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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Run the Burbs’ and ‘The Trial’

    A Canadian sitcom debuts on the CW. And a hard-to-find Orson Welles movie airs on TCM.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, July 31 — Aug. 6. Details and times are subject to change.MondayRUN THE BURBS 8:30 p.m. on the CW. Is it redundant to have a set of those cute family-member bumper stickers on the back of a blue Toyota minivan, that icon of suburban soccer-practice shuttling? Is that not a bit like sticking a “baby on board” sign to the handlebars of an infant’s carriage? Don’t tell that to the Phams, the family at the center of “Run the Burbs,” who have a set on their shiny van. A Canadian sitcom cocreated by Andrew Phung (a star of “Kim’s Convenience”) and Scott Townend, the program follows the Phams — a mother, Camille (Rakhee Morzaria), and father, Andrew (Phung), and their two children (played by Zoriah Wong and Roman Pesino) — as they navigate contemporary suburban life. The debut episode, which airs Monday, is built around preparations for a neighborhood block party.BREEDERS 10 p.m. on FX. The yin to the “Run the Burbs” yang, this dark and bold British comedy was encapsulated by a line that Paul, a father played by Martin Freeman, said to Ally (Daisy Haggard), his wife, in the very first episode: “I would die for those kids, but often I also want to kill them.” Since its debut in 2020, the show has mined humor from the least glamorous sides of family life. Major themes of its fourth and final season, which picks up five years after the previous season and is set to debut Monday night, include divorce, aging and teen pregnancy. In a 2020 interview with The New York Times, Freeman (who is also a creator of the series) explained that the show was interested in giving a frank look at less-discussed parts of parenting. “In nice sort of lefty, liberal circles,” he said, “you don’t really talk about how you want to throw your kids out of the [expletive] window.”TuesdayICONIC AMERICA: OUR SYMBOLS AND STORIES WITH DAVID RUBENSTEIN 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This documentary series, hosted by the philanthropist David Rubenstein, has been loose with what constitutes an “iconic” part of America’s identity: Previous episodes have been dedicated to the history of both physical sites (including the Statue of Liberty and the Hollywood sign) and shared imagery (cowboys, bald eagles). Tuesday’s episode looks at the Golden Gate Bridge.WednesdayAnthony Perkins in “The Trial.”Rialto Pictures/StudioCanalTHE TRIAL (1963) 5:45 p.m. on TCM. Orson Welles once declared that “The Trial” was the best movie he’d ever made, but it has been out of print in the United States for years. A new restoration, which played in theaters around the end of 2022, is set to be released for at-home viewing by the Criterion Collection in September, but for now this TCM broadcast remains a relatively rare opportunity for U.S. audiences to see the movie easily. Adapted from a Franz Kafka novel, the film stars Anthony Perkins as Josef K., a man living in an anonymous city who is charged with a crime that is kept unclear to both him and the audience. His journey to find out more brings him across an array of oddball characters, including a legal advocate (Welles) and an artist (William Chappell), but little light is shed. TCM will show the movie alongside several other films with Perkins, including PSYCHO (1960), at 8 p.m., and FEAR STRIKES OUT (1957), at 10 p.m.ThursdayJAWS (1975) 8 p.m. on AMC. In the same way as fast cars, secret agents and creepy dolls, there’s something about sharks that makes Hollywood salivate — like a beast of prey drawn to the scent of past box-office successes. (“Meg 2: The Trench,” in theaters everywhere Aug. 4.) Few attempts at big-screen shark tales have come close to matching Steven Spielberg’s original “Jaws” movie, though — or the one-two bite of John Williams’s score.FridayOlivia Colman in “Empire of Light.”Searchlight Pictures/20th Century StudiosEMPIRE OF LIGHT (2022) 6:05 p.m. on HBO 2 and 1917 (2019) at 9 p.m. on Showtime 2. Here’s an interesting do-it-yourself double feature: A pair of collaborations between the filmmaker Sam Mendes and the cinematographer Roger Deakins. First up is “Empire of Light,” a period drama that stars Olivia Colman as the duty manager of a cinema in a British seaside town in the 1980s. As she struggles with her mental health, she develops a relationship with Stephen (Micheal Ward), a new employee. Their story is a far cry from the one told in “1917,” a WWI drama about two British soldiers (played by George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) sent on an exceedingly treacherous mission behind enemy lines.SaturdayTHE WILD SIDES 8 p.m. on BBC America. The first entry in this new, three-part documentary series picks up during a drought in the Botswana wilderness. It introduces a slate of animals — elephants, cheetahs, leopards, jackals and baboons — whose lives are connected in some surprising ways.SundayQuincy Isaiah in “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.”Warrick Page/HBOWINNING TIME: THE RISE OF THE LAKERS DYNASTY 9 p.m. on HBO. The 1979-1980 season of the Los Angeles Lakers — and that era’s stars, including Magic Johnson (played by Quincy Isaiah) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes) — got a ritzy coat of HBO paint in the first season of this drama, which debuted last year. The plot of the new, second season, which begins Sunday, runs through the 1984 finals, when the Lakers and the Celtics landed in a rematch. In a trailer, the Lakers owner Jerry Buss (as played by John C. Reilly), sets up the rivalry as a classic underdog story: “They’re the dynasty,” he says. “We’re the flash in the pan.” More

