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      Review: Conversation and Conflict, as Warhol Meets Basquiat

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      Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope give memorable performances as the odd couple artists in Anthony McCarten’s new play, “The Collaboration.”Jeremy Pope, left, and Paul Bettany will also star in the forthcoming film version of “The Collaboration.”Marc BrennerLONDON — Opposite art world titans attract in “The Collaboration,” a new play that opened Thursday at the Young Vic Theater here. Chronicling the creative partnership between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat during the 1980s, Anthony McCarten’s play offers bravura performances from Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope as the two cultural icons.And if the writing isn’t fully the equal of its star turns, well, a film version of this play is already planned. A movie should give McCarten the opportunity to sharpen a script that, as of now, only begins to deliver on its promise in the second act.This writer’s track record with biopics certainly bodes well for Bettany and Pope when they transfer to the screen: The movies McCarten wrote about Stephen Hawking (“The Theory of Everything”), Winston Churchill (“The Darkest Hour”) and Freddie Mercury (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) brought Oscar wins for each of their leading men. His 2019 film, “The Two Popes,” earned nominations for the co-stars Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins and is the closest of those movies in structure to “The Collaboration.”Like that film, with his new play McCarten imagines a duo’s conversations and conflicts. At the beginning, Bettany’s lean, languid Warhol isn’t sure about the commingling of talent that the Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger (an excitable Alec Newman) has in mind for him and Basquiat: a joint exhibition to decide which of the two is the world’s greatest artist. Bischofberger has an eye on publicity and regards painters, he says, as boxers.Bettany’s Warhol reveals an insecurity and disgust that take the part well beyond caricature.Marc Brenner“Gee,” Warhol objects to the gallerist, “you make it sound so macho, like a contest.” Pope’s initially indrawn, pouty Basquiat, 30 years Warhol’s junior, isn’t any more certain that he wants to be part of a double act: “He’s old hat. Does anyone really care about Warhol now?” One man traffics in brands and pop culture iconography (we see Warhol’s signature Marilyn Monroes on the walls of Anna Fleischle’s flexible, white-walled set), the other sees logos as the enemy. Art, Basquiat maintains, “has to have a purpose.”The material follows a dramatically predictable course from mutual wariness to admiration, leading eventually to love. In fact, that very word is voiced in the penultimate line. Dismissive of Warhol’s attraction to surfaces at the expense of substance, Basquiat comes to adore him as a protective rival turned father figure, of sorts.“I hope you don’t die, Jean,” Warhol cautions, insisting that the addiction-prone Basquiat clean up his act. The younger artist’s reply is to insist on his own immortality, unaware, of course, that both men would die not long after, within 18 months of each other. When they do actually collaborate — on a sequence of paintings — it’s given surprisingly little stage time; you miss the specific attention to the artistic process that fueled a play like John Logan’s Tony-winning “Red,” about Mark Rothko.The director Kwame Kwei-Armah gets up close and personal with Warhol and Basquiat as the duo move beyond some fairly labored exposition (like when Basquiat, on cue, details his Haitian-Puerto Rican parentage) to achieve real power. The two actors manage to find something primal beyond the boilerplate writing.As Basquait, Jeremy Pope is a springy, restless stage presence.Marc BrennerPope, an Emmy and two-time Tony Award nominee, fills with fury as we see Basquiat at work on “Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart),” a painting created in response to the police brutality that resulted in the death of a young graffiti artist in 1983. The canvas inevitably chimes with the Black Lives Matter movement Basquiat never got to see, and lends “The Collaboration” a wrenching topicality.A springy, restless stage presence, that sweet-faced actor communicates the heightened edginess of a man hurtling toward disaster. It’s a shame, therefore, that the belated arrival into the play of Basquiat’s girlfriend Maya (Sofia Barclay) seems perfunctory, as if McCarten weren’t sure quite how to broaden the story beyond the artist duo.Bettany, in turn, is a marvel in his first stage role in several decades. The Englishman, a longtime U.S. resident, has starred in Marvel movies and recently impressed as a forbidding Duke of Argyll in the BBC TV show “A Very British Scandal,” which will come to the United States in April.A figure of white-wigged insouciance still reeling from having been shot by Valerie Solanas some years before the play starts, this Warhol reveals an insecurity and disgust that take the part well beyond caricature. Survival, you sense, is no less precarious for him than it is for Basquiat. The two legends are hellbent on self-laceration, reminding us that, no matter how great our cultural legacy, we’re all mortal.The Collaboration.Through April 2 at the Young Vic in London; youngvic.org. More

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      A Hallowed London Jazz Club Comes to Life Onscreen

