The world’s most popular student aardvark is retiring, at least from the big-hearted series that bears his name. PBS said there may be “additional Arthur content” in the future.These wonderful kind of days in a neighborhood where aardvarks, rabbits and other animals go to school, learn about life and play are ending. More
The comedian and actor talks about his new romantic comedy, the importance of Charlie and Eddie Murphy and why bombing onstage is a good thing.Jay Pharoah has more than 200 impressions in his staggering repertory — most famously, President Barack Obama, Jay-Z, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington.But the person he’s channeling in Netflix’s “Resort to Love,” starring Christina Milian as a singer who ends up performing at the Mauritius wedding of her ex-fiancé — that would be Pharoah — is, rather surprisingly, himself.“I can’t say it wasn’t hard, it was just something that I had lived before,” he said of the role, his first romantic lead. “Maybe not marriage-wise, maybe not engaged, but I’ve had those conversations with my exes. I’ve had somebody say to me, ‘If you were the one for me, it wouldn’t be as hard.’ I’ve had people say, ‘I’m scared.’ They were literally moments in my life that I was pulling from.”But if Pharoah’s amorous life is moving at a deliberate pace (“I’m narrowing it down,” he said. “I don’t date anymore. I go on interviews.”), his professional one is speeding ahead. After freestyling a new voice for the “Family Guy” staff last year, he was asked whether he wanted a writing job on the show, starting with the season premiering this fall.“The folks at ‘Family Guy’ were like, ‘Listen, we know you go on tour, we know you do movies, so we will work with your schedule. We value you,’” he said. “And that makes me feel good, makes me feel wanted — unlike high school.”In a call from New York, where he was hitting some comedy clubs before returning to Los Angeles, Pharoah talked about the people, places and things instrumental to that transformation. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. His Faith I used to work at Burlington Coat Factory. I remember in 2008, there was a gentleman who came through the line, and he said: “Listen, don’t worry about it. Everything that you want to happen in your career is about to happen. Just don’t give up on your talent. The spirit of God told me to tell you that.” I was like, “What?” I’d never seen this man before. He’d never seen me. But he told me that. And I was like: “OK, I’m not going to give up on my talent. But I am going to quit Burlington.”2. Shaina Farrow, his sister and manager My sister definitely made the ultimate sacrifice taking a chance on me. She could have easily got a job doing something else. In 2009, when we decided to go on the road, she pawned her jewelry so we had gas money to get up to New York.And she’s not somebody who I put in the position just because they were a family member — because my dad was my manager before, and he didn’t have the skills. It’s good to have people in your corner that really care about you, but it’s better to have people who care about you and know what they’re doing.3. Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious” It’s the greatest comedy special ever, next to “Richard Pryor: Live in Concert.” You want to talk about family stories, perfect impressions, callbacks, racial observation, racial humor — it’s the buffet of comedy. Nobody’s special has been better than that, and that came out in 1983. And until this day I can watch that stand-up and laugh the same way every time, even if I know that the punchline is coming.4. Charlie Murphy Charlie Murphy [Eddie’s older brother] is somebody who took a chance on me. Being young in the comedy game and killing onstage is intimidating for anybody who’s older. He saw me when I was 19 years old. He was like: “Yo man, that was hilarious. I want to take you on the road with me, man. You want to go?”He told me about the game. He told me to never lie. He’d say, “As long as you tell them the truth, they will walk with you.” He also said: “No matter what you do, whether it’s your cross, whether it’s a thought, whatever it is, always take God onstage with you.” And number three, and this was a big one, he said: “If you don’t have butterflies or you’re not nervous before you get on that stage, you’re nothing. Because that means you don’t give a [expletive] about your craft anymore.”5. Carolines on Broadway Charlie Murphy took me to Carolines on Broadway, my first comedy club in New York, and it was an amazing weekend. I remember the third show on Saturday night. It was late. I was tired. Uncle Ray [Murphy], rest in peace, was hosting. I do my set. I got a standing ovation and I’m like, whoa. As I’m trying to leave the stage, I trip. Uncle Ray is sitting in the back, and he goes: “That was good work out there. But we got to work on your balance.”6. Bombing onstage You have to bomb to become better. You know, all of the greats have bombed and if you haven’t bombed, you’re not great. You will become comfortable in something and you’re perpetuating it, whereas if you bomb, you have to dig in yourself and find something out. There’s no other options.7. Jay-Z and Chris Martin’s “Beach Chair” I don’t talk about this a lot, but I was depressed in 2007. There was a lot going on. And