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    Review: Finding Community in ‘As You Like It’

    This shimmering Shakespeare adaptation at the Delacorte Theater retains the outline of the original, while making space for songs. You don’t have to sing along, though you may want to.The Forest of Arden is where you head when the city won’t hold you. When laws are unjust, when custom constricts, when institutions squeeze and shrink you, here, at last, is space to breathe and to be. Manhattan razed its woodlands long ago, of course. (A lone stand of trees, in Inwood Hill Park, remains.) But on a summer night, in Central Park, squint a little and you can imagine a forest here — the refuge, the bounty, the hush.You won’t have to squint hard at “As You Like It,” the shimmering Shakespeare adaptation at the Delacorte Theater, courtesy of Public Works. Adapted by Laurie Woolery, who directs, and the singer-songwriter Shaina Taub, who provides the music and lyrics, this easeful, intentional show bestows the pleasures typical of a Shakespeare comedy — adventure, disguise, multiple marriages, pentameter for days. And, in just 90 minutes, it unites its dozens of actors and its hundreds of audience members as citizens of the same joyful community.Taub and Woolery’s adaptation retains the outline of the original, while shortening and tightening the talkier bits, making space for songs. Rosalind (Rebecca Naomi Jones), the daughter of the exiled Duke Senior (Darius De Haas), falls instantly for Orlando (Ato Blankson-Wood), the younger son of a dead nobleman. Threatened by the current Duke (Eric Pierre), they flee, with friends and servants, to the Forest of Arden, where Duke Senior has formed an alternate, more egalitarian court.Taub has cast herself as Jaques, the emo philosopher, who opens the show with the limpid ballad, “All the World’s a Stage,” singing: “All the world’s a stage/And everybody’s in the show/Nobody’s a pro.”These lyrics do a lot of work, work that transcends paraphrase. “As You Like It” is a production of Public Works, a division of the Public Theater that partners with community groups. So the song serves as a kind of pre-emptive apology, an acknowledgment of amateurism. Yet the lines function as an invitation, too, an inducement to imagine yourself as part of the show, to join in its creation. A big ask? Maybe. On a breeze-soothed evening, with the city quieted and the lights aglow, it won’t feel that way. And for those who blench and tremble at the thought of audience participation, take a breath. You don’t even have to sing along, though you may want to.I first saw “As You Like It” during a short run at the Delacorte Theater in the summer of 2017, after the travel bans had been instituted, but before the widespread adoption of the Trump administration’s family separation policy. All scrolling felt like doom scrolling then; to open the morning paper was to start the day with some fresh horror. Things could — and did — get worse. I remember experiencing the show, profoundly and with some tears, as a temporary respite.From left, Idania Quezada, Christopher M. Ramirez and Rebecca Naomi Jones in the Public Works adaptation of “As You Like It” at the Delacorte Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTo revisit it now, when disaster seems less immediate, is to relax into the brisk pleasure of the work. Jones, an actress with a voice of steel and sweetness, like a knife baked into a birthday cake, is a dynamic Rosalind. And if you admired Blankson-Wood in “Slave Play,” you will enjoy his playful turn here, as in the exuberant R&B number, “Will U Be My Bride.” But the show’s success owes less to any individual performer than to the generous and sociable whole. Taub’s lyrics are simple, but it takes effort to write lines that feel effortless. The same goes for Sonya Tayeh’s fluid choreography, restaged by Billy Griffin and achievable for all kinds of bodies, and Woolery’s insouciant use of stage space.The stage itself has an oddly flimsy set, by Myung Hee Cho, a turntable dotted with trees that don’t look a lot like trees. But Emilio Sosa’s costumes and Isabella Byrd’s lights provide happy splashes of color. James Ortiz designed the deer puppets; if they lack the emotional heft of the cow he designed for the current revival of “Into the Woods,” well, you can’t have everything. That “Into the Woods” revival is directed by Lear deBessonet, who inaugurated Public Works, which Woolery now leads. Small wonder then, but wonder all the same, that the two most joyous shows in New York right now, the two most engaged with questions of community and duty and care, have this shared maternity.If “As You Like It” succeeds as entertainment — and it does, fluently, enough to make you wonder if Shakespeare in the Park should stick to comedies and musicals and maybe the occasional romance — it articulates and answers graver concerns. There is a persistent fear in American politics that to grant freedom is to invite anarchy. “As You Like It” offers another possibility. There is no rule of law in the Forest of Arden. But rather than descend into riot, its inhabitants practice mutual aid. They live in harmony, figuratively and — when De Haas swoops over and around the melody — literally.This confirms Woolery and Taub’s adaptation as a kind of thought experiment: What might happen if a community were free to determine its own best principles and practices? Because “As You Like It” swells its cast with the members of partner organizations — Domestic Workers United, Military Resilience Foundation and Children’s Aid, among them — the show is also proof of concept. There is hierarchy here, of course. The direction is by Woolery alone and the folks with Equity cards occupy the prime roles. (To put the lie to Taub’s lyrics, somebody’s a pro.)But if the theater were really made welcoming and accessible to all, this is what it might manifest — a stage bursting with performers diverse in age, race, size, habit and circumstance, an audience distributed across a similar spectrum. “As You Like It” offers that rare thing — a New York theater that looks like the city itself and feels like a promise of what the city, at its best, could be.What a feat that is. And what a gift. So go ahead. Wait in line and then walk to the theater through the canopy of trees. Shelter here awhile.As You Like ItThrough Sept. 11 at the Delacorte Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    The Many Violations of the Violent Birth Scene

