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      Martha Henry, a Leading Stage Actress in Canada, Dies at 83

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      For decades her performances at the Stratford Festival drew acclaim. She gave her last performance just days before her death.For the last role of her long career, Martha Henry, one of Canada’s finest stage actors, played the character in Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women” known simply as A. Mr. Albee’s character description reads in part, “a very old woman; thin, autocratic, proud, as together as the ravages of time will allow.”As Ms. Henry took to the stage at the Stratford Festival in Ontario in August to begin the play’s two-month run, the cancer she had been dealing with for more than a year was well along. She used a walker in the first shows. In September she performed the role from a wheelchair, soldiering on in the demanding part through the final performance, on Oct. 9.She died of the disease on Thursday at her home in Stratford, the festival announced. She was 83.The effort Ms. Henry put into her final role — A is a dying woman, mean and prone to bursts of both laughing and crying — was, by all accounts, something to see. The performance “shows the veteran actor at her monstrous best,” J. Kelly Nestruck, the chief theater critic for The Globe and Mail of Toronto, wrote in August.“It’s unforgettable — which I mean both as praise and as a warning,” he added. “You might not want the woman she plays stuck in your head.”Ms. Henry had been known for memorable performances at Stratford for decades. She first appeared there in 1962 in a production of “The Tempest,” and her association with the festival continued, with a few gaps, to the present. She acted in more than 70 productions and directed 14 others.“Her sense of responsibility to the theater was so profound that it enabled her to endure pain and face down her terminal disease to complete an astoundingly truthful performance as a dying woman in ‘Three Tall Women,’” Antoni Cimolino, Stratford’s artistic director, said in a statement. “Her life became art.”Ms. Henry with Brian Bedford in “Much Ado About Nothing,” a Stratford Festival production staged at New York City Center in 1998. She acted in more than 70 Stratford productions and directed 14 others.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMartha Kathleen Buhs was born on Feb. 17, 1938, in Detroit. Her parents, Lloyd and Kathleen (Hatch) Buhs, divorced when she was 5. Her mother was a pianist who played cocktail lounges and was often working at night, so Martha was raised by her grandparents until she was 14. She was interested in acting at a young age.“I joined a Brownie troop because they were doing a play,” she told The Pittsburgh Press in 1968.As a teenager she rejoined her mother, who had become part of a traveling entertainment troupe. She would often go on the road with her, enjoying the company of the other performers.“On the same bill there’d be a comic — my mother would fill in as the straight woman — a ventriloquist, a snake charmer, a tap dancer,” Ms. Henry told The Edmonton Journal of Alberta in 1996, when she was playing the same role in “Three Tall Women” in an Edmonton production. “I grew up with show people. They were so good to me.”She enrolled at what is now the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama in Pittsburgh, choosing it over several other colleges because, as she told The Press, “it was the only one that held auditions, to see what you could really do.”The drama department did four Shakespeare plays while she was there, she said, but this future star of numerous Shakespeare productions didn’t get into any of them. After graduating in 1959, she did summer stock in Ontario and worked with the Crest Theater in Toronto. Then she enrolled in the National Theater School in Montreal when it was established in 1960, and went on to become its first acting graduate: Halfway through the three-year course, as she told The Press, the directors told her that she was ready for a professional career.Six weeks later she was a member of the Stratford troupe; her debut there was as Miranda in “The Tempest.” One critic called her “the find of the season.”She had married a fellow student at the theater school, Donnelly Rhodes Henry. The marriage didn’t stick, but the last name did (though not for him — he performed professionally as Donnelly Rhodes). A later marriage, to the actor Douglas Rain in 1968, ended in divorce in 1988. In 1989 she married the actor Rod Beattie, who survives her, along with a daughter from her second marriage, Emma Rain.At Stratford, Ms. Henry’s Isabella in “Measure for Measure” in 1975, her Beatrice in “Much Ado About Nothing” in 1998 and her Mary in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1994 were among her most acclaimed performances. She was also artistic director of the Grand Theater in London, Ontario, from 1988 to 1994.Ms. Henry made the occasional film or television appearance and performed on many stages beyond Stratford, including some in New York. But she said she was never tempted, as a young actress, to try to make it in Manhattan.“I knew exactly what would happen there,” she told The Journal. “I wasn’t exactly shy, but I wasn’t pushy. I was no great beauty. I could see myself getting an apartment and just staying in it.”Canada offered what she wanted, she said.“I just wanted to work, and I felt that any country that could produce a Stratford had to be the most wonderful place. And I was right.” More

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      Behind the 'Boo!': How Haunted House Actors Scare Guests

