper, carpeting and curtains, the actors Ruth Rosenfeld, Kate Strong and Heinrich Horwitz obsessively sift through memories and try to make sense of Bither’s torment. The play’s horror, it becomes clear, is not supernatural but psychological.My only complaint about this absorbing and uncanny show is that it ended abruptly after 70 intense minutes. Then again, the play’s unfinished quality, its lack of resolution, may be intentional: Bither, who died in 1999, claimed the haunting was real until the very end.Heinrich Horwitz, Ruth Rosenfeld, and Kate Strong in “In Memory of Doris Bither” at Schaubühne.Philip FroweinAt the start of this busy theater season, new plays by two leading German-language writers were elevated by young, dynamic directors who crafted fluid and stylish productions for texts that were rather uneven.The novelist and playwright Rainald Goetz shot to prominence 40 years ago with the novel “Insane,” a nightmarish odyssey through a madhouse. Ever since, he has been a bad boy of the German literary scene, known for a sprawling literary blog and a novel about ’90s techno culture. His latest, “Baracke,” is a poetic, rambling and infuriatingly undramatic play about German history, family violence and the impossibility of finding love.For the work’s world premiere at the Deutsches Theater, the young Swiss director Claudia Bossard has served up a stylistically varied, epoch-spanning staging that provides a gloss on Goetz’s epic grouse while sometimes subverting it. Nine intrepid actors courageously follow their director into battle, even if the stakes of Goetz’s stream-of-consciousness text aren’t always clear.Over at the Berliner Ensemble, there was more focused critique in the prolific German-Swiss writer Sybille Berg’s “Things Can Only Get Better” (“Es kann doch nur noch besser werden”) a dystopian parable about A.I. and the Metaverse taking over our lives. It’s somewhere between a screed, a cautionary tale and a blackly comic satire.Perra Inmunda, Amelie Willberg and Meo Wulf in “Things Can Only Get Better.”JR Berliner EnsembleThe director Max Lindemann floods the stage with digital projections, while actors with illuminated smartphones glued to their hands cavort jerkily on a rotating platform. The characters receive an endless succession of Amazon packages, praise the “great men who have made our lives so easy: Bill, Jeff and, naturally, Elon” and brag about using ChatGPT to write plays. Everything Berg says does seem worrying, but her targets are a bit obvious and the dialogue is often glib.Like with “Baracke,” the production comes to the rescue, with movement, light, outlandish costumes and eclectic music by the Swiss D.J. Olan! It’s another step in the right direction for the Berliner Ensemble, the playhouse that has recently cast off its conservative reputation and emerged as one of the Germany’s most interesting theaters.It has become de rigeur to bemoan the loss of Berlin’s gleefully anarchic and experimental side, most clearly represented, perhaps, by the recent transformation of a famous former squat into the slick photography exhibition center Fotografiska. But Berlin can still be relied on to deliver some sheer artistic lunacy.“Baracke” at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.Thomas Aurin“Toter Salon” is a monthly series of short performances written and directed by Lydia Haider and performed in an intimate venue at the Volksbühne theater. During the most recent installment, “Blut,” Haider stood in front of a coffin and officiated a gleefully blasphemous mass, which was frequently drowned out by the droning and often earsplitting score, by the Austrian electronic music artist Jung An Tagen.In her satanic priest garb, Haider also approached the spectators with an ice bucket full of white wine spritzer, which she drizzled into the mouths of willing audience members. For those unwilling to get down on their knees to receive her communion, there were Bloody Marys in plastic shot glasses. Sloppy, underdeveloped and massively weird, the hourlong performance was an endurance test.Yet suffering though the plumes of cigarette smoke, cheap booze and earsplitting music, I was oddly pleased that Berlin’s theater scene could accommodate both this level of experimental insanity and a well-made play like “Prima Facie.” Berlin may have lost much of its famed wildness, but at least when it comes to theater, there’s something for everyone. More

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    ‘Frasier’ Returns With a Sitcom Veteran in the Director’s Chair

