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Broadway Breakdown
Broadway 2024-2025 (So Far): Rankings and Tony Noms
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Matt discusses the Broadway season so far
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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. This episode is brought to you by Dutch Bros. Big smiles, rocking tunes and epic drinks. Dutch Bros. Is all about you. Choose from a variety of customizable handcrafted beverages like our Rebel energy drinks, coffees, teas and more. Download the Dutch Bros app for a free medium drink plus fun your nearest shop. Order ahead and start earning rewards offer valid for new app users only. Free medium drink Reward upon registration. 14 day expiration terms apply. See DutchBros.com I like to eat well, but I'm so bad about figuring out how to do it. Like what ingredients do I even use? What's a healthy calorie intake? And you've listened to my episodes. Even if I wanted to cook, I am terrible with time management. That's where Factor comes in. With meals delivered right to your home. Chef prepared dietitian approved and using only fresh ingredients, nothing frozen. Just two minutes in the microwave and you are ready to go. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Factor has you covered 35 different meals to choose from every week, not to mention over 60 additional convenience options. Vegan, kosher, doing whole 30 factor has something for everyone. Are you hearing a downside to any of this? Because I am not. Try Factor now and see what I'm talking about. Head to FactorMeals.com 50bb and use code 50bb to get 50 off your first box plus free shipping. That's code 50bb@factormeals.com 50bb to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping while your subscription is still active. Thank you very much. That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do, but Mr. Grab. Ah. Hit it. Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show bright light, rhythm and romance. The train is late, so while we wait, we're gonna do a little dance. Hello all you theater lovers, both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And this is our wrap up for both 2024 and the 20242025 season. So far, your auntie here has seen all of the eligible shows for the Tony Awards, not counting all in which I do believe is having Tony nominators and voters go to it so it is technically speaking Tony eligible. Doubtful though that it will get any nominations. So even though I most likely will not see that, I think we can all sort of rest easy and know that that doesn't really count. That one is just a mulligan because it is four people in chairs reading short stories and charging a million dollars for it. So I think we can just call that one Highway Robbery and move right the fuck along. One little thing we want to give our little shout out to give our roses to is we have a new review today. So before we get into the nitty gritty of all of this, let give this person their flowers and read out their review, shall we? Just one moment, let me get it ready to go. Okay, so please cue the light and the Piazza Overture Perfect Balance of Commentary, history and humor 5 stars Matt's reviews showed up on my Instagram feed a year or so ago and I always found his perspective honest and accurate. Eventually I succumbed and decided to listen to one of his podcasts, and I'm so glad I did. While most episodes clock in at well over three hours, I wouldn't say most, but plenty, I have found each to be a terrific balance of commentary, history, and humor. I worked in Broadway Theatre for two years out of college about two decades ago, and Matt's knowledge of the industry is entirely reminiscent of my experiences as well as those of the friends I know who are still within it. I personally relish every episode where he covers the show I worked on back in the day. He provides a great glance backward with the gift of hindsight. Just listened to his Aida episode on the problematic series. It is perfection. Now, as primarily an audience member who lives out of town but still tries to see most of the new shows each season, I find his takes on current Broadway and Off Broadway offerings so accurate. Oftentimes, when I listen to a review after I've seen a show, he helps me reframe that experience and bring so much of what was swirling around in my head into greater focus. Of course, his reviews have also helped me decide what to skip and what to see. The podcast is a gift to all those who love theater or who want to see theater. Side note, check out his play, Yours truly. I watched the entire reading online and found it really endearing as a modern take on some timeless experiences of searching for love and identity. Thank you very much. That is from Joe Joe Hardy. What a wonderful, wonderful review. You guys really just. You guys get to me. It's really, it's really lovely to read these and everybody wants to feel seen, right? Feel like what they do matters in some small way. But it's always nice to sort of get that back from you all. And you're all so smart and so creative and so articulate. It really makes me feel good that you choose to continue to listen to me. So thank you for that. And yeah, please get a chance if you haven't watched it yet. I'll put a link in the description box for this. The live stream of my play is gonna be up for like maybe another month or so. We've just finished re editing all the footage so it's cleaner. All the audio cuts are, all the audio drops that we had in the livestream are fixed and some visuals are fixed because we have a cleaner product that we are sending out to a couple of different agents and producers. And once we start doing that, we don't really want the live stream readily available because it's just going to be too confusing for some people. So yeah, you have about like another month, I'd say, of it on YouTube and you can watch it there. So without further ado, let's get into this season. I asked on the Discord Channel and if you haven't joined the Discord Channel yet, I highly recommend that you do. It's a great place to talk about the season, shows you've seen, shows you're working on, questions you might have. Or if you listen to this podcast and want to scream into your phone sometimes, or your computer when I'm speaking or a guest is speaking, you can do so. On the Discord Channel, I read just about everything, so you can always let me know what you're thinking. And also you can ask questions of other listeners if something confused you, or if you have some information you want to provide for episodes. But I asked on the Discord Channel if what, like what we wanted this episode to be, if we wanted it to be a ranking episode, if we want it to be a Tony prediction episode. So far, if people wanted me to discuss the whole year of 2024 or just this season, and I mean, obviously responses were all over the place, but the general consensus was to focus more on this season with maybe a couple of asterisks for maybe some notable things in the year of 2024 that I just wanted to give a special shout out to, as well as any specific Off Broadway things this season I wanted to give a shout out to. So let me get the asterisks out of the way. I would say first and foremost, my number one favorite thing I Saw not only this season, but this year was Cats. The Jellicle Ball at the Pack Center. It was just. Or I guess, pack. Yeah, sorry. At Pac, it was so fantastic. And it was honestly both sides of revival, where it was both very respectful of the original material. They didn't do much alterations to it. Most of the text was still the same. The music was relatively the same. They added, you know, a couple of club beats to some songs, but nothing was unrecognizable. I would argue, musically speaking, it was still like 85 to 90% the score of Cats as you know it. And yet it was this wild take on it that not only worked, but just also made the show more engaging, more fun, and for me, was a ball. I definitely had a couple of friends who did not care for it, and I have a few people in my life who refuse to see it because they are just so distasteful of the show itself, of Cats, and so they just can't bring themselves to see it. But I thought it was an absolute blast. And I won't reveal my sources and I won't reveal too much, but I will say it's good to have your antennas up about this show because it is definitely coming. They've been figuring out exactly what the path is for it. I know that when they were still at pac, Andrew Lloyd Webber didn't want it coming in this Broadway season because he didn't want it competing with Sunset Boulevard, which turned out to be a very wise decision. And so they were debating maybe going to London and doing it there for a little while just to sort of keep the buzz afloat. And London might still happen. But I do know that it is going to be coming back to New York sometime in 2025, possibly Broadway, possibly off Broadway. Again, nothing is signed, nothing is official. And last time I boldly released tea that I had. The plans changed and it did not age very well. So I'll just say from my sources, it is. The plan is for it to be back in 2025 in some very cool capacity. And I'm glad because it was honestly my favorite thing of this season and of 2024. It was just delightful. It was exciting, it was fresh and, like. My only real complaint was that I thought that the space was a little too big for it. So being in a theater or a different commercial off Broadway theater or whatever will, I think, be to its benefit. Sometimes a little more intimacy helps. A couple other things from 2024 that I really loved, maybe not just from this past season, but Jonah at the Laura Pell's Off Broadway Roundabout Theater starring Gabby Beans. As I mentioned a while back, that was my introduction to Danya Taymor as a director. I had not seen Passover. I did not see Daddy. This was my first Danya. And I really thought what she did with the play was wonderful. I thought the play itself was very strong. So it made me excited for the Outsiders. And I ended up enjoying the Outsiders a great deal. That was definitely one of my favorite things of last season. Definitely the new musicals. The Outsiders in Illinois were my favorites. I thought Encores had a relatively strong showing last year. I did not jizz all over myself in the way that our beloved Jesse Green did. I did not think it was the greatest season in recent memory. I thought it was a strong showing. You know, nothing was a dud, but also like, nothing totally blew my mind. Jelly's Last Jam probably came the closest. It had like four or five numbers that were really, truly phenomenal, including Leslie Uggams just parking and barking at like 81 years old. But Jelly's Last Jam was definitely inconsistent. It had amazing highs and some kind of dull lows. Once Upon a Mattress was a perfectly lovely encores showing that I think showed some of its wear and tear on flew a little too close to the sun. Not that you would know it from some of the reviews that it got, but I think you would know it from its box office returns and just sort of the impact it had on this season, which we'll get to a little further along. And then Titanic, I thought was musically really strong. The orchestra was phenomenal. We had some really wonderful singers, a couple of missed cast singers, miscast singers, in my opinion. But overall strong showing. And I thought Anne Kaufman really understood the assignment of doing Titanic and Encores. It is about the music and about giving as clean and understandable a presentation as possible. So she wasn't really doing anything that made you go like, oh my God, brilliant and inventive and high energy and whatever. Enough staging. Staging to move the plot along while also having a very simple, straightforward presentation. That it still felt honestly a bit like old school encores with just a little bit of extra money. And I appreciated that. And then Ragtime was just this past fall, another one where I just feel we all kind of got a little too in our heads about it with the political landscape and the grandioseness of an encore's musical showing. Seeing it, Encores definitely showed to me that Ragtime is not for me a perfect musical. I wouldn't even say it is a great musical. I think it is a musical with moments of greatness, mostly in the score. But seeing it done just so basic, I was like, oh, yeah, there's a lot of creaks here for sure. And we all know how I feel about LA director of that production. So moving right along, I think the only way I can really kind of move on from here. Also a couple other 20, 24 things, I guess, that weren't necessarily part of the season. Oh, Mary at the Lortelle was really special to me. I really enjoyed that. My London trip with my mother, which you can listen to that episode where we talked about the showings there. That was a really phenomenal trip and we had some great times there. Yeah. I guess what I'll just do is I'm gonna kind of do a ranking, I guess, of the season so far for me, and then I'll just sort of go into both, I guess, Tony predictions as well as what I would do because it's very difficult to predict predict right now. We still have so many more shows coming in and some shows have announced since we last sort of recorded the landscape of the season. So so many things have changed, but we can sort of get into it a little bit and just sort of see and maybe kind of take safe bets on what's gonna land on Broadway and what maybe won't. So of the 21 shows, not counting the, you know, Highway Robbery of all in my rankings so far are at 21 left on 10th, 20 McNeil 19 Tammy Faye, 18 Romeo and Juliet, 17 Home, 16 the Roommate, 15. Swept Away, 14. A Wonderful World, 13. Our Town, 12. Gypsy 11. Once Upon a Mattress, 10. Job 9. Death Becomes Her, 8. Elf 7. Sunset Boulevard 6. Yellow Face, 5. Eureka Day 4. Cult of Love 3. Maybe Happy Ending, 2. Oh, Mary and 1. The