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    Review: ‘The Rise and Fall of … Jean Claude Van Damme’ Revives an Action Hero

    A gleefully juvenile show about the Belgian star, from the writer Timothy Haskell, barrels through his life and oeuvre using toy action figures.The New York International Fringe Festival is no more, but its spirit lives on at a second-floor black box theater on the edge of the garment district. There you will find “The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed by a Relative Fall of … Jean Claude Van Damme as Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Months Earlier,” a new show whose descriptive title takes us right back to the heady days of such Fringe delights as “Theater of the Arcade: Five Classic Video Games Adapted for the Stage” and “Harvey Finkelstein’s Sock Puppet Showgirls.”Though the show announces itself in an expansive manner, it is a minimalist affair: a low-cost approximative biography of a former B-movie action star told by just two men, using action figures that were sourced on Amazon and then jury-rigged into controllable puppets. Again: very Fringe.It will come as little surprise to connoisseurs of stage exploitation — an expression I use with affection — that the writer is Timothy Haskell, “one of the great hustlers of downtown theater,” as The New York Times described him back in 2007. In the years after that review, Haskell and the company the Psycho Clan cemented their status as the emperors of immersive horror theater, most famously with the “Nightmare” series of Halloween spook houses, which ran every fall for 14 seasons and returns in October after a hiatus. The Psycho Clan’s exploration of shock tactics peaked with “This Is Real,” in 2017, an escape experience in which audience members were “abducted” in Red Hook.With “Rise and Fall,” however, Haskell has returned to the lighter, goofier pop-subcultural vein that put him on the Off Off Broadway map in the early 2000s; during that period he turned out productions like “Road House,” a “fightsical” based on the film in which Patrick Swayze played a bouncer, and “Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy.” In this show, the actors Joe Cordaro (Jean-Claude Van Damme, plus a smattering of other roles) and John Harlacher (mostly as a narrator, and ending up in a painfully unforgiving costume) need only an hour to barrel through the life and oeuvre of the so-called Muscles from Brussels, who achieved peak popularity from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s.Directed by Haskell, his brother Aaron and Paul Smithyman, the show tracks Van Damme from his childhood in Belgium to his early martial-arts training and his eventual move to Hollywood, where he deployed balletic splits and athletic leaping kicks in such classics of the VHS era as “Universal Soldier,” “Double Impact” and “Bloodsport.” Cordaro and Harlacher deploy stick puppets to move the story along, and pull up those action figures (customized by Aaron Haskell) for the fight sequences. Most of those have been dreamed up for the show, like a brawl between Van Damme and Steven Seagal that many 13-year boys would have loved to see in 1995.As the show’s title suggests, Haskell has little interest in digging beneath the surface to reveal the man behind the muscles. (For insights — sort of — viewers might want to check out the meta Van Damme film “JCVD,” from 2008, which, we are told, “the author of this play didn’t see because he was pissed about it.”) But despite the gleefully juvenile humor, pathos bubbles up, as when Van Damme’s career stalls and he is portrayed as grateful for a spot as a villain named Jean Vilain in “The Expendables 2.” Recalling a childhood trauma, Haskell’s Van Damme swears, “I would never be a laughingstock again. But I am. Or was.” No time to linger, though: There is always one more fight on the horizon.The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed by a Relative Fall of … Jean Claude Van Damme as Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Months EarlierThrough July 17 at the PIT Theater, Manhattan; thepit-nyc.com. Running time: 55 minutes. More

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    Nazi Tapes Provide a Chilling Sequel to the Eichmann Trial

    Sixty years after the execution of Adolf Eichmann, the logistics chief of the Holocaust, an Israeli documentary airs his confessions in his own voice.TEL AVIV — Six decades after the historic trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief engineers of the Holocaust, a new Israeli documentary series has delivered a dramatic coda: the boastful confessions of the Nazi war criminal, in his own voice.The hours of old tape recordings, which had been denied to Israeli prosecutors at the time of Mr. Eichmann’s trial, provided the basis for the series, called “The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes,” which has generated keen interest in Israel as it aired over the past month.The tapes fell into various private hands after