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    Museum of Broadway in Times Square Sets New Opening Date

    The first institution dedicated to the history of the Great White Way and the artistry of its shows and theaters plans to welcome visitors next summer.After multiple delays, the first museum dedicated to telling the storied history of Broadway shows is now expected to open its doors next summer in the heart of the theater district.The Museum of Broadway, described as an interactive and immersive experience, was originally scheduled to debut in 2020. But its founders, Julie Boardman, a four-time Tony nominated producer, and Diane Nicoletti, founder of Rubik Marketing, said the project was delayed by the pandemic.“We really thought it would be this great idea that was a hybrid of both an experiential museum that’s very interactive and colorful and fun,” Nicoletti said in an interview, “as well as making sure that we were really getting the integrity of the history of Broadway, by including costumes and artifacts and historic elements as well.”The museum, at 145 West 45th Street, next door to the Lyceum Theater, will have three sections: The first, a map room, will lay out the migration of the city’s theaters from the financial district to Union Square, Herald Square and then, eventually, Times Square.The second area will be a timeline, stretching from Broadway’s birth in the mid-18th century to classic book musicals and follies to shows currently running onstage. Opening-night telegrams, lyric sketches and handwritten pieces of sheet music have been obtained with the help of the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Along the timeline there will be installations created by visual artists and Broadway designers — think vibrant murals or interactive augmented reality experiences — that will explore some of the most important and influential shows. A room at the end of this section will highlight the shows playing on Broadway at that moment, and examine some of the 41 theaters that make up Broadway.A stage door will open into a backstage that deconstructs the making of a Broadway show. This last area is intended to honor the professionals — both onstage and off, actors and not — who ensure the shows go on.“It really paints the picture of how that all comes to be, and then honors all of the brilliant, talented creatives, and people who bring that to life,” said Boardman, one of the producer’s of a revival of “Company” this season.The Museum of Broadway was founded in collaboration with Playbill, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, Concord Theatricals and Goodspeed Musicals. Tickets are expected to go on sale next year.“With Covid, and the industry being completely shut down, we’re really excited to be able to open our doors to everyone” next summer, Boardman said. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Stand Up to Cancer’ and ‘Nora From Queens’

    Common, Stevie Wonder and Brittany Howard are slated to perform at a fund-raiser for cancer research. And Awkwafina’s Comedy Central sitcom returns.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, Aug. 16-22. Details and times are subject to change.MondayBEN & JERRY’S: CLASH OF THE CONES 9 p.m. on Food Network. While this title might call to mind the recent debate over the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s political advocacy, the series is pretty tame. “Clash of the Cones” is a reality show in which six ice cream makers compete to create new and unusual flavors, which they feed to discerning judges.TuesdayCHANGELING (2008) 5:40 p.m. on HBO Signature. Angelina Jolie stars in this period drama, which was directed by Clint Eastwood and is based on actual events. The story, set in Los Angeles in the 1920s and ’30s, follows a single mother whose young son goes missing from their Los Angeles home. Months later, authorities present her with a boy that they say is her missing son. She insists that it is not, and is painted as delusional when she tries to argue that point. “When it works best, ‘Changeling’ is a feverish and bluntly effective parable of wronged innocence and unaccountable power,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. But taken as a whole, Scott wrote, the movie presents a “distended, awkward narrative whose strongest themes are lost in the murky pomp of period detail.”WednesdayFrom left, Awkwafina, Lori Tan Chinn and BD Wong in “Awkwafina is Nora From Queens.”Zach Dilgard/Comedy CentralAWKWAFINA IS NORA FROM QUEENS 10 p.m. on Comedy Central. The actress and one-time viral video creator Awkwafina based the concept of this half-hour sitcom on her own upbringing in Queens. The first season saw her character, the fictional Nora, flitting from gig to gig — ride-hailing app driver, real estate assistant — while navigating life at home with her feisty grandma (Lori Tan Chinn), her father (BD Wong) and her cousin (Bowen Yang). The two episodes that kick off the show’s second season, which debuts Wednesday night, involve CBD and time travel. In a 2020 interview with The Times, Awkwafina discussed the show, which premiered after roles in “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Ocean’s Eight” and “The Farewell” had brought her a new level of stardom. “Nora is where a lot of us find ourselves in our 20s,” she said. “What’s next? Do you find success and suddenly it fixes everything? No, life is an open-ended question.”IN THE SAME BREATH (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. Nanfu Wang, a co-director of the well-received 2019 documentary “One Child Nation,” about the history of China’s long-lived one-child policy, takes on another politically difficult subject in this new documentary, which looks at the Chinese and United States governments’ responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Wang explores the flaws in those responses, and how many of the consequences of political decisions fell on the shoulders of health care workers.WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005) 12:30 a.m. on TNT, and on TBS and TNT on-demand platforms. For an apocalyptic scenario that’s entirely fictional, skip “In the Same Breath” and watch this take on H.G. Wells’s classic sci-fi story of invaders from space. This adaptation — the third in Steven Spielberg’s 2000s run of dark sci-fi films which includes “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and “Minority Report,” — stars Tom Cruise as a New Jersey father who fights to protect his two children (played by Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin) as the alien tripods descend. If you’d prefer sci-fi with a higher fashion sense — Cruise’s character navigates much of the film in a hoodie — consider instead BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017) with Ryan Gosling, which airs at 7:55 p.m. on HBO Signature.ThursdayHaruko Sugimura, left, and Setsuko Hara in “Late Spring.”ShochikuLATE SPRING (1949) 8 p.m. on TCM. The Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu kicked off a cycle of films about families with “Late Spring,” one of his most celebrated movies. The story follows a widower (Chishu Ryu) who is convinced to force his only daughter (Setsuko Hara) to marry, despite her wishes. In 2005, the critic Roger Ebert wrote that “Late Spring” is “one of the best two or three films Ozu ever made.” TCM is showing it alongside several other Ozu movies, including TOKYO TWILIGHT (1957) at 5:30 p.m. and BAKUSHU (1951) at 10 p.m. A large collection of Ozu’s films — including EARLY SUMMER (1951) and AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON (1962) — is also available to stream online through the Criterion Channel.FridayHERCULES (2014) 11 p.m. on TNT. What happens when you take Greek mythology, turn it into a graphic novel, and adapt that graphic novel into a movie from the “Rush Hour” director Brett Ratner? You get this 2014 blockbuster, which casts Dwayne Johnson as Hercules. (He might be one of the few performers who can make the 1990s animated Disney Hercules character look like a pipsqueak.) The plot, which imagines a Hercules who leads a gang of mercenaries, takes some liberties with the traditional myth: In his review for The Times, Ben Kenigsberg labeled this movie “tongue-in-cheek revisionist mythology, pitched at classics students who prefer to attend their lectures stoned.”SaturdaySTAND UP TO CANCER 8 p.m. on various networks including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. The seventh edition of this cancer research fund-raiser will be hosted by Anthony Anderson, Sofia Vergara, the comedian Ken Jeong and his wife, Dr. Tran Ho, who is a physician and a cancer survivor. The broadcast is slated to include appearances by Jennifer Garner, Matthew McConaughey and Ed Helms, and performances by Common, Stevie Wonder and Brittany Howard.SundayCindy Adams in “Gossip.”ShowtimeGOSSIP 8 p.m. on Showtime. The life of the longtime New York gossip columnist Cindy Adams is the subject of this new, four-part documentary. The series uses Adams’s career as a way to look at the history of American tabloids over the past several decades — she started writing a column for The New York Post in the late 1970s, soon after it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch. More

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    Jake Lacy Says Aloha to ‘The White Lotus’

    In an interview, the actor discusses the HBO social satire, Sunday’s season finale and the possibility of his returning for Season 2.This interview includes spoilers for Sunday’s season finale of “The White Lotus.”Before Jake Lacy landed in Hawaii to shoot “The White Lotus,” he had only received the first script of what was at the time a six-episode limited series. (HBO recently renewed it for a second season.) He knew a character had died — a cardboard coffin of human remains was loaded onto a plane. But who was it?“Mike White [the show’s creator, writer and director] was like, ‘All these limited series start with a body,’” Lacy said. “So there’s an element of narrative satire along with the social satire. It’s like, If a dead body is what you want, then we’ll start with a dead body. We’re making fun of the device that is part of this very popular narrative format.”“The White Lotus” doesn’t deal with its opening mystery right away, and only gives us a few clues at first. Before a backward time jump to a week’s events at a Hawaiian luxury resort called the White Lotus, we see that Lacy’s character, Shane, seems disturbed both by the dead body and by a friendly question put to him regarding the whereabouts of his wife Rachel, (played by Alexandra Daddario). Hmmm.“I kept asking myself, ‘When do I kill my wife?’” Lacy said. He assumed he was the killer, and she would be his victim. From the character’s perspective, the couple’s honeymoon had gone off the rails the minute they failed to get the prized Pineapple Suite they booked, and the hotel manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) put them in the Palm Suite (no plunge pool, but a nicer view) instead. Things soured further thanks to Shane’s temper tantrums and Armond’s odd responses to them.“Either one could back down,” Lacy said, “but they both keep upping the ante.”The actor recalls reaching the last pages of the final script — the scene in which Armond slips into Shane’s room to leave a parting gift in his suitcase — and pumping his fists with glee. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is it!’ How did I not see this coming four episodes ago? I can’t believe we’re going to have a guy defecate in my suitcase and then I murder him!”During a phone conversation, Lacy, who was in Vermont, discussed the series’s social satire, male Karens and Season 2 possibilities. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.HBO just announced a renewal of “The White Lotus” for a second season, to focus on a new location, new staff and new guests.This is the first I’m hearing of it! I’m thrilled. I hope I get to have Shane in the background at the pool, complaining about his daiquiri.You think he would go back to a White Lotus resort? He wouldn’t rather avoid the chain entirely?I don’t think shame or embarrassment are in his wheelhouse. He might be haunted by what happened and make up some excuse why he’s not going back, but it would be out of paranoia. I think he assumes people are whispering, “That’s the guy who killed the guy.” The more brazen Shane move is to play the victim: “I should be able to stay at any one of these places for free, anywhere in the world, for the rest of my life, because of what they put me through! I should have sued them for this!” That might actually be his mentality, to think he’s got the short end of the stick as a multimillionaire 