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    John Cameron Mitchell Finds Joy in Mavis Staples and ‘Veneno’

    On the eve of concerts celebrating “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” the writer and performer also shares why “The Gnostic Gospels” feeds his soul.“I haven’t had such a good role since Hedwig,” John Cameron Mitchell said.He was talking about Joe Exotic of “Tiger King” fame — and comparing the chance to play him with “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” his 1998 rock musical and 2001 movie about a genderqueer East German singer stranded in Kansas after a botched sex-change operation.That tale, rapturous and raunchy, still reverberates, with people outside a West Village cafe slowing to gawk or offer up praise as Mitchell elaborated on his cultural essentials recently.At the end of the month, he and his “Hedwig” co-creator, Stephen Trask, will reunite for two nights in “Return to the Origin of Love” at the Town Hall in Manhattan. Billed as a New Year’s catharsis with a heaping serving of debauchery, the show melds songs and stories about the making of “Hedwig” with newer material like “Nation of One,” the duo’s first song in 20 years and part of Mitchell’s lockdown album “New American Dream.”It also includes “Call Me Joe,” an ode to Joe Exotic, the gay, polygamist, now-imprisoned zoo owner immortalized in Netflix’s “Tiger King,” a character so delicious that it inspired him to audition for the first time in 27 years.A mulleted Mitchell will star in “Joe Exotic,” a fictional series coming out on Peacock in 2022. He intends it to be a fully rounded portrayal, with fewer of the “eye-catching hooks” that reduced him to “that crazy guy over there.”“I almost feel like I was playing Richard III — an antihero who’s clearly out of his mind, but strangely admirable,” Mitchell said.Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Veneno”Television has rocked lately. I was most moved by the Spanish series “Veneno” on HBO Max. “Veneno” means “poison,” and it’s brilliant, just brilliant, about the legendary trans celebrity Cristina La Veneno, whose life was equally inspirational and cautionary. Simply the best series in 15 years and criminally unsung. I’ve become friends with Los Javis [the duo Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo], who are making it, and they’re going to present our Origin of Love Tour in Spain.2. Silvio RodríguezI’ve been marinating in the songs of the great Cuban trovador Silvio Rodríguez. I was looking for a song in Spanish to sing in Mexico City, and my Mexican singer friend said, “Listen to this song called ‘Ojalá’” — which was stunning. And I was like, “Who is this guy?” He really is in the Latin American world as important as Dylan. He’s connected to Castro’s revolution, but the purview is larger and is very much about the heart. I cover his song “Casiopea,” about an extraterrestrial stranded on Earth, on “New American Dream.”3. “The Gnostic Gospels” by Elaine PagelsIt’s a formative text for me, about the Christian texts which never made it into the Bible. [Her scholarship] spoke to me as a lapsed queer Catholic. I saw a much less misogynistic church, the idea of androgyny being the highest level of humanity and finding the divinity within. And along with Plato’s “Symposium,” it inspired “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”4. My House in New OrleansCovid made me question my monogamous relationship with New York, and I traveled widely. New Orleans kept drawing me back. That city groans under climate change, poverty and drugs but also shimmers with music, art, a neighborly walk-around culture and crawfish. I bought a house there from a chapter of the Order of the Oriental Templars once run by Aleister Crowley, who had his own take on Gnosticism. The energy in the house is powerful, and we’re adding our queer arty vibes to create a destination for community creativity.5. Sci-Fi FantasyI acted up a storm in the last year, but in my downtime, I reverted to my youth and devoured dozens of sci-fi fantasy books. My favorite authors have always been women. They’re less into the hardware and more focused on emotion and theme. When I was very young, Andre Norton was my favorite. She took on a male name because boys wouldn’t read a book by a woman. I’d always heard of Octavia Butler but only started reading her in the last couple of years. She’s very much about creating community in adversity, being Black and a little gender-nonconforming herself.6. Douglas Stuart’s NovelsI’m deep into the galleys of Stuart’s upcoming “Young Mungo,” the follow-up to his gorgeous Booker Prize-winner, “Shuggie Bain.” “Mungo” follows a Glaswegian 15-year-old in a similar poverty-stricken setting as “Shuggie.” Stuart’s aching empathy and sublime images really got their hooks in me like an ancestral tug. My wonderful and difficult mum, Joan Cameron, grew up in Glasgow. Both she and her sister, sweet Aunt Mary, passed recently, and reading Stuart inspired me to create a song with Ted Nash called “You Can Go Now,” featuring Wynton Marsalis and Catherine Russell as my mum.7. Mavis StaplesI was floored by Questlove’s doc, “Summer of Soul.” When Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples tear into “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” I was transported to heaven — not the airy-fairy buffet staffed by winged cater-waiters, but to the mountaintop accessed by a steep and bloody path. I’m presently commissioning a stained-glass portrait of Ms. Staples by the great Hadyn Butler. I worship the ground that she walks on.8. Modern Fairy TalesMy own nonbinariness — such a clinical word for a natural state — was recently stirred and shaken by two brilliant books: “Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl” by Andrea Lawlor and “Venus as a Boy” by Luke Sutherland. The former is a punk fable about a femboy who finds he can alter his body and gender at will. The protagonist of “Venus,” however, alters his body and gender at someone else’s will. Both are lonely — and heroic.9. Films by Stephen WinterMy buddy Stephen was finally acknowledged as one of our most courageous filmmakers by the inclusion of two of his films on the Criterion Channel. He produced Jonathan Caouette’s surreal auto-doc “Tarnation.” But more important, he created two seminal queer Black features: “Chocolate Babies” (1996), about a gang of H.I.V. positive “terrorists” fighting AIDS by any means necessary; and “Jason and Shirley” (2015) about the dark symbiotic relationship between the Jewish filmmaker Shirley Clarke and her gay Black cabaret artist muse, Jason Holliday.10. Lockdown PodcastsWhile luxuriating in “Dolly Parton’s America,” I rereleased Bryan Weller’s and my musical “Anthem: Homunculus,” starring Cynthia Erivo, Glenn Close and Patti LuPone, as a free podcast. I play a guy crowdfunding his cancer care who finds that his brain tumor is sentient — voiced by Laurie Anderson, naturally. I also provided voices for my brother Colin MacKenzie Mitchell’s [upcoming] “The Laundronauts,” starring the late great Ed Asner, about a boy who is stuffed into a washer by a bully and disappears. His friends, the Laundronauts, must go in and rescue him. I play the Spirit of Absentia, the land beyond the washer where all the lost things go: socks, coins and boys. Along with their hopes, fears and dreams. Lockdown metaphors abound. More

