Eliana Willis

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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

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    15 Plays and Musicals to Go to in N.Y.C. This Weekend

    Our guide to plays and musicals coming to New York stages and a few last-chance picks of shows that are about to close. Our reviews of open shows are at nytimes.com/reviews/theater.Previews & Openings‘ENDLINGS’ at New York Theater Workshop (in previews; opens on March 9). On a Korean island, three elderly women — the last of their kind, known as “haenyeos” — dive for shellfish. A world away a Korean-Canadian playwright, now based in New York, wrestles with how to write about race and ethnicity. Sammi Cannold directs Celine Song’s aquatic comedy-drama, with Jiehae Park. 212-460-5475, nytw.org‘FLYING OVER SUNSET’ at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (previews start on March 12; opens on April 16). In this hallucinatory new musical, more or less based on real events, Cary Grant, Clare Boothe Luce and Aldous Huxley drop acid in Malibu, Calif. Tony Yazbeck, Carmen Cusack and Harry Hadden-Paton star, with music by Tom Kitt, lyrics by Michael Korie and a book by James Lapine, who also directs. What a long quaint trip it looks to be. lct.org‘GNIT’ at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center (previews start on March 7; opens on March 19). Henrik Ibsen’s fairy tale of man’s search for self — plus trolls — arrives in a new, modern-day adaptation from the existentially oriented playwright Will Eno. In this Theater for a New Audience production, Jordan Bellow, Joe Curnutte, Crystal Dickinson, Deborah Hedwall, Matthew Maher and Erin Wilhelmi star. Oliver Butler directs. 866-811-4111, tfana.org‘HELP’ at the Shed (previews start on March 10; opens on March 21). The poet and essayist Claudia Rankine (“Citizen”), who years ago created a performance aboard a Bronx bus (“Provenance of Beauty”), makes a stop at the Shed. In this piece, directed by Taibi Magar and starring Roslyn Ruff, Rankine adapts her conversations with white men about white male privilege. theshed.org‘THE LEHMAN TRILOGY’ at the Nederlander Theater (previews start on March 7; opens on March 26). The financial services firm Lehman Brothers was not too big to fail. This theatrical version of its century-and-a-half-plus run, staged with just three actors, is not too small to succeed. Stefano Massini’s play, directed by Sam Mendes, “unfolds a tale of extravagant wealth with an even more dazzling economy of means,” Ben Brantley wrote of the Park Avenue Armory production last year. 877-250-2929, thelehmantrilogy.com‘MRS. DOUBTFIRE’ at the Stephen Sondheim Theater (previews start on March 9; opens on April 5). A musical about an unusual approach to custody agreements, this adaptation of the Robin Williams movie bustles onto Broadway. Rob McClure stars as an actor in the midst of a divorce who puts on a dress — for the kids! Karey Kirkpatrick co-wrote the music and lyrics with Wayne Kirkpatrick and the book with John O’Farrell. Jerry Zaks directs. 212-239-6200, mrsdoubtfirebroadway.com[embedded content]‘ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS’ at Ars Nova at Greenwich House (previews start on March 10; opens on March 30). The singular singer-songwriter Heather Christian premieres a new music-theater piece for Ars Nova. Christian, who gracefully straddles a host of styles and genres, contemplates the mysteries of human existence with the help of an 18-member ensemble surrounding the audience. Lee Sunday Evans directs. arsnovanyc.com‘72 MILES TO GO …’ at the Laura Pels Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater (in previews; opens on March 10). When Anita is deported — from Tucson, Ariz., to Nogales, Mexico — family life goes on with and without her. Hilary Bettis’s border-crossing, decade-spanning drama stars Maria Elena Ramirez as Anita, with Triney Sandoval, Tyler Alvarez, Jacqueline Guillén and Bobby Moreno. Jo Bonney directs. 212-719-1300, roundabouttheatre.org[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]‘SIX’ at the Brooks Atkinson Theater (in previews; opens on March 12). In a time before marriage counseling and no-fault divorce, the much-married Henry VIII racked up six wives. And in this rock musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, they come together to debate who had it worst. “‘Six’ delivers pure entertainment throughout its headlong 80 minutes,” Jesse Green wrote of the Chicago production last summer. 