Eliana Willis

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    Four Stand-Up Specials That Punch Above Their Weight

    Jaye McBride, Mike Vecchione and Kyle Kinane focus on punch lines and delivery. Mae Martin creates a vibe that works in a different key.Jaye McBride, ‘Daddy’s Girl’YouTubeSetups and punch lines get all the attention, but the stuff in between can be just as important, especially in short jokes where every word counts. Take this one by Jaye McBride: “I love old guys. The older the better.” Pause. “I don’t do online dating. I do carbon dating.” This could work without the second sentence — “The older the better” — but not as well. The reasons have as much to do with rhythm as meaning. It’s the kind of small touch that lets you know McBride, a bespectacled Comedy Cellar regular, has an ear for jokes.Her debut special, an offhanded if very funny production shot at Union Hall in Brooklyn, has a quick and jaunty style, a rough production for a stand-up act without frills. She is the first to tell you that her brand of stand-up leans more on punch lines than stories, but this doesn’t mean the hour doesn’t vary, showing off different genres of jokes. There’s the windy kind that abruptly shifts because of a twist that upends everything that came before. There’s the observational material: A transgender comic, McBride has one bit about etiquette that, no matter how sure you are, you can never ask someone if they’re trans. There are self-deprecating asides, some spiky transgressive stuff and satirical jokes designed to make a point. After telling us she transitioned 15 years ago, McBride quiets the crowd: “Don’t clap. I only did it to compete in the Olympics.”Mike Vecchione, ‘The Attractives’YouTubeOnstage, Mike Vecchione speaks in a hypnotically steady cadence, adopting an almost uncanny calm. Sometimes, this deadpan affect, slightly slower than normal speech, is used to play dumb. (He has a great bit about being praised for his emotional intelligence, which he claims is invented by smart people to make the dumb feel better.) At other times, the result is ludicrously arrogant, as when he confides that the pandemic was difficult for good-looking people like himself because of the masks. (“As attractives, we’re used to being treated a certain way.”)His jokes can be deceptively intricate, and while many comics lean on callbacks as a cheap trick, he finds clever ways to incorporate them. As with other stand-ups, Dave Attell’s influential delivery haunts his set. You hear its notes especially in the wry way Vecchione introduces jokes. (“Fine, guys, what’s my immigration policy? Is that what you want to know?”) But at his best, he finds a space between sarcasm and sincerity. Take his explanation that one of his passions is going to other cities and insulting their pizza. What New Yorker can’t relate? Or the spin on a familiar line flattering the audience: “You’re a great crowd because you’re getting my jokes.”Kyle Kinane, ‘Shocks and Struts’YouTubeWhen you first see Kyle Kinane, the gravel-voiced comic road warrior, he’s all by himself outside his van under a vast sky. This is not a flashy stand-up. He doesn’t play with form, have a message or belong to a specific school of comedy. His jokes don’t rely much on character work and they don’t tend to wade into big issues. But this solitary image fits him. Kinane finds humor in feeling out of place, reliably turning crusty irritation into eccentric flights of fancy. On his latest special, he grouses about nonchalant surgeons, circumcision and attractive people in playful language filled with turns of phrase that will make you smile or even cringe (he calls foreskin “the devil’s calamari”). But what encapsulates him at his best is a lament on jam bands. It’s a niche bit that leans on giddy contempt and detailed performance culminating in an act-out emphasizing the unlikely pathos of the guy in the band who desperately wants to end the song but can’t pull it off. It’s a hilarious tragedy.Mae Martin, ‘SAP’NetflixIn their new Netflix special, the nonbinary comic Mae Martin (star of the series “Feel Good”) patiently, and with considered cheerfulness, explains the difference between gender and sexuality while rebutting comics like Dave Chappelle and placing gender fluidity in historical context. But also, Martin says that if people are confused about the contemporary conversation about gender, that’s OK, too. “I do not understand Wi-Fi but I know that it’s real.” Martin says. “I don’t let it keep me up at night.”Martin, 35, discusses gender grudgingly, and their bit imagining Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, who also have Netflix specials, seeing “SAP” and changing their mind about their trans material has received headlines. But there’s also something awkward about this more straightforwardly sincere section of the special, an abrupt shift from what precedes and follows it. A sweetly charismatic performer, their intimate comic voice is skewed and sunny, mystical but somehow grounded. Martin hails from Canada, where they shot this special, on a set dressed like a forest, and the sideways anecdotal humor (at the end of one story, Martin points out there are no punch lines, it’s just a vignette) belongs to a rich legacy of oddball Canadian comedy. (A moose plays a significant role in a joke.)Pay close attention and you can see a sturdy introduction to an entire life here, from a cringe comedy story about conception to a horrified portrait of puberty to a romance-besotted 20s to the current jaded moment. Sighing over having to talk about potential baby names in yet another relationship, Martin says: “Let me wade through the graveyard of dead hypothetical kids.”The first half of the special is strong, filled with surprising bursts of dark poetry and strange characters, like a postman in Europe who buries the mail of an entire town. Martin loves this man, whose explanation is as offhanded and blunt as the comedian is. There are ideas that emerge throughout the special about identities, the ways we intensely curate them as children and stop as adults. A better show would find more connective tissue and a funnier one would tighten up some stories, cut one or two and add a few punch lines. But doing that might also make Martin seem more like everyone else. It’s already an amusing, effortless vibe here, one whose pleasures derive in part from being comfortable to be what it is. More