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    ‘Insecure’ Recap, Season 5, Episode 8: Fears and Desires

    This week, Issa is thriving personally and professionally, but a series of dreams (or nightmares) injects uncertainty into her situation.Season 5, Episode 8, ‘Choices, Okay!?’Let’s talk about dreams, a popular subject of poems, songs, books and plays. In life, they can give us something to strive for; in drama, they’re a useful way to illustrate a character’s hopes and fears.In this episode, Issa has a series of dreams — or possibly nightmares — and they all come up Lawrence. “Choices, Okay!?” is more about the dreams that Issa has not chased down and brought to life than about the ones that she has managed to reach.This episode starts with Issa and Nathan splayed around Issa’s loved-in bedroom. Issa is thinking about squirrels until she remembers that her friend Tiffany might be moving away. She does a lot of daydreaming in this episode. After a quip or two, Nathan gets up and heads to the bathroom to take what appears to be medication, a welcome sign that he is staying dedicated to his health and well-being.The couple is clearly getting along — it seems Nathan was able to show up for Issa in the way she wanted. She’s wearing his T-shirt around her house and he says he loves making her coffee, and then he asks Issa if they should move in together.“Wow, do you think we’re ready for that?” she replies, looking somewhat stunned.“I don’t know, maybe,” he responds with a shrug. “It will save us some money.”Then they put a pin in the conversation and move on.Initially, Issa’s professional life appears to be blossoming along with her romantic one. In a dreamlike sequence, she is offered what seems like a high number to partner with MBW. She puts on a show at the Miracle Theater in Los Angeles and expertly walks her sponsors through the process — she is in charge, she knows her talking points and has her bases covered and then some. Then it appears we move forward in the timeline and she is on a panel being interviewed by Elaine Welteroth; it looks like our girl has professionally leveled up.Suddenly, she’s wearing a fly suit in first-class, sitting next to Ty Dollar $ign, who is on his way to Los Angeles to work with Crenshawn. Then Issa arrives at home. Nathan is at the house and the house is beautiful, that’s when I knew she was daydreaming. It might be when she figured it out, too — she kind of snaps out of it and asks Nathan when they moved to that apartment.At this point, the episode dedicated some time to Kelli, who was helping Molly’s parents with their estate planning, so I want to do the same. What would “Insecure” be without her? She is always on time, unabashed, constantly pushing the girls to take better care of themselves. She will DM Daniel Kaluuya and then say he DM’d her first, because why not? She is like a human confetti popper of joy and hilarious rage. (This week she told Issa’s brother, Ahmal, that she was going to write a TV show about him just so she could kill him off.) When she is helping Molly’s parents, she eases the tension with her on-point witticism and jokes. We all need a Kelli.Issa’s second daydream of the episode was both more aspirational and more fraught. In this one, she partners up with Crenshawn, who apologizes for his behavior on social media, and opens up two locations with him. She is known and loved in the community and plays spades with the ice cream man on Sundays. (Glad to hear that she finally learned how.) Ty Dollar $ign partners up with MBW instead, and promotes water on bus ads.Issa, on the other hand, receives the key to Inglewood from Tyra Banks — we all want to receive something from Tyra after watching her pass out headshots on “America’s Next Top Model” for years, I get it — and has a day named after her. At the end of this dream, she goes home and Nathan walks out to greet her. But then when he walks into a different room, Lawrence is who comes back out.“I’m proud of you,” he says to her. “You had a lot of options but you made a choice that made you happy, and now you’re being rewarded for it.”He goes in for a kiss and Issa screams.Issa has it bad — even when she’s daydreaming about what her life could become, Lawrence is still in play. Toward the end of the episode, she’s having dinner with Nathan at her place and he goes in the next room. When he says that he wants her to be happy, Issa hears Lawrence’s voice and braces herself for him to walk out of the room, but Nathan walks out instead. Did she look a little disappointed?In Issa’s real life, Nathan is her boyfriend and that’s who is in her house. Her dreams are turning into nightmares; is that what happens to dreams deferred? Will Issa try to turn her dream — ending up with Lawrence, it seems — into reality, no matter how misguided that move might be? Or will her actual reality be enough for her? More

