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    Elon Musk to Host ‘Saturday Night Live’

    Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX, will become the rare “S.N.L.” host not from the worlds of entertainment, politics or sports.There have been some unexpected “Saturday Night Live” hosts over the years.Turn the clock back far enough and you will find that the long-running late-night comedy series has offered its stage to such unlikely candidates as Brandon Tartikoff, when he was the president of NBC’s entertainment division, and George Steinbrenner, the pugnacious owner of the Yankees.“S.N.L.” has drawn eyeballs and raised eyebrows by occasionally recruiting from the political world, too, including the New York mayors Ed Koch and Rudolph W. Giuliani and presidential hopefuls like Steve Forbes and John McCain. In 2015, it gave a platform to the then-candidate Donald J. Trump in an appearance that the show’s own cast members later said they had come to regret.Now it seems that “Saturday Night Live” is attempting its own moonshot of sorts. NBC said on Saturday that Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and chief engineer of SpaceX, would host the program on May 8. Miley Cyrus, the pop singer and a frequent performer on “S.N.L.,” will be the musical guest that night.The announcement was made a few hours after the Crew Dragon Endeavour, a SpaceX craft, had successfully docked with the International Space Station on Saturday morning, following its launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday.Musk, 49, has previously appeared on shows like “South Park,” “The Simpsons” and “Rick and Morty” and in films like “Iron Man 2” and has gained an online following for initiatives like his recent announcement that Tesla would accept the digital currency Bitcoin for payments.Musk has also been criticized for his treatment of his employees, and his companies and projects have come under close scrutiny.Last month, the National Labor Relations Board upheld a 2019 ruling that found that a tweet Musk had posted, which appeared to threaten workers with the loss of stock options for planning to unionize, was illegal. The board also ruled that Tesla had illegally fired a worker involved in union organizing.And more than 400 workers at a Tesla plant in Fremont, Calif., tested positive for the coronavirus last year after Musk reopened the plant, flouting guidelines from health officials, according to public health data released in March by the website PlainSite.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has confirmed that it is looking into nearly two dozen crashes involving vehicles that were using or may have used Tesla’s Autopilot technology. Musk has said that the technology makes Tesla cars safer than other vehicles.Previous “Saturday Night Live” hosts this season have included the actors Daniel Kaluuya, Carey Mulligan and Regé-Jean Page, the musicians Adele and Nick Jonas and the comedian Bill Burr. More

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    ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ Series Finale Recap: ’Tis of Thee

