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    Shows Like ‘Cops’ Fell Out of Favor. Now Texas May Ban Them.

    Lawmakers passed a bill named for Javier Ambler II, who died in 2019 after officers arrested him in front of a “Live PD” television crew. If the governor signs it, this would mean the end of police cooperation with reality TV shows.Two years ago, a television crew gathered in the small city of Hawkins, Texas, to film the life and work of Manfred Gilow, the chief of police there.Cameras followed Chief Gilow as he and his officers responded to calls, snapped handcuffs onto wrists and searched vehicles for drugs. The program was not available on Texas televisions; Chief Gilow is from Germany, and that is where “Der Germinator” (a portmanteau of “German” and “The Terminator”) was broadcast.Last year, after the nationally broadcast policing shows “Cops” and “Live PD” were canceled, “Der Germinator” filmed a second season. But prospects for a third may have dimmed last week, when the Texas Legislature passed a bill that would make it illegal for law enforcement agencies to authorize reality television crews to film officers on duty.“Policing is not entertainment,” said James Talarico, the Democratic state representative who introduced the legislation. The office of Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, did not respond to requests for comment this week about whether he would sign the legislation.Reality law enforcement shows, Mr. Talarico said, “rely on violent encounters between citizens and the police to boost their own ratings.” He cited an investigation by The Austin American-Statesman, which reported last year that law enforcement officers in Williamson County, Texas, were more violent when the “Live PD” cameras were rolling.The bill, which the Legislature passed with bipartisan support on May 13, is named after Javier Ambler II, a 40-year-old father of two who died in 2019 after Williamson County officers forcibly arrested him in front of a “Live PD” camera crew.Mr. Ambler’s sister, Kimberly Ambler-Jones, 39, said she believed that her brother would still be alive if the television crews had not been filming. “Because they had ‘Live PD’ there, it had to be hyped up,” she said. “It had to be drama.”That show was taken off the air in June. So was “Cops,” which had beamed arrests, confrontations and car chases to televisions across the United States for decades.The cancellations came amid nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. They also followed years of campaigning by the racial justice organization Color of Change, which had been pushing networks to drop “Cops” since at least 2013.Arisha Hatch, the organization’s vice president and chief of campaigns, said the shows were one-sided and served as propaganda for law enforcement.“They violate the civil liberties of people who are forced to become the stars of the show,” she said. “They operate to make a joke about how Black communities and poor communities are overpoliced.”Ms. Hatch welcomed the Texas bill, noting that the state-level legislative approach appeared to be without precedent.But with two flagship policing programs already canceled, it is unclear whether the law would have any immediate effect if approved by Governor Abbott.A reality series set in Texas called “Lone Star Law,” on Animal Planet, could most likely continue filming as long as it keeps its focus on wildlife and game wardens, Mr. Talarico said.“Der Germinator,” on the other hand, could be at risk.Chief Gilow argued that the program should be allowed to continue, characterizing it as more of a documentary than a reality show. He said it offered German viewers a glimpse of life in the United States, as well as a cautionary tale about the consequences of crime.“I think it is positive,” Chief Gilow said. “But you will have some people just hating it because they hate the police.” He added that the show did not violate anyone’s rights and blurred the faces of people who did not consent to be filmed.Police body cameras captured the 2019 arrest of Javier Ambler II. Crews from “Live PD” were also filming, but their footage was never broadcast.Austin Police Department, via Associated PressMs. Ambler-Jones said she hoped that Mr. Abbott would sign the bill — and that similar legislation would spread beyond Texas.“I know people feel like this is just entertainment,” she said of reality policing programs. “But you don’t understand what the person on the other side of that camera is dealing with.”For months after Mr. Ambler’s death, his family did not know what had happened to him — only that he had died in law enforcement custody. The details became public last year, after The Austin American-Statesman and the news outlet KVUE obtained body camera footage.Mr. Ambler was driving in the Austin area on March 28, 2019, when Williamson County deputies tried to stop him because he did not dim his headlights to traffic, officials said. After deputies tried to pull Mr. Ambler over, the authorities said, he kept driving for more than 20 minutes before crashing his vehicle.The body camera footage showed that the officers restrained Mr. Ambler and used a Taser on him multiple times. “I have congestive heart failure,” Mr. Ambler could be heard saying. “I can’t breathe.”Mr. Ambler was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. “Live PD” footage of the arrest was never broadcast on television.Since then, Williamson County officials have faced several lawsuits related to reality television footage. Two deputies were indicted on second-degree manslaughter charges in Mr. Ambler’s death, and the former county sheriff, who lost his seat after a November election, was indicted on charges of evidence tampering. All have pleaded not guilty.A spokeswoman for Williamson County declined to comment because of pending litigation. Big Fish Entertainment, the production company behind “Live PD,” did not immediately respond to emailed questions.Mr. Talarico said he hoped the legislation, if signed into law by the governor, would keep “Cops” and “Live PD” out of Texas for good. “Without the force of law, there’s nothing preventing these shows from coming back,” he said, “except for their own conscience.” More

