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    Filmmaker’s Suit Says A&E Networks Suppressed ‘Watergate’ Series

    The director, Charles Ferguson, said in a lawsuit that an executive was concerned about the “negative reaction it would provoke among Trump supporters and the Trump administration.”“Watergate,” a four-hour documentary examining the scandal that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency, had its world premiere in 2018 at the Telluride Film Festival, an event known to foretell future Oscar nominations. It went on to be shown at the New York Film Festival and several others, collecting positive reviews that highlighted allusions the series made to the Trump presidency.It aired on the History Channel over three days in early November, just before the 2018 midterm elections. To the filmmaker’s surprise, it was never broadcast on American television again.The writer and director of the documentary, the award-winning filmmaker Charles Ferguson, is now suing the company that owns the History Channel, A&E Networks, asserting it suppressed the dissemination of his mini-series because it was worried about potential backlash to allusions the documentary makes to the Trump White House.In the lawsuit filed Friday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Ferguson accuses the company of attempting to delay the documentary until after the 2018 midterm elections because a History Channel executive feared it would offend the White House and Trump supporters.“He was concerned about the impact of ‘Watergate’ upon ratings in ‘red states,’” the lawsuit said of the executive, Eli Lehrer, “as well as the negative reaction it would provoke among Trump supporters and the Trump administration.”Mr. Ferguson resisted that plan, and the mini-series ultimately aired shortly before Election Day. But the filmmaker contends the documentary was given short shrift, despite acclaim in the film industry and previous assurances that it would receive “extremely prominent treatment.”The lawsuit describes the treatment of the documentary as part of a “pattern and practice of censorship and suppression of documentary content” at A&E Networks, and cites several others that it says were subject to attempted manipulation for political or economic reasons.A&E called the lawsuit meritless and the assertion that the documentary was suppressed “absurd,” saying its decision to not rebroadcast it additional times was based on lower than expected ratings.In a statement, the company said it has routinely given a platform to storytellers “to present their unvarnished vision without regard for partisan politics.” It pointed to its partnership with former President Bill Clinton, formed during the Trump administration, to produce a documentary series about the American presidency and the fact that a subsidiary, Propagate, had produced the four-part docu-series “Hillary,” on the life of Hillary Clinton.“A&E invested millions of dollars in this project and promoted it extensively,” the company said of “Watergate” in its statement. “Among other efforts, we hired multiple outside PR agencies, provided advance screeners to the press, and submitted it to film festivals and for awards consideration.”Charles Ferguson, whose film “Inside Job” won an Oscar in 2011, says that A&E Networks did not fulfill a promise to fully promote his documentary on the Watergate scandal.Associated PressMr. Ferguson’s “Watergate” is a deep dive into events set off by the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters and the cover up by the Nixon administration. It includes interviews with people who were involved in the events — such as John Dean, President Nixon’s White House counsel — as well as reporters who covered them, including Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Lesley Stahl. The New York Times’s co-chief film critic, A.O. Scott, wrote that the documentary tells a story that is “part political thriller and part courtroom drama, with moments of Shakespearean grandeur and swerves into stumblebum comedy,” though other reviews panned the film’s re-creations by actors.Mr. Ferguson, who is best known for his Oscar-winning 2010 documentary “Inside Job,” said that when he started pitching the project in 2015, he imagined it as a straightforward “historical detective story.” But, the suit says, a drumbeat of events involving the Trump administration made him realize the documentary’s renewed political relevance. In 2017, he watched as Mr. Trump fired his F.B.I. director, as the Justice Department appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials, and as the potential for impeachment loomed.The series — which Mr. Ferguson said cost about $4.5 million to produce — does not mention Mr. Trump’s name, but the documentary’s subtitle, “How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President,” was a nod toward his administration.The lawsuit hinges on a conversation between Mr. Ferguson and A&E executives in June 2018, before the film was released. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Lehrer, executive vice president and head of programming at the History Channel, said at that meeting that he would seek to delay the premiere of “Watergate” and “sharply lower” its publicity profile, expressing concern about its relevance to the politics of the moment and the reaction it would provoke from the Trump administration and Trump supporters.Mr. Ferguson has worked to collect pieces of evidence to support his contentions, among them an email he provided to The New York Times in which Mr. Lehrer acknowledged discussing the bipartisan nature of the network’s audience. In the email, Mr. Lehrer also denied the network was trying to suppress the documentary, writing that the rationale for exploring different airdates was to avoid the series getting swallowed up by heavy sports programming and election coverage.Mr. Ferguson’s contract did not specify how many times the network would show the documentary or whether it would receive theatrical distribution, though successful ones are typically broadcast multiple times.Nielsen ratings from the time show that “Watergate” earned only 529,000 viewers when it aired, including seven days of delayed viewing, compared to History Channel’s other multi-episode documentaries like “Grant” which bowed in May to 4.4 million viewers, or “Washington,” which drew an audience of 3.3 million in February 2020.Had the ratings been stronger, A&E says, it would have broadcast the series multiple times and it would have had a greater chance of securing additional licenses either with a streaming service or with international distributors.“The fact is that Watergate, which premiered in prime time on Mr. Ferguson’s desired date, drastically underachieved in the ratings, which was disappointing to all of us,” the company said in its statement.Mr. Ferguson’s documentary chronicles the aftermath of the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, which started the downfall of the Nixon presidency.  Associated PressBut the lawsuit says A&E Networks damaged Mr. Ferguson financially by, among other things, failing to make any “meaningful” distribution deals or arrange for advertising outside of the network. It says Mr. Ferguson traded a lower-than-normal director’s fee in his contract for a higher cut of the royalties, believing that if the documentary was successful, the majority of the viewership revenue would stem from sales to streaming services, foreign cable channels and other customers.One of the A&E executives named as a defendant, Michael Stiller — the vice president of programming and development at the History Channel — had told Mr. Ferguson that there would be rebroadcasts and required him to make slightly shorter versions of the episodes for daytime slots, but those never occurred, according to the lawsuit.The company noted the documentary is available on several services, which include iTunes, Amazon Prime Video and Google Play, including its own video-on-demand platform, History Vault.Mr. Ferguson’s lawsuit argues that the company executives interfered with his contract, and defamed him by telling industry executives he was difficult to work with, thereby costing him work. In addition to Mr. Lehrer and Mr. Stiller, the other named defendants include Robert Sharenow, the network’s president of programming, and Molly Thompson, its former head of documentary films. Ms. Thompson declined to comment. Mr. Lehrer, Mr. Stiller and Mr. Sharenow did not respond to requests for comment.The lawsuit cites several examples where Mr. Ferguson said he learned about conflicts between A&E executives and documentary filmmakers, including a dispute concerning “Gretchen Carlson: Breaking the Silence,” a 2019 documentary on Lifetime about sexual harassment in working-class industries. The suit says A&E executives questioned including information about McDonald’s, an advertiser. The information was ultimately included after the producers fought for it, but the episode was only aired once, on a Saturday at 10 p.m., the lawsuit said. A spokeswoman for Ms. Carlson declined to comment.The lawsuit also says Mr. Ferguson learned about a dispute regarding a 2019 A&E documentary called “Biography: The Trump Dynasty” that examines Mr. Trump’s life and family history. According to the lawsuit, A&E executives wanted the production company behind the documentary, Left/Right Productions, to add in the voice of a “Trump apologist” who could “justify” aspects of Mr. Trump’s background, a request that the suit says generated “significant tensions” between the network executives and the production company executives.Left/Right, which works with The New York Times on some documentary productions, did not respond to requests for comment. The Times did not have a role in any of the programming cited in Mr. Ferguson’s suit.Jack Begg contributed research. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Coded Bias’ and ‘Tina’

