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    Christopher Walken’s Hidden ‘Dune’ Connection

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    The actor who plays the malevolent emperor in the new film actually brought an element of the saga to life once before. Remember “Weapon of Choice”?If you turned on MTV for any length of time in 2001, you almost certainly saw Christopher Walken flying around the lobby of a Marriott in Los Angeles. Even in an era when music videos were far more hotly discussed than they are now, it was a weird sight. Walken’s trim shock of gray hair matched his gray suit, punctuated by a red tie; he looked less like the movie star he was than some guy on a long layover.The music was Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” a weird little ditty that did make you want to dance. Having trained as a dancer in his youth — and done a great deal of tap and more in “Pennies From Heaven” (1981) — Walken was well equipped for the concept that the video’s director, Spike Jonze, had cooked up: Normal-looking man hanging out in a hotel lobby hears the song, starts dancing, then flies off a mezzanine before, eventually, returning to his seat. The video was a hit, winning several MTV Video Music Awards and a Grammy.The lyrics to “Weapon of Choice” (sung by Bootsy Collins) are heavily distorted — the point isn’t the words so much as the hypnotic beat. But if you listen closely, you can pick up the line “Walk without rhythm/and it won’t attract the worm.”Yes, it’s a reference to “Dune.”In Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, giant ancient sandworms that live beneath the desert on the planet Arrakis are hugely dangerous to humans, though their power can be harnessed for travel and other purposes. They’re one of the most famous elements of the story, so instantly identifiable that they were made into a dubiously conceived popcorn bucket for the release of Denis Villeneuve’s new “Dune: Part Two.” And they’re attracted to rhythmic thumps on the surface, so the Fremen — people who live in the Arrakis desert — walk in strange, loping, arrhythmic steps to avoid accidental detection.In the video, Walken even seems to be imitating those steps:These lyrics also appear. They could mean anything, of course.Don’t be shockedby the tone of my voiceCheck out my new weaponweapon of choiceBut it certainly would make sense if it was a reference to “the voice” (or is it THE VOICE?), a powerful vocal distortion that the mystical sisterhood Bene Gesserit use to control people in “Dune.”This was all a funny reference in 2021, when the first installment in Villeneuve’s adaptation of “Dune” appeared in theaters. But it got much funnier in “Dune: Part Two.” In the new film, the role of Emperor Shaddam — who engineered the extinction, or so he thought, of the House Atreides, making him technically the baddest of the bad guys — is played by Walken himself.Coincidence? Maybe. Delightful? Absolutely. More

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      Everybody Dance Now! ‘Here Lies Love’ Dictates Your Moves.

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      Engaging viewers’ bodies is central to this Broadway musical, a rare production that sets its audience in motion on the dance floor.Like many Broadway musicals, “Here Lies Love” involves a lot of dancing. Notably less common: how much moving is done by the audience.It isn’t unheard-of for a musical to tell the story of a dictator’s wife, but this one, with songs by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, is distinctly focused on its subject’s dancing habits. Imelda Marcos — wife of Ferdinand Marcos, the longtime president of the Philippines — was fond of discothèques. Accordingly, the Broadway Theater has been half-converted into a club on the model of Studio 54. There is a giant disco ball and a D.J., and the orchestra seats have been stripped out so that up to 300 members of the audience can experience the 90-minute show while crowded on a dance floor.As at a disco, those standing can dance as they like. But they are also herded by wranglers in magenta jumpsuits with light-up wands like the ones used to direct taxiing airplanes. Wheeled platforms and runways are regularly rearranged around the floor area, displacing audience members. One cruciform platform is aptly called the Blender. It churns the crowd like batter.The rest of the audience is seated, above the dance floor and back into the depths of the mezzanine. But these viewers move, too, encouraged by the D.J. to join the standing folks in a simple line dance, picking up the moves from cast members spread throughout the theater on more platforms and catwalks. A lot of the story action happens up there, too.