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Thank you very much. That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do, but Mr. Gramster. Ah. Hit it. We're Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright Lights, White Light, Rhythm and Roman. Wait, we're gonn do a little dance. Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history und legacy of American Theatre's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And we are doing a little bit of a review jumble of things current and past because why the fuck not, you know, just do the things that give you joy. This is going to be a day late because due to the headlining production that we will be reviewing that is currently playing on Broadway, we cannot release this episode until like after 9pm on Thursday the 23rd. So unless apologies for this showing up Friday morning instead of Thursday morning, but everything is out of whack. We do what we do. We are going to be talking about four things today. We're going to be talking about all in Comedy of Love. I think that's the subtitle Comedy about Love. I'm going to do a little retrospective on teeth that just closed at New World Stages after a limited run at Playwrights Horizons. I'm going to talk a little bit about a work in development that I saw, Telemachus as well as the new play to open on Broadway, the Pulitzer Prize winning English. We'll see how we do. I know I teased last week a little bit about possibly this week being the Come From Away episode. Come From Away is coming. It has been recorded. I'm just lazy and I have to do some editing on it and I don't like editing as you all know because of the length of these episodes. So just, you know, that is happening. I'm not actually lying to you. I'm just putting it off and putting it off. Other quick bit of information before we continue. In typical fashion when David J. Lynch and I do a way too early predictions episode, the Tony eligibility committee or whatever their fucking name is dropped eligibility rulings the very next day and a lot of things that we had discussed did come to fruition and then a lot of things that we had said productions were petitioning did not come to fruition. I know I said last week that the producers of Death Becomes her were petitioning for Jennifer Simard to go into featured instead of lead. Same thing with the producers of maybe happy ending for Helen J. Shen. That is what they were trying to do. The Tony Awards ultimately rejected that. So that makes featured actress in a musical far more interesting because we now have two giant nominations out of there. And it makes leading actress in a musical interesting because it's ultimately a cage match of like eight or nine contenders. So we'll see how all that goes. The biggest news from that, for me, like the biggest surprise was the announcement that Eureka Day was going to be considered a revival that I don't fully understand. As far as I'm aware, it has never been performed in New York City. The show is also six and a half years old at this point. I don't even think it's been licensed yet. I don't know how it was able to get that. But hey, it shakes things up a little bit. We add it now to the revival of a play contenders and we'll do another predictions episode probably in a month and, you know, discuss things further there. But it definitely shakes that race up a little bit. Not that it'll win necessarily, but it could be almost guaranteed a nomination. I think one could say that Yellowface and Eureka Day are very strong nominees. And then if Glengarry Glen Ross and Othello are giant shit shows, who's to say what else gets dominated? Who's to say what even wins? So, yeah, that's really it. And then when they announced that Gray Henson was eligible for leading actor, that leads me to believe that the whole production is eligible, eligible for nominations. Gray was the only thing announced because he, I believe, was under the title. And that is sort of how these things work. People are asking on the Discord Channel, which if you haven't joined yet, now's the time people were asking on the Discord Channel, you know, when they didn't announce anything about Jennifer Simard or Helen J. Shen, or when they announced something about Helen J. Shen but not Jennifer Simard, did that mean that Jen was going to go into feature? Did that mean they were still figuring it out? Basically, they only make announcements if they go again against opening night billing. And the producers of maybe Happy Ending had put Helen J. Shen below the title on opening night and Death Becomes her had put Jennifer Smart above the title as well as Chris Seber and Michelle Williams, which is why the Tony committee announced that Michelle Williams and Chris Sebert were going to be featured because that is opposite of what their billing would state and that Helen J. Shen would go into lead because that is the opposite of what her billing would state. So that is something to consider when you are looking at Tony rulings. If there's something that you're hoping to read that isn't there, go to the opening night credits of the show you're thinking about and that'll give you a better idea. Same thing with John Gallagher Jr. For Swept Away, which we said, you know, he was more likely than not going to be considered lead. And he is, even though he's not above the title. But he is the central character of that story, which does lead me to wonder if Natalie Venetia Belcon will be considered lead for Buena Vista Social Club. As I said in the predictions episode, the person I know on the team for that said that her character is the center of the story, even if the show is mostly an ensemble piece. And that sometimes is enough for Tonys to go, no, they're the lead. Same way they go, you know, Eureka Day. She a revival. Anywho, moving on from there, I'm gonna start with Teeth because it is recently closed and I know it has a lot of passionate fans on here. There are people on Instagram and on the Discord Channel asking me to talk about Teeth. I had seen it at Playwrights Horizons and then saw it right before it closed at New World Stages. Teeth, of course, is the new musical by Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs. It is based on the movie Teeth that came out, I want to say, in like 2004 or 5, by Mitchell Lichtenstein. I'm gonna actually look up this exact 2007. The movie came out in 2007, I believe. It's written and directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein. I didn't see the movie when it came out, but I had heard about it. It was one of those things where camp, knowing camp, had not really entered mainstream just yet. Were this like two years prior to Drag Race. And most of the country had not really understood what dark horror satire was meant to be. And from everything that I read about the movie, everyone was like, this is the most ridiculous premise. Why would they think they could get away with this? This is insane. And from everything I was told to understand, the movie acknowledges that and is aware of that. And that's sort of the point. So the musical version, as I said, adapted by Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs, opened last March at Playwrights Horizons and was already like an immediate sellout because Michael R. Jackson had premiered Strange Loop at Playwrights Horizons, where it won the Pulitzer and then transferred to Broadway, where it won the Tony. And this was pretty soon after White Girl in Danger, which also was a major sellout at second Stage, but ultimately was considered a letdown. This had the benefit of being a movie that some people knew of, once again being a Michael R. Jackson product and being at the last non profit where he had major success. So there was a lot of anticipation for this musical. I saw it at Playwrights Horizons and I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was definitely funny. I thought the music was catchy, very sharp lyrics. I think Michael R. Jackson is a very, very good lyricist and he did not do the music this. He co wrote the book with Anna K. Jacobs and Jacobs wrote the score. And I did think that the music was very catchy at the time. I thought the cast overall was very strong. Stephen Pasquale was still in the production at that point and I was very impressed with him because I had never seen Stephen Pasquale be funny before and I thought he was very funny in this. The lead, of course, was played by Elise Allen Lewis. Louise Louis, I think it's Elise Alan Lewis. She plays a character named Dawn o'. Keefe. And dawn is in a community called Eden. It's a town called Eden and their community is deeply religious. Her stepfather, who is Steve Pasquale at Playwrights Horizons and Andy Karl at New World Stages, he is the town pastor. Her stepbrother Brad, played by Will Connolly, is basically like this very angry incel who has deep resentment towards Don as well as fear and hatred of his father. His father definitely plays favorites and he favors Don't Don. Even though she is his stepdaughter, he clearly favors her over his own son. Don is part of a group of young women in the church called the Promise Keeper Girls. And they are meant to hold each other accountable for their religious beliefs and their chastity. You know, a lot of talk about virginity and purity and innocence and