    PBS will air a documentary that examines the biases embedded in algorithms and other technology. And HBO to debut a documentary about Tina Turner.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, March 22-28. Details and times are subject to change.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: CODED BIAS 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The filmmaker Shalini Kantayya (“Catching the Sun”) examines the ways biases and inequities have become embedded in algorithms and other technology in this, her latest documentary. Kantayya focuses on the M.I.T. Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini, who has done prominent work on the subject. (Buolamwini was a witness at a congressional hearing on facial-detection technology in 2019, an event that the documentary covers.) Kantayya also looks at how these digital biases play out in the real world using examples in the United States and abroad, where algorithms can determine who qualifies for certain housing or who gets stopped by law enforcement. The documentary “tackles its sprawling subject by zeroing in empathetically on the human costs,” Devika Girish wrote in her review for The New York Times last year. She added that the movie “moves deftly between pragmatic and larger political critiques, arguing that it’s not just that the tech is faulty; even if it were perfect, it would infringe dangerously on people’s liberties.”AFRAID: FEAR IN AMERICA’S COMMUNITIES OF COLOR 9 p.m. on CNN. Just days after killings at three Atlanta-area massage parlors amplified fears about the recent rise of violence against Asian-Americans, the CNN anchors Amara Walker, Anderson Cooper, Victor Blackwell and Ana Cabrera will host a discussion about the state of hate in America, and how crimes like last week’s terrorize communities of color.TuesdayBUGSY MALONE (1976) 8 p.m. on TCM. Pinstripe suits and potty-mouth language come together in this bizarre mobster musical satire, which casts a group of young actors (including Jodie Foster and Scott Baio) in a prohibition-era gangster story. The movie’s writer and director, Alan Parker, replaces bullets with whipped cream and Model Ts with toy pedal cars; and his story is injected with musical numbers by the songwriter Paul Williams. The results, Vincent Canby wrote in his 1976 review for The Times, are “wildly uneven but imaginative and stylish.”WednesdayA scene from “Fast-Forward: Look Into Your Future.”FLX Entertainment/Twin Cities PBSFAST-FORWARD: LOOK INTO YOUR FUTURE 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Hollywood makeup artists might get jealous of the technology used in this documentary, which follows several families who experiment with suits designed by M.I.T. researchers that allow their wearers to get a preview of what their bodies might feel like in old age. Narrated by Rosario Dawson, with original music by Andrew Bird, the documentary uses the technology as a tool to encourage the families to plan for the future.ThursdayCASINO (1995) 6 p.m. on VH1. If the whipped-cream Tommy guns in “Bugsy Malone” (airing Tuesday) are too childish for you, consider instead this over-the-top Scorsese mob movie, where the bullets are real and the liquor is consumed legally. The story, based on a nonfiction book by the journalist Nicholas Pileggi, spans years. It revolves around a mobster (Robert De Niro) whose gig managing a Las Vegas casino leads to murder and betrayal. “Scorsese has been here and done this already in ‘Goodfellas,’ but not with his new film’s blistering bitterness or its peacock extravagance,” Janet Maslin wrote in her 1995 review for The Times. “The long, astonishing Copacabana sequence in ‘Goodfellas,’” she added, “was only a warm-up for this.”FridayDanny Glover in “To Sleep With Anger.”SVC Films, via Kobal CollectionTO SLEEP WITH ANGER (1990) 10 p.m. on TCM. The filmmaker Charles Burnett paints a surreal portrait of a family in this poetic drama, which was Burnett’s third feature. Paul Butler and Mary Alice play a mother and father in Los Angeles. The couple’s relationship, and more, start to waver after an old friend, Harry (Danny Glover), who they haven’t seen in years, arrives at their doorstep out of the blue. When “To Sleep with Anger” was reissued by the Criterion Collection in 2019, The Atlantic’s David Sims referred to it as “one of the best movies of the 1990s, an American masterpiece that remains relatively unheralded almost 30 years after its release.”SaturdayA scene from “Tina.”Rhonda Graam/HBOTINA (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. The life of Tina Turner — her rise to stardom, her escape from an abusive relationship, her cementation as a figure of rock resilience — is revisited in this new documentary from Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin (“Undefeated”). The film combines archival footage with present-day interviews, including with Angela Bassett, Oprah Winfrey and the playwright Katori Hall, who was the lead book writer for the recent musical “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.” Expect Turner herself, who is also interviewed, to bring her legendary persona down to earth. “I don’t necessarily want to be a ‘strong’ person,” she told The Times in 2019. “I had a terrible life. I just kept going. You just keep going, and you hope that something will come.”THE 52ND N.A.A.C.P. IMAGE AWARDS 8 p.m. on BET and CBS. You’d be hard pressed to find an awards season event more wide-ranging than the N.A.A.C.P.’s Image Awards, which honor film, television, music and writing all at once. Nominees this year include Regina Hall, who is up for the best actress in a comedy series prize for “Black Monday”; Delroy Lindo, a best actor in a motion picture nominee for his performance in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods”; and the writer Brit Bennett, whose novel “The Vanishing Half” is up for the top literary-fiction prize.SundayGREAT PERFORMANCES: MOVIES FOR GROWNUPS AWARDS WITH AARP THE MAGAZINE 8 p.m. on PBS. At 59, George Clooney probably isn’t quite old enough to qualify for senior discounts at his local multiplex yet, but he was still on the cover of AARP’s magazine earlier this year. He’s also slated to receive a career achievement award at this year’s edition of the AARP’s awards show, which recognizes films and TV programs. The NBC anchor Hoda Kotb will host. More

