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Broadway Breakdown
LEMPICKA, STEREOPHONIC & More...*and* Jack Viertel!!
02:10:45
Show Reviews and an interview with Jack Viertel
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Thank you very much. That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish.
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Oh, I'm sure you do, but, Mr. Greg, hit it. Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright lights, white light, rhythm and romance. The train is late, so while we wait, we're going. Hello, all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history und legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. We are still covering the Tonys and the current Broadway season as we lead up to nominations, which will be on April 30 and then the awards themselves, which is sometime in June, I believe. It's the second week of June, second weekend of June, TBD. I'll look that up at some point. It's 9:40 on a Tuesday, so I'm not gonna look that up right now. I'm busy. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And we are doing another solo episode, or at least we are for the first half. The second half of this episode is a real treat for you guys. I have an interview with Jack Viertell, who has a new book coming out called Broadway Melody, his first novel, but his second book. If you don't know who Jack Fertel is, let me catch you up to speed. The man was the artistic director for City Center Encores for many years. He worked for Drew Jamson Theater for 30 years, starting in the early to mid-1980s through the 90s, through the 2000s, up until about 2019. I'm pretty sure he's worked as a dramaturg on musicals like Dear Evan Hansen and Hairspray. He's had three musicals come to Broadway that were of his own idea. One, famously, is the Prom. He also came up with the ideas for Smokey Joe's Cafe and After Midnight. He's been a theater critic. He wrote the book the Great American Musical. He's just a baller of a man. And you will be very pleased with our interview. It's so phenomenal. So stick around after my takes on some of the shows that I've seen this past week for Mr. Jack Viertel. And it's. I'm just. I don't know. I. I had a ball. I hope you guys have a ball listening to it. And speaking of shows that I saw this week, I saw some shows this past week. I'm going to start off quickly with Merrily We Roll along, which I had seen back in February. But Tony winner Lindsay Mendes was out. She has been out quite a lot. And I went on a night where her understudy Jamila went on, and Jamila was great.
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She actually was my favorite performance of the three. And I had thoughts on the show, but, you know, I overall enjoyed it. And Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff had scheduled absences coming up. Jonathan Groff's absences, I think are next week. And Daniel Radcliffe had a planned absence last Wednesday, and there were tickets for those performances that he was missing up on tdf. I grabbed one because I thought to myself, well, if Daniel is out, Lindsay's not gonna be out. And I was correct. Daniel was out and Lindsay was in. So I got to see Lindsay. So I've now seen all the Tony eligible people for Merrilee. Lindsay does do a very good job. I will be honest. I kind of prefer Jamila. But Lindsay does a very nice job with the show. I find that her Mary is at her performance as Mary is at its best when she is depressed, as Mary, when she's sort of sadder and down in the dumps, that's when Lindsay really kind of shines best. I feel like Lindsay does depression better than a lot of actresses right now in Broadway musicals, which is a weird compliment to give, but there you go. Daniel's understudy. I know it was his first time, but also, you know, with understudies, you get many rehearsals leading up to your performance. You know, you get put ins and you're constantly just sort of rehearsing with management before you eventually go on. And his understudy for Charlie Kringas was Corey Teron. And Corey did a very nice job. I will say that, you know, Daniel was probably more impactful for me, but that's a very difficult comparison to make when it's someone's first official performance versus Daniel, who's been doing it for quite a long time. But I digress. That's sort of just where we're at with Merrily. I wanted to get that out of the way. My thoughts on the production kind of remain. If you want to know more about that, you can definitely read my review on Instagram. It's not as thorough as I would like because Instagram just doesn't have a lot of space. But, you know, it's. It's my. Those are my thoughts. I think this production is good. There are times when it's very good. I think tales of it being great, of them having solved the show. I don't agree with that. As I said, I don't think Merrily will ever really work. This show continues to prove that for me. I also just think we've gotten more used to the time travel, the going backwards in time of the show. So it's not as weird to us, but connecting the dots is still kind of difficult. Also, someone had mentioned to me last week that there was someone who was on Twitter X and had said, you know, James Lapine doesn't get the credit he deserves for helping Merrily's journey to be a more successful musical. And that's true, because when Merrily famously shuttered in 1981. I think it's 1981. Yeah. On Broadway, James Lapine was sort of the first person to kind of rescue it. He did it, I think, at Old Globe. Old Globe or La Jolla, I can't remember which one. And then it was done at arena in D.C. around 1990. And a lot of the work that James Lapine did on the structure of that show remains with the show to this day. You know, that Frank going in instead of Rich and Happy Beth having the Not a Day Goes by at the end of Act 1, before now youw know, although I believe that was something that was always the plan with Merrily. And then when they were doing the original production, the actress playing Beth didn't have a strong enough voice to carry the song out, so they gave it to Jim Walton. That's always been something that's kind of blown my mind because that happened also with Night Music. Originally they cast an actress first and a singer second for Petra. And then they were like, oh, actually, you kind of have to be able to carry out the Miller Son. And I was like, didn't she, you know, audition with that or at least do a callback with that? Wouldn't you know that she was not up to snuff vocally? But anyhoo, but it's true. James Lapine doesn't get a lot of credit for Merrily, so we should give him a little shout out. Thank you, James, for all of your hard work on Merrily Rollalong. It's not just George Firth and Sondheim. Lapine did a lot of work on it. And while I don't think the show still really works, a lot of James Lapine's work on it has helped improve it significantly. Moving on, the next show we saw was a musical called Lempicka. We mentioned this last week whether I was gonna call it Lempicka or Lempdica, based on, you know, how I felt about the show. And not to be crude, but we're calling it lempdicka. I've got two more video reviews to put on Instagram this week. I just posted my first one for the Outsiders, so I hope you guys liked that. And if you listen to this podcast regularly, then you know more of my in depth thoughts about it. Specifically performances that I didn't really mention in the video. I recorded them and then just for time, I cut. Because I didn'tfor a first video, I didn't want to make it more than 10 minutes. I feel like that was being a little conceited. If. If people gravitate towards them, in the end, maybe I'll make them longer just to incorporate or to include more elements of the shows and go a little more in depth. But for now, you know, we're treading light. But we have reviews on Lempicka coming up this week, probably on Sunday, when Lempicka opens, if not the day after. And I'm also going to do a video review for the Heart of Rock and Roll, which I'll talk about for a little bit on here as well. And I know that Heart of Rock and Roll doesn't open for a little while longer, but I wanted to get that video review out a little sooner in hopes that maybe somebody from the creative team will watch it and maybe agree with one or two of my notes and implement them. We do know Will Van Dyke, who is the music director and arranger of Heart of Rock and Roll. He's a friend of the pod, so maybe he'll watch it and take notes, I don't know. But first I want to say with Lempicka. So Lempicka is. It's basically a bio musical, I suppose, about Tamara Lempicka, who was a very prominent artist of the 1920s and 30s, based in France at the time, although she was born in Poland and then lived in Russia. Now that I know all this now, because I went on Wikipedia after I saw the show, because I gotta say, watching the show, I did not gain a lot of information about the main character, Tamara de Lempicka. There was only what I sort of assumed going in, you know, from the marketing, we know that it's that there's art, that there's war, that there's, you know, a queer component to it. But the show is.
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How do I describe this? The writers of the show are clearly into their main character, played by Eden Espinosa. They find her fascinating. She lived a Very fascinating life, a very rich life. You know, she married a Russian officer, I think, or like. Or like Russian upper class, I guess. I don't know. I'm. It's late, so my words are failing me. But in this show, the way that it is portrayed. Eden Espinosa starts the show off on a park bench in Los Angeles painting. And it's 1975, which I looked up on Wikipedia. And if that is to be believed, Lempicka did not live in Los Angeles at that point of her life. She actually lived in, I believe, South America by that point. She, you know, emigrated to the states in the 30s for reasons that we'll get to in a hot second. And then I believe in the 60s, moved down south. So, you know, if we're talking about historical accuracy here, which I don't really give two shits about, but. But because the show was so insistent on including as much of Lempicka's life as possible, that's something that I was like, why are we doing this? If you want to include so much, why are we changing this part? Unless Wikipedia is wrong, I don't know. But. So Eden comes out. Eden's on stage on this park bench painting, and she basically looks out at us and goes, you want to know how I got here, How I ended up here? And then they do a whole like bright star de aging moment. Someone today called it like the Titanique Selene pulls off her wig in his old rose kind of reveal. And already you're kind of confused because if you were to go into Lempicka as a totally blank slate, not having read anything about it, you would watch Eden come on stage and go, oh, do you want to know how I got here? And it's like, well, I don't know who you are. Who are you got here where? Immediately we don't get any insight or information about who we're dealing with. Even something perfunctory as a bit of exposition of, I was a very famous painter, I was a big deal, and if that is there now, after I've seen it, I apologize, but it wasn't there the night that I saw it. And we flash back to 1916, 1917, Russia. She's painting in a wedding dress and her mother, played by Beth Leavel, comes out and she goes, you're going to get paint on the dress. She goes, it's fine, I want to paint. Andrew Szymanski is her soon to be husband. We find out that she's probably with child when they're getting Married, because we do know that they've already banged, but it's implied that she might be pregnant already. They get married, she has the baby, he gets arrested because the Russian Revolution happens, although they never actually say it's the Russian Revolution, just somebody comes on stage, grabs Andrew some and drags him off stage. Eden Espinoza runs off stage in her wedding dress holding the baby, which is an image I will never forget, and then spends the rest of the song searching through Russia trying to find her husband, bribing different guards with jewelry because she has this mentality of we must survive, and then eventually allows herself to be raped by a soldier so she can get Andrew Szymansky out of prison. And they flee to Paris. And he's like, what did you do to get me out? And she goes, don't worry about it. That's all the first seven minutes of the show. I'm watching this going, this could just be act one. There's so much that we're just flying through. And that's kind of the case with Lempicka. Most of the time. There's a lot of plot that we just fly through. And then there are moments of Lempicka that we sit in, but they're not the moments that are necessary. And, you know, the music also is just very odd because it will be like. It will be Broadway pop one second, Les Miserables grandeur the next, and then like 1980s club kid techno music after that. Like, the opening number is very, you know, the How Did We Get Here And History's a Bitch and so Am I and let's Go Back In Time number that's very sort of sweepy, swoopy, you know, kind of music. And then we get into the Russian Revolution. Andrew Szymanski's in prison, Eden Espinoza's got to do whatever it takes to survive. And that's when we have, like, the hardcore missigon Chess music. Like, it was very Kim in Kim's nightmare being like, I'm the wife of a soldier. Help me, anyone. It's very. That. No, out of my way. It's that kind of intensity for five minutes straight. And then we get to Paris and everyone's like, vogue, vogue, vogue, vogue, vogue, vogue. And some scores are really good at intertwining multiple genres and making it feel like one whole tapestry. Caroline or Change is a show that does that very well. Great Comet, another Rachel Chavkin musical does that very well. And then other musicals give you kind of whiplash with the genres that they Incorporate. And for me, Lempicka is full on whiplash all the time. Every number is. So there are numbers that are in the same show, but they are far apart from each other. So you never have four numbers in a row that feel like they're part of one whole vision. They all feel like they're from different visions. Which is ultimately my biggest gripe with this show is that it wants to be so much, but it doesn't know which thing it wants to be the most. Because then we get to Paris and they're struggling to make ends meet because Andrew Szymansky won't work. And Lempicko wants to be a painter, and she's on the Seine painting with all the other painters. And Bethlehem Level shows up with an actor whose name I'm forgetting. Let me look that up. One moment, please. His name is Nathaniel Stampley. And I was actually talking to two gentlemen, the co hosts of Half Hour podcast today. And I asked them, when Beth Leavel came out onto the Seine to look at in Espinoza's paintings with her husband, did you for a moment think to yourself, oh, Lempicka is going to run into her mom now? And they said, yeah, Lempicka was not running into her mom. Beth Level was playing an entirely new person, but her hair and makeup were exactly the same. So you think it's she's about to run into her mom post revolution? No, she's playing a new character now. She's playing a baroness and her husband, the baron. And they see Lempicka's painting that we don't get to see. They just see her painting and they go, huh, You've got promise. Take this card, go to this art teacher. This art teacher is played by George Abood, I think is, how you say his last name. I'll learn it when I do the video for Instagram. But I think it's George Aboud. But they send her to him to learn how to paint better, you know, have vision, have a sense of style. And while that's happening, she's. I don't know, she's also trying to get other work to, you know, support her husband and her kid, who at this point has now grown up to be seven and is played by a teenage actress named Zoe Glick, who does a nice enough job, but, you know, I already kind of do not care for child actors. And in this particular show, her character remains seven the entire show, despite the fact that