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    Catherine Was Great. But Was She a Girl Boss?

    In seeking to turn historical women into yassified contemporary heroines, pop culture creators are narrowing what female success can look like.Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII, enjoyed embroidery and fasting. Little in the historical record suggests that she was any fun at a party.“Unfortunately, Catherine of Aragon just, like, loved church and was always praying and was kind of a bummer,” Dana Schwartz, a writer who hosts the podcast “Noble Blood,” told me recently.Yet there Catherine is, in the Broadway musical “Six,” vibrating her vocal cords like a Tudor-era Beyoncé, in a thigh-scraping miniskirt and studded boots — a girl boss, early modern style. “Six,” a giddy pop confection about the six wives of Henry VIII, joins recent works like “Dickinson,” the AppleTV+ comedy just concluding its final season, and “The Great,” the Hulu dramedy that recently released its second, in revamping notable women of past centuries as the cool girls of today. It’s history. With contouring.For decades now, popular culture and media have made a concerted effort — mostly laudable, occasionally cloying — to reclaim forgotten or maligned women. Think of the “Rebel Girls” books, the biopics that glut the Oscar race, even the Overlooked obituary series in The New York Times.Some of these works explore women’s lives mindful of particular historical contexts, acknowledging their achievements within the often oppressive systems of their times. Others, like “Dickinson” and to a lesser extent “The Great,” take a deliberately freewheeling approach to history, inventing counterfactual privileges and possibilities for their heroines. Still others, like “Six,” feed history through the YassifyBot, Facetuning women’s lives so that they seem fiercer, sexier, more aspirational — selfie-ready, way before cameras were invented.This girlbossification nearly always puts women in competition with each other, rather than emphasizing shared struggle. It diminishes oppression and bias, suggesting that any woman can get ahead if she just puts on her big girl panties and rises-and-grinds hard enough, retconning the necessary fictions of our own cultural moment into the past.In a moment when popular culture confuses fame and excellence, works like these also imply an inability to appreciate female merit absent of sex and glamour. The desire to zhuzh up women of history — Hey, it’s so super that you changed the world, but couldn’t you have done it in a bustier?— says a lot more about our own time than times past. When we reframe herstory as an Instagram story, what do we lose?I should probably tell you that questions like these make me feel like a scold. I hate that. You know who’s really no fun at parties? Scolds. Besides, I love “Dickinson.” I admire “The Great.” The songs in “Six” are absolute bops. None of these works aspire to historical accuracy. “The Great,” in particular, has the cheeky tagline of “an occasionally true story.” And even if they did, we probably shouldn’t be getting our history from prestige comedies and musicals.Hailee Steinfeld, left, as Emily Dickinson and Wiz Khalifa as Death in “Dickinson.”Michael Parmelee/Apple TV+Also, real life, even the real lives of great women, is mostly boring. Would you watch three seasons of a show in which Emily Dickinson sits alone at her desk, scratching out verse with a pencil? But there are telling emphases in these shows and equally telling excisions. This new breed of heroine is ambitious and sex positive, with impeccably modern politics. Rather than understanding these women as products of their time, we make them creatures of ours.Schwartz told me that she understands the impulse to sex up historical women. It lavishes attention on them, correcting the dismissiveness of earlier historians.“But that then has the collective effect of making these women less interesting and less honest in who they were within their periods,” she said.At least, “Dickinson,” created by Alena Smith, plays with this dishonesty purposefully and boldly, taking the wildness and desire that suffused Emily Dickinson’s poetry, if not her life, and externalizing it through scenes in which Hailee Steinfeld’s Emily twerks at house parties and takes carriage rides with Wiz Khalifa’s Death.The real Dickinson was introverted and, despite her on-trend eyebrows, not a particular beauty. “In terms of being a cool girl, I don’t really know if she was,” Monica Pelaez, a Dickinson scholar who has advised the show, told me. “She chose to seclude herself.”The historical Dickinson doesn’t seem to have dressed as a man or protested as an ecowarrior or taken multiple lovers or heaved her bosom in a daring red dress. But her poetry and letters conjure vivid emotional states, so “Dickinson” colors Emily’s life with this dynamism, colliding reality and fantasy.“What the show does is bring that sensibility from her poetry and dramatize it,” Pelaez said.The Emily who emerges is confident, career-minded, fascinating to men and women, a corrective to previous works (even recent ones like Terence Davies’s 2016 movie “A Quiet Passion”) that ignored the queerness her letters and poems suggest. But while “Dickinson” seems acutely aware of the sociopolitics of 19th-century New England, the show often argues for Emily’s exceptionalism by differentiating her — and to a lesser extent her sister, Lavinia (Anna Baryshnikov), and sister-in-law, Sue (Ella Hunt) — from the other women of Amherst.Rather than looking for solidarity among the women of her progressive community, Emily emphasizes this difference. “I’m just not made for traditional feminine handicrafts,” she complains during a sewing circle scene, the implication being that women who are made for them don’t deserve a prestige TV series.Elle Fanning as Catherine in the second season of the Hulu series “The Great.”Gareth Gatrell/HuluIn this way Emily resembles Catherine, of “The Great,” which slid its 10-episode second season onto Hulu a few weeks ago. Created by Tony McNamara (who also co-wrote the lightly counterfactual battling-British-royals comedy “The Favourite”), the series stars a luminous Elle Fanning as a German princess who arrives at the Russian court as a teenager and promptly claims the tsardom for herself. Liberated from chronology and fact, the comedy-drama twiddles the timeline of Catherine’s career and marriage. (Let’s just say that the real Peter struggled to consummate their relationship and the Peter of “The Great,” played by Nicholas Hoult, does not.)Bright, colorful and cruel, like a dish of poisoned candies, the show occasionally portrays Catherine as naïve. But she learns fast and her emergent politics and commitment to hustle are beautifully modern. She wants to end Russia’s wars, free its serfs, teach women to read, inoculate her subjects. (This is more or less true of the historical Catherine.) And in her ball gowns? An absolute smokeshow.The legacy of the real Catherine, who came to the throne not as a dewy teenager, but as a more seasoned 33-year-old, was of course more complicated. “She actually increased serfdom,” said Hilde Hoogenboom, a professor of Russian who has translated Catherine’s memoirs.Hoogenboom describes “The Great” as the “Disneyfication” of the real Catherine. To make her a fairy tale princess, the series also insists on differentiating Catherine from the other women at court, representing her as a savvy It Girl, more beautiful and more powerful than her peers.“Bitch,” one noblewoman sneers.“Empress bitch,” Catherine corrects her.The real Catherine was different. (And as someone who routinely elevated her lovers and male allies, not so big on sisterhood.) But she was one of several 18th-century female heads of states, including the Empress Elisabeth, her immediate predecessor, a fact that “The Great” conveniently elides. Instead it presents Elisabeth (Belinda Bromilow) as a dithery nymphomaniac, raising Catherine up by pushing Elisabeth and her underwear down.“Six,” created by Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow, puts its women in competition even more explicitly, structuring the show as an “American Idol”-style vocal contest. A blingy take on trauma porn, it demands that each woman sing not about her character or integrity, but about the wrongs she suffered at Henry’s meaty hands. Here are the rules, as detailed in the opening number:The Queen who was dealt the worst handThe Queen with the most hardships to withstandThe Queen for whom it didn’t really go as plannedShall be the one to lead the band.From left: Andrea Macasaet, Adrianna Hicks and Anna Uzele in the musical “Six.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBefore ending in a mostly empty gesture of solidarity, “Six” simplifies and updates many of these women, turning Anne Boleyn, an astute political player, into a foxy good-time-girl, framing Katherine Howard, a blatant victim of abuse, as a barely legal tease. (“Lock up your husbands, lock up your sons/ K-Howard is here and the fun’s begun.”) The costume design, in a nod to pop norms, sexualizes each women, coupling their worth with their hotness.In her song, Katherine Parr, Henry’s widow, reminds listeners of her accomplishments:I wrote books, and psalms, and meditations,Fought for female educationSo all my women could independently study scriptureI even got a woman to paint my pictureWhy can’t I tell that story?Well, why can’t she? Instead, the songs from “Six” center the women’s relationships to Henry, emphasizing his attraction to them (or rejection of them) over any of the wives’ accomplishments. “The things that these women were doing should be of historical interest, regardless of whether or not they were all married to this [expletive] dude,” Jessica Keene, a history professor who studies the Tudor period, said.This substitution of sexuality for excellence can extend even into more enlightened shows. That sewing circle episode of “Dickinson” includes a dynamic cameo from Sojourner Truth, played by the writer and talk show host Ziwe. Because “Dickinson” remains exquisitely self-aware, it jokes about Ziwe’s youthful appearance (“I’m roughly 66, but I look good as hell”) and Truth’s 19th-century sex bomb vibe (“Oh, they’re going to know I’m a woman in this dress”).But the real Sojourner Truth, who came to public life in middle age, didn’t lead with sex. Corinne T. Field, who has written on Truth, described her as a figure who critiqued girlish beauty and sexuality. “Her whole public career is built as someone who had already aged beyond youth and was occupying a position of power and charisma that did not rely on girlish beauty,” Field said.I asked Field what we miss when “Dickinson” depicts a woman like Truth this way. “An investment in intergenerational networks of mutual care,” Field said without pausing. “We need to think about how you sustain female empowerment over the course of a whole life.”If creators, even creators with explicitly feminist aims like Smith and Moss, believe that audiences won’t pay attention to female protagonists absent of youth and beauty, they will likely frame empowerment narrowly. And maybe that’s necessary on some level. The recent and more accurate versions — like “A Quiet Passion,” 2019’s “Catherine the Great” and this year’s “Anne Boleyn” — tend to be less fun.“If girlbossification is the price to elevate female historical figures to the mainstream consciousness, so be it,” Schwartz said.That consciousness could then encourage viewers to seek out what Schwartz called “actual historically accurate sources.” And in these sources they might find that sometimes women changed the world in flats or with split ends or in common cause with other women or when they weren’t especially sexy or young. A few of them must have had a really solid grasp of traditional feminine handicrafts. Where is the absolute bop for that? More