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    Stephen Colbert Comments on the ‘Slides of Sedition’

    Colbert couldn’t believe Congress is currently investigating a 38-page PowerPoint document detailing plans to overturn the 2020 election.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.‘Slides of Sedition’The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is looking into a 38-page PowerPoint document sent to President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that included plans to overturn the 2020 election.“PowerPoint? They weren’t just trying to overturn democracy, they were trying to bore it to death,” Stephen Colbert said on Monday night.“So what was in these slides of sedition? We’re not exactly sure yet, but there is one deck that’s been circulating, that may be the deck in question, and one of the slides on that was a list of recommendations, including a plan to ‘declare a national security emergency.’ I’m sure exactly how you do that. I assume by breaking into every broadcast using the emergency [expletive] system.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“They were also planning to declare electronic voting in all states invalid. Instead, they wanted to rely on ‘legal and genuine paper ballot counts.’ OK, so if you can’t trust computers, how are you giving your presentation, via PowerPoint pigeon? They’re staging a coup-coup!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s right, they wrote down their plans for a coup in a PowerPoint. You know what that means — Congress is going to have to subpoena Clippy. That’s from our new segment, ‘Jokes from 1995.’” — SETH MEYERS“Even the Mafia knows to use code words. If the Mafia ever made a PowerPoint presentation, it would say something vague like, ‘Plan for the guys at the place to do the thing.’ ‘OK, boss, what’s the next slide?’ ‘There’s no more slides. There’s just the one slide.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Elon Musk Edition)“Time magazine today unveiled their annual person of the year, and that person is Elon Musk or as I call him, Old Sheldon.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Person of the year is believed to be the highest honor ever awarded to a person who cuts his own hair.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In response to this, Jeff Bezos just bought Time magazine.” — JAMES CORDEN“He was going to go out and buy a copy, but then he realized he’d have to pay taxes on it, so it was, you know, not worth it.” — SETH MEYERS“It’s important to note this is not necessarily a compliment. Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump were also named person of the year. Time — for real — Time is basically your dad watching a bad Super Bowl commercial, and going, ‘Hey, love him or hate him, we’re all talking about him, right?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Man, I’m so happy for him. Like the guy could really use an ego boost, you know?” — TREVOR NOAH“And honestly you can’t argue with this. I mean, richest man in the world, who also control space, crypto and electric cars? Who would even be second place, like maybe Pete Davidson, maybe?” — TREVOR NOAH“Yeah, Musk received the honor for his work in space exploration and after he bought 10 million subscriptions to Time magazine.” — JIMMY FALLON“I’m kidding, although it was a little strange that everyone at Time drove into work today in a brand-new Tesla.” — JIMMY FALLON“Being named person of the year is a big deal. It’s basically ‘sexiest man alive,’ but you’re competing against the Dalai Lama and the pope.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingTom Holland, Regina King and Ted Danson are just a few of the celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves in a new edition of the popular recurring segment of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightChelsea Handler will stop by Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutJim Henson with Big Bird, as seen in “Street Gang: How We Got Sesame Street.” The HBO documentary uses file footage and new interviews to detail the early years of the influential show.Sesame Workshop/HBOA new documentary about “Sesame Street” details how social purpose has always been a part of the long-running children’s show. More

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    Review: In ‘Flying Over Sunset,’ Getting High With the Stars

