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    Bill Zehme, Author With a Knack for Humanizing the Famous, Dies at 64

    A prolific biographer, he charmed his way into access to, and insights about, Frank Sinatra, Hugh Hefner, Johnny Carson and many others.Bill Zehme, whose biographies and magazine profiles humanized the celebrities he described as “intimate strangers” — the “shy, succinct” Johnny Carson; the “blank” Warren Beatty; Frank Sinatra, whose “battle cry” was “fun with everything, and I mean fun!” — died on Sunday in Chicago. He was 64.His partner, Jennifer Engstrom, said the cause was colorectal cancer.Mr. Zehme’s biography of Mr. Sinatra, “The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’” (1997), was a best seller. He also shared the author credit on best-selling memoirs by Regis Philbin (“I’m Only One Man!” in 1995 and “Who Wants to Be Me?” in 2000) and Jay Leno (“Leading With My Chin” in 1996).His other books included “Intimate Strangers: Comic Profiles and Indiscretions of the Very Famous” (2002), “Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman” (1999) and “Hef’s Little Black Book” (2004), a stream-of-consciousness collaboration with Hugh M. Hefner, the founder and publisher of Playboy magazine.Mr. Zehme’s biography of Frank Sinatra, published in 1997, was a best seller, and he and Mr. Sinatra remained close.Mr. Zehme (pronounced ZAY-mee) conducted what is widely believed to have been the last major interview with Johnny Carson, whom he called “the great American Sphinx” and whom the CBS anchor Walter Cronkite called “the most durable performer in the whole history of television” when Mr. Carson retired in 1992 after some 4,500 episodes of “The Tonight Show.”Mr. Zehme’s “Carson the Magnificent: An Intimate Portrait” was published in 2007, but he never completed the full-fledged biography he had planned.The Chicago-born Mr. Zehme was often said to have cultivated recalcitrant sources with his Midwestern charm. His portraits were not hagiography, but neither were they tell-alls, and he remained close to some of the subjects he interviewed, including Mr. Sinatra and Mr. Hefner.“Bill didn’t dig around for dirt or comb through the proverbial closet hunting for skeletons,” David Hirshey, a former deputy editor of Esquire magazine, said by email. “What interested him was more subtle than that. Zehme looked for the quirks in behavior and speech that revealed a person’s character, and he had an uncanny ability to put his subjects at ease with a mixture of gentle playfulness and genuine empathy.”That’s why,” Mr. Hirshey continued, “Sharon Stone covered by nothing but a sheet allowed Bill to interview her while lying side by side as they enjoyed a couples massage.”Mr. Carson, Mr. Zehme wrote in an essay for PBS in conjunction with an “American Masters” documentary on him, “rose to reign iconic as the smooth midnight sentinel king whose political japes and cultural enthusiasms mightily swayed popular taste at whim or wink.” That wink, Mr. Zehme noted, transmitted “surefire stardom to aspiring personalities, especially comedians, and privileged co-conspiracy to regular viewers who became his spontaneous partners in sly mockery.”Andy Kaufman, Mr. Zehme wrote, was “a pioneering practitioner of various cultural trends long before they ever became trends.”Delacorte PressOf Mr. Beatty, Mr. Zehme wrote: “He speaks slowly, fearfully, cautiously, editing every syllable, slicing off personal color and spontaneous wit, steering away from opinion, introspection, humanness. He is mostly evasive. His pauses are elephantine. Broadway musicals could be mounted during his pauses. He works at this. Ultimately, he renders himself blank.“In ‘Dick Tracy,’ he battles a mysterious foe called the Blank. In life, he is the Blank doing battle with himself. It is a fascinating showdown, exhilarating to behold. To interview Warren Beatty is to want to kill him.”Mr. Zehme provided tips from Mr. Sinatra about what men should never do in the presence of a woman (yawn) and about the finer points of his haberdashery: “He wore only snap-brim Cavanaughs — fine felts and porous palmettos — and these were his crowns, cocked askew, as defiant as he was.”“Mr. Sinatra’s gauge for when a hat looked just right,” Mr. Zehme wrote, was “when no one laughs.”He described the unorthodox and at times controversial comedian Andy Kaufman as “the pre-eminent put-on artist of his generation” and “a pioneering practitioner of various cultural trends long before they ever became trends.”William Christian Zehme was born on Oct. 28, 1958, the grandson of a Danish immigrant. His parents, Robert and Suzanne (Clemensen) Zehme, owned a flower shop in Flossmoor, a village south of Chicago and not far from South Holland, where Bill was raised.Mr. Zehme in 2017. “Bill didn’t dig around for dirt or comb through the proverbial closet hunting for skeletons,” a colleague said. “What interested him was more subtle than that.”Loyola University Chicago School of CommunicationHe graduated from Loyola University in Chicago in 1980 with a degree in journalism.One of his first books was “The Rolling Stone Book of Comedy” (1991). In 2004, he won a National Magazine Award for his profile of the newspaper columnist Bob Greene.In addition to Ms. Engstrom, Mr. Zehme is survived by Lucy Reeves, a daughter from his marriage to Tina Zimmel, which ended in divorce; and a sister, Betsy Archer.Mr. Zehme bridled at being identified as a celebrity biographer, although most of the people he profiled had been famous long before he wrote about them. They had not, however, seemed as familiar as next-door neighbors until Mr. Zehme wrote about them.“The celebrity profile is the bastard stepchild of journalism, and I’m embarrassed sometimes to be associated with it,” he told Chicago magazine in 1996.“The truth is, I have never written about a celebrity,” Mr. Zehme wrote in “Intimate Strangers.” “I have always written about humans, replete with human traits and foibles and issues, who also happen to be famous.” More