then good things started happening, and Jay-Z’s “Beach Chair” was the soundtrack for that. That song put me on the Jay-Z wagon. Oh, he’s dope, he’s the G.O.A.T. And that’s the blueprint for my impression. His voice was lucid. It was strong, but it was soothing.8. Battle Rap Battle rap is so similar to stand-up comedy — setup, punchline, delivery, execution, swag, verbiage. Everything counts in battle rap the same way that everything counts on the stage. It’s the same science, but it’s a different form of that science. I like Loaded Lux, Murda Mook, Calicoe, X-Factor, Aye Verb. Of the new school you’ve got your Rum Nitty, JC, Geechi Gotti. You have Ave. You got Nu Jerzey Twork. I love the aggression. I love the wordplay. I love the creativity. And it just makes me happy to watch it.9. Ludacris’s “Back for the First Time” That’s the first rap album that I ever owned. I remember I burned the CD — I bootlegged it, that’s what I did. And it made me want to rap. Ludacris was a good balance of fun and lyrical, kind of like a Busta Rhymes but more contemporary.Coming from a heavy Christian household, there’s certain things your peoples don’t put up with. And my dad didn’t appreciate [Ludacris’s profanity]. So he took the album from me and put it in his room. But I found it, and I just swapped out an unburned disc, and he didn’t even know the difference. He’d leave the house and I would play it as loud as I could. I played it until it had so many scratches, I couldn’t play it anymore.10. Will Smith’s “I Am Legend”Just like Tom Hanks did in “Cast Away,” Will Smith showed that you can captivate an audience for an hour and change with just you. And that was the beauty of it. It was so much emotion. It showed his range. And to me it solidified him as one of the greatest actors of all time.And it showed me, if Will Smith could get ripped like that, I could get ripped like that too. Now I look like Black Bane. I am not slacking a minute. I know that they’re out here looking for Black Superman and if I don’t land that, I’m going to get somebody close. I don’t care if the Falcon’s got a little brother. I don’t care if they come out with a character called the Pigeon. I will play that role. More
The annual summer festival in Massachusetts has tried to adapt amid the pandemic and calls for more diversity onstage.I hate getting caught in the rain. But lately, with the mercurial weather and my new dog-walking schedule, I’ve found myself caught in bright sun showers, swampy mists and downright tempests. In my humble opinion, rain is nothing to sing about — Gene Kelly be damned.After a sunny bus ride to Williamstown, Mass., walking with a pup, a tote and a backpack, I was caught again — soaked down to the soles of my Converse. Roughly 15 minutes later the skies settled as suddenly as they had erupted. It’s a problem the Williamstown Theater Festival, which I was attending for the first time, has had to contend with all summer. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the usually indoor festival has tried to adapt with three outdoor productions. But the area has received an above-average amount of rainfall this season, disrupting these plans and leading the festival not to open its shows for reviews from critics.Adaptation, how the festival has successfully or unsuccessfully readjusted to the climate and the politico-cultural climate (namely the pandemic and the protests), was the theme of my weekend.One of the first sights I saw on my damp walk from the bus to the hotel was of a Black woman on a stage: delightful. This was an outdoor rehearsal for one of three 30-minute plays curated by the playwright-director Robert O’Hara for “Celebrating the Black Radical Imagination: Nine Solo Plays.” In “The Master’s Tools,” cleverly written by Zora Howard (“Stew”), a Black enslaved woman named Tituba (a wonderfully devilish Rosalyn Coleman), like the victimized slave from Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” recounts a treacherous storm that led to her mother’s decapitation. A storm is a “great equalizer,” she says, describing how nature howls “like it’s in heat” and how the trees shake “as though possessed.”It made me glance up to the sky again from my seat on the front lawn of the ’62 Center for Theater and Dance, where the production was presented. A clamshell arched over the stage where Tituba told her story. Just a few minutes before she stepped onstage, ushers had handed out rain ponchos to the audience; the forecast had predicted afternoon rain.Rosalyn Coleman in Zora Howard’s “The Master’s Tools.”Joseph O’Malley and R. Masseo DavisThe rain never came. But by that point the audience, who sat on the lawn without any covering, had already been exposed to the vicious midday sun for an hour while watching the two other short solos, all directed by Candis C. Jones, that were being featured in the last week of the anthology production’s run: “Mark It Down” by Charly Evon Simpson, and “The Last……(A Work in Progress),” by Ngozi Anyanwu.In “The Last,” a queer Black man (Ronald Peet) reflects on a relationship, reeling from his isolation — a literal quarantine — and sense of loss. And in “Mark It Down,” a Black woman (Naomi Lorrain) takes account of her grief over her grandmother’s death during the pandemic.These works by Black playwrights were another way the