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Thank you very much. That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do. But Mr. Graham hit it. Soon. And taking June to star her in a show Bright Lights, White Light with a metro man. The train is made. So while we wait, we're gonna do a little dance. Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history und legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broad. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And this is a 2025 season wrap up. This episode should be coming out on New Year's Day, so I wanted to do a ranking of the shows of the new season that I've seen so far. So this is not 2025 total, but just 2025, the new season. So where we are this season so far? I guess you could say before we do any of that, we have a little bit of what some of your, you know, least favorite word is to do, which is Housekeeping. Oh my God. Housekeeping. What? First off, we have a new review. I want to read it, give it its proper due. Thank you so much for the review. 5 on 4th 5 on 4th Cue the light in the Piazza Overture. 5 stars Ragtime. I completely agree with your critique of Ragtime the show in general, not specifically the current production. I love the music, but the story never felt right to me. And it's exactly because the musical thinks it is redeeming unredeemable characters. Very few of these characters are redeemable. Laugh, cry, emoji face. Thank you very much. 5 on 4th to be clear everyone, we've talked about this before. You don't have to agree with my opinions and Lord knows many of you have made it clear to me via DM or on Discord that you don't agree. That's totally fine as long as I can make it clear what I'm talking about, where I'm coming from with any pros or cons I have on show. At the very least, I hope it makes you guys think a little more intensely about your opinions on the shows you do or do not like. And we'll get more into Ragtime in a second. Next thing I just want to say is we have a couple of little shout outs we want to give on the podcast in this wrap up episode reminder that podmother Ali Gordon has a book. We have reached the end of our show. If you're watching this on YouTube or I think you can even do a video on Spotify. I can't recall. But you can see right here we have reached the end of our show. It's a beautifully written book. Well done, Ms. Gordon. We also have our new friend of the podcast, Teal Dvornick. Her book History Hiding Around Broadway. Backstage Lore, Secrets and Surprises from New York's Famed Theater District. It's a nice, cute little book. I know some of you on the Discord Channel have bought it. I think somebody just posted about it in the book club section of the Discord. If you haven't joined the Discord Channel, make sure to do so. It's been a really great time. People have been learning a lot about sort of the season and things going on in London and ticket advice and sharing their opinions on the podcast. And then of course, we have the book club section where people will buy the books that we've been talking about on the podcast and discussing them. And then we also have. I don't have a copy of it, unfortunately, but Daddy, Rob W. Schneider's book, Queer Musicals. I don't have that copy because everywhere I go it's constantly sold out. So I'm about to bite the bullet and just fucking buy it on Amazon. So thanks for that, Rob. But we have something else here that I haven't had a chance to talk about yet. But this was sent to me. The Periodic Table of Broadway Musicals in Illustration, illustrated guide to 118 essential shows. This is by Andrew Girl and Joseph Zelnick. I haven't looked through the whole thing. I'm about halfway through the book right now. But I gotta tell you, this book is a ton of fun. It is exactly what it sounds like. It is the entire periodic table and then shows that line up with said elements on the table. So, for example, SD here is the Sound of Music. And it gives you a full rundown on the history, the plot, and sort of why it's in the book. It also has Sweeney Todd, it has Candide, Carousel, Ragtime, whole bunch of shows. And it's beautifully illustrated and really, I don't know, just a really aesthetically pleasing book, first of all, which is what you want for something that is taking inspiration from the periodic table, you know. So I just, I recommend it if you haven't had a chance to check it out yet. So that is all of the housekeeping there. And yeah, I think it's time that we sort of go into this ranking system, see how long it takes, how far we can go. A couple of notes on the rankings. There are a couple things I have not seen yet of this current theater season, primarily on Broadway. I have not seen Mamma Mia. So that will not be included, although I have seen Mamma Mia Plenty of times, so I know what I'm getting myself into. Just have not seen this iteration. And then off Broadway, I have not seen Spelling bee yet. So unfortunately, unfortunately, I cannot include that in the rankings. But I do love spelling bee. I am including Bug on this ranked list, even though by the time this comes out, it'll be about a week before Bug opens on Broadway. And the reason I'm doing that is because I did not get to see Bug on a press seat. I bought a ticket. And so I was just a regular old theater goer, not a member of the press, not a journalist in this respect. And it's not an official review, but I will be discussing my thoughts on the show as we include it in this ranking. So that is why I'm willing to do that and not, you know, do a separate review for it. I am also including Off Broadway in this ranking. So everything that I saw at Encores and Playwrights Horizons is going to be included in this ranking. Just because without it, we're talking like 12 or 13 shows, and that's not a lot to really go off of. I'm also including two separate iterations of the same Broadway show on this ranking, and that is the Queen of Versailles, one with Kristin Chanuth performing and one with Sherri Renee Scott performing. Now, I did see Sheri twice, so I am going off of Solely Sherry's first night, and I will get a little more into depth about that and why it's where it's placed in the rankings. And I'm sure the rankings are going to rankle some of you. Sorry about it. These are just my opinions. This is not an official ranking of any kind. Enjoy the ride. Why not nurse that hangover or that lack of sleep from New Year's and just enjoy the this very silly ranking with me as we go forth into 2026. So here we go. At number 27 is, I'm sorry to say, Call Me Izzy, starring Jean Smart. Call Me Izzy is the first show of the Broadway season. It's still, in my opinion, the worst show of the Broadway season. The best thing I'll say about it is that Jean Smart was giving a very committed, very grounded, you know, fully realized performance. The play itself is just a giant nothing burger and wanted to be more than it was. Ultimately, it was the story of a woman in who Got married young and found herself in an abusive, toxic relationship, both emotionally and physically abusive, and aspired to be a writer, a poet, and always wanted to be called Izzy. And due to her circumstances with her husband, with her financial situation, she was not able to have a lot of outlets for her creativity, and she found inspiration wherever she could. So the play often takes place in the bathroom of her trailer with her husband, where she goes into the bathroom, writes poems on toilet paper, and then stuffs them in a Tampax box because that's the only place she knows that her husband won't look. And various things ensue. And it's a one woman show. Jean Smart, reciting the entire thing to the audience. And she again, does her best. She is a really great actress and is so committed and charismatic that we, of course, are going to be on Izzy's side even without the struggles she goes through. But ultimately the show never congeals in any way similar to like A Jagged Little Pill, where it's going through so many different things so quickly that you never feel like anything is given proper respect. It's. It's not that it's poorly intended. It just feels a little cheap and it's really sucky to feel that way about something like domestic violence in a show. But that's ultimately what you feel. And a lot of the humor just feels unearned. And I would argue that as a production, it's very poorly paced and staged and just was really one big nothing burger. Now, let me be very clear. This is not the worst thing I've ever seen. It's at the bottom of the list. But there's nothing on this list that I thought was a disaster so far this season. And I know some of you thought a couple of shows this season have been disasters. I disagree. There's been some bad stuff, and I think Call Me Izzy is bad. We're in the bad camp of the list right now, and then eventually we're gonna have a longer list of perfectly fine and degrees of how fine I found things to be. And then a very small part of the list that I thought were great or near great. So Call me Izzy. I would probably say, like, for me was a 3.5 out of 10, which is low. But considering I put, you know, Left on tent at a 0.5 out of 10, this is a full three numbers higher than left on 10th. It's bad. This was bad, but it wasn't the worst thing ever. Moving on, number 26. We're going off Broadway with the seat of Our Pants. This brings me no joy to say, guys, but Ethan Lipton's out adaptation of the Skin of Our Teeth for me was a giant mess and not even an interesting one. Everything that was interesting about it came from the Skin of Our Teeth. It didn't come from anything that this musical did to adapt it. The best thing I'll say is that Lipton had some very interesting musical ideas and for the first 20 minutes of the show I was like, oh, let's see where this goes. This could be quite something. They got a lot of Michael John Lachiusa vibes, you know, very First Daughter Suite and see what I want to see. Even a little bit of Bill Finn in a New Brain, I would argue. And it's a strong cast. Mikayla Diamond, Ruthie Ann, Miles Shuler, Hensley Leigh Silverman unfortunately does not know how to stage this thing, this production. In the Newman Theater at the Public, which is where Hamilton was in Fun Home, which is traditionally a proscenium style theater, they put seating on the other side as well, similar to Cabaret on Broadway. And Silverman ultimately did not know how to stage the Seat of Our Pants with this staging in mind. And it's unfortunate because I was luckily on, oh, Traverse Stage is what it's called, where it's basically like an alley or a corridor stage. Traverse Stage is where you have seating on two separate sides. It's not all the way around, just those two sides. And Silverman ultimately stages the thing towards the audience that would normally be where the audience is in a proscenium stage. The audience that's basically sitting on stage does not get. They get shortchanged with visuals. And that is unfortunate. It's also painfully obvious that this is the case. Like I don't think if you were sitting on stage you'd think, oh, if I, if I, you know, hadn't known that you could get a better view on the other side, like, I would never have guessed. Like you can guess that you're getting shortchanged where you're sitting over there. So many numbers are there in a way where it just feels like they're there because it's a musical. I feel like we've talked about this before, but have you ever watched a musical or even like onto like a reading of a new musical and songs happen and you think to yourself, there's only a song here because this is a musical, not because the moment calls for a musical number. I've seen that a lot. Not as often in a professional show at the level of like the public or on Broadway. It happens, but. But not super frequently. Seat of our pants. There were many times where Lipton had put in musical numbers where I thought to myself, there's a song here simply because this is a musical. Now, one could argue that Lipton is making fun of musical theater by doing it like such, but overall, this is a musical that goes so far up its own. But for me, that even if that were intentional, the execution is such that you can't distinguish it. And you just basically get into an esoteric bar fight where you and someone else who felt an opposite way of you are just arguing about what you projected onto a stage, not necessarily what was there. And that is a danger that I always find with shows like this of. It's not that something happens that you can interpret two different ways. It's that there's something that isn't there that you see that's an illusion. And I feel like this show was a lot of promise that ultimately leads to an illusion. It just kind of felt endless to me and made worse by the finale, which was just like one of the hokiest finales. I talked about with Pirates, how the finale of that felt very Cartman and the Ginger Kids episode of the Hand In Hand We Can Live Together. It felt like that with this one. Only twice as bad because at least with Pirates, there was some fun staging with the washboards. With this, it was like Oklahoma 101. And it was very, very wild to see of so many wonderful, smart artists. Just kind of. It felt like a little bit like, well, we give up. We don't know how to end this thing, so I guess we'll just end it. And that was kind of disappointing for me. All right, so that was number 26. At number 25 is Art, the revival of Art by Yasmin Reza. This is the play that won the Tony, I believe, in 1998, maybe 1997, starring James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris and Bobby Cannavale. In the piece, Neil Patrick Harris buys a work of art that basically just amounts to white paint on a white canvas. But Mila Patrick Harris buys it for $300,000. And this drives Bobby Cannavale insane. And Bobby Cannavale goes to their mutual friend James Corden and he's like, the fuck is wrong with Neil Patrick Harris? And the whole thing just kind of blows up and becomes this giant lecture on upper middle class bourgeoisie problems. And that was sort of Yasmin Reza's bread and butter for a while of doing these light hearted satires of Intellectual, upper middle class and making it clear to an audience that in a lot of ways, no matter your upbringing, no matter your sophistication, your refinement, we are one step away from animals. We are half a step away from children. And that really kind of got Yasmin Reza off of having these characters who pontificate over the beauty of art and the importance of intellectualism and having, you know, Christopher Hampton with his translation, because Yasmin Reza is French. These $5,000 words that go off into such verbosity that it becomes so flowery and it stops being satire and just becomes the thing it's satirizing. And that was really, really potent for audiences in the late 90s and the early 2000s, I would argue. Probably most potent for the late 90s, a pre 911 world. You know, you think of some of the more pretentious Woody Allen movies, the dramatic side of Crimes and Misdemeanors, or you look at like September and. Or Interiors, for God's sakes, Interiors is fucking insufferable. But these dramatic stories with people who are so well educated, so articulate and just move and speak in a way that is so pretentiously fake that it doesn't even feel like commentary. It feels like somebody who is writing beyond their means, aiming so high and so unable to command it that just something feels shallow. And that is what we have with art. This is a revival, that of a play that I think the play itself is a gentleman's 5.5 out of 10. It goes on for far too long. It's not really delving deep into anything. The actors are mostly fine. James Corden is unfortunately the best one in it. He is the one who understands the tone. He lives in the world well. He is a natural stage actor. Bobby Cannavale, I think, is a better stage actor than James Corden, but just does not live in the world of art well enough. Neil Patrick Harris, I think, lives in the world well enough, but is not as strong a stage actor as either Corden or Cannavale. Scott Ellis is a director who, you know, once upon a time had really good instincts and comedic direction, but I have found him to be wanting the last couple of years. It's not a terrible revival. Again, we're still in that part of the list where, like, even with Seat of Our Pants, despite the fact that I didn't like much about it, nothing here is God awful, but I just think it's bad. Or now we're sort of in the insanely missable part of the List like Call Me Izzy I thought was bad. Seat of our pants I thought was bad. And it's a step above Call Me Izzy, because at least it's trying something different. Even if I think that it's mostly a mess. Art is not a mess. It's just very missable and very forgettable. And I think within a couple of months, hell, in a couple of weeks, people will forget it was even on Broadway. Best case scenario. James Corden gets a nomination for featured in a play. But with, you know, Joe Turner's come and gone coming up, I doubt that will happen. Moving on. Number 24 is waiting for Godot. The Samuel Beckett play that I have said before just is not my play. It's a classic. A lot of people love it. This is my second production of it after having seen it with Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin. This production, starring Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves, directed by Jamie Lloyd. Key of the ASMR sound design and the black aesthetic and men in boxer briefs at the finale. Aesthetic. I did not hate this production as much as I expected to. I did not like it very much. It was still kind of a chore, but it wasn't deadly to sit through. As I said, this is just not a play I enjoy very much. And Keanu Reeves is not an actor that I like. This production did nothing to change my mind about that. Alex Winter, as I believe, plays Gogo in this production. He, for