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    An ‘Obsession’ With Philip Glass Inspires a Director’s Memory Play

    In “Tao of Glass,” Phelim McDermott, who has directed three Glass operas, turns to his personal history with the composer’s work.The first piece of theater that Phelim McDermott made after college, decades ago, used music by Philip Glass. And directing productions of three of Glass’s operas has brought McDermott — and Improbable, the theater company he helped found in 1996 — glowing reviews and sold-out houses.So it’s not surprising that McDermott’s “Tao of Glass,” which arrives at the NYU Skirball on Thursday, is a loving tribute to his long relationship — what, in an interview, he called “my obsession” — with Glass’s seemingly repetitive yet constantly transforming music.“Philip’s music has been like this river that’s gone through my creative life,” McDermott said on a video call from London, where he was completing rehearsals for a revival of his juggling-heavy production of Glass’s “Akhnaten” at English National Opera. “It connects me to a part of myself that sometimes I neglect and have forgotten about. It’s like an invitation to return to myself.”Improbable’s productions tend to be built from everyday stuff, but “Tao of Glass” is even more modest than most. It is essentially a one-man show for McDermott. (Glass doesn’t perform live in the piece, but is present in ghostly form through a sophisticated player piano that plays back precisely what he put down on it, including every detail of touch and phrasing.)Onstage, McDermott is surrounded by shadow play, sticky tape and creatures formed from tissue paper as he tells stories about his life; his history with Glass, both the work and the man; his experiences in meditation-encouraging flotation tanks; and his encounters with the writings of Lao Tzu, the open-minded principle of “deep democracy” espoused by the author and therapist Arnold Mindell, and a shattered coffee table made of, yes, glass.In the interview, McDermott talked more about his relationship with Glass and how the show came together. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.The composer Philip Glass in 1980.Jack Mitchell/Getty ImagesTalk about the roots of your relationship with Glass’s work.I was at college in London, what was then Middlesex Polytechnic, and I became very obsessed with his music. This was in 1982 or ’83, and I would take out VHS tapes of him playing with the Glass Ensemble, and footage of the operas and so on. And then, in the last six weeks of my degree course, I made an adaptation of an Ian McEwan short story, “Conversation With a Cupboard Man.”It was a monologue about a guy who lives in what, in the U.K., we call a wardrobe — quite a dark, sort of strange piece about this guy who’s a misfit. And Philip’s music from “Glassworks” was so appropriate to that piece. It became the music we used in the show.And when did you take on one of the operas?I was approached by John Berry at English National Opera. It was 2005, and I was performing a show called “Spirit” at New York Theater Workshop, literally around the corner from where Philip lives, and he met me at Atlas Cafe. I’d been asked to do “Einstein on the Beach,” and I thought it was a stupid idea. Philip asked me, “Why do you want to do ‘Einstein’?” And I said, “I don’t.” So we talked a bit, and he said, “Your genuine reluctance to do this piece makes me think you should do it.”But then he mentioned “Satyagraha.” And I went away and listened to it, and it’s not a bio-opera about Gandhi; it’s about a concept. I got excited by this idea of collective social activism, of big groups of people and how they can exchange ideas. And it resonated with Arnold Mindell’s “worldwork”: If you want to do social activism and change, you have to work on yourself. If there’s an outer conflict, you also have to work on that conflict within yourself. That idea of “deep democracy” is in “Tao of Glass.”Your stagings of “Satyagraha,” “Akhnaten” and “The Perfect American” have different unifying concepts.With “Satyagraha,” which we first did in 2007, it was big-scale spectacle, but using humble materials: sticky tape, newspaper — building those into large-scale puppetry. That became a model or metaphor for how, collectively, you can create something powerful even with humble materials. For “The Perfect American” (2013), which is about Walt Disney, it was about animation, and about all the work that goes into it between every frame. And for “Akhnaten” (2016), about the Egyptian pharaoh, it was juggling — and it turned out the very first image of juggling is in an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic.The countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, center, as the title character in McDermott’s staging of Glass’s “Akhnaten.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow did “Tao of Glass” come about?It’s a show that happened when another one didn’t, which I talk about in “Tao of Glass.” Philip and I were supposed to adapt Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen.” I’d come out to New York; I’d done a storyboard and what musical bits might happen; but Maurice’s sad death, in 2012, meant that project veered into not happening.John McGrath at the Manchester International Festival said even if that project’s not happening, if I was to dream what I might make with Philip, what might that be? And I got a vision, floating in the flotation tank, of me and Philip onstage together. I went to Philip and said, “I have a vision: I’m doing the puppetry, and you’re at the piano.” And he never said no.Part of the story is my dream of getting him back into a rehearsal room the way I imagine he did when he was just starting out, just a downtown rehearsal space and some musicians. And it happened: There was this week where Philip did come into the rehearsal room, and I told stories — about him, about Taoism, about Arnie Mindell — and he would riff, and then he went away and arranged those bits of music he’d played. And, in a way, the show made itself. In the breaks, he would take us to a Tibetan curry house where they all knew him. It was Philip having a good time, really.They say don’t meet your heroes, but I did, and I ended up making a crazy show with him that’s one of the things I’m proudest of. When you’re making a show like this, you have to trust something, and what you end up trusting is just doing the next step and the next step and the next step. And that’s what Philip’s music does. People say it’s repetitive, but it’s not really repetitive. It’s cyclical and it changes, and you get to a place where you don’t know how you got there, a deeper place.What comes next for you and him?The last time I saw Philip — we always have a little conversation about what happens next, and he said, “When we work together, it seems to go quite well.” And at the moment we’re talking again about “Einstein,” to complete the trilogy with “Satyagraha” and “Akhnaten.”There’s probably vocabularies from those other productions that will go into our version of “Einstein” — probably a new vocabulary, too, but also elements of those other productions. When we met, he talked about various things, but the thing he’s most excited about is the trilogy: that we’ve got to do our Improbable version of “Einstein,” so that we can do all three operas across a city at the same time.He’s a bit slow now, but he said, “You’ve got me all fired up.” So I know that that’s what Philip wants to happen — and I’m saying that publicly so that it does. That’s how you make things happen. More