    Does the gory surprise C-section in “House of the Dragon” represent a grim historical reality, an urgent political statement or a worn cultural cliché?“Are you sure you want to watch this?” my husband asked as we cued up the “House of the Dragon” premiere last week.We had both seen the online warnings that the “Game of Thrones” prequel kicked off with a “grisly,” “brutal” and “gory medieval C-section.” I had undergone a cesarean section a couple of years ago, during the birth of my son, and now I was again pregnant and preparing for the possibility of a second surgery. But yes, I was sure I wanted to watch it.I was, I guess, curious about what the most horrific interpretation of the procedure might look like. I’m still thinking about the scene — not because it is so violent, but because its violence is framed as so profound. Like so many depictions of pregnancy, its visceral and emotional possibilities are largely obscured by a tangle of clichés posturing as insight.King’s Landing, after all, is not a subtle place. At the top of the episode, an uncomfortably pregnant Queen Aemma foreshadows her fate: “The childbed is our battlefield,” she tells her daughter, Princess Rhaenyra. “We must learn to face it with a stiff lip.” Meanwhile, her husband, King Viserys, is ominously confident that this pregnancy, after a run of miscarriages and stillbirths, will finally produce a male heir.Instead, the queen’s labor reaches a dangerous impasse. The grand maester informs the king that the baby is in a breech position, and that “it sometimes becomes necessary for the father to make an impossible choice” — to “sacrifice one or to lose them both.” Viserys approves the surgical removal of the baby without Aemma’s knowledge or consent. As birth attendants restrain their desperate, confused queen, the grand maester slices into her belly. The queen dies, and her baby dies soon after.Throughout the violent birth scene, the queen is shot from seemingly every angle; no perspective on her pregnant body goes unseen.Ollie Upton/HBOWhat is the meaning of this gruesome spectacle? George R.R. Martin’s “Fire & Blood,” the book on which “House of the Dragon” is based, has the queen die in childbirth in an unspecified manner; only in the show does it become a murder by way of a rogue belly slicing. In a series of interviews, Miguel Sapochnik, one of the showrunners and the episode’s director, exhaustively explained the resonance of the choice. The scene — intercut with a bloody jousting tournament mounted by the king in premature celebration — was designed to be “a distillation of the experience of men and the experience of women” in Westeros, Sapochnik said. But it was also meant to reveal “parallels to our own past and present,” he added. It represents the grimness of childbirth in the medieval era, from which Martin’s fantasy world draws, when “giving birth was violence”; but it also represents the grimness of childbirth in post-Roe America, when the scene reads as “more timely and impactful than ever.”“Anxious not to get it wrong,” eager “not to shy away” but also “not to sensationalize,” the creative team — the episode was written, directed and edited by men — enlisted two midwives to advise on set and innumerable women to screen the sequence before it aired. The scene, Sapochnik promised, was just the beginning of a whole season of portentous births, each seeded with additional gender commentary. The theme of this birth, he explained, was “torture.”The sheer violence of the scene didn’t shock me. (Earlier in the episode, a character slices off a man’s penis and tosses it atop a pushcart piled with various severed appendages — violent spectacle is a major element of the show.) But the implied profundity of the violence struck me as faintly ridiculous. The loading of meaning onto the queen’s death felt like an attempt to sidestep the criticism that dogged “Game of Thrones” — that it indulged in senseless violence against women. But the imposition of sense on such violence can also feel unsatisfying, as the female character’s interiority is subsumed into the creators’ effort to make a statement.The showrunners intercut the childbirth scene with the cartoonish violence of the jousting to make points about both the past and the present.Ollie Upton/HBOThe scene creaks under the weight of so many signifiers. The queen is shot from seemingly every angle; no perspective on her pregnant body goes unseen. We see her moaning in the background, tangled in bedclothes. We zoom close on her delirious face in gauzy light, evoking the softness of a maternity shoot. Often we see her from above, as if we are peering down on her in a surgical theater. Or we spy her from beyond her rounded stomach, as if we are attendants assisting in the delivery. We look down upon her as she is cut open, drained of blood and stuffed with reaching hands.As the scene wears on, the camera itself seems moved by cowardice. It retreats further and further from the queen’s perspective, assuming a remote and clinical gaze. Often it looks away entirely, focusing instead on the cartoonish gore of the jousting,which comes to stand in for the violence of the birth. The queen’s screams are silenced, overlaid with the sounds of a roaring tournament crowd and the outlandish squishing of skulls and brains. In its desperation for meaning, the scene does become senseless.Being pregnant can feel like passing from the physical world into the world of signs. Pregnancy is weighted with so much metaphorical significance that it is even a metaphor for significance — pregnant with meaning. But I’m not pregnant with meaning; I’m just pregnant. And so I watch depictions of pregnancy and birth from my own removed position, curious what my experience signifies to other people, and what it is supposed to say about our culture and politics.The “House of the