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    Charles Hull, Who Brought Theater to Young Audiences, Dies at 92

    The award-winning company he co-founded, Theaterworks USA, went on the road to introduce millions of students to professional productions of plays and musicals.Charles Hull, who co-founded Theaterworks USA, a touring theater company that has brought professional performances to tens of millions of young people across the country, died on April 14 at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.The death was confirmed by his daughter Hilary Hull Gupta.Mr. Hull, who had been an Off Broadway, summer stock and commercial actor, founded the company that became Theaterworks in 1961 with the director Jay Harnick. For decades, Mr. Hull was the company’s managing director and Mr. Harnick its artistic director.The idea was to bring affordable, exceptional musicals and drama to children who might never get to see a Broadway or an Off Broadway show. By the late 1990s, Mr. Hull and Mr. Harnick were staging as many as 20 made-to-move productions in nearly 500 cities a year without the fuss, or expense, of a Broadway effort.The plays and musicals were short, the players nimble, often performing several roles in one show and doubling as the crew. Sets were minimalist and versatile, adaptable to a plethora of venues. “The term we use is cafegymatorium,” Michael Harrington, Theaterworks’ current executive director, said in a phone interview.According to Mr. Hull, only pared-down productions were viable.“If you have to have a crew of 10 to set up a show, there’s no way you can do it,” he told The New York Times in 1996. “The cast in our shows, from six to eight people, are the crew. They put up a set, and in an hour, there you are. If the show is good, you don’t need all those tons of Andrew Lloyd Webber things.”Many shows were biographical, about luminaries like Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson and Pocahontas. Others were literary adaptations of childhood favorites, like the Magic School Bus books, or of more adult fare, like “Don Quixote.” They tackled difficult topics, among them slavery, addiction and racism, without talking down to their audience.“Theaterworks productions are professional, highly entertaining and never condescending,” The Christian Science Monitor said in 1986.In 2005, The Times wrote that “the company has developed a strong reputation as a reliable source of intelligent and well-acted productions for young audiences.”Theaterworks did not just introduce young people to theater — it also introduced up-and-coming actors, composers, directors and writers to show business. The company’s alumni include the actors F. Murray Abraham and Henry Winkler, the four-time Tony Award-winning director Jerry Zaks and the Tony-winning lyricist Lynn Ahrens.A scene from a 1992 production of “From Sea to Shining Sea.” The productions were stripped down, and the actors served as the stage crew.William E. Sauro/The New York TimesThe company was successful and prolific. Mr. Harrington, the executive director, said it had created 148 shows and performed for more than 100 million young people, playing in every state except Hawaii. The company has received special Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards for its work in children’s theater, among other honors.Mr. Hull was born Karl Rudolf Horvat on March 3, 1931, in Vienna, the only child of Bernard and Hermine (Mayr) Horvat. His father owned a jewelry store, which was confiscated by the Nazis after they annexed Austria in 1938.The Horvat family fled West — Karl, who had blonde hair and blue eyes, smuggled jewelry in his clothing, his family said — and eventually settled in East Orange, N.J., where a relative encouraged them to Americanize their names. Mr. Hull’s father died a few years after they arrived, and his mother became a real estate agent.Mr. Hull attended Lehigh University in Pennsylvania on a football scholarship and graduated with a degree in business administration in 1953. He served as a lieutenant in the Air Force in England until 1955, when he accepted a sales job with a steel company in Ohio.Throughout his military service and his years as a salesman, Mr. Hull honed his skills as an actor, taking parts in amateur and community theater. In his late 20s, he traded his steady job for a life as an actor and moved to New York City. He studied under Lee Strasberg and acted in Off Broadway and summer stock productions.Charles Hull in 1968. The idea for Theaterworks started with a Broadway flop seven years earlier.via Hull familyTheaterworks sprang from a Broadway flop.The catalyst was “Young Abe Lincoln,” a musical that Mr. Harnick directed and which Mr. Hull joined as an actor. After a successful Off Broadway run, the show moved to Broadway. It earned effusive reviews but lasted only 27 performances.After consulting with friends, Mr. Harnick and Mr. Hull began booking the show in schools around New York State. In the late 1960s, they registered the company as the Performing Arts Repertory Theater, which they later changed to Theaterworks USA.In addition to Ms. Hull Gupta, Mr. Hull is survived by his wife, Ann (O’Shaughnessy) Hull; another daughter, Alizon Hull Reggioli; and three grandchildren.For Mr. Hull, Theaterworks was a calling more than an occupation. For many years, his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan served as its office. When the company faced financial headwinds, he acted in television commercials for companies like Chevrolet and Amoco to help his family stay afloat.And although he and Mr. Harnick officially retired in 2000, Mr. Hull kept coming into the office for almost two more decades.He was “really ambitious and passionate about the mission of the organization,” Mr. Harrington said. More

