America is seeing yet another British invasion — of thespians

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Kelli O’Hara and Ken Watanabe in a scene from the Lincoln Center Theater’s production of Rodgers and & Hammerstein’s “The King and I.”

By Charles McNulty

Los Angeles Times

This year, the discussion around the Academy Awards was all about the unbearable whiteness of being an acting nominee. The Tony Awards can hardly brag about diversity. It’s never a good sign when a revival of “The King and I” is the multicultural bright spot.

If there hasn’t been the same deluge of condemnatory op-eds for the Tonys’ lack of inclusiveness, it may be because theater folks are silently contending with another embarrassing cultural matter: the British re-colonization of our acting prizes.

The math speaks for itself: Of the 10 nominees in the lead actor and actress categories for drama, five are English. Had half the nominees been African-American or Latino or Asian, the year no doubt would have been heralded as another milestone. But when our ancestral overlords take 50 percent of the pie, it barely elicits a peep.

Broadway Anglophilia is certainly not a new phenomenon. With its august tradition of theatrical excellence, Britain has long been exporting its top-tier thespians to our shores, and this talent has cultivated a taste for language tautly delivered and wit served extra dry.

Yet the current wave of British stars, the one that includes Oscar and Tony winner Eddie Redmayne, along with Benedict Cumberbatch, Carey Mulligan and Felicity Jones, stands apart from previous generations. Although comfortable with classic and contemporary stage work, these performers are equally at home in front of the camera. They might not have the same panache of their illustrious theatrical forbears, but they seem more emotionally supple and are capable of crying real tears.

Ian McKellen made headlines a few years back warning that, with the demise of repertory theater in Britain, there’s little chance of another Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon or Judi Dench emerging. Far be it from me to contradict Sir Ian, but Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rory Kinnear and Sally Hawkins are proving him spectacularly wrong.

Commuting regularly from TV and film to theater, these relatively young guns have merged the best of the American and British styles. Impressively bilingual, they can switch back and forth between Shakespearean eloquence and Method mumbling.

One can discern the generational difference in this year’s Tony nominees. Representing the British old guard are Helen Mirren, the front-runner to nab the lead actress award for once again playing Queen Elizabeth II (this time in Peter Morgan’s play “The Audience”), and Bill Nighy, who stars opposite Mulligan in the top-notch revival of David Hare’s “Skylight.”

These two dazzling veterans deploy all the tricks of their trade. Mirren, in a performance that is much broader than her Oscar-winning portrayal of the same character in “The Queen,” delivers a royal tour de force that has lively, humorous fun with the British monarch’s famous restraint. (At one point, she discreetly breaks into a jig.) The play doesn’t paint a very convincing portrait of this Elizabeth, but Mirren strategically humanizes what is essentially an entertaining hologram.

No one’s hands are as busy on Broadway these days as Nighy’s. Returning to a character he has portrayed before, he is seducing audiences with his technical virtuosity, crunching on all those crisp consonants in Hare’s talky script while wielding his wiry body like a conductor’s baton. Nighy knows his character inside out, but his performance is memorable primarily as a feast of flamboyant acting.

Contrast these seasoned pros with their nominated younger compatriots and you’ll find an acting style that is less conscious of the audience and more hermetically attuned to a character’s longings and ambitions. These actors seem to specialize in what Stanislavsky, the progenitor of the Method, called “solitude in public.”

In the role of a self-made restaurateur with conservative leanings who tries to resume an old love affair after his wife has died, Nighy bounces around the apartment set like a Tory dervish. Mulligan, in one of her most disciplined performances to date, doesn’t try to compete but, rather, sinks deeper into character, allowing us to glimpse the invisible battle between her progressive politics and her unresolved romantic feelings.

My Tony vote, however, would go to Ruth Wilson, nominated for her portrayal of a Cambridge University theoretical physicist who receives some very bad medical news in Nick Payne’s “Constellations.” This inventive drama imagines variations of scenes between her character and a besotted beekeeper played by Jake Gyllenhaal, testing whether in a universe of infinite possibility, this love story might have a chance of circumventing its tragic fate.

Wilson doesn’t traffic in stereotypes of female scientists but plays instead a woman, as abrasive as she is soft, who just happens to be astonishingly gifted in math and science. Her performance is impressively naturalistic yet fleet enough to handle the stylistic challenges of a work that refuses to play by realism’s rules.