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      The new documentary “Ronnie’s” tells the story of a venue that reshaped the city’s jazz scene, and the mysterious musician who lent it his name.Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club has been an enduring beacon of musical genius in London. Any self-respecting jazzhead had to make the pilgrimage to the venue during its 1960s heyday. Musicians, too: Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald played it, along with Buddy Rich and Dizzy Gillespie.Scott, one of its benevolent owners, was as hallowed as the establishment itself, but remained a somewhat mysterious figure throughout his life. A charming tenor saxophonist with a warm demeanor and great comedic timing, he also had a gambling addiction and endured bouts of depression. Even those closest to him didn’t feel like they connected with him.“He was a very hard person to know,” Paul Pace, the club’s current music bookings coordinator, said in an interview. “He was a very quiet, private man.”Scott died in 1996 at the age of 69. The venue he opened with a fellow saxophonist, Pete King, is still holy ground among jazz supper clubs in the United Kingdom, and “Ronnie’s,” a new documentary getting a wider release in the United States this week, offers a multidimensional view of Scott and the nightclub through the perspective of journalists, friends and musicians who knew him — and a host of live performance footage. The film celebrates how the spot with narrow hallways and a tiny stage housed all sorts of grand performances, including Jimi Hendrix’s last gig before his 1970 death. And it reveals that the secret of the venue’s success largely was Scott, himself, who drew in patrons like he was an old friend who just happened to know the best players of his era.The tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins first went to Ronnie Scott’s in the 1960s as part of a deal that allowed American musicians to play British venues and vice versa. That partnership was brokered by King, who served as the club’s manager and saw the need to book established jazz artists to draw bigger crowds. His work paved the way for other notable artists, like the tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and the multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk, to play there.The club is still active today, drawing a range of artists from different scenes.Greenwich Entertainment“A lot of people hadn’t seen me in Europe,” Rollins said in a phone interview. “It was my first time in London, so I had a good time just looking at the scene. Every club has its own demeanor, and playing there was a wonderful experience. That was the place to go — Ronnie Scott’s club.”Scott, whose jazz career started in his teens, helped open the club in 1959 after a trip to New York City, where he heard Charlie Parker and Davis play at the Three Deuces along East 52nd Street. He was so taken by the jazz emanating from the New York scene that he wanted to replicate the feeling at home. “To walk in this little place and hear this band with this American sound we’d never really heard in person before — amazing,” Scott says in the film.With assistance from a £1,000 loan from Scott’s stepfather, he and King opened the club as a basement venue on Gerrard Street in Soho, a neighborhood with coffee shops and after-hour venues that catered to British counterculture. Before then, the space had been used as a tea bar and restroom for taxi drivers. Scott and King saw it as a place where British jazz musicians could work out material in a safe space — all strains of jazz were welcome — and get paid fairly, not a small thing in that era. The club, which moved to a bigger space on Firth Street in 1968, is known as the birthplace of British jazz.Yet the narrative wasn’t all sunny: Ronnie Scott’s had good and bad times financially, and sometimes teetered on the verge of closing until some last-minute lifeline kept the lights on. Then there was the issue of Scott’s gambling. “When things were really desperate,” King says in the film, “I used to come to work and there were guys in suits with notebooks there in the afternoon, making notes of how much the piano was worth, and how much the tables and chairs were worth. We were very close to just having to forget it all.”The film’s director, Oliver Murray, heard many similar stories about Scott while making his documentary. “Multiple people said to me that if he was able to gamble the club on certain occasions, he would’ve gambled away the club and then been absolutely devastated,” he said in an interview. “But that’s the complexity of the guy, just a true jazz man in that sense. He does live up to the stereotype of the musician with demons.”Ella Fitzgerald onstage at the club in a scene from “Ronnie’s.”Greenwich EntertainmentMurray was brought into the project by one of its producers, Eric Woollard-White, who frequented the club. One of Murray’s goals was to humanize Scott for a younger audience less familiar with the club’s golden era. “I wanted to make something that was like a passing of the torch from one generation to the next,” Murray said. The story felt especially ripe for this moment, when venues are in jeopardy because of ongoing pandemic challenges.Ronnie Scott’s remains vital, and “cultivates so much talent,” he explained. “It’s not necessarily even just the people that play, but it’s giving people in London a platform to see the very, very best, and that in itself raises the caliber of what’s going on in the city.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      BAFTA Nominations List: ‘Dune' and ‘The Power of the Dog’ Lead Awards

