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      ‘Late Show’ Staff Arrested at U.S. Capitol Complex Won’t Be Prosecuted

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      The Justice Department said it would not proceed with charges of unlawful entry against staff members from “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” who were arrested at a Capitol building last month.Federal prosecutors said late Monday that they would not prosecute staff members of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” who were arrested last month at the United States Capitol complex on charges of unlawful entry.When members of a production team for the CBS show were arrested on June 16, they had been filming a segment featuring Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a cigar-chomping canine puppet that is voiced by the comedian Robert Smigel, who was among those arrested. Mr. Colbert later said on his show that they were guilty of “high jinks with intent to goof.”The arrests, in a hallway of the Longworth House Office Building, were notable in part because they occurred soon after Congress began holding televised hearings into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, in which supporters of President Donald J. Trump violently stormed the Capitol complex.The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in a brief statement on Monday that it would not move forward with misdemeanor charges against the nine people arrested by the Capitol Police because the case wasn’t strong enough.The crew members had been invited to enter the building on two separate occasions by congressional staff who never asked them to leave, although the Capitol Police did tell some members of the group that they were supposed to have an escort, the statement said.In order to sustain convictions on charges of unlawful entry, prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that “these invited guests were guilty of the crime of unlawful entry because their escort chose to leave them unattended,” it said.“We do not believe it is probable that the office would be able to obtain and sustain convictions on these charges,” the statement said, adding that the defendants would not be required to attend a court hearing scheduled for Wednesday.The statement did not say whom the production team had visited at the Longworth House Office Building. Mr. Colbert said on his show that the team had been invited to interview Democratic and Republican members of Congress about the Jan. 6 hearings.Spokespeople for the Justice Department and CBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment overnight.After the arrests last month, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson said that the “Late Show” producers had committed “insurrection.” Mr. Colbert said a few days later that such criticism amounted to a “shameful and grotesque insult” to the memory of those who died in the Jan. 6 attack.“But who knows,” he joked on his show, “maybe there was a vast conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States with a rubber Rottweiler.”Glenn Thrush More

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      Ratings for the Tony Awards Rebounded, but Remained Low

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      The Tonys drew an audience of 3.9 million viewers on CBS on Sunday, about a million viewers more than last year. It was the second-lowest viewership on record. The Tonys bounced back.The 75th Tony Awards drew an audience of 3.9 million viewers on CBS on Sunday night, about a million viewers more than last year’s ceremony, according to Nielsen.The ratings comeback follows a monthslong trend where award shows, at least for now, have been rebounding from record lows. This year’s Oscars drew 16 million viewers, up from last year’s low of 10 million viewers. And the Grammys had a small ratings bump to over 9 million viewers this year.Even with the rebound, Sunday’s ratings performance was still significantly lower than the 5.4 million viewers that tuned in for the 2019 Tonys. This year marks the second-lowest viewership total since records have been kept.The Tonys likely benefited from a return to its traditional June time slot, when viewers are accustomed to watching the show. There was also significantly less competition on Sunday night, with most of the broadcast networks airing repeats. Last year, the delayed Tonys ceremony aired in September and had to go head-to-head against a prime-time Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers nail biter.Sunday’s Tonys broadcast, which was hosted by Ariana DeBose, was a chance for Broadway to put on a show for millions at a moment when ticket sales are still significantly down from before the pandemic.New York was the highest rated market in the country, with San Francisco and West Palm Beach right behind it, according to Nielsen. More

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      Best and Worst Moments of the Tony Awards

