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    Review: Sarah Silverman’s ‘Bedwetter’ Musical Has Sprung a Leak

    The comedian’s memoir was funny. But when the new show based on it tries for something deeper, it sinks into bathos.Zingy, 10-year-old Sarah Silverman (Zoe Glick) isn’t a natural fit for the town of Bedford, N.H., where sour, flinty fatalism is the norm. “May all your dreams come true,” one local says at a birthday party. “Mine did not.”The Silvermans, who anchor the new musical “The Bedwetter,” are defiantly nonconformist: all id, all the time. Sarah’s lately divorced father, the proprietor of Crazy Donny’s Factory Outlet (Darren Goldstein), encourages her to wow her new classmates with the dirty jokes he’s taught her. Dipso Nana (Bebe Neuwirth) thinks Sarah’s bartending skills are a better bet to impress. And if Sarah’s mother, Beth Ann (Caissie Levy), expresses herself by spending days in bed watching old movies, Sarah, taking the family’s let-it-all-out mojo perhaps too far, does so by wetting hers at night.Still, she is cheerfully resigned to being a misfit, taking no offense even when her sister, Laura (Emily Zimmerman), wanting nothing to do with her in public, sings a song called “I Don’t Know This Person.” And to beat her new fifth-grade classmates to the punch, Sarah pre-emptively tells them, in “I Couldn’t Agree More,” that she’s “eww-y” and “Jewy.” Not only are her arms “so hairy,” but “You should see my back.”The musical depicts one year in the life of 10-year-old Sarah, who quickly manages to make frenemies of three new classmates.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSatisfying as the standup rhythm is, “The Bedwetter,” which opened Tuesday at the Linda Gross Theater, is sometimes, like its title character, a bit of a misfit. Based on the real Sarah Silverman’s 2010 memoir, subtitled “Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee,” it works best when it aims for the comic highs of that charming if gangly book. As long as it sticks close to young Sarah’s resilience as she tries to make friends without revealing her mortifying condition, “The Bedwetter,” an Atlantic Theater Company production, is a potty-mouthed pleasure. But in jimmying the original into a more serious musical format as it proceeds, it achieves only a middling geniality.It starts out promisingly enough, establishing the main characters efficiently and with good humor. The songs, with music by Adam Schlesinger and lyrics by Schlesinger and Silverman, have the cheesy irreverence and synth-y disposability of period television jingles — the period being the early 1980s. Donny’s numbers, performed with schlubby insouciance by Goldstein, are a highlight, including one, whose refrain can’t be printed here, that explains how he knows all the other girls’ mothers. Perhaps you can imagine what rhymes with “along.”But a little of that sound goes a long way, just as Silverman’s naïve inappropriateness, so effective in her standup, works only the first few times onstage. When Sarah, introducing herself to her class, mentions a brother who died, her reflex not to seem piteous makes her explanation weirdly funny: “He was just like a baby, so it wasn’t sad or anything.” But when that death — and a lot of other dark material — comes to the forefront, the laughs wear thin.If such moments don’t feel out of place in Silverman’s memoir, that’s in part because its episodic narrative leaps froglike through 40 years of her life, quickly dispensing with even the most disturbing events. And though it makes sense that the musical’s authors would narrow the focus and shorten the time span, the book by Joshua Harmon (“Bad Jews”) and Silverman overreaches; in attempting to backfill the story with drama to justify the addition of songs, they put too much pressure on the one year it depicts.That’s the year in which Sarah arrives at McKelvie Middle School, manages to make frenemies of three classmates and, at the end of the first act, in an unconvincing scene involving diapers, finds the one thing she had hoped to keep private revealed. The second act deals with Sarah’s resulting depression — a state uncomfortably reminiscent of Beth Ann’s — as well as Nana’s mortality and a minor character’s suicide.The music, and especially the lyrics, cannot support this turn toward “Fun Home” territory. (In her black wig, Glick, a very talented 14-year-old, looks like she’s already playing the young lead in that show.) What works well in the lighter material — like the earwormy title song, which sounds like “Day Tripper” being covered by the Partridge Family — feels flimsy in the heavier material, especially Beth Ann’s overdramatic arias. (Levy sings them beautifully, though.) As a result, the show seems to spring a leak, losing all its giddy energy as it sinks into the serious.That’s a shame — the more so because Schlesinger, having died from Covid-19 complications in 2020, was not able to finish developing the musical with his collaborators. (The songwriter David Yazbek joined the team as a “creative consultant.”) Schlesinger’s songs for the 2008 stage version of “Cry-Baby” (written with David Javerbaum), as well as his experience in the pop-rock band Fountains of Wayne, demonstrated a quick ear for neat hooks but not yet the kind of complexity needed to carry theatrical emotion. And his lyrics with Silverman too often wander in search of a rhyme, then, sighting one in the distance, botch it.Glick, outnumbered by her meds, in the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMuch of this might have been improved had Schlesinger lived. And much could still have been camouflaged by a strong staging. But “The Bedwetter” doesn’t get that, at least in this incarnation; the usually