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    Rattlestick Theater Names Will Davis as Its Next Artistic Director

    Davis will be the rare transgender theater artist to lead an Off Broadway nonprofit.Rattlestick Theater, a well-regarded Off Broadway company in the West Village, has decided to name Will Davis, a freelance director and choreographer, as its next artistic director.Davis will succeed Daniella Topol, the artistic director since 2016, who has decided to leave theater administration to pursue a career as a nurse. Davis, 40, is transgender, a distinction that he views as noteworthy.“One of the most important things I can do, as a very intentionally, very visible trans person, is offer a mirror to other emerging artists in all disciplines who may not feel like there is a space for them,” he said. “I’m very excited to be part of the group of people who can push this door open and leave it open.”Davis, who is particularly interested in developing new plays, previously served as artistic director of the American Theater Company in Chicago. He programmed experimental work there and box office revenue declined; his tenure ended with the shuttering of the theater company.Jeff Thamkittikasem, the chairman of the Rattlestick board, said the nonprofit had considered Davis’s experience in Chicago and was confident that the situation in New York was different.In Chicago, Thamkittikasem said, Davis “did what he could and produced great art.” In New York, Thamkittikasem said, “We are in a safer and stronger position that will allow him to flourish.”“Will is just an amazing artist with a beautiful eye, and we’re so excited for that aesthetic to be used for developing the culture of Rattlestick,” Thamkittikasem said.Davis said he was proud of the work he did in Chicago, and looking forward to the opportunity to lead in New York. “Rattlestick has always been a home for experimentation, and that has definitely been a part of what my work has been about,” he said. “There’s every possibility for us to make work that is exciting, that pushes the form, and that also feeds and sustains the theater.”Rattlestick, founded in 1994, is a small company with a penchant for adventurous work by emerging writers. This past week, the Obie Awards said it would honor a show the theater staged in 2021, “Ni Mi Madre,” by giving a prize for performance to the show’s creator and star, Arturo Luís Soria.The company has an annual budget of about $1.5 million, with five full-time and five part-time staffers. The company operates out of a theater, rented from a church, with about 93 seats; a $4 million renovation project is scheduled to begin at the end of this summer, and the company plans to stage its next season at locations around the city.Davis will start working alongside Topol in the coming weeks, and will assume the artistic director position full-time on May 1. More

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    Review: In ‘With No Fanfare,’ Things Fall Apart

    The play, a hit at the Avignon Festival, explores the twists and turns of a breakup through a whimsical mix of musical numbers and dreamlike vignettes.While romantic drama fuels much of the theatrical repertoire, what happens after a catastrophic breakup isn’t nearly as easy to translate onstage. In “With No Fanfare,” a French musical theater production directed by Samuel Achache, it takes a set that literally falls apart to establish the slow process of picking up the pieces.The metaphor is transparent, but it isn’t overblown. “With No Fanfare” (“Sans Tambour”) centers on a nameless couple, a man and a woman who have already reached their breaking point when the play starts. The man (Lionel Dray) frantically washes the dishes in a small sink; the woman (Sarah Le Picard) accuses him of caring only about clogged drains. As they trade barbs, they punch the kitchen walls, or whack household items at them. One by one, the walls collapse like a house of cards.And that’s just the first 15 minutes. What comes next — mourning and rebuilding — is told through a whimsical mix of musical numbers and dreamlike vignettes. One character lands at an imaginary clinic for broken hearts. Later, the cast re-enacts the medieval story of the star-crossed Tristan and Isolde. The process is unpredictable, tragicomic, slightly messy — and thoroughly touching.“With No Fanfare” first made a splash at the Avignon Festival last summer, and it has now reached the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, where it feels right at home. When the director Peter Brook brought this dilapidated music hall back to life in the 1970s, he didn’t hide the visible wear and tear on the walls. The set, a two-story house designed by Lisa Navarro, has a similarly ramshackle quality, with peeling paint and a hazardous stairwell.Lisa Navarro’s set suggests a ramshackle, two-story house.Christophe Raynaud de LageOver the past decade, Achache has developed a quirky brand of musical theater, often in tandem with a co-director, Jeanne Candel. The company he founded in 2021, La Sourde, employs both musicians and actors, and “With No Fanfare” takes advantage of that as it weaves compositions by cast members and the musical director, Florent Hubert, on top of a series of lieder by Schumann.The soprano Agathe Peyrat sings many of these numbers, and acts almost as a shadow for the actors, expressing their grief-stricken feelings. Along with her, five musicians are onstage nearly throughout, and they also take smaller acting parts.