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    ‘Succession’ Recap, Season 3, Episode 4: Meep-Meep

    After last week’s punishingly bleak episode, this week “Succession” brought some much-needed comic relief alongside the ongoing melodrama.Season 3, Episode 4: ‘Lion in the Meadow’Last week’s punishingly bleak “Succession” episode was maybe the roughest since Season 2’s “Hunting” (a.k.a.“Boar on the Floor”). But as often happens in this series, this week’s episode pulls back a bit, bringing some much-needed comic relief alongside the ongoing melodrama. In “Lion in the Meadow,” the Roys take a break from scorching the Earth and get back to more subtle power plays, using schoolyard insults and small gestures of disrespect to needle each other. It’s all so oddly delightful.The pettiness comes early and often. When Kendall has to join a Waystar conference call to strategize about the upcoming shareholders’ meeting, he uses an unprintable variation on “Little Lord Fauntleroy” as his sign-on (which is then repeated, hilariously, when he abruptly hangs up). Later, when he’s asked to talk with Logan briefly on a private airstrip tarmac, before they both meet up with a nervous Waystar investor, Kendall zooms off to get to the meeting first, leaving the message, “Tell Dad, ‘Meep-meep’ … It’s from ‘Road Runner.’” For the most part, that’s the level of the attacks and counterattacks this week.The investor in question is Josh Aaronson (Adrien Brody), who owns about 4 percent of Waystar — a holding which, he complains, has lost 10 percent of its value since Kendall started giving news conferences. If Josh is going to back the Roys over Sandy and Stewy at the shareholders’ meeting, he needs to know how far this family feud will go. Does Kendall really want his father in jail? Does Logan really think his son is a mentally ill drug addict? How does this all end? Can the Roys maybe “close up the outrage shop”?There’s another reason Josh invites Logan and Kendall to join him at his sprawling estate. He needs to know if they think of him as a smart guy who knows what to do with his money — and is thus owed some respect — or as some speculator who got lucky, and who only has value because of what he can buy. Is he really an important part of their business? Is he a part of this Waystar family?The biggest chunk of this episode features these three guys putting on a show for each other. Josh tries to tease a little honesty out of the Roys, while Logan and Kendall pretend they’re still a loving family running a viable business, and wielding acumen no outsider can match. What makes these scenes so absorbing is that it’s not too hard to imagine Kendall, and maybe even Logan, wanting to believe the fantasy they’re selling. As they sit side by side in their matching black baseball caps — with Logan saying he can still see his son in charge of Waystar someday, and Kendall lovingly calling his old man “geezer” — they almost seem to be playing roles they wish were real.It doesn’t last. The first few times Josh steps away, the Roys maintain stony silence. Later, as they walk back to the main house through some exhaustingly bumpy hills, Josh leaves the two behind and they start making threats, each insisting the other is playing with a weak hand.Then Logan gets physically ill and the game is up. Josh makes it clear he can only back the Roys if Logan is running things, and seeing the patriarch stumble spooks him — as does Kendall’s attempt to keep talking business while his father is sick. The first cue that these three weren’t on the same page came earlier in the day, when Kendall called the Beatles a “great band” and Josh and Logan both said they’re just a “good band.” The lines were drawn then. Kendall never could convince Josh to cross them.Beyond the vigorous one-upmanship on the beach, what makes this episode so lively is that much of it is spent with the two most reliably comic “Succession” characters: Greg and Tom.Greg is persuaded to meet with Logan, who offers him a drink and then exasperatedly calls in his assistant to sweeten the nervous, indecisive kid’s cocktail with Coca-Cola. (The sound of the soda can opening is like a tiny rebuke to Greg’s manly ambitions.) Logan lets his great-nephew know that he has a little leverage over Waystar right now, and that he needs to use it wisely. Greg, though, is too shaky to assert himself. He keeps getting distracted by his beverage, calling it “strong for a man” and reflecting on the hard-drinking olden days, saying, “I don’t know how you did it back in the ’60s. Different times indeed. Better times? Not for all.”As for Tom, he’s been spending his time lately trying to pick out a good prison for himself and indulging in gallows humor, laughing that his co-workers are calling him “Terminal Tom.” Finally he breaks down in front of Shiv, dropping his fake-courage and musing anxiously about his future life behind bars.“What if I forget to burp the toilet wine?” he frets. “How late can I read? When is lights-out?”There’s a good contrast between the Logan/Kendall/Josh scenes — featuring three guys comfortable with flexing — and the much sillier confrontation in this episode between Tom and Greg. When Tom tries to get his former lackey to make a clear decision on what he wants, Greg finally admits that he’d like to be moved into a leadership position in Waystar’s theme parks division. Tom then moans again about jail before trying to wrestle with Greg, snarling, “Let’s fight like chickens!”Greg refuses, shouting, “I don’t want to do it,” prompting Tom to reply, “Neither do I, Greg!” He tries to turn this into avuncular advice saying, “You’re so hard to riff with. That is a big career obstacle.”But that “neither do I” may be the most honest moment Tom has had in this show. Guys like Logan genuinely enjoy a bloody fray. Guys like Tom only like it when they’re winning.Due DiligenceThe three other Roy children all get moments in the spotlight this week, too. While Kendall and Logan are strutting by the sea, Shiv is back at the office hustling to execute some of her dad’s big plans. These include interfering with ATN’s editorial independence by suggesting the news team take a harder line on the presidential administration. For her trouble, she gets a cranky phone call from her father, who is annoyed that the other executives are complaining about her. “I don’t need another toothache,” he growls. Logan also reminds Shiv, somewhat ominously, that no position he takes is set in stone. “Nothing is a line,” he says. “Everything, everywhere, is always moving, forever.”Meanwhile, Connor is still figuring out what he can ask for in exchange for being publicly loyal to Logan. He nixes Shiv’s idea that he become a host on one of Waystar’s travel and cuisine shows, because he still has presidential ambitions and he doesn’t think that spitting out wine on cable TV is going to help his numbers in the Rust Belt. Currently his team is angling for 2024; Connor assumes the current president — who everyone calls “the Raisin” — is going to get re-elected. But who knows? Maybe if Connor resumes his campaign in earnest, he can also help with Shiv’s White House problem.As for Roman, he is initially distracted by the news that Gerri is going on a date. (“With who?” he asks, incredulously. “Montgomery Clift? The Ghost of Christmas Past?”) Once he gets past that, he suggests a particularly nasty way to take down Kendall: By locating “Tattoo Man,” a down on his luck guy his brother once paid to tattoo his initials on his forehead, while the siblings were on an “ironic” New Orleans bar crawl. The man has since had the tattoo removed, but Roman eventually persuades him to provide Waystar with an old picture, which Gerri suggests Roman keep under wraps for now. She advises him to start asking himself, with every bold move or dirty trick, “How does this advance my position?” More

