B (34:37)

Billy, I beg to differ with you.

A (34:38)

How do you mean?

B (34:39)

You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire.

A (34:53)

And we're back onto the Penzance musical, which is currently at Roundabout Theater Company. This is a revisal of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Pirates of Penzance. Now, if you don't know the Pirates of Penzance or Gilbert and Sullivan in general, I highly recommend that you get into it. You can go on YouTube and you can watch the 1980 Central park production starring Kevin Klein, George Rose, Linda Ronstadt and Rex Smith, directed by Wilfred Leech. And it is one of my favorite revivals. I listened to the cast recording a bunch and was a really big turning point in terms of casting for revivals and also how to approach sound like orchestrations for revival. You did not just have to repeat what the original sound was. You can kind of infuse a modern sensibility. Modern sensibility. Like modern Mage in general into a classic. And the 1980s Pirates was very much that. It was very zippy, it was very zany. A lot of xylophones, a lot of electric synths, but with still a classical sounding voice on it. Like it. The. The cast of that Pirates is very much, with the exception of Linda Ronstadt, classical singers. But it's not all in their color. Torre it definitely they. A lot of the keys get lowered for the women. So it's still classic soprano, but it has some Broadway brass to it. And such is true with Linda Ronstadt's Mabel. She does do soprano scales, but she also has a lot of belting, like in when the Foam Embarrasses Steel. Now, this production takes place in New Orleans and gives the score a more jazzy, bluesy flavor to it. Why? Well, my assumption is because Rupert Holmes had an idea and wanted to pursue it with Pirates of Penzance. And thus, this is the production we got. The show opens with Gilbert and Sullivan. I believe Gilbert is played by David Hyde Pierce as well. Yes. It opens with Gilbert and Sullivan coming out and addressing the audience that we are going to see a new production of Pirates and Penzance that they have revamped to be in New Orleans. And they make a joke about, you know, copyrights and all that stuff, and then the show begins. Now, it's a funny enough bit. It goes on a bit too long. I also am somebody who's like, just, we don't need the play within a play. Just start the thing like, we get it. It's New Orleans. Just do the. Do the fucker. And to boil it down, before I get into the. The nitty gritty of it all, I went in with an open mind, open heart. I was ready to have a blast at this show. I love Pirates of Penzance. I enjoy a lot of the cast members, and I was excited and fascinated by the premise of this revival. Revisal Act 1. There was stuff in it that I loved, stuff in it that I liked, and stuff in it that I was underwhelmed by. Again, I will sort of specify in a second act two, I almost completely hated and by the finale of Act 2, wanted to burn the theater down to the ground. Why? Let's get into it. So it does still follow the basic premise of Pirates of Penzance. A young man named Frederick, who is played by Nick Barish in this, is sent to be apprenticed to a pirate crew where Ramin Karimloo is the pirate king because his nursemaid Ruth, played by Jinx Monsoon is hard of hear hearing. And Frederick's father had told her that he wanted Frederick to be an apprentice to a pilot, but she thought he said pirate. So that's where he went. And on his 21st birthday he is free of his duties to the pirates. And he informs them because he is a dutiful man, he is honor bound and he is innocent to a fault that while he does love his pirate friends, he will be pursuing them to kill them because the pirate life is a villainous one in his eyes. And so he leaves the pirates and goes off on his way. And also it turns out that the pirates are kind of simps anyway. They are all orphan boys. And whenever anyone tells them that they're orphans, they do not steal from them, they do not kill them, they just go on their merry way. And Frederick says, yeah, but everyone tells you that they're orphans and thus you have, you don't have any booty, you don't have any prisoners, and you have, you haven't done anything because everyone knows that you guys are simps. So he goes off on his merry way, runs into Mabel, played by Samantha Williams and her sisters, who are the daughters of a modern Major General, played by David Hyde Pierce as well. And Mabel and Frederick fall in love and the pirates try to kidnap the daughters. The Major General tells them, you can't kidnap them, I am an orphan boy. And so the pirates say, okay, we won't do that then. And then Act 2 begins. The major General is fretting because he lied about being an orphan and he's afraid that the pirates find out about that and sends out a police force to capture the pirates. Ruth and the pirate king get Frederick and they say, no, no, no, as it turns out, you were born on a leap year, so you're not 21, you are five and you are indebted to us until you are 88. And so Frederick has to go back and because he's honor bound to the pirates, and he tells the pirates that the Major General is not an orphan. And so the pirates get want to get revenge on the Major General, a fight ensues. And then there's a finale in the original Pirates, I believe what happens is that Ruth comes out and she announces that all the pirates are the lost sons of, I think, aristocracy or something like that. And so they're actually very honorable young men and thus they are okay to marry the Major General's daughters. And then there's a big ode to Queen Victoria and everything is hunky dory. The Revisal ends with the pirates and the police fighting and the. And Mabel fights and Frederick fights and. And there's sort of a back and forth of like, you go away. You go home. No, you go home. You get out of my home. You get out of my home.

B (40:55)

You.