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    Go or No? An Indoor Theater Invitation (at Last!) Needs an R.S.V.P.

    Two critics, hungry for live performance, weigh whether they’re ready to take a health risk for “Blindness,” which opens in New York next month.On Monday afternoon, theater critics in and around New York City received something they hadn’t seen in more than a year: an invitation to an in-person, indoor performance at an Off Broadway house. “Blindness,” Simon Stephens’s adaptation of the novel by José Saramago, directed by Walter Meierjohann and prerecorded by Juliet Stevenson, would open at the Daryl Roth Theater on April 6.The production, which played in London in August, involves no live actors, but it does invite live, masked, temperature-checked audience members to attend in pods of two. And if you are a theater fan still waiting on a vaccine, it also invites conflicting emotions — excitement, indecision, eagerness, fear — because any social interaction involves risk. Is theater (and particularly a show without actors) worth it? Two New York Times critics took to Twitter, and then to email and a Google doc, to try to sort it out. Here is their edited conversation.LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES Alexis, when you saw the invitation, what went through your mind?ALEXIS SOLOSKI Panic, basically. I’d heard about the show and I am breathlessly (wrong word, I know) excited for the return of in-person theater, but I won’t be vaccinated for months and I don’t feel ready to make this moral/professional/hygienic calculus. You?COLLINS-HUGHES When I think about returning to indoor theater, there are things that scare me and things that make me feel safe. I am terrified by anything involving poor air quality, or people eating and drinking, or people singing or playing wind instruments or otherwise breathing hard, like from dancing. “Blindness” has none of those. And when I think about the Daryl Roth Theater, I think about how airy it is. That’s huge for me.SOLOSKI I mostly think about “De La Guarda,” the longtime show it hosted, which was one big, sweaty upskirt shot. But to your point, “Blindness” involves no human actors. Why would I want to take on the associated risks of subway and lobby and the mask habits of other patrons for something that doesn’t even offer the energetic flow between performer and audience?COLLINS-HUGHES Fair point. I’m not vaccinated yet either and have no idea when I will be. To me, taking what feels like a minimal risk is partly about gathering, partly about theater design being a strong lure for me — and designers have been left out of a ton of online work. But I sensed when you raised the subject on Twitter and we started chatting (and it took our editor all of three minutes to intervene, suggesting we have that conversation here instead) that you weren’t feeling comfortable yet.SOLOSKI I wasn’t alone. A lot of our colleagues voiced mixed feelings, too, though some had already R.S.V.P.’d. And a London acquaintance piped up to say that he had seen it at the Donmar Warehouse and found the safety protocols impressive. But when I read that invitation, I felt nauseated. Which came as a huge surprise. Because I thought I’d be desperate to go. I dream about theater most nights. And even though this will probably sound insufferable, it’s something I actively mourn. I also miss the me who went to the theater, who put on hard pants and lipstick (remember lipstick?) and left my home as a functional adult who did professional stuff in the company of other apparently functional adults. I miss that almost as much as I miss the transport that theater offers. But no, I don’t feel comfortable. And then I feel like a wimp for feeling that discomfort.COLLINS-HUGHES One valuable lesson we learned right away, a year ago, is that it can be very brave to follow your gut and not do the thing that’s reflexive — like going to the theater, like keeping a show running — if it doesn’t feel safe. Theater does not work when the audience, or the artists, have to sit there and worry about something other than the show.SOLOSKI Yeah, but does it work when you’re at home and children are yelling and the temptation to check your phone or fold laundry is just overwhelming?COLLINS-HUGHES Wait, I thought you got into the online stuff?SOLOSKI I did. I do. Particularly when there’s a participatory or a gaming element. I am extremely competitive! But not when it doesn’t feel live. Then again, will something like “Blindness,” in which you listen on headphones to a prerecorded voice, feel live anyway?Signs promoting “Blindness” in New York include review excerpts of last summer’s well-received London production.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCOLLINS-HUGHES I just hunger for the in-person element, even if there are no in-person actors. The way I think about the safety of indoor theater is that it has to have what makes outdoor theater relatively safe: people in masks (“Blindness” requires them, and mine will be doubled), at a distance from one another, in a space with excellent ventilation. But I am surprised to see, when I check on the websites for “Blindness” or the Shed, for example, that there’s no mention of contact tracing, like they have at the Park Avenue Armory or at “Frozen” in Australia. [Note: After this article was published, publicists for “Blindness” said that a fuller description of safety protocols, including contact tracing and a medical questionnaire, was on the Daryl Roth Theater’s website.]SOLOSKI Laura, why didn’t we become critics in Australia? I guess I would feel more comfortable if audience members had to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test, like the one I had to show when I visited a television soundstage recently.COLLINS-HUGHES The Armory is requiring on-site rapid testing as well as a health questionnaire in advance, and the Shed has a testing requirement and a questionnaire. Those make me feel a little better than a temperature check.SOLOSKI Temperature checks are basically useless.COLLINS-HUGHES Over the summer, I went to a tiny indoor show, where the guy at the door asked where I’d traveled lately, and specifically inquired about a few virus hot spots in New York City. That felt reassuring.SOLOSKI What do you make of the edict that no single seats are available for “Blindness” and that people have to arrange to come in twos or purchase the extra seat?COLLINS-HUGHES I’m wildly opposed to that. I’ve spent the past year by myself, am ravenous for anything resembling ordinary life and am not thrilled to feel unwelcome as a single person at the theater. There has to be a way to make the economics of socially distanced audiences work less cruelly. But have you decided for certain not to go to “Blindness”? What would make you feel OK about going back to indoor theater?SOLOSKI I’ve mostly decided, at least insofar as my natural and wild ambivalence allows. Rapid tests would help, but the vaccine seems so close now and for an indoor performance, especially this indoor performance, I’d rather wait. I can turn off the lights and put on headphones right here at home. You’re going?COLLINS-HUGHES I am. And I will report back.SOLOSKI Good luck. Don’t get Covid! Even Juliet Stevenson isn’t worth it. More

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    Should the American Theater Take French Lessons?

