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    Cynthia Harris, the Mother on ‘Mad About You,’ Dies at 87

    She was a familiar, sometimes meddling, presence on a hit ’90s sitcom about a pair of newlyweds. Earlier she won acclaim as Wallis Simpson, who inspired a king to abdicate.Cynthia Harris, a versatile actress who played Paul Reiser’s assertive mother in the hit 1990s sitcom “Mad About You” and won acclaim in the British TV mini-series “Edward and Mrs. Simpson,” died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 87.Her death was confirmed by her nephew Dan Harris.The Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning “Mad About You” aired on NBC from 1992 to 1999 and was revived in 2019 by Spectrum Originals, a streaming site. It starred Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt as newlyweds (in the roles of Paul Buchman, a documentary filmmaker, and Jamie Stemple Buchman, a public relations specialist) who, living in Greenwich Village, must cope with both frivolous and eventful barriers to marital bliss, including Paul’s overbearing mother, Sylvia.Miss Harris’s Sylvia was a recurring character on “Mad About You” for four seasons and became a regular in 1997, often butting heads with Ms. Hunt’s Jamie but also sharing warmer moments. She reprised the role in the revival. All told, Miss Harris (who preferred that honorific) appeared in 73 episodes of the sitcom.In “Edward and Mrs. Simpson,” a seven-part dramatization broadcast in Britain in 1978 and in the United States in 1979, Miss Harris played Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American for whom King Edward VIII, played by Edward Fox, abdicated the British throne. For her performance she was nominated for best actress by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.She made her Broadway debut in 1963, and appeared in dozens of television shows and movies. For 21 years she was also the artistic director and a founding member of the Actors Company Theater, an off-Broadway collaboration founded in 1992 that calls itself “a company of theater artists that reveals, reclaims, and reimagines great plays of literary merit.”Miss Harris in Hyde Park, London, in 1979. She was nominated for a BAFTA award for her performance in “Edward and Mrs. Simpson,” a 1978 British TV mini-series in which she played the twice-divorced American for whom King Edward VIII abdicated the British throne.Monti Spry/Central Press and Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesCynthia Lee Harris was born on Aug. 9, 1934, in Manhattan to Saul and Deborah Harris. Her father was a haberdasher, her mother a homemaker.After graduating from Monroe High School in the Bronx in 1951, she earned a degree in theater and literature from Smith College in Massachusetts. Afterward she worked as an assistant stage manager.Miss Harris made her New York City acting debut with an improvisational group called The Premise and then acted for eight years as a resident member of The Open Theater, an avant-garde ensemble. Her first film role was as Mary Desti in “Isadora” (1968), based on the life of Isadora Duncan and starring Vanessa Redgrave. She also had roles in the movies “Reuben, Reuben” (1983) and “Three Men and a Baby” (1987), among others.Playing Wallis Simpson may have been the closest Miss Harris came to stardom, but she had no shortage of roles on television, in theater and in film.She appeared on Broadway in the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical “Company” in 1971 and in episodes of television shows including “Archie Bunker’s Place,” “All My Children,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “L.A. Law,” “Three’s Company” and “Sirota’s Court.”Miss Harris was familiar to radio listeners and TV viewers in the 1970s and ’80s as “Mrs. B” in commercials for the now defunct Bradlees discount department store chain.She married the theater manager and producer Eugene V. Wolsk in 1961; they divorced in 1972. She is survived by her brother, Dr. Matthew Harris; and her partner, Nathan Silverstein. More

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    An Actress and a Sports Agent Get on the Horse

    After they met at a North Hollywood house party, it took several years for Ashley Blaine Featherson and Darroll Jenkins to go from friendship to picturesque romance.Ashley Blaine Featherson, who plays Joelle Brooks on the Netflix series “Dear White People,” and Darroll Jenkins, a sports agent, were not immune to the anxiety inherent in a 2021 wedding. “In the midst of planning our wedding, many things have happened,” from Covid to hurricanes, said Ms. Featherson, 33 who is also a television producer and philanthropist.The two met through a mutual friend in the summer of 2010, at a house party in North Hollywood, Calif. “He kind of lit up the room,” Ms. Featherson said. “We just clicked and caught a vibe,” added Mr. Jenkins. “I knew I wanted to see her again.”Their sparks led to just friendship at first. “The romantic aspect of our relationship came about around 2011, but we didn’t officially become a couple until 2018,” said Mr. Jenkins, 34. “But once we got into a relationship,” Ms. Featherson said, “it was like we got into a relationship. We moved in together, we got a dog, and then we were engaged three years later.”Mr. Jenkins planned a trip to Santa Barbara, Calif., on Sept. 18, 2020, to pop the question. “I told her maybe we can go wine tasting or something,” he said. “I was downplaying it. I would say, ‘Let’s just enjoy being boyfriend and girlfriend,’ even though I bought the diamond a year before. I knew I was going to propose.”Ms. Featherson didn’t see it coming. “Our guide was like, ‘Hey, do you want to get off the horse and explore the beach?’ And I was like, ‘Not really,’ because I didn’t. I enjoyed being on the horse. I was reluctant to get down,” she said.When she finally did get off the horse, Mr. Jenkins suggested she look out at the beach while he took pictures of her. “When I turned around, he was on one knee proposing,” she said. “We had champagne on the beach then dinner at a nice French restaurant.”[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]Stanlo PhotographyOn Sept. 5, 2021, the couple were married at Q Vineyard on Hummingbird Nest Ranch in Santa Susana, Calif. Ms. Featherson had 16 “sisters of honor” while Mr. Jenkins selected 10 “brothers of honor.” A total of 180 guests were in attendance for the outdoor affair.All attendees, vaccinated or not, were required to provide their negative Covid test results. “We had a Q.R. code where people uploaded their results. They had to take the test within 72 hours of the wedding,” Ms. Featherson said.The couple also had a wardrobe request for their guests: “We asked everyone to wear black, and our brothers and sisters of honor were in a pink, burgundy and wine color palette,” Ms. Featherson said. The bride wore a custom gown with a 10-foot-long train by Selina Howard of Vainglorious Brides, and Mr. Jenkins, a suit from Davidson Petit-Frère.The ceremony was officiated by Ms. Featherson’s friend and fellow actress, Aisha Hinds, who was also a sister of honor. After vows were exchanged, the couple simultaneously took a shot of tequila. “We love a good adult drink,” said Mr. Jenkins.For their reception, the couple changed into different outfits and hit the dance floor. Ms. Featherson, a Maryland native and graduate of Howard University in Washington, appreciated the fete’s Go-go sounds, a soulful genre of music.Mr. Jenkins, who is from Detroit, ensured that his home city’s club music was in rotation, too; the couple enlisted D.J. Mo Beatz, who kept the dance floor packed. The couple also secured the band Philly Featuring the Hour to play soul music at their reception.A proud member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, Ms. Featherson also incorporated the organization’s wedding traditions in the evening: “We were strolling, we sang the hymn and my line sisters sang the sweetheart song for Darroll,” she said.As for the event as a whole, she reflected on the “added anticipation and gratefulness” that came with getting married in a trying year, and said, “It was beautiful that so many people came together in one place to celebrate our love.”­­­­ More

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    Late Night Dives Into a New Senate Report on Trump

    “So far, I’ve only read the title page, and it seems to be about how the former president and his allies pressured D.O.J. to overturn the 2020 election,” Stephen Colbert said 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.Under PressureThe Senate Judiciary Committee released a new report on Thursday, titled “Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Allies Pressured D.O.J. to Overturn the 2020 Election.”“So far, I’ve only read the title page, and it seems to be about how the former president and his allies pressured D.O.J. to overturn the 2020 election,” Stephen Colbert said on “The Late Show.”“According to a new Senate report, former President Trump directly asked the Justice Department on nine separate occasions to overturn the 2020 election. Nine? Was he in the back seat of the car? [Imitating Trump] ‘Will you overturn the election?’ ‘No!’ ‘Will you overturn the election?’ ‘No!’” — SETH MEYERS“Trump really thought he could get away with throwing out the vote. He told people at the D.O.J., ‘You guys aren’t following the internet the way I do,’ which I assume means they aren’t Googling ‘Mushroom penis normal?’ over and over again.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Fortunately, lawyers at the Department of Justice threatened to resign en masse if he replaced the attorney general, who refused to do his dirty work, with one of his cronies, who presumably would. He’s such a Karen, isn’t he? ‘Let me speak to the attorney general! He won’t? Well, does he have a supervisor? Put him on the phone!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Of course, there was no acknowledgment of this attempted coup — and that’s what it was — from his fellow Republicans. Senator Chuck Grassley’s office this morning issued the G.O.P. version of the report, which says, and I quote: ‘Trump listened to his senior advisers and he followed their advice and recommendations,’ which is a nice way of saying he wanted to overthrow the government but the lawyers wouldn’t let him do it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But that’s how close we came. Trump tried every avenue he could think of: the courts, the states, the vice president, the Justice Department. He’s like the guy in gridlock traffic who keeps switching lanes, and then throws his hands up when it doesn’t work.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Raise the Roof Edition)“We almost didn’t have a government to save, thanks to former President The Big Lie-bowski.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“As I mentioned, Congress has reached a deal to raise the debt ceiling for two months. I’ll tell you what I think: Just do what Netflix does and raise the ceiling a little bit each month so nobody notices.” — JIMMY FALLON“Woo! Raise the financial roof!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This means America will remain solvent and free from financial calamity. Until Dec. 3.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingMadonna answered all of Jimmy Fallon’s burning questions on “The Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutJovani Furlan, photographed virtually via FaceTime, keeping in dancing shape in Joinville, in Brazil. Three New York City Ballet dancers reflect on not being able to perform during the pandemic and how it feels to return to the stage. More