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      With Joaquina Kalukango’s high notes and Billy Crystal’s lowbrow jokes, the Tonys celebrated Broadway’s return after a tumultuous season.The Tony Awards returned to Radio City Music Hall on Sunday for the first time since June 2019. And after such a roller-coaster ride of a year, the ceremony was a welcome chance to celebrate all those people (from understudies and swings to stage managers and Covid safety officers) who made sure the show went on again (and again). Ariana DeBose, the former theater understudy turned recent Oscar winner, was the host of the three-hour broadcast portion of the ceremony on CBS. But it was Darren Criss and Julianne Hough, hosts of the first hour of the ceremony on Paramount+, who delighted one of our writers with their endearing eagerness to put on a show. As for the awards themselves: There were a few pleasant surprises but voters showed that they were craving the familiar. Here are the highs and lows as our writers saw them. NICOLE HERRINGTONBilly Crystal during a performance from his show, “Mr. Saturday Night.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Schtick: Billy Crystal Makes Silly CompellingThe telecast was professional, smooth, well paced and bland. Part of the problem: the generally lugubrious choice of musical material. Another: the overly careful and inoffensively middlebrow tone. Which may be why one of the few moments that broke through the taste and torpor was Billy Crystal’s lowbrow schtick from “Mr. Saturday Night,” the new musical based on his 1992 film. Actually, the “Yiddish scat” he performed — nonsense guttural syllables and spitty consonants sung in the manner of an Ella Fitzgerald improvisation — has been part of his act forever, with good cause: It’s so stupidly funny you can’t help but fall for it. And when he brought it out into the audience, and threw it up to the balcony, he showed how precision delivery and command of a room can make even the oldest, silliest material impossibly compelling. JESSE GREENMichael R. Jackson accepting the award for best book of a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Mid-Show Relief: A Win for ‘A Strange Loop’For the first half of the ceremony, I was sweating over the fact that “A Strange Loop,” which had been nominated for 11 awards, hadn’t won anything. I was expecting the Pulitzer Prize-winner to make a full sweep, but once the broadcast was underway, it was clear that the Tony voters had been more inclined toward the predictable picks for the winners’ circle. So when “A Strange Loop” won its first award of the night, for best book of a musical, it was thrilling to see Michael R. Jackson take the stage to celebrate his “big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway” show. Jackson’s boundary-pushing, thought-provoking script manages to be both hilarious and devastating, as well as wide-ranging in every sense of the word. MAYA PHILLIPSMallory Maedke, center, as Jane Seymour in “Six: The Musical.” Maedke, the show’s dance captain, replaced Abby Mueller, who tested positive for Covid-19 just hours earlier.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Shout-Out: Nods to Understudies and SwingsIn the weeks leading up to the Tony Awards, a buzz had been building — on various social media platforms — around demands that the Tonys honor swings, understudies and standbys. In a season often disrupted by Covid-19 transmission, these performers filled in for named players at show after show, sometimes at just a few moment’s notice.As the evening’s host Ariana DeBose noted in her opening monologue: “A show is put on by many people, not just the faces that you know and love.”No understudy could be nominated, but winners and presenters found ways to salute them. During the “Act One” special on Paramount+, the director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, a winner for “MJ,” shouted out “all the swings and understudies who kept us onstage this season. I bow to you.”During the main program, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, a winner for “Take Me Out,” thanked his own understudy. Patti LuPone, a winner for “Company,” hailed not only understudies, but also the Covid-19 compliance officers. And in the big production number, DeBose, took another moment, while being hoisted into the air, to thank the swings.Perhaps the greatest tribute came during the production number for the musical “Six.” Playing Jane Seymour was Mallory Maedke, the show’s dance captain, who had subbed in hours earlier after the actress who usually performs the role, Abby Mueller, tested positive for Covid-19. Maedke stepped in. The show went on. ALEXIS SOLOSKIDarren Criss and Julianne Hough during the “Act One” opening number.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest ‘Glee’ Alum: Darren CrissIt’s fitting that Darren Criss was one of the hosts at the 2022 Tony Awards: Before starring on Broadway, he got his big break in “Glee,” a series that was instrumental in bridging pop music and Broadway. He and Julianne Hough — a former “Dancing With the Stars” pro who didn’t miss a step even as her costume was coming off before the scheduled moment — had a sparkly showbiz quality peppered with an adorably enthusiastic nerdiness during their hourlong hosting gig of the “Act One” portion of the Tonys. And their opening number, written by Criss, for the Paramount+ stream, had more zest than Ariana DeBose’s opener in the flagship section hosted by CBS. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIAriana DeBose, this year’s Tonys host, sang directly to audience members.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWorst Display: The Evening-Long AmnesiaImagining alternate worlds and stepping right into them is what theater people do. But there was some serious cognitive dissonance on display in the collectively imagined world of the Tony Awards ceremony, a four-hour celebration of a post-shutdown Broadway season that made it through thanks to stringent Covid-safety measures — most visibly, masks strictly required for audience members.Disturbingly, the picture that the industry chose to present to the television cameras at Radio City Music Hall was a sea of bare faces, as if Broadway inhabited a post-Covid world. In the vast orchestra section, where the nominees sat, there was scarcely a mask anywhere.A brass band from “The Music Man” paraded through the aisles; Ariana DeBose, this year’s Tonys host, sang right in audience members’ faces; and three winners from the revival of “Company” — Patti LuPone; her director, Marianne Elliott; and their producer Chris Harper — made mocking reference to a mask-refusing audience member at their show. Funny, sure, but they, too, were now barefaced in a crowd.For all the loving shout-outs that the Tonys and Tony winners gave to understudies, swings and Covid safety teams for their indispensability in allowing so many productions to go on, it was hard not to wonder about Broadway choosing a normal-looking TV visual over caution, knowing how scary it can get when positive test results start rolling in. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESBilly Porter during the “In Memoriam” performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesVanessa Hudgens’s big, gold abstract planetary earrings.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Look: Theater Stars Deliver Shine and SparkleThe Tony Awards aren’t exactly known for being a major fashion event, at least compared to the other awards shows that make up the initials of EGOT. But maybe it should be. On Sunday, we saw major stars in major looks, with the biggest trend being found in high shine and sparkle, befitting of theater’s big night.Just look at Joaquina Kalukango, who won the Tony for lead actress in a musical while wearing a golden gown dripping in gems, tied with an electric lime green bow — a dress that was designed, she said in her acceptance speech, by her sister.Then there was Ariana DeBose’s head-to-toe black sequined gown; Kara Young’s metallic two-piece ball gown; Utkarsh Ambudkar’s suit covered in pearly buttons; Vanessa Hudgens’s big, gold abstract planetary earrings; and Billy Porter’s space-age jacquard silver tuxedo. There were women who wore their crystals and beading like armor. There were men who channeled Michael Jackson (with fringed epaulets) and Elvis (in a high-collared, low-cut shirt) — bringing enough glitz, glamour and intricate embroidery to occupy several Broadway costume designers. JESSICA TESTAMyles Frost and ensemble members in a performance from “MJ.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWorst Attempt at Nostalgia: Not So ‘Smooth Criminal’I have numerous grievances about “MJ,” the Michael Jackson jukebox musical, so perhaps it’s no surprise that I found the Tonys performance — the star, Myles Frost, and some of the company performing “Smooth Criminal” — a bit lackluster. The musical is inherently hollow; the opacity of Michael Jackson and his life of traumas and controversies make it difficult to find material compelling and cohesive enough to tell a story onstage. So the name of the game is nostalgia, and the show moonwalks by with the momentum of fans happy to see and hear some of the most iconic performances of Jackson’s career. But everything is an impression, with even the choreography restrained to the tried and true with little nuance and variation. The airless enormity and formality of the Tonys stage drained what little bit of charisma “MJ” might have otherwise had — though by the end of the evening the show was still a big winner, with Frost nabbing the best leading actor in a musical award. MAYA PHILLIPSThe Off Broadway veteran Deirdre O’Connell won best leading actress in a play for “Dana H.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Experimental Inspiration: Love for ‘Weird Art’Deirdre O’Connell’s win for “Dana H.”— which earlier in the evening presenters had referred to as both “Donna H.” and “Diana H.” — came as a marvelous surprise. O’Connell, 70, an actress of absolute passion and precision, has made her career Off and Off Off Broadway, enriching the work of two generations of playwrights, in works both traditional and very strange. (She is currently starring in Will Arbery’s “Corsicana” at Playwrights Horizons.)In “Dana H.,” she lip-synced to harrowing audio recorded by the mother of the playwright, Lucas Hnath. And in her acceptance speech, which came midway through a ceremony in which more traditional fare was typically rewarded, O’Connell dedicated her Tony to every artist who has worried if the art they are making would prove too esoteric for Broadway. She insisted that her presence should inspire haunting art, frightening art, art that no one else may understand.