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    Mart Crowley, ‘Boys in the Band’ Playwright, Dies at 84

    Mart Crowley, whose 1968 play, “The Boys in the Band,” put gay characters and their stories front and center in a way that had rarely been seen in a mainstream New York theater, died on Saturday night in Manhattan. He was 84.His friend the actress Natasha Gregson Wagner said the cause was complications of heart surgery.Where previous plays and movies often tiptoed around a character’s homosexuality or, worse, demonized gay characters, Mr. Crowley’s play presented gay men talking forthrightly and in depth about their lives. It featured nine men at a birthday party in which alcohol flowed and conversation grew brutally honest as a result.“The power of the play,” Clive Barnes wrote in his review in The New York Times, “is the way in which it remorselessly peels away the pretensions of its characters and reveals a pessimism so uncompromising in its honesty that it becomes in itself an affirmation of life.”The play, opening more than a year before the Stonewall Inn uprising in Greenwich Village, a catalyst of the gay-rights movement, gave new visibility to the world it depicted, with the show drawing both gay and straight audience members, including high-profile ones like Jacqueline Kennedy and Mayor John V. Lindsay. Staged at Theater Four on West 55th Street in Manhattan, it ran for more than two years and more than 1,000 performances.Fifty years later, the play finally made it to Broadway, in a revival directed by Joe Mantello and with a cast that included Zachary Quinto. The production won the Tony Award for best revival.“I think that was the highlight of his life,” the actor Robert Wagner, Ms. Gregson Wagner’s stepfather and Mr. Crowley’s longtime friend, said in a phone interview.Although groundbreaking, “The Boys in the Band,” which was made into a movie directed by William Friedkin in 1970, was not universally embraced. With the gay-rights movement evolving quickly and vocally even as the play was still in the midst of its initial run, some critics attacked it as presenting an image of gay men that was unflattering and full of self-loathing.“I went to see ‘Boys in the Band’ several times,” Edward Albee said in the documentary “Making the Boys” (2011) by Crayton Robey, “and more and more I saw an audience there of straights, who were so happy to be able to see people they didn’t have to respect.”Yet over time it has come to be seen as pivotal to opening up dialogue.“The people who criticize the play,” Mr. Mantello told The Times in 2018, “have the luxury to do so because of the play.”Edward Martino Crowley was born on Aug. 21, 1935, in Vicksburg, Miss. His father, he said later, was an alcoholic, and his mother was a drug addict.“I always resented that Eugene O’Neill already had my best plots,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2002.He attended an all-boys Roman Catholic high school and graduated from the Catholic University of America in Washington in 1957 with a degree in theater. While there he designed a production of a stage adaptation of Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd,” whose cast included Jon Voight, a fellow student.Mr. Crowley went to New York and was hired as an assistant by the director Elia Kazan. Kazan was filming “Splendor in the Grass,” and Mr. Crowley befriended one of its stars, Natalie Wood (Ms. Gregson Wagner’s mother). When she was cast in the film version of “West Side Story,” Ms. Wood — who was twice married to Mr. Wagner — hired Mr. Crowley as her personal assistant.In 1966, the critic Stanley Kauffmann wrote a provocative essay in The New York Times pointing out that although many leading playwrights were gay, their drama did not address their world directly.“In society the homosexual’s life must be discreetly concealed,” he wrote. “As material for drama, that life must be even more intensely concealed.”Mr. Crowley, who had dabbled unsuccessfully in television writing, was among those struck by the essay’s call for more open playwriting.“Kauffman’s article was, ‘Isn’t it about time that one of these homosexual writers writes a play that’s openly about his own experience?’” he said in a 2013 interview on the television program “Theater Talk.” “And I thought that was a very, very good point.”Mr. Crowley wrote “The Boys in the Band” in five weeks while house-sitting for the actress Diana Lynn. It was his first play. The New York production spawned productions in England and elsewhere.“I ran around the world on ‘Boys in the Band’ money,” he told The Washington Times in 1993.Mr. Crowley wrote several other plays, including “The Men From the Boys,” which looked in on the apartment and some of the characters from “The Boys in the Band” 30 years later.Another Crowley drama, “For Reasons That Remain Unclear,” involved an encounter between a priest and a younger man who share an unsettling past.