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    What’s on TV Saturday: ‘S.N.L.’ and Young Dylan

    What’s on TVSATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 11:30 p.m. on NBC. John Mulaney had to postpone a show in Toronto because he was “drafted” to host this episode, Lorne Michaels wrote in an apology to Mulaney’s Canadian fans. (Mulaney weighed in: “I’m afraid of Lorne, so I do what he says.”) This is the comedian’s third time hosting the show. He’s joined by the musical guest David Byrne, the former frontman of Talking Heads, who just wrapped up the first run of his critically acclaimed Broadway show “American Utopia.” (For those who missed the stage run, don’t fret — Byrne will reprise the production in the fall, and Spike Lee has announced that he will direct a film version to be released later this year.)TYLER PERRY’S YOUNG DYLAN 8:30 p.m. on Nickelodeon. Since retiring his Madea character last year, the prolific writer and director Tyler Perry has been preoccupied with several projects. The latest is this new children’s show, starring the charismatic child rapper Dylan Gilmer, who goes by Young Dylan. The aspiring hip-hop star plays himself — a cool, street-smart kid whose grandmother sends him to live with his cousins’ family, upending their conservative way of life.SEVEN WORLDS, ONE PLANET 9 p.m. on BBC America. The first season finale of this globe-trotting nature show takes us to Africa for a close look at its wildlife, with scenes highlighting hippos in need of water and ferocious battles between giraffes.What’s StreamingCOLOR OUT OF SPACE (2020) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes or Vudu. More than 20 years after the director Richard Stanley was fired from the set of “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” he returns to narrative filmmaking with this trippy science fiction horror. The movie, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, follows a family that has recently traded the city life for a quiet New England Farm. When the father, Nathan (Nicolas Cage), finally manages to reignite the spark missing from his marriage, a meteorite crashes into his front yard. Its crater unleashes a mysterious energy — in the form of a hypnotic, purple hue — that goes after the family in bizarre, bloody ways. Jeannette Catsoulis named the film a Critic’s Pick in her review for The New York Times, writing that “lovers of aberrant, gooey B-movies will be all in.”PAAVO JARVI AND SOL GABETTA 2 p.m. on medici.tv. The Estonian conductor Paavo Jarvi leads Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta in this live performance from Germany. The program starts with the Emily Dickinson-inspired piece “How Slow the Wind,” by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, followed by a Schumann Cello Concerto and Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony.IN SECRET (2014) Stream on Hulu; Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. Elizabeth Olsen seeks passion in a loveless marriage in this romantic thriller, set in 19th-century Paris. She finds it in her husband’s friend, and it’s all downhill from there. The movie leaves Hulu Saturday. More

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    Lee Phillip Bell, Soap Opera Creator and Talk Show Host, Dies at 91

    Lee Phillip Bell, a co-creator of two of daytime television’s most successful and enduring soap operas, “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful,” died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 91.Her death was confirmed by Eva Basler, a spokeswoman for the Bell family’s company, Bell-Phillip Television Productions.Ms. Bell also hosted a daytime talk show in Chicago for more than three decades and as a broadcast journalist produced and narrated award-winning documentary specials.She teamed up with her husband, William J. Bell, in creating “The Young and the Restless,” which has been on the air since 1973, and “The Bold and the Beautiful,” which celebrates its 33rd anniversary in March. The dramas have attracted millions of viewers while tackling difficult topics like incest, alcoholism and teen pregnancy.“The Young and the Restless” centers on a pair of fractious Midwestern families and has been a springboard for up-and-coming stars like David Hasselhoff and Tom Selleck. “The Bold and the Beautiful,” which premiered in 1987, is set in a ritzy Los Angeles fashion house.In 1975, Ms. Bell won a Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding drama series for “The Young and the Restless.” She received a lifetime achievement award from the Daytime Emmys in 2007.Loreley June Phillip was born in Riverside, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, on June 9, 1928, to James and Helen (Novak) Phillip. As a girl she often helped out in her parents’ floral shop.After graduating from Northwestern University in 1950 with a degree in microbiology, she returned to her family’s shop, working alongside her brothers and soon appearing with one of them, Russell, on a local television talk show, on WBKB, to demonstrate flower arrangements.Her on-camera presence impressed the station’s managers, and Ms. Phillip was asked to fill in as an announcer, a weather girl and a kind of home economics correspondent. She got her big break when the station was looking for someone to fill in for one of its leading talk show hosts, Lucky North, while Ms. North went on vacation.