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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Old Man’ and Juneteenth Specials

    Jeff Bridges stars in a new thriller series on FX. And several networks air programs recognizing Juneteenth.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, June 13 – 19. Details and times are subject to change.MondayDEADLY FRIEND (1986) 6:15 p.m. on TCM. Two years after “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” the filmmaker Wes Craven released this artificial-intelligence fable about a young computer wiz (Michael Sharrett) who implants a microchip into the brain of his injured teenage neighbor (Kristy Swanson). The chip is meant to save her life — and it does, sort of, but it puts others’ lives in danger. (The story is based on a novel by Diana Henstell.) In her 1986 review for The New York Times, Caryn James praised the “unpredictable goofiness” of the film. She called it “a witty ghoul story, a grandson of ‘Frankenstein’ that plays off the conventions of recent teen-age horror movies while paying homage to the classic starring Boris Karloff.”TuesdayBrian Wilson in “Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road.”Barb BialkowskiAMERICAN MASTERS: BRIAN WILSON — LONG PROMISED ROAD 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). A reflection of the depth of influence of the Beach Boys singer-songwriter Brian Wilson, this documentary includes interviews with music figures as disparate as the Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins (who died in March) and the star classical-music conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Those interviews and many others, including ones with Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Don Was and Al Jardine, accompany an extended conversation between Jason Fine, the editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and Wilson, who drive around Los Angeles together discussing Wilson’s life and career.WednesdayElsie Fisher in “Eighth Grade.”Linda Kallerus/A24EIGHTH GRADE (2018) and LADY BIRD (2017) 5:45 p.m. and 7:25 p.m. on Showtime. Here’s a double feature with enough coming-of-age awkwardness to fill a few college-ruled composition books. “Eighth Grade,” from the comic and filmmaker Bo Burnham, follows a very online adolescent (played by Elsie Fisher) navigating her final week of middle school in suburbia; “Lady Bird,” from the actress and filmmaker Greta Gerwig, follows a high school senior (Saoirse Ronan) balancing school drama (in multiple senses) and a complicated relationship with her mother (Laurie Metcalf) in the suburbs of Sacramento, Calif., in the early 2000s.ThursdayTHE OLD MAN 10 p.m. on FX. Jeff Bridges, long an old soul (see “True Grit,” “The Big Lebowski” and “Crazy Heart”), is a natural fit for the title role of this new series — though he’s not often quite this imposing. He plays Dan Chase, a former C.I.A. operative who abandoned the agency long ago. When we meet him, he’s grizzled and living off the grid. But his past catches up with him, as pasts are wont to do, and he finds himself being hunted by an F.B.I. director (John Lithgow). Amy Brenneman and Alia Shawkat also star alongside Bridges, in his first regular role in a series.FridayQuinn Kelsey and Rosa Feola in “Rigoletto.”Richard Termine for The New York TimesGREAT PERFORMANCES AT THE MET: RIGOLETTO 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The Tony-winning director Bartlett Sher relocates Verdi’s “Rigoletto” from Renaissance Italy to Weimar Berlin in this version of that dark three-act opera. The production, which opened at the Metropolitan Opera at the beginning of this year, stars the baritone Quinn Kelsey and the soprano Rosa Feola as the jester Rigoletto and his beloved daughter, Gilda, under the conducting of Daniele Rustioni. Anthony Tommasini’s review for The Times was positive, with some caveats. “If shifting the opera’s setting from Renaissance Italy to 1920s Berlin was not entirely convincing, this was still a detailed, dramatic staging, full of insights into the characters,” Tommasini wrote. Rustioni, he added, “led a lean, transparent performance that balanced urgency and lyricism.”WATERGATE: HIGH CRIMES IN THE WHITE HOUSE 9 p.m. on CBS. It was through the mouths of CBS reporters including Walter Cronkite, Lesley Stahl and Dan Rather that many Americans heard of developments in the Watergate scandal — and about the infamous break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, which happened 50 years ago this week. This new feature-length documentary about the events takes advantage of the reams of footage in CBS’s archives. It also features new interviews with Stahl, the reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the F.B.I. investigator Angelo Lano and others, including Hugh W. Sloan Jr., a treasurer of President Nixon’s re-election committee who was a major source of information for Woodward and Bernstein.SaturdayACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007) 8 p.m. on HBO Signature. Paul McCartney turns 80 on Saturday. Consider tipping your hat (or your mop-top hairdo) to him by revisiting this oddball jukebox musical from Julie Taymor, in which the visually sumptuous love story between a Liverpool bloke (Jim Sturgess) in search of his father and a young American activist (Evan Rachel Wood) is peppered with Beatles songs. It’s a “phantasmagoria,” Stephen Holden wrote in his review for The Times. “Somewhere around its midpoint, ‘Across the Universe’ captured my heart,” Holden wrote, “and I realized that falling in love with a movie is like falling in love with another person. Imperfections, however glaring, become endearing quirks once you’ve tumbled.”SundayEarth, Wind and Fire performing in New York last year. The group is on the lineup for “Juneteenth: A Global Celebration of Freedom,” which will air on CNN on Sunday.