being made in 1957 by a Dutch Nazi sympathizer, before eventually ending up in a German government archive, which in 2020 gave the Israeli co-creators of the series — Kobi Sitt, the producer; and Yariv Mozer, the director — permission to use the recordings.Mr. Eichmann went to the gallows insisting that he was a mere functionary following orders, denying responsibility for the crimes of which he had been found guilty. Describing himself as a small cog in the state apparatus who was in charge of train schedules, his professed mediocrity gave rise to the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil.The documentary uses re-enactments of gatherings of Nazi sympathizers in 1957 in Buenos Aires.Itiel Zion courtesy of Kan 11The documentary series intersperses Mr. Eichmann’s chilling words, in German, defending the Holocaust, with re-enactments of gatherings of Nazi sympathizers in 1957 in Buenos Aires, where the recordings were made.Exposing Mr. Eichmann’s visceral, ideological antisemitism, his zeal for hunting down Jews and his role in the mechanics of mass murder, the series brings the missing evidence from the trial to a mass audience for the first time.Mr. Eichmann can be heard swatting a fly that was buzzing around the room and describing it as having “a Jewish nature.”He told his interlocutors that he “did not care” whether the Jews he sent to Auschwitz lived or died. Having denied knowledge of their fate in his trial, he said on tape that the order was that “Jews who are fit to work should be sent to work. Jews who are not fit to work must be sent to the Final Solution, period,” meaning their physical destruction.“If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, I would say with satisfaction, ‘Good, we destroyed an enemy.’ Then we would have fulfilled our mission,” he said, referring to all the Jews of Europe.Kobi Sitt, the producer of the documentary, in the Jerusalem auditorium that served as a courtroom for Adolf Eichmann in 1961.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesMr. Mozer, the director, who was also the writer of the series and himself the grandson of Holocaust survivors, said, “This is proof against Holocaust deniers and a way to see the true face of Eichmann.”“With all modesty, through the series, the young generations will get to know the trial and the ideology behind the Final Solution,” he added.The documentary was recently screened for commanders and officers of the intelligence corps — an indication of the importance with which it has been viewed in Israel.Mr. Eichmann’s trial took place in 1961 after Mossad agents kidnapped him in Argentina and spirited him to Israel. The shocking testimonies of survivors and the full horror of the Holocaust were outlined in gruesome detail for Israelis and the rest of the world.The court had a wealth of documentation and testimony on which to base its conviction of Mr. Eichmann. The prosecution had also obtained more than 700 pages of transcripts of the tapes recorded in Buenos Aires, marked up with corrections in Mr. Eichmann’s handwriting.But Mr. Eichmann asserted that the transcripts distorted his words. The Supreme Court of Israel did not accept them as evidence, other than the handwritten notes, and Mr. Eichmann challenged the chief prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, to produce the original tapes, believing they were well hidden.Mr. Eichmann in court in 1961. He went to the gallows insisting that he was a mere functionary following orders, denying responsibility for the crimes of which he had been found guilty.GPO via Getty ImagesIn his account of the trial, “Justice in Jerusalem,” Mr. Hausner related how he had tried to get hold of the tapes until the last day of Mr. Eichmann’s cross-examination, noting, “He could hardly have been able to deny his own voice.”Mr. Hausner wrote that he had been offered the tapes for $20,000, a vast sum at the time, and that he had been prepared to approve the expenditure “considering their historical importance.” But the unidentified seller attached a condition that they not be taken to Israel until after the trial, Mr. Hausner said.The tapes were made by Willem Sassen, a Dutch journalist and a Nazi S.S. officer and propagandist during World War II. Part of a group of Nazi fugitives in Buenos Aires, he and Mr. Eichmann embarked on the recording project with an eye to publishing a book after Mr. Eichmann’s death. Members of the group met for hours each week at Mr. Sassen’s house, where they drank and smoked together.And Mr. Eichmann talked and talked.After Mr. Eichmann’s capture by the Israelis, Mr. Sassen sold the transcripts to Life magazine, which published an abridged, two-part excerpt. Mr. Hausner described that version as “cosmeticized.”Yariv Mozer, the director of the documentary. “This is proof against Holocaust deniers and a way to see the true face of Eichmann,” he said.Rob Latour/ShutterstockAfter Mr. Eichmann’s execution in 1962, the original tapes were sold to a publishing house in Europe and eventually acquired by a company that wished to remain anonymous and that deposited the tapes in the German federal archives in Koblenz, with instructions that they should be used only for academic research.Bettina Stangneth, a German philosopher and historian, partially based her 2011 book “Eichmann Before Jerusalem” on the tapes. The German authorities released just a few minutes of audio for public consumption more than two decades ago, “to prove it exists,” Mr. Mozer said.Mr. Sitt, the producer of the new documentary, made a movie for Israeli television about Mr. Hausner 20 years ago. The idea of obtaining the Eichmann tapes had preoccupied him ever since, he said. Like the director, Mr. Mozer, he is an Israeli grandson of Holocaust survivors.