festival reacted to the moment — not to the coronavirus, but to the recent calls for more diversity onstage. But when the plays were taken within the context of the community where they were being staged, there was a disconnect. My mother, who had joined me, and I barely saw any Black people in town all weekend, with the exception of the festival’s Black cast members. What’s the point of producing new work about Blackness in America if there’s not a more concerted effort to attract Black audiences to receive it?I asked the same question when I attended the experimental “Alien/Nation,” from the director Michael Arden and his company, the Forest of Arden. An immersive experience, “Alien/Nation,” written and devised by Eric Berryman and Jen Silverman, begins as a walking tour through the Williams College campus. (There’s also a version by car.) The audience is split into groups of about eight, and each group is led, via an app, along a path dotted with performers who act out bite-size, dance-heavy scenes about real events that happened in Western Massachusetts and beyond in 1969.Not only does this first act — mostly about Black student protests at Williams College — ring out as particularly relevant right now, but so does the second, which takes place at a Covid-19 vaccination center. The third, which includes an odd but beautiful reproduction of the moon landing and a planetary fashion show, makes a sloppy effort to tie the ending back into the racial themes of the beginning.“Alien/Nation” is an immersive theatrical experience that takes audiences on a walking tour through Williamstown, Mass.Joseph O’Malley and R. Masseo DavisWhile some parts of the production connect (the site-specific format, the wondrously fluid synchronized choreography of Jeff Kuperman and Eamon Foley), others show how the festival’s attempts to adjust to an innovative, pandemic-friendly experience failed. The complicated tech — audience members need to download an app, and must forfeit their driver’s licenses in exchange for earbuds — was prohibitive to many, myself included. The app didn’t work well, the tour ate up more than half my data, and my audio kept going in and out. And the first part of the lengthy production, which one of the company members described, understatedly, as “a little bit of a walk,” wasn’t very accessible, especially given the ample hills of the Williams campus. (“This is too much for someone my age,” my 56-year-old mother testily complained to a company member. “Especially for someone who had a hip replacement.”)And, again, when looking at the makeup of the audience, my mother and I appeared to be the only Black people attending a play about Black civil rights and political action.It was my final show of the weekend, however, that best captured the festival’s attempts to adapt theater in unpredictable circumstances. With a book by Daniel Goldstein and music and lyrics by Dawn Landes, “Row,” directed by Tyne Rafaeli, is staged on wooden platforms in the beautiful reflecting pool at the Clark Art Institute.This musical was inspired by Tori Murden McClure’s memoir “A Pearl in the Storm,” about her effort to become the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic. By presenting “Row” outside at the Clark, the festival uses a local setting (the gorgeous views) to present a tale of resiliency. Led by Grace McLean as Tori with a soaring voice (best showcased in the cascading bellows of the classic-rock-inspired “Drowning”), the show intercuts Tori’s narrative account of her journey with scenes from her past. Her story — acting out, growing up in a difficult home, then finding herself in a fight against nature — hits many familiar notes but is still novel, if only for the site-specific setup and the fact that her quest really happened a mere 22 years ago.Grace McLean as the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic in “Row” at the Clark Art Institute.Joseph O’Malley and R. Masseo DavisBut the show has also been plagued by the poor weather, and some of the sound crew walked off the job one night, complaining of unsafe and unsatisfactory working conditions in the rain. In switching gears to deliver outdoor theater, the festival has been able to step up during a challenging time for the performing arts, but it has struggled to manage the logistics.“Bad weather’s on the way,” Tori says at one point in the show. During her long, treacherous time at sea, she constantly has to acclimate to the conditions in order to survive.The same could be said of theater during the pandemic; easier said than done.The morning after I returned from Williamstown, I got caught in the rain yet again. I’ve started wearing my rain boots, I just got a new raincoat, and at Williamstown I bought a blue rain poncho just in case. I’d rather be prepared for any bad weather on the way — not just run for cover.RowThrough Aug. 15 at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.; 413-458-3253, wtfestival.org. Running time: 2 hours.Alien/NationThrough Aug. 15 in Williamstown, Mass; 413-458-3253, wtfestival.org. Running time: 2 hours and 25 minutes. More