    Arts workers are protesting closings and occupying playhouses all over France. On Broadway, that drama has yet to open.The only march you’re likely to see on Broadway this year is the kind with trombones in “The Music Man.”And if you ever hear people say the Majestic Theater has been forcibly occupied, you can be pretty sure they’re referring to “The Phantom of the Opera.”Which is why the news last week that thousands of protesters were marching in France to demand the reopening of theaters there seemed so difficult to comprehend here. Our theaters draw thousands outside only if they are lining up to see the Rockettes inside.Nor were the French merely marching. Dozens of protesters also forced their way into playhouses across the country — including three, in Paris and Strasbourg, designated as national theaters — to demand that cultural institutions, shut down since October, be treated like other businesses, some of which have been allowed to reopen.Also on their agenda: an extension of tax breaks for freelance arts workers, or “travailleurs d’art.”That the phrase “arts workers” (let alone “national theaters”) barely registers in American English is part of a bigger problem here — and suggests a bigger opportunity.The pandemic has been a disaster for the theater, of course, potentially more damaging to performing arts industries than to any other. And yet, in the long run, if there is a long run, how we repair our stages could also lead to long-needed changes that would elevate the people who work on, under and behind them.Not that those workers are likely to endorse the immediate reopening the French are seeking; by a strange quirk of political culture, the push for a return to normalcy at all costs that is a calling card of our right wing seems to be a progressive position there. The protesters — mostly students and actors and other theater workers — frame art-making as a matter of both liberty and labor. They see themselves as frontline workers; one of the signs they carried read: “Opening essential.”Cultural workers protesting the government closure of arts institutions, which are deemed nonessential, during the pandemic.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via ShutterstockHere, the unions representing actors and other theater workers make the opposite argument: They worry that a too-swift reopening for the sake of the economy would expose their members to unacceptable risk. Singing, trumpeting and spitting while speechifying are occupational hazards most other professions don’t face.Which is why, even in states like Texas and Montana that have ended mask mandates and declared themselves open for business without restriction, theaters aren’t on board. The Alley Theater, in Houston, is offering only virtual performances of its new production of “Medea” this month; the season at Montana Repertory Theater, in Missoula, remains a remote one regardless of state rules.But if the specific motivation for the French protests seems unpopular here, the underlying assumptions about art are ones Americans should heed. Begin with how we look at our theater, and how it looks at itself.Even when producing work that becomes a part of the national conversation — “Hamilton,” “Slave Play,” the Public Theater’s Trump-alike “Julius Caesar” in 2017 — our musicals and dramas are too often seen as inconsequential entertainment. The frequent abuse of the phrase “political theater” to describe cheap and manipulative appeals to sentiment tells you in what regard our theater is reflexively held.But if that attitude toward content is uninformed and condescending, the attitude toward the people who create it is worse.There is no tradition in the United States, as there is in France, of treating artists as skilled laborers, deserving of the same respect and protections provided to those who work in other fields. It doesn’t help that American unions are so weak compared to those in France, where nearly all workers are covered by collective bargaining contracts. The comparable figure here has hovered around 12 percent for years.Behind the statistics is an abiding strain of prejudice, dating back to the Puritan settlement, that sees cultural work, especially stage acting, as a species of child’s play or worse. In “An Essay on the Stage,” Timothy Dwight IV, a Yale president in the early 19th century, wrote that those who indulge in playgoing risk “the loss of the most valuable treasure, the immortal soul.”Or as a German character in “Sunday in the Park With George” puts it: “Work is what you do for others, Liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”Both attitudes are very nearly backward, but that doesn’t mean they’re not widely maintained even today. Indeed, they are enshrined in the stinginess of American governmental support for the arts, which remains a pittance. Cultural spending per capita in France is about 10 times that in the United States.Which is one reason there are six national theaters in France, not just the three occupied last week. More than 50 other cultural spaces around the country, including the Opera House in Lyon, which students entered on Monday, have now been occupied as well, the protesters say. To occupy a building (while permitting rehearsals within it to continue) may be a misdemeanor, but it is also a sign of love and ownership.It’s hard to imagine such an occupation in the United States; for one thing, there is no national theater. And who would play the role of the actress at the French film industry’s César awards ceremony this weekend who protested her government’s lack of support by stripping off a strange costume — was it a bloody donkey? — to reveal the words “No culture, no future” scrawled across her naked torso?But ours is a country that treasures its cultural heritage without wanting to support the labor that maintains it.Perhaps that’s changing, if less dramatically than in France. Though the pandemic has left many theater artists without work — and, often, without the health insurance that comes with it — the relief bill President Biden signed last week will make it cheaper for them to obtain coverage elsewhere. The bill also includes $470 million in emergency support for arts and cultural institutions.Organizations like Be an #ArtsHero are working to expand that relief even further. And hundreds of theater makers have used their talents to raise millions for organizations, like the Actors Fund, that are helping their colleagues survive the pandemic.But arts workers shouldn’t be remembered just in emergencies and just as charity. Nor should they be remembered solely for their economic impact. It is often argued that Broadway alone contributes $14.7 billion to New York City’s economy, as if that were the point when it is really just the bonus.What the French protests challenge us to consider is that the arts are neither an indulgence nor a distraction; they are fundamental not just to the economy but also to the moral health of a country. They are worth marching for.Surely our theater artists, those highly skilled laborers, can figure out, if anyone can, how to demonstrate that idea — if necessary, in front of the Majestic Theater, with trombones and Rockettes in tow. More

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    ‘Romeo y Julieta’ Review: Young Love in Two Languages

