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    Netflix Holiday Movies Ranked, From Tree Toppers to Lumps of Coal

    Is the streaming service delivering goodies in its holiday stockings? We make an assessment.We are back for our third annual ranking of the new original Netflix Christmas films, and the news is good: After last season’s dull vintage, Netflix has gotten back on track and improved its batting average. Still, it’s worth noting that while the top movies are much better than their equivalents from last year, the bottom entries are much, much worse. (Note that more originals are slated to debut after our deadline, but the biggest presents have already come down the chimney). Light spoilers ahead.1. ‘Single All the Way’Hulu scored with the lesbian romantic comedy “Happiest Season” last year, and now Netflix is striking back with a male version. This time, the lead does not shun the right love interest (Team Riley forever!).Michael Urie stars as the serially single Peter, who has dragged his roommate and best friend, Nick (Philemon Chambers), home for the holidays. Once settled in cozy New Hampshire, famine turns to feast as Peter is torn between two lovely suitors — there are no baddies in this movie. One is his mother’s trainer, James (the Hallmark Channel hottie Luke Macfarlane), and the other is the friend-zoned Nick, who had been hiding his true feelings.Directed by Michael Mayer, “Single All the Way” is fast-paced, funny and sweet without being cloying (the HGTV joke is gold). Kathy Najimy and Jennifer Coolidge, as Peter’s mother and aunt, deliver particularly delicious turns — the rehearsal scenes for Coolidge’s Christmas pageant alone could have landed this movie in the No. 1 spot.2. ‘A Boy Called Christmas’Like “Klaus” (No. 2 on our 2019 ranking), this film is a Santa origin story, albeit a live-action one as opposed to animated. A poor Finnish boy, Nikolas (Henry Lawfull), sets off to find his father (Michiel Huisman), who has left him behind to find the village where elves live. Of course that place could merely be the stuff of legends, but since Nikolas has a talking pet mouse (voiced by Stephen Merchant), we know early on that anything is possible.Based on a book by Matt Haig, “A Boy Called Christmas” knows that the best fairy tales have dark undertones, and it drops satisfyingly ominous touches: Dad is far from perfect; the wicked children-hating Aunt Carlotta (Kristen Wiig, in too short a role) does something unspeakable to Nikolas’s beloved turnip doll.Regrettably, the film never goes full Roald Dahl on us — if only Tim Burton had directed it. But kids should enjoy the story while their parents will eat up the sneakier jokes and fully appreciate Sally Hawkins’s stunning performance as the elf leader Mother Vodol.3. ‘Love Hard’This rom-com has such a sketchy premise that its spectacular recovery should count as an Olympics-worthy gymnastics feat.The biggest test is that viewers are asked to not hate Josh (Jimmy O. Yang) after he catfishes Natalie (Nina Dobrev) by using a photo of his hunky friend Tag (Darren Barnet) on a dating app. Not only does Natalie quickly get over the switcheroo, she then agrees to pretend to be Josh’s girlfriend. The film’s main asset is Yang (Jian Yang on “Silicon Valley”), whose Josh miraculously comes across as sweet rather than creepy. Once that battle is won, “Love Hard” — which is funnier than most rom-coms and fully embraces a farcical goofiness — can convincingly sell its central relationship. By the time Natalie and Josh duet on a memorably revised version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” we are firmly rooting for them.Bonus (likely involuntary) Netflix callbacks: Natalie is said to be a Los Angeles 6 and a Lake Placid 10; in “Single All the Way,” Nick is described as a 10 and Peter is a 10 in New Hampshire.4. ‘A Castle for Christmas’Sophie (Brooke Shields) is a best-selling American romance novelist who travels to Scotland to reconnect with her roots and impulsively decides to buy a scenic castle from its bristly cash-strapped owner, Duke Myles (Cary Elwes). Since a white-knuckle suspense this is not, they fall in love and all ends well.The film supplies the usual rom-com accouterments, in this case an adorable knitting circle that warmly welcomes Sophie, but it really hangs on the chemistry between Shields and Elwes. Fortunately, these two have a comfortable, playful rapport that makes their preposterous circumstances almost feel natural. Sealing the deal for Myles is his dog, Hamish, played by Barley, a natural who is more than ready to lead a spinoff movie. Barley is a 10 anywhere.5. ‘The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star’Netflix’s holiday all-star Vanessa Hudgens is back for the third installment of her trademark franchise, and this time everybody seems to have an eye on the clock, waiting for the ordeal to end.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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    René Pollesch Aims for a ‘Safe Space’ at the Volksbühne in Berlin

    René Pollesch is the fourth boss of the Volksbühne in four years. The Berlin theater is pinning hopes of a return to its former vibrancy on his collaborative approach.BERLIN — This fall, a new era at the Volksbühne theater got off to a curiously muted start. René Pollesch, the theater’s new artistic director, did not deliver a splashy opening salvo or unveil his first season with a flourish. Instead, four actors parlayed the writer-director’s signature banter in the cumbersomely titled “The Rise and Fall of a Curtain and Its Life In Between.” If the low-key chamber piece seemed typical of Pollesch’s work, it was also hardly earth-shattering.Then again, considering all of the recent turbulence at the Volksbühne, maybe a little restraint isn’t such a bad thing.Ever since the storied Berlin theater’s longtime artistic director Frank Castorf was fired in 2017, the Volksbühne has sailed on choppy waters. Castorf had run the playhouse since 1992 and had doggedly kept the theater’s East German spirit alive in the newly reunified Berlin: His leadership style was iron fisted, but he transformed the Volksbühne into one of the most exciting and influential forces in European theater, and he built a cult following for his own punishingly long reworkings of the classics from a Marxist perspective.From Castorf, the torch passed to Chris Dercon, a Belgian who was previously the director of Tate Modern in London, and who planned to turn the Volksbühne into a showcase for visiting performers from around the world.The regime change didn’t go as planned. For many in Berlin, the replacement of a provocateur from the former East Germany with a slick international transplant was an all-too-potent symbol of a city that was losing its edge. Protesters briefly occupied the theater and, after a series of increasingly hostile episodes — including one in which feces were left in front of the artistic director’s office — Dercon quit, only a few months into the job.In 2019, Dercon was succeeded by Klaus Dörr, a veteran theater