Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 138 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    ‘Insecure’ Season 5, Episode 1 Recap: No Time to Be Insecure

    The characters of “Insecure” set off to close out their final season with intention.During the first episode of the final season of HBO’s “Insecure,” we meet “Throwback Issa,” the college-aged version of Issa staring back at her in the bathroom mirror.This time, Issa doesn’t rap to her reflection. Instead, they catch up and she looks at her younger self endearingly. “I forgot how cute I looked with twists,” Issa says to her reflection. And the younger version of herself is struck by who she’s become. “Issa?! Is that me?” she asks.After they spend a minute admiring their teeth, they awkwardly cut one another off, as if they are both thinking and doing the same thing. In this tango you can tell that while Issa does not look like she used to — now she has a more auburn hair color and doesn’t wear braces — she is very much the girl she used to be, in essence.“Throwback Issa” was the most literal reflection upon the past in an episode set at Issa and her L.A. crew’s 10-year-reunion at Stanford, their old stamping ground. The crew looks as good as ever. Kelli and Tiffany in Gucci? Yes. (Tiffany only wore pink and green the entire episode). Issa and Molly in classed up Stanford sweaters? An aesthetic I can subscribe to.It was a weekend that involved plenty of time traveling. We saw college Issa admiring but also being slightly disappointed in current Issa. Later, on an alumni panel, current Issa worries about future Issa’s time to do the things that she wants to do. Molly finds herself thinking back about her younger, more bullish self. Kelli flies too far into a future where she no longer exists, and doesn’t like her legacy. The characters are looking back to see how far they’ve come and learn where they want to go.The episode also picked up the pieces of the more recent past. Last season, we left Issa in an entanglement with Lawrence, who had recently found out that his ex, Condola, was pregnant. At the time, Issa was considering moving to San Francisco with Lawrence, who had just found a job there. The pregnancy was a brick thrown through the window of their relationship.Issa and Molly’s relationship, the one viewers tune in for, was on thin ice and the heaviness of their love lives threatened to fracture it. Their dreamy hangout scenes were gone — now there was only awkwardness.This week there was movement on each of these fronts. Issa and Molly are in agreement on what they want: to move forward, to grow past the obstacles in front of them. They are done trying things on, they know more about who they aren’t and what they don’t want in their lives. “I know you’re a big-time lawyer now,” reflection Issa says. “No, I never really wanted to be a lawyer,” current day Issa responded, with a certainty that escaped her younger self.During the panel, Issa is joined onstage by a filmmaker, a start-up founder and the advertising art director at Coca-Cola, all alumni. Issa was invited as an entrepreneur and founder of “The Blocc” — we don’t know much about the company (and it’s not clear if she does either) but I love this for her.When the moderator asks the panelists when they found stability in their life, Issa doesn’t have an answer. She is honest with her audience and tells them that she’s unsure and that she may be wasting her time, but she’s also talking to herself. It’s as if by hearing herself talk about her latest endeavor, she comes to understand the risks associated with it in a way she hadn’t before.Throughout the episode, Issa is so focused on her future and past that she is incapable of being present. Whenever she is asked what the name of her company stands for, she stammers, unable to remember. She may have her own company now, but she is still managing apartments and driving a Lyft. This all appears hard for Issa to reconcile but I get the impression that she eventually will. This isn’t “Game of Thrones.”Back in the quad, Molly, three-months after her break up with Andrew, is trying to be a good friend to Issa because that’s what Molly needs from her. After the struggles of last season, Molly now seems ready to triage the friendship, softly asking Issa, “Are we going to be OK?”Molly also seems to be caught in a flashback on campus. While on a walk with Issa she remembers the confidence that she used to have. “Freshman year, we thought we had it all figured out.” The fire that used to define her, her tenacity and ambition, is absent. But I doubt that it’s gone forever.Kelli, on the other hand, is believed to be dead by the organizers of the reunion — she was marked as deceased in the program and even appeared in an in-memoriam video. (“Stanky Legg” by the GS Boyz plays in tribute when her face appears.)At first, she thinks it might be good for her to “go off the grid,” but then something else sets in. When she realizes that she is only remembered for her allergy to kale and solid stanky leg, it stops being fun for her. Kelli’s modus operandi has generally been to go with the flow, but maybe it’s time to swim upstream.When the girls are on their way to Reggae Gold, an old haunt in Oakland, Kelli is not as amped as the other girls. She is obviously disturbed and interrupts a singalong to The-Dream’s “I Luv Your Girl,” an on-the-way-to-the-club ritual, to let them know why she isn’t feeling the party vibes. She is quickly dismissed. Maybe playing pretend dead hit too close to home for her.The next morning at a diner, they give Kelli an appropriate in-memoriam tribute. When they leave, Molly and Issa walk past three young giggly girls, one carrying a poster that read “take action.” The girls apologize for bumping into them. Issa looks back at them as if they seemed familiar, it was like seeing their younger selves walk right past them. As those girls fade behind them, Issa and Molly tell one another they want to move forward.Then Issa proceeds to do so. When she flies home, Lawrence is waiting for her at LAX in a black hoodie, looking sorry and feeling sorry. (Yes, I’m still mad at Lawrence for getting Condola pregnant while trying to mend things with Issa.)What is different about Lawrence’s pitifulness is that Issa is no longer willing to take part in it. She breaks up with him and he immediately understands. The breakup was quiet — no arguments or shock, just an understanding between two adults. It was a more mature and cleaner breakup than their traumatic first one.Time is running out for “Insecure” and perhaps also, the premiere seemed to suggest, for maybes and half-steps as the characters consider the direction of their lives, beyond young adulthood. There’s not much time left to be insecure. More