30-year-old. He doesn’t know he’s the villain, not the victim.Shane appears to escape all accountability and just walk away from the death he caused. On the other hand, Kai (Kekoa Kekumano) will likely be severely punished for stealing the Mossbachers’ jewelry.I think that’s intentional. In this “White Lotus”-reality, here’s how one class of person is treated by the criminal justice system and here’s how someone with access, money and privilege is treated. Yes, you would normally be told, “Don’t leave the island,” or “Don’t leave the state.” But Shane’s dad probably called in a favor — a senator? a judge? That’s how at times a certain level of this world operates. Kai will be a felon, but Shane will not have to serve any time — and Shane will still paint himself as a victim, because he might become a social pariah. He might not be invited to summer parties in the Hamptons because of this.How replicable do you think the show’s concept is as it continues as an anthology series? How many oblivious rich people can we take?If Mike White didn’t have more to offer at this same level, he would go do something else. But you could do something more like “Upstairs, Downstairs,” with the second season being more about the service end of things.People have been talking about how the show is about entitlement, but Mike says it’s more about how money corrupts the dynamics of every relationship, whether it’s a business relationship, a friendship or a marriage. Tanya [Jennifer Coolidge] unfairly dangles this hope to Belinda [Natasha Rothwell] of having her own spa, and it’s messed up how quickly she snatches that hope away. But you also see how Belinda changes in the face of this opportunity. Nobody’s free from it, except maybe Quinn [Fred Hechinger] and the guys in the outrigger canoe, because none of them are making money from the ocean. There is a certain equality in that relationship.The story also seems to be about complicity. When Rachel joins Shane at the airport, she is essentially accepting his objectionable qualities in exchange for the benefits he provides. But since she spent the night in another hotel room, do you think she knew that Shane killed Armond?Oh, man! I always assumed that she knew, but maybe she just heard through the hotel, “Oh, somebody killed somebody.” Or maybe Shane’s mother Kitty [Molly Shannon] called her and told her. But it would be a wonderful scene to show her finding out after they get on the plane. He’d be like, “I killed that guy,” and she’d be like, “What are you talking about?! Oh no, no, no, no! I thought you were just rude to waiters!”But yeah, she’s giving Shane a get-out-of-jail-free card with her decision to stay. It’s just short of being in abusive relationship. The conclusion she’s come to is that having money is better than not having money in a capitalist society, but that’s not a healthy choice. You want to see her follow her heart, but that’s not what happens here. She makes a pretty pragmatic choice as to what she wants her life to be. Maybe she regrets it later. Maybe she walks away. But for the moment, she is settling, essentially, and the cost is the loss of some sense of self.“She’s giving Shane a get-out-of-jail-free card with her decision to stay,” said Lacy, with Alexandra Daddario in the season finale of “The White Lotus.”HBOOne of the things Shane and Rachel fight about is having sex on their honeymoon. Isn’t that when you’re supposed to have the most sex of your life?Some of what we shot didn’t make it in. We had one scene where Shane wanted to have sex, and Rachel wasn’t quite saying no, but she wasn’t in the mood. It’s not assault, but they took it out because it ended up looking far more aggressive than what they had intended. The purpose of the story wasn’t meant to be that Shane sexually assaulted his partner as much as he was not reading when she was in the mood or not.Some of those references about how sexed up he is maybe made more sense with those kinds of pieces in there. I think there is a multitude of things happening under that, too. She’s saying, “My concern is that is all you want from me.” She’s not saying, “This is too much sex.”If it were a white woman trying to get Armond fired, we’d have a name for her: Karen. I don’t know if we have a male equivalent of that name, but here it seems like “Shane” might work.I hope it does! The Karen thing is like, “I won’t stand for this,” as if they’re taking the side of justice. And Shane’s thing is, “Don’t make me make this ugly.” There is this aggression there, like, “I won’t be treated this way!” It’s the same in Shane as it is in a Karen.At the same time, Armond gave him the wrong room. I mean, these rooms cost $26,000 a night. It’s as if you bought a car, and they were like, “Oh, we just know this is the one you wanted,” and you’re like, “This is definitely not the car I paid for.” He booked a room, and he feels they should give him that room. Even if his behavior is increasingly inappropriate, and the way he treats people is terrible, what he wants seems pretty fair: “I want what I paid for.” Not that that excuses his behavior. In a perfect world, he would chill out and let it go.Who do you think was the worst?I feel like people are going to say Shane, but that’s my guy! I still have a little empathy for him. I feel like most of these characters are pretty unpalatable. In actions alone, Shane is the worst, for sure. No one else kills a guy. But Paula [Brittany O’Grady], as honest and progressive as she claims to be, is an accomplice to a felony, and when the rubber meets the road, she gets back on a plane. She doesn’t say anything. And Rachel will put up with Shane if it means she gets the nice dinners.To me, a lot of the show is saying is, “How clean are you? How innocent are you? How free of guilt are you?” Whether it’s the opportunities you’ve had that others haven’t, or your privilege, or money, or the way you look, or the color of your skin — if you’re in a transactional world, how clean are you?The hope is that all this gets reflected back to the audience: “You probably do some of the same things, don’t you? On some level?” Whether it’s at the Four Seasons, the carwash, in line at McDonald’s or at Starbucks, how much expectation do you have for what the world owes you and how you deserve to be treated?That is the part of the show that most intrigues me. It’s less about who’s worse, and more about who’s kidding themselves the most. More

