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“I don’t know why we have to do this over the phone,” says Arnold, speaking from Rotterdam to his estranged half brother, Jerry, in Idaho. That’s how I felt too, at least during the first half of Samuel D. Hunter’s “Grangeville,” a bleak two-hander named for the men’s hometown. Most of what happens happens at … Read more

new video loaded: Roberta Flack, ‘Killing Me Softly’ Singer, Dies at 88 transcript Back transcript Roberta Flack, ‘Killing Me Softly’ Singer, Dies at 88 As a Grammy Award-winning singer and pianist, Roberta Flack topped the charts as one of the most popular artists of the 1970s. Singing: “Killing me softly with his song, killing me … Read more

Altie Karper had been waiting for the call for years. An editor at a Knopf imprint, she had long wanted to publish an English translation of the last novel by Chaim Grade, one of the leading Yiddish authors of the 20th century. Grade was less well known than the Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, … Read more

News flash: Drake’s music is not dead. Although the Canadian rapper, the longtime prince of streaming, was badly pummeled in a diss-track war with Kendrick Lamar last year, and two weeks ago Lamar performed Exhibit A of that fight — the vicious “Not Like Us” — at the Super Bowl halftime show, Drake’s latest album … Read more

The renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas announced on Monday that he would scale back his engagements because of a recurrence of brain cancer. Thomas, 80, who has been grappling since 2021 with glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive form of the disease, said in a statement that his doctors recently told him the cancer had returned. Thomas, … Read more

‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ (1971) By the time Flack released her cover of this Shirelles’ classic, in late 1971, Carole King (who wrote the song with Gerry Goffin) had already done her own slowed-down version on her megaselling LP “Tapestry.” But Flack’s performance is still striking, a haunting showcase for her voice as … Read more

“I’ve been told I sound like Nina Simone, Nancy Wilson, Odetta, Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, even Mahalia Jackson,” Ms. Flack told The New York Times in 1970. “If everybody said I sounded like one person, I’d worry. But when they say I sound like them all, I know I’ve got my own style.” Preternaturally gifted … Read more

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on books with a sharp comic edge that were adapted for the screen. Just tap or click your answers to … Read more

In the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new “Hamlet,” the Danish royal court is all at sea — quite literally. The set is a ship’s deck that tilts and creaks ominously while a screen plays eerily textured footage of a roiling ocean. At several points, the action pauses and an ensemble of actors in Edwardian dress scatters … Read more

In the 1990s, as her career was on the rise, a 20-something Posey told an interviewer that she was working on a screenplay. She was interested, she said, in writing roles for older women. “I love that I said that,” Posey said when I brought it up. “I’ve always known, or felt, that I would … Read more