Eliana Willis

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    At Comedy Shows in Lviv, Crowds Look for Humor Amid a Deadly War

    At the Cultural Defense shows in Lviv, comedians and audiences look for humor amid a deadly conflict. Don’t mind the air raid alarms.LVIV, Ukraine — Some morsels of news are so grim and absurd that they sound like they were conceived in the warped imagination of bored satirists. Like the headline from Belarus a few weeks ago, reporting that 10th graders there were being taught how to aim rifles — using shovels.“What do you think about that?” asks the comedian Vadym Dziunko.Dziunko is onstage with two other comedians and a well-known singer. All are seated and holding microphones, gamely trying to find humor in a place and at a moment when the tragic is trouncing the funny by a spectacular margin.It’s a recent Saturday night at the Cult Comedy Hall, a comedy club in downtown Lviv, near Ukraine’s relatively peaceful western border. Some 100 people have spent about $13 apiece to eat, drink and listen to comics riffing about whatever crosses their minds, which is often the latest news about the war with Russia. Or in the case of this shovel-as-rifle business, the topic is the oddness of life in Belarus, a dictatorship a mere 150 miles to the north.“What do you expect from a country where a potato is a weapon?” says the comedian Oleksandr Dmytrovych. Then he imagines an instructor, giving tips to the kids.“‘We can’t give you rifles yet — —”“‘Because we only have one,’” finishes the third comic, Maksym Kravets.From left, Maksym Kravets, Oleh Luzanov, Bohdan Vakhnich and Oleksandr Dmytrovych riff on whatever crosses their minds.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesThis is Cultural Defense, an evening of unscripted and free-flowing humor staged in Lviv every few nights. It began two weeks after the Russian invasion, when Kravets, a Ukrainian intelligence officer by day and a comedian by night, called the co-creator of the show, Bohdan Slepkura, and pointed out that the Cult Comedy Hall was in a basement.“I said, ‘You know, the place is a bomb shelter,’” recalled Kravets, a burly and bearded 42-year-old.Kravets, wearing a T-shirt with “Wildness” on it, and Dmytrovych were sitting in another room in the club after the show recently. Initially, they said, they were not sure anyone in the country was in the mood for chuckles. The shock of the invasion was then fresh and hundreds of thousands of residents from the eastern part of the country were flowing into the city.“Before the first show, we thought, maybe this isn’t the right time for comedy,” said Dmytrovych, who is 30 and bearded, too. (“Without beards we’re ugly,” he explained.)“We were petrified,” he went on. “But after the first show, we came and sat in this room and realized, people want to laugh. They want to hear jokes about our enemy. From that first night, we understood this would be bigger than we had thought.”The shows are held in a basement space that is certified as a bomb shelter.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesThere has been exactly one international breakout star in Ukrainian comedy and he happens to be the president of the country, Volodymyr Zelensky. If this puts pressure on others in the business, it wasn’t obvious onstage on this Saturday, when nobody seemed especially pressed to land on a punchline and a singer, Mykhailo Khoma, spent a lot of time ruminating about his childhood.Ukraine has long had a modest live-comedy scene, though anyone accustomed to the standard setup at American clubs will find novelty in the show’s format. There’s no warm-up act, and at no point is anyone standing onstage alone. There are different guests every night. The evening starts with four men leading a raucous call and response in Ukrainian, like the rest of the show.Hosts: “Glory to the Nation!”Audience: “Death to enemies!”Hosts: “Ukraine!”Audience: “Above all else.”Hosts: “Putin!”Audience: Unprintable putdown!After that, the stars take their seats and start to talk.Some of the humor is self-deprecating. In a previous show — they’re all available on YouTube — Dmytrovych riffed about the news that Ukrainian soldiers had mastered a “single use” antitank missile called an NLAW. This was amazing, he said, because by nature and necessity, Ukrainians are accustomed to reusing everything, over and over.“I got slippers in a hotel in Egypt a year and a half ago and I’m still wearing them,” he said. “When they got dirty, I washed them. When they fell apart in the washing machine, I glued them together. Now these are slippers I offer to guests.”Kravets is a Ukrainian intelligence officer by day and a comedian by night.Emile Ducke for The New York Times“For as long as we’re laughing, we’re not giving up,” Dmytrovych said.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesThere are plenty of jokes at the expense of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who is scorned as a blustery idiot who underestimated the spirit and resolve of Ukrainians. The Russian military, on the other hand, is largely spared. The point, explained Dmytrovych, isn’t to belittle the invading forces, which Ukrainians regard as formidable and horrifying. It’s to lift the spirits of people who are not on the front lines, or who might have once lived near the front lines and have since relocated.So during one show, Kravets extolled the surprisingly polished beauty of checkpoints in Lviv (“I would not be surprised if they served lattes”), some of which have exceptionally long lines. (“I thought at the beginning they would take my order and at the end I’d be handed a Big Mac.”)Internal politics are a recurring theme. During a show a few weeks ago, a poll was cited that found 90 percent of Ukrainians want to join the European Union.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More

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    The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to HBO, Hulu, Apple TV+ and More in July

    Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of July’s most promising new titles.(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)Chris Pratt as James Reece in “Terminal List.”Amazon PrimeNew to Amazon Prime‘The Terminal List’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 1Chris Pratt is the lead actor and an executive producer of “The Terminal List,” a military mystery based on a series of novels by Jack Carr. Pratt plays James Reece, a Navy SEAL whose team is wiped out on a mission under circumstances that look much more suspicious once Reece is back home and able to investigate — a task complicated by a brain injury that makes it hard for the soldier keep his memories straight. This star-studded drama also has Taylor Kitsch playing one of Reece’s buddies, Riley Keough as Reece’s wife, Jeanne Tripplehorn as a top-level bureaucrat and Constance Wu as a reporter who helps the hero understand that the people he had answered to might not have had his best interests at heart.‘Paper Girls’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 29In 1988, four adolescent girls are delivering newspapers in suburban Ohio when they inadvertently travel through time, and in the process get caught up in a long-running battle between bands of adventurers who disagree about who should be allowed to use the time-hopping technology.That is the premise of the writer Brian K. Vaughn and the artist Cliff Chiang’s Eisner-winning comic book series “Paper Girls” as well as its new television adaptation, which is filled with enough metaphysical mysteries, ’80s nostalgia and ray-gun blasts to keep most “Stranger Things” fans satisfied. The show is also a coming-of-age drama, concerned with the past, present and future of its young heroines, who during their journeys get a chance to confront the women they will become, and to think about whether their fates can — or should — be changed.Also arriving:July 8“Warriors on the Field”July 15“Don’t Make Me Go”“Forever Summer: Hamptons” Season 1“Love Accidentally” Season 1July 22“Anything’s Possible”New to AMC+‘Moonhaven’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 7Set 100 years in the future, this quirky science-fiction series takes viewers to a lunar colony where scientists and idealists have spent decades testing out ways to make an increasingly fragile Earth more habitable. Emma McDonald plays Bella, a skeptical pilot and part-time criminal who gets stuck in this weird utopia when she becomes a suspect in a murder. As Bella works alongside one of the colony’s law enforcement officers (Dominic Monaghan) to clear her name, she become embroiled in the political intrigue that is threatening to wreck this grand social experiment.Created by Peter Ocko (a veteran TV writer and producer who has worked on cult favorite shows like “Lodge 49” and “Pushing Daisies”), “Moonhaven” is the kind of drama meant to keep audiences wondering what will happen next and pondering the deeper theme of social interconnectedness.‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Part 2Starts streaming: July 11The final six episodes of this acclaimed “Breaking Bad” prequel has a lot of ground to cover, as the creators Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan connect all the pieces of the Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman story: from how he cemented his place as Albuquerque’s go-to attorney for drug kingpins to what became of him years later after he changed identities again and moved to Nebraska.The fates of some of the “Better Call Saul” characters are already sealed because of what happened on “Breaking Bad,” but the show’s fans have been nervous about others — and especially about what night happen to Jimmy’s good-hearted, keen-minded wife, Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn). Regardless of how the plot plays out, these last few chapters will offer another chance to savor one of the most artfully directed, sharply written crime dramas on TV.Also arriving:July 1“Barbarians”July 8“Last Looks”July 12“Cow”July 15“Paris, 13th District”July 22“Happening”Egerton in “Black Bird” as Jimmy Keene, a convicted drug dealer who is offered a deal to leave prison early if he can elicit a confession from another inmate.Alfonso Bresciani/Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Black Bird’Starts streaming: July 8Based on a memoir, “Black Bird” stars Taron Egerton as James Keene, a seemingly untouchable golden boy — a former high school football hero and policeman’s son — who gets busted for drug-dealing and weapons possession, and is sentenced to 10 years in prison. Then James gets offered a deal: transfer to a rougher facility, where he can cozy up to the suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), and get the man to confess to where he buried the bodies, earning himself an early release.Produced and written by the crime novelist Dennis Lehane, this mini-series features an accomplished cast (including Greg Kinnear as a dogged detective and Ray Liotta in one of his final roles as James’s dad), telling a story about the unsettling mysteries at the heart of some criminal cases, including when the truth is in conflict with the evidence.Also arriving:July 8“Duck & Goose”July 22“Best Foot Forward”“Trying” Season 3July 29“Amber Brown”“Surface”A scene from “The Wonderful Summer of Mickey Mouse.”Disney+New to Disney+‘The Wonderful Summer of Mickey Mouse’Starts streaming: July 8The arrival of a new season brings another of Disney’s quarterly Mickey Mouse anthologies — the third