Eliana Willis

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    The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to HBO, Hulu, Apple TV+ and More in February

    Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of February’s most promising new titles.(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)Olly Sholotan, left, as Carlton Banks and Jabari Banks as Will Smith in “Bel-Air.”Evans Vestal Ward/PeacockNew to Peacock‘Bel-Air’Starts streaming: Feb. 13At the start of each episode of the teen-friendly 1990s sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” the show’s star, Will Smith, would rap the premise of the show: all about how his character, Will, was shipped out of Philadelphia to live with rich relatives in Los Angeles after a fight threatened to derail his promising future. In 2019, Morgan Cooper wrote and directed a trailer for an imaginary “Fresh Prince” reboot, re-conceiving the original as a lurid, soapy modern prime-time drama for adults. Smith liked what he saw and bought the concept. The resulting series has the newcomer Jabari Banks playing Will: a smart and athletic kid torn between his obligations to his old West Philly crew and the expectations of his upper-crust Los Angeles kin.Also arriving:Feb. 3“Dragon Rescue Riders: Heroes of the Sky” Season 2Feb. 11“Marry Me”Bradley Cooper in Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley.”Kerry Hayes/Searchlight Pictures, via Associated PressNew to Hulu‘Nightmare Alley’Starts streaming: Feb. 1In the end-of-year crunch of blockbusters and awards contenders, the director Guillermo del Toro’s visually sumptuous and thematically rich take on William Lindsay Gresham’s creepy 1946 crime novel, “Nightmare Alley” (previously adapted, beautifully, in 1947), didn’t draw as much attention or as big of an audience as it deserved. Now that it’s arriving on Hulu, fans of film noir will have another chance to catch up. Co-written by del Toro and Kim Morgan, “Nightmare Alley” has Bradley Cooper playing a sketchy drifter who gets a job at a carnival, where he learns the secrets of a mentalism act and starts passing himself off in high society as a psychic. As usual with del Toro’s work, the elaborate set designs and memorably offbeat characters are eye-catching, pulling viewers into a morally unsteady world where nearly everyone is either a hustler or a mark.‘Pam & Tommy’Starts streaming: Feb. 2The mini-series “Pam & Tommy” is partly about the tumultuous romance and tabloid scandals of the rock drummer Tommy Lee and the actress Pamela Anderson. The show’s third major character is played by one of its producers and creators, Seth Rogen, who takes on the role of a disgruntled carpenter looking to exact some revenge on the celebrity couple, selling their homemade sex tape in retaliation for an unpaid bill. Sebastian Stan plays Lee and Lily James plays Anderson in the series, which also features the work — and the ironic sensibilities — of the director Craig Gillespie (“I, Tonya”) and the screenwriter Robert D. Siegel (“The Wrestler”). While “Pam & Tommy” is based on a true story, it has a satirical edge, commenting on how the public sometimes prefers to be entertained by celebrities’ private lives more than by their actual work.Also arriving:Feb. 1“Your Attention Please” Season 2Feb. 3“The Deep House”Feb. 4“Beans”“The Beta Test”Feb. 5“Rick and Morty” Season 5Feb. 10“Gully”Feb. 11“Dollface” Season 2Feb. 17“A House on the Bayou”Feb. 18“The Feast”“The King’s Man”Feb. 22“How It Ends”Feb. 24“The Last Rite”“Snowfall” Season 5Feb. 25“No Exit”Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher and Martin Roach as Picard in “Reacher.”Amazon StudiosNew to Prime Video‘Reacher’ Season 1Starts streaming: Feb. 4The author Lee Child’s best-known creation is Jack Reacher, a stoic, hulking ex-military policeman and inveterate wanderer who, in over two dozen novels, has frequently stumbled into dangerous situations where he has felt compelled to right wrongs and help the helpless. Tom Cruise played Reacher in two solid action movies, but fans of the books complained that the actor’s physical type was never quite right. The tall and muscular Alan Ritchson looks much more like Child’s character in the pulpy TV series “Reacher.” Its first season adapts the first Reacher novel, the 1997 “Killing Floor,” in which the beefy do-gooder kicks around the suspicious locals in a small Georgia town to unravel a murder mystery.‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Season 4Starts streaming: Feb. 18Season 3 of this award-winning period dramedy ended on a down note, with the stand-up comedian Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) being kicked off a lucrative tour and her manager, Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein), dropping into deep debt. After a two-year hiatus, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is due for a reset — because this isn’t the kind of series where characters wallow for long. The creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, and her writing-directing partner (and husband), Daniel Palladino, will keep moving their story further into the 1960s, when American popular culture started becoming a bit freer and Midge and Susie can find more outlets for a frank, funny, fast-talking kind of comedy.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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    Calling All Tap Dance Kids (It’s Not the Acting Kid or the Singing Kid)

