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    Stephen Colbert Applauds Biden’s ‘Endgame’ for Afghanistan’s ‘Infinity War’

    Colbert pointed out that the conflict “has been going on so long, the first ‘Iron Man’ movie opens with Tony Stark in Afghanistan.”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.Twenty Years LaterPresident Biden announced on Wednesday that American troops will leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11 after nearly 20 years of war.“When he was V.P., Joe was ‘the most senior dissenting voice against a surge in Afghanistan back in 2008 and 2009,’” Stephen Colbert said, quoting from a news report. “This war’s been going on so long, Biden’s been trying to get the troops out since he was just ‘regular’ old. Now he’s ‘Mountain Dew Baja Blast Extreme’ old.”“The cost: A tragic loss of human life and a duffel bag of your cash they called ‘ghost money.’ Because spending $2 trillion with no clear definition of victory is pretty spooky.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Biden is getting criticism from people who say if America leaves Afghanistan then it will become a failed state, and that is a real danger. But on the other hand, America has been there for 20 years — is it supposed to stay there forever? Because if that is going to be the case, then I mean, America should at least make Afghanistan a U.S. state. And the good news with that is it would eliminate Afghanistan’s terrorism problem completely, because we all know that once terrorists are American, they’re not terrorists anymore — they are just frustrated citizens who are having a bad day.” — TREVOR NOAH“During his remarks, Biden announced that withdrawal would begin on May 1. When the troops get home, they’re gonna be like, ‘Why are all the bars closed?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Despite the fact that 2,400 service members gave their lives, the ongoing war in Afghanistan received not even a mention at the presidential debates. Oh, but how can you expect a ground war in Asia to compete with the urgent threat of windmill cancer?” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (No Endgame Edition)“President Biden said today he will withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 11 during a speech in the White House Treaty Room, which is where former President George W. Bush announced the start of the war. In fact, all the decorations were still up.” — SETH MEYERS“The war in Afghanistan has been going on for almost 20 years. To put that another way, this war is too old to date Matt Gaetz.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Twenty years is a long time. Those are 17th-century European numbers. That’s the kind of war you fight because the Spanish contessa rejected your proposal to unite the kingdoms and eloped with the Duke of Saxony.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The war in Afghanistan may finally be over, and people, it’s about time. It’s been what, 19 years? No war should ever be old enough to serve in itself.” — TREVOR NOAH“It’s been going on so long, the first ‘Iron Man’ movie opens with Tony Stark in Afghanistan. This conflict’s older than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s an ‘Infinity War’ with no ‘Endgame.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingSamantha Bee opened Wednesday’s “Full Frontal” by tracking anti-Asian racism throughout American history.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightAnderson Cooper will appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” where he is likely to discuss his upcoming gig as guest host of “Jeopardy!”Also, Check This OutPhoto Illustration by Julia Panek; Photos via Getty ImagesCelebrities who gave product endorsements used to be accused of “selling out.” Now they’re hailed as savvy investors and giving the performances of their careers. More

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    The Brief, Brilliant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry