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    In ‘Unstable,’ the Sins of the Father Are Comedy Gold

    LOS ANGELES — John Owen Lowe was 11 or 12 when he first realized that his father wasn’t quite like the other dads. So what was it like to grow up with a father this famous, this problematically handsome?“How about ‘unbelievably’ handsome?” John Owen’s father, Rob Lowe, 59, interjected from the other end of a sofa in a Netflix conference room in early March. His son grimaced.The short answer: Not great, especially for a kid with social anxiety. “I remember thinking, I didn’t ask for all this extra attention,” John Owen Lowe, 27, said. “But the truth is, nobody wants to hear you complain about that.”A few years ago, he found an alternative to complaining. He began to troll his father on social media, dinging him for each humblebrag. “The subtle art of taking a selfie in front of ur Emmy nominations,” an early comment on one of Rob’s thirst traps read. Others include “Maybe skip chest day for awhile” and “Plz god no.”The elder Lowe took the mockery in stride. Eventually he helped to give it a new platform. He had tried to dissuade both of his children — an older son, Matthew, is now a venture capitalist — from pursuing careers in the entertainment industry. But after John Owen graduated from Stanford, with a degree in science technology, he announced that he wanted to write and act. While writing on “9-1-1: Lone Star,” the Fox emergency responder drama starring his dad, he began to suspect that their barbed dynamic was actually pretty funny. So funny that it just might undergird a show of its own. The elder Lowe immediately signed on as a creator and executive producer.That half-hour comedy, “Unstable,” created with Victor Fresco (“Better Off Ted,” “Santa Clarita Diet”), debuts on Netflix on Thursday. Rob stars as Ellis Dragon, a volatile biotech guru grieving his wife’s death, with John Owen as Jackson, the son brought into his company to steady him. The show exaggerates their personal relationship for comic effect — in reality Rob is more self-aware and John Owen is less mean. But according to both men, it doesn’t exaggerate all that much. And it may have improved that relationship, if only up to a point.In the Netflix series “Unstable,” Rob Lowe plays a grieving biotech guru whose son is brought into the company to help steady him.John P. Fleenor/Netflix“Unstable,” both Lowes say, exaggerates the dynamics of their personal relationship for comic effect, but not all that much. Netflix“I have learned to treat him with some level of respect that feels earned,” John Owen said. “But then they call ‘cut’ and he’s like, ‘If you wear your hair like that, people aren’t going to take you seriously.’ And I’m like, ‘Now it’s time for you to get lost.’”In that small conference room, with John Owen in a baggy dotted suit and Rob in a tight, white T-shirt that set off his ridiculously blue eyes, the two men discussed family, trauma and the idea that despite its billionaire, high-tech trappings, “Unstable” is mostly just a story of a child deeply embarrassed by his parent.“The secret weapon of the show is how relatable it is,” Rob said.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.John Owen, when did you realize that your father was famous?JOHN OWEN LOWE It isn’t something you’re born knowing. But there is a time where you go, ‘Oh wait, my existence isn’t like everybody else’s.’ Probably around fifth or sixth grade, I remember looking back and re-evaluating certain things. Like, oh, it’s not a normal experience to get nervous to walk a red carpet with your dad when you’re 8 years old.When you were growing up, did he behave differently in public?JOHN OWEN There’s not that big of a difference. There’s just not.ROB LOWE I came into acceptance of living a public life really, really early, because I’ve seen two types of people: They either come to terms with it and embrace it or they don’t. The don’t crowd is not for me. My heroes are the people who wear it well.JOHN OWEN There’s a certain type of celebrity who’s like, “Just treat me like a normal person.” And I’m like, “But you’re not! You aren’t a normal person. Your life is the furthest thing from normal.” So don’t give me this spiel, because it’s fake. Rob, on the occasional night that he’s feeling it, he’ll say, “Let’s go giraffe.” And we’ll go to a place where he might be seen.Giraffe?ROB Because you can’t walk a giraffe down the street without people pointing.John Owen, when did you start making fun of your father in public?JOHN OWEN I’ve made fun of him my whole life. It’s our love language. He made it really easy for me to do it publicly when he started to become more present on social media — that was when I found it impossible to not chime in. Like when you took a non-ironic workout selfie in front of your Emmy nominations, I had to say something.ROB First of all. I will never, ever, ever——JOHN OWEN ——win an Emmy.ROB ——take an ironic workout photo. You just wait. You get north of 50, there’s no more irony left.JOHN OWEN I don’t think you know what irony means.