me, was a surprise. I thought he was kind of like the emotional glue of the production. He was able to find some heart into his character. Sorry. Alex Winter plays Dee Dee. Keanu Reeves plays Go Go. So Winter, as Dee Dee, I thought, was able to find some pathos in a play that I've never found pathos in a play that has always felt like a platform for high clownery. And I mean that in the best way. Some of the best clowns of the 20th century have done Whitney Frogado, you know, from Steve Martin and Robin Williams to Bert Lahr. And Winter and Rhys are not clowns of that caliber. Nor is Jamie Lloyd a director who would indulge them even if they were. If you're wondering what the plot of Waiting for Godot is, it's just two friends, Estragon and Vladimir, waiting by a tree for a man named Mr. Godot. They've never met them before. They're not even entirely sure why they're waiting for him. But Godot never comes. At the end of both acts, a young boy is sent to deliver them a message that Godot will not be coming, but he will surely be coming tomorrow. And while they wait, they talk about each other. They talk about life. They talk about the meaning of it all. They meet Pozzo and Pozzo's servant Lucky, here, played by Michael Patrick Thornton. It's just, it's, it's very much a play about everything and yet a play that, that shows nothing. It deals with everything and shows nothing. And I'm hoping maybe there's a production of Waiting for Godot that will come along and it will make the play really click for me. This production is not it. It is not the worst thing. It was not nearly as painful as I expected it to be. There is humor there. It's a beautifully designed production. I won't talk about Tony nominations all that too much with stuff that we've covered before. You can always listen to older episodes for more in depth Tony analyses on that. Plus, I'll be talking about this a little more thoroughly in Tony predictions which will be starting this month as we go towards May. But I would argue if there's anything from Waiting for Godot that would get recognized, it would be the lighting, scenic and sound design. Dirdin is very good, but again, somewhat accord in with art. I just feel like featured actor in a play is going to be crowded and so I don't see it happening. But the design is, is stunning and could very well be recognized. All right, so that is 24. Moving on to 23. Number 23 is the Queen of Versailles, particularly starring Kristin Chenoweth. I have already gone on very much about the Queen of Versailles. My big thing this is similar to, you know, art and Waiting for Gadothis is not in the bottom, bottom worst thing I've ever seen. And in fact I kind of, I'm a little baffled by people who say it is one of the worst things I've ever seen. The Queen of Versailles for me, the musical about Jackie Siegel and her husband David Siegel, and they're trying to build the biggest home in America with inspiration and motivation from the legendary palace of Versailles. This show for me is competently bad. Whether it's a good idea or not. We will get to as we talk about Queen of Versailles with Sherry, I guess we'll call it like this is Queen of Versailles, Kristen's version at 23. But this musical for me, when I watched it with Kristin Chenoweth now Granite, I watched on the day that they had announced closing and I had already planned on seeing Sheri the very next day. It all kind of happened accidentally but then sort of it ended up being kismet. And with Kristen, I watched it and I went, this is competently bad. It's not, you know, the worst thing I've seen. It's not good. But I'm more kind of confused as to why they chose this. And Kristen and I watched her, and I watched her work very hard, and it was very impressive, and I thought that she was giving a solid performance, and things shifted when I watched it with Sheri, and I'll get into that in a little bit more, but for the Kristen version, I will just say that the tone kind of felt off all over the place. It was unclear how satirical it was meant to be when this satire was happening. Kristen Chenoweth is a performer who is so eager for an audience's approval of their liking of her. And I think the only times we've ever seen her play really unlikable characters have been on screen where she has no control over what an audience thinks of her. She has no control over which take a director uses. So you watch her on a TV show where she plays, you know, a psychopath or you watch her in a movie, and. And it's very easy for a director to manipulate how she can come across for an audience to feel a certain kind of way. But even in that stuff, there's still a likability quota. If you ever watch her on the second season of Trial and Error, she absolutely plays a kooky, potentially murderous woman. But the idea is that she's so damn unknowable and likable that. That no one can pin down whether she did the crime or not. And with Queen of Versailles, Jackie Siegel is meant to be this complex, not unknowable, but this unknowable in her likability character. That is sort of the vibe we get when watching Kristen of, like, I guess we're not supposed to like you, but, like, we can't help it. And it makes the whole evening just feel off. Even the stuff that could potentially work, and I would argue there's really nothing in the show that does work, but even the stuff that could potentially work, it's just like. It just all feels too uneven, misguided for it to ever possibly come back and stick the landing with a rewrite. In the Kristen version of it all, there is stuff about it that I think is worth exploring. I don't think that the score is bad for Queen of Versailles, and I actually do think it will get recognized for best score when the Tony nominations happen, partly because Stephen Schwartz is very well liked, partly because they will be recording the cast album soon and it will be given to Tony nominators before nominations come out. And this is something that has happened a lot with Tony scores. Where the show opens, it is basically panned and then an album survives that gives people a second chance at appreciating it. This is, I would argue, a major reason why Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown got got a Tony nomination for best score because there were people who championed that score when it was in the theater. But a lot of people, I would still argue the majority of audiences were anti the entire show other than Laura Benanti's number model behavior. And it wasn't until the album came out separate from the mess of that production and people were able to appreciate what David Yazbeck had done. Now, Queen of Versailles is nowhere near the level of Women on the Verge of score. Believe me. I am not saying that, but I'm saying a similar story could happen where separate from the show and on multiple listens, you can appreciate maybe a clever lyric that Schwartz has written. You can appreciate a motif that he's put into place. People say, oh well, the score has no melodies, it has no bops. People have been saying that about Broadway scores for fucking years. And you know, some cases it's true. But as Sondheim has said over and over and over again, and I don't know why we haven't had this sink in yet. Memorable melodies come from repetition. None of us are such, you know, intelligent listeners that we hear a melody once in a song over a two and a half hour evening and we walk out remembering the entire tune. Rogers and Hammerstein repeated their melodies. What made them smart was they did it in a dramatically compelling way, in a dramatically sound way. It's why you walk out humming so many Andrew Lloyd Webber scores, because it's like one melody over and over and over again. Cry for Me Argentina is the same melody as oh, what a circus. So you walk out humming. And Queen of Versailles has some repeated motifs, American royalty. But overall it is. Each song is its own identity and thus audiences are not going to remember each song. Now, of course, as I said, most of those songs don't work, but some of those songs have a kernel of an idea that has potency to it has a melody that could go somewhere. And I think on listening to it on a cast recording some, I, I would not be surprised if some of those songs pop back out into public consciousness and people go, oh, that song is better than I remembered it being. If we're talking Tony's here. I think Kristen's chances of getting nominated kind of slip away by the moment as more shows get announced, like Titanique and Beaches, although we'll see how those things land. But Kristen does work very hard in this show, or did work very hard in the show. This show is closed now and that's a double edged sword. You don't want to see the effort, but a lot of audiences are willing to reward effort. There are performances in the last couple of years that I would argue have been just as effortful as Kristen's as Jackie Siegel. They just had better material and thus they got applauded for it in a way that Kristen didn't. And also because of Kristen, offstage social media antics that, you know, fucking suck. But yeah, that's Queen of Versailles. I think, you know, score and Kristen are, if not a total lock, very nearly a lock. And then I think that they have a good chance at scenic costume and lighting design for nominations. So that's 27, 26, 25, 24. That's number 23. Okay. At number 22, we have punch, a Manhattan theater club. Punch is the true story. Sorry, let me get my. Oh, also, I haven't been showing any of my playbills. I meant to be showing the playbill for you guys in the video part of this. So here you can see seat of our pants. My call me Izzy playbill is in my storage unit. So apologies for that. Here's my art playbill. Just so all you guys know that I was telling the truth about this. Waiting for Godot. There they are. And then we have Queen of Versailles. And now we have Poonch Punch, A Manhattan theater club. Punch tells the incredibly true story of Jacob D. Who in a night out with friends after a football match, went out on a night of wild drinking and debauchery and punched a young man named James Hodgkinson. James fell to the ground, went into a coma and died very quickly. Soon after, Jacob was promptly arrested and tried and went to jail and then rehabilitated and had since reconnected with. Not reconnected. He connected with Jacob, with James Hodgkinson's parents, who are here, played by Victoria Clarke and Sam Robards. And together they have created foundations and gone on touring lectures talking about the dangers of violence and toxic masculinity and the importance of mental health and therapy. And it's a really beautiful thing to see. Jacob here was played by Will Harrison. The piece was adapted by James Graham from Jacob Dunn's book. Right from Wrong Song. It's directed by Adam Penford. This is a play that, like most James Graham pieces, the story itself, the real life story, I think is very compelling. And I understand why Graham wanted to cover it. Graham really likes to take real life stuff and make theater out of it. And there's a lot about Punch that I enjoyed. I think that Jacob Dunn's story is powerful. I thought that Will Harrison did a really lovely job. I think Victoria Clarke was doing some of her loveliest acting this side of the of COVID The downside of it is Graham tends to write his plays sort of like a screenplay. And I don't mean that in the sense that it's constant motion and exciting and fluid. That is true. There's a lot of fluidity to his pieces. Scenes blend into other scenes, but he does a lot of things that would be like a quick cross cut in a film of a scene would be happening and then you would get a 3 second closeup of somebody on the phone from a different scene that comes back to another scene. And you do that a lot in Punch. And it's a little disorienting. And it also kind of keeps you at arm's length, especially because Graham has narration. Jacob Dunn is narrating the show most of the evening. And it again, it gives it theatricality, but it keeps you at arm's length emotionally. It's not until Jacob and James's parents meet for the first time in Act 2, after Jacob has been let out of prison and is rehabilitating, that they have a mediation. And the scene itself is maybe 15 minutes long. And it's the only scene of the show that goes on for that long uninterrupted. And it is incredibly powerful. Everyone on stage is doing a lovely job and you wish there was more of that, especially because after that scene, the show kind of wraps up very quickly and just sort of ends. And that's not. It doesn't feel great, especially when there's some really lovely acting work going on, some questionable accent work. But this is Broadway and we've been willing to, you know, let go of a lot of questionable accent work. Cough, cough, Kinky Boots, Cough, cough Sweeney Todd Cough, cough. But this wasn't a bad evening. I wish I had liked it more. I wish that I liked James Graham's stuff more. I found Ink to be interesting, if not necessarily gripping. I thought Dear England was very smart, again, if not gripping. And I thought Punch had a lot of emotional potency, but wasn't ultimately very gripping. Yeah, let's Just move on from this punch. I guess Will Harrison in lead actor is a possibility as a nomination. I would love for Victoria Clarke to be recognized again. Don't think it's gonna happen. I ultimately think the punch is gonna get forgotten by the time we get to the Tony nominations, but here we are. Okay, so that once again, to recap. 27 is call me Izzy. 26 is the seat of our pants. 25 is art. 24 is waiting for Gadot. 23, the Queen of Versailles with Kristin Chenoweth. 22 punch. And now at 21. Sorry about this, everybody, but it's Chess. It is. One second. Hold on. Chess. Oh, my God, no. People are gonna get so mad at me for this. How does one describe Chess? This is actually one where I kind of have to do a bit of a review here because I did not do a separate review episode of Chess. This is being billed as, like, the Chess that fucks. It's Lea, Michelle, Nicholas, Christopher, and Aaron Tveit as the three leads. It's a reworked book by Danny Strong. Song Chess is a notorious Broadway flop from 1988. That was a overhaul of the London production, which itself was a staging of the concept album that took over the world. The songs are by Benny and Bjorn from ABBA with lyrics by Tim Rice. And a book that has never made much sense. Danny Strong has spent the last eight years kind of overhauling that. And Michael Mayer as director has been by his side making that happen. And now this is the fully realized production of that rewrite. So the reason why Danny Strong has kind of overhauled the book again is because Chess has never worked. People claim that the London production, the 80s, the Lane page, worked and that it got ruined for Broadway. There are people who saw the London production and said, absolutely not. It was still stupid then. And people just keep tinkering with it and moving the songs around and trying to make it make more sense. I think the problem is that nobody knows what fans of Chess want from Chess. When you think of Chess, what do you think of? I famously came to the show late in life. I had only heard a couple of the songs. I knew. I grew up knowing Anthem. I grew up knowing Nobody side someone else's story, and I know him so well. Those are really, like, the only songs I knew for a majority of my life. Only recently, having been on theater, all the moving parts, talking about it, did I have to do some deeper research on the score and listen to One Night in Bangkok and Pity the Child and Heaven Help My Heart and. And I gotta Say, guys, for a show, for a score that has such a rabid fan base that has had stadium concerts around the world for decades, I'm both not surprised and fully surprised by the fan base that this score has, because this score is wild. Absolutely wild. It is every genre known to man thrown into a melting pot, and then they don't even melt. They're just constantly headbutting each other and taking over. It's. It's like. It's. It's like. It's like these ingredients want to be in a melting pot, but they end up being in a rugby game. And they just keep on grabbing the ball from each other, these genres and headbutting each other and running the field for five minutes before another genre takes over and throws that other genre off the field. So there's classical musical theater. There's opera, there's 80s pop. There's no, know, 70s disco. There's like a little bit of, like, Russian myth musicology. There's faux operetta. It's just like it's. It's all of this all a little bit of tinge rock. It's all thrown together and there's a lot of fun to be had from that. I would say that Chess might be the first melodramatic musical theater score that I can think of. In a way that I would compare Chess to something like Sideshow or Diana, where it is music that is going so hard and so intense, and 80% of the time, the story and the characters don't call for it. Doesn't stop it from being impressive vocally, but it is kind of ridiculous. And ultimately, Danny Strong's revisal for Chess has angered some fans and has made new fans of the show. If you've never seen Chess before, if you don't know Chess, I would imagine, and you're just going for the vocals of it all, to see actors you like sing well, you might get your money's worth out of this, because everyone sounds pretty great in this show. If I had one critique musically, it would be that Aaron Tveit as Freddie doesn't have that rock edge that a lot of us have come to know from that character. It's a very clean, very healthy sound. And usually Freddie, there's a bit of that rock danger to his voice. It's in his music, and Aaron just doesn't have that. But that aside, he sounds pretty great. Leah also just is very pop girly in this score, but she doesn't sound bad. And I. I might have lucked out because at the performance I saw she was not rushing any of her