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    Jimmy Kimmel Believes Trump Would Flip on His Own Children

    Kimmel agreed with Michael Cohen, the former president’s longtime personal lawyer, who said in an interview that Trump would turn on anyone to save himself.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.‘Alleged Children’Michael D. Cohen, the longtime personal lawyer for Donald J. Trump, said in an interview this week with MSNBC that the former president would turn on anyone to save himself, including his own children.On Thursday, Jimmy Kimmel referred to Cohen as “the guy who mortgaged his own house to pay Stormy Daniels, only to be cast aside by Mr. Wonderful.”“Michael Cohen, who knows Donald Trump as well as anyone, believes that in the end, the snake will devour his own eggs,” Kimmel said.“Said Trump: ‘Alleged children.’” — SETH MEYERS“It’s almost like he’s speaking from personal experience, huh?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The saddest part is going to be when Trump forgets to pin a crime on Tiffany.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Can’t believe I’m saying it, but I think prison was great for Michael Cohen. Came out with a new attitude and a quiver full of zingers, got rid of that baby blue jacket.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (‘A Riot Place’ Edition)“Last night, the House voted 252 to 175 to form a commission that would investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. But that’s right, that’s almost half of the House voted ‘no’. It’s like playing a game of Clue and half the players are like: ‘I think we just let this one go, right? With the pipe and the library — we’re good.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, not only did 175 Republicans vote against the commission, they also want to make Jan. 6 ‘Bring your insane rioter to work day.’” — JIMMY FALLON“The bill now heads to the Senate, where it needs support of 10 Republicans. Come on, there’s a better chance of 10 dentists supporting Mtn. Dew Cake-Smash.” — JIMMY FALLON“Republicans seem to think that if they don’t talk about Jan. 6, no one else will, either. It’s all laid out in the new movie, ‘A Riot Place.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“We were all watching it live — we saw it happen. You can’t just wave your hand in front of our faces and tell us it didn’t happen like you’re starring in some new Disney+ spinoff called ‘[expletive] Jedi.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingStephen Colbert challenged his first in-person guest in 14 months, John Krasinski, to arm wrestling on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutFrankie Beverly performing with Maze at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2019.Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressOn the new episode of “Still Processing,” the co-hosts Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris discuss the continued relevance of the 1981 Black anthem “Before I Let Go” by Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. More

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    ‘A Dozen Dreams’ Review: Eerie Memories Bring Magic to the Mall

