Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 88 Shares169 Views

    in Television

    Golden Globes Winners 2023: The Complete List

    The winning films, TV shows, actors and production teams at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards.Going into a typical awards show, the big question is, of course, who and what will win the top honors. This year’s Golden Globes ceremony is not a typical awards show.The 80th Golden Globe Awards will be the first edition of the annual spectacle to be on TV since an ethics, finance and diversity scandal involving the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group behind the awards, led NBC to decide not to air the 2022 ceremony. So the biggest question is really whether the show’s organizers can win back the trust of viewers, the network and the Hollywood figures whose presence it relies on.Still, there will be formal winners. As in years past, the show will hand out honors in both film and TV categories. Nominees in the top film categories include “The Fabelmans,” “Tár,” “Elvis,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Banshees of Inisherin.” TV shows up for multiple awards include “Abbott Elementary,” “House of the Dragon,” “Better Call Saul” and “The Crown.”The ceremony is set to air on Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time (5 p.m. Pacific time) on NBC, and to be streamed on NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock. Follow below for updates as winners are announced. More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Theater

    The Riverside Drive Apartment Where a Broadway Play Was Born

    “Between Riverside and Crazy,” Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning script, is set in a rent-controlled apartment that was inspired by the playwright’s own.The world of “Between Riverside and Crazy,” the Stephen Adly Guirgis play that opened on Broadway last month, is confined to a rent-controlled Upper West Side apartment building, where the dark comedy spools out over kitchen table bickering and rooftop joint passing.It’s the kind of New York City apartment that has stayed in the family despite rising rents and a landlord bent on eviction — the kind of apartment that Guirgis himself inherited from his father, an Egyptian immigrant who managed a restaurant at Grand Central and had little else to pass on when he died.Like the one in the play, the real Riverside Drive apartment is a “grand old railroad flat with chandeliers and a river view,” as Guirgis’s introduction to the play reads, with “beautiful fixtures, family mementos and antique furniture competing for survival with dust, stains, garbage, leaks and unattended junk.”About a decade ago, Guirgis started gathering actors there to read his developing play, about a Black New York City police officer who was shot while off duty at a bar by a white officer and has been seeking justice ever since.A fixture of the living room readings was Stephen McKinley Henderson, a friend and frequent visitor whom Guirgis had imagined in the lead role from the beginning. A parade of well-known actors participated in the readings on Riverside Drive along the West 80s, including John Leguizamo, Ellen Burstyn and Chris Rock, whose Broadway debut was in a Guirgis play.“The first time I read it, it was 15 pages,” Henderson said. “And as it grew, it grew on me.”Colón-Zayas and the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis at his Riverside Drive apartment in 2014, the year the play premiered Off Broadway.Monique Carboni The play that developed from those readings became a patchwork of autobiography and fiction, organized around an idea based on a local news story from the 1990s. Directed by Austin Pendleton, “Between Riverside and Crazy” went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in drama after premiering at Atlantic Theater Company in 2014 and running Off Broadway for a second time in 2015. (In that production, Ron Cephas Jones, a friend of Guirgis’s who once lived at the four-bedroom Riverside Drive apartment, played the lead character’s son, Junior.)Eight years after its premiere, the play has landed on Broadway — the Second Stage production at the Helen Hayes Theater still stars Henderson, with Common now playing Junior — in a radically altered landscape.Since the actors first gathered at Guirgis’s apartment, police shootings of Black men have fueled waves of protest. The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer in 2020 reignited the movement, with myriad industries, including theater, facing calls for large-scale racial justice efforts. In addition, rent rates in New York City have been soaring, boxing out lower-income residents from once-affordable neighborhoods, and evictions have picked back up after a pandemic lull.The actors who have inhabited their characters for years say they approach the work with a new depth and personal understanding, but the dialogue remains almost entirely the same. One short line was added, from Junior, a parolee who struggles to get the kind of love from his father that he received from his recently deceased mother.“Pops, it’s 2014,” Junior says, situating the audience in time. Guirgis said he asked that the line be added to prevent references to Donald J. Trump and Rudy Giuliani from sounding outdated.The actress Liza Colón-Zayas, who has been involved since early script readings as a character called the Church Lady, said people who have seen this production and previous ones (including her mother) are convinced that the play has been significantly altered over the years.In the play, a widower fights to keep his home and win a long-running lawsuit against the New York Police Department, as messy relationships and messier politics surface among his housemates and guests.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThough the writing is largely unchanged, the actors approach the work with a new depth and personal understanding in light of the cultural conversation surrounding police shootings since the play’s premiere.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“The writing didn’t change,” Colón-Zayas said. “The pain, and the years, and what we’ve survived has changed this play in ways that I can’t exactly articulate.”The seed for the story came in 1994, when a white off-duty New York City police officer opened fire on a Black undercover transit officer on a Manhattan subway platform, seriously injuring him. The white officer, Peter Del-Debbio, said he was responding to a shotgun that had discharged and had fired when he saw the plainclothes transit officer, Desmond Robinson, running with a gun.Part of the white officer’s defense was that the Black officer wasn’t wearing his badge or the color that would identify him as a plainclothes officer, so Guirgis remembered the story as the “color of the day” case. Del-Debbio was convicted of second-degree assault and was sentenced to probation and community service.“It always stayed with me,” Guirgis said.Years later, the playwright said, he was visiting Henderson when the veteran actor, having health troubles, remarked that his career would be slowing down.“I just lied and I was like, ‘Oh I started writing two plays for you: one where you’re the lead and one where you’re the supporting,’” Guirgis said. “When I went home I was like, OK, now I’ve got to come up with something.”By the time he started holding script readings, Colón-Zayas, who met Guirgis when they were students at State University of New York at Albany, had been visiting the Riverside Drive apartment for decades. When Guirgis’s mother died in 2006, he recalled, his family returned to the apartment to find Colón-Zayas and other friends cleaning it.After his mother’s death, Guirgis moved into the apartment, getting his father a dog, Papi, for additional companionship. The apartment became a haven for friends who needed one, Guirgis said, including a recovering addict who started to see Guirgis’s father like he was his own.“Anybody who walked into my apartment with me or with my sister was automatically given a blank check of love and acceptance,” he said.Common, right, is making his Broadway debut as Junior. He said part of what attracted him to the role was the message of redemption.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesThe unconventional household is intimately depicted in the play. The ex-cop, Walter Washington, welcomes his son’s sweet but clueless girlfriend, Lulu (Rosal Colón), and his friend Oswaldo (Victor Almanzar), who spent time in prison and is trying to stay sober.Like Guirgis did for his father, Junior brings a dog into the household to keep him company; Walter calls the dog by a choice curse word instead of his name, but the emotional attachment is apparent underneath the derision. (Papi, the fox-like mutt that Guirgis had adopted for his father, died recently, and the cast has mourned the loss of an original attendee of those early script readings.)A stubborn and ailing alcoholic, Walter gripes about his housemates and expresses love begrudgingly, but the core of the play is his inclination to welcome them into his home no matter their mistakes.“As with all of his characters, it’s a lesson in, ‘Who are we to judge anybody, really?’” Colón said.Common, who is making his Broadway debut as Junior and has done advocacy work within the prison system, said part of what attracted him to the role was the message of redemption.When he entered the cast as the only newcomer in a tight-knit group of actors, he received a welcome not unlike the kind Walter tends to give: matter of fact but unconditional.“One day Liza came up to me,” he recalled, referring to Colón-Zayas, “and she said, ‘You aight, you aight. You can roll with us.’”(Colón-Zayas was replaced in the role this month by Maria-Christina Oliveras because of a scheduling conflict.)In the play, as Walter fights to hold on to his home and win his long-running lawsuit against the New York Police Department, a series of characters passes through the apartment — ostensibly there to help a solitary widower. Two police colleagues gather for dinner and a serving of nostalgia; the Church Lady comes to chat and give communion.But in “Riverside,” the intentions of the houseguests are never clear-cut. The relationships get messy, and the underlying politics of the story even messier.Henderson’s character is portrayed as both noble and, at times, misguided. He maintains both a righteous grudge against the New York Police Department and a fierce pride for it. His children, biological and not, are both trying to change their lives for the better and backsliding into old ways.Guirgis is well aware that the persistent character flaws have the tendency to rankle some audience members who would have preferred to see their worldviews affirmed more emphatically. But he’s interested in telling a more complicated story, and says he thinks present-day audiences will see that, just as they did in 2014.“If the characters all just have white hats and black hats, then we’re watching a cartoon, and there’s nothing to learn from it,” he said. “I try to make it messy but I try to lead with love.” More

