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      ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Is Now a Play in London’s West End

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      Much has changed for L.G.B.T.Q. people since Annie Proulx’s short story was published in 1997. But a new theatrical version is a reminder that homophobia is far from over.In 2016, when the theater director Jonathan Butterell was considering a proposal to adapt Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story “Brokeback Mountain” for the stage, he wondered how to translate the prose’s vast landscape and insular emotions into a play.Last month, in a central London rehearsal studio, Butterell and Ashley Robinson, who wrote the play, tried to answer that question. To help the cast connect with Proulx’s story of a cowboy and a ranch hand falling in love against the wide-stretching landscapes of 1960s Wyoming, black-and-white photographs of American plains and mountain ranges were tacked to the walls during rehearsals.“The vastness has been there from the very beginning,” Butterell said in a recent interview. When it came to evoking the story’s emotional landscape, the director had stuck one sepia-toned photograph, of a lone cowboy in a snow-covered Wyoming, behind a pillar. The image “speaks to the bit of us that feels alone in the world,” Butterell said. “Maybe he’s at peace with this, maybe it’s the source of his agony.”Butterell’s “Brokeback Mountain” opened in previews May 10 at @sohoplace in London’s West End. It’s the first time the story has been adapted for theater — an opera by Charles Wuorinen premiered in Madrid in 2014 — and each version now follows in the footsteps of Proulx’s text and the film that popularized it: Ang Lee’s 2005 Academy Award-winning adaptation, which is often cited as one of the best L.G.B.T.Q. films of all time.Faist, left, and Hedges at @sohoplace. During rehearsals, black-and-white photographs of American plains and mountain ranges were tacked to the walls.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesButterell said he was aware of his audience having expectations based on the film. “They’re inevitable,” he said, “but I don’t mind that.”This theatrical version also has some Hollywood clout. Its lead characters, Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar, are played by the BAFTA-nominated actor Mike Faist and the Oscar-nominated actor Lucas Hedges.In late 2016, Robinson first wrote a treatment for what he called a “memory play” based on the short story, after speaking with the composer Dan Gillespie Sells and Butterell. Robinson’s script stated that the Wyoming setting should not be conveyed “in a purely literal sense,” and his story is set in 2013, with an older version of del Mar reflecting on the years he spent with Twist between 1963 and 1983.Proulx approved of Robinson’s vision. She has “high hopes for the play,” she said in a recent email interview. “When I read Ashley’s script several years ago, I thought he had done a fine job.”In Proulx’s story, del Mar and Twist’s interior worlds are conveyed by an omniscient narrator. In the stage adaptation, music does much of that work.“These two men can’t sing,” Gillespie Sells said, because “they don’t have an emotional dialogue.” Instead, a character called The Balladeer — played by the Scottish singer-songwriter Eddi Reader — sings with an onstage country and western band. “She takes us through time,” Butterell said. “Sometimes it’s from night to day. Sometimes it’s 10 years.”“Brokeback Mountain” will be the first time its two lead actors have appeared onstage in five years. Faist, who plays Twist, originated the role of Connor Murphy in “Dear Evan Hansen” on Broadway, and has had more recent success in film, including Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of “West Side Story.”Hedges “hadn’t acted in a while” when he was sent the script, he said, having been focusing on writing instead. The “Brokeback” offer and playing del Mar changed that. “There wasn’t an angle I didn’t love about this,” he said.“As terrifying and frustrating as it is, I really am having the time of my life,” Faist, left, said of the production.Shona LouiseAs the project entered its final week of rehearsals, both actors were grappling with the process in different ways. Hedges said he was experiencing “tragic and triumphant ups and downs” about his own work. “I have a day where I think I’ve figured it all out, and then a day when it all disappears,” he said. The “collective experience” of theater was daunting compared to working in film, he said, adding that onstage, “I can’t use tricks to make it through.”Faist concurred: “It’s a challenge, and it’s terrifying,” mainly because of the expectations of having to match the source material and 2005 film, he said. “But as terrifying and frustrating as it is, I really am having the time of my life,” he added.Butterell said that Faist and Hedges were “as men, as actors, very different creatures.” Faist, he said, had “a sense of life and vivacity,” while Hedges “has this deeply complex interior landscape that’s very much of Ennis.”Neither Hedges, Faist nor Butterell had revisited Lee’s film since they were approached for the project. “The truth of the matter is, no matter what, he’s not Heath Ledger and I’m not Jake Gyllenhaal,” Faist said of the film’s two lead stars, who both earned Oscar nominations for their performances. He and Hedges, Faist added, would both bring their “own weird things” to the roles.The production has forced Faist to confront his “traumas,” he said. “We can take those traumas, turn them around,” he added, and, he hopes, make the audience “think deeply about their own lives.”Following the success of the “Brokeback Mountain” film, Proulx said fans of her text sent her fan fiction that rewrote the ending of her short story, claiming the original was too sad. She told the The Paris Review that those fans had “misunderstood” the story and stated that it was, most importantly, about “homophobia.”Jonathan Butterell, the play’s director, said his two lead actors had different strengths: Faist, left, has “a sense of life and vivacity,” while Lucas, right, “has this deeply complex interior landscape that’s very much of Ennis.”Suzie Howell for The New York TimesThis is the first adaptation of “Brokeback” to be released since the Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in all 50 U.S. states. Robinson — who lives in Brooklyn but was raised in the tiny town of Lockhart, S.C. — said he wrote it to remind audiences that gay trauma still exists.“These stories aren’t necessarily being told anymore because of a trend to put onstage what we want the world to be,” he said, referring to the theater community. “That’s a wonderful thing to do, but we shouldn’t cancel out all of the opportunities to talk about what’s going on underneath it.”Butterell added that the fight against homophobia was “not over” in Britain either, citing a recent spike in the number of attacks on L.G.B.T.Q. people.“This is a tragedy,” Butterell said of the play. “Of course love exists — I don’t want it to be solemn — but the tragedy of this piece is that fear wins.” More