“I’ve made fun of him my whole life,” John Owen said of his father. “It’s our love language.” Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesDoes his social media persona actually embarrass you? Or do you just enjoy trolling him?JOHN OWEN It’s not a bit. This is very real. He’s very, very embarrassing.Is it funny to you, Rob, or does it hurt?ROB I love it. You have to understand, one of the highlights of my life was my Comedy Central roast.JOHN OWEN He’s a really good sport. I will give him credit there. I’ve said some cutting stuff to you before, for sure.ROB The more cutting, the more I like it.How did “Unstable” come about?JOHN OWEN I was writing on “Lone Star.” The proximity to my dad was driving me insane, the idea of never escaping his shadow. I had a weekly phone call with my manager and agent where they basically served as de facto therapists. I would say, “I’m going crazy. I’ll never separate from him. Is this my destiny?” They would laugh at my pain, but I thought to myself, Maybe there’s something interesting here, like, this might be a show. Then we got Victor Fresco involved, who really helped us structure it.So you made a Netflix show as therapy?JOHN OWEN It’s wildly cathartic for me. For sure. First of all, I get to make fun of him on a public platform. But it’s sweet and rewarding, honestly, to act with him.How close are both of you to your characters?JOHN OWEN Pretty close.ROB Pretty close.JOHN OWEN Ellis is like 90 percent Rob, truly. I do believe that.ROB It’s definitely my worldview and essence, on steroids.What are some of the other inspirations for Ellis?JOHN OWEN Elon Musk. Because he’s an insane person and keeps failing upward.ROB The other was the Zappos founder [Tony Hsieh], who was obsessed with fire and eventually died in a fire. It was just the notion of these brilliant, amazing geniuses, who always have to keep pushing and testing and searching.“Watching Johnny do the hours was amazing,” Rob said. “He’s like a hothouse flower. He’s like, ‘I’m so tired.’ I’m like, ‘Bro, you’re in the prime of your life.’”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWhat has it been like working together so closely?JOHN OWEN We do have a seamless work flow. I’ve worked with him in different facets before this, but this is the most hands-on we’ve ever been. I’ve never shared carrying a show with him.ROB Watching Johnny do the hours was amazing. He’s like a hothouse flower. He’s like, “I’m so tired.” I’m like, “Bro, you’re in the prime of your life.”JOHN OWEN I learned a lot from him on “Unstable.” How somebody in that position carries himself, when so many people are counting on you to deliver day in and day out. I was impressed. That’s as much of a compliment as I’m going to give you right now.And what was acting opposite him like? Because this man, he’s a brick wall of charisma — it’s a little shattering.JOHN OWEN He does have a lot have charisma. In a scene, if people aren’t bringing it, he’ll suck attention into himself. He’s a black hole of energy and positivity. I use that. There’s two ways to match an actor doing something like that: One is to try and meet them where they are; the other is to just let them go. And that’s really what Jackson’s doing, because that’s what I do in real life around him. Even in the writing, I’ve helped craft set pieces that are built for him to be the spectacle.Has it given you anything new to troll him with?JOHN OWEN Where do I even begin? He may have had to read a line off a cue card. I have that cue card in my car. I’m keeping it.And what has it given you, Rob?ROB I get to do what is probably one of the last great network hits [“9-1-1: Lone Star”], then I get to do this and fulfill my goofy, nerdy comedy side. It’s the dream. It’s literally the dream.JOHN OWEN It’s Rob’s world. We’re all just living in it.John Owen called working on “Unstable” with his father “wildly cathartic.” “First of all, I get to make fun of him on a public platform,” he said. “But it’s sweet and rewarding.”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times More

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    Late Night Recaps Donald Trump’s Waco Rally

