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Did I just hear an alarm start ringing? Did I see sirens go flying past? Though I don't know what tomorrow's bringing Got a singular impression things are moving too fast I'm gliding smooth as a figure hello, all you theater lovers, both ouch 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'm your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And today is a double whammy review day. Woo. We saw a whole bunch of shows this week, and due to embargoes and opening nights, the order in which we review them is a little shuffled. But today we are doing a double whammy reviewing both Boop and the last five years. Now, you might be wondering why you're hearing like a little rattling with my voice. Well, last time we recorded, we had just blown out our voice due to our birthday festivities and also got a little bit sick. So we've been downing these Cold Ease lozenges that have helped perpetuate the healing of our cold and getting our voice back and lubricating the vote. Shay. So unfortunately, I do have to suck on this Cold Ease lozenge while we record this. It's not technically eating. So, my misophonia listeners, I'm sorry, but I'm not falling back into bad habits before we get into reviews, we're gonna start with Boop first, actually, and then go on to the last five years. Before we do any of that, we do have another review to read, so I want to give that person their flowers now. And then we will get into Boop. Cue the Light and the Piazza Overture, please. Five stars. All you need to know. In short, this podcast has such great balance. Thoughtfulness and passion, humor and respect, immense theater knowledge and humility, openness, a genuine voice to rely on. I may not always agree, but I always listen. I like that. In long. Sorry, that caught me off guard. In long. Matt is a charismatic, thoughtful, eloquent, earnest host who approaches everything on this show with good faith, love, and respect. Thank you. Because of this, he is able to be honest. Funny. Funny is subjective. I don't think many people find me funny. Informative and occasionally a little sassy or a lot sassy. You will laugh, you will cheer in agreement. You will disagree with vigor. You will love every minute of it. Ultimately, when I listen to the show, I more often than not, I am reminded why I love this art form. Thank you very much, Jake Z. That's a lovely, lovely review. I don't know why I find the need to respond as I'm reading it, maybe to. I don't know. I think compliments, no matter what format, even when I'm asking people to write reviews, always make me a Todd uncomfy. So I'm always like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna say things, Cecily, to undercut to the positives that people have said. But thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you guys, always, for writing those. All right, let's get down to business. Because many people say that I talk too much. Boop. We went to one of the last press previews for Boop the Musical, starring Jasmine, Amy Rogers, Faith Prince, Stephen DeRosa, Eric Bergen. Directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, with a book by Bob Martin. A score PI, Susan Birkenhead and David Foster. Oh, there's. Who else? Somebody else is. Who am I missing from the. Oh, Ainsley Melham, who plays the. The hunky romantic lead, as well as Anastasia McCleskey, Angelica Hale, Philip Huber and Abi Merylies. I had heard quite positive things about Boop. When it was out of town in Chicago. Everyone said that Jasmine Amy Rogers was amazing. She was a star, and they really just needed to kind of focus more on her and cut down a lot of miscellaneous stuff. And they spent a long time in between Chicago and Broadway. I got a little nervous because they announced Boop and Smash in previews at the exact same time. And Boop and Smash, I think, opened within, like, four days of each other. The Smash review will be coming out a couple of days after this one. And I was like, I'm not sure if Bob Martin has it in him to go back and forth and make major changes to either show during this time. That's a lot to ask of one man. And I'm not entirely sure what all the major changes were from Chicago to New York, but when I was at the show, my friend and I were there, and there were two gentlemen who sat behind us and they had seen Boop in Chicago. And we asked them, oh, any major changes you can notice? And they mostly just said it felt shorter, but that there didn't seem to them any major overhauls or that could just be faulty memory. Maybe someone involved in the production can counter that and say, actually, this song is new and this scene is new, so that all might be possible. But to them, they said that it felt much like the show in Chicago, just tighter, which is, you know, tighter is always good, especially in a musical comedy. Now I will be giving spoilers on Boop just because one of the things I need to do with this review is I have feedback that is very specific, and in order to correctly give it, I have to actually address the plot of Boop and things that happen in the show, which are two separate things, by the way. The story is very separate from events that happen, which is a thing that we need to just distinguish right now. So in order to give that kind of feedback, I have to be specific. So if you don't want to hear any spoilers about the story of Boop or anything like that, I'm sorry, turn it off. Now. You can flash forward to the last five years review. I'm sure many of you want to listen to that one anyway. So Boop Boop is based off of the IP of the cartoon Betty Boop, which was a very prominent cartoon of the 30s and 40s. If you are unfamiliar with her, you can always see her with her cameo in who Framed Roger Rabbit? A amazing movie, one of my favorite movies of all time. And honestly, like a brilliant screenplay, she has a little cameo in it. And the joke is that once Toons went to color, she lost work. So she's waiting tables at this cartoon human bar, and she has her little boop boop be do boop. And it's fun. It's cute. You know, Betty Boop is a cartoon that was always kind of sexualized while still being innocent. And one of the major things was that men were always chasing her. The musical opens up in the cartoon world of Betty Boop. It's in black and white, and we're watching basically a run of Betty Boop shorts of all different scenarios that she has. This is a cute, clever concept that they do with Jazz and Amy Rogers sort of standing behind a. I guess you call it like a cardboard cutout. You know, when you go to fairs or, you know, do like a day trip to, like, an orchard or field, and they have those, like, wooden cutouts where you put your head in the hole and stuff like that. It's that. But the head is cut off, so it's just Rogers's head on top of this cutout. And then for each new scenario, they sort of flip the top of the cutout and it folds over, and there's a new outfit for her, and she's standing behind it the entire time, a little kind of rigid. It's very much giving Diana in her wedding dress during the. I will, I will. It's very much that. So she's. She's Kind of rigid in that stance while things are happening around her. But it's clever. It's, you know, it's cute enough and the song is perfectly fine. The song ends and Betty Boop is interviewed by the press, the press of her world, I should say, because she is the biggest star in her. In her world. Everything revolves around her. And the public wants to know, who is Betty Boop really? And she can't answer. She doesn't know. And she goes home to grandpa, played by Steven Derosa, and her dog, I think Pudgy is his name. Super adorable. I got Pudge. Maybe the thing is just Pudge. I need to. Yeah, Pudgy, her dog Pudgy, who is very adorable. Sarah got me a plushie, Pudgy, down in the merchandise store. And so she tells Grandpa, you know, she doesn't really know who she is. She wants to sort of get away from everything and just sort of be anonymous for a little bit. She wants to take a break from being Betty Boop because she just feels like everything is crowding in around her and she. She's basically has lost her sense of self. And Grandpa informs her that he's made a device that can take her to a different dimension, to essentially our world. But he advises against it because he went once upon a time many years ago and came back with a cold that he's never been able to shake. But Betty Boop decides to go anyway. And when she's in the real world, she shows up at Comic Con where she's like, oh my God, look at all the