“I’m not afraid of the memory, I’m afraid of the forgetfulness,” Mr. Sitt said of the Holocaust, adding that he wanted “to provide a tool to breathe life into the memory” as the generation of survivors fades away.He approached Mr. Mozer after seeing his 2016 documentary “Ben-Gurion, Epilogue,” which revolved around a long-lost taped interview with Israel’s founding prime minister.The German authorities and the owner of the tapes gave the filmmakers free access to 15 hours of surviving audio. (Mr. Sassen had recorded about 70 hours, but he had taped over many of the expensive reels after transcribing them.) Mr. Mozer said that the owner of the tapes and the archive had finally agreed to give the filmmakers access, believing that they would treat the material respectfully and responsibly.Visitors at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial in 2019. Mr. Eichmann said on the tapes that he “did not care” whether the Jews he sent to Auschwitz lived or died.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesThe project grew into a nearly $2 million joint production between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Sipur, an Israeli company formerly known as Tadmor Entertainment; Toluca Pictures; and Kan 11, Israel’s public broadcaster.A 108-minute version premiered as the opening movie at the Docaviv film festival in Tel Aviv this spring. A 180-minute television version was aired in three episodes in Israel in June. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is looking for partners to license and air the series around the world.The conversations in Mr. Sassen’s living room are interspersed with archival footage and interviews with surviving participants of the trial. The archival footage has been colorized because, the filmmakers said, young people think of black-and-white footage as unrealistic, as if from a different planet.Prof. Dina Porat, the chief historian of Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, said that she had listened to the Eichmann trial “from morning till night” on the radio as a 12th grader.“The whole of Israeli society was listening — cabdrivers were listening, it was a national experience,” she said. Professor Porat said that the last major Holocaust-related event in Israel was probably the trial of John Demjanjuk in the late 1980s and his subsequent successful appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court.The venue in Jerusalem where Mr. Eichmann was tried. Even without the tapes, the court had a wealth of documentation and testimony on which to base his conviction.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times“Each few decades you have a different type of Israeli society listening,” she noted. “The youth of today are not the same as in previous decades.”The documentary also examines the interests of the Israeli and German leaderships at a time of growing cooperation, and how they might have influenced the court proceedings.It asserts that David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli prime minister at the time, preferred the tapes not to be heard because of embarrassing details that could emerge regarding a former Nazi who was working in the German chancellor’s bureau, and because of the divisive affair of Rudolf Kastner, a Hungarian Jew who helped many Jews to safety but was also accused of collaborating with Mr. Eichmann.Hearing the tapes now, the unambiguous confessions of Mr. Eichmann are startling.“It’s a difficult thing that I am telling you,” Mr. Eichmann says in the recording, “and I know I will be judged for it. But I cannot tell you otherwise. It’s the truth. Why should I deny it?”“Nothing annoys me more,” he added, “than a person who later denies the things he has done.” More

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    What’s on TV This Week: Macy’s Fireworks and ‘America Outdoors With Baratunde Thurston’

