When Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan first stepped up to the podium at the museum’s star-packed 14th annual Art + Film Gala, the Dodgers were down one point to the Toronto Blue Jays in the eighth inning of the final game of the World Series.
There was no giant screen in the massive tent where a decadent dinner was being served Saturday night in celebration of honorees artist Mary Corse and director Ryan Coogler. Instead guests in elaborate gowns and tuxedos discreetly glanced at their phones propped on tables and at the base of flower vases across the star-packed venue. This became apparent when Miguel Rojas hit a game-tying home run at the top of the ninth inning and the whole room erupted in cheers.
Michael Govan, CEO of LACMA, wearing Gucci, speaks onstage during the 2025 LACMA Art+Film Gala.
(Amy Sussman / Getty Images for LACMA)
When Govan returned to the stageto begin the well-deserved tributes to the artist and filmmaker of the hour, the game had been won, the effusive cheering had died down, and the phones had been respectfully put away.
“Go Dodgers!” Govan said, before joking that LACMA had engineered the win for this special evening. The room was juiced.
It made Los Angeles feel like the center of the universe for a few hours and was fitting for an event that famously brings together the city’s twin cultural bedrocks of art and cinema, creating a rarefied space where the two worlds mix and mingle in support of a shared vision of recognizing L.A.’s immeasurable contributions to the global cultural conversation.
“This is a celebration that can only happen in L.A. — where art, film and creativity are deeply intertwined,” Govan said. “I always say this is the most creative place on Earth.”
The event raised a record $6.5 million in support of the museum and its programs. Co-chairs Leonardo DiCaprio and LACMA trustee Eva Chow hosted a cocktail party and dinner that drew celebrities including Dustin Hoffman, Cynthia Erivo, Cindy Crawford, Queen Latifah, Angela Bassett, Lorde, Demi Moore, Hannah Einbinder, Charlie Hunnam and Elle Fanning alongside local elected officials and appointees including U.S. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles); L.A. County Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Lindsey Horvath; L.A. Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky; West Hollywood Councilmember John M. Erickson, and Kristin Sakoda, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.
Sakoda said she thoroughly enjoyed the festivities “as representative of the incredibly diverse culture of Los Angeles and how that speaks to our entire nation.”
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1.George Lucas arrives at the LACMA Art + Film Gala on Saturday.(Jordan Strauss / Invision via Associated Press)2.Elle Fanning arrives at the LACMA Art + Film Gala on Saturday.(Jordan Strauss / Invision via Associated Press)3.Angela Bassett arrives at the LACMA Art + Film Gala on Saturday.(Jordan Strauss / Invision via Associated Press)
A special nod of gratitude went to previous gala honorees in attendance including artists Mark Bradford, James Turrell, Catherine Opie, Betye Saar, Judy Baca, George Lucas and Park Chan-Wook. Leaders from many other local arts institutions also showed up including the Hammer Museum’s director, Zoe Ryan; California African American Museum Director Cameron Shaw; and MOCA’s interim Director Ann Goldstein.
Rising in the background was LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries, the 110,000-square-foot Peter Zumthor-designed building scheduled to open in April as the new home for the museum’s 150,000-object permanent collection.
“Every day I’m in that little building behind installing thousands of artworks,” Govan said to cheers. “I can’t wait for people to rediscover our permanent collection, from old favorites to new acquisitions. It’s a monumental gift to L.A., and in addition to L.A. County and the public, I would like to thank the person whose generosity brought us to this landmark moment, Mr. David Geffen.”
Geffen sat in a sea of black ties and glittering gowns, near Disney CEO Bob Iger and DiCaprio — who had been filmed earlier in the week in attendance at Game 5 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium.
Govan also gave a special acknowledgment to former LACMA board co-chair, Elaine Wynn, who died earlier this year and was one of the museum’s most steadfast champions. Wynn contributed $50 million to the new building — one of the first major gifts in support of the effort. Govan noted that the northern half of the building will be named the Elaine Wynn wing.
Honoree Ryan Coogler, wearing Gucci, speaks onstage during the 2025 LACMA Art+Film Gala.
(Amy Sussman / Getty Images for LACMA)
Left unmentioned was the fact that earlier in the week LACMA’s employees announced they are forming a union, LACMA United, representing more than 300 workers from across all departments, including curators, educators, guest relations associates and others. One worker told The Times there were no plans to demonstrate at the gala, which raises much-needed funds for the museum.
The crowd sat rapt as the night’s guests of honor, Corse and Coogler, humbly spoke of their journeys in their respective art forms, with Govan introducing them as “artists whose brilliant groundbreaking work challenges us to see the world differently.”