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    Review: ‘Gnit’ Seeks Itself in a Mist of Magic and Mischief

    Will Eno’s inward-looking incarnation of “Peer Gynt” steps out of Ibsen’s shadow just as Ibsen shrugged off elements of the original fairy tale.We know the formula of the fairy tale: There is often a youth, sometimes a journey and always a touch of the fantastical to convey a moral or theme. Since we know the classic tropes from our childhood bedtime stories — don’t deviate from the path, be wary of witches, fear trolls — to contemporize a fairy tale is to shade these narrative standbys, coloring in the context of the time, updating the tone and plot to challenge our expectations.In 1867 Henrik Ibsen did just that, putting his own experimental, modernist spin on the Norwegian story of Peer Gynt to create a timeless narrative of self-discovery — in the form of a five-act play in verse, no less. In Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt,” the title character is a lazy, selfish liar who is a headache to his poor, sick mother. When he goes to a wedding to steal away the bride — an old flame — only to fall instantly in love with another woman at the wedding, the town turns against him for his troublemaking. So he flees, and his meanderings lead him to odd characters and even odder situations — encounters with magical beings, thieves and asylum patients.The playwright Will Eno puts his own stamp on Ibsen’s version in “Gnit,” which opened at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn on Sunday night. Portraying the protagonist as a listless young man on a search for self, Eno ends up with a funny story that is myopic in scope — a self-aware and sometimes cloyingly precocious thought experiment in individualism and identity.In “Gnit,” which originally premiered in the Actors Theater of Louisville in 2013, Eno translates Peer Gynt to Peter Gnit (that’s pronounced “Guh-nit”; you’re welcome) and consolidates many of the other characters so that a cast of six can represent a whole town. That’s one of the tricky parts of Ibsen’s text — the long list of characters, the insistent verse, the constant setting shifts, the frequent and abrupt dips into the absurd and surreal.Eno’s text takes a route of calculated whimsy: Ibsen’s trolls are changed to real estate agents, characters make knowing references to the original story and the dialogue is tuned to a cheeky deadpan. Playing off Eno’s heightened sense of language and pacing, Oliver Butler opts for comically stylized direction in this production by the Theater for a New Audience. The actors’ movement and intonation are stiff and curiously robotic, and the lines move with the rapid Ping-Pong tempo of the dialogue in an episode of “Gilmore Girls.”Joe Curnutte and Deborah Hedwall in the Theater for a New Audience production.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I’m on a journey to discover, to uncover, the authentic self,” Peter tells his mother.Her stone-dry response: “Yeah? Get some milk while you’re out.” Which isn’t to say it’s not funny — in fact, the work is genuinely hilarious, the turns are unpredictable and the performers, especially the priceless Deborah Hedwall as Mother Gynt, Jordan Bellow as several different characters, and of course Joe Curnutte in the lead role, seem to effortlessly hit their cues. (David Shih, who plays various townspeople at once, and spends most of the show in conversation with himself like a mini one-man show within the show, struggles to convey the multitude of tones and personalities and accents, and the novelty of the joke quickly wears off.)But Eno’s self-consciously idiosyncratic, academic style eventually gets old somewhere between the nuptial kidnapping and a trip to Egypt. Offbeat, Beckett-esque ruminations and existential querying are common in Eno’s works — including the poignant “Wakey, Wakey” and his popular Pulitzer Prize finalist, “Thom Pain (based on nothing).” So his adaptation brings out the big-picture questions Ibsen had in his original, about the ways we form, and own up to, our “authentic self.” Eno’s narrow and incessant philosophizing, however, quickly limits the play from exploring other themes that may have otherwise proved more fruitful.Ibsen’s incarnation of the fairy tale, for example, also works as a social satire of a community set at odds with its individuals and that emphasizes status over human empathy. Though the skeleton of that satire is visible in Eno’s version, “Gnit” does little to examine or expand it from Ibsen’s time to the present. Likewise, there could be a dissection of gender, a critique of class hierarchies, a sendup of this genre of storytelling itself.There’s magic in Kimie Nishikawa’s set of verdant rolling hills with a valley in the center, and periodically the facades of little cottages descend from the ceiling. Nishikawa’s hills, which the cast members travel among, through and around as they enter and exit scenes, draw the eyes to the pastoral scene and also provide a sense of Peter’s extensive journeying.This isn’t Norway, though. And it doesn’t seem to be the 19th century either. In fact, everything about the setting and characters is vague, which leads us yet again to the question of what Eno is trying to achieve with his adaptation?“There is a limit to the magic powers of language,” Peter says as he tells a story to his dying mother. The lesson, that cleverness can fail when wordplay and chin-stroking ruminations distract, is one that Eno himself could have taken to heart. “Gnit” is brainy and full of rhetorical magic, but with more dimension and greater relevance it could be spellbinding.GnitThrough Nov. 21 at the Theater for a New Audience, Brooklyn; tfana.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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    An Indigenous Canadian Director Channels Traumatic Memories Into Film