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      SurfacingWhen ‘Boo!’ Is Only the BeginningWhat does it take to scare the candy corn out of someone? Performers at two of New York’s hallowed haunted attractions explain the secrets behind the shocks.Keenan Loughney, who portrays a nurse at Headless Horseman in Ulster Park, N.Y.Angie Hansen knows what she wants: energy, professionalism, a gift for ad-lib. “And then somebody that really likes to scare people,” she said cheerfully.As the creative director of Blood Manor, a 10,000-square-foot haunted house nestled inside a TriBeCa skyscraper, Hansen assembles 60 performers annually, many of them Blood Manor veterans. She sorts the newcomers into appropriate roles — clowns, killers, corpse brides, victims weeping silicone wounds. In just three or four days of rehearsal, she teaches them to terrify the thousand or so guests who enter Blood Manor, a Halloween staple since 2005, each weekend evening.About two hours north, at Headless Horseman in Ulster Park, N.Y., David Berman leads acting workshops for seasonal scare actors. Because it takes more than ghoulish makeup and vibrating vocal cords to make ticket holders scream.“To just jump out of a closet and just yell, it doesn’t do anything,” Berman said.Nicole Borbone plays a reanimated corpse at Blood Manor.Such haunts — the industry term for a variety of haunted attractions — became popular in the 1980s. Spencer Terry, the president of the Haunted Attractions Association, a trade group, estimates that there are about 1,800 professional haunts in the United States this year. While horror now thrives in sundry forms, these destinations offer something entirely immersive, a 360-degree experience in which audiences can star in their worst nightmares.William Burton is Blood Manor’s mortician.Even as professional attractions move toward more extreme effects — animatronic monsters, plummeting elevators, rippling walls — most still depend on the potential of the human body alone. (Well, the human body and some terrifying face painting.) “Yes, you can scare folks with jump scares, or even puffs of air,” said Beth Kattelman, a professor of performance at Ohio State University. “But what people really remember are the characters, the special things that folks do.”Before Michael Jubie opened Headless Horseman nearly 30 years ago, he worked as a commander of a mounted police unit in Kingston, N.Y. He still projects extreme stoicism, and yet, his actors regularly frighten him. “Oh, I’ve been scared,” he said. “Oh, yes.”Shamia Diaz, a Blood Manor regular, plays the Bride, an asylum escapee. In the weeks leading up to Halloween, we spoke to some of the actors of Blood Manor, amid the hustle of New York City, and Headless Horseman — which operates escape rooms, haunted houses and a very scary corn maze on 65 acres a half-hour drive from the nearest train station — about how they make those scares happen.While some haunted houses use trained actors, most fill their ranks with enthusiastic amateurs. Before the pandemic, applicants came in for interviews and auditions. Now they typically audition remotely, scaring the camera. What makes a great haunt actor? “There has to be at least a little something off about you,” said Will Szigethy, a longtime Headless Horseman actor. But not too off. Most haunts run background checks.Scott Taylor, a packaging engineer for Avon by day, has worked at Headless Horseman for 10 years, with nine of them spent playing a very unsettling clown. “You can tell the people whose heart is in it,” he said. “And you can tell the people that are here just for a paycheck. Those people don’t usually last very long.”Scott Taylor has worked at Headless Horseman for 10 years, playing a clown for most of that time.Veterans take first-timers under their wings, helping them improve their personae and teaching them to scream without shredding their throats. (The trick: Howl from the diaphragm.) Over the course of a season, newcomers will refine characters based on their environment — a morgue, a cemetery, a sideshow — finding distinctive ways to move, to scream, to wield a chain saw or an ax. They will also find their rhythms: a horror variant on comic timing, with a shriek in place of a punchline.Shamia Diaz, a Blood Manor regular, plays the Bride, an asylum escapee. In her blood-smeared hands, the role involves a lot of shaking, a lot of screaming, a lot of encouraging attendees to read scripture from the book of Satan. “You have to find your own mojo, your own vibe,” she said. “Because once you find what works for you, you’re unstoppable.”Jose Torres as Jack, Blood Manor’s masked serial killer.For Dominique Peres, who joined Headless Horseman five years ago as a painfully shy teenager, mojo meant creating a character called Jacket, an exuberant take on a psycho killer. “Jacket is crazy, has an ax, runs rampant, likes candy, likes to make friends,” she said.Some performers specialize in jump scares, popping out from unexpected corners. Others prefer more psychological scares, sidling up to ticket holders, whispering in their ears. (Before Covid-19, some haunts allowed performers to do more than just whisper, but Blood Manor and Headless Horseman have always maintained strict no-contact policies.) Others are more versatile. Amateur psychologists, they vary the scare depending on the mood in the room.Jose Torres, who plays Jack, Blood Manor’s masked serial killer, adjusts his attitude for each new group. “It’s just a connected energy that comes between you and the people walking through,” Torres said.David Berman leads acting workshops at Headless Horseman.That energy, however connected, can be difficult to maintain. While a stage actor will perform once or twice per day, a haunt actor may replay the same scene 10 times an hour, for six to eight hours at a stretch. “It is physically strenuous,” said Meagan Donovan, who oversees a haunted house on the Headless Horseman property. “You’re swinging an ax around all night or just hiding in a small space, being loud.”But the adrenaline rush of eliciting scream after scream keeps performers swinging. “It’s better than a roller coaster,” said Hansen, who spent years playing a Blood Manor victim. “It’s better than sex. It’s better than then the best meal you’ve ever had. The feeling of scaring somebody is what makes you want to do it again and again and again.”Ketara Adolphus plays a character named Stressedgod at Blood Manor.This brand of acting rewards performers in other ways, too. Putting on the makeup and picking up a fake weapon allows them a sense of freedom and disinhibition they may not feel otherwise. “For me, the experience has been very empowering,” Diaz said.Many also treat haunt acting as a form of stress relief. “They use it as a kind of therapy,” said Berman, who plays a gross-out character named Dewey Tewey at Headless Horseman. “You can’t, in your regular day job, tell somebody you’re going to rip their arms and legs off and toss them into the woods.”As Reff, Hector Vega Toro prowls the depths of Blood Manor.Every so often an actor goes too far, continuing to scare a ticket holder who is obviously already petrified. But most know when to quit or even how to lend a helping, blood-covered hand, scooting people out of a room without breaking character. Besides, the best scares, many performers said, are the ones they really have to work for.Nicole Borbone and William Burton, recent college graduates, perform a scene set in Blood Manor’s sinew-stained morgue. They begin with a jump scare, then move into a sequence in which Borbone’s corpse suddenly rises from the table and begs attendees to help her. Burton likes to lock eyes with the customers who look like they’d be tough to scare; Borbone tends to lunge for them. Usually she gets the reaction she wants.“When I make a grown man scream and fall on his knees,” she said, “I’ve done my job.”Dominique Peres performs as Jacket, an exuberant psycho killer.Surfacing is a column that explores the intersection of art and life, produced by Alicia DeSantis, Jolie Ruben, Tala Safie and Josephine Sedgwick. More

