Locke, Joe (Actor)

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    ‘Agatha All Along’ Review: Toil and Trouble

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    Marvel’s “WandaVision” spinoff has more witchcraft but less magic.This review contains spoilers for the first episode of “Agatha All Along.”Jac Schaeffer, who created the first of the Disney+ Marvel series, “WandaVision,” and has now created the 11th, its spinoff “Agatha All Along,” is not one to let an idea go to waste.In Schaeffer’s first series, a grieving superheroine used her magical powers to create a world for herself based on classic American sitcoms. It was entertaining to watch how the show reimagined those familiar comedies within a dark fantasy-science fiction framework. (At least until “WandaVision” went off the rails toward convoluted Marvel business as usual in its last few episodes.)Now she starts “Agatha All Along,” which premiered Wednesday night on Disney+, with another detailed sendup. This time she puts her new main character — Agatha Harkness, a dangerous witch with a half-century history in Marvel comic books — inside a parody of the grim HBO crime drama “Mare of Easttown.” Still stuck where she was at the end of “WandaVision,” under a spell that strips her powers and any memory of who she really is, the fallen sorceress is now a cynical, violence-prone small-town police officer.You may ask yourself how, in the three years that have elapsed between the two shows, Agatha has undergone a complete personality shift, from chirpy neighborhood noodge to hardened cop. You should be more concerned, though, with why the cop-show pastiche is so disappointing — so dull and aimless that talented comic actresses like Kathryn Hahn (who stars as Agatha) and Aubrey Plaza seem at a loss.It is a relief when that show-within-a-show ends during the first episode, apparently a quick diversion rather than an integral element like the sitcom burlesques in “WandaVision.” (Four of the nine episodes of “Agatha All Along” were available for review.)It has set a bad precedent, though. Even when the series shifts into its actual format — a jokey, jaggedly comic fantasy quest in which a group of unfulfilled women hit the road in search of their powers — the results are mostly perfunctory. Spells are cast, but not on the audience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Agatha All Along,’ Joe Locke Works Like a Charm

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      A star of the Netflix hit “Heartstopper,” this actor is now joining the Marvel universe.Joe Locke nailed his first audition. He was 6 and up for a part in an amateur production of “The Wizard of Oz,” and he easily secured a callback. But when he was told he would have to return for another audition, the thought of trying out again reduced him to tears. He declined the callback. The role went to a different child. “It did traumatize me a bit,” Locke said.“And,” he added, ducking his chin toward the neck of his cream-colored hoodie, “I was always a crier.”Locke got older. He got bolder. He threw himself into school plays, Christmas pantomimes, community theater in his home on the Isle of Man. “I come from a very small place where individuality is less embraced,” he said. Onstage, playing pretend, he could express more.He planned to apply to drama school. Then a family friend alerted him to an open call for a new TV show, “Heartstopper,” a drama about queer English teens adapted from Alice Oseman’s emotion-heavy comics.At 17, after multiple callbacks, he beat out thousands of other young men to play 14-year-old Charlie Spring, the only openly gay student at an English preparatory school. “Heartstopper,” which became one of Netflix’s most watched shows when it debuted in 2022, was a showcase for Locke’s boyish, beetle-browed charm and uncanny ability to wear his heart on the sleeve of his rugby shirts.Locke and Kit Connor in “Heartstopper,” which became one of Netflix’s most watched shows when it debuted.NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      ‘Heartstopper’ Star Joe Locke Has a Soft Spot for ‘The Goonies’

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      “It’s the peak coming-of-age adventure film,” said the actor, who is set to make his Broadway debut in “Sweeney Todd.”Joe Locke was so moved when he saw “Next to Normal” at the Donmar Warehouse in London last fall that he called his agent with a request.“I was like, ‘I want to do a musical so bad,’” said Locke, 20, who for two seasons has played the sensitive teenager Charlie Spring in Netflix’s L.G.B.T.Q. coming-of-age drama “Heartstopper.”Soon after, his agent said he’d gotten an email from the casting team of Broadway’s “Sweeney Todd,” and the show was looking for a new Tobias Ragg, an urchin taken in by the scheming pie-maker, Mrs. Lovett.“The easiest way to play him is that he’s a bit simple — he’s not a full egg, as the Irish would say,” Locke said in a phone conversation in early January from his Manhattan apartment, before one of his first rehearsals. “But I think he’s a very street-smart character who’s survived in a world where people like him shouldn’t survive.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More