    Tracey Deer based “Beans” on her experiences as a child during the 1990 Oka crisis, a confrontation between the Mohawk people and the government.Tracey Deer can still remember the sound of rocks hitting the car, her panicked mother’s orders to “Get down!” and the loud smash as a back passenger window shattered, showering glass over her screaming little sister.Deer, an Indigenous Canadian filmmaker, was only 12 on Aug. 28, 1990, when a white mob hurled stones and racial insults at vehicles filled with Mohawk women, children and the elderly, all trying to evacuate a reservation near Montreal. The Oka crisis, a dispute between Canadian authorities and the Mohawk people over land rights, was reaching its height, and the frightened children crouched on the floor until Deer’s mother could drive on.“My sense of safety was stolen from me,” Deer said. “My sense of self-worth, as of that moment, was nonexistent.” But after spending most of her adolescence consumed by anger, she said in a video interview, “I ended up finding a way to channel that instead into my drive to prove all those people wrong.”One result is “Beans,” her first narrative feature, which was named best picture at the Canadian Screen Awards this year and has collected more than 20 prizes on the film-festival circuit. The newly released drama is a long-sought milestone for Deer, 43, a screenwriter, director, documentarian and television showrunner. (She was a creator of the comedy-drama series “Mohawk Girls,” streaming on Peacock, as well as a writer for “Anne With an E” on Netflix.)A fictionalized version of her experiences, the film focuses on a bright, ambitious Mohawk girl, nicknamed Beans (portrayed by the Mohawk actress Kiawentiio). She lives with her family on the Kahnawake reserve, as Deer did, and has applied to enter seventh grade at an elite, mostly white academy that’s similar to the school Deer went to before graduating from Dartmouth.“I wanted to be the one to tell the story,” Kiawentiio (pronounced Ghee-ah-wen-DEE-o) said via video from Canada, where she was shooting the new live-action “Avatar: The Last Airbender” series for Netflix. Thirteen while filming “Beans,” she felt a personal connection to the history, having grown up in Akwesasne, a reserve not far from the conflict. “A lot of people from my community went there and were helping,” said Kiawentiio, whose own parents were teenagers at the time.Violah Beauvais, left, and Kiawentiio in a scene from Deer’s film.Sebastien Raymond/FilmriseBeans’ journey begins when she is caught up in the real protests that unfolded after the mayor of Oka, a town near Montreal, announced plans to expand a golf course onto land containing a sacred Mohawk burial ground. Devastated by the violence that ensues — she is present when gunfire erupts at a confrontation between Mohawk demonstrators and the police, precipitating the 78-day crisis — Beans falls in with a rough crowd of Mohawk teenagers. They include a charismatic boy who tries to force her to perform oral sex; the scene is based on a sexual assault Deer experienced when she was 20.“It’s a big story,” said Anne-Marie Gélinas, founder of EMAfilms, which produced the drama. “And Tracey’s challenge was to talk about, of course, the bullies outside,” which in the film include the government and real-estate developers. But, Gélinas added in a video call, “she also wanted to talk about the bullies inside her community.”Although Beans’ struggles relate specifically to her time and place, they are likely to resonate with anyone who has raised an adolescent — or been one. When Beans practices profanity in front of her bedroom mirror, smiling proudly when she finally utters a curse, it’s impossible not to notice the doll and stuffed animals still on her bureau. And any viewer will be alarmed when a tough older girl encourages Beans to harm herself so she will be impervious to the pain inflicted by others.“It doesn’t matter if you’ve never heard of the Oka crisis,” Deer said, adding that the character is coming of age “in a tumultuous, unwelcoming world that is indicative of where we currently are.”An incident during filming reinforced that view. Deer shot “Beans” at several spots where the historical events occurred, including the Honoré Mercier Bridge, which Mohawk demonstrators blockaded during the crisis. It’s where the rock-throwing confrontation, recreated in the film, took place as well. When Deer began shooting in 2019, the structure was partly closed for maintenance. But some motorists, she said, assumed the movie crew had shut down the route.“They were beeping and yelling at us and revving their engines,” said Deer, who added that the occupants of one car began shouting racial slurs. Thirty years after the Oka crisis, she said, “the same kind of moment played out.”To show that she was not distorting the historical backdrop, Deer used archival footage throughout the film, in one case inserting an actor into the Mohawk protesters in a 1990 news clip. “Nobody remembered it to be so violent, so negative, so traumatic,” Gélinas said, describing audiences’ reactions in Canada, where the response to “Beans” has been overwhelmingly positive.Although the Oka conflict ended in September 1990 with the cancellation of the golf course expansion, disputes over the land rights continue. But in the Canadian cultural sphere, the concerns of Indigenous people are gaining increased attention, said Jesse Wente, chairman of the Canada Council for the Arts and executive director of the Indigenous Screen Office in Toronto. (The organization supports Native film projects but did not contribute to the financing of “Beans.”)“I think what you’re seeing is maybe an industry that is so ravenous for stories that it’s realized it has to open the gates beyond its usual suspects,” Wente, who is Anishinaabe, said in a phone interview. He added that while Indigenous representation in the Canadian film industry had been largely confined to documentaries until recent years, artists like Deer were now delving into many genres. “What that means is that Indigenous cinema is about to become commercial in a way it never was,” he said.Likening Deer’s film to Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” Wente said, “‘Beans’ is exactly what happens when you empower storytellers from a community who’ve had stories told about them forever, but rarely have had the opportunity to tell them themselves.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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    ‘Saturday Night Live’ Introduces a New Donald Trump