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    Book Review: ‘Tom Lake,’ by Ann Patchett

    This time the celebrated novelist spins the cozy tale of a former actress, her three daughters and their rueful memories. There’s a cherry orchard, too.Are you in possession of a hammock? A creaky old porch swing? A bay window with built-in seating? If not, Ann Patchett’s new novel, “Tom Lake,” will situate you there mentally. I wouldn’t be surprised if it put your fitness tracker on the fritz, even if you amble around listening to Meryl Streep read the audio version.This author is such a decorated and beloved figure in American letters — spinning out novels, memoirs and essays like so many multicolored silks; opening an independent bookstore in Nashville to fight the Amazon anaconda; even helping care for Tom Hanks’s cancer-stricken personal assistant — that I sometimes think of her as Aunt Patchett.Patchett’s actual family of origin was complicated, as she made explicit after the 2016 publication of the semi-autobiographical “Commonwealth.” “The Dutch House” (2019), which had a wicked stepmother, did not stray far from the idea that living with relatives can be messy and hellish.With “Tom Lake,” she treats us — and perhaps herself — to a vision of a family beautifully, bucolically simple: nuclear, in its pre-bomb meaning.Like some guardian angel in the sky, Anton Chekhov hovers over this story, which features three sisters in their 20s and is set on their parents’ cherry orchard(albeit in northern Michigan during the recent pandemic, not the tuberculosis-torn Russian provinces). But Thornton Wilder is driving the tractor.Sequestered not unhappily in lockdown, the sisters’ mother, Lara (she dropped a “u” after reading “Doctor Zhivago”), is telling them, after tiring days in the field, about her long-ago, short-lived career as an actress, whose highlight was starring as Emily Gibbs, the tragic heroine of Wilder’s enduringly popular piece of Americana, “Our Town.”In flashbacks we learn she played Emily in both high school and college in New Hampshire, also home to the play’s fictional Grover’s Corners. Then, after a brief and disorienting detour to Hollywood, she returns to the role in summer stock at a theater company, the titular Tom Lake, that happened to be nearish the orchard.“Even hawking Diet Dr Pepper I was Emily, because she was the only thing I knew how to do,” Lara realized after starting rehearsals to play Mae in Sam Shepard’s rather less innocent “Fool for Love.” “I had the range of a box turtle. I was excellent, as long as no one moved me.” Emily is as important to her as Barbie, apparently, was to so many others: a character so formative, she provides the name for Lara’s firstborn.Lara’s Emily doesn’t aspire to be an actress — that particular affliction has befallen the youngest daughter, Nell, named for Lara’s seamstress grandmother — but she is powerfully fixated on her mother’s former co-star and ex-boyfriend: one Peter Duke, who played Emily Webb’s father at Tom Lake.“Duke,” as everyone calls him, goes on to become a huge celebrity, enchanting the kiddies in a movie musical called “The Popcorn King,” singing and dancing on a floor covered with kernels, then becoming a Serious Actor, winning an Oscar and inevitably descending into addiction. As a teen, Lara’s Emily grows convinced he, not Lara’s hardworking fruit-farmer husband, was her father, and Patchett drops in enough subtle commonalities — their hair, a certain physical rubberiness (“whoever installed her interior compass put the magnet in upside down”) — that the reader is left in genuine suspense about whether it’s true.But the larger theme is that it may not matter: Our children inherit the full range of our experience, as much as genetic traits.“Tom Lake” isn’t a prudish novel — the flashbacks are to the 1980s, when parents hovered a lot less — but it is a resolutely folksy, cozy one, a thing of pies and quilts and nettlesome goats and a middle child named Maisie after the other grandmother. (Lara, in her late 50s up there in rural Michigan, is a demographic anomaly, leaving so many of her old friends in the deep fog of memory without trying to hunt them down on Facebook.) Nell senior had a sewing business and countrified sayings appear here like dropped stitches. You could have knocked me over with a feather!Idle hands? We all know whose workshop they are. You “can’t swing a cat” without hitting a castle, in Scotland.Two performances of Wilder’s Stage Manager are “as different as chalk and cheese.”But Patchett is also, as always, slyly needlepointing her own pillowcase mottos. “There is no explaining this simple truth about life: You will forget much of it.” “Sweet cherries must be picked today and every day until they’re gone.” “Swimming is the reset button.” This last spoken by a lithe and beautiful Black character named Pallace — whose integration into the theatrical utopia seems just a tad too easy.“Tom Lake” is a quiet and reassuring book, not a rabble-rouser. It’s highly conscious of Emily Gibbs’s speech about human failure to appreciate the little things, the Stage Manager’s line about the earth “straining away all the time to make something of itself,” and of the ravages to that earth. Domestic contentment is its North Star, generational continuity its reliable moon. Only a cynic could resist lying down on a nice soft blanket to marvel at Patchett’s twinkling planetarium.TOM LAKE | By Ann Patchett | 320 pp. | HarperCollins | $30 More

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    ‘We Are a Romantic Country’: On the Set of a Steamy Hit in Italy