this year, after “The Wonderful Winter of Mickey Mouse” and “The Wonderful Spring of Mickey Mouse.” This new special alters the format a bit, telling five “Rashomon”-like interconnected stories, with Mickey and his pals each explaining how and why they left a trail of destruction while recklessly speeding toward a lakeside vacation resort. As with most of the recent Mickey Mouse cartoons, the emphasis here is on colorful visual design and inventive slapstick, delivered at a frenetic pace.Also arriving:July 1“Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”July 4“America the Beautiful”July 15“Zombies 3”July 20“Siempre Fui Yo”“Tudo Igual… Só Que Não”July 27“High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” Season 3“Light & Magic”Aida Osman, left, and KaMillion in “Rap Sh!t.”Alicia Vera/HBO Max New to HBO Max‘The Rehearsal’Starts streaming: July 15Fans of the deadpan comedian Nathan Fielder’s offbeat reality series “Nathan for You” should quickly catch onto the vibe of his new show “The Rehearsal.” The premise is similar: Fielder helps ordinary people with their ordinary problems by going to absurd lengths. In this case, he prepares his clients for potentially stressful or uncomfortable interactions with their friends and families by hiring actors and constructing detailed sets, so that these men and women can practice what they want to say. Because this is a Fielder project, there are a few twists along the way, all intended to jolt the viewer into noticing how awkward and artificial even the simplest human behavior can be.‘Rap Sh!t’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 21Issa Rae follows up her HBO dramedy “Insecure” with the more experimental “Rap Sh!t,” for which she is the head writer and creator, but not the star. Aida Osman plays Shawna, an aspiring rapper who makes ends meet by working at the front desk of a Miami hotel and doing favors — sometimes legal, sometimes not — for her friends.Much of the show is framed through the cellphones the characters use to text each other, to post on social media, to make snarky comments about their rivals and to communicate with the not-always-reliable men in their lives. Like “Insecure,” this new series is about how relationships and careers have changed in the modern era. But the women in ‘Rap Sh!t” are more desperate, feeling anxious to make something exciting happen in their lives before they get stuck in a working-class rut.Also arriving:July 1“Last Night in Soho”July 10“The Anarchists”July 11“Tuca & Bertie” Season 3July 12“The Bob’s Burgers Movie”“Edge of the Earth”July 14“FBoy Island” Season 2July 21“The Last Movie Stars”July 26“Bugs Bunny Builders” Season 1July 27“We Met in Virtual Reality”July 28“Harley Quinn” Season 3“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” Season 1New to Hulu‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 4Starts streaming: July 13In its brilliant third season, this hilarious mockumentary about a Staten Island vampire colony took some unexpected narrative turns, becoming more about the existential ennui and centuries-old regrets that threaten to tear these immortal bloodsuckers apart. Season 4 will resolve last year’s surprising cliffhangers, which saw the moody Nandor (Kayvan Novak) set to return to his Middle Eastern homeland, the debauched Laszlo (Matt Berry) staying in New York to look after the newly reincarnated form of his annoying colleague Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) and the bossy Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) heading to London to join the Supreme Vampiric Council. Much of the humor in this show is derived from the way these very different characters play off each other, so it shouldn’t be long before their paths cross again.Also arriving:July 1“Feud” Season 1“The Princess”July 2“Asking for It”July 6“Maggie” Season 1July 7“Rehearsals” Season 1“Ultrasound”July 8“Minamata”July 9“Gold”July 10“Killing Eve” Season 4July 12“The Bob’s Burgers Movie”July 13“Solar Opposites” Season 3July 14“Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons”July 18“The Cursed”July 19“Aftershock”July 21“American Horror Stories” Season 2“You Are Not My Mother”July 22“All My Friends Hate Me”July 26“Santa Evita”July 29“Hatching”“Not Okay”July 31“A Day to Die”Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper as a beleaguered, mystery-solving married couple in “The Resort.”PeacockNew to Peacock‘The Resort’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 28Fans of “The White Lotus” and “Only Murders in the Building” who are looking for another twisty, character-driven mystery in an upscale locale should check out this stylish dramedy, produced by Sam Esmail (“Mr. Robot”) and created by Andy Siara (the co-writer of the movie “Palm Springs”).Set at an all-inclusive Mexican beach resort, “The Resort” has Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper playing a married couple on the brink of breaking up who stumble upon evidence of an old crime. The series jumps between the events 15 years earlier, filling the viewers in on the details of what might have happened, and the present day, showing the bickering heroes rediscover what they love and loathe about each other while they work together to crack the case.Also arriving:July 1“The Bad Guys”July 5“Dateline: The Last Day” Season 1July 7“The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip” Season 2July 8“Trigger Point” Season 1July 11“Days of Our Lives: Beyond Salem” Season 2July 14“Hart to Heart” Season 2July 19“Love Island” Season 4 More

