Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 138 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    In ‘A Small Light,’ an Ordinary Woman Helps Anne Frank’s Family

    A new series on Disney+ and Hulu tells the story of Miep Gies, a secretary who helped Anne Frank and others hide in Amsterdam during World War II.Two days after the Gestapo’s 1944 raid on the annex where Anne Frank and others were hiding, Miep Gies, a seemingly ordinary secretary, and her colleague walked into the hiding place and encountered a chaotic scene left behind by the Nazis.Years later, Gies described what she saw that day as a mess of books, newspapers and other everyday items. “And then we started searching. For what, I don’t know, but we were looking for something,” she said in a 1958 interview. Among the items, she found a red plaid diary. Gies grabbed it and put it in a drawer in her office.She had just saved one of the Holocaust’s most famous accounts: Anne Frank’s diary.On the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, the building that housed Otto Frank’s office is now the Anne Frank House, a museum that tells Anne’s story.Peter Dejong/Associated PressIn the show, Anne Frank is played by Billie Boullet as an angsty girl chafing against the restrictions of German occupation. Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneyThat moment, and much more about Gies’s life and heroism, is at the center of “A Small Light,” a new eight-part series that tells the story of Gies (Bel Powley), her husband, Jan (Joe Cole), and their involvement in Dutch resistance efforts during World War II. The show premieres Monday on National Geographic, and comes to Disney+ and Hulu the following day.Work on “A Small Light” began six years ago, after its showrunners Joan Rater and Tony Phelan, a married couple who used to be producers and screenwriters for “Grey’s Anatomy,” visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Walking around the museum and listening to tour guides, they learned that many people don’t really know the story of the Frank family anymore, let alone the story of the people who helped them, Rater and Phelan said in a recent video interview.Since then, they said, the moral question at the heart of Gies’s story — whether to do the right thing, the wrong thing or nothing at all — has only become more important, given how war, nationalism and antisemitism have once again been spreading across Europe.“When we started this project,” Phelan said, “it certainly didn’t feel as relevant as it feels now.”While the show opens with Gies, who wasn’t Jewish, trying to dodge a Nazi checkpoint, the first episode quickly takes the viewer back to 1934, when Gies was single and living with her adopted Dutch family. She finds employment with Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) — a stern, fellow German-speaking immigrant — and meets her future husband, a social worker. Much of the first episode follows Gies living life as a modern young woman, meeting friends and going out dancing.Rater and Phelan wanted to give the show a contemporary feel by focusing “A Small Light” not just around war, but also around ordinary people’s ordinary lives being suddenly interrupted.The show’s creators wanted to give the episodes a contemporary feel by focusing not just on war, but also on ordinary people’s ordinary lives being suddenly interrupted.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for Disney“Period pieces for me sometimes feel a bit sepia-toned, and that makes you feel distanced from them,” Powley said. But “A Small Light” didn’t feel that way. “It didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume,” she added.“These people, they had washing machines and toasters. They were living in a modern world and they couldn’t believe, in this modern world that they were living, that these things could happen,” Rater said.While the story of Anne Frank and what happened to her is well known, Gies — who died in 2010 at 100 — largely stayed out of the limelight. She published a memoir, “Anne Frank Remembered,” in 1987 and was involved with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, but much of her story stayed private.“When we started digging, we started putting together these pieces that I don’t know that anybody had ever put together before,” Phelan said. In the course of their research, with the help of a local researcher in the Netherlands, Rater and Phelan discovered that Gies and her husband also helped people hide in their own home, including two nurses.In the show, we see nurses help save babies from being killed by the Nazis, and instead sending them to live in the Dutch countryside. One memorable scene shows how nurses swapped babies for dolls, telling Jewish mothers to lose the dolls on their way to concentration camps.Miep and Jan Gies, pictured in 1957, hid people from the Nazis in their own home, as well as in Miep’s office.Sueddeutsche Zeitung, via AlamyIn the show, Jan is played by Joe Cole, and Miep by Bel Powley.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for Disney“It is such a fascinating, heartbreaking, hard to believe story at times,” Cole, who plays Gies’s husband, said in a video interview.When in 1942, Otto Frank asked Gies to help hide him, his daughters, Anne and Margot, and his wife, Edith, in an annex at their office, Gies didn’t hesitate before saying yes.“She had no idea what she was saying yes to,” Rater said. “And then she had to keep saying yes for two years.”This was until a warm day in August 1944 when Nazis raided the office and found the eight people — the Frank family and four others — hiding in the annex.“A Small Light” was shot in the Netherlands — in Amsterdam and Harlem — and in Prague.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneyIn “A Small Light,” Gies’s decision to help despite the dangers and disruption this posed to her life (she kept the secret, brought food and books and more), her unwavering spirit and her reluctance to be seen as a hero makes the viewer ask: What would I have done in that situation? The show’s title is taken from a quote by Gies: “Even a regular secretary, a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.”The show “is about your personal dynamics that are interrupted by the war,” said Schreiber who recently spent time in Ukraine raising money for humanitarian aid. “That’s part of what I saw in Ukraine. These people’s lives have been interrupted and they try to continue.”“A Small Light” was shot in the Netherlands — in Amsterdam and Harlem — and Prague, where the interior scenes were filmed in a three-story replica of Otto Frank’s Amsterdam office, where the annex was hidden behind a bookcase. (The original building, on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, is now the Anne Frank House.)While “A Small Light” has moments of levity and snippets of life’s mundanity despite the war raging outside, the episodes gradually become more intense, leading up to the inevitable betrayal that doomed all the people in the annex except for Otto Frank, Anne’s father.For Powley, the show never felt like a period piece. “It didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume,” she said.Dusan Martincek/National Geographic for DisneySchreiber, who is Jewish, said he was often asked to play roles in Holocaust films. “I hate the narrative that we went like lambs to the slaughter,” which is common in such movies, he said.“But this felt different,” he added. More

