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    Hollywood Writers Approve of Strike as Shutdown Looms

    The writers have not gone on strike in 15 years, and the vote gives their unions the right to call for a walkout when their contract expires on May 1.Hollywood is getting ever closer to a shutdown.The unions representing thousands of television and movie writers said on Monday that they had overwhelming support for a strike, giving union leaders the right to call for a walkout when the writers’ contract with the major Hollywood studios expires on May 1.The unions, which are affiliated East and West Coast branches of the Writers Guild of America, said more than 9,000 writers had approved a strike authorization, with 98 percent of the vote.W.G.A. leaders have said this is an “existential” moment for writers, contending that compensation has stagnated over the last decade despite the explosion of television series in the streaming era. In an email last week to writers, the lead negotiators said that “the survival of writing as a profession is at stake in this negotiation.”With two weeks to go before the contract expires, there has been little sign of progress in the talks. In the email, the negotiating committee said the studios “have failed to offer meaningful responses on the core economic issues” and offered only small concessions in a few areas.“In short, the studios have shown no sign that they intend to address the problems our members are determined to fix in this negotiation,” the email said.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of Hollywood production companies, said in a statement that a strike authorization “should come as no surprise to anyone.”“A strike authorization vote has always been part of the W.G.A.’s plan, announced before the parties even exchanged proposals,” the statement said. “Our goal is, and continues to be, to reach a fair and reasonable agreement.” It added, “An agreement is only possible if the guild is committed to turning its focus to serious bargaining by engaging in full discussions of the issues with the companies and searching for reasonable compromises.”The last time the writers went on strike was in 2007, and that strike lasted 100 days.Nick Ut/Associated PressIn recent weeks, Hollywood executives have begun preparing for a strike, both by stockpiling scripts and by getting ready to produce a torrent of reality series, which do not need script writers. David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns the Warner Bros. film and TV studios as well as HBO, said at a news media event last week that he was hopeful a deal would be reached. He added that “a strike will be a challenge for the whole industry.”Still, he said, the company was fully prepared if there was a walkout.“We’re assuming the worst from a business perspective,” he said. “We’ve got ourselves ready. We’ve had a lot of content that’s been produced.”A strike authorization does not guarantee writers will take to the picket lines in two weeks. In 2017, a last-minute deal was struck with the studios not long after 96 percent of the writers voted to authorize a strike. The last time the writers went on strike was in 2007. That stoppage dragged for 100 days, into early 2008, and cost the Los Angeles economy an estimated $2.1 billion.If a strike begins in early May, late-night shows like “Saturday Night Live” and talk shows hosted by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers will go dark immediately. It would take a strike of several months before viewers began to notice an effect on scripted television series and movies.The streaming era has resulted in a significant rise in the number of scripted television series that are produced, but writers say working conditions have not kept pace.“Writers are working more weeks for less money,” said Eric Haywood, a veteran writer and producer, and a member of the W.G.A. negotiating committee. “And in some cases, veteran writers are working for the same money or, in some cases, less money than they made just a few years ago.”In some cases, veteran writers are working for the same money or, in some cases, less money, than they made just a few years ago,” said Eric Haywood, right, a veteran writer and producer, and a member of the W.G.A. negotiating committee. Sarah Stacke for The New York TimesThe timing of the talks has an added complexity given the current financial challenges for all media and entertainment companies.Over the last year, share prices for those companies have nose-dived after Wall Street began questioning why many streaming services were losing billions of dollars a year. The studios are quickly trying to make those streaming services profitable, after years of focusing primarily on growth. The shift is coming at a cost.Disney is in the midst of 7,000 job cuts. Warner Bros. Discovery, confronting a debt load of about $50 billion, shelved projects and laid off thousands of workers last year. Other media companies are taking similar cost-cutting measures.The writers do not appear to be sympathetic.“The current status quo is unsustainable,” Mr. Haywood said.The writers have taken particular aim at so-called minirooms. There is no one definition of a miniroom, but they have proliferated in the streaming era.In one example, the studios will convene a miniroom before a show has been picked up by a studio and scheduled to air. A small group of writers will develop a series and write several scripts over two or three months.But because the studios have not ordered the series, they will use that as justification to pay writers less than if they were in a formal writers’ room, union leaders said. And given the relatively short duration of the position, those writers are then left scrambling to find another job if the show is not picked up.One union leader likened minirooms to “labor camps” during the negotiations, according to two people familiar with the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.A W.G.A. spokesman said the reference was not literal and had come during a presentation lasting an hour and a half.“Development work has always been paid at a premium because you’re coming up with the idea,” Ellen Stutzman, the chief negotiator for the W.G.A., said in an interview. “If you’re going to have these rooms before you pick up a show or a season, you should pay writers a premium.”The writers have also said residuals — which Ms. Stutzman called “the profit participation of the middle-class writer” — have been affected in the streaming era. Before streaming, writers could receive residual payments whenever a show was licensed, whether that was for syndication, an international deal or DVD sales.But in the streaming era, as global services like Netflix and Amazon have been reluctant to license their series, those distribution arms have been cut off and replaced with a fixed residual, Ms. Stutzman said.“If an overwhelming majority of the content writers create is for the streaming platforms where they are completely cut out of global growth and success, that is a very big problem,” she said. More

