Eliana Willis

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    Damson Idris Was Raised on ‘Def Comedy Jam’ and Bagel King

    The star of “Snowfall,” which is kicking off its final season on FX, talks about getting into character with a book about 1980s Los Angeles and why he always feels his best in a tuxedo.The British Nigerian actor Damson Idris can see the connections between his career trajectory and that of Franklin Saint, the character he plays on the FX cocaine saga “Snowfall.”“I came as a kid, and today I’ve got a show under my belt, and I’m meeting new people and there’s a different level of respect that they give me,” said Idris, who was 23 when the show’s creators, including John Singleton (“Boyz N the Hood”), anointed him the lead.“And that happened with Franklin, too,” he said. “He was this pushover kid who was getting beaten up every episode, and he grew into this guy who was running an empire.”So the end of the road was bound to be emotional.Idris, now 31, had just wrapped the sixth and final season and was still riding a wave of euphoria and exhaustion on a video call from his home in Los Angeles. That season begins on Wednesday, picking up a day after the events of the Season 5 finale, after Franklin sees $73 million of his nest egg vanish along with his dreams of a new life and a new wife.Now, with his back against the wall, he’s willing to take out everyone by any means necessary. “The sweet kid has finally turned into the monster,” Idris said.He had planned to take a long break from television after “Snowfall,” he admitted while discussing the first book he read (“I was never a book guy”), the music that moves him and the importance of humility. But then Donald Glover called to discuss his coming series “Swarm,” about an uberfan of a Beyoncé-like pop star, “and I’m like, When do I need to be at work, sir?”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1‘Young Locs on the Westside’This is actually, embarrassingly enough, the first book that I read. It was given to me by John Singleton, and I used it to understand South L.A. in the ’80s. You follow these kids as they’re transitioning through adolescence to adulthood, and the horrible things that they go through but also the wonderful things that they go through. After I read it, I immediately got into the mentality of Franklin Saint. It helped me get through six seasons.2AmapianoIt’s a subgenre of house music that emerged in South Africa in the mid-2010s, and it doesn’t matter what mood you’re in, you’re going to find your body moving. I tweeted about it last year when I was introduced to it. I said, “If you’re not listening to amapiano music, you’re missing out on life.” There’s a new dance move on TikTok to it every single day. I probably wouldn’t ever do it publicly, but I do it in the house often. My favorite song is “Tanzania” from the D.J. Uncle Waffles. It’s so culturally relevant that artists from Beyoncé to Rihanna are all dabbling.3‘Def Comedy Jam’When I was younger, I’d steal the tapes from my older siblings, wait for them to leave the house and spend all day watching the likes of Martin Lawrence, Chris Tucker, Bernie Mac, Katt Williams, Dave Chappelle. I would impersonate their stand-ups word for word. It was a brilliant party trick for family gatherings, minus the cussing.4FIFA Ultimate TeamI grew up wanting to be a football player. But I remember being 18 and Lionel Messi was 22 at the time. And I was so far behind, talent-wise, to him. He made me quit. [Laughs] The FIFA Ultimate Team is a game mode that’s possibly taken up a third of my life. You are essentially making a super team and then you compete with other people around the world. And till this day, if you lose at FIFA in my friendship circle, you have to give a written and verbal apology to the other person for wasting their time.5Fela Kuti’s ‘Beasts of No Nation’He is so important in Nigerian culture, so important to my family, so important to me. He’s talking about the civil rights of Nigeria of that time and the conflict between the common man and the politics. The song started coming back into my life during George Floyd. I understood the parallels of racism and how it really is a global issue and a pendulum that needed to swing. “Beasts of No Nation” comments on it perfectly.6Mum’s Beef StewI’ve tried a million times to make it, but there’s something I’m missing. Maybe her perfume falls into the soup, and that’s what the missing ingredient is. I would get on a 10-hour flight to London to taste my mother’s cooking and her mix of palm oil, tomatoes, garlic and onion, and then the beef. I hope to get married one day and that beef stew comes with the contract.7Bagel KingIf you grew up in inner-city London, as soon as the party gets shut down, everyone’s going to Bagel King to have a beef patty in buttered cheese-coconut bread and some plantains. It’s a staple in London culture, and it’s housed some of the funniest yet terrifying moments in my life.8‘Liberian Girl’When I was a kid, I remember watching the music video, and it was the first time that I saw a range of artists from different fields. Athletes, musicians, actors, poets — they were all in the same video, all paying homage to the greatest performer of all time. I became infatuated with Hollywood. I said, “I wish I was in that room.”9‘The Black Godfather’This documentary follows the life of Clarence Avant. It dives into the genesis of Black Hollywood and how there was one man behind it all, lurking in the shadows, that was pulling the strings and introducing some of the most amazing people of all time to each other — which then led to greatness. It was incredibly inspirational because it taught me that regardless of the problems that I may face on this journey — the ups and downs, which will inevitably come — those things will not matter as long as you have friends, as long as you’re a good person, as long as you walk in humility.10TuxedosWhen I was 4 or 5, for my birthday my mother would put me in these cute little tuxedo suits. All my friends would be dressed down in their tracksuits, their Reebok classics — here I was in a full-on suit, like I was about to get married. And then my sister would put me in the same suit and force me to marry her doll, who was my height. The doll’s name was Wendy, and she had a string that you could pull that would say “I love you.” It was the first person that said “I love you” to me after my mom. So I fell in love with tuxedos very early. And today I always say a tuxedo makes me feel I’m at my greatest level of excellence. More

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    ‘The Last of Us,’ Season 1, Episode 6: The Ties That Bind

