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    in Theater

    The Stars Come Out for George Clooney’s ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ Opening

    In the wake of President Trump unleashing a new series of tariffs that sent markets into a steep decline, a group of stars shoved into the Winter Garden Theater in Midtown Manhattan to see a play that lionizes the press, takes aim at right-wing politicians, and features actors talking about how they wake up in the morning unable to recognize the world around them.Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC were on the right side of the theater, a few rows behind Gayle King of CBS. Uma Thurman and Kylie Minogue hovered nearby.Even Jennifer Lopez was in the house, though that was not much of a surprise. The co-writer and star of the play she was about to see was George Clooney, who appeared alongside Ms. Lopez in the 1998 Steven Soderbergh caper “Out of Sight.”The play, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” is an adaptation of the 2005 film that Mr. Clooney directed and that takes place in the 1950s during the height of the red scare.It tells the story of Edward R. Murrow, the crusading CBS anchorman who used his platform to help bring about the downfall of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and end a government campaign against suspected American communists.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Review: Clooney, Fair and Balanced, in ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’

    George Clooney makes Edward R. Murrow a saint of sane journalism for a world that still needs one in a stage adaptation of the 2005 movie.“This just might do nobody any good” is a chancy first line for a play.Or maybe not too chancy at that, when the man who delivers it is George Clooney, and the man he’s portraying is Edward R. Murrow. This is, after all, Broadway, where glossy demigods of the left are loved.Still, Clooney has never previously appeared on its stages — “so … buckle up,” he writes in his bio.That Murrow has him beat in that regard, having appeared as a character in a musical called “Senator Joe,” is not surprising. He was, after all, a world-famous journalist whose first name might as well have been “crusading.” As “Good Night, and Good Luck” begins, what he’s crusading for, in a speech to news directors, is a complete rethink of television, which in choosing to “distract, delude, amuse and insulate” is making Americans “fat, comfortable and complacent.”That’s in 1958. Looking at the diminished state of television news today, you’d have to conclude he was right: His speech did nobody any good.But his journalism is another story, and that’s the one “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which opened on Thursday at the Winter Garden, wants to tell. To do so, it quickly jumps back to 1953 and into CBS’s Studio 41, where Murrow and his producer, Fred W. Friendly, run the small empire that creates the newsmagazine “See It Now.” They are about to embark on a series of broadcasts designed to unmask, and thus destroy, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the Communist-witch-hunting demagogue. Amazingly, they succeed.Clooney, at right, is aided by a capable cast, including from left: Fran Kranz, Michael Nathanson, Glenn Fleshler, Christopher Denham, Ilana Glazer, Jennifer Morris and Carter Hudson.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Television

    In ‘Dying for Sex,’ Michelle Williams Isn’t Looking for Love

    In this new series, based on a true story, Michelle Williams plays a terminally ill woman who wants to devote her remaining days to sexual exploration.Oh how the body keeps the score in “Dying for Sex,” an eight-episode FX dramedy, arriving Friday on Hulu, about a woman with terminal cancer. And if the big mort is near, maybe some petite mort is in order.Michelle Williams stars as Molly, who is sitting in an inert couple’s therapy session with her mild husband (Jay Duplass) when she answers a call from her doctor. Her cancer is back, and it’s Stage 4. She walks out of the office and out of her sexless marriage and into the loving embrace of her BFF (Jenny Slate) and a world of unbridled sexual exploration.Well, bridled a little, in that Molly engages in some bondage play as the show goes on. Her medication is making her horny, but also, simply being alive is itself a horn-inducing endeavor. She experiments with everything, starting with a marathon masturbation session where she tries a variety of vibrators and erotica: a cam guy, a nature documentary, the movie “Speed.” She has never really tried to figure out what she likes, and she’s never had an orgasm with a partner. She wants both of those things to change, and she can’t waste any more time.“You’re going to be dead in five years,” she tells herself. “Nothing matters.” Might as well hit on the guy in the elevator.Might as well swipe and swipe and have all kinds of interesting encounters. She’s not looking for love, she’s looking for pleasure — though she finds a bit of both. She unlocks her inner domme and gets the rush of her life by (consensually) kicking her neighbor (Rob Delaney) squarely in the penis. Unfortunately, this act also breaks her hip; the cancer is in her bones.“Dying” is based on a true story and adapted from the nonfiction podcast of the same name, which was created by the real-life Molly, Molly Kochan, and her best friend, Nikki Boyer, who is a producer on this show. (Kochan died in 2019.) The TV series was created by Kim Rosenstock and Elizabeth Meriwether, and it lives and dies by Williams’s performance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Television