Hills of California. Of course, that ranking is going to piss off so many people for so many different reasons. I have two very close friends who are going to be so upset with me for putting Sunset Boulevard so low, and I'm going to have two friends who are going to be so upset with me for putting it so high. So you just really can't win. A little breakdown of this rankings. So at 21, we have left on 10th, which is just. I'm sorry, there's no way to beat it on the bush here. It is 1000% the worst thing of the season. It is one of the worst things I've seen on Broadway. Parting wants to stay in a long time, but probably just ever. It both doesn't have a reason to exist and is so poorly done and with so many people involved who have done such wonderful work in the past, I don't understand what happened. Delia Ephron is a smart writer. There are definitely some moments where you're watching it and you're going like, oh, I can imagine reading this and enjoying it. Some people are much better for the page than for the body and the mouth and for the ear. I feel like Delia Ephron is someone who can write prose, but not necessarily dialogue. She can detail her life and stories of her life in a way that's engaging, but can't boil it down to something that's dramatic and dynamic. And I wouldn't say that Nora Ephron was a necessarily dramatic writer, but at her best, she was able to take the idiosyncrasies of everyday life and make them engaging and make them work in a structured story. And this just is not that. And Susan Stroman's direction, not only of the pacing and the actual literal staging, but the tone, her work with the actors is just all over the place. The style of the show, the design is ugly. It just. It doesn't make sense. And if you look at the grosses, it's been plummeting. You know, word of mouth has definitely gotten out. The reviews were mixed, negative to just flat out pans. This is the absolute mulligan of the season. Unless something happens in the spring, which it could. Plenty of things happen in the spring that are giant mulligans as well. But for right now, this is absolutely the nadir of the 2024, 2025 season. And I just. It's baffling to me that it's still running, that it's gonna try to make it to the end of its run. It's just hemorrhaging, hemorrhaging money and is kind of embarrassing, like, however you feel about the performances or them as people or actors. For Peter Gallagher and Juliana Margulies to go out eight times a week and play to 30% capacity of the Jones Theater, which isn't the largest theater, it's about a little under 1100 seats. But the way that it's spaced out, it feels so vast. So when you're playing to half capacity there, you feel it. So to play to a third capacity is just devastating and humiliating. As someone who has played to 10% capacity before, believe me, sometimes you'd rather just cancel the performance. So that is 21 left on 10th 20. McNeil. The thing about McNeil is that there are technical elements of it that are very impressive. There are no performances in it that are bad. Robert Downey Jr. Is very comfortable on stage, and he's very good at playing a dick. And it's just sort of this. Not totally charming, but, like, not hateful on the surface. Egotist and misogynist and just douchebag all around. I don't think that the play, though, has much to say about AI which it's very obsessed with. It doesn't have much to say about the creative experience, about relationships, about being an artist, the need to create, as well as the fear of when your well runs dry, as well as the bit of narcissism that is involved of any artist, actor, writer, director, painter, what have you, Hallowed caster. It's both a combination of, this is what makes sense to me. This is what I love to do, but also, I need someone to recognize it and to tell me that it's good. There's that, like, little broken part of you as an artist that's, like, a little narcissistic, and it doesn't really explore any of that. If you listen to the nine episode with me and Kevin Duda, nine explores that much better. Nine isn't perfect. It is definitely a watery book. But it explores the emotional and mental elements of this artist, of this egotistical, broken man and the women in his life, much like McNeil. And McNeil just doesn't do any of it, or at least any of it. Well, it doesn't do it humorously. It doesn't do it contemplatively. And on top of all of that, it is so forgettable. I walked out of the theater and I forgot 90% of what I had just watched. It just. It slips through your fingers like nothing else. And there are some forgettable things on this list. We're going to get into it in a second. I would argue, like, the bottom seven or eight shows here are all sort of tiered out of fighting. Duking it out of, like, purely just bad, misguided, and in poor taste, and then just absolutely forgettable because the two are different. Different sides of the same coin of. Of unforgivableness. Right. Of, okay, it's atrocious. But, my God, do you remember it? Or, you know, it's not in poor taste and it's not poorly done. I just forgot so much of it. And you ask yourself, like, well, which is worse? Do you want to have a blazing memory of something that was just bonkersly terrible, or do you want to see something where you're like, you know, it was workmanlike. It wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen. Just in a week, I'll forget all of it. Because the truth is that there's also some stuff that I've seen that's solid, not even mediocre, just like mediocre plus, and I still forget about it. It may take me a little bit longer, but I eventually forget about it. I think that's true of a lot of stuff we've seen on Broadway the last couple of years, whether we want to admit it or not. Just think about all the shows that have had huge fan bases when they were on Broadway and how quickly those fan bases weakened within a year or two when something else came along. It's partly our own ADHD as theatergoers, but also just. It shows you the lack of staying power of so many things. And McNeil has, I'm sorry to say, absolutely no staying power. Speaking of staying power, that brings us to 19, Tammy Faye. Literally no staying power. It opened and then ran for about a month before closing up shop. A lot of discourse about what made this flop. There was famously a letter from the director, Rupert Gould, that went to the company and backstage crew and basically blaming the failure of the show on audiences and on the political climate and nothing else. And I'm gonna say this. If you work in theater, commercial theater primarily, either reviews don't matter or they do. You can't say that reviews don't matter and then get raves and be like, oh, my God, how wonderful. And we're going to talk about that in a second as we get a little further up in the list. Reviews are simply an opinion, right? And you can trust them or not trust them. But when there tends to be a general consensus in reviews, something is up. And when audiences aren't coming, something's up. When audiences are coming and telling people not to go, something's up. At some point, you do have to look inwards and go. Something didn't connect. Even if this connected for 10 out of the hundred people in that audience, that isn't enough. It doesn't have to be unanimous, but it's got to be more than 10%, right? You have to sort of look inwards and go, I might have done a not good job or not as good as I could have done. And to lash out and blame everything else, well, it's mentally reminiscent of a certain incoming president, is it not? I'm not the problem. Nothing I did was the problem. Everything else is the problem. It's X, Y and Z. Sometimes you did a bad job. That doesn't mean you're a bad artist. It doesn't mean you're bad at what you do. But this is a very tricky art form. It's not a science. This isn't baking. You can't get it exactly right every time. No one's gotten it exactly right every time Sondheim didn't get it right every time Rogers and Hammerstein didn't. And they acknowledged when they didn't. Or at least they acknowledged when they could have done it better. And we've seen this happen so much lately. We talked about this last season with a lempicka discourse of blaming critics, of blaming audiences that aren't open minded and willing to take chances of blaming the economics of Broadway. And yes, they all definitely make, you know, matters worse. But at the root of all of it is the thing that you made. And if an entire group of critics didn't like it, if audiences are turning away from it, it's not a conspiracy. There's. Even if it's working for some people, something is up. The incoming president is working for some people. Right? There is no way to comfort yourself with something like that. You have to look at the bigger picture and also not define yourself by that failure. It is a part of your legacy now. And to try to spin it so it's not a failure doesn't help you because then you don't learn from it. And with Tammy Faye, there is so much here that is just misguided or under baked. It is an American story by an entirely British creative team, which gives it an emotional and mental distance. It's people who don't actually. Who didn't live through any of this and thus don't really know what they're talking about. They research, they might have seen some of it from afar, it might fascinate them, but they don't really know it that well. And there isn't enough excitement or point of view about it to make up for the fact that it wasn't lived in. I mean, speaking of British teams talking about something that they didn't live through. Evita is an entirely British and, well, it's not entirely British writing team with an American production team on Latin American politics that they did not live through. They were alive when it happened, but it was not their country, it was not their story, but they had a point of view about it which gave it a reason to exist. And they infused it with theatricality and energy and heat. And even if Some of it were wildly bold swings that don't land for everyone. They are defined swings. Tammy Faye lives in this muddy gray area of not having a point of view while also wanting to be incredibly smartassy about its viewpoints on religion and American politics and consumerism and media. But it doesn't actually have anything to say. It sort of always presents everything with a cheeky tone before then turning on a self serious tone. And none of it gels. None of it gels. There is some impressive staging. The design is neat. But I do think a lot of the reason why it landed better in London. A London audiences don't know much about this story. So it was fresh for them. It was in a theater a fifth the size of the one it moved to on Broadway. And that immediacy helps so much with the energy of a show and with an audience's forgiveness of any flaws. It's harder to see all the flaws when you are wrapped up in it. When you are in an intimate theater, it's not that you're up close, it's that you are in it. And when you're in it, it's harder to see the forest from the trees. You know, when you have a 1700 seat house distance, you can see it's not a Monet where like you take the distance and the blotches turn into water lilies. Like you start to see all the areas of the tapestry that are unfinished and it just doesn't work. The best things I'll say about it is Katie Briber. Is that her name? Braber, who plays Tammy Faye. She's a very talented actress who really gave her all in this performance. And there was a lot of gravitas to it, a lot of heart to it. And you know, she sings her fucking heart out in it. Katy Brabin. Sorry, Katy Brabin. I would also say her performance is not actually giving Tammy Faye. There's no accent, there's no stylization. She's. And as someone who, you know, watched the documentary and watched the Jessica Chastain movie, for that Jessica Chastain movie to be so close to our consciousness to then watch Katy Brabin do nothing remotely like the idiosyncrasies of the real life Tammy Faye makes you go, then what are we doing here? You don't look like her. You don't sound like her. You aren't even acting like her. You kind of sort of look like her third cousin. So this isn't. This isn't even about Tammy Faye. And the musical doesn't really Care about it being about Tammy Faye. It's more interested in the things surrounding her. She's a supporting character in her own show. And on top of all that, I forgot so much of it by the time it was over, it wasn't. This is not a Lempicka disaster or a Diana disaster. It's just. It just sat there on that stage and it was a giant. Why? What was, for me, half disaster, half why was Romeo and Juliet at 18? And Shakespeare is tricky because it should be exciting and we shouldn't hold it with curator gloves. You know, it's supposed to be alive, it's supposed to be energetic and feel spontaneous and, you know, so there's so much murder and suicide and in Shakespeare he has so many dick jokes. And to just treat it like it's vegetables, like it's homework, is really detrimental. And so I applaud this production for not wanting to do that, for wanting to make it as current as possible. What it showed me was that what's current, not only is it not for me, but there's just such a what the fuckness about it. It's an ugly production. Beautiful lighting, but, like, the aesthetic of the production is ugly. I don't understand the point of all the teddy bears. There's no style to it. And maybe that's a Gen Z, Gen Alpha thing of, you know, throwing together whatever, but I don't think that's true either. Like, it wants to have some of the euphoria elements of it, but euphoria, say what you will about it, has style. It has maybe too much style. You know, it's the Grassy or Skins meets Baz Luhrmann and Romeo and Juliet kind of wants to do that. And when it's trying to do that, it feels. So how do you do, fellow kids? Where Romeo and Juliet works is purely with Kit Connor as