    Lupita Nyong’o and Juan Castano star in a podcast adaptation that delivers the poetry — in Spanish and English — but not the fire.The scheme is so harebrained that it belongs more to farce than tragedy, but Shakespeare decided otherwise. In “Romeo and Juliet,” a trusted friar gives the desperate Juliet a potion to drink so she can fake her own demise.For a good “two and forty hours,” she will seem dead, he tells her, “and then awake as from a pleasant sleep.”Awake in a tomb full of corpses, he means, but that’s a mere detail. In countless productions, the hatching of this plan is where the plot flies off the rails. What is he, nuts, suggesting this to a teenager who’s come to him for help?Yet in the Public Theater’s bilingual audio production “Romeo y Julieta,” the extraordinary Julio Monge portrays Friar Lawrence with such warm ease and steadiness that the ploy seems — well, still exceedingly unwise, but almost persuasive. And the clergyman has his usual fine motive for aiding Julieta and her Romeo: to ally their warring families, turning their “rancor to pure love.”The program note for this production suggests that the Public, the most populist of Off Broadway theaters, has a similar motive concerning our own fractured culture. If this free podcast is better at conveying the poetry than the pulse of Shakespeare, its intention is laudable anyway.Starring Lupita Nyong’o as Julieta and Juan Castano as Romeo, the play is spoken in English and Spanish. It’s not a Sharks and Jets arrangement, either; the Montagues and Capulets are fluent in both languages. Switching nimbly from one to the other, midspeech or midsentence, is a means of welcoming speakers of either into the audience, and uniting us there — albeit at a distance from one another.Directed by Saheem Ali, the play is gently adapted by Ali and Ricardo Pérez González, and based on a Spanish translation by Alfredo Michel Modenessi. Presented with WNYC Studios, the recording (with original music by Michael Thurber and sound design by Bray Poor and Jessica Paz) comes with a downloadable script showing every line in Spanish and English, making it easier to follow along.Each actor in the cast of 22 takes great care with verbal clarity. Interpretive depth is harder to come by; textures of humor and passion, joy and grief, are scarce. Any scene where Monge appears, though, finds the others upping their games.That includes the tantalizingly paired Nyong’o and Castano, whose lucid performances never ignite the rebellious adolescent fervor that drives these just-met, I-would-die-for-you lovers to their irrational extremes. Romeo and Julieta are kids, with all the tendencies toward personal drama of people their age, yet we don’t sense that in them or in Romeo’s friends.It’s not a lack of talent on anyone’s part. What it feels like, largely, is a pandemic side effect. This show’s many artists couldn’t gather in a room to dig into characters and relationships; they rehearsed and recorded over Zoom. And when we listen to the podcast, and need the script to figure out who’s who in a crowd or a fight, we yearn for costume and gesture, for bodies in space.This “Romeo y Julieta” is a production in need of a stage, when that’s possible again. For now, it’s waiting on its third dimension.Romeo y JulietaAvailable at publictheater.org, wnycstudios.org and on all major podcast platforms. More

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    Theater Actors Step Up Push for Union to Allow Them to Work

    Nearly 2,000 performers have petitioned Actors’ Equity for guidelines that will speed up a return to the stage.As states around the nation move toward reopening, theater actors and stage managers are protesting what they see as their union’s slow pace toward helping them get back to work.Nearly 2,000 members of Actors’ Equity have signed a petition that asks the simple question, “When are we going to talk about the details of getting back to work?”The petition was spearheaded by Timothy Hughes, who, in an art-meets-reality echo, is a member of the workers’ chorus in “Hadestown.”“We feel unheard, we feel left out, and we feel way farther behind than any other industry when it comes to putting in place practical protocols that would get us back to work,” Hughes said in an interview.Among the signatories are the Tony Award winners Stephanie J. Block, Rachel Bay Jones, Karen Olivo and Ali Stroker, and numerous Tony nominees, among them Aaron Tveit, Eva Noblezada, Rob McClure, Ato Blankson-Wood, Robyn Hurder, Emily Skinner, Brandon Uranowitz and Max von Essen.The signers’ goals are basic: they are asking for a meeting with their own union officials, which seems likely to happen soon. “We are hopeful that the issue of realistic and detailed protocols to return to work can be prioritized so that funds can return to our union,” the letter says.But the letter, which was delivered to Equity on Tuesday and is being updated daily with more signatures, reflects longstanding frustration, both by some union members and some producers, over working with Equity through the course of the pandemic.Since the deadly coronavirus outbreak began, the union has barred its members from working on any productions in the country unless they have safety plans it has OK’d. Equity lists on its website 22 theaters where it has approved productions, but that’s a tiny fraction of the theaters in America, and some producers have said they’ve found the union nonresponsive or obstructionist.Frustration appears to be growing in part because Equity members have for months been seeing actors in film and television, who are represented by a different union, SAG-AFTRA, returning to work. Hughes said that a recent set of revisions to the union’s safety protocols, which have been updated regularly throughout the pandemic, was troubling because it included requirements, like private transportation for actors to theaters, that seemed prohibitively expensive.Equity, which represents about 51,000 actors and stage managers, did not immediately offer a comment, but on Monday the union’s president, Kate Shindle, and executive director, Mary McColl, wrote to members acknowledging that the landscape is shifting.“We are proud that our safety protocols have kept workers safe, but we also know that what we have done so far during the pandemic is not enough to bring us back to where we were,” they wrote. “When enough vaccine is available for everyone, a fully vaccinated company will have less risk, which will mean streamlined safety protocols and a faster return to work.” More