    The annual fireworks display airs on NBC. And a new outdoor adventure series has its debut on PBS.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 4-10. Details and times are subject to change.MondayMACY’S 4TH OF JULY FIREWORKS SPECTACULAR 8 p.m. on NBC. The “Today” show anchors Craig Melvin and Dylan Dreyer return for a second time to host the 46th edition of the annual fireworks display. Viewers will have a front row look at explosions of color and sound against the backdrop of New York City’s summer skyline, with musical performances by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pitbull, and the cast of the Broadway show “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” plus other special guests. An encore presentation will follow at 10 p.m.TuesdayBaratunde Thurston in “America Outdoors With Baratunde Thurston.”Twin Cities PBS/Part2 PicturesAMERICA OUTDOORS WITH BARATUNDE THURSTON 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In the premiere episode of this six-part outdoor adventure show, the writer and comedian Baratunde Thurston explores Death Valley in California, introducing viewers to some of the people who inhabit that sweltering region — including an ultramarathoner who runs in the heat and an elder of the Timbisha Shoshone tribe. “This show is about breaking expectations,” Thurston, who is Black, said in a recent interview with The New York Times. When Thurston hears someone mention the outdoors, he has “a white guy in mind, with a beard, and he’s looking off into the distance, having just conquered something,” he explained. “And we did spend some time with people like that, but we also spent time with the original people on this land. It was a beautiful privilege that I got to interview people from three different Indigenous nations.” At 10 p.m., PBS will premiere another expectations-breaking travel program, THE GREAT MUSLIM AMERICAN ROAD TRIP, in which the rapper Mona Haydar and her husband, Sebastian Robins, who are both Muslim, drive along Route 66 and explore the history of American Muslims going back to the 1800s. In a recent column, The Times television critic Mike Hale named the series one of 27 shows to watch this summer.WednesdayOSCAR MICHEAUX: THE SUPERHERO OF BLACK FILMMAKING (2021) 8 p.m. on TCM. Directed by Francesco Zippel, this documentary presents the life and work of Oscar Micheaux, a pioneer of the Black film industry. In a New York Times series of obituaries dedicated to African American figures the paper had originally overlooked, Monica Drake wrote that Micheaux “made you want to soak up the exuberance he clearly felt in delivering a whole new way of telling stories.” The 40 or so films that Micheaux wrote, directed and produced from 1919 to 1948, Drake continued, carried with them “the added excitement of Black characters doing things that at the time seemed unthinkable onscreen.” The documentary will be followed at 10 p.m. by one of Micheaux’s movies, THE SYMBOL OF THE UNCONQUERED (1920), a silent film in which a Black heiress fights off the Ku Klux Klan to save her land.Thursday2022 NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE DRAFT — ROUND 1 7 p.m. on ESPN. The N.H.L. draft is set to take place this year on July 7-8 in Montreal. In a three-hour special presentation of the annual meeting — in which every franchise team selects the rights to available ice hockey players — the Montreal Canadiens, who won the 2022 N.H.L. draft lottery, will pick first overall, followed by the New Jersey Devils and the Arizona Coyotes.FridayGiorgio Tsoukalos in “Ancient Aliens.”Mason Poole/A+E NetworksANCIENT ALIENS 9 p.m. on History Channel. “Ancient Aliens,” one of History Channel’s longest-running shows, theorizes that extraterrestrials have visited Earth for millions of years. In Friday night’s episode, the show’s host, Giorgio Tsoukalos, looks back at some of the structures the series has visited all over the world — structures that, in his mind, provide proof of extraterrestrial contact. In 2018, on an assignment for The Times, Steven Kurutz went to meet fans of the show at AlienCon, a three-day gathering for “Ancient Aliens” devotees, writing that only two hours into the conference, “500 years of accepted history and science were already being tossed out.”THE GREAT AMERICAN RECIPE 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In this reality competition show, home cooks from different regions of the United States showcase their signature dishes and compete to win the national search for the “Great American Recipe.” In the episode airing on Friday, “Love Language,” each of the eight remaining cooks will share a comfort food inspired by a loved one — from first-date meals to family favorites passed on through generations.SaturdayBONNIE AND CLYDE (1967) 8 p.m. on TCM. Directed by Arthur Penn, this classic crime film dramatizes the history of the real-life bank robbers Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway), including the shooting and robbing spree they went on across the South during the Great Depression. In a 2007 article, The Times’s co-chief film critic A.O. Scott called the couple’s legend “a morality tale in which the wild energies of youth defeat the stale certainties of age, and freedom triumphs over repression.” The critic Bosley Crowther in his 1967 review, however, chided the film as a “cheap piece of baldfaced slapstick comedy,” adding that its “blending of farce with brutal killings is as pointless as it is lacking in taste.”SundayA scene from “Patagonia: Life on the Edge of the World.”CNNPATAGONIA: LIFE ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 9 p.m. on CNN. In this series premiere, the Chilean-born actor Pedro Pascal (known for his role as Oberyn Martell on “Game of Thrones”) narrates journeys through the Patagonia region of South America. Across six episodes, the series takes audiences across windblown deserts, ancient forests and the high peaks of the Andes. With assistance from local experts, each episode showcases the region’s mammals, birds and insects — and the scientists who study them — along with populations that have evolved to live in these environments.WHO IS GHISLAINE MAXWELL? 9:02 p.m. on Starz. The finale of this three-part documentary series, directed by Erica Gornall, tries to uncover the descent of Ghislaine Maxwell. An Oxford-educated socialite, Maxwell was convicted in December of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to groom underage girls, and was sentenced last month to 20 years in prison for aiding in Epstein’s abuse. More

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    ‘Dom Juan’ Review: The Perks of Being a Professional Hypocrite

    Piety is just a pose in Ashley Tata’s gender-swapped production of Molière’s tragicomedy at Bard’s SummerScape festival.It’s a funny feeling and not always a welcome one when a play reaches out across the centuries and punches you in the throat. This happens toward the end of “Dom Juan,” Ashley Tata’s gender-swapped production of Molière’s 1665 tragicomedy at Bard’s SummerScape festival.Dom Juan (Amelia Workman), libertine extraordinaire, has finally reformed. Or has she? Turns out, her piety is just a pose. “In today’s world the finest role you can play is that of the morally upright person,” Dom Juan explains to her long-suffering, devious servant Sganarelle (Zuzanna Szadkowski). “The profession of hypocrite has countless perks.”Her cynical avowal speaks — loudly — of politics today. But wait. It gets worse. This same speech seems to prefigure internet trolling (“hypocrites create a cabal of the like-minded, if you attack one, they all turn on you”) and the way that so-called cancel culture seldom cancels anyone in power (“they just bow their heads, sigh contritely, roll their eyes, and everyone forgives them”). Lines like these might suggest savvy interpolations by the authors of this new translation: Gideon Lester, the artistic director of the Fisher Center at Bard, and Sylvaine Guyot. But no, they’re faithful renditions of the 17th-century original. The language has barely been updated.Great playwrights often have themes that they return to, over and over again. Molière’s is hypocrisy. Which should make Dom Juan, a freethinker who spends most of the play discarding social convention as casually as you or I might wad a Kleenex, a hero. Or as in this production, a heroine. Sure, Dom Juan remains a seducer. But a woman doing what she wants with her body? Sounds nice!Dom Juan’s reality is more complicated — for Molière and for Tata, too. Here is how Sganarelle describes her boss: “The greatest scoundrel who ever walked the earth, a fury, a dog, a devil, a rat, a blasphemer who doesn’t believe in heaven or hell or werewolves or anything.” Which doesn’t sound as great.“Dom Juan” asks questions — perennial ones — about what an individual owes the community and what she owes herself. As seductive as it is to see a woman resist subjugation, we are now years removed from #girlboss slogans, which is to say that the idea of freedom in the absence of ethics or solidarity has lost its shimmer. And a particular lesson of the pandemic has been how easily freedom can be weaponized, how it can make other people less free.Tata’s busy, restless production introduces these complications, though it sometimes forgets them amid the commotion of the sock puppet, the rock band, the swordplay, the lace cuffs, the haze and some very cool visual and sonic effects. (Afsoon Pajoufar designed the set, with lighting by Cha See, video design by Lisa Renkel and sound design by Chad Raines.) I laughed out loud when the show’s curtain — a tapestry of a pastoral scene — appeared to shrivel and burn. Because what fun! But for a long time in the middle, the play goes nowhere, breathlessly, and pleasure palls before Dom Juan’s comeuppance arrives.As Lester and Guyot have respected Molière’s original text, the gender-swap rarely feels complete. A woman could never have behaved this way in Molière’s day. She could barely behave this way now. Still, the swashbuckling role remains a showcase for Workman, an actress of both swagger and steel. Her Dom Juan is groovy, rowdy, but also adamantine, so unmoved by others that she is half-statue already. The supporting cast doesn’t always equal her, but Jordan Bellow offers lovely physical comedy as Dom Juan’s deserted husband, Elver, and Szadkowski’s Sganarelle has some fine unruly moments.Despite its adornments and seductions, the play is bitter at its heart. Invest too deeply in Dom Juan’s liberation or even in her punishment and the ending will leave a bad taste. The only alternative is not to care — to lose yourself instead in the production’s delights, which is not a particular chore on a sun-drenched afternoon.Otherwise, you might find yourself thinking, uneasily, of the play’s prescient moral, spoken by Sganarelle: “To have power and a wicked soul — that’s a terrible thing.”Dom JuanThrough July 17 at the Fisher Center LUMA Theater; fishercenter.bard.edu. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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    A Chameleon Flies From ‘The Blacklist’ to ‘The Kite Runner’

