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    Emma D’Arcy, Master of ‘House of the Dragon’

    A four-episode role in Season 1 of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” made the actor a breakout star. This season, D’Arcy reigns at the top of the call sheet.On a recent morning in London, the British actor Emma D’Arcy was dealing with “an emergency.”D’Arcy was in a studio, rerecording voice-over as Rhaenyra Targaryen for the second season of HBO’s hit “Game of Thrones” prequel, “House of the Dragon.” It was the fourth time the actor, who uses they and them pronouns, had recorded this particular bit of dialogue, and each time they were confronted by an enormous screen showing their face, surrounded by unfinished special effects.It was like a rather brutal “Groundhog Day,” they said, adding wryly that “the process of repression happens very quickly when you’ve got a job to do.”As the breakout star of “House of the Dragon,” which returns for its second season on Sunday, D’Arcy, 31, has had to adjust to seeing their image blown up. “Emma is literally the face on the poster,” Ryan Condal, a “Dragon” creator and showrunner, said in a phone interview, adding that he couldn’t imagine what it must be like “taking that on but also still being an artist, and a serious student of the craft.”D’Arcy has been grappling with this tension since “Dragon” first aired in 2022, when it became the most-watched premiere in HBO’s history. Set approximately 200 years before “Game of Thrones,” the show centers on the Targaryen dynasty before its dramatic fall. D’Arcy’s headstrong dragon rider, Rheanyra, who must defend her claim to the Iron Throne, quickly emerged as a fan favorite.In the coming eight-episode season, D’Arcy is in every episode, whereas in the first 10-episode season, Milly Alcock played a younger version of Rhaenyra in six.“What I realized retrospectively is, four episodes — mwah!” D’Arcy said, miming a chef’s kiss as they sat cross-legged in a chair at the Royal Court Theater in London. The second season was more emotionally difficult, too. At the end of Season 1, Rhaenyra’s son Luke is killed by a dragon, and so D’Arcy’s character is “stricken with grief,” they said. “She’s made an island by her loss,” radiating “a violent, vile feeling — like a hatred feeling.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘The Welkin’ Review: A Strong Ensemble and a Story That Resonates

    A somber yet witty play set in 18th-century England is a clever perversion of a courtroom drama that features strong performances from an ensemble cast.The final word of “The Welkin” — a soft “oh” of realization that left the theater breathless — is more of an utterance, the coo of an innocent young babe. But the speaker isn’t a child; she’s a grown woman.And she’s accused of murder.It’s England in 1759, just around the time everyone is buzzing about the arrival of Halley’s comet. This woman, Sally Poppy (played by Haley Wong), and her lover are accused of the murder and dismemberment of the young daughter of the rich family for which Sally worked. She’s set to hang, but there’s a hitch: Sally claims she’s pregnant.“The Welkin” is a kind of courtroom drama or, rather, a clever perversion of such; technically we don’t see the courtroom, just a dim, dungeonlike room nearby where a forum of 12 matrons has been convened. They’re not Sally’s final adjudicators (that job is for the men, after all), but the jury ruling on the women’s issue in this case: whether Sally’s actually pregnant.A little bit “The Crucible” and a lot bit the 2022 film “Women Talking,” in all the best ways, “The Welkin,” which opened on Wednesday at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater, is a somber yet witty examination of how women labor — with housework, with children and with a society of men that doesn’t serve them — and how they negotiate their assumed responsibilities with their desires.“The Welkin” successfully depicts these women as unique individuals, representing women from different strata of society, and with different prejudices and viewpoints. Each one is memorable, from the stately outsider, Charlotte Cary (Mary McCann), a colonel’s widow in a stylish crown of a hat, to Mary Middleton (Susannah Perkins), an awkward, superstitious young woman who is worried only about getting home to her crop of leeks.Sandra Oh (center) is a standout of the ensemble cast. Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Tony Predictions: Expect Wins for ‘Merrily’ and ‘Stereophonic’