    A new musical imagines the all-singing, all-dancing LSD trips of Aldous Huxley, Clare Boothe Luce and Cary Grant.To a perpetual square, nothing is as mystifying as another person’s high. Or so I learned in college, during the heyday of chemically induced inner journeys — and again at the Vivian Beaumont Theater the other night. Though sometimes mesmerizing, “Flying Over Sunset,” the new musical about LSD that opened there on Monday, is mostly bewildering, and further proof that transcendence can’t be shared.It admits as much in its structure, which throws into one scenario (by James Lapine) three famous seekers who never actually got high together. We meet them separately, starting with the philosopher and novelist Aldous Huxley (Harry Hadden-Paton), tripping at a Hollywood drugstore in the late 1950s. Next comes the greatest of all male movie stars, Cary Grant (Tony Yazbeck), demanding the drug — then legal — from his second wife’s psychiatrist. Finally we drop in on the playwright and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce (Carmen Cusack), hallucinating “a sapphire dragonfly” soon after being nominated as ambassador to Brazil.Much of this is true — if not the details of the visions then the settings and situations. But to advance the story beyond that, Lapine has to indulge in speculative nonfiction, a musical theater hallucinogen he has used to great effect before, in his play “Twelve Dreams,” inspired by Jungian imagery, and in his book for the musical “Sunday in the Park With George,” about the painter Georges Seurat. Perhaps recalling Seurat’s pointillistic technique, he writes in a preface to “Flying Over Sunset” that his script “connects the dots” of known history.It certainly connects the major players, bringing them together counterfactually, at the end of Act I, to discuss their common interest over champagne at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. In Act II, with the philosopher Gerald Heard (Robert Sella) as their “guide,” they indulge that interest together at Luce’s Malibu estate.Their trips take up perhaps two-thirds of the show — and 100 percent of the songs, by Tom Kitt and Michael Korie. As a concept, that makes sense, not just because music is arguably the most transcendent of art forms (and is often lovely here) but also because the characters, as Lapine presents them, apparently need to be high to be fully alive.Bottoms up: From left, Sella, Hadden-Paton, Cusack and Yazbeck prepare to embark on simultaneous LSD trips.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt’s hard to argue with him from personal experience; as he recently told The Times, he used LSD frequently while in graduate school. But the actual lives of Huxley, Grant and Luce do not support the idea that they were lacking in the rich complexity of humanity when sober.To correct for that problem, Lapine, who also directed the show, steers “Flying Over Sunset” in some very strange and ultimately tiresome directions. First, he assigns each character a buried emotional problem that needs resolving. Huxley is grieving the death of his wife. Grant, having never fully reconciled his imperturbable public persona with the terrorized child he once was, has problems with women. And Luce somehow feels guilt over the deaths of her mother and daughter, in car accidents she had nothing to do with.There’s an overly programmatic quality to that setup, especially as delivered in the exceedingly flat dialogue Lapine seems to favor. (“I think what’s interesting,” Heard says, “is that you each seem to be at a turning point in your lives.”) Perhaps the flatness is meant to set up the floridness of the trips, which compensate for the lack of real-world dramatic development by growing more and more outré as the show, at two hours and 40 minutes, wears on.The first of those trips is at least efficient in characterizing Huxley, whom Hadden-Paton winningly portrays as a goofy know-it-all nerd. Spotting a Botticelli monograph at the drugstore, he imagines characters from the painting “The Return of Judith to Bethulia” coming to life somewhat randomly around him, to the strains of some beautiful bel canto pastiche by Kitt and Korie. Here and elsewhere, you may be reminded of “Sunday in the Park” for its tableaux vivants and shimmering orchestral effects, if not for its thematic discipline.And Grant’s maiden trip, involving an otherwise flat-footed encounter with his younger self (Atticus Ware) and violent father (Nehal Joshi), allows for a showstopping dance routine to a music hall ditty called “Funny Money.” The choreography for Yazbeck and Ware, by the tap phenom Michelle Dorrance, almost obliterates any qualms about the song’s psychobabbly premise.But for an audience not invested in Lapine’s personal imagery, the second act, with its nonstop LSD sequences, goes quickly downhill. A number called “I Like to Lead,” in which Sophia Loren, Grant’s co-star in the 1958 movie “Houseboat,” slaps him around in an allegory of female domination, is incoherent. Another, in which Grant imagines himself as a “giant penis rocket ship” on a “secret mission” to spare the earth from disaster, is merely mortifying. Luce’s visit to heaven to see her mother and daughter, in a song called “An Interesting Place,” is as banal as that title.Emily Pynenburg as Sophia Loren and Yazbeck as Cary Grant in a number recalling a scene from the 1958 movie “Houseboat.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt least there are compensations in the typically gorgeous technical wizardry of the Lincoln Center Theater production. The lighting (by Bradley King) and the projections (by 59 Productions) on Beowulf Boritt’s swirling-circles set — along with the immersively psychedelic sound by Dan Moses Schreier — bring us closer to the sensation of melting consciousness than the script ever manages. At times even the costumes (by Toni-Leslie James) seem to be tripping. And Dorrance’s choreography for the show’s opening, arranging the cast’s varying footfalls in rhythmic counterpoint, is sublime.These are not enough to outweigh Lapine’s failure to dramatize what he evidently sees as the life-enhancing possibilities of mind-altering drugs. If those possibilities exist, surely they are not to be found in a direct linkup of symptoms and cures, as proposed by “Flying Over Sunset.” During his Botticelli immersion, Huxley claims that his right eye, severely damaged from a childhood illness, has started “working” again. Grant and Luce, having faced unfinished emotional business, emerge from their trips refreshed and ready to move on.But LSD, on its own, is not psychoanalysis by other means. And if the drug offers access to a shared consciousness that can help humans connect, neither the show nor the subsequent lives of its real-life characters demonstrate it. Luce, a brittle charmer in Cusack’s smart rendering, drifted ever rightward politically; Grant married three more times.As for Huxley, despite his supposedly improved eyesight, his overall health deteriorated quickly. On his deathbed in 1963, he asked to be injected with 100 micrograms of LSD. He was still a believer — but in what? Some mysteries, this musical among them, are too interior to be understood.Flying Over SunsetThrough Feb. 6 at the Lincoln Center Theater, Manhattan; flyingoversunset.com. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More