“Young women from all over Chicago showed up and auditioned,” Ms. Bell said at the Daytime Emmys ceremony in 2007. “Lucky thought they were all too good and didn’t want to lose her job, so she convinced the station to hire me instead.”The fill-in role led to stints hosting five- and 15-minute segments on weekdays and weeknights and ultimately to her own long-running show, “The Lee Phillip Show” (the name was changed a handful of times), on which she explored social issues and interviewed prominent people like Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan, Judy Garland, Clint Eastwood, Oprah Winfrey, Lucille Ball, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.Her documentary specials for WBBM covered topics like foster care, divorce and rape. One special, “The Rape of Paulette,” in which she interviewed rape victims and examined a criminal justice system that often failed to bring rapists to justice, won a local Emmy and a DuPont Award from Columbia University after it aired in 1973. Her work for WBBM won 16 regional Emmys.She met William Bell while he was working as an account executive for an advertising agency in the same building as WBBM. They married in 1954, and Mr. Bell quit his advertising job to write for several soap operas, including the perennial “Days of Our Lives.”Ms. Bell continued to host and produce daytime talk shows for WBBM, but with her husband she also developed “The Innocent Years!” for CBS in 1972, before changing the title to “The Young and the Restless,” feeling it better fit the mood of the 1970s.The couple moved to Southern California in 1986 to work on “The Bold and the Beautiful,” which became a kind of sister CBS show to “The Young and the Restless,” with several actors appearing on both.Mr. Bell died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease in 2005. Ms. Bell is survived by her sons, William and Bradley; her daughter, Lauralee Bell Martin, an actress who appears on “The Young and the Restless”; her brother Russell; and eight grandchildren.William Bell is president and chief executive of Bell-Phillip Television Productions. Bradley Bell is executive producer and head writer for “The Bold and the Beautiful.” A daughter-in-law, Colleen Bell, was ambassador to Hungary under President Barack Obama and is executive director of the California Film Commission. Another daughter-in-law, Maria Arena Bell, is a former head writer of “The Young and the Restless.”Though her shows were known for being progressive and, at times, provocative, Ms. Bell believed her work was simple at its core.“We do the very same thing, don’t we — Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch and the daytime dramas,” she said on receiving her lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys. “We reach out to people through our stories, through our words and examples. And hopefully, at the end of the day, we’ve touched someone’s life in a better way, and helped them.”The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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    Gerald Krone, a Negro Ensemble Company Founder, Dies at 86

    Gerald S. Krone, a theater manager and producer who in 1967 joined with Douglas Turner Ward and Robert Hooks to found the Negro Ensemble Company, a New York theater troupe that championed black writers, actors and themes in what was then a largely white theatrical landscape, died on Feb. 20 at his home in Philadelphia. He was 86.His longtime partner, Ivan Kaminoff, said the cause was Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Krone, who was managing various Off Broadway theaters at the time, brought administrative savvy to the new enterprise, while Mr. Hooks, an actor and producer, and Mr. Ward, an actor and playwright, concentrated on the creative side. Mr. Krone stood out in the partnership because he was white.Black activism was gaining a new militance in the second half of the 1960s, and before long the company, which took up residence at St. Marks Playhouse in the East Village, was drawing criticism over, among other things, the participation of Mr. Krone and other white people.