they spent almost 20 years in Paris. Like, her first time she comes out she's basically wearing a dainty June outfit. And she's like, mama, paint me, or Lempy, because, like, sit for me. I'm going to paint you. And then she just wears that same outfit or something similar to that outfit the rest of the show. Even though we go from like 1919 in Paris or like 1920 in Paris to 1936. And that. That aside, sorry, my brain is all over the place. I'm really trying to think this through. I think my video review for this will be a little better because I'll be. I'll have cleared out all my thoughts from doing this episode of the podcast, and then I'll be much more focused for the video, more focused than Lempicka, anyway. And so she goes to, you know, art school, and she's trying to work, maybe as a maid, doing all these other things every now and then. Andrea Samansky's like, how did you get me out of prison? And she's like, shut up. That was years ago. And she meets Amber Aman, who is a sort of sex worker, party girl. She is. If there's. If there's a somewhat concurrent theme with Lempicka, it's how people try to survive, I guess. It's not consistent, but it. It pops up quite a few times. No, Lempicka is the woman she becomes and does the things that she does to survive. And Amber Ammann is sort of the same. And Eden Espinoza sees Amber Ammon and immediately is like, I want to paint her, I want to fuck her. I got to do this. And Natalie Joy Johnson is, you know, a kind of passing through lesbian. She owns this. She works at this nightclub, and she eventually wants to own her own queer nightclub. And she passes through and makes jokes about, you know, vaginas. She has a joke to Beth Leavel when she first comes out. They're at this art gallery and she says to Beth Leavel, who's wearing a fur, she goes, I love that fur. I love beaver. And Beth Leavel says something along the lines of, you know, it's mink. And Natalie Joy Johnson goes, I know, and I love Natalie Joy Johnson. If you are a gay man in New York City who is into the theater scene or gay bar scene, chances are you've seen Natalie Joy Johnson cabaret. I have seen quite a few myself. She's even yelled at me through song on a drunken improv one night, sex shaming me, saying that I was very closed off sexually. And she's right. I basically am broken inside. But it wasn't what I was planning on that Saturday evening at Green Room 42. But that's the fun of Natalie, right? It's sort of like Patti LuPone at Les Mouche with nine bottles of champagne. And so it's so fun to see Natalie back on Broadway. And the night I was there, there were a small cluster of G in the mezzanine who are clearly there excited to see her. And I find that fun. She's sort of become like this secret gay icon in small circles in New York. That's fun. But we go back to the show. Now Eden wants to draw Amber. She keeps trying to find her. She keeps missing her. She and Andrew Samanski keep growing farther apart. And then, just as she finally gets a chance to draw Amber, she and Amber hook up in Eden's loft, where she paints outside of her apartment from her family. And of course, that's when Andrew Szymolsky comes to see her afterwards, and he's like, I want to make this work. I got a job. I love you. And she goes, oh, no, what do I do? And that's when she sings. Woman is at the end of act one, which I suppose is her artistic breakthrough. By being with Amber in a carnal sense, she's able to now paint women in a way that no one has before, which is bold and confident and sexy and seductive. At least that is what we're told. We never actually see it on stage. And even then, it's only said a little bit. And that's in Act 2. Because then in Act 2, Lempicka begins to paint more, and she. I guess she becomes far more successful. It's never really made entirely clear. We pass through a whole bunch of years. She and Amber Amon now are in a relationship, but she's still married to Andrew Simonsky. And even though he had just said at the end of act one, he wants to make it work, they are now fully separated. He has his own girlfriend. Meanwhile, Eden will only sort of be with Amber in certain safe spaces. They go to Natalie Joy Johnson's new queer club. But, you know, Eden won't parade Amber out in public because, you know, it's 1930 Paris, and even though Paris is a sexually liberated area, this is the 1930s, and, oh, by the way, it's Europe in the 1930s, so the Nazis are on the rise. And don't you worry, Lempicka, make sure you know about that, because every now and then, someone will talk about Hitler in third person, you know, oh, that joke just became Chancellor Things like that. And of course, Lempicka's art teacher is now sort of siding with Mussolini and the fascists, and he's becoming, you know, kind of wild and crazy and. And whatnot. And Lempicka has this big art show that her daughter tries to sabotage because her daughter is jealous that Lempicka is spending all of her time with Amber Am, but that doesn't really amount to anything. And then she and Andrew Szamotsky have this big fight, and Andrew Szman, and she tells Andrew Szamotsky, I had sex with a guard to get you out of prison. Basically, I was raped so you could be free. And to him, it's as if she had told him, I burned down an orphanage so we could go camping. And then she and Amber Amon break up. And then fascists start taking over Paris and Basic. Then Beth Leavel comes out, the baroness, and she goes, I'm dying, so paint me so my husband will have a painting to remember me by. And Beth Leavel does really, you know, a wonderful job just selling that number, but it does come so out of left field for me. And then she walks off stage in Espinoza, turns to the audience and she goes, the Baron and I made a good couple. And I go, wait, you and the Baron got together? Apparently they married, they moved to the United States. Lempicka then kind of became irrelevant for a while. And then in the 70s, right before she died, she had a major resurgence. Somebody found a bunch of her paintings in, you know, some warehouse or loft in Europe, and, you know, they sold a bunch of her canvases for millions and millions of dollars. She had this resurgence in Hollywood in the 60s and 70s. According to Wikipedia, in the musical, it happens right before she dies. I believe in Wikipedia. They say it was the 60s and 70s. You know, she became a go to artist to go on the walls of a lot of movie stars and Hollywood producers home. So they sold for a lot, a lot of money. And then, you know, coffee table books about her and all this stuff. And that's sort of how the musical ends. But it's all in a flurry. Like everything I just said, everything happens in a flurry. We don't get a song where Lempicka is questioning her own sexuality when she meets Amber Amon. Am I queer? Am I a lesbian? Am I actually bisexual? Am I just a lesbian for this one woman? What does that even mean? Do I still love my husband? Is it just because my husband and I are going through a rough patch? Am I inspired by Amber Amon, or am I in love with Amber Amon? None of these things are ever questioned. They're never. No one dives into them because they've got so many other things going on in Lempicka's life. They want to talk about that. They want to show. They want to show the Nazi uprising. They want to show her rise in the art world. They want to show her daughter again for some reason. They want to show how Andrew Szymansky is going through shit. They want to show that Beth Leavel is going to die in two months. They want to show that Lempicka, you know, sells jewelry or buys jewelry, that she's a survivor, that she, you know, is becoming an icon, that she's becoming irrelevant, that she becomes an icon again. We want to show how Natalie Joy Johnson works at a bar, then buys a bar, then the bar gets destroyed by the Nazis. And I don't know why we need all of it, because we don't spend enough time with any of it. And therefore, it all seems irrelevant. It all seems kind of shallow. And again, because the show, the whole production really doesn't have a point of view. It's just going for big, broad swings and style. There's no vision. You know, the set is basically a whole bunch of metal stairs done at an odd angle almost. It's like an M.C. escher painting. But it's just one of the staircases or two of the staircases from different parts of the painting. And certain things will sort of fly in and out, usually two different screens that will give you glimpses of whatever Lempicka has painted and they're showing. And then at the end of the show, they do this big reveal of a couple of her paintings. But they do them to scale. They do them at realistic scale, not theatrical scale. So if you're sitting in certain parts of the audience, you're not going to be able to see the paintings. And what made them so impressive, supposedly so impressive anyway? They have one platform that slides on and off all the time. That's supposed to represent her apartment, it's supposed to represent her loft. It sometimes represents a bedroom. They have a car that comes on once or twice. You know, Chavkin is a director who I've always admired because she is so good at using a space creatively and every square inch of a theatrical space. And even if I'm questioning what it has to do with story, I never question that the taste level is there. And this was the first time with her where I kind of questioned the taste level. The aesthetic of the show made no sense to me. The main characters all wear relatively period appropriate costumes, but the ensemble are all in heavily stylized, implied costumes for the era. It's, you know, half Paris, gender bending of the 1920s and then like half Madonna, express yourself music video. And I don't, and I don't know why, unless it's to connect the art world of then to the art world of now or just the art world of the 80s. But again, the show doesn't stick with that. It doesn't really stick with anything ever. It's just a lot of spaghetti thrown at the wall and occasionally a noodle might stick, but it's sort of. It's very scattered and it comes out of a lot of mischances, in my opinion. Now, I've spoken to quite a few people who have all really liked this show. Some of them are listeners of the podcast or people who follow me on Instagram. I've had two friends who really liked it. I gotta say, everyone else I've spoken to has not primarily people in the industry. I'm talking about actors, I'm talking about music directors, people who not only work on Broadway, but have worked with many of the people involved with this show in past productions. And it's not, it is not scanning well with a lot of people. There's a lot of people feel the way that I do, which is that it's a very confusing show. And for some people, that actually works for them. They like the idea of big bold swings on stage, whether they hit or not. And listen, that's part of the reason why I love Diana, right? I've talked about this on the podcast many a time. Diana, for me is a two hour masterpiece of being nothing but strong and wrong. But that's not really Lempicka. Lempicka has a lot of moments that are strong and wrong, but it's not two straight hours of it. There are moments where you can see what they're trying to do and how it could possibly work, but it's too sandwiched between two wild moments that you have no idea what's happening. And so anything that is actually quality in the show or well realized. It's hard to see the forest for the trees. At least it was for me and for honestly, quite a few people. Positives the score for all of its identity issues. For me, it is a fascinating score and clearly the writers are very creative. They have an ear for melody, they have an ear for energy and theatricality. It's just about reining yourself in and being precise. If you're going to do a wildly eclectic score, you have to have a reason for it. You have to make sure that everything ties together in a way that it feels like it's all part of one world. That's something that Dave Malloy does brilliantly with Great Comet. It's what Tesori does brilliantly with Caroline or Change, you know, Hell, I'd even say it's what Sondheim does really well with Sunday in the park with George. Not all of that score sounds the same all the time, but it feels of that world. It didn't feel of the same world for me. In Lempicka, it is mostly well sung. Amberman sings fantastically. She's got a lot of energy. I would argue she's in a different show from Eden Espinosa and Andrew Simonsky. Andrew Szymansky also sounds fantastic, but he's kind of given a wet blanket of a role and he carries it out how he's asked to carry it out. The role is just nothing. He has no personality. Once he gets released from prison, he basically becomes a dud. And I don't know if that's to make Eden's choice of wanting to be with Amber more forgiving for an audience. They're like, well, of course she's going off with Amber Iman. Look how awful her husband is. But that doesn't give him anything to play. And Beth Level, while wildly underused, does make the most of her stage time. She can land a one liner like nobody's business. She is in wonderful voice. Eden Espinosa in the lead role. You know, Eden is a very earnest and passionate actress. She is. You cannot claim she's not giving it a thousand percent. The role of Lempicka is very confusing in this show. Her motivations, her wants, they're all kind of flipping on a dime based on whatever the next scene requires. And this is called out by Andrew Samansky at one point when they have a fight in Act 2 about sort of the hypocrisy of her hating that he's got a girlfriend. And he's like, you got a girlfriend. But that's not a theme of the show, of how Lempicka is a hypocrite all the time, how she has standards for other people, that she doesn't meet herself and refuses to be held accountable for her actions. That's not ever something that's a theme for her character. That's just something that kind of Pops up once or twice in Act 2. And that's got to be hard for Eden to play. So she's just kind of riding the train as earnestly as she can on a vocal level. You know, it pains me to say this because we famously know Eden is to be one of the best Elphabas of all time, according to the marketing for Lempicka. And listen, you know, you watch those videos of her in her prime during Brooklyn and early Wicked days, and her voice is absolutely bonkers. And there is a lot of heft to her voice. Now the problem is, is that when she goes above like a C or D, I want to say, like when she goes really high, that's actually when her voice is at its best. She doesn't really sustain the notes terribly well, but she'll hit them and it'll be very nice and clear. It's when she goes lower than that. And to be clear, you know, an A or B is not a low note for a female singer. That's a very chesty area to be singing in. And that's where a lot of the score for Lempicka lives. But that is when Eden is kind of off vocally. She's. I hate to say this, she's under on a lot of the notes. She's flat on a lot of the notes. And it doesn't do us any favors to not acknowledge that because this is a very music heavy show and when your lead is off pitch a lot, even if you want to get swept up in the aesthetic, if you want to get swept up in the eclectic music, it's hard with that. Music is a very chemical reaction. And when there's one component that's slightly off, we can't get that same reaction that we want. Of course, there were people around me who were having wonderful reactions, so what the fuck do I know? Anyway, that is sort of where we're at with Lempicka. I will not be this harsh on my video, but to be perfectly honest, I kind of found the show to be a bit of a disaster. It's just so. It's so unsure of what it wants to say about her, what it wants to be about her and what it just wants to be as a show, what kind of style it wants to be. There are so many things that happen in it that each thing could be its own 30 minute segment if you expanded it and dove into it deeper. In fact, I believe there was a play about Lempicka that was in LA in like the 80s and 90s and was in New York for a little bit. I believe that play is like four and a half hours long. And that makes sense