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      in Television

      In ‘A Spy Among Friends,’ B.F.F. Betrayal at an International Level

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      A twisty MGM+ series tells the story of Kim Philby, a British agent secretly working for the Soviet Union, and Nicholas Elliott, his closest friend.“Why wasn’t he in custody?” asks the MI5 officer Lily Thomas. It is January 1963, and Thomas is talking about Kim Philby, a British intelligence agent who, after being exposed as a Soviet spy, has escaped to Moscow. Nicholas Elliott, Philby’s closest friend and a fellow member of the foreign intelligence agency MI6, looks slightly nonplused. “Well, that’s not how we —” he begins, before coming to an abrupt halt.That “we” is at the heart of “A Spy Among Friends,” a six-part series based on the book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, and starring Guy Pearce as Philby, Damian Lewis as Elliott and Anna Maxwell Martin as Thomas. The series, produced by Sony Pictures Television, premieres March 12 on MGM+.It’s the “we” of the old boys’ club, of men bonded by private schools, an Oxbridge education, members-only clubs and the confident assumption of their right to power. The show explores the psychological shock of the realization that a figure considered “one of us” was something quite different all along.“MI6 tended to attract those public schoolboys, people who had no hesitation about bending the rules because they thought they were above the rules,” Macintyre said in a recent interview. “They believed they were born to lead, and they couldn’t imagine that one of their own could be a traitor.”The TV adaptation was written by Alex Cary (“Homeland”) and directed by Nick Murphy (“Blood”). Like the book, it is both a tale of espionage and the story of a friendship and a betrayal that is as personally devastating for Elliott as the political betrayal is for the Western powers.Philby’s story is true: He was one of the Cambridge Five, a group of upper-class Englishmen recruited by the Soviets while in college, and who were eventually, and gradually, unmasked following World War II, after they had been working for the Communist cause from inside British intelligence services for decades.Pearce said that even after playing the character, Philby’s motivations remained an enigma to him.Sam Taylor/Sony Pictures Television“It’s such a well-known story in the U.K., Philby as the most successful traitor of the 20th century,” Lewis said in a video interview from New York. “This is a sneak peek at a more psychological, emotional way of looking at it.”Philby was both Elliott’s best friend and his idol, Lewis said, and Elliott “fatally continued to facilitate his treachery.” Lewis added: “The great tragedy is that he realizes in retrospect that the man he loved and enabled and defended had gotten thousands of people killed.”Macintyre said that he learned about the Philby-Elliott friendship from the novelist John le Carré, who described it to him as “the best unwritten story of the Cold War.” When he began his research, he discovered “comrades in arms who loved each other as much as heterosexual men in Britain could.”“It’s a very intimate treachery,” Macintyre said.The book, full of biographical detail and historical context, wasn’t easy to adapt, Cary said in an interview, adding that Lewis, whom he had worked with on “Homeland,” helped him develop the script and the show’s approach.“We had long, long conversations about the balance between spy-narrative red meat and a story about friendship,” Cary said.He came up with the fictional Thomas, he said, as “a device through which we could engage with Elliott emotionally,” and as an acknowledgment of the various women in Macintyre’s book who are “involved in an unsung way.” He added that he knew introducing a central female character to the story could “be called woke, which is fine with me!”Thomas, with her northern accent and blunt manners, embodies the class differences between MI5 (which investigates matters of national security, like the F.B.I.) and MI6 (the foreign intelligence service, like the C.I.A.). But her character also suggests a redemptive path for Elliott, who gradually becomes aware of her qualities and potential.Lily Thomas (Anna Maxwell Martin) is a fictional character, created for the show to help Lewis’s Elliott along a redemptive path. Sony Pictures Television“She represents what has to change in British society, but also has to play as a real person,” Maxwell Martin said in an interview. Thomas is there, she said, “to serve a narrative — someone who will cleave open Elliott’s mind and his subtleties, his emotional brain and his heartbreak, and someone who would challenge what happened in Beirut.”Beirut, where both men had been stationed, is where the final confrontation between Elliott and Philby takes place. Cary uses their long, elliptical conversation as a central structuring device for the show, which moves swiftly and without any identification between countries, eras and story lines. “That allowed me to tip my hat to the le Carré ‘Tinker, Tailor’ genre,” Cary said.Anchoring the rapidly shifting scenes are conversations: between Philby and Elliott, between Thomas and Elliot, and between Philby and his Russian debriefer. And between these, there are subplots: a fictional one involving a C.I.A. plot in Moscow after Philby’s defection, a true one about the identification of Anthony Blunt, the curator of Queen Elizabeth II’s art collection, as another member of the Cambridge group.“A key decision a director must make is the relationship between your camera and the story,” said Murphy, the show’s director, discussing the story’s shifts in time and location. In the show, “the camera reacts to everything, it doesn’t anticipate, which allows the audience to discover everything as the characters do.”Murphy’s London is a gray, monochrome place, full of brown-suited men and women who are constantly lighting cigarettes in dim rooms. “The era is often delivered cinematically as a tribute to the swinging ’60s,” Murphy said. “But the ’60s hadn’t swung yet; it was an England and a Europe trying to get off its knees after the war.”The Moscow that Philby escapes to is an even more drab city of slushy snow, long lines and drunks on the street. And although he is nominally welcomed as a hero, the K.G.B. is deeply suspicious that he has come to Moscow to spy for Britain.Pearce said that Philby mostly remained an enigma to him, too: “Did he really want to go to Moscow, or take the offer that Elliott makes of a peaceful life in the country in return for a full confession? Would his ego have allowed him to become an ordinary person in England?”While Philby’s flight to Moscow, and whether Elliott was complicit in it, remain an important ambiguity, the central question of the show, Cary said, is “whether there was sincerity in the depths of that friendship, even as there was duplicity in the great arc of the friendship.”That is also the essential question for Elliott, played by Lewis with a fine-tuned opacity that occasionally cracks to reveal the pain beneath.Lewis and the show’s writer Alex Cary also worked together on “Homeland,” and Lewis helped develop the script and approach for “A Spy Among Friends.”Sony Pictures Television“It is like a love story,” Lewis said. “He feels like the cuckold who gave everything blindly to the relationship without knowing he has been cheated on.”Midway through the first episode of the series, Murphy recreates the televised news conference that Philby gave after he was accused of being the “third man” in a Communist spy ring that included his fellow Cambridge student Guy Burgess. Asked whether he still regarded Burgess as a friend, Philby hesitates, then gives an answer that is perhaps the one sincere sentiment he expresses in the show:“On the subject of friendship,” he says slowly, “I’d prefer to say as little as possible, because it’s very complicated.” More