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    Michael R. Jackson on the Soap Opera Origins of ‘White Girl in Danger’

    The musical’s creator and creative team discuss their influences, including “Days of Our Lives,” “Showgirls” and D’Angelo.Hearing Michael R. Jackson, the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright of “A Strange Loop,” speak about soap operas is like getting lost in a Wikipedia wormhole. With nary a pause, he rolls through the details of characters’ yearslong arcs, including every stolen identity, forbidden romance and vicious backstabbing — literal and figurative.He’s amassed decades of knowledge: He became hooked at 5 years old, when he started camping out in front of a “gigantic” wooden television set with his great-aunt. “I would watch ‘The Young and the Restless’ at 12:30, ‘Days of Our Lives’ at 1, ‘Another World’ at 2, ‘Santa Barbara’ at 3. And I would do that every day — Monday through Friday,” Jackson, 42, said in a recent interview. “The more I sat and watched with her, the more engrossed I got in these characters’ lives and the story lines. I sort of grew up obsessed with them.”So it’s not surprising that these shows, which he began recording on VHS when he was older, would eventually become a source of inspiration for Jackson: His new musical, “White Girl in Danger,” is rooted in soap opera themes and tropes. It’s now in previews in a joint production of Second Stage and Vineyard Theater, and is scheduled to open April 10 at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater.Latoya Edwards, center, as Keesha, a character who is trying to transcend racial stereotypes and get a more prominent story line.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe show takes place in Allwhite, a world defined by soap tropes and ruled by three white teen-girl stereotypes: Megan, Meagan and Maegan (pronounced MEG-an, Mee-gan and MAY-gan, FYI). Much of the show’s action takes place in and around Allwhite’s high school, where “the Megans” are preparing for a battle of the bands competition. Then there’s a Black girl named Keesha, who is trying to get her own story line and level up from being a forgettable Blackground character, forever stuck in slave narratives and police brutality stories. Meanwhile, the town’s residents are reeling from a mysterious spate of murders.In separate interviews, Jackson, along with the director, Lileana Blain-Cruz; the choreographer, Raja Feather Kelly; the set designer, Adam Rigg; and the costume designer, Montana Levi Blanco, spoke about the show’s many influences (including romance novels, Lifetime movies and Black girl groups) and how those influences were reimagined for the stage.Gothic melodramaJackson described “Days of Our Lives” as the soap opera that most shaped his understanding of and love for melodrama — specifically a 1993 episode in which the rich socialite Vivian Alamain (Louise Sorel) drugs her nemesis, Carly Manning (Crystal Chappell), and buries her alive. Jackson gushed about the scene, which begins with Vivian plucking the petals from a bouquet of roses, maniacally chanting “She loves me, she loves me not” atop Carly’s grave; he called Sorel’s “incredible” performance downright Shakespearean. “I was 12 years old and it was, to this day, one of the most seminal soap moments; it’s burned into me because I had never seen something so Gothic and terrifying happen,” Jackson said. “I was like ‘This is my form.’”There are many other iconic soap moments that are alluded to in “White Girl in Danger”: Adam Rigg designed a curtain inspired by a pink beaded rhinestone gown that Joan Collins, as Alexis Carrington Colby, wears in “Dynasty,” and looked back at a famous fight scene from the show between Alexis and Diahann Carroll’s Dominique Deveraux that leaves both characters — and the room they’re in — in tatters. Rigg used some of the background details of that scene — a vase, the peach and coral color palette of the room and furnishings — in the show’s set design.When it comes to characters and their roller-coaster arcs, Jackson’s favorites are Viki Lord (Erika Slezak), the “One Life to Live” matriarch with dissociative identity disorder whose alter egos emerge to dictate her romantic life, blackmail people, murder people and trap her enemies in secret rooms, and Kristen Blake (Eileen Davidson), the good-girl-turned-bad girl who also kidnaps and hides her enemies in secret rooms.Jackson’s love of these soaps runs deeper than the cloak-and-dagger plots and mustache-twirling villains. He even layered in musical references: The show’s opening number includes musical allusions to Peabo Bryson’s “One Life to