Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 175 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,’ Season 1, Episode 6: Doom

    Here are five takeaways from an exciting episode with a cruel twist.Season 1, Episode 6: ‘Udûn’Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” movies won raves for their lengthy combat sequences, filled with fantasy beasts and spectacular backdrops, unlike anything ever seen before in a multiplex. Those scenes in turn inspired some of the most talked-about episodes of “Game of Thrones,” which devoted entire hours to armies at war. Now “The Rings of Power” has its first “battle episode” with “Udûn,” in which roughly two-thirds of the running time is spent on the orcs’ two swarming nighttime invasions of the human strongholds, followed by the tide-turning daytime arrival of the Númenórean forces.The 45 minutes or so of nearly nonstop fighting stands up well to both “Game of Thrones” and the “Rings” films — though as was the case with those, it was also a little fatiguing. So far, each episode of this show has featured impressive action choreography, in scenes that stand out because they last for just a few minutes. The daredevil stunts and dynamic camera moves in this week’s episode are just as excellent; but when there are so many of them, they become less special.That said, it is always exciting to see the likes of Halbrand, Galadriel and Arondir fight with skill and valor. The time the writers have taken to establish each of these characters makes it easier to pick out who’s who in the middle of any melee. Plus, the stakes of their skirmishes are always perfectly clear … which makes the ultimate outcome of the fighting this week all the more devastating.Here are five takeaways from an episode that accelerated the plot in this series, before delivering a cruel twist.The forces of darknessPart of what made the action this week feel a little exhausting is that so much of it takes place either at night or indoors. This show has generally been refreshingly bright and colorful for a prestige drama, so the retreat into deep shadow didn’t just make the battles harder to see, it also felt a little like a disappointing fall back into a visual cliché, aping all the pitch-black “Game of Thrones” combat.Explore the World of the ‘Lord of the Rings’The literary universe built by J.R.R. Tolkien, now adapted into a new series for Amazon Prime Video, has inspired generations of readers and viewers.Artist and Scholar: Tolkien did more than write books. He invented an alternate reality, complete with its own geography, languages and history.Being Frodo: The actor Elijah Wood explains why he’ll never be upset at being associated with the “Lord of the Rings” movie series. A Soviet Take: A 1991 production based on Tolkien’s novels, recently digitized by a Russian broadcaster, is a time capsule of a bygone era. From the Archives: Read what W.H. Auden wrote about “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first volume of Tolkien’s trilogy, in 1954.Broken down into individual moments, though, there is a lot going during the night scenes, as the orcs and their minions first storm a mostly abandoned tower fortress and then, after a frustrating defeat (and a brief respite from all the fighting), make their way down to a nearby village where Bronwyn and her people have retreated to regroup and fortify. Arondir gets a well-deserved spotlight during much of this long sequence, showing off not just the archery skills we have seen throughout the series but also his brute strength when he has to fight hand-to-hand with the orcs.In classic “just when all seems lost” pulp-fiction fashion, the nighttime battles end in a series of seemingly insurmountable losses. Arondir almost gets his eye gouged out. Bronwyn, who saves Arondir, gets pierced by an arrow and nearly bleeds out. The villagers make the mistake of peeking under the helmets of their attackers and see that many of the “orcs” they killed were actually humans — likely their former neighbors, who joined up with Adar at Waldreg’s behest. And, worst of all, Theo tries to save the day by handing over his much-coveted evil sword-hilt … right when we hear the rumble of horses’ hooves, off in the distance.From left, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Ismael Cruz Córdova and Charlie Vickers in “The Rings of Power.”Matt Grace/Prime VideoThe cavalry rides in.Those horses, of course, belong to the Númenóreans, led by Galadriel, who have made it across the sea to the Southlands