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      in Movies

      Ireland Cheers Paul Mescal for Embracing Irish Language

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      On the red carpet for the British Academy Film Awards, the Oscar-nominated actor gave an interview in Ireland’s national language.Paul Mescal, the Irish actor nominated for an Oscar for his performance in “Aftersun,” is a familiar figure on red carpets. But on Sunday at the British Academy Film Awards, he did something he had never publicly done before: He spoke Irish.Mescal, 27, was walking the red carpet in London when he stopped to talk with TG4, an Irish-language public broadcaster. The interviewer opened the conversation in Irish, also known as Gaelic, and the actor nervously followed suit.For a man whom the BBC had erroneously identified as British only a few weeks before, it was quite a moment. The two-minute interaction, posted on Twitter, has been viewed one million times and set off a conversation across Ireland about the state of one of Europe’s most endangered languages.“I found it very emotional,” said Eithne Shortall, an Irish author who lives in Dublin. “The whole country is bursting proud of Paul Mescal.”The interview resonated in Ireland, where many want to speak the language but may find themselves short on confidence, Shortall said. According to the 2016 Irish census, the latest for which numbers are available, 39.8 percent of the Irish population can speak Irish, which is down from 41.4 percent in 2011. Of the 1.7 million people who said they could speak the language, only 73,803 — 1.7 percent of the population — said they did so daily outside an educational setting.“I’m sorry about my Irish — it was much better when I was in school,” Mescal said in Irish during the interview. “It’s slightly lost on me now.”Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.Irish is a mandatory subject in primary and secondary schools in Ireland, said Deirdre Ní Loingsigh, director of the Irish Language Center at the University of Limerick. As a result, almost all Irish people have a “cúpla focal” — a few words — but some are reluctant to use them. Shortall said seeing Mescal himself being hesitant to speak was encouraging.“A lot of the reason we can’t or we don’t is we’re nervous, and we’re kind of embarrassed,” Shortall said. “Maybe there’s a feeling that because it is our national language, we should be able to speak it better than most of us can.”Mescal wasn’t the only Irish actor who spoke Irish at the BAFTAs. Brendan Gleeson, a well-known Gaeilgeoir, or fluent Irish speaker, also gave an interview in Irish, while Colin Farrell, his co-star in “Banshees of Inisherin,” slowly backed away and was relieved to quickly find someone who would ask him questions in English.“Shame on me,” Farrell, who is also Irish, said.Mescal’s viral clip appeared against the backdrop of the so-called Green Wave — also affectionately referred to as Ireland’s going Oscar Wild. Twenty-five percent of this year’s acting Oscar nominees are Irish, according to The Los Angeles Times, and this is the first time an Irish-language film has been nominated for an Oscar, with “The Quiet Girl” up for best international feature film.“The language is almost like the central character of our film, you know, it’s been silenced over many years,” Colm Bairéad, the director of “The Quiet Girl,” said in an interview. “There’s something quite appropriate about the fact that the year where we have the most nominations in our history, our language is also part of that.”Irish, a Celtic language closely related to Scottish Gaelic, is the oldest spoken language in Western Europe, according to Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, a professor at Concordia University’s School of Irish Studies in Montreal. While Ireland was occupied by Britain, speaking Irish was often punished; when Ireland signed its Constitution in 1937 — after gaining independence in 1922 — Irish was designated as the national language, with English considered a second official language. Factors such as mass migration stemming from the Great Famine and present-day emigration have contributed to the language’s decline and led to the creation of Irish-language schools across the country, Ó hAllmhuráin said.Irish is currently considered “definitely endangered” by UNESCO. Shortall said part of the issue is the way the language is taught in schools, which is more academic than conversational. Bairéad said that as a result, Irish had failed to feel like a “living language” to many people and that had contributed to the country’s complex relationship with its native tongue.“Irish people do have a yearning for this expression of ourselves, as a people, that belongs to us,” Bairéad, who was raised bilingual, said. “This is a mode of expression that is ours, and that we can reclaim, but it takes a certain level of commitment. And when you see people like Paul being willing to do that, that’s inspiring for people.”The Irish have a phrase, “Is fearr gaeilge bhriste ná béarla cliste,” which translates to, “Broken Irish is better than clever English” — an idea that Mescal has come to embody, Shortall said.Mescal’s example has motivated her to speak more Irish, even if she needs to mix in the odd English word.“I really don’t think you can overstate how great this is for the language, to have someone so visible, young and cool speaking Irish,” Shortall said.As the interview wound down on the red carpet Sunday, the journalist asked Mescal one final question: Would he ever consider acting in an Irish-language film?“Yeah, absolutely,” he said — in English. More