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    Sardi’s Is Back After 648 Days, Its Fortunes Tied to Broadway

    The caricatures are back up. But many shows are canceling performances just as Sardi’s reopens, a hurdle for a restaurant catering to the theater crowd.It felt sort of like old times, the other night at Sardi’s.Joe Petrsoric, back in his familiar red jacket, was lining up martini glasses at the second floor bar where he has worked since arriving from Yugoslavia in 1972. Manning the front door, his traditional dark suit now accessorized with a face mask, was Max Klimavicius, who started working in the kitchen in 1974 after immigrating from Colombia; he now runs the place.It had been 648 days since Sardi’s, a watering hole so closely entwined with Broadway that it was name-checked in the Rodgers and Hart song “The Lady Is a Tramp,” last served its cannelloni au gratin. And now, on the long night of the winter solstice, the oft-imperiled Main Stem mainstay with caricature-covered walls was ready to try again.The timing is nerve-racking. The Omicron variant is rampaging through New York City, wreaking havoc in the theater industry.There were 33 Broadway shows scheduled to perform Dec. 21, which Mr. Klimavicius chose for a soft reopening with limited hours, a limited menu and reduced capacity. But so many actors and crew members are now testing positive for the coronavirus that only 18 shows actually took the stage that night, and one of those made it to curtain only because the playwright grabbed a script and went on to replace an ailing performer.“The place has to live,” said Mr. Klimavicius, who greeted customers like the long-lost friends many of them were, but also helped make sure they had proof of vaccination. “It’s part of the fabric.”The restaurant is a combination of Broadway commissary and tourist magnet. As it reopened, the producer Arthur Whitelaw, who still remembers a childhood visit to Sardi’s more than seven decades ago (his parents were taking him to a new musical called “Oklahoma!”), settled into a cozy corner from which he could survey the room. A few tables away sat four friends from The Villages, the fast-growing retirement community in Florida, who were in town to see “To Kill a Mockingbird” on their annual Broadway trip.The restaurant’s owners did a substantial rehabilitation of the four-story eatery this year, but are hoping no one will notice, because Sardi’s customers are tradition-bound.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe work was made possible in part by help from the Shubert Organization, which owns the building, and in part with a large grant from a federal government program designed to provide emergency assistance to restaurants and bars affected by the pandemic. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway is a small town, but a big business — in 2018-2019, the last full season before the pandemic, 14.8 million people saw a show, spending $1.8 billion on tickets. Many of those patrons also spent money at hotels, shops, and at restaurants like Sardi’s — a symbiotic, and symbolic, economic relationship that is essential to Times Square and the city at large.“Sardi’s is a symbol of Broadway and the Broadway scene, and it’s been closed for far too long,” said Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance, which represents a theater-dependent neighborhood that occupies 0.1 percent of the city’s land mass, but contributes 15 percent of its economic output. With New York’s business districts threatened by remote work, and its brick-and-mortar stores by e-commerce, in-person experiences like live theater and dining are more important than ever.Times Square is still in recovery mode. “Office workers are coming back slower than anyone would have expected or wanted — occupancies are about 30 percent — and about 77 percent of businesses are open,” Mr. Harris said. “We still have a ways to go.”Sardi’s, which has been operating on West 44th Street since 1927, employed nearly 130 people during peak seasons before the pandemic arrived; it’s restarting with 58.The restaurant has weathered its share of challenges — booms, busts, and bankruptcy. It has been popular and it has been passé, but it has always been there, known more for its caricatures than its cuisine, drawing a mix of industry insiders and theater-loving visitors to eat, drink, kibitz and commiserate.It was established by Vincent Sardi Sr., who in 1947, at the very first Tony Awards, won a special prize “for providing a transient home and comfort station for theater folk.” Mr. Klimavicius is now the majority owner.Sardi’s has about 1,200 caricatures of famous people who have eaten in the restaurant, most of whom are connected to the theater industry. About 900 are on display at any given time. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe original caricature of Barbra Streisand was stolen, so now her image is the only one screwed into the wall, keeping watch over the empty dining room throughout the shutdown.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHabitués understand the risks now faced not only by Sardi’s, but by the industry, the neighborhood, and the city.“We haven’t proven that the pandemic is over, and that everything is not going to fail,” said Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical Productions, who likes to transact business at the upstairs bar while shows are running and the room is quiet. “But then, I grew up in California where the ground shook all the time and you never knew if your whole house was going to collapse on you, so I see it differently.”Sardi’s began the pandemic, appropriately, with a moment of high drama: On March 12, 2020, just moments after agreeing to shut down all 41 theaters, a group of Broadway bigwigs gathered at the bar to drown their sorrows. They ate, they drank, they hugged. Then many of them got the coronavirus.Among the industry gatekeepers who fell ill — with, to be sure, no way of knowing how — was Robert E. Wankel, the chairman and chief executive of the Shubert Organization, which has 17 Broadway theaters, and which is the restaurant’s landlord. On Tuesday, Mr. Wankel was there again, happily holding court over a vodka tonic and relentlessly bullish on Sardi’s, where he has been coming for 50 years, and lunches three times a week.“Sardi’s is going to do very well,” he said, “now that the theater is back.”Max Klimavicius, who grew up in Colombia, started working at Sardi’s in 1974 as an expediter in the kitchen. Now he owns the place.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAmong the restaurant’s most longstanding patrons: Arthur Whitelaw, a producer whose parents first brought him to Sardi’s in the 1940s. On the first night back, Whitelaw had a pre-theater dinner with his producing partner, Ruby Persson.