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Emmys 2022: Red Carpet Photos From TV’s Biggest Night
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What’s on TV This Week: ‘Atlanta’ and Fall Previews
FX airs the start of the fourth season of the Emmy- winning show. ABC shares its fall previews.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, Sept. 12-18. Details and times are subject to change.Monday74TH EMMY AWARDS 8 p.m. on NBC. Shifting from the usual Sunday night ceremony, the ceremony celebrating all things television is back on Monday, with Kenan Thompson as the host. The ceremony will be held in person at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. “Succession” leads the nominations with 25 potential awards — including in the categories of best actor and actress and best supporting actor and actress, for many of the main cast members. “Ted Lasso” follows closely behind with 20 nominations. Presenters will include Will Arnett, Kelly Clarkson, Selena Gomez, Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler and others.TuesdayTHE COME UP 9 p.m. on Freeform. This new reality show focuses on six Gen Zers as they navigate New York City after the height of the pandemic. The stars of the show, Taofeek Abijako, Fernando Casablancas, Ben Hard, Claude Shwartz, Ebon Trower and Sophia Wilson, work on their careers and figure out where they belong within their friend groups and social circles. Four episodes will premiere back-to-back on Tuesday and then two episodes will air each week that follows.WednesdayABC FALL PREVIEW SPECIAL 8:30 p.m. on ABC. The cast of “Home Economics” will host an evening dedicated to sneak previews of what is to come on ABC this fall. One new show, “Alaska Daily,” stars Hilary Swank as a reporter who leaves New York behind to work at a local Alaska paper. Another new show, “The Rookie: Feds,” stars Nathan Fillion as an F.B.I. officer who brings in Simone Clark (played by Niecy Nash-Betts) to investigate a former student who is suspected of committing a terrorist attack. They will also show previews of the upcoming seasons of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Bachelor in Paradise” and “Abbott Elementary.”THE CHALLENGE USA 9 p.m. on CBS. The first season of this show is wrapping up, with one man and one woman to be crowned champions and a $500,000 cash prize. “The Challenge USA” differs from the original “The Challenge,” which has been airing on MTV for over 30 seasons, as it has contestants from U.S.-based reality shows, as opposed to contestants from all over the world. The participants come from shows like “The Amazing Race,” “Survivor,” “Big Brother” and “Love Island USA.”ThursdaySTRAIGHT NO CHASER: The 25th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION 8:30 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The a cappella group Straight No Chaser, which was formed at Indiana University, is celebrating its anniversary with a concert back where it all began — in Indiana. The group which is touring the United States this year, performs some classic covers including “Proud Mary” and “Lean on Me,” as well as newer pop songs like “I’m Yours” and “All About That Bass” in this recorded concert.From left: Olivia, Shelia, Paxton and Cindy with Kelly Ripa and Anderson Cooper on “Generation Gap.”ABC/Raymond LiuGENERATION GAP 9 p.m. on ABC. This quiz show pairs up family members to answer questions about each other’s generations. Hosted by Kelly Ripa, each episode has also featured a special guest, including the YouTuber Colleen Ballinger (in character as Miranda Sings), and the actor Judd Hirsch. For this week’s episode — the 10th and final one of the season — the guest is the journalist Anderson Cooper.ATLANTA 10 p.m. on FX. After a four-year hiatus between Season 2 and Season 3, fans of this show will be happy that Season 4 is arriving this week, less than four months since the Season 3 finale. After last season’s romp through Europe, the characters are back in Atlanta. “If ‘Atlanta’ has always been hard to pigeonhole — it’s comedy, except when it’s drama, except when it’s horror,” James Poniewozik wrote in his New York Times review of the Season 3 premiere earlier this year, “that may be because it is about complicated people whose circumstances are always just a nudge away from any of these.”FridayDYNASTY 9 p.m. on the CW. This show, staring Elizabeth Gillies, Grant Show and Adam Huber, is finishing up its fifth and final season this week. It is based on the 1980s soap opera of the same name and features a rivalry between the Carrington and Colby families, but the show has had its own plot lines instead of building on the original show’s stories.SaturdayMeryl Streep, left, and Amanda Seyfried in “Mamma Mia!”Peter Mountain/Universal PicturesMAMMA MIA! (2008) 6:20 p.m. Based around the songs of ABBA, this movie tells the story of mother and daughter duo, Donna and Sophie (Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried), as Sophie prepares for her wedding. Hoping to meet her father, Sophie invites to the wedding three