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    Putin, Chekhov and the Theater of Despair

    In London, a new play about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and a revival of “The Seagull” explore undercurrents of pain.LONDON — There’s a chill in the air at the Almeida Theater, notwithstanding the record-breaking heat here. That drop in temperature comes from the coolly unnerving “Patriots,” a new drama whose look at power politics in Russia over the last quarter-century induces a shiver at despotism’s rise.The gripping production, directed by Rupert Goold, runs through Aug. 20.Written by Peter Morgan (“The Crown,” “Frost/Nixon”), “Patriots” surveys the sad, shortened life of Boris Berezovsky, the brainiac billionaire who died in 2013, age 67, in political exile in London. An inquest into Berezovsky’s mysterious death returned an unusual “open verdict,” but on this occasion, it is unequivocally presented as a suicide: The play ends with this balding man, bereft of authority, preparing to end his life.An academic whiz-turned-oligarch who expedited the rise of the younger Vladimir V. Putin, Berezovsky later fell out with the onetime ally who enlarged his power base, according to the play, with promises of “liberalizing Russia,” yet proceeded to do anything but.Morgan introduces Berezovsky, age 9, as a math prodigy whose mother hoped he might become a doctor. (A gleaming-eyed Tom Hollander plays the role throughout.) From there, we move forward 40 years to find Berezovsky an integral member of Russia’s moneyed elite welcoming to his office an obsequious Putin, then deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.“Respected Mr. Berezovsky,” says an initially indrawn, ferret-like Putin, “one would have to live on another planet not to know you!” But it isn’t long before Putin has changed his tune, and his tone, as he rises from prime minister to president and consolidates power around himself. In one notably effective wordless scene, Putin tries out poses in front of a mirror to see which makes him look most impressive. His earlier hesitancy has given way to a man in love with his own heroism.Berezovsky looks on at so dramatic a change in character appalled, urging the former K.G.B. operative to “know your place.” But Putin by this point simply won’t be sidelined. And besides, reasons Putin, why hold your enemies close when they can just as easily be destroyed?Tom Hollander as Boris Berezovsky in “Patriots.”Marc BrennerGoold, the director, dealt with a different headline-maker at the Old Vic this spring in “The 47th,” which imagined Donald J. Trump in the run-up to the next presidential election. Goold is in better company this time: “Patriots” is a richer, less fanciful play, with grim resonances for today. Although Morgan rightly leaves it to the audience to make the connection, you can draw a line between the glorious empire Putin yearns for in the play and his ongoing attack on Ukraine.In one of the performances of the year, Will Keen, as the Russian leader, astonishes throughout, bringing his character to agitated, unpredictable life. His early fawning in Berezovsky’s presence gives way to an icy rejection that finds its fullest expression when his onetime mentor writes as a fellow patriot requesting permission to come home to Russia. Putin dictates a reply, then tells his secretary to rip the letter up: Berezovsky, Putin concludes, “is not worth it.”Hollander impresses, too, as he did in a dazzling star turn in “Travesties,” which won the actor a 2018 Tony nomination — two talky plays requiring an actor at home with reams of language. His character is both a quick-tempered womanizer, and too naïve to realize the young Putin’s potential for authoritarian misrule.Widening the play’s scope yet further is the Russian president’s friend, the oligarch Roman Abramovich (the excellent Luke Thallon), who battles Berezovsky over ownership of the oil company Sibneft. That case, which came to trial in London in 2012, plays out here as a resounding defeat for Berezovsky that only amplifies his psychic distress. Alexander Litvinenko (Jamael Westman, a former leading man in “Hamilton”), the Putin critic who was poisoned in 2006, shows up, too, as the “most honorable” of dissidents (or so Morgan maintains): a political casualty wreathed in glory that the sorrowful Berezovsky never knew.There’s an aspect of bravery, you feel, in writing “Patriots” at all while Putin is on the march. (That said, like Trump with “The 47th,” it’s possible these men’s egos would thrive on the attention.) In the days after Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, orchestras, concert halls and opera houses pulled Russian works from their stages, and it looked as if it might no longer be allowable to perform the Russian repertory in the West; overseas trips by the Bolshoi Ballet, among other storied Russian arts companies, were canceled, as well.Emilia Clarke, second from right, in Anya Reiss’s interpretation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” directed by Jamie Lloyd at the Harold Pinter Theater.Marc BrennerSo it’s a relief to welcome a Russian classic, “The Seagull,” first presented in 1896 by Anton Chekhov, who died nearly a half-century before Putin was even born. That this first of Chekhov’s four great plays ends, as does “Patriots,” with a suicide is an intriguing coincidence that also points to the undercurrents of pain that inform both plays.Performed barefoot and in modern dress, Jamie Lloyd’s enthralling production, at the Harold Pinter Theater through Sept. 10, furthers the stripped-back approach to the classics he brought to a recent “Cyrano de Bergerac” that was acclaimed in New York and London.Just as that play dispensed with a fake nose for its title character, this “Seagull,” seen here in Anya Reiss’s 2012 version, never features the wounded bird of the title onstage. Doing without props of any kind, the cast members, headed by the “Game of Thrones” alumna Emilia Clarke in a terrific West End debut, deliver the play seated on green plastic chairs and boxed in by chipboard; they speak with a quiet intensity, as though we were eavesdropping on the characters’ innermost thoughts. Some will be exasperated by the approach, but I was riveted from the first hushed utterance to the last.Like “Patriots,” this “Seagull” draws from its own well of grief, even if the world of writers and actresses in Chekhov’s play is a long way from Morgan’s power-brokers and politicos. Lloyd’s ensemble communicates the shifting affections of a quietly devastating play that leaves you transfixed by the theatrical potency of despair.Patriots. Directed by Rupert Goold. Almeida Theater, through Aug. 20.The Seagull. Directed by Jamie Lloyd. Harold Pinter Theater, through Sept. 10; in cinemas Nov. 3. More