  • 88 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    ‘Succession’ Recap, Season 3, Episode 2: ‘Judasing’

    Kendall makes his pitch. Even with his siblings, he sounds like a guest on “Power Lunch.”Season 3, Episode 2: ‘Mass in Time of War’There’s a mad genius to the way Kendall Roy uses language. Here’s a guy who essentially learned to communicate by listening to cable TV panelists, leadership conference speakers and the macho bluster of his venture capitalist college bros. Now, in an ever-intensifying national spotlight, Ken is tossing around jargon with a frenzied, improvisational flair, like a jazz singer scatting in double-time.In this week’s episode, “Mass in Time of War,” he drops words like “epiphenomenal” and phrases like “let’s clean-slate this” and “detoxify our brand and we can go supersonic.” Even when his siblings ask how he’s doing, Ken answers with a studied earnestness, like a guest on “Power Lunch.” (“Certain amount of regret, but y’know … pretty cleansed.”)“Mass in Time of War” feels more like the second part of last week’s installment than it does a typical “Succession” episode. The Roys don’t travel anywhere special or gather for any major event; they’re just continuing in the same crisis mode they were in when the season began. Logan is still in Sarajevo, fretting over his inability to get any of his progeny on the phone. And the kids? Well, they actually do get together someplace unusual: the bedroom of Kendall’s daughter, Sophie. (Roman, feigning shock after Ken calls his siblings to her room: “He remembered his kid’s name.”)Once Roman, Siobhan and (surprisingly) Connor are huddled up, Kendall makes his pitch, with buzzwords flying around the room. His argument is a mix of the self-righteous and the pragmatic. On the one hand, he tries to hold himself up as the family’s noble truth-teller, finally calling for an end to decades of privileged, exploitative, chauvinist “vibes” at Waystar. He applies the most pressure to Shiv, getting under her skin by saying he’s doing what she failed to do as the Roy’s “token woman wonk woke snowflake.” “Right now, I’m the real you,” he needles.But Kendall also makes a persuasive case that the only way for the Roy children to save Waystar and to hold onto to any kind of sociopolitical clout is to oust Logan, who is weak enough right now that a unified front from his sons and daughter could finish him.Indeed, we see signs of Logan struggling throughout this episode. Last week, he was ordering his team to retain three “white shoe” law firms and to get a bunch of the other top attorneys tied up with conflicts of interest. This week, Logan has trouble getting anyone from his family to check in — with the exception of his wife, Marcia (Hiam Abbass), who comes back in part because she hates his kids and would love to help destroy Ken.And then there’s this: On their own, the younger Roys appear to be flailing. Although Siobhan pretends to keep her husband in the loop, he has to hear from Greg that she has sneaked away to Kendall’s ex’s apartment. She unconvincingly reminds Tom that she loves him — and he responds in kind, adding, “Good to know we don’t have an unbalanced love portfolio” — but she hesitates to tell him anything about who’s in line to become Waystar’s new “King Potato.” And when she finally does return to Logan, he promises to give her a fancy corporate title of “president” that can mean “whatever you want it to mean” … which, in Logan-speak, means it’ll probably be meaningless.Even more pathetically, Roman gets a similar runaround from Gerri. When he shows up at her new Waystar chief executive office, cracking his usual bad-boy jokes about how she chained herself “to a fire hydrant that spews out cultural insensitivity and sperms,” she quickly hustles him right back out the door. She offers him vague assurances that she plans to start working him into the quarterly earning calls “as a signal,” though it seems fairly obvious that the newly empowered Gerri is in no hurry to cede anything to Roman, of all people.Kendall certainly sounds sure of himself. But as we’re reminded in a couple of key scenes while he is away from his siblings, he is still beholden to Waystar’s insurgent board members, Stewy (Arian Moayed) and Sandy, who poke at him by sending a model of a Trojan horse to his wife’s apartment. And as Ken is urgently trying to chart a bold course for Waystar’s future, his lawyer is trying to get him to focus on the Brightstar scandal and his potential legal liabilities.As for Connor … well, he’s Connor. He seems to answer Kendall’s request for a meeting in part because he is happy to be included and in part because Logan made him fly home on a disappointing international flight with “a selection of heavily refrigerated cheeses.” Why did Ken want Connor to be a part of this? It may be because he’s less interested in securing Waystar’s legacy than he is in humiliating his father in their big game by taking all of his pieces of the board.Still, there are two problems with Kendall’s “we’re all in this together” plan. For one, he still thinks it makes the most sense for him to be the one sitting at the head of the table after the coup, and neither Siobhan nor Roman agree. Two, they’re all terrified of Logan — who rattles them when he sends a box of doughnuts to their “secret” meeting. “I don’t think he ever fails or ever will,” Roman admits.One by one, the siblings file out, each taking an insult from Ken with them. First Connor is out (“You’re irrelevant”), then Roman (“You’re a moron”) and then Shiv, who is told she has gotten this far only because “girls count double now” … thus revealing just how committed Kendall really is to “changing the cultural climate.”Yet during all of this running around behind other people’s backs — “Judasing,” as Kendall calls it — the person who may ultimately hold the key to everyone’s future is absent. Greg, who confesses to Ken his wariness, saying “I’m kind of too young to be in congress so much,” rejects Waystar’s chosen lawyer and takes advice from his moralizing grandfather, Ewan Roy (James Cromwell), a man who considers Ken to be “a self-regarding popinjay.” They end up in the office of an old left-wing lawyer (played by Peter Riegert), who tells Greg that his two priorities will be his client’s well-being and to “expose the structural contradictions of capitalism as reified in the architecture of corporate America.”In a way, this is exactly what Kendall wants to do. That is, if he actually believes all the words that keep tumbling, endlessly, out of his mouth.Due DiligenceLogan is insistent on having familiar faces around him and all but demands that his inner circle bring Marcia back into the fold. As Hugo eventually explains to her, “We would love to get back, visually, to the Logan we all know.” Marcia’s lawyer, though, lets Hugo know this will be a costly return — albeit less expensive or embarrassing than a divorce and a corporate board breakup.Perhaps in reaction to his humiliating phone call with Logan last week, Roman goes full brat in this episode, making inappropriate comments to Gerri (“How are your daughters? You got pictures?”) and responding to Kendall’s request that he not touch anything in Sophie’s room by immediately putting his hands near various objects on her dresser.Something about Roman’s presence brings out the brat in Shiv, too. As Kendall pontificates about how Waystar is “a declining empire inside of a declining empire,” she interjects with, “Unsubscribe.” Then she hits Roman where he lives, suggesting that he can’t keep preening around like a stud unless he’s willing to, y’know, consummate. (When he storms out, Shiv shrugs. “It’s not my fault he has a sex thing.”)File this away for later: Marcia reminds Logan that he has damaging dirt on Kendall. He waves off that advice, saying, “You drop some bombs, you get burnt too.” But if Logan starts to lose, badly? It could be time for the nuclear option. More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Theater