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    ‘53% Of’ Review: Zinging Pro-Trump Women, and Everyone Else

    A new comedy by Steph Del Rosso starts as a satire of conservatives, then takes aim at progressives. Too bad the jokes barely cut either side.In America, to vote in a federal election is to commit a secret act. One votes in private, in a curtained booth, on intimate terms with an oversize ballot. But little in American public life stays private for long.Exit polls soon provide precise demographic breakdowns, illuminating just who voted for whom. Perhaps you remember this statistic from back in 2016: Despite the “locker-room talk,” to say nothing of the accusations of groping, forced kissing and assault, 53 percent of white women voted for Donald J. Trump. The fitful new comedy “53% Of,” by Steph Del Rosso at Second Stage’s uptown space, takes that data point as inspiration. (Corrected metrics later showed it was more like 47 percent, but whatever.)The play begins in a middle-class living room, embellished with “Home Sweet Home” throw pillows and an outsize American flag. The setting is a small city in Pennsylvania. The time is wine o’clock. Four white women, members of a local conservative club called the Women for Freedom and Family Group, have met to toast Trump’s win and to make plans for his visit to their city. They’re joined by a fifth white woman, PJ (Eden Malyn), who arrives in a sweatshirt bearing the Confederate flag. That sweatshirt upsets the other women because it says the quiet part — the racism that undergirds their politics — loud and proud. It helps explain why these women have voted against their own gendered interests.After internal squabbles, the meeting devolves — a gelatin salad is thrown — and the actresses return, with slight changes of clothing (jackets instead of skirts), this time playing the women’s boorish husbands. It is a month or so later, and the men, also white, have gathered to watch the Trump inauguration.Grace Rex, Wake, Marianna McClellan and Crivelli, now as a progressive coalition in New York.Joan MarcusAfter a second change, the same actresses return again, this time as an urban collective of the pussy hat-knitting variety. The set, barely altered, has become a cramped New York apartment in some outer borough. The flag has gone, replaced by feminist ephemera. These women are white, too. Apparently the group had one Black member at one point. She hasn’t returned. There’s racism here, too, of course, which manifests as enthusiasm and tokenism.Del Rosso’s play is a kind of target practice, and in every act those targets are big. But the effect is hit or miss. The conservative women crave status and recognition. The conservative men crave women who aren’t their wives. The liberal women mask ego as sanctimony. None of this surprises. (I saw “53% Of” the day after the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, when in progressive corners of social media, ostensible allies had already begun to turn on one another.) The jokes are very shallow when they could go deep. Flesh wounds only. Take for example a moment in which the women contemplate going to a march against police brutality, only to ditch it for a bridal shower, a documentary screening, a date.A note in the script advises that “no one is a caricature in this play. Embrace their full complexities.” But Del Rosso and the director, Tiffany Nichole Greene, judge these characters energetically, which sours the play and leaves the actresses little space to expand beyond parody, though Anna Crivelli and Marianna McClellan find a few more grounded moments.The best scene of the play is also the last, in which Crivelli’s Sasha, who is white, goes for a drink with her college friend KJ (Ayana Workman), who is Black. (She is the one who bailed on the collective.) This dialogue also tackles white privilege, but from a place of greater realism rather than scattershot satire. Crivelli makes us feel Sasha’s good, misguided intentions; Workman delineates KJ’s frustrations with not being seen as fully, fallibly human. It’s a sad scene. And a good one. Here, finally, the aim is true.53% OfThrough July 10 at McGinn/Cazale Theater, Manhattan; 2st.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    Stephen Colbert Reflects on This Year in the Supreme Court

    Colbert referred to the court’s year of bold rulings as “a real roller-coaster ride, in that I am nauseous and scared we’re all going to die.”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.Environmental HazardThe Supreme Court held the last session of its term on Thursday and announced yet another controversial decision. This time, the court ruled to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants.Stephen Colbert referred to the court’s year of bold calls as “a real roller-coaster ride, in that I am nauseous and scared we’re all going to die.”“Today was the final day of the Supreme Court’s current term and I gotta say, thank god. This must be how the Jets feel when halftime finally arrives: [imitating a Jets player] ‘Well, at least we get 15 minutes when they can’t kick our [expletive]!’” — SETH MEYERS“What are you thinking, Supreme Court? It’s the Environmental Protection Agency — if they can’t limit the emissions, then the agency can’t protect the environment. They’re going to have to change what the ‘P’ stands for — maybe ‘Environmental Punch-Dolphins-in-the-Taint Agency.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“With these maniacs in charge, our only hope is that the smokestacks put on a condom.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to protect the environment? So what is their job now?”— TREVOR NOAH“And by the way, by the way, just so you understand, this ruling might not just be about the carbon emissions. A lot of experts believe the logic of today’s ruling makes it harder for the government to regulate anything unless Congress specifically passes a law to do it. Because you see, right now, a lot of regulations are made by agencies, like — like the F.D.A. They will handle food, you know? The C.D.C. with public health; the B.R.B., with ignoring text messages.” — TREVOR NOAH“Yeah, Justice Jackson made history as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, and the first person to make people cheer for the Supreme Court in the past two weeks.” — JIMMY FALLON“Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in today as the Supreme Court’s 116th justice — and then Clarence Thomas dissented against that, too.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Vasectomy Edition)“With contraception in the judicial cross hairs, folks are taking their genitals into their own hands, with men rushing to get vasectomies — and then very slowly walking home from them.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“According to one urologist, before the Supreme Court’s ruling he received four or five vasectomy requests a day. But since the decision, that number has spiked to 12 to 18. Makes sense. The most effective forms of birth control for men are abstinence and vasectomies. They have a similar result, but there’s a vas deferens.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I’ve never personally performed a vasectomy, but I’d like to try my very first one on Samuel Alito.” — CHELSEA HANDLER“Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, urologists have reportedly seen an uptick in requests for vasectomies. And this is weird — from women: [imitating woman] ‘His name is Dave — I’ll bring him in.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingJames Corden tried his hand at being the president’s assistant on Thursday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutOur list of 12 books to read in July includes a tender coming-of-age memoir by Isaac Fitzgerald, a biography of Vladimir V. Putin and novels from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Bolu Babalola and Daniel Nieh. More

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    Review: In a Powerful ‘Hamlet,’ a Fragile Prince Faces His Foes