    The challenge of casting the Encores! revival of “The Tap Dance Kid” exposes some of the complications of tap, show business and Black history.If you’re going to stage a revival of the seldom performed but dearly remembered 1983 Broadway musical “The Tap Dance Kid” — as Encores! at New York City Center is doing, Wednesday through Sunday — one of the main challenges is to find someone to play the title role.That character is Willie Sheridan, a 10-year-old boy whose dream is to become a Broadway tap dancer and who has the talent to do it. The performer who plays him has to be like Willie: a young Black boy who can act and sing and tap dance at the center of an old-fashioned musical. And in recent decades that particular combination hasn’t been very common.Some reasons are right there in the show’s story. It’s about a family — an upper-middle-class Black one, groundbreaking for a Broadway musical in 1983 — and the main conflicts are generational. The principal obstacle to Willie’s dream is his father.Hinton Battle in a scene from “The Tap Dance Kid” in 1984.Martha Swope/New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsTo the father, a lawyer, tap is not just antiquated but also shameful, tied to slavery and the racial humiliations from which he has worked to insulate those he loves. To the boy and his dancing uncle and the ghost of his dancing grandfather, tap is beautiful, something to be proud of.This is an argument about the past and progress, and it reflects some of the real-life attitudes that continue to affect the popularity of tap, especially among Black people, and the potential pool of tap dance kids.“I knew that it was going to be tough to find a Willie,” Jared Grimes, the choreographer of the Encores! revival, said in an interview.“I knew that it was going to be tough to find a Willie”: Bello and Grimes, rehearsing at City Center. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesDuring auditions, Alexander Bello stood out — for his acting and singing. His tap skills weren’t quite up to the level that Grimes was expecting. “I was not going to settle,” Grimes said. “This show isn’t called Acting Kid or Singing Kid.”But Bello — who once put “Broadway audition” on his Christmas list and is already a Broadway veteran at 13 — was determined to get the part. “I was amazed that almost all the creatives were Black,” he said. “I had never seen a room so melanated and I wanted to be in that room.” And so, while attending school and doing eight shows a week of “Caroline or Change” on Broadway, he squeezed in a month of tap boot camp with DeWitt Fleming Jr. (who plays Willie’s grandfather).“Alex earned that role,” said Kenny Leon, the director of the Encores! production.Bello, here with Trevor Jackson, squeezed in a month of tap boot camp. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesIn certain ways, this was an echo of the 1980s. Danny Daniels — who won a Tony Award for choreographing the original production and who, like most of the original creative team, was white — once told me about the trouble that team had finding a Willie.“I asked the producers, ‘Where are you going to find the Black kids? Black kids don’t tap anymore,’” said Daniels, who died in 2017. “So we put out a call for Black kid tap dancers. Nobody showed up.’”More precisely, nobody showed up who didn’t need tap training. Daniels started a tap boot camp. The first Willie it produced was Alfonso Ribeiro, who soon left for a successful TV career (and later showed off his tap skills as Carlton on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”). Among the many to follow during the show’s two-year run and national tour was Dulé Hill, whose own successful TV career, most recently in “The Wonder Years” reboot, is keeping him too busy to appear in the Encores! revival.Savion Glover in the 1980s Broadway production of “The Tap Dance Kid.” PhotofestAnother Willie was Savion Glover, the tap dance kid who most changed what it meant to be one. Under the guidance of Gregory Hines and older Black tap dancers, Glover became the heir apparent to their tradition in the Broadway shows “Black and Blue” and “Jelly’s Last Jam.”The 1996 show “Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk,” which Glover choreographed and starred in, reclaimed tap as Black history, both polemically and rhythmically, and brought it into a hip-hop present that people his age could see as their own. In a monologue, when Glover rejected Broadway styles as “not even tap dancing” but “arms and legs and a big ol’ smile,” he could have been describing Daniels’s choreography for “Tap Dance Kid”: the sequins and high kicks, more razzle-dazzle than rhythm.After “Bring in ‘da Noise” closed, tap on Broadway mostly reverted to its old ways. But Glover, with his unsurpassed virtuosity and more streetwise image, had inspired a generation of young hoofers. While deeply connected to tap’s roots in jazz, they made the form contemporary and pushed it to new technical heights — and largely away from the singing and acting of “Tap Dance Kid.” Among this cohort was Grimes, now 36.Bello, rehearsing with the actor Adrienne Walker.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAs Grimes demonstrated in the 2013 Broadway production “After Midnight,” he is a tap dancer of astonishing head-to-toe ability. But, unlike many Glover inspired hoofers, he also sees himself in the all-around entertainer line of Hines. Alongside his flourishing performing career — he’s in the upcoming Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” — he’s found acclaim as a choreographer of regional productions, including an updated “42nd Street.”Grimes said that he jumped at the chance to revisit “Tap Dance Kid,” which he called “the musical that every tap dancer dreams of getting a hold of.”The context has changed from the early ’80s, and from the late ’90s, too: “When I was coming up,” Grimes said, “if I looked to my side, there were other Black kids that were already tap kings and queens, but now almost none of my students are Black.”Kenny Leon lifting Bello after a rehearsal.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesSpeaking for kids today, Bello said tap is the dance style they “are most likely to overlook.”“Because you either think of it as Shirley Temple or as something guys did in the ’70s,” he said. “To other kids, it seems like tap never really modernized, but that’s not true.”Ayodele Casel, a tap dancer of the post-Glover generation whose career has been soaring lately, said that pockets of young Black tap dancers exist but that they don’t necessarily see themselves on Broadway because opportunities have been scarce. Yet, speaking more broadly, she noted the significance of someone like her, steeped in tap culture, being specially hired to handle the tap choreography for “Funny Girl.”“There is still a gap,” she said, “between the actors and singers, who have long been able to get by with tap basics, and the serious tap dancers, who haven’t had much incentive to train in acting and singing. But I think people, artists and producers, are starting to think about tap differently now.”Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAlong these lines, the background of the creative team, more than of the cast, might be the most significant change in the Encores! revival. The music remains the same, by Henry Krieger in a mode similar to his “Dreamgirls.” But Lydia Diamond, who has adapted the book for the Encores! production, has shifted the story from the 1980s to the 1950s — when the lines of racial struggle were more legible and tap was losing its place at the center of American popular culture.“We’re trying to show how something as precious as the history of tap is affecting this family who’s fighting to find a place in the ’50s,” Grimes said. He said that he’s been helping to get more accurate (and Black) tap history into the script and a sense of tap in transition into the choreography.“I want to show tap as storytelling and crazy rhythms,” he said, “but also tip our hat to vaudeville and comedy and what might be seen as what we had to do to get into the door. We can do that with integrity.”Grimes said this after a long day of rehearsal, eager to rehearse some more. “The security guards have to kick me out,” he said. “That’s love, man. I hope that ‘Tap Dance Kid’ will get a whole new crop of people to feel like that about tap.” More