“We were damned for not being in Harlem,” Mr. Ward wrote in a 1968 essay in The New York Times defending the company at the end of its first season, “accused of conspiring against black playwrights, judged traitorous for hiring a few white people, and stigmatized with a host of other mortal and venial sins negating our right to be called a black theater.”Criticism notwithstanding, the partnership enjoyed quick success, and the Negro Ensemble Company went on to send three plays to Broadway: “The River Niger” in 1973, “The First Breeze of Summer” in 1975 and “Home” in 1980. In 1981 it staged, Off Broadway, the premiere of Charles Fuller’s “A Soldier’s Play,” with a cast that included Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson; the play won the Pulitzer Prize.Less than two years after it was founded, the company received a special Tony Award, which Mr. Ward and Mr. Krone were on hand to accept. After Mr. Ward spoke, Mr. Krone addressed the audience, thanking his black colleagues “for being courageous enough — in this rather difficult, confusing, disturbing time — for being courageous enough to give me, a white man, an opportunity to be part of a very important, dynamic, wonderful black theater, which is theirs.”Gerald Sidney Krone was born on Feb. 25, 1933, in Memphis to Irving and Eva Sauer Krone. He grew up in Memphis and attended Hume High School, where Elvis Presley was a class or two behind him; Mr. Krone once served as M.C. at a school event and introduced Presley, Mr. Kaminoff said.Mr. Krone served in the Army during the Korean War, then graduated from Washington University in St. Louis. He served an internship with the Royal Shakespeare Company.For a time he was married to Dorothy Olim, and they were business partners as well, working on theater productions in management capacities as well as forming Krone-Olim Advertising. The marriage ended in divorce.Mr. Hooks met Mr. Krone and Ms. Olim when they were all involved in a production at the Cherry Lane Theater in 1964. When Mr. Hooks decided to produce two of Mr. Ward’s one-act plays, “Happy Ending” and “Day of Absence,” the next year at St. Marks, he asked them to serve as managers.The production generated buzz, and in the aftermath Mr. Ward wrote a provocative essay in The New York Times that bore the headline “American Theater: For Whites Only?”“Despite an eminent handful,” he wrote, “Negro dramatists remain sparse in number, productions sporadic at most, and scripts too few to indicate discernible trends.”The article caught the attention of the Ford Foundation, which asked Mr. Hooks and Mr. Ward to meet to discuss a possible grant.“Having Gerald right there as our general manager and numbers man, we asked him to come with us,” Mr. Hooks recalled in a telephone interview. The foundation asked for a proposal that would advance black theater; Mr. Krone was instrumental in drawing it up and securing a $1.5 million grant, which got the Negro Ensemble Company started.“We were in the right place at the right time and were able to create a movement,” Mr. Hooks said, “and Gerald was a big part of that.”The funding financed a company of 13 actors, workshops and a four-play season the first year. Mr. Ward was the artistic director, Mr. Hooks the executive director and Mr. Krone the administrative director. The first production, Peter Weiss’s “Song of the Lusitanian Bogey,” opened in January 1968.Once its Ford Foundation money ran out, the company faced occasional financial crises. Mr. Krone remained as administrative director until 1982, when he left to work in television news, though he remained on the board of directors for some years.In addition to Mr. Kaminoff, whom he married in 2013 after two decades together, Mr. Krone is survived by a brother, Norman.The Negro Ensemble Company continues today with workshops and intermittent productions. In 2016 the company staged a revival of “Day of Absence,” one of the plays that brought the three founders together in 1965.“The N.E.C. served its purpose,” Mr. Hooks said, “and is still serving its purpose.” More

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    What’s on TV Friday: ‘The Kingmaker’ and ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’

    What’s on TVTHE KINGMAKER (2019) 9 p.m. Showtime. Gold and diamonds commingle with political unrest and poverty in “The Kingmaker,” Lauren Greenfield’s documentary portrait of Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines. Through interviews — including with Marcos, who speaks here at length — and other footage, Greenfield (“The Queen of Versailles”) examines Marcos’s time as first lady during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s; her subsequent flight and exile; and her place in contemporary politics. The film ultimately “becomes less about one woman, her malevolent charms and quirks, and develops into an unsettling look at imperial power,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times. “Greenfield trots out the plunder and of course the shoes — those notorious emblems of Marcos’s excess — but also examines the appalling costs of that luxury,” Dargis wrote. “It’s an ugly story shrewdly told, with a sense of humor and also a deeper feeling for history.”RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE 8 p.m. on VH1. “Friday, February 28th, 13 new