Arts & Culture

NEW YORK — Billy Crystal's solo show 860 has its official opening tonight, October 21, at the Imperial Theatre, after previews that began October 1. Playbill lists the running time as 1 hour 40 minutes with no intermission. Broadway.com says the engagement is limited and closes January 3, 2027. The piece is built around the loss of Crystal's home of more than four decades in the Palisades fire. According to the production's description, he looks back on the people and moments that mattered most and on the role of laughter in getting through loss. The opening follows Sunday's debut of the Other Desert Cities revival at the Hudson. Roundabout's The Imaginary Invalid opens tomorrow at the Todd Haimes Theatre, and A Few Good Men opens October 29 at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is showing a retrospective of the Korean painter Ha Chong-Hyun. KQED's review, published October 19, calls it strikingly beautiful. The show has more than 50 paintings from six decades of work. It follows his move from thick impasto to his signature 'back-pressure' method, in which wet paint is pushed through a coarsely woven support. Early works use hemp, burlap, metal springs and barbed wire. The reviewer reads these as a reflection of pre-urbanization Korea, and barbed wire also evokes the line dividing North and South. The paintings from the 2020s, made when Ha is 91 and still working, are described as the high point. KQED notes that Ha is not yet widely known in the United States. Mission Local lists the show among the Bay Area's current museum highlights.

NEW YORK — Random House has acquired a biography of Ghislaine Maxwell by Amy Wallace, co-author of Virginia Giuffre's memoir Nobody's Girl, according to Publishers Weekly's deal roundup for the week of October 19. The same roundup says Delacorte lured fantasy author Chloe Gong away from Simon & Schuster for her next novel. Earlier this month Simon & Schuster signed a seven-figure North American deal with romantasy author H.M. Wolfe. The Atlantic had earlier accused Wolfe of using AI to write her July hit Daggermouth, published by Scarlett Press. Hachette Book Group reported third-quarter sales up 4 percent. CEO David Shelley credited a run of bestsellers and what he called enormous sales of puzzle books. Publishers Weekly also reports that August industry sales rose 8.9 percent, a slower gain than the double-digit rises of earlier in the summer.

The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, worth $25,000, is due to be announced Wednesday at 9 a.m. Pacific on YouTube, on what would have been Le Guin's birthday. Nine books made the shortlist, including Bora Chung's Midnight Timetable (Algonquin), Hiron Ennes's The Works of Vermin (Tor) and Claire North's Slow Gods (Orbit). Five authors, led by Nicola Griffith and Fonda Lee, sit on the panel. Next come the Booker Prize, to be announced November 9 at Old Billingsgate in London, with a £50,000 award. The shortlist includes Marlon James's The Disappearers (Hamish Hamilton), Douglas Stuart's John of John (Picador) and Elizabeth Strout's The Things We Never Say (Viking). The National Book Awards follow on November 18. Edwidge Danticat's Dèy (Knopf) is among the fiction finalists, and Salman Rushdie will receive the foundation's lifetime medal.

LONDON — Laika's 'Wildwood,' directed by Travis Knight from Colin Meloy's novel, has drawn mostly strong reviews since its London Film Festival premiere. Variety called the studio's sixth feature a stunner and a spectacular success. Empire called it astonishing and praised its scale. Gold Derby's roundup puts it ahead of 'Toy Story 5' in its Best Animated Feature odds. Critics broadly agree the film is dark for animation. It carries a PG-13 rating, and reviewers cite its war scenes and deaths. IndieWire's David Ehrlich was the notable dissenter. He admired the craft but judged it the least enchanting of Laika's films. He also faulted its stock fantasy storytelling and its use of digital effects. Gold Derby's front-runner label is a forecast, not a result. Academy voting does not begin until the new year.

LOS ANGELES — Amazon MGM Studios has restructured its film division. Julie Rapaport and Alana Mayo will each serve as head of film, production and development, Courtenay Valenti announced in a memo to staff Tuesday. Valenti is the studio's head of film, streaming and theatrical, and both executives report to her. Each will oversee roughly half the slate, about 15 films a year, across theatrical and streaming releases. Valenti said the studio is not creating separate pods or siloed teams. Rapaport joined Amazon in 2015 and has shaped titles including 'Saltburn,' 'Project Hail Mary' and 'Verity.' Mayo, who has led Orion Pictures since 2020, keeps that role. Physical production, business affairs, casting, music and worldwide theatrical distribution continue to report to Valenti. The studio said its output now exceeds 30 films a year.

NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Opera's new Verdi Macbeth, which opened the season on September 22, played its final performance on October 20. Louisa Proske made her Met debut as director. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted, with Lise Davidsen as Lady Macbeth and Quinn Kelsey in the title role. Critics largely agree on Kelsey. Opera Now called him an ideal Verdi baritone and gave the production four stars. Verdict on Davidsen is mixed. New York Classical Review judged it her finest Met work, while OperaWire found her passive and the conducting sluggish. Seen and Heard International admired her vocal control but thought she was more imposing than menacing. Another reviewer found little chemistry between the two leads. The Met's cinema relay of the production is still to come.

SEOUL — Korean pianist Minsoo Sohn, 50, has released his recording of the first book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Slipped Disc reported the release on October 9. Sohn is best known as the teacher of Yunchan Lim. He was the first Korean to win the Honens International Piano Competition, in 2006. In 2008 he broke his right hand. While recovering he overworked his left hand and strained it too, and for a time he could not perform. He finished a complete Beethoven sonata cycle in 2021 but says he still has physical difficulties with his hands. He describes his current outlook as finding his own role and speaking to audiences through music. Reviews of the album have not yet appeared in the sources checked.

WASHINGTON — Leonard Slatkin returns to the National Symphony Orchestra, which he led as music director, for concerts at the Kennedy Center on October 22 and 23. The programme, titled Returning Love, is built on memory and homage. It includes Slatkin's own Schubertiade, which recalls the informal Schubert evenings of the composer's circle. It also includes Joan Tower's Love Returns, a work the NSO co-commissioned for saxophonist Steven Banks. Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 3 ends the evening. The Kennedy Center lists Gianandrea Noseda as the orchestra's music director for the 2026-27 season. Its guest soloists include Yefim Bronfman, Beatrice Rana and Augustin Hadelich. The Center's listing does not say whether the Tower piece is a premiere.