Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    Ken Bode, Erudite ‘Washington Week’ Host on PBS, Dies at 83

    Beginning in 1994, he brought to the moderator’s role credentials as a political activist, an academic and a national correspondent for NBC News.Ken Bode, a bearded, bearish former political operative and television correspondent who, armed with a Ph.D. in politics, moderated the popular PBS program “Washington Week in Review” in the 1990s, died on Thursday in Charlotte, N.C. He was 83.His death, in a care center, was confirmed by his daughters, Matilda and Josie Bode, who said the cause had not been identified.Beginning in 1994, Mr. Bode (pronounced BO-dee) coupled congeniality and knowledgeability in steering a Friday night discussion among a rotating panel of reporters about the issues of the day coming out of Washington. His role, as he saw it, was to “bring in people who are really covering the news to empty their notebooks and provide perspective, not to argue with each other,” he told The Washington Post in 1999.As host of the program, now called “Washington Week,” he succeeded Paul Duke, who had helmed that roundtable of polite talking heads for two decades, and preceded Gwen Ifill, a former NBC News correspondent who died in 2016 at 61. The program, which debuted in 1967, is billed as TV’s longest-running prime time news and public affairs program. The current host is Yamiche Alcindor.The program’s loyal and generally older viewers were so brass-bound in the 1990s that when Mr. Bode took over, even his beard proved controversial. He proceeded to introduce videotaped segments and remote interviews with correspondents and bring more diversity to his panel of reporters.He also took more liberties with language than his predecessor.Mr. Bode moderating an episode of “Washington Week in Review.” He hosted the program from 1994 to 1999 while teaching politics at DePauw University in Indiana. PBSEnding an interview with Bob Woodward of The Washington Post about President Bill Clinton’s economic policies, Mr. Bode quoted a British newspaper’s snarky prediction that the president’s impending visit to Oxford, England, would present people with an opportunity to “focus on one of the president’s less well-publicized organs: his brain.” He described a vacancy on the Supreme Court as constituting “one-ninth of one-third of the government.”Still, Dalton Delan, then the newly-minted executive vice president of WETA in Washington, which continues to produce the program, wanted to invigorate the format. He proposed including college journalists, surprise guests and people-on-the-street interviews and replacing Mr. Bode with Ms. Ifill (she said she initially turned down the offer) — changes that prompted Mr. Bode to jump, or to be not so gently pushed, from the host’s chair in 1999.Kenneth Adlam Bode was born on March 30, 1939, in Chicago and raised in Hawarden, Iowa. His father, George, owned a dairy farm and then a dry cleaning business. His mother, June (Adlam) Bode, kept the books.Mr. Bode in his office in 1972, when he was involved in Democratic politics.George Tames/The New York TimesThe first member of his family to attend college, Mr. Bode majored in philosophy and government at the University of South Dakota, graduating in 1961. He went on to earn a doctorate in political science at the University of North Carolina, where he was active in the civil rights movement.He taught briefly at Michigan State University and the State University of New York at Binghamton, and then gravitated toward liberal politics.In 1968, Mr. Bode worked in the presidential campaigns of Senators Eugene McCarthy and George S. McGovern. He became research director for a Democratic Party commission, led by Mr. McGovern and Representative Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota, that advocated for reforms in the selection process for delegates to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. He later headed a liberal-leaning organization called the Center for Political Reform.His marriage to Linda Yarrow ended in divorce. In 1975, he married Margo Hauff, a high school social studies teacher who wrote and designed educational materials for learning-disabled children. He is survived by her, in addition to their daughters, as well as by a brother and two grandsons.After working in politics, Mr. Bode began writing for The New Republic in the early 1970s and became its politics editor. He moved to NBC News in 1979, encouraged by the network’s newsman Tom Brokaw, a friend from college, and eventually became the network’s national political correspondent. In that role he hosted “Bode’s Journal,” a weekly segment of the “Today” show, on which he explored, among other issues, voting rights violations, racial discrimination and patronage abuses, as his longtime producer Jim Connor recalled in an interview.Mr. Bode left the network a decade later to teach at DePauw University in Indiana, where he founded the Center for Contemporary Media. While at DePauw, from 1989 to 1998, he commuted to Washington to host “Washington Week in Review” and wrote an Emmy-winning CNN documentary, “The Public Mind of George Bush” (1992).Beginning in 1998, he was dean of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism for three years and remained a professor there until 2004.Mr. Bode said he retired from broadcast journalism for family reasons. “I was raising my kids from 100 airports a year,” he said. As he told The New York Times in 1999, “I knew then that my problem was, I’ve got the best job, but I’ve also got one chance to be a father, and I’m losing it.” More

