Just after Christmas I spent a few greedy, giddy days attending London productions—running through the rain to the Garrick Theatre, in the West End, for “Orlando,” then getting baffled by the brutalist maze of the Barbican Center while trying to find “My Neighbour Totoro,” and finally zipping out to Punchdrunk’s Woolwich storehouses for “The Burnt City.” There was no logic to it— my planning was catch-as-catch-can. But the shows all turned out to be portraits of worlds grown suddenly, surprisingly larger, and of the rather lost feeling of the small humans at their center. (In one case, that lost human was me.)
I had been particularly eager to see “Orlando,” which slots into the current gender discourse with a nearly audible click. In Neil Bartlett’s new adaptation, as in Virginia Woolf ’s 1928 novel, a poetic young aristocrat named Orlando catches the eye of Queen Elizabeth, embarks on various amorous adventures, falls into a coma, and wakes up changed into a woman. In the book, which is styled as a biography, Woolf ’s narrator tracks Orlando’s transformation, and, for a single paragraph, the text’s “he” changes to “they,” before pivoting to “she.” (Woolf wrote, “The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity.”) The show’s gleaming, nonbinary star, Emma Corrin—perhaps best known as the newlywed Princess Diana, from “The Crown”—uses they/them pronouns, the gender-fluid use of which Woolf may have pioneered a hundred years ago. This synchrony feels like fate.
Denne historien er fra January 16, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra January 16, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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The Football Bro - Pat McAfee brings a casual new style to ESPN.
If, on a cool weekend morning in autumn, you happen to be watching “College GameDay,” on ESPN, don’t worry about figuring out which of the broadcasters behind the improbably long desk is Pat McAfee. He’s the one with the roast-pork tan, his hair cut high and tight, likely tieless among his more businesslike colleagues. The rest of the onair crew—Lee Corso, Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, and, newly, the former University of Alabama coach Nick Saban—tend to look and dress and talk like participants in an old-school Republican-primary debate. McAfee, though, favors windowpane checks on his jackets and a slip of chest poking out from behind his two or three open buttons. If the others are politicians, he’s the cool-coded megachurch pastor who sometimes acts as their spiritual adviser.
The Dark Time. - On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging.
On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging. The point of contact between NATO and Russia's nuclear stronghold is the small town of Kirkenes. For years, Russia has treated the area as a laboratory, testing intelligence and influence operations before replicating them across Europe.
MIRROR IMAGES
‘A Different Man” and The Substance.”
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY
Proximity to wealth proves perilous in Rumaan Alam’ novel Entitlement.”
EYES WIDE SHUT
How Monet shared a private world.
WITH THE MOSTEST
The very rich hours of Pamela Harriman.
HUGO HAMILTON AUTOBAHN
On the Autobahn outside Frankfurt. November. The fields were covered in a thin sheet of snow.
TRY IT ON
How Law Roach reimagined red-carpet style.
SORRY I'M NOT YOUR CLOWN TODAY
Bowen Yang's trip to Oz, by way of conversion therapy and S..N.L.”
SNIFF TEST
A maverick perfumer tries to make his mark on a storied fashion house.