    Hosts raised their eyebrows over the former president’s choice of venue, near the Texas compound where the Branch Davidian cult met with disaster 30 years ago.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.‘If I Did It’Donald Trump held a rally in Waco, Texas, on Saturday, near the site where dozens of members of a religious cult died by fire as federal agents besieged their compound 30 years ago. During his speech, the ex-president addressed the investigation into his alleged payment of hush money to a porn star.“That wouldn’t be the one!” Trump said of the porn star, Stormy Daniels, quickly adding, “There is no one. We have a great first lady.”“Yes, her name is Jill Biden,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday.“But, just to be clear, he didn’t do it, he wouldn’t do it, but if he had done it, he wouldn’t have done it with her.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I love that Trump’s running for office and from the law at the same time.” — JOHN LEGUIZAMO, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Trump chose Waco because it’s a powerful metaphor for his campaign: He’s going down in flames, and he’s taking his cult followers with him.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Former President Trump held a rally on Saturday in Waco, Texas, near the site of the Branch Davidian cult’s compound. Or, as it’s now known: campaign headquarters.” — SETH MEYERS“Former President Trump held a campaign rally on Saturday in Waco, Texas, making him the first cult leader ever to escape that city alive.” — SETH MEYERS“Yep, you could tell Trump was nervous about getting arrested, because he gave his speech with one foot in Mexico.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Final Four Edition)“The teams in this year’s Final Four are Miami, Florida Atlantic, UConn and San Diego State. Really? The only way your bracket’s got those four teams is if you filled it out this morning.” — JIMMY FALLON“This Final Four was on nobody’s bracket.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In a strange turn of events, I found myself rooting for this imaginary school on Saturday. I was all in on Gonzaga because, they’re, really, they’re the ultimate Cinderella story, in that, like Cinderella, they’re also fictional characters who do not exist.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I’ll be honest, I think two of those teams might just be online universities.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingLil Nas X joined James Corden for “Carpool Karaoke” on Monday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe singer-songwriter and actress Mary J. Blige will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutLana Del Rey’s new album is “as sprawling, hypnotic and incorrigibly American as an interstate highway,” our critic says.Neil KrugLana Del Ray’s ninth album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” asks big, earnest questions and isn’t afraid to get messy. More

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    ‘Perry Mason’ Season 2, Episode 4 Recap: More Than Meets the Eye

    Perry, Paul and Della aren’t the only people searching for answers about Brooks McCutcheon.Season 2, Episode 4: ‘Chapter Twelve’Life, like a murder case, has its ups and downs. First, the down: Perry, Paul and Della have learned that the brothers Mateo and Rafael Gallardo have been lying and did indeed murder Brooks McCutcheon. Now, the up: Perry, Paul and Della all hooked up. Call it a glass-half-full situation.First, let’s focus on the amorous success of our three heroes. Della scores with her screenwriter inamorata, Anita, at Anita’s retreat in Palm Springs. Paul and his wife, Clara, carve out a little alone time during a rare 40-minute stretch when they’re alone in their crowded house. (Her sultry dance to Louis Armstrong proves persuasive.) And Perry seems downright stunned to discover the fetching schoolteacher Miss Aimes at his door during the small hours.Miss Aimes’s visit caps off the miserable days during which Perry learned of the Gallardos’ guilt, which stretch into a long night during which he briefly takes Lydell McCutcheon’s prize racehorse out for a joyride as retaliation for the negative headlines McCutcheon’s pals have been planting about him in the press. (No one does pointlessly petty like Perry.) It all culminates when Perry shows up at school to pick up his son and winds up socking another parent for calling him “Maggot Mason,” per the nickname generated by the radio firebrand “Fighting” Frank Finnerty (John DiMaggio).Is it reasonable to assume that decking that dude is part of what attracts Miss Aimes to Perry? I’ve never known an educator to respond to an outburst of violence on school grounds by thinking, “Ooh, that guy’s a catch!” Perhaps it’s Perry’s willingness to stick up for himself, and by extension his clients — guilty or not, they’re the victims of vituperative racism among the city’s chattering class — that revs her engine. Either way, we officially have ourselves another new love interest for one of our legal eagles.I wonder if there might be another on the way, too. As part of her research into Brooks McCutcheon’s stadium scheme, Della pays another visit to Camilla Nygaard. A true Renaissance woman, Camilla teaches piano and researches nutrition when she isn’t overseeing her oil empire. Most important, she encourages Della to be direct about her frustration with Perry’s moodiness and about her ambition to have her name on the firm’s front door.Sure, Nygaard may just be providing inspiration as a powerful woman — or, in a more sinister possibility, attempting to throw Della off the scent of her own potential involvement in Brooks’s murder. But considering Della’s already established wandering eye, I don’t think we can completely rule out the possibility of another affair.Getting back to business, Paul is the linchpin figure this week. (Like Juliet Rylance, Chris Chalk has an intense screen presence during his solo sequences that more than compensates for the absence of the title character.) Paul has every confidence that his conclusions about the murder weapon were correct and that the Gallardos used it, just as they later confessed to Perry and Della from jail. But that’s just it: Their confession lines up exactly with what the prosecutors Hamilton Burger and Thomas Milligan say took place. How often does that happen? Paul was a cop long enough to learn that the official story is rarely the correct one.So he does some more digging, bribing the gun dealer who provided the weapon to the Gallardos into admitting that they rented the piece every day for target practice. Where would they get that kind of money, Paul wonders? And is it a coincidence that Brooks’s murder required the skills of an expert marksman?The final scene hints at an answer. Using one of Rafael’s prison drawings as a guide, Mateo’s wife, Sofia, retrieves a huge cache of cash from beneath a nearby car. And since Perry is, ahem, busy at that moment, I’ll provide you a theory of my own about it: The Gallardos were paid to assassinate Brooks in such a way as to make it look like a mugging gone wrong.By whom, though? Was it his disapproving father? A business competitor like Camilla? A rival in the semi-legal casino business? Could it have to do with his violent sexual proclivities, which it seems left Noreen Lawson — the sister of the city councilman in charge of the ward where Brooks’s stadium was to be erected — in her mentally diminished state?Perry, Paul and Della aren’t the only people searching for answers about Brooks, by the way. His employee turned successor aboard the casino boat, Detective Holcomb, is on the hunt for how the guy managed to procure free food. More precisely, he is eager to know how Brooks and his business partners were making money off the operation, since he isn’t seeing a dime. Stumbling upon the man whom Brooks’s father, Lydell, maimed in the previous episode, he learns that Brooks was accepting huge shipments of produce from offshore vessels on a regular basis — from the McCutcheon shipping fleet, no less.Why bring in fruits and veggies in such an expensive manner when California is overflowing with them? Was daddy dearest aware his son was skimming from the family operation? Or, as I suspect, was there a lot more aboard those ships than just potatoes?From the case files:The show’s director of photography, Darran Tiernan, and the director Jessica Lowrey sure know how to light a scene. The huge blue-white stadium lights that illuminate Perry’s devil-may-care ride on that racehorse, the golden sun that illuminates Della and Anita as they kiss and undress, even the familiar flicker of a movie-theater newsreel taken in by Perry (and the sex worker he pays double to leave him alone) — gorgeous stuff from start to finish.“He seems a bit broken,” Camilla says of Perry, nailing it. In fact, it seems she is going to assess his character even more accurately when she says, “It can be a bit difficult to be in the trenches.” But after a pregnant pause, she adds, “with someone like that,” indicating that she was speaking metaphorically instead of speaking about his experience during the Great War. That remains his hero-slash-villain origin story, as far as I’m concerned.The deer-in-the-headlights look Miss Aimes wears when Perry asks her if she wants to come in is priceless. It truly is as if neither of them has any idea what her answer to that question could possibly be — until she answers it by coming in.At the start of the episode, it’s unclear whether Paul will hand over the murder weapon to Perry. Then, it seems as if they and Della might cover it up together. Then it seems as if Perry might quit the case rather than defend guilty men. In all three cases, idealism and illegality go hand in glove. More