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    Whoopi Goldberg Apologizes for Saying Holocaust Was ‘Not About Race’

    Ms. Goldberg’s comments, on Monday’s episode of “The View,” came amid growing ignorance about the Holocaust and rising antisemitism.Whoopi Goldberg, the comedian and actress who is also a co-host of the ABC talk show “The View,” said repeatedly during an episode of the show that aired on Monday that the Holocaust was not about race, comments that come at a time of rising antisemitism globally. She later apologized.In the episode, Ms. Goldberg said the Holocaust was about “man’s inhumanity to man” and “not about race.” When one of her co-hosts challenged that assertion, saying the Holocaust was driven by white supremacy, Ms. Goldberg said: “But these are two white groups of people.”She added, “This is white people doing it to white people, so y’all going to fight amongst yourselves.” As she continued to speak, music came on, indicating a commercial break.There was a fierce backlash. Jewish groups said Ms. Goldberg’s comments were dangerous and the latest example of growing ignorance about the Nazi genocide. During World War II, under a policy of mass extermination, the Nazis killed six million Jews — about a third of the world’s Jewish population at the time — because they believed Jews were an inferior race.Later Monday, Ms. Goldberg appeared on Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” where she apologized, explaining that, as a Black person, she thinks of racism as being based on skin color but that she realized not everyone sees it that way. “I get it. Folks are angry,” she said. “I accept that, and I did it to myself.”She apologized again on Tuesday at the start of “The View.” She expressed remorse over her remarks, saying she realized that they were misinformed and that she had misspoken.“I said something that I feel a responsibility for not leaving unexamined because my words upset so many people, which was never my intention,” Ms. Goldberg said. “And I understand why now, and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things.”On Monday, Ms. Goldberg had been discussing a Tennessee school district’s recent decision to remove a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust from its curriculum when she made her initial comments on Monday’s episode. On Monday night, she released a statement apologizing for them. On Tuesday, she said that she had learned from the experience.“It is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race,” she said. “Now, words matter, and mine are no exception. I regret my comments, as I said, and I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people, as they know and y’all know because I’ve always done that.”During an appearance on the show on Tuesday, Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said it was critical to combat hate and misinformation about the Holocaust.“The Holocaust happened and we need to learn from this genocide if we want to prevent future tragedies from happening,” Mr. Greenblatt said.Mr. Greenblatt suggested that “The View” should consider adding a Jewish host to its panel.“Think about having a Jewish host on this show who can bring these issues of antisemitism, who can bring these issues of representation to ‘The View’ every single day,” he said.Ms. Goldberg, 66, did not mention having a Jewish background, as she has in the past. She has said in interviews that she does not practice any religion but identifies as Jewish and adopted her distinctive stage name partly because of that. She was born Caryn Johnson.In 1994, Ms. Goldberg mentioned her ties to Judaism in an interview with The Orlando Sentinel, after the Anti-Defamation League criticized a recipe that she contributed to a charity cookbook for “Jewish American princess fried chicken.” The title was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, she said.“I am a Jewish-American princess,” she told the newspaper. “That’s probably what bothers people most. It’s not my problem people are uncomfortable with the fact that I’m Jewish.”This week, the criticism of Ms. Goldberg’s remarks was intense. Before he was invited onto “The View,” Mr. Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League wrote on Twitter: “No @WhoopiGoldberg, the #Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race. They dehumanized them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering 6 million Jews. Holocaust distortion is dangerous.”And Mrs. Goldberg’s former co-host, Meghan McCain, said on Twitter on Monday that antisemitism was “a poison that is increasingly excused in our culture and television — and permeates in spaces that should shock us all.”According to a 2014 report by the Anti-Defamation League, more than one billion people globally hold antisemitic views. More than a third of people in the 102 countries polled had never heard of the Holocaust, the report found.Jewish communities around the world have indicated an increase in annual antisemitic incidents, according to research by the Anti-Defamation League. That feeling is pronounced in Europe, where 89 percent of Jews felt that antisemitism in their countries had increased between 2013 and 2018, according to a 2018 European Union survey of about 16,500 Jewish people.The survey also found that 40 percent of European Jews worried about being physically attacked, and across 12 E.U. countries where Jews have been living for centuries, more than a third said they were considering emigrating because they no longer felt safe as Jews.Last month, the United Nations adopted a resolution that condemns denial and distortion of the Holocaust. Ms. Goldberg’s comments also came weeks after a gunman held several people hostage at a Texas synagogue for 11 hours.David Baddiel, a British comedian and the author of the book “Jews Don’t Count,” said in an interview that antisemitism has very little to do with religion itself — descendants of Jewish people who had converted to Christianity were also killed in the Holocaust because they were viewed as members of the Jewish race.“If you are a race, an ethnicity, as Jews are, that have suffered persecution over many, many centuries, principally because that happens to be who you are, happens to be who your parents are, happens to be who your ancestors are, then that is racism,” Mr. Baddiel said.“There is no other word for it.” More

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    After Moving Online, BBC Three Returns to the Airwaves