songs. Nobody's side was done at a pretty decent tempo. Other positives, I guess I'll say for me, the best performance in this production is Hannah Cruz as Svetlana, the wife of Anatoly, played by Nicholas Christopher. So I guess, like the way you could describe the plot, the plot of Chess is that it's a combo of two or three real world events that happened in the late 70s, early 80s, that chess has melded together for its own story. And this version there is Anatoly, who is the Russian chess champion, playing opposite Freddie Aaron Tveit, who is the American champion. Freddie's first AKA like his coach and his manager, and his lover is Florence, who is Lea Michele. And. And they arrive in Medano to compete against Anatoly. We find out that Anatoly and Florence had had an affair a year before, because while Florence and Freddie are lovers, Freddie is also undiagnosed bipolar and not always taking his medication because it interferes with his ability to play chess. So he's also very erratic. Freddie also has trauma. And while they are figuring out, you know, chess strategies, Florence and Anatoly kind of fall back in love, I guess you could say that's one of the major changes this production has done, is that Florence and Anatoly used to be adversaries who fall in love, and now they are former lovers who fall back in love with each other. Which I think takes away a lot of the will they, won't they sexual tension that those characters could possibly have. Similar to how I don't like that the movie version of in the Heights turned Nina and Benny from will they won't they into former boy, boyfriend and girlfriend. Because now the sexual tension is completely gone. God, I'm getting lost here. Freddy and Florence are competing against Anatoly through various mechanisms from their government. Because we're in the middle of the Cold War, Russia and America are dealing with greater, higher stakes issues than chess, but chess is sort of both, both a smokescreen and a metaphor for the relations between those two countries during the Cold War. Again, all these things are sort of happening around. Meanwhile, we find out that Florence is originally Hungarian and through Russian invasions, had to flee her country, has not seen her father since she was 10. And this is something that has been troubling her. Of course, this is something that in the new version we don't learn about until the middle of the second act. And so that becomes a whole new arc for Florence after an hour and a half, of which boy Do I like it becomes, well, now I don't have an identity because I, I, I don't have a country I belong to. Anatoly eventually chooses Florence and seeks asylum in the UK with Florence because he leaves Russia. Sorry, my brain is fried just trying to think about the show. So all the natural words of the English language are leaving me. Apologies for that. And then three years later, the Russian government uses Anatoly's wife, Svetlana, to manipulate him to come back to the chess tournament and come back to Russia and leave Florence. Hannah Cruz as Svetlana, a character who does not show up second act for me, is the best performance in the show because Hannah Cruz is the only one who's aware that she is doing chess. Danny Strong's book is aware that it's chess and also embarrassed that it is chess. And the only way that melodrama can work is if you do not keep calling attention to yourself every five seconds. Which is, unfortunately the case for Bryce Pinkham as the arbiter who becomes sort of the MC of Cabaret, the omnipresent narrator of the show, making constant references to the fact that this is a, quote, quote, Cold War musical, making references to other Broadway musicals, making references to our current political climate, making jokes about Joe Biden and Donald Trump and RFK's brain worm. And if you think that this is the height of political humor, good for you. You will love this. If you are someone like me who watches Veep annually, you will roll your eyes so hard like Liz Lemon, they will pop out of your sockets to the extent that every time Bryce Pinkham came out on stage, I groaned. And ultimately, Danny Strong, I want to say fuck you for making me resent Bryce Pinkham coming on stage, because Bryce Pinkham is awesome. I think he's super cool, amazing voice, super fun. I've enjoyed him in just about everything I've seen. I've seen him. And ultimately, he is stuck with the cringiest of jokes. And being a fucking Reddit thread of a narrator of a narrator, undercutting any dramatic tension the show could possibly muster just by constantly commenting on everything. Absolutely everything. And the only way that Chess could possibly work is if it's earnestly Chess. Sideshow does not work when you are calling attention to your ridiculousness. Imagine, if you will, doing Sideshow and Tunnel of Love is happening. This is my favorite example to always use when I'm talking about the ridiculousness of musical theater. Tunnel of Love is a scene at the World's Fair where Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley conjoined twins are in the dark with their manager, Terry, Jeff McCarthy, who has a thing for Emily Skinner, and Hugh Pinero, who is Alice Ripley's betrothed. They are to get married the next day. Alice Ripley's thinking, we'll be in the dark. Hugh Panero's gonna give it to me. Hugh Panero won't even touch her. Meanwhile, Jeff McCarthy is finger blasting Emily Skinner to high heaven. And not only is that amazing for Emily Skinner, but Alice Ripley, as her conjoined twin, can feel the phantoms of Emily Skinner's orgasms. And all of this is being done to song for seven minutes straight. It is wild. It is kind of tasteless and crass, and I adore every second of it because musically, it is extraordinary. Dramatically, it is what the flying. But sideshow gets away with it, in my humble opinion, because sideshow goes for that brass ring on that scene the entire time. They do not undercut it with Ken Jennings coming out and being like, huh, that was hot. Like, are you kidding me? Just be ridiculous. It's musical theater. It's never gonna be cool. You're never gon be the cool kid at the cool kids table, so you might as well just be earnestly weird. That's what makes musical theater memorable to begin with. Hannah Cruzes seems to be the only person in chess who understands this. Lea Michelle thinks this is her adult role. And I thought Leah gave one of the best performances in musical theater in the last 10 years in funny Girl. So to see her in this, where she has no handle on maturity, has no. No chemistry with Aaron Tveit, has no chemistry with Nicholas Christopher, blows my mind. You watch her do pizza hand acting where she's saying things about not belonging to any country and not understanding your heart and what am I gonna do, Freddie? Have you taken your pills? Girl? This ain't Glee. And I know that's an easy joke to make, but just this is not a TV show. You're not playing a teenager. You are playing a woman who is frustrated, who has. Has gone through things. And Leah's Florence does not feel like she has gone through things. Hannah Cruz's fetlana feels like she has gone through things. Hannah Cruz's fetlana feels like a woman who has had sex, who has had good sex, who has had good sex taken away from her, who has had her life on the line, who is very confused about her wanting to live, about her hating her husband, about wanting to have sex again, about wanting the best for her kids, about not having any idea what her Government might do to her with in any room that she walks into. And also by the way, looks like a million dollars. I would say after Leah of this trio, that is the next successful would be Nicholas Christopher. Now, maybe it's because I went in having been told that he was the breakout star of this production. I expected a bit more. I really enjoyed Nick Christopher. I thought he did a really good job in Jelly's last jam at Encores. I thought he was was a perfectly lovely Sweeney in Sweeney Todd with some more work with a genuine director and maybe higher keys because Nick is a genuine tenor. I would have really adored his Sweeney, but as it was, he was a very strong Sweeney. He sounds great as Anatoly and I liked his big 11 o' clock number, which was Endgame in his final match where you finally kind of get some emotion out of his character. You see a breaking point with him and that was very enjoyable. Mostly up until then. I felt nothing coming from him emotion wise. His accent work is what it is. But I found his Anatoly to be so stoic and so unaware of everything, so isolated from everything. And not in a way of like, I have a shield around me, not in a Sally Bowles kind of way, but like just in a way of going like, are you a functioning adult? The way he sounded and the way he spoke, it felt to me like Nosferatu doing Forest Cloud. And it doesn't bring joy to say this, but it makes me just go, I don't understand what everyone's doing on stage, what show we think we're doing. Because after Nick is Aaron Tveit, who is actually mildly successful as Freddie. I think that he's at his best when Freddy is on his meds and has his mania sort of in check and is just able to be a charismatic fuck boy. When you watch him in his press conferences or you watch him kind of be like an anti. A stinker opposite Nick. There is a swagger that Tveit has that I really haven't seen him harbor since next to normal. Now, I don't think that Aaron has the danger you need for Freddie. I don't think he's able to get to that manic state. And when Freddie is at his lowest valley in his depression of his bipolar state, you know, he goes for more kind of comatose than darkened depression. If you want to kind of see someone who can really channel those valleys, those highs and those lows, check out Rachel Bloom in Crazy Ex Girlfriend. She. And part of this is, you know, her own experience with this mental Disorder. But she is able to navigate those waves in a way that is. Is very real, but also very actable and able to register for an audience. Eren, for me, does not go to those extremes, but when his character's sort of in the middle and like the calmest of waves, he rides it very well and very charismatically and is ultimately of that threesome, the most effective. But it is Hannah Cruise, for me, who walks away with the show. Design wise, this production is. It kind of looks like. Like if you typed in Chess, cheap semi unit set screens into AI and this is what you would get. Just like no vision, no direction. It's very much like staged concert encores with a higher budget and some technology added to it. And the Lauren Lotaro choreography is certainly Lauren Lotaro. To quote Amadeus. One sees moves like that and what can one say but Lauren Lotaro. I will talk more about choreography as we get to a higher point on this list, but that is ultimately where I'm at with Chess. This is a show, this is a score that is so earnest and bonkers in its earnestness. And I understand the desire to have some cheek added to that. How can one swallow this much 80s craziness, this, and not laugh a little bit? You have to do something like Chess earnestly and know that it's ridiculous. Have it in the back of your head that it's ridiculous so we can just enjoy the ride as it is. This show wants to have it both ways and it doesn't do right by either. The best thing I can say is that it is extremely well sung, everyone's attractive and. Hannah Cruz, come sit by me. I want to cast you in like 10 more things. Between this, the connector and stuff, and her playing Gussie in the Mary Lee movie, I'm like, yeah, let's give this girl some fucking options because she deserves so much. Let's give it to her. Let's do it. All right, so that is Chess. And I hope that I whetted all of your appetites on that Tony wise orchestrations and sound. Maybe again, it sounds good. Leah could get in there because actress in a musical is. Is again, sort of weird. There's also a world in which she doesn't get in there. Actor. I hate to say this, but between Nick and Aaron, I would give the edge to Aaron. For me, if I were nominating, I would imagine people are more likely to nominate Nick because Nick is a more exciting prospect to invest in. He has been this sort of, I hate to say, up and comer because it's not like. It's not like he's been, like, waiting in the wings this whole time. He's been working. He's been at the forefront. But he's getting his due now in a way that I'm happy for him. But after Little Shop and Sweeney and Jelly's last jam, I was really ready for this to be a blowout moment for him, and it didn't do it for me. And that was unfortunate. But he could definitely get nominated. Him being nominated would not be the most surprising thing in the world. Me. But again, actor in a musical at the Tonys is also kind of tricky. You know, we'll talk about that more with nominations down the road. I do not see it getting revival, though. Not with Ragtime, Jellicoe and Rocky Horror. Unless Rocky Horror absolutely shits the bed. I just don't see that happening for Chess. But, yeah, that's where we're at. So, again, 27 is call me Izzy. 26 is the seat of our pants. 25, art. 24, waiting for Gadot. 23, the queen of Versailles with crystal. 22, punch. 21, chess. We will get to number 20 right after this 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. And we're back. So 20, we have Le Baker's wife, a classic stage company. We are now in the stage of the section of the list where I liked it, how much I liked it is up for debate. So Baker's Wife I liked. I did not love. I liked is the musical by Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein based on the French film La Femme du Boulanger by Marcel Pagnon. This is a famous musical that closed out of town in the 1970s. This was Stephen Schwartz's first flight. It had a life at Paper Mill. It had a life in London. It had a revival at the Mannior Chocolate Factory, which this production at Classic Stage is kind of a transfer of. And the show has always been kind of worked on because there were. There was a highlight album recorded in the 70s with Patti and Paul and Kurt Peterson, you know, giving us metal arc. Where is the warmth? Proud Lady Meadow Arc in particular, becoming a major staple and having covers by Liz Calloway and Judy Kuhn, Lea Solano. And people have always been interested in trying to fix the Baker's Wife. Similar to Chess. There's, you know, I feel like sometimes with musicals we are the girl who thinks we can fix the boy. You know, if I. If I just get him to the right therapist, if I. If I take him to the right places, he'll be. He'll be better. I swear. And sometimes it works a lot better. You know, shows like Merrily have. Have definitely improved. Candide has improved. But other shows just. There's really nothing you can do. And the Baker's Wife is a show that I really think there's nothing you can do. It is. Is a very light story of a French town who wants the bread, and the new baker who comes with his young wife. And the older baker makes the bread, and everyone's happy. But then the young wife goes off with a young stud, and the baker goes, I cannot make the bread anymore. I am too depressed. And the town goes, but what about the bread? And they go to find the waff so they can get the bread. But then the wife comes back because even though she's like, there's so much heat with the young man, there is no warmth. I need the worms. And the town's like, we need the warmth so we can have our bread. And everyone's happy. And there's a cat. There's a cat in the show that is a metaphor for love and pain and regret and sadness and optimism and joy. And, of course, the cat is also a metaphor for bread. The Baker's Wife is just. It's a nice little show that ultimately is too long for the story it's telling. That'll be a theme for other shows as well. This production is very nice, though. Gordon Greenberg directed it. It is beautiful to look at. Scenic design by Jason Sherwood, costumes by Kathryn Zuber, lighting by our king, Bradley King. As I said in my review, it kind of looks like the line for a ride at Disney World, maybe like an epcot for Ratatouille. And I mean that with all of the warmth in my heart. I love that kind of aesthetic. And the cast is strong. The one weakling for me is the actor playing Dominique, Kevin William Paul, who is very handsome and actually does have a good voice, but is clearly a high tenor. And the role is meant for a baritone, and so it is too low for him. And he's pushing to make it sound heavier, and it's making him actually sharp on stuff. And I don't know if they refused to give him new keys, if this was the sound they liked, but I just don't think that the production helped him in that respect. You want kind of a tightly formed unit on a show like this. And while this is a perfectly nice production, it's not a production that struck enough to overcome the flaws of the piece. And the flaws of this piece I don't think can ever really be fixed unless they can whittle it down to 90 minutes or 100 minutes. Because again, the story is too thin to warrant a two and a half hour musical. And the only way again to really fix that is to kind of trim the show down, make it much more of an ensemble piece and not have anyone be the sole focus, have us do a mini French Nashville and just weave the stories in and out. So really make it concise, make it tight and have it be even peeled, have it just be a true ensemble. But that is not really what the show wants. And I don't think that it'll ever really get around that. Especially with Joseph Stein dead, with Stephen Schwartz getting up there in age and not really at the best of his abilities, I think that this show is kind of just doomed to be a sort of. Kind of almost. And this production, nice as it is, as I said, does not overcome those obstacles. But other pluses, we got Judy Kuhn, you got Kunzy on stage being awesome, sounding great and being funny. We got Sally Murphy yet again in an unhappy mirage. But this time she gets out of it girlfriend. And we love that for her. She and Kunzy had a scene together. It was 90 seconds long. I was in heaven. Nobody warned me that they would share a scene together alone on stage. And it was just them acting and it was so good. Okay, remind me what number that was again? That was 20. 