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Broadway Breakdown
Matt Reviews: Betty Gilpin in OH MARY & URINETOWN at Encores
00:53:08
How does a new leading lady hold up? How is the new Encores?
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But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do. But Mr. Gregson, hit it. Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright light, rhythm and romance. The train is late, so while we wait. Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history und legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And this is the beginning of what's gonna be quite a crowded rest of your February. This is a review episode I'm gonna be touching back on Betty Gilpin in Omar as well as yous're In Town at Encores. After this, there's going to be an episode direct from BroadwayCon, which was recorded just the other day, live episode with me and Gray Henson. Immediately after that will be my review of Redwood, which I just saw today, this Sunday, February 9th. And that will be out probably the day after the BroadwayCon episode drops because I have to wait till the review embargo is up on Thursday. After that there will be, I think, one more review episode possibly, but then it's going to be the rest of the deep dives from Grab Bag. So hopefully the episode on the Wiz movie and then a couple of different episodes on Angels in America, as well as a, you know, touching base on Tony Awards So you got all that to look forward to and I hope you are all very happy about that. Before we jump into reviews, we've got a little bit of Housekeeping. I know our favorite word. I'll be quick, I promise though, because we have a new review and I would like to give it its worth. This is a review that came after another recent review and unfortunately I read that review when we recorded the first Angels in America episode which won't be coming out for like another two to three weeks. So the person who wrote that review. Your time is coming. Don't you worry. Alright, here we go. Cue the light in the piazza. Overture Music 5 stars Standing ovation Worthy Broadway Breakdown is my favorite new podcast and the fact that there is a huge library to catch up on makes it even better. Matt has that rare ability to be both entertaining and informative, all with a conversational presentation that makes it easy to listen to for hours. I also love that he's not afraid to share his unpopular takes and always supports his opinions with care and reason. Also, his willingness to do a Tony nomination episode no matter how early it is, makes me happy. We are all thinking these things, so why not have an open discussion about it? A truly fabulous podcast. Thank you. It's always fascinating when people are like, oh, Matt's hot takes, his unpopular opinions. And sometimes I'm like, I wasn't aware it was that unpopular. It's fascinating when you find out that you're the anomaly, you're the outlier. But hey, sometimes you gotta be the special one. And on that note, let's jump into oh Mary. We went back to see it after having seen it at the Lortel Theater Off Broadway back in February of 2024, and then we saw it on Broadway right after it opened in August of 2024. And we just came back to see Ms. Betty Gilpin as well as a few other new cast members. I have already said that oh Mary was number two so far in my ranking of this Broadway season, right in between Hills of California and maybe Happy Ending. And a lot of people were concerned about whether the play would still hold up if Cole Escola, the playwright, was no longer playing the lead role of Mary Todd Lincoln. And it threw a lot of people, myself included, when Emmy nominee Betty Gilpin was announced to replace Cole. Now, I'm only familiar with Betty's work on film and TV and she's a phenomenal actress, but I never got the sense that she was quite the freak that you would need someone to be to play this role. Because it's not just sort of the drag Persona of it all, but the sense of humor of O Mary is a very specific kind of humor. Or rather I should say it's a humor that not everyone can do. And especially playing that role, people have asked like, oh, should a male or a male presenting person always play it? Whether they're cisgender, non binary or, you know, can cisgendered women or, you know, female presenting women play it? Female presenting people play it. And my response has always been like, it doesn't really matter so long as you are a freak. Because the whole point of Mary Todd Lincoln and oh Mary is that she is sort of the hurricane of the whole show. She is the chaos that everyone is sort of circling. And I wasn't sure if Betty Gilpin was going to be able to channel that. So I went in again, open mind at arm's length. There had been a couple of early reviews of her that were not terribly favorable, and then word of mouth quickly turned on her and got a lot more positive. So I was interested to see. So first we'll also say the audience at oh Mary was not that different from the audience I had back in August. It was a very female heavy audience. It was a Wednesday evening. And I would say a lot of people in the audience were probably not used to this kind of humor. They enjoyed it immensely. But it was clear which things were sort of shocking to them and which things were enjoyable to them. You know, you can always tell from a person by how they laugh when it's a laugh of, like, recognition and when it's a laugh of shock. And both times I saw Omari, it was definitely laughs of shock. Broadway with the audience at the Lortel, it was much more a laugh of recognition from the mostly gay audience. So Betty Gilpin, I'll just cut right to the chase. Betty Gilpin as Mary Todd Lincoln is phenomenally