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSardi’s has been a part of Broadway longer than some theaters, and has become part of the industry’s lore. As a line in “The Lady is a Tramp” has it: “The food at Sardi’s is perfect, no doubt / I wouldn’t know what the Ritz is about.” Alice Childress mentions it in her play, “Trouble in Mind,” now being staged on Broadway, while in the musical “The Producers,” Mel Brooks has a would-be showman dream of “lunch at Sardi’s every day.”Over the years, the restaurant has hosted luminaries from Eleanor Roosevelt to Ethel Merman, scads of Tony winners, Oscar winners and even, once a year, the dog that wins the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. “I went there with Elizabeth Taylor, for God’s sake,” said Charlotte Moore, the artistic director of Irish Repertory Theater.Among its current boldfaced regulars: the designer Michael Kors, who created a Sardi’s-themed cashmere sweater for Bergdorf Goodman (selling for $990).“When I walk into Sardi’s I feel like I’m living in ‘All About Eve’,” he said. “I know Times Square needs to come back, and I know Sardi’s needs to come back.”Joe Petrsoric has been working the bar at Sardi’s since 1972. “What am I going to do at home?”, he asked.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlthough the dining room and bar will look quite familiar to Sardi’s regulars — polished but unchanged — the kitchen was completely overhauled in order to modernize it, and some equipment has yet to arrive because of supply chain woes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSardi’s is among the last Broadway institutions to resume operations.Since June, 39 Broadway shows have begun performances, the TKTS booth is once again selling discounted tickets, and other industry watering holes, like Joe Allen and Bar Centrale, have long since reopened.But for months Sardi’s remained shuttered, with an eerie menu in the window still listing the specials for March 13, 2020: a tasting of five cheeses, meatballs over bucatini, sautéed sea scallops.Early in the pandemic, Mr. Klimavicius, like many, had his doubts — theater was dark, Midtown was dead, everything seemed uncertain. But this June, buoyed by $4.5 million from the federal government’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund, he began overhauling the space — redoing the kitchen, the gas lines, the ventilation, and the wiring, among other things — hoping to modernize it in a way that no one would notice. People who love Sardi’s are, to put it mildly, change-averse.“I was concerned when I heard ‘renovation’,” said Andrea Ezagui, a Sardi’s regular from Long Island, who showed up at 4 p.m. — the moment it reopened — and immediately repaired to the bar upstairs, where she celebrated with champagne and friends. “They kept it the way it should be,” she said, “a little piece of heaven on Broadway.”The restaurant’s famous caricatures came off their picture ledges for the restoration — all but one, that is. Barbra Streisand has the only caricature screwed to the wall, because fans stole the original; so now she remains, irremovable, with her admonition “Don’t steal this one” inscribed above her signature.On a recent afternoon, Mr. Klimavicius and his crew set about putting the hundreds of caricatures back up, starting with one of Lin-Manuel Miranda, “a good friend of the house.”As he settled into his domain on the second floor, Mr. Petrsoric, the bartender, was clearly relieved to be back on the job, after spending too many months in Mamaroneck, N.Y., riding a stationary bike and, by his own account, going crazy. “What am I going to do at home?” he said. “I love people. And think about 50 years behind the bar. You know how many people I know?”He started by mixing a Belvedere martini, a cosmopolitan and a lemon drop. “This is unbelievable,” he marveled. “But you know, it takes me one hour, and you’re back to normal.” More

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    Two More Broadway Shows Close as Omicron Takes a Toll on Theater

    “Thoughts of a Colored Man” and “Waitress” became the latest productions to end their runs because of coronavirus cases among their cast or crew.Two more Broadway shows announced Thursday night that they had closed as the spike in coronavirus cases fueled by the Omicron variant takes a growing toll on the theater business.“Thoughts of a Colored Man,” a new play about one day in the life of a group of Black men in Brooklyn, said it had closed after two days in which it was so short of performers that it had kept going only because the playwright, Keenan Scott II, stepped in to perform. The play, which began previews Oct. 1 and opened Oct. 13, had been scheduled to run until March 13.“While this is not the outcome we had hoped for, being part of this historic season on Broadway has been the greatest privilege of our lives,” the play’s producers, led by Brian Moreland, said in a statement. A return engagement of “Waitress,” which began performances Sept. 2 and was scheduled to run until Jan. 9, also closed after missing several performances because of coronavirus cases in the cast or crew. The show said on Thursday that it had detected new cases in its company.“We are heartbroken that the Covid virus won’t allow us to finish our glorious scheduled run,” Barry Weissler, one of the show’s producers, said in a statement.Meanwhile, Sutton Foster, the lead actress in a revival of “The Music Man” that just started previews on Monday, missed Thursday night’s performance for reasons that the show would not explain.The closing announcements come at a brutal time for Broadway. The last weeks of the year are usually quite lucrative as tourists and vacationers turn to theater for entertainment, but this week about half of the shows scheduled to play on Broadway have canceled most nights. On Thursday, only 16 shows had performances, down from the 33 that would have performed without the surge in cases.The closings of “Thoughts of a Colored Man” and “Waitress” follow a decision on Monday by the producers of “Jagged Little Pill,” a musical with songs by Alanis Morissette, to shut down. That show, too, had been missing performances because of positive coronavirus tests, and the producers said that given the uncertain climate they could not justify continuing. And in November, a new comedic play, “Chicken & Biscuits,” also closed citing the coronavirus.Those closings come on top of other disappointments for producers this fall. The musical “Diana” closed last weekend, just a month after opening, following a number of brutal reviews and low ticket sales. And a pair of well-reviewed experimental plays, “Dana H.” and “Is This a Room,” also cut short their scheduled runs over soft sales.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4The U.S. surge More

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    ‘And Just Like That’ Recap, Episode 4: New Friends