Dragon” C-section is neither historically accurate (the mother’s life was valued over that of the fetus in much medieval teaching, as Rebecca Onion detailed in Slate) nor particularly of the moment (post-Roe, many women are begging doctors for surgical interventions in their pregnancies). But it does access a persistent cliché: The C-section is a birth choice loaded with stigma, as Leslie Jamison noted in an essay on the procedure last year. It is coded as “both miraculous and suspect, simultaneously a deus ex machina and a tyrannical intervention” — the antithesis of a “natural birth.”This construction voids the mother’s role in childbirth, ceding it to a patriarchal medical establishment. The riddle from “Macbeth” — which posits that because Macduff was “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb, he is not “of woman born” — persists. On-screen pregnancies still rarely end in C-sections. When they do, they are the stuff of horror. As the film critic Violet LeVoit has argued, the vaginal birth is framed as the climactic final struggle of the hero’s pregnancy journey. A C-section, then, renders our hero a victim — and a failure.None of this coincides with my own experience. I didn’t feel bad for having a C-section, or feel that I didn’t truly “give birth” to my son; I felt that my doctors and I did what was medically necessary to deliver him safely. And yet I feel nagged by this imposed narrative, and I am reminded of it whenever I see a birth scene shot from above, as the “House of the Dragon” one often is.Birth was, for me, an overwhelmingly sensory experience, not a visual one. During labor, I couldn’t see past my own abdomen. My strongest memory of the surgery, which the hospital shielded from my view with a raised blue tarp, is of the uncanny release of pressure in my anesthetized body when the baby was removed. As it was happening, a doctor asked if I wanted her to photograph the moment, and I impulsively agreed, thinking that I could always delete the image if I couldn’t stomach it. When I look at the photo now, I recognize my son’s features emerging from the bloodied edges of my body, but I don’t recognize the point of view. It is as if I am reliving another person’s memory, not my own.So no, the depiction of violence in birth does not bother me. But the bird’s-eye view of it does. The camera’s insistence on its lofty perspective, on looking down on the birthing woman’s full body from a spectator’s remove — that strikes me as the real violation. In those jarring shots, the depiction of male violence becomes indistinguishable from the male gaze.Maybe future “House of the Dragon” births will resonate with my own feelings about childbirth. And I’m sure other parents, bringing their own experiences to the episode, left it with different interpretations. But that is the trouble with trying to distill the entire “experience of women” into a scene — the idea is absurd, even in a fantasy world. More

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    Laura Linney to Return to Broadway in New David Auburn Play

    “Summer, 1976,” about a friendship between two women in Ohio, will open next spring at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater.Laura Linney will return to Broadway next spring, in a new play by David Auburn about a friendship that arises between two women during America’s bicentennial.The play, called “Summer, 1976,” will be presented at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater by the Manhattan Theater Club, or M.T.C., which is one of four nonprofit organizations with Broadway houses. M.T.C. had previously announced plans to stage the play this fall, Off Broadway, but on Tuesday announced that Linney had agreed to lead the cast and that the production would now be delayed to spring and moved to Broadway.Linney, 58, is well known for her work on film (“The Savages”) and television (“Ozark”); she has won four Emmy Awards and has been nominated for three Academy Awards.She has returned often to the stage, performing in 12 previous Broadway productions, and has been nominated five times for Tony Awards. Her most recent Broadway role was in early 2020, just before the pandemic closed theaters, when she starred in the solo play “My Name Is Lucy Barton,” which was also produced by M.T.C.Auburn, the playwright, is best known as the author of “Proof,” which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in drama, as well as the Tony Award for best play. That play was also produced on Broadway by M.T.C.“Summer, 1976” will be directed by Daniel Sullivan, who won a Tony for directing “Proof,” and who also directed Auburn’s 2012 Broadway play, “The Columnist.” Sullivan has directed Broadway productions featuring Linney three times previously, including most recently a 2017 revival of “The Little Foxes.”M.T.C. said that previews for “Summer, 1976” would begin April 4; it did not announce an opening date or other members of the cast. The organization described the new play as about an unexpected friendship between two Ohio women, “a fiercely iconoclastic artist and single mom” played by Linney, and “a free-spirited yet naïve young housewife.” The characters “navigate motherhood, ambition and intimacy, and help each other discover their own independence.” More

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    Gabriel Byrne’s ‘Walking With Ghosts’ Is Heading to Broadway