to me. I believe the play is called Tamara. And it makes sense to me that it'll be that long because she lived a very full life and there are so many things you could explore. But if you try to cram all of it into a musical, which is a very economic genre of storytelling, nothing will feel good or thought through. On that note, we have the heart of Rock and Roll. And before we get to the heart of rock and roll. Sorry, let me say that again. But before we get to the heart of rock and roll, let us take a quick break. Billy, I'd like to dimmer with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow caller. And we're back. Okay, so the Heart of Rock and Roll is a jukebox musical using the song catalog of Huey Lewis and the News. This is a show that has kind of been under the radar for a lot of people. It had an out of town tryout at the Old Globe with Matt Doyle and Katie Rose Clark. I had not heard really anything about it from out of town. I had friends who had done workshops of it and they enjoyed themselves, but no one really remembered much about it since then. The word from friends from the dress rehearsal and very early previews was not terribly positive. But I do have it on good authority that they have done a lot of work on this show in previews, mostly to tighten it, which makes a lot of sense because this is a show that. That is aiming to be fun and dumb. And the only way you can get away with that is if the show is right and tight. And as I mentioned before, I am all. I'm a big fan for silly. You know, I can watch Soap Dish as many times as I please. I love Sex and the City. I've been very vocal about how much I love Mamma Mia. You know, if you're gonna be dumb, be smart about how dumb you are. If you want me to turn off my brain, you got to do all the work. And the thing is, the surprising thing is the heart of rock and roll is quite a bit of that. They do a lot of the work for you. They are relatively smart about how dumb they are. It has its flaws, some of which I think could be fixed relatively easily, some of which can't just because of its very existence. But there's a lot of fun to be had there. Let me start with a couple of things that I think are just very easy fixes. The plot of Heart of Rock and Roll is essentially, Corey Cott used to be in a band, and due to daddy issues and the fact that the band wasn't going anywhere, he gave that up and started working for this packaging company owned by John Dossett that he runs with his daughter, mackenzie Kurtz. And Corey Cott is a bit of a screw up. Tamika Lawrence is the head of HR for this company and he screws something up so he gets fired. But he's on a warpath. He's got a plan. He's going to do a working girl. He's going to be a Tess McGill and sort of fake it till he makes it. And to this convention that John Dossett and MacKenzie Kurtz are going to be at in Chicago, this, like, packaging convention or whatever where he's also getting this award. John Dossett and Corey Codd's like, hey, Orville Mendoza is this Swedish millionaire who has this furniture store that's about to sweep America called Idea Get It. Like ikea. I'm going to get his business. And he does. And there are other complications with that, but, you know, when it comes to stories about business, it's really hard for me to totally stay focused. Like the moment you mentioned Quarterly Reports, I'm like, wait, no. There are other plot lines as well. In addition to this convention, Mackenzie Kurtz goes to Chicago and finds out that it's also her reunion, either high school or college. I can't remember. Her best friend from her childhood, Zoe Jensen, is there with her husband, and she goes, married life is weird. And I have a baby now. We're gonna have fun. By the way, your ex, Billy Harrison Tighe is here, and he's still a snack. You should date him. Billy Harrison Tighe is a traditional 80s villain. The whole show takes place in the 80s. It's very much an homage to the fun and silliness of those 80s movies. Like, you know, Better Off Dead or Weird Science. Earth Girls Are Easy, The Sarah Jessica Parker flop that I Love. Girls Want to have Fun. No, it's very much in that kind of style. And so he's very much a. A yuppie villain, you know, wearing collared shirts and sweaters and, you know, doing acapella with an acapella group from their school. And he's definitely trying to get after mackenzie Kurtz. I don't know why she doesn't give him any indication that she likes him still. Also, mackenzie Kurtz's character is a bit of a Disaster. She's just always got anxiety. She's not terribly fun to be around Mackenzie. And that's intentional. Like, that's what the character is supposed to be. She kind of grows out of that by the end of the show. And Mackenzie Kurtz does a good job with that. I think she go to Annaleigh Ashford, Corky in act one, being like, the her we're me. And I think you can tone that down a bit just because, you know, if you play it not real, but if you don't comment too much on the comedy, we will laugh harder. And there's no greater example of that than Billy Harrison, Tai and Tamika Lawrence, who. They do not comment on the comedy. They play weird characters earnestly, and that makes us laugh and also like the characters more. The other issue I have with the show is, you know, ultimately, in the end, there's a big conflict because Corey Cott's band gets back to him and they perform, and then all of a sudden, the band is starting to blow up, and he has to kind of make a decision of which one he wants to do. He ultimately decides to go into the business with Mackenzie Kurtz, you know, work with her, be in love with her, and, you know, the band will go off and do their own thing. And it does sort of lean into that 80s trope of like, yeah, forgive up on your dreams, contribute to corporate America. But I would have loved it if, when he had his conversation with Tamika Lawrence, because he eventually has his decision to be made in the end, when the band is like, hey, we found this letter from your dead dad from beyond the grave. And this is, weirdly, yet another musical to do that. But that letter ultimately is what moves him to go back and do the business. And I would have loved it if he and Tamika Lawrence, because they have a scene, they're sort of buddies in the show. If she had said to him after he performed at the band and he signs a contract to go back on tour with them and do this record while also signing a contract to get promoted for John Dossett. If Tamika Lawrence was like, do you actually want to go back to perform? I'm sure it was lovely being with your friends again, but did it feel as good as it did the first time? Or do you just want to do the band stuff? Or are you tempted by the band stuff because somebody wants you now? Because that happens a lot with people, right? Where they get disillusioned by the thing that they used to be passionate about, and then when people pay attention to Them, they mistake that for, oh, I actually really love this. This was my path all along. It's like, actually, no, you're still not thrilled with what you're doing. It's just now people are maybe paying you a bit more money to do it. And I would have loved it if Corey Cott was like, you know what, you're right. It was so much fun to sing again. I loved being with those guys. It wasn't as good as I remembered. I kept thinking on stage, all these ideas I had for the business, is that weird? And Tamika Lawrence could be like, yeah, it's weird, but, you know, if that's your dream, do it. Because your dream doesn't just have to be art. And your dream can also change over time. And I wish that that sort of where he comes to the conclusion at the end, that's not where they want it. That also might be a little too, like, human, you know, that might be too human journey for them. They might be like, we want to keep it simpler, cuter, campier, and that's fine. The other two things about the show, I will say the show wants to be sort of a scrappy, campy underdog. It kind of wants to be like the Wedding Singer, but even more kind of dumb. Off Broadway, like an oh, Mary Cola Scola kind of thing. And there are some things in the show that land that really well, including a fantasy sequence that I don't want to spoil too much. But they also want it to be a big Broadway musical. And I don't think you can be the kind of show this wants to be, have the tone that it wants to be on a large stage like the James Earl Jones, which, like, is not the size of the Gershwin, but for an 1100 seat theater, that theater feels quite spacious. And they try to scale up the show with a semi large set. They try to fill the space that way. They have choreography by Lauren Lettero, who also did Tommy. And her choreography, like in Tommy, in my opinion, is way too much. Again, for a show that's trying to be very tongue in cheek. Her choreography is very big, big, big, kick in the face, kick in the face, high energy. Watch all these things that the cast can do rather than stay in line with the, you know, with the environment that the show is trying to live in. If you are on social media, you might have seen the video of the, you know, bubble wrap tap dance that they do. And I know a lot of people watch that and like, the fuck is this in. In the sense of what kind of Tone the show is setting, it makes sense. Again, the show is definitely going for silly, so doing something silly like that would make sense. The two issues with it are, one, the execution is flawed because while it's a fun idea to use the popping of bubble wrap as a tap sound, it's just not a clean sound. So it doesn't execute as well as you want it to. And I don't. In that part, I don't think is necessarily a Lauren Lotaro problem. I'm not sure any choreographer would be able to make tapping on bubble wrap clean enough to really land. But also, if you're gonna do that in the same way that, you know, Stroman does rope with Slap that Bass, you gotta introduce the bubble wrap a little sooner. You know, it happens in this expo scene. And some of you are listening to this. May be watching my video for Heart of Rock and Roll. At the same time, being like, Matt, you're kind of saying the exact same things you say in the video. Well, I recorded the video earlier today, so a lot of this is just fresh in my brain. Sorry. Not sorry. But. So they're in this sort of, like, expo at the convention. Mackenzie Kurtz and John Dossett. And so, you know, one booth has packing peanuts, one booth has cardboard boxes there, One booth has the bubble wrap. And we don't ever see it really. We don't ever see it used in the scene or anything like that. It's not. We don't get, like, a Chekhov gun with it earlier on. So we're aware that it's in the room that it can be used. And we don't ever see it being used for its actual purpose. We just have it roll out in the middle of the number. Mackenzie Kurtz accidentally walks on it, and everyone's like, oh, my God. Hear that sound? And if we're gonna do it, if we're gonna do the gig, I think it's best to at least introduce it earlier in the way it's supposed to be used. So then when you do do it for the tap dance, we can be like, oh, fun. Look at this thing. We watched being used in the normal way earlier now, being used for this fun musical theater way. But, you know, I don't think that's ever gonna happen. I don't think they're gonna do that. There are obviously some more cuts they can make again, make it right and tight. I think they can introduce the bandmates of Cory Cotts a little sooner. They come to open the show at the very beginning in this Sort of fantasy sequence. And then we don't see them again for like almost 30 minutes. We're dealing with the business stuff and Mackenzie Kurtz's high school stuff. And then they show up towards the end of Act 1 and Corey Cott reconnects with them and they perform. And so we don't ever really. I mean, I didn't feel anyway, any kind of conflict about which side Corey Cott was going to choose, the business or the band? Because we spend more time with the business. So it's like, well, clearly that's where we're going to go. And so I would have loved it if we could have maybe taken the beginning of the first. The band chopped it off and moved it like 20 minutes earlier. Done in a scene transition where they say, we miss Corey Cott. Oh, I actually did send him a tape of our old stuff the other day just to see if he could get nostalgic about the old days. And then the next time we see them is 15 minutes later and it's Corey Kot showing up and like, hey, man. Just keeping them fresh in our brains. And the actors who play them are all very fun. You know, it's John Michael Lyons, it's Raymond J. Lee, it's F. Michael Haney, and they're all very fun, very talented actors. I enjoy them all immensely. I mentioned this in my video. I keep. I always think about the way John Michael Lyons says in Exile and Gayville in a strange loop top. If it goes there, huh? Maybe looking for a gym buddy. Lol. Also his agent. The agent for Usher. Very fun. We've got an exciting project, especially for you. He's just, you know, he's a fun actor. I enjoy him and I like seeing him on stage. That's really all my major notes. Oh, there's also like a bit where MacKenzie Kurtz kind of saves the business in Act 2, but we don't see that happen, which is fine. We don't necessarily need to. But it would have been nice to have a little hint that that's what was going to happen if, you know, she could have a 15 second moment with Orville Mendoza again during a scene transition where he catches her eye and she's like, please don't leave. I got a proposition for you. And they go off stage and then we find out in the final scene, I saved the day. Because we don't have that first part, we just have that last part. And it would help to have little things like that. And I think that's something that you could very Easily incorporate because the scene change has already been teched. So, you know, just put that in there and add an extra spotlight or something. But that's just my. My two cents, because I do think that the show is actually quite a lot of fun. It's more clever than it has any right to be, if not all the time. Often enough, I think that it is very well cast. Everyone does a good job in it. Again, Tameka and Billie, in my opinion, walk away with the show. I think the music is very well arranged. And I don't know Huey Lewis and the News very well. I know a couple of their songs, but I found the songs to be well incorporated into the show. They didn't feel stuffed. You know, I think the opening number is kind of not lame, but just. It doesn't live up to the fun silliness of the rest of the show. It's a bit sloppy, it's a bit rudimentary, which may not be the right word, but it sounds right. It's them doing Hip to Be Square and the packaging company. And it's just not as clever of a number as many other numbers end up being. But, you know, I digress. I also think Act 2 still feels a little padded. In a perfect world, they would cut two numbers and, you know, get to that third act a lot faster. That's not going to happen. People are going to a jukebox musical to see the Huey Lewis numbers. They're not going to cut more Huey Lewis numbers. What else? In a perfect world, I also think the show would be 100 minutes and at New World Stages. And that's not me negating its quality. It's me just saying, once you get into a Broadway theater, the expectation from an audience changes. Even if it's a bridge and tunnel crowd who just wants to hear Huey Lewis numbers. They have an expectation of what a Broadway show is supposed to be, which is not the fault of Heart of Rock and Roll. I think all a Broadway show has to be is good. I don't care about the scale. But they're trying to be a big Broadway musical while also being a scrappy underdog. And I think they should be in a smaller theater. It should be a smaller set. It should be a shorter show. But all that said, I still had fun. I still think there's a lot of cleverness here. And maybe I just have had a lower bar this season because it's been quite underwhelming for me. But I still have seen things this year and I've been like, no, not not this one.
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A
And I.