candidates enter the race.” No, that sentence isn’t pulled from the nightmares of the Democratic presidential candidates bracing themselves for Super Tuesday; it’s from a trailer for the latest season of RuPaul Charles’s flagship drag show, which will kick off its search for “America’s first drag-queen president.” That search will be aided by a collection of celebrity guests peppered throughout the season, including Nicki Minaj, Whoopi Goldberg, Leslie Jones, Chaka Khan and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.DATELINE 9 p.m. on NBC. In 2013, Karl Holger Karlsen pleaded guilty to murdering his son in order to collect a life insurance policy. Earlier this month, Karlsen was convicted of killing his wife years earlier for the same reason. Those cases are the focus of this week’s edition of NBC’s “Dateline” series, which brings together interviews with those close to the events — including Karlsen himself.What’s StreamingTHE EDGE OF HEAVEN (2008) Stream on Criterion Channel; rent on Amazon. The writer-director Fatih Akin won the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival for “The Edge of Heaven,” his critically acclaimed look at generational differences and the experience of Turkish immigrants in Germany. As the lives of its disparate characters — mothers and daughters, a father and a son — weave together, “there is a sense of human connections becoming stronger and thicker, of a fragile moral order coalescing beneath the randomness and cruelty of modern life,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “By the end,” he added, “you know the characters in it so well that you can’t believe you’ve seen the movie only once, yet on a second viewing it seems completely new.”ALL THE BRIGHT PLACES (2020) Stream on Netflix. Elle Fanning and Justice Smith star in this adaptation of a Y.A. novel by Jennifer Niven, directed by Brett Haley (“The Hero”). The story centers on a pair of Indiana teenagers, Violet (Elle) and Theodore (Smith), who help each other cope with mental illness. More

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    Review: With ‘Queen Sono,’ Netflix Enters New Territory

    Unlike most spy thrillers in which statuesque, expensively dressed women show an unexpected talent for kicking the bejeezus out of armed men, the South African series “Queen Sono” also devotes a lot of time to historical and geopolitical debate, or at least sloganeering. An armed band that might be terrorists or might be freedom fighters declares its intent to liberate Africa from “the clutches of colonization.” A hapless do-gooder calls out the primary villain for being a neocolonialist, and is quickly abducted with extreme prejudice.The real colonizer, of course, is the one behind the screen: Netflix, where the six episodes of this sprawling, earnest, likable show debut on Friday. “Queen Sono” is Netflix’s first script-to-screen commission from Africa, another small step in the streaming giant’s takeover of international television and a significant leap in the visibility of African-made stories in America and elsewhere. That “Queen Sono” is unremarkable as an action and crime drama doesn’t cancel the excitement of seeing something new (if it’s indeed new to you).As with other test cases for narrative globalization, like the South Korean “Kingdom” or the Scandinavian “Ragnarok,” you can sense the bending of local traditions toward Netflix norms: the six-episode season; the emphasis on action and mystery; the clockwork interjections of a Westernized, universally intelligible wry humor. But “Queen Sono,” created by the South African writer and performer Kagiso Lediga, doesn’t compromise when it comes to rooting its story close to home.The title character, played by Pearl Thusi — she was the lawyer and C.I.A. agent Dayana Mampasi in ABC’s “Quantico” — is an undercover agent for a South African intelligence unit, a small and beleaguered group tasked, in somewhat cartoonish fashion, with protecting the country and the continent from every kind of threat. (Its size — five core members — makes you wonder whether the budget for “Queen Sono” wasn’t as generous as it was for other Netflix series.)Queen is an ace at hand-to-hand combat, but she, and the show, are saddled with an omnipresent back story about her mother, an activist killed in mysterious circumstances when Queen was a child. Her anger and guilt over her mother’s death tie into the show’s overall mood, a simmering anguish in which the ecstatic promise of South Africa’s liberation under Nelson Mandela has ebbed into stasis and corruption, with former heroes now busily pocketing bribes. The show’s embodiment of that outlook, and the motor of the season’s plot, is an alliance (perhaps plausible, but presented in awfully broad strokes) between a squad of black-nationalist revolutionaries and a Russian security outfit called Superior Solutions. (The initials S.S. aren’t remarked on, but are hard to miss.)That framework is