Meet the (Pop) Queens of Broadway’s ‘Six’Maya Phillips��Reporting from the Theater DistrictJane Seymour (Abby Mueller): Known as the only wife Henry truly loved, Jane is imagined as a wholesome mother and hopeless romantic, robbed of domestic bliss. (She died shortly after giving birth.) Simple Pleasures: Sundays on the couch, brunch, tea. More
Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of October’s most promising new titles.(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)Brian Cox as the Roy family patriarch in “Succession.”David M. Russell/HBONew to HBO Max‘The Many Saints of Newark’Starts streaming: Oct. 1This movie-length prequel to the groundbreaking cable series “The Sopranos” looks back at life in the late 1960s for a notorious family of New Jersey mobsters and their various colleagues and enemies. It’s a film about the evolving nature of organized crime and race relations, at a time when the United States was experiencing rapid social changes that some sectors — like the old-school Mafia — resisted. Written by “The Sopranos” creator David Chase and directed by Alan Taylor (one of the show’s regulars), “The Many Saints of Newark” tells a sprawling story of criminal rivalries, balancing pulpy violence with dark comedy. Chase also returns to one of his core themes, considering how parental pressure and macho pride affect the choices of a young Tony Soprano, played here by Michael Gandolfini (the son of TV’s Tony, James Gandolfini).‘Succession’ Season 3Starts streaming: Oct. 17It has been nearly two years since HBO aired the Season 2 finale of this Emmy Award-winning drama. During the long, pandemic-fueled delay, fans have been eager to find out what will happen to the mega-rich Roy family and their right-wing media empire, after the troubled son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and his goofy cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) went public with evidence of a messy scandal. That cliffhanger ending set up a bloody fight between Kendall and his cantankerous, megalomaniacal father, Logan (Brian Cox), with the other power-hungry Roy kids Siobhan (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) left to decide where their loyalties should lie. Expect another year of jarring twists and unsparing satire from “Succession,” one of TV’s most exhilarating shows.Also arriving:Oct. 7“15 Minutes of Shame”Oct. 11“We’re Here” Season 2Oct. 14“Aquaman: King of Atlantis”“Phoebe Robinson: Sorry, Harriet Tubman”“What Happened, Brittany Murphy?”Oct. 18“Women Is Losers”Oct. 20“Four Hours at the Capitol”Oct. 21“Reign of Superwomen”Oct. 22“Dune”Oct. 24“Curb Your Enthusiasm” Season 11“Insecure” Season 5Oct. 26“The Mopes”Oct. 28“Love Life” Season 2From left, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed as seen in “The Velvet Underground.”Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘The Velvet Underground’Starts streaming: Oct. 15It would be hard for any filmmaker to make a documentary about the influential 1960s band the Velvet Underground as inventive and mind-expanding as the group itself, but Todd Haynes sure comes close. The director behind “Velvet Goldmine” and “I’m Not There” clearly understands not just the primitivist art-rock that the singer-songwriters Lou Reed and John Cale pioneered — a sound that inspired thousands of punk, New Wave and power-pop acts in the decades that followed — but also the New York underground culture that nurtured the Velvets. Combining new interviews, vintage audio clips and hypnotic old avant-garde films from the likes of Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas, “The Velvet Underground” captures both the brilliance and the chaos surrounding a band who documented both the ugliness and the beauty underlying the hippie era.‘Invasion’Starts streaming: Oct. 22Shot in locations around the world, this big-budget science-fiction series employs an ensemble cast to tell a story about the arrival of an Earth-threatening alien species. The show stars Sam Neill as a small-town sheriff, Shamier Anderson as a soldier stationed overseas, Shioli Kutsuna a mission-control engineer in Japan’s space program and Golshifteh Farahani and Firas Nassar as married Syrian immigrants living in New York. The “Hunters” creator David Weil and the writer-producer Simon Kinberg (best-known for his work on blockbuster superhero movies, including multiple X-Men films) collaborated on “Invasion,” which uses a fantastical, action-packed plot as a way to examine something relevant to today: how people cope with escalating crises that could wipe out life as we know it.Also arriving:Oct. 8“Acapulco”“Get Rolling With Otis”Oct. 15“Puppy Place”Oct. 29“Swagger”Rosario Dawson as a Drug Enforcement Administration agent facing down the opioid epidemic in “Dopesick.”Gene Page/HuluNew to Hulu‘Dopesick’Starts streaming: Oct. 13An all-star cast tackles the origins of the opioid crisis in this mini-series, based on the journalist Beth Macy’s 2018 nonfiction book “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America.” The director Barry Levinson and the writer-producer Danny Strong turn the complicated saga of how Purdue Pharma marketed the painkiller OxyContin into a focused story, mostly about the people in one small mining town: including a compassionate doctor (Michael Keaton) and an addict (Kaitlyn Dever). Michael Stuhlbarg (as a former Purdue leader, Richard Sackler), Rosario Dawson (as a Drug Enforcement Administration agent) and Peter Sarsgaard (as a crusading lawyer trying to expose the insidious effects of a community-wide addiction) add their own strong personalities.Also arriving:Oct. 7“Baker’s Dozen”Oct. 8“Jacinta”Oct. 12“Champaign ILL”Oct. 14“Censor”Oct. 21“The Evil Next Door”“The Next Thing You Eat” Season 1Oct. 22“Gaia”Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy in “Muppets Haunted Mansion.”Mitch Haaseth/DisneyNew to Disney+‘Muppets Haunted Mansion’Starts streaming: Oct. 8The Muppets’ first Halloween special leans on a classic horror-comedy plot, as the Great Gonzo and Pepe the King Prawn explore a ghost-infested house and deal with its baffling secret passageways and untrustworthy human hosts (played by Will Arnett, Taraji P. Henson and Darren Criss, among others). In just under an hour, the Muppets and their guests deliver a rapid-fire assortment of songs and puns, along with some Halloween-themed parodies of “The Muppet Show” itself — plus plenty of references to the original Disneyland attraction that gives this special its name. “Muppets Haunted Mansion” is geared toward