just in time to save the day. I could quibble with the timing of all this, but unlike in “Game of Thrones,” where travel took ages for the first few seasons and then just a blink of an eye by the end, in “The Rings of Power” we have been given no specific sense of where all these characters have been all this season in their respective timelines. In other words: Galadriel could have started her expedition months ago, long before the humans even took up residence in the elves’ tower.Anyway, the Númenóreans arriving when they do makes for better television. It makes for some more great action sequences too — and shot in daylight this time. Galadriel and Halbrand are especially impressive, dodging arrows and ducking off the sides of their horses to get a better slashing angle. It’s no wonder Theo gasps, “Who is that?” as Galadriel rides by.King me.Halbrand’s whole story arc so far has been one of my favorites of Season 1 — so much so that I now wish the writers had given him more screen time earlier. Still, I appreciate how he remains reluctant to embrace his place as the true king of the Southlands, even as he understands that the restoration of a ruler to a broken kingdom gives the humans a cause to rally around.This week he even gets to face his old tormentor when his armies beat the orcs and capture Adar. But here’s the bitter irony: For all the importance the humans have attached to Halbrand coming home and dispatching his mortal enemies, when the king looks Adar straight in the eyes and asks, “Do you remember me?,” the villain says, sincerely, “No.” The humans have their agenda; but as we will see in the episode’s closing minutes, this is of little concern to Adar and his orcs.The Adar questionAfter all the sword-fighting and archery in the first two-thirds of this episode, the long scene of Galadriel interrogating Adar was a welcome change of pace — and also a major advance of this season’s larger plot. Adar confirms that he is part of the race of elves who were transformed by Morgoth into the “sons of the dark,” becoming the first orcs. He also indicates yet again that he is not Sauron, and that Sauron abandoned his responsibilities to immerse himself in the study of “the power of the unseen world,” to heal Middle-earth and bring its ruined lands together. Adar even says that he, in fact, killed Sauron. (Perhaps he means this in a “Darth Vader killed Luke Skywalker’s father” way.)Adar is actually sympathetic throughout this conversation, as he talks about the loved ones killed by Sauron’s ambitions, and as he reminds Galadriel that even orcs “have names and hearts.” And Galadriel doesn’t exactly cover herself with glory when she says, “Your kind was a mistake,” and tells Adar she intends to eradicate every orc except him, so he can witness the end of his race. Galadriel was exiled from Lindon because Gil-galad felt she had become as much the cause of the elves’ problems as the solution. Adar echoes these sentiments when he tells her that he apparently is “not the only elf alive who has been transformed by darkness.”Joseph Mawle in “The Rings of Power.”Prime VideoAnd they lived happily ever … oh, wait.As I hit the one-hour mark of this episode, I wondered if I had been mistaken about Season 1 of “The Rings of Power” containing eight episodes. Even though there were no dwarves, Harfoots or Elrond this week, it sure seemed like we were reaching a natural endpoint. Adar had been captured and Halbrand had claimed the throne. Time to reset for Season 2.But remember when Arondir described Theo’s purloined sword-hilt as a kind of key? Well, in the closing minutes we find out what that means, as Waldreg plunges it into a lock in the ground, setting off a chain of events that involves avalanches and floods, forcing water through the underground tunnels the orcs have been busily building and causing a nearby mountain to spew lava and ash, blotting out the sun.Fans of the “Rings” movies may have noticed how the elves’ tower fortress in the Southlands looks a little like Sauron’s Dark Tower. Now the exploding volcano resembles Mount Doom, the central landmark of Sauron’s evil kingdom of Mordor. These may not actually be the same locations, just like Adar — or so he insists — is not Sauron. But it sure seems like the orcs have set in motion exactly what Galadriel has spent years trying to warn everyone would happen. In the episode’s final shot she stands still and silent as the ash engulfs her — consumed at last by the darkness she has spent her whole life hunting. More

