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    Times Theater Fans on Their Favorite Musical Cast Albums

    Under normal circumstances cast albums are used by musical theater fans to experience shows that are no longer running, playing too far away or prohibitively expensive. But with live theater currently on hiatus, these recordings are now one of the few ways that musicals remain accessible.Recently, The Times’s co-chief theater critics, Ben Brantley and Jesse Green, each chose the 10 albums they’re grateful to have during this time of isolation. Readers reacted with suggestions of their own. Here are but a few lightly edited responses:Calls for Classics“Guys and Dolls”! Seriously! And “The Music Man”! I don’t know what you would take out, but you have to include these two just for the joy if nothing else. PAULANeither of you two listed “Candide”? Sure, the book is a mess, but that doesn’t play a role in the cast album (or albums as there is no definitive compilation and so several different selections to choose from). My favorite is {John} Mauceri’s with City Opera. A more gorgeous score and wittier lyrics cannot be found in all of theater. And sue me, but I prefer it to “West Side Story.” GARYWhatever happened to “The Sound of Music”? If you are to be marooned, why not some of the happiest songs? It’s your choice whether it’s the Broadway cast album (Mary Martin) or the movie soundtrack (Julie Andrews). JIMSeriously? A desert island list is exactly THE top 10 must-have and ONLY list — the ones that you listen to on repeat forever, not the weird obscure ones to show us that you’re a show critic! “Hamilton”: of course!! “West Side Story”: definitely! But not to include “Fiddler,” “Evita,” “Oliver,” “A Chorus Line,” “Sound of Music” and “Les Mis”? DR TEL“Porgy and Bess.” The only recording I now have is from the 1959 film, but the music is still glorious, especially those numbers by Sportin’ Life, sung by Cab Calloway. JONATHAN“Hair,” a great album from a great musical that reset the stage for many to come. JOECAreas of AgreementPersonally, I would switch out “My Fair Lady” for “Camelot.” Julie Andrews shines always. MAYASo happy to see “She Loves Me” on the list. My favorite show. Succeeds at making the ordinary sublime. MARKI agree with many of these choices, especially “Gypsy,” “Chicago,” “The Threepenny Opera,” “The Most Happy Fella,” and “Hamilton” among others, but I could not do without “Parade,” one of the best musical scores ever. CHIRPER“Funny Girl” is my favorite Broadway Cast Album. The movie soundtrack is excellent too. Barbra Streisand at her best. Great songs. IWCSondheim SubstitutionsI have to add my Sondheim favorite: “Assassins.” A look at those left out of the American dream. Both recordings, Off Broadway (1991) and Broadway (2004), have their strengths; in fact, I combine the two to create one complete version of the show. However, if I had to choose, I would take the earlier version. MADISON MINIONSNo love for “Assassins”? I do like “Passion,” but “Assassins” I think just beats it out. And then nothing for “A Little Night Music” either? “Pacific Overtures” also has some gems, if not continuous greatness on its cast album. The show itself doesn’t seem very good, but the cast album is brilliant. M. CALLAHAN“Side by Side by Sondheim,” the original cast album, is a fantastic collection of well-ordered songs that stands up well on its own. Don’t even think about leaving “Follies” or “A Little Night Music,” or “Company” on the shelf, but “Side by Side” is also a fantastic listen that allows you to appreciate the full-strength songs on their own. Certainly get intimate with “Sweeney Todd” too. The original cast recording will take you to places that the two-dimensional Tim Burton movie never could. ROBERTONewer NotesOnly a casual fan, but we have found that “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Book of Mormon” go really well with jigsaw puzzles. MARMACNo “Book of Mormon”? I’m out. KATHY BThrilled to see “Hamilton” included on this list, but I also urge music lovers to check out Lin-Manuel Miranda’s very first Broadway show, “In the Heights.” As you might expect, the cast album features addicting salsa and rap numbers, yet it also offers so much more. ANN SCHWABI think “Come From Away” is what everyone needs to hear right now — uplift in the midst of crisis. KEVIN L.Personal Preferences“A Chorus Line” is my all time favorite and the one I still go back to when in need of a good emotional and physical lift. BRAZILIANHEATI just asked my smart speaker to play the original cast album from “Camelot.” I would listen to Broadway cast albums with my mother. Brings me back to happier times. NYCRNThis gay Jew would be lost without “Funny Girl” and “Cabaret.” SANSACROAnd for those of us who would miss our dysfunctional families … “Fun Home”! SCOTT More

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    What’s on TV Tuesday: ‘Empire’ and a Tribute Concert