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    in Television

    Carl Reiner’s Archives Will Go to the National Comedy Center

    The collection of papers, artifacts and memorabilia spans Reiner’s career and work on “Your Show of Shows,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and beyond.When Carl Reiner died last June, he left a hole in the comedy firmament that no performer, writer or director will be able to fill.Reiner, who would have turned 99 on Saturday, also left behind a trove of documents, artifacts and personal memorabilia, working on TV programs like “Your Show of Shows” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and films like “Oh, God!” and “The Jerk.”Now this personal archive will live on: his family is donating it to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, N.Y., so that current fans and future generations can appreciate the breadth of his accomplishments.“It’s a lot there,” said Rob Reiner, the actor and filmmaker who is Carl Reiner’s oldest child. “We’re talking about an 80-year career. He lived to 98 and he started when he was in his late teens. As I like to say, my father was on television before we owned a television.”Carl Reiner’s archives contain writing and versions of scripts from just about every project he worked on and every phase of his career. They include sketches he composed as a cast member on “Your Show of Shows,” where he worked with writers like Mel Brooks and Neil Simon, as well as early drafts of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” which Reiner created and originally titled “Head of the Family,” intending it as a starring vehicle for himself.Reiner, right, with Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke on the set of their TV series.Carl Reiner Collection/National Comedy CenterOther materials include Reiner’s annotated screenplays for “The Jerk,” “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” “The Man With Two Brains” and “All of Me,” which he directed and which starred Steve Martin.“It’s hard to overstate Carl Reiner’s impact on comedy as an art form,” said Journey Gunderson, the executive director of the National Comedy Center.“I can’t tell you how many writers and comedians have told me that they were inspired, in particular, by ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ because that was the first time they saw comedy represented as a craft,” Gunderson said. “Generations of comedy writers learned that was an occupation via that show.”Reiner had been a member of the National Comedy Center’s advisory board of directors. Gunderson said that after his death, the center approached his family about ways in which it could pay tribute to him. Among these plans, the center will rename its department of archives and preservation for Reiner.Reiner’s archives include unproduced projects and annotated screenplays.Carl Reiner Collection/National Comedy CenterGunderson said that this conversation led to further discussion with Reiner’s family about providing a home for his creative and professional possessions.“We just thought it was a natural thing to do,” Rob Reiner said. “We felt that he had a connection there and he was trying to help launch the place and give it some credibility. When he passed away, we thought this is the place where all of his artifacts, materials and awards should go.”Carl Reiner’s archives also include his Emmy Awards and his Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, many autobiographical writings and drafts of unproduced projects, and even the chairs and TV trays that he and Brooks used in recent years when they sat together in Reiner’s home and ate dinner in front of the television. Gunderson said that the National Comedy Center is planning an exhibition for next year, to mark what would have been Reiner’s 100th birthday.Rob Reiner said he was particularly fond of the archival photographs that chronicle his father’s development as an actor from very humble beginnings.“They used to perform Shakespeare plays at high schools and the kids would sit in with the scripts in their hands so they could follow along,” Rob Reiner said. “While he was up onstage, he’d hear, whoosh, the sound of the pages turning.”Rob Reiner continued, “He told me that one time, he forgot his lines and he started doing Shakespearean double-talk. And you heard this — whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh — people trying to find out where the heck he was in the script.” More

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    in Television

    Can the Makers of ‘Money Heist’ Mint Another Hit With ‘Sky Rojo’?