    Alex Lawther makes for an especially riveting hero in Robert Icke’s chic if imperfect modern-dress production at the Park Avenue Armory.Many Hamlets I’ve seen are wily. Some kooky. Narcissistic, aloof, even pretentious. Less common is a Hamlet who is tender and romantic and achingly vulnerable, like a petal falling from the head of a flower at the end of its bloom.When Alex Lawther’s fragile Danish prince drags himself onstage in Robert Icke’s modern-dress production of “Hamlet,” which opened Tuesday night at the Park Avenue Armory, he recalls the 19th-century poets Arthur Rimbaud and Percy Shelley, a brilliant yet dejected young man who seems resolved to his sorrow — and to a tragic end.In the last decade, Icke has gained prominence for his heightened and contemporary-inflected adaptations of classics. This “Hamlet” played in the West End in 2017, with the hot-priest-sized package of magnetizing charisma known as Andrew Scott in the lead. He was one of the best Hamlets I’ve ever seen — though, as in so many other takes, the focus fell on his brooding and banter more than his emotional depth.Lawther, best known for his role in “The End of the __ing World,” doesn’t have Scott’s starry flair, but he possesses his own demure kind of charisma; he draws you in even as he withdraws into himself. As a result, this rendition honors Hamlet as not just self-indulgently melancholy, but as grappling with legitimate, heartbreaking loss.We begin at a swanky wedding party. (Hildegard Bechtler did the stylish sets and costumes.) Beyond a wall of sliding glass panels, we see Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude (Jennifer Ehle), and her new husband, his uncle Claudius (Angus Wright), dancing amid balloons and strings of lights. Dressed in a black suit, Lawther slowly shuffles across the stage and sits close to, but removed from, the action. He roughly rubs his palms against his thighs, as though to rub the fabric off his body.Throughout the hefty 3-hour-and-45 minute production, Lawther fully embodies Hamlet’s despondency, shuffling like a wayward toddler, with knees slightly bent and a constant sway that makes him appear near collapse. Planning to enact his vengeance on his scheming uncle, he holds a gun off at an angle, as though his arm is being puppeted by someone else pulling the strings above the stage.And when he speaks, it’s in a slow, warbling singsong, at once contemplative and idiosyncratic, especially when he pauses in the middle of sentences as though his mind is hiccuping with existential thoughts.Though the peculiar line readings sometimes turn monotonous, he snaps out of it, erupting into a surprising fit of mania. And Lawther threads the famed “What a piece of work is man!” monologue with poetic resonance, moving from wonder to despair through slow articulation and emphatic rhythm.From left: Lawther, Michael Abubakar, Hara Yannas, Angus Wright (as Claudius),Gilbert Kyem Jnr and Tia Bannon in the modern-dress production.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIcke, whose one-woman “Enemy of the People” played the Armory last year and whose “1984” had a brief Broadway run in 2017, brings a cinematic eye to the proceedings, using foreground and background to create dimension. In one clever bit of staging, Hamlet tarries in the forefront as the king and queen canoodle in back and guards race by mid-stage between them, fresh from sighting the former king’s ghost.At the same time, the director brings some curious adjustments to the characters, giving Polonius a touch of dementia and depicting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as a couple clearly at odds about how they should respond to the royal request to monitor Hamlet.The women, in particular, get short shrift. Gertrude is unreadable, despite Ehle’s punchy line readings, and Ophelia’s descent into madness occurs faster than you can say “something rotten” — doing a disservice to Kirsty Rider’s perfectly matched delicate companion to Lawther’s Hamlet.As Claudius, Wright has the self-consciously composed air of a politician but misses some of the menace, while Peter Wight leans too heavily on the bumbling as Polonius. Luke Treadaway, however, makes the most of Laertes’s transformation: from refined gentleman and doting brother to unhinged revenge seeker, wildly swinging a gun at the news of his father’s murder and sister’s suicide.There are actual gunshots, too — ghastly pops and flashes of light that make the audience jump to attention. This is nowhere as gratuitous as, say, the 2019 DruidShakespeare production of “Richard III,” or even the current Broadway staging of “Macbeth,” with its severed limbs and crotch wounds. Still, the sight and sound of a gun onstage today, given our country’s despicable relationship to firearms, is unsettling.What’s most frustrating about Icke’s otherwise intriguing approach is the inessential, and, by now, highly unoriginal, incorporation of high tech. A grid of 12 screens hangs overhead, and two larger screens flank the stage, showing security footage from the castle and news reports about Denmark’s conflict with Norway.Clockwise, from lower right: Lawther (as Hamlet), Kirsty Rider (as Ophelia), Luke Treadaway (as her brother Laertes), Wright and Kyem.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe screens also flash “pause” and “stop” before the two intermissions and the final scene, mawkishly calling attention to the audience as spectators. The way Icke and the lighting designer Natasha Chivers handle several of Hamlet’s monologues is more effective; soft overhead light halos Lawther as he seems to addresses theatergoers directly from the edge of the stage, only to snap off when he’s done speaking.Tom Gibbons’s sound design envelops the proceedings in ominous atmospheric gloom:a distant howling wind; the cold, mechanical hum of static and feedback; and, finally, the thunderous exclamations of drums. Less fitting are the production’s folksy compositions (by Laura Marling) and use of Bob Dylan songs, which, even deployed ironically, are a bit too Midwest-porch-jam for this chic production.“Hamlet” is one of the Shakespeare plays that most suffers from diminishing returns — adaptations that try too hard to innovate, to render a classic modern and hip. Though Icke’s protracted production occasionally falls into that trap, ultimately the creative team’s visual and technical prowess — along with its provocative young lead — make this a tale of musing, mania and murder for our age.HamletThrough Aug. 13 at the Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory; armoryonpark.org. Running time: 3 hours 45 minutes. More

