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    Paul Rudd Hosts a Year-End ‘S.N.L.’ Disrupted by the Omicron Variant

    “Saturday Night Live” sought to persevere with an episode featuring special guests, but no musical performer and only two regular cast members.In a week when the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus had disrupted Broadway shows, concerts, sports and numerous other entertainment events, “Saturday Night Live” inevitably found it challenging to broadcast live from New York.Hours before a year-end holiday “S.N.L.” episode that was to be hosted by Paul Rudd and feature the musical guest Charli XCX, NBC suddenly announced several changes to this sketch variety show’s familiar format: citing “an abundance of caution,” the network said on Saturday afternoon that “S.N.L.” was pulling its live audience and would have “limited cast and crew.” A short while later, Charli XCX said that she would be unable to perform on the program at all.Even so, “S.N.L.” tried to persevere, as it has throughout the pandemic. The onset of the coronavirus had forced the cancellation of several live broadcasts in its 2019-20 season, which the show finished out with episodes consisting of sketches its cast members recorded from their home quarantines. Since the beginning of the 2020-21 season, in October 2020, “S.N.L.” has aired a full run of live shows from its Manhattan home in Studio 8H in 30 Rockefeller Plaza with many new protocols in place but little apparent interruption.But this week’s episode, which offered a mix of new segments filmed earlier in the week and vintage sketches from past years, was bound to come across differently. As Rudd told viewers at the end of the night, “I know it wasn’t the Christmas show that you expected but that’s the beauty of this place. Like life, it’s unpredictable.”However, the first performer to cross the show’s threshold tonight was a surprise guest: The opening sketch, which took place on the Studio 8H stage with no set, began with Tom Hanks, who was wearing his smoking jacket from the Five-Timers Club.Hanks offered his gratitude to the program’s “surviving crew members,” adding that it was his intention to induct a new member into the club tonight “but Covid came early this year,” he said.Though many “S.N.L.” cast members would be absent, Hanks said, “I came here from California, and if you think I was going to fly 3,000 miles and not be on TV, you’ve got another thing coming.”He was joined by Tina Fey, an “S.N.L.” alumna, who explained that this was not the smallest audience she had ever performed for, “because I have done improv in a Macy’s,” she said.When Rudd entered, he glanced into the studio audience and said brightly, “I’m extremely disappointed.” He was nonetheless inducted into the Five-Timers Club by Kenan Thompson, one of only two current cast members to be seen onstage tonight. (The other was Michael Che.)Rudd then explained to viewers that the rest of the show would feel “a little bit like that new Beatles documentary: a lot of old footage but enough new stuff that you’re like, OK, yeah, I’ll watch that.”Commercial Parody of the WeekIt may be long and shaggy and constructed of variations on, basically, just one joke. But after the week that just transpired, how can you not be charmed by Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon as two senior moms (and frequent customers at HomeGoods) whose participation in a TV commercial boils down to telling its director (Rudd), over and over, the truth about what they really want for Christmas? (It’s grandchildren, by the way. They want grandchildren.)Unexpected Scorsese Homage of the WeekMany of Pete Davidson’s sketches now are about the fact that Pete Davidson is Pete Davidson, and still this latest one proved to be a worthy entry in that surprisingly abundant genre.Beginning with a sendup of the bookend segments from “Raging Bull,” this mostly black-and-white film imagines an aging Davidson in the year 2054, with a gut and a receding hairline, now the star of a meager nightclub act in which he tries to recapture his past “S.N.L.” glories. (At least things appear to have turned out better for him than they did for his pal Machine Gun Kelly.)Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekIn what had to be the loosest, most low-fidelity production of Weekend Update since the Chevy Chase era, the news-satire segment this week featured Che and Fey sitting on the stage in directors’ chairs as they read jokes to Rudd, Hanks and Thompson. (Fey explained that, though she was filling in for the regular co-anchor Colin Jost, “It’s not what you think — he’s having work done.)Among the highlights from their routine:Che: “Well, it’s Christmas, so let’s start with some good news, Tina. O.J. Simpson has been released from parole two months early because of good behavior. Said O.J., ‘I can’t believe I got out of parole early but I did it. I did it.’”Fey: “Time magazine has named Elon Musk ‘Person of the Year.’ You can read more about it on your phone while your Tesla is self-driving you into a lake.”Che: “It was revealed that on January 6, three Fox News hosts all texted Mark Meadows to urge him to get Trump to call off his supporters. And you know you’ve gone too far when Fox News is like, somebody better calm these white people down.”Vintage Sketch of the WeekSeveral of the classic sketches resurfaced tonight were tried-and-true “S.N.L.” Yuletide gems, like “D*** in a Box” and “Christmastime for the Jews.” But then there was this curveball: a 1990 segment called “The Global Warming Christmas Special,” which if nothing else proves that, like climate change, the show’s predilection for bits in which its cast members play random celebrities is not a recent phenomenon.Watch for impersonations of Carl Sagan, Dean Martin, Sally Struthers, George Hamilton and many more. And see if you can keep it together when the late, beloved “S.N.L.” stars Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks walk onstage to perform a duet, as Isaac Asimov and Crystal Gayle. More

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    Rockettes Christmas shows are canceled for the rest of the season over breakthrough Covid cases.