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    Review: In ‘Best of Enemies,’ a TV Duel Becomes a Theater Gem

    James Graham’s new play draws parallels between the bad-tempered 1968 debates between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal and the rancorous public arena of today.LONDON — History comes hurtling to life in “Best of Enemies,” the latest attempt from the prolific playwright James Graham (“Ink,” “Quiz”) to put flesh on the bare bones of the past. Chronicling a sequence of televised face-offs that transfixed the United States in 1968, Graham once again shows a gift for mining the annals of politics and journalism for real theatrical gems. The result, at the Young Vic through Jan. 22, is the most riveting play in London just now.It helps that the personalities involved in those 10 TV debates were William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal, two richly articulate men of any dramatist’s dreams. On the one side was Buckley (played here by David Harewood), founder of The National Review and a conservative grandee; on the other was Vidal (Charles Edwards), the pleasure-seeking novelist and playwright with two homes in Italy and a withering disregard for the “Christian values” Buckley espoused.Ideological opposites, the pair were brought together by ABC to restore the flagging ratings of a network dryly referred to early in the play as the “almost broadcasting company.” Drawing inspiration from a 2015 film documentary of the same name, Graham sets their increasingly barbed exchanges against the backdrop of a tumultuous summer. We’re reminded, via Luke Halls’s video design, of the riots and protests that were tearing at America, just as Buckley and Vidal tore into one another. (Bunny Christie’s set is a horseshoe-shaped soundstage with screens perched above the action.)Luke Halls’s video design, on screens in a set designed by Bunny Christie, evokes the turbulent summer of 1968.Wasi DanijuGraham’s narrative begins at the end, with his opponents clearly disturbed by a shift in their discussion from which there is no turning back. Vidal has denounced Buckley on air during the Democratic convention in Chicago as “a crypto-Nazi,” and Buckley has retaliated by dismissing Vidal as “queer.” The play then rewinds and charts the course back to that on-air debacle, but we also seem to be witnessing a descent into ad hominem argument that has only gathered in intensity to this day.Graham’s obvious theatrical prototype is “Frost/Nixon,” Peter Morgan’s 2006 play, which Ron Howard later made into a film. But the stakes here seem higher and the context broader: Jeremy Herrin’s deft production brings in cameos by Aretha Franklin (Justina Kehinde) — “they know who I am,” she snaps when she is introduced — and Andy Warhol (Tom Godwin). The actor John Hodgkinson, doubling parts, plays Chicago’s bellicose mayor, Richard Daley, and the ABC News anchor Howard K. Smith, both of whom he does well.James Baldwin (Syrus Lowe, excellent), another onetime debating opponent of Buckley’s, is seen now and again, commenting on the personalities and the fallout between them: “Whatever the hate, wherever it comes from, it will always eventually destroy the one hating,” he tells us.From left: Emilio Doorgasingh, Kevin McMonagle, Syrus Lowe and John Hodgkinson.Wasi DanijuGraham sufficiently connects the vitriol between Buckley and Vidal with the contempt, and worse, that dominates the airwaves now, but you slightly recoil when someone belabors a point. “More and more, we’re divided into our own communities of concern,” a media analyst (Kehinde again) remarks near the end, bemoaning the way in which TV has increasingly carved up American life.Even then, the feral energy between the two leads proves irresistible. Vidal is a plum role, and the wonderful Edwards is suitably dapper and silver-tongued, not least when on the offensive: “Do you read?” he asks Buckley. “You could learn a great deal.” We clock Vidal’s predatory eye — “speaking of eating, hello” he remarks libidinously to a young man (Sam Otto) who will become his aide and bedmate — alongside his exhaustive breadth of historical knowledge.Buckley, far from being the straw man of the pair, is arguably the more complicated. Casually disdainful and airily patronizing, he is given tremendous gravitas by Harewood, a Black British actor cunningly cast against expectation as a white establishment figure who was taken to task for bigotry more than once.Speaking in a lower register than Buckley, Harewood requires that we listen afresh to Buckley, as we do to Vidal: both men at ease with their characters’ fast-talking fluency of thought. And if their shared fate was to cross the line that separates reasonable debate from rancor, well, welcome to the world today, and to the coarsening of the public arena that “Best of Enemies” brings stingingly to life.Best of EnemiesThrough Jan. 22, 2022 at the Young Vic in London; youngvic.org. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘American Auto’ and ‘MTV Unplugged’