“The engagement of the audience’s body is highly unusual,” Annie-B Parson, the show’s choreographer, said. “And when you engage the body, you also engage the mind and the heart.”The choreographer Annie-B Parson: “The engagement of the audience’s body is highly unusual. And when you engage the body, you also engage the mind and the heart.”Naima Green for The New York Times“Here Lies Love” has developed over more than a decade in various incarnations, but dance and audience motion have been at the center of the conception from the start, said Alex Timbers, the director: “We didn’t want it to be interactive, with people pulled up onstage and feeling embarrassed. We wanted the audience to be moving as a unit so no one feels singled out.”The idea is to cast the audience in the drama as extras, Timbers said. They aren’t just dancers at the club. They are guests at the Marcos’s wedding; the public at political rallies and election parties; witnesses to the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr., the Marcos’s rival; participants in the People Power Revolution that overthrew the dictator in 1986.“Your journey changes, just like America’s relationship with the Philippines,” Timbers said. “After Aquino’s assassination, you feel a little complicit in having danced at Imelda’s wedding.”Similarly, the D.J. telling everyone what to do is somewhat dictatorial. When Marcos institutes martial law, no audience member “is getting tortured or anything,” Timbers said, “but there is a metaphor at play physically.”“You watch the audience applaud,” Parson said, “and you watch them wonder why they’re applauding. It’s pretty Brechtian.”Development of the show has been a trial-and-error experiment in how to get audiences to move as the creative team wants. “You don’t have the same audience every night,” Timbers said, “so you’re looking at trends, at human nature.”Elaborate charts delineate how the wranglers can redistribute the crowd effectively and safely without being distracting. And since the people in the mezzanine face in one direction while those on the floor face in several, directing everyone to “step to the right” in a line dance isn’t a simple matter. (Well-placed performers and video screens help.)Parson, who has worked with Byrne on concerts tours and on his recent Broadway show, “American Utopia,” comes from the world of postmodern dance. She said that while Timbers “has a beautiful sense of the body and space,” he and she had opposing, if complementary, attitudes about the fact that no audience member of “Here Lies Love” could see everything.The director of “Here Lies Love,” Alex Timbers, said the idea was to cast the audience in the drama as extras.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“Alex worked really hard to share all the story material with everyone in the theater,” she said, whereas she was thinking about the composer John Cage’s philosophical idea that every seat in the house is perfect. “It becomes about perception. I love the experience of watching someone watch things that I might not be seeing. You feel things in your body that you may not see.”It’s a question of perspective, and not the only one. Many reviews of “Here Lies Love” and public objections to the show have focused on how the glamour and play of the club atmosphere rub against the show’s critique of the Marcoses.Parson said the context of disco — “an ecstatic dance form that tips quickly into despair” — is intentionally ambiguous. “Dancing is relative. You can use it for ill or for the greater good.”Imelda’s use of dance, what became known as her handbag diplomacy, “was embodied statesmanship,” Parson said. “She didn’t put a table between her and Nixon or Castro. She asked them to dance. She wasn’t a great dancer but that gave her a lot of power.”At one point, cast members act this out, wearing masks of famous political leaders. At other points, the choreography borrows a few of Imelda’s signature moves: circling her eye with two fingers, tapping the tops of her butterfly sleeves.The line dance, Parson said, was designed to be “fun and easy, something you could do in a chair if space was tight.” (“The Philippines have a really muscular tradition of line dancing,” she added, noting that the line dancing performed by the all-Filipino cast at parties is much more intricate.)Much of the choreography for the cast is more complicated, but mostly in tone, Parson said. In the title song, for example, Imelda tells the audience to remember her for love. “But let’s talk about the families she destroyed,” Parson said. “It’s a beautiful song, but it is ironic, so that’s how I choreographed it, with swinging umbrellas and sternum to the ceiling. You can’t take it straight.”Timothy Matthew Flores, who plays Aquino’s son along with other ensemble roles, said the detail of Parson’s choreography — “every single movement has a meaning” — made it more difficult than flashier and harder-hitting dance he’s done before. And running all around the large theater is “90 minutes of cardio.”But getting the audience out of their seats and dancing? That’s just fun, Flores said. “They start off shy and then they end up having a really good time. You can see them thinking, ‘Wow, this is not like any other Broadway show.’” More