acute director Anne Kauffman, working on an awkward set by Laura Jellinek, seems to be going for a middle-school aesthetic to match its milieu. Even at two hours, the show feels needlessly elongated by switchovers from one vague locale to another — and by numbers, including one about Xanax, that extend well past their welcome.About that Xanax: It’s a bizarre omission in the musical that it does not highlight, as the book clearly does, the role the massive over-prescription of that drug played in Sarah’s depression. (By age 14 she was taking 16 pills a day.) Perhaps this was a choice to make the drama more emotional than pharmaceutical but, in any case, it further burdens what is already a weak plot about a weak bladder. But then many of the show’s choices, like the promotion of a Miss New Hampshire character (Ashley Blanchet, suitably lovely) from cameo to mascot, seem similarly random. That’s true of Silverman’s comedy in general, built as it is on apparently aleatory mismatches of tone and content.If that kind of randomness can be a convincing aesthetic in some art forms, I’ve never seen it work in musicals, where “that seems weird enough to work” never does. A show that operates on that principle may still hit a few highs; Neuwirth, dry and suave, certainly knows how to find them. The song in which she tells Sarah, warmly but practically, “You’re beautiful — to me,” is one of the few serious numbers that lands. Too often the rest of “The Bedwetter,” at least when aiming for tears, feels merely wet.The BedwetterThrough July 3 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours. More

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    Ruth Negga Thinks Lady Macbeth Is Misunderstood

    The actress, nominated for a Tony Award for her magnetic performance in “Macbeth,” is drawn to female characters who challenge the status quo.Ruth Negga dazzles onstage. Not just because, as Lady Macbeth, she briefly wears a gold metallic gown in Sam Gold’s otherwise fairly casual staging of “Macbeth” at the Longacre Theater. But, rather, it’s because she infuses her character, and her marriage to Macbeth (Daniel Craig), with such intensity, urgency and vitality that I found myself missing her when she came to her inevitable end.Negga was nominated for a Tony Award for best performance by a leading actress in a play, which recognizes both her powerful stage presence and the gender parity that Gold’s revival sought to achieve. “Like a feral cat, she can seem quicksilver and weightless or, when enraged, menacing and bristly and twice her size,” Jesse Green wrote of Negga’s performance in a review in The Times.Even if Lady Macbeth appears in substantially fewer scenes than her husband, her cunning mind — and Negga’s command of Shakespeare’s verse — leave an indelible imprint. “Her language is very fertile, it’s very fecund and it’s very sensual,” Negga said last week in a video interview. “I think a lot of people associate that with darkness as well. But that’s another layer that I think this character has been burdened and muddied with.”Negga, left, with Amber Gray in the revival. “She’s not evil,” Negga said of Lady Macbeth. “It’s this archetype that chases her: the deadly villainess, the villain behind the man.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNegga, who plays the mysterious, seductive, blonde-haired Clare in the movie “Passing,” and the real-life civil rights activist Mildred Loving in “Loving,” is drawn to characters who try to circumvent the social circumstances into which they were born. Negga sees Clare, Loving and now Lady Macbeth as paying a price for such transgressions because they are either running out of time or, in the case of Loving, ahead of hers.Born in Ethiopia to an Ethiopian father and an Irish mother, and raised in Ireland and England, Negga, 40, spoke from her place in New York about the significance of seeing “Macbeth” as a love story, and why she finds the role of Lady to be liberating. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.You were playing Hamlet at St. Ann’s Warehouse right before everything shut down in March 2020. How has coming back to the stage, on Broadway with a different Shakespeare play, been for you?Revisiting the Tragedy of ‘Macbeth’Shakespeare’s tale of a man who, step by step, cedes his soul to his darkest impulses continues to inspire new interpretations. On Stage: Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga star in Sam Gold’s take on the play. Despite its star power, the production feels oddly uneasy, our critic writes. Onscreen: In the “Tragedy of Macbeth,” Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand embody a toxic power couple with mastery. Break a Leg: Shakespeare’s play is known for the rituals and superstitions tied to it. How does the supernatural retain its hold on the theater world?My isolation was book ended by two Shakespeare plays, which is really interesting because I hadn’t actually been onstage for 10 years before that. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. I think those two years of being so separate from people just compounded that feeling of “connect, connect.” It’s such a personal, visceral experience for the person playing onstage and the person receiving that performance. Because it’s so immediate and in the now, and it’s happening live, that kind of energetic exchange can only happen at that moment. It’s so weird — that’s why I love it.How did playing Hamlet prepare you for Lady Macbeth?I was approaching 40, playing this young man who was just entering his exploration of his adulthood and his place in the world, and I was guided by this moment of internal discovery and complete honesty. Hamlet is a truth-teller but he’s also a truth searcher, and for good or bad, and I think to his chagrin sometimes, nothing but the truth will do. That’s a very hard place to be, but it’s also where amazing transformation can happen. [The role] really tests your mettle, your physical and vocal stamina, and also what you’re willing to lay bare. And since everything’s laid bare, you can’t really hide anywhere. To be honest, anything’s a relief after Hamlet.With Lady Macbeth, was it hard to know what motivated her?Even before I started rehearsals I was like, “What’s all this jazz about her being evil?” She’s not evil, it’s this archetype that chases her: the deadly villainess, the villain behind the man. That’s what she’s become known for, and she’s been robbed of any idiosyncrasy or personality. But whereas we rail against [Macbeth] for his procrastination, I think she could have done a bit more thinking things through. But the thing is, time wasn’t on her side. This is what happens when you just have all these ideas and they seem great and you’re really getting things going and you don’t have much time. I mean she makes one bad mistake when you think about it.Which is?Well, I personally don’t think you need to kill people to get ahead! But I don’t come to a character trying to justify them, that’s not my job. I’m not interested in that. But very few people act from a core of badness or evilness. I loved her desire to be alive, to reach for things, to strive, and I was so excited to play someone who has such clear ideas of what they think they deserve, especially a woman. And when you realize that your desires and your ambitions are restricted by the status quo, one has to think quickly on one’s feet. They have to become quick and mercurial. That’s what she has a talent for. There’s a self-awareness there that I think makes her similar to Hamlet.Daniel Craig, left, stars as Macbeth. “There’s very much an awareness that this is a marriage of equals and respect, and I loved that,” Negga said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe chemistry between Macbeth and Lady is so palpable onstage. Was that important to you?When I read this script, I thought, “Wow, this dies on whether you believe that they love each other or not. This is key.” Their relationship is the backdrop or the environment of this play; that’s what their action is born out of. But there’s also a love there that is very robust. You feel like they both draw strength from that union in a very equal, balanced way. And that was something that was important for me to not let be put to the side, or laid to waste or watered down in any way. There’s very much an awareness that this is a marriage of equals and respect, and I loved that.Marriage is central to some of your other characters, like Clare in “Passing” and Mildred in “Loving,” whose marriages to white men challenge the status quo.To me race is in the foreground, the background, the present, and it’s not something I have had to chase or I’ve had to ignore. It’s with me, it’s in me, it’s who I am. So stories about race and stories written by people of color, Americans of color, have always piqued my interest. How do people go through the world as a person of color with the structures and limitations that have been imposed by society? And how does the status quo come up against your personal desire and ambition? And how do you live the life that you want as best you can within these structures that are telling you, “No.”In “Macbeth,” the other characters are casually dressed, but at one point, Lady is wearing a gold gown. Why?That was really important to me and to Suttirat [Larlarb], our amazing costume designer. I think we both fell in love with Lady. My heart spills over with joy when I see women, any type of woman, just embrace who they are. And for me, her femininity is important because I was familiar with this idea that she could seem like this sexless, austere, bloodless, lustless sort of shell. That just doesn’t chime with the Lady on the page, so I wanted her to have no shame, be lusty and alive, and really enjoy her sexuality and her femininity, and not be frightened to stand out from the crowd.Is there another Shakespeare character that you long to play?I remember in college I used to do the Queen Margaret speeches [from “Richard III”]. They’re great because they’re deadly, speeches that are powerful and about power. It’s extraordinary that Shakespeare gave them to her. What I love about him, he doesn’t make his women saints. He gives you complexity. He’s not presenting a Lady Macbeth we can hate; he’s presenting a woman that we can see ourselves in, and a woman overwhelmed by grief. She has a great catharsis and a great internal reckoning. And I feel for her deeply. More

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    ‘Being BeBe’ Review: Reaching for Drag Superstardom

    Observing its subject with a clear eye, this profile of Marshall Ngwa, who performs as BeBe Zahara Benet, is a breath of fresh air.In the perspicacious documentary “Being BeBe,” the director Emily Branham seems to have taken a page from Janet Malcolm. Within her profile of Marshall Ngwa, who performs drag as BeBe Zahara Benet, Branham tucks lucid insights about the codes, ethics and art of cinematic biography.Branham, who gathered footage of Ngwa over 15 years and became his dear friend, frames the movie as a reminiscence. It opens in 2020 in Ngwa’s Minneapolis home, where he watches clips that Branham captured years earlier and reacts to the scenes in real time. These segments intermix with an overview of Ngwa’s life and his campaign for drag superstardom. Special attention is paid to his affection for his family, and the grace with which he navigated their shifting feelings about his embodying BeBe.