longtime Muppets fans, but it should also appeal to anyone who loves old-fashioned gothic horror stories.Also arriving:Oct. 1“LEGO Star Wars Terrifying Tales”Oct. 6“Among the Stars”Oct. 13“Just Beyond”New to Amazon‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Season 1Starts streaming: Oct. 15Back in 1997, Lois Duncan’s 1973 young adult novel “I Know What You Did Last Summer” inspired a hit slasher film, which itself spawned multiple sequels. Now the book has become a TV series, which updates the original’s premise to the age of social media. Once again the story is about a circle of self-involved high school friends who have to grow up in a hurry when a mysterious killer starts a campaign of revenge against them after a fatal hit-and-run accident. But the themes this time out are more up-to-the-minute, dealing with the disconnect between how some young people present themselves online and the troubles in their personal lives. It’s a thriller where the threat of public embarrassment is as scary as any murderer.‘Fairfax’ Season 1Starts streaming: Oct. 29Fans of “Bojack Horseman” and Adult Swim cartoons will recognize the sensibility of this adult animated series about a handful of Los Angeles teenagers who behave like “extremely online” mini-adults, obsessed with hard-to-find fashions and exclusive experiences. Skyler Gisondo, Kiersey Clemons, Peter Kim and Jaboukie Young-White voice the kids, whose problems include the commonplace (like desperately wanting to buy a kitschy limited edition T-shirt) and the strange (like finding an underground fighting pit beneath a hip boutique). “Fairfax” — named for the Los Angeles avenue — is part slice-of-life comedy, part absurdist satire of Gen Z consumerism, spoofing the next wave of wannabe influencers.Also arriving:Oct. 1“All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs”“My Name Is Pauli Murray”“Welcome to the Blumhouse” Season 2Oct. 8“Justin Bieber: Our World” More
Tiago Rodrigues, the newly appointed director of the Avignon Festival, will make his American debut, in English, with a work he has also performed in French, Greek, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.LISBON — Theater knows no language barriers for the Portuguese actor and director Tiago Rodrigues. At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where he will make his American debut on Oct. 12, he will perform “By Heart,” a solo show with audience participation, in English.Since it was created in 2013, he has also staged it around Europe in the three other languages he speaks: French, Portuguese and Spanish. And because the premise of “By Heart” is that Rodrigues, 44, brings 10 audience members onstage to teach them a Shakespeare sonnet, he has also learned the poem in Greek and Russian, for shows in Thessaloniki, Greece; Moscow; and St. Petersburg, Russia.Midway through a recent interview at the Lisbon playhouse he has directed since 2015, the grand-looking Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, he recalled the first four lines of the sonnet — No. 30, which begins, “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought” — in Russian, with obvious delight.“I really love to see what happens to a play when you did it in one language, and then you do it in another,” he said. “I always ask someone from the country to help out. I’ve visited a lot of embassies in Portugal.”Rodrigues, center, performing “By Heart” in 2013 at O Espaço do Tempo performing arts center, in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal.Magda BizarroOne embassy has recently been less amenable. In September, the United States Embassy in Lisbon denied Rodrigues a visa to perform at BAM, advising instead that he “travel to a country outside Europe to apply for a visa to enter the U.S.,” Rodrigues said in an email on Wednesday. So he will go to Canada before traveling to New York, pushing the “By Heart” premiere back by a week: The show will now run from Oct. 12 through Oct. 17.At least American theatergoers will still get a glimpse of the work that has made Rodrigues a widely appreciated figure on Europe’s stages — and led to his appointment as the next director of the Avignon Festival, one of the continent’s biggest theater events, starting with the 2023 edition.Over the past two decades, Rodrigues’s output has spanned multiple genres, including classic dramas like Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” and Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” and less formal and more personal works like “By Heart,” which is a loving tribute to his grandmother Candida. A voracious reader, she tried to learn a favorite book in its entirety when she found herself going blind at the end of her life.“The moment I say her name onstage, it’s a way of perpetuating her presence, somehow, and to share this invisible connection that literature creates,” Rodrigues said.What Rodrigues’s productions have in common is a Pan-European, multilingual outlook and a loose, collaborative directing style. His wife, Magda Bizarro, has been a frequent collaborator from the start of his career, and will oversee international programming in Avignon.Artists who have worked with Rodrigues describe him as gentle to a fault. Océane Cairaty, who played the role of Varya in “The Cherry Orchard” at Avignon in July, said that he “completely trusts the actors — he believes we also have our vision of the play and the role, and he welcomes it.” (In an interview in Lisbon, Bizarro explained with a laugh that it doesn’t mean Rodrigues doesn’t have an end point in mind: “Tiago hears everyone, but if he has an idea about a text, he keeps it until the end.”)Rodrigues’s approach stems in part from political principles, he said. A child of the young Portuguese democracy, he was born in Lisbon three years after the “Carnation Revolution” in 1974 that abolished the country’s military dictatorship. His father was an antifascist activist who spent several years in exile in France in the late 1960s, and later worked as a journalist.“I never want to work with someone and, when we disagree, play the authority card because it’s my job,” Rodrigues said.Ana Brigida for The New York Times“Democracy for me is a big thing. I try to work the way I try to live,” Rodrigues said. “I never want to work with someone and, when we disagree, play the authority card because it’s my job. If I ever do it, I hope I’m brave enough to say sorry.”