    Over nearly five decades, Burrows has directed a thousand sitcom episodes. Next up: the new Paramount+ series, which follows Frasier Crane’s return to Boston.“You can’t learn how to be funny,” James Burrows said. “That has to be instinctual in you.”Burrows, 82, a celebrated director of the multicamera sitcom, has more of that instinct than most. The son of the playwright and director Abe Burrows (“Guys and Dolls,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”), he never intended a career in show business. But to defer his draft eligibility, he enrolled at the Yale School of Drama. Yale taught him that he wasn’t a playwright. Or an actor. But he became curious about directing.After graduation he worked as a stage manager, once assisting Mary Tyler Moore on a disastrous musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” (“It was a horrible experience,” he said. “Mary would come offstage and collapse in my arms and start crying.”) He segued into directing, eventually running a theater in San Diego. One night, while watching “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” he realized that directing a sitcom in front of a live studio audience wasn’t so different from his theater work. He wrote to Moore. Her husband, the producer Grant Tinker, invited him to the set.In 1974, he directed his first episode of the show. Over nearly five decades, he would go on to help create “Cheers” and direct a thousand more sitcom episodes, including the pilots for “Taxi,” “NewsRadio,” “Friends,” “Third Rock From the Sun” and “Will & Grace.” In 1993, he directed the pilot of “Frasier,” a “Cheers” spinoff that followed Kelsey Grammer’s psychiatrist character, Frasier Crane, as he relocated to Seattle from Boston. That show ended in 2004. But Burrows has kept on. In February, he directed another pilot, a “Frasier” reboot (though Burrows doesn’t like to think of it that way) that begins Oct. 12 on Paramount+. The show finds Frasier back in Boston, trying to reconnect with his son. Besides Grammer, none of the other original cast star, but several make guest appearances.In the new Paramount+ series, Kelsey Grammer, left, reprises his role as Frasier Crane, trying to reconnect with his son, played by Jack Cutmore-Scott, in red. Chris Haston/Paramount+On a recent Monday (morning in Los Angeles, where Burrows lives, afternoon in New York), Burrows appeared on a video call screen, spiffy in a New York Giants jersey. A practiced entertainer, he kept the jokes and the Yiddish — naches, mishpachah, kop — coming as he discussed the decline of the sitcom and the pleasure of getting behind the camera again. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you learn to direct for television?I observed on “The Bob Newhart Show.” I knew how to talk to actors. I knew what was funny. But I didn’t know the situation with the cameras. Then I watched my dear mentor, Jay Sandrich, on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” And after about four months, they gave me a show to do.You say that you knew what was funny? How?How do you know when something’s hot?You touch it and it burns you?It’s an instinctual reaction. I know what’s the best way to say a joke or what’s the best position onstage. I also have a multitude of ideas of what’s wrong with the script and what’s not wrong.I’m staggered by the list of shows that you’ve brought into being. How do you know if a show is for you?I try to only do multicamera sitcoms. For me, the camera is not a character. I don’t think of it that way. If there’s two people talking, I want you laughing at what they’re saying, not admiring the beautiful cinematic camera moves. When I first started, I did anything anybody would throw my way. “Taxi,” that was my first big break. Then there was “Cheers,” which I created with Glen and Les Charles. I look at those scripts. “Cheers” was a workplace comedy. “Taxi” was a workplace comedy. But they were about families. In “Taxi,” it’s a family that wants to get out. In “Cheers,” it’s a family that wants to come in. I guess I have a gift for creating families. My job is to mold a disparate group of actors into a family that likes one another.“Cheers,” in 1986, from left: Woody Harrelson, John Ratzenberger, Grammer and George Wendt.Ron Tom/NBC, via Getty ImagesHow do you know if a show is going to work?Well, it comes in pieces. The first thing I do is read the script. Then I’ll meet the writers. There has to be this compromise between writer and director, that’s the second thing. The third thing is the casting. You have to get lucky. You have to have the right actor available.I do my work in rehearsal. I don’t have any preconceptions. I take the best bolts of electricity and stick with that. And if there is no electricity, my job is to try to make electricity, change the batteries. Then I put in pieces of business that make the scene funnier. When the audience comes in on the fifth day, we do the first scene. And if a couple of jokes don’t work, we change the jokes, because the audience