Midday

In our final segment today, Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom live with her review of the new touring production of Tootsie, the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical that's based on the multiple Oscar-winning 1982 film.

The gender-bending romantic comedy, a farcical romp through the issues of sexual identity, sexism, sexual harassment and gender stereotypes, is live on stage at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre through Sunday, December 5. For ticketing information, click here.

COVID-safe protocols are in effect at the Hippodrome, and patrons must wear masks and present proof of vaccination to be admitted.

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At the conclusion of today's review, J. Wynn Rousuck offers a brief remembrance of Stephen Sondheim, the titan of Broadway musical theater who died last week at the age of 91. Judy's commentary on the legendary lyricist, whom she met and interviewed two decades ago, appears in today's online edition, and in this coming Sunday's print edition of the Baltimore Sun.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

André De Shields has been called “the King of Broadway.” His many Broadway roles range from the title character in “The Wiz” to his current Tony Award-winning role, Hermes, the Greek messenger god, in “Hadestown.”

Now André De Shields is back in his hometown of Baltimore to perform three concerts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, beginning tonight. (Follow the links for ticketing information.

Theater critic J Wynn Rousuck spoke with André De Shields last week.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

We begin today with another edition of Midday at the Movies, our monthly look at films and filmmaking. We're joined again by two of our favorite movie aficionados: Ann Hornaday, film critic for The Washington Post and author of the great movie-goers guide, Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies, and Jed Dietz, the founder and former director of the Maryland Film Festival and Parkway Theater.

Our guests discuss a new survey showing American moviegoing crowds have still not returned in pre-COVID numbers to their local moviehouses — and the numbers suggest that a sizeable percentage of them might never return.

We also consider a few of the best new holiday-season releases, including Belfast - at the Charles and area theaters only - director Kenneth Branagh's semi-autobiographical memoir of growing up amid the sectarian violence of Northern Ireland in the 1960s; The Humans, an indie gem from director/playwright Stephen Karam (based on his Tony Award-winning play) that's now streaming on SHOWTIME; and The Power of the Dog, director Jane Campion's powerful western drama starring Benedict Cumberpatch, now showing at the Parkway and streaming on Netflix.

Ann Hornaday joins us on our digital line. Jed Dietz joins us on Zoom.

Some other notable new releases we didn't have time to talk about:

Cmon C'mon, a moving drama about the relationship between a troubled journalist and his young nephew, shot in moody black and white by director Mike Mills, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Woody Norman, and now playing at the Charles and local theaters;

House of Gucci, director Ridley Scott's lavish tale of decadence, betrayal and murder in the family of the legendary designer, starring Lady Gaga, Adam Driver and Al Pacino, now at the Parkway and other local theaters;

Get Back, director Peter Jackson’s 3-part, 8-hour documentary about The Beatles, now streaming on Disney Plus; and

West Side Story, director Steven Spielberg's long-awaited remake of the 1957 hit Broadway musical (later an Oscar-sweeping 1961 film) featuring music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a new screenplay by Tony Kushner. The film opens in theaters (only) on December 10.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's next guest is an emerging star in the world of country music, and a native daughter of Baltimore. Midday first checked in with Brittany Spencer in an interview last summer, right before she made her second appearance at the famed Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

Since then, much has happened in her career. After years of singing back-up for other artists, she is now headlining her own tour. She’ll be playing at The 8X10 Club in Baltimore Sunday night. And a couple of weeks ago, she was featured on the Country Music Association Awards broadcast singing with two other Black country artists, Mickey Guyton and Madeline Edwards, in a performance of her hit song, “I Love My Hair.”

Brittney Spencer joins Tom on Zoom for the second half of this hour. Their conversation was recorded last week, so we’re not able to take any calls or comments.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Today on Midday, another edition of Midday with the Mayor, our monthly conversation with Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott.

Among the topics addressed in today's discussion (which was pre-recorded on Tuesday, November 30) are the mayor's plans for allocating $35 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds toward closing the city's digital divide and providing better Internet access, especially in currently under-served West Baltimore neighborhoods; another $30 million in ARPA funds on a COVID-recovery workforce development program; and a new job training program for the city's "squeegee kids."

Mayor Brandon Scott joined us on Zoom from his office in City Hall.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

This morning (December 1), the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a landmark case that could change access to legal abortions in the United States.

A law in Mississippi called the Gestational Age Act, passed in 2018, prohibits a woman from having an abortion if she has been pregnant for more than 15 weeks.

The law was challenged by the only remaining place in Mississippi that provides abortions, a clinic in the state’s largest city, Jackson, called the Jackson Women’s Health Clinic.

If the court decides the Mississippi law is constitutional, the legal precedent established in the Court's 1973 ruling in the case of Roe v. Wade will be eliminated. Recent polls show that 70% of Americans support the right to an abortion guaranteed in Roe v Wade, but the current Court, with six conservative Justices and three liberal Justices, may decide to overturn that historic ruling. A decision in the case is expected by summer.

Joining Tom today with analysis and perspective is the legal scholar Kim Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, a former Assistant US Attorney, and the author of two excellent books, How to Read the Constitution-And Why, and What You Need to Know About Voting-And Why. Wehle is also the host of the Instagram & YouTube Show called #Simple Politics.

Kim Wehle joins us on our digital line from her office in Baltimore.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's next guest is the actor and filmmaker Sonja Sohn. She is best known for her portrayal of Baltimore Police Detective Kima Greggs in The Wire, the critically acclaimed HBO series.

Her latest documentary film is about a real-life Baltimore detective, Sean Suiter, who died while on duty in November 2017. It’s called The Slow Hustle, and it explores the lingering questions that surround Suiter’s death. It will air on HBO beginning a week from tonight.

