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American Utopia’s Mustachioed Standout on Bringing Queerness to David Byrne’s Show “I feel like we put in just the right amount of camp and just the right amount of wink to really hold space for that cheesy showiness that we love about Broadway.” Tendayi Kuumba and Chris Giarmo in  American Utopia .   HBO In Spike Lee’s film of David Byrne’s  American Utopia , an ensemble of 16 musicians and vocalists fill the stage of Broadway’s Hudson Theatre, moving freely around one another, all wearing identical gray suits. Throughout the film, which premieres on HBO and HBO Max on Saturday, one performer really pops out: Chris Giarmo, whose sparkly eye shadow, expressive mustache, and precise dancing make him a kind of bedazzled counterpoint to his monochrome bandmates. A downtown fixture who, like everyone in the cast, made his Broadway debut in  American Utopia , Giarmo—along with his fellow dancer and vocalist Tendayi Kuumba—is onstage nearly every moment in the show, singin...

Thank God Social Distance Is Sad Despite its title, “You Gotta Ding-Dong Fling-Flong the Whole Narrative” — starring Peter Scanavino, Ali Ahn, and Scanavino’s own son Leo Bai-Scanavino — may be  Social Distance ’s bleakest entry.  Photo: Netflix I’m not sure what to describe as the first episode of  Social Distance , Netflix’s new coronavirus anthology show created by Jenji Kohan and Hilary Weisman Graham. When I open Netflix, the episode that begins playing for me as the first one of the series is called “Delete All Future Events,” and it’s just the kind of awkward, unpleasantly topical episode you’re probably already imagining when you hear the phrase “new coronavirus anthology show.” The main character, played by Mike Colter, is a barber struggling to maintain some kind of career, and also cling to his sobriety, while stuck at home alone in the early spring lockdowns. When I watched  Social Distance  as the screeners provided for critics, “Delete All Future E...