men whom her mother wrote about in her diary the summer before she was born. Harry (Colin Firth), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and Sam (Pierce Brosnan) show up and chaos ensues. “Really, this movie is incapable of harming anyone,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “except moviegoers with the good taste and bad manners to resist its relentless, ridiculous charm.”STAND BY ME (1986) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Jerry O’Connell and Corey Feldman star in this coming-of-age story based on Stephen King’s “The Body.” The story follows the four boys as they go on an overnight hike to try to find a body of a boy who was hit by a train. “Mostly, there is a lot of boys’ talk and good fellowship and an unstated and stated appreciation of this grand episode in their lives and how nothing will ever equal the comradeship of this summer,” Walter Goodman wrote in his New York Times review of the film.SundayJessie T. Usher in “Tales of the Walking Dead.”Curtis Bonds Baker/AMCTALES OF THE WALKING DEAD 9 p.m. on AMC. Each episode in this spinoff anthology series of “The Walking Dead” is a different story in the same post-apocalyptic world. The season’s sixth and final episode follows a couple traumatized by the state of the world, and who might be living in a haunted house. More
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Man Sentenced for Threats to the Actress Eva LaRue and Her Daughter
Eva LaRue, an actress known for her roles on “CSI: Miami” and “All My Children,” said her family lived in fear. James David Rogers, 58, was sentenced to just over three years.A man in Ohio was sentenced to more than three years in prison after 12 years of harassing the actress Eva LaRue and her daughter. He had threatened via letters and phone calls to torture, kill and rape them, the authorities said.Judge John A. Kronstadt of the United States District Court for the Central District of California sentenced the man, James David Rogers, to 40 months in prison on Thursday, for what prosecutors in a sentencing memorandum called a “campaign of torment” in which he “terrorized a mother and her daughter.”Mr. Rogers, 58, had pleaded guilty on April 28 to “two counts of mailing threatening communications, one count of threats by interstate communications and two counts of stalking,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.Ms. LaRue is known for her roles as the DNA analyst Natalia Boa Vista on the crime series “CSI: Miami” and Maria Santos on the soap opera “All My Children.” Her daughter, Kaya Callahan, was as young as 5 years old when the threats against her began, court documents said. She is now 20. Mr. Rogers wrote threats to Ms. LaRue’s partner at the time as well.An apparent lawyer for Mr. Rogers did not respond to a request for comment.In March 2007, he began to send menacing letters to the family, court documents show, and stalking behavior continued until his arrest in November 2019. Between March 2007 and June 2015, Mr. Rogers mailed about 37 handwritten and typed letters with threats. He signed many of the letters with the name Freddy Krueger, a fictional serial killer from the horror movie “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”“I want to make your life so miserable that you can’t stand it,” he wrote in one letter, according to court documents. “You should be very scared,” another read.The letters were first sent to Ms. LaRue’s publicist, then to her manager, she said. Finally, she received them at home and her husband’s office at the time.“The letters were anywhere between three to six or seven pages long, detailing in the most heinous, evil, grotesque, depraved way, how he wanted to kidnap my then-5-year-old daughter and I,” she said.The family moved several times in the hopes that Mr. Rogers wouldn’t find their address again, even deciding to sell a home during the 2008 financial recession, she said. They also avoided receiving mail and packages at their home address.“They drove circuitous routes home, slept with weapons nearby and had discussions about how to seek help quickly if defendant found them and tried to harm them,” prosecutors said.Ms. LaRue never knew where the person writing the letters lived. She operated as if he could have been around the corner at any point, she said in an interview.During a “CSI: Miami” hiatus, Ms. LaRue said she fled the country. She and her daughter temporarily lived at a friend’s house in Europe because they were afraid he would come to her home.In October and November 2019, Mr. Rogers called the school Ms. Callahan attended 18 times, often posing as her father and asking questions about her whereabouts, according to court documents. In another incident, he left a voice message at the school with vulgar threats, identifying himself under the serial killer pseudonym. She was a high school senior at the time, Ms. LaRue said.Weeks later, when he was arrested, his call log had been cleared. But the phone was registered to the same number that he had called the school from, prosecutors said. It also