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    Michelle Ebanks Named President and CEO of the Apollo

    Michelle Ebanks, who most recently served as the president of Essence Communications, will assume the role in July.Michelle Ebanks, who most recently served as the president of Essence Communications, the global media and communications company dedicated to Black women, will be the next president and chief executive of the Apollo Theater in Harlem, the organization announced on Tuesday.“I have a deep understanding of the value of cultural institutions and their profound impact on individual lives and society, and the Apollo Theater as one of the nation’s greatest cultural institutions,” Ebanks said in an interview on Monday.Ebanks, 61, replaces the theater’s longtime leader, Jonelle Procope, who announced last year that she planned to step down this summer after nearly 20 years steering the Harlem organization, which she transformed from a struggling nonprofit to the largest African American performing arts presenting organization in the country.The appointment comes at a critical time for the theater, which is wrapping up an $80 million capital fund-raising campaign to fully renovate its 109-year-old building, with construction set to begin next year and the first cultural programs in the new space planned for spring 2025. Along with a new lobby cafe and bar that will be open to the public, plans include added and upgraded seating, new lighting and audio systems and updates to the building’s exterior. The main theater will be closed during at least part of the renovation, but programming will be presented at the Victoria theaters, and will also continue at the Apollo.Ebanks, who holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Florida, led Essence Communications for 18 years and helped grow the company into a global franchise that now includes Essence, the life-style magazine for Black women; Essence.com; and the Essence Festival, the brand’s annual live music event that draws hundreds of thousands of people to New Orleans each year.It was her experience with the Essence Festival specifically that was one of the primary draws for the Apollo, said Charles E. Phillips, chairman of the theater’s board.“She understood really well the kind of artistic content that people would respond to with the Essence Festival,” he said in a phone interview on Monday. “At the same time, she has business experience as well.”Her focus, she said, will be on continuing the existing partnerships the Apollo has with early-career creators and organizations in Harlem and the nation, and expanding them.“I want to reach as many different audiences as possible,” she said. “The impact of arts and music on society is immeasurable, and we need as many stories told from those emerging artists as possible.”Ebanks will assume her new position in July. More

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    Anna Shay, Star of Netflix’s ‘Bling Empire,’ Dies at 62

    A Los Angeles socialite and heiress to a defense contractor, she lived most of her life in private before joining a reality show.Anna Shay, an heiress and Los Angeles socialite who became a breakout star of the Netflix reality show “Bling Empire,” has died. She was 62.Her family confirmed her death to The Associated Press in a statement, which said the cause was a stroke. It was not immediately clear when or where she died.“It saddens our hearts to announce that Anna Shay, a loving mother, grandmother, charismatic star, and our brightest ray of sunshine, has passed away,” said the statement provided to The A.P. “Anna taught us many life lessons on how not to take life too seriously and to enjoy the finer things. Her impact on our lives will be forever missed but never forgotten.”“Bling Empire,” which ran for three seasons on Netflix starting in 2021, centered on wealthy Asian and Asian American fun seekers in Los Angeles and was billed as the real version of the movie “Crazy Rich Asians.” Ms. Shay appeared in 22 episodes, according to the Internet Movie Database.Jeff Jenkins, who produced the show and other reality hits like “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” praised Ms. Shay’s performance in an interview with Town & Country magazine in 2021.“I consider it a personal gift that she agreed to participate,” he said. “But it’s also a gift to everybody watching.”Ms. Shay’s presence on the show was that of a sometimes intimidating, but well-loved matriarch. “Anna is nice to people,” Guy Tang, another cast member, said in one episode, “but you cross her line, she’s going to cut you.”Born in Japan, Ms. Shay was the daughter of Ai Oizumi Shay, who died in 2015, and Edward Albert Shay, who died in 1995. Her parents moved the family to Los Angeles from Tokyo in 1968, according to several news reports.Her father founded the defense contractor Pacific Architects and Engineers, which she and her brother Allen Shay sold to Lockheed Martin in 2006 for an estimated $700 million.Ms. Shay said on the show that she had been married and divorced four times.“I always meet people and then we become friends and that’s it,” Ms. Shay said, adding that all four spouses brought adventure to her life. (She met one of them when she was learning to fly helicopters, she said). Getting ready for a blind date on “Bling Empire,” she said she was open to marrying a fifth time. Ms. Shay never publicly shared her spouses’ identities.She is survived by a son, Kenny Kemp. A full list of survivors was not immediately available.Ms. Shay in a scene from “Bling Empire,” which ran on Netflix for three seasons.Netflix/Netflix, via Associated PressAfter the news of Ms. Shay’s death, her co-stars and other friends expressed their grief and posted tributes on social media.“We spent most of the pandemic together, slaying it on Rodeo Dr., grocery shopping, making Japanese plum wine and doing silly things,” Kane Lim, a fellow cast member who said he forged an off-camera friendship with Ms. Shay, wrote on Instagram.