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    in Theater

    Colman Domingo’s Nat King Cole Play Explores the “Psychology of an Artist’

    In November 1956, Nat King Cole was given his own variety show on NBC. It drew major guest stars and got good ratings, but was abandoned just over a year later because it couldn’t secure a single national sponsor; brands were too nervous about boycotts from racist viewers.“Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark,” Cole observed at the time.He couldn’t have been too shocked. Cole may have been one of the biggest pop stars of his time, charting 86 singles and 17 albums in the Top 40, but he was, after all, the first Black man to host a nationally broadcast program. (He referred to himself as “the Jackie Robinson of television.”) In 1948, when he moved into Los Angeles’s all-white Hancock Park neighborhood, a cross was burned on his lawn. A few months before the TV show debuted, Ku Klux Klansmen attacked him onstage at his concert in Birmingham, Ala., shoving him off his piano bench.Daniel J. Watts, left, as Sammy Davis Jr., and Dulé Hill as Nat King Cole in the show “Lights Out: Nat ‘King’ Cole” at New York Theater Workshop.Marc J. FranklinThose experiences and the story of the final episode of “The Nat ‘King’ Cole Show” in December 1957 is now the focus of “Lights Out: Nat ‘King’ Cole,” which is running through June 29 at New York Theater Workshop. Written by Colman Domingo, an Academy Award nominee for “Rustin” and “Sing Sing,” and Patricia McGregor, the theater’s artistic director and the show’s director, the play had a long gestation period, premiering in Philadelphia in 2017. It also had a Los Angeles run in 2019.Domingo described “Lights Out,” which stars Dulé Hill as Cole, as a “dark night of the soul” that explores “the psychology of an artist.”Though today he’s best known for his recording of the holiday perennial “The Christmas Song” and for his daughter Natalie’s technology-assisted duet with him, “Unforgettable” (from her Grammy-winning album of songs associated with her father), Cole was an astonishing talent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Television

    Why I Find Comedy in Difficult Places. Like My Dad’s Stroke.

    Mike Birbiglia’s father didn’t want him to become a comedian. But after writing a comedy special about him, he understands his dad better.There’s a story in my new Netflix comedy special, “The Good Life,” where I’m fiercely arguing politics with my father at his house about 20 years ago. The conversation got so meanspirited that when I walked out to my car, my dad didn’t even say goodbye.I said, “Bye, Dad.”And he said, “Well, you’ve gone another way.”At that point in “the special I say, “My whole life I wanted to be my dad, and at a certain point I decided I wanted him to be me.”But if I’m being honest, that’s not what I thought in the moment. I thought something along the lines of, “What is he thinking? He’s just wrong.”About a year ago, my dad had an acute stroke that put him in the hospital for months and now he’s home with care. He can’t stand up. He can’t walk. He can speak, but he doesn’t remember anything that’s happened in the last 12 months. This is a huge change for my family. My dad has always been a big personality. Sometimes too big. When I was a kid, he’d sometimes fly off the handle. So in my special, I make the joke that the silver lining is that as horrible as the stroke has been, “if I’m being completely honest, it has calmed him down.”One night, after I made that extremely dark joke, the audience didn’t know how to feel about it. It sort of sat there. I think the audience thought, Are we allowed to laugh about this guy’s ailing father? So I improvised a line: “Most of the jokes tonight are for you, but some of the jokes are for me. This is a coping mechanism. And I hope it is for you too.” That lit up the crowd. There was an acknowledgment that this was something I was really grappling with. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Television

    There Are Problems for Sure. But ‘Étoile’ Has Humor and Heart.