    Twelve exquisitely designed installations capture the fears, hopes and reveries shared on audio by 12 women playwrights.A dark room with a naked bulb hanging over a headless, but dressed, seated mannequin. A nightmare room of shattered glass. A room of Tetris-ed cardboard boxes. A wishful room of sunrise or sunset, depending on your disposition.Part art installation, part immersive theater, En Garde Arts’s endlessly intriguing “A Dozen Dreams” takes audience members on a self-guided audio tour through the pandemic dreams of 12 female playwrights, rendered in a dozen rooms exquisitely designed to replicate the surreal, chameleonic chambers of the mind at rest.Created by Anne Hamburger, who conceived it along with John Clinton Eisner and Irina Kruzhilina, “A Dozen Dreams” begins in the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place, a high-end mall in downtown Manhattan and the most unlikely setting for such a wonderfully strange work. (The show is being presented by Arts Brookfield.)Audience members in singles or pairs are given an iPhone preprogrammed with the dream sketches, written and performed by the playwrights. (Each performance, taken in on headphones, is roughly 50 minutes long and free; reservations are staggered in 20 minute slots.)Initially “A Dozen Dreams” doesn’t look like much: Among the towering palm trees and the lifeless luxury is a small room, the inside of which is designed as a dilapidated theater.Ellen McLaughlin’s installation includes a model of a theater without an audience.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis is Ellen McLaughlin’s dream, which is one that many viewers may relate to: She is pushed onto a stage but doesn’t have any clue as to what she’s performing.It’s a perfect beginning to this kind of somnambulist theater, where the subconscious is the star, trying to make sense of everyday anxieties and concerns while life has been irrevocably changed by a global pandemic.You don’t stay here long; at the end of McLaughlin’s dream you’re guided by the stage manager to some hidden part of Brookfield. A back hallway leads to a larger labyrinth of interconnected rooms where live the dreams of the other 11 playwrights, including the Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok and the former artistic director of the McCarter Theater Center, Emily Mann, as well as the off-Broadway writers Andrea Thome, Mona Mansour, Ren Dara Santiago, Rehana Mirza, Caridad Svich, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Liza Jessie Peterson, Sam Chanse and Lucy Thurber.The vast differences among them creates a captivating patchwork of memories, reveries, and wishes — and it’s impossible to guess what fantastical world you’ll encounter next.Andrea Thome’s childhood home in Wisconsin is depicted in her piece, entitled “House Dreaming.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThome’s “House Dreaming” invites the audience into a fragmented version of her childhood home in Madison, Wis. Bookshelves reveal Hesse and Dickens and Woolf, while a teddy bear, a hardcover book and a blue ceramic mug sit on a windowsill of what looks like a child’s bedroom.From inside, the panes of glass reveal a snowy scene, wiry tree branches reaching in every direction. As Thome recalls the “hickory, oak, the tall, tall pine,” their stately trunks frame the space, some even hosting little dioramas of living rooms and bedrooms overgrown with flowers and trees.“Who are you when you lose home?” Thome asks near the end of her segment, one that represents “A Dozen Dreams” at its best: whimsical yet still grounded, reflective without being didactic. But as with any anthology, there are opposite extremes. Peterson and Thurber opt for a more political (and pedantic) angle, sharing their hopes for change in a divided nation after the Black Lives Matter protests, while Santiago and Dickerson-Despenza fly off into the abstract with stream-of-consciousness poetry.Most of the installations hit a sweet spot in the middle, with the audio performances mellowing the tone, as though each playwright were speaking to a friend. In “The Death of Dreams,” Mirza recounts her dream of moving lightly, with playful asides, while still having sobering moments of introspection. (“It’s almost like we know we can’t ask for much anymore, not even in our daydreams.”) In “Secret Catastrophe” Chanse speaks with a similar nonchalance, accented with moments of dry humor (“I’m trying to get to Providence — the city, not the concept.”).Other playwrights, however, lean so heavily into the dream theme that the performances feel affected. Svich’s dream of the ocean is glacial, a sleepy monotonous lull of language. Dickerson-Despenza, who recently won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, brings her signature lyricism to her segment, which is more percussion than text, an indecipherable tangle of metaphors and images.But even in the segments with the strongest writing, the words always play second fiddle to the inspired dream spaces, courtesy of the production’s outstanding designers, Rena Anakwe, Brittany Bland, Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew and Kruzhilina.Multicolored lighting columns are a focal point in Sam Chanse’s “Secret Catastrophe.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWith a mannequin, a staticky TV set and weblike curtains of black yarn, they bring an unnerving sense of horror to Majok’s dreamscape. And in Chanse’s dream the brilliantly lit geometric columns, which change from cool blues to springy pastels, recall some fantastical other-world, perhaps from “The Dark Crystal.”Throughout the production, it’s the details that delight: several clocks all set to the time 10:10; tiny portholes in a wall revealing a Lilliputian table with tiny bottles of alcohol, miniature doughnuts and other scaled-down domestic details; an illuminated fissure in the floor like a living fault line.In fact, there’s so much to see that “A Dozen Dreams” can overload the senses, making it likely you’ll miss something — an excuse to revisit it. And just as time follows its own logic in dreams, so too does this experience seem to move impossibly quickly.The rapid prattle of some of the playwrights, like Majok, is too hard to catch while you’re taking in the sights. And the muddle of narratives like Mansour’s — about a prom night and a performance and a family she once nannied for — doesn’t make things any easier to follow.The self-guided aspect also presents a challenge. Most of the rooms are separated by curtains, and a few arrows and some lighting help point the way, but the production could do with more signs and directions. I went twice because I fully enjoyed the experience, but also to catch what I had missed the first time, especially as I hesitantly wandered from room to room, unsure if I was going the right way.For such an imaginative production, “A Dozen Dreams” fizzles out near the end, with Mann’s final installation failing to leave a lasting impression. But being there led me back to my own recent reveries. After a spate of protests I dreamed that Black citizens — me and my family included — were herded and enslaved. I dreamed of my childhood home. I had a recurring dream of the apocalypse.In penetrating moments of loneliness during lockdown, I had nightmares of being lost in labyrinthine hallways and trapped in rooms by dangerous men.That the talented women behind “A Dozen Dreams” can capture just a sliver of those emotions is no small accomplishment. Last year I learned how a room can come to represent utter isolation. In this production I learned how a room can represent any time or place — the limitless reach of our imagination. As McLaughlin asks, “What dreams are we headed for tonight?”A Dozen DreamsThrough May 30 at Brookfield Place, Manhattan; engardearts.org More

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    Rahul Vohra, Indian Actor and Video Blogger, Dies at 35