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.The back-and-forth between drama and music lends “With No Fanfare” much of its power, because the show’s dreamlike logic can be hard to follow. The part in which characters play Tristan and Isolde doesn’t quite land, for instance: A relationship built on a mythical love potion isn’t an ideal point of comparison for a modern couple.“With No Fanfare” is stronger when Achache and his cast (who all get a writing credit) let their imaginations roam freely. Once the central relationship has crumbled for good, the woman suddenly reappears at a treatment center where doctors offer remedies for heartbreak.There, the woman meets a third character, a writer named Spinel. Played by the actor and singer Léo-Antonin Lutinier, Spinel is a test patient for the clinic’s offbeat, metaphorical procedures. On doctors’ orders, he swims in his own tears. Later, he has surgery to remove the last remaining traces of love from his brain.“With No Fanfare” weaves a series of songs by Schumann into the narrative, as well as additional compositions by cast members.Christophe Raynaud de LageLutinier brings a dryly burlesque quality to the proceedings, and Spinel is in some ways the most affecting character, even though his relationship with the others isn’t fully fleshed out. Many scenes in “With No Fanfare” rely on plain physical comedy, as when Spinel tries to reach a piano that is hovering above the stage. He looks at it, and then brings a ladder that doesn’t reach; when he tries to climb it despite this, the steps give out under him, a Buster Keaton-style digression.Yet even the most absurd scenes have a melancholy quality to them. Achache somehow connects them to the long, frustrating process of rebuilding a life when the world you had imagined with someone collapses. As the nameless central man, Dray — an actor with over-the-top energy — spends much of the show standing precariously on a half-destroyed stool, a hammer in hand.It makes little sense on paper, yet onstage what you see is a man struggling to re-establish a sense of normalcy. Achache doesn’t aim for a tidy narrative. The characters don’t get a happy ending, or any real ending at all, but that lack of resolution rings true.At the end, Dray sits alone on the upper level of the set, dangling his legs over the edge, and surveys the ruins underneath. “And still, I coped with it,” he says, looking bemused. Mourning is a mental journey, and “With No Fanfare” makes a fitting visual and musical response to its twists and turns. More

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    SAG Awards 2023: Complete List of Winners, Led by ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

    The film took the top prize, as well as lead actress and two supporting trophies. “Abbott Elementary” and “The White Lotus” were named the top TV shows.The Screen Actors Guild handed its top award for outstanding cast on Sunday night to “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the hit sci-fi comedy that recently dominated the Directors and Producers Guild Awards and now appears to be a strong best picture front-runner at the Oscars. Three of the four individual acting trophies went to “Everything Everywhere” cast members, too.But will they also prevail with Oscar?The safest bet to repeat is “Everything Everywhere” comeback kid Ke Huy Quan, who won the supporting-actor trophy from SAG and has been collecting statuettes in that category all season. During Sunday’s show, which aired live on YouTube and will stream exclusively on Netflix next year, the 51-year-old Quan delivered his most touching speech yet.After rising to fame as a child actor in popular films like “The Goonies” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” Quan found few roles available for Asian actors and moved behind the camera, working in stunt choreography. Still, he paid his SAG dues every year, hoping and biding his time for the resurgence he’s finally experiencing.“To all those at home who are watching, who are struggling and waiting to be seen,” Quan said, “please keep on going because the spotlight will one day find you.”In an upset victory, Quan’s co-star Jamie Lee Curtis won the supporting-actress statuette over Golden Globe winner Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) and BAFTA winner Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), suggesting that this may be the season’s most fluid acting race.