    The British public broadcaster moved a youth-focused channel online, but now it’s changing course as viewing habits continue to mutate.LONDON — When the BBC took its youth-focused TV channel off the air and moved it online in 2016, the broadcaster was going where its viewers seemed to be.Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon had transformed how people — both in Britain and the U.S. — watched TV, and BBC Three’s target audience of 16- to 34-year-olds were apparently turning their backs on traditional television channels.Now, Britain’s public service broadcaster has done a U-turn: BBC Three — home to shows like “Fleabag” and “Normal People” — is back on terrestrial TV.The move reflects the continued challenges of understanding how the internet is changing TV habits. And it shows how the BBC is doubling down on youth programming as it deals with competition and potential budget cuts.Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal in a scene from “Normal People.”Enda Bowe/HuluBBC Three was launched in 2003 as a younger sibling to the BBC’s two long-running TV channels. It produced provocative comedies like “The Mighty Boosh” and “Little Britain” that appealed to a younger audience than the more conventional programming on BBC One and Two. The decision to turn BBC Three into a streaming channel also came with a massive cut to its budget, from 85 to 30 million pounds (about $114 million to $40 million).“It was a disaster. And it was an immediate disaster,” Patrick Barwise, co-author of the book “The War Against the BBC,” said of the move.Time spent watching the channel soon fell by more than 70 percent, and it also lost the same proportion of reach among its target viewership, according to data from Enders, a research company.There is wider evidence that millions of households haven’t, in fact, moved to streaming. In an interview, Fiona Campbell, the head of BBC Three, pointed to a recent report on American TV habits from Nielsen that showed 64 percent of viewers still regularly watch cable television, compared to 26 percent who watch streaming.The idea that young people are turning their backs on traditional TV also seems more complicated than it did six years ago. BBC Three’s relaunch is also intended to make its programming more accessible, Campbell said, especially to less affluent and more rural viewers who may not have high-speed internet and are less likely to be streaming.Fiona Campbell, the head of BBC Three, said on-air broadcasting would make the channel more accessible.via BBCAccording to Barwise, many young viewers are also taking a hybrid approach. “People are watching Netflix or other video some of the time, and then they’re watching broadcast” television, he said. Despite a decline, younger viewers still watch more than one hour of live television a day, according to Ofcom, the British media regulator.During its online-only years, BBC Three still produced some of the broadcaster’s most popular shows, and the renewed investment in the channel — its programming budget will return to 80 million pounds — comes at a time when the BBC is facing pressure from several sides.The British government recently announced that the country’s license fee, which is charged each year to all households with a TV and is the main source of funding for the BBC, will be frozen for the next two years. With inflation rising fast in Britain, this is likely to mean another round of cuts, and the BBC chief Tim Davie has said that “everything is on the agenda.”“To have a freeze in the BBC license fee at precisely the time when genuine inflation is really high, and inflation in the broadcasting industry is really high, can’t be a good moment,” said Roger Mosey, a former head of BBC Television News. “Not only have you got competition from the streamers for audiences, you’ve also got competition for talent.”In this context, the public broadcaster is betting on BBC Three’s track record for producing buzzy shows in combination with the allure of traditional “linear” television. In Britain, despite the availability of seemingly infinite streaming content, viewers have been gravitating toward weekly appointment viewing.The BBC releases many of its popular programs as complete seasons on iPlayer, its streaming service, at the same time as the first episode airs on broadcast television. Charlotte Moore, the BBC’s head of content, said in a phone interview that with “The Tourist,” a drama starring Jamie Dornan, “we were still getting two million people choosing to watch it on a Sunday night even though it’s all available on iPlayer.”When the BBC Three show “Normal People” aired on the broadcaster’s traditional TV channels, it was regularly a trending topic on British social media. “When we do shows that really drive conversation,” Campbell said, “people want to be in for the live moment. And that’s why channels still have a role.”Campbell also believes there are drawbacks to only distributing shows via streaming, since viewers may be more hesitant to engage with documentaries on challenging public-service topics. Citing a recent series on revenge porn, she said, “They’re very challenging subjects, and people would be going, ‘Do I really want to go there?’ Whereas if they encounter it on linear, it can be less intimidating.”While Moore wouldn’t say whether BBC Three would be immune from the next round of budget cuts, she indicated that youth programming would remain a core focus. “Obviously we’ll look at our whole funding envelope to work out how we are going to meet all audience needs, with the money that we have,” she said. “But of course, young audiences are going to continue to be a critical part of that.”A scene from “The Fast and The Farmer(ish),” a tractor racing competition.Alleycats TV, via BBCWith its return to broadcast, Campbell also hopes to make BBC Three stand out from its commercial streaming rivals by telling stories from across Britain. Upcoming programs include “Brickies,” which follows young bricklayers in the north of England, and a tractor racing competition called “The Fast and the Farmer(ish)”, filmed in Northern Ireland and created to appeal to the 11 million young people who live in the British countryside.“You want to reflect the current challenges and pressures and difficulties people are having now, all the more so after the pandemic,” Campbell said. “If we don’t reflect that, then why do they need us in their lives?” More

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    Martin McDonagh’s ‘Hangmen’ Will Open on Broadway This Spring

    The production, which was canceled at the start of the pandemic, will try again, this time starring Alfie Allen of “Game of Thrones” fame.“Hangmen” has been saved from the executioner.The dark comedy, by the British playwright Martin McDonagh, will open on Broadway this spring, two years after the production was canceled by its producer as the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close.The resurrected production, about an English hangman at the moment Britain banned capital punishment, will now star Alfie Allen, who played Theon Greyjoy on “Game of Thrones,” as a mysterious visitor to a bar run by the hangman. The hangman will be played by David Threlfall, a Tony nominee for “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.”The play is now scheduled to begin previews on April 8 and to open on April 21 at the Golden Theater.In 2020, “Hangmen,” with a slightly different cast, had completed its 13th preview performance, also at the Golden, and was a week away from opening when Broadway theaters closed.Eight days into the shutdown, producers announced that they were canceling the production, saying, “We do not have the economic resources to be able to continue to pay the theater owners, cast and crew through this still undefined closure period.” The show was the first, and one of the few, to make such a move.“I’m not saying I had any wisdom, but when people were saying we’d be back open in four weeks, I never believed that,” the lead producer, Robert Fox, said this week. “We were still being charged rent, and all sorts of expenses we didn’t have the money to cover. I assumed that was the end of ‘Hangmen’ on Broadway.”But the play was given new life by the U.S. government: It was awarded a $5.2 million Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, and was then granted an extension for its use of that money until June 30, 2022. Fox said that a combination of the federal aid, and investors returning money they had received from an insurance claim, “meant we had enough to put the show on, and hopefully to be able to support it in its early days, if it needs support.”Much had to be rethought: During the last two years, one of the play’s producers, Elizabeth I. McCann, died; several of the play’s lead actors became unavailable for personal or professional reasons; and the set was dismantled. But Fox said he wanted to try again, in large part because of his fondness for the work of McDonagh, a four-time Tony nominee whose other plays include “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” and whose films include “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”From left: Jeremy Crutchley, Tracie Bennett, Mark Addy, Richard Hollis, John Horton and Ryan Pope in the production of “Hangmen” that was slated to open in 2020. The play will reopen with several new cast members.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I’m a huge Martin fan — I think he’s a true original, and a brilliant writer, and this is the third play of Martin’s I will have produced on Broadway,” Fox said. “I don’t think anybody’s putting it back on because they think they’re going to make a lot of money, but they believe it’s a wonderful play of Martin’s, and hopefully people want to see a dark mystery comedy and enjoy themselves.”“Hangmen” began its life in London, at the Royal Court Theater, and then, following a West End run, had an Off Broadway production at the Atlantic Theater Company, where The New York Times critic Ben Brantley called it “criminally enjoyable.” Matthew Dunster has directed each production, and will do so again on Broadway; the Broadway production will feature Tracie Bennett (“End of the Rainbow”) as the hangman’s wife. More