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    Review: Making S’mores Around the Campfire at the Apocalypse

    In “The Grown-Ups,” a play by Skylar Fox and Simon Henriques, audience members sit around a real fire in a backyard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.In the light of the campfire on a summer night, after the children have gone to bed, some of the grown-ups sit up and talk. Most of them have been coming here since they were small, and when they roast marshmallows for s’mores, the scent must take them right back — the charred-sugar sweetness that means, yep, someone’s marshmallow is suddenly aflame.They’re so comforting, aren’t they, these seasonal rituals from childhood? In “The Grown-Ups,” an apocalyptic play by Skylar Fox and Simon Henriques staged for a handful of audience members around a real fire in the backyard of a house in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the freshly minted adults are senior camp counselors at Indigo Woods, and they earnestly want to pass those traditions on.Well, except the traditions that are racist, like the Indigenous name their extremely white camp had until this year, or otherwise exclusionary, structured to favor the boys or the older kids. Trouble is, there are a lot of those traditions.“I guess it’s just a question of what you care about more,” says Cassie (Chloe Joy Ivanson), the self-possessed newcomer to this tight-knit group of counselors, and the only one who isn’t white. “Taking the best care of these kids that you can? Or doing things the way you’ve always done them.”Cassie (Chloe Joy Ivanson) is the self-possessed newcomer to this tight-knit group of counselors.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesDirected by Fox for the experimental company Nightdrive, “The Grown-Ups” is part satire, part scary story. If it buckles under the weight of too many targets, that overstuffedness is very 2021: so many crises to frighten us, so much damage to fend off and fix, so much anxious-making news to navigate.At night, when these 20-something counselors retrieve their phones from Aidan (Justin Phillips), the endearingly dutiful assistant camp director, they scroll for the latest developments in what sounds like a new American civil war — sparked, absurdly, by an image of a pineapple in which some people see the face of Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. the Rock, and well-armed others furiously do not.The counselors wonder whether to tell the children, and if so, what to say; then, as the danger moves closer, how to protect and prepare them, preferably without shattering their illusion of safety.“The second we tell the kids,” Aidan says, “this isn’t camp anymore.”Under a dusting of stars in Greenpoint the other night, the air smelled of earth and foliage and somehow of fresh water, too, as if Indigo Woods’s lake really were just out of sight. The firelight was soft, the physical space just right. It was quirkily charming that, as we filed through the house, whose location you learn only after you book a ticket, the other seven audience members and I had to pass through a bathroom to reach the yard.Justin Phillips as Aidan, the dutiful assistant camp director, and Emily E. Garrison as Becca, a veteran counselor.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesIvanson and Phillips managed nicely with performances very different in style. Yet I never did feel truly immersed in the play, or sense the bone-deep familiarity that the three veteran counselors — Becca (Emily E. Garrison), Lukas (Henriques) and Maeve (Abby Melick) — would have from their years of shared summertimes.Doing theater this intimate, though, with actors and spectators in the same circle of chairs around a fire, is like doing close-up magic. It’s harder for the illusion to work, and relies on delicate calibration. It is also probably easier to pull off without a critic right in your face.The Grown-UpsThrough Oct. 3 at a secret location in north Brooklyn; nightdrive.org/thegrownups. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    ‘Like Choosing a Pope’: How Succession Got Messy at ‘Jeopardy!’

    The decades-old game show, TV comfort food for many, has been rocked by drama over who would replace the late Alex Trebek.When Ken Jennings arrived at the “Jeopardy!” studios in November for the first day of his audition to become the new host of the long-running quiz show, he found a gift waiting for him: a pair of Alex Trebek’s cuff links, along with a handwritten note from his widow, Jean.Mr. Trebek, the “Jeopardy!” galaxy’s central star, had died of pancreatic cancer three weeks before, setting off a frenzy in Hollywood: one of the greatest jobs in television was available for the first time in 37 years.For some members of the “Jeopardy!” crew, the cuff links validated their assumption that Mr. Jennings, a genial Utahn who rose to fame in 2004 after winning a record 74 consecutive games, had been Mr. Trebek’s preferred successor. (“Jeopardy!” producers had arranged for a phone call between Mr. Jennings and Mr. Trebek two days before he died.) But “Jeopardy!,” while a beloved cultural icon, is also a lucrative asset of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and in the television industry, sentiment only goes so far.“Jeopardy!,” whose first iteration began in 1964, is one of TV’s last bastions of comfort food, a place where politics don’t matter and the real world is easily digested in just-the-facts bites. Then its succession drama got messy. After a cattle call of guest hosts, including Anderson Cooper, Robin Roberts, Aaron Rodgers, LeVar Burton and even Dr. Mehmet Oz, the announcement of the winner sent fans into a tailspin. The new weekday host would be Mike Richards, the show’s obscure executive producer and the man initially charged with finding Mr. Trebek’s replacement.Mr. Richards, it seemed, did not have to look very far.Critics accused Mr. Richards of rigging the contest à la Dick Cheney, who led the vice-presidential search for George W. Bush. Old lawsuits surfaced from Mr. Richards’s previous job, at “The Price Is Right,” involving his treatment of female staff members. (He denies wrongdoing.) After Sony said the “Big Bang Theory” actress Mayim Bialik would host the show’s prime-time spinoffs, her past skepticism about vaccines recirculated. (Her team said “she is not at all an anti-vaxxer.”)Mike Richards, the show’s executive producer, was named Mr. Trebek’s weekday replacement.Carol Kaelson, via ReutersUnder the retro, feel-good surface of “Jeopardy!,” the succession battle is a story of television’s dwindling real estate in American life and the strenuous efforts to occupy one of its remaining desirable plots.