Although the Tony is likely to go to either American Alex Sharp in the British import “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” or Bradley Cooper in “The Elephant Man,” Ben Miles, a British stage actor now entering his vintage prime, would be my pick for lead actor in a play. Playing Thomas Cromwell in “Wolf Hall,” the two-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s celebrated novels about the Machiavellian goings-on in Henry VIII’s court, Miles manages in a plot-heavy dramatic marathon to shed light on a complicated, much-misunderstood historical figure. The great Mark Rylance has become the face of Cromwell to many, thanks to the British miniseries recently shown on PBS, but it was through Miles’ always dignified, always subtle characterization that the protagonist of Mantel’s books, a commoner turned royal fixer, sprang to life.

Although there’s obviously no shortage of brilliant actors in this country, the U.S. no longer has a monopoly on the grittiness that once set our performers apart. American realism has seeped into the world’s cultural reservoir through movies and television, yet our artists have been a little too content to stick to their own patch of ground.

This has put American actors at a decided disadvantage when the role being essayed is elevated in some way, when everyday folksiness is not the ultimate goal, when fluency and intelligence are set above the common rung.

One could concede that Redmayne’s Englishness gave him an edge in playing theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything” or that Cumberbatch’s accent was just right for mathematician Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game.” But surely there were many African-American actors up to the challenge of playing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the film “Selma.” King’s soaring oratory, however, came naturally to Oyelowo, schooled in Elizabethan cadences at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Globalization keeps leaving Yanks in the lurch. While “Breaking Bad” is available everywhere, Shakespeare remains the pinnacle in Britain. “The Hollow Crown,” the series of British television films in which Shakespeare’s history plays have been revitalized, has become a showcase for this agile new generation.

By submerging themselves in the metaphorically rich rhetoric of the Wars of the Roses cycle, Ben Whishaw, Tom Hiddleston, Kinnear and Cumberbatch have enlarged their capacity as interpretive artists. That’s not something that readily happens with studio movies or even the better TV shows. Shakespeare, it turns out, can still boost popularity: Cumberbatch’s coming performance as Hamlet on the London stage this summer has the buzz of the Beatles’ first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

The musical is the one area in which America hasn’t lost its predominance. But as the Brits bring home more of our award bric-a-brac, it has become increasingly apparent how a lack of diversity — in both demographic representation and acting versatility — is causing us to come up short.

Caitlyn Jenner’s new reality show is called ‘I Am Cait’

Vanity Fair
Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of “Vanity Fair.”

By Stephen Battaglio

Los Angeles Times

The TV docu-series that will follow Caitlyn Jenner on her journey as a transgender woman has a title: “I Am Cait.”

The E! network, which will air the program starting July 26, unveiled the title and a trailer Wednesday amid the public’s fascination with the Olympic gold medal-winner’s transition.

The former Bruce Jenner announced her new name and presented a postoperative look in an interview and photo spread in Vanity Fair released Monday. The pictures and details generated worldwide attention and reaction, mostly supportive, on social media.

Caitlyn Jenner’s new Twitter account attracted 1 million followers in under five hours, surpassing the previous record for quickest achievement of that milestone that had been set on May 18 by President Barack Obama. It was the leading topic of discussion over the past two days on cable news channels.

Jenner, who is 65 years old, first went public about her transition in an ABC News interview with Diane Sawyer that aired April 24. It was during that interview that the eight-part E! series was announced.

In the minute-long trailer for “I Am Cait,” Jenner is heard pondering the new circumstances of her life. Seen doing her makeup in front of a vanity, she says, “You start learning kind of the pressure that woman are under all of the time about their appearance.”

Jenner describes herself as “the new normal.’”

The eight-part series produced by Bunim/Murray Productions will air in 120 countries internationally.

Farewell to David Letterman, ‘a force of nature’

Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS/TNS
David Letterman shakes hands with Paul Shaffer after the final taping of the “Late Show With David Letterman” on Wednesday at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Mary McNamara

Los Angeles Times

A colleague came by my desk a couple of weeks ago to discuss the unexpected sorrow he felt while watching the final weeks of “Late Show With David Letterman.” “I am surprised at how much it means to me,” he said.