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      Dennis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic and Jane Campion’s western secured the most nominations in a lineup notable for its diversity.Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Power of the Dog,” which was nominated for eight BAFTA awards on Thursday.Kirsty Griffin/Netflix, via Associated PressLONDON — The unpredictability of this year’s award season continued on Thursday when the nominees were announced for this year’s EE British Academy Film Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars.Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic “Dune” was nominated for best film at the awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs, as was “Don’t Look Up,” the climate change satire starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jane Campion’s tense western “The Power of the Dog.”Those films will compete against “Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s black and white movie based on his childhood in Northern Ireland, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s ’70s coming-of-age romance “Licorice Pizza.” But of those movies’ directors, only Campion and Anderson were also nominated for the best director prize. They will compete in that category against several directors lesser known in the United States: Aleem Khan, the director of the British movie “After Love”; the French director Julia Ducournau for her Cannes-winning horror movie “Titane”; Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the Japanese director of “Drive My Car”; and Audrey Diwan, the French director of the abortion drama “Happening,” which was the unexpected winner of the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice Film Festival.The BAFTA nominations, which were announced in a YouTube broadcast, are often seen as a bellwether for the Oscars, because of an overlap between the voting constituencies for both awards.Learn More About ‘Don’t Look Up’In Netflix’s doomsday flick, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are two astronomers who discover a comet headed straight for Earth.Review: It’s the end of the world, and you should not feel fine, writes the film critic Manohla Dargis.A Metaphor for Climate Change: With his apocalyptic satire, the director Adam McKay hopes to prompt the audience to action. Meryl Streep’s Presidential Turn: How the actor prepared to play a self-centered scoundrel at the helm of the United States.A Real-Life ‘Don’t Look Up’ Moment: The film revives memories of a nail-biting night in the Times newsroom two decades ago.“Dune” secured 11 BAFTA nominations, the most overall, although many are in technical categories like costume and production design. “The Power of the Dog” secured eight nominations, the second highest, with three of those in the acting categories.This year’s list also includes some acting nominees that may not be to be on the Oscars’ radar. The nominees for best actor, for instance, include Stephen Graham for “Boiling Point,” a British movie set behind the scenes in a restaurant, and Adeel Akhtar for the British romance “Ali & Ava,” as well as big names like Will Smith (“King Richard”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Leonardo DiCaprio (“Don’t Look Up”) and Mahershala Ali (“Swan Song”).The nominees for best actress similarly include the British actress Joanna Scanlan for her role in “After Love,” about a white Muslim convert who uncovers her husband’s secret past, as well as Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”), Alana Haim (“Licorice Pizza”), Renate Reinsve (“The Worst Person in the World”) and Tessa Thompson (“Passing”).Amanda Berry, the chief executive of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, which gives out the awards, said in an interview that the diversity of this year’s nominees was partly down to changes introduced in 2020 to encourage voters to watch more widely among the nominated movies. Before they cast their ballots, voters must now watch a random selection of 15 films via an online portal, to ensure they don’t just focus on the most-hyped movies, Berry explained. How much overlap there is between the BAFTAs and Oscars nominees will soon become clear. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science is scheduled to reveal the nominees for this year’s Oscars on Tuesday.The winners of the BAFTAs are set to be announced on March 13 at a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and Berry said she expected the event would return to its usual, pre-pandemic format. Last year, nominees attended via video link, but Berry said she expected the awards to be given out in person in March, and that the glamour of the red carpet would be back. More

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      ‘Dr. Semmelweis’ and ‘The Glow’ Reviews: Tales From the Asylum