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    Among Faceless Offices, a Theater Taking Risks

    The New Diorama in London is placing bets on small troupes, inviting them onto its stage and giving them help to thrive. With two shows now in the West End, its gambles are paying off.Regent’s Place, a business quarter in the Euston district of central London, isn’t a likely location for a theater. Many of the buildings there are the offices of global corporations. The glass-fronted New Diorama could easily be mistaken for one.Since it opened in 2010, the New Diorama, an 80-seat studio theater, has gained a reputation as an incubator of new talent. It presents an innovative program of work by emerging theater companies and offers the artists who work there a level of creative support that’s rare for a venue of its size, with free rehearsal space, interest-free loans and help finding funding from other sources.The theater has nurtured the careers of many small troupes, and, in some cases, its support has been transformative. This season, two shows that originated at the New Diorama are playing on the West End: “Operation Mincemeat,” a comedy musical by the collective SplitLip, and “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy,” a piece exploring Black masculinity and mental health, created by Ryan Calais Cameron. That show, which premiered in 2021, went from the New Diorama to a run at the Royal Court Theater, before a commercial producer snapped it up.“Operation Mincemeat,” a comedy musical about British spies in World War II, began at the New Diorama and is now playing in the West End.Alex Harvey-BrownDavid Byrne, the New Diorama’s artistic director, said in an interview that it was “a theater that would support companies and collaborative work in the way that a new writing theater would support writers.”Byrne added that he always tells artists who work at the New Diorama: “We need you to ask for things that you need. And we will try to provide them.”Cameron, whose show is running at the Apollo Theater through May 7, first came to the New Diorama’s attention in 2018, when he and his company, Nouveau Riche, won the theater’s Edinburgh Untapped Award. That prize gave the young director the funding to take an earlier show, “Queens of Sheba,” to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In an interview, Cameron recalled Byrne telling him that the New Diorama’s support didn’t end with the award: It was the start of a relationship. “He really seemed like he cared about the longevity of myself and the company,” Cameron said.Then, in 2021, when many British theaters were rebounding from pandemic-related lockdowns with low-risk solo shows, Cameron went to Byrne with his proposal for “For Black Boys,” a dance-theater piece for six performers. Cameron said the theater agreed to program the show after a meeting that lasted just eight minutes.The cast of “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy,” performing at the New Diorama in 2021. Ali Wright“New Diorama was the only venue in London willing to take that kind of risk on an artist still relatively new to the mainstream,” Cameron said.Zoe Roberts, a SplitLip member whose previous company, Kill the Beast, also received support from the New Diorama, described the theater’s decision to work with her troupe as “a leap of faith,” because SplitLip had never produced a musical before. (“Operation Mincemeat” is at the Fortune Theater through July 8.)“They held our hands through the entire thing,” Roberts said in an interview. “They’re in their office running the theater, while also helping to produce our show, and even running around with a drill fixing bits of our set, because we didn’t have someone to do that,” she said.One of the key things the New Diorama provides the artists it works with is financial assistance — and not just while they’re developing a show for its stage. In 2016, the theater started offering interest-free loans for companies who had already worked there, to offset the costs of venue hire or taking work to the Edinburgh Fringe. Roberts likened the New Diorama to “the kindest bank in the world.”Its annual budget is around $1.5 million: It receives a small subsidy from the British government, and raises the rest through philanthropy, corporate sponsorship and ticket sales. Byrne makes the New Diorama’s income go further by negotiating deals with local businesses, including hotels to host visiting troupes from outside London and a local restaurant that delivers free post-show pizzas.The New Diorama was “a theater that would support companies and collaborative work in the way that a new writing theater would support writers,” said its artistic director, David Byrne.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesOne of the biggest barriers that small theater companies face, Byrne said, is the cost of rehearsal space, which in London can be up to $60 an hour. So in 2017 the New Diorama made a deal with British Land, the property developer that owns the land that the theater stands on, to take over part of a nearby vacant building. Companies working with the New Diorama could use it as a free rehearsal space.That program was a test run for N.D.T. Broadgate, a temporary artist development complex in an empty central London office space that opened in 2021 and closed last year. N.D.T. Broadgate was also a collaboration with British Land, which again gave over the vacant real estate at no charge. Theater companies from across Britain could apply to use the space free, with the spots filled via lottery.N.D.T. Broadgate featured 16 rehearsal spaces, as well as a design studio. According to an independent report on the project commissioned by British Land and the theater, 724 small theater companies used the resources, creating 250 new shows. Cameron was one of the artists who benefited, creating a studio for Black artists within the space. “It was a kind of utopia,” he said.Byrne said that many British theater companies were struggling to get back on their feet after enforced closures during the pandemic, and that the rising cost of living had only amplified their problems. “Everyone we talked to was exhausted,” he said. Last year, he and the New Diorama’s executive director, Will Young, decided to close the theater for a season and focus on rejuvenation instead. “We wanted to send a signal that it’s all right not to continue growing,” Byrne said.“For Black Boys” cast members in a rehearsal at N.D.T. Broadgate, a temporary creative development complex that the New Diorama ran in an empty central London office space.Guy J. SandersEven though it was closed, the New Diorama continued paying artists to develop new work. It put out an open call for ensembles around Britain and received over 500 responses, Young said.The theater reopened earlier this year with “After the Act,” a musical developed during this period by the multimedia performance company Breach Theater, about the legacy of Section 28, a government policy that banned the promotion of homosexuality in British schools in the 1980s and 90s. According to the New Diorama, “After the Act” is its best-selling show to date.Not being as reliant on public funds as some organizations “means we can take really calculated swings that often pay off,” Byrne said.“It’s about pushing that creative ambition as much as possible,” he added. The New Diorama is about encouraging artists to run with their ideas, to take risks and know that “we’ve got you,” Byrne said. “You have a safety net.” More