is the ultimate barometer.Frasier Crane was first introduced on “Cheers.” Who was he?Glen and Les created the character. He was a device to get Diane Chambers [the waitress played by Shelley Long] back into the bar. She was in a loony bin. Her doctor there was Dr. Frasier Crane, and he recommended that she go back and confront her demons. We hired Kelsey Grammer for four shows. In the first show, he was sitting at the bar, and he opened his mouth and the audience laughed. The three of us looked at one another and went, “Oh my God, this guy’s great.” We hired him for the rest of the series. If you watch Frasier on “Cheers,” you can see he’s a buffoon, but you love him. He’s pretentious, but you love him. Kelsey played him with such vulnerability.What made this character worthy of a spinoff?David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee [the creators and executive producers, who were then writers on “Cheers”] came to us and said they wanted to spin off the character of Frasier. They were smart enough to know that Kelsey was a skilled enough actor to go from playing a buffoon on “Cheers” to playing a leading man on “Frasier.” So that was their genius and also Kelsey’s genius.Where did the inspiration come from to do a revival?I was not involved in that. I don’t even call it a revival. I call it a continuation, because it’s not really a reboot. It’s a character moving on, and he’s surrounded by a whole new set of characters, so it’s not really a reboot.Are there maybe too many revivals, reboots, continuations these days?I have no idea. I don’t like them. But I enjoyed going back with Kelsey and revisiting the character.Grammer, with David Hyde Pierce as his brother Niles Crane, in the original “Frasier,” which premiered in 1993.Gale M. Adler/NBC, via Getty ImagesIf the magic of the original “Frasier” was the interaction among the characters and the actors playing them, is it enough to do it with just Kelsey?Well, the audience will be the judge of that. I know that. When Kelsey called me and said, “Would you do it?” I said, “I’ll read a script.” I read the script. I liked the script. And I agreed to do it just to make sure we protect the character.Has Frasier changed? Can characters change in a multi-cam format?Frasier is dealing with new emotions with his kid that weren’t emotions he dealt with before. He’s still a pompous ass. He always is and will always be. That’s what makes him funny. But I think there is growth.This “Frasier” is on a streamer. It doesn’t need to adhere to a 21-minute time limit or pause for commercial breaks. Does that change anything?You can go up to 30 minutes with a comedy. After that, it gets taxing. I do love a joke a page. Sometimes two jokes. That doesn’t happen often now.Why is that?There are a lot of single-camera comedies that get chuckles. They don’t get guffaws. I have friends at CBS and they say [of multicamera sitcoms], “Don’t worry, don’t worry. They’re going to come back.” I’ve been hearing that for years.How have you seen sitcoms evolve during your career?The one evolution I’ve seen is that a lot of them aren’t funny anymore. The prime requirement of a multicamera sitcom is you’d better be funny.When a great pilot script comes your way, do you still enjoy the process?I had a ball on this, with my dear friend. That laughter behind me is so rewarding for my soul. If somebody sent me a great script, I would almost do it for free. It’s better than sitting around in the house, reading novels and watching sports. And it’s nice to be able to go back to what happened to me 50 years ago and still have this feeling of creativity. When pilot season comes this year, I hope there is a pilot that I like. More

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    How ‘Survivor’ and “Amazing Race’ Adapt to Climate Change

    The CBS hit, along with fellow staple “The Amazing Race,” is learning to deal with climate change, globalization and other seismic shifts.Since its premiere in 2000, the hit CBS reality game show “Survivor” has taken place across the globe, with each season set in an exotic island locale: Pulau Tiga in Malaysia, Ko Tarutao in Thailand, Efate in Vanuatu and many, many more.But around a decade ago, the longtime host and executive producer Jeff Probst had an alarming realization. A growing population was making it harder to find remote islands without anybody on them. Extreme weather, including rising heat and more intense storms, was making it more dangerous to film. And burgeoning political unrest was making it more difficult to work with certain governments or in countries that no longer felt safe.