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B
And I enjoyed Hard of Rock and Roll. So what have you? Last show on our list before we eventually get to our interview with Mr. Jack Viertel, is the play Stereophonic. An immediate transfer from Playwrights Horizons. This three hour plus epic is about a fictional band recording their sophomore album and finding out while they're recording that their freshman album became the number one record in the country. It takes place in the 1970s, I think. 1978, I believe that's the year. Let me see, 1976. Sorry. It's the first two acts are June through July of 76 and then September of 76. Then we come back after intermission, it is December of 76, then March of 77, and then June of 77. And it's obviously not, you know, every day straight through, they take breaks. They have to go do concerts. They got to do other stuff. But, yeah, no. So I guess it's over the course of a year while they make this album. And it's the bandmates, which is their lead female singer, their lead guitarist, who also writes a lot of the songs and arranges a lot of the songs, their bassist, their drummer, who's also now their manager, their second female vocal and piano player, and then the two engineers running the studio while they record. And one of the engineers ends up getting promoted as producer because he ends up just sort of doing way more than he was hired to do. And to the band's credit, they promote him for all of his hard work, but he has to deal with a lot. And I didn't know much about this play other than it was supposed to be very good and that the score was really good as written by Will Butler. I also didn't know that this play was kind of loosely inspired by Fleetwood Mac. I mean, it's not actually Fleetwood Mac, but it's in the same way that Dreamgirls isn't actually about the Supremes, but it's that it's kind of about the Supremes. The writer of Stereophonic definitely took inspiration from that band and their history. I don't know Fleetwood Mac terribly well, but I do listen to a podcast called Dis and tell about many feuds throughout history, most of them celebrities. And one of them was about Fleetwood Mac, about Stevie Nicks and her partner at the time when they joined the band. They are no longer together. I don't remember his name. Please don't ask me again. I don't know this kind of stuff very well. But all of that is present in the play. What did I think of it, guys, this has been the season of plays. The plays have been mopping the fucking floor with all the musicals this year. Not every play has been fantastic. You know, I hated Shark is Broken. I was underwhelmed by the Cottage. I found Greyhouse to be kind of meh. I think this revival of Doubt is, you know, perfectly fine for a regional theater. It's not an exciting production. Teresa Rebeck's play in quotes. I need that is. It exists. But on the other end of that, we have Appropriate, which is fantastic. We have An Enemy of the People, which was fantastic. Pearly Victorious was delightful. Jaja's African hair braiding was delightful. You know, I. I preferred Prayer for the French Republic Off Broadway, half the cast was different then, and I think that the cast. That the cast changes for Broadway were weaker. And also, once it was on a larger stage, some of the air in the play was more apparent to me. But it's still a very strong play, a lot of it quite compelling and very well acted by many cast members, very well directed. You know, if that play was a surprising 9 out of 10 for me, off Broadway, on Broadway, it was about an 8, maybe a 7.5 to 8 somewhere in that respect. And then we have something like Stereophonic, which is just fantastic. Yes, it is long, and I think Act 1 maybe feels a bit more of that length than Act Two, but, my God, is it compelling? First of all, yes, the music is great. We only hear two or three songs in total, but we hear quite a lot of songs, you know, snippets of songs, and it's fascinating to hear how it comes together. You hear, you know, a melody line or a chord progression, and then you hear it being put into an actual song. One scene later, you'll hear somebody record vocals solo in the studio, and you don't know how it's fitting into the rest of the song. And then they play it back with the musicians, and it sounds so cool. The sound design for this thing is fucking stellar. The lighting design is really beautiful. This set, which is, you know, hyper realistic by David Zinn, is so smartly utilized. And the cast is absolutely fantastic. This is some brilliant ensemble work. I'm talking, like, everyone's got beautiful chemistry. Everyone has a fully realized character, even if they don't have a lot of stage time or a lot to say. They have their characters down cold. The actors playing the bandmates all sing and play their musician, play their instruments live on stage. I mean, there's. I gotta say, the Tonys are gonna Have a really hard time picking which actors to point out for nominations. I know that Eli Gelb, who plays Peter, the engineer, who then gets promoted to producer on the album, he got nominated for the Lucille Lortel recently, and that'll help. That helps us point us in the right direction. And I definitely would nominate him. He was wonderful. His character. It takes a minute for his character to kind of become this focal point of the show, the center of the show, but once he does, he just does beautiful work. Everyone in it is great. Will Brill plays Reg, who is the bassist. And he has his own demons. He's an alcoholic. He is married to one of the bandmates. He's married to what's her face? Holly. He's married to Holly, and their marriage is definitely on the rocks. They're, you know, the British couple. The drummer is also British. And he does. He's just. He's very charming, even when he's being awful. And he's funny and he's sad and, you know, sometimes even a little sexy. And that's great. Juliana Canfield as Holly is wonderful. She plays a very smart, very strong character who nonetheless crumbles sometimes in situations that you don't expect her to. Sarah Pidgeon as Diana, which is the sort of Stevie Nicks character, a phenomenal voice. She's a beautiful individual. They give her amazing costumes. The costumes in this show are also fucking on point. But she's got such a natural air about her. Like she just comes on stage and you don't even think you're watching an actress. You're just watching a musician from 1976 about to record an album. And she's got wonderful chemistry with Juliana Canfield as Holly, their best friend. And they're. Their relationship was one that I really loved watching on stage. The intimacy that they had with each other, the love and the trust. And when they would be mad at each other or feel betrayed by each other, it was just so believable as two friends who are basically sisters, two soulmates in a situation that is both the best thing that's ever happened to them, this band success. And one of the worst things, because the success is also kind of tearing the band apart. You also have. Who else? We have Eli Gelb as Grover. That's the engineerist. We have Andrew Butler as Charlie. That's. I think, the co. Yeah, that's the co engineer on the album. Small Role. He doesn't do a lot. He's mostly there for reactions, but he's very good at them. So, you know, Pop off this. Peter is Tom Pasinka. He is the writer of most of the songs. He's that lead guitarist. He's in a relationship with Diana, played by Sarah Pidgeon. And their relationship is bad. You don't realize how bad it is until about halfway through act one. He's very controlling, and he's a genius. His character is a genius of what he does. He has this vision, and he's brilliant at carrying it out. But he's also a giant dick. And he is so childish about wanting his way all the time and just not understanding why people don't get what he's going for. Or when he gives feedback, it's so harsh to him. It's, you know. Well, it's. It's the truth. And it's to the point I don't. We don't have time to beat around the bush. And they're like, you gotta treat us like human beings and like collaborators. He's like, but you're not my collaborators. I do all the work. And that's not even true because a lot of them do write stuff. Sarah, pigeons, Diana, she writes a whole song and all these other things, and it takes a strain on their relationship. And there's this phenomenal scene between the two of them where she is trying to stand her ground, and you just watch him fully gaslight her. And he doesn't mean to. He's just so narcissistic. He can't possibly empathize. He has no way of putting himself in her shoes. And he has some points, because the scene they have is about how he treats her when they're in the studio in front of the band. His feedback about the songs that she writes. Even if his feedback do make the songs better, or. Sorry, even if his feedback does make her songs better, he does it in a way that's hypercritical and pushy and embarrassing. Because he does it in public. He doesn't even have the decency to do it in private. Like, if you're gonna give me the tough love, do it in a safe space when we're alone. But he doesn't do that. And he doesn't understand why she needs any of that. And then when she brings up things he's done in the past that have hurt her, that she's still holding on to, when he counters with things, some of the points he makes are valid. You sold my guitar. Well, you never practiced with it. It's like, well, it's because I was working so I could afford the rent. We had to Pay for our apartment so you could write songs. He goes, no, no, no. You said that you would work so I could write the songs because I'm the one who knows music. And that's all true. I say it's all true. I know it. I'm not part of their lives. But it could be true on both ends. But he is not allowing her to say, I am upset about this. Allow me to be upset about this. You need to understand that what you did hurt me. Even if you had your reasons, it hurt me. And he won't give her that. And he just keeps on barraging her with all of his reasons, rather than saying, I understand where you're coming from. Let me say my piece now. It's just, no, you're wrong. You're wrong. That's not what the truth is. That wasn't what our life is. And I won't spoil what continues to happen with them and the band. But it seems like that where you're like, oh, God, I've been in these situations. I've seen people do this. You do feel like a fly on the wall, which is something that they have been sort of promoting the show as is like, you're a fly on the wall for this recording, for this album, which I feel like makes it feel like the play is drier than it is or less compelling than it is. And there are moments where you're watching and you go, oh, you know, we're kind of just sitting here and living in the moment. But there's a lot of tension in the show. There's a lot of drama. It's. Guys, this show is just really good. And I can totally see it being a major, major heavy hitter at the Tonys this year. I mean, best play nomination done. Direction done. You know, if they don't get at least three acting nominations, I don't think anyone in this show is necessarily the lead. It is very much an ensemble show. Some roles are larger than others. I could see a world in which the Tony committee decides they're going to put Eli Gelb and Tom Pasinka into lead actor and maybe even Sarah Pidgeon into lead actress. It would be a mistake, but I could see that happening. Those three would probably be my main three for nominations. I would also make a note for Will Brill, but, I mean, if anybody here gets nominated, I would be thrilled. Everyone does a wonderful job. I think they should be nominated for all the design categories. They should win Sound design. Now, the lighting design is so effective. The costumes are period appropriate, and Stunning. Half the times, half the shit that Sarah Pidgeon wears, I was just in awe of set design. It's such a. Such a realistic, specific set that it's just mind blowing. And, yeah, score, I think they could definitely get in for score. The songs are so catchy. They're beautiful. They're arranged well. They're of the era. And there's no real musical theater score so far this year that everyone is getting behind. You know, I enjoyed the score for the Outsiders. I had a friend who just saw it tonight, and he was like, girl, I hated that score. My friend Patrick, when I went to see it with him, he hated the score, too. I think the score for Water for Elephants is pure liquid. It just sort of washes over you and goes away. I have friends who really enjoyed that score. People who think that the Notebook score is beautiful. People think that the Notebook score is amateur. I think it's sort of somewhere in between. Here Lies Love might be my favorite score of a new musical this season. And even that score, I would really give an 8 out of 10. It's not one that I'm going to the mat for so hard. So, like, Stereo Fauna could. Could happen. I don't. Ultimately, I don't think it will win because I think Tony voters are quite rigid with that kind of stuff. But I see a nomination very much happening for them. A win is not out of possibility. I just wouldn't put my money on it. And that's Stereophonic. It's a. This is a shorter review than the other two, but it's because I had fewer issues with stereophonic, you know. Yeah, you could probably cut five between five and 10 minutes of act one just to not have any sagging areas. And there are no moments when act one sags so much as the last 30 minutes. I wasn't quite sure when we were getting to our end of the act. There were two or three different moments where I was like, oh, yeah, we could totally end act one here. And we didn't. And that's fine. Where it ends is totally great, but that's really, like, my only note. I found it so compelling and. And intelligent and nuanced. So many plays these days. I feel like the writers want to make sure the audience knows how they're supposed to feel, how a character is supposed to come off. And everyone in Stereophonic has a moment where they are doing the right thing and when they're doing a crappy thing, when they're being smart and when they're being a child. And that's like the shit of the human experience. And that's what's so fun in a play. You know, Appropriate does that very well, but Appropriate is about a much more intense theme. You know, Stereophonic has a lot of tension in it, but ultimately, at the end of the day, it's about a band making an album. But art matters to us. It has an impact on us. So, you know, for them, they want to create something good a for themselves. They want to get to the next level. They want to keep the success going, prove that they aren't just their one good album, but also on the other side of that, if they do make something that's good that keeps them going, they make something that lasts and something that brings a lot of joy to a lot of people. And the proof of that is how many people were in the audience last night when I saw this show who were Fleetwood Mac fans and went not knowing anything about the show other than that it was inspired by that band. And that is, I think, very magical. And those are my thoughts. We next have we're going to take a quick break in just a second, but we have Mr. Jack virtel coming on to talk to us about his new novel Broadway Melody, as well as talk about his career working at City Center, Encores, working at Jude Jamison working as a critic. You know, some of his experiences on Broadway. He talks about being out of town with Grand Hotel, which was a disaster until it wasn't a disaster anymore, some people and stories that are influences for his novel, how he writes. It's a really fantastic interview. I'm really excited. So please stick around after the break to listen to that before we continue. I say at the end of the episode, at the end of the Jack interview, if you like the podcast, give us a nice five star rating, write us a little review. We got a new review after I recorded with Jack and I want to read it. It's not a five star review. It is a three star review, which you know is not always the best thing. But if you take the time to write the review, I want to take the time to read it. And honesty and our opinions is like the name of the game on this podcast. So why not listen to someone who maybe isn't as enthralled with this podcast as others might be and maybe I'll learn a little something from it as well. Full disclosure, I did read this review before the episode and I tried to take some of it into account when I recorded. Maybe I succeeded, maybe I didn't. Who knows Play the lightning the piazza over Churn Music, please. Five stars. Good content. Mouth throat sounds, however, and then it gets cut off because of Apple podcast structure. Fellow misophonia sufferers, beware. The content can be enjoyable, interesting at times, but might not be worth the triggers you'll find throughout. Be warned of the forceful throat clearings and audible swallowing, and perhaps most horribly, the tongue click snaps that occur each time he opens his mouth back up after the aforementioned throat clearing and swallowing. Hats off to the folks who can listen without noticing and or caring. I just can't. Sad face emoji. I am so sorry that that's the case for you. I don't mean to make this a bad listening experience for anybody. I do know that sometimes I can smack my tongue as I open my mouth. That just is something that happens due to dry mouth. I try to drink some water before I record. After I record. I don't think I do much throat clearing on the podcast. There have been one or two episodes where that's happened because I've been sick. I know that was the case with the Heathers episode, and maybe the person who wrote that review was listening to Heathers, but I don't think I cough too much on this podcast. I also, I don't really do a lot of snapping either. Sorry, I should say not finger snapping. Maybe they mean like a tongue snap, tongue click, post throat clearing or whatever. I say, um, a lot. That is another thing I do and I've tried to be better about that. That is something that I've noticed by recording and having to listen to myself. But that's not even a misophonia thing. That's just me listening to my own stupid voice and going, stop saying so much. Take a beat before you say your next thought. Have the sentence ready to go, and then say the thing. That's what my dad does anyway. It makes it annoying to talk to him sometimes because he'll pause and and then you think you can talk and he'll just start talking again. But the man knows what the sentence is going to be when he opens his mouth. So I'm sorry that that was your experience. And if anyone else has experiences like that, you know, feel free to tell me. I did stop eating on the podcast because I had enough of you reach out and be like, can you stop? It affects my ears and I did. So hopefully in the future I will have fewer coughs, fewer throat clears, and fewer tongue clicks. And that reviewer, if you are so inclined in the future to give us another shot, please Do. So if you disagree with that review or if you're like, yeah, no, that's true, but it doesn't bother me, you know, Godspeed. But, yeah, that's our. That's our first three star review on Maine, and I'm glad that we got it. I hope to get more five star ratings and reviews coming up. We're very close to 200 ratings and I would love to hit that very soon. You know, we got this one which brought us to 195. I would like maybe five more that like me a bit more than that. But we digress. We'll take it if we can. So that's that. As I said, please stick around for the second half of this episode, which is with the legendary Jack Virtel. It's a wonderful interview. I'm very excited about it. We will take a quick break and get to that. So without further ado, let's just take that quick break. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow caller. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred. Hello, Jack Viertel. Thank you for coming to Broadway Breakdown.
