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    Late Night Dunks on Trump for Getting Dumped During Tax Season

    “It’s like getting divorced on Christmas Eve,” Jimmy Kimmel joked.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.‘H&R Cellblock’Last week, Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA cut ties with the former president and his family, saying financial statements they prepared for him from 2011 to 2020 should “no longer be relied upon.”“In other words, ‘We are not going to prison with you, Mr. Trump,’” Jimmy Kimmel joked on Tuesday night.“So, for those nine years, no one should trust any of his financial statements, or any of his statements.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Good for them, standing up and doing the right thing 10 years too late.” — JAMES CORDEN“The New York attorney general and Manhattan district attorney have been trying to determine whether the insurers, lenders and others Trump dealt with were misled about the strength of his finances. Let me save you guys some trouble: They were.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“If there’s any karma in this world, they dropped him for a younger, hotter client.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“What new information could have come to light right now? Were they like ‘Wait a minute — Trump organization? As in Donald — does that have something to do with Donald Trump?’” — JAMES CORDEN“Now he’s going to need someone else to do his taxes. I suggest H&R Cellblock.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I tell you, there’s nothing more depressing than getting dumped by your accountant during tax season. It’s like getting divorced on Christmas Eve.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I like the idea of Donald Trump angrily now setting up a TurboTax account to get his taxes done.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“A lot of people believe this could be it for Donald Trump — this could be the one. I don’t know. How many ‘the ones’ have we had now. We’ve had like 400 or something?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Kamila Valieva Edition)“I also know that nobody believes her excuse, right? That she accidentally took her grandfather’s heart medication, but I do. I believe her, because I know what it was like growing up me and my family — we always had a big bowl of loose pills all mixed together. It’s an easy mistake to make.” — TREVOR NOAH, on the Russian Olympic skater Kamila Valieva testing positive for a banned substance called trimetazidine“She tested positive for three substances that can be used to treat heart problems. Imagine how devastating that must be: You train your whole life to be in the Olympics, follow all the rules, put in all the hours, eat the right things. Last minute, you accidentally take your grandfather’s heart medicine.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“No one is focusing on the fact that her grandpa took her medication, now he’s dominating bingo at the old folks home.” — TREVOR NOAH“But again, I’m not saying Russia did it on purpose; I’m not saying that. I’m just saying don’t be shocked when later this week they use 15-year-olds to invade Ukraine.” — TREVOR NOAH“Her lawyer said maybe her grandfather drank something from a glass, saliva got in and this glass was somehow later used by the athlete. Ah, the old ‘must be from Grandpa’s saliva’ defense, huh?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“We’ve all shared a big, wet cup of water with Granddad, haven’t we?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I think the real question is, how much of your grandfather’s saliva are you coming in contact with and why?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And why does this keep happening to Russia? These poor people. Will you leave them alone?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I can’t believe they caught someone cheating and they’re still letting her compete while they investigate more. Like guys, it almost feels like the investigation is not about whether she cheated or not, it’s almost like the real investigation here is ‘OK, let’s see what the drugs can do — let it rip! Come on, let’s just see. We want to know, right? Everybody wants to know.’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingRoy Wood Jr. dived into the history of Black athletes at the Winter Olympics on his “Daily Show” segment “CP Time.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightRebecca Hall, the director of “Passing,” will appear on Wednesday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutAudra McDonald, Denée Benton and John Douglas Thompson in “The Gilded Age.”Alison Rosa/HBOHBO’s “The Gilded Age” seeks to depict an elite class of 19th-century Black New Yorkers with historical accuracy. More

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    ‘Wolf Play’ Review: What Keeps a Family From Falling to Pieces?