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      ‘Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie’ Review: Hiding in Plain Sight

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      The “Back to the Future” star time-travels through his career in this documentary, charting his experiences learning to live with Parkinson’s disease.With apologies to Dr. Emmett Brown, you don’t need a flux capacitor to build a time machine. All you need to do is make a film. “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” a new biographical documentary from Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”), zips through the “Back to the Future” actor’s career with humor and style; it gives the impression that its subject is willing to answer any question. Fox appears, head-on, in contemporary interviews with an off-camera Guggenheim. None of the charisma and charm that made him a star have diminished.But much of what distinguishes “Still” — as it’s simply titled onscreen, sans marketing hook — is how cleverly it has been edited. While this documentary draws on a standard tool kit of re-enactments and archival material, its best device is to use clips of Fox’s own movies as a counterpoint to his words, as if Fox weren’t playing fictional characters, but himself.In a way, he was. “Still” charts his experiences learning to live with Parkinson’s disease, a diagnosis he kept private for years before going public in 1998. One montage — tackily but irresistibly set to INXS’s “New Sensation” — illustrates how he managed to hide his illness in plain sight. Movies like “For Love or Money” (1993) and “Life With Mikey” (1993) reveal his practice of putting an object in his left hand to mask its trembling. What looked like nimble character work was, even then, documentary evidence.Guggenheim presents this sequence as if it were depicting an illicit drug binge, in part because Fox discusses his habit of popping Sinemet pills to keep up his level of dopamine, which is deficient in Parkinson’s patients. The segment ends by cutting to the present-day Fox, who says he needs more pills and asks Guggenheim for a couple of minutes so that the meds can kick in, to make him less “mumble-mouthed.”“Still” certainly doesn’t sugarcoat Fox’s life with Parkinson’s. An early scene shows him taking a spill across the street from Central Park. At another point, a makeup artist gives him a touch-up because a fall has broken bones in his face. But such moments are reminders of just how much any movie would necessarily leave unseen.The film establishes a brisk, appealing pace early on, as Fox, the only formal talking head (although we see him with his family), recalls how he came to acting. The title comes from one of Guggenheim’s queries: “Before Parkinson’s, what would it mean to be still?” Fox answers, “I wouldn’t know.”After moving from his native Canada to Hollywood, he says, he lived in an apartment so cramped that he washed his hair with Palmolive and his dishes with Head & Shoulders. Marty McFly emerges as an almost autobiographical creation, because the making of “Back to the Future” (1985) required Fox to engage in a bit of temporal dislocation himself. To fulfill his obligations to the sitcom “Family Ties” while making the movie, he had to shuttle between sets, with little sleep in between. In another toe-tapping montage — this time scored to Alan Silvestri’s “Back to the Future” theme — “Still” conveys the sheer whirlwind of what Fox’s life was like as drivers chauffeured him from one place to another and he could barely keep straight which role he was playing.Fox’s wife, Tracy Pollan, who appeared with him as a love interest in “Family Ties” and as a possible salvation for the cocaine-addled magazine employee he played in “Bright Lights, Big City” (1988), is held up as a rare person who could stand up to his arrogance during his peak period of stardom. “Still” becomes something of a love story, of how Pollan stayed with Fox not just through his sickness but during long gig-related absences and what he characterizes as a period of alcoholism.But the documentary is, perhaps improbably, not a downer in the least. It isn’t oriented primarily around illness, even as it shows Fox working with doctors and aides throughout. It’s a character study in which Fox reflects on his life with quick wit and self-deprecation. “If I’m here 20 years from now, I’ll either be cured or like a pickle,” he says. The real-life Marty McFly may not have a time machine. But he now has this crowd-pleaser of a movie.Still: A Michael J. Fox MovieRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More

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      15 Fashion Triumphs From Cannes Over the Decades

