Ariana Grande (0:00)

Hi, I'm Ariana Grande. Hi, I'm Cynthia Erivo, and you're listening to the Broadway Podcast Network. Visit BPM FM to discover more. Hey, Broadway fans, this is Wayne Brady. Maybe you've seen me on Whose Line Is It Anyway? Making stuff up. Maybe you've seen me give away money and making things up on let's Make a Deal, but have you seen me on stage? If you haven't, now's your chance. Hop on the Broadway Cruise. What is the Broadway Cruise, you ask? I'm glad you asked. It's where some of your favorite performers from stage are now. On a cruise ship. That's right. The Great White Way becomes the Great Wet Way. I just thought of that. We're gonna be on a boat. Panels, discussions, foods. It's a cruise ship. You're gonna get to sing, dance, mingle with other Broadway lovers, sing show tunes at the top of your voice till 2 o'clock in the morning. No one's gonna stop you. We're at sea. And the best part is we're all on a boat. We get to hang out from March 31st to April 4th. The Broadway Cruise. You're gonna love it. Sailing from Miami to Cozumel, Mexico. Visit the broadwaycruise.com that's the broadwaycruise.com you don't wake up dreaming of McDonald's fries. You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns. McDonald's breakfast comes first. Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history or legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And today is a special day because today is my birthday. Yes, yes, yes. 35. The Bobby Year, or the Carrie Bradshaw Season 4 of Sex and the City year, depending on what your sign is. So happy birthday to me. Thank you so much. I decided because this was a special day. And by special, I just mean, you know, it's very rare that the podcast drops on my birthday. I wanted to do a little, you know, Q and A, something we haven't done in a while since it's a little slow right now with reviews. There's, you know, the Broadway season is definitely picking up steam, but I've had a kind of light turnaround with theater reviews. That being said, I do have at least two coming up later this week, and there will be another Tony episode coming up very shortly. But, you know, the Tony Awards themselves haven't really kicked in quite yet. It's a little. It's both a little too busy to do deep dives as well as not quite busy enough to dedicate solely to Refuse and to Tony nominations. So I figured a nice Q and A would be sufficient for this one especially because, you know, sometimes you guys want to ask me questions on Instagram or on the Discord and I'm always happy to answer, but it's always nice to have these sort of out in the open kind of episodes, right? And as you all know, I'm pretty much an open book. I do try to draw a line somewhere. You guys have been pretty respectful with questions in the past. Sometimes there have been anonymous comments that I would find a little less respectful. But hey, you know, we do what we can. Apologies if you hear any sort of like bumpy sounds like in past episodes we are recording back in my bedroom, no longer in the office of the apartment. So that means that I don't have quite like the normal stand that I usually do. So doing my best. So apologies about that. If you were wondering how you could submit questions, I left a chat open on the Broadway Breakdown Discord channel. There is going to be a link for the Discord channel in the description box for this episode. I know some of you have had issues with Discord links to join the Discord and have reached out to me via Instagram. I do apologize about that. I. I do my best, but Discord has different plans about how they, you know, want their links to work. I set the link to never expire when I put the invite in the description box and then Discord decides, nope, that's going to expire anyway. So if that is the case, if you are clicking on different links and they're not working and you do follow me on instagram @mycoplic usualspelling, then please let me know and I will send you a direct link immediately. We already have over 240 members on the Discord Channel and plenty of those members wrote in questions. I also did a 24 hour Anonymous Q and A on Instagram for people who were not on the Discord channel for this episode. So that's how people were able to submit their questions. So we will get into all of that in just a quick second. But, but before, sorry, I had to grab my phone. Before we do any of that, I want to give a little bit of flowers to one of our listeners because as I always say at the end of every episode, if you like the podcast to give us a Nice rating or five star review? Five star rating. If you don't like the podcast, feel free to write a review or give a rating as you please. I'm not going to force anyone to do anything, but it's always nice to get those ratings. Especially because as I've said in the Tony ranking episode that we are aiming to submit ourselves to the Broadway League as a an official member of the press because we have been getting press seats for Broadway shows, but not nearly all of them. And so we are, you know trying to we are trying to see everything this season to do Tony predictions to give you guys reviews so we can, you know, really do this the correct way. And that can get expensive if you're doing everything at full price or even TDF or Rush. So any, you know, anything we can do to help with that, we want to. So the more ratings and the more reviews we get on Spotify and on Apple podcasts, the more likely it is that Broadway that v. Broadway League will accept me for to be a member of the official press. So we will get to your questions in just a second but I want to give my flowers to a new review that we got Cue the Light in The Piazza Overture 5 stars legal disclaimer warning this podcast cause you to re evaluate to re evaluate all other podcasts both in terms of quality and length. You may find yourself frequently telling others about that podcast or Matt said when discussing a show, theme plot, device or really anything else. When your non theater friends say that you see every show or see more shows than anyone they know, you may feel compelled to correct them and say that you are actually an uncultured redacted we all know what that means. Matt takes no responsibility I assume for the self doubt you may feel when he methodically but respectfully destroys a show you liked. Oh no. But he does take all credit when you correctly recognize that a show is great or horrible and it is incredibly validating when that happens. All jokes aside, this podcast is a masterpiece in thoughtful, intelligent and entertaining discussion of all things Broadway. I cannot recommend it enough from Broadway Lawyer Legal Disclaimer thank you so much Broadway Lawyer. That's amazing. You guys are so good at writing these. Thank you. That's fantastic. It really does warm my heart to read these reviews. So I know I've had a few of you tell me that you're waiting. You're, you know you intend to do it but you're kind of nervous about it. Just write from your heart. You know, everything that you guys all think of is fantastic and I'm truly just in awe of all of you. So thank you. Thank you for doing me the honor of choosing to spend your time on this podcast. It means the world and I am very, very grateful. So without further ado, let's get into some of your questions. I'm going to go a little bit out of order because I got one towards the very end that I realized I should probably answer first as a disclaimer because we actually have some new listeners of this podcast, which is to say one of the first questions was tell us about Tampa. For those of you who don't know what that means. I just got back from Tampa, Florida, the birthplace of Ms. Jenna Maroney. I was asked by two listeners of the podcast. Hi, Maddie. To adjudicate and teach at the Tampa. Sorry, not Tampa, the Florida State Thespian Festival. I believe that's what it's officially called. It's, you know, it's like the Jimmy Awards but set in Florida. And it's actually like, you know, 15, 20 years older than the Jimmies. And it's like bring it on. But for high school theater, it's high schools all over Florida compete in their districts and then win those districts and come to Florida states. And students come in and compete with contrasting monologues and do musical theater songs and musical theater scenes and do full blown musical theater numbers and choreography and set design and costume design and makeup design and productions compete and perform against each other all over this whole week. And it's done both at the Tampa Convention center and the Stratus Performing Arts Center. I had heard about this many years ago back in my Everyone Take a Shot days at Stagedoor Manor at the Manor, because I had friends at Stage Door who lived in Florida and competed in Thespians. Friend of the Pod, Itai Benson was one of them. Hi, Itai, if you're listening. And I was always so jealous of that. I knew about it. I was always so jealous. And so to be asked to come and teach and adjudicate was really, really special. And I was so incredibly honored. I was there for about four and a half days, arrived Tuesday afternoon and left very early Sunday morning. And I had a blast. But it was also very exhausting. I was down there with plenty of other teachers and artists from Florida, as well as New York artists who had connections to Florida and the Thespian Festival. I was there with who? I was there with Jen Colella and Ashley Brown, Wesley Taylor, Lauren Molina, Nick Searle, Michael Kushner, Chelsea Turbin and a bunch of other wonderful Florida folks. And we just. We all had a great time, but it's also no joke. You know, we were up early and judging or teaching and then kind of relaxing in the second half of the day, going to see shows and all these things, and it was wonderful. I say this early because I taught two workshops. I adjudicated a couple of times. I adjudicated for solo musical theater acting, which was students doing a song, as well as solo acting, which was students doing two contrasting monologues. I also adjudicated with friend of the Pod, Jennifer Ashley Tepper, and Chelsea Turban, who some of you might have seen in Little Shop of Horrors. And we adjudicated for the first night's showcase performance, which was students from different schools performing contrasting musical theater numbers or scenes or duet scenes and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was so much fun. I also taught two workshops. I taught scene study, and I taught musical theater analysis how to analyze musicals. And I know that some of the students from those workshops now are starting to listen to the podcast. So I probably should have told you guys this at the workshops. I apologize. Something we learned at Thespians is doing an asterisk when things might have content that might offend people. And we have an expletive stamp on this podcast. So I'm hoping the kids see that and know that this is not a podcast for the week. But at Thespians, when you're doing a performance of something, whether it's, you know, usually when it's adjudication, you have to asterisk beforehand to say that this piece contains violence or foul language or sexuality. And if that offends anyone, they are free to leave the room before they begin. Because when these competitions are happening, and they're happening all throughout the week, like all day long, in addition to the workshops happening at the same time. But when you're judging, it's not just you in the room, or at least it wasn't when I was doing it. These students, friends, people from their district come to support them. People from other districts are there. Teachers, parents are there. And so, you know, we had. I think of the three things that I judged, there was only one time where somebody actually left the room, and that's because a young girl did contrasting monologues. One from the audition, which was a piece I never heard of, and then one from Night Mother, and she said, you know, this piece is asterisked for talk of suicide, and if that offends you or makes you uncomfortable, you'll feel free to leave the room and Someone did. Otherwise, nobody did. And I'll tell you, these kids, they came to play, and they both didn't come to play. They. They really hit the ground running. And I was very impressed with so many of them. If you're listening, guys, I'm impressed with your talent, your intelligence, your passion a little bit about. About what we did. So if you were some. If you were a student that I adjudicated, if you did a musical theater solo number, and you know, you're interested in more feedback because we were able to write in some feedback on our judging. I often spoke about connection to the song as well as comfort with the. With the music. So both, you know, how in command the student was of the song itself, musically tempo, lyrics, breath support, things like that, or the comfort level they had just singing the number in general, if it was in their range, and then a connection to the lyrics. Having a character, having a scene partner, having a build to the song, showing different shades to your acting, right? There were some students who sang beautifully and were so confident and so professional. So had a wonderful presentation, but were like a little one note on the acting front. They weren't bad emotional choices. They were totally in line with what the songs were about, but they didn't really change their emotional perceptions throughout. And something I talked about a lot in scene study, and I'll get to that in a second, was you only have so much time to show us different facets of yourself and of not just of yourself, but of your character. So you don't want to play just one thing for three minutes straight. There are, you know, whoever feels one thing completely all the time, and that is sort of what you want to do in your number. And also when you're moving, you want to move with purpose. You want to have it be connected to your character and have it be personality and have some attitude towards it. And that doesn't mean that every word has to have a movement. Sometimes there is power in being still, in drawing us in. The two worst things I think you could do with movement or either have no intention with your movement and just be wandering aimlessly or have your arms sort of flop about. The other big mistake I think you can do is overstage and be too clean and too presentational and have the whole thing just feel like a pageantry, right? It's musical theater, so it is presentational, but it is a story you're telling. It's a character you're expressing. So you want to make sure that those two are intertwined. And that's not Easy. And it's not always going to work out. But that's why we're here, and this is why we have a competition like this. I tried very hard with my comments to be supportive and give very specific notes of things that students could work on and really think about for their next time and understand that they might have done really exceptional work. But there was one student who might have just done a little better because of things like movement, like things as showing different sides to their emotions, like having the song be in a key that was comfortable in their voice, things like that. So that's the adjudicating with the workshops. I'll talk about scene study for just a little bit and then go into the analyzing musicals. Scene study. What we did was. I think I did five of them, and the turnout ranged anywhere from 20 to 80, depending on when of the day we were. I talk to the students about how when you're auditioning, sometimes you don't get a lot of information on the show you're auditioning for. Especially the more professional you get. Sometimes you just get two or three scenes and you don't get a plot description. You barely get anything about your character. So you don't have a lot of context for what you're about to act in. And you have to make very specific decisions very quickly, especially if you have a scene partner. You got to work with them very fast. So I had three scenes with very little character information or scene information, just the dialogue. And it was about two pages from the first scene of Steel Magnolias between Truvy and Anelle. The first scene of Biff and Happy and Death of a Salesman. Obviously very, very condensed, just two pages. As well as a scene between Nora and Stanley in Brighton Beach Memoirs. I would have two students come up and I would say, okay, just do a cold read. And I would check to make sure they didn't know the scene. Sometimes students would know the scene and wouldn't tell me until later. But mostly they didn't know the scene. They didn't know the play. I would say, okay, let's do a cold read in front of everyone. After the cold read, I'd say, okay, what are some clues we can get from that first read? Who are these characters? What is our takeaway about them with their personalities? Maybe? What's their relationship to each other? Where do we think we are? What time period do we think we're in? And. And then after that, it's okay. Now, what is the arc of this scene for our character? Where do we start? And where do we have to end? And we would talk about that as well. And we'll say, okay, now, with all of that information that we've just discussed, let's do a second take of this. Just reading it through, no physicality, no nothing, just reading it through and apply what we've just spoken about to this second take. It's not going to be perfect, but. But now that you have a little more information, let's make some character choices. And I would also have them check in with each other. Is there anything you need from each other to help you with those character choices? The actor playing Happy, is there anything you need from the actor playing Biff so you can get here in this moment? Actress playing Nora, you have to end on the verge of tears. Can the actor playing Stanley help you with something? Is there a turning point or anything like that? Things like that? They would do the second take, we would talk about what we learned from that, and then we would do a third take. And this time we would add a little bit of physicality. And what I would tell them is we have to think of three moments where we have to do an action of some sort that could be moving our body completely, that could be standing up or sitting down. That could be an arm thing, what have you. It has to be specific. It has to be motivated and sort of figuring out from there and playing around with that. And then once each scene was finished, that took up about an hour of the hour and a half workshop. And then I would offer to the rest of the group who is sitting and watching this process. Okay. With everything that we've been watching, that we've been learning, I want you all to have been absorbing that. And you can come up and do a cold read with somebody applying all the things that you've been watching today and show us what you learned. And then afterwards, give us a little feedback of what you did that you liked, what you did, that you would love to improve on if you had more time? And other pieces of information I would give is, when it comes to stage business, meaning physicality stuff, it's always helpful to have a task to do. And that task can take you a very long time. It buys you so much time. So for the Truvy and Enel scene, it opens with Anele doing Truvy's hair auditioning to get a job. Auditioning, job interview, essentially, to be a hair technician, beauty technician in the hair salon. And she gets the job. And now Truvy has to open up the shop for Shelby's wedding and every girl who's playing Truvy, you know, we set the scene. I said, okay, here's where the chair is. Here's where all the coffee stuff is. Here's where all the beauty supplies are. That's the front door. You gotta unlock it, open up for the day. And they would start to go around and they would speed through everything, and they would be done with all of the physical actions. You know, two thirds of the way through the first page, and they still had another page to go. And I would stop them and I would say, okay, watch me. This is me literally putting four pieces of paper together. And I took four pieces of paper, I put them together, put them on the table, and I said, that took me