good. Is she as good as Cole? She's very different from Cole. The. The headline I sort of came up for it is if Cola Scola as Mary Todd Lincoln is performing Charles Bush, Betty Gilpin is performing John Waters. Both of which are a very different sense of camp but very understandable and totally valid because Betty is a feminine person and is not. Does not have the aura of a masculine presence in female attire. Her delivery, her attitude and her energy can't channel what Cole did. And Cole's a very specific kind of performer. Cole's Mary Todd Lincoln was very much a performance. It was the idea of femininity. It was the idea of a woman as Mary Todd Lincoln, it wasn't. It's hard to explain. It's not that Cole wasn't earnest, but that Ernesty was sort of masked by sarcasm and a dry delivery. And it was more the impression of a woman rather than a woman. And Betty is doing a heightened, melodramatic version of a woman. And what was fascinating to watch was moments when Abraham Lincoln is sort of cutting into Mary Todd, sort of just really ripping her down to shreds. Or even when, spoiler alert, John Wilkes Booth is also ripping on her. In the second half of the play. The audience really kind of felt for Mary this time around. I think there was something about the fact that there was no veneer in Betty Gilpin. She was a cisgender woman playing a female character. It was a form of drag, but not the kind of drag that a lot of audiences have known for many years. So there was one level less, one layer less of theatrical presentation to her Persona. And so when her character would get insulted, a lot of audiences took it to heart, which is fascinating to me. And it made Mary's journey all the more exciting for them when it all kind of came to fruition at the end. What it also proved to me is that this is just objectively a good play. A lot of people have wondered, oh, is it just the hype? Is it the. Can it succeed without Cole? Is it just the fact that Cole Escola wrote it, that they are doing a star vehicle for themselves? It is legitimately a well structured play. Everything connects. It all makes sense. It is still very funny. It is directed very well, and you can have other people play these roles and it can still work. So that was very exciting to me. I also want to give a shout out to the rest of the company. Bianca Lee as Louise is still in it. Who the fuck is Louise? And I gotta say, Bianca Lee has. I've always thought that she was quite delightful in this, but she's really come into her own over these last few months. She's really, you know, she's found new jokes, she's gotten a whole new sense of energy. She's really commanding the stage in a way that I always felt like she was sharing the stage with the rest of the company. And this time she's definitely staked her ground. And then Tony Mokt as Abraham's basically butt boy. He's also still doing very wonderful dry work. Our other two new members of the company are Philip James Brannan as Abraham and Chris Renfro as John Wilkes Booth. Chris is very good. Chris is very much in the same vein as James Scully was. He's a little less. I don't want to say less dashing because it's not about physicality. It's not about his looks or anything like that. He's a handsome man. It's more that he's. He isn't playing the bland leading man type for the first half that James did. James, because of the twist in the third act of O Mary, it's very tricky for an actor playing that role to make it make sense at first. It all makes sense in the third act. But for the first two, you have to get the audience to sort of trust that this is a character that's living in the world of the play and is totally enamored with Mary and is willing to come back. And you don't necessarily think less of him. And I didn't think that James totally nailed that when it was off Broadway. Granted, they were still in previews by the time they went through their entire Off Broadway run and opened on Broadway. I thought James really kind of nailed it. And Chris, to his credit, has only been doing this for, like, three weeks, and I think he also has nailed it. So props to. Props to Chris. I will say also for. Sorry, got to check my playbill here for Philip James Brannon as Abraham. I'm going to say something that's very controversial for some of you. I preferred him to Conrad. Rick Amora Conrad. I really liked Off Broadway, and I liked him on Broadway. But a little something got lost for me in his interpretation of the role when they transferred in sizing up his performance to a larger theater and to a Broadway audience, you know, he brought a great deal of extra energy to the. To the production and whatnot. But the beginning of the play, and I said this before, you know, whereas off Broadway, it took a minute for things to get cooking on Broadway. It started off at a 10 out of 10 in terms of energy, which gets the audience riled up. But it, for me, robbed Cole as Mary the opportunity to be the hurricane, to come in with that much force, which they were able to do off Broadway. It's sort of you sacrifice having three or four extra laughs in the first five minutes between Abraham and I already forgot the name of his assistant. But between them, and, you know, you risk losing laughs in those first two or three minutes with those two characters in favor of really making an impression when Mary enters. And then on Broadway, they added a couple of new laughs by having that energy. But I felt it lessened the impact of Mary's entrance, as well as the follow up of Mary's scene. So I thought that Philip was able to really channel what I liked about Conrad in 1.0 while still playing to the back of the house. He also found a whole bunch of idiosyncrasies within Abraham Lincoln, because