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      in Movies

      BAFTAs Make Changes for Better Representation Among Nominees

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      Three years after an all-white lineup of actors was nominated, this year’s group is more diverse.LONDON — In January 2020, the performers shortlisted for the British Academy Film Awards were announced. All 20 actors on the list were white. Never mind that, five years earlier, an all-white actor lineup at the Academy Awards had sparked a global backlash, and given rise to the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) was taking the same path.Criticism was instant, and it continued at the awards ceremony the following month. “Not for the first time in the last few years, we find ourselves talking again about the need to do more to ensure diversity in the sector and in the awards process,” said Prince William, the president of BAFTA, as he introduced the event’s final award at the Royal Albert Hall. “That simply cannot be right in this day and age.”Joaquin Phoenix went further, as he collected his award for best actor for “Joker.” “I think that we send a very clear message to people of color that you are not welcome here,” he said. It was, he added, “the obligation of the people that have created, and perpetuate and benefit from, a system of oppression to be the ones that dismantle it. So that’s on us.”BAFTA’s reaction was immediate, and comprehensive. As the world descended into lockdown in the early months of the pandemic, the British academy seized the opportunity to consult about 400 people, including industry-group representatives, directors, actors, and screenwriters, as well as academics and union leaders.By September, a review was out with more than 120 changes. Among them: adding at least 1,000 new voting BAFTA members, with a focus on underrepresented groups; publishing a longlist in all categories, with voters obliged to see all longlisted films in the categories they are voting for; and demanding that there be as many women as men on the best director longlist.Three years on, the diversity among nominees has improved. Ten of the 24 nominees in the four performance categories are ethnically diverse. The multiverse story about a Chinese American immigrant family, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” starring Michelle Yeoh, has 10 nominations. And the only criticism raised by this year’s shortlist is that only one woman has been nominated in the best director category — Gina Prince-Bythewood for her movie “The Woman King.”Gina Prince-Bythewood was nominated for best director for her movie “The Woman King,” the only woman nominated in that category.Erik Carter for The New York TimesThe awards have “increased visibility of Black and brown people and people of color” in all categories, and they have also “sustained conversations” on the theme of diversity and inclusivity, said Clive Nwonka, an associate professor of film, culture and society at University College London, who was one of the many people consulted by BAFTA in its review.Mr. Nwonka welcomed the review, describing it as “extensive,” and said it reflected “a recognition that there needs to be some kind of radical change.”Yet he noted that it would take five or six years to get a full sense of the review’s impact, and that in the meantime, discriminatory attitudes and practices remained just as ingrained as they were everywhere else.The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Meet the Newer, Bolder Michelle Williams: Why she made the surprising choice to skip the supporting actress category and run for best actress.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies like Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.‘Glass Onion’ and Rian Johnson: The director explains why he sold the “Knives Out” franchise to Netflix, and how he feels about its theatrical test.A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.The entertainment world “parades the idea that what happens in the industry is separate and distinct from the rest of the society,” Mr. Nwonka said. Yet the same systemic racism prevails in the film world as it does when a person of color is “walking down the street.”The BAFTA review was spearheaded by the organization’s chair Krishnendu Majumdar, a film and television producer who was previously BAFTA’s deputy chair, and who steps down from the board in June.BAFTA’s aim is “to level the playing field: We want more films to be watched, and a diverse range of films to be evaluated,” Mr. Majumdar said in an interview at the British academy’s headquarters on London’s Piccadilly. “And it has to be on merit.”The review threw up a number of findings. Actors of color spoke of “exclusion” and “racism,” which Mr. Majumdar said he had experienced firsthand. For actors with disabilities or from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, the outlook was possibly worse, he said, recalling the “horrific” stories that those performers had told of experiencing invisibility and discrimination.Still, the professionals polled in the review made one thing clear: They wanted no quotas and no “tokenism” — no separate category for female directors, for instance. They “just wanted their work to be seen,” Mr. Majumdar said.All in all, the problem “starts at the top” of the British film industry, Mr. Majumdar said, because there isn’t “the diversity of voices” and “the diversity of thought” in boardrooms and among decision makers and program commissioners. He concluded: “We’re moving toward a fairer system.”Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s film, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” about a Chinese American immigrant family, received 10 nominations.Allyson RiggsMichelle Yeoh, front, with Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan, has been nominated for best actress for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”Allyson Riggs/A24, via Associated PressJane Millichip, the BAFTA chief executive who took over in July, promised that the review process would be ongoing and constant. “Every year, we will reassess. Every year, we will look again,” she said. “This is not a perfect full stop.”She said that to get rid of “unconscious bias,” BAFTA voters were being encouraged to watch videos aimed at “broadening the mind-set” and making sure that they weren’t “unintentionally making systemic assumptions.” The academy was striving for “empathy,” she added, and “asking people to put themselves in someone else’s shoes.”Since 2020, there are signs of progress, and not just in the acting category.The best director and best picture winners in the last two years were women: Chloé Zhao for “Nomadland” in 2021, and Jane Campion for “The Power of the Dog” in 2022. In the half-century before, there had only ever been six female nominees in the director category, and one winner — Kathryn Bigelow in 2010 for “The Hurt Locker.”As BAFTA pointed out, there might have been more than one shortlisted women director this year, were it not for the fact that more than twice as many men as women submitted films to be considered for the best director category. In other words, there was a much bigger male talent pool for the voters to choose from.What does Britain’s leading actors’ union think of this year’s nominations?Ian Manborde, the equality and diversity officer of the Equity union — which represents 47,000 creative professionals and the majority of actors in Britain — was among those consulted by BAFTA in its review.“Quite clearly, there’s been some change if you look at the lineup now,” he said in an interview. Yet he added that the review was “not a one-off exercise: It’s a constant process.”He said some of Equity’s biggest concerns were around disability and social class — more specifically, how to prevent performers from being discriminated against on those grounds.In the end, Mr. Manborde said, the awards system was just “one feature” of a global industry that determined what stories were told, who commissioned and created them, and who got the opportunity to portray them. And that industry was far from equal, he said.“True diversity in the awards system will only exist when there’s greater diversity at the other end,” Mr. Manborde said — meaning “who gets to decide what stories are told.” More