Live” and the opening of “Another World,” sung by Gary Morris and Crystal Gayle.Three sides of Mark-Paul GosselaarMark-Paul Gosselaar, right, as the mischievous Zack Morris, with Mario Lopez as Slater, left, and Dustin Diamond as Screech, in “Saved by the Bell.”NBCThere are footprints of the late ’80s and early ’90s high school sitcom “Saved by the Bell” all over the musical, from Rigg’s kitschy Memphis-style design of the Allwhite school to Keesha’s colorblock windbreaker.And then there’s that show’s beloved Zack Morris, played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar. In “White Girl in Danger,” Jackson pulled from boyfriend tropes — not only Zack but also some of the other roles Gosselaar has played in his career — to mold a boyfriend character (known as Matthew Scott, Scott Matthew and Zack Paul Gosselaar, and played by one actor) opposite “the Megans.” Jackson cited as inspirations Gosselaar’s roles as a frat boy who sexually assaults a college freshman played by Candace Cameron in the TV movie “She Cried No” and as a loving, supportive brother in “For the Love of Nancy.”“This concept of three different boyfriends in one was born out of that, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar specifically, because he played all these parts really well,” Jackson said.Teen queen dreamsFrom left, Tara Reid, Rachael Leigh Cook and Rosario Dawson as small town musicians vying for a big break in the 2001 film “Josie and the Pussycats.”Universal Pictures, via Associated PressThe female clique atop the teen social hierarchy is a well-loved trope. For Kelly, the groups of alpha it-girls in movies like “Clueless,” “Jawbreaker” and “Heathers” greatly influenced how he choreographed “the Megans.”“The opening number, for me, is kind of like ‘Josie and the Pussycats,’” he said. “Everything they do is super cute and super meticulous.” There’s duality to their gestures, Kelly added, which can “flip from being really cute to being insidious.”Blain-Cruz mentioned “My So-Called Life,” and shows “about young women trying to navigate that in-between space of childhood and adulthood, but also claiming their own space.”“And those spaces generally tended to be occupied by white women or white girls,” Blain-Cruz said, noting that one of her favorite scenes to develop was a band rehearsal in which each of the girls’ performance styles recalls that of ’90s pop starlets.‘Hollywood, sex and murder’Gina Gershon, left, and Elizabeth Berkley in the 1995 film “Showgirls.”Murray Close/United ArtistsAffairs, dalliances and general sexcapades are hallmarks of soap operas, so “White Girl in Danger” follows suit with kooky seduction scenes, surprising bedfellows and sprays of bodily fluid. For the choreography of a scene featuring a sudden sexual reveal, Kelly enthusiastically references one of his favorite movies, the erotic 1995 drama “Showgirls.” He described it as “the wild and crazy cat-fight-love-festival that was between Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon.”For Jackson, it wasn’t just the sexy daytime and prime time dramas that left an impression, it was also the work of the romance writer Jackie Collins.“I was like 10 years old and my older cousin gave me a copy of ‘Chances,’” Jackson said. “I devoured it, because it was so dirty. It was like my form of pornography, because I lived in a pretty strict religious home,” he continued. “That took me into this world of Hollywood, Vegas, gangsters, sex and murder.”Black music in the BlackgroundThere’s no “White Girl in Danger” without the Black characters who try to escape the racist, stereotypical Black stories in the Blackground. Three of the show’s Blackground women — Florence, Caroline and Abilene — serve as a kind of Greek chorus. For their fashion and choreography, Blanco and Kelly channeled the Pointer Sisters, the Mary Jane Girls, the Dreams, the Ronettes, even the trio of singer-narrators in “Little Shop of Horrors.” Kelly said the Blackground women represent “the trope of the three women 30 feet from stardom on the outskirts of every story.”For Tarik, a Blackground character whose roles are exclusively getting killed and going to jail, Black music was also prominent influence. “Tarik is every Black male stereotype from ‘Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ to its counterpart; he’s also D’Angelo. He’s also Ginuwine. He’s also Usher,” Kelly said, specifically calling out D’Angelo’s bare-chested video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” Though Tarik has his own deliberately underdressed jacket-open moment, Blanco’s costume design for him includes a “Fresh Prince”-style cap and Hammer pants. More