Romeo. And am I biased? A little bit maybe. I think he's a very, very handsome boy and he's very, very talented, but he is genuinely good in this and he sticks out like a sore thumb because the truth is that no one else really is. Not Rachel Zegler, not Gabby Beans, who was so phenomenal in Jonah earlier this year. Everything else about it feels misguided or under baked or, you know, not thought through or just, you know, it's like the. It's like the Broadway equivalent of. Of doing a million hashtags and doing a lip sync on TikTok to go viral. Even though you don't understand what it is that makes something go viral, it's just so much glitter and k and. And. And try heartedness. It was not for me. It wasn't for anyone else. I know. I don't know anyone who liked this. I think guest of the pod, Juan Ramirez, wrote a good review for it, but, you know, that's fine. I'm glad he enjoyed it. But yes, this was a combination of both forgettable and misguided. Part, disaster, part. Why? With, I wouldn't say awful intentions. As I said, I appreciate when artists try to make Shakespeare, you know, hot again and make it hit, but this, this just was not it. But then we have the opposite end of the spectrum of just absolute forgettableness, which was home at Roundabout this summer, first thing of the season. I know I spoke about it on the podcast. I saw it. I have vague memories of it. I gotta tell you, it's really hard to remember this show. I don't remember it being bad. I remember the two featured actresses in it were quite strong and showed a lot of versatility. They played a bunch of different roles. I didn't think that it was aesthetically ugly. I appreciated the speed with which it was done. I think too many shows right now are lounging in their sluggishness, but it just. It's missed so hard for me in the sense that just like, not only could I not connect with it on an emotional thematic level, which is fine. I don't need to, and I don't think it's written to do so. But as a production, I just sort of sat there. I was like, okay, okay. Again, nothing that made me go, God, what were they thinking? This is awful. Just, like, could not give you a specific moment of the show to save my life. Should that alone put it at the very bottom? Perhaps. But it's hard to put it at the bottom when something like left on 10th or McNeil stick in my mind of just like, such awfulness. Whereas Home is. It's. It's Home is so low because of just how forgettable I found it. If it were slightly more memorable, it would probably be up three or four spots because it wasn't amateurish, it wasn't misguided. It was just. It just sat there like an egg. And everyone in the audience was the same. You know, everyone applauded. This was maybe the only show of the season where there was no standing ovation when I was there. Not even a partial one. Even left on 10th got like a half, semi standing ovation. This was just. Everyone applauded kindly on that Saturday matinee. And then we moved on. I'm going to move on to the Roommate just for a quick second at 16, and then we'll take a quick break. The Roommate is just another one where not necessarily super forgettable, but a giant. Why? I'm not entirely sure what the point of this play is both in what it's trying to do and its existence. You could argue it's just a vehicle for two women of a certain age to, you know, have some fun. Totally understandable. Not enough to be an hour and 45 minutes with no intermission. And if it is meant to be about just having fun, this production doesn't really endorse that, at least not for a very long time. It starts off okay with the odd coupleness of Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone. Mia Farrow, I would argue, is the more annoying character that has more to do and has the more interesting arc of the play. Even if the arc is kind of bizarre and makes no sense, it at least is an arc. Patti LuPone's character really exists in the first half for Mia Farrow to react off of, and then in the second half to react off of Mia Farrow. And she does her job. I wouldn't say she does much more than that. You know, Patty's a very emotional actress. Sometimes she can be incredibly dropped in and sometimes she can be incredibly indulgent, like the best of them. Because, again, as an artist, you are taking swings, you are trying things, and it's up to the people out in the dark, the director, the audience, to inform you what's working and what's not. And it just doesn't seem like she or Mia were really given much definition in their direction. Because Mia, while she starts off strong and you're surprised to, you know, enjoy her as much as you do. For me, BY like, the 30 minute mark, I went, oh, I understand exactly how she's performing this, and I can predict what her line reading is going to be in the next scene. And I was always right. It didn't make her line readings less enjoyable or not good. It just made them unsurprising to me. And that made the performance actually go on a lot longer because I just sat there knowing how it was going to be acted, even if I wasn't quite sure where the plot was going, the plot, quote unquote, so to speak, I knew how it was going, going to be performed for me. And it's. The whole thing just sort of feels kind of like, huh, the design is very sleek and stylish and sophisticated, which is odd. Because the whole point is that it's supposed to be in the middle of Iowa where there's. And Mia Farrow's character having no style or anything, and. And the odd coupleness of their. Of their relationship and the bonkers ness of both of their backgrounds and the new information we keep hearing and the things that they say yes and to. With each other. But it all just happens so casually, with no inventiveness in either staging, in performance, in plot. And it tries to go for this emotional beat at the end that I don't think it earns. And I will say this for it. Like, there are moments that I remember for sure much clearer than anything in the shows I've just listed. And it's not insultingly bad. And if you found it funny, that probably helped a lot. I didn't find it terribly funny, but it was just. Yeah, this was a giant why for me, Giant why? Especially for someone like Patti LuPone, who talks such a big game about Broadway as a theme park now there's so much garbage. We aren't giving, you know, opportunities to new voices. I'm like, okay, well, what about. What was it about this voice that made you say, I want to go back to the Broadway stage after giving up my equity card and making such a public showing of how I feel about the state of Broadway? What was it about this play that did it for you, Patti? Was it just that you wanted a job? Was that you wanted to work with Mia? Was it that you wanted to work with Jack O'Brien again from your Juilliard days? Did you just want to have fun playing a vegan lesbian? I don't know. But I will say this. If I had read this play and was looking for something to do and was bemoaning the state of Broadway, which I always am, I can't tell you that. This play would have done it for me. Not the story, not the character. I would have had more questions about why than questions about how. And that's where I am with the roommate. We'll continue on with the rest of the rankings, and then we will do Tony's right after this break. Billy, I'd 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. I like to eat well, but I'm so bad about figuring out how to do it. Like, what ingredients do I even use? What's a healthy calorie intake and you've listened to my episodes. Even if I wanted to cook, I am terrible with time management. That's where Factor comes in with meals delivered right to your home. Chef prepared, dietitian approved and using only fresh ingredients, nothing frozen. Just two minutes in the microwave and you are ready to go. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Factor has you covered 35 different meals to choose from every week. Not to mention over 60 additional convenience options. Vegan, kosher, doing whole 30 factor has something for everyone. Are you hearing a downside to any of this? Because I am not. Try Factor now and see what I'm talking about. Head to FactorMeals.com 50BB and use code 50BB to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code 50BB@FactOrMeals.com 50BB to get 50% OFF your first box plus free shipping while your subscription is still active. This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why Lifelock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply and we back. So next up in our rankings we had left on 10th McNeil, Tammy Faye, Romeo and Juliet Home the roommate. Next up at 15 is swept away. This is the first item on our list that has a New York Times critic pick that I just don't like agree with. And I know the show has its fans. I know that on social media there was a big push about it closing and then getting extended for two more weeks due to, you know, ticket sales just skyrocketing for the last performances. I don't know if you guys actually are following the grosses these days. It's always fascinating to look at. For me, if you look at Swept Away, which had, you know, they announced that they were closing like 10 days before the closing date. Maybe a little less than that. Maybe it was like they had 10 performances left and they made a big to do about how the ticket sales just skyrocketed. So due to public demand, they extended by two more weeks and the grosses went up for that week of what was supposed to be their closing week. Not by so much that it made sense, but like a solid 150k. Something like that. But then if you looked at the grosses for the week after the first of their, you know, two extended weeks, the grosses went down. Which goes to show that this is a case of, you know, many critics, despite the New York Times critics pick. A lot of critics were very mid on the show or even negative on the show. And a lot of public, you know, word of mouth on the show was mixed to bad. The only thing worse than bad is a mixed word of mouth, because with ticket prices the way they are and with so many other shows to choose from for. For someone to be like, it was okay. You know, if you have time, maybe go see it. Like, that's the surefire way to get everyone to say no. Especially if the show is trying to get them to pay anywhere from, like, 90 to 350 bucks to see it. And swept away for me was there. Was. There's good here. It's a strong cast. I will always love Stark Sands, and he's wonderful in this. I think that this is the beginning of the return of Michael Mayer as the director that I love. Not a full return, but the beginning of it. I think that there's some solid choreography. I really loved what they did with the shipwreck. I think the treatment of the music is very well done. I think that the singing is great, and there's some solid arrangements. The orchestra sounds good, and I think it's designed very well. The lighting is gorgeous. The set reveal is fun. The problem is, is that for me, it's all lipstick on a pig. Because I think the book is terrible. I think the book is so boring. And I don't say this to be mean. I don't say this to be judgmental. You know, I was so excited to see this. I'd heard such wonderful things about it in D.C. i know people involved with it, and I had some friends on, you know, who posted on social media how much they loved it. And then I went to go see it with Gunkle of the pod Adam, and we, like, we had great seats. We had press seats. And I was excited for, like, the first 10 to 15 minutes. Like, ooh, is this, like a ghost story? Oh, like, what did John Gallagher Jr. Do? Do? Because they're hinting at, you know, that their story needs to be told and tell everyone what he did. I was like, okay, what's going on? What's going on? And after the opening number, when we flash back and everyone's on the ship, like, it kind of started to slowly die for me. Like, the air was slowly getting let out of those tires. And by the Shipwreck happened and that was great. And then we were in that boat with the four of them with John Gallagher Jr. Stark Sands, the Twinkie brother and the captain. And time moved by so slowly. I understand part of the reason, dramaturgically that is, you know, we're feeling what they're feeling, which is the weeks of being isolated and thirsty and hungry and tired and on the brink of death. But we also have to still be engaged. And when you're just feeling exhausted by the longevity of a passage, there's no way that anything could be engaging. People who have loved the show have blamed its lack of success on the fact that it is just so dark. It's not dark. Even the cannibalism stuff that is spoken of, you know, it happens, but we don't actually watch it. And it's 30 seconds max of a 95 minute show. It's not that it's dark. And if you think that it's that I didn't like it because it was too dark for me, like, bitch, you got another thing coming. You're talking to the boy who went to go see how I learned to drive. The Pulitzer Prize winning play about a woman and her groomer, her molester and their years long situationship. Saw that with my mother six months after I finally told her that I myself was groomed by my now dead voice teacher. If you think that Swept Away was too dark for me, kindly go sit in the fucking corner and read a book. Because I don't know what you think dark is. If you think that this is dark. Cannibalism for 30 seconds of a play that is simply narrated is not dark. Hot take spoilers not dark. Like, I just don't know what we're doing here. Like, if you think that this, that that is upsetting or controversial, watch the first four minutes of the lachiusa Wild party when Mandy Patinkin comes out in blackface. Like, my Lord, that's not it. That's not the one. Learn what actual dark is. Learn, go out and see some of the world and then come back into a theater and tell me that that is dark. It's not. I did find it boring though, and it's not without its