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    Trevor Noah: Trump Is America’s Relentless Ex

    “And like many exes, he really wants a second chance. But instead of promising to do better next time, he’s threatening to do even worse,” Noah said.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.Land of Second ChancesDonald Trump held a rally on Sunday in Texas, where he said, if re-elected as president, he would consider pardoning those involved with the Capitol riot. On Monday’s “Daily Show,” Trevor Noah called Trump “the greatest con man of all time,” noting he had not pardoned those involved while he was still in office and instead let them be prosecuted.“Trump is basically the ex that America kicked out for throwing an open house party at the Capitol. And like many exes, he really wants a second chance. But instead of promising to do better next time, he’s threatening to do even worse.” — TREVOR NOAH“While the Jan. 6 select committee continues to look for the cause of the Capitol riot, the cause admitted to everything and threatened to do it again.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“If it had been him instead of O.J., the quote would have been ‘The gloves don’t fit, but you don’t need gloves to stab a guy.’” — SETH MEYERS“What a weird platform to run on for president: ‘I will pardon violent criminals.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“You’ve got to admit, Trump leans on his supporters really hard. I mean, first they had to storm the Capitol because he lost the election, then their donations went to his legal fees because he’s always getting sued. Now they have to protest if he gets charged? Like, where does it end? If Trump does go to prison, is he going to make these poor people smuggle cigarettes up their butts?” — TREVOR NOAH“Even the rioters were, like, ‘Oh no, I don’t think he can say that.’” — JIMMY FALLON“There’s no better way to announce a presidential run than to say, ‘I’ll empty the jails!’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Super Bowl Surprise Edition)“The L.A. Rams are headed to the Super Bowl after a come-from-behind victory over the San Francisco 49ers. The Rams will play the Cinderella Cincinnati Bengals in the lowest-seeded matchup in Super Bowl history, meaning the teams that oddsmakers least expected to make it this far made it. To put that in non-football terms, if this was a matchup of Kardashians, it’d be like Kourtney versus Rob, OK?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Before the season, the Bengals’ odds were 150 to 1. To give you an idea, there are better odds of finding a rapid test at CVS.” — JIMMY FALLON“This is the most exciting thing to happen to Cincinnati since they found all that spaghetti under their chili.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But this is the Bengals’ first Super Bowl appearance since the ’80s. A lot has changed since then: Back then, inflation was high, there was tension with Russia, and our president was in his late 70s.” — JIMMY FALLON“And, this is crazy, the Super Bowl is being played in Los Angeles at the Rams’ home stadium. That’s right, even N.F.L. players are working from home.” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, we’re two weeks away from the game and experts are wondering, if a Super Bowl doesn’t have Tom Brady, can it still be called the Super Bowl?” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon gave two puppies the task of predicting which team will win the Super Bowl.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightDavid Letterman will celebrate 40 years of “Late Night” with Seth Meyers on Tuesday.Also, Check This OutThroughout “Janet Jackson,” the highs and lows of Jackson’s career are often presented as a kind of collateral asset or damage.LifetimeThe new documentary series about Janet Jackson offered more insight into the private pop star but still doesn’t dig too deep. More

