Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 88 Shares169 Views

    in Theater

    Does the Devil Wear Prada in Indiana?

    Discovering Broadway, a nonprofit founded in 2019, has brought actors and writers to the state for weeklong retreats to workshop movies-turned-musicals.CARMEL, Ind. — What do the performers Christy Altomare and Corey Cott do during a weekend in this midsize Central Indiana city in between workshops for a Broadway-aimed musical?They get cake. And steak.In that order.“I’m pretty sure Corey lived in the Cake Bake Shop this week,” said Joel Kirk, the founder of Discovering Broadway, a nonprofit that brings New York actors and creative teams of Broadway-bound musicals to Indiana to work on their shows-in-progress.On Sunday night, while New York City’s biggest stages remained dark, Altomare (“Anastasia”), Cott (“Bandstand”) and five creative team members of the musical “Ever After” performed eight songs from the Renaissance-era Cinderella story, with sheet music printed just hours before.They were performing for two fully vaccinated audiences at Feinstein’s at Hotel Carmichael, an upscale nightclub named for the entertainer Michael Feinstein, who is the artistic director of the nearby Center for the Performing Arts.The audience members Missy Eldredge and Joel Keating during the opening number on Sunday.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesAmid clinking glasses, soft purple lighting, waiters in black vests over white button-ups and black masks and women in heels — heels! — the musical’s composer, Zina Goldrich, played the piano as Altomare, Cott and the rest of the team sang numbers like “My Cousin’s Cousin” and “Right Before My Eyes” as well as songs written the day before, including a new finale.It was the first time many of them had performed live since March 2020.“It’s so good to see everyone’s faces again,” Cott said.“Ever After” was the second musical to bring its creative team to Carmel for a weeklong workshop. The team for “The Devil Wears Prada,” the musical based on the 2006 film about Anne Hathaway’s aspiring young woman pitted against Meryl Streep’s fashion-world ice queen, visited in February.Except for one very important absentee.Joel Kirk founded the nonprofit Discovering Broadway to bring the creative teams of Broadway-aimed musicals to Central Indiana.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesSir Elton John, the musical’s Tony-winning composer, “was unable to attend,” Kirk said, though his husband, David Furnish, one of the musical’s producers, stood in on Zoom calls from Britain. (Paul Rudnick, who co-wrote the book, was also absent.)It was a missed opportunity for the composer to visit the state where musicals like “The Prom” and “Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” are set.“He’ll just have come back,” Kirk said. “I’d love to show him Carmel.”The Discovering Broadway initiative, which Kirk founded in late 2019, is part of an effort by the 26-year-old New York-based producer and director to bring top-notch talent to his hometown.Kevin McCollum, a producer of “Rent,” “Avenue Q” and “In the Heights” as well as “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Ever After,” said the biggest advantage to workshops in Indiana was their capacity for focused concentration, without people leaving early or arriving late because of other commitments.“It’s like the filet mignon of time,” he told the audience at Sunday’s 5:30 p.m. performance. “The A5 Wagyu $120 8-ounce of time.”Kevin McCollum, a producer of “Ever After,” has brought the creative teams for two Broadway-bound musicals to Carmel for workshops. Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesMcCollum brought the “Prada” team to Carmel for Discovering Broadway’s first workshop in February, ahead of the musical’s 2022 premiere at Chicago’s James M. Nederlander Theater. It was the first time Shaina Taub (“Twelfth Night” at the Public Theater), who wrote the lyrics; Nadia DiGiallonardo, the music supervisor; James Alsop, the choreographer; Kate Wetherhead, who co-wrote the book; and Anna D. Shapiro, the director, had been in a room together.“We were trying to figure out what we needed to do to keep the show going,” Alsop said. “Kevin was like, ‘Carmel, Indiana!’ And we were like ‘What?’ Then we got there, and it felt like a movie set.”After a mutual friend introduced him to McCollum in 2019, Kirk got a call from the producer in late January asking if he could host a weeklong retreat for the “Prada” creative team — in 17 days.Kirk’s answer: Yes.“I wanted to look back on the pandemic and say, ‘Wow, we programmed “The Devil Wears Prada” before Broadway was back,’” he said.Audience members received commemorative programs at Sunday night’s performances.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesSheet music used at the performance was printed just hours beforehand.