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      in Television

      James Michael Tyler, Who Played Gunther on ‘Friends,’ Dies at 59

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      A real barista who was cast as a Central Perk co-worker of his crush, Jennifer Aniston’s character, he appeared in 150 episodes of the hit show.James Michael Tyler, who played the deadpan, smitten barista Gunther on the TV show “Friends,” died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 59.His manager, Toni Benson, said the cause was prostate cancer, which was diagnosed in September 2018. After his diagnosis, Mr. Tyler shared his story to encourage others to get screened for prostate cancer as early as 40.“Friends” helped launch the careers of its star-studded cast, which included Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer. It debuted on NBC in the fall of 1994, ran for a decade, and typically had around 25 million to 30 million viewers each week.Though Mr. Tyler was not a main character, he was widely considered to be “the seventh friend” and appeared in 150 episodes. He played the part of Gunther, a barista at Central Perk, the friends’ hangout, who had a deep crush on Ms. Aniston’s character, Rachel, who also worked at the coffee shop.Mr. Tyler’s path to the show was fortuitous. While working as an actual barista at a real-life coffee shop, he was asked if he would be interested in being an extra on “Friends.” For the first season, his character was known as “Coffee Guy.”“At the time I was also working as a barista for a place called the Bourgeois Pig, one of the last independent coffee houses in Los Angeles,” Mr. Tyler told The New York Times in 2012. In his second season, he got a line of dialogue: “Yeah,” he said, when Mr. Schwimmer’s character, Ross, asked him if his apartment had stairs.Marta Kauffman and David Crane, the show’s co-creators, recalled the beginnings of Mr. Tyler’s run on the series. “When he started as an extra on Friends, his unique spirit caught our eye and we knew we had to make him a character,” they said in a statement Sunday night. “He made Gunther’s unrequited love incredibly relatable.”In the series finale, Gunther, known for his bleached locks, finally summoned the courage to confess his love to Rachel, who let him down warmly.“I love you, too,” Rachel told Gunther. “Probably not in the same way. But I do. And when I’m in a cafe having coffee, or I see a man with hair brighter than the sun, I’ll think of you.”Born May 28, 1962, in Winona, Miss., Mr. Tyler was the youngest of five children, raised by a retired Air Force captain and a homemaker, according to a biography on IMDb. He moved to Anderson, S.C., to live with his sister at age 11 and enrolled at Clemson University as a geology major. He earned a master’s of fine arts from the University of Georgia and moved to Los Angeles after a brief stint of selling cars in Olympia, Wash., according to the bio.“Michael loved live music, cheering on his Clemson Tigers, and would often find himself in fun and unplanned adventures,” Ms. Benson said in a statement. “If you met him once you made a friend for life.”Mr. Tyler revealed publicly in June that he had prostate cancer. He told “Today” that he was surrounded by an “extraordinary” support group and that many people were praying for his health.“It’s made me, personally, just realize how important every moment is, every day,” Mr. Tyler said. “And fighting. Don’t give up. Keep fighting. Keep yourself as light as possible. And have goals. Set goals. My goal this past year was to see my 59th birthday. I did that, May 28th. My goal now is to help save at least one life by coming out with this news.”While undergoing treatment, Mr. Tyler continued to perform and starred in two short films, “The Gesture and the Word” and “Processing,” earning accolades at film festivals, according to The Hollywood Reporter.Mr. Tyler’s survivors include his wife, Jennifer Carno. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available. More