  • 125 Shares189 Views

    in Theater

    Ben Platt to Lead ‘Parade’ Revival on Broadway This Season

    The musical’s exploration of antisemitism is timely, with rising concern about the issue in the United States and beyond.Ben Platt, the Tony-winning star of “Dear Evan Hansen,” will return to Broadway next month to lead the cast in a revival of “Parade,” a musical about an early-20th-century lynching of a Jewish businessman in Georgia.The revival, directed by Michael Arden (a two-time Tony nominee, for revivals of “Once on This Island” and “Spring Awakening”), had a seven-performance run at New York City Center last fall. Platt plays Leo Frank, a factory boss convicted of killing a young girl in a case tainted by antisemitism; Micaela Diamond, who previously played the youngest version of the title character in “The Cher Show” on Broadway, will co-star as Frank’s wife, Lucille.The show, with songs by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Alfred Uhry and co-conceived by Hal Prince, had a brief run on Broadway that opened in 1998; it was commercially unsuccessful, but won Tony Awards for both book and score. The history it depicts is real: Frank was convicted in 1913, lynched in 1915 (at age 31), and in 1986 he was posthumously pardoned.The musical’s exploration of antisemitism has made it more timely now, when there is rising concern about the issue in the United States and beyond. The City Center production garnered uniformly strong reviews: in The New York Times, Juan A. Ramírez called it “the best-sung musical in many a New York season.”The “Parade” revival will begin previews Feb. 21 and open March 16 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, where the musical “Almost Famous” closed on Sunday. The “Parade” production is planning a short run, to Aug. 6.The revival is being produced by Seaview, a company created by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea that previously produced “Slave Play” and “POTUS,” and Ambassador Theater Group, a large British theater company that operates two Broadway houses (the Hudson and the Lyric) and also produces shows. More

