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    in Theater

    Democrats to Protest Trump’s Takeover of Kennedy Center With Pride Event

    “This is our way of reoccupying the Kennedy Center,” said Jeffrey Seller of “Hamilton,” who was asked to stage the invite-only concert hosted by five senators.Five Democratic senators have rented a small theater at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and invited the producer of “Hamilton” to stage a gay pride concert there as a form of symbolic protest against President Trump’s takeover of the institution.The event, scheduled to take place on Monday night before an invited audience, will feature Broadway artists performing songs and readings. The concert, hosted by Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado, is being called “Love Is Love,” a slogan used by the gay rights movement and quoted by the “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda when his show won at the Tony Awards in 2016.“What’s happening in the world is deeply concerning, but even in our darkest hours, we must continue to seek out the light,” Mr. Hickenlooper said in a statement. “The L.G.B.T.Q. community has long embodied this resilience, maintaining joy and creativity in the face of adversity.”Mr. Trump took over the Kennedy Center in February after purging its previously bipartisan board of Democratic appointees and replacing them with his allies. He denounced its programming as too “wokey” and promised to usher in a “Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”The senators, who exercised a prerogative extended to members of Congress to rent space in the center, chose this week for the event because June has long been when supporters of the gay community have celebrated Pride Month.Mr. Trump, in a departure from previous presidents, has not acknowledged Pride Month, and some of his actions in recent months have prompted concern in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Since his takeover of the center, several groups have canceled events there, saying they no longer feel welcome.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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    in Television

    ‘The Bear,’ Plus 3 Things to Watch on TV This Week

    The Hulu original series returns for its fourth season, and a new crime drama from Dennis Lehane airs.Between streaming and cable, there is a seemingly endless variety of things to watch. Here is a selection of TV shows and specials that are airing or streaming this week, June 23-29. Details and times are subject to change.If you can’t take the heat …“The Bear” — FX’s hotly anticipated kitchen drama — airs its fourth season this week. The first season, which aired in 2022, had a familiar premise of the prodigal son returning home: Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), who was climbing the culinary career ladder, goes back to Chicago to take over the family’s sandwich shop after a sudden tragedy. Much of the drama takes place in the kitchen, where Carmy, like Hamlet in a pair of Birkenstock Tokios, navigates his grief while managing competing pressures. In subsequent seasons, “The Bear” has included cameos by such real-life Michelin-starred chefs as René Redzepi and Thomas Keller.“The Bear” is about the pursuit of greatness, however fleeting, but it doesn’t play into the myth of the individual genius either. Much of the show’s success is owed to the fleshed-out portraits of an ensemble of characters — Liza Colón-Zayas and Ayo Edebiri have both picked up Emmys for their roles — whose abilities and dreams are as real as those of the show’s tortured frontman. Season three ended with a cliffhanger involving a consequential review for Carmy’s new fine-dining restaurant. Tune in for more of the show’s choreographed mania. Streaming Wednesday on Hulu.A point of originIn fire forensics, the “point of origin” is the term for where things ignited. For the Apple TV+ original series “Smoke,” that was the podcast, “Firebug,” about a real-life arsonist who tried to use his crimes as fodder for a novel, and then got caught. “Smoke” will run for nine episodes and center on the fraught partnership between an arson investigator (Taron Egerton) and a detective (Jurnee Smollett) as they try to catch two serial arsonists on the loose. A game of cat and mouse ensues, set to the melancholic crooning of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, who wrote the series’s theme song, “Dialing In.” “Smoke” was created by the novelist cum TV writer Dennis Lehane, who is also an executive producer. Fans of Lehane’s books “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island” may appreciate the show’s slow-burning drama (forgive the pun). Streaming Friday on Apple TV+.Redemption arcsWe 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

    What Does Shane Gillis Want (to Get Away With)?

