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    A Broadway Choreographer Who Gets Ideas on the Subway Platform

    5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 Samuel R. Delany Jonathan Bailey Piet Oudolf […] More

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    ‘Bridgerton’s’ Jonathan Bailey Takes the Plunge

    5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 Samuel R. Delany Jonathan Bailey Piet Oudolf […] More

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    Ivo van Hove on His Famously Short Rehearsal Times

    5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 Samuel R. Delany Jonathan Bailey Piet Oudolf […] More

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    Playwright Aleshea Harris and Director Whitney White Bond at a Taqueria

    5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 Samuel R. Delany Jonathan Bailey Piet Oudolf […] More

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    When Their Show Was Postponed, a Playwright and Cast Turned to Poetry

    5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 Samuel R. Delany Jonathan Bailey Piet Oudolf […] More

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    Beanie Feldstein Warms Up for ‘Funny Girl’

    5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 Samuel R. Delany Jonathan Bailey Piet Oudolf […] More

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    Younger Than It Looks, but No More Diverse: France’s Top Theater Prize

    At the Molières, France’s equivalent of the Tony Awards, commercial and publicly funded productions seem to inhabit different worlds.PARIS — Four hundred years after his birth, the playwright Molière is being feted in France this year, and the theater awards that bear his name couldn’t pass up the chance to participate. The Molières, France’s equivalent of the Tony Awards, have jokingly renamed their yearly bash — set for May 30 — the 400th ceremony.Yet in truth, the Molières are a spring chicken compared with similar theater awards around the world. They were founded only in 1987, four decades after the Tonys; their initiator was the producer Georges Cravenne, who had already created the Césars, the French film awards, in 1976.And their history has been anything but smooth. The Molières were designed to bridge the gap between two opposing production models: publicly funded stagings on the one hand and private ventures on the other. The distinction has long structured French theater and shaped its aesthetics. “Public theater,” which is largely funded by the culture ministry and local authorities, prides itself on presenting more experimental, cerebral fare than privately owned venues.Ahead of the 2012 ceremony, however, representatives of over two dozen commercial venues walked out of the Molières, arguing that the ceremony favored the publicly funded sector and didn’t sufficiently account for their popularity with audiences. It returned only in 2014, under new leadership.This year’s nominations suggest the balance remains precarious. There are separate prizes for public and privately funded productions in several of the top categories, including best production and the acting awards, with different criteria. To be eligible, private-sector shows must have been performed at least 60 times between January 2020 and March 2022, whereas half that number of performances is enough for public-sector nominees. The winners are then voted on by members of the Molières’ Academy, whose names aren’t public.The outcome of this process can be puzzling. It rarely reflects critical consensus, perhaps because many well-reviewed productions don’t even qualify for consideration, and it favors star-led shows. The acting categories, especially, are dominated by acting veterans and celebrities like the singer Vanessa Paradis, who this year earned a best private-sector actress nomination for her stage debut, in “Maman” by Samuel Benchetrit.The Molières also appear utterly unconcerned about their lack of diversity. As early as 2016, the French collective “Decolonizing the Arts” pointed out that there wasn’t a single person of color among the acting nominees. Two years later, the Black author and director Gerty Dambury publicly called for a “non-racist Molières ceremony.” The message has fallen on deaf ears: This year, the acting and directing categories are almost uniformly white again, with the exception of one performer of Algerian descent, Kamel Isker.Jordi Le Bolloc’h as Jack Mancini and Anne-Sophie Picard as Élisa in “The Race of Giants” at the Théâtre des Béliers Parisiens.Alejandro GuerreroIf you are in the market for a white-savior narrative, on the other hand, the Molières have some options. One of the top shows in the private-sector categories this year is “Lawrence of Arabia,” playing at the Théâtre du Gymnase Marie-Bell through May 22. Like the 1962 film of the same name, it was inspired by the life of the British archaeologist and colonial administrator T.E. Lawrence, who played a role in the Arab Revolt throughout the Ottoman Empire during World War I. (The film isn’t mentioned in the show’s credits, despite obvious parallels.)Eric Bouvron and Benjamin Penamaria have crafted a zippy, low-tech stage biography, whose central highlight is live music, with two musicians and a singer onstage throughout. The artistic team clearly came to this story with good intentions. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, a secret 1916 treaty that outlined how the Ottoman lands would be divided between France and the United Kingdom, is explained and denounced. As in the film, Lawrence is made aware of the plan late, and disagrees with it.Yet this “Lawrence of Arabia” doesn’t engage with the problems involved in representing Arab history and culture through the eyes of a British colonial-era hero. While the show includes some dialogue in Arabic, the frequent use of “Allahu akbar” as a war cry plays into Muslim caricatures, and a faux-“Oriental” dance is a low point.As the central character, Lawrence is depicted as a master strategist, without whom Arab leaders wouldn’t have accomplished much. Lawrence’s close Arab friend, Daoum, speaks in cringeworthy pidgin French that highlights his lack of education and manners, and follows Lawrence like an over-excited puppy.It is difficult to understand why anyone would want to reaffirm these dated perspectives today, but “Lawrence of Arabia” is in many ways typical of the production style favored in France’s private sector. Its storytelling is relentlessly upbeat and fast-paced, with regular visual jokes and puns; the characters are brightly captured, yet often one-dimensional.The main goal, clearly, is entertainment, and two of the other nominees for best private-sector production are made of the same cloth: “The Race of Giants,” written and directed by Mélody Mourey, and Léna Bréban’s production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”At the Théâtre des Béliers Parisiens, “The Race of Giants” (through May 29) dives into the 20th-century space race, efficiently weaving together history and fiction. Mourey invents a brilliant yet troubled astronaut, Jack Mancini, who makes it to NASA in the 1960s — only to be betrayed by a secret Soviet agent. The production makes inventive use of video and very few props, which allows for fast transitions and jumps back and forth in time.Jordi Le Bolloc’h makes for an energetic loose cannon as Mancini, but as in “Lawrence of Arabia,” the female characters — ditsy wives and flirty, drunken bar visitors, mainly — take a back seat to the lives of men, with the exception of Jack’s headstrong wife, Élisa.Barbara Schultz, left, as Rosalind and Ariane Mourier as Celia in “As You Like It” at the Théâtre de la Pépinière.François FontyFor feel-good comedy, “As You Like It,” at the Théâtre de la Pépinière through April 30, remains the best ticket in town. Bréban, who staged the first post-lockdown show in France — at a retirement home — in 2020, has been going from strength to strength recently. This winter, she briskly led members of the Comédie-Française in an adaptation of Hector Malot’s 1878 novel, “Sans Famille.”“As You Like It” is rarely performed in France, in part because its brand of pastoral fantasy isn’t easy to transpose, but the translator Pierre-Alain Leleu has provided this production with a brilliantly witty French rendition. Bréban, for her part, has a gift for instilling an exhilarating sense of collective rhythm in her actors. There isn’t a dull moment in her Forest of Arden; the relationship between the cousins Rosalind (Barbara Schulz) and Celia (Ariane Mourier) is especially loving and zany.“As You Like It” is nominated in several private-sector categories, but Bréban’s career shows that the distinction between private and publicly funded theater isn’t as clear-cut as it was in the past. Her ability to go from the Comédie-Française, a prestigious public institution, to the smaller Théâtre de la Pépinière with the same level of success suggests that the audiences for each are not so different. The Molières may not have found a happy medium yet, but some of its nominees are leading the way.Lawrence d’Arabie. Directed by Éric Bouvron. Théâtre du Gymnase Marie-Bell, through May 22.La Course Des Géants. Directed by Mélody Mourey. Théâtre des Béliers Parisiens, through May 29.Comme Il Vous Plaira. Directed by Léna Bréban. Théâtre de la Pépinière, through April 30. More