- [70:01]
A
I'm very glad to be on Broadway Breakdown. I'm glad to see you.
- [70:04]
B
Glad to see you, too. I'm sure you are tired of hearing this, but you clearly have had such a illustrious and varied career. You've done pretty much everything. You. You and Elaine May are kind of my role models of people who have just done absolutely all the things. And because when people are like, do you want to be a writer, an actor or critic? I'm like, can't I be all of them? Life's so short. Why must I do one job?
- [70:28]
A
But I have nothing but admiration for Elaine May. She's a great hero of mine. But my, you know. But my lodestar has always been Harpo Marx. Because you seem so happy.
- [70:37]
B
Yeah. Anyone who's happy and content, it's like, let me. Let me go to where they are. But you've done absolutely everything. You've been a critic, you've been a dramaturg, you've been an artistic director, you've worked with Jude Jamison, a few of. You've had three shows that you've conceived on Broadway after Midnight, Smokey Joe's Cafe and the Prom.
- [70:56]
A
Yeah.
- [70:57]
B
Yep. And then you also have written books. You have written the Secret Life of the American How Broadway Shows Are Built, which. Oh, what do I have Here. Oh, it's. There it is right there in my hand. And you've recently written a novel, Broadway Melody?
- [71:10]
A
I have. My first, yeah.
- [71:13]
B
So tell us.
- [71:14]
A
The one I wrote when I was an undergraduate at college, which thankfully nobody published.
- [71:18]
B
Oh, yeah, no, that's. That's the bad pancake. You get that one out of the way.
- [71:21]
A
That was supposed to be the great American novel, but it turned out not to be.
- [71:24]
B
Yeah, I mean, every. All. We all think we're going to write the great American novel of the great American musical, and then we're just glad no one ever gets to see it so we can move on to the better thing. Tell me about Broadway Melody. How. What is it about for all my listeners who are maybe unfamiliar and then what inspired you to write it?
- [71:41]
A
What it's about, actually, is three characters who interact in a kind of triangulated romance that goes on for decades and decades and decades who are people of Broadway. I mean, that woman who's an actress or actor, as we now say, who's. Who begins as an ingenue in a musical and ends many, many, many years later doing a revival of a musical as an old person, older person, a trumpet player who falls in love with her, and a spotlight operator who also falls in love with her. And it. It traces their romance through many eras of Times Square and Broadway, beginning really in the 60s. The romance really begins in 1960, but we also get their stories up to 1960, so we know who they are by the time they fall in love. And it ends in about 2016 when they're quite elderly. But it allowed me to write about not only them, but about how they interact with the various phases of Times Squares, going from being reasonably glamorous to being reasonably seedy to being kind of a hellhole, to its resuscitation, thanks in large part to the Disney Corporation and the Times Square Redevelopment Corporation, into something that now feels more like a mall than like. Than like the individual place it was. Even when it was not at its most glamorous, all of the. The things about it that marked it were unique. You know, there was a big ad for Camel cigarettes with a man's face that actually blew smoke out. Now, of course, and this is not just true of Times Square, it's true of every place. You know, most of the stores are national brands. Most of the people who are there are not from New York. They're tourists who come to see Times Square. It's just a different experience than it was. So it's been through it all. And I Decided I would try to put my characters through it all as well. Yeah.
- [73:43]
B
And from the few pages that I was allowed to read. It seems that you incorporate them into actual historical. Into actual theater history. In the same way that, you know, El Doctro in Ragtime incorporates his characters into history. And then Steve Martin in An Object of Beauty, which is. That actually might be a deep cut for some of my listeners. Steve Martin wrote a book called An Object of Beauty. And it's like Ragtime for the art world. He's got three characters who aren't real. But they go through things that happened in real time in the early 2000s. So it seems like that's similar to your characters. Because it seems that everything sort of circled around the Winter Garden Theater as well. Like, that's a major character in the book.
- [74:20]
A
Yes. I mean, I think I was interested in writing about Broadway history. And I come from a family that has a certain amount of Broadway history going back to the A Depression. And the only way to do it, it seemed to me, was to create three characters. I guess, like Steve Martin did. I don't actually know that book. I know Ragtime very well. I would not aspire to be as good a book as Ragtime. And then to use those characters as ways of talking about everything from, you know, the destruction of the Morozco and the Helen Hayes theaters. To the AIDS crisis and that plague that went on for years. To the changing world of what a musical sounds like and why. To all of these different things that happened on Broadway. And also at the same time, to give them adventures that they could only have on Broadway. But that are entirely fictional.
- [75:21]
B
Absolutely. What would you say was one of the things you were most looking forward to while writing it. And something that you were perhaps nervous about attacking while writing this book?
- [75:34]
A
Well, it was interesting. I started out with a character. And the character's name in the novel is Ike Harris. And he's based only very, very slightly. A man named Red Press, who I knew very well. And who was actually not a trumpet player. He was a reed player, mainly a saxophone player. And he played in the original pit orchestra of gypsy in the 50s. And he was still playing in the Encores orchestra in the mid 2000s at age 85. And we got to be friends. And he had lived through many, many of these eras and events on Broadway. And I just found him a fascinating character. Now, the character I created, other than the beginning parts of the book. Is entirely different from who Red Press actually was. But I had that idea that someone who had been in the business that long was a way of starting. And then I. And then I came across this story of a soprano, young soprano, this is completely true story, who was in the ensemble at Encores, who said to me, you know, just in casual conversation during a rehearsal one day, you know, this is going to be my last encores because I'm moving to Germany to get married. And I said, oh, that's very exciting. Why not? Why, you're entitled to get married. But how did that happen? And she said, well, I was playing the lead in Phantom of the Opera in a German tour of Phantom of the Opera, and the spotlight operator fell in love with me, who was following the guy who was following my character throughout the evening, eight times a week without ever talking to me. And he appeared in my dressing room one night and he said, I've fallen in love with you. And I thought, well, there you go. There's a romantic story that could only happen in the theater, and why shouldn't Ike Harris be in love with the same girl? And that's what happens. So, you know, both men are pursuing the same woman, one from 60ft above the stage and one from 12ft below the stage. Neither of them are actors, but they both are part of one of the things I wanted to write about, which was who really puts on Broadway shows every night? Of course, you see the actors and of course, you know, the famous directors and writers and some cases the producers. What you don't. You don't really know if you're an audience member is how much your own emotions are affected by people. You never see or think about that trumpet player who has that solo, that. That spotlight operator who causes you to focus on one character rather than another. All those people who come to work every day and. And. And make your experience happen. And that was kind of the impulse. And the thing that frightened me the most, if I can use that word, was that I never had a real outline. I had an ending, and I. And I knew I had to get to the ending, but it was sort of like a maze in a way. You know, you know where the front door is and you know where the marshmallows at the end of the line are. But you. But how do you get there? And so I just kept writing and rewriting and writing and rewriting, and, you know, one way or another, I got there. Yeah, that was the most disconcerting part, was I would stop writing for the day and think, how am I going to get to the. I know kind of what the thing after the next Thing is. But what's the thing, you know.
- [78:44]
B
Yeah.
- [78:44]
A
On the other hand, I have to say that as nervous as some of that made me, it's also the most fun. It's like being in a. You know, it's like being in any game where you're not sure you can win and you're trying to plot out the next moves and see if you can, you know, clear the hurdle or not.
- [78:59]
B
Absolutely. That's one of my favorite stories about. As I'm sure you're aware, because you worked on the thing with Angels in America. When Tony Kushner was writing it, he was commissioned to just write one play, and he kept writing, and Oscar Eustace was like, are you done yet? He's like. He's like, I can't get these characters to change fast enough. And Oscar Eustis is like, what are you talking about? You created them. Get them to change fast enough. He's like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, I keep writing, and I don't know how I'm going to get to my conclusion. So they just made it two parts. And I was like, that's. I love it when that happens with writers. When you have your idea, you know, what is you want to do with it, and then as you're writing it, it starts to surprise you, and you're like, I have no idea where it's going to go next. I know where it's going to end up. Up, but I don't know how it's going to get there just yet. And that's. Yeah, as you said, it's a fun, terrifying moment.
- [79:44]
A
You know, August Wilson once once told me, because I worked on six of his plays, when he was beginning to write Seven Guitars, which starts at a funeral, not after a funeral, when everybody has come back to the house after a funeral and these characters are talking to each other about, oh, it was a nice funeral and a good sermon and all that. And one of them says, did you see those angels that came down and lifted him up into the sky? And. And another character says, those weren't angels. Those were men from the funeral homes. And they weren't men from the funeral home. Those were. Those were angels. He said, I had absolutely no idea that character was going to say that. Did you see those angels? I didn't know that. The character said it to me, and I wrote it down, you know, and then I had to figure out what it meant.
- [80:28]
B
Exactly. It's when the muses truly take over, because we. I feel like we always roll Our eyes. When people get very purpley about artistry and, you know, the creativity, and then when it actually happens to you, you're like, oh, I get it now.
- [80:41]
A
Yeah, it's scary. You get an idea, you know, in the shower and you don't know where it came from.
- [80:46]
B
Exactly. You mentioned Encores earlier. I don't know if I said this while we were talking. I know I said this in your intro because it's one of my favorite credits of yours. You were the artistic director at Encores for many, many years. You won't remember this because I'm sure many people did this too. So. My grandmother used to work at City center for a few years. She worked at Lincoln center for the 90s and then worked at City center for a few years. And when I was 13, I typed up a list of the shows I wanted Encores to do, gave it to her so she could give it to you. Now, I don't know if she ever did. She claimed she did, but she might have just been placating me. But at the top of the list was the Apple Tree. And the very next year, y' all did the apple Tree. And I, I've. I've always.
- [81:25]
A
Because of her.
- [81:26]
B
Yes, because of Chris and Shadow.
- [81:27]
A
She gave me the list. And we'll just go down the list and we'll do whatever it says.
- [81:32]
B
Well, that is what I've told everyone for years now. But I know it's not true because number three on the list was Smile. And Smile still hasn't been done in Encores. And I, I've been. I've been tempted to write Lear a letter, but I was like, I feel like Jack probably at least read the letter knowing when it came from a 13 year old Lear is not going to read a letter from a 30 something year old man in New York telling her to do Smile.
- [81:53]
A
She might, she might, she might. She's very open. And, you know, one thing about Encores was people were constantly, not necessarily giving me lists, but giving me suggestions. And some of them came from people who assumed I had never heard of any of these shows that they were suggesting. But in fact, we had a list of virtually every show produced from, you know, the turn of the century to the present in chronological order. And we would have meetings and say, you know, what about this one? What about that one one? It is true that we have not done Smile, but it's out there for her to do.
- [82:24]
B
It's out there for her to do. I took it very personally for many years that it was Never done. And I only bring it up because my listeners have heard me talk about it many times. So they would all be remiss if I didn't at least say that to you while you were here on Zoom with me.
- [82:35]
A
There you go.
- [82:36]
B
But what. What would go into the decision making with shows for Encores? Because, I mean, you're right. I'm sure people, you know, always would be like, have you heard of this one? And it's like when you're. Your friend who's not in the industry sends you a link to an article from the Times about theater, and it's like, yeah, I know about that. Thank you very much. It's like, I appreciate the thought, but I know this already. I mean, you have all these shows at your disposal. How did you. What was usually the thought process in selecting them?
- [83:02]
A
Well, it was really initially a process that I went through with Rob Fisher, who was the first music director of Encores, and then with Rob Berman, who was the continuing music director at Encores. And we would sit around. It was a delightful and entirely unscientific process. The first part of it was, what show do you really want to see? And if we could land on that, like, I really want to do Carnival, then it would be, okay, so we're going to do Carnival. This is early on in the Rob show.
- [83:32]
B
I remember when Carnival happened. That's one of my dad's favorite shows. He was so thrilled y' all did it.