    Our reporter surveyed a quarter of Tony voters before Sunday’s ceremony. One certainty: Sondheim’s onetime flop seems destined for redemption.Everyone loves a comeback story. And this year, Broadway will be celebrating one for the ages.“Merrily We Roll Along,” a Stephen Sondheim show that has long been one of musical theater’s most storied flops, will cement its long-sought redemption on Sunday by winning the Tony Award for best musical revival, according to my annual survey of Tony voters.This week I have connected, by phone or by email, with just over a quarter of the 836 Tony voters, and asked how they were voting. In a season in which lots of new musicals have admirers but none seem to have fully satisfied industry insiders, that race is tight, as are some of the key acting categories.But “Merrily,” more than any show since “Hamilton,” has won over not only the ticket-buying audience, which has made this production a significant hit, but also the group of producers, investors, writers, actors, designers and others whose work or volunteer lives are so theater-involved that they have qualified as Tony voters.The survey is not a scientific poll; some voters haven’t even cast their ballots yet. For the actual winners (and some song and dance, too), tune in Sunday for the awards show, which starts at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS and Paramount+ with Showtime. A preshow with some of the awards will stream on Pluto TV starting at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, and we’ll be live-blogging all evening at nytimes.com/theater.Until then, here’s a look at what those surveyed are indicating.Best musical: ‘The Outsiders’ could upset ‘Hell’s Kitchen.’“The Outsiders” is getting lots of love for its vivid depiction of violence and gritty physical production, but less for its score.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMany are loving the vocal performances and the choreography in “Hell’s Kitchen,” but are less enamored with the storytelling.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Hell’s Kitchen,” the Alicia Keys musical, is doing quite well: good reviews, lots of media attention and the strongest sales of any of the season’s new musicals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Late Night Recaps Donald Trump’s Return to Capitol Hill

    “They always return to the scene of the crime,” Jimmy Kimmel said after the former president met with House Republicans on Thursday.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.The Scene of the CrimeDonald Trump returned to Capitol Hill on Thursday, his first visit there since the Jan. 6 riot. House Republicans sang an early “Happy Birthday” for the former president, who turned 78 on Friday.“They always return to the scene of the crime,” Jimmy Kimmel joked.“Some Republicans who were in the room described the meeting as a ‘gripe-filled’ airing of legal and personal grievances. That sounds right.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The meeting itself, according to sources, took place at an undisclosed location, which means any of the five McDonald’s within a 10-minute radius of the Hill.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“One of the things he’s upset about, he talked about at this meeting, is Taylor Swift supporting Joe Biden. He said, ‘Why would she endorse this dope?’ And they were like, ‘I don’t know, why did we endorse this dope?’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Trump’s Birthday Edition)“They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him? They’re not waiters at a TGI Fridays. Isn’t that embarrassing for everybody involved? A room of adults wearing suits saying, ‘Let’s discuss our agenda to dismantle the regulations that protect our environment, but, first, who’s the big boy getting a year older?’” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Seriously, do you people have no shame? It’s the guy’s first public visit since he sicced a mob on you and almost got you killed, and not only are you welcoming him back with open arms, you’re singing him ‘Happy Birthday’ a day before his birthday? This is like if all the teens at Crystal Lake got together to throw a surprise party for Jason: ‘We got you a new chain saw.’” — SETH MEYERS“And the worst part is that Ted Cruz sang it sexy like Marilyn Monroe.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Trump’s birthday should be fun. The last time people gathered to say ‘Are you 1? Are you 2? Are you 3?’ they were counting guilty verdicts.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe singer and actress Maya Hawke discussed her third album, “Chaos Angel,” and her voice acting role as Anxiety in “Inside Out 2,” on Thursday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutEmilio Estevez, left, and Andrew McCarthy discuss the Brat Pack in “Brats,” a documentary directed by McCarthy.ABC News StudiosThe actor and director Andrew McCarthy examines his life and career as a member of the Brat Pack in his new documentary, “Brats.” More

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    Patrick Gottsch, Champion of Rural TV Programming, Dies at 70