administrator who was supposed to stabilize the Volksbühne until a permanent artistic director took the reins. But this March, Dörr abruptly resigned after 10 of the Volksbühne’s female staff members accused him of sexual harassment and creating a hostile workplace.Pollesch said the Volksbühne’s spirit came from “the way people interact with each other here, how the entire staff is involved in what’s happening onstage.”Thomas AurinIt was against this stormy backdrop that Pollesch, 59, arrived this summer to lead the house. All of the theater’s hopes for a return to its former vibrancy have been pinned on Pollesch, a veteran of Castorf’s Volksbühne who is considered one of Germany’s most distinctive theatrical auteurs, and whose start here is both a homecoming and a new beginning.In an interview at the theater, Pollesch spoke lovingly of the “spirit of the old Volksbühne” that he had felt since he saw his first play at there at 17. “It’s the way people interact with each other here, how the entire staff is involved in what’s happening onstage,” he said.But he was also quick to dispel the hope, or the fear, that he was a Trojan horse for reinstating the theater’s old guard.“We are not Castorf,” he said. “Castorf ran the theater very differently than we do.”By “we,” Pollesch means himself and a team of actors and theater professionals that he has assembled as an advisory committee. It’s a cooperative model that is rare in the German theater world — and unique for a theater the size of the Volksbühne, which has a large staff and a full-time acting ensemble.Pollesch described how the members of the committee helped him plan his inaugural season: The actor Martin Wuttke, a regular collaborator who is best known for portraying Hitler in the film “Inglourious Basterds,” recommended the Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo; the actress Lilith Stangenberg proposed the Filipino experimental filmmaker Khavn de la Cruz. The Volksbühne will premiere works by both directors early next year, Pollesch said.With the young French director Julien Gosselin and the Argentine choreographer Constanza Macras also working at the house this season, the Volksbühne’s globe-trotting lineup looks like it could have sprung from one of Dercon’s unrealized seasons. But that program was not the result of any agenda to make the house more international, Pollesch said. It emerged organically from his discussions with the advisory board.That collective approach also mirrors the way the director develops his own quirky plays through intense collaboration with a small group of artists he knows and trusts. A typical Pollesch show is characterized by fluent, chatty dialogue that combines the silly with the philosophical, and by high-energy performances from a group of charismatic actors. Pollesch devises the text of his plays, as well as the staging, for specific performers, whose creative input during the rehearsal process effectively make them co-authors.From left: Franz Beil, Astrid Meyerfeldt, Inga Busch and Christine Gross in “Mr. Puntila and the Giant Thing in Mitte,” a show by Pollesch.Luna Zscharnt“Often, he sets out with nothing more than a theme, a title,” Wolf-Dieter Ernst, a professor of theater studies at the University of Bayreuth, said in an email. He added that performers loved working with Pollesch because his method created a “a kind of safe space for exhausted actors and actresses.” By applying a similar approach to running the Volksbühne, Pollesch was trying to “run a theater in a more democratic, and less toxic, way,” Ernst said.Pollesch, who was born in Friedberg, a small city outside Frankfurt, studied theater at the nearby University of Giessen. In the 1980s, that school was considered the theoretical cradle of “postdramatic theater,” a self-reflexive and deconstructive approach to writing and directing for the stage. Inspired by the theories of Bertolt Brecht and by postmodern artists like the director Robert Wilson, the playwright Heiner Müller and the performing ensemble the Wooster Group, postdramatic theater is less concerned with plot or textual fidelity than with exploring — and exploding — the relationship between a stage presentation and its audience.Postdramatic theater is often dense, difficult and theoretical, yet Pollesch’s work is anything but. The lack of narrative or conventional characters may confound expectations about what theater is, but his plays rarely feel obtuse or obscure. In fact, they’re surprisingly fun and punchy — and rarely exceed 90 minutes.In Pollesch’s first stint at the Volksbühne, he ran its smaller, off-site venue, the Prater, from 2001 to 2007. He also staged shows on the main stage, where his work contrasted sharply with productions by Castorf, whose dark, demanding shows could last up to 12 hours.Since Castorf’s ouster, Pollesch has been a fixture at another storied Berlin playhouse, the Deutsches Theater, and has also worked on main stages in Zurich and in Hamburg, Germany. Last year, Berlin critics and audiences went gaga for a Pollesch show unexpectedly staged at the Friedrichstadt-Palast, a 2,000-seat revue theater.Yet the director’s inaugural work for the Volksbühne has met with a different response.“Rise and Fall of a Curtain” hardly amounted to the grand statement of purpose that many expected. If it was unmistakably Pollesch, it also felt slight, as if the director was up to his old tricks at a time when he was expected to wow everyone with a bold new vision. The critical consensus was that the auteur was writing tired backstage chatter for an audience of his own groupies.Margarita Breitkreiz in “The Rise and Fall of a Curtain and Its Life In Between.”Christian Thiel“Instead of timpani and trumpets and manifestoes to usher in a new start, we get a display of cluelessness,” wrote Peter Laudenbach, a theater critic, in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. Reviewing “Mr. Puntila and the Giant Thing in Mitte,” the house’s third new Pollesch production in three months, Laudenbach concluded that it added to the “disappointing picture that the Volksbühne under Pollesch has offered so far.”The director’s flexible and collaborative approach to programming, and the fact that the theater is tight-lipped about its plans, make it difficult to say what the future of the Volksbühne under Pollesch may look like. The director is much clearer about what not to expect. The old Volksbühne’s classic productions won’t be coming back, he said, recalling the disappointment he once felt after seeing a decade-old revival at the theater during the Castorf era.“It had nothing to do with now,” he said. “You can watch movies that were made in a different era,” he added. “Theater ages insanely fast.” More

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    ‘And Just Like That’: The Shoe Must Go On