merits, but it just, it just isn't for me, I'll put it that way. And it wasn't for a lot of people because even after the push in the extension with the ticket sales, it's not catching on in any way. There's what people say on social media and then there's what actually Happens. And I have a lot of respect for the performers who are all very talented, and I hope they find work again soon. But it's also not the job of an audience to go see something and then tell everyone else to go see it if they didn't like it simply because it's a new work. It's the court of public opinion in theater. If word of mouth is bad, it's not because the public is, you know, not ready for you. It's because you are not ready for the public. You still need to be worked on. We love to talk about. Oh, west side Story wasn't raved about when it first came out. Sweeney Todd, you know, was sort of divisive with. With people. Sweeney Todd won eight Tony Awards, had a rave review from the New York Times, and actually did have good business. It was just simply too expensive to keep running the way that it was. But for what that show was when it first came out, that was not a failure outside of not making all of its money back. West side Story also, by the way, made its money back and ran for almost two years and did actually get strong reviews. It got very respectful reviews. Maybe not the raves you'd expect for, you know, being introduced to that show, but it did not get swept away reviews. And it was nominated for best musical. It did run for almost two years. It did get a movie version out of it. Like, it's. We like to think that so many shows were denied their first go round and then it took years for everyone to catch on. Very rarely does that happen. Honestly, you see that more with, like, Shakespeare and Ibsen. Less so with musicals and plays of the 21st century and the 1900s. Yeah. I mean, I think the only things you can really think of are something like Evita, which got mixed, muted responses from critics on Broadway. But that show was an audience hit, like, right out the gate. It was trying to think what else. Like Wicked also, you know, not really respected by critics, but again, out the gate, an audience favorite. And I think that a lot of the issues critics have with Wicked are absolutely fair. It's just that for a lot of us, it doesn't matter. Yeah. So I just. I really don't like this lack of accountability. Sometimes it's good to just take a moment and be like, this hurts. I really believed in this. But maybe there are things that I didn't see when working on this that. That I can focus on for my next project. Always be better. Always be better. Yeah. Moving on. Number 14, a wonderful world. The Louis Armstrong Musical. I don't really have much to say about this one. It's slightly better for me than Swept Away, if only because I think that there's, I think, more exciting music, more exciting choreography, worse design, though. Swept Away is a better design show than Wonderful World and probably has overall better performances. I think that A Wonderful World unfortunately is weakened by its central performance from James Monroe Iglehart. I understand that his. The other James, his standby is stronger. The women, the four wives of A Wonderful World, are really the reason to see this show. The book is passable at its best best and an afterthought at its worst. But there are some solid moments. It's not a total discard, but it's not terribly good. And that's all. And that's all I have to say about Wonderful World. Next up is Our town at number 13. We're still not in the land of me giving recommendations here. This is another New York Times critics pick. And something I've learned about Jesse Green is that if he loves a show player musical, if he thinks that it's objectively great, it doesn't take much for him to give a revival of it a critics pick. You have to really fuck it up so hard for him to give it a critics pick. And I will say this for the survival of Our Town, they do not fuck it up so much that you can't recognize the greatness of the play. Because Our Town by Thornton Wilder is one of the great American plays. It just is. All it takes is one solid production of it for anyone to see. Unfortunately, a million terrible productions are out there, and it's been so heralded that it's so easy to roll your eyes at it, right? But it is just genuinely a phenomenal work, and you recognize the greatness of it in this production. But that's about the best thing I can say about this production. Kenny Leon, as a director, I've never found it necessarily to be much of a visionary. Not that anyone has to be. I find him mostly to be a respectful director of text. You know, he'll do a very tasteful job. He'll do a very controlled job as a director. His superpower, I've always felt, was in casting. I felt that his productions in the past were almost always well cast, top to bottom. Fences, Top Dog, Underdog, Pearlie, Victorious, Raisin in the Sun. This was the first time where I was like, oh, I think that this is, like, jarringly miscast. So many people are in wildly different productions of Our Town, different levels of quality of performance and sometimes just felt like everyone was speaking different languages in different times by trying to make it so universal in our town for our time and made it a mishmash of an our town. And it felt both so try hard and also. So I don't even know the word to use for this. So try hard. And so laid back. Like, there's so little on that stage that I felt was thought through, like the text was doing all the work for them, while also, like, trusting that the actors would do what they do. But even if you have 10 great actors who all give very different energies, that clashes. We saw this with Uncle Vanya last season. We see it all the time. Like, you have to always be wary when you see a casting announcement of, like, a bunch of actors who you love. Ask yourself, like, well, are they. Do they all fit into a world together? Because sometimes they don't. You know, I don't think that Katie Holmes fits into the same world as Richard Thomas, who doesn't fit into the same world as Julie Halston and Julie Halston. Julie Halston and Jim Parsons probably fit into the same world, but that's about it. Honestly. My favorite performance in this show was Donald Webber Jr. As the choir master. And I do know Donald a little bit. It's been many years since he and I have seen each other, but it's not because I have met him before that I think so. I just. I thought he found the most meat in his role, and it's a relatively small one, and I was very impressed with what he was able to do with so little stage time. So he's definitely a contender for my fake Tony categories at the end of the season of, like, I see what you're doing in tbh. Bravo performance of the season. He's definitely a contender for that right now. But, yeah, that's all I can really say about Our town. At number 12, is Gypsy another one of Jesse Green's critics picks, where it's like, well, Gypsy is a brilliant musical, and he loved Audre. I understand this was an interesting case because when I talked about earlier with Tammy Faye and, you know, you can't say that critics don't matter when they dislike you and then use quotes from the reviews when they do like you as justification for what you've done. Either they matter or they don't. And I do think that critics matter. I think that opinions on things absolutely matter. You can have reverence for some and maybe disregard for others. I. In the last, like, three years, I have pretty much decided that I don't trust Jesse Green. Even when he and I agree, I don't trust him. It's more like, oh, a broken clock is right twice a day. Like his review for Hills of California, I was like, yeah, right on. But I don't think that makes you a great critic or have great taste. I think that you and I aligned this one time or one of these few times, because I didn't read the reviews for Gypsy. I just know that they were all mostly positive. But people kept contacting me about them because I wrote my last Instagram review for Gypsy, and I wanted to discuss why this revival disappointed me so much. It's, again, not an absolute disaster. It has moments that I wanted to fucking scream, but it has other moments that are totally solid. You know, like, there would be, like, 45 seconds straight. A straight 45 seconds where I was like, I love this. And then it would be like five minutes till we got those 45 seconds again, which sounds kind of snarky and catty, but, I mean, for a show like gypsy that it's two hours and 45 minutes for every five minutes, to get, like, an almost a full straight minute of like, oh, yeah, this is what I want. It's both exhilarating and frustrating because it's just enough of a taste that you know what you could have, but it's constantly interrupted, a constant stream of interruptions of what I loved with things that I thought were mediocre or bad. And I wrote all of this in my review of being Disappointed because I love George C. Wolfe. I think he's one of the smartest men to ever work on Broadway and truly does things that are in your face. And I was so excited to see what he was going to do with this. Gypsy. This is a man who loves the 1920s and 30s. Brought on a design team that has done this era before. And I was like, oh, this is a production that you're really going to smell the grease paint, and you're gonna feel the heat from those stage lights, and it's gonna be sweaty and maybe even a little sexy, and it's gonna have style. And I found it to be a relatively cold production and a methodical one. And I saw it about three or four days before they froze it. And then they had, like, three or three frozen performances. And then critics started coming for a full week. And I had friends at the critics performances, and some were like, you should come back. It's settled so nicely. And Audra's great. And then I had some who saw it and no, what he said is accurate. So the question, I guess, is for some of us, like, are we hearing what we want to hear? Are we seeing what we want to see? Are we informed by predetermined viewpoints on Gypsy? Because it's been done so many times and most likely at least once to our specific liking. I like Gypsy. That is fast paced, with a specific direction and viewpoint, and really focused in its determination. And this for me, was not that. It was so insistent on finding the humanity of Rose and empathizing with it that so much of the monstrosity of her character and the shallowness of everyone's dreams weren't really coming to the surface at all. And that was upsetting to me. I really wanted to see that there was emotion to it, but it didn't feel earned and it didn't feel cathartic in any way. And on top of that, they did make some changes that I was like, the are we doing here? The whole strip is a giant shit show. And I don't understand how anyone can, you know, argue otherwise. And I've had people be like, well, yeah, no, the strip was not good, but I loved the rest of it. I'm like, then it's not a great Gypsy, because arguably, before you're building to Rose's turn, you are building to the strip. So if that first one doesn't land, Rose's turn for me cannot be the second sucker punch. It's a 1, 2. So if the first punch doesn't hit, the second one won't hit as hard. And it didn't hit as hard for me. But because of my review and then because of the reviews of all the critics, people were sending me a lot of thoughts about it. A apparently many of the reviews while being positive. Supposedly what everyone said was that they read raves for Audra and then sort of mixed on the production. I specifically did not mention Joy woods in my written review because of the three leads. She was. Was the biggest miss for me, and I just didn't need to spend as much time on that. I thought that that sort of just lobbed in with all the things I had issues with about this production. And people sent stuff to me and said, you know, a lot of reviews also just don't mention Joy, even if they were raves for Gypsy. Like, they just didn't say her anything about her performance. And I think that's very telling. You know, there are three principal roles in Gypsy. It is Rose, it is Herbie, it is Louise. Rose is obviously like the big Star performance. But Louise is, technically speaking, the title role and the second most important part of any production. And if you have reviews that just, like, aren't mentioning Joy's performance, then that says something about Joy's performance. That also says something about how successful this production actually is and how much you can actually trust any of those critics. And I'm sure there are people who loved Joy's performance. I'm not gonna ding any of them. I think Joy is a very talented woman. It's just I didn't understand anything she did. And she is terribly undermined by the creative choices of the strip. And I'm not gonna blame her for that. But it's just. It was so much of a miss for me. But again, when people sent me these reviews and go, oh, well, does this change your mind at all? You're the outlier here. Like, why would it change my mind? I had. I saw what I saw. I had a reaction to it. I expressed it. I will say I may go back in the new year to see it, just to see how things have settled since I saw it. Because I'm sure that Audra has gotten much better since I saw it. She wasn't bad. When I first saw her, she was like, 35% there. And this other 65% wasn't bad. It was just like, oh, she needs to work on this stuff. She hasn't spent as much time and thought on this as she has on the other stuff. So I'm sure she's constantly getting better every day, and I'm sure that the show has gotten tighter. But, you know, unless they overhauled the strip, they redid all the choreography, they reconfigured the sets so there isn't as much dead space. I can't imagine that my opinion is going to skyrocket to a 10 out of 10 or 9 or 8 out of 10. It