    This week, Joel and Ellie encounter a safer and more social way of life, but it’s not clear whether they want any part of it.Season 1, Episode 6: ‘Kin’In the old western movies, the aging cowboys and gunslingers would sometimes talk about giving up the vagabond life and buying a ranch, where they could settle down — bothering no one and going unbothered. In this week’s “The Last of Us,” Joel and Ellie spend a fair amount of the episode riding horses, shooting guns and facing down posses, just like those western heroes. They also find the time to talk about what their lives might be like after the Fireflies whip up a cure for the cordyceps infection. And sure enough, the first thing Joel imagines for himself is living in an old farmhouse and raising sheep — who, he says pointedly to Ellie, are “quiet and do what they’re told.”As we move into the second half of this season and get closer to the point where Joel is supposed to turn Ellie over to the Fireflies and possible save humanity, it’s only natural for these two to start thinking about what comes next. And it makes sense for Joel — who has seen enough of this fallen world — to want to escape from everything and everybody.But Ellie’s experiences have been more limited. She never experienced life before cordyceps. She seems less sure of what a “normal” life should be like. She knows the Boston Quarantine Zone — functional but depressing. She got a brief glimpse at Bill and Frank’s survivalist oasis but never really saw it in action. She has seen the horrors of “Killer City.” So what does she want for herself? She used to dream of being Sally Ride. Will that ever be an option again in her lifetime?At the start of this episode, Joel and Ellie invade the remote cabin of an old Indigenous couple, Marlon (Graham Greene) and Florence (Elaine Miles), who are skeptical about their prospects in Wyoming. (When Joel asks for the best way to head west, Marlon says, “Go east.”) But then our heroes make it all the way to Jackson, where they encounter a whole other way of living: calmer, safer and more social.And neither Joel or Ellie are sure they want any part of it.To be fair, by the time they get to Jackson, they are feeling pretty stressed. Marlon and Florence warned them that Wyoming would be a deathtrap, with every major city swarming with infected and the wilderness strewn with corpses. Even the Jackson emissaries they meet out on the road initially surround them on horseback and let a snarling dog sniff them to see if they are sick. (Joel looks terrified as the hound approaches Ellie, unsure if she will pass the test.)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.Then they get taken behind Jackson’s enormous wooden gates, and inside they find a kind of utopia. The residents have power, thanks to a nearby hydroelectric dam. They have a sewage system. They grow vegetables and raise livestock. They have nice houses, Christmas trees and movie nights. (During Joel and Ellie’s stay, the community center is showing the 1977 Neil Simon comedy “The Goodbye Girl.” Hey, in the end times, a movie is a movie.)Jackson also has Joel’s brother, Tommy, who left the Fireflies and settled down with his new wife Maria (Rutina Wesley). As soon as Maria sees Ellie — all scruffy and scrappy — her maternal instinct kicks in. She gives Ellie a few things she’s sure the girl needs: an “eggplant”-colored winter coat, a menstrual cup and a haircut. (Maria: “Who’s been cutting your hair?” Ellie: “World class salons.”)She also offers Ellie advice, born of her years as the Assistant District Attorney in Omaha. “Be careful who you put your faith in,” she says. Maria thinks she knows the kind of person Joel is, based on what Tommy has told her about their time on the road. Ellie’s reply? “Maybe I’m smarter than Tommy.”As for Tommy — described derisively by Joel two episodes ago as “a joiner” — he looks both happy and wary to see his brother. He is not too keen on the way Joel seems to roll his eyes at Jackson’s communistic “share and share alike” approach to survival. (When Joel suggests that this kind of living isn’t their way, Tommy replies, “There were other ways, we just weren’t any good at them.”) But when Joel explains who Ellie really is and what his mission is — and adds that he feels like he has lost his edge and his reaction time as he has gotten older — Tommy agrees to take over the job of escorting Ellie to the Firefly compound at the University of Eastern Colorado.Hearing this plan, Ellie panics. She may not know exactly what kind of life she wants to lead after the world gets fixed, but she knows she is not ready to live it without Joel. So Joel relents. They say their goodbyes to Tommy and head down to Colorado together, feeling more bonded than ever. Because Maria told Ellie a little about Sarah, Joel starts letting down his guard. He talks about the old world, and his old job. (“Everybody loved contractors,” he insists.) When Ellie asks whether America used to be like the way things are in Jackson, he admits the real world was much more competitive.Gabriel Luna and Pascal in “The Last of Us.”Liane Hentscher/HBOBut it seems Joel was right to doubt himself. The UEC campus turns out to be Firefly-free, with indications that the group has fled to Salt Lake City. Before Joel and Ellie can regroup, they see raiders roaming by and have to hurry back onto their horse — though not before Joel, while fighting off one of the interlopers, gets stabbed by a broken baseball bat. He has been dealing with some kind of chest pains all episode. That, combined with the wound in his gut, fells him on the outskirts of town.Back in the first episode, as Joel and Ellie left Boston, the radio in his apartment played Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again,” sounding a warning he did not hear: Do not fail another teenage girl. As he slumps off his horse, the song returns, in a slowed-down, ethereal cover version. It’s like a voice from beyond, mocking Joel with lyrics that now sound like lies: “He knows where he’s taking me / Taking me where I want to be.”Side QuestsIt’s too bad that Joel and Ellie didn’t get to spend more time with grumpy old Marlon and Florence, because those two were a hoot. Greene (“Dances with Wolves”) and Miles (“Northern Exposure”) are veterans of the big and small screen, and their characters’ deadpan digs at each other are wonderfully wry. When a gun-wielding Joel asks Marlon to show him where they are on his map and growls, “Your answer better be the same as your wife’s,” Marlon asks Florence, “Did you tell him the truth?” When she says yes in a hesitant monotone, an uncertain Marlon then asks, “Are you telling me the truth?”Ellie’s brain has been so warped by her book of puns that when she looks upon the splendor of an active hydroelectric plant, she says to Joel, “Dam!” (Joel: “You’re no Will Livingston.” Ellie: “Who is?”) And Joel’s brain has been so warped by her daily barrage of questions that after mentioning what a dam does he quickly adds, “Don’t ask me how it works.”Joel and Tommy have their first long conversation at an actual bar, drinking what looks like pretty good whiskey. This got me thinking: How many unspoiled food and beverage products from before the apocalypse would still be unconsumed 20 years later? I suspect there was probably enough bottled alcohol left in the world to supply survivors for centuries — but only if they could safely get to it.This episode opens with a flashback to Henry’s suicide, which again includes the sound of Ellie’s haunting reaction: a startled combination of a gasp and a pained moan. That’s one end of Bella Ramsey’s remarkable acting range. The other end is seen and heard in Ellie’s unceasing line of goofy banter, as when she teases Joel’s poetic description of proper rifle-handling by asking, “You gonna shoot this thing or get it pregnant?” More