    In the ’90s, “Sex and the City” celebrated single women. Can a new, more nuanced version make a comedy of middle-aged ones?When we last left the ladies of “Sex and the City,” the pathbreaking, cupcake-inspiring HBO series and film franchise, Miranda had joined a new law firm, Samantha had achieved orgasm atop a Mercedes G-Class SUV, Charlotte was hosting a child’s birthday party, and Carrie and Big were snuggling on the sofa as a black-and-white movie played, a happily ever after for everyone.This was the peaceable close of “Sex and the City 2,” the strained 2010 movie that sent its characters into the Middle East and critics into ecstasies of disdain. (Here is A.O. Scott’s comparatively mild pan in The Times: “Your watch will tell you that a shade less than two and a half hours have elapsed, but you may be shocked at just how much older you feel when the whole thing is over.”) Still, another movie was planned, only to fall apart, largely on Twitter, in 2017. Like a Fendi baguette, the series seemed to have gone out of style.But the ’90s are extremely on trend right now, and the women of “Sex and the City” (well, most of them) have returned for another strut down the premium cable runway. “And Just Like That,” a 10-episode limited series, premieres on HBO Max on Dec. 9. Don’t call it a reboot! The characters so rarely wore boots!Like the original, this new version follows the author Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), the lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and the former gallerista and current homemaker Charlotte (Kristin Davis). But in the place of Kim Cattrall’s libertine Samantha are four new actors: Sarita Choudhury, Nicole Ari Parker, Karen Pittman and Sara Ramírez. Their presence remedies the original’s blinding whiteness, though if the promotional materials are any indication, not its appetitive glamour and unacknowledged privilege.So here’s a question for Carrie: Can a show adapt to changed characters and changing times while still supplying what fans loved about the original?On break from a shoot at Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios, Michael Patrick King, a “Sex and the City” executive producer and the showrunner of “And Just Like That,” had an enthusiastic answer. “It’s dangerous. It’s exciting. It’s a challenge,” he said, bent forward on the sofa in his office. “It’s not a cash cow. It’s not a cash in.” Besides how else could he get a show about middle-aged women greenlighted?“I don’t think that anybody would take on new women characters at 55 without proof that people will watch,” he said. Which means that ladies might have some new paths to break, if they can walk them in heels.The original “Sex and the City” was always two shows. One was a fidgety, philosophical comedy about single, successful women who didn’t need a man to complete them. Or maybe they did? And really, what is completion anyway? The other was the show as fans received it — and the show that it arguably became — a high-gloss romantic comedy and a fashion romp. What, you think it was the existential crises that motivated the bus tours?New stars like Nicole Ari Parker (center, with Davis and Pat Bowie) keep “And Just Like That” from being as overwhelmingly white as the original.Craig Blankenhorn/HBOThat latter show had long ago reached its conclusion. Because in a romantic comedy, once the girl gets the guy — or as in Samantha’s case, the many guys — where can the story really go? This structural roadblock explains why the second movie spun its wheels. (Those wheels were camels, which King now somewhat regrets.) So it seemed destined to live on only in reruns, rewatches and Instagram accounts devoted to its outfits.But early into New York City’s pandemic lockdown, King and Parker began to chat about making a behind-the-scenes podcast. At some point, those chats turned more imaginative, speculating about what the lives of the characters might look like now. As Parker, speaking by telephone from the set of another sequel, “Hocus Pocus 2,” put it, they began to ask themselves, “Why are we not thinking about the thing that we’ve touched on many times, which is, are there more stories to tell?”Having already resolved the characters’ questions about marriage, partnership and children during the original series — King maintains these weren’t the relevant questions, but few plot lines centered on anything else — the new show claims to look elsewhere and largely inward, just as the first series did in its early seasons. Parker ran down a few of the current interrogations: “Who am I? What will change do to me? Can I change? How do I react to big change?”The show has undergone changes big and small — some thematic, some aesthetic, many structural. King recalled that during the first series, he felt as though he had to tie up each episode with a little bow, a concession to an audience that might not view them sequentially.“Streaming is like, untie the bow,” he said. “Untie it.”That doesn’t mean that “And Just Like That” encompasses much mess. During my visit to Steiner Studios, where I felt extremely underdressed, King took me around the various sets, each immaculate. Miranda’s Brooklyn brownstone and Charlotte’s Park Avenue palace have each received glow-ups. Carrie’s old apartment has lilac paint and statement wallpaper now. Her closet? Sublime.So Carrie still has two apartments, but “And Just Like That”no longer centers her experience. The show has mostly done away with her voice-over, making way for dialogue for its four new main characters: Choudhury’s high-end real estate agent, Parker’s documentarian, Pittman’s professor and Ramirez’s podcast host.Why didn’t the show have more characters of color before? “It was a show that was based on material that was very much of its time,” Sarah Jessica Parker said diplomatically, referring to Candace Bushnell’s New York Observer columns.Though Nixon has stuck with the franchise, she said she had been “horrified” by the lack of racial diversity during the show’s original run. Like Parker and Davis, she said that she insisted that the characters in this new version couldn’t function as trendy accessories for the original cast.“In order to get great actors to do these parts, they would have to be not supporting us,” Nixon said. That meant also insuring that the writers’ room was staffed with several women of color and that their story lines followed these new characters even when Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte headed offscreen.“Each of the episodes, at this point, they’re all around 43 minutes,” King said. “Because there’s seven fully realized people in it.”The new series doesn’t try to reform the characters, Parker said: “We don’t try to make a point of, ‘Look, they’re mature, they’re better, they’re smarter.’”Craig Blankenhorn/HBOOn the day I visited the set, I watched one of Nicole Ari Parker’s scenes. Dressed to the nines or maybe the tens, she performed a marital spat with her series husband, played by Christopher Jackson. A few days later on the phone, I asked her if she had seen the original series — she had — and if its overwhelming whiteness had bothered her.“A little bit,” she said. “But I wasn’t expecting ‘Sex and the City’ to be realistic.” She was talking to me while she shopped for shoes at Nordstrom, which seemed nicely on brand.