    The curtain rises on a dim, drab room. An alarm sounds, and a woman wakes. She tries to rouse her sleeping child and husband, calling out: “Get up!”It is the opening scene — and the injunction — of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun,” the story of a Black family living on the South Side of Chicago. “Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, had so much of the truth of Black people’s lives been seen on the stage,” her friend James Baldwin would later recall. It was the first play by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway. When “Raisin” won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for best play, Hansberry — at 29 — became the youngest American and the first Black recipient.How often the word “first” appears in the life of Hansberry; how often it will appear in this review. See also “spokeswoman” or “only.” Strange words of praise; meretricious even, in how they can mask the isolation they impose. Hansberry seemed to anticipate it all. At the triumphant premiere of “Raisin,” at the standing ovation and the calls for playwright to take the stage, she initially refused to leave her seat. “The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all,” she later wrote, “is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”Hansberry died in 1965, at 34, of cancer. The fact still feels intolerable, almost unassimilable — her death not merely tragedy but a kind of theft. “Look at the work that awaits you!” she said in a speech to young writers, calling them “young, gifted and Black” — inspiring the Nina Simone song of the same name. Look at the work that awaited her. She goaded herself on, even in the hospital: “Comfort has come to be its own corruption.”But a flurry of recent renewed interest attests to how much Hansberry did accomplish — the range of her interests and seriousness of her political commitments. There has been Imani Perry’s 2018 book “Looking for Lorraine” and Tracy Heather Strain’s 2017 documentary “Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart.” The pre-eminent Hansberry scholar Margaret B. Wilkerson has a book in the works.To this Soyica Diggs Colbert, a professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University, adds her contribution with “Radical Vision,” positioned as the first scholarly biography. Here is Hansberry resurrected from the archives, from her scripts, scraps and drafts. Through a series of close readings, Colbert examines “how her writing, published and unpublished, offers a road map to negotiate Black suffering in the past and present.”.To quote Simone de Beauvoir, an important influence, Hansberry could not think in terms of joy or despair “but in terms of freedom.” And she could not think of freedom as a destination but as a practice, full of intervals, regressions. It is the same idea one encounters in radical thinkers today, in Mariame Kaba’s notion of abolitionist feminism as a practice of freedom.A central aim of Colbert’s biography, as with Perry’s book and Strain’s documentary, is to reclaim Hansberry as the radical she was.In the public eye, she was the slim and pleasing housewife, the accidental playwright featured in a photo spread in Vogue. “Best Play Prize Won By a Negro Girl, 28,” The New York Herald Tribune declared. “Mrs. Robert Nemiroff,” The New York Times profiled her, “voluble, energetic, pretty and small.”Studies of Hansberry excavate her behind-the-scenes activism. There is the now famous story of her confrontation with Robert Kennedy, who as attorney general in 1963 convened a group of Black activists and intellectuals. Hansberry demanded Kennedy acknowledge racism as a moral problem, not a purely social one, before walking out in disgust.Colbert adds detail and dimension to Hansberry’s work — covering, for instance, the years she spent writing for Paul Robeson’s newspaper Freedom, reporting on the Mau Mau Uprising and child labor in South Africa. She held fund-raisers, and studied alongside Alice Childress and W.E.B. Du Bois. The mythos of “the first” obscures so much of the communality of Hansberry’s thinking. “We never talked about men or clothes or other such inconsequential things when we got together,” Nina Simone wrote of Hansberry in her memoir. “It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution — real girls’ talk.”A small interlude. Imagine another opening scene. Another dim, drab room. The alarm sounds. A woman wakes, tries to rouse a sleeping child. This is the beginning of another story set on Chicago’s South Side — Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” published in 1940. The parallels to me have always felt too uncanny for it not to be homage. Hansberry reviewed Wright’s fiction — a little uncharitably, to my mind. She had no patience for despair, for victims, really; her plays hinge on a decisive moment in which a character fends off complacency and takes a stand (quite often while making a thunderous speech about the necessity of taking a stand). There’s an odd narrowness to her vision. Her commitment to realism was absolute, a matter of moral principle. Interest in anomie, absurdity or paralysis was dismissed as liberal silliness, and an abdication of artistic responsibility.This stringency is curious, given Hansberry’s openness when it came to tactics, her insistence that the movement required a multipronged approach. “Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and nonviolent,” she wrote. “The acceptance of our present condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children.” This belief, Colbert argues, was her inheritance.Soyica Diggs Colbert, the author of “Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry.”Paul B. Jones/Georgetown UniversityHansberry was born on May 19, 1930, in the first Black-owned and -operated hospital in the nation. She was a “movement baby,” Colbert writes. Her father built a real estate empire by chopping up larger apartments into smaller units to provide housing for the waves of Black migrants who fled the South only to encounter deeply segregated Chicago.In 1937, the family moved to a white neighborhood — the story she revisits in “Raisin.” A segregationist landowners’ association challenged the sale of the house. White mobs harassed the family, on one occasion throwing a concrete mortar through the window. It narrowly missed Hansberry, who was 7 years old.These years taught Hansberry the necessity of fighting on all fronts. Her father filed a lawsuit, and Hansberry recalled her “desperate and courageous mother,” home without him, “patrolling our house all night with a loaded German Luger, doggedly guarding her four children.”Colbert’s study is loving, lavishly detailed, repetitive and a little stilted in the telling. (The notes, however, are splendid — fluent, rich and full of a feeling of discovery; here she permits herself to speak more freely.) The book circles a few points very dutifully — even as we feel Colbert itching to rove. She has a habit of making arresting asides and then refusing to follow their trail: “Hansberry’s writing suggests that she understood Blackness to implicitly include what we would now describe as queerness.”It’s not incidental, I think, that these asides often have to do with desire. Colbert pays forensic attention here to scripts, articles and stories, but takes less intellectual interest in the jottings and journals — to the self that was feverish, exultant, wary in its sexuality. The thinking gets pleasantly tousled and unsure here; Hansberry is off the podium and on her second glass of Scotch, wondering at her attraction to femininity — “the rather disgusting symbol of woman’s oppression.” And yet: “I am fond of being able to watch calves and ankles freely.” She divorced her husband in 1964 (they remained artistic collaborators) and began to move in lesbian circles that included Patricia Highsmith and Louise Fitzhugh, the author of “Harriet the Spy.” For years, she kept annual inventories of her loves and hates. (“My homosexuality” made both at age 29.) To read these notes, their shame and their thrill (At 32, under “I like”: “the inside of a lovely woman’s mouth”) recalls some of the pleasures of the private writing of Virginia Woolf and the fragmented diaries of Susan Sontag — two other writers capable of caginess about their attraction to women.Hansberry exhorted students to “write about our people, tell their story. Leave the convoluted sex preoccupations to the convoluted.” And yet out of her own convolutions, a new self was emerging, a new understanding. “I feel I am learning how to think all over again,” she wrote anonymously to a lesbian magazine.What would this thinking have wrought? Her impatience, her greed for work, for thought — for more life — is palpable until the end. The final journal entries burn. She is desperate for her lover (“I consumed her whole”) stuck in the hospital, she is hungry to return to her play. “The writing urge is on,” she wrote. “Only death or infirmity can stop me now.” More