    What’s on TVEMPIRE 9 p.m. on Fox. The past year has not been easy on “Empire,” a drama about the family of a hip-hop mogul (Terrence Howard). Before the sixth and final season debuted last fall, the writers wrote off one of the main characters, played by Jussie Smollett, who is being investigated for potentially staging a hate crime he himself reported. Now, the series is ending earlier than planned because production shut down before the final two episodes could be completed. This episode will have to tie up a few loose ends: While Bossyfest opens, Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) tries to regain control of Empire. Lucious (Howard) contemplates his feelings for her while still supporting Yana (Kiandra Richardson). And, since flashbacks from earlier episodes showed grim endings for Cookie and Lucious, it’s clear the Lyon family is still in hot water.BLUE PLANET II 3 p.m. on BBC America. As Earth Day approaches, BBC America is airing a marathon of this exquisitely shot nature series, which is dedicated to oceans and their wondrous creatures.[embedded content]LET’S GO CRAZY: THE GRAMMY SALUTE TO PRINCE 9 p.m. on CBS. For those looking for live entertainment that was not filmed at home, tune into this tribute concert in memory of Prince. (It took place in January, which, for those of us under lockdown, may seem like eons ago.) Hosted by Maya Rudolph, the event features performances — on a stage shaped like the love symbol — by artists including Beck, Alicia Keys and John Legend. Rudolph also jumps on the microphone with her Prince cover band, Princess. The special airs four years to the day Prince died of an accidental opioid overdose.What’s StreamingMIDDLEDITCH & SCHWARTZ (2020) Stream on Netflix. When Thomas Middleditch (“Silicon Valley”) and Ben Schwartz (“House of Lies”) aren’t appearing on screens big and small, they’re touring the country as a comedy duo. In these three new Netflix specials, filmed at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, the actors perform long-form improv sketches based solely on suggestions from the audience. The scenarios involve a wedding that segues into the story of sixth-grade lovers; a class of law students who delve into the supernatural; and a job interview that devolves into an existential crisis. Middleditch and Schwartz are a charming pair, and their chemistry keeps the momentum going.HERE WE ARE: NOTES FOR LIVING ON PLANET EARTH (2020) Stream on AppleTV Plus. This animated short film is a delightful watch for the whole family. Narrated by Meryl Streep and based on the children’s book of the same name by Oliver Jeffers, “Here We Are” follows a curious 7-year old (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) who, on Earth Day, learns all there is to know about the planet from his parents (Chris O’Dowd and Ruth Negga) and an exhibition at the Museum of Everything. More

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    ‘Better Call Saul’: Rhea Seehorn on Kim’s Dark Turn