    NBC debuts a sitcom about bumbling auto executives. And Tony Bennett sings with Lady Gaga on “MTV Unplugged.”Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Dec. 13-19. Details and times are subject to change.MondayAMERICAN AUTO 10 p.m. on NBC. In “Superstore,” the TV producer and creator Justin Spitzer lampooned a distinctly American workplace — a Costco-like big-box store — threatened by industry innovation. His new sitcom, “American Auto,” does the same for the automotive industry. It follows a group of bumbling executives at a fictional Detroit auto manufacturer as they try to keep up with an industry being transformed by self-driving cars and electric engines.SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (2017) 5 p.m. on FX. Tom Holland leaps back into theaters this week in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” his latest outing as that superhero, and the newest in a long line of attempts to capture the energy of comic book panels inside of film frames. This 2017 entry was the first time that Holland had a Spider-Man movie to himself. In her review for The New York Times Manohla Dargis called it a “likable, amusing” reboot. “What makes Spider-Man different and, ideally, work as a character, giving him an off-kilter charm, is he retains the uncertainties and vulnerabilities of adolescence,” Dargis wrote. “The team behind ‘Homecoming’ certainly gets that Spider-Man is a kid,” she said, “even if the movie plays the naïf angle too hard at times.”TuesdayAlan Cumming in “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.”Andrew YoungTHE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The actor Alan Cumming teams up with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for this new take on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story of the same name. Conceived by the producer and conductor John Mauceri, who leads the performers here, this version combines live narration with music.ERNST LUBITSCH MOVIES 8 p.m. on TCM. On Tuesday night, TCM will show a string of early movies by the formative filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch. First up: THE DOLL (1919), a comedic fantasy about a young man who decides to marry a life-size doll. (The story was adapted from “La poupée,” an operetta by Edmond Audran, itself an adaptation of the E.T.A. Hoffmann story “Der Sandmann.”) Next: THE OYSTER PRINCESS (1919) at 9:15 p.m. and THREE WOMEN (1924) at 10:30 p.m., both also about relationship shenanigans. The Lubitsch continues into the early-morning hours for the hardiest among us.WednesdayTHE IHEARTRADIO JINGLE BALL 2021 8 p.m. on the CW. Lil Nas X, Ed Sheeran, the Jonas Brothers and Saweetie are among the headliners of this year’s iHeartRadio holiday tour. This special will compile highlights from that tour, which included a stop at Madison Square Garden last week.ThursdayTony Bennett and Lady Gaga in “MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga.”Kevin Mazur/MTVMTV UNPLUGGED: TONY BENNETT & LADY GAGA 9 p.m. on MTV. Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga perform songs from “Love for Sale,” their album of duets, in this special. The album was released in September, months after Bennett announced that he has been living with Alzheimer’s disease. It has been promoted as Bennett’s final record. That gives this old-school-jazz-club set a bittersweet flavor, but the sweetness prevails; the tone here is warm and celebratory.FridayLIVE FROM BRADLEY SYMPHONY CENTER: MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The conductor Ken-David Masur leads the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in classic works by Ellington, Gershwin and Stravinsky and a new piece by Eric Nathan in this concert, which celebrates the opening of the orchestra’s restored concert hall. The pianist Aaron Diehl joins as a guest.THE REAL CHARLIE CHAPLIN (2021) 10 p.m. on Showtime. The filmmakers Peter Middleton and James Spinney use reams of archival footage; narration from the actress Pearl Mackie; and, perhaps most interestingly, dramatizations of audio interviews by lip-syncing actors to revisit the life and career of Charlie Chaplin in this documentary. It’s a rags-to-riches tale: The film follows Chaplin’s journey to Hollywood heights from a difficult childhood in Victorian London. The filmmakers “mostly run through the well-trodden timeline of Charlie Chaplin’s life and fame — from poverty to ubiquity to exile in Switzerland,” Nicolas Rapold wrote in his review for The Times, “but they keep up a wondering, questing approach.”SaturdayA scene from “Ron’s Gone Wrong.”Locksmith Animation/20th Century StudiosRON’S GONE WRONG (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. A kind of “Black Mirror” for the whole family, this computer-animated movie casts Zach Galifianakis as the voice of Bubble, a cute little robot who becomes the companion of boy named Ben (Jack Dylan Grazer). Bubble is the product of big tech company. Ben’s copy is defective, which may or may not be the reason this human-robot relationship is destined to be a bumpy one. Released after recent revelations from a Facebook whistle-blower have made the role of tech giants in the real-world more concerning than ever before, “Ron’s Gone Wrong” immerses viewers in “a world that suddenly looks more dystopian than it did before,” Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review for The Times. But “as family entertainment,” he wrote, “it’s fine.”Sunday1883 9 p.m. on Paramount Network. Paramount has had a big hit with “Yellowstone,” its modern-day Western series that stars Kevin Costner as a headstrong rancher. As its title suggests, this new prequel spinoff series brings the action to the 19th century. It follows Costner’s ancestors on a journey through the Great Plains. Sam Elliott, the actor and veteran of westerns, stars alongside the singers Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. More