    Hansol Jung’s new play looks at the broken adoption of a little boy who is plucked from South Korea and moved to one American home, then shunted to another.Sand-colored with beady black eyes and a throaty howl, the character at the center of “Wolf Play” is and is not what he seems. Wolf, who serves as the narrator, is a simple but expressive puppet made of wood, cardboard and papier-mâché in this probing and playful exploration of family by Hansol Jung.Loose-limbed and rising just a few feet off the floor of the tiny stage at Soho Rep, Wolf represents a 6-year-old boy who undergoes one wrenching separation after another. The American couple who adopt him from South Korea decide they can’t handle him and the demands of their newborn too, so they find another family for the boy by advertising on a Yahoo message board.An abandonment so awful and absurd calls for fierce survival instincts. Perhaps that goes to explain why the boy isn’t a boy at all, but a wolf who longs for a pack, as Mitchell Winter, the adult actor maneuvering the puppet, insists.Wolves get a bad rap, Winter tells the audience, which is seated on either side of the stage. The lone ones may snatch red hoods, but they don’t make mischief for its own sake. It’s a natural response for familial creatures left to fend for themselves, crouched defensively much of the time. “But stories need conflict,” he says, “and, boy, do wolves know how to fight.”“Wolf Play,” which opened on Monday, proposes that “the truth is a wobbly thing.” In Jung’s freely associative landscape, that means allowing a puppet to be a boy, a boy to be a wolf and a wolf to be an actor in a knit cap with pointy ears (costumes are by Enver Chakartash).The play directed by Dustin Wills and presented with Ma-Yi Theatre Company, portrays a traumatic situation, but with an antic disposition and a goofy heart. How would a boy respond to these wounds but with growls, howls and swinging paws? It seems too much for one being to process, yet there’s a lightness here that chases away the shadows.Wolf, a volatile and reactive jumble of joints, is handed off by Peter (Aubie Merrylees), the father who adopted him, to Robin (Nicole Villamil) and her wife, Ash (Esco Jouléy). Robin is eager to become a mother, while Ash is a boxer prepping to go pro and reluctant to take on a distraction like a child. Ryan (Brandon Mendez Homer), who is Robin’s brother and Ash’s coach, seems supportive of the adoption — until Wolf’s position in the pack seems to threaten his own.If the play has a love plot, it’s between Wolf and Ash, a prototypical fighter with a tough exterior and soft center. Ash is nonbinary, and is the first person to whom the boy speaks out loud. “Wolf Play” suggests there’s an animality connecting us that transcends gendered social scripts; kinship and love are wild and don’t play by any rules. Peter, however, objects to the absence of a conventional father in the boy’s new home.Performances from the ensemble are uniformly strong and suited to the production’s intimate scale. Winter’s double feat as an energetic narrator and a sensitive puppeteer is so nimble that the boy often appears to be a separate living thing, endearing one moment, a terror the next (Amanda Villalobos is the puppet designer).But casting a wolf as a protagonist becomes a tricky gesture when expressing inner feelings is limited to encyclopedic facts about the species. (“Wolves are cautious, the masters of survival.” “Wolves suck at being alone.”) Though Jung’s narrator seems to promise access to the story’s emotional core, there is only so much that taxonomy can illuminate.Wills’s production has the exuberant restlessness of a crayon drawing tacked to the fridge, chaotic but underlaid with a careful internal logic. A door on wheels, mismatched chairs and blue balloons (from Wolf’s “welcome home” party) are roving fixtures of You-Shin Chen’s set. Barbara Samuels’s lighting makes prodigious use of tone and darkness, while the sound design by Kate Marvin inspires the grating quality of a child’s crying.If stories need conflicts, as Wolf suggests, the climactic ones here — a bout in the ring, the inevitable custody battle — ultimately feel manufactured and somewhat beside the point. There’s an unruly quality to Jung’s idea of what theater can be, jagged and untethered, coy and dreamlike. It’s thrilling to see that potential unleashed on the vagaries of love, even if it’s not so easily tamed.Wolf PlayThrough March 20 at Soho Rep, Manhattan; sohorep.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    Review: A ‘Merchant of Venice’ That Doubles Down on Pain