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    Richard Belzer, Detective Munch on ‘Law & Order: S.V.U.,’ Dies at 78

    A stand-up comic, he called his hard-boiled character on the long-running TV drama “Lenny Bruce with a badge.”Richard Belzer, who became one of American television’s most enduring police detectives as John Munch on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and several other shows, died on Sunday at his home in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France. He was 78.The death was confirmed by Bill Scheft, a friend of Mr. Belzer. Mr. Scheft, who has been working on a documentary about Mr. Belzer’s life and career, said that the actor had suffered from circulatory and respiratory issues for years.As Detective Munch, Mr. Belzer was brainy but hard-boiled, cynical but sensitive. He wore sunglasses at night and listened to the horror stories of rape victims in stony silence. He was the kind of cop who made casual references to Friedrich Nietzsche and the novelist Elmore Leonard. He spoke in quips; when accused of being a dirty old man, he responded: “Who are you calling old?”In a 2010 interview with AARP The Magazine, Mr. Belzer — who was a stand-up comic when he was not playing Munch — described his television alter ego as “Lenny Bruce with a badge.”With Munch, Mr. Belzer found phenomenal success. In 2013, when the character was written out of “SVU” — as the “Law & Order” spinoff is often called — Mr. Belzer wrote in The Huffington Post that he had appeared as Munch in more than 500 hours of programming on 10 different shows.The character’s run began in 1993, on “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and included guest appearances on “Sesame Street” and “30 Rock.”At his retirement, Mr. Belzer was often described as the actor with the longest run playing the same character on television, as well as the actor who had played the same character on the largest number of different shows.Mr. Belzer performing in Central Park in 2011. Karsten Moran for The New York TimesA life of mistreatment, misbehavior and missed opportunities prepared Mr. Belzer for his star turn as a streetwise detective.Richard Jay Belzer was born on Aug. 4, 1944, in Bridgeport, Conn. He grew up in a housing project in the city. His father, Charles, co-owned a wholesale tobacco and candy distributor, and his mother, Frances (Gurfein) Belzer, was a homemaker.“Our mother didn’t know how to love her sons appropriately,” Leonard, Mr. Belzer’s brother and a fellow comedian, told People magazine in 1993. “She always had some rationale for hitting us.”Richard added, “My kitchen was the toughest room I ever worked. I had to make my mom laugh or I’d get my ass kicked.”She died of cancer, and Charles died by suicide before Mr. Belzer turned 25. Leonard jumped from the roof of his Upper West Side apartment building and died in 2014.Mr. Belzer routinely fought authority. “I was thrown out of every school I ever went to,” he told AARP. He served in the army for a little under a year, then received a discharge on psychiatric grounds after repeatedly injuring himself.He went on to work as a truck driver, jewelry salesman, dress salesman, dock worker, census taker and reporter for The Bridgeport Post. In that job, he dreamed of becoming a serious writer — but instead spent his free time dealing drugs.In 1971, Mr. Belzer answered an ad in The Village Voice for auditions for a sketch show, and soon enough he found himself performing stand-up. In 1975, he began working as a warm-up comic for the “Saturday Night Live” audience, but his friend Lorne Michaels did not invite him to join the cast. Mr. Belzer accused Mr. Michaels of breaking a promise to him — a charge Mr. Michaels did not comment on to People.Absent fame or fortune, Mr. Belzer became the bohemian prince of New York City comedy. His fans included Robert De Niro, John Belushi and Richard Pryor. Mr. Belzer gained renown for working the crowd, which often meant insults — labeling, for instance, the bejeweled get-up of a drunk audience member as “Aztec pimp” — but could also include his attempting to start a brawl.He held court at an Upper East Side club called Catch a Rising Star, where he was given an hourlong slot on a nightly basis. In 1981, a Rolling Stone profile described him as spending his final three dollars on a taxi to his set, performing while on quaaludes and mocking a famous talent manager in the audience.“On the outside, he was still ‘The Belz,’ in shades and black leather punk jacket, coke-dealer thin, lupine, always cool and relentlessly self-assured,” David Hirshey and Jay Lovinger wrote. But on the inside, he was “scared” — 37 years old and still struggling to afford meals.Mr. Belzer performing his stand-up act in 1988 at Caroline’s comedy club in New York.Catherine McGann/Getty ImagesHis life began turning around in the mid-1980s, when Mr. Belzer survived testicular cancer, quit drugs and married Harlee McBride, a former Playboy model and actress.In 1990, he found financial stability in a characteristically absurd and brutal fashion. Five years earlier, Hulk Hogan, demonstrating a wrestling move on Mr. Belzer on TV, knocked out the comic and dropped him headfirst to the ground. An out-of-court settlement enabled Mr. Belzer and Ms. McBride to buy a home in France, which they called variously the Hulk Hogan Estate and Chez Hogan.His career took off after he began appearing as Detective Munch on “Homicide,” when he was nearly 50 years old.Mr. Belzer’s first two marriages — to Gail Susan Ross and Dalia Danoch — ended in divorce. He is survived by Ms. McBride; two stepdaughters, Bree and Jessica Benton; and six step-grandchildren.Mr. Belzer came to own two homes in the south of France, and he built a basketball court at one of them. He enjoyed shooting baskets and waiting for one of his dogs to collect the rebounds. He read up on Roman history and visited ancient ruins.At the start of his career in television, he spoke happily about leaving behind his romantic, rough-and-tumble years in stand-up comedy.“I tell you,” he said to People, “I won’t miss making drunks laugh at 2 in the morning.” More