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    A Bold Concert of Songs and a Potent Play Leave Audiences Abuzz

    At the Williamstown Theater Festival, Daniel Fish’s “Most Happy in Concert” confounds and Anna Ouyang Moench’s “Man of God” raises its own question.WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Saturday matinee of “Most Happy in Concert” had just let out at the Williamstown Theater Festival, and grumbling disgruntlement hung in the air, along with surprised puzzlement.“Was there supposed to be a story involved in that?” a woman asked her companions, on a patio outside the ’62 Center for Theater & Dance at Williams College.No, ma’am, evidently there was not. Or if there was, it isn’t the story that Frank Loesser tells in his 1956 musical “The Most Happy Fella,” about the romance between the unhandsome middle-aged Tony and the waitress Rosabella. To be fair, no one promised that it would be. This is not the musical but rather a 70-minute program of songs (and song fragments) from the score. And it may leave you, as it’s left me, humming those tunes for days. This, though, is no friendly, pattering cabaret.Conceived and directed by Daniel Fish, this fast and busy show on the festival’s main stage (through July 31) is far more aggressively experimental than the sexy, bloody reboot of “Oklahoma!” that he put on Broadway with its book intact. That production was so conscious of the audience’s presence that intermission featured a communal meal of chili and cornbread. Granted, Fish wanted ultimately to implicate us in the American culture of gun violence that’s at the core of that show. But it mattered that we were there.“Most Happy in Concert,” whose fella-free cast of seven includes two terrific veterans of Fish’s “Oklahoma!,” Mary Testa and Mallory Portnoy, is a starkly different creature: aurally rich and gorgeous, visually austere and glamorous — and utterly aloof from its audience.It’s not just that one song bleeds into the next with no pause for breath, let alone applause. It’s that from the opening number, “Ooh! My Feet!,” which the actors perform in a remote corner way upstage, there is the strange, shrugging sense that this production needs nothing from us, and would hurtle right along even if no one were watching from the auditorium. Maybe that will change in future iterations, as Fish gets closer to solving the show’s mysteries. For now, it’s a real obstacle.From left: Maya Lagerstam, Erin Markey, April Matthis, Tina Fabrique and Testa in Fish’s minimally staged production. Emilio MadridThe trouble isn’t an absence of artistry, and it certainly isn’t the cast, which also includes Tina Fabrique, April Matthis, Erin Markey, Maya Lagerstam and Kiena Williams. Songs like “Somebody, Somewhere” and “Big D” are lovely, and Fabrique makes every second of “Young People” entirely her own. The sole case that this concert unambiguously makes is that someone needs to hand Fabrique a big, juicy role in a full-on musical as soon as humanly possible.But any larger point is lost. What does it mean to take the girl-watching harmonies of “Standing on the Corner” out of the mouths of men and put them into the mouths of these actors? Unclear. Given that no one is playing a character from the musical, what is the actors’ relationship to one another meant to be? Ditto. Fish has uprooted these songs from their original context without planting them in a solid new one. (Music arrangements are by Daniel Kluger and Nathan Koci, vocal arrangements by Koci and Fish, orchestrations by Kluger. The music director is Sean Peter Forte.)On a set by Amy Rubin whose main feature is a kinetic curtain of golden fringe that we see stagehands lower so it puddles on the floor and raise so it spins in the air, Fish seems more interested in exploring architectural space and the geometry of bodies within it than he is in communicating with audience members. Who, depending on where they’re sitting, can’t necessarily see the parts of the show happening in the wings.Is this chilly production — which boasts choreography by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the Urban Bush Women founder, but is hardly rife with dance — an album in three dimensions? Is it a music video? As striking as “Most Happy” is to look at (lighting is by Thomas Dunn, costumes are by Terese Wadden), it feels like something less alive than theater, and less shared.In a Q. and A. in the digital program, Fish says that the show — seen in an earlier version last year at Bard SummerScape, with many design elements not yet in place — is ideally “a proposition or a provocation to the audience that asks ‘What happens when this person sings this song in this space with these people?’”It’s an interesting question, but he doesn’t help us to hazard a guess. He is provoking his spectators, absolutely, but to what end?From left, Erin Rae Li, Ji-young Yoo, Shirley Chen and Emma Galbraith as high school students on a mission trip to Bangkok in “Man of God.”Stephanie BergerNext door on Williamstown’s smaller Nikos Stage, Anna Ouyang Moench’s “Man of God” (through Friday) builds and builds, bringing its audience along on an unsettling, darkly comic ride. Not that a plot summary suggests hilarity.A pastor (Albert Park) has taken four high school girls from his California church on a mission trip to Bangkok. He has also hidden a camera in their bathroom, the discovery of which, as the play begins, throws the teenagers into crisis — inciting some of them into thoughts of murdering this supposedly holy man who took such advantage of their trust.“If you read the Bible,” one says, “it’s full of examples. People get killed for a lot less.”At 15 and 16, the girls have little in common beyond their church. Jen (Emma Galbraith) is a brainy, ambitious feminist; Mimi (Erin Rae Li) is a knee-jerk rebel with a fondness for four-letter words. Samantha (Shirley Chen at the performance I saw) is naïve but more intelligent than the others give her credit for, while Kyung-Hwa (Helen J Shen, who took over the role on July 16, the day I saw the show) is deeply conservative, keen to give the pastor the benefit of the doubt.Directed by Maggie Burrows on a messily lived-in hotel room set by Se Hyun Oh, “Man of God” could use some tightening, in both text and performance. But it’s a play whose potency accumulates as it balances ordinary adolescent bickering with stomach-dropping realizations. We see the girls’ illusions crumble as they consider the common ground between lurid sexual exploitation and quieter, more insidious predation.It’s a smart and thoughtful play, with a wordless, minutes-long penultimate scene that’s a tour de force of tension: the girls packing their suitcases to go home, radiating fury and betrayal. And the revenge fantasies that lead up to it? They’re lots more fun than contemplated homicide ought to be.All of which sparks its own kind of post-show chatter — people heading to their cars, eagerly asking one another: “Would you have killed him?”Man of GodThrough July 22 on the Nikos Stage, Williamstown Theater Festival, Williamstown, Mass.; wtfestival.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.Most Happy in ConcertThrough July 31 on the Main Stage, Williamstown Theater Festival, Williamstown, Mass.; wtfestival.org. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. More