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      Movies aren’t the only thing to watch. The film festival has made red carpet waves since “being seen” became mainstream.If the Met Gala is the all-star showcase of red carpet entrances, the Oscars the skills championship, and the MTV Video Music Awards the X Games, then the Cannes Film Festival is effectively the playoffs: an extended period in which celebrities show up multiple times in clothes high and low, demonstrating all their moves.And though outfits seem to be getting increasingly extreme with the proliferation of social media, a look back through the history of the festival’s runway (oops, red carpet) — which this year runs May 16-27 — reveals that it was, in fact, ever thus.The Croisette boulevard has always been a catwalk and we, the rapt audience looking on.The actress Elizabeth Taylor grasps the arm of her husband at the time, the film producer Mike Todd, at the Cannes Film Festival, wearing a Balmain gown and Cartier tiara.Malcolm McNeill/Mirrorpix, via Getty Images1957Elizabeth TaylorWhen she attended Cannes on the arm of her third husband, the producer Mike Todd (who was there to promote “Around the World in 80 Days”), Ms. Taylor was Hollywood royalty, and she dressed the part — from the tip of her diamond Cartier tiara to the hem of her white Balmain gown and the fingertips of her opera gloves. The princess dress would forever after be a festival staple (not least on Princesses Grace and Diana when they would take their own Cannes bows).Catherine Deneuve attended a screening of “Les Cendres” by Andrzej Wajda at Cannes in an Yves Saint Laurent T-shirt dress.Gamma-Keystone, via Getty Images1966Catherine DeneuveMs. Deneuve attended Cannes with her then-husband, the photographer David Bailey, in a long seaside-striped sequin Yves Saint Laurent T-shirt dress. She was a de facto YSL ambassador before that term had even entered the fashion playbook (back then, the usual appellation was “muse”). She would remain one for decades, loyally wearing YSL onscreen and off. When it comes to casual glamour, however, this dress set the tone, proving the concept was not an oxymoron, but a whole potential genre unto itself.Jane Birkin toted her signature picnic basket as a handbag to Cannes.Gilbert Giribaldi/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images1974Jane BirkinMs. Birkin popped up at Cannes with her beau, Serge Gainsbourg, and a picnic basket as a handbag, toting it not just during the day, but on the red carpet with a glimmering frock. Reportedly discovered in a fishing village in Portugal, it was the Birkin bag before the Birkin bag. It became a symbol of the British star and of a certain je ne sais quoi in boho style and the freewheeling nature of Cannes.Madonna arrived for the premiere of her film “Madonna: Truth or Dare” (known internationally as “In Bed with Madonna”) in a pink Jean Paul Gaultier coat that she shed to reveal a satin undergarment set.Dave Hogan/Getty Images1991MadonnaShe came to Cannes to unveil “Madonna: Truth or Dare” — and herself. Decades before Lady Gaga stripped down to her undergarments on the Met Gala steps, Madonna walked the carpet for her premiere in a voluminous pink taffeta coat by Jean Paul Gaultier — only to drop it at the last moment to reveal a white satin cone bra, knickers and a garter belt set. She jolted the public out of their torpor and started a new era of peekaboo dressing.Sharon Stone came to the premiere of “Unzipped” unbuttoned — a satin skirt parted to uncover a bedazzled romper.Stephane Cardinale/Sygma, via Getty Images1995Sharon StoneIn 2002 Ms. Stone came to Cannes as a member of the film festival jury and revived her flagging profile by walking the red carpet in a different fashion statement every night. But years before that, she made dressing noise when she arrived at the premiere of “Unzipped” in a champagne-colored satin skirt that was, well, unbuttoned to reveal a bedazzled romper beneath. Ever since, shorts have been a festival staple.For the screening of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” Johnny Depp was accompanied by his girlfriend at the time, Kate Moss.Patrick Hertzog/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images1998Kate MossMinimalism came to the Croisette courtesy of Ms. Moss, attending the premiere of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” with her then-boyfriend, Johnny Depp. Ms. Moss wore a black cocktail dress with ostrich feathers at the top and almost no makeup with merely a touch of diamonds and barely-there sandals. She made everyone else look overdone and overdressed, washing the Augean stables of Cannes clean.Tilda Swinton walked the Croisette in a metallic pantsuit.Daniele Venturelli/WireImage2007Tilda SwintonMs. Swinton strode the carpet in a metallic pantsuit, proving that a woman does not need a big dress to make a big statement.Linda Evangelista in a gold Lanvin dress.Kurt Krieger/Corbis, via Getty Images2008Linda EvangelistaMs. Evangelista posed like a gold Greek statuette in Lanvin at the premiere of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Models had become key parts of the festival’s opening evening mix, upping the fashion ante even further.Lupita Nyong’o in a chiffon Gucci dress.Venturelli/WireImage2015Lupita Nyong’oMs. Nyong’o seemed to embody springtime itself in a green pleated Gucci chiffon dress accented with crystal flowers. It was only a few months after Alessandro Michele had taken over as creative director of the Italian house, and the dress heralded the arrival of a new aesthetic and Hollywood love affair with Gucci.Amal Clooney in an Atelier Versace dress.Andreas Rentz/Getty Images2016Amal ClooneyMs. Clooney made her Cannes debut in a classic butter yellow Atelier Versace dress with a high slit on one leg, entirely overshadowing her husband, George, at the premiere of his film, “Money Monster,” and, once again, proving style and substance are not antithetical concepts.Rihanna in a Dior couture gown.Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images2017RihannaShe made her first Cannes appearance at the “Okja” premiere in an ivory Dior couture gown with a long matching coat and New Wave-style sunglasses. Two years later, Dior owner LVMH would announce a deal with the artist for her own fashion line, and though it was shut down during the pandemic, her ability to channel cool has never wavered.Kristen Stewart, in a Chanel dress, removed her Louboutins to ascend the stairs barefoot.Andreas Rentz/Getty Images2018Kristen StewartMs. Stewart’s short chain mail Chanel dress was a fighting mix of armor and crystals, but what really made news was her decision to doff her Christian Louboutin stilettos and walk up the stairs barefoot. Coming a year after the actor complained about the festival’s unspoken high heels dress code, it was an unmistakable fashion throw down and, well, a step forward for wardrobe equity.Isabelle Huppert in a Balenciaga gown.Andreas Rentz/Getty Images2021Isabelle HuppertThe French actress made the ultimate elegant refusal of Cannes convention in a high-necked, long-sleeved all-black Balenciaga gown, matching boot leggings and matching shades. It cut through the carpet froth and excess like a knife.Spike Lee in a colorful suit made by Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton.Eric Gaillard/Reuters2021Spike LeeThe sole man in this trendsetting list, Mr. Lee put ye olde penguin suits to shame as jury president, eschewing the usual tuxedo or white dinner jacket for a bouquet of sunset-toned suiting, by Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton. He did the right thing.Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in a Gaurav Gupta gown.Stephane Mahe/Reuters2022Aishwarya Rai BachchanSometimes, it seems like the wide open skies of the Côte d’Azur encourage even wider skirts on the Cannes carpet, but Ms. Bachchan topped them all in a fantastical creation from Gaurav Gupta that made her look like some sort of alien smoke goddess materializing on Earth. Sometimes, it really does seem like the looks at Cannes are out of this world. More