  • 125 Shares169 Views

    in Theater

    N.Y.U. Names New Performance Space After Nation’s First Black Theater

    The university is commemorating the African Grove Theater, part of a new building opening in 2023.A new performance space at New York University will be named “The African Grove Theater” in honor of the African Theater, a historic New York production company and venue widely considered to be the first Black theater in the United States, the university announced on Wednesday.Supported by a $1 million donation, the theater is on the fourth floor of a new multipurpose educational building at 181 Mercer Street that will open in spring 2023. It also will house the graduate acting and design programs for stage and film of the university’s Tisch School of the Arts.Where there was once merely a plaque with a brief history of the theater, there will be space to host theatrical performances, lobby displays, educational seminars and an annual symposium on the history of Black theater and culture.“This theater wasn’t ‘somewhere downtown’; it was on our campus,” said Laurence Maslon, an arts professor at N.Y.U. Tisch School of the Arts who is also a theater historian and co-chair of a university Committee to Commemorate the African Grove. “It has been part of our DNA for over 200 years.”“Felicitous is the word I keep coming back to,” he added.The original African Theater was started in 1816 by William Alexander Brown, a retired ship steward who started hosting music, poetry and short plays for Black New Yorkers in his backyard at 38 Thomas Street. The entertainment “tea garden” became known as the African Grove, one of the few spaces where Black patrons could enjoy leisure arts.In 1821, the theater moved to Bleecker and Mercer Streets — where the new performance space will stand next spring — expanding to a 300-seat venue known for staging operas, ballets and Shakespearean classics alongside original work, initially performed by Black performers for Black audiences and, later, integrated audiences. The original venture was not entirely peaceful. The theater faced harassment from white rivals and police raids. A yellow fever epidemic further ravaged the theater, which closed two years later. The last known playbill for an African Theater production was dated June 1823.The new theater will be a “space where we celebrate another tradition in the culture of New York City that has often been disregarded and overlooked and not understood,” said Michael Dinwiddie, an associate professor at N.Y.U.’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, who is also a theater historian and co-chair of the Committee to Commemorate the African Grove. “This was a theater that in its early time, was really creating a model for what the American theater could be. And that’s what we want the modern African Grove Theater to be.”Dinwiddie said he was excited “to see what happens culturally” for students who learn about the theater and understand that they are performing in a place that is “historic and sacred and new, at the same time.” More

  • 113 Shares129 Views

    in Television

    Stephen Colbert Will Go Live After Jan. 6 Hearings

    “They are destined to go down in the annals of live TV like the Watergate hearings, the moon landing, and the time Walter Cronkite was swallowed by a python,” Colbert said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Not Too ProudStephen Colbert announced that “The Late Show” will go live on Thursday night after the prime-time Jan. 6 committee hearings.“They are destined to go down in the annals of live TV,” Colbert said on Tuesday, “like the Watergate hearings, the moon landing, and the time Walter Cronkite was swallowed by a python.”“Now, here’s the deal: all the major news outfits — CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN — will be covering the hearings live, while the Fox News Channel will stay with its usual prime-time lineup. Well, that’s actually good. No, it’s actually good. We’ll hear directly from the people who planned the coup.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The Proud Boys are going to be prominently featured during the live hearings on Thursday, because the committee intends to present live testimony from a British documentarian who was filming the group, with their permission, during the riot. Why do you let a film crew follow you while you commit treason? Well, same reason Benedict Arnold commissioned that painting of him handing over the plans.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I’ve got to tell you, seeing those guys arrested makes this boy proud.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, if you’re not familiar with the Proud Boys, that sounds lovely. But as a refresher, they’re a far-right, anti-immigrant, all-male group who take their name from an obscure show tune from the Disney musical ‘Aladdin’ entitled ‘Proud of Your Boy.’ It was actually their second Disney song choice. Originally, they were the Supercalifragilisticexpiali-douchebags.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Going to the Dogs Edition)“According to a new study, dogs are more effective at detecting Covid than rapid tests. I’m glad we’ve reached the point in the pandemic where the C.D.C. is like, ‘I don’t know, dogs?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Knowing the C.D.C., in two days, they’re going to be like, ‘Never mind, it’s actually rabbits, I’m sorry.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Seriously, I have no idea what’s going on. Today, I saw Sarah McLachlan snuggling a person with Covid asking pets to help.” — JIMMY FALLON“Here’s how it works with dogs: If you have symptoms, they sniff your crotch. One hump — one hump means you’re negative, two humps means you’re positive.” — JIMMY FALLON“Apparently, dogs are better at detecting Covid than rapid tests, which explains now when you take an at-home test, the instructions look a little different. Yeah, now the steps are: ‘One, open package. Two, remove at-home Covid test. Three, walk and feed at-home Covid test.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingSeth Meyers went day drinking with Post Malone on Tuesday’s “Late Night.”What We’re Excited About Wednesday NightPresident Biden will visit “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Wednesday.Also, Check This OutCustomers in Bookmongers of Brixton, a book store in London. Apps have struggled to reproduce the kind of real-world serendipity that puts a book in a reader’s hand.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesNew apps like Tertulia are helping avid readers discover new books. More