I nodded sympathetically but a lot was going on. Bruce Jenner had just come out as a transgender woman, Baltimore was burning, “Mad Men” was ending, the demands of Emmy season had begun. I knew, of course, that Dave was retiring from his “Late Show” and had been watching sporadically.

To be honest, I had recorded more than I had watched, figuring I would crash through the final episodes and revisit some of the greatest hits in the days before the actual finale.

When I did, I realized exactly what my friend had been talking about. Like millions of Americans, I have watched David Letterman pretty much my entire life. Now that he is leaving — has, in fact, left — it feels like the bottom of my heart has come loose.

If there was any legitimate reason to choose sides in the vaunted late-night wars, I always chose Dave. It was a family tradition, like being a Democrat.

I still remember my father laughing and calling us all to the kitchen one summer morning. “You gotta see this guy,” he said, watching a morning show for the first and, when “The David Letterman Show” was canceled four months later, last time in his life. (Imagine morning television had NBC kept that show on. Imagine the world with a completely different time line.)

I love Dave the way you love certain passages from your favorite book or the smell of turkey cooking on Thanksgiving Day, the way you love the bend in the road that means you’re almost home.

And I will never feel this way again. Dave is gone, he is gone and it is impossible to imagine a balance of opposing forces to match his sardonic compassion, his stalwart self-deprecation. What other host would begin a finale with five presidents announcing that “our long national nightmare is over”?

Johnny Carson allowed himself to be embraced and sung off his penultimate show with near-tearful torch song by Bette Midler; Dave was thrilled by a virtually incomprehensible Bob Dylan, who appeared incapable of making eye contact, much less going in for a hug.

But Dave was never big on hugs and that didn’t change, even in the finale. He was big on making a tough job look easy, and that didn’t change either. He moved smoothly through his final show, cracking wise and taking care of business, as if it were any other.

Except for the business he took care of — revisiting old bits, offering words of welcome to Stephen Colbert, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the show and counting down as a chorus line of top comedians filled in the final signature list — “Top Ten Things I’ve Always Wanted to Say to Dave” — with jokes just the way Dave liked them: dry and unsentimental.

Forget heartfelt final words, brimming eyes or eleventh hour sentimentality. Dave stayed true to himself and the show, continually sharing the credit and pronoun usage with band leader and comedic companion Paul Shaffer. He sincerely thanked everyone who worked on the show, including his longtime boss and frequent punching bag, Les Moonves.

He acknowledged the profusion of praise he has received in recent weeks as being “flattering, embarrassing and gratifying,” but continually made sure everyone remembered that this was a comedic show. He didn’t even allow himself the final word; he left that to the Foo Fighters.

As our news anchors lost their paternal mojo, we increasingly turned to late-night for our sense and sensibility, for ritual and reassurance. Through boom and bust, war and peace, terrible tragedy and absurd pettiness, David Letterman was there, cracking jokes and ushering us to the inflatables.

Thirty-three years is a long time to act as culture sheriff and a pole star. Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert are great in their own way, but does anyone really see them staying put for 30-odd years? Doing good work year after year, even if it means staying No. 2?

Dave is on, as he would say, a very short list. Only he, and perhaps Johnny Carson, understood the civic dedication necessary to do the job right. And while Carson was always Carson, Letterman was a smart funny character you might actually know.

Not well enough maybe to invite to your house for dinner, but to hang out with on a regular basis, for a limited time in a specific situation. Your old English professor or your highly literate and hilarious plumber, if either of them had their own TV shows.

This sentiment and others similar have been expressed in many ways in recent weeks. Famous people who actually know Dave came on to thank him for helping them with their careers and say things the rest of us were thinking. Like how he helped America find its footing in the early days after the 9/11 attacks.

Or how he kept to himself, but when a health crisis or personal scandal forced him to go public, he did so with candor, simplicity and just the right amount of self-deprecation. How he created a show that was the best of both worlds, pioneering all the wacky stunts the new hosts think they’re inventing (for the record, nothing will ever be funnier than Dave working at McDonald’s) but also keeping it real couch-side.

He is a force of nature, David Letterman, though more glacier than tempest. A tempest may seem more dramatic, but a glacier sculpts the lasting landscape. For all his quiet sarcasm and almost bitter self-doubt, David Letterman was, and is, a powerful man.