that all would be well and good if Don didn't have a boyfriend played by Jason Gauthe, who she definitely is kind of having these confused feelings sexually about him. She pretty much wants to have sex with him, but her faith and her community is telling her no. And her boyfriend Toby is kind of. He's not. Not coercing her into sex. Like, it's more that he recognizes that she is horny as well. And because he thinks that she is so pure and perfect, it makes him want her more and fans the flames of her desire. He does not tell her, we shouldn't be doing this. He sort of. There's what he says. And then there's what he does. He says, we shouldn't be doing this, and then keeps making her horny. While this is all happening, Brad is part of an online community called the Truth Seekers. And these are men who feel like society is rejecting them, that the world is trying to dismantle the patriarchy, and that women are out to get them. Very timely. And on top of all of this, Brad informs us that Don has teeth in her vagina, a fact that he's been sure of since they were children, when there was an incident when don was about 6 and Brad was, let's say, 7 or 8, and no one ever believed him, but he knows what he saw or felt. And he's basically. In addition to his resent for how his father treats her over him, he has resentment over this as well. And without going too much into specifics, I'll say, in her first sexual encounter with Toby that starts off consensual and then turns out into assault pretty quickly. The idea of consent is a major theme of teeth, of what it is to actually be with someone and to be a. An ally of women. You know, there's what. I said this about Toby already, but, like, there's what you say, and then there's what you do. And teeth is very big about what people say and then what they do. And just because, you know, Don wants to be with Toby, both, you know, his wife and sexually, doesn't mean that she wants to, you know, be with him sexually. Exactly. At the same time that he wants to be with her sexually, or even if she does and she changes her mind halfway through, he needs to respect that. And by not respecting Don, that is when Toby falls victim to teeth, to dentate, one might say. And dawn is unaware that she has this in her body. When it happens, she's sort of thrown and completely in shock. And then only, you know, throughout the second half of the show does she realize what is happening with her. And she needs two more. She has two more encounters that sort of help her realize what exactly is going on with her. When she. When she kills Toby, she tries to go into hiding. And then she goes to a doctor in a neighboring town, also played by Andy, Carl, Steve Pasquale. And he, you know, he's a gynecologist who assaults her during her exam, which then, of course, causes her. It's so weird to talk about this, like, in a critical way and not make people just go, oh, God, but the teeth in her vagina chop off the doctor's hand. And then There's a gay character who is trying to, you know, become born again. And he wants to prove that he can be with a woman, and she needs to prove that she can actually enjoy sex. And they have a sexual encounter, and it's actually quite great. But then, as it turns out, he films the whole thing and livestreamed it because he wants to prove to the community that he can be straight. And he also says, I'm giving you an alibi here. I'm doing this for the two of us. But he does not ask for her consent. So even though the sex itself was consensual, the act of filming her or was not. And when he does not understand the weight of his actions, of course, he then falls victim to Dentata. And it all culminates in a giant showdown between Don and Brad. The girls versus the boys, even. And the whole show kind of builds to this apocalyptic climax. The set starts to fall apart. There's fire everywhere. All of the women of the cast are in. How would I describe it? If you look up Sutton Foster and anything goes, the costume she wears for Blow, Gabriel Blow, is sort of like the Off Broadway weirder sister of that costume. So, like a lot of fiery red and, you know, skirt situations and capes and glitter, and it's sort of meant to invoke that these young women are channeling their inner Dentata goddesses. And when the show ends, dawn is sort of at the top of the apocalyptic heap and ruling the. Not the. Not the whole human race, but the corner of the human race that she resides in as the women and their subservient men go out and sort of bring balance to the whole with their teeth. Now, if that sounds like a weird show to you, I want to once again remind you this is a Michael R. Jackson show and remind you that it's based off of a campy mid 2000s horror movie. The show is very much meant to be funny. It is. Even when things get, quote, unquote, scary and, you know, sexual assaulty, there is a wink to all of it, especially because the men who perpetrate Dawn's body meet a very gruesome end and a very over the top end. There's. There's been a lot of talk in this show about having a splash section that the first couple of rows you're given ponchos in case of any blood getting on you. From what I understand, this. This was something that started at Playwrights and then moved to New World Stages and then kind of grew from there. I don't Think there was a plan to have a splash section so much as that blood sometimes would get into the audience. And as a way to cover their asses, producers created the idea of a splash section just in case blood got out on any audience members. And then more blood was added when it moved to New World Stages. And because people were aware that there was a splash section, actors got a little more crazy with props and with blood. And so it definitely went beyond the first two or three rows, but it never went, like, past the fifth row, I would say. And we were talking, like, up to, like, row nine or ten. The night I saw it, that had ponchos. And I was like, okay, if you're in the 10th row, you are in absolutely no danger. Just, you know, warning. The differences between Playwrights Horizons and Neural Stages, for me, one is that, first of all, the casting. The majority of the cast is the same as I said, except for Andy Karl, who replaced Stephen Pasquale. I would say that Andy Carle definitely leaned more into the camp vibe, whereas Steve Pasquale leaned into the satirical vibe. I would say that I preferred Pasquale as the pastor and I preferred Andy Carle as the Doctor. The Doctor has a number, I think it's called Girls like youe and it's sort of like, wonderful from Wicked with like, a Kurt Vile Brechtian spin on it that ultimately meets a bloody conclusion. And, you know, Carl absolutely plays it up. He's silly, he's quirky, and then definitely gets sinister when the song calls for it. As the pastor, he's a little more ridiculous. And I think that adds to the fun vibes that the show provides. With Pasquale, it was a bit more of a commentary. He was still funny as the pastor, but he. Because Pasquale is such a. I can only describe it as like, he has a dark energy on stage. Not that he's necessarily mean or evil, but that when he's on stage, he's always kind of the heavy. You never really cast him to be the clown. And if he's the clown, he's gotta be a very specific kind of clown. Like, he wasn't. Here we are. He was a very self serious Lothario. You would never, like, cast him to be Adolfo in drowsy chaperone. Right. So when he was playing the pastor in Teeth, his character took it all so seriously that when he honestly goes towards the ridiculous, you know, wearing ninja attire and fancying himself like a secret agent in disguise, it was hilarious, honestly, because he was so, you know, into It. Whereas with Andy Karl, it was a bit more of a cartoon and it still worked. It was very funny. It just. Some of the hardened edges that the character had and that the tone of the show had at Playwrights definitely got a bit softened for New World. And I do think overall, that is for the better, even if it made that part of the show a little less interesting to me. Fascinatingly enough, there are a lot of changes that kept the show pretty much at the same length at New World that it was at Playwrights Horizons. The whole show ended up still being about an hour and 50, hour and 55, even though I know for a fact that they did a lot of trimming in the first half of the show. According to my friends who worked on it, the first half definitely had a lot of tightening to get to certain major plot points faster, but then certain things in the second act were fleshed out better. So the show still remained the same length despite all these cuts. But I appreciated that because one of the things I felt at Playwrights Horizons was that it took a very long time for us to get to the first Dentada scene, which was dawn and Toby at the pond or the lake or whatever the fuck it is. And ultimately, for a show called Teeth, where many people in the audience know the premise, they're waiting for that scene because it's ultimately the catalyst that launches the rest of the story. And it was probably like an hour, maybe a little over that, when we finally got to that scene at Playwrights. And I want to say we got to it about the 45 minute mark at New World Stages, which doesn't sound like a huge difference. But