  • 125 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    Britain Wonders, Is It Too Soon to Dramatize the Pandemic?

    A new Sky Atlantic mini-series, “This England,” depicts the early days of Covid-19 in the country, with Kenneth Branagh playing Boris Johnson.LONDON — In the final moments of the new mini-series “This England,” Boris Johnson, the exhausted and embattled British prime minister, stares bleakly out of a window at 10 Downing Street and falls back, as he often does, on Shakespeare.“This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,” says Johnson, who is played by Kenneth Branagh in the series, a six-part drama about Britain’s ordeal with the coronavirus pandemic.“We usually leave it there, you know,” he says, turning to his anxious wife, Carrie (Ophelia Lovibond), who is cradling their newborn child. “Forget the rest.”But Johnson goes on to recite the end of John of Gaunt’s deathbed soliloquy from “Richard II,” with its damning reproach of the king. “That England, that was wont to conquer others,” he says, “hath made a shameful conquest of itself.”It is a fitting coda to a much-talked-about show in Britain, a series that captures the everyday heroism of Britons during the pandemic, but also the failings of their leaders and how those failings contributed to a dilatory response that arguably deepened the nation’s suffering and led to needless additional deaths.“This England,” which debuted with solid ratings on Wednesday on Sky Atlantic in Britain, chronicles, almost day-by-day, how the first wave of the pandemic swept across the country. To many, the timing is curious, given that the latest wave of the virus hasn’t even ebbed yet.Work on “This England” began in June 2020, not long after the first Covid-19 wave had rampaged across the country.Phil Fisk/Sky AtlanticMichael Winterbottom, the British documentary filmmaker who wrote the script with Kieron Quirke, said that he viewed the show as a “mosaic of many people’s experiences,” from those of Johnson and his advisers to those of doctors and nurses — and, above all, of the dying — in the overwhelmed hospitals and nursing homes.“The goal was to be human and, I think, humane,” Winterbottom said in a joint interview with Branagh. “To honor and acknowledge this incredible, painful loss.” For all the government’s confusion and missteps, he added, “There was a sense that everybody was doing their best.”Yet inevitably, “This England” shows people falling short. Caught in the fog of a mysterious illness, some in government, like Johnson, initially underestimated the risk. Others were compelled to make bad personal choices, like the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, who drove 260 miles, in breach of lockdown, to visit his family as the virus struck.Work on “This England” began in June 2020, not long after the first wave had rampaged across the country, and the desperate scenes in ambulances and hospital intensive care units have an anguished immediacy. Much of the commentary about the show in Britain has focused on whether it’s too soon to dramatize all of this.Nearly 300 people died of Covid-19 in England in the seven days ending on Sept. 17; more than 4,000 were admitted to hospitals. The government is still pleading with people to get their booster shots. Johnson was drummed out of office only two months ago after a scandal over parties at Downing Street that violated lockdown rules.The outcry over the parties does not figure in the film, which ends instead with the misbegotten road trip Cummings made to his parents’ house in the north of England after his wife contracted Covid. This abridged timeline led The Financial Times to declare that the show “pulls off the unusual feat of feeling simultaneously premature and dated.”When the series opens, Johnson’s girlfriend, Carrie Symonds (Ophelia Lovibond), is pregnant.Phil Fisk/Sky Atlantic“This England” has also had to contend with a torrent of other news. Sky pushed back the series by a week after the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8, which plunged the country into 10 days of mourning. It premiered at a time when the government of Johnson’s replacement, Liz Truss, caused a run on the pound by announcing a plan to cut taxes despite double-digit inflation.Winterbottom acknowledged that the show was a first cut and that some might prefer the cooler perspective that comes with distance, which might be found in future books or films about the pandemic. But his goal was to make a kind of diary of a national trauma, he said. “By being close,” he noted, “you’re able to get a fresher view.”The other big debate is over Branagh’s performance as Johnson. The actor, a 61-year-old Oscar-winner, wore a blonde wig, prosthetics and padding to assume the 58-year-old politician’s shambling appearance.Some critics praised Branagh for nailing Johnson’s propulsive gait and peculiar diction. Another dismissed it as an impersonation that recalled the puppets on “Spitting Image,” a British TV show that satirized public figures of the 1980s and ’90s.Branagh, who has played real-life figures including Franklin D. Roosevelt and the German SS officer Reinhard Heydrich, said that he and the writers had debated how closely he should try to mimic Johnson. They concluded that the former prime minister was too vivid in people’s minds to stray far from the O.G.“With somebody so prominently in the public eye,” Branagh said, “I think it’s harder to serve to an audience something that is very, very different — that is stylized and abstract.”The series shows Johnson initially underestimating the risk posed by the coronavirus.Phil Fisk/Sky AtlanticTo plumb Johnson’s interior life, Branagh said that he had read all the former prime minister’s books, including his biography of Winston Churchill, as well as his newspaper columns for The Daily Telegraph. He came to see Johnson as a kind of “poet-politician,” ambitious and combative, but also emotionally separated from those around him by the crushing weight of his job.That translated to the production. “I didn’t really have small talk with other actors,” Branagh recalled. “It was as if there was already a sense that you must be burdened, and if you are burdened, you must be left alone.”Branagh watched footage of Johnson hustling through the House of Commons to capture his distinctive forward-leaning posture. He said that he had been especially struck by a video in which Johnson, then the mayor of London, runs down a 10-year-old boy while playing rugby during a visit to Japan. “This barreling-forward intensity, almost unstoppable, is just part of the propulsion,” Branagh said.But “This England” also offers a sympathetic portrayal of a harried man with a tangled personal life. Between crisis meetings and late-night awakenings to soothe his crying baby, Johnson is depicted as plaintively leaving voice mail messages for his adult children. It suggests a painful rift after Johnson divorced his second wife, Marina, and moved in with Carrie, who worked as a Tory Party communications aide.“This England” also captures the cramped, claustrophobic work environment in Downing Street, which doubles as the prime minister’s home and the headquarters of the British government. There are tracking shots of aides walking and talking about urgent matters of state, which recall the Aaron Sorkin series “West Wing.” The close quarters nearly became deadly after Johnson himself contracted Covid and wound up in an intensive care unit for three days.Dominic Cummings (Simon Paisley Day) is depicted as arrogant, entitled and contemptuous of his colleagues. Phil Fisk/Sky AtlanticTo the extent that there are heroes and villains, the show clearly puts Cummings in the black hat category. Played by Simon Paisley Day, he is depicted as arrogant, entitled and contemptuous of his colleagues. Winterbottom said that the producers had reached out to all the principals to gather their accounts.When the show takes the camera out of Downing Street, “This England” abruptly shifts from a political procedural to a tragedy. There are many scenes in hospitals and nursing homes, some of which were filmed in a real nursing home with actual residents and nursing staff, who were essentially re-enacting their experiences.“Our starting point was to make everything as accurate as possible, as authentic as possible,” Winterbottom said.It adds up to a heartbreaking depiction of the pressure on health workers, and the fear, pain and often lonely deaths of those hooked up to ventilators. By the final episode, it is easy to understand why a tormented Johnson would stand at a window, peer into a cold dawn and mourn how a disease had conquered his “sceptered isle.” More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Theater