After NBC announced that Leno would replace Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” all those years back, Carson had Letterman on the program. Though the two laughed often and fairly easily, there was fear in Carson’s eyes when he asked the now famous question: “How pissed off are you?”

Quite a bit, obviously, as he made clear. But Letterman kept that interview on the high road and even after he left NBC for CBS, continued to openly idolize Carson, who made his final TV appearance on the “Late Show.”

There are a million reasons to love David Letterman. The glee with which he dropped things off the top of the CBS building alone will do, but more than that is the simple fact that he made it all look so easy and just kept on doing it.

Until now.

So who couldn’t forgive George Clooney his perfect life and private island (Really? You couldn’t just buy a house?) when he handcuffed himself to Dave and said, “You’re not going anywhere.”

Who didn’t feel wild hope when, on the penultimate show, Bill Murray, blinking through cake detritus, suggested that retirement might not be the best decision and there was still time to reverse it. If anyone could reverse this particular polarity, it was Mr. Bill Murray.

Alas, Letterman’s mind was made up, and considering the months of wicked ribbing he gave Leno when he decided to return to “The Tonight Show,” there was no chance of him changing it.

“You leave,” he said, explaining, in what is now known as the “Don’t Blame Conan Monologue,” what Leno should have done when NBC moved him to 10 p.m. “You don’t.”

Then, switching to a maliciously good Leno impersonation, he added: “’Yeah, OK, but I’ll be in the lobby if you need me.’ You don’t hang around.”

Dave, I think I speak for everyone when I say, you are more than welcome to hang around. Wherever, however and for as long as you want.

Springfield, home of ‘The Simpsons,’ opens at Universal Studios Hollywood

Al Seib/Los Angeles Times/TNS
The original Simpsons ride at Universal Studios Hollywood has expanded to include a replica of Springfield, the home of America’s favorite yellow TV characters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Martin Miller

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Springfield, the mythical city that serves as Anytown, USA for “The Simpsons,” is enjoying some urban sprawl in the real world.

Home to America’s favorite screaming yellow TV characters, the town becomes bicoastal on Wednesday when Universal Studios Hollywood officially unveils a newly created Springfield. The city block-sized neighborhood, constructed on formerly open space near the park’s existing Simpsons ride, will feature a collection of show-inspired landmarks, such as the cooling towers of Mr. Burns Nuclear Power Plant, and eateries — one of which will answer the age-old question: What exactly does a Flaming Moe taste like?

“It’s hard for me to be objective,” said Al Jean, one of the show’s executive producers who was closely involved in the ramp up of the show’s theme-park presence. “But if you’re a fan of ‘The Simpsons,’ you will feel like you’re in their world.”

Springfield’s leap from cartoon to concrete, which first began at the theme park’s Orlando, Fla., location in August 2013, marks another surprising cultural enshrinement for a subversive animated comedy that began more than 25 years ago with few expectations of success. Today, American television’s longest-running scripted program powers a lucrative global brand that has rung up billions in merchandising sales and has hauled in 31 Emmys and a 2012 Oscar nomination for its theatrical short “The Longest Daycare.”

The show that proved prime-time cartoons could appeal to adults received even more acclaim. Fox recently announced the show would continue setting records for TV longevity when the network renewed it for an unprecedented 27th and 28th season. When concluded, those seasons will bring the tally of “Simpsons” episodes to 625.

On Friday, Tommy Trojan got some new company on USC’s campus. A sculpture of Bart Simpson’s “Bartman” was officially dedicated at the School of Cinematic Arts Complex by Nancy Cartwright, the work’s creator, who also supplies the character’s distinctively mischievous voice.

Springfield’s arrival in Universal Hollywood is among a slate of upgrades undertaken by the theme park over a five-year span that began in 2012 with the opening of its 3-D Transformers ride. Later this summer comes the roll out of another elaborate attraction, “Fast & Furious — Supercharged,” which is based on the popular movie series and will serve as a grand finale for the park’s studio tour.

Universal Hollywood’s “epic transformation,” as the park’s PR machine is fond of calling it, will culminate next year with the highly anticipated opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, already a huge hit at the Orlando park. The coming Hollywood attraction, well under construction, shares a border with Springfield.

Park officials won’t disclose how much they’ve invested in the Simpsons and other projects, but they all are designed to keep competitive in a crowded marketplace of amusement parks and tourist destinations.

