Category Archives: New Utopia

The full cast of The Coast of Utopia, including playwright Tom Stoppard, center, in brown coat, and director Jack OBrien, in glasses. CreditPaul Kolnik.

This week I had a chance to revisit the most spectacular theater experience Ive ever had. It took place on a weekend in February 2007. Over the course of two days, I experienced all nine hours of The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppards trilogy on 19th century Russian intellectuals and revolutionaries. My New York friend Patricia and I hung around the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle and visited neighborhood cafes in between going to the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center for many glorious hours of theater. This week Lincoln Center Theaters celebrated that monumental theatrical achievement.

I flew to New York after work on Friday and met Patricia for an early lunch on Saturday, saw Voyage, part one, then had an early dinner and saw Shipwreck, part 2. On Sunday, we saw a matinee of Salvage, part 3. We had a final dinner, at which we both were almost too exhausted to talk. I had bought copies of the scripts and read Voyage on the way home on Monday morning. I saved the playbill on my bookshelf along with the three volumes of scripts.

The trilogy was also done as a marathon on a few Saturdays when you could see all three plays in one day, from 11am to 11pm.

My playbill from February 2007.

Ive never forgotten that weekend and like most memorable theater experiences, the visuals are imprinted in my brain, to be released when some tangential memory nudges them. Thats what happened this week.

Lincoln Center Theaters celebrated the 14th anniversary of The Coast of Utopias U.S. premiere in November 2006 with a virtual discussion that was open to theater fans. Director Jack OBrien, four cast membersandin person from Londonthe playwright himself. I was on a Zoom call with Tom Stoppard! No, he didnt know I was thereonly the participants were on the Zoom screen. But it was an exhilarating moment.

The play has more than 70 characters, performed by 40 actors in the New York production. The cast size and complexity of the story explain why this magnificent historical work has been produced so few times: in London in 2002, in New York in 2006-07, Moscow in 2007 and Tokyo in 2009. (This article describes the daunting nature of the production.)

Scenic design for the trilogy was by Bob Crowley and Scott Pask with costumes by Catherine Zuber. The gorgeous musical score, which flowed like a film score, was by Michael Bennett.

The actors participating in the discussion were Jennifer Ehle and Martha Plimpton, who played Liubov and Varenka Bakunin, two sisters, in Voyage; Ethan Hawke, as their brother Michael Bakunin, a writer and student of philosophy; and Billy Crudup, who played Vissarion Belinsky, a noted literary critic and radical.

The actors discussed the production experience, which involved almost a years commitment, starting with nine months of rehearsal. (Part 3 was being rehearsed while parts 1 and 2 were on stage. The typical rehearsal time for a modern play is four to six weeks). Cast members prepared by studying Russian history and literature and four of the actors (including Plimpton) made a trip to Russia. We did endless research. We had books, piles of books, and notebooks where we noted reactions and questions, one of the actors commented.

Before seeing The Coast of Utopia, I had been preparing too by reading Russian history and cultural history (Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Pushkin and Karl Marx are among the characters in Utopia). Many of the characters, including Belinsky and Alexander Herzen, are drawn from history. The plays title comes from a chapter inAvrahm Yarmolinskys book,Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism(1959), which is on my to-be-read list.

The cast compared the productionespecially the occasional Saturday marathon performanceslike going to camp. Meals were brought in and there were dressing rooms available for naps, Plimpton said. The intense rehearsal and performance schedule meant they spent almost all of their waking hours together at Lincoln Center Theaters for a year.

One experience they all vividly remembered was when actor Richard Easton, who played Alexander Bakunin, the father of the Bakunin siblings, died on stage for seven minutes. It wasnt part of the script, but the audience didnt realize that at first. During a preview performance, Easton spoke a final line (it was That is my last word after an argument with Michael) and started to exit, only to crumple in a heap at side stage. He had a heart attack. When Hawke realized that the fall was serious, he asked the audience the classic question, Is there a doctor in the house? But a stagehand performed CPR. Easton was revived in the ambulance and underwent a procedure to fix a heart arrhythmia. The opening date was briefly delayed because Eastons character was a pivotal part of Voyage.

Hawke remembered that Easton asked him to come to his hospital room to run lines. After that, Hawke said, we were all in service to something larger than ourselves.

The three books of The Coast of Utopia plus Stoppards latest play, Leopoldstadt.

The play begins in a Chekhovian mood; Voyage is set at Premukhino, the Bakunin country estate 150 miles northwest of Moscow. The sisters and brother Michael all long to escape to the city. At one point, in the middle of Voyage, Michael, who is in Berlin studying philosophy and translating a history, is asked to come back to the estate because Alexander wants him to study agriculture, for which he has no fondness.

The storyline concerns philosophical and literary debates in pre-revolutionary Russia (and in Berlin and Paris) between 1833 and 1866. The actual Russian revolution, of course, was another half century in the future, but that didnt hinder discussions about liberty and censorship. Shipwreck takes place in Russia, then in Germany and France; and Salvage is set among the intellectual and revolutionary community in Paris.

The most important character among the radical intellectuals is Alexander Herzen, who Stoppard defines as a would-be revolutionary, but is an important historical figure. One of the most moving scenes in Shipwreck is about an actual shipwreck on which Herzens young son, Kolya, was lost. His wife Natalie is eagerly awaiting the arrival of her mother-in-law who has taken her grandson Kolya on a trip to Paris. The scene where Herzen has to tell Natalie that Kolya is not returning, is devastating.

Stoppard was asked what inspired him to write on the subject of the Russian intellectuals and radicals. He said he was moved by the status of the critic Belinsky in Paris, where you could write anything you wanted and no one cared whereas in Russia, one could only read work like this at midnight.

Stoppard was also asked when he knew he was writing three plays. It happened when I was writing the first, he said. And commenting on his own experience working with the Lincoln Center Theaters team, that nine months was the most binding and bonding theater Ive ever done.

An audience member asked Stoppard whether we can learn anything for today from his work on radicals and revolutionaries. He responded that the strongest ideas in The Coast of Utopia are about families. His latest play, Leopoldstadt, also focuses on the emotional and intellectual lives of a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna who go through wrenching political change in the first half of the 20th century. The family had escaped the pogroms in the East but the fates of the generations are impacted by communism and fascism over the years.

I recently read the script of Leopoldstadt (I had to draw a family tree chart to keep track of the family branches). So far it has been produced only in London in January 2020. Had it not been for the coronavirus, it most likely would be on stage in New York by now and scheduled for Chicago in a coming season. It is a profound and moving play with nearly 40 characters over distinct time periods from December 1899 to 1955. I look forward to seeing Leopoldstadtperformed on stage, perhaps in 2022.