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      Two new plays offer very different experiences of the sanitarium, one starring Mark Rylance and the other spotlighting a fast-rising actress.LONDON — “Wash your hands! Wash your hands!” That plea has sounded the world over in recent years, and it lends a topical potency to “Dr. Semmelweis,” running through Feb. 19 at the Bristol Old Vic, a beautiful 18th-century playhouse in southwest England.Its urgent speaker is the titular medic, a Hungarian-born doctor in 19th-century Vienna who pioneered antisepsis only to die in 1865, at age 47. It was left to subsequent physicians like Joseph Lister to pick up his work.The play tells the time-honored tale of a man against the system, in this case a visionary whose desire to reverse a high mortality rate among young mothers comes up against a largely heedless establishment. Worthy of Ibsen and chronicled before in a Howard Sackler play that circled Broadway but never got there, Semmelweis’s story here emerges as a star vehicle for Mark Rylance. The much-laureled actor (three Tonys and an Oscar) co-wrote the play with Stephen Brown.The director, Tom Morris, runs the venerable Bristol venue and has given Semmelweis’s too-short life a busy, bustling production that includes actors spilling from Ti Green’s turntable set into the auditorium on occasion, with musicians and dancers on hand to amplify the discordant emotions of the piece. The dancers, choreographed by Antonia Franceschi, give swirling physical expression to Semmelweis’s increasingly disordered mind and to the mothers who lost their lives to hygienic neglect. The Salomé string quartet weaves among the events, playing snatches of Schubert and lending a high-art sheen to some grave subject matter.If all this sounds like a lot of embellishment, it’s fair to say that the first act in particular feels as if stage business is being used to disguise some fairly boilerplate writing. The play begins at the end, with Semmelweis in Hungary recalling, alongside his calm-seeming wife, Maria (Thalissa Teixeira), a climate of contamination in Vienna that did irreparable damage to the doctor’s psyche.How can a vaunted “city of new ideas” not be more responsive to the investigations of a young maverick who comes upon the disinfectant potential of chlorine? This grocer’s son has determined that death rates at the world’s largest hospital — as Vienna General then was — are three times higher at the doctors’ clinic than at that of the midwives. “Cadaveric particles” are posited as the culprit, passed on by unclean hands from the autopsy room to the delivery ward and turning the hospital into a de facto slaughterhouse.Rylance’s character in “Dr. Semmelweis” is, in time-honored fashion, a visionary whose desire to reverse a high mortality rate among young mothers comes up against a largely heedless establishment.Geraint LewisThe locals aren’t having it. “Nuts by name, nuts by nature,” one of Semmelweis’s colleagues remarks dismissively, referring to this upstart’s first name, Ignaz. Never mind that the insult doesn’t make a whole lot of sense given that these people were probably not speaking English.After the intermission, the baldfaced, expository nature of the writing continues. If Semmelweis is right, we’re told, “the entire future of medicine will be changed.” There’s a line, too, about the possible efficacy of bleach that draws thumping parallels to one of the more, um, peculiar proposals to defeat the current pandemic.Through it all, Rylance is a springy physical presence. He brings a stammering restlessness to the role of a radical thinker whose thoughts at times outpace his words. You have to smile when this protean actor — acclaimed across TV and film, but devoted first and foremost to the stage — speaks in passing about “not wanting to waste time in the theater either,” and it’s nice to find among the supporting cast such fellow theater stalwarts as Alan Williams, in stern form as the obstetrician Johann Klein, Semmelweis’s nemesis.More than anything, “Dr. Semmelweis” whets the appetite for Rylance’s return to the London stage in April, reprising his seismic performance in the Jez Butterworth play “Jerusalem,” first seen at the Royal Court in 2009. That same London address, an important one for new writing, is currently hosting an Alistair McDowall play, “The Glow,” that really is nuts, albeit intriguingly so.The title character of “Dr. Semmelweiss” died unappreciated in an asylum, and McDowall’s time-traveling drama begins in one two years earlier, with a dimly lit figure fearfully inhabiting a windowless cell. That figure, a woman (Ria Zmitrowicz), is then glimpsed in any number of settings and centuries, ranging from the 1300s, in the company of a warriorlike personage (Tadhg Murphy) who might have wandered in from “Game of Thrones,” to 343 A.D. and forward to the 1970s and beyond.From left, Ria Zmitrowicz and Rakie Ayola in “The Glow” at the Royal Court Theater in London.Manuel HarlanWhat in heaven’s name is going on? You might ask McDowall the same of his 2016 play for the Royal Court, “X,” which was set on Pluto.Shouty and apocalyptic only to turn rapturously poetic in its closing monologue, “The Glow” is best viewed as a sensory experience in which lighting and sound conjoin with the writer’s freewheeling imagination to summon up a lonely and difficult world that nonetheless allows for the warmth of the title. The intermission, only 40 minutes or so in, gives audiences ample time to ponder what they have seen.The more literal theatergoer will be driven to distraction by the play’s apparently willful opacity, but that in itself tracks with the experimental bent of a theater defined in part by the playwright Caryl Churchill, whose own inquisitiveness and disregard for convention may have offered a beacon for McDowall.For myself, I have to commend the full-throttle production of Vicky Featherstone, the Court’s artistic director, in tandem with a design team in which Jessica Hung Han Yun’s mercurial lighting reigns supreme. Fisayo Akinade and Rakie Ayola offer sterling support as more recognizable participants in a world to which Zmitrowicz’s initially mute woman has a hesitant relationship. Seen first as a spiritualist medium — yes, you read that right — Ayola also gets to display a lovely singing voice.With the mysterious spectral figure at the play’s center, McDowall has offered a gift to Zmitrowicz, a fast-rising actress who has come to attention of late largely at the Almeida. Alternately sullen and feverish, indrawn yet eloquent, this performer rivets our attention throughout, even when the play she inhabits is ricocheting every which way around her.Dr. Semmelweis. Directed by Tom Morris. Bristol Old Vic, through Feb. 19.The Glow. Directed by Vicky Featherstone. Royal Court Theater, through March 5. More

