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See, you dreamt of being a pilot but you never got to fly so you dreamt of sailing the seven seas but never got to try well, let navy lads get soaking we'll all stay nice and dry we shout to war the soldiers jump and hear them shout how high? For we were made to give the orders While lesser men take it hello.
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All you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I'm your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts, and we've got a review episode today. A double whammy, if you will. Now, this is coming out on Friday. No, this is gonna be coming out on Friday or Saturday of this week because while I technically could release this at any point, I would like to honor the opening nights of these two shows and not release a review episode before they technically speak. Speaking open. The reason why I could release this whenever I want is because I did not receive press tickets for either of these shows. So I don't have a review embargo to adhere to. When I released my Gypsy review the first time, there were people who were mad that I released it like a couple of hours before the opening, or it might have been like 11pm the night before. And the truth was that I could release it at that point because I did not have a review review embargo to adhere to. I had purchased a ticket. And as a person who just simply purchased a ticket, I could release my thoughts at any given moment. And I could do that with this as well. But I figured, you know what? Let's just be a respectful little bitch about it, shall we? The two shows we're going to be reviewing today are Buena Vista Social Club, a transfer from the Atlantic Theatre Company from last season, and Operation Mincemeat, which was the Olivier winner for best musical last year in the West End. So I am going to do. I'm going to space these reviews apart based on their opening night. So Buena Vista Social Club opens, I believe, on the 19th and Operation Mincemeat on the 20th. So I will put it in that order, even though, technically speaking, I saw it in the reverse. I saw Mincemeat at a Wednesday matinee and then Buena Vista Social Club Thursday night. And I'm recording this the Sunday before I release this episode just so I have my thoughts for fresh in my brain. Full disclosure, I actually recorded this review yesterday late at night, and I found my thoughts were a little too jumbled. I found it rather an incoherent episode, I think, because I was just very tired and my brain was just scattered. So I decided to do a redo and I took to the Broadway Breakdown Discord Channel, which if you haven't joined, please do. We have over 230 members. It's a great spot to discuss Broadway news, to share any upcoming theatrical work you're doing, any questions you have on theater ticket advice, any comments you want to make on the podcast, but also more importantly, if you have any questions you want to submit to me for the podcast. Whenever we do a deep dive on a past show, whenever I'm reviewing a current show, you can write in questions or topics you want me to discuss on the Discord Channel and I will do my best to cover it because I asked people on the Discord Channel if there's anything in particular they wanted me to address with either review. So I had them write in and I'm going to address those for these reviews today. Also, by the way, on March 27th next Thursday, that'll be my birthday and I'll be releasing a special birthday episode which will be a Q and A with all of the listeners of Broadway Breakdown. So you can join the Discord Channel and submit questions there that I will answer on the podcast or if you follow me on Instagram attcoplock usual spelling. You can submit anonymous questions there as well and I will do my best to answer all of them. So let's get into Buena Vista Social Club first. Now, I do not know much about Buena Vista Social Club other than the fact that it was a very critically acclaimed, successful run at the Atlantic. I knew that Natalie Venetia Belcon was in it. I knew that Justin Peck was the co choreographer and as it announced its run for Broadway and I read a little bit more about it, I learned that it was a jukebox musical. I learned that it was based off of a true story with true characters. I did not know anything about this musical ensemble. I did not know anything about the album itself, which is just sort of how this goes, right? In pop culture. Some things can make such a huge impact for so much of the world and have this giant cultural shift at the time. And then over the years as more things enter the lexicon, it doesn't make it less important. But fewer people who are growing up or coming onto the scene will maybe know about it. They kind of have to seek it out. It doesn't come to them. There was some post recently on the boards about, I don't know, Barbie. Like, Barbie came up in conversation, I think, about Boop or something, and someone was like, oh, that movie was terrible. And I feel like no one's talking about it anymore anyway. I feel like it's fully forgotten. And that's not true. It's just. It's been a year and a half since Barbie was in theaters and it was absolutely everywhere. So it's still in the lexicon. People are still talking about it. It's just that not everyone is talking about it because we've got new things. We have Wicked before Good and Wicked for Good to talk about and Buena Vista Social Club. So seeing Buena Vista Social Club, as I said, I knew very little about the actual premise or the story or anything like that. I went with it with fresh eyes. And I think that that is actually a good way to go for something like this because I find that that great works about true events and real people should be able to stand on their own to someone who doesn't know anything about it. And then afterwards, when you go and find research about them, more things in the show can really make a larger impact. You can find more meat on the bone, right? It's like trying to think of it in a negative way. So for something like Evita, a musical that I think is not a good musical, but has greatness about it. I've always said, with Evita, if you don't know Argentinian history, half of that show is going to make no sense to you. How, you know, it's constant turning over of governments and policies and the foreign influence of Europe and specifically with Britain and France. All of these things that are, technically speaking, major themes in Evita don't really register. They're sort of fleetingly mentioned and you have to do research on it to know what they're talking about. And something similar with Lempicka. Lempicka was a musical that, you know, I understood basically the storyline they were going for. If certain events maybe happened very suddenly, that's a whole other story. But like, I understood the historical intricacies that they were tackling. And then when I went and researched Lempicka after the fact, a lot of things about her real life I thought, I thought were actually more interesting than what they put in the show. So with Buena Vista Social Club, I felt if I can go in and have a good time and understand it, then it has done its job and then I can go research it and it will enhance my appreciation for the show. And I'M sort of halfway about that. So Buena Vista Social Club takes place back and forth between 1956 and 1996. And technically speaking, the main storyline is the Cuban music producer Juan DeMarcos, played by Justin Cunningham, is assembling all of these veteran Cuban musicians and artists to create this album that's going to be called the Buena Vista Social Club. And eventually they form the musical ensemble called Buena Vista Social Club. And the big get that they want to have is a very famous Cuban singer named Omara, played by Natalie Venetia Balcone. And the idea is Omara is hesitant to do it. Omara has been retired. Omara has some demons she's not really grappling with. But as soon as she says no, she then says yes and comes into the studio and, you know, has a couple of disagreements about music arrangements or what songs to sing. But again, these things are resolved within 30 seconds. The main conflict for Omara is battling those demons. And this is where the show flashes back and forth between 1956 and 1996. 