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    At a Berlin Festival, Avant-Garde Theater from Europe and New York

    Companies bring body horror and political statements to Berlin’s FIND festival of new international drama, where the Wooster Group is the “artist in focus.”We all walk around with baggage. For some, that’s holding onto the past or worrying about the future, but for Danny Iwas — the main character in the outlandish play “Burnt Toast” — it means carrying an aluminum briefcase containing the remains of his dead mother. The case is even handcuffed to his wrist: that way, he’ll never misplace it.Written and directed by Trine Falch of the Norwegian theater group Susie Wang, “Burnt Toast” is a high point of this year’s edition of FIND, the international festival of new drama held each spring at Berlin’s Schaubühne theater. By accident or by design, a large number of the entries in this festival, which runs until April 30, unfold in confined spaces. In many productions, the very setting feels like a main character.I can safely say that I’ve never seen anything quite like “Burnt Toast,” which mixes sardonic comedy and splatter horror and which was staged on the Schaubühne’s small studio stage. A clammy and rigorously precise chamber work, it takes place entirely in the lobby of a sinister hotel. (The stage-spanning carpet is blood-red.)Shortly after Danny checks in, he meets Violet, a mother who is nursing her infant. In the unpredictable and unclassifiable play that ensues, Falch unspools a disturbing yet tender tale of love and cannibalism. The English-language dialogue is a mix of the mundane and the outrageous, which the three main actors recite with an exaggerated Southern twang.There are the fingerprints of other directors here — Susanne Kennedy, Toshiki Okada and Falch’s countryman Vegard Vinge — but the unsettling tone of the piece feels unique. “Burnt Toast,” which premiered in 2020, is Susie Wang’s first work to be staged in Berlin. Featuring David Cronenberg-style body horror, pregnant infants and dismemberment, “Burnt Toast” certainly isn’t a show for everyone, but it left me hungry for more.“A Pink Chair (In Place of a Fake Antique)” from the Wooster Group is one of the plays on view at the FIND festival.Steve GuntherFor the past several years, FIND has featured an “artist in focus.” Following Angélica Liddell in 2021 and Robert LePage in 2022, this year’s guest of honor is the revered New York experimental theater company the Wooster Group. In Berlin, the Woosters are presenting two recent shows staged by their artistic director, Elizabeth LeCompte, including “Nayatt School Redux,” which revisits one of the group’s early seminal productions and arrives during the festival’s closing weekend. (Four additional productions are also streaming online until Sunday.)In “A Pink Chair (In Place of a Fake Antique),” from 2017, the Woosters pay tribute to Tadeusz Kantor with a re-enactment of one of the towering Polish theater artist’s final plays. Along with Kantor’s daughter, who appears in a recorded video interview, the actors go in search of the director through a painstaking reconstruction of his play “I Shall Never Return,” their movement and dialogue (much of it lip-synced) matching up with archival footage of a 1988 rehearsal that plays on a television screen behind them.There’s no doubting the finesse of the production, but the technique is so finely honed and executed that it borders on self-parody. Only in the last 20 minutes, when the troupe launches into a fairground-booth version of Homer’s “Odyssey,” does the show feel fresh and transporting.At FIND, Tina Satter’s play “House of Dance” was staged in German for the first time. From left, Genija Rykova, Henri Maximilian Jakobs, Holger Bülow and Hevin Tekin.Gianmarco BresadolaOn the stage of the Schaubühne’s more intimate Globe theater, FIND hosted another influential American theater practitioner’s work: Tina Satter’s 2013 play “House of Dance,” staged in German for the first time.Satter was at FIND last year with the remarkable “Is This A Room?,” which later became her gripping filmmaking debut as “Reality,” premiering in February at the Berlin International Film Festival. She returned to FIND with this utterly different yet equally impressive play, the first work she has directed in German.“House of Dance,” set in a tap dance studio in a small American town, has a four-person cast drawn from the Schaubühne’s excellent acting ensemble, and is an exuberant chamber drama largely fueled by music and propulsive tap numbers. Satter and her actors make us viscerally feel the dreams and frustrations of the dance studio’s students and teachers in this stripped-down, focused production. (The play remains in the Schaubühne’s repertoire, with performances through July.)In the hyper-realistic play “Fortress of Smiles,” a group of fishermen meet daily to eat and drink.Shinsuke SuginoOn the Schaubühne’s main stage, the hyper-realistic “Fortress of Smiles,” from the Japanese writer-director Kuro Tanino, had a far more monumental set. Two houses with identical layouts stand side by side: In one, a rambunctious group of fishermen meet daily to eat and drink; in the other, a middle-aged man cares for his senile mother with the help of his reluctant college-aged daughter.Closely observed, with naturalistic, slice-of-life