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    Trevor Noah Still Doesn’t See Any Good Arguments Against Gay Marriage

    “The House has officially passed a bill legalizing gay and interracial marriage, which is a great victory for 1995,” Noah joked on Wednesday.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.A Little RespectThe Respect for Marriage Act was passed in the House this week, which Trevor Noah described as Democrats “trying to learn their lesson and protect those rights before Clarence Thomas gets to them.”“The house has officially passed a bill legalizing gay and interracial marriage, which is a great victory for 1995,” Noah joked on Wednesday.“Everyone is still shellshocked by the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Although this made conservatives happy because they finally made government small enough to fit inside a woman’s vagina, everyone else was pretty furious.” — TREVOR NOAH“And people weren’t just angry at the Supreme Court. No, they were pissed at Democrats because they didn’t codify Roe v. Wade. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t said ‘codified’ this much in my entire life.” — TREVOR NOAH“Because let’s be honest: It is really strange to be diving back into this debate that we thought was resolved in 2015, all right? This is weird — they’re like ‘We are doing it now.’ Well, what do you mean now? What’s next — we’re going to start arguing about that dress again? Is that what we are doing? Because it is over, guys — it’s over. We decided a long time ago it’s blue and black, all right? And anyone who thinks it’s while and gold is a Nazi. Yeah, I said it.” — TREVOR NOAH“I mean I don’t even know what the argument is against gay marriage — what’s the argument? When it became legal in 2015 conservatives all said, ‘Oh, America is going to fall apart when this happens,’ and yeah, it kind of did but that’s not ’cause of gay marriage.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Hot Earth Edition)“Meanwhile, today, President Biden announced new executive actions to address the climate crisis. Whew, just in time. it’s 115 degrees outside!” — JIMMY FALLON“Unfortunately, Biden’s speech was cut short when the teleprompter burst into flame.” — JIMMY FALLON“So the president held a press conference today to announce new steps to combat climate change but stopped short of declaring a national emergency. Yeah, you don’t want to call a climate emergency too early — you’ve got to wait until our internal temperature is 165 degrees in the thigh. Then we’re safe to eat.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Seriously, even the climate change deniers were like, ‘Do you mind if we protest inside? It’s hot as hell out here.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It’s so hot in the city, Times Square had a naked cowboy and a shaved Elmo.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingLizzo surprised fans with an “Undercover Sing” segment on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightRuPaul will guest host Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutFrom left, Lydia Rose Bewley, Richard E. Grant, Dakota Johnson and Yolanda Kettle in the latest version of “Persuasion.”Nick Wall/NetflixNetflix’s adaptation of “Persuasion” is the latest in failed attempts to please fans of Jane Austen. More

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    An Immersive ‘Next to Normal’ Debuts in Barcelona