1956, when Omara is about like 18 or 19, doing a singing act with her older sister. And they're from like the upper middle class areas of Cuba and they're performing at all the major clubs and performance halls. And while they're performing, they get recognized by Columbia Records, which the sister wants to sign with, because Cuba is about to be overthrown by revolutionaries and it's going to be very dangerous to be living there. And this is at the exact same time that a young Omara gets swept up in the social club scene. It's very dirty dancing, right? Of, you know, privileged girl, meets up with, for lack of a better term, like lower class artists and gets swept up in the scene that they have and the honesty and the heat of their art and really getting attracted to that and kind of abandoning the safety of the work and the life she had as she, you know, gets more involved with the social clubs and the artists there. And of course, Cuba's government does fall, the president does flee. And Omara's sister, what's her name? It's. I think it's Haiti. Haiti, played by Ashley de la Rosa. Yes, Haiti played by Ashley de la Rosa. And young o' Mara is played by. I think it's Issa Antonetti. Isa Antonetti. Issa Antonetti. I'm call her Issa. Rolls off my tongue. Better. If that's incorrect, Ms. Antonetti, I apologize and you can come into my DMs and correct me personally. And I will let Everyone know that I was wrong. But Ms. Antonetti plays young Omara, and she and Ashley de la Rosa's Haiti, they keep butting heads and ultimately, spoiler alert, Haiti does sign with Columbia Records on their behalf, but o' Mara does not go with her to America, and they never see each other again. And Omara never really knew what became of her sister and never really was able to ask for forgiveness for abandoning her and staying in Cuba. And Omara ends up having a very strong career and coming into her own as she gets older and becomes a solo artist. But those are sort of her demons, right? And the show goes back and forth with that between present day and the past. And ultimately the show ends with the album being finished and then performing at Carnegie hall and Omara also reuniting with her young love, I think. Sorry. Ibrahim. Ibrahim. Ibrahim. Ibrahim. It's been, like, four days since I saw the show, and I am going off of Two Coffees and a Prayer right now. So again, there are some names I'm going to be mispronouncing. I deeply apologize. It's due to my own dumbness and being the least famous Broadway podcast host. But Omara's sort of young, sort of fling with Ibrahim, they lose touch over the years, and she reconnects with him. He's a young black man living in Cuba, and when they reconnect, he's, you know, gone on to live a whole life and has a wife and has kids and joins her on the album. And in a moment that's meant to sort of be very empowering, Ibrahim gets to sort of take center stage at the end of the show and sing solo, a thing he never really got to do when performing professionally. There's a whole moment where it's discovered that Ibrahim had sung backup for Omara and her sister Hadi, and they never. And Omara never knew that because they never looked around to turn around to look at the background singers. So he never got to sing lead, and now he gets to sing lead. That sounds more impressionable than it actually is. It is a thread that is kind of forgotten for a solid hour, and then when it comes back, you realize why he's singing the lead and not Omara. But at the moment, my friend and I, when we saw it, we were like, why is Natalie not singing the final moments of the show? Her character is the central point of the show, and yet she doesn't get to have a moment at the end. She's part of the Buena Vista Social Club Ensemble, but she is, technically speaking, the focal point. So that was something that after the fact, when we were talking, we're like, oh, I guess that's why. Because that character Abraham never got to really be center stage professionally and now he gets to later in life. So that's sort of the premise, the whole story of Buena Vista Social Club on the Discord Channel. Someone on the Discord channel, it was asked, you know, what do we think the Tony chances are for this show? And is Natalie Venetia Belcone what I consider her lead or featured? That was something that with the David J. Lynch early predictions episode we were discussing because when it was off Broadway, Natalie was nominated and I think won for leading performance in a musical and then was nominated for featured at the drama desks and possibly even the outer critics circle. And I will say that I found Natalie to be a featured performance. The character of Amara is absolutely the central role of the show. But Natalie herself is not on stage enough. And it's not even about clocking minutes of stage time. It is about how much of the show is really centered around her because it is centered around her character. But that character is split in two. Two. Her younger self and her and I would argue the younger self more of. I would argue more of the running time of Buena Vista Social Club is dedicated towards young Omara's narrative and not quite so much present day Omara's narrative. All of the drama with the album and Omara having to deal with her demons, it's more kind of inferred. And we don't really get to see a lot of that drama because grappled with. We don't get to see Omara struggle making the album. We don't get to see her struggling with her past. We see her sing and then it triggers a memory that we then run into. And we sometimes will see Natalie Benisha Balcon on stage sitting in the remembrance of it all, but only rarely. The best way I can describe it is looking at the Notebook, the musical and the movie. If we think of the musical, Marianne Plunkett as older Ally was considered the lead of the show and Joy woods and Jordan Tyson as the two younger allies were considered the featured roles. And if you saw the Notebook on Broadway, it made absolute sense. The show circles around older Ally. She and older Noah are the central characters and it is always their story. But in addition to any time Joy or Jordan were on stage, half the time Marian would also be on stage and there would be scenes where Jordan and or Joy would have their attention be focused on Marian. She was Always the focus of the show. And her narrative is was, I thought, woven in very well with the past. It also helps that Jordan and Joy essentially were playing a split track, because when you think of the movie of The Notebook, Rachel McAdams is younger Ally and Gena Rowlands is older Ally. When you think of the movie of the Notebook, which of those two do you consider to be the leading performance? It's Rachel McAdams. Right. That's because Rachel McAdams is doing the narrative that is the combined track of Joy woods and Jordan Tyson. She has more screen time and the movie is more focused on her narrative than Gina Rowland narrative. Gina Rowland's narrative is like the B story to the A story, and it doesn't make it less important, but it is less of a focus of the movie, even if it's ultimately where the story concludes. And that is sort of how I would describe, you know, Buena Vista Social Club with, Sorry, with Natalie Venetia Balcon. She has a couple of big vocal moments in Act 1, two of which are with the. With the band. As far as I can recall, she doesn't have a major musical moment in Act 2, at least not to herself. If she does, it's with others. Whereas Ms. Antonetti as young Amara has a very big vocal moment in Act 2 on her own, in addition to all the stage time she has in both acts. So I would argue that Natalie's part is a featured part, and I would urge the producers to petition her as featured. I think they would be more successful getting Antonetti into lead than Natalie, but, I mean, I would say even Antonetti, you could put her in featured. It really is quite an ensemble show. There's no one who really feels like the absolute lead. You know, Natalie, Vinisha, Balcon, Issa Antonetti, they have the most stage time and the most to do. Ashley DeRosa, also, Ashley De La Rosa has a lot to do as well, but it's not. There's no one who feels like the star of the show. And so that is where I feel Natalie would do really well. I wouldn't. I don't know if I would put Antonetti. If I would, I would nominate her. She's very charming. She's got an amazing voice. For me, she wasn't as compelling of an actor, actress as Natalie Venetia Balcone was, or even Ashley De la Rosa. I want to give major props to Ashley De La Rosa as Heidi, who takes a part that really is there to be a springboard for young Omara's journey. She is there to kind of counter all the feelings that young Amara is having and honestly give a lot of exposition to the audience about sort of what's going on in Cuba. But I think Ashley de la Rosa does a really good job of making Omara's sister Haiti a full person. You see the love she has for her sister. You see the drive she has for their careers, as well as the fear she has of what's going on in Cuba