certainly a serious part of Lediga’s conception of the show, and it serves a similar purpose, in terms of setting a mood, as do the more anonymous conspiracies and injustices of American or French noir. But spelling it out makes “Queen Sono” sound a lot more serious than it is. Between the speeches about colonial legacies and about historical atonement, there are plenty of throwdowns and chases and shootouts, staged with competence if not much flair. They tend to show up arbitrarily, on what feels like someone’s idea of an action-show timetable. When it’s time for a fight, there’s a fight.The pleasures of “Queen Sono” come outside of the action and the highly basic presentations of espionage and police work. They’re in the generally engaging performances, including warm and sharply funny work from Abigail Kubeka as Queen’s acerbic grandmother and Enhle Mlotshwa as the patient girlfriend of a man hung up on Queen.They’re also in the show’s freewheeling, lightly cynical humor — the fictional leader of South Africa is described as “their idiot president” by an outsider and “the most bribable statesman on the planet” by one of his own citizens. And for the unfamiliar viewer, they’re also in the locations — not just Johannesburg but also Zimbabwe, Kenya and, in a Bond-style opening, Zanzibar.On the other hand, if you do have some experience with African TV — the glossy, unapologetic melodramas of Nollywood or the viscerally brutal action thrillers of South Africa — you may find “Queen Sono” unsatisfyingly in-between, a halfhearted and problematic attempt to dress up a soft Western-style drama. If so, you can take heart in another aspect of the Netflix international effect: Its next African original, the teenage mystery “Blood & Water,” is due later this spring. More

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    13 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‘COAL COUNTRY’ at the Public Theater (in previews; opens on March 3). In 2010, a thousand feet underground in West Virginia, coal dust exploded, killing 29 of the 31 miners on site. The documentary playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen interviewed survivors and family members, learning how a community reckons with disaster and loss. Steve Earle supplies original music. Blank directs a cast that includes Mary Bacon and Michael Laurence.212-967-7555, publictheater.org‘COMPANY’ at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater (previews start on March 2; opens on March 22). Phone rings, door chimes and in comes a gender-bent version of the beloved Stephen Sondheim musical, with a book by George Furth. Marianne Elliot’s production, which originated in London, arrives with the Tony-winner Katrina Lenk as the bachelorette Bobbie, with Patti LuPone as the heavy-drinking, heavy-singing Joanne. 212-239-6200, companymusical.com‘DIANA: A TRUE MUSICAL STORY’ at the Longacre Theater (previews start on March 2; opens on March 31). The people’s princess comes to New York. Joe DiPietro and David Bryan’s musical, which debuted at La Jolla Playhouse, recreates the not-so-happily-ever-after fairytale of Prince Charles (Roe Hartrampf) and Princess Di (Jeanna de Waal). With Judy Kaye as Elizabeth II. Christopher Ashley directs, with choreography by Kelly Devine.212-239-6200, thedianamusical.com‘THE FRE’ at the Flea Theater (previews start on Feb. 28; opens on March 15). Having brought a dancing-penis kickline to Broadway, Taylor Mac has now sunk low. In this new work, set in and around a mud pit, a young aesthete tries to persuade his grubby hedonists to de-ooze. In this show, directed by Niegel Smith, “audiences will literally and figuratively jump into the mud,” the theater warns. 212-226-0051, theflea.org‘GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY’ at the Belasco Theater (in previews; opens on March 5). This Bob Dylan jukebox musical, written and directed by Conor McPherson, now knocks on Broadway’s door. Set in a boardinghouse in Duluth, Minn., in 1934, it centers on various down-at-heart, down-at-heel residents. Ben Brantley wrote, “What’s created, through songs written by Mr. Dylan over half a century, is a climate of feeling, as pervasive and evasive as fog.”212-239-6200, northcountryonbroadway.com[embedded content]‘HANGMEN’ at the Golden Theater (previews start on Feb. 28; opens on March 19). Martin McDonagh’s morbid comedy flings its noose around Broadway’s neck. In Matthew Dunster’s production, Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey,” “Legion”) takes over the role originated by Johnny Flynn. When it ran Off Broadway, “Hangmen” was described by Ben Brantley as “criminally enjoyable” and “a juicy tale of capital punishment and other forms of retribution.”212-239-6200, hangmenbroadway.com‘THE HOT WING KING’ at the Pershing Square Signature Center (in previews; opens on March 1). A saucy comedy, Katori Hall’s new play, part of her Signature Theater residency, unfolds during the Hot Wang Festival in Memphis, with family and romantic conflict cooking alongside the chicken. Steve H. Broadnax III directs a cast that includes Toussaint Jeanlouis and Korey Jackson. 