“It is a little like choosing a pope,” Mr. Jennings said, in his first interview since the new hosts were announced. “If you don’t watch ‘Jeopardy!,’ you don’t understand, but people take this very seriously.”In an age of atomized audiences, “Jeopardy!” still averages 8.8 million viewers a week, according to Nielsen — not quite “NCIS” territory, but roughly comparable to a network evening newscast. Its audience skews older: Last year, about four viewers out of five were over age 55.And the job itself is, as any Hollywood agent would tell you, a pretty sweet gig.When the “Jeopardy!” cast and crew gather on the Sony Pictures stage in Culver City, Calif., they film five 30-minute shows in a single day, the equivalent of one week of syndicated television. The host works roughly two days a week, two weeks a month — and toward the end of his tenure, Mr. Trebek’s salary was estimated at $16.5 million. Sony would not disclose Mr. Richards’s compensation, but several people familiar with internal discussions said it was significantly less.There are other perks to being the face of a show that is still watched by a broad audience on local network affiliates, a rarity as the nation divides into ever-more-partisan extremes and as traditional TV is supplanted by niche streaming services.“It’s appointment television, which is rare,” said George Stephanopoulos, the ABC News anchor, who guest hosted for a week. “It’s the kind of thing you can watch with your whole family.”Plus there is the reflected glow of always having the right answers.“It’s absolutely iconic,” said Rick Rosen, the TV superagent at Endeavor. “Everybody knows the show and has played along with it. And it’s not the type of show where you’re just a genial host — there’s a perception of intelligence that goes along with it.”Unlike his rivals, Mr. Richards, 46, had a deep background in game shows. Born in Burbank, Calif., he started his career as a stand-up comedian and went on to host game shows like the mid-2000s concoction “Beauty and the Geek.” He hosted and produced numerous series on the Game Show Network before auditioning to replace Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right.” Drew Carey got the job, but Mr. Richards was brought on as executive producer; his successful 11-year tenure revived the wilting franchise into a hit.By “Jeopardy!” standards, though, he was a newcomer.He started as executive producer at both “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” in May 2020, replacing Harry Friedman, who oversaw both shows for 25 years. Mr. Richards overlapped with Mr. Trebek on set for only 15 shoot days before the host stepped aside, 10 days before he died.Sony said that while Mr. Richards initially led the hunt for Mr. Trebek’s replacement, he moved aside after he emerged as a candidate.But as executive producer, Mr. Richards retained a key role in selecting which appearances by each prospective host would be screened for focus groups, whose reactions weighed heavily in Sony’s decision-making, according to three people familiar with the show’s internal deliberations. The other supervising “Jeopardy!” producers were excluded from that process, the people said.Asked about Mr. Richards’s role, Sony referred to a memo from its TV chairman, Ravi Ahuja, who told staff that after the company began considering Mr. Richards as a potential host, “he was not part of” the selection process. The ultimate decision was made by Tony Vinciquerra, the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.As questions mounted, Mr. Richards sent a memo to “Jeopardy!” staff that was distributed by Sony’s publicists.“The choice on this is not my decision and never has been,” Mr. Richards wrote. He said the “Price Is Right” litigation — which included an allegation that he made insensitive comments to a pregnant employee — “does not reflect the reality of who I am.” (Sony said it had “spoken with Mike about the issues raised in these cases and our commitment to maintaining a workplace environment where our employees are respected and supported.”)Mayim Bialik was announced as a co-host.Carol Kaelson, via ReutersOn Thursday, Sony announced Mr. Richards and Ms. Bialik as co-hosts, although for now, only one prime-time special featuring Ms. Bialik is scheduled. “What started out with my 15-year-old repeating a rumor from Instagram that I should guest host the show has turned into one of the most exciting and surreal opportunities of my life!” Ms. Bialik said in a statement.Mr. Jennings, who remains a consulting producer at “Jeopardy!,” praised Mr. Richards’s performance. “Mike was the only person up there with any game show hosting chops, and it showed,” he said.Some fans argue that a relatively bland, little-known host was always a better outcome than a celebrity. “The game is the star, and the contestants are the stars,” said John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine and a 1987 quarterfinalist in the “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions. “The host should be a secondary figure.”For his part, Mr. Jennings agreed. “What was great about Alex was we didn’t know anything about him: He came into our homes every night and he hosted ‘Jeopardy!,’” Mr. Jennings said. “Today, it’s very hard to find a broadcaster whose priors and opinions you know nothing about.”Mr. Jennings, who guest hosted six weeks’ worth of shows, said he harbored no hard feelings about the outcome.“I knew ‘Jeopardy!’ was in a spot this year, and I mostly wanted them to have a smooth transition,” Mr. Jennings said. “I was not going to lobby for that job in the media, ever. I was not going to plant stories about what a promising young candidate I was. I wasn’t interested in doing any of that. I am a company man.”Marc Tracy More

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    New Work by Suzan-Lori Parks to Be Part of Public Theater Season