    John Douglas Thompson stars in Arin Arbus’s caustic and assertive new production of the Shakespeare play.More than 30 years ago, John Douglas Thompson, then a successful salesman at a Fortune 500 company, saw a play in New Haven, Conn. When it was over, he offered up a prayer: “Please, God, make me an actor. Teach me how to do that, and make this possible for me.”Thompson told me this five years ago, on the floor of a Broadway lobby after finishing a performance of August Wilson’s “Jitney.” And I remembered it last week, watching him as Shylock in Arin Arbus’s caustic, provocative production of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” at Theater for a New Audience.That prayer has been answered.Since 2009, when he played Othello — also for Arbus, also at Theater for a New Audience — audiences have recognized Thompson as an outstanding classical actor, perhaps the greatest Shakespeare interpreter in contemporary America theater. There are actors of greater plasticity, better grace, lusher voice. But Thompson, a virtuoso of psychological insight and emotional specificity, makes each centuries-old line sound like it has occurred to him in the moment. In his distinctive sandpaper rasp, he takes what’s timeless and transmutes it to the present. To watch him work is to feel fluttery, lightheaded. Blessed, maybe.“The Merchant of Venice” is a fairy tale with a corrosive center, a chocolate filled with battery acid. Its plot joins two folk tales, three love stories and a nerve-splintering trial scene that puts “Perry Mason” to shame. It concerns a melancholy Christian merchant, Antonio (Alfredo Narciso), who borrows 3,000 ducats from a Jewish usurer, Shylock (Thompson), to fund his friend Bassanio (Sanjit De Silva) — a close friendship that Arbus renders as explicitly romantic. Shylock forgoes interest in favor of an unusual condition: If Antonio forfeits, Shylock will extract a pound of flesh from his body.From left, Thompson, Maurice Jones, Yonatan Gebeyehu, Nate Miller, Alfredo Narciso and Varín Ayala in the production, which emphasizes the awfulness of everyone in Venice, not Shylock alone.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDespite his relationship with Antonio, Bassanio is wooing Portia (a flexible and elegant Isabel Arraiza). To confound her suitors, her father has set them a challenge. They have to choose among three caskets: one gold, one silver, one lead. If a suitor chooses correctly, he will find Portia’s portrait. Otherwise, he has to leave, with the promise that he will never marry. The plots combine in that harrowing courtroom scene, where Portia gives her “quality of mercy” speech.Over the past century, scholars have debated whether “Merchant” should be staged at all, particularly after the play was deployed in Germany in the 1940s as Nazi propaganda. Every responsible production has to contend with its uneasy legacy.Arbus’s solution is to emphasize the awfulness of everyone in Venice, not Shylock alone. Mercy? Look elsewhere. On Riccardo Hernandez’s set, a doge’s palace given a Brutalist remodel, and under Marcus Doshi’s grim lights, the characters demean and betray one another. Even the virtuous Portia displays casual racism and less-casual hypocrisy. No one else behaves any better. Emily Rebholz’s costumes — athleisure, Vans, a hoodie with “Brooklyn” printed on it — confirm this atmosphere of treachery as neither long ago nor far away.Casting Thompson complicates the prejudices at work in the play, superimposing Blackness on Shylock’s Jewishness. Black Jews of course exist, but despite the interpolation of some lines from a Yom Kippur prayer at the play’s end, it is this Shylock’s Blackness and not his Jewishness that Arbus’s production emphasizes. “By casting a Black man as Shylock in America in 2021, one becomes painfully aware of the connections between Shakespeare’s 16th-century Venice and our world now,” she said in a news release.This pays certain dividends, giving some lines particular resonance, as when Shylock, in his speech to the Venetian court, says:You have among you many a purchased slave,Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,You use in abject and in slavish partsBecause you bought them. Shall I say to youLet them be free! Marry them to your heirs!Why sweat they under burdens? Let their bedsBe made as soft as yours?In laying bare Antonio’s prejudices during the first act, Thompson mockingly assumes the cringing tones of a racist caricature, a barbed and devastating choice that shows his anguished self-awareness. He knows how the others see him and how they want him to behave. He refuses. But in exacting revenge on those who perceive him as less than fully human, he loses his own humanity, which is his tragedy.And yet, this doubling feels like displacement — diminishment, perhaps — especially as it sidesteps the thorny questions of the play’s own attitudes toward Jews. Threats against American Jews have risen precipitously in recent years, as has online harassment. The hostage situation at a Texas synagogue last month was a sobering reminder of hatred with a long history. None of this necessarily makes Arbus’s focus on Blackness wrong. (And who would deny Thompson any role he wanted?) But anti-Blackness and antisemitism aren’t identical. And both continue. Which is to say: Wasn’t this painful enough? Weren’t we aware already?The Merchant of VeniceThrough March 6 at Theater for a New Audience, Brooklyn; tfana.org. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More

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    ViacomCBS renames itself as it plays catch-up with Paramount+, its streaming service.