    If you came for the action, you probably finished the series satisfied. If you came for the characters, maybe not so much.Season 1, Episode 6: ‘One World, One People’What was the best part of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”? Was it the action? The first episode kicked off with an aerial fight sequence exciting enough to be in a Marvel movie; and throughout the series, even when the plot was less than gripping, the director Kari Skogland and the stunt and special effects teams could pep up almost any episode with some high-flying, hard-punching, shield-flinging thrills.The series finale, “One World, One People,” leans hard on the big action set pieces. More than half of the episode is dedicated to a multistage, multilocation battle between the heroes and the violent anti-nationalist organization the Flag Smashers. Sam — now clad in his new hybrid Captain America/Falcon costume, complete with both shield and wings — performs phenomenal feats of strength and agility as he battles the kickboxing mercenary Batroc, chases a helicopter and saves a truck full of hostages from plunging to the ground.Meanwhile, Bucky, Sharon Carter and John Walker all cross paths out in the street, fighting directly against Karli Morgenthau and the Smashers. Before the melee is done — ending with Batroc and Morgenthau shot dead by Sharon — we see motorcycle stunts, martial arts, and superpowered combat.So, yes … if you tuned into “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” each week to see big-budget super-heroics, then you should have been pretty pleased by this finale. But if you watched this show for the characters? You may have been disappointed.As I mentioned in last week’s recap, the writers left themselves a lot of work to do in their final chapter. This show about Captain America’s legacy ultimately had five or six major characters, each with an arc to complete in a way-too-crowded finale: Sam, Bucky, Walker, Sharon, Morgenthau and Baron Zemo.Bucky’s story is perhaps the cleanest and most heartening. He gets to deliver a touching warning to Morgenthau, letting her know she will be haunted by the people she kills, no matter the reason. After the fighting is done, he completes his list of amends, finally confessing to his neighbor Yori Nakajima (Ken Takemoto) that the Winter Soldier killed his son. In a sweet montage of life in Louisiana at the end of the episode, Bucky seems at peace, playing with Sam’s nephews. It’s nice!But it’s harder to know what to make of the endings for Zemo, Morgenthau and especially Sharon. The Baron’s presence in this episode is almost an afterthought as he remotely engineers the bombing of a surviving cadre of Flag Smashers. As for Morgenthau, even before she is killed she has begun to lose the faith of her people, who question her bloodthirsty win-at-all-costs mentality and her apparent need for martyrdom.Neither Zemo nor Morgenthau has a particularly strong finish, in large part because of the big twist in this episode: revealing that Sharon has been the series’s real villain, pulling the strings as the Power Broker. This doesn’t come out of nowhere. Sharon seemed pretty shady when she first appeared back in Episode 3, and that never really changed — all the way up to this finale’s mid-credits scene, which showed her worming her way back into the U.S. intelligence services with plans to exploit her new access for profit.Still, given that she wasn’t prominently featured throughout “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” it is an odd choice to center on Sharon at the end. It makes the show’s entire thematic and narrative focus feel misdirected.Sebastian Stan in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”Marvel Studios/Disney+The episode’s credited writers, Malcolm Spellman and Josef Sawyer, are on firmer ground with their two Captains: Walker, who gets rebranded at the end of this episode as U.S. Agent (just as that character did in the comics), and Sam, who shakes off his doubts and critics and figures out what kind of Captain America he wants to be.Walker is such a fascinating character: a fiercely honed and doggedly faithful warrior, nurturing resentment toward the superpowered people who get all the headlines. When the Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine reappears in this episode, promising to put him to work representing the interests of the powerful in a complicated post-Blip world, that’s a fitting fate for a man so committed to a “might makes right” worldview that he dosed himself with a dangerous, destabilizing serum.In fact, Walker’s lingering problems probably should’ve been recognized more in this finale. But the character works well here (as he did in the comics) as a contrast to Captain America. Again, this episode too quickly resolves some of the series’s thorniest themes about who should and shouldn’t try to represent American ideals. After all his soul-searching, Sam finally claims the Captain America title with a tidy speech, in which he says he is choosing to fight for his home and for the rights of the marginalized.But Sam’s off-the-cuff manifesto is very much in the spirit of Captain America, who from the comic book pages to the multiplex has nearly always been both a champion of the underdog and a force for fairness. Having a new Captain America with no super powers — who can tell the world, “The only power I have is that I believe we can do better” — makes sense.There were a lot of different paths “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” could’ve followed to get this point where Sam finally claims the shield. I think the show meandered too much, shoehorning in too many side characters and too much Marvel mythology. Nevertheless, it was a rush in Episode 1 to see the Falcon zooming through the air. In the end, it is even more satisfying to see the new Captain America doing the same.The all-winners squadI appreciated the callbacks to earlier episodes, as when one of the spectators calls Sam “the Black Falcon” and another says, “I thought Captain America was on the moon.” Some of this show’s best moments involved the nonheroes, trying to live their lives while supernatural phenomena and property-demolishing super fights happened around them. It made me think that a TV version of Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross’s “superheroes as seen by ordinary folks” comic book series, “Marvels,” would work really well.We got another look this week at that amazing Captain America museum exhibit, which included a section dedicated to Isaiah Bradley’s super-soldier service. This exhibit was first featured in the Captain America movies. It has always impressed me with how much it looks like a real museum installation, complete with video-screens and memorabilia. One of the great pleasures of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — including this TV version — is the level of fine detail, indicating that no expense was spared.One last thought on this largely enjoyable if scattershot show: Unlike the Marvel movies, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” ends with so many unresolved and newly generated story lines that I have no idea what Marvel Studios is going to do with all this material — if anything. Will we ever see the U.S. Agent again? What about Sharon? Captain America? Some of the Marvel movies and TV shows in development could use these characters. (“Hawkeye” and “Secret Invasion” on the small screen, for example, or “Black Widow” and “Black Panther II” on the big one). But it seems equally likely that some of these threads will be left dangling forever. After this show and “WandaVision,” I’m not seeing the same sense of direction that distinguished the earlier M.C.U. projects. Here’s hoping the future series and films bring some clarity. More

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    Bethenny Frankel Is Back on TV Because ‘I Know What People Want to See’