three seconds. I said, let's put the paper away and let me mime that for you. Watch how long it takes me. And I was able to manage like 30 seconds of shuffling the papers. I said, don't let things take super quickly. Buy yourself time. If you have something to do, let it take three times as long as you expect it to. It gives you action to do, and you aren't thinking ahead and you aren't worrying too much of what the next task is. It also, if you're doing so much and doing it so quickly, you're speeding through the scene and you're making the audience nervous and it becomes messy. So that's stuff that we all talked about. We also talked about things like sometimes what your character says wasn't what they intended to say at first. They might have thought of something and then shoved it down and then said something else. Things to consider. So that was stuff we talked about in scene study. And then analyzing musicals. We literally just. We did what that was analyzing musicals. I asked the students to give me three musicals. One from the golden age, one from the 70s or 80s, and then one from the last 15 to 20 years. And we would sort of compare and contrast. And then I would include other shows as well, for analysis sake. And some common ones that we talked about were Oklahoma. West side Story, Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd. Eventually got to the point where I just made sure that we talked about Sweeney Todd for a solid 25 minutes. I also mentioned Sweeney Todd. I actually connected with Next Normal and with Newsies. And if you were part of those workshops, you know exactly what I mean. If you weren't, if you're just a regular old listener, you can write in and ask me what. What the fuck I meant by that. How is Sweeney Todd connected to Newsies? And next to normal. Well, I'll just say this. All three shows have twists. Two of them I think are good twists. One I think is a dumb twist. And you can ask me more about what I mean about that on the Discord Channel. So, yeah, that was. That was Tampa. And I had a great time. I made tons of new friends. I sang with Lauren Molina and Nick Searle on the first night. They are the founding members of the Skivvies. They perform and teach there. Every Nick is a friend. I've now become good friends with Lauren. She's the fucking best. And, yeah, they asked me to sing with them as well as Michael Kushner and Chelsea Turban. And Nick said, okay, think of a mashup to do. He said, think of, like, a Broadway song and a pop song to mash up for the kids and possibly a song from a show that the kids would like a lot. And I gave them a couple of options. And the one. The option they decided was the one we were going to do was a mashup of Dead mom from Beetlejuice with since youe've Been Gone. Not gonna lie, it kind of slayed. I also learned a lot about, like, the shows that the kids right now are loving, what musicals they're loving. I've learned that Ride the Cyclone is so insanely popular with high schoolers. I barely know that show. I remember when it was here. It kind of came and went. It's huge now. I saw so many girls sing the Ballad of Jane Doe. The kids wanted me to deconstruct Ride the Cyclone. I didn't know it super well, so I mostly just sort of did it at the end when the last 10 minutes of analyzing musicals, we played the game where I said, you know, every musical can sound dumb. The best musicals you could think of can sound dumb if you pitch it the wrong way. So I said, you know, throw musicals at me and I'll make them sound dumb to you. And then they eventually told me about Ride the Cyclone. I had kids have to, like, tell me what the plot was. And it's like, people who died at the roller coaster, I guess something like that. And one of them, they're having a competition of their lives, pitching their lives to each other via song. And whoever wins gets to not die. I'm like, oh, so it's a reverse Cats meets Six, which they said was true. That was Tampa. It was great. That's the longest answer I'm probably going to be giving because that's such a general question, but that is exactly How Tampa was. Um. Let's find another one. What's my favorite White Lotus scene of all time or of this season? Because if it's this season, I'm not gonna lie. I'm recording this after the most Recent episode. Episode 6. And the Pool scene with Chelsea, Chloe, and Saxon I thought was incredible. If you've been watching this season, you know that everything happening with Saxon and Lachlan has come to a breaking point. And we were all waiting for it. We all expected it, and it happened. And it was both exactly what I expected, but not what I expected. But the Chloe Chelsea scene by the pool I thought was like a chef's kiss. Other amazing scenes I love in the first season, I'm forgetting all their names, but the two mean teenage girls, one of whom is Sydney Sweeney at the pool in the first episode, talking to. I think her name's Alessandra now. Trophy wife. The one who. She's not even a journalist. She writes recaps of other people's articles, and they're by the pool talking, and it's just so uncomfortable. And then it ends with her taking off her, you know, like, sarong or whatever and showing off her body in front of the teenage girls and them, you know, being impressed by it, you know, Great, great, great scene. So those are two that come to mind. Will you be seeing Love Life? I will be. That's actually going to be a review mashed up with another show. I'm seeing Love Life on Friday, literally the day after this episode comes out. So I look forward to talking about it then. Who's my favorite pop diva? Ultimately, it just keeps coming back to Kelly Clarkson. She's got some songs that I really love. It all really culminated when back in the early days of the Breakdown, when John Miscavige and I were co hosts and we used to play the game Jukebox, that musical where you had to take a pop song catalog and turn it into a musical and write a plot for it. And I did one for Kelly Clarkson, and I think I don't remember what the plot was at all. I just remember it was, like, environmental. It's like a Cher show, but environmental. But anyway, doing that, I fell in love with her song catalog. I fell in love with her. I think she's so cool. Her voice has never sounded better. She's got her revenge body, and, yeah, she is my pop diva. If you could play any role in any play this season, what would it be? Um, that's a good question. I think that the role I'm Best suited for is Darren Criss's role in maybe Happy Ending. I'm not sure if that's the role I most would want to do. Honestly. I would love to play Laura Donnelly's duo roles in Hills of California. I just think that's a great showcase. Also. This is so weird, but Louise and Gypsy has always been a role that I've wanted to try. I think that there's so much there, and it's also kind of difficult. There's so much that you have to make work on your own. So it's both. The material is there to help you as well as you have to fight to make certain things work. And I think that's an incredible challenge. So, yeah, it would be. I think it would be those three for now. I also did the Riddle Song in college with my friend Mike Niederer. I was Floyd, he was Homer. I would love a chance to sing that song again. My voice is in better shape than it was in college. And it's not that it's easy now, but it is easier now, and I can sing it with a lot more joy and a lot less stress. So, yeah, I would say that. What are the most underappreciated Golden Age musicals? This is gonna sound mean, but I think all the Golden Age musicals that are well appreciated are well appreciated for a reason. And the ones that maybe have fallen by the wayside are also for a reason. There are some scores that people don't really think about much, but it's because the. The books are clunky or dustier than people remember, and thus the shows are done less frequently. I think Carnival is a really beautiful score, and it's a good musical that's really hard to do well, similar to Carousel. It's like you kind of have to lean in to the darkness of it and find actors and people don't really want to do that. Trying to think of. Because golden age is 1940s, 1950s, and the early 1960s. Like pre 1965. Yeah. Because like Candy is an incredible score, but that libretto has been rewritten to death and it still has never 100% worked. I really enjoy Wonderful Town, and I look forward to seeing it at Encores, but I feel like that's kind of properly appreciated. Sorry, that's. That's kind of a non answer. So, yeah, sorry about that. I hope. I hope you felt okay about my answer. It's a bit of a non answer. But what have you. What is your realistic ambition for your play? That is my play. Yours truly. Professional staging Somewhere Off Broadway Run starring you. Broadway or Bust. Dramaturg for something else. I'm so impressed with where you got it so far. Thank you. But been curious how far you expect it to go or what you want it to do for you. I'm not sure what I want it to do for me. I didn't write it for it to make me famous. I wrote it because I needed to get it out of my body. It was such a sad experience. And the real life. Owen and I are. We are on better terms. I'm not gonna say we're on great terms. It's still kind of weird. But we are no longer completely cut off from each other, which is nice. So this is to say, like the play wasn't for any other reason other than when I wrote it. I was in such a state because of what had happened. And then it turns out that it actually had the makings of something. So we then kind of had to reprioritize and stop making it a therapy piece and make it into a legitimate work. So the plan is right now Maddie and I would like to have a production of the second half of this calendar year and Maddie's in London directing the comedy about spies. And he'll be done with that in May and I'll be in May with my mom to see it. So that's exciting. But we're in the middle of cutting together all the footage from the live stream taping, which if you didn't watch, you can absolutely still watch it on YouTube. You just look up yours truly streaming musicals and it's there. I think it starts at the eight minute mark, but we're cutting together all the footage to make sort of about a 2, 2 and a half minute trailer for it to accompany a little summary on the play as we send it out to a couple of agents and producers that have shown interest. Maddie is already represented by an agency and they're going to help us send it out. But there are people who are interested in it and are interested in working with Matty or myself. And so we want to send it out to them and sort of get their interest. And if they like it, then we'll send them the full script. Because people are not reading scripts with the speed with which they once did, especially me, who's a first time playwright. But we also have some other people who've joined on the team, some actors who are transitioning into producing who really love the play and are using their connections to help us sort of get it out there. The goal is, yeah, Second half of the year. It doesn't have to star me. I very much enjoy acting in it. We've yet to have an actor play the role of John in a way that was satisfactory for everyone. And I'm including myself. You know, Maddie and I both think that I can do the role, but there could be someone else out there. I don't really desire to be a dramaturg if that's something that people want for me. I'm interested in many job opportunities, I will say also, the play has gotten me in contact with the Broadway director who's interested in me writing a musical with them or for them. I suppose they don't really write. So that's been happening. And yeah, it's definitely gotten me some more invitations to things, interviews for things and meetings for things. Our goal is a production somewhere at the end of the year. I think if we had our dream, it would be in New York, Off Broadway somewhere. And then, I mean, we all would love for it to move to Broadway. I think Broadway's the goal for anyone, no matter what they say, and it could fit there. But realistically speaking, we would like to do maybe like a six to eight week run somewhere in New York. So that's the plan for that. You said 2017 was the last time the best musical category had no skips in it. Have there been any other seasons where you would say this is the case? Yeah. Do we mean solely best musical or other categories? Because if we're talking other Categories, I think 1994 Best Musical Revival is a no skip category. That is, of course, my beloved Carousel, but also the delightful she Loves Me with Boyd Gaines and Kunzie. And then Diane Frantantoni. Later, the Grease revival that had Rosie and Megan Mullally in it. I wouldn't say that that was like the epitome of high art, but that was a very fun revival and ran for four years and started off a lot of careers and was, I think, a great blend of what people wanted from Greece and something new you could bring to it. And then also a very delightful commercial production of Damn Yankees. So that's a great no skip any other. But I'm trying to think of any other musical lineups, because 2005, I would say, isn't really a skip. Best musical category. Spamalot is the weakest of the four, but I don't think Spamalot is bad. I think Spamalot is just sort of okay. It's more that spelling bee is kind of perfect. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is hysterical. And Lenny the Piazza is gorgeous and Spamalot is just not as special as they are. But it's a strong four and a very diverse four as well. That's all I can think of right now. Yeah, I feel like there's always one Peggy in the group for a best musical lineup, but there are definitely other categories that have had great lineups. No skips, but I think you were just asking about best musical. So 2017 and 2005 are the two years of this century, anyway, that I think are the strongest. Any other major ones? Oh, I think 1991 is a really solid year. I think Will Rogers Follies is the least successful of the four. But Will Rogers Follies has a lot to recommend it, so I wouldn't even call it a skip. It's just. It's Will Rogers Follies opposite Miss Saigon, Secret Garden, and Once on this Island. So I think that's a great four as well. So in the last. In the last 35 years, I would say those are the three best ones and last one before we take a break. Any productions Broadway Off Broadway Encores yous Wish Got a cast recording. I wish that Kristin Chenow within the Apple Tree got a cast recording, preferably when it was at Encores with Malcolm Goetz and Michael Cerverus. But I thought the Broadway transfer was also really strong with Brian Darcy James and Mark Kudish. And I feel like Chenoweth deserved a professional recording of her singing that score. I wish there was a professional recording of the licensed version of Smile. I love the demo version that Samuel French has, and I actually think the synthesizers give it a nice campy vibe. But it'll be nice to have a full Broadway recording of that score. So that's it for those questions. We'll take on the rest and even more after this break. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble TR. This is a message from sponsor Intuit. TurboTax Taxes was getting frustrated by your forms. Now Taxes is uploading your forms with a snap. And a TurboTax expert will do your taxes for you. One who's backed by the latest tech which cross checks millions of data points for absolute accuracy. All of which makes it easy for you to get the most money back guaranteed. Get an expert now@turbotax.com only available with TurboTax Live full service. Seek guaranteed details@turbotax.com guarantees. Hi, this is Debbie, your blinds.com design consultant. Oh, wow, A real person. Yep. I am here to help you with everything from selecting the perfect window treatments to. Well, I've got a complicated project. Oh, not a problem. I can even schedule a professional measure and install. We can also send you samples fast and free. I just might have to do more. Oh, okay. So the. The first room we're looking at is for guests. Shop blinds.com now and save up to 40% site wide. Blinds.com, rules and restrictions may apply. And we're back. So next question we have is any favorite Playbill cast album artwork? Well, an obvious one is 94 carousel. James McMullen. That's a great one. McMullen's work for the Patti LuPone anything goes. I also really love trying to think of stuff recently. You know, Wicked is obviously very iconic. I. I actually dislike McMullen's artwork for light in the Piazza, but I love the album artwork. The silhouette of Kelly in front of the Yellow Scrim. I think that's absolutely gorgeous. Any artwork, you know, in the last, like, five years that I've liked? Not totally. I liked the. I mean, it's the. It's both the poster as well as the album artwork for the LA Cage that came over from Meniere. I thought that was really well done. I think. I mean, I think Book of Mormon and Newsies were very intelligent marketing artwork, but I wasn't obsessed with, like, the. The artwork itself. The original Follies is a pretty iconic piece of album artwork and poster. I think that there's. So actually there's artwork from Amis Behavin, original artwork and concept art from when it opened, and then the. The Castle that I think is really well done. Very like art deco y and enticing. I like that a lot. I also really like the artwork for the Secret Garden and Jelly's Last Jam. I think those are. Are good. And I love the sort of come hither face that Cheetah has in the Kiss of the Spider Woman poster. Yeah, all good stuff. Next up, any guests you haven't had in a while you'd love to record with again? And is there a specific show you'd want them to do? I have a few people who are eager to come back. It's just scheduling. It's finding the right thing for them. I definitely have two people who haven't been on in a while who we expect to have back for the next Deep Dive series, which I will if you. If you guys haven't listened to me on But Life's But a Song. I do mention what the theme is of that one, but I didn't mention what the shows are. I'm going to do an announcement of that as well. I'll announce it soon. But yeah, I have a couple people who haven't been on in a while who will be on that. I actually just saw him tonight at an event, so I'll quickly give a shout out to Brian Nash. He hasn't been on since the Hamilton episode and I love Brian and he's so much fun. I love to have him back on. I loved having Jason Kerr on. I love to have Jason on again. We haven't had Caitlyn Kennan since the pre Covid era when it was me and Wiscavage and Caitlyn's a sweetheart and she came and did the Sondheim birthday concert for me at 54 below and I would love to have her back on. And no, I. I have so many friends who think are awesome and fun, but they get up in their heads about not being knowledgeable enough to come on the podcast and I always have to tell them like, no, no, no, it's just like, it's us having fun and it's all gonna be good. And they go, yeah, but I really gotta like bone up before I do it. So I could name a lot of them, but I don't want to throw them under the bus. But if they're. Chances are if there's a. If there's like an actor or Broadway person who was on and it's been a while since they were on, or like a year or five years, chances are that we've discussed them coming on and they were eager and then they kind of chickened out at the last second because they were like, no, I'm going to sound like an idiot. And I really don't want to sound like an idiot. So, yeah, no, plenty, plenty. I'll say Brian for now because he'll understand. And Jason. And I'll say Natalie. Natalie Walker. I want her back on. And maybe she will. Maybe it will entice her. Just saying. What's another one craziest thing a director ever said to you? In my audition for Daddy Issues, the director asked if I was gay. He had never met me before. I think I was three minutes into the audition. I did the scene that I was asked to do once and then he asked if I was gay and I said yes. And he said, great. I thought, so let's do the scene one More time. And then can you sing a little something? And that was that. I never had any kind of direction during rehearsals or anything like that that were super crazy. I