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    Review: In ‘Día y Noche,’ Opposites Intertwine

    David Anzuelo’s generous, unwieldy play about an oil-and-water friendship between two high school boys opens at 59E59 Theaters.Let’s get this out of the way: The highlight of David Anzuelo’s new play, “Día y Noche,” is a wild, riotously funny sex scene that brings Act 1 to, well, a climax. It involves a trio of teenagers, Martin, Danny and Edna, enacting an unconventional scenario punctuated by Edna yelling encouragements in a fake French accent as she writhes in ecstasy, looking feral and her eyes bulging.Any show would have a hard time living up to this memorable sight, and unfortunately so does the LAByrinth Theater Company production “Día y Noche,” which is currently at 59E59 Theaters in Manhattan. The play is ambitious and generous but also unwieldy — the overlong sum of individual moments that often feel rushed.The show focuses on Danny (Freddy Acevedo) and Martin (Neil Tyrone Pritchard), who meet in their high school practice room in El Paso, Tex. — the first plays the guitar, the second the oboe. They form a bond that, despite Martin’s initial wishes, is not romantic but just as complex: an enduring friendship between oil-and-water boys.We are in 1984, and Danny, who is from a lower-middle-class Chicano family, is cooler than cool — he likes Patti Smith and David Lynch, girls and theater. Martin, one of the few Black students at their school, is a shy, bumbling nerd who is more well-off. He is just coming out as gay and wants to major in computer science in college.They should not get along, but they do.Anzuelo, who grew up in El Paso in the 1980s and also has a long career as an actor, is best at mapping out the way kids outside the mainstream found and supported each other in the pre-internet days — he is attuned to what can bind people over differences of class, ethnicity and temperament.It takes a little while for both the play and Carlos Armesto’s production to settle into a groove. The show is divided in “tracks” of various length, with projected titles, as if we were listening to an album, though this format also gives a choppy feel to the proceedings. Punk and proto-punk numbers punctuate key moments (the mood music in that teenage ménage: the Stooges’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog”), but Anzuelo forgot that brevity was one of the genre’s signatures: The Ramones’ debut album lasted just 29 minutes; “Día y Noche” goes on for close to three hours.After the intermission, the momentum evaporates into a succession of disjointed scenes filled with enough for two more plays, though the twin narrative helixes are that Martin finds a boyfriend (Peter Collier) and deals with the specter of AIDS, while Danny falls under the spell of a manipulative older theatermaker (Joe Quintero) with a taste for the stage director Peter Brook and drugs.To his credit, Anzuelo also gives us a couple of distinctive female characters, Edna (Emma Ramos) and Jessica (Viviana Valeria), though we learn just enough about them to be left wanting more — especially of Ramos, whose quirky, ferocious performance is downright electrifying. The lesbian Jessica is mostly an accessory to Martin’s gay baby steps, and is rewarded with a brief, wordless scene with a girlfriend, which is worse than no scene at all. Sometimes, more is just less.Dia y NocheThrough April 15 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 59e59.org. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes. More