    “The Visitor” and “cullud wattah,” two shows postponed by the pandemic, will get their premieres alongside works by James Ijames, Shaina Taub and Lloyd Suh.The Public Theater’s 2021-22 season will feature a mix of projects postponed because of the pandemic and new works, including “Plays for the Plague Year” by Suzan-Lori Parks.Behind the scenes, the Off Broadway nonprofit — responding to renewed calls for racial equity in the theater industry — said it will include over 50 percent representation by people of color in artistic leadership roles, from the directors and writers to the choreographers and the designers.“This last year and a half, in addition to Covid, has been about a call for racial justice and equity that we take profoundly seriously,” Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director, said in an interview. “The Public obviously has always been, we felt, progressive on racial issues. And what became clear to us is we weren’t progressive enough.”The season begins with a musical that was about to have its world premiere in March 2020, before theaters were shuttered because of the pandemic: “The Visitor,” by Tom Kitt, Brian Yorkey and Kwame Kwei-Armah. Directed by Daniel Sullivan and based on the film about a college professor and two undocumented immigrants, it will feature David Hyde Pierce and Ari’el Stachel, both Tony Award winners. Performances will begin Oct. 7.The pandemic also led to the postponement of the debut of Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s play, “cullud wattah.” In the interim, she received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, which honors work by women and nonbinary playwrights. The play is about the effects of the water crisis in Flint, Mich., on three generations of women. Candis C. Jones will direct the play, which begins performances in November.Another delayed work, Mona Mansour’s “The Vagrant Trilogy,” about Palestinians’ displacement, will be directed by Mark Wing-Davey and will now open in April 2022.And Shaina Taub’s anticipated musical about the American women’s suffrage movement will take the stage in March 2022. “Suffs,” described as an epic show about some of the unsung heroines of the movement, will be directed by Leigh Silverman and feature the choreography of Raja Feather Kelly.In addition to Parks’s “Plays for the Plague Year,” in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright wrote a play a day since the beginning of the pandemic, the season will also include “Out of Time,” a collection of monologues by five award-winning Asian American playwrights; “The Chinese Lady,” Lloyd Suh’s portrait of the first Chinese woman to step foot in America in 1834; and “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’s “hilarious yet profound new ‘Hamlet’-inspired play” set at a Southern barbecue, Jesse Green wrote in his review of a streaming production. (Some of these are co-productions with Barrington Stage Company, Ma-Yi Theater Company, NAATCO and National Black Theater.)The theater artist Daniel Alexander Jones’ digital album, “Altar No. 1 — Aten,” will unfold through a series of weekly installments beginning Sept. 22. And Joe’s Pub will be back, too: The performance space tucked inside the Public will have live music starting Oct. 5.The lineup of shows reflects the current moment well, Eustis said, for a few reasons. There’s the representation of artists of color and the partnerships with theater companies hit harder by the past year than the Public. And then there’s what he called Parks’s “astonishing” new work, “Plays for the Plague Year.”“They give a sort of map,” Eustis said, “and a day by day examination of what this year has been, like no other work of art I’ve seen. I think it’s an incredibly important and powerful work.”Parks began writing “Plays for the Plague Year” on March 12, 2020, and it covers at least a year. Among the snapshots she captured were those “almost like a small domestic adjustment drama,” Eustis said, in April, and the murder of George Floyd in May, as well as the racial reckoning that followed.The past year has sparked dialogue and rocked foundations, and the theater is no exception. Much of the conversation at the Public has been in the gap between “we need to be more thoughtful” and “the show must go on,” Eustis said.“Because the show must go on; it really must,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t figure out a way to be more thoughtful about how we work, and more mindful about and contemplative about the ways we treat each other while the show goes on.” More

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    Velvet, Organza and Vipers: Stage Costumes Dazzle

    Here is what you can’t see from the rear mezzanine of a theater: the flocked velvet, the ruby-like rhinestones, the layered fabrics that shape a lush rosette atop each dance pump. This is the Red Death costume from the “Masquerade” number in “The Phantom of the Opera.” A carnival of flocked velvet and gold braid, it integrates art and craft, glamour and kitsch, fantasy and hand-sewn reality.Red Death awaits you on the lower level of “Showstoppers! Spectacular Costumes From Stage and Screen,” a pop-up exhibition to benefit the recently formed Costume Industry Coalition, an alliance of over 50 New York City-based small businesses and independent artisans.A costume from “Wicked” that involves hundreds of yards of ombré-dyed organza ribbon.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesOn Broadway, even in the best seats, an orchestra pit separates you from the finery. At “Showstoppers!,” which runs through Sept. 26 in a former Modell’s branch in Times Square, you can stand close enough to make out individual threads.When theaters went dark last year because of the pandemic, costume fabricators had to close up shop, too. Designers are the visible faces of this industry — they’re the ones who collect the Tony Awards, though not during the broadcast portions of the ceremony. But while they dream up the costumes, it is the fabricators — the tailors and seamstresses and embroiderers and weavers and beaders and pleaters and painters and milliners and glovers and cobblers — who actually build them.This gown from Heartbeat Opera’s “Dragus Maximus” features 3-D printed vipers.An Rong Xu for The New York Times“We create the three-dimensional moving piece of art,” Brian Blythe, one of the exhibition’s organizers, said. Many of the pieces are couture items, built on the bodies of individual performers and retired when those actors leave a show.