“Knowing him has been one of the privileges of my theater life,” Jean-Marie Hordé, the director of the Théâtre de la Bastille in Paris, where Rodrigues has presented many of his works, said in a phone interview. “His talents are manifold, and he is an extremely honest man.”Rodrigues himself took an unusual path to the stage. When he applied to the Lisbon Theater and Film School as a teenager, he was rejected — “I was the first of the non-admitted, the best of the refused,” he recalled — yet ultimately, he got in after someone dropped out. “I did one year, and by the end, they were sorry they had called me,” he said. “They said I was just not talented. I’m not sure they were wrong. I probably grew much, much better, just to prove them wrong.”The school advised him to focus his talents elsewhere. Instead, Rodrigues enrolled in every workshop he could find after the school year, including one with the Belgian company tg STAN. By the end of the summer, tg STAN, a director-less collective that Rodrigues described as “my school of theater,” offered him a role in an upcoming production.“It was really love at first sight with them,” he said, adding that when he turned to directing, he was heavily influenced by the collective’s philosophy. “The idea of a creation is shared by all, collectively, and is based upon the freedom of the actor onstage.”To keep working with tg STAN, Rodrigues pretended he could speak French to land a role in “Les Antigones,” a production that premiered in Toulouse, France, in 2001. “I said in English that my French was great, and they never doubted me,” he said.His now excellent French will no doubt improve further when he moves to Avignon, in southern France, full time this winter. In Lisbon, Rodrigues leaves behind a rejuvenated Teatro Nacional — Portugal’s “symbolic temple of theater,” as he puts it.“When I came in 2015, it was perceived as a bit old-fashioned,” Rodrigues said. “Sometimes it didn’t allow for the great work being done here to be perceived as great work.”A production of “By Heart” at the Teatro in June 2020, shortly after the theater reopened following a coronavirus lockdown.Filipe FerreiraUnder his leadership, the theater introduced outreach programs aimed at residents of central Lisbon who had never been to the Teatro Nacional. The resident ensemble, at that point downsized to only a handful of actors because of funding cuts, was supplemented by young performers on fixed contracts.While bringing in new blood, Rodrigues also honored the theater’s long-serving staff members. “Sopro,” a work he created in 2017, is based around four decades of backstage anecdotes from the theater’s prompter, Cristina Vidal. She whispers her stories to actors onstage, who relay them to the audience.“He took a sleeping beauty, and woke it up,” said Hordé of Rodrigues’s tenure in Lisbon.The Avignon Festival — in another country, and language — will present new challenges, but Rodrigues said he would apply the same convictions there. It might also mean “doing less” than the current, sprawling event, he added.The vast scale of the job might mean he has to do less, too: Avignon will most likely keep Rodrigues too busy for many stage appearances of his own. “When I started directing and writing more and more, I understood that acting is the hardest job for me,” Rodrigues said. “I’m exhausted by it.”Yet eight years after the “By Heart” premiere, he said he hadn’t tired of sharing Shakespeare’s sonnet around the world. “Every performance, 10 new people come onstage,” Rodrigues added. “And it’s a totally new adventure.” More
Also: Sam gets a remarkable offer. And are Keeley and Roy OK?Season 2, Episode 11: ‘Midnight Train to Royston’And when you least expect it, “Ted Lasso” has something to say about … soccer.Look, obviously it’s not a true sports show, nor should it try to become one. But the first season paid significant attention to the trials and tribulations of AFC Richmond, the wins and the losses, the looming threat of relegation out of the Premier League and into a less competitive one.The explicit goal at the end of last season (both the AFC Richmond season and the “Ted Lasso” season) was for the team to play well enough to get promoted back into the Premier League. But, unless I’m mistaken, it took until this episode — the penultimate of the season! — to inform us how close Richmond is to accomplishing what had been promoted as the primary quest of the season.And who could have imagined: It all comes down to the final game! If they win, they’re promoted; if they lose, they remain in the inferior league. This is, of course a minuscule variation on the end of Season 1, in which they had to win the last game in order to avoid relegation. (Obviously, they didn’t.) It would all be terrifically exciting if not for the fact that the show forgets about the team’s win/loss fortunes altogether for long stretches.The latest victory comes at the hands of the fan favorite Sam, who scores a “hat trick”— three goals in a single game. Now I do not pretend to know much about soccer. But isn’t Sam a right back defender? Aren’t the odds against a player in that position scoring three goals astronomical? Especially when we are told time and time again that the team’s best players — and scorers — are its strikers, Jamie and Dani? Again, “Ted Lasso” is not really a sports show. But sometimes it seems to treat the sport it revolves around with extraordinary negligence.This week’s episode was not as eventful as last week’s bravura outing. But breaking the recap down by story lines seemed to work pretty well, so I’m going to do the same here.Ted and SharonIs that really it? We were told that Sharon needed to leave the team a day early because of some crisis. But at least for the moment it appears that it may just be that she doesn’t like to say goodbye in person?I have a few qualms. Had we ever been informed before this episode that Sharon’s tenure was about to be over? Doesn’t she have — let’s say conservatively — a ton of work still to do with Ted? Their breakthrough talk about his father’s suicide was tremendous, but I don’t think one conversation, however productive, is going to fix him.And what about the strong hints that Sharon is going through something, too? The comments from her therapist on the phone? The collection of wine and liquor bottles that Ted saw on her counter when he escorted her home from the hospital? Perhaps all of this was in the letter to Ted. But if so, read the letter aloud!Now perhaps this will all be resolved next episode: Sharon will wind up not leaving, or will come back, or something along those lines. But to have Sharon sneak out the door while in the middle of her most