    In a sea of glossy celebrity bio-docs, “Being BeBe” is a breath of fresh air. It observes its subject with a clear eye, and does not shy away from positioning Ngwa’s triumphs, such as his exciting win on the first season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” within a context of artistic, financial and social struggle.Perhaps most powerful of all is Branham’s intermittent presence in the film. Sometimes she queries Ngwa from behind her grainy video camera, or he addresses her. In other moments, she interrupts her representation of Ngwa to stage a broader survey of homophobia in Cameroon. With her feature debut, Branham exposes her hand as filmmaker, and reminds us that “Being BeBe” is only a snapshot of Ngwa’s persona; the real thing is so much richer.Being BeBeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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    Lucy Moss Unwinds With Songwriting and TikTok Cleaning Tutorials

    The Tony Award-nominated co-director of “Six” shares the corners of the internet she haunts to help her stay productive.At 26, Lucy Moss became the youngest woman ever to direct a Broadway musical: the global hit, “Six,” which she had co-written at 23 with Toby Marlow, and co-directed with Jamie Armitage. The show, structured as a pop concert battle in which the wives of Henry VIII compete to see who suffered the most, began at the Edinburgh fringe festival in 2017 and now has six productions running worldwide.At 28, Moss is now up for best direction and best original score at the Tony Awards, and just directed a reimagined revival of “Legally Blonde” at London’s Regent’s Park Open Air Theater, running through July and starring a largely queer, mostly Black and brown cast.“At first I was quite a snob about movie adaptations, thinking they’re usually not good, even though that’s not true,” she said on a recent Zoom call from her apartment in London. “It also wasn’t very queer, so I didn’t know if it was my vibe. Then I saw the original’s MTV recording and thought it was the best thing I’d seen in my life.”The London native discussed the diverse bits of culture — pop, online, and IRL — that propel her. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. A Weeping Willow in Regent’s Park When you walk in from the Baker Street Underground station, there’s a bridge and then this lone tree on the bank of the little lake. I’m usually on the tube stressing about something, trying to send 20 emails or whatever, so to then go into the park is just so beautiful, particularly when I was going in for auditions and meetings in the winter. I love weeping willows, I feel a very kindred spirit in them. They’re just falling over, like, “Ugh, everything is so difficult.” I can just look at it and go, “Yeah, same.”2. “Circle Jerk” by Fake Friends — Onstage I paid for, like, three tickets for the digital version of it in 2020 and kept watching it afterward — maybe 40 times? I immediately became their biggest fan from across the internet, and then we did “Ratatouille the Musical” together and became friends. I love how dense it is, textually. It’s such a rich rewatch, and just so funny and nuanced and stupid.I know it quite well at this point — the performances and choices and all that — and I imagine there’ll be new TikTok references [in the new production]. I just can’t believe I get to see it in the flesh. I’ve never been more excited to see a live show.3. Basketball Shorts They’re a great length; you can wear them high-waisted and still not have them be super short. I feel like myself in them. I went to a vintage shop and bought a bunch, so now I have a pair for every day of the week. Now I’m dabbling in wearing them lower, but high-waisting my underwear line, with a crop top. Although, last night, I had to give my phone to a friend because it kept pulling them down.4. Her Cousin Max My mom’s sister’s son is my best friend, and the baby of the family. I love that he has a phone now so I can send him sort of memes of geese and stuff. He texts like a grandma, with correct capitalization and punctuation. I texted him to remind him of the time he fell into the pond at my mom’s house and he replied, “Oh gosh! That brings back memories.” It’s like a novel.5. Cleaning TikTok (“CleanTok”) I watch these when I’m going to bed, when I should be reading a book or something. It’s so soothing and relaxing to see videos of people cleaning their bathrooms — especially the ones from Japan, because they have gadgets that click in and out of place. I watch and fall asleep, though, I’ve absolutely not learned anything from them. Actually, I realized how clean you can actually get things to be.6. The “Contrapoints” YouTube Channel She is just the queen of nuance. Her videos are such a weird, amazing combo of academia made really accessible, and comedy and dress-up. They’re only about an hour but still so thorough, and she’s so empathetic. Sure, she’ll mock people but she’s ultimately discussing the roots of what’s going on in society. She doesn’t place herself higher than anybody else.7. @ZeeWhatIDid I guess she’s kind of like an influencer? She’s a British teenage TikToker who is so charismatic and sweet. She does cosplay and makeup tutorials and Marvel stuff, which I’m not even into, but I’m just happy that TikTok