    On Tuesday, Shari Redstone staged her second hourslong investor presentation in two years. Both events were designed for the same purpose — to reposition her old-line media company, ViacomCBS, as a streaming giant in the making, one capable of competing head-on with Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video, despite a late start.This time, there was less snickering.“Some of you thought we were on an impossible mission,” Robert M. Bakish, the chief executive of ViacomCBS, said during the presentation on Tuesday. “It’s not only possible. It’s happening.”To highlight the importance of its fast-growing Paramount+ streaming service, Ms. Redstone, the company’s chair, announced that ViacomCBS would rename itself Paramount Global.Paramount+ had 32.8 million subscribers worldwide at the end of its most recent quarter, up from fewer than 19 million a year earlier. In the three months that ended on Dec. 31, Paramount+ added 7.3 million customers, the result of offerings like “1883,” the prequel to “Yellowstone”; “Clifford the Big Red Dog”; and National Football League games. (A year earlier, ViacomCBS was adding about a million streaming subscribers a quarter.)The company’s streaming portfolio (Paramount+ and niche services from Showtime, BET and Nickelodeon) now has about 56 million subscribers. Mr. Bakish said that number would grow to 100 million by 2024, more than the roughly 70 million the company had previously forecast. The company also raised its 2024 streaming revenue goal to $9 billion, from $6 billion.Streaming brought in about $4.2 billion last year, including advertising sales from the free Pluto TV service.Paramount+ unveiled a barrage of additional programming to fuel continued growth. The expanded lineup will include fresh content from franchises including “Yellowstone,” “Beavis and Butt-Head,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Real World,” “Dora the Explorer,” “NCIS,” “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Transformers” and “South Park.” Paramount+ will be the exclusive first stop after theatrical distribution for all Paramount Pictures movies beginning in 2024. (Many previously went to Epix, a premium cable channel.)Starting this summer in the United States, Paramount+ subscribers will be able to upgrade to receive Showtime content, including the new hit drama “Yellowjackets” and older series like “Billions.”ViacomCBS shares declined about 6 percent in after-hours trading. Richard Greenfield, a founder of the research firm LightShed Partners, cited investor concern about Mr. Bakish’s “meaningfully stepping up spending” on content.It may be growing quickly, but Paramount+ continues to lag behind competitors like Disney+, which added 11.8 million subscribers worldwide in its most recent quarter to reach 129.8 million. Netflix has about 222 million. More

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    Kathryn Kates, Actress of ‘Seinfeld’ Babka Fame, Dies at 73