important work with Ted, for reasons that are never expressed aloud? Very disappointing.That said, having Ted send her a final beer (with an army man in it!) along with a goodbye note was a pretty clever turnaround. But I certainly hope it’s not the end of their story. And I’m guessing it’s not.Roy and KeeleyKeeley’s irritation with Roy’s teasing about the corpse-tree last week was one thing. Jamie’s declaration of love after the funeral was another. But both could perhaps be written off as bumps in the road. This week, it’s becoming clear that the whole road may need repaving.Roy’s scene with Phoebe’s teacher seemed more than a bit flirty, culminating with his curt answer when she asked if he was married: “no.” (Phoebe’s boob drawings were a riot though, recalling the early phallic obsessions of Jonah Hill’s character in “Superbad.” And no, I’m not going to link to the scene. This is a family newspaper.) And there was, of course, Nate’s idiotic kiss — but I’ll come back to Nate’s behavior later.It’s at the photo shoot that it all comes to a head, with escalating confessions by Keeley and Roy.Keeley tells Roy about Nate’s attempted kiss, which is no big deal. Roy replies with a customary expletive and “that must have been awkward.”Then Roy tells Keeley about spending three hours(!) with Phoebe’s teacher and the incompleteness of his “not married” answer. This is more concerning, and you can see Keeley struggling with whether to go One Confession Further.She does, telling Roy what Jamie said to her after the funeral. The worry on her face and in her voice is palpable.But it’s Roy’s reaction that really struck me, a slight tilt of his head to one side. This is Roy’s “do I understand this correctly?” look, a lower-key version of the face he made to Phoebe’s teacher back in Episode 8 when she was trying to tell him how his swearing was affecting Phoebe.I don’t believe Roy was thinking about what Jamie had done, but rather about Keeley’s response to what Jamie had done: She hadn’t told him. Keeley and Roy’s first two confessions were about incidents that had just happened. The Jamie episode was something Keeley had kept to herself until now, and clearly had qualms about revealing at all.My own confession: I am officially worried.And was it just me, or was the final shot of the scene, after they turn to face the photographer, an echo of the last shot of “The Graduate” (yes, one of the most widely misunderstood movie endings of all time). I saw two people who had been thrilled with their envisioned future suddenly wondering whether that future was theirs at all. I could almost hear “The Sound of Silence” playing in the background.Someone, somewhere — by which I guess I mean everyone, everywhere — needs to have extra depression hotlines set up in preparation for any possible Keeley-Roy breakup. I don’t mean to sound apocalyptic, but just by myself, I may need to speak to as many as three or four mental-health professionals simultaneously.My fingertips actually hurt after typing this section.Sam and RebeccaFirst things first: I love Sam Richardson, the actor brought in to play billionaire Ghanaian heir, Edwin Okufu. (If you know him principally from “Veep,” as I do, you’ll find him unrecognizable.) From the moment he got out of the helicopter, his joyous charisma was evident.The bit about buying out the art gallery and filling it with actors was silly. (I mean, a £1.2 billion inheritance makes him barely a billionaire.) The bit with the pop-up Nigerian restaurant was more plausible. But it’s not really those perks, but Edwin himself that seduces. He is a sharp, likable and persuasive pitchman.So far, so good. Sam is coming into his own as a star-level player. And as much as he loves Richmond, this seems like an incredible opportunity: to be the early centerpiece of a team, based in Africa, that has aspirations to be one of the top clubs in the world, alongside Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Man U, and PSG. And the team has an owner with the apparent will, resources and connections to make this happen. It’s a far cry from playing for a mid-tier club like Richmond thousands of miles from home.Sam certainly seems excited when he describes the meetings to — of course — his dad on the phone. Indeed, he’s still grinning from ear to ear as he arrives home.But there’s Rebecca, waiting by his door. (Brief note: I don’t believe for an instant she would do this. She’s a highly recognizable figure, waiting in full view by the door of a 21-year-old player’s place well after dark. If some passer-by recognized her, the whole thing would be in the tabloids by dawn.)And what does she tell Sam? Three things: 1) I can’t decide about us. 2) And I can’t ask you not to go. (This second sentence, incidentally, is false in every meaningful way: Sam is under contract. He can’t leave unless Rebecca lets him.) 3) But “I hope you don’t.”Brett Goldstein and Juno Temple in “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+I’ve noted earlier that this season has essentially turned the powerful (if frequently scheming and intermittently evil) Rebecca of Season 1 into a Carrie Bradshaw figure, utterly consumed by romantic decisions, yet somehow unable to make any romantic decisions. But I may have been being unfair to Carrie Bradshaw.This “I don’t know if I want to date you, but I want you to make massive, life-defining decisions based on the possibility that I might, someday” seems more like the high-schoolers of “Sex Education.” Although, that’s probably unfair, too. They’re mostly more mature. (Incidentally, the third season of that show may be the best yet. If you’re not watching it, you should be.)And even beyond the sad emotional blackmail, there’s this. Rebecca has a fiduciary duty to AFC Richmond, its other shareholders, and (to at least some degree) it’s tens (hundreds?) of thousands of fans. When Edwin said he would pay her a transfer fee so exorbitant that he would look like a fool in public, she declined even to hear it.But this is her explicit job. If Edwin wanted to pay her so much money that she could sign two or three players as good as Sam, then of course she should do it. And if that decision is too difficult, then she should hire someone else to run the team or sell it altogether. Then she could explore whether she and Sam still work — or work better! — when she’s not his boss’s boss.One last little observation: This season has focused a lot on Rebecca’s recovery from her awful marriage with Rupert. It’s understandable. Like Sassy, I think of Rupert’s death