    Amy Sherman-Palladino’s new series, created with her husband, takes ballet somewhere it doesn’t usually go: the world of comedy.Like the art of ballet, “Étoile,” a television show about ballet, has its ups and downs. Sometimes you want to toss confetti in the air to celebrate how deftly it dives into the intelligence and humor of ballet culture. It lives largely in the world of comedy, which is rare for a ballet story. Yet it also shows a commitment to world-class dance, with snippets from classic works like George Balanchine’s “Rubies.” And it arrives with a narrative miracle — nary an eating disorder in sight.But then comes a scene, or sadly a dance, that makes you want to throw that confetti in the trash. The first time the show seesaws between paradise and purgatory happens in its first five minutes. “Étoile,” on Amazon Prime Video, begins on a poignant note as a young girl, alone in a dark studio, follows along to a ballet class saved on a smartphone. A cleaning woman appears in the doorway to let her know that she has only one more floor to get through. This is the dancer’s mother, who has been secretly recording company class for her.“I’ve barely gotten to frappés,” young SuSu (LaMay Zhang) says to her mom. With a heavy heart, SuSu fast forwards to petit allegro, and an overhead shot pulls back, rendering her tinier and tinier as her feet cross back and forth in springy jumps. Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” its beat echoing her rhythm, takes over, and we’re dropped into a pulsating nightclub.A scene from “Étoile,” which often has observant, real-world details about the ballet world.Philippe Antonello/Amazon MGM Studios There, a tipsy and inane conversation about Tchaikovsky and Aaron Copland ensues: Who would win in a fight? (Who cares?) And that generates a new topic: famous composers who had syphilis.SuSu, come back! (She does eventually. And her part gets better and better especially after Cheyenne, the leading French ballerina, sees in a studio “this little girl who appears only at night like a fairy” and takes her under her wing.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Television

    10 Books Like ‘The Last of Us’ If You Can’t Wait for Next Season

    If HBO’s zombie drama has you craving more postapocalyptic action, these books have got you covered.HBO’s propulsive, nail-biting series “The Last of Us” — based on the acclaimed video game by Naughty Dog — offers a bleak and brutal depiction of the apocalypse, as hardscrabble survivors including Joel (Pedro Pascal), Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) navigate a fallen world crawling with flesh-eating “infected,” not to mention other healthy humans who range from desperate and mistrustful to aggressively sadistic. The show is violent and at times disturbing — especially in its shocking second season, which recently concluded — but there’s more to it than action spectacle. A deep undercurrent of emotion runs through the series, making this story about zombies compulsively watchable, frequently moving and deeply human.While the first season of the show faithfully adapted the eponymous video game, HBO has split the story of its sequel, 2020’s The Last of Us Part II, into two installments — meaning that we’re leaving things on a considerable cliffhanger. If your craving for killer fungi, survival stories, revenge tales and postapocalyptic considerations of what we owe to each other isn’t quite satisfied, these 10 novels can scratch that itch.Severanceby Ling MaNot to be confused with another popular 2025 series, this darkly comic novel — published two years before Covid-19 — is an incisive (and prescient) portrait of a society stumbling through a devastating pandemic. The contagion here is Shen Fever, a debilitating fungal disease that turns its victims into (harmless) zombies. Even as it decimates the globe, Candace Chen, a millennial Chinese American woman living in New York City, resolves to see out the end of her contract doing product coordination for a Bible publisher. It’s fairly soul-sucking drudgery but, it turns out, an improvement on life after societal collapse, when Candace finds herself sheltering in an Illinois shopping mall with a band of other survivors from whom she’s hiding a secret.Read our review.Manhuntby Gretchen Felker-MartinIn Felker-Martin’s postapocalyptic thriller, a plague that targets testosterone has turned half the population into a brainless mass of murderers and rapists, leaving the matriarchy to reign supreme. But for Beth and Fran, two trans women keeping their hormones in check with home remedies, it isn’t only the bloodthirsty men they need to worry about: Roving bands of TERFs view them not as fellow sister-survivors but as interlopers who need to be expunged. A smart book about the politics of gender and the perils of transphobia, “Manhunt” could easily have turned didactic — but Felker-Martin, a dyed-in-the-wool horror fan, delights in the genre’s free-flowing carnage, and that glee is tons of fun.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Television

