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Inside Broadway’s Reopening: A Times Virtual Event
We visit the “Hadestown” company and a new playwright, share backstage performances, and answer your theater questions in the “Offstage” series finale. More
Eliana Willis
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This Theater Brings Nature Right Into the Drama
A lush forest makes a spectacular backdrop for the stage of the Théâtre du Peuple, in eastern France.BUSSANG, France — Hundreds of productions have been performed at the Théâtre du Peuple, a 126-year-old playhouse in this village 45 miles from the border with Germany. Yet no matter how good the actors, they are often upstaged by the theater’s unusual backdrop: a steep forest, visible right behind the stage.Framed like a painting by a wooden wall, the view brings nature into the proceedings — and visitors can’t get enough of it. This summer, two hours into “And Their Children After Them,” a new production by Simon Delétang, the otherwise plain set was lifted to reveal the trees beyond. The scene drew oohs and aahs from the audience, followed by spontaneous applause.This indoor-outdoor setup in the Vosges Mountains has sustained the Théâtre du Peuple (or People’s Theater) through many incarnations. Founded in 1895 by the playwright and director Maurice Pottecher, who was inspired by visits to Richard Wagner’s Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, Germany, it became known as a pioneering example outside Paris of “popular theater,” drawing audiences from all social backgrounds. Decades before the postwar push by the French government to decentralize a cultural scene concentrated in the capital, Pottecher convinced local workers to attend his plays and perform in them.While amateurs are still cast in one production every year, professional actors have long since taken over most roles, and the Théâtre du Peuple now sits on a curious artistic fence. On the one hand, its founder, nicknamed Le Padre, lingers in the background — literally, since he is buried in the theater’s garden with his wife, the actress Camille de Saint-Maurice. His motto, “Through art, for Humanity,” still adorns the proscenium arch.On the other hand, Pottecher’s own plays — which formed the bulk of the repertoire from 1895 to his death in 1960, and had a strong moralistic streak — have long since fallen out of fashion. “Every director arrives thinking it would be great to perform Pottecher again, but when you read him, it’s not possible: It’s dated,” Delétang said in an interview in Bussang.The exterior of the Théâtre du Peuple, which was founded in 1895.Christophe Raynaud de LageInstead, artistic directors are appointed for four-year terms by the Association of the Théâtre du Peuple, a local governing body, and given free rein. Delétang, who co-directed a small theater in Lyon, Les Ateliers, from 2008 to 2012, had no professional experience in Bussang when he was appointed four years ago. His contract was recently renewed through 2025.The current season, which runs through Saturday, suggests Pottecher’s legacy now lies mainly in the experience of attending the Théâtre du Peuple, rather than in the shows themselves. Before a recent performance of “And Their Children After Them,” locals could be found picnicking in the theater’s garden, a longstanding tradition, with Delétang and the show’s actors tending the bar and making themselves available for a chat.In that sense, Bussang is a forebear to the generation of rural festivals, like the Nouveau Théâtre Populaire, that have sprung up around France over the past decade and emphasize approachability.The programming of those events couldn’t be more different, however. While newer events have favored collective decision-making and diversity, the Théâtre du Peuple only just welcomed its first female director, Anne-Laure Liégeois, for a staging of Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” in July. Onstage, Bussang’s productions are also slicker and more aligned with the standards of publicly funded French playhouses — leafy backdrop aside. “And Their Children After Them” and “Our Need for Consolation Is Insatiable,” the two productions on offer in August, could have fit right into the lineups of a number of highbrow Parisian theaters.Simon Delétang, center, during a rehearsal for “Our Need for Consolation Is Insatiable.” Jean-Louis Fernandez“Our Need for Consolation Is Insatiable” started life last year as a response to the pandemic. After the Théâtre du Peuple’s 2020 season was canceled, Delétang directed and performed this 40-minute show, based on an autobiographical essay by the Swedish writer Stig Dagerman, as a compensation of sorts. Billed as an “electro-rock oratorio,” it was first shown here last summer, outdoors, with live music by the band Fergessen.Perhaps it shouldn’t have transferred to the main stage, though, where it lands awkwardly. Dagerman’s meditation on life and depression, written in 1951, comes across as profoundly self-involved in the Théâtre du Peuple’s interpretation. Smartly dressed, his feet planted shoulder width apart throughout, Delétang seems to embody a dandy’s despair rather than any larger malaise.It doesn’t help that Dagerman returns time and again in his essay to the naïve notion of complete freedom from society’s shackles as the ultimate “liberation.” Last year, that could conceivably have been understood as channeling the desire for a release from lockdowns. Public debate in France has moved on; this summer, it has been focused on whether or not vaccine passport mandates infringe on personal freedom, and in that context, Delétang’s ode to self-determination took on an entirely new meaning — an unfortunate coincidence, since the season was programmed months ago.