“The play has its hard nugget of truth,” Lloyd Rose wrote in a review in The Washington Post when the play was staged at the Olney Theater in Maryland in 1993. “Crowley is more honest, and wiser about human nature, than many playwrights with more obvious and accessible writing skills.”Mr. Crowley leaves no immediate survivors.In 2010, when “The Boys in the Band” was being revived by the Transport Group Off Broadway, several playwrights spoke of the work’s influence on them. Larry Kramer had seen the play both in New York and in London.“It was the London one that was life-changing in a way for me,” he said, “because it showed me as a writer, as a gay person, as a gay writer, what was possible to do in the commercial theater. The theater in London was packed, and people loved the play and gave it a standing ovation.”Mr. Wagner, in the phone interview, said simply of his longtime friend, “He was his own man at a time when it was really, really difficult.” More

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    Review: Notes of Joy and Fear Fill This ‘Fandango’

    As the festive notes of a guitar fill the room, and smartly dressed men and women set up towers of tamales that threaten to overwhelm their containers, it feels for a moment as if nothing could go wrong in the world of Andrea Thome’s rapturous “Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes).”But the truth is that most of the characters in this En Garde Arts production are undocumented immigrants gathering in a church on the eve of an ICE raid that threatens their presence in the United States.They are there for a fandango, a traditional gathering in which musicians, dancers and guests take turns performing on a wooden platform surrounded by the others. Inspired by stories of real-life immigrants (including Sinuhé Padilla, who wrote the songs and portrays a musician), Thome’s play is a sensitive portrait of the in-between: characters balancing the small joys of everyday life with the fear of uncertainty.At the center of the festivities is Mariposa (Jen Anaya), who has become the unofficial leader of this immigrant community. As Anaya portrays her, Mariposa (the word for butterfly in Spanish) is the embodiment of Zen, all sweet smiles and softly spoken responses. But look closely at her careful movements and alert eyes and Anaya also reveals anxiety. She is not exempt from the terror.Still, she encourages others to let the music of the fandango transport them to a place beyond panic. And as they step up onto the platform, cast members both perform and share their stories of border crossing.Originating in Spain, fandangos gained prominence when the conquistadors brought the tradition to Mexico. They are common in Veracruz, where composers created the son, jarocho and jarabe, upbeat genres that revolve around guitars and tap dancing. Less common in Latin America, the musical gatherings have been adopted by Latinx immigrants in the United States, who use them to quench their thirst for the culture they left behind.When Rafaela (Silvia Dionicio) explains that she can’t stay for the fandango because she’s Dominican, Pili (a scene-stealing Frances Ines Rodriguez), who is of Mexican descent, counters: “You don’t have parties? With music, dancing and food?”Rafaela stays, of course; who would refuse an offer of such merriment? And we in the audience are invited to partake in the singing and dancing with the cast after the play is over. But under the astute direction of Jose Zayas, it is clear that this a bittersweet get-together: We tap our feet to the music but also to the unease of not knowing what awaits the characters.In between songs, dread fills the room, Beckett-style, as attendees wonder when their loved ones will arrive. Honduran cousins Rogelio (an extraordinary Carlo Albán, who you might remember from “Sweat”) and Elvin (Andrés Quintero) are expecting Johan (Roberto Tolentino), who just took the trip across the border.We hear Johan’s story in a riveting scene in which Marcelo Añez’s harrowing sound design, Lucrecia Briceno’s lighting and Johnny Moreno’s projections converge to show us the way in which the faintest light provides hope.The light here is music, as Johan remembers how the ominous sounds of the freight train in which he traveled started to sound like drumbeats.Following its premiere at La MaMa, where I saw it, “Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)” will be presented in every borough of New York, in the hope of reaching immigrant communities and audiences who don’t always go to the theater. May they come to realize there are maladies that can only be healed by a guitar.Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)Through March 28 at various locations; engardearts.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    What’s on TV Sunday: ‘Kidding’ and ‘The Outsider’

