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Tony voters struck a perfect equilibrium with the awards for scenic design. Beowulf Boritt won for the musical “New York, New York,” a big, buoyant throwback of a show whose aesthetic is decidedly classic Broadway. “There’s no video wall in ‘New York, New York,’” he assured the audience, which sounded glad to hear it. Recognizing such different kinds of excellence, the Tonys gracefully embraced both tradition and tradition-breaking. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESSmall is beautiful

Persons: Tony, Beowulf Boritt, ”, “, ’ ”, Tim Hatley, Andrzej Goulding, LAURA COLLINS, HUGHES Organizations: “ Locations: York , New York, ‘ New York , New York

At this point, Audra McDonald is part of Tony Awards history. McDonald previously won four featured actress Tonys in the play and musical categories for her roles in “Carousel” (1994), “Master Class” (1996), “Ragtime” (1998) and “A Raisin in the Sun” (2004). She is the only person to win in all four acting categories. Despite the cascade of awards, she told The New York Times in an interview last month that the recognition remained special. “It’s an honor,” she said while on a lunch break from working on yet another project.

Persons: Audra McDonald, Tony, who’s, —, Suzanne Alexander, Adrienne Kennedy’s, McDonald, Chita Rivera, Julie Harris, Tonys, ”, Bess, Porgy, Bess ”, Billie Holiday Organizations: Sun, New York Times

☆ ‘Succession’: Jeremy Strong on Kendall’s ‘Catastrophic’ Ending
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When filming on the final season of “Succession” wrapped this winter, the actor Jeremy Strong flew to the Danish fishing village where he and his wife have a home. For Strong, who began filming the HBO drama seven years ago and won an Emmy for playing Kendall Roy, this was a happy ending. But for the character, “Succession,” created by Jesse Armstrong, concluded on bleaker terms. Kendall began Sunday night’s finale episode believing that he would emerge as the chief executive of a giant conglomerate. But the final scene, which also took place at the water’s edge, also at sunset, left Kendall numb, friendless, bereft.

☆ In ‘Succession,’ Tom and Greg Were Never Playing the Long Game
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-29 | by ( Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I genuinely don’t know what he wants any more than I know what I want. Do I need to feel this bad at work?” I also don’t know if he’s going to cut my salary. Walking down the hall, every office: “You’re fired.”Why do you think Shiv sides with Tom over her brothers, Kendall and Roman? She just looks at Kendall and thinks, “I can’t.” I don’t think she made a rational decision. And then there’s this beautiful stage direction that Jesse wrote in the script of Tom and Shiv in the car.

☆ ‘Succession’ Clears the Air: Here’s What to Read
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-29 | by ( Jennifer Vineyard | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

None of his children could manage to put a sticker on that.) Below, we put stickers on some of the noteworthy recent features on the series coming to its end. ‘“Succession” Is Over. Why Did We Care?’ [NY Times]The “billon-dollar question,” as Alexis Soloski puts it, has been answered — none of the Roys won the prize. “Writers have argued that we love ‘Succession’ because of what it says about America, what it says about class, what it says about money, family, trauma and abuse,” Soloski writes.

☆ Sarah Goldberg on the ‘Barry’ Finale and Bad Decisions
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-28 | by ( Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Was this really a comedy, especially in this final season? I had a lot to say, which I never took for granted, because it’s rare. I find it interesting to play characters who are making bad decisions. Sally attracted a lot of online hate, which reminded me of the reactions to female characters on other series. I feel like there’s just this undercurrent of cultural misogyny — the sexism involved in how we view those characters is wild to me.

☆ ‘Succession’ Is Over. Why Did We Care?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-28 | by ( Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On Sunday night, with the second son, Kendall, poised to take it all, his younger sister, Shiv, betrayed him. The company would be sold to Lukas Matsson, a Swedish tech anarchocapitalist, with Shiv’s husband, Tom Wambsgans, as C.E.O. In its final season, “Succession” drew fewer than half the viewers, across all platforms, of “The Sopranos” or “Game of Thrones.” So if this was a water cooler show, that water was filtered. Yet its queasy, stinging satire of the ultrawealthy exerted an outsize influence on its audience. If you hardened your heart, or if your heart came pre-hardened, it made for a mutinous kind of comfort viewing, in which pleasure, envy and outrage could twine.

☆ In ‘Sweeney Todd,’ Annaleigh Ashford Puts It All Together
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Other roles came, several of them further variations on the dumb blonde: Glinda in “Wicked”; Essie in “You Can’t Take It With You,” her Tony-winning part; Sylvia in “Sylvia,” in which she played a blond dog. Yoked with that mind is a clarity of purpose, tinged with a belief in the divine, which can resemble a kind of innocence. Sarah Paulson, who worked with her on “Impeachment: American Crime Story” and filmed a movie with her last summer, described that clarity as lending Ashford a certain buoyancy. “She can seem like she’s dancing in the ether a little bit,” Paulson said. But Ashford also has a seriousness to her, which Paulson described as “a fierce self-possession, this unassailable confidence that is wild to me.”