“You had a nonchalance about you that was mesmerizing,” he wrote. “I was lucky to get to know the real you.”She was known on “Bling Empire” for her personal style, a love for cooking and cutting zingers. In her first scene, she is seen sledgehammering a wall in her closet while wearing a red ball gown and a sparkling diamond necklace. When a friend asked what she was doing, she dryly answered, “I’m fixing my closet.”Ms. Shay was always surrounded by a security detail, including at her vast estate in Beverly Hills, something she said she had been used to from an early age as a member of a wealthy family.“My father, he was extremely protective as I was growing up,” Ms. Shay said on the show.Even though she spent much of her final years in front of cameras, she remained somewhat of a mystery. “Anna Shay can reach you, but you can’t reach Anna Shay,” Kelly Mi Li, another “Bling Empire” star, said on a podcast last year.“She was something special,” Pep Williams, an art photographer in Los Angeles, wrote on Facebook. “We used to race Ferraris and Lamborghinis from Beverly Hills to Palm Springs. So many good times just hanging out at the house talking about life, cars, and photography.”This spring, Netflix canceled “Bling Empire” as well as its spinoff, “Bling Empire: New York.”Mostly, Ms. Shay exuded a sense of confidence among the gossip and drama that the reality show inspires. “I don’t feel this need to compete,” she said in one episode. “I find it fiercely annoying.” More

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    ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ Star Shows Off Her Snug Upper West Side Rental

    Bonnie Milligan, a star of the musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” has been the lucky occupant of a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan for 15 years.Bonnie Milligan, an actress known for her vocal range and belting voice, shares a snug rental on the Upper West Side with a college friend who is also a performer. Ms. Milligan’s bedroom is sufficiently small that she has to leave to change her mind. The kitchen and living room are pretty much one and the same space.But the 30-something Ms. Milligan, a Tony nominee for her performance as the shifty, shiftless Aunt Debra in the musical “Kimberly Akimbo” (the awards ceremony is scheduled for June 11), isn’t much for trafficking in discouraging words. Thus, she quickly points out her building’s admirable location (handy to both Lincoln Center and a subway stop) and eagerly enumerates the desirable features of the apartment complex. A concierge across the street “collects packages for us, which is a huge thing,” she said. There’s a washer and dryer in the basement, and workout equipment in the courtyard.As for the apartment itself: Ta-da! It’s rent controlled.“Over the course of the 15 years I’ve been here, it has gone up $550 in total,” Ms. Milligan said.Bonnie Milligan, a Tony Award nominee for her performance in the musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” shares a rental on the Upper West Side with a college friend. “I feel comfort here,” she said.Earl Wilson/The New York TimesBonnie Milligan, 30-somethingOccupation: ActressTwo’s company: “My apartment mate and I have both gone out of town on jobs. I’ve been here alone, or she’s been here alone, and we think, ‘I really like the comfort of living with my best friend.’ That’s the long and short of it.”“We have all these amenities that would mean a skyrocketing price if we went elsewhere,” she added, while declining to reveal her current rent. “Every time we’ve looked somewhere else in the neighborhood, we end up thinking that we might as well stay here.”And even if the Tony nomination is great and validating — and, perhaps, a sign of lucrative things to come — Ms. Milligan knows that the one certain thing in an actor’s life is uncertainty. She made her Broadway debut in 2018 in “Head Over Heels,” a musical that combined a Renaissance pastoral romance with the music of the Go-Go’s. When it closed (barely five months after it opened), she had a year of readings and workshops, and “maybe a demo here and there, and I think maybe I shot a little TV,” she said. “But I was hustling to get money for my bills.”Ms. Milligan comes honestly by her modest housing expectations.She spent her formative years in a double-wide trailer behind her grandparents’ home in central Illinois. “I had friends — not even the mean kids, but friends — who would say, ‘We love coming to your house. Yours is the only one with license plates and taillights.’ Those little jabs were hard,” said Ms. Milligan who, after her parents’ divorce, moved with her mother to a small house in northwestern Ohio.Next stop, in 2007: Manhattan.“I remember trying to decide if I wanted a bigger apartment, but this feels like home to me,” Ms. Milligan said.Earl Wilson/The New York Times“I’d been there before on some trips as a teenager, and I just knew it was where I wanted to be to do musical theater. I was a small-town girl, but New York was always my heart,” said Ms. Milligan, who initially sublet space in a three-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up on the Upper East Side. “During my first six months in New York, I lived in every one of the bedrooms as people came and went.”She found stability when some college pals invited her to take over a recently vacated room in their three-bedroom Upper West Side apartment. “That was February 2008, and I’ve been here ever since,” she said.When one of the original residents moved out some years ago, a procession of subletters took over the third bedroom. “I got to a point where I said, ‘Let’s not do this anymore,’” Ms. Milligan recalled. Now that spare room is an office.By necessity, the apartment is light on furniture. A blue love seat in the kitchen/living room is the spot to sit, eat or watch television. A small bookcase near the front door holds Ms. Milligan’s alphabetized DVD collection of 1960s and ’70s television series, most snagged from the $5 bin at Target. Another small bookcase with more DVDs — “Taxi,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show”— sits in her bedroom, along with the bed and bureau from her teenage room in Ohio.The