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    ‘Like a Romance’: Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht’s Spring Fling Onstage

    In David Auburn’s new play, “Summer, 1976,” the actresses play unlikely friends whose relationship has the intensity of a love affair.Alice and Diana don’t like each other very much. Not at first. Diana, a teacher at the University of Ohio, considers Alice an intellectual lightweight and flaky. Alice, a faculty wife, finds Diana condescending.“They are unlikely friends,” Laura Linney, who plays Diana, said with understatement.And yet forced together for a few sticky Midwestern months by their young daughters, a relationship burgeons over kiddie pools and popsicles. Their friendship, which will eventually burn with the blue-flame intensity of a love affair, will profoundly alter each woman’s life.This is the substance of David Auburn’s memory play “Summer, 1976,” a febrile two-hander directed by Daniel Sullivan and starring Linney and Jessica Hecht (Alice) as women in their 50s recalling a pivotal time in their 20s. The Manhattan Theater Club production, mostly composed of daisy-chained monologues, is scheduled to open April 25 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater.Linney, left, and Hecht in David Auburn’s new play, “Summer, 1976,” at Samuel J. Friedman Theater in Manhattan. The two-hander opens on April 25.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesOn a recent weekday morning, the two women met in an otherwise empty rehearsal room at M.T.C.’s Midtown offices. This was a fraught moment in the process. “Week three in rehearsal for me is always a disaster, I’m so frustrated,” Linney said. And Hecht was still starring in another show, Sarah Ruhl’s “Letters From Max” at the Signature Theater. But the co-stars, dressed in drapey clothing, seemed relaxed enough.Both are stage and screen veterans who have worked with Sullivan — Hecht long ago in “The Heidi Chronicles,” Linney most recently in “The Little Foxes” — but never together. They were learning the play by listening, raptly, to each other.“It’s like being in a romance of sorts,” Hecht said.Over midmorning coffee — “Sometimes there’s god, so quickly,” Linney said, quoting Tennessee Williams, when the drinks arrived — the two women discussed the play, the process and why they keep returning to the theater. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“It’s always exciting to see where the intersection is between the actor and the character,” Linney said of watching other actors and their process. “Like, where do they find their way in?”Thea Traff for The New York TimesWhat do you remember about 1976?JESSICA HECHT My mother’s divorce and her consciousness raising group.LAURA LINNEY I can remember wearing Corkys and feeling very cool with my Lip Smackers and my shampoo that smelled like wheat germ.What attracted you to these characters?LINNEY I wasn’t attracted to the character at first. I have no idea of who a character is until I’ve been working for several weeks. So for me, it was really the combination of people. If Dan Sullivan whispers my name, I’ll show up. Honestly, I will do anything that man wants me to do. And I so wanted to do it with Jess, because she is so amazing. Also, hurray for a new play!HECHT I never told you, but before they had officially asked me to do the play, I saw Dan on the corner of 93rd and Broadway. And he said, “Have you worked with Laura?” And I said, “No, I haven’t worked with her.” And he said, “She’s the real deal.” And it is true, because you have a clarity of purpose. We share that. For me, I’m interested in plays that talk about intimacy.LINNEY This was a time before cellphones, before the internet. Friendships were very deep. The effort that you would happily make to continue a relationship or a friendship! And the romance that went with not being able to have access to someone immediately.So once you’d signed on, what work has gone into building these characters?HECHT My approach is kind of internal. It’s really based on the language and how the story is working. It’s quite annoying.LINNEY No, not at all.HECHT I always worry that my technique annoys the other actors. Do you ever get that feeling? That this must be frustrating to the other person?LINNEY I love watching someone else’s process. How do you do this crazy thing that we do? Because we are all so different, it’s always exciting to see where the intersection is between the actor and the character. What is it that’s letting them in, bringing blood to the character? Like, where do they find their way in?I’m the daughter of a playwright. So I tend to be text-based. I try to listen to what the play is telling me to do. I work on it and work on it and work on it. Then there comes a period of time where it literally lifts up off the page and it becomes a three-dimensional living thing. Then it starts to work on me. It doesn’t always happen. But it’s exciting when it does.So who are these women? Who is Alice?HECHT Alice has a kind of impulsivity about relating to people and an attraction to different people. That excites me. I definitely was that person.And who’s Diana?HECHT She’s such a mystery. She’s so complicated.LINNEY There’s the question of who is she really and who does she think she is. There’s a big difference between the two. She wants to be an artist. It’s important to her. It’s more than a vocation. It’s a sacred pact. And she suffers terribly for it. She is uncompromising, she is opinionated. She is astute and perceptive and diagnostic. She also doesn’t really know who she is or what she needs or what she wants.Why is this friendship so intense?HECHT They both really feel that need to have somebody as a partner. With Alice, Diana teaches her so much.LINNEY They’re attracted to the qualities that they don’t have, but that the other person has in abundance. And there’s a sense of belonging to each other. There’s a sense of family, there’s a sense of chemistry. When you click with someone, it’s really powerful.HECHT Being friends with Diana is almost like having an affair, it changes Alice’s whole metabolism.LINNEY You’re chemically altered. And you’re spiritually rearranged.You’re about four weeks into rehearsal, what have you learned about the play?HECHT Yesterday we did our first run of the play without our books in hand. And it was so scary, but we got through.LINNEY We’re learning a lot. I don’t think any of us have pretensions that we have all the answers. Maybe that’s the one thing that shows how long we’ve been doing this. If you’re too knowing, there’s no room for growth.What’s the joy and terror of a two-hander, of having to rely so much on each other?LINNEY The joy is the intimacy and the