Near the end of the discussion, director OBrien summed up our mutual yearning for an end to our life of physical distancing. Heres what the theater does. You have to be there. Youre in a room of people who are giving their heart and soul to you. We have survived pandemics since Aeschylus and well survive this.

Update: You can now watch The Coast of Utopia discussion on YouTube, but only through January 10.

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Essay: Revisiting Stoppard's Magnificent The Coast of Utopia on Its 14th Anniversary - thirdcoastreview.com

An uncertain fate awaits the most bracing and contrarian writers: Will the insights they offer still come across as stingingly original if the disillusion they so often recommend becomes commonplace?

I was thinking about this while reading John Grays peculiar new book, Feline Philosophy, the latest in a provocative oeuvre that has spanned four decades and covered subjects including Al Qaeda, global capitalism and John Stuart Mill.

Gray, a British philosopher, has long been one of the sharpest critics of the neoliberal consensus that emerged after the end of the Cold War. (He happens to share a name with an American self-help author, leading to some unintentional comedy whenever someone has to explain that the writer of books like Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia isnt also responsible for the best seller Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.)

On the face of it, Feline Philosophy would seem like a departure for Gray a playful exploration of what cats might have to teach humans in our never-ending quest to understand ourselves. But the book, in true Gray fashion, suggests that this very quest may itself be doomed. Consciousness, he writes, has been overrated. We get worried, anxious and miserable. Our vaunted capacity for abstract thought often gets us (or others) into trouble. We may be the only species to pursue scientific inquiry, but were also the only species that has consciously perpetrated genocides. Cats, unlike humans, dont trick themselves into believing they are saviors, wreaking havoc in the process. When cats are not hunting or mating, eating or playing, they sleep, Gray writes. There is no inner anguish that forces them into constant activity.

Humans like to think of themselves as special, in other words, but what makes us special also, not infrequently, makes us worse. We are human supremacists whose vanity and moralism and tortured ambivalence make us uniquely unhappy and destructive. While cats have nothing to learn from us, he writes, we can learn from them how to lighten the load that comes with being human.

This is a variation on an unwavering theme for Gray, who has been critiquing the follies of humanity and humanism for some time now. Humans are like any other plague animal, he wrote in Straw Dogs (2002). They cannot destroy the Earth, but they can easily wreck the environment that sustains them. In The Silence of Animals (2013), he connected a belief in progress, which he ascribes to both the left and the right, to the hubris that denies our animal nature. In The Soul of the Marionette (2015), he went so far as to assert that an insentient puppet was infinitely more free than any sentient human being.

Feline Philosophy shares a core with those previous books, but its advice is offered with a lighter touch than the very serious, Cassandra-like pronouncements he usually favors. This time he makes reference to essays by Mary Gaitskill, Pascal and Montaigne, among others, and reflects on some cat-centric fiction by Patricia Highsmith and Colette. His literary treatments are appropriately fleet-footed; he hops from text to text, never alighting on any one for very long.

Gray has made ample mention of various animals in his other books, but he focuses expressly on cats in this one. Why? For one, he clearly enjoys their company. He thanks four cats in his acknowledgments, including a 23-year-old named Julian. Also, unlike dogs, he writes, cats have not become part human. Dogs have been domesticated to please their owners and retain a wolflike preference for a pack held together by relationships of dominance and submission. Cats abide by none of the settled hierarchies that shape interactions among humans and their close evolutionary kin. Cats are solitary hunters and live with fearless joy.

They do? Its a tricky business, this presuming to know that cats experience joy, and that its fearless to boot. Gray concedes that we cannot know what it is like to be a cat, but that doesnt stop him from trying. He decides that they would most likely find humans as foolish as he does: If cats could understand the human search for meaning they would purr with delight at its absurdity.

Gray has written so brilliantly about the perils of anthropomorphism in his other books that its surprising to see the rank anthropomorphism he deploys in this one only instead of projecting human qualities onto cats, he projects the qualities he wants humans to have. Liberals like to think that empathy is a great virtue, he says, and that progress is not only possible but morally necessary, but people would be better off cultivating a catlike indifference.

A recent profile of Gray in The Guardian remarked on his unusual political journey from a working-class upbringing in Northern England; to support for Thatcherism in the 1980s; to a dalliance with New Labour in the 90s before he abandoned that, too, after it became yet another universal project he considered in thrall to a distorted view of human possibility. He was in favor of Brexit, and has written sympathetically of those who voted Leave, deeming the European Union another grand scheme shot through with arrogant idealism. In its place, Gray wants to see well, something thats never fully defined.

Gray has always been a shrewd critic, nimbly dismantling high-minded schemes and their unintended consequences, but his is no longer a lonely voice in the post-Cold War wilderness, where liberals could blithely pretend that they had won and nothing was wrong. Considering the enormity of our current problems raging nationalism, climate change, a devastating pandemic making the world livable for vulnerable humans will probably require something more than the feline indifference and Taoist contemplation that Gray counsels. He marvels that cats are arch-realists who know when not to bother: Faced with human folly, they simply walk away.

This is all fine and good for the cat, but if youd like another perspective on whether living a cats life is as exemplary and harmless as Gray makes it out to be, you may want to ask a bird.

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Want the Good Life? This Philosopher Suggests Learning From Cats - The New York Times

A moment I barely noticed in the 2019 Broadway production of David Byrnes American Utopia jumped out at me with new resonance in Spike Lees film of the show for HBO.

That was when Byrne, in his introduction to the song Everybodys Coming to My House, described hearing it performed by students at the Detroit School of Arts. Without altering a word or note, the high schoolers had turned the number, which in Byrnes original version comes off as an anxious monologue about being inundated by otherness, into a joyful choral invitation.

I kind of liked their version better, Byrne says, apparently amazed by the materials mutability: The song was the same yet had a completely different meaning.

I knew what he meant; after all, I was watching an even more elaborate translation, in which a concert staged like a Broadway musical was turned into a live-capture television film for cable. And though Lees slick and exuberant adaptation includes plenty of shots of the audience at the Hudson Theater bopping to the beat and dancing in the aisles, it was now, like Everybodys Coming to My House, the same yet totally different.

Theater lovers are getting familiar with that feeling. These days, it seems like everybodys coming to our house and walking off with the furniture. Not for decades have we seen so many Broadway shows, whether musicals (Hamilton, The Prom) or plays (What the Constitution Means to Me, The Boys in the Band, Outside Mullingar, Ma Raineys Black Bottom) or unclassifiable offerings like American Utopia, taken up by Hollywood, squeezed through the camera lens and turned into film.

