A LIVE performance of musical Legally Blonde had to be halted when a canine cast member pooped centre stage.
And the bulldog’s performance stool the show, with the audience giving him a standing ovation and a huge cheer at the end.
A live performance of musical Legally Blonde had to be halted when a canine cast member pooped centre stageThe show is based on the 2001 comedy movie starring Reese WitherspoonSource: Alamy
The sell-out crowd at the musical comedy, which stars Strictly finalist Amber Davies as Elle Woods, erupted into laughter when the pooch walked to the front of the stage before turning and starting to do its business.
Onlookers said the actors nervously glanced around, unsure what to do next, before quickly leaving the stage.
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The lights at Manchester’s Opera House, which seats 1,920, were turned down and two maintenance workers wearing gloves and armed with disinfectant spray rushed on stage from the wings.
They quickly dealt with the situation before dashing off so the show could go on — to huge applause and cheers.
One audience member said: “It was hilarious. The actors and audience were just like, ‘Oh my God, is this actually happening?’
“There was quite a lot of it, and the dog walked along as he was doing his business with his back end facing the audience.
“The show is brilliant, but that definitely got the biggest laugh. He stole the show. The actors were stood there looking at each other.
“It seemed to go on forever before they all went off laughing. But they recovered quickly, and once the mess was dealt with, they carried on the scene.”
The audience member added: “At the closing, the audience cheered and shouted when the dog was brought on stage, and they gave a standing ovation. It was all very funny.”
The bulldog in the show is called Rufus. He is character Paulette Bonafonte’s beloved pet, who becomes the centre of a custody battle with Paulette’s former boyfriend Dewey Newcombe.
The show, based on the 2001 comedy movie starring Reese Witherspoon, has been playing to packed-out audiences and finished its run in the city last night before continuing its UK tour.
The family drama is a distinct American genre— one at which playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins excels. His 2013 show, “Appropriate,” about a prominent Arkansas clan that discovers old photos tying their deceased paterfamilias to a Jim Crow era lynch mob, won a Tony Award for best revival two years ago. Jacobs-Jenkins soon topped that by winning the 2025 Pulitzer Prize along with a Tony for best drama for his next play, “Purpose,” which unfolds during a snow day in the Chicago home of a prominent civil rights leader named Solomon Jasper.
That production is making its Los Angeles premiere at Geffen Playhouse, beginning Wednesday and running through Dec. 20. The Broadway and Steppenwolf Theatre Company production features the same Tony-nominated and Tony-winning team as it had in New York, including director Phylicia Rashad and actor Kara Young, who won a Tony for best featured actress for her portrayal of Aziza, a social worker who ends up in the middle of the family conflict at the heart of the play.
“I feel like we’re always using family as a metaphor. It’s always a stand-in for some American crisis,” Jacobs-Jenkins said in a recent Zoom interview from New York. “This is something I discovered when I was working on ‘Appropriate,’ every major family drama you can think of is animated in some way by anxieties of race and class. Ultimately, this is your tribe and you gotta figure out where your tribe’s value lives and what challenges that tribe’s value.”
The “Purpose” tribe was inspired by an array of prominent political families, but the one most commonly referenced by audiences is that of civil rights icon Jesse Jackson. Like Jackson, Solomon (Harry Lennix), is a former clergyman and old-school activist, while his son, Solomon Jr. (Glenn Davis), is a disgraced politician fresh from serving prison time for mishandling campaign funds. Junior’s estranged wife, the bitter and often hilariously caustic Morgan (Alana Arenas), wants nothing to do with any of them, while her mother-in-law Claudine (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), pilots the family through trying times. Observing with a jaundiced eye is Naz (Jon Michael Hill), a nature photographer and narrator of the chaotic weekend as it unfolds. Along for the ride is his friend Aziza, expectant mother of his child conceived through artificial insemination.
The original Broadway cast of “Purpose” is returning for its debut at Geffen Playhouse.
(Marc J. Franklin)
For Jacobs-Jenkins, inspiration came from the work of Arthur Miller, which prompted him to ask why there were no family dramas in the American canon centering Black people of status. It inspired a deep dive into political histories, which led to the realization that no Black political dynasty has endured beyond two or three generations.
Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre commissioned the play after the success of “Appropriate,” stipulating that Jacobs-Jenkins use two actors from its ensemble. This led to the casting of Hill, Davis and Arenas. Jacobs-Jenkins noted that he was also required to write the play in the company’s house style: muscular realism.
“As we worked together over the ensuing years and various workshop settings, the story and the family began to emerge,” he said. “When I was in rehearsals for the revival of ‘Appropriate’ on Broadway, a lot of the writing was happening then.”
The central action of the play takes place during a dinner foreshadowed by Naz telling the audience to “Buckle up!” It’s a lengthy scene that introduces long-standing points of friction between characters — Junior’s plan to revive his career by publishing his mother’s letters, the platonic parental arrangement between Naz and Aziza, Solomon’s discontent with Junior, and Morgan’s discontent with all of them.