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    In ‘Stranger Things,’ He Delivers Pizza and Stoned Comic Relief

    Eduardo Franco, who joined the Netflix hit this season, has carved out a role as the show’s addled but reliably hilarious tension-release valve.The “Stranger Things” gang in Lenora Hills, Calif., is in danger — shots are being fired, and an agent is bleeding out. The camera switches abruptly to a view of an unknowing Argyle, played by Eduardo Franco, pulling up to the Byerses’ home as the catchy reggae hit “Pass the Dutchie” blares from his pizza delivery van.“Byers man, having a party and not inviting me, man?” he says. “That is so not cool.”As the group’s wheelman who “smokes smelly plants,” as Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) puts it, Argyle serves as comic relief in the show’s most horrifying season, his lighthearted energy offsetting the dark forces bedeviling the gang.“Argyle delivers pizzas and he dwells in the psychedelics sometimes,” Franco said in a recent video interview. “That’s the perfect combination: to always have hot and ready food, and a little tree.”As one of the most prominent cast additions in Season 4 — the final episodes arrive Friday on Netflix — Franco has carved out a role as the show’s addled but reliably hilarious tension-release valve. But Argyle transcends the stoner-pal stereotype and adds a little heart to the story as well, primarily in the form of his sweet friendship with Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) — though admittedly this often involves the duo being stoned out of their minds.Franco’s most prominent role before Argyle came in Olivia Wilde’s coming-of-age comedy “Booksmart,” as a 20-year-old high school senior named Theo who was recruited to code for Google. That performance led to his current gig — Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler in “Stranger Things,” saw Franco in the movie and suggested him for the role.Franco spoke from Biarritz, France, where he was visiting as part of a “Stranger Things” branding partnership with the surf culture label Quiksilver, which supplied much of Argyle’s wardrobe. In conversation, he was clearly more astute than his character but similarly funny and informal, indulging in f-bombs as freely as Argyle does his smelly plants.In the interview, Franco discussed his inspirations for the character and “marinating in the awkwardness” that comes with life as the show’s designated burnout. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was it about Argyle’s character that appealed to you?I loved that I could hopefully bring a breath of fresh air to the chaos that ensues in the show. It tends to get crazy, and I was hoping I could serve as “let’s laugh it off now, because I’ve been tense for the last 45 minutes.”Argyle provides reliable comic relief, but he transcends the stoner-pal stereotype.NetflixDid you take inspiration from any past cinematic potheads?Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” is always in the back of my mind. My initial approach was to just completely be blown out of my mind all the time — as the character, not Eduardo the actor! I wanted Argyle to be completely clueless: When someone says “Oh my god, Argyle, we gotta get out of here!” I’ll be like, “Huh?” But I know that for the sake of the energy and the adrenaline in the scenes, that wouldn’t always work.How old is the van you drive in the show?It was touchy, an 80-something. I was taught how to drive that van by this professional stunt driver — I’d never driven a stick shift before and it was the worst thing to learn on, because it was just so old. But he was always in the van with me when I was driving, hiding in the car just in case.Was there a scene that was particularly fun to film?The dinner table scene was my personal favorite. Eleven is bummed out. Mike is also concerned. Joyce and Murray [played by Winona Ryder and Brett Gelman] are lying about going to Alaska. And me and Jonathan are blown out of our minds.It was so fun sitting there, marinating in the awkwardness. When it was time for me and Charlie to do our lines, sometimes we would stall while everyone was waiting for us, and we’d be sitting there just eating slowly. It was hilarious, and it was awesome to be able to get Brett and Winona to laugh. I love going to work and making people laugh — the camera man, the crew, the people hauling things up and down all day. And everything felt so organic, sharing the screen with Charlie, Finn and everyone.What did Argyle’s relationship with Jonathan bring to the show’s dynamic?Jonathan is in pain. I think they became instant friends because Jonathan needed a set of ears, and Argyle happened to be right there. Argyle’s character is what we all wish we could be: completely judgment-free. He’s there to have a good time with his bud, and to listen to Jonathan and help him out, no matter what he says.Do you think Argyle is capable of handling whatever danger is coming his way?I can’t tell you anything, but geez, he’s out of his mind for sure. Poor guy.“I loved that I could hopefully bring a breath of fresh air to the chaos that ensues in the show,” Franco said.Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesHow has joining an enormous global phenomenon like “Stranger Things” changed your life?At the Season 4 premiere in New York, when we sat down to screen the first episode, I got mad emotional and started crying in my seat. I was glad it was dark and nobody could see anything. To be a part of something this massive was overwhelming, and I hope people can accept my character as a new guy in the show. I hope he does serve his purpose as a breath of fresh air from all the crazy madness.Have you started getting recognized in public?Yes! For an example, when I got to France last week, I was riding a bike down the street to grab some stuff from a market. My bike had no brakes, and as I’m pulling up, I put my feet down to try to stop, and there was this guy pointing and laughing. Then he double-takes and he was like, “You’re the guy from ‘Stranger Things’? What are you doing here, man?” I was like, “I came to get some chocolate croissants and an adapter to plug my phone charger in the wall.” It was so funny, but that’s just how massive this show is.A series like this generally provides a significant career boost. What kinds of things do you hope to work on in the future?I got a couple movies under my belt, but to be in a movie where people are going to the theater and I’m rockin’ people’s socks off is my dream. I don’t know if that era is already out the window, but I just recently watched “Top Gun,” and it was amazing. So I have hope.And I’d love to be a part of creating the projects, but I don’t know necessarily how to do all that yet. I’m trying to figure all this stuff out. I don’t know a [expletive] thing, but we’re all learning. More

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    in Television

    ‘Fourth of July’ Review: Fraught Family Dynamics From Louis C.K.