colors. Because she's only seen black and white, so they have a whole song about colors. She runs into a girl who is obsessed with Betty Boop. It's like all over her clothes. And Betty Boop wants to be incognito, so she claims she's somebody else. She meets this teenage girl's older brother who really loves jazz. They take her to their apartment. The 17 year old girl. I think she's 17. Her parents have been dead for a while. I think like five or six years. She says she's been in therapy for five years. She and her brother live with their aunt who is working on a mayoral campaign for Eric Bergen, who is clearly corrupt. And once they're at the apartment, we learn about the brother's love of jazz. Sorry, the much older brother's love of Jazz. And then Betty Boop confides in the teenage girl, I'm actually Betty Boop. The girl's like, I knew it. I knew it. You seem like Betty Boop. And the girl's like, I want to be a designer, but I don't know if I'm good enough. And I want to apply to this program, but I don't know if I'm good enough. And then Betty goes to Times Square with them. Betty goes with the brother to a jazz club where she sings at the end of act one. And then act two begins, and we find out that apparently that was blowing her cover. And now all of New York knows that Betty Boop is in New York. And all of New York is going bananas for the fact that Betty Boop is now in New York. While this all happens, we also have cut back to Betty Boop's Cartoon World, where her producer, director, and his assistant are going insane because their star is missing. They need her. They. They want her back. She is the sunshine. They don't know what to do without her. There's a very good joke about how the director's like, I don't know what I did or didn't do, but I apologize for it. So he has his assistant write a letter being like, dear Betty Boop, like, I'm sorry for blank. I will never blank again. Please accept my blank. You know, all these things. And I don't know if he did it, if he made this joke too, but they implied that he also would apologize for anything that he did not do. So I actually thought that would be funny. If the director is like, I apologize for blanking. I will never blank again. Blah, blah. Letter two. Ms. Boop, I am so sorry that I did not blank. And I promise in the future that I will blank if you ask me to. I think that'd be funny. Anyway, they inform Grandpa that Betty Boop has gone missing. They don't know where she is, and they need her because their whole world is about her son. So Grandpa knows she's gone off to New York. He brings Pudgy with him, and they go to New York, where he runs into Faith Prince, the woman he met 40 years ago when he first went to the real world. And they fell in love. And then when they separated, they each got this cold that they couldn't shake. She's now working at NASA or something. And everyone's like, oh, if you have a cold, it's because you're in love and you need to stay in love. And so they're like, well, that's nice. And that's the end of their act one, and then act two, they go and they find Betty, like, halfway through Act 2, and. And they're like, oh, by the way, Betty, Faith Prince and I got married. And she's like, well, that's nice. And Eric Bergen's like, oh, Betty Boop is super popular. I'm gonna have her stand beside me on the campaign trail, and everyone will see her like her, and they'll want to vote for me. And he rises in the polls, but he doesn't ever let Betty speak. He has her in his office, where he reveals that he's corrupt. He chases her on the desk for about five seconds. She knocks him on the head, tells teenage girl and Jazz boy's aunt, you should be running for mayor. So she says, okay, I will. She runs, she wins. And. Oh. And with her cover blown, Jazz boy is upset for, like, two minutes that she lied to him about who she really was. But they still fall in love anyway. And as all that happens, Steven DeRosa, as Grandpa and Faith Prince show up, and he's like, our world is falling apart. You have to go back. And she's like, okay, I'm sad to leave, but I know that I have to. And Faith Prince is like, I'm coming with you. I've always wanted to be a cartoon. And she's like, okay. And Grandpa's like, I don't know if that'll work. We've never had a human come to our worlds, but, like, let's risk it. And so she says her goodbyes. They go. She sings a big 11 o' clock number about, like, I've got something to shout about. They're in their world. She's like, I will not. I will be making new cartoons now. You won't be chasing me around the desk anymore. I want to make stories that, you know, people in other worlds will see and find inspiration from. And then five seconds later, Jazz boy shows up and he's like, it's. It's okay. My aunt is mayor and she's kicking ass. And my teenage sister, you know, she's in that design program now, and she's helping out my aunt, and she's going to be mayor someday. And, like, they're doing great. And I'm here because I want to be with you because I love you. And she's like, great, end of show. Now I'm going to start with the things about Boop. That work. Believe the hype about Jasmine Amy Rogers. She is genuinely a star. Now, I do not use that word lightly because I have felt for a long time that people want to create moments to justify the money they spend, the time they spend. That's why we have all these mid show standing ovations. Standing ovations at the end of shows. People were trying to give Jasmine an 11 o' clock number. Standing ovation at our performance. And by people, I mean it was probably 30 people in New York Orchestra, a couple in the front row, a couple people behind us, but they couldn't make it. The rest of the audience did not buy into it. And so they sat down. But how many times have we heard stories of the understudy going on or the standby going on, this unknown going on and everyone going, a star is born. You're going to hear their names and how often does that actually follow up? Even if they work constantly, even if, you know they have a following, they have a fan base, that's wonderful, but really we're talking like a Barbra Streisand in I can get it for you wholesale and Audra in Carousel, A Sutton in Millie. Moments where like truly a career is born. Jessie Mueller in On a Clear Day. Right. And even Jessie Mueller in On a Clear Day. It wasn't like this launching of a star so much. It was the first domino that fell that created her stardom. Right. Like by the time Beautiful happened, she'd had a few Broadway credits, she already was a Tony nominee. The, the industry knew her, the industry loved her. And she blew up with Beautiful, but like a genuine going from one level to another level within a show. I do think with Jasmine, Amy Rogers, that is the case here. She is so special in a, in a time where I feel like programs are, I hate to use the word, the term, churning out, but churning out very strong, smart and dependable talent, but kind of indistinguishable. She is very indistinguishable. She, first of all, she has an amazing voice which who, you know is surprised about that, is a wonderful dancer, but she's a gifted comedian and an intuitive actress and she has a phenomenal way to balance the hyper specific and stylized tone of Betty Boop with a Fish out of Water while also having a what's. I'm looking for a gregarious spirit that doesn't feel forced and doesn't feel put upon. She's never commenting on the humor, she's just playing the humor. And it's so phenomenal to see. And if you watch her and you watch her physicality, she's always doing things with her body, showing whether Betty Boop is ill at ease, when she's comfortable, when she's happy, when she's in love, all these things like it's all defined and specific and intuitive, and it's great, and it's so wonderful to see. Every time she was on stage, I was happy, and I always wanted more of her. We'll come back to that in a second. Other positives. There are some design elements of the show that are really well done. Costumes overall are really great. The set is a lot of projections. Sometimes that works. Pretty much everything in the Betty Boop world works quite nicely, as well as a few special effects. Most of the stuff in New York City, design wise, I hate I'm gonna say this, but it blows. But Boop World stuff is actually very well designed. There's a number. The opening number is very well done and very well choreographed. There is mostly solid choreography in the show. The two highlights for me are the opening number of Act 1 and the opening number of Act 2. Act 2 is basically a number