    Review: In ‘Fairycakes,’ the Woods Are Campy, Dark and Daft

    Douglas Carter Beane’s winky fantasia finds Pinocchio, Puck and other unlikely characters meeting cute in a storybook setting.Did you ever want to see a fairy-tale mash-up, set amid the magic of nature, offering clever rhyme and delightful song, with a powerful theme to bring it all home?Well, this isn’t that.“Fairycakes,” the laborious new comedy by Douglas Carter Beane that opened on Sunday at the Greenwich House Theater, dares to enter the precincts of “Into the Woods,” upping the ante and losing the bet. Written mostly in ear-scraping doggerel, it throws characters from the fairy-world subplot of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” into the mixer with Cinderella, Peter Pan, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty, then presses the button marked “beat to death.”I say this with no glee; I went in needing and fully expecting an old-fashioned good time from the author of “The Little Dog Laughed,” “As Bees in Honey Drown” and many other hilarities. Beane’s always palpable love of theater, and satirical eye for its self-dramatizing denizens, suggested a lighthearted romp in the metaphysical woods.And for a moment, when familiar cutups like Jackie Hoffman and Ann Harada started the show by singing one of Lewis Flinn’s Shakespeare settings in sparkly, diaphanous drag, I thought we were heading in the right direction. (The perfect found-in-the-attic costumes are by Gregory Gale.) In her trademark cat-eye glasses, with her bitter-lemon moue, Hoffman, as Moth, is comedy just standing there; Harada, as Mustardseed, a warmth machine. Completing the set of Queen Titania’s attendant daughters are the witty Z Infante as Cobweb and the winning Kristolyn Lloyd as Peaseblossum, as the name is rendered here.Yet once their opening number ends and the plot begins, the poetry of the premise starts leaking out. That’s especially true in Beane’s singsong dialogue, mostly rendered four feet to a line with a few extra left feet thrown in. It scans like an ice cream truck with a flat tire.Jamen Nanthakumar, far left, in “Fairycakes,” by Douglas Carter Beane, which opened on Sunday at the Greenwich House Theater in Manhattan. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs for the rhymes, often stressed on the wrong syllable, one can only assume they are designed to make you cringe. There is no world in which “fairy” and “ordinary” align without damage to one of them. And when Titania (Julie Halston) explains the parentage of the young man she dotes on — an offstage boy in Shakespeare, here the handsome Jamen Nanthakumar — she has this mouthful to spit out: “She was a princess her husband a king/But when she died, she did leave this changeling.”If it were only the verse that limped so badly, “Fairycakes” might still make viable comedy. But the story is lumpy too, its mechanical interweaving of Shakespeare and Disney somehow both predictable and holey. Each of the immortals is involved in the lives of one of the mortals: Peaseblossum encouraging Geppetto (Mo Rocca) to carve a son (Sabatino Cruz); Cobweb helping Cinderella (Kuhoo Verma) win her prince (Jason Tam); Mustardseed trying to wake Sleeping Beauty (Infante again); and Moth dumping Peter Pan for the pirate Dirk Dead-eye (Arnie Burton).I doubt we’re meant to think much about Dirk’s provenance. (He apparently comes from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore,” by way of Cap’n Crunch.) Nor are we meant to think much about anything else; Beane’s run-here-then-there direction on the very small set by Shoko Kambara and Adam Crinson almost always chooses distraction over information. But distraction only works for a while, and watching the novelty expire well before the play does makes each of these scenes seem less like a comedy vignette than a condolence call.From left, Chris Myers and Kristolyn Lloyd,whose relationship is complicated by both Shakespeare and Disneyfication.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThings are somewhat more interesting in the Shakespearean part of the plot, where a prophecy suggests that the impending divorce of Titania and Oberon (Burton again) will result in the deaths of their daughters. Now Puck (Chris Myers) enters the story, hoping to undo the curse and win the love of Peaseblossum, who disdains him for giving her the nickname that is also the show’s title. How Cupid, a large cricket and Queen Elizabeth are dragged in as well, I leave for you to discover.At a baggy 2 hours and 15 minutes, it’s all too much, and too little. Or it was for me; others seated nearby seemed to be having a better time. One of them explained to me, later, at home, that he’d always enjoyed camp on its own terms, excusing its longueurs and illogic as the price, or even the source, of the entertainment. He name-checked the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and the old days of Wigstock, both of which featured amateur performers among the professionals.But amateurism as an aesthetic is a tricky proposition. Charles Ludlam, the Ridiculous star, and the better drag queens at Wigstock had in common painstaking precision. Even celebrating too-muchness, they knew the value of a tight fit and a tight edit.“Fairycakes” does share some of the anarchic, insider energy of that genre, thumbing its nose at the usual theatrical necessities of coherence and critics. But it is, for the most part, too uncareful for its unsophistication. And editing does not seem to be in Beane’s vocabulary, at least when it comes to actors. He perpetually indulges rather than cures his hams’ tendency to overdoneness.What makes these over-the-top shortcomings especially apparent are the few moments that beguile with (relative) subtlety. Beane gets off some of his finely honed zingers, and Flinn’s songs, especially the setting of Sonnet 23 that opens the second act (“As an imperfect actor on the stage”), are truly lovely. (So is Lloyd, who sings the sonnet, accompanying herself on the guitar.) Tam, dashing in tails as Prince Charming — and no less so in gold diapers as Cupid — gets the generic suaveness of a royal on the make in a few strokes, almost as if he had built his performance on the far more detailed version of the character in “Into the Woods.”Kuhoo Verma, center left, dancing with Jason Tam in “Fairycakes.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd then there’s Halston, who as always manages to pull the rabbit of real humanity out of the hat of caricature. Even while delivering a moral, she’s funny.That moral may not amount to much in “Fairycakes” — it’s something about embracing the human “capacity for change” — but in the hands of an old pro like Halston, it sounds like news. Now if only the play itself would listen.FairycakesThrough Jan. 2 at the Greenwich House Theater, Manhattan; fairycakestheplay.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