“I know you look at me and think nepo baby, and I totally get it,” said a thrilled Curtis. “But the truth of the matter is I’m 64 years old and this is just amazing!”Later in the night, “Everything Everywhere” leading lady Michelle Yeoh won a crucial best-actress prize over “Tár” star Cate Blanchett, whom she acknowledged as a titan from the stage.“Thank you for giving me a seat at the table because so many of us need this,” Yeoh told the crowd. “We want to be seen and we want to be heard, and tonight you have shown us that it is possible.”Though the SAGs have honored Asian performers from TV shows, Yeoh was the first Asian woman to win best actress in a movie category, and Quan was the first Asian male actor to win for movies as well.The only film actor to win who didn’t hail from “Everything Everywhere” was Brendan Fraser, who mounted a best-actor comeback with his transformational performance in “The Whale.” Though “Elvis” star Austin Butler earned best-actor prizes at BAFTA and the Golden Globes, Fraser wasn’t expected to win at the latter show, since he had publicly accused the former Globes head Philip Berk of groping him in 2003 and had said he wouldn’t attend the ceremony. (Berk denied the accusation.)Like many of the night’s winners, Fraser spoke about the ups and downs of a Hollywood career: “I’ve rode that wave lately, and it’s been powerful and good,” he said, “and I’ve also had that wave smash me right down to the ocean floor.”SAG’s track record with the Oscars is suggestive but spotty. Last year, all four SAG winners triumphed at the Oscars and Jessica Chastain’s SAG win for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” helped her vault to the front of a wide-open best-actress category. But the year before that, only two of the four SAG winners repeated at the Oscars.But the strongest takeaway from this year’s SAG ceremony is that “Everything Everywhere,” which cost only $14.3 million and took in more than $100 million worldwide, is almost certainly headed for a best-picture victory: Of the films that earned top honors at the DGAs, the PGAs and the SAGs — that is, all three major guilds — only Ron Howard’s “Apollo 13” (1995) failed to go the distance with Oscar.When the season began, the “Everything Everywhere” directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan were surprised that their quirky film was generating awards chatter. But with two weeks left until Hollywood’s biggest night, the real surprise would be if anything but “Everything Everywhere” becomes the Oscars’ ultimate victor.Here’s the complete list of SAG winners:FilmOutstanding Cast“Everything Everywhere All at Once”Actor in a Leading RoleBrendan Fraser, “The Whale”Actress in a Leading RoleMichelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Actor in a Supporting RoleKe Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Actress in a Supporting RoleJamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Stunt Ensemble in a Movie“Top Gun: Maverick”TelevisionEnsemble in a Comedy Series“Abbott Elementary”Ensemble in a Drama Series“The White Lotus”Actor in a Comedy SeriesJeremy Allen White, “The Bear”Actress in a Comedy SeriesJean Smart, “Hacks”Actor in a Drama SeriesJason Bateman, “Ozark”Actress in a Drama SeriesJennifer Coolidge, “The White Lotus”Actor in a TV Movie or Limited SeriesSam Elliott, “1883”Actress in a TV Movie or Limited SeriesJessica Chastain, “George & Tammy”Stunt Ensemble in a TV Series“Stranger Things”SAG Life Achievement AwardSally Field More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘True Lies’ and ‘Black Girl Missing’

    An action series premieres on CBS, and a new film on Lifetime highlights how missing Black women are treated by the police and the media.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Feb. 27-March 5. Details and times are subject to change.MondayAlhajji Sharif, a former prisoner, in “Attica.”SHOWTIMEATTICA (2021) 5:45 p.m. on SHO2. This Oscar-nominated documentary from the director Stanley Nelson explores the enduring violence and racism of the prison system, and the ongoing need for reform, through the lens of the Attica prison revolt of 1971. Using archival footage and interviews with survivors of the uprising, reporters and government officials, the documentary takes the viewer through the events as they unfolded, building to “a powerful final half-hour that makes the case that the brutality used in ending the riot was excessive, criminal and racist — a show of force closer to revenge,” as Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review.TuesdayClockwise from left, Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton in “Apollo 13.”Ron Batzdorff/Universal StudiosAPOLLO 13 (1995) 7:55 p.m. on Syfy. Adapted from the 1994 book “Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13” by Jim Lovell, the astronaut who commanded the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970, and Jeffrey Kluger, this Academy Award-winning film follows Lovell (Tom Hanks), Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and what happened during their failed Moon landing mission. In a 1995 article about the film for The Times, John Noble Wilford, the science journalist who covered “the ill-starred flight” in 