  • 163 Shares109 Views

    in Television

    Todd and Julie Chrisley, Self-Made Moguls on Reality TV, Are Convicted of Fraud

    The couple, who star on the popular show “Chrisley Knows Best,” used money from fraudulently obtained loans on luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate and travel, the Department of Justice said.Todd and Julie Chrisley, the stars of “Chrisley Knows Best,” a reality TV show in which the couple project themselves as real estate moguls who judge PG-rated family squabbles according to strict standards for comportment, were convicted on Tuesday of conspiring to defraud banks out of $30 million and avoiding years of tax bills, the Department of Justice said.After a three-week trial in Federal District Court in Atlanta, a jury found the Chrisleys guilty on all counts — jointly, eight counts of financial fraud and two counts of tax evasion, with Ms. Chrisley also being convicted of additional counts of wire fraud and obstruction of justice.Their accountant, Peter Tarantino, was found guilty of filing false corporate tax returns for the Chrisleys’ company.“When you lie, cheat and steal, justice is blind as to your fame, your fortune, and your position,” Keri Farley, special agent in charge of the F.B.I. in Atlanta, said in a statement.The Chrisleys could each be sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison. U.S. Judge Eleanor L. Ross of the Northern District of Georgia set sentencing for Oct. 6.“Disappointed in the verdict,” Bruce Howard Morris, a lawyer for Todd Chrisley, wrote in an email on behalf of the couple. “An appeal is planned.”Lawyers for Mr. Tarantino did not immediately reply to requests for comment.Despite the Chrisleys’ self-presentation as self-made businesspeople, their wealth depended in large part on fraud, according to the indictment against the couple.They obtained loans, for example, by using a bank statement saying they had $4 million at Merrill Lynch when they did not even have an account with the bank, the indictment said. Mr. Chrisley directed his accountant to perform actions he himself suggested would be “crooked,” and Ms. Chrisley repeatedly used glue and tape to falsify documents, according to the indictment.The couple used money from loans for “luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate, and travel,” the Department of Justice said, even as they also filed bankruptcy and walked away from more than $20 million in loans. They did not pay the Internal Revenue Service in a timely manner for the 2013 through 2016 tax years, the indictment said.NBC Universal announced last month that “Chrisley Knows Best” had been renewed for a 10th season. The network also said that “Growing Up Chrisley,” a spinoff starring two Chrisley children, Chase and Savannah, had been renewed for a fourth season, and that a new series, “Love Limo,” a dating show hosted by Todd Chrisley, would begin next year.The release described “Chrisley Knows Best” as USA Network’s “most-watched current original series,” with an average of 1.8 million total viewers.A spokesman for NBC Universal declined to comment on the verdict or on the company’s plans regarding any of the shows. The second half of Season 9 of “Chrisley Knows Best” is still scheduled to air starting June 23.Following a proven American formula, the show depicts a family with traditional values and a down-home style of self-expression who just happen to be fantastically rich.In the show’s trailer, Mr. Chrisley describes himself and his wife as people from a “small rural town” who now live in a “gated neighborhood” outside Atlanta alongside “celebrities.” Their “main home” is 30,000 square feet, they spend at least $300,000 per year on clothes and Mr. Chrisley earns “millions of dollars a year” — but the Chrisleys still face the same issues as families making $40,000, he says.Mr. Chrisley plays the controlling and fastidious patriarch, the sort of father who responds to his son’s misbehavior by throwing his laptop into the pool. His wife’s role is to comment sarcastically yet forgivingly about her husband’s foibles.The Chrisleys join a growing roster of reality TV stars who have gotten into legal trouble.In 2018, Michael (The Situation) Sorrentino, an actor in MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” was sentenced to eight months in prison for violating federal tax laws, and in 2014, Joe and Teresa Giudice, two stars of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” were sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to bankruptcy fraud, among other charges.Eduardo Medina More