had photos of Ms. LaRue and her daughter on it.Until his arrest, Mr. Rogers had been working as a nurse’s assistant at a nursing home, according to court documents. He said he was the caretaker for his mother.Mr. Rogers said in mitigation that he had grown up a social outcast with difficulties with his parents and struggles in school, according to court documents. He also said he had limited mobility, but prosecutors said the F.B.I. found that claim to be false. He said at his sentencing that he was receiving mental health treatment, Ms. LaRue said.Before the sentencing, Ms. LaRue and her daughter had only seen a photo of Mr. Rogers. They did not want to see him in person but they decided to go into the courtroom when they learned that he would be joining via video conference. They were left unnerved.“At one point, my brother was holding my hand because I was shaking,” she said. “And that’s not me. I’m not easily rattled by anybody or anything.”Mr. Rogers, indicted in 2019, was identified using genetic genealogy, which uses databases to match DNA to a large network of people, said Stephen Busch, a former F.B.I. special agent who worked the case. The authorities used DNA left on a discarded straw to place him, leading to his arrest.“Forensic genealogy is the greatest investigative technique since the fingerprint for law enforcement,” said Mr. Busch, who is now the CEO of a DNA investigations company. “And we’re just scratching the surface with it right now.”Genetic genealogy has been used to solve many high-profile cases in recent years, including in 2018 to identify Joseph James DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer. On “CSI: Miami,” Ms. LaRue played a DNA analyst who conducted work similar to the one used to solve this case, she said, except the technology wasn’t as developed at the time.“DNA, oddly enough, has just played such an interesting role in my life in so many ways,” she said.Ms. LaRue is now writing a show that is partly autobiographical about her experiences over the past 12 years, and which will delve into some of the new DNA methods.Mr. Rogers apologized to Ms. LaRue at the sentencing’s video conference on Thursday. But for Ms. La Rue and her daughter, the damage had been done. They both lived in fear and paranoia after more than a decade of threats, Ms. La Rue said.Every school that Ms. Callahan attended had to be notified of the stalking, and she and her daughter were surrounded by security.“This was her formative years,” Ms. LaRue said.“I was afraid for my life,” her daughter said in court.The F.B.I. investigated the case, and the violent and organized crime section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuted it. More
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‘War of the Worlds’ Review: Dystopia à la Française
A new season of the dark science-fiction thriller on Epix continues a tradition of smart, atmospheric genre series from the French channel Canal+.This review contains spoilers for the first two seasons of “War of the Worlds.”As you make your way through the cavernous emporium that television has become, brand loyalty may be your best hedge against disappointment. It can be limiting, sure. But if you know you are likely to enjoy the latest Taylor Sheridan drama or Adult Swim animated comedy, that’s valuable time saved.There is a logo that signals happiness for me, but it’s a little farther afield. Someone in Paris has my number: For the last decade or so, a handful of my very favorite shows have begun life on the French channel Canal+.A lot of shows from Canal+ — an ad-free subscription service analogous to HBO — don’t make it to America, and I’m sure there are plenty that I wouldn’t care for. But its programmers have a taste for atmospheric, complicated genre pieces, and over the years there has been a succession of its series that I’ve eagerly consumed: the Paris police procedural “Spiral,” the eerie supernatural-metaphysical melodrama “The Returned,” the superlative spy thriller “The Bureau.” My fixation continues with “War of the Worlds,” a particularly dark and dystopian science-fiction adventure whose third season begins Monday on Epix. (Seasons of all four shows are available at Amazon Prime Video.)“War of the Worlds” differs in being a French-English coproduction (with the Fox Networks Group) whose action, especially in recent episodes, mostly takes place in London, with English dialogue. It was created, and to this point has been written by, the British TV veteran Howard Overman, best known for creating the award-winning supernatural dramedy “Misfits.”Overman’s story has points of connection with the H.G. Wells novel he very loosely adapts: Invaders (who turn out to be physically compromised) arrive in gigantic ships and assert their dominance, while human refugees do a lot of fleeing and hunkering down. There are fewer of these refugees than Wells imagined, however. In the show’s first episode, the spacecraft that land emit a signal that kills nearly everyone on Earth, sparing only those who are underground or otherwise shielded.The