where Betty Boop's Cartoon World and the real World are singing about Betty. Real World in New York is like, oh, my God, we love Betty Boop. We're so excited she's here. Cartoon World is like, where is Betty? We don't know where to find her. And the way that the ensemble's costumes work is that one side of their costumes. Spoiler alert. But one side of their costumes is color. The other side is black and white. And the. And they flip flop whenever they are, you know, different characters from different worlds. And what makes it smart is, like, half the ensemble, their fronts are color, their back is black and white, and then the other half, it's the reverse. So there's a lot of, like, switching and switching, and it's. It's very well done. And I was with Sarah and she was enjoying the number, but when they did the first switch, everybody was like, oh, that's really clever. And I think it even got a little bit of applause. But Sarah didn't really clock it. She was just sort of, like, enjoying it. And by the third switch, because they did it a couple of times in the first minute or so, and Sarah's like, oh, it's fun. I'm like, sarah, are you aware what they're doing? And she goes, what do you mean? I'm like, sarah, look at the costumes. And she's like, yeah, they're so cool. And then they switched again, and she goes, oh, it's black and white now. Then they switched back to color, and then she realized, but she's a sweetie. But it was just funny to watch her enjoy the number because it was a good number, but she was so much enjoying the energy of it, she couldn't even clock the twist. And I had to be like, no, pay the fuck attention. Imagine telling someone to pay attention at Betty Boop. It's not something that really should require that much attention. And yet there are a couple of good songs again. The opening song I think is good. The opening of Act 2 is good. I think Where I Want to Be is a bop. The rest of the score, it's not bad. It's just not as colorful and as enjoyable as those three songs. There are some really solid jokes and Betty Boop. Bob Martin has written a couple of really great one liners. It's overall a very strong cast. Everyone is giving their all and doing really fun work. I, I enjoyed Steven derosa a great deal as grandpa. Here is where we now have to get into the nitty gritty of it all and why I had to be specific about plot and characters. As I said, every time Jasmine Amy Rogers is on stage, I was happy. She is not on stage nearly enough. This is where I pull a Jerome Robbins and talk to the team of Funny Girl and I tell them, you don't really have a show. What you have here is a star. And every time she's gone, the show deflates. So get back to your star for a show called Boop. Betty Boop is in like about half of the show, maybe 55% if I'm being generous and like it goes back and forth. And I give them a lot of props for not giving her such an impossible track to do. This is not a Lempicka or an Elle woods where you're like, how are you alive at the end of this? That said, we could, she could stand to have a little more to do, especially because her character is the best one, has the best material and she is truly like. She is lightning in a bottle. And you feel your adrenaline go down when she leaves the stage. So that's the first thing. The other thing is Betty Boop or say Boop the Musical. It's a fun time. It's also a mess. And I don't say that to be cruel. I say this because this can be fixed. I think Boop the Musical can be fixed. It's not going to be fixed now because they have frozen the show. But if anyone from the creative team is listening and the way my luck has been going these days, one of you probably is. I want to talk to you about what I feel like is not working about this show. You have a fun time, but. But it doesn't make much sense. It doesn't make much narrative sense. There's no cohesion to it all. There's no real arc to it all. And granted, this is Boop, the musical we're talking about, but if you can create a strong narrative with pivot turns and inciting incidents and everything that's concise and economic, it separates your show from the week. It'll allow your show to survive and thrive in the future because having the energy in the moment allows an audience to have a good time. And then the more time they spend away from your show, the less they'll think about it. And you don't want that. Not when you need that kind of word of mouth to bump up your show. When you need Tony nominators to walk away and then two weeks later go. When they're making their nomination choices, go, oh, you know what? Yeah, no, that was really clever. That was very good. You don't want people to have to return to remember things and to enjoy the thing. So without further ado, here are my notes on what we can do for Boop. First things first, you have three characters that you can cut. You would cut Faith Prince's character, which I know she's Faith Prince, but if it's not played by Faith Prince, and her character's name is Valentina, she's second build in the program, and it makes no sense. She doesn't show up until the very end of act one, and then she has, like, three scenes in act two, tops. Cut. Valentina, she doesn't add anything to the plot. Everything she says could be said by Grandpa. So cut her. Cut all of Grandpa's being in New York and with Valentina and like, oh, I'm in love. Again, we have to cut. And this is not just because I don't like children, but we do have to cut the teenager. What's her name? Trisha. We cut Trisha for many reasons. One part of the reason why Betty Boop leaves her comic world to go to the real world is she wants to go where no one knows she's famous. And the first person she meets when she's in New York at Comic Con is a teenage girl who's obsessed with her. And she's like, well, I gotta hide my true identity and then reveals herself. And there's no stakes to it. There's no tension about it. But also, there's no difference of opinion between Betty Boop's life in the comic world and the real world once people know who she is. I think cutting Trisha Helps with two things. First of all, it cuts superfluous minor storylines that don't need anything and takes away from Betty Boop. But have a contrast between Betty in her world where she is everything, she is the center of everything, to the real world where Betty Boop is now passe and people haven't thought about her other than ironically in merchandise on Etsy for years. And that makes Betty wonder what's going on between the two worlds. What changed in the decades that she's been around? Also, it allows Trish's older brother and what's his name, I want to call him Hugh, but I don't think that's correct. Dwayne. Dwayne. I think of that. Amy Sedaris clip on David Letterman. Dwayne, Trish's older brother Dwayne. He, by the end of the show, he romantically goes into the Betty Boop cartoon world to be with be with Boop. And he abandons his aunt and his 17 year old sister who, you know, she says, I'm fine. I had five years of therapy to deal with my dead parents. But my older brother, he's basically like a half brother, half parent to me. He leaves to go be with Betty. I'm like, you abandon your sister. And we like, we bandaged that up real quick. I'm like, oh, well, she's doing great. No, no, no. Give him less responsibility in the real world. So when he leaves to go with Betty Boop, we aren't worried about any ties he has to our world. So there's also the question of what is it that Betty Boop wants? What is her journey? What is her arc? And the truth is, we don't know. The first part of the show, it's, I don't know who I am anymore. Goes to the real world, comes back, and she's like, you know what? I want to make different movies now. Cool. I like the idea of Betty Boop wanting to make new movies, but let's find a way to tweak that some. This is because the, the plot is sort of half Barbie, half Annie with like sprinklings of Back to the Future in there. Right? Because we are told in Act 2, towards the very end that Betty's world is crumbling because she's not there and she needs to go back with Twitch. She says, absolutely, no problem. And Betty is told about Trisha's parents. Oh, they're dead. And she has no real response to that other than, oh, I'm so sorry. Now Betty Boop is a cartoon. She's fictional. And she comes from a world where people don't die and everything lives on forever. Think of Toons in who Framed Roger Rabbit? So we can lean a little bit more into the Barbie thing of this all. There's an episode of south park, by the way. And I bring this up for a