dialogue, “Fortress of Smiles” was the most conventional entry in FIND’s first week. And while the acting was among the finest I saw at the festival, the play itself sometimes felt static and stifling, like watching a dramatization of a Yasujiro Ozu film, albeit one that lacks the immediacy and deep pathos that characterize the Japanese master’s best work.The only production at FIND that tried to break free of the confines of the stage was the Swiss production “Vielleicht” (“Maybe”). Over two hours, its lead actor, Cédric Djedje, delivered a history lesson about Berlin’s “African Quarter,” a district whose street names celebrate Germany’s colonial advancement in southwest Africa. With a heavy dose of docudrama and autobiography, this performative lecture given by Djedje and the equally charismatic Safi Martin Yé was highly didactic but rarely engaging as theater. (It was both more substantive and less entertaining than another recent work confronting Germany’s colonial history, the film “Measures of Men.”)Our critic found the Swiss production “Maybe,” starring Cédric Djedje and Safi Martin Yé, highly didactic but rarely engaging as theater.Dorothée Thébert FilligerA far more absorbing work of political theater came from Iran. The writer-director Parnia Shams’s “is” took us inside a high school for girls in Tehran, where constant surveillance — or the fear of it — makes the stage’s classroom feel like a prison. In the play, cast entirely with young women, a new girl who transfers to the school midyear is tormented by her classmates. When the best student in the class defends her, the others close ranks against them, accusing them of having a sexual relationship.Shams’s play, which she co-wrote with Amir Ebrahimzadeh, was first seen in Tehran in 2019. The way it dramatizes themes of power, coercion and repression feels provocative, and yet it’s hard to locate an explicit social or political critique. But while much is left unsaid, the production gained renewed meaning in the aftermath of protests that have roiled Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini in September.It certainly felt like a statement when the actresses took off their head scarves for the curtain call. For a brief moment, a stage in Berlin seemed to encompass the world.FIND 2023 continues at the Schaubühne through April 30. More

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    Late Night Hosts Fight Over the Best Bits on the Final ‘Late Late Show’

    Jimmy Kimmel suggested that after leaving late night, James Corden should “stick to corporate gigs, podcasts, maybe ‘The Masked Singer.’”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.Eight Years of ‘Late Late’James Corden signed off Thursday after eight years as the host of “The Late Late Show.” He followed a prime-time send-off special with one last show in his usual late-night slot, with his parents teary-eyed in the audience and with Harry Styles and Will Ferrell as guests.For one final time, it’s #SpillYourGuts with Will Ferrell and @Harry_Styles! pic.twitter.com/xb3Sokl2Dc— The Late Late Show with James Corden (@latelateshow) April 28, 2023
    “This is it, gang, this is it. It’s the final ‘Late Late Show’ in the history of CBS,” Corden said at the top of the show. “I’m telling you tonight, finally, we are determined to get it right this time.”Corden thanked viewers by name for tuning in (“Dan, Stephanie, William — that’s it, really.”) and received a special video send-off from President Biden. “That is amazing, although there was a minute in the middle when I was watching that, where in those photos I go, ‘Wait, have I died?’” Corden said.But it was a visit from his fellow late-night hosts that was the last “Late Late Show” bit worth watching.“First things first, you can’t look like you’re enjoying retirement too much.” — SETH MEYERS”You’re going to grow a beard — a huge one. One that says, ‘God spoke to me from a bush.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And don’t get any big ideas — stick to corporate gigs, podcasts, maybe ‘The Masked Singer.’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe hosts simultaneously fought for what comedy bit they wanted now that Corden was going off air and, despite chiding Corden for singing and dancing too much on his show, they answered in unison: “Carpool Karaoke.”The Punchiest Punchlines (Tucker Tok Edition)“After being fired from Fox News on Monday, Tucker Carlson posted a video last night to Twitter and said, ‘Where can you still find Americans saying true things?’ Well, hell, you’ve already tried Fox News and Twitter. I’m out of ideas. I don’t know — maybe Wall Street?” — SETH MEYERS“Nothing says, ‘I landed on my feet’ like ranting in a decommissioned sauna.” — JIMMY FALLON“Wow, good for Tucker. Even though he’s isolated in a remote cabin somewhere, he’s still getting his message out, just like the Unabomber.” — DESI LYDIC, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Although it is funny how he said, ‘When you step outside the noise, people are actually pretty nice.’ Buddy, you are the noise. Your entire show was you being mean to people — trans people, immigrants, women, lady M&Ms. Tucker complaining about people being mean is like Guy Fieri complaining about how there are no salad shows.” — DESI LYDIC“Yep, Tucker criticized the current state of debate on television, then said, ‘And that’s why I chose to be fired.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He’s been fired by Fox, CNN, MSNBC and PBS. That’s like the EGOT of cable news.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingThe actor and talk show host Drew Barrymore popped by the “Tonight Show” for “Ew!,” with Jimmy Fallon and the singer-songwriter Charlie Puth.Also, Check This OutGeorgia O’Keeffe’s “Evening Star No. III” from the new exhibition “To See Takes Time.” Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Museum of Modern ArtA new Georgia O’Keeffe show at the Museum of Modern Art spans more than four decades, featuring 120 works on paper and eight paintings. More