The squeeze is certainly subtler now than it used to be. Lyrics are seldom butchered to avoid offense as they once were; I expect that Steven Spielbergs version of West Side Story, scheduled for release in Dec. 2021, will restore Stephen Sondheims original rhyme for buck, which had to be altered for the 1961 film.

Nor are innumerable songs dumped like dead plants from fire escapes anymore. (The 1966 movie version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum dropped at least half of Sondheims 14 numbers.) Musicals and, in a way, plays too are now being filmed because of their music, not in spite of it.

Of course, you expect that hands-off treatment from the Disney Plus live capture of Hamilton, which in its content, if not effect, was a near replica of the celebrated stage version. But even The Prom, though not a blockbuster on Broadway, emerged from Ryan Murphys Netflix translation with all its songs and then some.

That doesnt mean these works are unchanged. Compared to the stage version, Lees American Utopia feels grander, more elevated sometimes literally, with its shots from above.

Hamilton, on the other hand, with its frequent close-ups, especially of the women characters, is a much more human-scale story onscreen than it seemed to be on Broadway. Swirling hand-held cameras suggest the intimate chaos of lived experience in a way no choreography framed for a proscenium could. Whether that is an improvement may depend on whether you prefer your history personal or formal; I like both and refuse to choose.

The movie of The Prom definitely went for the personal in part because of Murphys biographical connection to the book of the stage musical, by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin. Like the character of Emma, Murphy grew up in Indiana, had an unhappy coming-out and could not take the date he wanted to his prom.

The stage show seemed to alternate between telling that story and satirizing four narcissistic Broadway performers who, in need of good publicity, decide to help Emma whether she likes it or not. In the movie, though, three of those four interlopers feel like supporting characters, despite being played by Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Andrew Rannells.

The fourth, played by James Corden, is given so much more emotional heft not to mention an onscreen mother referred to only briefly onstage that the movie is as much about the healing of his own gay scars as it is about Emmas getting to dance with her girlfriend.

I understand, and was even moved by that choice, but it takes a lot of the fizz out of the material, replacing it with syrup. And the cast, starry though it is, cannot compensate. I kept hoping that the superior original Broadway performers journeymen including Beth Leavel, Brooks Ashmanskas, Christopher Sieber and Angie Schworer would descend on the film the way the Broadway characters in the story descend on Indiana, to show the rubes how its done.

Recasting a play with stars for the screen used to be the rule; I need only say the words Lucille Ball is Mame to set musical theater fans teeth rattling. The excuse is always money: It takes big names to sell enough tickets to offset the enormous budgets of film. Im not sure whether Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan are those kinds of names, but their appearance in the screen adaptation of Outside Mullingar, called Wild Mountain Thyme, is the least of that movies problems.

The most is John Patrick Shanley, who wrote both versions and, catastrophically, directed the movie. (His direction of the film version of his play Doubt was better, but so was the raw material.) Exaggerating everything bad in Outside Mullingar its bizarre plot twist, its encyclopedia of Irish clichs he smothers the small spark of what was good in it: the tale of a man so locked in by shame that love can find almost no way to enter.

Following what used to be stage-to-screen protocol, Shanley has also made the mistake of opening up a story that was better off shut down. Placing Blunt and Dornan within touristy shots of the Irish countryside does no more to make the material filmic than the addition of an unnecessary character played by Jon Hamm, paired off with an even more unnecessary one, makes it richer. This is a case of the moviemaker not respecting the playmakers material, which is especially odd given that Shanley is both.

The best adaptations today do not feel like rescue missions or charity makeovers; they relish the theatricality of their sources and try to enhance, not disguise it. Joe Mantellos powerful Netflix rendition of The Boys in the Band, based on the 2018 Broadway production, does make a few poetic forays into back story, but mostly, like the play, stays put in one place on one evening. The compression makes the whole thing tick like a time bomb.

Thats also how I felt about Viola Daviss huge and hugely pressurized performance as the blues singer Ma Rainey in the otherwise patchy Netflix adaptation of Ma Raineys Black Bottom. Her expressionistic makeup is demure compared to her emotional makeup: She is a woman who knows that her voice is the only capital she has in a world run by racism.

Whenever the director George C. Wolfe and the screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson stick close to August Wilsons original story and its claustrophobic setting a Chicago studio in which Ma is about to record with her band the movie maintains the plays long-fuse tension. But that power dissipates the moment it steps outside for context, as if context were necessary in a plot whose themes of appropriation and resistance are as relevant now as they were in 1982, when the play was written or for that matter in 1927, when its set.

The best scenes in the movie like the one in which Ma insists that her nephew be allowed to deliver a songs introduction even though he stutters use the camera as a highlighter, emphasizing the structure of the argument. These moments do not try to simplify or, worse, overplay that argument, instead trusting that film, contrary to its reputation as theaters flashier but less intellectual sibling, is capable of delivering complex verbal ideas like Wilsons.

But is it a film? Most of these recent adaptations were made for streaming services, with economics and aesthetics completely different from those of the studios that made the classic ones. People who saw the 1972 movie of Cabaret, to name an almost universally admired film transfer of a musical, saw it on a screen even larger than the proscenium at the Broadhurst Theater, where it originally ran on Broadway. But most people who see The Prom today will see it on devices that fit in their den or their palm. No wonder its story got pumped up.

The best of the recent adaptations do something subtler. Instead of enlarging the action, they bring it closer, pulling us right up to the edge of the caldron and then tossing us in.

For me, this was especially true of What the Constitution Means to Me, Heidi Schrecks play about lives lost in the shadows of our foundational legal document. Marielle Hellers gripping live capture for Amazon doesnt change the subject at all but, in a way, reverses the angle. Were asked to situate ourselves in Schrecks consciousness instead of our own just as Viola Davis demands that we understand what it is to be Ma Rainey and as Spike Lee, in American Utopia, forces us to see the world through David Byrnes antsy eyes.

In the theater, we are our own cameras and editors. We see what we choose, frame it as we like, and relish the right to maintain the long shot. The paradox of the best film adaptations is that we love them for doing the opposite: They put us onstage with the story and give us no say.