  • 150 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    What’s on TV This Week: ‘A Small Light’ and the Met Gala

    A new series about the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family premieres on National Geographic, and E! streams “the party of the year.”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, May 1-7. Details and times are subject to change.MondayE! LIVE FROM THE RED CARPET: MET GALA 2023 6 p.m. on E! Officially known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute benefit (unofficially as the party of the year) and attended by some of the biggest names in the media and art world, the Met Gala is a black-tie event that raises money for the fashion wing of the museum. This year’s themed exhibition is “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” a homage to the longtime luxury brand designer who helped shape the modern fashion world. (Mr. Lagerfield died in 2019). Regina King, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds and Lin-Manuel Miranda are the event’s co-chairs this year.A SMALL LIGHT 9 p.m. on LIFETIME, NGC and NAT GEO WILD. This limited series tells the story of Miep Gies (Bel Powley), a Dutch woman who was the secretary to Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber), the father of Anne Frank (Billie Boullet), during World War II. Premiering on what would have been Gies’s 114th birthday with two back-to-back episodes, the series follows Gies and her husband whose lives changed when they agreed to help hide the Frank family — and four other individuals — over the course of two years.TuesdayJohn Pingayak, right, and his grandson Sonna Boy in “Life Below Zero: First Alaskans.”Tyler Colgan/National GeographicLIFE BELOW ZERO: FIRST ALASKANS 8 p.m. on NGC. This unscripted series, a spinoff of the Emmy Award-winning series “Life Below Zero,” follows Indigenous Alaskans as they survive and thrive in one of the most remote landscapes on Earth. In the show’s second season, the cast stays true to the traditions passed down from generations of Alaska Natives while adapting to 21st-century technology and advancements.COUPLES RETREAT 9 p.m. on MTV. Celebrity couples head to Las Vegas for the third season of this MTV reality series, in which they will challenge their relationships with the help of some unconventional experts. The couples, who range from R&B legends to “Real Housewives of Atlanta” alums, break out of their comfort zones in a series of adrenaline-fueled activities like zip-lining, cattle herding and wilderness training.1000% ME: GROWING UP MIXED 9 p.m. on HBO. The Emmy Award-winning producer and comedian W. Kamau Bell explores the joys and challenges of growing up mixed-race in this hourlong compilation of interviews with multiracial children in the Bay Area. Topics like casual racism, microaggressions and the pressure to pick a side are all fair game, as is a chipper rundown of the interviewees’ favorite animals and weekend hobbies.WednesdayTommy Lee Jones, right, and Garret Dillahunt in “No Country for Old Men.”Richard Foreman/Miramax FilmsNO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007) 10:17 p.m. on MAX. Joel and Ethan Coen “combine virtuosic dexterity with mischievous high spirits” in their film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel of the same name, writes A.O. Scott in his review for The New York Times. This neo-western thriller, which won the Oscar for best picture, follows three men entangled in a drug deal gone awry in 1980 West Texas. Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh, a “deadpan sociopath with a funny haircut.” Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is a jaded sheriff, trailing the detritus Chigurh leaves behind. Both are following Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), “the human center of the film, the guy you root for.” Scott promises you will be “jangled, stunned,” and “completely and ecstatically absorbed.”ThursdayVictor McLaglen, left, and Cary Grant in “Gunga Din.”Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesGUNGA DIN (1939) 3:30 p.m. on TCM. “All movies should be like the first twenty-five and the last thirty minutes of ‘Gunga Din,’” wrote Benjamin Crisler in his review for The Times. This classic adventure film, which pulls elements from Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 poem by the same name, follows three British sergeants in colonial India (Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) who fight a murderous cult, with the titular Gunga Din (Sam Jaffe) as their guide. The film was deemed culturally significant by the Library of Congress in 1999 and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.FridayRhiannon Giddens, right, and Francesco Turrisi in “The Articulate Hour.”Tom Contarino/The Ariculate FoundationTHE ARTICULATE HOUR 9 p.m. on PBS. This three-part mini-series features the journalist Jim Cotter in conversation with poets, musicians, neuroscientists and historians on a variety of topics. The first episode delves into the concept of human memory, while the second explores our contrasting needs for community and solitude.SaturdayChol Soo Lee, center, surrounded by TV news crews in “Free Chol Soo Lee.”Grant DinFREE CHOL SOO LEE 8 p.m. on PBS. For Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage month, PBS’s Emmy Award-winning anthology series, “Independent Lens,” presents a documentary about Chol Soo Lee, a Korean immigrant who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1973. Though he is ultimately exonerated, this “isn’t an uplifting movie,” wrote Ben Kenigsberg in his review for The Times, as the documentary follows Lee on his troubled post-prison journey. “Just because Lee was innocent doesn’t mean he was perfect,” Kenigsberg writes.SundayMTV MOVIE & TV AWARDS 8 p.m. on MTV. The actress Drew Barrymore will host this year’s awards show, where a number of film and television stars will be recognized for their work — among them Jennifer Coolidge (“The White Lotus”), the 2023 winner of the Comedic Genius Award, which will be presented to her at the event.THE 2010s 9 p.m. on CNN. This seven-part series, from Emmy Award-winning executive producers Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog, examines the last decade influenced by Instagram, the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, marriage equality and the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, before culminating with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. More

  • 100 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    ‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 6: Cool New Rule