    Review: In ‘Textplay,’ Stoppard and Beckett Get Snarky, FWIW

    An imaginary electronic conversation between the two playwrights falls somewhere between a ❤️ and a 🤷.The game is Guess That Play and the first round is a gimme. Among the clues one player texts the other are emojis of a skull, a goblet, crossed swords and nine tombstones. The answer is obviously “Hamlet,” but the next round isn’t as easy. What to make of a glass of milk, some trees and, yes, another tombstone?If you can solve that one, you’re probably the right kind of audience for “Textplay,” a witty two-character, no-actor sketch, conducted entirely in the world’s latest lingua franca, complete with emojis, emoticons, ellipses and erasures. (The virtual NYU Skirball presentation is available on demand through Dec. 3.) On the screen of your choice, you watch as a pair of playwrights amuse themselves electronically: teasing, bickering and generally debunking their reputations, or having them debunked.That the playwrights are Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard (it’s Stoppard’s phone we supposedly see) makes “Textplay” a somewhat Inside Theater experience, with untethered references to the two men’s works, styles and obsessions. That the credited author, Archer Eland, is clearly a pseudonym, deepens the atmosphere of esoterica.Could Stoppard himself be Eland? Anonymity might be just the kind of publicity he prefers as an amuse-bouche for his latest real-world play, the uncharacteristically personal “Leopoldstadt,” which opens on Broadway on Oct. 2. For that matter, could Eland be Beckett, so existential he seems to exist even now, an avant-gardist more than 32 years after his death?Yet neither Stoppard nor Beckett, as scripted here, seems sure of his stature, pre- or post-mortem. They complain that some playwrights, like Pinter, got the classier adjectival ending “-esque” even as they each wound up with “-ian.” (“It’s really unfair,” Stoppard whines un-Stoppardianly.) They worry more seriously that their work came to nothing, perhaps deservedly. “All we did was tart up a hole and claim it was an abyss,” Beckett types. “And NO ONE read our novels.”In compensation, they get to preen over their “genius” hair, certainly compared with Pinter’s. Beckett praises Stoppard’s as “Messy and brilliant, like your mind.” Stoppard returns the favor: “And you have those beautiful silvery rows. Like sharks.”After live theater shut down in March 2020, and in the two and a half years since then, we’ve seen lots of experiments in digital dramaturgy. Those that succeeded did so by offering apt substitutions for in-person performance or by abjuring it completely in favor of a frankly virtual experience. In the middle ground lay boredom — and the reflex, born of so much streamed television, to watch only until another show or a snack beckoned.“Textplay” might seem to fall into that middle ground; it’s both live (you can’t pause it) and unlive (the entire “conversation” is preprogrammed). Unlike “Hamlet,” it makes little claim on your soul, and unlike “Under Milk Wood” — the answer to the clue with the glass of milk and the trees — none at all on your heart.Indeed, the playwrights haunting “Textplay” aren’t Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas, or even Beckett and Stoppard. Instead, I thought of Edward Albee, for the merciless wit, and Sophocles, for the Oedipal anxiety. Cutting one’s forefathers down to size is an entertaining, if dangerous, endeavor. The cleverness of the writing comes, to some extent, at the expense of honor.Still, at about 35 minutes, “Textplay” is a snack in itself. There’s even a blink-and-you-miss-it Easter egg at the end. (I missed it.)Theater types might also derive from the stunt a little encouragement about the uses of technology. Humans now send six billion text messages a day, most of which, data scientists say, are read. If the ever-dying theater could access even a fraction of an audience as large and willing as that, it might just perk up. Beckett and Stoppard and even poor, average-haired Pinter may one day be more immortal than ever. Who needs tombstone emojis?TextplayThrough Dec. 3 at NYU Skirball, Manhattan; nyuskirball.org. Running time: 35 minutes. More

  • 175 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    After 7 Years on ‘The Daily Show,’ Trevor Noah Says ‘It’s Time’ to Depart

    “It’s not instant. I’m not disappearing. Don’t worry. If I owe you money, I’ll still pay you,” Noah joked.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.Happy Anniversary, I’m Out of HereTrevor Noah announced his departure from “The Daily Show” on Thursday, almost seven years to the day since he took over from Jon Stewart.Noah expressed his gratitude to everyone who’d supported Comedy Central’s “crazy choice” to hire “this random African” whom “nobody knew on this side of the world.”“It’s been absolutely amazing. It’s something that I never expected. And I found myself thinking throughout the time, you know, everything we’ve gone through. The Trump presidency, the pandemic, just the journey of, you know, the more pandemic.” — TREVOR NOAH“And then I realized that after the seven years, my time is up. Yeah, but in — in the most beautiful way, honestly. I’ve loved hosting this show. It’s been one of my greatest challenges. It’s been one of my greatest joys. I’ve loved trying to figure out how to make people laugh even when the stories were particularly [expletive] on the worst days, you know? We’ve laughed together, we’ve cried together. But after seven years, I feel like it’s — it’s time.” — TREVOR NOAH“I’ve never been good at goodbyes. It’s not instant. I’m not disappearing. Don’t worry. If I owe you money, I’ll still pay you.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Frankie Lasagna Edition)“Frankie Lasagna sounds like a name you get from the Olive Garden witness protection program.” — JIMMY FALLON, on the name of the fan who missed the 61st home run ball from Aaron Judge on Wednesday night“[imitating Frankie] ‘Hey, I’m Frankie Lasagna. It’s Francis — it’s Francis Lasagna but my friends call me Frankie.’” Which is either the best name I’ve ever heard, or the worst alias in the history of the mob. ‘[imitating mobster] Hey, I’m Frankie Lasagna. These are my associates, Mikey Pizza, Sal Calzone, and his cousin, Bobby Unlimited Breadsticks.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Frankie Lasagna sounds like the name Robert De Niro checks into hotels to avoid paparazzi.” — JIMMY FALLON“Frankie Lasagna sounds like the name of Trump’s next lawyer.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingOn the “Tonight Show,” Robert De Niro played a game of hot hands with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday’s cold open.Also, Check This OutLea Michele (with Ramin Karimloo) lights up like a light as the new Fanny Brice on Broadway. Matthew MurphyLea Michele is stupendous as Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl.” More

