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    Three Stars, Three Ways, Three Classic Plays

    On British stages, Saoirse Ronan, Cush Jumbo and Ian McKellen present contrasting approaches to Shakespeare and Chekhov. LONDON — Saoirse Ronan may be the main attraction of “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” as Shakespeare’s play is billed at the Almeida Theater, where it will run through Nov. 27. Yet, not for the first time in the director Yaël Farber’s career, Farber rules every minute of this attenuated account of the famously short work. Running nearly an hour longer than many “Macbeths,” the production conjoins sound, lighting and design to conjure a haunting mood that does more for the play than any individual’s performance. The menace and foreboding are palpable before the three witches have spoken a word.Where, then, does this leave Ronan, the superb Irish film actress and four-time Oscar nominee, in her British stage debut? She sometimes seems a decorative accessory to an exercise in total theater in which Tim Lutkin’s scalding lighting design, for instance, shines as bright as any Hollywood star.Yes, Ronan is given more to do than many Lady Macbeths, to foreground the actress most audience members have come to see. She’s there for the slaughter of Lady Macduff (Akiya Henry) and her children, which in turn reduces Ronan’s initially demure purveyor of evil to an anxious, hysterical wreck.But even as James McArdle in the title role builds to a vocal frenzy, we’re drawn to the hazily lit stage, which fills with water at the end, so the play’s combatants can splash about. (Those seated near the front might want to bring ponchos just in case.) Farber’s actors work hard, and often well, but they’re subsidiary to the atmosphere of gloom and dread she creates. That stays with you long after the thrill of celebrity has worn off.There’s never any doubting the intense stage presence of Cush Jumbo, the blazing talent known to TV audiences from “The Good Fight” and “The Good Wife” and who, unlike Ronan, cut her teeth in the theater. Some years back, she played Mark Antony in an all-female London production of “Julius Caesar” that was later seen in New York.Cush Jumbo in “Hamlet,” directed by Greg Hersov at the Young Vic theater.Helen MurrayHer return to the stage here as Hamlet, at the Young Vic through Nov. 13, constitutes an event. It’s just a shame that the director Greg Hersov’s modern-dress production doesn’t more frequently rise to the level of a star who is also the rare Black British actress to take this iconic role.Now and again, you sense inspiration. I liked the idea of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as selfie-taking hipsters who try their best to engage with the prickly Danish prince. Tara Fitzgerald’s Gertrude is an emotionally reined-in fashionista who may never have had an honest emotion in her life — until it’s too late.Elsewhere, Adrian Dunbar is a surprisingly dull Claudius; Joseph Marcell’s twinkly Polonius plays to the house, as if milking the character’s self-satisfaction for laughs. (His murder is bewilderingly staged to minimal impact, which seems odd given its importance as an early indicator of Hamlet’s building rage.)Throughout an unevenly paced evening, the androgynous Jumbo sets Hamlet apart as surely the smartest person in the room, and also the most furious. “To be or not to be?” feels less like an existential rumination than like the angry outburst of someone who’s had enough. I’ve seen more moving Hamlets, yet Jumbo fully catches the edgy restlessness of a protean character. Purring “this likes me well” of the knife he will use in combat, Jumbo’s Hamlet separately refers to “the very witching time of night.” This got me thinking: If Jumbo is looking for more Shakespearean roles, as I hope she is, what about having a go at Macbeth or his lady — or both?It’s not long ago that I caught another unusual choice for Hamlet in the age-inappropriate Ian McKellen. At 82, the acting veteran is still onstage in Britain, this time in the starry company of Francesca Annis and Martin Shaw in “The Cherry Orchard.” This Chekhov revival, directed, as was McKellen’s “Hamlet,” by his longtime friend and colleague Sean Mathias, is on view through Nov. 13 in the riverside town of Windsor, and is worth the trip.Ian McKellen in Windsor, England, in July. He’s now appearing there in “The Cherry Orchard.”  Gareth Cattermole/Getty ImagesUnlike the two Shakespeares, Chekhov’s 1904 play is kept in period and brings to mind the name-heavy productions of the classics that used to be mainstays of the West End but aren’t so much anymore. In a vital new adaptation by the American playwright Martin Sherman (“Bent”), this “Cherry Orchard” even indulges in a little gender-bending, with the eccentric uncle, Gaev, played by a tearful Jenny Seagrove — last seen as Gertrude to McKellen’s Hamlet.The focus of the play remains Madame Ranevskaya, the financially heedless aristocrat newly returned from Paris to the ancestral Russian estate that will soon be sold out from under her. Annis, a onetime Juliet to McKellen’s Romeo, is perfectly cast in a role that capitalizes on her natural elegance and luxuriant voice. Shaw, too, is in terrific form as the wealthy Lopakhin, the peasant’s son made good whose warnings about the fate of the orchard go unheeded.Shuffling about with a cane, a long beard tumbling from his chin, McKellen seizes the role of the aging manservant, Firs, without stealing focus from his colleagues. “I’ve lived a long time,” Firs says at one point, to an appreciative chuckle from the audience.Like Hamlet, McKellen knows the play’s the thing. Sometimes a classic text, simply and clearly told, is all you want, or need.The Tragedy of Macbeth. Directed by Yaël Farber. Almeida Theater, to Nov. 27.Hamlet. Directed by Greg Hersov. Young Vic theater, to Nov. 13.The Cherry Orchard. Directed by Sean Mathias. Theater Royal Windsor, to Nov. 13. More