877-250-2929, sixonbroadway.com‘UNKNOWN SOLDIER’ at Playwrights Horizons (in previews; opens on March 9). A late work by the composer Michael Friedman, who died in 2017, and the book writer and lyricist Daniel Goldstein comes to New York. Spread across three time periods and nearly a century, it follows a Manhattan obstetrician’s investigation of her family’s past. Trip Cullman directs a cast that includes Kerstin Anderson, Estelle Parsons and Margo Seibert. 212-279-4200, playwrightshorizons.org‘WHISPER HOUSE’ at 59E59 Theaters (previews start on March 12; opens on March 24). In this spooky musical from Kyle Jarrow and Duncan Sheik, directed by Steve Cosson, the living and the dead converge on a Maine lighthouse during World War II. When a young boy is sent to live with his aunt (Samantha Mathis), a pair of ghosts help him acclimate. 646-892-7999, 59e59.orgLast Chance‘ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE’ at the Atlantic Theater Company at the Linda Gross Theater (closes on March 15). Alice Birch’s play, dazzling in its form and devastating in its effect, ends its Off Broadway run. With dizzying simultaneity, the play follows three generations of women (Carla Gugino, Celeste Arias, Gabby Beans) in the throes of suicidal depression. Lileana Blain-Cruz directs. 866-811-4111, atlantictheater.org‘HAMLET’ at St. Ann’s Warehouse (closes on March 8). Ruth Negga’s sweet prince bids his final good night as Yaël Farber’s shadowed version of Shakespeare’s tragedy closes. In an admiring review, Ben Brantley wrote that Negga “has created a portrait of the theater’s most endlessly analyzed prince that is drawn in lines of lightning.” 718-254-8779, stannswarehouse.org‘THE INHERITANCE’ at the Ethel Barrymore Theater (closes on March 15). Matthew Lopez’s diptych, a six-hour visit with gay men in contemporary New York and the long shadow of the AIDS crisis, leaves Broadway. Ben Brantley noted, “Ambition and achievement are not entirely commensurate” in Stephen Daldry’s production. The play’s breadth, he added, “doesn’t always translate into depth.” 212-239-6200, theinheritanceplay.com‘A SOLDIER’S PLAY’ at the American Airlines Theater (closes on March 15). Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1981 drama, directed by Kenny Leon and starring Blair Underwood and David Alan Grier, reaches the end of its tour. Set on a Louisiana army base in 1944, the play is both a crime story and an exploration of immutable racism, a structure and theme that, as Jesse Green wrote, “can sometimes seem at odds.” 212-719-1300, roundabouttheatre.org More

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    Missing ‘Gomorrah’? Watch This

    For a certain kind of viewer — raise your hand if you love gritty, operatically scaled gangster melodrama — Seasons 3 and 4 of the Italian drug-gang epic “Gomorrah,” seen in other parts of the world but still missing from North American streaming services, are the Honus Wagner rookie card of television.(If you haven’t discovered the show yet, the first two seasons are on Netflix in America. We’ll wait.)Now that you’re back, we have news. “Zerozerozero” (eight episodes Friday on Amazon Prime Video) shares some DNA with “Gomorrah”: It’s also based on a book by the Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, and two of its creators, Stefano Sollima and Leonardo Fasoli, are “Gomorrah” alums. And it is, if you’ll pardon the expression, a decent fix. It’s not the pure stuff, but it will tide you over.“Zerozerozero” is, like the drug deal it chronicles, an international production, bringing Amazon together with the European networks Sky and Canal Plus. (The title isn’t explained, but presumably refers to the very large sums of money exchanged via banking apps or duffel bags.)And it reflects its mixed origins in a literal way. “Zerozerozero” is three shows in one: an Italian mafia saga with rocky Calabrian hillsides and generational omertà; a Mexican narco thriller with lavish cartel violence; and, more improbably, an indie-movie-style American family drama and character study. The series toggles among the three stories, which are intimately connected but for the most part told separately, with occasional meetings that are invariably bad news for the characters involved.The common thread, purchased in Mexico and transported to Italy by an American broker, is a shipping container of jalapeño tins that actually hold cocaine. They’re a familiar but effective narrative and visual device, weary but determined travelers whose progress we root for as they’re hoisted on and off ships and trucked across deserts and mountains.They’re also mute witness to the travails