THEATER
Relax, ‘Much Ado’ Fans
In April, the Public Theater suspended its
Shakespeare in the Park season for the first
time, a move as disheartening as it was re-
sponsible. One production has since re-
emerged in a new form, a “Richard II” star-
ring André Holland and adapted for radio
by the director Saheem Ali. But if you’re
missing the Delacorte’s visual pleasures,
PBS, through its Great Performances se-
ries, has made last summer’s exuberant
“Much Ado About Nothing” available on its
website into September (it will also air the
play on Aug. 14; check local listings).
Directed by Kenny Leon and starring a
radiant Danielle Brooks (“Orange Is the
New Black”), the production moves the set-
ting from Sicily to an Atlanta suburb and
situates the tragedy-flecked romance
within the Black Lives Matter movement.
The comedy takes big swings and only
sometimes connects, but Brooks’s Beatrice
outshines any light rig, and her co-star,
Grantham Coleman, makes a dynamic,
teasing Benedick.
The PBS recording captures the play in
perfect weather, but Brooks, in a recent
email, recalled a night when it rained so
hard she was sure everyone would leave.
“To then witness over 1,000 people who
stayed to watch us perform only increased
my love for the theater and its community,”
she wrote. “It truly reminded me of how
magical the theater is.” Stream “Much Ado”
and remind yourself, too.
ALEXIS SOLOSKI
JAZZ
From Live to Livestreaming
More than almost any other musician to-
day, Shabaka Hutchings, the tenor saxo-
phonist and serial bandleader, has helped
drive a new and real interest in jazz among
younger listeners. He has done so by being
selective about the musical and social histo-
ries he draws from, and by connecting un-
self-consciously with London’s dance hall
culture and the urgent political life of this
moment.
From the time Hutchings started making
waves about eight years ago, his greatest
asset has been his live shows, where his
saxophone leads the way through seething
corridors of rhythm. His second-greatest
asset has been his ability to make his re-
cordings bleed and bellow like a live per-
formance. So how will he take to the
livestreaming format?
We’ll find out on Saturday at 5 p.m. East-
ern time when, in lieu of an in-person show
that had been planned for this summer in
Central Park, Hutchings will play a Sum-
merStage Anywhere Session from Total Re-
freshment Center in London. He’ll be joined
by the two-drummer team from his popular
group Sons of Kemet, Tom Skinner and Ed-
die Hick; his fellow breakout tenor saxo-
phone star Nubya Garcia; the guitarist
Dave Okumu; and the bassists Tom Her-
bert and Neil Charles. The concert will be
streamed on SummerStage’s YouTube
channel, and its Twitch, Facebook and In-
stagram pages.
GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOMISCELLANEOUSWindows on Our World
With all kinds of artists experiencing vari-
ous kinds of quarantine, there’s hardly been
a shortage of quick videos addressing the
way we live now. What’s distinct about
those on the website Decameron Row is the
container.
You see a cartoon drawing of apartment
buildings. If you click on one of the win-
dows, you get a video postcard, around a
minute long, from a writer or a dancer or a
musician, somewhere in the world.
It’s like an advent calendar, an assort-
ment of chocolates. The sense of surprise
and variety is high. One video might be dia-
ristic, the next poetic. One silly, the next
sad. This one is on the nose. That one is off
to the side. A label tells you the artist’s
name, location and discipline. But a writer
might drum. A dancer might recite.
The project’s title alludes to Boccaccio’s
“The Decameron,” that 14th-century col-
lection of stories and its frame of people en-
tertaining one another in quarantine from
the plague. That the website’s gathering is
only virtual is part of its poignancy; there’s
a ghost of desolation in the title, too.
This community is, in one sense, a fan-
tasy: the Chilean musician next door to the
Israeli writer next door to the Thai film-
maker. But in another sense, it’s real, and
not all the windows are lighted yet, and
more artists move in every week.
BRIAN SEIBERTCLASSICAL MUSICA Unique Golden Calf
Arnold Schoenberg’s powerful, unfinished
opera “Moses und Aron” poses multiple
challenges for directors. Perhaps the big-
gest: Anyone producing it may seem to side
with one of the characters in this biblical
narrative, which is driven by a dispute be-
tween Moses (who abjures divine represen-
tations) and his brother, Aron (who thinks
people need idols).
As is often the case, the director Barrie
Kosky has some ingenious ideas up his
sleeve in the Komische Oper Berlin per-
formance, free to stream on the Operavi-
sion YouTube channel until Sept. 11. Kosky
depicts the drama with clarity. Yet he also
realizes some scenes through abstraction
and anachronism, so that he doesn’t fall too
squarely on Aron’s side.
That means blood sacrifice and orgiastic
nudity are out (unlike a recent staging by
Willy Decker). But that doesn’t preclude
Kosky from offering us a fervently wor-
shiped Golden Calf. Here, the idol is a
painted dancer: a cross between a Weimar-
era cabaret performer and the fate of
Shirley Eaton’s character in the film “Gold-
finger.”
This gets at the sensuality that grips the
Israelites as they await Moses’ return, but
stops short of a sexploitation aesthetic that
might throw off the opera’s equilibrium. Not
every Kosky innovation hits as strongly.
Still, this is a spellbinding presentation of
Schoenberg’s work, which in other hands
can seem most profound when heard in-
stead of seen.
SETH COLTER WALLSKIDSTaking Their Acts Online
When many performers entered quaran-
tine, the characters they portrayed van-
ished with them. But not Inspector Pulse,
who is Bruce Adolphe’s wacky alter ego, or
Wolfgang Amadeus Schmutzinberry, Rami
Vamos’s comic persona. Those fictional fel-
lows now live happily online.