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    Late Night Recaps Democrats’ Stinging Election Results

    Stephen Colbert said Democrats are used to being disappointed: “That’s why they’re changing their logo from the donkey to Eeyore.”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.Pity PartyRepublicans won elections in several key states on Tuesday, including Virginia, where Glenn Youngkin won the race for governor.“So, it was a disappointing night for Democrats, but Democrats are used to being disappointed,” Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday night. “That’s why they’re changing their logo from the donkey to Eeyore.”“Some of you may be upset by the results, but don’t panic — save your panic for climate change.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But the bigger loss was in Virginia, or as it’s known by its full name ‘East West Virginia.’ Because Virginia has been becoming more and more Democratic for years now. They voted for the first Black president and the first blackface governor.” — TREVOR NOAH“Republicans figured out that they could use a twin strategy of keeping Trump’s MAGA base motivated by using the right-wing propaganda network to feed the red meat on the one hand, while also running a candidate who looks like the dentist who gives you the gas for a cleaning.”— SETH MEYERS“And what is especially shocking about this result is that Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points just a year ago. That is a huge swing, people. That’s like a Kim Kardashian going from Kanye to Pete Davidson-level swing.” — TREVOR NOAH“Here’s the thing — and maybe I’m alone — but I’m not that upset. I’ve already endured the worst election in American history, live on TV, sitting over there, drinking a cocktail of bourbon and my own tears. This one just seems like another election: ‘Oh no, Terry McAuliffe didn’t win? Will the republic survive our post-Terry future?’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yep, Republicans haven’t been this excited since they realized that you can print fake vaccine cards off of Google Images.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Kennedys Resurrected? Edition)“I mentioned last night they had this QAnon event in Dallas. The illiterati gathered by the hundreds because they believed J.F.K. Jr. and J.F.K. Sr. were going to re-emerge and reinstall Donald Trump to power, because obviously the Kennedys would be big Trump fans.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Of course, J.F.K. Jr. died tragically 22 years ago, so at this point, any announcement from him would be pretty big.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, some of these folks also believe J.F.K. Jr. will be seeking office soon, based on their T-shirts suggesting J.F.K. Jr. would be the former president’s running mate in 2024. Makes sense: Kennedy died over 20 years ago, but he’s still more lifelike than Mike Pence.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Shockingly, J.F.K. Jr. did not show up in Dallas yesterday afternoon, due to his chronic case of ‘not alive.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But the QAnon crowd didn’t lose hope, because rumors began to circulate that J.F.K. Jr. would instead appear at a concert by the Rolling Stones that evening. Guys, come on. You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might find, you just might find you get what you need. Which is medication.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“So, the concert happened, and J.F.K. Jr. was a no-show. Some QAnon believers walked away with a new theory about his father: that Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is, in fact, President John F. Kennedy. OK, that is crazy. President Kennedy would be 104 years old, and Keith Richards is clearly way older than that.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Who should be more insulted — Keith Richards by people who thought he was a 104-year-old J.F.K., or J.F.K. for them thinking he was a 77-year-old Keith Richards. I don’t know.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s crazy that people actually believed this. I mean, if you’re gonna believe that a band is the dead Kennedys in disguise, wouldn’t you assume that band was the Dead Kennedys?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingSamantha Bee dug into the latest on the Supreme Court’s abortion rights cases during Wednesday’s “Full Frontal.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightSerena Williams will talk about the new film “King Richard” on Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutZazie Beetz, left, with Jonathan Majors in “The Harder They Fall.”David Lee/Netflix“The Harder They Fall” on Netflix is a bloody new Western about Black gunslingers, chanteuses, saloonkeepers and train robbers. More

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    Julianne Boyd to Retire After 27 Years at Barrington Stage