    The play, adapted from his memoir of the same name, will run for 75 performances starting in October.To Gabriel Byrne, his play “Walking With Ghosts,” adapted from his memoir of the same name, doesn’t refer to haunting phantoms but the lost people and places that we carry within us.“Who we are now is the result of what we were,” Byrne said in a video interview.In this autobiographical solo show, he tackles identity as an immigrant separated from his Irish homeland, along with memories of love and failure as people age. The play, directed by Lonny Price, will begin performances in October on Broadway at the Music Box Theater.The show premiered in January at the Gaiety Theater in Dublin and will continue from Sept. 7 to Sept. 16 in London’s Apollo Theater before it begins 75 performances in New York.Byrne described the feeling of returning to the New York City stage as a soup of nerves and excitement. As both a writer of and performer in the show, he said he wants the message surrounding the human experience to be and feel universal.He makes reference to what it means to be an immigrant and to be home.“As soon as you leave your place of belonging, in a strange way, you don’t belong anywhere else,” Byrne said.Although Byrne lives in Rockport, Maine, he grew up outside Dublin, in Walkinstown, the oldest of six. He left Ireland at age 11 to enroll in a Catholic seminary in England, but renounced his faith after he said he was sexually abused by a priest.He later joined an acting troupe in college. Byrne was most recently on the New York City stage as James Tyrone in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” in 2016. He played a survivor in a BBC adaptation of H.G. Wells’s “War of the Worlds” in 2019.Lonny Price first directed Byrne in the New York Philharmonic’s “Camelot” in 2008. Impressed with Byrne’s performance, Price, who directed “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” and “Sunset Boulevard,” said he was thrilled to work alongside Byrne again, as the actor embodies the friends, teachers, religious figures and family members that influenced his life.“I think the play has a kind of healing quality to it where people look at their own lives and find peace,” Price said.Byrne said that in the play, he aims to provoke the audience into thinking about their lives, their parents and their decisions.“My own belief is that every single person has an extraordinary story to tell and what I’ve done is I’ve put mine down, not because I want people to think or look at my life,” he said. “I want people to look at their own.” More

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    Ayo Edebiri and Her Dog Gromit Go to the Bookstore

    A morning out in Los Angeles with the surprise star of “The Bear” and her Chihuahua mix.LOS ANGELES — Ayo Edebiri has an arresting screen presence because she doesn’t look like she’s acting. In “The Bear,” the frenetic restaurant drama that has been one of the most talked-about shows of the summer, she is usually the calm at the center of the storm.In real life, she’s the same — unassuming, unshowy — and she speaks in an even tone. In other words, she’s not the kind of person who will break into a series of practiced anecdotes when a reporter shows up.On a hot day in Los Angeles, she was standing outside her apartment complex in the Los Feliz neighborhood, waiting for her puppy, Gromit, to do his business. She then picked up what he had left in the grass with a biodegradable green baggy. She looked around for a trash can but couldn’t find one, so she ended up tucking the baggy into her canvas tote.Gromit is a small dog with black and white hair. He is part Chihuahua, part minikin and part terrier, Ms. Edebiri said, adding that she knows the mix because she had his DNA tested.“He’s a melting pot,” she said. “I think he’s the American dream.”Ms. Edebiri, whose first name means joy in Yoruba, grew up in Boston, where she sang in a church choir and appeared in plays put on by the congregation. At 26, after a few years of writing for television and working as a stand-up comic and podcaster, she finds herself becoming known as an actress.“I love doing the show,” she said of “The Bear.” “Even when we were making it, we all felt like it was really special and an honor to do. But also because of that, I think there was this fear that people wouldn’t get it.”Ms. Edebiri plays the sous-chef Sydney Adamu on the critically acclaimed show “The Bear.” FXPeople got it. And they responded to her character, the even-keeled sous-chef Sydney Adamu, a kind of stand-in for every unflappable Gen Z-er who suspects that they might have a better idea of how to run a workplace than their chaotic boss.Gromit started moving toward some broken glass in the street. “That’s glass,” Ms. Edebiri said in her calm voice. “We are not doing that, dude.” She gave the leash the gentlest of tugs, and Gromit heeded her command.Before “The Bear,” Ms. Edebiri liked to make roast chicken for friends. While preparing for her role, she took courses at the Institute of Culinary Education in Pasadena and shadowed several chefs in Chicago and New York. And, yes, she learned how to prepare the cola braised ribs that become an obsession for her character.“I made it a lot,” she said. “There was a lot of practicing. It needs to look real. And if we’re practicing it, you might as well make it taste real.”Ms. Edebiri with Gromit near her home.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesIn addition to her work on “The Bear,” she played Hattie on the AppleTV+ show “Dickinson.” She also provides the voice for Missy Foreman-Greenwald, a biracial girl feeling her way through puberty, on the animated Netflix series “Big Mouth.” So far in her acting career, the characters she plays seem to deal with anxiety by putting on a brave front, and they share a quiet confidence.“I don’t have to dig too deep to access that anxiety,” she said.For a time, she said, she was ready to accept that she didn’t have what it takes to be a performer.“I remember singing in the choir and doing plays, and my god-mom, she was like, ‘You know what? This may not be your gift,’” Ms. Edebiri recalled with a laugh. “She was like, ‘You’re good, but this might not be for you.’ I was like, ‘For sure.’”She changed her mind during middle school and high school, she said, when she started doing improv. After that, she went to New York University with the aim of becoming a teacher, only to realize it wasn’t for her. At the behest of some college friends, she started doing stand-up.“I was definitely nervous about the idea of performing alone,” she said. “I didn’t like being onstage and was very nervous at first.”Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesAfter a few years spent working in writers’ rooms Ms. Edebiri became known for her work in front of the camera.