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    Review: Sarah Silverman’s ‘Bedwetter’ Musical Has Sprung a Leak

    The comedian’s memoir was funny. But when the new show based on it tries for something deeper, it sinks into bathos.Zingy, 10-year-old Sarah Silverman (Zoe Glick) isn’t a natural fit for the town of Bedford, N.H., where sour, flinty fatalism is the norm. “May all your dreams come true,” one local says at a birthday party. “Mine did not.”The Silvermans, who anchor the new musical “The Bedwetter,” are defiantly nonconformist: all id, all the time. Sarah’s lately divorced father, the proprietor of Crazy Donny’s Factory Outlet (Darren Goldstein), encourages her to wow her new classmates with the dirty jokes he’s taught her. Dipso Nana (Bebe Neuwirth) thinks Sarah’s bartending skills are a better bet to impress. And if Sarah’s mother, Beth Ann (Caissie Levy), expresses herself by spending days in bed watching old movies, Sarah, taking the family’s let-it-all-out mojo perhaps too far, does so by wetting hers at night.Still, she is cheerfully resigned to being a misfit, taking no offense even when her sister, Laura (Emily Zimmerman), wanting nothing to do with her in public, sings a song called “I Don’t Know This Person.” And to beat her new fifth-grade classmates to the punch, Sarah pre-emptively tells them, in “I Couldn’t Agree More,” that she’s “eww-y” and “Jewy.” Not only are her arms “so hairy,” but “You should see my back.”The musical depicts one year in the life of 10-year-old Sarah, who quickly manages to make frenemies of three new classmates.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSatisfying as the standup rhythm is, “The Bedwetter,” which opened Tuesday at the Linda Gross Theater, is sometimes, like its title character, a bit of a misfit. Based on the real Sarah Silverman’s 2010 memoir, subtitled “Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee,” it works best when it aims for the comic highs of that charming if gangly book. As long as it sticks close to young Sarah’s resilience as she tries to make friends without revealing her mortifying condition, “The Bedwetter,” an Atlantic Theater Company production, is a potty-mouthed pleasure. But in jimmying the original into a more serious musical format as it proceeds, it achieves only a middling geniality.It starts out promisingly enough, establishing the main characters efficiently and with good humor. The songs, with music by Adam Schlesinger and lyrics by Schlesinger and Silverman, have the cheesy irreverence and synth-y disposability of period television jingles — the period being the early 1980s. Donny’s numbers, performed with schlubby insouciance by Goldstein, are a highlight, including one, whose refrain can’t be printed here, that explains how he knows all the other girls’ mothers. Perhaps you can imagine what rhymes with “along.”But a little of that sound goes a long way, just as Silverman’s naïve inappropriateness, so effective in her standup, works only the first few times onstage. When Sarah, introducing herself to her class, mentions a brother who died, her reflex not to seem piteous makes her explanation weirdly funny: “He was just like a baby, so it wasn’t sad or anything.” But when that death — and a lot of other dark material — comes to the forefront, the laughs wear thin.If such moments don’t feel out of place in Silverman’s memoir, that’s in part because its episodic narrative leaps froglike through 40 years of her life, quickly dispensing with even the most disturbing events. And though it makes sense that the musical’s authors would narrow the focus and shorten the time span, the book by Joshua Harmon (“Bad Jews”) and Silverman overreaches; in attempting to backfill the story with drama to justify the addition of songs, they put too much pressure on the one year it depicts.That’s the year in which Sarah arrives at McKelvie Middle School, manages to make frenemies of three classmates and, at the end of the first act, in an unconvincing scene involving diapers, finds the one thing she had hoped to keep private revealed. The second act deals with Sarah’s resulting depression — a state uncomfortably reminiscent of Beth Ann’s — as well as Nana’s mortality and a minor character’s suicide.The music, and especially the lyrics, cannot support this turn toward “Fun Home” territory. (In her black wig, Glick, a very talented 14-year-old, looks like she’s already playing the young lead in that show.) What works well in the lighter material — like the earwormy title song, which sounds like “Day Tripper” being covered by the Partridge Family — feels flimsy in the heavier material, especially Beth Ann’s overdramatic arias. (Levy sings them beautifully, though.) As a result, the show seems to spring a leak, losing all its giddy energy as it sinks into the serious.That’s a shame — the more so because Schlesinger, having died from Covid-19 complications in 2020, was not able to finish developing the musical with his collaborators. (The songwriter David Yazbek joined the team as a “creative consultant.”) Schlesinger’s songs for the 2008 stage version of “Cry-Baby” (written with David Javerbaum), as well as his experience in the pop-rock band Fountains of Wayne, demonstrated a quick ear for neat hooks but not yet the kind of complexity needed to carry theatrical emotion. And his lyrics with Silverman too often wander in search of a rhyme, then, sighting one in the distance, botch it.Glick, outnumbered by her meds, in the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMuch of this might have been improved had Schlesinger lived. And much could still have been camouflaged by a strong staging. But “The Bedwetter” doesn’t get that, at least in this incarnation; the usually acute director Anne Kauffman, working on an awkward set by Laura Jellinek, seems to be going for a middle-school aesthetic to match its milieu. Even at two hours, the show feels needlessly elongated by switchovers from one vague locale to another — and by numbers, including one about Xanax, that extend well past their welcome.About that Xanax: It’s a bizarre omission in the musical that it does not highlight, as the book clearly does, the role the massive over-prescription of that drug played in Sarah’s depression. (By age 14 she was taking 16 pills a day.) Perhaps this was a choice to make the drama more emotional than pharmaceutical but, in any case, it further burdens what is already a weak plot about a weak bladder. But then many of the show’s choices, like the promotion of a Miss New Hampshire character (Ashley Blanchet, suitably lovely) from cameo to mascot, seem similarly random. That’s true of Silverman’s comedy in general, built as it is on apparently aleatory mismatches of tone and content.If that kind of randomness can be a convincing aesthetic in some art forms, I’ve never seen it work in musicals, where “that seems weird enough to work” never does. A show that operates on that principle may still hit a few highs; Neuwirth, dry and suave, certainly knows how to find them. The song in which she tells Sarah, warmly but practically, “You’re beautiful — to me,” is one of the few serious numbers that lands. Too often the rest of “The Bedwetter,” at least when aiming for tears, feels merely wet.The BedwetterThrough July 3 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours. More