The night concluded with an enthusiastic performance by Doja Cat on an outdoor stage in the shadow of the David Geffen Galleries, the lights girding its massive concrete underbelly like stars in the sky.
“It was a beautiful evening of community coming together around something that reminds us of our shared humanity at a time when we need it,” said Yaroslavsky with a smile as the evening wound down.
In 1997, the comedy “In & Out” did its shiny, star-studded best to mainstream the story of a closeted gay man in a rock-ribbed American community embracing his truth. The fine new indie drama “Plainclothes,” which takes place in 1997 in Syracuse, N.Y., and centers on a young police officer in the throes of desire, wants to remind us that the reality of such reckonings was a bit more fraught.
In first-time screenwriter-director Carmen Emmi’s tense, sensitively threaded scenario, fresh-faced cop Lucas (Tom Blyth) isn’t just holding a secret — he’s involved in the enforced criminalization of it. His assigned undercover detail is the mall, using a seductive look (not entirely acting) to lure gay men to the restroom, silently clocking the moment they meet the minimum requirement for breaking indecent exposure laws, then having them arrested.
Something shifts inside Lucas during one of these stings, however, when he locks eyes with a target named Andrew (Russell Tovey), whose soulful return gaze promises a deeper connection than instant gratification. He spares Andrew the planned indignity waiting outside, but secures a phone number away from the watchful eye of his sergeant (Christian Cooke). Weeks later, the pair arrange to meet in the upstairs balcony of an old movie palace. (Though we never see the screen, sharp-eared film buffs will recognize allusions to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 surveillance classic “The Conversation.”) After a couple of warm, intimate exchanges in secluded spaces, Lucas allows himself to imagine a future free from hiding, even if Andrew cautions that what they have can only ever be temporary.
Early in “Plainclothes,” thanks to changes in aspect ratio and Lucas’ facial hair, we realize that this timeline amounts to an extended memory, triggered in the present scenes by tense New Year’s Eve preparations at Lucas’ childhood home and a misplaced letter that he hopes neither his adoring, recently widowed mother (a wonderful Maria Dizzia) nor his obnoxious, hot-headed uncle (Gabe Fazio) find.
The backward-forward structure creates entwined tracks of suspense between the outcome of the Andrew relationship and the expected ramifications of what’s assumed to be a revealing letter. That framework gives “Plainclothes” the feeling of an emotional chase film where pursuer and pursued are the same, stuck in a loop of possibility, torn about what being caught really means.
Emmi’s well-conceived screenplay does justice to the ways a compartmentalized life can crack. When Lucas is with Andrew — and even in scenes with a nice ex-girlfriend (Amy Forsyth) — acceptance is palpable, understanding real. Among family, the pressure to conform activates his guardedness. And when his department, steeped in macho culture and eager for more mall arrests, starts deploying a video camera behind a one-way mirror, an increasingly anxious Lucas is made to feel nothing but risk about his identity.
There may be little that’s psychologically fresh about “Plainclothes,” but the fact that its low-key, close-framed style suggests a taut, moody gay indie you might have seen in the ’90s works in its favor. It’s also well cast, with the appealing Blyth always in control of the undercurrents, especially alongside the excellent Tovey, playing a sadder, wiser closetedness. I wish Emmi hadn’t overegged the visual motif that Lucas’ POV in moments of stress is akin to the fuzzy texture of Hi8 video: A little of it goes a long way and too often pulls us out of the tone in a room. But it’s the kind of choice that’s easier to forgive in a movie so well-attuned to shifts in perception, one that dimensionalizes the problem of achieving clarity when leading a double life.
‘Plainclothes’
Not rated
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday, Sept. 26, at Landmark Sunset
The written reasons detailing the commission’s finding were published on Wednesday.
“The FA is committed to ensuring that the integrity of football is maintained, and full and thorough investigations will always be conducted into serious allegations of rule breaches,” said English football’s governing body., external
The FA started its investigation in August 2023 and the Brazil international was charged in May last year for allegedly getting booked deliberately “for the improper purpose of affecting the betting market”.
The four charges against him related to a Premier League game against Leicester City on 12 November 2022, as well as 2023 fixtures against Aston Villa on 12 March, Leeds United on 21 May and Bournemouth on 12 August.
Paqueta was also charged with two counts of failing to co-operate with the investigation after breaching “FA Rule F3 in respect of alleged failures to comply pursuant to FA Rule F2”, which relates to providing information and documents.
He also denied these charges, but the regulatory commission found them to be proven.
“The regulatory commission will decide an appropriate sanction for the breaches of FA Rule F3 that were found proven and the details will be published at the earliest opportunity,” added the FA.
Paqueta joined the Hammers from Lyon for an initial £36.5m in August 2022 and helped the club win the Europa Conference League during his debut season.