    Charlotte wants to change L.T.W. from a mom friend into a real friend. Carrie and Miranda nurture new connections.If Miranda was the white lady buffoon in Episode 1, it is Charlotte’s turn in Episode 4.Despite being a classic “‘Rules’ girl” and a master of playing hard-to-get (“I invented that game,” she once declared in the original “Sex and the City”), all that self-discipline Charlotte once reserved to pique men’s interest goes out the window when Lisa Todd Wexley says she is free for dinner on Thursday night — just two days away. Charlotte drops everything, even canceling Harry’s colonoscopy for the next morning, to throw an impromptu dinner party at her house.(Can’t Harry just book his own colonoscopy?)Charlotte desperately wants to morph L.T.W. from a mom friend into a real friend — a distinction actual moms, like me, will relate to. But it occurs to Charlotte that at the soiree she’s about to host, L.T.W. and her husband, Herbert (Christopher Jackson), will be the only Black people in attendance.Horrified that it will appear as if she and Harry have no Black friends (they don’t), she makes it her mission to recruit at least one fringe friend of color to invite. Just as she gets a bite from a fellow P.T.O. mom, L.T.W. abruptly backs out.But she and Harry still attend Herbert’s birthday party at L.T.W.’s house, and in a twist, they’re the sole white couple there. Charlotte has come prepared, having forced a cram session about contemporary Black authors on herself and Harry. It’s all for naught, though, when Charlotte walks in and immediately mistakes one of L.T.W.’s guests for a different Black woman they both know.It turns out, however, that Charlotte didn’t really need to study. When Herbert’s mother, Eunice Wexley (Pat Bowie), takes jabs at the seemingly frivolous art collection L.T.W. has amassed, Charlotte defends her, calling out the notable Black artists by name and talking up the importance of each work hanging on the wall — to the delight of L.T.W., who relishes taking her mother-in-law down a peg.Somewhere during these awkward scenes, Charlotte remembers who she is. She’s far more than the demure wife and mom she has been made out to be since she quit gallery life in the original “Sex and the City.” She’s highly educated and cultured, and she knows art impressively well. All she really had to do at that dinner party was be herself.I hope to see more of this multidimensional version of Charlotte as the series progresses, especially because she hasn’t been given a substantive story line since her struggles with infertility — a topic that comes up over dinner between Miranda and her law professor, Nya.The ‘Sex and the City’ UniverseThe sprawling franchise revolutionized how women were portrayed on the screen. And the show isn’t over yet. A New Series: Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte return for another strut down the premium cable runway in “And Just Like That,” streaming on HBO. Off Broadway: Candace Bushnell, whose writing gave birth to the “Sex and the City” universe, stars in her one-woman show based on her life. In Carrie’s Footsteps: “Sex and the City” painted a seductive vision of Manhattan, inspiring many young women to move to the city. The Origins: For the show’s 20th anniversary in 2018, Bushnell shared how a collection of essays turned into a pathbreaking series.Amid the bustle of a hip, crowded restaurant, Nya surprises herself (“Maybe it’s the hormones,” she quips) by telling Miranda that she’s undergoing her second round of in vitro fertilization, but that’s not her biggest revelation. She also says that when her first attempt failed, she felt a deep sense of relief. It’s a fair assumption that anyone going through the effort of fertility treatments must very much want a baby, but Nya isn’t so sure. She likes her life as it is and asks Miranda to confirm that motherhood is worth it. Miranda can’t quite make that promise.What unfolds between them is one of the more astute conversations about the plight of modern womanhood that I’ve seen on TV, maybe ever. Pushing beyond the trite topic of whether working mothers can “have it all,” the two characters grapple with the hard truth that no matter what kind of life is chosen, there are always roads not taken, and probably some level of regret. Reaching the pinnacle of your career doesn’t erase that, nor does having children. Despite coming from two rather different worlds, Miranda and Nya connect on this, and they move from acquaintances to confidantes.All the while, Carrie (whose real name is apparently Caroline! Who knew?) is wrapped up in selling the apartment she shared with Big. She taps the hotshot real-estate agent Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury) who waltzes in and immediately replaces the colorful character Carrie has woven into the home’s décor with boring beige. Seema must erase anything that feels too much like the current owners, she explains, so that buyers can see themselves in the space.“It’s like we never lived here. Our life is just … gone.” Carrie tells Miranda over the phone, dejected.Oddly, that’s exactly why Carrie feels good when she’s around Seema. Seema never knew Big, so Carrie can tuck away the sad stuff when she is with her and simply enjoy the moment.That is until Seema accidentally breaks the frame that holds an old photo of Carrie and Big.Seema is ready to replace it, not thinking the broken glass is much of an issue, but Carrie is heartbroken. That frame was on Big’s side of the bed, she explains. He touched that glass over and over, and now one of the final connections she had to her late husband is in pieces.Seema sees she’s being insensitive, but in a slightly contrived fit of whataboutism, she brings up a recent moment when she felt Carrie had done the same. When Carrie commended Seema for “still putting herself out there” in the dating world, it stung. Seema has never really found love, and Carrie unwittingly rubbed that in. What’s more, Seema doesn’t feel all that bad for Carrie, she says, because at least Big was the love of her life, and she had him for years.Carrie is taken aback. Is Seema right? Is it actually better to have loved and lost?In a sense, we could all be asking ourselves the same question about Big.In recent days, two women have accused Chris Noth of sexual assault, as detailed by The Hollywood Reporter. Noth, who was enjoying some reupped fame from this reboot, as well as a viral Peleton ad — itself a response to some ill-advised product placement in Episode 1 and since taken down — has denied the accusations.I was never a fan of Mr. Big. Maybe he conjured up too many personal ghosts, and I wanted Carrie to see through that kind of whiplash-inducing lover faster than I had. Plenty of viewers adored his mystique, and if you were in that camp, or you at least loved the love they shared, that’s almost certainly tainted — it’s nearly impossible now to separate Big’s sleazier tendencies from this troubling new context.As for me, I thought Big deserved the boot long ago. I’m not sorry I don’t have to see his face, or Noth’s, on my screen anymore.Carrie may never see things that way, though, so a new beginning with new people may be just what she needs. As she and Seema exchange apologies and dig into takeout sushi, the agent-client relationship begins to dissipate and a genuine friendship starts to blossom.In case it isn’t abundantly clear, that’s the theme of this episode: Each main character advances her friendship with her new pal (over dinner, in each case, to really tie it all together). The producers promised these new characters would be layered and do more than simply serve as window dressing for the returning leads. This episode seems to be a bridge to those new story lines that will, I hope, continue to deepen.The show must go on without one more of its recurring characters, though, and that is Stanford, because the actor Willie Garson died in September while the series was filming. The disappearance of Carrie’s steadfast friend is accounted for when she opens a melodramatic letter from him explaining that he has jaunted off to Japan on tour with the TikTok cash cow he manages. Anthony got a letter as well, except in his, Stanford asks for a divorce.Stanford always had a catty side, which was one of his more endearing traits, but it is hard to imagine he would have Dear John’d both Carrie and Anthony in such a hardhearted way. Perhaps the writers didn’t want us dwelling in sadness over the loss of Garson, but it’s hard not to feel like we never knew Stanford at all. The Stanny we knew would have at least wanted to share one last cigarette with Carrie.Oh yeah, she’s smoking again. More