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesCarmel is home to Michael Feinstein’s Great American Songbook Foundation and hosts a prestigious summer vocal competition based on Broadway and Hollywood musicals.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesBecause the coronavirus vaccine was not yet widely available, the team members wore masks and were regularly tested before, during and after their time in Carmel. Taub said precautions, combined with heavy snowfall and 20-degree temperatures, meant the team essentially stayed in the hotel the entire week — and worked far beyond the typical 10 a.m.-6 p.m. schedule.“I’d wake up in the morning with lyrics in my head and then go to sleep with lyrics,” she said.Three months later, McCollum brought a second team to Carmel to workshop “Ever After,” a feminist Cinderella story based on the 1998 film that starred Drew Barrymore, with a goal of staging a concert performance by the end of the year. And this time, the sunny skies and balmy temperatures meant they could actually explore.Wetherhead, who wrote the book with Marcy Heisler, was taking long walks on the Monon Trail, a 27-mile section of a former rail line — then rushing back to the hotel with ideas. Heisler, who also wrote the lyrics, was writing at the nearby Eggshell Bistro, on a sun deck at Hotel Carmichael and in her own room at 3 a.m.“We were working eight hours a day,” she said. “Just not 9 to 5.” (There was time for steak breaks at Anthony’s Chophouse and Monterey Coastal Cuisine, she said.)The musical already had two out-of-town runs, at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey in 2015 and at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta in 2019. The New York Times critic Charles Isherwood called the Paper Mill production, “storybook-pretty if bland,” with a score that “blurs together in the memory almost instantly.”But Cott, who arrived with Altomare on Friday and taught a master class for local students, said that this version was a “dramatic change” from the previous stagings. Goldrich, the composer, and Heisler, known for their children’s musicals “Dear Edwina” and “Junie B. Jones,” wrote five new songs, and the others on the team, including the director Marlo Hunter (“American Reject”), collaborated to revamp much of the rest of the show, including writing a new finale.Altomare and Cott with  members of the “Ever After” creative team. In the fall, Kirk hopes to host a workshop that mixes leads from New York with a local cast. Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesUnlike in New York, where invited audiences often consist of Broadway theater owners and stakeholders, Kirk said the focus is on sharing the work with the Carmel arts community, which is home to Feinstein’s Great American Songbook Foundation and hosts a prestigious summer vocal competition based on Broadway and Hollywood musicals. (According to Kirk, 80 percent of the audience members for “Ever After” were Central Indiana residents who were not contributors to the organization.)Discovering Broadway also underwrites tickets for young people and funds scholarship slots in master classes taught by visiting artists.“I’m creating opportunities I would’ve leaped at growing up in Carmel,” Kirk said.Kirk, who remains Discovering Broadway’s sole employee, said more than 60 Broadway-aimed productions have inquired about doing residencies in Indiana in the year and a half since he founded the nonprofit, which has an annual budget of between $350,000 and $400,000. His goal is to do three workshops per year in the Indianapolis area.Each retreat can cost Discovering Broadway upward of $50,000. (The organization pays for the team’s travel expenses and housing and also provides a per diem and an artist stipend.)“But $50,000 is nothing for the experience and investment we’re able to provide in the community,” Kirk said.Kirk has lined up two corporate sponsors for each workshop; received five grants, including from the Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation and the Central Indiana Community Foundation; and enlisted more than 50 individual donors, all through relentless hustle. He estimates he had about 628 meetings in the organization’s first four months.In the fall, he hopes to host a workshop that mixes leads from New York with a local cast of six to eight actors, as well as local musicians.“The goal is to create a bridge,” he said, “to bring two communities together to create a third.”Near the end of the performance on Sunday night, Altomare and Cott sang the new finale, grasping hands, their faces almost touching. They crept closer together, their lips inches apart — then they hugged.“I’ll give away they do kiss at the end of Act 1,” McCollum said onstage. “But you’ve gotta pay for that; it won’t happen here.” He added: “Seeing that kiss is worth at least $100.”“Sold!” a woman in the audience yelled. More