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesJUNETEENTH: A GLOBAL CELEBRATION FOR FREEDOM at 8 p.m. on CNN. Sunday is Juneteenth, and many networks have programming lined up to recognize the holiday. One of the highlights is this blowout concert, which is slated to include the Roots; Earth, Wind and Fire; Mickey Guyton; Robert Glasper; Yolanda Adams; Billy Porter; and many more performers. Questlove and the producer, songwriter and instrumentalist Adam Blackstone are the night’s music directors. Other Juneteenth-related programming throughout the day includes BET SPECIAL: THE RECIPE: JUNETEENTH at 1 p.m. on BET; a Juneteenth episode of the family show YOUNG DYLAN at 7 p.m. on Nick; and the 30TH ANNUAL TRUMPET AWARDS, which honor Black performers and other figures (this year’s honorees include the actor Courtney B. Vance and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia), at 7 p.m. on Bounce TV. More

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    Tony Award Winners 2022: Full List

    The Tony Awards were held Sunday at Radio City Music Hall.The Tony Awards were back at Radio City Music Hall for the first time since June 2019. The awards ceremony, which honors the plays and musicals staged on Broadway and resumed its traditional calendar after a long pandemic disruption, honored work that opened on Broadway between Feb. 20, 2020, and May 4, 2022. (“Girl From the North Country” opened on March 5, 2020, just a week before theaters shut down for the pandemic.)Ariana DeBose, the former Broadway understudy turned Oscar winner, hosted the three-hour broadcast portion of the Tony Awards on CBS, which was preceded by a one-hour segment hosted by Darren Criss and Julianne Hough on Paramount+. “A Strange Loop” won best musical and “The Lehman Trilogy” was awarded best play at a glittering ceremony celebrating Broadway’s comeback. Myles Frost won his first Tony for best leading actor in a musical for “MJ,” his Broadway (and professional acting) debut. And there were performances from some of the past year’s most prominent musicals: “Company,” “Girl From the North Country” and “Paradise Square,” among others. A complete list of winners is below.Barbara Whitman, center, accepting the Tony for best musical for “A Strange Loop.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Musical“A Strange Loop”Best Revival of a Musical“Company”Best Play“The Lehman Trilogy”Best Revival of a Play“Take Me Out”Best Book of a MusicalMichael R. Jackson, “A Strange Loop”Lucy Moss, left, and Toby Marlow accepting the Tony for best original score for “Six: The Musical.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Original Score“Six: The Musical,” music and lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy MossBest Direction of a PlaySam Mendes, “The Lehman Trilogy”Best Direction of a MusicalMarianne Elliott, “Company”Best Leading Actor in a PlaySimon Russell Beale, “The Lehman Trilogy”Best Leading Actress in a PlayDeirdre O’Connell, “Dana. H”Best Leading Actor in a MusicalMyles Frost, “MJ”Best Leading Actress in a MusicalJoaquina Kalukango, “Paradise Square”Jesse Tyler Ferguson accepting the Tony for best featured actor in a play for “Take Me Out.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Featured Actor in a PlayJesse Tyler Ferguson, “Take Me Out”Phylicia Rashad accepting the Tony for best featured actress in a play for “Skeleton Crew.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Featured Actress in a PlayPhylicia Rashad, “Skeleton Crew”Best Featured Actor in a MusicalMatt Doyle, “Company”Patti LuPone accepting the Tony for best featured actress in a musical for “Company.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Featured Actress in a MusicalPatti LuPone, “Company”Best Scenic Design of a PlayEs Devlin, “The Lehman Trilogy”Best Scenic Design of a MusicalBunny Christie, “Company”Best Costume Design of a PlayMontana Levi Blanco, “The Skin of Our Teeth”Best Costume Design of a MusicalGabriella Slade, “Six: The Musical”Best Lighting Design of a PlayJon Clark, “The Lehman Trilogy”Best Lighting Design of a MusicalNatasha Katz, “MJ”Best Sound Design of a PlayMikhail Fiksel, “Dana H.”Best Sound Design of a MusicalGareth Owen, “MJ”Christopher Wheeldon accepting the award for best choreography for “MJ.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest ChoreographyChristopher Wheeldon, “MJ”Best OrchestrationsSimon Hale, “Girl From the North Country”Special Tony Award for Lifetime AchievementAngela LansburyIsabelle Stevenson AwardRobert E. WankelRegional Theater Tony AwardCourt Theater (Chicago)Special Tony AwardJames C. NicolaTony Honors for Excellence in the TheaterAsian American Performers Action CoalitionBroadway for AllFeinstein’s/54 BelowEmily GrishmanUnited Scenic Artists, Local USA 829, IATSE More

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    Angela Lansbury Honored for Lifetime Achievement at the Tonys