the running joke is that Abe is gay and is trying to suppress his urges, but just keeps getting overwhelmed with lust for his assistant. And Philip, as Abraham, found all these small moments where he sort of catches himself in flamboyancy, whether it's a limp wrist or the way he walks or the way he might say a word. And it added a whole bunch of humor to me that maybe it's something that Conrad added throughout the run that I didn't catch because I saw it too early. But between Conrad in August and Philip in February, I was really pleased with what he brought to the production into that role and wasn't afraid to be a bit of a villain because the role, like Abraham and Omari, is a shit. He's a total asshole. And you want. You gotta play the dick, but you also still need to be funny and you have to go on your own journey. And his Abraham wasn't vindictive, but he was an asshole. And it worked very nicely. As I said, when he would insult Mary, the audience kind of felt a pang. Betty is. It's hard to explain. It's a incredibly violently brave performance. She is going balls to the walls the entire 80 minutes of the play. She's silly, she's campy, she finds ways to alter her voice and her posture. And it all lives within the world that Cola Scola has written. And so it's not. She doesn't stick out poorly in any way. It's really a lovely performance, very different from Cole's. But I think what makes it such an intelligent performance is that she understands, like I said, there's one layer of commentary removed just by the very fact that she's playing it now. So she can't do what Cole did. So she plays it far bigger and far more straight. And by straight, I mean earnest, whereas Cole would have moments of earnesty and honesty. But it was, you know, flying in between so much other deadpan comedy and silly comedy. And Betty's Mary, it's sort of how I described Ariana Grande in Wicked, where Glinda is ridiculous, but she takes herself so seriously. That is absolutely. What Betty is doing as Mary Todd Lincoln, is that she. Her Mary is crazy, but it all makes sense to her. She said in an interview that, like, she views her as sort of Rucasault meets Shirley Temple with a ketamine addiction and Gollum. And I think that totally accurate. I would also put in one of my favorites, Roger the Alien. She has moments where it's almost sort of like Mary is living her Sally Fields Best Actress Oscar truth. And then someone says something that undercuts it and she just cuts the bullshit and she cuts them right down to the quick. And it's very funny. I was terribly impressed by her. It's hard to say that and not sound condescending, but that's what I mean. If you have a chance to see Betty Gilpin and Omar before she leaves, I do highly recommend it. I know a lot of people are excited about Titus Burgess coming in. I think that's also really cool. If it's the Titus that I Love from 30 Rock and the first two seasons of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, I say go. I didn't get to see Titus when they were in Moulin Rouge, but I understand they were fun. But yeah, I think that's a good part for them. So that's. That's sort of our quick thing about Betty Gilpin in oh, Mary. If you have any other specific questions about her performance in the show, I highly recommend you join the Discord Channel, the link to which will be in the episode description box. For this, let's move on to Urinetown at Encores. Speaking of comedies and how to play the ridiculous, 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 Estate. What's the best time of day to get a deal? All day with Jack in the Box's all day big deal meal. You get to choose from four entrees like the supreme croissant and five tasty sides, plus a drink starting at $5. So hurry in or take your time. You've got all day at Jack. Every bite's a big deal. This episode is brought to you by Intuit. TurboTax didn't file with TurboTax last year. That's in the past. Now Taxes is getting the TurboTax app and filing your own taxes for free. If you didn't file with them last year, file by February 18th. All tax forms, all 100% free. Now this is taxes, Intuit, TurboTax, new filers and filers who didn't use TurboTax. Last year only. Must start and file your own taxes in app by February 18th. Includes TurboTax Live full terms@turbotax.com so urinetown, for those of you who don't know, was a musical that premiered at the Fringe Festival in, I think, 1999 and then got an Off Broadway production for about a month or so like 55th street in like April or May of 2001, and then transferred to Broadway that August, September of 2001 and almost didn't make it because of the terrorist attacks on 9 11. But they were able to sort of persevere. They got really strong reviews. They were a major competitor at the Tonys that year, and that is one of the Broadway musicals to win best book and best score, but not best musical. It lost to Thoroughly Modern Millie. It's one of my main examples when stuffs won book and score. And how can they win book and score not best musical? I'm like, well, sometimes you can really admire the writing of something, but maybe the overall production leaves a cold impression on you or something else just influences you more. And so that was sort of the case with Urinetown and Millie. What's a little trickier is that Urinetown also got the Tony for best director for John Rando. So I'm like, how do you win all three of those? Because then there's also the production that you clearly like because you gave the director a Tony, but it doesn't win musical. Fascinating. And if you want to know more about sort of the history and a deeper dive into the material, you can listen to the episode I did with Mark Tuminelli about three years ago. I