refrigerator is covered in a very tidy array of magnets.Earl Wilson/The New York TimesThe tidily arrayed magnets on the front and side of the refrigerator clue visitors in to her heroes in the most compact way possible. Her beloved maternal grandmother, Betty Jean Meador, loved cardinals; thus, the cardinal magnet. There are Lucille Ball and Gilda Radner magnets, “because both of them were influences on me,” Ms. Milligan said.Doris Day also figures prominently. “I’ve been a huge fan since I was a kid,” she said. “I used to take my allowance money and go on eBay and buy magnets from her movies.”At its most essential level, the apartment is mixture of where Ms. Milligan came from and where she is. The quilt on her bed and the Afghan slung over the sofa once belonged to her grandmother. So did a tin in the living room and the jewelry box atop the bureau. “We were very close, so I like to have a lot of her around,” Ms. Milligan said.The bureau is also home to a small stuffed teddy bear previously owned by Ms. Milligan’s father, a pastor and talented singer, as well as a photo of Ms. Milligan’s mother and grandmother. Nearby is a hatbox that was a prop in “Head Over Heels,” and a small wooden chest that a friend’s grandfather made for Ms. Milligan as an opening night gift.The bedroom walls, on the other hand, tell the story of Ms. Milligan’s life in New York — show posters, fan art, awards, caricatures by Justin “Squigs” Robertson, a theatrical illustrator, and a drawing, commissioned by a friend, of a raccoon garbed in the same warehouse-store vest that Ms. Milligan sports in the last moments of “Kimberly Akimbo.”“My friend and I love raccoons in general, and we’ve always believed that Aunt Debra is an absolute raccoon,” she said.On the morning the Tony nominations came out, three of Ms. Milligan’s college friends came over to watch the announcement on CBS, bringing along coffee, bagels and champagne (just in case there was reason to pop a cork).“It was really beautiful being with dear friends that I met at the Ohio State University,” Ms. Milligan said. “They’ve known me for, like, 20 years. So it was my past and present all together in one place. And that’s the whole thing of my apartment.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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    Ama Ata Aidoo, Groundbreaking Ghanaian Writer, Dies at 81

    A playwright, novelist and poet, she was a leading African writer who explored the complexities faced by modern women living in the shadow of colonialism.Ama Ata Aidoo, a Ghanaian playwright, author and activist who was hailed as one of Africa’s leading literary lights as well as one of its most influential feminists, died on Wednesday. She was 81.Her family said in a statement that she died after a brief illness. The statement did not specify the cause or where she died.In a wide-ranging career that included writing plays, novels and short stories, stints on multiple university faculties and, briefly, a position as a cabinet minister in Ghana, Ms. Aidoo established herself as a major voice of post-colonial Africa.Her breakthrough play, “The Dilemma of a Ghost,” published in 1965, explored the cultural dislocations experienced by a Ghanaian student who returns home after studying abroad and by those of his Black American wife, who must confront the legacies of colonialism and slavery. It was one of several of Ms. Aidoo’s works that became staples in West African schools.Throughout her literary career, Ms. Aidoo sought to illuminate the paradoxes faced by modern African women, still burdened by the legacies of colonialism. She rejected what she described as the “Western perception that the African female is a downtrodden wretch.”Her novel “Changes: A Love Story,” which won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best book, Africa, portrays the psychic and cultural dilemmas faced by Esi, an educated, career-focused woman in Accra, Ghana’s capital, who leaves her husband after he rapes her and lands in a polygamous relationship with a wealthy man.In this work and many others, Ms. Aidoo chronicled the fight by African women for recognition and equality, a fight, she contended, that was inextricable from the long shadow of colonialism.“Our Sister Killjoy” was Ms. Aidoo’s debut novel.Her landmark debut novel, “Our Sister Killjoy, or Reflections From a Black-Eyed Squint” (1977), recounted the experiences of Sissie, a young Ghanaian woman who travels to Europe on a scholarship to better herself, as such a move was traditionally described, with a Western education. In Germany and England, she comes face to face with the dominance of white values, including Western notions of success, among fellow African expatriates.As a Fulbright scholar who spent years as an expatriate herself, including stints as a writer in residence at the University of Richmond in Virginia and as a visiting professor in the Africana studies department at Brown University, Ms. Aidoo too experienced feelings of cultural dislocation.“I have always felt uncomfortable living abroad: racism, the cold, the weather, the food, the people,” she said in a 2003 interview published by the University of Alicante in Spain. “I also felt some kind of patriotic sense of guilt. Something like, Oh, my dear! Look at all the problems we have at home. What am I doing here?”Whatever her feelings about life abroad, she was welcomed in Western literary circles. A 1997 article in The New York Times recounted how her appearance at a New York University conference for female writers of African descent “was greeted with the kind of reverence reserved for heads of state.”Although she never rose to hold that title, she had been Ghana’s minister of education, an appointment she accepted in 1982 with the goal of making education free for all. She resigned after 18 months when she realized the many barriers she would have to overcome to achieve that goal.Ms. Aidoo’s novel “Changes: A Love Story” won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best book, Africa.After moving to Zimbabwe in 1983, Ms. Aidoo developed curriculums for the country’s Ministry of Education. She also made her mark in the nonprofit sphere, founding the Mbaasem Foundation in 2000 to support African women writers.She was a major Pan-Africanist voice, arguing for unity among African countries and for their continued liberation. She spoke with fury about the centuries of exploitation of the continent’s natural resources and people.