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    Review: Close Quarters and Distant Love in ‘The Last Five Years’

    Casting Black actors and filming in a claustrophobic New York apartment revitalizes Jason Robert Brown’s popular two-character musical.Breakups, hookups, divorces, engagements: Even if you haven’t been afflicted yourself, you’ve surely heard stories of the dramatic changes Covid-19 has wrought on relationships, as though Cupid himself got feverish and went rogue.It’s unsurprising, given how the pandemic has redefined space, shrinking the square footage of our lives to a house or a studio apartment. Proximity became a test, and if you don’t believe me, the proof is in Out of the Box Theatrics and Holmdel Theater Company’s gorgeously performed and neatly contained virtual production of “The Last Five Years.”Plot-wise, you may already know the lowdown: Created by Jason Robert Brown, the 2001 musical is about the beginning and ending of a five-year relationship between two young New Yorkers. Each side of the story is enacted separately, and in opposite chronological order; Cathy (Nasia Thomas), a struggling actress, begins the tale in the future, after the fights and farewells, while Jamie (Nicholas Edwards), a talented novelist on the path to celebrity, starts in the past, in the exciting early days of courtship. Their paths only cross once, in the middle of the musical, during their wedding.Though the show is barely old enough to be of legal drinking age, it’s had many lives. Consider the myriad productions we’ve recounted in this newspaper: in 2002, at the Minetta Lane Theater; in 2012, at Crossroads Theater Company; in 2013, at Second Stage Theater; and in 2016, a benefit concert with Cynthia Erivo and Joshua Henry at Town Hall. I’ll even take a moment to recall the tragically limp 2015 film version, starring the otherwise button-cute Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan.And yet for all of this, “The Last Five Years” was and remains just … fine. The diverging timelines are often confusing, the songs workable but nothing extraordinary and the character portraits rely too heavily on the clockwork conceit.Which is what makes this virtual production, directed by Jason Michael Webb (the musical director of several Broadway shows), that much more delightful. For one, a Black Cathy and Jamie feel like a novelty, given how many productions cast white leads by default. And Webb’s arrangements, which anchor Brown’s score with more soul and strut, allow Thomas and Edwards to revitalize the songs.Thomas and Edwards in the filmed production, which, under Jason Michael Webb’s direction, stresses the claustrophobia of a troubled relationship.Gerald Malaval“Still Hurting” is a showcase for Thomas’s regal timbre, her vibrato recalling the crystal-clear tone of a knife clinked on a champagne glass.Edwards, who recently starred as the Son of God in the Berkshire Theater Group’s pandemic-era production of “Godspell,” wears the kind of toothy grin that could bring out the sun on a cloudy day, and his vocals are just as sunny, especially in his character’s effervescent early numbers.Later, Edwards, as an older, restless Jamie, slows down into the melancholic swells of “Nobody Needs to Know.” (Carin M. Ford’s sound editing and Nicole Maupin’s sound mixing expertly coax liveliness from the performers, by no means a given in a recorded musical.)The production’s most clever aspect, however, is what defines it as a Covid-19 theater experience: the penned-in feel of where and how it’s shot. Filmed inside a New York apartment, “The Last Five Years” recalls the claustrophobic bubble of a couple who remain stuck — because of love or codependency or, maybe, a pandemic — in each other’s orbits until something gives.Wall scrolls, tapestries, pictures, books and random Star Wars collectibles (like a familiar green baby alien) create the look of a fully lived-in space and also provide visual clues into the couple’s style and personality, details absent in the script (design is by Adam Honoré).Webb’s inspired direction keeps the characters, and the paths of their relationship, in a tight embrace. Cathy and Jamie move around each other, often inhabiting the same space, but their interactions often feel distanced. Because the couple meets only once in the timeline, there’s a sense of pantomime to their other scenes together, reactions and physical proximity but no dialogue. It’s fitting because we know, watching, that what we’re seeing is only one character’s memory of an event.At least Cathy and Jamie have beautiful accompanists to score their confrontations and declarations of love. Six musicians haunt the space like ghosts: Sitting on a couch, perched on a bed, they function as silent stand-ins for friends and roommates, before fading back into the background, or discreetly poke the fourth wall with a subtle smirk or nod at the singing characters.Meanwhile, Brian Bon’s videography waltzes with the contours of the apartment, angling high and low and peeking around corners to create the illusion of a labyrinthine setting for relationship purgatory.In purgatory, time doesn’t pass. The same may feel true during a pandemic. Two lovers stuck together but living in two different moments — one racing toward the future, one clinging to the past — that’s a story I’ve heard before.But in this robust production, it’s a story impressively freed, not trapped, by its physical and creative limitations.The Last Five YearsThrough April 25; ootbtheatrics.com More