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesAfter graduation, she moved to Los Angeles and wrote for the NBC sitcom “Sunnyside,” the FX series “What We Do in the Shadows” and “Dickinson.” Leaving the comfort of the writers’ room to go in front of the camera was a big adjustment, she said.“It’s weird,” she said. “I look like this, so I might as well look like this. I don’t want to be self-mythologizing, but I do feel like, growing up, on TV, there weren’t a lot of young Black women who I felt actually looked like me or people I knew, or were allowed to have imperfections.”“There’s a lot of Black women on TV in the media,” she continued, “and I feel like we look different, but we also still look like ourselves. I feel like that’s important and beautiful.”She went into Bru, an airy coffee shop, and ordered a lavender lemonade with sparkling water. When asked what she has learned from her various roles, she demurred. “This is like an actress question,” she said. “I’m not used to answering questions like an actor.”Gromit gets V.I.P. treatment at Skylight Books.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesSoon, Ms. Edebiri and Gromit walked into the Skylight Bookstore, an indie shop with a huge ficus tree surrounded by walnut colored shelves. She came across “The Woman Who Borrowed Memories: Selected Stories” by the late Finnish writer, illustrator and comic book author Tove Jansson. She tapped the cover with her index finger, ornamented with a rustic gold signet ring that reads “Libra.”“She rules,” Ms. Edebiri said, picking up the book. “She’s like this incredible lesbian that made the Moomin comics.”As she moved toward the checkout area, Ms. Edebiri was asked if she would like to go back in time and give her younger self some words of advice.“I don’t think I would say anything, because that messes with the rules of time travel,” she said. “Everything you learn is in the time and in the season that you’re supposed to.”Near the cash register, she spotted a cookbook, “Black Food: Stories, Art and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora,” edited by Bryant Terry. She set Gromit on top of the checkout table — along with the Tove Jansson book — before she squatted down to open the cookbook.Ms. Edebiri and Gromit on a recent morning in Los Angeles.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesWhile she flipped through its pages, her dog was becoming a star of the store. He wagged his tail on the makeshift stage, ears pointed upward, as three store employees fussed over him, petting him and giving his ears a scratch. After Ms. Edebiri set the cookbook near the cash register, one of the workers started reading to Gromit from the Jansson book.“He is loving it,” Ms. Edebiri said with a laugh. More

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    Sarah Steele, of ‘The Good Fight,’ on Finding Love in Brooklyn

    The actress, who plays Marissa Gold on the legal drama, fell hard for her new Brooklyn Heights co-op — and for her new partner, a lawyer.During her 20s, like countless other New Yorkers in that age group, Sarah Steele “bopped around apartments that mostly, you know, weren’t so nice,” she said.Ms. Steele’s résumé of rentals includes studio apartments in Prospect Heights and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as well as a diminutive one-bedroom in Williamsburg that she shared with a longtime (now ex) boyfriend.A few years ago, when a college roommate went through a breakup of her own, “I saw it as an opportunity to live with an old friend. We moved in together in October of 2019, so we did the whole pandemic together basically watching ‘Sex and the City,’” said Ms. Steele, now 33, who plays the fearless secretary turned P.I. turned lawyer Marissa Gold on the Paramount+ legal drama “The Good Fight.” Its sixth and final season begins Sept. 8.The two-bedroom apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, was a strange place: The oversized bathroom with its Jacuzzi and red light seemed to have been conceived with Russian oligarchs in mind. And it was a strange, troublous time.“I haven’t talked about this publicly much, but I had cancer,” Ms. Steele said. “I had a sarcoma in my leg — which, you know, knock on wood, I’m cancer-free now — but I had to have surgery and couldn’t walk for the first, like, two months we were in the apartment.”Sarah Steele, 33Occupation: ActorHome sweet home: “A couple of months ago, there was a really, really long, hard day on ‘The Good Fight,’ where I didn’t get home until like 3:00 in the morning or something. I put my bag down and starting sobbing with gratitude that I have this place.”She continued: “We were like, ‘We are due for some good luck.’ And my roommate got up one day and said, ‘We are both going to find amazing love while we’re in this apartment.’”Sure enough, two months later, both found “incredible partners,” Ms. Steele said. Then, in the summer of 2021, she found an incredible co-op in Brooklyn Heights. And barely a week ago, her incredible partner, Sean Patrick Smith, a lawyer, moved in with her.Sarah Steele, who plays Marissa Gold on the Paramount+ series “The Good Fight,” lives in a two-bedroom co-op on the fifth floor of a walk-up building in Brooklyn Heights. “I walked in and fell completely in love,” she said. Regan Wood for The New York TimesThere are two love stories to unpack here, and one quite stunning coincidence.Love story No. 1 involves the apartment: a light-filled, two-bedroom walk-up with a wall of casement windows in the living room, two decorative fireplaces, a kitchen with a skylight, and a washer and dryer (no more lugging sacks of dirty clothes to the laundromat). But the most persuasive selling point was the array of built-in bookcases. “I was an English major, and I’m totally book-obsessed and so is my partner,” Ms. Steele said.“I walked in and I was like, ‘I really want to buy this place,’” she said. “I asked my parents to come look at it, because I was like, ‘I can’t tell if I’ve just gone insane and can’t see what’s problematic,’ because it is a fifth-floor walk-up. But then my parents came and they were like, ‘Nope, you’re not insane. Get it right now.’”Love story No. 2 stars Mr. Smith, whom Ms. Steele met on Tinder. On their first date, the two learned they were from the same neighborhood outside of Philadelphia. But there was another, far more rom-com-ready real estate connection: The house Ms. Steele grew up in had previously been owned by Mr. Smith’s grandmother, who turned it into a day care center after raising 10 children there.