reason. I think it's the first episode of season seven. It's called Cancelled. And it's the boys at the bus stop, and they are recreating the very first scene of the very first episode of South Park. And they realize we've done this before. And they realize, oh, we're in a rerun. And they realize that Earth is actually a reality show made up by the universe. But Betty doing one of her shorts or a number of her shorts in the opening number, going into a new day of something, not knowing that it's a repeat, but then all of a sudden, kind of being hyper aware that I feel like I've done this before. I feel like this has happened before. This thing with Grandpa or this thing with my director and all these things. And then she takes a moment, or she and Grandpa or Grandpa, through his calculations, they take a moment to realize that they have done this one thing or all of these things, like 10,000 times. And Betty Boop's like, well, how can that be? Like, we used to have new adventures all the time. What changed? Why are we doing these repeats all the time? And why did it take us so long to. To realize it? And she is told by Grandpa, you know, oh, there's another dimension where you can figure that out. You know, you. You can go to the real world. I did it. Grandpa not thinking anything of it because he did it once. But he's also like, it wasn't great. I went there. I met a girl. It was really nice, but I had to come back. And Betty decides she's gonna go. And while she's there, she realizes that no one really knows who Betty Boop is. And while she's there, while she's at Comic Con, that is when Eric Bergen's character and the aunt. Aunt Carol. And we don't even really need Eric Bergen's character, the mayor candidate, Raymond Demarest. He's so inconsequential to anything. But if we want to keep that plotline, then we have to introduce him sooner because he doesn't show up until two thirds of the way into Act 1. And he has one scene it's like 80 seconds long, goes off stage, doesn't show up again until the top of Act 2. And again, only has two scenes, and then he's done it. Just. It's. It's all little pieces of things that just sort of happen, and none of it is part of a cohesive whole. So if we do want to keep Raymond Demarest, introduce him at Comic Con. The moment Betty arrives, he's there with Aunt Carol trying to sway voters and get publicity, get exposure, because Aunt Carol's like, hey, let's go outside of your demographic and reach younger voters. It doesn't work because he's a douche. But while they're there, that is where they run into Betty Boop with, let's say, Aunt Carol's nephew Dwayne, who's there to help out. Because Dwayne is sort of a jack of all trades, master of none, which he sort of is in the musical already. But we can lean into that more. Like, Dwayne is sort of directionless. He has interests in many different things, but they all cost money, and they all take a lot of time, and you can't really make so many things. He wants to do your job. You have to, you know, earn a living and. And pay rent and all these things, and there's not enough time, and everything costs money. And he just. He has so much potential, but he doesn't know what to do. So he's directionless. So he's helping Anne Carroll on the campaign while she's, you know, the campaign manager for Raymond Demarest at Comic Con. And it doesn't go great, but let's say Betty Boop does something at Comic Con to help them accidentally. And she and Dwayne start to connect, and she says, oh, I'm new in town. I don't know where to stay. And as sort of a thank you for helping them on that day. And Carol's like, oh, well, you can stay at our apartment today. You know, everything's good. You can. We have a spare bedroom, blah, blah, blah. And so she stays with Aunt Carol and Dwayne. She and Duane connect. He takes her out to a nightclub where. Where she sings, something happens to reveal that she's Betty Boop. Or nothing is revealed that she's Betty Boop. And something happens with Raymond Demarest that ultimately allows Aunt Carol to usurp him and go run for mayor herself. And while Betty is away, we see in her world, it start to crumble. We start to see how her. You know, the things are getting erased. Things are starting to fall apart. People are getting wonky because. And Grandpa realizes, oh, because I was A supporting character. It didn't matter that I left. But Betty is the center of our universe, and therefore she has to come back. Now. They imply this in the show. They have, like, a quick line of his when he's in the real world where he's like, it didn't matter. I'm a side character. It didn't matter. But we need to see more of that, because we never see Betty Boop's world crumbling, so we need to see that. So there are stakes. And he. And he goes into the real world to find Betty. He finds her in Act 1. But this. But the conflict is Betty doesn't want to go back. She likes it here. She likes being anonymous. But she also has found out that Boop comics have been passe for a long time. You know, people watch it on YouTube. It's sort of jokingly, and it's be. And that's sort of why they're in a repeat in their world, because no one has made new Betty Boop stories in. In decades. And there's the question of, well, can Betty Boop herself make new stories in her world? Or does someone have to make new stories in their world? And they can make a quick joke about, like, who fucking cares? You make the art. You. You know, you make your life, and that is art. And that art will find its way into the real world. You can make a joke about it. But she's already starting to think, oh, you know, there's so much out there in the world. There's so many things I can do that we haven't explored yet in our world. People, you know, the. The stories that we put out of me, getting chased around the desk, that didn't do great for narratives out there for women, for anybody, for romance, anything like that. And she says, I don't want to go back. I want to stay here. And Grandpa's like, fine, if we're going to stay here, I want to look up the woman that I met last time and see what she's up to, because we fell in love, and I love to see her again. And they find out it's been 60 years since Grandpa was in New York, and the woman that he fell in love with was 60 years old then, and she's dead now, and she can't come back. And that's when Betty and Grandpa realize, oh, in this world, people die, and they don't come back. You don't live forever. And that's when Betty realizes she has to go back to her world, but she's gonna take what she learned from this world, bring it back with her so they can create new stories and put out art into the world and narratives into the world that can inspire a new generation of women breaking this repetitive cycle that she once had. And then ultimately, Dwayne does come with her because he learns by going into Betty Boop's world that he is going to be granted time to try all the things that he wants to try and do the things he wants to do well. And that also provides new storylines for him and Betty Boop. And by being in a romance, they have new storylines of showing a new generation of girls with what a healthy, communicative romance can be, what a, you know, all the humor and stories that can come from a healthy marriage, that it doesn't have to be a battle of the sexes. It just has to be in equilibrium. And I think that is something that could really fix Boop. You know, we. We, as I said, we cut Faith Prince, we cut Trisha the teenager. I wouldn't even argue. We cut Eric Bergen and just have it be that Aunt Carol is an independent running for mayor. And it's not going great because she's a woman and she doesn't have a lot of money or a lot of exposure and. And something with her. And Betty works where Betty Boop can help her get that exposure. As I said, show us earlier, things going wrong in Betty's world. Also, they make a whole thing about when Betty comes back that she tells her director, like, she's going to do new stories, and she says, I'm not going to be chased around the desk anymore, and I'm not asking you. And the idea is, oh, she's empowered now. The problem is that it's been established for comedic effects, but it's been established that everyone bows to Betty Boop and Betty Boop's world because it's Boop World. She's the star, she's the center, and all the men in that world cater to her anyway. So it's. Nothing has changed in terms of dynamics so much as what she wants to make now. So it's not as if she's grown a pair. It's not like she's grown a spine. She's always been the leader