want to say during the British. Sorry, during the big Move miniseries we did for Broadway, Breakdown. I think that was actually the first series we did when we got picked up by Broadway Podcast network. So yeah, give that a listen. I think it's like 90 minutes. It's not one of our deepest of dives, but it's a solid episode. And this is the first show of the traditional encore season. Ragtime was sort of their gala presentation, but it is technically speaking, encores adjacent. This is the first of the three actual season shows. Next up will be Love Life and then after that, Wonderful Town. And I've talked about this before. This really bugs me now with encores. It was the case before COVID but it's still the case after. More so now. Ever since Chicago transferred to Broadway, Encores has always kind of been hungry for another transfer. And sometimes it has happened. Sometimes it's a direct transfer, sometimes it takes a little while and another producer or theater company picks it up. So when Kristin Chenoweth did the Apple Tree at Encores, technically speaking, it did transfer to Broadway, but it was a few years later and Roundabout produced it, but it was Chenoweth and it was the same production team. When Wonderful Town transferred to Broadway with Donna Murphy, it was a few years later, and again, commercial producers this time, but totally different design and a recasting of everyone else. But it was Donna, it was Kathleen Marshall, Finian's Rainbow, same deal, Kate Baldwin, same director, but they didn't do a cut and paste job like what they're sort of doing now. And I always kind of felt that, you know, the point of Encores was to relish in shows that maybe aren't perfect, but there's something about them that you can really enjoy. They worked once in the past, or maybe they only sort of worked once in the past, and you get to relive it and you'll never see it done at this scale again. So you really just relish it and have it be the nice thing that exists for a week, sometimes two weeks. But ever since Encores came back from COVID the shows that they've picked on the whole have been a lot more recent and a lot more foolproof. Their very first season is infamous for trying to fuck around with some shows from the 80s and 90s that were maybe a lot more problematic just in terms of not being quite as good. And those experiments, Failing Encores decided that they were now going to be sort of a workshop house where artists could take a show that they love but wanted to make better, do their job, to fix it and present it to the world. And it could possibly be the new version of that show. They were going to do that with Millie with Ashley Park. They did it with the Life with Billy Porter, and Millie never got to be performed, but with the Life. It blew up spectacularly in their faces. I remember seeing that with my grandmother and people just walking out in droves during the show. We stayed because they moved the oldest profession to the second act. And I was like, I must hear that song live in a theater. Then everything changed with into the Woods, a show that we have known works since it premiered, has been performed everywhere. It was done very simply, very cost effectively, was a huge hit, Transferred, Made Money, was nominated for Tony Awards, and this is sort of what they're aiming to do again. They did it with Once Upon a Mattress. And now people go to every encore season and they go, oh, is this show the show that's going to transfer. That puts a fuck ton of pressure on an encore production considering how little time they have to prepare. It is about a 10 day rehearsal process that is to learn the whole show, stage the whole show, tech the whole show. And people are lenient on Broadway shows that go into previews saying like, oh, they need to get their feet wet, they need to settle it first. And those are shows that have six weeks of rehearsal and two weeks of tech or whatever. By the time a Broadway show ends their rehearsal process and finishes tech, you could have done four encore shows during that time in terms of how long it takes them to rehearse and perform. So I've always felt that that was incredibly unfair on the actors. It puts a whole lot of pressure on them to deliver. It puts a whole lot of pressure on the production team to deliver a completely finished, polished product. And that's. It's also just not really what Encores is supposed to be. It's like a theater nerds excavition excavation. I don't know, it's late and I have a cold, so words are hard. But it's. It's a history project and it's for theater nerds and it's a little expensive and it's a little niche, but it's really exciting and sometimes things do click. A show turns out being way better than you remembered it being and the casting is just right and the right director came on board for it and you go, oh, this is really magical. And sometimes you go, it really should have a life beyond this. That's how we all felt when we saw Chenoweth and Apple Tree. We were like, oh, this show is better than we remembered and Chenoweth is perfect for it. There have been other productions where I didn't necessarily feel that it needed to transfer, but it was a wonderful company and the right director took it on and did an amazing job with it. Most happy fella. Anyone can whistle. It's a bird. It's a plane of Superman. So I did not go into Urinetown going like, okay, are you going to be great? Are you going to transfer? I never go into Encores feeling that way, but I do go in hoping to have a very nice time. And some of the casting for this definitely raised my eyebrows and some of them, it got me very excited, but I go in every time. Open mind, arm's length. Urinetown is a musical. I can't rightfully say if