    In “The Big Shot With Bethenny,” on HBO Max, millennial strivers will compete to help Frankel run her Skinnygirl empire.If reality television is a game, Bethenny Frankel belongs among its M.V.P.sFrankel, 50, began her on-camera career in 2005, during the Martha Stewart season of “The Apprentice.” She came in second, with Stewart telling her, “You’re spunky, you’re a show-off, you feel you have to make a physical impression.”If that made Frankel wrong for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, it made her right for “The Real Housewives of New York City,” which premiered in 2008, even though she wasn’t a housewife then and has never really been one since.Frankel spun a tossed off cocktail order in Season 1 — “the skinny girl’s margarita” — into the premixed cocktail brand Skinnygirl. She sold it to Beam Global for $100 million in 2011, retaining her rights to the brand name. (Beam got the premixed drinks business; Frankel kept everything else.) She has since parlayed her reality fame into food stuffs, supplements, cookware, shapewear and under her Bethenny label, eyewear.She is, in her words, “the H.B.I.C. of a major empire.” She recently signed a multiyear deal with iHeart Radio to bring her “Just B with Bethenny Frankel” podcast to the network and to produce others.Her endemic hustle extends to the disaster-relief initiative, B Strong. While raising money for hurricane and earthquake relief, the initiative, in partnership with Global Empowerment Mission, has distributed more than $19 million in aid and personal protective equipment during the Covid-19 crisis.“The Big Shot With Bethenny” is the “authentic modern version of ‘The Apprentice,’” Frankel said.Krista Schlueter/HBO MaxOn television, Frankel used “The Real Housewives” as a vaulting horse toward a couple of Bravo spinoffs; a single season of a syndicated talk show, “Bethenny”; and a bunch of appearances on “Shark Tank.” She quit “The Real Housewives” in August 2019 after eight on-and-off seasons, citing spiritual corrosion.“I was making great money, but I didn’t feel good about it,” she said. “If I’m really as successful and smart and savvy and legit and the-Emperor-does-have-clothes as I think I am, then that’s not really where I should be anymore.”But she didn’t stay away from reality television long. She teamed with Mark Burnett (“The Apprentice,” “Survivor”) and MGM Studios to create “The Big Shot with Bethenny.” “In business and television she is a clear force of nature, deservedly so,” Burnett wrote in an email.  In “The Big Shot,” premiering April 29 on HBO Max, millennial strivers attempt to become Frankel’s vice president of operations at Skinnygirl. Nominally a business competition show, it dispenses with most hallmarks of the genre — imagine “The Apprentice” with 100 percent more entropy.“I can let two people go. Hire everybody. Fire everybody,” Frankel says in the first episode. “I can do whatever I want.”On a recent afternoon, Frankel arrived at a Soho loft where some of the show was shot — lipped, lashed, bronzed, glamorous even through the Zoom screen. During an hourlong interview, she discussed entrepreneurship, her Martha Stewart beef and how to make reality TV more real. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you end up on “The Apprentice” in the first place?I’d never watched a ton of television, but I said, “I could get on ‘The Apprentice.’” I said to my partner, “Go buy the least expensive video camera you can find and just videotape me selling cookies.” I got called, which was the craziest thing of my life, and I went to Bloomingdale’s and used my credit card to buy a Moschino red jacket. I went to this hotel, they interviewed me. I didn’t make it. But I’ve always been a connector, like, follow through, send a card, send a gift. Connect. So I kept in touch with the same producers and casting directors without looking too desperate. And they said, “OK, now it’s the Martha Stewart ‘Apprentice,’ here’s your chance.” I wanted it more than anything in the world. I didn’t want the fame per se. I wanted the job.You made it to the finale, then lost. Do you feel like you were robbed?I ran into Martha Stewart shortly after. I was wearing a really sexy dress. Intentionally. She was standing next to Jon Bon Jovi. And she said to him: “This is Bethenny, she was just on my show. And she’s mad at me because she didn’t win.” And I said: “Martha, I’m not mad at you. You’re like an ex-boyfriend that I hate but I’m still in love with.”Frankel and Dawna Stone were finalists in the Martha Stewart season of “The Apprentice.”Virginia Sherwood/NBCFrankel with Alex McCord, left, and Jill Zarin in “The Real Housewives of New York City.” Frankel left the franchise in 2019.Barbara Nitke/BravoThen you went onto other reality shows, “Housewives,” the Bravo spinoffs, “Shark Tank,” “Skating With the Stars.” How do people who know you only from TV see you?People think I’m scathing, abrupt, aggressive, intense, passionate, smart, successful, secretive, stealthy, a baller, manipulative, funny. I think I said intense? Economical, organized, efficient, reliable, honest.What do we get wrong? What don’t we see?What people probably don’t realize or believe is I am the most private person that I know, which is the craziest irony. I’m private about moments and experiences. I’m more of a homebody than anybody that I know, short of someone being agoraphobic. I do not leave my house and I do not put on hair and makeup unless I’m being paid to.Few people have used reality TV as successfully as you have. Was that always your plan?Going on “Housewives” was strategic. It’s not that easy to get on TV. I wanted to be a natural food chef. I wanted to be on the Food Network, and this is a place to show that I’m a natural food chef. Once it started, I thought: This is going to be a game changer. This is going to be very disruptive. But I was always honest about what I was doing.The premise of “The Big Shot With Bethenny” is that you need to hire a vice president of operations for Skinnygirl. What does a vice president of operations do?I wanted a second in command. The people at MGM wanted the title because the audience can digest and understand the title. What I really needed in my business was my person, who can think like me, manage the shop like me, edit a social post, have a vision.“What people probably don’t realize or believe is I am the most private person that I know,” Frankel said.Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesIs a reality show the best way to find that person?I’ve never looked at a résumé, ever. Headhunters give you people that are like, “Next Tuesday, I have a doctor’s appointment, and two years from July, I need to take a three-week trip, and what time is my lunch break?” I didn’t come up that way. We just worked. It’s hard to find people like that. That’s who I go for. I don’t care if you know anything — you’re loyal and you’re smart and you work hard. That is all you need.People competing for a job on a reality show sounds a lot like “The Apprentice.”Initially, I wanted to be disassociated from “The Apprentice.” It’s not real. It’s manufactured. Everything going on with our projects was really going on. So for example, I really have a shapewear brand; we really had to create a campaign for it. That was really happening. I really have salad dressings and preserves. The built-in projects are real; they have real stakes. Also, when you watch “The Apprentice,” do you ever see him in his pajamas? You ever see him at home with his wife? I imagine Donald Trump eats cereal. Do we see that? No. Do you see me in my life? Yes. The authentic modern version of “The Apprentice,” that’s what this really is.“The Apprentice” has a very predictable structure. Watching your show, I had no idea what would happen.Our executive producer produced “America’s Top Model.” Mark Burnett has produced “The Apprentice,” “Shark Tank,” “Survivor.” I get that they feel safety in format. I feel trapped and suffocated by it. Like, I’m back on my talk show directing traffic between a soufflé and fall florals. On my own reality shows and on the “Housewives,” I would say, “Let’s do real.” So all of the things that are shocking are not contrived. There were so many things not planned. It’s a very different show for that reason because it’s based in authenticity.So without too many spoilers, did it work out? Did you get your person?This experience gave me the person and I’m so excited.What have you learned about being good at being on television?People always say get out of your own head — it’s not entirely true. Reality television is the highlights. Something’s a sound bite. Something’s a takeaway. Something’s entertaining. I know what people want to see. I know what people want to drink. I understand what people think is entertaining. More