bond and that you’re not alone up there. There’s a total interdependence. The biggest fear is that I won’t be able to help her if she gets into trouble.HECHT Yeah, that we would let the other person down.LINNEY The language is very difficult. We never stop talking. We’re going to mess up. We’re human beings. There’s just the fear that we will mess up in a way that derails the show.You both have spent a lot of your career on television. What keeps you returning to the theater?HECHT I feel very, very committed to our community. Being part of this community is definitely the biggest accomplishment of my professional life. I feel a tremendous amount of energy and human connection to the people I act with and the people I act for. Nothing else replicates that.LINNEY It’s a family profession. I have a history with it that goes beyond me. I also strongly believe that it is a part of public good. Theater provides a nourishment, intellectually and emotionally and spiritually, to audiences. And I love the ritual. There is a connection to the work that’s much deeper than anything you can do on television and film. Because we are doing it from beginning to end, eight shows a week.HECHT It is a religion. Someone said to me the other day, “Oh, that is my religion. Being in the theater.”LINNEY People ask me, “What church did you grow up in?” I’m like, “The theater.” Everything that’s important about life I’ve learned in the theater. More

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    With Cheers and Tears, ‘Phantom of the Opera’ Ends Record Broadway Run

    The show’s record-breaking 35-year Broadway run came to an end on Sunday night. Its famous chandelier got a bow, and its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, spoke after its emotional final performance.“The Phantom of the Opera” concluded the longest run in Broadway history Sunday night with a glittery final performance at which even the production’s signature chandelier, which had just crashed onto the stage of the Majestic Theater for the 13,981st time, got its own curtain call.The invitation-only crowd was filled with Broadway lovers, including actors who had performed in the show over its 35-year run, as well as numerous other artists (including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Glenn Close) and fans who won a special ticket lottery. Some dressed in Phantom regalia; one man came dressed in the character’s sumptuous Red Death costume.The final performance, which ran from 5:22 to 7:56 p.m., was interrupted repeatedly by applause, not only for the main actors, but also for beloved props, including a monkey music box, and scenic elements such as a gondola being rowed through a candelabra-adorned underground lake. After the final curtain, the stagehands who made the show’s elaborate spectacle happen night after night, were invited onstage for a resounding round of applause.“It’s just amazing, really, what has happened,” the composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote the show’s soaring score, said after the final curtain, as he dedicated the performance to his son Nicholas, who died three weeks ago.Lloyd Webber spoke alongside his longtime collaborator and the show’s lead producer, Cameron Mackintosh. They invited alumni of the original Broadway production to join them onstage, and projected onto the theater’s back wall pictures of deceased members of the original creative team, including its director, Hal Prince, as well as every actor who played the two lead roles (the Phantom as well as Christine, the young soprano who is his obsession).Andrew Lloyd Webber, center left, with Cameron Mackintosh during the curtain speech at the Majestic Theater after the final performance of the musical “Phantom of the Opera.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesToward the end of the evening, Mackintosh acknowledged the one-ton chandelier, which was lowered from the ceiling to a round of applause, and the crowd was showered with gold and silver metallic confetti, some of which dangled in ribbons from the chandelier.Hours before the curtain, fans gathered across the street, waving and taking pictures and hoping somehow to score a spare ticket. Among them was Lexie Luhrs, 25, of Washington, in a Phantom get-up: black cape, homemade mask, plus fedora, vest and bow tie, as well as mask earrings and a mask necklace. “I’m here to celebrate the show that means so much to us,” Luhrs said.On Broadway “Phantom” was, obviously, enormously successful, playing to 20 million people and grossing $1.36 billion since its opening in January 1988. And the show has become an international phenomenon, playing in 17 languages in 45 countries and grossing more than $6 billion globally. But the Broadway run ultimately succumbed to the twin effects of inflation and dwindled tourism following the coronavirus pandemic shutdown.Carlton Moe, obscured, hugs Raquel Suarez Groen before they go on the red carpet. They are both cast members in the musicalSara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt closed on an unexpectedly high note — and not just the high E that Christine sings in the title song. As soon as the closing was announced last September, sales spiked, as those who already loved the musical flocked to see it, and procrastinators realized it could be their last chance; the original February closing date was delayed by two months to accommodate demand, and the show has once again become the highest-grossing on Broadway, playing to exuberant audiences, enjoying a burnished reputation, and bringing in more than $3 million a week.“For a show to go out this triumphantly is almost unheard-of,” said Mackintosh.Jaime Samson at the theater in a Red Death costume he made himself.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAfter the final performance, the show’s company and its alumni gathered for an invitation-only celebration at the Metropolitan Club, with the show’s iconic mask projected onto a wall next to a marble staircase.The show, with music by Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Charles Hart, is still running in London, where the orchestra size was cut and the set was altered during the pandemic shutdown to reduce running costs, and it is also currently running in the Czech Republic, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. New productions are scheduled to open in China next month, in Italy in July and in Spain in October.And will it ever return to New York? “Of course, at some point,” Mackintosh said in an interview. “But it is time for the show to have a rest.” More

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    Book Review: ‘Chita: A Memoir,’ by Chita Rivera with Patrick Pacheco