of their Mexican sellers, Italian buyers and American expediters. In Monterrey a special-forces sergeant (Harold Torres) takes his team of anti-cartel soldiers on a ruthless and bloody venture into the private sector while keeping up his attendance at evangelical church services. In Calabria an aging don (Adriano Chiaramida) hides out in underground bunkers and abandoned farmhouses while dealing with his rebellious grandson (Giuseppe de Domenico).Caught between, in New Orleans, a father, daughter and son (Gabriel Byrne, Andrea Riseborough and Dane DeHaan) struggle to keep the family shipping brokerage afloat, counting on the tens of millions they stand to make from transporting those jalapeño tins.And, again improbably, the American story line is the strength of “Zerozerozero” — when it’s onscreen, there’s more to watch than a coolly efficient international crime thriller. Perhaps because they couldn’t fall back as easily on mafia or narco clichés, Sollima and his collaborators came up with a framework for the American family — domineering father, children struggling to prove themselves in the business, sister fiercely protective of brother with degenerative disease — that’s usefully melodramatic and gives Riseborough and DeHaan room to portray a real and subtly moving relationship.Their scenes, as the sister and brother tend to the shipment through increasingly dangerous and implausible complications on the Atlantic and in Africa, provide emotional and dramatic jolts in what’s otherwise a polished, visually absorbing, highly engineered prestige-TV package. Locations in northern Mexico, southern Italy and the Sahara are photographed in ways that are simultaneously arresting and unsurprising, and the “Gomorrah”-like ambience — violent action depicted with a melancholy austerity of tone and style — is reinforced by the incantatory music of the Scottish band Mogwai.That kind of package is an impressive thing in its own right, and the Italian sequences have their share of coups, like an opening scene in which the gangster emerges from a cramped, windowless cell into a wild mountain landscape. But “Zerozerozero” also has stretches, especially in the Mexican story line, that serve mostly to fill our expectations of this kind of show, sequences in which the narco-thriller conventions are just there for their own sake. As a globe-spanning attempt to tell a start-to-finish story of the drug trade, “Zerozerozero” evokes Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 film “Traffic” (based on the superior British mini-series “Traffik”), and it shares the movie’s tendency to sacrifice dramatic specificity for the sake of broad-brush platitudes.It has a saving grace, though, in Riseborough, who overcomes an attention-grabbing hairdo — a two-tone affair resembling an alien warrior’s helmet — and makes human and disarmingly charming what could have been a flat, cartoonish character. Spoiler alert: Her character, unlike many, survives, and the smile that pops onto her face amid the carnage of the show’s final scene is enough to make you hope for a second season. More

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    Review: In ‘Mr. Toole,’ Trying to Remember Teacher

    The writer Walker Percy’s foreword to “A Confederacy of Dunces” is only a couple of pages long, but in it he gets across the dramatic essentials of the novel’s tortuous path to publication: that the much-rejected manuscript was orphaned when its author, John Kennedy Toole, killed himself in 1969; that Toole’s mother, Thelma, was tenacious in pressing Percy to read it; that when at last he did, he discovered a “gargantuan tumultuous human tragicomedy” that he helped usher into the wider world.Because the book, a New Orleans picaresque, became a Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, the play “Mr. Toole” — a fictionalized recollection of the novelist written by Vivian Neuwirth, a student of his in the 1960s — elicits a glimmer of curiosity based on its concept alone.Casting the Off Broadway stalwart Ryan Spahn in the title role, opposite Linda Purl as Thelma, amps the allure. Yet, as admirably as they acquit themselves in Cat Parker’s Articulate Theater Company production at 59E59 Theaters, there is the dispiriting sense of watching talented actors trapped in a show that they cannot save.Ostensibly, “Mr. Toole” is a memory play. Its narrator, Lisette (Julia Randall), is an undergraduate in a poetry class that Toole teaches in New Orleans. She has a raging crush on him, which might be why, after his memorial service, she goes to his parents’ house and tells a