The New York Times - USA (2020-12-02)

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2020 C1

N

NEWS CRITICISM

5 ALBUM REVIEW

Miley Cyrus is ready to rock,

’80s style. BY LINDSAY ZOLADZ

6 MUSIC

A politically charged piano

work. BY SETH COLTER WALLS

6 BOOK REVIEW

Little faith in

marriage, but some

in psychoanalysis.

BY JOHN WILLIAMS

This interview includes spoilers for Sunday’s
episode of “The Undoing.”

Sunday night’s finale of HBO’s “The Undo-
ing” finally wrapped up its modest mystery
(Who murdered Elena Alves?), tickled us
one last time with Nicole Kidman’s fab win-
ter coats and seized the attention of the in-
ternet. (“Based on Twitter I’ve deduced
that a fancy coat played by Hugh Grant
killed a baby,” one writer quipped on Twit-
ter.)
Grant himself planned to avoid social me-

dia after the show’s conclusion, he said on

Monday morning, “but then I took a quick

look and two hours later, I’m still scrolling.”

“There are plenty of people who are

telling me how old I look, and they’re not

wrong,” he added. “But the fact that they

liked the finale is huge.”

If “Undoing” didn’t quite reach the “Who

Shot J. R.?” or “Who killed Laura Palmer?”

level of fevered fascination, the six-week

limited series did qualify as event television

in the pandemic era, something to obsess

about while the world was on pause. So-

cially distanced viewers with time to kill

gathered around the social media water

cooler to lust after the resplendent clothes

and spin increasingly implausible theories.

Noma Dumezweni and Hugh Grant in the final episode of the mystery “The Undoing” on HBO.

NIKO TAVERNISE/HBO

The ‘Undoing’ Whodunit

David E. Kelley and Hugh

Grant discuss the finale.

By JENNIFER VINEYARD

CONTINUED ON PAGE C4

In 1970, homosexual acts were still out-

lawed in parts of Britain and would remain

so for more than a decade. Yet two years be-

fore that nation even had its first official

Gay Pride rally, the quintessentially British

songwriter Ray Davies of the Kinks wrote

“Lola,” a song that embraced a full spec-

trum of gender nonconformity. “Girls will

be boys/and boys will be girls,” he sang, be-

fore emphasizing “it’s a mixed-up, mud-

dled-up, shook-up world/except for Lola.”

The song shot to No. 2 on the British sin-

gles chart, hit the Top 10 in the United

States and went all the way to No. 1 in five

other countries. The response even took its

author by surprise. “I didn’t think the song

would be so ahead of its time,” Davies said.

“But time has proven it so.”

To emphasize the single’s pivotal role,

and to celebrate its 50th anniversary, Da-

vies has assembled a sprawling boxed set

that adds remixes and outtakes to the al-

bum that contained it, “Lola Versus Power-

man and the Moneygoround, Part One.”

The LP, a witty and scathing sendup of the

music industry’s exploitation of artists,

turned around the fortunes of the commer-

cially flagging Kinks, making so deep an im-

pression on a then 12-year-old Wes Ander-

son that when he grew up to become a direc-

tor, he used three songs from it for his 2007

film “The Darjeeling Limited.”

“I planned scenes in our movie around

‘This Time Tomorrow’ and ‘Strangers’ spe-

cifically,” Anderson wrote in an email. “Sub-

Ray Davies of the Kinks in 1970, the year he wrote “Lola.”

The song has been an enduring hit with a simple but

irresistible chorus hook and a back story.

PHOTOSHOT

‘Lola’: Still Inspiring at 50

In 1970, Ray Davies of the Kinks wrote a song that embraced gender

nonconformity, and now he is finding new ways to continue its story.

By JIM FARBER

CONTINUED ON PAGE C5

It’s not polite to stare. Especially if you per-

ceive the person you’re looking at as differ-

ent in some way. But if you avert your eyes

quickly, there’s no time for your perception

of difference to change.

“On Display” disrupts this pattern. It’s a

performance art exhibition, a group of peo-

ple acting as if they were sculptures. They

pose in stillness, with their eyes open, or

move between poses very slowly, eyes

closed. They do this for hours. There’s lots

of time to look, to see and be seen.

By design, these bodies exhibit differ-

ence. “On Display” is a project of Heidi

Latsky Dance, the kind of company called

physically integrated, which means that its

diverse array of dancers includes many

who are disabled. The project began in 2015

as guerrilla art in Times Square commemo-

rating the 25th anniversary of the Ameri-

cans with Disabilities Act.

“In stillness, the dancers are beautiful,

vulnerable,” Ms. Latsky said in a phone in-

terview. “But there’s also a fierceness in

their ability to be exposed. The longer

they’re still, the more you can see.”

That first iteration went so well that Ms.

Latsky remarked to a friend that she

wished people could do it all over the world

on a given day. The friend — Kelly Drum-

mond Cawthon, the creative director of Sec-

ond Echo, a Tasmanian ensemble that

trains and employs artists with and without

disabilities — responded with a date: Dec.

3, the United Nations’ International Day of

Persons With Disabilities. Thus “On Dis-

play Global” was born.

Since then, it has expanded from New

York and Australia to dozens of sites across

BEOWULF SHEEHAN

The Disabled

Become Visible

As Works of Art

Heidi Latsky’s ‘On Display’ and Kinetic Light’s ‘Descent’

show the broadness and diversity of a field of dance.

Heidi Latsky Dance Company in “On Display” at New York City Hall in 2017.

The performers pose in stillness or move between poses very slowly.

By BRIAN SEIBERT

CONTINUED ON PAGE C2