    The Broadway musical and its Tony-winning star, Alice Ripley, return to the stage in this condensed and deconstructed production.BARCELONA, Spain — When Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey began writing their 2008 rock musical, “Next to Normal,” they wanted to create a piece in which, according to Yorkey, they could “bring the audience into the mind of the main character.” That character, Diana Goodman, is a suburban wife and mother with bipolar disorder who grapples with the harrowing symptoms of her mental illness while trying to maintain a functional life.The emotional musical not only won acclaim — it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2010 — but also resonated with theatergoers, playing on Broadway at the Booth Theater from 2009 to 2011. In his review, Ben Brantley wrote that the show “gives full weight to the confusion and ambivalence that afflict not only Diana but also everyone around her.”Now, audiences here are experiencing “Next to Normal” in a whole new way through an immersive, hourlong production that recently opened at the Festival Grec de Barcelona. This version, stripped of its props, sets and live orchestra, is being presented in a venue with an open-floor plan, a surround-sound system and 360-degree projections. The cast performs in English, with Spanish and Catalan supertitles, alongside the audience members, who sit in small cubes and become ghostlike witnesses sharing living quarters with the Goodman family.Alice Ripley, who originated the part of Diana, has returned to the role, and she shares the stage with Andy Señor Jr., who plays her husband, Dan; Lewis Edgar, who portrays her son, Gabriel; Jade Lauren, who plays her daughter, Nathalie; and Eloi Gómez, who is Nathalie’s love interest, Henry. But some of Ripley’s most thrilling exchanges occur with an actor thousands of miles away: Adam Pascal, who plays her “rock star” doctor, and who, in a nod to the pandemic, holds his sessions with her via Zoom. Ripley and Pascal rehearsed their scenes together in Florida (he is performing in the national tour of “Pretty Woman: The Musical”), and the recordings of his scenes make Pascal appear to be a larger-than-life figure, adding to the show’s surreal effect.“I would venture to say that I am now the first actor to perform simultaneously in the United States and Barcelona in two different shows at the same time,” Pascal wrote in an email.Ripley won a Tony Award for her role as a woman grappling with mental illness. The immersive show features wall-to-wall screens, with imagery of abstract landscapes meant to evoke Diana’s inner state. David Ruano“Next to Normal” is being produced by the Grec Festival, Layers of Reality and Pablo del Campo, who first saw the musical in 2010 and became obsessed with it. (At the time, he was working as the worldwide creative director of the advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi, splitting his time between London and New York.) Struck by Diana’s emotional ordeal, he said he felt the story needed to be translated into other languages and began working on a Spanish-language adaptation during layovers. A determined del Campo soon found himself pitching his idea directly to Yorkey, and not long after, the Spanish-language production, titled “Casi Normales,” was onstage in Buenos Aires, where it has been running for 10 years.But that wasn’t the end of del Campo’s involvement with “Next to Normal.” In early 2020, weeks before Covid-related lockdowns began, del Campo had what he called “a moment of electroshock” while visiting an artificial intelligence exhibition at the IDEAL Center d’Arts Digitals de Barcelona, which specializes in producing and showcasing digital arts projects. As he watched robots translate texts into visual displays, del Campo said he envisioned Diana in the number “Wish I Were Here,” in which she sings, “When the bolt of lightning crashes / and it burns right through my mind.”Before long, del Campo approached Kitt and Yorkey with his idea for an immersive production, and they — surprisingly — agreed to compress their two-act, nearly two-and-a-half-hour musical. Some scenes of dialogue were cut, but all the big musical numbers remain. The British director Simon Pittman was brought in to oversee the project, and Søren Christensen and Tatiana Halbach, who work under the name Desilence, created the visuals (including abstract landscapes meant to evoke Diana’s inner state). “There’s something to look at everywhere you turn,” Christensen said. “It’s like ‘Dogville’ meets a music video.”Reflecting on the richness of the production’s images, he added: “If movies are 4K, and really good-looking movies are 8K, this is up to four times that.”During a recent rehearsal at IDEAL, the cast was practicing “Who’s Crazy”/“My Psychopharmacologist and I,” a song about adjusting Diana’s medication. At first, the actors practiced their blocking in a completely empty space. Then the wall-to-wall screens lit up, and the actors were transported to a surrealistic world with ticking clocks, larger-than-life-size neurons floating like jellyfish, and pills resembling colorful raindrops falling from the sky. “We need more pills!” Halbach exclaimed at one point.The other element flooding the space was Ripley’s achingly emotional voice.“When we first made [Diana], I didn’t know what it was going to be — the audience watched me figuring it out live,” Ripley said, reflecting on the musical’s Off Broadway run at Second Stage Theater in 2008. She drew from that same feeling of adventure in tackling this new production, though she said she found the experience disorienting at first.“We actors are told never to give our backs to the audience,” she said, “and here all of those rules are gone.”The team behind the immersive production figured it was a no-brainer to bring back Ripley, who won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Diana, even in the wake of a 2021 report in The Daily Beast in which she was accused of “having sexual conversations with a girl as young as 13 and puppeteering a cult-ish, obsessive fan base of vulnerable youngsters.” Ripley later denied the accusations in a statement to The New York Post’s Page Six. “It is a misinterpretation of my actions to say I manipulated anyone, and more shockingly, that there was abuse,” she wrote in a statement.During a break from rehearsals last month, Ripley said she had no further comment about the accusations.Musical purists might clutch their pearls at the idea of a beloved Broadway show being deconstructed, but, as Pittman put it, “We’re doing a ‘Next to Normal.’” And Barcelona might just be the perfect locale for this experiment. After all, it’s the city of Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, a towering basilica that’s been under construction since 1882 and a reminder that true masterworks can sometimes never truly be finished.Ripley, seated center, with from left: Lewis Edgar, Jade Lauren and Andy Señor Jr.David RuanoFor Pittman, directing one of his biggest shows to date felt like a throwback to his Fringe days in Edinburgh, which began in 2005, when he received rave reviews for his direction of “Hospitals and Other Buildings That Catch Fire.”“It’s like being in the underbelly,” he said, before adding: “I’ve never directed a show where you’re both building the process and the venue,” referring to the new technology that was installed at IDEAL to satisfy the production’s needs. (According to del Campo, the show’s budget is close to $1.2 million.)It’s been nearly 15 years since Ripley first inhabited the character of Diana. “Playing Diana is definitely more fun than it’s ever been,” Ripley said of her role in the production, which runs through Aug. 14. “I like to use my whole body to tell the story, and now I know people will be watching my hands or my heels or something.”She added: “I have gone through hell and back since I last played Diana,” referring to life-altering events like the death of her parents and changes in her body and her voice, “but this feels incredibly liberating. We come to the theater to be impacted like that, and to make an impact ourselves.” More