“Please let me standing here,” she said, “be a little sign to you from the universe to make the weird art.” So go ahead, writers and directors of Tonys future: Make the weird art. ALEXIS SOLOSKIBen Power accepts the Tony for best new play for “The Lehman Trilogy.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Spotlight: A Playwright MedleyOn typical Tony Awards shows, playwrights are about as prominent as animal trainers and child wranglers. (It’s a permanent embarrassment that they seldom get to talk even if their work wins.) This year’s presentation may not have heaped upon them the glory they deserve — they are, after all, at the heart of the entire enterprise — but it gave them a longer-than-usual segment that was also clever and insightful. Each of the five best play nominees answered a few simple questions about themselves and their work; their answers were edited together like a medley. What one word would Tracy Letts, the author of “The Minutes,” use to describe it? “Hilarious,” he said, with a self-serving twinkle. What is Lynn Nottage’s favorite line from “Clyde’s”? “A little salt makes the food taste good. Too much makes it inedible.” And how would Ben Power, the author of “The Lehman Trilogy,” describe a play about his own life? “As long as ‘The Lehman Trilogy,’ but with a happier ending.” JESSE GREENEnsemble members in the gender-flipped “Company” at the Tonys on Sunday night. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWorst Trend: Rewarding Marquee NamesThe worst part of the evening was not a single moment but the fact that almost every time the most famous person or show won. It felt as if the voters were craving something familiar for the first full post-Covid Broadway season — even when that familiarity was draped in a seemingly (but not really) edgy concept like a gender-flipped Sondheim show (“Company”) or a fun retread of the Spice Girls (“Six”).There were two major exceptions to that trend: the Off Broadway veteran Deirdre O’Connell winning best actress in a play for “Dana H.” and Michael R. Jackson’s bracing “A Strange Loop” winning for best musical. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIJoaquina Kalukango singing “Let It Burn,” during a performance from “Paradise Square.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Heroine: Joaquina Kalukango Lifts ‘Paradise Square’“Paradise Square” is not the best musical. And that makes Joaquina Kalukango’s moving performance, as the show’s tough-broad-heroine Nelly O’Brien, that much more impressive. In an otherwise drab Tonys broadcast, the excerpt from “Paradise Square” brought some much-needed vitality to the stage. Beginning with an ensemble song and dance that showed off the musical’s jaunty choreography, the segment then turned into a solo showcase for Kalukango, who blazed through her character’s big number “Let It Burn.”Thanks to the camera close-ups (something we don’t often get in the world of theater) we got to see the particulars of Kalukango’s performance; her face seems to open up into a dauntless roar, and by the end of the song her whole visage darkens with tears. It’s no surprise that she later won the award for best actress in a musical; watching her perform is like watching the bursting of a Roman candle in a starless night — that kind of powerful, that kind of beautiful. MAYA PHILLIPS More

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      The 75th Tony Awards: Time, Hosts and How to Watch

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      The ceremony returns to Radio City Music Hall on Sunday night.The Tony Awards, which honor plays and musicals performed on Broadway, will take place this year on Sunday, June 12, with a four-hour ceremony that begins on a streaming service and continues with a television broadcast.The evening is the first Tony Awards ceremony to recognize shows that opened after the long shutdown of theaters brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The theater season was extraordinarily challenging, with ongoing Covid disruptions and fewer tourists than normal, and the ceremony is expected to highlight Broadway’s perseverance.The nominators spread out their admiration quite widely: Of the 34 eligible shows, 29 got at least one nod, including the critically scorned “Diana.”Here’s what to look out for on Sunday night:How Do I Watch?The main event, at Radio City Music Hall, starts at 8 p.m. Eastern time and is to be hosted by Ariana DeBose; it will be both broadcast on CBS and available to stream on Paramount+.The broadcast show will be preceded by a one-hour segment, hosted by Darren Criss and Julianne Hough, that will begin at 7 p.m. Eastern time and be viewable only on Paramount+. That hour is expected to include the announcement of many of the design and writing awards, as well as some performances.The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, the first to recognize shows that opened after a long Broadway shutdown during the pandemic, will be given out on June 12.Hosting Duties: Ariana DeBose, who will host the ceremony, vows that this edition