    This interview includes spoilers for Season 5 of “Better Call Saul.”Rhea Seehorn watches episodes of “Better Call Saul” when the AMC show’s audience does — on Monday nights. The actor, who over five seasons has expanded the tightly wound attorney Kim Wexler into a complex, simmering set of contradictions, could potentially watch the series far earlier, but she hasn’t considered it.“It’s of course a bit excruciating at times to watch myself,” she said, laughing, over the phone last week. “But I’m a fan of everyone else’s work on it and I like watching it as a fan when it airs live.”“It’s actually a show I don’t care to binge,” she added. “I like thinking about certain shows for a week, and this is one of them.”Seehorn (her first name is pronounced “Rae”) had not seen the season finale when we spoke (I had), so she hadn’t had a chance to absorb the dark turn Kim Wexler takes, or the threat that she and Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) may face next season — the show’s final one — when Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) returns from Mexico to avenge what he will likely see as a conspiracy against him. But she did relish the potential for her character to explore what she sees as one of the show’s core themes.“The question of extrinsic versus intrinsic properties of people fascinates me,” she said. “You can no longer just say, ‘Oh, Jimmy was a bad influence on Kim.’ It’s just way too simple for the story they’re writing.”In an interview, Seehorn discussed Season 5, Kim’s surprising moral swerve and the show’s most recalcitrant performer. (Spoiler alert: It’s a fish). These are edited excerpts from the conversation.There was palpable sadness for the first half of the season because it looked as if the relationship between Jimmy and Kim was dissolving in slow-motion. But you’ve said she is just trying to figure out who Saul is, and there are moments later in the season, especially when he’s lost in the desert, when you see elements of love.You also see it in small moments: when she’s watching Jimmy make his commercials at the nail salon, and she knows she needs to tell him, “We’re not going to do this anymore.” She still enjoys watching him flourish in whatever he’s good at. I loved the moment where she’s considering asking him to help with Everett Acker [Barry Corbin], and she wants to go and see him practice as Saul Goodman for the first time because she doesn’t know how that person practices law. I have to remind myself that Kim has not seen “Breaking Bad”; that’s not the picture she has in her head.She’s navigating. She’s trying to figure out: “Who is this new persona that you’re bringing into the relationship? Do you plan on being Saul Goodman 24 hours a day? Where are you going with this?” I admire that part of Kim, how she looks at things pragmatically instead of having a sweeping emotional response. Unfortunately, that is sometimes a bad thing, when she keeps compartmentalizing and trying to find a way to think her way out of emotional situations.The third episode starts with an almost-silent beer bottle scene and ends with a completely silent one. And in the first one, there is what you were witnessing: She’s looking at him like a specimen and kind of holding back, and he’s trying to reach her and she’s unreachable. But then you see that there is great love in the silent scene at the end. At that moment, she’s thinking, “I still know the man that’s under whatever this is.” And she’s still in love with that. It’s like, your partner has decided a very bizarre different road to take. I think we’ve all been in situations where you’re not ready to throw out your whole relationship, but you are closely watching what this change means.For Kim, the romantic side of their relationship seems to come alive when being with Jimmy allows her to rebel. At the end of the finale, they start coming up with this plan to ruin Howard (Patrick Fabian), and then the next shot they’re in bed together.I have enjoyed tracking over the seasons this idea: I don’t think it’s just that she loves the dangerous side of Jimmy — I think she enjoys also being dangerous at times, and to let go a little bit. And it’s happening more and more at the same time she is learning that following the rules does not seem to get the righteous result, either. She was trying to follow the rules so that the good guy won, so that she could help people. But there was also a level of control that I think Kim seeks constantly, to be able to decide who gets what.She has a lot of idealistic thoughts about the little guy getting stepped on. She doesn’t like the Kevin Wachtells of the world and the Howard Hamlins. She has serious problems with people who haven’t earned their own way. You could say a lot of things about Jimmy, but he has definitely worked his ass off. Everything he has, he got himself, and she has too. I think that they connect on that.One of the things that was really fun to play was when she ends