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      in Theater

      ‘Standing at the Sky’s Edge’ and ‘Sylvia’ Energize British Musicals

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      The art form needs to make room for lesser-known names, to refresh and enlarge the talent pool, our critic writes.Where are the new British musicals? The question bears asking as Britain’s defining musical theater composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, starts previews on Broadway of his latest show, “Bad Cinderella.” In April, Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” will close on Broadway after a record-‌breaking 35-year run in a city where he has often seemed to be the only English practitioner of musicals around.Who else might carry forward an art form in which Lloyd Webber, 75 next month, surely can’t be expected to go it alone? There have, of course, been the occasional offerings from George Stiles and Anthony Drewe (“Betty Blue Eyes,” “Honk”), or from Elton John, whose “Billy Elliot” ran for years on both sides of the Atlantic. John’s recent “Tammy Faye” premiered Off West End last year at the buzzy Almeida Theater‌, and has life in it still.But musicals need to make room for lesser-known names as well, to refresh and enlarge the talent pool. How gratifying, then, to encounter two recent London openings from comparative newcomers, both in large playhouses, both enthusiastically received. And each show knows how to energize an audience — no small achievement in itself.That’s not to say that either “Standing at the Sky’s Edge,” at the National Theater, through March 25‌, or “Sylvia,” at the Old Vic, through April 8‌‌, is ready for the Broadway spotlight‌, ‌if that is even ‌their goal: Both are determinedly British in their subject matter, and “Sylvia,” in particular, has further work to do.It was nonetheless cheering to note the visceral response of playgoers swept up in the sheer passion of stories vigorously told; on this evidence, there seems to be an appetite for shows that expand the scope of what an English musical can be.‌“Standing at the Sky’s Edge” arrives in London after two‌ runs in Sheffield, the northern English city where it is set, and where both its composer-lyricist, Richard Hawley, and book writer, Chris Bush, are from.Cast members of “Standing at the Sky’s Edge,” which is set in the Park Hill housing complex, a Brutalist architectural landmark in Sheffield, England.Johan PerssonAnd yet you don’t need to be familiar with the city’s Park Hill housing complex, a Brutalist architectural landmark, to be drawn into the musical’s skillful weave of three story lines set in the same apartment there. Ben Stones’s imposing concrete set includes the signature graffito, “I love you, will u marry me,” that was painted on a concrete bridge of the housing project in 2001 and became an unlikely Sheffield icon.Love in its various forms turns out to be the topic connecting the show’s three plot strands, each set in different eras. We see Rose (Rachael Wooding) and Harry (Robert Lonsdale) starting a family in the early 1960s: Harry, a steelworker, takes pride in being the youngest foreman in his company’s history, but slides into depression as the once-mighty steel industry in the region goes into decline.That same flat some 30 years later becomes home to a teenager fleeing war-torn Liberia. Played by a radiant Faith Omole, that character, Joy, isn’t sure whether Park Hill, her supposed place of refuge, is a castle or a prison. And when she embarks on a mixed-race relationship with a sweet local boy, Jimmy (Samuel Jordan, in a knockout performance), Joy confronts the realities of racism head on: You wince when someone asks her family if they know how to use a refrigerator.Bringing the story line forward to 2016 is the transplanted Londoner Poppy (a clarion-voiced Alex Young), whose anxious parents need reassurance that their daughter has moved to “South Yorkshire, not Siberia.” Attempting a fresh start in a property that has been newly refurbished and a neighborhood that has gentrified since Joy’s time there, Poppy can’t escape her former lover, Nikki (Maimuna Memon), who shows up hoping to rekindle their romance.A roving narrator (Bobbie Little) appears now and then to connect the thematic dots. Home, she tells us, may “simply be a series of boxes that stops the rain,” but, in the director Robert Hastie’s production, there is also a profound sense of connection to the city. (Hastie runs the Crucible, the Sheffield theater where the show began.)Hawley’s full-bodied score, meanwhile, folds this singer-songwriter’s back catalog together with new songs, yearning and hopeful, that catch at the heart. The title song, taken from a 2012 album, is a rousing company number that gets the second act off to a propulsive start, and whose elation is characteristic of the show as a whole.The cast of “Sylvia,” which tells the story of the English suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst, at the Old Vic.Manuel Harlan“Sylvia” also looks toward England’s past, this time to tell the real-life story of the celebrated suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst, an activist who fought over many years to secure the right of British women to vote. She is at the impassioned center of this well-meaning, if dramatically sketchy, musical from the director-choreographer Kate Prince. The impressive designer here, as with the Sheffield-set musical, is Ben Stones.An earlier version of the show had a brief run at the Old Vic in 2018 as a dance-led work-in-progress. It has since been reworked as a largely sung-through musical that casts a strong glance ‌toward‌‌ “Hamilton.” Like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s trailblazer, “Sylvia” refracts history through an ethnically and musically diverse lens: The music by Josh Cohen and D.J. Walde draws from funk, soul, R&B and hip-hop. Sharon Rose, in the title role, recently appeared as Eliza in “Hamilton” in London.But “Sylvia” has a superficial feel that “Hamilton” never had: It makes caricatures of the historical figures it presents, including Winston Churchill, and skimps on the family drama at its fractured heart, though the soul singer Beverley Knight is in tremendous voice as Sylvia’s mother, Emmeline.It’s left to the giddy, near-perpetual motion of the staging to carry us through, even when the writing doesn’t. And Prince, a notable figure on the British dance scene, is canny enough to know how to end proceedings on a high. The show ends with a pair of anthems, “Stand Up” and “Rise Up,” celebrating women’s progress and exhorting the audience to get to their feet. And, swept along, they do. More