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    ‘Lackawanna Blues’ Review: A Soulful Master Class in Storytelling

    Ruben Santiago-Hudson brings his tender and vibrant autobiographical show to Broadway, honoring the woman who not only raised him but also kept a cast of misfits in line.It takes a village, the saying goes. But if you’re one member of a motley crew of characters in 1950s Lackawanna, N.Y., well, then, you might say it takes a boardinghouse, and a generous woman, to keep everyone in line.That woman is Nanny, the beating heart of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s tender and vibrant autobiographical one-man show, “Lackawanna Blues,” which opened on Thursday night in a Manhattan Theater Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. It proves to be a winsome performer’s master class in storytelling, despite a few flat notes.Santiago-Hudson, who also wrote and directed the production, brings us to Lackawanna, where he grew up under the tutelage of a Ms. Rachel Crosby, the landlord and proprietor of two boardinghouses, whom everyone around town knows as “Nanny.” Don’t let the affectionate moniker fool you, though; she will calmly challenge an abusive husband and threaten to kill an unscrupulous lover for mistreating a child, all while serving up her famous Everything Soup and cornbread. In other words, she’s a tough cookie.Her party of misfits includes Numb Finger Pete, Sweet Tooth Sam, a pampered pet raccoon, and a man who was sentenced to 25 years in jail for a double homicide. In “Lackawanna Blues,” Santiago-Hudson introduces us to each of these figures, some with specific anecdotes; some in passing, as one would mention an acquaintance in a conversation; and some with little framing at all, just whatever monologue that person sees fit to deliver through him. Yet everything comes back to Nanny, easily and patiently tying everyone together.In Santiago-Hudson’s depictions of Lackawanna residents, he treats them with tenderness and empathy, even the brutal ones who did wrong, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYou might think it would also take a village to animate these characters — at least 25 — for the stage, but Santiago-Hudson manages just fine on his own. Michael Carnahan’s intimate set design — a few stools and chairs and a brick backdrop meant to look like the outside of one of Nanny’s apartment buildings, all framed by a proscenium of faded wooden panels — brings the timeworn homeyness of Lackawanna to the Friedman Theater. When Santiago-Hudson first steps onto the stage, in front of the door of that Lackawanna boardinghouse, an overhead light cloaks his face in shadow; he’s just a silhouette, his rounded shoulders and slouch or straight-backed posture illustrating a rapid-fire series of transformations.This isn’t Santiago-Hudson’s first rodeo. “Lackawanna Blues” premiered Off Broadway at the Public Theater in 2001, and, four years later, was adapted for a star-studded HBO film with S. Epatha Merkerson, Hill Harper, Terrence Howard, Rosie Perez and many others. Still, seeing Santiago-Hudson take command of the Broadway stage is delightful to watch — and listen to. He slips into a slow, self-consciously genteel purr for Small Paul, a piping soprano for Mr. Lucious, and a warble and growl for Freddie Cobbs.The very first instrument we learn to use is the human voice. In “Lackawanna Blues,” Santiago-Hudson shows his expert prowess with his, which he uses to deliver music with his portrayal of the various personalities. He strings together a cadence, tone and rhythm into a piece of work that is equal parts narrative and song.Which isn’t to disregard the actual music in the production, which not only bridges the anecdotes but also maintains the brisk tempo of the show. (A beat too brisk, at times, but at 90 minutes “Lackawanna Blues,” like most of Nanny’s tenants, knows not to overstay its welcome.)The alternatively soulful and upbeat jazz music also serves as a kind of dialogue; sure, the guitarist Junior Mack expertly accompanies the text from his seat on the side of the stage, but he also converses with Santiago-Hudson — and his harmonica — without saying one word. So when Santiago-Hudson pauses to take a sip of water, Mack summons him back with a few low strums. And Santiago-Hudson returns that steady hum with the vigorous trills and whines of his harmonica, which he seems to summon out of thin air, each time creating jouncing rhythms that would make blues greats of the past shimmy in their graves.Santiago-Hudson animates at least 25 characters set against the backdrop of Michael Carnahan’s spare set design.