up doing an imitation of Kevin Wachtell [Rex Linn]. That, to me, was him trying to encourage her to enjoy what she’s doing. She is struggling mightily with the fact that she knows it is legally wrong, and Jimmy is asking her to enjoy it, that it’s fine as long as the result is the right thing. It doesn’t matter how you got there. I liked that scene so much for what it says about them as a couple. I think they do know each other in ways that they’re afraid to say out loud.The very last scene with the two of them turns their dynamic on its head. Jimmy is the one who always takes things too far, and when it becomes clear that Kim is willing to go further than he could have ever imagined, he’s scared by it.It remains to be seen whether Kim was completely sincere and has reached some sort of boiling point. Is this a new side of her, or a side of her that’s always been there that she’s been suppressing? It’s a very magnified version of when we get defensive when people think they know us and we’re like: “You don’t know me. I’m sick of everyone telling me who I am.” That great scene with Howard Hamlin, also in the finale, where she blows up — there is something about her continually being put in a box, and told what she is and what she isn’t, that she doesn’t like.On top of that, she can see that she’s going to lose the relationship. Jimmy is trying to say, “It’s too dangerous,” throughout those scenes by the end. She’s trying to say, “These are my choices.” And it’s sort of sad, but she’s also kind of owning the idea of, “I say if I’m ruining me.” Nobody’s sullying her. Nobody is making choices for her. She’s here, eyes wide open. I don’t know where we’ll go next as far as, is she baiting him, or daring him to imagine that he doesn’t know her? Or is she telling a truth that she’s never said out loud before?Like “Breaking Bad,” the show incorporates incredibly creative camera work — shots inside vending machines or drainpipes, scenes shot from dramatic angles. Is the complex cinematography ever difficult to work with or within?One thing that was making me laugh were the scenes [in Episode 9] where Kim is pacing, when Jimmy is in the desert and she’s terrified for him. [Thomas Schnauz, who wrote and directed the episode] really wanted to shoot with the fish coming across the lens, and every time the fish would go to the other side of the tank. And you had 100 people who were all trying to be very delicate, because you can’t tap on it and we don’t want to upset the fish by putting a big scoop in there. People were trying to say delicately, “Maybe put his food flakes on the left side …” and the second they said, “Action!” and I tried to walk — and I’m supposed to be close to tears — the fish would be like, “[expletive] all of you” and go back. [Laughs.]In some scenes Kim is wound so tightly that her eyes are the only clues to how she’s feeling. How difficult is that to pull off, from a performance standpoint?Kim’s greatest confidant in many scenes is the audience. Obviously she doesn’t know she’s in a TV show, but choosing not to speak, choosing not to let other people know what I’m thinking in the physical room — early on, I had so much of that, and the audience went on this ride with me. It reminds me of being onstage doing theater, when you have passages or scenes where you can feel the audience breathing with you. You can sit on a chair and stare straight out, and if you’ve taken them on the ride and you’ve built the car solid enough that they understand the world they’re in and the story that’s happening, they’ll sit with you.[The showrunners, Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan], from the get-go, wanted me to trust that, and obviously I trust their scripts. So I literally just decide the thoughts she’s thinking and sometimes she’s playing two games at once — consciousness versus the subtext. I sometimes think, “Is this enough?” I’m acting but I’m showing nothing. She has a wryness and sometimes a sadness to her, but she’s also very powerful when she chooses to let people hang themselves, and she uses that as a weapon. But in these vulnerable moments with Jimmy, it’s so great that the directors and the writers have gotten us to a place where now we can earn those pauses for her being vulnerable as well. They can stay with me in those moments, too, and I have nothing to say. I’m just grateful that people are able to follow it.So much of the show, and the whole “Breaking Bad” universe, examines the enjoyment we take in doing what people might think of as wrong. People have these hidden selves.I think the audience is rewarded for sticking with that and thinking about those bigger questions while you’re watching it all unfold. Who are we? You are the summary of your choices, but how much is that affected by everybody you’ve ever met? How you were raised? What remains a pure property of anybody in the end? Because if there are multiple selves, who’s to say which ones are the authentic ones? More