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      Diane Keaton Likes a Messy Comedy

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      The Oscar-winning actress and one of the stars of “Book Club: The Next Chapter” makes friends when making movies and is trying to get to the beach.One of Diane Keaton’s new favorite pastimes is going for walks by herself, taking pictures of abandoned storefronts.“You can see sadness, but you can also look at the attempts that they made when they were selling whatever they were selling,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Los Angeles. “One place will look like one thing, and another, you could tell that it had clothes or some sort of fashion with it. It’s fascinating for me.”Keaton’s solitude is broken up by acting, which creates opportunities for her to make friends and meet new people, including on her latest movie, “Book Club: The Next Chapter.”Out Friday, it is a sequel to the 2018 film “Book Club,” and reunites Keaton and her friends, played by Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen. This time they are coming out of quarantine for a trip to Italy, and the movie is peppered with references to “The Alchemist,” Paulo Coelho’s best-selling novel about a young shepherd in search for treasure and his “personal legend.”“The movie’s fine,” Keaton said. “I did what I could, you know, sort of.”The 77-year-old Oscar-winning actress talked about Goodwill fashion, Miley Cyrus and tortillas. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Visual BooksI have a whole room full of visual books. They’re engaging in a way that moves me. Somebody recently sent me this amazing book of Lee Friedlander’s photographs, “Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen.” It just takes me back to how the world looked — our world, our country, our cities and people’s homes.2FashionMy interest in fashion goes back to my mother. When I was in junior college, or even younger, and I was consumed by what people were wearing, there were other girls who had more money, and they were able to have clothes that I envied. My mom and I would go around to the Goodwill and we would buy old clothes — an old skirt, a blouse — and she would make it into a better version of that.3The BeachMy father loved the ocean. He would gather us together constantly to explore all kinds of places that have oceanfront. For almost a year, I’ve been trying to buy a beach house. It’s not like it’d be a grand beach house, but everybody’s holding on to their homes. If you go to Laguna Beach, which I love, you can’t buy anything.4FamilyI had this dinner with my children last night, and we were all together, and my daughter’s husband was there. It’s just wonderful that I have that opportunity. Even as a young adult, I really needed my mother and my father a lot. When I had problems, they were there, both of them. I loved them. They were very much an active part of my life.5Miley Cyrus and AsheThese are two really interesting young women who are taking over music, who I have been lucky to encounter and to get to know a little bit. I like both of these two young women because they’re both unique.6My Golden RetrieverI have a golden retriever named Reggie. Somebody gave her to me as a gift. Reggie’s been a bad girl today. I’m so happy that I have enough room out in the backyard for her to just destroy all the plants. Right, Reg? I love that dog. There are things that just take your heart and your breath away.7TortillasI like tortillas. I buy tortillas. Just the tortillas. I slap a bunch of stuff inside of it and I eat it and love it. I love tortillas.8ComediesI do feel more comfortable with comedy than drama. I like the mess of it and that it can kind of crop up on you and then you’re free to play around.9Movie TheatersIt’s been a while since I’ve been to the theater, but I love to go to movie theaters, and it’s been really interesting the way it’s just kind of fallen apart, but now it’s very slowly coming back. I love that. I’m glad it’s coming back.10My Collage WallI have a massive wall of images that I’ve cut out of magazines or that I’ve kept. Right now I’m looking at a picture I cut out of a magazine of Buster Keaton. It’s so great. What a beautiful face. One is of a truck that has a huge sign that these men are trying to hold onto that says, in large letters, “Damaged.” Go figure. More

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      Will Poulter Is Just Getting Used to His Superhero Era