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    With ‘Letters From Max’ Onstage, Sarah Ruhl Again Mourns a Poet’s Death

    Through dialogue, poetry and ritual, the playwright revisits her correspondence with her former student, who died at the age of 25.About 10 minutes into “Letters From Max, a Ritual,” Sarah Ruhl’s new play about her epistolary friendship with the poet Max Ritvo, something akin to a sacred rite takes place: The lights dim, a spotlight illuminates center stage, and the actor portraying Ritvo walks toward a winged tattoo artist. For a few moments, they circle each other. Then the tattoo artist-angel removes the hospital gown that the poet is wearing and lifts him with grace. With a miming gesture, he offers a compact mirror to Ritvo so he might examine the birds newly adorning his back.“It’s dope,” Ritvo says of the tattoo, looking over his shoulder. “I really love it in this light.”But that quiet exchange was not dreamed up by Ruhl. It is actually a scene from a play that Ritvo wrote for Ruhl when he was a student at Yale in 2012, four years before he died of cancer at the age of 25. (After each surgery, he would acquire a new tattoo of a bird.) Before handing in the project, he told Ruhl, “I am adamant that something extravagant and silent happen.”With the Signature Theater production of “Letters From Max,” his desire for the work is now being realized in a way he might not have imagined.Ruhl’s play, adapted from a book she compiled of their correspondence during Ritvo’s chemotherapy, boils down to a single, yearslong conversation about poetry, love, mortality, the afterlife and soup. But this is not a traditional play. Poems and live music are interspersed between the dialogue, which comes from the letters, texts and voice mail messages they exchanged.Edelman, right, as a tattoo artist-angel, helping Pais remove his hospital gown in the play. The two actors alternate in the role of Max.Ye Fan for The New York Times“I don’t think of this play as ‘show business,’” Ruhl said in an interview, “but instead an encounter for the audience.” She hopes viewers will “bring their own grief or their own need for communal sadness,” she said, adding that the theater has been a place for catharsis dating back to the Greeks. “We’ve all been through so much in the last two years.”Though Ruhl feels her own grief in this production, which opens on Feb. 27, she has also found joy in sharing Ritvo’s work, and in seeing it move people the same way he did. “He was such a present, joyful person who made everyone around him laugh,” she said. There are other small tributes to Ritvo, too: A song he composed recurs throughout, and the titles of his poems are projected in his handwriting above the stage.There were no plans to adapt “Letters From Max” upon the book’s 2018 publication. But as Ruhl read sections at events — often with an actor reading Ritvo’s words — people asked, “Is this going to be a play?”Before distilling the 309-page book into a two-hour stage production, Ruhl consulted Ritvo’s literary executor, the poet Elizabeth Metzger.“She asked me long ago, ‘Do you think Max would want this?’” Metzger recalled, adding that she was “very, very certain that Max would.” For Ruhl, finding “the bones” within hundreds of pages of correspondence became a process of trial and error.She realized the first act is “about a teacher and a student getting to know each other and forming a friendship,” she said, “that would then reverse the teacher-student relationship” in the second act, which opens with a dialectic on the afterlife. “I was trying to offer Max a comforting view of the afterlife when he was afraid of death,” Ruhl said. “And he ultimately said, ‘Thank you. But no.’”Kate Whoriskey, who directed the New York production of Ruhl’s previous epistolary play, “Dear Elizabeth,” also about two poets exchanging letters, signed on to direct, and the actress Jessica Hecht was game to portray Ruhl, her longtime friend and collaborator. But casting Ritvo introduced a unique challenge. “I’m definitely sensitive to the fact that he had a huge reach and people are still in mourning,” Ruhl said.She said she was moved during auditions. “It was actually beautiful to see Max’s language inside a young person’s body again,” Ruhl said. Ruhl and Whoriskey liked the idea of a third body onstage — similar to the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” — who might “care-take the space” by delivering soup and poems to Ruhl and Ritvo. When the actors Ben Edelman and Zane Pais read for the role of Ritvo, Ruhl said, the team believed they “could do beautifully in both roles” by alternating nights. It turned out that Edelman plays the piano and Pais plays the guitar, so each composed music to perform while the other recites Ritvo’s poetry.“There’s some mystery, and it’s beyond words,” Ruhl said of the duality. “But it’s something about the spirit and the body, and the observer and the observed.” Not to mention, as Ruhl writes in the program note, the actors’ interchangeability demonstrates that Ritvo’s spirit and legacy is “bigger than any one actor.”“Max was many himself,” Metzger said. “Every time he read a poem, he read it differently, because he allowed the moment of the poem and the moment he was reading to merge.”When rehearsals began, Metzger texted Ruhl some guidance for the actors: “Reading the letters, the character is coming to face death,” she wrote, but “reading the poems, the character is not dying but being born, coming to life!” Metzger hoped the actors might “capture the shock of Max’s performance style, even the strange wild aliveness of the poems on the page.”Ritvo’s mother, Riva Ariella Ritvo, has been “an incredibly staunch supporter,” Edelman said, calling a video meeting she had with the cast members “one of the most intense experiences of my life.”He and Pais didn’t study Ritvo’s mannerisms. Instead, they aimed to embody his work. “Neither of us are trying to do an impersonation of Max at all,” Pais said.Hecht and Pais onstage during rehearsals at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Marsha Ginsberg’s spare set includes a white zoetrope that rotates to reveal scenes inside Max Ritvo’s childhood home, hospital rooms and a theater.Ye Fan for The New York TimesTo foreground the writing, the scenic designer Marsha Ginsberg kept the stage spare. The sole set piece is a white zoetrope that rotates to reveal scenes inside Ritvo’s childhood home, hospital rooms and the 13th Street Repertory Theater, where he accepted the 2014 Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America while wearing a pink kimono. At one point, during a silent sequence, the outside of the zoetrope becomes the window of an Amtrak quiet car. “We were trying to create a world where imaginative scapes could happen,” Whoriskey said. “So that a poem happens, and then suddenly, you’re seeing skeletons across a bridge, or a poem happens, and you’re seeing the shimmering of water.”Hecht didn’t work through the emotional arc of Ruhl’s character until the week before previews began. Though it’s easy to cry on command, she said, “I felt embarrassed to do that before we lived through the play for a while, and I really felt the weight of that story and that person coming into our lives.”For the past 30 years, Ruhl said, she has carried on an “intense” dialogue on life and art with Paula Vogel, her former professor. “When I met Max, it felt like he was one of those people that I would have that kind of dialogue with, had he lived that long,” she said. “It’s a comet-like thing. You might only meet those people once every … how often do comets circle?” Perhaps Ritvo made such an impact because he valued relationships. “He’s not a poet who just went inward and was exploring his own self and soul. It was always about talking to another person in a room,” Metzger said. “It was happening all the time, these little births and deaths of just being with a person in a room. I think that’s why he had so much intimacy with so many people. I’ve never met someone with as capacious of a soul.”When Ruhl attended the first preview performance of “Letters From Max, a Ritual” earlier this month, she could finally observe “how the humor landed,” how the emotional beats played out, and how Ritvo’s poetry “theatrically holds an audience.”But it wasn’t until intermission that the project came full circle. As part of the play’s “ritual,” she said, audience members sat at tables in the lobby to write letters to loved ones. A young woman approached Ruhl with an envelope addressed to her. The playwright opened it and drew out a note reading: “I have incurable brain cancer. And this production gave me hope.” More