  • 125 Shares139 Views

    in Theater

    As Broadway Returns, Shows Rethink and Restage Depictions of Race

    “The Book of Mormon,” “The Lion King” and “Hamilton” are among those making changes as theaters reopen following the lengthy pandemic shutdown.“Hamilton” has restaged “What’d I Miss?,” the second act opener that introduces Thomas Jefferson, so that the dancer playing Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who bore him multiple children, can pointedly turn her back on him.In “The Lion King,” a pair of longstanding references to the shamanic Rafiki as a monkey — taxonomically correct, since the character is a mandrill — have been excised because of potential racial overtones, given that the role is played by a Black woman.“The Book of Mormon,” a musical comedy from the creators of “South Park” that gleefully teeters between outrageous and offensive, has gone even further. The show, about two wide-eyed white missionaries trying to save souls in a Ugandan village contending with AIDS and a warlord, faced calls from Black members of its own cast to take a fresh look, and wound up making a series of alterations that elevate the main Black female character and clarify the satire.Broadway is back. But as shows resume performance after the long pandemic shutdown, some of the biggest plays and musicals are making script and staging changes to reflect concerns that intensified after last year’s huge wave of protests against racism and police misconduct.At the “Mormon” workshop, actors and members of the creative team discussed the script and the staging. Here, from left to right, actor Derrick Williams talked with the musical’s director, Casey Nicholaw, while two of the show’s writers, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone, conferred in the background.Darren Cox“We’re in a new world,” said Arbender J. Robinson, who was among the actors who expressed their concerns in a letter to the “Mormon” creative team. “We have a responsibility to make sure we understand what we’re doing, and how it can be perceived.”Although classic shows are often updated to reflect shifting attitudes toward race and gender when they are brought back to the stage as revivals, what is happening today is different: an assortment of hit shows reconsidering their content midrun. They are responding to pressure from artists emboldened by last year’s protests, as well as a heated social media culture in which any form of criticism can easily be amplified, while taking advantage of an unexpected window of time in which rewriting was possible, and re-rehearsing was necessary, because of the lengthy Broadway shutdown.“To me this feels like nothing ever before in theater,” said Diane Paulus, the director of “Jagged Little Pill,” which just last month won the Tony Award for best book and has revisited its book to refine the references to race. “This is different. This is saying the world has changed, and how can we embrace that?”Some of the changes are readily apparent, and others subtle, likely to be noticed only by the most detail-oriented audience members. There has been little pushback so far, either from those who might see the revisions as insufficient, or from those who might see them as an overreaction.The changes, big or small, are significant to performers — especially Black performers, who have become increasingly willing to speak up about concerns on and offstage.The letter from the “Mormon” actors, some from the original cast and some from the current roster, was sent in July of 2020, four months after the pandemic had closed Broadway and two months after George Floyd was killed by the police in Minneapolis. They warned that “when the show returns, all of our work will be viewed through a new lens.”The musical has faced criticism for years over its depiction of Africans, but some cast members were prompted to reflect again when an actor unaffiliated with the show denounced it on Facebook as “racist.”“I never felt this show was racist — never — but then I started hearing some concern from people in the show, who don’t know the intentions, and are saying, ‘Oh my God, am I doing a racist show?’” said Derrick Williams, who has been in “Mormon” since 2014 and also signed the letter. “There’s a fine line between satire and being offensive, and you have to be on the right side of that.”Trey Parker, one of the writers of “The Book of Mormon,” talked with the cast and crew. Darren CoxThe creative team was unsettled. “There was a moment where we weren’t sure — we thought, ‘Maybe this show has run its course,’” said Robert Lopez, who wrote the show with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of “South Park.” “But that’s not what anyone was asking for, so we braced for the hard work of what we would have to do.”So this summer, after a year of quiet conversations by phone and video, the original creative team gathered with the current cast — some meeting for the first time — and, for two straight weeks, went through the show scene by scene, clarifying their intent as they reviewed the plot, the comedy and the staging. The goal, Mr. Stone said: “Make sure everything works and everybody feels good.”Throughout the show, which will resume performances next month, moments were tweaked to sharpen the satire of Mormonism (already cringe-inducing for many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and to give the Ugandan villagers more agency. A gag in which the villager Nabulungi tries to send a text using a typewriter is gone; now she has an iPad, and the joke is no longer about her lack of sophistication, but about the unreliability of social media. Also: toward the end of the show, it is Nabulungi, not a white missionary, who scares away a warlord.“It’s putting Uganda at the center,” said Kim Exum, the actress playing Nabulungi, “instead of the Mormon boys.”In “The Lion King,” references to the character Rafiki, who is a shamanic mandrill, as a monkey have been dropped to avoid any possible racial overtones. Tshidi Manye played the role the night “The Lion King” reopened last month.