mean, things that I found mean or vague or not helpful. The director of Daddy Issues I also thought was very unhelpful in rehearsals. But, yeah, just being asked if I was gay in the audition room, I was like, oh, I guess that's what we're playing today. Who's a director you like and what is their weakest work? I mean, it's so easy to say because it's happening right now, but I've been very vocal how much I love George C. Wolfe. I respect him, I admire him, I'm in awe of him. And I don't like his work on this Gypsy. Maybe it's my own expectation of what I was hoping he would do with it. But, you know, the man who gave us Jelly's Last Jam and Top Duck, Underdog and the Wild Party and Shuffle along and Bring it the Noise, Bring it the Funk, I did not. I wanted that kind of fire in this, and it just didn't do that. And then also a director you may not be a fan of and their strongest work. I am not a fan of Lear Debessonet. How she approaches musicals is not for me. Her approach worked solidly for into the woods, though, and that is where we're at. Would you rather fight 10 duck sized horses or one horse sized duck? 10 duck sized horses. They're small enough. You can. You can take them on, especially because ducks can get very violent. They're kind of rapey. Look up duck mating rituals. They're not. They're not cute. So, yeah, I would rather tend duck sized horses. Your favorite and least favorite Broadway house. I love the Beaumont, the Vivian Beaumont. I love what you can do in that space. They've also fixed the acoustics since they started it in the 70s. So I. I love that theater. I love being around Lincoln Center. It's a very. It's not the most attractive of theaters, but I really do love it. We're talking, like, aesthetically, the Majestics renovation is gorgeous. I think that the Richard Rogers looks gorgeous post renovation. Honestly, one of my least favorites is the lan Fontanne. I think that theater has horrible sight lines. It's ugly as sin. It's not. It's very cold and unwelcoming. The Marquis feels like an airport hangar. But I will say the Marquis has good sight lines. Yeah, I'm in the minority, but I really like the Walter Kerr. If you're on the balcony, it feels like you're going to fall off at any second. But I love the aesthetic of that theater, and it actually does feel rather intimate. So, yeah, those are those. When I was growing up, I had a lot of Broadway T shirts. Did you? It seems like fewer people wear them now. Am I correct in my observation? I had a Les Mis T shirt when I was a kid, and I would wear it from time to time. I feel like I also had an into the Woods T shirt from the 2002 revival, and that might be it. I didn't wear a lot of Broadway merch. I still don't wear a lot of Broadway merch. What I have, I have my K pop sweatshirt and my bucket hat. That's less because of the fashion, more because I was in an emotional state. When I was at the show and it was the second to last performance, I was like, I need merch. Because otherwise, you know, this thing's closing tomorrow. I want something to remember it by. Same reason why I have a Diana T shirt and a Diana magnet, but I don't know. I'm sure people have them and wear them. Merch is a lot more fashionable now. It's not always about emblazoning the logo and the image on the. On the outfit. It's not. You're gonna see fewer, obviously, Miz shirts with the little Cosette on it. You're gonna see like a quote or you're gonna see a little image sort of in the. In the corner. So people might be wearing show merch and you just don't know it. But no, I feel like I see it sometimes. I never saw it a lot as a kid. Mostly just a theater camp. And again, that was when I felt most comfortable wearing my. Wearing my Les Mis T shirt. Sorry, let me delete that one. I gotta delete these so I don't repeat myself. What are your most out of pocket Tony predictions this year? Out of pocket? Do you mean sort of like random, like throwing spaghetti kind of predictions just, like super randomly out there, or. Actually, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by out of pocket. Out of pocket meaning I'm such an idiot because I only know it in the monetary way. I guess. I think that. I think the three score and best musical locks are maybe happy Ending, Operation Mincemeat and Dead Outlaw. I think now that I'm thinking about it, I think that old friends could sneak in as the best musical nominee. And I think Lea Salonga could be a formidable featured actress nominee, especially if they Decide that Natalie Venetia Belcon and Jinkx Monsoon are best actress eligible, which I hope they're not. They should be in featured and that would make the category far more special. But if they are put in lead, then I think that means Lea Salonga could easily win featured actress. Those are some bold ones, I'm willing to say right now. I've got a Tony predictions episode coming soon, so I don't want to say too much. Shoot. I deleted the wrong thing. Okay, here we go. If you could add a new Tony category or two to the Tony Awards, what would it be and why? I would add wig design. I think that you don't know what a great wig is until you see a bad one. And I would have nominated Heart of Rock and Roll for wig design last year. I thought those wigs were sensational. I think I would also nominate the things like there were categories that used to exist that I love, and I get why they cut them because Tony voters wouldn't know how to vote for them. Things like music director. But I do miss tight music direction and powerful music direction, and I would love it if that was honored again. I say I miss it like it doesn't exist anymore. It exists, just not in abundance. And I would love it if that was recognized casting maybe. And I know that the Oscars are going to be doing that. I would love it if the Tony Awards followed suit. Yeah, those are. Those are two that I would really love to have. Hottest, coldest, and most lukewarm theater takes. Oh, I have no idea. I mean, you guys have heard me talk so much on this podcast, I can't imagine there's anything I would say that would blow your minds that, like, you haven't already heard a million times. I mean, like, coldest theater take. I think that Hamilton is good, actually. Whoops. Hottest theater take. I think that there's not a single Broadway show that's worth $500. I don't think there's a single Broadway show that's worth 350. Hot. Take most lukewarm theater takes. Sometimes the Tony Awards get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. And I tend to stop caring which one is true two weeks after the winds. And then I just look at it as a piece of analytics. But that's also the fun of it. Watched the live stream of your play and loved it. Would love to know how it's been post performance. I talked a little bit about sort of what our plans are for it. Post performance has been great. We got a lot of Wonderful feedback. The actors who were in it all really loved it and said wonderful things and made jokes about right of first refusal for future projects. And, yeah, we're working on it. We're working on having it go somewhere soon. Theater works so slowly, and everybody gets back to everybody really slowly. So we're trying to keep the momentum going while not rushing into things that we haven't thought through. But, yeah, the response was really fantastic. Something that Tyler told us while he was in the control room with Matty and the producers from streaming musicals was when it was being live streamed. I think we had, like a little over 400 people watching at the time. It since has almost 2,000 views. But the night that we aired it live, we had a little over 400 viewers. But what they said was incredible was for the 2 hours and 10 minutes that we ran it, they said the number never changed. It stayed exactly at that number from the moment we began to the moment it ended. And they said that's never happened to them before. And I thought that was really cool. What's another one? Any chance of turning the podcast into a book? A Broadway seasonal Almanac, maybe? I've been. I've been yelled at by some people to write a book, and the truth is that I'm very, very lazy, and it's very, very overwhelming. But, you know, enough people have yelled at me that maybe I should really start thinking about it. Friend of the pod, Robert W. Schneider has written a couple. Friend of the pod, Jennifer Ashley Tepper has written a couple. So I should. I'm going to ask them for some advice and see what I can do. Yeah, because I think it's. It's always good to have this information available and have it be accessible and have it be fun and good. A good reading experience, you know, and there are plenty of books that have contrasting information, so I'm always eager to know which one is correct. What are your top 10 favorite musicals of all time? Well, obviously, number one is Carousel. Fun Home is up there. Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music are up there. That's four. Les Mis is up there. That's five. A Chorus Line is six. Probably Caroline or Change and probably landing the piazza. So that's eight, huh? What would be nine and 10? Because I have two spots left, and I feel like I just shot my wad. Gypsy's probably number nine, and Little Shop of Horrors is number ten. Maybe. I don't know. Ask me again in a couple of days and I'll absolutely change my mind, but Those are the 10 I'll save for now. Book. Okay, what is your ideal day with theater? 2 show day, show, you know, and love or a brand new show. 90 minute knee, meaning a 90 minute, no intermission dinner or drinks before or after. I'm a big fan of drinks after a show. Not necessarily dinner after. It has to be an early, early show to do a dinner after. The night that my mom and I saw Standing over Sky's Edge, we went to get a late dinner at the Ivy afterwards and that was really lovely. But that's not usually ideal. I'm a bigger fan of having dinner before and going to the show. So yeah, I mean a two show day is lovely. Doing maybe like brunch at 11, being done by one, taking a leisurely stroll over to the theater, having that one maybe be a 90 minute or 100 minute, no intermission, then luxuriating over to dinner, having. Having a luxurious dinner at five, getting out at 7:15, walking over to the theater, be there by 7:30, have a two hour, two and a half hour show, do a late drink, a nightcap to recap everything and call it a day. I'm not the biggest fan of day show day marathons. You know, two shows in a day. Some people have been able to do three in a day due to the weird timing schedules of Titanique and Omari. That's a little overwhelming for me. But sometimes I'll do a two show day if I really got to cram everything in there. But it can be pretty exhausting pretty quickly. What is your favorite example of simple but effective technical theater? Oh, interesting question. I love shit with props that are that when you take one thing and just make it an illusion. I think that the Jerry Robbins staging of the Small House of Uncle Thomas from King and I has some gorgeous imagery that comes from very simple technical effects like the river becoming a frozen lake with this silk screen. I think that's beautiful. I think all the, the falling snowflakes on the pieces of string is gorgeous. And I have talked so much shit about this show. I hate this musical so much. But the glitter tornado when Laura Michele Kelly died of glitter cancer in Finding Neverland was very stunning. And that was just glitter with, you know, blow dryers coming out of the stage. But it was very, very effective. What are some of your favorite fourth wall breaks in theater, film and tv? All of the asides to the audience in Fleabag in seasons one and two are phenomenal. But when season two makes it clear exactly what the fourth wall breaks mean, that blew my mind. And I was Obsessed. And I'll love it forever. I also love. I love how messy Skin of Our Teeth is with Fourth Wall breaks. And I can't say that the play itself totally sells me, but I love Thornton Wilder's I don't give a shit attitude with that kind of stuff and how interested he was in breaking the fourth Wall, because Our Town also does that. And I believe there's a lot of addressing with the audience in the Matchmaker. That's always fun to me. I find it less fun in musicals. If I had one major complaint with Dirty Round Scoundrels, I remember that they broke the fourth wall quite a few times. Spamalot. They do it incredibly often, and it bugs me every single time. One second. How long are we at? I think we're at about 26 minutes. Okay, let's do, like, three more questions, then we'll take another break. What are your favorite and least favorite instances of children in theater? I think that Sydney Lucas and Fun Home, Millie Shapiro and Matilda are two phenomenal performances given by children. I think if you have a really good, precocious actress with a strong voice to play Annie, that can work quite well. I think that Oliver. We actually were talking about this in analyzing musicals, of when your lead character is the least interesting person in the show. And a couple of kids said, Oliver. And I felt that with Oliver, while he is the title role, he's not necessarily meant to be the lead or even the most interesting one on stage. Oliver in the musical Oliver is. Is sort of the connective tissue for all of the adult characters, and things just sort of happen to him, and we watch the adult characters deal with it. So I think that's actually a good use of a child in a show. So I haven't seen a child do it yet. I'll be seeing it in London. So I'm excited for that. But I think that's a good use of having a child actor in your show, as well as the silent kid in Once on this Island. Also a good use of a kid. I have yet to see a Winthrop, and I'm including Ron Howard in the movie. That hasn't bugged the living shit out of me. I. Yeah. And that's. I don't. I'm not entirely sure if that's a child actor thing so much as I. That character annoys me. I mean, he's intentionally annoying in Music man, but yes. I've never found Winthrop endearing. So, yes, that is least favorite. Favorite Jennifer Simard performance. I think she's killing it right now in death becomes her. But you never forget your first. I'll never forget seeing her disaster and just going, who the fuck is that? That is a unique, unique person and I have eaten her up ever since. So, yeah, I will say that's gonna be my favorite Jen Smart performance for now. What is your favorite show? Most people haven't heard of. What show, in your opinion needs a revival? Oh, plenty of things need revivals. I would love to see carnival come back. I very much want Smile back at Encores or On Broadway again. J2 Spotlight with Robert W. Schneider. It's gonna be done there in April. I'm very excited for that. Favorite show no one's heard of. A lot of people haven't heard of Amor and I think that that score is beautiful. A lot of people haven't given a year with frog and Toad the light of day and I think that score is delightful. I think that show is delightful. Should really be 100 minute knee and it's a two act. I think it's an hour and 50 minute two act. But yeah, I think those two shows are just super, super duper sweet. And anything else. I know baby's not really underground. It's more kind of a cult show. But I think that score is fantastic and I wish more people paid attention. Not just as story goes on, but the whole score and kismet. I'm not gonna say Kismet's a good musical. I definitely its politics have aged terribly, but it's also, in my opinion, a mess of a book. But it's fascinating music and I would love it if people would listen to that score a little bit more. It's just wild. It's like very intense. Bonkers. It reminds me a little bit of great convent in the sense of that it's got a lot of tonal shifts within it, but it works. It works. All right, that's that round of questions. I will answer some more of your questions after this break. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow color. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Freddysday. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states and we're back. So next question we have is, who would you do on Snatch Game? Snatch Game, for those of you that don't know, is from Drag Race. Part of me wants to say Patti LuPone. I don't think I would do a very good impression of her, but I just think she's a good character for Snatch Game, and I don't know why. No queen has done her yet. Who are your top three current favorite living composers or top three composers who you think are ones to watch? Currently working right now, Jeanine Tesori, Dave Malloy, and I can't say Gettel, because I haven't liked anything he's written since Piazza. So I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say. I'm just gonna say Genie dsorian, Dave Malloy for now and then. Ones to watch, I would say. Anna K. Jacobs really liked her stuff on Teeth. I went to a 54 Below concert of her work, and it was really quite lovely. Friend of the pod, Preston Max Allen is a really gifted composer. I hope to hear more of their compositions at some point. I know they're working more in screenwriting these days, but they're a really strong composer. So, yeah, those are two that I think you should all definitely watch out for. Do you think purpose could win Best Play? It could. I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard good things. I've heard a lot of good things about John Proctor as the villain, actually, and it's shaping up to quite to be a really strong best play lineup, so we'll see. I think the thing with Omari is that it's just been the hit for the season for so long, and Cole and Conrad and James are coming back at the exact right moment to drum up all the interest for it again. But, yeah, no, it. It could happen. It could. The Tonys really do love to give best play to a show that has a real important political message to it. Next up, are you excited for Floyd Collins? A bit. I. I'm going in as I always do, which is my mind open and at arm's length. I really like the musical. I really like the cast, but I've had my heart broken in the past before, so I am. I am hopeful. I am hopeful for Floyd Collins. Did you like or believe Darren Criss's character in maybe Happy Ending? Yes, I did. I thought that Darren was really lovely in that show. I thought he was. He was a great fit. I thought he sounded really nice, and I thought he had a great attitude and perspective on his character. I Thought he presented that quite well. I thought he enacted the role really well. I thought he connected with Helen J. Shen. I thought he had good understanding of tone. Yeah, I. And I think the character is well written. It's you. You're either on board with the story of maybe happy ending or you're not. And if you are, yeah, I think I bought it. I bought everything he did. Will you be seeing George Clooney in Good Night and Good Luck? Yes, I am. And it's the most money I've ever spent for a ticket. And it's not anywhere near as expensive as what everyone else is paying for. It's obscene and I hate it. But I will be seeing it. Will you see and support Mamet and Glengarry Glen Ross? I am trying to see everything this season, which unfortunately does include Glengarry Glen Ross. There's a possibility I'll be able to see it not with press tickets, but with someone else who will be going. And if that happens, I'll be thrilled. Otherwise, that means I do have to pay to see it. And I really would rather not. This is sort of where we can't really claim a ton of moral high ground for Broadway because we keep choosing to revive works by David Mamet and giving him fucking residuals. Like, we didn't. We did not have to do this revival of Glengarry Glen Ross. It didn't need to happen. And what I hate even more is that it is a good play. I think this American Buffalo and Speed the Plough are his three best stage works. That's my personal opinion. Others can change, can think differently. They are all very good plays. I also don't need to see them ever again. There are other wonderful plays. We've also seen Glengarry Glen Ross two other times this century. And I'm just sort of done for a while. It is a good cast. It's a good team assembled. But, yeah, so I. I am. I am planning to see it. I don't know how that's