in a musical, every minute is precious. So like, 15 minutes is basically a football field of time. And just getting to all of the necessary preamble earlier and getting through it faster allows the audience to enjoy the ride more and to be more on the edge of their seat for the beginning, to get to the big moments, right? Because if you're waiting for that first Dentata scene and it happens, then it becomes, okay, when's it going to happen again? How is it going to happen again? And you're willing to be a little more patient to see it again now that you've gotten your money's worth. The first time, you're like, okay, let the rest of the chips fall as they may. But to make an audience wait so long for the first one is a bit not naive. It just is asking a bit much of audiences, especially audiences now that have shorter attention spans and, you know, are not they're both more willing to lean into what you're doing because they want to justify the tickets that they paid for, but also less willing because they'll. They will interpret things on bad faith alone. So if you keep them engaged, they are less willing to do honestly, really crappy analytics on your show. So that was one of the major changes I appreciated, was that they got the first half the story moving a lot faster and got to all the points we needed to a lot quicker. So that way the second half of the show, even though yes, it was longer and a little more in depth, it didn't feel as much of a slog as it could have. I will say normally on this podcast and when I used to write reviews on Instagram, I would talk about the shows that didn't know that they needed to be 90 minutes and instead were two act musicals shows like or even 80 minute musicals shows like Heart of Rock and Roll, which I still think should be 100 minutes, no intermission. Once Upon a One More Time, which would absolutely be 85 minutes, no intermission and Teeth might be the first show I've seen in a while where I actually think it would benefit being a two act musical. Now, there's a lot of reasons it's not a two act musical. The premise alone. You want to keep audiences in the theater as long as possible. You want to keep people from walking out as much as possible. And an intermission absolutely allows people who are on the fence to walk out. But I do think that the intermission would allow the second act to feel a lot faster than it probably is. Because as I was watching the show as we got into the second half, the post Toby Death, I guess, spoiler alert. I guess. But I feel like I already mentioned that when we got into the show post Toby Death, there's nothing necessarily that I would have cut or even trimmed, but I was starting to feel the length of the evening as we got closer to the finale. And I don't think that would have been so much of a problem if we had had a 10 to 15 minute break in between, even if it was a 50 minute second act, it would feel even tighter than had we not had it. It's just sometimes when you get a little bit of respite, the last mile on your run can go by in a flash and just be all that easier to complete. So that's more of a technical thing on my end. Narratively speaking, they don't necessarily need it. The show kind of always worked as it did. I know A lot of people who saw the show felt like that it was given an unfair shot at commercialism. We are in this era where people are talking about the rebirth of Off Broadway and it being a commercially viable entity. And it is. We had Omar do so well Off Broadway and then transfer to Broadway where it's continued to do really well. Little Shop of Horrors remains a huge cash cow at west side Theater. And Titanique is still running. And then something like Teeth only really manages about a three month run. Something like Big Gay Jamboree only really managed a two to three month run. Big Gay Jamboree I've already talked about on this podcast. I don't think that show was ready for the big time. I also think that their desire to move that show to Broadway, which I know for a fact was their hope it was ill, was misguided in my personal opinion. That was a show with a lot of interesting ideas and a lot of good bits and a lot of beautiful design in it, but the bones just were not there yet. Teeth. The bones are there. It works. It's absolutely an Off Broadway musical. The intel I have with Teeth ultimately is that it is too expensive a show to run off Broadway. The financial model just did not make sense. They needed it to sell at like 90% or 95% capacity at every performance in order to just like, break even. And when you are running an Off Broadway musical called Teeth, we're like, yes, one of your writers has a major following, but Michael R. Jackson is still. He's not new on the scene, he's been around for a while, but he's new to major Broadway audiences. In the most recent couple of years, he does not have like 100, 200,000 fan following that could sell out New World Stages for nine months straight. You have to think rationally and go, okay, what's the best way we can put this show up and, you know, make it sell at either, you know, 80% capacity at discounted rates or 65% capacity at full price? Because the audience for Teeth is there. But due to the World, a lot of young theatergoers do not have the resources to see Broadway and Off Broadway shows constantly at full price. They go for discounts, they go for rush, they go for lottery because they love it. But they can't spend 90 to $150 once a week or twice a week or once every other week to do this. They need to buy groceries, they need to pay their rent, they need to pay their utility bills. They'll look for the $40 ticket and happily go, and they'll tell all their friends. But if you need 200 to 300 seats to be paying 150 bucks every time for a show like this, you gotta rethink how you're gonna do it. And it's easier for me to say this as a backseat driver. Right. I'm not on the producing team. I don't know if these options were thought about, but it's less that the audiences weren't showing up for teeth and more that teeth just could not last very long. Indie structure that it had set for itself, which is a shame, But I do hope that other theater companies across the country will look into doing it. I think the cast album is out now. If it. If it is, please give it a listen. If it hasn't come out yet, wait for it. It is a very good score. It's just a very delightfully weird, slightly horror, slightly campy, slightly feminist musical that I think a lot of people will probably dislike. But it will have its fans, and the fans that it does have will be committed to it probably forever. There's a lot of endorphins that you get when a show is absolutely in your wheelhouse, when it just checks off every box for you and, you know, you just keep coming back to it over and over and over again. I have a friend who actually, it's a friend of the pod, Itai Benson, who you might remember from the downstate episode. He's a huge movie buff, and we were sort of talking about all the possible Oscar movies, and I was asking him which I should see next, and he said the Brutalist. And I really liked the Brutalist, but he loved the Brutalist. And he admitted that it's basically like everything that movie does checks off every box for him of what he loves about movies. So he's seen it three times now. And I'm like, I'll probably see it once more in my lifetime. It's just good as it is. It is not a movie that does everything that I love, but I feel like with something like Teeth, because it is so specific, there's absolutely, you know, 200,000 people out there that this musical fully just nails for them. And they will be the die hard Dentata fans forever and always. That's all I really got to say about Teeth. I've been talking for, like, 25 minutes. I want to say about it 24 minutes. If you have any questions about it, if you want to, you know, get my opinion on things that I maybe didn't mention so much I highly recommend that you join the Discord Channel. The link will be in the description box for this episode and you can ask me in the Topics and Questions page of the Discord Channel. I know that a lot of you on there already wanted me to talk about it. I hope I covered as much as you wanted me to. If not, again, just ask me on the Discord Channel. That would be great. Moving on, let's do a quick blurb about all in and then we'll take a break and then we'll go to our last two so All In Comedy About Love opened right before Christmas with a cast of John Mulaney, Fred Armisen, Renee Lee Skoldsberry, and Richard Kind, with the band the Bangsons performing songs intermittently. It's directed by Alex Timbers and it is written by Simon Richard, who is the son of Frank Rich. Honestly, my favorite New York Times theater critic. If you haven't read much about All In, I'll just say this to you, there's a lot of discussion of, you know, what exactly is this All In? Comedy About Love, especially, you know, how could this thing get put up so quickly? And then how can the cast be rotating in and out so much? What kind of show is this? Because everyone that I listed just now is no longer in the show. The current cast is Lin Manuel Miranda AD Bryant, Nick Kroll and Andrew Reynold and then Annaleigh Ashford, Hank Azaria, David Cross, Jimmy Fallon. They all come in after that. Tim Meadows