and the desperation and the eagerness, the, you know, sort of it's now or it's never. And no, she also. But she's also very classist. You see how she has all these microaggressions towards all the men that Omara sort of starts warming to and gravitating towards. And it's a very dropped in performance. It's not over the top. I was very impressed with what she did, and she and Natalie Venetia Balcone have a scene in Act 2 that I found to be quite compelling. I think they're both very good. I would argue that the book was something that people after. I was. After I saw it and I went online and I was reading some thoughts on it. A lot of people felt that the book was the weakest thing about the show and that it was. That it barely. That it sort of barely existed. And I agree it's probably the weakest thing in the show, but it's. I don't think it's a bad book. I think it mostly gets the job done. I. I found that a good chunk of dialogue wasn't actually bad. I thought it was very concise and some of it quite eloquent. Is it like, you know, the most profound poetry I've ever heard? But it wasn't clunky to the point that I was rolling my eyes. I was. I was mostly engaged with it and I thought that it was structured okay. I think my biggest issue was I felt that the present day stuff wasn't fleshed out enough. I never really got a lot of conflict and drama with the making of the album. Everything kept getting. Any problems that were had with the making of the album felt resolved very quickly. And maybe it's because we're coming off of stereophonic, which took three hours and 15 minutes to show you conflicts of making art. And so Buena Vista Social Club just felt very sped through and not quite earned in that respect. What saved it was every time they would record something, it was pretty fantastic. There's also a great deal of humor in the show. I think a lot of it relatively solid young Omara's narrative I found the most fleshed out. And I think because it was going back and forth with present day, there were times when it sort of felt a little under baked and not quite. There was a lot of foreshadowing, a lot of ominous foreshadowing in present day. Stuff about the past that never really cashed out because we would hear a lot about, you know, we hear a lot of implications that or inference that there was trauma coming up or that there was, you know, a major tragedy about to happen. And outside of the new Cuban government sort of shutting down all the social clubs and Omara never really seeing her sister again, There wasn't a moment that really kind of gave you the pain that we were told was coming. And I mean, listen what I just said. The club's closing and never seeing her sister again, like those are very sad things and they're done very well. But considering how much was sort of warned to us at the end of act one, maybe I just expected something a little more, or at least if those were going to be the things, to have them have a little bit more of a payoff. So alas, they didn't have much of a payoff. And the final number, fun as it is, also felt a little sped up like that was. I always find that a lot of shows either don't know when to end or when they get to their final number, they go on for far too long. The curtain call for Billy Elliot is, in my opinion, one of the most egregiously long curtain calls of all time. And this was a case where because Buena Vista Social Club clocks in about two hours and five minutes, including the intermission, I thought they could have embellished a bit more in the final number. They could have really luxuriated in the success of the album and the cultural shift that that album made for Cuba and the importance of it and mentioning the Oscar nominated documentary about it because they talk about how they go all over the world and they even get to go to Carnegie Hall. But it would have been really nice to have a little bit more of that journey included instead of just sort of the last four minutes. And then this happened, this happened, this happened. Now we're here and now we're going to sing for you for another 85 seconds and then curtain. I think we could have been okay with just another five minutes of that. It was one of the few times where I'm like, we could have added a few more minutes. Very rare. But here we are So I would say that they could get a Best Book nomination, if only because I think Best book of a musical this year is kind of a weak field. I think maybe Happy Ending is absolutely a lock, and I'll talk about Mincemeat in a second. But I could see it getting in there, if only because it's a perfectly fine book and we've had far worse books nominated and some have even won. We've had Jagged Little Pill win. We've had Paradise Square nominated. We've had New York, New York nominated. This is not a category that has had nothing but bangers since its creation. So I think it could happen. I think it's on the bubble right now for Best Book. I think Best Musical is absolutely in play. The audience was very receptive to the show. It has a lot of energy. It has a lot of heat to it. It's not fire the entire time. But the music is so fantastic and it's so well arranged, and the sound design is really crisp. I think that's another nomination they're going to get. I would also see them getting nominated for costumes and lighting. I think they're probably the frontrunner for choreography right now. This is definitely the most. I have liked Justin Peck's work in the musical theater realm to date, and maybe it's because I'm just getting more used to him, but I have found with each new work of his, I've enjoyed him more and more. Carousel, I just flat out hated his work from start to finish. I have nothing nice to say about that choreography. West side Story, I thought was an improvement. The thing with Peek, with me, with musical theater, is, you know, he obviously knows how to move bodies, he understands ballet, and he has a very good vocabulary with that. But I have felt with him as I have felt with other choreographers who come in from the outside world. And it should be noted that he co choreographed this with his associate, Patricia Delgado, who is this time listed as a co choreographer, not just his assistant or his associate. Not just, but you know what I mean. It's a full co credit now. And with Peck, as I said, a lot of fluidity and knowledge of ballet. But I have found that starting with Carousel and moving onwards, the three things that I've struggled with him as a choreographer is his choreography being specific to character, his choreography being beneficial to story, and his choreography having any kind of structural build to it in any of the numbers. Carousel, 0 for 3. Total goose egg for me on that one. None of that choreography was character specific. None of it was story beneficial. And none of it had any kind of structure. West side Story. I thought his choreography actually was quite character specific. It had a lot of jerky, anxious, heated energy to it. And that made sense because these are young people in the 1950s, it's the dead of summer and they all are horny and they're angry and they don't know what to do with all of this that they have building up inside of them. I didn't think his choreography and OSI's story had much attitude in the way that the original Robbins Gennaro choreography had. And also I feel that it didn't really build. I don't like his choreography for America. And I think that it's just constant 11 out of 10 energy all the time. It's just 11, 11, 11, 11. It had no build to it. And the way that you watch Debbie Allen doing the original Gennaro choreography, you even watch the rearranged choreography in the movie with Rita Moreno, it has a build to it and it has attitude to it. So that was sort of a step up, but still a lot to work on. Illinois, I felt, actually had quite a bit of structure and a lot of creativity to it. And because it's a full blown dance piece, obviously the choreography had to mean something to the story. It had to progress the story long in a lot of ways. Where I actually thought it lacked was in character specificity. And maybe that's because in Illinois, it being a dance piece, everyone just speaks the same language of dance because it's 90 minutes of just pure dance. Here we go. But I didn't find that different characters who told different stories or were going on different emotional journeys, I didn't find that they had their own language to dance. Everyone sort of was just on the same plane. It was beautiful. But I also think that my biggest takeaway from Illinois was that I fell so deeply in love with the music that the choreography, very good as it was, that was not my main takeaway from the show. And I'm very glad that they won. But I think I even said during the Tonys that year, like, I wouldn't have been angry if outsiders won choreography. I wouldn't have been angry if even Water for Elephants won choreography. I thought that those two shows used choreography in a much more creative and beneficial way. Illinois's, but choreography often goes for at the Tonys most choreography. And Illinois's was absolutely the most choreography. And a lot of it was really fantastic. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Buena Vista Social Club, Peck's work with Patricia Delgado is, I definitely think, his best work in musical theater land to date. It is pretty character specific. You know, the way that young Amara and Hedi perform their sister act together is very period appropriate and very different from any of the movements going on in anything else whenever we're at the social clubs. It's definitely kind of like Dirty Dancing meets in the Heights. It never gets quite to the moment of explosion dance wise as I want it to, but it does have an ebb and a flow to it. Again, I would argue structure building of a number in the dance is perhaps where Peck still needs work on because the numbers themselves, musically speaking, build and they explode in a great way. I don't think the choreography always matches that energy, but it is very fluid, very energetic character, descriptive choreography with an attitude in a way that I felt that the choreography in west side Story did not. So again, this is definitely the most I've liked his work in musical theater. It's not perfect. It hasn't totally won me over to him. And even if I did think this was perfect, I don't think I would be totally won over to Justin Peck in musical theater land because he would need to do like two more shows where I felt the same way before I finally trusted him in this realm. But it is again, it is definitely his best work to date and I do think it is the front runner for choreography. I do think Natalie, if she gets put in featured, I think she's a very heavy contender to win that. We'll see what how the rest of the season shapes up if she's put in lead. Unfortunately, I don't know if I see her getting nominated, not with Audra Nicole and probably Jasmine Amy Rogers being full on locks and then two, possibly three slots left. It's like, okay, we've got Natalie Venetia Balcombe, we've got both Megan and Jennifer for Death Becomes Her. We've got Helen J. Shen for maybe Happy Ending. We've got Adrienne Warren for last five years. We'll see how that goes. But we've got Adina for Redwood, which I don't necessarily think I would put her in there, but you can't deny that there are people who are going to want to nominate her. People who are going to want to nominate Sutton Foster when it's that crowded and Natalie doesn't have that much to do despite the fact that she would be in a best musical contender. It's really hard to put her in to nominate her for lead when all those other Contenders have so much more going on on stage. So I hope they put her in featured. I think if she's in featured, she's definitely locked to get nominated and could even win. I don't know if there's anyone else in the cast who I think makes such an impression that they would get nominated. A couple members of the band, possibly because everyone's got a moment to shine. There's a guitar player in the band who opens Act 2 and really kind of sells the crowd over. But it's not really a moment or rather should say it's not a track that outside of that moment you go like, oh, my God, what a performance. It's. It's a very. It's a very special spotlight. And granted there have been nominees and featured actor and actress in a musical that all they've had is like that one specific moment and then the rest of the performance. Who cares? I just don't know if that's enough to get him in there. We'll see. I think Mel Sesame, I think that's. I think that's his name. Mel Seme. He was nominated, I believe, at the Lortels. He plays the older Ibrahim. And I mean, he could get nominated again. It's not quite enough material to warrant it, not when there's so many contenders this season, but it could happen. I think Natalie is definitely the best option. And I think as of now, they are, I won't say a lock, but they are a very likely nominee for best musical. Probably not going to win, but likely nominee. Anything else in the Discord, the people were interested about Tony eligibility. Someone in the Discord also said they felt like everyone in that show is featured. Someone was asking if I. If you knew any of the actual history, what has changed for the show? Does it. Does it indeed feel true as the actor told us at the beginning of the show? I mean, it did feel true. Nothing seemed terribly outlandish. They tell you at the top of when it was Buena Vista Social Club that a lot of what you're about to see is true, or at least feels true. And it didn't seem so incredibly over the top that you're like, that's dramatic license. I'm sure there are things in terms of timelines that maybe got condensed or moved around for the sake of a two hour structured narrative. But yeah, I mean, I looked up some stuff after the fact and the certain elements of the making of the album were not clear to me about why it was happening, who everybody was. I assumed everyone in the recording studio was in a band together in the past. It didn't really click for me until I went home and looked it up that these were just people who knew each other because they were all musicians in Cuba back in the day. But no, they hadn't like formed a band. It wasn't a reunion of a band. It was just a reunion of artists making a new band that I. That was not clear to me at the time. And now I understand that. Anything else? That's it for Buena Vista Social Club. All the rest of the questions are about Operation Mincemeat. So I will get to Operation Mincemeat in a second. We'll take a quick break and I will tell you my thoughts on that. So let's take a break.
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A
Billy, I beg this info with you.
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B
How do you mean?
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A
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.
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B
And we're back. So Operation Mincemeat. If you are a somewhat long time listener of this podcast, or at least have been listening for the last year, you'll know that I saw Operation Mincemeat in the West End. Yes. Is that correct? In the West. It's in the West End, yes. I have some British listeners and they sometimes will correct me on phrasing that I'll do, which is crazy, considering I'm a bit of an Anglophile that I. You'd think I'd be better about it, but hey, I'm also lazy. But I went to London about a year ago last June with my mom and we saw a couple of different shows. We saw Guys and Dolls at the Bridge Theater. We saw Standing at Sky's Edge, we saw the Hills of California and we saw Operation Mincemeat. And we talk a little bit about all those shows. In my London trip episode with my mom, spoiler alert. We're actually going to London again in May and we'll do a London trip episode about that as well. My mom is very excited to go back and visit Tesco Express again. I had some British listeners who wrote into me afterwards and they were like, yeah, moms love Tesco. So Mama K. Dani ticked in conflict. She's very happy to know that she's among the British mothers out there. But we saw Mincemeat and it was the first show we saw. I was very, very excited. They had just won the Olivier, like, I think a month or two prior. I was a little disappointed to find out that Only one of the original cast members was still in the show. The new replacement cast had been in for a couple of weeks at that point, so they were. They were pretty settled. Nonetheless, I was excited it had won the Olivier. I knew very little about it. I knew it was based on a true story. I've been told that it was sort of scrappy. It was like a scrappy underdog musical. It's very small, very cheeky, very fun. And as I said, I love British culture, I love British humor. It all sounded super up my alley, and I ended up being super underwhelmed by Operation Mincemeat. When I saw it in London, I didn't laugh a great deal. I didn't find it terribly compelling. I thought it was sort of tonally inconsistent. But when it was announced that it was coming to Broadway with the original company, I thought I should give it a second chance. I also, as we know, I'm trying to see everything this season so I can, you know, do a solid ranking of the season so I can do informed Tony