Latest news with #JackMcMillan
Los Angeles Times
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
In ‘Étoile,' details and dialogue drive a ballet-world comedy
Near the start of the fifth episode of 'Étoile,' a highly enjoyable series premiering Thursday on Prime Video, Jack McMillan (Luke Kirby), executive director of the Metropolitan Ballet Theater, stands outside New York's Film Forum, waiting for Geneviève Lavigne (Charlotte Gainsbourg), general director of Le Ballet National in Paris. The marquee reads 'Frederick Wiseman's Ballet & La Danse,' two real-world documentaries on the dance world by our greatest documentarian; the first, from 1995, looks at the American Ballet Theater and the second, from 2009, the Paris Opera Ballet, actual institutions whose shadows are cast on the wall of this comedy — with a dramatic turn or two — from Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino. The Wiseman reference betokens a certain seriousness on the part of the creators, an awareness that people might be watching who know a thing or two about the subject. (And documentary film.) Sherman-Palladino, who studied dance from a young age, is already well known to fans as the woman behind 'Gilmore Girls,' 'Bunheads' — which also had a dance theme — and 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,' which share with 'Étoile' an innate theatricality; an interest in performance (apart from 'Gilmore'); and the verbal rhythms of prewar screwball comedy. There are scenes whose dialogue, with a little adjustment, could have served Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, or Carole Lombard and John Barrymore; it's the world as once scripted by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur or Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, if not quite to that level, and the combination of theatrical speech and location shooting — in and around New York's Lincoln Center and the Palais Garnier and Salle Favart in Paris — makes for something interesting. Artificial in a way that paradoxically allows for something real and relatable, it's also, for all its air of sophistication, corny, sentimental, sweet and sexual without being exactly sexy — all these people really care about is their work. Setting the series in motion is a proposal from Geneviève that, in order to combat their mutual afflictions — aging audiences, slow ticket sales post-pandemic and creeping cultural irrelevancy — her company and Jack's would agree to swap some top talent, generating publicity and excitement on both sides of the Atlantic. The bill for whatever this costs will be picked up by Crispin Shamblee (Simon Callow), a wealthy balletomane whom Jack regards as 'the devil' and whose exaggerated posh delivery belies the fact that he's an arms manufacturer (and delivered the eulogy at Rush Limbaugh's funeral); friend and/or foe, he will come in and out of the action as an unaccountable comical wild card. Swapped to Paris is Mishi Duplessis (Taïs Vinolo), the daughter of the French cultural minister; having been cut from the French troupe's ballet school, she's become a featured soloist in New York and is now being repatriated, much to her displeasure — and that of the jumped-over ballerinas who regard her as a 'nepo baby,' even if they can't properly pronounce it. Also traded is Tobias Bell (Gideon Glick, a 'Maisel' vet), a choreographer we are asked to accept as a groundbreaking genius, and whose thorough eccentricity Glick plays quietly and quizzically, as if the world around him, to the limited degree he understands it, is out of joint. Also appearing are a sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are not the only characters to quickly disappear once a minor point has been made. Heading west to Manhattan is Cheyenne Toussaint (Lou de Laâge), the Paris company's star ballerina — its 'étoile' — who earlier had made a splash as a guest artist in New York. (She, like Geneviève, has some old sub-romantic business with Jack.) We first meet her in a stormy sea as an ecowarrior, attacking a ship fishing illegally, then getting arrested herself. Cheyenne's intensity, often indistinguishable from rage, can border on the comic, but de Laâge delivers an all-in, all-out performance; she sits and stands and walks like a dancer (though she also has a double for the dances) and makes you believe she's who the show says she is. Whether actual star ballerinas are this serious and demanding and socially brutal, I don't know, but this is a television show. 'Étoile' is not long on plot, in the sense that it is heading toward some obvious, definable goal — it has rivulets of plot, rather, involving different characters in different situations and settings, working out problems that have nothing necessarily to do with the series' Big Idea, as the show moves toward its first-season irresolution. (New plotlines spark up near the end, making a second season a given.) In an eight-episode series, such sidetracks can hardly be avoided, but it's a show in any case more enjoyable in its details and performances than in the fate of the companies, or the future of dance. These plots and subplots and miniplots involving dancers and assistants, technicians and politicians, are not all equally rewarding — best of all is the relationship between Mishi and Cheyenne's intimidating mother, Bruna (Marie Berto), who hammers on things, and with whom Mishi finds herself lodged — but together they create an attractive tapestry. Kirby, whom I first noticed in the great Canadian series 'Slings & Arrows,' a Shakespeare-themed backstage comedy not unlike 'Étoile,' and who played a convincing Lenny Bruce in 'Maisel,' rockets between nervous energy and being a nervous wreck as Jack; his flying up and down stairs is a motif here. Gainsbourg, in simply accessorized ninja black, is the picture of a woman who knows and means business. David Haig claims a fair share of the show's comedy lines as Jack's closest friend, Nicholas Leutwylek, a former choreographer and dancer who now gets around on an electric scooter, though he remembers the good old days of cocaine and Quaaludes and when, as a guest artist at Stuttgart, hard-partying Germans 'gave me so many petrochemicals I was technically a car for most of that season.' (Sleep aids seem to be the drug of choice for young and old here.) Kelly Bishop, from 'Gilmore' and 'Bunheads,' plays Jack's mother. David Byrne makes a funny appearance as David Byrne; choreographer Mark Morris and no doubt other real-world dance world figures I couldn't identify lend authenticity. The dancers are good, naturally, even if the dances can sometimes feel less exciting than we're meant to find them. More interesting is the placing of bodies in space when nobody's dancing, lending a choreographic energy to ordinary conversations. Those Wiseman films are streaming on Kanopy, by the way, accessible to anyone with a library card (they're free, and you should have one). They'll take you right into that rarefied world, without the extra comedy but with plenty of inherent drama. I can't recommend them enough.
BBC News
20-04-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
McMillan fourth and Firth third at GB Championships
Olympic gold medallist Jack McMillan finished fourth at the Aquatics GB Swimming Championships, while Paralympic champion Bethany Firth was third in her was fourth in the 200m freestyle final at the London Aquatics Centre, while Firth was third in the multi-classification women's 200m individual from Northern Ireland, was fourth behind Duncan Scott and James Guy, who were tied for first, while Matt Richards was third. The trio have 15 Olympic medals between them and won gold at the Paris Games in the 4x200m final alongside Tom Dean, while McMillan secured his gold by swimming in the didn't compete in the trials but was pre-selected for the upcoming World Championships in the relay along with Scott, Guy and looks set to join them in Singapore, most likely in the same capacity as last summer, where he is likely to swim the heats once giving birth to baby Charlotte in July, six-time Paralympic champion Firth was third in her 200m individual 29-year-old has returned to full-time training and is aiming to qualify for the World Para-swimming Championships in September. S14 competitor Firth touched first on 889 points, thanks in the main to her characteristically outstanding backstroke leg. Faye Rogers came in just behind in a new S10 British record of 2:28.97 but scored more points on 919 to briefly sit in the gold-medal position, only for S8 athlete Brock Whiston in lane one to power home for an overall tally of 921 and take the the Irish championships last week, Firth recorded a time in the 100m backstroke that would have won gold at the Paris Paralympics by one-hundredth of a second, so is showing good form and will look to make the GB team at the Summer National Championships at the end of July as she returns to competitive action.