    This week, Kendall, Roman and Shiv are on a mission to impress the grown-ups watching them in what amounts to their public debut as the stewards of Logan’s legacy.Season 4, Episode 6: ‘Living+’The “Succession” world tour stops in Los Angeles this week, where the Waystar power-players are gathering at their Hollywood studio for Investor Day. The plan is to show off a line of state-of-the-art retirement communities called “Living+,” which Logan signed off on before he died. But secretly, Kendall and Roman are hoping their pitch will bump the stock price up so high before the GoJo acquisition that Lukas Matsson backs out of the deal.Less secretly, the brothers plus Shiv are on a mission to impress the grown-ups watching them, in what amounts to their public debut as the stewards of Logan’s legacy — which they each, in their own inadequate way, try to uphold.Let’s start with Shiv, and her ongoing covert communication with Matsson. Last week I speculated that the two of them may have them had conversations in Norway we were not privy to, about his negotiations with the Roy boys. This latest episode begins with a rejection of that theory, as Shiv and Matsson meet on her private jet and he surprises her with his description of how the meeting on the mountaintop went. Throughout the day she will keeps him posted on how things are going with Living+ — a Waystar initiative he plans to kill as soon as he takes over.Matsson’s words are still ringing in Shiv’s ears when she reaches Los Angeles and hears her brothers tell the Waystar executives that Matsson melted down at that last meeting — and that maybe they should think twice about recommending a deal to the board with “a person of this character.” Shiv knows they are lying to tank the deal, and that they are cutting her out of their play. Roman, genuinely sorry after she calls them out, asks her, “Can we do the huggy thing?” But she does not seem to be in a forgiving mood.As for Roman, he is struggling with the interpersonal part of being in charge. Because he has favors to bestow and firing power, he thinks everyone he deals with at Waystar should just take his money and do as he asks. But at a meeting with a studio executive, he first suffers through her offer of condolences — “Refused!” he jokes — and then groans when she complains about ATN’s far-right lean. Roman’s initial response is to troll, by making a snide comment about the “incredibly evolved, ruthlessly segregated” community of Los Angeles. Then he decides it would be easier just to terminate her.When Gerri finds out what Roman did, she tries to play the mentor again, warning that he is “a weak monarch in a dangerous interregnum” and noting, “You cannot win against the money.” He snaps back, saying she is being disrespectful and adding, “I need you to believe that I am as good as my dad.” She replies, “Say it or believe it?” So he fires her too. (“Shall we get started on the paperwork? Do you want to do it yourself or do you want me to get someone a bit sharper?”)Knowing he overstepped, Roman turns to Kendall, hoping his brother will play the Good Cop and clean up the Bad Cop’s mess. But Kendall is excited about them putting their own stamp on Waystar, and thinks these two firings may impress the markets. (“Some are saying these Young Turks might just have what it takes to turn things around,” he says, imagining what the business pundits might write.) Distraught, Roman excuses himself from the Investor Day pitch, figuring a solo Kendall will flame out and then the adults will finally step in and fix everything.It’s a reasonable assumption too, because Kendall is in full Icarus mode throughout this episode. There are few things more entertaining in “Succession” than Kendall in a boss groove, tossing out big ideas and buzzy business jargon at a rapid clip. While Shiv is the kind of boss who hates making decisions and makes fun of everyone else’s ideas, and Roman is the kind of boss who hates interacting with anybody who is not saying “yes sir,” Kendall is a hands-on boss, urging his team to be as excited as he is about taking huge swings.On this day, Kendall is trying to pump up the market potential of Living+, dubbing it a “price-rocket.” Talking rings around the Waystar accountant Pete (John Quilty), Kendall tries to get him to work some mojo with the spreadsheets, to see what would happen if they