    Under her leadership, the nonprofit produced “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” and other shows that made it to Broadway.Julianne Boyd, who has served as artistic director of Barrington Stage Company since cofounding the Western Massachusetts nonprofit in 1995, will retire next fall.The company started by renting space at a high school in Sheffield, Mass., and now operates five buildings in Pittsfield, Mass. It has had a number of notable successes, the best known of which is “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” a musical by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin, which Barrington first staged in that high school’s cafeteria in 2004. The next year, the musical transferred, first to Off Broadway’s Second Stage Theater, and then to Broadway, and it has repeatedly been staged around the world.Barrington Stage, one of the many arts institutions that have made the Berkshires a destination for culture lovers, also developed a revival of “On the Town” that transferred to Broadway in 2014, and a new play, “American Son,” that opened on Broadway (starring Kerry Washington and Steven Pasquale) in 2018.Boyd, 76, said that after one last summer season she will be ready for a new chapter. She said she plans to continue to split her time between Pittsfield and New York, to direct, and to spend time with her seven grandchildren. “Nana hasn’t been there,” she said.The last two summers have been particularly challenging because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, after stages had shuttered nationwide, Boyd directed the country’s first play featuring an Equity actor during the pandemic — an outdoor production of “Harry Clarke.”“I’ve been thinking about retiring for a few years, but I couldn’t do it during Covid,” she said. “I want some free time, and I don’t want the day-to-day responsibilities to be on me.”The theater company has produced a lot of new work — 41 premieres — including two small plays, “Freud’s Last Session” and “Becoming Dr. Ruth,” both by Mark St. Germain, that have gone on to be staged by many other regional theaters.And last weekend, the theater wrapped up another noteworthy endeavor: a nine-performance presentation of a musical in development, “Mr. Saturday Night,” adapted from the 1992 film and starring Billy Crystal, who is also one of the show’s three writers.The theater, which has an annual budget of $5.2 million and a year-round staff of 22, will conduct a search for Boyd’s replacement.Boyd’s retirement, announced Wednesday, creates the second opening at a major Berkshire theater company this week. On Monday, the Williamstown Theater Festival said that its artistic director, Mandy Greenfield, had stepped down. More

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    Review: Edie Falco Shines as an Everywoman in ‘Morning Sun’

    A new play by Simon Stephens has hearty performances but a nearly undetectable pulse.Making the best of the little you’ve got may or may not be the theme of “Morning Sun,” the pianissimo new play by Simon Stephens that opened Off Broadway on Wednesday. But it’s certainly the problem.Not for Stephens is the big statement. His characters, linked in a maternal chain, are everywomen — or anywomen — positioned equidistantly along a conveyor belt between birth and death. Claudette is the tough one in her 70s, Charley the practical one in her 50s, Tessa the disillusioned one in her 30s. That they are identified by number in the script suggests their merely prototypical status.But unlike the lettered characters (A, B and C) in Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women,” of which “Morning Sun” sometimes seems a less glittering variation, 1, 2 and 3 have self-consciously ordinary lives. Instead of Albee’s Park Avenue-ish boudoir, Stephens locates three generations of the McBride family in a rent-controlled walk-up in Greenwich Village. And instead of having chic lawyers and live-in caretakers, the McBrides and their companions have pointedly working-class jobs: a hospital receptionist, a museum guard, a janitor at the Y.M.C.A.Generations: from left, Falco, Brown and Marin Ireland.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat these three not-so-tall women are played by three excellent stage actors — Blair Brown as Claudette, Edie Falco as Charley, Marin Ireland as Tessa — ensures that their crises come into clear focus. Abuse, affairs, alcoholism and abortion each get a believable turn in Lila Neugebauer’s staging for Manhattan Theater Club. Yet for all the enjoyably detailed work, the play remains stubbornly tiny, as if Stephens, aiming small, overshot.Certainly the effort to valorize unglamorous lives is worthy. The problem comes from trying to dramatize uneventful ones. It can be done; consider “Waiting for Godot,” a play about nothing happening. But “Morning Sun” highlights neither the existential angst of a meaningless world nor the interpersonal conflicts that make so many fictional homes feel dangerous.Instead, it illustrates familiar moments on a family timeline: Claudette moves from Nyack to New York City, marries while pregnant but the baby dies; two years later Charley (actually Charlotte) is born, and 30 years later, Tessa. For two of the women, the search for happiness in love is eventually successful — there’s a reason they’re named McBride. And though Claudette tells Charley she’s a failure as a mother and Charley tells Tessa she’s an irresponsible daughter, everyone is reconciled before they die.