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    Is Michael Jordan Playing Defense in ‘The Last Dance’?

    Michael Jordan seemingly has everything. He toppled almost all of his foes as a player. There was his individual greatness. Team greatness. Much business greatness.So why, after all these years, would Jordan, who rarely gives interviews, take part in a lengthy documentary series rehashing his epic time with the Chicago Bulls?It’s the legacy.What emerges in “The Last Dance,” a 10-part documentary series produced by Netflix, ESPN and Jordan that had its premiere on Sunday night, is what amounts to an extended defense of Jordan’s career as many are considering the contributions of the 21st century’s best basketball player: LeBron James. At least in the eight parts ESPN allowed journalists to screen. (On Monday, ESPN said the first two episodes on Sunday averaged 6.1 million viewers in two hours on ESPN and ESPN2, making it the most highly viewed documentary in the network’s history.) Consider the most contentious debate in the N.B.A., which the show is now recharging, intentionally or not:Jordan or James? Who is the best of all time? Six rings, or three? Oh, but Jordan couldn’t do it without Scottie Pippen and played in a watered down league. Yeah, but LeBron couldn’t do it without Wade and Bosh. And the league is soft now. No, the league is better now! Jordan never beat a team as good as the 2016 Golden State Warriors! Yeah, but Jordan didn’t lose to the 2011 Dallas Mavericks!Jordan hears these conversations loud and clear, even though he won’t publicly partake in them. “I think he’s made his mark,” Jordan said of James at a news conference in January. “He will continue to do so over a period of time. But when you start the comparisons, I think it is what it is. It’s just a standup measurement. I take it with a grain of salt. He’s a heck of a basketball player, without a doubt.”But the timing of his agreeing to cooperate with the producer Mike Tollin is apt: As Tollin said in an article in The New York Times last week, Jordan’s cooperation to participate in the documentary and greenlight the release of the long-hidden footage came on the same day that James and the Cleveland Cavaliers were celebrating winning the N.B.A. championship in 2016. That is some grain of salt.“I take a redeye to Charlotte for a meeting, I turn on ESPN in the morning as I’m getting dressed, and there’s the Cavaliers’ parade as I’m heading in to see Michael,” Tollin said of his first face-to-face meeting with Jordan and his business advisers Estee Portnoy and Curtis Polk. “He said yes in the room, which doesn’t happen too often in my business.”Maybe this is coincidence. But Jordan has managed his image to the finest detail. A documentary is, in theory, supposed to provide an unvarnished look at a person or its subject. But “The Last Dance” is not that. Michael Jordan’s production company, Jump 23, is a partner in the project. Commissioner Adam Silver, who in the 1990s was the head of NBA Entertainment, told ESPN that a condition of allowing the film crew to follow the Bulls around during the 1997-98 season was that none of the footage could be used without Jordan’s permission. Optically, very little of this is unvarnished.Sam Smith, the veteran N.B.A. writer who wrote a critical portrayal of Jordan in his 1992 book, “The Jordan Rules,” wrote a piece last week in which he said he asked the director of the film, Jason Hehir, whether he went to Jordan for permission to interview him for “The Last Dance.”Smith wrote, “So the director dithered a bit and somewhat shyly answered, well yes, they asked Jordan if it was OK to interview me.” The director, in Smith’s telling, said Jordan told them he didn’t care who they talked to. “Michael being Michael,” Smith added.Even if Jordan gave the greenlight to everyone, clearly his approval was on the team’s mind if what Smith said was correct. (A spokesman for ESPN said Jordan did not personally approve which people could be interviewed.)Hehir gave a quotation recently to The Athletic, in which he recalled Jordan discussing his treatment of a teammate, Scott Burrell: “When you see the footage of it, you’re going to think that I’m a horrible guy.” Yet many of the interactions that you see with Jordan and his teammates in the series present the image Jordan has long cultivated for himself: competitive and willing to win at all costs — hardly anything that will make basketball fans think less of him. If anything, that relentless drive to win will endear him more to fans.I am reminded of that viral clip of Jordan and Tom Brady playing pickup basketball with other unidentified players from 2015 in the Bahamas.“Hey, man, you guys still have YouTube?” Jordan, in his early 50s, says to one of his defenders after making a flawless jumper over him. “You better put on Michael Jordan for real.”That’s what “The Last Dance” is: Jordan reminding us who he is, or was, as James’s legacy emerges. Not just as a basketball player, but culturally. Would a documentary about James’s career attract multiple former presidents and A-list celebrities?The series eventually goes over some of the less savory aspects of Jordan’s legacy. But even then, he and several of his defenders are given ample time and space to explain them, or paint them in a more favorable light, such as Jordan’s bullying of Jerry Krause, the Bulls’ general manager, about whom Jordan made cracks about his weight.When teammates are described in unflattering situations, including drug use, Jordan and the documentary team make clear that he steered clear. As Jordan says, he didn’t go to clubs. He didn’t smoke or drink (at the time, he notes, though a glass of what appears to be bourbon sits next to him during some interviews).“I was looking just to get some rest, get up and go play,” Jordan says. In other words, you should Be Like Mike.That’s by design. The documentary is a product for Jordan. And Jordan doesn’t attach his brand to something that doesn’t benefit him personally.He said it himself.“Because you can always put your name on something, but most of the things that I do — practically all the things that I do — are very authentic in terms of my involvement,” he told Cigar Aficionado in 2017, after he gave the documentary the go-ahead. “I don’t want to just lend my name to a product. Because at the end of the day, that product is always going to represent my DNA. So I like to have some interest, I like to have some input, I like to have some participation. There’s nothing that goes out with my name on it that we don’t oversee, we don’t deal with.”That doesn’t mean “The Last Dance,” even as a hagiography, doesn’t have its compelling moments. The series is effective in emphasizing that Jordan is one of the greatest athletes who has ever walked on this planet, in case we forgot.It seems that no one wants to remind us more than Jordan himself.Marc Stein contributed reporting. More

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    Can You Make Money in Live Comedy Right Now? Some Producers Say Yes