    What’s on TVKIDDING 10 p.m. on Showtime. When a show is granted a second run, it faces the pressure of matching the success of its first and proving it has promise for more to come. This poignant tragicomedy, about a beloved children’s television host (Jim Carrey) who strains to keep his brand intact as his personal life crumbles, has plenty of life left in it. Last week’s episode walked us through the past, before Jeff’s son Phil died in a car accident. Season 2 wraps up on Sunday with a two-part finale, in which Jeff realizes he would be better off on his own for a while. If you have yet to give the show a try, it’s never too late to delve into the dark, imaginative world of Puppet Time — and Carrey puts on an emotional, layered performance.FAMILY KARMA 9 p.m. on Bravo. If you’ve been following “Shahs of Sunset,” the Bravo reality show about a group of Iranian-Americans living in Los Angeles, this new series is right up your alley. “Family Karma” centers on seven Indian-American friends in Miami whose lives have been intertwined since childhood. The cast members grew up partaking in the same cultural traditions and now face that familiar (sometimes overly emphasized) dichotomy between Eastern and Western lifestyles. First-generation Americans may relate to the daily struggles that come up here, such as living with a big family under a single roof or facing the pressure to marry on a regular basis. Another draw is the inevitable tension that surfaces among lifelong friends who know each other’s deepest fears and secrets.THE OUTSIDER 9 p.m. on HBO; stream on HBO platforms. The investigation at the heart of this series, adapted from the novel by Stephen King, has reached its boiling point. Last week (spoiler alert), Ralph (Ben Mendelsohn) and the team were met with bullets when they arrived at El Cuco’s hiding place. This season finale picks up right where that episode left off, with Ralph and Holly (Cynthia Erivo) coming face-to-face with the killer in a gripping showdown. It’s unclear whether “The Outsider” is a 10-part mini-series or whether it will be back with more hair-raising mysteries. The showrunner Richard Price was already working on a second season when the show debuted in January.What’s StreamingBECAUSE SHE WATCHED Stream on Netflix. Sunday is International Women’s Day and to celebrate, Netflix and U.N. Women asked 55 notable women in entertainment — including Ava DuVernay, Mindy Kaling and Salma Hayek — to handpick movies and shows that empower females onscreen and off. The titles will be available all year-round. Among them are the thriller series “How to Get Away With Murder,” starring Viola Davis; the dramedy series “Russian Doll,” created by and starring Natasha Lyonne and the DC Comics adventure “Wonder Woman,” directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot. More

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    Review: In ‘Skinfolk,’ the Joys of Blackness Burst From the Earth

    In “Strange Fruit,” Billie Holiday’s protest song from 1939, the jazz singer evoked the gruesome imagery that haunted her: black bodies hanging from trees after being lynched by angry white mobs. Originally written as a poem by Abel Meeropol, Holiday’s rendition became an anthem of sorrow and anger, but from its endless pain also emanated a soulful wish, that the spirits of these wronged bodies would find solace in the world to come.One might draw a line connecting Holiday’s lament to the transcendent “Skinfolk: An American Show,” a play with songs by the writer and performer Jillian Walker and a co-production of the National Black Theater and the Bushwick Starr (where it’s currently running).Three black spirits, or perhaps nymphs (Walker allows audience members to interpret each character and symbol as they see fit), transport us to an underground cave where happiness and pain coexist, unable to distance themselves from each other. Here, they guide us through vignettes that retell Walker’s family history — and by extension, the history of America — in the hopes of reclaiming the joys of blackness in all its complexity.Walker plays one of the nymphs, a character inspired by her own life whom she calls Me. Me is a gracious host, using poetry and song (Walker wrote all of the songs with her co-composer, Kasaun Henry) to share her complex personal story and her views on the African-American experience.