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      in Music

      Review: Dancing With Dictators in David Byrne’s ‘Here Lies Love’

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      A new Broadway musical tells the disturbing story of Imelda Marcos by putting her, and the audience, in a disco.It’s the applause — including my own — I find troubling.Not that there isn’t plenty to praise in “Here Lies Love,” the immersive disco-bio-musical about Imelda Marcos that opened on Thursday at the Broadway Theater. The infernally catchy songs by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, performed by a tireless and inspired all-Filipino cast, will have you clapping whether you want to or not. Their chunky beats, abetted by insistent dance motivators, may even prompt you to bop at your seat — if you have one.Because the real star of this show is the astonishing architectural transformation of the theater itself, by the set designer David Korins. Opened in 1924 as a movie palace, more lately the home of “King Kong” and “West Side Story,” the Broadway has now been substantially gutted, its nearly 1,800 seats reduced to about 800, with standing room for another 300 in the former orchestra section and a 42-inch disco ball dead center.The folks upstairs, if not the mostly younger standees below, will surely recognize the visual reference to Studio 54, the celebrity nightclub where Marcos, the first lady of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986, danced away the last decade of her reign while impoverishing her people. That she would probably adore the over-emphatic atmosphere of “Here Lies Love” — with its lurid lighting by Justin Townsend, skittering projections by Peter Nigrini and earsplitting sound by M.L. Dogg and Cody Spencer — is, however, equivocal praise.For here we are, at the place where irony and meta-messaging form a theatrical-historical knot that can’t be picked apart. Which is why, as you clap, you should probably wonder what for.Is it for Imelda (Arielle Jacobs), the beauty queen who rose from “hand-me-downs and scraps” to become the fashion-plate wife of the Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos? Is it for the ruthless Ferdinand himself (Jose Llana)? (His landslide election in 1965 elicited some Pavlovian cheers the night I saw the show.) Or is it for Ninoy Aquino (Conrad Ricamora), the opposition leader who was Imelda’s former beau? (Having spurned her in their youth, he was later assassinated by forces thought to be close to Ferdinand’s regime.) All get equivalent star treatment here.Seating at the Broadway Theater was reduced from 1,800 to about 800, with standing room for another 300, to create a Studio 54-like atmosphere, complete with a 42-inch disco ball in the center of the house.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe confusion of sympathies is just where Byrne and the director Alex Timbers want us. Avoiding the near-hagiography of “Evita” and yet unwilling to bank a commercial production on a totally hateful character, they aim for a middle ground that doesn’t exist, yet mostly hit it anyway. Their Imelda is a victim of poverty and mistreatment, dim despite her cunning and innocent by reason of inanity. When Filipinos fully turn against her during the People Power revolution of 1986, she is more mystified than crushed. “Why don’t you love me?” she sings.We know the answer: The string of her outrages, even apart from her husband’s, seems literally endless. She did not retire from public office until 2019, and her son, Bongbong, is now president.But “Here Lies Love” — the title taken from an epitaph she proposed for herself — tempers the atrocities with the pleasure of its songs. Jacobs, a Broadway Jasmine in “Aladdin,” gets the catchiest ones, and delivers them well, if without the emotional nuance Ruthie Ann Miles brought to the role a decade earlier when the show had a developmental run at the Public Theater.To be fair, the material steers as far from emotion as possible, no matter how many times the word “love” is used. Byrne’s characteristic idiom — which feeds disco, folk and pop through an art rock filter — is too cool for that, and his lyrics, perhaps because they are based on public utterances of the real-life figures, reject psychology almost entirely. They are often thus too banal to serve the usual purpose of songs in musicals; instead of developing character internally they suggest it externally with a torrent of catchphrases. “It takes a woman to do a man’s job,” Imelda sings blankly upon assuming power from the sickly Ferdinand.Without a vivid inner life to inflect such clichés, it’s hard to wring anything from them except a cringe. The beamish Ricamora and the scowling Llana, returning from the earlier production, get around the problem with their charisma, and Lea Salonga, in the cameo role of Aquino’s mother, turns “Just Ask the Flowers,” sung at Ninoy’s funeral, into a powerful if perplexing anthem through sheer vocal bravura.Conrad Ricamora, center, as Ninoy Aquino, performing on an array of moving platforms that transport the action to various parts of the theater while sweeping the audience into new configurations.