    After nine seasons on the NBC series, Amir Arison is making his Broadway debut in the stage adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s popular 2003 novel.An early scene in the new Broadway play “The Kite Runner” is mostly spoken in Dari, the Afghan dialect of Farsi, though the action depicts a distinctly American art form.“This town ain’t big enough for the two of us!,” the 12-year-old Amir exclaims to his best friend, Hassan. The two boys, pretending to be cowboys, love American westerns, especially “Rio Bravo” with John Wayne. After a standoff, Hassan charges at Amir, but Amir trips him and Hassan stumbles and falls. They wrestle, tumbling and giggling — blissfully unaware of the dark forces that will soon tear them apart.The place is Kabul, the year is 1973 and the two actors playing the boys are actually adults. One of them, Amir Arison, 44, the veteran stage actor who recently left NBC’s hit series “The Blacklist” after nine seasons, portrays Amir as a young boy and an adult.The show, which is scheduled to begin previews on July 6 at the Helen Hayes Theater, is based on Khaled Hosseini’s popular 2003 novel of the same name. It tells the story of Amir, a privileged Pashtun boy growing up alongside Hassan, the Hazara son of his father’s servant. After a childhood act of cowardice, Amir spends most of the play reflecting on and trying to atone for his failure to come to the aid of his best friend.Arison, center, during rehearsals. He plays the protagonist, Amir, as both a child and an adult. Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesIn playing Amir as both a child and an adult, Arison jumps between acting out his childhood memories and narrating them from the present. He doesn’t leave the stage once.It may be a daunting part, but Arison, who cut his teeth on Off Broadway stages before appearing as an FBI counterterrorism expert in some 190 episodes of “The Blacklist,” is up for it.Over the years, he’s played a flashy Iraqi dermatologist in the documentary drama “Aftermath”; a mysterious newlywed in Christopher Durang’s dark comedy “Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them”; and a government accountant in Stephen Belber’s “The Muscles in Our Toes,”Still, he said over lunch recently, this role is the biggest challenge of his professional and personal life. “In the theater, you cut a vein open,” he said. “You give your voice, your body, your mind and your soul.”Matthew Spangler, who adapted the story for the stage, said of the role: “It does raise the bar for that actor quite a bit, but then it becomes something truly virtuosic.”Reporting From AfghanistanInside the Fall of Kabul: ​The Taliban took the Afghan capital with a speed that shocked the world. Our reporter and photographer witnessed it.On Patrol: A group of Times journalists spent 12 days with a Taliban police unit in Kabul. Here is what they saw.Face to Face: ​​A Times reporter who served as a Marine in Afghanistan returned to interview a Taliban commander he once fought.A Photographer’s Journal: A look at 20 years of war in Afghanistan, chronicled through one Times photographer’s lens.While the casting director Laura Stanczyk and the cultural consultant Humaira Ghilzai ensured that Afghan actors auditioned (and that it was easy for them to do so), the role of Amir ultimately went to Arison, who is Israeli American. He grew up in Florida the son of Israeli immigrants; his mother was born in a refugee camp to Holocaust survivors.In March, when Arison landed the audition for Amir, his first call was to Ghilzai, whose family fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. He didn’t know of her affiliation with the show, but he had worked with her twice before — once for his role as a colonel in the Pakistani army in a West Coast production of J.T. Rogers’s “Blood and Gifts” — and asked for advice on his accent.Arison is a chameleon, Ghilzai said: He’s played Afghans, Arabs, Americans and “metamorphosizes into whatever you need him to be.”