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    Peter Dinklage on ‘Cyrano’ and Life After ‘Game of Thrones’

    Peter Dinklage doesn’t consider himself much of a singer, and swordfighting is outside his usual area of expertise. But the opportunity to master those skills is precisely what appealed to him about the new movie musical “Cyrano,” which Dinklage leads as a crooning, jousting poet.“I’ve got to be intimidated by it,” he said. “Anything that scares me gets my interest.”The 52-year-old actor first tackled the material in a stage musical written and directed by Erica Schmidt, Dinklage’s wife, with songs written by members of the band the National. After an Off Broadway premiere in late 2019, Schmidt’s “Cyrano” has now been made into a lavish film directed by Joe Wright (“Atonement”), which finds the title character covertly courting his true love, Roxanne (Haley Bennett), in the form of letters sent by the besotted soldier Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.).Of course, that begs a very contemporary question: Did Cyrano de Bergerac invent catfishing? Though the new film retains the period setting of the 1897 Edmond Rostand play it was based on, Dinklage detects many modern-day parallels. “It’s exactly what we’re doing today with online dating, where you’re putting up a profile of yourself out there that is not necessarily true to who you are,” he said. “We all pretend to be other people to varying degrees.”Dinklage with Haley Bennett in the new movie musical “Cyrano.”Peter Mountain/MGMBut few pretend better than Dinklage, a four-time Emmy winner who played the sly and short-statured Tyrion Lannister for eight seasons of “Game of Thrones,” culminating with its controversial finale in May 2019.“‘Game of Thrones’ wasn’t really a TV show — it was like my life,” Dinklage said. “My family was there in Ireland six months out of every year, for almost 10 years. You dig roots down there, my daughter was going to school there. She developed an Irish accent because she was with little Irish kids all day long.”Still, in a recent and wide-ranging conversation via video call, Dinklage told me that he has found life since “Game of Thrones” to be quite liberating: “You feel this void, but then you also go, ‘Oh, wow. I don’t have to do that, so what am I going to do next?’ That’s the exciting thing.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.It’s my understanding that your wife, Erica, was fairly far along in adapting “Cyrano” before you read it and decided to star in it. What convinced you?Yeah, she was commissioned to write an adaptation of “Cyrano,” and she had the great idea of stripping it down to its bare essentials, replacing the long monologues about love with love songs. Most importantly for me, I finally connected with it because she got rid of Cyrano’s most famous attribute, which is the obviously fake nose on the handsome actor’s face.I’m an actor, I’ve worn prosthetics before, but the pretense of that didn’t jive with me. I’d always thought, “What’s the big deal? You get to take that off at the end of the show.” And then Erica removed it and I thought I had to play this part because now it’s about a guy who doesn’t know what to do in the face of love, who has nothing to blame but himself.What do you mean by that?I think Cyrano is in love with love, and so many of us are, but we have no idea what it is. I always jump ahead and think, well, what if Cyrano really got what he wanted? Would he and Roxanne start to annoy each other? Because he keeps her on a pedestal, is that why he loves her? I think so many people do that. They don’t want to get too close. They want to know the good stuff without the bad.How did you feel about love when you were in your 20s? Were you in love with the idea of love?Yeah, I think so. I think there’s a “Wuthering Heights” quality to all love when you’re younger, you know? “Romeo and Juliet” wasn’t written for 40-year-olds. I was guilty of always falling for someone where it wasn’t reciprocated, because keeping it at a distance is more romantic than bringing it up close. You fall for people you know aren’t going to return that, so it’s even more tormented, and you’re not interested in the people interested in you. That’s how my brain worked because I was a self-saboteur when I was young.When it comes to love, Dinklage said, “I was a self-saboteur when I was young.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesHow do you grapple with that?You get a bit older and you realize that has nothing to do with anything. But it’s OK, because in your 20s, everybody should be a mess. I meet so many ambitious, professional young people in their 20s and they have everything together, and it seems like they haven’t made any of those really important mistakes, as opposed to when me and my friends were in New York in our early 20s and we’d go out drinking all night and smoke cigarettes and howl at the moon. We were all just fools, and it was fun.Do you remember the first time you met Erica?Of course. It was about 18 years ago now. We were all at a friend’s house and someone said, “They’re walking the elephants through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.” The circus was in town and it was snowing, and they were walking the elephants through Manhattan, a long line of them. It was like something out of a beautiful, fantastical, end-of-the-world, crazy, romantic movie. See? I always think about movies. So that’s the night we met, the night the elephants walked through Manhattan.By that point, had you been able to move past your tendency to torment yourself about love?I don’t think you do that. I think other people do that to you. If anybody’s been lucky enough to experience love, it just grabs hold of you. You don’t control how you feel, but you can choose what to do with it.Which is part of the issue with Cyrano, who may feel unworthy of love.I was raised Irish Catholic, so I totally feel unworthy of everything. That’s what hopefully this movie is speaking to, that unworthiness we all go through. When you meet somebody you love, they’re suddenly so important and so powerful that of course your go-to is, “I’m not worthy of this, because why would I be? This is so much bigger than me.”Do you think Erica removed the fake nose and reconceived Cyrano because she had you in mind for the role?Subconsciously, perhaps, because we had worked together before and we’re partners in life. But I definitely think she wasn’t just replacing the nose with my size in terms of a physical difference of the character. She just wanted to unearth. It’s kind of what I do: Every time I approach a role, I’m not just approaching it as someone my size, I’m approaching it as a flesh-and-blood human being with many more complications to the character.It’s so funny, just talking about this movie, I’m asked, “How does it feel to play a leading man?” That’s still part of the conversation because we’re still inundated by clichés. The domain of romantic leads has been beautiful white people for a hundred years now. That’s just what we’ve been served up, like Burger King, and then if we eat it, they’re going to make more of it. But my favorite filmmakers have been the ones who take risks, like Hal Ashby. I just worship “Harold and Maude” because look at who the romantic characters are. It’s a brilliant movie.Dinklage opposite Jasmine Cephas Jones and Blake Jenner in the stage version of “Cyrano.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesIn the ’90s, you gave an interview where you said, “What I really want is to play the romantic lead and get the girl.”I think I was speaking more to the idea that they get to thread the whole narrative, and that’s sort of a joy. I had been playing a number of fun parts, but they were supporting parts. Behind the curtain of filmmaking, so much of it is continuity of character: If you come in for one or two scenes, you can just lay some dynamite, have some fun, and then you’re out of there, but there’s no real arc to your storytelling.I think what’s fascinating about “Game of Thrones” and why a lot of actors are now drawn to television, is because they get to do that slow burn. For example, if you take the character of Tyrion’s brother Jaime, he pushes a little kid out the window at the end of the first episode, but two seasons later, he’s a hero to the audience. It’s like, did you forget he pushed a kid out the window? It’s crazy the way you can just surf this narrative and take it wherever you want to go. I got to do that with Tyrion and you get to do that in the movie if you’re the lead, though you have to condense it a little bit more.What was it like to be famous at the height of “Game of Thrones” mania?It’s myriad different reactions I get on a daily basis. People mean well, but when you’re walking down the street with your kid and people take your picture without asking … I start to talk this way and then I stop myself, because for an actor to complain about that reflects poorly on you. Everybody is like, “You have a great life. What’s wrong with me taking your picture? You’re a performer, that’s my right.”But it’s not about that. It’s more about just on a human level, I’m not a zoo animal. I’m a person. Let’s say I’m having a really bad day, or I just got off the phone and you’re right in my face. Am I supposed to smile for you? And why aren’t you actually communicating with me? More often than not, people take pictures without asking, and sometimes when I respond, even kindly, they don’t say anything because they’re almost surprised I’m talking to them. It’s really wild. If you’re a fan of what I do, why would you pay me back with that?Dinklage with Sophie Turner in “Game of Thrones.”Helen Sloan/HBOSo what’s your read on why they act that way?I think a lot of people are totally removed from each other. Camera phones have become like fingers, an extension of themselves, and they don’t even think about it because that’s how everybody’s living. Much more famous actors than me can walk down Broadway if they hide themselves correctly, but I’m unable to do that, so it can be hard. I moved to New York City to be anonymous: “Who cares? Nobody looks twice.” And now, because of the technology, everybody does.George R.R. Martin wanted “Game of Thrones” to go on for two more seasons. Do you think it should have, or was that the right time to end?It was the right time. No less, no more. You don’t want to wear out your welcome, although I’m not sure that show could have. But I think the reason there was some backlash about the ending is because they were angry at us for breaking up with them. We were going off the air and they didn’t know what to do with their Sunday nights anymore. They wanted more, so they backlashed about that.We had to end when we did, because what the show was really good at was breaking preconceived notions: Villains became heroes, and heroes became villains. If you know your history, when you track the progress of tyrants, they don’t start off as tyrants. I’m talking about, spoiler alert, what happened at the end of “Game of Thrones” with that character change. It’s gradual, and I loved how power corrupted these people. What happens to your moral compass when you get a taste of power? Human beings are complicated characters, you know?I think some people really did want a happily-ever-after ending, even though “Game of Thrones” told us it was not that show from the very beginning.They wanted the pretty white people to ride off into the sunset together. By the way, it’s fiction. There’s dragons in it. Move on. [Laughs] No, but the show subverts what you think, and that’s what I love about it. Yeah, it was called “Game of Thrones,” but at the end, the whole dialogue when people would approach me on the street was, “Who’s going to be on the throne?” I don’t know why that was their takeaway because the show really was more than that.One of my favorite moments was when the dragon burned the throne because it sort of just killed that whole conversation, which is really irreverent and kind of brilliant on behalf of the show’s creators: “Shut up, it’s not about that.” They constantly did that, where you thought one thing and they delivered another. Everybody had their own stories going on while watching that show, but nobody’s was as good as what the show delivered, I think. More