  • 150 Shares189 Views

    in Theater

    ‘Touching the Void’ Review: Choices That Shape a Life on the Edge

    This Bristol Old Vic production, based on the harrowing story of the British mountaineer Joe Simpson, tracks the spiral of decisions behind human exploits.Many movies, books or shows are metaphorical slogs. The play “Touching the Void” is about a literal one: the slow, agonizing crawl of the British mountaineer Joe Simpson as he tried to return to his base camp after sustaining a gruesome injury on an Andes peak.The Bristol Old Vic production, which is streaming live, then on demand, from Britain (and is presented by N.Y.U. Skirball as part of a “digital tour”), starts off with Joe’s wake in a Scottish inn. Since the show is based on the best-selling book Simpson published in 1988, three years after his ordeal, it’s not much of a spoiler to reveal that he somehow survived.The playwright David Greig came up with this narrative device mostly to introduce the character of Joe’s sister, Sarah (Fiona Hampton), who acts as the audience’s proxy. This means that Sarah needs to be told, over and over, what could possibly drive some people to risk their lives to reach mountaintops. She is angry as all get out and hates climbers, those adrenaline junkies with their “endless [expletive] stories about how they nearly died,” she tells Joe’s climbing companion, Simon Yates (Angus Yellowlees, with fetching two-tone hair). “Blah blah epic blah.”From left, Angus Yellowlees, Patrick McNamee and Fiona Hampton in the play, a Bristol Old Vic production presented by N.Y.U. Skirball.Michael WharleyMuch of the first act explores the friendship between Joe (Josh Williams) and Simon, and their ambition to make a mark by pioneering an unclimbed route, on the 20,000-foot Siula Grande in Peru. They work on the logistics of the ascent and, much more complicated, the descent.As staged by Tom Morris (the co-director of “War Horse”), the production, which premiered in 2018, remarkably evokes the physicality of scampering across rugged terrain or hanging by a thread off a snowy, freezing, windy face with just some low platforms and an apparatus halfway between a latticed scaffold and monkey bars. (This is the kind of show where the set designer Ti Green and the sound designer Jon Nicholls should be above the title on the marquee.)But as is often the case with human exploits, the most dramatically compelling parts of the story, and the play, are not so much the historical background, the practicalities of the expedition or even Simpson’s survival feat. Instead it’s the spiral of decisions, some technical and some ethical, that surround the events — just like how Jon Krakauer’s classic account of an Everest disaster, “Into Thin Air,” is made so engrossing by the human errors and the hubris. “There is always a choice,” Joe and Simon say.Williams, left, and Yellowlees on the scaffolding that represents the mountain.Michael WharleyComing down the peak, Joe falls down an ice cliff and breaks his leg (the snapping sound is especially horrifying). Simon is confronted with a terrible dilemma: stay and possibly die as well, or leave and try to at least save one life, his own.Simon leaves, thinking there is no way his friend could survive — only he does.Sarah’s heated interactions with her brother, Simon and, to a lesser degree, the comic-relief figure of the backpacker Richard (Patrick McNamee) dominate Act I, which has a genuine urgency as it deals with those pesky human issues.But after intermission, the show focuses on Joe’s journey back to safety and bogs down as he spends minutes at a time pulling himself along and yelling in excruciating pain — admittedly, streaming undercuts much of the impact those scenes likely would have in a theater, just like “War Horse” was much more effective live. The overuse of 1980s songs becomes distracting (Simpson’s real-life favorite, “This Is the Day,” plays during a scene in a crevasse and — just, no), and it eventually it starts feeling as if Greig can’t figure out how to end the show. Fortunately, real life gave him a good way out.Touching the VoidThrough May 29; on demand June 2-8; bristololdvic.org.uk More

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Television

    'Friends' Reunion Is Censored in China, Cutting BTS and Lady Gaga

    Cameos by Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and the K-pop group BTS mysteriously disappeared from the special when it aired on Chinese streaming sites. Online, fans suspected censorship.In China, the reunion episode of “Friends” was all about grudges.The problem wasn’t “Friends,” but the friends of “Friends.” More

  • 125 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    Stephen Colbert Parodies Brian Kemp’s Version of the National Anthem

    “Land of the home and freedom reigns! It’s as American as pie-ball and the mom and bars,” Colbert joked of Kemp’s blunder during a recent Fox News interview.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. More

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Theater

    ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Onstage. A Nightmare Off It.