comes in, I think towards the very, very end. This is not a play. This is a collection of short stories written by Simon Rich with the theme of love. And they're comedic short stories. And ultimately it is a 90 minute evening or afternoon with the four performers sitting in chairs with scripts in their laps narrating and acting out these stories again with songs by the Bengsons performed in between. And Alex Timbers and his team have done their darndest to spruce it up a bit, give it some very fun lighting to add projections to the show. So for every story that is recited to us, we get a visual aid for it all. But ultimately, this is not a play. It's not even really a TED Talk. It is story time for adults. It is everyone having fun with their characters but not really having much beyond it. I'm not going to talk about the financial situation of the show, the ticket pricing for what is ultimately four people in chairs that has already been discussed by critics. You can discuss it amongst yourselves if you'd like. I already kind of think the show is Basically highway robbery. But if people just want to see the actors they like on stage, far be it for me to tell them how to spend their money. But I think my biggest issue with this production is while they continually have people in it who are very delightful stage presences, John Mulaney, in particular, I found to be, you know, very charming and selling the material as much as possible. There's not much to these stories. I didn't find them hilarious. They were, at times funny. They were not, like, you know, painfully unfunny. I would watch it and I would go, that was clever. A couple of things made me chuckle. Fewer things made me actually laugh. Of the 90 minutes I spent there, I would say that I laughed a total of, like, five minutes sprinkled throughout. Maybe even less than that. The stories all have the common theme of love. Different kinds of love, romantic love, parental love, sibling love. And there's no real sustenance to them. And I don't mean that like they have. Oh, they need to have a deeper meaning. I just mean, like, it's these situations in the story that, like, would make a fun SNL sketch. A talent agent who's sort of in his older age, fends off Death from coming to his door by ultimately signing Death as a client and promising Death that they can, you know, be a star in the entertainment industry. And he gets to live a bit longer, you know, at home with his wife. That is cute. It's a nice, fun premise, but it doesn't really go anywhere. The punch lines aren't all that strong. There's a moment in it that is. There's, like, one line in particular that I found funny. And there's a speech that Fred Armisen gives as Death that I chuckled because it was accurate in how a lot of actors talk about their, you know, school days with acting. But it's not this, like, laugh out loud, oh, my God. Punchline after punchline after punchline kind of story. There's another one about the Elephant man and the doctor who's treating the Elephant man and his strained relationship with his wife and how the Elephant man basically seduces this doctor's wife and ultimately brings him. The doctor and his wife closer together because of the affair. There are pirates who are out to sea and find a young girl as a stowaway who's, like, maybe two or three. And they ultimately decide to keep her and raise her, and they become, you know, still pirates, but parents. They're pirates and their parents and the love they have for the girl. And then there's a detective story, but it's a baby detective and his even younger baby sister and what's going on on with the missing stuffed doll that she has and things like that. And as I said, like, it's, it's clever, it's cute sometimes it's like chuckle worthy funny, but it's overall not really substantive in any way. It's not hilarious and it's not deep. It doesn't make you think differently about love. It doesn't even really warm your heart about love. It's just sort of like, okay, that was cute, that was nice. As I said, it definitely gives you an appreciation for John Mulaney as a performer and just as a presence. I'm assuming that either Lin Manuel Miranda or Andrew Reynolds is currently doing the John Mulaney stuff now with the new cast, but I rightfully couldn't say. I also don't know if it's dispersed the same way with each new cast member as it was this time. Like when I saw it with the original four, John Mullini definitely had the heavy lifting. He had the majority of the work. He did the opening monologue. He then was the lead of two separate stories. Richard Kind and the narrator of a third story that Richard Kind technically was the lead of, but not really. Fred Armisen was sort of a featured player in three of the stories. And then Renee Lee Skoldsberry was a, you know, cameo performer for two stories and then had the closing monologue. It was very much heavily loaded towards Mulaney. There's not much else I can really say about this. This is not something that offended me as a piece of art. Maybe it offends me a bit in terms of the pricing, but again, we're not going to go into that. It's just the whole thing is just sort of there. And it's possible that, you know, the theater was available for this amount. The actors were all available and the production team was all available. It's hard not to think a little bit of it as a. As a, you know, cash grab, but with theater, it's really hard to make a lot of money in a short period of time. So I. It's hard to really gauge how this came about and why this came about. It's, it's, it's, you know, it's sold well, but it's a big nothing, in my opinion. Like, it's gonna close in about two weeks and we're gonna forget about it. We're gonna forget about it so soon. And that's why I'm not really gonna talk about it much more after this and not talk about it for very long at all. It's. Yeah, it's a. This was just a giant. What I saw it. To try to complete my viewing of everything that was on Broadway this season. We'll see how well I do with that at the end. But so far we're up to date and it is, technically speaking, Tony eligible. I would not nominate it for anything. Biggest thing I would say, like gun to my head would be Mulaney. Maybe the lighting, which is such, you know, that Liz Lemon and 30 Rock ISM. The lighting was really neat. The programs are really easy to read. You know, like, this wasn't a disaster of a day to see it. It was just I walked out and went, okay, well, that happened. And that's all I really gotta say about all any comedy about love. So we will take a quick break and then I will go talk about. Actually, what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about English next. I'm going to do my review of English. And then after English, I'm going to talk about Telemachos. So sit tight and let's take a break. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an Arrow caller. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Freddy's feet. And we're back. So this past Saturday, I got to see one of the final previews of English at Roundabout Theatre Company. It is the 2023 Pulitzer Prize winning play by Sanaz Tosi, who I did not know much about. I did some research on her after the fact. She is the daughter of Iranian immigrants, which takes into effect with the themes of this play. And she started writing it in 2017 before she graduated from Tisch. In 2018, it was done at the Atlantic Theatre Company. In 2022, it was also done at the Goodman Theatre rather recently. But this is its Broadway debut and it takes place in Iran in 2008 over the course of a few months during an English class where the students range in ages and reasons for wanting to learn English, as well as the teacher of the class and her reasons for teaching it and what English, the language, means to all of them, as well as what it means to learn a new language. The play is mostly a comedy. I would say. It's overall a comedy with a lot of heart to it, with a lot of meat on the bone. And I'll say right off the bat, like I really enjoyed this. I thought it was a incredibly well acted. This has really been a phenomenal season for acting ensembles this Eureka Day, Cult of Love, Hills of California, O Mary. Even just really wonderful groups of actors who have a clear understanding of their character, of their character's journey, as well as what their character means to the overall tapestry of the production. Right. There's no one who's trying to steal the spotlight from anyone else. Everyone is in service to everyone on stage. Everyone gets their moment to shine. Everyone is a giving scene partner, generous scene partner and really listens and is dropped in. And everyone has a naturalistic quality to their performance while being able to project it to the back row of the theater, which is a lot harder than it sounds. You see so many film actors come to stage and just completely get washed up in the scenery because they can't go further than the first three rows. And you also see actors who maybe studied theater for a long time, but maybe not the deeper elements of performance. They know how to perform, they know how to present, but they maybe are not as good at the dropped in elements of acting. It's a really tough balance to crack. So I want to commend all the actors in this show, first of all. So the