1970, attests to the film’s authenticity. The story “evokes a time when people took risks to reach grand goals,” Wilford wrote, adding that “perhaps the retelling of the Apollo 13 story will remind Americans of who we were and who we want to think we are.”WednesdaySURVIVOR 8 p.m. on CBS. This Emmy Award-winning competitive reality television series returns for its 44th season. Hosted by Jeff Probst, the season premiere introduces the 18 contestants who will compete in a series of games and challenges until only one person remains to claim the show’s $1 million prize.TRUE LIES 10 p.m. on CBS. Inspired by the James Cameron action film of the same name, this new series follows the suburban Tasker family as Helen (Ginger Gonzaga), a language professor, finds out that her husband, Harry (Steve Howey), is a spy for Omega Sector, a U.S. intelligence agency. The show follows the couple as Helen is recruited by Omega and the pair begin working together, all while keeping their double lives a secret from their children.ThursdayBREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961) 8 p.m. on TCM. This Grammy and Academy Award-winning romantic comedy, adapted from Truman Capote’s 1958 novella of the same name, follows Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), a country girl turned socialite, as she falls in love with Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a struggling writer in the same apartment building. “It is a completely unbelievable but wholly captivating flight into fancy composed of unequal dollops of comedy, romance, poignancy, funny colloquialisms and Manhattan’s swankiest East Side areas captured in the loveliest of colors,” A.H. Weiler wrote in a 1961 review for The Times.FridayThe poet Ruth Stone’s work explored the nature of creativity, grief and family dynamics.Ruth Stone TrustRUTH STONE’S VAST LIBRARY OF THE FEMALE MIND (2021) 9 p.m. on PBS WORLD. The poet Ruth Stone’s work explored the nature of creativity, grief and family dynamics; she died in 2011 at 96, and wrote for much of her life in obscurity. Through interviews with Stone at different points in her life, interviews with her family and colleagues, readings of her poetry and an animation by her granddaughter, this documentary, premiering on PBS for Women’s History Month, is an intimate look at Stone’s legacy and art.SaturdayBLACK GIRL MISSING (2023) 8 p.m. on Lifetime. A part of Lifetime’s Emmy Award-winning public affairs campaign, “Stop Violence Against Women,” the movie “Black Girl Missing” highlights how missing Black women are handled by the police and the media. The film follows Cheryl (Garcelle Beauvais) as she tries to find her daughter, who has been labeled a runaway while the police and the media are too busy following another missing person: a white girl. The movie is accompanied by “Beyond the Headlines: Black Girl Missing,” which tells the true stories of missing women of color through interviews with their families.SundayFrom left, Tameka “Tiny” Harris, Kandi Burruss, LaTocha Scott and Tamika Scott, members of Xscape, in “SWV & XSCAPE: The Queens of R&B.”Phylicia J.L. Munn/BravoSWV & XSCAPE: THE QUEENS OF R&B 9:30 p.m. on Bravo. Two of the best-selling ’90s R&B girl groups are brought together for a one-night-only concert event in this six-part limited series. Viewers will follow the Grammy Award-nominated, multiplatinum trio SWV and the quartet Xscape as they explore the dynamics of sisterhood in music groups on and off the stage. Each episode will capture the highs and lows of these seven women’s journeys as they work together — and against one another — to put on a massive concert. More

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    ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1, Episode 7: Secret Origins

    This week, an extended flashback fills in significant aspects of Ellie’s life in the Boston Quarantine Zone.Season 1, Episode 7: ‘Left Behind’Although Ellie talks almost nonstop, during her long trip across the country with Joel she has said very little about herself.Going by the few details she has let slip — and what he have seen ourselves — we know she grew up in the Boston Quarantine Zone with no parents. She does not have a boyfriend. She did have a friend who knew how to perform an infamous finishing move in the video game “Mortal Kombat II.” She loves the comic book series “Savage Starlight.” She thinks whiskey is “gross.” She is wild about Will Livingston’s “No Pun Intended” joke books. She experienced shooting and violence firsthand back in Boston. And she got her nonfatal cordyceps infection while exploring a sealed-off shopping mall.About 95 percent of this week’s episode consists of an extended flashback to Ellie’s life in the QZ, while in the present day she scrambles to keep the wounded Joel alive. Most of what we see in the flashback confirms what we already knew. But some details are a bit different — and those details matter.For example: Ellie wasn’t just being educated by FEDRA; she was being indoctrinated. Singled out from her class as a future