exists for her. She’ll be doing highlighter on her face and talking about blinding your enemies; she’s so gorgeous and funny. I love that she’s living her best life online.8. Writing Songs It’s a good way to unwind without feeling like I’m wasting my life. I don’t have plans to do anything with them, and I often put in little personal in-jokes. I just like the actual process of writing something just for myself, particularly as someone who is usually writing with other people, and always to a specific end. If I was writing with Toby, they’d be like, “Oh no, that rhyme should be at the end of the line,” or something to actually improve it, but I don’t have to do that alone.9. The Bush Theater in London Lynette Linton was made its artistic director a few years ago, and I admire her so much. She runs this building in such an incredible way; the way that everybody in the building interacts with her and each other, it’s such good vibes. And the actual space is amazing: The library is gorgeous, there’s a nice little cafe, and the shows they put on are always championing and nurturing young, different voices that other theaters wouldn’t necessarily do. And it’s in west London, which is where I grew up. So it’s kind of the only cool thing in west London, basically.10. A 2014 Video of Russell Brand Giving Away a CroissantI used to watch his show, “The Trews,” where he would discuss the news, and it got a bit more serious. And then, in the middle of that, there’s this video of him trying to give away a luxury croissant on the motorway. I watch it so often and quote it all the time, which obviously nobody even knows. It makes me so happy, I just love the way he says “croissant” and sings about this segment being his “trafficky bit.” I’ve been obsessed with this video since then and I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. More

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    In ‘Buggy Baby,’ Shadows Creep In

    Josh Azouz’s vivid, nightmarish play at Astoria Performing Arts Center in Queens is a hallucinatory tale about two refugees and a talkative infant.In the tub, the baby is screaming and thrashing around, on her way to a full meltdown. Overwhelmed, her young mother has turned her back — not for long, but for long enough. The infant slips beneath the water.There is no actual water, though, and no actual child, either. The title character in Josh Azouz’s vivid comic nightmare “Buggy Baby” is played by an adult. Why, then, the terror that jolts through us as we watch her start to drown? More perplexingly, why is that sense of urgent immediacy so rare in this play?For lovers of gritty, messy, mordant theater that cocks an eyebrow at the world and dissects its cruelties, the ingredients of a potent experience would seem to be assembled here. When “Buggy Baby” made its premiere in London, in 2018, critics were left baffled but impressed by the hallucinatory tale.Yet Rory McGregor’s production at Astoria Performing Arts Center in Queens — produced in association with Dutch Kills Warehouse and Lawryn LaCroix — gives the persistent impression of being a bit too enamored of its own trippiness and less interested in telling this strange, unsettling story with the necessary clarity.In a crummy room in London, Nur (Rana Roy) and Jaden (Hadi Tabbal) are refugees from an unnamed country that no longer exists, scraping by on so little money that when a job cleaning toilets comes up, Nur urges Jaden to really try for it. They are not a couple, at least not at first, but they have become for each other a kind of family.In “Buggy Baby” Hadi Tabbal and Roy play two refugees who are scraping by.Emilio MadridThe widowed Jaden — who promised Nur’s father, his old friend, that he would look after her — earns a pittance as a gardener, and misses his dead wife. Nur is a college student whose daughter, Baby Aya (Erin Neufer), sleeps in her stroller; they can’t afford a crib. When Aya was born, her soft skull was misshapen, so she wears a helmet to make it round. And yes, it does take a minute to acclimate to the sight of Aya embodied by a grown woman in a stroller, dressed in a rubber-duck onesie, her purple helmet strapped on. (Costumes are by Avery Reed.)But once you get used to it, Aya is a fascinating baby: wry, no-nonsense, gimlet-eyed, with all the iffy muscle control and stubborn whims of a tiny new human. She is closer to Jaden, who cares for her while her mother is at school, than to Nur, who is afraid to pick her up. “Little gazelle,” Jaden calls the infant, tenderly.In the real world Aya would be too young to talk, but in the heightened surrealism of this play — with its set (by Brendan Gonzales Boston) painted shocking pink, and lighting (by Stacey Derosier) that shifts into lurid reverie — age is no obstacle to dialogue.“You’ve got a violent imagination for a baby,” Nur tells her, after Aya muses about chopping out parts of herself.“I’ve seen some terrible things,” the baby says, and this is true.So have Nur and Jaden, and when Jaden attempts to escape his own awareness by chewing psychedelic leaves from a cotton-candy-colored tree, that ugliness pursues him in the form of “rabbits with devil souls.” In his wrecked head, the upright-walking Burnt Fur Rabbit (Jeffrey Brabant) and Gunshot Wound Rabbit (Zack Segel) menace him and threaten Nur and Aya. (When, eventually, guns are involved, they are reassuringly, cartoonishly fake-looking.)Predatory men are a lurking presence in this play, and under the influence of those leaves, Jaden becomes one of them, with Aya entirely at his mercy. This is, hands down, the most disquieting element of “Buggy Baby.”Yet if there is a core to this show beneath the polychromatic cleverness, it remains elusive. Even when pure, battered realism breaks through, the dire circumstances of this unstable family are disturbing only at a distance: the peril they’re in, the pain they feel, the safety that lies somewhere just out of reach.Buggy BabyThrough June 26 at Astoria Performing Arts Center, Queens; apacny.org/buggybaby. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. More