“The plates look like they’re trying to escape,” she said of the wall display in the kitchen.Regan Wood for The New York Times“Through talking to Sean, I was like, ‘Wait, are you talking about this house in Philly where I grew up?’ I was like, ‘Wait, I know your family!’” Ms. Steele recalled. “I told him, ‘I was like 5 years old and putting on a little concert for your grandmother.’”Among Mr. Smith’s contributions to the ornamentation of his new home: a portrait of said grandmother with a background that Ms. Steele recognized as the first floor of her parents’ house. The painting now hangs over the fireplace in the living room.The apartment represents Ms. Steele’s first stab at serious nesting. “Before, it was like, ‘I know I’ll only be here for a couple of years,’” she said. “And when that’s true, you don’t want to buy crazy expensive furniture, because who knows if it’s going to fit in your next place.”A bit at sea, she enlisted the aid of Adam Charlap Hyman, a designer and artist. Their first conversation went something like this:Mr. Charlap Hyman: Could you tell me some things you like in other people’s houses?Ms. Steele: I really like when people hang up Christmas lights all year long.Mr. Charlap Hyman: We’re not doing that.Ms. Steele: OK. Well, I really like tie-dye.Mr. Charlap Hyman: No.The built-in bookcases were a big selling point for Ms. Steele.Regan Wood for The New York TimesBut Mr. Charlap Hyman took note of the bohemian aesthetic his client was after and offered up a version that was, as he put it, classier, with an adroit deployment of patterns on the sofa and on a pair of recently acquired stools. The two had a meeting of the minds about a custom-made daybed under the living room windows (perfect!) and an arrangement of pottery plates on a wall in the kitchen. “They’re awesome,” said Ms. Steele, who independently elected to go with beaded curtains to conceal the washer-dryer unit.“I grew up with a beaded curtain in front of my childhood bedroom,” she said. “But they were pink and plastic, and from Hot Topic.”Star-struck bargain hunters hit pay dirt this past weekend: Ms. Steele and Mr. Smith had a stoop sale to divest themselves of duplicate pots, pans and other kitchenware. But the couple have seamlessly commingled their books, their art (much of it covers the walls of the second bedroom) and their greenery.“But I’m a plant killer,” Ms. Steele confided. “All the ones that look good are Sean’s.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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    ‘House of the Dragon’: Steve Toussaint on Playing Lord Corlys

    One of the most powerful people in Westeros made his reputation as a fearless sailor. The actor who plays him does better on land.This interview includes spoilers for the first two episodes of “House of the Dragon.”Legendary explorer, naval commander, lord of a noble house that has long earned its living from the sea: Corlys Velaryon, a.k.a. the Sea Snake, is a boat guy, through and through. Steve Toussaint, the British actor who plays him on “House of the Dragon,” is not.“It’s a weird thing,” he said, laughing. “The last couple of times I’ve been on a boat, I suddenly started getting seasick. I’ve never had that in my life, but just recently it started happening.”Whatever Toussaint’s shortcomings as a sailor, Lord Corlys’s prowess on the sea is so formidable that even the dragon-riding scions of the ruling monarchy, House Targaryen, must show him deference. In the show’s second episode, he even rage-quits the Small Council led by King Viserys (Paddy Considine) — he’s one of the few people in the Seven Kingdoms who can turn his back on the ruling monarch and live to tell the tale.Corlys’s in-world untouchability makes for a salutary counterpoint to the racist reactions Toussaint has faced in some quarters. The actor, who is Black, portrays a character of direct descent from the fallen empire of Valyria who is assumed to be white in the source material by George R.R. Martin, the book “Fire & Blood.” In the world of the show, created by Martin with Ryan Condal, Corlys’s power and prowess are presented unapologetically, without caveat.“I guess some people live in a different world,” Toussaint said of the controversy. “I’m very lucky that I have friends who are of all persuasions. I’ve got Caucasian friends, East Asian friends, South Asian friends, Black friends. That’s my world, and I want to be in programs that reflect that world.”In a phone conversation last week, Toussaint spoke from London about the forces that drive Corlys and knowing which rules to follow and which ones to break. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Corlys has a cool factor that even some of the most charismatic characters lack. He just seems comfortable in his own skin in a way that many others aren’t.That’s one of the things I like about Corlys. Of the people he’s around, he’s the guy who went out and made his fortune by himself, with his own bare hands, as he says late in the episode. That gives him a sense of self. It’s one of the things that’s key to who he is.Funny enough, when I had the initial meeting with Ryan and Miguel, the co-showrunners, all we talked about, really, was fatherhood and his feelings about his family. He’s got this desire to cement the Velaryon name in history. He feels the slights to his wife [Princess Rhaenys, played by Eve Best], the fact that she was passed over [for the Iron Throne], more than she does.And when he’s realized he can’t get her back on the throne, the next thing for him is get the family as close to power as possible, i.e. marry off the kids in some way or other.Return to Westeros in ‘House of the Dragon’HBO’s long-awaited “Game of Thrones” prequel series is here.The Sea Snake: Lord Corlys Velaryon, one of the most powerful people in the Seven Kingdoms, is a fearless sailor. Steve Toussaint, the actor who plays him, does better