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    in Theater

    Review: In Clare Barron’s ‘Shhhh,’ Staging a Memoir of the Body

    The playwright directs and stars in her new play for Atlantic Theater Company’s Stage 2. It’s less a traditional narrative and more of a series of flirtations with discomfort.To get to your seat, you walk past someone’s toilet, stationed next to their sink, above which their pill bottles sit on a shelf.It’s hard to get more intimate than that.And yet that’s exactly what “Shhhh” manages to do. The new play, written by, directed by and starring Clare Barron, is explicit and occasionally uncomfortable, but all for the right reasons.Arnulfo Maldonado’s exquisite set design for the show, which opened on Monday at Atlantic Theater Company’s Stage 2, truly makes the space feel as if it were an apartment transformed into a theater rather than the reverse. There’s that bathroom stage left. And in a corner, partially obscured by a wall, a mattress lies on the floor, the sheets tousled on top. Candles and hanging string lights create a seductive atmosphere, but the industrial-looking metal rolling carts add a cool edge. And the audience members in the first few rows sit on cushions on the floor, extending the cozy vibe.“Shhhh” begins with Sally (named Witchy Witch in the program, and performed by Constance Shulman) recording an ASMR meditation. The sound of it is unsettling. Shulman’s signature rasp seems to envelop the space as she narrates what she’s doing — she talks about the Lysol wipe she’s using as we hear the sound of the cloth moving, amplified by a mic, and she taps her nails against a ceramic cup, telling us it’s full of lavender tea. She speaks slowly, stretching the syllables of each word so far they could reach from the theater, in Chelsea, to the East River. (The sharp sound design is by Sinan Refik Zafar.)Sally, a postal worker, says her job makes her feel close to people, even though that intimacy isn’t real. She goes on a so-so date with Penny (Janice Amaya), a nonbinary person who shares that they feel most comfortable and in control of their body during sex parties.Sally’s sister is Shareen (Barron), a playwright with a lot of “health stuff” who has a codependent and often consensually iffy sexual relationship with a male friend, Kyle (Greg Keller).And Francis (Nina Grollman) and Sandra (Annie Fang) are, well, two random young women who talk about body agency and consent in a pizza shop as Shareen, sitting at another table, silently listens.Barron and Greg Keller in the play. Arnulfo Maldonado did the set design.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Shhhh!” doesn’t have a traditional narrative; there’s no antagonist, and there’s not much of a sense of causality across scenes. The work itself has the feel of a series of flirtations: discomfort, assaults, insecurities and sorrows are spoken about and alluded to, but not detailed. We don’t get back stories or explainers. We just get the way these people speak and move and touch in relationship to one another. It’s telling that most of the sex acts mentioned are ones of penetration and discharge but much less often about the simple delicacies of a caress, or a kiss.The conversations these characters have are visceral: They talk of gushing wounds, feces-covered sheets, body fluids of all flavors. Though this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with Barron’s works, which include “I’ll Never Love Again” and the Pulitzer Prize finalist “Dance Nation.” She’s made a specialty of writing what are essentially staged memoirs of the body. Barron rarely opts for the romantic idea of pleasure, instead examining pleasure tied to physical violence and emotional manipulation, shame, self-esteem and trauma. The whole production aches with an unspoken loneliness.That ache comes through in Barron’s direction, but also in the performances, led by Barron herself, who sheaths Shareen in a delicate melancholy. Her gaze seems to drift off into the distance serenely but without satisfaction. She seems unsteady. And yet her somberness also belies a ferocious hunger; throughout the show Shareen plays with her food, pressing her fingertips into the scraps, crumbs and flakes on her plate or table and bringing them to her mouth, almost compulsively. The characters move self-consciously — in the way they recline or cross their legs — and seem to traverse the distances that separate them cautiously, as if wading through a river to the other shore.Keller is believable as the guy friend who soon realizes he may have to hold himself accountable for some questionable bedroom behaviors, and Grollman, Fang and Amaya, who get to wear the show’s most eclectic fashions (the satisfyingly offbeat costume design is by Kaye Voyce), give top-tier performances in small roles. Shulman is less convincing as Shareen’s older sister, supposedly by only two years, despite the nearly 30-year age gap between the two actresses. Shulman’s monotone drawl is a comic novelty at first, helping many of the jokes land, but this delivery, dry as a dust storm in the desert, becomes tiresome.Nina Grollman, left, and Annie Fang in a powerful scene at a pizza shop.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe other issue is the show’s erratic pacing. A Looney Tunes-esque chase scene and a mystical ritual both feel interminable. While other scenes are too short, and characters lack depth. Amaya has a sparky energy, but their character is less developed in relation to the others. And the characters of Francis and Sandra speak in only one scene, in the pizza shop, though the dialogue is incredibly compelling: candid exchanges about what it’s like to be a woman in a world of modern dating, and romantic metaphors about isolation and desire. I could’ve watched an entire show of this conversation.I went into this show expecting the grotesque and perhaps even the gratuitous, especially once I passed a sign in the theater warning the audience about the nudity and the play’s content. Nothing triggered me or offended me, not even Shareen’s description of her diarrhea or the sight of a used DivaCup. (I can’t say the same for everyone else, particularly the three audience members who shuffled out early in the show, never to return.)But then there was one moment that got to me, when Francis and Sandra are talking about the ways the men they’ve dated have manipulated their way to getting what they want, like unprotected sex. As Francis recounted a drunken negotiation she had with a guy, my body stiffened. The exchange was so familiar; it made me recall my own sticky encounter with a date.While that moment in the show may have made me feel uncomfortable, I was also grateful for the scene, and even the thorny feeling it inspired — theater should sometimes cause us discomfort. After all, the greatest intimacies we can hope for, as audience members, are those we build between our seats and the stage.ShhhhThrough Feb. 20 at Atlantic Stage 2, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    in Television