of her world. It's just that now she's like, oh, I have things I want to do now or new things I want to do now. But that has nothing to do with her not knowing who she was at the beginning of the show. She doesn't have a specific want that she then Gets. She doesn't have or. Or specific want that she thinks she wants. That changes halfway through the show, the more exposed she is to the outside world, which changes her for something else. It's all just sort of things happen to her and she gets a little more. I hate to use the term, but she gets a little more woke as things go on and she comes back to her world a little more woke and everything goes back to normal, just with new stories. There's so much more you can play with here. Right. Any other major changes? I wanted to say no, that's really it. They have a brief mention when they ask her about her stories, like, do you ever do stories about love? And she says, no. Now that I think about it, not really. And that's because she's never been in love. I think we can explore more of that, of why is it that Betty Boop has never been in love? Why has she never had a real relationship? They say, well, it's because all of the stories are her being chased around a desk. But that's not entirely true. There are a lot of stories of her being ogled. But when you are the center of your world, why is it that there are no new stories? That's why I like my idea of they are in a repetition. Because the outside world that created Boop has sort of forgotten it and not added anything to it. And she has to break that cycle to create new stories for herself. And by creating new stories for herself, creating new narratives to go out into the world. And just because they're fictitious doesn't mean they don't have merit and that they don't make an impact. Right. The movies, the shows that we see, the books that we read, they matter as much to us as anything else that's actually happened to us in this world. Right. There's a whole trilogy about it in south park, the Imaginationland trilogy. It's great. I highly recommend. So those are ultimately my thoughts on Boop, Tony wise, I think if there's any Broadway justice, Jasmine. Amy Rogers will be nominated. She is honestly currently my vote for best Actress. I wish that the show gave her more. But what they do give her, she absolutely nails hard. I see costumes being nominated for them, choreography. They could get a score nomination. It is an original score. It's a big, brassy sound too. They could even get an orchestration nomination. They could even do get a lighting nomination. That's where I'm gonna cut it. The book is honestly just too scattered and cluttered to be nominated. Although we have had worse books be nominated. I don't see it really selling enough to be a best musical nominee. But it could be that being the underdog, the community really rallies behind it to bring it up. It's also, I mean, it's a very feel good show. It's just not. It needs to be stronger. You can't just run on vibes alone. You have to have something worth committing to, even if it is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air. And that's my thought on, on my boobs, my thought, my thoughts on the boops and my personal fixes that I would do to make this show the stronger show that I know it can be. I think the show has so much potential and I really would love, I would love to be in the room with the whole team afterwards and be like your next iteration. This is what we got to do. Because you have something here, but you aren't really going for the jugular with it. And not in the like, oh, you got to be Tom Stoppard. But just if you're going to be the glitzy fantasia that wants to touch on some of these themes, be it and be, to quote Ms. Alyssa Edwards, if you're going to be a Rowdy Bowdy bitch, stand up and be Rowdy Bowdy. That's me paraphrasing, but still, just don't be weak sauce. If you want to be this, be this, but be the best this. And that's it. That's what I got to say. So we're going to take a quick break and then we'll get into last five years. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean you're the top? Yeah, you're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire. And we're back. So we are talking about the last five years, the two person Jason Rapper Brown musical that has been done to death everywhere in the musical theater canon. If you are like me, you were first introduced to this by Sherri Renee Scott and Norbert Leo Butz on the cast recording. And then a bootleg circulated. Oh my God. Among the theater children of the early to mid 2000s that was treated like the fucking holy Grail. I remember there being a movie night at Stage Door in one of the dorm rooms where like eight of us all gathered around someone's laptop and watched the entire thing. It was. Yeah, that was a fun night. There also was a revival at second Stage With Betsy Wolf and Adam Cantor. The movie version with Jeremy Jordan and Anna Kendrick. Peter. Plenty of regional productions, community theater productions. I doubt any high schools have done it, but you never know colleges. And this is the first time the show has been done on Broadway. It is the third time it has been done in New York, fourth time if you count the Town hall concert with Cynthia Erivo and Joshua Henry. And it's starring Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren, directed by Whitney White. And this was a production that already people were eyebrowing and side eyeing. And with every bit of media that came out, it sort of there became a clash among theater people of like, this is embarrassing or no, you're crazy. They sound good. And no one really knew what was what. And it felt like a lot of people already had daggers out for this production, wanting it to be bad because of preconceived notions about the show. And then as information was leaking out from previews about staging and whatnot, people would say, well, that misses the point. And then other people would come around and go, well, actually this production did that this one time. So let's clear up some things. Yes. Adrienne Warren and Nick Jonas share the stage with each other in more numbers than just the next 10 minutes, which is the song where Kathy and Jamie sing together for the only time. The night that he usually the night that he proposes, except for this production, and then get married. Because if you don't know the last five years. It is the story of a five year relationship between Kathy, an aspiring actress, and Jamie, an on the rise novelist. They meet when they're about 23 and over the course of five years they date, they get married, they break up, and the musical charts their relationship with Kathy going backwards and Jamie going forward. So at the top of the show, it's Kathy after Jamie has left with a letter that he's written her. And then we go into Jamie right after he and Kathy have met and we keep going. So by the time the show ends, Jamie has left the relationship and written Kathy the letter. And we hear in his song what the letter is, which is I could never rescue you. And Kathy's storyline ends after their first amazing date and her feeling like this is going to be amazing. I will say this is a great bout of material the last five years. I, I found it first as an album and heard so many musical theater straight boys just like go on and on and on about it, which is enough to turn anyone's stomach. But no matter where we are in the community and where we come to in the last five years. We all sort of. We all sort of come back to remembering that it is good material. My hot take is I don't really have ever felt that it's worked as a stage show. I've always felt that it's worked more as a listening experience. There are productions that have done certain things really well and made it make more sense than others. The movie has its positives and its negatives and we'll get into that in a little bit as well. But even the movie, I just don't think the movie ever really needed to be made. I don't think it lends itself to being a film. And there are things they do quite well and then other things are like, yeah, this was never going to work because this is such a theatrical piece. And even then, like, I'm like, it's really more of an album piece. But so many people have had experiences with the show crying to it in their car, crying to it in their bedroom, crying to it at the theater. It's never been a show that has made me weep. But it is a show that I find very impressive. Again, with a lot of great stuff. And I do think that Kathy and Jamie as