A (40:55)

This is mine. This. This is mine. You go away. And the Major general stops everything and he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is nobody's home. We are on stolen land. And the one thing that we all have in common is that we are all from different places. We're all from different places. Yeah, we all are from different countries and lands. And we are here in a melting pot. Cuz America's a melting pot. And then everybody comes and joins hands and like, melting pot, different places. Very. Nomi Malone from Showgirls throwing her French fries on the table and going different places. Right? Or I made a joke about this on Instagram, but it's South Park Cartman with the ginger kids and he doesn't want to die. And he has them all sing together. Hand in hand. We can live together Ginger or not, it's all the same. Black or white, brown or red we shouldn't kill each other Cause it's lame. It is literally that finale. And I was furious. Not because I disagree with it. I don't disagree with it. It's true. This is stolen land and we all come from different places. Nomi Malone. But I am getting. I don't know about you guys. I am getting fed the fuck up by musicals thinking they can get away and sometimes getting away because audience members seem to have no problem with it. Of shoehorning in an ideal that, let's be honest, 85%, if not 100% of the audience already is on board with shoehorning. An ideal in a super obvious skywriting manner that has no nuance, has nothing to do with story or character, is just shoved in there for an audience to applaud and cheer and pat themselves on the back. It bothers me the fuck off. It has nothing to do with story. It has nothing to do with nuance. It has nothing even to do politically with anything. It would be one thing if the show was about that and there was a turning point for these characters understanding that this isn't about. We can't fight over territory that we're now realizing isn't ours to begin with. Which, first of all, at the time period of Pirates of Penzance, no one would have cared anyway. But let's just sort of throw that out of the window for A second to stop everything and preach to an audience something that the vast majority of the audience already knows and understands and believes in. That isn't changing minds. That isn't even a fight affirming. It is simply aggrandizing. And it's not just this with the Stolen Land. It's Boop talking about, you know, the power of femininity with a character who comes from a land where she's already the boss and being like, well, I won't be silent anymore and I'm going to not answer to anyone again when I'm in Boop Land, I'm like, well, first of all, collaboration and conversation is the key to any kind of progressiveness. But also, you are the boss of Boop World. So who are you? Answer. Who are you answering to beforehand? Smash saying, oh, we are too progressive to have women fight over a role. That is so sexist. Meanwhile, the crux of the plot of Smash is if you let a woman read, it leads to trouble. If you give a mouse a cookie or inserting queer romances in the last 10 minutes of a show like in Boop, like in Smash, like in Once Upon a One More Time and going like, sea gays, you're one of us. You also deserve love. Even though you haven't had a single storyline for the entire two and a half hours hours of the show, you now have found love. It bothers me the fuck off. Especially because audiences don't. Don't seem to care and seem to think that it's enough. And so writers are like, great, we will keep on doing this super basic, super shoehorned end thing. And I find it very insulting. It is not challenging me, it is not affirming me. It is just there to get my applause and I'm not gonna give it. I'm not. I refuse. When you have. When it has nothing to do with the rest of the tapestry you're trying to weave. I find it cheap and I find it gimmicky. And honestly, half of these book writers don't believe in it anyway. I'm convinced that Bob Martin actually kind of hates women and homosexuals than anyone under the age of 40, just based off of his last three librettos. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm being hateful here, but, like, just. I can feel the cynicism dripping from his pen and I just don't buy it. And it bothers me that that's all it takes for a lot of audiences. Like, you just have to say it, say it simply say it loudly and Say it in a bevel and I'll applaud for you. I'm like, oh, great. So we really. We actually are sometimes as dumb as our enemies say we are. And there's nothing wrong with having a smooth brain. Entertainment, right? But as I often said, if you are gonna be the dumb show and you want me to be along for the ride, you have to be smart about how dumb you are and you have to do all the work for me. And listen, there are things about pirates that are smart, dumb. There's plenty of puns thrown into the show that are quite funny. A lot of solid jokes. There were times that I did laugh. It's designed beautifully. The set is gorgeous. Well, most of the set is gorgeous. I don't like the set at the beginning of Acts 2. Costumes for the most part are really lovely. Beautiful lighting and the orchestrations are fascinating because they do incorporate jazz and blues very well into the Pirates score. And there are some other songs in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire that they throw into the show. It makes the show longer and makes it less fast paced and zippy, in my humble opinion. So that's to the detriment of pirates. But they do nail the assignment of what if we made this more bluesy and more jazzy. The problem is that you then hear the score done this way and all of the energy of it, all of the fire of it is taken out. The opening alone, the pour o por the pirate cherry. And listen, I'm not a completist, traditionalist. It doesn't have to be done exactly like how I know it, but when you know it and you. And you know how good the coffee can taste. And then you go to Senka or someone tries to do a decaf or a water, a super watered down and burnt coffee from a bodega. It just doesn't taste as good. And it's. It's. Sometimes it's just the new recipe isn't. Isn't good. But you want to applaud the experiment. And so much of what makes pirates bombastic and fun and silly