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    Alex Newell From ‘Shucked’ Sings Their Favorite Whitney Houston Song

    After growing up listening to powerhouse voices, the actor brings their own back to Broadway.Amid the sweet, folksy ballads (and many, many corn jokes) of “Shucked,” the new Broadway musical opening April 4, comes a soulful, commanding number performed by Alex Newell that provides the show some unexpected heft — a song full of riffs and modulations and belted notes that seem to reach both ends of the actor’s expansive range.Roles that showcase the breadth and power of Newell’s voice are familiar territory: The actor made their Broadway debut in 2017 as the maternal goddess Asaka in the revival of “Once on This Island” (1990) and may be most recognizable for their time on “Glee,” from 2012 to 2015, as the transgender teenager Unique Adams. But their character in “Shucked” — Lulu, a whiskey entrepreneur — and that song, “Independently Owned,” offer the chance to inhabit something new: “The expectation of plus-size people is that they cannot be sexy; all my life, I’ve heard you’re either fat and jolly or fat and a bitch,” says Newell, 30. “So to have this dimension of this person, to just exude sex, is so much fun for me because it doesn’t happen often — especially on the Broadway stage.”“Shucked” is set in a small farming town with a thriving corn crop — until the stalks start dying, spurring a local woman (Lulu’s cousin and confidante, Maizy, played by Caroline Innerbichler) to leave home in search of a solution. Newell heard about the piece through a friend, who did an early reading before the pandemic. But they didn’t see the script, written by Robert Horn, until the show’s musical director and orchestrator, Jason Howland, texted Newell about the role. They were immediately drawn to the show’s humor — nearly every line is a pun or punchline or both, the laughs offset by a warm score from the country songwriting duo Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark.Newell grew up singing in church in Lynn, Mass., and listening to other big voices, Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, Patti LaBelle, Jennifer Holliday among them. They had early aspirations of becoming a gospel artist, but performing in a choir proved challenging — “I mean, I never fit in. I was always loud.” After seeing a local production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” when they were 11, Newell began thinking about a career in musical theater.When Fox held an open call for “Glee” hopefuls to audition online in 2011, Newell, then a sophomore in high school, submitted a self-taped clip performing “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from “Dreamgirls.” (Starring as Effie, a role in the musical originated by Holliday, has long been a goal.) Newell later started making pop music, including the queer anthems “Kill the Lights” and “All Cried Out,” and in 2020 eventually returned to TV as Mo, a gender-nonconforming D.J. on the musical series “Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist.” But for now, Newell says, they’re content to stay onstage: “The endorphins that are released after you’ve sung and everyone is standing and screaming and that wall of sound is pushing right back at you: It’s beautiful.”Ahead of opening night, T asked Newell to sing and discuss their favorite song by one of their idols: Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know” (1985). More

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    Late Night Is Tickled by Trump’s Indictment

    “He was right — we’re finally saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again!” Stephen Colbert said of Donald Trump on Thursday.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.Merry Christmas!Former President Donald Trump was indicted by a New York grand jury on Thursday in connection with his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to people familiar with the situation.“He was right — we’re finally saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again!” Stephen Colbert said. The host celebrated by eating an ice cream sundae out of a helmet on what was also the opening day of the 2023 Major League Baseball season.“I didn’t know it would feel this good!” he said.“This is good news for everybody, even him. He now gets to join his J6 Prison Choir!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And, you know what, he should see whether that grand jury will cut him a check for $130,000, because he is so screwed.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“For the first time in the history of this country, an American president has been indicted for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, although, in fairness, that’s a pretty narrow window. Like when Grover Cleveland was president, porn stars were very hard to come by. Still, it’s historic, and it’s funny — it’s very, very funny.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But hey, let this be a lesson to all you kids out there, OK? If you commit fraud to cover up an affair with a porn star, the law will catch up to you after, like, seven years and a full term as president.” — JOHN LEGUIZAMO, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Maybe instead of running for president, he’ll do another show, like ‘The Celebrity Apprehentice.’ Or maybe, maybe a sitcom like ‘Arrested Developer.’ We don’t know. All we know is that right now for the first time in seven years, Melania is smiling at Mar-a-Lago.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He’s going to be arrested, he will be fingerprinted, he will be read his Miranda rights. Wait till he finds out, all this time, he had the right to remain silent. He’s going to kick himself. That’s going to be a tough pill to swallow.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Satisfaction Guaranteed Edition)“The report is that they are going to try to negotiate his surrender. Either that, or they’ll leave a trail of Big Macs leading to the prison.” — JOHN LEGUIZAMO“When she heard, Stormy Daniels was, like, ‘Oh, so this is what it feels like to be satisfied?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Who’s going to help Don Jr. pick out his Lunchable tomorrow?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And you know, I take a firm stance against mass incarceration, OK? But for this, I’m willing to make an exception. I just hope they take it easy on him and put him at least in a cell with his lawyer.” — JOHN LEGUIZAMOThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon enlisted puppies to predict the results of this year’s Final Four on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutTeyana Taylor stars with Aaron Kingsley Adetola in “A Thousand and One,” which won a grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival.Focus FeaturesAfter stepping away from recording music to focus on acting, Teyana Taylor landed the lead role in the drama “A Thousand and One.” More

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    ‘Life of Pi’ Review: A Boy and a Tiger, Burning Brightly