every day. And that is despite the fact that Anthony Stewart Head (who plays Rupert) also played Giles on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” one of my favorite TV characters of all time.But for all the angst about “being alone,” it’s worth remembering that Rebecca was only married to Rupert for (correct me if I’m wrong) about six years. She is not some starry-eyed young ingénue who married a powerful man and was controlled by him from her early 20s on. By the time they wed, she’d had plenty of years of being a self-sufficient, independent woman. So why is the show trying so hard to persuade us that, post-Rupert, she can’t help but revert to being 16-years-old?Sigh.NateThis is the one we’ve been waiting for. Nate has been belittled by his father and by the hostess of a modest Greek restaurant. Ted laughed unintentionally when Nate considered himself a “big dog” in the coaches’ office. Social media has messed with his brain (as it does with everyone’s), and every single time he wears a necktie, someone has to straighten it for him. In the words of the classic “Seinfeld” episode “The Contest,” something’s gotta give.And give it did this week.After Nate suggests a “false 9” formation to Ted and Ted distractedly tells him to give it a try, Nate loses it in front of Roy and Beard. “I give Ted yet another idea that he’ll take all the credit for,” Nate fumes. (Notably, I don’t think we’ve ever seen Ted do this. He’s called out Nate as a genius assistant coach on multiple occasions.)Later, Nate expresses the precise same “don’t you want to be the boss” sentiment to Keeley while they are shopping, which Keeley inadvertently encourages with her talk of their both being underdogs. And then Nate kisses her, which is such a spectacular misreading of the situation that even he knows it instantly.Nate’s transformation this episode has been abrupt: For all his anger and frustration throughout the season, he has always punched down — at Colin, at Will — not up. Remember his mortified look when he asked Beard if he’d told Ted about his treatment of Colin in Episode 7?What accounts for this shift? Occam’s razor suggests that it’s whatever Rupert whispered to Nate on the way out of the wedding last week. I had surmised that Rupert was buying a new team and suggesting that Nate could coach it. (He had, after all, just divested Bex’s shares of AFC Richmond back to Rebecca, which I assume would be required before buying another team.) And it could still be the case that Rupert is on the market for a new team.But it could also be that Rupert is merely trying to sow dissension within Richmond by stoking Nate’s fragile ego and burgeoning resentments. That is, after all, a lot less expensive than buying a team.Whatever it was that Rupert said, it appears to be working. Nate places a story in “The Independent,” bylined of course by Trent Crimm, revealing that Ted left that AFC Cup match not because of food poisoning but because he was having a panic attack. Classy move, Nate.A closing note, however, on journalism. In his texts to Ted, Trent says he felt obligated, “as a journalist,” to write the piece, which is perfectly reasonable. But then he immediately reveals to Ted that his source is Nate. Now presumably, he is telling Ted this because Nate was an anonymous source — otherwise Ted would just read it in the piece. And “as a journalist,” revealing the identity of a source to the subject is crossing one of the clearest ethical lines in the profession. This would never happen so casually.I’ve come to expect “Ted Lasso” ’s oddly dismissive approach toward the finer points of soccer. But now journalism, too?Odds and EndsColin needs to dump the Lambo for a car he’s capable of driving competently.There’s been some discussion about whether the romance between Sam and Rebecca is a play on the romance between Ted Danson (Sam) and Kirstie Alley (Rebecca) on “Cheers.” The argument against: They’re two fairly common names. The argument for: Jason Sudeikis is George Wendt’s nephew! I think Ted’s comment this week — “Sam and Rebecca are already one of my favorite TV couples” — pretty much lays the debate to rest.In addition to those already mentioned, this week’s pop-culture references included ‘Nsync, “The Godfather,” Ziggy Stardust, Bo Jackson and Bo Diddley (from a series of Nike ads they did together), “I May Destroy You,” and Prince (a.k.a., Prince Rogers Nelson, the “Mr. Nelson” Ted refers to when Sharon tells him the origin of her “SMF” pinball handle).Thank you to those who pointed out last week that Roy and Keeley’s “hit by a bus” discussion included both a reference to “Red Dawn” (“Avenge me!”) and, by inference at least, one to philosopher Philippa Foot’s famous trolley problem.And finally, special recognition to the reader who noted that Ted’s getting dressed to “Easy Lover” last week was not a solitary mistake. A couple of episodes back, he stated, “I think a fella should only take as long as the tune ‘Easy Lover’ by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey to get dressed in the morning.” So apparently, Rebecca’s mom, Deborah, is not the only character with an appalling musical-morning routine. Nice catch! More
The actor, a recent transplant to Brooklyn, navigates his new neighborhood while dealing with the chaos of red carpet prep.For someone who struggles with what he described as “legendary, decades-long insomnia,” BD Wong usually makes rest a priority on the weekends. “With Sundays, in particular, there are the fewest responsibilities and the fewest things scheduled,” Mr. Wong said. “So that is really the day that I can sleep.”But last Sunday, there wasn’t much time for snoozing, except for when Mr. Wong was in the barber’s chair, as he prepared to introduce a duet at the 74th Annual Tony Awards.A Broadway veteran, Mr. Wong is still known for his Tony-Award-winning performance in “M. Butterfly” in 1988. Since then, he has worked in theater and in television, including shows like “Law and Order: SVU,” “Oz” and, most recently, “Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens,” where he plays Nora’s father, Wally.He also made his directorial television debut with the second season of “Awkwafina,” admitting that he was resistant to the idea at first. But, he said, “I felt ensconced as a member of this creative family.”Mr. Wong, 60, just relocated from the Financial District in Manhattan to Brooklyn Heights with his husband, Richert Schnorr, 37, a creative director, and their cat, Lox.CRAVING, SATISFIED We went for breakfast at this diner on Montague that we discovered: Grand Canyon Restaurant. I had the thing that I have been trying to get for days, which was a toasted sesame bagel with an egg and ham.Mr. Wong, left, and his husband, Richert Schnorr, out for a (messy) snack.