    Shakespeare’s Globe survived Elizabethan plagues. Today’s version got through the coronavirus pandemic, but tough times lie ahead.LONDON — At the Globe theater in London one recent Thursday was a sight Shakespeare could have related to: 11 actors larking about onstage rehearsing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” while beneath them stood the director Sean Holmes, looking furious.“Listen please, everyone,” Holmes said. “Can we do the scene again, even if it’s a bit of a car crash?”Everyone stopped joking and got into place. Then Peter Bourke, playing the fairy king Oberon, started singing: “Now until the break of day, through this house each fairy stray.” Soon, the rest of the cast took over, and everyone crept offstage through two huge doors, getting quieter and quieter, as if trying to lull onlookers to sleep with their song.The performance was perfect. But Holmes didn’t look happy. That day’s rehearsal, he said, wasn’t about the onstage action, but ensuring the 11 actors could get off, change costumes quickly in a small backstage area, then get back on, all while staying two meters (about six and a half feet) apart to maintain social distancing.If they got it wrong, he’d have to do it again, and again, until they found a solution.“It’s been the hardest thing,” Holmes said. “I think it finally broke me today.”When the coronavirus pandemic shut Britain’s theaters last March, Shakespeare’s Globe, as it is officially known, might have been the one institution expected to survive.An audience member being checked before admission into “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesIt’s one of the world’s iconic theaters, with supporters worldwide drawn to the idea of a modern recreation of Shakespeare’s stomping ground on the banks of the Thames, complete with a thatched roof open to the elements.In Shakespeare’s time, his Globe was repeatedly closed as the plague hit London, especially between 1603 and 1613, though the Bard kept writing even during the closures. If the original Globe survived that, surely its updated version could manage Covid-19?But within weeks of coronavirus hitting Britain, the Globe — heavily reliant on tourism (17 percent of its audience are international tourists, many American) and without the public subsidy that goes to venues like Britain’s National Theater — was losing 2 million pounds, about $2.8 million, a month.The 180 freelance actors and crew who were on its books at the time, some in the final days of rehearsing a new “Romeo and Juliet,” had to be let go, Neil Constable, the theater’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview. He also had to furlough 85 percent of his permanent staff, meaning the British government paid most of their wages. On top of that, he canceled a multimillion-dollar refurbishment project.Even with those moves, Constable was soon having to consider mothballing the theater entirely. “We’d have had to shut to 2023,” he said.In May, he submitted a document to British politicians pleading for emergency funding. Without it, “we will not be able to survive this crisis,” it said. That would be “a tragedy for the arts, for the legacy of England’s most famous writer, but also for the country.”The news made headlines, including in The New York Times. A few weeks later, Oliver Dowden, Britain’s culture minister, went to the Globe to announce a $2 billion arts bailout package. The government eventually gave the theater almost £6 million, about $8.5 million, of that money.That didn’t stop need for further cost saving, Constable said. Staff took salary cuts, up to 50 percent.But the bailout money did mean one thing: The theater could finally reopen this month, if only to a socially distanced audience of 400, rather than the normal 1,600. Audience members would also not be allowed to become “groundlings,” the term for people who stand in the pit beneath the stage, like normal. Instead they’d have to sit on shiny metal outdoor chairs.The “Midsummer Night’s Dream” production features Mardi Gras-style music.Adama Jalloh for The New York Times“It doesn’t make financial sense to do this, but it’s important,” Constable said. “It’s what we’re here for.” He hoped British tourists would make up for the shortfall of international visitors.At the rehearsal, Holmes — who is also the