just, y’know, plugged in bigger numbers. (“Numbers aren’t just numbers, they’re numbers,” Pete sputters.) The gambit results in a prospectus promising such a high rate of return that Kendall, in a moment of clarity, chuckles, “It’s enough to make you lose your faith in capitalism.” He is then brought back down to earth by Frank, who threatens to blow the whistle if Kendall asks him to support a fraud.Frank’s complaint comes on the heels of Kendall’s dumbest setback of the day. Eager to get his Hollywood studio to make some magic on his behalf, Kendall asks for a scale replica of a Living+ house, with clouds rolling overhead. (He saw something like that in Berlin once, he explains.) In the episode’s funniest moment, Kendall arrives at the auditorium to see a slapped-together, half-finished house and “clouds” that are essentially a rapidly dissipating mist. The look of disappointment on his face is a work of actorly art from Jeremy Strong, who has a gift for playing those moments when Kendall’s over-the-top enthusiasm suddenly craters.Strong is even better in Kendall’s make-or-break speech for the investors. This is a tricky thing to perform, because the presentation has to be both corny enough to make the people who know Kendall wince in embarrassment, yet credible enough that a general audience could buy him as someone who knows what he is doing. The cringe moments are sprinkled throughout, like in the way Kendall repeats the phrase “big, big shoes” multiple times and in his tacky interaction with a video-screen showing his father, taken from a video Logan made to promote Living+. (Kendall also makes the dubious decision to have a sound effects engineer manipulate the video so that Logan says Living+ will “double the earnings” of the cruise business.)Yet at no point in the speech does Kendall lose control. He makes self-deprecating jokes. He builds a persuasive case for how personally enriching a Living+ facility could be. In touting the potential for this new business to extend its customers’ lives, he muses, “Would I take an extra year with my dad?” and says he absolutely would. (Shameless? Sure. But effective.) Even when he gets asked about a cruel tweet posted by Matsson during the presentation, Kendall is flustered for just a couple of seconds before saying, “I’m not gonna fave it.” The crowd laughs. The markets are kind. Matsson deletes the tweet. A stunned Shiv and Roman seethe.Look, this is “Succession,” so there is no reason to believe that Kendall’s triumph will be long-lived. Still, throughout the series, one of the recurring visual motifs for this character has been water: Kendall sinking morosely into a bathtub; Kendall falling face down into a pool; and so on. So it is telling that at the end of this episode, Kendall plunges into the ocean and emerges floating face up. On this day at least, he swims.Due diligencePity the poor director who had to ask Logan Roy to make his lines in a Living+ promotional video “a touch more upbeat.”So what is Living+, exactly? According to Logan’s video, it is an attempt to “bring the cruise ship experience to dry land” with exclusive Waystar content piped into a home with state-of-the-art security. Or, as Shiv describes it to Matsson, “Prison camps for grannies.”Does anyone give worse Waystar presentations than Tom? After Kendall leaves the stage, Tom steps into the spotlight and looks like a wild-eyed maniac, pointing into different parts of crowd and shouting, “You are an ATN citizen!”Because Roman bailed on the presentation, Kendall gets his sound-manipulation guy to make a video of Logan calling Roman pathetic and clueless (among other things). Roman, a masochist, plays the video over and over, forcing himself to take the same kind of punishment he used to get from his father.Shiv and Tom resume their weird flirtation/foreplay this week, which includes playing “bitey,” a game that involves biting each other on the arm until one person stops. (Shiv, after losing: “Tom Wambsgans! Finally made me feel something.”) Later they have sex, after which Tom takes accountability for betraying her by admitting he partly married her for her money. “If you think that’s shallow, why don’t you throw out all your stuff for love?” he says, with a bitter undertone and a sickeningly sweet smile. These two are made for each other. More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Television