    Human ingenuity and animal grace course through this rich, inventive play about difficult choices and the stories we tell to make sense of them.The butterflies enter first, quivering gaily atop their sticks. Then a giraffe pokes her head in. A goat gambols. A hyena cackles. One zebra runs on. Then another. An orangutan swings through while her baby reposes on a branch nearby. Above, monkeys and meerkats chitter. In the first act of “Life of Pi,” a menagerie — menacing, delightful — entrenches itself on the stage of Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.With dazzling imagination and sublime control, the show’s cast and crew conjure a delirious, dynamic, highly pettable world. And oh, is it a wonder. Though the play is ostensibly about one boy’s fraught survival after a disaster, that story is somewhat thin. “Life of Pi” instead succeeds as a broader tribute to human ingenuity and animal grace.Directed by Max Webster and adapted by the playwright Lolita Chakrabarti from Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel, “Life of Pi” begins more somberly, in Mexico, in 1978. A grayed-out hospital room houses a sole patient, Pi Patel (Hiran Abeysekera). A Japanese cargo ship en route to Canada has sunk. Among its passengers were Pi and his family, who had set out from Pondicherry, India. And among its freight were the animals Pi’s zookeeper father tended. All aboard have drowned, except Pi, a traumatized 17-year-old who washed up in this fishing village after 227 days lost at sea.Visiting him this morning are Mr. Okamoto (Daisuke Tsuji), a representative from the Japanese Ministry of Transport, and Lulu Chen (Kirstin Louie), from the Canadian Embassy. These guests have been charged with learning what happened to Pi. For their benefit, he spins a fantastic tale — incredible in every sense — about sharing a lifeboat with animals, initially several then finally just one, Richard Parker, an enormous, sinuous, very hungry Bengal tiger.Between Richard Parker and Pi, adamant carnivore and lifelong vegetarian, there is a desperate struggle for dominance. Richard Parker needs to eat. Pi would prefer not to be eaten. But these two passengers eventually achieve a détente, even a kind of friendship, a hallucinatory acknowledgment of what is human within the animal and animal within the human. It is the example of Richard Parker — and his companionship, however imagined — that allows Pi to survive.“You’re the only reason I’m alive,” a despairing Pi says to his friend, midjourney. “It’s just you and me.”But “Life of Pi” is a much larger affair than this small-man-big-cat duo. The cast runs to 24 actors, many of them also puppeteers, with a small fleet of crew members to make the whole show seaworthy. (The play originated in Sheffield, England, before moving to the West End and then to the American Repertory Theater in Boston, so yes, it floats.) Martel’s novel — absorbing, florid — is a work of magical realism. Webster, the director, makes sure to deliver the magic and the realism both.The menagerie of puppet animals, designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, prowl and canter and leap with astonishing character and style, our critic writes.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesNodding to techniques pioneered by Robert Lepage and Improbable Theater, Webster encourages a beautiful synchrony of lighting (Tim Lutkin), video (Andrzej Goulding), sound (Carolyn Downing) and set (Tim Hatley, who also designed the costumes). Aided by the other production elements, the mise-en-scène constantly moves and shifts. The room becomes the boat. The boat recedes into the room. Sometimes both room and boat are there at once and a person might have to clap her hands across her mouth to stop herself from oohing, especially when the schools of fish surface or the stars begin to flicker. We are in the realm of fantasy here, of symbolism, but squint just a little and waves appear. Even from the mezzanine, I could feel — almost — a salt spray.And the puppetry! Between Milky White of “Into the Woods” and the dinosaur and mammoth of “The Skin of Our Teeth,” New York has not been starved of extraordinary stick and cloth creations. But the animals here, designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, with movement direction by Caldwell, prowl and canter and leap with astonishing character and style. And Richard Parker, animated by three puppeteers at any given time, is the show’s striped jewel. Chuffing, growling and panting as he stalks the boat’s perimeter, he is at once beguiling, gentlemanly and quite dangerous. Abeysekera — a petite hurricane of an actor with reeling limbs and a clarion voice — is excellent in an exhausting role.But Richard Parker (very briefly voiced by Brian Thomas Abraham) makes the more indelible impression. When he finally slunk onto dry land, I worried for him as I did not worry for Pi. He seemed so thin.The cast runs to 24 actors, many of them also puppeteers.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesToward the start of his tale, Pi promises his listeners that his story will make them believe in God. But while Martel’s novel has a deep and sometimes tendentious concern with religion and philosophy, Chakrabarti’s adaptation engages with these questions only glancingly.At its most abstract, this a play about how we come to terms with our own choices, even with our own survival, and the stories we might tell to make those choices and that survival make sense. Trauma requires language, Pi insists. If you don’t find words to compass it, he says, “it becomes a wordless darkness, and you will never defeat it.” Yet language tends to recede whenever the animals are onstage. Want wonder? Want divinity? Look to the tiger burning bright. And then look to the human hands that tend the flame.Eventually Pi offers an alternative version of what happened on that lifeboat, which Webster also stages. Stripped of animals, allegory and visual pleasure, this account is more plausible, though much darker. “Which is the better story?” Pi asks.Depends what he means by “better.” But of course it’s the one with the animals. Because faced with such horror, or even with the ordinary hardships of daily life, anyone would prefer the fantasy, especially when it is rendered with such richness and invention. (A different show might have questioned the morality of extracting such pleasure, such delight, from a tale of privation. Not this one.) Significantly, neither story redeems what Pi has suffered. But only one has a tiger in it.That roaring that you will hear at the show’s end? It’s the sound of a standing ovation.Life of PiAt the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, Manhattan; lifeofpibway.com. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. More

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    In This ‘Peter Pan,’ Something Always Goes Awry. That’s the Plan.