“It’s just people, just trying to get through stuff,” Falco said in a New York Times article. “There’s something very beautiful about that.”Perhaps, but even Stephens seems to find the approach insufficiently muscly for a contemporary play. As a vitamin supplement, he turns to irony and meta-theatrics, having each woman narrate parts of the story as if reading one another’s résumés aloud and annotating them with sass. At times, Brown and Ireland moonlight as ancillary characters — a boyfriend, a lover, a husband, a pal — to thicken the texture.But these attempts to sketch the women’s lives and the ethos of the eras they live through are unconvincing, laced as they are with hasty anthropology and a whiff of Wikipedia.So when Claudette gets a job in the haberdashery department at Macys in 1947 or Charley attends a Beatles concert in 1965, the specifics seem paradoxically generic. The skipped-over patches necessitated by the play’s chronological format likewise become little more than name-checks: Leonard Bernstein, AIDS, Valerie Solanas, Sept. 11, Jane Jacobs, poor demolished Penn Station.Those last two are a tipoff to what Stephens, whose earlier plays “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and “Heisenberg” were crackling fun, may be up to here. Rather than adding to the catalog of works in which monsters prevail and little lives go unnoticed, Stephens seems to prefer, in “Morning Sun,” to eulogize the loss of a quieter idea of civic life, and also of theater. The New York City he offers — admittedly from afar; he’s British — feels relentlessly sepia, like 1930s social drama but without the social disruption. It’s a place that can be modest about its grandeur, where work is honored and sadness is part of the light.That Hopperesque quality — “Morning Sun” takes its name from Edward Hopper’s 1952 portrait of a woman staring out a sun-filled window — is the play’s most attractive trait. Neugebauer’s staging doesn’t pick up on it, though; the set, by the design collective called dots, references a painterly spareness but leaves out the beauty part. (It’s just a big, ugly room, less like a fifth-floor walk-up than a basement, with barely any sunlight at all.) And since the women are mostly speaking from different eras, or from some unspecified time beyond time, the home they all occupy comes off less as a real place than as a purgatory.Under these conditions, a lot is asked of the actors; all three deliver. Brown, in her snappish mode, is wonderfully entertaining, and Ireland brings a sparkly, neurotic wit to the weakest material. (Tessa seems to have been reverse engineered from a list of plot necessities.) But Falco, perhaps because she is the only one who plays no other characters, offers the richest portrait; even if you don’t quite believe in Charley, you believe that she does, and that’s often enough.Even when it’s not, the play is no disaster, just strangely becalmed and unresponsive. Only rarely can you detect its pulse, let alone the feeling Stephens describes as “the sadness in your chest.” Claudette, speaking for Charley after the end of a relationship, says of that feeling, “What’s odd is there is no reason that you can understand why people should feel sadness or shame in their actual heart, an organ the primary function of which is to maintain the distribution of blood around the body. But you do.”It’s a beautiful line, but also an unintentional diagnosis. In “Morning Sun” you mostly feel the heartbreak in your head.Tickets Through Dec. 19 at Manhattan Theater Club; manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    Review: ‘Dr. Brain,’ Your New South Korean TV Crush

    In the afterglow of Netflix’s “Squid Game,” Apple TV+ premieres its first Korean-language series, a mind-melding sci-fi mystery.“Dr. Brain” has not received the launch that you might expect for a mini-series made by a significant South Korean filmmaker, one that’s an important building block in Apple TV+’s attempt to upgrade its international content. The show’s Thursday debut was announced less than two weeks ago, and even then, there was confusion about the actual date it would premiere in the United States. The ritual press day with cast and crew, just announced on Tuesday, is taking place a week after the premiere.That seeming lack of planning could be a result of Apple focusing its attention on the show’s release in South Korea; “Dr. Brain,” created by Kim Jee-woon, is the service’s first original series from that country. But it’s hard not to suspect another culprit: Netflix’s “Squid Game,” and the sudden avalanche of attention it has brought to South Korean television drama. Maybe someone at Apple woke up and said, “Hey, we’ve got one of those, too!”And the one they have is, in its relatively quiet and only slightly sensational way, better. Quiet and unsensational are not qualities always associated with Kim, who was happy to engage in excesses of gore or hyperbolic action in movies like “I Saw the Devil” and “The Good, the Bad, the Weird.” In “Dr. Brain,” he’s operating in a calmer, subtler mode reminiscent of his best work, the polished horror film “A Tale of Two Sisters.”Kim has been a genre-hopper in his career, and the six-episode “Dr. Brain,” his first TV series, blends formats that he’s worked in before. In outline, it’s a straightforward mystery, as the brain scientist Sewon Koh (Lee Sun-kyun) searches for the son he thought he buried but who may be alive; he’s helped by a police officer, Lt. Choi (Seo Ji-hye), who’s initially skeptical but comes around to his side.But it’s also a science-fiction story: Koh has developed a process for “syncing brain waves,” allowing him to tap into the memories of the recently dead. The fate of his son is wrapped up with a conspiracy involving this technology, and there’s a hubris-of-science theme that ties “Dr. Brain” to Dr. Frankenstein, at the high end, and the mid-1980s helmets-and-electrodes thrillers “Brainstorm” and “Dreamscape,” at the lower end..