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    In This ‘Grease’ Prequel Series, Pink Is the Word

    “Rise of the Pink Ladies” describes the origins of the title 1950s girl gang before Rizzo and Frenchy took over, as viewed through a 2020s lens.If you’re into musicals, you may often find yourself wondering: Why should sci-fi fans be the only ones to enjoy ever-expanding franchises?“I know a lot of people who get so much joy from Marvel and ‘Star Wars’ and all the iterations of those universes,” the television writer and producer Annabel Oakes (“Atypical,” “Minx”) said. “I have always been a little jealous of that.“So when ‘Grease’ came as an opportunity to me, I realized that Rydell High is a universe I wanted to spend a long time living in and exploring.”What resulted was the 10-episode prequel series “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies,” premiering Thursday on Paramount+. (Oakes is the creator and showrunner.) Set in 1954, four years before the events of the hit 1978 film starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John — itself an adaptation of the 1971 stage musical — “Pink Ladies” explores how a group of four Rydell outcasts forged a friendship, then became the title girl gang, forebears to Rizzo, Frenchy and the other beloved Pink Ladies from the movie.Both the stage musical and the film filtered the 1950s through the prism of the 1970s, offering an often frank, funny and unsentimental view of sex, class and gender at an American high school. The movie’s sequel, “Grease 2” (1982), viewed the early ’60s through the early ’80s.“Pink Ladies” is similarly reflective of its time, offering a more diverse, more self-aware take on the ’50s. Like its predecessors, the series embraces candy-colored exuberance, but it also looks more overtly — and at times, more seriously — at coming-of-age concerns like race and sexual orientation.“We want to talk to 2023 and we want to talk to 1954 and we want to talk to 1978,” Oakes said in a video call. “And we want to do all that in the music, in the scripts, with the characters. We’re in conversation with all three of those time periods.”Oakes grew up a fan of “Grease” — when she was a child, she once dressed up as the cheerleader Patty Simcox — so when, in February 2020, Paramount solicited pitches for a show set in the world of the movie, she started reflecting on what she had loved about it.The series tells the origin story of the Pink Ladies, whose members are predecessors to the ones in the movie. Eduardo Araquel/Paramount+Counterclockwise, from top, Stockard Channing, Jamie Donnelly, Didi Conn and Dinah Manoff played the Pink Ladies in the original film “Grease.”Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection“I thought about that sleepover scene with the girls, singing ‘Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee,’ and I just really wanted to be at that sleepover,” she said. “That was what I wanted out of my life as a 10-year-old girl.”Crucially, that scene centers not on the movie’s leads but on the Pink Ladies, a group of independent-minded girls who stand apart from the cheerleaders and the jocks, the greasers and the nerds, and are led by Stockard Channing’s charismatic, swaggering Rizzo. The answer to that character in the series is Olivia (Cheyenne Isabel Wells), a confident Mexican American student who struts down the Rydell hallways in pencil skirts.“Once I put on that outfit and the hair and the makeup, I was ready to bring on that Olivia walk,” Wells said in a video chat. “It was like, ‘All right, time to be cool.’ ”The Pink Ladies were memorably distinct — so much so that they became the focus of “Grease 2,” starring a gum-snapping Michelle Pfeiffer. Oakes decided their origin story was worth investigating.“This aligned with what Paramount was really looking for, which was: How can we tell the stories that you couldn’t have told in 1978 and that you definitely couldn’t have told in 1958?’” Oakes said.The show applies a more modern sensibility to coed relationships than films like “Gidget” (1959), in which a teen played by Sandra Dee somehow clings to her innocence while surrounded by hunky surfers. Now, it’s not just acceptable but recommended to portray girls as embracing their sexuality and also having a degree of agency. In the second episode, boys spike the punch and the future Pink Ladies retaliate by putting castor oil in the booze.“You’re right,” Olivia tells them, “it’s not funny to put something in somebody’s drink that makes them feel out of control of their body.”Naturally, the score plays an important role in helping viewers navigate eras. Aside from an updated version of the movie’s title track — a recurring musical motif throughout — the songs mostly navigate a fluid zone that is not entirely vintage, not entirely modern. For that, Oakes worked closely with the show’s executive music producer, Justin Tranter, who grew up loving musicals and is a regular presence on the upper rungs of the Billboard Hot 100, with writing credits on hits by Justin Bieber, DNCE and Selena Gomez.Michelle Pfeiffer, center, starred in “Grease 2,” which also focused heavily on the Pink Ladies. Paramount PicturesTranter, who oversaw and co-wrote the series’s 30 original numbers and uses the gender-neutral pronouns they and them, drew inspiration from the movies, which, as they noted in a video call, had a relaxed attitude toward period authenticity: Some songs that were added for the 1978 movie, they said, didn’t bother to sound like the 1950s.“‘Grease is the word,’ that is just a disco song, there is no nostalgia,” Tranter said. (The song, whose proper title is “Grease,” was performed by Frankie Valli but written by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.) “In our arrangement, we actually used more ’50s instrumentation than the ’70s movie did, on purpose,” Tranter continued, but the songs also included contemporary flourishes, like “the vocal being a little more modern,” or the inclusion of “sub bass, or 808s,” a type of drum machine.“So there is that modern element,” they added, “just like the original ‘Grease’ had.”Like Oakes, the young actors who portray the Pinks, as they all referred to their characters in separate video conversations, grew up with “Grease,” so they were familiar with the premise and tone. “It’s been in and out of my life since childhood,” said Tricia Fukuhara, whose character, Nancy, is a Japanese American student who wants to become a fashion designer. Wells said she had waited until after she landed the role to rewatch the movie. But she and “Grease” were hardly strangers.“I’d seen it before,” she clarified. “I mean, who hasn’t?”What was less familiar at first was the 1950s setting. But the creative team and the cast quickly realized it was not quite as foreign as they expected. Oakes looked up and interviewed some of the students in the 1950s yearbook of a Southern California high school where parts of “Grease” were shot, now in their 80s; she grilled her own mother about her experience. She read up and discovered that interracial and mixed-ethnicity relationships were not unheard-of in that time and place.The young cast members were all familiar with the premise and tone of “Grease” going in. “I’d seen it before,” said Wells, far right. “I mean, who hasn’t?”Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesFollowing the showrunner’s example, the actors portraying the Pink Ladies researched what it was like growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, especially as a girl. They were all struck by how much they could relate.“I talked to a woman who was not out in the 1950s but was aware of her sexuality in high school, which was truly a huge benefit to me, being able to sort of communicate and authentically connect with someone who had that lived experience,” said Ari Notartomaso, who plays the gender-nonconforming goofball Cynthia. “There’s a lot more of a connection between generations than we may be told.”Marisa Davila, whose character, Jane, stirs up Rydell by running for president of the student council against a popular boy, also found resonance close to home.“My father is a first generation Mexican American, so I grew up hearing stories and being influenced by his background,” she said. “I used my dad as a big inspiration for the role: He was the first and only in his immediate family to get a college degree, and that’s all Jane wants — to learn more and go really far.”That drive to follow one’s heart and brain wherever they might lead made the original Pink Ladies feel iconoclastic even in the 1970s, Tranter, the music producer, said — a timeless idea that carries over into this newer iteration. “So many people watched ‘Grease’ so young that I think they don’t realize how progressive and edgy it was for the time,” they said.“What’s so great about Annabel’s story is that these Pink Ladies are radical and subversive and rebellious,” Tranter added. “They’re causing a moral panic in their town just because they want something.” More