devastated Thelma that she wants her paper on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T.S. Eliot, back. Priorities, right?Lisette never knew her teacher well, which limits the quantity and insight of her memories. Neuwirth does show us Toole lecturing on “Prufrock,” in scenes meant to probe for signs of frustration and despair in his dissection of Eliot lines like “Do I dare disturb the universe?” But the play is more banal biography than firsthand reminiscence. You could get much the same understanding from Wikipedia.At the core of the play is the relationship between Toole and Thelma. If they are less colorful cousins to Ignatius J. Reilly — the grandiose hero of “A Confederacy of Dunces”— and his hovering, put-upon mother, there is also quite a bit of Tennessee Williams’s Tom and Amanda Wingfield to their dynamic.Spahn and Purl consistently outperform the material, his Toole as restrained as her Thelma is relentless. There is only so much that actors can do to bring depth to superficial storytelling, but they have built characters with palpable interior lives that we only wish the play would let us in on.Neuwirth, in the script, does offer guidance about how to stage “Mr. Toole” that Parker would have been wise to heed. The production lacks Neuwirth’s suggested “dreamlike quality,” because the set (by George Allison) depends on projected digital photos whose 21st-century crispness whisks us right out of Toole’s time, however much the period costumes (by Angela Harner) try to root us there.And of the few objects that Neuwirth suggests be realistic, Toole’s hulking manuscript is bafflingly off. Inside its manila envelope, it never looks more than about 30 pages long.The main trouble with “Mr. Toole,” though, is that it tries to force a tenuous connection.Visiting Thelma once again, Lisette stalks her around the room, demanding to know the contents of Toole’s suicide note — as if that would provide her an answer that she requires, or has a right to.“You’re forgetting your manners,” says Thelma, who always maintained that professional rejection killed her son. “I might just have to ask you to leave.”That would be for the best. Narrator or not, she has no significant place in this sad story.Mr. TooleThrough March 15 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 646-892-7999, 59e59.org. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. More

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    ‘Devs’: How the Universe Brought Alex Garland and Nick Offerman Together

    Never accuse Alex Garland of thinking small. From his Gen-X touchstone novel, “The Beach,” to his mind-bending science-fiction movies “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation,” the British writer and director has spent his career exploring grand ideas like utopianism and artificial intelligence, in multiple mediums. Now he’s attempting television with “Devs,” an eight-episode techno-thriller debuting Thursday on Hulu’s new FX hub.“Devs” stars Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation”) in a rare dramatic role, playing Forest, the longhaired, haunted and quietly terrifying founder of a Silicon Valley tech company called Amaya, which specializes in quantum computing. When the boyfriend of one of Forest’s employees, Lily (Sonoya Mizuno), disappears, she suspects Forest may be involved.During the course of her investigation, she discovers that Amaya’s most secretive division has been doing research into simulated realities and multiverses. It has also developed a predictive algorithm so precise that it functions like a window into any point in time.Garland and Offerman spoke by phone about their collaboration — Garland from England, Offerman from a vacation spot in Napa Valley — and about the tech worship that inspired the series. They also discussed the extent to which they buy into the series’s deterministic vision of the universe. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.