first two seasons followed increasingly smaller bands of survivors in France and England who eventually coalesced in London around Bill Ward (Gabriel Byrne), a scientist whose existence the invaders were somehow aware of. The feel was clammy and claustrophobic — there was no word from the rest of the world — with a steady drip-drip-drip of horror as the humans were picked off by the mechanical attack dogs the invaders deployed. The whirring, clanking noises the robots made were an eerie signature.But the show isn’t just a video-game-style thriller. Overman does a good job with the human relationships, which are marked by the anger, despair and pettiness the dire situation gives rise to. Characters backbite, bellyache, reluctantly pitch in and commit mundane acts of heroism in a largely believable manner, and there’s blessedly little inspirational speechmaking.The show is also a big-idea science fiction fantasy, of course, and that is both a strength and a weakness. The delayed revelation of who and what the invaders were, and how they connected with the show’s human characters, was intriguing — which was the minimum requirement for plugging you into the show — but the science involved felt a little more fictional than usual. And there are some fundamental questions about the plot that are still unclear, and which you suspect may remain so.Byrne in Season 2 of “War of the Worlds.”Simon Ridgway/EpixIf you’ve watched the first two seasons — here come the big spoilers — you know that the invaders are actually humans who have apparently traveled back in time on a mission of self-preservation, and that Bill stands in their way. And you know that the second season ended with Bill using the invaders’ technology to time travel himself, arriving before the invasion and committing a murder that would prevent the invaders from ever existing.So Season 3 is one of those sci-fi reboots in which things never happened and the world is back to normal, except that Bill is in prison, there’s a black hole hovering over Earth (there’s that dodgy science again) and people are having visions that look a lot like memories of the invasion that didn’t happen.The visions, presumably being experienced by people who, in the original timeline, were survivors, are a smart device for keeping the cast together — characters like the resourceful cop Zoe (Pearl Chanda), the compassionate immigrant Kariem (Bayo Gbadamosi) and the awkward French scientist Catherine (Léa Drucker), who will eventually recognize one another, and Bill. And they still have a battle to fight, since a few of the invaders, including the implacable Adina (Ania Sowinski), stowed away with Bill in the time machine and are working on building a new one.The mood and story lines in the new season are more like those of a conventional mystery — there are police chases now — with the dramatic spice of a handful of characters knowing an earthshaking secret that they can’t talk about without being considered crazy.It’s a great situation for Byrne, whose grumpy, weary performance as Bill drives the show. With a prison sentence as his reward for saving the world, Bill is now more completely fed up than ever, and his reaction when Zoe tells him he needs to do it again is succinct and profane. Byrne, in a way that feels more French than British, makes you understand exactly how big a bother this world-saving business is. More
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Why Did Instagram Pause This Play? Its Creators Still Don’t Know.
Marion Siéfert’s “_jeanne_dark_,” about a shy teenager beginning to express her sexuality, contains no nudity yet still ran afoul of Instagram’s opaque policies.PARIS — It was hailed as France’s first “Instagram play.” In Marion Siéfert’s “_jeanne_dark_,” a 16-year-old character, Jeanne, goes live on the app to tell the world about her private frustrations — and as she films herself with a smartphone onstage, Instagram users can watch, too, and weigh in.Yet in early 2021, a few months into the production’s run, Instagram started cutting off these live streams, citing “nudity or sexual acts.” Then the account tied to the play disappeared from the platform’s search results. For months, Siéfert and her team scrambled to understand why their work — which will have its New York premiere on Sept. 14, as part of the French Institute Alliance Française’s Crossing the Line Festival — was being repeatedly targeted.