“I mean, every now and then I felt sorry for them,” she said. “Like, if they had a Black girlfriend, they wouldn’t be having these problems.” But she appreciated how complex a character the show had created for her and that she wasn’t the only character of color.“They understand that one Black friend is not going to cut it,” she said.Still, this new series shouldn’t be seen as a repudiation of the old one or even as a corrective to its oversights — well, some its oversights. Sarah Jessica Parker knows that not everyone liked the original characters, Carrie in particular. This new show doesn’t aim to fix them.“We don’t try to make a point of: ‘Look, they’re mature, they’re better, they’re smarter. See, they’re sorry for the things you didn’t like,’” she said. “I don’t think that’s our best approach.”The occasional tutu aside, “And Just Like That” isn’t intended as fan service either. The series doesn’t pretend that the women haven’t moved on with their lives in the intervening years; it doesn’t deny that they have aged. When some first-look pictures and a teaser trailer emerged, social media briefly blew up with comments about the women’s looks and the cosmetic interventions they had or hadn’t undergone.“And Just Like That” has several scenes that discuss these issues directly. King mimed a bit involving Nixon’s Miranda and her neck. Generally, it aims for stories about women in their 50s as rich and bright and complicated, if not as raunchy, as the ones the original told about women in their 30s. (Same city. Less sex.) Which is to say that it’s trying for just a little more nuance than “The Golden Girls.”“I am a woman in my 50s, so I am well aware that your life does not end whether you find a guy or a girl or not, whether you have kids or not, right?” Davis said. “We can testify to the fact that it’s not over, and it’s not boring. So I was never in doubt that we could tell interesting stories.”What those stories were, no one would spoil. Eager fans have analyzed that 30-second teaser clip with the exegetical rigor typically reserved for ancient hieroglyphs. So here is what I did learn: Big (Chris Noth) is not dead. Samantha is not dead, though Cattrall’s absence means that she doesn’t appear onscreen.“Nobody’s dead,” King said. Nobody? “Nobody.”And yet, Willie Garson, who played Carrie’s gay best friend, Stanford Blatch, died during the filming of “And Just Like That,” a sad reminder of time’s passage and the grief it can bring. His death wasn’t written into the show.“Because it wasn’t charming,” King said. “And I knew that the audience would know.”“And Just Like That” wants to charm. It isn’t the first comedy about middle-aged women. Since “Sex and the City” ended, television has offered “Cougartown,” “Hot in Cleveland,” “Younger.” September brought Julie Delpy’s “On the Verge.” But a few statement necklaces aside, none of those shows had quite the glamour of “Sex and the City” and none were quite as revolutionary — in the frankness of the sex talk, in the insistence on female subjectivity, in the championing of single women, even if it did pair just about all of them off.Will “And Just Like That” exert the same cultural, fashion-forward influence, even in a culture obsessed with youth, even in a world glutted with content? King, predictably but not unreasonably, argues that it might.“If it was aspirational — aspirational apartments, aspirational clothing, aspirational people — it’s still aspirational,” he said. More

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    Trevor Noah Says Omicron Might Not Be So Bad

    Noah said that new strains are like streaming new TV shows: “You gotta stick with it the first couple of weeks and see where it goes.”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.Next Week on OmicronThe first Covid cases with the new Omicron strain have been reported in the United States.Trevor Noah encouraged viewers not to freak out just yet, saying, “We have no idea if Omicron is actually that bad.”“And what I mean by that is, we don’t know if it might spread more easily or we don’t know if it will be more deadly. It’s just too early to know. And I hate to sound like someone describing every streaming show right now, but you gotta stick with it the first couple of weeks and see where it goes.” — TREVOR NOAH“Yesterday, we learned the first Omicron case on U.S. soil was found in California, which led the state’s secretary of health and human services to claim Californians were proud to have identified the first Omicron case. Good for you, Golden State. You put that kind of positive spin on all your disasters: ‘Greetings from California, home of extra-crispy trees.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Unfortunately, that’s not the only case. Today, a second case of the Omicron variant was identified in Minnesota. But do not panic — it’s just one person in America’s heartland, who recently traveled to New York City. OK, OK fine but maybe he was here on business, spent most of his time alone in his hotel getting takeout and staring pensively out the window at all the people he wasn’t infecting — right after he attended the 2021 anime convention at the Javits Center.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s right, one of the first U.S. cases of the new Covid variant may be an adult man who attended an anime convention. I mean, which is good. At least we know that it’s not transmitted via eye contact.” — TREVOR NOAH“But people, please remember this, please remember this, we shouldn’t be surprised when we find more and more cases, OK? Because Omicron is like those microscopic bugs that live in your eyelashes: Even if you don’t see them, you know that they’re there. Yeah, laughing at you about all the spiders that crawl into your mouth while you sleep.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Getting Lit Edition)“Well, guys, tonight in Washington, D.C., President Biden attended the 99th annual national Christmas tree lighting. Meanwhile, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was like, ‘Uh, yeah, sure, that’s the national Christmas tree.’” — JIMMY FALLON“The event was hosted by LL Cool J. Originally Snoop was supposed to host, but he canceled once he found out it wasn’t the kind of tree lighting he was used to.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And this was special — a real-life Elf on the Shelf made an appearance. Yeah, he got up and said, ‘For the last time, my name is Pete Buttigieg.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Then organizers said, ‘Sorry, here’s the real Elf on the Shelf,’ and then he got up and said, ‘I’m sorry, for the last time, my name is Dr. Fauci.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingTracy Morgan talks about why he’s going back onstage on Thursday’s “Desus & Mero.”Also, Check This OutRebecca ClarkeBette Midler shared her love of classics like “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and Charles Dickens, among others, in this week’s By the Book. More

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    Wajdi Mouawad's 'Mother': Was It Worth It?