might. Might get to a 7, maybe. We'll see. But remember that because a couple of you guys sent, you know, DMs to me about the reviews, and I've had friends send it to me and people follow me on Instagram. Just like, the attitude of, oh, well, you know, critics pick rave by one. And, you know, so many other critics really loved it. Does this make you second guess yourself? It's like, no. If you saw it and didn't like it, doesn't make you second guess yourself. Because I'll tell you this, there's a lot of people in the community that also don't like this production. There's always A difference of what's on social media and what is said. And I will talk about that as we get further towards Tony's Next up at 11. Once upon a Mattress. Slightly better than Gypsy. Not by much. Gypsy's of course, the better musical and I think had more high points for me than Once Upon a Mattress. But Once Upon a Mattress was sort of consistently mid to weak mid and another critics pick that. I just didn't understand. It was finely delightful, delightfully fine at Encores. And then once we moved to Broadway and they were like, oh, we don't need to do anything with it. It worked there. I'm like, no, no, it doesn't work as well. It's the encore's, you know, copy paste financial scheme. They're trying to have one show a season transfer by, you know, making it as cost effective as possible. And it's just not. It's not as good. There's no viewpoint, there's no style, there's no flair, there's no speed. It just. It is split. Come on stage, go off stage. It is PS 122 does Once Upon a Mattress. Next up, job at number 10. This is where I start in the sort of semi recommendations. Onwards. Job has two amazing central performances. Sidney Lemon, Peter Friedman, the two of them do absolutely phenomenal work. And there is a lot of style to this show. The set, the staging, the use of sound effects, really inventive, really clever. And I was very impressed by that. The play itself impressed me in terms of where it went, what it was trying to tackle. I think that the playwright and the director have very big careers ahead of them and I look forward to seeing what they do next and what they will continue to do. Because I think, because this is just so recent and we haven't seen the other entries yet, Job is at the moment like, that's their one. And so we are kind of defining those two people by this show. I am going to make a very educated guess and say that in like 10 to 15 years, we are really just going to look at this as a fascinating impetus for their careers of like, oh, that's what got them started. I can totally see the origins of where they are now from this play, but I think. I think their careers are going to give us even better offerings than this one. It's not a bad show, but it is one where I was like, this is. This is a really interesting cook, but it doesn't totally satisfy. And I think that these two are. They both name Max. Let me find on ibdb oh, it's. I think it's Max and Michael are the two gents. Yes, it is. Michael Hurwitz is the director and Max Wolf Friedlich is the writer. And I think both of them are going to continue to do really cool, awesome stuff and I look forward to seeing what they are. Next up at number nine is Death Becomes Her Again. This is sort of like a semi recommend for me. At the center of it, once again, we have two central performances that rock. We have Megan Hilty, who is giving an wonderful comedic performance. And then we have Jennifer Simard, who is finally in her element at the center of a big, big musical. I had only really heard of Jennifer Simard through Seth Rudetsky playbill videos prior to Disaster. And then when Disaster happened, I was like, oh, this gal is the fucking real thing. And has continued to prove that to me ever since. And so to have a. A big musical that utilizes all of her talents is so exciting for me and I'm so happy to see her flourish in this. I think that Megan probably has better material in the show, but I think that Jen does more interesting work with the material that she has. This is also a big budget musical. It's very spectacle heavy and very well designed. Tastefully designed. Tasteful in its garishness, I should say, because it is ultimately a drag queen show. But it works. It works. I think that the choreography is fine. I wish that Chris Catelli were more of an inventive comedic director. There are some gags that are great, but there is a lot of scene work and some song work where it could absolutely be tighter. It could be more bit heavy. Some moments are funny. They could always be funnier. And yeah, I think this will last for a minute. It's doing well. It's doing well. And it was relatively well received. I'm not mad about it. It's currently number nine, but I think as the season continues, we're going to see it get a little lower. Number eight is Elf, which was just such a fucking surprise for me. This is where we definitely have recommend, like definite recommend upwards. Because Elf is a musical that I'm not sure I love. I think it's a B musical, a lot of catchy tunes. It's a very respectful adaptation of the movie. It follows it pretty closely while also kind of changing a few things here and there. So that way it works for the stage. And this production, like on a physical level, is very much a touring production. It's got a computer screen, you know, backdrop to help us go from scene to scene. But it is also flanked by other flats and movable scenery. It doesn't fully rely on the screen. It's. It does some other things. I think it makes as good a use of all of that as it possibly can on what is clearly a very limited budget. I also just think it's well staged, well choreographed, and very well cast. This is really my first exposure in full to Elf, and I wonder how I would have felt had I seen the first two incarnations of it with Sebastian Arcellus or Jordan Gelber I think was his name. Gray is just so perfect in this role, and I think everyone around him is also doing such lovely work that it does elevate the show and was really just a wonderful bomb and really what I needed, especially after having seen a couple of disappointments right before it. Yeah, I was very happy with this show, and I'm sure I will think less of it down the line. Lord knows I've done that before. But in this moment right here, right now, I thought that Elf was very sweet, more charming than it had a right to be, smarter than it had a right to be, more creative than it had a right to be. I don't mean to say that it is, like the ultimate revival of the year or the ultimate adaptation of a movie, but, like, you know, you gotta give credit where it's due. And if we're saying that not everything has to be groundbreaking so long as it's well done. This isn't groundbreaking, but I thought it was relatively well done. Good on them. And number seven is Sunset Boulevard. This is another one where it's so fascinating because I read Jesse Green's review and I was like, he's not wrong, but I also don't trust him. Like, have you ever done that where, like, you're reading a review where you were. You're reading why someone didn't like something? I'm sure a lot of you have felt that way when you're listening to me talk about shows, because you say so in your. In your podcast reviews, but you're reading it, you're like, yeah, no, you're totally right. Ultimately, it didn't matter. For me, that's sort of me with Jesse Green's review for Sunset Boulevard. I'm like, yeah, I hate this musical. I think I do objectively think this musical is bad and does not understand the movie at all. It understands the aesthetic of the score for the movie. It is smart enough to recognize, not to fuck with the story too much. But ultimately, I think it doesn't understand a Lot of the nuances and meta humor of the movie. And this revival doesn't really care about the musical all that much. And. And does a lot of wild things. Ultimately, though, I think that all those wild things are rooted to getting back to the movie. Which is why I think the revival is more successful for me than it is for Jesse Green, is that I see it more as a live show of the movie than as a revival of the musical. Which sounds like a bunch of word salad, I'm sure, but that is how I kind of view it. This is less of a respectful production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical and more of trying to genuinely bring the excitement and weirdness of Wilder's film to stage. And we've talked about it enough. I have that review of it already, but it's. I can't tell you if it's all great. I can all tell you. I can tell you that it's all very fun. I have my caveats again. I think the tempos for all of Norma's stuff is way too slow. And I had someone write comment on my review for Instagram, where I said, I understand why they've slowed down the tempos of, like, everything is slower in normal land. She's reveling in the past and. And thinking differently of who she is and. And just Normal works in a different medium than everyone else, but it is still too slow. And this person's like, here's my dissertation on why the tempos work. And then just said what I said 10 times longer. And I didn't respond, but it's like, yeah, no, I get all of that. I'm just saying, pick it up a couple of hairs. I'm not even saying get it to let's have lunch speed. I'm just saying, like, as if we never said goodbye. It's like seven minutes long now you can make it six. It's so easy because normally that song runs for five. So just make it six, don't make it seven. You don't need it to be. But yes. And Nicole, her real life aside, is just objectively phenomenal in the show. And it's a hard role to get right, and she gets it very right. And number six is Yellowface, a very smart, surprisingly very funny play that kind of falls apart for me in its third act, but ultimately I didn't care that much. With a very strong ensemble, Lee Silverman's direction is very good. And especially making what is an intimate play that should really be in a 200 seat house work as well as it can in a 700 seat house. I'll just speed through the rest of these guys because these are a little more current. At number five is Eureka Day, which, again, I said, you know, a fascinating conversation with a phenomenal central performance by Jessica Hecht. And the rest of the supporting cast is also very strong. If they're not quite at Jessica's level, it's because Jessica is fully giving a 10 out of 10 and everyone else is giving like a 9 out of 10. I'd say Tom Mildich is probably at an 8.5, and the other actress I can't think of but the one who's having the affair with him in the show, she's probably at an 8 out of 10. But Amber Gray, Bill Irwin, both 9, 9.5s out of 10. Not as. Not as strong objectively as a play for me as the next one, which is Cult of Love at number four. But I do think is much better at diving into these messy conversations than Cult of Love is. Which brings us to number four, Cult of Love, which, as I said, just stronger play. Structurally, I think most of the characters are more interesting. Also an incredibly tight ensemble. I think everyone in Cult of Love is great and pretty much across the board, equal. And it's a little funnier to me than Eureka Day. Eureka Day has one extraordinarily funny sequence with the town hall zoom and then everything else has a lot of great moments. I think Cult of Love is more sort of like constant tension that breaks with, like, some really dark humor every couple of minutes. And like Eureka Day, I think that it doesn't necessarily fall apart so much as I. The last five minutes of both plays, I'm sort of like, okay, like, Eureka Day has a very. Has a very hilarious, very timely, very pointed image for its final scene, and then it continues for the next, like three or four minutes. And you're like, okay, that's how it ended. That's fine, that's fine, it's fine. Cult of Love made me a little more upset with its ending. Not like on a emotional, political level, just on a dramatic level. I don't like that. I think that's kind of. It's both a cop out and also not as strong a way to maybe make the point you're trying to make about family and the cultish mentality people sometimes have about it. But both are really strong plays overall, and I'm glad that they're here. Number three, maybe. Happy ending. Again, a wonderful surprise. My two biggest caveats are, like, all Michael Arden productions, if you're gonna see it. Try to get as center of the theater as possible. Sight lines are absolutely an issue. They will not be such an issue that you will hate the show if you're, you know, sitting on the sides of the orchestra or mezzanine or balcony, but you don't realize actually how many small, crucial things you're missing until you get a dead on view. Which is a shame because for a show like this, there's so much beauty happening on that stage that you want. Want as much of the audience to see it as possible. Because we're not even talking like, oh, 85% of the audience is seeing what you need to see. It's just that 15%. No, I'm talking like maybe half the audience is seeing everything that you're supposed to see, and then the other half is kind of seeing 75% of the stage or 75% of the images. My other only caveat is that it does take a while to wrap up at the end. The last 15 minutes feel a bit sluggish and the ending is very sweet. I have my thoughts on how maybe I would have chosen to end it the way they did, but I. We've talked about that already and it's also not my place. The writers wrote the show they wanted and the way they wrote it is not bad at all. It's just like my sort of. Yeah, that's like a nice flavor. I would have added this flavor too, but sure, no, totally works. Otherwise, it's a really lovely show. Helen J. Shen and Darren Criss are both wonderful. I think the score is really great. Very strong lyrics, the music is melodic and catchy. It's also not like a big, belty show, which I fucking love. They just really let them