“People thought what we were doing was great, the future of creation,” Siéfert said in Paris earlier this month. “But for me, it’s been more like a nightmare.”Siéfert joins a long list of artists and activists who have locked horns with Instagram in recent years over its community guidelines, which ban content the company deems inappropriate. That includes nudity, and especially photos and videos showing women’s nipples (outside of breastfeeding and health-related issues, like a mastectomy), a policy that has prompted an online campaign, “Free the Nipple.”But “_jeanne_dark_” doesn’t fall into this category: Siéfert, who was aware of the policy, steered clear of nudity from the start. When the automated interruptions started, the artistic team filed appeals through Instagram’s in-app system, yet received no response or clarification. They said their attempts to contact employees of Instagram also went nowhere.Only after a series of mock performances on a private account did Siéfert pinpoint the gesture that apparently triggered Instagram’s detection algorithm. At that point, Helena de Laurens, 33, who plays Jeanne, cupped her covered breasts from the sides and moved them up and down.The scene, which Siéfert cut in the spring of 2021, may have fallen foul of Instagram and Facebook’s infamous policy on “breast squeezing,” which was clarified in 2020 to state that hugging, cupping or holding breasts is allowed, but not squeezing in a grabbing motion, because of a surmised association with pornography. (According to Instagram, no such issue was identified with the account _jeanne_dark_. A spokeswoman declined to answer further questions about the company’s moderation policies.)Helena de Laurens, who plays Jeanne. “I had found something that was very funny, I was quite proud of it,” she said of the play.Matthieu BareyreAccording to research conducted by Dr. Carolina Are, a fellow at Northumbria University’s Center for Digital Citizens in Britain, very few appeals to Instagram trigger a response from a human moderator. “It’s an incredibly murky system,” she said in a recent video interview.She traces the increase in heavy-handed moderation on Instagram and Facebook (both owned by Meta) to two bills that passed in 2018, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. Their stated purpose — to hold tech companies accountable for sex-trafficking schemes on their platforms — has led, she said, to bans on a wide range of material Instagram’s algorithm classifies as risqué, not just in the U.S. but around the world. (It has regularly flagged Dr. Are’s own videos, too, since she is also a pole dance instructor.)“Facebook in particular censored female bodies before, but nothing on this scale,” she said. “It creates a chilling effect on expression.”The gesture at issue in Siéfert’s play came with a narrative context. Jeanne, initially a shy teenager who is bullied at school and feels stifled by her Roman Catholic family — her Instagram handle (_jeanne_dark_) is a pun on the French styling of Joan of Arc — has grown emboldened, and begins a pastiche of sexualized music videos.“I had found something that was very funny, I was quite proud of it,” de Laurens said recently in Paris. “There was something a little grotesque and excessive about it. She parodies people, but she also wants to be like them.”Performing “_jeanne_dark_,” de Laurens said, has proved stressful for other reasons, too. Since she is constantly focused on her character’s smartphone, she sees many of the live — and unscripted — Instagram comments. (The stream is also relayed on screens on both sides of the stage, for the theater audience.) While many comments have been funny, and the production team is quick to ban trolls, some have crossed lines and targeted her body.“I don’t want to think about a comment that says I have terrible teeth while I’m onstage,” de Laurens said. “It takes you out of the performance, and it grates.”This Instagram play wasn’t Siéfert’s first artistic brush with social media. The 35-year-old director, whose own sheltered, Catholic upbringing in the French city of Orléans inspired the character of Jeanne, mined Facebook for information about her audience in her first professional production, “2 or 3 Things I Know About You,” from 2016.Once people responded on Facebook that they were attending the show, Siéfert would study their public profiles to create a script based on them. Onstage, she’d comment on screenshots as her character, a naïve alien looking to make human friends. “I would find out about their holidays, but also intimate things, like a bereavement,” Siéfert said. Some people laughed; others were moved or shocked to see themselves through that lens. “Sometimes the information was very beautiful, but at the same time, it was a lot of power.”“People thought what we were doing was great, the future of creation,” Siéfert said of the play. “But for me, it’s been more like a nightmare.”Julien Mignot for The New York TimesSiéfert’s experimental approach to audience interaction was shaped, she said, by the years she spent in Germany — first as an exchange student in Berlin, where she discovered the local performance scene, and later at Giessen’s Institute for Applied Theatre Studies. With “_jeanne_dark_,” she was “interested in bringing theater to a place that isn’t really made for it, that is part of the fabric of people’s daily lives. What we didn’t know was: Are there actually people who will want to watch us on Instagram?”There were — not least because “_jeanne_dark_” had its premiere in the fall of 2020, between the first two waves of the Covid-19 pandemic in France, as the entire theater industry wondered how to effectively harness digital formats. Between 200 and 600 viewers tuned in for the live streams throughout that first season, and the play was honored with a special “digital award” by France’s Critics’ Union in 2021.Yet as the production met with acclaim, new issues kept arising behind the scenes with Instagram, even after the breast-cupping gesture was removed. According to screenshots provided by Siéfert, “_jeanne_dark_” was cut off a total of four times throughout 2021, twice with two-week bans on further live streams, forcing the team to resort to an alternative account. Ironically, Siéfert said, the theater audience often thought the ban notification was “part of the show.”In addition to “nudity or sexual acts,” the final ban, in November 2021, cited “violence and incitation.”