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    Tom Stoppard’s ‘Leopoldstadt’ Will Open on Broadway This Fall

    The play, about a Jewish family in Vienna in the first half of the 20th Century, will begin previews Sept. 14 and open Oct. 2 at the Longacre Theater.“Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s much-heralded and uncharacteristically personal play about an early-20th-century Jewish family in Vienna, is coming to Broadway in September, bringing an unusually large cast and a pointed reminder of the perils of antisemitism to the New York stage.Stoppard, 84, is one of the great dramatists of recent decades; his four best play Tony Awards, for “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Travesties,” “The Real Thing” and “The Coast of Utopia,” are the most of any playwright in Tonys history. “Leopoldstadt” will be the 19th production of a Stoppard play on Broadway since 1967.“Leopoldstadt,” which begins in 1899 and continues through, and past, the two World Wars, chronicles 50 years in the life of one family. It is inspired by, but does not depict, Stoppard’s own family history; he was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937, but fled to Asia with his family when he was a toddler, has spent much of his life in Britain, and only learned some details of his heritage in the 1990s.“It’s two extraordinary hours where you go through this time and this exploration of a family: what they have to face, and how they come out the other side and deal with their past, cope with their present and think about their future,” said Sonia Friedman, a lead producer. “Being Stoppard it’s complex, but also incredibly emotional.”The Broadway production, with a cast of 38, is scheduled to begin previews Sept. 14 and to open Oct. 2 at the Longacre Theater. Friedman, who produced the Tony-winning best plays of the last three seasons before the pandemic, is producing “Leopoldstadt” with Roy Furman, another Broadway veteran, and Lorne Michaels, the “Saturday Night Live” creator.“Leopoldstadt” began its life with a production in London’s West End in 2020 directed by Patrick Marber, which won praise from the New York Times critic Ben Brantley; that run, which was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic, won the Olivier Award for best new play. The play then returned to the West End last year for a brief but profitable run.In New York it is again being directed by Marber, who also directed the last Broadway production of a Stoppard work, a 2018 revival of “Travesties.” In a phone interview, Marber said that he was looking forward to a third go at the material, following the London runs.“It’s a surprisingly enjoyable play to direct — even though it’s very painful and sad, it’s also full of lightness and laughter,” he said. “It’s fundamentally about memory, and time and love. But it’s also about fascism and immigrants and refugees. It’s about everything — it’s Stoppard.”Marber said that Stoppard has continued revising the play for New York, where he said he expects the play to resonate differently because of the ongoing war in Ukraine. “With any play, what’s happening in the real world affects the way you watch it,” he said. “Different things will pop out.” More

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    Late Night Anticipates Jan. 6 Hearings

    Late-night hosts poked fun at Louie Gohmert, the Republican congressman who complained about not being able to lie to the F.B.I. about Jan. 6.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Louie Lou-lieThe Jan. 6 committee hearings will be televised beginning this Thursday — or, as Stephen Colbert referred to it, “America’s Got Treason.”On Monday, late-night hosts poked fun at Louie Gohmert, the Republican congressman from Texas who spoke out against the indictment of former Trump adviser Peter Navarro by complaining Republicans can’t lie to Congress or the F.B.I.“Gohmert is upset because some of his fellow Republicans are getting hit with contempt charges for refusing to cooperate with the committee investigating the insurrection on Jan. 6, and what he’s upset is they’re not even allowed to lie about it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“At least he’s not lying about how upset he is about not being allowed to lie, I guess. Small victory.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This statement used to be the kind of thing that could ruin a person’s political career, but now that we’ve been MAGA-tized it barely even makes a dent.