    How do you profit from a sudden windfall of attention?That’s what’s confronting the man-children of “Tires,” the Netflix sitcom from the comedian Shane Gillis, at the beginning of its recently released second season. The question digs at them both onscreen and behind the cameras.The show’s first season, which aired last year, felt like a tentative demo — a lo-fi experiment in bawdy, blue-collar yuksmanship. Season 2 is crisper and slicker. The clothes fit better. The lighting is sharper. And the auto repair shop at the show’s center is thriving, or something like it. The spoils of success are trickling in.Gillis, a frisky bear of a man who deftly tangles with the absurdities of contemporary culture and politics, is one of the standout comedic talents of the past few years. His humor is playful and plugged in, and delivered approachably. But he has at times deployed offense, or the appearance of it, in ways that have rendered him still something of an outsider from the mainstream, despite his huge popularity.“Tires,” an episodic sitcom on a major streaming platform, is first and foremost an opportunity to bridge that divide. Can the edgelord comedy that’s defined the nü-bro movement of the past few years come out and play?That remains to be seen. “Tires” is too inert to be offensive — curiously (purposely?) stakesless and edgeless for one of the few performers capable of making comedic hay of the current paroxysms around ideological purity (on all sides). Itchier provocations can be found in one Michael Scott monologue on a random episode of “The Office,” or truer right-leaning red meat on any of Tim Allen’s sitcoms.Gillis, left, stars in “Tires” as a mechanic at a Pennsylvania car repair garage.NetflixWe 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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    Gunilla Knutson, Star of ‘Take It Off’ Shaving Cream Ads, Dies at 84

    A model who was crowned Miss Sweden in 1961, she became best known for commercials that one observer said “replaced the ‘hard sell’ with the ‘sex sell.’”A blond Swedish model named Gunilla Knutson holds a can of shaving cream to her cheek and gazes deeply into the camera. “Nothing takes it off like Noxzema medicated shave,” she says.In a 60-second commercial from 1966 that rings with double entendre, the jazzy instrumental “The Stripper” plays as a man shaves his face in rhythmic strokes timed to the bump-and-grind of the music. When the camera returns to a tight close-up of Ms. Knutson (pronounced KUH-noots-son), she utters seven of the most famous words from that era of advertising.“Take it off,” she says, before pausing slightly. “Take it all off.”In another ad from the campaign, Ms. Knutson strips the rind from a lime, licks her thumb slowly and hums “The Stripper.”“Men,” she says. “Noxzema shave cream now comes in lime, too. So take it off.”Ms. Knutson, for whom the Noxzema campaign represented the peak of her fame, died on Feb. 3 in Ystad, Sweden, where she was born and where she had lived since leaving Manhattan a few years ago. She was 84. Her death was not widely reported at the time.Her son, Andreas von Scheele, said she died in a hospital after dealing with multiple medical issues. He and her husband, Per von Scheele, are her only immediate survivors.Gunilla Karin Maria Knutson was born on Nov. 14, 1940, to Einar and Sonja Knutson, who divorced when she was young.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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    in Theater

    A Retelling of the Mahabharata, Set to Modern-Day Struggles

    At Lincoln Center, the Toronto-based theater company Why Not strives to balance the old and new in its production of the Sanskrit epic.The Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata has been adapted many times over in oral retellings, plays, movies, comic books and more. Consisting of over 100,000 verses, the poem has so many stories that picking which ones to tell is a statement in itself.And making that decision can pose its own challenges as Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes, co-artistic directors of the Toronto-based theater company Why Not, learned when they went about adapting it. Now they are bringing their expansive two-part contemporary staging, which premiered in 2023 at the Shaw Festival in Ontario, Canada, to Lincoln Center, where it will run from Tuesday through June 29.Their adaptation is based on the poet Carole Satyamurti’s retelling of the epic, which, at its core, is the story of two warring sets of cousins — the Kauravas and the Pandavas — trying to control a kingdom. The poem is part myth, part guide to upholding moral values and duty — or dharma. Some of the epic incorporates the Bhagavad Gita, a philosophical text on Hindu morality, which is framed as a discussion between Prince Arjuna, a Pandava and a skilled archer, and Lord Krishna, a Hindu God who acts as Arjuna’s teacher.Jain, 45, began developing the piece in 2016 after receiving a $375,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, the country’s public arts funder. Fernandes, 36, joined him on the project two years later after finishing graduate school in France. Jain described an early version of the script in an interview as “feminist” and “self-referential.” But the pandemic made them rethink which stories could best drive home the point of dharma — a central tenet of the text.Meher Pavri as an opera singer in the section drawn from the Bhagavad Gita. In the background, Neil D’Souza as the Hindu god Krishna and Anaka Maharaj-Sandhu as Prince Arjuna, Krishna’s pupil. David Cooper“To build a civilization, those with the most power must take care of those with the least,” Jain said, referring to the epic’s message. “In the animal kingdom, the strong eat the weak. There’s no problem with that. But humans have empathy, and we can build a civilization where we’re not just those who eat and those who are eaten, but rather those who feed and those who are fed.”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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    in Television