    Italy falls for “Mare Fuori,” a television melodrama about the inmates of a juvenile detention center who pass the time making out — when not scowling at or occasionally stabbing one another.Before dawn, the teenage girls convened outside the Naples Navy base where the wildly popular Italian television show “Mare Fuori” is filmed.“We want to show them all of our love,” said Federica Montuori, 16, who with her fellow fans unfurled white sheets with spray-painted messages expressing how the lead actors, who play star-crossed — and mobbed-up — lovers in a juvenile prison, “belong in our hearts.”On the wall beside her, the scrawls on the bricks are love letters to “the most beautiful series in the world” and its main characters. “Ti Amo Carmine,” read one rectangle. “Ti Amo Rosa,” read another.Other fans have dived from nearby piers and swum to the back of the set, vexing gate guards charged with keeping them at bay. During the day, their screams have ruined takes.“We had to stop shooting,” said Ivan Silvestrini, the show’s director. “They won’t listen. It’s pretty unbearable, but what can you do?”Maria Esposito, who plays Rosa Ricci in the series, and Mr. Caiazzo, who plays Carmine, filming a scene for the fourth season.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesItaly has fallen for “Mare Fuori,” or “The Sea Beyond,” an often gritty but always soapy melodrama about the inmates of a coed juvenile detention center who pass the time stealing kisses — when not scowling at or occasionally stabbing one another.Entering its fourth season, the show, set and steeped in Naples street life, is “Saved by the Bell” meets “Scared Straight” meets “Gomorrah” meets Skinemax. It has been a smash hit on Italian television and is a fixture on Netflix Italy’s most-watched list. During Carnevale, children dressed up as the precocious gangsters, with leather hot pants and jackets, tank tops, lots of chains and toy guns.Its hypnotic theme song, recorded by an actor who plays an inmate on the show and who is also an increasingly popular singer in Italy, has been streamed 35 million times and gone platinum. Some fans have kept vigil singing the chorus outside the set.The series tells the intertwining stories of a hodgepodge of attractive delinquents, in a fictitious juvenile hall inspired by a real one — where the sexes are separated — on an island off Naples. Most of the characters are hardened thugs from competing Naples mob families, but there is also a rich Milanese piano prodigy jailed after a night out in Naples goes terribly awry, and a manipulative goth goddess who licks faces, cuts herself and kills for fun.The cast of mostly unknowns keeps the budget low, but the ensemble approach is also creating stars to supply Italy’s insatiable and often schlocky television-cinema complex.The show has turned Ms. Esposito and Mr. Caiazzo into celebrities. Fans can often be found surrounding the Navy base where the show is filmed, and even diving off nearby piers to swim to the back of the set.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe producers market the show as a dialect-heavy portrayal of Naples reality with a redemption message. But following on other Italian hits, like “Baby,” about underage prostitutes, the show has also underscored Italy’s infatuation with steamy young adult programming.“We have realized that these stories of young lovers, people like a lot,” said Roberto Sessa, one of the show’s producers. “In the end, we are a romantic country.”The plot revolves around Carmine Di Salvo, the reluctant and seemingly meek scion of a crime family who really just wants to be a barber, but who lands behind bars after stabbing a would-be rapist of his girlfriend in the neck with scissors. Incarcerated, he finds a nemesis in Ciro, the prince of the competing crime family, who eventually tries to kill Carmine and his piano-playing cellmate but who ends up getting stabbed with a screwdriver.Things really took off in the third season, this year, when Rosa Ricci, the late Ciro’s sister, shoots a guy to get into jail so she can settle scores with Carmine. In classic Montague and Capulet style, she falls for Carmine instead.A scene from the third season of “Mare Fuori,” whose costume director said “skin, skin, skin” is an important part of the show’s look.Fosforo PressOn a street in Naples, a fan of the show, Domenico Marino, 18, and his girlfriend considered taking home a souvenir pillow — displayed next to similar shirts, mugs and key chains — of the scantily clad Rosa featuring her catchphrase (“I am Rosa Ricci, and who the [expletive] are you to tell me what I need to do”). He decided on a cushion of her late brother Ciro instead.On Naples’s Via San Gregorio Armeno, famous for its Christmas nativity scenes, a crowd gathered to admire terra cotta figurines of the cast standing in front of the juvenile prison, displayed next to a manger.