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    Late Night Celebrates Earth Day

    “Earth Day started back in the ’70s with very lofty goals and has kind of turned into, ‘Guys, please, just for one day try not to light garbage on or near a panda bear, OK?’” Jimmy Kimmel said.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.Save the Rainforest (Cafes)Late-night hosts celebrated Earth Day on Thursday, with Jimmy Kimmel touching on the holiday’s origins.“Earth Day started back in the ’70s with very lofty goals and has kind of turned into, ‘Guys, please, just for one day try not to light garbage on or near a panda bear, OK?’” Jimmy Kimmel joked.“There are so many amazing things from Earth. I mean, we have oceans and mountains, and shaving cream, and pine cones and the iPhone. We’ve got monkeys; we’ve got chocolate-covered raisins. Ryan Gosling, we’ve got Ryan Reynolds. We’ve got the Aurora Borealis. Pens are good. ‘Property Brothers,’ Magic Johnson, tennis rackets, yoga pants, poodles, tacos, yarn, marshmallows and Mr. T. I mean, that is a diverse portfolio of things that we should be grateful for.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Of course, Earth Day is like prom in that every year has a theme. This year’s is ‘Restore Our Earth.’ Yes, we have to, or pretty soon the theme’s going to be ‘Enchantment Under the Sea.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“A lot of stores celebrated Earth Day. H&M added a section for sustainable items, Lowe’s offered a free garden-to-go kit, and Subway recycled last week’s tuna.” — JIMMY FALLON“I’m kidding around, but protecting the Earth is serious. I mean, can you believe that in 1999, we had nearly 50 Rainforest Cafes, and now we’re down to almost 20?” — JIMMY FALLONClimate ChangesPresident Biden’s climate summit was a related hot topic, with late-night hosts touching on the president’s announcement that the United States will cut its carbon emissions in half by 2030.“Added Biden, ‘Of course that responsibility will ultimately fall to President the Rock.’” — SETH MEYERS“Other countries are cautiously optimistic now. They’re like, ‘OK, but last year, weren’t you the guys saying climate change isn’t real? Which America are we talking to?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The science is absolutely clear that it’s necessary to avoid a worldwide catastrophe. No one should be against this, so naturally, almost every Republican is against this.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Climate change is getting harder to ignore. Last year, wildfires blazing in the Arctic Circle set new emissions records, the Atlantic hurricane season raged stronger than ever, and we reached the end of the hottest decade ever recorded. Most of that came in the last year due to the rise in ‘Bridgerton’ butt.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The tone of the summit was that we’re all responsible. But you know, Costa Rica was looking at the U.S. and China like: ‘Yeah, this is all our fault, right? Yeah. We’re all to blame.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Earth Day Edition)“Happy Earth Day! Everyone is in the spirit. This morning at 7-Eleven, I saw a rat drinking a Big Gulp with a metal straw.” — JIMMY FALLON“Today was Earth Day. ‘Ah, yes, the place I’m totally from,’ said Mark Zuckerberg.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, today was Earth Day even though I didn’t planet.” — SETH MEYERS“Today was the 51st Earth Day, although the Earth was like, ‘Let’s say — let’s just tell people I’m 35.’” — JAMES CORDEN“Humans celebrating Earth Day is like fleas celebrating Dog Day.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingDesus and Mero caught up with a friend of the show, Issa Rae, about her official new status as media mogul after Ms. Rae, the “Insecure” creator and star, signed an eight-figure deal with WarnerMedia.Also, Check This OutFans have gotten their wish: LeVar Burton is slated to guest-host “Jeopardy!” the last week of July.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockAfter fans campaigned online, LeVar Burton will guest-host “Jeopardy.” More