live in their voices and be characters and actors and it's great. It's definitely Michael Arden's most inventive staging and use of technology and scenery to date. And I'm glad that it is catching on. I don't think this is ever going to be a blockbuster musical, but it seemed kind of DOA when it opened. And through sheer willpower and genuinely good word of mouth, the show is catching on and I think has a really good shot at making it to the Tony Awards, which is important because it should, and if it does, it'll be a major contender and I want to see it be. Next up at number two is oh Mary, which, you know, craziest surprise of the season of just how well it has done. Never would have thought. Never would have thought. And we love to see it. We love to be surprised. This way, when people talk about like, oh, Broadway's too commercial. Oh, audiences only want to see what they know. They want a sure thing. I'm like, you know, tickets are so fucking expensive now. Audiences want to know that they're going to get their money's worth, whatever that means. But more often than not, New Yorkers decide what the hot ticket is before tourists do. You know, think about Hamilton or Rent or A Chorus Line. You know, they all started off Broadway like Omar did and were huge hits off Broadway that transferred to Broadway with all of that same buzz and excitement. So when the tourists come and they hear about what the hot tickets are, that's what they want to go see, whether they like it or not. Like, they can at least have bragging rights of having seen the hot thing. And Omari is just a genuine word of mouth, buzzy hit. It's not propaganda. It's not because its big names are a recognizable title. It's an 80 minute show with four actors. Like the two most famous ones, Conrad, Rick Amora and James Scully are not marquee names by any means. If they were here, Lies Love would still be running. It's just. It just caught on in a way that is really hard to do. But when you see it happen, it's great. And it's a fun play. It's well structured, it's tight. I did prefer it a little bit more off Broadway, but they have kept a lot of the weirdness and energy intact for Broadway and it's working for them. So props to ya, mama. And then at number one, we have Hills of California, which I just, I can't say enough amazing things about this show. This has been a really good season so far for plays similar to last season. Hills of California, I loved it in London, except for the third act where my mom and I both felt it kind of started to fall apart. It was the most avant garde, it was the weirdest. It was the most Jez Butterworth of all the acts. But it didn't land as well. And for Broadway, they shaved off 15 minutes. They cut a full plot line out of that third act. They did some restaging of some critical moments and they added a connecting line from certain parts of the third act that weren't really connected before. And they streamlined most of the arguments so it was less shouty. They added more humor, they added more love and awkwardness and tension. And it's one of those rare cases where something comes from London, where a British show comes from London and actually improves when it gets here. And I also love that Sam Mendes and Jez Butterworth didn't rest on the fact that it was just transferring and they felt they didn't need to do anything with it. They still worked on it. They re attacked that third act to make it better and it paid off for them. The show was not a financial hit. It never sold out. They didn't extend in any way. And not every critic loved it. But enough critics loved it. And I'm sorry, everyone I've spoken to who's seen it loved it, really loved it. And I think that it's going to be reflected in Tony nominations at the end of the season. And they certainly reflect in my Tony nominations, which gets us into both sort of my predictions and also what I personally would nominate, which I will get into 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 Astag. Streaming now on Peacock. Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie are back. That's hot. Loves it. For a show stopping reunion that will prove putting on an opera is anything but simple. We're really good at this. One thing's for sure, they won't be upstaged. Good to have you back. Come on, we've got a show to do. The encore, a three part reunion special. Streaming now only on Peacock. This episode is brought to you by. Skinny Pop popcorn. Perfectly popped, endlessly delicious. Oh so light and crunchy. Skinny pop original popcorn is the snack you've been searching for. Made with just three simple popcorn kernels, sunflower oil and sal. Snacking never felt or tasted so good. Perfectly popped, endlessly delicious. Give yourself permission to snack and pick up Skinny Pop original popcorn today. And we're back. So let's talk about sort of Tony awards in general as we head into 2025, the second half of this season. The Tony awards will be approaching sooner than you know it and we will be having some pop up episodes before nominations happen. We'll do like a way too early prediction episode. We'll do a couple sort of charting episodes, maybe some even look back episodes. And when we do our Tony stuff we talk about, you have to kind of look around and get a sense of what the vibes are. It's not just about reviews. It's not just about box office. If it was about box office, Great Gatsby would have swept the Tonys if it was just about reviews, it would have been Illinois sweeping the Tonys. And you can't go off of just like what's a critics pick because I mean, look, look at the best musical race. Last year we had Illinois Water for Elephants and Hell's Kitchen as the three critics picks of the best musical lineups. And the Outsiders won best musical with Suffs winning book and score and you know, play. Obviously we had stereophonic sweeping or doing very well, I should say. But it doesn't always happen that way. It's not just about like what the New York Times anoints. It's not just about what the critics like, it's not just about what's selling. It's a combination of many things and more importantly, what people are excited to get behind. And sometimes with a new musical, the Tonys really will want to award an original work that has an original score, an original book, not just a jukebox show. If you look at the past, they have awarded jukebox musicals best musical a small handful of times in the last 50 years. Jersey Boys is like the last real genuine one. Moulin Rouge won during the COVID lockdown year. Nothing since then. MJ got pretty close. Won more Tonys than A Strange Loop. But A Strange Loop did end up winning best musical in the end. And I'm sure we can see that happening this coming year. Of the musicals that have opened so far, I think we have maybe happy ending as a definite nominee for both musical score and book. I think Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen have strong chances getting nominated. Probably Darren Criss more than Helen just because his field is a little more open than hers is. We already have a leading actress of musical of what's open so far, Nicole and Sunset, very much leading the charge. Audra kind of coming up right behind her with great reviews and a revival of Gypsy that is selling very well. And Gypsy is more well regarded than Sunset Boulevard. There's just like the magnitude of Audra being a six time winner doing a role that many consider or considered her miscast in being the first black actress to do it on Broadway and you know, critically triumphing and box office wise being able to sell it. So that's a lot of affirmation. Not affirmation, but it's confirmation, I suppose of success to bring into the Tony Awards. And then we also have Sutton in Once Upon a Mattress who also got very strong reviews. The show was sort of what it was. And Jennifer Simard and Megan Hilty in Death Becomes her are just kind of coming in hot as the two absolute ultimate reasons to see that show. And that show is also selling rather well right now and got better critic reviews than I expected. I mean, good for them, you know. Right. So it's just. And that's not even counting. Boop. Coming in with Jasmine Rogers and Adina with Redwood, whatever that ends up being. You know, Darren at the moment is kind of his only real competition of shows that have opened is Tom Francis for Sunset Boulevard. Much as I would love to see Gray Henson nominated for Elf, I don't think it's gonna happen. I just don't think that the Tonys have ever really respected that show. They don't really respect limited holiday engagements. They feel more like cash grabs than, you know, Tony worthy things to them. Which is a shame because I think that this year Elf is, you know, has done much better work than some other things that were not holiday entries. With revival, you know, it's definitely Sunset v Gypsy. It's going to be four slots, I think because it's six possible. We've got Gypsy, Sunset, Once Upon a Mattress. Elf I'm pretty sure is eligible. So that's four Floyd Collins last five years and Pirates. So seven. We've got seven. Seven contenders, which means four nominees. I think Gypsy and Sunset Boulevard are absolute locks at this point. We'll see what happens with Floyd Collins. It could absolutely get in there for the Lincoln center of it all. It's also just a genuinely good musical. So even if this production is only sort of okay, I think that's enough to push it in. Also, I think it'll probably get Jeremy a Tony nomination. We have new musicals. We still are waiting for the Bobby Darin musical which I'm sure will get Jonathan Groff another nomination just because he's playing a real person. The Tonys love to nominate people playing real people. He's coming fresh off of his last Tony win so it'll be confirmation that it was the right choice to vote for him. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how everything sort of shakes up with play. Play is fascinating because we've had already some pretty great entries. We have Hills of California and oh Mary, which at this point I would say are Lockes. Eureka Day and Cult of Love are very much coming in, you know, knocking on that door, wanting to get seen in the new year. We've got Goodnight and Good Luck. We have John Proctor is the villain. What else do we have? I wonder if Picture of Dorian Gray is going to be considered eligible for original or revival. I'm going to say original because even though it's based off of a book, and I think that that book has been done on stage before, this is the first time this version has happened. So I think it'll be considered a new play. What are other ones coming in in the spring? We have Hoot. Please. English. I think English is going to be considered a new play. I'm almost positive. We also have Purpose. Yes. I think Purpose will be an interesting entry. And then Stranger Things. So with that, I think Purpose and English are going to be the ones to really look out for for entries for best play. I don't think that Hills of California or Omari have anything to worry about in that regard with revival. We've had Our Town, We've had Romeo and Juliet. We've had Yellowface. I think those are the only three best revival of play so far. But we have Othello coming in. We have Glengarry Glen Ross and. Yeah, I think that's it. Othello and Glengarry Glen Ross. Yeah, those are the last two to come in. Unless there's a play revival that's been announced without a theater attached that I'm not thinking of. If. If that's true, please let me know. In the Discord Channel. I think that Othello and Glengarry Glen Ross are definitely shows to look out for. Othello, it's classic Shakespeare. It's already selling out because of Jake Gyllenhaal and Denzel Washington. It's definitely much feeling like an event. I think the weird thing about Glen Carey, Glen Ross is that it's playing the Palace. So weird. And that's not an epic play. That's. It's. That's a play that's played the golden and the Schoenfeld. Like, this is even. Even with the star power of it, I feel like it's gonna get swallowed in that theater. Even if it is a good revival, if it's well acted, if it's well staged, well designed. Like, I don't know how. How that's gonna land in that theater. So odd. It's very odd to me. But I do think that they are already just like, on the surface level, solid entries for best revival of a play. And then it'll probably also be Yellowface and Our Town. I would say those are probably going to be the four revivals, unless we have three. We have Romeo and Juliet Home, Our Town, Yellowface, Othello and Glengarry Glen Ross. Okay, so now that's six. So I think we are Going to have four. So yeah, I think that's going to be the four. We'll keep you guys posted as we keep doing predictions as the season continues. I think that other performances to sort of be on the lookout for as we get into best musical and best play. You know, look out for Buena Vista Social Club, which got, you know, very strong word of mouth at Atlantic Theater Company. I understand that the leading actress, Natalie. Sorry, I'm trying to, I'm trying to look up everyone's names as I do this, but sometimes my Internet is fast, sometimes it's slow, and sometimes IBDB decides to help a girl out and sometimes it decides to fuck me in the ear. And as of right now, IBDB refuses to help me out. But yeah, Buena Vista Social Club. The leading actress's name is Natalie Venetia Belkin, who I remember playing Gary Coleman in Avenue Q. Word on the street is that she is absolutely phenomenal in this show and could very much be in the running for actress in a musical. Obviously we mentioned Idina in Redwood Jasmine and boop. Smash is going to be a very fascinating case because the word from the workshop was that it was fun and that there were some good things about it, but that ultimately it was kind of a mess book wise. And again, when the book is, it's one thing for the book to be passable and everything else