“Merry Wives,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy, had already pushed back its opening night by nearly two weeks after an injury to its leading man.The merriment is still on hiatus.The Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in the Park production of “Merry Wives,” which had already pushed back its opening night by nearly two weeks after its leading man was injured, announced on Friday that it would cancel its third consecutive performance after learning a production member had tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday.The theater had canceled the Wednesday and Thursday performances at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, in accordance with its existing protocols. It announced on Twitter on Friday that it would call off Friday’s performance as well “to support the artistic and logistical efforts required to restart performances.”A spokeswoman for the theater, Laura Rigby, said the theater planned to resume performances on Saturday. The production is scheduled to run through Sept. 18, with a special gala performance on Sept. 20.The theater noted on Twitter that it practiced “rigorous testing and daily health and safety protocols to ensure everyone’s safety.” It said on Wednesday that the cast, crew and staff members would isolate and take additional tests if needed.Earlier this week the theater postponed the play’s opening night to Aug. 9, from July 27, after Jacob Ming-Trent, who plays Falstaff, sustained an undisclosed injury. (He is recuperating, the theater said, and his understudy Brandon E. Burton will perform the role in his absence.)The show, a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” has been running in previews since July 6. Written by Jocelyn Bioh and directed by Saheem Ali, it is set in South Harlem and represents African immigrant communities not often seen onstage. Bioh and Ali have said they hope the production makes Shakespeare accessible to all audiences, especially people of color who may have been told Shakespeare was not for them.“We want it to be antiracist,” Ali told The New York Times this month. “We want it to have opportunities for people of color that didn’t exist before.”In June, the theater announced that it would fill the Delacorte Theater to 80 percent capacity after initially saying it would allow only 428 attendees in the 1,800-seat theater for each performance.People who show proof of vaccination can occupy full-capacity sections, and distanced sections are available for those who are unvaccinated (and those theatergoers do not need to show proof of a negative test to enter). Face masks are required for people in both sections when entering and moving around, though those in the full-capacity sections may remove them while seated.On Friday, Rigby said the theater was monitoring Covid-19 cases in New York City and would adjust its policies if needed in collaboration with its city, state and union partners.The cancellations come amid the rise in cases caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, which has been responsible for the postponement of a number of stage productions and delays in television and film projects in Europe over the past month. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cinderella” musical recently moved its opening night in London’s West End back about a month after a cast member tested positive, while productions like “Hairspray” at the London Coliseum and “Romeo and Juliet” at Shakespeare’s Globe have also experienced delays following positive tests.In the United States, the Delta variant is now responsible for a majority of cases, and some experts are recommending that fully vaccinated people wear masks again to protect the unvaccinated. More
The N.B.A. hosts its 75th draft and Cesar Millan returns to TV with a new show focused on rescue dogs and their owners.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 26-Aug. 1. Details and times are subject to change. More
This cult favorite comedy had a simple premise, but its mission was more complex: to deconstruct the modern sitcom.In the early days of the pandemic, when everyone was bored at home, I took an extremely comprehensive online personality quiz designed to determine your similarity to more than 1,600 fictional characters from TV, literature and film. My closest counterpart, with a 96 percent match, was Jeff Winger, the charismatic lead character played by Joel McHale on NBC’s cult sitcom “Community.” More
The Season 2 premiere finds Lasso and friends demoted from the Premier League. And yet, not much has changed.Season 2, Episode 1: ‘Goodbye, Earl’So here we are. Relegation.At the end of the first season of “Ted Lasso,” the show’s fictional English football (soccer) squad, AFC Richmond, lost its final game of the season in the closing minute. As a result, the team’s record was so bad it was relegated (demoted) from the Premier League to lower-tier competition. More
The stand-up special is built around audio recorded in live performances. Then artists went to work. Sometimes they took her bits far beyond what she expected.One day during the production of her new, animated stand-up special, Tig Notaro was presented with a rough illustrated version of an anecdote about her double mastectomy. In the bit, Notaro ponders what her doctors might have done with her discarded breasts after the surgery she underwent following a 2012 cancer diagnosis. What if, she asks, the remains had been tossed in a Hollywood dumpster? Might they have been left for rodents to play tug of war with? More