BBC Sport pundit Julien Laurens believes Lucas Chevalier recovered well from his early mistake in his PSG debut and has dealt with the pressure of replacing Gianluigi Donnarumma, as the French goalkeeper saved a penalty to help PSG beat Tottenham Hotspur win the UEFA Super Cup in Udine.
In making a decision that has surprised many in world football, Luis Enrique believes Chevalier will improve PSG even more, especially with his team’s playing style.
The French keeper has been likened to a five-a-side player due to the quality of his touch, vision and ability to break lines with his passing from the back.
Chevalier can effectively turn into an outfield player for PSG when in possession as they look to build an attack from their own defensive line.
Replacing Donnarumma will be tough, but he stepped up successfully as Lille’s first choice in the 2022-23 season after just a season in Ligue 2 with Valenciennes. Pressure should not be an issue.
Chevalier was named Ligue 1’s best goalkeeper last term with 11 clean sheets as his side finished fifth, while earning a call-up to France’s senior squad.
Former England goalkeeper Paul Robinson told BBC Radio 5 Live: “The goalkeeper situation is a huge decision from Luis Enrique. Gianluigi Donnarumma is the best shot stopper and he is the best version of the older-style goalkeeper, but they have been replaced by the modern-day keeper who play in the defensive third.
“Luis Enrique is leaning into the way that modern teams want to play and build from the back. PSG are looking for that ninth degree, that tiny little bit of percentage of advantage and with Lucas Chevalier they feel they can further refine their style.”
Signs of what Chevalier will bring were seen during his debut against Spurs, with PSG opting to go short on goal-kicks and showing no fear when using him in general play.
He should have done better with Cristian Romero’s header that put the Premier League side 2-0 ahead, but showed great reflexes in a stunning save to push Joao Palhinha’s effort on to the bar, although Micky van de Ven netted the rebound for Spurs’ opener.
Chevalier then stopped Van de Ven’s penalty in the shootout as PSG won after a superb comeback from 2-0 down.
It was a bold move by Luis Enrique to drop Donnarumma and turn to the Frenchman, but one that could prove a masterstroke in the future if Chevalier lives up to great expectations.
“But the news is incredibly positive. If it had gone the other way, there would have been a whole other line of questions.
“Lucas is happy and committed. He is an important person in dressing room and at the club and we love him. We just want to help him enjoy his football.
“You can imagine on a personal level for him, having to fight those allegations was an incredible challenge for him. It has been a really tough period in his life and career.
“It is a credit to him and his family and everyone who has supported him that he has come through.”
As the written reasons are yet to be published, it is still not known whether Paqueta will take legal action against the FA.
Meanwhile, Antonio looks to be surplus to Potter’s plans.
Asked whether the 35-year-old would be part of his squad for the forthcoming campaign following the signing of another veteran frontman – and Antonio’s former podcast partner – Callum Wilson on a free transfer, Potter said simply: “No.”
Last month, the club said no formal decision had been made on the player whose contract expired at the end of the month.
“As a long-serving, highly-respected player, and a much-loved member of the West Ham family, the club’s absolute priority at this time is to support Michail personally in his journey to resume playing at the highest level,” said a statement.
There had been no update on that prior to Potter’s answer.
Having recovered from his horrific car crash in December, Antonio made a playing return for Jamaica during this summer’s Concacaf Gold Cup.
He joined West Ham from Nottingham Forest for an undisclosed fee, reported to be £7m, in 2015 and is the club’s record Premier League goalscorer, scoring 68 goals in 268 top-flight appearances.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, rising on what used to be a parking lot in Exposition Park in downtown L.A., is devoted to visual storytelling: the comics of Charles M. Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Alex Raymond (“Flash Gordon”), movie concept art by Neal Adams (“Batman”) and Ralph McQuarrie (“Star Wars”), paintings by Frida Kahlo and Jacob Lawrence, photography by Gordon Parks and Dorothea Lange, illustrations by Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth.
So when George Lucas and wife Mellody Hobson chose Mia Lehrer and her L.A. firm, Studio-MLA, to design the 11 acres of landscape around — and on top of — MAD Architects’ swirling, otherworldly, billion-dollar building, the driving forces behind the Lucas Museum made it clear that the landscape had to tell a story too.
Lehrer and her team studied how directors, illustrators and painters use topography to help amplify, among other things, emotion, sequence and storyline.
A long stretch of park space extends from the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which sits next to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“We looked at the landscapes of myths and movies,” said Kush Parekh, a principal at Studio-MLA. “How do you take someone on a journey through space? How does the terrain change the story — and how can it be the story?”
