Tomlinson, Taylor (1993- )

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      Taylor Tomlinson: A Comic With the Confidence of a Star

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      On her new Netflix special, “Look at You,” she demonstrates tight joke writing, carefully honed act-outs and a ruthless appetite for laughs.The moment I knew that the stand-up comic Taylor Tomlinson was going to be a star was not after she made the precociously funny debut special, “Quarter-Life Crisis,” at the age of 25. Or her assured follow-up, “Look at You,” which premiered on Netflix this week. Or even after the news that she’s writing and starring in a movie about her own life (directed by Paul Weitz).It was the minute after the comic Whitney Cummings insulted her bangs.This took place on Cummings’s podcast, one of two freewheeling episodes that Tomlinson, now 28, appeared on during the pandemic that were also filmed and released on YouTube. For most of their chummy conversations, Tomlinson appeared polite, deferential, even in awe of her friend and mentor, a more seasoned stand-up, writer and television star. But when Cummings offhandedly suggested her protégé might need help from a stylist with her new haircut, the temperature in the room plummeted.“Are you serious?” Tomlinson asked, shooting a look that jarred the voluble Cummings into juddering paralysis. Tomlinson diagnosed the insult as a disingenuous play for content and calmly told Cummings to stop. Then came the counterpunch. Shifting from her friend to the camera, she told a story of pitching a television show with Cummings that described her, brutally, as an underminer. Tomlinson wrapped up this entertaining story with a compliment, saying she learned how to stand up to Cummings from Cummings. Along with teaching a lesson that it’s always best to tread carefully when commenting on a new hairstyle, Tomlinson displayed steel, poise, showmanship and a willingness to get tensely uncomfortable, which can help turn a good joke into a great one. More than anything, she showed a commanding ability to quickly pivot without fluster. Small talk can reveal big things.The bangs were gone by the time Tomlinson shot “Look at You,” but it did not escape my notice that after an arty opening shot of her all alone in the audience, she began her set with jokes about them. “It’s been a rough couple years,” she said, setting up expectations of talk about the pandemic. “I got bangs at one point.”This new hour has the confidence to start slowly but build, anchored by three or four superb extended bits. Tomlinson has emerged as one of the youngest comics with multiple Netflix hours because of tight joke writing, carefully honed act-outs and a ruthless appetite for laughs. With a quick smile and wide, alert eyes, her comic persona leans into a wholesome, cheerful affect, a Christian upbringing and impeccably basic cultural references (Harry Potter, Taylor Swift). This provides a solid backdrop for incongruously dark swivels, sometimes accompanied by the kind of shimmies Steph Curry does after hitting a shot near half court.Her gift is making weighty subjects come off as breezy. There’s no way a special that covers night terrors, panic attacks, bipolar disorder, a dead mother and a disturbingly blunt father, along with suicidal thoughts, should seem this delightful. That requires skill and savvy. Take her six-minute chunk on her mother dying young. These jokes are carefully massaged, contextualized and accented to work for any crowd, and among her strategies to lighten the mood is arguing that it’s OK to laugh because the death of her mother helped her career.“Do you think I’d be this successful at my age if I had a live mom?” she asks, flashing the kind of condescending disappointment given to someone ordering lobster at a diner. “She’s in heaven. I’m on Netflix. It all worked out.”Tomlinson has a people pleaser’s ability to ingratiate. In her new special, she says she looks like someone who would be better at meeting your mother than at sex. “I’ll meet your mom all night long,” she boasts. But to get a laugh, she’s just as happy to play the jerk. “Lot of my friends are settling down,” she says. “Some are just settling.”Tomlinson taped her first special after a breakup with her fiancé. Since then, she has clearly spent many hours with a therapist, which makes its way into many jokes. Ever since Maria Bamford dug into the subject of mental health, it has been explored thoroughly in stand-up, particularly in the last year or two, and we may be reaching the point of exhaustion. And Tomlinson occasionally risks veering into a kind of comedy that doesn’t fully digest and transform therapy into jokes.And yet, the strength of her best bits is the specificity and depth of her analysis of her own psychology. There are few jokes with the classical structure breaking down the difference between men and women, but more investigation into her own eccentric personality. She attributes her tendency to rush into relationships as a reaction