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDisney, which reopened “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” last month, not only replaced the references to Rafiki as a monkey (first used in the 1994 animated movie, when the character was not depicted by a live actor) but also made a few changes to “Aladdin.” Among them: the word “barbaric” has been deleted from the opening song, “Arabian Nights,” and replaced with “chaotic,” reflecting a change previously made for the 2019 live-action film.“The 18-month hiatus gave us a chance to take a fresh look at ‘Aladdin’ and ‘The Lion King’ and make surgical changes to the books,” Disney Theatrical Productions said in a statement for this story, “informed by all that’s occurred since we’d last performed these shows.”At “Hamilton,” which broke ground by casting people of color to play the nation’s founders but has faced criticism for what some historians see as its misleading depiction of the title character as an abolitionist, attention during preparations for its reopening last month focused on Jefferson.Jefferson has become an increasingly controversial figure — the New York City Council earlier this month voted to remove his statue from its chambers — and “Hamilton” director Thomas Kail said the cast and creative team concentrated its revisions on Jefferson’s big number because of “the shameful distance between the liberty he wrote about, and the life he lived as a slaveholder.”There was another factor, too: the song contains the only moment in the show when an enslaved person is named — Hemings. “When you invoke the name of an enslaved person, you have to give some kind of respect,” said James Monroe Iglehart, who plays Jefferson.Hemings has no lines, but is represented through dance when Jefferson, saying “Sally be a lamb,” asks her to bring him a letter from George Washington; the choreography, Mr. Kail said, is now “quite different,” with “a different tone — one that is more respectful to Sally’s point of view.”In “Hamilton,” the second act opening number has been restaged so ensemble members representing enslaved people can express more distance from slaveholder Thomas Jefferson, currently played by James Monroe Iglehart.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn the prepandemic staging, Hemings would dance around Jefferson flirtatiously, performing a battement; in the new version, she still kicks her leg, but she faces away from him, arms forming a cradle as if to remind viewers of the children she bore him. “Rather than the playful, romantic energy that the previous version had, I’m now playing a person that had no claim over her own life and her own body,” said Justice Moore, who dances the Hemings role.There are changes for the ensemble, too. Gone are the white gloves and the pantomimed motions of slaves at work as Jefferson arrives at Monticello; now some members of the ensemble stand at a distance, and don’t even join in the singing. “The gloves automatically put you in a servant place, in a minstrel show sort of place, and the more we dug deeper, the more we asked why we need that weight on the story,” said Shonica Gooden, a member of the show’s ensemble.“To Kill a Mockingbird” has restaged its ending to ensure that audiences stay focused on the plight of Tom Robinson, a Black man falsely accused of rape and then killed by prison guards. When the show opened in 2018, Robinson was played by Gbenga Akinnagbe, right, who is no longer in the cast; the role of Atticus Finch was played by Jeff Daniels, who has returned to play the role again this fall.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a stage adaptation of the classic novel about a white lawyer’s unsuccessful effort to defend a Black man falsely accused of rape and then killed by law enforcement officers, the final scene was restaged before this month’s resumption of performances. A specter of the accused man, Tom Robinson, now returns at the end. “My goal is to not lose track of Tom’s story,” said Bartlett Sher, the director, “and to keep the impact of what happens to Tom more present.”“The Lehman Trilogy,” about the rise and fall of a financial family, added new references to the businessmen’s relationship to slavery after earlier versions of the play were criticized for playing down that connection. “Everything that was built here was built on a crime,” a character now warns.Broadway is addressing concerns about race in a variety of ways as it reopens — the current season features a record number of plays by Black writers; many shows are creating new diversity-related staff positions; and industry leaders have pledged to create more opportunities for artists of color. But race, although the primary focus of the protests last year, is not the only subject being reconsidered.“Jagged Little Pill,” a musical adapted from the blockbuster Alanis Morissette album, has simultaneously tried to deepen its discussion of race (the show centers on a white family with an adopted Black daughter) and gender identity. The show had been criticized when a character who appeared to some to be nonbinary before “Jagged” reached Broadway was more clearly portrayed as female once it arrived. In response, the producers said last month that they had hired a new dramaturgical team, including nonbinary and transgender members, “to revisit and deepen the script.”The writer of the musical’s book, Diablo Cody, said that she welcomed the opportunity to take another look at the material: She works primarily as a screenwriter, and of course once a movie is done, it’s done. But during the shutdown, she was able to update the musical’s family argument about transracial adoption. “When I wrote this, it was 2017 to 2018,” Ms. Cody said, “and it just feels like there has been such a cultural sea change since then.”Are the changes enough? Maybe not — although “Lehman” opened this month to raves, some critics once again faulted the play’s treatment of slavery.And are the alterations finished? Again, maybe not, at least for long-running shows.“We used to say a show was frozen, but the show is never frozen now,” said Mr. Iglehart, the “Hamilton” actor. “The shows are evolving, and they will evolve as the world evolves.” More