“Since we met you people 500 years ago, now look at us,” she said in an interview with a French journalist in 1987, later sampled in the 2020 song “Monsters You Made” by the Nigerian Afrobeats star Burna Boy. “We’ve given everything, you are still taking. I mean where will the whole Western world be without us Africans? Our cocoa, timber, gold, diamond, platinum.”“Everything you have is us,” she continued. “I am not saying it. It’s a fact. And in return for all these, what have we got? Nothing.”Christina Ama Ata Aidoo and her twin brother, Kwame Ata, were born on March 23, 1942, in the Fanti village of Abeadzi Kyiakor, in a central region of Ghana then known by its colonial name, the Gold Coast.Her father, Nana Yaw Fama, was a chief of the village who built its first school, and her mother was Maame Abba Abasema. Information about Ms. Aidoo’s survivors was not immediately available.Her grandfather had been imprisoned and tortured by the British, a fact she later invoked when describing herself as “coming from a long line of fighters.”She said she had felt a literary calling from an early age. “At the age of 15,” she said, “a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how, I replied that I wanted to be a poet.”Four years later, she won a short story contest. On seeing her story published by the newspaper that sponsored the competition, she said, “I had articulated a dream.” More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Burden of Proof’ and the Tony Awards

    A brother investigates his sister’s 1987 disappearance in a new true crime series from HBO, and the 76th Annual Tony Awards air live on CBS.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, June 5-11. Details and times are subject to change.MondayFrom left, Adam Rippon, Richard Sherman and Ariel Winter in “Stars on Mars.”Brook Rushton/FOXSTARS ON MARS 8 p.m. on FOX. In this new competition series hosted by the “Star Trek” actor William Shatner, 12 celebrities live 24/7 in a “space station” that simulates life on Mars. The “celebronauts,” who include the comedian Natasha Leggero, the wrestler Ronda Rousey and the “Modern Family” star Ariel Winter, will compete against one another in a series of “missions,” and vote to eliminate one of their crew members at the end of each week.Lexi Underwood, left, and Sadie Stanley in “Cruel Summer.”Justine Yeung/FreeformCRUEL SUMMER 9 p.m. on Freeform. Told through three different timelines, the second season of this drama anthology series follows the friendship among the teenagers Isabella (Lexi Underwood), Megan (Sadie Stanley) and Luke (Griffin Gluck) as their relationships evolve, and they become embroiled in a mystery that profoundly affects all three of their lives. The series “takes a lot of its cues from prestige crime dramas, so its performances are terrific and its central mysteries appropriately tantalizing,” the New York Times TV critic Margaret Lyons wrote.Tuesday30 FOR 30: THE LUCKIEST GUY IN THE WORLD 8 p.m. on ESPN. Directed by Steve James (“Hoop Dreams,” “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail”), this four-part documentary series about the basketball Hall of Famer Bill Walton is the latest installment in ESPN’s Peabody- and Emmy-winning series, “30 for 30,” which explores the role of sports in society and culture. Through commentary from Walton, his family and a number of basketball stars, the episodes tell the story of Walton’s life, following him from antiwar protests at U.C.L.A. to an N.B.A. career in Portland, Ore., and Boston, while also exploring Walton’s struggles with his mental and physical health.BURDEN OF PROOF 9 p.m. on HBO. Shot over the course of seven years, this four-part true crime docuseries follows Stephen Pandos as he pursues his own investigation into the disappearance of his sister, Jennifer, who went missing from their family home in 1987 at age 15. Their parents told everyone she ran away. The series features Jennifer’s journal entries and letters, police documentation and interviews with family and friends to paint a picture of what may have happened the night of Jennifer’s disappearance. As missing evidence is uncovered and Stephen’s parents fail lie detector tests, he becomes increasingly convinced of their culpability.WednesdayGlenn Howerton and Kaitlin Olson in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”Patrick McElhenney/FXIT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA 10 p.m. on FXX. The longest-running live-action comedy series in American TV history is back for its 16th season — and so are Mac (Rob McElhenney), Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Charlie (Charlie Day), Sweet Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and Frank (Danny DeVito), the potty-mouthed protagonists who run Paddy’s Pub in Philadelphia. They’re up to new high jinks, as this season finds Dennis and Mac investing in inflatable furniture, Frank shooting Dennis and Dee, and Mac and Charlie going on a road trip with their mothers in order to get their inheritances. The series “isn’t for everyone,” writes Austin Considine in an episode guide to the show, as there is little redemption or character growth. But for those willing to give it a chance, “Sunny” features a “brilliant ensemble of self-centered neurotics who somehow manage to be likable, despite their best efforts.”ThursdayALONE 9 p.m. on History. The 10th season of this popular survival show takes place in Northern Saskatchewan, Canada. Ten survivalists are separated and scattered across the wilderness to see who can endure living in the harsh climate the longest. There are no camera crews or outside aid, and each contestant is given only 10 items of their choice, enough camera gear to self-document their experiences and a radio for