to her mother’s dying so early in her life, and builds many jokes out of her trust issues, including a wonderfully performed series of punch lines about how she interprets any kindness from a boyfriend as a tactic. “Oh, is this your move?” is her refrain, about everything from opening the car door to staying together for six decades.Her first special was a portrait of a young fogy, but this new one zeros in on her self-protective cynicism and exaggerates it until it’s an absurd cartoon. The funniest parts of these jokes are in the subtext, how Tomlinson performs knowingness in a way that can be truly clueless. But unlike many comics who find laughs in saying the wrong thing, her act never comes off as character comedy. It’s a testament to her acting ability that even when you know she’s presenting a deluded version of herself, you buy it.For a comic her age, Tomlinson is remarkably nimble, able to pivot from light to dark, innocent to dirty, chummy to aggressive. Whatever gets the laugh. If there is something missing from her comic tool kit, it might be a certain vulnerability. She can push right past that, and understandably so. She’s dealing with grave issues, like a parent’s death or a wounding comment, and her emotional armor needs to be thick. Notably, she allows it to get a little thinner when it comes to more modest concerns like, well, her bangs. It’s in that bit that she sits in insecurity.“Having bangs is exactly like being on mushrooms,” she says. “The whole time you’re like: Do I look weird?” More

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      12 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2022

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      ‘Better Call Saul’ returns, Cecily Strong stars in a one-woman show, and Faith Ringgold gets an overdue retrospective.As a new year begins in uncertain times (again), our critics highlight the TV, movies, music, art, theater, dance and comedy that promise a welcome distraction.Margaret LyonsThe End of ‘Better Call Saul’Bob Odenkirk stars as Jimmy McGill in AMC’s “Better Call Saul,” which returns for its final season this spring.Greg Lewis/AMC, via Associated PressI’ll be sad forever when “Better Call Saul” is over, so part of me is actually dreading the sixth and final season. I never want to say goodbye to Jimmy or Kim — but man, am I dying to see them again. By the time “Saul” returns on AMC this spring, it will have been off the air for two full years. (Bob Odenkirk, its star, recovered from a heart attack that occurred on set this year.) If there was ever a show that knew how to think about endgames, it’s this one, among the most carefully woven dramas of our time. Of course, thanks to “Breaking Bad,” we know exactly where some of these characters are headed but not how they get there or how they feel about it or whom they’ll hurt along the way. Hurry back! But also, go slow.Salamishah TilletA ‘Downton Abbey’ Sequel Travels to FranceThe sequel “Downton Abbey: A New Era” is partly set in the South of France; from left, Harry Hadden-Paton, Laura Carmichael, Tuppence Middleton and Allen Leech.Ben Blackall/Focus FeaturesOK, so yes, it was weird that my friends Sherri-Ann and Amber and I were the only Black people in the theater when we saw the movie “Downton Abbey” in 2019. At the time, we agreed that despite the absence of people of color in the theater and onscreen, we still found delight in the grandeur — the clothing, the castle, the cast of characters, especially the Dowager Countess of Grantham, Violet Crawley, marvelously played by Dame Maggie Smith. Now that we’ve set our calendars to March 18, 2022, for the sequel, “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” I’m looking forward to seeing how the franchise tries to reinvent itself on the cusp of a new era, the 1930s, and how it fares in the current racial moment. (A Black female face pops up in a trailer.) Partly set in the South of France after the Dowager Countess learns she has inherited a villa there, the movie sends the upstairs Crawley clan and their downstairs employees off on another adventure, with another wedding. While Julian Fellowes, the creator of “Downton,” has a new show, “The Gilded Age,” premiering on HBO in January — which seems to be a bit more thoughtful in its take on race, class and identity — here’s hoping that this sequel to “Downton” takes a bow in grand Grantham style.Jesse GreenCecily Strong in a One-Woman ShowCecily Strong, left, and the director Leigh Silverman; Strong is starring in “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” at the Shed.Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesJane Wagner’s 1985 play “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” was custom-made for the chameleonic gifts of her life partner (and, later, wife), Lily Tomlin. Who else could have inhabited its 12 highly distinct characters — among them a runaway punk, a bored one-percenter and a trio of disillusioned feminists — with such sardonic sympathy? When Tomlin won a 1986 Tony Award for her work, it seemed to seal the idea that the performer and the play were forever one. But in the kind of casting that makes you smack your head with delight, Cecily Strong takes up Tomlin’s mantle in a revival directed by Leigh Silverman at the Shed, expected to open on Jan. 11. Strong — whose “Saturday Night Live” characters include Jeanine Pirro, the Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party and, most recently, Goober the Clown Who Had an Abortion When She Was 23 — seems like another custom fit, nearly four decades later.Jon ParelesAfrofuturism at Carnegie HallSun Ra Arkestra will perform its galactic jazz as part of the Afrofuturism festival that starts in February.Nate Palmer for The New York TimesStepping outside its own history as a bastion of Western classical music, Carnegie Hall will be the hub of a citywide, multidisciplinary festival of Afrofuturism: the visionary, tech-savvy ways that African-diaspora culture has imagined alternate paths forward. Carnegie’s series is expected to start Feb. 12 with the quick-cutting, sometimes head-spinning electronic musician Flying Lotus. (One challenge might be the main hall’s acoustics.) Shows at Zankel Hall include the galactic jazz of the Sun Ra Arkestra with the cellist and singer Kelsey Lu and the spoken-word insurgent Moor Mother (Feb. 17); the flutist Nicole Mitchell leading her Black Earth Ensemble; and the clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid with her Autophysiopsychic Millennium (Feb. 24); the African-rooted hip-hop duo Chimurenga Renaissance and the Malian songwriter Fatoumata Diawara (March 4); and the D.J., composer and techno pioneer Carl Craig leading his Synthesizer Ensemble (March 19). There’s far more: five dozen other cultural organizations will have festival events.Anthony TommasiniThe Metropolitan Opera Rethinks VerdiThe set model for a new production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos,” which is expected to open at the Metropolitan Opera in February.Metropolitan OperaVerdi’s “Don Carlos” may not be a flawless opera. But it’s a profound work; I think of it as Verdi’s “Hamlet.” Written for the Paris Opera, it nodded to the French grand style and included epic scenes and massed choruses. But at its 1867 premiere, it was deemed overly long and ineffective. Verdi revised the opera several times, making cuts, translating the French libretto into Italian, leaving a confused legacy of revisions. The Metropolitan Opera is giving audiences a chance to hear the work as originally conceived in its five-act French version, which many consider the best. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who has led superb Met performances of the Italian adaptation, will be in this pit for this new production by David McVicar. The starry cast, headed by the tenor Matthew Polenzani in the title role, includes Sonya Yoncheva, Elina Garanca, Etienne Dupuis, Eric Owens and John Relyea. When performances begin on Feb. 28, be prepared for a five-hour show with two intermissions; I can’t wait.Mike HaleTrue-Crime, Starring Renée ZellwegerRenée Zellweger is starring in the true-crime mini-series “The Thing About Pam,” premiering March 8 on NBC.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesThis winter brings more than the usual number of big stars taking time out for the small screen, like Uma Thurman (“Suspicion”), Christopher Walken (“Severance”) and Samuel L. Jackson (“The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray”). The one that piques my interest the most is Renée Zellweger, taking on only her second lead television role in “The Thing About Pam,” premiering March 8 on NBC. Zellweger can be hit or miss, but her hits — “The Whole Wide World,” “Chicago,” “Judy” — keep her in the very top rank of American actresses. Here she plays Pam Hupp, who is implicated in multiple deaths and is currently serving a life sentence for one of them, in a true-crime mini-series whose showrunner, Jenny Klein, was a producer on solid TV offerings like “The Witcher” and “Jessica Jones.”Jason FaragoAt 91, Faith Ringgold Gets a RetrospectiveA retrospective of the work of Faith Ringgold opens at the New Museum in February and will include “Dancing at the Louvre: The French Collection Part I, #1,” from 1991. Faith Ringgold/ARS, NY and DACS, London, via ACA GalleriesWhen the Museum of Modern Art opened its expanded home in 2019, its most important Picasso suddenly found itself with a new companion: a tumultuous, panoramic painting of American violence that Faith Ringgold painted in 1967. Ringgold, born 91 years ago in Harlem, has never been an obscure figure: Her art was displayed in the Clinton White House as well as most of New York’s museums; her children’s books have won prizes and reached best-seller lists. But she has had to wait too long for a career-spanning retrospective in her hometown. The one at the New Museum, which opens Feb. 17, will reveal how Ringgold intertwined the political and the personal: first in her rigorously composed “American People” paintings, which channeled the civil rights movement into gridded, repeating, syncopated forms; and then in pieced-fabric “story quilts” depicting Michael Jackson or Aunt Jemima, and geometric abstractions inspired by Tibetan silks and embroideries. The show comes with a major chance for rediscovery: the first outing in over two decades of her “French Collection,” a 12-quilt cycle that recasts the history of Paris in the 1920s through the eyes of a fictional African-American artist and model.Maya PhillipsA Viking Prince Seeks RevengeAlexander Skarsgård in a scene from “The Northman,” a story about a Viking prince who seeks revenge for his murdered father, directed by Robert Eggers.Focus FeaturesRobert Eggers has directed only two feature films, and yet he’s already known as a maker of beautifully strange, critically acclaimed movies. “The Witch,” from 2016, was followed three years later by the grim and perplexing “The Lighthouse.” Both established Eggers as a stylistic descendant of the Brothers Grimm, a crafter of macabre fables that descend into torrents of madness. Which is why I’m excited to see his third feature film, “The Northman,” expected to premiere on April 22, about a Viking prince who seeks revenge for his murdered father. Steeped in Icelandic mythology, the story is based on the tale of Amleth, the inspiration for Prince Hamlet, my favorite sad boy of English literature. Eggers wrote the screenplay with the Icelandic poet Sjón, so we can surely expect an epic with epic writing to match. There’s also a stellar cast, including Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe — and Björk as a witch. I’d watch for that alone.Gia KourlasTransformation, Via Tap and Modern DanceA still from Ayodele Casel’s “Chasing Magic”; from left, Anthony Morigerato, John Manzari, Casel and Naomi Funaki.Kurt CsolakThere are times, however rare, when a virtual dance can be just as stirring as a live one. Ayodele Casel’s joyful and galvanizing “Chasing Magic,” presented by the Joyce Theater in April, was just that. Now the tap dancer and choreographer unveils a new version of the work, directed by Torya Beard, for the stage — an actual one — starting Tuesday, barring any Covid cancellations. And the following month, “Four Quartets,” an ambitious evening-length work by the modern choreographer Pam Tanowitz, lands at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Feb. 10-12). Based on T.S. Eliot’s poems, the production features live narration by the actress Kathleen Chalfant, music by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and a set by Brice Marden; in it, Tanowitz continues her exploration of the relationship between emotion and form. It’s true that one is tap; the other, modern dance. What do they have in common? Both have much to say and to show about the transporting, transformative power of dance.Isabelia HerreraThe Rapper Saba Explores TraumaSaba, a rapper from Chicago, will release a new album, “Few Good Things,” on Feb. 4.Mat Hayward/Getty ImagesDiaristic and quietly intense, Saba, a rapper from Chicago, is the kind of artist who navigates grief with a cool solace. In 2018, his record “Care for Me” considered this theme in the aftermath of the murder of his cousin and collaborator, who was stabbed to death a year earlier. Out on Feb. 4, his next album, “Few Good Things,” confronts equally gutting life challenges: the anxiety of generational poverty and the depths of survivor’s guilt. It reprises Saba’s slithering and poetic flows, which breathe out a profound sense of narrative. The beats are still buttery, jazzy and meticulously arranged. But this time around, there is more wisdom — a recognition that living through trauma means finding gratitude and affirmation in the moments you can.Jason ZinomanComedian Taylor Tomlinson on TourThe comedian Taylor Tomlinson in her Netflix special “Quarter-Life Crisis,” from 2020; a new one is in the works.Allyson Riggs/Netflix“Quarter-Life Special,” the debut stand-up special from Taylor Tomlinson, introduced a young artist with real potential. Tomlinson tautly evoked a clear persona (cheerful but not the life of the party; more like, as she put it, “the faint pulse of the pot luck”) and told jokes marked by a diverse arsenal of act outs and manners of misdirection. She covered standard territory (dating, sex, parents, kids) with enough insight and dark shadings to get your attention. Most excitingly, every once in a while, she let her thought process spin out into deliriously unexpected directions, like the story that led her to imagine a test for sadness conducted by the police. “Instead of a breathalyzer,” she explained, “they have you sigh into a harmonica.” This Netflix special made a splash, but it would have probably been a bigger one if it didn’t come out in March 2020. One pandemic later, she has another hour ready, and another Netflix special on the way. She’s now performing it on tour, which is expected to stop in New York in January at Town Hall and then the Beacon Theater. More