  • 88 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    Jimmy Kimmel: McCarthy Won After Near-Knockout Punches

    “It got so out of control, I thought I was watching the Oscars,” Kimmel said of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s 15-round ordeal.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.‘A Full Ali-Frazier’After 15 rounds of voting, Kevin McCarthy was sworn in as speaker of the House of Representatives early on Saturday morning.Jimmy Kimmel called it “a full Ali-Frazier,” saying “it was the political equivalent of handing your kid an iPad to shut him up.”“Things really started to spin out on the floor of the House. It got so out of control, I thought I was watching the Oscars.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Ahead of the last round of voting for House speaker, Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers appeared to charge at fellow Republican Representative Matt Gaetz. And, out of habit, Gaetz yelled ‘I’ve never even met your daughter!’” — SETH MEYERS“That’s a face mask violation — 15 yards. It was really the most exciting hour of cable news in quite some time.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Oh, my God. I don’t know if men should hold political office. They’re just too emotional!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s one thing to hold a dude back by his shoulders, but by his face? Is this the House of Representatives or a Long Island wedding?” — SETH MEYERS“Republicans resorting to violence on the House floor? What a perfect way to honor the two-year anniversary of Jan. 6.” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (New But Not Improved Edition)“After 15 rounds of voting, McCarthy pulled off the impossible — he got people to watch C-SPAN for an entire week.” — JIMMY FALLON“I can’t even imagine what McCarthy was going through. It must have felt like sitting outside Applebee’s and waiting four days for your disc to buzz.” — JIMMY FALLON“McCarthy was like, ‘I’m just glad it didn’t go to a 16th vote. That would have been humiliating.’” — JIMMY FALLON“We have a new, not improved, but we have a new speaker of the House.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“They chose McCarthy the same way you choose Thai food on New Year’s Day: ‘You guys want Thai? Well, nothing else is open!’” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingThe actress Gwyneth Paltrow offered some post-divorce dating advice on Monday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightPrince Harry will pop by Tuesday’s “Late Show” to discuss his new memoir, “Spare,” with Stephen Colbert.Also, Check This Out“M3GAN,” about a robot doll programmed to befriend and protect a young girl (Violet McGraw), riffs on some of the classic conundrums that arise when a machine develops humanlike qualities.Universal PicturesIn the scary movie “M3GAN,” the titular robot doll’s dancing is part of the horror. More