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      The once-gawky British actor buffed up to play Adam Warlock in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” But he says, in his head, he’s still 5-foot-4.Even when people don’t know Will Poulter’s name, they recognize his face. It helps that the 30-year-old Brit has been acting for half his life and has racked up an eclectic list of film credits, though he’s also blessed with a pair of distinctive eyebrows that are as curvy and expressive as a fleur-de-lis. They pull people in, even if those people aren’t always sure where to place the on-the-cusp actor.“To be honest,” Poulter said, “the bulk of my interactions are, ‘Do I know you from somewhere? Are you the guy from that thing? What have I seen you in?’”Often, this forces Poulter to cycle through a list of his projects until something clicks. Do they remember him as the shy dork who received kissing lessons from Jennifer Aniston in “We’re the Millers,” or the brash friend who meets a bad end in “Midsommar”? Or maybe they grew up on some of the YA franchises he co-starred in, like the “Maze Runner” series and “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”?Poulter is a patient man, but his willingness to oblige a stranger can still lead to some awkward moments. “No one wants to be put in a position where you’re reciting your C.V.,” he said. Likening himself to a supporting character from “The Simpsons,” he added: “I often feel like I’m doing a Troy McClure impression: ‘You may know me from such things as…’”After this weekend, Poulter’s “where do you know me from” conversations will receive a cut-to-the-chase trump card: He’s joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, playing the caped superhero Adam Warlock in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” Described in the comic books as a genetically engineered perfect being, Poulter’s Warlock has glittery-gold skin and dangerous powers: Imagine an Oscar statuette that can shoot cosmic beams out of its hands, and you’re halfway there.Poulter as Adam Warlock in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” Whether he returns to the Marvel Cinematic Universe depends on fan reception.Jessica Miglio/MarvelIntroduced flying through outer space to the stirring guitar rock of Heart’s “Crazy on You,” Warlock is a significant figure in Marvel lore, though he’s still coming into his own when we meet him in the new “Guardians” film: Ejected from his birthing cocoon a bit too early, Warlock has a sense of right and wrong that is up for grabs, which gives Poulter several surprising beats to play as he butts heads with the Guardians and considers joining their side.“He brought life and reality to someone who is essentially a child in the body of an adult,” said the film’s writer-director, James Gunn, who picked Poulter over a wide field of hot Hollywood hopefuls. “And,” Gunn added, “he got yoked.”Ah yes, the great yokening. Though he was often cast as scrawny geeks earlier in his career, Poulter’s been through a recent, gym-aided glow-up: 6-foot-2 and Marvel-muscular with a thick head of blond hair, he has followed in the path of fellow British actors Nicholas Hoult and Dev Patel, who played realistically awkward teenagers onscreen before blossoming into Hollywood heartthrobs.Just a few years ago, Poulter was bullied on social media for his looks, but after his physical transformation, he’s been the subject of thirst tweets and internet-boyfriend articles. It’s enough to give a guy whiplash, and Poulter said he’s parsing the head trip.“It’s quite odd, because I’ve sort of formed my personality around looking a certain way,” he admitted. “Psychologically, I’m still 5-foot-4 because that’s what I was at school. Even being tall is something that I’m still getting used to!”Poulter is polite and humble without a trace of former-child-actor neediness. In early March, when I met him for strip-mall soul food in Los Angeles, he had gotten up early to watch an Arsenal soccer game and was eager to follow the match with a big bowl of jambalaya. “Will is completely easy, listens to everything, and is simultaneously very serious and game for anything,” Gunn said. “He’s down to earth and just plain fun to be around.”And though Gunn selected him to play a golden god, Poulter is too self-deprecating to let that kind of role go to his head.“I knew when I was cast that they were definitely going in a different direction than ‘perfect man,’” he told me, grinning.“Will is completely easy, listens to everything, and is simultaneously very serious and game for anything,” James Gunn said. Rosie Marks for The New York TimesTHOUGH IT CAN come with its own special baggage, Poulter has always considered acting to be a safe space. As a preteen growing up in Hammersmith, London, he would spend his entire school week looking forward to drama class on Friday morning, a place where he could kick off his shoes and explore creatively.When he was 12, his drama teachers encouraged him to audition for the charming indie comedy “Son of Rambow”; he landed the film’s breakout role on his first try and filmed it for eight weeks during his summer holiday. “For that to be my introduction to the film industry, I couldn’t have asked for a gentler, nicer, more wholesome experience,” he said. “It really lit the fire in me to want to do it again.”Poulter has worked steadily ever since — you may have also seen his supporting roles in