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    Blue Man Group to End New York Run After Three Decades Off Broadway

    The troupe is also closing its Chicago company, but continues to perform in Berlin, Boston, Las Vegas and, soon, Orlando.Blue Man Group, the wordless theatrical troupe of drum-beating, paint-splattering, bald blue performers, will end its run in New York on Feb. 2, more than three decades and 17,000 performances after it began.The troupe, which started as experimental street theater and is now a subsidiary of the global circus behemoth Cirque du Soleil, will also end its Chicago run on Jan. 5.But the show will continue to run elsewhere, with long-running companies in Berlin, Boston and Las Vegas, and a forthcoming run in Orlando, where it is scheduled to reopen next spring after a four-year closure prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. There have also been touring productions.The end of the New York production was announced in a news release by Jack Kenn, the company’s managing director; the release did not say why the show was closing, and a spokeswoman for the company declined to provide any further information.The closing at Astor Place Theater in Lower Manhattan comes at a challenging time for theater, as production costs are higher, and audience sizes generally lower, than before the pandemic.Blue Man Group, which began performing at Astor Place in 1991, will conclude its New York run two years after the end of “Stomp,” another wordless, percussion-heavy show that had been an Off Broadway staple since 1994. And “Sleep No More,” an immersive riff on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” that opened in 2011, says its final performance will be Jan. 5. (It has previously postponed closing dates several times.)Off Broadway has been a mixed bag since the 2020 shutdowns — many nonprofits are struggling, staging fewer shows and employing smaller casts than before. But in the commercial Off Broadway arena, there has been a rebound, as a number of shows have found ways to break through and succeed.Some producers now believe that limited run shows have better odds of success, because consumers are more motivated to buy tickets when they know it’s now or never.A new generation of long-running Off Broadway shows has arrived, although generally not with the longevity of Blue Man Group. A few examples: “The Play That Goes Wrong” transferred from Broadway to New World Stages in 2019 and is still running there; a revival of “Little Shop of Horrors” has been running at Westside Theater, also since 2019; and “Titaníque,” now at the Daryl Roth Theater, has been running Off Broadway since 2022. More

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    in Television

    The Voice of Milhouse on Saying Goodbye to ‘The Simpsons’

    After 35 years of voicing Bart’s unlucky but indefatigable best friend, Pamela Hayden is retiring. She still has high hopes for his future.When you answer your phone to hear a grown woman shouting “Wazzzuuuuup?” in the voice of a 10-year-old boy, you can be pretty sure that you’re talking with Pamela Hayden. For some 35 years, Hayden has played many distinctive characters on “The Simpsons,” the long-running animated Fox sitcom, but none with more nerdy exuberance than Milhouse Van Houten, the hapless but good-hearted best friend of Bart Simpson.On Wednesday, however, Hayden announced that after having played Milhouse since before “The Simpsons” was even its own series (and having amassed a roster of other roles including the bully Jimbo Jones and Bart’s sweetly pious neighbor Rod Flanders), she has retired from voice acting. Her final “Simpsons” performances as Milhouse and Jimbo will be shown on Sunday night.Hayden, 70, whose voices have been heard on numerous animated shows since the 1980s, said in a phone interview on Thursday that voice acting is not vastly different from on-camera acting. When you’re putting yourself in the mind-set of a voice character, she said: “You’re thinking to yourself, what do I want? How bad do I want it? What happens if I don’t get it? And Milhouse has to think a lot about what happens if he doesn’t get it, because he hardly ever does.”Dave gets a surprise greetingOur reporter was expecting a call from Pamela Hayden, just not her opening line.And with the same soft-spoken compassion she has brought to her performances, Hayden said she understood why Milhouse became the most enduring and best-known of all the characters she played.“Milhouse is somebody who’s having a rough time a lot of times, but he doesn’t take it personally,” she said. “It doesn’t ruin his life. He wakes up the next day and he still feels like things are going to be better, even if they’re not.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Stratford-Upon-Lake-Michigan: Royal Shakespeare Company Plays Chicago

    The Royal Shakespeare Company, which keeps the plays of William Shakespeare alive in the town of his birth, was long a regular presence in the United States. It brought Ian McKellen to Brooklyn as King Lear, built a replica of its main theater in an Upper East Side drill hall and sent a stream of shows to Broadway.But in recent years the renowned troupe has taken fewer overseas trips from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.Now, for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic, the company has returned to the United States — but not to New York, where some of the main importers of European work remain diminished and disoriented. It has struck up a partnership with Chicago Shakespeare Theater, which is led by Edward Hall, whose ties to the Royal Shakespeare Company run unusually deep: His father, Peter Hall, the eminent British director, founded it.“My love of Shakespeare grew up from my father talking to me about Shakespeare, and why he was passionate about Shakespeare, and why he thought Shakespeare endured, and quoting Shakespeare,” he said. “I watched him work a bit, and then, like every child, you go off into a corner and find your own way, which is what I did.”His earliest memory of Shakespeare is watching “The Wars of the Roses,” directed by his father, when he was 4 or 5, and “seeing a lot of people in armor with very exciting-looking weapons.”Edward Hall, the artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater, is the son of Peter Hall, the founder of the R.S.C. He’s also the human for a dog named Dennis.Lyndon French for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Television