    James Austin Johnson took on the role of Trump in an episode that also featured appearances by Dionne Warwick and Tracy Morgan. Kieran Culkin of “Succession” was the host.The last time Cecily Strong played the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro on “Saturday Night Live,” it seemed like she might be saying goodbye to her longtime TV home. (She did, after all, end the segment by singing “My Way” and dousing herself in a giant box of wine.)But to the benefit of the show, Strong did not leave “S.N.L.,” and she was back tonight playing Pirro in the show’s cold open. She’d get a more memorable moment in the spotlight later in the night — for now, the segment belonged to a rookie cast member, James Austin Johnson, who has rapidly become one of “S.N.L.”’s most versatile celebrity impressionists and brought his capable sendup of former president Donald J. Trump to the program for the first time.Strong began by interviewing a guest she introduced as “an American brave enough to stand up and say, screw you science — I know Joe Rogan.” That turned out to be Pete Davidson playing the Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this week and confirmed, in a combative interview on Friday, that he was not vaccinated.Davidson, as Rodgers, defended his ambiguous remarks about his vaccination status. “I never lied,” he said. “I took all my teammates into a huddle, got all their faces three inches away from my wet mouth, and told them trust me, I’m more or less immunized. Go team!”He added, “At the end of the day, my record is still 7-1. Meaning, of the eight people I’ve infected, seven are fine.”Strong also interviewed Alex Moffat, playing Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor-elect of Virginia. When she asked him to provide a definition of critical race theory, Moffat answered, “It’s simple: It’s what got me elected.” Pressed for more clarity, Moffat added, “It’s not important. What’s important is parents.”He introduced Heidi Gardner as a member of his parental task force on education, and she cited some of the books she wanted removed from the state’s curriculum, including “Pride and Prejudice” (“Prejudice is fine, but pride is a term that has been co-opted by the gays,” Gardner said) and “The Great Gatsby” (“Too much jazz”).Strong brought out her surprise final guest: Trump, as played by Johnson (who is already holding down the recurring role of President Biden on “S.N.L.”).“I just wanted to congratulate Glenn Youngkin and mostly myself on a tremendous victory in Virginia,” Johnson said. “You know what Glenn? We did it together.”Moffat uncomfortably replied, “You don’t have to say that.”Johnson went on to deliver a discursive monologue, complete with a “Pardon the Interruption”-style topic list and countdown clock, in which he rambled on about “Star Wars” (He claimed to have told George Lucas, “You need to do it with swords — the lasers are not enough”), “Dune,” Timothée Chalamet, Jason Momoa, “Game of Thrones” and, finally, the state of Virginia.An impressed Strong asked him, “How do you keep that all in your brain?”Johnson answered, “I had my ears sealed so nothing comes in or out.”Opening Monologue of the WeekKieran Culkin, who plays the sarcastic media scion Roman Roy on HBO’s “Succession,” naturally used his opening monologue to crack some jokes about his role on that hit series. Roman, he said, is “one of the nicer characters on the show — which still makes him one of the Top 10 worst humans on TV.”Culkin also reminded viewers that he had previously appeared on “S.N.L.” some 30 years ago when his brother Macaulay had hosted the program, and that 9-year-old Kieran had been hoisted aloft by grown-up cast members during the show’s good nights. Did a 39-year-old Kieran repeat the tradition at the end of this weekend’s broadcast? You’ll just have to watch and see. (OK, fine, he did repeat it.)Surprise Celebrity Cameo of the WeekThis is why you watch an “S.N.L.” sketch all the way to the end. It seemed, at first, like a typical outing of “The Dionne Warwick Talk Show,” a recurring segment in which Ego Nwodim plays a delightfully kooky version of that enduring pop singer. And as usual, she was joined by guests that she doesn’t recognize or particularly care about, including Chloe Fineman as Miley Cyrus, Culkin as Jason Mraz and Ed Sheeran as Ed Sheeran.But just as the sketch seemed to be winding down, Nwodim said, “I’m sick and tired of interviewing people who are not icons. Please welcome: me.” And out strode the real-life Warwick, who sat down in a chair opposite her. Nwodim asked the singer, “Dionne, why are you perfect?” Warwick replied, “My darling, I am not perfect. I’m just very, very good.” Their brief duet of “What the World Needs Now” that followed was almost too generous but we’ll take it anyway.Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on the passage of President Biden’s infrastructure plan in the House of Representatives, and the results of Tuesday’s elections.Jost began:Our top story tonight, like it’s been for as long as I can remember: infrastructure. Last night, the House passed President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which should be enough to clean as many as two of LaGuardia’s bathrooms. The infrastructure bill will also expand internet access across the U.S., which is great news, because when has more internet ever been bad for America? [His screen displays a photo of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.]Che continued:Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia governor’s race. But on the bright side, losers from Virginia usually get a statue. [His screen displays a photo of a monument to Robert E. Lee.] Political experts say that the Republican victory in Virginia’s governor’s race was fueled by white women who didn’t go to college. Which just so happens to be the same exact group I target on Tinder.Weekend Update Character of the WeekHere, as promised, was Cecily Strong’s true standout moment from the episode.At the Weekend Update desk, Jost began with a prelude about the recent Supreme Court arguments on a restrictive Texas law that bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. He then introduced Strong as a character called Goober the Clown Who Had an Abortion When She Was 23.While she sprayed Jost with water from a trick boutonniere and tried to make balloon animals, Strong talked about how common it is for clowns to have abortions and how they feel more comfortable discussing the subject with one another when they learn that other clowns have had them. It was not the easiest subject to mine for comedy. But as Strong explained, describing a doctor who jokingly asked if she had gotten pregnant on her way over to the clinic, “It’s not like a funny ha-ha joke, but like a funny, you’re not an awful person and your life isn’t over now joke. The best kind.” More