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    Miami Outdoor Theater Hit Announces a New York Arrival

    “The Seven Deadly Sins,” a theatrical anthology series, will start off on June 23 at a series of storefront windows in the Meatpacking District.After enjoying a successful run in Miami Beach from late November through January, “The Seven Deadly Sins,” an outdoor theatrical anthology series that explores humanity’s basest impulses, will come to New York. Performances are scheduled to begin on June 23 and will take place in storefront windows in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.“I think it was important for us to do it in this moment of transition,” said Moisés Kaufman, the founder and artistic director of Tectonic Theater Project, which is producing the show with Madison Wells Live in association with Miami New Drama. “We wanted to be able to create something while the pandemic is still with us because it feels more like an act of defiance.”The New York version of “The Seven Deadly Sins” will feature short new plays by Ngozi Anyanwu, Thomas Bradshaw, MJ Kaufman, Jeffrey LaHoste, Ming Peiffer and Bess Wohl. Moisés Kaufman will also contribute a piece to the anthology and direct the production. Each playwright’s work will address a particular “sin”: pride, greed, wrath, envy, gluttony, sloth or lust.“We really wanted the event to not be a revival of an existing play,” Kaufman said in an interview on Wednesday. After having been through a pandemic, “the idea that new art can be born on the streets of Manhattan is something that excites us.”The 10-minute-long plays will be viewable from the street — by a masked, socially distanced audience, who will be provided with disposable earbuds to hear the actors in the storefronts. Escorted by a guide, they will watch the seven pieces in different orders. Before viewing the artistically rendered debauchery, ticket holders will have the opportunity to grab a drink at a pop-up bar called Purgatory.The Meatpacking District Business Improvement District is pitching in to identify performance venues and manage the production’s use of public space.Dael Orlandersmith and Nilo Cruz were among the writers who contributed plays to the twice-extended inaugural production, which was conceived of by Michel Hausmann, a co-founder of Miami New Drama with Moisés Kaufman.Storefront performances have cropped up in New York periodically since the pandemic began, but none so far have matched the scale or complexity of “The Seven Deadly Sins.” In March, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that live indoor and outdoor shows could resume in the state at limited capacity beginning April 2, paving the way for more ambitious projects to take root in the city this spring and summer.Tickets go on sale May 14. Casting information will be released soon. More