    ‘The Rehearsal’ Argues That Cringe Comedy Can Save Lives

    The second season of “The Rehearsal,” Nathan Fielder’s ambitious exercise in comic social experimentation, ended on Sunday on HBO. It focused on one topic — air safety — but did so with an astounding array of props and stunts, including replica airport terminals, cloned dogs, a fake singing contest and enormous, breastfeeding puppets. James Poniewozik, chief TV critic for The Times, and Alissa Wilkinson, a Times movie critic, discussed all of the above and more.Spoilers and some simulations of Fielder’s simulations follow.HOW TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION To help airline first officers navigate challenging interactions with co-pilots — and potentially save lives — a simulation recreates a typical day on the job.Steps: Build full-scale replica of airport terminal (fig. 1). Hire actors to portray actual crew members likely to interact with first officer (fig. 2).Simulate real-life cockpit scenarios with actors (fig. 3). Optional: Amplify tension by casting significant other as captain (fig.4).Simulation may reveal deeper emotional and relational challenges.JAMES PONIEWOZIK Alissa, the last time we convened to discuss a Nathan Fielder project, “The Curse,” it ended with his jaw-dropping ascent into the air. Today we’re talking Season 2 of “The Rehearsal” and I will not bury the lead: Our boy flew a damn passenger jet.I will say that the ending, which reveals that Fielder has been moonlighting as a commercial jet pilot, caught me by surprise (though not eagle-eyed Redditors, who noted weeks ago that Fielder had obtained a commercial pilot’s license). It also assuaged my worries that this audacious premise would fizzle out. The previews for this season suggested that it might build to Fielder bringing his ideas before a congressional subcommittee. Instead, that scene proved be a rehearsal, and the host only managed an awkward meeting with one actual representative, Steve Cohen of Tennessee.Turned out there was nowhere to go from there but up. I don’t know if the final flight of “The Rehearsal” proved the thesis — essentially, that cringe comedy can save lives. But just as Season 1 was a striking exploration of how to live with doubt and regret, Season 2’s high-concept stunts, and its combination of social commentary and personal (quasi) revelation, suggest that what might have been a one-off is in fact a spectacularly repeatable format.How well did it work for you? Please be Blunt. I’m Allears.ALISSA WILKINSON Co-pilot Blunt here, clocking in for duty. Or whatever pilots say.

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    in Television

    ‘Duck Dynasty’ Patriarch Phil Robertson Dies at 79

    He founded the duck-call business that became the foundation of his family’s reality television empire.Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the hit show “Duck Dynasty” and the founder of a duck hunting gear business that became the foundation of his family’s reality television empire, has died. He was 79.His death was confirmed by his son Jase Robertson in a social media post late Sunday that did not specify a cause.Jase said on the family’s podcast last year that his father had early-stage Alzheimer’s and other health problems.Mr. Robertson was one of the stars of “Duck Dynasty,” an A&E series that stars his family — Mr. Robertson and his wife, Kay; their sons; the sons’ wives; an uncle and some grandchildren — and revolves loosely around their duck hunting gear business.Mr. Robertson was born on April 24, 1946, in Vivian, a rural town in the northwestern corner of Louisiana, as one of seven children.He attended Louisiana Tech University on a football scholarship and after receiving his bachelor’s degree in physical education and a master’s in education, spent several years teaching in Louisiana schools.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Television