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    Jerry Springer, Host of a Raucous TV Talk Show, Is Dead at 79

    The confrontational “Jerry Springer Show” ran for nearly three decades and became a cultural phenomenon. Mr. Springer also had a career in politics.Jerry Springer, who went from a somewhat outlandish political career to an almost indescribably outlandish broadcasting career with “The Jerry Springer Show,” which by the mid-1990s was setting a new standard for tawdriness on American television, turning the talk-show format into an arena for shocking confessions, adultery-fueled screaming matches and not infrequent fistfights, died on Thursday in suburban Chicago. He was 79.His death, after a brief illness, was confirmed in a statement by Jene Galvin, a family friend and executive producer of Mr. Springer’s podcast.Mr. Springer earned a law degree from Northwestern University in 1968 and started on a political career, winning election to the Cincinnati City Council in 1971. But he was soon embroiled in the type of personal scandal that would later fuel his talk show: He resigned in 1974 after he was found to have written a check for prostitution services at a Kentucky massage parlor.But Mr. Springer was nothing if not resilient: He was re-elected to the council in 1975. One of his comeback speeches nodded to the prostitution controversy. “A lot of you don’t know anything about me,” he said, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer, “but I’ll tell you one thing you do know: My credit is good.”Mr. Springer in 1974 during his time in politics, at a convention of restaurant operators in Cincinnati.Bettmann Collection, via GettyHe was elected mayor of Cincinnati in 1977, and in 1982 he ran for governor of Ohio, addressing the prostitution incident forthrightly in a campaign advertisement.“The next governor is going to have to take some heavy risks and face some hard truths,” he said. “I’m prepared to do that. This commercial should be proof. I’m not afraid, even of the truth, and even if it hurts.”He finished third in the Democratic primary and made a career change, joining WLWT-TV in Cincinnati, first as a news commentator; he later became an anchor and managing editor. Over the next decade he won or shared multiple Emmy Awards for local coverage.“The Jerry Springer Show,” a daytime talk show syndicated by Multimedia Entertainment, which owned WLWT, began in 1991. Originally it was an issue-oriented program; The Los Angeles Times called it “an oppressively self-important talk hour starring a Cincinnati news anchorman and former mayor.”By 1993, however, lead-ins like “Worshiping the Lord with snakes — next, Jerry Springer!” were turning up, and the shock value just kept going up. A 1995 episode featured a young man named Raymond whom Mr. Springer was helping to lose his virginity, offering him five young women, hidden by a screen, to choose from. Raymond’s friend Woody accompanied him.“Woody doesn’t know it — his 18-year-old virgin sister is one of the contestants!” a scroll told viewers.The talk-show universe had by then become something of a free-for-all, with hosts like Montel Williams and Sally Jessy Raphael also serving up salacious content. Mr. Springer, though, did it better and more outrageously than anyone else. His viewership peaked at about eight million in 1998.Security guards separate guests as they fight on the “Jerry Springer Show,” a common occurrence.Ralf-Finn Hestoft, Corbis, via Getty ImagesMr. Springer in 1998 on the set of his talk show. That year his viewership peaked at about eight million.Getty Images“Why is it so outrageous that people who aren’t famous talk about their private lives?” he once said. “It’s like, ‘It’s OK if good-looking people talk about who they slept with, but, please, if you are ugly, we don’t want to hear about it?’”“The Jerry Springer Show” ran for nearly three decades, ending in 2018 after more than 3,000 episodes. No matter what sort of drama had taken place in front of a studio audience, as well as viewers tuning in from home, Mr. Springer ended each segment with a signature sign-off: “Take care of yourself, and each other.”Gerald Norman Springer was born on Feb. 13, 1944, in London, in an underground station that was being used as a bomb shelter during World War II.“It’s not as dramatic as it sounds,” he told The Chicago Tribune in 2007. “Because of the bombing, women who were in their ninth month were told to sleep in the subway stations, which were set up as maternity wards.”His family relocated to the United States when he was 5. In a commencement speech at Northwestern in 2008, Mr. Springer evoked the moment of arrival.“In silence, all the ship’s passengers gathered on the top deck of this grand ocean liner as we passed by the Statue of Liberty,” he said. “My mom told me in later years (I was 5 at the time) that while we were shivering in the cold, I had asked her: ‘What are we looking at? What does the statue mean?’ In German she replied, ‘Ein tag, alles!’ (One day, everything!).”Mr. Springer earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Tulane University in 1965. He worked at WTUL, the campus station, and over the years he would check in from time to time.