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd after the dark times of the past year and a half, we’re overdue for some laughter. Santiago-Hudson, a merciless charmer, gamely supplies many funny moments: whether he’s recounting a prime-time-worthy brawl between Numb Finger Pete and Mr. Lemuel Taylor or speaking in the mangled vocabulary of Ol’ Po’ Carl, who praises the sights of New York, including “da Statue Delivery” and “the Entire State Building.”Though even in those moments when he emulates these Lackawanna folks — many of whom, he notes, are poor and uneducated — he doesn’t do so cruelly; he treats them with tenderness and empathy, even the brutal ones who did wrong.There are also instances of sorrow, which Santiago-Hudson fails to attack as nimbly. He pushes too hard on the emotional notes, like a scene in which a woman comes to Nanny’s in the middle of the night with her kids and bloody wounds. And by the end, he awkwardly circles around an ending that must inevitably tackle dear Nanny’s death.It always comes back to Nanny, with her stiff back and neatly folded arms; Santiago-Hudson’s rendering evokes a Cicely Tyson type, a strong Black matriarch not to be trifled with. His narrative performance is impressive for many reasons, but one of the most nuanced is the way Santiago-Hudson sees it all, as a child eavesdropping and peeking through doorways, with curious and affectionate eyes.He grounds us in the details, which brings not just these characters, but also a whole town to life: the way a woman pops her hips, the way a man coughs, even the particular tint of the Lackawanna snow. After all, people may think the blues are about heartbreak, but to get to heartbreak, you first have to pass through love.Lackawanna BluesThrough Oct. 31 at Manhattan Theater Club; 212-239-6200, manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    The Flea Announces New Resident Company and a Focus on Black and Queer Artists

    The Off Off Broadway theater, which ended programs for emerging artists in December, will return next year with a model that centers the work of underrepresented artists.The Flea, a notable Off Off Broadway company that discontinued its most prominent programs for emerging artists in December, effectively eliminating dozens of positions and provoking the ire of resident artists, announced a new model for its future and a new show. That model, unveiled on Thursday, focuses on supporting the work of underrepresented artists via self-contained, self-programming resident companies.“I’m really excited about it,” said Niegel Smith, the Flea’s artistic director since 2015 and one of the few Black artistic directors at a prominent New York theater. “The artists have total autonomy in making their work, and we’re making a long-term investment in a group of artists we care deeply about.”The first resident company will be the newly formed Fled Collective, composed of many of the members of the Flea’s former nonunion acting company, the Bats. It will have a three-year residency that comes with an unrestricted $10,000 cash grant and $50,000 in space rental credits each year, as well as production and marketing support and resources to develop new work. The company will have complete control over its artistic output and will focus on the work of artists of color and queer people.“Almost all the things we asked for, the Flea added into this partnership,” Dolores Pereira, a leader of the Fled Collective and a former member of the Bats, said in an interview. “It’s been a very collaborative process.”The theater will also begin a multiyear residency program for itinerant artistic companies. The first participant will be Emerge 125, a Black woman-led modern dance troupe that will receive creative, technical and producing support, discounted rental space, and access to office space for at least three years. The theater hopes to eventually support multiple companies in the program each year, Smith said.Pereira said the Fled Collective aims to be able to pay all its artists and plans to rely on the annual $10,000 cash grant and additional fund-raising to do so. The company has no cap on members and currently has at least 50, she said.The theater also restructured its board, with at least one seat now allotted to an artist from a resident company (board members remain volunteers, Smith said). He said the Flea, which has three paid staff members, aims to raise at least $850,000 to support programming and operations in the coming year.Since 2017, the Flea has operated out of a new, three-theater building in TriBeCa whose largest performing space holds about 100 seats. In the last few years, it has staged plays focusing on police brutality, gun violence and other timely issues: “The Fre,” a play by Taylor Mac that is partly a queer love story, was in previews when the pandemic forced it to close.The Flea also faced pushback for its reliance on unpaid artists, which boiled over in June 2020 when a number of the unpaid workers wrote a letter accusing the theater of “racism, sexism, gaslighting, disrespect and abuse.” The Flea then committed to begin paying all of its artists. But in December, it dissolved its programs for emerging artists, citing the financial effects of the pandemic.Through months of having meetings almost weekly, then holding a healing circle, and with the help of a Black woman-led consulting group, CJAM Consulting, the Flea and its artists set out repairing their relationships, Smith said. The theater’s staff also completed anti-oppression and antiracism training.