    Angela Lansbury, a beloved star of stage, film and television, was honored on Sunday night with a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement.Len Cariou, 82, who starred opposite Lansbury in the Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd,” presented the award. Lansbury, 96, was not present to accept the award in person at Radio City Music Hall.The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus also sang “Mame” as a special tribute to Lansbury. (Read on for more about that show.)The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus perform a tribute to Lifetime Achievement Award winner Angela Lansbury.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“There is no one with whom I’d rather run a cutthroat business with,” Cariou said. “Angela’s extraordinary 75 year career was marked with many joyful moments onstage.”Lansbury first appeared on Broadway in 1957, in a farce called “Hotel Paradiso,” and in 1964 she starred in her first Broadway musical, “Anyone Can Whistle.” She landed her breakout Broadway role, starring as the free-spirited title character in “Mame” in 1966. She won her first Tony Award for that performance.Lansbury, center, in hat, appearing in “The Best Man” in 2012.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHer most recent Broadway appearance was in a 2012 revival of “The Best Man,” a play by Gore Vidal.In total, Lansbury has been nominated for a Tony seven times, winning in all but two instances. Here is some of what critics from The New York Times have said about those Broadway performances over the years:Mame (1966)“This star vehicle deserves its star, and vice is very much versa. No one can be surprised to learn that Angela Lansbury is an accomplished actress, but not all of us may know that she has an adequate singing voice, can dance trimly, and can combine all these matters into musical performance.” — Stanley KauffmannDear World (1969)“But for one minor miracle I suspect that ‘Dear World’ would never have seen the gloom of day. That minor miracle is Miss Lansbury and whether or not the musical is worth seeing — for it is extraordinarily tenuous — no connoisseur of the musical comedy can afford to miss Miss Lansbury’s performance. It is lovely.” — Clive BarnesGypsy (1974)Lansbury in “Gypsy” in London in 1973.Donald Cooper/Alamy“Most important of all, this new Broadway ‘Gypsy’ has brought over Angela Lansbury as Rose. Her voice has not got the Merman-belt, but she is enchanting, tragic, bewildering and bewildered. Miss Lansbury not only has a personality as big as the Statue of Liberty, but also a small core of nervousness that can make the outrageous real.” — Clive BarnesSweeney Todd (1979)“Her initial number, in which she sings of selling the worst pies in London, while pounding dough and making as many purposefully flailing gestures as a pinwheel, is a triumph.” — Richard EderDeuce (2007)“After an absence of nearly 25 years Angela Lansbury has returned to the New York stage. And she is so vitally and indelibly present that she even occasionally gives flesh to a play as wispy as ectoplasm.” — Ben BrantleyBlithe Spirit (2009)Lansbury in “Blithe Spirit” in 2009.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“But it’s Madame Arcati who walks — or rather dances — away with the show, as she has always been wont to do. Those who know Ms. Lansbury only as the bland, levelheaded Jessica Fletcher of television’s ‘Murder, She Wrote’ may not be aware of this actress’s depth and variety of technique.” — Ben BrantleyA Little Night Music (2009)“But there is only one moment in this production when all its elements cohere perfectly.That moment, halfway through the first act, belongs to Ms. Lansbury, who has hitherto been perfectly entertaining, playing Madame Armfeldt with the overripe aristocratic condescension of a Lady Bracknell.” — Ben Brantley More

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    Review: In ‘Spindle Shuttle Needle,’ History With Strings Attached

    With war as a backdrop, Gab Reisman’s lively comedy is content to hang out with a motley group of women at the dawn of modern capitalism.A siege is terrifying. It is profoundly disorienting. It is also, as Gab Reisman argues in her lively, quasi Marxist comedy “Spindle Shuttle Needle,” kind of a bummer.“I should be painting outside and going to book club!” moans Charlotte, a young woman of good family. “I should be visiting Dresden and studying Swedish.”Instead, Charlotte (Monique St. Cyr), who may have done something dumb with some sensitive diplomatic letters, spends her days hiding in the rough-hewed cottage of Tilda (Mia Katigbak), a weaver. Hanni (Zoë Geltman), Tilda’s daughter, and Jules (Florencia Lozano), an Italian refugee with a criminal past, also sojourn there. The time is late in the Napoleonic wars and the place is somewhere in or near Saxony. As the women spin wool into yarn and weave yarn into blankets, the sound of a battle rumbles just outside the wooden doors.“Spindle Shuttle Needle,” a winner of Clubbed Thumb’s past biennial commission, joins a jauntily postmodern company of plays that refract history through the insouciant lens of the present. (Watching it, on the narrow stage of the Wild Project, I thought of recent and semi-recent Off Broadway plays such as David Adjmi’s “Marie Antoinette,” Jordan Harrison’s “The Amateurs,” Jen Silverman’s “The Moors.”) The commission prompted writers to think through the work of the playwright Caryl Churchill, and Reisman’s comedy has echoes of Churchill’s early plays, like “Light Shining in Buckinghamshire” and “Vinegar Tom.”But that comparison isn’t all that instructive. Reisman has a couple of big themes in mind — the transition from an artisan economy to a capitalist one, the role of women in war. But the Marxist analytics are pretty limited. And the depredations of war (embodied in the arrival of a young soldier, played by Seth Clayton) are never staged with enough realism to fully register. There’s a frisky refusal to reckon with what life might have been like in a besieged Germany two centuries ago and an incomplete attempt to suggest what any of this might mean to us now. None of which means that “Spindle Shuttle Needle” isn’t a very nice time.Under Tamilla Woodard’s direction, the play works