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“[imitating Gohmert] Nowadays you can’t even lie to Congress or lie to the F.B.I. or hot wire a car, then drive that car to a bank and grab all the money at gunpoint, then head to the nearest zoo to throw rocks at the pandas? There’s a two-tiered justice system: one tier for people who obey the law and a whole different one for people who break the law. How is that fair?” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (‘Holo-Grandma’ Edition)“That’s right, Britain marked the queen’s 70-year reign with four days of parades, parties and celebrations. Yeah, four days. Basically, the queen is like your annoying friend who insists on celebrating their birthday month.” — JIMMY FALLON“Lilibet took the throne at age 25, on Feb. 6, 1952. So naturally, the Brits are celebrating her 70th anniversary in June. They were aiming for London’s annual day of sunshine.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, 70 years makes it the queen’s Platinum Jubilee, so I believe the traditional gift to give her is Africa.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yep, the queen celebrated 70 years of sitting on the throne. When he heard, your uncle who does The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle said, ‘Challenge accepted.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It was a star-studded event with performances from Elton John, Rod Stewart and Ed Sheeran. Yeah, when Ed first walked out, the queen was like, ‘Oh, Harry, you’re back.’” — JIMMY FALLON“During a parade over the weekend honoring her Platinum Jubilee, a hologram of Queen Elizabeth was shown in her Gold State Coach and whatever you think of the queen, her duet with Tupac was amazing.” — SETH MEYERS“Nothing says you’re healthy and doing fine like resorting to technology from Disney’s Haunted Mansion.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The crowd sang ‘God Save the Queen’ as the holo-grandma passed them by. At this point, God must be like, ‘Enough already with the song, I’m doing it. She’s 96 — do you not see me saving the queen?’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingBobby Brown sat down with Trevor Noah on Monday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightTig Notaro will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutJoel Kim Booster at Akbar in Los Angeles. He said that before filming of “Fire Island” started, he thought, “This is either going to change my life or it’s going to be the biggest flop of my career.”Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York Times“Fire Island” star Joel Kim Booster reflects on making the rare romantic comedy that puts gay Asian-American men at its center. More

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    A Woman Who Says Bill Cosby Molested Her as a Teen Begins Testifying

    Judy Huth, who is suing Mr. Cosby on sexual assault grounds in a civil case, took the stand in California to begin describing an encounter with the entertainer that took place decades ago.Judy Huth took the stand in Santa Monica on Monday to describe a moment in 1975 when, as a teenager, she said she met Bill Cosby in a California park where he was making a film.Days later, at his invitation, she said, she and her friend went along to his tennis club and then ultimately to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.“It was an adventure,” Ms. Huth said. “We were kids. He was a celebrity.”But later that day, the man she had admired as a famous comedian molested her, she said, after taking her to an isolated room at the mansion. Ms. Huth said she was 16 years old at the time.Mr. Cosby has denied he sexually assaulted Ms. Huth or any of the other women who have come forward in recent years to accuse him of sexual misconduct. He has said any relationship was consensual.But Ms. Huth, 64, has sued Mr. Cosby for sexual assault, and her account, which was not finished on Monday, is the centerpiece of her case against the entertainer, which completed its fourth day of testimony. Ms. Huth testified that she and her friend had been impressed when they saw Mr. Cosby — along with other movie stars — in a park in San Marino on the set of the film “Let’s Do It Again.” According to her account, Mr. Cosby gave the two teenagers alcohol at a house where he was staying, telling them to drink if he bested them in a game of pool, and then asked them to follow him in a car to the mansion. The Sexual Assault Cases Against Bill CosbyAfter Bill Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction for sexual assault was overturned, the first civil case accusing him of sexual misconduct has reached trial.The Civil Trial: Judy Huth has accused Mr. Cosby of assaulting her as a teenager. She sued in 2014, but the case had been on hold while he was criminally prosecuted.Criminal Conviction: In 2018, a jury found the disgraced entertainer guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home near 14 years earlier,His Release From Prison: After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction, Mr. Cosby was released from prison on June 30, 2021.The Ruling: The conviction was overturned on the grounds that prosecutors violated Mr. Cosby’s rights by reneging on a promise not to charge him.