  • 163 Shares169 Views

    in Theater

    Frigid Fringe Festival Is ‘Uncensored’ No More After Pulling a Work About Gender

    The Frigid Fringe Festival in New York said it would no longer bill itself as “uncensored” after deciding not to move ahead with a performance it deemed anti-trans.Since its 2007 founding, the Frigid Fringe Festival in New York has selected the plays it produces randomly, like many other fringe festivals around the world that aim to highlight voices from outside the theatrical establishment. It boasted that it was both “unjuried,” since it did not rely on gatekeeping panels, and “uncensored.”But that changed this past fall, when Frigid decided for the first time that it would not stage one of the productions it had chosen. A staffer at the festival had red-flagged the work, “Poems on Gender,” after its author, David Lee Morgan, submitted a blurb drawn from the show that began: “There are two sexes, male and female.” Further investigation led organizers to conclude that it “featured material we deem to be anti-trans.”In canceling its production of “Poems on Gender,” Frigid announced that it would stop calling itself “uncensored,” and that it would reserve the right to withdraw future plays. “Our commitment to freedom of expression does not obligate us to lend our efforts to platform what we consider to be hate speech, or even just very offensive and hurtful speech,” it said in a news release. It added, “In this case we choose to just say no.”The festival was “uncensored” no longer, becoming the latest example of a wider rebalancing in the worlds of culture, publishing and academia, as many institutions that once emphasized freedom of expression and artistic license have curbed speech that they deem hateful or offensive to members of marginalized groups.Morgan, a busker and spoken-word poet based in London who performs “Poems on Gender” as a recited monologue, said in an interview that he did not expect Frigid to tolerate absolutely everything. “If I were presenting a recruiting film for the Ku Klux Klan,” he said, “I’d be astounded if they’d be fine with putting it on.”On Being Transgender in AmericaFeeling Unsafe: Intimidation and violence against gay and transgender Americans has spread this year — driven heavily, extremism experts say, by increasingly inflammatory political messaging.Puberty Blockers: These drugs can ease anguish among young transgender people and buy time to weigh options. But concerns are growing about their long-term effects.‘Top Surgery’: Small studies suggest that breast removal surgery improves transgender teenagers’ well-being, but data is sparse. Some state leaders oppose such procedures for minors.Generational Shift: The number of young people who identify as transgender in the United States has nearly doubled in recent years, according to a new report.But he disputed that his show, which he performed last year at the prominent Edinburgh Festival Fringe, was deserving of censorship. “Is it reactionary?” he said. “Is it anti-trans? Is it bigotry to say there are two sexes, male and female?”Erez Ziv, a founder of Frigid New York and its managing artistic director, said he could not ask his increasingly diverse staff, which includes several transgender and nonbinary people, to be part of a production that denied their realities. The Frigid Fringe Festival, which will run in February and March, supplies shows with theatrical space and publicity, and tech and front-of-house workers. Productions keep all box office revenue. (Frigid relies on grants and small fees from the productions.)“In November, I boastfully said to an entire room full of fringe producers in North America that I would allow a show to happen no matter what,” Ziv said. “But then it happened: We actually got a show that I just couldn’t ask my staff to work.”“I support free speech,” he added. “I think all speech should be legally protected, but not all speech should be platformed.”David Lee Morgan said he did not believe his work “Poems on Gender” deserved censorship: “Is it bigotry to say there are two sexes, male and female?”Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesBefore deciding, Ziv, who never reads production scripts for Frigid, viewed several online videos of Morgan performing other works. He also consulted a colleague: the co-artistic director at Frigid, Jimmy Lovett, partly because Lovett is trans.Lovett said that some of Morgan’s online performances of related works were “very minimizing of our experiences” and framed transition-related surgery and other medical care as “damaging to the body rather than necessary and healthy for the individual.”In sometimes elliptical language, “Poems on Gender” raises questions about how some people define their genders (“You tell me I can’t be your friend/Unless I believe you are a real woman/I can’t do that”) and about transition-related medical care (“You took a rainbow and forged it into a knife”).Morgan, who grew up in Washington State, describes himself as left-wing and feminist and said that “Poems on Gender” was partly inspired by conversations with trans friends from the spoken-word poetry scene. “I’m looking at people I have a lot of respect and unity with, and then seeing where we disagree,” he said, noting that he believes some of the friendships have ended because of his views.Frigid’s evolution away from its stage-anything ethos is striking, because the festival exists precisely to ensure that even unusual or outré works get a chance to go up in New York City.Fringe festivals share a mandate to elevate edgier voices. The concept originated when troupes that were not invited to the first Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 put on a counter-festival, which a journalist later described as “round the fringe of official festival drama.” They have earned a reputation for giving opportunities to new talent: the hit Broadway musical “Six,” about the wives of Henry VIII, was written by college students and was one of the 3,398 shows the Edinburgh Festival Fringe put on in 2017.Xela Batchelder, a veteran fringe producer who studied fringe festivals for her Ph.D. dissertation, said that generally “the audience is the curator,” and that it would be a challenge for festivals to begin deciding which works to stage and which to rule out. “It’s going to be very hard for the arts organizations and the artists trying to figure out how to work through all this,” she said.The fringe model has been tested in recent years. The Chicago Fringe Festival, which like Frigid selected works entirely by lottery, faced backlash in 2017 for staging “A Virtuous Pedophile.” (Its author, Sean Neely, said the play did not advocate pedophilia.) The outcry was “very detrimental” to the festival, said Anne Cauley, its executive director at the time, and the festival’s largest foundation sponsor declined to renew its support the next year. The festival ceased after 2018.The Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, whose guiding principles call for convening no juries for selecting plays and allowing no interference with artistic content, added a new plank in 2017 that said, “Festivals will promote and model inclusivity, diversity and multiculturalism.”A spokeswoman for the association, Michele Gallant, said that Frigid, which is one of its members, had still abided by the principle that says “festival producers do not interfere with the artistic content of each performance,” because it had not altered the show — but simply pulled it entirely.Morgan still hopes to take “Poems on Gender” to other fringe festivals.He won the Canadian association’s lottery in November, which gives him entry to fringe festivals next summer in the cities of Victoria and Vancouver, in British Columbia. The Vancouver Fringe declined to comment, and an official at the Victoria Fringe did not respond to a request for comment. More