The result — which feels surprisingly grown-in even though the museum won’t open until next year — is a sinuous, eclectic landscape that unfolds in discrete vignettes, all promoting exploration and distinct experience. Each zone contains varied textures, colors, scales and often framed views. A shaded walkway curls along a meandering meadow and lifts you toward a hilly canyon. A footbridge carries you above a developing conifer thicket. A plant-covered trellis, known as “the hanging garden,” provides a more compressed moment of pause. The environment, like a good story, continually shifts tone and tempo.
“It’s episodic,” Parekh said. “Each biome reveals something new, each path hints at what’s ahead without giving it away.”
A key theme of the story is the diverse terrain of California — a place that, in Lehrer’s words, “contains more varied environments in a single day’s drive than most countries do in a week.” Foothills and valleys, groves and canyons, even the mesas, plateaus and plains of the Sierra and the Central Valley — Lehrer calls all of it a “choreography of place.”
Lucas Museum staff and design team stand under the trellis of “the hanging garden.”
Another, more subtle, layer of this narrative is time. Plantings were laid out to bloom in different seasons and in different places. Bright yellow “Safari Goldstrike” leucadendron, edging the meadow and canyon, come alive in late winter and early spring. Tall jacarandas, spied from a foothills overlook, emerge then quickly disappear. “Bee’s Bliss” sage, lying low in the oak woodland, turn lavender blue in the early summer. Something is always emerging, something else fading.
“Every month, every visit, feels different,” Parekh said.
Even the alpine-inspired plantings cladding the museum’s roof — colorful wildflowers, long sweeping grasses and coarse scrubs, all chosen for their hardiness, lightness and shallow roots — follow this rhythm.
“They’re alive. They change. They move with the climate,” Lehrer said.
The landscape creates the illusion that some plantings run right up to the museum. Here, the black void on the underside of the building is the opening for a giant waterfall that will cascade to a pool below.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The grounds include the terraced seating of an amphitheater.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The plant palette includes low-water selections.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Amazingly, the rest of the landscape is a kind of green roof as well, sitting atop a 2,400-spot underground parking structure — available to those visiting the Lucas or any of Expo Park’s other institutions. Wedged between the greenery and the parking are thousands of foam blocks, mixed with soil and sculpted to form the landscape while minimizing weight on the building below.
“I wish I had invested in foam before we started this,” joked Angelo Garcia, president of Lucas Real Estate Holdings. “It’s everywhere. These mountains were created with foam.”
“It’s full-scale ecology sitting on top of a structural system,” noted Michael Siegel, senior principal at Stantec, the museum’s architect of record, responsible for its technical oversight and implementation.
“That’s how the best storytelling works,” Lehrer added. “You don’t see the mechanics. You just feel the effect.”
Foam blocks buried in the soil shape the terrain while minimizing weight on the parking structure below.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
As you make your way through the rolling landscape, it becomes clear that it’s also crafted to meld with MAD’s sculptural design — a hovering, eroded form, itself inspired by the clouds, hills and other natural forms of Los Angeles.
“There’s a dialogue,” Garcia said.
Paths bend instead of cut; curving benches — cast in smooth, gently tapering concrete — echo the museum’s fiber-reinforced cement roofline. Bridges arc gently over bioswales and berms. Ramps rise like extensions of the building’s base. Paving stones reflect the color and texture of the museum’s facade.
“It was never landscape next to building,” Lehrer said. “It was building as landscape, and landscape as structure. One continuous form.”
Closer to the building, where a perimeter mass damper system that the design team has nicknamed the “moat” protects the museum from seismic activity, landscape nestles against, and seemingly under, the structure’s edges, further blurring the barrier between the two. Rows of mature trees being planted now will help soften the flanks. Vines will hang from the Lucas’ floating oculus, right above its entry court.
The building’s oculus eventually will have vines hanging from it.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art rises in Exposition Park, its rooftop clad with solar panels and gardens, the skyline of downtown Los Angeles rising behind it.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
A worker on the green rooftop of the museum.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The topography was designed to minimize environmental impact. Hundreds of plants, mostly native to the region, are drought-tolerant (or at least require little watering). A rain-harvesting system captures water for irrigation. And on the north edge of the museum will be “The Rain,” a waterfall that doubles as a passive cooling system, replacing traditional air-conditioning infrastructure. (Dozens of underground geothermal wells provide additional cooling.)
In this part of South L.A., park space is egregiously scarce, a remnant of redlining and disinvestment. This space — set to be open to the public without a ticket, from dawn to dusk — is a game changer, as is a massive green space on Expo Park’s south side that also replaces a surface parking lot and tops an underground garage. (That latter project has been delayed until after the 2028 Olympics.)
“It’s hotter, it’s denser and it’s long been overlooked. We wanted to change that,” Lehrer said of the area.