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21. 20. Yes, that was 20 with the baker's wife. At number is. Oh, no, I don't have my Playbill for it, but it's Heather's. It's Heather's the Musical at New World Stages. Again, I have a review for that if you want to hear it more in depth. The truth is that Heather's is a musical that just doesn't work for me. It's a movie that I adore, that has meant a lot to me growing up. And while I don't necessarily think a musical of Heather's would ever truly work, I would want something that would go a little harder and a little weirder than the musical that we have have. And overall, I think that Heather's the Musical is too beholden to the traditional structure of musical theater and towards the appeal of commercial success and of wanting to take a story that ultimately Goes down like a lollipop covered in barbed wire. And it just sort of wants the lollipop. It wants the lollipop to maybe have a sour taste to it, but it doesn't want any of the barbed wire. And that's what makes Heather's the movie be so unique and so evergreen. Because there's stuff about Heather's as a movie that is less funny over time as the world gets sadder and Heather's becomes more of a prophecy than a wackadoo acid dream. That said, if I'm going to see Heather's, this production is maybe the best case for it. There are still some things physically that could be done better. The set is a much better, you know, need an improvement over the original. There is an actual aesthetic to it. It could be a little more creatively designed in terms of fluidity with different locales being used there. We could use fewer blackouts. There could be a tighter pace to it. None of the rewrites, I think, are detrimental to the show. I think that most of the rewrites have been either a lateral move or an improvement. But there are some songs that I just can't get around. I think that you're welcome is, you know, musically speaking, a better choice than Blue. But that's just a scene that I don't think requires song. I say no. I'm sorry, guys. I will say it to the day I'm dead. I hate that song. It is so Pasek and Paul in a show that Pask and Paul would get eaten alive in if it were a real person. I just. I don't like it. I don't want it. I don't need it. And we're also at that point in the show where we're getting to the two and a half hour mark and like, we gotta wrap this her up. Overall, it's really strong cast. Mackenzie Kurtz, who has now left the show, was Heather Chandler. And she was giving, in my opinion, the strongest performance. I really enjoyed. Casey likes as J.D. his Act 2, I thought was pretty flawless. I wish that he kind of would hold off on some of that menace in the first act, but overall he did a strong job. The whole cast does a strong job. Lorna Courtney, I thought, did not have the dry sensibility that I envisioned Veronica to have. She was a little too, not pick me, but like manic nerd, awkward girl. And she kept that for most of the show, which again, shows you that no matter how beautiful and glammed up Veronica is, she's still a nerd. At heart. But Veronica's nerd is more wise beyond her years, hyper, intelligent narrator from the sidelines. She's not like kooky crazy Anna in Frozen, like Oopsies. That's just me in a nutshell. That's not Veronica. But ultimately I think that her being kind of more bubbly is reflective of the issues I have with the tone of the musical. But it's not a bad time. It's perfectly fine. So that's 19 with heathers. At number 18, we have ginger Twinsies. Written and directed by friend of the pod, Kevin Zak. Ginger twinsies is the 80, 85 minutes at parody camptacular festival of the Parent trap, specifically the 1990s remake starring an 11 year old Lindsay Lohan. Some have asked if I don't know the Parent Trap would, would I have liked Ginger Twinsies? Would I have even understood Ginger Twinsies? The bottom line is, no, I don't think that you would have. And even if you understood the basic premise, if you got some of the stray jokes in it, I think part of what Ginger Twinsies relative success relies on is your nostalgia of the piece of your nostalgia for that era, primarily on what age you were when that movie came out. I think if you were a full grown adult, if you were like 35 when the parent Trap came out, and here we are 27 years later and you know, you're 62. I do not think the Ginger Twinsies reads the same way for you. You really kind of had to be a millennial or a very, very young Gen X to get into Ginger Twinsies. Because it's not just the movie, but it's also that decade of everything that's happening around it of the Spice Girls. Plus it makes other jokes from Mean Girls and Devil Wears Prada, Whitney Houston, a whole bunch of stuff like that. And really kind of goes off the rails in a way that is purely intentional. The show is meant to be sort of like a fever dreamy Titanic meth mentality. And because it is what we call referential humor and because it is a constant stream of throwing a joke out, throwing a joke out, both from the script and from the design and from the staging and from the actors, you're more likely to not laugh than you are to laugh. Just because they're coming fast and loose and not as maybe heightened and as strict as they could be, but just from the sheer mass of humor being thrown at you, you are going to laugh. There are times when you're going to laugh. You just can't help It. It's inevitable. It was a very strong cast. Russell Daniels as Annie, which is the British twin in the Parent Trap. I'm a big Russell Daniels fan, having seen him play Ruth in Titanic, like, four times. Still my favorite Ruth to this day. Day. Plenty of other really wonderful members of the company. Philip Taratula as Meredith Blake and a few other roles. But Philip, I also thought, really understood the assignment of playing ridiculous straight. And Zach, who, again, we're all very big fans of here. Kevin is a really smart, creative nutcase. And with Ginger Twinsies, obviously, you know, if you are aware of his social media, you know that he has jokes coming out of every port of his body. What I was really impressed by was his directorial skills. I thought he had a really good sense of tone and pacing with the show, and he had a really good eye. He was able to really use the Orpheum Theater and every crevice of that. Of that space in a way that I have seen other shows fail with, for example, Big Gay Jamboree. That theater is sort of like a wind tunnel and you. And it's hard to feel invested if you're too far away. It's how I also felt about the Jonathan Larson project. And I thought with Ginger Twinsies that Kevin was able to use his space to his advantage and make everyone feel a part of it. Even if you were like, all the way in the back, you still were able to get in on the energy and the zest of the show. Whether the style of comedy that it did is for you is another thing. Whether the material that it's spoofing is something you knew. I think that does impede enjoyment of it. And. And I. While I had a very nice time at Ginger Twinsies, I. I couldn't help but think about all the things that I knew it was doing that it was referencing and then wondering if I actually was laughing at a joke or I was laughing because I knew the reference. So that was number 18 for ginger twinsies. At number 17, we have slam Frank. Slam Frank also has just recently ended its Off Broadway run at the Asylum. Music and lyrics by Andrew Fox and book by Joel Sines. Directed by Sam Naflage. Choreography by Nico DeJesus. And it's actually produced by a friend of the pod, PJ Adzema, and his company, Stagetime. How to describe Slam Frank? Slam Frank is, technically speaking, a musical within a musical. It is about a theater company that is performing their own version of the Diary of Anne Frank. But they have, you know, for lack of a better term, for people who might be considering this offensive, they have over wokeified it. They have Hamilton it. They have decided to make it so that the Diary of Anne Frank is now a hip hop rapper. And Anne is a Jewish but Latina identifying young girl who writes in her diary while hiding from the Nazis with her family. And the production over politically corrects every element of the show. So I think Peter is the young man in the ad actually hides with. Is that his name? Right? He. He become. It turns out that he's non binary or he. He discover. Sorry, they discover that they are non binary. An's father is a secret homosexual with a var. A variety of ailments and mental. Yeah, I say ailments because it. It. They're both mental and physical. And then there's a whole element of toxic masculinity and girl boss Gaslight Gatekeepism. And the show fluctuates different genres of music. Again, a lot of it takes inspiration from the Lin Manuel Miranda catalog. Again, all intentionally so. And the musical is supposed to. Again, it's supposed to be a musical within a mutual musical. And the idea is the ridiculousness of modern musical theater, of politicizing musical theater, of pandering the politics of modern musical theater, as well as the dangers of using your identity of what makes you different or makes you a minority in any respect to make. To promote yourself as better than. Than. Or as. Yeah, as. As superior than. Because what the show tries to do in its last 20 ish minutes is highlight the darkness brewing underneath and the anti Semitism brewing underneath of modern wokeness. And I had a talk with a member of the team after the fact that. Because basically what happens is when it's looking in the musical because again, never forget that this is a musical within a musical. But when it's looking like in the musical that the war is soon going to be over and the Nazis will be defeated, the family all sings about what it is that they plan to do when they're free again. And an sister who has been silent this entire time sings about how they will go to Palestine and they will no cherish the land and they will. Will murder anyone who comes in their path and that they will take over the world, starting with Palestine. And Anna's like, don't you understand though, sister, that that's exactly what the Nazis are trying to do to us. And we can't do that. We can't be those monsters. We have to prove them all wrong. We can't. We cannot kill the Palestinians. And so the character of Anne Frank re reveals to the Nazis that they're hiding in the attic because in her mind, if the Nazis kill them, then the Palestinians will be saved and then there will be no genocide in Ghana, Gaza. And the whole thing is done with the actors putting on, you know, those masks where it's the glasses with the bushy eyebrows and the big noses and a whole, you know, to do of blatant anti Semitism. And this was when I was speaking to a member of the team and I was like, it took me a while to get there because watching it, I wasn't sure what was going on. And 48 hours later I stewed on it and I thought about it and I've come to the conclusion that because this is a show within a show, this is a theater company that has rewritten Anne Frank. This is highlighting their anti Semitism by being so pro Palestine and anti Israel to the extent that it's not even about. I'm just anti the Israeli government. It's no, I'm just anti Jew and, and, and roping in all Jewish people of the world as murderers of Palestine and power hungry, money hungry. And not viewing it, not viewing Judaism as it's. As an actual identity, as an actual ethnicity. Ignoring centuries of genocide towards them, of genocide, of genocide in honestly the last hundred years and, and ignoring the rise of anti Semitism all because of one element of their history that's happening right now that is horrific, but is not necessarily reflective of Judaism, but so much as one particular government that honestly is not that different from our government right now. And so we were talking about that and I was like, okay, cool, cool. It's like I had a hard time seeing that at the moment because ultimately the first 90 minutes of slam Frank is meant to be a majorly insightful slam piece on modern liberalism and modern musical theater. And I'm all for that. Not because I think that being liberal or being aware or being progressive is stupid. I don't. I think it's a wonderful thing, but I think a lot of it is very performative. And I've talked about this about modern musical theater, of how performative it actually is and how pandering it is. For all of the shows that have had done stuff that I enjoyed, there's something about all of them that have annoyed me. I think that there's a lot of creativity and intelligence to suffs. I find suffs to be pandering, maybe less so once it's traveling the country and going to cities where the audience is less like minded, maybe Then it'll be challenging. But in New York City, the majority of people sitting in that audience agrees with the politics of suffs. And so when characters are doing a girl bossy moment, it's not changing minds, it's a rallying cry, which is its own form of power, but it does not change the world. It just incentivizes the already converted. Same thing with a kinky boots that says, like, being gay is being fabulous and, you know, enjoy the rainbow, taste the rainbow. It's like, yeah, 95 of the audience already understands that and agrees with that. They're patting themselves on the back with that one. And it's the same thing with. With Slam Frank. Every time a moment happens, that's like a you go girl moment. And I'm not just talking about women, but like anything, anytime there is a you go get it moment, the audience. The audience kind of forgets that it's meant to be commentary, and they just applaud it, like, yes, I agree with that. And then the final 20 minutes takes a very hard pivot in tone and becomes brutally attacking the mindset of the audience. But the audience has already forgotten that this is a show within a show. My argument was, I think, that the first 90 minutes are not hard enough for a parody of modern musical theater and modern liberalism. The first 90 minutes are, I think, kind of softball in that respect. It's. The music is very well done, the lyrics are incredibly concise and clever. And it's not that the jokes are bad, but it's all very light bites. It's a little Heathersy, if I'm being honest. And I think that for the first 90 minutes, they could go harder, especially if they really want to have that. Those last 20 minutes land. There's also the question of what is real? What is this? What is the show within a show? I don't think the writers have fully figured that out yet. There are moments where you're like, is this the actor saying this or is this the character saying this? What's the logistics of this all? I think they kind of need to take another pass at the logistics of this show within a show. Show. I also think that there can be more evidence of this being a show within a show outside of the opening monologue from the artistic director, who's performing in the show as well. And I think, like, one or two shots of his headshot. Other than that, it's pretty much straight through. And I think we can have a bit more of the reminding us that we are watching a theater company's version of the Diary of Anne Frank. Because that also adds to the ridiculousness of this all. Cause for some people, they forget that this isn't like a fake musical about Anne Frank. This is meant to be a musical adaptation of an already written play. That is Slam Frank in a nutshell. If you have more questions, you can always ask me on Instagram. Hoplik usual spelling number 16. We have bat Boy. We've spoken about Bat Boy already on this podcast. So I will simply say that this was the New York City center annual gala presentation, directed by Alex Timbers, starring Taylor Trench, Kerry Butler. Major highlights were honestly, those two performances. Carrie Butler in particular was giving an extraordinary, phenomenal diva performance as Meredith, obviously she has a history with the show, having played Shelley in the early 2000s. So she gets this show. It's under her skin. And Batboy, similar to Urinetown, similar to, you know, Heather's or even even Slam Frank. It's a very hard tightrope to walk of. Of the B movie pulpy camp horror aesthetic. Harry Butler fully committed the entire time and also sounded incredible. Like not a single hour has passed since 2001, which is insane. Taylor also, as Bat Boy slash Edgar was able to really kind of get into the same mode as Carrie and sounded pretty strong in the role. And as we know, I have played that boy, so I can tell you that role is a to sing. So the fact that, you know, he even got through through it, that anyone gets through it, I applaud them. Downside is, similar to Heather's, there were some changes made to Bat Boy. And unlike Heather's, where there were moves that were either lateral or like slightly improved, that boy, for me, there were changes that were either lateral changes or they were negative changes. The lateral changes are things like random lyrics being changed for the opening number that I don't understand why they were done. That's something that only makes sense to the creative team. Most of Act 1 has been rewritten and I don't understand that the subplot with the town and the cows have been rewritten and I don't understand that the other small town characters have been expanded and I don't understand that Shelley and Edgar's Act 2 song used to be inside your heart and now it's called. I think it's mine all mine. Yeah, mine all mine. And it's. That's a lateral change for me. It does the exact same