    Her new memoir finds the 90-year-old singer-dancer hungry for acclaim, but generous to others on her way to getting it.CHITA: A Memoir, by Chita Rivera with Patrick PachecoHow did Chita Rivera feel when she saw Rita Moreno, another actress of Puerto Rican descent, in the movie role of Anita that Rivera had originated on Broadway in “West Side Story”?“How dare she?” she recalls thinking in “Chita,” her playful and history-rich memoir. “That is my dress, that is my earring!” The truth is she was already kicking it up with Dick Van Dyke on Broadway in “Bye Bye Birdie” at the time. So she got over it. Then, when that show became a movie, Janet Leigh took Rivera’s part of Rosie, even after Rivera killed with “Spanish Rose,” her stereotype-bashing number, on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” (Look it up on YouTube, you won’t be sorry.)Years later the steamy role of Velma Kelly that she originated in “Chicago” for Bob Fosse went to Catherine Zeta-Jones, who won an Oscar for it. “She’s the perfect choice,” she responded when Rob Marshall, its director, checked in.Cutthroat as the acting game may be, and even harder for talent with Hispanic names long before J. Lo, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rosie Perez and Daphne Rubin-Vega hit the scene, Rivera comes off as thirsty for recognition — but not bloodthirsty — despite the urgings of her colleagues Gwen Verdon, Fred Ebb and others to up her diva game.She occasionally takes a satisfying swipe (Paul Lynde gets a dressing-down for being nasty and so does John Lennon, of all people, when she appeared with the Beatles in 1964). But most everyone else gets a pass, including Tony Mordente, her first husband, a dancer whom she met in “West Side Story”; Lisa Mordente, their daughter; and the many loves of her life that she recalls with generosity — the restaurateur Joe Allen and Sammy Davis Jr., among them.“There’s nothing wrong with ambition,” Davis once told her. It took some time for Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero to understand that. A tomboy born in 1933 and raised in Washington, D.C., by a poised mother of mixed ancestry who worked for the Defense Department and a dapper Puerto Rican musician father who died when she was little, Rivera got a scholarship to the School of American Ballet when she was 16. She moved in with relatives in the Bronx and describes a heady time of bodegas, subways, public school and intimidating ballet instructors. Overcoming her fear of singing, she got into the national tour of “Call Me Madam” with Elaine Stritch, then on Broadway in “Guys and Dolls” and “Can-Can,” starring Verdon. With “West Side Story,” her career took off.Broadway-loving readers will appreciate the play-by-play (pun intended) of this fizzy book, written in collaboration with Patrick Pacheco, a theater-savvy journalist and TV host. It doesn’t take much to make the pages fly when you have a scene of Stritch in rehearsals with Rivera, “blowing” on the Scotch in her coffee cup, or a pre-rehab Liza Minnelli playing her daughter in “The Rink.” Essentially a good girl, despite her insistence that she has a fire-breathing alter ego, Dolores (who occasionally makes herself heard in the book), at 90, this national icon doesn’t seem to want to burn many bridges. If roles or songs were taken from her and given to others, all for the best. She doesn’t get too political either, although she does unload about what it means to play Latina characters “subjected to racist taunts,” and on her defining early role as a street-sassy Puerto Rican. When Rivera was suggested for “1491,” one of his lesser-known shows, Meredith Willson, who wrote “The Music Man,” asked, “Doesn’t she speak with an accent?” She allows that while she bumped into ethnic stereotypes, the theater world was more relaxed than Hollywood. “I wanted to be considered for a range of roles and for the most part I succeeded,” she writes.One role she never played, this upbeat memoir makes clear — the victim.Bob Morris is a frequent contributor to The Times and the author of “Assisted Loving” and “Bobby Wonderful.”CHITA: A Memoir | By Chita Rivera with Patrick Pacheco | Illustrated | 320 pp. | Harper One | $27.99 More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Amityville: An Origin Story’ and ‘Revengineers’

    A docuseries on MGM+ delves into the history of the real Amityville house of horrors, and a new prank show from Mark Rober and Jimmy Kimmel premieres on Discovery.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, April 17-23. Details and times are subject to change.MondayFrom left, Kevin Garnett, LaKeith Stanfield and Adam Sandler in “Uncut Gems.”Wally McGrady/A24UNCUT GEMS (2019) 5 p.m. on SHO2e. This film from the Safdie brothers “blows in like a Category 4 hurricane” with its “tumult of sensory extremes,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times. The movie follows Howard Ratner (​​Adam Sandler), a debt-ridden New York City jeweler and gambling addict, as he attempts to retrieve and sell a large black opal in order to keep his debt collector — also known as his mafia-adjacent brother-in-law (Eric Bogosian)— at bay. As Ratner juggles familial obligations and relationships with his own survival, “the Safdies don’t judge Howard or, worse yet, ask us to,” Dargis writes. “Instead, they situate him in a specific historical moment (the year is 2012), throwing him into a late-capitalist, wholly transactional, anxiously insecure world.”TuesdayDEADLIEST CATCH 8 p.m. on DISCOVERY. This reality series about fishing crews in the Bering Sea near Alaska is back for its 19th season, in which a new generation of skippers will partner with the show’s veteran fishing captains to start their careers and learn how to become successful in a dangerous industry.Michael Cera, left, and Elliot Page in “Juno.”Doane Gregory/Fox Searchlight PicturesJUNO (2007) 8 p.m. on MAX. This Academy Award-winning film from the director Jason Reitman tells the story of Juno MacGuff, a wisecracking, smart teenager who becomes pregnant. The film follows Juno “on a twisty path toward responsibility and greater self-understanding” as she decides to move forward with the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption. This journey is “a message that is not anti-abortion but rather pro-adulthood,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “‘Juno’ could not be further from the kind of hand-wringing, moralizing melodrama that such a condition might suggest.” Instead, he wrote, it “evolves from a coy, knowing farce into a heartfelt, serious comedy.”WednesdayM. Sanjayan in “Changing Planet II.”Jennifer Jones/BBC StudiosCHANGING PLANET II 9 p.m. on PBS. This show about the changes affecting some of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world — and what local experts and scientists are doing to combat those changes — returns for its second year, as Ella Al-Shamahi, a paleoanthropologist and stand-up comic, and Ade Adepitan, a television presenter and children’s author, join the global conservation scientist M. Sanjayan in revisiting the communities featured last year. From Brazil to California, Greenland to the Maldives, and Kenya to Cambodia, the series highlights the progress and setbacks of a series of conservation projects across the world.ThursdayREVENGINEERS 11 p.m. on DISCOVERY. This new prank show from Jimmy Kimmel and the NASA engineer turned YouTube star Mark Rober follows Rober and his team as they exact revenge on social wrongdoers through a