    Lottery to Be Held for Coveted Seats at Menendez Brothers Hearing

    The court is expecting high demand and has announced a public lottery for a limited number of seats at a status hearing in Los Angeles on Monday.What’s one of the most exclusive tickets in Los Angeles? It may not be what you think.A lottery is being held on Monday to determine who will be the 16 people who get to witness what happens next in the case of the Menendez Brothers, who are serving life sentences for murdering their parents in 1989.The drawing will take place between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. Pacific time, in front of the Van Nuys Courthouse West, the Superior Court of Los Angeles County said. The seats for 16 people, in a county of more than 10 million residents, will be allocated just one hour before the status hearing is set to begin at 10:30 a.m.The court occasionally holds public lotteries “when seating is limited and public interest is high,” a court spokesperson said in an email.The high level of interest in the case is in part spurred by a new series as well as a new documentary on Netflix that detail the brothers’ abuse allegations against their parents. Erik and Lyle Menendez killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, more than 35 years ago in their Beverly Hills mansion.The Menendez brothers were found guilty of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison without parole. At the time, the judge said that he sentenced each brother to two consecutive life sentences because they had carefully decided to kill their parents.In the almost three decades since, the public perception of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were 21 and 18 when they committed the murders, has shifted somewhat. Many have shown their interest in the murders in social media posts, and have often pushed for the brothers’ release, with the renewed attention earning them a new class of defenders.Last month, the Los Angeles County district attorney, George Gascón, said he would request that the brothers be resentenced, which could ultimately lead to their release.“I came to a place where I believe that under the law, resentencing is appropriate,” said Mr. Gascón, who has since lost his seat.The brothers could also find freedom through clemency from California’s governor, for which they have petitioned. Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he would hold off on considering that request until the new district attorney, Nathan Hochman, takes office early next month and has had a chance to review the case. More

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    In Marlon James’s ‘Get Millie Black,’ Colonial Rule Haunts Jamaica

    Marlon James’s new HBO detective series, “Get Millie Black,” draws on Jamaica’s colonial history as well as his family’s experiences.In 2015, the author Marlon James was in London, where he had just won the Booker Prize for his novel “A Brief History of Seven Killings.” Holed away in a hotel room after the ceremony before he flew home to Minneapolis, the characters for a TV show began to take shape.“I’ve always looked at novel writing and storytelling as a kind of detective work,” he said in a recent video interview. “Characters show up in my head and I wonder why. They’re a mystery to be solved.”In the resulting HBO limited series, “Get Millie Black,” there are several other mysteries to be solved. The five episodes, from the showrunner Jami O’Brien, tell the story of an obsessive detective, Millie (Tamara Lawrance), who returns to Jamaica from London to reconnect with her sister and join the local police force. While investigating the case of a missing teenage girl, she comes close to breaking point.With all the requisite twists and turns of the detective genre, “Get Millie Black” — which premieres Monday — is a confronting look at Jamaica’s criminal underworld, set against the misty backdrop of a colonial past that is never far away. “In this country, nothing haunts like history,” Millie says in Episode 1: “Pick something ugly, bigoted hateful, shameful, violent and you see a shadow reaching back 400 years.”James’s mother became a police detective in Jamaica in the 1950s, when it was rare to see women in the role, and even rarer to see them succeed.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesThis long shadow has fallen across much of James’s writing, stalking him since he was growing up in Portmore, a town just outside Jamaica’s capital, Kingston.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘A Man on the Inside’ Review: Ted Danson in Another Good Place