“And Their Children After Them” adheres more closely to Pottecher’s humanist ideal. The play is based on a Goncourt Prize-winning novel by Nicolas Mathieu, who grew up in the Vosges region. Like the book, Delétang’s production follows a group of friends in the 1990s, in a rural part of eastern France increasingly left behind by deindustrialization.From left, Agathe Barat, Lise Lomi and Elsie Mencaraglia in “And Their Children After Them.”Jean-Louis FernandezAlthough it opens with Nirvana’s 1992 hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and ends with France’s landmark victory at the 1998 soccer World Cup, the stage version of “And Their Children After Them” often leaves the historical context aside to focus on the horniness of teenagers. Anthony, the main character, is desperate to attend parties and sleep with girls, who in turn grapple with their own sexuality.Delétang designed the production for the graduating class of a renowned Lyon drama school, the ENSATT, and provided everyone with a chance to shine. Very few scenes are acted out in a conventional sense. Instead, the 13 actors take turns narrating the story and loosely playing the main characters. To indicate a kiss, for instance, two actors describe it to the audience without touching each other, merely closing their eyes to signal pleasure.It proves a smart directing choice to avoid extensive nudity and any problematic gender dynamics, and the young cast takes to Mathieu’s text with a solid sense of rhythm. The downside is a lack of movement over three hours, as Delétang’s static posture in “Our Need for Consolation Is Insatiable” is replicated here by every performer.Counterintuitively, given how often the teenagers from Mathieu’s novel find themselves in the woods, Delétang also opts to open the Théâtre du Peuple’s back wall only at the very end, when the characters are reunited at a city fair. Is it entertaining, at that point, to see a motorbike drive out of the forest into view? Yes. Are there better ways to use the Théâtre du Peuple’s surroundings? Probably. All the more reason to return to Bussang. More
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Richard Nelson’s New Play Closes a Chapter of Theater History
“What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad” is the 12th and final installment in the quiet yet sweeping “Rhinebeck Panorama.”A character named Kate tells a story, of a story told to her, about a man attending a play. The actors are all deaf, and they rest their cheeks and chins on a big table, which stretches out to the audience, to feel the vibration of a spinning top. From his seat, the man leans in and puts his forehead on the surface.“He wants to share in what the characters are feeling,” Kate says. “He wants to be at that table too.”Kate’s monologue is delivered almost in passing — no one onstage even responds to it — yet it reflects, in just a few lines, the mission and magic of Richard Nelson’s decade-long, 12-play project called the “Rhinebeck Panorama,” which concludes with “What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad,” opening Sept. 8 at Hunter College’s Frederick Loewe Theater.These works, written and directed by Nelson — and realized with aesthetic unity by a consistent creative team and a de facto acting company — contain the four Apple Family plays, which feature a family gathering in Rhinebeck, N.Y., on days that happen to be of national significance; the Gabriels trilogy, about another Rhinebeck household that we visit at three points during the 2016 election year; three pandemic Zoom plays that revisit the Apples as they talk through collective trauma in real time; and a two-part exploration of the Michaels, an artistic family on the verge, then the other side, of immense loss.Charlotte Bydwell in one of several dance scenes in “What Happened?,” which takes place after the death of a dance luminary.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlong the way, Nelson has established a style of theater that has its roots in Chekhov: not naturalistic or realistic, but, as Nelson said in a recent interview, an attempt at verisimilitude. Through the dozen plays he makes a case — in our cultural moment of polarized absolutes — for questioning, nuance and, above all, conversation as a way to connect people, process the unknown and ultimately be in the world.“Centuries from now, when people want to know what a certain class of person lived like in America, they’ll go to Richard’s plays,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, which produced nearly all of the panorama. “The characters are individual, yet they capture the shape of our time.”The plot of each Rhinebeck play couldn’t be more simple: A family prepares or eats dinner. Conversations are discursive, guided more by the timeline of the meal than anything else; but within them are sprawling and subterranean dramas that reveal themselves through ordinary discussion rather than traditional theatricality. Conflicts are rare — raised voices, even rarer.If the series has a broad arc, it is in how the characters relate not just to time, but to place: the Apples find a home in Rhinebeck, while the Gabriels are pushed out of it and, the Michaels, by the end, are assembling around a table in France.