play, it doesn't totally center around any one character necessarily. I would say if we were to have any leads, the two leads would be. Pardon me for any mispronunciations. I do. It's been two and a half days since I saw the show and I tried to go back online to see the pronunciations of the characters so I could be a little more sure about my memory of how it's pronounced and I couldn't find any. So Elam is one of these students played by Tala Ash and she is definitely like the main student character in the show and is probably a co lead with Marjane who is the teacher played by the actress Marjeanne Nechet. And as I said, every character in the show has a reason for wanting to be there. Alam wants to be a doctor, she wants to study medicine and, and the body and she wants to learn in Australia what, you know, makes what makes certain diseases happen, what makes how. What ails people and how to cure them. And she can't do that in Iran. She can only. Or she can only do it so far in Iran and she wants to go to Australia to be a teaching assistant and then get a fellowship and, and you know, really excel because she's a smart person. But in Order to do that, she has to learn English. And there's a test that they have to take in order to qualify for their green card. For their green card or for their passport. And it's called the toefl. And you know, you have, you have to pass it. It's a very hard exam. You have to hit a specific percentage in order to pass. And we eventually find out that Ellam has, or Elam has taken it five times, I think, and has failed it every single time. And she's getting frustrated because she is a very smart person, but she feels very dumb learning English. English is a very hard language in a lot of ways. You know, so many words can mean a million things, and there are turns of phrases that can make no sense to, to the ear of someone from a different country. And so language in general is easier for some people to learn than for others. And no one wants to sound or feel stupid. And when you have a limited vocabulary as you are learning a new language, it's so easy to just feel stupid. And that is probably like the number one thing that gets at our sensitivity, right? More so than physical stuff. You know, someone can call you ugly and yeah, like, that can sting for a second, but it's also, it's the face and body you have and you can work out more and, you know, get in, you know, stronger shape, but even that, there's only so much you can do. Some body types just lean towards lean, some go towards thicker or muscular and. And there's all different ways and shapes to be healthy. Right? And every culture has a different idea of what beauty is. But when someone comes for your intelligence, that is, I feel like a more raw nerve than anything else. Despite how shallow so much of our culture is, intelligence is the thing that people come for. And you can always learn more. There's no shame in not knowing something so long as you are willing to learn and you absorb it and you carry it with you as you continue. Right. But also, we've talked about this on the podcast before. People don't love to admit either when they're wrong or when they just don't know something. So many people now, we sort of trained everyone to feel like it's more important to be the one teaching the information than the one absorbing the information. And what English as a play does is it sort of gets to the root of how everyone can feel silly and how they better themselves, you know, from any kind of humiliation or egg on face. Right, Egon? Face and humiliation is basically the same thing. So that is Elam, there's Goli, who is the youngest student. She's. I think she's 18. And I can't recall if they say why she's there, why she wants to take the toefl. I think she also wants to study abroad and possibly pursue a career in a different country. But also she just genuinely enjoys learning English and as it turns out, is quite good at learning it, much more so than Elam. There's also Roya, who is, in contrast, that the oldest student there. And Roya is learning English because her son has immigrated to Canada and supposedly he doesn't want her to move to Canada with him until she learns English because he has married someone and they now have a kid and they're teaching their daughter English only, and they want Roya to be able to converse with their daughter. So they're like, until you pass your TOEFL and, you know, can get your green card, you can't come here. So she's there to learn so she can communicate with him and with her granddaughter. And then there's Omed, who is by far the most learned of the group, the most advanced. And I'll get to sort of him in a second. He doesn't really have a reason for being there in any way. And it's perhaps the only real fatal flaw I have with the play is his character. And. But that's. We'll get to that. Marjan is the teacher. And we learned that Marjan spent nine years living in London and loved it and eventually came back to Iran, got married, had a child, and teaches English in this. It seems like a community center almost, or at this school, to help everyone with their toefls. And she makes it a point to always have the class speak English in class. That's what she says. You know, when you're here, we are speaking English. And in her mind, it is to make everyone better at it, to make it feel more like a first language than a second one, to make it just sort of come naturally to them, which is, there is truth to that. If you read Eat, Pray, Love, God, I can't believe I'm referencing Eat, Pray, Love. But if you eat, Read, Eat, Pray, Love. What Elizabeth says in that book is part of the reason why she was able to grasp Italian so quickly was that she just immersed herself in all of it and just learned what everything meant through conversation as well as through memorization. And the more she forced herself to use it every day, the easier it got. And so she was able to sort of flip in and out of English and Italian very easily. And that is ultimately what Marjan is trying to get the class to do, is to stop translating in their head and be able to think in English. Easier said than done, right? When you spend your whole life with one language that is so incredibly different from another and you're learning this new language, you are translating in your head constantly. And it takes so much brain power to be able to not just immediately go to a translation mind frame, right? You have to just sort of. You kind of have to do repetition, memorization, until eventually something breaks through. And Elam is already very resentful of this, as we've mentioned. It's not coming easy to her. She's resentful of the language, which she eventually admits that she does hate English as a language, and she's learning it basically because she has to, and she's viewing it as something to conquer. Goli very much enjoys English. She likes how it sounds, she likes the fluidity of it, and she likes how she feels as she's learning it. And when she's impressing people in her life with the English that she knows, Roya couldn't care less. She's doing it because she has to. She has, you know, a semi talent for learning it, but she's not super keen about it and ultimately decides to kind of stand down from it and sort of retreats from the lessons eventually because she finds English to be the enemy after a time and really resents what it has turned her son into. And we never meet Roya's son, but we do watch voice messages that she sends him as well as a voice message he sends her that she recites to the class later on. Omad, we learn, has an American family. He spent a lot of time in America back and forth, but he considers himself Iranian and he is by all intents and purposes, fluent, which is unfair because it is a class for advanced learners, but not fluent speakers. And I'm going to get into a little bit of a spoiler alert with this character in a minute. But Omid and Marjane connect in a way. Marjane really does miss London and misses Speaking English. We find out that no one in her family does. Her husband and her child don't really. She likes watching romantic comedies in English that her daughter gets bootlegs up for her. So, you know, we watch her watch Notting Hill in the classroom and Omid sits in with her and they speak English together, sometimes flipping into Farsi, but mostly in English. And what we learn is that Omid actually has dual Citizenship and is choosing to live in Iran and goes to these classes sort of for a reason we don't understand or ever hear about. You know, he's not there to take the toefl. He's not, you know, he's not planning to immigrate back to America. He's. We find out he's engaged to a woman. Despite the connection and flirtation he has with Marjan, the emotions that they have with each other, his character really more exists for Marjan to have her own emotional breakthrough, right? She's projecting onto him all the things she loves about the English language and the English speaking world. And she doesn't necessarily have resentment towards her home country, at least I don't think so. She's accused of it, but we don't really get evidence of that. But she maybe does not love it or is as proud of it as everyone else is of speaking Farsi, of being from Iran. She talks so lovingly about