LaTanya Richardson Jackson, left, Kara Young, Glenn Davis and Jon Michael Hill in the Broadway / Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of “Purpose,” which makes its L.A. premiere at Geffen Playhouse.
(Marc J. Franklin)
“A really important site of a family cohering is that dinner table. So I always find it’s incredibly satisfying on stage,” said Jacobs-Jenkins, acknowledging a nod to the dinner scene in another well-known family drama, “August: Osage County.”
“Everyone’s days are stacked, and that’s where the story gets wrestled out of how the family is moving forward,” he said.
Rashad’s turn as pill-popping family matriarch, Violet Weston, in “August: Osage County” suitably prepared her for directing the dinner drama in “Purpose.”
“There’s certain things that will happen within the scene, whether an actor turns to the left or the right, who you’re speaking to, whether someone is seated in a way that lifts them up higher,” Rashad said of the physically static yet dramatically compelling sequence. “I study the play very carefully, but I’m always hearing something new, no matter how many times I’ve read it. I’m looking to see what comes naturally to the actors. And that kind of informs the direction that I’ll give.”
Phylicia Rashad is directing Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Tony Award-winning play, “Purpose” at the Geffen Playhouse.
(Evan Mulling / For The Times)
When Jacobs-Jenkins finished writing “Purpose,” he felt he had composed, “a high tragedian drama.” But once it hit the boards, the theater filled with laughter.
“I don’t think of myself as a comic writer in that I don’t think in terms of joke structures and comic structures,” he said, shaking his head, noting the many situations that elicit laughter. “I really just try to make illusions of people that feel real. I try to make room for all those kinds of audience responses in the work just because it’s ultimately about connecting to the viewer.”
Much of the humor isn’t on the page but in the performances, like when Aziza chides Naz for concealing the historic relevance of his family and then, realizing their prominence, cries, “Oh, my God!” With hands on her stomach — and her future baby who will carry the same genes — she widens her eyes and repeats the line.
“You don’t always have to tell actors exactly what to do, especially when you’re working with people who are creative and inquisitive, and who like to take risks and try things. Some gestures seem very natural for an actor. But if you change actors, you might get something different,” said Rashad, who has won two Tonys for her acting and made her Broadway directorial debut with “Purpose.”
Best known for playing Clair Huxtable on the 1980s sitcom “The Cosby Show,” Rashad has received six Emmy nominations and is currently in HBO’s “The Gilded Age.” She won an NAACP Theatre Award for directing Center Theatre Group’s 2014 production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at the Mark Taper Forum, and she’ll be returning to CTG next spring to direct August Wilson’s critically acclaimed “Fences”.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins poses in the press room with the award for best revival of a play for “Appropriate” during the 2024 Tony Awards.
(Evan Agostini / invision/ AP)
Riding high on accolades for “Purpose,” Jacobs-Jenkins recently announced his next play, “Grass,” starring Daniel Kaluuya in his New York stage debut at the Park Avenue Armory in February. A news release describes it as “equal parts fantasia, memory play, and morality play…a surreal meditation on the limits of personal, ancestral, and national identity amidst social upheaval.”
Despite being at the height of his career, Jacobs-Jenkins expressed some trepidation about staging a show in the cavernous, 55,000-square-foot Armory. “A mother and son take a road trip through the South and kooky stuff happens. So, it’s a road play,” he paused, a nervous grin spreading across his face. “We’ll see if I pull it off.”
‘Purpose’
Where: Gil Cates Theater at Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., L.A.
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. (Check for exceptions.) Ends Dec. 20
Putellas showed again this year why she is one of the most influential footballers in the world.
After 14 years with Barcelona, she delivered a spectacular final season with the club – helping them win four major trophies.
Her 14 goal contributions in 11 Champions League appearances helped her childhood club win the competition for the fourth time, and she remained a decisive figure bringing experience and leadership when it mattered most.
Putellas delayed announcing her move to London City Lionesses to avoid creating a distraction, but in July 2026 she completed that transfer, saying the club’s “women-only identity and ambition” were important factors.
Internationally, Putellas was instrumental in Spain retaining the Women’s Nations League in late 2025, scoring three goals against Sweden in the semi-finals before being named player of the finals as Spain defeated Germany 3–0.
MATTHEW Perry’s five surviving Friends co-stars will not appear in a new Netflix documentary about the late actor, with the filmmaker behind the series confirming they were approached.
Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer are all absent from The One About Matthew Perry, which arrives on Netflix on October 27.
Robertson also told Page Six there were no hard feelings towards the stars, or Perry’s family members who declined to participate.
“I think everyone grieves in their own way. And I understand why someone might feel that this isn’t the moment to talk,” Robertson told the outlet.
A source also previously told Page Six that the stars did not want to publicly revisit their grief over Perry’s death, with Aniston said to have found the prospect particularly difficult.
“She isn’t going to sit down and start crying on camera. She doesn’t want to relive it and have it be so public,” the insider said.