    Former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst Dies at 30

    Ms. Kryst, who was also a correspondent for the television show “Extra,” was found dead on Sunday in New York.Cheslie Kryst, a correspondent for the celebrity news program “Extra” who won the Miss USA title in 2019 while working as a lawyer, was found dead on Sunday in New York. She was 30.Ms. Kryst died in a fall from a high-rise building on Manhattan’s West Side, where she had an apartment, the New York Police Department said. Her death was being investigated as a suicide, Lt. Thomas Antonetti, a department spokesman, said on Monday.“Extra,” which also announced her death, provided a statement from her family that said Ms. Kryst “embodied love and served others, whether through her work as an attorney fighting for social justice, as Miss USA and as a host” on the show.Ms. Kryst joined “Extra” as a correspondent in the fall of 2019, and later earned two Daytime Emmy Award nominations for outstanding entertainment news program for her work, according to Variety.Ms. Kryst shooting a segment for the show “Extra” in New York in 2019.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesIn the hours before her death, Ms. Kryst shared a picture of herself on Instagram with the caption, “May this day bring you rest and peace.”Cheslie Kryst was born on April 28, 1991, in Jackson, Mich., and moved to Charlotte, N.C., when she was a toddler, according to a profile from SouthPark Magazine. She later graduated from the University of South Carolina with a business degree and then earned an M.B.A. and a law degree from Wake Forest University.In 2017 she joined Poyner Spruill, a law firm based in North Carolina, where she focused on civil litigation. The firm said in a statement on Sunday that Ms. Kryst “was a passionate advocate both in and out of the courtroom.” After she was crowned Miss USA, she and Poyner Spruill agreed that she would go on sabbatical, and she later left the firm, according to its managing partner, Dan Cahill.Although Ms. Kryst worked as a lawyer for some time, she was no stranger to beauty pageants. Her mother, April Simpkins, was crowned Mrs. North Carolina in 2002. “My mom was the second Black Mrs. North Carolina, so I knew no matter what, I was going to compete,” Ms. Kryst told The New York Times in 2020.Ms. Kryst started her pageant career as a teenager and won the Miss Northwestern pageant while in high school. In 2019, she was crowned Miss North Carolina and went on to win Miss USA, becoming the oldest contestant ever to win at age 28. She later represented the United States at the 2019 Miss Universe Competition, finishing in the top 10.In the midst of a rising career that required long days, Ms. Kryst told The Times in December 2019 that down time was the key to balancing her busy schedule, which included traveling for events as Miss USA and maintaining her blog, White Collar Glam, where she discussed affordable workplace fashion. Mental health was also a priority for Ms. Kryst, who said in a Facebook video in 2019 that she regularly spoke with a counselor. “When I’m not talking to my counselor, I take time at the end of every single day to just decompress,” she said. “I unplug. I shut my phone off. I don’t answer messages. I just sit and watch my favorite movie.”Ms. Kryst also used her rise to fame and presence on the pageant stage to make a statement about diversity. She described herself as a Black woman of mixed race heritage and told The Grio in 2019 that she intentionally wore her hair natural during the Miss USA pageant. “Winning with my natural hair was really important to me because I thought, this is the way that my hair grows out of my head,” she said. “I should be OK to wear my hair like this.”In an essay published by Allure magazine last year, Ms. Kryst reflected on the challenges of growing older and challenging conventional thinking about women’s appearances and opinions.“A grinning, crinkly-eyed glance at my achievements thus far makes me giddy about laying the groundwork for more, but turning 30 feels like a cold reminder that I’m running out of time to matter in society’s eyes — and it’s infuriating,” she wrote. “After a year like 2020, you would think we’d learned that growing old is a treasure and maturity is a gift not everyone gets to enjoy.”Ms. Kryst is survived by her parents and five siblings.If you are having thoughts of suicide, in the United States call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States.Christine Hauser More