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    Stephen Colbert Takes a ‘Mug Shot’ on Donald Trump’s ‘Arraignment Eve’

    It’s unclear whether Trump will have a mug shot taken, Colbert said, “but here’s my mug and I will definitely be doing a few shots.”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.Colbert Takes a ‘Mug Shot’Stephen Colbert brought out a bottle of bourbon for a few celebratory shots ahead of former President Donald Trump’s expected arrest in Manhattan on Tuesday.“One question a lot of people are asking is: Will there be a mug shot? Well, I don’t know about of him, but here’s my mug and I will definitely be doing a few shots,” Colbert said, calling Monday “Arraignment Eve.”“How are we going to explain that to our grandchildren? Hopefully in the book, ‘Donald and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad N.D.A.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“What if he goes to jail? He could end up the head of a violent white supremacist gang, but in prison this time.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Tomorrow, the moment the world’s been waiting for: He’ll head into the D.A.’s office, where he will receive a booking number and be fingerprinted. They won’t even have to use ink — I’m pretty sure there’s enough ketchup on there all the time.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Reverse Spring Break Edition)“Today, ahead of his scheduled arraignment, former President Trump flew from Florida to New York and landed at LaGuardia Airport. Yep, he was smart — nothing helps you ease into prison like spending time at LaGuardia.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, Trump flew from Florida to New York, where he’ll soon be arrested. He’s basically doing a reverse spring break.” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump’s got to provide a DNA sample, which, if you think about it, that’s kind of how he got in this mess in the first place.” — ROY WOOD JR., guest host of “The Daily Show”“The upside with Trump’s DNA? Now the NYPD can probably solve a bunch of cold cases from the ’80s.” — ROY WOOD JR.The Bits Worth Watching“The Daily Show” correspondent-turned-guest host Roy Wood Jr. spoke with Ron DeSantis’s education adviser while leading a class called White History 101.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightU.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”Also, Check This OutIn a new solo show at 59E59 Theaters, the comedian Judy Gold mentions her forebears, including Totie Fields and Joan Rivers.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesComedian Judy Gold’s new solo show “Yes, I Can Say That!” is equal parts uncomfortable and hilarious by design. More

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    ‘Perry Mason’ Season 2, Episode 5 Recap: Follow the Money