predictions and whatnot. And I unfortunately wasn't able to get a press ticket for Mincemeat. I know one of us is social club. Press team got back to me and said, unfortunately, that they were strapped for seats, so it was only going to exclusive Broadway League press list. Mincemeat. The press team just never got back to me, which is odd, as I have a very good relationship with that press team. But Mincemeat, I wasn't able to get a press seat. Totally fine. I leave in two days to go to Florida to judge the Florida State Thespian Festival. So I was like, it's kind of now or never that I go see it. So I went Wednesday. I was trying to find something on the theater app that kept on not really working out. I was going on StubHub, seeing if anybody was selling anything at a solid price that wasn't really working out. Everything on StubHub was like 400 bucks. So I got to go to the theater. I went to the theater about five minutes before showtime. I was also constantly losing the lottery. So I went to the theater five minutes before showtime on a Wednesday matinee, and I went to the box office, and I was like, long shot. Do you have anything available? And as it happened, they had a $90 seat that was dead center in the orchestra. They. They said, it's either that or 160 for, you know, second Romes. And I was like, I will take the $90, sir. Thank you so much. It's still not totally within my budget, but I was able to move some things around and work it out. So I go and granted, it's a Wednesday matinee, so it's not the most rambunctious of crowds, but it's still, you know, this is a show that's on the pulse that people are talking about, that theater people are interested in seeing. It has a lot of buzz from London. So it was a very full theater. It wasn't quite sold out. There were a handful of empty seats around me. But it was a relatively full Wednesday matinee. And one of the biggest questions on the Discord Channel was sort of if I noticed any differences between how audiences were reacting to the show in London versus how they were reacting to it on Broadway. And I was interested to see how I would react to it this time. A, not being jet lagged and B, seeing it with the entire original company who also created this show. So it was sort of built on their personalities and they understood the best way to sell the material. And I'll say that it was a pretty typical Wednesday matinee crowd. It was pretty attentive. The guy next to me kept checking his phone, but he claimed to be enjoying it. There were two people in the orchestra, two younger people in the orchestra who were absolutely living for it and laughed at every single joke. And that's great. They unfortunately had laughs that pierced the air. So it's one thing when an entire audience laughs. It's another when the audience kind of chuckles and two people are like, brrr. And sort of. It both adds to the comedy and also takes away from the comedy. But I would say that there were three musical numbers that really kind of got the audience's, you know, they were really responding to. And of course, they were, let's say, four. Four numbers that the audience really was responding to. And only one of them was kind of a quieter number. The other three were big, big loud numbers. And I don't know if I would attest that to the quality of the song so much as that. I can always tell when an audience is going to be really receptive to a number because it ends with a very big flourish. And in a lot of ways that's great. It shows you that the writers understand the structure of a song and how to build a song. Justin Peck, take notes. But I'll hear a song happening and even if I don't think it's very good, good, and the audience isn't necessarily going wild for it during the moment, we'll get to the final 45 seconds, I'm like, oh, this audience is going to give a really loud holler because the song ends in a really big way. And that's not me saying that Operation Mincemeat is bad for doing that. Everyone does it. It's just something you can clock pretty much every time when you go see a show. Now of ask yourself, when you're watching and listening to a number, can you guess how the audience's response is going to be? Because I will also say there were plenty of songs in Mincemeat that were given sort of a tepid response. And not a lot of the jokes were met with guffaws. It was sort of light chuckles. A couple of jokes were met with a really amount of. A good amount of hearty laughter. I would say the second act is probably more warmly received than the first, but only kind of slightly. It really. It was the same response I see in most shows, which is whether the audience is living for it or not, during the actual performance, at the very end, jump to your feet, scream and shout. I think maybe only a handful of shows I've seen where the audience kind of stood respectfully and it just sort of feels like an empty standing ovation. I was at a reading a while back where everybody stood and applauded, but it was a quiet standing ovation. I talked about this before on the podcast opening night of Scandalous starring Carleigh Carmelo. The audience stood, but it was a very respectful standing ovation. It was sort of out of duty than because they genuinely loved it. For those of you who don't know Operation Mincemeat, I'll try not to do too many spoils. Spoilers. It's based on the very true story of British intelligence, Naval intelligence during World War II in the 1940s, trying to find a way to undermine Hitler, specifically trying to get Hitler and the Nazis to deport Sicily. Sicily, Italy. So that way. And make. And have the Nazi party think that England and the Allies are going to invade Sardinia. So what they do is they come up with a plan to basically plant a dead body in the ocean. Someone, a corpse that's already dead. They're not going to, you know, unalive anybody. But if someone who's already dead, give them a whole backstory, give them records and all these things and create a history for someone and plant them with false documents informing that has the information that the British and the Allies intend to invade Italy at Sardinia and not Sicily. And the reason they're doing this is because the actual target is Sicily and not Sardinia. So they want the Germans to move all their troops from Sicily to Sardinia, so that way, when the Allies do invade Sicily, the Nazis are totally underprepared and don't have enough men to fight back. And so all of Act One, everyone's trying to come up with a plan to defeat Hitler. And then one person finally comes up with his plan, Operation Mincemeat. And then act one is convincing the government to let them do it. Finding a body, coming up with records, coming up with a backstory for this person. And then Act 1 ends with them planting the body in the ocean. And then Act 2 is, well, will it work? Does it work? How does it work? And then what is the fallout from all of that? Spoiler alert. It does eventually work, but. And that's not a total spoiler. It's history. And also, this is a musical theater comedy. They kind of have to succeed in order for it to be a comedy. And that's sort of where I'll leave it at that. The basic tone of the show is, as I would describe it, it's like 39 Steps meets Hamilton. And it's five actors and playing multiple roles. The show has gets a lot of mileage out of performers playing opposite their supposed gender. So a lot of women are playing male presenting roles and male presenting actors playing female presenting roles back and forth. And for the most part, they don't really make it much of a. A comedic gimmick in the way that a lot of British comedy in the past has. This is not, you know, a Noises off kind of farce or a 1960s British gender bending farce where the joke is a man is in a dress. That's not really the point of it. It's mostly played straight with a couple of flourishes. The actor, David Cunningham. Is that his name? Sorry, sorry. The actor David Cumming, who plays Charles, the man who comes up with the plan, Operation Mincemeat. David is the only one who, when playing a woman, definitely plays up the camp and cartoony elements of femininity for laughs. But that also is in line with a lot of David's performance. For all of his other roles, David is the one who's doing the most British music hall kind of performance, performance style. It's a lot bigger than everyone else and has a lot of ticks and antsy ness to it. That is something that I'm sure a lot of people not necessarily warm to. It's a lot of big, bold choices, specific choices, I must say. He's not being messy about any of it, but it's big, bold choices. And that is not something that a lot of people enjoy. And I can't say that