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesStill, a musical not centered on feelings is a strange thing. Where another show might attempt to squeeze the relationship between Imelda and Ninoy for drama, it is merely a lump of undigested fact here. And Imelda’s infamous collection of state-financed shoes goes unmentioned, which is like mounting “Evita” without the Dior dress.To compensate, or double down, Timbers emphasizes pure pageantry in his staging. The actors often perform on an array of moving platforms that transport the action to various parts of the theater while incidentally sweeping the standees into new configurations. (Guides in pink jumpsuits with airport-style light wands keep them from getting mowed down.) You are left to draw your own conclusions about how crowds, whether in Manila or Manhattan, respond to being pushed around for too long and for apparently arbitrary reasons. There’s a reason affiliations and uprisings are often called movements.No surprise then that the most expressive element in “Here Lies Love” (along with Clint Ramos’s costumes, which also move beautifully) is the choreography by Annie-B Parson. Based on small hand gestures and large traffic patterns, it suggests a fuller spectrum of human engagement than the otherwise narrowly focused and sometimes mechanical production achieves.Is it wrong to seek that engagement more fully? (Or as Imelda sings: “Is it a sin to love too much?”) For most of its 90 intermission-less minutes, “Here Lies Love” finesses the question, preferring to be treated as anything — an art object, a dance party — besides what it is. In that way, it recalls Byrne’s Broadway concert “American Utopia,” on which Timbers and Parson also collaborated. But that show, which had no story, needed only to be sleek and enjoyable to score its points.“Here Lies Love” bets that glamour can make up for narrative — or, rather, that in a show about the dangers of political demagogy, glamour itself is the narrative. It’s a case of form follows function into the fire. We are drawn to cultural and political excitement in much the same, often dangerous way.Perhaps the irony of making a musical about that is more viscerally appreciable down on the dance floor. It was for me at the Public, where almost everyone had to stand and be part of the story, not observers of it. (There were only 42 seats.) And perhaps, 10 years later, with our own politics looking a lot more like the Marcoses’, no one can afford to keep a distance.In any case, on Broadway, it’s not until the gorgeous last song, “God Draws Straight,” that the material matches the movement in a way that reaches the balcony. Led by Moses Villarama, and based on comments by eyewitnesses to the peaceful 1986 revolution, it acknowledges the moral superiority of its real heroes — the Philippine people — in the only way a musical can: by giving it beautiful voice. Finally, it’s OK to applaud.Here Lies LoveAt the Broadway Theater, Manhattan; herelieslovebroadway.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      in Music

      For Filipino Audiences, ‘Here Lies Love’ Offers Emotional Rip Currents

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      The disco balls were spinning, the club music was pulsing, and on the dance floor, several Filipino audience members were near tears.It was a Saturday night, and at the Broadway Theater, “Here Lies Love,” the David Byrne-Fatboy Slim musical about the rise and fall of Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, the former first couple of the Philippines, was preparing for its Broadway opening on July 20. In previews, it has drawn a growing stream of Filipino American theatergoers, reeled in by the chance to see their national — and in some cases, their family — history told onstage, close enough for them to literally touch.“I’ve never been in a play where I have a personal connection” to the story, said Earl Delfin, a 35-year-old Manhattanite. “I felt represented on a New York stage for the first time.”He got emotional in the opening scenes, he added. “And of course I danced.”Arielle Jacobs as Imelda Marcos, whose journey from beauty pageant contestant to wife of a despot is the focus of the show.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“Here Lies Love,” which opened to critical raves and sold-out crowds at the Public Theater downtown in 2013, arrives on Broadway after sojourns in London and Seattle, each time expanding its house and fine tuning its immersive staging. But only now has it added a fully Filipino cast — the first-ever on Broadway, organizers say. Also new are a cadre of Filipino producers, including the Tony winner Lea Salonga, the Pulitzer-winning writer Jose Antonio Vargas, the comedian Jo Koy and the Grammy-winning musician H.E.R., along with investors from Manila.