gonna go just yet. I want to make my mind believe that I'm not supporting Mamet by seeing it. But the bottom line is that we are. Even if we don't, you're still putting down money that is supporting Mamet. I would say no one's really clean in this situation, myself included, unless I get to go for free. But even then, like, I'm still giving it my attention. But that is the downside of when you're trying to make content. That covers all of the season. Right. Sometimes the season Puts shit in front of you that you really don't want to see. And that's as much of a reflection on the Broadway community as it is on the rest of us. Will you be seeing Othello? If so, how is one able to get reasonably priced tickets? You can't get reasonably priced tickets unless you win the lottery for it. The $49 lotto, which I'm pretty sure they're only selling like 10 seats a show for that, so best of luck. I am hoping to see it again. I have a connection to see it. We do not have confirmation for our tickets yet, so if I don't see it, I don't see it. And we'll make do. But yeah, it's another show where I'm just like, fuck you guys for those ticket prices. That's absolutely evil. Would you consider making a letterbox? Maybe? I don't watch enough movies these days. I mean, I've seen plenty of movies in the past. I watch a lot of my favorite movies, but I don't see a lot of new stuff. Do you guys recommend it? Is that something you all like to do? If you could pick any theater for yours truly to go into, where would you put it? I would probably. If Second Stage didn't own the Haze. I think the Haze would be a lovely theater for it. If I were dreaming big. Maybe something like the Music Box or the Longacre. Something where the last row of the theater doesn't feel very far away. I'd rather have a mezzanine and balcony than have an orchestra and mezzanine and have the last two rows feel a mile away. Any update on your play and will it play off Broadway? Already gave that update, so hopefully y'all heard that one. Thoughts on Ibsen's Ghost at Lincoln Center Theatre or Andrew Scott with Vanya? I have no thoughts on Ibsen's Ghosts. I don't really plan to see it. I will not be seeing Andrew Scott and Vanya, unfortunately. I hope you all know how much I adore him. So much. My good friend Danny did see him and said that he was a miracle and I do not doubt that. I wish I could see it. I've heard nothing but exceptional things about it. Do you think Ramin, David and Jinx could all get nominated for Pirates? And why was Lilli Cooper replaced? I'm not sure why Lilli Cooper is no longer part of the show. I'm not sure if she was replaced or she just left. I believe everyone else in the company. Actually, no, that's not true. I think Colton Ryan was the original Frederick before Nick Barish came on board. But don't quote me on that. But yeah, I don't know if Lily was replaced or she just left. If she was replaced, she was probably replaced for jinx, who is a much, much bigger name. And that just sort of is how the cookie crumbles, I think. Yeah. I mean, I think all three could get non nominated. I think just jinx could get nominated. It's a weird season and this is a production we haven't seen just yet. We don't know how it's going to go. So let us hold off on that kind of prediction just yet. Let's see, what was the most surprising result or result of your score ranking survey? Things you were annoyed were ranked as they were. I was surprised at how little overall consensus there was on any score. A small handful got overwhelming majority percentages in the votes. When we were ranking the Tony winning scores but not a lot. And any scores that got a winning vote. It was not easy. It was often a lot of close calls between rankings. I was surprised that titanic did not rank higher initially. I was surprised that bridges, madison county and kiss of the spider woman were not ranked higher than they were originally. They all got moved up a little bit as we did some shakeups. But yeah, I thought they all were going to come in much higher than they did. I'm not annoyed that newsies is so low again. I'm just sort of surprised. But there's. Yeah, there was not a single score in that rankings that didn't have a handful of people fighting for it and against it. So it was a interesting social experiment. Here's what would you have ever start having end of the episode questions again, like you did for many of the early series? Sondheim series, British invasion series. Sure. I mean, I feel like when we're doing the deep dive episodes, I ask you guys to write in questions and topics you want us to cover and I acknowledge a lot of those when we're recording and I use those as touchstones, touch points when we're losing our way of what to talk about. But if you wanted to do questions at the end of the episode, we could. We could. I don't know, you write into the discord. Tell me how you think that should go. Next question. What's a show that would have been nominated and maybe even won an award had that category been around? I'm thinking orchestrations, but if you can think of others, I'd love to hear it. I think that if the Design categories were split between plays and musicals before 2005 or was. I think that's when they split the categories. Might have been 2003, but I think it was 2005. But I think if they split the design categories earlier, there would have been shows that would have won more Tonys. I think that. That into the woods revival in 2002 probably would have won scenic design of a musical if it was separated music and plays. I think that if. I don't know if orchestrations existed in the 80s, we probably would have seen Dreamgirls win orchestrations. We probably would have seen 42nd street win orchestrations. Les Mis. The question is if into the woods or Phantom of the Opera would have won. I'm gonna go with Phantom, but, yeah, that's. That's probably what I think. What is your guilty pleasure musical? Diana. It's. It's just Diana. Because I hate. I think that musical is. Is objectively poorly made, but I love every second of it. I wouldn't change a note, and I listen to it at the gym a lot. I can sing a lot of that score pretty. Pretty verbatim. When did you realize that being a native New Yorker gave you such an immersion into a medium you love that's difficult to replicate almost anywhere else in the world? When did you come to realize and appreciate the advantages you had because of this? So what this question is asking is when did I realize that not all theater was at the level of Broadway? That's how. What I assume. I'll be honest. When I was a kid, I loved everything I saw. I mean, genuinely, everything. I think, honestly, I think the first show that I saw that kind of disappointed me was Mamma Mia. When I saw it in London. And that was. Honestly, that was more about the audience than it was about the show. But I loved the show when it came to Broadway. I think the first Broadway show that really disappointed me was Avenue Q. I built it up in my head that I was gonna really be obsessed with it because I loved the cast album, and I laughed, but I didn't laugh as hard as I thought I would. So that said, what did I realize? I would probably. I mean, listen, I was doing theater as a kid as well, so I knew that the kids I was doing shows with were not at the level of Broadway. But, yeah, I would probably say, like, around 10 or 11. I knew that there was theater all over the world that wasn't Broadway and it wasn't going to be the same. And you judge accordingly. When did you come to realize and appreciate the advantages you had about this. I don't know, maybe. I don't think I appreciated the advantages of having Broadway be readily accessible until I went to college. And I had a lot of classmates who did not have it accessible and would ask questions about things that I saw and how I acted around the city. So, yeah, college was when I came to really appreciate that. Next question. You're leaving Earth forever. You can only take one cast album with you. What do you pick? Oh, Lord. It's probably gonna be something that puts me in a good mood. So it would either be the original Chorus Line cast album or, I mean, honestly, dare I say that? Actors, fun Dreamgirls concert. Bumpy as some of those vocals are. It's nice to have a full recording that score. And it's. Yeah, it's. It's fun to dance to. So, yeah, one of those two. Both Michael Bennett shows. Can you believe? What's your favorite NDA you've ever signed that you can mention? No, I've never signed an NDA, so I have no favorites. You said your thoughts on Passion had slightly shifted since your first episode on it. Any other episodes you'd like to do again because you have a different opinion now? I don't know. I honestly don't remember what a lot of my opinions were on the first go rounds for some of these shows. Maybe some of the underestimated musicals I'd like to do again. Maybe would like to do Sideshow again. My opinion hasn't changed. I just want to come at it from a different angle. I would maybe do Mack and Mabel again. I don't know. Just to see if I have a different opinion. Yeah, I mean, plenty of episodes that I would love to re record. I'm not sure if it's because my opinion of them have changed much. Just I'm sure I could. I could do it better. What's something you think the West End does more successfully than Broadway and vice versa? I think Broadway does musicals overall much better than the West End. And I think that the West End does really creative, heightened drama better than we do. Things like the Ferryman and Hills of California and Shakespeare, like really cool productions of Shakespeare. What show roles in a show would you like to see gender swapped? I never, like, there's nothing that's really at the tip of my tongue that I've always thought, oh, this would work so well if it was gender swapped. But also there I have. There's nothing that I would object to either. If it works, it works. And if the actor in it is fantastic. In the role then better. Better for them. I don't know. Yeah. Nothing that's really ever done that for me. I guess it'd be interesting to see what a more androgynous performer as the MC would be like. But the way that the MC has been portrayed now, it's kind of already is. Even if it's mostly played by mostly male identifying performers. Anything else I would like to see Gender swapped. Huh? I also kind of would love to see a grand dame of the stage play the I think his name is the Chairman. The George Rose role in Mystery of Edwin Drood. I think that would be fun. Yeah. Also if we could do like a gender swapped Pirates of Penzance with men and women swapping roles, that could be cool. A gender swapped Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. All the men play the female roles, the women play the male roles. I think. I think that also would be fun. What Broadway show Paradise Square and Finding Neverland aside, would you never see again? No matter how much money you were paid left on 10th? I don't ever want to see that show again. Yeah. Please don't ever make me. Thank you so much. If you could re record a single episode with a guest that had a strict cutoff that had a strict cutoff at that time in which I recorded it and have the new episode be as long as you want. Which show and guest. So I would have to bring the guest back to rerecord the episode I guess is what you're saying. I would love to have Charlamalt B back on to talk about a little night music even further. I feel like we only spoke about it for an hour and a half. I think we could talk about it even more. Charlotte's also pretty fucking awesome. I would love to have James Crichton back on for History Boys. These are also just shows that I would love to talk about. I'd love to have Ali Gordon back on to talk about the frogs. See if we can actually stretch that out into a two and a half hour episode. Probably we can't. But never say never. Who is an actor you feel is super underappreciated or underrated? I don't think he's underrated and I don't know how underappreciated he would be considered. But I feel like Christopher Fitzgerald should be a much bigger deal in theater than he is. He works all the time but he should be headlining shit. In my humble opinion. And should already have a Tony Award. If not have multiple Paul Alexander Nolan has zero nominations for a Tony, and that's criminal. Neither does Sally Murphy. Also criminal. Anyone else I think is underrated or underappreciated? I mean, I think a lot of people who I love are getting their roses now or have gotten their roses rather recently. So, yeah, it's weird to call Christopher Fitzgerald underappreciated when he has three Tony nominations, but yeah, I just think. I think he should be bigger. But that's just my. That's my opinion. If you got to create a season at a regional theater, money and licensing aren't an object. What would be your perfect season? Ooh, interesting. If you ever watch Slings and Arrows, they talk about this. There's a episode, I think it's season two, where Paul Gross's character has to come up with a season like in five seconds. And he has a whole balance of Shakespeare and classics that work out quite nicely. I think a great regional theater season is truly a balance of so much. You have things that are exciting and challenging, things that are classic and, you know, avant garde and safe but. And loving and musicals and plays. So I would probably do. Open with a musical. Maybe we would open with a classic like Guys and Dolls, and then we would do new play, a small new play. Then we would do something like Death of a Salesman with two B list actors as Willie Willy, Loman and Linda, and then Noises off and then Ain't Misbehavin, and then Proof and then close out with an original musical. Yeah, that would be. That would be my regional season. Have two original. Have two original works, a play in a musical, a classic musical. One that's really big and splashy and one that's maybe a little more intimate but fun. And then have, you know, a couple of classic and then have a comedy in there. And. And yeah, I think that would be a nice balance. That's what I would do. What are five hot takes on theater trends? You have bootlegs, screens on stage, influencers. This is not meant to throw anybody under the bus. I am friends with plenty of influencers. My issue with influencers is that a lot of them don't really help a show's cause because you get invited to an event. You're there to promote the event. You're there to talk up the event, but people don't listen if everything is great. So you're mostly just getting invited to the thing for. To see the thing for free. And then people like the content that you posted, but they maybe don't go see the thing that you Posted every. More and more people are aware of using influencers for buzz and hype and not actually creating it organically. That said, there are plenty of content creators with theater on social media that are just do doing amazing work. Super funny, super insightful, super clever. But yeah, it's like the hype men theater social media influencers that I that I think are not great. Anything else Screens on stage. I mean sometimes it works beautifully, sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, I'm over it. When it works beautifully, I'm very surprised and blown away. Bootlegs are important. They just are. They keep, they keep history alive. I wish that people didn't feel the need to record every performance. I wish they didn't feel the need to be super obvious about it. But there are some shows that we only see on YouTube now because of bootlegs. Half of Aurora's Spider Woman is bootlegs. Encores Related what's a show you think they should take on? And in parentheses here, despite it not being the point, what's a production of theirs that should have transferred but didn't? In my opinion, The Annie get your Gun with Megan Hilty had such a stellar cast, though technically the fundraiser of that year. I've already said Smile. I don't have any other golden age musicals off the top of my head. I would love for them to do Baby with that giant orchestra. I think that would be so much fun. The only times I've felt where Encores should transfer productions was when something kind of happened by accident, like a miracle where the entire audience went, oh, this show is so much better than we realized. And this cast is well put together and like everything about this present presentation just works and it just can't end here. The only time I ever saw that live was Appletree with Chenoweth and it did eventually come to fruition that they would have a full blown production. The only other two times I watched something and I was like, oh, this could continue after this. I didn't necessarily feel it had to, but I thought to myself, if they did, I wouldn't be mad. One was Grand Hotel, which was basically a pre Broadway tryout and it was very good, but I didn't see it afterwards and think, oh my God, this has to continue. The other one that I think was more sort of in line with Encore's was Most Happy Fella, a musical that a lot of people love but not everyone knew super well. And so I remember seeing it and I felt like the entire audience went, oh, this musical is so much better than we remembered. This score is incredible. This cast is really strong and fits their roles well and Casey Nichols did a really good job of helming it and I mean it could have just kind of done what they are doing now with a copy paste job and have worked but if they wanted to embellish it a little bit, they could have. Yeah, that was the only time after Apple Tree where I thought, oh, this is surprisingly good and I wouldn't be mad if this moved. So yeah, that's that other one. Happy Almost B Day. I'd buy you a drink but I don't support underage drinking. Ha ha. And though I am obviously hot, I will keep my question can you give a shout out to an underrated theater artist, performer, writer, composer, you choose and where we can find more info on them? One historic and one current xost. Oh, I think I know what this is. Hi. If you're the st, I think you are. Hello. Let's see. Underrated theater artist from the past. The two I always kind of bring up are Barbara Harris and Anna White. Anna White is a multi Tony nominated choreographer and she got a special Oscar for her work on Oliver. Unfortunately there aren't many clear and professional recordings of her stage work, but she has done a lot of films. She did Music man, she did Oliver. I think she did something else. I can't remember. Maybe she did the movie version of Half a Sixpence. I'm pretty sure her choreography in Mame is in the movie. I think Anna White was such an underrated choreographer and I wish more people knew her stuff. And again, it's hard to promote it when there's not a lot of it out there. Barbara Harris, I just thought was one of the most unique and special performers of all time. You can watch her Tony performance of the Apple Tree online. You can watch her on the Ed Sullivan show doing on a clear day you can see forever. You can watch her Oscar nominated turn in who is Harry Kellerman on YouTube because she really only has two scenes so her entire section is on YouTube and she's absolutely phenomenal. It's one of the best screen acting performances I've ever seen. Elaine May. I'll always shout out Ms. May. And especially, I mean I think everyone should take a look at the Nichols and May sketches on YouTube. They're pretty extraordinary and hilarious present day people. Hmm. I mean Michael R. Jackson finally has become a name in theater, which I love and I'm waiting for Anna K. Jacobs to have the same. I honestly couldn't tell you especially now that Josh Harmon's really coming to the forefront with prayer for the French Republic and We had a World because Significant Other meant so much to me. And Bad Juice, I thought was really fascinating. And I'm glad that he's out there. The. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, I. You. YouTube is a wonderful resource, so for any musical theater composers or performers, you can see a lot of their stuff out there. I can't. Yeah. I can't rightfully say there's anyone current who's underrated or underground that I want to promote. If any of you guys can think of any, by all means write it in the Discord. Are there any musicals that were deemed revival via the classics rule you wish could have been eligible for score? Oh, right. Like when. When. When shows that technically didn't. Speaking didn't play Broadway before but were deemed classics and thus were put into revival. What would I do? I would have loved to have seen Hedwig and Assassins get score nominations even though they were deemed revivals because of the classics role. That would have been Lovely Gal. What are two shows everyone adores that you can't stand? I just. I get bored during Threepenny Opera, and I know it's a classic, but it just doesn't do it for me. Currently, Operation Mincemeat has a butt ton of fans, and that show leaves me cold. It eludes me. That said, I don't hate it. I dislike it less now than I did before, but I still don't like it. But I don't hate it. Yeah, I don't think there's any show that I hate hate that everyone loves or the vast majority of people love. Threepenny Opera is probably the closest we can get to that, and it mostly just bores me. So. Yeah, that's that one. Who are your top five playwrights still writing today? I do enjoy Josh Harmon. Who else? Annie Baker and Bruce Norris I think is doing a lot of really great stuff. And I would also say. Huh? Who else is there? That's a. That's a good question. I said Josh Harmon and I said Bruce Norris and. Oh, Amy Herzog. Yeah, Amy Herzog. I love her work and I think I look forward to everything she does, especially her adaptations of classics. I think she does a really great job with that. And yeah, Annie Baker and Jocelyn Bio. Jocelyn Bio Bio. I hope I said that correctly. But I really did love Jaja's African hair braiding and I look forward to seeing what she's got cooking next. Favorite font. I don't know. Helvetica Times New Roman. I don't know most of the fonts. What show would you like to see them take to Broadway? My show. I want to see my show get taken to Broadway. What current Broadway actor would you like to go on a date with? Oh, none. I have food poisoning from dating a Broadway actor. So I. They make very nice friends. I can't say that they make great boyfriends. Not. Not for me, anyway. It might just be that I've got terrible luck with them. Maybe there's a really sweet one out there that I actually would match with and I'll just never get to meet them. Cause my luck is just so rotten. What would be your nightmare? A little night music cast. Oh, God, a bunch of children. Honestly, anyone who can't sing semi classically. Anyone with a pop sound. If you can't sing Light in the Piazza decently, I don't want you to sing Anne. If you are an opera singer or a pop singer, I don't want you to play Desiree. I don't want someone with no comedic timing playing Charlotte. I don't want someone who sounds like Jeremy Jordan singing Carl Magnus. I want a mixture of classical singing voices and singing actors. And so, yeah, anyone who's overly singing for the singing actors or more modern sounding for the classical voices, get the fuck out. Will you be seeing Orville Peck and Eva Noblezada in Cabaret? I will not be because I don't desire to see this production ever again. I've seen it twice now. That's far too much for me and I do not desire to see it anymore. True or false? Hamilton is overrated. True and false. I think Hamilton is a great piece. I'm not sure if I think it deserves the international hype that it's gotten, but also, I can't tell you what work of art does. Hamilton never was produced with the expectation that it was going to be as huge as it was. I think the expectation was that people would like it or hope that people would like it. So we cannot blame Hamilton for its success. That is something that you can't really plan for. So I don't think it's necessarily the behemoth that its financial success would have you believe, but I do think it's great. It is objectively a great show. I'm sorry, you cannot like it. You're allowed to not like it, but there's a lot of merit to it. Are you. I already said that. Are you excited for Floyd Collins? Yes. You have handsome eyes. Thank you very much. I like my Eyes too. Have you seen Dorian Gray? It is even better on Broadway than London. Hand Director and Sarah the Tonys. I will be seeing Dorian Gray the day after I record this, and that episode will be coming out shortly after this one. So you'll get my answers about all of that soon enough. I saw Stranger Things in London after not watching the TV show and was blown away. Are you looking forward to seeing it? I'm curious. I wouldn't say looking forward. I'm curious to see it. Not sure what that's gonna be like. What is your dream, Ms. Cat, Ms. Ca? What is your dream Miscast concert lineup, songs and performers you'd love to see? I don't know. I said this once in an anonymous Q and A on Instagram, but Brandon Victor Dixon doing no one else from Great Comet would be fun. I'd love to hear him sing that song. That's it right now. I don't really think about a miscast lineup all that often. It's a fun time, but it doesn't always work out. And I mean, having people I love do great material that's no matter the gender or what have you, I think is always fun. Like, I would love to see Simard do, I don't know, like Joe sing Joanna from Sweeney Todd or hear Audra do stars from Les Mis. But that's all I can really think of right now. Carmen Cusack doing Heaven on Their Minds from Jesus Christ Superstar. It's late, so my brain is addled, but that is where my mind is at. Yeah, I can't really. Yeah, I'm always excited to see what Miscast comes up with. It's not something that I spend a lot of time on, if I'm being honest. And that's not me casting any judgment. It's just my brain has a hard time making those things match. The possibilities are so infinite that my brain kind of melts trying to put them together. So I give Will a lot of credit for figuring all that shit out, because it's a lot and I look forward to watching it every year. If you're getting cast in six, which Queen are you playing? Anne Boelyn. Easy. I. It's the character. I love that song the most. I am obsessed with Anne Boleyn as a historical figure, and the way that they wrote the character in the show is right up my alley as a performer. Super easy. Which 30 Rock character are you? I am pretty much a blend of Liz and Jenna, I would say, maybe with like a dash of Jack Donaghy, but we're talking like 3%. Otherwise, I would say I am like, I think I'm 70% Liz Lemon, 27% Jenna and 3% Jack. Yeah, and a little bit of Angie. Because I can say ham, ham. Last one, and then we'll take another break. Worst time you've been miscast. When I played not Caucasian. When I played Ching Ho and Thoroughly Modern Millie and a shark in west side Story. Not good. Not good. But it was 2004 and 2006. It was how stage Dramator was at the time. All right, so that's those questions. Oh, God. We still have. Well, it's actually not as many as I expected. We have quite a few more to get to, but not a ton, ton, ton, ton, ton, ton. We will get back to the rest of them after this break. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah. You're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire. 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And we're back. I should also say good morning. Fun fact. I recorded the first half of this episode Monday night. I meant to do it in the afternoon and I had errands that got away from me. So I did it Monday night and I started to fade. And so when I took the break, I was like, oh, let me see if I can sort of rally. And I couldn't. So I just passed out. And so I'm recording the rest of this Tuesday morning, so I'm refreshed. So if there was anything I said in the first half that seemed a little wibbly wobbly, that's why. So we are back. Let's see. Next question. Who are you hoping will win best play and best musical? That's difficult to say. I haven't seen everything yet. Of the shows that I have seen. I would most likely vote for maybe happy ending for musical and I would probably vote for the Hills of California for play. I would not be mad if Omar won. I think Omari is a wonderful piece, but I haven't seen Purpose yet. I haven't seen John Proctor as the villain yet. I haven't seen, you know, I haven't seen Boop or Smash or Old Friends yet. Or. I mean, I saw Dead Outlaw off Broadway. I would like to see it again on Broadway. But right now, maybe happy ending and hills would be my two votes. Let's see the Othello question I remember doing already. How will you complete informed awards projections if you did not see all the shows this season? Well, we are hoping to see all the shows this season. That's the first thing we do, projections and predictions before everything else comes about anyway. Right. We did a too early Tony Award nomination episode and we're going to do another one after this. And you do a couple of things. You take into account what you've seen, you take into account buzz, and you take into account reception and basic information like what's the show about, what's the word on the material, who's working on it. And listen, sometimes things with really phenomenal teams do not pan out, which is why we want to sort of wait till shows start playing, performances in front of audiences before you make these kind of decisions. And you just. Yeah, you just kind of have to go with your gut and you have to go with what the vibe is. But you also can't just go off of your inner circle. You have to really look around and see what everyone is saying because your small group of five could all be saying, oh, this is the thing to beat. But then you go right out of your circle and the narrative shifts altogether. All you have to do is go on the fucking message boards and see how people are trying to write narratives based on their own priorities and their own prejudices, and none of it's actually accurate. You have to get out there and talk to a bunch of people and get those kind of inclinations. So that's how I do it. I talk to a lot of people in the community. I talk to my friends who are Tony voters. I talk to friends who work on Broadway. I talk to people who are, you know, on the drama desks and things like that. And not necessarily about what they're going to vote for, but what has really stood out to them and what maybe underwhelmed them. And there are certain common shows that are repeated either in terms of, oh, this really impressed me or this underwhelmed me. And I use that when I make my predictions because you're not. You go with your gut when you're in doubt, when you're sort of, when you have a, when you come to a fork in the road and you're like, oh God, which, which decision am I going to predict? That's when you go with your gut of, well, oh no, I really liked this and, and I found this undeniable. So maybe someone else will. But you can't just go with all of your favorites for these are going to get nominated. You're predicting what 55 strangers are going to think and then after that, what 800 strangers are going to think. So that's how we do it. We make as informed an opinion as we can. But it is not an exact science. If you could change one Tony win from the entire history, what would it be? Oh Lord. There are plenty that I disagree with. I think the one that I really wish we could have changed was Catherine Zeta Jones winning for a Little Night Music. I wish that had gone to Sherri Renee Scott. Sherri Renee Scott's another person who I don't think she's underrated. I do think she's underappreciated considering how good she is and how much she has done. She is a, I think three time Tony nominee. She hasn't won yet and I wish she had won for Everyday Rapture. I thought that she was so magnetic and so dynamic in that show and it was honestly a weak category that year. And I thought she was far and away the best at the category. The problem was is that it was a show that not a lot of people got or enjoyed. And CZJ was playing a tried and true role, singing the Tried and true song. She was a movie star. She got mostly okay reviews. There were audiences who really loved her and I'm not talking about her Tony performance. I saw Catherine Zeta Jones in A Little Night Music and I really disliked her performance. I saw her like a month into the run and maybe she calmed down later on, but what I saw was not far away from what the critics saw. And I found her very cold. I found her very brash. I did not find her emotionally engaging. I did not find her sophisticated in the world of night music. Granted, I really had a major dislike of that revival. It got better when the cast was able to sort of incorporate their own ideas into the show and Trevor Nunn had officially left and didn't come back to check in on it. And that also helped when Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch came in. But, yeah, I was not happy with that Tony win. I thought it could have gone to Sherry. I would have loved for it to have been Sheri. I wouldn't say that's the most egregious. I'm sure if I were to rack my brain for decades of Tony wins, I could find ones that I disliked even more. But that's one that always just comes to mind. So, yeah. What is the biggest misconception of you as a content creator or of your play? I think people have this misconception of me that I am elitist. I'm not. Am I judgmental? Sure. I think we all can be judgmental. And half the time, you know, we're talking about stuff in an analytical kind of way, which is in itself a judgment. But I don't approach things from an I'm better than you or better than it perspective, especially when I'm doing things with teenagers and younger kids. I mean, listen, I've been very vocal. I'm not the biggest fan of children. And unfortunately, now my friends are all having kids, so I'm around them all the time. And weirdly enough, they all seem to like me. But when I'm working with young actors or, you know, doing adjudicating or whatever, I really want them to enjoy what they're doing. I want them to be eager to learn. Nothing is ever really a finished product in theater, ever. Even when a show has opened on Broadway, it eventually will evolve over time as times change and its legacy changes. I mean, we're seeing it all the time, right? Almost Famous opened on Broadway. They're now doing workshops again to change it. They're doing workshops for Thoroughly Modern Millie to have it adapted the times. So as a performer, you're never finished. You're only going to get better. And I really like to inject that kind of mentality with young aspiring actors. Right, of be bold, make choices. You're not going to be perfect. And also just be hungry to learn not just about different ways of performing and vocal training, but just the history and learn more about shows and be excited about shows, and that's how I've always been. And I think sometimes people see me on Instagram where they listen to this podcast, and they think that if they don't know something, that I'm going to be super critical of them or if they don't do the best job, that I'm going to be really snarky about it. And I'm not. I'm more snarky about works that I think are very lazy by people who should know better, or works that are really, you know, underbaked by people who should know better. I think New York, New York was like an example of that, of everyone involved in that show should have known better than to say that the final product was ready. It wasn't. It had its moments, but it wasn't ready. And I don't think anyone involved in Back to the Future should have looked at it and said, oh, yes, we did a creative job of making this a musical. They did a by the numbers job. And those are all creatives who should have known better than that. And I think a lot of them did, but that's where we're at. And then a misconception about my play. I don't know. I don't know if you wrote this question. I don't know if you saw it or not. So I don't know what your thoughts on it were or how people might have thought of it. I think maybe one of the biggest misconceptions about it, based on the premise, is that it's fluff, maybe because we sort of lean into the romantic comedy elements of it and it being sort of a meta piece, that it is only comedy and that it's only talking about a singular romance. And it's not that. If anything, I was talking in one of the analyzing musical workshops, the kids pitched Oklahoma as the golden age musical that we analyze. And I talked about how, like, the first 10 minutes of a musical are very important. It sets up tone, it introduces character and story conflict and blah, blah, blah, but also sort of tells you what the vocabulary of the show is going to be like, how this is how we are going to be telling you this story. So we explained, you know, west side Story opens with dance. Why is that important? Well, dance is very well integrated into west side Story. That's going to be a major component of its vocabulary. And we talked about Oklahoma and how the musical opens with Curly and Ann Eller. And it's a very small number. It's just these two, and it's very intimate and Dropped in and human. And I said, you know, there's a major thematic conflict in Oklahoma, which is the cowboys versus the farmers and territory and, and, and. And whatnot. But it opens with Curly and Aunt Eller and Laurie, and Aunt Eller and Laurie are farmers and it's their farm, and Curley is the cowboy. And the conflict we're seeing between Curly and Laurie is more interpersonal, it's less grandly thematic. But it is representative of the theme that the show is going to be covering overall. And it's telling you we're talking about really big, you know, a very big landscape, as well as very relatable emotional conflict. But we're doing it on a small scale. We're showing you couples, we're showing you two person scenes, three person scenes. And that is how we are going to express to you then the thematic narratives of. Or the narrative themes, whichever ones you want to call it, of this show. And that's sort of what yours truly is, at least that's how I wrote it, is stuff like sexuality and heteronormativity, millennial arrested development and monogamy. And I would say prejudice against different sexual relationships and things like that, as well as pop culture and what it does to us and how we relate to it and what it can say about us. It does all of that on a very intimate scale. It ultimately the. The central. The central conflict of the show is between John and Owen and then everything around that. And it can seem very high school, like, oh, we're just sort of following the drama of this relationship. But it expands beyond that. When I submitted yours truly to a couple of festivals and then also to the Terrence McNally incubator last year, I had said that it's a show that doesn't wear its importance on its sleeve. It's not announcing to the audience. This is why you should pay attention. It draws them in with humor and with romance and with sexiness, and then eventually sort of expounds upon that later on. So I guess maybe that would be the biggest misconception. And then after that, when people hear that it's based off of real events, then they go, oh, well, have you know, is this a slam piece? How obvious have you made it about who it's about? And the truth is that I haven't made it obvious. The first two drafts were a little obvious. People figured it out quickly. And then I tweaked it enough that no one since has been able to clock it. So that makes me feel good. All right, moving on. Why are ticket Prices so high and producers so greedy. Well, I would say ticket prices are high for a couple of reasons. One of them is that it is far more expensive now to run Broadway shows. Part of that is unions. Whenever there's a union negotiation, the contracts, the salaries and contracts go up. So it used to be like the equity minimum on a Broadway show could be like $1,900. I think now it's $2,900, something along those lines. So that's more expensive. Landlord. Theater landlords are charging more now these days. The cities become more expensive. So all of that goes into it. So that's one reason if you're talking about something like Othello or All in or Glengarry Glen Ross, obviously these are limited runs where producers want to make back their investment and be able to have some sort of profit, and they calculate for that. And that is sort of the