“Are you girls ready for your surprise?” he said, according to Ms. Huth. “I had no clue what it could be,” she said. Her lawyers showed the jury a photograph of Ms. Huth standing with Mr. Cosby in the game room at the mansion, taken, she told the court, “before he molested me. It happened 15 minutes after.”Ms. Huth’s testimony was interrupted by the end of the court day before she was able to discuss what she has, in court papers for her case, accused him of doing: placing his hand down her pants and then forcing her to fondle him.The impact of that event, her lawyers have told the court, included depression and anxiety. She had experienced a happy childhood, she said, growing up in Temple City, Calif. But her lawyers said that the incident had derailed her and that she didn’t earn her high school diploma until she was 60.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have disputed Ms. Huth’s account, suggesting that their meeting actually happened years later, when she was an older, and willing, visitor to the mansion who by her own account did not flee after the encounter but stayed on for hours, swimming in the pool and watching a movie.Ms. Huth’s lawsuit, filed in 2014, was largely on hold while prosecutors in Pennsylvania pursued Mr. Cosby, 84, criminally on charges that he had sexually assaulted Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee.But Mr. Cosby’s 2018 conviction in that case was overturned last year by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on due process grounds, and Mr. Cosby walked free after serving nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence.Mr. Cosby, flanked by two of his lawyers, outside his home in the Philadelphia suburbs after being freed from prison last year. Mark Makela/ReutersEarlier on Monday, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers had cross-examined Donna Samuelson, Ms. Huth’s friend who accompanied her to the mansion. She had told the court last week that Ms. Huth had been distraught after her encounter with Mr. Cosby but that Ms. Samuelson persuaded her to stay.Mr. Cosby’s defense tried to undermine the credibility of that account, suggesting that the two friends had coordinated their stories before Ms. Huth first went to the police in 2014. (Prosecutors ultimately declined to file criminal charges because the statute of limitations had passed.)But Ms. Samuelson said she had simply misremembered when she had initially reported to authorities that Ms. Huth was 15 at the time, not 16 as Ms. Huth now says.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers showed a layout of the game room at the Playboy Mansion and said that Ms. Samuelson had been wrong to say a person could access the bathroom only through an adjoining bedroom.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers also said it was impossible for Ms. Samuelson to have played the arcade game “Donkey Kong” there in 1975, as she has testified in a deposition. The game was not released until six years later.Ms. Samuelson said she meant that she had played a game like Donkey Kong.She denied that she and Ms. Huth had coordinated their accounts before Ms. Huth went to the police in 2014. “We were not putting anything together,” she said. “We were just telling our memories.”Jennifer Bonjean, a lawyer for Mr. Cosby, also brought up the subject of race in a way that suggested Ms. Samuelson was motivated to take down Mr. Cosby because he is Black. She said, for example, that Ms. Samuelson, in her pre-trial deposition, had described the décor of his house in Los Angeles as “jungly” and “African,” referring to the leaf print on the wallpaper.“It wasn’t atypical for people in your friend group to use racial slurs like the N-word,” the lawyer asserted.Ms. Samuelson said she never did that.“I am not racist,” she said.One of Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, Jennifer Bonjean.Lucy Nicholson/ReutersMr. Cosby’s lawyers have noted in court proceedings that Ms. Huth’s recollection of when her encounter took place has changed: While she initially said it had happened in 1974, when she was 15, she more recently concluded it was in 1975, when she was 16. The law in California classified a 16-year-old as a minor. In disputing Ms. Huth’s account, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have suggested they met years after the time she said they did, when she was no longer a minor.Last week, Ms. Huth’s legal team introduced two other women who testified about encounters with Mr. Cosby. Kimberly Burr testified that she was 14 years old when he tried to kiss her in his trailer on the set of “Let’s Do It Again” in 1975 as well.Margie Shapiro testified that she was 19 that year when Mr. Cosby met her at the doughnut shop where she was working and invited her to the set of another movie he was filming in Los Angeles. Later that day, according to her testimony, she went to his house and then they went to the Playboy Mansion, where, she said, he drugged and assaulted her, an accusation that Mr. Cosby denies.Mr. Cosby is not expected to testify at the trial, having asserted his Fifth Amendment rights. But lawyers for Ms. Huth deposed him several years ago, and a portion of that testimony is expected to be presented in court before the conclusion of the trial, which is expected to last through the week. More