“When we started in 2000, there were lots of places in the world we could go,” Probst said last week in a phone interview. “But over the years, starting in about 2012, 2013, it became clear that we were running out of places to shoot.”Both “Survivor” and its sister series, the globe-trotting adventure competition “The Amazing Race,” have been stalwart hits on CBS for nearly two decades. Both continue to draw sizable audiences: Last week’s Season 45 premiere of “Survivor” and Season 35 premiere of “The Amazing Race,” which screened back-to-back on Wednesday evening, were the most-streamed shows on Paramount+ that night, according to the network, with “Survivor” also topping NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” to win the night in broadcast ratings. But while the popularity of these shows has endured, producing them has continued to be a unique challenge — particularly as the world around them keeps changing.“Our show is really a time capsule of 20-plus years of seeing the world grow,” said Elise Doganieri, one of the creators and executive producers of “The Amazing Race” alongside her husband, Bertram van Munster. “The Amazing Race” challenges teams of American contestants to chart sprawling international courses that take them from one far-flung locale to another, and many of the cities that appeared in the series when it debuted in 2001 have been transformed over the intervening years. “We go back to places that we’ve been to before, but the world has evolved and grown so much, and the landscape has really changed.”Remote landscapes where the crew could shoot with little interference have since been built up, while locals in even the most out-of-the-way regions are more connected to the rest of the world. When “The Amazing Race” paid a visit to Dubai in the early 2000s, Doganieri remembered, the city was by and large still a sprawling desert landscape where “everything was old, with wooden boats and dhows.” Today, of course, “it’s the complete opposite: a futuristic ultramodern city.”“The Amazing Race” started its 35th season at the Hollywood sign. Nicolas Axelrod/CBSIn some ways, Doganieri said, making a show like “The Amazing Race” has gotten easier over time: advancing camera and cellphone technology has streamlined aspects of the production, and location scouting, which used to be done using still photography, can now be done using video.Other changes are more challenging. As with “Survivor,” climate change has begun to affect the way that “The Amazing Race” is made, with extreme heat and tropical storms sometimes interfering with the production. “Weather has made a big change in how we travel,” Doganieri said. “There’s more storms, especially over Asia, and we have flight delays and cancellations that push into the schedule.” Soaring temperatures in the summer have made filming the competition elements more demanding for both the contestants and crew. “We scouted in Asia for the first several episodes. It was hot when we scouted in April. When we filmed, it was 90, 95 degrees.”Although Doganiei said production is prepared for when it’s “unbearably hot” with “electrolyte drinks, snacks, water, anything to keep hydration up,” she admits that “it’s tough” in the midst of more and more grueling summers. “Most of our show is shot outside, so it really does affect you,” she said. “You have to really be aware of it.”“Survivor” solved its location problem by settling on one setting: the show has been set on the Mamanuca Islands in Fiji since its 33rd season. Earlier seasons were distinguished primarily by their location, with subtitles like “Survivor: Panama” and “Survivor: China” luring an audience in with the appeal of an intriguing new place. Shooting in Fiji again and again has removed that novelty, but Probst insists that it was a negligible feature to begin with. “It doesn’t really matter where you do it as long as it’s a real jungle,” he said.“You don’t see Fiji,” said Drea Wheeler, a former contestant. “You’re just on an island. You’re miserable. It’s hot. It rains. It still sucks.”In recent years, “Survivor” has tried to mix things up by devising overarching conceits.Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS“The real challenge,” said Rob Cesternino, a two-time “Survivor” contestant who competed in Panama and Brazil, “is keeping the show interesting with new ideas every season without changing locations.” In recent years, “Survivor” has tried to mix things up by devising overarching conceits, such as “David vs. Goliath,” in which “underdogs” compete against “overachievers,” and “Winners at War,” which featured the return of 10 previous “Survivor” victors. Although not all of these concepts have been considered successful, Probst said that he would “much rather the show burn out due to a bad idea than fade away due to boredom.”Probst also said that filming in Fiji has freed the producers up to spend more time working on such ideas, simply because the static setting has “made everything more streamlined.” The show’s 300-person international crew, which also commands a vast infrastructure including 40 boats and a helicopter, now knows what to expect from the setting season over season, removing some of the environmental unpredictability that could make producing “Survivor” such a risky endeavor. The number of possible options for the production would only continue to dwindle as time went on and the climate continued to change. Nor could they easily reuse old locales after departing them.