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    Colton Underwood, ‘Bachelor’ Star, Comes Out as Gay

    The 29-year-old former football player had written about questioning his sexuality in a memoir, published in 2020.Colton Underwood, a star of “The Bachelor” and a former football player, came out as gay in an interview with Robin Roberts that aired Wednesday on “Good Morning America.”He described 2020 as a year of self-reflection, one that “probably made a lot of people look in the mirror and confront what they were running from or what they’ve been putting off in their lives.”“I’ve ran from myself for a long time,” Mr. Underwood, 29, said in the interview. “I’ve hated myself for a long time. And I’m gay. And I came to terms with that earlier this year and have been processing it, and the next step in all of this was sort of letting people know.”He said that coming to understand his sexuality has been a “journey,” and now he is “the happiest and healthiest” he’s felt in his life. He had reached a low in 2020, he said, that led to thoughts of self-harm and suicide.“I got to a place where I didn’t think I was ever going to share this,” he said. “I would have rather died than say, ‘I’m gay.’ And I think that was sort of my wake-up call.”In his 2020 memoir, “The First Time: Finding Myself and Looking for Love on Reality TV,” Mr. Underwood described being confronted by his parents about his sexuality as a teenager.“‘You know, Colt, we’d still love you and support you if you were gay,’” he recalled his mother telling him.His father was more confrontational. “He’d pulled up the history of recent Google searches, which included gay porn sites and a variety of questions: ‘Am I gay? How do you know if you’re gay? Why don’t I like having sex with my girlfriend?’” Mr. Underwood wrote in the book. “At first, I denied responsibility. Then I owned up to having been curious. He asked if I wanted to talk about it. I said no, explaining that I’d figured things out on my own.”Mr. Underwood appeared on “The Bachelorette” in 2018 and quickly became a fan favorite on the reality dating show. But Becca Kufrin, the season’s star, worried that he was unprepared for a lifelong commitment and eliminated him after their “hometown” date, where she met his family. (The show’s producers had made Mr. Underwood’s sexual inexperience a major plot point.)He starred on “The Bachelor” in 2019, where again his virginity was a central theme. Near the end of the season, as the stress of the show increased, he said he was “done” with filming and “jumped the fence” of a resort in the Algarve region of Portugal in an effort to escape the set.After the show ended, Mr. Underwood and Cassie Randolph, 25, the front-runner of his season, began dating. Ms. Randolph’s family helped him recover from Covid-19 in March, around the time his memoir was published.The couple announced their split in May 2020. In November, Ms. Randolph filed a restraining order against Mr. Underwood, who she said had placed a tracking device on her car. Viewers of his “Good Morning America” segment inferred that this was the personal low to which he was alluding.The “Bachelor” franchise had its first onscreen same-sex relationship in 2019 on “Bachelor in Paradise.” Demi Burnett, who appeared on Mr. Underwood’s season of “The Bachelor,” and Kristian Haggerty, who was flown out to the set midseason, ended up getting engaged. (They later broke it off.)In its 20 years, the franchise has never featured an all-gay cast. More

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    Theater to Stream: ‘Assassins’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet’