“An experience that no one has asked the right questions for,” exclaims Avery (an ethereal Tsebiyah Mishael Derry), who, along with the Smiling Tuxedoed Man (an impish Lori Sinclair Minor), helps Walker convey a sensuous evening filled with the promise of mutability, an existence without the restraints of what our skin color binds us to.That potential transformation is implied by the performance space itself. Scenic designer You-Shin Chen transforms the Starr into the cave beneath a tree, brimming with smaller alcoves filled with curlers, lotions and other domestic accouterments that create a sense of homeyness. But those small details also establish an atmosphere that this is a place where people have been stuck for a long time, waiting to leave.And Tuçe Yasak’s warm lighting, which sometimes peers from the ceiling from among the hanging roots, suggests cracks leading to the surface; the nymphs, along with their “skinfolk” — wronged black souls and their mortal descendants — might finally break through.The insightful writing and the play’s free-form structure have a jazzlike quality. Walker layers dialogue and songs so that the two engage in a multipurpose dance, filled with both conviction and questioning, while always staying grounded. A scene in which the trio sit one above the other, recreating the process of getting their hair braided, becomes a metaphor for the hierarchy in a matriarchy as well as a visual nod to the choreography of girl groups like Destiny’s Child or the Supremes.The director Mei Ann Teo cleverly balances the varying moods: When Walker recounts the brutalities of slavery and segregation, she conveys a sense of unearthing ancient artifacts while still maintaining the kind of urgency that makes the audience want to jump from the seats to demand justice.It’s in this duality and unwillingness to let audiences off the hook that “Skinfolk: An American Show” plants its seeds of hope. Although we never leave the cave under the tree, we have been granted a vision of the forest above. If we could only get there.Skinfolk: An American ShowThrough March 14 at the Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn; thebushwickstarr.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    On ‘Oprah’s Book Club,’ ‘American Dirt’ Author Faces Criticism

    When Oprah Winfrey selected “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins as her January book club pick, the novel seemed poised to be one of the year’s major releases. It follows a mother and son fleeing Mexico for the United States to escape cartel violence and was described by its publisher as a modern-day version of “The Grapes of Wrath.”But the conversation surrounding the book quickly turned sour. After a scathing review by the writer Myriam Gurba, who said it relied on racist stereotypes, other Latinx writers and community members expressed similar criticism. “American Dirt” became a best seller, but its publisher, Flatiron, canceled a planned book tour and more than 100 writers signed an open letter asking Winfrey to reconsider her pick.Winfrey decided instead to “lean in” to the conversation, she said. In an episode of her Apple TV Plus series, “Oprah’s Book Club,” that became available on Friday, she addressed the book, her decision to feature it and the backlash to both.The two-part episode features Cummins in conversation with Winfrey, but in a departure from most “Oprah’s Book Club” episodes, it includes three Latina writers critical of the book: Julissa Arce, an activist and author of “My (Underground) American Dream”; Esther Cepeda, a syndicated Washington Post columnist; and Reyna Grande, who has written several books about her experience crossing the border, including the memoir “The Distance Between Us.”Opening the show, Winfrey explained why she chose the book and defended the right of Cummins, who isn’t Mexican, to write it. “I fundamentally, fundamentally believe in the right of anyone to use their imagination and their skills to tell stories and to empathize with another story,” Winfrey said.When asked whether she anticipated the negative reaction to it, Cummins said, “I definitely worried about this moment, about being called to account for having written the book.”She said she regretted a widely criticized line in the book’s author’s note, in which she wrote that she wished someone “slightly browner” had written the story. Talking with Winfrey, Cummins called it a “clumsy phrase,” adding that it was “indicative of my own sort of grappling with my identity in these pages.”Cummins also drew criticism for writing about her husband’s immigration to the U.S. from Ireland without noting his ethnicity. During the episode, she said his background was “absolutely relevant in why I was drawn to writing about immigration issues, and I felt like it was a thing that I wanted to mention,” but said she regretted conflating her husband’s experience with that of asylum seekers at the Mexico-U.S. border.When Arce, Cepeda and Grande joined the discussion, they criticized the book as well as the broader publishing industry and its treatment of Latinx writers.Reading “American Dirt,” “I felt hurt and I felt undervalued,” Grande said, “because the publishing industry does not have the same attitude with our immigrant stories as they did with your story.” The books by Latinx writers that are published, she said, are “to little fanfare.”Cepeda said that writers of color are often expected to write solely about issues such as race and immigration, while white writers have much more liberty. “We have lots of other stories to tell than immigration stories,” she said.Don Weisberg, the president of Macmillan, which operates Flatiron, and Amy Einhorn, the editor who acquired “American Dirt,” were in the audience. Weisberg said that increasing diversity in the company was a priority and that it had hired strategists to help. “Did those people suggest you hire more Latinos?” asked Cepeda.