emergencies. The last person standing wins $500,000.FridayWALK THE LINE (2005) 6:25 p.m. on HBO. Based on two autobiographies by the singer-songwriter Johnny Cash — “Man in Black: His Own Story in His Own Words,” published in 1975, and “Cash: The Autobiography,” published in 1997 — this Academy Award-nominated biopic tells the story of Cash’s ascent in the music scene. With Joaquin Phoenix playing Cash, the film begins with his abusive childhood on a cotton farm in Arkansas, and follows him as he joins the Air Force, gets married and becomes a country music star, with a large portion of the film devoted to his romance with the singer June Carter (Reese Witherspoon) and his drug addiction. “The sheer range of material is staggering,” A.O. Scott wrote of Cash’s music in his review for The Times, adding that “there is no way a feature-length movie could do justice to such bounty, and ‘Walk the Line’ settles for the minimum.” Yet, Scott wrote, the film’s personal treatment of Cash and his rise “remind us why we should care about this guy in the first place.”SaturdayKINGS ROW (1942) 3:45 p.m. on TCM. This Oscar-nominated film, based on the 1940 novel of the same name by Henry Bellamann, tells the stories of five friends from the small Midwestern town of Kings Row. The film follows them as they transition from childhood to adulthood at the turn of the 20th century, and face a series of setbacks and challenges in pursuit of the lives they want. Featuring Ronald Reagan in one of the lead roles, the film is just as “gloomy and ponderous” as the book, Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The Times, adding that the story centers on “several sordid and perverse folk.” Ultimately, Crowther wrote, “there are moments of pathos in ‘Kings Row,’ and occasionally it strikes a sharp nostalgic note,” but overall, “it just shows a lot of people feeling bad.”SundayTHE 76TH ANNUAL TONY AWARDS 8 p.m. on CBS. The annual awards ceremony meant to honor Broadway plays and musicals will take place this year at the United Palace, a large theater in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood. Ariana DeBose, the Academy Award and Golden Globe winner who was nominated for a Tony in 2018, will host the ceremony for the second time in a row. More

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    Peter Simonischek, Beloved Austrian Actor, Is Dead at 76

    He played a prankster and adoring father in “Toni Erdmann,” the Oscar-nominated 2016 comedy that made him an international star, but he had long been a celebrity at home.Peter Simonischek, an eminent Austrian theater actor who found international fame as the shambolic prankster and adoring father in Maren Ade’s Oscar-nominated 2016 German film “Toni Erdmann,” died on May 29 at his home in Vienna. He was 76.The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Brigitte Karner, said.Mr. Simonischek was a member of the Burgtheater, the venerable Viennese institution otherwise known as the Burg, one of the oldest and largest ensemble theaters in the world.“He was one of the last great stars of Austria,” said Simon Stone, the Australian director who is based in Vienna and cast Mr. Simonischek in his 2021 play, “Komplizen,” at the Burg. Mr. Simonischek, he said, was a beloved public figure, recognized by taxi drivers and passers-by in the streets of Vienna, where he was more of a celebrity than most film stars.He was certainly easy to spot: a handsome, shaggy-haired bear of a man who used his physical heft to marvelous effect.His size “lent his performances a hulking grandeur,” said A.J. Goldmann, who covers German theater for The New York Times, “that could be tragic or give them a Falstaffian absurdity.”In the comedy “Toni Erdmann,” the story of a workaholic management consultant named Ines (played with brittle humor by Sandra Hüller), Mr. Simonischek is Winifried, Ines’s mortifying father, a retired music teacher who sets out to liberate Ines from her soul-squashing profession by camouflaging himself as Toni Erdmann, a loutish, lumbering corporate consultant to her boss, and upending all she holds dear.The film, written and directed by Ms. Ade, enthralled critics at Cannes and the New York Film Festival and was nominated for a 2016 Academy Award for best foreign language film (losing to “The Salesman,” from Iran). A.O. Scott, writing in The New York Times, called it “a study in the radical power of embarrassment” and described Mr. Simonischek’s character as “a slapstick superhero.”Mr. Simonischek in a scene from the 2016 film “Toni Erdmann,” which brought him international fame.Photo 12/Alamy Stock Photo“Sometimes he’s a clown,” Mr. Stone said of Mr. Simonischek. “And sometimes he’s an authority figure or a debonair leading man. He was willing to completely humiliate himself. He used his beauty and his imposing physicality as a kind of canvas on which he could paint any kind of disgusting or extraordinary quality that any of his characters needed.”In Mr. Stone’s play “Komplizen,” which he said translates not quite accurately as “Complicit,” Mr. Simonischek played an industrialist who is facing a reckoning as the world turns against him and his ilk.It is Mr. Stone’s process to write his scripts in rehearsal, to encourage the actors to come to the material fresh and make room for improvisation. It’s a grueling process, he said, and Mr. Simonischek excelled at it, cheering on the younger cast members who struggled with the practice. Also, the production called for a rotating stage, making rehearsals even more grueling.