is kind of zapped here, I found. Anyway, one of the biggest offenders was Climbing Over Rocky Mountain, which is the song that introduces Mabel's sisters. This song has been rewritten completely. The lyrics are now sashaying through the old French Quarter. And Rupert Holmes rewrote all the lyrics. And all the lyrics are what I would describe as gay white man feminism, which is these men still don't understand that gaslight Gatekeep girl boss is not actually feminism. It is capitalist Corporate feminism it is. You know, Chase, Sapphire, bank of America and Gatorade. Being sponsors at Pride and being like, yes, fag. Enjoy our water bottle with our brand name on it. It's all shallow and it doesn't actually mean anything. It's the sisters coming out. And on top of this, the tempos are slow, the arrangement is soft, is more soft and, like, kind of soft, chewy. And when you watch or listen to any other version of Climbing Over Rocky Mountain, it is silly and it is vibrant and it slaps and it builds to a lovely finale that just, like, lands the plane perfectly. And this version is more sultry and sassy, which in theory I'm not against, but just musically, again, sometimes there's a chemical response. You get to something and it's just not as exciting. It kind of lays an egg, in my opinion. And the lyrics are all like, we're sashaying through the old French Quarter and, like, we can be doctors and we can be presidents and we can these things. And I'm like, first of all, sometimes a person can just be a person. Sometimes a woman can just enjoy her time on the beach. I don't think that anyone, unless you're our current president, walks down the street thinking, I can be anything I want to be all the time, always, and anyone else should get out of my way. Sometimes we're just a person who wants to enjoy the sunlight. You know, sometimes where the person just wants to touch the grass. And that's sort of the whole point of the joy and the story stupidity of Climbing Over Rocky Mountain is that it's these otherwise very prim and proper Victorian women who are living their best life by running through the beach, running by the ocean, and they think it's the coolest, most scandalous thing afterwards, that they're going to take off their shoes and their stockings and paddle in the water. They're like, oh, my God. Yolo. Best life ever. Vacation with my besties. And they're just enjoying it. They're enjoying their time. And to Rupert Holmes, he's like, well, but why have a woman on stage in this day and age? Unless she's going to tell an audience, I'm amazing and I can be anything I want to be. I'm like, sure, I don't disagree with that. But isn't it just as powerful to let a woman enjoy her time in the sunlight? Does she have to come on stage and command and demand respect all the time? Always. Shouldn't that be something that she can just sort of fight for in a Scene when she's not having to fight. Can't she just enjoy herself? Can we all just enjoy ourselves? Sometimes I think that when I get out of bed, the first thing I don't do as a homosexual is go wake up out of bed and I tell them to the kitchen and I tell my mom I deserve equal rights. Sometimes I'm like, I just want a bagel and a coffee. Let me enjoy this first before I then get pushed. Right? It's just I get very frustrated because it's the same again. I'm not trying to be sexist, racist, and ageist, but it's the same boomer white males, usually homosexual, but sometimes not. And to be fair, there are some Gen X homosexuals have been writing this too. Of just the feminism is women wearing pants. Feminism is women saying, we don't need a man. Feminism is a woman coming on stage, enlisting all of her credentials. I'm like, feminism is just equilibrium and its independence and its autonomy in the way that any right, any civil right for any human being is that. And if you want to write a strong female character, make her a human being, give her strength, give her flaws, give her a point of view and have her be challenged like any other human being in this world. Don't make her a stick figure. Make her a person. It don't make her a mouthpiece for you so everyone can go, oh, well, this man is an ally. Like, no, you want to be an ally. Listen to women, hear what they have to say and write that on the stage. Let them see themselves on stage, not a Barbie on stage. It's so crazy to me that people yell at that Barbie movie about like, this is capitalist and empty feminism. And in a way, it is basically just a toy commercial. But it is also Greta Gerwig intelligently acknowledging the snake eating its own tail of a doll that is meant to symbolize independence for women. And then because the world has not caught up to the ideal of it, people thinking that the symbol is enough, or people hating the symbol for the rest of the world not catching up when sometimes it's just a doll. A doll is just a doll. And there are writers this season who are like, well, yes, but Barbie is feminism. And thus the women should be saying all the things like, Barbie President Barbie, air pilot Barbie. And she should bevel and say, I'm just as good as anyone else, and I will not take any, you know, orders from anybody. Like, that's not. That is literally gaslight, gatekeep girl boss. Is that the correct order? I Can't remember. I don't even care. It shouldn't matter. We should. We should ditch the ideal anyway. But I want to make sure I have the words down at some point. But do you know what I mean? Is this making any sense to you guys? Do you ever watch something, whether you're a woman or you're a person of color or you're queer or you're trans, or, you know, you're of a different religious persuasion and you see, quote, unquote, representation of you in a movie or on a stage, and you feel like it's being done not through nuance and empathy or even joy, but out of obligation or of a sense of a checklist or of a sense of, I don't want to be canceled. So I'm going to have diversity in my show, whatever that looks like or whatever I think it looks like. And I'm going to make sure that they have no flaws and that they say all the amazing things, and everyone will cheer me for being an ally. And I talked about this before. Broadway still has a problem with diversity. They don't understand that it's not just about