Globe’s associate artistic director — said the theater had decided to reopen with a revival of his 2019 production of “Midsummer” precisely because it was cheaper than doing a new show.The onstage social distancing was also as much for financial as health reasons, he said. Under the British government’s rules, if one person gets ill in a theater, everyone they’ve been in close contact with also has to isolate, so keeping people apart prevents that. “We have to protect the show,” he said, adding it’d be “incredibly damaging financially” if they had to pull it.A play about mistaken lovers turned out to be surprisingly easy to stage in the age of distancing. “There’s passion and extremity in the language,” Holmes said, “so you don’t need as much physical action.”He still had to make some changes. In one scene, four of the play’s many lovers fall asleep in a wood. In 2019, they did so “piled on top of each other,” Holmes said. Now, they each got a corner of the stage to themselves (one lover, Lysander, gets a blowup mattress at one point, much to his lover Hermia’s annoyance).A scooter driven by Titania waits for its moment in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesThe biggest challenges all involved keeping people apart offstage. At one point in the rehearsal, Holmes went through a scene where the actors run onstage — all playing the fairy Puck — then fire blow darts at one another. Shona Babayemi kept missing her cue.“Is there a reason you’re always late?” Holmes asked. “There were, like, seven, eight people in the way,” Babayemi replied. “Oh, God,” Holmes said. “Sorry!”Last Wednesday night, Holmes and the cast were back at the Globe for their first performance in 14 months.The mood in the lines outside was ecstatic, despite London being cold and damp even by the standards of a British summer. There were groups of drama students waiting to get in, as well as a fishing society and a mother and daughter celebrating a birthday.None were foreign tourists, but several attendees said they had traveled over an hour to get there, suggesting the Globe may not have to worry too much about attracting people from outside London.“I’ve got six tickets already for this year,” said Peter Lloyd, 61, who’d journeyed from Brighton on England’s south coast. “It’s the only authentic Elizabethan theater in the country, it feels so close to Shakespeare’s time,” he added. Was he OK with distancing in the plays? “Oh, I didn’t know about that,” he said, worried. “Are they wearing masks, too?”Shona Babayemi, who portrays Helena, awaits her entrance in the show.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesInside, the eager atmosphere didn’t let up, helped by Holmes’s carnivalesque staging of the play — with Day-Glo costumes and a band playing almost constant Mardi Gras-style music. At one point, Titania, the fairy queen, wove in and out of the audience on a scooter (the cast pulled up masks sewn into their costumes whenever offstage). A bemused-looking audience member was even roped into the play, made to read out lines and ride on an exercise bike (it helped power the production), much to his partner’s apparent amusement.The Globe depends heavily on international tourists.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesOn the few occasions that coronavirus rules intruded into the staging, the cast played the scene for laughs. When two characters had to stab themselves with the same knife, the actor playing Flute pulled an antiseptic wipe from his sock, then cleaned the blade, before plunging it into his chest.The play ran without an intermission — another effort to reduce risk — but few people left to use the bathroom or buy a drink. When it finished, to cheers, about 30 audience members even stayed behind, forming a polite queue to take selfies on the ramp leading up to the stage.Holmes stood nearby, watching. He looked as annoyed as during rehearsals. “That’s clearly just my resting face,” he said, with a laugh.“It’s just great we’re back and people are hungry for it,” he added. “We can’t sustain at this level of audience by any means,” he said of the theater being only a quarter full, “but I’m feeling optimistic.”Then, without the frown disappearing, he headed toward the crew, to find out if the distancing had worked as planned, after all. More