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Bumps on the Road From Broadway to Hollywood - The New York Times

CONSERVATISMThe Fight for a TraditionBy Edmund Fawcett

From its very origins in resistance to revolutionary movements in the late 18th century, conservatism has had two broad contrasting moods. The first is an attachment to the world as it is, and a resistance to too drastic a change in anything. The second is an attachment to what once was and a radical desire to overturn the present in order to restore the past. Some have attempted to distinguish these two responses by defining conservatism as the more moderate version and reactionism as the more virulent. But Edmund Fawcett, in Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition, a truly magisterial survey of the thought and actions of conservatives in Britain, France, Germany and the United States, insists more interestingly that they are both part of conservatism in its different moods.

Most conservatives, I imagine, have experienced both these sensibilities. A defense of the status quo against disruption comes naturally to anyone truly comfortable in the world. Its mood is skeptical, defensive, pragmatic, and it is rooted in sometimes inexplicable love of country, or tradition. But this can often shift, in different circumstances, toward acute discomfort and near-panic when change seems overwhelming and bewildering. The mood of this type of conservatism is certain, aggressive and ideological, and it can become obsessed with its enemies to the left and extremist in countering them. The first mood defends liberal democracy as a precious inheritance that requires tending; the second excoriates it for its spiritual shallowness, cultural degeneracy and tendency toward an individualist myopia or socialist utopia. Fawcett, the author of Liberalism: The Life of an Idea, calls the second not the far right but the hard right, keeping it central to the conservative tradition as a whole, rather than a departure from it.

Edmund Burke was both right and hard right. He was as in favor of the American Revolution as he was horrified by the French; he believed in pluralism, modest but necessary reform and the dispersal of power. But he could equally be viewed, Fawcett notes, as a conservative nationalist, an early exponent of geopolitics treated as a conflict of ideologies (England, Burke wrote in 1796, is in war against a principle) or as a down-to-earth defender of British power concerned with efficient taxes, lively commerce and a stable empire. He could be as rhetorically brutal as he was intellectually supple. He had Irish fire and English sense.

Burke could defend liberalism because it emerged organically in English and British history and therefore was a conservative inheritance. And this conservative defense of liberal democracy is in many ways the history of conservatism in the West, and a core reason for its endurance and resilience, as well as its remarkable success in winning governmental power. But what liberal democracy eroded the authority of religion, the coherence of a community, a sense of collective belonging, home, meaning and security could prompt far more radical responses. Fawcett sees these not as anomalies, but as part of a conservative spectrum.

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Andrew Sullivan on the War Within Conservatism and Why It Matters to All of Us - The New York Times

Theater gave up what many consider its essence in 2020 the communality of gathering together to experience the benediction of artistic expression along with the challenge of confronting our inner demons and social transgressions together.

That didnt, however, stop artists from bringing us together in unique digitally-enhanced groupings, often through Zoom. ARTery critic at large Ed Siegel found himself sitting on a jury with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jessica Hecht in State vs. Natasha Banina from the Arlekin Players while ARTery theater critic Jacquinn Sinclair had a one-on-one telephone experience curled under her dining room table in the dark in Baby Jessicas Well-Made Play.

It was also a year notable for how well high-definition technology has evolved in making theater come alive on television. There were several outstanding examples this year including American Utopia, Hamilton and What the Constitution Means to Me. Live theater still beckons but if celebrants could not go to theatrical stages in 2020, the year was notable for how creatively theater artists popped up in our living rooms.

David Byrne has collaborated with a whos who of creative talent since the 1970s but what beautiful music he made with Spike Lee, whose 11 cameras seemed to be dancing along with him and his talented troupe of musicians and dancers. Byrnes message was that for all the depressing events weve had to endure in recent years that every day is a miracle in the words of one of the songs, a sermon he delivered with minimal trademark irony and without any sappiness. Celebrate what we can, resist what we should and keep dancing. In gray suits and bare feet, it seemed more like passion play than road to nowhere. (Available to stream on HBO.)

The Arlekin Players, a troupe of Russian and Ukraniian theater artists, were one of the great stories of 2019, with their award-winning productions of The Stone and The Seagull in a tiny performance space in Needham. Necessity was the mother of invention there and it played the same role during the pandemic as artistic director Igor Golyak and Darya Denisova fashioned a transcendent performance about a young ward of an Eastern European country charged with a crime and the Zoom audience sitting in as the jury. Golyak has become one of the areas top theater artists.

Unlike Spike Lee, director Greg Shea didnt have 11 cameras at his disposal but he didnt need them to capture Melinda Lopezs magisterial performance of the one-woman show she wrote about tending to her ailing 92-year-old mother, a Cuban migr, made all the more poignant because of the difficulty people have now of seeing their loved ones in similar situations today. Mala, however, is much more than the journal of her mothers decline, it is autobiographical storytelling at its best and Shea matched it with nuanced, thoughtful and emotional camerawork of his own.

Richard Nelson captured the pandemic moment with stunning clarity as he moved his saga of the Apple family from stage to screen, allowing us to sit in on a Zoom call among the four Apple siblings and a partner. As they talk about issues large (familial passings) and small (anxiety about pandemic shopping), their lives become our lives, their lack of physical connection our lack, their attempts to find connection anyway a stand-in for the way we live now. Like the writing, the acting Jay O. Sanders, Maryann Plunkett, Laila Robins, Sally Murphy and Stephen Kunken was both of the moment and out of this world.

As if he didnt have enough on his resum, Lin-Manuel Miranda also produced the superb visualization of his historical (in more ways than one) musical, which substituted actors of color for the Founding Fathers and hip-hop music for Broadway tunes. What was revolutionary six years ago was deemed close to reactionary by many criticstoday as the lack of attention Miranda gave to slavery became painfully problematic. Im inclined to give Miranda the benefit of the historic doubt. This was not an obvious flaw even to prominent Black criticssix years ago. Miranda broke so many barriers in terms of Broadway musical and cultural norms that, while we shouldnt lose sight of his our myopia on slavery, we shouldnt forget what Miranda and Hamilton accomplished, as captured so well by Thomas Kails video production with the original cast.

The Founding Fathers and we do mean fathers was very much on Heidi Schreck's mind when she forged this engaging, feminist take on the revered document that played to great acclaim on Broadway. The only dissent here came from the right-wing as Schreck's seriously comedic dissection of the Constitution, from the age of 15 onwards, leaves her firmly in the camp that if it is any value at all, then it is a living and breathing testament to freedom for all Americans. (Available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.)

Ma Rainey, The Mother of Blues, and her band head north to Chicago for a recording session in the summer of 1927, but the day doesnt go as planned. Rainey is late to the studio, one of her band members tries to stage a coup and Raineys girlfriend has romantic plans of her own. The simmering internal conflict raging in one character erupts in an extraordinarily devastating way. The Netflix adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilsons play screenplay by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and directed by George C. Wolfe stars Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Colman Domingo and Glynn Turman. In true Wilson style, the play takes a brief look into these peoples complicated lives and highlights their fight to persist. The music and the remarkable performances by the entire cast make this brief film a standout.(Available to stream on Netflix.)