“A lot of the places we visited in the past became popular because of ‘Survivor,’ and after we left they might have erected a resort on that island,” Probst said. “It was harder to find remote islands simply because there are more people on the planet. Storms were more intense, and there was no denying it — we had been out in these waters before and it was never like that. And it became less desirable to visit places where things were happening politically that made us feel unsafe, or that we didn’t want to be part of.” Given those considerations, sticking to Fiji just made sense.“I think in many ways this was the answer to a problem that was always fast approaching,” he said.“The Amazing Race” in Lijiang, China, in 2011. Shifting geopolitical concerns have restricted the scope of where the crew can now go.Robert Voets/CBSThat problem has continued to vex the producers of “The Amazing Race,” which still involves dozens of international settings per season. Shifting geopolitical concerns, a delicate matter for American productions abroad, have restricted the scope of where the crew can go, making it harder to find new and interesting places to shoot. “The world has gotten a little smaller,” said van Munster. “We’re not going to Russia right now. We’re not going to China. There are a lot of places in West Africa where I would love to go but where we can’t go. Senegal. Logistically, maybe we can figure it out. But is it safe? We don’t want to get ourselves in trouble in another country. The world is a tricky place.”Nor is this the only way in which the world seems to be getting smaller. Phil Keoghan, the host of “The Amazing Race” since its inception, said in a recent video interview that people are more aware of the world around them than every before — that globalization, in short, has changed the function of the show. “It used to be that we were almost opening up another universe for the audience, these unknown worlds that existed out there, these exotic places,” he said. “Some of that innocence has been lost. Now we’re watching Korean TV and Indian movies. We’re seeing the influence of the rest of world across social media. People who live in these places are sharing their homes with us in an intimate way.”Part of the reason that “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” have endured throughout these many changes is precisely because they are so good at capturing them. As fly on the wall, cinéma vérité exercises, they are not only contending with the realities of an ever-shifting world, but they are also documenting them. What’s evolving, in the environment and in the landscape, is evolving before the eyes of the audience. “The genre we operate in, we go with the flow, and whatever happens in front of the camera we go with it,” van Munster said.“The world is changing so rapidly that what was fun 20 years ago is different fun 20 years later. But whatever it looks like, it’s always fascinating.” More

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    Late Night Hosts Address the Hamas Attacks on Israel

    Seth Meyers kept things serious, while Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel tried a touch of levity around a tough subject.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.Sensitive MaterialLate night hosts addressed the Hamas attacks on Israel during Monday night’s monologues. On “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert said his writers “didn’t even attempt to write jokes about this.”“The human mind simply refuses to do it. Even A.I. refused to do it,” Colbert said, adding that ChatGPT responded to a request by stating that “making jokes about such matters can easily be seen as insensitive, disrespectful, or offensive to those who are suffering as a result.’”“I, for one, want to commend our future robot overlords. That is a rare show of humanity from something that can’t identify which photos contain a traffic light.” — STEPHEN COLBERTSeth Meyers kept things serious but vague, saying that he wouldn’t “pretend to have any answers as to how to respond to a crisis like this.”