    She had a long screen career but may be best remembered as the counterwoman who tells Jerry and Elaine the bad news that her bakery was out of chocolate babkas.Kathryn Kates, who appeared as a counterwoman in two memorable scenes from “Seinfeld” involving baked goods in short supply — chocolate babkas and marble rye bread — and racked up numerous screen credits over nearly 50 years, died on Jan. 22 at her brother’s home in Lake Worth, Fla. She was 73.The cause was lung cancer, the brother, Josh Kates, said.Ms. Kates, who lived in Manhattan, had roles in dozens of television shows and movies, including the recent series “Shades of Blue” on NBC, “Friends From College” on Netflix and “The Good Fight” on CBS.She appeared in five episodes of “Law and Order” — a fixture on the résumé of most New York working actors — as Judge Marlene Simmons. She also had a recurring role in Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black,” as the mother of Jason Biggs’s character, Larry Bloom. And she was cast as Angie DeCarlo, an Italian beauty shop owner, in “The Many Saints of Newark” (2021), the prequel movie to “The Sopranos.”But it was in two episodes of “Seinfeld” (1990-1998) that she made an indelible mark.Sporting a yellow apron and a New York attitude, Ms. Kates appeared in Season Five’s “The Dinner Party” as the bakery clerk who announces to Jerry and Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) that the store’s last treasured chocolate babka had been sold just ahead of them. Offered a cinnamon babka instead, Elaine calls it a “lesser” babka, to which Jerry objects, intoning, “Cinnamon takes a back seat to no babka.”The scene includes a memorable coughing fit by Ms. Kates’s character next to a wall of baked goods and her closing lines to a loitering Jerry and Elaine: “Can I get you anything else? How about a nice box of ‘scram’?”The episode also features Jerry’s exaltation of another New York bakery mainstay, the black and white cookie, as something of a model for better race relations. “Look to the cookie!” he declares.In an interview last year with “This Podcast Is Making Me Thirsty,” a podcast about “Seinfeld,” Ms. Kates recalled getting the part for which people would recognize her on Manhattan streets for decades.The whole writing staff, including Mr. Seinfeld and the show’s co-creator, Larry David, watched as she read her lines and delivered her cough in an audition. She had earlier auditioned for other small parts on “Seinfeld,” but the brassy counterwoman was her lucky break.Two seasons later, Ms. Kates, again in her yellow apron, reprised the role in the episode “The Rye.” This time she tells a crestfallen Jerry that the bakery’s last loaf of marble rye has been sold, complicating a plot to restore George into the good graces of his future in-laws.Ms. Kates devoted much of her time to running The Colony Theater in Burbank, Calif., of which she was a founding member. There, she and the actress Barbara Beckley were co-general managers from 1975 to 1981. She appeared in numerous Colony productions.“Kathy was New York through and through,” Ms Beckley said. “She did some wonderful roles with us.” But she added: “She was not a leading lady. She was much more of a young character actress, and not a Hollywood type at all.”Kathryn Jane Kates was born Jan. 29, 1948, in Queens. Her father, Louis Kates, was an electronics engineer. Her mother, Sylvia (Fagan) Kates, was an actress who, under the stage name Madelyn Cates, appeared on television in the hospital drama “St. Elsewhere” and the series “Fame” and played the eccentric concierge confronting Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) in the 1967 film version of “The Producers.”Ms. Kates grew up in Great Neck, N.Y., on Long Island, and graduated from Great Neck North Senior High. She studied acting at New York University.After graduating in 1971, she moved to Los Angeles in 1974 and focused on theater. Her early television credits included appearances on the legal drama “Matlock” in 1991 and other cameo roles in “Rachel Gunn, R.N.” and “Hudson Street.”In 1993, she married Joseph Pershes, an executive at a video distribution company. They divorced in 2006. In addition to her brother, she is survived by a sister, Mallory Kates.When asked in the podcast interview about appearing on “Seinfeld,” Ms. Kates responded that she was always grateful to have work. “I have loved every job I’ve ever had,” she said.And as for her babka preference? She favored chocolate. More

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    Stephen Colbert Sets the Mood for Valentine’s Day With His Viewers