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    in Theater

    Continuing ‘The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe’

    Lily Tomlin, who first performed this comically cosmic play, and Jane Wagner, its author, discuss a new production with Cecily Strong and Leigh Silverman, its new star and director.Should you ever have the chance to converse with Lily Tomlin, you don’t have to tell her it’s an honor. “Believe me, it’s not,” Tomlin said recently in her distinctive deadpan.At 82, Tomlin is not precious about her reputation or the esteem she enjoys as a comedian and actor. But she remains fiercely proud of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” the one-woman play that was written for her by Jane Wagner, her wife and longtime creative collaborator.“Search for Signs,” which had its Broadway debut in 1985, is a comedic and philosophical whirlwind in which Tomlin Ping-Ponged across 12 roles, including the sullen teen punk Agnus Angst; the feminist activists Edie, Lyn and Marge; and the wealthy, urbane Kate. Their scenes are framed and interwoven by the character of Trudy, an enlightened vagrant who believes she is in communication with aliens.Tomlin’s performance in the Broadway production of “Search for Signs” won her the Tony Award for best actress in a play. That production ran for more than a year, and the play became an emblematic entry in the careers of its author and its star; Tomlin continued to perform it in other cities, in a 1991 film adaptation and in a Broadway revival that ran from 2000-1.Lily Tomlin in “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” in 2000.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Search for Signs” has become a treasured work to performers like Cecily Strong, the “Saturday Night Live” cast member, and directors like Leigh Silverman (“Well,” “Violet”). As Silverman, 47, said, “This play gives us a sense of purpose and a meaning while telling us all the time how meaningless it is. It holds us up and supports us and loves us. It cherishes the audience in a way that no other theater experience I’ve ever had does.”Now Silverman is directing Strong in a new production of “Search for Signs” that will be presented at the Shed. This incarnation, which is choreographed by James Alsop, begins performances Dec. 21 and opens Jan. 11; its limited run is scheduled to end Feb. 6.While they are still working through the play’s ambitious and ample material, Strong and Silverman said their preparations are testing them to their fullest extents. “There’s no plan to this,” Strong, 37, explained. “I said nobody else bug me until February — all of my time and my brain and my heart and my soul is here, and that’s where it has to be.”Tomlin and Wagner, who are executive producing, are content to observe these rehearsals from afar, weigh in when needed and reflect on what the play has meant to them. (Or simply to kibitz affectionately, as in one moment when Tomlin turned to her wife and audibly observed, “We’ve lived a long time, sister.”)Wagner, 86, said she was confident in the approach that Silverman and Strong were taking. “I have such a feeling of security, really, with the two of them,” she said. “But now that you mention it, I’ll start feeling pressured again, I’m sure.”Tomlin, Wagner, Strong and Silverman gathered earlier this month for a video interview in which they spoke about their individual and collective journeys on “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Lily and Jane, can you recount the origins of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”? How was it created?JANE WAGNER I was in a New Age phase. I was reading some philosophy and I began to be aware that I was being aware. [Lily Tomlin laughs.] That’s an insight that I hadn’t even thought about having.LILY TOMLIN I was on the road a good part of that time.WAGNER Which was very good for us.TOMLIN She would send me a load of pages every now and then. I remember the first packet I got, I was playing in Lexington and she sent me a huge stack of papers all about Trudy. Every line, one after another, was so observant and perceptive. I read them at a show one night and there was a raucous and wonderful response. When I read Trudy saying, “Frankly, I think they find us quite captivating,” I knew where the play was headed. But I had no idea how she was going to get there.Tomlin, right, and Jane Wagner in 2001 with their Tony Award nominations for the revival of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.”Henry Ray Abrams/Agence France-PresseCecily and Leigh, how did you each discover the play?CECILY STRONG The first time I encountered it was in my library in high school, looking for monologues. I was very serious about being an actor and I remember finding this cover with a long crazy name. What could this show be? I looked at a couple of Trudy monologues and I wanted to do something like this. This is a stupid thought, but I had it: I’ve got to marry a writer. I need to have someone write this show for me. I certainly never thought it would be a possibility to do this.LEIGH SILVERMAN I saw it at the Kennedy Center [after the show’s original Broadway run]. I was 11. My mother took me and we were sitting in the front row. It really sent me on a journey to see a performance like Lily’s. It was radical — written by a woman, performed by a woman who played all kinds of characters. Lily was so masculine, androgynous, highly feminine — she was all of it, the full package. I felt like my whole being was rearranged and maybe for the first time put into place.Lily, you continued to perform the play for many years in different settings. Does it remain in your body from production to production?TOMLIN You have a lot of muscle memory from it. When you start working on it again — this doesn’t feel right, I must have moved over here — then it falls into place. It comes back to you very quickly.WAGNER I’ve gotten by as a writer with no muscles. All my life, I’ve never had muscles.TOMLIN She’s at an age where the muscles would come in handy.Would the play change depending on the time and place where you were doing it?TOMLIN In 2001, right after the 9/11 attacks, we opened in San Francisco. Jane used to collect a lot of old Whole Earth Catalogs from her hippie days, and she cited this quote from Whole Earth Catalog. I used to end the production in San Francisco with this same quote because I felt it was so meaningful. It’s anonymous: “Humans are finally the bits of earth that leap up from the planet’s surface, tell what they see to each other, and then die. The sum total of all this seeing and telling is the story of one planet waking up to itself.” We loved that. That’s how we felt at that time.Did you get protective when other people would ask to put on the play? There were solo shows and versions with larger casts playing all the characters.WAGNER We did once we saw one