    By asking the singer Bertrand Cantat to contribute to his latest show, the director Wajdi Mouawad has overshadowed his own production.PARIS — Traumatized individuals reach a standoff. They talk past each other; the more powerful party is too hurt to mitigate the pain they inflict. Ultimately, no one wins.Recently, this story unfolded both on- and offstage at La Colline — Théâtre National, the Paris playhouse led by the Lebanese-born theatermaker Wajdi Mouawad, one of the biggest names in contemporary French theater. In November, Mouawad unveiled a very personal new play, “Mother” (“Mère”), inspired by his family’s exile from Lebanon during the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990. In the weeks leading up to the premiere, however, “Mother” became embroiled in conflicts of its own.In early October, the hashtag #MeTooThéâtre began trending in France; with it came a wave of testimonies about sexual abuse and harassment in the country’s playhouses and drama schools. A collective of the same name was created to agitate for change, and Mouawad’s programming was quickly singled out for criticism. In 2022, La Colline theater is set to host a production by the director Jean-Pierre Baro, who has been accused of rape, a charge he denies. Additionally, the composer and singer Bertrand Cantat, who was convicted of killing his partner Marie Trintignant in 2003, was commissioned by Mouawad to create the music of “Mother.”It’s not the first time Mouawad has hired Cantat. In 2011, the singer even appeared onstage in one of Mouawad’s shows, a play titled “Women” (“Des Femmes”). The ensuing controversy led to the cancellation of a number of tour dates and Cantat’s withdrawal from the cast when the production played at the Avignon Festival.Wajdi Mouawad and the actress Aida Sabra, who plays his mother in the production.Tong-Vi NguyenMouawad’s response to #MeTooThéâtre has been rigid. In an open letter on Oct. 19, he likened his detractors to “a contemporary form of the Inquisition” and said they were engaged in a “lynching.” He added that claims should be adjudicated only in court. On Oct. 19, a demonstration in front of La Colline delayed the “Mother” premiere by 30 minutes. The protesters called on Mouawad to resign, and booed the audience members walking into the theater.Was it worth it? That question should be asked of Mouawad, who has been known until now as a progressive supporter of multicultural stories and a promoter of young artists. On opening night, when he came out into the auditorium for a preshow announcement, he carried on as if nothing had happened. Yet this stance interferes with the reception of what is otherwise a strong production, to which Cantat actually made a minimal contribution.The French singer Bertrand Cantat, who was convicted of murdering his partner Marie Trintignant in 2003. Mouawad’s inclusion of Cantat’s music in the production has drawn criticism, and it’s not the first time he has hired him.Xavier Leoty/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe play is centered around Mouawad’s own mother, Jacqueline. In 1978, she fled war-torn Lebanon with her three children, while her husband stayed behind. The family landed in Paris, where they spent the next five years anxiously waiting for the phone to ring, with news that they could return home.“Mother” recreates vignettes from their fractured home life amid an unfussy wooden set. Two superb Lebanese actresses, Aida Sabra and Odette Makhlouf, play Jacqueline and Mouawad’s sister Nayla. (His brother is mentioned, but not shown.) While the young Mouawad is played by a child, Dany Aridi on opening night, the director himself is never far away. Throughout, Mouawad observes the proceedings up close onstage, moves furniture and props around and, ultimately, takes the spotlight to confront his mother, who in real life died from cancer in 1987.There is a harrowing amount of raw pain in “Mother.” In a vivid mix of Arabic and French, Sabra perfectly captures Jacqueline’s deteriorating mental health, and the unprocessed anger she projects on to her children. She berates her young son for not learning French faster, yet never really adjusts to life in Paris. On the phone, early on, she cries: “I am in ruins.”Members of the cast, including Makhlouf and Mouawad, at far left. The play is being performed at La Colline — Théâtre National in Paris through Dec. 30.Tong-Vi NguyenFurther weaving reality into fiction, Mouawad cast Christine Ockrent, a well-known news anchor who was a near-daily presence on French television in the 1980s, in her first stage role. In her best broadcast voice, Ockrent reads dispatches from Lebanon, but also becomes an imaginary presence in the characters’ lives, chatting with the children and cooking with Jacqueline.Mouawad’s own meta-dialogue with his mother is both the high point of the show and a clue to his overall state of mind. “I wrote this scene to talk to you,” he tells Sabra, playing Jacqueline. He has been unable to cry since his mother’s death, he adds, before pleading with her to tell his younger self “that you love him, once.”It doesn’t take a therapist to see that Mouawad’s grief, at this point, goes far beyond acting. Onstage, he mentions the loss of his father to Covid last year; his long-term theatrical collaborator and mentor, François Ismert, also died in early September. In a scene near the end of “Mother,” Mouawad pulls out a gun and pretends to shoot himself, seven times.What of Cantat? His contribution amounts to six recorded songs — no more than 15 minutes, over two and a half hours. Several of them are raspy reinterpretations of classic French songs from the era the play is set in, and Cantat is buried down the list of credits. On opening night, unsurprisingly, he didn’t come out for a bow.The young Mouawad is played by a child, Dany Aridi, on opening night, at left, with his mother Jacqueline, played by Sabra. Sabra perfectly captures Jacqueline’s deteriorating mental health, along with her unprocessed anger.Tong-Vi NguyenThe songs are too anodyne, and fleeting, to add much to “Mother.” It is pretty disturbing, however, to hear Cantat sing sensual lines at one point to Makhlouf, as Mouawad’s sister. For those in the audience who are aware of the singer’s identity, and there will be many, moments like this are an obstacle suspending disbelief. Cantat may have served his prison sentence for murder, but that doesn’t mean his presence is neutral; it actively distracts from the story