job as inside your heart. It's less funny, but. But. And it also doesn't quite sound like the rest of the Score. It sounds a little too contemporary based compared to the rest of the score. But it's not a bad song and I'm not angry that it's in there. I prefer Inside your heart, but I'm not. This is not like such a terrible change that I'm like burning the theater down to the ground. This production also, I thought, made good use of the space. City center is a very large theater. It's over 2,000 seats. And Batboy really should only be played in theaters that are less than 200 seats. It requires intimacy. It requires sort, sort of Judy and Mickey putting on a show in the barn. Slap dash, you know, five dollar budget aesthetic. That's what adds to the charm of it, adds to the humor of it as well as the doubling of roles and using puppets for animals for the sex orgy in Act 2. Don't ask questions. And considering that they obviously had to fill the space and they needed to put in money so their show could register to the back row, I think that they were able to get away with a lot of that if they were in a smaller theater. Theater, I would request that they do a smaller cast and a smaller budget. But considering the venue, that's what they needed to do. And I don't begrudge them that. So that is Batboy at 16. To recap, we have Call Me Izzy at 27, Seat of Our Pants at 26, Art at 25, Waiting for Godot at 24, the Queen of Versailles with Kristen at 23, Punch at 22, Chess at 21, the Baker's Wife at 20, Heather's at 19, Ginger Twinsies at 18, Slam Frank at 17, Bat Boy at 16. This has all been off Broadway stuff now. And at 15, 15 we have, yet again off Broadway we have Caroline. Let me find her. There's Caroline at mcc, written by friend of the Pod, Preston Max Allen. We have a whole lot of friends of the Pod on this list. Ain't that great, everybody Again, we had a little bit of a review on Caroline earlier this year. You can find that review in. I think it's the wrap up review that has Bat Boy and I think Oedipus and things like that. But Caroline starred Chloe Grace Moretz, Amy Landecker River, Leipe Smith, directed by David Cromer. And it was just a very heartwarming tale of a young mother fleeing a terrible, dangerous situation with her child, who we learn is trans or discovering their transness. I think they're about 10 or 11 and is now going by the name Caroline. And they Return to the the mother, whose name is Maddie. They return to Maddie's childhood home to see Maddie's parents, who she had run away from and stolen money from when she was much younger in hopes of money and shelter so Maddie can come up with a new game plan to help take care of Caroline. Caroline, as a play, discusses the trickiness of second chances, of giving loved ones second chances, of what it means to be there for someone you love, of being supportive, of sometimes giving up your own self interest for someone you love. And I think does it with a great deal of nuance and aplomb. If there's one thing that I kind of was thrown by is that there's a major wrench that's thrown in the third act of the play that ultimately feels like it's done for dramatic intensity. It doesn't feel totally earned, especially after a great deal of growth that the characters do together, a great deal of healing that Matty and her mother do with each other. Rhea is the name of her mother, but because this sort of wrench is thrown so late in the third act of the play, it felt a little jarring. And then it's not resolved, but it's kind of. It's put to bed pretty quickly after that. And so there doesn't seem to be a need for. For it to have a moment like that. And so that was a little frustrating. But overall it's a very lovely play. And again, we're in the part of the list that I'm saying this is the stuff that I liked. So that is Caroline at number 15. At number 14. Where are you at, bitch? Here we go. At number 14 we have Bug, a Manhattan theater club. Bug is five Tracy Letts, currently starring Carrie Coon, directed by David Cromer. Bug has been around for 25 years, 26 years. This is its Broadway debut, though it will be eligible for revival, I'm pretty sure under the classics ruling. Bug tells the story of Agnes. Agnes is living in a hotel in Oklahoma City and she is a waitress. She kind of is living day to day. Her ex husband Jerry, is about to get out of prison. We we learned that years ago her son had been kidnapped and she never really got over it. She never got any answers about what happened to her son. She does have a friend named R.C. and R.C. brings a young man named Peter to Agnes's hotel room while they all do drugs, getting ready to go to a party. And then, then Peter ends up staying behind and he and Agnes end up connecting. And you don't realize it at first, but Peter has a. Some. Has a mental dysfunction. I don't know what. How do we describe them now? But no, he has a mental imbalance. He is. He is. Has a paranoia that we don't totally clock at first, but eventually we come to realize that it manifests in piercing. But bugs like genuine insects. But it's not just that they're insects. It's that those bugs are implants of the government. Peter, we learn, was in an institution, might even been in jail for a while. And once he's gone off his meds and left, once he's left the institution, gone off his meds, his brain starts to make him believe again that he is an experiment and that the government has been testing him. Him. By implementing bug. By implementing bugs into his body and through osmosis and manipulation and coercion, as well as her being just in a. In a weakened, vulnerable state to accept this delusion. Agnes has gotten on board with Peter's paranoia as well. And as a play, Bug is a slow burn. It's always been a slow burn. It's always been a weird play. Play. That said, this production at Manhattan Theater Club leans into the play's weaknesses and exploits them rather than leaning into the play's qualities and promoting them. The best way to go about doing Bug is it needs to sort of feel like a pressure cooker. You have the first two scenes that can be kind of slow but still can be enjoyable. A little funny, a little odd. And then at the evening continues, it gets more and more tense and more and more pressure feels put upon from the outside until eventually Peter, who has. Who, you know, we should feel has a little bit of something off about him, but still has a charm and a vibrancy about him. The charm and vibrancy goes away and the dangers just fully takes over. And you watch a woman who could have been fine get fully enveloped in a conspiracy. And the production gets to the final impact of that. The last 20 to 30 minutes. I think the production does ultimately nail. It's the hour and 10 before that that is difficult. And I don't know if Bug has always been done with an intermission. I feel like it has, but even so. So the first act of this show, especially in this production, is done so quietly and so calmly that when the lights went up for intermission, there were people around me who were like, that's it. What's to keep me here? And to their credit, most of the audience still stayed. But a lot of people were confused as to if anything had happened at that point. I think part of that is Cromer as a director. Cromer is not someone who I necessarily equate with. With danger and bubbling intensity. I find that Cromer's at his best when he's doing kind of not quiet pieces, not. Not quiet pieces, but like, he does quiet well. And he does dropped in very well. I think about Caroline, I think about the band's visit, and I think about his production of Our Town. And, you know, Dead Outlaw definitely was not as dropped in as those shows, but it had a lot of ASMR elements to its production, to the point that I know a lot of people who saw it on Broadway and were quite bored. And I don't know if Cromer was the right director for this. I don't know if he, as a director, could helm a production that would get weird enough and intense enough. And that's also evident in Namir Smallwood as Peter, who is ultimately just not. Again, I hate to overuse words, but he's not dangerous enough. This is a role that really launched Michael Shannon's career as an actor. And think about Michael Shannon and sort of what he does best. Even he. Speaking of Bug, he's got these buggy eyes and he has an intensity about him that he. Even when he's in neutral, you're always kind of wondering, what's he going to do? There's something unknowable, untenable about him. It's why I always wanted him to play Sweeney Todd. And even when he's sitting and stewing, there is an energy about him that makes him so watchable and not in a charismatic, oh, I want to get a bureau that kind of way, in a, like, I have no clue what this fucker's about kind of way. And that's ultimately what the character of Peter is. It's a really great use of Michael Shannon. And Namir Smallwood ultimately plays Peter as a very quiet, very go with the flow kind of guy for over an hour, to the point that, like, I don't know if it was the direction or if it was him, but I just. He was. I found him very unmemorable for the first hour. And you need Peter to be memorable because you need someone where we can understand how, like, the bugs that Peter imagines are under his skin. Peter is a bug that gets under Agnes skin and burrows within her and pollutes her brain. And we don't ever really see that happen. We see Carrie Coon as Agnes try to justify that for us. But she can't really go to the places she needs to go because the production does not help her. Carrie Coon is a phenomenal actress and she does a really good job in this show, especially in the last 20, 30 minutes. She really, you know, gets to a manic state that. That doesn't feel put upon, but it does feel disconnected from the rest of the show because, again, this production does not help push her in that direction. She kind of has to get there herself, and it's a lot of work for one woman to do. As I said, I enjoyed a lot of this. It's not the worst thing of the season. It's not the best thing of the season. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did, but that is bug at 14. Everybody. Again, if you have more questions, anything that I didn't cover, you can ask me on Instagram or you can even write it on the sub stack. Make sure you join that. If you haven't. In terms of nominations, I would say probably just Carrie Coon maybe. Set design. There's a big set change in the last 20 minutes of the show that's very impressive, and it had the audience definitely, you know, wowed. But other than that, I don't. Other than Carrie and maybe the set, I don't really see much else happening for Bug. Next up at number 13. This one's also going to annoy some people. We have two Strangers carry a cake, A cross across New York. If you listened to my review of that show a few weeks ago, you'll know that I do not dislike this show. I do not love this show. I feel. I don't want to, you know, shit on people who are really big fans of this because they're fans of this. On the Discord, who really have spoken its praises. And I wanted to love it. I really wanted a show that could come in and be the. Maybe happy ending or the gentleman's guide of the season. A champ. A show that I could champion. Champion. And I'm a big Anglophile, you know that I love my British and I love rom coms and I love, you know, intimate pieces. And there's a lot to like about two Strangers carry a cake. There's a. There's a lot to admire. I think that this show ultimately is fine. It's cute. The word that people often said was charming. They said a lot of people said the same thing about the Baker's Wife. Charm is a little different for me. Charm is. Is something that can entice you, that can seduce you, that you Ultimately can be won over by. Cute is something that you can acknowledge, but you're always a little bit at a far from. And for me, two strangers is cute, not charming. I think what's charming is Sam Tutti in the main role of Dougal, but Dougal as a character, I do not find charming. I think Sam Tutti is a charming performer who works a miracle with a role that ultimately is incredibly annoying on paper. The basic premise is Dougal is English and comes to America for the first time to go to his estranged father's wedding. His father, who he has not seen for the better part of 10 or 15 years. His father is now an incredibly successful businessman living in New York. And Dougal's father is marrying a woman much younger than him. And that woman's sister is Robin. Robin is only like two or three years older than Dougal. And. And Robin, through reasons we come to find out later, is basically penance, is doing all of her sister's bidding leading up to the wedding, including picking up Dougal at the airport, dropping him off at his hotel. And Robin also has to, you know, help with her sister's wedding dress and help pick up the cake from Brooklyn for the event. And ultimately Dougal accompanies her and they end up having an adventure all over New York one night and we learn that Robyn is working a dead end job in a coffee shop. She moved from Brooklyn out of her grandmother's house to Manhattan to be closer to her sister because she loves her sister. She's kind of obsessed with her sister. She talks about growing up, always kind of wanting what her sister had. She and her sister lived with her grandmother growing up, and Robin has not seen her grandmother in two years, has not spoken to her in two years. We never really find out why. The show does not make that clear. And the show does not really give Robin any incentive for doing so. Robin, we also find out, slept with Dougal's father when he was dating Robin's sister. And that is why Robin is doing penance for her sister. She originally is not invited to the wedding and keeps pleading to be invited to the wedding. And we find out it's because of her having an affair with Dougal's father. But also it's implied that Robin's sister has been taking advantage of her for years and has never really thought of her sister highly. So that's an odd relationship that's also never really quite fleshed. On top of all this, the show has all of these, I guess you could call them red herrings that don't really go anywhere. Robin's on, on, on Tinder and swiping with guys and Dougal helps her with swiping and helps her with a guy she might like, and that all sort of connects. But then Robin doesn't end up meeting with the guy from Tinder because ultimately the show wants us to believe that Robin and Ducal fall in love at the end. And it's a romance that I don't buy. At the beginning of the show, I thought that maybe it wasn't. It was gonna flip it on its head and you would. Would think that this was gonna be a rom com, but actually, no. It becomes about two lost souls who find a meaningful friendship. And that, I think is far more potent than a forced quick romance. Now, for some people know, romantic love is the greatest love of all. We see so many stories that it's like, it's not just romantic love. It's love from your parents, love from your sibling, love from your best friend. And I think that being a love that you need in a moment of need is a really interesting thing to discuss. And having it not necessarily be romantic, just someone being there and caring for you. And in a lot of ways, two strangers carry a cake across New York does do that, but it ultimately cannot resist the going for the romance in the second act, which I wouldn't mind if I bought it, but I don't buy it. Part of that is also similar to the Baker's Wife is that for a show that has a very short plot, it takes its sweet time doing. So it is a two act. It is a little over two hours, and it doesn't need to be. This could easily be 95 minutes with no intermission. There are songs that are very well crafted that tell you a great deal about the characters. And then there are songs that I feel like are in there because it's a musical, not because the songs are required. And similar to something like a chess. There are songs where the music goes so hard in times where I don't think it's necessary, but they are tuneful. The lyrics are well crafted. The set and the staging are inventive. It's all on a turntable. The set is made up of various suitcases that open up and create different locations in New York City. And that's quite nice. Yeah, this is. I'm. I feel like I'm shitting more on, on this show than I mean to. It's more that this show has fans who have told me that this is, you know, that this is not only far and away the best musical of the season, which it is, but that it would be in another season. And that this is, gives people hope for the future of musical theater, which I think is a lot. But I, I mean, go off, pop off sis if you want to. It's not doing terribly well at the box office right now. And a lot of people have also asked me why that is. And the truth is that I think that there are a lot of people like me who have gone to see it and have been like, it's cute and have not gone on any further. People who are not hating it, but people are like, let's all calm down. I don't think this is the greatest thing of the season. And people have been trying to compare it to maybe Happy Ending, which is also a small show that, you know, got great reviews and had to kind of struggle to find its audience. But the difference between these two shows is that maybe Happy Ending A did overall get stronger reviews than Two Strangers. Two Strangers did get a critics pick from the New York Times, but then again, so did Queen of Versailles. And the rest of the reviews for Two Strangers were mostly positive, but a couple of mixed and a couple of negatives. It wasn't overwhelmingly raves and, and maybe Happy Ending had a word of mouth situation that was so intense that you look at the grosses for maybe Happy Ending. And it was on an upward trajectory from the get go. It didn't start reaching the Million dollar Club until around