Further reports suggested that feeling extended across the group rather than there being any objection to the documentary itself.
“It’s still too raw,” an insider told New Idea, which reported that Aniston and Kudrow were still struggling to discuss Perry without becoming emotional.
The source claimed LeBlanc and Schwimmer were also uncomfortable with appearing and said the stars wanted to honor Perry privately, on their own terms and in their own time.
However, the stars have all paid tribute to Matthew since his death and some have spoken about him in interviews.
Aniston told Vanity Fair of losing Perry, “As hard as it was for all of us and for the fans, there’s a part of me that thinks this is better. I’m glad he’s out of that pain.”
Cox also wrote in an Instagram tribute after his death, “I am so grateful for every moment I had with you Matty and I miss you every day,” adding, “He was funny and he was kind.”
While none of Perry’s five main co-stars appear in the documentary, his younger sister Mia Perry Bowick does take part and speaks about her brother on camera for the first time.
Bowick offers several intimate insights into Perry’s relationships, his addiction troubles and his time on Friends, including how much the storyline between his character Chandler Bing and Courteney Cox’s Monica Geller meant to him.
She says her brother had sometimes felt that Schwimmer and Aniston’s Ross and Rachel received more of the spotlight on the beloved show.
Bowick says Perry was therefore thrilled when Chandler’s relationship with Monica developed, giving his character a major emotional storyline of his own to get his teeth into.
“He was not just silly Chandler anymore,” Bowick says in the documentary.
She explains that the romance allowed Perry to move beyond Chandler’s familiar comedy and demonstrate a more tender, romantic and vulnerable side of his acting.
Bowick says the family also understood how much Perry himself longed for the kind of love and family life that Chandler eventually found with Monica.
But her most poignant recollection of the Friends cast comes as she describes seeing them together at Perry’s private funeral.
Bowick says in the documentary that it was a small affair attended by family and close friends and that the five Friends stars entered together.
“I hadn’t seen them in easily 20 years,” Bowick recalls.
She says Aniston was the first of the group to approach her, giving her a huge hug, before the other cast members embraced her.
Bowick then watched as they all walked towards Perry’s casket holding hands and stood around their former co-star crying together.
Bowick also recalls an unexpected moment of laughter during the funeral as Perry was being moved into a mausoleum.
She says she suddenly felt as though her brother was standing behind her shoulder and could imagine him making a joke.
The thought caused her to start laughing during one of the most painful moments of the service, and she says it was the first time since his death that she had strongly felt her brother’s presence.
Robertson told Page Six that Bowick’s account of the funeral was both “wrenching and harrowing”, but said the unexpected laughter was also true to Perry’s personality.
The documentary also features Perry’s close friends and former NBC executive Warren Littlefield who recalled being in the room when Perry auditioned for Chandler.
Perry was found unresponsive in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home on October 28, 2023. He was 54.
His death was ruled accidental, with the acute effects of ketamine listed as the primary cause and drowning among the contributing factors.
Rallies organised by the No Kings network opposed to United States President Donald Trump were held Saturday in cities and communities across the US, with an aim of getting people out to vote early in the midterm elections.
No Kings has more than 3,000 events planned across the US. The planned events, this time dubbed “No Kings: Vote Early”, were billed as nonpartisan, though they sought to build on nearly two years’ worth of No Kings marches and demonstrations by people upset with Trump’s presidency.
“It’s a day of nonpartisan voter participation: we are bringing our community together to make a plan to vote early and ensuring every eligible voter understands their options for how to vote and has the opportunity to make their voice heard,” organisers said in a statement.
By advocating for voting early, the “No Kings” organisers hope to cut off the potential for any malfeasance once election day rolls around.
A band entertained what appeared to be a few hundred people in caps and coats at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Despite the chilly weather, many in the crowd danced to the tunes. “VOTE EARLY” and “HANDS OFF MY VOTE!” were among the many signs held aloft.
At an Atlanta rally, City Councilman Michael Julian Bond told the crowd to urge others to vote ahead of the November 3 general election.
“The Constitution gives you one power, right? That is the power to vote. Are you gonna use that power?” he said.
“You don’t see Superman giving up his power,” Bond continued. “You don’t see Black Panther giving up his power. You don’t see Wonder Woman giving up her magic lasso. So why would you give up your right, your power, your obligation to vote? Be a superhero, use your power. Go to the polls and vote.”
Trump has long been suspicious of mail voting and has claimed without evidence that voting fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election.
His administration sued California election officials Thursday, asking a judge to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots for the midterm elections from people whom the federal government has identified as “likely” noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed.
On Friday, the Department of Justice warned that local officials who process and tabulate ballots submitted by suspected noncitizen voters are putting themselves at risk of criminal investigation and potential prosecution.
Earlier that day, Democratic Senators Alex Padilla of California, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote to Attorney General Todd Blanche, demanding that the Justice Department commit to not seizing ballots or other election materials before the midterm elections are certified.