    No one in live comedy is thrilled about moving shows online. “Doing standup without an audience is like sex without an orgasm,” quipped Felicia Madison, the booker for West Side Comedy Club. “Why bother?”But in the era of social distancing, you make do. Comedians quickly adjusted, telling jokes on their social media feeds and holding online benefits. But after these efforts, everyone was faced with the daunting challenge of how to make live comedy economically viable for the long term.While many have decided to wait the quarantine out, some producers have built new online business models, charging money for stand-up or storytelling shows that are transitioning to streaming or inventing new kinds of talk shows on the internet. There’s been a startling amount of entrepreneurial experimentation in the last few weeks, proceeding in fits and starts, and it should have an impact on the culture long after the lockdown ends.Most traditional clubs have been slow to, and still resist, putting stand-up online. The Comedy Cellar in New York has held a free nightly conversation among comics, and the Comedy Store in Los Angeles has been quiet. The argument for caution in moving the business online is not merely artistic. Several producers expressed unease about asking for money during a crisis, preferring an optional tip over seeking a fee. “If someone is charging money it should either be for charity or they should be ashamed of themselves,” said Cris Italia, owner of the Stand. But doing nothing may not be a sustainable option, particularly for comedians.“This is the livelihood for many people, so I needed to figure out a way to make money,” said Marianne Ways, the booker for Butterboy, a Monday-night stalwart at Littlefield in Brooklyn. She moved the show, with hosts Jo Firestone, Maeve Higgins and Aparna Nancherla, online early, testing a free night on March 16 before charging $5 for the following week. She sold 812 tickets, which is far more than her 150-seat performing space could hold. Drawing a global audience helped, but 60 percent of the patrons were still from New York. These staggering numbers did not last, though, as competition increased. The audience dropped by roughly 50 percent each of the following two weeks before stabilizing at around 260 with a little less than half from New York.Ways has encouraged comedians to not just talk about the quarantine. She also learned that good lighting and staying stationary is key. She also arranged for performers to hear laughter from others on the bill if they wanted, which made a difference in the absence of an audience response. “It’s never going to be perfect, but it’s an experiment,” she said. “We’re doing our best.”Others are following suit. Dan Goodman, who produces Shtick a Pole in It, a seven-year-old East Village show that alternates stand-up and pole dancing burlesque, initially balked at the idea of performing online. But once it became clear the lockdown would last for months, he figured he had nothing to lose. For his April 25 show, he will charge $10, less than half his usual fee, and the performers will be able to see the audience on Zoom, but not hear the crowd until the show is over and the applause is unmuted.Moving live shows online presents a number of challenges, none more formidable than how to replace audience laughter. Some clubs charging tickets for new shows, like West Side and Eastville, began offering conversations between comics, instead of standup sets. Both still put faces of the crowd on the screen. At West Side, you can even direct-message other members of the crowd, giving it the feel of a comedy club mixed with a dating app. Watching shows on both platforms, I found myself drawn to the audience as much as the comedians.What became clear is that you don’t have to hear a laugh for it to make an impact. Some people guffaw with their whole body. There’s also something soothing about seeing all those faces, many presumably alone and isolated, a reminder that one of the most important reasons we go to see live entertainment is to be part of a community. But crowds of course want more than that. Madison said that while West Side initially did not want to put stand-up online, choosing instead to run talk shows and other productions rooted in conversations, she noticed that when people didn’t see jokes, they started logging off quickly. She has now starting programming traditional sets.New conventions are emerging in this suddenly online live-comedy world. “Close your tabs” has replaced “Turn off your cellphones,” and YouTube commenters have become the new hecklers. Comics are also finding a lot of material by playing with split screen, like two comics creating the illusion of melded faces or passing a prop from one screen to another. On a recent podcast, Joel Mandelkorn, a Los Angeles-based producer behind several shows including the popular Hot Tub with Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunohler, said he had noticed a lot more prop-involved bits and funny facial expressions. “Zoom backgrounds are probably going to be hack in a couple weeks,” he added.Shows that depend less on frequent punch lines have an easier transition, which helps explain the success of Risk!, a storytelling show with Kevin Allison as the host. Its producer, JC Cassis, said she decided to move online in mid-March out of a sense of panic. With a staff of 20, including six full-timers, and revenue from podcast ads and corporate gigs drying up along with live shows, she concluded: “If we don’t figure out how to do shows online, we’re going to run out of money in a month.”She started studying shows online, settled on an inexpensive ticketing service (PayPal) and price point ($10 to $12), and announced she was selling tickets. Almost immediately, patrons responded, buying more than 360 tickets. The next week, that number grew. Last week, around 600 people saw the show, and with lower costs (no hotel rooms, agents or venue to pay for), she brought in three times as much profit.At the start, Allison glanced at the audience on his screen and saw fans from Singapore, Montreal and Tokyo, and exclaimed: “We have a hit on our hands.”He said he missed the live shows but had been surprised at how similar doing the online version is. “It feels very live,” he said. “There’s that performer thing of reading the room, but it’s going on in my head.”Cassis said she thought the success was partly because of the lack of competition, but she also cited loyal audiences, gained from a decade of shows, that do not want to see Risk! disappear.“People are stuck, and they need to feel they are not just watching Netflix but connecting with a community of people having a collective experience,” she said, adding that she thought shows should continue on Zoom even when things return to normal. “Necessity is the mother of invention. Why didn’t we do this before?” More

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    What’s on TV Monday: ‘Better Call Saul’ and ‘The Plot Against America’