    Stephen Colbert Likens Trump’s Tariffs to an Economic Infection

    “Has anyone thought about injecting our money with bleach?” Colbert said after President Trump’s new tariffs tanked the stock market on Thursday.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.Downward SpiralThe stock market had its worst day in five years on Thursday, the first day of trading on Wall Street since President Trump announced his new tariffs.“So, worst day for our economy since Covid,” Stephen Colbert said. “Just a little reminder: This time, he’s the disease.”“Has anyone — and I’m just spitballin’ here — has anyone thought about injecting our money with bleach?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Everyone’s wondering how Trump decided on a tariff rate for each country. Well, it turns out a very precise mathematical formula was created. And then Trump just said, ‘Forget that — we’re doing it Plinko style.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, Trump’s tariffs went all the way from 54 percent to 10 percent, and today, so did his approval rating.” — JIMMY FALLON“But, you know what, I’m not too concerned about Donald Trump not understanding how his tariffs work, because he’s Donald Trump — he doesn’t understand how to make money running a casino.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Now, one bit of good news comin’ out of all this: It’s all pretty solid proof there is no deep state, ’cause if there was, they would’ve stopped this [expletive], OK? But if they do exist, I just want to say to the cabal of financial and governmental elites who pull all the strings behind the scenes, maybe put a pause on your 5G-chip JFK Jr. adrenochrome chemtrail orgy and jump in here, ’cause we’re [expletive] dying.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Mr. Worldwide Edition)“Yesterday, Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs across the entire globe: Asia, South America, Narnia, Arendelle, Wakanda, Bachelor Nation.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“President Trump yesterday announced a base line tariff affecting more than 180 countries, including a group of uninhabited islands near Antarctica. So, let that be a warning to you, great Pacific garbage patch.” — SETH MEYERS“Yeah, we put a 10 percent tariff on an island that only has penguins? Trump would have been better off tariffing that island Tom Hanks got stranded on. At least it had one guy and that li’l volleyball he was [expletive].” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Is this a mistake? Look, I know old people butt-dial strangers all the time, but this is the first time I’ve heard of someone butt-tariffing an entire country.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Yep, Trump put tariffs on almost every single country, and as you would expect, the world is pretty mad at us. Right now, Epcot is down to two countries.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThursday’s “Tonight Show” musical guest Perfume Genius performed “It’s a Mirror” from his new album “Glory.”Also, Check This Out“‘The Lost Albums’ were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released,” Bruce Springsteen said in a statement.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBruce Springsteen announced a new boxed set featuring 83 songs, including 74 that have never been released. More