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      in Music

      Harry Styles Dedicated a Brit Award to Female Acts Who Weren’t Nominated

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      In 2022, the Brit Awards merged its top artist prizes to include male, female and nonbinary acts. This year, the event faced backlash for not nominating any women.On Saturday night at a glittering ceremony in London, the pop star Harry Styles was named artist of the year at the Brit Awards, the highest honor at Britain’s equivalent of the Grammys.After punching the air as he headed onstage, the singer then thanked his family, his mother and his former bandmates from One Direction.But to some watching the televised ceremony in Britain, the acclaim for the pop icon was a little soured because Styles triumphed in a category that did not have a single female nominee — an unintended consequence of the decision a little more than a year earlier by the Brit Awards to merge its categories for best male and best female artist of the year into one gender-neutral top prize.For the past few weeks, prominent figures in Britain’s music industry, and even some politicians, have been discussing the effects of that change on the visibility of female musicians here.At a time when other major cultural award shows — including the Tony Awards and the Academy Awards — are facing pressure to include nonbinary artists, the experience at the Brits shows the difficulties that can arise from removing gendered categories.Onstage, Styles made it clear he was conscious of the conversation. “I’m very aware of my privilege up here tonight,” he said, “so this award is for Rina, Charli, Florence, Mabel and Becky.” Those are the names of five female British pop stars — Rina Sawayama, Charli XCX, Florence Welch, Mabel and Becky Hill — who were not nominated.For much of the past decade, the British Phonographic Industry, or BPI, which organizes the awards, has broadcast its efforts to make the event more inclusive. But three years ago, the organization faced a dilemma after the singer Sam Smith announced they were nonbinary and used they/them pronouns.The Dreamy World of Harry StylesThe British pop star and former member of the boy-band One Direction has grown into a magnetic and provocative performer.A Destination for Fans: A stray lyric in Harry Styles’s song “Falling” radically changed the clientele — and fortunes — of a Beachwood Cafe, a cheerful spot with an all-day menu in Los Angeles.Latest Album: The record-breaking album “Harry’s House” is a testament to the singer’s sense of generosity and devotion to the female subject.Styler Fashion: Stylers, as the pop star’s fans are called, love to dress in homage to their idol. Here are some of the best looks seen at a concert.Opening Up: For his solo debut, Styles agreed to a Times interview. He was slippery in conversation, deflecting questions with politeness.That made the pop star — and frequent Brit Award winner — ineligible for the show’s artist of the year awards, which had long been split into “best male” and “best female” categories.When the BPI announced that it would drop gendered categories for the 2022 awards, the move was praised by British musicians and newspapers as long overdue.At last year’s Brit Awards, which was the first time the ceremony featured a gender-neutral best artist category, Adele won the trophy, along with three others. Kate Green/Getty ImagesThat decision did not immediately lead to the exclusion of women: Last year, Adele won the first best artist prize. “I understand why the name of this award has changed,” she said at the 2022 ceremony, “but I really love being a woman and being a female artist.”This year, however, the nominees list included four men alongside Styles: the rappers Stormzy and Central Cee, the dance act Fred Again.. and the singer George Ezra.Francine Gorman of Keychange, an organization that aims to increase female and nonbinary involvement in Europe’s music industry, said in a recent interview that the all-male list was “a real step backward” for inclusion.“We’re faced with five men, and they’re supposed to be representative of every British artist making music today,” she said.Smith — who was in the running for two awards at Saturday’s event — also criticized the all-male nominees in a recent interview with The Sunday Times, a British newspaper. “There’s so much incredible female talent in the U.K. — they should be on that list,” they said. (Smith’s representatives did not respond to an interview request for this article.)Sam Smith arriving at the 2023 Brit Awards. After the singer came out as nonbinary, the awards decided to award a single gender-neutral artist of the year prize.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Wednesday, concern about the issue even made it to Britain’s parliament, where the Women and Equalities Committee was holding an inquiry into misogyny in music. Caroline Nokes, the committee’s chair, said afterward that she thought that the Brit Awards had acted “too soon” to remove gendered categories, given the significant barriers women face to building careers in music.In an era when some people in Britain see conflicts between women’s rights and those of transgender and nonbinary people, the absence of female nominees for the top award touched a nerve, though most commentary has focused on the barriers facing women in music.The BPI has not announced any steps to avoid another all-male shortlist at next year’s awards. YolanDa Brown, a saxophonist and the BPI’s chair, said in a video interview this week that the organization would review the nomination process and determine if any changes were needed to support women. That could include expanding the number of nominees, she said, but she would not guarantee that any measures would be taken.“Change and evolution is uncomfortable,” Brown said. The success of the move to gender-neutral categories should be judged over a longer time period, she added, noting that “this is just the second year.”The Brits’ best artist category has strict eligibility criteria. Acts must have released either a Top 40 album or two Top 20 singles, within a yearlong period, to make the longlist. This year, only 12 female acts and one nonbinary act qualified, compared with 58 men. The awards’ voting body, made up of some 1,200 music industry insiders, then chooses nominees from the longlist. This year’s voting bloc was 52 percent female.An all-male shortlist “was always going to happen sooner or later” because of the unequal nature of Britain’s music industry, said Vick Bain, a consultant on diversity issues and the president of Britain’s Incorporated Society of Musicians. Women make up only about 20 percent of artists, and 14 percent of songwriters, signed to British record labels and publishers, Bain said.Charli XCX performs at the 2022 Glastonbury Festival. That year, the singer’s album “Crash” was No. 1 in Britain, but she wasn’t nominated for artist of the year at the Brit Awards.Kate Green/Getty ImagesBain said the one positive aspect of the exclusion of female and nonbinary acts was that “it’s shone a spotlight” on that inequality. Women are similarly underrepresented in the British and American movie industries, Bain said, so the Academy Awards could expect similar problems if the academy were to do away with gendered acting categories.In 2020, the BAFTAs, Britain’s main film awards, made a host of changes to try to increase the diversity of its honorees. That included reserving half of the spots on the longlist for the best director prize for women. Yet at this year’s awards, just one female director was among the final six nominees.Before Saturday’s awards, few British musicians commented directly on the backlash. Representatives for more than 20 British pop acts declined interview requests for this article, including the publicists for all 12 female artists who were eligible for this year’s award, as well as all five of the representatives for the male nominees.Bain said the lack of diversity at the Brits requires action across Britain’s music industry, not just from the awards themselves. Record labels should sign more female acts and provide them with the same marketing support as male stars, she said, while festivals should book more women and more radio stations should play their music.Until those wider shifts happen, award shows will “have to be prepared to keep changing” their procedures to stay inclusive, said Bain, who noted that it was true of film awards as well as the Brits.On Saturday night, some acts suggested the Brits needed to up its game. When asked about the lack of female nominees for best artist on the Brits red carpet, Charli XCX told a BBC reporter that female musicians were “doing everything right.”“I don’t think it’s our fault,” she said. “I think it might be theirs.” More