“Rhinebeck is a complicated place, as all places are,” said Nelson, who has lived in the Hudson Valley town since the early 1980s. “You take something small, and you just look at it enough, and you see all the pieces and all the things.”The plays have all been set on the days when they open. But despite that specificity of time and location — and a milieu of predominantly white, educated people — they have achieved broad resonance, including international adaptations and imitations. And by being presented in the round in small spaces, they also elicit the intimacy of a private gathering.From left, Jay O. Sanders, Nelson and Maryann Plunkett — whom Nelson called “the beating heart” of the Rhinebeck plays.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJay O. Sanders, who along with his wife, Maryann Plunkett — “the beating heart” of the panorama, as Nelson called her — has starred in all 12 plays, recalled asking a question during “The Gabriels” that was promptly answered by a man in the audience who, like the one in Kate’s story, seemingly wanted to join them at the table.But that is the effect of Nelson’s style, in which no arguments are made and people represent nothing; as Sanders said, “The drama of just living is enough.” In a note for “What Happened?” Nelson includes a telling quote from a hero of his, the early-20th-century theater artist Harley Granville-Barker:One is tempted to imagine a play — to be written in desperate defiance of Aristotle — from which doing would be eliminated altogether, in which nothing but being would be left. The task set the actors would be to interest their audience in what the characters were, quite apart from anything they might do.Easier imagined than done. Nelson said that any time he has written a line that sounds like him or his beliefs, it gets cut. “The truth,” he added, “comes from the characters speaking to another character, and not for the audience to overhear.”In rehearsals, actors are directed to talk as they would at home, not to project as they typically would. They are aware, at all times, of where they are directing their questions or lines. In real life, Nelson said, rarely does someone speak to an entire room; so his characters don’t either.“It’s very unusual,” Sanders said. “And it takes a lot of courage.”The plays have flashes of prescience and recognition. You can, for example, trace former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s career through the seven Apple plays, which open in media res with an expletive and mention of his name. The first installment of “The Gabriels,” from early March 2016, includes the now-haunting line, “Don’t you feel something really bad is going to happen?”At times, though, Nelson’s characters — and perhaps Nelson himself — have been unequipped to deal with history in the making. The Apples gathered on Zoom in early July 2020, amid the upheaval of the Black Lives Matter movement. In the theater industry, platitudes reigned; but in Rhinebeck, a group of white people didn’t really know how to talk about it.Their not thoroughly engaging with Black Lives Matter frustrated some in the moment, including The New York Times’s critic, Jesse Green. But that wouldn’t fit Nelson’s approach to theater. Instead, the Apples ask questions with no answers, and are quietly saddened by a world that might be passing them by.“What you don’t want to do is make an argument,” Nelson said. “I don’t think my characters are confident about what’s going on. Everybody has their own journey.”Plunkett and Sanders, center, seen here in the 2011 play “Sweet and Sad,” have acted in the entire “Rhinebeck Panorama.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat tension arises again in “What Happened?” — “I don’t know” is a common line — the first of the staged Rhinebeck plays not to be produced by the Public. (Presented by Hunter Theater Project, it is being underwritten by a single donor, Susie Sainsbury. The second two Zoom plays were also independently produced.)There are no bad feelings between Nelson and the Public; the separation was a matter of logistics. “He was not going to let a pandemic slow him down,” Eustis said of Nelson. “It was sad for me that for the first time, I couldn’t keep up with him. So on a level it breaks my heart that this is not at the Public.”Nelson felt that “What Happened?” couldn’t wait any longer. He had written a version last year for a live theater season that never came, with politics on his mind as the election approached. But he rewrote it to open now, as live theater re-emerges in New York. Gone are any mentions of the current or former president; instead the loss presaged by the first play in 2019 — the matriarch, a modern dance luminary named Rose Michael, has cancer — permeates its sequel.That, in addition to the setting of Angers, France, makes for a departure from the panorama. “What Happened?” may be a mirror of the present, with characters regularly sanitizing their hands and sharing how they passed time in lockdown, but its preoccupations are also comparatively abstract: the loss of life, of youth, of work.And of Rhinebeck itself. Plunkett said that during a recent rehearsal it hit her: “I found myself tearing up. This specific place that we resided in and explored for a decade — not many people have gotten to do that, and I’m very fortunate. You realize how short a decade is.”Nelson may return to Rhinebeck in the future — he has written a television series of Chekhov stories set there in the present — but for now “What Happened?” is the last time he is bringing a family together at a dinner table to weave, as the critic Ben Brantley once wrote, “momentous history in the fabric of the quotidian.”The audience is, as always, invited to the table. “We’re living in a moment of confusion, tragedy and loss, but together,” Nelson said. “We are not alone.” More