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      in Movies

      Dorothy Steel, Whose Big-Screen Career Had a Late Start, Dies at 95

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      She was cast in “Black Panther” at 90, not long after she began acting professionally. “As soon as we saw her,” the movie’s casting director said, “we wanted her.”Dorothy Steel was 90 and had been acting professionally for little more than a year when her agent asked her, in late 2016, if she wanted to audition for a role in “Black Panther,” the Marvel Studios film set in the fantastical African nation of Wakanda.She was uncertain. So she said no.“I said, ‘There is no way I’m going to be in no comic strip at my age,’” she recalled telling her agent, Cindy Butler, when she appeared on Steve Harvey’s television show in 2018. “But she’s very persistent. I have to give her credit. She said, ‘Miss Dorothy, you can do this.’”She relented after getting an extra push from her grandson, Niles Wardell.“She was on the fence about it,” Mr. Wardell said in a phone interview, “and when she brought it to my attention, I said: ‘Grandma, you always talk about stepping out on faith and doing the things you love. This is your opportunity.’”He added, “She wasn’t so much concerned that it was a comic-strip movie, but that the role was too big for her.”Before she auditioned, Ms. Steel studied videos of Nelson Mandela on YouTube to help her develop a credible accent. She then auditioned on video for the role of a tribe leader, reading lines from the script. Ms. Butler emailed the video to Sarah Finn, the film’s casting director, who quickly agreed to hire her.“We found her late in the process,” Ms. Finn said by phone. “She was extraordinary. As soon as we saw her, we wanted her. She had an incredible spirit, warmth, humor and intelligence. We were thrilled to cast her.”She was in a few scenes but said only one line, to T’Challa, the king of Wakanda and the movie’s title character, played by Chadwick Boseman: “Wakanda does not need a warrior right now. We need a king.”Ms. Steel died on Oct. 14 in a hospital in Detroit at 95. She had completed most of her filming for the “Black Panther” sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” when she got sick. She was flown home by Marvel to Detroit, where she had been living for the last year.Her grandson, her only immediate survivor, confirmed the death.Dorothy May Steel was born on Feb. 23, 1926, in Flint, Mich. She worked for many years as a senior revenue officer for the Internal Revenue Service in Detroit. Her marriage to Warren Wardell ended with his death.After retiring in 1984, she lived for 20 years in the Caribbean, on St. Croix, before moving to Atlanta to be near her grandson and her son, Scott, who died in 2018.Ms. Steel began acting in her 80s in the annual plays staged at the Frank Bailey Senior Center in Riverdale, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. She had never acted before “and wanted to try something new to see if she could do it,” said Elaine Jackson, the former manager of the center, who wrote the plays, including one in which Ms. Steel played a teenager.Ms. Butler said that while Ms. Steel was playing the voice of God in one of the plays, Greg Alan Williams, an actor and drama teacher, happened to be there and was impressed enough to offer her free lessons. Another student, a client of Ms. Butler’s, suggested that Ms. Steel sign with Ms. Butler.“So she came in one day and I said, ‘Spend a day with me,’” Ms. Butler said. “After that meeting I had to sign her. She was going to work.”Within weeks, Ms. Butler had found work for Ms. Steel. It was her presence, Ms. Butler said, that brought her jobs.“When she spoke, she spoke with authority,” she said. “Her voice was strong. And at her age she was memorizing lines without a problem.”Ms. Steel’s credits also include “Merry Christmas, Baby” (2016), a television movie; “Daisy Winters” (2017), a feature film; and four episodes of the prime-time soap opera “Saints & Sinners” in 2016, as well as a commercial for the South Carolina Lottery and a public service announcement for the DeKalb County Board of Health.Acting provided her with a “protective cubicle,” Ms. Steel told The Washington Post in 2018. “You’re protected from the world,” she said. “And that’s the first time in my life I felt absolutely secure.”On the set of “Black Panther,” she recalled, she became a grandmotherly presence to the cast, and each day she would get a hug and kiss from Mr. Boseman, who died in 2020.“We were one big melting pot of Black people, and we knew we were doing something special that had never been done before,” Ms. Steel told WSB-TV in Atlanta in 2018. “You know?” More