  • 138 Shares159 Views

    in Theater

    London Theater's Reopening: 'Flight,' 'Herding Cats' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'

    One “play” uses only voice-overs. Another features a main actor only on video. And under Covid rules, an 11-person Shakespeare cast counts as an army.LONDON — Theaters here are gradually reopening for business, but not in ways you might expect. Take the astonishing 45-minute installation at the Bridge Theater, “Flight.” A story of Afghan refugees crossing Europe to start a new life, this collaboration between the directors Candice Edmunds and Jamie Harrison uses diminutive claylike figures in revolving boxes to chart the journey of two boys, Kabir (a plaintive Nalini Chetty) and Aryan (Farshid Rokey), from Kabul to London.You learn of their quest via headphones (Emun Elliott is the adroit narrator) as you sit in a booth to which you’ve been led by a member of the staff. Although the project, from the Scottish company Vox Motus, seems an explicit response to coronavirus restrictions, “Flight” was in fact conceived before the pandemic and played at the Edinburgh Festival in 2017 before traveling widely, including to New York in 2018.The Bridge had scheduled a return engagement in collaboration with the Barbican in December, only to have it halted by a five-month lockdown. The current return offers an unmissable opportunity to experience something that may not technically qualify as theater — it’s just as much a shifting cyclorama — but speaks with piercing humanity. “Perhaps we could learn to fly,” one of the boys remarks, eager to reach his destination in any way he can, by which point the singular wonder of “Flight” has sent the heart soaring.A panoramic look at “Flight,” a collaboration by the directors Candice Edmunds and Jamie Harrison.Drew FarrellAnd what of actual actors? In this climate, don’t expect them all to share a stage. The recent Soho Theater revival of “Herding Cats,” Lucinda Coxon’s brittle 2010 play set in the world of online sex, had the distinguishing feature of beaming in the American actor Greg Germann (“Grey’s Anatomy”) live from Los Angeles. Appearing intermittently on a giant screen, Germann joined his British colleagues, Sophie Melville and Jassa Ahluwalia, in a play about the difficulty of making connections. How apposite, then, to have had one cast member a continent away.The production, directed by Anthony Banks, has finished its brief run but will be available June 7-21 via the video-on-demand service Stellar, and it will be interesting to see how its components link up online. Watching in a socially distanced theater, I was struck by my feeling of alienation from the characters. The fast-talking, angsty Justine quickly wears out her welcome in Melville’s frantic portrayal, and Ahluwalia can do only so much to flesh out the cryptic Michael, a pajama-wearing shut-in who makes his living on the telephone chat line that brings him into contact with Germann’s quietly threatening Saddo.Jassa Ahluwalia, in headphones, interacting with Greg Germann onscreen in Lucinda Coxon’s 2010 play “Herding Cats” at the Soho Theater.Danny KaanThe most arresting sight was the curtain call, in which the two onstage actors did their best to link hands with the looming figure of Germann during the bows. Might this mark some weird new way forward for trans-Atlantic productions, in which American actors become part of a London play without ever getting on a plane?The two onstage actors, Sophie Melville and Jassa Ahluwalia, in “Herding Cats.” Danny KaanAfter one show with no actors and another featuring only two in person, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the season opener at Shakespeare’s Globe, seems to be populated by a veritable army: Its 11-person cast represents a notably high number in these Covid-cautious times. But that figure is smaller than usual for this play and has been achieved by doubling of roles. The members of the ensemble, for instance, take turns playing that quicksilver fairy, Puck.The Globe, normally crowd-friendly, has blocked off rows of seats in accordance with government protocols, and the fabled yard, usually home to 700 “groundlings” standing shoulder to shoulder, offers carefully arranged chairs, still for the remarkably low price of 5 pounds, or $7. The production is a partially recast version of the “Dream” seen at the Globe in 2019, where it was the debut at the theater of the associate artistic director Sean Holmes.As was the case then, Holmes’s raucous approach works best as a colorful, elaborately costumed party, complete with streamers and a piñata, and with Titania (a sprightly Victoria Elliott) emerging from a recycling bin. Before the performance begins, the five-person Hackney Colliery Band warms things up with a brass-heavy version of “The Power of Love,” instructing the audience to “relearn how to clap.” Snatches of pop songs recur throughout the play, and Bryan Dick’s floppy-haired Lysander gives off a rock-star vibe.From left, Nadine Higgin, Sophie Russell, Victoria Elliott and Jacoba Williams at Shakespeare’s Globe in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed by Sean Holmes.Tristram KentonThe costumes are a carnival, mixing thigh-high boots with Elizabethan ruffs that seem to sprout from the young lovers’ backs and with turquoise headgear for Peter Bourke’s Oberon. Jacoba Williams’s Snout at one point appears in a pink skirt and sequins as if ready for an Abba tribute concert.An appeal early on from the weaver Bottom (Sophie Russell, delightful) to her colleagues in the “Pyramus and Thisbe” play-within-a-play to “spread yourselves” could have been written with the pandemic in mind, and Quince (Nadine Higgin) informs Flute (George Fouracres) that he can play Thisbe “in a mask” — which seems apt given the masks that the actors slip on as they move through the yard toward the stage. The physical intimacy associated with the play has also been adjusted: Rather than reclining into one another, the smitten Lysander and Hermia lie at right angles, only their footwear touching.This isn’t the most poetic “Dream” or the most reflective, but it offers one moment that stops the heart. It comes near the end when two senior characters abandon the rules and take hands in a firm gesture, held for a noticeably long while. There before us is the human connection that we have been deprived of for so long and that, with luck, may again become the norm as we move toward midsummer.Nadi Kemp-Sayfi, kneeling, in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Tristram KentonFlight. Directed by Candice Edmunds and Jamie Harrison. Bridge Theater, through June 6.Herding Cats. Directed by Anthony Banks. Stellar, online, June 7-21.A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Directed by Sean Holmes. Shakespeare’s Globe, in repertory through Oct. 30. More

  • 113 Shares109 Views

    in Television

    Seth Meyers Calls Trump the ‘David Blaine of Crime’

    “If he ever goes to trial, he’ll just regurgitate a frog that has ‘not guilty’ written on its back,” Meyers joked on Wednesday 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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. More

  • 75 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    A Brief History of ‘Friends’ Reunions

    Ahead of Thursday’s “Friends” special on HBO Max, here are highlights from the many times the cast members demonstrated that they were clearly not on a break.The long-awaited “Friends” reunion is almost upon us, set to land Thursday on HBO Max at around 3 a.m. Eastern. More