    On a recent afternoon, the actor Greg Tannahill sat perched atop a London rooftop, one leg extended, one arm outthrust. A pair of carpenters would then whisk Tannahill from his rooftop and into a nursery. And then out of it. And then back in again. A window frame would come free. Tannahill, now jerked upside down, would mewl and scream and clamber down a wall. Once he finally righted himself, the flight harness would wrench him upside-down again.This breathless, silly sequence lasted less than a minute and ended when Tannahill, playing an actor cast as Peter Pan in an ill-starred kiddie production, finally stands up straight and delivers the line: “Thank heavens I didn’t wake the children.”The routine requires split-second precision and the seamless cooperation of actors, flight operators and stage managers. To make it work and to make it safe (there is an open flame on set!), the creators and crew members of “Peter Pan Goes Wrong,” the spry, slapstick comedy that is scheduled to open at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theater on April 19, have spent dozens of hours (maybe hundreds of hours, counts differ) honing this one bit.“Peter Pan Goes Wrong” is the second Broadway production, following the Agatha Christie- adjacent “The Play That Goes Wrong,” in 2017, from the theater company Mischief. Founded by three former drama school roommates — Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields — Mischief specializes in farcical deconstructions of established genres. Each new play is putatively the work of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, a troupe of overambitious amateur thespians. Whenever the Cornley players take the stage, something inevitably goes awry. A lot of somethings. Mischief’s fascination is with the things (and people) that go bump in the night. People like Tannahill.Backstage at the Ethel Barrymore Theater: Richard Force, a carpenter, helping Tannahill into his harness.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times“I’ve gained a bruise or two in rehearsal,” said Tannahill, once he had retired to his dressing room. “But you’ve got to break a few eggs to make a lovely omelet.” He then clarified that he hadn’t actually broken anything.‘Acclimate to the terror’I visited the Barrymore a week before the show’s first preview performance because I wanted to see the work that went into putting even one gag together. “Hours go into generating just 10 seconds,” Sayer told me.It was late afternoon, just before the dinner break, and the auditorium was littered with binders, monitors and makeshift desks. The atmosphere was one of controlled chaos, but no one seemed especially tense. (Many of the company’s members studied together at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.) Not even Tannahill, though he did ask, good-naturedly, for a moment to catch his breath before the carpenters swung him in again.“Just so I can acclimate to the terror that is that moment,” he said.That moment has been in the works for about 10 years, ever since “Peter Pan Goes Wrong” first opened at the Pleasance, a small theater in North London. Mischief had chosen a children’s show as the follow-up to “The Play That Goes Wrong” for two reasons. First, these shows have so many rules and conventions ripe for rupture. “You can’t really get more serious than a show that is intended for children,” said Henry Shields, as he and his collaborators speed-ate a dinner of pasta and salad. “The moral standard of these shows, it is extremely high.”The second reason was the flying rig. With characters suspended high above the stage floor, what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot.When the show debuted, at the Pleasance, the company couldn’t afford luxury gear. The rented rig had no counterweight, so when they wanted to lift Tannahill, who originated the role of the actor playing Peter Pan, a crew member had to jump off a stepladder. To have Tannahill enter at the appropriate speed, a couple of actors would hold his feet, pull him back and let him go.Honing a sequence: Jonathan Sayer, one of the founders of the Mischief theater company, compared their process to stop-motion animation, because a new movement or gesture has to happen nearly every second.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times“The low-tech version of the show was much more dangerous,” Shields said. “I mean, it was safe, we took care, but there were more bruises.”In this low-tech version, things actually did go wrong, unscripted things. At one point, a screw fell out and a door broke away, jamming the revolving stage just minutes before curtain. At another performance, a dummy version of Peter Pan fell to the floor prematurely. (“Don’t worry,” Tannahill ad-libbed. “That’s just the other dead Pan.”) One night, Sayer, playing one of the children, forgot to loosen a button on his costume. When his own rig jerked up, it choked him.