race, gender, sexuality, body type, age all comes into play. It's not just about what a character mouthpiece is to everyone. And I really, really, really, really want us to start being more aware of when we're being pandered to. Because even shows with the best of intentions that are more interesting than pirates and going for deeper than pirates can still be guilty of pandering. There was a Tony winning show last year that I talked about that I think while it had very honorable intentions and had a lot of intelligence and creativity in it, I still found it quite pandering. Didn't find it challenging to me. And sometimes we need something to galvanize us, to give us that energy, especially in this world, right? The world is awful. It's always been awful. And the more we learn about it and the more power we give people who are idiots, the harsher and meaner and sadder and scarier it becomes. And sometimes we just want something that can give us the. The inspiration to just get out of bed and live a life. Which is why I think climbing over Rocky Mountain should just remain fucking climbing over Rocky Mountain. By the way, let those sisters just enjoy the Rocky Mountains Let them enjoy the water Let them gaily tread the measure. My fucking God, is that so hard to ask? Let these girls have their fun. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. It's like if we did a musical of Pirates and it was all gay. Boys doing. Climbing over a rocky mountain and they're. And literally doing. Sashaying through the old French Quarter. And they were like, we are here and we're queer and we're proud of it. I'm like, you know what queers really do on their time off? They go get brunch and they talk shit about their other friends. Let these sisters do fucking that. In terms of performances for Pirates, Sorry, I went on a long tangent just now. In terms of performances, the absolute best. The MVP of this show is David Hyde Pierce as Gilbert Slash the Modern Matri General. Modern Matri General has the fewest tweaks of any song in this score. There are some small tweaks to it. Nothing insane, but it's mostly just the song as written. It's not as fast as George Rose does it, but that's okay. David Hyde Pierce isn't a pedophile. Therefore we allow him to sing it a little slower if he needs to. George Rose, amazing talent, does. Did an incredible modern Major General. But he was a very dark man who did a lot of terrible dark things. Look it up. Woof. But it's also a well staged number. Warren Carlisle does a really great job with the choreography there. There are some numbers where Warren Car. Where Warren Carlisle does a really good rambunctious job. I think with Cat Like Tread, he also does really well. Other numbers that I think he does his Warren Carlisle thing where there's a lot of knee cartilage getting torn due to his very rambunctious in a bad way choreography, where it's like, oh, this is 11 out of 10 energy for a song that doesn't need it. And you're making your cast break their backs for no purpose and for no build. But there are other songs where he does a very wonderful job. Nick Barish, I think, actually is a very strong Frederick. He sounds great. He looks like a cutie. And he understands the tone of Pirates and he understands what Frederick's role is, which is the innocent juvenile who. And he gets some laughs in there. But Frederick can only really work if everyone else around him is a correct kind of kook. Right? You have to have the not imbalance. You have to have the diversity of cartoons. With Ernesti, it's got to blend together. And unfortunately, I don't think that he has a lot of that on this stage. Samantha Williams is a very sassy, very sexually aggressive Mabel, which is great. I wish that they would do another pass at the arrangement for Poor Wandering One, because she sings it just fine, but it's a little too smooth. Ella Fitzgerald. Y I will listen. Part of me wishes that it was still the soprano Enos of Normal Mabel's. But if we're not going to do that, let's really have it be more dynamic because again, as it is, it's a little more soft, easy listening. And I don't care for that. I don't listen to pirates for soft, easy listening. It just. This is not what it should be. If you're gonna have it be jazz, have it be hot, spicy, fucking sexy jazz as opposed to just elevator music jazz, which is unfortunate, especially because Samantha Williams could sing a hotter jazz. She's got a great voice and she's clearly got a lot of fire within her. She and Nick do a solid job, but because the rest. Because the show doesn't know what to do with their characters and not everyone around them is at a fever pitch that they can play off of. She gets a little more lost than Nick does. Nick, I would say, is a little more successful, but still they are not fully able to land the plane because of other elements, one of which is Ramin Karimloo as the Pirate King. Ramin, amazing voice. He's a handsome, handsome fuck. He is not funny. He just isn't. And I will not be gaslit into being told. So I watched him. I then immediately went home and watched Kevin Klein do it. I'm like, no, that's. That's a comic. That's funny. The Pirate King is not smooth. The Pirate King is not debonair. He's a goof. He thinks that he's the shit and the what makes it funny is that he is play acting the part of a Pirate King. He's basically a man child given all these toys and he doesn't know how to use a single one of them. And there is the humor comes from the bigness and the broadness and the self importance of it with the incompetence always right underneath. And for me, for my money, Ramin is having a ball. He's having a good time, but he is not able to channel the goofball freakazoid that you need for this. Pirates needs to be a cast full of freaks and Ramin is not one. I'm sure he's a very lovely man. He sounds good, he looks good, but he's not funny. And that is pivotal for this role. On top of that, we have Jinx Monsoon as Ruth. Jinx. I'm a big fan of Jinx Monsoon. My mom, who I took to pirates, loves Jinx Monsoon. She Was so thrilled to see her again on stage. And even my mom, I must say, was rather underwhelmed with Jinx as Ruth. She was funny. She had moments where she really nailed the comedy. Jinx knows how to nail a joke, so she was definitely, I would say, the