leader, she was being trained physically and mentally to protect the QZ and hunt Fireflies. Her stubbornness though was causing trouble. She was bucking authority, sneaking out at night, and fighting with the other girls — spurred on in part by her rebellious roommate Riley (Storm Reid).When the flashback starts, Riley has been AWOL for three weeks; but while Ellie is asleep in their barracks after lights-out, Riley sneaks back in and explains her where she has been. She joined the Fireflies, after meeting Marlene and commiserating about how much they both hate FEDRA fascism. Ellie is skeptical, but still agrees to join her best friend for a wild after-hours excursion — which turns out to be a trip to the mall. For those of us watching at home, the alarms bells are already ringing.Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.It takes a while before any trouble starts; and in the hour or two before then, these two girls have the greatest night of their lives. The building has working electricity, so Riley lights the whole place up, and as the young ladies head down what Ellie calls the “electric stairs,” Riley announces her intention to show her “the four wonders of the mall.” Hearing this, Ellie beams and says, “You planned stuff?”Ellie’s excitement is the first clear sign that she is hoping this outing could — if played right — turn romantic. Anyone who has ever had an intense hang session with a pal they secretly have a crush on will recognize this vibe. When Riley makes fun of the mall’s un-looted Victoria’s Secret store and jokes about what Ellie would look like in lingerie, Ellie blushes and then surreptitiously checks her hair in the window’s reflection. Later, Riley takes Ellie’s hand to lead her to a working carousel, which plays what sounds like an instrumental version of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” Is this flirting?We experience all these moments from Ellie’s perspective, sharing her hesitancy to make the next move. Sometimes their faces get close, and Ellie clearly wants to lean in further for a kiss. But what if she is misreading the signs? The romantic tension is more stressful than a clicker attack.Throughout this episode, there is some foreshadowing of the looming tragedy. Before they enter the mall, Ellie and Riley come across a QZ resident who has killed himself with pills and booze. After they liberate his alcohol (which Ellie pretends to enjoy), the corpse falls through the floor. Later, while they are enjoying the marvels of a video arcade — playing “Mortal Kombat II,” naturally — the camera moves away to show a wall-clinging monster, awakened by the noise. It is a nerve-racking mood-shift, worthy of a great horror movie.Ellie and Riley have some cranky moments together, arguing about whether the Fireflies are a force for good. Ellie fancies herself a freethinking anti-authoritarian, but she has spent much of her adolescence being inundated with anti-Firefly propaganda. When Riley grumbles about how the QZ can keep the lights on but can’t feed their own people, Ellie counters that the Fireflies didn’t help matters when they blew up a storage depot. The friends later briefly split up after Ellie realizes that Riley didn’t just stumble across this mall but has in fact been posted there by the Fireflies, who have her building explosives for them. (Ellie is not persuaded when Riley insists she would never let them use those bombs on her.)Ellie comes back though, because Riley is about to be reassigned to Atlanta, and Ellie doesn’t want their last memory of each other to be her storming away in anger. They reunite in the Halloween store — the final planned “wonder,” after the carousel, a photo booth and the arcade — where Riley talks about how the Fireflies have replaced the family she lost.“I matter to them,” she says.“You mattered to me first,” Ellie says.Then they put on monster masks, dance around to Etta James’s cover of “I Got You Babe,” and finally kiss. Ellis panics and apologizes; but Riley says, “For what?” The huge smile that spreads across Ellie’s face — followed by her asking, “What do we do now?” — is one of the sweetest and most relatable moments yet in this series.The magic can’t last. While Ellie and Riley are still giddy over their first kiss, that wall-clinging savage from earlier barges in. The girls kill him off, but not before he wounds them both. Ellie, we know, will survive. Riley, presumably, does not. (Her death is not shown, but it is possible that when Ellie hinted to Joel back in Kansas City that she had killed before, she meant Riley.)Earlier in the episode, a FEDRA officer mapped out Ellie’s future, pointing to two possible choices. She could keep goofing around and then spend the rest of her life as a miserable QZ worker-bee; or she could follow the rules and one day become a boss. Toward the end of the episode, Riley offers a different binary. They go ahead and kill themselves; or they could savor every last remaining second of their humanity. Riley knows what the right option is: They stay alive until the decision is out of