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    HBO Max Gains Traction in a Crowded Field

    AT&T, HBO’s parent company, reported that HBO and the new streamer added 2.7 million subscribers in the first quarter.AT&T added 2.7 million new customers to HBO and HBO Max in the first quarter, a boost for the company’s new streaming effort in an increasingly crowded field.The company’s WarnerMedia division, which includes HBO, recorded $8.5 billion in revenue for the period, a 9.8 percent jump over last year, when theater sales and advertising revenue plummeted during the pandemic. Led by the chief executive Jason Kilar, WarnerMedia also includes the cable networks CNN and Turner and the Warner Bros. film studios.HBO is the cornerstone of AT&T’s media strategy, and the company sees HBO Max as a way to keep its mobile customers from fleeing, offering the streaming platform at a discount to its phone subscribers.In its report on the year’s first quarter, AT&T stopped disclosing the number of active HBO Max users, obscuring how many people are actually tuned into the new streaming service.Over all, AT&T counted 44.1 million subscribers to HBO and HBO Max in the United States at the end of March, a gain of 2.7 million from the previous quarter. Before it stopped breaking out the HBO Max subscriptions, in December, it said it had 41.5 million subscribers: 17.1 million for the streaming service, 20 million for HBO on cable and the rest from hotels or other deals.HBO Max most likely drove the gain in the quarter, which is notable given how competitive the streaming universe has become. HBO Max is also the most expensive of the major streaming platforms, at $15 a month. Netflix, which reported earnings on Tuesday, remains the leader, with 67 million customers in the United States and nearly 208 million in total.Netflix’s dominance has started to wane, in part because of newer entrants like HBO Max and Disney+. Netflix added four million new subscribers in the quarter, with a little more than 400,000 in the United States. Netflix chalked up the comparatively sluggish growth to the production slowdown when Hollywood studios largely stopped making shows and films during the pandemic. The company said it expected a more successful second half of the year, when returning favorites and highly anticipated films become available.HBO Max most likely got a boost from an unorthodox strategy championed by Mr. Kilar: The sibling company Warner Bros. plans to release its entire lineup of 2021 films on HBO Max on the same day they’re scheduled to appear in theaters. The announcement rumbled throughout Hollywood, angering agents and filmmakers who stood to lose out on crucial bonuses and commissions by short-circuiting the old theatrical release schedule.Mr. Kilar has said the company was likely to go back to a more traditional distribution plan next year. For the rest of 2021, he is counting on the film slate — which included the recent releases of “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” and “Godzilla vs. Kong,” as well as the Friday premiere of “Mortal Kombat” — to help drive people to HBO Max.The company also plans a global expansion of HBO Max starting in June, along with a lower-cost version of the service that will include commercials. The company has about 19.7 million HBO customers overseas who it hopes to convert into HBO Max subscribers. More

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    Review: ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Cut in Half and Twice as Good

    Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley star as the star-crossed lovers in a compelling stage-film hybrid adaptation.What’s written in haste may be repaired in haste. Or so the fine and fleet new “Romeo and Juliet” from Britain’s National Theater, available here on PBS’s “Great Performances,” convinces me.At 90 minutes, it is even shorter than the “two hours’ traffic of our stage” promised in its first lines but rarely honored in performance. (The entire play normally takes about three hours.) Yet as directed by Simon Godwin, this emotionally satisfying and highly theatrical filmed version scores point after point while whizzing past, or outright cutting, the elements that can make you think it was written not by Shakespeare but by O. Henry on a bender.If the cutting merely left what remains with a much higher proportion of penetrating insight and powerful feeling, that would be enough; “Romeo and Juliet,” at its best, anticipates the great later works in which complexity and ambivalence are made real and gorgeous in language. But the speed serves another function here: telling a story that’s mostly about teenagers with a teenage intensity and recklessness.Not that the stars are anywhere near their adolescence. Though Romeo is 17 or so and Juliet, 13, Josh O’Connor, who played mopey young Prince Charles in “The Crown,” is 30, and Jessie Buckley, the mysterious star of “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” 31. Still, there’s a reason they’re called actors: They can perform the acts a play requires of them. Onstage, at any rate, that would be sufficient.Under Simon Godwin’s direction, the masked ball in this “Romeo and Juliet” is closer to a rave.Rob YoungsonOn film, we need an extra push, which Godwin and Emily Burns, who adapted the text, provide by grounding us in a theatrical world before escorting us into a filmic one. The production begins unceremoniously with the cast in street clothes, entering a theater, unmasked and vulnerable, none more so than O’Connor, with the low-slung, “sticky-out” ears he says earned him his role on “The Crown.” Sitting on three sides of a small, square, scuffed playing space, the actors are barely past the greeting phase — O’Connor and Buckley smile shyly at one another, as if across a Veronese piazza — when the play leaps out of the gate.Purists not already offended will soon have plenty to set them off. The masked ball at which the lovers meet is not exactly courtly; it’s more like a rave, and Romeo is given just two lines (instead of 10) to fall for Juliet, who is moaning at the mic like Lana Del Rey.But impurists will be satisfied that the erotic intensity between them is so palpable, even when Godwin dissipates it by cutting away from the theatrical moment to a filmed montage in some other dimension. Similarly, the introduction of a passionate gay pairing among the supporting roles makes up in thematic coherence — the plot turns on forbidden love — what it lacks in textual fidelity.The trade-offs continue throughout. The most fascinating one finds Juliet’s parents inverted, Lady Capulet (Tamsin Greig) getting most of the lines Shakespeare wrote for her Lord (Lloyd Hutchinson). Greig, so funny on the Showtime series “Episodes,” is spectacularly entertaining as she explores what besides the habitual assertion of male power might motivate a parent to threaten a daughter with expulsion. Her interpretation, underlined by “evil” music, nevertheless denatures one key feature of the play, which now suggests that the Capulets are monsters when the really terrifying thing is that they’re not. They are upstanding citizens doing what’s expected.It is that atmosphere of immutable custom and inherited hatred that the lovers are desperate to escape. But Godwin’s staging makes clear by physical proximity and by judicious intercutting that these elements are related: Romeo and Juliet’s passion is as rash and irrational as the other characters’ repression and violence. As the outlines of their love are filled in, so is the hatred around them — and so are the set (by Soutra Gilmour) and props; swords that were simple wooden dowels in Act I by Act III are knives that look menacingly real. In youth, it seems, enmity precedes an enemy just as love precedes a lover.Tamsin Greig as Lady Capulet and Lloyd Hutchinson as Lord Capulet.Rob YoungsonAt every turn we are offered insights like that until, suddenly, we aren’t. Nothing Godwin can do to make the play rough and unfamiliar — whether by having Tybalt (David Judge) urinate on a wall or by excising greatest hits like “parting is such sweet sorrow” — can help it get past the place where the lovers’ ingenuity fails along with Shakespeare’s. The plot thread by which Juliet’s fake death prompts Romeo’s real one is so absurdly flimsy that adaptations have tried for centuries to fix it; Arthur Laurents’s workaround for “West Side Story” is especially strong.For me, though, no production of “Romeo and Juliet” survives the potions of Friar Laurence; they are a lot of magick to swallow in a play about such real and serious things. That Laurence is portrayed here (by Lucian Msamati) with great dignity, not as a nutty professor, helps, raising the profound if wishful idea that faith can correct for society’s failings. Even more movingly, Deborah Findlay, as Juliet’s fond nurse, is able to temper the role’s comic elements with an immutable loyalty to her mistress, and then temper that with something darker and arguably in fact disloyal. It’s a perfect trifold performance.That’s the thing about Shakespeare, at least for me: There comes a moment in many of his plays when only the actors can preserve the emotion the plot keeps leaking. Happily, that happens here: As the tragedy narrows, O’Connor and Buckley flood with feeling.Stars will do that. In the same way an enemy is just a receptacle for enmity that already exists, a starring role is whatever a star can pour ambient emotion into. O’Connor’s essence is a silent yearning — the kind that is not extinguished but fanned by satisfaction. (This is what made his otherwise insufferable Charles almost sympathetic in “The Crown” and the nearly silent young farmer in his breakthrough film, “God’s Own Country,” so expressive.) Buckley, whose face seems transparent at times, is more about wonder; her Juliet clearly wants Romeo but, more than that, is amazed by her good fortune in getting him.Even in a more conventional production — this one was meant to be performed live onstage but was retooled for the pandemic — you need that kind of incandescence to make the play make sense. Remember that Shakespeare was a young star, too, albeit 30 or so himself, when he wrote “Romeo and Juliet.” Indeed, it often seems that his title characters, in haste and passion, wrote it for him.Romeo & JulietThrough May 21; pbs.org/gperf More