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      in Television

      Jay Ellis Comes Home to Harlem

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      The “Insecure” actor goes on a walking tour of his adopted neighborhood.Jay Ellis was buying snacks at a corner bodega in Harlem when a woman in a crop top and Ray-Bans approached him. “Oh my God, I’m so happy!” she said.This was on a sticky Monday in September, halfway through a walking tour of Harlem, where Mr. Ellis had lived, on and off, in the mid-2000s, when he was a model trying to break into acting. After years of sporadic work, he landed a starring role on BET’s “The Game,” a comedy-drama set in the world of professional football, then booked the romantic lead on the HBO comedy “Insecure,” playing Lawrence, the boyfriend of the series creator Issa Rae’s Issa.At the end of the show’s first season, Issa cheats on Lawrence. Lawrence retaliates by dangling the promise of a reunion, then bedding a co-worker. Which means that attitudes toward the character — and Mr. Ellis — are pretty divisive. (“Insecure” returns for a fifth and final season on Oct. 24.)“I’m not a fan of yours,” the woman in the bodega clarified. “That payback wasn’t right. Nonetheless you’re a great actor.”Mr. Ellis, 39, favored her with his Sunday morning smile, then left with his water and unsalted cashews.A skyscraper of a man with dizzying charisma, Mr. Ellis, 6-foot-3, had overdressed for the day in jeans, a Comme des Garçons striped shirt, a slate jacket and sneakers the blinding white of new veneers. He met the tour guide, Neal Shoemaker, at the offices of Harlem Heritage Tours on Malcolm X Boulevard. Together they set off for a shambolic stroll through the neighborhood.“You may meet my mom any minute now,” Mr. Shoemaker said as he led Mr. Ellis onto the basketball court at the center of Martin Luther King Jr. Towers. Fourteen floors up, Mr. Shoemaker’s aunt waved furiously from a window. Mr. Shoemaker shouted up to her, teasingly introducing Mr. Ellis as her “new nephew.”Mr. Ellis bought some snacks at a bodega, where he was approached by fans. Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesNext, they walked through the African market near West 116th Street and past the Masjid Malcolm Shabazz, where incense clouded the late summer air and a nearby cafe advertised male enhancements and veggie burgers. Mr. Ellis had barely been back in 15 years. The burned-out brownstones had been renovated, he noted. And the police presence seemed lighter.The tour continued past Minton’s Playhouse and alongside Marcus Garvey Park, the site of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that was chronicled in the documentary “Summer of Soul,” which Mr. Ellis had just seen. He stopped outside the house where Maya Angelou once lived, admiring the ivy that tumbled from the lintel.Throughout the walk, fans stopped Mr. Ellis for greetings and pictures — “Take it with me, not of me,” Mr. Ellis said to an excitable middle-aged woman who had halted her car just to snap him. Friends and relatives stopped Mr. Shoemaker, too, and Mr. Ellis, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and baby daughter, seemed a little jealous of the humming street life.“It’s the music mecca for Black culture,” Mr. Ellis said. “It’s the style mecca. Religiously, it’s a mecca. I come here, and I’m like, ‘Why am I living in LA.?’”Mr. Ellis plays Lawrence in “Insecure,” the boyfriend of the series creator Issa Rae, right.Merie W. Wallace/HBOMr. Ellis, the only child of an Air Force family, moved to Los Angeles just after his Harlem years. He briefly gave up on acting, then recommitted. A plucky hustle — he pretended that a casting agent had recommended him — hooked him a decent manager, and after a couple of years of acting classes, he began to book roles.None has meant as much to him as Lawrence, a character who struggles with the obligations of Black masculinity. Lawrence wasn’t supposed to make it past Season 1, but something about Mr. Ellis’s layered portrayal made him a fan favorite. And a least favorite.“I always say that if people are mad at me, if people are happy with me, if they’re sad or whatever, then I did my job,” he said. “Even if you hate Lawrence, I did my job because you felt something. I hope you love him because I love him. But I get it if you don’t.”Are Lawrence and Issa endgame? Mr. Ellis knew better than to comment. “I want both of them to be happy,” he said diplomatically. “I hope that it’s with each other.”He has already begun his post-“Insecure” career, with a starring role in “Top Gun: Maverick,” due out next year. (His character’s nickname? Payback.) He recently signed onto a romantic comedy, “Somebody I Used to Know,” and is the co-creator of the podcast “Written Off,” which features the work of formerly incarcerated authors.Mr. Ellis also has a starring role in “Top Gun: Maverick,” due out next year. Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesMr. Ellis followed Mr. Shoemaker past Dapper Dan’s atelier, into the Harlem Haberdashery and cater-corner to Harlem Shake, where Mr. Ellis would return for a post-walk burger. On 125th Street, he stopped to read the text on a monument to the politician and civil rights leader Adam Clayton Powell Jr.The tour ended at the Apollo Theater, “where stars are born, legends are made,” Mr. Shoemaker said. Mr. Ellis is already a star, but he still fantasizes about appearing in one of its amateur nights. Would he sing? Tell a joke?“All of it,” Mr. Ellis said, flashing that slow dance smile. “I’d do it all.”Mr. Shoemaker pointed to an unoccupied rectangle on the Apollo’s Walk of Fame, next to Lionel Richie. “I can see Jay Ellis right there,” he said.Mr. Ellis posed for a photo with a fan or two, including a teenager who recognized him from the thriller “Escape Room.” Then he and Mr. Shoemaker said a friendly goodbye.“Appreciate you, chief,” Mr. Ellis called as he headed back down 125th Street. “Tell your mama I’m coming, I’m hungry.” More