    After canceling all four of Friday’s performances of Radio City Music Hall’s enduring Christmas show starring the Rockettes because of breakthrough coronavirus cases in the company, the show’s producers announced late Friday that they would end this season’s run entirely over “increasing challenges from the pandemic.”The show, “Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes,” had been scheduled to run through Jan. 2 with multiple performances each day. But it did not make it to Christmas, or even to the break that many city schoolchildren will begin next week.It became the latest show to be upended by a rash of coronavirus cases among cast and crew members, as the virus has surged in recent days in New York.Earlier Friday, producers had canceled the four performances scheduled for the day because of what the company described as “breakthrough Covid-19 cases in the production.” By the end of the day, they had canceled the rest of the run.“We regret that we are unable to continue the ‘Christmas Spectacular’ this season,” the show said in a statement released later in the day. “We had hoped we could make it through the season and are honored to have hosted hundreds of thousands of fans at more than 100 shows over the last seven weeks.”The decision comes as Broadway has had to endure a raft of cancellations unlike any in its history. Six of the 32 current shows running on Broadway canceled their performances Friday night, including “Moulin Rouge!”, which hopes to resume Saturday afternoon, “Hadestown,” which hopes to resume Saturday night; “Hamilton,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Tina,” which are closed until Tuesday, and “MJ,” a new musical about Michael Jackson, which said it would close until Dec. 27.The cancellations are affecting a variety of shows elsewhere in New York and around the country. At New York City Center, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater canceled all of its remaining performances this week, citing positive coronavirus tests, while Off Broadway, the Red Bull Theater canceled its remaining performances of “The Alchemist” and Soho Rep canceled the rest of its performances of “While You Were Partying.”In a sign of the increasing level of concern over the Omicron variant, the Metropolitan Opera on Wednesday became the first major performing arts institution in New York to unveil a booster mandate: Beginning Jan. 17, all employees and audience members eligible for booster shots will be required to show proof that they have received them in order to enter the opera house.Michael Paulson More

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    How ‘Succession’ Turns Getting What You Want Into Hell

    The characters in HBO’s prestige hit let us set aside judgment and just marvel at how ardently, how comically, people will chase after the worst thing for them.Two years ago, as HBO’s “Succession” finished its second season, we saw Logan Roy, the head of a right-wing media empire, looking for someone in his inner circle to serve as the scapegoat for a corporate scandal. One candidate was his hapless son-in-law, Tom Wambsgans. But Shiv, Logan’s daughter, asked him to spare her husband, and Logan’s sights turned instead to his second-born son, Kendall. For once, though, Kendall would not do the old man’s bidding: He showed up at a news conference and, instead of taking the heat, blamed his father.The pandemic kept “Succession” from continuing the story until this fall; its third season, nine episodes in all, ended Dec. 12. But it featured, midway through that run, a remarkable moment that captured the series’ great trick: Whenever these One Percenters succeed, the outcome is worse than if they had failed.Because with Kendall gone rogue, it is indeed Tom who volunteers for sacrifice and resigns himself to facing criminal charges. He assumes he has few days left as a free man, so he spends them reading prison blogs and trying to get used to cheap food. It’s only in the seventh episode that he learns the federal investigation he was afraid of will most likely end in a financial penalty. Suddenly spared years behind bars, he heads to the office of his wary sidekick Greg and destroys it in celebration: Screaming, he flips over a desk and leaps atop some filing cabinets, pounding his chest. But his ecstasy is short-lived. An episode later, Shiv — under the guise of role play — tells him she doesn’t really love him, though she would consider having the child he wanted. Having avoided prison, Tom gets to remain in a loveless union, trapped in a cage of wealth he lacks the audacity to leave. He wins, and he may well be worse off for it.Tom’s fate seems to have taken a very different turn in the season’s finale. But those earlier scenes reminded me, more than anything, of “Peep Show,” the sitcom that Jesse Armstrong, the creator of “Succession,” made in Britain between 2003 and 2015. The series, which used point-of-view shots and voice-overs to reveal its protagonists’ inner thoughts, centered on two characters: Mark, a cynical and awkward loan manager, and Jez, his perpetually out-of-work roommate. Its humor derived from many things — Mark’s repressed fury and anxious conservatism, Jez’s sexual carelessness and delusions of cool — but the writer Jim Gavin, creator of the AMC show “Lodge 49,” reported in 2016 that he had discovered the “central narrative conceit” beneath all of it. “Mark and Jez,” he wrote, “ALWAYS get what they want” — and it inevitably turns out to be terrible. “Getting what you want is a form of hell,” he wrote, “and ‘Peep Show’ is nothing if not a complete and terrifying vision of hell.”