March or April of its run, but even in the December, January times when it was tough and, and it was, you know, still like the little show that could, it wasn't doing terribly and every week it was doing a little bit better, which showed that word of mouth was working. And Two Strangers is kind of fluctuating. And I think that's all you need to know of where the word of mouth is for everyone who loves this show. There are plenty of people like me who were sort of like, it was fine. And I think that divide is what's keeping people who are curious about it from seeing it. You know, if the show were taking off, it would take off. And I don't mean it any harm. I liked it perfectly fine. It's at number 13 out of 27. But I think it's worth. I'm like, I'm just annoyed by people who get very loudmouthed about it. But I get loudmouthed about shows too. And people, people get annoyed by me all the time for it. That's two strangers at number 13. At number 12 we have a Christmas Carol at Pac the Perlman Arts Center. This was a very delightful afternoon at the Fiata. I missed this production when it played Broadway in 2019 at the Lyceum. It is co conceived and directed by Matthew. It's a script by Jack Thorne cast that included Michael Serveris as Ebenezer Scrooge. We all know the whole plot. It has an original score by Christopher Nightingale. It also had Nancy Opal in it. It had also had Crystal Lucas Perry. It had Julianne Nidle. This was a very delightful afternoon. It similar to Two strangers. I don't think it needed to be two acts. The act break also was at a very weird moment. It also felt a little padded. Thorne is very interested in the baggage of trap Alma. He's interested in reconciliations. So he has devised quite a few scenes that do not exist in A Christmas Carol so Scrooge can get some closure. And he also includes parental violence for Ebenezer of a father who used to hit him and a father who implemented fear and loathing into him. Which, you know, let's not blame one person for creating the terribleness of a man. One person can plant the seed, but it takes a community to make it grow. And that's sort of the point of A Christmas Carol is that Scrooge did not come out of the womb nasty and power hungry. He had ideals that were shaped by his teachers and his father and a world that did not reward his his kindness and his idealism. It rewarded his his motivation and his urgency and his desire for success. And the show I think kind of hammers harder than even the novel does of the Love all mankind. Be a good person while you're here. Don't hold on to material things in a way that's like it. That is very 21st century of just sort of like TikTok idealism. That said, what I think keeps it from being overly saccharine is Orchis production. The design, the staging, the company, all top notch and really, really beautifully excitingly done. Like watching it after having seen a few other shows before it that I was less than interested in with Christmas Carol I was like, oh, this is what a real director does is what Warches does with this production. And it was so enjoyable. I really, really, really had a lovely time. Not much else to say. It's closing around this time, I believe in a few days after this episode comes out. But that's a curses carol. At Perlman Art center at number 12, at number 11 we have Prince Phagot. That has also closed at Studio Seaview after having a successful run at Play Arts Horizons. This is indeed the play by Jordan Tennis Hill that discusses what would happen if Prince George had become gay. What would the royal family do? How would the world react? And how would George be as an adult in this world where we're still kind of navigating what it means to be homosexual, what it means to be an acceptable homosexual to the world, what it means to embrace and relish in your sexuality and even your kinks. And there's been a lot of discussion of exactly the morality of doing that for a play that's based on a. An. An imagined future for a person who's still a child and very real. But I think what the show does well is the conversation it has around sexuality, around identity. It does not do kink for the sake of kink. It does not do sensuality for the sake of sensuality. I think that the conversations it has are more interesting, perhaps, than the story that it tells of an imagined George and his boyfriend. But it has a great deal of style to it. It has a great deal of dramatic, I'm gonna say pulp to it, and it's not that it's classless, but it does relish in the. I guess, in the controversial side of sexuality. It wants to be boundary pushing and envelope pushing and it's never really quite that it does beyond nudity on stage and a pretty, you know, well choreographed sex scene that I'm sure many audiences have not seen before on stage. It doesn't really go for the jugular of inner turmoil in the way that I've seen other queer shows do. Even shows that people have problems with, like Boys in the Band, Boys in the Band fights to get to the root of the velvet rage that so many people feel. I had a long conversation with some gays the other day about the velvet race rage, and it was enlightening because some people, some homosexuals really hate that book because they think it's so simplistic. And it is very simplistic. But there is a truth to it, even if it is repeated over and over again. And it can be found in Prince Phagote. And that's all I'll really say about Prince Phagote. It's always great to see John McCrae on stage again. Having seen him in Everybody's Talking About Jamie. I never thought that I would, and I was so thrilled that I was able to do so. I was also a huge fan of David Greenspan. I will be seeing everything that person does from now on. Because they are are that good. That is Prince Phagot for us. Let's recap for a second, shall we? Okay. At 27 we have Call Me Izzy. 26, seat of our pants. 25. Art 24. Waiting for Gadot. 23, Queen of Versailles with Kristen. 22 punch. 21. Chess. 20. The Baker's Wife. 19 Heathers 18. Ginger Twinsies 17 Slam Frank. 16 Bat Boy. 15 Caroline 14 Bug 13. Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York. 12. A Christmas Carol at Pearlman Arts Center. 11. Prince Fagot. And we will get to the top 10 right after this break. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred. And we're back. So. So I'm sorry to do this for everybody, but we're going to recap again. At 27 is Call Me Izzy. 26 is the seat of our pants. 25 is art. 24 is waiting for Godot. 23, Queen of Versailles. 22 Punch 21, Chess 20. The baker's wife. 19 Heathers 18 Ginger Twinsies 17. Slam Frank. 16 Bat Boy 15 Caroline 14 Bug 13. Two strangers carry a cake across New York. Number 12, A Christmas Carol. 11. Prince Phagot. Number 10. 10. Gotta dance from New York theater company, American Dance Machine. Gotta Dance. There's not much to it other than it's a review of dance pieces as choreographed by some of the great American choreographers of musical theater, both on stage and on film. And it includes such incredible numbers as I'm a Brass Band from Sweet Charity as the pas de deux in the Dance Within a Dance of Singing in the Rain between Gene Kelly and Sid Charisse. Moses opposes from Singin in the Rain. It also has Music in the Mirror from A Chorus Line as well as one from a chorus line, Mr. Monotony from Jerome Robbins Broadway. It also had. Or some other ones that it does. It does sing, sing, sing from Swing on Broadway, Simply Irresistible from Contact. All I Need is the girl from Gypsy. The I feel like there's some other ones that I'm missing. What? Looking at my thing for a second. I love a piano from White Christmas. But ultimately what this piece did for me and I hope would do for others who saw it is it kind of highlighted how shitty a lot of choreography today is on Broadway because I feel like I'm, I. I'm a broken record. But choreography is not just about impressive dancing. It's not just about an audience watching and going, I can't do that. But they can. That's amazing. That's an element of it. That's part of the reason why Glitter and Be Gay is such a baller, you know, aria in musical theater. Because watching a soprano hit those notes is like, fuck me sideways. That's incredible. But it also has to be earned, and especially in musical theater. The difference between musical theater and a dance recital is that there's a story to be told, there's characters happening. The choreography. Choreography is not just impressive, but it also fits the world in which it's being told in. It fits the character. It has a build to it. An audience builds up anticipation for it. And so much modern choreography today is sloppy. It is throwing all the spaghetti at the wall immediately, shooting its load immediately. And you don't get precision, you don't get refinement. You don't get character, and you don't get story. You mostly will get energy, and sometimes it's decent energy, but you don't get a lot of attitude. And watching Gotta Dance, you watch what Michael Bennett does with one, which is a perfect finale, and you see just how simple a lot of it is and how quietly it builds and how he's always shifting perspective and shifting the shapes of the group and constantly keeping you on your toes of when exactly the piece is going to explode. You want it to build and build and almost get there and then come back down and then build a little higher than get back down. And then finally it explodes. Because you don't need backflips and cooter slams to get an audience cheering. You need to just build up the tension, build up the excitement. You think about Alfred Hitchcock talking about suspense versus shock. He says, nine people are at a dinner table and a bomb goes off. You get 10 seconds of shock and then it's all over. But you show the audience before, at the beginning of a scene that there's a bomb under the table. Then for 10 minutes during that scene, the audience is in constant suspense events and constant tension. Because they're like, when is that bomb going to go off? And that is ultimately the explosion of when a dance pays off in spades. You think about speaking of Bennett again, You think about Turkey Lurkey Time. That is a number that builds to a climax that it shouldn't earn, but it does. And songs like I'm a Brass Band, which is Fosse, like, you know, Fosse had done some of his more Acrobatic staging. You look at, you know, his version of Sing, Sing, Sing from Danson, or you look at some of all that jazz, and there's plenty of, you know, incredible leaps and. And lifts and turns. But he also can make the most out of so little. And he always had an image in his brain. And you wonder, like, where is that now? There really isn't any of that right now. Like, think about it. Really think about it. Think about something like Big Spender from Sweet Charity. Compare that number to anything else, just in the simplicity and how iconic its imagery is and how much it makes you wait and wait and wait and wait. Think of, you know, let's look at Jerome Robbins for a second. Let's think of Cool. Oh, they also did cool from west side Story. I forgot. But his original cool. And you think of the attitude about it, and you think of the Jack Cole angles and how it's always kind of. It's like an M.C. escher painting. It's just always moving at a disorganized angle that makes sense but doesn't have a lot of clarity. And today, when we're choreographing something like Cool, it just becomes constant motion and constant swooping and constant no jagged punches. And it's not just about the aggression of an action, but also about the suppression of wanting to do more and having to force your character to hold it until they really can have the space to explode with it. And Gotta Dance is just like number after number of dances that are just so perfectly crafted, that are so real well realized, that have a style and an attitude and a precision that you just don't see as much anymore. And I sincerely hope that at least American Dance Machine can. Can have more widespread acclaim like it did in the past, but also that this Gotta Dance and maybe other iterations of it can be done on larger stages for larger audiences. Because we need to remember what actual genius is, because we've had good choreography, but we haven't had shit like this in so long. And I am tired of having to pretend that we do. We just don't. And that's all I really gotta say. So thank you. Gotta Dance for your service. And I hope we see more shit like this down the line. All right, moving on. At number nine, we have Little Bear Ridge Road, the Samuel Hunter play that stars Laurie Metcalfe and Micah Stock, directed by Joe Mantello. This is a play that has lived with me a little bit longer than I expected. I. I both like it and don't like it. As much as I thought I would when I walked out of the theater and when I reviewed it for this podcast. On one side, Laurie Metcalf's performance remains crystal clear in my brain. A lot of the imagery of that production remains clear in my brain. Joe Mantello, you have a gorgeous eye, more than people are willing to give you credit for. And there are, and there are moments in this piece that I think back on and it stays with me. Ultimately, it's a very quiet show. It's, I think, two leading performances that are very jarring in tone that between Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock. And of the two, I think Metcalf is the one who walks away with the show. Even if Stock's characters who were ultimately focused on. And this is one that got incredible reviews, had some really strong word of mouth online, but also I think has had some mediocre word of mouth online as well. It's one of those things where people will write something thing on, on social media and then when they're at a dinner table with 10 people and those people ask them, oh, should I go see it? And they go, maybe. Maybe is not enough. Not with the ticket prices the way that they are. Not with the competition that's all around so quiet. Plays like Little Bear Ridge Road can't really survive. And I did like it, but we're still really in the like section, not in the excellent section of the list. For me, that is at number nine. I do think that best play as a nomination is very much an option for a Little Bear Ridge Road. We'll see what happens. Giants reception in the spring. I think Gloria Metcalf as actress definitely has a shot. Whether she ends up competing with herself for Death of a Salesman, we'll see. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure how that production's going to make Linda's part feel in the grand scheme of things, but you never know. There's not much else to say about Little Bear Ridge Road. You can hear me talk about it more in depth on that review episode. That's part of. I believe that's part of the Bat boy group. But now you can find that not. Not too far back. Okay, so that's Little Bear ridge Road at 9. At number 8, we have ragtime. Is that too low? Is that too high? I don't know. I don't care. As I said before, Ragtime is a musical that I love to listen to. Every time I see it, I am dry eyed. I have enjoyed the novel. The novel is weird, but it is very Smart and. And well crafted. It's a solid adaptation of the novel. It gets a lot of the events, event in time. It weaves all of the plot points together in a way that's not super confusing. There are some timeline issues in Act 2 that I don't think the show has ever properly addressed or the creative team has never really properly addressed. And I think only some people ever really catch. It does need a production that can spearhead it creatively with, you know, really, really well realized imagery and with an urgency and a vitality and, and. And a pressure that can make you forget about any of the issues, any of the other issues you might have with the piece. Because what the piece really has is glorious, glorious music and a compelling narrative that I think could add for some debate if the show wasn't so intent on idealizing its main characters and idealizing the racial dynamics that the novel works so hard to kind of of have an indictment of. And the musical just kind of wants to lay it out plainly. Granted, that's what a lot of musicals do in general. But Ragtime as a musical I've always found to be a product slash a victim of the decade that it was written in. As well as the producer who commissioned it and wanted it to be the most important American work of the century. The Showboat or Oklahoma, probably. And a lot of people think that it is, and that is their prerogative. I think that it is a lot of really great craft and a lot of phenomenal music that ultimately adds up to something that I don't buy. That's sort of me with Ragtime. This production is fine. It has a strong cast of actors. Everyone is very smart and very talented. The musical sounds fantastic. I said before, Casey Levy and Colin Donnell just sound too modern musically for me. And that is not an issue of theirs. That is just something that you can't really get past. Some people have a very classic sound. Some people have a poppy sound. Joshua Henry is, you know, just a major gust of wind on that stage and sings incredibly well, as he always does. I don't find as much mayhem in his second act as I have found with other Coal Houses. But I guess you could also argue that that is his interpretation of rather than Coal House being a hurricane. He is a precise force with a mission, which could be, you know, quite scary under the right circumstances. But Ragtime doesn't really want to go down that route. I found Brandon Uranowitz as Tata to be really strong. I find this to be very ugly looking production. The design just is not conducive to any kind of theme or vision. A lot of it just looks ugly. Costumes are fine. Lighting is okay. It's very dimly lit ragtime. But it. I think the lighting helps sort of carry the burden that the set can't really do for the production. There's a lot of cases where actors run on stage