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      Betty Lynn, Thelma Lou on ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ Dies at 95

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      She played Deputy Barney Fife’s girlfriend on the long-running sitcom and was remembered by fans with fondness more than 50 years later.Betty Lynn, who portrayed Thelma Lou, the patient girlfriend of Barney Fife, the bumbling deputy sheriff of the homespun town of Mayberry in the long-running 1960s sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show,” died on Saturday in Mount Airy, N.C. She was 95.The death was announced by the Andy Griffith Museum in Mount Airy, Mr. Griffith’s hometown and the inspiration for fictional Mayberry.Ms. Lynn joined the cast of the show in 1961, late in the first season, for an episode in which Sheriff Andy Taylor (Mr. Griffith) plays matchmaker between Barney and Thelma Lou.Thelma Lou’s occupation through 26 episodes remained a mystery, as did her surname. Although Barney (Don Knotts) had an occasional telephone flirtation with Juanita, a diner waitress who was never seen, it was clear that Thelma Lou was Barney’s steady girl. But in a 1966 episode, after Mr. Knotts departed as a series regular, Barney returned for a high school reunion to learn that Thelma Lou had gotten married.Still, all was not lost for him. When much of the cast reunited in 1986 for a two-hour television movie, “Return to Mayberry,” Thelma Lou had gotten divorced. She and Barney married in the film.Ms. Lynn moved from West Hollywood to a retirement community in Mount Airy in 2007. In addition to the Griffith museum, the town offers recreations of familiar Mayberry haunts like Floyd’s barber shop. Ms. Lynn became a nostalgic lure to tourists, who would stand in line once a month to get her autograph, to give her a kiss or to chat about the series.“I think God’s blessed me,” she told The Associated Press in 2015. “He brought me to a sweet town, wonderful people, and just said, ‘Now, that’s for you, Betty.’”Elizabeth Ann Theresa Lynn was born on Aug. 29, 1926, in Kansas City, Mo. Her mother, Elizabeth, was a singer, organist and church choir director who raised Betty with her parents. By 14, Betty was singing in local supper clubs and at 18 began performing in U.S.O. shows. After the war, she had small roles in the Broadway musicals “Park Avenue” and “Oklahoma!”She appeared in films like “Sitting Pretty” and “June Bride” in 1948 and “Cheaper by the Dozen” in 1950. On television, she acted in anthology series, westerns and sitcoms, including “Family Affair and “My Three Sons.” In 1986, she played Mr. Griffith’s secretary on four episodes of his dramatic series, “Matlock,” in which he played a lawyer.Ms. Lynn never married and did not leave any immediate survivors. Among regular cast members of “The Andy Griffith Show,” only the director Ron Howard, who played Opie, Sheriff Taylor’s son, is still alive.Ms. Lynn said that she could have stayed with the series, which ended in 1968, had she accepted the producers’ offer to make her the owner of a hairdressing salon. But Mr. Knotts was gone, having moved on to a film career.Without Barney, she told The A.P. in 2007, “I didn’t think Thelma Lou made much sense.” More