“It sounds simple, but it’s not simple,” Weisberg said, adding that change was required on all levels at the company.Despite the criticism of “American Dirt,” the book has been a commercial success, spending six weeks on the New York Times best-seller list for combined print and e-book fiction and selling nearly 200,000 copies, according to NPD Book Scan. Being named a book club pick by Winfrey continues to be a boon for writers and typically all but ensures their work will land on the best-seller list.But after the backlash to her selection of “American Dirt,” Winfrey recently dropped her March pick, “My Dark Vanessa.” Winfrey, through a spokeswoman, declined to say why, but after the taping of the “Oprah’s Book Club” episode she told The Associated Press, “I’m not going to play it safer, but I’m not going to wade into water if I don’t have to.”Missing from the conversation released Friday was Gurba, one of the first critics of “American Dirt.” Arce pointed out her absence at one point, saying she wished Gurba was there to speak for herself.In a phone interview on Friday, Gurba said she was disappointed that Winfrey kept the book as her pick. “The book didn’t become problematic when the criticism was communicated to her, the book was problematic when she read it,” Gurba said. “I’m disappointed that she doesn’t want to engage privately regarding the issues raised by critics.”She, along with the writers Roberto Lovato and David Bowles, founded the media campaign #DignidadLiteraria amid the fallout over “American Dirt” and met with Flatiron and Macmillan last month to discuss diversity at the company.“We’re cautiously optimistic,” Lovato said. But to Gurba, “the commitment that they made is very vague,” she said, “and until they put real meat in that commitment, I’m not going to put much stock in it.”In a report released this week, Flatiron’s president, Bob Miller, said the company had taken steps to address its lack of diversity, including hiring a new H.R. employee focused on recruitment from underrepresented groups and creating a database of “authenticity readers” for use on future titles. Miller also said that Flatiron is considering fellowships and mentoring programs for Latinx writers, adding, “Our hope is to continue to expand our outreach efforts in other underrepresented communities as well.”Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. More

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    ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 1, Episode 7 Recap: Will Riker Makes Pizza

    Season 1, Episode 6: ‘Nepenthe’This week’s “Star Trek: Picard” is less about the central story arc and more about taking stock of who Picard is at this point in his life, as well as his android friend. The series creators have said that the show should be viewed more as a character study than anything else. And who better to assess the captain than his former “Number One,” William Riker? And his former ship’s counselor, Deanna Troi, the Betazoid who can sense emotions?Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis are the last actors from past iterations of “Trek” expected to appear this season. And of course, it was wonderful to see them interact onscreen again. It was nice a touch to have Troi immediately realize — without words — that Picard is in trouble because of her empathic abilities and for Riker to quickly deduce, without Picard telling him much, exactly what his quandary is.Riker and Troi are semiretired, seemingly away from the U.S.S. Titan, and now on a planet called Nepenthe, where soil has regenerative properties. They have a daughter, Kestra — who loves language and is a pacifist, and they had a son, Thad, who died of a mandaxic neurosclerosis. (Say that three times fast.) And our favorite Trek couple does not hesitate to help Picard hide for a bit. But that was just a plot device to get Riker and Troi into an episode.“Nepenthe” captures the feel of “The Next Generation” more so than any other episode of “Picard.” Its best moments are conversation-heavy scenes dedicated to character building. Soji slowly but surely comes to terms with her discovery that she is an android. Kestra helps her get there.Where I thought the episode fell short was in the conversations Riker and Troi each individually have with Picard. They gently chide him, in their own ways, for being who he is. Riker accuses his old boss of “classic Picard arrogance” for not being more revealing about his situation.