of the productions you just described. It was pretty awful.TOMLIN In the old days, the requests would come in and I would deal with the agent. He’d say it’s a good theater or whatever, and we’d let them do it. Sometimes they would send us a film of what they’d done.WAGNER That’s where it went wrong, I think. [Laughter.] I’m more easily beaten down than she is.TOMLIN That’s why we keep her from the theater. She stays locked in a hotel room and I go, “I’ll be back in three or four hours”WAGNER I’m thinking about us doing it when we had no producer.TOMLIN I was the producer!WAGNER Well, I didn’t know that. I’d send you pages and you’d do them or toss them.TOMLIN Very often in the development process, I’d come in from a night at the theater and I’d talk to Jane about some monologue. I’d say, “If you can just make it — blah blah blah.” Instead of just adjusting some small phrase, she’d just write another monologue. I had like six or seven drafts of some monologues in my head, and I would move sections around, trying to find what the key would be. I was so steeped in it, I was able to just put it out and fly with whatever I could fly with. That’s what an actor really hopes for.“Of course I wanted to do this. The biggest reason to say no is, why would you ever put yourself in a position to be compared to Lily Tomlin?” said Strong, who’s been rehearsing with Silverman at the Shed. Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesLeigh, what got you interested in reviving the play?SILVERMAN When we were in the darkest moments of the pandemic, I was feeling so lost. I have done a lot of solo plays in my career. Most recently I did “Harry Clarke” with Billy Crudup. We were actually supposed to do it again during the pandemic and it was canceled. I had this moment where I thought I never want to do another solo show, ever, ever, ever again. I had a conversation with the Shed and they said, “We want to reopen and we’re looking for the right theatrical experience to do that with. Do you have any ideas?” I said no. And then I had a second call and I said, “I really don’t want do another solo show. But I do think this play should be done, and this is the time.”How was Cecily chosen? How did everyone get comfortable with that choice?SILVERMAN When we were talking about people, very serendipitously, there was the finale of “S.N.L.” last season and I was watching Weekend Update, where Cecily dove headfirst into a giant box of wine and drank her way out. Watching that, I had this moment where I was like, she can do it. She had the combination of the stamina, the skill, the courage and deep, deep empathy. The wild curiosity to just be outrageously funny.STRONG Of course I wanted to do this. The biggest reason to say no is, why would you ever put yourself in a position to be compared to Lily Tomlin? But you hear Leigh talk about it and you start tearing up. It’s like, yes, yes, let’s do this. Just the way the show feels, physically — I get to go through this wonderful catharsis every time we run it.WAGNER Lorne [Michaels, the creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live”] has an uncanny ability to understand talent, and he believed in you so much. You wouldn’t have been on “S.N.L.” if you weren’t pretty great.TOMLIN I was totally for it because I wanted Jane’s authorship to stand. So often, I’m thrown into the mix as her collaborator. It’s just not true. Jane is a solitary writer and that’s all there is to it. She writes pages and pages, and if you asked her now to write about this bottle of water, she’d probably come up with 2,000 words.Cecily, you recently performed a Weekend Update character, a clown named Goober who tells jokes about abortion, that felt like she could have fit into this play. Was that piece inspired by your work on this show?STRONG Not consciously writing it. It came from, I’m going to take Ambien and I’m going to write essays to myself every night, or I’m going to remain frustrated and do weird things. Obviously this is something I wanted to get out. I kept posing it to people — I’m thinking it’s about a clown talking about her abortion — and everybody was like, okaaay. I certainly felt scared, and then I felt like I came closer to earning this show. [Speaking to Tomlin] To your bravery, your courage, and what a bombastic, badass thing it is.Jane and Lily, were you ever criticized for your depictions of feminist characters in this play? They are affectionately rendered but still allowed to be laughed at and joked about.WAGNER Oh, yeah. We heard that a little bit.TOMLIN What was there?WAGNER Do you want me to name names?TOMLIN No, you don’t have to name names.WAGNER There are always people that say you shouldn’t. One time somebody insisted we shouldn’t have a monologue that was a half an hour long.TOMLIN Oh, yeah, well, that’s old stuff. You have to make those decisions yourself. Don’t be influenced.WAGNER When I went to a consciousness-raising session — and I only went to one, because I was kind of in shock — I knew that I had to talk about it. People looking at their genitalia and everything like that, there was something satirical there that you could use. I still love the movement and believe in the movement.Cecily and Leigh, how do you begin to tackle a play like this, where one actor is responsible for this much material?SILVERMAN There’s so much that you put down one coat of paint and then you keep going.STRONG I don’t think I’ve ever taken on anything like this, where I’ve been so challenged. How do I put on a coat and I’m trying to sing and I’m trying to quote Buckminster Fuller? It’s so many things but the minute we get one thing right it just feels so good. I feel like my brain is changing a little.Do you allow yourself to have favorite characters within the play?STRONG Something new tickles me every day. Leigh just gave me a big cart of stuff and was like, put it somewhere. What do you do with this thing? It was a great way to enter into Trudy. The other day, I was talking to a plant. I was like, ooh, I like the sound of how that plant shakes.Do you seek notes or input from Lily and Jane? Do they just weigh in when they want to, like the voice of God?STRONG I’ll take anything I can get.WAGNER We like the voice of God concept. [Laughter.]TOMLIN We’re trying to come [in person].WAGNER I have trouble with my leg. Loss of muscle memory, I guess. SILVERMAN We send them video and they’re with us always. There’s a line in the play where Trudy says that she puts some time aside each day to do “awe-robics,” and I will say that so much of working on the play is an exploration of “awe-robics.”WAGNER They’re wonderful, the way you communicate. I think you’re going to do something that actually makes our brains crack. Which could be good for the run of the show. More

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    Broadway Grosses Drop 26 Percent as Many Shows Cancel Performances