“Devs” represents fairly new territory for both you. How did you two connect?NICK OFFERMAN: Well, I had been running like I was performing in a circus act, with several figurative plates spinning: acting jobs, touring as a comedian, book writing and woodworking. I wanted to slow down, to create some daylight in my calendar. So I did that, and then miraculously I got a call that Alex Garland wanted to meet me. I’d been a fan of Alex’s for a long time. I was quickly cast under his spell.When I first sat down with Alex, he told me about some of the ups and downs of his previous projects, which involved clashing with large corporations and standing his artistic ground. And I said, “I am getting ready to propose marriage to you.” As an artist, you always hope your collaborators will be so aligned because you have a much better chance of making good art. The more the captain of your ship steers to the to the tune of the military industrial complex, the greater chance you have of making dross.ALEX GARLAND: Nick’s character, Forest, is in some ways genial and affable, but in other ways there’s something really dark inside him. Though I didn’t see darkness in Nick, I did see melancholy. And my experience with Sonoya was not dissimilar, inasmuch as there’s something subverting the thing that appears to be there. There’s nothing solicitous about Sonoya or Nick. Many actors operate from a deep-rooted desire to be liked. They play a kind of seducing game with the audience via the camera. And these two just don’t have any trace of that, at all.Nick and I also just got on really well. All of the people in this cast are serious actor-actors, but they’re also good-natured. When you’re shooting, it’s always going to be difficult, and in the end the personalities you’re involved with become crucial. Nick, don’t you think it’s true that there was very little in the way of the hierarchies that can easily happen on set?OFFERMAN Yes, it was this unique, ragtag band of high-end artists across the board, with a wonderful diversity. The prevailing tone around the set was that everyone felt very lucky. I think when a person loses the attitude of a student and instead decides they’ve become a master, that’s when bitterness can set in on a set. What you want are those of us who are inescapably aware of our failings, and who understand that we succeed because of our ability to embrace them, as human animals. Those are the people I love working with.There are obvious parallels between the Forest character and real-world tech entrepreneurs. Was there anybody particular you had in mind?GARLAND I had lots of people in mind; and they’re probably the same people that you have in mind. [Laughs.] But the thing I was most interested in was not the specific personality traits of any particular tech leader, but more the kind of messianic quality that is conferred upon them — by consumers, by the media and by their employees. It all has a slightly cult-y feel. Ultimately we’re talking about products. And yet their launches feel a bit like church.OFFERMAN I was glad I wasn’t called upon to emulate any specific Silicon Valley figurehead, but instead a more realistic, finely wrought human being. When the story begins, my character’s company has been established, and my product and my triumph are all in place.I’m grateful Alex gave me some very human circumstances to dig into, because I don’t know that I have the skills to play some kind of Howard Hughes iconoclast. If I started thinking, “Wow, how am I going to going to play Attila the Hun?,” that would’ve become a whole other juggling act.“Devs” deals with some big theoretical ideas, like the possibilities of a multiverse of realities, and the question of whether we’re all living in some sort of computer simulation. Do either of you personally believe in any of that?OFFERMAN I’ll be the briefer of the two of us because I’ve seen Alex deliver a complete college lecture on this subject, off the top of his head. Alex would gently bring me around to a rudimentary understanding of all this, and then within about 36 hours, I needed to be reminded. I can understand the theory of it, absolutely, but when asked to place that lens over my own existence, it almost immediately becomes too complicated, and I say, “Well, let me put that aside for the moment, because I need a sandwich.”GARLAND In terms of whether we’re living in a simulation, I think it’s fantastically unlikely. The “many-worlds” theories are just an attempt to explain the strange and counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics; and there’s something attractive about it. I’ve met very senior physicists who believe entirely in many-worlds. I’ll ask them, “As we’re driving down this road, do you believe there’s another world in which your car spins out and burns up, and another in which you have a heart attack, and another in which the journey continues and your car arrives safely?,” and they’ll categorically believe that’s the case.We also deal with the idea of determinism. If everything is a result of cause and effect, this means our paths — our histories and our futures — could be predicted if we peered in closely enough. Of all the ideas contained within this story, that’s the one I think