will celebrate the often unsung actors who have stepped in during the pandemic.Ruth Negga: The actress, who is nominated for her role as Lady Macbeth in Sam Gold’s staging of the play, infuses the character with intensity, urgency and vitality.Hugh Jackman: The actor may potentially win his third Tony Award for his role in “The Music Man.” He shared some thoughts on his life between film and theater.Choreography: Musicals like “MJ” and “Paradise Square” take on dances of the past but miss some opportunities to elevate the dancing; “For Colored Girls” effectively weaves language and motion.There will also be a red carpet earlier in the evening; New Yorkers with Spectrum cable can watch coverage of the red carpet starting at 6 p.m. on NY1.What Should I Expect?The broadcast will feature performances from all six shows nominated for best new musical — “Girl From the North Country,” “MJ,” “Mr. Saturday Night,” “Paradise Square,” “Six: The Musical” and “A Strange Loop” — as well as from two of the three shows nominated for best musical revival, “Company” and “The Music Man.” And, of course, many awards will be bestowed.Some of the presenters include Chita Rivera, Cynthia Erivo, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Silverman, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Bebe Neuwirth. Paris Jackson and Prince Jackson, two of Michael Jackson’s children, are expected to spotlight “MJ,” a jukebox musical about their father that is nominated for 10 awards, including best new musical and best book of a musical.Among the other expected highlights: a tribute to the composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died in November; a 15th anniversary reunion of the cast of “Spring Awakening”; and a lifetime achievement award for Angela Lansbury.What Are Some of the Key Races?Best new play: This Tony Award seems certain to go to “The Lehman Trilogy,” a riveting history lesson that chronicles the rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers financial empire. Two dark comedies are also in the running: “Clyde’s,” by Lynn Nottage, is set in a sandwich shop employing recently incarcerated individuals; and “Hangmen,” by Martin McDonagh, takes place at a bar run by Britain’s second-best executioner just after that country banned capital punishment. The other contenders are “Skeleton Crew,” Dominique Morisseau’s play about a group of workers at an automotive plant facing shutdown, and “The Minutes,” Tracy Letts’s look at the dark secrets kept by a small-town governing body.Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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      Ariana DeBose to Host This Year’s Tony Awards Ceremony

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      The nominees are to be announced on Monday, and the awards ceremony is to take place on June 12.Ariana DeBose will host this year’s Tony Awards.The Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, the two organizations that present the awards, announced the choice on Wednesday. The Tony Awards, which honor plays and musicals staged on Broadway, will take place on June 12.DeBose, 31, in March won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her performance as Anita in last year’s Steven Spielberg-directed film adaptation of “West Side Story.”She has appeared in six Broadway shows, including “Hamilton” (in a dance number, she portrayed the bullet that killed the title character). She was nominated for a Tony Award in 2018 for her work in “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical” (she played “Disco Donna,” representing one of three stages of the singer’s career).The Tony Awards will be DeBose’s second high-profile hosting gig this year; in January she hosted “Saturday Night Live.”This year’s Tony Awards ceremony will take place at Radio City Music Hall, and is scheduled to last four hours. DeBose will host the three-hour televised segment, broadcast on CBS from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern; that segment, which is likely to be dominated by performances, will be preceded by a one-hour segment, streamed on Paramount+, at which many of the awards are likely to be announced. The streaming portion will have a different host who has not yet been named.The nominations for this year’s Tony Awards are to be announced on Monday. More

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      David Birney, Who Starred on TV’s ‘Bridget Loves Bernie,’ Dies at 83