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    in Television

    ‘Lazarus’ Is a Dark and Kinetic Adventure

    This anime series on Adult Swim is filled with fantastic fight sequences but also deeper musings about the nature of existence and divinity.A scene from “Lazarus.”Adult SwimRight on the heels of “Common Side Effects” comes another animated pharmacological thriller, this time the Japanese anime series “Lazarus,” which premieres, dubbed, on Saturday at midnight, on Adult Swim. The show is set in 2055, and a miracle pain killer that claims to free people from all suffering has become ubiquitous. Years after the mysterious Dr. Skinner released this drug, Hapna, he re-emerges with a second bombshell: After three years in your system, Hapna will kill you.Humanity has 30 days before everyone who has taken it — which is just about everybody — succumbs. Unless, of course, someone can find Dr. Skinner and the antidote only he can share.This calls for a ragtag team! Of course it does; “Lazarus” was created and directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, best known for his work directing “Cowboy Bebop,” which is also a dark, funny, futuristic ensemble adventure. The show’s other big draw is its fight choreography by the “John Wick” director Chad Stahelski. The action sequences are the highlight of the five (of 13) episodes made available for review: a big jailbreak in the pilot, lots of urban scrambling, a zippy comeuppance for a sex-pest sleaze.Our snappy hero and newest member of the crew is Axel Gilberto, an escape artist and underbelly-dweller who is serving 888 years in prison — your sentence is doubled every time you escape. He is recruited out of his cell and into a shadowy group that is determined to find Dr. Skinner and has the requisite position players to do so, including a hacker, a researcher and an icy boss.Each episode of “Lazarus” begins with the same visual montage, but each opening narration and narrator is different. The episodes end with a countdown of how many days are left until the Hapna apocalypse. This repetitive yet iterative framing feels like a ritual, and the show is filled with religious imagery and musings about the nature of divinity.If Dr. Skinner can both cure and kill everyone, does that make him a god? Or just the world’s most powerful drug peddler? If pain is a part of life, and there is no more pain, maybe we’re already dead, and there’s nothing left to pray for. If you thought the end was coming, would you change course or just surrender? More

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    in Television

    In ‘The Bondsman,’ Kevin Bacon Goes to Hell and Back

    The actor stars as the title character in this new horror comedy series, playing a man charged with tracking down escaped demons.The devil goes down to Georgia in the horror comedy series “The Bondsman,” but he’s not looking for a fiddle fight. This demon master is actually an old-school telemarketer, fax machine at the ready, overseeing a pyramid scheme of lost souls. And when he taps you on the shoulder, you’d best be ready to do his handiwork.A gory, tongue-in-cheek slice of Southern Gothic, the new Amazon Prime Video series, premiering Thursday, presents a system of penance that borders on bureaucracy. A rural Georgia bondsman named Hub Halloran (Kevin Bacon) stumbles into the scheme in the first episode, when his throat gets slit in the line of duty. Coming to with a gaping wound in his neck, he soon realizes that he has been to hell and it has spit him back up. He’s still a bondsman, but now his job is to track down demons that have escaped from hell. If he refuses, he gets sent back.In a TV landscape offering no shortage of horror in recent years, “The Bondsman” has a folksier flavor than most. The show’s haunts are rural; the main characters are scared and surprised by the demons they encounter, but they also just seem inconvenienced and perturbed by the whole affair.“The operational theory is like, ‘Well, hell, I was going to go grocery shopping today, and instead, I’ve got to deal with a demon on the loose in my small town,’” said Erik Oleson, the showrunner. “It’s just one more of those things that the system keeps sticking on you.”The system, in this case, is represented by Pot O’ Gold, which presents itself as a tenacious series of pop-up ads and voice mail messages offering one of those opportunities that you just shouldn’t pass up. The company logo is a jovial leprechaun. The boss is the devil himself, though he’s too busy to make himself seen; instead he sends a very cheerful, un-devilish minion (Jolene Purdy) to give Hub his new assignment.Hub is skeptical, though he notices that his slashed throat, which he initially covered up with duct tape, seems to have magically healed. Soon he’s off to hunt down demons, armed with a variety of weapons (shotgun, chain saw), and Kitty, his spitfire mama (Beth Grant) by his side.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ Sarah Snook Goes Digital