“You get to make the decisions about who gets to take the chances and who doesn’t,” Riker says. “And who is in the loop and who is out of the loop.”Unless something has changed in the last 20 years, this assessment is inaccurate. There are dozens of examples in “The Next Generation” of Picard relying on the counsel of others. Heck, he made timeline altering decisions based solely on the intuition of Guinan, the ship’s bartender. This notion that Picard is arrogant and close-minded goes against much of what we know about him. It’s a description that more befits Picard’s predecessor: Captain Kirk.Troi nods at this and tells Picard that he “had it coming,” when Soji shoves him aside. Troi thinks that Picard is being dismissive of Soji’s concerns, but there isn’t much evidence for that either. Picard’s former ship’s counselor tells him that he needs to be “compassionate” and “patient” like the Old Picard — which thus far, from my eyes, he has been? It felt like Riker and Troi were diagnosing problems that don’t exist.The action in this episode, written by Samantha Humphrey and Michael Chabon, mostly involves the Borg cube and the La Sirena. I must admit that my eyebrows were raised for much of these scenes. I’ve been willing to give the “Picard” writers a lot of leeway for crafting an ambitious story but there are several incongruous plot points in “Nepenthe.” This is the first episode in which these seeming holes distracted me from the story.For example, during an early scene of this chapter, we see Hugh captured along with several former Borg drones by Rizzo. At the end of the last episode, “The Impossible Box,” Hugh and Elnor are about to face off with the Romulans pursuing them. How did Hugh get captured? Elnor is an incredible fighter. And how does Elnor avoid capture? He pops out seconds later after Hugh watches all his former Borg compatriots die.Elnor tells Rios, “Go without me. This will not happen again.” How did it happen the first time? It’s literally why he stayed behind! (I expect some reader emails to tell me something obvious I missed.)When Rios is headed toward Nepenthe, he is being tailed by Narek’s ship. Rios, the amazing pilot, pulls off an expert maneuver — which is that he … stops so Narek’s ship can fly right over his? (I half expected Rios to eject banana peels into space to throw Narek as well.) At some point, Rios also realizes that the ship has a tracker on board. Instead of suspecting Jurati, whom he barely knows and is behaving erratically, he points the finger at Raffi — which seemed baffling to me, given that they’ve known each other for much longer and had multiple bonding scenes in “The Impossible Box.”It’s possible, of course, that Rios actually suspects Jurati and was trying to gauge her reaction — but that doesn’t explain his comment on the bridge, where he tells Raffi that he hopes he doesn’t have to shoot her out of an airlock. (On second thought, I’m going with Rios and Raffi truly suspecting Jurati and trying to cover for it in a bit of a clumsy way.)Odds and EndsWe get a bit more context on why Jurati murdered Maddox through a flashback. Commodore Oh mind melds with her to show what will happen if synthetic life is allowed to exist. Mind melds have typically shown the past, yet, Oh is able to implant the future into Jurati. Either we have historically misunderstood how mind melds work in “Trek” or … wait for it … Oh Oh, it’s magic, you know … I am so sorry.A farewell to Hugh, our naïve, hopefully optimistic former Borg drone. I would have liked to see him factor into the main plot a bit more, but it seems that none of these former “Trek” mainstays are going to.And a possible farewell to Jurati? She seems to be feeling guilty about her true motivations. The question is whether Picard and company will ever discover what really happened here.Next week, I imagine we’ll find out about this Captain Crandall character, who immediately cracked the code of where Soji’s home planet is, which was very convenient for the plot.There were some lovely “Trek” callbacks in this episode. A smattering:When Picard first arrives to Nepenthe and Kestra is pointing a bow and arrow at him, Picard mentions his heart is made of duritanium. We found out in the sixth season of “The Next Generation” that Picard, as a result of a bar fight with Nausicaans, was stabbed in the chest and had an artificial heart.Kestra recalls that Data wanted to learn how to ballroom dance, a reference to a fourth season episode called “Data’s Day,” where Data indeed learns how to dance — a bit clumsily for Dr. Crusher’s liking. Riker refers to Troi as “imzadi” — a Betazed term for “beloved.”And credit to Reddit for this one: Kestra was the name of Troi’s older sister, who died in the “Next Generation” episode “Dark Page.” More