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Throw in some film noir embroidery, in the person of a laconic private eye (Park Hee-soon) who also helps Koh out, and you’ve got a genre stew. And that’s before you get to the mind-meld sequences, when Koh goes inside the heads of murder victims, random corpses and, in one droll sequence, a dead cat. Kim takes these as opportunities to inject visual pizazz into the generally naturalistic mise-en-scène, in the form of giallo and Asian-horror motifs. Finally, it would be a shame not to mention that melding with the cat gives Koh occasional access to feline powers of vision and agility, making him a part-time superhero.That may make “Dr. Brain” sound like a mess, but it’s surprisingly coherent. Kim is firmly in control — his unobtrusive professionalism ensures that the shocks, reversals and revelations are part of a smooth, modulated ride. And that smoothness carries you past the nagging questions, mostly involving why someone didn’t do the obvious thing, that this sort of story tends to raise.The real barrier to entry for some viewers may be the sentimentality of the season’s beginning and ending — the need for Korean TV dramas to assert themselves as soap operas to meet their domestic audience’s expectations. But Kim pours on less syrup than the norm, and for most of its run, “Dr. Brain” is a classy and absorbing entertainment. More

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    At Wrexham and Elsewhere, the Soccer Is Just a Story Line

    In a steady stream of documentary series, more and more clubs are turning themselves into content. But where does spectacle end and sport begin?LONDON — The cameras were rolling even before the actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney could be sure there would be anything to film.Last November, Reynolds and McElhenney were waiting anxiously to discover if their bid to buy Wrexham, a Welsh club marooned in the fifth tier of English soccer, would survive a vote from the Supporters’ Trust, the fans’ group that had rescued the team from bankruptcy and run it on a threadbare budget for years.The actors had reason to be confident: When they had presented their ideas to the Trust in a video call, the reaction had been positive. Still, as they waited for the call that would inform them of the result of the vote, they did not know if it would be good or bad news, and that put them in something of a bind.McElhenney had concocted the idea of buying a soccer team after inhaling both seasons of “Sunderland ’Til I Die,” the successful Netflix series that detailed the fleeting ups and frequent downs of another faded club rooted in postindustrial Britain. “He told me: ‘We should do this. We should buy a club and make a documentary,’” said Humphrey Ker, one of McElhenney’s writers and the person who had recommended the Sunderland series to him.If the Wrexham trust rejected the actors’ ownership bid, their plan would be up in smoke; after all, with no club, there would be no documentary. But for the documentary to work, it had to follow their adventure in soccer from the very start. So as they waited for the phone to ring, McElhenney and Reynolds had to decide, effectively, which came first: the content or the club?Wrexham is not the only place wrestling with that question. Soccer has long provided fertile ground for film and television, but the rise of streaming platforms — with their insatiable appetites and generous wallets and breakthrough series involving entirely fictional teams — has triggered a deluge of productions.Some, like Amazon’s “All or Nothing” documentary series, have tried to draw on the inbuilt appeal of some of the world’s biggest clubs, embedding multiple camera crews over the course of a season with teams like Manchester City, Tottenham and Juventus.Amazon’s “All or Nothing” series has followed several top clubs, with their permission.Amazon PrimeManchester City, Tottenham and Juventus have opened their doors to the series already.Amazon PrimeOthers have eschewed the editorial control — and considerable fees — the game’s superpowers demand in favor of a more authentic aesthetic embodied by “Sunderland ’Til I Die,” in which the club is less the subject of the documentary and more a backdrop against which a human story plays out.But there is one crucial difference between many of those projects and their forerunner. In Sunderland, the producers were mere observers of the club. At Wrexham, and elsewhere, they are something more: They are actors in the drama.“Soccer clubs are the best content investments in the world,” said Matt Rizzetta, the chairman of the creative agency North Six Group and, since 2020, the principal owner of Campobasso, a team in Italy’s third tier. “They stand for a set of values, and they automatically connect with people in a way that almost nothing else can match.”Rizzetta said his decision to invest in soccer was driven by his heart — it was a “lifelong dream” to own a team, he said, particularly one based close to the part of Italy where his grandparents had grown up — but his thinking behind buying Campobasso, in particular, was governed by his head.“We looked at around 20 teams, all in that area,” he said. Campobasso stood out. It had once reached the second division, but had found far more snakes than ladders in recent years. It is based in Molise, a region that often complains it is overlooked by the rest of the country: Molise Non Esiste, as the self-deprecating local slogan puts it: Molise doesn’t exist.That suited Rizzetta perfectly. His strategy was centered on “content, storytelling, marketing and media,” he said. “Being a club owner now is different to the 1980s and 1990s. Provincial teams, in particular, need new revenue streams to reinvest in the product, and content is one of the most underutilized channels.”To remedy that, Rizzetta’s North Six Group signed a deal with Italian Football TV, a YouTube channel, for a documentary series that would follow Campobasso on its (eventually successful) attempt at winning its first promotion in decades.