  • 88 Shares129 Views

    in Television

    Trevor Noah Will Leave ‘The Daily Show’

    During a taping of the Comedy Central program Thursday night, he noted that it has been seven years since he replaced Jon Stewart. He will depart at a time to be determined, he said.Trevor Noah, the South African comedian who took over the hosting reins of “The Daily Show” after the departure of Jon Stewart seven years ago, announced on Thursday that he would be leaving the program.“We’ve laughed together, we’ve cried together,” Mr. Noah said during a taping of the show on Thursday that was released before the show aired. “But after seven years, I feel like it’s time.”Comedy Central said in a statement that the network had been working with Mr. Noah “for a long time to figure out how he can maintain the demanding schedule.”The network added that “with no timetable for his departure, we’re working together on next steps.”Mr. Noah, 38, said on Thursday that after presiding over the show for a turbulent seven years — writing jokes about the presidency of Donald J. Trump, the pandemic and other major news events — he had realized that there was “another part of my life that I want to carry on exploring.” He said he missed touring, going to other countries, learning other languages and “being everywhere, doing everything.”Mr. Noah did not elaborate further, but he has continued touring and releasing stand-up specials throughout his time as host.Comedy Central said that it was “excited for the next chapter” of “The Daily Show,” but it did not say who would be the next host.Mr. Noah’s announcement will come during the departure of several late-night hosts: In April, James Corden said that he would leave his 12:30 a.m. nightly show on CBS next year. Samantha Bee, an alum of “The Daily Show,” announced that her show would not return to TBS in the fall. And last year, Conan O’Brien said goodbye to his late-night show on TBS.Mr. Noah thanked the network on Thursday for believing “in this random comedian no one knew on this side of the world.”When Mr. Stewart left the program in 2015, having spent 16 years transforming the satirical program into an award-winning staple of political comedy, fans eagerly awaited an answer to the question of who would succeed one of TV’s most influential and revolutionary hosts.The announcement came as a surprise to many: Mr. Noah, a newcomer to American television who had been scouted by Mr. Stewart and his “Daily Show” staff, was getting a huge and unexpected promotion after just three appearances on the show. (The network had approached higher-profile stars like Chris Rock, Amy Poehler and Amy Schumer.)The decision to name a 31-year-old biracial comic from South Africa was intended to bring a more youthful, international perspective to “The Daily Show.”In an interview with The New York Times after the announcement, Mr. Noah spoke of being part of “a new young generation of comedians of color, in a space where our parents didn’t have a voice that was recognized.”But soon after the announcement, Mr. Noah became embroiled in a controversy over jokes he had posted years earlier on Twitter about women and Jewish people that some viewed as offensive. Mr. Noah responded to criticism at the time, saying that “to reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn’t land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian.”The network stood behind him. Soon, Mr. Noah’s version of “The Daily Show” was off and running, with correspondents from various backgrounds bringing fresh takes to the show.He joked to The Times in 2015 that since joining the program, the “blackness has tremendously increased at the show. There’s been an epidemic of blackness.” And he recalled the advice that Mr. Stewart gave him before starting in his new role: “Make the best show that you feel needs to be made. And trust your discomfort.”During his tenure, Mr. Noah embraced his outsider perspective, commenting on America’s struggles with race, class and other facets of society that he deemed absurd, if not ripe for comedic jabbing.In 2020, he dedicated entire segments to the Black Lives Matter movement and the people protesting police brutality against Black people, saying in one video that it felt as if there was “no moment of justice.”He recalled on Thursday that he had never dreamed of becoming host.“I sort of felt like ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’” he said. “I came in for a tour of what the previous show was. And then the next thing I know, I was handed the keys.”Mr. Noah has since shown his serious side. In 2016, he published his autobiography, “Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood,” a raw chronicling of his upbringing in South Africa during and after apartheid.The son of a Xhosa mother and a Swiss-German father, Mr. Noah reminisces in the book about being “half-white, half-Black” in a country where his birth “violated any number of laws, statutes and regulations.”In May, he performed at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, the first during the pandemic era, teasing President Biden before stopping to remark about having the freedom to do so.“I stood here tonight and I made fun of the president of the United States, and I’m going to be fine. I’m going to be fine, right?” he said, glancing at Mr. Biden. “Like, do you really understand what a blessing it is?”In 2023, Mr. Noah will tour in South Africa. He wrote on Twitter this week: “Can’t wait to come home.” More

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    Review: In Lea Michele, ‘Funny Girl’ Has Finally Found Its Fanny