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      in Theater

      On London Stages, Brevity Reigns Supreme

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      A new work by Caryl Churchill, the final installment in Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell saga and a Larry Kramer play deploy their running times with varied success.LONDON — Theatrical convention has never mattered to Caryl Churchill, the questing English playwright who at 83 continues to display a maverick intelligence. “What If If Only,” her new play for her longtime home, the Royal Court, runs only 20 minutes — which is six minutes longer than was widely reported when the three-performer drama was first announced.But Churchill manages to communicate so much about love and loss and the possibility — just maybe — of a brighter tomorrow that the play, on view through Oct. 23, seems utterly complete. Theatergoers could add value by combining this premiere with the British debut of the American writer Aleshea Harris’s blistering (and 90-minute) “Is God Is,” also playing on the Court’s main stage.The text of Churchill’s play gives its characters names like “Someone” and “Future,” but the director James Macdonald’s ever-spry production cuts through any potential opacity. You understand in an instant the inconsolable despondency of John Heffernan, playing (superbly) a man in a one-sided conversation with someone dear to him who has died; a reference at the outset to painting an apple calls to mind Magritte, whose surrealism Churchill echoes.Jasmine Nyenya, left, and John Heffernan in Caryl Churchill’s “What If If Only,” directed by James Macdonald, at the Royal Court Theater.Johan PerssonHeffernan is visited in his bereavement by a beaming Linda Bassett, a mainstay of Churchill’s work here playing one of several versions of the future in a hypothetical multiverse that evokes the recently revived “Constellations,” a play that was first seen at the Court. Bassett reappears later, this time known only as “Present” and promising a reality that, “of course,” contains war — what reality doesn’t, she asks — alongside “nice things” like “movies and trees and people who love each other.” Are those verities enough in themselves to provide comfort? “What If If Only” isn’t sure, preferring not to traffic in certainty but in the mystery of existence that Churchill has once again marked out as her magisterially realized terrain.Events, by contrast, couldn’t be more linear in “The Mirror and the Light,” the third and final installment in the saga of the Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell, as filtered through the beady eye of the novelist Hilary Mantel. The first two books in her trilogy were adapted into a pair of plays that ran in the U.K. and on Broadway, and this third play, at the Gielgud Theater through Jan. 23, presumably has Broadway in its sights as well. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.Whereas “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies” were adapted for the stage by a seasoned playwright, Mike Poulton, the completion of the triptych has been whittled down for theatrical consumption by Mantel herself, in collaboration with her leading man, Ben Miles, reprising the role of Cromwell. Both are first-time playwrights working with a skilled director, Jeremy Herrin, who has staged all three plays.The result is a lot of filleting for a book in excess of 700 pages, and you often feel as if you’ve boarded a speeding train that is racing through its narrative stops. Keen-eyed playgoers might want to supplement this show with a visit to the popular musical “Six,” which chronicles Henry VIII’s much-married life from the ladies’ perspectives: Equal time seems only fair.This non-singing account of the story begins at the end, which is to say with Cromwell not far from his beheading in 1540. We then rewind to allow for a speedy recap illustrating how Henry VIII’s once crucial aide-de-camp reached this baleful state. No doubt in an effort to avert musty history’s cramping the theatrical mood, characters’ relationships to one another are neatly laid out, leavened where possible with jokey repartee. Dream sequences bring in such ghostly personages as Cardinal Wolsey (a droll Tony Turner) and Cromwell’s father, Walter (Liam Smith).The aim is presumably a modern-day equivalent of the history play cycle of which Shakespeare was the master, as makes sense for a drama presented on the West End in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The problem is a narrative compression so extreme that the story barely has time to breathe, paired with an ensemble overly prone to shouting: Nicholas Boulton’s blustery Duke of Suffolk is on particular overdrive throughout.Things improve with Nathaniel Parker’s increasingly irascible Henry VIII, who is seen changing wives — scarcely has he married the ill-fated Jane Seymour (Olivia Marcus) before he’s on to Anna of Cleves (a cool-seeming Rosanna Adams) — while Miles’s Cromwell watches from the sidelines, too often this time a supporting player in his own story. Christopher Oram won a Tony in 2015 for his costumes for the two-part “Wolf Hall,” and his work here similarly suggests a Holbein portrait or two come to life.For sheer illumination, however, it’s left to Jessica Hung Han Yun’s elegant lighting to sear the stage, lending intrigue and import even when the hurtlingly superficial play has careered off course.Ben Daniels, left, and Dino Fetscher in Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart,” directed by Dominic Cooke at the National Theater.Helen MaybanksA grievous chapter from our own recent history is on view through Nov. 6 on the Olivier stage of the National Theater, where the protean director Dominic Cooke (“Follies,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) has revived the AIDS-era drama “The Normal Heart.” This is the first major production of Larry Kramer’s momentous 1985 play since its pioneering author died last year.Kramer’s crusading spirit lives on in the impassioned Ned Weeks (the English actor Ben Daniels, in fiery, wiry form), the author’s obvious alter ego, who is seen galvanizing a reluctant New York community (The New York Times included) about the peril posed by AIDS in the early years of that pandemic. The production employs a peculiar Brechtian device that has each scene introduced by the actors in their own accents before they morph into their characters: All that does is illustrate the difficulty some of the cast has with the American sounds required.Still, there’s no denying the roiling fury of a wordy play running close to three hours that now as then works as both a call to arms and a requiem: a testament to the durability of people under siege as well as to their fragility. “There’s so much death around,” says Ned, a remark that Churchill’s “Someone” would himself surely recognize, even as both characters find themselves in plays that pulsate with life.Liz Carr in “The Normal Heart.” The production is the first major presentation of the momentous 1985 play since Kramer died last year.Helen MaybanksWhat If If Only. Directed by James Macdonald. Royal Court Theater, through Oct. 23.The Mirror and the Light. Directed by Jeremy Herrin. Gielgud Theater, through Jan. 23.The Normal Heart. Directed by Dominic Cooke. National Theater, through Nov. 6. More