212-244-7529, signaturetheatre.org‘THE PERPLEXED’ at New York City Center Stage I (in previews; opens on March 3). Before Richard Greenberg goes to the ballgame with the Broadway revival of “Take Me Out,” he premieres this uptown comedy about two families, alike in indignity, and the wedding that unites them. For Manhattan Theater Club, Lynne Meadow directs a cast that includes Margaret Colin and Frank Wood.212-581-1212, nycitycenter.org‘SANCTUARY CITY’ at the Lucille Lortel Theater (previews start on March 4; opens on March 24). Life could be a dream — with permanent residency status. In this new New York Theater Workshop play from the Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok, young immigrants, documented and otherwise, fight for citizenship and survival. Jasai Chase-Owens, Sharlene Cruz and Austin Smith star. Rebecca Frecknall directs.212-460-5475, nytw.org‘WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF’ at the Booth Theater (previews start on March 3; opens on April 2). Who’s afraid of Laurie Metcalf? Over the past few years, Metcalf, a longtime Steppenwolf member and a sitcom star, has made a home on Broadway. In Edward Albee’s martial, marital comedy she stars opposite Rupert Everett, with Patsy Ferran and Russel Tovey as the gettable guests. Joe Mantello directs.212-239-6200, virginiawoolfonbroadway.com[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]Last Chance‘GRAND HORIZONS’ at the Hayes Theater (closes on March 1). Bess Wohl’s comedy of divorce, directed by Leigh Silverman, calls it quits. Jesse Green questioned the wisdom of writing “a boulevard comedy for a cul-de-sac age.” However, he had particular praise for Jane Alexander, writing that “you haven’t lived until you’ve heard a woman who once played Eleanor Roosevelt sing the praises of cunnilingus.”2st.com‘MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON’ at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater (closes on Feb. 29). Rona Munro’s adaptation of Elizabeth Strout’s glimmering 2016 novel, directed by Richard Eyre and starring a scarf-wrapped Laura Linney, reaches its final paragraphs. Ben Brantley wrote that “as embodied with middle-American forthrightness” by Linney, the play’s title character “may be the most translucent figure now on a New York stage.” 212-239-6200, manhattantheatreclub.com‘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 More

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    ‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 1, Episode 6 Recap: Hugh Are My Friend

    Season 1, Episode 6: ‘The Impossible Box’In this week’s “Star Trek: Picard,” the puzzle pieces, scattered in the first half of the season, finally start coming together. Picard reunites with Hugh on the captured Borg cube and finally connects with Soji. But not before Narek finally makes his intentions clear and tries to murder Soji, who at this point discovers who she really is: an android.Soji is a character constantly in search of secrets in a world hiding them from her. She knows Narek is hiding something and probes him for answers, to which she gets none — not even his real name. She suspects that there is more to her identity, but he doesn’t quite know what. Narek has to thread the needle here: Soji needs to know just enough to find the location of other synthetics, but not so much that she gets activated.He almost gets away with it too. First, he places her in what appears to be a Romulan sauna and probes her dreams for clues about the whereabouts of the other synthetics. Then he locks her in and tries to poison her. Not a great date if you ask me!This was a marvelous bit of directing by Maja Vrvilo: “Picard” has already shown its willingness to kill off a seemingly main character with Soji’s sister, Dahj. So killing off Soji didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility for the show. The way the scene is shot is full of tension as a result. But Soji gets activated regardless, and her superhuman strength — I should say, her android muscle — gets her out of the situation.I thought this was the best episode of the season, with some caveats. “Picard” has a tendency to rely on some clumsy exposition to help viewers remember details or to fill in back stories for plot lines to come. When Jurati is reminding the audience why Picard is uneasy about being on a Borg cube, it felt off. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the character knows why Picard does not want to go back. But it does lead to a nice opportunity to watch Patrick Stewart dial into Picard’s anger at the Borg — much as he did in “Star Trek: First Contact.”