In July, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensens The Line was the first full-length online play I viewed. The documentary theater piece with its celebrity cast centered New York City healthcare workers and tapped into all of the fear and dread at the onset of COVID-19 through an enthralling collection of seven stories. The influx of emergency calls, impromptu funerals in the back of ambulances and the lack of proper equipment from PPE to ventilators were just some of the stories shared. The throughline, though, was heroism. Created as an immediate response to the special role frontline workers have played during the pandemic, each narrative shined a light on the indomitable will of the human spirit. Despite the overwhelming sickness and death around them, the workers persevered and cared for their patients in ways that warmed the heart.

U.K. actors Alfred Enoch of Harry Potter fame and Fiona Button of BBCs The Split star in murder mystery What a Carve Up! The show examines the evidence in the 1991 murder of the powerful Winshaw family, of which Josephine Winshaw-Eaves (Button) is a member. Raymond Owen (Enoch) sets out to prove his late father Michael Owen, a celebrated author, was framed for the murder of six Winshaws. As we get a closer look at the evidence, the victims seem more sinister. The play by Henry Filloux-Bennett is based on the award-winning Jonathan Coe novel of the same name. Button is brilliant as the callous and moneyed survivor who isnt interested in re-living this trauma. But whats fascinating about this offering is that it takes full control of the medium. Watching it feels like a movie premiere thats equal parts thriller and crime-documentary full of charged interviews from the past and present, newspaper snippets and sticky notes. The ambitious and highly produced show made me more interested in the evil-doing of the Winshaws than who murdered them.

Familial misunderstandings and the toll of war are at the forefront of the new play This Is Who I Am by Amir Nizar Zuabi. Actors Ramsey Faragallah and Yousof Sultani portray a father and son who are separated by much more than geography. The father lives in Ramallah, Palestine, and the son now calls New York home. Though the two dont have a close relationship, they agree to cook together while on a video call. As they work to put together a dish from their past, they talk more about what haunts and hurts them. The writing is lyrical with both Faragallah and Sultani rendering outstanding performances that range from tender to explosive. By listening to one anothers perspective, they each learn that things are not always what they seem. The message of the play is a universal one. It made me think about my relationship with my father. He used to always say, perception is reality. But here, in Zuabis thoughtful story, an open and honest conversation helps both of the characters see one another more clearly. (On view through Jan. 3.)

If open to it, participating in a performance like Baby Jessicas Well-Made Play could be more than just entertaining; it could be revealing. This play a conversation over the phone is inspired by the fall and rescue of toddler Jessica McClure from a well in Texas in 1987. The company asks the audience of one to place themselves at the scene and interact with a performer who is aided by compelling news-centered audio. Playwright and WalkUpArts co-founder Philip Santos Schaffer prompts interaction and introspection with his work. After the show, I talked to a stranger about the experience. We stayed on the phone longer than expected and found that we both felt similar about the production and many other things. The play is a two-day commitment (an hour or so on the phone each night) with an outcome that depends on the showgoer and who theyre paired up with to compare notes. Whats best about Baby Jessicas Well-Made Play" is that it offered connection at a time when we were (and still are) so disconnected. (The show has extended its run through Feb. 2021.)

Melinda Lopezs thoughtful audio play By the Rude Bridge is set at the Minuteman National Historical Park on Patriots' Day, April 19, 2025. Through the personal narrative of a re-enactor who loves history and whose son is a veteran, Lopez pushes listeners to think more about history, its memorials, what they mean to us and how those meanings change over time. The approximately five-minute-long audio experience is part of the ongoing Dream Boston series featuring the area's leading playwrights. This story touched me. It made me think a lot about perspective in a non-preachy way. Memorials or monuments that many pass by without noticing have deep meaning for others. Some statues represent history for some and for others, they commemorate racism and pain. Even though my mind is made up about some of our nations more controversial statues, the play did make me consider the questions posed 250 years from now, what memorials will we build? What statues? What will we tell our children's children about what we fought for? And also, what will we say about those we erased?

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12 Standout Nights At The Virtual Theater, Even If We Weren't In The Room Where They Happened - WBUR

A pumpkin Jack O' Lantern carved as the movie monster Frankenstein is displayed on the grounds of the historic Van Cortlandt Manor House and Museum during the "Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze" in Croton-on Hudson, New York October 27, 2015.

LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) - Frankenstein may have created a monster but imagine stitching together a global, post-pandemic economic version of Mary Shelleys fictional creature. This would be a country with the strengths of its global counterparts but not their weaknesses, and perfectly positioned to thrive post-Covid-19.

Changes to how people work, live, and consume will outlast 2020s lockdowns. That will drive demand for information and communications technology, benefiting leaders in this field. The ideal composite country will therefore rival South Korea, where ICT accounts for nearly 28% of total trade on United Nations Conference on Trade and Development data. Nor will it just export such know-how. Its citizens and companies would already have superb internet connections and be in the vanguard of rolling out 5G technology at home.

Economic success will also mean embracing productivity-boosting automation. That means emulating Singapore, which has a chart-topping 918 robots installed per 10,000 employees, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Such technology can lead to the disappearance of lower-skilled jobs. But that wont be a problem for this economic utopia, which dedicates resources to education and equips workers with new expertise. Think Switzerland, which tops the World Economic Forums league tables on the general level of its workforces skills as well as the quantity and quality of education.

Trading partners also matter. Nations exporting to economies that tend to be resilient will fare better through future global downturns. China, whose policymakers manage activity more closely, is the ideal export destination on this count. It is the only major economy whose output wont have contracted in 2020, the International Monetary Fund reckons.

Finally, the ideal Franken-economy of the future will have a green hue, like Denmark, which has the highest score in the Environmental Performance Index ranking produced by Yale and Columbia universities. Countries that are making good progress in becoming carbon neutral are less likely to face big cliff-edge transition costs. They are also more likely to have companies well versed in green technology, like renewables, that will be in demand for todays less eco-friendly peers.

This is a Breakingviews prediction for 2021. To see more of our predictions, click here.

Reuters Breakingviews is the world's leading source of agenda-setting financial insight. As the Reuters brand for financial commentary, we dissect the big business and economic stories as they break around the world every day. A global team of about 30 correspondents in New York, London, Hong Kong and other major cities provides expert analysis in real time.