    The comedian directs, co-writes and takes a supporting role in this family dramedy. It’s not supposed to be his show, but it is anyway.Jeff, a jazz pianist, is a recovering alcoholic who is almost three years sober. But he hasn’t quite begun to reap the gifts of his new state. In spite of his contented marriage, his soul is a bag of anxiety — one that both his A.A. sponsor and his therapist seem bent on stuffing anew. As Jeff contemplates, with dread, visiting his loutish family for Fourth of July week, the bag is set to burst.The comedian Joe List, who co-wrote the script, plays Jeff with scruffy sad-sack conviction, and his real-life partner, the comedian Sarah Tollemache, is grounded and appealing as his wife, Beth. The couple have a bantering style that’s emblematic of their offscreen gigs. But neither of these talents (or, for that matter, any of the excellent supporting cast) has much to do, probably, with why you’re reading this review.The director and other writer of “Fourth of July” is Louis C.K., the comic artist who is hellbent on maintaining his career in the wake of multiple accusations of sexual misconduct. While Louis C.K. has not faced criminal charges, his actions of past years, which he eventually admitted to, were squalid, callous and harmful. Leading to what some would call a cancellation.The scandals did, in fact, torpedo the release of his 2017 feature, “I Love You, Daddy,” a tale with sexual dimensions that were sufficiently provocative as to be characterized as nose-thumbing. In any case, after complaining that the scandals had cost him millions of dollars, he returned to stand-up, successfully. His recording “Sincerely Louis C.K.” won a Grammy in 2022. And there you have it.What he’s up to with this film, it would appear, is helping out his colleague List, who seems to have put a lot of his own life into this narrative. A narrative that, for better or worse, wrings more glumness than humor from Jeff’s travails. The holiday trip to Maine — and his people’s impressive cabin on a lush mountainside — reveals a clan of possibly unsurpassable awfulness: a mother (Paula Plum) whom Jeff accurately deems “a spider,” and a pack of racist and sexist cousins and uncles who make Archie Bunker look like the Dalai Lama. When a female cousin shows up with her biracial friend, the recently widowed Naomi (Tara Pacheco) — and boy, what a hoo-hah this arrival elicits from the fam — Jeff finds one sane person to talk to. Jeff’s dad (Robert Walsh) will hardly talk at all.As a director, Louis C.K. puts several feet wrong. Casting himself as Jeff’s passive-aggressive therapist is a bad move; his performance is droll but not droll enough to make his presence more than a distraction. Then there’s the soupy Jeff-and-Beth montage when Jeff is playing the piano in the cabin one morning. And the showy green lighting with which Louis C.K. suffuses a scene preceding Jeff’s meltdown — and breaks out again to signal the fragile emotional state of Jeff’s dad. And finally, there’s the ending. The family dynamic here is so unrelentingly brutal that it’s an actual shock to see how glib the movie is in papering it over. Imagine a “Dr. Phil” producer doing a third-act rewrite of a Tracy Letts play. Without Louis C.K.’s involvement, the movie would warrant little more than a “nice try” shrug.Fourth of JulyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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    in Theater