it's the first meta musical, but it's definitely the most well known of its timeline of being as early as it was, which is 2001 to 2002, which is to say that it is a musical that calls out all of the tropes and structural stereotypes of musicals while adhering to absolutely all of them. And it works for a lot of us. Some people find it far too self referential, some people find it too intellectual and cold. Some people don't like the music. It is very inspired by Kurt Weill, but I've always found it to be terribly funny. It is also, for a show that I think is pretty structurally sound, it is incredibly difficult to do well, which is. I know that sounds like a weird compliment, but I've said the same thing of Carousel, right? Carousel is my favorite musical and it has its bumps in the material just in terms of structure. Some songs could get cut, some songs could get shortened, but it's also incredibly hard to do well. And Johantown, I think, has fewer bumps than Carousel, but it's just as equally hard to do well because it's a very specific kind of comedy and you have to cast it very intelligently. You're in town on a music level, you do need strong singers and not smooth, poppy sounding musical theater singers. You need people who have done Rodgers and Hammerstein, people who have done Les Mis, who've got thick folds and a big sound. It's, you know, people think of it as a very rangy score. They think of Privilege to Pee or they think of Run, Freedom Run. And those two are the outliers. Really. A lot of that score sits in a more baritone heavy place for a lot of the men in the show, women in the show. There's a lot more soprano stuff going on in there. It's not like a big wailer of a show. So you need like a slightly classical sound to it while at the same time getting actors who are very funny and intelligent about their comedy. And also in terms of type, Urinetown. Every character in Urinetown basically is an archetype of a musical theater role. Hope is the ingenue. Bobby Strong is the hero. Caldwell B. Cladwell is the villain. Pennywise is sort of the matriarch role, like a Nettie Fowler in Carousel. But you want to cast it with people who in a lot of ways could play a traditional archetype, but there's like one chromosome off if we're being the. Like the. The more pithy way to say that is sort of like the non EC version of these. Of these archetypes. Like who's the non ek? Julie Jordan, who's the Non Ek Billy Bigelow. But it's, it's like a little more than that. It's not the lesser version, it's just the slightly off version. Like, what you want to do is you want to write down all these archetypes, the romantic lead, the ingenue, all that stuff, and think of like today, who is the absolute first person that comes to your mind for each of those archetypes once you've done that, Those are the people you should never cast in Urinetown. They are too classically of those types to be in the show. Urinetown is like the weird, like meta literary cousin of these musicals. It sits in its room and watches Anime and YouTube videos all day long, then comes out and like says a lot of pithy stuff, but it's the odd black sheep of the family and you got to sort of cast it as such. And so some people in this cast I thought were of that ilk and other people are like, you're either a little too close to the traditional mold or you're too kind of a poppy sound or what have you. So I'll flat out say, like, this production I think is perfectly okay. It's fine. It's not terrible, it's not amazing. There are moments that are incredibly enjoyable. There are some moments that are quite tragic in, in quality. More often than not, it's just perfectly pleasant. Which is not a ringing endorsement enough for something to transfer from Encores to Broadway. In my humble opinion, I will say it is a mostly well sung production with a few caveats. The night that I saw it, I actually saw it with friend of the pod, Lauren Nicole Chapman. And I won't, I'll only speak on what I felt. Lauren enjoyed it immensely, but, you know, I, she. That's as far as I'll go. She was like, please don't tell people on the pod. My, like, specifically what I liked. Just tell them that, you know I liked it. Which is true. She did. But the night we saw it, Keela Settle was out as Pennywise, which isn't shocking. She was out the night before, apparently. She's been out all weekend. I'll. I'm sure she'll be back by, you know, the following week. Everyone's getting sick. Which will, spoiler alert, be a part of my Redwood review as Idina Menzel has been fighting sickness as she's been back in Redwood and performing for press. But Tiffany Mann was Pennywise and I gotta say, she was incredibly strong. First of all, her voice is wonderful. I was reading Online some comments today about the Saturday matinee evening, about how much head voice she was using, which is strange because she was fully belting Friday night. It was a. It was the Nancy Opal realness you would hope for with that role. She used some classic soprano where it counts, like the very final note of Privileged Pee. That's what it's supposed to be. But, you know, she fully belted our night and was also very funny. Another standout, I would say the three MVPs for me of the production were Tiffany as Pennywise, Greg Hildreth as Officer Lockstock, and Stephanie Stiles as Hope Cladwell. Stephanie, my only real caveat with her is I don't think that Hope is a particularly good fit vocally for her. She sounds very good. She's got a beautiful voice, but she clearly has a higher break than where that role sits. So there are moments in the score, like parts of Follow youw Heart and even in I See a River where it's. It, it's written to be in a woman's mix. And Stephanie's break is