“We keep making them as long as there is demand, even for the ones who get killed,” said Elio Cassano, 60. “They don’t look at the soccer players or the Holy Family in the crèche, they form crowds around ‘Mare Fuori.’”One of the admirers, Chiara D’Amico, 18, a Sicilian with a crush on Carmine, said the juvenile prison reminded her of high school. Her mother, Santina Santonocito, 40, said she liked the show because it taught children “not to make errors — life inside is not so easy.”Pillows with photographs of the show’s characters on sale in Naples.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesElio Cassano arranging figurines of the show’s characters outside a shop in Naples.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThey were visiting Naples, with plans to see its castles and eat pizza. “But the first thing on the list,” Ms. D’Amico said, was a pilgrimage to the set.Shortly before noon, a black van carrying Maria Esposito, 19, who plays Rosa, rolled up to the gate. She blew kisses from the passenger seat, sending the fans into a tizzy.On the set — which looked like a seaside high school with a soccer court, a foosball table and a black piano that had hearts traced in its dust — she stopped in hair and makeup with Massimiliano Caiazzo, who plays Carmine.“The theme of a forbidden love touches adults just as it touches adolescents,” said Mr. Caiazzo, 26, as Ms. Esposito, puffing on an e-cigarette, had her lashes doused in mascara.She had worked as an aesthetician before she joined at the end of the second season, which had made her “weep perennially, every day, with joy.”But for a young woman who loves going out (“I love living”), it was not easy being the face of Naples, she said. “I’m walking around the streets with my face on the pillows,” she said. “It’s a little creepy.”Rossella Aprea, the show’s costume designer, holding one of Rosa’s outfits.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe costume designer, Rossella Aprea, said that since there was no uniform in a real Italian juvenile prison, she could use her imagination. At a rack dedicated to Rosa, she held up a skimpy leotard decorated with dragons.“A lot of black, super tight, crop tops,” she said. “Skin, skin, skin.”Outside, the director struggled with a scene about the arrival of a new inmate, who held a leather satchel and looked as if he had either returned from safari or robbed a Banana Republic.“Tell him to come out of the car and look towards the girls,” Mr. Silvestrini instructed with frustration. He said he understood sex appeal was vital to the show’s success and required the suspension of disbelief about love in the detention center through the creation of imaginary circumstances for hooking up, what he called “room for romance.”“We created a pizza lab, a place where the boys and girls can be together,” he said. “And they can be promiscuous.”Ms. Esposito on the way to her dressing room. In the show’s third season, her character shoots someone to get into jail so she could settle scores with another character.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesAfter lunch, the director ordered the activation of a smoke machine for atmosphere, then walked a 40-something actor who played a crooked guard and a 20-something actress who played an inmate through their scene.“Then, at a certain point,” he instructed. “The kiss moment.”Their moment extended to a full-on make out session, lasting so long that the crew gave each other awkward looks.Soon after, Ms. Esposito walked on set for the day’s final scene.“She’s my star,” Mr. Silvestrini said.Ivan Silvestrini, the show’s director, seated in front of a screen, along with other members of the cast and crew, reviewing a scene.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesMs. Esposito, rail thin and with long straight black hair, wore bell-bottomed tight leather pants and a leather halter top. “These pants have gotten loose on me,” she said, laughing. “I’ve lost weight from the stress!”She said everywhere she went, she was mobbed by teenagers, “but also the adults.”“It’s in the hearts of all, this series,” Ms. Esposito said.She and Mr. Caiazzo acted an intense face-to-face scene on a staircase, the director called it a wrap and the crew blasted the “Mare Fuori” song. Soon after, the stars departed in separate vans, and the fans screamed and ran after them.Ms. Esposito made a heart sign with her hands.“Rosa Ricci,” they bellowed. “Bellissima.”Mr. Caiazzo greeting fans as he left the Naples set.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times More