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      Annie Mac’s Before Midnight: A Dance Party With an Early Bedtime

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      The Before Midnight parties promise all the thrills of a hedonistic night out, but with a respectable finish time for older dance music fans.It was Friday night, in a 2,000-person capacity nightclub in London, and the dance floor was packed. A heavy-duty sound system pounded out house music and a huge disco ball turned overhead. Only one thing was off: It was 9.30 p.m.A woman in the crowd gleefully yelled to the throng of people around her: “I’m 15 weeks postpartum and I’m in the club!”The party, called Before Midnight, is organized by the Irish D.J. Annie Macmanus, who plays under the name Annie Mac: It promises all the thrills of a club — just with an early bedtime. Starting at 7 p.m. and wrapped up by 12, Before Midnight is one of several recent variations on the hedonistic all-night sessions in which dance music is usually enjoyed, aimed at older fans juggling children and careers.“There’s an inherent belief that clubbing is for young people,” Macmanus said recently by phone. “There’s now a generation of people who experienced clubbing in its most popular guise, and still want to do that, but don’t feel like they belong there anymore.”Macmanus explained that Before Midnight was born out of her desire to fit a music career around her duties as a mother of two children, ages 6 and 9. Late-night D.J. sets didn’t mix well with their weekend activities, she said.“It felt like I had jet lag,” Macmanus said. “It just wasn’t accommodating for where I’m at in my life right now.”Annie Macmanus, who D.J.s as Annie Mac. Before setting up Before Midnight, she fronted BBC radio’s flagship dance music show.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesMacmanus said this reckoning coincided with her decision, in 2021, to stand down as the presenter of the BBC’s flagship dance music show, on BBC Radio 1 — a gig she had held for 17 years and which cemented her name as a musical tastemaker in Britain.Before Midnight was her next act, she said, a fresh project to restore some work-life balance. The premise was simple, she added: “a definitive club night that’s just like a normal one, only earlier.”The first night, held last year at the Islington Assembly Hall, a London music venue, was a one-off experiment. It sold out, and, at the end of last year, Macmanus announced a 10-date Before Midnight tour of Britain and Ireland. The tour’s two remaining London dates are also taking place at Outernet, a new, subterranean nightclub in the city’s West End that is the largest live events space built in central London since the 1940s.Before Midnight is particularly popular with women, who Macmanus estimated make up about 75 percent of the crowd. Jodie Brooks, 44, who has attended every Before Midnight party in London to date, was in the crowd this past Friday. “I just didn’t want the night to start at 1 a.m. anymore,” Brooks, who works in advertising and like Macmanus has two children age 6 and 9, said later by phone. “I never wanted parenthood to change me in that way, but, inevitably, it just does. You have to get up and do the Saturday-morning football practice at 9 a.m.,” she said.The coronavirus lockdowns of 2022 and 2021, which took clubbing temporarily out of the mix, made many people in their 30s and 40s re-evaluate how they wanted to spend their weekends. Some, like Brooks, emerged determined to get back on the dance floor, but on new, more wholesome terms. With Before Midnight, she said, “You can go for a really lush dinner at six. By eight you’re in the club,” and “by 12 you’re out.”Before Midnight is particularly popular with women, who Macmanus estimated make up about 75 percent of the crowd.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesOthers realized that they liked dance music, but not nightclubs. Adem Holness, who leads the contemporary music program at the Southbank Center, a central London arts venue, said that many of the venue’s offerings suited electronic music enthusiasts at a more mature life stage: Performances are seated, and finish in time to catch the last Tube home.“We have a menu of different options for people,” he said. “It’s about making the model work for all kinds of people.”In the last year, D.J.s and dance music performers including Fabio & Grooverider, Erykah Badu and Peaches have all played gigs at the Royal Festival Hall, a concert hall managed by the Southbank. “I’m seeing people wanting to experience really great music that you might think or assume belongs in a club, somewhere else, or in a different way,” Holness said.Before Midnight’s London dates are at Outernet, a new, subterranean nightclub in the city’s West End.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesUpcoming parties are scheduled for Manchester in northern England, Glasgow and Dublin, among other cities.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesBefore Midnight was also influenced by the experience of bringing club culture into a more rarefied space, Macmanus said. In 2019, she recalled, she played in New York at MoMa PS1’s Warm Up, the art museum’s summer series that sets experimental and electronic music alongside contemporary art and design. There, she saw a multigenerational audience dancing together, she said. “It had a big effect on me as a D.J.,” she added. “I’m always going to try and reach that type of a dance floor.”The Before Midnight concept was simple, Macmanus said: “a definitive club night that’s just like a normal one, only earlier.”Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesMacmanus added that an early-starting dance party wasn’t a totally original idea. Tim Lawrence, a professor of cultural studies at the University of East London who researches nightlife has been running a monthly London dance party that starts at 5 p.m. since 2018; in an interview, he said that events like Before Midnight were a way to “pluralize the culture.” During a 2017 tour of the United States to promote his book “Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor,” Lawrence recalled, he attended an invite-only party in New York called Joy that started around dinnertime.Lawrence brought the concept back to London with him and co-founded his monthly dance party called All Our Friends. “It’s about confounding certain ideas that come with the all-night or late-night thing,” Lawrence said. The earlier timetable allows for a different approach to dancing, he said, which can “potentially be more expressive, more interactive and go a bit deeper on a social level.”But for Brooks, the advertising worker, the appeal of Before Midnight was much simpler: It was an opportunity to dance to the music that she loves, in a club like any other, and be home in time for bed.“You get all the joy and the love,” she said. “You get to be a part of something again. And you don’t feel out of place.”Confetti released just before midnight signaled the party was almost over.Lauren Fleishman for The New York Times More

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      Raye Made ‘My 21st Century Blues’ After a Long Journey