“It was my first job in broadcasting,” he said in a message to the station in 2009 to mark its 50th anniversary, “and it’s been downhill ever since.”After Tulane he went on to Northwestern and law school. In 1967, he took a job as a summer clerk at a law firm in Cincinnati; it was his first exposure to the city that would play an important role in his life. The next year he took time off from his law studies to work on Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, but he completed his degree after Mr. Kennedy was assassinated.Mr. Springer returned to his family home in New York without any particular plans. When the Cincinnati firm where he had spent a summer called with an offer for a full-time job, he took it.Mr. Springer in his dressing room before a taping of “The Jerry Springer Show.”Steve Kagan/Getty Images“I had to do something to get my life moving again,” he told The Cincinnati Post in 1977.He quickly became involved in local politics, impressing the city’s Democratic leaders. In 1970, he ran for Congress, losing but drawing 44 percent of the vote, much better than expected. A year later, he was on the City Council.Mr. Springer’s talk show brought him enough fame that he had a side gig as an actor, turning up in episodes of “Married … With Children,” “Roseanne,” “The X-Files” and other shows, generally playing a version of himself.He was also a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars” and “The Masked Singer,” and for a time was host of “America’s Got Talent.” In 2005, he began “Springer on the Radio,” a serious, left-leaning political show, on Air America; it lasted about two years.Information on his survivors was not immediately available.In 2008, some students objected when Mr. Springer was invited to give the commencement address at Northwestern.“To the students who invited me — thank you,” he said. “I am honored. To the students who object to my presence — well, you’ve got a point. I, too, would’ve chosen someone else.”“I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a comfortable measure of success in my various careers,” he added, “but let’s be honest, I’ve been virtually everything you can’t respect: a lawyer, a mayor, a major-market news anchor and a talk-show host. Pray for me. If I get to heaven, we’re all going.”Remy Tumin contributed reporting. More

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    ‘The Knight of the Burning Pestle’ Review: Wielding His Trusty Kitchen Tools

    With a 17th-century grocer as its hero, Red Bull Theater and Fiasco stage a 400-year-old comedy that’s both a satire of the theater and a valentine to it.When did audience members become so wanton and disorderly? Since theaters reopened a year and a half ago, reports of fights, vomiting, public urination, public sex, and the verbal and physical abuse of staff have proliferated. Early in April, police were called to a theater in Britain hosting “The Bodyguard,” because some ticket holders wouldn’t stop singing along, precipitating a near riot. And on Monday night, at the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village, a grocer and his wife stormed the stage — well, maybe she didn’t storm so much as prance on up — to demand that the company revise its show and hire their apprentice, too. Is there an usher in the house?Of course, this particular disruption was planned more than 400 years ago. It’s right there in the script of Francis Beaumont’s “The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” a tricksy, loopy, wildly self-referential 1607 play that parodies both city comedy and chivalric romance. Excepting the uptown revival of “Camelot,” these aren’t genres with a lot of currency. But Red Bull Theater and Fiasco, the co-creators of this revival, don’t seem overly concerned. Keep the jokes popping, keep the songs coming, the directors Noah Brody and Emily Young seem to believe, and the contemporaneity will take care of itself.When the play begins, a troupe of actors, costumed in skirts and breeches that gesture toward the Elizabethan, are about to put on a new show, “The London Merchant.” George (Darius Pierce) interrupts them. He doesn’t think that local business owners have been represented fairly by the theater. With the help of his wife, Nell (Jesse Austrian, a Fiasco founder and a cherry bomb of comedy), he forces them to remake the piece with a grocer as its hero. So Rafe (Paco Tolson) is transformed into the Knight of the Burning Pestle, a cavalier with a colander for a helmet and a pestle for a sword.The problem with topical comedy, even backward-looking topical comedy like this, is that the references don’t always survive. That’s true enough here. What’s also true is that the play within the play — the story of a merchant, a daughter, the daughter’s lover — isn’t so engrossing. It also includes a scene in which the lover, Jasper (Devin E. Haqq) threatens to murder the daughter, Luce (Teresa Avia Lim), in order to test her devotion. It’s a frightening moment and categorically abusive. The comedy can’t contain it.But the adventures of the knight and his horse (Royer Bockus) and squire (Ben Steinfeld) are beautifully silly. The interruptions of the grocer and his wife are better still, especially when Nell is pulled onstage to play a pan-Slavic princess who talks like Dracula. Best of all, though, is the Fiasco mien, which favors a giddy, affable, let’s-put-on-a-show quality. The actors are clearly enjoying themselves (Steinfeld, who sings most of his lines, often accompanied by