Eliana Willis

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    6 Comedy Specials Worth Watching Over Memorial Day Weekend

    New hours from Sarah Silverman, Mike Birbiglia, Jerrod Carmichael and others range widely in subject and style. But they all provide laugh-out-loud moments.Sarah Silverman, ‘PostMortem’(Stream it on Netflix)“Death is really hard for me,” Sarah Silverman says with the kind of impeccably performed earnestness that makes you believe her banal statement for just long enough to be sideswiped by the punchline. “And that’s what makes me unique.” What actually makes Silverman different is that few others would handle the death of a father and stepmother in the same month by joking merrily about merch. “I really feel like my parents would want me to monetize this,” she says.No amount of tragedy is going to turn Silverman into a maudlin solo artist. Her funniest jokes employ sarcasm, not sincerity. Despite its subject matter, this new hour is, in some ways, classic Silverman terrain, with raunchy bits and Hitler references. I wouldn’t even call it her most personal special. The closest she gets to philosophizing is a long chunk about the ignored life of the fly. Attention must be paid. She pays tribute to the memory of her parents through descriptions in loving detail.As those who saw her 2022 musical “The Bedwetter” know, her father clearly passed down a warmhearted, open-book sensibility. She ends with a scene from his last days, a beautiful (and gross) account of helping him pee. The most moving moment to me, though, was her consideration of the last words of her stepmother: “Your hair. It’s so dry.” Silverman looks grateful: “She always told me the truth.”Mike Birbiglia, ‘The Good Life’(Stream it on Netflix)Mike Birbiglia dislikes the friends of his 9-year-old daughter. Watching them, he quips, “makes me really not understand pedophilia.” That may not sound like a Birbiglia joke to you, but despite being a mostly clean, NPR- and Lincoln Center-approved comic, he has long been drawn to secrets, small transgressions and the humorous possibilities of being unlikable. He’s just not flamboyant about it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘O.K.!’ Review: When the Abortion Clinic Cancels

    In Christin Eve Cato’s new backstage dramedy, an actress’s plan to terminate a pregnancy collides with the rollback of reproductive rights.In a shared dressing room of a theater somewhere in Oklahoma, an actress named Melinda is the first to arrive. It’s 90 minutes before the curtain rises, and to the keen-eyed stage manager, Alex, she seems not quite herself.“You look like you’ve been throwing up,” Alex says, getting it right in one guess, not that Melinda is about to admit that she is pregnant. She has an abortion scheduled, and no one needs to know.But in Christin Eve Cato’s new backstage dramedy, “O.K.!,” Melinda’s timing is on a collision course with the rollback of reproductive rights. The date is June 24, 2022, and the U.S. Supreme Court has just overturned Roe v. Wade. Soon the clinic calls to cancel Melinda’s appointment permanently, and the clear vision she had of her future clouds over with panic.“O.K.!” is about how Melinda (Danaya Esperanza) moves through that fear as the clock ticks down to showtime, with the help of her fellow actors Jolie (Yadira Correa) and Elena (Claudia Ramos Jordán) and their collective reverence for tarot-card wisdom. Also instrumental: the calming competency of Alex (a very funny Cristina Pitter), who herds unruly cast members like cats.The barely glimpsed show within a show is a nonunion tour of a musical called “Okla-Hola,” a parody of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s cowboy-Americana classic “Oklahoma!,” told from a Latino point of view. Melinda stars as Lori (a version of Laurey, of course, the farmhouse beauty pursued by two suitors), with the jaded, politically engaged Jolie as Titi Elder (a variation on Laurey’s Aunt Eller) and the high-spirited, Spanglish-speaking Elena as Ada Ana (the inveterate flirt Ado Annie). In a corner of their dressing room stands a scaled-down, rustic farm windmill, which will transform into the tarot deck’s glowing, 3D Wheel of Fortune. (The set is by Rodrigo Escalante.)Directed by Melissa Crespo for Intar Theater and Radio Drama Network, “O.K.!” blends a loving critique of the theater with a historically minded explication of threats to women’s health and autonomy, leavens it all with comedy and sprinkles it with the surreal. Tonally, that is quite a mix to pull off, particularly with the script’s didacticism working against its drama.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    For the Creators of ‘Adults,’ Maturity Is Overrated

    Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold graduated from college in 2018. At commencement, they gave a speech in which they talked about moving on from Yale. As the speech went on, it appeared that Shaw was also moving on from Kronengold. A video clip of the speech went viral, not least because Hillary Clinton, that year’s speaker, can be seen giggling at a joke about Yale’s endowment.Shaw and Kronengold were briefly famous. Days later, jobless, they moved back in with their respective parents. She returned to the Upper West Side. He was back on Long Island.“All of my autonomy and independence and this beautiful sense of self I’d cultivated, no one cared about it anymore,” Kronengold said.Shaw and Kronengold were still together — the breakup had been a comic bit — but separated by the L.I.R.R. They missed school, they missed their friends, they missed having a schedule and a sense of purpose. Adulthood, it turned out, was kind of a bummer.Bored and isolated, they began to sketch out a show about five housemates living together, clumsily, in Queens, New York, a “Friends” remade for an extremely online, acutely self-conscious Gen Z crowd.“We were clearly lonely and, like, imagining this fantasy where all our friends lived with us,” Kronengold said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Sirens’ Is a Poppy Summer Getaway

    The new Netflix series, starring Meghann Fahy, Milly Alcock and Julianne Moore, isn’t breaking any boundaries, but it is often entertaining.“Sirens,” a five-part mini-series on Netflix, brims with trendy TV elements, a mythology-tinged beach drama with a weepy trauma plot and a poppy attention to cult sagas. It’s more summer fling than marriage material, but who doesn’t like to get away?Meghann Fahy stars as the down-and-out Devon, who dresses in black, smokes cigarettes, has casual sexual encounters and tries to care for her ailing father with dementia in Buffalo. Milly Alcock is Simone, her little sister, a live-in assistant on Martha’s Vineyard whose outfits seem ripped from a Lilly Pulitzer lookbook. Devon arrives, unbidden, because she needs help, but she soon becomes worried that Simone is in a cult led by her employer, Kiki (Julianne Moore), an ethereal, overwhelming ex-lawyer married to a frustrated billionaire (Kevin Bacon).“Sirens” is “White Lotus”-adjacent, thanks in part to its “rich people: they are actually very sad sometimes” elements and especially thanks to Fahy, its lead and a “White Lotus” alumna. It shares an “Upstairs, Downstairs” behind-the-scenes energy and a fascination with birds with “The Residence.” As in the dopey yet engrossing thriller “Paradise,” there is something unsettling and amiss about the luxury here. Every mysterious streaming drama needs a parade of famous faces, and “Sirens” gives us Moore, Bacon and Glenn Howerton. And as with dozens of other poor-little-rich-folks series, primo real estate is the backbone of the show.Those are relatively chichi shows to resemble, but “Sirens” is perhaps more in keeping with trends from the other end of the prestige spectrum: It often feels like a Hallmark Channel movie.“Sirens” swims from campy to grounded and back, feeling sometimes refreshingly unpredictable and other times confusingly disjointed. When the oddities amplify each other, the show takes on an eerie, alluring dreaminess. But then the show backs away from its boldest ideas, as if it had this bolder, grander plan and then just said, “Eh, never mind.”The draw here is the goofy luminosity of it all and the commitment of the performances. It is also a show that could be told entirely through hair: Each perfect ponytail is an instant character biography; frizz stands in for personal failure; face-framing waves that crest right at the cheekbone might as well be a halo; and a stick-straight blowout cuts deeper than a knife in the back. More

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    James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris and Bobby Cannavale Lead Broadway ‘Art’