algorithm that they come up with. Producers, Listen, I think everyone wants to get rich. And it's not necessarily just producers. I think shows like Othello and Glengarry Glen Ross charging what they're charging, I do find that kind of criminal. And I find it very hypocritical considering that Broadway and the theater community has expressed themselves as inclusive and world changing and important. And when you're charging as much as some of these shows are charging, you are excluding 99% of the world. You are actually emphasizing the narrative that you are for, you know, cultural elites and not for everyone. And you're also. Now, even if your show is good and could possibly rattle some minds, you're not going to rattle any minds in the theater because everyone who's in that theater is a curated audience member. You don't have an actual melting pot in your theater. And thus everything becomes insular and it becomes an echo chamber and nothing gets done. And I find it very infuriating. So I could not answer to you. Why necessarily? Producers are greedy. I think everyone is. But it bothers me, too. I see it. I hate it too, and I wish I knew how to make it change. The other thing is ticket scalpers. So I know a lot of ticket prices went up to ward off scalpers, or at least. So that way, if scalpers are going to try to, you know, buy and resell tickets at a higher price, the production can benefit from it better than before. I think ticketing sites are getting better about reselling with stuff on like, StubHub and whatnot. But there obviously need to be even more hurdles to overcome with all of that. So, yeah, sorry, that's not a great answer. I apologize. But doing what I can here. Favorite or most anticipated spring season show off Broadway. I don't really know what's happening off Broadway. My friend Natalie is in, I think it's called the Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse at New Group, and I'm excited to see her again. I thought she was so good in Big Gay Jamboree. So, yeah, I guess, you know Natalie's show. I'm excited for Natalie's show. Any performances from past Broadway Backwards or Miscast did you feel could have been a full production with that casting take? Um, not really. I've enjoyed a lot of the Miscast performances. I've been to Broadway backwards twice now and it's some of the numbers are just, you know, someone coming out and singing a gender bent song. Adam Lambert singing Acid Queen and Kelly O'Hara singing She Loves Me. Alex Newell doing Back to Before. And sometimes they write an original scene to justify the song being performed. And I always find those to be a reach. And so when I see those scenes, it makes me go, I don't want to see this number now. So, yeah, I've never seen anything where I was like, oh my God, why has this person ever played this role before? Let's do a gender bent version of it or something. I've just always enjoyed the performance as is. So, yeah, I can't say that I've ever been inspired to want to see a full production from a Miscast or a Broadway Backwards. What is a show that has never had a revival that you think needs one? And then when someone wrote that on the Discord Channel, somebody responded to that. I see a smile mentioned in our future. Yeah, Smile is one that I would love to see more for encores than for. Than for Broadway. But yeah, I don't know if there's any other musical right now where I'm like, how has this never had a revival? It's time. Full Monty, I guess. And it's been 22 years, so I think we're ready for the Full Monty to come back. I think that musical is so good. And oh, David Yazbek, that's another modern composer who I love and especially a lyricist that I love these days. Can I request a Broadway Breakdown episode of Songs for a New World? You sure can. I'm sure it'll happen at some point. It's. Yeah, it'll happen at some point. Let's see. That's another revival question. Please give us the scoop on Sondheim's Basement. We know you've Been. The redecorating is gorgeous. The wallpaper is beautiful. Oh, okay. So we've. I've got. Actually, these are two questions that I wrote down. It was from one person. I. I saw these questions, and I knew exactly who it was from. This person also wrote a third question that I'm not including, because if you want. If that person wants to hear me answer that third question, they can text me because they were doing this. They were doing this to fuck with me. First one was, ever braid your own arm hair? No, I haven't. And you. And you know that I have pretty long arm hair. I wish it were curlier because then it would look less thick than it is. But it's also arm hair. It's very fine, so it can't ever be braided. And then this person also wrote, as soon as I met you, I thought to myself, what a sassy little twink who needs a spanking. You and I both know I'm not a twink. I have too much body hair. I'm very much an otter. I am slender, and I have got body hair. But if you want to spank me, go right ahead, sir. And I hope you're listening. Who's an incredible talent you think is overdue for a big break? I'm not sure. I'm not as super familiar with members of the ensemble right now in terms of all of their talents. I mean, I see so many amazingly talented ensembles on Broadway, and I think, like, God, I can't ever do what any of you are doing, and very few people can. But I don't know if I have seen a show where there was, like, one specific ensemble member. And I was like, oh, my God, like you, who, like, got a solo or something. And I went, you know, your voice is incredible, and you dance incredibly. And clearly you could. You're a phenomenal actor or actress. And why hasn't it happened yet? I think there are a lot of people who are fantastic and are working incredibly often. Maybe they're not headlining like they should be again. Christopher Fitzgerald, things like that. Or people who have headlined and are slowly coming back to us, but maybe not in full force like I would like, like a Sherry Renee Scott or Norbert Leo Butz. But yeah, I. I'm interested to see what happens with Andrew Burnap's career because he won the Tony for the inheritance, rightfully so, even though it was a Covid gas leak year. And he did star in Camelot, and I did not like that revival, but I thought his acting was. Was. Was solid. And he's now playing Cassio in Othello, and he just did Snow White. So it's sort of. I'm interested to see where he goes, what happens, because I think that he's an incredibly talented actor. I think he's very handsome, and I think he could do a lot of really interesting things. So I'd like to see what happens with that. Have you seen Streetcar at bam? Curious to hear your thoughts. I haven't. I don't think I'll be able to, so. But I heard good things. I heard that Paul is very good, even if the production is kind of odd. Just saw that the Jonathan Larson Project is closing after a month. Did you see it? And why was the run so short? Unsuccessful. I originally booked through June. I did see the Jonathan Larson project. I wasn't the biggest fan of it. I'm not really a Jonathan Larson. Die Hard. I enjoy Rent. I enjoy Tick, Tick, Boom. Neither one of them reaches to me in a deep way at this stage of my life. Rent did when I was. When I was younger, but now I kind of just enjoy some of the songs, and that's really it. And Tick, Tick, Boom. I enjoy a couple of the songs, and I think that the movie version is quite good, but again, it doesn't really move me. So the Jonathan Larson Project, which is a review of Jonathan Larson songs that either got cut from shows or have never been published or whatever, that was never really my catnip. And some of the songs I saw, and I was like, I kind of see why you were cut. Like, there's a reason why a lot of us haven't heard these songs. Some of them were solid, and I was like, oh, that's a. A lovely tune. Or those are good lyrics. And that's actually oddly prescient. But some of them, I was like, oh, yeah, like, he cut this for a reason. The cast was very talented. It was very, very intricately designed and really well done on that level. But I. I don't know. It just. I felt at arm's length from it. That's. That was my response to it. And I don't know how other people felt, but it's possible that other audiences felt similarly, because other than, like, pure hatred for a show, the only other thing that can really kill word of mouth is indifference. If someone walks out of a show. And, like, how was it? And you go, it was. It was. It was. It happened. It wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen. But I didn't. I didn't care for it all that much. That's already a pass for so many people, right? If someone comes out of a show and loved it and then the other person comes out and hated it, that actually provides a bit more intrigue because it's like, ooh, this is really polarizing. Maybe I should see it for myself. But if one person comes out and loves it, another person comes out and is like, meh, that actually kind of kills it even further than the other one. So that's. I would imagine that word of mouth was probably similar if that's the case, because people have been talking about like, oh, is it unsustainable to do a commercial off Broadway show? And the truth is, no. Titanique has been very successful. Little Shop of Horrors was very successful. O Mary proved to be a really big hit off Broadway. You really cannot undervalue the importance of word of mouth and genuine word of mouth. And you can't just take at face value how an audience responds in the theater, because audiences are going to respond positively always in the theater. They're going to stand, they're going to cheer. And what happens is after the fact, when they leave the theater, what they text their friends, what they say online, what they say in person, and especially, you know, within 72 hours after seeing it, what they're going to say. Because they might have said positive things, immediately leaving, and then as the hours pass, they might have softened on it or forgotten more about it. So it's just possible that word of mouth of Jonathan Larson project wasn't overwhelmingly strong with how expensive things are and especially of the time suck that you can't get back. People really want as close to a sure thing as possible, and they don't trust indifference. And they. They don't trust. They really don't trust split votes. So I talked about, like, the polarizing responses to things. I loved it. I hated it. Some people are going to be interested in something so divisive, but not everyone, and especially no one really is going to go see something if the overall word of mouth is indifferent or like, meh, you know, someone writes, I saw Mincemeat in London and in New York. Didn't care for it either time. Do you think it improved? Why the Act 2 opener that has no larger relevance? I've already spoken about the Act 2 opener in my review, and somebody on Discord kind of responded to that with their defense of it, and that's totally fine. I still don't like the show very much. I don't find the Act 2 opener to be clever. I don't find it to be fun. I understand wanting a number from a different perspective. And some people say, oh, well, no, they're making fun of the Nazis. And I mean, in a way they are. But it's not the best version of making fun of Nazis at the top of Act 2 of Mincemeat. I think that they blur the lines a bit and I don't think that that's intentional. I think in their minds they are doing a full blown making fun of them. And it made me uncomfortable the first time I saw it in London. It made my mom uncomfortable and it still made me uncomfortable on Broadway. And again, not in a if you could see her way on Cabaret. And I didn't find it hilarious in a Springtime for Hitler kind of way. I don't necessarily think the show has improved since London. It helped seeing the original company. They understood where all the nooks and crannies of finding the laughs and finding the pathos were. But I still am pretty meh on the show. Again, it's not similar discussion on Jonathan Larson project. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen. And there are things about it that I think are objectively well done. I was just very unmoved and unstimulated by most of it, which is a shame because on paper it should be my obsession. And I was. I was sad that I. That it couldn't be. Let's do two more and then take one last break. How has the legacy of Hamilton changed Broadway? Do you see it as similar or different from other blockbuster shows? I mean, I think that Hamilton has really done the same thing that all major blockbusters have done, which is that it has brought attention to Broadway. Right? People say, like, oh, Othello, doing such amazing business is great for Broadway. It's not. It's great for those producers of Othello and they go, oh, well, if they, if people want to see Othello and then they can't get a ticket, they'll go see something else. No, they won't. They'll. They won't go see something else because they wanted to see Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal. If Othello was more affordable, if it was more accessible, and if the production were amazing, then you could get maybe new audiences in there, go, oh, who's this Shakespeare? And like, should I see more of his stuff? Oh, that play was so good. Maybe I should go see more plays. Hamilton for a while was pretty exclusive, and then they started doing high school performances every Wednesday matinee, which I thought was great. And I think that the pro shot helped by having a larger outreach and by having it be such a cultural phenomenon. It just brought all eyes to Broadway. And shows like School of Rock and Waitress also benefited that season from Hamilton being so successful. I think revivals like the Color Purple and she Loves Me benefited from Hamilton having all eyes on the Broadway community that season. It's one thing for a show to be making a lot of money. It's one. It's another for a show to actually be a cultural conversation. I think that's something that Omari was able to do for the first half of the season, was by having everybody talk about it. People were then talking about Broadway. And so I think that's something that Hamilton did, and that I think has been its legacy right now in terms of creativity and artistry. I'm not sure Sondheim said this when the show opened, and I agreed with him, was, you don't really know what a show's artistic impact is until years later. You have to sort of see how the fallout goes. And we haven't seen a lot of shows that have tried to attempt Hamilton. We've seen a couple of shows lean into its aesthetic and fail. But, yeah, I don't know if I've seen necessarily a lot of shows try to repeat what Hamilton tried to do. The only thing I'll say is when talking to producers and investors, they'll go like, oh, well, is this going to be the next Hamilton? And what they mean is, is this going to make money? Is this going to run for five years? And you don't know. You never know what that thing is going to be. So it's just become the new touchstone when people are referring to a hit. Since Hamilton has opened, anytime we talk about a show that was successful pre2015, people say, oh, it was the Hamilton of its time. And people used to say it was the rent of its time. It was the chorus line of its time. So at some point, we'll have a brand new spanking show that's also a huge, huge, huge hit. And people will talk about, talk about Hamilton and go, oh, it was the blank of its time. So that's the Hamilton legacy, I suppose. What else we have? What are the musical theater songs you'd most want to sing? Assuming your range was infinite, of course. What makes you think my range isn't infinite? If I had the widest vocal range, I would love to do glitter and be gay. I think that song is a pussy Popping aria. And I would love to show off with it. I would love to do. Also, let's just, like, assume that these. I could sing any of these songs not get canceled. I would love to do Ain't no Party, Laurel's song from Dreamgirls. Of all the three gals, like, I. Part of me would love to play Dina, but also love to get at Laurel. I think she rocks. I would love to do. I would love to sing Rainbow High. I'm going off of, like, women's songs right now. I would love to sing Anthem. Ice. Vanilla Ice Cream. I think it's Pity the Child. Is that the American song in chess? I can sing Love Can't Happen. It's. It's such a. Of a song. So I. I wish I could sing it and have it not be scary. I wish I could just let it fly free. So that's another one. And, yeah, I don't know. A lot of the songs. A lot of the male songs that I used to be scared of when I was a teenager and in high school, I actually can sing pretty well now, so I. I've sung plenty of them. I've sung a couple of Jamie things from last 5 years. Moving too Fast and Shiksa Goddess. I would love to get. I would love to play Freddy in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. And that's actually like, really comfortably in my range, so I would love to do that Defying Gravity, too. I mean, that song is just a baller and an easy Showstopper, so I would love to have an easy, easy Showstopper. Yeah. Trying to think of any other, like, super, super big stuff. Not since Nineveh from Kismet. I think that one's fun. Yeah. Those would be the ones for now. I could think of others. There's so many amazing songs in the canon and we're talking, of course, like, if you could sing it in the original keys and you had infin range. So those. All right, those are those questions. And I will get to the rest of these after this break. You're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred. As any vehicle can take you places. But why stop there? The Alfa Romeo Tonale combines luxurious Italian design and electric electrifying performance to make every mile a masterpiece and every arrival unforgettable. When precision meets instinct and power moves with purpose, you never have to stay in a lane. Experience a world without limits in the Alfa Romeo Tonale Plug in Hybrid Tap the banner to learn more. Alfa Romeo is a registered trademark of FCA Group Marketing SpA. Used with permission. Still getting around to that fix on your car? 