“Succession,” a prestige hit, attracts far more attention in America than “Peep Show.” Perhaps that’s why, amid obsessive discussion of each episode’s winners and losers, it’s not often noted how much this tradition continues among the Roys. Look at both shows together, and you sense a creeping, overarching worldview. Each sets its characters in looping environments where it’s rare for them to face lasting consequences. Instead, they are constantly humiliated by their own desires — and then, even more so, by the fulfillment of those desires.Throughout the early seasons of “Peep Show,” for instance, we watch Mark pine after a co-worker named Sophie, played by Olivia Colman. But when he finally succeeds in his romantic pursuit of her, it becomes clear that they have little in common — a fact that Mark, clinging to what he suspects is his sole chance to be a normal man, strains to ignore. The two become engaged based on a miscommunication, and Mark spends an entire season trudging toward a wedding he dreads, fearing it will be too embarrassing to back out. But there, again, he gets what he wants, in the worst way: After a catastrophic ceremony, Sophie flees, seeks an annulment and convinces all their co-workers that Mark is a monster.“Peep Show” was unquestionably a comedy, an unglamorous half-hour of laughs. “Succession” is an hour long, with remarkable acting and an HBO budget. As a result, critical discussion around it has often focused on form: Is this a comedy? A drama? A “sitcom trapped in the body of a drama” (as Slate had it)? “Seinfeldian in its cyclical efforts” (The New Yorker)? Has its repetitive nature made it boring? The Nation said the show has a “repetition compulsion”; The Atlantic explained its stasis by asserting that “late capitalism will always insulate the extraordinarily privileged from real consequences.”It’s true that the patterns of a sitcom, in which hardly anything ever truly changes, run the risk of disappointing prestige-TV viewers who tune in anticipating real stakes or didactic punishment for the superrich. But the circularity of such comedy is, typically, cozy. Sitcoms assure us that their worlds will remain stable, that the characters will arrive each week to behave in exactly the manner we’ve become so fond of. This was true of “Peep Show,” but in the most unsettling way possible. Mark and Jez were self-aware enough to realize how hopelessly stuck with each other they were; they knew full well that whenever either of them achieved what he wanted, the other would promptly help ruin it. As Gavin noted, “Virgil makes clear to Dante that all the souls in Hell remain there by choice,” unable to let go of the very thing that damned them in the first place. Mark and Jez will repeat their mistakes forever.It’s as if he literally can’t perish, as if hell cannot exist without the devil.What makes “Succession” a variety of sitcom is the way it, too, relishes this vision of the afterlife. The Roy children’s battle for status mostly immiserates them, yet they can’t abandon it. Each time they help save the family empire, their father lambastes or humiliates them for their trouble. Even Logan’s death scares repeat: It’s as if he literally can’t perish, as if hell cannot exist without the devil. As the show’s third season ended, we saw his children scramble once again to maintain family control of the company — to remain in the very cycle they’ve all toyed with escaping. They failed. But can there be much doubt that the situation will reset, as it has in the past, just as surely as a sitcom character’s new adventure will resolve itself in 30 minutes, leaving things right where they began? In Armstrong’s hands, character flaws are not simply quirks to be blithely repeated for our amusement. They are anchors that are constantly degrading the characters’ own lives. “Peep Show” let that degradation sit, awkwardly and hilariously, on the screen. “Succession” finds the tragedy at the heart of the sitcom form, the structure whose characters can never break free of it.The Roys’ corporation feels like their show’s Sophie. I’ve never had any trouble imagining what would happen if Kendall or his siblings wrested control of it from their father, or what they would do to address its many failings: They’d have absolutely no idea. Like Mark on “Peep Show,” they’d struggle to admit their victory was hollow from the start. This is the joy of Armstrong’s shows: They let us set aside judgment and just marvel at how ardently, how comically, people will chase after the worst thing for them. People, each season suggests, do not change that much. What we share with the Roys and two inept London flatmates might be, simply, that we only think we want them to, and would probably hate it if they ever did.Above: Screen grabs from HBO and YouTube.Alex Norcia is a writer in Los Angeles. He last wrote for the magazine about John Krasinski’s YouTube show “Some Good News.” More