series of elaborately engineered pranks. After identifying their targets, the series documents Rober’s team as they brainstorm funny and technically interesting ways to catch the wrongdoers in the act. The show is a companion series to “This Is Mark Rober,” a behind-the-scenes series of Rober’s viral video ideas, which premiered last week.FridayTupac Shakur in “Dear Mama.”FXDEAR MAMA 10 p.m. on FX. Titled after the rapper Tupac Shakur’s 1995 hit song “Dear Mama,” this five-part docuseries from Allen Hughes (“The Defiant Ones”) explores the relationship between Tupac and his mother — the civil rights activist Afeni Shakur — as well as their individual lives and legacies. Archival footage and interviews with Tupac and Afeni are interspersed with Tupac’s music as a way to link mother and son across the decades in this documentary, which tells their stories in the context of Black activism, hip-hop and the struggle for human rights.CONTINUUM: JASON MORAN & CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE 10 p.m. on PBS. In this new episode from PBS’s “Next at the Kennedy Center,” a series that spotlights cultural leaders from various genres of music, theater and dance, the bassist Christian McBride and the pianist Jason Moran come together to play music by jazz masters like Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus and Louis Armstrong, and tell stories about their teachers and students. Revered as modern jazz luminaries, McBride and Moran hold eight Grammys and a MacArthur fellowship between them.SaturdayCHASING THE RAINS 8 p.m. on BBCA. Timed to premiere on Earth Day, this three-part documentary series follows a different animal matriarch in each episode — a cheetah, an elephant and an African wild dog — as they fight to take care of their families amid one of the worst droughts in decades. The series is filmed in the Kenyan wilderness and narrated by Adjoa Andoh (“Bridgerton,” “Invictus”).Dustin Hoffman, left, and Robert Redford in “All the President’s Men.”Associated PressALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976) 8 p.m. on TCM. Based on the best-selling book of the same name by the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, this multiple Academy Award winning film follows Woodward (Robert Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) as they uncover and break the story of the Watergate scandal that ultimately brought down the Nixon presidency. In his 1976 review for The Times, Vincent Canby described the film as “an unequivocal smash-hit,” praising its accuracy and writing that it is “a vivid footnote to some contemporary American history that still boggles the mind.”SundayAMITYVILLE: AN ORIGIN STORY 10 p.m. on MGM+. This four episode docuseries delves into the real story behind what happened at the Orchard Avenue home in Amityville, N.Y., after the 1979 film, “The Amityville Horror,” inspired by the book of the same name by Jay Anson, generated a slew of paranormal theories, movies and books. Beginning with the DeFeo family’s murder in 1974, and continuing with an examination of the Lutz family’s 28-day stay in the house, this series uses archival footage, along with interviews with family members, witnesses and former investigators to try to find out what exactly transpired in this Long Island “house of horrors.” More

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    ‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 4 Recap: A Coronation Demolition Derby

    Just when Logan’s inner circle thinks that it might finally be free of his mercurial nature, he springs one more annoying surprise.‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 4: ‘Honeymoon States’How do you sum up a media giant and a political visionary like Logan Roy? The day after his death, the newspapers call him “a complicated man.” (Kendall’s translation: “Threw phones at staff.”) He was a “sharp reader of the national mood.” (Roman: “He’s a bit racist.”) He was “very much a man of his era.” (Kendall: “Again, racist. Also, relaxed about sexual assault.”) As Logan’s family, friends, employees and admirers gather at his home to mourn — and to plot — no one can seem to agree on who he really was. After reading yet another glowing tribute, Shiv jokes: “Dad sounds amazing. I’d like to have met Dad.”Yet just when Logan’s inner circle thinks that it might finally be free of his mercurial approach to business and family matters, he springs one more annoying surprise from beyond the grave. In Logan’s safe, the estate’s executor, Frank, finds a piece of paper from four (or more) years ago, naming Kendall as Logan’s preferred successor.But there are a handwritten notes and markings on the page — including a line partially under Kendall’s name and partially through it. Was Logan emphasizing that he wanted his son to take over? Or was he indicating that he definitely did not?After last week’s emotionally wrenching episode, “Succession” comes back with one of the funniest of the series, filled with quotable lines and sick burns. Any feelings of sadness or sentimentality among the Roy children fades as soon as they realize Waystar’s top executives — Frank, Gerri, Karl and Tom — are disappearing behind closed doors to begin what Shiv calls a “a coronation demolition derby.” The ensuing bumps and scrapes are perversely entertaining.On the old-timers’ side, everyone speaks with a brittle politeness masking deep hostility. Gerri puts herself forward as the logical choice to be chief executive, having already done it on an interim basis. When Karl balks, she delivers a wicked backhanded compliment, saying: “I think you’re a corporate legend. What you did in the ’90s, with cable? Huge.”Tom, meanwhile, insists that all he wants to do is serve, adding: “If there’s a ring, my hat is in. Respectfully.” To that, Karl suggests that the board might have questions about Tom, and he frames those “as a friend,” saying, “You’re a clumsy interloper and no one trusts you.”As for the Rebel Alliance — now possibly interested in rejoining the Empire, if the pay is competitive and management positions are available — they seem initially more united. They all jump on a call to one of Lukas Mattson’s lackeys, where Shiv waves away a question about which one of them is the leader, saying, “We’re a pretty fluid group.” But it is perhaps an ominous sign that she physically recoils after saying that. It is also not good that Mattson demands that one of the three fly out to GoJo’s strategy retreat within the next 24 hours. (Shiv: “You obviously know what happened here yesterday, right?” Lackey: “Oh sure, yeah, we really feel for you guys. Bad one.”)This is when Frank comes across the “rather worrying piece of paper.” (It is so worrying that he wonders if maybe it could be flushed down a toilet. He and Karl then clarify that they are merely “speculating in a comic mode.”) Both the old and young factions gather in an upstairs room, where Roman diminishes the document’s meaning, saying to Kendall, “This thing is old, and you’ve tried to put him in jail, like, 12 times since then.”One thing seems clear: Both the children and