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    in Theater

    'Living Newspaper' at the Royal Court Theater Stirs Up Stories of Our Time

    Tired of reading the headlines? You can watch artistic interpretations of the stories of our era by trailing actors in a Living Newspaper production, section by section.LONDON — Have you had enough of wading through newsprint or scrolling online? The Royal Court Theater has a bracing online alternative that refracts current events through a vibrant and eclectic array of plays that give many of today’s hot-button topics a piquant spin.The self-evident inspiration for “Living Newspaper” is the project of the same name from Depression-era America, a federally funded response to the social concerns of the day that had its origins in the Russian Revolution and saw art as an agency for change.That immediacy tallies with the history of engagement at the Court, a theater that prides itself on taking the temperature of the times. Not for nothing is one of the makeshift spaces adapted for this collection of plays referred to as the Weather Room. (The idea was to reconfigure the Court so that its spaces, onstage or off, approximated the sections of a newspaper.)Kayla Meikle in the solo play “And Now, the Weather,” written by Nina Segal. Helen MurrayAnd what, you might ask, is the forecast? “Unpredictability, volatility and destruction,” announces the actress Kayla Meikle in a solo play by Nina Segal, her reply hinting at a sense of uncertainty, or worse, common to much of the writing here. Its tone cheerful, then chilling, Segal’s play runs less than six minutes and forms part of Edition 5 of an ambitious seven-part venture. The Court is due to reopen to the public in June.The playhouse in Sloane Square, long devoted to new writing, has put the pandemic to culturally productive use. At a time when theater professionals have been reeling from an absence of work, the Living Newspaper has employed over 300 freelancers, two-thirds of them writers and actors. The first four “editions” are no longer available, but Editions 5 and 6 are, with the final one to be available beginning Monday for two weeks. That one will be devoted to writers ages 14 to 21.How can a building work as a newspaper? Surprisingly easily. We experience the stories in different physical places much as we might flick through the news pages. Each “edition” comes with an obituary and advice “pages,” for instance, into which are slotted plays to match. The front page tends to be reserved for a larger-scale piece with music to get the proceedings off to a rousing start.The result has allowed as varied a range of expression as you could imagine, sometimes cheeky and satirical, just as often pointed and polemical. (The Living Newspaper of legend knew a thing or two about agitprop.) The writers include regulars like E.V. Crowe, whose teasing “Shoe Lady” was at the Court last spring just as London theaters were shut down, and Tim Crouch, a maverick actor-writer whose solo play “Horoscopes” shows him at his most wicked as he eviscerates the 12 signs of the zodiac.Nando Messias outside the Royal Court performing a work by Hester Chillingworth.Helen MurrayThemes of empowerment and self-identity recur, just as various forms of the word “apocalypse” betray a prevailing unease. Normalcy exists only to be upended, not least in Crowe’s “The Tree, the Leg and the Axe,” in which two women (Letty Thomas and Alana Jackson, both terrific) sit cozily in the theater bookstore and exult in being “safe ones” far removed from the virus — no masks for them! — only to reveal a landscape marked by savagery.Several plays embrace the environment of the Court. Maud Dromgoole’s witty “Museum of Agony,” a solo piece delivered with sustained brio by Jackson, folds its simmering anger into a discussion about what to order from the theater bar. Episode 6 features an arresting turn from the performance artist Nando Messias, whose “Mi Casa Es Su Casa,” by Hester Chillingworth, concludes with the elegantly clad Messias rising from the outdoor steps of the Court and entering the playhouse, an invitation for us to follow scrawled on the performer’s back.Any of these themes could fuel an entire season in nonpandemic times, especially at the Court, known for keeping an eye on the mood of the moment. It has a history of plays embracing political tensions (one was Jez Butterworth’s “The Ferryman,” set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland) and of casting a wide geographic net. The theater also introduced the notion of the “angry young man” in 1956 with John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger,” and it courses with palpable emotion here.Tensions in the Middle East fuel several of the plays, like Dalia Taha’s “A Warning,” about planting the seed for revolution in Ramallah in the West Bank. The renewed violence in Northern Ireland propels the bitterly funny “Flicking the Shamrock” by Stacey Gregg. At four minutes, it is beautifully performed by Amanda Coogan and Rachael Merry as women whose preferred forms of sign language (BSL versus ISL) indicate a power-sharing that may not be going according to plan.Cian Binchy in Amy Bethan Evans’s “Neurodiverge-Aunt.” Helen MurrayThe Living Newspaper offers a theatrical potpourri comparable to the Lockdown Plays, which were a highlight of pandemic-era writing and folded in many a recognized name from the Court. As with any newspaper, you can dip in and out, alighting on whichever play catches the eye. I would happily return to Amy Bethan Evans’s cheekily titled “Neurodiverge-Aunt,” in which the wonderful Cian Binchy, who is autistic, ponders the limits of compassion allowed by an advice columnist: “I can’t be your friend because that’s unprofessional.”I laughed out loud at Leo Butler’s “In Memoriam (With Helen Peacock),” in which the actress Nathalie Armin looks back dispassionately at a forbidding list of recent deaths that includes “nuance” and “debate,” which has made it all the way from ancient Greece only to surrender to modern-day trolling.And cheers for Rory Mullarkey’s “This Play,” which describes theater of all styles and structures, including those that have been impossible during the pandemic. At one point, the actress Millicent Wong demands, “Just give me plays again now,” her voice rising. Any devotee of the Court, and its downstairs bar, would surely drink to that.The Living Newspaper continues online through May 9. More