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    They Put the Heart in ‘Heartstopper’

    Kit Connor and Joe Locke discuss the pressure of expectations and how the global success of their Netflix hit, returning Aug. 3, has changed their lives.Kit Connor and Joe Locke sat on a plump bordello-red couch at the Manhattan headquarters of Netflix. It was June, and they were in town to talk about their roles as the leading sweeties on “Heartstopper,” Alice Oseman’s romantic dramedy series about queer British high schoolers that begins its sophomore season on Netflix on Aug. 3.When “Heartstopper” debuted in April 2022, its fate was anybody’s guess. “Euphoria,” “Elite” and other shows with teen queer characters lured eyeballs with sex and bad behavior. “Heartstopper” offered its audience mellow dramatics and an understanding that puppy love is universal. “Just queer people being,” as Connor put it.It paid off. “Heartstopper” made the Netflix Top 10 — a list of the service’s most-watched shows in a given week — in 54 countries, and its first-season numbers were good enough to get the show renewed for two more. To date on TikTok, #heartstopper has 10.7 billion views and counting. Readers also gobbled up the source material: Oseman’s best-selling graphic novels and original webcomic, which now has over 124 million views. In April, Oseman announced that a fifth graphic novel was set to publish in November, with a sixth in the works.So my first question was: How has the “Heartstopper” phenomenon changed the lives of the two actors at its center?“The easier question is how hasn’t this changed our life?” Locke said.He wore a cream-colored cardigan with elegant vertical caviar beading plus skinny jeans and black sneakers, looking a lot like how his character, the misfit naïf Charlie, might dress if he were on a class trip to New York. Connor wore a blousy turquoise top and wide-legged black pants over what looked like flamenco heels — an elegant ensemble that his character, Nick, who is Charlie’s anxious jock boyfriend, would be aghast to find in his closet.Now 19, as is Connor, Locke said he’s had to grow up fast but in exchange got a platform to “normalize queerness.” Example: Days after our interview, Locke posted on Instagram a photo of himself wearing a “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” T-shirt on a float in D.C.’s Pride parade, an image that his 3.5 million followers have showered with over a million likes.In the new season, Charlie and Nick go to Paris together on a class trip.Teddy Cavendish/Netflix“There’s a big push in our world at the moment to take away young queer people’s autonomy,” Locke said. “It’s beautiful to be part of a show that really pushes and loves that young queer people can be in charge of their own fates.”And Connor?“I’m a bit more confident in myself in a very open sense, about who I am, what I can do, the way that I hold myself and the people I spend my time with,” he said. “I have a lot more pride.”But then we started talking about coming out, and the mood in the room shifted, fast. Last year, Connor came out on Twitter as bisexual, saying he felt forced to do so after some fans accused him of queer-baiting.“Telling someone you’re gay or bi or part of the queer community, there’s a thing where you feel like they might see you differently or think that it would change who you are,” he said. “For me, it’s just who I am. Coming out didn’t change me.”He’s cool with being called queer, he said, explaining that it is “more freeing in a way, less about labels.”Locke, who also identifies as queer, jumped in: “I think coming out is stupid, that it’s still a thing that people have to do.” He said he briefly came out at 12 on Instagram before reconsidering.“I had just told my mum, and I was on top of the world,” he said. “I quickly realized I was ready to tell my mum but I was not ready to tell the world. So I quickly deleted it and said my Instagram had been hacked. I went back in the closet for three years. I retold all my friends and they’re like, ‘Yeah, you told us two years ago.’”And now that he’s out-out and playing gay on “Heartstopper”? Locke glanced down and fingered his rings.“Twelve-year-old me would be very proud, and terrified,” he said.He paused to let tears collect in his eyes. “I’m getting emotional,” he whispered. Connor watched him. The room was still. “I’ve never thought about it in that sense before,” Locke continued, “which is weird because I’ve thought about the show a lot.”After a few seconds, he said softly: “It’s great.” He wore a teeny grin.“They’re meant for each other,” Connor said of his and Locke’s characters.Victoria Will for The New York TimesQueer pride, quick-fire emotions, happy tears, supportive mums: It’s like these guys are on “Heartstopper” or something. Thea Glassman, the author of “Freaks, Gleeks and Dawson’s Creek: How 7 Teen Shows Transformed Television,” said the series is rich in a rare commodity for contemporary teen television: “unapologetic sweetness.”“It’s about kindness and positivity and acceptance, and as teens, that’s all you’re looking for,” she told me. “As adults, that’s all you’re looking for.”The new season focuses on Nick and Charlie’s couple stuff: sharing a bed during a class trip to Paris, navigating hickey shame, coming out about their relationship. There is still no sex or even under the shirt stuff, though — there is no second base in “Heartstopper.”There is also a character who is asexual (as is Oseman) and new transgender characters that Locke said he hopes will help transgender kids understand “that there are still people in the world who have their backs.”Locke and Connor were very aware that expectations from fans, Netflix and industry watchers are considerable now that the show is a global hit. The pressure, Locke said, is “terrifying.”But if they were antsy about it, it didn’t show in their relaxed rapport and modest demeanors. Connor, who grew up in Croydon in South London, comes across as grounded and affable, and he speaks with considered thoughtfulness, like he actually took notes during media training.Locke has Charlie’s gentle deportment but with the soft edge of a cool-kid wise guy. As our conversation turned to their own education, Connor mentioned that he “wasn’t one of those people who thrived at school,” and sheepishly said he got a B in drama. When he finished, Locke leaned over, cracked himself up and said into my recorder: “You don’t need school, kids. He got a B in drama.”Locke said a sharp tongue is one way he protected himself while growing up on the Isle of Man. “People knew not to give me [expletive],” he said.”I think coming out is stupid, that it’s still a thing that people have to do,” Locke said.Victoria Will for The New York TimesAs for what’s next, Connor is set to star in a new horror-thriller, “One of Us,” and Locke recently shot “Agatha: Coven of Chaos,” Marvel’s “WandaVision” spinoff. The stage beckons: Locke wants to be in a Broadway musical, Connor would do Shakespeare in London. If they had free time, Connor would hang with friends in a park. Locke wants someone to make him brunch.As our conversation ended, I asked both men where they’d like their characters to be in 20 years.“The hope would certainly be that they’re still together,” Connor said softly, looking at Locke as if to get approval.“I think they would be,” Locke replied, glancing back.“They’re meant for each other,” Connor said.“They’d have some children, a family,” Locke said.“Happy would be nice,” Connor said.“Yeah,” Locke said, again with that grin. “Just happy.” More

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    Pamela Blair, an Original ‘Chorus Line’ Cast Member, Dies at 73