Adolphe, a composer and the director of
family programs at the Chamber Music So-
ciety of Lincoln Center, created Inspector
Pulse, a sort of symphonic Sherlock
Holmes, for the long-running Meet the Mu-
sic! children’s concerts.
In May he invented that series’s pan-
demic replacement: Inspector-
Pulse@Home, presented free on Facebookevery Friday at 11 a.m. Eastern time
through Aug. 21. Using funny props and a
keyboard, Inspector Pulse investigates mu-
sical concepts in each short video episode,
which is then archived on the society’s web-
site, along with related activities. This
week, “A Trilling Story!” will tackle orna-
mentation, as Inspector Pulse tries to iden-
tify a familiar tune that’s been overloaded
with musical flourishes.
Schmutzinberry, a clueless contempo-
rary composer who reveres Mozart, used to
appear at Lincoln Center, too. Now, howev-
er, he stars exclusively in “Schmutzin-
berry,” a new free web series that Vamos, a
guitarist and composer, has developed with
Kevin Hylton, a producer and writer.
Featuring other performers, well known
and not, the brief “Schmutzinberry” videos
explore musical topics like emotion (the pi-
lot, “So Many Feelings”) and tempo
(Episode 2, “Wolfgang Gets the Beat”).
LAUREL GRAEBERPOP & ROCKLet the Humans Guide You
Spotify’s Discover playlists can be rich and
rewarding, but sometimes it’s nice to es-
cape the algorithm. For those seeking a hu-
man helping hand in their quest for new mu-
sic, Sonos Radio, a streaming service intro-
duced this year, offers a selection of artist-
curated programs on its signature station,
Sonos Sound System.
Initially available exclusively on Sonos
devices, these radio hours were recently
archived on Mixcloud, where they can be
streamed on demand.
Guest curators have included the indie
darlings Vagabon, Phoebe Bridgers and
Angel Olsen. For David Byrne, an espe-
cially adventurous listener, one session
wasn’t enough: After an initial appearance
in which he offered something for crate dig-
gers (e.g., “Refined Fuji Garbage,” by the
Nigerian artist Ayinde Barrister) and pop
enthusiasts (Billie Eilish, Christine and the
Queens) alike, Byrne signed on for a recur-
ring gig. His new show, “Here Comes Ev-
erybody,” will air on the first of every
month.
Another new artist radio hour is set to
premiere in the coming week: On Wednes-
day, the eclectic psych-soul trio Khruang-
bin, which recently released its third album,
“Mordechai,” will spin a selection of favorite
tracks. Sonos owners can listen to the ses-
sion on their devices; others need only wait
24 hours to listen to it on Mixcloud.
OLIVIA HORN6 Things
To D o
This
Weekend
Shakespeare, banned from the
park, moves online as other
artists attempt web-basedperformances as well.
SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES (THEATER),
JACOB BLICKENSTAFF FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
(HUTCHINGS), CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN
CENTER (ADOLPHE)From top left, a
production of “Much Ado
About Nothing”; Shabaka
Hutchings on the
saxophone; and Bruce
Adolphe, who will tackle
ornamentation in “A
Trilling Story!” on Friday
on Facebook.C2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2020Watching Sign up for our newsletter: nytimes.com/newsletters/watching
... a half-hour, and I miss the silly bits in ‘Barry.’
‘HITMEN’
ON PEACOCK PREMIUM
You might know Sue
Perkins and Mel
Giedroyc (near and far
right) from their time
hosting “The Great
British Baking Show,”
but in this breezy com-
edy they play endearing
assassins. While “Hit-
men” doesn’t have the
dark intensity or moral complexity of “Barry,” it does share its affec-
tion for clash-of-context comedy, in which characters indulge in pop
culture banter or a game of charades while carrying out horrible
crimes. There’s a fun zip here, and if you watch a lot of British televi-
sion, you will recognize every supporting player. The first episode is
free on regular Peacock, but the subsequent five are available only
with a subscription to Peacock Premium.
... 90 minutes, and try the gray stuff (it’s tasty).
‘HOWARD’
FRIDAY ON DISNEY+
This new documentary
biography of the play-
wright and lyricist How-
ard Ashman traces his
life from his childhood in
Baltimore through his
death from AIDS in 1991.
Ashman is best known
for writing the book and
lyrics for the musical
adaptation of “Little Shop of Horrors” and for writing the lyrics for
“The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and parts of “Aladdin,”
but this film pays ample attention to his student work and earlier
pieces, too. The archival material here is wonderful, especially the
initial character designs for Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” and the
footage of Ashman coaching Paige O’Hara (above), the voice of Belle,
on the exact intonation for a lyric that eventually taught a generation
of children the word “provincial.”... many hours, and empty stadiums bum me out.
BUD GREENSPAN’S
OLYMPIC FILMS
ON THE OLYMPIC YOUTUBE
CHANNEL, HBO MAX AND
THE CRITERION CHANNEL
Sunday would have been
the closing ceremony for
the Tokyo games had the
coronavirus not ruined
everything, so if you’re
missing the spectacle
and catharsis of it all, try
one of the many Olympic
films directed by Bud Greenspan, 10 of which are currently available
to stream. I’m partial to “Calgary ’88: 16 Days of Glory” and “Atlan-
ta’s Olympic Glory,” which includes a segment about the track star
Jackie Joyner-Kersee (above) and her final Olympic Games. Or, for a
fuller understanding of what athletes endure, listen to the podcast
“Heavy Medals,” which chronicles some of the abusive coaching
practices in women’s gymnastics.This weekend I have...
SKY UK LIMITED DISNEY+ BARTON SILVERMAN/THE NEW YORK TIMESBY MARGARET LYONS