- [83:37]
A
So we just started by saying, okay, we're going to Carnival. Now we need two other shows. Here's the mission to the greatest degree possible. They can't be anything like Carnival. They can't come from the same era as Carnival. And they have to be practical in terms of being able to do them. And what I mean by that is a shocking number of shows exist where the orchestration is lost, particularly with older shows, but even with some more recent shows where there's no definitive script, it's. So we would just go around and around and try to say, well, okay, Carnival is not really a big, noisy party comedy show. Let's pick one of those. So then we would, you know, and we would work our way around. And sometimes the show we started with first, like, I want to do Carnival, didn't. Didn't end up in the three. It just got eliminated little by little. Not that year, but some years, and then maybe we'd do it the following year. But it was always a matter of trying to have contrast, have one show that was really less well known, that usually sat in the middle of the season that could be buttressed by two shows that were at least a little more well known so that it could support the middle show, which was, would no doubt be the one with the smallest audience, would be supported by the other two. And it was just so much fun. And then in some cases, the question of whether the show could be done or not was one we couldn't answer immediately. We would say, well, let's do, oh, I don't know, I'm just trying to think of an example of 50 million Frenchmen Nicole Porter show and, and then you go hunt down the orchestrations and the script and see how much of it exists and how much of it doesn't. Actually, in the case of 50 million Frenchmen, which we never did, there, there, there is a restored orchestration which I'm sure all your listeners are passionate about.
- [85:30]
B
But, but my listeners are a varied bunch. They sometimes DM me about things and I'm like, good on you. I, I didn't know that you could find that.
- [85:40]
A
Yeah. So, you know, it was, as I say, an entirely unscientific process and an enormous amount of fun. And there were other participants. I mean, once we got sort of like, okay, here are six or seven, then Arlene Schuler and before her, Judith Dakin, who were the various presidents of City center, you know, had to be consulted. It wasn't like we just had free reign to put throw up there. Whatever we wanted to, we had, we did have to make some kind of sense.
- [86:06]
B
Has there ever been a situation where maybe a well known actor came to you and said, like, have you thought about doing this show for encores? Because I would like to do it.
- [86:14]
A
A couple of times that and a couple of times the opposite. And when I say the opposite, I don't mean they didn't want to do.
- [86:19]
B
It, but that you approached an actor and were like, we think you would be great for this.
- [86:23]
A
Yes. Laura Benanti said, I would like to do Rosabella and the Most Happy Fella. And so we said, okay, all right, if you insist.
- [86:33]
B
Twist my arm, Benanti.
- [86:35]
A
Right. And. And there was a moment when Jay Binder, who was the casting director for Encores for all of its life until I left in 2020 and he died the following year, said he called me on the phone and he said, if Patti LuPone wants to do Cancan, we should do Cancan. If she doesn't, we shouldn't do Cancan. So I said, that actually makes a lot of sense because it's not A great show. It has five, you know, standards in it, but the show itself is not. So I. I contacted Patti LuPone's agent and I said, ask her if she wants to do Cancat. She said, yes. So we did Cancan. And that happened a couple of times, too.
- [87:11]
B
Have there been shows where you were surprised once they went up, how strong they were, and then shows where you were convinced they were going to work better, and then you saw them on their feet and you're like, oh, I see why no one has done this in 50 years.
- [87:24]
A
Both. Yeah, there have been. It's funny when you read a show on paper and even when you play through the score on the piano, know, you don't necessarily know what's going to happen when you get it up there, you know, out there, full out. And it can also depend on the director and the casting and, you know, a lot of other elements that can make it better or not as good as you had hoped. But, yeah, I'm trying to think of shows that were stronger than I thought there were. There were. There were a few of them where I thought, you know, this show actually works. We're not. We're just doing this so you can hear the score sung and played the way it's supposed to be. But actually, this is a pretty good show.
- [88:03]
B
Yeah.
- [88:05]
A
And. And. And there have been one or two where I thought, either this isn't. This show doesn't work as well as I thought, or you get to the dress for final dress rehearsal and you think, damn, I wish I could start again. I wish I had another crack at this one. We made a mistake, or we made eight mistakes or 20 mistakes. But generally speaking, the shows that we thought were going to work worked, and the shows that we thought were going to be of. Of interest because their scores were beautiful and the shows didn't particularly work, came out that way. I would say.
- [88:39]
B
Yeah. I remember seeing Superman. When Was that? Like, 2013, 2014. And. And everyone just sort of walked around being like, I think the show actually is quite good. Like, why have we not heard from this in a while? It was. It was. It's always a delighted encores. With intermission, everyone kind of looks around and sort of test the water of, like, we're gonna say it right. Like, this show actually is really good. Like, yeah, yeah, because I think it was. Yeah, because you always. You always go in being like, at the very least, I'm gonna hear a beautiful score tonight, and we'll sort of see how the book scenes go. And then that was One where we were like. I kind of also like the book scenes.
- [89:12]
A
This is.
- [89:12]
B
This is a delightful surprise.
- [89:15]
A
Superman was a delightful surprise. And I. It was a show I always sort of loved that we were gonna do in 2001. And just before we announced the season, 9, 11 happened. And what happens at the end of the first act of Superman is that the biggest building in town gets blown up by terrorists. So we thought, well, there goes that idea. And we waited a full, you know, 12 or 13 years before we did it. And then finally we thought, okay, everyone has calmed down enough so that in a comic context, we can do this.
- [89:44]
B
Yeah, there's enough of a disaster. Would you remember the show that replaced Superman that year? Year.
- [89:49]
A
I don't.
- [89:50]
B
I'll look it up at Wikipedia.
- [89:52]
A
You can look it up. It would be. It would be the 2002 season, I guess, because 2001, 911 was. Was, you know, at the end of the year. So.
- [90:01]
B
Yeah. And it would probably have been like, the middle show, I would assume. But even so, I would think. Yeah. And then you also have been with G. Jamson for many, many years, and that's a case where you're constantly getting scripts for new works and then testing the waters with that when you're. When you would read a script. Because you also have come at shows from every angle one could come at, other than, you know, being the Ethel Merman on stage. Like, you've pretty much been every part.
- [90:29]
A
Yeah, I haven't been.
- [90:31]
B
Yeah, not. Not yet. They're. Not yet. That's. I think. I think that should be. Your next book is called Not Yet. But when you're reading a script.
- [90:42]
A
Is.
- [90:42]
B
There anything that you constantly kind of have to look for to make sure that it's something that could be done or could work on stage or is there really no rhyme or reason? It's just whatever you gravitate towards and then you hope for the best?
- [90:55]
A
No, I think. I think generally speaking, you look for certain things, but then you can be completely fooled. I always look for really, a couple of things. And I should say at the outset, we didn't really produce many shows at Drew Jamison that started with me reading a script. The first couple we did, but they were, you know, one was by David Huang and one was by August Wilson. So they weren't exactly things that flew in over the transom. I always look for a really strong leading character or pair of leading characters, because even back then, it was important to convince important actors to be in plays on Broadway, because plays on Broadway were Always a tough sell. I mean, when I say always, always in my time, a tough, tough sell. So, you know, it was. It was harder to do completely ensemble shows and expect them to succeed, although we did a couple. And the other thing I always looked for was, does this story actually capture my imagination all the way through to the end? Does the show end in a way that's satisfying or is it simply a show that has some interesting characters in it and it's well written? And. And I think the other thing for me was size. Not physical size, like size of the ideas. Is this. Is there a reason why an audience should sit in a theater for two and a half hours? Because something is happening that's bigger than themselves. That's not just a domestic. Even if it's a domestic drama, is it telling us something about the way families interact that's bigger than just a situation comedy or whatever. Whatever. But most plays that we did and musicals that we did were developed from a stage beyond the original script being written. Not all. We started, we began the Secret Garden and Jelly's Last Jam, but. And there probably are a few others, but. But generally speaking, we were partners with producers who had done the play, you know, at the La Jolla Playhouse or were about to. And so we would. I would go out and. And look at it. You know, they were further along than just being scripts on paper.
- [93:07]
B
How long was the gestation process for Secret Garden? Because I don't. I weirdly don't know a lot about its pre Broadway life. And that's one that I know a lot of my listeners do love, so they'll be interested to hear.
- [93:17]
A
Secret Garden began was the idea of Heidi Ettinger's. Who was Heidi Landesman in those days. She was married to Rocco Landesman, who was the president of Jejamson. And she walked in one day and said, I think we should make a musical of Secret Garden Garden. I had never even read the Secret Garden. You know, that's a girl's book as far as, as far as I was concerned when I was 12 years old. So I did quickly. And it was a. Was a gestation period, I would guess was four or five years. It was originally written. And we did a two week reading slash workshop in Saratoga, New York, which was half successful. And then there was a production at I think Virginia Stage that was not very successful. And then a lot of the personnel changed, not the writers, but a lot of the other personnel changed. And we did a workshop with what amounted to the final Broadway cast and Then we did the show. But it happened over a reasonably long period of time in those days. Nowadays that would be considered a short period of time. Exactly.
- [94:20]
B
I'll say. Like. Oh, that'd be like fast tracking. Yeah. And. And so there was. So there was. Then, because of that gestation period, there wasn't really an out of town. It was, you know, it was Saratoga, it was Virginia and then a workshop and then Broadway. It wasn't like set and then went to, you know, Chicago or LA and then came to Broadway.
- [94:40]
A
No, I mean, the, the, the traditional out of town tryouts had begun to disappear by then. You know, where you go to the Colonial Theater in Boston for four weeks and then you come crashing into New York Park. Yeah, I did do that with Grand Hotel. That was one of the two times I actually did that process, which was like being in a 40s movie about a show in trouble on the Road. I mean, it was, it was, it was every bit as melodramatic as, as you can imagine. But Secret Garden, I guess the Virginia Stage production was like a regional theater production. And then we did a full size workshop of what the Broadway show would be, which has become a much more common way of bringing a show on nowadays.
- [95:17]
B
Yeah, with Grand Hotel in Boston, which is a very famous story of, you know, first of all, we have at the grand, the show that it first was many years prior, but then we have Grand Hotel as helmed by Tommy Tune, going into Boston and not working, and then over the course of that period, finding its footing. Do you remember the moment when it looked like the show was starting to click?
- [95:41]
A
I don't remember an exact moment and I don't know that there was an exact. There must have been, I guess, an exact moment. But, you know, I mean, as I'm sure you know, your listeners may all know as well, it was a very tepid piece of material originally, which Tommy Toon felt could serve him in a way, that he wanted to stage something in a spectacular way. Very simple in a way, but very incredibly striking. But the material just didn't. Wasn't good enough, frankly. And so the day after we opened in Boston, the authors were sent packing. New authors were brought in, Maury Yeston and Peter Stone. And that really did feel sort of all about Evish. And, you know, Maury had a upright piano installed in the basement of the Colonial, and he went to work writing songs. And, and. But Tommy's attitude was, you know, I, I don't know if he ever. This is. Jerome Robbins apparently did say this, but it was the same point, which is, I can fix three things a day, and I'm going to start with the things that most need fixing, and each day I'm going to fix three things. And so it was a very gradual process. And every night the show got a little better. And I stole almost all of this experience for Broadway Melody, for a fictionalized show that I created. But a lot of the writing in that part of the novel comes out of the experience that I had in. In Boston at the Colonial and living at the Four Seasons Hotel with the producers and. And everybody was crazy. I mean, not Tommy, but almost everybody else was crazy. And it. The show just kept changing and gradually. Gradually getting better. I think what finally happened was one night, I may be making this up because it sounds too romantic even for me, but one night, you know, Michael Jeter doing. We'll. We'll Take a glass together. Absolutely. Just stop the show in its tracks. And at that point, I thought, well, the audience is paying attention. They have been paying attention for an hour and 35 minutes now or something, otherwise that this wouldn't happen. And by the time we got to New York, we also had four weeks of previews in New York. So Tommy continued to work in New York. There were plans made in Boston that couldn't be executed in Boston. And, you know, the show started to really. To really play. And it's one of the only times I've ever seen a show saved on the road, even from a distance. In this case, it wasn't from a distance, but it's hard to think of shows that open badly on the road that actually turned into successes in our era.
- [98:16]
B
Yeah, I feel like, why do you think that is? And you don't have to be specific about any people, but just when you watch shows kind of flounder and then creatives not make the necessary changes, is it. Do you think there's a confusion of sticking to your guns and your vision and not necessarily taking the constructive criticism? Is it a defense situation? Is it maybe lack of money to, you know, alter things that need altering? Is it. Oh, it can be.
- [98:47]
A
It can be all of those things. I think most frequently I. I think shows that don't work at the outset don't have the bones to work. They may have good things about them, but they don't really. There is some. Some fatal problem. It's not just a matter of fixing five or six things. There is some. Something that just does not want to happen. I've also seen lots of situations where creatives don't want to make changes because they believe. Someone was telling me a story the other day about a producer dragging an author up to a box and saying, I just want you to don't look at the show. Turn around and just watch the audience. And he said it could, because at a certain point every single night, the audience started to fall back into their seats and cough and look at their programs for about 10 minutes. And the producer said to the writer, seats, see? Can you see what's happening? That they. And the writer said, yes, but I. I like it my way. And I thought, well, okay, that show's not going to succeed.
- [99:50]
B
There you go.
- [99:51]
A
Yeah, you know, and you can go to your grave liking it your way. And to be fair, in some cases, people are pressured to make changes by producers who are purely interested in, you know, popular success at any cost and would like to cheapen shows down to the lowest common denominator level. And the creators don't want to do that. And I'm not saying they'd rather fail than do that, but maybe they would rather fail than do that. And I can't exactly blame them.
- [100:19]
B
There's some famous story. I can't remember what it was, but it was a show that wasn't playing out of town. And the. The producers came to the creative team and basically was like, what are you going to change about it? And they said, nothing. The show works. Like, we're just in the wrong town. Like, this is going to work in New York work.
- [100:39]
A
And then.