prestige dramas like “The Revenant” and “Detroit” — while also navigating the unique challenge of growing up in the public eye. At 19, his role as awkward virgin Kenny in “We’re the Millers” elevated his profile but led to an uptick in jeers and catcalls from strangers; later, after playing a bespectacled computer-game designer in the 2018 “Black Mirror” episode “Bandersnatch,” some social-media users made such cutting comments about his looks that Poulter announced he’d be stepping back from Twitter to preserve his mental health.That’s why, now that the tide has turned toward appreciative tweets instead of cruel jokes, Poulter is skeptical about putting any stock into what social media has to say about him. “It shouldn’t inform how I treat myself, because I don’t know those people,” he said. “One of the dangers with social media is we can conflate things that exist online to the real world without even questioning it. We just carry the one and don’t really ask whether it actually adds up at the end of the day.”He smiled. “That’s a bad math analogy from someone who’s heavily dyslexic.”He’s seen tweets that compare pictures of his gawky character from “We’re the Millers” to his modern-day, muscular incarnation, as though they couldn’t possibly be the same person. “People are acting like I played Kenny Miller in 2013 and then woke up and now I look like I do, like there was some strange and mystical explanation behind it,” he said. “I just grew up, like every other human being on Earth.”But unlike Adam Warlock, who emerges from his birthing cocoon with a perfect physique, Poulter’s new look took time to attain: He began lifting weights at the start of the pandemic and found the regular fitness regimen did wonders for his mental health. A looming shirtless scene in the Michael Keaton-led limited series “Dopesick” spurred Poulter to step up his workouts, and by the time he began auditioning for “Guardians,” he had already reached the sort of shape that meant he could plausibly play a superhero.“If you want to do it in a way that’s safe and is entirely natural, you have to be prepared to spend a long period of time doing it,” Poulter said. “There’s no way that I could’ve got into the shape that I got had I not been working out for a number of years prior and built up foundations.”Though social-media posts now thirst for him, Poulter is skeptical: “It shouldn’t inform how I treat myself, because I don’t know those people.”Rosie Marks for The New York TimesIf people think his physical transformation happened overnight, Poulter worries they’ll believe he turned to enhanced means to attain it. “Obviously, there’s a lot of pressure out there on young people, both men and women, regarding body image,” Poulter said. “I’m being kind of careful in the words, but if you’re going to promote the process by which you achieved said body goal, I think you have to be fully transparent about how you got there.”Are other actors less than transparent about getting yoked? “Potentially,” Poulter demurred. “It’s not for me to say.”Still, even if Poulter took the long road to his Marvel musculature, he knows it hasn’t stopped people from speculating. “The rumor mill was mad,” he said. “My own mum was sending me something from someone being like, “Has Will had plastic surgery?’”Though Poulter tries to brush all that off, one viral clip still gnaws at him: On YouTube, a physical trainer analyzed a shirtless photo of Poulter from “Dopesick” and criticized his team on the assumption that they had trained him to diet in a certain way.“It’s got millions of views,” Poulter said. “Does it bug me that anyone might believe that, or think that I went about it in a different way that would contradict what I’m an advocate of? For sure. But I guess it’s about learning to relinquish your control over that sort of thing and just hope that there’s enough people who know what’s up.”As we finished lunch, Poulter chatted with our server; over the course of our meal, I had watched it dawn on her that she knew who he was. “You’re very funny,” she eventually told Poulter, who thanked her.We discussed his impending worldwide press tour for “Guardians,” though Poulter said he genuinely didn’t know whether Marvel had bigger plans for him beyond this film: “It kind of hinges on how people respond to the character,” he said. “If the fans don’t like Adam Warlock, obviously I’m going to be pretty gutted. My family’s opinion means a lot, but it’s not necessarily going to bring me back as the character.”But even if it proves to be a one-off, playing Warlock was a valuable experience, Poulter said. When he first started on the production, Gunn told him that he shouldn’t be afraid to screw up, even if those mistakes might make him feel self-conscious. For someone who struggles with how he can be perceived, that advice was scary but also freeing: It meant that he could take big swings and feel safe, and that he could learn to forgive himself when things didn’t go to plan.Those are the sort of realizations that keep Poulter enamored with acting even when so many other things about his chosen career can be tricky. “It can be stressful, it can be painful, and plainly speaking, it can be difficult to do and a strain on your mental health, but I also think it’s very necessary to reflect on your own psyche and think about its impact on the world around you,” Poulter said. “It’s a lovely psychoanalytical journey that I’m really enjoying.” More