    As Val, one of the dancers in the hit Broadway musical, she sang a memorable song explaining how she got work by enhancing her body through cosmetic surgery.Pamela Blair, who as the sassy and profane dancer Val in the original production of “A Chorus Line” delivered a showstopping song about enhancing her breasts and butt with silicone to get work as an actress, died on Sunday at her home in Mesa, Ariz. She was 73.Her former husband, the director Don Scardino, said the cause was complications of colon surgery, including pneumonia and sepsis. She also had Clippers disease, a chronic inflammation of the central nervous system.Ms. Blair was one of the performers who were invited to the workshops where “A Chorus Line” was developed, and who told the creative team — led by Michael Bennett, who conceived, directed and choreographed the show — deeply personal stories, which were used as material to build its characters.“The core of Val came from the anarchic character that was Pam,” Mr. Scardino said in a phone interview.Ms. Blair’s brassy solo, “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three” (a reference to the grades Val got at an audition before undergoing cosmetic surgery), was a paean to the benefits of silicone, among them the national tours Val was hired for. (Ms. Blair herself said she didn’t have her breasts enhanced.)In a number written, like the rest of the show’s score, by Marvin Hamlisch (music) and Edward Kliban (lyrics), Val sings, in part: “It’s a gas, just a dash of silicone/Shake your new maracas and you’re fine.”And:Where the cupboard once was bareNow you knock and someone’s thereYou have got ‘em, hey, top to bottom, hey.In reviewing “A Chorus Line” in its pre-Broadway run at the Public Theater in the East Village, Allan Wallach of Newsday called Ms. Blair “a marvelously defiant blonde” and Douglas Watt of The Daily News of New York described her as “blonde and saucy.” After moving to Broadway in 1975, the show ran for 6,137 performances. Ms. Blair stayed with it for about a year before joining the national tour.In 1980, Ms. Blair recalled the experience of singing “Dance Ten; Looks Three.”“When I sang that song, I really was like that girl,” she told The Hartford Courant. “I was blond. I was dumb. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I thought, ‘Damn it, I’m an actress too.’”She returned to Broadway in 1978, first in the musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” in which she played a prostitute, and later that year in another musical, “King of Hearts,” in which she played the youngest inmate in a mental hospital.She made her final Broadway appearance in 1990 when she replaced Megan Gallagher as Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway, the only female character in Aaron Sorkin’s military drama “A Few Good Men.”“It was great at first, being the only girl with all those guys,” she told The Daily News in 1990. “But it didn’t last. Now they treat me like one of them. I get no respect. They go around backstage in their holey underwear — and even less!”Ms. Blair was also seen on soap operas like “Loving” and “Another World”; on prime-time series like “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”; and in films like John Huston’s version of the musical “Annie” (1982) and Woody Allen’s “Mighty Aphrodite” (1995).Ms. Blair in 1983 on the soap opera “Loving,” one of her several television appearances.BC Photo Archives/Disney, via Getty ImagesPamela Blair was born on Dec. 5, 1949, in Bennington, Vt. Her father, Edgar, worked at a company that made plastic molds. Her mother, Geraldine (Cummings) Blair, was a homemaker who worked part time in a local Christmas shop and as a library volunteer.When Ms. Blair was 16, she entered the National Ballet Academy New York. She met Mr. Bennett during a class there, which led to her being cast in her first Broadway role, in the 1968 musical “Promises, Promises,” which he choreographed.In 1972 and 1973, Ms. Blair played several roles in “Sugar,” a musical adaptation of the Billy Wilder comedy “Some Like It Hot” (unrelated to the current Broadway adaptation). She was the understudy for the title role, Sugar Kane, which Marilyn Monroe had played in the 1959 film, and replaced Elaine Joyce when she went on vacation.When asked how it felt to star in “Sugar,” she told the syndicated columnist Leonard Lyons: “I wasn’t that nervous. The butterflies hadn’t developed — they were still caterpillars.”In 1973, she played another small role in the musical “Seesaw,” for which Mr. Bennett was the director and one of two choreographers. A year later, she was cast as the seductive character known only as “Curley’s wife” in John Steinbeck’s stage adaptation of his novel “Of Mice and Men,” which starred James Earl Jones and Kevin Conway.“I can’t tell you how affected I was by acting with James Earl Jones,” she told Newsday. “To do a scene with him was so exciting. I would lose myself in him. I want that again.”She continued to work on TV and in films through 2009. By then, she had moved to Arizona and become a physical and massage therapist, although she return to the stage to play Miss Mona, who runs the Chicken Ranch brothel, in a 2006 Phoenix production of “Best Little Whorehouse.”Ms. Blair is survived by a sister, Cheryl Hard. Her marriages to Alfred Feola and Mr. Scardino ended in divorce.In 1980, Ms. Blair recalled the tension she felt while she was in “A Chorus Line,” mainly because of Mr. Bennett.“He made you live the show,” she told The Courant. “I mean, he’d make you think you were gonna be fired at any moment.”Near the end of her time in the show, she watched it from a seat in the audience.“I thought we were all so unhappy and yet we were giving people such joy,” she said. “I cried during the finale, and I remember thinking: This show was a miracle. Why couldn’t I have enjoyed it while it was happening?” More

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    Despite Acquittal, Kevin Spacey Faces Uphill Battle for Hollywood Roles