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      The British musician spent years writing for other artists, eventually sharing her frustrations online. After speaking her truths about the industry, she shares personal revelations on her debut.When the British artist Raye performed “Ice Cream Man.” during a January concert at the cavernous Utilita Arena in Birmingham, England, many of the young women in the audience began to cry.“Everything you did, it left me in a ruin/And no I didn’t say a word/I guess that proves it/I’m a woman,” she sang, her voice assertive, but with a quiver of vulnerability. The intimate, spare track recounts her experience of sexual assault, and was one of several unflinchingly personal songs in her set as the opening act on Lewis Capaldi’s tour.As she belted out “Escapism.,” a collaboration with 070 Shake that earned Raye her first U.K. No. 1 last month, the crowd screamed the lyrics back to her. Even that track, which exploded on TikTok and recounts a nihilistic night out with glib humor, is “actually quite a sad song,” Raye said, sitting in the bedroom she’d created on her tour bus after the show, a burning Le Labo candle nearby. But she chose to put the melody over “this fat beat with this fat bass,” adding sirens, synths and strings, which “makes me feel powerful in my pain,” she said.Transforming her pain into power is a recurring theme on Raye’s debut album, “My 21st Century Blues,” which arrives on Friday, nine years after the 25-year-old musician signed her first record deal.“When you think, ‘I want to be an artist,’ there are a few things you think of, the first thing being: album,” she said. But waiting became as much a part of her journey as creating.Raye joined the roster of Polydor Records in 2014, and in the subsequent years wrote on tracks for artists including Beyoncé, John Legend and Charli XCX. While she worked on her own music, she said that the label encouraged her to make chart-friendly dance tracks with D.J.s like Joel Corry and David Guetta, which she now believes pigeonholed her as “the girl who sings on dance songs” that she didn’t even like. She wanted to create a body of work, but, “From a business perspective, they decided for me that I was this, and this was all I would ever be,” she said.Sitting in her tour bus in stage makeup and sweatpants, Raye recalled the moment in June 2021 when, as she was about to record a performance for N.Y.C. Pride, a member of her team told she wasn’t going to be able to release an album with Polydor after all. “I freakin’ lost it,” she said. After bursting into tears, she wiped her eyes, recorded the broadcast and later posted a string of tweets about her frustration with the industry that drew loud support from other artists. Three weeks later, she announced that she had parted ways with the label.“It’s important to be honest about those things I kept in the darkness for so many years,” Raye said.Alexander Turner for The New York TimesA Polydor spokesman declined to comment on Raye’s description of her time with the company, and said, “We’ve loved seeing Raye having all of this well-deserved success and wish her the very best.”Raye was determined to carry on. Last year, she signed a deal with the distribution service Human Re Sources. Its founder and chief executive, J. Erving, who is also an executive vice president at Sony, said in a video interview that Raye could have gotten more money upfront — “the bag, so to speak” — if she had signed with a traditional label. But instead she “bet on herself,” choosing to release her album as an independent artist who owns her masters.For Raye, creative control was the key to continuing in an industry that had nearly broken her down. “I’m not interested in being a ‘singles’ girl, it’s the last thing I ever wanted to be,” she said. For her, the album format is not about “selling records” but telling stories.Raye (born Rachel Keen) has known what kind of artist she wanted to be from a young age. At 10, she was determined to attend the BRIT School, the performing arts institution known for famous alumni, including Amy Winehouse and Adele. Four years later, she won a place at the school, which is near the home in south London she shared with her parents and three younger sisters.Raye said she was so devoted to her budding career, she gave up her social life to write music after school and on weekends with professionals she met through her guitar teacher: “I’d get the train up to whatever address in my calendar and I would go into a