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    in Television

    Kate McKinnon Returns to ‘S.N.L.’ as Dr. Anthony Fauci

    McKinnon wasted no time playing numerous roles in a “Saturday Night Live” episode in which Billie Eilish was both host and musical guest.For the first seven episodes of its current season, “Saturday Night Live” was without the services of Kate McKinnon while she worked on other projects. This had temporarily deprived the show of one of its most prolific impressionists, and though other cast members helped to fill the void, “S.N.L.” wasted no time in putting McKinnon back to work upon her return.This weekend’s episode, for which the pop star Billie Eilish was both the host and the musical guest, began with McKinnon returning to the role of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, in a speech where she addressed concerns about the rise of the Omicron coronavirus variant.But first, McKinnon asked, “Do people still think I’m sexy or are we done with that? When people see me on TV, they think, this can’t be good. And their children think, wow, that Elf on the Shelf got old.”She then introduced a series of short scenes meant to dramatize real-life scenarios that people might find themselves in this holiday season.In the first, Mikey Day played a prospective customer at a restaurant who had lost his vaccination card. “Then you are banished from society,” its hostess, Heidi Gardner, told him. “Have fun living in the woods.” (As Fauci, McKinnon helpfully commented on their interaction, “You can get a replacement card. I think.”)In other scenes, Bowen Yang and Ego Nwodim played an airline passenger and a flight attendant, and Kyle Mooney and Melissa Villaseñor played a mall Santa Claus and a child hoping to sit on his lap.Another scene that McKinnon said was about “two unemployed brothers on Christmas Day” turned out to depict ex-New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo (Pete Davidson) and the recently fired CNN host Chris Cuomo (Andrew Dismukes).“We both lost our jobs,” Davidson said, pausing to add, “because of Covid.”Cecily Strong and Chloe Fineman appeared as Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, both wielding assault rifles, and Aidy Bryant played Senator Ted Cruz, describing herself as “the weirdo with a beard-o.”At the sketch’s conclusion, McKinnon tried to find some common ground. “Clearly this country is divided,” she said. “But I think we all agree on at least a few things. We all want to spend time together with our families.”Bryant interjected, “Or run it back solo to Cancun.”Davidson observed, “Family is all we have.”“Yeah,” added Dismukes. “As of two weeks ago.”Dose of the Holiday Spirit of the WeekIf the various decorations and poinsettias around Studio 8H didn’t already remind you that this was a Yuletide episode of “S.N.L.,” the holiday mood was quickly established by this sketch in which Villaseñor and Alex Moffat played a couple watching the Christmas cards on their refrigerator come to life.The well-wishers included Fineman and Day as the parents in a particularly fertile Christian family; Yang and Kenan Thompson as a middle-aged gay couple with a long-lived dog; and Punkie Johnson, who strong-armed Miley Cyrus (playing herself) into posing with her for a photo.Social Media Parody of the WeekWhat’s the shortest duration of time in which an “S.N.L.” character can exist? A sketch? A Weekend Update deskside bit? How about just one joke?It’s a mathematical riddle that gets put to the test in this segment that sends up the viral video site TikTok and features a seemingly endless stream of single-serving characters. Watch for Fineman as a conspiracy theorist obsessed with Blake Lively’s attire; Eilish as a dancing nurse oblivious to her own patients; Aristotle Athari as a stand-up comic who doesn’t handle heckling very well; James Austin Johnson (we think?) as something called Homer Simpson A.S.M.R.; and possibly 20 or 30 other bits we may have missed.Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on headlines from the week, including the guilty verdict in the Jussie Smollett trial and criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris.Jost began:On Thursday, a Chicago jury declared Jussie Smollett really bad at acting. Smollett was found guilty of charges related to staging a hate crime. It’s the worst staged hate crime since my all-Christian production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” And in legal news where someone definitely won’t get convicted, Donald Trump is being investigated for fraud by New York’s attorney general, who wants to depose Trump under oath on Jan 7. But come on, Jan. 7? That’s the day after his big anniversary. [A picture of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is shown onscreen.]Che continued:According to a new report, a former staff member for Vice President Kamala Harris says that she often fails to read briefing material and is unprepared for meetings. It feels really amazing to finally see someone in the White House who’s just like me. After the tree outside Fox News headquarters was sent on fire by a homeless man, “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt said, “This Scrooge is not going to get away with it.” And nothing has ever explained Fox News better than a rich white lady calling a homeless man Scrooge.Five Minutes ’Til Closing Credits Sketch of the WeekYour reward for making it to the end of the show was this loopy segment featuring McKinnon and Eilish in a promotional video for an utterly generic — and yet thoroughly objectionable — hotel chain called the Inn & Suites & Hotel Room Inn.Eilish’s brother, Finneas, turns up as a chaotic valet (who performs a few extra duties on the side) and Eilish declares in her best deadpan, “See why Trip Advisor called us a stock photo you can sleep in,” as she and McKinnon try and fail to prevent themselves from cracking up. More