What was once a walled-off asphalt lot is a porous public space, linking Expo Park to the rest of the neighborhood via its four east-west pathways and opening connections on the north side to Jesse Brewer Jr. Park, which the Lucas Museum has paid to upgrade. The museum also funded the creation to the south of the new Soboroff Sports Field, which replaces a field that was adjacent to the site’s parking lot. The Lucas’ circular plaza and amphitheater with seating for hundreds, have the potential not only to host museum events but also to become popular community gathering spots.
Kush Parekh, left, and Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Treetops rising along the museum’s curvaceous silhouette.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
For Lehrer, the landscape is a convergence of civic and ecological ideas that she’s developed throughout her career — really ever since a chance encounter with the intricate original drawings for Central Park while she was studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Design spurred her to pivot from planning to landscape architecture. At this point, she’s created arguably more major new public spaces in Los Angeles than any other designer, including two vibrantly didactic landscapes at the adjacent Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, downtown’s 10-acre Vista Hermosa Park and the artfully layered grounds and lake surrounding SoFi Stadium.
“This brings everything together,” she said. “Design, ecology, storytelling, infrastructure, community. It’s the fullest expression of what landscape can be.”
Lehrer credits Lucas with not just permitting her to explore these ideas but encouraging her to push them further. Lucas supported the rare — and costly — installation of mature plantings. Usually the landscape is the last part of a building to emerge.
The progress in the grounds is a bright spot for the museum, which has been grappling with construction delays, the surprise departure of its executive director and, most recently, the layoffs of 15 full-time and seven part-time employees, part of a restructuring that a museum official said was “to ensure we open on time next year.”
As the new building accelerates toward that opening, the vision outside is becoming more clear.
George Lucas, center, wife Mellody Hobson and then-Mayor Eric Garcetti as the Lucas Museum began construction in 2019.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“To have an open-minded client, who gets landscape and also appreciates creativity, it’s rare,” Lehrer said. Lucas, who grew up on a farm in Modesto, has been developing the vineyards, gardens and olive groves of his Skywalker Ranch in Northern California for decades.
“I have always wanted to be surrounded by trees and nature,” Lucas said. “The museum’s backyard is meant to provide a respite in a hectic world.”
Hollyoaks fans want Lucas Hay and Dillon Ray, known as HayRay, to get together permanently and have a future on the Channel 4 soap, and now the stars playing them have dropped hints
22:42, 01 Jun 2025Updated 22:49, 01 Jun 2025
Fans hoping for a HayRay reunion on Hollyoaks could be in luck according to the stars playing the pair(Image: (Photo by Karwai Tang/WireImage))
Fans hoping for a HayRay reunion on Hollyoaks could be in luck according to the stars playing the pair.
Lucas Hay and Dillon Ray have been on and off for a while now, and every time it seems like they’re back together something gets in the way. At a time where both characters are facing traumatic events in their lives, fans are hoping the pair will lean on each other and get through it all.
But will HayRay, as they are known to adoring fans, finally get their romance back on track and be together? Cast members Nathaniel Dass and Oscar Curtis spoke exclusively to The Mirror about the big scenes ahead that could see the pair finally happy.
While Lucas actor Oscar joked it may be short-lived, he did say he was sure there was happier times ahead for the on/off couple. With fans sure they are meant to be together, Dillon star Nathaniel teased there would be a “storm brewing” and “conflict” ahead, but that it could be the moment the pair get things on track.
Of course we requested to speak to the pair together, with them agreeing it was a must. Speaking at the British Soap Awards 2025, they initially remained coy over whether HayRay were back.
Cast members Nathaniel Dass and Oscar Curtis spoke exclusively to The Mirror(Image: Getty Images)
Nathaniel said: “We can’t tell you that,” with Oscar jibing: “You’d ruin the fun.” Nathaniel then explained: “The beauty of Lucas and Dillon is you don’t know. It’s amazing when we are together and it’s crushing when we’re not, and I think thats’ fun.
“We can’t say what happens and what doesn’t but we know it’s exciting.” Oscar went on: “There’s always something brewing, there’s always a storm. The fans want the calm but the storm is always fun, and it makes it work.”
On the couple being so on and off, Nathaniel told us: “It’s the ups and the downs as well. When one character is up the other one is down, and when you think one character’s ready for a relationship, the other one’s not. That’s where the chaos works and where it shows, and it’s hard as they are completely different characters and so they’re never on the same page.”
On whether there is a future for HayRay, Oscar teased: “I’m sure there will be.” Nathaniel then shared: “Let’s hope so. It will be lovely to see, even if it’s only for a little bit,” as Oscar joked: “Yeah, at least two weeks.”
Joking aside, Oscar and Nathaniel are keen to see their characters reconcile for good and make their relationship work. Nathaniel said: “We had it for a little bit and hopefully can get back to that.”