funniest. After David Hyde Pierce. The problem is, musically speaking, the keys. The keys just are not in a place for Jinx that it is comfortable. There was. I hate to say this, but there were a lot of cracks at our performance. And maybe she's sick, but many of the songs just did not land, did not sell the way they should have. And Ruth is not a big sing. It's just that they did not put them in keys. That allowed Jinx to succeed and especially allowed Jinx to mine for comedy. When Jinx is doing scene work, she's funny. I don't think everything that they give her is funny, but she sells it and gets good laughs out of it. But when it comes to her numbers, they don't put it in a place for her that she can be comfortable and sell the comedy. She's focusing on the voice because she's maneuvering. She's navigating the score. It's very similar to when I saw Idina and Redwood, who had just gotten off of being sick and I was watching her navigate this score in real time. And it's a shame. Everyone in Pirates should be firing on all cylinders. Should be pussy popping for every song that they do. It should be, look what I can do with my voice. You can't do this while also being the silliest little children ever. It should be controlled chaos. I need to remember that as we get into the next review after the next break, because ultimately, and I'll talk about this more in depth, but I don't think that Scott Ellis was the correct director for this. Scott Ellis is a solid director. He's done some good stuff. He's done some not good stuff. I never found him to be necessarily a comedic genius. Interestingly enough, I found his production of she loves me into 2016 to be actually too zippy and too fast for what that show is and too glittery for what that show is. And this Pirates actually had more of the energy that I wanted from she Loves Me of like sat in comedy light. A lighter tone, a lighter touch. And the. The energy should be reversed. Pirates should be chaos. Controlled chaos. Not messy, but chaos with high energy zaniness. And I really didn't get that here. Occasionally the water would bubble, bubble and steam, but often in act one, it was just steam, not a lot of bubbles. And then in Act 2, for me, there were no bubbles except for with cat like tread. And it frustrated me because I was really ready to love this. I wanted this to be awesome. If you guys have been listening to the Tony predictions, before I saw Pirates, I was like, oh, my God. I just. I want Pirates and Floyd to be amazing because I want them to shake up the best revival race. And I think that this is going to get a good number of nominations. On a technical level, it is very well done. The design, as I said, is gorgeous. It's got orchestrations that maybe I don't necessarily love, but because they are new arrangements for a score that people know, that's kind of an easy nomination for them. They'll probably get a choreography nomination. I can see Jinx getting in. David Hyde Pierce could end up knocking out Andrew Durant in Leading Actor now that he's deemed lead. But overall, this was an unfortunate miss for me. And with the finale, I just got infuriated because it just became so gimmicky and pandering in a way that all sense of fun and all sense of joy and all sense of intelligence was gone. Because Gilbert and Sullivan is kind of the beginning of intelligent dumbness. Mikado, HMS Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance, they are so smart, but they are fucking dumb. And that's the point. It's also kind of meta because Pirates has an HMS Pinafore joke in it, and that might be the first meta joke in a musical performance, as far as I know. And I just wish that this production let loose more, went bigger, went badder, went faster, and wasn't so concerned with trying to update and improve on this show. As I was talking about with, you know, climbing over a rocky mountain, sometimes you are just the person doing the thing. If you remember that, that's. That's an old, old episode with Emily Malpy on Sunday in the park with George. Like, sometimes as actors or directors, we overthink stuff with a scene. It's like sometimes you're just the person grabbing coffee. It doesn't mean the world when it means the world. You can tell. But sometimes you're just the person doing the thing in the scene, and there can be a lot of fun from that as well. You don't always have to comment on the comedy. You just be the person who is wacky doing the thing earnestly. The chaos comes from your person being naturally wacky, but you are not having to comment on everything. Just live in the world of the crazy and play it, you know, for real. I think Jen Simard said in the Golden Girls podcast when talking about comedy like, you know, plant your when she was doing Dolly, Jerry Zak said, you know, the best thing you can do in comedy is plant your feet, look at your scene partner and tell them the truth. Give them your honesty. Give them what's real to you, because that's what's ultimately the funniest to us. Again, there are different pitches to do that, but that is ultimately what you want. Yeah, not much else to say about Pirates. There are things to enjoy. I overall did not enjoy it. It's actually kind of low on my rankings, especially because it ended for me on such a sour note that any good that I found beforehand kind of got obliterated by the last 30 minutes of the show. This was a miss for me, a big one, and I'm sad because I was really ready for it. But if anyone out there really enjoyed it, sorry to piss all over it for this review. Don't let that take anything away from you, but things to think about when we approach revivals and revisals. Right? Keep in mind what it was that the show was going for when it came out, and if there are things that in its aging process over the decades that have kept it from reaching modern audiences, help it along, get it back to where it once was for a modern audience. Don't think of it as fixing. Think of it as supporting, taking it off of life support and giving it the antibiotics it needs to thrive again. And this is more of an experiment that has some perks in it but often cons for me. And it's on. It's unfortunate. I was really hoping to like it. Anyway, that's Pirates. We're gonna take a quick break and then we will get to Just in Time.