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    in Theater

    ‘James Brown Wore Curlers’ Review: A Superfan Becomes Celine Dion

    In “James Brown Wore Curlers,” the French playwright tries out a more far-fetched premise than in her previous hits, and produces less satisfying satire.“No realism,” the French playwright Yasmina Reza indicates twice in the opening pages of her new play “James Brown Wore Curlers,” which had its world premiere this past weekend in Munich.It’s a stage direction that the director Philipp Stölzl has taken to heart in his gently surreal production at the Residenztheater. The rotating stage is dominated by a wooden swing, a player piano and, most memorably, a gigantic fish: two halves of a trout, suspended high above the actors. The effect is weird, hilarious and, when fog issues in torrents from the fish’s mouth late in the performance, hallucinogenic.It turns out Reza and her director have a point. The non-naturalism of the staging helps the audience ease into the improbable plot, which tracks a French couple whose son goes from being a Celine Dion superfan to believing that he is the French Canadian pop diva herself. The premise is more outlandish than in Reza’s most celebrated works — the Tony-winning satires “Art” (1994) and “God of Carnage” (2006) — which skewered the rituals, pretensions and prejudices of the upper middle class. Here, the target of her satire is less defined.Instead of a living room or restaurant, Reza ushers us into a psychiatric ward, where, in the opening scene, Pascaline and Lionel Hutner, a middle-aged French couple, have just decided to commit their son Jacob. Recently, Jacob has ceased to merely dress up as his idol and put on concerts for his parents. Now he speaks with a French Canadian accent and insists that his parents — whom he now addresses by their first names — call him Celine.The play is set entirely in the clinic and a neighboring park. Aside from the Hutners, there’s an unconventional and freewheeling psychologist who zips around the stage on a white scooter, and Philippe, a white patient who claims to be Black and who is Jacob’s only friend at the clinic. Identity certainly looms large in the play, but Reza doesn’t engage with the issue in a serious and sustained way beyond hinting that all attempts at constructing an identity may contain an element — or more than an element — of delusion.From left: Juliane Köhler, zur Linden, Michael Goldberg, Lisa Wagner and Nussbaum.Sandra ThenOver a series of hospital visits, Reza keeps the tone breezy. (Though she wrote the play in French, it is performed in Munich in a smooth German translation by Frank Heibert and Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel.) There is background music and song, although none of it by Dion herself. That might be a rights issue, or just an opportunity for Reza to pen her own lyrics, which are set to original music by Ingo Ludwig Frenzel.Stölzl, who also directs film and opera, serves up an elegant and well-paced production, but there’s only so much that his clever staging can do for a play that is as light and insubstantial as a meringue. The only thing that lends the evening depth are the performances.Decked out in a red tracksuit and long, billowing blue scarf, Vincent zur Linden is captivating and flamboyant as Jacob. The young actor, who also has a starring role in Stölzl’s acclaimed recent production of Matthew Lopez’s “The Inheritance,” gives a performance that is both campy and affecting. The comedy is deepened by the fact that Jacob’s Celine can barely hold a tune.As his parents, Michael Goldberg and Juliane Köhler come off as clueless boomers trying their best to be tolerant and vacillating between self-recrimination and despair. Lionel is the more bitter of the two. Pascaline wants to be accepting, but the ways she encourages Jacob — dancing and singing backup to his awful songs — are cringeworthy. Lisa Wagner is wonderfully batty and occasionally cantankerous as the unorthodox shrink, and there’s more than a hint that she might just be another patient in the clinic.What are we left with, in the end? A plea for tolerance? A utopian ideal where everyone can flourish in whatever skin or identity they choose?It’s hard to know what stance Reza takes on these issues, but they’re not necessarily what’s on our mind when we leave the theater. I was still puzzling over the trout. It was one of the production’s most inspired choices (Stölzl also designed the set), but what on earth did it mean?Reza hasn’t had a new play on Broadway since “God of Carnage” closed in 2010 after more than 400 performances. Clocking in at a brisk 100 minutes, “James Brown Wore Curlers” is less a biting bourgeois farce or comedy of bad manners than Reza’s most celebrated plays: It feels slight and hardly packs a punch. A French production in the not-so-distant future seems inevitable, but don’t hold your breath for a Broadway run.James Brown Wore CurlersThrough May 25 at the Residenztheater, in Munich; residenztheater.de. More