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    in Television

    Seth Meyers: Chauvin Verdict Confirms ‘What We Saw With Our Own Eyes’

    “As we’ve explained on this show many times before, the culture and system of policing in this country must be dismantled and reformed,” Meyers said on Wednesday.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.Holding Out for Justice for AllOn Wednesday, as Derek Chauvin’s conviction in the killing of George Floyd continued to reverberate around the country, Seth Meyers said it was “at the very least a relief to have what we saw with our own eyes confirmed by a court of law, even if it’s still a sorrow moment for grief and mourning, because this one verdict alone does not mean justice is done.”“True justice would mean George Floyd would still be alive today. True justice would mean Black people no longer having to live in fear of being killed by police. But there was at least accountability, which is hopefully a comfort to George Floyd’s family, and all those mourning his death, and a first step toward true justice and the reform we so desperately need, because it is undeniably the case that this is not the end of the story. As we’ve explained on this show many times before, the culture and system of policing in this country must be dismantled and reformed.” — SETH MEYERSSamantha Bee and Stephen Colbert also described Chauvin’s conviction on all charges as just a step in the right direction on a long path to righting generations of injustice.“While yesterday’s guilty verdicts are a step toward justice, they don’t change the fact that a man was murdered and Black people are still being killed by police. We have a long way to go to make this a country that, I don’t know, actually treats everybody like human [expletive] beings?” — SAMANTHA BEE“Americans are still emotionally processing yesterday’s verdict by a Minnesota jury that found Derek Chauvin guilty on three counts in the murder of George Floyd. It brings up a lot of complex feelings, because no jury verdict can bring George Floyd back, but the news of this accountability was celebrated across the nation, in Minnesota, New York and across the street from the White House, in Black Lives Matter Plaza, where people were dancing and crying with relief. What a difference 11 months make: Last time they were crying from tear gas and rubber bullets.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, the problem of police violence against people of color is still far from solved. While this is a welcome verdict, it’s like wiping up a spill on the Titanic: Good job, now let’s focus on the water pooling around our ankles.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yeah, it should not take nine minutes of damning video to get some accountability. There’s a reason the Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t say, ‘With liberty and justice for all who are being filmed on an iPhone. Otherwise, sucks to be you!’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Misleaders Edition)“We can see the injustice with our own eyes, but there’s a whole industry of people, from police unions, to private prisons, to cable pundits, whose very lucrative job is to try to convince us that what we can see and hear with our own eyes and ears is not real. In fact, it’s worth going back and reading the initial police description of Floyd’s murder before the video came out to see just how deeply detached from reality it was. Here’s the official headline: ‘Man dies after medical incident during police interaction.’ It’s shocking. It’s hard to fathom. It’s like writing a book report about ‘Lord of the Flies’ called, ‘Kids successfully cooperate during tropical vacation, remain lifelong friends.’” — SETH MEYERS“Many Americans on Twitter, on various platforms, have spoken passionately, powerfully, about the verdicts and their significance yesterday, but none spoke less eloquently than Tucker Carlson of Fox News.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“After former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty yesterday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed the jury was intimidated into the guilty verdict by the protests and the Black Lives Matter movement, which is frustrating for Carlson, because he put a lot of work into intimidating that jury.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingSamantha Bee made the case for federal legalization of marijuana on Wednesday’s “Full Frontal.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe Olympic champion gymnast Simone Biles will join Jimmy Fallon on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutIn “Minari,” Steven Yeun, front, portrays a Korean immigrant who moves with his family to rural Arkansas in the 1980s; Lee Isaac Chung directed.David Bornfriend/A24With more female directors and people of color nominated for Oscars, the coronavirus pandemic seemed to have a positive effect on the diversity of this year’s Academy Awards. More