    What’s on TVBETTER CALL SAUL 9 p.m. on AMC. The fifth season of this series saw Jimmy McGill’s transformation into the Saul Goodman character we know from “Breaking Bad” accelerate in earnest. At the end of Season 4, he announced his intention to start a criminal law practice using the Goodman alias but it wasn’t until this season that Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) began to fully embrace his relationship with the underworld. He was quickly drawn into a conflict between the Salamanca family, members of the Juárez Cartel, and Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), who is affiliated with the cartel but working to establish his own empire. The die may have been cast, but Jimmy’s relationship with his wife, Kim (Rhea Seehorn), has kept him from falling too far too fast.THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA 9 p.m. on HBO. In the first episode of this adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, Charles Lindbergh was an obnoxious voice on the radio whose isolationist and anti-Semitic sentiments were disturbing to Herman Levin (Morgan Spector) and his wife, Bess (Zoe Kazan), but not a clear and present threat to their well-being. Unfortunately, in this alternative history, Lindbergh didn’t remain an ineffectual agitator. He defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, signed a neutrality pact with Nazi Germany and began his own persecution of American Jews. These political developments have devastated the Levins, who were upwardly mobile before Lindbergh’s ascension. Their son Sandy is being turned against them by anti-Semitic propaganda and Alvin, their nephew, is being shadowed by the F.B.I. Even if the country manages to reverse its direction in the final episode of the mini-series, serious damage has already been done to the family.What’s StreamingPARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 (2011) Stream on Amazon, Hulu and Tubi. Rent on Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. This installment of the found-footage horror franchise is a prequel to the 2009 low-budget hit. It explains how Katie, the main character of the original movie, and her sister Kristi, the star of the sequel, came to be connected to the demonic force that terrorizes the women and their partners in the first two movies. The trouble begins when Kristi started conversing with an imaginary friend, Tobi. It’s clear from the beginning that he’s no figment of the imagination, but even once Julie, the girl’s mother, recognizes the threat, it’s far too late. It turns out that the family’s connection to Tobi runs deep.BALTHAZAR Stream on Acorn TV. In the second season of this French crime series, Tomer Sisley returns as the gifted but eccentric forensic pathologist Raphaël Balthazar. His ability to coax answers from the dead is unparalleled but one case continues to stymie him even after more than 13 years: the killing of his wife. Balthazar pursues new clues in her case while working with the taciturn police commander Hélène Bach (Hélène de Fougerolles) on others. More

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    ‘Westworld’ Season 3, Episode 6 Recap: The Man in White

    Season 3, Episode 6: ‘Decoherence’With only two episodes left in the season, “Westworld” spent this week’s putting all the pieces in place for a mix-and-match battle royale between humans and hosts, hosts and hosts, and humans and humans. There was still the usual chatter over free will, mostly in a metaphysical group therapy session where William confronts his father and various incarnations of himself, but the episode was mostly about arranging the pieces on the board.Many major characters have clocked out for long stretches this season — Bernard has been close to a non-presence, for example, and the Man in Black has disappeared into his own navel — but all of them make an appearance here.The episode opens with Maeve in a simulation of the Valley Beyond, imagining the permanent reunion with her daughter that she has been pursuing for nearly the entire run of the show. (Maeve’s attachment to this sentimental and illusory mother-daughter relationship plays against the shrewdness and lethality she displays in almost any other circumstance. She can never see through it.) Burned by her failure to contain the Dolores’s coordinated insurrection, Serac wants to give her proper motivation to get the job done, and he wants to give her the team she needs to battle multiple Doloreses, Caleb and their mercenary hangers-on. So Hector gets taken out of cold storage and the other decommissioned host bodies are torched.The timing coincides with Serac’s successful corporate takeover of Delos, secured by murdering a board member in broad daylight. He wants Charlotte to deliver the data he has coveted, after which he intends to obliterate a trillion in intellectual property because keeping Delos operating isn’t a priority. This will surely be a blow to elites anxious to murder robots on their vacations, but Serac’s focus is entirely on Incite and Rehoboam and on getting back to exercising more control over human destiny.Serac figures out the big twist that Charlotte is actually Dolores — has he been reading Reddit threads, too? — but Charlotte-bot has prepared for this contingency and gases all his cronies in the boardroom. (Of course, he prepares for this contingency by being a hologram.)“Westworld” hasn’t needed to spend much time on how Dolores has learned to play various humans so convincingly, presumably because she has all the personal information required. But there’s a fascinating thread here about how the host and human separate from each other over time, as Dolores’s conscience processes events and relationships differently than Charlotte herself would have. It’s significant that the tip-off for Serac was Charlotte-bot’s interest in her son, whom the real Charlotte would never have prioritized over running the business. One of the basic conceits of “Westworld” is that the hosts are more human than humans, and Charlotte’s ex-husband and son are the beneficiaries of that — at least until they’re blown to bits for it.With the coalescence of forces in this episode, the good news is that the Man in Black, now dressed in white, finally has an active purpose this season, in alignment with Bernard and Stubbs. The bad news is that it takes some absolutely grueling scenes to get there. After proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s not fit for group therapy, the Man in Black gets shifted to a special “A.R. treatment” that’s usually reserved for soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress. The treatment is invasive and confrontational, a virtual meet-up with his childhood, young adult, and elderly selves, along with his cruel stepfather. But there’s been so much foul anguish whipped up around this character that the treatment feels like another form of wheel-spinning. He marinates in the past without doing anything to move the larger narrative forward.The Man in Black’s emergence as a self-described “hero” completes all the table setting required for the homestretch, but some excitement is lost in the process. The show stages a few action sequences to try to quicken the pulse, including Maeve’s Nazi-punching warm-up in Warworld, the activation of the riot control robots at Delos and the massive fireball that consumes Charlotte’s SUV. But what’s missing from the episode is a more proper follow-through on the data leak that has thrown society into chaos. These are the horses Serac is trying to put back into the barns, but it’s hard to get a sense of how much human life has been transformed by the leak.The one exception is the fate of the Man in Black’s therapist, who learns along with her husband that she is projected to lose her medical license and get divorced because of multiple affairs with patients and an opioid addiction. For all the show’s talk about the potential for free choice, this destiny is accepted as such a given that her husband already leaves with the kids and she hangs herself in her office. It never occurs to anyone that she might steer clear of popping pills and sleeping with patients now that the algorithm has detailed the consequences. For the main characters on the show, such moments of existential recognition are a catalyst for change. Others, apparently, find it impossible to break out of their loops.Paranoid Androids:“You have no past because it’s always present.” That’s one good insight from Serac about what makes the hosts different from humans. All the experience and knowledge they have is easily accessible, whether it happened a minute ago and hundreds of lives ago. For characters like Dolores and Maeve, that makes it impossible to forgive and forget past transgressions. All grievances are raw.Likening humanity to “a thin layer of bacteria on a ball of mud hurtling through the void” and “maggots eating a corpse” in the same session is an excellent way to get kicked out of group therapy. If that was the Man in Black’s intention, mission accomplished.“My body will be reprinted shortly.” Sounds like a good “$25,000 Pyramid” clue for Things Robots Say.“I can keep you safe.” The ultimate empty promise when an all-knowing trillionaire and his goons have you and your family in the cross hairs. More