  • 113 Shares99 Views

    in Theater

    Chad Kimball Sues ‘Come From Away’ Over His Termination

    The actor, who is Christian, said in an interview he was let go because of his religious beliefs. The show’s producers declined to comment.A former lead actor in the musical “Come From Away” has sued the show’s producers, claiming that he was let go from the production because of his Christian beliefs.Chad Kimball, 45, a Tony-nominated performer who had been with the show since before its transfer to Broadway in 2017, filed suit this week in New York State Supreme Court, alleging that the production had violated his rights under New York City’s Human Rights Law.In the lawsuit, which was first reported by The New York Post, Kimball claimed he was terminated “wholly or partly” because of his religious beliefs. According to the lawsuit, one of the show’s producers allegedly told him there were concerns about supposed connections between his faith and Christian conservatives connected with the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.Matt Polk, a spokesman for the show, which reopened on Sept. 21, said the producers declined to comment.Kimball, a Broadway veteran described in the lawsuit as “a devout and practicing Christian,” had stirred controversy in November 2020 when he announced on Twitter that he would “respectfully disobey” Washington State’s coronavirus-related restrictions on religious services, including rules forbidding even masked worshipers from singing. At the time, he was living in Seattle, his hometown.“Respectfully, I will never allow a Governor, or anyone, to stop me from SINGING, let alone sing in worship to my God,” Kimball, who had previously had Covid-19, wrote.That statement drew strong criticism from some in the theater industry, including a co-star, Sharon Wheatley, who responded, “I respectfully totally and completely disagree with you.”Kimball said in an interview Friday that it was hurtful to have the initial reaction to his social media posts subsequently “snowball” into discussion of him as a “conservative Christian” whose beliefs were somehow connected with the Jan. 6 insurrection, which he described as “an event I wasn’t even involved with.”“I don’t talk about politics at all,” he said. “The only thing they really know about me for sure is that I’m a Christian.”Before the social media exchanges, the lawsuit said, Kimball, who had appeared in more than 1,000 performances of the show before the shutdown in March 2020, had never received any reprimand or complaint, and had never been told by anyone connected with the show that he “made them feel unsafe.” But subsequently, he “was forced to explain and defend his Nov. 15, 2020, tweet to Defendants’ agents and employees,” the suit claims.Then, on Jan. 18, the suit said, he was contacted by a producer, Susan Frost, who allegedly informed him that there was conversation around his “conservative Christian” faith and his “freedom to believe.”Frost, the suit claims, also mentioned the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and said that there were concerns that “the events at the Capitol, Josh Hawley and the conservative Christian movement were tied together and implied a connection” between Kimball’s faith and the “ideas and actions” of that day.On Jan. 22, according to the lawsuit, Frost told Kimball he would not be invited back to the production, which he was told “needed to focus on bringing the show back together and ensure people’s safety.”At the suggestion of Frost, the suit said, he spoke with the show’s director, Christopher Ashley, on Feb. 2, and asked him if he had been let go because of disagreements with colleagues or his religious beliefs. “In response,” the lawsuit continues, Ashley “stated that it was ‘everything.’”As a result, according to the lawsuit, Kimball was “made to suffer significant economic and professional harm,” as well as “emotional and physical pain and suffering.” The lawsuit is seeking compensatory and punitive damages and lost wages, as well as legal costs.Kimball was nominated for a Tony Award in 2010 for his role in the musical “Memphis.” While he has always been a Christian, the lawsuit said, it was following his recovery from an injury while in the show that he started becoming “more outspoken regarding his beliefs.”In the interview, a joint one with his lawyer, Lawrence Spasojevich of the firm Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins, Kimball said he had an inkling that his position with the show might be in jeopardy as early as December 2020 when he contacted the show’s producers to inform them of the tweets and the reaction to them.Kimball, who said he was currently not working, added that negative reactions to his beliefs weren’t new to him. “What was new to me was the idea that a religious belief could be used as fodder for deciding I wasn’t worthy of being a part of the show,” he said. More