I find it worked for me all of the time, but it was consistent and it was in line with a lot of the show. A lot of the other actors do much more. I don't call it nuanced, but, like dropped in comedy. Jack Malone plays a multitude of roles. One of the biggest roles that Jack Malone plays is the, I guess, head Secretary of Naval Intelligence who ends up helping out with coming up with a backstory for the dead man that they plant in the ocean. Also plays a bunch of other parts, plays the corner that they get the corpse from, plays an American pilot, plays a sailor, plays a whole bunch of other people. And what I like about Jack Malone's performance is Jack truly does what's I'm looking for transform into each role that he plays, but doesn't do it in an overly ostentatious kind of way. It is very, again, I don't say nuanced, but I guess dropped in because he's not underplaying it and he's not. Everything he's doing is coming across the footlights into the audience. It's a really good blend of big enough to fill the theater, but not so big that it feels put upon, that it feels like the idea of a character he is genuinely playing. A lot of these characters very, very straight. Some characters obviously are meant to be more cartoony, like the American pilot, things like that. I also found that, sorry, Claire Marie hall, who plays Jean, one of the secretaries also working with Naval Intelligence on this, as well as a multitude of other roles. Claire actually was the one original cast member who was still in the show when I saw it in London. Claire's character, Jean, is, I wouldn't say like the heart, but definitely the most earnest character in the show and the least played for laugh. She gets a couple of jokes here and there, but she's mostly meant to be a straight man for all the madness happening around her. And she does a good job of being earnest without being a killjoy. She, you know, she levels up to a lot of other people's energies. I also want to give a shout out to Natasha Hodgson, who plays Ewan Montague, the sort of cohort for Charles in Operation Mincemeat. And the whole thing about Ewan is that he's egotistical. He's, you know, he's basically a combination of Jon Hamm and John Slattery. From Mad Men of just typical priggish man who super toxic and, like, kind of in a laughable way until it's not really laughable anymore. And I found that Natasha does a really good job of embodying all of those elements without making it seem too calculated or too caricature. Y the thing about mincemeat for me. So another question was, did I like it more this time? Did my opinion change since London? And the short answer is, you know, I did enjoy it more than when I saw it in London. The original cast definitely helps helped me enjoy it more, because a lot of things for me that made me roll my eyes in London, I didn't so much roll my eyes this time, nor did I really appreciate it as a work of genius so much as. Like, there were lines where, again, without spoiling too much, Natasha Hodgson as Ewan Montague has a punchline where in Act 2, something about, like, you know, everything that they're all going through. How could it be any worse? And the audience knows what's coming because of the way that Natasha sort of looked out to the audience. And the punchline is ultimately, you know, at least it's not a bloody musical. And in London, it was done very sort of like, at least it's not a bloody musical. Thinking with the intention of, ah, you weren't expecting that joke, were you? Super meta. And we got you on that. And the audience lost its mind. But I knew that that punchline was coming, and it really kind of bugged me. I was like, you're not. It's not so much that I'm smarter than you, but I'm not dumber than this. And on Broadway, Natasha kind of looked out to the audience and kind of shuffled her feet a little bit because we all knew what she was about to say. And it was sort of. She was teasing it of, like, you know, it's coming, it's absolutely coming, and I gotta say it. And then she sort of almost threw the line away, still being, you know, audible and clear, but it wasn't a. It was more of a. And I found that to be a very impressive way to sell what a line that I do not find very funny and do not find very clever. So it's it that is a specific example that is representative of the whole performance of the cast, of how they sort of sell the material, where, again, the material itself for me, doesn't soar as it does for other people, but the cast does make it come off better. Someone asked about Tony Chancellor's reparation mincemeat. I think this is going to be a solid nomination. Heavy show. If they're gonna win anything, it would be for Jack Malone for featured actor, possibly book. Jack Malone probably has the best song on the show, which we talked about in the London episode, which is Dear Bill. And it's Jack Mullen's character, the head of the secretary pool, helping them sort of create a love letter to his fiance, this. This man who doesn't exist, creating a fake love letter to his fake fiance about fighting off to war. And then. Or rather the fiance writing a fake letter to the fake man. And what Jack Malone's character. I think Hester is the name of the. Of the woman. You learn that she says, you know, this is not. Some of us have lived through another war, by the way, meaning World War I. As Hester is older and, you know, in her youth, definitely was. Most likely had a romance that did not last due to the war. And so the song Dear Bill is them sort of coming up on the spot. A love letter from the fiance to Bill, you know, the fake fiance, the fake man. And it's an emotional song. You know, it starts off very light. It starts off very sweet, a little. A little humorous. And then it gets emotional in a way that is very British, where it's not purpley. It's not, I love you, I miss you, I need you. It's very. I'm hiding my pain and I'm hiding my suffering with a stiff upper lip. And I'm talking about all the things in the room other than what I'm really feeling with occasional moments of emotion coming through. Talking about the weather, talking about the neighbors, talking about family and then the garden and the roses. And I know I'm not gonna do this because you used to do that, and I'm angry with you, but I'm not really angry with you. And going back and forth. My biggest issue with Dear Bill, which, again, I think is the best song in the show, is that it's ultimately too long. It is for me. It starts to meander and it starts to become a little repetitive. But the idea of the song and the overall structure of the song, I think works. It's just a matter of being incredibly shrewd with pruning shears of when am I repeating myself in a way that's not beneficial to the song? If you listen to my interview with Kelsey Watts, half interview, half hour long deep dive of six. We were talking about this in Heart of Stone. A good song will have a lyric that repeats but it's not the same. Meaning you can find a new way into it because of the way that the song is built. And Dear Bill ultimately has some lyrics that do repeat, but it also just has verses that do the same thing as a previous verse. And that is the kind of repetition that I am not on board with. That said, Jack Mullen does sell it, and it is one of the biggest ovations of the show. And I think that's very impressive, considering it's the one song that it's the least loud song in the show. Other positives, I will say this time around, I think the opening number, Born to Lead, is a strong opening number. It sets the tone, it's catchy enough. It introduces all the characters. It gives you a sense of the comedy. I don't find it overwhelmingly funny, but it is good and it's well presented. I think that the score for me has diminishing, returns as it continues. Continues. The lyrics are relatively clever. There are some slant rhymes, but I do think that they're mostly intelligent lyrics. And it's not as if the music is so banal that it's like elevator music. It's. There's some solid melodies in there. It's just. Nothing ever really sticks. Nothing ever really excites me. I think that the Act 1 finale is pretty strong and is actually probably my favorite bit of staging the show. I think the other issue I have is that there are times when it's very cleverly designed and staged, and the multicasting and the having to change in and out of costumes is done incredibly well. And other times where I find it actually kind of basic and a little sloppy. And that might. I think those moments stand out like a sore thumb to me because they are in direct juxtaposition of moments that are so well executed. And it makes you kind of go, did we think that this was.