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    JoAnna Cameron, an Early Female Superhero on TV, Is Dead at 73

    In addition to achieving Saturday morning fame as Isis, she was said to have appeared in more national television commercials than anyone in advertising history.JoAnna Cameron, who in the 1970s portrayed Isis, the first female character on television with superpowers, and appeared in more national network television commercials than anyone else, died on Oct. 15 in Oahu, Hawaii. She was 73. The cause was complications of a stroke, said Joanna Pang Atkins, who starred with Ms. Cameron on the Saturday morning children’s series “Isis.”Ms. Cameron, who broke into the movies in 1969 with a small part in a Bob Hope film, blazed a trail when she arrived on the small screen as Isis in September 1975, two months before Lynda Carter made her first appearance as Wonder Woman. “The Bionic Woman,” starring Lindsay Wagner, began in January 1976.“Isis” starred Ms. Cameron as Andrea Thomas, a high school science teacher who had acquired the powers of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of healing and magic. Running with the speed of a gazelle, flying like a falcon and displaying superhuman strength, she used her extraordinary powers to fight crime.The series ran on CBS from 1975 to 1977; reruns were later syndicated as “The Secrets of Isis.”Ms. Cameron’s other television roles included appearances on “Columbo,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors.”A lithe brunette, she also received tremendous exposure as a television model for scores of commercial products. The Guinness Book of World Records said in 1979 that she had appeared in more than 100 commercials on network television, more than anyone else in advertising history.Advertisers spent more than $100 million “using JoAnna as the beauteous centerpiece of their commercials for cosmetics, shampoo, wine, beer, pantyhose and breath freshener,” TV Guide reported in 1979, adding that “she certainly has a face that can sell a product.”Ms. Cameron was outdoorsy and athletic, and she appeared in commercials skiing, scuba diving, piloting a jet, driving a racecar and romping through a field of flowers. She flew with the Blue Angels and worked to promote the United States Navy. But many of her other commercials were for personal products. In an ad for pantyhose, she struck a Mrs. Robinson-like pose. In a cigarette spot, she smoked. She also made a brief foray into directing commercials, but did not enjoy it.When she appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show,” Mr. Griffin said that if all her commercials were strung together, they would run for 150 hours, or six days of continuous viewing. He noted that advertisers said she had “the perfect face,” although he did not specify what that meant.When Mr. Griffin asked her if she felt pretty, she demurred. “Pretty,” she said, “comes from being healthy and feeling good about who you are and what you do.”Patricia Kara Cameron was born on Sept. 20, 1948, in Greeley, Colo., where her parents, Harold and Erna (Borgens) Cameron, operated a drive-in restaurant.She showed an interest in acting from an early age. While in high school, she worked with the Little Theater at Colorado State College, where she had a part in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Moving to California in the 1960s, she worked part time at Disneyland as a tour guide. She was a winning contestant on “The Dating Game” and JoAnna finalist on the televised beauty pageant “The Dream Girl of 1967.”Her big break came when she became friends with Bob Hope’s daughter, Linda. Mr. Hope cast her in “How to Commit Marriage” (1969), a comedy in which he starred with Jackie Gleason and Jane Wyman.On Mr. Gleason’s advice, she dropped the name Patricia and started calling herself JoAnna Cameron, although her screen credits list her variously as Jo Anna Cameron, Joanna K. Cameron, Joanna Kara Cameron and Joanna Cameron.Her other movies included “Pretty Maids All in a Row” (1971) and “B.S. I Love You” (1971). She was under consideration for the role of Jenny Cavilleri in “Love Story” (1970), but it went to Ali MacGraw.After her last movie, in 1980, she moved permanently to Hawaii, where she had often visited. She lived a quiet and anonymous life there, a friend in Hawaii said by email, and few people knew about her Hollywood career or that she had starred in “Isis.”With a nursing degree she had earned in California, she turned to patient care, working in private facilities or patients’ homes and providing comfort and care — similar to hospice work.She also had a marketing degree, and she later became a marketer for two major hotels. Information about survivors was not immediately available.Asked in a 2002 interview for an “Isis” fan website if she had ever been afraid of being typecast by her role as Isis, she expressed no doubt.“Who’s afraid of being typecast as a superhero?” she responded. “If you have to be typecast, take superhero. Or Egyptian goddess.” More

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    Get Your Kill Room Ready. Dexter Is Back.