for no purpose just to say their line and then go back off stage. And that's part of the issue of ragtime. I also don't. I gotta say, I do not love Lear's idea of having the show begin with the boy telling Little Coalhouse child, the in 1902, father built a house. Because then it becomes like, oh, so this whole show, then is the boy telling Little Coal House the whole story? Because there's a. There's. It's similar. Like when Usnavi's telling the story, you find out Usnavi's telling in the Heights to all those kids in the bodega in the movie of in the Heights, and you go, oh. So he. When they're talking about Nina and Benny, this is something that Usnavi tells the kids in the bodega when they're in the clareb dancing. Usavi's telling the kids about the clothes. And I'm like, at what point is this just what we're watching? And at what point is it actually what Usavi's telling them? And I know that's getting in the weeds of this shit, but I'm sorry, I can't help it. This is what I do. And that is. If you're going to make that the. The book ending narrative, if you're going to make that the storytelling device, I'm sorry, I'm going to think about it. It's going to lay on my brain. And it also just doesn't amount to much because the kid comes on stage at the beginning and then on stage at the end. It's not like once on this island where the little girl is there the entire time and. And is woven into the story. This is. The kid pops up at the beginning and pops up at the end. And so then the question becomes like, why does he hear this story at such a young age, ultimately hearing about how his parents were murdered one senselessly and one unfairly. I don't know. I don't know. Things to think about. But it's very well sung and it's not a bad production. Uh, I think tales of its greatness are way overdone. But I have felt that way about Lear Debessenet. Productions since Lear DeBessenet started doing Broadway productions. Remember when everyone lost their shit for her? Into the Woods? And here we are two years later, and people are starting to kind of change their tune about the narrative of that show's response. People were really gung ho about Once Upon a Mattress and that moved to Broadway, and all it took was that show, show, you know, finishing its run for us to never talk about it ever again. And right now, Ragtime seems to really struck a chord in a way that it did not do the last time. All right, that is ragtime at number eight. At number seven is Queen of Versailles with Sherry Renee Scott. Now hear me out. Hear me out. Hear me out. Hear me out. Hear me out. Queen of Versailles did not get good with Sherri Renee Scott. What I am ranking here is Sherri Renee Scott's first performance as Jackie Siegel. Specifically, that experience that I had in the theater. It was both watching an actress I love be on a Broadway stage in a musical. Again, it was watching a show that not only didn't work when I watched it with Kristin Chenoweth, but I was confused as to why it was even being created with Kristin Chenoweth. And watching with Sheri having things fall into place where it didn't work. But I was able to see the potential all of a sudden. It was a very fascinating experience. And not only that, being with 1300 other people who were solely there to witness. Witness an actress they also loved be back on a Broadway stage and give her nothing but undying love and support in a way that was selfless. It was. It was not performative. Woohooing and cheering and yassifying and everyone wanting Sheri to know that they were there. It was pure people wanting Sheri to know that we all were there for her and how excited we all were to see her and how we needed her to know that this is where she belonged and this is what she was born to do. It might be the closest at this point in my life that I'll ever get to the feeling of Judy Garland decarnation, Carnegie hall of that large a group of people ferociously supportive of one woman, that even if they weren't liking the musical, they didn't care. They cheered. They were on board. They laughed when they needed to. And it made the musical make a lot more sense. Didn't make it good, but made it make a lot more sense. And again, it was a response to shout Sheri. That was not about any of us individually, but just all of us collectively. There for her. And it was really powerful and it was a little addictive. It's kind of why I went back a third time to see what was supposed to be Sheri's final performance. Didn't end up being her final performance. She went on again, but it was her last scheduled performance and that third time was not as good. Sherri had gotten actually better in the role. But also audience was on board for like the first 30 minutes and then the quality of the show kind of got to them and they were less invested. But that first night everyone was invested from start to finish. And it was really. People throw this word around a lot, but it was magical. It was a magical night and I was so happy to be there and experience it. So Sherry and Queen of Versailles with her first night is currently at number seven on my list. Not because of the show. Sherry did not make it all of a sudden magically incredible. But that evening was incredible. And for that it will be at number seven and number six we have Meet the Cartosians. Second stage is Meet the Cartosians. This play in addition to it has kind of connections to Slam Frank in a lot of ways. It takes, it's two acts. In the first act, it's sort of great gardens in this respect, takes place in the 1920s and then the second act takes place 100 years later and it is following, following an Armenian family. And in the first act it is the grandfather fighting for his legal right to be considered white by the American government for on, for the, for the Armenian people on a census to be declared white because they feel that that is what they are, that is how they should be treated. And they, and they want to be considered equal status Americans. And you flash forward a hundred years to the next act and all of a sudden there's now a fight for the new census for Armenians or for a section of our of Armenians population in America to have their own box to not be considered, considered white. And this is happening what is supposed to be an interview for a reality show of the Cartosian family, the same family we, we met in the first act 100 years earlier. That family has gone on to become essentially the Kardashians. And as they're waiting for the Kim Kardashian of the Cartosian family to come and, and interview these four California based Armenian American Americans, we there a debate starts to happen about what is going on in Armenia, about the genocide where Armenians had to flee their country and go into more Western European countries and whether Armenians are from the Middle East. Or if they're from Europe and what they're not just their ethnicity, but what their race is now. And the debate becomes, what is ethnicity? What is race? Is race something that people, people see and define you as? Is that. Is ethnicity something you are or you are from? And who makes these decisions? And what is even the point of it all? Are you. Is by selectively separating yourself from another group of people, giving you independence or your demographic and identity, or is it minimized your inclusion in society by trying to have a separation? And there's, and there's arguments all around for that. And, and, and sort of the irony of this demographic fighting so hard for one thing, a hundred years earlier that they now are trying to fight against 100 years later. And I feel like this kind of goes into my original Queen of Versailles review when I, when I reviewed Queen of Versailles and Ragtime together a few weeks ago. And I talk about, about why, as writers, you don't necessarily want to try to write something for the moment, because the moment will pass and you don't know what moment will come after that. And, and if your piece is only specifically addressing this moment in time as it exists and only works if it's addressing a specific moment in time, when the moment passes, the piece won't matter anymore. It will lose its potency. We talked about this, this with shows from the 60s and 70s like two gentlemen of Verona and Promises, Promises that were so on the pulse that they became dated a year later. And that's obviously a more flippant example, but Meet the Cartosians, I feel like, is a piece that addresses that kind of struggle and that combat within all communities, really, because everybody wants to have an identity, and everybody wants to have pride in their identity, but sometimes the urge to be taken seriously has a detrimental effect by selectively separating yourself from the, from society as a whole to be your own subcategory. And that is something, something that Andrea Martin is, you know, arguing against, as opposed to Susan Porfer, who wants to be on a separate list on a census. And then there's a whole conversation with Will Brill's character who's, you know, originally an Irish lawyer who's helping the cartosians in the 1920s. And then in the 2000s, he's working on the reality show, and he has a whole diatribe about, about, you know, white people who don't want to be white people when it's beneficial, but then when it's beneficial, they want to be white because there's a character who was up for tenure at his university and then doesn't get it because they don't want to give it to another white guy. And he's like, but I'm not white. I'm Armenian. And he's like, well, you know, if being white was beneficial 15 years ago for you to get the job, and now it's not beneficial for you because you know it won't get you tenure, which one is it? You can't. You can't flip and switch when you want, which is its own. There is truth to that, while also having an offensive element to that. But I also think that all truth is a little offensive, because what makes it offensive is that there is a little bit of truth to it. People magnify it and simplify it to the point that it becomes a stereotype that. And. And you no longer are able to have the conversation because it's also fueled with hatred and bias. And I. And I think that this play, for all of its intricacies, is a first of all, very enjoyable, very funny and very smart. And it's always nice to see a new play and has a lot to say that doesn't go for the simple route and. And allows its actors to really kind of just relish in the meat of the piece. If there's one thing I will say about it is that the ending does kind of go on for too long. There's a. There's a sort of coda element that I don't. If I agreed with it, not with any messaging of it, but just of, like, being there at all. But that's always something that's up for debate. So that's number six with Meet the Cartosians. At number five, we have Beau the Musical. We're still in the I liked it section of this list. Now we're with Meet the Cartosians, wherein I liked it a lot. So with Beau, this is a musical we liked a lot. Again, you can hear more about the details of this production in my review for it. Highlights, I'll just say, is that I thought that this was a very exciting musical score. I thought that it had a lot of natural country twang to it. It had a lot of energy and heat to it, which I appreciated. On a storytelling level, I thought that it was a little. Not half baked. It's more than half baked. But just attention was drawn to elements of the story that I care less about. And the things that I thought made it more interesting, like the relationship between Ace and his grandfather. Beau, I thought, followed, you know, story Beats perfectly fine, but did not explore the intricacies of, like Beau being a closeted gay man for so long and. And maybe having a recognition of self with his grandson, who he had not known for most of his life. On the upside, we do have Matt Roden as Ace, who is just a genuinely phenomenal singing actor. Charismatic, a total star. Plays guitar and he's a writer. He has his own substack, so, you know, he's just coming for all of our gigs and snatching all of our wigs. And that's Matt Rodin in a nutshell. Next up, we have practice at Playwrights Horizons. This is in number four. Practice is the inverse of Sea of Our Pants in the sense that the first act is two hours and the second act is 40 minutes or maybe 45. Practice tells the story of a MacArthur genius grant, played by Renald. Pete is the actor playing Asa. Asa Leon, certain, a little Jeremy O. Harris coded. And Asa is a theater maker, a writer, a director, a content creator who is putting together a troupe of actors of artists in a church in Brooklyn for a piece that's gonna be premiering in Berlin and then playing in London. London. And he's not sure what the piece is yet, but he wants to interview the troupe with their own personal stories and have them recontextualize it into art. And over the course of two hours, over the course of a few weeks with his troupe, you watch him create a cult like mentality. And spoiler alert, it ends up being on purpose in the second act when they finally do the presentation in what is a giant glass box that to them looks like nothing but mirrors, but to us is a. Like a test tube. You learned that Asa's whole point was to see if he could create a cult out of actors. And the reveal of that for me was a little disappointing because I thought that for the first act, you know, long as it was, it was a really, I thought, powerful parallel of theater making and studying acting and creating something that requires so much vulnerability and honesty of you and traveling through your past traumas and indiscretions and mistakes and figuring out what to do, do with it and try not to be exploitative of others, not exploiting you. And yet because of that vulnerability, you are in a place where others can manipulate you and take advantage of you. And you watch this happen in this company and you watch people who are eager for approval because actors do want approval. And it's hard to know how well you're doing when you are only in control of yourself and you can't see the greater canvas. And you can't. You, you can't help but compare yourself to others, but you also have no idea how you're comparing to others because you are not seeing it the way everyone else is seeing it. And you want to have the approval. You want to please the person in charge, the person whose talent and whose intelligence you think so highly of. And when you find that somebody is not taking it as seriously as you, you, you start to turn on them. You think about any kind of acting class or any studying program, and when it requires that much intensity, that much of you, it does ultimately become like a cult. And I thought that the first act did a really marvelous job of exposing that. So for it to become intentional on Asa's part in the second act was a little disappointing for me. But what it does do is in the second act, you know, the company, we flash forward a few months later and they're in Berlin performing this piece. And it is a 45 minute, 30 minute performance art where they are recreating the traumas that they have discussed in earnest with each other. We're talking about sexual trauma, we're talking about addiction and family drama. Things that were said in confidence that then are recited by other members of the company in almost a mocking tone. And everyone is basically faceless and everyone is portraying everyone else. So no one even gets to hold on to their own identity. No one gets to tell their own story in this piece. Their story is nothing but fodder for a theatrical endeavor. And part of you want, as you're watching it, how brainwashed are these actors? Because one actor does leave in act one, they, they escape because they are not on board with what's going on. And you find out that a lot of these actors signed on to do this knowing what the piece was supposed to be, and yet they still did it anyway. It's. It's like in the menu when you find out that Nick Holt's character knew everyone was going to die anyway, but he so wanted to experience the restaurant and the food that he was willing to sign up away literally his life to enjoy it. And so you have all these questions as you're watching this really kind of ridiculous performance piece. And then when the piece is over, we cut out and we come back and it's a few months later and we're now in London and we see one of the actors warming up on set as another actor is looking for their water bottle. And it seems like this kind of totally random, random, unnecessary, unimportant moment. But what it's telling you is that after everything we've gone through, after the weeks of trauma bonding, of mental gymnastics, of manipulation and deception, of sexual politics, of, you know, one actor sleeping with Asa's husband, and that husband telling Asa and Asa revealing the affair to everyone in class during an exercise of someone talking about, you know, their own child, childhood trauma and. And baggage and all these things, you know, all of this constant back and forth in the power plays. There's an issue with jelly beans. Asa makes a whole thing about jelly beans. I don't. I don't want to get into it too much, but like, the jelly beans play a big part in terms of trust and everyone turning on one member of the company and again, manipulating this member for dramatic gain, and everyone having this be revealed to them and being done in the performance, and the performance becoming this sort of mockery of everything that they went through. And then it just becomes a job. We flash forward a few weeks later, they're in London, they're at the national, performing this, wherever they are. And now it's just a. Now it's just a job. Now it's something that they're doing eight times a week after all that they went through. And that's kind of the crazy thing about theater, about training your body to trick itself into being depressed, being sad, being