Sign up for a free trial of our full service at https://www.breakingviews.com/trial and follow us on Twitter @Breakingviews and at http://www.breakingviews.com. All opinions expressed are those of the authors.

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Breakingviews - The Franken-economy that will thrive post-pandemic - Reuters

Talking Heads and Salt-N-Pepa are among those set to receive Lifetime Achievement Awards at next years Grammys.

The Recording Academy announced its 2021 Special Merit Awards early this morning (December 22). Other Lifetime Achievement honourees include: Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Lionel Hampton, Marilyn Horne andSelena.

Ed Cherney, Benny Golson and Kenny Babyface Edmonds are Trustees Award honourees, whileDaniel Weiss is the Technical Grammy Award recipient.

As we welcome the new class of Special Merit Award honorees, it gives us a chance to reward and recognise the influence theyve had in the music community regardless of genre, said Harvey Mason Jr., Interim President/CEO of the Recording Academy.

As a music creator and music lover, I am grateful that we are able to look back at our influences and see the impact that they have made on our community. In a year where music has helped keep us together, I look forward to honouring this iconic group of music creators.

Salt-N-Pepa. CREDIT: Getty Images

The 63rd Annual Grammy Awardstakes place on January 31, 2021. Details on how it will be presented will be announced soon.

Meanwhile, David Byrne has told NME why there probably wont be a Talking Heads reunion in the future.

Byrne was speaking as part ofthis weeks Big Read cover feature, promoting the release of his new concert film American Utopia.

Asked whether hell ever play with the band again, Byrne replied: Probably not. Theres a lot of differences that havent entirely gone away. And I think, as is evident in [the American Utopia] film, Im having a pretty good time doing what Im doing.

Byrne also discussed Remain In Love, the 2020 memoir of Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz, which Byrne previously said he hasnt read, because if I read it I would get asked about it.

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Talking Heads, Salt-N-Pepa and more to receive Lifetime Achievement Grammys - NME

Nerdette podcast host Greta Johnsen reads a lot of books. This year, while stuck at home during the pandemic, she finished nearly 100.

From self-help for the creatively shy to science fiction about parallel earths to a short story collection touching on government overreach, Johnsen consumed a lot of new literary content this year.

I spent a lot more time inside, Johnsen said.

Below are Johnsens 10 favorite books from 2020, in descending order. Each is fiction unless noted otherwise.

A family of four leaves the big city for a quiet vacation in rural New York thats free from cell phone service and the daily bustle. Then, the owners of their rental home show up late one night in a panic. Blackouts have swept the coast, they say, and a hurricane may be heading their direction.

What follows is what Johnsen calls a quiet apocalypse novel that explores how humans carry on with normal life in the midst of unexpected insanity.

It kind of sneaks up on you, Johnsen said. And its extremely relevant to how all of us are operating or have been operating this year.

Benson and Mike are two young gay men living in Houston. Their undefined romantic relationship gets a few more wrinkles when Mike learns his estranged father is on his deathbed. So Mike leaves Benson in their apartment just as Mikes mother arrives for an extended visit.

Memorial is about Mike and Bensons relationships with their fathers, their mothers, themselves and food. Its also about how people create their own family.

It switches perspective halfway through, Johnsen said. And its a really beautiful way of helping you understand what someone elses point of view is even if initially you find it very frustrating.

These books are better than Game of Thrones, Johnsen said of debut author Sarah Kozloffs epic fantasy series. Why?

Because they are complete, she said. And they are feminist as f***.

The novels follow Cerulia, Princess of Weirandale, as she escapes a coup, navigates exile and returns home to fight for her rightful place on the throne.

Especially for people who are looking for a total escape from reality for several hundred pages, this series is the way to go, Johnsen said.

Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy calls the self-help genre oxymoronic. (If you can help yourself, you dont need a book! he told Nerdette last month.)

But How To Write One Song offers some self-help-style advice for both aspiring songwriters and anyone who wants to scratch a creative itch.

This book is so much more than instructions on how to write a song, Johnsen said. I think it would make a lovely gift to someone who you know has creative inclinations but doesnt necessarily give themself permission to explore them.

In One to Watch, Bea Schumacher is a plus-size fashion blogger. When she writes a scathing takedown of a Bachelorette-type TV show, the shows producers give her a call and ask her to be the shows next star contestant.

Johnsen says the book is both a lovely summer read and a critical assessment of reality TV tropes.

I dont let myself watch reality TV because Im afraid I would quit my job and let myself do nothing else, Johnsen said, but I really enjoy reading reality TV books, apparently.

NPR reporter and former Invisibilia podcast host Lulu Miller tells the true story of taxonomist David Starr Jordan, a man responsible for discovering nearly one-fifth of the worlds fish, whose collection of specimens was destroyed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

But what Miller learns about Jordans life starts to transform her own, changing her understanding of history and morality.

Its part-memoir, part-reported story, Johnsen said of Millers book.

So much of it is about celebrating the chaos and imperfections that inherently exist in humanity, Johnsen said. And the fact that its a celebration is such a nice reprieve from what a lot of us are going through.

This one contains a slightly-confusing multiverse premise, so buckle up: There are hundreds of different earths that all include slightly different versions of ourselves. But no one can visit an earth where you already exist, which means the people best equipped for inter-earth exploration are those who are most likely to be dead on the other worlds.

It ends up being a really interesting parable for privilege, Johnsen said. Its super badass, scrappy sci-fi that I think would work really well even if you think you dont like science-fiction, because its action-packed and fascinating.

David Mitchell is the speculative-fiction writer best known for Cloud Atlas, and Johnsen calls his time-bending works literary magic.

Utopia Avenue follows the life and times of a British rock band in the psychedelic 60s, including their meteoric ascent and the turbulence that comes with fame.

You forget that its fiction, Johnsen said. The way hes written it is so beautiful that you want to hear the songs for yourself, but then you remember that you cant because its not real.

Johnsen said that each of the short stories in this collection led her to underline something amazing.

Some of the big themes are loss and longing and belonging, but its also somehow hilarious, Johnsen said. So its one of those really special books that feels like its about capital-I important topics while still just being a great time to read.

The title story is about what would happen if the government set up a bureau to stop fake news, an Office of Historical Corrections.

It goes super awry, Johnsen said. Its grim, but there are funny moments. It seems extremely artful.

The Vanishing Half begins in rural Louisiana in the 1950s, when two light-skinned Black sisters run away to New Orleans.

But their lives take two very different turns: one moves back home after escaping an abusive relationship with her dark-skinned husband. The other chooses to pass as a white woman. Then, the rest of their lives unfold as they deal with the consequences of their decisions.