    Jay Ellis Considers Colson Whitehead His Literary GOAT

    “‘Harlem Shuffle,’ ‘Crook Manifesto,’ ‘Underground Railroad,’ ‘Nickel Boys’: I feel like I did not understand or see myself in fiction until I read him.”So far this year, Jay Ellis has played a basketball coach in the Netflix comedy “Running Point” and a record-setting M.V.P. in the action movie “Freaky Tales.”This summer, he’s swapping free throws for freestyles as he steps into the role of a hip-hop star in the Off Broadway play “Duke & Roya,” at the Lucille Lortel Theater. The drama finds him stumbling into a cross-cultural romance with life-threatening consequences.“At first glance,” he said, “there’s no reason why you think these two people would ever hit it off.”He added: “We’re in a world where everyone yells, no one listens. Everybody really just wants connection, to be seen, to be understood, and I just loved the idea that these two characters do.”Ellis, 43, temporarily relocated his family of four to New York from their home in Los Angeles. One particular aspect of the local culture suits him well.“I absolutely love pizza,” he said, name-dropping his latest find, Fini. “My daughter took a bite and was like, ‘Why don’t we have pizza like this in L.A., Daddy?’”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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    Anne Burrell Memorial Service Attended by Food Network Stars

    The Food Network chef, who died Tuesday at 55, was remembered in a star-studded service that sent her off with a singalong.As friends, relatives and colleagues filed into a memorial service for the Food Network host Anne Burrell in Manhattan on Friday afternoon, they noticed that somebody had placed on each chair a sheet of Billy Joel’s lyrics to “Only the Good Die Young.”At the end of the event, they learned why. Ms. Burrell’s husband, Stuart Claxton, urged them to “give her a big send-off” in a karaoke-style singalong joined by Food Network executives and hosts including Scott Conant, Amanda Freitag, Marc Forgione and Geoffrey Zakarian.“We’ve got one shot at this, so let’s make it count,” Mr. Claxton said as the opening lines flashed on two large screens on either side of the closed coffin in the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel on the Upper East Side.The city’s medical examiner has not yet determined a cause of death for Ms. Burrell, who was found unresponsive in the shower at her Brooklyn home on Tuesday morning. According to an internal document viewed by The New York Times, Ms. Burrell, who was 55, was “surrounded by approximately (100) assorted pills.” Emergency medical workers who responded to a 911 call pronounced her dead at the scene.But any clouds of mystery were determinedly kept at bay during the service, which was a celebration of a woman who, by all accounts, rarely passed up an occasion to celebrate. She had spent the night before she died performing at an improv club in Brooklyn.Her manager, Scott Feldman, recalled that Ms. Burrell invariably introduced him as “my dad” when he went out with her in the evenings.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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    Anne Burrell’s Death Is Under Investigation as a Possible Drug Overdose

    The city’s medical examiner has not determined a cause, but an internal police document says the TV chef was found surrounded by pills.The New York City Police Department is investigating the death of Anne Burrell, the popular Food Network star who was found dead in her Brooklyn home on Tuesday morning, as a possible drug overdose, according to an internal document viewed by The New York Times.The document said Ms. Burrell, who was 55, had been “discovered in the shower unconscious and unresponsive surrounded by approximately (100) assorted pills.” Emergency medical workers who responded to a 911 call pronounced her dead at the scene.A spokeswoman for the city medical examiner’s office said Friday that an autopsy had been completed, but that any findings on the cause and manner of Ms. Burrell’s death were still pending.Ms. Burrell was an accomplished Italian chef who began her television career as a sous-chef to the celebrity chef Mario Batali on the Food Network show “Iron Chef America.” She was best known for hosting “Worst Cooks in America,” which has run for 28 seasons.With her plume of platinum-blond hair, signature mismatched socks and a way of teaching that included a big helping of unvarnished truth, she became a mainstay for the network, appearing as a guest or judge on several other shows and even once riding on the network’s float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.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