B (66:25)

Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Freddy's.

A (66:44)

And we're back. Now what we have is Just In Time, the Bobby Darin musical starring Jonathan Groff at Circle in the Square. Those of you who don't know Bobby Darin. Bobby Darin was a famous popular recording artist and movie actor in the 1960s, late 50s through the 1960s, and then very much fell out of grace by the late 60s into the early 70s and famously died very young at I believe the age of 37. And he has A lot of similarities to Frank Sinatra. I made a joke in an earlier episode that he's sort of like a non equity Frank Sinatra. And the truth is that in a lot of ways he was. They did a lot of the same things. They had a very similar crooner voice. They had very similar rough upbringings. They were both sickly children. They both kind of had a darker edge to them, had lots of female troubles. They also went into movies and had successful movie careers. And they did a lot of very famous covers of old standards, songs that had always sounded one specific way. And then both of them using big band sound to completely reorchestrate these old standards. Basically, everything Bobby Darin did, Frank Sinatra just did a little bit better. Bobby Darin went into movies and got nominated for an Oscar. Frank Sinatra won an Oscar. Bobby Darin had original hits, so did Frank Sinatra. Bobby Darin did covers of Mack the Knife, by the Sea, beyond the Sea. Frank Sinatra had a million different covers. Frank Sinatra did a famous, famous cover of New York, New York after the movie came out that was originated by Liza Minnelli. And I would argue most of the world knows it as a Frank Sinatra song. I did it my way. Everything, as I said, everything that Bobby Darin did, Frank Sinatra did a little better and a little more famously. So. Bobby Darin, in a lot of ways, has fallen by the wayside of pop culture. A lot of people don't know him. I know him. My mother, famous Danny Tickton Coppola who's been on the podcast, she would play Bobby Darin at the Copa all the time in the car when I was a kid. And I ended up taking her to Just in Time with my press seats. Thank you very much. Because I thought that, you know, first of all, her birthday is today as I'm recording this. Happy birthday, Mom. And I thought it would be nice for her birthday to see Pirates. And then when I got the Just In Time tickets, I was like, hey, mom, want to see this as well? Like double whammy for your birthday. And so we went and she had a lot of thoughts. I have a lot of thoughts. Overall, I will say Just in Time is a fun evening. It's. It's a. It's a good time at the theater. Whether I think that it's good, good is another story. And I have some caveats I want to get into in a bit. Some positives. First, similar to Pirates, design wise, the show is pretty aces. What they do with Circle in the Square is really beautiful. They did a really phenomenal job overhauling the space to make it look like a nightclub. Sort of Copa coded, but not at the same time. Very detailed and specific lighting. Often it kind of envelops the audience in certain moods. But they use. Alex Timbers and his team use the entire space for the whole show. It is absolutely environmental. The cast uses all of the aisles, they use the main stage, they use the back wall, they use the space where all the tables are. There are constant surprises in the design. There's a table that ends up spinning, things like that. So in terms of using the space, every square inch of the Circle in the Square theater is used to often very exciting effects. It is a very strong cast. Everyone in it is well cast and some people really mind their material for all it's worth. I want to give special props to Gracie Lawrence as Connie Francis, who is making her Broadway debut. And first of all, her voice is fucking insane. But she's also a really charming presence and I was able to create a full form character with not a ton of stage time. It sort of feels like as soon as Connie Francis enters Bobby Darin's life, she's out of Bobby Darin's life and Gracie Lawrence is able to chart her progression as a teenage girl to a fully grown woman. Her command of the songs that she sings as Connie Francis is really impeccable. And again, her voice is just phenomenal. Erica Henningson as Sandra Dee is also very good. I found that Henningson had. She had more stage time than Lawrence with Act 2. But I found that Henningson's material as Sandra Dee was kind of rote and didn't help her all that much. She had, if you were to argue, she has the more interesting storyline. She's the one that marries Bobby Darin, she gets wooed by Bobby Darin, they have a child, she goes on the road with him. She starts having a gambling addiction and alcohol abuse issues and they end up divorcing each other. And that's a lot of material. But it all happens very quickly and it all because it's Bobby Darin's show. It's mostly from his perspective. But again, the writers want to give Sandra Dee a little autonomy and a little bit of grace, which I admire. But because the show tells you from the very top that they are going to tell Bobby Darin's life as fast and as furiously as he lived it, a lot of details are dropped at the wayside and some details don't always matter. It's a bio jukebox musical. A lot of things are going to get glossed over, especially when your estate is the one producing it. So they don't necessarily let Bobby Darin look like a total saint, but they do gloss over a lot of the issues that he had as a human being, as well as the issues of the people he hurt. If you want to read Jesse Green's review for the show, you know, the one thing he says that I will absolutely allow him to say is Sandra D. Had a very terrible childhood, filled with sexual trauma and assault, and worked to the bone by her mother and thrown into show business at a very young age, which the show acknowledges, the working at a young age part. But they hint at her troubled life with one sentence of, you don't know what my childhood was like. And all it takes is a simple Google search of Sandra Dean reading two sentences about her childhood to know that she had an awful childhood. Really awful. She also struggled with an eating disorder in addition to her substance abuse, but, you know, and ended up coming out the other end and surviving. But even though she kind of struggled with it the rest of her life. So it's things like that where it's like, because it is, technically speaking, Bobby Darin's story, we can't go into all of that with characters like Sandra Dee. But considering she is such an important part of his life, there's a lot of darkness there that could be explored. But since when do bio jukebox musicals really want to get into the darkness of it all? They want to celebrate the artist. They don't want to explore the complications of what they did, what happened to them, and what happened to the people that were most important to them. Right. Bio jukebox musicals tend to usually follow the same pattern, which is, somebody has promise, they have talent. Nobody believes in them until one day somebody does. They're recording stuff and nothing's hitting. Until one day, something really big hits and turns them into a sensation overnight. And then they're the most famous person in the world, and everything they did changed the game. And then they meet somebody and it goes great until it stops going great, and then they lose the love and then they die or the person that they really care about dies. Usually in a bio jukebox musical, if the artist is still alive or if their estate is running the show, they are allowed to have one major flaw. If the show is about a woman, it is that they pick the wrong romantic partner for a while. So if this was a bio musical about Sandra Dee, her only flaw would be that she picked Bobby Darin for a While. And he was bad. When it's a man, usually the flaw they have is once they get famous, they become bad at being there for their family and somebody usually dies because of it. So in Bobby Darin's musical, his mother dies as he's getting famous and it really tortures him. And then hespoiler alert. He eventually finds out later on that the woman he thought was his mother wasn't his mother, but his grandmother and the woman he thought was his sister was actually his mother. And he's not able to grapple with that fully when he passes and he has a very