“I will only say that in the moments when we are confronted with such evil, inhumane acts, we are most at risk of losing our own humanity. When we are justifiably blind with rage and sadness, we can make choices that will have massive, irrevocable impacts on the lives of our fellow man. It requires the absolute best of us, to think clearly in times like this. And I hope with all my heart the best of us can emerge in this time of unthinkable loss.” — SETH MEYERSJimmy Kimmel called it a “nightmare situation” earning condemnation from world leaders, including “our super-duper, pro-Israel former President Donald Trump,” who, Kimmel said, “immediately found a way to make it about himself.”“He wrote, ‘The horrible attack on Israel, much like the attack on Ukraine, would never have happened if I were president. Zero chance!’ That’s right, if he was president, we’d all be blissfully downing jiggers of bleach. There’d be no war anywhere.” — JIMMY KIMMELKimmel recapped statements Trump made at a Saturday rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he compared his physical prowess to President Biden’s.“On the day one of our closest allies is hit by a devastating terrorist attack, Trump is onstage talking about how much better his body is than Joe Biden’s.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Maybe instead of an election next year, we just have a wet T-shirt contest and end it.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Subpar Edition)“After leaving the White House, former President Trump reportedly shared details about the capabilities of U.S. nuclear submarines with an Australian billionaire, including how close they can sail to Russian vessels without being detected. Said Trump, ‘Oh, come on, I’m not an idiot — I told Putin first.’” — SETH MEYERS“Yes, he heard that the guy came from down under and he thought, ‘Well, that’s where the submarines are, down under. He should know. If anyone should know, I should tell the down under guy.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Trump was just sealing the deal, OK? Following the old sales mantra: A.B.C. — always be compromising national security.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“OK, that’s not right. You can’t just give away our classified secrets without trading for some of Australia’s classified secrets, like how they make the Bloomin’ Onion.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe Canadian indie rock band Metric performed their song “Just the Once” on Monday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightTroye Sivan, whose new album, “Something To Give Each Other,” will be released this week, will appear on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutMadonna, here on her Blond Ambition tour, isn’t interviewed in “Madonna: A Rebel Life,” but thanks to voluminous media coverage over her career, she has lots to say in the book.Gie Knaeps/Getty ImagesMary Gabriel’s new, three-pound biography, “Madonna: A Rebel Life,” is as thorough as the author could make it without interviewing her superstar subject. More

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    in Theater

    ‘Holidays,’ a Madonna Musical, Pays Tribute to the Star

    “Holidays,” the first musical to include the pop icon’s songs, arrives just days before her “Celebration” tour starts. But matching the star’s talents is a challenge.Two lovers belting “Open Your Heart.” A misunderstood woman exhorting a roaring audience to “Express Yourself.” A gay wedding extravaganza set to “Like A Prayer.”No, this isn’t a preview of the stage antics in Madonna’s highly anticipated “Celebration” tour, which starts Saturday in London, at the O2 Arena. In Paris, the French stage director Nathan Guichet has started the party early with “Holidays,” a plucky new musical inspired by the global pop icon.It’s a wonder no Madonna jukebox musical has made it to the stage until now. Her back catalog brims with highly theatrical songs, and if “Holidays” is any indication, it doesn’t take a big-budget, bells-and-whistles production to get admirers of the pop icon to buy tickets.This two-hour show, which is set to run at the Alhambra theater through Jan. 28, features just four performers and one (very pink) set.Guichet has woven 15 Madonna songs into a fictional script performed in French. It is centered on four childhood friends, with somewhat contrived results: A number of twists and turns clearly exist to shoehorn songs into the show. (A character somehow lands in San Pedro, the island mentioned in “La Isla Bonita,” solely to cue Madonna’s 1986 track.) Yet by the end of a recent performance, Parisians were on their feet, fully hung up on Madonna nostalgia.Madonna performing during her Blond Ambition tour, in Rotterdam in 1990. “Holidays” tries to capture the star’s many talents.Gie Knaeps/Getty ImagesThe French capital is an unlikely setting for the first Madonna musical. Still, the