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    Best Comedy of 2021

    The return of indoor shows brought comedy closer to normal, and there were plenty of specials from Bo Burnham, Tig Notaro, Roy Wood Jr. and others.From left, a scene from Tig Notaro’s HBO special “Drawn,” Susie Essman in HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and Tiffany Haddish in Netflix’s “Bad Trip.”From left: HBO; John P. Johnson/HBO; Dimitry Elyashkevich/NetflixComedy got dangerous in 2021. Not cancel-culture dangerous (though after creating one of the loudest controversies of the year with his Netflix special “The Closer,” Dave Chappelle might disagree). More like “I might contract Covid at this show” dangerous. After a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime shutdown of live performances, audiences returned to indoor shows, and comics picked up where they left off. These are some of the highlights.Best Punch Line Inside a Club to Defuse Covid AnxietyOne night at the Comedy Cellar, Dave Attell told a guy in the crowd: “I’m glad you’re wearing a mask because we need a survivor to tell the story.” But in the basement of the West Side Comedy Club, Bill Burr took down the elephant in the room even quicker: “I’m happy to be down here working on a new variant.”Best Experimental ComedyTig Notaro is not the first stand-up to turn herself into a cartoon, but her “Drawn” HBO special was the most ambitious attempt, using a different animated style for each bit — realistic one moment, whimsically fantastical the next, veering from the perspective of the audience to a cockroach. Imagine if Pixar did stand-up.A scene from “Drawn,” an animated HBO special from Tig Notaro, which uses a different animated style for each bit.HBOBest Musical ComedyThis was the year that visual humor caught up to the verbal kind in comedy specials. Bo Burnham invented a new comic vocabulary with his Netflix hit “Inside,” a filmic meditation on isolation, the internet and ironic distance itself. It was so tuneful and thematically well made that a blockbuster musical is surely in his future.Best Opening BitIn “Imperfect Messenger,” a Comedy Central special packed with refined comic gems, Roy Wood Jr. begins by discussing things that are not racist but feel racist. Things that have, as he puts it while rubbing his thumb and his fingers together as if he’s grasping at something, “the residue of racism” — like when white people use the word “forefathers,” or when you go somewhere and there’s “too many American flags,” which he calls “too much freedom.” He rubs his fingers and thumb again and asks: “How many American flags equal one Confederate flag?”Roy Wood Jr. in his Comedy Central special “Imperfect Messenger.”Sean Gallagher/Comedy CentralBest DirectingWith a jangling horror soundtrack, claustrophobic close-ups and the menacing humor of a Pinter play, the movie “Shiva Baby” offers a modern spin on the postgraduate angst of “The Graduate.” Its director, Emma Seligman, is the most promising cringe-comedy auteur to come along in years.Best MemoirIn the Audible original “May You Live in Interesting Times,” Laraine Newman describes studying with Marcel Marceau, dating Warren Zevon and farting in front of Prince. She gives you what you want in a “Saturday Night Live” memoir, but what makes her audiobook excel is her nimble voice, impersonating a collection of characters, none more charismatic than her own.Best Documentary“Mentally Al” catches up with the unsung comic Al Lubel when he’s near broke, disheveled and struggling with an impossibly dysfunctional relationship with his mother. Onstage, however, he’s consistently hilarious, even when the audience doesn’t think so. After countless documentaries about how a really funny person became a star, there’s finally a revelatory one exploring why one didn’t.Best Political ComedySometimes the most powerful punch is a jab. In “Oh God, an Hour About Abortion” — an understated, humane and deeply funny examination of the experience of having an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion — Alison Leiby uses observational comedy to reframe a political question at a critical moment for reproductive rights.The comedian Alison Leiby performing at Union Hall in Brooklyn in September.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBest Keystone Cops UpdateNot since Chaplin has running from the police been as funny as Tiffany Haddish in “Bad Trip,” a scripted movie on Netflix that includes unscripted scenes, such as Haddish emerging from under a prison bus dressed in an orange jumpsuit, forcing a male bystander into an uncomfortable decision.Best SpecialThere’s never been a better year for handsome comics making jokes about their fraying mental health. Along with Bo Burnham unraveling onscreen and John Mulaney describing the depths of his addiction in live shows, the British comic James Acaster delivered his masterwork, “Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999,” on Vimeo. It’s a nearly three-hour show, wildly funny and deeply felt, that mocks how easily mental struggles can be turned into entertainment before doing just that.Best Arena SpectacleThere were prop missiles, shining diamonds and a massive sign that announced “World War III” in lights. I’m still not sure what the battle was about, but as soon as the born entertainer Katt Williams charged into the Barclays Center, yellow sneakers a blur, it was clear he had won.Best Netflix DebutNaomi Ekperigin is a natural — a comic that can make you laugh at just about anything: summing up Nancy Meyers movies, vaccines, clichés (why L.A. sucks), the way she says “OK.” In a half-hour set, as part of the collection “The Standups” that will be released on Netflix on Dec. 29, she even has two different jokes about the color beige that earn laughs. It’s a delight.Naomi Ekperigin performs in Season 3 of “The Standups,” coming to Netflix on Dec. 29.Clifton Prescod/NetflixBest Grand Unified TheoryIn describing how the porn industry pioneered everything on the internet, from user-generated content to diversity casting, Danny Jolles, in his endearing and far too overlooked Amazon Prime Video special, “Six Parts,” finds a new way to describe the fragmentation and filtering of the news: fetishes. All news, he argues, has become “kink news,” catering to our narrow, even perverse whims.Best Inside Comedy ParodyLast year ended with the release of “An Evening With Tim Heidecker,” a parody of edgy stand-up comedy that was a bit too vague to really resonate. Now, Heidecker hit the bull’s-eye with his recent YouTube spoof of The Joe Rogan Experience; its 12-hour running time (really one hour on a loop) is its first joke. So precise, so meticulously sensitive to the details, to the cadence and lingo of that podcast, his conversation with two sycophantic guests (played with pitch-perfect smarm by Jeremy Levick and Rajat Suresh) is a master class in sounding absolutely earth-shattering while saying precisely nothing.Best Argument for the Staying Power of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’No comedy that started in 2000 should still be this funny. Part of the reason for this feat is the consistently elite supporting performances, none more important than Susie Essman, who shined this year. Famous for her volcanic fury, she can do dry and understated just as well. I have not laughed louder at a television show this year than after hearing her say the word “caftan.”Susie Essman, left, plays Susie Greene in the long-running HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”John P. Johnson/ HBOMost Underrated Star ComicJim Gaffigan has put out so much material for so long that he’s easy to take for granted. The fact that he’s family friendly probably doesn’t help his press either. His dynamite new special, “Comedy Monster” (premiering Tuesday on Netflix), may be his best, showing Gaffigan at his most dyspeptic. It suits him. Who would have thought that he would so satisfyingly eviscerate marching bands and parades? Or have the most unexpected prop joke of the year (keep an eye out for a grand piano). More

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    Seth Meyers Wants Fox News to Stop Saying ‘Big Meat’