“It was a story that needed to be told, this team from a part of the country that has been forgotten,” Rizzetta said. That obscurity, to some extent, helped make the project viable. “It was a small, sleepy club,” he said. “It had the feel of a start-up. We kind of had a blank slate. There was nothing we could do that would be wrong.”Not every group of supporters, though, welcomes that kind of approach. This summer, it was announced that Peter Crouch, the former England striker, would be joining the board of Dulwich Hamlet, a team based in a well-heeled enclave in south London where he made a handful of appearances in the early stages of his career.The move was not motivated purely by altruism: Crouch’s experiences, it emerged a few days later, would form the basis of a documentary bankrolled by Discovery+. According to several people involved with the project, the network had explicitly conceived the idea as a chance to create its own version of “Sunderland ’Til I Die.”“Sunderland ’Til I Die” has served as a model for a host of documentary producers.NetflixThe idea has “received a mixed response,” said Alex Crane, a former chairman of the Dulwich Hamlet Supporters’ Trust. “Some fans are genuinely excited,” Crane wrote in a WhatsApp message. “Others are very skeptical, and are querying what the club gets out of it.”Certainly, the apparent theme of the documentary — that Dulwich faces a “bleak future” and Crouch has parachuted in to save it — has not been universally accepted. The Brixton Buzz, a community news outlet, suggested, with some profanity, that the “TV narrative” had been concocted purely for the sake of the series.That trap — contorting themselves to become a more marketable pitch — is one Rizzetta is adamant clubs must avoid. In September, North Six Group added Ascoli — in Italy’s second division — to its stable of teams. It appealed to the club’s former owner, Rizzetta said, as a “strategic operator” that could reproduce its Campobasso success on a larger scale. Among the first things the new owners did was sign an exclusive deal with Italian Football TV.“Content is still a big part of our strategy,” Rizzetta said. “But it will have to be done in a different way. Ascoli has a different message, brand and story. It is sacred to its community.”Reynolds and McElhenney have been equally explicit about their plans. “The documentary is a huge part” of the project, McElhenney said on the actors’ first visit to Wrexham in October. “We feel that is the best way to really do a deep dive into the community. You can televise the games, but if you’re not following the story of the players and the story of the community, ultimately nobody is really going to care.”Wrexham is already feeling the benefits of its sprinkling of Hollywood stardust. A raft of impressive signings arrived over the summer to strengthen the team. There has been investment, too, in the club’s infrastructure.“The stadium is being remodeled,” said Spencer Harris, a club director before the takeover. “The first team’s training facility is much better. The club are building for long-term success. It feels sustainable.”Some of that new money has come from ticket sales — crowds are up this season — and some from a spike in the sale of replica jerseys. By October, Wrexham had sold more than 8,000 — almost as many as it would ordinarily ship in a good year — with the Christmas rush still to come.But perhaps most significantly — and lucratively — the jerseys themselves are a little different. The away shirt is green and gray, McElhenney’s tribute to his hometown Philadelphia Eagles. Ifor Williams Trailers, formerly the club’s principal sponsor, has been replaced by the more recognizable insignia of TikTok. Expedia’s logo stretches across the shoulders.Though the team’s first game of the season was televised nationally in Britain, it is not the audiences that tune in to BT Sport to watch the National League that coaxed brands of that stature to invest in Wrexham. Far more appealing was the prospect of being front and center on prime-time television.In May, Reynolds and McElhenney announced — in the wry style that has characterized their ownership so far — that they had sold two seasons of their documentary, “Welcome to Wrexham,” to FX. It will include the moment they received the call to confirm that their bid to buy the club had been approved by the fans. It was all captured on film. The content, it turned out, was inseparable from the club. More

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    Aunjanue Ellis Leans Into a Supporting Role in 'King Richard'

    The actress is used to secondary parts, but with “King Richard” she is being singled out for her turn as the mother of Venus and Serena Williams.The actress Aunjanue Ellis is nearly 30 years into an onscreen career, but until about a decade ago, she thought it was all a fluke.The 52-year-old Mississippi native grew up on a farm and had no drama experience outside of performing in Easter and Christmas plays at church. She began her undergraduate studies at Tougaloo College, the historically Black university where an acting instructor encouraged her to consider taking the craft seriously.