At least for now, the Simpsons crew isn’t worried about being overshadowed by the rising towers of Hogswart Castle, which are easily visible from Springfield.

“We’re trying to figure out ways to tell people at Harry Potter world to turn left and visit Springfield,” said Jean, who originally pitched the idea for a drink named the Flaming Moe on the TV show.

“Harry Potter is a pretty enticing setting, but we’re pretty different,” added Jean. “They do what they do great, but they are about magic and atmosphere and we’re just trying to be funny.”

There’s no shortage of gags, wisecracks and humor on the not so mean streets of Springfield. Visitors need only look up to see a mock tribute to the Hollywood sign that has 40-foot high letters spelling out the name of the Simpsons’ hometown. Fans of the show will immediately recognize dozens of other “Simpsons’” structures including Stu’s Disco, Springfield Police Station, Burns Manor and Homer’s work station at the nuclear power plant (which every so often has a little meltdown).

Of course, no realistic Simpsons world could exist without a celebration of incredibly unhealthy food. Exhibit A — a 17-foot statue to Lard Lad (yes, you can buy doughnuts.) In all, the new Springfield boasts nine places to eat including Krusty Burger, Luigi’s Pizza, Cletus’ Chicken Shack and Phineas Q. Butterfat’s Ice Cream Parlour. (Also available at Moe’s Tavern, a non-alcoholic Flaming Moe.)

The show’s writers, often borrowing from a wealth of material from the TV show, came up with the menus. Guests can order Cletus’ Peep-Fried Chicken Platter, a Clogger Burger (a double Krusty Burger with bacon), or for health nuts the Mother Nature Burger, a veggie pattie with guacamole.

In developing the menu, Universal officials had to keep reminding the writers that jokes couldn’t trump clarity.

“They kept telling us, ‘Make sure that people know that a hamburger is a hamburger. People should know what they are buying so they don’t have to decode it,’” said Jean. “It’s a valid point.”

That Springfield is a reality is something over which those associated with the show can marvel — a state of mind that doesn’t come naturally to most comedy writers.

“Things you remember from childhood are very powerful,” said Jean. “And we’ve been around long enough to have been part of people’s childhoods. I’m just glad we’re all alive for our own nostalgia.”

TV review: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin shine in new Netflix comedy ‘Grace and Frankie’

Melissa Moseley/Netflix
Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in “Grace and Frankie.”

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‘GRACE AND FRANKIE’

3 stars

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By Chuck Barney

Contra Costa Times

Thirty-five years after starring in “9 to 5,” showbiz icons Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are back together again. In “Grace and Frankie,” an amusing original series from Netflix, they play a couple of women coping with the fallout from an emotional bombshell.

That shocker comes in the show’s opening scene: Summoned to a restaurant by their law-partner husbands of 40 years (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston), Grace (Fonda) and Frankie (Tomlin) learn that the men are gay and are about to leave them for each other.

Awkward!

The women are devastated. “You mean you’re gay and this is who you’re gay with?” Frankie asks incredulously. Grace immediately feels the need to throw up.

This is where “Grace and Frankie” morphs into another twist on the overly familiar “Odd Couple” concept. Turns out that these golden girls have never really liked each other, even though their families have been linked for more than 40 years. Grace is a button-down, Type-A WASP, and Frankie is a “hippy-dippy” free spirit who has a thing for mind-altering substances.

But now they are sisters in grief, experiencing a similar kind of domestic turbulence. Where do they go from here? How do they explain it to their kids? Were they leading fraudulent lives all these years? Slowly but surely, they begin to form an unlikely bond.

That bond produces plenty of easy jokes and predictable, sit-commy scenarios. Somehow, for example, you just knew Grace and Frankie would get high together on a beach while wallowing in their existential angst.

But the writing, which delivers humor and heartbreak in near equal measure, contains enough observational shrewdness to keep the endeavor engaging. And the performances by this all-star cast don’t hurt, either.

Fonda and Tomlin, still live-wires after all these years, bring their A-games. Just seeing them sharing the screen is enough to put a smile on your face. They’re funny, fierce and absolutely glorious.

And let’s give some credit to Netflix for trying to make a go of this. The major broadcast networks, such slaves to advertising demographics, wouldn’t touch a series led by two women in their 70s. The streaming service, in contrast, is diversifying its slate and sending a clear message that its brand is accessible to everyone.