their hands: “Whether it’s two minutes or two days, we don’t give that up.”Back in the present — in the basement of a snow-covered suburban home — Joel says the opposite. She wants Ellie to leave him, to let him die. Instead, she tears the house apart until she finds a needle and thread to stitch Joel up. He holds her hand tenderly, before she threads the needle and gets to work.Two more minutes down.Side QuestsThis episode is based on a downloadable expansion to the “The Last of Us” video game, released about a year after the original’s 2013 debut.The scene where Riley lights up the mall is absolutely beautiful, rich with the soft, colorful glow of retail outlet signs. (Also oddly touching is the electronic clatter of an old arcade, echoing through the empty walkways. Who would have guess that a “Mortal Kombat II” punching sound could be poignant?)The funniest visual gag in the episode: The sign on the multiplex box office reading “Back in 5 min.”The Ellie/Riley debates about FEDRA are fascinating, because during Ellie and Joel’s journey, both sides have at different times been proven right. Law and order has indeed broken down in some “liberated” QZs. But some of those communities fell apart in the first place because FEDRA’s rule was unbearable.Nearly everything in Ellie and Riley’s room either comes up again in this episode or is a part of Ellie’s lore. We see a “Savage Starlight” comic, an Etta James tape, a “Mortal Kombat II” poster, and, of course, the first volume of “No Pun Intended.”“How does the computer get drunk?” “It takes screen shots.” Another Will Livingston classic! (Ellie and Riley, born too late for that kind of tech, don’t get it.) More

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    ‘Saturday Night Live’ Mocks Trump’s Trip to Ohio

    Woody Harrelson was the host this week of an episode, which featured Jack White as musical guest.The “Saturday Night Live” opening sketch has reliably become a showcase for the cast member James Austin Johnson — it’s simply a matter of which political figure or celebrity he’ll impersonate in the segment. This week the wheel was spun and it landed on former President Donald J. Trump, who on Wednesday visited the town of East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a train derailment that has led to a toxic chemical spill.This week’s “S.N.L.” broadcast, which was hosted by Woody Harrelson and featured the musical guest Jack White, began with Johnson playing Trump as he addressed an East Palestine firehouse.“It’s wonderful to be here in the town of East Palestine,” Johnson said. “Not a great name. But I had to come here and see these wonderful people who have been abandoned by Biden. He’s on spring break in Ukraine with his friend Zelensky in the T-shirt, very disrespectful. Zelensky thinks he’s rocking that ringer tee like Scott Pilgrim. But I’m here and I brought hats. Cameras and hats.”Relating a story that he claimed had happened on his visit, Johnson said, “Earlier today a farmer came up to me, big fella, and he said, ‘Sir, we have nothing to eat because our dirt is poisoned.’ And I said, well, what are you doing eating the dirt? Don’t eat the dirt, folks. Don’t eat the dirt. You should be eating the cold McDonald’s I brought you. And the bottled water, Trump Ice. I’ll be honest, I just put my sticker on some Dasani.”Indulging in a bit of Trump-style free association, Johnson said, “I was looking at your river and it’s so shiny. I’ve never seen water so beautiful. Beautiful rainbows and discolorations, it’s great. It’s wearing makeup. Fenty beauty water. Fenty by Rihanna. Rihanna. By the way, you know she was pregnant doing Super Bowl, can you believe that? I said of course she is, she’s not moving at all. It was just arms, right?”He added, “But your train exploded and who do we blame? We blame Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg. This was his responsibility. Unfortunately he was too busy being a nerd and being gay.”Promising his audience a special guest, Johnson brought out Chloe Fineman, who was playing Emily Kohrs, the forewoman of a special grand jury in Georgia that was investigating election interference by Trump and his allies.Kohrs drew attention for the quantity of news media appearances and interviews she made this past week. Johnson introduced Fineman by saying, “She’s an odd duck but we like her. She’s either seven or 40, we can’t tell.”When he was unable to get the excitable Fineman to reveal the grand jury’s decisions, Johnson said, “Wow, we don’t like that. We don’t like that sound. Because she knows if I’m getting indicted.”He added, “They almost had me and then this little horse girl comes in and saves the day.”Concluding his remarks, Johnson said, “I’m gonna get out of here soon ‘cause the air is full of poison.” He speculated that this could somehow be a benefit for flatulent men. “Blame the train, right?” he said. “You’d normally blame it on the dog but they’re all dead now, aren’t they?”Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on President Biden’s trip to Ukraine and the political responses to the train derailment in East Palestine.Jost began:This week President Biden made a historic visit to Ukraine and met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, where they greeted each other like two action figures having sex. While Biden was in Ukraine, Republicans criticized his delayed response to the Ohio train derailment. But Biden said he was just waiting to shoot the train down until it was over the ocean.Che continued:President Biden is being praised for his surprise visit to Ukraine by taking a 10-hour train ride from Poland. Big deal. You know who else takes a long-ass train ride through an active war zone? Every New Yorker. China is trying to help the war in Ukraine and proposed a 12-part plan for peace. The catch is, the 12 parts have to be assembled by children.Jost then picked up the thread:Donald Trump visited East Palestine, the site of the recent train derailment, because Trump usually tries to make himself look better by standing next to a train wreck. [His screen showed a photo of Rudy Giuliani.] The train that derailed was carrying highly toxic vinyl chloride, which I think is something Trump recommended as a cure for Covid. And while visiting the disaster site, Trump also gave out bottles of Trump brand water. Said residents, “Thanks but we’d rather drink the toxic train water.” I just love that Trump is the one who rolled back train safety standards when he was president and now he’s giving the victims bottles of water. What’s next? Is he going to visit all the migrant kids he put in cages and give them a gift card to Dave and Buster’s?Delayed Gratification of the WeekLongtime fans of “S.N.L.” know that when a celebrity guest hosts the show for the fifth time, the occasion is usually marked with a little pomp and circumstance. But for Harrelson — who took nearly 34 years to finally cross that threshold, having made his first appearance as host in 1989 — there was seemingly no such celebration coming.Harrelson halted his opening monologue a couple of times to extend his arms in expectation of a ceremonial jacket that never arrived. He also cheekily called attention to this when he set up the first musical performance from White, who was also appearing on “S.N.L.” for his fifth time: “You know what,” Harrelson said, halting his introduction, “he’s been here five times, too. Does he get a jacket?”At the end of the show, as Harrelson, White and the cast took the stage to say good night, Kenan Thompson said that on behalf of everyone at “S.N.L.,” he was proud to present a five-timers’ jacket … to White. Not to worry: Harrelson also got a jacket from Scarlett Johansson, Jost’s wife and a fellow five-timer herself. More

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    Review: ‘black odyssey’ Sails Through Black Past and Present

    This wine-dark sea threads through Harlem, and its Ulysses, buffeted by the gods, is a soldier fighting in Afghanistan who makes a fatal mistake.Imagine fitting the various arenas of Black history — protests, from the March on Washington to Black Lives Matter; deaths, from the enslaved lost on the Atlantic crossing to Trayvon Martin; music, from Negro spirituals to Biggie Smalls — into one of the foundational texts of civilization, so old that it predates the written word itself.Things are going to get a bit crowded.But that isn’t to say that what the poet-playwright Marcus Gardley has accomplished in his often stunning but also muddled “black odyssey,” which opened Sunday, is any less impressive for the sizable challenge it presents.Set in modern-day Harlem and beyond, “black odyssey” follows the journey of Ulysses Lincoln (Sean Boyce Johnson), a soldier in Afghanistan who unknowingly shot and killed the son of the sea god Paw Sidin (Jimonn Cole). The god’s vengeful machinations, along with Ulysses’ own guilt, have deterred him from getting back to his wife, Nella P. (D. Woods), and son, Malachai (Marcus Gladney, Jr.). The god-in-chief, Deus (James T. Alfred), and his daughter, Athena, or Aunt Tee (Harriett D. Foy), an ancestor of Ulysses who becomes human to support Nella and Malachai while the hero is away, try to help Ulysses despite Paw Sidin’s obstacles. Ultimately, though, Ulysses discovers that the only way he can absolve himself and return home is by finding his history.Presented by the Classic Stage Company, “black odyssey” opens with a chorus’s invocation: “Let’s begin at the beginning so we may end at the end.” This cheeky, faux-cryptic line introduces Gardley’s work, directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, as not just inspired by the plot and characters of the Odyssey but also by the formal structure of the epic poem, which begins with the same circularity and foreshadowing. The dialogue snaps with playful alliteration, repetition and puns, even rhymes that punch up lines rather than overpower them. (“God knows you could use a hot bath, hot comb, and a hot oil treatment,” Aunt Tee says indelicately to Nella, inviting herself into her home.)And the script demonstrates Gardley’s appreciation