around it to be incredible, but when the book is bad, it really doesn't matter how good any of your numbers are. The whole thing feels like lipstick on a pig. And it's a shame because the cast is so phenomenal. I'm so happy we've got John Bellman back on Broadway. I've heard great things about Bella Coppola in the show. And Robin Herder, of course, is just a genuine triple threat. So they could really come in hot in Featured actress in a musical this season, I'd say featured actress in a musical is kind of wide open at the moment. We, of course, also can't forget last five years, which, you know, whether you like the show or not, though, that show is meaty material for two actors. And I think Adrienne Warren is a phenomenally gifted musical theater actress. I'm not sure if she's who I would think of for Kathy. Just I've always, I've always found Kathy to be quite the wounded flower who masks it with a cool girl Persona and a very sharp sense of humor. But there's so much bruised. There's so much that's bruised about her. And I have never seen Adrian Warren portray that which. Which it's entirely possible that she can and just hasn't been given the opportunity. But I've always equated Adrian Warren with strength and force. And I think she's gonna, like, mop the floor with summer in Ohio. I think she might even do a really lovely job with. See, I'm smiling, but I'm sitting here going, like, how what's climbing uphill gonna be like? That might be a very intense climbing uphill. And then Nick Jonas as Jamie. You know, I love that he's in his daddy era, and I actually think he's kind of come into his own as an actor, but mostly on screen. I don't know how he's gonna handle it vocally. I don't know how he's going to come off on stage as a performer. And Whitney White as the director is such an interesting choice. I loved what she did with Jaja's African hair braiding again. Never seen her do a musical before, but it'll be interesting nonetheless. Dead Outlaw is very exciting. Last minute entry. Very excited to see how that does. It's an odd musical, but it's a fun one. And if we can get that and maybe Happy Ending as best musical nominees, you know, the other three can be a mishmash for all I care. I'll be happy to have those two. We'd have two very strong pillars in that category. Let me do. Rather than keep on, you know, predicting things that I can't really predict yet, let me tell you what I would nominate so far of this season for each category. Now, I have forced myself to do a minimum of two nominees and a maximum of five per category. This is not necessarily who I think is gonna get in, but if you're like, hey, Matt of the season so far, who would you nominate and what would you nominate? So let's. I'm gonna be a dick and I'm gonna go at the categories people care about least and work my way up just to make you. Make you work for it a little bit. So first we've got sound design of a musical. And I would nominate here, maybe Happy Ending, Sunset Boulevard and Swept Away. Very strong sound designs by all three, both in terms of the crispness of the voices, the balance with the orchestra, but also just the effects. There's some really wonderful sound effects in all three. Sound design of a play would be job and McNeil just job on a technical level is so well done. And McNeil on a technical level has a lot of, you know, strong artistic stuff. About it, it is not. Not incredible. And as the season progresses, that might get phased out, but Job is pretty locked in here for me. Lighting design of a musical. I got four. I have Death Becomes her, maybe Happy Ending, Sunset Boulevard and Swept Away. Again, that might phase out as the season continues, but right now, those are four lighting designs that I really, really enjoy. Of the four, I would say Death Becomes her is my lowest. But Sunset, Boulevard, Swept Away and maybe Happy Ending have pretty fucking artful lighting designs. Lighting design of a play job Our Town, Romeo and Juliet, Hills of California. As I said, outside of Kit Connor, the lighting is like the only thing I really give a thumbs up to on Romeo and Juliet. I think it's very stylish, very tasteful and very theatrical. Hills of California is a bit more of a subtle lighting design, the way it plays with shadow, the way it plays with memory, but it's very effective for me. Our Town, the lighting is like the only thing I find artful in that production. And Job, again, on a technical level, I think that show is very well executed. I could see pretty much all of them getting swapped out for later plays this season, but as of right now, those are my four. Costume design of. Costume design of a play Cult of Love and Omari Omari. So far, it's like the only real period piece. The nominees I thought about Hills of California and the costumes are good in that, but something about Cult of Love, where it's a modern play where the costumes just make sense for the characters. It's subtle, but it works. And there are enough small flourishes to catch people's eyes of just what the costumes mean about the characters, how they differentiate from each other, how they're the same. You can see sort of who's family, who's not, who's an outsider, who's not, and who's butting heads and who's not. Costume design of a musical for obvious reasons, Death Becomes Her. Those costumes are absolutely insane. Paul Tazel has done a really phenomenal job. He's having quite the year with Wicked too. Gypsy. The costumes in Gypsy are not incredible, but there are some that are really well done. I actually like everything that they give Audra. I think it's a great blend of being flattering to her as the star while also making sense for the character of Rose, of her financial situation, of her own taste level of the time period she's in. The big caveat I have is I don't find that any of Louise's gowns as Gypsy to be all that great. They're not terrible. But I found that even Benanti's costumes in the Patty production to be more creative than these. And it's a shame because, like, those are the costumes that I feel like every costume designer who comes onto Gypsy's like, yeah, that's what I'm excited to do. And they were sort of the biggest letdown for me. Third is Once Upon a Mattress, which those costumes, they're not amazing, but for me, they were more. They were more representative of the idea of Broadway fun, of, like, Broadway actors doing summer stock and having fun with it, than the set, which just honestly was both cheap and made no sense to me. Scenic design of a play job, again, that's not really going to change much for me. McNeil, which is an impressive set, but it's really more just sort of here right now, Eureka Day, which I would love it if this still got set design a nomination for that by the end of the season. Because it's not like a super spectacular set. It's just so accurate and so descriptive. Like, it has so many small details that I highly recommend if you. If you go see Eureka Day and you are maybe not sitting in the first couple of rows, get there a little early so you can look at the set up close. Because, I mean, the books that they have in, the signage, it all takes place in the library of the private school. And the details of the set are incredible. And it made me guffaw. My last scenic design for a play nomination here is Hills of California. That's not changing. I think that set is absolute art. Scenic design of a musical. I would nominate Death Becomes Her Again. It's spectacle done very well, very tastefully. Sunset Boulevard, which may sound shocking because a lot of people say there is no set, there is a set. That screen is part of the set. How they use the lighting, how they use the cameras, all part of the set. And it's very effective. And it all falls in line with that production and its viewpoint. Are there technically more set pieces in something like Gypsy? Yes, but I think that Sunset Boulevard is so locked in with its vision that on a technical level, I think everything is well played. And this is not me giving it an extra nomination for fucks and giggles because I'm not giving them a costume nomination. Those costumes totally, again, fall in line with the viewpoint of the show, but they're not enough to make you go, oh, yeah, throw them another one. My last scenic design of a musical Tony nomination here is maybe happy ending. And even if maybe happy ending doesn't make it to May, which again, it absolutely could. It's looking like it could. But if it doesn't make it to May, there's no world in which they don't get nominated for set design. Set design and lighting. It's just. It's. That design is too spectacular and too well crafted to not. Honestly, it's my favorite to win at the moment. Next up, we have best orchestrations, which I would nominate maybe Happy Ending. It's a small band, but it has so much character to it. Swept Away. It takes jukebox material and does a lot of really creative theatrical work with it. And then Death Becomes Her. A score that I don't love, but I do think has a lot of flair to it. I really like the orchestrations, particularly in my favorite number. Tell Me Ernest. I think there's a cowbell in there at one point that I must be boring, nuisanceless. I'm just so glad that you both are here. It's just that I've got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell. That is my Christopher Walken best choreography. I have David Newman for Swept Away, Liam Steele for Elf, and then Ricky Tripp DeWitt Fleming Jr. For a wonderful World. I gotta tell you, of these three, Liam Steele and Elf, that is my number one right now. I thought his work on that show was so good. Not perfect, but like a genuine 8.5 out of 10. And Newman and Swept Away for me is like a 7 out of 10. Ricky Tripp DeWitt Fleming Jr also sort of a 7 out of 10. Death becomes her has solid choreography. You know, it's definitely not Gattelli's best. I think his best stuff in it is probably the. For the Gays, Madeline Ashton number. I don't really love what he gives the ensemble for all of Michelle Williams's stuff. And then, you know, trying to think what else. Like, I think the choreography and mattress is fine. I don't really love the choreography in Sunset Boulevard. I think it works for some things and doesn't work for others. I don't like the choreography at all for Gypsy, which breaks my heart because, like, I thought going in that Camilla A. Brown was, like, going to win this category, and she'll probably get nominated at the end of the day, but I'm not nominating her in my current specific decisions. Again, these are not predictions. These are just who I would do director of a play right now. I would pick Sam Mendes for the Hills of California, Sam Pinkleton for Omari, and Lee Silverman for Yellowface. I feel like it's all pretty self explanatory. I think that Hills of California as my number one of the season right now. It would be blasphemy not to nominate Sam for not only his work with the actors, but working with Jez on that play in the script and carrying the tone and the pacing. I know some people had issues with the accents at first. They had issues with. With diving into it in the first 10 to 15 minutes. I would argue. There are a lot of plays where the first 10 to 15 minutes take a minute to warm up. You're trying to get to know all the characters and you're doing a lot of brain work of figuring out who everybody is and what they mean to each other. Oh, Mary kind of just comes in hot right at the start. And because it's so dumb and simple in a lot of ways, you don't have to do that work. So you can just sort of be into it at the beginning. I think Sam's comedic work in this is really spectacular. I would have loved to have seen what he had done, what he could do with death, becomes her, because he has some really great stuff in this. And then Lee just really, you know, has a great hold on Yellowface, director of musical. My only two right now are Michael Arden for maybe Happy Ending and Jamie Lloyd for Sunset Boulevard. Such creative and visionary work on these shows that work a lot more than they don't for me. And even when they don't work, I'm not sitting there baffled. I'm sitting there going like, okay, that just wasn't as good as the last moment. But I think Michael probably does more consistently phenomenal work and maybe Happy ending for me than Jamie Lloyd in Sunset Boulevard. But yeah, they're both nominees here. Featured actress in a musical. Ooh, we're switching things up. I currently have for my picks for who I would nominate. Jordan Tyson for Gypsy as Dainty June, Jenny Harding Fleming for A Wonderful World and Darlesia Circe for A Wonderful World. Those two women were definitely my favorites of the four wives. As I said, the four wives were the highlights of the show for me, and those two were the highlights of the highlights. And I don't see them getting in at the end of the day, but I mean, they could. As I said, featured actress in a musical kind of wide open. And in Gypsy, the two women who really stood out for me were Jordan and Melinda Hall. And I think Melinda Hall's track, unfortunately, is too small to get her noticed, so I'm just giving her her Roses again right now. But Jordan, really, as I said, probably the best Dainty June I've seen live and would be in. Arguably the best Dainty June of all time if I thought that the production was stronger and supported her better. But she is doing really strong work in this featured actress in a play. I would nominate myself, Molly Bernard for Cult of Love, Shailene Woodley for Cult of Love, who really surprised me with how much I. How good she was in that. Helen O. Wilson in the Hills of California and Amber Gray for Eureka Day. If I had my way, I would nominate all the women of Hills of California. But I had to cap this off at 5 and I couldn't think of which of the other two sisters to nominate. So I was like, fuck it. I'm gonna just pick the one who I absolutely would for sure, no doubt, like desert