“Showstoppers!” displays 100-odd costumes, as well as a handful of the tools used to make them, like millinery blocks and a 19th-century crewel machine from the embroiderers Penn & Fletcher.Even the boots in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” were designed to sparkle.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe exhibition was put together in three and a half months, and its lighting, sound and design (from Thinc Design) were provided at cost or gratis. So it feels inevitably ad hoc. The Broadway and opera displays put their custom-shod feet forward; the film, television, theme park and dance portions hang back. The selection reflects less a dedication vision, and more what could be begged, borrowed or briskly replicated.But what’s more theatrical than a let’s-put-on-a-show ethos?Replica costumes from the musical “Six,” which was set to open on the day Broadway shut down last year.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe Red Death costume, center, from “The Phantom of the Opera.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesNot every garment benefits from close study. Some need the alchemy of star power and stage lighting to shine. Still, each testifies to the men and women (mostly women), who have patiently attached every ribbon and rhinestone. A handful of these craftspeople will be on site, plying their spangled trades during opening hours. Here are 10 highlights from the show.‘The Cher Show’“The Cher Show” apportioned its heroine’s life among three actresses, referred to in the biomusical as Babe, Star and Lady. The exhibition includes the costumes for all three of them in the number “If I Could Turn Back Time,” a slinky triptych of velvet, rhinestones and boots. When Cher came to see the Broadway show, she reminded the designer Bob Mackie that she hadn’t actually worn the glamorous bat wings that crown the display. “You would have if I’d drawn them,” he told her.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Six’A few steps away huddle replicas of the outfits for “Six,” a pop musical about the six wives of Henry VIII that was originally set to open the day Broadway shut down. The Tudor-inspired minidresses are built from plastics, vinyl and the occasional Swarovski crystal. They gesture to the 16th-century — the lattice patterning, the corsetry — but also the likes of contemporary stars such as Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande. Thousands of metal studs, some so sharp they could cut you, adorn the outfits. Each boasts a personalized mic holster.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Aladdin’One of the exhibition’s displays pays tribute to Disney’s Broadway dominance. (“Frozen” announced its closure during the pandemic, but “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” will soon reopen.) Up close, the “Aladdin” costumes offer astonishing intricacies, like the beaded birds and flowering vines that meander up and down Aladdin’s turquoise robe. The delicate embroidery on Jasmine’s pink skirts may be difficult to discern without a close-up look, but see how it contrasts with the unapologetic opulence of her top.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York Times‘The Lion King’Perhaps the most memorable element of “The Lion King” is its life-size animal heads, designed by the director Julie Taymor and the mask and puppet designer Michael Curry. (The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has acquired two of them for its theater and performance collection.) But “Showstopper!” shows the complexity of subtler costumes. Take the grasslands corset: Strands of rope form a skirt below. Above, cloth blades are loomed, by hand, into more rope to create a bodice at once enduring and delicate.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical’Diamonds are forever. Ostrich feather boas are not. In the Sparkling Diamond look from “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” the courtesan Satine perches in a swing in a strapless gown, a top hat, high-heeled boots and a necklace that could strain the cervical vertebrae. There are diamanté rhinestones in a firework pattern on the heart-shaped bodice, individual gems sewn to the stockings. Even the boots’ heels sparkle. In a nod to Satine’s vulnerability, the skirt — made of ostrich feathers and mylar tinsel — softens her look’s diamond hardness.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Wicked’During the “One Short Day” number from “Wicked,” the school-age witches Glinda and Elphaba arrive in the Emerald City, off to see the wizard. The verdant costume for just one townswoman involves 900 yards of ombré-dyed organza ribbon. (It gives the effect of an ordinary day dress overrun with lettuce.) The dress’s skirt has a kick pleat, and if you glance beneath it, you’ll find five layers of underskirt, three of them meticulously embroidered, just in case the performer lifts her dancing shoe.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Hamilton’When Paul Tazewell was designing the costumes for “Hamilton,” the musical’s creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, told him that Hamilton’s suit ought to be green. Not just any green, but the color of money. (Pity the costume assistant who had to visit the city’s fabric stores, clutching a 10-dollar bill.) The final outfit is ultimately more lush than cash, and it yields other surprises, too: like the feminine lace at each cuff, and the waterfall ruff that encircles the neck.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesWing + Weft GlovesSome of the gloves from Wing + Weft, the last glove-maker in the garment district, have built-in claws. Others are sequined, feathered, fringed, beaded, buttoned, ruched and pearled. The studio designs for theater, film and television, and (along with its immediate predecessor, Lacrasia Gloves) have also gloved a dozen first ladies. But many of the most splendid creations seen here are for drag and burlesque — gloves designed to be worn and then, finger by finger, flirtatiously removed.