    His YouTube posts dissected issues of Indian life, especially gender inequality. He died of complications of Covid-19 after lamenting his hospital treatment.Rahul Vohra began his acting career in the theater and later worked in low-budget films and television ads. But he was fascinated by the role technology played in shaping conversations about society, so he turned to video blogging.After he and Jyoti Tiwari married in December, she joined him in producing short, scripted videos in Hindi about issues like gender disparity, rising gas prices and the difficulties of working from home during the pandemic. Several have received more than 1 million views, and Mr. Vohra swiftly became one of India’s most popular YouTube stars.In one video, titled “Story of a Woman,” he asks for a cup of tea from his wife, who is played by an actress and is seen lost in thought after a long day of housework.“I am not a robot,” she says.“You only stay at home; what else do you do?” Mr. Vohra asks. She challenges him to do household chores for a day, telling him that then he would understand what she had meant. After accepting the challenge, he’s soon seen struggling and tiring within hours.“Even if I am sick, I had to do this work every day,” the wife says. “In reverse I ask for nothing, just a bit of respect and love.”Mr. Vohra died of complications of Covid-19 on May 9 at a hospital in New Delhi, Ms. Tiwari said. He was 35.He had fallen ill in New Delhi’s second wave of the pandemic, when much of the country’s health care system was overwhelmed. He found himself making desperate calls to his wife from his hospital bed, telling her that he feared he would die. She called the hospital for help but received little attention, she said. He was eventually moved to another hospital and died there.His videos struck a chord with young and middle-class Indians. “There was something about him which touched the lives of people,” a friend, Ankur Seth, said. “He spread positivity around even in dark times.”Rahul Vohra was born into a middle-class family in New Delhi on Jan. 27, 1986. His father, Suresh Vohra, works in a manufacturing firm, and his mother, Bimla Vohra, is a homemaker. Along with his wife and parents, he is survived by a sister, Neeru Vohra.Mr. Vohra received a degree in commerce from Delhi University. A talented performer from a young age, he was then offered a place at the prestigious Asmita Theater Group school in New Delhi.Two days after he died, Ms. Tiwari, 29, a writer for YouTube videos, found on her husband’s phone a video of him struggling to breathe and complaining about the poor quality of medical care at the hospital where he had initially been admitted. She posted it on Instagram with the hashtag #justiceforirahulvohra.“This is extremely valuable right now,” he said in the video, referring to his oxygen mask. “Without it patients get giddy and suffer.”In another post the day before he died, on his Facebook page, he wrote, “I would have lived had I received better treatment.” He tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been severely criticized for his handling of the pandemic.“My Rahul has left us, everyone knows that but, no one knows how he left us,” Ms. Tiwari wrote on Instagram. “I hope my husband will get justice.” More

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    Mary Ahern, Who Produced Early TV and Then Preserved It, Dies at 98