    “Hey, don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here doing my thang — a long monologue,” Colbert joked.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.Bringing Sexy BackLate night celebrated Valentine’s Day by pointing to a new study reporting that Americans are having less sex than ever.Stephen Colbert said that his viewers were surely having a great holiday, joking, “It’s almost midnight and you’re doing the sexiest thing there is: You’re watching TV.”“I hope you’re having a sensual Valentine’s Day, which, if you’re watching this, you’re probably not.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“So, how’s it going out there? Looks like you’re having a great night. Just know I’m rooting for both of you — wait a second, all three of you.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Hey, don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here doing my thang — a long monologue. And maybe later, if we’re lucky, some Toyota commercials. And I’ve got 400 people in this room with me who just like to watch.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And I’m happy to help, because America could use a little help in the seduction department right now. Because according to new research, Americans are at a 30-year low for sex. And again, no judgment: Whatever doesn’t float your boat. I’m not going to kink-shame the jigsaw puzzle/Breathe Right Strip/lights out by 9 p.m. lifestyle.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The study says there are a number of possible reasons for it, including fewer people getting married, an aging population. But let’s be honest: We all know what the real reason is — unlimited porn. The same reason people at the Olive Garden are eating more breadsticks — it’s unlimited.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I think it’s weird having Valentine’s the day after the Super Bowl. I was out past midnight last night flipping SUVs and setting mattresses on fire, now I’m supposed to be romantic? I don’t know, I’m all charged up!” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (The Day After Edition)“Yesterday, as I hope you know, was Super Bowl Sunday, also known as — a.k.a. ‘Cryptocurrency Awareness Day.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s all crypto now. Even the halftime show, bloods versus the cryptos.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It was crypto and Peacock all day long. There were more ads for Peacock than there are living peacocks on the planet earth.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, and — it was supposed to be Mary J. Blige, but Snoop Dogg smoked all the j’s, so it was just Mary Blige.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But it really was quite a game. The big hits, the long draws, and that was just Snoop right before the halftime show.” — JAMES CORDEN“This is a headline in The New York Post today: ‘Snoop Dogg smokes weed right before star-studded Super Bowl halftime show.’ Yeah, no kidding. He smokes weed right before everything.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“For Snoop, that’s a performance-enhancing drug.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Two legends of hardcore gangsta rap, or as the kids today call them: Martha Stewart’s friend and the headphones guy.” — STEPHEN COLBERT, on Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre“I was so excited and nervous my palms were sweaty, knees weak, arms were heavy. There was vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingTrevor Noah dedicated Monday night’s “The Daily Show” to a conversation with musician India.Arie about Joe Rogan, unconscious racism and why she took her music off Spotify.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightJohn Oliver will sit down with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutIvan Reitman in 2011. Matt Sayles/Associated PressFilmmaker Ivan Reitman, best known for “Ghostbusters,” “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” and “Stripes,” died on Saturday. More

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    ‘Space Dogs’ Review: To Boldly Go Where No Dog Has Gone Before

    … Some never to return. This new Cold War musical about the Soviet-American space race pays tribute to the pups who preceded the cosmonauts.We’re in 1957, the height of the Cold War. The Soviets and Americans are racing to space, and the Soviets have pulled ahead by launching the first human-made object into the Earth’s orbit. The next goal on the horizon: sending a man into space. But before that, there was Laika, a stray dog from Moscow who was the sole living occupant of the spacecraft Sputnik 2, which orbited the Earth. Sputnik fell from space eventually, but Laika did not survive the trip.Now Laika has been resurrected as the subject of a vapid new musical, “Space Dogs,” an MCC Theater production that opened on Sunday and that stars its creators, Nick Blaemire and Van Hughes.Directed by Ellie Heyman, “Space Dogs” recounts the story of Laika, the best known of the dogs that Soviet scientists trained for space travel. In this retelling, a scientist known by the code name Chief Designer led that initiative.Parts of the show are told from Laika’s perspective, from doggie diary entries and songs (Laika is played by a plushie that is mostly handled and voiced by Blaemire). Other parts come from the perspective of the chief designer, played by Hughes. The rest of the scenes break the fourth wall, providing historical and political context. It’s informative, in a slipshod way, but also hopelessly cheesy, packed with dad jokes, puns, silly accents and even a doggie beauty contest. “Space Dogs” gives off the vibe of a B-grade educational children’s show — though one with the occasional vulgarity amid the bleak material.One oddly peppy song recounts how the chief designer, “driven by a void in the center of his chest,” to use a cliché from the show, was imprisoned in the gulag and tortured during the height of Stalin’s rule. And though no dogs were harmed in the making of this show, there are canine casualties and somber existential musings from the four-legged friends. Besides the Bowie-esque chorus and spoken word of “Fill the Void,” and the alternating soft acoustic chords and heavy strumming of “Blessed by Two Great Oceans,” most of the musical’s songs are pretty uniform stylistically and generically upbeat — bouncy yet forgettable numbers that contribute little to the story.“Space Dogs” also telegraphs Pixar-level heartbreak through mawkish tunes. “What if I die? What if I fall out of the sky?” Laika sings, and later croons from beyond the grave about her dashed hopes for a family and delicious steak. It’s emotionally manipulative, especially for tenderhearted animal-lovers in the audience. The show then must walk a difficult line between a celebration of Laika and her canine colleagues (“History was changed by dogs!” the two actors declare) and commentary on the ambitions of two countries on the brink of mutual annihilation.Laika the dog in the spotlight of the musical “Space Dogs,” an MCC Theater production.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHughes and Blaemire attack their material with such enthusiasm; their earnestness is palpable, even taking into account the corniness of the book and their imperfect vocals (the songs they wrote accommodate their range and abilities).The rest of the production appears poised to overshadow the two stars and their story. Wilson Chin’s scenic design is compact and cluttered, full of drawers and speakers of different shapes and sizes stacked together Tetris-style alongside Soviet and American flags. Amanda Villalobos offers some fabulous puppet and prop design that, unfortunately, isn’t prominently showcased until the last third of the show.The lighting design (Mary Ellen Stebbins) is the boldest, full of neons and strobes. Projections, green screens and live cameras all figure prominently as well, and though the celestial lights and scenery are dazzling, all of these elements together offer a glut of visual information that is often overwhelming.What would my own dog think of such a show, I wondered as I left the theater. I’m betting he’d prefer to keep his paws on the ground.Space DogsThrough March 13 at MCC Theater, Manhattan; mcctheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    Isabel Torres, Actress Known for ‘Veneno’ on HBO Max, Dies at 52