“It only felt responsible, to fully engage with the motherland,” said the costume designer and creative consultant Clint Ramos, a native of Cebu, Philippines, who has worked on the show since its inception. He is now also a producer.“Having cultural capital from the motherland, but also financial capital from the motherland, it feels like the authorship and ownership of the show are holding hands very tightly. And that’s a great feeling,” he said.The narrative framework of the show has not changed: It still harnesses the gloss of a discothèque — as first lady, Imelda was a denizen of Studio 54 — to reflect the Marcoses’ dizzying rise to power, and the glittery allure of privilege and wealth that led the couple to spend their nation into massive debt, to live lavishly as their constituents suffered.The production has a cultural and community liaison who plans Filipino community events; even on regular nights, the show attracts attendees who had direct dealings with the Marcos and Aquino clans, organizers said.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesJustin J Wee for The New York TimesJustin J Wee for The New York TimesArielle Jacobs, a new addition to the cast, plays Imelda, whose journey from naïve beauty pageant contestant to sentimental megalomaniac — “Why Don’t You Love Me?” goes a signature song — is the focus of the story. Jose Llana reprises Ferdinand from the Public; his path from charismatic leader to presidential despot is shorter. “If they want to boo Marcos,” Llana said of audiences, “then I think I did my job right.”There is no book; the action is driven by Byrne’s soaring tunes (with beats by Fatboy Slim) and by the exuberant choreography of Annie-B Parson, Byrne’s frequent collaborator. A D.J. (Moses Villarama) acts as an emcee.Every day, Ramos said, as the creative team worked out the massive lighting rigs and costume transitions, they also asked the question: “Are we looking at history correctly here?”The challenge — engineered by Byrne, who hoped that the nightlife setting would give audiences a taste of the limitlessness of power — is formidable. “How do you combine joy with tragedy?” said Alex Timbers, the director, in a joint interview with Ramos.In place of a stage, the Broadway Theater was redesigned to create a dance club. Moving platforms carry the performers, with standing theatergoers surrounding them on the floor; catwalks bring the actors within arms reach for those seated above. The choreography encourages audience members to interact with the cast, hip-swiveling beside them in line dances, and playing the part of the faithful at political rallies — moments of civilian joy and swept-along fellowship that are broadcast on giant screens around the space, alongside darker, real news footage and transcripts.Audience members making the Laban sign, a Filipino hand gesture popularized by Ninoy Aquino, Ferdinand Marcos’s chief political rival.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesElizer Caballero, a fan who came from San Francisco, was practically vibrating with delight as he sang and bopped along to the score. The experience of being surrounded by the actors as they told this native story was almost surreal — he felt like part of the show — “but it’s also very poignant,” he said. “Especially for a Filipino American, it’s best to be on the floor. It adds more depth.”An untranslated moment when Imelda curses at Ferdinand in Tagalog has gotten a more consistent laugh on Broadway than it ever did downtown, cast members said. (The production has a cultural and community liaison, Giselle Töngi, who plans Filipino community events; even on regular nights, it attracted attendees who had direct dealings with the Marcos and Aquino clans, organizers said.)Salonga, the first Asian woman to win a Tony (in 1991, for “Miss Saigon”) is stepping in as Aurora Aquino, the mother of Benigno Aquino Jr., Ferdinand’s chief political rival, in a guest spot this summer. It is the first time in her long career she has played a role written as Filipina.Seeing a production of “Here Lies Love” a few years ago surfaced visceral memories of her childhood in Manila, during the Marcoses’ reign. Performing in it felt overwhelming. “I’m slamming into history,” Salonga said.Researching the part, she spoke to friends in the Aquino family. (Corazon C. Aquino, Benigno’s widow, succeeded Marcos as president.) In rehearsals for her number, she thought, “Oh my gosh, how am I going to keep my emotions from overtaking me as I try to sing the song?” she said in a phone interview. “I had friends texting me, saying, How on earth are you going to keep from crying when you do this?”Attendees of Filipino descent have described experiencing an intense personal connection at seeing their history depicted onstage.