higher, so she is mixing it, but it's on the low end for her. And I, I know I talked about this with another performer recently. Not we talked about this with Audra's Passaggio and Gypsy, but somebody else where it was like a person's break is lower. Oh, Ariana Grande's break. We were talking about this in the Wicked episode with Joel where someone was saying, like, it felt sometimes, especially at the beginning of no One Mourns the Wicked, that Ariana's soprano was kind of breathy when she wasn't, you know, hitting the really super high notes. And my belief is that because Ariana Grande has such a wide range and also has such a high belt, her break just sits higher, much higher than Kristin Chenoweth's. And Glinda was written for Chenoweth, a role that Glinda, by the way, a role that Jennifer Laura Thompson, the original Hope in Urinetown, also played. And when your head voice break is higher, you can mix it. It's just not going to sound as smooth. It's not going to sound as full. It's not an unpleasant sound. It's just kind of on the thinner side. And so that's something with Stephanie as Hope. That is a caveat I have with the performance. It's nothing. That's her fault. She has a beautiful voice. It's not her fault that, like, the role is written in a range that is a little below her break. She she navigates it very well. But when you know you've heard Jennifer Laura Thompson doing the follow into the open air and it's just so smooth and caramelly. Stephanie definitely was trying to like, she really didn't want to belt it because it's so soft, but it was a little too low for it to be a pure soprano sound. She is very funny. If you've seen the video of the original Broadway company, she is very much channeling Jennifer Laura Thompson's energy. But I'm not mad about it because Jennifer Laura Thompson is incredibly funny. Tony nominated for playing Hope. Greg Hildreth as Officer Lockstock. Also really wonderful lockstock. For those of you who don't know, the show is both a character in the show as well as the narrator of the show. And he is where the majority of the meta commentary comes from, where he talks about what roles people play in the story and what songs are about to happen or what songs need to happen. And it's easy to do it and push just go lean really hard into the meta ness of the jokes. And the best lock stocks are the ones that play it incredibly straight, which is what Greg does. He plays it a little light compared to Jeff McCarthy who was very much a self serious lockstock. His lockstock studied Shakespeare in college and never totally let it go. Greg Hildreth is sort of just like, yeah, I know all about this stuff, what of it? And it was a lot of fun and definitely landed very well. He has a great chemistry with Chris Fitzgerald. I'll talk a little bit more about the impressiveness of Greg's performance in a second because I need to now pivot to sort of where things get a little muddier and weaker. I mean, there are other people in the cast who do a really good job. Jeff Hiller as Cladwell's associate. I forget the character's name. He has a lot of fun finding little bits in his performance to get audience laughs and sympathy. The ensemble does a really good job of finding moments for themselves. Major shout out to Jenny Barber, who I've always really enjoyed ever since I saw her in the Performers on Broadway. And I just think she's a very, very funny gal. So every time I know she's going to be in something, I'm like, oh, comedy's coming to town Holes, please. Told you I had a cold. She definitely has a few moments in the show that Lauren and I both just, we guffawed and then sort of snapped our fingers at her for just finding really smart pockets to get A laugh without sacrificing Story or her fellow ensemble members. Kevin Calhoun also. Sorry, Kelvin. Kevin Calhoun is also very good in the show and quite funny. The issue vocally with a lot of the cast similar to Stephanie and also similar to Jordan Fisher, is there are members of the cast, I would argue most of the men in the ensemble are tenors and they have beautiful voices, but they are light, poppier sounds and they are higher than the score writes for. So there's a. There were a lot of numbers that did not have vocal heft to them because the money notes were like four notes lower than a lot of these guys. Money notes actually are. And again, it's no one's fault other than just it's not a total vocal match. It doesn't sound bad, it just sounds light and things like the opening never really need to hit you over the head. Freedom Run really has to sail. The Act 1 finale really kind of has to sail. And a lot of like final buttons just sort of landed, not with a thud, but just sort of with the. To quote waitress, a soft place to land. And it's. You don't listen and go, oh God, how terrible. But you listen. You go, okay, not giving me everything I want, but it's not bad. And that's also sort of just a problem that stems from. On a production side, from like behind the table of what you're looking for for your production. And the lightness of the sound, which is also something that I have issues with with Jordan Fisher in the role of Bobby, also stems towards casting and acting. I. There's not a lot I can really say about Rainnn Wilson as Caldwell B. Cladwell. He doesn't make much of an impression. He doesn't have a bad take on the role. He just isn't. He's clearly not super comfortable on the stage, or at least on the musical theater stage and especially with an encores rehearsal schedule. He drops a couple of lines and a couple of lyrics the night that we saw it, which happens. But he wasn't able really to relish in the role. And on top of that, because of the short amount of time Encores has to rehearse