- [100:40]
B
And then, to their credit, it did, but I wish I remembered what show it was because, like, that's the exception to the rule. But I feel like oftentimes creatives will think of stories like that and be like, see, they stuck to their guns and it worked out. I'm like, yes. Like, you can't look at it that way.
- [100:52]
A
Yeah, but that. That does happen sometimes. I mean, audiences are different in different places. And, you know, I. I think it's such an. It's such a completely unscientific world. Not. Not to say there aren't principles behind and doing it well. I mean, that's what my first book is about. What are those principles? But, yeah, that. That. That happens. I mean, I think if Sunday in the park had opened and, you know, originally in Kansas City, it would have been a very different story. That's a hard show to. That's a hard show to wrap your head around, you know.
- [101:27]
B
Absolutely.
- [101:28]
A
And, you know, and in New York, it was not such a hard show to wrap your head around.
- [101:31]
B
Yeah, no, it's the environment. Definitely helps if you have. Have the people around you who get it and know what you're trying to do, it helps you figure out how to make it even better. Yeah, I was so I listened to you in an interview because I am a professional, Jack. I don't care what you've heard about me, but I am professional. I do my research. I listened to an interview with you where you were being asked from your critic days, and then, you know, as a dramaturg, what is the best advice you would give someone who's, like, coming in to maybe give notes to a show or something? And I. I. And you said something that I loved, because I agree with you. And I've said it before, you don't come into a show if you're being asked to give notes and say, here's what I would change. Here's what I would do. Like, this is the show that I believe. And you first start with, what is it you're trying to achieve as the team? Like, what kind of show are you trying to make? And then craft your notes based off of what they're trying to achieve. Help them get to their goal. Don't take over and say, here's what to do. I'm. I'm assuming, Jack, you don't watch Drag Race, RuPaul's Drag Race.
- [102:29]
A
I don't, actually. My daughter is devoted to it, but I don't. I'm an old. I'm an old person. You know, there.
- [102:35]
B
There's no way in which you ever need to. But I only say this because they have a version of it in Canada where the head judge, who is a drag queen as well, whenever they give notes, it's always like, here's what I would do. Like. Like, you have a different aesthetic from that contestant. Like, meet the contestant from what they're trying to do, and then offer them critiques to help achieve what they want. But they just like, well, this is not the taste I have, so here's my taste. And I'm like, that's. That's a terrible way to give feedback. And I feel like a lot of people do that with notes, so. I was happy to hear you say that in your interview.
- [103:08]
A
I think those kinds of notes are actually worse than useless. They're. They're. Because what they do is they create hostility. And if you can force a creative person to make a change based on that kind of a note, they won't do it well. And I'm not saying they'll sabotage it on purpose. I'M just saying, if your heart's not in your writing or not in your directing, it'll inevitably be perfunctory. You have to try to help artists realize their own vision. You can't substitute your vision for them. There's no reason to do that. And I've sometimes said to people on shows or, I don't know, you guys have said this to producers. I don't think I've ever said it to creatives when they've asked me to come on board. I don't respond to this piece, and so I won't be able to help. I'll only harm it. I don't. I don't know what they're trying to do or I don't agree with what they're trying to do, and I don't. And I'm not going to walk in there and tell them to do something else. So the best thing to do is don't let me ruin the show even more.
- [104:03]
B
Yeah. Now that's. I think that's a very wise and healthy way to look at it. I. I wrote a play about a year ago, and we had done a few readings of it, and at the third reading, I had a friend who is a critic come in and sit in, and afterwards, he was giving me all of his notes, and afterwards, I. I listened very carefully, and then I just went, you want me to write a very different play than what I want to write. And I was like, I don't mean to disparage any of your notes, sir. Just. And. And you're. And you have very good taste, but, like, I. I feel like you sat there wanting it to be something else, and so you aren't giving me the feedback I need right now. And we kind of just called it a draw after that.
- [104:41]
A
Yeah, yeah. You know that. That happens. And particularly if someone's a critic.
- [104:45]
B
Critic, yeah.
- [104:46]
A
Which I was for seven years.
- [104:47]
B
Yeah. I'm an amateur critic. I go. I go on the podcast, and I give my feedback on shows, and then sometimes I write on Instagram, thoughts I have on shows, not necessarily because I consider myself a critic, but because I do find the discourse in theater right now to not be great. It's either very harsh for the sake of visibility on social media, or it's toxically positive because they don't want to offend anybody. And I'm like, well, now no one. I'm like, now no one's really growing from this because you either.
- [105:16]
A
No one knows what's going on.
- [105:17]
B
Exactly. You either are offending them or you're placating them and who, and who wants that?
- [105:21]
A
Right?
- [105:22]
B
Yeah. But bringing this back to your book for a second, you were, I was so ready to transition back to Broadway Melody when you connected it to Grand Hotel. And then we got, or, sorry, I got distracted and got more excited by everything else.
- [105:33]
A
I'm never distracted. That's what, I want to talk about it all the time.
- [105:36]
B
All the time. Let me talk about my book for, please. No, but, so when people read Broadway Melody, they'll, they'll get to the part that is clearly Grand Hotel coded. And if they've listened to this episode, they'll know, ah, these are these, some of these might be some reworded stories from the Grand Hotel era.
- [105:54]
A
Yeah, I mean, they're, they're in the book. This woman whose name is Aurora Shelton goes out of town in a musical, which she is very fond of. The script and the, and the songs and the thing, for one reason or another, opens badly, mainly because it has a very inexperienced director. Opens badly. And then the producer, who is not based on the producer of Grand Hotel, but another producer, you know, explains to her how he's going to fix the show and does fix the show and the Met. The things that were done in the novel were very similar to the things that were done in Grand Hotel. New writers, new, you know, some new ideas, some new stadium, a new, a new director. In Grand Hotel, of course, there was not a new director. There was Tommy Tune all the way through, thank God. And you know, I, I, I, I, I, it's, I tossed the salad a little bit, but, but the experience of being out of town, being in trouble and getting back to New York and having solved the problems enough at least, you know, that, that, that definitely, that part of the novel definitely comes from Grand Hotel. And there are other, you know, I've written about other real flops in the, in the, in the book. Pooh Cafe being one of them, which was a three performance musical that I.
- [107:14]
B
Think on page two of, of the book or again of the section that I read, you mentioned both the vamp and Shangri La in one page. And I was like, this is my kind of book.
- [107:23]
A
Well, yeah, because they were both at the Winter Garden, right?
- [107:25]
B
They sure were, yeah.
- [107:26]
A
Yeah, yeah. And the Winter Garden was the most important theater to me for entirely private reasons. My grandmother and my parents took me to see Peter Pan when I was just short of six years old with Mary Martin at the Winter Garden. And then the big flop in the novel, which is a show called Nowhere to Go, but up, which is a real show. But I had to move it back two years from 1962 to 1960, which I also saw at the Winter Garden. And west side Story was at the Winter Garden, and Juno was at the Winter Garden. So the Winter Garden has been a very, very important place for me, at a very sentimental place for me. And my part of my yearning about it has to do with the fact that between the day that Cats opened and the day that Mamma Mia Closed, I had no reason to go to the Winter Garden. I mean, I went once to each show, but there was years went by when I couldn't go to the Winter Garden. I know after Flop, I could go every week. I saw All American at the Winter Garden. You know, I was there all time. The talk.
- [108:25]
B
All American. I, I, I love the Winter Garden because. So I used to give walking tours of Broadway in my younger days and the Winter Garden. A lot of Broadway theaters, for those of you who don't know, a lot of them started their life as movie palaces and then became converted into Broadway houses. The Winter Garden started off as the New York Horse Exchange. And so.
- [108:45]
A
Exactly. Yes.
- [108:46]
B
Yeah. So the architecture of that theater is just so different for every place else. It is, is incredibly wide. It's, it, it doesn't, it's not overtly circular. But if you sit there and I tell you, like, there used to be sort of like a circle for show ponies to parade around, you'd be like, yeah, I kind of get it. There's like a weirdly circular vibe here. It's got a very low ceiling. So even though you're like, in the back of the mezzanine, you still feel like you're close enough to the stage, and the stage is big enough for big spectacles. So, I mean, there are so many shows where I've always wanted them to go into the Winter Garden because they, they needed the size of the stage, but also the intimacy of the audience. And they could never go there because Katz was there for 18 years.
- [109:24]
A
Right. Forever.
- [109:25]
B
And Mama Be there forever. Yeah, I always wish.
- [109:28]
A
But, but, but, but let's not forget Follies was at the kindergarten, as was, as was Pacific Overtures and Angela Lansbury.
- [109:35]
B
And Gypsy and many, many other places. But.
- [109:38]
A
And Barbra Streisand and Funny Girl.
- [109:40]
B
Oh, yeah. And I have an alternate reality in my head, and I'm glad that this ended up in the theater that it did. And my listeners will know exactly where I'm heading with this because I talk about it every day. The carousel that transferred from the Royal national to Lincoln Center. Brilliant. In the Vivienne Beaumont, pretty much perfect. But I have an alternate reality where cats closed in 92 and Carousel was able to go into the Winter Garden from the national because it's a very similar setup to the Littleton Theater in the National. Yeah, that is my favorite thing that's ever existed. And I talk about it it pretty much constantly to anybody who will have me.
- [110:15]
A
The, the Nick Hyder carousel.
- [110:16]
B
1,000%.
- [110:18]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [110:19]
B
My, my take on that is. I say it's the best thing that's happened to Broadway since they put air conditioning into theaters.
- [110:28]
A
I saw it at the national before it came to New York. And I have to say, at the end of the first act, I started to ball. I mean, I don't mean weep, I mean ball. And I could not get myself together until the beginning of act two. I just couldn't. It is one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. Anyhow. But there's a reason why the first chapter and the last chapter of Broadway Melody are called the Winter Garden.
- [110:53]
B
Yeah. No, it obviously has a very big importance to you and it is a wonderful theater to make it the center of your book. You don't have to.
- [111:04]
A
It also just. I don't know whether this is worth saying or not. It also was the sort of built in metaphor for the book because the book ends when the characters are quite elderly and yet love blossoms, so to speak. So having a winter garden is, you know, maybe a little pretentious, but that was always in my mind.
- [111:27]
B
You're so proud of yourself for that one, aren't you?
- [111:31]
A
Or ashamed of myself. Depends on which day you ask. Investment.
- [111:33]
B
Exactly. It's, you know, I feel I, I just have this vision of you as like this 8 year old boy who had the greatest pun and just is looking around there being like, everyone catch that? Everyone. Yeah, everybody. I love that.
- [111:45]
A
Get it? You get it? You get it.
- [111:49]
B
You don't have to say which parts of the book or, or, you know, which shows, but are there other shows or artists you worked on that not that are not included in this grand hotel sequence in the book book, but that you incorporate into the book in a fictionalized setting?
- [112:04]
A
Well, there are real characters like Joseph Papp and some others and then there are characters who are based on people I knew, but whose names I've changed because it didn't seem nice otherwise, because I didn't, you know, they were extent. They were eccentric and in some cases not that pleasant. As people, but there are some. I'm not going to name them here. And then there are a great number of people who, in the book, who are, who are, you know, conglomerates of more than one person elements, elements of various different people that I've met, known, worked with that I've sort of smushed together into one character. But, yeah, there are some. There are some real people in the book, but what they do I made up. I don't claim that they ever did any of the things that I said. They did it.
- [112:56]
B
Okay, you heard it here first, everybody. Elaine Stritch did not do highway robbery. Harold Channing did not do graffiti in front of the Winter Garden after the vamp. That is just something that went into Jack's book as fiction.
- [113:09]
A
None of that is there.
- [113:10]
B
No. When you're teaching students who want to go into musical theater, let's, let's, let's just say for writing for now, what is your. Some of your top advice, your constant advice you're giving young writers who want to get into musical theater?
- [113:26]
A
I think the thing that I taught. I taught at NYU for about a decade, and I taught two different courses to graduate students. One was on just structure and one was on what we call song plots, you know, which are not. It's not the plot of the show. It's like the graph of how the songs are laid out. And I think the, the thing I was trying to impart to them was that there is a. Not a formula. It is not a formula formula, but there is a technique for getting to an audience, grabbing an audience, holding an audience, responding to the biorhythms of an audience by changing tempos. And all these things can be laid out and you can ignore every single one of them, but it's better if you ignore them after you learn them, because once you've learned them and maybe use them a couple of times, when you ignore them, you know how close to the edge of the roof you are and what you're going to have to do to, to, you know, to compensate for that. But it was, it was trying to teach that idea that shows, musical shows really are built like buildings. They're. They're architecturally put together. And if you don't understand that technique, it makes it much easier to get lost. And when young writers get lost, they, as talented as they may be, they tend to really not have a hard time finding their way out. And, you know, I don't want that to happen to any writer. I would rather have a writer start by writing a less original show that actually works all the way through, and then having ingested all of that, get to the original show that doesn't feel like any other show.
- [115:09]
B
Absolutely. Is there a musical that you can think of that sort of bucks all of the conventions and yet still somehow works? An example I give. This is not a stage musical, but whenever I. I've had to guest on a lot of podcasts about movie musicals, and I always say, the Baz Luhrmann, Moulin Rouge with Nicole Kimn and Ewan McGregor, they do absolutely everything you should not do in a movie musical, and yet somehow that movie works. Don't ask me why. I said, if you want to talk about movie musicals that do what you're supposed to do and work, like, let's. Here's my list. But they'll. People bring up Moulin Rouge all the time. Like, we can't talk about that one because that one's such an anomaly. And then we move on. But I was trying to think about that with stage shows. I can't really think of any.