  • 75 Shares169 Views

    in Theater

    Alex Brightman Lays ‘Beetlejuice’ to Rest

    A concussion nearly derailed the actor’s fan-favorite turn as the madcap, black-and-white striped ghoul. But he recovered in time for the closing show.As Alex Brightman disappeared through the doorway to the Netherworld one last time at the Marquis Theater on Sunday night, his black-and-white-striped Beetlejuice suit enveloped by a cloud of smoke, he uttered a few special parting words:“Goooodbye, Broadway!”And he meant it.“I’m very aware that it really could be the last time I am on Broadway,” said Brightman, 35, who for parts of the past four years has played the ghostly guide to the other side in “Beetlejuice,” the Broadway musical based on the 1988 Tim Burton film about a face-off between a goth girl and a devious demon. “So it’s a humbling experience to be up there and to be able to share and be vulnerable.”After his first entrance of the final show, Brightman was met with a two-minute standing ovation.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesHis farewell wasn’t quite the one he had anticipated. At a Christmas Eve performance, Brightman slammed into the show’s giant sandworm backstage at a full sprint — when a door hadn’t opened, Brightman tried an ill-fated alternate route — leaving him with a concussion.“I didn’t realize what had happened,” he said. “I figured I just banged my head.”Symptoms abruptly surfaced two days later, and after spending the next week nauseous, achy and painfully sensitive to light, he thought he’d played his final performance — maybe ever. (Three of the show’s standby and understudy Beetlejuices, Andrew Kober, Elliott Mattox and Will Blum, filled in while Brightman was out.)“I thought I wasn’t going to recover,” said Brightman, who was funny and lively in the eighth-floor cocktail lounge at the Marriott Marquis hotel before getting into costume for Sunday evening’s performance. “It felt like one long 10- or 11-day sickness in one day.”But things improved about a week ago, he said, and after doing a four-hour rehearsal on Thursday, he got the all-clear to return for the show’s final three evening performances.The 1,602 audience members at the sold-out performance on Sunday night, many of whom sported black-and-white striped suits and green wigs, showered Brightman with appreciation. (Everyone in attendance received a special Playbill with a silver sticker on the cover that read “It’s the Final Showtime.”) It started with his first entrance, when he received two minutes of applause and a standing ovation.Brightman received a Tony Award nomination in 2019 for his performance as Beetlejuice.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times“I’ve never had that happen before,” said Brightman, who has been in six Broadway shows, earning Tony Award nominations for his role in “Beetlejuice” and as Dewey Finn in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation of “School of Rock.”Though “Beetlejuice” opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theater in April 2019 to mixed reviews (the New York Times critic Ben Brantley called it “absolutely exhausting”), it became a fan favorite — dozens of them would turn up as Lydia, the Maitlands and, of course, Beetlejuice to compete in the musical’s preshow costume contests. Still, the show was handed a closing notice in December of that year when what the Shubert Organization saw as a potentially lucrative production of “The Music Man” needed its real estate. Then the pandemic happened, and the production shuttered in March 2020.The surging sales before the closure led producers to reopen the show last year at the Marquis Theater in April. But attendance dipped again over the summer, and producers announced in October that the show would close in January after 679 performances. (A national touring production began in December, and there are also coming international versions in Brazil and Japan.)To protect his vocal cords, Brightman creates Beetlejuice’s signature gruff voice using a technique called ventricular fold phonation, in which he vibrates the cartilage in his throat.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesBrightman and Elizabeth Teeter, who plays Lydia, paid tribute to the show’s fans, known as “Netherlings,” on Sunday night, holding up signs at the curtain call that read “Hey guys” and “Love you guys!”“This is a show about death that’s actually really a celebration of life,” the show’s director, Alex Timbers, said from the stage after a purple-and-green confetti storm. “And you all have given us life.”Before the show and directly afterward in his dressing room — sweaty and smiling in a white V-neck stained with green and red blotches as his team helped him remove his makeup for the final time — Brightman reflected on parting ways with the ghost with the most, the show’s fervent fan following and what’s next for him (other than, of course, sleeping).These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“This is a show about death that’s actually really a celebration of life,” said Alex Timbers, the show’s director, addressing the house on closing night. “And you all have given us life.”Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesYou first read the part in 2017. How are you feeling after tonight’s performance?Exhausted. It was very cathartic. I’m thrilled I got to close it after six years.Do you have any lingering effects from the concussion?I still have headaches, but they’re not pounding. I take Aleve. And my doctor said I will probably be prone to more headaches throughout the rest of my life because of it, but nothing too crazy.How important was it to you to make it back for the closing night?I’m not necessarily one of those people that believes in making that miraculous appearance at that last performance because he has to. I value my health, and I want to do more things after this. So running the risk of passing out onstage or reinjuring myself if I wasn’t ready was not in the cards.What has it been like starring in a show with such a devoted fan base?It never, ever gets old. The “Beetlejuice” fans are the warmest fans that I’ve ever encountered in the six Broadway shows I’ve done. It’s a lot of me in there, so for 1,500 people to accept my character in the show and my style of absurdity and comedy and improv is extremely cathartic and emotional.What is it like to spend so long with the same character?The last thing I want to do is be bored with anything I do, and anything this long has that danger, but this part allows me to discover new things not every night, but every minute. I have the ability to be a bit topical, a bit loose — it doesn’t feel like I’m on a track. That’s made it easy to do for six years.The show developed a devoted fan base who call themselves “Netherlings.” They frequently attended shows dressed as “Beetlejuice” characters.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesWhat’s a moment that’s different in every show?There’s a part in the opening number where I have a stand mic and do a Frank Sinatra impression for a “Tip Your Waitress” kind of thing. And in it, there’s space for me to say a couple of things if I want to. The other night, I just screamed “The Kardashians!” and it got a laugh for no reason. And then right after I said, “I can’t keep up with them.” “Gangnam Style!” has also been a popular one.What did your first attempts at the Beetlejuice voice sound like?At my first audition, I was like, “I don’t know how to do a Michael Keaton impression, so let me just try something.” And it went fine, but I paid for it for two days — my voice was on fire.How do you do it now for eight shows a week without damaging your vocal cords?It’s called ventricular fold phonation, and it means you vibrate the cartilage in your throat alongside your vocal cords. I was able to figure out through trial and error that it’s the same muscles I use to clear my throat. I could do this interview better — and more healthfully —[switches to Beetlejuice voice] in this voice than just talking to you with [reverts to normal voice] this voice, because right now I’m using my vocal cords, and vocal cords get tired. Cartilage doesn’t get tired — there’s no nerves, it’s not a muscle.“This part allows me to discover new things not every night, but every minute,” Brightman said.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesWhat’s next for you?I sold a cartoon series to Warner Bros., “Cleaners,” which is a raunchy, slightly musical comedy about a crew from Boston that does biohazard cleanups — crime scenes, meth labs, hoarders. And I wrote a play called “Everything Is Fine,” about the one-year aftermath of a mall shooting from the perspective of the family of the perpetrator, who is no longer with us. Cynthia Nixon directed a number of the readings, and we’re hoping to continue getting that somewhere in New York. And I’m working on a musical with Universal Theatrical with my writing partner, which is an adaptation of the film “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” about a kid who checks himself into a psychiatric ward.So, a lot of writing.I’ve been onstage for 15 years now, kind of consistently, and I’m a little Broadway-ed and musical-ed out, which I know is a very privileged thing to say. But what comes with doing this is scrutiny. People look at you and judge you every night. I want to do my own thing for a second — to just let my work speak for itself and not have to defend it with a musical number.Would you ever want to return to “Beetlejuice”?What I know is that I have the right of first refusal for a London production, were it to happen. There are no designs for it to happen just yet that I know of, but I would consider it.“I’ve been onstage for 15 years now, kind of consistently,” Brightman said. “I want to do my own thing for a second.”Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesLet’s do a quick round of confirm or deny.Ooh, yes!You have done the voice in a public setting that is not the theater.Confirm. A few months ago, I went into Starbucks and said [in his Beetlejuice voice] “Can I just have one grande Pike Place with a little bit of half and half and just one Splenda?” They said, “What’s your name?” And I said [in Beetlejuice voice], “B.J.” And then they said, “Coffee for B.J.?” And I said [in Beetlejuice voice], “Thanks so much.” And I left. It’s New York. I was the least weird thing to walk into that Starbucks that day.You get nervous when you know someone famous will be at the show.Deny. The only person who would make me nervous would be Mel Brooks, because I revere him to a point that is probably pretty unhealthy.If you had to choose between marrying Beetlejuice or having to wear a single pair of used workout clothes for the rest of your life, you would —Marry Beetlejuice, if only for the fact that I know how much I sweat. More