is most intuitive; because although we may feel very strongly that we have free will, we also can accept surprisingly quickly that we might not.Think about a 16-year-old who’s mugged someone at knife-point. If we live in a society that believes he exercised his free will, we’ll put him in prison. But what if the 16-year-old came from an impoverished family with a history of drug addiction? What if they became drug addicted themselves? Suddenly the question of free will becomes much more cloudy.Did the cast talk a lot about the ideas in the show?OFFERMAN We did. We shot across nearly six months, with a couple breaks, both in America and England. There’s a wonderful feeling of camaraderie when a cast assembles in different locations. We had these rehearsal sessions in which Alex held our hands and walked us through the ideas of determinism and many-worlds and how they might apply to our program.But really what got the most play between us was what it felt like to perform this. It was like if Eugene O’Neill and Stanley Kubrick had sat down to cook up a collaboration.Amaya’s secret team invents a machine that lets them peer into moments from history. If you could do that, what you look at?GARLAND The difficulty would be trying to narrow it down. But I’d like to go back to when we were living in caves. I’d love to know what kind of language existed then and what form human interactions took.OFFERMAN Mine’s easy, because I wouldn’t. I’m OK with just looking at what’s front of me on a day-to-day basis. I don’t need to see Hitler on a date with Eva Braun.GARLAND And I’d be very interested in seeing that. [Laughs.] I’d never stop. More

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    These Women-Led Works Are the Right Plays at the Right Time

    PARIS — Some performances come at just the right time. On Monday, the French author Virginie Despentes was greeted with a roar when she stepped onstage at the Théâtre Bobino for “Viril,” a performance that was part rock concert, part feminist monologues. After Roman Polanski’s triumph three days earlier at the César Awards, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, Despentes had just published a furious opinion piece in the French newspaper Libération — under the headline “From Now On, We Get Up and We Leave” — and the youthful crowd was clearly on her side.The contrast with the chill that had descended during the Césars ceremony spoke to a deep rift in the French arts world. Led by Adène Haenel, a handful of actors and directors walked out after Polanski, who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women, was named best director. (Polanski denies the accusations.) In her piece, Despentes pointed the finger at French cinema’s disregard for gender inequality, writing that “the real message is: Nothing must change.”French theater, which shares many artists with the film industry, has some of the same problems. Yet audiences can vote with their wallets. Alongside “Viril,” which was presented for one night only as part of the “Paroles Citoyennes” festival, a number of female-led productions are currently among the best nights out in Paris, and bring diverse characters — mythical, historical and contemporary — to the fore.Take away the period setting and some scenes from Catherine Anne’s “I Dreamed the Revolution” (“J’ai Rêvé la Révolution”) could easily belong in the collection of feminist texts in “Viril.” Performed at the Théâtre de l’Epée de Bois, the play was inspired by the 18th-century writer Olympe de Gouges, whose political pamphlets were influential during the French Revolution and who advocated women’s rights, even publishing a “Declaration of the Rights of Woman.”Anne — who wrote the text, co-directed with Françoise Fouquet and plays the role of Gouges — focuses on the activist’s final months. Gouges was arrested in 1793, at the time of the Terror that followed the Revolution, and sentenced to the guillotine. Many former revolutionaries lost their lives along with Gouges because of political disagreements with the new regime, and “I Dreamed the Revolution” explores that bloody period. In the play, the mother of the young guard tasked with watching Gouges becomes fascinated with her, and covertly gives her a key to escape.Anne captures the openhearted, infectious confidence in justice that leads Gouges to refuse the offer. Opposite her, the guard (Pol Tronco), who childishly believes his superiors, and his illiterate mother (Luce Mouchel) grapple with moral dilemmas about political loyalty and women’s role in social movements, in scenes that take place almost