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      The sitcom, about an interfaith marriage, drew criticism from Jewish groups and was canceled after one season. He fared better onstage than in television.David Birney, a classically trained theater actor who found success on the stage, including on Broadway, but who was best known for his role in “Bridget Loves Bernie” — a short-lived sitcom about an interfaith marriage in which he starred opposite his future wife, Meredith Baxter — died on Friday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 83.The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said Michele Roberge, who said she was his life partner.Mr. Birney had been in a handful of television series and movies when he was cast in 1972 as Bernie Steinberg, a Jewish taxicab driver and struggling writer. Ms. Baxter played Bridget Fitzgerald, a schoolteacher from a wealthy Roman Catholic family.“This is not a message show,” Mr. Birney, who was Irish American, said during an interview with The Kansas City Star before the series’s debut. “It’s not even an idea show.”CBS gave it a plum time slot between “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on Saturday night; it consistently finished among the top 10 programs in prime time and was the highest rated new series of the 1972-73 season.But it attracted criticism from a broad spectrum of Jewish groups, which objected chiefly to its treatment of intermarriage between Jews and Christians as a positive outcome and complained that it used Jewish stereotypes. CBS publicly played down the criticism but, without an explanation, canceled “Bridget Loves Bernie” after 24 episodes.“One segment of the protesters is truly concerned about the dilution of their faith,” Mr. Birney told The Daily News several months after the cancellation. “But intermarriage is on the rise, nevertheless. The threat doesn’t come from a harmless show such as ours, but from within.”Mr. Birney and Ms. Baxter married in 1974.In 1976, Mr. Birney received acclaim for playing John Quincy Adams in the public television production of “The Adams Chronicles.” Later that year, he was hired to play Frank Serpico, the corruption-fighting New York City detective, in an NBC series adapted from the Sidney Lumet movie “Serpico” (1973), which had earned Al Pacino an Oscar nomination for best actor.Mr. Birney was cast in the role on the strength of his work playing an officer in two episodes of “Police Story,” another NBC series. But “Serpico” was canceled after less than a full season. Mr. Birney and Meredith Baxter in an episode of “Bridget Loves Bernie,” a short-lived CBS sitcom about an interfaith marriage. Jewish groups were critical of it. CBS via Getty ImagesDavid Edwin Birney was born on April 23, 1939, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Cleveland. His father, Edwin, was an F.B.I. agent, and his mother, Jeanne (McGee) Birney, was a homemaker and later a real estate agent.After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Dartmouth College in 1961, Mr. Birney turned down a scholarship from Stanford Law School and instead chose to study theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received a master’s degree a year later. In the Army, he was part of a program called the Showmobile, which entertained at military bases in the United States.Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.“Mr. Birney had a cock sparrow arrogance,” Clive Barnes wrote in his review in The New York Times, “that mixture of both confidence and certainty that seemed perfectly right.”At the opening of “Playboy,” the Clancy Brothers, the popular Irish singing group that Mr. Birney had befriended at a Manhattan bar, sat in the front row.“They had their Irish sweaters on,” Ms. Roberge said in a phone interview, “and their arms crossed as if to say, Come on, show us what you’ve got.”Over the rest of his theatrical career, Mr. Birney played a wide variety of roles, including Antonio Salieri, as a replacement, in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” on Broadway; Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.; Hamlet at the PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria, Calif.; and James Tyrone Jr. in Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Miniature Theater of Chester, Mass.He also adapted some of Mark Twain’s short stories into a play, “The Diaries of Adam and Eve,” which he often performed and directed. In 1989, he starred in one of the productions, with Ms. Baxter, for American Playhouse on PBS.The couple divorced that year. In 2011, she wrote in her book, “Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame and Floundering,” that Mr. Birney had been abusive during their marriage. He denied her accusation, calling it an “appalling abuse of the truth.”One of Mr. Birney’s biggest successes on television was a starring role as a doctor in the first season of the medical dramedy “St. Elsewhere.” But as the second season approached, he left the series because of his commitment on Broadway to “Amadeus.”He continued to work in television through 2007, when he was a guest on the police procedural “Without a Trace.”In addition to Ms. Roberge, Mr. Birney is survived by his children with Ms. Baxter, his daughters Kate and Mollie Birney and a son, Peter Baxter; a stepdaughter, Eva Bush, and a stepson, Ted Bush, Ms. Baxter’s children from a previous marriage; two grandchildren; and his brothers, Glenn and Gregory. Another marriage, to Mary Concannon, also ended in divorce. More

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      David Birney, Who Starred in TV’s ‘Bridget Loves Bernie,’ Dies at 83