characters have a lot of meat to them. I was reading some stuff about this production where people were like, well, Kathy is underwritten, and it's amazing what Adrienne Warren does with it. I'm like, kathy is not an underwritten role. And I actually resent that. Kathy has to. It's hard to start the show when you're Kathy because the first two Kathy songs are pretty down airs. And James, like, you get still hurting and then see I'm smiling. Jamie gets shiksa goddess and moving too fast, which are big ball bustin showstoppers. But if you are patient as a Kathy, the show rewards you because we end on a high with you and we see all the things that made Jamie fall in love with you and all the ways in which you worked at the relationship at the same time that we're watching Jamie fuck up his side of the equation. And it's very easy to walk away hating to start the show finding Kathy a wet blanket and then ending the show liking Kathy and hating Jamie. And I don't think that's totally fair either. They both have their flaws. Kathy is sweet and she's smart and she's very seductive and charming and witty and clever. But she also, I think, fancies herself a bit of a manic pixie dream girl. A dry manic pixie dream girl, but she. She fancies herself a little more special than she actually is. And by going out into the world and trying, acting, doing it professionally, she gets some successes, but not a ton. And as her career is stalling, that is when Jamie's is thriving. And it's easy to be in love when you both are on the same plane. But when one person starts moving forward and you are stalling, it does a lot for your psyche, it does a lot to your ego. And part of you is like, well, for the sake of the relationship, do I let go and allow the balance to kind of shift a bit? What does that say about me as a person? Am I giving up on myself by defining myself as. Only in this relationship, you ask yourself, what's the most important thing to you? Jamie, meanwhile, is also charming. And Jamie is creative and does a lot of grand romantic gestures, and he's very passionate. Jamie is also quite egotistical with tunnel vision and is really unable to be empathetic. He cannot look at something from another person's perspective. It's always his perspective. And he is frustrated by Kathy's lack of motivation, by her lack of success, and by her lack of adaptability. And you can see that in all the. In various productions, how they make that work. One of my favorite things in the original production with Norbert and Sherry is in a miracle would happen in the second half when he's on the phone with Kathy singing, you know, I'll be there soon, Kathy, and doing the don't give up on me yet. That part. Some productions have it where he is literally home writing and he has to get a chapter done and his agent is calling and his publisher is calling. All these things in the Norbert Sherry production, he's at a bar, probably with people, and he has, like, three beers at his table, and he's on the phone with Kathy saying, like, I will be there so soon. And while he's doing that, he's looking at an offstage waitress pointing to a beer and saying, one more. So he's fucking lying to her and clearly, like, wants to avoid going home because things with Kathy are not going great. And spoiler this, under this ends up leading to him cheating on her that she's suspicious of, but never, as far as we know, has total confirmation of. Now, people often cite the cheating with Jamie as, like, the final straw. He's to blame. It's all over because of him. He's a shit, and he is a shit. But a lot of times, what people like to talk about with cheating Is it's a symptom, right? It's not necessarily the sickness that is hurting the relationship. Now that sickness can be for some people that they are an egotist and that they, there's something going on with them that they have to cheat. But we also have seen relationships that are open, non monogamous and people being honest about what they need sexually and not wanting to put expectations on their partner that they have to be all of those things. We see people in throuples, right? One could ask like, well, is it that Jamie needs more sexual satisfaction than he's getting from Kathy, or is it that Kathy, as she is honestly drowning in her flailing career as an actress and finding resentment towards Jamie's success and all of the adoration he's getting? She is rather than look inwards and go, I can't self sabotage. The one thing in my life that is going well is that I is that we are married and like we are on a good path. Instead of doing that, she closes in on him and starts to become manically possessive. And what's it looking for? Not suspicious, but like paranoid. Kathy gets very paranoid. And that doesn't mean that cheating is the correct response to that. But when your partner basically wants to always hover over you and be right next to you and like when, when, when they start treating you with lack of trust, you become distrustful. It's just, it's a, it's, it's an animalistic instinct that we all have of like, oh, you're gonna make me feel this way, then fine, I'll be this kind of way, right. Rather than keep jumping through hoops that you then set even higher the next time I'm gonna say fuck it and set fire to the hoop. And. Or maybe that's not how everybody responds, but that's how someone like Jamie responds. So it's an interesting blend. And this. People want to hear more about this production, right? And I just keep talking about the, the material itself. But I say all of this as we get into this production with Nick and Adrian because ultimately my overall thoughts are I did not like this production. I really did not. But I also don't know if I think this production ever really should have existed. Last Five Years is a very small musical. It's just the two characters. It's an intimate musical. And while the Hudson is not the gershwin, it's like 950 seats, something like that. It is a very large space for a medium sized house. And if you're gonna do a Broadway production of last five years. It needs to be in something like the Haze or the Booth. I mean, like the largest I would allow is something like the Longacre or the Music Box, which have a couple of more seats than the Hudson, but feels smaller, feels more personal than the Hudson does as a theater. And so by being in a large space, the production team has tried to enhance the show and make it seem bigger and more Broadway. So it's a very scattered, in my opinion, very unattractive design. But it's very flashy with lights up and down the walls and set pieces sliding on and off like an apartment door. And little small, like dollhouses representing apartment buildings and a platform that sort of goes to the back and then comes to the front and then goes to the back and comes to the front and scrims flying in and out. And also like doing more presentational theatrical stagings of songs like Summer on Ohio, which is the song where Kathy is normally writing to Jamie, but this time is leaving a voice memo. This production also wants to make it clear that it's within the present or around our present. So she's leaving a very long voice memo for Jamie. The whole number takes place in front of a blue sky scrim and a travel box. A show box or trunk. Like a show trunk. You know, like old vaudeville. Like I was born in a trunk. And it's Kathy opening up the trunk and taking out a feather boa and a cane and a top hat and all these things. Maybe there's no top hat, I can't remember. But ultimately doing a very performative, like, wow, Rousey, dashy number, which I'm sure works for some people, but it takes away from the humanity of the show because it is always just about these two characters and it's about showing us different sides of their personalities and showing us different stages of this relationship. And if you are just wondering, how am I going to make this number sell to a 900 seat house, how am I going to, you know, justify Broadway prices? Then you actually lose the thread of the last five years, which is my biggest complaint about this production, is it's constantly losing the thread. And part of that is narrative, and part of that is just like losing the humanity. So many numbers are bigger and brighter and splashier than they have any right to be, because it's ultimately about filling the stage and filling the theater and not about what is the story here. And some of the things that Whitney White has done with her direction are definitely to counteract what people have always assumed with the last five years. For