best as a hangout comedy about the borderline witchy things that women get up to when they are left in close quarters and cramped circumstances, when they are left mostly alone. Occasionally, Reisman flirts with a plot. Will Hanni find her brother? Will Charlotte’s secret be discovered? Will Tilda, a loom genius, be permitted to join the all-male weaver’s guild? And hey, what’s that brand on Jules’s neck? Yet Reisman’s greater interest is in how these very different women fill their time and their stew pot, how they jostle along together.And so we get scenes in which they dose one another with herbal tinctures; they pick nits out of one another’s hair; they kill a chicken for dinner; they clean the pelt of a rabbit; they tell stories, like one involving a crow, a mouse and a sausage. (That fable is a little Aesop, a little Brothers Grimm, a lot Reisman.)Also, they spin, which is played here as a frankly erotic activity. Even Tilda’s instructions for handling the thread seem freighted with double entendre.“Wet your fingers then slide it along the twist,” she says. “Push and release. Push and release. Find the rhythm for yourself then keep it steady. Slide. You feel it?” Let’s just say that yes, Charlotte feels it.Katigbak is a treasure of Off Off Broadway, and remains so here, as does Tina Benko, who plays a rascally entrepreneur. St. Cyr, Geltman and Clayton are somewhat less familiar, and Lozano is better known from television. Each is given space and language to dazzle in the tidy confines of Frank J. Oliva’s stonework set, lit by Barbara Samuels, in playful, slightly silly costumes by Dina El-Aziz. The overall pattern of “Spindle Shuttle Needle” isn’t especially imposing, but the individual threads still shine.Spindle Shuttle NeedleThrough June 16 at Clubbed Thumb, Manhattan; clubbedthumb.org. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. More

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    The 75th Tony Awards: Time, Hosts and How to Watch

    The ceremony returns to Radio City Music Hall on Sunday night.The Tony Awards, which honor plays and musicals performed on Broadway, will take place this year on Sunday, June 12, with a four-hour ceremony that begins on a streaming service and continues with a television broadcast.The evening is the first Tony Awards ceremony to recognize shows that opened after the long shutdown of theaters brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The theater season was extraordinarily challenging, with ongoing Covid disruptions and fewer tourists than normal, and the ceremony is expected to highlight Broadway’s perseverance.The nominators spread out their admiration quite widely: Of the 34 eligible shows, 29 got at least one nod, including the critically scorned “Diana.”Here’s what to look out for on Sunday night:How Do I Watch?The main event, at Radio City Music Hall, starts at 8 p.m. Eastern time and is to be hosted by Ariana DeBose; it will be both broadcast on CBS and available to stream on Paramount+.The broadcast show will be preceded by a one-hour segment, hosted by Darren Criss and Julianne Hough, that will begin at 7 p.m. Eastern time and be viewable only on Paramount+. That hour is expected to include the announcement of many of the design and writing awards, as well as some performances.The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, the first to recognize shows that opened after a long Broadway shutdown during the pandemic, will be given out on June 12.Hosting Duties: Ariana DeBose, who will host the ceremony, vows that this edition will celebrate the often unsung actors who have stepped in during the pandemic.Ruth Negga: The actress, who is nominated for her role as Lady Macbeth in Sam Gold’s staging of the play, infuses the character with intensity, urgency and vitality.Hugh Jackman: The actor may potentially win his third Tony Award for his role in “The Music Man.” He shared some thoughts on his life between film and theater.Choreography: Musicals like “MJ” and “Paradise Square” take on dances of the past but miss some opportunities to elevate the dancing; “For Colored Girls” effectively weaves language and motion.There will also be a red carpet earlier in the evening; New Yorkers with Spectrum cable can watch coverage of the red carpet starting at 6 p.m. on NY1.What Should I Expect?The broadcast will feature performances from all six shows nominated for best new musical — “Girl From the North Country,” “MJ,” “Mr. Saturday Night,” “Paradise Square,” “Six: The Musical” and “A Strange Loop” — as well as from two of the three shows nominated for best musical revival, “Company” and “The Music Man.” And, of course, many awards will be bestowed.Some of the presenters include Chita Rivera, Cynthia Erivo, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Silverman, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Bebe Neuwirth. Paris Jackson and Prince Jackson, two of Michael Jackson’s children, are expected to spotlight “MJ,” a jukebox musical about their father that is nominated for 10 awards, including best new musical and best book of a musical.Among the other expected highlights: a tribute to the composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died in November; a 15th anniversary reunion of the cast of “Spring Awakening”; and a lifetime achievement award for Angela Lansbury.What Are Some of the Key Races?Best new play: This Tony Award seems certain to go to “The Lehman Trilogy,” a riveting history lesson that chronicles the rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers financial empire. Two dark comedies are also in the running: “Clyde’s,” by Lynn Nottage, is set in a sandwich shop employing recently incarcerated individuals; and “Hangmen,” by Martin McDonagh, takes place at a bar run by Britain’s second-best executioner just after that country banned capital punishment. The other contenders are “Skeleton Crew,” Dominique Morisseau’s play about a group of workers at an automotive plant facing shutdown, and “The Minutes,” Tracy Letts’s look at the dark secrets kept by a small-town governing body.Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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    Tony Nominees for Choreography Put the Past in Motion