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    The Antihero’s Last Gasp

    In the popular Amazon Prime series “The Boys,” Hughie, an irrepressibly earnest young man who runs with the title group of misfits, is forced to decide — several times — if he’s willing to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for justice. And by “the devil” I mean Billy Butcher, the ruthless, potty-mouthed leader of the team of soldiers and assassins devoted to fighting, extorting, torturing and killing superheroes.Hughie’s our Everyman — our well-meaning protagonist who gets thrown in with Butcher’s crew and serves as his moral compass. While Butcher viciously feeds his vendetta against “supes,” Hughie tries to fight for justice without shedding more blood.In the inside-out world of “The Boys,” which just concluded its third season, Hughie discovers that there are no moral absolutes. The superheroes who are Butcher’s targets? Murderers, rapists, and (in the bland smiling visage of Homelander) a proto-fascist. Clear-cut understandings of who’s a hero and who’s a villain fly — like a bird, like a plane, or like a Superman — out the window.Three members of “The Boys,” who recognize that superheroes aren’t all that super, from left: Tomer Capone as Frenchie, Jack Quaid as Hughie, and Karl Urban as Billy Butcher.Panagiotis Pantazidis/Amazon StudiosAnd with them goes the longstanding comic-book archetype meant to split the difference: the antihero. The old model — the brooding, traumatized crusader in black who toes the line between good and evil, whom we root for even as he descends into moral (and too often, literal) darkness — has become a gross parody of itself.Once a contradictory figure meant to represent both the fresh sins of a modern world and a righteous crusade for justice, the antihero is too often written to such base extremes that it negates the very reason he first became a popular trope — because antiheroes can exist only in a universe in which idealized notions of heroism, and the concept of good and bad, still exist.Plenty of observers have argued that prestige TV reached this impasse, too, when the warped values represented by such beloved characters as Tony Soprano, Walter White and Dexter Morgan grew tired, giving way to the cheery “Ted Lasso” and the family of outsiders in “Pose.”In the comic-book-spawned worlds that, for better or worse, dominate popular culture, creators have tried to resurrect the antihero, to varying degrees of success.There’s more to their struggle than fluttering capes and face-contouring masks. Comic book heroes reflect the morals of our society; the antihero has become a symbol of our muddled ethics and the contradictions we embrace under the guise of justice.‘The Batman’ as Dead EndHow did we get here? We need to talk about that billionaire with the bat fetish — Batman, the quintessential antihero.It’s 1940, just months after his comic book debut, and two goons are escaping in a truck. Into his Batplane our hero goes: “But out of the sky, spitting death the Batman!” one panel reads. In the next he grimaces from the cockpit as he looks through the sight of the plane’s machine gun. “Much as I hate to take human life, I’m afraid this time it’s necessary!” he insists while the bullets fly. He’s only a threat to Gotham’s criminals. He’ll bend the rules but won’t break them.The campy 1960s TV series rendered him into a milk-drinking do-gooder, in keeping with attitudes about violence and ethics in children’s television of the time. When the film franchise began, the directors Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher introduced the dark and garish Gotham. Still, their portrayals were threaded with loony humor and irony.In Christopher Nolan’s movie trilogy, based on the comic book writer Frank Miller’s gritty Dark Knight reboot, Gotham gradually crumbles, the rubble and squalor are palpable, the impact of a crime-ridden city meaningful.Robert Pattinson as the title hero in the preposterously dour Matt Reeves film reboot of “The Batman.” Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.In three hours of listless dolor, Matt Reeves’s oppressively dour “The Batman,” which came out this spring, turned its hero into a comically emo Bat-adolescent. Though Bruce Wayne was traumatized by witnessed his parents’ murder, the film focuses so heavily on his forlorn expressions and tantrums that his pain seemed merely ornamental.It’s why the barbs delivered by a parody like “The Lego Batman Movie” hit their self-serious target. “I don’t talk about feelings, Alfred,” the Lego-block Batman declares while caught mournfully looking at his family photos. “I don’t have any, I’ve never seen one. I’m a night-stalking, crime-fighting vigilante, and a heavy-metal rapping machine.”The Jekyll-and-Hyde SolutionIn the 2018 movie “Venom,” Eddie Brock is a dogged investigative reporter who loses his job (and his relationship) for refusing to compromise his ideals while reporting on the shifty doings at a major corporation. Then he’s infected with Venom, a sentient alien being that controls his body and gives him superhuman abilities. Venom wants to kill and eat people; Eddie wants to help them.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and TV series continues to expand.‘Thor: Love and Thunder’: The fourth “Thor” movie in 11 years, directed by Taika Waititi, embraces wholesale self-parody and is sillier than any of its predecessors.‘Ms. Marvel’: This Disney+ series introduces a new character: Kamala Khan, a Muslim high schooler in Jersey City who is mysteriously granted superpowers.‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’: With a touch of horror, the franchise’s newest film returns to the world of the mystic arts.‘Moon Knight’: In the Disney+ mini-series, Oscar Isaac plays a caped crusader who struggles with dissociative identity disorder.“Venom” is one of several recent films and TV series that make the antihero into a Jekyll-and-Hyde figure, caught between his worst inclinations and best intentions.The Hyde side of the Jekyll-and-Hyde-like antihero Venom.Sony Pictures, via Associated PressIn this year’s “Morbius,” the title character is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist on a search for a cure for his chronic illness. He combines his DNA with a bat’s and becomes newly healthy, but a feral human vampire. He regrets his research, deciding he’s made himself into a monster. Yet when his best friend steals some of the serum for himself, he transforms into an even more vicious beast whom Morbius must stop.That’s another trick to keep the antihero in play: Throw in someone who’s worse than our protagonist. Morality is relative, so at least for a moment, while there are worse villains in the world, we can have something that resembles a hero.Laughing MattersAnother way the culture industry has kept antiheroes popular is by lacing their stories with a dose of often self-deprecating humor. Deadpool, Harley Quinn and the Peacemaker — in the movies and TV series built around them — break the rules and kill rampantly, yet still save innocents.All the while they get distracted by zany side-quests, pal around with odd sidekicks and preen narcissistically. We laugh because they remain fully aware of the pitfalls of hero worship and the ridiculous notion of a bad hero; they either embrace the gray area between good and evil or all but erase it completely, acknowledging that the world is rarely that simple.Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, whose violent ways are laughed off in the movie of that name.Joe Lederer/20th Century Fox, via Associated PressEven his allies find holes in the moral code put forth by the Peacemaker, played by John Cena. “I think liberty is just your excuse to do whatever you want,” one tells him.HBO MaxThe Peacemaker, a character who appeared in James Gunn’s 2021 film “The Suicide Squad” and this year got his own spinoff series on HBO Max, starring John Cena, is a dimwitted, misogynistic Captain America-esque hero who fights for justice — even if that means killing women and children.In “The Suicide Squad,” his teammate Bloodsport calls out the inconsistencies in the Peacemaker’s moral code: “I think liberty is just your excuse to do whatever you want.” And in the series, other characters point out his glaring biases, like the fact that most of the “bad guys” he confronts are people of color.It’s worth stopping to point out that some of the disparity in how antiheroes have evolved can be attributed to the different philosophies of competing franchises.In the family-friendly Marvel Cinematic Universe (owned by Disney) the antihero can be rehabilitated. Black Widow, Hawkeye, the Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, even “The Avengers” antagonist Loki all get redemption arcs, despite the wrongs they’ve committed in the past.The challenge — and it’s a big one, as the franchises morph and blend and reboot, to keep going and going and going — is maintaining any sense of coherence or moral logic.In 2016’s “Batman v Superman,” DC’s miserable Batman fights a miserable Superman over who has the authority to be the hero. In “Captain America: Civil War” from that same year, Marvel’s Captain America and his allies fight Iron Man and his friends over whether or not their actions should be regulated by the government. These battles are equally inane.If one hero is a vigilante on the run for protecting his assassin best friend, and one hero is pro-government but made his money selling guns for warfare, who has the moral high ground? Is there really any difference between a hero and an antihero if everyone is making rules up as they go?Women WarriorsAs I’ve been talking about antiheroes, I’ve been using the pronoun “he.” That’s intentional, because the antihero is so often an avatar of traditional markers of masculinity. He broods over his past. He muscles his way through his obstacles, almost always with a six-pack and bulging biceps. He’s a rapscallion who can fight the law because coded within the archetype is a male privilege that depicts him as an unstoppable force; he is his own judicial system.The female antihero (as scarce as they still are) resists being a cookie-cutter figure. She is less emotionally opaque than her male counterparts, but she can be devious. She is willing to break the rules because she realizes the rules weren’t created for women like her anyway.Krysten Ritter, the title character in “Jessica Jones,” being terrorized by David Tennant as Killgrave.David Giesbrecht/NetflixTake Harley Quinn. She arrived on the scene as the girlfriend of the Joker in an animated “Batman” series. But thanks to Margot Robbie’s dotty performance in “Suicide Squad,” her popularity led to her own film, “Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).” As its lengthy subtitle suggests, the movie frees the character from being a sidekick.The brutally hilarious “Harley Quinn” animated series from 2019 does the same work; it begins with another female villain, Poison Ivy, helping Harley Quinn to realize that her self-worth lies outside of her toxic relationship with the Joker. She can make for herself a life of both high jinks and crime.Jessica Jones, the title character of the Marvel series of the same name, offers a useful contrast to what Batman has become. She, too, witnesses the death of her parents. In her case, it’s caused by an accident that leaves her with superhuman abilities.She is an alcoholic and a loner with trust issues, who for years was assaulted and manipulated by the mind-control villain Killgrave. Her suffering is gender-specific, and when she uses her powers in ways that are less than heroic, she feels utterly human.When Fans Call the ShotsIn a widely seen photo of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, a Proud Boy jumps the railing in the Senate chamber; on his vest, printed over an image of the American flag, is a white skull.This is the logo of the popular comic book character known as The Punisher.The Punisher has been featured in three live-action movies and, most recently, a Marvel TV series starring Jon Bernthal. He’s a Marine-turned-vigilante who begins a vicious war on crime after his family is killed by the mob. Murder, torture, extortion — the Punisher’s methods make Batman’s worst throttlings look like playful slaps on the wrist.Jon Bernthal, who stars in “The Punisher” on Netflix, has publicly taken issue with the alt-right fans who’ve embraced the character as a hero.Jessica Miglio/NetflixHe is also the character who makes most clear that if not handled with care, the ambiguity and sympathetic back story granted a violent antihero can offer real-world cover for despicable actions.For years police and military officers have embraced the character as a can-do man of action. But more recently he’s been adopted by the alt-right Proud Boys, the skull image showing up at the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville as well. Both Bernthal and the character’s creator, Gerry Conway, have publicly chastised the alt-right fans who’ve heralded the Punisher as a hero and adopted him as a model of justice.In fact, this year Marvel Comics has officially moved the Punisher to the dark side; he’s now an enforcer in The Hand, an underground syndicate of supervillains.“The Boys” is especially shrewd on this dilemma, explicitly satirizing toxic fandoms. As the so-called heroes got even more brazen this season, lying and committing crimes in public, their fans grew more enamored with them. What used to look like an engaged fan community was perverted into an incipient fascist movement.Where ‘The Boys’ May Take UsIn the original “Boys” comics on which the TV series is based, everyone is equally corrupt and equally punished. It’s a thoroughly nihilistic vision.The TV version, now that we’re three seasons in, is more optimistic, contending that people are as good as they challenge themselves to be, redeemable when reckoning with their wrongs.In the beginning of this season, Hughie seems to have found a middle place in the war between Butcher’s crew and the superheroes: He leads a government agency set up to regulate the behavior of heroes who’ve stepped out of line.Butcher scoffs at Hughie’s career move, and turns out to be right. Hughie soon discovers the job isn’t what he thought it would be, and the challenges are more than bureaucratic: There’s corruption on this path as well. So Hughie decides Butcher’s brutal approach has been right all along: stopping the superheroes by any means necessary.Butcher, meanwhile, bends his absolutism, occasionally granting supes mercy and even looking after Ryan, the superpowered child who accidentally killed his wife.The categories of hero and villain — and, yes, antihero — don’t do the job in “The Boys,” which is why the series is so arresting. We’re left with complex individuals breaking from the simple archetypes these scripts so often place them in.Such labels are certainly letting us down, and not merely in the world of the comics. Tales of heroes and villains feel, right now, like the stuff of fables. Mass shootings, climate change, human rights, women’s rights — each has been twisted into a narrative of right and wrong that suits the needs of the storyteller, whether that’s the politician, the judge, the voter, the media.About halfway through “The Boys,” one do-gooder supe tries to convince a corrupt corporate henchwoman to do the right thing, but she replies, uneasily, that she doesn’t have superpowers.How can she help save the day? The hero replies, “You don’t need powers. You just need to be human.”Forget the capes, the masks and the powers. We need humans — being good, being bad. As for heroes? They’re the ones who make mistakes and atone for them, who try — and fail, but still try — to stay honest in a broken world. More