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Clean and clever moment, or is this a moment that we just could never figure out? Because some moments are so intricately figured out and then other moments are not, in my eyes. And so it's just. That's always kind of frustrating. Someone also asked about the tonal shifts. This might not have been discord. I think this might have been on Instagram. The show does have a bit of tonal whiplash, and I don't. That is not, quote unquote, a fault of the show so much as that that is how it came off to me, and I know it's come off to some other people. Operation Mincemeat is ultimately a Comedy, but it is a comedy with a lot of heart to it. They want to have it clear to you that these writers respect the stakes of World War II. They respect how much was at stake by doing this mission. And that real people had real lives on the line and there was so much fear and loss happening. And ultimately wanted to be respectful of that. In addition to the silliness of the situation that you only can really recognize with time and with distance. And I think that's very admirable. And I think there are times when it works really well. I think the Dear Bill is a moment of that. I think there are a couple of scenes where things are jovial and then they kind of take a turn for the lightly serious. But then there are also times when it goes for super, like Faulty Towers esque broad comedy and then tries to really hit you hard with an emotional moment. And that's really difficult to do. That's a knife's edge. And if it works for you, that's fine. But if it doesn't work for you, it really just is jarring. And Lord, I mean, listen, I am someone who I've talked all the time with the Pillow man, with Martin McDonne as the pillow Man. That was the first time I ever saw something where I was laughing one second and gasping the next. And it's so rare for that to succeed. And I know people who hate the Pillow man and did not care for it the first time around. So again, it's just one of those things where if it works for you, you kind of marvel at the craft of it. And if it doesn't work for you, it's just really off putting. And there are, as I said, there are a couple of moments in Mincemeat where I think it does work. There are a lot of moments when I felt that it didn't. And so that was something that people had asked of me. Someone asked, how does it work here compared to the West End? Is it the same show? Do they tweak some things? It's ultimately the same show. I can't tell you intricacies because I don't know the show well enough. I didn't listen to the cast recording multiple times afterwards and listen to the intricacies of lyrics. I'm sure there are some jokes that got tweaked for the sake of American audiences. Just like some references or some verbiage to make the joke land better for an American audience. Matilda did the same thing. Escapologist became a scape artist and so on. They Have a whole running joke with Ian Fleming at the beginning that comes back at the end. And a lot of people know Ian Fleming and James Bond. That's really kind of it. It's still ultimately the same show. The sound design is, in my opinion, kind of poor. The band sounds very far away and whenever the whole cast is singing together, a very quick lyric, it really goes by and you don't really. You can't really make out the forest for the trees of the wording. Someone else, Aubrey Schwenspeed, someone said they can't get Mincemeat out of their head. For them, it felt like a cross between Six and Come From Away. There's a little bit of poppiness in Operation Mincemeat, the biggest song. I guess that kind of reminds me of 6. If I had to say, 6 would be the Acts 2 opener, which kind of gives you House of Holbein vibes. But it's about the Nazi party and I hate that song. I really do. It bothered me in London too. It bothers me how it all works, because it's. For me, it's the ultimate example where I don't trust an audience. Because the song ultimately is meant to trick an audience's Pavlovian response of, again, cheering for something because it's big and it's loud and it's campy like there. It's definitely a silly number, but it's all about the Nazis and there's a swastika on stage and they're all doing Sieg Heils and all of these things. And it's very techno music and it ends with the world exploding. Sound effects similar to end of 96,000 in the Heights or half the score of Hamilton. And I will say, in London, the audience fully went crazy for it on Broadway. I would say, like, half the audience really whooped and cheered and the other half gave sort of like mild golf claps. And then the joke is the lights come up and one of the actresses looks out at the audience and is like, really? Really? Whose side are you on? And the audience erupts in laughter and cheers for that. And I'm like, ah, ah, you can't. You don't get to laugh at that when you were the one cheering before. Because it's ultimately saying you're an idiot for cheering for that, because you let your gay pop centric self clap. Because the song ended loudly and boppily. Not really thinking about the fact that you were applauding and cheering for a Nazi number and not a Springtime for Hitler, where they are made to look like absolute fools. It's sort of halfway of that. So both times, both on Broadway and in the West End, I was like, I don't trust this audience now. Because they cheered for the number and then laughed when they got called out for it. And it's not an audience that learns anything from that. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you feel differently, but that is how I felt both times I saw it, where I'm like, you don't get to have your cake and eat it too with this. You either laughed at that she wouldn't look Jewish at all in Cabaret, or you didn't. And you don't get to say, oh, I got called out for it. And. And I'm smart for knowing I got called out for it. It's like, no, no, no, just don't be called out for it. That we say that we should be, that we're more progressive now, that we're smarter now. We should know better now. Do we? Do we know better? When I don't. It's. I talk about this all the time with fucking Diana with, you know, the Lipa Wild Party, you have to ask yourself what it is you're trying to get an audience to feel or do. And Mincemeat. They are trying to trick the audience into applauding for a Nazi number. But sometimes a bop is not necessary in a moment. And with Diana, when she's going through postpartum depression, the last thing you should be thinking is, like, toe Tapper. When Burrs is having a breakdown in the Liba Wild Party with Let Me Drown, the last thing you should be thinking is, mmm, she's a toe tapper. It should be scary, it should be sad, it should be heartfelt. And I don't trust audiences anymore. I just. I really don't. I really don't. Moving on. Someone also said, oh, to Me Mint. To me, it feels like a crossover between Groundhog Day and Hamilton and 39 steps, blah, blah, blah. Someone else was, like, not quite sure what the Groundhog Day thing was. I think for Groundhog Day, it's just the intricacy of the lyrics and the quirkiness of the score. Yeah. I talked about how the cast changed things for me. Anything else with Mincemeat that people wrote in, that's really it. Ultimately, with Mincemeat, for me, it was an improvement from London, but that meant I went from finding the show to be kind of amateurish to just sort of meh. And I know it has its fans there's nothing in mincemeat that I look at and I go, oh, this is terrible. And if you like it, you're dumb. I think there's some stuff about it that's creative and that's clever. It's not without merit. I just remain kind of unmoved by it. And I don't even mean, like, emotionally. Like, I wasn't even really terribly excited. I wasn't laughing all the time, I wasn't cheering all the time. I wasn't engaged all the time I was watching it. I was respectful. But this is a show that kind of eludes me. And it's sad because it's a show that I thought would really do it for me when I first saw it, and I was hopeful that it would. That I would change my tune this time around. It's happened before where I see something with some time and distance and a new perspective, and I come to love it. I might have said this on the podcast, but I used to hate Wes Anderson. I didn't get him at all. And Moonrise Kingdom was the movie that kind of changed that for me. I. I loved that movie. And then I went back and watched Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums. I was like, oh, I get it now. And I actually really love these movies. And so I was hoping now, with Mincemeat, I would feel that way, but sadly, I didn't. I think the thing with Mincemeat that's gonna be tricky is British humor. People are like, oh, is it too British to succeed here? In a way, yes, because British humor is very different from American humor. There are some crossovers, but one of the things that British humor really loves is repetition. And, you know, we enjoy our catchphrases here as well. But in British