    Paul is pushed to new extremes. Perry finds a hole in the prosecution’s case.Season 2, Episode 5: ‘Chapter Thirteen’Whodunit? Oh, we are so far past “whodunit” in this season of “Perry Mason,” folks.We know exactly who killed Brooks McCutcheon now. As put forth by the prosecution and confirmed last week, it was Mateo and Rafael Gallardo. Their motive may be complicated, including a payoff from an unseen puppet master and a personal desire for revenge — their apartment was cleared and burned to make room for Brooks’s baseball stadium, which killed their kid sister. But their guilt is beyond doubt.Fortunately for the second half of the show’s second season, there are now bigger questions to answer: Who paid whodunit, and why? Brooks’s unpopularity with, well, pretty much everyone who knew him doesn’t simplify matters. As Perry puts it regarding Brooks in his opening argument to the jury, “You won’t be asking who in this town wanted him killed, you’ll be asking who in this town didn’t.” To be fair, this is characteristic Masonic bluster, designed to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors without much to back it up … yet.That’s where Paul Drake, the ace up Perry’s sleeve, comes in. In many ways, this is his episode; his story is that of a decent and dogged man who is forced constantly into humiliating or outright morally compromising positions, emerging largely intact but increasingly scarred each time.For example, Paul is the fellow Perry dispatches to interview Councilman Taylor (Damian O’Hare), the influential brother of the mystery-shrouded Noreen Lawson. Perry’s team presumes that Brooks had something to do with Noreen’s current unresponsive state, but all the councilman will do is mindlessly repeat that she was injured in a car accident. Of course, he does this with a heaping helping of racial antagonism — an occupational hazard for a Black private investigator.Paul is also tasked with tracking down Ozzie Jackson (Terrence Hardy Jr.), a low-level gangster whose trademark Converse shoes make him a standout. With help from his no-longer-estranged friend and housemate Mo, Paul learns that Ozzie works for Melvin Perkins (Christopher Carrington), the relatively benevolent racketeer currently mired in legal trouble thanks to pictures taken by Paul while he was working as a stringer for the district attorney’s office.So Paul makes a deal with Perkins: He’ll render the photos useless in court by refusing to testify to their veracity in exchange for Ozzie’s location. When Perkins learns that Paul was the photographer in question, though, he forces the investigator to beat the info he needs out of Ozzie. Then he forces Paul to continue beating Jackson, even after the kid admits that he received the order from the husband of a rich woman to whom he used to sell heroin — until he was paid better not to.Paul winds up crawling into bed with his wife Claire, touching her skin with the same hand he used to beat Jackson. “Am I … good?” he asks her. She assures him he is. What else could she say?Unfortunately for the Mason team, a mysterious person — no really, that’s how he’s listed in the closing credits: “Mysterious Person,” played by Kyle T. Heffner — has eyes on Perry. He’s there when Mason visits the Gallardo family’s Hooverville to ferret out the initial tip about Ozzie and his Converse shoes.Worse, this mystery man tails Della and Anita to an underground lesbian club. I’ve been wondering how long it would be before Della’s sexuality would be weaponized against her the way the more externally obvious fact of Drake’s race has been used against him.It’s worth keeping in mind that District Attorney Burger is vulnerable along the same lines. Note also that he is under some kind of as-yet unidentified pressure to settle the case, despite seeming to be firmly in the driver’s seat. He offers a plea deal to Perry — not an exceedingly generous one, but still, a deal — over the obvious dismay of his ambitious lieutenant Tom Milligan. No one on Perry’s team can figure out why he would do this unless someone was forcing his hand. Who? Why?Milligan doesn’t seem to care either way. What he wants to do is win the case, one virtually designed to put him on the map; the vocal support of the radio firebrand Frank Finnerty could make him a political superstar overnight. (His verminous epithet for Perry has caught on to such a degree that a witness refers to Mason as “Mister Maggot” on the stand.) Milligan helps wrap up the episode by asking Perry’s old pal Pete to turn against him; knowing Pete, he’ll do it if the price is right.And the hits just keep on coming. Della is confronted by her girlfriend (Molly Ephraim) about her late night with Anita. Perry returns to his apartment after another assignation with the surprisingly forward schoolteacher Miss Aimes to discover that someone has set up his son’s model train set and left behind a still-burning cigarette. It’s one of the more whimsical ways of sending someone a warning that they can be gotten to, but it’s no less alarming for that.The message is clear: You can either get on board, or get run over.From the case files:I’m a broken record on this point, I realize, but good gravy, the lighting in this show. This time we can credit the director, Marialy Rivas, and the director of photography, Eliot Rockett, for the way Perry’s cigarette smoke obscures his face as light streams through his blinds; for the near-blinding morning light that similarly illuminates Milligan’s office when Pete pays his fateful visit; for the cold blue-gray glow of the small hours when Paul staggers in from the beatdown Perkins forces him to deliver, a smart, stark divergence from the lighting scheme of pretty much every other scene.I’m impressed with the way the show tied the Perkins story line, which seemed like a minor conflict driver for Paul, Pete and Mo, into the main plot. I didn’t see that coming — not that a mystery tyro like me ever sees anything coming on this show.The closing credits begin unspooling over an image of a little girl’s shoes catching fire and burning up, a grimly poetic metonymy of the Gallardos’ tragic back story.I enjoyed the contrasting demeanors of Burger and Milligan when they discuss the opposition. Milligan reacts with evident disdain when Burger tells him that Perry passed the bar with only a few hours’ preparation, a fact he imparts in order to impress upon the younger man how formidable his opponent is. Burger wears the unmistakable look of “I’ve made a huge mistake,” in terms of both tangling with Perry and relying on Milligan to take the matter seriously.It’s minor in the scheme of things, but a ton of fun in as a scene: Thanks to the fortuitous placement of his shot glass, Perry discovers that the print number on the crime-scene fingerprint photo is reversed. This helps him uncover the fact that the print was bogus, placed on Brooks’s steering wheel in order to more thoroughly frame the Gallardos. It wasn’t enough for the Gallardos to kill the guy — they had to do so in a way that was guaranteed to be found out. Whoever hired them gilded the lily, and now the case against the Gallardos is weaker. When the judge says that “the jury will disregard” Perry’s statement about the fingerprint’s being planted by the cops, Perry simply murmurs, “No they won’t,” under his breath, and he’s right.My favorite bits of physical acting this week: Chris Drake as Paul, wincing with misery every time he has to take a fist to Ozzie, and Katherine Waterston as Miss Aimes, matter-of-factly raising her leg to kick shut the front door when Perry shows up for a little romance.Oh yeah: Della and Anita are now officially in love. So that’s nice! Unless you’re Della’s girlfriend, I guess. More

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    In ‘Public Obscenities,’ the Transgender Activist Tashnuva Anan Makes Her New York Debut