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    Marc Maron, Roseanne Barr and Nathan Macintosh Have New Specials

    In the mix this month are hour sets from a maturing Marc Maron, a very funny Nathan Macintosh and a pandering Roseanne Barr.Marc Maron, ‘From Bleak to Dark’HBO MaxIn his new hour, Marc Maron says he refuses to outgrow blaming his parents for his problems. “They did it,” he grumbles, concisely. His graying hair bouncing off a dark leather jacket, Maron, 59, has remained a vital comic voice by staying in touch with his inner brooding teen. And yet, don’t be fooled: Maron is maturing. His comedy has become more intricate, varied in timing and tone, and politically astute. After decades of leaning over stools, his years of touring theaters — and perhaps film work — have turned him into more of a showman, with a repertoire of small scenes, satires (his spoof of the TED Talk is pitch perfect) and act-outs.The emotional centerpiece of his new special is the 2020 death of his partner, the director Lynn Shelton. Here is where he really shows his evolution, because he handles this passage with a light touch, humbly and without the melodramatic negativity of his title. What stands out is his lack of philosophizing or waxing poetic. There’s a lot of art, including comedy, that exploits the gravity of death. And why not? Our greatest play, “Hamlet,” is about a neurotic, grief-struck young man who can’t stop obsessing over the death of a loved one. But Maron brings an older man’s perspective. He tells us he’s not the victim. Shelton is. He calls his loss ordinary, common. Can art help? People send him “The Year of Magical Thinking,” and it does nothing for him except make him compare himself unfavorably to Joan Didion.What does help, he says, is “the Jewish thing.” Maron has long been fascinated by religion and spirituality, but this hour is his most Jewish by far, featuring the most jokes on the religion, including punch lines about the Holocaust and antisemitism. He says he finds solace in the Jewish epithet “May her memory be a blessing.” This phrase, dating at least to the Talmud, contrasts with the Jewish stereotypes of neurosis and kvetching. Maron pokes fun at the idea of him doing an emotional Jewish one-man show about the death of his girlfriend, but in a way, he has done it — or at least, his version. Looking to the wisdom of religion is perhaps the most hack move possible, but one of the things you learn as you get older is that clichés exist for a reason.Nathan Macintosh, ‘Money Never Wakes’YouTubeWhen it comes to stand-up specials, it’s a “best of times, worst of times” situation. There have never been more being made, released and available to a global audience than right now. According to Sean McCarthy’s newsletter Piffany, there have already been 55 released this year — more than one a day. While most hours are terrible, rote or entirely mediocre, there are gems that would have remained entirely obscure in previous eras.Take Nathan Macintosh, an inauspicious-looking blond guy dressed in khaki pants, a white T-shirt and a button down. His new hour did not get picked up by any major platform, but you can watch it free on YouTube and, if you’re like me, convulse with laughter. His jokes won’t translate well to the page because his delivery is so eccentrically goofy while still managing a momentum that keeps building and building. His main mode is end-of-your-rope exasperation, with eyes popping, voice squeaking and a jittery physicality. He can be funny on mute.The panic in his voice is a perfect match for his preoccupation: The confusing way money works and the infuriating inequities of class. That makes him sound didactic, but his jokes stay close to the ground and unexpected, sympathizing with much-mocked figures like landlords or subway drivers. There’s a novelistic detail in his description of his own apartment, with rats scurrying above the ceiling. (“Have you ever heard rats above you having a better life?”) His self-loathing bit on losing money on crypto is a wonderful time capsule of our moment.But his funniest jokes are about the pampered rich, whom he portrays as aliens speaking to one another and oblivious of everyone else. In dark comic set pieces, they are forced into contact with ordinary people, who must treat them with extreme deference. He acts out one scene in which a rich person complains about his chicken being cold at a fancy restaurant. The manager says with practiced professionalism, “Look, we’ll have the waiter murdered in front of his family.”Roseanne Barr, ‘Cancel This!’Fox NationIn the oral history “We Killed: The Rise of Women in Comedy,” Roseanne Barr explained how she adjusted her stand-up act in the 1980s to fit in with comedy clubs. “I had to make it less political and more mainstream,” she said. This clearly worked. Barr became one of the most successful comics in history, turning her fed-up housewife persona into one of the best sitcoms of the era. But now, several years after an offensive tweet led to her being fired from a reboot of that show, Barr has adjusted again by becoming more political, aggressively courting right-wing audiences as a conspiracy-minded victim of cancel culture.Her new special, which arrives on the Fox Nation streaming service, feels like a mix of rally and fan convention, with some stand-up sprinkled on top. Barr, who alternates between long pauses and flashes of anger, gets an applause break from saying “Baby blood drinking Democrat community” and a big laugh from “I don’t want to talk to no Hillary donors.” It’s a balky production, with abrupt edits and occasional tangents that belong more to the green room than the stage, like an extended gripe about doing promos for her sitcom.It’s the culture war material, though, that gets her crowd fired up. She berates #MeToo victims, suggests that taking the vaccine will prevent you from getting pregnant, and in bemoaning the decline of men, orders the ones in her audience to tell their wives and girlfriends to sit down, shut up and make them a sandwich. Barr says she plans to offend, but this has become another pander, since obviously her crowd loves the grievances, the resentments. She even clarifies that she likes doing promos for Fox.Watch Barr’s early sets and you will find not only a quick comic mind, but also tightly written jokes. Neither appear here. Of course, it’s not just Barr who has changed. Comedy has, too. The scene is more political, polarized, desperate for outrage. Jim Jeffries prefaces the trans jokes in his new Netflix special by saying he’s doing them because he wants the press that Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais received. I’m sure he’d say it’s a joke, but I believe it. When Barr trots out a stale gag about gender, riffing on the question “What is a woman?” she gets a predictable roar. It’s a reminder that Barr once ran for president, and how much comedy and politics have blurred. Cheap nostalgia can be powerful in both arenas. At one point, Barr jokes, “The world has changed a lot since I was alive.” More