“There definitely was a lot of hurt,” Pereira said. “But now it feels like a new relationship.”The first show of the new season (which is being produced by the Flea, not a resident company) will be “Arden: A Ritual for Love and Liberation,” slated for early 2022. That work was conceived by five artists including Carrie Mae Weems and Diana Oh and draws inspiration from the Forest of Arden from “As You Like It” — reimagined as a place where “queers, feminists and intellectuals dare to create the world that centers their desires.” It will be followed in June by four Juneteenth public art commissions that meld artists’ reflections on the holiday with work that honors Black culture. Additional productions will be announced at a later date, the theater said.Pereira hopes that organizations like the Fled Collective — which focus on empowering underrepresented artists — can serve as a blueprint for other companies, and help artists “reclaim their power.”“The harm done at the Flea is not unique to the Flea, but showcased throughout the theater community,” she said. More

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    From a Contemporary Drama Festival, Tales of Art and Survival

    At Berlin’s FIND festival of new international drama, some plays tackle big themes while others reject being useful.BERLIN — Theater, according to the Spanish director and performer Angélica Liddell, is a sacrificial act. In the opening minutes of her new show, “Liebestod: The Smell of Blood Does Not Leave My Eyes, Juan Belmonte — Histoire(s) du Théâtre III,” she takes a razor blade and slashes at her kneecaps and the back of her hands. It’s a “sacrifice in the name of the absurd,” she explains in an online teaser for the production. “It’s not a sacrifice in pursuit of the greater good.”“Liebestod” is the centerpiece of this year’s FIND festival of new international drama at the Schaubühne theater in Berlin, where many of the 2021 entries flirt with the redemptive power of art as a tool for both survival and transcendence.The theatrical persona Liddell assumes in “Liebestod,” a monologue-fueled play about art, religion, Wagner and bullfighting, is loud, angry, self-destructive and startlingly musical.When she’s not singing, cooing or screeching along to Bach, Handel and Spanish flamenco rumba, she lashes out at the audience for their mediocrity, hypocrisy and middlebrow tastes from a sparsely decorated stage whose yellow floor and red curtains suggest a bullring.In extended soliloquies, Liddell rails against the spiritual and aesthetic decadence of contemporary “culture.” Nor does she spare herself from scathing criticism. As a result, the production contains a running commentary on its own status as art.“Liebestod” refers, of course, to Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” The term is often used as a shorthand for the opera’s radiant coda, where Isolde sings herself to death in a moment of transfiguring ecstasy. We never hear the aria in the production, although Liddell, dressed as a matador, recites the lyrics to the stuffed effigy of a bull.While bullfighting is a main trope of the production, “Liebestod” is also awash in Catholic symbolism. Liddell renders the liturgical in ways both disturbing and absurd, including in a scene in which she mops her own blood with bread, which she then eats. There’s also a double amputee dressed as Jesus and a coffin-shaped glass reliquary filled with live cats. Some of these images seem worthy of Buñuel (an artist Liddell reveres), although the atheistic filmmaker would rise from the dead to protest when Liddell endorses theocracy as a corrective to a society built on secular values.Although she lacerates herself and her audience (some of whom left; others giggled nervously; most applauded heartily), it is clear that Liddell considers art a wellspring of holy beauty. And at the moments when her production approaches the high-water mark of the art she so venerates, Liddell makes us feel how dazzled she is.While Liddell performs as if her every minute onstage were a fight for survival, she’s not the only person with work at the festival for whom making art seems a matter of life and death. The Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov spent 18 months under house arrest in Moscow on charges of embezzlement that are widely considered to be trumped up. During his long confinement (and the coronavirus lockdowns that came after it), Serebrennikov has directed plays, operas, films and even a ballet remotely. Much of his confinement-era work has dealt with persecution, paranoia and even incarceration, suggesting a therapeutic working through of themes that loom large in the director’s new reality.In 2017, Serebrennikov contacted the Chinese photographer Ren Hang about developing a play inspired by his arrestingly provocative images. Shortly afterward, Hang leapt to his death and Serebrennikov’s freedom of movement was curtailed. From his living room, he devised “Outside,” a phantasmagorical double exposure of himself and Hang that premiered at the 2019 Avignon Festival.In “Outside,” by Kirill Serebrennikov, erotic choreographies bring Ren Hang’s photos to life.Ira PolarAt the start of the performance, the American actor Odin Lund Biron plays a character who is similar to his director. He converses with his shadow about life in confinement and under surveillance. These early scenes, which depict a version of the director’s Kafkaesque ordeal from the inside, are the most dramatically absorbing in the play. Soon, however, Biron is all but supplanted by the suave Russian actor Evgeny Sangadzhiev, who plays the Chinese photographer. The stage fills with beautiful bodies, many naked or in various stages of undress.Much of the following 90 minutes is a series of erotic choreographies that bring Hang’s photos to life. While frequently arresting, the lengthy succession of tableaux vivants often feels arbitrary in its order and selection.