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      In London Theaters, the Show (Sometimes) Goes On

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      A surge in coronavirus infections toppled production after production, but two stage adaptations — of a movie and a blockbuster novel — recovered and endure.LONDON — The show goes on, or these days maybe not. The uptick of coronavirus infections in the last month has upended live performances as severely here as on Broadway. During the holiday season, productions toppled one after another, unable to continue because of outbreaks in their casts or crews. Barely had Rebecca Frecknall’s revelatory revival of “Cabaret,” starring Eddie Redmayne, opened to rave reviews before it lost a spate of performances, a scenario repeated on and off the West End.Shutdowns affected big productions like “Moulin Rouge!,” the epic Tony-winning musical whose much-delayed London opening is now scheduled for Jan. 20. But they also occurred at fringe theaters like the Bush, where a two-hander called “Fair Play” closed within days of its premiere. (The run has since resumed.) Elsewhere, the organizers of the VAULT festival decided “with broken hearts,” they said in a statement, to cancel what would have been the 10th anniversary edition of that important showcase for new work.The Royal Court and the National Theater, two prominent state-funded playhouses, shut their doors altogether during the lucrative holiday period, and, over in the commercial sphere, Andrew Lloyd Webber closed his new musical, “Cinderella,” until February. “I am absolutely devastated,” the composer wrote on Twitter on Dec. 21.So you can imagine my delight this week to find the Donmar Warehouse back in business after being caught up in the closures, presenting the stage premiere of “Force Majeure,” adapted from the 2014 movie. (The play is scheduled to run through Feb. 5.) The audience at the 251-seat theater had to show proof of vaccination or a negative antigen test before entry, and we remained masked throughout — something that, until recently, has been an all too rare sight here. (At “Cinderella” back in August, I clocked scarcely a single mask.)I’m not sure that the playwright Tim Price’s adaptation, alas, is worth all the protocol. Those who know the Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s Cannes Grand Jury prize-winner will recall its portrait of a marriage in free fall, which is sometimes bitterly funny but, more often than not, disturbing and even eerie. Set during five days in the French Alps, “Force Majeure” tells of a husband and wife and their two young children whose ski holiday doesn’t quite go as planned.Caught up in a controlled avalanche that appears to be out of control, Tomas abandons his family in the moment of crisis — or so claims his wife, Ebba, who is shaken by his behavior. Before long, Tomas’s ready smile turns to howls of grief and an awareness that their relationship has been altered for keeps.The theatrical version’s director, Michael Longhurst, has turned the Donmar stage into a miniature ski slope, and the backdrop of Jon Bausor’s clever design shows off the snow-capped mountains essential to the action. What transfers less well is the darkening, ambiguous tone of a film that, in Price’s stage iteration, seems both more literal and more vulgar: Much is made of one character’s priapic tendencies. The couple’s stage children are sullen brats who would have been better off left at home, and the film’s extraordinary ending aboard a wayward bus has been discarded in favor of silly shenanigans in an overcrowded elevator.As the hapless couple, Rory Kinnear and Lyndsey Marshal, both fine actors, slalom their way between affection and recrimination in what plays for the most part as a routine domestic comedy. Tomas’s breakdown — harrowing to watch onscreen — elicited laughs from some spectators the other night.Hiran Abeysekera, left, as Pi and Tom Larkin as Tiger Head in “Life of Pi,” directed by Max Webster, at Wyndham’s Theater.Johan PerssonThe stagecraft is more of an occasion at another play whose performances were interrupted late last year: “Life of Pi,” at Wyndham’s Theater, improbably brings to theatrical life the 2001 novel by Yann Martel that inspired the acclaimed 2012 film for which the director Ang Lee won an Oscar.In that version, 3-D plunges the moviegoer directly into the turbulent waters of a tale told largely at sea, as the teenage Pi, a zookeeper’s son, finds himself cast adrift on a lifeboat with only animals for company — chief among them a Bengal tiger known as Richard Parker. Not to be outdone, the play brings together veterans from the world of video and puppetry who work alongside the director Max Webster and the designer Tim Hatley in conjuring an array of beasts before a rapt audience. The cast list includes six puppeteers for the tiger alone, overseen by the puppetry and movement director Finn Caldwell, who also designed the puppets with Nick Barnes.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4The latest Covid data in the U.S. More