    Tashnuva Anan Shishir, who became her country’s first transgender news anchor in 2021, is performing in “Public Obscenities” at Soho Rep.When Shayok Misha Chowdhury wrote the character of Shou for his new bilingual play, “Public Obscenities,” about a couple who interviews queer locals in Kolkata, India, he was “super worried” about casting the role. The performer would not only need to be of the appropriate gender but also a Bangla speaker with the right “linguistic fluency” to capture the character, who speaks “exuberantly and forthrightly and confidently,” he told me recently.Shou identifies as kothi, an Indian gender that encompasses a breadth of expressions, Chowdhury said. So he reached out to a friend for advice: Debanuj DasGupta, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who is “very in the sort of Bangali queer and trans space.” After the professor mentioned Tashnuva Anan Shishir, Chowdhury searched her name online, and several questions came into his head: Is she even in New York? Would she be interested in auditioning?When he posted a casting call on Instagram, and Anan responded, a plan started to coalesce. She was in New York, performing in Queens, in “I Shakuntala,” a play by Golam Sarwar Harun and Gargi Mukherjee, a married couple who would also go on to star in “Public Obscenities.” Anan’s role was small, but she “stole the show,” Chowdhury said.After she auditioned for his play, it was practically unanimous, he said: “We have found the person.” While Shou doesn’t appear until 50 minutes into “Public Obscenities” — its run at Soho Rep (in a coproduction with the National Asian American Theater Company) has been extended through April 16 — the character has been among its most memorable.In “Public Obscenities,” Anan, center, plays a scene-stealing interview subject, our critic wrote in a review of Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s play.Julieta CervantesIn March 2021, Anan made history as the first transgender news anchor in Bangladesh. For three minutes, on International Women’s Day, she spoke on the air and was seen by millions of her compatriots. She went on to anchor occasionally for the network, Boishakhi TV, through November 2021.In December of that year, she came to New York, her first time in the United States. Her trip was primarily to receive care related to what she calls her transformation. And while here, professional opportunities have arisen: Last year she became the first transgender model from Bangladesh to walk in New York Fashion Week.Anan, 31, grew up in a conservative Muslim family and has had a grueling journey to this point. She has endured relentless harassment and survived suicide attempts; been shunned by family members, including her father; and lived penniless in a slum.“I really wanted to be an actress,” Anan, who performed in theater in South Asia and in a small Bangla film, “Kosai,” told me recently in a video interview. “People shouldn’t be considered by their gender. People should acknowledge their work. People should acknowledge their skill.” Being a news anchor in Bangladesh was eye-opening, she said, but it couldn’t quite open up the world for her like the United States could. “I was feeling that I have to swim. So I should swim in the ocean, not in a pond, not in a river. So if I can achieve, I can achieve. If not, then not.”Here are excerpts from our conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.“I had to pay a lot. I had to leave my family to prove my identity,” Anan said.Desmond Picotte for The New York TimesHow has life in New York been for you?It’s a lot of adaptation. I’m born and raised in a village, not a city. The city is highly competitive, but I like this competition. Being an activist, this is a great eye-opening for me to learning, to adapting to each other, to teaching how is the activism going on. When I was in Bangladesh, I was working in a national level. Now I’m in New York, and I’m working globally. I’m contributing internationally. So this is a good opportunity for me.You’ve shown remarkable perseverance. What gives you strength?For myself, that I believe: Do your own job. Just do hard work. There is no shortcut in life. Just believe in yourself. And just, first, inspire yourself. I have competition only with myself, because I’m trying to do a little bit better than yesterday.Why do you think Shou has been so memorable to audiences?Shou is intelligent, Shou is extra-talented, an extrovert, and Shou knows actually about this scenario: the situation of queer people, queer activism, especially in Kolkata, Bangladesh, Pakistan. So Shou is charming everyone. Shou is connected with everyone.Shou is very common character in South Asia because Shou is kind of a feminine guy, so Shou would like to wear femininity in her body or in their body. So this feminine guy represents South Asian queer community also.How do you see yourself in this character and how are you different?Tashnuva bold, Tashnuva sexy, Tashnuva brave, Tashnuva iconic — and the brand I created, I had to pay a lot. I had to leave my family to prove my identity. Shou is also powerful. Shou is also entertaining. Shou is also jolly. Shou is also friendly. Tashnuva is sometimes moody, because people can consider my self-esteem or people can consider my self-respect as an ego, but I had to maintain it. But Shou doesn’t have that; Shou is more friendly.When I get confirmation from my team, I was a little bit tense actually, because, see, I have long hair, and the show is going to put, like, a wig. Then I asked Misha, “Should I cut my hair? I can’t!”First time, when I watched myself with that wig, with proper costume, I was so low — believe me, I was so low. I didn’t feel well because still, then, I didn’t believe Shou. So I was trying to just discover what was going on. Now, I literally fall in love with that wig. Yeah, this is me, this is Shou.How has the reception been from South Asian audiences?Oh my God, they appreciate a lot. They were looking at their sorrows in front of them. They’re looking at their life in front of them, through Shou’s eyes. I got lots of messages from my friends — “Tashnuva, you’re doing really well because this is not doing acting, this is very natural.” I wanted to be a natural actor. I want to play a character that should be more natural, that should be believable. I really believe when I am doing something, people should believe.Last night, when I’m coming toward audience, a girl literally was crying, and she was from Bangladesh, and she born and raised here. She only heard me by social media, and this is the first time we get connected in person. And she was telling me, “Tashnuva, this is the story that we know but we couldn’t tell in front of people.”What’s next for you?I don’t like to say my dream because people are always critics. So I love to keep my dream inside. I am looking for opportunities to act more. So I think now, just now, after this project, I want to jump into another project. There I can play a more powerful character. There I can say another story. I don’t want to pursue any character that is very common.When I think about performance — light, camera, action — I love Broadway performance. Today and tomorrow, is my dream that I will perform in Broadway, or I will perform in a Hollywood film. When I start working, I just forget my every pain. I just forget everything. And this is the performance that inspired me a lot, that did a lot for me. More

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    ‘Yes, I Can Say That!’ Review: The Freedom to Offend