island pick and then spread some love elsewhere. As I said, everyone in Cult of Love is doing a really good job. I think that Shailene Woodley has the hardest part of a character that is objectively supposed to be the most hateable and making her pretty disgusting while also giving you moments where you have to sort of feel pity for her and making her a person. It's so easy to make Diana just a total caricature. And I thought that Shailene did a really good job of making her a person for what is also, by the way, her Broadway debut. So props to you, mama. Amber Gray in Eureka Day has the second best role after Jessica Hecht and eats it up so much and goes toe to toe with her in all of their scenes and really does wonderful stuff. And then, yeah, Helena in Hills of California island pick. And then Molly Bernard in Cult of Love. Molly would probably be my vote for the win in this category. And I'm not even sure she'll be nominated at the end of the season, but. But I loved her character and I loved what she did with it. If you've ever watched Younger, Molly is so good on younger taking a role as well. Speaking of Shailene Woodley, who on paper could be so annoying and sometimes is annoying, but finding facets to it to make it surprising and making her character still feel like a person even when the writing is like, total caricature. She's just very talented that way. Featured actor in a play. My two nominations right now are James Scully for Omari and Francis Jew for Yellowface. I would probably give Francis the win. James is also my most improved from off Broadway with Omari. He was already very good at the lortel but he just found a way to make me buy that role more in the first half pre twist than he did off Broadway. I think just having time with it and listening to audiences has helped him a lot. Francis Jew in Yellowface is my vote for the win right now. He's in a play where everyone is very good. He is just exceptional and really gets you on his side. And I would love it, love it, love it if he got nominated. I think because Yellowface is a lock for a revival nomination, we could get him in there. The problem is with Othello and Glengarry Glen Ross coming in, it's like, oh, God, are we just gonna. Is recency bias gonna kill that? Like, are we gonna give Conrad and James nominations for O'Mary and then like two guys from Glengarry Glen Ross and then like somebody from Our Town or Othello? It would be a shame because Francis should be in there. Featured actor in a musical. I currently would nominate Stark Sands for Swept Away, Michael Urie for Once Upon a Mattress, and David Thaxton for Sunset Boulevard. I'm going to try to see Sunset Boulevard again in January when Mandy goes on because I didn't get to see David the last time I saw it. It was his understudy who did wonderful work. But I like David a lot and if he is as good as his understudy was, and by all accounts he's even better, he would be a pick for me for nominations, for myself. And then, yeah, Michael is just like my MVP of Once Upon a Mattress since Harriet Harris didn't carry over with it. And Stark is for me the most fully defined performance of Swept Away. And I do have some bias about that because I love him. I think he's so good. Best book of a musical. My nominations would be maybe happy ending and Death becomes her same thing for best score. I can absolutely see Death becomes her kind of getting needled out for score as we continue on with the season. But as of right now, those are. Those are the two for both categories. Best actress in a play. I am choosing Laura Donnelly for Hills of California, who is right now who I would vote for to win. Followed by Jessica Hex and Eureka Day, who is really just kind of sopping it up post Covid, y'all. Like this summer 1976, which she was so delightful in. I also saw. I also saw her in admissions at Lincoln Center Theater a few years ago. She's doing a really good job of doing the non profit route. And then Sidney Lemon for job. All three. So good. And I think all have a shot at getting nominated. I mean, we'll be honest, from everything I understand Sarah Snook is coming in at the end of the season and just collecting all of the hardware for Dorian Gray. But right now, these are my three actor in a play. I would do Kit Connor for Romeo and Juliet, Colt Escola for O'Mary, Peter Freeman for Job, and Daniel Dae Kim for Yellowface. I probably would vote for Cole for O Mary. I think Kit for Kit to succeed as well as he does in Romeo and Juliet when everything else fails is so impressive that I wonder if I would vote for him. And I don't think that Peter Friedman's getting nominated for Job because again, the category is so packed. We've got George Clooney coming. We've got Denzel Washington and Jake Gillian. I honestly think Jim Parsons has a better shot at getting nominated over Peter, which is a shame because Peter I think is better in Job and then Daniel Dae Kim I think also is probably going to get pushed out at the end of all of this. And he is very good in the show. I mean, Francis for me is the show. But Daniel takes a role that is pretty much meant to sort of be the straight man glue and really has a lot of personality involved in it. It's a hard part to play actor in a musical. My three nominations are Darren Criss for maybe Happy Ending, Tom Francis for Sunset Boulevard and Gray Henson for Elf. Hot take. I would fucking vote for Gray, who is doing such a good job. It's so hard to do what Gray is doing. And part of it is that the role just fits Gray like a glove. But, you know, Tracy Turnblot fit Marissa Jarrett Winokur like a glove and she won. I don't think it's a dig to say that that a role just fits somebody because when it works, it works and you can't deny it. I think without Gray, this revival of Elf would not be nearly as successful as it is as we've seen before. Actress in a musical. My four at the moment are Megan Hilty for Death Becomes Her, Jennifer Simard for Death Becomes Her, Nicole Scherzinger for Sunset Boulevard, and Helen J. Shenzhen for maybe Happy Ending. Yes, that means I do not include Sutton for Once Upon a Mattress, who I think is solid in Mattress, but it's by no means my favorite Sutton performance. And yes, I'm not including Audra in Gypsy at the performance I saw. It is nowhere near Audra's best. I look forward to hopefully seeing it again and Seeing how much she's improved. Because if she has improved as much as it has been implied, then yeah, I'll totally put her in the five. It's not the singing 85% of the time. She sings it pretty incredibly. It was sort of the everything else of it. Then we have. Oh, and also for my vote for this, I would definitely vote for Jennifer Nicole with Nicole as a close second. But Jennifer is doing the Lord's work in Death Becomes her. And again, it's comedic performance so people don't take it as seriously, but it is. She is giving a star performance that is tailor made to her and just eating everything up. And it's. It's wonderful to see Best Musical Revival. My nominations are Sunset Boulevard and Elf, with probably me voting for Sunset Play Revival is Yellowface in our Town. Our town is only in there because the only other two options were home and Romeo and Juliet. And we're not. We're not doing that. We're voting for Yellowface right now. Best musical. My two nominees are maybe Happy Ending and Death Becomes Her. With my vote going to maybe Happy Ending, Best Play. We've got a nice full four here. We've got Cult of Love, oh Mary, the Hills of California and Eureka Day. Obviously, oh Mary is the one that would win if the Tonys were to vote right now, but my vote goes for Hills of California and luckily I do think that both of those plays are getting in at the end of the season. So that's kind of it for right now, guys. I don't have much else to say. It's been an interesting year so far. Somebody asked trends I've been seeing or thoughts I've mostly had. I think it's been a little touch and go this season. I was very excited to see how it was going to shape up. It looked really exciting from the outset when they announced Sunset coming in, when they announced Audra and Gypsy and they announced Death Becomes were coming in and all of these wonderful things. There have been more surprises for me of disappointment and surprises of quality. Maybe Happy ending absolutely surprised me. That kind of came out of nowhere and I know we all sort of dismissed it when it was announced, so I'm thrilled to say that it was just so genuinely lovely and well crafted and beautiful to look at, well performed and I really wish it nothing but the best. I was disappointed with Tammy Faye. I know when we talked about the season earlier this year, like, like that kind of came in with London with buzz with Olivier nominations and wins and, oh, it's coming into the palace, they must have a lot of hope for it. And that just really kind of bummed me out. In A Wonderful World, I'd heard all the work they had done on the libretto and ultimately all for naught. And Romeo and Juliet looked fascinating. Sam Gold had just triumphed in Enemy of the People. But I just don't know if Shakespeare is a good fit for him for the most part because this is also now coming off of his King Lear and his Macbeth. He also did a Hamlet at the Public that was very divisive. I know his Othello at New York Theatre Workshop was praised and I wish I had seen that. But yeah, more disappointment than anything. Romeo and Juliet disappointed me. Tammy Faye McNeil, gypsy, honestly, our Town disappointed me. Once Upon a Mattress didn't disappoint me because I didn't love it to begin with, but I did think it was a little weaker. Swept Away very much disappointed me. And then, yeah, even something like Death becomes her, which I liked, disappointed me because I wanted to love Death becomes her. Maybe if I get a chance to see it again, knowing sort of what it is and not having the. I don't think I had sky high expectations, but I heard enough strong word of mouth that I was ready to like have a ball and I just had a very nice time. So I think I'm looking forward to the second half of the season. But again with trepidation, open minded, arm's length because there aren't many things so far this season that I loved. I think we have Hills of California and Omar. And then I would say love minus is maybe happy ending because that's like a couple steps above really like, but not like one or two steps away from love itself. So yeah, Hills of California, oh, Mary Love. Maybe happy ending, Love minus. Really liked Cult of Love, Eureka Day, Yellowface, really enjoyed Sunset Boulevard, Elf, and Death becomes her fascinatingly recommended job, if not necessarily loved it. And then mid to disappointed. Everything else to full on hated with McNeil and left on 10. Yeah, I feel like we started in a similar place last year where we had a lot of hope for things that did not follow through and then had more hope for the spring. And then once again, it was the plays that came through that really made the rest of the season successful last year and a lot of the musicals disappointed. I mean, I remember last year we talked about how the Notebook was coming in with all this hype and maybe that was our best musical frontrunner after a disappointing fall. And then the Outsiders kind of came in out of Nowhere and took over. So we'll see what happens. I think Dead Outlaw coming in in the spring is very exciting. I'm interested to see if any work has been done on Boop. What that work is. I'm excited to see if Buena Vista Social Club lands on Broadway, if Operation Mincemeat lands with Broadway audiences and if I see it again, if it lands any better for me, I would like to give it a second chance. It's just. Just didn't really do it for me in London. So. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. And then I'll be interested to see with Sunset and Gypsy how they duke it out with all of their nominations and if they dominate nomination wise or if a lot of the new musicals are able to kind of take up enough room that both Gypsy and Sunset like get a smart handful but don't necessarily overwhelm. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. That's kind of it for now. You guys have a great rest of your 2024. We'll see you in the new year. We will be back in two weeks with Come From Away, which is again one of our shorter deep dive episodes. And finish out the Grab Bag series and then talk about my new series after that, which is sort of grabbag adjacent as well as some new pop up Tony episodes throughout January, February and March and some reviews and yeah, that's it. You guys take care of yourself. Hope you had a great holiday and a happy new Year and I will see you soon enough. Who should we have close this out today? I'm gonna say, hmm, I'm gonna say Adrienne Warren because I don't know if we've ever had her closest out about before and I'm interested to see what she does with last five years. So on that note, take it away, Ms. Adrian. Bye. If I lost you, would I? Can you identify an Elphaba just from her defying gravity war cry? Can you name every actress in the Wicked to waitress pipeline? Or does the phrase witch switch mean anything to you? Well then, good news. My name's Quincy. And my name's Kevin and we're the hosts of Sentimental Men. We're here to talk and maybe scream about our favorite women in musical theater, the witches of Wicked. So if spending a Friday night in a no good deed Rabbit hole on YouTube sounds like your idea of a good time, then Sentimental Men is the podcast for you. And with guests like Jessica Vosk, Lucy Jones and Stephanie J. Block, chances are we've already got an episode with with your favorite Elphaba or Glinda, like Laura Bell Bundy, Brittany Johnson and Mackenzie Kurtz. So pause your Riff compilations, put down your copy of the Grimory, and give sentimental men a listen. You can find us on the Broadway Podcast Network or wherever you listen to podcasts.