- in Television
Mike Richards Is Out as ‘Jeopardy!’ Executive Producer
Three weeks after naming him as Alex Trebek’s replacement to host the show, Sony cited “disruption and internal difficulties” in its announcement that he will leave the program entirely.Sony said on Tuesday that Mike Richards would immediately exit his job as the executive producer of “Jeopardy!,” completing a stunning downfall for a game-show impresario who just three weeks ago had secured one of the most coveted jobs in television as the replacement for the longtime host Alex Trebek.“We had hoped that when Mike stepped down from the host position at ‘Jeopardy!’ it would have minimized the disruption and internal difficulties we have all experienced these last few weeks,” a Sony executive, Suzanne Prete, wrote in a memo to staff on Tuesday. “That clearly has not happened.”Mr. Richards is also set to leave his role as executive producer of “Wheel of Fortune.” He will be temporarily replaced at both programs by Michael Davies, a veteran game-show producer who developed the original American version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”Sony had named Mr. Richards as the permanent host of “Jeopardy!” on Aug. 11, calling him a “unique talent.” But Mr. Richards quit the hosting job on Aug. 20, days after a report by The Ringer revealed offensive and sexist comments he had made on a podcast several years ago, the latest in a series of scandals that tarred his brief tenure.Top executives at Sony had initially signaled support for Mr. Richards to stay on as executive producer even after he stepped down as host. But they eventually came to believe his continued presence would be untenable, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.Crew members confronted Mr. Richards on Aug. 19 in an emotional meeting, where they expressed dismay at his past behavior and said it had imperiled the show’s reputation. An all-hands call last week that included Mr. Richards left some staff members demoralized. Some “Jeopardy!” fans also said they were confused as to why Mr. Richards was being allowed to stay on behind the scenes.A final decision was made over the weekend, the person said.Mr. Richards is in contact with the powerful Hollywood lawyer Bryan Freedman about negotiating his exit from Sony, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Mr. Freedman also represented the former NBC News anchor Megyn Kelly and Chris Harrison, the former host of “The Bachelor,” after their own abrupt ousters.Mr. Richards taped one week’s worth of “Jeopardy!” episodes in a single day of filming before Sony announced that he had ceded the hosting job. (Those episodes are still set to air the week of Sept. 13.) The sitcom star Mayim Bialik is expected to remain as the host of “Jeopardy!” prime-time specials, but Sony has said it would resume the search for a replacement for Mr. Trebek’s weeknight slot. Ms. Bialik will be the first guest host of the regular program in place of Mr. Richards.The competition to replace Mr. Trebek, who died in 2020 after serving as the show’s host for 37 years, captivated “Jeopardy!” fans and featured a parade of potential successors including the former contestant Ken Jennings and the actor LeVar Burton.But it was Mr. Richards who won out, despite having virtually no name recognition among viewers and the fact that, as the show’s executive producer, he had overseen elements of the replacement process. Old lawsuits also resurfaced from Mr. Richards’s last job running “The Price Is Right” that included accusations of sexist behavior.“Jeopardy!” first aired in 1964 and became a beloved TV institution that still draws millions of weekly viewers. The furor surrounding Mr. Richards pierced the show’s above-the-fray reputation, long cultivated by the understated Mr. Trebek, and subjected it to intense debates about diversity, privilege and behavior in the modern workplace.Sony’s leadership was also facing scrutiny for the mess. “Jeopardy!” had been a reliable jewel in the studio’s television portfolio, quietly earning tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. But its messy succession drama roiled fans and raised questions about why Sony had not discovered Mr. Richards’s past offensive behavior before naming him as the new host.The report in The Ringer revealed offensive comments Mr. Richards made on a podcast, including a 2013 episode where Mr. Richards called his female co-host a “booth slut” because she once worked as a model at a consumer show in Las Vegas. He described women who wear one-piece swimsuits as looking “really frumpy and overweight” and referred to stereotypes about Jews and large noses, prompting outrage from the Anti-Defamation League.Mr. Richards, in a memo to the “Jeopardy!” staff on Aug. 20 announcing he would step down as host, wrote that “it pains me that these past incidents and comments have cast such a shadow on ‘Jeopardy!’ as we look to start a new chapter.”He closed the memo by writing, “I know I have a lot of work to do to regain your trust and confidence.”One prominent former contestant, James Holzhauer, who first appeared on “Jeopardy!” in 2019, seemed to rejoice on social media after the news of Mr. Richard’s exit, suggesting that he might not have even watched the show if Mr. Richards had remained involved.Andy Saunders, who runs the website The Jeopardy! Fan, said on Tuesday that he was relieved and hopeful that peace might be restored at the game show.“Its reputation has taken a bit of a hit over the past few weeks,” he said in an interview. “I’m really looking forward to being able to move on from this. And I’m hopeful that the show has learned from what’s happened.” More