    Eight years after the lovable serial killer went into bearded self-exile, he returns for “Dexter: New Blood.” Here’s a refresher on where things left off.“Dexter” ended in 2013, with its protagonist self-exiled to the frozen North and most major characters dead. But you can’t keep a high-functioning psychopath down. “Dexter: New Blood,” which premieres on Showtime on Nov. 7, finds Michael C. Hall’s Dexter Morgan working at a fish and game shop under an assumed name. His side hustles including bladesmithing, goat farming and maybe some vengeance.In the intervening eight years, you may have forgotten a few details of the show — other than, say, its wildly unpopular finale. Here are a few mementos.The KillerDexter Morgan, born Dexter Moser, grew up in Miami, the adopted son of Harry Morgan (James Remar), a Miami Metro police officer, and his wife, Doris. He has an adoptive sister, Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter). During the first season, it is revealed that Dexter also has a half-brother, Brian (Christian Camargo), and that the two boys witnessed their biological mother’s murder, via chain saw, and were left with her dismembered body in a blood-flooded shipping container for days. If you’re thinking trauma like that might make anyone into a serial killer, you’re right! Twice!When Dexter was still a child, Harry discovered the corpse of the neighbor’s yappy dog, which Dexter had buried alongside other animal bones. Accepting Dexter’s antisocial tendencies, Harry channeled those impulses into hunting — first animals, then, as Harry put it, “other kinds of animals” who have escaped justice. With Harry’s permission, Dexter killed his first human at 20, offing a nurse who was overdosing her patients.Dexter became a bloodstain pattern analyst for Miami Metro. Deb joined him there as a police officer, working first in vice, then in homicide, and in time becoming a detective. Eventually, Deb learned Dexter’s secret (walking in on your adopted brother mid-stab will do that) and later killed to protect him, which sent her spiraling. She also discovered that she was in love with him, an upsetting twist even for a show that specialized in upset.Armchair psychiatrists watching at home have diagnosed Dexter as a sociopath and a secret schizoid. Dexter claims not to feel human emotion. He lets the audience in on his real thoughts through voice-over, like this one from the pilot: “People fake a lot of human interactions. But I feel like I fake them all. And I fake them very well. And that’s my burden, I guess.” As the original series progressed, Dexter seemed to move closer to authentic emotion, maintaining friendships and romantic relationships and enjoying a close bond with Deb, even as he never lost his need to kill. He personified that predatory urge as his “dark passenger.”Is Dexter a bad person who does good things or a good person who does bad ones? Or neither? Or both? He loves a pulled pork sandwich and is surprisingly good at bowling.James Remar, left, plays Dexter’s adoptive father, Harry, who appears to Dexter in visions to remind him of the code.Sonja Flemming/ShowtimeThe CodeOnce he recognized Dexter’s death drive, Harry taught Dexter to adhere to a code. “There were so many lessons in the vaunted Code of Harry — twisted commandments handed down from the only God I’ve ever worshiped,” as Dexter put it. “One through 10: Don’t get caught.” Other rules: Never kill an innocent person. Kill only those beyond the reach of the justice system. Be prepared. Leave no trace.Dexter occasionally violated some aspect of the code. (He was caught surprisingly often. But that’s what happens when you run for eight seasons.) But he killed the wrong person only once, and he rarely lets emotions cloud his judgment. He often killed when threatened, but he sometimes refused to kill people — even dangerous or inconvenient people — when they failed to meet Harry’s criteria. He has even released a few people from his kill rooms.Dexter (Hall, with Sam Underwood) delivers a lecture to one of his many, many victims per the usual routine.Randy Tepper/ShowtimeThe RitualUnless acting in self-defense or within a significant time crunch, Dexter adhered to a specific ritual. Knocking his victims out with a synthetic opioid, he brings them to a plastic-draped kill room, decorated with photographs of their own victims. He undresses his prey, then binds them to a table with duct tape or cling wrap. Using a scalpel, he makes an incision on his victims’ cheeks, placing a droplet of their blood on a glass slide, adding the slides to his collection of trophies.Before killing his victims, whom he refers to as his playmates, he often toys with them, engaging them in conversation. His preferred weapon is a knife, but he knows his way around a saw — and an anchor, a cleaver and a pen. After the kill, he dismembers the bodies, places the parts into plastic trash bags and dumps them into the bay.Dexter at one of many funerals with his sister, Debra (Jennifer Carpenter, in plaid shirt), who . . . also later died.Sonja Flemming/ShowtimeThe DeadBy the time the original series ended, most major characters had died. There are Dexter’s direct victims, of course, a list that includes his brother, Brian; an ex-lover or two; and more than 100 others. Most of his known associates have also come to bloody ends, like his wife, Rita Morgan (Julie Benz), a victim of the Trinity Killer (John Lithgow), and several of Dexter’s co-workers, including James Doakes (Erik King), an antagonist, and Maria LaGuerta (Lauren Velez), his former lieutenant, shot by Deb in a bid to protect Dexter.Deb died, too. (More on that in a minute.) But deceased “Dexter” characters often cameo, courtesy of Dexter’s vivid imagination.Dexter said goodbye to his sister in the original series finale, and goodbye to his life in Miami.Randy Tepper/ShowtimeThat FinaleThe final season found Dexter stalking the Brain Surgeon, a serial killer with ties to a famous psychologist. The Brain Surgeon shot Deb in the abdomen. In the finale, she suffered a complication during surgery, a blood clot (way to work those metaphors) that left her in a vegetative state.Dexter had planned to escape to Argentina with his onetime girlfriend and fellow serial killer, Hannah McKay (Yvonne Strahovski), a poisoner, and Harrison, the child he had with Rita. But Dexter can’t escape himself. As a storm approached, he murdered the Brain Surgeon. With a pen! Sending Hannah and Harrison ahead, he turned off Deb’s life support and absconded with her sheet-wrapped body, which he dumped alongside his other kills. The hurricane arrived, wrecking Dexter’s boat and ostensibly killing him, too. But the final shots find Dexter in some frozen waste, having grown a lumbersexual beard and invested heavily in flannel.It’s an ending that no one saw coming. Probably because it lacked closure, retribution and attentiveness to Dexter’s journey toward personhood. Maybe the snowy new series, set in upstate New York, will provide that. More

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    in Television

    Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Aaron Is a Karen’