Hollyoaks fans want Lucas Hay and Dillon Ray, known as HayRay, to get together permanently(Image: WireImage)
Oscar has been keeping an eye on the fan reaction too, before feeding back to his co-star about what fans are saying. He told us: “I’m on social media every day. If I see something I don’t like I’m like, ‘never mind’.” Nathaniel said it was “nice to hear the positive stuff” fans share about the couple.
With that Oscar declared: “Hashtag HayRay,” with his pal adding: “HayRay forever.” Oscar then revealed “conflict” would be ahead on the show with Dillon agreeing, but both stars confirmed fans will see the characters together a lot more, no doubt sparking hopes the pair will finally make it work.
Nathaniel told us: “There’s conflict but there’s a lot more. As characters we haven’t spent a lot of time on screen together but you are definitely gonna see a lot more of us together after this.
“There’s the calming down and processing of what’s happened, and then you’ll see a lot more of them.” Oscar concluded: “Let’s put it this way, HayRay might be back for now.”
Hollyoaks is available to stream on Channel 4’s streaming service now, while it also airs Mondays to Wednesdays on E4 at 7PM.* Follow Mirror Celebs and TV onTikTok,Snapchat,Instagram,Twitter,Facebook,YouTubeandThreads.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has laid off 15 full-time employees, many from the organization’s education and public programming team.
The layoffs amount to 14% of the full-time staff, the museum said Tuesday. An additional seven part-time, on-call employees also had their roles eliminated, the museum said.
Two people familiar with museum operations who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation described the scene as shocking and chaotic on Thursday morning, when employees were summoned into morning meetings with human resources, informed that their jobs had been terminated and given until 2 p.m. to vacate the premises. Personal belongings were being sent to their homes by courier, the sources said.
The museum’s curator of film programs, Bernardo Rondeau, was among those laid off. He was informed while he was at the Cannes film festival, and he posted on LinkedIn: “As of today, my role as Curator, Film Programs at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has been made redundant, effective immediately. I’m deeply grateful for the time I’ve spent there and for the many talented people I’ve had the privilege to work with.”
Rondeau, who previously served as the founding director of film programs at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Times.
A representative for the museum told The Times that the layoffs were made “due to a necessary shift of the institution’s focus to ensure we open on time next year.”
“It is a tremendously difficult decision to reorganize roles and to eliminate staff, but the restructure will allow the museum’s teams to work more efficiently to bring the museum to life for the public,” the museum said in a statement.
The Lucas Museum was founded by filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, who searched for a location in San Francisco and Chicago before choosing Exposition Park in Los Angeles. The $1-billion museum broke ground adjacent to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in 2018. The project experienced its first substantial delay in 2022, as pandemic-related supply-chain issues forced the opening originally scheduled for 2023 to be pushed back to 2025. Earlier this year its opening was again pushed back, to 2026.
In February the museum’s director and chief executive, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, stepped down after five years in charge. The museum said her role was being split into two positions, with Lucas overseeing “content direction” and former 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures chairman and chief executive Jim Gianopulos taking over as interim chief executive. Jackson-Dumont left on April 1.
Jackson-Dumont has not spoken publicly about her departure and did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Monday.
Sources said Lucas has been involved in curatorial decisions but did not seem engaged in the education and public programming that Jackson-Dumont had championed.
Prior to her arrival in L.A., Jackson-Dumont served as the chairwoman of education and public programs at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The San Francisco native also held education and public programming roles at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Seattle Art Museum, where she worked with Regan Pro, the Lucas Museum deputy director of public programs and social impact who was among those laid off last week, according to sources. Pro did not respond to a request for comment from The Times.
“Education remains a central pillar of the Lucas Museum,” the museum said in a statement Tuesday morning. “One of the main reasons Los Angeles’s Exposition Park was chosen as the location for the museum was its proximity to other museums, USC, and more than 400 schools in a five-mile radius. The importance of education for the museum can be seen by the educational spaces baked into the museum’s design from the beginning, including 10 large classroom spaces, a vast library, and two state-of-the-art theaters. Educational program plans are still in development, and we look forward to sharing more closer to opening.”
In “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” playwright Lucas Hnath cheekily proposes an answer to a question that has haunted the theater for more than a century: Whatever happened to Nora after she walked out on her marriage at the end of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 drama, “A Doll’s House”?
The door slam that concludes Ibsen’s play ushered in a revolution in modern drama. After Nora’s exit, anything was possible on the stages of respectable European playhouses. Conventional morality was no longer a choke hold on dramatic characters, who were allowed to set dangerous new precedents for audiences that may have been easily shocked but were by no means easily deterred.