  • 88 Shares149 Views

    in Theater

    Ruth Negga Thinks Lady Macbeth Is Misunderstood

    The actress, nominated for a Tony Award for her magnetic performance in “Macbeth,” is drawn to female characters who challenge the status quo.Ruth Negga dazzles onstage. Not just because, as Lady Macbeth, she briefly wears a gold metallic gown in Sam Gold’s otherwise fairly casual staging of “Macbeth” at the Longacre Theater. But, rather, it’s because she infuses her character, and her marriage to Macbeth (Daniel Craig), with such intensity, urgency and vitality that I found myself missing her when she came to her inevitable end.Negga was nominated for a Tony Award for best performance by a leading actress in a play, which recognizes both her powerful stage presence and the gender parity that Gold’s revival sought to achieve. “Like a feral cat, she can seem quicksilver and weightless or, when enraged, menacing and bristly and twice her size,” Jesse Green wrote of Negga’s performance in a review in The Times.Even if Lady Macbeth appears in substantially fewer scenes than her husband, her cunning mind — and Negga’s command of Shakespeare’s verse — leave an indelible imprint. “Her language is very fertile, it’s very fecund and it’s very sensual,” Negga said last week in a video interview. “I think a lot of people associate that with darkness as well. But that’s another layer that I think this character has been burdened and muddied with.”Negga, left, with Amber Gray in the revival. “She’s not evil,” Negga said of Lady Macbeth. “It’s this archetype that chases her: the deadly villainess, the villain behind the man.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNegga, who plays the mysterious, seductive, blonde-haired Clare in the movie “Passing,” and the real-life civil rights activist Mildred Loving in “Loving,” is drawn to characters who try to circumvent the social circumstances into which they were born. Negga sees Clare, Loving and now Lady Macbeth as paying a price for such transgressions because they are either running out of time or, in the case of Loving, ahead of hers.Born in Ethiopia to an Ethiopian father and an Irish mother, and raised in Ireland and England, Negga, 40, spoke from her place in New York about the significance of seeing “Macbeth” as a love story, and why she finds the role of Lady to be liberating. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.You were playing Hamlet at St. Ann’s Warehouse right before everything shut down in March 2020. How has coming back to the stage, on Broadway with a different Shakespeare play, been for you?Revisiting the Tragedy of ‘Macbeth’Shakespeare’s tale of a man who, step by step, cedes his soul to his darkest impulses continues to inspire new interpretations. On Stage: Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga star in Sam Gold’s take on the play. Despite its star power, the production feels oddly uneasy, our critic writes. Onscreen: In the “Tragedy of Macbeth,” Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand embody a toxic power couple with mastery. Break a Leg: Shakespeare’s play is known for the rituals and superstitions tied to it. How does the supernatural retain its hold on the theater world?My isolation was book ended by two Shakespeare plays, which is really interesting because I hadn’t actually been onstage for 10 years before that. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. I think those two years of being so separate from people just compounded that feeling of “connect, connect.” It’s such a personal, visceral experience for the person playing onstage and the person receiving that performance. Because it’s so immediate and in the now, and it’s happening live, that kind of energetic exchange can only happen at that moment. It’s so weird — that’s why I love it.How did playing Hamlet prepare you for Lady Macbeth?I was approaching 40, playing this young man who was just entering his exploration of his adulthood and his place in the world, and I was guided by this moment of internal discovery and complete honesty. Hamlet is a truth-teller but he’s also a truth searcher, and for good or bad, and I think to his chagrin sometimes, nothing but the truth will do. That’s a very hard place to be, but it’s also where amazing transformation can happen. [The role] really tests your mettle, your physical and vocal stamina, and also what you’re willing to lay bare. And since