    As Fox hosts went after President Biden over rising prices, Meyers found their choice of words a little distracting.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.Where’s the Beef?On his last “Closer Look” of the year, Seth Meyers tackled some Fox News coverage of President Biden’s response to inflation — specifically, rising meat prices.“Recently, the White House said the blame for rising meat prices rests in part with meat conglomerates, and then Fox News decided to repeat a term for those companies to deride Biden that — well, let’s just say the term was a little distracting,” Meyers said on Thursday.That term? “Big Meat.”“Why are they saying ‘Big Meat’ so much? Is this ‘Fox News After Dark’?” — SETH MEYERS“They sound like they’re on a press tour for a porno about a pizza delivery guy.” — SETH MEYERS“The worst part of that segment came when Rudy got confused and accidentally Googled ‘Big Meat.’”— SETH MEYERS“Maybe they’re just sticking up for Big Meat because that was Trump’s Secret Service code name.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Thong Edition)“If you fly Spirit, that’s the oxygen mask that drops down in an emergency.” — JIMMY FALLON, on a United Airlines passenger who wore a red thong on his face to protest mask requirements (and who later compared himself to Rosa Parks)“A few minutes later, an air marshal walked over and gave him a mouth wedgie.” — JIMMY FALLON“Rosa Parks? My man, don’t be so modest — you’re more than Rosa Parks. If anything, you’re the Martin Luther King of white dudes comparing themselves to Black heroes for no reason.” — TREVOR NOAH“You know, for real, sometimes I think conservatives are right: America shouldn’t be teaching the history of racism in schools, because then at least white people wouldn’t know who to compare themselves to when they get kicked off airplanes for doing dumb [expletive]. ‘I’m exactly the same as — huh, I can’t think of anybody, you know? Maybe I’m just a [expletive] wearing panties on my face. I need to re-evaluate my behavior.’” — TREVOR NOAH“And, by the way, can we all agree there’s no way this dude just starting sniffing thongs during the pandemic? I bet you he’s been going around for years like, ‘Looks like I got kicked out of the dorm because I’m once again the Rosa Parks of my sister’s friend’s underwear drawer.’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingScarlett Johansson tells Jimmy Fallon about meeting Judge Judy (she was star-struck).Also, Check This OutOlivia Rodrigo, members of the cast of “Reservation Dogs” and a scene from “Sanctuary City.”Clockwise from left: Mat Hayward/Getty Images; Jeremy Dennis for The New York Times; Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOlivia Rodrigo and the cast of “Reservation Dogs” are among the breakout stars of 2021. More

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    ‘And Just Like That’ Recap, Episode 3: A Week of Discovery

    Miranda ponders new directions while Carrie is drawn back into the orbit of an old rival.Season 1, Episode 3: ‘When in Rome’It turns out Miranda doesn’t need red hair to be spicy.If you picked up on a bit of flirtation between her and Che right after their decidedly uncute meet in Episode 2, you might have been onto something. At the very end of Episode 3, after she, Carrie and Charlotte take in the live comedy set Che is recording for Netflix, Miranda fibs to her pals that she’s headed home but instead sneaks back in to see her new friend at the after party.Showing a bit of nerves, Miranda is a chatterbox and can’t keep herself from fawning over Che, who tells her to breathe. Oh, Miranda breathes. In a sexy, showstopping move, Che shotguns a drag of weed smoke into Miranda’s mouth, nearly kissing her, and quite possibly shaking her to the core.How did we get here?Well, Miranda told us long ago, in the original “Sex and the City” series, that her husband Steve Brady (David Eigenberg) isn’t a “core-shaker.” He and Miranda were more congenial than amorous, and in “And Just Like That,” this still seems to be the case.Miranda and Steve haven’t had sex in years, she reveals to Charlotte over coffee, somewhat casually. She wonders if they’re even still a couple, or just “roommates with ice cream and a kid.”Che’s act offers an exciting counterpoint to such humdrum domesticity. It is a raucous, LGBTQ+-centered party filled with jokes that feel more like rallying cries, with the comedian telling the crowd that confusion is a good thing — a notion Miranda realizes she relates to — and that if there’s something they don’t like, whether it’s their shirt or maybe even their identity, they can change it. Could Miranda be ready to upset her settled life in favor of a personal revolution? And if so, might it alleviate the need she feels to carry mini bottles of vodka around in her backpack?The ‘Sex and the City’ UniverseThe sprawling franchise revolutionized how women were portrayed on the screen. And the show isn’t over yet. A New Series: Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte return for another strut down the premium cable runway in “And Just Like That,” streaming on HBO. Off Broadway: Candace Bushnell, whose writing gave birth to the “Sex and the City” universe, stars in her one-woman show based on her life. In Carrie’s Footsteps: “Sex and the City” painted a seductive vision of Manhattan, inspiring many young women to move to the city. The Origins: For the show’s 20th anniversary in 2018, Bushnell shared how a collection of essays turned into a pathbreaking series.The wisdom layered within Che’s rowdy, raunchy set isn’t lost on Charlotte either, who takes mental notes between chuckles on how the message relates to her own life. Rose, her youngest, has just confessed that she doesn’t always feel like a girl. Charlotte isn’t quite sure how seriously to take this at first, nor is her best friend Anthony, who basically tells her to ignore it.But during Che’s show, the vibe of acceptance and self-love pulsing through the crowd encourages Charlotte to follow her instincts and ensure that Rose feels supported. She calls Rose after the performance just to say “I love you.” Like a typical teen, Rose just wants to go back to playing Mario Kart.For Carrie, Che’s event is mostly an escape from a week otherwise filled with heartache and humiliation. Natasha Naginsky (Bridget Moynahan), a.k.a. the “idiot stick figure with no soul,” reappears and, to my own personal delight, so then does nutty, neurotic Carrie.Early on in the episode, in the reading of Big’s will, Carrie finds out that her late husband has left a cool million to Natasha, his ex-wife. Carrie can’t help but wonder — no, completely obsess over — why.Carrie spirals (classic Carrie) and becomes convinced that Big and Natasha were still in touch before his death — perhaps they even were having an affair.She roots through her and Big’s apartment for clues and is taunted by a photo she finds in his wallet of Gogi, an old dog she never knew about. What else doesn’t she know? It’s an urgent question that seems to have only one answer: that Natasha was really the love of Big’s life, and he regretted choosing Carrie over her.Despite Miranda and Charlotte’s reassurances, Carrie has to hear from the woman herself whether this is true. She emails Natasha but gets stonewalled. She messages her on Instagram but gets blocked. So Carrie concludes that the logical next step is to show up unannounced at Natasha’s office.In a demoralizing sequence of events, Natasha’s assistant lies to Carrie’s face, saying Natasha is in Rome as a means of shooing her out of the lobby, only for Carrie to see Natasha moments later in her office window. Worse, Natasha sees Carrie on the sidewalk, pointing up at her like a deranged stalker. As if that weren’t mortifying enough, a few days later Carrie walks in on Natasha using the bathroom at a coffee shop.They are both so startled that Carrie spills her hot drink and badly burns her hand. Despite not wanting to engage with Carrie, Natasha takes pity on her in a scene that harkens back to the moment in the original series when she caught Carrie sneaking out of her and Big’s marital abode.During that scene, Natasha injures herself, and Carrie takes care of her. Now it is Carrie who needs the first-aid, and Natasha owes her one. She gives Carrie ice and some desperately needed closure, telling her that she and Big haven’t been in contact since their divorce. Natasha has no idea why he would leave her money, and she doesn’t want it. There was no affair, and no love lingering between her and her ex-husband.Carrie reasons that the gift was probably Big’s way of apologizing to Natasha, something Carrie feels compelled to do as well. They part ways cordially with a promise not to bother each other on social media.Big not alerting his wife to the loaded line item in his will was wildly inconsiderate, which happens to be his signature trait. Even from beyond the grave, he still has the power to knock Carrie off balance and worse, make her feel like she isn’t enough.Which is to say that Big is still classic Big, even when he’s dead. More