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    in Theater

    ‘The Woman Gave Him His Ticket, and He Walked Off’

    In tribute to a New York City institution, this week’s Metropolitan Diary offers reader tales of encounters with Stephen Sondheim.Going UpDear Diary:A few years ago, I went to see a friend in a play at the Signature Theater in Manhattan. The elevator was empty when I got in. Seconds later, Stephen Sondheim got in too and stood almost shoulder to shoulder with me.I froze. I couldn’t speak.After exiting the elevator, we both approached the young woman at the box office. He was in front of me.“Reservation, Sondheim,” I heard him say.The woman gave him his ticket, and he walked off.It was my turn.“Mere mortal,” I said.“Aren’t we all?” she replied.— Ellen RatnerVote For The Best Metropolitan Diary Entry of 2021We’ll have published 255 Diary entries this year by the time it ends. We need your help choosing the best. New York Times editors narrowed the field to five finalists. Now it’s up to you to vote for your favorite.Close CallDear Diary:I was a freshman at Marist College in fall 1983 when I returned to my dorm room to find a message scrawled on the little whiteboard hanging on my door: “Stephen Sondheim called. Call him back at … ”Figuring it was one of my theater-loving friends from home making a joke, I called back from the pay phone at the end of the floor, only to discover that it was in fact Stephen Sondheim’s office number.His assistant answered and asked when it would be convenient for him to call me back. I was so stunned that I didn’t ask why he was calling or how he had gotten the pay phone number. (It turned out he had tried my home in the Bronx first, and my mother had given him the pay phone number. “Did a Stephen Sondheim get ahold of you?” she asked when I called later.)I explained to Mr. Sondheim’s assistant that I was in college and could only be reached at a communal pay phone but that I could be at it any time the next evening.When the next night came, the phone rang at the designated time. I answered on the first ring. It wasn’t Mr. Sondheim. The caller was Gerald Chapman, his creative partner in the Young Playwrights Festival, a contest for teenagers that the two had recently started.Mr. Chapman was calling to tell me that a one-act play I had written in high school had been selected as a semifinalist. (I had forgotten that I submitted it.)So, I never got to speak with the theater legend, but in my mind, I can still see the message on that erasable board: “Stephen Sondheim called. Call him back at … ”— John RocheEast Side StoryDear Diary:One Sunday night in the early 1980s, I dropped by my office on Park Avenue and 48th Street. As I was heading across Park Avenue to a parking garage in my small two-seater, a car ran a red light and T-boned me.My car was crushed, and I was pretty shaken up. The police came to the scene. The other driver told the officers that I had run the light.There were three people on a nearby corner who had seen the whole thing. Without hesitating, one approached the officers. He told them what he had witnessed and confirmed my story: The other driver had run a red light before crashing into me.Still shaken, I approached the man and thanked him. He was reserved, humble and forthcoming. I asked for his name and phone number in case my insurance company needed to contact him. It was only when he told me his name that I learned this witness was Stephen Sondheim. Extraordinary!The insurance company said later that the other driver’s claim had been closed because of the witness’s account. I called Mr. Sondheim to thank him again for stepping forward.He asked how I was feeling.— Barry A. BryerFirst Name, PleaseDear Diary:Many years ago, my husband and I decided on the spur of the moment to see a Broadway show. We phoned and reserved tickets.When we arrived at the box office, my husband got on the line, and I stepped to the side and stood next to a young man.The person in front of my husband was Stephen Sondheim.The woman at the box office asked Mr. Sondheim for his first name.“I hope she doesn’t ask him to spell it,” I said quietly.The young man next to me laughed.— Marcia AltmanWaving HelloDear Diary:I was waiting for a crosstown bus on East 49th Street near Second Avenue the day before Thanksgiving on my way to see a matinee of “Company.”Stephen Sondheim’s townhouse is across the street, and I noticed that the blinds in the second-story window were open. I don’t know why, but I felt moved to get a better look.I crossed the street and was on the sidewalk just beneath that window when I saw Mr. Sondheim suddenly swing around in a chair and wave.Reflexively, I waved back.I realized later that he had probably been trying to get the attention of the driver of the Lincoln Town Car that had just pulled up. It all happened so fast. I had walked past his house many times in the 30 years I had lived in the neighborhood, and nothing like this had ever happened before.I went back to the bus stop. The driver locked the car and walked up the block. And Mr. Sondheim disappeared into his house.— Christina ClarkeRead all recent entries and our submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter.Illustrations by Agnes LeeSubmit Your Metropolitan DiaryYour story must be connected to New York City and no longer than 300 words. An editor will contact you if your submission is being considered for publication. More