    Musicals like “MJ” and “Paradise Square” take on dance of the past — with some missed opportunities. But the dance in “For Colored Girls” helps us to “remember what cannot be said.”A Black dancer and an Irish one face off in a dance contest in 19th-century New York. They take turns, each trying to top the other with steps and rhythms that are unique and unbeatable. It’s adversarial but also collegial, since the premise both assumes and encourages commonality, the kind of back-and-forth that breeds hybrids. This is a primal scene of American dance, and a version of it is on Broadway now.Whether in revivals, jukebox musicals or reimaginings of more distant history, a lot of the dance on Broadway these days is dance of the past. It’s theater, so the aim is less historical fidelity than persuasiveness. The choreography has to represent how people used to move in a way that makes sense to people today. But that constraint contains a possibility: In watching performers of the present embody the dance of the former times, we might feel, in our own bodies, how the present and the past are connected.That possibility was live for all five shows nominated for Tony Awards in choreography this year. The subject of each is, in some sense, historical. But the one that addresses dance history most directly is “Paradise Square.” It’s a musical about the Black and Irish denizens of the Five Points district in the 1860s. In the decades before, this neighborhood was a crucial site of interracial exchange and invention, a nursery not just for tap dance but for American theatrical dance in general — the kind that would long characterize Broadway musicals.“Paradise Square,” with choreography by Bill T. Jones and others, makes dance central and consequential.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMainly set in the kind of tavern where much cultural exchange occurred, the story seems to make dance central and consequential. No one knows exactly what the dancing in the Five Points looked or sounded like, so Bill T. Jones, leading a team of choreographers, is free to juxtapose some ideas of the Black and African side (Juba dance, shout) with some ideas of the Irish (the fast stepping familiar from “Riverdance”). But this choreography is subtle and inventive only compared to the absence of those qualities in the score and book. It doesn’t persuade.The Irish dance, credited to Jason Oremus and Garrett Coleman, is served somewhat better, partly because the Irish clichés in the music support it. Two of what the program calls “Irish Dancers” (Coleman and Colin Barkell), with little role in the plot, get to be briefly impressive in bursts of footwork. But even as the story builds to that Black vs. Irish dance-off, the dancing doesn’t make us feel how and why Black and Irish dance mixed, the similarities and differences that attracted the cultures to each other.It’s a missed opportunity. “Paradise Square” might have staged a shocking, thrilling return to sources, especially the Black ones. Instead, in a deeply flawed show, it offers the sort of choreography that inspires comments like “But wasn’t the dancing good?” Not good enough.Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man,” with choreography by Warren Carlyle.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA revival of “The Music Man,” a tried-and-true classic, is a much simpler choreographic assignment. Warren Carlyle does the job just fine. He has an adequate, nostalgic grasp of the period flavor, the “new steps” of the 1910s. The origins of these moves — in places like the Five Points before spreading to places like Iowa, the musical’s setting, and to the white stages of Broadway — isn’t part of the story. So Carlyle can focus on arranging a large cast of skilled dancers. If it’s all a little cautious and underwhelming, so is the rest of the production.Carlyle offers a professional, if uninspired, take on Broadway choreography as it used to be. “Six” is much more current, despite being about the wives of Henry VIII. The conceit of the show is to give them voice by casting them as contemporary pop divas, inspired by Beyoncé, Rihanna and the like. It’s a singing contest, and we expect to see certain kinds of dancing. These are dancing singers, and as each queen takes her turn, the others serve as the backup that every pop diva commands in concert.This is dance of the present, and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille, the choreographer, is up to speed in the genre and its variations — the ratios of sass and sex and empowerment moves, even the requisite absence of dance in Adele-style heartache. She keeps the action both tight and fluid, letting the performers save enough breath for all their belting. Like the clever, catchy pastiche songs, the choreography identifies its sources without quoting directly. It gives the pleasure of finding what we already know in a context where we might not expect it.Present tense: The cast of “Six” doing Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s moves.