- [115:55]
A
Well, I mean, there. 1776 comes close. It's really an unusual. It's a very, very unusually structured, structured thing for a musical. And then there are, you know, more experimental ones like. Like Sunday in the park with George that are. Yes. They, you know, in that case, you're dealing with a composer, lyricist who's had so much experience that he's able to go wherever he wants to go and still understand what. What needs to be done. You know, Follies to a great degree is not. Does not follow the pattern of how a typical musical works. But it's hard to think of any that are just completely off the wall that really worked for people. I mean, there are some, like bloody, bloody Andrew Jackson that worked for some people, but not. They don't sustain for a general audience.
- [116:51]
B
Yeah, it's. I think because with the birth of the Internet and everyone having a platform, there's no longer a consensus of any show. Just doesn't work. And that's what we all all agree on, because every show now has its fans for one reason or another, which.
- [117:07]
A
Is a whole bunch of niches.
- [117:08]
B
Yeah, exactly. Which is wonderful. I'm glad that people are finding the shows that mean something to them. But I was thinking about this. I was like, you know, we can't just openly say, well, this show doesn't work because there's. It's always going to get backlash from somebody who disagrees. And even back in the day, you know, we think of Notorious flops like Moose Murders. There were people who read that script and said, this works. I want to give it my money. So there just was no Internet for them to go online and be like, here's why you're all wrong, but right. Yeah, but I agree with you.
- [117:38]
A
My grandmother had money in a show called the Fun Couple with Jane Fonda. This is back in 1963, maybe something like that. Which she put money in because she was told by the producer, jane Fonda is going to wear a bikini in this show and show. The show is going to be a hit. Because my grandmother, who is not a professional theater person really, although she was married to one who had died long before, read the script and thought it was ridiculous. And this producer said, yes, but she's going to wear a bikini and the show will be a big hit. So she invested some amount of money, I don't know, probably $500 in those days. And the show closed in a weekend. And there's a very good, very good documentary about it called Jane that the Pennebakers made. One hour documentary. But yeah, I sometimes see shows and think, how, how, how did it happen? You know, there's always some way that it happened.
- [118:29]
B
Yeah. And sometimes it's just again, you know, people having an idea and then not being able to execute it well, and no one. And, and, and also, sometimes when you work on a show, I'm gonna say sometimes, oftentimes with shows you. It's easy to get sort of lost in the forest as you're in the thick of it. And then also everyone's drinking the Kool Aid because they have to believe in the show in order to sell it night after night on stage.
- [118:54]
A
Stage. Right.
- [118:54]
B
And so sometimes you just. No one can see the big picture. And that's why you often bring someone from the outside who isn't a part of it for so long to give you, you know, an honest take of what you got. Yeah, I don't know.
- [119:10]
A
That's.
- [119:10]
B
I had nowhere to go with that.
- [119:11]
A
The out of town critics, where. That's what the out of town critics were supposed to do in the days when shows went to Boston and Philadelphia and you know, out of town towns like that, the Shubert and New Haven. The critics were supposed to say, okay, we just walked in here. We hadn't been working on this show for eight weeks. I'm here to tell you this part of it stinks, you know, or, or none of it stinks, or it doesn't stink, but it's too long or whatever they say.
- [119:35]
B
Yeah.
- [119:36]
A
And and good producers and good creatives, whether they like the critic or didn't, weighed those criticisms in an honest way and said, well, I think he's was wrong about this, but right about that. But you could get a general sense of how well your show was working from professionals who were writing for newspapers nowadays, where we tend to just do workshops and, you know, then rehearse and open. It's a cult. You know, you. You have to believe in the show. You have to.
- [120:04]
B
Yeah, yeah. And, but. And audiences are less discerning now, or rather I should say when they're in the room, they're less discerning. They might give you the. The appraisal in the room and then go home and tell people it was okay. And that doesn't actually do anyone any good. They need to know what's actually landing and what's not. I actually, I think I remembered the. The show that the story was about the critics, which was Fiddler on the Roof went to Detroit and then. Yeah. And when it was in Detroit, it got bad reviews. And the producer, Robbins, what are you going to do? He said, nothing. It's just like he says, I'm just going to trim like it's, it's, it's just simply too long. Song we're gonna cut, but we're not rewriting anything. And by the time they got to dc, it pretty much was the show that Fiddler became and was super praised in D.C. and then it came to Broadway. But, yeah, I was like, I'm not making this up. This story exists. I just don't remember the show.
- [120:56]
A
And I'm not sure that they didn't, in fact, write a couple of new songs and whatever along the way. But, but. Which is almost never done now. But, yeah, yeah, show got bad reviews. And of course, the famous story of the Funny Thing happened on the way to the Forum, which got terrible reviews until they put Comedy Tonight into it and then became a hit.
- [121:14]
B
Exactly. Well, that's the, that's the importance of the opening number. Besides Comedy Tonight are. What are some opening numbers you would probably point to for a student to say, take a look at this. See what it does for its show.
- [121:28]
A
Well, certainly Tradition and Fiddler and Bill Coleman and Cabaret and Comedy Tonight are all basically the same number. I mean, when you think about it, they bring you into the world of the show without giving you anything about the plot of the show. Comedy Tonight actually has some book over that does give you something about the plot, but they are so good at saying, welcome to our world. This is what our world is. This is the tone of our show. This is how serious it is. Or not serious or romantic or. Or political or whatever. And there are. But there are very. I mean, you know, in my first book, I wrote about the fact that all of those numbers are, you know, ensemble, involving. Here's the company, here's the scenery, here's the everything. But, you know, oh, what a Beautiful Morning does just as good a job with one man walking out on stage and telling you what kind of show it's going to be. And I think that's the job of an opening member. And almost every successful show does that. It's hard to think. Well, not hard to think of one. I could think of one that doesn't do it because I worked on it, which is Dear Evan Hansen. Dear Evan Hansen. Never really had an opening number and still doesn't. It has a number called Has Anybody Got a Map? Which is not really helpful in that way. It does enough, and then the show does the rest.
- [122:48]
B
But, yeah, it goes on from there. I always did, like.
- [122:51]
A
And Pasek and Paul. Pasek and Paul knew they didn't have an opening. They were like. Like tearing their hair out.
- [122:56]
B
Well, I think the important thing of Does Anyone have a Map? Is that it's short, so it. It. It gets us to the story happening relatively quickly. Exactly.
- [123:04]
A
Exactly. Yeah.
- [123:05]
B
But I think in a way, it kind of does help a little bit. It does set up who all the character. All the main characters we're going to get to know are before we get to waving through a window. Yeah, it's. You're right. It's. It's sort of a really strong opening number, like a tradition or even comedy tonight. It's, you know, here's the house, here are all the rooms. Here's. That's where the toilet is, here's the kitchen, blah, blah, blah. And once you get acquainted, we're gonna start living in this house, and we're gonna. And we're gonna go through all of it together.
- [123:32]
A
That is the job. And there are shows that have wonderful opening numbers that turn out not to be very good shows, but, you know. But they get, you know, Tree Grows in Brooklyn gets that part right. And then, you know, the show is. Which has a lovely, lovely score. Just kind of disappointing after that. But, yeah, they know. They know how to welcome you to the neighborhood.
- [123:50]
B
Yeah. There have been a couple of shows this season where I've actually enjoyed the musical itself, but the opening has always been kind of underwhelming to me, and I Think it's. I only say that because it's happened so much this year and, like, on three different occasions, I go see the show and the opening number happens. I'm like, oh, I'm not gonna like this, am I? And then the next song happens. I'm like, well, that one's a banger. And then it just got better from there. And I was like, well, can we. Yeah, can we take another pass at that opening? Because everything after the opening is great. It's. You just don't. You're not starting strong. But I digress. Is there anything about Broadway Melody we haven't discussed yet? Anything you want to talk about? Maybe about the process or as it's. When. When does it exactly come out? What. What. When's our.
- [124:35]
A
It just came out. It came out April 2nd, which is, I guess, last week.
- [124:42]
B
Oh, sorry. My Amazon page is saved from when I was reading this last week. Not. Not from the second. Now that I've refreshed it, it says.
- [124:50]
A
Yeah, you know, not particularly germane, but it. It didn't hurt that there was a pandemic. It hurt a lot of things that there was a pandemic, but it didn't hurt my. The fact that I had a lot of time on my hands. So it was very. It was good from that point of view. No, I think what was interesting about the process to me was my grandfather, who I never knew, he died a couple of years before I was born, built theaters. He was in the building business with his father, and in one case during the Depression, remodeled the theater on Broadway. And Earl Carroll, it was the Earl Carroll Theater, couldn't pay him, and so he inherited the theater as a settlement. And suddenly he found himself a theater owner who was in the theater business business, and he had to, like, produce something. And so my family was suddenly in the theater business and that my father was so romantically involved by that idea that he wrote a play as an undergraduate that was actually produced on Broadway and ran for Rip Roaring two weeks at what is now the Richard Rogers Theater and quickly decided that he wasn't a playwright and he went into the construction business with his father. But I grew up, you know, I grew up with that, with those kinds of bones. And in fact, my father. His one other professional adventure was that he produced a play that closed in Boston called Brief Holiday. Bad title for a play if you're going to close in Boston. But the porch furniture that I grew up on, on our screen porch was from the set of Brief Holiday, which I always knew, but I never really knew what Brief Holiday was, and I still didn't sound so. A big part of Broadway Melody was my own love and nostalgia for the. For the. The decades immediately preceding when I became interested in Broadway as a. On a daily basis. I started going in 62, and I saw everything in 62 and 63. I was 13 years old, and my parents let me get on the train and go, and, you know, here's $2.50. Buy a seat in the balcony. And so for me, writing the book was an expression of sort of a lifelong enthusiasm for this. This world. This district started, now, starts on 41st street and ends on 53rd street, where the Broadway is, which my grandfather built. And everything that can happen there, everything that can happen, from the changeover in the type of orange drink that you can buy, to the changeover in the type of musical that you can see, it was just all part of it. And I just reveled in the experience of being able to research it and write it and just kind of express a really kind of profound love. I don't know if the book is profound, but my love of the theater in a Broadway is profound. The book might be a little less than profound. Found.
- [127:46]
B
Don't sell yourself short. We. We. We're trying to sell this book here. Jack, come on. This book, okay? This is the great American novel, everybody.
- [127:51]
A
Yes, it is. It's the great American novel.
- [127:53]
B
Yes.
- [127:54]
A
Why not? Why not?
- [127:55]
B
It's Funny Girl, Fiddler and Dolly combined.
- [127:58]
A
Exactly.
- [127:59]
B
Exactly. Well, Jack, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for stopping by to talk about all of this. I mean, you've done it all. You've seen it all, you've written it all. And I think anyone who's listened to this interview will rush out and buy your book, because who wouldn't want more of this?
- [128:16]
A
That would be much appreciated, and I've enjoyed this enormously.
- [128:19]
B
I've enjoyed it as well. Thank you so much. And again, guys, you can find Broadway Melody anywhere you purchase books, bookstores, Amazon, what have you. Jack, because you're the guest, we close out every episode with a Broadway diva. I put a little audio in post as we fade to our final commercials, but is there any Broadway diva you would like to play out for you today?
- [128:43]
A
I don't even think I understand the question. Oh, oh, you mean you play. You. You mean you actually.
- [128:47]
B
Yeah, like, I'm gonna.
- [128:48]
A
I'm. I get it, I get it. I get it.
- [128:50]
B
I'm gonna play out her music with her later on.
- [128:51]
A
I see. I thought maybe I had to be a Broadway diva. I didn't know. You know, I'm, I'm not singing. I am not singing. Don't rain on my parade. I'm sorry, I'm just not, not today anyway.
- [129:03]
B
No, we gotta get some daiquiris into you. And even then we can't have a mic on. On.
- [129:07]
A
It's just, you wouldn't, you wouldn't want that to happen. Let's see. Gee whiz. Well, let's have a little Elaine stretch. We haven't had a little Elaine stretch in a while. I haven't.
- [129:20]
B
Yeah, but we need a little lane stretch right this very minute.
- [129:23]
A
I, I mean, how about, how about a nice, how about that nice kind of up tempo song from Goldilocks?
- [129:30]
B
Sure.
- [129:30]
A
There's a little lady, a great big hand.
- [129:32]
B
Absolutely. Let's, let's, let's go for it. I don't think we've actually ever played Goldilocks on this podcast. We've done, we've played Elaine in the past. We've done her zip. We've done, we've done, I think Sail Away. We did the why do the people Wrong people travel, but we've never done Goldilocks. So this is, this is why you're here today. This. You just proven your, your worth with that one. So thank you very much.
- [129:54]
A
All right, very good.
- [129:55]
B
So that's it for now, guys. Thank you so much for listening. If you like the podcast, give us a nice 5 star rating or review, check us back. Check back next week when we talk about Suffs and Patriots. And no, I will have already mentioned Stereophonic on this episode. So subs and Patriots are the next shows we're going to be covering as we head towards Tony nomination day. And that's it. Take it away, Miss Elaine.
- [130:18]
A
Bye. And give. I want to be a lady. I've got to be a lady. Wonderful.