of “Mother,” something no other singer would have done. (As a friend from Lebanon pointed out after the show, a Lebanese composer would also have been a more coherent choice.)Mouawad may be too deep in his feelings to realize this. He has always been hierarchy-averse, and his open letter about #MeTooThéâtre, as well as “Mother,” make it clear that he sees himself as on the side of the oppressed. “I won’t be pitted against the notion of a victim. I was a victim,” he wrote. But two things can be true at once. The traumatized boy who experienced exile grew up to become the powerful artistic director of one of France’s most prestigious theaters. Criticism comes with the territory; an understanding of the zeitgeist in which theater productions come to life should, too.In any other context, “Mother” would have been hailed as an unqualified success. Yet the presence of Cantat on the creative team is the hill on which Mouawad has chosen to die. From the audience perspective, it’s simply not worth it.MèreThrough Dec. 30 at La Colline — Théâtre National in Paris; colline.fr. More

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    Jussie Smollett’s Lawyers Dispute Account That Attack Was Staged

    Under questioning by Mr. Smollett’s defense team, two brothers who say they participated in a fake attack denied suggestions they had lied to avoid prosecution.Jussie Smollett’s lawyers suggested in court on Thursday that two brothers at the center of the case attacked the actor to scare him into hiring them as his personal security, and later, to avoid prosecution, falsely told the police that Mr. Smollett had planned it all as a hoax.The brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, have each testified that Mr. Smollett gave them detailed instructions on where and how to mildly attack him in January 2019.“You attacked Jussie because you wanted to scare him into hiring you as security,” said a lawyer for Mr. Smollett, Shay Allen, “so you could go back to L.A. and get paid $5,000 a week, didn’t you?”“No, sir,” Abimbola Osundairo replied.During cross-examination, the brothers, both aspiring actors and fitness aficionados, disputed that and other defense contentions about the attack. During more than 11 hours of testimony, which touched on minute details like Mr. Smollett’s grocery list and workout regimen, they told the court that Mr. Smollett instructed them to yell racist and homophobic slurs at him — and say, “This is MAGA country” — during the attack.During one of the brothers’ testimony, the defense asked for a mistrial, suggesting the judge had misspoken during the proceedings and later asked for the judge to acquit Mr. Smollett. But Judge James Linn ruled against Mr. Smollett in both instances.Thursday was a pivotal day in the trial as the prosecution, whose case relies heavily on the brothers’ credibility, rested after each brother told the jury in detail that Mr. Smollett had knowingly made a false police report about the attack.Abimbola Osundairo, 28, testified on Wednesday that Mr. Smollett, who is gay, dreamed up the scheme because he had been disappointed by what he saw as a muted response from the television studio to a death threat he received days earlier.Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo both appear in minor roles in the television show “Empire,” in which Mr. Smollett had starred. Abimbola Osundairo said he had agreed to participate in the hoax because he felt “indebted” to Mr. Smollett for securing him a role as a stand-in on the show, while Olabinjo Osundairo said that, as an aspiring actor, he had agreed because he wanted to “curry favor” with Mr. Smollett.The defense’s efforts to undermine the brothers’ credibility included questions about guns and drugs found in Abimbola Osundairo’s home and accusations that Olabinjo Osundairo had a history of making homophobic comments.Olabinjo Osundairo is not legally allowed to possess a gun because he was convicted of aggravated battery several years ago. But a detective testified earlier in the week that the guns were all Abimbola Osundairo’s and were owned legally and described the amount of cocaine discovered as “very small.”One of Mr. Smollett’s lawyers, Tamara Walker, also cited discrepancies between Olabinjo Osundairo’s testimony and what he had said to the grand jury in the case. He told the grand jury, for example, that he had decided to pour bleach, instead of gasoline, onto Mr. Smollett because he wanted to avoid being seen filling up a gas container on a surveillance camera. In court on Thursday, though, he testified that he had chosen bleach because he thought it would be safer on Mr. Smollett.The brothers remained composed during their sessions on the witness stand even as they were being questioned about several written conversations that Olabinjo Osundairo has had in which he made remarks that the defense cited as homophobic.Olabinjo Osundairo, 30, denied any bias, explained the remarks as mistakes he had made because he was upset and asserted that he had “no hate for anybody.” The prosecution had earlier in the day shown the jury a photo of the brothers at the Chicago Pride Parade in 2015 in which they were dressed as Trojan warriors for a float that centered around the condom brand of the same name.The mistrial request arose from this line of questioning as Judge Linn at one point described Ms. Walker’s questions about Mr. Osundairo’s past comments as “very collateral matters.” She argued, unsuccessfully, that the judge’s remark had discredited a part of the defense argument in front of the jury.A third lawyer for Mr. Smollett, Heather Widell, accused Judge Linn of making “snarling faces” during the defense questioning. The judge objected to Ms. Widell’s characterization and pointed out her own “smiles and frowns.”“There is no mistrial here,” Judge Linn said. “Frankly, I’m stunned you’d consider a mistrial based on that little colloquy.”Jussie Smollett’s trial entered its fourth day as the prosecution wound down its case and the defense challenged the credibility of two brothers who say the attack Mr. Smollett reported was a hoax.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressEarlier in the day, Olabinjo Osundairo testified that during the attack on Jan. 29, 2019, while his brother and Mr. Smollett were on the ground, he put a noose around Mr. Smollett’s face and made sure to pour the bleach on Mr. Smollett’s clothing, not his skin, to avoid severely injuring him.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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    Ron Cephas Jones Has Something to Prove Again