newfound popularity of American-style musicals in France means there is a hunger for new titles, while producing costs are lower than on Broadway. “Holidays” came together in a year or so with a budget hovering around $1 million, according to its lead producer, Stéphane Pontacq. (For comparison, Broadway’s “Jagged Little Pill,” a jukebox musical inspired by the music of Alanis Morissette, was capitalized for up to $14 million in 2019.)Guichet, who has directed and produced original productions including a ”reimagining of “The Snow Queen,” said in an email that he was inspired by an interview Madonna gave to The Daily Star newspaper in 2012. “I’d sanction my songs to be made into a musical,” she said at the time. “But I wouldn’t do it myself, I don’t think that would interest me.”“Holidays” premiered just as global curiosity surrounds Madonna, who turned 65 in August. In June, she postponed “Celebration,” her 12th world tour, because of what her manager called a “serious bacterial infection.” The U.S. leg of the tour has now been rescheduled to start in December, following a series of concerts in Europe.There is little doubt that “Celebration” will be a lavish affair: Delivering a show to remember is what Madonna does, and has been doing consistently for four decades. Part of the challenge, when staging a tribute like “Holidays,” is trying to match her many talents.It is clear from the singing numbers in “Holidays,” all set to recorded music, that Madonna’s history of gutsy performances has challenge the performers to go above and beyond. The four women who carry the show all have moments of brilliance, and work hard to make the often dubious script shine.In it, a young heiress who is about to get married, Louise, gathers three friends she hasn’t seen in well over a decade. Their passion for Madonna united the quartet as teenagers, and every year, on Aug. 16, Madonna’s birthday, they would come to mark that special “holiday.”They reconvene as adults in Louise’s childhood home in a French village, which features a full-on Madonna altar: an eccentric pink bedroom suite designed for the girls by Louise’s doting father, covered in portraits of their idol.It takes a while for the four characters to gel. Louise, played by Juliette Behar, starts off as a manic pixie blonde, a “Material Girl” proxy with an over-excited delivery. Of her three friends, one, Valentina (Fanny Delaigue), has become a mysterious, provocative star in the United States, not unlike Madonna herself; another, Nikki, is a travel blogger with a history of family abuse. The fourth, Suzanne, is the proverbial underdog, who stayed in their local town and is stuck in underpaid jobs.The production weaves together Madonna songs into a fictional story centered on four childhood friends.NeibaPhotoThroughout, the main thing the four women have in common is Madonna. What “Holidays” gets right is what the star represents for many women: A sense of freedom and empowerment, the belief that they could break free of existing norms. It quickly becomes clear that Louise and her future husband don’t see eye to eye, and her friends encourage her to think beyond what is expected of her. Similarly, in a nod to Madonna’s longstanding L.G.B.T.Q. activism, a gay romance links two of the four friends, and blossoms movingly with the song “Secret.”“Holidays” isn’t a Madonna-backed venture. Promotional material for the production names her as infrequently as possible and the playbill’s plot summary only refers to the “famous pop star” who inspired the main characters. Luckily for the producers, it doesn’t take much to telegraph the mystery star’s identity. The poster art for “Holidays” closely mirrors one of Madonna’s best-known portraits, with her head tilted back and eyes closed on the cover of her 1986 album “True Blue.”Still, as fan tributes go, “Holidays” is a welcome reminder that Madonna’s catalog has rare staying power — and offers space for others to make their mark onstage. As Suzanne, Ana Ka brings serious vocal chops to the table, and lends heart to a character that could easily feel miserabilist.And the charismatic Nevedya, a budding musical star in France who recently headlined a production inspired by Josephine Baker, takes the role of Nikki and runs with it. A consummate dancer and singer, she brought striking arm flourishes and even a death drop to a “Vogue” number that otherwise felt a little timid, and in her hands, “Papa Don’t Preach” became a powerful plea to a father attempting to clip her wings.Madonna herself will be in Paris with “Celebration” in November. Until then, “Holidays” is an entertainingly upbeat stand-in. More

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    in Television

    Do You Know These Science Fiction Novels That Became TV Shows?

    Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s monthly quiz about books that have been made into television shows, movies, theatrical productions and more. This month’s challenge is about science fiction novels from the past 60 years that were adapted into television shows. Tap or click your answers to the five questions below.New literary quizzes appear on the Book Review page every week and you can find previous installments in the Book Review Quiz Bowl archive online. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘Shining Vale’

    The NBC skit show starts its 49th season, and the Starz show returns.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, Oct. 9-15. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) 8 p.m. on HBO. As the leaves start changing and pumpkin-flavored items hit grocery shelves, it is clear that spooky season has arrived. And what better way to get into the spirit than with one of the most revered psychological thrillers? Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), a top student at the F.B.I. academy, is sent in as bait to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), in prison for murder and cannibalistic acts. Meanwhile, another serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill is on the loose and has a penchant for skinning his victims.TuesdayBET HIP-HOP AWARDS 9 p.m. on BET and VH1. Hosted by the Grammy-nominated artist Fat Joe, BET’S Hip-Hop Awards, which happened live on Oct. 3 are being broadcast this week, with performances by DaBaby, Fivio Foreign and Glorilla, to name a few, in honor of 50 years of hip-hop. There will also be a celebration for the 30th anniversary of the record label So So Def. In terms of awards, 21 Savage and Cardi B are tied for the most nominations with 12 each; Drake is right behind with nine.NO ACCIDENT 9 p.m. on HBO. In August 2017, hundreds of white nationalists rallied against the removal of a confederate statue in Charlottesville, Va. When they marched into town and were met by counter protesters, a brawl ensued, leading to the death of one person and dozens injured. In 2021, a civil trial began to determine if the far-right organizers had plotted for violence at the rally. This documentary looks at the stories of plaintiffs and their injuries as well as an examination into the intentions of organizers.WednesdayFrom left: Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin and Woody Harrelson in “Zombieland.”Glen Wilson/Colombia PicturesZOMBIELAND (2009) 11:05 p.m. on Syfy. As someone who can’t stomach much gore but loves Jesse Eisenberg, this is the ideal movie for me. Though this movie takes place in a postapocalyptic, zombie-infested world, the story focuses instead on Columbus (Eisenberg) who teams up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) as they head West where there are apparently no zombies. This would be a good time to note that the characters are all named after their locations when the zombie apocalypse began. There’s a little bit of romance, lots of funny moments, an amazing cameo and a scene at an amusement park, where Eisenberg’s characters often find themselves (see: “Adventureland”).ThursdayHOUSE OF VILLAINS 10 p.m. on E! The reality villain queen herself, Omarosa Manigault Newman, is back on small screens this week alongside a whole slew of other familiar “we love to hate them” TV personalities, including Jax Taylor from “Vanderpump Rules,” Corinne Olympios from “The Bachelor” and Johnny Bananas from “The Challenge.” On this show, hosted by Joel McHale, the villains will have to form alliances and compete against one another for a $200,000 prize.FridaySHINING VALE 9 p.m. on Starz. Last season, this show started out with Pat Phelps (Courteney Cox) moving with her family to a small town for a fresh start after she cheated on her husband, Terry Phelps (Greg Kinnear), but Pat could immediately sense something demonic happening in her new home. The new season starts off with Pat returning home after a breakdown, and there she finds out her daughter Gaynor (Gus Birney) doesn’t want to spend time with her and Terry cannot remember her after suffering a brain injury.A still from season one of “Creepshow.”Boris Martin/AMC, via ShudderCREEPSHOW 10 p.m. on AMC. Serving as a de facto continuation of the 1982 film of the same name, this anthology series is back for a fourth season. Each episode features two horror stories vignettes with all things supernatural, gruesome, terrifying and haunting.SaturdaySATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 11:30 p.m. on NBC. As another fall season rolls around, on Saturday night this show is going to be live from New York! Coming back for its 49th season, Studio 8H will be busy again, even amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. Pete Davidson is making his hosting debut after being a cast member on the show from 2014 to 2022. Ice Spice will be the musical guest, and on the following week’s episode Bad Bunny will serve as the host and musical guest.SundayNatascha McElhone and Mark Umbers in “Hotel Portofino.”Courtesy of Eagle Eye Drama LtdHOTEL PORTOFINO 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The first season of this show took place after World War I, as British travelers began vacationing in Italy. The second season, which begins this week, takes place in Portofino in the summer of 1927, with the Roaring ’20s are in full swing and Bella Ainsworth (Natascha McElhone) making sure that the Hotel Portofino is a success. More