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    Late Night Celebrates 4/20

    “Time for all you doobie-lovin’ potheads to get up to your usual smoky high jinks: folding laundry and hoping half a gummy will help you fall asleep,” Stephen Colbert joked.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.Total Smoke ShowLate Night celebrated 4/20 on Wednesday, or what Stephen Colbert referred to as “the unofficial holiday for marijuana.”“Time for all you doobie-lovin’ potheads to get up to your usual smoky high jinks: folding laundry and hoping half a gummy will help you fall asleep,” Colbert joked in his monologue.“This year is a big one for 4/20, because new polling shows 37 percent of Americans say they use weed, while the remaining 63 percent say they were just holding it for a friend.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“According to a new poll from CBS News, a vast majority of Americans want the federal government to legalize cannabis for recreational purchases. Sixty-six percent are in favor, 34 percent no. Sixty-six percent of Americans don’t agree on anything. We can barely get 66 percent of Americans to agree that horse medicine is for horses.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“If you smoke, obviously, you want it to be legal. But even among those who say they never use marijuana, a majority favor legalization. Well, that makes sense. Marijuana is tame compared to other controlled substances — its most dangerous side effect is making hacky sack seem like a sport.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Oddly enough, tomorrow, the sale of recreational weed will begin in New Jersey, one day after 4/20. I mean, really? That’s like Chipotle offering free guac on Seis de Mayo, you know what I’m saying?” — JIMMY FALLON“That is exciting news, but it means New Yorkers will have to do the unthinkable: Drive to New Jersey on purpose.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Just be careful, people from New Jersey, because if you smoke too much weed, you might accidentally ‘fuhgeddaboud’ a bunch of important stuff you need to do.” — JAMES CORDEN“The move is overwhelmingly supported by state residents, who can now look forward to Jersey-specific strains like Jon ‘Bong’ Jovi, Bruce ‘Springstrain,’ ‘Joint’ Stewart and, of course, ‘Stoney’ Soprano’s ‘Ganjagool’.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Are You Still Watching? Edition)“Netflix just announced that for the first time in over a decade, they lost subscribers, and now their stock is crashing. Yeah, not only did their stock plummet, but it turns out that all the cash they had in the bank was just cake.” — JIMMY FALLON“Today, their stock price dropped over 35 percent after they announced they had lost 200,000 subscribers. That’s a lot. Explains why they’ve changed their pop-up message from ‘Are you still watching?’ to ‘Come back, please! I can change! Do you want DVDs again?’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Damn, Netflix is in trouble, which is so surprising because me and the 43 people I share my account with, we’re still watching it all the time.” — TREVOR NOAH“Now, now, there are many reasons why Netflix subscriptions are down, all right? Password sharing, inflation, Regé-Jean Page leaving ‘Bridgerton.’ Yeah, I’m sorry, you want us to pay 15 bucks a month without that [expletive]? I don’t think so.” — TREVOR NOAH“Right now Netflix is so desperate for money, they’re now Googling ‘Is there a real-life “Squid Game”’?” — JIMMY FALLON“Netflix is blaming their losses on fierce competition, inflation and Russia. When he heard that, President Biden was like, ‘Hey, get your own excuses.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, Netflix is losing money — you can tell it’s having an effect on all of their shows. For instance, ‘Emily in Paris’ is now ‘Emily in Pittsburgh.’ It’s still good. Also, ‘The Crown’ is now ‘The Hat.’”— JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingRonny Chieng, “The Daily Show” correspondent, gave the public the task of convincing him of Earth Day’s worth in this week’s “Prove Me Wrong.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightChloë Sevigny, star of “The Girl From Plainville” and “Russian Doll,” will sit down with Seth Meyers on Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutNicolas Cage as “Nick Cage” in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” He said, “I feel closer to my muse and my instrument now than I ever have.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesNicolas Cage plays a meme-ified version of himself in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” More