    The Emmy-winning “This Is Us” actor received a double-lung transplant after a secret battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Now he’s back onstage in “Clyde’s” on Broadway.In the spring of 2020, a recurring nightmare began tormenting the actor Ron Cephas Jones. A theater veteran known for his work on the NBC drama “This Is Us,” Jones is 64 and wiry, with short waves of black hair and an almond-shaped face. In the dream, he is delivering a monologue onstage — darkened room, white backlights — when he notices something amiss. Everyone in the audience is looking elsewhere, in seemingly every direction but his. Jones waves and shouts, trying to draw the crowd’s attention. But no matter how desperately he screams, no one registers his presence. He is there but not there, a ghost among the living.In the new Broadway play “Clyde’s,” where Jones plays a kind of spiritual leader to a beleaguered crew of recently incarcerated sandwich cooks, he is the show’s transfixing center of gravity — the very opposite of ghostly incorporeality. But when the nightmares began, Jones really was in mortal peril.In May of last year, he received a double-lung transplant after years of suffering in secret from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Jones spent nearly two months at the Ronald Reagan U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Los Angeles on and off a ventilator, learning to breathe and then eat and then walk again. The hope of one day returning to the theater was the fire that fueled his recovery.Uzo Aduba as Clyde and Jones as Montrellous in Lynn Nottage’s new comedy, “Clyde’s,” in which ex-convicts working at a truck-stop sandwich shop dream of remaking their lives.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“My whole life has been the stage,” Jones said recently, over lunch at a restaurant a few blocks from the theater where “Clyde’s” is running. “The idea of not performing again seemed worse to me than death.”Jones is the kind of actor who works like chipotle mayo — you don’t always think to look for him, but you’re happy when he shows up. About six years ago, after three decades of working on and off Broadway in New York, he began quietly lending credence to a crop of ambitious streaming-era dramas. He added a touch of warmth to Sam Esmail’s “Mr. Robot,” a note of vulnerability to Marvel’s “Luke Cage,” a foreboding undercurrent to Stephen King’s “Lisey’s Story.” But his biggest breakthrough — and two Emmy Awards, for outstanding guest actor — came from the ratings smash “This Is Us,” where Jones has played William, the biological father of Sterling K. Brown’s character, Randall, since 2016.On a series with no shortage of weepy story lines, William is a figure of singular pathos. The character, who is Black, bisexual, a former drug addict, an absentee father and has terminal cancer, would in lesser hands strain the limits of good taste. But Jones’s soulful performance — the weather-beaten brow, the voice like brushed wool — confers a lived-in texture and depth.The same year that Jones was cast as William, he complained to his doctor about difficulty breathing. An X-ray confirmed advanced emphysema, a pulmonary condition in which damage to the lungs deprives the blood of oxygen. Jones, who had been a two-packs-a-day smoker for most of his life, was told the disease was progressive — left untreated, his lungs would grow weaker and eventually collapse. He was advised to consider a transplant. But he shut down the idea after learning the risks involved. Even if his body accepted the new lungs, there was a 31 percent chance he would be permanently bound to an oxygen tank.From left, Jones, Bob Dishy, Tonya Pinkins and Zach Grenier in “Storefront Church,” about Bronx residents whose lives become tangled in unexpected ways, at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2012.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I was in total denial,” Jones said. “I told myself that it would pass, or that I was just getting older. I was afraid and didn’t want to change what I wasn’t ready to change.”For a year after his diagnosis, Jones continued smoking up to 12 cigarettes a day. He finally changed course in 2017, after an incident on the set of “This Is Us.” While filming a long outdoor scene with Susan Kelechi Watson, who plays William’s daughter-in-law, Jones became increasingly short of breath. He sensed his heart pounding and broke into a sweat. He felt as if he were underwater. After someone called an ambulance, an emergency responder resuscitated him using an oxygen tank. Denial was no longer an option.“You can see in his eyes that he made the right decision,” said the actress Jasmine Cephas Jones, Jones’s daughter and an original cast member of “Hamilton.” “I feel like I have my dad back.”Many of Jones’s characters, including Montrellous, the ex-convict he portrays in “Clyde’s,” are pacific, hard-luck men in pursuit of redemption. The playwright Lynn Nottage, who met Jones in the 2000s when both were members of the Labyrinth Theater Company, said she wrote Montrellous with Jones in mind.“He moves through the world like a cool jazz man, but is also generous and a nurturer,” Nottage said. “The same qualities that he brings to his acting are the qualities that he embodies in real life.”Jones at the Helen Hayes Theater, where “Clyde’s” is running through Jan. 16.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesJones was first drawn to performance as a young man during the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s. Born and raised in Paterson, N.J., he took Route 4 to Harlem on weekends to see jazz at St. Nick’s Pub, or plays at the National Black Theater or Avery Fisher Hall (now David Geffen Hall) at Lincoln Center. After graduating with a theater degree from Ramapo College, in 1978, Jones immersed himself in the art scene in New York but was derailed when he developed a crippling heroin addiction. Encouraged by his mother, he moved to Los Angeles for a fresh start and spent four years working as a bus driver.Eventually, Jones turned to gambling and relapsed. He said he was arrested with 10 small bags of heroin and narrowly escaped a five-year prison sentence. A judge sent him back East — to a rehabilitation center in Albany, N.Y. — but the program didn’t take. Jones relapsed a second and third time. His mother, who had taken him in after Albany, kicked him out of the house and stopped answering his phone calls.