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Don't over commit to stuff that you maybe can't follow through on. That was something that John and I learned when we started was we didn't have a release schedule and we only recorded when we could. And so it was inconsistent. And that's not a great way to build a listenership. You want people to know and count on that this is the day that you're always going to have something or, you know, let them know if it's gonna be a while till something happens. So for example, with this, before I was doing Broadway reviews, before I was doing Tony stuff and before I was doing bonus episodes, I would inform the listeners that it was every Thursday for however long the series goes. So sometimes that was a month, sometimes that was three months, depending on the miniseries. And it was every Thursday until the series was over. And then it was usually gonna be a one to three month break and then do the next miniseries. And that's still the case. The miniseries have gotten broken up a bit more now again, because we've had other stuff come in, but Thursday is always a major release day and then there are usually bonus episodes scattered throughout. So that's one thing I would say, you know, be open to change when it comes to the podcast in terms of content, in terms of form, if things are. If people are starting to respond to different things that you maybe weren't planning to, don't try to cut that off. Really listen to the people who are listening to your podcast and what they're telling you. And if you're getting recurring feedback about something, maybe it's best to look into it, whether it's positive or constructive. And yeah, I mean, also, I would say research, research is really important because there's so much information out there and you really don't want to show your butt when you're talking about stuff, right? You don't want to say things with absolute authority and then find out that you're completely wrong or say things super wishy washy and have your listeners just get very frustrated that you don't know. So research, research, research. Release schedule, be open to change, be open to constructive feedback. And I guess those would be my big ones. And invest good money in audio equipment. I'm actually about to buy some new audio equipment soon because the audio equipment I have is starting to bug out on me and I can't rely on that anymore. So those are that. And then you asked how honest, how honest is honest? Or I guess too honest is what you mean. How honest is too honest when doing a show review? I mean, I don't know, I don't know. I, I don't lie about anything that I saw and I think that's the important thing. Do not lie. If you didn't like something, don't say that you did. If you are mixed on something, don't say that you loved it. So right off the bat, don't lie to your listeners. If you're afraid of ruffling some feathers, if you're afraid of maybe not getting asked to things, then maybe wonder if doing public reviews is for you. I didn't intend to do public reviews on the podcast. I didn't intend to write reviews on Instagram. That all just sort of happened and then I kind of kept going with it. And again, I've been shifting as the times have been moving along. I, I, there's someone's always going to get hurt about what you say because making art is a very vulnerable experience. And then there are some people who just are not open to any kind of constructive feedback whatsoever. It's just praise. They only want praise and I find that super unhealthy. I don't think it behooves any of us to be a total dick with our opinions to just be like, well, this is terrible and you should, you know, be ashamed and blah, blah, blah, blah. When I talk about things like why I thought back to the future was kind of insulting. I say specifically in what landscape I mean by that and not that it's an awful job so much as there are so many people trying to make art and can't get through the door and three millionaires do, in my opinion. A copy paste job of a successful movie and get it up in London, get it on Broadway, get a national tour. And I'm like, so what are we doing here? We say we need new generations of theater writers. We say we want musicals that can change the landscape. And yet this is something we're setting our mind to. And when people say, well, it's not trying to be ground breaking, I'm like, that's not what. It doesn't have to be, but it's not interesting and it's not special and it's very boring and it's very safe and made by people who didn't need to make it. That has ruffled some feathers. No one in the community, I will say, but fans of the show. So that might be too honest for some people in terms of my opinion. And I don't take my opinion as gospel, but I think very hard about it and why I feel such a way. So when I relate my opinions on the podcast, people can understand where I'm coming from and what it is I'm talking about. So I don't think necessarily there's such a thing as being too honest about your opinion. I think it's possible to be too mean spirited and too soft in your delivery of it. I think a very safe thing you could say is simply like, this wasn't for me. When looking at a show, I think it's. It always helps if you don't like it, to find one or two things that you think worked or two or one or two things that intrigued you or where you saw the potential of what it could be. You also want to meet every show, where it's at, what it is it's trying to do, and then figure out if it was successful at that. Because if something wasn't for you, then no one can really blame you for that. It's okay you didn't connect to it. I did. No harm, no foul, I guess. Just be aware of when you're attacking and when you're actually having a conversation. Right. Because it's. It's all art. Whether it's artful is another question. But it's all art and it's subjective and it gives us a reaction and the reaction is yours to own. And no one should make you feel bad about that. We can always be better about how we relay it. That's all. I said that I basically said two sentences for a very, very long time just now. But yeah, I guess that's what I would say about opinions and reviews. What is another one? If you could recast, if you could recast one role from last year's Broadway season to drastically improve a show, what would it be and who would you cast? I don't know. If one role would drastically alter a show, at least everything else. Everything else would have to be firing on all cylinders and there would have to be one obvious weak spot. And I'll say that last season's Merrily I enjoyed it a very good deal. I did think that there was one performer who I. I did not think was properly in tune with the character and what everyone else was doing. They felt very much in a different show for me. So I'll just say that I would have liked to have played put in. I also thought they were too young for the role of the other thing. Like, so I thought the actress who played Gussie and Merilee was too young, and I thought that she was playing a very different Gussie from what everyone else was playing in that show. And that is also a direction thing. That is something Maria Friedman should have informed her actress of. Of, hey, your tone is very different from the tone of Lindsay and Daniel and John. Let's make sure we're all in the same show now. So this is not me blaming the actress. Something that I was taught in college by a teacher that I disliked very heavily. But he said this one thing that I have held on to forever. And I want to tell every actor this, it's never your fault you got cast. If you end up being wrong in the role, do your very best. But you were hired for a reason. They saw something in you. And if it didn't totally work out, or if you accepted the role, knowing it was probably going to be a difficult fit. You know, again, it's a job and you have to do your best. But everyone involved in the production is on the line as well as you. So if you're not doing as good a job as you were hoping, it's not your fault, or at least it's not entirely your fault. There are a lot of other people involved in making a show happen and your performance happen. So I. While I found the Gussie to be the weakest of the main principles, I don't necessarily blame the actress for that. I would have loved to have cast someone A bit older than her, though. Someone not quite Heather Headley age, but like, somewhere in between. Like someone in her mid-40s. Is Heather in her mid-40s? No, I think Heather's in her early 50s, early to mid-50s now. So, like, I think, like Rufe and Miles, I would have loved to have seen as Gussie, or I don't know who else I would have loved to have seen. I mean, Ko, I thought. I think, would have actually been a really good Gussie. Maybe not as, like, glamorous and shallow as most Gussies would have been, but I think Ko's really would have done a really good job of being sort of a cynical leading lady on. On the stage, which is what Gussie is. Yeah, I think those two would have done a really good job with Gussie. So, yeah, that is one of my recastings. If you had to guess, what is the length and weight of the biggest rat you've seen in New York City? I've never seen a rat that big in New York City. I've seen plenty of them, but never one that made me go, oh. I mean, we're talking probably like one that if I. If it was on a scale, is maybe three and a half pounds. I don't know if that's considered heavy or not, but, yeah, I've never seen a super, super huge rat. What is one show you saw in the last 10 years that you despise and could have been fixed with better directing or casting? I wouldn't say despise. I actually think it's a really good musical. I just didn't like its production. I think Waitress is actually a very solid musical. I didn't like the Broadway production. I thought it was way too overproduced and overstaged, and I would have liked to see simpler production of it. I don't know if I think I. A show I despised would have. Oh, you know what? Okay, I despise. We all know this. I despised the 2018 carousel, and I solely blame the direction for that as well as everything else. But it all stems from direction. Better. Better direction would have helped that because it was well cast for the most part. Everyone in it was a very good singing actor. I just thought that the director made poor use of all of them. Okay, next up, if your play got to Broadway and you could cast it with Broadway, West End and movie actors, who would you cast? Oh, good question. Well, so let's see. I'll start with the characters of Anna and Kennedy, the two best friends of John. Anna has to be Wry and funny, but, you know, supportive. Little tough. Very much a supportive person that is, has like a. An attitude and a very strong sense of opinion about her. And it's not overbearing so much as it's just if you want to ask for her advice, you have to be prepared for whatever she's going to say. And we still have to kind of want to love her, even if she's like. Can be a little bit judgmental. So for Anna, I would say my number one choice at the moment would be Stephanie Hsu. I think she has a really good sense for it. Kate Rockwell did it in the last reading and she was awesome. Kennedy is a bit more of. Has a bit more sass and levity about him and in a lot of ways and in the wrong hands could be a stereotypical gay best friend. And he is meant to sort of stand in for that prototype, but he has a lot more facets to him. He's tougher. He's got a bit more of like a warrior and survivor instinct about him. He also has to be incredibly funny without pushing for it. Bowen, Yang, Gray Henson, Robin De Jesus are three people who have come to mind when I've thought about it. For eren, the Act 2 Princess track, what we said about Eren and the casting breakdown was, you know, she's. She's very smart, but she's very calculated and you're not sure if it's honest or not. It reminded me of Anne Hathaway back in interviews like 10, 15 years ago, where the whole thing was how poised she was and she was always kind of thinking how it was going to sound, how it was going to come off. It was incredibly filtered. But also you could sort of see something going on behind the eyes beyond the. The presentation of her. And I think if I were to go with a movie actress, it would be someone like Amanda Zyfried, if you're talking stage, someone like Taylor Louderman or, hmm, trying to think who else it could be. Also, Florence Pugh would be a really great Anna, now that I'm thinking about it. But yeah, it's got to be someone who can come off as cold and probably is a little cold, but can show pain behind the eyes and, you know, almost it can really do sort of like a malfunctioning robot of I. I don't. I refuse to cry now. I won't do it. So that's who I would probably have as Aaron Mom. I've always kind of wanted Laurie Metcalf for the character of the mom. But I also would accept she's not terribly Jewish, but Laura Linney just. Or who else would be really good? Miriam Silverman. Tony winner Miriam Silverman just I. Someone who doesn't push for the comedy on it. She's a very dropped in character. She says a lot of quips, but none of them are like Geneva Carr did it at the reading and she was great. And Gabby McClinton was Aaron. Aaron J. Albano was Kennedy for Owen and John. So for Owen, someone asked, you know, does Owen have to really be kind of handsome? And I said yes, because a, he's standing in for the generic romantic interest of a rom com. But also it's a testament to how much we let people get away with when we find them objectively, conventionally attractive. But he's not like a swarthy, burly leading man type. He's a bit. I mean, it's a little Michael Hayden in Carousel. I think I described it as like if Paul Rudd played Billy Bigelow. He's kind of like a soft handsome. He's lithe and he's very dreamy. But also there's kind of a tortured poet ness about him. Andrew Burnap comes to mind. Trying to think like, it wouldn't be a Patrick Schwarzenegger who are all currently watching on the White Lotus. It would be like an Andrew Burnap kind of person. And then John, and I don't say this to pat myself on the back, I actually think I wrote a really difficult character to cast because. And I don't think that I clear the bar at all in it. But John is our focal point and he has to be charming enough that we want to follow him and kind enough that we like him, but also not get upset or roll our eyes when he makes some dumb but empathetic decisions. He's got some anxiety about him, he's got some quirks about him, but he can't be played with anxiety. He can't be played overly queer. He is a stand in for the charming, if sometimes generic protagonist of a rom com. And again, the whole point of yours truly is that as the show continues, everyone gets far more defined and we see the human beyond the trope. Right. So I'm trying to think of Maddie and I talked about reaching out to Alex Weiss at one point before we decided to ultimately have me do it. Also because I just. I came cheaper than any actor, so. But Alex Weiss was someone we thought of and I think Alex would do a really lovely job. That's as far as I can get right Now I'm trying to think of any TV or movie actors who would be good. And a lot of these characters are in their early to mid-30s. John, Anna and Kennedy are about 31, 32. Owen and Aaron are about, like, 35, 36. Mom is in her, like, probably early to mid-60s. And then there's a. There's a small character that we only see once for one scene in Act 2. And that could actually even be double cast by whoever plays that one. But, yeah, that's who I guess I would think of for that. Next question. What's the most. This says, what's the most opinion you'd have that would make the theater world absolutely hate you? I guess that what they mean is, what's the opinion you'd have that would make the theater world absolutely hate you? Oh, God. I mean, there are plenty of actors that I find to be somewhat overworked, and I think we can think outside of the box about that. Yeah, we got a couple of go to's that I don't think we need to necessarily have as our go to's. I mean, I don't think anyone in theater should be a go to. We have so many talented people. And sometimes I just. I think that there's a lack of imagination in casting, but I don't know if that would make people hate me. I think everyone kind of feels that way. Right? At least I will say everyone in the theater community kind of feels that way. If there's some people who get cast and stuff and we all kind of go, either we go, why them? Or like, okay, I get why them. But there are five other people who could do it just as well, if not better, who haven't had opportunities like this. And this person has had this opportunity, like, nine times. So I guess that would be my biggest hot take. Next question. With the stacked actor and actress categories, both for plays and musicals this season, combined with all the celebrities on stage, who do you think? Tony Nominer. Tony Nominators will risk overlooking also, which celebrity nominations would make you throw your shoe? I would probably throw my shoe if Robert Downey Jr. Got nominated for McNeil. He did a solid job. I just thought that play was big fat nothing. I also don't think he's getting nominated. I would love it if Kit got nominated. I don't think it'll happen. I haven't seen Othello, so I can't comment on it. But by all accounts, Jake Gyllenhaal is the more powerful performance between him and Denzel. So I guess I would be surprised if Denzel got in there as well, but I think he's most likely going to get overlooked. Who else do I think will risk getting overlooked? I think that Idina has a good shot of not getting nominated. I think Redwood is Redwood. From what everyone has been talking to me about from inside the community, no one's really been on board with Redwood or her in it. As opposed to things like Sunset and Gypsy, which are very polarizing. There are far more champions of those shows and of those leading performances than there are of Redwood. I also think Sutton has a really good shot of not getting nominated this year for Once Upon a Mattress and. Hmm, who else? I think we're seeing a world in which no one from Cult of Love gets in. Jessica Hecht might not get in for Eureka Day. And that's. I mean, that's featured, but still. Yeah, it's. No, it's getting crowded up in here. Also, I'm nervous about the Death Becomes her ladies. I think it's really hard to nominate one and not the other, which means that they both have to get in there. And we could end up having six nominees in Best Actress, or we could have seven, but with Audra Nicole and I would argue Jasmine Rogers as the three locks, that's two spots, two official spots left open. And Jen and Megan could cancel each other out, especially if people are clamoring for Helen J. Shen to get in there for maybe happy ending. So, yeah, I don't know. I definitely. I'm much more confident in saying that Robert Downey Jr. Is not getting in. I'm feeling a little confident about Idina and Sutton not getting in. That's how I feel for now. Unfortunately, I think that Gray Henson probably won't get nominated for Elf, which is unfortunate, as I think he's. He was so fantastic in that show and remains my pick for actor in a musical right now. And if there's any justice, he will be nominated, but I don't think it'll happen. So we all have to kind of prepare ourselves. What has been your experience having press tickets? What has your experience getting press ticks? Let me say this again. What has your experience having press tickets been like? Any tips for people trying to gain access to press tickets in the future? So, again, I'm not a member of the Broadway League press list, which means I do not get guaranteed seats for every show. I have to contact the press team every time, and I usually do it about two weeks before opening because that's when they're starting to coordinate these things. And it's not up to the press team whether you can get seats or not. It's up to the producers if they're going to release those seats. And then the press team gets back to you and coordinates with you. It has been mostly positive. There is one press team that has been really bad about getting back to me about stuff, and it's incredibly frustrating. They will send me all of their email blasts, and then when I ask about press tickets, I tend to get left unread and I have to write them like three or four times. And then they'll either say, yes, we can accommodate you, or no, we can't accommodate you. And I know people are busy, but I don't. I don't like being a pest, so it always makes me uncomfortable having to be in that position. You also kind of have to decide if you're going for press tickets, what that means as a member of press. What are you doing? Are you promoting the show? Are you talking about. Are you, like, are you going to interview somebody from the show? Are you going to review it? Are you going to do, like, coverage for it in whatever medium that you. You do? I say every time I am going to review the show on the podcast. It's part of my coverage for the season. It also is part of my Tony Awards coverage. I always send them links to Broadway Breakdown, on Broadway Podcast Network, on Apple and on Spotify to show that I'm legit, that I have a listenership. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The fall and winter have proven far more productive with press tickets. The spring has been very tricky. I was supposed to see. I emailed about purpose about 10 days before opening, and I was offered a ticket for after opening, to which I said yes to. And then I never got an official confirmation. So I emailed two days before I was supposed to be seeing it, and they got back to me and said, we do not have that ticket available anymore. Would have been nice to have gotten that email, but whatever. And then some press teams have gone back to me immediately, whether they do or do not. You always just want to always be polite, never assume, have your emails be concise. I always, and I remind the press team every time who I am, what it is that I'm doing and why I'm doing it, why I'm asking for this. And sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. So do not expect, but lead with your best foot forward. Lead with your most confident, professional foot forward. Hopefully we can get on the Broadway League press list at the end of this season. Then we can see these shows with, you know, confidence and we can continue covering every show this season and covering the Tony Awards. So again, guys, I'm gonna ask if you can give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. A nice review. It always helps and it'll help the Broadway League take us seriously. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire. We're so done with new Year. New you. This year it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Geminis because you know you always like them. More of you dating with with intention because you know what you want and you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. At Patron, we craft our tequila using high quality natural ingredients without additives. No sweeteners, no extracts, no secrets. In fact, Patron's secret ingredient is that we have no secret ingredients, just 100% additive free tequila made with 100% Weber Blue Agave water and thyme. Patron 100 additive free tequila. Visit patron tequila.com to learn more. The perfect way to enjoy Patron is responsibly. Copyright 2025, imported by Patron Spirits Company Coral Gables, Florida. Tequila 40% ABV Next up, what are three things you are looking forward to the next year? Do you mean like 2026 or like for the next season? Because if we're talking next season, not a lot has been announced. Queen of Versailles sounds fun. I heard it needed a lot of work though. The Lost Boy sounds cool. That's all I really remember being announced. I'm sure there's more, but nothing that's really stuck in my brain. Yeah, I don't really have much. What is your favorite actress in a musical lineup ever? The year 2000, I think that is a phenomenal best actress in a musical lineup. We have Heather Headley, who wins for Aida. It's a total star is born moment and giving this dynamic, very specific performance and, you know, a super grounded, nuanced take in a Disney musical. You have Marin Maisie and Kiss Me Kate, who is just pissing all over that stage. Rebecca Luker in the Music man, which is also a wonderful revival but a very different kind of leading performance than Marin Maisie in a revival. You have Toni Collette in the Wild Party, giving a sensational Broadway debut in Granite, a polarizing musical, but really anchoring it and doing a really phenomenal and brave performance. And then you have Audra McDonald and Marie Christine, who is just, you know, it's a star turn that she just devours. And every. Every nominee is a phenomenal performance and a very different show giving a very different kind of performance. That's why it's my favorite of all of the lineups. I'm also a big fan of the 1988 Best Actress in Musical lineup, which is Patti LuPone in Anything Goes, Joanna Gleeson in Into the Woods, Alison Fraser in Romance Romance, and Kunzie in Chess. I wouldn't say that everyone is in a great work, but I think it's a very solid foursome. So. Yeah. But 2000, that's my favorite lineup. Which show from the spring are you looking forward to the most? Are you seeing Vanya Downtown? I feel like I answered this one. I will not be seeing Vanya. I'm entering the lottery, and I'm not winning, and I don't think I ever will win because that's such a hot ticket. Tell us about your running goals. Are you training for anything? Do you ever run with front runners? New York City? I'm not training, no. I run before every workout. I enjoy running. I do about anywhere from 20 to 35 minutes on the treadmill. I'm a little OCD, so I look at the numbers and the calories and the numbers in the distance, and I always combine them, and I make sure that I hit a specific number with that total by the end of my run. So sometimes. So I'm not even really looking at how many calories I'm burning. I'm not even looking at the distance I'm going. I'm just making sure that the total equals that. And, yeah, I'll alter the incline sometimes to have some more resistance. I will go anywhere from, like 10 miles per hour to 4.5 miles per hour. You want to always switch it up, But I just. Yeah, I put on. I have a musical theater playlist that I play. I sometimes I'll do pop, but I find that when I'm running, I like having musical theater songs that have, like, a nice structure to them, a nice build, and I have them in a certain order right now because some songs have a slow start that build to a great finale. Others start at a 10 and end at 10. So I have my strongest suit in there. It's Your Wedding Day from Wedding Singer is in there. I have Let Me Be youe Star. I have Fabulous Baby from Sister Act. I have the Sparkling Diamonds medley from the movie of Moulin Rouge. The Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend with Material Girl. I have some other ones. I have welcome to the 60s from the hairspray soundtrack, not the Broadway cast recording. I have Raise youe Voice. I have Dance at the Gym from the New west side Story. I have Defying Gravity from the movie I used to have. What Is this Feeling from the movie. I switch it up a lot. I'll add some. I'll take out some. I have, oh, my God, you guys in there right now. A lot of poppy things that just really get your blood pumping. Yeah, I'm not part of any running group. I just run at the gym again before my workout. Sometimes if I have extra time at the gym, I'll do like, a little run afterwards. But you want to warm up your body before you do any muscle work, any core strength and things like that. And cardio really helps with that. I should probably only really do 15 minutes before I go, but I just. I really enjoy it, So I do 30. Yeah, those are my running goals. If time travel were reality, which show would you go back in time to see? There's some obvious ones. Like, I would love to see Ethel Merman opening night of Gypsy or Barbra Streisand on her closing night of Funny Girl. Although I think there's audio of that performance out now. I also would love to see an audience react to Dreamgirls on opening night and Evita on opening night. I have those audios, but I really would love to have seen it. The one that I think I would most like to have seen. And again, I have the audio of this, but I talked about this in the episode with Gunkle out of the pod. Adam Ellsbury. I kind of want to see the opening night of promises promises in 1968. Because those reviews, again, this is where we talk about Hamilton. It got like the Hamilton of its time reviews where they were like, broadway is shifting in a new direction. It's never sounded like this before. It's never looked like this before. This is absolutely incredible. Run, Don't Walk. And I like Promises Promises a lot. But it's so wild that that show got that kind of reception. Sort of makes you go, I want to be in the theater on that night and really experience what those critics experience, because they all said it. It's not like one critic said that and everyone else Was like, it's fine. Like, they all said, this show is incredible and is gonna change Broadway. So I would have liked to have seen that. One second. What are steps that can help ensure ongoing financial success and meaningful work being done in Off Broadway houses? Fuck if I know. I don't. I mean, I guess meaningful work is subjective, right? Everyone has a different idea of what is meaningful. I just think be good. But that's also hard because again, what is good but financial success? I mean, don't overshoot your chances in an Off Broadway house. Don't just immediately assume that your show is a done deal, that you should spend a ton of money and expect people to flock. I think big gay jump. We kind of learned that the hard way. Also, don't do Off Broadway expecting to transfer because that may not happen and you might lose everything. So really try to make it work in the theater you're in. Find a running cost that makes sense. That's something we talked about with the Teeth episode, is that that was a production where the running costs just made absolutely no financial sense. If you're an Off Broadway house, try to figure out a way for the numbers to work where you can fill 60% of the theater at full price and still break even. If that's unrealistic, then 70%, but you shouldn't be at 90, 95%. And it has to be full price in order to cover all of your costs, because that's never gonna. Not ever. But that's really hard to make happen in an Off Broadway theater to make something meaningful. I mean, I guess that again, what do you find as meaningful? Because I think all kinds of art can be meaningful depending on how you do it. If it's not a good product, it doesn't matter how lofty your goals are. It's just not going to reach across the footlights. So, yeah, I mean, I just think that you don't want a lot of yes men in your room. When you're workshopping stuff, when you're reading stuff, you want to find some people who will tell you what they think and have, like, reach. When you're workshopping and doing readings of stuff, try to find somebody who didn't like it and talk to them about why. They may not end up giving you anything worthwhile, but sometimes they do. Sometimes they'll say, this didn't work for me. I didn't like that. I didn't like that. And if they understand what it is you're trying to accomplish, and they still didn't, like, can be a little. It can be helpful. It can help you refine what you're working on and really make it work for a larger audience. Because no matter what anybody says, they don't want their thing to be so niche that only 10 people like it. No one aims to be nine people's favorite things. No matter what title the show tells you, everybody wants to be a juggernaut. So yeah, next question we have what musical in your opinion needs a full blown encores revival and why? I said it already. Smile. Every year that encores doesn't do Smile is a year wasted. In my humble opinion. If you could go back to 1971 rules and award music and lyrics separately, would you at the Tony Awards, are there any years you think would have made a huge difference? I don't think I would. I think score is music and lyrics together. I don't think they should be separated. The drama desks do it and that's fine for them, but I. I think the score is the score. Sometimes lyrics on their own can seem super odd until you pair it with the music. And sometimes really cleverly crafted lyrics don't scan with the music and what have you. But you hear all of that with with the full product. Would there be any years where that would have changed things? Maybe the year of 9 versus Dreamgirls 9 might have still won music, but Dreamgirls probably could have won lyrics. Anything else? Huh? Maybe the year of. Maybe the year of Aida, they would have won music and maybe Wild Party would have won lyrics. But Wild Party was not super well liked at the time and kind of goose egged. Yeah, maybe Millie would have won music and Urinetown would have won lyrics. Who's to say? Who's to say? It's hard for me to see a year where the lyrics of one score were so infinitely better than another to the point that people would have actually, you know what? Maybe the year of landing the Piazza spelling bee might have won lyrics and Piazza might have won music. That might have happened. But I think the lyrics and Piazza are very poetic and beautiful. But the lyrics in Spelling Bee are also a great deal of fun and quite witty. Someone writes. Your reviews are amazing and appreciated though sometimes come off as condescending. If that's what you think. I don't know how to fix that. I have tried to be very aware of not talking down about stuff and yet I still sometimes get feedback like that. Not often, but every now and then. I don't know how to change that perception you have. It's just. It's there's no way to talk about this stuff and not have. Have some judgment about it. Right. We are literally judging this stuff we're analyzing and we are evaluating. So I'm sorry if you find it a little condescending, but that's also not a question. So anywho, what's a fun, interesting, inventive staging. Sorry, fun interesting or inventive staging or takes on a show you would like to see happen? It could be site specific or it could be casting specific. Example, the female non binary. 1776 ragtime on Ellis Island. Sweeney taught in the pie shop. I don't know, I don't really have many takes. Seussical at the Children's Museum perhaps, or. I always wanted there to be a production of Midsummer Night's Dream in Central park, but not at the Delacorte Lake. Literally in the park in one of the open fields or something. But that might be a little trickier. Anything else? I guess I wouldn't be mad about. I think I want to see a production of Waitress that's like a nine person cast. I don't really want that ensemble and it doesn't have to be site specific. But yeah, I think that's what I would want. And trying to think of any like gender swapping, casting. I don't know. It doesn't. It's not something that I'm always thinking about. I, I would have to be absorbing the show and, and decide for myself, oh, this would work really well with this, with this performer. And I think it actually would. The whole show would fall into place with this gender or, or person of color or what have you with that shift. But it doesn't happen very often. It has to happen naturally for me. I can't just, you know, make the choice to do it and then justify it. I find that too many people do that. Oh, that was a question somebody else had. Like what was. What's one. A common misconception about Broadway? I think a common misconception about Broadway is that people get along. It doesn't happen as often as you would think. Oh, someone said, I know you can't talk about the. Talk about which actor in the new west side Story had an issue with their performance after the initial screening. But can you give us any more tea from that set? And why did Ariana DeBose and Rachel Zegler stop following each other on social media? I don't have much tea to give on that movie other than I just know that there are a lot of hormones running around on that set in terms of why Rachel and Ariana are no longer following each other. I can't give you the official story, but I will say actors on social media, the one bit of power they have is who they do and do not follow. So if they are not following a co star, it's because they want it to be made clear to everyone else how they feel about them. So my guess would be that Rachel and Ariana did not get along on set and maybe didn't get along after the fact, or they couldn't pretend any longer and had to wait till the movie was out before they could unfollow each other. But yeah, they. They know what they're doing and they know that people can see it. You can see a lot of other Broadway actors when they're in shows or when they're leaving shows, who they follow or unfollow. And it's a choice. It's absolutely a choice. So I don't have actual tea about those two, but you can come to your own conclusions about that. And then the final question. Could a revival of tougher shows, quote, unquote, tougher, like carousel, etc. Possibly revitalize public perceptions of these shows if they were done like Daniel Fish's Oklahoma or Jamie Lloyd's Sunset? What songs would songs like June's Bus, Noddle over, or Clambake work in a stripped down production? June and Clambake would not work in a stripped down production, although I will say I did. When I directed Carousel, I did it in a black box theater with two pianos. But it wasn't like an avant garde production. It was very straightforward. It was just that we had no money for sets and very little money for costumes. So we did. We still did the show as written, and we didn't have, like, a huge take on it other than it was intimate. So it still. It worked in that respect. But if you were to do like a Jamie Lloyd Carousel, no clam bacon, June is busting out a lover. Would not work. Could revival. So the thing about Oklahoma. About the Whoa. Klahoma with Daniel Fish is I had a couple of kids at Tampa who they knew Oklahoma because of that revival. And they asked me why the Dream Ballet was there. They said, it makes no sense and I don't like it. And I asked if they had ever watched other versions of the Dream Ballet and they said no. And so I said, okay, you got to go online and you got to watch the one from 1999 with Hugh Jackman, choreographed by Susan Stroman. You can also watch the original film, but that'll give you a better idea of why that ballet works and what it's trying to convey. The problem with these kind of productions is a lot of people who maybe don't know the show. There are people who will come out confused about the show if they don't know it's super well going in. And then you also run the risk of people who love the show and seeing it done this way getting very upset that their beloved show is being fucked around with so much. I don't know if this is the future. I think it's a fun alternative, but it's not necessarily what the overall trend should be. I think you. Every revival should always come to the material blind and say, how do we make this show come alive for an audience today? And some directors, that's just their mind goes to something like a Jamie Lloyd and they. And they see it already crystal clear in their head, and that's great. That's how it works for them. That's not where my brain goes. So I would think of it more in terms of, like, the 90s, where it's much more elaborate with a large ensemble, but no really artful acting and motivated and insightful singing and performance. So I think when it comes to tougher shows, it's just not talking down to it, embracing the tricky nuances of it and seeing how that strikes you when you're, you know, brainstorming your production. So I don't think that. I don't. I don't think that these kind of revivals, that Jamie Lloyd or Daniel Fishes would necessarily revitalize these shows so much as a thoughtful production would, because South Pacific was revitalized by Bart Sher and at Lincoln center just by doing a thoughtful production with great acting and really taking it seriously. Same thing with the 94 carousel. Same thing with Chicago and Cabaret. That's all you got to do. Just don't. If you are doing a revival as a museum piece, if you're doing it because you want to fix it, you're going to fail. Just figure out how to make it come alive again for a new audience, and you're bound to succeed. All right, that's it, guys. That's the full Q and A. If you made it this far, I congratulate you. It's still a long episode, but not as long as the Tony rankings episode. So I appreciate your patience on this one. If I missed your questions, I apologize. I answered as many as I could. I think I also. I deleted one or two accidentally while you were doing this and by the time I realized I had deleted one or two, it was too late. So if I, if I did miss a question, I'm sorry. But please, if you haven't joined the Discord Channel yet, please do so. The link will be in the description box. If that is not working, please reach out to me on Instagram acopolik usual spelling. I will send you a direct link to the Discord Channel from that and next week is going to be another early Tony Predictions episode with friends of the pod, Richie and Jeff from the half hour podcast. So stay tuned for that. I'm also going to have a review episode coming out sometime this weekend and after the I think it's after the Tony Ward prediction episode with Richie and Jeff, I will do a full announcement of the next Deep Dive series and what those shows will be. So stay tuned for that. And I think today we're gonna do something very different and we're gonna close out actually with a male performer because I've spoken about him quite a lot and I again do think that he deserves a lot of praise and a lot of work. We're gonna close out with Christopher Fitzgerald, three time Tony nominee Christopher Fitzgerald. I think he's awesome and so special and I hope he knows that. So yeah, we will see you guys in a couple of days and then again next week. And happy birthday to me, I suppose. Thank you for all of your questions. Take it away Christopher. Bye to follow. I'm gonna love you so you'll learn what I already know I love. It means you're never ever, ever getting rid of me. 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