“They don’t change,” Picard snarls. “They metastasize.”Speaking of “First Contact,” there are some lovely callbacks during this episode, including references to the Borg Queen and a glimpse of Picard as Locutus. In one great shot, Picard faces the projection screen with Locutus’s picture on it, and the camera swivels around to juxtapose the two faces, underscoring his internal tension.But there’s no bigger callback than the reunion between Hugh and Picard. Here, I must register a small complaint. It is certainly wonderful as a Trek fan to see two beloved characters from some of the best episodes of “The Next Generation” reunite. But the version of Hugh that Jonathan Del Arco plays in “Picard” seems entirely different from the intensely earnest one he played in “The Next Generation.”I realize that Hugh evolved and reclaimed more of his humanity. People change and grow over time. Certainly, former Borg drones who leave the collective do. Hugh doesn’t have as many cybernetic implants now. And I credit Del Arco with bringing warmth to this version of Hugh. Jeri Ryan did something similar with her resurrection of Seven of Nine. It feels almost as if these characters had been totally recast.I am being nitpicky here, of course. Ryan and Del Arco are excellent at their craft. I just wish we saw a bit more of the personalities we became accustomed to before “Picard” — Hugh’s oblivious sincerity, Seven of Nine’s well-meaning desire for order — rather than a wholesale reinvention.Even so, Del Arco’s Hugh is compelling and helps Picard and Soji escape by leading them to the “Queen’s Cell.”I will register a louder complaint. WHY. DOES. PICARD. LEAVE. ELNOR. BEHIND?! There was no reason for it! Even Picard asks — exasperated, “What are you doing?” when Elnor says he is staying behind to fight. Picard and Soji are able to step through the spatial trajector before the other Romulans arrive — so why does Elnor need to stay?This was such a waste of a great fighter. It feels like a gaping plot hole in a series that has otherwise been the most tightly written stretch of “Trek” episodes in the franchise. And do the Romulans even know about the spatial trajector? The implication from Hugh is that this Queen’s Cell is in a hiding spot of sorts.Odds And Ends:Jurati, who deftly hid her murderous ways in last week’s episode, begins a romance with Rios as he kicks around a soccer ball shirtless. (Not the first soccer reference on “Star Trek,” by the way.) I’m still not sure what to make of Jurati — but she seems genuinely remorseful for murdering Maddox. Or she could be a well-trained Romulan spy. Or both. And I’m certainly not sure of what to make of her being relieved about not having to go to the Borg cube.Raffi seems to be spiraling, although she deftly talks a Starfleet official into letting Picard request diplomatic credentials to board the Borg cube and deduces that the Romulans have kept Dahj alive for a reason. She is presented as someone for whom work is the only thing that can get her to focus. It’s her therapy. Yet, this episode makes clear that work isn’t enough. The scene with Raffi and Rios shows that her estrangement from her son is a source of deep frustration. Even a hard mission can’t solve that.So what happens with Hugh here? When we leave him, he is about to help Elnor fight off the oncoming Romulans. Presumably, the Romulans won’t be happy with him for helping Picard escape. So shouldn’t he have gone with Soji too? He could want to stay help out the reclaimed drones, but I am not sure how he does that now.Did anyone notice the former Borg drone who recognizes Locutus and calls his name in the hallway? And also that Picard turns his head? A nice touch there by Stewart and Vrvilo.This was not the first “Star Trek” episode to deal with an android’s dreams. Recall the “Next Generation” episode “Phantasms” as well as “Birthright,” during which Data discovers his own evolution. More

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    In London, Contemporary Anxieties Take the Stage

    LONDON — Before we get to the apocalypse implicit in the title of “Death of England,” Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s furious play at the National Theater through March 7, spare a thought for the vocal cords of its tireless lone performer, Rafe Spall.Spewing 100 minutes of frequently enraged reports from the front line of grief, Spall is asked to sustain a level of vitriol that must be as wearing on his larynx as it risks becoming for the audience. Playing Michael, a verbally uninhibited Londoner in mourning for a father whom he loved, but whose pro-Brexit politics he found abhorrent, Spall animates a racially fractious landscape with a near-maniacal vigor that I’ve not seen before from this gentlest-seeming of actors.