“Outside,” though less hermetic than “Liebestod,” is similarly committed to art that is upfront about mining personal pain for the sort of rare beauty that can produce epiphany. For all of their differences, these two shows reflect the sensibilities of artists who are not afraid to practice their art as an end in itself.“I think that making theater into a tool is death to theater and death to art,” Liddell says in the “Liebestod” teaser. In the context of this year’s festival, that credo almost sounds like a warning to some of the other artists featured in the program.In “Not the End of the World,” the writer Chris Bush and the director Katie Mitchell run the risk of using theater to lecture the audience about the dangers of climate change. Bush is a young, acclaimed British playwright; Mitchell is arguably the most influential English theater maker working regularly on the continent. Sadly, their encounter is ill-fated.From left, Alina Vimbai Strähler, Veronika Bachfischer and Jule Böwe in Chris Bush’s “Not the End of the World.” Gianmarco BresadolaThe play toggles between time periods and plot lines at breakneck speed: a young climate scientist interviewing for a postdoctoral position; a researcher who dies during a research expedition; a woman delivering a eulogy for her mother.To their credit, Bush and Mitchell have consciously avoided making a militant play, but what they’ve given us is so slippery that it’s very difficult to get a handle on.The wealth of obscure or cosmically weird anecdotes that are stuffed into this collagelike text often make the play sound like “Findings,” the back-page feature of Harper’s Magazine that compiles wild facts from science journals.In keeping with the play’s theme, the entire production has been crafted with an eye to sustainability. The British team didn’t travel to Berlin for rehearsals; the sets and costumes have been recycled or repurposed; and the show’s sound and lighting is powered by two cyclists who pedal from the sides of the stage. Yet these facts don’t add much to the production.Another British production at FIND, Alexander Zeldin’s “Love,” also runs the risk of “making theater into a tool.” First seen at the National Theater in London in 2016, it centers on a family who have been suddenly evicted from their apartment and find themselves in a crowded shelter, struggling to maintain their dignity.Janet Etuk in “Love,” by Alexander Zeldin.Nurith Wagner-StraussThere are so many ways that a play like this could go wrong, but “Love” is neither earnest nor preachy. The themes are so elegantly dramatized, and the characters so beautiful rendered, that it winds up being politically urgent almost by stealth; the production’s emotional impact is surprising considered how economically it is put together.The immense set depicting the dreary residence plays a focusing role — for the actors, I imagine, as much as for the audience. This is naturalistic theater at its best, evoking the work of the filmmakers Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.“Love” had me thinking that perhaps Liddell is too absolutist in her thinking. I’m not saying it’s easy, but in the right artist’s hands, theater that is alive to social and political issues can be an occasion for beauty and transcendence.FIND 2021 continues at the Schaubühne through Oct. 10 More

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    For Sutton Foster, Crochet Is a Survival Tactic

    Sutton Foster is finishing up a 15-week run at the Barbican as Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes,” a role for which she won a Tony a decade ago, and she is preparing to return to Broadway later this year to co-star with Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man.”But before we got into all that, she wanted to show off a washcloth.“They didn’t have any washcloths here in the flat,” Foster said during a video interview from London last month, “so I was like, ‘Well, I’ll make some!’” She plans to give them as Christmas presents.When she isn’t performing onstage or onscreen (recently as one of the stars of the television series “Younger”), there is a decent chance that Foster is crocheting, cross-stitching, baking, drawing or gardening, hobbies she explores in her new essay collection, “Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life,” which Grand Central will release on Tuesday.The chapters are craft-themed, but this book is not all about Mod Podge and Jo-Ann Fabrics. Foster, 46, writes about how keeping her hands busy has helped her cope with the stress and pressure of her career and the ups and downs of a life in which she didn’t always get what she needed from her family, loved ones or colleagues.“Hooked” is out on Oct. 12.