everything’s laid bare, you can’t really hide anywhere. To be honest, anything’s a relief after Hamlet.With Lady Macbeth, was it hard to know what motivated her?Even before I started rehearsals I was like, “What’s all this jazz about her being evil?” She’s not evil, it’s this archetype that chases her: the deadly villainess, the villain behind the man. That’s what she’s become known for, and she’s been robbed of any idiosyncrasy or personality. But whereas we rail against [Macbeth] for his procrastination, I think she could have done a bit more thinking things through. But the thing is, time wasn’t on her side. This is what happens when you just have all these ideas and they seem great and you’re really getting things going and you don’t have much time. I mean she makes one bad mistake when you think about it.Which is?Well, I personally don’t think you need to kill people to get ahead! But I don’t come to a character trying to justify them, that’s not my job. I’m not interested in that. But very few people act from a core of badness or evilness. I loved her desire to be alive, to reach for things, to strive, and I was so excited to play someone who has such clear ideas of what they think they deserve, especially a woman. And when you realize that your desires and your ambitions are restricted by the status quo, one has to think quickly on one’s feet. They have to become quick and mercurial. That’s what she has a talent for. There’s a self-awareness there that I think makes her similar to Hamlet.Daniel Craig, left, stars as Macbeth. “There’s very much an awareness that this is a marriage of equals and respect, and I loved that,” Negga said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe chemistry between Macbeth and Lady is so palpable onstage. Was that important to you?When I read this script, I thought, “Wow, this dies on whether you believe that they love each other or not. This is key.” Their relationship is the backdrop or the environment of this play; that’s what their action is born out of. But there’s also a love there that is very robust. You feel like they both draw strength from that union in a very equal, balanced way. And that was something that was important for me to not let be put to the side, or laid to waste or watered down in any way. There’s very much an awareness that this is a marriage of equals and respect, and I loved that.Marriage is central to some of your other characters, like Clare in “Passing” and Mildred in “Loving,” whose marriages to white men challenge the status quo.To me race is in the foreground, the background, the present, and it’s not something I have had to chase or I’ve had to ignore. It’s with me, it’s in me, it’s who I am. So stories about race and stories written by people of color, Americans of color, have always piqued my interest. How do people go through the world as a person of color with the structures and limitations that have been imposed by society? And how does the status quo come up against your personal desire and ambition? And how do you live the life that you want as best you can within these structures that are telling you, “No.”In “Macbeth,” the other characters are casually dressed, but at one point, Lady is wearing a gold gown. Why?That was really important to me and to Suttirat [Larlarb], our amazing costume designer. I think we both fell in love with Lady. My heart spills over with joy when I see women, any type of woman, just embrace who they are. And for me, her femininity is important because I was familiar with this idea that she could seem like this sexless, austere, bloodless, lustless sort of shell. That just doesn’t chime with the Lady on the page, so I wanted her to have no shame, be lusty and alive, and really enjoy her sexuality and her femininity, and not be frightened to stand out from the crowd.Is there another Shakespeare character that you long to play?I remember in college I used to do the Queen Margaret speeches [from “Richard III”]. They’re great because they’re deadly, speeches that are powerful and about power. It’s extraordinary that Shakespeare gave them to her. What I love about him, he doesn’t make his women saints. He gives you complexity. He’s not presenting a Lady Macbeth we can hate; he’s presenting a woman that we can see ourselves in, and a woman overwhelmed by grief. She has a great catharsis and a great internal reckoning. And I feel for her deeply. More