“Death of England” comes from two of Britain’s leading black theater practitioners (Dyer doubles as the director) and is an expansion of a micro-play first commissioned from Williams by the Royal Court Theater and the Guardian newspaper in 2014. In the Dorfman Theater at the National, the stage takes the shape of a St. George’s Cross that cuts through the audience, allowing Spall’s Michael to interact with playgoers at random (“Did you drop something?” he asks a spectator early on) even as he tells us he is talking through the hazy filter of drugs and booze.Performed without an interval, the production gains visual energy from the sudden appearance of props, embedded in cubbyholes to the side of the set: a roast dinner here, a record album or two there. Through it all, Michael attempts to accommodate the memory of a man about whom he feels as divided as the country in the play’s title.The narrative may not always add up: Michael’s father is revealed to have had a secret life in the company of a local Indian restaurateur, Riz, the details of which aren’t remotely plausible: Would this man really be seeking literary sustenance with the also-unseen Riz in the predawn hours? The ending, too, takes a lurch toward the sentimental that Michael, of all people, would surely resist. But you have to hand it to the creative team — not least the hardworking sound designers Pete Malkin and Benjamin Grant — for carrying a full-on assault of this sort straight across the finish line, to co-opt the language of sports deployed by the play.Credibility poses a more significant problem in a longer, more populous play, “The Haystack,” which has been extended at the Hampstead Theater in North London through March 12. Marking the full-length playwriting debut of Al Blyth, the production is the first at this address from the Hampstead’s artistic director, Roxana Silbert, who acceded to her post last fall.Telling of a surveillance state in which our every move is monitored, the careering narrative devolves into a nasty revenge drama, by which point you’ve lost sympathy for both the hotshot intelligence expert Neil (Oliver Johnstone) and the emotionally damaged journalist, Cora (Rona Morison), on whom he alights first professionally and then romantically. She, for her part, gives scant respect to professional benchmarks like fact-checking and attribution.It’s a measure of clunky dramaturgy when a play resorts to lapsing into direct address for no other reason but to impart information or gain a spurious relevance. At one point, we’re given a vivid recapitulation of recent terror attacks in London that only distracts from the tortured courtship at the play’s core. The play takes its title, you guessed it, from the proverbial image of a needle in a haystack, but at a running time of nearly three hours, “The Haystack” is at least one bale too many. Compression, not to mention more logical plotting, would seem to be the noninvasive remedy here.What happens when the world at large simply proves too much? One answer is on compelling view in “Collapsible,” an hourlong play that was a hit at last summer’s Edinburgh Festival. The director Thomas Martin’s keen-eyed production has been extended until March 21 at the Bush Theater, the West London venue devoted to new writing that is on a roll between this and the New York-bound “Baby Reindeer.”The cunning design by Alison Neighbour tips you off to the precarious state of the internet-addicted Esther, or Essie, whom we find perched atop a plinth of sorts from which she seems about to tumble. (The stage floor looks like gravel but is in fact a mix of various materials including charcoal and cork.) Having lost both a job and a partner, Essie lets rip with a fusillade of language to match Michael’s in “Death of England,” the difference being that Breffni Holahan’s Essie speaks even faster than Spall, if more quietly. The Bush’s studio space seats only 60, which allows for greater intimacy.Essie’s thirst for news — “the planet bucking like a horse trying to throw us all off and out into space,” as she describes the state of things — provides a daily catalog of woe writ small as well as large. A Sky television modem, we’re wryly informed midway through a litany of far more terrible disasters, has not yet arrived. Margaret Perry, the play’s Irish writer, keeps the images pouring forth in a lava flow of language that the superb Holahan navigates with confidence.There’s a dark comedy to be found in Essie’s various job interviews, as well as her reckoning with friends and family, from whom she is forever requesting the one word that might best describe her before she slips into a mental abyss. “Smart,” replies her father. “That’s your ration of compliments for the year.”Both author and performer achieve a neat trick in the closing moments that shouldn’t be revealed here beyond a change in perspective that catches the audience unawares. That is followed by a haunting exchange of the word “OK,” though whether Essie or the world she inhabits really is remains movingly up for grabs.Death of England. Directed by Clint Dyer. National Theater / Dorfman, through March 7.The Haystack. Directed by Roxana Silbert. Hampstead Theater, through March 12.Collapsible. Directed by Thomas Martin. Bush Theater, through March 21. More