    The three actors will star in a revival of Yasmina Reza’s 1994 play, which begins performances at the end of August.Broadway’s run of starry plays shows no signs of slowing down.James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris and Bobby Cannavale will return to Broadway in a late summer revival of “Art,” a Yasmina Reza comedy that explores what happens to a three-way friendship when one of the men spends a lot of money on a painting that is mostly a white canvas.First staged in France in 1994, the show made it to Broadway in 1998, and won the Tony Award for best play that season. It has been widely staged in the years since its debut. The revival is scheduled to begin performances on Aug. 28 and to open Sept. 16 at the Music Box Theater. It is expected to run through Dec. 21.The new production will be directed by Scott Ellis, a Broadway regular who is currently serving as interim artistic director of Roundabout Theater Company and who directed this spring’s production of “Pirates! The Penzance Musical.”The show is being produced by Sand & Snow Entertainment, a company founded by Michael Shulman, as well as by ATG Productions, led by Adam Speers, and Gavin Kalin.This star-led production is the latest example of a growing trend: Broadway producers are turning to limited-run plays featuring TV and film celebrities because those shows seem more likely to succeed. At a time when almost every new musical is failing financially, six of this season’s plays have already become profitable: “Oh, Mary!,” “All In: Comedy About Love,” “Romeo + Juliet,” “Othello,” “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “Good Night, and Good Luck.”Corden, Harris and Cannavale are not just stars of the big and small screen — all three are experienced and accomplished stage performers. Corden and Harris are both Tony winners — Corden in 2012 for “One Man, Two Guvnors,” and Harris in 2014 for “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” Cannavale is a two-time Tony nominee. More

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    Late Night Thinks Trump’s ‘White Genocide’ Video Was a Bit Much

    “The guy who couldn’t find South Africa on a map of Africa” subjected its leader to an extremely dubious video about his own country, Jimmy Kimmel said.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.Lie, the Beloved CountryOn Wednesday, President Trump lectured the visiting president of South Africa, claiming that genocide was being carried out against white farmers in his country (and subjecting him to a dubious video on that subject). In turn, Trump got a lecture from late-night hosts, who dismantled his false claims.“There’s a right-wing conspiracy theory bubbling right now that says they’re killing all the white people in South Africa,” Jimmy Kimmel explained on Wednesday night. “Trump apparently has seen this online, so he brings the president in, he turns the lights down and makes him sit through a multimedia presentation about his own country titled ‘White Genocide.’”“I mean, seriously, does anyone at the White House — does anyone around him ever say, ‘Oh, Mr. President, this one is wrong, this is not real, this one makes you look demented and dumb’? Nobody does.” — JIMMY KIMMELOn “The Daily Show,” Ronny Chieng said Trump had turned the White House meeting “into a murder podcast.”“Trump is convinced that there is white genocide going on in South Africa, which of course means there is no white genocide happening in South Africa. It’s not even mathematically possible. I mean, you’ll never run out of white South Africans when one of them is making 5,000 kids a week.” — RONNY CHIENG, referring to Elon Musk“But still, Trump thinks there is one, and you know he cares about it because he said ‘white genocide.’ It’s like someone told him, ‘Hey, it’s not just a genocide, it’s a white genocide. You know, the bad kind.’” — RONNY CHIENG“During the meeting, this is real, things got pretty heated, and the president of South Africa actually said, ‘I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you.’ And then, to mess with Trump even more, he gave him tickets to see a Springsteen concert in New Jersey.” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump asked some tough questions, like, ‘How did you get rid of Elon? I’ll tell you what I did. How did you do it?’ — JIMMY FALLON“If you really want to impress Trump, you should have given him one of your golf courses. Then Trump would be like, ‘Hell, yeah! Sorry, white South Africans, if that’s even a real thing. Thoughts and prayers.’” — RONNY CHIENGThe Punchiest Punchlines (Golden Dome Edition)“President Trump has unveiled plans for a ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense shield that could cost tens of billions. Here is a schematic of what the golden dome would look like. The best part about the defense shield? He says the Klingons will pay for it.” — GREG GUTFELD“We’re fine. Gold doesn’t melt. It’s the strongest metal on earth.” — GRACE KUHLENSCHMIDT of “The Daily Show”“Yes, gold. Because when I think impenetrable, I think of stuff that pirates can bend with their teeth.” — STEPHEN COLBERTWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Business Ideas’ Review: A Parable in a Cute Cafe