    The actor, who was cleared of sexual assault charges in Britain this week, has parts in two small upcoming films. Yet his tarnished public perception makes starry roles unlikely.The two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey said last month that he was ready to return to acting after years in the wilderness following sexual assault allegations.“I know that there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London,” Mr. Spacey told a German magazine, referring to accusations that he had assaulted four men. “The second that happens, they’re ready to move forward.”Mr. Spacey was right in several ways: A British jury found him not guilty of nine counts of sexual assault this week, nearly a year after a federal jury in Manhattan cleared him of battery in a civil case filed by the actor Anthony Rapp. And he has two small projects awaiting release, with directors who could not be more publicly supportive.But the starry Hollywood roles, like Mr. Spacey’s conniving politician in “House of Cards” and droll advertising executive in “American Beauty,” may not come back anytime soon, if at all.Despite Mr. Spacey’s legal successes, his public perception is tarnished and a turnoff to studios and streaming services desperate to avoid controversy, said Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts.“He’s in real trouble,” said Mr. Galloway, who previously served as executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter. “On the 0-to-10 scale, this is like a minus one.”During Mr. Spacey’s trial in Britain, he testified about the damage to his career after the public accusations began to emerge in 2017. “There was a rush to judgment and before the first question was asked or answered, I lost my job, I lost my reputation, I lost everything,” he said.Within months of the initial allegation, Mr. Spacey’s character was killed off in the final season of “House of Cards,” his scenes as J. Paul Getty in “All the Money in the World” were reshot with a different actor, and Netflix scrapped the film “Gore,” in which he played the writer Gore Vidal.Beyond two recently filmed parts listed on IMDb, a movie database, it is unclear whether Mr. Spacey is attached to any new projects. His team did not respond to a request for comment, and Mr. Spacey did not provide career insight after being acquitted this week. “I imagine that many of you can understand that there’s a lot for me to process,” he said from the courthouse steps.Mike Paul, a public relations expert who specializes in reputation and crisis management, said that considering the nature of the accusations Mr. Spacey faced, he must avoid “pouring gasoline back on issues that you don’t want gasoline on.” Hollywood, he said, wants to see a time of reflection and quiet analysis.The best bet, Mr. Galloway said, is for Mr. Spacey to develop projects for his production company, Trigger Street, or to pursue indie projects that value his acting prowess or consider the publicity a boon.Mr. Spacey’s two known upcoming roles are in minor movies: “Control,” a British film in which he plays a hacker who takes over a politician’s smart car (his part is voice only), and “Peter Five Eight,” a comedic thriller in which he plays a shadowy stranger who arrives in a small mountainside community.Spacey plays a shadowy stranger in the upcoming comedic thriller “Peter Five Eight.”Ascent Films Forever Safe ProductionsMichael Zaiko Hall, the writer and director of “Peter Five Eight,” said in an email that the film, which does not have an official release date, represented a return to the smaller independent films with which Mr. Spacey started his career.“We have here a double Oscar winner with legendary screen presence whose name has just been cleared,” Mr. Hall said. “I imagine there will be a thaw period, followed by a re-emergence into the culture.”Gene Fallaize, the writer and director of “Control,” said that he approached Mr. Spacey for the voice role last fall, and that the recent verdict showed “our gamble had paid off.” Before the jury’s decision, his movie had distribution deals in Germany, Russia and the Middle East. Now, Mr. Fallaize said, it was negotiating with American and British distributors.Mr. Fallaize added that Mr. Spacey might need to do independent movies for a year or two, showing he could generate commercial returns, before major studios would be prepared to work with him. Those movies might have to be in countries that have a more “lenient” view to allegations made against stars, Mr. Fallaize added.“It’s more likely for Europe to be receptive,” agreed Dominik Sedlar, a Croatian-born director and friend of Mr. Spacey’s whose father made a movie this year in which the actor played the country’s first president.Mr. Sedlar said that although Mr. Spacey had twice been vindicated by juries, Hollywood studios might keep shunning the actor “rather than admit they were wrong.”In recent years, both the Venice and Cannes film festivals have been happy to showcase work by directors and actors whose reputation has been stained in the United States, including Woody Allen, Roman Polanski and Johnny Depp. On Thursday, spokeswomen for both festivals said their artistic directors were unavailable to comment on Mr. Spacey.Comebacks have always been hard in Hollywood, which may be politically liberal but is artistically and financially conservative.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockThere was similar reluctance from members of the London theater world, where Mr. Spacey was a regular star in the 1990s and 2000s and served as the artistic director of the Old Vic theater from 2004 to 2015. Representatives for 15 producers, West End theater owners and artistic directors either turned down or did not respond to interview requests to discuss Mr. Spacey’s future.Alistair Smith, editor of The Stage, Britain’s major theater newspaper, said in an email that Mr. Spacey’s return was “highly unlikely.” In 2017 the Old Vic published the findings of an independent investigation into Mr. Spacey’s tenure that revealed that 20 unnamed people accused him of unstated inappropriate behavior.“Those allegations have never been satisfactorily addressed by Spacey,” Mr. Smith said. “Unless they are, I can’t see him working in London theater again.”Comebacks have always been hard in Hollywood, which may be politically liberal but is artistically and financially conservative. For those who have succeeded, such as Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr., the road was long.“You need to completely reset your reputation,” Mr. Galloway said. In “fortress Hollywood, the drawbridge is pulled up, and it’s a dangerous moat to swim across.” More

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    2023 Emmy Awards Will Be Postponed Because of Actors’ and Writers’ Strikes