on land.A Rogue Prince: Daemon Targaryen, portrayed by Matt Smith, is an agent of chaos. But “he’s got a strange moral compass of his own,” the actor said.A Violent Birth Scene: Was the gory C-section in the show’s premiere the representation of a grim historical reality, an urgent political statement or a worn cultural cliché?The King’s Hand: Otto Hightower is a major player in the prequel. Here is what to know about the character and the history of House Hightower.How does Corlys feel about going through with this ritual of having his 12-year-old daughter, Laena [Nova Fouellis-Mosé], court the king? Does he have second thoughts about this system at all?The thing about Corlys is he is a stickler for the rules. Despite the fact that he felt that his wife is the more capable person to be on the throne as opposed to Viserys, that is what [the Great Council] chose. He thinks they made a mistake, but: “These are the rules that I’ve been given. This is how we have decided power dynamics work in that world. OK, well in that case, I will do this.”So in Episode 1, when Otto Hightower [Rhys Ifans] says to Viserys, “We’ve got to talk about your succession,” it is Corlys, despite the fact that he wants his wife to be on the throne, who says: “No, no, we have an heir. It’s Daemon [the king’s younger brother, played by Matt Smith].” Now, it may not be to everyone’s liking, but that’s what the rules are. When there is a dispute about [the king’s daughter] Rhaenyra’s position, he again is like, “Well, her father chose her, and so we have to go with that.”I think he’s like, “I don’t like these rules, but these are the rules. What can I do to thrive in them?”Corlys and his wife, Lady Rhaenys (Toussaint and Eve Best), offered their 12-year-old daughter to King Viserys (Paddy Considine, left) in hopes of cementing an alliance with the throne.Ollie Upton/HBOIt’s not just that Corlys built his family’s fortune — he did so by making nine legendary voyages to distant lands, putting himself in great danger. Is that in the back of your mind as you play him?Yes. I remember saying to Ryan at one point, “It would be great to have some sort of write-up so that I’ve got a memory of them,” basically. Ryan was good enough to come back with a whole dossier of stuff, because Ryan is a supergeek. [Laughs.] It’s a huge part of Corlys’s very being, what he did.It’s interesting that you said he put himself in great danger. I don’t know if, at the time, he would have thought of it that way. He just had an adventurous spirit. He wanted to get out there and see what was beyond the known world at that time. Certainly when I was in my teens and early 20s, there was no fear — I was going to live forever.Obviously, being an older man and sitting around these people who like to talk so cavalierly about war, there’s a part of him that’s like, “No, I’ve seen it, you haven’t. If you’d seen it, you wouldn’t be talking this way.”The thing about battle is you either succeed or you don’t — there’s no gray area. He likes that. He’d like it if life were like that, generally. That’s one of the reasons he’s not always entirely comfortable in the Small Council with diplomacy and so forth. “If something is right, it’s right. Let’s just do it.”Did that make it difficult to play those Small Council scenes?In terms of the character, the resentment that Corlys has for what he considers these privileged people helps me a lot. In fact, there were some points where Ryan would have to rein me in and go: “If you spoke to the king like that, you’d have your head cut off. You’ve gone too far.” It would be more difficult for someone like — and I didn’t have this discussion with them, so I don’t know — Paddy or maybe Gavin Spokes [who plays the Small Council member Lord Lyonel Strong], whose characters have to be mindful of not upsetting people and trying to keep the balance. I never felt that way with my character.There is a side to him that is, as far as he’s concerned, above the rules. Also, he knows just how valuable he is for the realm, because he controls the majority of the navy. So he knows he’s got a little bit more leeway.You’ve talked about the racist backlash that you initially faced from some segments of the fandom when you were cast. Has that improved?There are still trickles coming through, but generally, it’s been great. The overwhelming majority of people have been very welcoming and supportive.Some people have gone out of their way to find my timeline so they can explain to me that “It’s all about the books” and so forth. My view is this: There are shows on TV that I don’t like — I just don’t watch them. There are actors that I don’t find interesting — I just never feel the need to broadcast I don’t like them. There are some people who don’t like my appearance and don’t think someone like me should be playing that particular role because when they read the book, they saw it a different way. All of that is natural. My objection is to people who have racially abused me.For some reason, the responses that I’ve been getting recently seem to have overlooked that, as if I’m just going, “You don’t like me, and therefore you’re racist.” That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t know what people’s motivations are. But I do know the motivations of somebody who calls me the n-word. I know what that means.Were you a “Game of Thrones” guy before you got this part?Yes, I was. It had been going for about three or four seasons before I actually watched it because fantasy is not really my genre. I was staying with a friend in L.A., and he said to me, “Have you seen this ‘Game of Thrones’?” And I was like: “No. It’s got dragons, why the hell would I watch that?” [Laughs.] He said, “Just watch one episode.” And it was so much more gritty and, for want of a better word, realistic than I was expecting. I was hooked. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Race for the Championship’ and ‘Stargirl’