“Anxiety runs in my family — in me,” she writes. “I am the daughter of an agoraphobic mother. I make a living as a performer. It’s complicated. And yet, if I’m feeling anxious or overwhelmed, I crochet, or collage, or cross-stitch. These hobbies have literally preserved my sanity through some of the darkest periods of my life.”There are light moments, like when we learn that Foster crocheted an octopus toilet-paper-roll cover as a wedding gift for her “Younger” co-star Hilary Duff. But these are balanced with heavier revelations, such as when Foster writes about the baskets she cross-stitched for her mother as a means of escaping toxic cast dynamics early in her career.She opens up about snowman-shaped holiday cookies she baked with the family of her first husband, Christian Borle, and the floral blanket she pieced together, one “granny square” at a time, when that marriage ended. She describes drawing interconnected circles with paint pens while undergoing fertility treatments, and the striped baby blanket she crocheted while waiting for her daughter’s birth mother to go into labor.Foster taught herself how to crochet when she was 19, and estimates that she has eight to 10 projects going at a time. She has a yarn dealer who shipped three boxes of Lion Brand supplies to London, then flew over to see “Anything Goes.” (You know what a big deal this is if you’ve ever been a novice in a certain kind of a yarn store, where customers tend to be sorted into varsity, junior varsity and invisible.) Sometimes Foster works from a book or consults YouTube for assistance, but she also creates her own designs.Foster said she has crafted many evenings of song, so she brought the same approach to writing her book: “You’re taking a reader on a journey, like taking an audience on a journey.”Ellie Smith for The New York TimesGrowing up in Georgia and, later, Michigan, Foster got her start, like many thespians of her generation, in a community production of “Annie.” After performing in national tours of “Grease” and “Les Misérables,” she appeared in Broadway productions of both shows, as well as “Annie” and “The Scarlet Pimpernel.” In 2002, she won her first Tony for “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”Like her perennially cheerful “Younger” character, Liza Miller, Foster was a bundle of can-do energy and enthusiasm, until our conversation turned to her mother. Then she spoke slowly, eyes closed, choosing each word painstakingly.Helen Foster’s health began to decline when Sutton and her brother, Hunter, were teenagers. She had a fraught relationship with Sutton and stopped speaking to Hunter for close to a decade; the siblings’ connection with their father suffered as a result. Since Helen Foster’s death in 2013, Sutton and Hunter have enjoyed a new chapter with the man known as Papa Bob, and “Hooked” includes his tips for growing the perfect tomato. (No. 9: “Pick the tomatoes when they’re near ripe but not quite ripe, so others can grow.”)“Crafting was the way I could tell my mother’s story that felt most authentic to me,” Foster said. “A way to weave, pun intended, all the facets of my life together in a way that felt true to me today.”In the book, she takes readers inside the squalid house in Florida where her mother spent her final years. “I flipped on the light and gasped,” she writes. “All of her windows had been blacked out with black garbage bags, secured to the walls with duct tape.” Her mother had been bedridden for months, refusing to seek medical treatment: “That explained the bedpan and pee pads on the floor next to her bed.”In “Younger,” Foster plays a 40-year-old empty-nester who lands an entry-level publishing job — and a whole new life — by pretending to be a millennial.Nicole Rivelli/CBS“It was mental illness that was never treated, never dealt with,” Hunter Foster said in a phone interview. After mentioning that he spends as much time as possible outside, he added, “I don’t allow myself to sleep past a certain time because my mom stayed in bed half the day.”His and his sister’s relationship with their mother is likely to surprise some readers, Sutton Foster said. “It’s a part of our story that people don’t know. It’s this underbelly: my mother’s illness and protecting her and being afraid of her. No one talked about it, and there’s this freedom now.”Behind her on the wall was a framed poster that said “Breathe.”Foster wrote “Hooked” with Liz Welch, who has collaborated on best sellers by Malala Yousafzai, Elaine Welteroth and Shaun King. “Sutton is a Broadway musical actress, my mother was a Broadway musical actress. Sutton’s an adoptive mother, I’m an adoptive mother. Honestly, I think we’d be friends anyway,” Welch said. “Crochet was the perfect metaphor for holding oneself together, taking all these different threads of her incredibly interesting, not-what-you’d-expect life.”Suzanne O’Neill, a vice president and executive editor at Grand Central, said: “One thing that’s very hard for people who are writing memoirs to do is to excavate their stories, and Sutton was game for it, even if there were moments that were hard. She wanted the book to be excellent. She dove into it. It was a piece of art for her, and she worked really hard to make it the book it is.”In “Hooked,” Foster recalls being 16, mesmerized as her idol, Patti LuPone, belted out “Being Alive” on TV. “There was something simultaneously terrifying and thrilling about her confidence,” she writes. Her mother, who had recently stopped driving and grocery-shopping, said, “You can do that.”Foster, center, won a Tony for her performance in “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesShe later met LuPone, who also played Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes,” and LuPone inspired one of Foster’s favorite collages: a colorful confection of craft paper on plywood, spelling out BADASS.