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    Pop Music Faces the Coronavirus in Prime Time

    Songs called for inspiration, empathy and perseverance on “One World: Together at Home,” the prime-time special produced by Global Citizen that was broadcast Saturday night on CBS, NBC and ABC and online. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, late-night representatives from each network, were the hosts, toggling awkwardly between deadpan comedy and earnestness. Lady Gaga helped select the musical lineup, which included Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Taylor Swift, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes, the Rolling Stones, Elton John and more — many more, since there was also a six-hour webcast before the televised broadcast.Billed as a special to celebrate Covid-19 workers and to support the World Health Organization, the show was not a fund-raiser. Instead, it was a reminder of the medical, logistical and humanitarian efforts being made worldwide.Global Citizen’s productions — it has presented annual all-star concerts in Central Park since 2012 — hammer home messages about worldwide predicaments and relief efforts between acts. “One World: Together at Home” was full of stay-inside advisories alongside tributes to and testimonials from health care workers, volunteer initiatives and international officials fighting the pandemic. It also extolled palliative efforts by corporations, and it urged viewers to pressure governments to provide far more extensive testing.[embedded content]Musicians sometimes performed in split-screen with montages of health care workers (like Paul McCartney doing “Lady Madonna”), and they took care to thank those on the pandemic’s front lines. Beyoncé and Alicia Keys, who didn’t sing, used their segments instead to point out the severely disproportionate effect of the coronavirus on African-Americans.Popular music is still seeking appropriate ways to face this crisis. Musicians are separated from both bandmates and audiences, forcing both players and listeners to reconsider what they have always taken for granted. Performers are coming to terms with the unpolished sound and look of playing from home online: solo in the living room or home studio or, more ambitiously, collaborating virtually with homebound bandmates. And then there’s the question of tone: Mourning? Sympathy? Stoicism? Comfort? Dogged determination? Upbeat defiance? Let’s just try to forget?On “One World: Together at Home,” the mood was usually reflective, with a handful of more lighthearted moments. Many stars chose to revive an inspirational oldie. Lady Gaga reached back to “Smile,” the 1954 song with music by Charlie Chaplin, in a poised Broadway mode. Shawn Mendes, at the piano, and Camila Cabello shared a reverential “What a Wonderful World”; as a coda to the song’s resolute optimism, they added lines about, “all the pain that we’ve been through/All the fears and the hurt.” More