    In Munich, Young Directors Offer Horrors Both Real and Fantastical

    The Radikal Jung festival transports theatergoers to Russia’s 2014 invasion of eastern Ukraine and an American high school in the Middle Ages.MUNICH — At the end of a recent performance of “Bad Roads” here, the play’s Ukrainian director, Tamara Trunova, thanked the audience for staying for the entire 180-minute production, a harrowing succession of vignettes set in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which Russia invaded in 2014, eight years before it undertook a larger war against Ukraine.“It’s much easier to drink a glass of wine than it is to watch our play,” Trunova said from the stage of the Münchner Volkstheater, where “Bad Roads” opened this year’s Radikal Jung (Radical Young) festival, an annual showcase of productions by up-and-coming directors.The two previously scheduled installments of Radikal Jung were canceled because of the pandemic. This year’s edition, which kicked off on June 26 and runs through this Saturday, is the first to be held in the Volkstheater’s brand-new home, a luxurious performing arts complex in a former slaughterhouse.The festival is traditionally focused on theater from the German-speaking world, but this year’s lineup of 11 plays was unusually international. The widened geographical perspective seemed to acknowledge the artistic affinities between the work of young German theater makers and their counterparts in Greece, London and Paris. All but one of their productions were of recently written dramas, which seemed to reflect a desire to tell new stories that specifically address contemporary concerns. Many of today’s burning issues — including the pandemic, debates around gender and sexuality, the ubiquity of pop culture and social media, life during wartime and climate change — surfaced in Radikal Jung’s varied crop of productions.In a strong lineup that also featured an innovative digital reworking of Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and a brilliantly acted one-woman show about Britney Spears, “Bad Roads” stood out — and not just for its torn-from-the-headlines immediacy.The Ukrainian writer Natalya Vorozhbit based the play, subtitled “Six Stories About Love and War,” largely on reports she gathered while traveling across combat zones in eastern Ukraine. An earlier version of “Bad Roads” was staged, in English, at the Royal Court Theater in London in 2017; Trunova’s production premiered at the Left Bank Theater in Kyiv in 2019. (A film version directed by Vorozhbit was Ukraine’s official entry in the 2022 Academy Awards.)On a stage dominated by a giant fence, a dozen actors vividly conjure Vorozhbit’s nightmarish tales. Hallucinogenic and frequently absurd, they alternate between the barbarically cruel and the banally quotidian. In the opening narrative, a journalist on a fact-finding mission in the Donbas needs to list her identifying body marks, such as moles and tattoos, on an application before entering the region, in case she is killed while on assignment.A scene from Natalya Vorozhbit’s “Bad Roads,” directed by Tamara Trunova at the Munich Volkstheater.Spyros RenntAnother moment in “Bad Roads,” which is subtitled “Six Stories About Love and War.”Spyros RenntThe reporter, who in initiating us into the war zone seems to be a stand-in for the playwright, recites a lengthy monologue that combines the prosaic and the poetic. She tells us about the suffering she finds as well as the conflicted sexual attraction she feels toward the soldier who leads her around. “You aren’t just some ripped Brad Pitt look-alike,” she says. “You really have killed another person.”This introductory story sets up the moral ambiguities of the tales that follow, in which ordinary people, robbed of their lives by a senseless conflict, are driven to extremes.The production is relentlessly dark and savage, even if it’s shot through with morbid humor, such as the moment when a medic who is transporting her lover’s corpse propositions the soldier who has accompanied her on the mission: “A body without a head in a body bag just doesn’t turn me on.”It was sometimes difficult, at least for this non-Russian- and non-Ukrainian-speaking viewer, to tell who was on which side. (The performance had German surtitles). The disorienting atmosphere brought to mind Sergei Loznitsa’s extraordinary film “Donbass,” another anthology of surreal episodes about the 2014 conflict. At the same time, Vorozhbit’s sensitivity to her characters’ psychologies — and her desire to understand the perspective even of violent perpetrators — make “Bad Roads” a deeply human work about the compromises, cunning and sheer blind luck that surviving in an inhuman time requires.It was almost a relief to leave the real-life horrors of “Bad Roads” behind for the immersive dystopia of “Gymnasium,” a “high school opera” written and directed by Bonn Park with music by Ben Roessler. The only Volkstheater production at Radikal Jung, it is quite possibly the loopiest and most entertaining German production that premiered last year. Set in a kooky mash-up of the late Middle Ages and the 1990s, the show is a campy, riotous sendup of films like “Carrie,” “Heathers” and “Clueless” that gleefully pokes fun at American high school myths.The stock characters and plot devices of teen comedies transposed to the eccentric setting provide Park and Roessler plenty of fuel for skewering our off-kilter world. Tribalism, feudalism and superstition are among the medieval codes that are resurgent in the “post-truth” digital age. With scrappily sung musical numbers and eye-poppingly colorful sets and costumes, “Gymnasium” comments on trolling, viral rumors and climate change skepticism with a gentle satirical touch.The hand-drawn sets, the low-budget special effects — including an active volcano that looms over the school — and the rough and spirited playing of the Orchestra Academy of the Munich Philharmonic (credited as the Orchestra of Cheerleaders) help make “Gymnasium” the senior play you wish your school had been awesome enough — or your classmates talented enough — to put on.While “Gymnasium” constructed its sui generis world from history and pop culture references, “We Are in the Army Now,” from the Greek director Elias Adam, plunged its audience into a largely digital theatrical universe to probe the hopes, anxieties and confusions of Gen Z.First presented as part of an online theater festival put on by the Onassis Foundation-Stegi in Athens, this impossible-to-categorize show is a social media vaudeville where four fearless young performers bare their souls (and a lot of skin) while screaming into the cyber void.“We Are in the Army Now,” from the Greek director Elias Adam, at the Munich Volkstheater.Pinelopi GerasimouWhile their tools of self-expression are TikTok and Instagram — and many parts of the live performances are captured with the performers’ smartphones or computers and projected at the back of the stage — their grievances are old as the hills: rage at their parents, unhappy loves, the impotence to change a world that refuses to accept them. Their autobiographical monologues, staged with furious energy and physicality, are alternatively heartbreaking and empowering. In an exuberant finale, the actors engage in some kick-ass cosplay, battling against the patriarchy and their own self-destructive tendencies as glam-rock Power Rangers.Our world and the people in it need some serious sorting out. The innovative productions at Radikal Jung suggested that theater can help us untangle things, however modestly, by fostering a greater sense of solidarity with the victims of complex systems of oppression. As an actor in “We Are in the Army Now” says, “Ideology can’t be explained using emojis.”Radikal JungThrough Saturday at the Münchner Volkstheater; muenchner-volkstheater.de. More