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    With a 7-Hour Saga, Robert Lepage Returns to Safer Ground

    After a tumultuous few years, the revered Canadian theater director Robert Lepage is returning to a tried-and-tested production.“The Seven Streams of the River Ota,” which became a worldwide hit after its 1994 premiere, takes the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, as the starting point of a seven-hour saga. Seven stories, spanning 50 years, explore the repercussions of the 1945 attack on survivors and their descendants around the world.Lepage, 62, has made his mark internationally as an imaginative storyteller who draws on a variety of media and cultural influences. In 1994, he founded the multidisciplinary company, Ex Machina, in Québec City, Canada, and it soon became renowned for monumental productions like “The Seven Streams of the River Ota” and “Dragons’ Trilogy,” which delved into Chinese culture.Lately, however, Lepage has been embroiled in debates around cultural appropriation.In 2018, his production “SLAV,” which initially featured a predominantly white cast singing African-American slave songs, was canceled after protests. It returned to the stage in a reworked version, before Lepage ultimately pulled the plug on it.“Kanata,” a play inspired by the history of Canada’s indigenous groups, known as First Nations, lost North American investors the same year after activists accused the production team of ignoring indigenous input. A version of it, “Kanata — Episode 1 — The Controversy,” was eventually presented at the Théâtre du Soleil in Paris.“The Seven Streams of the River Ota” was revived in September for the opening of Le Diamant, a new cultural center Lepage founded in Québec City, and the show is now set for another world tour. The revival is a coproduction with the Chekhov International Theater Festival in Moscow and the National Theater in London, where it runs until March 22. The show is to travel to Japan this summer as part of the culture festival of the Tokyo Olympics, and commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.A few days before “The Seven Streams of the River Ota” opened in London, Robert Lepage spoke by phone. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.How much did you alter “The Seven Streams of the River Ota,” 25 years on?We were happily surprised to what extent the whole thing holds. It doesn’t feel like an old show at all. The challenge in remounting it was that the younger generations are ill-informed about the context of Hiroshima and World War II. We feel that we have to remind people of certain things.And how have you changed as a director since it was first performed?I feel more secure about a lot of things. I’ve learned not to fear the process as much. What I do works when you start in complete chaos. You can’t start with a recipe. I still have doubt, but I have the impression that I’m more courageous.For a long time, I was trying to be faithful to a style I was developing. I’ve got rid of all that. Whatever the subject matter for a creation, I try to find its own sauce.“The Seven Streams of the River Ota” is very long. How do you make a seven-hour performance work for an audience?Nowadays you have such a huge offer of storytelling in every form and shape. People will actually go to the theater if it’s an event. We’re asking them to be marathon runners. When you go to see a show that lasts two hours, it’s an individual experience. But when you’re there for seven hours, it creates a community. There is this spontaneous thing that happens at curtain call: actors and technicians applaud the audience for staying, and the audience takes it as an achievement.“SLAV” and “Kanata” caused debates about cultural insensitivity. You met with black activists after the initial cancellation of “SLAV.” What did you learn from that exchange?I was thinking that it would be the opportunity for a big confrontation. It was exactly the contrary. There was nothing against me personally: It was a big movement in Canada at that point about cultural appropriation. It’s a debate that needed to happen.Of course there was something a bit obscene and naïve on our part in having only white women singing slave songs. It was a really bad judgment from the start. People volunteered to come and see us work, we had a great collaboration, and now we have projects together. What’s more complex and unresolved is the relationship with the First Nations.What differences do you see between the two situations?The First Nations have been robbed of so many things, and suddenly here we are telling their stories. But at the Théâtre du Soleil, most of the 36 actors who were part of “Kanata” were people from