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesJustin J Wee for The New York TimesFor second-generation Filipino Americans, whose families prioritized assimilation, learning the story of their homeland has been a different kind of revelation. “Growing up, the only thing I really knew about Imelda was her shoe collection,” Jacobs said. “Getting in touch with this part of the Filipino culture, and the resilience of the Filipino people — all of that has been an awakening for me.”“Here Lies Love” is arriving on Broadway in a political and social landscape that’s vastly shifted since its premiere in the Obama era. The rapid unraveling of democracy it depicts is close at hand, the world over, Timbers and Ramos noted. Ferdinand’s habit of exaggerating or outright fabricating his successes is part of the autocrat playbook. Even his recorded dalliances with a starlet have a familiar ring. Ferdinand and Imelda’s son, known as Bongbong, is currently president of the Philippines. (After her husband’s death in 1989, Imelda, now 94, returned to politics and served three terms as a congresswoman.)Developing the project with Byrne, the protean former Talking Head, the creative team took pains not to glamorize Ferdinand, who imposed martial law from 1972 to 1981, and whose regime carried out mass arrests and silenced critics. The assassination of Aquino, at the airport when he returned from exile in the U.S. in 1983, served as a turning point to galvanize opposition against the Marcoses, and is an emotional rip current in “Here Lies Love.”In previews, it has drawn a growing stream of Filipino American theatergoers.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesConrad Ricamora, who has played the boyish Aquino (known as Ninoy) in three of the four productions, understood his legacy quickly. On Broadway, audiences make the Laban sign — a hand gesture like an inverted L; the word means “fight” — that Ninoy popularized. “If you look at people who do heroic things throughout history, they are only able to do them because they are deeply in touch with their humanity and the humanity of others,” Ricamora said.The show has still been criticized for putting a couple known for their ruthless corruption in the spotlight, and for minimizing Imelda’s political prowess. (A website aims to contextualize the country’s history.) In a statement, the producers said their new, binational group came together “in a time of necessary and welcome assessment of who tells what stories,” and that having people with lived experiences of this era further imbued the show “with authenticity.”For the nearly two dozen cast members — eight of whom are making their Broadway debuts — it is a rare chance to commune, and revisit, together, a past that is hardly in the rearview mirror for some of them.Ramos calls himself “a martial law baby,” raised under Marcos’s most brutal period. He was also there in February 1986, a school kid “on top of a tank,” he said, when the four-day protests known as the People Power Revolution swept the couple out of office, peacefully. “I experienced the whole arc of the regime,” he said. He came to the U.S. in the late ’90s, for grad school.Llana’s family landed in New York in 1979, when he was 3; his parents were student activists who had fled martial law. “Me being a part of this show for the past 10 years has really been cathartic,” he said, “because it wasn’t something necessarily that my parents talked about.”The choreography encourages audience members to interact with the cast, hip-swiveling beside them in line dances, and playing the part of the faithful at political rallies.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesWhen he first heard about the show, he hoped to play Aquino: “I thought nothing would make my parents prouder.” Instead he was asked to read for Ferdinand. It was, he said, an awkward conversation with his family when he got the part, and he made it known to the creative team that he would walk away if the production flattered a dictator.Still, he said, as an actor he needs to find the humanity in his characters. “And I think maybe that’s where sometimes people start criticizing us, is that we’re humanizing them. But you have to humanize people if you want to hold them accountable.”Llana’s castmates call him “kuya,” which means older brother or older male cousin in Tagalog — a term of endearment. For him, even after so many years with the show, the addition of Filipino producers was deeply meaningful. “It made me feel safe,” he said, “knowing that the Filipinos were in charge, that we could just do our jobs” as artists.Like Salonga, he has played a variety of ethnicities, just about none of them Filipino.“I feel like I owe all of those ethnicities an apology — like, I’m sorry I got cast,” Salonga said. “But things were very different at the time.”Even putting a complex, layered story like this on Broadway — staged like a dance party, no less — could serve as inspiration and empowerment, she hoped. “I want to see other communities of color be able to look at ‘Here Lies Love’ and go, ‘We can do that. We have these stories that we are able to tell. We are going to be able to do this.’” More