    Milo Cramer’s new comedy about work, survival and the quest for a meaningful life opens Clubbed Thumb’s venerable Summerworks festival.Late each spring at the Wild Project, on East Third Street in Manhattan, crowds bubbling with conversation spill out of the airy lobby onto the sidewalk, awaiting curtain time. For fans of appealingly eccentric downtown theater, this is a seasonal ritual: the return of Clubbed Thumb’s venerable Summerworks festival of new plays.Opening this year’s series, Milo Cramer’s “Business Ideas” is recognizably Summerworks fare — a thoughtful, heightened comedy with a Grade-A cast, a trim running time and a set that instantly draws the eye. A curveball-throwing play about work, survival and the quest for a meaningful life, it takes place in the kind of cafe where a patron could comfortably spend hours, what with the creamy color scheme, the big windows and the potted greenery on the shelves. (The set is by Emmie Finckel.)But for Patty (Brittany Bradford), a miserable and underpaid barista, working there is a shame-inducing, six-days-a-week form of torture: so many customers, so impossible to please. Her only curiosity about them is what they do for a living.Each customer is played by Mary Wiseman, whose over-the-top transformations are a huge part of the fun of this production, directed by Laura Dupper. Wiseman becomes the Slowww Customer, who turns out to be a kindergarten teacher; the Anxious Customer, a therapist; and the Apologizing Customer, an administrative assistant. Also the Hurried Customer, who wears a comically loud dress that clashes wonderfully with what we learn is her vital job. (Costumes are by Avery Reed.)Wiseman plays the cafe’s dreadful owner, too. Sounding like Madeline Kahn, she dryly reads out a series of online customer complaints about Patty, then demands: “Every single Yelp review has to be perfect from now on.”“That’s impossible,” Patty says. “That’s like a fairy-tale task. Like weave straw into gold.”Over in the corner, taking up two tables despite having bought nothing, the recently fired Georgina (Annie McNamara) and her constitutionally embarrassed teenage daughter, Lisa (Laura Scott Cary), are engaged in a challenge with similarly long odds: dreaming up a business idea so irresistible that it will instantly rescue their family finances. Desperation eventually removes any moral framework from schemes they’re willing to consider.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole’ Review: Dimming a Great Talent

    Dulé Hill stars as the silky crooner in a play about the last broadcast of his variety show, in 1957.When Nat King Cole performed “The Party’s Over” on his NBC variety show, he did it with a smile, as he seemed to do everything. But the song bitterly resonated on that particular broadcast, Cole’s final outing as a host, having quit after just over a year’s worth of struggles finding national advertisers. “It’s time to wind up / The masquerade,” he sang. “Just make your mind up / The piper must be paid.”Written by Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor, the formally ambitious, if muddled, “Lights Out: Nat ‘King’ Cole” takes place on that fateful Dec. 17, 1957, when the pianist and singer said goodbye to his audience. (Note that Domingo, who is famous as an actor these days, does not appear in the show.)The framing device is not unlike that of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which is also set in a TV studio, and both shows look at a momentous taping as a mode of resistance against America’s powers-that-be. But “Lights Out” takes a very different tack from the George Clooney and Grant Heslov play’s straightforward embrace of docu-like similitude .“Some of you thought you were going to get a nice and easy holiday show,” Sammy Davis Jr. (Daniel J. Watts) informs the audiences of both the television studio and New York Theater Workshop, where the production is running. “No! Welcome to the fever dream.” The musical unfurls in the minutes before Cole (Dulé Hill) is supposed to go on the air.Time dilates and contracts; guests and family members pop up; conversations are interspersed with musical standards. Davis, who had actually guest-starred on Cole’s show a few months earlier, is ever-present here as a flamboyantly extroverted jester who might represent the id of the more restrained (at least publicly) Cole. The pinnacle of McGregor’s production is a fiery tap number, choreographed by Jared Grimes, between the two men that lands halfway between duet and battle, and is set to “Me and My Shadow.”Juxtaposing an irrepressible scratcher of itches and a debonair charmer as two forces of Black creativity, which the white establishment tried to contain in safe, acceptable boxes, is the show’s best idea. Hill gives it life with a complex, layered performance as Cole, who is revealed to be channeling his anger and frustrations into a smooth, urbane exterior — a review of his show’s premiere in The New York Times described him as having “an amiable personality that comes across engagingly on the television screen.” (Both Hill and Watts were in the “Lights Out” premiere in 2017, with the People’s Light company in Malvern, Penn.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More