  • 100 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    How Damar Hamlin’s Recovery Allowed Us to Breathe

    This weekend the narrative around the Buffalo Bills player flipped, from soul-searching about the violence of America’s most popular sport to something more hopeful.Last week came the horror of watching Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills safety, suffer cardiac arrest live on television, followed by days of national soul-searching about the violence of America’s most popular sport. This weekend, the narrative flipped.On Saturday night, before the Tennessee Titans and the Jacksonville Jaguars faced off for a division title and a trip to the playoffs, both teams gathered at midfield, then knelt and prayed together. Sunday afternoon, on the usually macho CBS pregame show, Boomer Esiason confessed his love for each of the other panelists individually, which prompted Nate Burleson, another former player, to say, “Love you, too, brother.”Before the opening kickoff of Sunday’s game pitting the Bills against the New England Patriots, Jim Nantz, the first-string play-by-play announcer for CBS, then delivered the N.F.L.’s message: “What we’ve really seen this week is a glimpse of humanity at its very best.” Nantz’s partner in the broadcasting booth, Tony Romo, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback, underscored the point. “People came together and put their differences aside,” he said. What started as a tragedy, he added, “has slowly turned into a celebration of life.”So what’s the ultimate takeaway? If Hamlin weren’t making a remarkable recovery, off his breathing tube, talking, tweeting and neurologically intact, it would probably be different. There would still be the outpouring of public good wishes but not the joy or shared pride and sense of common purpose. Like the movies and other forms of popular culture, football is a national barometer, after all. And the last week seems to have illuminated the country’s erratic condition — the violence but also the longing, or at least the posture of longing, for unity in polarizing times.Looking back, what made Hamlin’s collapse all the more shocking last Monday night was how it followed the most routine of tackles. At this point it’s a fair guess that no play all season has been watched more often online. The telecast didn’t keep showing the tackle out of a sense of decency. Instead, cameras lingered over the players’ anguished reactions, showing teammates huddling around Hamlin’s body on the field, weeping and praying while medics struggled to save him for nearly 10 minutes.On Saturday night, before the Tennessee Titans and the Jacksonville Jaguars faced off for a division title and a trip to the playoffs, both teams gathered at midfield, then knelt and prayed together.Gary Mccullough/Associated PressThe scene may have summoned to some minds famous paintings by artists like Giotto, Titian, Caravaggio and Dürer of mourning crowds surrounding Jesus as he is taken down from the cross or entombed. For centuries, church- and museum-goers have gaped, with something approximating the same mix of fear and confusion, at these pictures of violence and despair. America certainly didn’t invent rubbernecking.Or violent sports. Twenty-nine Formula 1 drivers died during the ’60s in Formula 1 or other racing cars; 18 during the ’70s. Auto racing was popular in Europe and considered all the more glamorous for being dangerous. Things changed after the death of Ayrton Senna, the sublime Brazilian driver, in 1994. New regulations and technologies arrived. A culture of safety emerged. In the United States, navel-gazing about football and violence is nothing new. Between 1900 and 1905, 15 years before the National Football League was founded, at least 45 college players died from broken necks and backs, concussions and internal injuries they suffered playing football, according to The Washington Post. The death toll troubled Americans enough that President Theodore Roosevelt and a number of university presidents pressed for reforms. Today we gather in front of our screens by the tens of millions to witness collisions of increasingly spectacular brutality with the expectation that modern players, vastly better trained and equipped than they were a century ago, will pop back up like John Wick and Spider-Man.Of course, we know that sometimes they don’t. The long-term effects of concussions have increasingly become a topic of public concern, alongside gun control, mass shootings and crime. But Americans juggle conflicted feelings about the violent game. Some parents, and even former N.F.L. stars, are discouraging their young children from taking up tackle football. At the same time, football, like no other sport, crosses politics, gender, race, age and class in the United States. N.F.L. games accounted for a whopping 82 of the 100 most-watched television broadcasts last year, according to Nielsen, making it the last remaining form of water cooler entertainment in our atomized culture.Not coincidentally pro football only took off as a national sport during the late ’50s and ’60s when it embraced television, which marketed football’s brutality as a counterweight to baseball’s languor. The league cooked up documentaries and highlights shows, memorably narrated for years by John Facenda, the voice of God. “The game is a time warp where the young dream of growing up and the old remember youth,” he intoned. As the writer James Surowiecki put it, NFL Films “tried to simultaneously convey the gritty reality of the game and mythicize it in a Homeric fashion.”This was also the era of America’s metastasizing debacle in Vietnam. A 1967 documentary, “They Call It Pro Football,” exalted N.F.L. linebackers who, like American soldiers in Da Nang and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, were on “search-and-destroy” missions. Head coaches like Vince Lombardi were lionized as tactical generals leading self-sacrificing armies of clean-cut soldiers to victory. The nation was on the verge of coming apart and football needed its own counter culture representative, who arrived in the green and white uniform of the New York Jets in the upstart American Football League. While campuses were erupting with antiwar protests, the Jets’ playboy quarterback, Joe Namath, with his long hair, fur coats and bedroom eyes, famously predicted the Jets would beat the N.F.L.’s ultra-establishmentarian Baltimore Colts and win Super Bowl III.When the Jets won, football not only survived the upheaval. It came out richer, more popular than ever and unified. At least on Sundays, Americans could dream about Hollywood endings despite their divisions.We are again a nation divided, and reading more than ever into the meaning of the game and what, wishfully or otherwise, it says about us. Buffalo fans this Sunday suggested Hamlin’s recovery was a metaphor for the resilience of a city battered by storms, decline and crime. As if on cue, the Bills returned the opening kickoff against the Patriots for a touchdown, the first time the team had done that in 18 years. A nail-biter through the first half, Buffalo pulled away in the second. “We all won,” Hamlin tweeted from his hospital bed. As Nantz, the announcer, put it: “Love for Damar, it was definitely in the air. Not just here. All across this league, this nation.”Then he asked the melancholy question that seemed to sum up the week. “The love, the support, the prayers,” he said, “why can’t we live like that every day?” More

  • 150 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    Simona Tabasco, ‘White Lotus’ Fan Favorite, on the Best Parts of Italy