“I remember being very out of breath and quite shaken and looking up expecting to see you all looking very concerned,” Sayer recalled. “Everyone had tears rolling down their faces with laughter.”The company now takes rehearsals and personal safety just a bit more seriously. “With age and experience comes much more care,” Sayer said. “When you’re 21, you say, ‘Let’s just go for it!’ Now, there’s a lot of poring through everything at an extreme level of detail to get it right and to make sure that we’re safe and well and happy.” (He and his collaborators are now seasoned men of 34.)Mischief managedFor a “Goes Wrong” play to work, the production has to chart an exact course between mayhem and control. Too much polish and it isn’t funny. “Especially on a big Broadway show, people are so hard-wired to be like, ‘Well, this is how it’s done. This is how we’ll make it clean, neat, tidy.’ You’re quite often trying to unpick those things. Like, ‘No, no, let that moment be messy. Let the shirttails hang out,’” Lewis said.But too little refinement and the jokes don’t fly. If the doors slam — and slam and slam — but the story isn’t told, the audience won’t laugh. With each new production, the director, Adam Meggido, includes at least one rehearsal in which everything goes right. “You need to be able to do the thing and to have total control over it before you can start to undercut it,” Sayer said. “You’ve got to make sure the story of ‘Peter Pan’ is being told before you start to rip it up a little bit.”Matthew Cavendish, who plays Max, in bunk beds that collapse, naturally.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesAnd then, second by second, joke by joke, the ripping begins, in a process that Sayer compared to stop-motion animation, because a new movement or gesture has to happen nearly every second. “Comedy is hard,” Shields said. “Jokes are hard. You have to be very precise.”Still, that precision has to allow for differences in the layout of each new theater and for the addition and subtraction of actors and understudies, who have to be afforded the space to play the roles in their own ways, even while hitting every line and mark. Besides, Lewis, Sayer and Shields have never met a joke that they didn’t believe they could eventually improve. Ten years on, they’re still tweaking, refining and adding new bits. “You’re never finished writing comedy,” Shields said, sounding slightly exhausted. (At one point he had described Mischief’s style as “a bottomless pit of comedy.”)The fine-tuning ends only during the technical rehearsals, when any further changes would give the designers, board operators and stage managers conniption fits. I found them a few days before that, during what Lewis described as “that fun, exhilarating part of the process where we’re trying to get those last few changes through.”Where the magic happensAn assistant stage manager led me across a confetti covered set to a narrow backstage area that magically held a half-dozen people. The carpenters stood behind a bank of monitors. One grasped the ropes that controlled Tannahill’s horizontal travel; the other his vertical axis. “Peter Pan Goes Wrong” has upgraded since its Pleasance days. The rig now came courtesy of Flying by Foy, the industry leader. (In a neat bit of symmetry, Peter Foy, of Flying by Foy, designed the rig for Mary Martin’s celebrated “Peter Pan.”) It would take both of them, three stage managers and an offsite flying manager to guarantee Tannahill a smooth journey. Which is to say, one in which every bump and inversion is intentional.Tannahill says he enjoys all the pranks, even being turned upside-down. “It’s quite therapeutic,” he said.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesTannahill claimed to enjoy all of it, even the moments in which he was turned upside-down. “It’s actually quite nice,” he said. “Gets the blood circulation going in a different direction. It’s quite therapeutic.”At rehearsal, he oriented himself precisely on a roof. At a cue from Tannahill, a raised hand, the operators swung him through the window. This was the carpenters’ 20th time with the sequence, maybe the 30th, and it ran without a hitch, though without the necessary force.“Can you slap him into the wall?” Sayers said to the carpenters. “He used to really thwack into the wall.” The sequence had to look out of control while the actual control remained perfect. If Tannahill seemed to be in real danger, the audience would feel too anxious to chuckle. But if he came in too slow, they wouldn’t laugh either.They tried it again. This time Tannahill did smack into the wall. The wrong wall. The sequence reset. “Because that happened in rehearsal, it was very controlled,” Tannahill later reassured me. “It didn’t give me a bruise straightaway.”The third time, the sequence, in fairy-tale fashion, went just right. When Tannahill flipped upside-down for the second time, the cast and crew cackled. How did it feel to have finally nailed the timing and the trajectory, to have his colleagues laugh at his discomfort?“It feels great,” Tannahill said. “It makes all the bruises worth it.” More