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    in Television

    ‘Succession’ Season 4 Premiere Recap: Many Happy Returns

    The Roy family is back for a fourth and final season, and everyone came out swinging. Let the humiliations begin.Season 4, Episode 1: ‘The Munsters’Have you ever noticed that “Succession” is a show about deal-makers in which hardly any deals are ever completed? Every major acquisition or transfer of power always seems to be 48 hours away. Everyone always needs to iron out a few more details, get a few more stragglers from the board into the fold, toss in a few more sweeteners for the major shareholders, et cetera. How many times over the course of this series have the principals actually signed on the dotted line?I can think of one: when Siobhan Roy (Sarah Snook) married Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen). And even then, Shiv blew up the deal on the couple’s wedding night by telling Tom she wanted an open marriage. Given a choice between no wife and barely a wife, Tom chose to stay in the mix, hoping Shiv might one day wake up and realize she had already found her true companion. But the string of humiliations over the past few years has not been easy for Tom. As Season 4 begins, the two are on the brink of divorce.Yet even when it comes to dissolving a contract, these two cannot quite finish what they started.Tom and Shiv are at the center of both halves of this lively and highly entertaining premiere of the show’s fourth and final season. After betraying his wife and allying with Logan Roy (Brian Cox), Tom is starting to realize that his father-in-law perhaps values him mainly as a way to keep tabs on his rebellious kids. Tom even broaches the subject of a Shiv-free future, asking (after a hilariously rambling prologue), “What would happen were a marriage such as mine, and even, in fact, mine, were to falter to the point of failure?”Logan’s typically cryptic reply: “If we’re good, we’re good.”The Tom half of this episode takes place in New York, at Logan’s birthday party, which for the guest of honor is a miserable occasion. (We know this night is going to be a bummer when Nicholas Britell’s typically mournful string cadence plays as Logan mingles.) He gets so fed up with all the cheerful “Munsters” scarfing up his food that he ducks out with his bodyguard and “best pal” Colin (Scott Nicholson), escaping to a diner where he grimly ruminates on how, if you really think about it, people are just economic units, and how once we die, our place in the market dies with us. “I think this is it,” he mutters. “Realistically.”What eventually rouses Logan on this deeply depressing evening is what is happening across the country in Los Angeles, where Shiv, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) are plotting revenge for the vicious way Logan blocked their recent coup attempt. These “new-gen Roys” are planning to launch “a high visibility, execution-dependent disrupter news brand” called The Hundred, with insights provided by the 100 top thinkers in all the major fields usually covered by the media — business, tech, food, politics and the like.This all sounds great to Shiv — really, it does, she over-insists — until she gets a tip from Tom that in addition to Waystar’s impending megadeal with GoJo, Logan wants to land a big fish he has been salivating over for years: the left-leaning, Roy-hating Pierce Global Media, which Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones) is desperate to sell. Sure, The Hundred had potential investors lining up outside Roman’s fancy hillside house. Nevertheless, Shiv, Kendall and Roman still jet up to Nan’s palatial estate and vineyard, where they become the ones who have to line up and wait.Shiv wants primarily to be taken seriously so that Nan will stop thinking of the Roy kids as “fake fruit for display purposes only.” The younger Roys know that they can offer Nan assurances about preserving the P.G.M. brand that Logan would never honor (despite Tom’s promise to the Pierces of “a little tummy-tickle on culture”). And they are pretty sure they can line up the financing after their dad’s GoJo deal goes through and they cash out of Waystar, netting about $2 to $3 billion. The real question is: Do they want this?Kendall clearly does, because he is driven by a hunger to beat Logan. Shiv wants to do something big, which is probably not The Hundred. (I mean … it is The Hundred, not The Billions.) Roman, though, is skittish about going another round with their dad, having just been soundly whipped.Roman eventually falls into line, and with as much fake enthusiasm as he can muster, gets ready to “talk to an old lady about newspapers.” But Nan is tricky. She insists there is no way to back out of her tentative deal with Logan and groans that she is tired of hearing about numbers, while sneakily steering her new suitors toward an offer well beyond the $7 billion Waystar was planning to spend. The kids settle on $10 billion, which turns out to be a “definitive,” conversation-ending bid.Earlier, Logan’s children had gotten a call from his friend, assistant and adviser Kerry (Zoe Winters). (Who is also possibly his lover and the future mother of his child? Logan’s love life is another deal that never quite seems to close.) She suggested that maybe they could ring him up and wish him a happy birthday. Instead, Logan’s party ends with him demanding Tom call Shiv so he can growl at “the rats,” hissing, “Congratulations on saying the biggest number.”This brings us back to Shiv and Tom. They end their busy day by meeting awkwardly in their New York apartment, where Shiv has popped by to pick up some outfits Tom thought she did not want. (“I don’t want to be restricted to my favorites,” she says, a tossed-off remark that says a lot about Shiv’s whole vibe.) They bicker a bit about how Tom and Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) have been tomcatting around, calling themselves “the Disgusting Brothers.” She suggests they “move on” from this marriage, to which he offers a Logan-esque, “uh-huh.”Then they collapse next to each other on the bed and hold hands. They are not going to talk things out. They are not going to reconcile. They are not going to have sex. But neither of them wants to leave, so they are going to stay in the same space together a little while longer. Whatever is going to happen with them, they will figure it out tomorrow — or maybe never.Due DiligenceCousin Greg comes in hot in the season premiere, bringing an un-vetted rando named Bridget (Francesca Root-Dodson) to his uncle’s birthday party. Bridget is “a firecracker” and “crunchy peanut butter,” who at one point sneaks off with him and has “a bit of a rummage” in his pants. She also posts pics from the party on social media, asks Logan for a selfie and carries what Tom describes as a “ludicrously capacious bag” that one would slide across the floor after a bank job. So when Colin indicates that he needs to eject her, Greg does not stop him. (“I don’t want to see what happens in Guantánamo,” he says. “Do your ways, and God be willing.”)Connor Roy (Alan Ruck) is in a funk all episode because he has been told he needs to spend another $100 million on his presidential campaign just to maintain his current 1 percent in the polls. So he asks his fiancée, Willa (Justine Lupe), if she would let him drum up some free publicity by having their wedding underneath the Statue of Liberty with “a brass band” and “bum fights.” (Y’know, hoopla and razzmatazz.)You may be thinking, “What about The Hundred?” This promising start-up may have just stopped, but we will always treasure the many ways its founders tried to define it. It is “like a private members club but for everyone.” It is “an indispensable bespoke information hub” with “high-calorie info-snacks.” It “has the ethos of a nonprofit but the path to crazy margins.” (Tag yourself! I’m “Substack meets Masterclass meets the Economist meets The New Yorker.”)Always remember: Logan is not being horrible. He is being fun. More