It was kind of the perfect book I think, Johnsen said. All the characters are fascinating. The plot is soapy but substantive. I would recommend it to anyone.

Its one of those books that felt really timely when it came out this summer, she added, but its also always timely.

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The Best Books Of 2020 According To WBEZs Resident Bookworm - WBEZ

Moviegoing has been thinking of ending things for a century now. The 1918-19 influenza pandemic, met with inadequate and piecemeal federal response, provoked many silent film industry players to pronounce the relatively new commercial medium a goner. Yet it survived long enough to attend its own dress-rehearsal funeral in 2020.

Probable causes of possible death: Netflix, AT&T, Wall Streets relentless cheerleading for the great streaming migration and a pandemic still at large, met once again with an inadequate and piecemeal federal response.

It has been a dire year of loss and suffering for arts, culture, entertainment and the very sociability of our lives.

I wrote a few COVID-19 obituaries, along with so many other Tribune colleagues. My columnist wife ended up hospitalized in the fall, after testing positive. Shes doing well now. Getting to this point meant dealing with the kind of suspense none of us needed.

This was the year every other columnist and critic in existence weighed in on The Queens Gambit. Live theater, which is likely to come roaring back in a year or two in a way that seems deeply unlikely for traditional moviegoing, seemed far away yet so close, thanks to Hamilton, American Utopia, and films such as Radha Blanks shrewd and pungent artists-struggle comedy The Forty-Year-Old Version.

The best new TV I saw included I May Destroy You (HBO); How To with John Wilson (HBO); and, well is Steve McQueens five-film anthology Small Axe (Amazon) a series of films, or a broadly defined limited series? Parsing these distinctions in 2020 seems frivolous. I put two of the Small Axe films in my Top 10 for movies. And thats that.

No worsts this year (well, Holidate, but other than that things were harsh enough. The vaccines en route. The masks remain essential. See you in 2021.

Runners-up, 11-20, in alphabetical order:

Beanpole; Driveways; Earth; The Forty-Year-Old Version; Hamilton; The Nest; The Personal History of David Copperfield; Red, White and Blue (Small Axe); 76 Days; Shirley.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always, directed by Eliza Hittman. Sidney Flanigan excels as a rural Pennsylvania teenager whose pregnancy leads to a risky trip to New York City with her cousin. The girls lives have been spent assessing their limited options; Hittman handles the potential melodrama with documentary honesty and a quiet sense of truth. Streaming on various platforms.

The Vast of Night, directed by Andrew Patterson. In 1950s New Mexico, two high school kids catch the sound of something alien, and its up to them to locate the story behind the frequency. Id see this affectionate, slow-burn riff on various UFO and science-fiction notions again just for the fabulous extended-take opening, which involved hand-held filming, go-cart filming, green-screen digital effects and a lot of nerve. Streaming on Amazon Prime.

Mangrove, directed by Steve McQueen. The first in McQueens quintet of Small Axe films about late 20th Century Black and immigrant London is part community mosaic, part courtroom drama, and a far stronger fact-based drama than, say, The Trial of the Chicago 7. Streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Assistant, directed by Kitty Green. The #MeToo and Harvey Weinstein scandals inspired this remarkable directorial feature debut. We never see the toxic source of the fear, loathing and thwarted careers; Greens story fixes on a low-level assistant in a film distribution company (Julia Garner, unerrring in every averted glance and interior struggle) and her realization that her workplace is killing her, softly. Streaming on various platforms.

Ma Raineys Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe. Radically compressed and thrillingly acted screen version of August Wilsons breakthrough play, set in 1927 Chicago and starring a riveting Viola Davis as blues giant Gertrude Ma Rainey, locking horns with one of her sidemen, played by Chadwick Boseman in his farewell triumph. Lacerating Black history from a poet who, like Boseman, died tragically early. Streaming on Netflix.

City So Real, directed by Steve James. When 2020 happened, documentary filmmaker James went back into a project he thought hed finished. He kept filming through the spring and summer, and added a crucial new chapter to his epic portrait of recent Chicago mayoral politics and eternal Chicago divisions. As a very different portrait of humanity titled it: This is us. Streaming on National Geographic Channel, Hulu, Sling and YouTube.

Nomadland, directed by Chloe Zhao. In the aftermath of a recent recession, a recently widowed woman (Frances McDormand, who optioned the source material and hired Zhao) hits the road in a modified RV, looking for her next life. Zhao made The Rider, my favorite film of 2018. This ones nearly as great a poem of working-class longing, on the edge of darkness.

Filmed during its Broadway engagement at the Hudson Theatre, the same theater where Steve Allen introduced Tonight to Eisenhowers America, this David Byrne box of wonders offers pure pleasure to a very different land. Talking Heads fans tend to fall apart when the elegantly conceived and flawlessly filmed concert gets around to This Must Be the Place. The first song (Here) gets right to where we are now, with its lyric: Heres the connection/To the opposite side. If only we knew where here is. Streaming on HBO Max and Amazon Prime, premium subscription.

First Cow, directed by Kelly Reichardt. The American entrepreneurial spirit collides with the viciousness of the early 19th Century Oregon Territory frontier in Reichardts moving tale of friendship built on deep-fried oily cakes, a taste sensation that turns into a matter of life and death. Streaming on various platforms.

Lovers Rock, directed by Steve McQueen, part of the Small Axe collection. After this miserable, minimal-contact year, McQueens rhapsody of love barely an hour, and 2020u2032s most rewatchable small-scale masterwork couldnt be more welcome. In 1980, an all-night West London house party becomes fraught with sexual danger as well as romantic possibility for characters played by Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn and Micheal Ward. McQueen and co-writer Courttia Newland pulled from their own house party memories of the time. The result proves how little narrative a narrative needs if everything else has the moves, on or off the dance floor. Streaming on Amazon.

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Top 10 movies of 2020 | Movies | wyomingnews.com - Wyoming Tribune

By Megan Riedlinger 7:29am PST, Dec 25, 2020

We can't wait to binge "Bridgerton"! The new Shondaland period series set in Regency-period London which is based on author Julia Quinn's popular book series drops on Netflix on Dec. 25, 2020, making it the perfect Christmas present for fans of producer Shonda Rhimes' brand of delicious drama. In honor of its debut, Wonderwall.com is explaining who's who with this handy guide to the cast! Keep reading to meet them all

RELATED: The best Netflix series released during the pandemic

You might recognize Reg-Jean Page from another Shondaland series! The Brit starred on "For the People" on ABC from 2018 until 2019. Before that, he was best known for his role as Chicken George in the 2016 miniseries "Roots."