complicated relationship with his sister. This is all covered very quickly, not with a lot of nuance. I would say it ultimately is an excuse for a showcase for Jonathan Groff. Now, there's other stuff to it than Groff. As I said, design wise, it's pretty wonderful. And it's very well staged. There's a lot of humor to it. The arrangements are good. It's a very strong supporting cast. And Groff is a very special musical theater talent. This is somebody who lives to be on stage, lives to perform, has a great voice, is a great actor, has charisma coming out of every pore of his very wet body. And physically and artistically does almost everything a musical actor could do in a show. He is going through the wringer with it. The one thing Jonathan Groff does not do in Just In Time, the Bobby Darin musical is channel Bobby Darin. No attempt at voice, no attempt at mannerisms, no attempt at any kind of energy. He is very much just being Jonathan Groff. Now, the show begins in a meta way with him introducing himself as Jonathan Groff and saying, here are the similarities between me and Bobby Darin. And you know, from here on out, I am now Bobby Darin. If he didn't say that, we would never know that he's Bobby Darin. To some people, this is not a problem. To some people, they love Groff so much and he is a very charming, captivating performer that they don't mind that he's not really channeling Bobby Darin in any way and in fact will make excuses for it. It's not a Bobby Darin. It's not a Jonathan Groff concert of Bobby Darin songs. They have scenes where he's acting out Bobby Darin's life and it's an absolute transformation. I know what you're talking about. This is where I would argue the double standard is in theater, in the world, but in this microcosm of theater and this is actually something where I would sort of put a magnifying glass onto people about prejudice when it comes to performers. I got called out on Spotify once because I opened jokingly with my first Gypsy review of like, well, you know, we have our revival of Gypsy that's starring and directed by a whole bunch of nobodies, which was a joke because it's six time Tony winner Audra McDonald, two time Tony winner George C. Wolf. You know, some of my favorite artists in the world doing the show. I'm like, yeah, as we all know, these are. These are people. And someone was like, you don't throw this kind of disrespect on the first Broadway production of Gypsy with a Black Rose. Now listen, you want to talk about disrespect? Audra McDonald's sixth Tony Award was for playing Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill when she was announced for that. And this was, by the way, at Circle in the Square with also nightclub tables. And what I would argue is sort of a decent script, not amazing script. But when she was announced for it, everyone was like, I don't want to hear Audra McDonald sing Billie Holiday songs. Great as she is, like, I'm watching a Billie Holiday show. And then we all went to see it and she fully embodied Billie Holiday. She got so in the weeds with that voice. She nailed the voice. It wasn't just an imitation, it was a full personification. She got the voice, she got the mannerisms, she got the body language, she got the energy. She got this frame of mind and carried the whole evening by fully getting by losing Audra McDonald and becoming Billie Holiday. Now, granted, Billie Holiday is a more recognizable sound than Bobby Darin. Many people could listen to a Bobby Darin song and think it's Frank Sinatra. But if Audra had done what Groff is currently doing as Bobby Darin, she never would have heard the end of it. She would have had her defenders. Audra McDonald is one of the greatest singing actors right now. Like, who are you to complain about hearing Audra McDonald sing Billie Holiday songs? But you aren't playing Audra McDonald. You're playing Billie Holiday. And Audra went above and beyond to get into that role and lose all semblances of Audra. I would argue Grof has not done the same. He is giving a very good performance. It's a well acted performance in terms of his emotional range. He's a smart actor. He can clock his character's journey in that respect. But I would argue he does not lose himself into Bobby Darin in a way that you kind of need to when it's a bio jukebox musical about Bobby Darin. And I am not here to defend Audra and light a torch for her and defend her in a way that she needs defending for. She's Audra McDonald. She can defend herself. She's a warrior. And she may disagree with me about how Groff is in this show and the comparison of the two, but as somebody who has now seen both in that same theater, that is a connection that I can't help but make. And the double standard is a little too impossible for me to. It's too impossible for me to not recognize the double standard. Right? Especially when I definitely got some shit back in December for saying, like, listen, Gypsy, for me, this one doesn't work. And. And I'm sort of sitting here going, we can love Jonathan Groff if we want, but if you want to talk about prejudice and double standard, let's talk about this. You have no problem that Jonathan Groff isn't doing anything whatsoever to channel Bobby Darin. And yet when Audra was announced for Billie Holiday, everyone was up in arms because they were saying she wasn't going to be able to channel her. And she had to channel her so impeccably to get away with it to the point that she eventually did win her record breaking six Tony Award. Could Jonathan Groff win the second Tony in a row for just in time? He could. This whole show is built around him and he does it with aplomb. But there are elements for me that keep me from feeling like it is that kind of a performance. It's impressive on a scale of physicality of like, what it just like what he's physically able to get through in that show for two and a half hours. It's impressive in terms of vocal agility. He sounds good the whole time. It's not a hardship to watch Jonathan Groff. It's not a hardship to listen to Jonathan Groff. But ultimately, for what is a Bobby Darin passion project and mostly just sort of feels like a Jonathan Groff Groff showcase. Now they are doing Bobby Darin's story. When. When I say showcase, I don't mean like, oh, there's no story there. Oh, it's just the songs. I mean, the whole evening is not really about Bobby Darin. It's an excuse for Jonathan Groff. I've had people come to me and say, I think that this is going to bring Bobby Darin back to a whole new Audience. Maybe it will. Maybe it will. The audience was that the audience that I was with was more engaged with being in the presence of Jonathan Groff. There were a few women at those tables who could not contain their excitement. One woman in particular kept jumping for joy and shaking in her seat anytime he got near them. And I love that for her. I love the joy she was feeling. She was living her best life. But would you tell me that that's a woman who's going to walk away and look up Bobby Darin later who felt like she got the Bobby Darin story? Or is that a woman who lives her best life because she was watching Jonathan Grob do what he does best? It's the. The Sphinx riddle, right? Not really, but you know what I mean. Like, it's a riddle from his Sphinx, essentially, of the thing that makes this show worth seeing is a double edged sword for me because it ultimately is also what keeps this from being an objectively good musical and an objectively great performance. It's an impressive feat from its lead actor and there's a lot of pizzazz in the presentation. Alex Timbers, I would argue, owes a lot to the DNA of Jersey Boys. The breaking of the fourth wall and even having Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin's mother give some of their own perspectives, which is very Jersey Boys. Four different perspectives on the same story. It's a similar time period and the non stop energy and non stop bullet train attitude of this production is very Jersey Boys, which, if we're being honest, Jersey Boys got that from Dreamgirls. And I admire this show for understanding in order to keep the audience on the path for this story, it has to just keep moving all the time. It does also for me lack an emotional punch. But that's something that I've always felt with Alex Timbers, is that he does comedy well, he does energy well, he does zaniness well, and he has an eye for stage.