for and understanding of Homeric storytelling: As in the Odyssey, where so little of the main action takes place in real time but instead comes to life in hearsay and recollections, so too does “black odyssey” manipulate time and place, memory and fantasy, in the simple act of telling a story. (Gardley’s film adaptation of “The Color Purple” is forthcoming.)More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.The cast is a delight, especially when Walker-Webb’s direction allows them to let loose with the comedy. Foy is uproarious as the wise and wisecracking Aunt Tee. Adrienne C. Moore, as the enchantress Circe, provocatively stalks across the stage, sticks out her bottom at Ulysses and stretches out horizontally in front of him, all the while describing a sensual menu of Southern comfort food (“Neck them neck bones … dump my dumplings,” she begs Ulysses in some culinary-themed foreplay). Cole’s Paw Sidin is wily and despicable, though as cool as his long, blue buttoned jacket.The heroes themselves are less interesting, though to be fair their roles give them less room for such play, given that they must carry the show’s drama. But Ulysses jittering around with desire as he’s seduced by Circe, Nella going angry-Black-mother on Malachai, and Malachai giving woke Gen Z-style speeches to his elders are all, in their comedy, more compelling than in their moments of sorrow and joy.From left in background, Tẹmídayọ Amay and Sean Boyce Johnson in boat. In foreground, James T. Alfred has the ship’s wheel chained to him.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesIn general, when the play leans to parody, offering sirens styled as Dream Girls and the blind prophet Tiresias as a funky, supa-dupa-fly afro-wearing bus driver (Alfred, clowning around wholesomely), it becomes a whole different production — entertaining, though from left field.Because otherwise, the work’s copious name-dropping, and its conflation of characters and events from Black history, transforms it into a game of Black bingo: Check references to the Scottsboro Boys, the Birmingham church bombing, the Middle Passage, Hurricane Katrina and the spirituals (though beautifully performed, particularly by Woods and Gladney) for the winning card.And “black odyssey” has a lot of fun with naming, in the same spirit as its source text (in the Odyssey, Odysseus says he is “Nobody” or “No one”) — but between Malachai Malcolm Little Lincoln and Circe Tubman Sojourner Rosa Ida B. Nzinga, among others, even that touch of humor becomes little more than an overdone declaration of the play’s Blackness.Formal and informal classicists who’ve attended the College of Homer and the University of Bulfinch and Edith Hamilton may also have some follow-up questions about this Harlem odyssey’s modus operandi. For example, the play represents the gods exercising their power in the human world as Deus and Paw Sidin playing a chess game. But the metaphor is overused and raises more questions: Do these gods have laws and limitations to follow? Deus says they’ve been playing since 1619, so does that mean they are to blame for the state of Black Americans? Are they only gods of Black people; are they the same gods from Homer?More generally “black odyssey” sometimes struggles to strike the right balance of working from the original text and departing from it; the tension is most apparent when the play blatantly explains itself, by, for example, naming a character Benevolence Nausicca Calypso Sabine (a transformative Tẹmídayo Amay) to make clear that she’s an amalgamation of several young female characters Odysseus encountered in his travels.David Goldstein’s set beautifully transforms the thrust stage at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater with an elevated platform that appears to ripple and reflect like the actual sea. Two ends of a sailboat, painted with a city skyline and used to represent a home, a rooftop or, of course, a sailing vessel, go a long way, but the production could use a few other pieces or props to make its different settings clear. Adam Honoré’s lighting is appropriately august, when Deus stands with a trail of warm yellow light behind him, opposite the chilly dark blue of Paw Sidin’s lighting, and aquamarine blues and greens reflect off the sea-stage, submerging the whole theater in an oceanic underworld. Similarly on point is Kindall Houston Almond’s costume design, which showcases such a variety of fashions from different periods and aesthetics: bright, flowing robes, a black baseball cap with a Basquiat-style crown, huaraches, a.k.a., the unofficial shoes of every Caribbean man of a certain age.This classic-meets-modern, Greek-meets-Black production traverses a lot of ground in its two-and-a-half-hour running time, making the journey feel tiresome by the end. Still, “black odyssey” offers a set of heroes — and villains — and a grand spectacle of Blackness to make the trip worthwhile.Black OdysseyThrough March 26 at Classic Stage Company, Manhattan; classicstage.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More