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      As Broadway Rebounds, ‘Some Like It Hot’ Gets 13 Tony Nominations

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      As Broadway’s rebound from the pandemic shutdown picks up pace, Tony nominators showered much-sought attention on a wide variety of shows, from razzle-dazzle spectacles to quirky adventurous fare.“Some Like It Hot,” a musical based on the classic Billy Wilder film about two musicians who witness a gangland slaying and dress as women to escape the mob, scored the most nominations: 13. But it faces stiff competition in the race for best new musical — ticket buyers have not made any of the contenders a slam-dunk hit, and there does not appear to be a consensus among the industry insiders who make up the Tony voting pool.Three other musicals picked up nine nominations apiece: “& Juliet,” which combines pop songs with an alternative narrative arc for Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers; “New York, New York,” a dance-driven show about a pair of young musicians seeking success and love in a postwar city; and “Shucked,” a pun-laden country comedy about a rural community facing a corn crisis. “Kimberly Akimbo,” a critical favorite about a high school student with a life-altering genetic condition and a criminally dysfunctional family, picked up eight nominations.The Tony nominations also feature plenty of boldfaced names. Among the stars from the worlds of pop music, film and television who earned nods are Sara Bareilles, Jessica Chastain, Jodie Comer, Josh Groban, Sean Hayes, Samuel L. Jackson, Wendell Pierce and Ben Platt. Another went to one of Broadway’s most-admired stars: Audra McDonald, who, with nine previous nominations and six wins, has won the most competitive Tony Awards of any performer in history.The musical “Shucked,” the rare Broadway show about corn, got nine nominations. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis year’s Tony Awards come at the end of the first full-length season since the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close for about a year and a half. Given that tourism remains below prepandemic levels, many workers have not returned to Midtown offices, and inflation has made producing far more expensive, the season has been surprisingly robust, with a wide range of offerings.“Entertainment is like food — sometimes you’re in the mood for an organic small plate, and sometimes for a burger and fries, and the best thing about New York is we’ve got the variety,” said Victoria Clark, the Tony-nominated star of “Kimberly Akimbo.”Broadway shows this season had grossed $1.48 billion as of April 30, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League. That’s nearly double the grosses at the same point last season — $751 million — but lower than the $1.72 billion at the same point in 2019, during the last full prepandemic season.Other key metrics are better, too: 11.5 million seats have been filled on Broadway this season, compared with 6 million at the same point last season, but still down from the 13.8 million that had been filled by this point in 2019.The Tony nominations, which were chosen by a panel of 40 theater industry experts who saw all 38 eligible shows and have no financial interest in any of them, are particularly important to shows that are still running, which try to use the vote of confidence to woo potential ticket buyers.“It’s all about what’s going to make a show run longer and create more jobs for more people,” said Casey Nicholaw, the director and choreographer of “Some Like It Hot.” “Hopefully we’ll sell more tickets, and the show will be more of a success.”The Tony nominations can also boost the employment prospects, and the compensation, of artists. And, of course, they are a tribute to excellence. “It means something when your peers and your colleagues see beauty in something you make,” said James Ijames, whose play “Fat Ham” was among the nominated productions.“Between Riverside and Crazy” was among the nominees for best new play. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway is a complicated place, dominated by commercial producers but also with six theaters run by nonprofits, and the work this season, as is often the case, featured everything from experimental plays tackling challenging subjects to more mainstream fare that aims primarily to entertain.Among the five nominees for best new play, three have already won the Pulitzer Prize in drama, including “Between Riverside and Crazy,” Stephen Adly Guirgis’s story of a retired police officer trying to hang onto his apartment; “Cost of Living,” Martyna Majok’s exploration of caregiving and disability; and “Fat Ham,” Ijames’s riff on “Hamlet,” set in the North Carolina backyard of a family that runs a barbecue restaurant.The two other Tony-nominated plays are each significant in their own ways: “Leopoldstadt” is Tom Stoppard’s autobiographically inspired drama about a European Jewish family before, during and after World War II, while “Ain’t No Mo’” is Jordan E. Cooper’s outlandish comedy imagining that the United States offers its Black residents one-way tickets to Africa.The nominations for “Ain’t No Mo’” were especially striking given that the show struggled to find an audience and closed early. “I’m just so elated, I can barely find the words,” said Cooper, who was nominated both as writer and actor. “There was a lot of turbulence, but we landed the plane.”Stoppard is already the winningest playwright in Broadway history, having won Tony Awards for four previous plays (“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Travesties,” “The Real Thing” and “The Coast of Utopia”). He is now 85 years old, and “Leopoldstadt” is his 19th production on Broadway. Stoppard said he was proud of the nomination, but sorry the play had come to seem so timely at a moment of rising concern about antisemitism.“Nobody wants society to be divided,” he said in an interview, “and I like to think ‘Leopoldstadt’ works against a sense of human beings dividing up and confronting each other.”Jordan E. Cooper in his comedy “Ain’t No Mo’,” which was nominated for best play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOf the 38 Tony-eligible plays and musicals this season, 27 scored at least one nomination, leaving 11 with no nods. Among the musicals snubbed by the nominators were “Bad Cinderella,” the critically drubbed new musical from one of the most successful musical theater composers of all time, Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as a progressive rethink of “1776,” about the debate over the Declaration of Independence, which was revived with a cast of women, nonbinary and transgender performers.One of the musicals that did not score any nominations, a revival of “Dancin’,” quickly declared plans to close: A little more than nine hours after the Tony nominations were announced, the revue’s producers said its last performance would be May 14. Among the seven plays shut out was “The Thanksgiving Play,” which is thought to be the first work on Broadway by a female Native American playwright, Larissa FastHorse.The season featured shows examining a wide variety of diverse stories, and the nominations reflect that.At a time when gender identity issues have become increasingly politicized in the nation, nominations were earned by two gender nonconforming actors: J. Harrison Ghee, a star of “Some Like It Hot,” and Alex Newell, a supporting actor in “Shucked.”Helen Park, who is the first Asian American female composer on Broadway, was nominated in the best score category for the musical “KPOP.” “The more authentic we are to our respective cultures and stories,” she said, “the richer the Broadway soundscape and Broadway landscape will be.”Five plays by Black writers were nominated in either the best play or best play revival category, and four of the five nominees for leading actor in a play are Black.“I broke down in tears,” Pierce said about learning that he was among those nominees, for playing Willy Loman in a revival of “Death of a Salesman” in which the traditionally white Loman family is now African American. “I did not know how profoundly moving it would be. It was the culmination of years of hard work and a reflection on how much effort and toil went into the challenge of playing the role.”This was a strong season for musical revivals, and the nominated shows include two with scores by Stephen Sondheim — “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd” — as well as the Golden Age classic “Camelot” and “Parade,” which is a show about the early 20th-century lynching of a Jewish man in Georgia.“Into the Woods” was one of two Stephen Sondheim revivals to earn nominations.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“We’re so happy audiences are taking to it, and we hope that Sondheim would be happy this morning as well,” said Groban, starring as the title character in “Sweeney Todd.”The nominated play revivals are also a compelling bunch: a hypnotically minimalist version of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” adapted by Amy Herzog and starring Chastain as a Norwegian debtor trapped in a sexist marriage; a bracing production of Suzan Lori-Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog,” about two brothers ominously named Lincoln and Booth; a rare staging of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” featuring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan; and a ghostly performance of “The Piano Lesson,” August Wilson’s classic drama about a family wrestling with the meaning, and monetary value, of an heirloom.The 769 Tony voters now have until early June to catch up on shows they have not yet seen before they cast their electronic ballots. The awards ceremony itself will be held on June 11 at the United Palace in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan in a ceremony hosted by Ariana DeBose.Julia Jacobs More

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      J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell, Gender Nonconforming Performers, Earn Tony Nominations

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      Even as gender identity has become an increasingly politicized subject in a polarized America, Broadway shows are featuring a growing number of gender nonconforming performers, and two of them scored Tony nods Tuesday morning.J. Harrison Ghee, one of the stars of a musical adaptation of “Some Like It Hot,” was nominated in the best leading actor in a musical category. And Alex Newell, who plays a whiskey distiller in the country musical “Shucked,” was nominated in the best featured actor in a musical category.Both performers use he/she/they pronouns, and both agreed to be considered as actors (rather than actresses) for Tony purposes.Another gender nonconforming performer on Broadway this season, Justin David Sullivan of “& Juliet,” opted out of awards consideration, rather than choosing between the actor and actress categories. More

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      In Nida Manzoor’s World, Martial Arts and Jane Austen Belong in the Same Movie