    About five minutes into “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” the stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel, the actress Sarah Snook, playing the louche aristocrat Lord Henry Wotton, reaches out and rests a hand on Dorian Gray’s shoulder. At nearly every performance, the audience gasps. Sometimes, from sheer delight, they giggle.The gesture itself is simple, but the execution is so demanding that two years ago, when Snook first tried it, she had a panic attack. Snook plays both Lord Henry and Dorian Gray — and two dozen other characters, too. So she is putting her own hand on her own shoulder by way of an elaborate synthesis of live action, live video and recorded video. “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a Victorian Gothic trifle, can now be seen in portrait mode.Even after a celebrated London run and weeks of performances at the Music Box Theater on Broadway, that moment, in which a recorded Lord Henry joins a live Dorian onscreen, hasn’t become any easier. As it approaches, Snook said she will find herself thinking: What if I’m a millimeter off? What if the magic is spoiled? The recording doesn’t protect her from imprecision, from accident. “The thing is,” she said, “it’s live theater.”Live video merges with recorded sequences to create the image of Sarah Snook reaching out to touch her own shoulder, conjuring the moment in which Lord Henry seduces Dorian Gray into a life of pleasure.Kip Williams, the director of “Dorian Gray” and until recently the artistic director of the Sydney Theater Company, pioneered this technique, which he calls cinetheater, about a decade ago. Rehearsing a production of Tennessee Williams’s “Summer and Smoke,” he decided to stage a chase sequence in the bowels of the theater. Some colleagues encouraged him to record it, but Williams resisted.“Theater is a live art form,” he said. “The audience knows when it’s live and when it’s not. That transiency, that temporal quality of being in the present moment is at its core.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Late Night Debriefs After a ‘Tariff-fying’ Day at the White House

    Stephen Colbert said that, thanks to President Trump, “America is finally free from the tyranny of being able to buy stuff from other countries.”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.Just ‘Tariffic’On Wednesday, President Donald Trump held an event at the White House to announce new international tariffs during what he referred to as “Liberation Day.”Stephen Colbert said that, thanks to Trump, “America is finally free from the tyranny of being able to buy stuff from other countries.”“Who’s ready to learn how to make their own iPad from scratch?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Right, ‘Liberation Day. That sounds like the fake holiday your friends make up after you get dumped: ‘No, man. Who needs that beautiful, smart, independently wealthy woman in your life, when you can die alone? This is your liberation day, bro!’” — MICHAEL KOSTA“OK, so Liberation Day is just the day that Trump announced new tariffs. I kind of doubt this day will be remembered for all of history, but if you give me a day off from work, you can call it whatever you want.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Now, you might be thinking, ‘What am I even being liberated from? The ability to afford goods and services?’” — MICHAEL KOSTA“Reportedly, Trump was still weighing tariff options until late yesterday. Now, if you’re not steeped in the wonky language of Beltway insiders, that basically means they were spitballin’ ideas through the bathroom door at 3 a.m.: ‘[imitating Trump] Tell you what: What if Ireland has to pay extra to be, uh — to be on the Lucky Charms box? What about that? I’m just spitballin’ here. We stop Count Chocula at the border.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yeah, in his speech, Trump said, ‘[imitating Trump] We’ll make America wealthy again, like it was at the start of my presidency. Six months ago.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, Trump announced tariffs on aluminum, steel and several other items that popped into his head mid-speech.” — JIMMY FALLON“He also expanded the tariffs on aluminum to include canned beer. Even Kid Rock was, like, ‘Um, what are we doing here, man?’” — JIMMY FALLON“The tariffs will raise prices for Americans, and costs could go up by $3,000 per year. Netflix was, like, ‘Game recognize game.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Holding It Edition)“Democratic Senator Cory Booker delivered a 25-hour, four-minute speech yesterday on the Senate floor, shattering Adrien Brody’s record.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, Senator Cory Booker broke the record last night for the longest speech ever delivered on the Senate floor. The previous record was held by Joe Biden after somebody asked, ‘What was it like growing up in Scranton?’” — SETH MEYERS“What an amazing day for Cory Booker. Not so great for the C-SPAN cameraman, who missed the birth of his first child and kindergarten graduation.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“After his speech, Booker said he hadn’t eaten since Friday and stopped drinking fluids on Sunday so he wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders went to the bathroom three different times during this joke.” — JIMMY FALLONWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More