example, the next 10 minutes is a song that normally takes place in a boat in Central park where Jamie and Kathy are looking at all the buildings surrounding them. The San Remo, the Dakota, things like that. And then he pulls out a ring and proposes to her. And that's when he asks, will you share your life with me for the next 10 minutes? And then we go into their wedding and we leave the wedding and we get back to Kathy in the boat, responding to Jamie's question. This production does away with that and chooses to make the number Jamie and Kathy, the night they've gotten married, and they are in their hotel room, most likely in the Plaza, looking at buildings further away around Central Park. That is not the worst idea. But by making it now after the fact, rather than a genuine question, it's more sort of like a recommitted vow that they just gave each other five hours earlier, and they're then about to have sex on the. On the hotel bed. It does take away the stakes of the moment. Like, this is. It's now no longer. This is the moment we're deciding to get married. It's. We already decided off stage. This is the aftermath, which keeps. Which just undercuts so much of the show, because a lot of the show is telling, not showing. There are moments when they show, but the next 10 minutes is one of the few truly like showing, not telling songs of that show. And they've now made it a telling song, which is a shame. I go back to people saying, oh, Adrian and Nick are on stage with each other a lot. And that undercuts the whole point of them being in their own narratives and having them meet in the middle and then other people going, well, no, in past productions, Sherry and Norbert were on stage with each other, and they were. You can see they are there for some numbers, but not all numbers. Norbert is there for Sheri for the first part of See, I'm Smiling and then is gone. And she does the rest of the number on her own. Sheri is there for him to react off of in the Shmuel song. And I believe she's even there for if I didn't believe in you, or at least for the first half of it. But they're not the focus of it, not in the way that it is in the movie. And this is one of the things that people who know the show complained about in the movie was by having Anna and Jeremy always in scenes with each other, it sometimes took away the magic of what those songs were sometimes it worked really well other times took away Anna Kendrick's, like, constant alibing during the Shmuel song. It either works for you or it doesn't. It does not work for me. But one thing that the movie does really well is. And something that you can't do on stage is, and if I didn't believe in you, you can't not have Anna Kendrick in there. He's literally singing to her, but the camera is only focused on Anna. Jeremy is behind her. He, like, dirties the frame behind her. The whole time. We're following her and her responses to everything he's saying, which allows us to, you know, enjoy the song for what it is without having interruptions, while also not questioning why Kathy isn't saying anything, questioning what she's doing in the scene. Like, we're watching her and we're watching her face while we're hearing his words. This revival tries to do the same thing with Adrian and Nick, and it just doesn't work as well. They have Adrien on stage with him for all of schmulsong, and it's not for him to react off of. It's them to genuinely have a scene together. And they do that a couple of times, especially in the second half. They spend the first half really not in each other's world and then get into each other's worlds a lot more in things like the second half of Moving Too Fast and Climbing Uphill and Shmuel song and things like that. And it's. It's frustrating because it distracts and it just gets messy and it gets cluttered. On an aesthetic level, I don't enjoy it. Performance wise, Nick Jonas, he does not. People have said, like, well, he can't sing it. And the truth is that, no, yeah, he can't really sing it. He's not a Jeremy Jordan or Norbert Leo Butz. He's not an Adam Cantor. He has a nice sounding voice. It's not an unpleasant sound. It is a small sound and it's not expansive. So he definitely cannot sell a lot of those musical moments, things that we've all come to know that are in our musical theater DNA. Right. His best moments are when he's in a comfortable chest range and just sort of allowing himself to pop croon. I would argue he vocally handles 70% of moving too fast quite nicely. It's the. It's the high notes, the, whoa, I'm sick. And I'm literally shouting into a mic. So I'm not going to do the actual high notes right now. But those notes he can't really do. He can't do the elongated phrases in Shiksa Goddess. He can't do the elongated phrases in if I Didn't Believe in you or Nobody Needs to Know. But it's not the worst vocal performance. It's just beyond his capabilities. And he tries to work around that, which I give him credit for. I give him a credit for. For trying something brave like this. You can't really hide. And then recognizing where he can't go and finding new ways around does not sound comfortable and it does not sound as freeing as we've heard it sung before. He's also not, in my opinion, a natural stage presence. And yes, I know he's done stage before, but not for a while. And I found that he was unable to actually captivate and emote in his songs. He was so busy figuring out how to get through them vocally and then what to do with his body that there was no ease with him. When you watch Norbert in any video of last five years, there's an ease to his Jamie, which is important because one of the things that Jamie gets by on is charm. He is talented, but he's also a charming motherfucker. And charm comes from not actually working very hard. It comes from just a sense of calm and a sense of comfort in your own skin, in your body, and the way that you glide around the stage. Nick Jonas does not glide. He's constantly almost like fighting with himself to make it through each song and to make it into the next scene. And this also is a problem with his connection with Adrian Warren. They do not have chemistry because they are just so ill matched. Now, Adrienne Warren as Kathy. This is a tricky one to talk about because I think that Adrienne Warren is a phenomenal talent. I'll never forget seeing her in Dreamgirls on the road when I was in college. She was my favorite thing in that tour. I saw her in Bring it on where I thought she was wasted, but, you know, she did well and then was obsessed with her and shuffled along. Was so fucking thrilled she got that Tony nomination. Adrienne Warren is a phenomenal talent, an amazing voice. I do think she is miscast as Kathy for two things. One is, I don't think that it is vocally a fit for her in the same way that, you know, I would personally argue, like Betsy Wolf is not a great vocal fit for Waitress. Like, just some things don't always sit on your voice. Some people can't sing everything and that's okay, right. You don't like when we hear Barbara Cook played Fanny Brice. Jewishness aside, Barbara Cook, gorgeous voice that she was, was not the right vocal type for Fanny Brice. So you're like, not only are you the most shiksa y woman in the world, Barbara Cook, your vocal type is so wrong for this show. Why are you playing this role? Adrienne Warren has a very powerful instrument because Adrienne Warren is such a strong, captivating presence, and she's a warrior. Kathy is a victim. Kathy is a sensitive. Sensitive, I'm not going to say frail. But all of the humor, all of the seductive qualities of Kathy are masking a deep rooted insecurity. And Adrienne Warren is a smart, intuitive, talented actress with an amazing instrument. And hearing her sing the score is not a hardship. Right. You're hearing a great voice sing great music. It's just there is a mismatch there in what her vocal quality is on those songs. And maybe it's my own preconceived notions of having heard different women sing it, but it's just a very. It's a very intense sound. Because Adrienne Warren is a powerful person, and she does not. I don't find that she's able to channel the insecure, raw, victimy energy of Kathy that can then be woven into her intelligence and her charm with things like still hurting and See I'm smiling. I watched Adrian give a committed dramatic performance. She hit the correct beats. She understands how to sell a scene. She understands how to be on stage. She understands how to sell herself to an audience. She knows how to sell a number. But there's just a mismatch