living in London and being able to tell a woman on the street where you know something, giving them directions for a place because she just came off like a native speaker. And there is a pride of that, of being able to fool people that you are, that you belong somewhere when you maybe originally did not. That's why so many people who move to New York love it when they can call themselves a New Yorker. Right? And everyone else in this show has a reason and has reason for being there, as well as a reason for maybe leaving. And Omid, as you find out, has this dual citizenship, is engaged to a woman, doesn't plan to leave, doesn't plan to take the toffel. So it's never really understood why he's there to begin with. It's really that he's there almost as a plot device for Marjane to learn more about herself because she realizes that she, despite the connection she has with him, the feelings she has for him, there's not a lot she does know about him. She's connected to the sides of himself that he's allowed her to see. And he questions her as, why is it, you know, you only like me when I speak English? We never speak Farsi together. And there, I mean, there is truth to that. They don't really speak Farsi with each other. In fact, Marjan doesn't speak Farsi till the very end of the show. And it's. There is a dramatic device they use for the Farsi in this play, which is that whenever the characters are speaking the English language, they speak it with an accent, some heavier than Others, some in more broken English than others. As I said, everyone is sort of at a different level of. Fluency. Yeah, fluency. But when they speak in Farsi, they speak English, but without any accent. And you see how much more comfortable certain characters are when they speak in their native language. This is a helpful for an audience because it provides no subtitles for them and people hate reading and it gives you the shorthand as an Amer, as an English speaking audience. The everything, all the information you need from the show, as well as the difficulty characters have with the English language when they. When you can see that they are, you know, intelligent and have a point of view and humorous and the intimacy they have with each other when they're speaking in their native language. The. I won't say it's a twist, but the coup de theatre that the play does in the last about five minutes is again, spoiler alert. Takes her tafel finally and passes with flying colors. And she and Marjane have a heart to heart because they butt heads a lot throughout the show. Marjane is there to teach everybody, but she is relatively cold to Alamo, who, granted, does not make it easy to be warm to Alam is very opinionated and very contradictory. She loves sort of poking the bear and ultimately that leads to her to saying a lot of hurtful things to people, even if she doesn't mean it to be. And because she has so much resentment of the class and the English language, she constantly is flipping back into Farsi and Marjan uses it sort of against her. And. And Alam is always trying to ask Marjan to speak to her in Farsi so they can connect. And she genuinely asks her, why is it you don't like me? I'm your student, you can't play favorites and I know you like Omid. We all see it. And when she does pass, she and Marjane speak in Farsi, but it's not the Farsi that we've been hearing. It's not English with no accent. It is actually the Farsi language and there are no subtitles. And we just watch these two women for a total of three minutes tops at the very end of the play. Connect with each other and be intimate with each other and be proud of each other and understand each other in their own language. And I didn't stay afterwards. There was a talk back afterwards and I couldn't go. I had a meeting afterwards, but my friend Sophia stayed. I took Sophia with my press tickets and Sophia had told me that the playwright had said that like the Number one question she always gets is, why didn't you provide subtitles for the end of the play? And the playwright says, if you can't sit in the discomfort of not knowing what someone else is saying for, you know, no more than three minutes, then you absolutely did not understand anything about this play, which is totally fair. And guess what? There are people who are totally roundabout subscribers, Atlantic Theatre Company subscribers, who definitely have seen this play and don't understand why there aren't subtitles. It's the difference between going to theater because it's what you do. It's, you know, part of the culture. And you want to tell people you saw the thing. You want to be proud that you saw the thing by the person and actually sitting there and taking it in and understanding a play where it's at, where it's coming from and what it's trying to do. You don't have to enjoy it, you don't have to like the play, but you need to try to understand what the play is doing before you can make a statement about it or even ask the playwright questions about it. You know, I mentioned this before on the pod, but with my own play, when I had someone give me notes on it, I listened, and I didn't write a single note down because it became very clear to me early on this person had no idea what it was I was trying to accomplish. And it wasn't that they weren't smart. It was that their notes were all of a sudden were no longer relevant. And I feel like the playwright, whenever they hear this question, they must get frustrated. But it's also like that question ultimately says more about you as the audience than it does about me. As I said, this whole cast is pretty phenomenal. I love the majority of the characters. Omid is sort of an anomaly, and he's not a bad character. He's just. I don't think he's as fleshed out as everyone else, which is, you know, my biggest gripe with it. And it's not even one that makes me not like the play. It's just where everyone else has so many facets to them and dynamics to them. I wish that he, considering he is so important to the journey of Marjan and the dynamic of the class as a whole, you wish there was a little bit more to him and he feels a bit more like a plot device. Elam is a really wonderful character. So smart, so insightful, says a lot of truthful things, but is ultimately has no tact and is. Is the epitome of condition, but can't take it. And it results from a deep insecurity. As I said, when nobody ever wants to feel stupid, no one ever wants to feel like the dumbest one in the room. And when you are speaking a different language around people who speak it better than you, you can feel like the odd duck. And that is absolutely what Alam does not want. And she's giving a presentation on a medical discovery and she wants to read the article in English, which she's doing very well. But then Marjan makes her not recite it, says put it down and give us the gist in your own words. And you see her struggle to do so. She's able to, but it's not as confident and you understand all of the intricacies of this person. And then you have someone like Guli who her interests are that of an 18 year old girl. The very first scene is her for show and tell, showing her brow pencil and why she likes it. And she's having trouble describing it at first. She's, you know, it's the beginning of their, of their class journey. But she gets better at English as the play continues. She's actually, in my opinion, the best in the class because she is starting so much further back than Omid and she gets maybe not as good as he is, but so much better in such a short period of time, whereas he doesn't ever really progress. And she gives this dissertation on Ricky Martin's. She bangs and she understands what the lyrics mean literally as well as metaphorically. And she is able to give a very insightful presentation on, on this song that's both very funny and very sweet. But then she kind of gets not made fun of but she gets reprimanded for by Alam who's like, why did you pick a song in English? Why don't you pick a song in your own tongue and, and explain it to us in English? And you know, such a silly song too, but Goalie likes the song, she likes the English language. And you know, she's 18 and an older person has humiliated her a little bit so she stops herself. But she does ultimately hold her head up high every time she gets kicked down a bit and comes back up being even better at English. And that has nothing to do about the language of English. But the character of Goli, you know this, the language is not the point of the show. It is the reason that we are able to get insight to each character of what makes them tick and what they take pride in and what brings them joy. And I think that it also sort of shines a light on us and any kind of biases that we may have when we hear someone speak our language and they're not a native speaker, right? And so many people, because they hear broken English, they equate that with a baby learning words. And they'll go, well, you're 45 years old. Why are you speaking like the 3 year old in the park? And it's so fascinating how people just are not willing to expand their brain beyond that rationale. Right? When we did the King and I episode with Corey, we talked about this. People talk about how that show maybe shouldn't be done. And I fully disagree. And one of the main reasons people