☆ Surprises, snubs and a watershed moment that wasn’t.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Scott Heller | Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Not everyone can wake up to good news on Tony nominations morning. Then again, with a panel of voters often un-wowed by celebrity, the roster typically turns up left-field choices and anoints young talent. But the Tony committee gave the show’s team something to laugh about, lavishing six nominations, including two for Cooper himself: best play and best featured actor in a play. Cooper, who portrayed a saucy airline hostess named Peaches, gave it his all, onstage and off: When the show’s sudden closing was first announced, he took to Instagram to rally audiences. Yet Tony voters passed on nominating Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan for their sexy, impassioned portrayals of a fraying couple in 1960s Greenwich Village.

☆ ‘Somebody Somewhere’ Celebrates a Life With Tears and Jokes
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the first episode of the new season of “Somebody Somewhere,” the poignant Kansas-set comedy that returned to HBO this week, Sam (Bridget Everett) receives a letter from her father, Ed. Ed, a farmer, has charged Sam with feeding the chickens, mowing the lawn and cleaning out the barn. Sam begins her chores, but when she finds Ed’s baseball cap, she begins to tear up. In its quiet, fine-grained way, these episodes of “Somebody Somewhere” provide a eulogy in comedy form, with grief triangulated and transformed. “We knew we wanted to dedicate the season to him,” Hannah Bos, a “Somebody Somewhere” creator, said in a recent video call.

☆ ‘Love & Death’ and the Feminine Urge to Commit Murder
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

That killing and Montgomery’s eventual acquittal (she claimed self-defense; the jury believed her) have inspired two series more than 40 years later: “Candy,” which debuted on Hulu last May, and “Love & Death,” which premieres on HBO Max on Thursday, with new episodes following weekly. But in most true-crime narratives, these mothers, daughters and wives are the victims. This grants these series, which typically attract a majority female audience, a unique appeal and horror. “It is scary!” Jessica Biel, who played the title role in “Candy,” agreed in a recent phone conversation. Biel spoke of Montgomery’s service within her community, her care for her children.

☆ In ‘Fatal Attraction,’ Lizzy Caplan Makes a Mess
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Despite spray tans and brief stints as a blonde, she could rarely convince producers to see her as the heroine, the nice girl. “That’s the journey of every brunette.”The joke came by way of a video call in early April from her home in North London. (She and her husband, the English actor Tom Riley, spend half the year there and the other half in Los Angeles.) Jesse Eisenberg, her co-star in the FX limited series “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” expressed a similar observation. “She has such an unusual, distinctive quality of world weariness and humor, jadedness, but also hopefulness,” he said in a phone interview.

☆ ‘Barry’ Is Ending. For Anthony Carrigan, That’s Nothing to Be Afraid Of
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

That hair and the worry that he would lose it were sources of anxiety. “I really had nothing to lose at that point,” he said as he spooned horseradish onto an oyster. Whatever parts did come his way, he would play the hell out of them. And it netted him an audition for “Barry.”NoHo Hank, intended as a minor antagonist, is a member of a Chechen mob. “He’s a lovable scorpion,” Carrigan explained at the oyster counter.

BARONE The book could not be staged as-is now, just as much of opera makes you cringe the closer you look. VINCENTELLI The “Phantom” legacy is most visible in business terms, with a generation of blockbusters that run for years, decades even. The current “Sweeney Todd” revival has luscious orchestrations but the staging and most of the performances are so timid. A couple of years ago I saw “Phantom” at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki. “Phantom” is similar to Puccini not only in its music, but also in its specificity; you can’t really stretch Puccini, conceptually, and with “Phantom,” you have to either go big or go home.

☆ What Rom-Coms Teach Us About Love, Life and Meg Ryan’s Hair
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Tala Safie | Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

THE ENDThank you for playing,Photo credits: Sony Pictures (“Jerry Maguire”); Universal Pictures (“Love Actually,” “Marry Me,” “Notting Hill,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Along Came Polly,” “Bridesmaids”); 20th Century Fox (“Say Anything,” “The Devil Wears Prada,” “There's Something About Mary”); Columbia Pictures (“50 First Dates,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “Hitch,” “The Holiday,” “The Wedding Planner,” “Cruel Intentions”); Miramax (“Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Kate & Leopold,” “She’s All That”); MGM (“Licorice Pizza”); TriStar Pictures (“Sleepless in Seattle”); Warner Bros. (“You've Got Mail,” “Crazy, Stupid, Love”); Lionsgate (“Shotgun Wedding”); New Line Cinema (“Monster-in-Law”); Buena Vista Pictures (“Pretty Woman,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” “High Fidelity”); Disney (“The Princess Diaries”); Focus Features (“Deliver Us from Eva”); Paramount Pictures (“How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”). A quiz by Tala Safie and Alexis Soloski. Produced by Sean Catangui, Amanda Webster, Alicia DeSantis and Lorne Manly.

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