comedy, it's a really big thing. If you watch the Catherine Tate show, if you watch Absolutely Fabulous Fawlty Towers, Monty Python, there's a silliness to the intelligence of it all. There's also a bit of a meanness and a bit of a departure from reality. And a lot of times a situation is just, oh, how can this character do what they always do in a new setting? There's a TV show that my friend Danny introduced me to that I liked a lot, but it was a TV show that I couldn't binge because it just wasn't. What's the name for it? Too much of it was repetitive for me to really watch it, like, five episodes in a row because the main character just kept getting into the same kerfuffles over and over. And you're like, well, this person just doesn't seem real. I need something. I want to look this up because I feel like it begins with an M, like Madeline or Margaret or. Oh, Miranda. It's Miranda Hart's show. And I think the show is just called Miranda. Yes, Miranda Hart's Show. It's funny. She has a lot of funny moments, but it is every episode kind of the same rinse and repeat of. Her mother picks on her. Her best friend is very sweet and kind to her, even though they have absolutely nothing in common. And Miranda isn't a good friend to her. Miranda is always awkward in front of a man she finds attractive. She's absolutely undateable. She's basically a child. She's a super weird girl. And it's funny, but when you watch five episodes in a row, you realize that it's the same formula over and over and over again. But the show is, like, was this giant hit in London, and it's a show that couldn't really be a giant hit here. You think of sort of the progression of sitcom humor in America today. Things that sort of shifted how we view comedy like Arrested Development in the Office and 30 Rock. And now you watch something like. Or Veep. You watch something like Abbott elementary, right? And all of those characters have growth, slow growth, but growth. And that actually provides more opportunity for comedy because you're watching characters struggle with change. And as they change, you can put them in new scenarios. And in those new scenarios, you see how they react differently than they might have before two seasons ago. That's not really how it works with British sitcoms. All you have to do is watch absolutely fabulous an episode from each season to see how these characters don't change at all. And we love them for it, and British audiences definitely love them for it. That's something that you kind of see in Operation Mincemeat with. The humor is a lot of the jokes are repetitive or they're very, very silly, or they're very, very obvious and very hyper energetic. There's not really a kinetic quality to Mincemeat that I think is going to turn off some audience. Same way that I know that Matilda turned off a lot of audiences. I think that ultimately, as I said, this is a show that I think will get nominated for musical, probably score and book. I think Jack Malone is going to get nominated. They could get nominated for direction, maybe lighting, maybe costumes, because the costumes are so quick and there's so many quick changes to them. But I Don't think it's going to be a big winner. I don't think this is something that's going to really challenge maybe happy ending or even really dead Outlaw, a Tony. Voters have been very wary of giving British musicals wins these days. They are much more likely to provide a win for a British best play or even revival, even musical revival. But when it comes to original musicals, we've only had one British musical. Two. Sorry, two British musicals win in the last 30 years. And that was Sunset Boulevard and that was Billy Elliot. Some shows with American teams had a stint in London before coming here. But I wouldn't really call that British musical. Like Hadestown is not a British musical. It played Canada, then London, then here. But you think about matilda, Groundhog Day 6, Girl from the north country, even Sister act, which is also an American team but was a British import. There's a bit of a home homeland bias with this that after the mega musical sort of took over for such a long time, the Broadway community, while they enjoy the mega musical, is like, we really support our own and we want to support the sort of young, scrappy musical that. That needs it. Think of a fun home. Kimberly Akimbo, Band's Visit, even Gentleman's Guide, which is a British Y musical. But a full American writing team. I think that Come From Away is going to sort of. I think that Operation Mincemeat is going to have sort of a similar thing where, like it'll. I'm sure it'll get good reviews, maybe even great reviews. I don't know. Critics these days have really thrown me ever since the great Jesse Green critics pick of Redwood. Who the fuck knows anymore? But I think it'll get some good reviews. I think it'll get nominations. I think ultimately maybe Happy Ending and Dead Outlaw are the two that are really gonna vie for it. I think Mincemeat is gonna seem like a contender because it might rack up a couple of nominations, but similar to a Hell's Kitchen or a Sun Like It Hot. The problem with having so many nominations is that having so many nominations and then not being a frontrunner for most of them is that as the night continues, you just continue to lose all of them. And I don't think Operation Mincemeat is going to be like a 13 Tony nomination kind of show. I think we're looking more at like 7 or 8 watch me eat my Words in a month. But yeah, that's where I think we're at with this show. I think it's solid. I don't hate it like I did a year ago, but I don't like it really. And if you like it, I hope you continue to like it. I'm not here to convince anyone otherwise. So yeah, this was an improvement from last time, but not enough for me to recommend it. Really. I am much more likely to recommend Buena Vista Social Club, which also has its bumps. It's not quite great, but for me it had greater highs and I was more engaged and swept up in it than I was in mincemeat. Anyway, that's it for now. I hope that this was a coherent one for you guys. I did my best. It's always tricky to do these things on my own and I'm glad that y' all wrote in on the Discord Channel to help me find some structure and have some talking points about these musicals. If you have questions further that I did not address, please join the Discord Channel so you can write in and I will address them as best I can. You also can join the Discord Channel to write in questions for my upcoming birthday episode, which will be in a few days. As I said, this is dropping Friday or Saturday, so you really only have like three or four days to write in those questions before I record and that's it. If you like the podcast, make sure to give us a nice 5 star rating or review. We are going to submit to the Broadway League at the end of this Tony season to be on the official press list for the Broadway League and it always helps to have as many ratings on Apple or on Spotify so they can see numbers and take us seriously. As a critic, I don't think of myself really as a professional critic and even if I were to get on the press list, I still wouldn't really deem myself a professional professional critic. But we've talked about this that what we like about this discourse of the podcast of doing the reviews this way is that it does sort of feel like a conversation and exploring the nuances, not being a 50 character tweet or a Broadway world anonymous message post and me being somebody who also writes and acts and knows a lot of people in this community. When I don't like something, I try to be very respectful of how I don't like it. If I love something, I really try to find the specifics of what it is that makes it so good and also explain why it is subjective in my opinion. And I don't think we have a lot of that right now. So I urge you guys to please rate or review at the very least review or rate whatever you want to do just so we have the numbers for the league, so they can hopefully put me on the press list for next year. And that way I can see absolutely everything with no problem. And we can continue doing these reviews and ratings and rankings at the end of each season. I'm going to close this out with Ms. Natalie Venetia Belcon in honor of her turn in Buena Vista Social Club. It's probably going to be her turn as Gary Coleman, as that's the only professional recording I think we have of her voice. And that's fine. Actually, no, yeah, we'll do that. We'll do. We'll end with. With Natalie and call it a day.
- [72:18]
A
Yeah.
- [72:19]
B
So I'll see you guys for my birthday episode in a couple of days. Take it away, Natalie. Bye.
- [72:24]
A
You're not allowed to be loud at the library, at the art museum, or at a play. But when you and your partner are doing the Nash, they don't behave like you're at the ballet. But you can be as hard as the hell you want when you're making love. You can be as hard as the hell you want when you're making love. How do I let the neighbor stop you from having.