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Human Most of All: In Moscow, a Theater Stages ‘Gorbachev’
The Latvian director Alvis Hermanis’s bioplay is an ode to the love story of Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev, and portrays the former leader in all his humanity.MOSCOW — In August 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow with his family from house arrest in Crimea after a K.G.B.-managed anti-democracy coup had failed to depose him.Instead of joining hundreds of thousands of ecstatic Muscovites, who had gathered on the city’s squares to celebrate his victory and theirs, Gorbachev went to a hospital with his wife, Raisa, who had suffered a stroke.This scene was pivotal for Russia’s recent history, and it is also central to “Gorbachev,” the latest hit production from the state Theater of Nations in Moscow, where despite the pandemic shows continued to be performed live, though at limited capacity.“I was not married to the country — Russia or the Soviet Union,” Gorbachev, who is now 90 and still lives in Moscow, wrote in his memoirs.“I was married to my wife, and that night I went with her to hospital,” his character, masterly played by Yevgeny Mironov, said from the stage. “Perhaps it was the most crucial decision of my political life.”“Gorbachev,” which premiered last October, is an ode to the love story of the Gorbachevs. By putting their relationship at its center, the play does something extraordinary for the Russian performing arts culture. It portrays the country’s leader as a human being instead of a grand demiurge, responsible for its future. It shows Gorbachev as someone for whom sentiments and moral obligations, to his wife, friends and citizens, reigned supreme over political expediency.In a country where autocrats, including the current one, carefully protect their image and personal life, “Gorbachev” is a breath of fresh air. It celebrates the humanity of a person who is almost universally celebrated as a liberator and equally despised by many in Russia as the butcher of the country’s superpower status.Alvis Hermanis, the acclaimed Latvian director who wrote and staged the play, tried to show how political matters appear secondary in the presence of true love. In the tradition of Russian classics, Hermanis makes the theme of love primary to historical events, which serve only as background. He makes the story universal, applicable not only to the leader of a vast nation but also to all of us.To achieve this result, Hermanis uses the tools of Russia’s psychological realism tradition. The only two actors onstage, Chulpan Khamatova as Raisa Gorbacheva and Mironov as the last Soviet president, play impeccably with eerie precision, creating an atmosphere of timelessness, and melancholia. Under Hermanis’s direction, the play’s pacing gives the viewer enough space to reflect on the characters.The whole production takes place in a dressing room with two makeup stations and two mirrors. There is a rack of dresses, and wigs are scattered around the space. This is a work in progress. A large sign on the entrance door reads: “Silence! Performance is ongoing.”Khamatova and Mironov enter in what could easily be their usual street clothes: a hoodie, jeans, an unpretentious black shirt. Over the course of the performance, they will transform onstage, change their attire and looks as they age.The two actors start by reading their lines out loud, discussing how to impersonate their characters. Slowly, through discussion, they adopt their roles, most visibly by imitating accents: Mikhail’s southern Cossack-derived pronunciation with elongated vowels and Raisa’s highly pitched chirping of an enthusiastic philosophy major in a country where the only accepted philosophical school was Marxism.Khamatova and Mironov, who are among the finest drama theater actors of their generation, leave the stage only once, for the intermission in this three-hour performance. Slowly and seamlessly, they read out and play out their lives: The story of Stalin’s purges is followed by the gruesome war with Germany. Then their lives get consumed by their university love affair and, finally, by Gorbachev’s rise to the top through the ranks of party nomenklatura.The story of Gorbachev at the helm of one of the world’s two superpowers is treated as background noise: “It was just one, six-year-long working day,” Raisa says from the stage. In the end, by the time the actors are already fully immersed in their characters, we only see a 90-year-old Mikhail. (At this point, Mironov is wearing a mask that covers his entire head, with Gorbachev’s port-wine birthmark on full display.) For the last few minutes, Mikhail is by himself, mourning his wife’s death in 1999 from leukemia, remembering her last words: “Do you remember if we returned the white shoes that we borrowed from Nina for our wedding?”The play’s success, and the insatiable demand for tickets that sell out in a half-hour and cost up to $250, can be attributed to the fact that its creators had something personal at stake.For Hermanis, Gorbachev, who liberated his native Latvia from the Soviet yoke, was the third person “who changed his life the most after his father and mother,” he said in an interview with a Russian state-run broadcaster.For Khamatova, Gorbachev gave hope for “a different life with the freedom of speech and sexual orientation,” she said in an interview with the Russian GQ.For Mironov, who, as manager of the Theater of Nations, turned it into Moscow’s premier cultural institution over the past decade, Gorbachev provided artistic freedom at the time when he was just starting his career in the late 1980s.