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    ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 3, Episode 7 Recap: Moral Ambiguity

    It turns out Starfleet is not the force for good that “The Next Generation” had us believe.Season 3, Episode 7: ‘Surrender’For much of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Starfleet was presented as the most virtuous force in the universe — a body with the aim to do good. No conquest. No fighting. Just good old fashioned exploration. Any time a photon torpedo was fired, it was because the Enterprise was forced to fire by hostile forces. If there were corrupt admirals here and there, they were just bad apples. If the Federation tried to move Native Americans away from their home without their permission to satisfy a silly treaty, it was with noble intentions: to avoid war.After “Next Generation,” Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision of mankind’s future began to give way to darker versions. “Star Trek: Insurrection” gave us a Starfleet-sponsored plan to steal a planet away from an Indigenous species. In “Deep Space Nine,” we saw Starfleet personnel repeatedly operating in a moral gray area, especially when it came to the Dominion War. In one of the best episodes of “Deep Space Nine,” Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), the show’s hero, helped orchestrate the murder of a Romulan Senator in order to lure the Romulans into the war. Later in the series, we learned that Starfleet tried to orchestrate a genocide of the changelings through a virus — a story line that returned with gusto this week in “Picard.”“When you’re constantly subjected to these self righteous, self-proclaimed heroes, spewing their morality as if vomit were somehow virtuous, then sometimes, dear, a little bend, a little arch, a little antagonizing flair is required,” Lore snarls in front of Geordi in this week’s episode. It seems the “Picard” writers really wanted to take our favorite characters down a peg this season. (Note Shaw’s repeated mention of how often the Enterprise crew got themselves into trouble.)Geordi responds, “Lore has a perverted sense of what it means to be human.”Does he? Or does he have a perfect grasp of what it means to be human based on what we learn in this episode from Vadic?Vadic, after being “captured” on the Titan, tells Beverly and Jean-Luc that the Federation reneged on its promise to give the changelings the cure for the virus at the end of the Dominion War, and in fact, someone had to steal it. I’m a bit unclear as to how this is possible: This would seem to be in direct contrast with what we saw onscreen when Odo cures the Founders himself as a condition of the Founders’ surrender to end the war. Unless the Founders themselves chose to withhold the cure from certain changelings.But nevertheless, Vadic also reveals that she and nine other changelings were experimented on by Starfleet as prisoners of war, as part of Project Proteus. It’s a startling revelation: Starfleet tried to convert changelings into, as Vadic calls them, “perfect, undetectable spies, able to drop into any species and spread chaos,” and instead created the biggest threat to the Federation since … well, since the last one.It’s a far cry from the noble Starfleet that Jean-Luc loved and eschewed a family for. Even the enlightened Beverly isn’t as righteous as she used to be. She introduces the idea of a biological weapon to root out the changelings, which she acknowledges would be tantamount to genocide. The New Jean-Luc indulges the proposal and, later, floats the idea of executing Vadic, once he realizes that they won’t get anything of use from her once she is captured.“Are you and I so fundamentally changed that we’re willing to compromise everything?” Jean-Luc asks Beverly.“Yes,” Beverly says. “I think I’m losing my compass.”In “Next Generation,” this exchange would have led to a moralizing speech from Jean-Luc about how they cannot play judge, jury and executioner. And everyone would have gone home happy, and there would have been virtuous solution. But Jean-Luc and his friends are older now. Harder. They’ve seen some stuff. And deep down, they know Lore was right about what he said.Jean-Luc and Beverly move to execute Vadic and, of course, it doesn’t work. The force field goes down. Vadic escapes and takes over the Titan. Worst of both worlds!Odds and endsWhile finding out Vadic’s motivations in becoming a baddie was certainly a worthwhile addition to the season’s story line, Jean-Luc’s plan, like many of his actions this season, made no sense. His grand idea was to lure the changelings from the Shrike, a superior ship, onto the Titan? When he, of all people, should know is Lore is also onboard and really wants to get revenge on him? Why would Shaw leave a powerful villain alone in a room with just force fields and two older humans not known for their hand-to-hand combat? That’s what security teams are for!Fun cameo from Tim Russ as Tuvok. One takeaway from the conversation, despite its not really being with Tuvok, is that Seven still considers Tuvok a friend — another indication of how fondly she thought of her time on Voyager.It turns out that the generational inheritance Jean-Luc passed onto Jack is actually the abilities of Professor X, now that Jack can read minds and control other people just by thinking really hard.The Shrike needs an upgrade in its scanners. The ship can read that the Titan’s warp core is offline and that the ship is running on emergency power only, but it cannot tell if there is any life on board.Geordi’s speech to Data about mourning him was a nice moment for LeVar Burton. He got to say the goodbye to his favorite android that he didn’t get to say in Data’s previous two deaths. More

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    Jimmy Kimmel Recaps Day Eight of ‘To Catch a President’

    Kimmel complained that the grand jury is “leaving us hanging like Trump tried to do with Mike Pence.”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.Two More Weeks of WaitingOn Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel joked it was “Day Eight of ‘To Catch a President.’”“The grand jury in Manhattan is still out, and they are going to stay out for two weeks,” Kimmel said, adding that they are “leaving us hanging like Trump tried to do with Mike Pence. But that’s a different indictment, I think.”“Some experts believe that it is possible the grand jury may already have voted to indict Donald Trump but that the Manhattan D.A. is slow-walking it to give him time to make preparations for his arrest, whereas others are saying it’s possible — and this is pretty crazy — that Donald Trump died two years ago and we’re all being haunted by his ghost.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yep, a potential indictment is at least a month away. Melania was like, ‘Welp, cancel the party.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Even Ted Cruz was like, ‘You’re going on vacation now?’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Eyewitness Edition)“The reason we know this is good for the country is because neither Pence nor the former president want it to happen.” — STEPHEN COLBERT, on Mike Pence being forced to testify before a grand jury in the Jan. 6 investigation“The ex-president argued that his conversations with Pence fell under executive privilege, while Pence claimed that his role as the president of the Senate granted him legislative immunity. So, he was a part of the executive branch and the legislative branch. You can see it all in the new movie, ‘Every Job Everywhere All Mike Pence.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Another day has gone by, and the ex-president still has not been indicted for making illegal hush money payments to a porn star. I really thought it was going to happen today. After all, Wednesday is Cover Your Hump Day.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingKevin Bacon joined Jimmy Fallon for a parody called “Paint It, Black” on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe actress Maude Apatow, a star in “Little Shop of Horrors,” will appear on Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutThe artist Aura Rosenberg at her first major survey, “What Is Psychedelic,” at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.Tonje Thilesen for The New York TimesArtist Aura Rosenberg’s first major survey, “What Is Psychedelic,” features 50 years of her work, including collaborations with Laurie Simmons, Louise Lawler, John Baldessari and Mike Kelley. More