talk about it is the character of the King of Siam and, oh, the broken English he speaks in and all the stereotypes he has and all these things. And I'm like sitting here going, are you aware of how smart a person has to be not only to speak another language, but understand that language and be able to have a sense of humor in that language? The King of Siam and the King and I is reading the Bible, makes an observation about the Bible, and then later on is able to make a joke referencing the Bible. It's like a throwback. And I'm like, that is a fucking intelligent dude. He has his limitations because he has the world that he's known for so long, but he's also questioning that world, which is also incredibly insightful and intelligent. Right? It bums me out when people take things at face value in both directions. Either hearing someone speak in a language that's not theirs and consider them dumb because they're not fluent, or to think that a work is problematic because it's not holding every character up to the highest standard of human excellence. First of all, no one ever clears that hurdle. But that's also not where drama lives. But also, it's not a playwright's job to make every community not only feel seen, but feel exceptional. It's their job to find the stories of the world and make them sing. And if you're really good at what you do, you can take a story that is not the story of the majority of the room, and you can make them understand. They'll never live it. It'll never be baked into their skin, but it will stay with them and it'll give them some perspective as they continue onwards. That is what the best theater does. And I think that English does accomplish that very well. It's a story with characters that many people in that theater would never know. It makes them feel like they know them when the show is over and understands them a little bit better and maybe gives them some new insight. And I think that's very special and I want to commend Roundabout for doing it. I think it's a wonderful play. I look forward to seeing what future Roundabout seasons are like and I highly recommend that you all go see it. So please go see English while you can. I'm gonna do a quick wrap up now as we head towards the end of this episode and if you have any questions about English, maybe how I feel about its Tony chances now that I've seen it, you can ask me on the Discord Channel. I do think Tala Ash I said this in the predictions episode. She was nominated for, I believe the Lortel and the Drama Desk for leading actress in a play and as I said, she is probably the closest thing to a lead or co lead that the play has and I think that she would be a formidable nominee. I would love to see that happen. It's not the star vehicle that picture of Dorian Gray or Hills of California is. It's not the two hander that job is. But it's a. You know, I think that this is a very strong contender for play. Hopefully not revival because it's the fucking Wild west now that Eureka Day is a revival. Alright, so moving on Telemachus, which if you've seen it or you know anything about it, you know why I call it that. Telemachos is the workshop one man production of the first four books of Homer's the Odyssey as created and performed by Joseph Medeiros. Joseph Medeiros is a Broadway performer. He's been in Groundhog Day and Matilda and plenty of other shows. And he went back to school to study the classics and studied Homer's Odyssey and learned it and memorized it in its original ancient Greek. He's been workshopping this for a while. I first heard about this, funnily enough, from Bub. The famous Bub, of whom yours truly is inspired by, heard about this from Bub a little over two years ago. He had gone to one of Joseph's early performances of this and told me about it and I heard it and I was like, that sounds pretentious and I hate it. But then my friend Aaron, Aaron Albano, who you might have seen in the Yours Truly streaming and you might have seen him with me on theater, all the moving parts, talking about Wicked, he informed me about it as tickets were going on sale for this workshop and he had said it was really good. So I went, oh, let's give it a chance. So Joseph Medeiros had basically spent the better part of a year or two workshopping the first book in Ancient Greek. And he would perform it in his apartment for an audience of three people, no more. And as I said, Bub had seen that first book and really spoke highly of it. Aaron spoke very highly of it. But then Joseph also started workshopping the second book, and he was doing that in Ancient Greek, but he was doing it out in the park again for like an audience, audience of three, maybe four. And then he started workshopping books three and four as well. And he put all four together for what was a six hour performance with two intermissions. One was 30 minutes, one was 15. And the entire thing, well, not the entire thing, But I'd say 99% of it was indeed in Ancient Greek. And it was him performing those first four books for us. And I don't know how to describe it truthfully, it is as a feat of theatricality. It is incredible because Joseph is at the root of all of it. He has, if you look through the program, he does have people who've helped him produce it and have been advisors on it, because when you are creating something yourself, designing and staging yourself, you need outside eyes to help you put it all together and make sure it looks how you want it to look. But ultimately this all comes from him. And it's a production that is a sense of theatrical ingenuity and wonder is such, like a flowery word, but it's all I can really think of. He uses all of these household items and toys and food to create props and sets and costumes to play multitudes of roles, to explain to an audience what is happening in a story physically. And he does all these drawings and he pulls them out of the wall and underneath the table and turns a blue pillow into an ocean as he puts a toy boat across. And you understand that Odysseus has left the island of Calypso. And he does this whole assembly of Penelope suitors with different soccer jerseys on. And you understand who each person is and who they're speaking to based on what jersey he's wearing and what jersey he's looking at. He also incorporates the audience. This was for an audience of 15, so it's a little more than the audience of three, but it was an audience of 15. And he engages with you as an audience by not only just connecting with you, but making you a part of the production. It harkens back to how the Odyssey was originally told with Homer sang it over campfires to audiences as each installment came through his head and he would recite it. And then eventually somebody wrote it all down. But for a long time it was just spoken over these campfires. And this is sort of hearkening back to that. And he says right off the bat through projection texts, that you are going to get bored sometimes because it is in ancient Greek. And he doesn't expect anyone in the audience to understand ancient Greek. But he does say you have permission to be bored. You have permission to let your mind drift because you're not going to understand all of it. And that is totally okay. It's important to know what happens to our brain, where our minds go when we're bored. And once you get that permission, the whole thing becomes a lot easier to take in because you're not working so hard to absorb it all. You are allowing it sort of to come to you and engage with it when you can. And even if you don't always understand what's happening in the dialogue, you understand what's happening in this story. He's very good about giving you enough information and preambles via, you know, projected text to tell you what are the major characters and what's going on. And in these first four books, you know, if you don't know the, the Odyssey, you can also watch or listen to the Golden Apple if you want. But you know, it's the battle of Troy and, and Odysseus and his men have all gone to Troy to get Helen back. And they do the Trojan Horse and all that, and they finish the battle and Odysseus pisses off Poseidon, I believe he kills his son. And as punishment, Poseidon makes him lost at sea for three years. And then when he is no longer lost at sea, he ends up on the island of Eclipso, where he ends up for another seven years. This in addition to traveling to get Helen and having the battle. So I believe Odysseus has been away from home for like 20 years at this point. Meanwhile, his wife Penelope is there, is back home trying to ward off suitors and his son Telemachus is growing up without a father and, and slowly coming into his manhood and learning how to transition from a young man to an adult man. And something that's very smart that Medeiros does is when he's giving you all this preamble and he's showing you all the characters names. There's a little tape recorder playing and all you hear is static. But every now and then you'll hear the character's name in ancient Greek. And I can remember the ones for Athena or Penelope or Odysseus. I think Odysseus is like Odysseus or something like that. Penelope is like Penalope. But Telemachus we all remember and because at the intermission we're all going to get like a slice of pizza and we're all saying to each other, Telemachus. So