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      Terry Gilliam's Disputed Sondheim Show Finds a Home

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      The director was set to stage a revival of “Into the Woods” in London. After a clash at the Old Vic theater, the much-anticipated production will now debut 115 miles away, in Bath, England.LONDON — For weeks, a question hung over London theater: What would happen to Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods”?On Nov. 1, the Old Vic theater canceled a revival of the musical, co-directed by Terry Gilliam, after a dispute in which the renowned director was accused of endorsing transphobic views and playing down the MeToo movement. That left the production in limbo and London’s theater world wondering if anyone would dare to take it on.Now, there is an answer. On Aug. 19, 2022, Gilliam’s “Into the Woods” will debut at the Theater Royal in Bath, 115 miles from London. The show will run through Sep. 10, 2022, the theater said in a statement.The fuss around the revival — which had received Sondheim’s blessing before his death — began in May, when the Old Vic announced the production as the centerpiece of its new season. That news caused a stir on British social media, because of comments Gilliam had made, in a newspaper interview, about the MeToo movement and so-called cancel culture.In January 2020, Gilliam told The Independent that MeToo “was a witch hunt” and that he was tired of white men “being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world.” Anyway, he added, he now identified as “a Black lesbian in transition.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}According to a report in The Stage, a British theater newspaper, “some within the Old Vic team” felt Gilliam’s comments were “at odds with the theater’s culture and values.”On May 12, Kate Varah, the Old Vic’s executive director, addressed staff concerns at an internal meeting. She said that she had spoken with Gilliam and that the conversation had reassured her that he shared the theater’s values.But the dispute escalated after Gilliam wrote a post on Facebook about “The Closer,” the Dave Chappelle comedy special on Netflix. In the show, the comedian comments mockingly on transgender issues and aligns himself with some feminists who say a transgender woman’s biological sex determines her gender and can’t be changed. Dozens of Netflix employees in Los Angeles staged a walkout over the special, accusing Netflix of endorsing bigotry.“There is a storm brewing over Netflix’s support for the show,” Gilliam wrote on Oct. 14. “I’d love to hear your opinions.”On Nov. 1, the Old Vic and Scenario Two, the musical’s co-producers, announced that they had “mutually agreed to cancel the production,” leading British newspapers to speculate that the Facebook post was the reason behind the decision. The theater and the director both declined to comment for this article. But on Monday, Gilliam said on Facebook that a group of up-and-coming playwrights, directors, costume designers and others at the theater was responsible for the cancellation.The Theater Royal in Bath, England. “Into the Woods” is set to open at the playhouse on Aug. 19, 2022.Nigel Jarvis/ShutterstockGilliam said that members of a short-term artistic development program at the theater, called the Old Vic 12, had “intimidated” the playhouse into canceling the musical after he recommended Chappelle’s special to his Facebook followers.Members of the program were “closed-minded, humor-averse ideologues,” Gilliam said, adding, “Freedom of Speech is often attacked, but I never imagined that Freedom of Recommendation would be under threat as well.”Three members of the Old Vic 12 declined to comment, but one did note that the program had ended several months before the Old Vic reached its decision on “Into the Woods.”In a phone interview, John Berry, a co-founder of Scenario Two, declined to comment on the Old Vic’s decision. His focus was on making an entertaining show, he added. “For me, nothing else matters.”The controversy around “Into the Woods” is not the only recent scandal involving accusations of bigotry in London’s theaters. In November, several prominent Jewish celebrities and journalists accused the Royal Court Theater of perpetuating antisemitic tropes after it staged a new play by the British playwright Al Smith, called “Rare Earth Mettle.” Early performances in the show’s run featured a character called Hershel Fink, a big-nosed, greedy billionaire who seemed to embody negative stereotypes about Jewish people.After a barrage of criticism on social media and in British newspapers, the character’s name was changed. The theater said in a statement that a Jewish theater director had raised concerns about the character in a September workshop: “We acknowledge our wrongdoing and will include antisemitism in future anti-oppression practices and training,” the statement said.Berry declined to comment on whether the two controversies had implications for theater makers, but added, “I have my own views.”He was certain of one thing, though: “There’s certainly not going to be anything controversial” in his production of “Into the Woods.”“It’s going to be vintage Terry Gilliam,” he said. More