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      Former ‘Hamilton’ Cast Member Files Discrimination Complaint Against Show

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      In the E.E.O.C. filing, the actor, who is nonbinary, describes being retaliated against after requesting a gender-neutral dressing room, among other claims. The show denies the allegations.A former “Hamilton” cast member filed a federal workplace complaint against the show on Wednesday, alleging that the show had retaliated and refused to renew a contract after the actor had requested a gender-neutral dressing room.In the complaint, filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, lawyers for the former cast member, Suni Reid (who prefers the pronouns they/them), said they were sidelined and eventually let go in September after requesting a gender-neutral space at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles where “Hamilton” was playing.In the 28-page complaint, Reid, a Black, nonbinary performer who has performed with the New York, Chicago and Los Angeles productions of “Hamilton” since 2017, outlined several other instances of discrimination and harassment by cast members and management over the years, including episodes in which Reid said they were physically threatened or intentionally and repeatedly misgendered.The complaint said Reid eventually intends to pursue legal claims in federal court. Filing a charge of discrimination and retaliation with the E.E.O.C. is a precursor to filing such a lawsuit.“Publicly, ‘Hamilton’ is a beacon of diversity and appears committed to causes seeking social justice and harmony,” Reid’s lawyers, Lawrence M. Pearson and Lindsay M. Goldbrum, said in a statement. “Behind the curtain, however, the Company’s management will force out a Black, transgender cast member simply because they stood up for themselves and advocated for a more equitable workplace, and therefore called that public image into question.”“We look forward to upholding Reid’s rights and hope this is a wake-up call for the theater industry about the systemic inequities that persist even at its greatest heights,” the statement continued.In its own statement, “Hamilton” said Wednesday that Reid had been “a valued cast member” for years and said the show had “offered them a contract to return to ‘Hamilton’ with terms responsive to their requests.”“We deny the allegations in the Charge,” the show said. “We have not discriminated or retaliated against Suni.” During the shutdown, it added, “we have given Suni direct financial support, paid for their health insurance, and paid for their housing. We wish Suni well in their future endeavors.”Reid has performed in the ensemble as well as in roles such as Aaron Burr, George Washington, Hercules Mulligan/James Madison, and Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, according to the complaint.It comes as Broadway and touring shows are working to find their footing following a lengthy pandemic-related shutdown. Earlier this summer, as several shows like “Hamilton” were preparing to restart, some of the most powerful players on Broadway signed a pact pledging to strengthen the industry’s diversity practices.But Reid’s complaint paints a picture of a toxic workplace environment at “Hamilton” that stretched from coast to coast.Reid was cast in the Broadway production of the show in 2017 and met hostility from the start, according to the complaint. Reid eventually requested a transfer from the Broadway production and started with the Chicago company of “Hamilton” in March 2019, according to the complaint, and came out publicly as transgender and gender-nonconforming. They were constantly misgendered by co-workers, “at times in a pointedly hostile or callous manner,” according to the complaint.By 2020, Reid had begun rehearsals for the Los Angeles company, but never was able to to join the Los Angeles cast in performance because of the shutdown, the complaint said.In May, Reid was presented with a contract renewal for “Hamilton.” Around that time, they asked their agent, Michele Largé, to request a gender-neutral dressing room at Pantages that Reid and others could use. “Hamilton” officials then raised concerns about posts Reid had published on social media describing racial equity issues on the show, according to the complaint.The show would eventually agree to set up gender-neutral dressing spaces in every “Hamilton” theater. But in the fall, after Reid’s lawyers informed the show that they had legal claims of discrimination, the show told Reid’s lawyers that it was “no longer open” to having Reid perform in “Hamilton,” and that “renewal of their contract was no longer an option,” the complaint said. More