of what she can bring to what Kathy is. Is. And you can try things, right? You can. You can say, hey, I'm not the usual person who goes in for this, but let's see what shades of the character are there with my kind of energy attached now. And for me, watching it, it sort of showed the weaknesses of the material, which is not to say that the material is bad, but that the material is limited in how you can approach it. I find that those characters are pretty baked in with. With what their traits are. Right. There's not a ton of room for interpretation. With their energies and their attitudes, you can find new jokes, you can find new vocal flourishes, but the way that the music is, with the way that those characters are portrayed, there's not a lot you can do with who they are, especially because who they are is ultimately what leads to the blossoming of the relationship and the downfall of the relationship and Adrian's. Kathy is not a victim. She is a spunky, spiky, gives you what for kind of gal which would give you an inclination of how Jamie fell for her. It doesn't give you an inclination of how what she is contributes to the dissolution of their marriage. Right. Because it's not one sided. It's not all Jamie's faults nor is it all Kathy's fault. There is a meeting of the of the two there. Right. And I think that there's a conversation we can have about actors where you can be a great talent and not be great in something and that doesn't take away from the greatness that you have. As I said in I think my Tony predictions episode with Richie and Jeff, like with someone like Audra and Gypsy and this sounds like I'm beating up on Audra. I'm not like I didn't dislike Audra in Gypsy. I want that to be made very clear. There are things she does in that performance that I like a great deal. It's just I went in with higher expectations than I came out getting. But when we talk about a performer we love and say where they underwhelmed us with something, there becomes an immediate trigger for people of like, well, they're incredible. They have all these accolades and how dare you take that away from them. We're not. If you are a great artist, you are going to make choices sometimes that aren't always going to stick. That's just the name of the game. You can't curate a performance or a career in a way that it's all hits all the time. That just doesn't happen. And if you're going to be bold with your choices, if you're not going to be safe, you are going to fail every now and then. But because you're someone like an Adrian Warren who is just so talented and so has great intuition and intelligence, your failure is not the kind of failure that really ultimately should be the stuff of embarrassment. Like your failure is the kind of failure that I would kill to have right of you watch someone and going, I see how hard you're working. I don't think this production is helping you in any respect. I think you are ill matched for your role. And then also I think the production around you is just not boosting you in any way. That is not your fault. I see you working, I see you trying and I see you trying to make it, you know, happen. But ultimately it's not happening. And I'm not going to say that it is for the sake of appeasing ego or for, you know, calm in any sort of storm. This is just sort of what I see and what I. How I respond to it. Right? Because this isn't. If the production fails, then that also means that the two people who are at the center of it are failing it in their own ways. I do not see a world where a production of the last five years you look at and you go, what a terrible production. But the Kathy was amazing. I'm like, well, then it wasn't a terrible production. Maybe it was a mediocre production. But if you walked away hating the production, then something was off with the Kathy as well, or with the Jamie. It's not just vocals. It's not just star presence. Those are wonderful things that can't be taken away from you. But that's not enough. And that is sort of where I'm at with this production. Again, the ultimate thought I have is just, I don't think that this production needed to happen. I think it's a mismatch of everything. I think that the two stars are ill cast. I don't think that Whitney White was the correct director for this. I think they were in the wrong theater and I think they had the wrong attitude of how to bring it to Broadway. They went, oh, well, we gotta beef it up. This is such a small show. You can beef up the orchestrations a bit. The band sounded lovely. I like the expanded orchestrations in the movie, and I think the second stage revival had expanded orchestrations, but it's not. This is not a big show. And they tried to make it a big show and it just doesn't work. I was. I know I put this on Instagram. I was at the same performance as Lin Manuel Miranda. He was in the row in front of me. He was on the aisle with a friend. I was closer in the center aisle. I was closer to the center of the orchestra than he was. And he did have a woman who came in right after the next 10 minutes, sit down next to him, and then go on her phone throughout the show. He eventually told her to stop, but not for a solid 25 minutes. I couldn't go to get an usher. I was in the middle of my row. And it would have been a larger disruption to get up, find someone to scold her than to just sit there. And on top of that, she was too far away for me to scold her. So it was no bueno for many, many reasons. But I'll also say this granted, it was their first Wednesday matinee and matinee audiences tend to be on the quieter side. This was not an effusive audience. They stood at the end because everyone stands at the end. But you heard after every number, rather tepid applause from all of it. I would say the one song that got the biggest response was I Can Do Better Than that, which Nick Jonas also is in for some reason I don't understand. And the staging they give it has no clear activity that connects to story or to character. Like normally that song is. They're in the car driving to meet her family, I think in Jersey or somewhere. And in this production they're like leaving the house and getting dressed to I guess, meet her family, but she's in a sundress with sunglasses on and. And the second half of the number, he comes out and she basically her one action is she puts a tie on him. I don't understand it, but that song probably got the loudest applause and it was like a couple of woos for the first two or three seconds and then it died down. Word of mouth on this production isn't great and I can't tell you that people are wrong about it, but I understand that people do have it out for this show. So I'm not here to tell you that I have it out for it. But I. This is what I saw, this is how I felt. And yeah, I can't necessarily recommend this production. If it got nominated for anything, it would be Adrienne. But it's really hard to say that with all my heart because as I said, I do think she is ill cast and she's not supported by anything. So that is the double edged sword. You're the best thing about your production and that can make you stand out in a good way to a lot of people. But ultimately those who know the last five years can just sort of see how everything isn't clicking. Literally everything. And it's a shame because we want good things and I would love for the revival race to be shaken up, but that's where we're at. Anyway, that's it for today, guys. Thanks so much for listening. If you have any questions about either of these productions, you can join the Discord Channel, which the link will be in the description box for this episode. We have 250 members at this point, which is phenomenal. And we are starting a Tony Awards predictions pool, so you can join and join in all the fun there. That's also where I will be announcing more merchandise opportunities and links for that. So if you want to get on the ground floor of that, you can join the Discord Channel. Now. I'm going to actually close us out with between Boop. And you know what? Because I think she's so awesome, we're going to close out with Jasmine Amy Rogers, probably from the big song from Boop that they've been selling on the Internet. Because I'm telling you guys, she's awesome and you're gonna hear more about her. So yeah, we will see you guys soon. Make sure to give a five star rating or review. If you like the podcast, you can follow me on Instagram acopolik. And that's it for now. Take it away. Jasmine by Back in My tent I'm where I want to be? I'm where I want to be? I'm where I wanna be? I'm When I.