the Waystar executives want the GoJo sale to go through. After that, there will be no more Waystar to control and the siblings can proceed with their original plan to run Pierce Global Media together, perhaps now merged with ATN. Since the chief executive position would be temporary anyway, Kendall pounces, saying: “Anyone can do that. And since he said. …”Something about Kendall’s eagerness does not sit right with Roman and Shiv, although they have trouble articulating why. Maybe it is the gleefully vicious tone he takes when he snaps that Logan’s document “doesn’t say Shiv.” Or maybe it is the way he keeps trying to corner both of them, warning that they should not give the company away to Gerri or anybody else “just because we didn’t talk.”Ultimately, Roman buys the idea that the board and the markets might see Kendall’s pitch for himself as “same-old but with a vibe-y new banner.” And the executives come around when they realize they can package Kendall as a co-leader with Roman, who still has an official title as Waystar’s chief operating officer. Shiv is cut out of this leadership group. Her brothers insist that she is still a part of an unofficial triumvirate, but while she has them make “a Dad promise, on yesterday” (referring to how they all bonded in their shock and grief), she is so upset by the mini-coup that she falls down a small set of stairs while fleeing the house.There are other power-plays afoot this week. Logan’s estranged wife Marcia (Hiam Abbass) is no longer — as Kerry once said — “shopping in Milan, forever.” She conspicuously positions herself as a greeter at the wake, asserting that she still spoke to her husband every day. She also refuses Kerry entry to the upstairs and has her removed from the premises, right as Kerry is gathering her personal effects and nervously babbling to Roman about Logan’s big plans for her.And then there is Tom, as always treading the line between “sweetly helpful” and “snaking around.” He tries to show Shiv some kindness, reminding her of when they first got together and how he flew to France to be with her. Shiv, as uncertain as the rest of us as to whether Tom is merely making a play, replies coolly, “That was a while back.”It is Kendall, though, who ends the day in the lead. He and Roman entertain a pitch from Hugo and Karolina about strengthening their executive bona fides by getting it out into the press that Logan was a mentally unstable abuser who had not really been in charge of Waystar in years. Roman nixes this unequivocally. But Kendall — who knows that Hugo has some potential insider-trading trouble to bury — comes to him privately about the “Bad Dad” plan and says, “Action that, but soft … no prints.”Before he meets with Hugo, Kendall is staring at a picture on his phone of Logan’s sloppy succession plan — and his own crossed-out or underlined name. The old man remained inscrutable to the end, for sure. But the sickening smile on Kendall’s face right before the credits roll raises questions, too. Is he smearing Logan because, as he claims, that is exactly the kind of nasty maneuver his father would pull? Or is Kendall still bent on revenge?Either way, one thing is sure: Kendall is his father’s son.Due DiligenceThe title of this episode, “Honeymoon States,” refers to the itinerary Connor has set for his post-wedding travels with Willa: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania … all swing states in his presidential campaign. Connor also moves without Willa’s permission to buy Logan’s home from Marcia for $63 million. When Willa reminds him of the old advice not to make big decisions while still in mourning, he counters with, “They also say it’s pretty smart not to pay Realtors’ fees.”As the nation’s conservative thought leaders — who call Logan “L.R.” — raise a toast to “a man of humility, grace, dignity,” Tom can’t resist leaning over to Greg to whisper, “who died fishing his iPhone from a clogged toilet.” (Rumor has it Karl clogged it.)Greg is briefly allowed into the meeting about Logan’s estate, where it is noted that Greg is “an addendum of miscellaneous matters, in pencil, with a question mark” on the controversial piece of paper. When he asks hopefully whether Logan meant for him to be Kendall’s second-in-command, the ensuing riotous laughter is probably about as joyous as anybody in that room feels all day.We need to talk about Shiv’s big news, which she does not share with anyone in this episode. In the opening, she gets a phone call from a doctor about a test that shows “everything looks healthy,” and she hears that she will have to come back for “the 20-week scan.” It is strongly implied that Shiv is pregnant — which makes her tumble later in the episode more alarming.Speculation corner! If Kendall keeps playing hardball, how long until his siblings make use of what he confessed to them last season about accidentally killing a cater waiter? (Also: Shiv is definitely going to fly off to see Mattson within the next 24 hours, right?)This whole episode is about how nobody really knew Logan. (Was he a neocon? A paleo-libertarian? An anarcho-capitalist?) This point is driven home further when Waystar’s new co-chiefs, Kendall and Roman, step into Logan’s office at the end of the episode and are surprised to discover that their father liked to do Sudoku puzzles. More

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    ‘Barry’ Is Ending. For Anthony Carrigan, That’s Nothing to Be Afraid Of

    Anthony Carrigan was 7 the first time he stepped onstage. And he was terrified. Debilitating stage fright, which he would struggle with for decades, would have led most children to consider alternate careers. Carrigan, a star of the tar-black HBO comedy “Barry,” was not most children.Because even that first time, he felt something beyond terror. Diagnosed at 3 with alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder that attacks the hair follicles, he often found himself stared at, gawked at, even in elementary school.“People would look at my alopecia and not really look at me,” he said. “That’s kind of a weird dehumanizing thing, when someone is looking at a part of you.” But onstage, he felt as though he could control how people saw him — which meant he could make sure they saw all of him, or at least all of the character he was playing.They are seeing him now. On, “Barry,” which returns for its fourth and final season on Sunday, Carrigan, 40, plays the gangster NoHo Hank. Originally meant to die in the pilot, NoHo Hank, powered by Carrigan’s sweeping, sunshiny, Emmy-nominated performance, has survived multiple assassination attempts and a presumed panther attack. The character has become a fan favorite, complete with catchphrases (“Hey, man,” “super great!”) and multiple GIFs of a Season 2 rooftop folk dance.Two days before I met him, a young woman stopped him on the street. “She just wept, like, Beatles-level mania,” he said. “She was really lovely, though, very sweet.”We were speaking on a Monday afternoon in early April at the Tin Building, an upscale food hall in Lower Manhattan. (He is based in Los Angeles, where “Barry” shoots, but his girlfriend lives nearby.) Alopecia has rendered him bald and without eyebrows or eyelashes, a look that causes a momentary neural jar, until the force of his personality — buoyant, sincere, self-actualized — takes over. Carrigan comes here often. Maybe not often enough.Originally meant to die in the pilot, NoHo Hank (Carrigan, left, with Michael Irby) has become a fan favorite, complete with catchphrases and many GIFs in his honor.Merrick Morton/HBOHe hadn’t made a reservation at the oyster counter, and for a moment it looked as if he wouldn’t be seated. I joked that he could pull a “Do you know who I am?” maneuver, and Carrigan had the decency to look appalled.