“The Kite Runner” was first staged in 2007 at San Jose State University, where Spangler teaches performance studies. Its first professional production took place in 2009, and it has since been staged in multiple countries. The Broadway production, directed by Giles Croft, is based on the version that ran at Nottingham Playhouse in 2013 and at Wyndham’s Theater in the West End three years later. (The play “mostly works on the level of childlike fable, satisfyingly schematic but frustratingly simplistic,” Stephen Dalton wrote in a Hollywood Reporter review.)The book — published two years after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to depose the Taliban — has captivated millions of readers around the world. Now the play arrives on Broadway almost a year after the United States withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban seized power again.Hosseini’s tale gave readers a rare inside perspective on Afghanistan and the intricacies of life there, but it also has, as Arison pointed out, universal themes of immigration, power, redemption, and father and son relationships.Azita Ghanizada, who plays Amir’s wife, Soraya, with Arison.Nina Westervelt for The New York Times“The immigrant story never goes away,” Croft, the director, said in an interview. “Most of us have it in us somewhere. Even if we didn’t experience it ourselves, somewhere in our background, somebody will have traveled to get somewhere that they think will be better or safer. So we carry it with us.”As does Hosseini, whose family sought political asylum in the United States in 1980 after the Soviet army invaded the country, and told The Times last year that he still has “a perspective, and I do feel strongly about what’s going on in Afghanistan.” (In “The Kite Runner,” Amir and his father also escape Afghanistan — first to Pakistan, then to the United States.)Along with Arison, the cast has deep Middle Eastern and South Asian roots. Azita Ghanizada, who portrays Amir’s wife, Soraya, and Salar Nader, who plays the tabla onstage throughout the show, are both Afghan.“It’s been really heartening for me to see how devoted they are to representation,” Ghilzai, the cultural consultant, said of the cast members. “I think because their culture has been misrepresented so much that they really, really, really want to get it right.”Still, placing a non-Afghan in the central role was not a choice made lightly.“The thing that swung it for me,” Croft said of Arison’s casting, “was that he has an inherent warmth and generosity and vulnerability — all of which are qualities that the character has.”The director Giles Croft, left, said he cast Arison as Amir because he “has an inherent warmth and generosity and vulnerability — all of which are qualities that the character has.” Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesIn coaching the cast and creative team, Ghilzai guided actors through Dari pronunciations — including the names of characters and towns. The dialect is sprinkled throughout the script.One actor recently asked Ghilzai about Afghan body language: What should he do if he loses in a competition? She advised making a thumbs up motion, a Middle Eastern insult. (They later replaced it with a different gesture, so the meaning wouldn’t get lost in translation.)This production is Ghilzai’s first involvement as a consultant, and she worked closely with Spangler and Croft to re-evaluate the text. In a pivotal scene in the second act, Assef (Amir Malaklou), the neighborhood bully turned-Taliban member, taunts Amir, who has returned to Afghanistan from America.“But America’s not all bad,” Assef tells him. “You know who taught me how to use a Stinger missile? Your C.I.A.”The line emerged from conversations between Ghilzai, Spangler and Croft and was added for this production. It recognizes the role that U.S. foreign policy has played in the militarization of various groups in Afghanistan.Arison, third from left, played an F.B.I. special agent on the NBC series “The Blacklist.”David Giesbrecht/NBCIn his last episode of “The Blacklist,” Arison’s quirky character Aram Mojtabai told his colleagues that he’s leaving the FBI and plans to move to New York, where among other things, he’d likely see “a Broadway show.” (The episode left open room for him to return.)On Twitter, the actor explained to fans that he was a big fan of Hosseini’s novel, had done his first play in second grade, and couldn’t pass up the lifetime dream to be on Broadway himself.While his part there is “the most unheroic hero you’ll ever see,” he said in the interview, he has come to see it as personally meaningful in ways he didn’t expect.At the beginning of the second act, Amir and his father are hidden inside a fuel truck, fleeing Afghanistan to neighboring Pakistan. Soviet soldiers stop the truck, and father and son don’t know if they’ll live or die.“The other day I just lost it because I thought of my grandparents — that’s what happened to them,” Arison said. “That’s another way I connect, even though I’m not Afghan.“So I’m hoping — and I think every audience should take what they want,” he added, that “through an individual story, we do not forget that history is repeating itself.” More

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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