    As Covid sidelined the Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Kimmel and other hosts scorned him for implying that he’d been vaccinated.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.Rodger ThatThe Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers tested positive for Covid this week, which means he’ll sit out Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs (or as Stephen Colbert put it, “the next five State Farm commercials”).“He’ll be watching it from ‘Mahome.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL, referencing Chiefs quarterback Patrick MahomesLate-night hosts found it egregious that Rodgers had vaguely referred to himself as “immunized,” leading some to believe he’d been vaccinated. Instead, according to a report, he received homeopathic treatment.“I’m no expert, but I’m guessing it’s a lot easier to just play football with a shot in your arm than a jade egg stuck where the sun don’t shine. Then again, they are called the Packers.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s not the only confusing statement that he’s made about his vaccine status. For example, in one press conference he said, ‘I’d like to think of myself as vaccine-adjacent.’ In another press conference he said, “In a spiritual sense, are any of us truly vaccinated?’ And finally, he cleared things up by saying, ‘I didn’t not, not, not not, not get the shot. Not.’” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s really vague. He better not talk that way in the huddle.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Honestly, the only thing worse than not getting vaccinated when you’re in close contact with other people is letting them think you’re vaccinated when you’re not. It’s basically the Covid equivalent of ‘The condom fell off.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Aaron is a Karen, that’s the fact of the matter.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (More Shots Edition)“The Biden administration today ordered U.S. companies with 100 or more employees to have their workers fully vaccinated or regularly tested for the coronavirus by Jan. 4. All right, you heard the man, Arcade Fire.” — SETH MEYERS“It’s great timing — make sure everyone is vaccinated right after the holidays.” — JIMMY FALLON“Team Biden today announced that more than 100 million American workers are required to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4. And if I know my fellow American workers, everyone’s going to be super chill about that.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Because I guess Jan. 1 — just way too obvious.” — JAMES CORDEN“What’s the thinking here? ‘Nobody expects this policy to start on a random Tuesday, let’s do that!’” — JAMES CORDEN“Like the drunkest friend at a bachelor party, Joe Biden’s going to make sure everyone gets shots.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn “The Tonight Show,” Ariana Grande got to see Jimmy Fallon play a clip of her singing the national anthem at eight years old.Also, Check This OutMeryl Streep as President Orlean, a commander in chief very focused on her approval ratings, in “Don’t Look Up.”Niko Tavernise/Netflix Finally, a world in which Meryl Streep is president — in Adam McKay’s apocalyptic satire “Don’t Look Up.” More