room full of middle-aged men and be like ‘Hey, I’m going to write a song.’”Growing up, her Ghanaian-Swiss mother and English father “worked stupidly, exceptionally hard,” she said, as a nurse and in insurance. Church, where her father played piano and her mother sang in the choir, was a big part of family life.But Raye’s private time with the records she loved inspired her to dream big. Every day after school, she would lie on the living room floor and play “The Diary of Alicia Keys‌,” the singer’s 2003 album, “like a religion,” ‌she said. With its hip-hop overture, spoken-word interludes and vivid storytelling, Raye said “Diary” made her excited to one day write her own liner notes, order her own track listing‌ and tell people who she was through her music‌.Raye’s vision for her debut album began with its title. “I wanted to tell my blues,” she said, which she defined as both a “12-bar phrase” but also “the stories on top.” Heartbreak, so often a focus in pop music, was just one small part of the human experience, she added, and the album also explores disordered eating and addiction.“As a woman, it’s so taboo, and so unattractive, and so like, ‘God, she’s such a mess’ to even discuss having a problem,” Raye said. She described “Body Dysmorphia.” as the album’s most revealing track. “I’m so hungry I can’t sleep/But I know if I eat/Then I’ll be in the bathroom on my knees” she sings, her voice staccato over a trip-hop beat.Making music out of hard truths has become as central to her mission as speaking them when she felt the industry was holding her back. And rather than using metaphors to keep such experiences hidden, Raye said it now feels “important to be honest about those things I kept in the darkness for so many years.”It may be therapy for her listeners, but it helps her, too: “I want to create stuff that will make me feel better.” More

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      Gary Glitter Is Released From Prison After Serving Half of His Sentence

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      The disgraced former glam rock singer was found guilty in 2015 of sexually abusing three young girls in the 1970s. He had been given a 16-year sentence.LONDON — The former glam rock singer Gary Glitter has been released from prison after serving half of a 16-year sentence for sexually abusing three young girls decades ago, Britain’s Ministry of Justice said on Friday.The singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd, will serve the remainder of his sentence under probation, a common arrangement in Britain.Mr. Gadd will be fitted with a GPS tag and will face other restrictions, the ministry said in a statement. “If the offender breaches these conditions at any point, they can go back behind bars,” it noted.The 78-year-old former star rose to fame in the 1970s after a string of hits, including “Rock and Roll Part 2,” which has been widely featured in films and at sporting events in the United States.Mr. Gadd was arrested in 2012 as part of an inquiry set up to investigate accusations of sexual abuse against Jimmy Savile, a longtime BBC host.That arrest led to Mr. Gadd’s conviction on one count of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 12. During his 2015 trial, prosecutors described how he had abused his access to young fans as he became an international star in the 1970s.In his sentencing remarks, Judge Alistair McCreath said that he had found no evidence that Mr. Gadd had done anything to atone for his crimes and that, after reading statements from the three victims from the 1970s, it was “clear that in their different ways, they were all profoundly affected by your abuse of them. You did all of them real and lasting damage.”Before his 2015 conviction, Mr. Gadd had been convicted in separate cases of sexually abusing minors and possession of child pornography.In the late 1990s, he served two months in jail after admitting to possessing 4,000 images of child pornography. In 2006, he was sentenced to three years in prison in Vietnam for molesting two underage girls at a seaside villa he was renting.In 2019, the music label that owns “Rock and Roll Part 2” said that Mr. Gadd would not receive any royalties from the use of his song in “Joker,” one of the year’s top-grossing films.The British government enacted a law last year that required criminals serving sentences for violent or sexual offenses to spend longer in prison, with the automatic release point occurring two-thirds through their sentences, not halfway. More