    The “Glee” star is stupendous in the role Barbra Streisand made famous, turning the 1964 musical into something better than we know it to be.Though it can be a great vehicle, “Funny Girl” has rarely been a great ride. Even its first-rate Jule Styne songs — “I’m the Greatest Star,” “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” among them — are problematic. Not only are the lyrics, by Bob Merrill, often inane (“I’ll light up like a light”?) but the challenge of the vocal writing that made Barbra Streisand a star in 1964 makes casting anyone else now a nightmare.And let’s not get started on the book, by Isobel Lennart, which in telling the (mostly fictional) story of the early-20th-century comic Fanny Brice, and her disastrous love affair with the gambler Nick Arnstein, seems to have been assembled from a warehouse of used musical-comedy parts. They do not work well together, however well they work individually.The revival that opened in April at the August Wilson Theater — its first on Broadway — only made matters worse. Harvey Fierstein’s meddling with the confusing book confused it further by giving Nick (Ramin Karimloo) more to do; nobody cares what Nick does. And Fanny, whom we do care about, was just too much of a reach for Beanie Feldstein, offering a pleasant performance in a role that shouldn’t be. “Without a stupendous Fanny to thrill and distract,” I wrote at the time, “the musical’s manifold faults become painfully evident.”Lea Michele, who took over the role on Sept. 6, turns out to be that stupendous Fanny. Yes, she even lights up like a light. Both vulnerable and invulnerable, kooky and ardent, she makes the show worth watching again.She can’t make it good, though. Michael Mayer’s production is still garish and pushy, pandering for audience overreaction. A confetti cannon tries to put an exclamation point on a dud dance. Many of the minor players overplay. The lighting by Kevin Adams would make a rat clap, and the unusually ugly set by David Zinn seems weaponized against intimacy. It looks like a missile silo.But at least “Funny Girl” now has a missile: a performer who from her first words (“Hello, Gorgeous”) shoots straight to her target and hits it.It has been a tortuous path to this obviously right and seemingly predestined casting, with decades of false starts involving Lauren Ambrose, Debbie Gibson, Sheridan Smith and others. Feldstein was just another in the long list of misfires; after she ditched the show in a cloud of apparent acrimony — a cloud everyone denied — her standby, Julie Benko, took over.Benko, who is still the Thursday night Fanny, sings the role very well, so you never worry, as you did with Feldstein, that she might not make it through the songs. Then too, Benko gets closer to the dark heart of the comedy, backfilling its shtick with something like anger. Still, good as she is, her voice and the rest of her performance don’t yet match; she even has a different accent when acting the role than when singing it.Like Barbra Streisand, Michele brings added depth to her performance. When Michele sings “People,” our critic writes, it’s not a bald statement but a genuine inquiry.Matthew MurphyMichele matches throughout. Her voice, an exceptional instrument, is not an ornament but a tool, and she knows how to use it. That in itself is no surprise; she seems to have been trying out for the role since 2009. Over the course of her six seasons as Rachel Berry on “Glee,” she sang most of Fanny’s numbers with exceedingly high polish, if sometimes a powerful whiff of Streisand karaoke. (Rachel’s middle name was Barbra.)Onstage, though, the Barbraisms are less in evidence. A few are unavoidable, Streisand having in essence rewritten, and improved, some of Styne’s vocal lines. And in general, anyone hoping to make a success of “Funny Girl” has to follow the originator’s template, because it was created for her — you might almost say “on” her, like a couture gown. The songs work (and the scenes nearly do) when a performer can access a manic desperation to succeed, not caring how she comes off or what she loses in the process. Let’s just say that Michele, like her idol, has that access.What surprised me in “Funny Girl” is that she can also access much more. You need not understand the details of vocal placement to understand that a performer able to belt all of “People” without worrying about switching registers has plenty of bandwidth left over to worry about more important things. When Michele sings the song, it’s not a bald statement but a genuine inquiry: Can Fanny be successful in both love, which means a lot to her, and work, which means more?And at the end, when life has delivered its unhappy answer, Michele isn’t playing at sadness. A hot mess of tears, she takes her time recovering sufficiently to move into the finale, a reprise of “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” It’s a mark of her shaping of the role that she sings it quite differently than she did at the end of Act I, when Fanny is reaching outward to grab the life she wants. Now she’s reaching inward to rescue herself from emotional disaster — a point Michele makes with typical vocal daredevilry in the song’s final heart-stopping phrase.Unfortunately, you may not hear it. Despite the amped-up vocals, the amped-up audience is often even louder than Michele. (On Tuesday, one of her several mid-show standing ovations was actually mid-song.) You can’t blame fans for their excitement, and at least there’s something worth being excited about here. But it seems to me that the production is reaping the dubious reward of its constant goading and prodding. You can see Michele having to calculate on the fly how and when to resume, or whether to blast right through, unheeded.Tovah Feldshuh, left, replacing Jane Lynch as Fanny’s mother, brings grit to the role.Matthew MurphyIn a way, she’s almost too serious for the show; comedy, at any rate, isn’t her (or its) best suit. That’s a problem when the title is “Funny Girl.” Still, when Michele is given a good situation to play, as when Nick seduces her in a restaurant, she gets good laughs. Other times, as in an embarrassing in-joke added post-Feldstein, coyly referring to a song sung on roller skates in the 1968 movie, she looks lost, even as the audience yuks on cue.I hope she’ll keep burrowing into the role and not give in to the general hysteria. She certainly has allies in that fight: Karimloo, especially as the broken man Nick becomes at the end, does some lovely, quiet work, and Tovah Feldshuh, having replaced the zany Jane Lynch as Fanny’s mother, is so gritty and salty she could turn ice into slush. In the smaller role of Florenz Ziegfeld, Peter Francis James remains a model of dignified restraint.Charismatic performers make the thing they’re performing disappear. In effect, they replace it; their voice becomes its voice, their skin its story. That Michele makes “Funny Girl” seem better than we know it to be is the wonderful but possibly irreproducible product of the mutual need between an old-fashioned talent on the way up and an old-fashioned musical on the way down. It’s a need like that of lovers, and you know what the song says about them: Despite all evidence, they’re the luckiest people in the world.Funny GirlAt the August Wilson Theater, Manhattan; funnygirlonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes. More