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    in Theater

    Alice Childress Finally Gets to Make ‘Trouble’ on Broadway

    Wiletta Mayer walks into the theater already knowing how things will go. Smartly dressed, attractive and middle-aged (don’t ask for a number, because “a woman that’ll tell her age will tell anything”), she is a veteran actress who’s played maids and mammies and knows how to cater to white directors and producers. You can call it “Uncle Tomming.” Or you can call it plain common sense. Either way, it’s a living.Until enough is enough.Alice Childress created Wiletta Mayer, the protagonist of her 1955 play, “Trouble in Mind,” to paint a realistic portrait of what it was to be Black in the theater industry. Or to be more accurate: She wanted to portray what it is to be Black in theater, because 66 years later, as the play opens on Broadway in a Roundabout Theater Company production, the words Childress wrote remain just as relevant.And yet this author and play, a comedy-drama about an interracial cast rehearsing an anti-lynching play written by a white author and led by a white director, haven’t gotten their proper due in the decades since its premiere. Childress was supposed to be the first Black female playwright on Broadway, with a play critiquing the racism and misogyny of the theater industry.Thanks to interfering white theatermakers and a Broadway unwelcoming to challenging Black art, things didn’t turn out as planned. But the content of the play, and its troubled production history, prove how rightly “Trouble in Mind” and its author should be celebrated as part of the canon.From left: Chuck Cooper, LaChanze, Danielle Campbell and Michael Zegen in “Trouble in Mind,” which will have its long-awaited Broadway opening night this month.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn the play, Wiletta arrives for her part in “Chaos in Belleville” alongside a young Black actor named John; an older Black actor named Sheldon; a younger Black actress named Millie; and two white actors, Judy, a well-meaning yet naïve Yale graduate, and Bill, a neurotic character actor. The play within the play is about a Black man who dares to vote and is killed for it.During rehearsals Wiletta tries to give the newcomer John tips on how to survive as a Black actor in the business, but her own advice fails when the white director, Al Manners, pushes her to perpetuate stereotypes.It’s a familiar scenario, one Childress encountered herself as a young actress in the 1944 Broadway production of “Anna Lucasta.” She based Wiletta on the character actress Georgia Burke, who appeared with her in that production. Like Wiletta, Burke had also done her fair share of mammy roles, and she would later appear in the original Broadway “Porgy and Bess.”Burke had problems with the director of “Anna Lucasta,” but Childress knew her to complain only to her fellow Black actors; when it came to white directors and producers she kept quiet for the sake of her career.In “Trouble in Mind,” Childress wrote a version of Burke who finally had to speak up.“Darling, don’t think. You’re great until you start thinking,” Al Manners says to Wiletta during rehearsals. That kind of condescending treatment may have been par for the course for Black theater performers. Childress, however, was uncompromising.“She was a woman of amazing integrity,” said Kathy Perkins, Childress’s friend and the editor of a major anthology of her plays. (She is also the lighting designer for Roundabout’s production.) “She hated the saying ‘ahead of your time.’ Her thing was that people aren’t ahead of their time; they’re just choked during their time, they’re not allowed to do what they should be doing.”Childress, at left, with actors rehearsing the premiere of “Trouble in Mind” in 1955.Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsIt’s this integrity — or, more accurately, the times choking a great writer of integrity — that cost Childress Broadway. In an ironic echo of the play’s plot, Childress found herself at odds with the would-be director when “Trouble in Mind” was slated for its Off Broadway premiere. Unwilling to budge, she took over as co-director, along with the actress Clarice Taylor, who starred as Wiletta.The play premiered on Nov. 5, 1955, at the Greenwich Mews Theater, and ran for 91 performances.But that version isn’t the version we know today.The white producers were concerned about the play’s ending, which they thought was too negative. According to Perkins, as a relatively new playwright Childress was intimidated by these experienced producers.And then there was the rest of the cast and crew to think about. Childress was a fierce advocate for unions and workers’ rights, and feared that pulling the play would cost everyone their jobs. So she conceded, providing an ending of reconciliation and racial harmony, even though she maintained that it was unrealistic.The New York Times praised the play as “a fresh, lively and cutting satire” — except for the ending. Childress always regretted the change, and said she’d never compromise her artistic integrity again. So when “Trouble in Mind” was optioned for Broadway with the happy ending and a new title (“So Early Monday Morning”), Childress refused. She would have been the first Black female playwright to see her work there; instead, that honor would go to Lorraine Hansberry four years later, for “A Raisin in the Sun.”Childress, who died in 1994, never had the financial success nor popular recognition that her work merited in her lifetime. It’s unfortunate because her plays are works of merit. Many of her works, like “Florence” (1949), “Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White” (1966) and “Wine in the Wilderness” (1969), are confrontational without being pandering or preachy. Not simply about race, they are also about gender and class and artistry, and challenge their audiences to look at their own prejudices and misconceptions. (Theater for a New Audience is reviving “Wedding Band,” a tale of interracial love set amid the 1918 flu pandemic, Off Broadway this spring.)And they’re clever. The meta structure of “Trouble in Mind” makes Childress’s satire especially poignant; it’s both explicitly biting and subtly searing.Childress, at right, with James Broderick and Ruby Dee, the stars of the 1972 production of her play “Wedding Band.” Theater for a New Audience will present a revival in 2022.Jack Mitchell/Getty ImagesOne reason Childress is often left out of conversations about the American canon is her style. In an essay in “The Cambridge Companion to African-American Theater,” the historian and dramaturge Adrienne Macki Braconi calls Childress a “transitional” writer, unheralded because her work reflects “the conventions of dramatic realism.”“Critics often overlook their subtle variations on the form, including such innovations as bold thematic content; assertive, complex female characters; and a focus on lower-class and middle-class blacks,” Macki Braconi wrote of Childress and the writer Eulalie Spence.Sandra Shannon, a scholar of Black theater and emeritus professor of African-American literature at Howard University, maintained that Childress’s blend of naturalistic dialogue and social commentary put her “at the top of her game” among playwrights in the late ’40s and early ’50s. Her plays, Shannon said, “raise awareness, stop short of just getting out and marching in the streets.”And La Vinia Delois Jennings, the author of the 1995 book “Alice Childress” and a distinguished professor in the humanities at the University of Tennessee, pointed out the “dynamism” of Childress’s works, which so often feature Black women taking agency. The stereotypical trope of the angry Black woman gets turned on its head, Jennings said, proving that anger can be “liberating — a force that brings about change.”But for all of Childress’s dynamism, it still took over 60 years to get her work to a Broadway stage.A 1950 portrait of Alice Childress, painted by Alice Neel, was included in a recent Metropolitan Museum of Art show.The Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner; The Collection of Art BerlinerCharles Randolph-Wright, who will be directing the Broadway production, said he’s been eyeing this play for the big stage for more than a decade.On June 20, 2011, a nonprofit called Project1Voice hosted an event in which 19 theaters across the country did readings of “Trouble in Mind.” Randolph-Wright directed a Roundabout reading at the American Airlines Theater, which included André De Shields, Leslie Uggams, Bill Irwin and LaChanze, who will be starring as Wiletta in the full production at the same Broadway venue.“I’ll never forget everyone coming up to me saying, ‘Did you rewrite this?’ and I was like, ‘No, she wrote this in 1955.’ And they said, ‘But you tweaked it —’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t touch one thing,” Randolph-Wright explained.After all, theater insiders and outsiders are still loudly calling for improved representation more than a half-century later.“There’s been a false sense of progress. That progress has been in fits and starts,” Shannon said. “The same issues that Childress deals with, or dealt with in the 1950s with ‘Trouble in Mind,’ have always been bubbling beneath the surface. They’ve never gone away.”In one scene in the play, Manners says, “I want truth. What is truth? Truth is simply whatever you can bring yourself to believe, that is all. You must have integrity about your work.”Though the statement comes from a flawed character, the sentiment is Childress all the way. Perkins said that at the end of the day, Childress wouldn’t say she was writing for white audiences or Black audiences; she only wrote for herself, and she concerned herself first and foremost with the truth, whatever form that would take.Randolph-Wright said he thinks of John Lewis when he approaches the play. “It is ‘good trouble,’ ” he said, referring to the call to action made famous by the activist and congressman. “It agitates, it illuminates, it makes you laugh, it’s entertaining.”But he hopes this production will only be the beginning — that audiences will learn more about Childress’s work, and that she and other Black writers will get greater recognition for their contributions to the art form. Because this moment — after Black Lives Matter and “We See You, White American Theater,” and when seven new Broadway plays this fall are by Black writers — is perfect for Childress, but also for Spence and Ed Bullins and Angelina Weld Grimké and other Black playwrights past and present.So will change really come this time around? The version of “Trouble in Mind” that’s finally arriving on Broadway ends inconclusively, not optimistically. The ending Childress’s producers rejected back in 1955 seems right for right now. More