    Under the Hollywood Spotlight, a Fading Welsh Town Is Reborn

    A former industrial hub, Wrexham had long been in decline. Now, it’s reviving as the globally famous star of a reality series about its once forlorn soccer team’s rejuvenation.In the Welsh language, the virtually untranslatable word “hiraeth” (pronounced here-ayeth) describes a blend of nostalgia and longing for a time that can never be recreated.For Wrexham, a working-class town in northern Wales, it was a feeling that came to define a postindustrial malaise that descended in the 1980s as the last remaining coal mines shuttered their rickety gates and, later, the furnaces at the nearby steelworks ran cold.Only the beloved soccer club, Wrexham A.F.C., remained: the oldest team in Wales, a perennial also-ran but still an indomitable source of local pride.“We went through so much as a town,” said Terry Richards, 56, a lifelong fan of the club as he sat at home in the team’s bright scarlet jersey. “Those were difficult times.”Wales has its legends of heroes returning to save the day, but few could have predicted that an unlikely pair of Hollywood actors, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, would waltz into town just over two years ago and buy the ailing club. That set off a chain of events that catapulted the town out of the doldrums and into the international spotlight, casting the residents as the main characters in their own Hollywood reality show based around the soccer club, “Welcome to Wrexham.”Few could have predicted that the two famous actors would walk into the town in the first place. But Mr. McElhenney, an American who had binged on sports documentaries during lockdown, conducted an exhaustive search for a down-and-out soccer team with growth potential, landing on Wrexham A.F.C., and persuaded Mr. Reynolds to join him in his pet project.Players from Wrexham A.F.C. practice at the Racecourse Ground while crews from the documentary series “Welcome to Wrexham” film them.Mary Turner for The New York TimesAfter paying the bargain sum of around $2.5 million, they moved into town (the Canadian-born Mr. Reynolds even bought a house) and began overhauling the team’s operation. They revitalized the training facilities and upgraded the roster, offering comparatively enormous salaries that attracted established players from the upper levels of English soccer.Last Saturday, that Hollywood story finally got its very own Hollywood ending — the team’s promotion after its winning season into the English Football League, the next tier of England’s multilevel soccer pyramid, after a 15-year absence. As the referee blew the final whistle, generations of teary-eyed supporters leaped from the stands onto the rain flecked field in joyous celebration.In that moment, a town was reborn, and that lingering “hiraeth” was no more. More

  • 138 Shares149 Views

    in Theater

    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

  • 138 Shares179 Views

    in Theater

    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

  • 175 Shares169 Views

    in Television

    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

  • 163 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    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