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA show about Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, and one of the great dancing singers, might seem to call for a similar approach. But “MJ,” as in so many other ways, is a different beast. It’s a jukebox musical, so the whole point is to hear the songs you know and love. But many of these songs already have choreography inextricably attached: that of Jackson’s hugely influential music videos of the 1980s. This isn’t just a period style that can be reproduced in general. Plenty of people who know the words and melodies also know all the steps.What is Christopher Wheeldon, the choreographer of “MJ,” to do? For the parts of the show covering Jackson’s early life, the Motown and Soul Train years, Wheeldon can work idiomatically, borrowing the styles to tell the story. When the timeline reaches the advent of MTV, though, he balks, having dancers tease some of the zombie boogie from “Thriller” at the back of the stage, facing away.It’s true that the second act begins with a close-to-verbatim reproduction of Jackson’s epochal “Motown 25” performance of “Billie Jean.” And Myles Frost, who plays the adult Jackson, is an astonishing mimic. (He dances that “Billie Jean” a little better than Jackson did.) But elsewhere, Wheeldon keeps replacing the original choreography with his own, and I kept feeling my heart sink, both as a lifelong Jackson fan and a dance critic.An effective replacement would have to be an improvement. And while Wheeldon is expert at crowd control and transitions (and an extremely accomplished choreographer of ballet), he has little feel for what Jackson in the show calls “smelly jelly” — funk, swing or whatever the dancers of the real Five Points called it. Despite help from Rich and Tone Talauega, who worked with Jackson, Wheeldon keeps swerving from that core, straightening away the rhythmic complexity of Jackson’s dancing along with its strangeness.Myles Frost as Michael Jackson in “MJ,” which was directed by Christopher Wheeldon, who was also the lead choreographer.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe most telling moment is the scene of the dancers who inspired Jackson. The representations of the Nicholas Brothers and Fred Astaire show no understanding of what Jackson saw in them (rhythm and attack that extend back to the Five Points), and thus the production can’t fully communicate how this great imitator forged a style that has been endlessly imitated. The only predecessor that “MJ” comprehends is Bob Fosse, whose own easy-to-imitate style defines the boundaries of Broadway dance inside which “MJ” keeps retreating.A good director might have pointed this out. But the director of “MJ” is Wheeldon (who, granted, had many other Jackson-related problems to deal with). There’s a strong Broadway precedent for combining those roles, one established by Jerome Robbins. But among this year’s Tony nominees, the best example of how that can benefit a show isn’t Wheeldon.It’s Camille A. Brown. “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” is what its dancing-poet author, Ntozake Shange, called a “choreopoem.” Although the show was a Broadway hit in 1976, the form didn’t become common, even as the text became canonical. Directing and choreographing this revival, Brown becomes one of exceedingly few Black women ever to take both roles for a Broadway show. (The last that comes to my mind is Katherine Dunham, in 1955.) That fact matters, but so does how she uses the combined power: She restores the work as an expression of a culture in which dance is central.The seven women of the cast recite poems, and they’re always dancing, in sadness and joy. They dance in girls’ games that become adult play, part of Shange’s original conception. But Brown adds American Sign Language, making the weaving of language and motion even more visible. Like the cast of “Six,” these women back each other up in dance. But in Brown’s vision, you can also sense their connections in the way that an exposing monologue by one, about abortion or abuse or self-discovery, reverberates in the silent bodies of the others.This isn’t what we know and expect of Broadway choreography. But unlike “Paradise Square,” it is a powerful return to a source. Dance, Shange once wrote, “is how we remember what cannot be said.” Brown reminds us. More

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    ‘Soft’ Review: Young Black Men, Gently Pointed Toward Liberation

    In Donja R. Love’s new play, an English teacher struggles against the penal system — and with his own guilt — to help students see a future beyond prison.Black manhood is envisioned as a delicate garden full of blossoms and wilts in Donja R. Love’s compelling new play “Soft,” receiving its world premiere at MCC Theater in Manhattan.Adam Rigg’s classroom set, encircled by vibrant flowers and audience members, lulls you into a sense of tranquillity before the clang of prison bars announces the start of the play, which takes place in a youth correctional facility’s English class. Despite the distress at the heart of these young men’s circumstances, Love convincingly offers a sense of hope, showing how outside encouragement and a commitment to self-improvement are crucial to their liberation.A phenomenally grounded Biko Eisen-Martin as Mr. Isaiah, the facility’s English teacher, helps the Whitney White-directed production skirt the trope of the saintly educator who brings out the best in his pupils. With sparse sentimentality but firm understanding, his performance creates space for Love’s larger themes of redemption in a system set up to keep young Black men locked away.As the play begins, Isaiah, conveying he’s not much older than his late teen students through daps and earnest hype-manning, is impressed