    Highlights include a virtual production of Adam Rapp’s “The Sound Inside” and a new reading series by Roundabout Theater Company.In March of last year, Classic Stage Company announced that its revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins” was postponed. “The production was to begin performances on April 2,” the email said. “C.S.C. intends to resume rehearsals and present ‘Assassins’ in the coming months.”Fast forward 13 months, and the company is indeed presenting “Assassins,” or at least a stopgap event until the director, John Doyle, can fully proceed. Still, fans will enjoy “Tell the Story: Celebrating Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s ‘Assassins,’” a tribute to the show — which is told from the perspective of people who have tried, successfully and not, to kill an American president — featuring chats (including with Sondheim and Weidman), performances and testimonies, with actors from the 1990 premiere and the 2004 Broadway production joining the Classic Stage Company cast.This is a rare opportunity to hear, for example, three John Wilkes Booths (Victor Garber, Michael Cerveris and Steven Pasquale) talk about their craft — and killing Lincoln. Among Doyle’s most alluring casting moves: Tavi Gevinson as Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Judy Kuhn as Sara Jane Moore. Even the theater superfan Hillary Clinton will weigh in on the show’s impact. Thursday through Monday; classicstage.orgMaggie Bofill, left, and Ephraim Birney “The Sound Inside.”Pedro Bermudez‘The Sound Inside’A drama as suspenseful as any thriller, Adam Rapp’s brilliant two-character Broadway debut considers how fiction can be uncomfortably close and personal. TheaterWorks Hartford’s digital version was hatched by the stage director Rob Ruggiero and the filmmaker Pedro Bermúdez, with Maggie Bofill as a Yale professor of creative writing and Ephraim Birney (the son of Reed Birney) as a student both troubled and troubling. Through April 30; twhartford.orgFrom left, Jessie Buckley, Lucian Msamati and Josh O’Connor in “Romeo and Juliet.”Rob Youngson‘Romeo and Juliet’With Jessie Buckley (“Fargo”) and Josh O’Connor (“The Crown”) as the unluckiest lovers ever, the swoon factor is high in Simon Godwin’s staging of Shakespeare’s tragic romance for the National Theater. Watch also for Deborah Findlay (a Tony Award nominee for “The Children”) and Tamsin Greig, who almost hijack the show as Juliet’s nurse and mother. April 23-May 21; pbs.orgSecond ChancesAfter a prologue set in 1600, the Chilean theater collective Bonobo’s “Tú Amarás” (“You Shall Love”) jumps to a present-day medical conference, where the arrival of aliens weighs on the proceedings. The Baryshnikov Arts Center captured the play’s New York premiere in February 2020, and is now featuring it as part of the center’s digital season. April 22-29; bacnyc.orgAnother small show getting a welcome encore online is Lizzie Vieh’s dark comedy “Monsoon Season.” All for One Theater is streaming a performance filmed during the play’s 2019 run at the Rattlestick Theater in Manhattan. Danny (Richard Thieriot) and his ex-wife, Julia (Therese Plaehn), live in a world of tech-support jobs, wannabe YouTube influencers and crummy apartments. The couple are almost never onstage at the same time yet share a weird chemistry, until an even weirder finale. Through Sunday; afo.nyc‘The Norman Conquests’In 2009, a terrific British cast led by Stephen Mangan and Jessica Hynes barreled through an inspired Broadway revival of this Alan Ayckbourn trilogy, in which each play offers a different perspective on the same hectic weekend in the country. If you want another take on these farcical shenanigans, the streaming platform Acorn and Broadway HD have made available the British mini-series adaptation from 1978. It’s deliciously drenched in 1970s aesthetics — behold the brown palette — with Tom Conti in the pivotal role of Norman. acorn.tv and BroadwayHDFrom left, Florencia Lozano, Jimmy Smits and Daphne Rubin-Vega in “Two Sisters and a Piano.”via New Normal RepNew Normal RepIt takes moxie to create a theater company these days. Welcome to the emerging New Normal Rep, which is presenting Nilo Cruz’s “Two Sisters and a Piano.” In the play, which predates Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Anna in the Tropics” by a few years, the siblings of the title are under house arrest in the Havana of 1991. The cast of this virtual production, directed by the playwright, includes Daphne Rubin-Vega, a veteran of both shows, and Jimmy Smits, who was also in “Tropics.” April 21-May 23; newnormalrep.orgThe ReFocus ProjectThe powerhouse Roundabout Theater Company is launching an initiative to help rethink what constitutes the American theatrical canon. For the first year, which focuses on 20th-century works by Black playwrights, Roundabout has partnered with Black Theater United and unearthed promising texts for readings. The first is Angelina Weld Grimké’s “Rachel,” from 1916, which is thought to be the first professionally produced play by a Black woman in the United States (April 23-26). The following week brings Samm-Art Williams’s “Home,” originally produced by the Negro Ensemble Company before transferring to Broadway in 1980. (April 30-May 3). roundabouttheatre.orgThe Gay ’80sDid the recent Russell T Davies mini-series “It’s a Sin” leave you wanting more? Two solo shows explore a similar milieu: the lives of gay men in the 1980s. Ben SantaMaria’s semi-autobiographical solo play “Really Want to Hurt Me,” captured in 2018, depicts the coming-of-age of a young gay man (portrayed by Ryan Price) in 1984 Britain. bensantamaria.comThe protagonist of “Cruise” discovers he is H.I.V. positive in 1984 and spends the following four years living life to its fullest. Written and performed by Jack Holden, who was inspired by a story he heard while working at a hotline, this play is getting a digital run before a physical one (if all goes as planned) in May. Thursday through April 25; stream.theatreRosalyn Coleman in “The Woman’s Party.”via Clubbed Thumb‘The Woman’s Party’The Clubbed Thumb company, whose discoveries include “What the Constitution Means to Me” and “Tumacho,” is serializing Rinne Groff’s play, about the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment, over three episodes released weekly. The show, directed by Tara Ahmadinejad, tracks the arguments among feminist activists as they wrangled over goals and strategy. This should be catnip to the terrific cast, which includes Alma Cuervo, Marga Gomez, Marceline Hugot and Emily Kuroda. April 22 through August; clubbedthumb.orgBen Thompson, left, and David Ricardo-Pearce in rehearsal of “The Lorax.”Manuel Harlan, via The Old Vic‘The Lorax’As part of its In Camera series (“Lungs,” “Three Kings”), the Old Vic Theater in London is bringing back its 2015 production of Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” for a handful of livestreamed performances that jointly celebrate the book’s 50th anniversary and Earth Day. Max Webster directs David Greig and Charlie Fink’s adaptation of the eco-minded story. “I am the Lorax,” the title character says. “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” Wednesday through Saturday, with free performances for schools on April 22; oldvictheatre.com More