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      The sitcom, about an interfaith marriage, drew criticism from Jewish groups and was canceled after one season. He fared better onstage than in television.David Birney, a classically trained theater actor who found success on the stage, including on Broadway, but who was best known for his role in “Bridget Loves Bernie” — a short-lived sitcom about an interfaith marriage in which he starred opposite his future wife, Meredith Baxter — died on Friday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 83.The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said Michele Roberge, who said she was his life partner.Mr. Birney had been in a handful of television series and movies when he was cast in 1972 as Bernie Steinberg, a Jewish taxicab driver and struggling writer. Ms. Baxter played Bridget Fitzgerald, a schoolteacher from a wealthy Roman Catholic family.“This is not a message show,” Mr. Birney, who was Irish American, said during an interview with The Kansas City Star before the series’s debut. “It’s not even an idea show.”CBS gave it a plum time slot between “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on Saturday night; it consistently finished among the top 10 programs in prime time and was the highest rated new series of the 1972-73 season.But it attracted criticism from a broad spectrum of Jewish groups, which objected chiefly to its treatment of intermarriage between Jews and Christians as a positive outcome and complained that it used Jewish stereotypes. CBS publicly played down the criticism but, without an explanation, canceled “Bridget Loves Bernie” after 24 episodes.“One segment of the protesters is truly concerned about the dilution of their faith,” Mr. Birney told The Daily News several months after the cancellation. “But intermarriage is on the rise, nevertheless. The threat doesn’t come from a harmless show such as ours, but from within.”Mr. Birney and Ms. Baxter married in 1974.In 1976, Mr. Birney received acclaim for playing John Quincy Adams in the public television production of “The Adams Chronicles.” Later that year, he was hired to play Frank Serpico, the corruption-fighting New York City detective, in an NBC series adapted from the Sidney Lumet movie “Serpico” (1973), which had earned Al Pacino an Oscar nomination for best actor.Mr. Birney was cast in the role on the strength of his work playing an officer in two episodes of “Police Story,” another NBC series. But “Serpico” was canceled after less than a full season. Mr. Birney and Meredith Baxter in an episode of “Bridget Loves Bernie,” a short-lived CBS sitcom about an interfaith marriage. Jewish groups were critical of it. CBS via Getty ImagesDavid Edwin Birney was born on April 23, 1939, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Cleveland. His father, Edwin, was an F.B.I. agent, and his mother, Jeanne (McGee) Birney, was a homemaker and later a real estate agent.After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Dartmouth College in 1961, Mr. Birney turned down a scholarship from Stanford Law School and instead chose to study theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received a master’s degree a year later. In the Army, he was part of a program called the Showmobile, which entertained at military bases in the United States.Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.“Mr. Birney had a cock sparrow arrogance,” Clive Barnes wrote in his review in The New York Times, “that mixture of both confidence and certainty that seemed perfectly right.”At the opening of “Playboy,” the Clancy Boys, a popular Irish singing group that Mr. Birney had befriended at a Manhattan bar, sat in the front row.“They had their Irish sweaters on,” Ms. Roberge said in a phone interview, “and their arms crossed as if to say, Come on, show us what you’ve got.”Over the rest of his theatrical career, Mr. Birney played a wide variety of roles, including Antonio Salieri, as a replacement, in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” on Broadway; Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.; Hamlet at the PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria, Calif.; and James Tyrone Jr. in Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Miniature Theater of Chester, Mass.He also adapted some of Mark Twain’s short stories into a play, “The Diaries of Adam and Eve,” which he often performed and directed. In 1989, he starred in one of the productions, with Ms. Baxter, for American Playhouse on PBS.The couple divorced that year. In 2011, she wrote in her book, “Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame and Floundering,” that Mr. Birney had been abusive during their marriage. He denied her accusation, calling it an “appalling abuse of the truth.”One of Mr. Birney’s biggest successes on television was a starring role as a doctor in the first season of the medical dramedy “St. Elsewhere.” But as the second season approached, he left the series because of his commitment on Broadway to “Amadeus.”He continued to work in television through 2007, when he was a guest on the police procedural “Without a Trace.”In addition to Ms. Roberge, Mr. Birney is survived by his children with Ms. Baxter, his daughters Kate and Mollie Birney and a son, Peter Baxter; a stepdaughter, Eva Bush, and a stepson, Ted Bush, Ms. Baxter’s children from a previous marriage; two grandchildren; and his brothers, Glenn and Gregory. Another marriage, to Mary Concannon, also ended in divorce. More