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    in Television

    Milo Ventimiglia on the ‘Honest Deception’ of ‘The Company You Keep’

    In his first regular TV role since the hit series “This is Us,” the actor plays a character who is himself a kind of actor: a charming con man.Milo Ventimiglia reached television stardom during the age of cable and streaming dominance. But his signature shows, including “Heroes,” “Gilmore Girls” and “This Is Us,” have all aired free of charge on network TV.And that’s just the way he likes it.“I’m a product of broadcast television,” Ventimiglia said in a recent video call. “I like the idea that anyone can turn their TV on and watch the show.”“People want to give exclusivity,” he added. “I prefer inclusivity.”Ventimiglia’s newest venture, “The Company You Keep,” based on the Korean series “My Fellow Citizens!,” follows suit, but with a twist on his usual handsome charmer persona. Premiering Sunday on ABC, the series tells the story of Charlie Nicoletti, the main talent in a family of Baltimore con artists that also includes his sister, Birdie (Sarah Wayne Callies); his dad, Leo (William Fichtner); and his mom, Fran (Polly Draper). It’s Ventimiglia’s first starring vehicle since the hugely popular “This is Us” ended its six-year run last year. (He is also an executive producer.)A smooth operator and skilled thief, Charlie finds himself facing changes bad and good as the series opens. The family, which owns a neighborhood bar as a front for their capers, has just been burned on a job, owing mostly to Charlie’s carelessness. The consequences are dire. Reeling from his mistake, Charlie falls into the arms and bed of Emma (Catherine Haena Kim). They’re a very secretive couple, especially with each other. She is a C.I.A. agent. He’s a con man.Unbeknown to them, their jobs are about to converge. It’s love, and lust, at first sight. Trust, however, is another matter.“It’s a different kind of communication when you are playing two people that are fundamentally in love, but there are a lot of obstacles to their being together,” he said. “I think it mostly comes down to communicating vulnerability.”Reeling from a mistake, Ventimiglia’s character, Charlie, falls into the arms and bed of Emma (Catherine Haena Kim), a C.I.A. agent.Eric McCandless/ABCVentimiglia, 45, was drawn to Charlie’s duality. “As a barkeep, he’s unremarkable, a simple neighborhood guy,” he said. “But as a con artist, he has to adapt and change shape and become somebody else believably, as a real human being, not a caricature.”Ventimiglia discussed the art of the con, moving on from “This Is Us” and why he looks to help military veterans however he can. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was the transition from “This Is Us” like?I brought over about 90 percent of the “This Is Us” crew. For me, it was always them that made the show. It wasn’t just the subject matter. It wasn’t just those beautiful Dan Fogelman scripts that he and the writers crafted. It was the different departments, everything from camera to grips, electric, art departments, transportation, craft services, the folks that were feeding us. There was a lot of magic in that show, and I loved bringing that team over. I miss Fogelman, and I miss aspects of production. But because of the crew, there was no real loss.That was such a beloved show. Why do you think it struck a nerve in so many viewers?I think it had a commonality. Viewers were able to see themselves inside of a lot of the characters. It wasn’t built for one lane. It didn’t fall under any particular genre. It was just a show about everyone.The original title was “36,” which was the birthday that Jack and the three kids were celebrating. But Dan Fogelman kept toying with this idea: This is us and us and us. And it just makes sense. That’s what the show was about. It was about all of us, every single one of us. That always felt like the appeal: Everybody could relate to the life that was lived in those characters.I Imagine people often identify you with Jack.I remember once I was getting off a plane and a guy stopped me and said, “Hey, you’re that guy from that show.” I said: “Yes, sir, I am. Nice to meet you.” And he goes, “Man, you’re my Tuesday night.” I thought, wow. Every Tuesday, this guy sits down and he hangs out with me and my co-stars on the show. There’s something really rewarding about that when you know an audience member is giving you time.How do you approach playing a con man? It’s interesting that the word “con” comes from “confidence,” which Charlie definitely has.To be an actor, you’ve got to be confident in what you do, but you can’t cross that line and be cocky because you get knocked right down. And you’ve got to be confident as a con man to get people to do what you want need.With the cons that we’ve been setting up, and the characters that Charlie plays within those cons, it’s exciting and it’s fun. It’s given me an opportunity to stretch, not just playing one part, but playing several parts through a season.