“After getting into Gorbachev’s skin, I realized that he wasn’t a politician,” Mironov said in an interview recorded during rehearsals last year.“That’s why he did what he did — that’s why he is so interesting and valuable to me as a person,” he said. “Because he behaved like a human being.”The sense of care oozes through every pore of the acting and directing. That wouldn’t be enough, however, without the mastery that is also on full display here, which only testifies to the fact that it is time for Russian theater to cultivate more new territories, including the country’s most recent history.In that vein, the authors could have gone farther along their path. For instance, the production could have put more emphasis on the role of Raisa. The production could have been called Raisa, after all. With her independence and carefully crafted looks, she was among the most hated figures in late Soviet times. (My grandfather called her nothing but “rat” because her name rhymes with the word for rat in Russian.)It is time to do her justice.In the end, Gorbachev, who attended one of the final rehearsals, and stood up to a standing ovation from a box, did not ask for a single change.“This is freedom,” he said, according to Mironov. “Get used to it.”GorbachevAt the state Theater of Nations, Moscow; theatreofnations.ru. Running time: 3 hours. More
- in Television
For a Tony Nominee, an Apartment With a Sense of Drama
Kathryn Gallagher’s Upper West Side home ‘was never supposed to be a one-bedroom apartment.’ But that’s why she likes it.When Kathryn Gallagher was 11, the career demands of her father, the actor Peter Gallagher, forced the family to leave the Upper West Side of Manhattan for Los Angeles. A decade or so later, the demands of her own burgeoning career — specifically, a role in the 2015 Broadway revival of “Spring Awakening” — meant a move back to Manhattan. And she knew precisely where she wanted to land.“I was like, ‘If I’m going to live in New York, it has to be the Upper West Side, which is home, and which is where the best bagels are to be found,’” said Ms. Gallagher, now 28, a current Tony nominee for her performance in the musical “Jagged Little Pill” and a Season 2 cast member of the Amazon series “Modern Love,” based on the New York Times column. “This is my neighborhood.”Initially, she rented a studio apartment on the fourth floor of a walk-up building near Central Park West, the fulfillment of every “young-woman-in-the-big-city” dream she ever had. There were tall windows, exposed brick, crown molding and just the right degree of scruffiness. But what with the three or four (or more) daily walks required by her dog, Willie Nelson, the trips up and down the stairs became burdensome.Kathryn Gallagher, 28, who is nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the musical “Jagged Little Pill,” lives in a one-bedroom rental in a townhouse near Riverside Park.James GallagherKathryn Gallagher, 28Occupation: Actor and songwriterDesign for living: “It’s very helpful for have a mother who’s an interior decorator. I inherited my mom’s sense of style, but added 50 points for zany wackiness.”Ms. Gallagher is an avid student of life. Her conversation is studded with phrases like “lessons hard learned,” “a journey of learning” and “learning curve.” So it will come as no surprise that when she went hunting for a new apartment two and a half years ago, she had absorbed enough wisdom to hold out for something that was close to ground level but with the raffish charm of the walk-up.She found such a place — a one-bedroom with high ceilings and period detail on the parlor floor of a townhouse near Riverside Park — at the end of a long, rainy day of searching with her mother, Paula Harwood, an interior designer.“The moment I walked in, I was like, ‘When this was a single-family home, this was where they gathered after work to smoke a pipe and have a whiskey, and there were books lining the walls.’ I created a whole fantasy for the life that was lived in here before,” Ms. Gallagher said.“This is a one-bedroom apartment that was never supposed to be a one-bedroom apartment,” she added. “I think of it as a library and a lounge. I love it.”It’s true that there’s more vertical than horizontal space, and Ms. Gallagher, an eager cook, has “a criminally small” kitchen. But, really, what’s a dearth of counter space when measured against the vintage mirror over the fireplace, the fireplace itself, the Tiffany-style ceiling pendant, the French doors separating the living room from the bedroom, and the massive wood front door?“I’m obsessed with the door,” Ms. Gallagher said. “No one is messing with this door. This door has seen many things.”