“She’s a beautiful creature,” LuPone said of Foster. “She exudes a very positive light. We’re drawn to tortured souls, just to find out why they’re tortured. And we’re also drawn to the light, and the light is much more nourishing. You see somebody onstage that makes you feel better. That’s Sutton.”Foster is set to open “The Music Man” in December, playing Marian Paroo opposite Jackman as Harold Hill. But before she embarks on more soul-soothing craft projects backstage at the Winter Garden Theater, she will have time to settle into the Orange County farmhouse she moved into last spring with her husband, Ted Griffin, a screenwriter, and their 4-year-old daughter, Emily.She plans to bring at least one piece of her past into this next phase of life: a cross-stitched scene depicting baskets of various shapes and sizes that she made for her mother. For years, the piece hung in the front hallway of her parents’ house and was a stabilizing presence during difficult visits.Foster recently collected the baskets from her father’s basement. “I have them now,” she said. “They’ll go in the new house.” More

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    Seth Meyers Breaks Down Facebook’s Very Bad Week

    “It’s the kind of week you normally post about on Facebook,” Meyers said on Wednesday night.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.Face-OffLate-night hosts continued to weigh in Wednesday night on Facebook’s horrible, no good, very bad week.“It’s the kind of week you normally post about on Facebook,” Meyers said, adding that the social media giant had it even worse than the Yankees, who lost their wild-card game Tuesday and were knocked out of the baseball playoffs.“Here’s the thing. Facebook is like a pocketknife: You can use it to peel an apple or stab a janitor at school.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Speaking of destroying America, Mark Zuckerberg is pushing back after the bombshell testimony from a whistle-blower who gave Congress insight into what her former employer is up to. Zuckerberg fired back last night with the longest Facebook post ever recorded. This post was so long, I thought my Aunt Fran wrote it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, claimed, among other things, that Facebook prioritizes angry posts — they get the most traction. Zuckerberg rejected those claims in an angry post.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Up until now, Zuckerberg has been silent about a whistle-blower revealing that Facebook has misled the public about the negative effects of its platforms on children and teens, especially young girls, and that Facebook’s mechanics further the spread of misinformation. That’s why I’m not on Facebook. I get my news from a more reliable source: pantsless guy on the subway.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Zuck actually posted a statement defending Facebook against charges that their algorithm encourages conflict, explaining, ‘I don’t know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry.’ Really? I do — it’s called cnn.com. Why is the video embedded in the article not about the article? If I click a link about the Albuquerque Balloon Festival, I don’t want to watch a video where Van Jones sits down with undecided voters after watching the same Humira ad twice!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And it is, to say the least, not good that what amounts to a global public utility is controlled by one massive, secretive international conglomerate. It’s like finding out that all the drinking water in the world is controlled by some company called ‘Aqua Buds’ and it’s run by one weird little dude who created the company out of revenge because none of the cute girls at this college would give him a glass of water: ‘Oh, I’ll show them. I’ll show them all! Who’s thirsty now, Courtney?’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Anyone Else Edition)“Well, get this — apparently New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been telling people that he’s going to run for governor of New York next year. New Yorkers heard and were like, ‘Please, anyone else.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Then Rudy Giuliani was like, ‘What about me?’ and New York was like, ‘OK, maybe not anyone else.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Here’s the deal: de Blasio is reportedly possibly running for New York governor. There’s still a lot of unknowns: what his platform is, what his announcement date is, and what he’s smoking.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Apparently, de Blasio has been sounding out trusted former aides about their interest in working on a potential campaign. His only hope is that they don’t remember his presidential campaign, when he finished 47th behind Michael Bennet and a Roomba with googly eyes.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingTrevor Noah spoke to Monica Lewinsky about her new documentary, “15 Minutes of Shame,” on Wednesday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightMadonna will pop by Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutJeremy Strong, left, with Nicholas Braun, in the HBO comedy-drama “Succession.” David M. Russell/HBO“There’s a trying to Greg that’s really endearing and fun for me to play,” said Nicholas Braun, a star of “Succession,” which returns with Season 3 on Oct. 17. More