“At 45 years old, I feel like I’m just getting started,” Ventimiglia said. “That’s a good feeling.”Carlos Jaramillo for The New York TimesCharlie is kind of an actor in that sense.Totally. Either that or I’m realizing that acting is absolutely a con. When I was a little younger, I used to joke and say, “I lie for a living.” Then it turned into, “I wear makeup and read lines for a living.” Now, in a way, I’m back to what feels like an honest deception.How do you think the secrecy of the characters translates to the performances?It’s funny, in real life, romantic partners tend to under-talk things until they realize they need therapy. On set, we’re over-talking things for absolute transparency and communication to find the best possible solution that works for [Kim’s] character, my character, and then ultimately the show.You have worked with and supported several veterans organizations, including the U.S.O., Team Rubicon and America’s Gold Star Families. What is the source of that passion?My dad was a Vietnam War veteran, so I think I always had this understanding of the community from that point of view, and from studying the war. But having never served in uniform, I asked myself how I could serve the community. The work is never done. But I think it’s a community to which we owe a lot of gratitude. I nearly went into the Navy when I was 18. I had this grand idea that I was going to be flying jets because I grew up on “Top Gun.” But then I took a different path.When did you know that you wanted to be an actor?I’d always put on plays and stuff when I was a little kid. And I remember when award shows still felt glamorous, and I would hear Whoopi Goldberg talk to the camera at the end of the Oscars, when she was hosting, saying, “Maybe one day you’ll be on this stage.” That inspired me. I’d see an actor putting on a character, and then I’d see him putting on a different character. You’d see Michael Keaton as Mr. Mom. Then you’d see Michael Keaton as Batman. You’re like, Oh, it’s Batman. But no, it’s Mr. Mom.It was all an understanding that these people are playing different roles, and that is the profession of acting. How do you do that? How do you make those roles so convincing that you get to do the next one? It’s weird. At 45 years old, I feel like I’m just getting started. That’s a good feeling. More

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    Late Night Weighs in on President Biden’s Annual Physical

    Jimmy Fallon joked that Vice President Kamala Harris “seemed a little too eager to hear the results.”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.So Far, So GoodPresident Joe Biden received a clean bill of health after his annual physical at Walter Reed on Thursday.Late night hosts used the opportunity to poke fun at Biden’s age. Jimmy Fallon joked that Vice President Kamala Harris “seemed a little too eager to hear the results.”“Yeah, it’s never good when the doctor examining you is like, ‘I don’t know if they even make these parts anymore.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, the exam was going great until Biden confused the eye chart for a teleprompter.” — JIMMY FALLON“The White House said Biden’s exam took three hours. It’s never good when your physical has an intermission, you know what I’m saying? Nothing says ‘peak physical condition’ like a doctor’s visit with the same running time as ‘Avatar 2.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Fit as a Fiddle Edition)“So today, Joe Biden had his annual physical. It was a clean bill of health, although his X-ray did reveal several classified documents. Gotta look everywhere.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The presidential physical is pretty thorough. They do a colonoscopy, blood tests, and, as part of the dental exam, Biden pulls Air Force One with his teeth.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The physician reported that the president remains healthy and vigorous. That’s right, you tuned in to this show to be entertained, and you are hearing about an 80-year-old man’s doctor visit.” — JAMES CORDEN“Between the F.B.I. search and undergoing a physical, this is a huge week for Biden getting probed.” — JAMES CORDEN“This seems like one of the worst parts of being the president of the United States, just having the entire country know your height, weight and that you’ve got some kind of weird rash.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Daily Show” correspondent Jordan Klepper found out where Republican voters stood on Donald Trump at a recent rally for Nikki Haley, Trump’s first declared rival for the presidential nomination.Also, Check This OutIn the revival, all of the original main characters (except for Casey, played by Lizzy Caplan, not pictured) are either pulled back into cater waiting or never stopped.StarzThe all-star sleeper hit comedy series “Party Down” returns for a new season 14 years after the comedy first premiered on Starz. More

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    Review: In ‘The Wanderers,’ Two Marriages and a Movie Star