that's how. I don't know how to say Telemachus in any other way now, but the ancient Greek pronunciation, Telemachus. But that's sort of where the whole show begins, is with Odysseus trying to get out of Calypso's island and come home. And Telemachus is trying to, you know, find his father and learn more about his father while warding off his mother suitors and is sort of learning how to be a man and has this interaction with the goddess Athena and she sort of warns him that he's got to probably murder one, if not all of the suitors, if he wants to ward them all off. And that is the basic gist of the first four books, right? And then Telemachus sailing off to find Odysseus and learning more about Odysseus and all of this stuff and all these crazy things that happens because, you know, the gods. And what I mostly want to say is not everything worth seeing is on Broadway. Not everything worth seeing is even finished because as I said, this is being workshopped. The first four books are pretty much down pat. Medeiros is still working on books three and four. And also not everything worth seeing is going to pander to you and make it easy for you. Some things you see are going to challenge you, they're going to bore you a little bit. But there is something special in nothing but pure creativity and channeling what you are passionate about, because Medeiros is clearly passionate about this and using all of your ingenuity to carry across to an audience what you hear and see. And the way that this one man show is able to engage with an audience just on an artistic, theatrical level, right, of having a moment where you're all eating apples together as he does a scene at a banquet table and then having you create s' mores together, which you aren't even aware you're doing until he brings around the graham crackers. Like you see a tray of items that you don't know what it is, and he puts it on a radiator, turns on the radiator then takes out another tray and you realize it's graham crackers with chocolate. And that what you had previously seen were chopped up marshmallows that were dyed red. And you were making s' mores together as you were engaging with this story. Much like the people of ancient Greece listening to Homer recite the Odyssey. And he incorporates his childhood toys like Legos and his Sesame street lunch trays. And he uses hand weights to tie to a string, which then allows of a piece, a bunch of paper wings to fly off into the sky as Athena flies off to Mount Olympus. And he uses projections and he uses movies and uses songs. He sings the man that got away. He sings if I loved you. The whole thing is a marathon of performance. It is a feat of creativity. And it is ultimately like how I would love to see a production of Candide done right, of nothing but household objects all of a sudden repurposed to be a ship, a robe, a ladder, all of a sudden becomes a tree. And all these drawings made with nothing but crayon and paper that get unfurled from the ceiling and fall off the wall. And just seeing how what one thing normally is isn't what it always has to be. All it takes is thinking something through and outside of the box to make it something else. And all of a sudden becomes special in a whole new way. And that is exciting to watch. And I would love it if it comes back because I would love to see how it progresses and how it gets fine tuned because this is not something that is totally in my wheelhouse. Ancient Greek ain't my gig. Six hour shows usually not my gig. And I know that he wants to make this basically like a 24 hour thing. He wants to do all the books and make it a 24 hour performance, which is a feat. But I was so surprised at how something that's so not for me was able to engage with me as often as it did and surprise me as much as it did. It reminded me and reminds us all that there is so much out there beyond just Broadway, beyond just musicals, beyond just the English language. Inspiration can come anywhere. And if you are a creative, it helps to take in as much as you can from everywhere. If you consider yourself a lover of theater, see as much different theater as you can. See Telemachos, see teeth, then see English and then wash it all down with a performance of Aladdin if you so choose. Or Moulin Rouge or Titanique. There's merit in all of it, right? I. I know I said this before, maybe not on the podcast. But, like, when I talk to people about art, it's hard for me to. Especially narrative art like film, theater, and tv. It's hard for me to take opinions of people seriously unless they can understand the ridiculous and the complex. Yeah, I say, I. I need someone to understand the brilliance of Angels in America as well as understand that Michelle Williams's best performance is in the movie Dick. It's just true, you know, you have to understand the silly as well as understand what you will not be able to understand because some things are beyond your grasp. But you can keep learning and keep unpeeling layers. My father and I had an argument a few weeks ago. As you know, Oscar season is approaching us. He could not understand why the substance was doing as well as it did. And he has not seen the substance, and he will never see the substance. But he said, I don't know why anyone would make a movie about that that didn't need to get made. And then he goes and sees the Bob Dylan movie, a complete unknown, and he tells me, you should go see it. You got to challenge yourself. You got to go outside your box. Now, first of all, I have not seen a complete unknown yet. I will absolutely see it. I guarantee you it's not going to be challenging to me. But I did say to him point blank, great, so when are you seeing the substance? And he had no response. It'd be one thing if he saw it and he didn't like it and could come to it from his own perspective while understanding what it's trying to do. But it's hard for me to take a recommendation seriously when that is your attitude about art. And I love my father and you can listen to the Follies episode to know that he's an insightful man. But that's sort of where we're at, right? It's all out there. Theater, film, tv, all of this art is out there. It behooves you to try out some new waters, see what other people are cooking up. Because of all the things that I've talked about on this podcast today of, you know, English and teeth and all in. And this Telemachus is absolutely the thing I remember the most vividly and the most passionately about. And you heard me talk about English for so long, like, you know, that that's. I'm not just whistling pixie dust here. I'm being very truthful about that. I thought that even the things that were still needing some work, even the times when I was bored, this was so inspiring in its Magnitude and in its personal components because there's a lot of Joseph Medeiros life that he incorporates in the show, even just mostly just visually. And it's so honest and raw and exposing while also just being impressive and impactful. And I don't know any other words to say about it. You don't know you're only drinking Sanka until you've tasted coffee. And this isn't the first coffee I've tasted, but I. But whenever I taste it again, I am reminded truly of what like incredibly impressive and exciting theater is. And it doesn't have to be six hours in an ancient Greek to be considered important. But that also should make it a hindrance. So with that in mind, I'm going to tell you guys to look out and see what's happening in your areas. Any kind of theater or film or whatever that maybe you were not going to consider before. Maybe go see it. It could be terrible or it could be exciting. It could be your new obsession or it could be somewhere in the middle and inspire you for something of your own down the line. Right. I think that's sort of one of the other great things that art can do, is that it can inspire other art. And that's all I really got to say. Yeah. Once again, join the Discord Channel if you haven't joined yet. If you like the podcast, give us a nice 5 star rating or review. Got an announcement coming up very soon. I can't say it quite yet. All I'll say is if you are in New York City in February, maybe around February 8th, it might behoove you to be at the Hilton Hotel or no, the Marriott Hotel. The Marriott Hotel in New York City. Maybe Just a thought on February 8, maybe around 4:30pm Just letting you know. And that's it. Yeah, I'm trying to think of who I want us to take this away. If there's any audio of teeth available, we will close out with teeth. If not, we will close out with something from a strange loop as that is, you know, more Michael R. Jackson theater. And that's it for now. I will catch you guys next week when it will probably be come from away. If not come from away something random. Imagine if that becomes like my Jimmy Kimmel Matt Damon running joke. Come from away coming next week. It's coming soon, I promise. I just gotta get my ass to editing it. Yeah, you guys have a great rest of your week weekend and I will talk to you soon. Take it away. Bye. There is a dark satanic collision rising from a journey. Something that hunts with laser precision. Teeth, teeth, teeth. Teee back up my eyes and I can envision. Teeth, teeth. Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. My index finger has been tingled.