  • 75 Shares129 Views

    in Television

    Jay Ellis Comes Home to Harlem

    The “Insecure” actor goes on a walking tour of his adopted neighborhood.Jay Ellis was buying snacks at a corner bodega in Harlem when a woman in a crop top and Ray-Bans approached him. “Oh my God, I’m so happy!” she said.This was on a sticky Monday in September, halfway through a walking tour of Harlem, where Mr. Ellis had lived, on and off, in the mid-2000s, when he was a model trying to break into acting. After years of sporadic work, he landed a starring role on BET’s “The Game,” a comedy-drama set in the world of professional football, then booked the romantic lead on the HBO comedy “Insecure,” playing Lawrence, the boyfriend of the series creator Issa Rae’s Issa.At the end of the show’s first season, Issa cheats on Lawrence. Lawrence retaliates by dangling the promise of a reunion, then bedding a co-worker. Which means that attitudes toward the character — and Mr. Ellis — are pretty divisive. (“Insecure” returns for a fifth and final season on Oct. 24.)“I’m not a fan of yours,” the woman in the bodega clarified. “That payback wasn’t right. Nonetheless you’re a great actor.”Mr. Ellis, 39, favored her with his Sunday morning smile, then left with his water and unsalted cashews.A skyscraper of a man with dizzying charisma, Mr. Ellis, 6-foot-3, had overdressed for the day in jeans, a Comme des Garçons striped shirt, a slate jacket and sneakers the blinding white of new veneers. He met the tour guide, Neal Shoemaker, at the offices of Harlem Heritage Tours on Malcolm X Boulevard. Together they set off for a shambolic stroll through the neighborhood.“You may meet my mom any minute now,” Mr. Shoemaker said as he led Mr. Ellis onto the basketball court at the center of Martin Luther King Jr. Towers. Fourteen floors up, Mr. Shoemaker’s aunt waved furiously from a window. Mr. Shoemaker shouted up to her, teasingly introducing Mr. Ellis as her “new nephew.”Mr. Ellis bought some snacks at a bodega, where he was approached by fans. Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesNext, they walked through the African market near West 116th Street and past the Masjid Malcolm Shabazz, where incense clouded the late summer air and a nearby cafe advertised male enhancements and veggie burgers. Mr. Ellis had barely been back in 15 years. The burned-out brownstones had been renovated, he noted. And the police presence seemed lighter.The tour continued past Minton’s Playhouse and alongside Marcus Garvey Park, the site of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that was chronicled in the documentary “Summer of Soul,” which Mr. Ellis had just seen. He stopped outside the house where Maya Angelou once lived, admiring the ivy that tumbled from the lintel.Throughout the walk, fans stopped Mr. Ellis for greetings and pictures — “Take it with me, not of me,” Mr. Ellis said to an excitable middle-aged woman who had halted her car just to snap him. Friends and relatives stopped Mr. Shoemaker, too, and Mr. Ellis, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and baby daughter, seemed a little jealous of the humming street life.“It’s the music mecca for Black culture,” Mr. Ellis said. “It’s the style mecca. Religiously, it’s a mecca. I come here, and I’m like, ‘Why am I living in LA.?’”Mr. Ellis plays Lawrence in “Insecure,” the boyfriend of the series creator Issa Rae, right.Merie W. Wallace/HBOMr. Ellis, the only child of an Air Force family, moved to Los Angeles just after his Harlem years. He briefly gave up on acting, then recommitted. A plucky hustle — he pretended that a casting agent had recommended him — hooked him a decent manager, and after a couple of years of acting classes, he began to book roles.None has meant as much to him as Lawrence, a character who struggles with the obligations of Black masculinity. Lawrence wasn’t supposed to make it past Season 1, but something about Mr. Ellis’s layered portrayal made him a fan favorite. And a least favorite.“I always say that if people are mad at me, if people are happy with me, if they’re sad or whatever, then I did my job,” he said. “Even if you hate Lawrence, I did my job because you felt something. I hope you love him because I love him. But I get it if you don’t.”Are Lawrence and Issa endgame? Mr. Ellis knew better than to comment. “I want both of them to be happy,” he said diplomatically. “I hope that it’s with each other.”He has already begun his post-“Insecure” career, with a starring role in “Top Gun: Maverick,” due out next year. (His character’s nickname? Payback.) He recently signed onto a romantic comedy, “Somebody I Used to Know,” and is the co-creator of the podcast “Written Off,” which features the work of formerly incarcerated authors.Mr. Ellis also has a starring role in “Top Gun: Maverick,” due out next year. Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesMr. Ellis followed Mr. Shoemaker past Dapper Dan’s atelier, into the Harlem Haberdashery and cater-corner to Harlem Shake, where Mr. Ellis would return for a post-walk burger. On 125th Street, he stopped to read the text on a monument to the politician and civil rights leader Adam Clayton Powell Jr.The tour ended at the Apollo Theater, “where stars are born, legends are made,” Mr. Shoemaker said. Mr. Ellis is already a star, but he still fantasizes about appearing in one of its amateur nights. Would he sing? Tell a joke?“All of it,” Mr. Ellis said, flashing that slow dance smile. “I’d do it all.”Mr. Shoemaker pointed to an unoccupied rectangle on the Apollo’s Walk of Fame, next to Lionel Richie. “I can see Jay Ellis right there,” he said.Mr. Ellis posed for a photo with a fan or two, including a teenager who recognized him from the thriller “Escape Room.” Then he and Mr. Shoemaker said a friendly goodbye.“Appreciate you, chief,” Mr. Ellis called as he headed back down 125th Street. “Tell your mama I’m coming, I’m hungry.” More