and because I'm not entirely sure if the director is a major comedy director. There was a lot of air in this production, a lot of bits had room to breathe and really sell an audience, but things were not moving along at a steady clip and they really have to in Urinetown. You can't languish in each laugh. You have to keep going. And the Cast has to drive the momentum. They can't just let the audience decide when they're done laughing. You have to. If there's a really uproarious applause and laughter coming from the audience, you let that begin, and then you have to dictate to them, we're gonna move on. Now, get yourselves together, because another laugh is coming. Because if you keep waiting, the comedy's gonna die. There's an urgency to the story, and urgency is great for comedy because, again, comedy lives in timing and tempo. So if you're languishing in it all, it's not that the comedy dies. It just softens. And everything is very soft in this production. The thing. And that sort of leads us to Jordan Fisher's performance as Bobby. I. I like Jordan Fisher as a performer. I don't know him as a person. I like his. The sound of his singing voice. He seems like a nice guy, and he's a dedicated performer. I had not always liked him on stage, though. I was very vocal about not liking him in Sweeney Todd and the fact that he was a bad Anthony in Sweeney Todd, in my eyes, when I watched Urinetown, I was reminded of that because you want to kind of cast again. You want to cast someone who's playing Bobby Strong, who almost got Anthony and then was decided that they didn't look enough like Jordan Fisher or enough like Matt Doyle or enough like Victor Garber, but can still sing the house down with it. Jordan's voice is a pop sound, and he doesn't have a heft in it. That really lends Bobby's music to sail, in my opinion. His voice is also odd because his range is actually a lot higher than you would expect. And the higher he goes, the stronger he sounds. And so a lot of money notes for Bobby are, like, right in his break, and he would often option up a little higher and then sort of drop down to the money note at the end. And a lot of those option ups a do not fit with the tone of the music of Urinetown. This is not a commentary on musical theater using contemporary musical theater songs. It's a commentary on musical theater using very old school musical theater songs. Follow youw heart is not 17 from Heather's. The closest you get to, like, modern day musical theater is Privilege to Pee and Run. Freedom Run, I would argue. But Privilege to Pee, as it's written doesn't sound like contemporary musical theater. We only think that because of the high wailing. We know that comes from that song because of Nancy Opal. But Nancy Opal wasn't the ideal singing voice for that role. Again, that role was sort of modeled after the Nettie Fowlers and Ellers of the world and they wanted a soprano in it and Nancy Opal came in and just wailed it and they're like, well, fuck me blue, that's great and we'll take it. And that's how we know it. But, you know, privilege to be itself is very vile. Esque. And Run Freedom Run doesn't sound like contemporary musical theater. It's a, you know, it's a gospel number, but it's one of the more high energy numbers and it allows for some wailing in there. And to his credit, that is absolutely Jordan Fisher's best moment in the show for any issues I have with his performance in Urinetown. And he's not bad in the show, mind you. I'm just saying this now. He doesn't sound terribly bad, but some of his option ups are just not to my liking. Some of them didn't sound great, in my opinion, but I would say 90% of the time he doesn't sound bad in the show. He just sounds thin. And he's not a particularly funny actor. So he chooses to play everything incredibly earnest, which is fair. You don't want to be winking at the audience, but you do have to have a level of absurdity to your earnestness. It is your again, it's. It's Betty Gilpin and Omari, right? It's. You are ridiculous, but you don't realize it. So you got to be serious in a ridiculous world. I think I've said it before, but a lot of my friends who have been in Mamma Mia. On Broadway and on tour would say that Phyllida Lloyd would tell them when she would come to give notes. You know, you got to have one foot on the ground and one foot in the air. You as the actor know that this is silly. Your character takes it seriously, find the balance. And Jordan mostly just plays it very sweetly and earnestly and it gets him a couple of laughs, but not as often as he should. That said, he absolutely does nail Run Freedom Run, which is perhaps the most important number if you're going to play Bobby Strong to nail. He sings it incredibly well and he finds humor in it when he's conducting the ensemble during the gospel part, during the choir part, he has a physicality in there that is silly. And it's maybe more overly silly than the rest of the show would ask for, but because of the energy of that song, it's totally justified. He has a good chemistry with Stephanie, but I would argue Stephanie, communically speaking, is sort of mopping the floor with him. So it's even more impressive that she's able to land as many laughs as she can with him when he's not really setting up the volley for her to spike. Which actually then translates now to Greg Hildreth again as Officer Lockstock, who I said has a very good rapport with Chris Fitzgerald as Officer Beryl. Lockstock and Beryl, get it? But where Greg has a bit more trouble is opposite his Little Sally, who is played by Pearl Scarlet Gold. Little Sally is a child character of the show age, not totally known. It's always been played by an adult woman. And again, it's because it's more