  • 88 Shares109 Views

    in Television

    ‘Being BeBe’ Review: Reaching for Drag Superstardom

    Observing its subject with a clear eye, this profile of Marshall Ngwa, who performs as BeBe Zahara Benet, is a breath of fresh air.In the perspicacious documentary “Being BeBe,” the director Emily Branham seems to have taken a page from Janet Malcolm. Within her profile of Marshall Ngwa, who performs drag as BeBe Zahara Benet, Branham tucks lucid insights about the codes, ethics and art of cinematic biography.Branham, who gathered footage of Ngwa over 15 years and became his dear friend, frames the movie as a reminiscence. It opens in 2020 in Ngwa’s Minneapolis home, where he watches clips that Branham captured years earlier and reacts to the scenes in real time. These segments intermix with an overview of Ngwa’s life and his campaign for drag superstardom. Special attention is paid to his affection for his family, and the grace with which he navigated their shifting feelings about his embodying BeBe.
    In a sea of glossy celebrity bio-docs, “Being BeBe” is a breath of fresh air. It observes its subject with a clear eye, and does not shy away from positioning Ngwa’s triumphs, such as his exciting win on the first season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” within a context of artistic, financial and social struggle.Perhaps most powerful of all is Branham’s intermittent presence in the film. Sometimes she queries Ngwa from behind her grainy video camera, or he addresses her. In other moments, she interrupts her representation of Ngwa to stage a broader survey of homophobia in Cameroon. With her feature debut, Branham exposes her hand as filmmaker, and reminds us that “Being BeBe” is only a snapshot of Ngwa’s persona; the real thing is so much richer.Being BeBeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Theater