    Created by Michael Schur and starring Danson, this Netflix sitcom synthesizes the most gutting realities of life and death into cozy, low-stakes comedy.“A Man on the Inside,” created by Michael Schur and starring Ted Danson, synthesizes the most gutting realities of life and death into a cozy, low-stakes comedy populated by well-intentioned sweethearts. The show is as gentle and mild as baby soap, though it could hardly promise no tears.Danson stars as Charles, whose wife died a year earlier from complications of Alzheimer’s. He is a retired professor and a San Francisco booster who wrote a book about the Golden Gate Bridge; he has a warm but arm’s-length relationship with his daughter, Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), who encourages him find a project or hobby. So he responds to an ad in a newspaper and finds himself working for a private investigator, going semi-undercover in a Bay Area retirement community.The show is loosely based on “The Mole Agent,” a Chilean documentary from 2020, though the stakes here have been dialed way down: While the figures in the film were investigating potential abuse in an elder-care facility, here the narrative clothesline is a missing necklace. The only person truly aggrieved by its absence is the necklace owner’s son (Marc Evan Jackson), who icily describes his mother moving back in with him as “suboptimal.”Under the weakly exasperated guidance of Julie (Lilah Richcreek Estrada), the investigator, Charles moves into Pacific View. Virginia (Sally Struthers), an aggressive flirt, and Florence (Margaret Avery), an energetic poet, take an immediate liking to him, which bothers Virginia’s on-again-off-again lover, Elliott (John Getz), who declares Charles his “sexual rival.” Calbert (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Charles develop the rom-com-y friendship that would be doomed by Charles’s duplicity were the show not defined by its characters’ deep wells of forgiveness. Didi (Stephanie Beatriz) is the devoted administrator running the facility, cheery and capable. Mostly, Pacific View is like a resort, with parties and companionship and dignified care. According to Didi, loneliness is as detrimental to seniors as any aspect of aging.Perhaps it is merciful not to dwell in the self-dissolving agony of dementia, for death to be peaceful, hygienic and offscreen. A subplot about a declining woman named Gladys (Susan Ruttan) is central to the story and handled gracefully — shallowly. Better to discuss a fancy watch that costs $10,000, which the characters do, often, or run up an $800 Uber tab. Elliott, the most ornery and cynical resident, can’t stay mad long, and he encourages Charles to simply become inured to his peers losing themselves.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Carl the Collector’ Puts an Autistic Child (Well, Raccoon) in the Lead

    Several recent TV series for adults have featured autistic lead characters. A new PBS show looks to expand that trend into children’s programming.Carl isn’t unlike many small children you may know. He balks when his mother suggests he get rid of some of his many stuffed animals. If his friends want to play a game that isn’t his favorite, he feels frustrated. And when he realizes he has left one of his prized toy collections away from home, he needs help falling asleep.But Carl also differs from most of his peers, and not just because he is a fuzzy little raccoon. Carl is autistic, with reactions that are often longer-lasting, more intense or more socially awkward than those of his pals. As the title character in PBS Kids’ animated television show “Carl the Collector” — and the first autistic lead character in a PBS children’s series — he offers young audiences a rare close-up view of autism spectrum disorder, demonstrating to those who are not on the spectrum, and to those who are, how they can help one another navigate childhood challenges.“The stories overall are just human experience, stories for everybody,” said Zachariah OHora, the best-selling children’s author and illustrator, who is the creator of “Carl the Collector.” “We just get to see it through all these different lenses.” (The show began streaming last week across PBS Kids digital platforms and airs on PBS stations.)Geared toward viewers ages 4 to 8, the series debuts with a story in which Carl figures out that he can make a photo scrapbook of the plush toys he seldom plays with, which makes them easier to give away. In another episode, when Carl insists on his choice of what to play and when, his buddies persuade him that they should devise a rulebook that includes taking turns.“So much of the strategies and techniques that are used to support and help autistic individuals are really just extensions of good practice,” said Stephen Shore, an autistic professor of special education at Adelphi University and an adviser to the show.That support seems especially important now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in 36 American children is now diagnosed with autism — up from one in 150 in the year 2000. Although medical experts attribute the rise partly to increased testing and broader diagnostic criteria, the disorder remains a major concern for parents.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How to Plan a Family Heritage Trip

    In the second season of the TV show “The White Lotus,” three generations of a fictional American family travel to Sicily to try to reconnect with their ancestral roots. Though their journey goes hilariously wrong at times, heritage trips like theirs have become serious business.Decades ago, Americans who were interested in traveling to explore their roots had to rely on family lore, sort through dusty books and, often, follow their gut. But DNA-testing sites, online genealogical databases and social media have made searching far easier, fueling a growing interest in heritage travel.Global heritage tourism is a nearly $600-billion-a-year industry, which is expected to keep growing by about 4 percent annually through 2030, according to market analysis by Grand View Research. And TV programs like “Who Do You Think You Are?” and “Finding Your Roots,” which follow mostly celebrities as they discover their heritage, are continuing to inspire other journeys.Not everyone goes on a heritage trip for the same reason: Maybe you want to meet living relatives to swap photos and stories. Maybe you are tracking down official documents to obtain dual citizenship. Or you could simply be looking to connect with a place your family once called home.Here are some tips for planning your own heritage trip.Follow your DNAServices like Ancestry.com, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage and the struggling 23andMe use your genes to decode your family’s likely places of origin. Other DNA-testing websites cater to specific ethnic groups, like African Ancestry or Somos Ancestria, for Latino origins. The cost of the DNA test kits, which usually require a saliva sample, can vary from about $40 to $300, depending on the company and how detailed you want your results to be.Do some free online sleuthingBirth, death, marriage and census records can help you narrow your search to specific places. You can dig into these sources through the U.S. Census Bureau or the National Archives and Records Administration. If you don’t know where to start, FamilySearch is an easy-to-use, free website funded by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (You don’t have to be a member of the church to use it.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More