    The ‘Summer House’ Reunion, Plus 9 Things to Watch on TV This Week

    The ninth season of the Bravo show wraps up, and Jesse Armstrong’s movie “Mountainhead” airs on HBO.Between streaming and cable, there is a seemingly endless variety of things to watch. Here is a selection of TV shows and specials that are airing or streaming this week, May 26-June 1. Details and times are subject to change.When fiction mirrors reality.The series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel of the same name, is wrapping up its sixth and final season this week. The dystopian show, which follows the residents of Gilead, a totalitarian society where women are treated as property of the state, has been airing since the start of President Trump’s first term, and the show’s costumes of red cloaks and white bonnets have been used in real protests for women’s reproductive rights. The finale will be directed by Elisabeth Moss, who has starred in all six seasons of the show. Streaming Tuesday on Hulu.From left: Jason Schwartzman, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef and Cory Michael Smith in “Mountainheads.”Macall Polay/HBOJesse Armstrong certainly knows a thing or two about portraying the ultrarich when the world around them is crumbling — he was the creator and showrunner of “Succession.” Now, he is making his full-length film directorial debut in his TV movie “Mountainhead,” which follows Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith and Ramy Youssef, four men worth a combined half a trillion dollars, who are on a boys’ trip when a violent crisis erupts at home. Along with snowmobiling and playing poker, they also field calls from the president of the United States and keep an eye on the mayhem unfolding on their screens. Saturday at 8 p.m. on HBO and streaming on Max.From the mid-90s to the 2010s, we had shows on air, including “Friends,” “How I Met Your Mother” and “New Girl,” that illuminated the pitfalls and absurdities of 20-somethings stumbling into adulthood and managing to the best of their abilities. There hasn’t been a new show of that genre in a while, so “Adults,” which follows a group of codependent housemates in their 20s, is filling that gap. Malik Elassal, Lucy Freyer, Jack Innanen, Amita Rao and Owen Thiele star as friends who crash in one of their childhood homes, as they navigate dating in a world of apps, try to figure out the health care system and strategize how to climb the corporate ladder. Wednesday at 9 p.m. on FX and streaming the next day on Hulu.When reality is reality.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    in Television

    ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Finale Recap: The Monster at the End

    Dina learns the truth. Ellie learns a hard lesson about the unintended consequences of vengeance.‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 7In an interview with Collider last week, “The Last of Us” co-showrunner Craig Mazin estimated that it will take four seasons for him and the video game’s co-creator Neil Druckmann to adapt the two “Last of Us” games properly. I found this comment a bit surprising. Mazin and Druckmann covered most of the first “Last of Us” game in an action-packed Season 1. After this week’s Season 2 finale, is there enough story left in “The Last of Us Part II” for two more seasons?Having never played the game, I do not know the answer to this. But I do know that Season 2 — as good as it has generally been — has raised some questions about where this show is ultimately headed. Season 1 was something of a quest saga, about a one-of-a-kind hero traveling to the place where she was meant to sacrifice herself and save the world. Then Joel ripped up that script. In the Season 1 finale, Joel didn’t just move the narrative goal posts, he tore them down.So what’s the endpoint now? What does a “chosen one” do when she is no longer chosen?The Season 2 finale wrestles with these questions in ways both exciting and somewhat perplexing, before ending in someplace unexpected and potentially promising. If nothing else, the episode does have a strong arc for Ellie, as she realizes that missions of vengeance are messy and unsatisfying.We begin with Ellie’s return from Lakehill Hospital, where — contrary to how it appeared in last week’s episode — she did not club the infected Nora to death. As Ellie explains to Dina, she beat on Nora until she gave up clues Abby’s location. (The words “whale” and “wheel” were mumbled.) Then Ellie took off, leaving Nora to get zombified.Ellie says all this in hushed, even tones, admitting that torturing Nora was easier for her to do than she had expected. Still in a confessing mood — and in an especially vulnerable place, as Dina is washing the wounds on her bare back — Ellie finally tells Dina why Abby and her crew came after Joel in the first place. Dina’s icy reply? “We need to go home.”After this opening, much of the first half of the episode follows Ellie and Jesse as they head out to find Tommy so that the Jackson contingent can get the heck out of Seattle. This is not a happy journey. Jesse, understandably, is in no mood for Ellie’s flippant attitude; and Ellie does not have much use for Jesse’s sanctimony.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More