    The actress shares some of the places she loves the most, and the art that both inspires and disturbs her.The day Simona Tabasco got a callback for “The White Lotus” with the show’s creator, Mike White, she tested positive for Covid-19. So she auditioned over FaceTime and landed the part.A month later, she was on set in Sicily playing Lucia, one of the two local prostitutes — the other played by her real-life friend, Beatrice Grannò — who spend the television show’s second season charming and swindling Americans on vacation. By the time the season ended in December, the duo had become fan favorites, inspiring memes, think pieces, conspiracy theories and style tips.“I’ve never been part of a project of this magnitude, something that was so big and involves so many artists — people that, yes, are famous, but also such amazing artists,” Tabasco, 28, said in a video interview from Rome, where she plays an undercover police officer in the Italian TV series “I Bastardi di Pizzofalcone.”Speaking through a translator, the Neapolitan actress talked about why the city where “The White Lotus” was shot is so meaningful to her — as well as some of the other places she loves in Italy — and the horror movie she couldn’t stop thinking about even though it annoyed her. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Taormina It’s where we filmed “The White Lotus,” and it’s where I received an award for best young actor after my first film, “Perez,” at the film award ceremony Nastro d’Argento. One of the local cafes, Bam Bar, is known for its granita. My favorite flavor is almond. It became a tradition for Beatrice and me to have breakfast there together on days we didn’t have to wake up too early. Every time we went, we saw someone from the “White Lotus” cast or crew.Inside the World of ‘The White Lotus’The second season of “The White Lotus,” Mike White’s incisive satire of privilege set in a luxury resort, is available to stream on HBO.End of a Journey: The actress Jennifer Coolidge discussed the ending of the second season and where the series, already renewed for a third season, might go from here.Dressing Gen Z: The costume designer for “The White Lotus” sees your mean tweets about how the younger characters dress. She told us how she created the chaotic and divisive looks.Michael Imperioli: The “Sopranos” star is enjoying a professional renaissance after years of procedurals and indies. In the new season of “The White Lotus,” he tries his hand at comedy.F. Murray Abraham: The buzzy series is one of several featuring the actor, who at 83 is finding some of the most satisfying work of his career.2. Nuovo Cinema Olimpia This theater in central Rome is special for me. It has only two rooms, and it’s not like the other cinemas in the city. There are usually very few people, and it’s where I like to have movie marathons. I’ve spent hours in there watching films. Sometimes I just need to binge on movies, and for me, this is the perfect place to do it. Right after, I like to drink a beer and talk about what I’ve just seen with friends. It can sound a little boring, but I have so much fun during these kinds of days.3. Monti I used to live in this neighborhood with classmates way back when I was in acting school. Known as the artists’ quarters, it’s a beautiful area. It’s small, and it kind of gives you the feel of being in a little village, which is rare for such a big city like Rome. It’s also filled with vintage clothing stores, which I started going to because of auditions. My favorite vintage shop is called King Size.4. “Titane” I love this movie, which is a horror/sci-fi mix, because it disturbs me. It’s a film that annoys me. I went to see it and then I had to go see it again. I thought about it for days. And I think that’s how art should be — I love when art is that way. It’s something that you encounter by chance, or not, and then it changes your day or your life.5. Tate Modern Five years ago, I was staying in London for a month to enjoy the city and practice English, and I think I went every day for seven days. The first time I went in, I had this sense of shock because it looked like such a big empty space. I would go and listen to this tower of radios, Cildo Meireles’s “Babel,” and I was totally blown away. I’m not sure what the artist wanted to say, but that’s also the beauty of art. Maybe the artist had one idea and whoever witnesses an installation like that then has a different reaction.6. Kintsugi My favorite thing about visiting Japan in 2017 was seeing the art of kintsugi, which is their practice of putting back together broken things with gold and varnish. They turn something that seems like it no longer has purpose into something extremely beautiful through the act of repairing it. It’s a very powerful symbol of resilience.7. “Lo Potevo Fare Anch’io” by Francesco Bonami The title of the book translates to “I could have done it too,” which the author wrote because he wanted to bring people closer to and push people farther away from contemporary art, which I think is very provocative. One of the artists mentioned in the book is Robert Ryman, who creates these paintings and sculptures using only white paint, which is something that gives you the impression of being incredibly simple when you first think about it, but then you realize that it’s impossible to replicate. It tells you that art can be — and most of the time is — simple.8. Sziget Festival I went when I was 24. I wanted to see Budapest, because I think it’s a great European city to visit and to live in. During the day, I would explore local neighborhoods and in the evening, I would go to the festival. The setting is so crazy; it’s this island off Budapest with 60 different stages. It becomes difficult to see everything that you want to but attending is one of my favorite memories. I love music. One of my dreams is to go to Burning Man; it’s on my list.9. Naples I probably have a better relationship with Rome because it’s where I’ve built a life, but the thing I love about Naples is the state of mind that it puts me in. It reminds me of my family, of my childhood. Most of what I am and how I grew up — my mannerisms, the way I talk, the way I move — most of it comes from there. It’s something that I try to bring with me whenever I’m on set because it’s such a big part of who I am.10. “Je So’ Pazzo” You could classify Pino Daniele’s music as blues, but what we say in Naples is just that it’s “Pino’s music,” because it’s its own thing. He was so incredible because of his technical talent but also because of the way he used his music to express a moment in time in Italy, specifically in Naples. This song talks about Masaniello, a kind of spokesman of the Neapolitan people. It literally translates to “I’m crazy.” More