  • 150 Shares199 Views

    in Theater

    In Paris Plays, What It Would Be Like if Shakespeare Was Female

    Several Paris theaters geared up to open their seasons with the most famous English playwright. How would the plays be tackled if a woman’s name were attached to them?PARIS — When the hero of Shakespeare’s play “Coriolanus” likened himself to a “lonely dragon” in the early 1600s, the adjective “lonely” was still a new addition to the English language. Based on surviving records, “Coriolanus” was probably only the second time it appeared in print. The first? In “Antonius,” a 1592 translation of a French play by Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke.This tiny, almost insignificant detail is one of many listed in “Sweet Swan of Avon: Did a Woman Write Shakespeare?,” a 2006 book by the scholar Robin P. Williams — and now brought to the stage by the director Aurore Evain. In both, Williams and Evain argue that the little-known Sidney, an extraordinarily well-educated and high-achieving noblewoman, could have penned Shakespeare’s canon.It is a relatively new answer to the “authorship question,” as the long-running debate about the identity of the writer is known. While most Shakespeare scholars still believe that William Shakespeare, the man from Stratford-upon-Avon, was the main author of the works published under his name, suspicion that someone used him as a cover arose in the late 18th century.His humble origins and apparent lack of advanced education are factors, because the author of the plays appeared to be versed in a number of languages as well as in aristocratic habits. Additionally, no complete original manuscript by his hand is known to have been found.Bard worship is such in theater worldwide that it’s easy to put any doubts down to gaps in Shakespeare-era historical records. Going into Evain’s “Mary Sidney, Alias Shakespeare,” an absorbing staged conference presented at the Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois, in the suburbs of Paris, I expected little more than a pleasantly quirky intellectual exercise.Yet over the course of two hours, with just two lecterns and a few projections, Evain, who is also a theater historian, presented such a wide range of circumstantial evidence drawn from Williams’s “Sweet Swan of Avon” — as well as potential rebuttals, with vivid help from the actress Fanny Zeller — that I started questioning my own beliefs.Fanny Zeller in “Mary Sidney, Alias Shakespeare.”Charline FauveauHere are a few assertions they offer. “Lonely” is one of several dozen words Sidney introduced into the English language that Shakespeare later used. She provided patronage to Pembroke’s Men, one of the early companies to perform plays that were later attributed to Shakespeare. Sidney’s extensive library included many of Shakespeare’s sources, and she was familiar with pursuits as varied as falconry, alchemy and cooking, whose vocabulary Shakespeare drew on.Shakespeare’s First Folio, published about seven years after his death, is dedicated to Sidney’s sons, William Herbert and Philip Herbert.After the performance, other audience members flocked to Evain, expressing their shock at how reasonable Sidney’s authorship suddenly sounded to them. Over the years, speculation has centered mostly on a handful of men, namely Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe and Francis Bacon.Yet, as Evain put it convincingly onstage, unlike many other contenders, Sidney had a very good reason to hide her identity: She was a woman. While Sidney ran an influential literary salon, the Wilton Circle, and published translations and original verse, it would have been considered improper at the turn of the 17th century for her to show plays of her own, let alone works with occasionally bawdy language and violent themes.And what if a woman had actually written Shakespeare’s works? Beyond the whodunit — and neither Williams nor Evain claims to have definitely solved it — the implications are fascinating, because very few women were afforded the opportunity to have careers as playwrights until far later.As several Paris theaters geared up to open their seasons with Shakespeare, I started wondering how differently the plays would be tackled if they had a woman’s name attached to them.Let’s say the Comédie-Française, France’s prestigious theater company, was presenting Sidney’s “King Lear,” in lieu of Shakespeare’s. That would certainly have turned the German director Thomas Ostermeier’s interpretation on its head: In a playbill essay, Ostermeier wrote that Shakespeare’s work was “part of a 1,000-year-old culture that ties the representation of power to the masculine,” and suggested that he had tried to go “against” Shakespeare to give the female characters greater “legitimacy.” (What this means remains to be seen: Press performances of “King Lear” were delayed because of Covid-19 protocols.)What of Sidney as the author of lonely “Coriolanus”? The idea felt comical at the Théâtre de la Bastille, which is playing host to a tacky, histrionic production by François Orsoni. This “Coriolanus” couldn’t have telegraphed more crudely its laddish credentials. As the Roman leader at the heart of the play, Alban Guyon, dressed in either leather pants or a tracksuit with a gold chain, swaggers and shouts to exhausting effect.From left, Alban Guyon, Estelle Meyer and Thomas Landbo in “Coriolanus,” directed by François Orsoni at the Théâtre de la Bastille.Vincent BérengerThe two main female characters, Volumnia and Virgilia, are combined and played by Estelle Meyer with over-the-top, vampy energy. Pascal Tagnati goes for Johnny Depp-adjacent levels of parody as a pirate version of the Volscian leader Aufidius, and the entire play takes place under “CorioLand” signs that read like advertisements for racing cars.Would this staging have seen the light of day if “Coriolanus” was known to be the work of Sidney? It’s doubtful, but then again, many would most likely also have trouble believing that this grim and bloody historical play was penned by a woman.One prolific 19th-century French writer knew the benefits of publishing under a male-sounding pseudonym: George Sand, born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin. While she wrote multiple plays, they are rarely performed today. Instead, this season, the director Laurent Delvert opted to adapt one of her novels, “Gabriel,” for another of the Comédie-Française’s stages, the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier.While Delvert’s dark, pared-down production is workaday, with electronic sound effects that feel more like tics, it is a very welcome reintroduction to Sand. Gabriel de Bramante, her central character here, is a woman who was raised secretly as a man for reasons of inheritance; her grandfather can’t bear the idea of his title going to what he sees as a less deserving branch of the family.From left, Yoann Gasiorowski, Elisa Erka and Claire de La Rüe du Can in “Gabriel,” directed by Laurent Delvert at the Comédie-Française’s Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier.Vincent PontetClaire de La Rüe du Can brings delightful artlessness and honesty to the character of Gabriel, who learns of the deception when she comes of age. As she sets out to make things right with her relatives, she falls in love and starts living part-time as a woman, only to fall victim to a man’s irrational jealousy.Sand’s style is exactingly clear as she weighs the ways in which gender norms shape the experience of love and moral dilemmas — something Shakespeare wasn’t too bad at, either. We may never know what some women truly achieved when they couldn’t express their talents fully, but Sidney and Sand, no longer lonely in their pursuits, make for gratifying stage company.Mary Sidney, Alias Shakespeare. Directed by Aurore Evain. Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois.Coriolanus. Directed by François Orsoni. Théâtre de la Bastille, through Oct. 7.Gabriel. Directed by Laurent Delvert. Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, through Oct. 30. More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    Midori Francis Is Among the New Class of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