“It was the tough love thing,” Jones said. “But it felt like everything I had loved was gone.”Jones hit rock bottom and said that for a while he slept on a bench in Eastside Park in Paterson. He was saved by an uncle who invited him to stay at his apartment in Harlem. It was there, in 1986, that he got clean for the last time.Jones and David Zayas in “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train.” Stephen Adly Guirgis’s portrait of lives behind bars debuted at the East 13th Street Theater in 2000.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn 1990, he starred in his first play, “Don’t Explain” by Samuel B. Harps, at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the Lower East Side. By then he was a father — Jasmine was born in 1989 — and went on to a wide-ranging stage career, starring in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train,” John Patrick Shanley’s “Storefront Church” and “Richard III.”“Clyde’s” is his first appearance on Broadway in seven years. After his lung transplant, Jones was determined to prove that he could still perform at the highest level, and for the standard eight shows per week. In his review of the play for The Times, Jesse Green wrote that Jones perfectly embodies his character, balancing a “Zen imperturbability with subtle dashes of pain and sacrifice.”“It was kind of miraculous to see him up there so full-bodied,” said Nottage, who, though aware of Jones’s operation, said it was never discussed during rehearsals this summer. “You would never know that he had any kind of struggle.”“Clyde’s” opens with a monologue, in which Montrellous attempts to persuade Clyde, played by Uzo Aduba, to change the menu at her restaurant. On opening night late last month, when the curtain lifted and revealed a packed crowd, including many of Jones’s friends and family, he said he was so overcome with emotion that he nearly screamed his first line.“I was so eager that all of the air from my diaphragm just came rushing out at once,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that I could be heard.” More

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    Jimmy Kimmel: Trump’s Covid Test Is the Only Positive Thing He’s Done

    Late-night hosts weighed in on Donald Trump’s initial results just three days before his debate with Joe Biden.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.On Whose Honor?In his new book, Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, wrote that Trump tested positive for the coronavirus before his first debate with Joe Biden in 2020.“Sadly, testing positive for Covid was the only positive thing he did in four years as president,” Jimmy Kimmel joked on Wednesday night.Mark Meadows, left, has written a book about his time in the White House, where he served as chief of staff of Donald Trump when he was president.Al Drago/Reuters“Meadows wrote that when he informed Trump he’d tested positive, Trump replied, ‘Oh, [expletive], you gotta be [expletive] kidding me,’ which is what most of us said when he was elected president.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Fox should not have let him debate. Joe Biden is 143 years old. The debate moderator, Chris Wallace, is no spring chicken, either. He said they were relying on the honor system, which, you’re relying on the honor system with Donald Trump? You might as well rely on the Dewey decimal system.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The honor system? How can you rely on the honor system when you know he doesn’t have any? That’s like meeting with Vladimir Putin and relying on the shirt system.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Have you met Donald Trump? ‘Do you promise you’re negative, guy who ran a fake university?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“You can’t go wrong when you bet on the former president lying. It’s just one of those certainties in life — and him not paying taxes.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And if you do the math on the Covid, it means Trump had it at that little soiree he threw for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, after which at least eight people who were there tested positive. I wonder who they got it from? I wonder whose tiny hand they all shook at that party?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I’m not saying that Trump was trying to assassinate Joe Biden, but he definitely wasn’t going out of his way to avoid it.” — TREVOR NOAH“That explains why Trump originally wanted to end the Biden debate with a long, drawn-out kiss.” — JAMES CORDEN“Trump participated in the debate despite testing positive. Or, as Fox News is spinning it, ‘President Trump battled on heroically, and graciously shared his exclusive strain of Covid with a stage full of ungrateful libs.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Signing Off Edition)“CNN has suspended Chris Cuomo indefinitely for his role in advising his brother, Andrew Cuomo, during his recent scandal. Yeah, Chris Cuomo knew something was up when CNN added a suspension countdown clock.” — JIMMY FALLON“On the one hand, this is a story about a guy helping his brother in a time of crisis. And, I mean, who wouldn’t do that for their brother? Because you’ve got to remember, brother is the top level of male relationship. Yeah, it goes brother, my dude, homey, this guy and stepdad.” — TREVOR NOAH“Of course, it does matter and it does make a difference how you help your brother and what you’re helping him with. Like, if your brother murdered somebody, you can either help him get the best lawyer in the country, or you can help him bury the body. I mean, both make you a good brother, but one makes you an accessory after the fact.” — TREVOR NOAH“And, people, that’s not what CNN is about. CNN is about sitting 12 people together at a desk and having them yell at each other about whether Adele’s Las Vegas residency is going to hurt Biden’s poll numbers or not.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingThis week’s “Tonight Show” hashtags featured viewers’ travel fails.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightMahershala Ali (a.k.a. Marvel’s new Blade) will chat with Stephen Colbert on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutMel Brooks in “High Anxiety,” 1977.Jim Palmer/Associated PressMel Brooks keeps things light in his new memoir, “All About Me!” More