“I love having meteorites and beautiful stones all around the apartment,” she said. “And I like having things around, like my tarot cards, that make me happy and connect me to something.” James GallagherIn pulling the apartment together, Ms. Gallagher came to an important realization: Mom really does know best. It was Ms. Harwood, after all, who inveighed against the folly of trying, as she put it, to move in overnight. “She was like, ‘You won’t know what you need for six months. Don’t buy everything at the beginning,’” Ms. Gallagher said.Only recently, for example, did she have radiator covers made. “I was like, ‘Of course I need them.’ But it took me a long time to realize they were even an option,” she said, noting that she’s using the newly available flat surfaces to hold books. “I’m really excited about that.”The one thing she did insist on soon after signing the lease was a red velvet sofa. “And my mother was like, ‘Are you sure?’” Ms. Gallagher said. “‘Because if you get a red velvet couch, everything else has to be chill. You can’t get an orange chair and a purple rug.’”As if. The red velvet, tufted, Tuxedo-style sectional makes its strong statement, while a leaf-patterned rug in shades of sage, cream and blue provides appropriately quiet support. “It’s the kind of couch that, if this were the 1920s, someone with curls in a long silk robe would be sitting on it smoking a skinny cigarette and drinking a martini,” she said.In the interest of filling out the scene she has so earnestly conjured, an Art Deco bar cart with mirrored shelves is just a few feet away.In moments of uncertainty in life and in work, Ms. Gallagher’s first instinct is to nest. “I never imagined spending so much time in the apartment,” she said. “But since the pandemic, I’m finding I just love it more and more, and have found little ways to personalize it, by putting things that make me happy in every corner.”The list includes tarot cards, guitars and journals. Atop and around the fireplace are large quantities of crystals and candles, as well as vases that once contained congratulatory opening-night bouquets, then candy canes during Christmas season, and now dried flowers.Nick Cordero, an actor known primarily for his theater work, died last year of Covid-19. Friends, including Ms. Gallagher, poured the contents of a whiskey bottle into the Hudson River in tribute to him. The empty bottle now sits on the mantel of Ms. Gallagher’s fireplace. James GallagherOn the wall behind the sofa hangs a photo of Ms. Gallagher’s maternal grandmother, who was a member of the now-defunct ballet company at Radio City Music Hall; an original piece by Erté, a gift from that same grandmother; and a needlepoint likeness of the four principal female “Jagged Little Pill” cast members, stitched by Ms. Gallagher’s dresser, Dyanna Hallick.On a wall in the bedroom is a handwritten card from Alanis Morissette, whose music forms the basis of “Pill”: “Kathryn: thanks for your courage and willingness and grace and power and vulnerability. Love Alanis.”Peter Gallagher, who is “super handy,” according to his daughter, took on the role of picture-hanger and also installed a clothes rod in an armoire from the family’s old apartment, to turn it into a coat closet for Ms. Gallagher.“I had my dad on FaceTime when I was re-caulking the bathtub and when I was putting in an air-conditioner,” she said. “I think he was prouder of me for installing the A/C than he was of my Tony nomination.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More
- in Television
Watch One of the Best Current Comedies on TV
“What We Do in the Shadows” is back. Our TV critic also recommends a beachy Australian procedural.This is a preview of the Watching newsletter, which is now reserved for Times subscribers. Sign up to get it in your inbox four times a week.Dear Watchers,Netflix announced on Saturday that it has picked up “Manifest” for a fourth and final season after the show was canceled by NBC earlier this summer.Have a chill week.I want something beachy but still murder-yEbony Vagulans, left, and Lucy Lawless in a scene from “My Life Is Murder.”Matt Klitscher/AcornTV‘My Life Is Murder’When to watch: Now, on Acorn.Lucy Lawless stars in this Australian procedural as Alexa, a retired cop who just can’t stay out of the murder-solving game. The show sometimes feels a little retro thanks to its unfussy pacing and to bumper music that sounds as if it were from a ’90s sitcom, and its tone is more like that of “Psych” or “Monk” than of a grueling European misery opera. There’s a sunny ease and quirk to it all, and Lawless is a lot fun to watch. The entire 10-episode first season is available to stream, and the first two episodes of Season 2 are, too; new episodes arrive Mondays through Oct. 25.I need a comedy that’s genuinely ha-ha funnyHarvey Guillén in a scene from “What We Do in the Shadows.”Russ Martin/FX‘What We Do in the Shadows’When to watch: Thursday at 10 p.m., on FX.Oh thank God, one of the best current comedies is back this week for its third season. You’ll get more out of the continuing plots if you start at the beginning — Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Hulu — but don’t let a completeness fetish keep you from the ridiculous joys of these Staten Island vampires. We pick up in the aftermath of Guillermo’s heroics at the end of last season, where he killed a bunch of other vampires to protect our crew; this violates vampire law, though, so now he is imprisoned in a cage in the basement. “Shadows” thrives on clashes of majesty and mundanity, the fancy-schmancy lore contrasted with sibling-style bickering. If you are feeling a bit frayed right now and want something brilliant and silly, a true pleasure, watch this.Also this weekPatton Oswalt in a scene from “A.P. Bio.”Evans Vestal Ward/PeacockThe fantastic, strange comedy “Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace,” which stars Matt Berry from “What We Do in the Shadows,” is now on Peacock in addition to Amazon Prime Video.