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    Chris Noth Peloton Ad Pulled After Sexual Assault Allegations

    The online ad, a response to the “Sex and the City” reboot, was removed after The Hollywood Reporter published an article in which two women accused the actor of sexual assault.Peloton pulled down a popular online ad featuring the actor Chris Noth on Thursday after The Hollywood Reporter published an article in which two women accused him of sexual assault.The article detailed the accusations of two women, identified with pseudonyms, who claimed Noth — who played Mr. Big on “Sex and the City” and stars in its new reboot — sexually assaulted them in separate incidents in 2004 and 2015. In a statement, Noth called their accusations “categorically false.”After the allegations surfaced, Peloton, the stationary-bike maker, removed a widely viewed online ad featuring Noth. It had quickly put up the ad after the first episode of the “Sex and the City” reboot — the HBO Max limited series, “And Just Like That” — depicted Mr. Big dying of a heart attack after riding a Peloton bike.“Every single sexual assault accusation must be taken seriously,” Peloton said in a statement. “We were unaware of these allegations when we featured Chris Noth in our response to HBO’s reboot.”One woman told The Hollywood Reporter that Noth, 67, raped her in 2004, when she was 22, after inviting her to his apartment building’s pool in West Hollywood; the woman said that after the assault, a friend took her to the hospital, where she received stitches. Another woman said he assaulted her in 2015, when she was 25, after a date in New York City.“The encounters were consensual,” he said in the statement. “It’s difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I don’t know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women.”Noth, who also had roles in “Law & Order” and “The Good Wife,” is best known for his role as Mr. Big, the central love interest and eventual husband of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) in “Sex and the City.” His death in the reboot shocked fans and set social media ablaze. Peloton’s stock dropped the day after the episode became available.Three days after the episode debuted, Peloton tried to make the most of the ill-fated product placement by releasing the parody ad, which features Noth lounging with his Peloton instructor, extolling the health benefits of the exercise machine while he flirted with her. In the clip, Mr. Noth suggestively raises an eyebrow, seemingly glancing back toward the bedroom, and asks, “Shall we take another ride? Life’s too short not to.”Then, after the sexual assault allegations surfaced, Peloton’s post on Twitter that included the video disappeared. In a statement, the company said it had archived social media posts related to the video and stopped promoting it while it sought to “learn more” about the allegations.HBO declined to comment. More