“Once you’ve got Peter in your corner, you can achieve anything,” Mr. Stone said. “His brilliance was infectious; he shared it with the cast on a daily basis. It’s a quality he has had from the beginning of his career — to make other actors brilliant while never becoming less brilliant himself.”Peter Simonischek was born on Aug. 6, 1946, in Graz, Austria. His mother was a homemaker and his father was a dentist who had hoped his son would study medicine, as Mr. Simonischek told an interviewer last year. But after seeing a performance of “Hamlet” when he was a teenager, he said, “I was lost.”He attended the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, and found work as an actor in Switzerland and Germany. In 1979, he joined the Berlin Schaubühne, an innovative ensemble theater, where he became a star. He joined the Bur in 2000.In addition to “Toni Erdmann,” for which he received the European Film Award for best actor, his most recent film roles include “The Interpreter,” a 2018 Slovak film, and “Measure of Men,” a German film about the country’s colonial atrocities in Africa; it came out in February.Besides his wife, who is also an actor, Mr. Simonischek is survived by three sons, Max, Kaspar and Benedikt, and two grandchildren. His first marriage, to Charlotte Schwab, ended in divorce.Just before his death, Mr. Simonischek had been playing the stage role of the patriarch of a Pakistani American family in a production of Ayad Akhtar’s “The Who and the What” at the Renaissance Theater in Berlin, following an enormously popular run at the Burg, where it opened in 2018. (The Renaissance stopped the show when Mr. Simonischek fell ill a few weeks ago.)The play tells the story of a devout and charismatic Muslim man whose daughter has written a novel about the Prophet Muhammad, scandalizing their traditional community and upending their relationship.Mr. Akhtar, who won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2013 and is the author of the critically acclaimed 2020 novel, “Homeland Elegies,” said that of all his plays this production is the longest running and most popular. And in contrast to its American run in 2014, it was staged with an all-white cast, only because that is the cultural and racial makeup of Burg’s ensemble. It’s a scenario that in years past might have given him pause, as he told Mr. Goldmann of The Times in 2018. But Mr. Simonischek and his castmates had won him over.Mr. Simonischek in 2008 with the German actress Sophie von Kessel in a dress rehearsal of “Jedermann” at the Salzburg Festival.Schaadfoto, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“What was remarkable was this weird alchemy,” Mr. Akhtar said in a phone interview, “because Simonischek at that point was the patriarch of Austrian theater, a father figure to the Austrian public, and he was playing this conservative Muslim father.“On opening night the notoriously stoic Viennese audience was in tears,” he went on. “Maybe not as much as me” — Mr. Akhtar said he was sobbing onstage at the curtain call — “but not far from it. It was one of the peak moments of my career.”At Mr. Simonischek’s death, Mr. Akhtar was in the middle of writing a play for him. Mr. Simonischek, he said, was “soulful, precise and enthralling — an actor whose heart and generosity were as wide as his talent.” More

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    in Theater

    Review: In ‘Love + Science,’ a Meet Cute Becomes a Medical Mystery

    In 1980s Manhattan, two medical students find themselves at the forefront of the AIDS crisis in David J. Glass’s new play at New York City Center.The two medical students in “Love + Science” a new play by David J. Glass, quickly tumble into bed together and then spend five years too afraid to kiss. The time is 1980s Manhattan, and the students, Matt and Jeff (Matt Walker, Jonathan Burke), are gay men both researching virology when reports of a frightening new infection arise. In this meet cute turned medical mystery by In Vitro Productions, the pair find themselves at the forefront of the H.I.V./AIDS crisis, investigating a deadly threat to which they’re both vulnerable. Glass sets the clock ticking (the years are marked between scenes) and asks us to observe the history of the devastating disease, ensuing protests and therapeutic breakthroughs.Since the 1980s, a genre of plays dramatizing the AIDS epidemic, has generally sought to render on a human scale a catastrophe that might otherwise seem unfathomable. In “Love + Science,” Glass returns to the tradition of documentation, detailing both the microscopic maneuvers and social consequences of H.I.V. with the schematic precision of a lab experiment. (Glass is a senior lecturer in cell biology at Harvard University.) This meticulous drama that opened on Sunday at New York City Center functions primarily as a chronicle of developments, with characters whose particulars are cursory and incidental.Walker and Burke are able and appealing performers, but surface-level charm is all the information-saturated dialogue will allow. (The push and pull between them as lovers, hyper-informed by risk but lacking in chemistry, has the erotic charge of a leaflet.) Of the five supporting cast members, who play multiple roles, Imani Pearl Williams brings welcome pizazz as a lab student and a blind date who each deliver truth bombs like punchlines. Adrian Greensmith and Ryan Knowles make the terror and uncertainty faced by AIDS patients both palpable and affecting.The director Allen MacLeod’s lively production at least relishes the fun of 1980s aesthetics, with flashes of electric pink and blue in the lighting and projection design by Samuel J. Biondolillo and with costumes by Camilla Dely that are Zoomer catnip. And perhaps “Love + Science” will offer a bit of essential education, and opportunity for reflection, to those who did not live through the outbreak depicted onstage but have just experienced another pandemic.If the coronavirus is the playwright’s claim to timeliness, that context is left almost entirely inferred until a present-day coda attempts to draw a rushed and tenuous through line. At the performance I attended, the audience seemed to assume the show was over before its leap three decades forward. Not that the final scene offers narrative resolutions; the relationships between the characters hardly ask for any, and the future of scientific study is still unwritten.Love + ScienceThrough July 6 at New York City Center Stage II, Manhattan; loveandscienceplay.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    in Television

    ‘The Idol’: The Weeknd, Sam Levinson and Lily Rose-Depp on Their Graphic Pop Drama