Bockus and the actor and multi-instrumentalist Paul L. Coffey, even more than the rest). And their performances carry with them a swaggering sense of rehearsal room experimentation and delight. They seem to be performing for the sheer pleasure of it, with the audience a welcome afterthought.This probably explains their attraction to “The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” however antiquated and rickety. It’s a satire of theater that is also a valentine to it, to the transport of becoming swept up into a play, to the wonder of seeing someone just like you onstage. Or as in the case of Nell, playing a part yourself. It’s an invitation to all of us: To put on our colanders, take up our kitchen implements and give ourselves over to make-believe.The Knight of the Burning PestleThrough May 13 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan; redbulltheater.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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    ‘Welcome to Clowntown’ Review: Raunchy Stories and Giant Balloon Animals

    In a production decidedly for grown-ups, Tanya Perez’s one-woman show draws on her life as a professional clown (and occasional stripper).According to Tanya Perez, the writer and performer of “Welcome to Clowntown,” strippers and clowns have the same modus operandi, which includes average dancing while wearing baby attire. She would know: She’s done both jobs.In this unripe one-woman show, Perez, as Pixie the Clown, performs her party act for the audience while regaling them with tales of her career as a clown-for-hire (and more) in New York City and Los Angeles.As Pixie, Perez is dressed in a vivid ensemble designed by Lisa Renee Jordan with polka dots, corkscrew ribbons, a red petticoat, a purple corset and sparkly Chuck Taylors. She seems to have done it all, from stripping to bartending: parties spent placating hostile adults, catering to gross fraternity brothers and serving drinks for one of the Real Housewives. (Don’t ask which one; she signed a nondisclosure agreement.)And then of course there’s clowning, which she started doing in college, amusing obnoxious kids for beer money. That’s why, she announces, with an unprintable word, that she hates your children.Perez has crafted a kind of rudimentary stand-up routine, but it’s light on snappy punch lines and lacks a cohesive narrative structure. Most of her stories stay close to the surface, barely mining their comic potential or personal or political stakes. She gets into misogyny in the exotic dancing world, racist microaggressions in the clowning world (she is Latina, and describes one boss who expected her to be the “hip-hop clown”) and the class divide at play in both. But these themes mostly float at the margins.Produced by the Tank and billed as an “adult immersive experience,” “Welcome to Clowntown” encourages audience participation. Perez makes balloon animals for the audience and plays games like rock, paper, scissors and telephone, but that hardly seems to qualify the work as immersive theater. As a result, the show feels underinflated, despite its fleet 60-minute running time. The erratic direction, by Lorca Peress, exacerbates the problem, fumbling the transitions between Perez’s monologues and the party games.Perez is lively, with a chuckle that’s somewhere between the jovial trill of SpongeBob and the tee-hees of Skeletor. But often her performance feels rehearsed instead of spontaneous, even a bit detached, despite the intimate space with fewer than 50 seats and a small, unadorned stage.Near the end, Perez wrestles a giant balloon animal the way “Clowntown” wrestles in a message about the importance of play and fostering one’s inner child. Still, don’t let the expletives fool you: This may be clowning for adults, but “Clowntown” still has some growing up to do.Welcome to ClowntownThrough May 13 at the Tank, Manhattan; thetanknyc.org. Running time: 1 hour. More

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    The Cathartic Value of Dame Edna’s Extravaganzas of Ego

    Audiences were eager to humbly suffer the stinging quips tossed out by the towering figure that was Barry Humphries’s creation.Listen to This ArticleShe was, lest we forget, the original Real Housewife. Or Surreal Housewife, if you prefer. Possessed of few obvious talents and a bottomless sense of entitlement, this expensively upholstered figure was the archetype for the ordinary middle-class matron who blossomed into improbable, overwhelming, gasp-inducing fame.Her name was Edna Everage (just one vowel away from “average”), and her advent in the mid-20th century anticipated a brash new age of undeserved celebrity. “Oh, my prophetic soul,” she might have said, contemplating the constellation of self-anointed stars who occupy our attention these days. The line comes from “Hamlet.” But Edna was the kind of gal who could convince you that she had coined it all by herself.Dame Edna, as she became known from the early 1970s, was the inspired alter-ego of the sui generis performer Barry Humphries, who died on Saturday in Sydney, Australia. Humphries was 89. Dame Edna, of course, is immortal.To become Edna, Humphries would put on a mauve wig, an increasingly rococo pair of eyeglasses and a glittering gown that screeched conspicuous consumption. Yet it would be a mistake to describe Dame Edna primarily as a drag act.This unfiltered, towering figure — who looked down on the world, in all senses, from a six-foot-plus linebacker’s frame atop stiletto heels — wasn’t a comment on gender. No, Dame Edna was all about blinkered, arrogant