    After a career as a satellite dish installer, he found success with RFD-TV, a 24-hour cable channel aimed at farmers and ranchers.A tractor-pulling contest in Rockwell, Iowa. “The Big Joe Polka Show.” A veterinarian discussing how to keep flies off cows. A rerun of a 1982 episode of “Hee Haw.”Those were some of the recent offerings on RFD-TV, a 24-hour channel created by Patrick Gottsch, a satellite-dish installer who had the idea to start a network aimed at the farmers and ranchers who were his customers.Its programing may not be the stuff of must-see television in urban and suburban America. But RFD-TV, which also carries gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Future Farmers of America convention, occupies an enduring, if narrow, niche on the television spectrum.Mr. Gottsch, whose spinoff properties include the Cowboy Channel, the Cowgirl Channel and Rural Radio, Channel 147 on SiriusXM, died on May 18 in Fort Worth. He was 70.His death, at a hotel in the city’s historic Stockyards district, was unexpected. His daughters Raquel Gottsch Koehler and Gatsby Gottsch Solheim said that the family was awaiting a medical examiner’s report to learn the cause, but that it was probably related to his history of diabetes.Mr. Gottsch, who grew up on a farm in Nebraska, fought tenaciously to prove that TV programming about agriculture, horses, the rural lifestyle and traditional country music could be viable — especially in his company’s early years, when, he liked to recall, investors and media executives told him that it was a “stupid idea” or that “farmers don’t watch TV.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘How Long Blues’ Review: Twyla Tharp in Overdrive at Little Island

    Her frenetic new dance-theater work, which opens a new festival at the new park on the Hudson, includes references to Camus and music by T Bone Burnett.On a recent dusky evening, a dozen or so visitors to Little Island in Manhattan were gazing into its outdoor amphitheater from a nearby perch. They didn’t have tickets, sold out at $25 each, to “How Long Blues,” the first outing in a new summer festival that hopes to fulfill the site’s promise as a lively platform for the performing arts. So the slope of a rolling, manicured hill offered the best vantage point.Halfway through the hourlong show, though, most of them had wandered off.To be fair, the lush, dynamic public park, rising from the Hudson River and privately funded by the media titan Barry Diller for $260 million, can be delightfully distracting. But “How Long Blues,” a new dance-theater work conceived, choreographed and directed by Twyla Tharp, now running through June 23, is a chaotic head-scratcher. While a riverside setting can be overstimulating (a heliport is less than 20 blocks uptown), the action onstage pulls your attention in so many directions at once that you feel you’re always missing something.In addition to an excellent band on elevated platforms, a standing piano rides in on the back of a tricycle. (The music, a mercurial flow of jazz that ranges from swingy and upbeat to trippy and dissonant, is by T Bone Burnett and David Mansfield.) There are appearances by performers wearing doll heads with cartoon features, a demonlike figure covered in straw fringe and Sisyphus carrying a rock on his shoulder — all of this while two smartly dressed men (played by the Tony Award winner Michael Cerveris and a Tharp regular, John Selya) vaguely pantomime amid a swirl of vibrant dancers. (The show has only a few spoken lines.)You would have little way of knowing, without reading Tharp’s interview in The New York Times, that “How Long Blues” concerns the French writer and philosopher Albert Camus, and specifically elements from his 1947 novel “The Plague” about a pandemic in Algeria (coughing fits by a dancer or two are not sufficient clues). Notes shared privately with the press confirm that Cerveris is meant to be Jean-Paul Sartre, a close friend of Camus, played by Selya, and that “literal thinking” about narrative “is not helpful here,” according to Tharp.That’s certainly true, but nor is “How Long Blues,” named for a song by Leroy Carr, coherently abstract. Consistent gestures toward an illegible story undercut the show’s components, which are less often in harmony than in competition.Tharp’s choreography, when it has sufficient room to breathe, is the star attraction: a medley of vigorous and precise ballet technique — graceful suspension, expansive limbs — with the sort of unexpected pivots and urgent expressiveness that distinguish her muscular style.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘The Curse’ Is a Pulpy and Self-Aware Heist Series