    Ms. Torres was one of three transgender performers to play Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez, a beloved Spanish television personality, in the eight-part streaming series.Isabel Torres, the Spanish actress best known for playing the transgender singer and television personality Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez in the HBO Max series “Veneno,” died on Friday. She was 52.Ms. Torres’s family confirmed her death in a statement on her official Instagram account. The statement did not specify a cause or say where she died.In recent years, Ms. Torres had documented her treatments for lung cancer on Instagram. In November, she shared a video in which she said she had been told she had only about two months to live.“Let’s see if I get over it,” she said. “And if not,” she added, “what are we going to do? Life is like that.” She said the video would be her last, though she continued to post photographs for several weeks.Ms. Torres had acted sporadically since the mid-1990s before she found her largest audience in 2020 in “Veneno,” as one of three transgender performers who portrayed Ms. Rodríguez, a transgender singer and television personality. In the show, Ms. Rodríguez, who was known as “La Veneno” (“The Poison”), rises to fame after being interviewed by a television journalist in a park in Madrid where she had been working as a prostitute. She becomes a fixture on Spanish television and the most prominent transgender person in the country before her death in 2016 at 52.“Veneno” is based on the book “Listen! Not a Whore, Not a Saint: The Memories of La Veneno” by the journalist Valeria Vegas. Created and directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, the series debuted on the Spanish streaming platform Atresplayer Premium in 2020 and was then picked up by HBO Max.Ms. Torres was the oldest of the three actors who played Ms. Rodríguez in the eight-part series. In one Instagram post, Ms. Torres said it was the role of a lifetime, adding that she had gained weight to transform herself for it.For her performance, she won an Ondas Award for best actress in a television series.Ms. Torres was born on July 14, 1969, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands, according to imdb.com.In 1996, she became the first Canarian woman to have her gender legally changed on her identification, according to the Spanish news outlet Las Provincias.In 2005, she became the first transgender woman to be a candidate for the title of Las Palmas Carnival Queen, Las Provincias reported. Last year, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria honored her as its “favorite daughter.”Information about her survivors was not immediately available.In an interview with The Advocate last year, Ms. Torres said that she was surprised to discover how much she had in common with Ms. Rodríguez when she was cast in “Veneno,” and that she had seized on those similarities to shape her performance.“I think in it there was a lot of me, and in her there was a lot of all of us,” she said. “I never thought we would have a lot of similarities, and at the end, after seeing the character, learning her story, and learning to love her through her wounds, I understood that we share a lot in common.” More