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    Stephen Colbert Skewers Steve Bannon

    “Finally, Bannon can tell the former president’s side of the story,” Colbert said 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.Losing PrivilegesThe criminal trial against Steve Bannon began on Tuesday, when prosecutors presented evidence that Donald Trump’s former aide never had the executive privilege he claimed kept him from complying with the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.“I mean, wow, he really hung Bannon out to dry,” Stephen Colbert said of Trump on Tuesday. “Which isn’t easy, because he excretes a thick layer of sebum.”“Finally, Bannon can tell the former president’s side of the story. [Imitating Bannon] ‘Mr. Chairman, this is all a simple misunderstanding. The president didn’t mean to grab the steering wheel from the Secret Service — he just thought it was a big black doughnut!’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (How Hot Is It? Edition)“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it is hot. It is hot! Not just here in the U.S., but there are record-high temperatures all across the world. Seriously, it’s so hot, people on TikTok were slapping each other with tortillas just for the breeze.” — JIMMY FALLON“It’s so hot right now, the fantasy suite on ‘The Bachelorette’ is just the back of an ice cream truck.” — JIMMY FALLON“It is so hot, people are ordering Chipotle just so the E. coli can give them the chills.” — JIMMY FALLON“The heat’s hitting the Brits extra hard, because the Brits aren’t used to extreme weather, and the houses over there — especially older ones — were built to retain warmth. Now luckily, Brits can keep cool with their light and refreshing cuisine of potted organ meat, battered fish and room-temperature beer.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Remember when you wished that everybody who denied climate change would go to hell? Unfortunately, hell came to us.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingGregory Robinson of NASA sat down with Trevor Noah to share insights on what the James Webb telescope can tell us about the universe.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightKerry Washington will guest host Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutDesus Nice, left, and the Kid Mero. Their late-night talk show upended many conventions of the format with a freewheeling approach that could elicit candid, personal insights from celebrities and politicians.Joel Barhamand for The New York Times“Desus & Mero” has ended its Showtime run as the hosts pursue “separate creative endeavors.” More