    Ms. Ahern was a key behind-the-scenes figure in the landmark series “Omnibus” before becoming the Paley Center for Media’s first curator.Mary V. Ahern, who was an important behind-the-scenes figure on the cultural magazine show “Omnibus” and other early television programs, then helped preserve those and similar touchstones of television history as the Paley Center for Media’s first curator, died on May 1 at a care center in Peabody, Mass. She was 98.Her niece Joan Curry said the cause was cancer.Ms. Ahern spent much of her career working with Robert Saudek, an Emmy Award-winning producer whom The New York Times once described as “alchemist in chief of what is often recalled as the golden age of television.” Mr. Saudek, who died in 1997, created “Omnibus” in 1952, when television was new. Ms. Ahern was his valued right hand, as she had been earlier when he worked in radio.“Omnibus” was hosted by Alistair Cooke, who at the time was known primarily from radio, and it cast an incredibly wide net as it explored what could be done on the new medium and whether anyone would watch it.Orson Welles, Yul Brynner, Ethel Barrymore, James Dean and other famous or soon-to-be-famous actors appeared in staged dramas. William Inge and other playwrights unveiled new works. Gene Kelly tap-danced with the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. There was a segment that explained what an X-ray was. One particularly inspired episode put children’s toys to the adult test: Professional musicians jammed on kiddie instruments, and a professional chef tried to make a dinner for six using a tiny toy oven.At the time, television job titles and duties were less rigidly defined than they are now, but Ms. Ahern was essentially a producer on some episodes, a script writer on others, lead researcher or editor or supervisor on still others, and sometimes all those at once.She was pivotal in bringing Leonard Bernstein to the program, meeting over lunch with him and Paul Feigay, another “Omnibus” producer, who had worked with Mr. Bernstein on the 1944 musical “On the Town.” She and Mr. Feigay showed Mr. Bernstein some Beethoven sketchbooks that had come their way that were filled with the composer’s notes from his writing of the Fifth Symphony, including an assortment of rejected ideas.“Lenny had never seen these sketches at all,” Ms. Ahern said in an oral history recorded by Ron Simon in 2017 for the Television Academy Foundation. As they were leaving the lunch, she said, he was struck with an idea.“I remember coming out on Fifth Avenue with Lenny,” she recounted, “and he said, ‘You know what I could do?’ — because he knew the score, of course, backwards; he’d conducted the Beethoven Fifth many times. He said, ‘I could look at where he would have put those sketches and why he rejected them.’ And that was the first program we did on Bernstein.”That episode, broadcast in November 1954, is regarded as a classic early example of television that both entertains and enlightens. Mr. Bernstein, Howard Taubman wrote in The Times, “made vividly clear how Beethoven fought his way to the right phrase.”The episode’s success led to a series of appearances on the program by Mr. Bernstein, on subjects including opera, Bach and the art of conducting. A Bernstein episode on musical comedy in 1956 included among the cast an unknown singer named Carol Burnett, making one of her first television appearances.But Mr. Bernstein’s television talks weren’t improvised; one of Ms. Ahern’s tasks was working over his proposed scripts, which were full of musical terms of art, to make them more friendly to the general viewer.“He knew so much,” she said. “What he didn’t realize is — and I was the perfect foil for that — that people did not know what he knew.”Leonard Bernstein on the television program “Omnibus” in 1956. Ms. Ahern played a pivotal role in bringing Mr. Bernstein to the program.Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images“Omnibus,” which began on CBS, moved to ABC and then NBC before finishing its run in 1961 after more than 150 episodes, most of which — these being TV’s early days — were broadcast live. By then Mr. Saudek had formed his own production company and Ms. Ahern had joined him there, where she continued to be a key figure in numerous productions.In the mid-1970s William S. Paley, the chairman of CBS, decided to create the Museum of Broadcasting, dedicated to preserving TV and radio history, and brought in Mr. Saudek to be its first president. Ms. Ahern became curator of the new museum, which opened in 1976 and is now the Paley Center for Media.“That title makes me feel I should have jars with old bones,” she told The Times in 1977, but in fact it made her a foundational figure in documenting and preserving important programs, old TV commercials and assorted broadcasting oddities. Later, from 1986 to 1989, she did similar work as an acquisitions specialist at the Library of Congress.Mary Virginia Ahern was born on Oct. 15, 1922, in Cambridge, Mass. Her father, Thomas, was in real estate and insurance, and her mother, Nora, was a teacher.Ms. Ahern enrolled at Radcliffe College to study anthropology but switched to literature, graduating in 1942. Then, during World War II, she served for three years in the Army’s Chemical Warfare Service.“She supervised the inspection of gas masks and was assigned to the procurement of flame throwers and other deadly weapons,” The Times wrote in a 1959 article about her. “One of her associates has noted that this was an incongruous occupation for a gentle, retiring young woman who had majored in American literature at college. But, he added: ‘I’m sure she was good at it. She knows how to get to the essence of any problem.’”After the war, Ms. Ahern enrolled in a management training course at the Harvard Business School (which was not yet admitting women to its master’s program).“They had internships, which were novel in those days,” she said in the oral history, “and I had an internship to what was the brand-new American Broadcasting Company, in the public affairs department.”The head of that department was Mr. Saudek.Ms. Ahern being interviewed for the Television Academy Foundation in 2017.The Television Academy Foundation InterviewsThey worked together on radio documentaries, taking on weighty subjects like the Marshall Plan and urban slums. In the early 1950s, when the Ford Foundation set itself the task of developing TV programs that would inform and enlighten, it hired Mr. Saudek, by then an ABC vice president, as director of what it called the TV-Radio Workshop. He brought along Ms. Ahern, and she helped him start “Omnibus.” Few women were working as producers at the time.Programs Ms. Ahern worked on after “Omnibus” included the mid-1960s anthology documentary series “Profiles in Courage,” a Saudek production, for which she wrote and edited scripts. In the 1970s she worked with Mr. Bernstein again as one of the producers of his “Norton Lectures” series for PBS. In the 1980s, Ms. Ahern was credited with greatly expanding the Library of Congress’s radio and TV holdings, particularly by acquiring countless programs from the NBC archives.In addition to Ms. Curry, Ms. Ahern is survived by two other nieces, Mary H. Ahern and Sharon A. Ahern.Ms. Ahern’s long association with Mr. Bernstein included traveling to the Soviet Union in 1959 to oversee the filming of “Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in Moscow,” which Mr. Saudek’s company was making for CBS. The Times wrote about her behind-the-scenes role, not only for the Bernstein special, but also for many other programs, saying she “has investigated and become proficient in such diverse subjects as jet aircraft, burlesque and sea horses.”Among the problems she had to solve in Moscow, the article said, was how to translate the title of Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid,” which was on the program, into Russian. She consulted a teacher in Kiev.“The closest equivalent the adviser could offer,” the newspaper said, “was ‘Fellow Billy.’” More