    The comedian Judy Gold’s new solo show at 59E59 Theaters is deliberately uncomfortable — and packed with laughs.The knuckle-dragging notion that women aren’t funny makes only a cameo in the comedian Judy Gold’s new solo show, “Yes, I Can Say That!” It’s tucked amid her homage to pioneering forebears like Totie Fields and Joan Rivers, who, Gold tells the audience, “said out loud what women whispered about when their husbands weren’t around.”The slur about unfunniness, she says, was handed down through generations of men “who did not want to see some brassy broad onstage making jokes about them and the part they played in their wives’ unhappiness.”Directed by BD Wong for Primary Stages, “Yes, I Can Say That!” is a deliberately uncomfortable, laugh-packed show seeded with stealth missiles like that one. Though Gold insists at the outset that a comedian’s only goal is to land the joke, this is not entirely true. As in her smart and impassioned book “Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians, We Are All in Trouble,” released in 2020, she wants at least as much to make us think.Onstage at 59E59 Theaters, Gold builds a vehement case for the vital importance of the freedom to offend in a healthy democratic society. For starters, she would like us to get over the kind of hair-trigger touchiness about language that leads to social media pile-ons, and focus on genuine threats.“They are taking away women’s rights, they are banning books, we have mass shootings, and people are furious if you mistakenly use the wrong pronoun,” she says. Then, urgently: “We had an insurrection, people!”As much as Gold is in favor of some general toughening up across the political spectrum, she’s not anti-sensitivity — “I [expletive] hate bullies,” she says — just anti-preciousness and anti-absurdity. What worries her is the freedom of expression that gets taken away when the freedom to outrage is banished.Written by Gold and Eddie Sarfaty, “Yes, I Can Say That!” interweaves a brief history of American comedy (Lenny Bruce is of course invoked) with Gold’s personal history, including comedy-club flashbacks, like the time she took rapid revenge on an M.C. who was witless enough to insult her just before she took the mic. She does some terrific impressions, including an uncanny Rudy Giuliani.What she doesn’t quite do is make palpable any current threat to comedians’ speech, so a moment when she explicitly frets about that — in the context of speaking truth to the president at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — feels like a relic of the previous presidency, when Gold wrote her book. The show’s argument could gain strength by paying just a little more attention to some of the other First Amendment issues currently in the headlines.Gold’s larger point is that the ugliness of the past isn’t as long ago as we like to think. She notes, unnervingly, that her birth in 1962 was just 17 years after the death camp at Auschwitz was liberated.“Hashtag ObjectsInMirrorAreCloserThanTheyAppear,” she says, almost as if it’s a throwaway line.She gets a laugh, but the joke is a warning.Yes, I Can Say That!Through April 16 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 59e59.org. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. More

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    ‘Saturday Night Live’ Tackles the Trump Indictment

    The episode, hosted by Quinta Brunson, envisioned the former president going to unusual lengths to pay for his legal defense.Two days after Donald J. Trump was indicted in New York, marking the first time that a U.S. president, sitting or former, has faced criminal charges, “Saturday Night Live” envisioned Trump going to unusual lengths to pay for his legal defense by selling his own album of musical covers.“S.N.L.” also used its Weekend Update news segment to lampoon Trump’s legal predicament, as well as the reactions of his political supporters and rivals.This week’s broadcast, which was hosted by Quinta Brunson and featured the musical guest Lil Yachty, began with the show’s resident Trump impersonator, James Austin Johnson, addressing the audience directly.“Well, folks, it happened,” Johnson said as Trump. “I got indicted. Or as I spell it, indicated. Frankly, it’s time that I come clean. Admit that I broke the law and go quietly to prison.”He quickly added: “April Fool’s! That was a prank. I was doing a Jim from ‘Office.’”Johnson went on to pitch a satirical album titled “Now That’s What I Call My Legal Defense Fund,” purporting to offer his versions of hit pop songs.“I didn’t even sleep with Stormy Daniels, but in many ways I did,” Johnson said. “And isn’t it ironic that the first time I actually pay someone, they try to send me to jail?” He then sang a few bars of “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette.Later in the show, on Weekend Update, the anchor Colin Jost began the segment by announcing what he said was “great news for conservatives: New York Is finally cracking down on crime.”He continued, “Former President Donald Trump was indicted for his role in paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels. And the trial will be like a Stormy Daniels movie, because I’m deeply ashamed at how excited I am to watch it.”Given the unprecedented nature of the news events, there’s no exact blueprint for “S.N.L.” to follow here. The show made its debut a year after Nixon’s resignation, and in the time since, it has variously capitalized