  • 125 Shares139 Views

    in Television

    Grace Van Patten, a Breakout Star of ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’

    The young actress made her television debut at 8 on “The Sopranos.”Name: Grace Van PattenAge: 24Hometown: ManhattanCurrently Lives: In an apartment with her family in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn.Claim to Fame: Ms. Van Patten is known for supporting roles in “The Meyerowitz Stories” and “Nine Perfect Strangers,” along with starring roles in several indie films, including “Under the Silver Lake” and “Good Posture.”In 2017, she also performed off-Broadway in “The Whirligig.” “I’m dying to do another play as soon as it’s back up and safe,” she said. “I find it to be one of the most terrifying things, but also the most fulfilling and challenging.”Big Break: Ms. Van Patten made her television debut when she was 8, in episodes of “The Sopranos” directed by her father, Timothy Van Patten. She has always loved acting, but didn’t pursue it seriously until after graduating from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in 2014. Her breakthrough role came in 2017, when she played Adam Sandler’s daughter in Noah Baumbach’s film “The Meyerowitz Stories,” alongside Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson.Latest Project: Ms. Van Patten played a grieving college student in “Nine Perfect Strangers,” the Netflix mini-series based on the Liane Moriarty novel and starring Nicole Kidman as a witchy Russian wellness guru.“Whether you want better skin or want to lose weight or want to be less sad, we all want that instant fix,” Ms. Van Patten said. “But if you actually want things to change, it takes a lot of work.” She also starred in the fantasy drama film “Mayday,” which was released in September.“I love it here,” said Grace van Patten about New York City. “It’ll always be home.”MEGHAN MARIN for The New York TimesNext Thing: Ms. Van Patten will star in her first TV series, “Tell Me Lies,” a coming-of-age drama on Hulu adapted from a novel by Carola Lovering. “I’ve never been attached to something this early on, so it’s new for me,” she said.The story line, which follows a tumultuous relationship over a decade, reminds her of “Blue Valentine,” one of her favorite films, and “Normal People,” another Hulu series. “‘Normal People’ did such a good job showing the stillness of relationships and the vulnerability and sadness,” she said. “This is like raging ‘Normal People.’”Wanderlust: Ms. Van Patten wants to move out of her parents’ home but isn’t ready to commit to Los Angeles. “I’ve been all over the place for the past few years and I’m definitely craving a place of my own, but I just don’t know where yet,” she said. Her father will be in London next year, so she plans to spend time there. But she knows she’ll return to New York eventually: “I love it here, it’ll always be home.” More

  • 125 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    Trevor Noah Predicts Trump Will Post Dares on Truth Social

    Noah did an impression of Trump posting on his new social media site: “OK, I shared my truth, now I dare you to hang Mike Pence.”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.Truth or DareDonald Trump’s new social media app, Truth Social, was the talk of late night on Thursday. Trevor Noah touched on the site’s terms of service requirements for the “truths” users can post.“And, also, you know what this means: If Trump is posting ‘truths,’ knowing him, eventually he’s going to start posting ‘dares.’ ‘OK, I shared my truth, now I dare you to hang Mike Pence,’” Noah joked while doing a Trump impression.“In a press release, Trump explained the need for his new social network: ‘We live in a world where the Taliban has a presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American president has been silenced.’ I don’t think Trump’s making the point that he thinks he is in that. All he’s telling us is that he’s more offensive than the Taliban.” — JAMES CORDEN“The site was briefly accessible to the public last night, and was immediately overrun by trolls, including one who started a fake account under the former president’s name that posted a photo of a pig defecating on its own scrotum. Are they sure that was a fake account? Because it feels on brand.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yo, this man is a legend. He creates a free speech website, and immediately was like, ‘OK, here’s what you can’t say.’ It’s like if the first rule of Fight Club was, ‘Hey, hey, hey, no fighting! No fighting! No fighting! We work [expletive] out here.” — TREVOR NOAH“At the same time, though, you know this is going to backfire, because half of the fun of being on social media is talking [expletive] about the platform.” — TREVOR NOAH“How is Trump of all people going to make a rule about disparaging comments? I mean, this man roasts people so much, he has to do it at auctioneer speed.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Truth and Consequences Edition)“The man who told over 30,000 lies in office has started something called Truth. He’s also launched a new makeup line called Human Skin.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s the perfect site for any person who ever wondered, ‘What if Twitter was only the bad parts?’” — JAMES CORDEN“The former president also announced that he is setting up his own streaming service. Well, his — his second streaming service.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“According to the press release, they’ll proudly broadcast ‘nonwoke entertainment programming.’ That’s right, nonwoke! If you can stay awake, your money back.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It’s going to feature the former president’s favorites like ‘Who Wants to Spank a Millionaire?” ‘The Unmasked Singer,” and ‘Only Fascists in the Building.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Thursday’s “Late Late Show,” James Corden explained how he was able to procure Celine Dion’s chewed gum as a gift for Adele.Also, Check This OutIllustrations by Ross MacDonaldClassic crime novels by the likes of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, and Dashiell Hammett still hold up today. More