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    in Theater

    The Best (and Worst) Theater in Europe in 2021

    The Times’s three European theater critics pick their favorite productions of the year — plus a turkey apiece for the festive season.Matt WolfFour favorites from The Times’s theater critic in LondonNabhaan Rizwan, left, and Emma Corrin in “ANNA X” at the Harold Pinter Theater.Helen Murray“ANNA X”Joseph Charlton’s 80-minute two-hander was first seen in 2019 at the VAULT Festival, an annual London showcase of new work on the theatrical fringe, but it hit the big time last summer as part of the producer Sonia Friedman’s RE:EMERGE season of new writing. In Daniel Raggett’s bravura production, the mysterious con woman of the play’s title draws the ambitious techie Ariel into her duplicitous orbit. Playing a fictionalized take on the real fraudster Anna Sorokin, the lauded Princess Diana of “The Crown,” Emma Corrin, proved a stage natural in this West End debut: sleek, stylish and intriguingly dangerous.Eddie Redmayne, left, and Jessie Buckley in “Cabaret” at the Kit Kat Club in London. Marc BrennerHarold Pinter Theater, London“Cabaret”Kit Kat Club, LondonThis 1966 musical is rarely absent from the London stage for long. But I’ve seldom seen it so angrily, or movingly, realized as in the production from the fast-rising director Rebecca Frecknall that opened recently at the Kit Kat Club, as the Playhouse Theater has been renamed. The West End venue has been refashioned into a Weimar-era Berlin nightclub, complete with backstage corridors full of dancers, and drinks, that audience members discover on the way to their seats. Jessie Buckley is blistering as the hapless Sally Bowles, and Eddie Redmayne is a sinister and sinuous Emcee. The two reinvent their iconic roles from scratch, and are given robust support by Liza Sadovy and Elliot Levey as the doomed couple at the musical’s bruised heart.Ivo Van Hove’s “Roman Tragedies,” which was livestreamed from the International Theater Amsterdam in February.Jan Versweyveld“Roman Tragedies”International Theater AmsterdamAmid a lean spell for Shakespeare on the London stage, a one-off livestream from Amsterdam during the coronavirus lockdown in February found something current in some time-honored texts. “Roman Tragedies” amalgamated Shakespeare’s three Roman plays — “Julius Caesar,” “Coriolanus” and “Antony and Cleopatra” — into a riveting six-hour marathon conceived well before its Belgian director, Ivo van Hove, had become a Broadway and West End presence. (The triptych was first performed in 2007.) These studies in political discord and societal discontent found multiple correspondences with the present, not least in the storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., the previous month: Democracy is fragile in Shakespeare’s plays, and it certainly felt so then.From left, Linda Bassett, Samir Simon-Keegan and John Heffernan in Caryl Churchill’s “What If If Only” at the Royal Court Theater.Johan Persson“What If If Only”Royal Court Theater, LondonAt 83, Caryl Churchill shows no sign — thank heavens — of slowing down or easing up on the adventure and surprise that characterize her work. “What If If Only,” her latest offering, ran a mere 20 minutes, but without leaving the audience feeling shortchanged. Churchill’s searching wit and intelligence were evident at every turn, as was the crystalline clarity brought to the play by her frequent director, James Macdonald, and a superb cast headed by John Heffernan and Linda Bassett, playing characters with names like Someone, Future and Present. The potentially cryptic, in their hands, made perfect sense.And the turkey …Lizzy Connoly, left; Ako Mitchell; onstage center; and Norman Bowman, onstage right, in “Indecent Proposal” at the Southwark Playhouse.Helen Maybanks“Indecent Proposal”Southwark Playhouse, LondonWhy must seemingly every film become a stage musical? I was beginning to feel I’d had enough after watching this misbegotten venture, which is adapted from the same novel by Jack Engelhard as the 1993 Robert Redford and Demi Moore movie. The outline remained: A couple is thrown into turmoil when the wife is offered a million dollars to sleep with a smooth-talking man of means, here played by Ako Mitchell. What was missing was any real characterization, motivation or decent music. The production resembled a cruise ship lounge act: appropriate for a show that was entirely at sea.Laura CappelleFour favorites from The Times’s theater critic in ParisEric Foucart in “What Should Men Be Told?” at the MC93 theater in Bobigny, France.Emilia Stéfani-Law“What Should Men Be Told?”MC93; Bobigny, FranceThe first performances of “What Should Men Be Told?” (“Que Faut-Il Dire aux Hommes?”) took place under unusual circumstances. Last January, theaters were still closed in France under coronavirus restrictions — they didn’t reopen until May — and to keep artists onstage, some theaters held private daytime performances for industry professionals. This collaboration between the director Didier Ruiz and seven men and women of faith provided unexpected respite from the outside world. All were nonprofessional actors opening up in monologues about their relationship to spirituality, whether they had spent decades in a Dominican cell or found shamanist beliefs late in life. Even to this atheist, the result felt like a soothing meditation.Permanent members of the Comédie-Française acting troupe in “7 Minutes.”Vincent Pontet/Comédie-Française“7 Minutes”Comédie-Française, ParisIn Stefano Massini’s “7 Minutes,” the director Maëlle Poésy found a play that both widens the horizons of the Comédie-Française, France’s oldest and most prestigious theater company, and plays to its strengths. This contemporary blue-collar drama — a rarity in the Comédie-Française repertoire — follows 11 women who fear for their jobs after the textile factory where they work changes hands. They meet to discuss whether they should accept or reject an offer from the new management team, which initially seems too good to be true. The cast, drawn from every generation within the company’s permanent acting troupe, delivered the debate with passion, nuance and a compelling hint of working-class rebellion.Vhan Olsen Dombo, left, and Claudia Mongumu in “Out of Sweat” at Le Lucernaire.Raphaël Kessler“Out of Sweat”Le Lucernaire, ParisThe premiere of “Out of Sweat” was delayed twice because of the pandemic, but it was worth the wait. The play, by Hakim Bah, won the 2019 Laurent Terzieff-Pascale de Boysson writing prize, created by the Lucernaire theater to encourage new talent and help produce their work. It deftly tells the stories of a handful of characters from an unspecified African country. One woman has already emigrated to France, while another decides to seduce a Frenchman online, abandoning her children and unfaithful husband. Yet “Out of Sweat,” co-directed by Bah and Diane Chavelet, is no gritty drama: Each scene is a self-contained work of poetry, carried by the musical lilt in Bah’s writing. A superb and versatile cast completes this showcase of Black talent.Simone Zambelli, front center, as Arturo in “Misericordia” at the Avignon Festival.Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Festival d’Avignon“Misericordia”Avignon FestivalThe Italian director Emma Dante has become a regular visitor to the Avignon Festival, and “Misericordia,” one of two productions she presented there this year, exemplified her mastery of movement-based theater. In this spare show, three women rally around a mentally disabled young man, Arturo, whose mother has died. Dante gives the characters a larger-than-life physicality to express their frustrations, as money becomes tight and their home life fraught. The back-and-forth gestures and quips among them are meticulously timed, and as Arturo, Simone Zambelli, a trained dancer, anchors every scene, his limbs bending and darting eloquently in bittersweet solo turns.And the turkey …The cast of “Andy” at the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in Lisbon.Bruno Simão/BoCA Bienal de Artes Contemporâneas“Andy”Teatro Nacional D. Maria II; LisbonGus Van Sant certainly doesn’t lack confidence. For his first stage production, “Andy,” a musical inspired by the life of Andy Warhol, he opted not only to direct but also to write the script, design the sets and compose the music. Predictably, “Andy,” which had its premiere as part of Lisbon’s Biennial of Contemporary Arts, failed on pretty much all counts, with labored pacing, dubious songs and characters that never acquired inner lives. The inexperienced cast valiantly tried to save Van Sant from himself, but this will go down as a lesson in the perils of hiring big names who lack a basic knowledge of stagecraft.A.J. GoldmannFour favorites from The Times’s theater critic in BerlinLina Beckmann in “Richard the Kid and the King” at the Salzburg Festival.Monika Rittershaus“Richard the Kid and King”Salzburg Festival / Deutsches SchauspielhausThe German actress Lina Beckmann gave the performance of the year in this epic Shakespeare mash-up that traces the development of the Bard’s most bloodthirsty monarch. Selecting carefully from the vast panorama of the eight War of the Roses plays, the director Karin Henkel keeps her staging (seen at both the Salzburg Festival in Austria and the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, Germany) focused and uncluttered despite the large dramatis personae. For much of the lengthy evening, the Houses of Lancaster and York are brought to life by a handful of nimble actresses playing multiple roles. But the production belongs to Beckmann, whose volcanic performance as Richard III is a master class in shape-shifting, dissembling and uncanny persuasion: in other words, in acting itself.“The Threepenny Opera” at the Berliner Ensemble.JR Berliner Ensemble“The Threepenny Opera”Berliner EnsembleRobert Wilson’s legendary production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera,” which ran for over 300 performances at the Berliner Ensemble, was going to be a hard act to follow. If Barrie Kosky, the director of the new production at the theater, where what is Berlin’s most famous musical premiered in 1928, felt under pressure, his assured staging doesn’t show it. Kosky’s bold reimagining scrupulously avoids the Weimar clichés that have hardened around the work over the past 90 years. Working with a flawless cast from the theater’s acting ensemble, Kosky has produced something full of savage and gleeful menace — and the firecracker score has rarely sounded better.The cast of “Metamorphoses (overcoming mankind)” at the Volksbühne Berlin.Julian Röder“Metamorphoses (overcoming mankind)”Volksbühne BerlinAs Germany slid back into lockdown last winter, the Volksbühne forged ahead with a series of new plays, streamed online, exploring ancient Greek drama and myth. The most arrestingly beautiful was the director Claudia Bauer’s Ovid-inspired “Metamorphoses (overcoming mankind),” a hypnotic combination of drama, dance and music whose premiere was one of the most exquisitely filmed digital productions of the pandemic. Seven actors (wearing blank masks) and three musicians imaginatively conjured the magical transformations whereby women become birds and men turn into flowers. At the same time, Bauer used the stories about the porous relationship between humans, nature and the gods to reflect on a range of timeless and contemporary issues, including gender fluidity, toxic masculinity, exploitative capitalism and climate change. From left, Katharina Bach, Svetlana Belesova and Thomas Schmauser in “The Politicians” at the Münchner Kammerspiele.Judith Buss“The Politicians”Münchner Kammerspiele; MunichWhen I first saw Wolfram Lotz’s dramatic monologue “The Politicians” (“Die Politiker”) embedded in a 2019 reimagining of “King Lear,” I was startled by the verve and inventiveness of this manic, free-associative monologue. In the short time since, Lotz’s screed has taken on a surprising life of its own in several stand-alone productions throughout Germany and Austria. In Felicitas Brucker’s concise and furiously paced staging at the Münchner Kammerspiele, three performers give a dazzling rapid-fire delivery of this enigmatic and repetitive text. Clocking in at 65 minutes, “The Politicians” feels like a sustained freak-out: an exhilarating roller coaster of bravura acting and transformative stagecraft, in the service of a distinctively bold (and odd) new dramatic text.And the turkey …From left, Edmund Telgenkämper, Hildegard Schmahl and Lea Ruckpaul in “The Falun Mine” at the Salzburg Festival.Ruth Walz/Salzburg Festival“The Falun Mine”Salzburg FestivalA new staging of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s rarely performed “The Falun Mine” was intended to celebrate the Austrian writer who was one of the Salzburg Festival’s founders, and whose morality play “Jedermann” is the event’s perennial favorite. Sadly, Jossi Wieler’s production, which arrived in the midst of the festival’s centennial celebrations, was so lackluster that it felt like the opposite of a rediscovery. Indeed, the inert staging was so dreary that one could wish “The Falun Mine,” never performed during Hofmannsthal’s lifetime, had remained buried. Here’s hoping some other theater or director can successfully excavate it in the future. More