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    The West End's Comeback: London Theater Reopens

    London’s theater scene re-emerged with “The Mousetrap,” Agatha Christie’s long-running murder mystery, which has changed little from its debut in 1952, let alone from before the coronavirus.LONDON — At 8:30 p.m. on Monday, two friends were huddling outside St. Martin’s Theater in London’s West End doing something no one has for 14 months: arguing during the intermission over who was the murderer in “The Mousetrap,” Agatha Christie’s long-running whodunit.“I’m convinced it’s the posh woman who runs the hotel,” said Lockie Chapman, 40, a singer, before immediately changing his mind.“Actually, it’s the major!” he said. “Or how about that shifty Italian dude?” he added.“The shifty Italian dude?” replied Rah Petherbridge, 37. “But he could be a red herring!”Such debates have rung out outside the “The Mousetrap” ever since it debuted in 1952, but those accompanying the show’s 28,200th performance on Monday were significant. They marked the reopening of the West End.Since March last year, when the coronavirus pandemic shut down Britain, the country’s theaters have been effectively dark. A few shows, including “The Mousetrap,” tried to come back last fall, only for a second lockdown to keep them from even making it to rehearsals.Pippa Griffin, a “Mousetrap” usher, during the show. Audience members on Monday said they felt that this time, theater’s comeback would last.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesSeveral tried again in December, including “Six,” the hit musical about the wives of Henry VIII, but they managed only a handful of performances before they were shut once more. Theaters had to perform to online audiences if they wanted to keep working.Monday’s comeback felt like it was actually permanent, 15 audience members said in interviews, many highlighting Britain’s speedy vaccination campaign as the reason for their optimism. (Over 55 percent of the British population has received at least one dose, a higher proportion than in the United States.) A small but worrying surge in coronavirus cases in Britain, linked to a variant first identified in India, did not dampen their mood.“I really think we’re back for good this time,” said Matthew Lumby, 48, a civil servant. “I wouldn’t be certain we’ll be without face masks for a while, but if wearing one’s the price of being back in a theater again, it’s a small one to pay.”The Royal Opera House has also reopened, with Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito.” Clive Barda, via Royal Opera HouseThe mood was similar at the nearby Royal Opera House, which also reopened on Monday, with Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito.” “I feel confident this time it’s for good,” said Katie Connor, 40, as several huge Rolls Royces pulled up with glamorous operagoers.“I’m just so happy to be back,” she added. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to ugly-cry for the whole two hours and 25 minutes of the show.”England’s theaters are not immediately allowed to return to their prepandemic state. For now, shows can open only at 50 percent capacity, and audience members must wear face masks throughout performances.Social-distancing rules are supposed to be removed June 21, allowing full capacity, but on Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that the date might be pushed back because of the recent rise in cases.“I have to level with you that this new variant could pose a serious disruption to our progress,” Johnson said.Inside the Royal Opera House before the show on Monday. For now, venues can open only at 50 percent capacity.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesIt would be “financially bumpy” for “The Mousetrap” if distancing weren’t removed soon, said Adam Spiegel, the show’s producer, but he insisted that he would keep the show open no matter what, to give the actors and crew work. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said.Several other major West End shows are reopening this week, including “Six” and “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” a hit musical about a boy’s attempts to become a drag queen, with a host of others to come across England in coming months. But on Monday, the spotlight was left largely to “The Mousetrap,” which holds a Guinness world record for the longest-running play.It was “a bit bizarre” for “The Mousetrap” to be at the vanguard of theater’s return, Spiegel said. Critics have been calling it “an anachronism” since at least the 1970s, lacking the technical bells and whistles one would expect of a modern production. But Spiegel said that it was the best play to reopen the West End, as it had become a symbol of the city.