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      The writer-director set out to make “a joyful film about South Asian Muslim women” that didn’t revolve around trauma. The result is “Polite Society.”“Polite Society” is an action caper filled with martial arts battles and secret lairs. It’s a romance in which two smart, impossibly attractive people fall in love. It’s a Jane Austen-esque comedy of marriage in which a teenager meddles in her older sister’s love life while their parents look on in dismay.It’s also a movie with a lavish, Bollywood-inspired musical number, because why settle on a single genre when you can cram in as many as possible?Yet this new British film does not feel tonally inconsistent or stylistically scattered; rather, form imaginatively fits function.“It’s about women dealing with norms and expectations and rules, and wanting to push them,” the writer-director Nida Manzoor explained in a video conversation from Bristol, England. “When they’re breaking them, I’ve got to break genres as well. So it all felt like it was working together, not just me being insane.” She laughed. “Maybe a bit of me being insane.”Reviewing “Polite Society” for The New York Times, Amy Nicholson called it a delight that signals the arrival of Manzoor as “a promising new thing: a first-time filmmaker impatient to evolve cultural representation from the last few years of self-conscious vitamins into crowd-pleasing candy.”Kansara, left, and Ritu Arya as South Asian Muslim sisters in Britain. Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus FeaturesIn the film, Ria, the youngest in a British Pakistani family, attends high school while training hard to fulfill her dream of becoming a stuntwoman. (She idolizes Eunice Huthart, a real-life Liverpudlian with extensive experience as a Hollywood stunt double.) And so the actress portraying her, Priya Kansara, had to get with the program — fast.“I have no prior martial arts experience or anything like that,” Kansara said in a video chat. “I was cast around six, seven weeks before we started the shoot, so that’s the time I had to learn as many of the stunts and the fight choreography. It was intense because there was so much to get through. And Ria is just a crazy kid; she doesn’t really stop.”The plot moves at a fast clip peppered with a lot of action, which is nearly always layered with rambunctious comedy. When Ria, who usually has no time for “girlie” accouterments, is forced to endure a wax, the scene is shot like a dramatic interrogation in an early James Bond movie — “but with this kind of villain Auntie character,” Manzoor said, referring to Ria’s nemesis, played by Nimra Bucha.The film is often cathartic in the way it lets girls and women do — with contagious glee — things we have seen men do onscreen for decades. When Ria and her sister, the art-school dropout Lena (Ritu Arya), go out for burgers, they wolf them down with memorable gusto.“Nida came up to us, like, ‘Just go for it, eat like you haven’t eaten in hours and you cannot wait to get into it,’ ” Kansara said. “Me and Ritu took the note literally and we went for it. After that take, Nida came back up to us and was like, ‘OK, maybe not that much.’ ”“Polite Society” lets Kansara, left, and Arya do things onscreen the way men have for decades.Samuel EngelkingFor Arya (best known as Lila Pitts in the Netflix series “The Umbrella Academy”), being encouraged to chomp was a refreshing change from what she usually sees in movies or on television. “I love watching people eat, but onscreen they are often sort of playing around with their food because of the amount of takes they have to do,” she said in a joint chat with Kansara. “Which is why it’s satisfying when you see people actually eating. I love that scene for that reason.”Arya was familiar with Manzoor’s sensibility because they had worked together before, most notably on the 14-minute comedy “Lady Parts,” which Manzoor made for Channel 4 in 2018 and in which Arya played the lead singer of the short film’s titular punk band, a raucous quartet of Muslim women. (Because of scheduling conflicts, the part was recast when the short became the series “We Are Lady Parts,” which streams on Peacock in the United States; Manzoor is currently writing Season 2.)Manzoor started writing “Polite Society” around 10 years ago but kept running into obstacles as she tried to get the project off the ground. Very early on, before such suggestions became less acceptable to make, potential financiers would ask if she could make the central family a white one. Others would have preferred something a little bit less action and more art house. Later, the emphasis on comedy became a problem: Couldn’t there be some weighty issues like, say, an arranged marriage?Manzoor did not budge. “It was like, ‘It’s a joyful film about South Asian Muslim women,’ ” she said. “So much of the reason I’m a filmmaker is because I want to not have our stories only be about trauma.”Giving “Polite Society” emotional ballast is the bond between Ria and Lena, which was inspired by the one between Manzoor and her own sister, Sanya, who is a year older. (Their brother, Shez, worked on the soundtrack.) After collaborating with Arya on “Lady Parts,” Manzoor felt she was a natural fit for the role of Lena. “She has the quality of my oldest sister,” Manzoor said, “that natural, inherent sort of alternative brown girl, which is quite rare, actually, in actors. It’s kind of mercurial and wild and vulnerable at the same time.”Even a brutal brawl between Ria and Lena, at a low point in their relationship, was inspired by real life. “I used to fight with her — we used to do martial arts together,” Manzoor said of Sanya. “I have this memory of when we were in a martial arts class and our instructor always wanted us to fight when we did sparring.” She laughed. “It was kind of creepy.”Asked why she was so keen to put women being active and physical at the heart of her film, Manzoor dug back into her past again.“I used to love sports, and doing martial arts and dancing,” she said. “And then around 12, 13 years old, your body changes and you become objectified. I felt so alienated from my body, so ashamed of it. I realized I’m drawn to genres that allow women to be in possession of their bodies: playing an instrument, being onstage. That was something I lost when I was a teenager, that physicality,” she added. “In my art, I’m always trying to show women have it or regain it or find it.” More