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      in Music

      Looking Again at Amy Winehouse, 10 Years After Her Death

      by

      In “Amy: Beyond the Stage,” the Design Museum in London explores — and tries to somewhat reframe — the “Back to Black” singer’s life and legacy.LONDON — On the wall of a museum here hangs a handwritten page from Amy Winehouse’s teenage notebook, listing her “fame ambitions.” There are 14 goals, including “to be photographed by David LaChapelle” (the photographer who would later direct the music video for her song “Tears Dry on Their Own”) and “to do a movie where I look ugly.”A decade after her death at 27, the exhibition “Amy: Beyond the Stage” at the Design Museum displays both intimate items — like the goal list — and objects that point to the singer’s influences in an attempt to add new dimensions to how we understand Winehouse’s short career and legacy, both of which are often overshadowed by her struggles with addiction.Winehouse’s memory has been shaped, in part, by documentaries like “Amy” from 2015, which won an Oscar, and by artists who cite her as an influence — “I owe 90 percent of my career to her,” Adele said onstage in 2016.Speaking in an interview at the museum, Janis Winehouse, the singer’s mother, said that her daughter was “difficult” growing up. “We had a relationship: I would say, ‘Amy don’t,’ and she would take it as, ‘Amy carry on,’ and that’s how it worked,” she said.Winehouse’s stepfather, Richard Collins, added that the musician “was very strong, very charismatic, she was manipulative, she was loving, she was naughty, headstrong and she could sing — and it was obvious.”The idea for an exhibition that could touch on many of these facets was brought to the Design Museum by Naomi Parry, Winehouse’s friend and stylist, in the summer of 2020. After 10 years, Parry hoped that people would be receptive to thinking about Winehouse’s story in a different way.A wall of photographs in the exhibition depict the evolution of Winehouse’s style around the release of her first album, “Frank,” in 2003.Ed ReeveIn the years immediately after her death, “people weren’t ready to talk about anything but the tragedy, which I understood,” Parry, who is an adviser to the exhibition, said in a recent interview. But more recently, she has “needed the narrative to shift slightly to a more positive focus on her life because it was a real struggle constantly seeing books and stories and negative things about my friend.”There was also another motivation. Last month, there was an auction of a number of the singer’s belongings from her estate, which is administered by her father, Mitch Winehouse. . “It was kind of our last opportunity whilst we had things in our control to do this,” Parry said.The exhibition charts Winehouse’s evolution and influences, from her early years growing up in the Southgate suburb of north London to the Black artists who inspired her, as well as the clothes and hair that made up her distinctive aesthetic..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Here’s a look at some of the items on display, and what they reveal about the singer.Winehouse wore this yellow dress, second from left, to the BRIT Awards in 2007. She paired it with a black bra.Ed ReeveDress by PreenWinehouse wore a yellow dress from the designer Preen in 2007 at the BRIT Awards, an annual ceremony celebrating British popular music. That year, “Back to Black” was nominated for album of the year, and Winehouse took home the award for best British female artist.For Parry, the BRIT Awards marked a moment in which the singer’s signature vintage style — the beehive, short dresses and thick eyeliner — took shape.Winehouse customized the outfit by wearing a black bra underneath. “When we did the fitting, she tried it on without a bra, and I was like, ‘It looks incredible,’” Parry said. Before the event, however, Winehouse tried the dress on again over her bra and decided she preferred it that way.Parry said that Winehouse often personalized outfits: Before one performance, Parry had to cut off the bottom of a Dolce & Gabbana dress because Winehouse wanted it shorter. “It was always a conversation,” Parry said of the alterations. “But she would always win.”In one installation at the Design Museum, visitors may feel like they’re stepping into the London recording studio where parts of “Back to Black” were recorded. Ed Reeve‘In the Studio’ InstallationThis installation, created by Chiara Stephenson, a stage and costume designer, is inspired by Metropolis Studios, the London recording studio where parts of Winehouse’s 2006 album “Back to Black” were recorded and mixed. The constructed “booth” plays footage of Winehouse, her contemporaries and influences.“It kind of felt like it was overnight,” Parry said of Winehouse’s fame after the album’s release. “Suddenly she had paparazzi camped directly outside her house. For anybody, whether they had mental health issues or not, that is a lot.”A jacket from a 2008 collection that Karl Lagerfeld designed for Chanel.On the runway, models sported Winehouse-style beehives. Ed ReeveJacket From Chanel’s Métiers d’Art Pre-Fall CollectionThis piece is from Chanel’s 2008 Métiers d’Art collection, designed by Karl Lagerfeld. On the runway, many of the models sported beehives and heavy eyeliner, inspired by Winehouse.While Winehouse was confident in her abilities as a singer, Parry said, “I think it completely blew her mind when people, like Lagerfeld, knew who she was and were inspired by her.”Winehouse’s influence on high-fashion houses continued after her death — in 2012 Jean Paul Gaultier unveiled a line paying even more direct homage to the singer — as did her effect on street style more broadly.“In the wake of Amy’s death, there were women all over the streets of London, Paris, New York wearing beehives in all different forms,” said Priya Khanchandani, the show’s curator. “I think some people were doing it without necessarily realizing that it came from Amy.”After Winehouse’s death, fans wrote messages to her on the street signs outside her north London home.Ed ReeveCamden Square and Murray Street SignsFans and well-wishers wrote on these street signs outside Winehouse’s home in the aftermath of her death in July 2011. “The fans were in the square singing Amy’s songs and crying,” said Collins, Winehouse’s stepfather.The council had planned to take the signs down and replace them, Collins said, but Winehouse’s manager persuaded officials to hand them over to the family.Parry, who lived with Winehouse from January to May 2011, said of the public outpouring: “Looking back on it, it was such an amazing thing how many people felt like they experienced her to the point where they feel physical grief.”Fred Perry and Winehouse collaborated on a collection in 2010.Ed ReeveFred Perry CollectionThese selected items come from the 2010 collaboration between the clothing brand Fred Perry and Winehouse.Parry had conversations with Winehouse about starting a label together and thought that a collaboration with Fred Perry — a brand that Winehouse loved and that had strong connections to musical subcultures — would be a way for her to enter the fashion world.Remembering Winehouse’s excitement at the prospect of working with the brand, Parry described it as “like a child that was about to go into their favorite sweet shop.”Working on the collection was an escape for Winehouse, Parry said: “It was still doing something creative, but it wasn’t the pressure of music. It was something new and something she could get her teeth into.”During her lifetime, the media often fetishized Winehouse’s troubles or didn’t “treat them with the gravity that they should have,” said Priya Khanchandani, the show’s curator.Ed Reeve‘In the Limelight’ InstallationThese are a selection of articles written about Winehouse, many of which address her substance use.“The exhibition sets out to be celebratory of Amy and her legacy, but it would be impossible to do an exhibition about Amy and not talk about the struggles that she faced,” said Khanchandani, the show’s curator. At the time, the media often fetishized Winehouse’s troubles or didn’t “treat them with the gravity that they should have,” she said.Stories included here describe Winehouse as “a tortured soul” and “the nation’s high priestess of hedonism.”Khanchandani took care to properly frame this part of the exhibition, calling on experts who deal with addiction and body image to workshop the exhibit’s language. “I wanted to shift the discourse to approach these issues through a critical lens,” she said. More