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesLox, Mr. Wong’s one-eyed cat, tasting some ice cream.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesSO MUCH FOR THAT ERRAND I had my niece’s wedding present that I had to wrap and thought, “We need ribbons for the presents, so let’s go out for a walk along the Brooklyn Promenade.” We also stopped for ice cream and took pictures of the ice cream truck. I got a vanilla Frosty dipped in a chocolate shell, and Richert got a Chipwich, which is his favorite. I accidentally left the ribbon at the CVS.BEAUTY SLEEP The barber is right across the street from my apartment, and it’s a place I tried once before and liked. Whenever I sit in the barber chair, I fall immediately asleep. So I actually was able to multitask and take a nap while the guy cut my hair.“I think it was supposed to be a shark,” Mr. Wong said of his hydrating mask. “Everyone else thought it looked like The Joker.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesSKIN CARE There’s a groomer that I always try to book when I have an event in New York. Her name is Jennifer Brent, and she knows that I like to try to relax with a face mask. So, she brings a deck of face masks, and one of them is an animal face mask that has this colorful animal face. I think it was supposed to be a shark. Everyone else thought it looked like The Joker.FAMILY TIME Having our family Zoom — siblings, parents, cousins, in-laws, it’s for whoever is around — is definitely one of the most deeply settled routine things. We opened the Zoom while I was getting makeup on, and Richert was there to help facilitate what was happening in our house. They haven’t seen our apartment yet; they’re dying for us to give them a virtual tour, but we’re refusing to do it because we’re not ready.A Zoom session with family members is “one of the most deeply settled routine things.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesTIED UP While I was getting dressed, I could not remember how to tie the knot on this particular high necktie that I wore when I was on “Gotham.” I played this character who wore these weird tie knots, and I did that really well and easily when I was on the show. But then as soon as the show ended, I forgot how to do that. I had to look up a video of how to tie this crazy knot. I finally got it about 15 minutes after we were supposed to get in the car. I put the rest of the outfit on, and we did modeling for the Zoom.BD NOT BEBE I got a call on my iPhone from a driver asking repeatedly for “BB,” which is always irritating, letting me know he was parked outside and looking for me at least an hour before we were supposed to go. At the same time I could also hear a woman client on the line, urgently wanting to know where her car was, as if the phone connections were crossed. I realized it was actually the dispatcher, not the driver, calling me. I started to explain that it was way too early for me to get in the car, and I kept saying, “No, this is BD Wong,” as the woman customer’s voice became more insistent. All of a sudden it became super clear what was happening when I recognized the lady customer’s voice: It was Bebe Neuwirth looking for her ride to Radio City.After a button on his tuxedo popped off, Mr. Wong had to make a quick fix on the way to the Tonys. “I’d really never done that before.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesWARDROBE MALFUNCTION As we were walking down the street to get into the car, one button on my tux jacket popped off. We found the button, and we decided to go back inside my house to get a safety pin. We come up with these campaign badges that have pins in them. I get in the car, and as I’m pulling the pin out, it flies out of my hand and slips into a crack in the seat. The photographer went to CVS, bought a sewing kit, and I spent the whole ride to the Tonys sewing the button. I’d really never done that before. Then, the photographers on the red carpet took the pictures that are online now.PREGAME The awards show rents out this Applebee’s to serve as a “green room.” They put out food, and all the monitors at the bar are tuned in to the broadcast. I was so wound up by this point I actually had a whiskey, which I normally wouldn’t do, and then proceeded to debate with my green room buddy Adam Pascal to see if he could get away with having a beer before he sang. He was the perfect person to spend this time waiting to go on with because he’s so friendly and even-tempered. I introduced Andrew Rannells and Tituss Burgess singing a duet together.POST-SHOW I have a very supportive, wonderful husband, and he watched the whole awards show, so he could report back to me. When I got home, he explained the parts that were his favorites, and we had an assessment. I took a minute to decompress with my phone and looked at some pictures that were posted from the red carpet, but then I went to bed. To be quite honest, I was exhausted from the entire day.Sunday Routine readers can follow BD Wong on Twitter and Instagram @wongbd. More
“It was just baseball, no politics, until the Republican catcher went nuts about having to wear a mask,” Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday night.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.Buy Me Some PeanutsDespite this week’s turmoil in Washington, including the threat of a government shutdown, the annual Congressional Baseball Game went ahead as scheduled, with President Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi among the spectators.“It was just baseball, no politics, until the Republican catcher went nuts about having to wear a mask,” Jimmy Fallon joked on Thursday night.“It was a real nail-biter. In the eighth inning, I got a text from Pelosi saying, ‘We’re down by one run and only your donation of $26 can turn this around.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But Pelosi had to work the phone instead of watching what I’m sure was a terrible baseball game. You think regular baseball is slow, imagine what it’s like with these bozos.” — SETH MEYERS“President Biden stopped by for the game, although it was a little creepy when he left by disappearing into a cornfield.” — JIMMY FALLON“He also spent some of the game working the phones, and then Biden left the park about an hour after he arrived. That has big absent dad vibes: [imitating Biden] ‘You look great out there, kiddo. Daddy’s just on a work call.