“It’s been through all the ups and downs of British life of the last 70 years: terrorism, economic recessions, this,” he said. “There’s not a scientific answer to why it should be first. It just feels right.”Cassidy Janson and Danny Mac in “The Mousetrap.” Two casts were hired so that if one had to go into isolation, the other could step in.Tristram KentonThe play hadn’t needed much rewriting to lessen coronavirus risks, except the removal of one kiss, Spiegel said. Agatha Christie wrote the play just after World War II, he added, when British people “weren’t that kissy-wissy.”“So it fortunately lends itself quite well to social distancing,” he added.Backstage, though, there had been a few changes. Two casts were hired, so if one has to isolate, the other can step in. Cast and crew also had to stay distant, which meant the show’s wind machine could no longer be used, as the person operating it would have had to stand next to an actor backstage.Other shows are adopting similar measures. On Monday, the director Michael Longhurst started rehearsals for a revival of Nick Payne’s relationship drama “Constellations,” which is being staged at the Vaudeville Theater. He hired four two-person casts — including famous names like Zoë Wanamaker — to try to ensure that the show wouldn’t suffer any coronavirus-induced closures, he said. “It’s such a complicated balancing act for every production,” he added.Other theaters across England are similarly focused on small shows with lower coronavirus risks for now. The Theater Royal in Bath in southwestern England, for instance, is reopening May 25 not with a play, but with Ralph Fiennes performing T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” The performance will then travel around England.Temperature checks outside “The Mousetrap” on Monday. “Whatever is necessary to restart people’s ability to enjoy theater I’m OK with,” said Adam Spiegel, the producer.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesEngland’s theatrical reopening puts it ahead of Europe’s other major theater centers. In Paris, theaters may open from Wednesday, but they must finish by 9 p.m. and are allowed only 35 percent capacity. Some theaters have said that they can’t reopen under those conditions. Others have said that they can’t because they’re occupied by students protesting a lack of support for arts workers.In Berlin, theaters are also allowed to reopen on Wednesday, but only outdoors.In the West End, most theater owners and producers seem happy to accept restrictions, including the potential use of coronavirus passports to guarantee entry. “Whatever is necessary to restart people’s ability to enjoy theater I’m OK with,” Spiegel, of “The Mousetrap,” said.Many in the industry realize that it will be a long time before theaters are back to their old selves, employing thousands of freelancers. Some job losses are only just emerging. In April, The Stage, Britain’s theater newspaper, reported that “The Phantom of the Opera” would reopen July 27 but only with its touring orchestration, cutting the number of musicians almost in half, to 14, from 27.“It sets a bad precedent for the whole sector,” Dan West, a trombonist who played in the show before the pandemic, said in a telephone interview. “Every small producer will say, ‘If they don’t need brass, I don’t,’” he added.During “The Mousetrap” on Monday, any worries seemed far from people’s minds. Many audience members took off their masks to sip drinks during the show, then left them off as the tension ramped up onstage, with Detective Sergeant Trotter (Paul Hilliar) quizzing eight potential murderers.Eventually, the perpetrator was revealed, and several audience members gasped. “See, I told you!” one shouted, being shushed by those around him.“The Mousetrap” ended just had it had for every one of its previous 28,199 performances. “Thank you so much for your unbelievably warm reception this evening,” Hilliar said, after a standing ovation from the half-full theater.“Now, you are our partners in crime,” he added, “and we ask you to keep the secret of whodunit locked in your hearts.” More