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Phantom of the Opera’The Phantom’s Red Death outfit is so top-heavy, it’s surprising that it hasn’t caused actors to fall down the stairs in “Masquerade.” There’s the feather-bedecked cavalier hat, the skull mask, the beads, rubies, buttons, trim and sofa’s worth of tassels that pull together the stomacher, a Renaissance-era decorated panel. Turn your back on that outfits, and you will find designs from another archetypical scene — Christine’s white nightgown and the Phantom’s black cape from “The Music of the Night.”‘Dragus Maximus’An Rong Xu for The New York TimesTake one look at Medusa, and you’ll turn to stone. That won’t happen at “Showstoppers!,” but when you see this mannequin dressed in the Medusa costume from Heartbeat Opera’s “Dragus Maximus,” a queer take on the Homeric myths, you might stop cold. The gown is wreathed in vipers, each of them 3-D printed at the behest of the designer Miodrag Guberinic. Compared with the other looks on view, it’s has a less artisanal approach, but it’s no less intricate or exciting. And it hints at fabrication’s future.Showstoppers! Spectacular Costumes From Stage and ScreenThrough Sept. 26 at 234 West 42nd Street; showstoppersnyc.com. More

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    ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 2 Episode 4 Recap: A Very Special Christmas Episode

    It’s only a matter of time before the poster-board and markers come out …Season 2, Episode 4, ‘Carol of the Bells’Houston? We have a Christmas Episode.Here I’ve been, trying to convey the relatively subtle ways in which the second season of “Ted Lasso” differs from the first. And then, four episodes in, they give away the whole game. It’s not merely that they’ve produced a Christmas episode — albeit one airing in August — it’s that it’s an episode that, back in the day, would have been billed as a “Very Special Christmas Episode”: absurdly uplifting — even for “Ted Lasso”!—seasonally sweet, devoid of tension or discord, et cetera.This was the unfair knock on the first season of “Ted Lasso”: That it was too much about just making viewers feel good (as if that were a bad thing), and was unwilling to plumb deeper — which it actually did, mostly without making a big deal about it.Our newest episode, by contrast, is not merely a holiday episode, but a meta-holiday episode: an episode about holiday movies, and about one movie very much in particular. There are red herrings scattered about — you’ve got to love the “Christmas Story” leg lamp that Keeley unveils early on and the fractional glimpses of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But this episode is aiming at a much more specific target.Rebecca’s invitation to a Christmas party at Elton John’s may be the first obvious clue. Why, her Yuletide plans sound almost as awesome as those of a certain over-age rocker circa 2003.And then, about a third of the way in, we get the holiday calamity of Phoebe’s bad breath. “A boy at school was mean to me,” Phoebe explains, prompting perhaps the most terrifying interrogative in televisual history by her Uncle Roy: “What did he do?” (Roy’s subsequent “Where does Bernard live?” suggests a quite different, decidedly intriguing direction that the “Lasso” franchise might have taken.)Instead, we get a remarkably familiar London door-to-door mission by Roy, Keeley and Phoebe. They’re looking for oral-health assistance — this is perhaps the most American joke at the expense of Britain that “Ted Lasso” has yet allowed itself — but they might as well be Hugh Grant asking “does Natalie live here?”Yes, this is actually the “Very Special ‘Love Actually’ episode of ‘Ted Lasso.’ ” And while I have some exceptionally strong feelings about Richard Curtis’s quasi-amorous opus, I’ll keep them to myself for once. (Though I should probably note here that there is a prominent “Once” reference in the episode.)The commercially upbeat subplots that ensue fall as thick upon the ground as snow might have if it weren’t the middle of summer. Ted has his first FaceTime Christmas cut short by his son embracing the thrill of the new drone he’s acquired. But just as he begins pouring himself some sad, solo whiskey and watching an unshaven Jimmy Stewart at the end of his rope — boom! — Rebecca shows up with a sidewalk-tinsel greeting outside his window. Moments later, we get a busker singing “Last Christmas.” This is, I hope, as close as “Ted Lasso” will ever come to “Glee.”What follows is highly enjoyable television without any meaningful hint of conflict or adversity. The Higgins’s family Christmas — to which they always invite AFC Richmond’s far-from-their-families players — unexpectedly welcomes a crowd; Ted and Rebecca deliver absurdly oversized Christmas stockings to kids who sent Santa letters; and, as Roy announces to Phoebe and Keeley, “We’re going to my stupid posh neighborhood …. And if we don’t find a dentist in ten houses, you each get a thousand pounds.”And, because we all believe in Christmas miracles — or, at least in my case, Roy Kent-related miracles — they do indeed find a dentist, who has a treatment plan for Phoebe’s halitosis. Merry August 13.I would like to write “and it all ends (as it must) with some cue cards and markers.” But instead I need to write, “and it all almost ends (as it probably should have) with some cue cards and markers.”The “Love Actually” money shot is evidently not quite special enough for this Very Special Episode, so we need our occasional reminder that Hannah Waddingham, who plays Rebecca, is a musical-theater superstar, who offers a glorious street-side rendition of Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”Did I enjoy the episode? Absolutely. Does it make me worry for the future of “Ted Lasso”? Absolutely squared.Odds and EndsRoy’s admitting that he pooped his pants to a tween whose door he’s randomly ringed was a bit of a surprise. His turning it into a learning opportunity — “Let’s both try to knock it off, shall we? If you can do it, I can do it” — makes me want to be a better human being.“God bless me, everyone” — could Jamie Tartt possibly have found a more personally apt way of channeling the Christmas spirit?I continue to love Sam’s increased screen time. And what better way could there have been for him to capture the magic of Santa for one of Higgins’s boys than to explain his “true power is not his speed but his endurance”?This week’s pop-cultural references (in addition to the many already cited) included Paw Patrol, John Holmes(!), the Helter Skelter murders, and Rachel Weisz and Daniel “Double-Oh-Heaven” Craig. More