    The ceremony, originally planned for Sept. 18, may be pushed into January in hopes that the labor disputes will be settled.The fallout from the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes continues.The 75th Emmy Awards will be postponed because of the strikes, according to a person briefed on the plans. The ceremony, originally planned for Sept. 18, does not yet have a new date but will most likely be moved to January, the person said.Emmy organizers are hopeful that would give the Hollywood studios enough time to settle the labor disputes. A new date will be finalized in the next few weeks.Fox, which is broadcasting this year’s event, and the Television Academy, which administers the Emmys, had concluded last month that it would have to postpone the event if the writers’ strike continued to linger until the end of July, The New York Times reported last month. The writers have now been on strike for 88 days and have not returned to the bargaining table with the major Hollywood studios since negotiations broke down in early May.By the time tens of thousands of actors joined the writers on picket lines and went on strike on July 14, it all but put a nail in the coffin for an Emmys ceremony in September.The postponement marks one of the biggest events that will get rescheduled because of the labor conflicts. The Emmys, which traditionally take place in August or September, were last postponed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. That year, the event ultimately took place in November.Organizing the Emmys is a significant undertaking, one of the reasons that the Television Academy and Fox set a late July deadline to make a decision on a postponement. Variety reported earlier that the Emmys would be rescheduled.Nominations for the Emmy Awards were announced this month. HBO, which led all networks in total nominations, became the first network in 31 years to earn four nominations in the best drama category — “Succession,” “The White Lotus,” “The Last of Us” and “House of the Dragon.” In the comedy categories, two-time winner “Ted Lasso” will compete against shows including “Abbott Elementary” and “The Bear.” More

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    Nonprofit Theaters Are in Crisis. A Times Reporter Spoke With 72 of Them

    Michael Paulson spoke with producers and artistic directors at nonprofit theaters across the country about the crisis their industry is facing.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Michael Paulson, who has covered theater for The New York Times for eight years, knew the situation was bad at the country’s nonprofit regional theaters, which had yet to regain their prepandemic audiences.But in recent months, the shock waves have gotten bigger: One of the nation’s largest companies, Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, said it would pause production on one of its three stages and lay off 10 percent of its staff. The Lookingglass, an anchor of Chicago’s theater scene, halted production for the rest of the year. Then this month, New York’s prestigious Public Theater cut nearly one in five of its jobs.“We’ve seen an increase in the number of closings, and it felt like this is real and serious and important for readers to know about,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview.That observation formed the basis for an article by Mr. Paulson that appeared on the front page of Monday’s newspaper. To document the crisis at America’s regional theaters, he spoke with the leaders of 72 top-tier companies across the country.Here, Mr. Paulson reflects on the reasons for the upheaval, on the most promising solutions being proposed and on the balancing act he juggles between the demands of daily news reporting and investigative projects. This conversation has been edited.How many of the issues that challenge nonprofit theaters stem from the pandemic?The pandemic was an accelerant. But the issues at the heart of this crisis — the aging of the audience, the growing role of streaming media in people’s entertainment diets, the decline in subscriptions as the way consumers plan their theatergoing — were underway before it. The economic situation combined with this inflationary moment proved unsurvivable for a number of theaters and damaging for many more.Are these challenges unique to theaters, or are they true of the nonprofit arts sector in general?Theater has some particular vulnerabilities — it’s a niche art form, and a lot of nonprofits pride themselves on developing new work, which means a show sometimes has a title or is by an artist that audiences don’t yet know. A bunch of people told me audiences want to be sure they’re going to have a good time before they set aside the time and the money, and that often means going to something that’s already established, versus something that is just being introduced to the world.Seventy-two interviews is a lot for one article. Do you envision this piece being the first in a series?I do have a tendency to be an overreporter, but I wanted to be confident that what we were reporting reflected a national pattern and wasn’t just an extrapolation from a handful of worst-case scenarios. I expect that a lot of my time this year is going to be spent thinking and writing about the economic challenges facing theaters in America.How do you balance the demands of daily news reporting with bigger-picture projects?I’m probably going to be doing fewer features about individual shows, while I focus on more of these stories about the health of the field, but I still want to write occasional pieces about artists and works of art. I think a mix of stories is what keeps a reporter sane.Do you anticipate doing a lot of that reporting in person?I hope so. A couple of days ago, I went to see “Evita” at American Repertory Theater outside of Boston, and over the weekend I went to see a play called “tiny father” at Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires. On Thursday, I saw a production of “Fun Home” at the Studio Theater in Washington, D.C. I’m trying, to the extent I can, to see things outside New York. We need to pay more attention to nonprofit theaters and theaters outside New York — because there are real challenges in those places we need to be telling our readers about.What was the most surprising thing you learned while reporting this article?I was struck by how many theaters are now doing coproductions. It’s pretty dramatic: The Shakespeare Theater Company in D.C. had one coproduction out of six shows before the pandemic, and now at least five out of six will be coproductions this coming season. There’s also a lot of experimentation with collaboration, which is heartening. Theaters that once saw themselves either as competitors or just strangers are much more interested in finding ways to help one another.Your article touches on a number of potential solutions. Which seem most promising?There’s a coalition forming of theaters in Connecticut that is talking about whether the theaters might be able to share set-building functions. Those kinds of approaches might have promise. A lot of theaters are talking about the possibility of either more government assistance or for more foundations to take seriously the challenges facing this field. There’s a shared sense that box-office revenue, which has never been enough to sustain these organizations, is not going to be a primary part of the solution.How will we see an effect on Broadway, which depends on nonprofit theaters to develop material and support artists?The situation means less work for artists, actors, writers, directors and designers. Fewer shows are being staged, and those shows are often smaller and have shorter runs, which is a challenge both for the people who are already established in the field and the people who are seeking to enter it. There’s just less work to go around. More