“I’ve never done that!” he said. Once seated, he listened politely as a server described the oysters of the day. He declined the ones from Massachusetts. “I’m from Massachusetts; I know how salty we are,” he said, and ordered a dozen from Canada and Maine.After high school in Massachusetts, he studied acting at Carnegie Mellon University. His hair loss was still isolated to patches at that time, and professors often cast him as the longhaired bad boy, a look that determined most of his early roles. That hair and the worry that he would lose it were sources of anxiety. And after landing his first major role, as an amateur detective on the one-season Jerry Bruckheimer series “The Forgotten,” his alopecia progressed and he did lose it. At first he covered up, with hairpieces and eyebrow makeup, a must for character continuity. But when the series ended, he put the hairpieces away.“I really had nothing to lose at that point,” he said as he spooned horseradish onto an oyster. “Because I had no idea what my career was going to look like. I just knew that it was either try it with the way that I looked, or I was going to have to find a new career.”So he kept going, without wigs or false lashes, even when his representatives argued for them. He worried that this new appearance would limit the roles he was seen for. It did. But he suspected that this new self-acceptance would free him as an actor. Whatever parts did come his way, he would play the hell out of them.The parts did come. Gone was the bad boy. In its place, he discovered, was the bad guy. He began to play villains, chief among them Victor Zsasz, the psychopath he played for 20 episodes on the Fox superhero series “Gotham.” He fretted, sometimes, that he was helping to reinforce a stereotype of bald men as sinister. But it kept him in the Screen Actors Guild. And it netted him an audition for “Barry.”NoHo Hank, intended as a minor antagonist, is a member of a Chechen mob. Carrigan had little interest in playing another villain. But the script’s violent comedy delighted him. He went back to the formal exercises of his college days. How should Hank move? What animal would he be? A scorpion, he decided, which explains the puffed-out chest, the hands on hips, the scuttling walk.“He’s a lovable scorpion,” Carrigan explained at the oyster counter. “He doesn’t want to sting anyone, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. But that’s just his nature.”He made his audition tape and sent it in. Alec Berg, a co-creator of “Barry,” recalled being struck at first by Carrigan’s atypical appearance, then by his skill and commitment.“For me, I just completely forgot that this is a guy who doesn’t have hair,” Berg said in a recent phone interview. “He just was that character so thoroughly.”When he and the series star and co-creator, Bill Hader, met Carrigan in person, they knew they couldn’t kill Hank so quickly. “He was lovely and so imaginative, he really understood the comedy,” Hader said, in a separate interview. “I was like, ‘I’d like the option that this guy lives.’”Hader described NoHo Hank as a “heavy.” But in Carrigan’s hands and in the wardrobe department’s shrunken polo shirts, he became the lightest heavy imaginable. He’s a people pleaser, a charmer. During a Season 2 near-death experience, he tells his underlings, needlessly, in his Chechen-accented English: “I know you look at me and see hard-as-nails criminal, stone-cold killer, ice man. But, uh, this is lie.” Hank should have had a career in hospitality, Carrigan said. Hank has said as much himself.Carrigan’s command of the role is exhaustive. He often devises new idioms for Hank, as when he substitutes “kid and the poodle” for “kit and caboodle” in a Season 4 episode. And he preapproves each polo shirt.“I’m playing the bad guy, but making him likable, making him winning,” Carrigan said.In playing both sides of Hank — Hank’s cheer, Hank’s sting — Carrigan complicates the stereotype of the bald villain, allowing “Barry” to pose knotty questions about good and evil, action and intention. Hank, that likable guy with the juice boxes, has killed an awful lot of people.“People would look at my alopecia and not really look at me,” Carrigan said about beginning to lose his hair as a child. But onstage, he felt as if he could control how people saw him.Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesThe complications that Carrigan brings to the part have drawn the attention of other directors. He played a robot in the 2020 comedy “Bill & Ted Face the Music.” Paul Weitz cast him as comic relief in the 2021 Kevin Hart film “Fatherhood,” attracted, Weitz said, by Carrigan’s “baked-in love of performance and love of human eccentricity.”So far, no role has rivaled Hank in its complexity or its blood-spattered joy. Carrigan knows this better than anyone. When “Barry” wrapped, just before Thanksgiving, he hung up Hank’s costume for the last time and there, in his trailer, said goodbye to him, thanking Hank for the chance to play, to experiment, to make mistakes. Then he stole Hank’s watch, a fake Rolex.Berg bet that Carrigan would find other roles. “He’s just the nicest, most genuine, friendly, lovely guy,” he said. “Part of who he is goes into Hank, but he’s not just playing himself, he’s really performing.”“I don’t think it’d be hard for him to step outside of that,” Berg added, “play other things.”When I met Carrigan at the oyster counter, he was trying to take that step. He had recently returned from a location shoot in Kentucky for a new film. And the director Alex Winter, his co-star in “Bill & Ted,” was writing a role for him in another movie. “He has heart and he has physicality,” Winter said. “And he has an incredible sense of humor.” Is the character a villain? “Everyone’s a villain in this thing,” Winter said.If Carrigan worries that no subsequent role will be as beloved as NoHo Hank, he worries less than he used to. “When I’m able to curtail my anxiety enough to feel loose and feel free, then I can go in any direction,” he said.As he ate his oysters, I noticed a signet ring on his finger, a recent gift from his girlfriend. The ring shows a rabbit. Rabbits are famously fearful animals. But this one, Carrigan pointed out, was running free. “The fear is no longer taking up space,” he said.He turned it around, showing an engraving of a trap. Would the rabbit fall into it?Carrigan shook his head. “I think he’s already escaped it,” he said. More