    USA Network airs its NASCAR documentary series. And the third season of the CW show based on the DC Comics character premieres.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, Aug. 29 — Sept. 4. Details and times are subject to change.MondayA still from “Keep This Between Us.”FreeformKEEP THIS BETWEEN US 9 p.m. on Freeform. This four-part docuseries follows the filmmaker Cheryl Nichols as she re-evaluates an inappropriate relationship she had with a teacher when she was 16-years-old. Through the lens of her own experience, Nichols evaluates the broader, all-too-common cycle of grooming and predatory relationships between teachers and students. Through the four episodes, two of which are airing back-to-back on Monday night, Nichols seeks to identify the factors that allow for this dynamic to continue and answer the question of how it can be stopped.TuesdayRISE OF THE BOLSONAROS (2022) 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro was elected as the president of Brazil, solidifying the country’s general shift to the right. Throughout his campaign, he used the country’s crime and years of political and economic turmoil to advocate himself as a shift from the status quo while vocalizing his anti-abortion, anti-same sex marriage and pro-police stances. This feature-length documentary charts Bolsonaro’s rise from an unknown military officer and politician to one of the most powerful figures in South America.WednesdayBrec Bassinger in “Stargirl.”Boris Martin/The CWSTARGIRL 8 p.m. on the CW. Based on the DC Comics character of the same name, the CW version of this character is back for a third season this week. The show, which stars Brec Bassinger as Courtney Whitmore, a.k.a. Stargirl, begins when Courtney moves from California to Nebraska, where she discovers the Cosmic Staff, a rod that gives superpowers, and recruits a group of new superheroes to form a new Justice Society of America. The first two episodes of the third season feature Joel McHale as Starman, the original owner of the cosmic staff, as he trains her on how to garner power and be a good superhero.WELLINGTON PARANORMAL 9:30 p.m. on the CW. This New Zealand mockumentary is wrapping up its fourth and final season in the U.S. this week; this season (and the series as a whole) finished airing in New Zealand on TVNZ 2 in March. The show follows Sergeant Maaka (Maaka Pohatu) and officers Minogue (Mike Minogue) and O’Leary (Karen O’Leary), who all work in the Wellington paranormal unit and investigate supernatural events such as demon possession and haunted houses. This week’s finale brings the detectives back to the 1990s, where they’ve created a timeline that changes the outcome of events in current times.CMT STORYTELLERS: DARIUS RUCKER 10 p.m. on CMT. Darius Rucker, the singer and songwriter who was first known as the lead singer of the band Hootie & the Blowfish, is being featured on this one-hour special. After Rucker’s run with his rock band, he went on to create country music, including his hit song “Wagon Wheel.” In this special, Rucker will talk through his career and the inspiration behind different songs. “Storytellers” was revived earlier this spring after its original run from 1996 to 2015 on VH1, featuring musicians like Taylor Swift, The Chicks and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few.ThursdayRACE FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP 10 p.m. on USA Network. In the tradition of “Drive to Survive,” USA is airing a new racecar reality show, but this time with NASCAR drivers. This ten-part series follows the drama on and off the racetrack with the drivers Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, Kyle Busch, Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski, to name a few. The show will feature 16 drivers as they compete in the NASCAR playoffs — with cameras closely following each race. The cameras will continue to follow the drivers as they spend their time off the racetrack with their children, partners and family.FridayCameron Diaz and Matt Dillon in “There’s Something About Mary.”Glenn Watson/20th Century FoxTHERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (1998) 5:30 p.m. on FX. After Ted (Ben Stiller) experiences an unfortunate mishap that prevents him from going to prom with Mary (Cameron Diaz), he never gets over her. Years later, he hires Pat (Matt Dillon) as a private investigator to track Mary down — but Ted doesn’t realize that Pat is using his role as P.I. to get information about Mary so that he can date her himself. “The Farrellys display a crazy audacity that’s worth admiring, and they take sure aim for the funny bone,” Janet Maslin wrote in her review of the film. “‘There’s Something About Mary’ may be many things, but dull and routine aren’t among them.”CLUB CUMMING PRESENTS A QUEER COMEDY EXTRAVAGANZA! 10 p.m. on Showtime. Alan Cumming, who owns a nightclub in the East Village of the same name as this special, is hosting a cabaret-style evening that features up-and-coming comedians in the L.G.B.T.Q. community with a range of comedy styles. Joe Castle Baker, Julia Shiplett, Zach Teague with Drew Lausch, Nori Reed, Pat Regan, and Larry Owens will all perform stand-up, musical performances and more.SaturdayTHE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946) 10 p.m. on TCM. This film noir thriller staring Lana Turner, John Garfield and Cecil Kellaway is the third (and not the last) adaptation of the 1934 novel of the same name by James M. Cain — the previous two were LE DERNIER TOURNANT (1939) in France and OSSESSIONE (1943) in Italy. The story is about a married woman, Cora (Turner), who falls in love with a drifter (John Garfield), and together they plot to kill Cora’s husband. “It is, indeed, a sincere comprehension of an American tragedy,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1946 review. “For the yearning of weak and clumsy people for something better than the stagnant lives they live is revealed as the core of the dilemma, and sin is shown to be no way to happiness.”SundayMCENROE 7 p.m. on Showtime. Fans of John McEnroe, known as one of the best tennis players of all time, as well as for his outbursts on and off the court, will be able to see a more intimate look into the player’s life in this documentary. The feature-length film will feature archival footage that guides McEnroe’s narration about the significant moments in his life and career. More