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And while he was there, he handed out ice cream bars with the presidential seal on the package. I scream, you scream, we all scream, ‘Can you get back to work, Joe?’” — JAMES CORDEN“The Republicans beat the Democrats 13-12, but only because Kyrsten Sinema refused to tag anyone out.” — SETH MEYERS“The Dems had a chance for a big win, but in the bottom of the ninth, Joe Manchin wrote a letter cautioning that it would be irresponsible to score.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Free Britney Edition)“All right, let’s move on to some news about Britney Spears: formerly a girl, yet currently a woman.” — TREVOR NOAH“Jamie Spears, her father, is vacating his daughter’s conservatorship to focus on his true passion, trying to jump an ATV over his aboveground pool.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It has been 13 years since a court put her under a conservatorship, which means she can’t spend her own money, she can’t make her own career or medical decisions and she can’t even choose her own fighter in ‘Super Smash Bros.’ She just has to be Diddy Kong every single time!” — TREVOR NOAH“And props to her fans for making this happen. Because you know who really was ahead of the curve? That ‘Leave Britney alone’ person. Yeah, at the time, we were like, ‘Whoa, that’s a little over the top!’ And now we’re like, ‘Yo, let’s put this [expletive] on the Supreme Court.’” — TREVOR NOAH“I mean, Britney Spears is worth $60 million, yes — but she doesn’t need a conservator. You know who does? People with $60 billion. Those people are out of control. I mean, name one thing Britney has done that’s as wasteful and just, like, mindless as going into space in a giant penis.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingChloe Fineman of “Saturday Night Live” performed several spur-of-the-moment impressions on “The Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutDaniel Craig in “No Time to Die,” which was delayed a few times because of the pandemic. “I’m so desperate for people just to see it and hopefully for them to like it,” he said.Nicola Dove/MGMDaniel Craig says goodbye to James Bond with “No Time to Die.” More
Anne Washburn’s phantasmagoric “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” is getting a timely new run at Theater Wit in Chicago.CHICAGO — One of the most unbearable things about the pandemic is the uncertainty: about what we can and cannot do, and the way our understanding of what is going on gets tangled in conflicting stories or collapses altogether. And then there is the dread about what will happen next.Or at least that is what I was thinking as I watched this pandemic-era production of “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play,” Anne Washburn’s 2012 apocalyptic phantasmagoria about hope, storytelling and “The Simpsons.” At Theater Wit in Chicago, Jeremy Wechsler, its longtime artistic director, is offering an expressive new staging that leans on the horror of the last 18 months to draw out the work’s fresh urgency. But he has also found new comfort in its meaning.I saw “Mr. Burns” twice in the Before Times — in 2013, at Playwrights Horizons in New York, and, in 2015, which was Wechsler’s previous Theater Wit production. Like many critics, I was won over by Washburn’s agile, boisterous storytelling and her tangled, semi-redemptive vision of how humans would respond to the end of the world as we know it.The plot is ingenious: In Act I, a group of people try to keep it together after a series of nuclear meltdowns by retelling the story of a single “Simpsons” episode: “Cape Feare,” a sendup of the movie “Cape Fear.” Seven years later, in Act II, those same characters, now an itinerant theater troupe, are recreating episodes of “The Simpsons,” commercials and hit songs. But they lose whatever unity they had and, in the closing scene, are gunned down by rivals. The sung-through third act begins 75 years later, with a ritual homage to the meltdown and a fantastical, grisly and surprisingly comedic version of “Cape Feare.”Washburn and the composer Michael Friedman, who died of complications from AIDS in 2017, were trying to examine how pop culture and storytelling might survive after a disaster. To take a line from the play: “What will endure when the cataclysm arrives — when the grid fails, society crumbles and we’re faced with the task of rebuilding?”Wechsler’s new production lands differently. And the pandemic isn’t the only threat it evokes. Take, for instance, climate change and all that comes with it: fire, heavy rain, droughts, people buying blocks of ice in a city with no electricity, gas stations running out of gas, power grid failure. “We have a larger sense of ourselves as being on precarious ground,” Washburn said in an interview.An emblematic moment arrives at the end of Act I, when one character, Maria, crouched around the fire, shares an anecdote about someone she met at Walmart who courageously tried to shut down the plant. But as she goes on telling the story, it begins to seem as if he never made it to the plant at all: “It’s not knowing,” Maria recounts the unnamed character saying. From the safety of a nearby gas station, he dreams himself fleeing the generator, nuked, and dying. But he actually walks in the other direction, away from the plant.Moments like this — as full of vivid, free-floating theories and fears as our current lives — make it fitting that “Mr. Burns,” which opened Sept. 8, was until recently the only Actors’ Equity Association production in Chicago.Theater Wit requires proof of vaccination and masks; the actors, who are unmasked, perform 10 feet away from the audience of the 99-seat house. But the attendees I saw didn’t seem fazed by the restrictions. And one of them, comparing Wechsler’s 2015 “Mr. Burns” with this one, said during a post-show discussion, “What was speculative became realistic.”In an interview, Wechsler agreed. “Back then,” he said, “the play had a funnier, sci-fi spin and a hallucinatory, giddy feeling.”He did not start the pandemic plotting to restage “Mr. Burns.” In March 2020, Theater Wit was presenting “Teenage Dick,” Mike Lew’s take on Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” Wechsler took the show online, but then he sank into a depression. “What surprised me was how quickly the profession could vanish,” he said.Once the theater reopened to in-person audiences, Wechsler thought, it would need “something