on or discounted other executive controversies depending on how near to airtime they occurred, as well as other factors in the cultural mix.In a Jan. 9, 1999, broadcast that aired a couple of weeks after the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Clinton, “S.N.L.” opened with a sketch that lampooned two Republican lawmakers who lost their posts during Clinton’s deepening sex scandal.In the sketch, Bob Livingston (Will Ferrell) and Newt Gingrich (Chris Parnell) meet at a bar and commiserate. “He lies about it, under oath,” Parnell laments. “Then we prosecute him and he’s still in the White House and we lose our jobs.”On that show’s Weekend Update, then-anchor Colin Quinn joked that Clinton should attend his own impeachment trial projecting confidence, “with a big-haired, tube-topped Ponderosa waitress with a Marlboro menthol hanging out of her mouth, just like, ‘Hey, what’s up, boys? Heard you talking about me. You don’t take me down — I take you down.’”Two decades later, in the first “S.N.L.” broadcast that followed the House’s vote to impeach President Trump for the first time, the show was more focused on the return of Eddie Murphy, a cast alumnus who had returned to host.That episode, on Dec. 21, 2019, opened with a parody of a Democratic presidential debate. On Weekend Update, Colin Jost delivered a somewhat time-sensitive joke about then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to not transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate.“Now we’re all in this weird limbo where no one knows exactly what’s going on,” Jost said. “There’s this cast of wild characters making fools of themselves, and everyone is thinking, please God, just let this end. So basically, it’s ‘Cats.’” (Again, it was 2019.)Both the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the House vote to impeach Trump for the second time took place during an “S.N.L.” hiatus. When the show returned on Jan. 30 of that year, Jost remarked on how distant these events already seemed in topical-comedy time.“Well, guys, a lot has happened since our last show,” he said on Weekend Update. “Some of it was good. The inauguration, that was nice. Christmas, I liked Christmas, and hey, now the terrorist watch list includes white people. So yay for diversity. Yay for diversity, it’s important to see yourself represented.”In this week’s opening sketch, Johnson sang duets with Don King (Kenan Thompson), Afroman (Devon Walker) and Donald Trump Jr. (Mikey Day). He went on to tell the audience, “Folks, if they can come for me, they can come for you too. Or in the case of Jan. 6, they can come for you and not for me. I like that one a little bit better.”Opening monologue of the weekBrunson, the creator and star of “Abbott Elementary,” used her first-ever “S.N.L.” monologue to take some apt potshots at “Friends” (“Instead of being about a group of friends, it’s about a group of teachers,” she said. “And instead of New York, it’s in Philadelphia. And instead of not having Black people, it does.”)Though Brunson lamented the fact that she’s now expected to solve any problems that come up in public schools, she also praised real-life teachers including her mother with a video assist from “my friend Barack,” also known as former President Obama.Fake commercial of the weekAt a time when true-crime documentaries about cults are providing the foundation of nearly every streaming TV library, “S.N.L.” added its own entry to this seemingly limitless trend.This fake filmed ad for a would-be Netflix mini-series chronicles another arcane American institution that demands total loyalty from its participants: being a bridesmaid. The ritual is described by talking heads played by Brunson, Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim and Sarah Sherman, who looks especially horrified as she recounts how a single text from a maid of honor — ending with a sparkle emoji — was enough to compel her to sell her car.Weekend Update jokes of the weekAfter rebounding from an April Fool’s prank in which Che had told the “S.N.L.” studio audience not to laugh at Jost’s jokes, the anchors continued to riff on the political response to a shooting attack at a Christian elementary school in Nashville.Che began:In the wake of the Nashville shooting, President Biden once again called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. Or, hear me out, stop-and-frisk for whites.Jost continued:Congressman Andy Ogles, who represents the district where the Nashville shooting took place, is being criticized for a Christmas card where he and his family are holding assault rifles. OK, even putting aside mass shooting, who are you psychos sending these cards to? If I received that in the mail, I would move. All that card tells you is, “I’m armed, I have terrible judgment and I know where you live.”Weekend Update desk character of the weekFollowing the news that the principal of a charter school in Florida was forced to resign after students there were shown Michelangelo’s David during a lesson on Renaissance art, Michael Longfellow could have responded in any number of ways.He could have appeared on Weekend Update playing an aggrieved parent or a student from the school. But instead, he chose to play David — not the biblical figure but the statue itself, for which Longfellow proudly went bare-chested with his face and body painted a marbly white. We applaud his commitment to the bit and we hope the coloring washes off in the shower. More