Sonja Sohn joins us on Zoom from North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

A grim reminder that the COVID crisis is not yet a thing of the past came last week when health officials in South Africa were the first to announce the appearance of a new variant, named omicron, which has since been identified in more than 15 countries. CBS News is reporting today that the new variant appeared in Europe at least a week before it was detected in southern Africa. It is only a matter of time before it is detected in the US.

The World Health Organization has warned that the new variant poses a “very high risk” globally, but questions about how transmissible it is, how virulent it may be, and if our current regimen of vaccines provide enough protection remain unanswered. Yesterday, President Biden said that the omicron variant is a “cause for concern, not a cause for panic.”

The US and many other nations have banned travel from South Africa and 7 other countries in southern Africa, a decision that has been met with derision in the affected countries.This new development is just the latest challenge facing health care providers across the country.

Tom's Newsmaker guest today is Kevin Sowers, who serves as both the president of the Johns Hopkins Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine. In that capacity, he oversees six hospitals, and Johns Hopkins Community Physicians, which has more than 40 outpatient sites throughout Maryland and Washington, D.C.

[Full disclosure: Tom Hall's wife, Linell Smith, works in the Marketing and Communications Department at Johns Hopkins Medicine.]

Kevin Sowers joins us by phone from his office in Baltimore.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Today on Midday, a variety of perspectives on Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities, the 1992 play about Black-Jewish relations in America that's getting a new production at Baltimore's Center Stage. Opening night is Thursday.

Tom's first guest today is the playwright who created Fires in the Mirror: the writer, actor and educator, Anna Deavere Smith. In addition to the one-woman plays she has written and performed, her acting credits include dozens of well-known television and film roles. She has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 2012, President Barack Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal.

Anna Deavere Smith has revolutionized theater with work based on intensive interviews with people around the subjects she explores. She transforms these interviews into powerful shows that capture the nuances and complexities of the issues she takes-up.Her work has examined, among other topics, health care, the school-to-prison pipeline, and racial tension in Los Angeles following the acquittal of white police officers who beat Rodney King in 1991. In 1992, she wrote and performed Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities, which explored the violence that broke out in a New York City neighborhood after a Hasidic Jew lost control of the car he was driving and killed an African American child. The play was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of a 1993 Drama Desk Award.

Anna Deavere Smith joins us on Zoom from New York City.

Baltimore Center Stage is presenting Fires in the Mirror in a live stage production that runs through December 19. A little later in this hour, Tom speaks with Center Stage's artistic director and with the director of the new production.

But first, Tom is joined by two eminent scholars who help us explore the relationship between the African American and Jewish communities in America:

Dr. Susannah Heschel is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. Her father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, was a close confidant and colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Heschel will be speaking in Baltimore a week from tonight about the current state of inter-religious dialogue in this year’s Manekin-Clark Lecture, sponsored by the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. Her talk is entitled “Recapturing the Prophetic Tradition: A Challenge for Interreligious Dialogue.” The event begins at 7:00pm at Kraushaar Auditorium at Goucher College, and will also be streamed on YouTube. To register for the talk, click here.

Prof. Susannah Heschel joins us today on Zoom from Hanover, New Hampshire.

Dr. Charles Chavis is the Founding Director of the John Mitchell, Jr. Program for History, Justice, and Race at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. He’s also an Assistant Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution and History at George Mason. His new book will be published next month. It’s called The Silent Shore: The Lynching of Matthew Williams and the Politics of Racism in the Free State.Dr. Charles Chavis, Jr. joins us on Zoom from Virginia.

Tom's final guests today are two artists who are bringing Anna Deavere Smith’s extraordinary play, Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities to life at Baltimore Center Stage. Stephanie Ybarra is the Artistic Director of Baltimore Center Stage. Nicole Brewer is directing the production. They join us on Zoom with their perspectives on this groundbreaking drama.

The one-woman play opens on Thursday night and runs through December 19.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

(This conversation originally aired on September 13, 2021)

Welcome to an archive edition of Midday.

Nearly 70% of Americans have a Facebook account, and Facebook’s unrelenting mission is to add even more people to its huge list of subscribers, and to keep all of us glued to those accounts for as long as possible, every day.

Executing that mission has made Facebook insanely profitable. The company is also unquestionably problematic and unapologetically purposeful in its manipulation and marketing of our personal data, most of which we disclose quite freely.

The Federal Trade Commission has updated its antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant, arguing that it should be broken up into smaller companies, separating, for example, Facebook from Instagram and What’s App.

Tom's guests are two award-winning reporters for The New York Times, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang. In a disquieting book published in June, they examine Facebook in the period between the 2016 and the 2020 elections.

Forty-four percent of Americans say they got their information about political candidates from the behemoth social network. And a lot of the time, that information is spurious, generated by foreign states like Russia, and sometimes, the candidates themselves. The deleterious effect on basic democratic institutions is immeasurable, and as Kang and Frenkel document, Facebook’s efforts to curb it are ineffective, and contrary to Facebook’s business model.

Facebook’s reach into the global community is unmatched and its unchecked power presents a conundrum to those who would break it up or attempt to regulate it. The book is called An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination.

In recent months, a whistleblower named Frances Haugen testified before Congress and released internal documents which show that the harmful effects of Instagram on young girls were known to the company, and other damning revelations. Today’s show was recorded before that testimony, and before the company announced that it was creating a new umbrella company, called Meta.

Cecilia Kang joined us on Zoom. Sheera Frankel joined us on our digital line. Because our conversation was recorded earlier, we’re not able to take calls and comments today.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.