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    Jimmy Fallon Pokes Fun at Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine Pause

    “That’s right, they’re recommending a pause. Then anyone who’s ever been dumped was like: ‘Oh, boy. We know what “pause” means,’” Fallon 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.What Are the Odds?Johnson & Johnson was the talk of late night on Tuesday after the F.D.A. advised a pause in using its Covid vaccine because six recipients developed blood clots within two weeks of vaccination.“That’s right, they’re recommending a pause. Then anyone who’s ever been dumped was like: ‘Oh, boy. We know what “pause” means,’” Jimmy Fallon joked.“But statistically speaking, six is not that significant, since nearly seven million people in the U.S. have received Johnson & Johnson shots so far. That’s less than one in a million. To put that in perspective, it’s slightly better odds than you have of getting to visit Willy Wonka’s Fantabulous Chocolate Factory, which, for the record, kills or maims four out of the five children who step foot inside.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“You realize that means you’re more likely to get struck by lightning 10 times, which, by the way, is the origin story of Marvel’s most useless superhero.” — TREVOR NOAH“That means the odds are less than one in a million. It’s .0000009 — that’s more zeros than in the Trump family.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And don’t forget, yes, yes — you might have a 0.0001 percent chance of getting blood clots from this vaccine, but if you get coronavirus, you can get lung damage, heart damage, neurological damage, strokes, seizures, Guillain-Barré syndrome, immune disorders, erectile dysfunction and, get this, also blood clots.” — TREVOR NOAH“And today if you had a Johnson & Johnson appointment in New York, they gave out Pfizer instead. Yeah, it’s like going to a restaurant and hearing, ‘We’re out of Coke; is Dom Pérignon OK?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, it’s a really rare event. It’s like seeing a working self-checkout machine at CVS, that’s how rare.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Johnson v. Johnson Edition)“Honestly, if you ask me, I think it’s impressive Johnson & Johnson even made a vaccine with such a low chance of blood clots. Pfizer and Moderna are drug companies; Johnson & Johnson makes baby shampoo — I’m surprised their [expletive] works at all.” — TREVOR NOAH“When reached for comment, Johnson said it was Johnson’s fault, but Johnson pointed the finger at Johnson.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I blame the second Johnson. He never graduated high school.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Damn it, Johnson & Johnson, you had one jab.” — JAMES CORDEN“Johnson & Johnson is owned by the same family who owns the New York Jets, so don’t think of this as a pause; think of it more like a 50-year rebuild.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingTaylor Swift revealed the inspiration for her song “Hey Stephen” on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe comedian Margaret Cho will be on Wednesday’s “A Little Late With Lilly Singh.”Also, Check This OutNina Totenberg, Linda Wertheimer and Cokie Roberts in 1979.NPRLisa Napoli’s “Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie” chronicles four journalists who helped to establish NPR in the 1970s. More