Afghanistan, from different parts of the world, who had fled to France — people who had been exploited and recognized themselves in the First Nations’ tragedies.To this day, I can understand their position. But I think it’s very moving that somebody who comes from another part of the world, who had to flee because of the Taliban, compares that oppression with how the First Nations were oppressed.You first took “The Seven Streams of the River Ota” to Japan in 1995, for the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. How was your vision of Japanese history received then?Hiroshima is a strange thing for Japanese to talk about. We saw them as victims, and the Japanese don’t necessarily feel comfortable with feeling like victims — certainly not in World War II, where they also have their lot of atrocities. They were very interested and surprised to see the way we portrayed the whole tragedy of Hiroshima as something that resonates years later in London, or elsewhere in the world.Since then, Japan has lived through another nuclear tragedy, at Fukushima. Do you think it will be seen differently now?For sure. I did a few interviews in Tokyo a few months ago, and everyone was very intrigued to see how it will resonate. In Japan, they emerge from these tragedies in a very noble, beautiful way. The way they express that pain is always understated, very discreet, but at the same time profound. That was an inspiration for the show from the very start.The Seven Streams of the River OtaThrough March 22 at the National Theater in London, then touring in France, Russia and Japan; nationaltheater.org.uk. More

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    What’s on TV Friday: ‘Hillary’ and ‘Spenser Confidential’

    What’s StreamingHILLARY Stream on Hulu. “We want to hear your story, unvarnished, beginning to end,” the filmmaker Nanette Burstein tells Hillary Clinton at the start of this documentary. “Hillary” relays that story in four parts, beginning with her path from a childhood in the Chicago suburbs to becoming the first lady of Arkansas in the early 1980s. Subsequent installments cover her time as the first lady of the United States, as a United States senator and ultimately as a presidential candidate. The documentary places interviews with Bill Clinton and the journalist Joe Klein, among others, alongside archival footage, thought it’s built largely around Burstein’s interviews with Clinton herself. The first question: “Do you feel frustrated that you’ve been in public life for 30 years, yet people feel that they don’t know who you are, that you seem inauthentic?” (It surely can’t be a spoiler to reveal that Clinton’s answer is yes.)SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL (2020) Stream on Netflix. See Mark Wahlberg order burritos and dodge a machete (both in the same scene) in this tongue-in-cheek action movie, the latest collaboration between Wahlberg and the director Peter Berg (“Deepwater Horizon,” “Lone Survivor”). Loosely based on a book by Ace Atkins, the movie casts Wahlberg as Spenser, a former cop who falls into a dangerous conspiracy. “The perfunctory plot matters less than the scenes depicting Spenser’s relationships with his old buddy Henry (Alan Arkin); his new buddy Hawk (Winston Duke); his former girlfriend Cissy (the comedian Iliza Shlesinger); and his dog, Pearl,” Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote in her review for The New York Times. “Those moments are Berg and Wahlberg at their loosely funny best, clearly enjoying making room for the supporting cast to strut their stuff — Duke is especially winning as a laconic gentle giant working on his MMA moves.”ZEROZEROZERO Stream on Amazon. The filmmaker Stefano Sollima had success translating real-life crime into compelling onscreen drama as the showrunner of “Gomorrah,” a popular Italian Mafia series based on nonfiction investigative work by Roberto Saviano. That series developed a reputation for vicious violence, and drew comparisons to “The Wire,” “The Sopranos” and “The Godfather.” Sollima has adapted another work by Saviano, his 2013 nonfiction book “‘ZeroZeroZero,” in this new show, which revolves around international cocaine trafficking. Don’t expect an easy watch: In his review for The Times, Mark Bowden called the book “a kind of concordance of cruelty.”What’s on TVTHE TRADE 9 p.m. on Showtime. In the first season of this series, the documentarian Matthew Heineman (“Cartel Land”) spent time with subjects on many sides of the opioid crisis: Users and their families, police officers and criminals. He turns his attention to human trafficking and smuggling in the second season, which will debut Friday night. It focuses on migrants fleeing Central America, looking at those making the journey, law enforcement agents trying to stop them and shadow industries that have been built around them. More