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    ‘Desus & Mero’ Late-Night Show Ends After Four Seasons

    Showtime said that the Bronx-bred hosts were “pursuing separate creative endeavors” after the duo collaborated on television shows, podcasts and a book.The Showtime late-night talk show “Desus and Mero” will not be returning for a fifth season, the network announced on Monday.The show’s hosts, Desus Nice (a.k.a. Daniel Baker) and the Kid Mero (a.k.a. Joel Martinez), interviewed former President Barack Obama and collaborated on projects including podcasts and a book, but are now “pursuing separate creative endeavors moving forward,” a Showtime representative said in an emailed statement.“Desus Nice and the Kid Mero have made a name for themselves in comedy and in the late-night space as quick-witted cultural commentators,” the statement said.After the announcement, Desus wrote on Twitter that he was “proud of the show my staff made every episode” and hinted he had more projects on the way.Before Showtime picked up “Desus and Mero” in 2018, the show aired on Viceland for two years. The pair, who both grew up in the Bronx, also hosted a long-running podcast, “Bodega Boys.”The television series upended the traditional model for late-night talk shows, with the hosts sitting in chairs next to their guests instead of cloistered behind a desk. They swapped carefully crafted opening monologues for a looser conversation style where they responded to news events and viral clips, building on each other’s jokes.The show’s fourth season on Showtime premiered in March with an interview with Denzel Washington that spotlighted Desus and Mero’s ability to pull candid, personal insights from celebrities and politicians in interviews that felt more like conversations. The two spoke with the Academy Award-winning actor, who grew up in Mount Vernon, N.Y., about different stops on the No. 2 subway line and the rising price of a pizza slice.Before Desus and Mero became a comedic duo, each had built a following on Twitter, where they would occasionally interact while making jokes about their day jobs and the Bronx.They had attended the same summer school and were familiar with each other, but it was a meeting they were both invited to by an editor at the pop culture website Complex that formally brought them together. That meeting led to a podcast called “Desus vs. Mero,” that premiered in 2013, then a web series.After they left Complex, they started the “Bodega Boys” podcast. In 2020, they published an advice book, “God-Level Knowledge Darts: Life Lessons From the Bronx.”Fans, known as the “Bodega Hive,” had speculated that the end of the comedic partnership could be near after the podcast stopped posting new episodes; the last one went up in November. Responding to a series of tweets that appeared to confirm the podcast had ended, Desus said last week that their fans “deserved better than this ending.” More

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    Trevor Noah Mocks Joe Biden for That Fist Bump

    Noah called the president’s choice how to greet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia “the whitest decision of all time.”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.KnuckleheadsPresident Biden’s fist bump with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia raised eyebrows over the weekend. On Monday’s “Daily Show,” Trevor Noah had a lot of opinions about that moment.“America obsesses about these things: ‘No, don’t look too friendly.’ It’s also funny how President Biden thought it would be better to fist bump Mohammed bin Salman because that seems less friendly than a handshake. That’s the whitest decision of all time.” — TREVOR NOAH“You know what Biden should have done if he didn’t want controversy in this? He should have gone in for the handshake and then given him the ‘Psych!’” — TREVOR NOAH“You know what I really think happened? I think Joe Biden’s team briefed him and they were like, ‘Mr. President, in Saudi Arabia, if you make them mad, and you have, they will chop off your hand. So hide your finger, get in, quick, in and out, in and out. Godspeed, Mr. President.’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bennifer Again-if-er Edition)“That’s right, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez reportedly got married over the weekend. Because right now, that’s the only way a Red Sox fan can get a win in the Bronx.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, they got married at a drive-through chapel. You know inflation is bad when even those two are, like, ‘Let’s just do it in Vegas.’” — JIMMY FALLON“The guy who married them was, like, ‘Wow, you two are the best Ben and J. Lo impersonators I’ve ever seen — you’re really good.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Love is real! If they can make it work, there’s hope for every attractive millionaire celebrity couple with a skin-care line.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And as I’m sure you know, the two were engaged years ago, but now they’ve made it official. It’s Bennifer again-i-fer! Or, as I prefer, ‘Jennifer 2: Jen-flecktric Boogaffleck.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingDana Carvey, the guest host on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” brought his famous “Church Lady” impression from “Saturday Night Live” to Monday’s monologue.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightCourtney Barnett, the Australian indie rock artist, will perform on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutJoel Kim Booster in his Netflix special “Psychosexual.”Terence Patrick/NetflixSome seasoned stand-ups — Joel Kim Booster, Nikki Glaser, Bill Burr, Fahim Anwar and Cristela Alonzo — have stellar new comedy specials available for streaming this summer. More