    The surge in coronavirus cases comes at a tough time for the theater industry, which traditionally relies on the holiday season box office.The surge in coronavirus cases is starting to take a real financial toll on Broadway, just as the industry is attempting to rebound from its lengthy shutdown.The Broadway League, a trade association, said on Tuesday that its theaters brought in $22.5 million last week. That’s a 26 percent drop from the $30.5 million in tickets sold the previous week; in the week before Christmas in 2019, total grosses were $40.1 million.The drop in grosses is a reflection of the fact that multiple shows have canceled performances when positive coronavirus tests forced cast or crew members to quarantine and there were not enough understudies or replacement workers for the shows to continue.Last weekend, about one-third of all shows canceled some performances, and this week, multiple shows decided to postpone performances until after Christmas, including “Ain’t Too Proud,” “Aladdin,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Hadestown,” “Hamilton,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “The Lion King, “MJ” and “Skeleton Crew.”Plus, “Tina” canceled until Christmas night; “Jagged Little Pill” closed entirely; “Mrs. Doubtfire” canceled Tuesday night; and “Waitress” canceled Tuesday and Wednesday nights.Attendance also dropped, given the cancellations: 184,227 people saw a Broadway show last week, down from 240,602 the previous week.The resulting revenue drop is a real concern for an industry where most shows, even before the pandemic, fail financially. But the damage is not evenly dispersed — some shows that stay open are benefiting by selling tickets to people scrambling for something to see after their first-choice show canceled. This year the Broadway League is releasing only aggregate weekly grosses rather than breaking them down for individual productions, so it is difficult to see exactly how the financial ramifications are unfolding.Five other shows cited the pandemic shutdown in deciding not to reopen this fall — the musicals “Frozen,” “Mean Girls” and “West Side Story” and the plays “Hangmen” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Two shows cited the ongoing pandemic in deciding to close for good after starting (or restarting) performances this fall, then pausing because of positive coronavirus tests in their companies: not only “Jagged Little Pill,” which announced its closing Monday night, but also the play “Chicken & Biscuits,” which closed last month.The current crisis is coming at the worst possible time for the industry, because the holiday season is traditionally the most lucrative time of year for Broadway, and many shows depend on the holidays to make up for softer periods.Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, said she does not envision the industry shutting down again, no matter how many individual shows have to pause. “I do not imagine a shutdown by us, unless every show has people with Covid,” she said. “We’re going to keep as many people employed as we can.”And New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, at a news conference on Tuesday, was similarly shutdown-averse. “No more shutdowns,” he said. “We’ve been through them. They were devastating. We can’t go through it again.” More

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    in Theater

    Revisiting Childhood Wonder With Winnie the Pooh and Emmet Otter

    Our critic takes in two puppet-driven musicals in Manhattan. But with the Omicron variant on the rise, maybe kid-friendly theater is best consumed at home right now.“My, God,” I thought, perhaps 20 minutes into “Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Stage Adaptation” at Theater Row in Manhattan. “Why am I here? That bear couldn’t even be bothered to put on pants.”One of the small private sorrows of last year’s lockdown was that I couldn’t take my children to the theater, a practice I’d begun when I was still carrying them in BabyBjorns. With vaccinations newly available to the 5-to-11 set, I had just started to bring them back. When I’d booked our tickets for “Winnie the Pooh,” the Omicron variant was still mostly an abstract concept, fodder for late-night jokes and Twitter memes. But as we made our way to Times Square this weekend — passing round-the-block lines at testing sites and crowding into a subway car — it felt a lot more real.Written and directed by Jonathan Rockefeller, with songs borrowed from the Sherman Brothers and other music composed by Nate Edmonson, “Winnie the Pooh” is an unremarkable stage adaptation of the Disney franchise, itself an adaptation of A.A. Milne’s short story collections about a human boy and his fuzzy friends. Despite having always agreed with Dorothy Parker’s assessment of Pooh in her Constant Reader column — “Tonstant Weader Fwowed up” — I’d hoped that the show would seem worth the risks.The show follows Pooh, that pantless “bear of very little brain,” and his animal friends through four seasons. The seasons — falling leaves, snowflakes — are absolutely the best part. The scruffy full-size puppets are manipulated by denim-clad actors doing weird voices. (The actors control the puppets by sticking a fist through the backs of their heads, which is somewhat disturbing.)But it’s both much too much, when it comes to the acting, and not nearly enough in terms of story or stakes or reasons for being. At the performance I attended, Pooh’s mic broke, and one of Tigger’s feet disconnected. In the summer section, Pooh became stuck in the hollow of a tree, which was nice for a while.A toddler behind me happily narrated the goings on, but one of my children threatened to doze off throughout and the other kept kicking me with her rain boots, which suggests something less than rapture.The cast of “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas” at New Victory Theater.Richard TermineTwo days before, we’d had a far more soothing experience, at another puppet-driven musical, the New Victory Theater’s “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas,” a stage adaptation of the 1977 television special, based in turn on the children’s book by Lillian and Russell Hoban. The theater looked as glorious as ever, though rigorous social distancing kept it less than half full. Onstage were a mix of enchanting puppets (including some really acrobatic squirrels) and humans dressed as animals. Set in Frogtown Hollow, a picture-pretty riverside community, the show tells the story of Emmet and Ma, semiaquatic animals eking out a hardscrabble life of laundry and odd jobs.When they receive news of a talent competition with a $50 reward, they separately decide to enter, though this means hocking Emmet’s tools (to buy a costume for Ma) and wrecking Ma’s washtub (to provide an instrument for Emmet). So it’s very “Gift of the Magi.” I question the wisdom of trading the means of honest work for a fleeting chance at fame. But then again I was a theater major, so really what do I know?Christopher Gattelli, the director and choreographer, and Timothy Allen McDonald, the lead producer, have gussied up the libretto nicely, giving the furry characters a bit more depth and enlivening the talent show. Mostly unchanged are Paul Williams’s superb songs, which draw lightly upon American folk, rock and bluegrass traditions. (Dan DeLange is the orchestrator, he and Larry Pressgrove also provided new arrangements.) Like his best work with the Muppets, Williams’s music is naïve without condescension, as playful as it is heart-whole beautiful. I had “Brothers,” “Our World” and “When the River Meets the Sea” flitting through my head for days after.Though it is a children’s show, it is not exclusively for children. (Our performance was attended almost entirely by adults.) The sets (Anna Louizos, with lighting by Jen Schriever) are charming and transporting, the costumes (Gregg Barnes) elegant. The message, which celebrates fellow feeling and mutual care, is especially welcome right now. I would have taken home every single squirrel.But I don’t know if you should see “Emmet Otter” or “Winnie the Pooh” for that matter, especially with children too young to be vaccinated, despite the care that theaters have taken with their Covid-19 protocols. The day after we saw “Emmet Otter,” the New Victory canceled the next several performances because a company member testing positive for Covid. (Performances resumed two days later.)And the day after “Winnie the Pooh,” we learned that my older child’s fully vaccinated teacher had tested positive, which meant that we would need to quarantine and then test. So it’s possible that we — and not that mom who was leisurely taking maskless selfies at “Winnie the Pooh” — were the real problem. Togetherness has its price right now.Happily, the New Victory has made “Emmet Otter” available for streaming. So you can visit Frogtown Hollow without ever leaving your home. Which isn’t what most of us want. But it may be what a lot of us need. Even a bear of very little brain — or a bear with a brain half-broken from risk assessment — knows that.Winnie the PoohThrough Jan. 30 at Theater Row, Manhattan; winniethepoohshow.com.Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band ChristmasThrough Jan. 2 at New Victory Theater, Manhattan; newvictory.org. More