the idea of a child in a show, not an actual child in the show. And a lot of the humor of the show isn't as good unless it's played by a small, high pitched voice older person. So having the director cast Little Sally as an actual child, like I'm talking like 10 or 11 already, is a mistake. Also, when you're of that age, unless you are truly a prodigy, you don't have an innate sense of comedic timing that you can nail, especially with like 10 days of rehearsal. Right. So there's a rhythm and a rapport in the scene work with Little Sally and Officer Lockstock that doesn't exist in this production simply because the young actress playing her doesn't know how to convey that yet. She's just simply too young and inexperienced. That is not a critique of her, that's just a fact. And you wonder what's the aim to having this character be played by a little girl when it should be a Dana Steingold, it should be a Celia Kenan Bolger, it should be like anyone who's ever played Logan Schwartz and Grubineer in Spelling Bee. Right. And the truth is that, I don't know, it sounds, it felt to me more like, especially with the aesthetic of this production and just what they chose to lean into, that the production team was more interested in the political metaphors of this musical and the messaging that lies beneath it than in the actual comedy. And that's fair to a point. Urinetown absolutely has some messaging in it that is timely, it's worthwhile, and it's always good to remember sometimes it's harder to laugh at the timeliness of it than others, depending on what era we're living in. But those messages are at the center of a wild romp and it's not that Urinetown doesn't have a heart in it. It's just that it's a very cynical heart and the cynicism it only gets away with if you lead and lean on the comedy. And this production doesn't really lean on the comedy. It is still funny. They've cast enough comedic actors that it remains funny. And the show just has too many good jokes in it to not be funny. It could be funnier, it could be tighter, it could be smarter and a little more cynical. Some of the casting could maybe not lean so into modern day musical theater sound and go back to the classical musical theater sound. Get that hardiness in the voice, right? Think a little bit more of who's not the actual archetype and who's more the idea of the archetype and go with that. Or who's the first callback reject of that archetype. Get them in there, see what they can do with it. So overall, this is to say that this Year in Town is perfectly fine. If you see it, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Just okay. If you miss it, it's also kind of missable. It's not the worst encores I've ever seen that probably still remains the life. It's not the best. It's. It's too produced to get away with to get for it to excuse the simplicity of a lot of the staging and a lot of the dead air in the scene work and pacing. You know, something like Titanic gets away with some bad staging moments and a few miscastings. Because ultimately from its physical presentation it was made clear we are not trying to make this a production to transfer. We just want you to enjoy this music. So they got away with that. We excused that something like Jelly's Last Jam put a lot of energy and focus and insight into about five or six numbers that were so incredible that we did not forgive the boringness of the scene work so much as we were able to forget about it when we left. Because it was also clear that this was a production that wasn't going to transfer, no matter how many people thought it might or should. Maybe this will transfer. I know that there's some Broadway money behind it, but ultimately the buzz on it is just not there. And it's just not a strong enough product as a production to do. So it's a perfectly okay encores and that's fine. We can let this be the nice thing that happened for two weeks and then we can move on and we can get our hopes up. For Love Life, that it'll be another nice thing that happens for two weeks. But that's sort of, you know, that's the luck of the draw. At Encores, not everything is the cultural moment. Sometimes it's just a pleasant diversion for that time and we can let it be. That's it on Urinetown. I guess if you have more questions, comments or concerns, once again, you can write in on the Discord Channel. The link will be in the description box. For this Thursday will be the release of the live episode at BroadwayCon with myself and Gray Henson, where we had the audience submit one of four shows into a bowl that we picked out at random. And whichever one we picked out at random was what we talked about for an hour. So you'll find out what that was when you listen to the episode. And then after that will be my review of Redwood and then the Wiz movie and the Angels in America episodes. So stay tuned for more and that'll be it. I'm gonna close us out with. I've done Jennifer Laura Thompson before. I'm gonna close us out with Nancy Opal's Privilege to Pee because it's just too good. So, yeah, that'll be it. Thank you so much, guys, for listening. I will see you in a couple of days. Take it away, Nancy. Bye. The good Lord made us so we piss each day until we piss away. The good Lord made sure that what goes in man must soon come out again. So you're no different than from lowly me, but Miss Pennywise. That's enough, Bobby. All you homeowners have unique needs. Some feel the need to paint their door a vibrant shade of blue. Others have the need to decorate their bathroom with fish anchors and other nautical items. And because each homeowner has unique needs, GEICO helps you get the right coverage for your home and what's in it. 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