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      James Corden Says He’ll Leave His CBS Show Next Year

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      The British-born host, who was a successful actor and comedian before joining the network’s late-night lineup, has been signaling for some time that he was considering leaving.James Corden, the British theater actor and comedian turned late-night TV host in the United States, said on Thursday that he would leave his 12:30 a.m. nightly show on CBS next year. Mr. Corden made the announcement during a taping of his talk show in Los Angeles.Mr. Corden, the host of “The Late Late Show” since 2015, has been signaling for some time that he was strongly considering leaving the show.Five months ago, Mr. Corden told Variety that he never saw his late-night perch as “a final destination.” In a previous interview with The Sun, Mr. Corden said he and his family were “homesick.”Mr. Corden’s contract was set to expire in August, but he signed an extension that will keep him on CBS through next spring.“We wish he could stay longer, but we are very proud he made CBS his American home and that this partnership will extend one more season on ‘The Late Late Show,’” George Cheeks, the president of CBS, said in a statement.James Corden’s Run on ‘The Late Late Show’The British actor and comedian turned late-night TV host, announced he would leave his CBS show in 2023.His Debut: James Corden was “amiable and cheerfully self-assured, but not particularly special,” our critic wrote of the comedian’s first night as host in 2015.A Bit of Controversy: In a recurring gag on the show, Corden portrayed foods from cultures around the world as disgusting. The segment drew the ires of some viewers. On Stage: Corden started out as an aspiring stage performer. Here is what he said about his long love affair with theater.Mr. Corden’s impending departure is one of the most significant changes for the late-night comedy lineup since 2014 and 2015, when veteran hosts like David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jon Stewart left their shows, and a new generation of stars, including Mr. Corden, Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah and HBO’s John Oliver, went on the air.There is a feeling of uncertainty in late night beyond Mr. Corden’s departure. Jimmy Kimmel, the longtime ABC host, has a contract that will end soon and has said publicly that he was unsure if he would renew. Stephen Colbert, whose show precedes Mr. Corden’s on CBS, also has a contract that expires next year. Chris Licht, the longtime executive producer of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” left last month to become the chairman of CNN. And Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” recently went through yet another showrunner change, the fourth in four years.There are questions throughout the entertainment industry over the longtime viability of the late-night talk show genre. Over the last few years, as viewing habits have rapidly changed, ratings for the shows have nose-dived. Five years ago, roughly 2.8 million people were tuning into Mr. Corden’s show as well as NBC’s 12:30 a.m. show, “Late Night With Seth Meyers.” By 2022, that figure had dropped to about 1.9 million, according to Nielsen’s delayed viewing data.Talk shows — which depend on topical relevance and audiences who make it a daily habit to tune in — have also not fared well on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.Mr. Corden entered the late-night fray in a big way when his show debuted in 2015. Mr. Corden, who had a successful theater career but was still relatively unknown in the United States, became an overnight star. “Carpool Karaoke,” a signature of his show, featured him singing along with stars like Lady Gaga, Michelle Obama and Adele, and clips routinely went viral.“Seven years ago, James Corden came to the U.S. and took television by storm, with huge creative and comedic swings that resonated in a big way with viewers on-air and online,” Mr. Cheeks said.But Mr. Corden’s brand of comedy — focused on games and musical sketches — soon found itself out of step with the zeitgeist.The landscape changed considerably after Donald J. Trump entered the White House. Late-night audiences began devouring biting political humor. Within weeks of Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Fallon’s fun-and-games approach at “The Tonight Show” fell steeply in the ratings, and Mr. Colbert became the No. 1 late-night host, thanks to his more topical approach. He has held that lead for more than five years. Like Mr. Fallon, Mr. Corden favored a lighter show.Mr. Corden parlayed his late-night perch into other high-profile ventures, including hosting the Tony Awards and Grammy Awards. He has also appeared in several movies, including the critically gnawed-on “Cinderella” and “Cats.”Seated behind his “Late Late Show” desk, Mr. Corden called his decision to leave the hardest “he ever had to make.”“I never want this show to overstay its welcome in any way,” he said. “I always want to love making it. And I really think in a year from now that will be a good time to move on and see what else might be out there.” More