class and especially a breed of self-crowned royalty that had become our default deities in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.That would be those who were defined by being famous, whether or not for any discernible reason beyond their willingness to become so. The genius of Humphries’s conceit was to translate the small-minded, unyielding smugness of the middle-class Australian suburbs in which he grew up into the even more invincible complacency of outrageous, drop-dead stardom.As for the rest of us — and that meant, in addition to us peons, her fellow celebrity chums, including the pope and Queen Elizabeth II — we existed to serve as her mirrors, reflecting her own fabulousness.During my tenure as a Times theater critic, there were few events I anticipated more avidly than Dame Edna’s extravaganzas of ego, where I would join the throngs of those she called “possums” and “paupers” to worship at her boat-size feet. Like so many of the greatest comics, she surgically tapped into the ruling obsession of her time.What Lenny Bruce was to the sexual hangups of the late ’50s and early ’60s and what Richard Pryor was to the racial anxieties of the ’70s and ’80s, Dame Edna was to the age of Olympian narcissism. As she said, graciously tossing her signature gladioli into the audience as she was magically lifted into the air at the end of a 1999 performance: “I have to rise above you. It’s the secret of my survival.”Dame Edna in her 2010 show “All About Me” at what is now the Stephen Sondheim Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMy years of reviewing Edna were years when the most commercially successful shows on Broadway were often those that featured faces found on the covers of People, Vanity Fair and supermarket tabloids. Audiences clamored to see Nicole Kidman in “The Blue Room” or Julia Roberts in “Three Days of Rain” not so much to watch a play as to participate in a sacred pilgrimage to the shrines of NICOLE and JULIA.Attending a Dame Edna show thus had its own special cathartic value, rooted in the openly sadomasochistic exchange of energy between her and her audience. She took it for granted that we were there because she was of an unapproachably higher order than we were, a holy order. In a riff that led to a reference to Jesus, she backtracked to say of course she wouldn’t compare herself to him, before pausing to add, “Although there are spooky similarities.”Naturally we humbly suffered the stinging quips she tossed in our direction, collectively and individually. (Pity — and envy — the chosen few she selected for audience participation.) Never mind that when she sang and danced, she sounded like a bullfrog on steroids and moved like a drunken stevedore.She was protected by her impregnable certainty that whatever she did was utterly beyond reproach. Reviewing her 2004 Broadway show “Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance!,” I wrote, “Dame Edna, you see, knows better than anyone that fame means never having to say you’re sorry.”That attitude is less likely to fly in 2023, when being famous seems to mean you’re apologizing all the time. And in writings and interviews in their later years, both Edna and Humphries stumbled with comments that drew outcries from members of the Latino and trans communities and others.So allow me to return to an earlier moment in this century, when Edna was at the peak of her invulnerability, and I received a letter after raving about one of her shows. “I have to say,” the note read, “I almost deserved it.” It was signed Barry Humphries. Had the signature been Edna Everage there would have been no “almost” about it.Audio produced by More

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    ‘Somebody Somewhere’ Celebrates a Life With Tears and Jokes

    When the sudden death of Mike Hagerty, one of the show’s stars, forced the creators to retool the new season, they sprinkled tributes to him throughout the episodes.In the first episode of the new season of “Somebody Somewhere,” the poignant Kansas-set comedy that returned to HBO this week, Sam (Bridget Everett) receives a letter from her father, Ed. The letter informs her that he has gone to join his brother in Corpus Christi, Texas. Ed, a farmer, has charged Sam with feeding the chickens, mowing the lawn and cleaning out the barn. Sam begins her chores, but when she finds Ed’s baseball cap, she begins to tear up.“It just feels really weird to be here with all his stuff,” Sam says. “I know he couldn’t have cleaned out this barn — it would have broken his heart. I didn’t know it would break mine.”Heartbreak might seem like a strong reaction to some rusted farm equipment. But Mike Hagerty, the actor who played Ed, had died unexpectedly in May 2022, at the age of 67, about a month before filming began for the Season 2. Ed lives on, sailing across the Gulf of Mexico; his absence and Hagerty’s absence inform most of the season. In its quiet, fine-grained way, these episodes of “Somebody Somewhere” provide a eulogy in comedy form, with grief triangulated and transformed.“We knew we wanted to dedicate the season to him,” Hannah Bos, a “Somebody Somewhere” creator, said in a recent video call. “We wanted to celebrate him.”Hagerty, a Chicago native and an alum of the Second City comedy troupe, best known for a five-episode run as the building superintendent on “Friends,” joined the series for the pilot in 2019. Carolyn Strauss, an executive producer, had worked with him before, on the short-lived series “Lucky Louie.” She bet that Hagerty — bushy haired, jowly, with a heart as big as a prairie — would bring warmth and solidity to the taciturn Ed. She won that bet.When Everett, a Kansas-born actress and cabaret star, met him for a chemistry read, she started crying before he had even said a word. “I felt immediately really safe,” she said on that same video call. Strauss and Paul Thureen, the show’s other creator, were also on the line.