Elizabeth Reaser and Jason Butler Harner in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Pasadena Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
“A Doll’s House, Part 2,” which opened Sunday at Pasadena Playhouse under the direction of Jennifer Chang, is a sequel with a puckish difference. Although ostensibly set 15 years after Nora stormed out on Torvald and her three children, the play takes place in a theatrical present that has one antique-looking shoe in the late 19th century and one whimsical sneaker in the early 21st.
The hybrid nature of “A Doll’s House, Part 2” isn’t just reflected in the costume design. The language of the play moves freely from the declamatory to the profane, with some of its funniest moments occurring when fury impels a character to unleash some naughty modern vernacular.
More crucially, comedy and tragedy are allowed to coexist as parallel realities. Hnath has constructed “A Doll’s House, Part 2” as a modern comedy of ideas, divided into a series of confrontations in which characters get to thrash out different perspectives on their shared history.
Elizabeth Reaser in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Pasadena Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
Chang stages the play like a courtroom drama, with a portion of the audience seated on the stage like a jury. The spare (if too dour) set by Wilson Chin, featuring the door that Nora made famous and a couple of rearranged chairs, allows for the brisk transit of testimony in a drama that lets all four characters have their say.
Nora (played with a touch too much comic affectation by Elizabeth Reaser) has become a successful author of controversial women’s books espousing radical ideas about the trap of conventional marriage. She has returned to the scene of her domestic crime out of necessity.
Torvald (portrayed with compelling inwardness by Jason Butler Harner), her stolid former husband, never filed the divorce papers. She’s now in legal jeopardy, having conducted business as an unmarried woman. And her militant feminist views have won her enemies who would like nothing more than to send her to prison.
Kahyun Kim in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Pasadena Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
Nora needs Torvald to do what he was supposed to have done years ago: officially end their marriage. But not knowing how he might react to her reemergence, she makes arrangements to strategize privately with Anne Marie (Kimberly Scott), the old nanny who raised Nora’s children in her absence and isn’t particularly inclined to do her any favors.
After Torvald and Anne Marie both refuse to cooperate with her, Nora has no choice but to turn to her daughter, Emmy (crisply played by Kahyun Kim). Recently engaged to a young banker, Emmy has chosen the road that her mother abandoned, a distressing realization for Nora, who had hoped that her example would have inaugurated a new era of possibility for women.
Hnath works out the puzzle of Nora’s dilemma as though it were a dramatic Rubik’s Cube. The play hasn’t any ax to grind. If there’s one prevailing truth, it’s that relationships are murkier and messier than ideological arguments.
Jason Butler Harner in “A Doll’s House Part 2” at Pasadena Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
Nora restates why she left her marriage and explains as best she can the reasons she stayed away from her children all these years. But her actions, however necessary, left behind a tonnage of human wreckage. “A Doll’s House, Part 2” offers a complex moral accounting. As each character’s forcefully held view is added to the ledger sheet, suspense builds over how the playwright will balance the books.
Each new production of “A Doll’s House, Part 2” works out the math in a slightly different way. The play had its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in 2017 in an elegant production that was somewhat more somber than the Broadway production that opened shortly after and earned Laurie Metcalf a well-deserved Tony for her performance.
The play found its voice through the Broadway developmental process, and Metcalf’s imprint is unmistakable in the rhythms of Nora’s whirligig monologues and bracing retorts. Metcalf is the rare actor who can lunge after comedy without sacrificing the raw poignancy of her character.
Elizabeth Reaser, left, and Kimberly Scott in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Pasadena Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
Reaser adopts a humorous mode but it feels forced. More damagingly, it doesn’t seem as if Hnath’s Nora has evolved all that much from the skittishly coquettish wife of Ibsen’s play. The intellectual arc of “A Doll’s House, Part 2” suffers from the mincing way Reaser introduces the character, with little conviction for Nora’s feminist principles and only a superficial sense of the long, exhausting road of being born before your time.
The early moments with Scott’s Anne Marie are unsteady. Reaser’s Nora comes off as a shallow woman oblivious of her privilege, which is true but only partly so. Scott has a wonderful earthy quality, but I missed the impeccable timing of Jayne Houdyshell’s Anne Marie, who could stop the show with an anachronistic F-bomb. Chang’s staging initially seems like a work-in-progress.
The production is galvanized by the excellent performances of Harner and Kim. Harner reveals a Torvald changed by time and self-doubt. Years of solitude, sharpened by intimations of mortality, have cracked the banker’s sense of certainty. He blames Nora for the hurt he’ll never get over, but he doesn’t want to go down as the paragon of bad husbands. He too would like a chance to redeem himself, even if (as Harner’s canny performance illustrates) character is not infinitely malleable. Bad habits endure.