    Álex Pina is back with another glitzy, over-the-top Spanish thriller for Netflix. This time, he and his creative partner say, the story is even leaner and the excess is even more over-the-top.The new Spanish-language action series “Sky Rojo” is sheer excess.The plot is simultaneously minimal and over the top: Three prostitutes are on the run, their vengeful pimp is after them.“What do we want to be, hares or foxes?” one of the women asks her friends. “Foxes all the way” is the answer. And so goes the show itself. The action is nonstop, the ultra-vivid colors jump from the screen, the tonal shifts induce whiplash, and the soundtrack will fry your speakers.The only thing that is restrained about “Sky Rojo,” the first season of which dropped Friday on Netflix, is its running time: Each of the eight episodes clocks in well under 30 minutes.“We have an audience that is becoming more and more demanding, so you have to give them the tenderloin — no sides, no French fries, no salad,” said the Madrid-based writer and producer Álex Pina, who created the show with his professional and personal partner, Esther Martínez Lobato. “They understand more with less so you must go to the essentials.”Pina, 53, certainly knows about serving up meals people love to devour: He created “Money Heist,” which is Netflix’s most popular non-English-language series to date. Martínez Lobato, 44, is a writer on the show, which is currently in production on its fifth and final season.From left, Lali Esposito, Verónica Sánchez and Yany Prado play three prostitutes on the run in the ultra-vivid new action series “Sky Rojo.” Tamara Arranz/Netflix“Money Heist,” is just one of the creators’ high-profile series — a growing list that has extended their reach well beyond the Spanish border.It has been a hectic pace: “We are so tired,” Martínez Lobato said dryly.The couple met about 15 years ago, when Martinez Lobato joined the writing staff of “Los Hombres de Paco,” a cop show Pina had cocreated. Initially working with the Spanish giant Globomedia, they eventually set out on their own; Pina founded the production company Vancouver Media in 2016. In addition to writing, Martínez Lobato is an executive producer on most of the company’s productions.“Alex wanted to create his own company and not be bound or stuck by any kind of network, so we created Vancouver Media with just him, myself and two other colleagues,” Martínez Lobato, 44, said in a video chat. (The couple were interviewed separately from their office in Madrid, each through an interpreter.)Since its founding, Vancouver Media has cranked out the nutty melodrama “The Pier,” about two women connected by a mutual (dead) lover; the drugs-and-murder thriller “White Lines,” set on the party-happy island of Ibiza; and “Money Heist.” This output is all the more impressive given the tight creative control the couple maintains over each show, from conception to editing.For “Sky Rojo” (which is set on another Spanish island, Tenerife), Pina and Martínez Lobato were keen to challenge themselves even further.“We wanted to show a constant third act — all action, all the time,” Martínez Lobato said. “You take away any sequence or dialogue that is not absolutely necessary for the plot and you only use what’s extremely important and fast-paced. It is hectic and completely different from what we’re used to doing, but very stimulating.”Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato designed “Sky Rojo” to have a breakneck pace from start to finish. “We wanted to show a constant third act,” Martínez Lobato said. “All action, all the time.” Gianfranco Tripodo for The New York TimesThe central female trio is an international conglomerate of sorts made up of the Argentine singer-actress Lali Espósito; Yany Prado, from Cuba; and Verónica Sánchez, from Spain. Sánchez, who played one of the leads in “The Pier,” thought she was used to Vancouver’s fast and furious pace, but Pina gave her a heads-up when he offered the role of Coral.“Alex came to me and said, ‘You will be a woman who is running away from a brothel where she has been held captive, and it’s action-packed so get in shape’ — he meant in terms of physicality and getting ready to fight,” Sánchez, 43, said through an interpreter. “When I received the script, I saw that the character was even crazier than I had thought.”The self-possessed Coral, for example, starts off addicted to the powerful anesthetic propofol, which she gets through a client who is a veterinarian. No wonder Sanchez said she drank the highly caffeinated South American drink maté on the shoot every day — a fitting beverage for a show in which each episode feels like a shot of espresso.Vancouver’s brassy approach may not be to everybody’s taste. But the distinctiveness of its productions, with their eclectic set lists, high-resolution cinematography and flamboyant plot twists, is undeniable. It all amounts to an aesthetic that the couple is happy to claim as Spanish.“We’ve always had the same gaze from the United States in terms of fiction because they’ve been the main producers, but thanks to streaming platforms we can give a different perspective and a different spirit to any kind of genre,” Pina said. “What is local is perceived as exotic, in a good way, and people can appreciate it.”Úrsula Corberó in “Money Heist,” Netflix’s most popular non-English-language series to date.NetflixWith “Money Heist,” that appreciation reached a whole new scale — the show has become an international pop culture phenomenon. The fourth installment, which debuted in April 2020, reached Netflix’s overall Top 10 (which includes series and movies) in 51 countries. It reached the series Top 10 in 62. Halloween costumes have surfaced. The rapper Bad Bunny name-checked the character Nairobi (played by Alba Flores) in his song “Yo Perreo Sola.”Some of the stars have become social-media royalty: Úrsula Corberó, who plays Tokyo, jumped from 600,000 Instagram followers in December 2017 to nearly 21 million now; Miguel Herrán, who plays Rio, jumped from 50,000 to 13.6 million.This extra attention brought extra pressure to conclude the series in a satisfying manner. With restrictions over Covid-19 slowing down operations, Pina and Martínez Lobato were able to finally finish tweaking Season 5 of “Money Heist.” The thorny finale took 33 drafts.“We are finally happy with the current version,” Pina said.The delays also benefited “Sky Rojo,” whose two seasons were shot together. The show is a sensory overload that sometimes feels as if Quentin Tarantino were directing a long-form video for Versace: flashy, outrageous, punctuated by well-curated songs — another Vancouver signature. A highlight of “White Lines,” for example, was a mass orgy set to a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep”; in “Sky Rojo,” it’s a mordantly sarcastic use of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”At the same time, there was a real danger that all this glitziness could backfire given the new show’s premise, which, after all, is about women trying to escape sexual exploitation. The two creators were well aware that they were on treacherous ground but the delays proved providential.“The tone is very tricky,” Pina said. “Having time helped us rewrite all the sequences — you can sound pretentious on the drama side, and you can go to the other extreme, which is trivializing a very important subject matter.”For Sánchez, the show is a brilliant Trojan horse.“You always find this kind of message in social cinema and documentaries that not everybody is willing to watch,” she said. “But a series from the creators of ‘Money Heist,’ everyone is going to watch it.” More