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    ‘Succession,’ Season 4, Episode 2 Recap: The Serious People

    Logan Roy does not care about any of your social norms, and he lacks the patience for apologies.Season 4, Episode 2: ‘Rehearsal’Here’s what you need to know about Logan Roy: He does not care about any of your social norms or niceties. In last week’s “Succession,” while his kids were stealthily trying to outbid him for Pierce Global Media, Logan did not bother to play their little games. He demanded that Tom call Shiv to find out what was what — and he did it in a room full of Waystar executives, so Tom could not say no. Logan never minds coming off as rude or presumptuous. Manners are a waste of time, which is a waste of money.This week, the younger Roys are at it again, weighing a pitch from the maverick Waystar board members Stewy Hosseini (Arian Moayed) and Sandi Furness (Hope Davis) to gum up the works with the impending GoJo sale. So what does Logan do? He does not wait patiently and politely to see what will happen — heavens, no. He crashes a karaoke party.Logan spends a lot of this episode in places no one wants him to be. Apparently, without telling anyone — except for maybe Kerry and Tom — Logan has made a plan for how to spend the rest of his life. Once Waystar is officially sold to GoJo, he is going to dedicate himself to “fixing” ATN, because the only part of his business that he has every really cared about is the news.He shows up unannounced at the ATN offices late one afternoon and starts “terrifyingly moseying” around, according to Greg. (“It’s like ‘Jaws’ if everyone in ‘Jaws’ worked for Jaws.”) Logan complains to Tom about how much everything costs, from the air conditioning bill for ATN’s new hangar-style bullpen to the fresh pizzas being stacked atop the unfinished cold pizzas in the break room. (“There’s a sog factor,” Greg weakly explains.)In a stirring and terrifying speech — delivered to the assembled employees from atop some boxes of printer paper — Logan proclaims his vision for ATN. A state-of-the-art election package with spiffy new graphics? Who cares? What Logan wants is for his team not just to report the news but to make it. He wants them to start giving the audience “something everyone knows but nobody says.” It is time, at last, for brutal honesty.So it is inevitable really that Logan ends his night facing some of that honesty himself from two of the people with the biggest grudges against him: Kendall and Shiv. (But not Roman. We will get back to that.)The showdown is set up by a couple of typically petty Logan moves. The kids are supposed to helicopter into New York City for Connor and Willa’s wedding rehearsal, but their father cancels their Waystar chopper privileges with no warning. This infuriates Shiv, who is already fuming because he advised Tom to tie up every notable divorce lawyer in New York, so that they are all “conflicted out” from handling her case — a classic Logan breakup move. (“I got Mommed,” Shiv grumbles.)The vibes are even worse in the city, where just as Kendall, Shiv and Roman are walking in late to the rehearsal dinner, Willa is ducking out. Connor explains that when his fiancée rose to give a speech, she said, “I can’t do this,” and then disappeared into the bathroom. Connor is now mopey and anxious, and tracking Willa’s whereabouts via a locator app on his phone. Roman, incapable of letting a prime opportunity to needle a loved one go unheeded, revels in describing what kind of decadent escapades Willa might be up to. (Connor, when the app shows Willa at an aquarium supply retailer: “Is that a drug thing?” Roman: “It is.”)To cheer Connor up, they indulge his longstanding dream to sing karaoke at a “real” bar “away from the Fancy Dans,” just like people do in the movies. But while Connor is in the middle of an impressively miserable version of Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” — an impressively miserable song — the kids get the alert that Logan is on his way.Because Logan knows everything — in this case, thanks to Connor — he knows his children are thinking about squeezing GoJo’s Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) for more money. He is also convinced that deep down, this is personal for them not business. He needs to give them something they want more than money: an apology.But an apology for what? Logan wants to limit his regrets to some of his minor recent obnoxiousness. But Kendall and Shiv, who have had enough of their father’s pretending to atone one day then going back to being awful the next, want him to acknowledge his biggest sins: ignoring Connor, hitting Roman, weaponizing Tom against Shiv, conspiring with the kids’ mother to push them out of Waystar … everything, basically.Logan sees no point to this, so he abruptly ends his family reconciliation time with a gentle but devastating kiss-off: “I love you, but you are not serious people.” Only after he leaves the karaoke bar does Logan start raging, ranting to Kerry about how in New York there are “rats as fat as skunks.” He then pivots back into Logan mode, deciding to cancel the board meeting and to meet with Mattson again, with every major Waystar player there except Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron). He wants to skip the procedural hoo-hah and settle this person to person.Shiv and Kendall seem almost giddy that they got to tell the old man off to his face — though later as they ride home separately, only Kendall is still smiling. And Roman?Well, it turns out Roman has been texting little “hey how are you” messages to his father for weeks. So after the karaoke fiasco, he drops by his dad’s home and immediately gets roped into the big Mattson plan. Logan needs “pirates” like Roman to lead his new ATN. “Smart people know what they are,” he tells his son.This is something Shiv and Kendall have missed, as they have been dragging Roman from one Logan-skewering plan after another and treating him like their mascot. They think their brother is the George Harrison of their band. But when pushed, Roman stares them down and straightens them out, proclaiming — with a confidence that should frighten them — “I’m John.”Due diligenceThe best running gag in this episode — just edging out how Kendall keeps pestering Roman with snackable bits of Buddhist philosophy — involves Kerry’s audition to become an ATN anchor. She has produced a terrible tape. (For some reason she keeps smiling at all times, even when reporting on a child abduction.) Tom, tasked with figuring out what to do about this, gravely tells Greg that the situation is “like Israel-Palestine, except harder and much more important,” before passing the buck and offering a step-by-step guide for how Greg should handle it. But when Greg tries to follow those steps, he botches it. His best attempt to soften the suggestion that her tape is awful is to say, “It can happen that they shoot weird, the cameras.”A serious question for serious people: Why do the Roy children even want to be in the news business? News is Logan’s passion. The children, based on all available evidence, seem baffled by its appeal. While watching some PGM programming and brainstorming about how to improve it, they sound completely lost. Shiv only knows they should “broaden out and stop over-indexing to college professors.” Kendall tosses out jargon like “from global-global to hyperlocal” but when he tries to clarify what he means all he can come up with is, “Every day: What is happening in Africa?” And as a bit of possible foreshadowing, Roman comes closest to imagining something like his dad might want when he proposes info-dumps in the day and “A Clockwork Orange” at night.The younger Roys do a lot in this episode to torpedo any sympathy viewers might be nurturing for them. When they follow Connor into one of his non-Fancy Dan bars (where he sighs, “Ah, America! I’ve missed you.”), Roman mutters, “Do you think they know how to make a vodka tonic?” while Shiv chuckles, “House red? Do I dare?” Later, Roman seems bemused and repulsed by the plastic menus listing basic pub food like wings. The Roys’ contempt oozes … and it stinks. More

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    Review: ‘True West: Sam Shepard’s Life, Work, and Times,’ by Robert Greenfield

