Review: The satirical absurdity of Chou's 'Disorientation'

tested positive for COVID and sadly couldn’t attend), has a lot going for it. The drama is about a little-known, fascinating piece of World War II history that will have audiences racing to Google at intermission. Manilow’s score, with lyrics by Bruce Sussman, is pretty and occasionally touching.

David Benedict Mike Bartlett’s latest play is monstrous. In a good way.Shapeshifting actor Bertie Carvel, having shot to fame creating the marvelously alarming Miss Trunchbull in “Matilda,” is back to world-beating bullying with his mesmerizing, convincing performance as Donald Trump in Bartlett’s play about the next US election, “The 47th,” now playing at the Old Vic in London.

désolé. Or, perhaps, NYC should apologize for booking it.The woeful touring dance show, which opened Monday night at the Broadway Theatre, does not belong whatsoever where it’s currently situated.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, and it doesn’t get any colder, literally or figuratively, than the bitter portion ladled up in Robert Eggers’ merciless yarn of medieval vengeance, The Northman. This seriously nasty and violent tale comes across as an intense labor of love on the part of the American director and his Icelandic co-writer, the poet Sjón; there’s scarcely a moment of softness, sentiment or relaxation here, just fierce and ferocious determination to fight and prevail in an unstintingly harsh environment. For the most part it’s an enthralling immersion in a forbidding time and place, enhanced by an immoderately attractive cast and saddled only by a dramatic sameness that settles in after a while and gradually diminishes the film’s impact.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIn the second episode of “The Kardashians,” Hulu’s new reality show featuring the widely-documented Calabasas, Calif. family, there is a moment of reflection.

Ayanna Prescod One minute you’re a teenager ready to “rebel against the universe,” then in the blink of an eye you’re a senior making peace with the life that was handed to you. That’s the short and sweet premise of Noah Haidle’s buttery new drama, “Birthday Candles.” In the play, now having its New York premiere at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway, Debra Messing (“Will & Grace”, “Smash”) plays the protagonist Ernestine, methodically and graciously moving through the aging process and proving that the recipe to thrive is to simply survive.The ingredients of this Roundabout Theatre Company production are equally measured.

Birthday Candles, Noah Haidle’s Broadway dramedy starring Debra Messing as a woman who, over the course of the play’s 90 minutes ages from 17 to 107, has just about all the right ingredients for the poignant, funny and life-affirming experience it sets out to be. If everything doesn’t always come together just as it should, well, even an imperfect cake is better than no cake at all.

Roy Trakin At perhaps one of the lowest points in the pandemic, in May 2021, a video appeared, like a rose growing out of a crack in the concrete, of a group of teenage and pre-teenage girls of Chinese, Mexican and Salvadorean descent, a veritable melting pot from Los Angeles taking the acrid anti-Asian racism in the air and transforming it into a marvelous punk alchemy and expiation, an about-face that turned victim into victor.That viral clip was “Racist, Sexist Boy,” a reaction to an experience 11-year-old drummer Mila de la Garza had with a classmate who was warned to stay away from her because she was Chinese. Along with Mila’s 15-year-old sister Lucia, who plays guitar alongside Bela Salazar, a lifelong friend who was the oldest at 17, and Eloise Wong, a cousin of the de la Garzas, 14, on lead vocals and bass, they formed the Linda Lindas, originally a new wave cover band.

for example, a white, male film critic said he disliked “Turning Red,” a film about a Chinese teenage girl, because he found it “limiting in its scope,” I would say that that man was experiencing a personal problem, not a cinematic one. “The Goldfinch” and “Dear Evan Hansen” both bombed in large part because, unless viewers were already fans of the texts on which they were based — an 800-page novel and an unhinged Broadway musical, respectively — they were unlikely to see past both films’ inherent messiness.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThe “Bourne” movies revivified the espionage genre with their nimble, scrappy, down-and-dirty action. But they weren’t as widely imitated as one might have expected, which leaves “The Contractor” feeling like a relatively fresh chip off a not-so-old block. Chris Pine stars as a forcibly decommissioned U.S.

EXCLUSIVE: Indie distribution outfits Deaf Crocodile Films and Gratitude Films are combining forces to give limited theatrical releases this year to a pair of foreign-language titles.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is your standard multiverse martial arts movie about filing your taxes and midlife regret in which googly eyes, everything bagels and fanny packs play vital supporting roles and portals to parallel existences are opened not with a spell but with butt plugs and paper cuts.The movie, opening in theaters Friday, is by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the filmmaking duo known as the “the Daniels,” whose first film, the buddy movie “Swiss Army Man,” co-starred Daniel Radcliffe as a very flatulent corpse.“Everything Everywhere All at Once," though, is more ambitious. It's possible that the distance has never before been so great between a movie's mundane storyline — in this case, a Chinese immigrant laundromat owner trying to file her taxes — and what extreme shape it takes.

EXCLUSIVE: Seayoung Yim, a playwright and educator from Seattle, has won the 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize for her new play Jar of Fat, a work selected from more than 1,500 entries.

Kelly Ripa is celebrating one of the best performances in cinema this year at the upcoming Live with Kelly and Ryan After Oscar Show. The talk show host, 51, transformed into Tammy Faye Bakker, played by Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain, 44, in the The Eyes of Tammy Faye, in a clip from the show that airs March 28, the day after the 2022 Academy Awards. Kelly absolutely nails her impersonation as Tammy by rocking the iconic evangelist’s signature red curly hair, eye lashes, and makeup. The clip even starts off with Kelly belting out Tammy’s anthem “Jesus Keeps Takin’ Me Higher and Higher.”