“Sparking Joy,” a new Marie Kondo show, arrives Tuesday, on Netflix. It’s only three episodes, and none of them sparked much joy in me; they’re pretty similar to “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo” but phonier and less helpful.“Future of Work,” a three-part documentary, begins Wednesday at 10 p.m., on PBS. (Check local listings.)Season 4 of “A.P. Bio” arrives Thursday, on Peacock. More
- in Television
Review: Martin Short Kills in ‘Only Murders in the Building’
Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez star in a Hulu comedy about homicide, podcasts and the peculiarities of life in a New York luxury prewar building.Martin Short gives a master class in “Only Murders in the Building,” the 10-episode Hulu series in which he stars with Selena Gomez and Steve Martin. (The first three episodes premiere Tuesday.) It’s not a class in acting or comedy so much as it is a seminar in agelessness and professionalism, and in Short’s unmatched ability to turn self-absorption into a virtue.Martin, who conceived of the show, created it with John Hoffman and stars in it — Martin’s first continuing role on television — is the elephant in the spacious rooms of the Upper West Side prewar apartment building where “Only Murders” is set. (The exteriors and the courtyard are those of the grand Belnord at Broadway and 86th Street.)But it is Short, his frequent collaborator, who gives the show some comic spark and humanity, making Martin and Gomez his foils, in the most charming way possible. He steals every scene, not through grandstanding but with the steady skill of an old pro. He slays with filler dialogue (“You’re kidding me!” when his character isn’t allowed to return to his apartment) and throwaway gags (“Oh, you’re not Scott Bakula?” aimed at the always graciously self-deprecating Martin). You wish he were onscreen every moment.He’s onscreen enough to carry you through “Only Murders,” an otherwise benign grab bag of familiar elements. It’s a lampoon of New York eccentricity, an ever so slightly mawkish tale of golden-agers getting their mojo back, and a cozy mystery of the closed-room variety, though in this case the room is a hulking co-op apartment building.The one original ingredient in this blend is showbiz comedy: the three lead characters are all obsessed with true-crime podcasts, and when a fellow resident of their building is murdered in his apartment, they whip up their own broadcast titled “Only Murders in the Building.” (The series has some vanity-project vibes, and the inscrutability of the title doesn’t help dispel them. It refers to one character’s insistence that their podcast remain strictly local; imagine Martin saying, “Only murders IN THE BUILDING.”)The central trio, pulled together by the murder, represent different shades of New York narcissism. Charles (Martin), a once-famous TV actor, is smug and misanthropic; Oliver (Short), a once-successful Broadway director, is gabby and theatrical; the much younger Mabel (Gomez), about whom little is known, is laconic and disdainful.The central trio bonds over a shared obsession with true-crime podcasts.Craig Blankenhorn/HuluAs they bond over their shared grisliness and get excited about both solving a mystery and creating a podcast, there’s fun to be had from Oliver and Charles’s bickering, and the amateur detective work, while pretty routine, passes by painlessly. The depiction of co-op life will be amusing at least to those familiar with the real thing, and it’s fleshed out by a great supporting cast drawn from New York theater: Nathan Lane as a deli king and sometime Broadway angel, Amy Ryan as a possible love interest for Charles, Jayne Houdyshell as the foul-mouthed board president, Vanessa Aspillaga as the super. Da’Vine Joy Randolph shows up as a real detective who despises true-crime podcasts, and Tina Fey and Sting (as himself) drop in for entertaining cameos.All of those seasoned performers provide moments of pleasure, and the various narrative threads play out with polished proficiency. But “Only Murders” doesn’t gel into something beyond the ordinary. Part of the problem is the time devoted to the show’s sentimental side, in which the podcast’s success might repair Oliver’s relationship with his son, return Charles’s self-esteem and solve the riddles of Mabel’s troubled past, breaking all of them out of their lonely New York shells.That material takes some of the life out of what’s otherwise a slight but charming comedy, and it doesn’t do any favors to Martin, whose performance is a little dour and closed off, or to Gomez, who looks uncomfortable and occasionally terrified. (With all the veteran talent on the set, you would think that someone could have helped her relax and find something natural to play.)It never slows down Short, however; he can turn on a dime and make Oliver’s desperation touching, then sail right back into high comic mode. He’s the real killer in the building. More