“The rules change constantly, you never know where you stand,” Siéfert said. She alleges that starting in May 2021, the account was also “shadow banned” for weeks — meaning that it became nearly impossible to find through the app’s search engine, and existing followers no longer received live notifications. (According to Instagram, the account _jeanne_dark_ wasn’t flagged in a manner that might have led to such issues.)While Siéfert’s next play, “Daddy,” set to premiere at the Odéon playhouse in Paris in 2023, will delve into another virtual world — a video game — it will involve no screens or live digital element. Her experience with Instagram, which she describes as a “hostile space” for artists, has been enough.“It has often been sold as the app for creativity, but it’s just publicity,” she said. “When you actually put a work of art on Instagram, this is what happens.” More
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How Ivo van Hove Turns a Novel Into a Play
He draws inspiration from his neighbors, whom he studies from afar as they sit at the cafés near his apartment, drinking coffee in the morning or beer in the late afternoon. “They’re like little Greek choruses,” he says. “Even if you don’t know them, you know them.”
“Combats” follows a son and his mother as she breaks out of her violent marriage. In one of the play’s most tender scenes, the pair escape their house and enjoy a rare night out at a chic restaurant in Paris. Van Hove chose a white tablecloth to convey the simple power of the moment. Amid the darkness of the play, he says, “there is always hope. There’s always a capacity to transform.” More
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‘Burbank’ Review: When Disney’s Animators Went on Strike
Cameron Darwin Bossert’s smart new play fictionalizes a 1941 labor dispute to explore the tension between passions and paychecks.On the lawn outside Walt Disney’s snazzy new animation studio in Burbank, Calif., a young woman is out cold. The apple that was going to be her meager lunch has slipped from her grasp and rolled away.It is 1941, her name is Betty Ann Dunbar, and her ambition is to become an animator — though at Disney, being a female artist means having almost no chance of that. She works as a painter and inker instead, and if her salary is so measly that she can’t afford to eat, so be it. She isn’t living her dream, but she is living dream-adjacent, with work on films like “Snow White” and “Fantasia.”“I mean, the stuff we get to make here,” she gushes, after a worried colleague rouses her. “I just love this place so much.”But that’s where you’re vulnerable, isn’t it, if the job you get undercompensated to do also fills your life with meaning. Throughout Cameron Darwin Bossert’s smart and entertaining new play, “Burbank” — a fictionalized retelling of a 1941 strike by Disney animators and the events leading up to it — the tension between passion and paycheck thrums like an underscore.In a spare, well-acted production by the company Thirdwing at the Wild Project, in Manhattan’s East Village, Walt himself bestrides this lively drama, played by the author with a cigarette frequently in hand. On the cusp of 40, stymied by the war that’s eaten into the European box-office prospects for “Pinocchio,” Walt views himself as benevolent, much the way he sees his cherished Mickey Mouse. Sure, Walt expects his people to work long hours — the studio needs a smash ASAP — but it’s not like their environment is unpleasant.“Why the hell would anybody need to unionize at a place like this?” he asks, as baffled as any 21st-century overlord who’s provided every amenity to a captive staff. “We got volleyball.”Except that his employees’ lives are falling apart. Not everyone blames Walt for that; Betty Ann (Kelley Lord) figures she can’t afford to eat because she’s single and bad at budgeting. But many Disney workers, like the animator Art Babbitt (Ryan Blackwell), want a union.The creator of Goofy, Art is watching his marriage collapse because he’s paid more attention to his drawings than to his wife, the dancer whose movements were a model for Disney’s Snow White. And he is haunted by the fate of Adriana Caselotti, who voiced that same character in the studio’s 1937 hit.