by their recent essays on “Othello,” particularly Kevin’s (Shakur Tolliver) observation that the abuse and isolation felt by Shakespeare’s tragic moor are not so different from the circumstances that landed them inside here.Some, like hotheaded Bashir (Travis Raeburn) and the extravagantly queer Dee (Essence Lotus), maintain that their crimes were victimless — borne out of a necessity to survive. Others, like the easygoing crack dealer Jamal (a fantastic Dario Vazquez), have no such illusions. Eddie (Ed Ventura, in the production’s most physical role), meanwhile, is simply happy to be away from his abusive home.Isaiah’s own past includes a brush with the law, as he is somewhat threateningly reminded by his boss, Mr. Cartwright (Leon Addison Brown): “We’re all where we are because of somebody’s good graces.” If the students must turn to Isaiah for approval and mercy, the teacher himself is resigned to Cartwright’s godlike status within the facility, his voice periodically issuing commandments through speakers.Caught in the double bind of toxic masculinity and a racist revolving-door carceral system, where does the buck stop? When one student escapes through suicide, his close friend (or was he more?) Antoine, played by a simmering Dharon Jones, opts out of the bind by refusing to speak. Heavy with guilt, Isaiah tries to have his students verbalize their discontent, resulting in (sometimes contrived) arguments, and physical fights incredibly choreographed by UnkleDave’s Fight-House.Biko Eisen-Martin, left, as Mr. Isaiah, the students’ English teacher, with Raeburn.Daniel J. VasquezInstructed by Love’s script to feature no onstage crying, the production finds instead catharsis through White’s direction, attentive to the characters’ physicality and complex relationships to one another. Qween Jean’s costumes cleverly locate a chic aesthetic somewhere between orange jumpsuits and athleisure. (How the flamboyant Dee cuts up and alters his outfits is a charming nod to queer creativity).All is in service to Love’s belief that hope springs eternal, if not here, then in our next lives, as graciously evoked by Rigg’s simple, almost schoolyard-like set and Mauricio Escamilla’s harp-heavy original music during an ethereal coda. In earlier plays like “Sugar in Our Wounds” and “one in two,” Love has demonstrated an admirable commitment to thoughtfully depict Black queerness in all its forms. The new work broadens the canvas, reminding us (in the words of Tennessee Williams) that we are all “children in a vast kindergarten, trying to spell God’s name with the wrong alphabet blocks.”Love doesn’t lean on such grandiose statements here, but he powerfully conveys a paradoxical modern malaise — a sense of unsupervised supervision, where it feels we’re both left to our own devices and under someone’s watchful eye. His “Soft” is a lovely encouragement to let our guards down, and leave the hardness to our hardships themselves.SoftThrough June 26 at MCC Theater, Manhattan; mcctheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    Steven Knight Isn’t Ready for ‘Peaky Blinders’ to End

    The cult British show’s final season is now on Netflix, but its creator has plans for a spinoff movie and says he wants to follow the Shelby family into the 1940s and ’50s.LONDON — Steven Knight knew something special was happening around “Peaky Blinders,” his TV crime drama, a few years ago, when the rapper Snoop Dogg asked to talk with him.The pair met in a London hotel room, Knight said in a recent interview, and for three hours discussed the show, which is based on the real-life Shelby family that operated in Birmingham, in central England, in the shadow of World War I. “Peaky” reminded the rapper of how he got involved in gang culture in Los Angeles, Knight said.“How the connection occurs between 1920s Birmingham and South Central, I don’t know,” Knight, 62, said. “I think you just get lucky with some projects and it resonates with people.”Since premiering in Britain in 2013, the tumultuous fortunes of the Shelby family, headed by Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy), and set against the backdrop of the political and social tumult of the interwar years, has resonated with many.Devotees hold weddings themed around the show’s early-20th-century aesthetic and cut their hair like the characters. The official “Peaky” brand extensions have been diverse, weird and wonderful, including an official cookbook, despite fans noting that Tommy is never seen eating; a Monopoly board game; a virtual reality game; and a dance show which premieres in Britain this year.The tumultuous fortunes of the Shelby family, headed by Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy), are set against the backdrop of the political and social tumult of the interwar years in Britain.Robert Viglasky/NetfilxNow, after six seasons, the cultural hit is drawing to a close, its final outing dropping on Netflix on Friday. (The season aired in Britain earlier this year.) While Season 6 is the official conclusion of the show, Knight has trailed a spinoff movie and other projects, framing the final season as “the end of the beginning.”In a recent video interview, he discussed the development of “Peaky,” and what he has planned for the future. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.When did you first have the idea to dramatize the story of the Peaky Blinders?These stories were told to me when I was a kid by my parents because they grew up in Small Heath in Birmingham, and so they sort of experienced that world. When they told me stories, I always thought it would make a great drama.I first thought about doing it as a TV series probably 20 years ago, and I’m really thankful that it didn’t happen then because I don’t think there was the technology to have done it justice. Then I was off writing movies and, when television started to become what it is now, someone said, do you have any television ideas? It was an idea that I had sort of in the bottom drawer.Why did those stories resonate with you as a child, did you see them as heroes?Yes. My dad’s uncles were illegal bookmakers known as the Peaky Blinders, so he was in awe of them as a kid — whenever he saw them he was terrified and impressed, they were heroes to him. He would see them in immaculate clothes with razor blades in their hats and drinking whiskey out of jam jars.And I know those streets, I know the pubs, I know the Garrison pub — the real one — and when I wanted to do “Peaky” I decided to keep the mythology rather than be like, what was it really like?I wanted to keep it as if they were being viewed through the eyes of a kid. The horses are all beautiful. The clothes are all magnificent. I was a big fan of westerns; it’s like a western, and that’s how I wanted to keep it.“My take is that Season 6 is asking the question: Can Tommy Shelby be redeemed?” Knight said.NetflixDo you think the show has changed how Birmingham is viewed? In Britain at least, the city and the accent have often been maligned.Part of the challenge in the beginning was to try and make Birmingham — which was a blank canvas at best before — cool. To give it a story. Liverpool has the Beatles and Manchester has the nightclub scene, Birmingham never really had anything.There was a suggestion in the early days of moving the story to London or another city, and I said no. I think the fact that Birmingham was a blank canvas helped because there were no preconceptions.According to people I know from Birmingham, when they go abroad and they speak, instantly people mention “Peaky Blinders.” And it’s not a bad thing, it’s always good. I think it has given Birmingham an identity that perhaps it didn’t have, purely in the media.The show could easily have been ahistoric, but you weave contemporary social movements and political goings-on throughout the seasons. Why was that important to you?If you’re setting something in the 1920s, if you look at what was really going on historically, it gives you an enormous amount of material to use.I didn’t look at history books because I think they, first of all, don’t really tell the history of the working class anyway, and also they tend to look at trends and patterns that eventually made everything that happened seem inevitable when it wasn’t.If you look at newspapers and wherever you can get word-of-mouth testimony about the way life was, it’s so fascinating. And if you can bring that into the work, it just gives it — even though this is very heightened and mythological — a real base.The show takes place in a similar time frame to “Downton Abbey.” As in that series, British period dramas usually show working-class characters as servants.Servants or figures of fun or whatever. What I wanted to do was have these working-class characters where we’re not looking at them and saying, ‘Isn’t it a shame? Wasn’t it awful? Wasn’t their life so dreadful?’ Their lives are amazing and romantic and tragic.An abiding critique of the show is its portrayal of violent masculinity. What do you think about claims that “Peaky” glorifies violence?I think there’s lots of things going on. First of all, you’re depicting life in the ’20s and ’30s and it was very different — to suggest that people behaved the way they behave now, would be the same as saying they didn’t smoke. But also, the way that I look at it, any act of violence in “Peaky” has a very big consequence. If they get scarred, they stay scarred.There’s a scene in one of the early series where Arthur [a Shelby family member] is in a boxing ring and kills someone because he loses his temper. In the next season, that boy’s mother turns up at the Garrison with a gun and wants to get revenge for what happened. In other words, it’s not like this is parting violence. All violence has a consequence.The show is coming to an end, but you have spoken of spinoffs, including a movie. Why do you want to keep returning to the show’s world?It’s partly to do with the fact that it seems to be going up and not down in terms of audience. And I’m interested in concluding during the Second World War. So the film will be set during that war, and then the film itself will dictate what happens next.But I’m quite interested in keeping that world going into the ’40s and ’50s and just seeing where it goes because as long as there’s an appetite, then why not do it? I probably won’t be writing them all, but the world will be established.“Tommy doesn’t think there’s a point, he doesn’t think there’s a goal, he doesn’t think there’s a destination,” Knight said of the lead character. “He just does these things.”Robert Viglasky/NetflixTommy Shelby is a deeply complicated character. How did you want his story to end?I always imagine that before Episode 1 of Season 1, he put a gun to his and decided, ‘Well, I’m not going to kill myself, I’m just going to do whatever I want.’ There’s a great Francis Bacon quote about how, since life is so meaningless, we might as well be extraordinary. Tommy doesn’t think there’s a point, he doesn’t think there’s a goal, he doesn’t think there’s a destination, he just does these things.Then over the six seasons, he, bit by bit, comes back to life. It’s like something that’s frozen is thawing out, but obviously that process is very painful. My take is that Season 6 is asking the question: Can Tommy Shelby be redeemed? And I think that question is answered in the last 10 minutes. More