B (84:20)

He.

A (84:20)

He can see a million different pictures in his head. But when it comes to emotional truth, when it comes to a romantic or tragic core, that's where he often loses me. And he doesn't do it very often, but when he does, you're like, oh, this is a blind spot for you. I don't think you really know how to connect this to your story and to your cast and to your audience. And that's enough for some people. They don't need that. They just, they have the highs of the rest of the evening that they don't care if there's not an emotional punch to It. But Just In Time has a tragic end. Bobby Darin does die very young, and they have a lot of foreshadowing of that throughout the show. And then when it finally happens, it happens very fast and kind of. It felt very empty to me, and I didn't go to this expecting to be moved. But that's sort of when you. When you can pull off that magic trick, that is when you can sort of separate yourself from the rest. Right. If you can be a Bullet train Fun time and then pack an emotional wallop at the end, that's like, oh, now, now. This went from being a fun time to being something special. And I didn't really get that from this. I had a very enjoyable time. And again, when I walked out, I was like, oh, Alex Timbers should have directed Pirates, because Alex Timbers can do fizzy energy and controlled chaos and he can get an audience on board with the speeding train. But I can't tell you that this is the diamond standard of the Bio jukebox musical. Bio Jukebox musicals are, in my opinion, lesser beasts in general. They tend to be vanity projects for the estate. This is one with a lot of creativity in it. Not much insight, but a lot of creativity and a lot of love for its source material, which I appreciate. And I mean, I think if I. If I were to compile my own personal five best musical nominees, I would heavily consider putting Just In Time in There, just because I think that it ultimately nails what it's trying to do more frequently than other new musicals this season that are aiming for something higher and don't clear the bar as successfully Just In Time as as far as I see it is aiming for a lower bar and hits it pretty consistently. There are just things about its aim that I question. Not because it's bad, but because I feel like that there could be a little bit more. And that's sort of where I'm at with Just In Time. I don't know if that was a comprehensive review at all. Again, if there's anything I missed that you wanted to hear about, by all means, write it in the Discord Channel. In terms of Tony chances, obviously Jonathan Groff is getting in there. I would love to put forward Gracie Lawrence as a potential featured actress nominee. I'm not sure if it'll happen, but I would like for her name to be considered. I think design wise, it should pretty much get in for everything. Lighting, set, costumes. I thought the costumes were pretty impeccable. And this is also a case where we should really get wig design in The Tony Awards. There's some really phenomenal wig work in this show. Pirates too. Pirates has some pretty solid wig work, I will say. And you don't notice how good wig work can be. Try saying wig work a million times. But you don't realize how good wig work can be until you see a bad wig. And I think that the aesthetic they give Erika Henningson for Sandra Dee is pretty impeccable. Gracie Lawrence for Connie Francis is impeccable. It's. It's. This is a very, very fun time. I do not regret going. This is up there in the season for me, for sure. For every negative thing I just said about Just in Time, I want to remind you that I did actually like this overall. I liked a lot of it overall. I had. The bumps that I have are not bumps that take away from my time so much as it's things I want to acknowledge because it's being discussed right now online. The bumps that I had with this show and the people who are defending it seem to not be understanding what it is when those of us who have these issues are communicating this issue. And I hope I communicated it well if I didn't. Apologies. But when those of us talk about how, like, the show ultimately feels like an excuse for a showcase and how Groff does not necessarily embody Darren, but he does because of the showman in him and the natural star quality of him, a lot of people are willing to forgive that. There are those who defend it and say, I'm not forgiving it. He does embody him. This is a bit more of a boy from Oz than it is of a lady. Day meets Jersey Boys. Does that make sense? This is a star vehicle for Jonathan Groff and shows all of the abilities that he has. What it does, again, what it doesn't do is show him as Bobby Darin. And for someone like me, for someone like my mom, that's kind of important because it's supposed to be the point. Now, unfortunately for them, a lot of people going into this probably don't know Bobby Darin and don't know what he sounded like or looked like or acted like. And thus, as far as they're concerned, Grof is embodying him. But if you do know Bobby Darin, you know, you're not going to get an impersonation. You're not going to get a personification and embodiment of it. You're going to get the Jonathan Groff show, which is not a bad show to be at. It's just not the Bobby Darin show. That's it for now, guys. Thank you so much for listening. Stay tuned tomorrow when I do my final Tony predictions and then stay tuned for Thursday afternoon when the theater lovers come on to react to the official Tony nominations with me. And then after that will be my final round of reviews for Dead Outlaw and Real Women have Curves and Old Friends, Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends. And that'll be a fun time. Yeah. So for this episode for the diva, I want to close us out. I'm going to because I thought she did such a great job in this. I am going to have us close out with Gracie Lawrence. I don't think there's any audio of her yet in just in time. So I'm just gonna have to find something from her band to play. But just remember, I really enjoyed her and I would love it if she got nominated. So that's it. Yeah, we'll see you guys in tomorrow and then two days after that. And have a good 24 hours. 12 to 24 hours. Ish. Take it away, Gracie. Bye. Oh, wait, sorry. If you want to follow me, I'm on Instagram only. Mattcoplek Join the Discord Channel. If you like this podcast, give us a nice 5 star rating or review because you guys have been killing it with the reviews and it's gonna help us with the theater wing. I just know it. And that's it. Now it's it. Take it away, Gracie.

B (90:52)

Bye to the end Just, just like a friend I tried to warn you somehow but we had our way and now we must be I am sad and so sorry Now.