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    in Theater

    A German Festival Takes Stock of Pandemic-Era Theater

    Online for a second year, Theatertreffen showcases the highs and lows of recent innovations in German-language digital dramaturgy.MUNICH — The most immediately striking aspect of this year’s Theatertreffen, the annual showcase of the best of German-language theater, is the numbers.To make their selection, the 2020 festival jury watched 285 productions in 60 cities across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The resulting program, which runs until Monday, is dauntingly full, with 80 hours of streaming events on a digital festival platform.When the seven jurors announced their selection in February, the festival hoped to hold in-person performances. But a third wave of the coronavirus, which has gripped Germany in recent months, meant that for the second year in a row, Theatertreffen was confined to this online presentation.Since the start of the pandemic, German playhouses have been uniquely proactive in adapting to social distancing restrictions. Many have devised new theatrical formats, including immersive live productions for solo spectators or digital-only productions that have enlisted social media, video messaging apps, chat rooms and video gaming technology to create art that responds to our circumstances.Keeping up with this creative proliferation has been occasionally exhausting; more consistently, it has been inspiring to see how theater here — much of which receives robust state funding — has refused to lie down and die.A moment during the 12-hour production “Show Me a Good Time,” by the German-British theater collective Gob Squad.Eike Walkenhorst/Berlin FestivalI had hoped that this year’s Theatertreffen would take the full measure of this challenging year, so I was dismayed that the jury chose only one “corona show” among the 10 productions selected for the festival.But what a production it was!“Show Me a Good Time” by the German-British theater collective Gob Squad, was a wild noon-to-midnight performance that whizzed between the empty stage of the Berliner Festspiele and various participants in the outside world, discussing life during the pandemic, conducting man-on-the-street interviews about theater and soliciting artistic suggestions from callers. The performers at the theater, driving through Berlin and traipsing around England were connected via headsets and cameras in what often had the aspect of a theatrical telethon.Yet despite the marathon running time, it was accessible and down to earth. By design, it was a show that one could dip into and out of at will; over the 12 hours, more than 3,000 people popped their virtual heads in.While meditating on life, theater and the intersection of the two, the performers routinely injected their largely ad-libbed performances (in German and English) with generous doses of humor and silliness. One example: For two minutes each hour, they dropped everything and screeched with laughter.Rainald Goetz’s “Empire of Death” directed by Karin Beier, who leads the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. Arno DeclairWhile none of the other productions provided a similar degree of meaningful reflection on life during Covid-19, the reality of the pandemic clearly influenced the aesthetic choices behind several of the other streamed productions.Theaters had already reopened, at limited capacity, in Switzerland when a livestream of Schauspielhaus Zurich’s “It’s Only the End of the World” opened Theatertreffen last week. But the director, Christopher Rüping, a regular at the festival who has been a prominent proponent of new digital possibilities for theater during the pandemic, decided to keep the live audience out. Instead of performing for a handful of spectators, the actors addressed cameras. The result, watched online, was a hybrid theatrical experience reminiscent of cinéma vérité.Roving hand-held cameras captured Jean-Luc Lagarce’s 1990 play about a gay man who returns to his estranged family after a long absence. Most impressive was how effective the livestream’s filming style was at capturing the nuances of the production’s fine actors, including Ulrike Krumbiegel as the nervous, broken matriarch and Wiebke Mollenhauer and Nils Kahnwald as a pair of emotionally scarred siblings.This was also the second year that Theatertreffen’s jury voted to adopt a quota system to ensure that at least half the productions would be directed by women or majority-female collectives. (A recent study by the European Theater Convention that surveyed 22 countries found that there are six men for every four women working in theater).Last year’s Theatertreffen program looked quite similar to earlier installments despite the marked increase in female-led productions. This time around, though, an unofficial feminist theme seemed to reflect the festival’s focus on female theatermakers.“NAME HER. In Search of Women+,” a 7½-hour multimedia performance-lecture, directed by Marie Schleef, about overlooked women throughout history.Hendrik LietmannBy far the most didactic was “NAME HER. In Search of Women+,” a 7½-hour multimedia performance-lecture, directed by Marie Schleef, about overlooked women throughout history. Standing in front of a triptych of large iPhone-like displays of biographical information, charts and videos, the actress Anne Tismer gave an engaging performance that, however heroic, did suffer on video. Watching her rattle off this A to Z of brilliant and unjustly ignored woman, it was hard not to imagine it would have had an entirely different immediacy and energy if experienced live.One of the most prominent female theatermakers in Germany, and a frequent presence at Theatertreffen, is Karin Beier, who leads the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. This year, her production of Rainald Goetz’s “Empire of Death” served up a savage indictment of America’s post-9/11 military adventures abroad and democratic degeneracy at home, and it was easily the grimmest thing at the festival. I couldn’t wait for the four-hour theatrical scream to end.After so many lengthy shows, I was also grateful for those that clocked in at little more than an hour. They provided a sense of intimacy that was missing from the more sprawling productions.One was Leonie Böhm’s internal monologue version of “Medea*,” Schauspielhaus Zurich’s second production at the festival, which worked best as a finely tuned psychological examination of one of world literature’s most famous villainesses. In it, the actress Maja Beckmann’s Medea struggles with how Euripides’ tragedy fates her to be a child murderer, and how history will forever judge her a monster.Staged in a large white tent, “Medea*” created an atmosphere of privacy that it shared with the festival’s most unusual entry, the fragile dance performance “Scores That Shaped Our Friendship,” a physically tender exploration of the friendship between Lucy Wilke, a performer with spinal muscular atrophy, and Pawel Dudus, a queer Polish artist and dancer.Maja Beckmann in Leonie Böhm’s internal monologue version of “Medea*” from Schauspielhaus Zurich.Gina FollyDespite the quota system, this year’s Theatertreffen featured only one conventional play by a female playwright that was also directed by a woman: Anna Gmeyner’s “Automatenbüfett.”We have the Burgtheater in Vienna and the director Barbara Frey to thank for the rediscovery of this 1932 play by the Austrian-Jewish Gmeyner. In it, she combines folk realism with symbolic elements for a parable-like tale of the common good undermined by avarice and sexual dependency, set largely in a vending-machine restaurant. The automat dominates the drab set of Frey’s dramatically incisive and impeccably acted production.It is far and away the most traditional production in this Theatertreffen, as well as one of the best. Starting late this month, it will again be seen onstage in Vienna, where theaters have just reopened after half a year of hibernation. More

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    in Television

    Jimmy Kimmel Rakes Republicans for Downplaying the Capitol Attack

    “You know, when a violent mob attacked our embassy in Benghazi, Republicans in Congress investigated it eight times,” Kimmel said. “A violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol, they’re like: ‘Tourists! What are you gonna do?’”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