Kimberly Scott in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Pasadena Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
Kim’s Emmy holds her own against Nora even as her proposed solution to her mother’s dilemma involves some questionable ethics. Nora may be disappointed that her daughter is making such conformist choices, but Emmy sees no reason why the mother she never knew should feel entitled to shape her life. The brusquely controlled way Kim’s Emmy speaks to Nora hints at the ocean of unresolved feelings between them.
The production is somewhat hampered by Anthony Tran’s cumbersome costumes and Chin’s grimly rational scenic design. Elizabeth Harper’s lighting enlivens the dull palette, but I missed the surreal notes of the South Coast Repertory and Broadway stagings. Hnath creates his own universe, and the design choices should reflect this wonderland quality to a jauntier degree.
But Chang realizes the play’s full power in the final scene between Nora and Torvald. Reaser poignantly plunges the depths of her character, as estranged husband and wife share what the last 15 years have been like for them.
“A Doll’s House” was considered in its time to be politically incendiary. Hnath’s sequel, without squelching the politics, picks up the forgotten human story of Ibsen’s indelible classic.
‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’
Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave.
When: 8 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays, 7 p.m. Thursdays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays (check for exceptions); ends June 8
He was in tears after was he booked against Tottenham two weeks ago, after which Potter said he was “frustrated” and had “given everything and in difficult circumstances”.
Later that evening Paqueta’s wife Maria Fournier said in an Instagram post that they had “been living this nightmare for two years”.
Paqueta was left on the bench for last weekend’s 2-0 win at Manchester United, which Potter said was because he had a cold.
“It has taken its toll on him. The week he had was a particularly tough week for him personally,” Potter said.
“As a result of that he was feeling under the weather on the day before the game and the day of the game, so I didn’t want to risk him and make it worse for him.
“Sometimes stress, pressure, can manifest itself in a different way.
“Generally he’s come in and conducted himself in a really good way. He’s handled it really well.”
Potter said he is keen for the case to be resolved before the start of next season.
“It’s not my thing to talk about, but the sooner the better for everyone,” he said.
This followed allegations he intentionally got a yellow card for betting purposes in four Prem games between November 2022 and August 2023.
The club say they have NO idea when the findings of this will be revealed, so do not know if he will be banned for life or found not guilty.
Being in limbo is taking its toll on Paqueta, who denies any wrongdoing, and he broke down in tears of frustration after being booked in the 1-1 draw with Tottenham on May 4.
Today’s clash against seventh-placed Nottingham Forest is the Hammers’ final home match of the season and it could be the last time he ever dons the claret-and-blue colours.
He was an unused sub against Manchester United last week with a cold.
Potter said: “The week he had was particularly tough for him personally, which I think everybody can understand.
“And then, as a result of that, he was feeling under the weather on the day before the game at Manchester United and during the game.
“So I didn’t want to risk him and make it worse for him. But he’s trained really well, he wants to be part of the team to help and we’ll see how to use him for the weekend.”
When he broke down in tears against Spurs, wife Duda Fournier took to Instagram to express her concerns about her husband’s mental state.
West Ham star Lucas Paqueta charged with betting breaches
She said: “My husband has a posture and a strength that I admire and impresses me. We have been living this nightmare for two years.”
Asked if the situation was taking its toll on Paqueta, Potter replied: “Obviously, you know what it’s like, sometimes you are in stress and pressure, it can manifest itself in a different way.”
Asked if he wants clarity by the start of next season, Potter said: “For everybody concerned, yes. The sooner the better for everyone.
“In fairness to Lucas, he’s handled it brilliantly. Generally he’s come in and conducted himself in a really good way. He’s just ready to help the team.
“I think coming into work is a distraction for him. It takes his mind off things.
“For me, I’m just there to support him, the same with his team-mates.”
The FA declined to comment when approached by SunSport.
It will be an emotional afternoon in East London also for the likes of Aaron Cresswell, Lukasz Fabianski, Vladimir Coufal and Danny Ings.
The quartet, who were part of the 2023 Conference League-winning squad, have not been offered new contracts and will leave this summer.
Czech defender Coufal, 32, joined in 2020 from Slavia Prague.
And in a message to Hammers fans, he said: “I knew that once this time would come but I could not imagine how emotional it would be for me and my family.
“I can say with all honesty in my heart that I enjoyed every minute of being at West Ham. I am taking a lot of unforgettable memories with me.”
Yet there are NO guarantees any of them will play a role today and be given a proper send-off as Potter is eyeing up a possible 13th-place finish.
He added: “There’s a lot at stake in the Premier League in terms of our points and what Forest are fighting for, so we have to make sure we pick the right team to try to win.
“Of course, emotion is always part of football so that can help. But we have to make the decision based on everything to try to win.”