“Adriana’s contract stipulates that she cannot sing. Or act. In anything else. Ever again,” Art says to Walt. “Why would you do that to someone?”The theme of taking a woman’s voice is woven through this slender play, with its repeated mentions of “The Little Mermaid,” a fairy tale that has lately captured Walt’s imagination. Online, Thirdwing puts the spotlight on female characters in “Disney Girls,” the “teleplay series” that’s a streaming companion to the play. But “Burbank,” the second half of a diptych that started with “The Fairest” — Bossert’s 2021 play about the women of Disney’s ink and paint department — is primarily focused on Walt and Art.Curiously for a piece whose characters are all deeply invested in visual art-making, it’s in appearance that this production falls short — not because it looks like it was made on a shoestring, which it does, but because the set and lighting design, which are uncredited, are underconsidered. The fake-grass mat standing in for the lawn is distractingly bad, while the lighting lacks the fluidity that the play’s shifting moods and locations demand. But the period costumes, by Yolanda Balaña, are nicely done.What’s remarkable about “Burbank,” which does not have a credited director, is that while it’s a labor drama, it sidesteps all of the traps that that phrase implies. Warm and alive, it’s layered with nuance as it captures the anxiety that can grip a workplace amid a labor struggle — and the ruthlessness that can ensue on all sides.BurbankThrough Sept. 18 at the Wild Project, Manhattan; thirdwing.info. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. More
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James Corden Pays Tribute to the Queen
The British host of “The Late Late Show” called Queen Elizabeth II “a guiding light.” Other hosts went a bit lighter with their commentary.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.Long Did She ReignQueen Elizabeth II died on Thursday, after seven decades on the throne. Late night’s British import, James Corden, delivered a joke-free opening segment on “The Late Late Show,” calling the queen “a guiding light; always gracious, always dignified, always a shining example of leadership.”“I, like the rest of the world, am so sad tonight, but also so thankful and grateful to the queen for the most incredible service and leadership she has shown during all of our lifetimes.” — JAMES CORDENThe other hosts went lighter with their commentary on the queen’s lengthy reign.“She was the queen for 70 years, longer than any monarch in British history. To put it in perspective for Americans, this would be like if Kris Jenner died here.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The queen is known as England’s rock. We don’t have a rock. The closest thing we have to a rock in America is The Rock.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But 96 — that’s a pretty good run. I feel like if you die anywhere on the FM radio dial, it’s — you know? My goal is to make it to Hot 97 — or maybe even Power 106, who knows?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“When you think about all the people that the queen has met with over the last 70 years, it’s really remarkable. She’s met with everyone from Lady Bird Johnson to Lady Gaga, from Bill Clinton to Will.i.am. She met J.F.K. and J.Lo. She’s met the Beatles and the Spice Girls. … Then, after all these years, this week she saw Harry Styles spit on Chris Pine and said, ‘OK, I’ve had enough.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“She came to power in 1952. You understand how long that is? That means she’s seen Adam West as Batman, Michael Keaton as Batman, Christian Bale as Batman, Ben Affleck as Batman — survived that — and then Robert Pattinson as Batman. And look, I’m sure there’s a better way to measure time than in Batman, but you get it. She’s been in the game for a minute.”— TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bannon’s Dirty Deeds Edition)“Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon turned himself in to New York authorities today to face state criminal charges. Well, the good news is, I’m positive this man knows how to make toilet wine.” — SETH MEYERS“He has been charged with multiple felonies, including money laundering, which is definitely the first time in Steve Bannon’s life he’s been accused of doing laundry.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This guy doesn’t look like he has $15. Look at him! Millions of dollars? He looks like he sublets from Oscar the Grouch.” — TREVOR NOAH“When the judge asked Bannon how he pleads, he said ‘grimy.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon and Blake Shelton premiered their new football-season-inspired song “I’ll Bring the Ice” on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutThe real Weird Al Yankovic, left, and his movie double, Daniel Radcliffe. “I hope this confuses a lot of people,” the musician said of their biopic.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesWeird Al Yankovic and Daniel Radcliffe formed an unlikely bond on the set of “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.” More