joyous, being turned on, being angry, being villainous. This. It's something that you have to do over and over and over again. Whether it's for multiple takes of a movie, whether it's eight performances a week. You are tricking your body so you can trick an audience into being part of the human experience in a concentrated amount of time. Words that are not your own, or maybe once were your own, or now something else. Think of like A Chorus Line. And what does that do to you? Do you have to disassociate after a while? Does it take a toll on your body? Or does it just sort of become a job after a while? Do you become numb to it? And that was so fascinating for me. With practice, it's not perfect. It definitely goes on for too long. And I, and I did not enjoy the reveal that it was intended to be a cult because again, I thought that that took away from the not so subtle, but still underneath the surface parallels between occult like mentality and theatrical studying and company building in a theater company. But it still was really smart and fascinating and. And just memorable. This is one that will stay for me with a while. We're now in the top four I loved this, and I want to keep talking about it shows. So that's practice at number four. At number three, we have Liberation, which is finishing up its run at the James Earl Jones Theater. Written by Bess Wall, directed by Whitney White, Liberation is both a performance piece and a memory piece, where Susanna Flood basically plays Best Wall as well as Best Wall's mother, Lizzie, or rather, who we imagine best Wall to be, because her mother was part of a women's liberation group in the early 1970s in Ohio and marched for women's rights, formed all of these great friendships, helped move the needle forward for women's places in the country, only to then marry, move to New York and have kids. And you watch Susanna Flood play both Lizzie and Bess, or who I perceive to be Bess going in and out of the piece, narrating as herself, talking about her own journey, remembering her mother as she was. Because the inciting incident is right before this play begins. Her mother has died. And so she's looking through her mother's collection of stuff and interviewing women from this group who still alive. And we flip flop between the 1970s and present day and these interviews, and the show explores, you know, what exactly is it that these women did? Was it enough? Did they know it was enough then? Did they not know it was enough then? Do they regret anything? Do they like where their lives are now? What is it to be a woman now? What is it to be a feminist now? And there is a great deal of. Of intelligence and heart, because at the root of all of this is the playwright's connection with her mother, her relationship with her mother, all the questions that she had that she never got to ask because time ran out. And learning all of these things that she never knew about her mother, this whole other life she lived that she never knew about, almost like she's discovering a stranger and I guess having confusion about the woman she knew and the woman her mother used to be and trying to find a connection between the two. And if she judges her mother a little bit for it, if she judges herself for judging her mother, if she is in any position to claim what a woman should be or what a woman should do, you know, feminism is supposed to be about choice. So if her mother chose to be a wife and mother after all of this, isn't that okay? But I guess she also then wonders how. How could one choose to be a wife and mother? Only after everything you've gone through, after being a working woman, after fighting for all the rights that you fought for, and meeting with other women of the group who are still alive, who did not have children and went out to be badass bitches of their own. And seeing who these women were 50 years ago compared to who they are now. And not only that, but like the racial component, because there's, you know, two women in the group who are not white, one who is black American, and one who is, I guess, I think she's Italian. But, you know, that's. That's another discussion to have down the road. But the. The. The differences between being a white presenting woman in this country and being a woman who looks a certain kind of way, being an aesthetically attractive woman in this country, and the ways you can get ahead are the ways that society will bend to what you want to do. And. And the show plays with the conventions of theatrical storytelling. It plays with memory. It plays with, again, the. The conversation of womanhood. And I've spoken to a few women after seeing it who did not enjoy it, I think, because they found it a little bit of a messy play. And it is a messy play. And I think that's why I liked it so much, because I found it to be very human. It was tackling very big subject matter, but focusing on the personal, that is, for me, the shows that land best with audiences, because ultimately the subject matter is subject matter we're familiar with. Familiar with. The topics are topics we talk about. There's Twitter, there's TikTok, there's Instagram, there's Facebook, there's Reddit, there's substack, there's discord. We can talk about this and fight about this everywhere. If we're watching a play, we're watching, watching for something entertaining to compel us. And part of that is people. And liberation has people, which is important because it means that you're able to put a face and an emotion to the topic, to the debate. And you don't need one character to be solely right. You need multiple characters to be right about different things, because that is where you start to question your own own morality and your own concept of what is correct. You want to be challenged. If you think that you're right about everything, then you might as well just lay in bed and wait for it all to end, because then there's nothing to grow from. There's nothing to change. And there are these characters, these women who are very smart and very, you know, they know what they want, but what they want is not always necessarily what's good for them. And I'm not even just talking about voting rights or owning businesses and getting promotions, but even just like personally for their own relationships with their mothers, with each other, with their loved ones, to have a husband, to have a girlfriend. One woman who's like, no, most. The thing that she loves the most and wanted most in the world was to sell her car and get a motorcycle. She eventually does and a few years later she dies because of it. We don't see that. That's something that's explained in the end. Sorry for that spoiler, but I think that's a great representation of being a feminist means being independent. Being independent means you get to make your own choices. Making your own choices doesn't mean you're always right about your your choices. You have to learn that having someone make your choices for you, it doesn't matter if it ends up being a choice that's good for you, you still want it to be your choice. You don't want to always be answering to someone. There's a difference between answering to a boss at a job and answering to a boss of your, of your day to day. You don't want to wake up every morning and have someone tell you what to do. Or at least most of us don't. There are days when I'm a human being and I just go, I just need someone to give me an itinerary. But that's not every day. I think what liberation does really well is it constantly toys with the desire for independence, the fear of making a mistake, the fear of not being supported in your mistake, whether it is as something as big as, you know, getting equal pay for equal work work, or for choosing to marry a man, for allowing yourself to fall in love. And it doesn't answer any of those questions, which I think is important. It asks them. And whether you think that they are mundane, been there, done that, or if you think that they are being asked because they are still prevalent, because that's sort of the thing that liberation ends on is like we're back to where we started. In fact, we're kind of, of getting worse off than where we were. And there are characters who debate that and say no, there are things that are so much better now than, than they ever were. And just because we're, we're slowly going backwards doesn't mean we're all the way back to where we were and we can move forward. It sucks that we have to do that, but that's sort of the way change goes. And which is, that's maybe something the liberation doesn't really explore of the overarching arching theme of change. The. The overall history of it. In order for change to happen, it doesn't just happen and stay that way. There's always pushback. We, we. If you look at history over hundreds of years, let alone thousands of years, it does take a while for things to just become the natural order. And we forget how much change has happened over the last 60 years and that it's all still relatively young in the grand scheme of life. And I found it very. I found it very moving. I found it very powerful, very funny. A lot of cigarette smoke. A lot of people were coughing, which is frustrating, but I, I liked it a lot. This was a number three. I did not expect to like this as much as I did because I think people were so up on its quote, unquote importance that I found it hard to take it seriously while walking in. I don't think that importance makes the play good. I think the play is good and it tackles things that we should always be talking about. That's liberation number three. So 27 is Call Me Izzy. 26 is Seat of Our Pants. 25 is Art. 24 is Waiting for Gadot. 23 is Queen of Versailles with Kristen. 22 is Punch. 21 is Chess. 20 is the Baker's Wife. 19 is Heather's. 18 is Ginger Twinsies. 17 is Slam Frank. 16 is Bat Boy. 15 is Cat Caroline. 14 is Bug. 13 is Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York. 12 is A Christmas Carol. 11 is Prince Phagote. 10 is Got to Dance. 9 is Little Bear Ridge Road. 8 is Ragtime. 7 is Sherry Renee Scott's first night in the Queen of Versailles. The Experience of It. Six is Meet the Cartosians. Five is Beau. Four is Practice. Three is Liberation. Oh, I should also say Tony Wise. I think a Best Play nomination is expected. Expected. I would argue Susanna Flood is the lead of this show and will probably be considered as such. I don't know if that's been decided yet by the Tony nominating committee, but when that decision does come out, I think she'll be considered lead. She feels like the lead. So at number two, we have Marjorie Prime. I don't think I've talked about Marjorie prime yet on the podcast. If I. If I have, I apologize for repeating myself. I'll be quick because spoiler alert. At number one, we have Oedipus, which is just at this moment my favorite thing of the season and remains such. But Margery prime is also an excellent piece and is not as dramatically dynamic as Oedipus. The stakes are a little lower. But it is a very human piece taking place somewhere in the near future where humans are now using AI almost as a coping mechanism. We begin with June Squibb as Margaery talking to a young man played by Christopher Lowell, who we learn is. Is her husband as she wanted to remember him. He's since died, and so she's remembering him as his younger self and she's feeding him memories so the AI can morph and develop and get smarter and be able to help Marjorie as a, as an aid, as both a coping, mechan coping mechanism for her loss of her husband as well as her own dementia that she is, or Alzheimer's that she is, has been diagnosed with and slowly dealing with. Meanwhile, while this is happening, her daughter, played by Cynthia Nixon, and her son in law, played by Danny Burstein, are also taking care of her. And Danny Burstein is very pro Christopher Lowell AI. Cynthia Nixon is very anti Christopher Lowell AI. Part of that is also Cynthia Nixon has a very contentious relationship with her mother. The mother we're seeing is not the mother she needs knew. We find out that Cynthia Nixon had a brother who had died by suicide when she was younger and had taken the family dog with him when he died. And that is something that the family never truly got over, specifically Marjorie. And that is something that always bore a burden on Cynthia Nixon. And she has a lot of resentment for her mother for who she used to be and who and the mother she can't talk with now. She has a lot of resentment that her mother has come to rely on a device rather than, you know, be present with her for all the things that she's doing for her. And then when, spoiler alert, Marjorie dies, Danny Burstein programs an AI Marjorie for Cynthia Nixon. So June Squibb now has become basically a computer. A computer device for Cynthia Nixon to deal with her own loss of her mother and the questions she never had. And yet you watch Cynthia Nixon talk to Marjorie prime, which is the name of the AI device, because each device has, you know, it's the person and then the prime is after the name. And you watch her grapple with her history with her mother and the things that she never got to say and she doesn't still know how to say. And dealing with her life as it is. She has a daughter who won't speak to her. She's got two sons who she's got, you know, fine, if not great, relationships with. And she's in terrible pain and she doesn't know what to do about it. And she's confused by it and she doesn't know how to get out. And you wonder if the Margaery prime is helping or hurting, because then, spoiler alert. After she has her scene with Marjorie Prime, Danny Burstein has a scene, the second to last scene, with Cynthia Nixon. And it's not Cynthia Nixon anymore. It's the prime version of her character. Tess is the. Is Cynthia Nixon's character's name. Tess prime is there to help Danny Burstein cope with the loss of Tess because Tess has then also died by suicide. And you watch these people, these humans who are just trying to find a way to breathe and come out the other end of the pain that they're dealing with. And in a lot of ways, ways this AI is trying to help, but it isn't the real thing. And one wonders if it, being so close but not quite the real thing, is actually hurting and leading them to greater pain and, you know, greater suffering. And we never know because the AI doesn't truly know love. It knows the idea of love. It knows what you feed it and then can morph from that to become a more evolved version of that. But it's not necessarily, necessarily love. And the final scene is the three AIs conversing and learning from each other, from the memories each of them have been fed, and then one piece of information that somehow slipped. I believe the Marjorie Prime AI is told to her from. I believe the. What's Chris Lowell's character's name? Walter, from Walter's AI, which ultimately leads to this breakthrough for all three of them of revolution. Realizing when we were us, when we weren't this, when we were us, when we were humans, we did love. And isn't that wonderful? And there's a sweetness and a simplicity to that. And to the whole production at large, there's a delicacy to Marjorie prime that really affected me. A The whole thing is acted perfectly from top to bottom. It's hard to remember from. And just like that. But Cynthia Nixon is a phenomenal actress and absolutely nails this show. They all do. They all, all do. But, like, my God, it's Cynthia Annex and take my breath away. And I would recommend seeing it just for the acting and specifically her. But as a play, I think that this is one of those cases of, like, liberation. It deals with very human themes. And a lot of the stuff in the play is stuff that we're dealing with now with technology. But it doesn't go for the high Greek tragedy of Oedipus. It goes for the Daedric day, mundane tragedies of human life. And that is what makes it so powerful to me of it's the little things that you can relate to that you've experienced constantly that hit you and you're watching people similar to you or similar to people you know in as much pain as you've been in before, you've known other people to be in before, and watching them try to crack grapple with it and it just cuts you to your core. Not again, not in a way that is wham bam thank you ma', am, but in a way that just haunts you. I found this play very delicate and very haunting and I I adored just about every second of it and I can't recommend it highly enough. That is my number two and number one is Oedipus. And if you want to know more about why I recommend Oedipus, listen to that review from Back in November. Marjorie Prime, I think is going to be eligible for revival. I hope it's nominated. I hope Marjorie prime and Oedipus are both both nominated. And I'm not sure if June Squibb or Cynthia Nixon will be considered lead actress or both featured actress, but I hope they're both nominated. And there was some really gorgeous original music that I wouldn't mind considering as well. That's it for this episode, you guys. Thank you so much for listening. 2025 has been a weird year and an interesting beginning of the season, but here's hoping for a fun spring. I am getting ready to go to London soon and I'll be having a Tony predictions episode coming up soon and I believe the next episode will be a deep dive on July Chicago. Yes, that's it. The next episode is going to be our deep dive on the movie of Chicago. So with that in mind, I am going to close us out with. You know what, I'm going to close this out with Donna McKechnie doing music in the mirror with that amazing belt of hers from back in the in the seventies. So that's it. If you like the podcast, make sure to give us another five star rating and another review. I love reading your guys guys reviews. And that's it for today. We will see you next week. Take it away Donna. Bye. Give me a chance to come through. All I ever needed was the music and the mirror and the chance to dance.