    “True West” is a new biography of a playwright and actor who was laconic in person but spoke volumes in his work.TRUE WEST: Sam Shepard’s Life, Work, and Times, by Robert GreenfieldThe first rule of being Bob Dylan’s friend, it’s said, is to not talk about Bob Dylan. A similar code of omertà appears to apply to Sam Shepard, the playwright and actor, and it has held since his death in 2017. A lot of people have lined up to not talk to his latest biographer, mostly the same people who lined up to not talk to the previous ones.Robert Greenfield’s “True West: Sam Shepard’s Life, Work, and Times” is the fourth life of Shepard, after Ellen Oumano’s in 1986, Don Shewey’s in 1997 and John J. Winters’s in 2017. Greenfield has persuaded 38 people to submit to interviews, according to his source notes. It’s not a shameful number, but this isn’t Robert Caro supersleuthing.Judge a party not by who’s there, the old credo goes, but by who isn’t. The missing voices include those of O-Lan Jones, Shepard’s first wife; his longtime partner, Jessica Lange; his lovers Patti Smith and Brooke Adams and Joni Mitchell (her song “Coyote” is about him); and myriad friends and collaborators, including Terrence Malick, Keith Richards, Ed Harris, Peter Coyote, Wim Wenders, John Malkovich, T Bone Burnett, Diane Keaton, Ethan Hawke and Dylan himself, with whom Shepard, in “Brownsville Girl,” wrote the abiding lyric “Even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt.”Greenfield’s book is faithful to Shepard’s life, while it skips like a stone along the surface. Shepard spent much time laying down cover, and tending to his own mythology. He gave a lot of interviews about hating to give interviews. Like Dylan, he was laconic in person while, in his work, he spilled words by the bucketful. Like Dylan, too, he threw out a million ideas and images and left them for others to try to pick up.Shepard reflexively lied about his life, so there’s a lot to untangle. He was so handsome, so fine and flinty and long-boned, that he was a shock to be around — he made people stupid, or teary, or angry or skin-starved, sometimes all at once. He mostly got away with wearing those John Deere hats and chewing on toothpicks and dispensing regular-fella observations such as “I learn more at the racetrack than from Shakespeare” and “I just stay in the movie business to feed my horses.” You wish the photo insert (why only one?) went on for a couple dozen pages.“True West” is the first biography of Shepard since his death, at 73, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. His body was ambushed in other ways. His smoking caught up with him. He needed a stent for a blocked artery. He carried an oxygen machine.By his late 60s, the wheels were coming off. He got a second D.U.I. at 72. He rarely chose well, in terms of his acting roles, but did he need, near the end, to appear on the Discovery Channel series “Klondike”?Cover photograph by Bruce WeberGreenfield is a prolific journeyman biographer who has written the lives of Jerry Garcia, Bill Graham, Timothy Leary and Burt Bacharach, among others. His Shepard book lacks a certain density, and a critical sensibility, but it’s well organized and cleanly written. It neatly covers the bases.Richard Hell was born Richard Meyers, and Iggy Pop was Jim Osterberg. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott? He was really Elliot Adnopoz. When Sam Shepard arrived in Manhattan in 1963, at 19, he went by Steve Rogers, though his full name was Samuel Shepard Rogers III.His father was a B-54 Liberator pilot during World War II, whose drinking and macho, unruly moods informed the characters in some of Shepard’s best plays, including “Fool for Love” (1983). Shepard grew up in Southern California, in South Pasedena and then in Duarte, on an avocado ranch, though both his parents taught in exclusive high schools. He thought he might become a veterinarian. He began writing plays while in community college, before dropping out.Shepard knew Charles Mingus’s son, Charles Mingus III, in high school. The younger Mingus helped Shepard get a job busing tables at the Village Gate, a nightclub in Greenwich Village. Where did Shepard’s faculty for language come from? Greenfield can’t explain it. But the plays started pouring from him, dozens of them.Shepard’s early works, with titles like “Shaved Splits” and “Back Bog Beast Bait,” were hallucinatory cascades of rapid-fire assertion and they broke with nearly every convention. Everything Shepard wrote was stripped bare and a bit out of whack; Beckett and Pinter stood sentinel over his shoulders. Gone was any remnant of soggy humanism or stabs at Arthur Miller-like “depth.” His plays were staged at young downtown experimental theaters like Café La MaMa, Theatre Genesis and Caffe Cino.Sometimes he’d have a rock band onstage, an assault on the mock emotion of show tunes. Sometimes that band was the Holy Modal Rounders, with whom he played drums. (In 1968, at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom, the Rounders opened for Pink Floyd.) Shepard was the person who convinced Patti Smith, a poet, to try standing in front of a loud and unruly group of musicians, to become a rock star.He won his first Obie Award in 1967 for “La Turista.” Elizabeth Hardwick reviewed it in The New York Review of Books and called it “a work of superlative interest.” He was 24 when Michelangelo Antonioni brought him to Rome to help write the screenplay for “Zabriskie Point.” Later that year, he lived in Keith Richards’s country manor while working on a screenplay for the Rolling Stones. He stayed at the Chateau Marmont while in Los Angeles and bought land in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, near Philip Glass and Robert Frank.Shepard in 2016.Chad Batka for The New York TimesShepard’s friends back in New York thought he was getting awfully full of himself. They tried on one opening night to kidnap him, as a kind of intervention. What they didn’t know was that he wasn’t yet in full flower. Between 1977 and 1985 he wrote his best and most mature work: plays including “Curse of the Starving Class,” “Buried Child,” “True West,” “Fool for Love” and “A Lie of the Mind,” many about disintegrating families. The stature of most of these has only grown. They still make you reinterpret your experience.He had that rare gift, among playwrights, for being able to articulate what’s unsaid right alongside what’s said. He hated to fly and wrote some of his plays while driving, pinning his papers to the steering wheel.Shepard’s fame peaked in 1983, when he appeared as the laconic West Virginia test pilot Chuck Yeager in Philip Kaufman’s film of Tom Wolfe’s best seller “The Right Stuff.” He received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, losing to Jack Nicholson in “Terms of Endearment.”Greenfield rakes this material toward a series of tent-pole scenes. These include clashes with authority figures including Antonioni; Dylan, who made him feel square; the theater producer Joe Papp; and the director Robert Altman, who made a film of “Fool for Love.” The sections on Shepard’s time with Smith are lovely. They drifted in hairy-pitted love through the corridors of the Chelsea Hotel, a Robert Doisneau photograph come to bohemian life. Shepard was newly married to O-Lan Jones when he crashed into Smith. Jones knew, and he knew, that he was a hero-heel. The usual rules bent around him. In 1985 he told Newsweek about his early years in the city, “I rode everything with hair.”He met Lange on the set of the 1982 movie “Frances.” She was six years younger and had just had a child with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Though she and Shepard never married they were together for nearly three decades, much of that time spent on a 107-acre horse farm near Charlottesville, Va.Shepard’s later plays were not among his best, but such was his stature that audiences tended to feel that the failure was their own, for not fully appreciating them.Shepard’s is a hard life to screw up, and Greenfield doesn’t. His writing about the playwright’s final years is detailed and moving. Despite the D.U.I.s and the mediocre television shows, we glimpse his personal dignity. It was as if Shepard were following Shakespeare’s stage direction: “Keep some state in thy exit, and vanish.”TRUE WEST: Sam Shepard’s Life, Work and Times | By Robert Greenfield | Illustrated | 432 pp. | Crown | $30 More