    In the best ways, this endearing and very bingeable British show feels as if “Breaking Bad” were happening to “Bob’s Burgers.”From left, Hugo Chegwin, Allan Mustafa, Emer Kenny and Tom Davis in a scene from “The Curse.”BritBox“Some of this might have happened,” “The Curse” declares at the top of each episode. The show is loosely inspired by the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery in London, when robbers stole a mountain of gold bullion from a vault and largely evaded capture. As with many plundered caches, though, those bricks came at a cost, and where money led, misery followed.But veracity claims feel beside the point for “The Curse” — a British show that debuted in 2022, not to be confused with the unrelated 2023 Showtime series starring Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone — which shines bright enough on its specifics, its self-aware pulp and especially its antsy momentum.Our doomed squad centers on the calculating cafe owner Natasha (Emer Kenny), her bumbling husband, Albert (Allan Mustafa), and her even more bumbling brother, Sidney (Steve Stamp, who also created the show). Mick (Tom Davis) is the muscle, but definitely not the brains, and Phil (Hugo Chegwin) is convinced he is the group’s leader — which the others dispute.In the best ways, the show feels as if “Breaking Bad” were happening to “Bob’s Burgers.” Anxious wannabe-tough guys argue over inane minutiae while fumbling their way through the criminal underworld. After Phil gives a grandiose pronouncement, Mick asks if he is quoting the Bible. “It’s our new Bible,” Phil says. “‘Scarface.’”The Brink’s-Mat robbery was recently the basis for the also terrific 2023 mini-series “The Gold,” which is witty but takes a more grounded approach. “The Curse” is more cartoonish, blending sitcom one-liners with flashes of abrupt violence — neurotic, endearing infighting in the foreground, international crime rings in the background. The plotting is brisk approaching breakneck, which highlights just how much its ding-a-ling characters are struggling to keep up, getting both luckier and unluckier at every turn.Episodes of “The Curse” are a half-hour, and most end on cliffhangers, so the show is practically begging to be binged. Season 1, available on Amazon Prime Video and BritBox, starts with the heist and ends with a great escape; Season 2, available on BritBox only, is set in Spain, where characters are avoiding extradition, building a water park and trying to break into the cocaine industry. More

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    Listen to the Best Songs From 8 Tony-Nominated Shows

    “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Stereophonic” and others are up for top prizes at Sunday’s ceremony. Our critic takes stock of their cast albums, all available now.Cast albums are both keepsakes and fantasies, preserving a show for those who have seen it and implying it for those who have not. At their best, they are also stand-alone works of musical-theater art. Listening to the recordings of the eight shows nominated for Tony Awards in the best musical and best score categories — all of which are now available — I was impressed by how often and how variously they reached that standard. Below, in chronological order by opening date on Broadway, a guide to the latest batch of future treasures.‘Here Lies Love’The first of the season’s best score nominees, this sung-through biography of Imelda Marcos was the only one not to release a cast recording. That’s a shame, but die-hards can seek out the 2014 Off Broadway version or the 2010 concept album, with its whacka-whacka disco-beat ditties by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. Remastered in 2023, and with a very different collection of songs from the Broadway show, the concept album is naturally less theatrical; with each track featuring a different singer in a totally distinctive style — Tori Amos, Florence Welch, Natalie Merchant, Sia — character development is impossible. Instead, it offers hypnotic dance-floor euphoria, as in Cyndi Lauper’s take on Imelda’s “Eleven Days” of courtship.“Eleven Days”“Here Lies Love,” featuring Cyndi Lauper, from the 2010 concept album (Nonesuch)‘Days of Wine and Roses’A story of husband-and-wife alcoholics on diverging paths toward recovery and disaster is bound to be harrowing, but Adam Guettel’s score carefully balances the inevitable lows with the sometimes wild highs. The cast album brilliantly captures that full-spectrum range, especially in the edge-of-danger singing by Kelli O’Hara and Brian D’Arcy James at their finest. Their quasi-operatic cries for relief and forgiveness effectively contrast (but do not contradict) the jazzy mania of songs like “Evanesce,” in which the snockered characters sound like xylophones and leap like dolphins, making you ache if not for drink then for these desperate drinkers.“Evanesce”“Days of Wine and Roses” (Nonesuch)‘Water for Elephants’Jessica Stone’s thrilling staging is a real eye-catcher in this circus-based musical at the Imperial Theater. But the cast album demonstrates how the songs, by PigPen Theater Co., a seven-man indie folk collective, can grab you by the ears. Avoiding the rut of some Americana scores, PigPen, along with its arrangers and orchestrators, offers a wide variety of sounds and formats that suit the milieu and the action: bravura showstoppers for the ringmaster, soaring anthems for the hero, haunting ballads for the woman caught between them. One of those ballads is “Easy,” a heartbreaker even if you have no idea that it’s sung to a dying horse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More