    Anna Ziegler’s play about an Orthodox couple in the 1970s and an unorthodox one in the 2010s explores the limits of longing.There’s no shortage of stories that explore the merits and pitfalls of arranged marriages. In the Jewish subcategory alone, we have “Shtisel,” “Unorthodox” and the perennial “Fiddler on the Roof.” But Anna Ziegler’s awkwardly hitched play “The Wanderers,” which opened Thursday at the Laura Pels Theater, may be the first to consider the problem of forced matches while also exemplifying it.A shotgun seems to have been involved in forcing its two incompatible tales under one roof. The first begins in 1973 with the wedding of Esther and Schmuli, members of the Satmar Hasidic community who barely know each other. Even if Schmuli (Dave Klasko) is a bit meek, and Esther (Lucy Freyer) alarmingly headstrong, they seem at first like a traditional Orthodox couple, looking forward to making a family.Nevertheless, within five years, their marriage is in ruins. Schmuli has spirited away their daughters; Esther has fled Brooklyn with their infant son, Abraham.That’s not a spoiler but the foundation for the second story, which takes place decades later and proceeds in alternating “chapters” with the first. Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas) is now an acclaimed 40-something novelist, having won, we are told, “a Pulitzer and two National Book Awards before turning 30.” The purple samples of his work provided suggest that the prizes were massively misjudged.Somewhat too conveniently for himself and the play, Abe is married to the daughter of another Satmar refugee. His mother and hers, best friends since childhood, raised Abe and Sophie (Sarah Cooper) to be each other’s “bashert”: their fate, their soul mates.Eddie Kaye Thomas and Sarah Cooper, on the table, portray a married couple with connections to an Orthodox couple played by Lucy Freyer, far left, and Dave Klasko, sitting at the two ends of the table.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhether they also chose that fate is an open question; for all their similarities, there are also crucial differences. For one thing, Sophie, who is biracial, grew up with a father — a Black professor of environmental science — but Abe rarely saw his after the separation. Precious about his loss, yet glib about other people’s, he has the charismatic narcissist’s ability to finagle subservience.That’s already a lot of plot for a 105-minute play, even before the lopsided interaction between the two stories, and the potential to explore generational harm through them, is overshadowed by an out-of-the-blue development. At a reading in a Brooklyn bookstore, Abe spots in the front row a well-known actress, a longtime crush who is apparently on his freebie list. Immediately afterward he receives an email that leads to a correspondence featuring thousands of others, many flirtatious to the point of virtual adultery.Unaccountably, the actress is given the name Julia Cheever, a herring so far past red it’s bleeding. As played by Katie Holmes, with whom the character shares certain biographical features, Julia is glamorous and wry but strangely underpowered. That’s in part a lack of stage authority; in this Off Broadway Roundabout Theater Company production, Holmes, though she appeared in the 2008 Broadway revival of “All My Sons” and in Theresa Rebeck’s “Dead Accounts” in 2012, is still feeling her way around a world that lacks a camera.But her indistinctness is also the result of the problem of representing virtual communication onstage. Sometimes the director Barry Edelstein has Julia sit face-to-face with Abe, or even touching, as if in the same room. Other times, she wanders about Marion Williams’s set, which consists almost entirely of books, while reciting her emails as if they were soliloquies.At least hers are down-to-earth. Abe’s are high-flown, pretentious — which is but one way this plot thread recalls the infamous electronic flirtation between the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer and the actress Natalie Portman. Ziegler has said she found that correspondence, part of which was published in The New York Times, “pretty juicy,” but in repurposing it for the play, she seems to have spilled the juice everywhere. As written, and in Thomas’s crafty performance, Abe bears enough of a resemblance to Foer (who also has a mother named Esther) to make you wonder what the point is.In any case, the real governing spirit here isn’t Foer but the frequently name-dropped Philip Roth; Abe seems to aspire not just to his stature but also to his characters’ unapologetic selfishness. That Sophie tolerates this while also taking nearly sole responsibility for their two children, who could not possibly be as whiny as her husband, is something of a mystery, at least for a half-hour. But pretty soon, and with growing irritation thereafter, the explanatory twist becomes obvious, leaving the big revelation at the end of the play a letdown.Is it too much of a hint to mention that catfish is not kosher?Helpfully, Cooper, known for her comic lip-syncing of Donald Trump, has a fresh and natural energy onstage. Even so, the plot mechanics ensure that Sophie isn’t given enough playable material to make us want to stay in her story. And Abe, who thinks he is deep, is unbearable.The social strictures facing Freyer’s Esther and Klasko’s Schmuli seem impossible to alter and are thus political, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIf only by contrast, Schmuli and Esther are more engaging. The forces aligned against their happiness are not merely theoretical as with Abe and Sophie; they emerge from social strictures that seem impossible to alter and are thus political. This gives the emotions of their scenes more complexity, and though Freyer can’t do much else with her troubled character, Klasko is at times heartbreaking in his portrait of conflicted and hopelessly unenlightened love.The comparison between the two marriages, each undone by the search for something outside the characters’ ken, nevertheless feels specious. The dialogue in both sections, sprinkled like parsley with pidgin Yiddish and Hebrew prayer, has a secondhand aura that is also unconvincing. More authentic are the wigs by Tommy Kurzman and costumes by David Israel Reynoso; you certainly never question which world you’re in as the fur hats and wigs — the shtreimels and sheitels — give way to sweatpants.Still, “The Wanderers” feels, like its vague title, unmoored. That has not been a problem with Ziegler’s previous plays, which include “Photograph 51” (about the molecular biologist Rosalind Franklin) and “Actually” (about a campus sexual assault trial). Both feature stories in which a strong argument is developed single-mindedly through specific conflicts that point toward a crisis.It’s an irony that in trying to weld two such stories together, “The Wanderers” doesn’t enhance those elements but compromises them. Arranged or chosen, not all marriages are bashert.The WanderersThrough April 2 at Laura Pels Theater, Manhattan; roundabouttheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More