real, big, complicated and recklessly extravagant.” And he wanted that show to ask: What would theater need to provide in a post-lockdown landscape?Tina Muñoz Pandya and Ana Silva in the play, whose Act III costumes are made from materials including Amazon packaging and pieces of plastic buckets.Charles OsgoodHe thought of Washburn’s layered storytelling and how it might hit more closely now. “I became obsessed with it,” he said.Although Wechsler has directed over 50 shows, restaging “Mr. Burns” felt different. He had never done a remounting in which the lives of artists, and culture at large, had changed so much, he said. This run is different from 2015 in many ways: It is the largest production in the theater’s history (with help from a $140,000 Shuttered Venue Operators Grant); and although a few actors reprised their roles, most of the cast was new, including Will Wilhelm, the first nonbinary actor to play Jenny.The design team is mostly intact from the 2015 production, though the set and costumes in Act III are more of, as Wechsler put it, a “fever dream” this time. The clothes worn by “Simpsons” characters are made of comparatively wackier found materials like Amazon packaging and pieces of plastic buckets. Humorous frescoes of Marge Simpson as Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” and Homer crossing the Potomac River have been moved closer to the audience.But the most marked changes are in the staging. In 2015, Wechsler set Act I in a forest; now, it opens on the characters huddled around a pile of burning chairs in a backyard. It is also set later in the year, with how people passed time during the pandemic in mind. “Act I is really, ‘How We Spent the Winter,’” he said.Earlier productions I saw dragged at times in Act II, but Wechsler’s new staging of it is ragged and brisk. “There is a shared sense of a new normal and managing dreams, the things the characters talk about, like the fires and the grid going down, have already happened,” he said. “I wanted that ‘Let’s put on a show’ spirit in desperate circumstances.” He was inspired in part, he said, by things that he had previously taken for granted, such as friendly visits and birthday parties, becoming difficult during the pandemic.Wechsler also updated the poignant and hilarious “Chart hits” medley, in which the actors perform (and flub) lines from pop songs. He added snippets from Billie Eilish, Lorde and Taylor Swift. Act III, too, has transformed: Its ceremonial theater piece seemed sharper, or maybe I understood better that we need the grandeur of a chanting masked chorus to communicate apocalyptic horror.In that scene, the actors also used details from their lives during the pandemic. Leslie Ann Sheppard, who plays Bart Simpson, said in an interview: “We incorporated a little bit more of the coughing and ‘Stay away from me. We need to cover our faces.’”During one striking moment of Act III, Jenny reads the names of people who have died. “When we first did the show in 2015, we would sing audience members’ names that were there that evening,” Wechsler said. “This was arresting in its way, but too anxiety-producing and flip after the last 18 months.”Now the names include those in the script, as well as theater luminaries who have died — not just from Covid-19 — including the Chicago actor Johnny Lee Davenport and the Organic Theater founder Stuart Gordon.Later in Act III, Mr. Burns brutally murders Homer, Marge and Lisa, and then Bart seems to kill the villain. But when the lights come on, Mr. Burns is not dead. The last moment reveals him pedaling more and more slowly on a stationary bike hooked up to a generator. It’s an image that “is uncertain,” Washburn said. “It can toggle more difficult or more heartening.”In his production, Wechsler wanted to emphasize the positive. “Life is hard, and none of us is going to emerge unscarred,” he said. “How do we heal? The answer is just keep living.”That moment, in 2015, ended with a blackout after a spotlight shone on Mr. Burns pedaling for a long time. Not now: Rather than close with that image, several colorful electric fixtures slowly descend from the ceiling as the house lights come on.“We wanted to bring the audience in,” Wechsler said, “to show them we are in this together.” More
The Broadway show had just returned to the stage on Tuesday with several understudies.On Tuesday, “Aladdin” held its first performance since Broadway closed for the pandemic. On Wednesday, the show was canceled because of several positive coronavirus tests.Disney Theatrical Productions announced the cancellation just a half-hour before curtain, saying “through our rigorous testing protocols, breakthrough COVID-19 cases have been detected within the company of ‘Aladdin’ at the New Amsterdam Theater.”Disney said it was refunding purchased tickets, and did not yet know whether or how future performances might be affected.“We will continue to provide support to the affected ‘Aladdin’ company members as they recover,” the company said in a statement.The cancellation is the first missed performance of a Broadway show for Covid-related reasons since theaters started reopening in late June.But there have been missed shows Off Broadway — Second Stage canceled several performances of Rajiv Joseph’s “Letters of Suresh,” citing “an exposure of COVID-19,” and then postponed that play’s opening after resuming performances with an understudy. And in Atlanta, a touring production of “Hamilton” had to cancel a performance because of positive coronavirus tests.All Broadway companies — cast and crew — are required to be fully vaccinated, as are all Broadway audiences. When breakthrough cases occur, some productions have been able to keep going with a combination of backstage testing and understudies. For example, “Waitress” had a positive test in its cast before its first performance, but was able to use testing to determine that the rest of the cast was OK, and then to keep going with an understudy.“Aladdin” had been dealing with coronavirus complications in the run-up to its reopening performance. The raucous first night performance, with an audience that included Kristin Chenoweth and the show’s composer, Alan Menken, and librettist, Chad Beguelin, featured three understudies. The crowd didn’t seem to mind — “Friend Like Me,” the Genie’s big production number, brought the audience to its feet. Michael James Scott, the actor playing the Genie, stood to the side of the stage, breathless, before shouting to the audience, by way of explanation, “18 months, people! 18 months!” More