“My feet had no path and he just gave me one,” she said in an recent interview.Now, she’s just weeks away from the release of a biopic that is generating Oscar chatter about her performance: “King Richard” is the story of Richard Williams (played by Will Smith), the father of tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams. Ellis plays Oracene Price, his wife.Looked at in one light, it’s a typical part in a career that can perhaps be best characterized as a series of roles ranging from minor to supporting. But Ellis, who went on to earn degrees at Brown and New York Universities, has fully leaned into them and made them her own: whether that’s showcasing her comedic chops in “Undercover Brother” or gravitas in dramas like “Ray” and “The Help.”In recent years she’s earned critical acclaim in productions like “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel,” and Emmy nominations for her turns in “When They See Us” and “Lovecraft Country.” Her performance as Price may be another step on the awards path: she has been singled out by critics and Oscar pundits alike when it played on the festival circuit ahead of its Nov. 19 release on HBO Max and in theaters.On a video call from Chicago, where she’s filming her next project, “61st Street,” a series set to air on AMC, Ellis spoke about what she hopes audiences take from her performance as Oracene Price and the pressure to choose roles that reflect well on Black women. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.From left: Demi Singleton as Serena Williams, Saniyya Sidney as Venus Williams and Ellis as their mother, Oracene Price, in “King Richard.” Warner Bros.Your first onscreen role was on the TV show “New York Undercover.” Do you remember how it felt when you got cast?I say this with intention because somebody will hear this and feel themselves reflected in my story. My grandmother stood in line for government cheese, for peanut butter, just so we could eat — to sustain us. I was raised on AFDC [Aid to Families with Dependent Children]. I would hide because I would be so embarrassed that my grandmother was paying for our groceries with public assistance.There was nowhere in my imagination that I would be making a living doing something creative. Absolutely none. I got the “New York Undercover” job, I just thought it was a fluke. It wasn’t probably until 10 years ago that I started to believe that I could sustain my life and my family by acting.What makes you say yes to a role?I’m real childish about this. Is it going to be fun? Am I going to have a good time? Can I do it and not be embarrassed and stand by the fact that I’ve done it? That’s a challenge I’m still navigating. I have a responsibility that the people I generally work with don’t have. I know what it’s like to have done a film and when it’s over, Black women are looking at you like, “Why did you do that? You failed us by doing that” and having to answer for that. I think Black women particularly have to answer for that in a way that nobody else does. Those are my considerations: Is it fun to play and am I doing a service to Black women?How did the script come to you and what were your initial thoughts after you read it?I know there were probably other candidates that they were looking at, that they were going to go to originally. I’m used to that. I just bided my time and waited for the possibility that I would get a chance to read for it — and I did.The wife of the hero can be utterly boring to play because they are stick figures and their only purpose is to, as I’ve read somewhere, create problems for the hero. I felt that [the screenwriter] Zach Baylin had done something where that wasn’t the case with Ms. Oracene — she had a life outside her husband. I thought that was going to be fun to play..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How did you prepare for the role? Did you get a chance to speak to her?I play the character of Ms. Oracene Price. I’m not doing a recreation of her life. So I approach it in the same way I approach any other role. The other great thing is that I have material to work with. There’s history there, information that I don’t just get out of my own head.Zach and Reinaldo Marcus Green, the director, did extensive interviews with Ms. Oracene, so I listened to those tapes over and over again. She’s a particular kind of woman that is more of a challenge for me. When I play characters, I try to find things on the outside of them that I can capture like accents, how they walk, how they talk. But Ms. Oracene is a very interior person, so I had to rely on her words about herself. Her daughter Isha Price was on set every day, so she was a great resource as well.I’m curious about what you’re channeling. Is it a person? Where does that kind of intensity come from?[On] Wikipedia she was referenced as a coach and I had such a cynical response to that. I thought, why is she calling herself a coach? Isn’t that an overreach? I mean, it’s great that she’s in the stands with her children and cheering them on, but that doesn’t make you a coach.And hearing these tapes, listening to her daughters talk about her, you find out that Ms. Oracene was as much a coach to these girls as Richard Williams was. She was designing their approach to their play. I didn’t know that. I think 99 percent of the world doesn’t know that about Ms. Oracene.Mr. Williams is the architect of the new face of the new generation of tennis; Ms. Price is the builder of that. Now she does all this while working two jobs — plural — and she trained herself for years so she could coach her kids. There are so many women living lives like this. I wanted people to know who Ms. Oracene Price was and is. That is what drove me. I’m speaking for this woman.Ellis was Emmy Award-nominated for her role in the HBO series “Lovecraft Country.”Eli Joshua Ade/HBOI wonder if you see parallels with your own career. Does it feel like your time?I don’t know. It’s strange. I toiled. I was in a whole bunch of stuff that nobody saw and nobody liked. They let me know they didn’t like it. God knows I’ve been in things that were golden and glossy but I wasn’t as proud. But I’m so proud to be a part of something that hopefully gives this family their flowers.What you brought to this role is making you a possible contender for the Oscars. How