RELATED: The best period TV shows and movies to watch right now

Phoebe Dynevor plays Daphne Bridgerton, the eldest daughter in a large aristocratic family who's just made her society debut and started her search for a husband.

Acting is in Phoebe Dynevor's blood! The actress, the daughter of British star Sally Dynevor, began performing professionally at 14 on the BBC One series "Waterloo Road." From there, she appeared on other British series like "Prisoners' Wives" and "Dickensian" before landing her first American role on TV Land's "Younger" in 2017, where she continues to appear as Clare.

Ruth Gemmell plays Lady Violet Bridgerton, the wealthy widowed matriarch who's a loving mother to her large aristocratic brood.

Ruth Gemmell has been in movies including 1997's "Fever Pitch" opposite Colin Firth as well as a slew of TV shows, mostly in her native Britain, including "Deep State," "Utopia," "Home Fires," "Penny Dreadful," "Silent Witness," "The Bill" and many, many more.

Scheming society mother Portia Featherington is brought to life by Polly Walker.

Polly Walker scored a Golden Globe nomination back in the '00s for her work on the series "Rome." She's also popped up on shows like "Numb3rs," "Prisoners' Wives," "The Mentalist" and, most recently, "Pennyworth." The English actress has an impressive film career too, with roles in the films "Patriot Games," "Emma," "Clash of the Titans" and "John Carter." She's been married to actor Laurence Penry-Jones since 2008.

Prudence Featherington the eldest daughter in her family is played by Bessie Carter.

Bessie Carter has the perfect acting pedigree to join a period piece both her parents are "Downton Abbey" alums! Yep, the star's parents are Imelda Staunton (who played Maud, Dowager BaronessBagshaw in the 2019 movie) and Jim Carter (who played Mr. Carson on the series and in the film). Bessie even appeared with them both on the BBC series "Cranford" back in 2007. More recently, Bessie starred on the British shows "Howards End" and "Beecham House."

Nicola Coughlan (left) plays sweet and kind Penelope Featherington, the youngest of three sisters on the London marriage market who is friends with the Bridgerton girls.

Nicola Coughlan's career really kicked off in 2018. That year the star who had previously only had an episode of the BBC soap opera "Doctors" on her resume landed roles on two buzzy series, "Derry Girls" and "Harlots" both of which were huge hits in the U.K. and abroad thanks to streaming on Netflix. She's also active in the theater and has done voice work.

Harriet Cains was cast as Philippa Featherington, the husband-hunting middle daughter in the female-dominated Featherington family.

Like many in the "Bridgerton" cast, Harriet Cains kicked off her TV career with a part on the soap opera "Doctors." From there she landed roles on shows like "Hollyoaks Later" and "In the Flesh" while also appearing in short films.She's seen here on the British detective series "Marcella."

Jonathan Bailey plays Anthony Bridgerton, the eldest son among the Bridgertons siblings who's tasked with leading the family following his father's death.

Like many of his castmates, Jonathan Bailey is best known for his work on British TV and on the stage. He's appeared on series in the U.K. including "Doctor Who" and "Broadchurch" and has received acclaim for his work on London's West End. American audiences might recognize him from a stint he did on "Jack Ryan" in 2018.

Bringing Eloise Bridgerton one of the teenagers in a large aristocratic family to life? Actress Claudia Jessie (center).

Like many of her "Bridgerton" co-stars, Claudia Jessie appeared on an episode of BBC's "Doctors" which was actually her first ever role. From there, she landed parts on series like "WPC 56," "Lovesick," "Vanity Fair" and "Doctor Who."

Adjoa Andoh plays Lady Danbury, a powerful and influential dowager who was a friend to the new Duke of Hastings' late mother.

Adjoa Andoh is a very familiar face to British audiences. She's best known for her work on popular shows like "Doctor Who," "Casualty" and "EastEnders" in the U.K. When it comes to American roles, she appeared in Clint Eastwood's movie "Invictus" alongside Morgan Freeman. She's also been a fixture on the British stage. The actress is married to Howard Cunnell, with whom she shares three kids.

Luke Newton (second from right) plays Colin Bridgerton, the third son in the aristocratic Bridgerton family.

Luke Newton, who's best known for his work on U.K. television screens, made his debut on the BBC show "The Cut" back in 2010. He also appeared on a show many of his co-stars also popped up on over the years the BBC soap opera "Doctors." In 2016 and 2017, he appeared on the British Disney Channel series "The Lodge," also singing on the show's soundtracks.

Gossip-loving Queen Charlotte (seated), the wife of King George III, is played by Golda Rosheuvel.

Golda Rosheuvel has appeared in many British TV shows from "The Bill," "Casualty" and "Torchwood" to "Luther," "Coronation Street," "Silent Witness" and more. She's also been in films including Lady Macbeth and has worked extensively in the theater.

Ruby Barker (center) play Marina Thompson, a country relation of the Featheringtons who comes to live with her cousins in London.

Before landing a role on "Bridgerton," Ruby Barker only had three British television series on her resume. he appeared on "Wolfblood" in 2017, the soap opera "Doctors" from 2017 until 2019 and "Cobra" in 2020.

Ben Miller plays Lord Featherington, the father of three young ladies on the marriage market.

Ben Miller has been a fixture on British TV since 1991. His most notable roles have been in projects including "Death in Paradise," "Armstrong and Miller," "The Worst Week of My Life" and "Primeval." He's been married to Jessica Parker, with whom he shares a son and daughter, since 2013. He also has a son from a previous marriage to actress Belinda Stewart-Wilson.

Florence Hunt plays young Hyacinth Bridgerton, the youngest daughter in her aristocratic family.

"Bridgerton" is only the second project for Florence Hunt. The young actress previously appeared on the 2020 Netflix series "Cursed."

Will Tilston plays Gregory Bridgerton, the youngest son in his aristocratic family.

Prior to landing his role on "Bridgerton," Will Tilston's only other acting part was playing Christopher Robin in "Goodbye Christopher Robin" in 2017.

Luke Thompson plays sensitive, artistic Benedict Bridgerton, the second-eldest Bridgerton son. Luke has an extensive background in the theater and also appeared on the big screen in "Dunkirk."

Julie Andrews narrates "Bridgerton" think of her as a Regency era Gossip Girl. She plays the anonymous but well-informed Lady Whistledown, the author of a scandal sheet that's read among those in polite society.

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Who's who on 'Bridgerton': A guide to the cast | Gallery - Wonderwall