    In an interview, the Weeknd, Sam Levinson and Lily Rose-Depp discussed their controversial new HBO drama. “Running headfirst into that fire is what thrills us all,” Levinson said.From left, Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. the Weeknd), Sam Levinson and Lily-Rose Depp during filming of “The Idol.” The series, premiering Sunday on HBO, has already been the subject of scathing reports and reviews.Eddy Chen/HBOLast month, the director Sam Levinson and his stars, Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. the Weeknd) and Lily-Rose Depp, walked into the Lumière Theater at the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of the first two episodes of their show, “The Idol,” to a standing ovation. The lights hadn’t yet dimmed, but celebrity fuels Cannes, where ovations are cheap. By the time the screening was over, the amped-up crowd was on its feet again and critics were racing out to fire off some of the most scathing reviews to emerge from this year’s event, with pans studded with barbs like “regressive,” “chauvinistic,” “skin-crawling” and “grim disaster.”“The Idol” centers on a chart-busting pop star, Jocelyn (Depp), who, in the wake of a nervous breakdown, is prepping for a comeback. Surrounded by handlers — the cast includes Hank Azaria, Troye Sivan, Jane Adams, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and the horror-film impresario Eli Roth — Jocelyn has made a lot of money for a lot of self-interested people. One night at a Los Angeles dance club, she meets Tedros (Tesfaye), a smooth-talking enigma with a rattail. Before long, she has invited him back to her mansion and they’re grinding in the shadows, and a mystery has taken root: What in the world is she doing with this guy?Created by Levinson, Tesfaye and Reza Fahim, “The Idol,” which premieres on Sunday, was already a heat-seeking target by the time it played at Cannes. In April 2022, word hit that its original director, Amy Seimetz, had left the show amid a creative overhaul. For whatever reason, the brain trust at HBO decided to pump up the show’s notoriety in a teaser, released three months later, that trumpeted Levinson and Tesfaye as “the sick & twisted minds” behind “the sleaziest love story in all of Hollywood.” But unwanted attention arrived this past March in a damning Rolling Stone article that, among other rebukes, accused Levinson’s version of being “a rape fantasy.” That teaser has since disappeared from HBO’s YouTube channel.Levinson, Tesfaye and other “Idol” collaborators have vigorously defended the show and its creators. “The process on the set was unbelievably creative,” Azaria said at a news conference a day after the Cannes premiere, as Adams nodded along. “I’ve been on many, many a dysfunctional set, believe me,” Azaria continued. “This was the exact opposite.”For his part, Levinson, who is best known for “Euphoria,” yet another HBO show about a beautiful young woman in crisis, said at the news conference that the specifics in the article felt “completely foreign.” But he also seemed to welcome the controversy.“When my wife read me the article,” he explained, “I looked at her and I just said, ‘I think that we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.’”On the day after the “Idol” news conference, I met with Levinson, Tesfaye and Depp — whose father, Johnny Depp, was also at the festival this year — for a sit-down at the Carlton Cannes, one of the grand hotels that faces the Mediterranean in this rarefied resort city. We talked about the show while tucked into a private patio corner, just out of earshot of nervously hovering publicists and other minders. During our chat, Levinson and his two colleagues alluded to the negative reviews, but if they were upset by them, they didn’t show or share it.“I’m still spinning from it,” Levinson said of the premiere. “It was maybe the most surreal moment I’ve had — I don’t really leave my house much.” These are edited excerpts from the interview.Can we talk about the genesis of “The Idol”?SAM LEVINSON Abel and I have known each other for quite a few years, and we’ve always wanted to work together. We got on a Zoom because I’d heard he has this project. The genesis was he said, “Look, if I wanted to start a cult, I could. And I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing.”ABEL TESFAYE I actually don’t remember saying that [laughs]. I think I was just trying to say anything to finally work with you. I’ve always wanted to work with Sam; we’ve been friends forever. It was more about celebrity culture and how much power they have.How much power they have?TESFAYE It’s probably hard to believe, but I can’t see myself in that way. I never have. Even when I move around with security, it feels so weird because I don’t ever want to be seen. I feel like I have to be seen — fans want to see who they listen to, who they love. But for me, celebrity culture was always fascinating, and how much power they have on their fans.Depp plays a pop star named Jocelyn who comes under the sway of an enigmatic man named Tedros, played by Tesfaye.Eddy Chen/HBOLily, you grew up in a famous family, but it was fame by proxy.LILY-ROSE DEPP I’ve experienced it by proxy since birth. That’s simultaneously a strange thing and also not strange at all, because I don’t know anything different. My childhood looks nothing like Jocelyn’s, a character who has been working from a young age, and who was a child performer and had a mother who was pushing her. My childhood was never going to be “normal,” but they gave us the best sense of normalcy that we could have.Did you watch any of the Britney Spears documentaries?TESFAYE It’s not about Britney at all, but how could we not pull inspiration from Britney, from Madonna, from every pop star that’s gone through any kind of serious pain? I’ve always called Lily one of the creators of the show, because I couldn’t write Jocelyn until we knew who was going to play her. Once Lily got the role, she and Sam worked together on creating the character. What I could provide was the music industry around her — management, labels, touring, everything that I know.DEPP I was so nervous about the musical aspect. It’s