    Lucy Moss Unwinds With Songwriting and TikTok Cleaning Tutorials

    The Tony Award-nominated co-director of “Six” shares the corners of the internet she haunts to help her stay productive.At 26, Lucy Moss became the youngest woman ever to direct a Broadway musical: the global hit, “Six,” which she had co-written at 23 with Toby Marlow, and co-directed with Jamie Armitage. The show, structured as a pop concert battle in which the wives of Henry VIII compete to see who suffered the most, began at the Edinburgh fringe festival in 2017 and now has six productions running worldwide.At 28, Moss is now up for best direction and best original score at the Tony Awards, and just directed a reimagined revival of “Legally Blonde” at London’s Regent’s Park Open Air Theater, running through July and starring a largely queer, mostly Black and brown cast.“At first I was quite a snob about movie adaptations, thinking they’re usually not good, even though that’s not true,” she said on a recent Zoom call from her apartment in London. “It also wasn’t very queer, so I didn’t know if it was my vibe. Then I saw the original’s MTV recording and thought it was the best thing I’d seen in my life.”The London native discussed the diverse bits of culture — pop, online, and IRL — that propel her. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. A Weeping Willow in Regent’s Park When you walk in from the Baker Street Underground station, there’s a bridge and then this lone tree on the bank of the little lake. I’m usually on the tube stressing about something, trying to send 20 emails or whatever, so to then go into the park is just so beautiful, particularly when I was going in for auditions and meetings in the winter. I love weeping willows, I feel a very kindred spirit in them. They’re just falling over, like, “Ugh, everything is so difficult.” I can just look at it and go, “Yeah, same.”2. “Circle Jerk” by Fake Friends — Onstage I paid for, like, three tickets for the digital version of it in 2020 and kept watching it afterward — maybe 40 times? I immediately became their biggest fan from across the internet, and then we did “Ratatouille the Musical” together and became friends. I love how dense it is, textually. It’s such a rich rewatch, and just so funny and nuanced and stupid.I know it quite well at this point — the performances and choices and all that — and I imagine there’ll be new TikTok references [in the new production]. I just can’t believe I get to see it in the flesh. I’ve never been more excited to see a live show.3. Basketball Shorts They’re a great length; you can wear them high-waisted and still not have them be super short. I feel like myself in them. I went to a vintage shop and bought a bunch, so now I have a pair for every day of the week. Now I’m dabbling in wearing them lower, but high-waisting my underwear line, with a crop top. Although, last night, I had to give my phone to a friend because it kept pulling them down.4. Her Cousin Max My mom’s sister’s son is my best friend, and the baby of the family. I love that he has a phone now so I can send him sort of memes of geese and stuff. He texts like a grandma, with correct capitalization and punctuation. I texted him to remind him of the time he fell into the pond at my mom’s house and he replied, “Oh gosh! That brings back memories.” It’s like a novel.5. Cleaning TikTok (“CleanTok”) I watch these when I’m going to bed, when I should be reading a book or something. It’s so soothing and relaxing to see videos of people cleaning their bathrooms — especially the ones from Japan, because they have gadgets that click in and out of place. I watch and fall asleep, though, I’ve absolutely not learned anything from them. Actually, I realized how clean you can actually get things to be.6. The “Contrapoints” YouTube Channel She is just the queen of nuance. Her videos are such a weird, amazing combo of academia made really accessible, and comedy and dress-up. They’re only about an hour but still so thorough, and she’s so empathetic. Sure, she’ll mock people but she’s ultimately discussing the roots of what’s going on in society. She doesn’t place herself higher than anybody else.7. @ZeeWhatIDid I guess she’s kind of like an influencer? She’s a British teenage TikToker who is so charismatic and sweet. She does cosplay and makeup tutorials and Marvel stuff, which I’m not even into, but I’m just happy that TikTok exists for her. She’ll be doing highlighter on her face and talking about blinding your enemies; she’s so gorgeous and funny. I love that she’s living her best life online.8. Writing Songs It’s a good way to unwind without feeling like I’m wasting my life. I don’t have plans to do anything with them, and I often put in little personal in-jokes. I just like the actual process of writing something just for myself, particularly as someone who is usually writing with other people, and always to a specific end. If I was writing with Toby, they’d be like, “Oh no, that rhyme should be at the end of the line,” or something to actually improve it, but I don’t have to do that alone.9. The Bush Theater in London Lynette Linton was made its artistic director a few years ago, and I admire her so much. She runs this building in such an incredible way; the way that everybody in the building interacts with her and each other, it’s such good vibes. And the actual space is amazing: The library is gorgeous, there’s a nice little cafe, and the shows they put on are always championing and nurturing young, different voices that other theaters wouldn’t necessarily do. And it’s in west London, which is where I grew up. So it’s kind of the only cool thing in west London, basically.10. A 2014 Video of Russell Brand Giving Away a CroissantI used to watch his show, “The Trews,” where he would discuss the news, and it got a bit more serious. And then, in the middle of that, there’s this video of him trying to give away a luxury croissant on the motorway. I watch it so often and quote it all the time, which obviously nobody even knows. It makes me so happy, I just love the way he says “croissant” and sings about this segment being his “trafficky bit.” I’ve been obsessed with this video since then and I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. More