does that feel?The reality is there’s a practical side of that, right? When that is next to your name, it helps you get more work. I lose jobs all the time to chicks that have that thing at the end of their name. If it happens, it would be great because it expands my job options and everything that comes with that. But the other side of that is, it’s a further extension for me to shout out Oracene Price. She stood in the stands and clapped for her daughters, but it would be so cool to hear people clap for her.Are there any directors you’d like to work with?Reinaldo Marcus Green of “King Richard” — I’d love to work with him again. Raven Jackson, a Southern woman, is doing her first feature. She’s a wonderful writer. I hope that I’ll have a chance to work with her.There are things people send my way — my managers and agents — they come from these reputed directors. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in Black folks who are hungry to tell stories about Black people and doing it in really interesting, innovative ways.Would you do a buddy cop film or a romantic comedy?Listen, there’s nobody throwing scripts my way. That sound you hear, that’s not people throwing scripts at me.That might change.Well not right now. That’s not my life. So if I had to choose, I certainly am going to choose a “King Richard,” I’m going to choose “When They See Us.” I get joy out of doing that kind of work.Acting is not something that you necessarily do for a hobby, it is how you pay your rent. I do what I need to do to take care of my family. If I had to choose, this kind of work that I’m doing now is the kind of work I’ll continue to do.Do you think about the kind of film you’d like to be the star of?Certainly. There are things I’m working on right now and trying to make happen. I’m from the South, and one of the great travesties is the erasure of Black women who were so central in the freedom rights movement. And I say the freedom movement, not the civil rights movement, because they were two different demographics. So what I’m living to do is to correct that.​​ More

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    Jimmy Fallon: Biden Can Cut Emissions Just as He Did His Ratings

    “I mean, he cut his approval rating in half in three months,” Fallon joked on Tuesday.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.‘Save the Amazon From Amazon’President Biden addressed world leaders at the U.N. Climate Conference on Tuesday, reiterating his commitment to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030.“And he can do it,” Jimmy Fallon said. “I mean, he cut his approval rating in half in three months.”“Well, good news, over 100 countries have agreed to stop deforestation by 2030. In other words — in other words, they agreed to stop giving the Brazilian Rainforest a Brazilian.” — JIMMY FALLON“Basically, they made a deal to save the Amazon from Amazon at this conference.” — TREVOR NOAH“Yesterday, more than 100 world leaders pledged to halt deforestation by 2030. Of course, to do that, they’ll need a detailed plan — that they’ll need to print out on thousands upon thousands of pieces of paper.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“President Biden announced yesterday that more than 70 countries would join the U.S. in a pledge to reduce global methane emissions by 30 percent by the end of the decade. Yeah, but not Russia or China, right? That’s like saying: ‘Hey, great news — I got the whole neighborhood to agree to stop murdering, except for Hacksaw Dave and Larry the Strangler. Sleep tight, everybody!’” — SETH MEYERS“Biden ended his big speech by saying, ‘God bless you all and may God save the planet.’ And God was like, ‘Uh, this is definitely a you-broke-it, you-bought-it situation.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Space Jam Edition)“Apparently, there are issues with the toilet on the SpaceX capsule. So four astronauts are going to have to use backup undergarments during their trip home. Astronauts were, like: ‘You know, not sure we needed to make that public. We’re doing tons of other stuff up here.’” — JIMMY FALLON“OK, but be careful which undergarments you choose, because it is very hard to poop in a bra.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“You know, it’s pretty humbling that no matter what technological advances we come up with, we’ve still got to deal with our poop.” — TREVOR NOAH“What is so embarrassing about diapers? I honestly think that diapers are underrated. Like, if diapers didn’t already exist and someone introduced them now as a hot new technology in 2021, be honest, people would be excited about them: ‘Guys, what if I told you you never had to worry about finding a bathroom ever again, because you would always be carrying one with you?’” — TREVOR NOAH“Meanwhile, I saw that NASA astronauts used the first peppers grown in space to make tacos on the International Space Station. I guess they figured, ‘Well, toilet’s broken — Taco Tuesday, anyone?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Anyone thinking here? Next they’re going to have a prune-eating contest.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingTom Hanks paid tribute to the late Peter Scolari, his “Bosom Buddies” co-star, while on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightKristen Stewart will talk about her latest role as Princess Diana on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutIan Shaw, the son of the “Jaws” star Robert Shaw, co-wrote the show “The Shark Is Broken” and plays his father.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesA new play details the real-life drama that unfolded on the set of the movie “Jaws,” malfunctioning sharks and all. More