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      in Theater

      U.K. Theatergoers Cover Up Again, After Months Without Masks

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      Since England’s theaters reopened without restrictions in July, one thing has been as notable as the action onstage: the lack of masks in the audience.Unlike in Broadway theaters, patrons here have not been required to wear face coverings, and many attendees have chosen to ignore preshow announcements encouraging them to mask up.Several visiting theater critics have been left aghast. Laura Collins-Hughes, writing in The New York Times in September, said that at “nearly every production I saw, there were loads — sometimes a majority — of barefaced people in the crowd, which felt reckless and delusional.”Peter Marks, writing in The Washington Post in November, called London’s theaters “consistently shocking these days.” That had nothing to do with the action onstage, he added; it was entirely down to the absence of masks.Now, that image may be about to change. On Saturday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made masks mandatory in stores and on public transportation in England, responding to the newly discovered Omicron variant of the coronavirus.He did not make them mandatory in theaters, but several venues have now done so voluntarily. On Monday, the Royal Shakespeare Company said face coverings would be required at its theaters in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, unless an attendee is under age 12 or has a medical exemption.“We want to do all we can to ensure that we do not have to cancel performances and disappoint our audiences,” the company’s executive director, Catherine Mallyon, said in a news release.Other theaters quickly followed. On Monday, Andrew Lloyd Webber, the composer and theater impresario, quietly strengthened rules for the six theaters he owns in the West End. His company website was updated to say, “All audience members must wear a face covering throughout their visit, except when eating and drinking, or if they are medically exempt.” Previously, those theaters requested masks, but did not require them.On Tuesday, the National Theater, the Royal Opera House, the English National Opera and the Old Vic also said they would make masks mandatory.The rules might only last a few weeks. The National Theater’s website says the measure will be in place until Dec. 19, “when the next government review of Covid measures is due.”So far, there appears to be little resistance to the changes. Kate Evans, a spokeswoman for the Royal Shakespeare Company, said 45 people had asked for refunds or to exchange their tickets for vouchers to see a future show since the mandate was announced, out of 6,000 who had booked to see its current show, “The Magician’s Elephant.”“The majority of feedback we’ve received around the decision has been very positive,” she said. More