“It just felt like the right match and the right person and also like I’d met a friend,” Everett said. “I’m not trying to be corny; it’s just really how I felt.”Bos and Thureen enjoyed writing for Hagerty, knowing that he could make any line sound grounded and sincere, that he could endow even simple dialogue with depth. And Everett felt that she grew as an actor every time she was opposite him. He felt to her, she said, like a surrogate father.“Often I get really nervous on sets,” she said. “His affable, calm, steady hand, it set me at ease.”Bridget Everett, left, said that when she met Hagerty, “I immediately felt really safe.” (With Mary Catherine Garrison, bottom left, and Kailey Albus.)Elizabeth Sisson/HBOHagerty seemed to enjoy himself, too. In February 2022, in Los Angeles, HBO hosted a special screening for the Season 1 finale. Strauss chatted with him there, and she recalled him cracking that the show had taught him two words he’d never heard before in his long career: “Season 2.” To celebrate, he bought himself a Toyota RAV4.That spring, ‌Hagerty entered Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, feeling unwell. The Season 2 scripts had already been written, and he planned to participate in a table read from his hospital bed. But he was ultimately too ill to join. On May 5, following an adverse reaction to an antibiotic, he died.The initial response from the producers and his co-stars was a mix of shock and grief. There was a group Zoom call, with cast and creators crying in their separate windows, sharing memories of Hagerty.“He really did feel like a North Star in terms of what we were creating and what we had done,” Strauss said. “So it was hard to believe; it felt very unreal.”Twining with the grief was an understandable amount of panic. The shoot was set to begin in two weeks, and Hagerty was meant to be in almost every episode. Amy Gravitt, HBO’s executive vice president of comedy, made many individual calls, telling the showrunners and producers to take all the time that they needed to mourn — to put off worrying about the show. But Bos and Thureen knew that to put it off for too long would risk losing actors and crew members. A frantic rewrite began.At first, no one knew what to do about Ed, but Strauss, Bos and Thureen felt that they shouldn’t have him die. Season 1 had begun shortly after the death of Sam’s sister Holly — as the show follows Sam’s halting steps toward self-acceptance and a full adult life, the thinking went, another death and an explicit focus on grief would set her back too far.Everett wasn’t so sure. Her own sister and father had died a year apart, and she figured the show, which operates with an unusual degree of realism, might as well mirror that. But after sleeping on it, she agreed.Production was pushed back two weeks. Strauss worried that wouldn’t be enough time for a full rewrite, but she didn’t share that worry with the others. As originally written, the season had focused partly on Ed growing too old for hands-on farming and on his relationship with his wife, an alcoholic. He also played a role in a season-ending wedding. All of that had to be retooled. So Bos, Thureen and Everett got to work on Zoom. Thureen said these sessions, however fraught, brought relief.“It helped in a weird way to have something to focus on,” he said. “It turned into a creative problem-solving thing.”With Strauss’s help, they all worked to find a metaphor that would account for Hagerty’s absence and honor his life. Together they came up with the idea of the brother’s boat and sending Ed across the water, finally free. They also made him a presence throughout several episodes, via occasional letters and phone calls.Jeff Hiller and Everett in the new season of “Somebody Somewhere,” which includes several subtle tributes to Hagerty.Sandy Morris/HBOWhen it came time to do the scene in the barn, Everett was anxious about how it would feel to act without Hagerty. “That was going to be an emotional house of cards for me,” she said. “We all kind of felt it. Just being there without him was devastating.” She had learned the monologue about cleaning out the barn by heart, but when it came time to speak it, the loss of Hagerty overtook her. The tears she cries in the scene are very real.“We only did it two times or three times because it was just a little much,” she said. “I just wanted to say it and then let it go.”Later in the season, there is a funeral for a different character. This became an oblique tribute to Hagerty, with his memory shadowing several of the eulogies. “A poetic honoring,” Thureen called it. And in the final episode, a wedding reception pauses to honor Ed.“Raise your glasses everybody, raise them high — this is to Ed,” a character says. It was a way of making sure that Ed was still there, still a part of this family and this community.If “Somebody Somewhere” is renewed for further seasons, Ed, however far away, will remain a part of them. The creative team is already kicking around Ed-centered ideas for Season 3. Hagerty, in his own way, remains with the show, too.“His impact endures,” Strauss said. “He’s left everybody with a gift: that gravity and humor and forthrightness that characterize him, we all carry it.” More