entirely in the family’s home and in Gouges’s cell, divided only by a screen onstage. A final, didactic excursion into the present — featuring two contemporary characters who tell us about Gouges’s importance — feels forced, but the rest of “I Dreamed the Revolution” is sharply written and to the point.Not that female directors should be expected to bring only overtly feminist stories to the stage. The lovers of “Pelléas et Mélisande” have a timeless quality, like the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde, which the playwright, Maurice Maeterlinck, drew on heavily. His play, which premiered in 1893, is less often seen these days than the opera that Claude Debussy based on it, but the director Julie Declos has come up with a convincingly graceful production at the Théâtre de l’Odéon.The challenge lies in Maeterlinck’s symbolist style, which resists psychological realism at every turn in favor of evasive dialogue and sibylline details. A prince, Golaud, happens upon Mélisande in a forest. She is lost, and there is a crown at her feet, which she begs Golaud to leave behind. Where does she come from? What happened to her? The two characters promptly marry, and we never find out.The central, forbidden love story, between Mélisande and Golaud’s brother, Pelléas, is hardly even articulated. When they first meet, she simply loses her wedding ring in a fountain — a silent acknowledgment that the wheels of their doomed relationship have been set in motion.Declos directs with restraint, working hard to sustain Maeterlinck’s dreamlike tension. The initial encounter in the forest is filmed and projected on a screen, and Golaud and Pelléas’s family castle is represented by a mostly empty two-tier set. Light is a central symbol in the text, and Mathilde Chamoux’s shadowy lighting leaves the lovers nearly in the dark at key moments — a counterintuitive yet effective choice.It is refreshing, too, to see the cast strip back the stereotypical gestures of onstage romance and aim for stillness. Looking apathetic is rarely a quality onstage, but Alix Riemer, as Mélisande, manages to project detachment without being bland. She seems to grasp her love for Pelléas, played by Matthieu Sampeur, only at the last possible moment, and after Golaud kills him, she convincingly suppresses any memories of the event. Regardless, she dies of a broken heart.Similarly, realism isn’t the goal in Elsa Granat and Roxane Kasperski’s new play, “V.I.T.R.I.O.L,” which just had its premiere at the Théâtre de la Tempête. In it, the playwrights map the warped inner world of a man in the throes of a mental health crisis as he summons other characters — his ex-girlfriend, her new boyfriend and three musicians — to spar with or support him.The first half of the 90-minute production, which Granat also directed, is as captivating as it is strange. Olivier Werner, who plays the nameless central character with a sense of manic despair, initially appears to show up at his ex-girlfriend’s door, much to her distress. But he also controls her and her new partner like puppets at times: A table onstage is set with figurines that represent them, and whenever Werner shakes or throws them, the actors wobble and fall, too.This device renders every scene brilliantly unpredictable, as the cast alternates between believable domestic drama and absurd physical theater. “V.I.T.R.I.O.L” is a portrait of Werner’s restless mind, and resourcefully mimics its fits and start.The second half doesn’t quite build on that promise, unfortunately, in part because it sidelines the female character (a playful performance by Kasperski) in favor of an emphasis on theory, as the men discuss excerpts from radio interviews with psychology experts. The relationships “V.I.T.R.I.O.L” sets up may be imaginary, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t reach a meaningful conclusion.Granat, who is also an actor, is still relatively new to stage direction; she can certainly build on this idiosyncratic offering. As France fights over old narratives, it’s worth remembering that women are writing new stories.Viril. Directed by David Bobée. Festival “Paroles Citoyennes”/Théâtre Bobino. Further performances in Rouen, May 12-16, and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, July 1.J’ai Rêvé la Révolution. Directed by Catherine Anne and Françoise Fouquet. Théâtre de l’Epée de Bois, through March 8.Pelléas et Mélisande. Directed by Julie Duclos. Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe, through March 21.V.I.T.R.I.O.L. Directed by Elsa Granat. Théâtre de la Tempête, through March 29. More