not what I do and this character has been doing this her entire life. I remember the first time that I had to sing in front of Abel, I was, like, I’m going to blow my brains out. Little by little, we got to know each other more and got comfortable with each other.LEVINSON We basically moved into Abel’s house, which was our shooting location. We knew that we were going to shoot the entire show in this one place, so we turned it into a live set.Abel, obviously performing for a live audience is different from performing in a music video, and this is very different.TESFAYE I never wrote Tedros for myself; it was Sam who planted the idea. I just focused on being Tedros and living as the character and spending all my time with Sam and listening and allowing him to just be my teacher. Tedros is such a dark, complicated, scary, pathetic human — I had to just distance myself from who I am. And it’s scary, you know, it’s a big risk.“Tedros is such a dark, complicated, scary, pathetic human,” Tesfaye said of his character.Eddy Chen/HBOSo far, the only pathetic thing about him is his hair.TESFAYE We made sure of it. He’s pathetic. It’s funny, we were in the theater watching Tedros and there are moments where only us three were laughing. People have no idea ——LEVINSON —— where it goes. The moment that Tedros clicked for me and, I think, for Abel was, imagine you have all of this ambition, all of this drive, this ability to tell a story through music. But none of the talent. So you have to find a puppet, someone to work through. I also think part of what was fascinating is that he’s rolling up to this mansion and it’s a world that he’s never been invited into. She opens this door ——TESFAYE —— like Dracula, inviting him in.In the first episode there’s a lot of comedy about the intimacy coordinator who doesn’t want Jocelyn to expose part of her body. What is agency for someone brought up in a bubble?DEPP I totally respect and love intimacy coordinators. I think they belong on sets, and that it’s important to make everybody feel safe. I’m very comfortable saying, “I’m fine to do this or not this,” but some people aren’t. At the same time, you have to have this nudity rider, it has to be submitted in advance and it has to be signed by this person and the lawyer. It becomes this very structured legal thing when the purpose is to give freedom and safety to the person who may or may not be doing nudity. You literally can’t make a decision about your own body.“I think that they are two twisted psychopaths who love each other,” Depp said. “She’s going to use him, too.”Eddy Chen/HBOIs Jocelyn her own person? She’s surrounded by this apparatus. Abel, is the show inspired by your life in terms of wanting to do what you want to do?TESFAYE There have been moments where I’ve felt like it is me-against-them. But because of my situation — I own my masters — I’m very fortunate. But what if I didn’t? They would automatically win: 99.99999 percent of pop stars don’t have that and are in Jocelyn’s position. So it’s not autobiographical; it’s like an alternate reality.LEVINSON That’s part of what we wanted to set up. Here is this machine and we’re not sure how complicit she is. We see how it grinds her down. But that moment of agency is when they’re in bed and Tedros says, “Maybe I should move in for work purposes.” You see this slight smile on her face. That’s her going, I’ve got him. He’s hooked.DEPP It’s going to be easy for the audience to immediately think, Oh my God, he’s using her. I think that they are two twisted psychopaths who love each other. She’s going to use him, too.TESFAYE Everything is very intentional. We knew that the reaction was going to be the way it is because of those two episodes.Much of the early talk surrounding the show has been about the amount of nudity. Lily, were you surprised by how your body was shown?DEPP No, honestly. Her bareness, physically and emotionally, was a big part of the discussions that we all had. Those were decisions I was completely involved in. There are many women who have felt exploited by the nudity they’ve done and have thought, I didn’t feel great about that. But I’m comfortable performing in that way, I enjoy it. It informed the character. In the conversation around the risqué aspects, there’s the implication that it’s something being consistently imposed upon women. Obviously, that has been true a lot historically.LEVINSON It also plays into that feeling that the audience has: Oh, she’s a victim. She has to be a victim. I believe people will underestimate Jocelyn as a character because of how exposed she is.I wondered about all the nudity, and about having a Black man be the villain.LEVINSON Playing into those stereotypes in the first couple of episodes is important for the journey and the arc and the emotional experience. It has a way of disorienting us because of our knowledge of who we are, and what has happened in the world. I think the audience will slowly begin to see who the true villain of the piece is.TESFAYE We wanted to make a fun show, as well. It’s a thriller. There are a lot of topics, but it’s really important that it’s entertaining as well.Do you worry about how the show will be received, given that larger discussions about race, gender and representation are so fraught right now?LEVINSON That’s what makes it exciting, that these discussions are fraught. I think running headfirst into that fire is what thrills us all.TESFAYE Someone’s got to do it. No one’s really doing it now. They just need to see the whole show.DEPP We always knew that we were going to make something that was going to be provocative and perhaps not for everyone. That was a draw for all of us. I don’t think any of us were interested in making anything that was going to be, you know, fun for the whole family.TESFAYE When I first started making music, it was the exact same thing. It was provocative, and I knew it was going to be tough for people. And a lot of people didn’t like it. Not to compare it, but I feel that this is kind of like that again. This is not going to be for everybody, and that’s fine. We’re not politicians. More