    A star of “The Sex Lives of College Girls” talks about queer and Asian representation on network TV.Name: Midori FrancisAge: 28Hometown: Rumson, N.J.Now Lives: In a two-bedroom apartment on the West Side of Los Angeles, which she moved into last summer.Claim to Fame: Ms. Francis is a queer Asian American actress who starred in “The Sex Lives of College Girls” on HBO and “Dash & Lily,” a young adult series on Netflix. Being vocal about representation has not dimmed her career. Next month, she’ll join the cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” for its 19th season on ABC, where she plays Mika, one of Grey-Sloan Memorial’s newest residents. “Network TV is a whole other beast,” she said. “Millions of people will be watching.”Ms. Francis, far right, in a scene from “Grey’s Anatomy.” ABCBig Break: After graduating from Rutgers University in 2014, Ms. Francis pursued theater acting, earning Obie and Drama Desk nods in Off Broadway productions of “The Wolves” and “Usual Girls.” She then started landing guest roles in major films and TV shows. In 2019, she was offered her first lead role, opposite Austin Abrams, in “Dash & Lily.” The acclaimed series was canceled after one season, but Ms. Francis was cast in “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” where she plays Alicia, a queer activist on campus. Her character has resonated with the show’s L.G.B.T.Q. viewers. “I’ve received some really beautiful messages from young people about feeling seen and represented,” she said.Latest Project: Earlier this year, Ms. Francis got word from her agent that “Grey’s Anatomy” was casting its next class of interns. A longtime fan of the show (she rarely missed an episode during middle school), she immediately asked to audition. “When you’ve seen these people on TV for so long, you think of them as their characters. “So when Meredith Grey is showing you the O.R., it has a certain weight. You fall in line.”On “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” Ms. Francis plays Alicia, a queer activist that resonated with the show’s L.G.B.T.Q. viewers. HBONext Thing: In addition to Season 2 of “Sex Lives,” she is starring in her first feature film, “Unseen,” a thriller set to be released next year, in which she plays a visually impaired woman trying to escape her murderous ex-boyfriend in the woods. She relished doing many of her own stunts. “I was jumping in freezing water, climbing through the mud, literally scaling walls, and I loved it,” she said. “I could not have been more in my element.”Being Seen: As one of the few queer Asian actresses on network TV, Ms. Francis knows how much her presence matters. “I cannot represent everyone, of course,” she said. “I can only hope and fight to play fully fleshed-out characters who are just as messy, joyful, hurt, silly and complex as all human beings actually are.” More