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Matt Koplik
Hi, I'm Ariana Grande. Hi, I'm Cynthia Erivo and you're listening to the Broadway Podcast Network. Visit BPM FM to discover more. This episode is brought to you by Chevy Silverado. When it's time for you to ditch the blacktop and head off road, do it in a truck that says no to nothing. The Chevy Silverado Trail Boss. Get the rugged capability of its Z71 suspension and 2 inch factory lift, plus impressive torque and towing capacity thanks to an available Duramax 3 liter turbo diesel engine. Where other trucks call it quits, you'll just be getting started. Visit chevy.com to learn more. Nordstrom brings you the season's most wanted brands, Skims, Mango Free People and Princess polly, all under $100. From trending sneakers to beauty must haves, we've curated the styles you'll wear on repeat this spring. Free shipping, free returns and in store pickup make easier than ever. Shop now in stores and@nordstrom.com thank you very much. That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do, but Mr. Grant. Ah, hit it Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright Lies, White Lies. Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And today we have another review episode, a review bundle. This is the second to last one of the season and we're going to do our best to kind of give everything concisely and hopefully give all of you wonderful listeners an idea of these shows and some, you know, enough information for you to decide if you want to see it, if you don't want to see it, and then how it maybe influences your Tony predictions, which are coming up in a few days. After this episode will be my final Tony predictions, which I am mostly flying, not blind for. There will be two shows I haven't seen before the nominations come out, two shows I will not have seen when I record my prediction episode, but I will have seen everything else. So we're doing the best we can with that, but otherwise we're good. So we are reviewing today Floyd Collins and Lincoln Center Theater, the Penzance musical at Roundabout and just in time. It's the Jonathan Groff Bobby Darin musical. I will be doing it in that exact order. And before we get to any of it. I have a couple of reviews to read out because I asked that we buff up the Broadway Breakdown Apple podcast review page. So that way when we submit to the American Theatre Wing to be on the official press list, they would have enough, hopefully enough material to read from you guys to go, yeah, let's put that Matt Kaplan idiot on our press list. And I will say you guys have been really stepping it up. I read one review last week and then like a whole bunch of others came through like, like day after day after day. So I'm only gonna really. I'm only going to read three of them today because I want to spread it out. I want everyone to get their roses. So I'm doing three today, I'll do two tomorrow, and then one more on the day that we react to the Tony nominations officially with our friends the theater lovers. Okay, so with that said, I'm gonna sort of barrel through these. Cue the light of the Piazza Overture. 5 stars the breast Broadway Podcast Written by Old Twink I've listened to most of the Broadway podcasts out there and this is the only one I keep coming back for. The episodes are in depth and I love hearing Matt's take on new shows and classics alike. He really is a skilled podcaster and it feels like catching up with a friend when you listen. Thank you very much. Nice to know that I have friends. Next one. 5 stars Theater gays giving Real Opinions Written by Call Me by your Shame y'all are really coming through with these names. I just started listening to this show and wow, do I love it. I thought my friends were the only fags who could spend hours upon hours talking about shows, analyzing every little detail from every production. Fags, I should just say, has an asterisk for the A because I don't think they wanted to get flagged. I feel like I am amongst kindred spirits who also possess so much unnecessary Broadway knowledge. Unnecessary? Necessary. Who's to say Matt and his various co hosts don't sugarcoat their well supported thoughts, which I really appreciate. Sorry, Jesse Green, your days are numbered. Ooh, Jesse. Oh Jesse, we got a lot of stuff to say to you. And then last one. Five stars and the Tony Award for best podcast goes to. Written by actor to attorney Pipeline. This one's a bit longer. What can I say about this podcast that hasn't already been said? Matt is incredibly insightful and presents incredibly thoughtful opinions that while others may find critical, clearly illustrates his deep love and respect for theater as an art form. Similar to Matt I was an incredibly pretentious theater kid who sang Ladies who Lunch at a children's theater audition when I was 12, and listening to these podcasts brings me such a sense of joy. Like many listeners, I left theater after college, and this podcast reconnects me to a part of myself that is so central to my development. I love listening to Matt's deep dives like Problematic and Underestimated and all of his Tony predictions. I recently introduced my dad to the Pod, and Matt's ranking of best scores since 1970 inspired us to do our own monthly musical book club where we do a deep dive into a show to discuss. Oh, fuck, yeah. Of course. Supplemented with Matt's incredible episodes on the show. Well, thank you. This is all to say thank you, Matt, for creating such an incredible podcast that makes us all better patrons of the arts. Well, you're all very welcome. Oh, God. Y'all really do a really wonderful job with these reviews. I feel very, very fortunate to have all of you listen to this podcast frequently, and I just hope that I can continue giving content that you all enjoy. And. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this before. I sometimes get cited with being considered condescending or pretentious or overly critical, and I don't. I do not think that I am, or at least I try very hard not to be. It's hard when you're discussing things you don't like to make it not sound condescending because you are literally talking down about something. But I do as. As the reviews have said, I do try to back it up with real reasons why I feel the way that I do and really analyze this. I was talking to a friend the other day about another show that I recently saw that will not be reviewed on this episode. It will be reviewed on the next episode. And he had felt one way about the show and then was asking a lot of people about that show, and they were all feeling differently. And so he was kind of having a theory tested out about social structure with certain classes of people on that show and then asked my opinion, and I gave him mine. And he was like, huh? Well, you threw my theory out into the garbage with your opinion. I was like, well, sorry about that, but what can I say? I am very, very, very special. But, yeah, when we talk about how we feel about stuff, right? When we talk about something that we didn't like, and ultimately we're talking all the things we're dinging it for, it's mostly us trying to explain and trying to figure out for ourselves why Something didn't work for us because with a lot of art, it is weirdly a chemical reaction. You have an immediate response to something and it can be that you just genuinely found it to be wonderful. Sometimes something can be messy, but you still really enjoy it. Case in point, my review with Boop. And we we have this as a space to talk about all of that, as well as the Discord channel, which I'll put a link for in the description box. And if that working at some point again, DM me on Instagram to get a new link. We have over 260 members on the discord. We are slowly approaching 300, which is exciting. And we have over 300 ratings and reviews for the podcast 308. Let's keep that number rolling, everybody. And now let's just sort of move on and get to the reviews. Reviews that you guys want to hear about. First up, Floyd Collins at Lincoln Center Theater. This is the Broadway debut of the musical written by Adam Gettle and Tina Landau, which premiered in 1996 at Playwrights Horizons and was very much a launching piece for both Landau and Gettel. Landau has done more in theater than Gettel has. Gettel is notorious for taking a very long time to write his scores, but when he does write them, there's a lot of beauty to them. And granted, I think Piazza is still his masterwork, but Floyd Collins is a wonderful runner up. And I knew this show relatively well. As I've mentioned before, I did the Riddle Song in college, but I do have the script. I've read it a few times. I've listened to it a few times. I've never seen a production of Floyd Collins, but I always knew about the original production and how it was staged. And a lot of regional productions and college productions do very similar things. And when they announced that Floyd Collins was going to be done at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, those of us who were familiar with the show were intrigued and a little baffled because Floyd Collins is ultimately an intimate show. This production, I think, has a cast of 15. Normally it's a cast of 12 or 13, so, you know, beefed it up a bit for Broadway. But it's a small show, always has been, with sort of an indie folk country sound to it, and has always been very presentational and simplistic. And in its design and its staging in 96 at Playwrights Horizons, it was basically a bear stage with a psych and a couple of pieces, you know, coming on and off. And mostly it was bear. And to represent Floyd Collins, the cave explorer The Kentucky cave explorer in 1825 who got trapped inside of a cave while trying to explore it. The way that Tina Landau did it originally was the original actor was on a slab of wood facing the audience sort of at a tilt, you know, tilting backwards a little bit, and just was stuck on that slab for most of the show. And it was fascinating reading reports from early previews of Floyd Collins from a lot of people who did not like it or were confused by it. And one of the first things they said was, there's no set and Jeremy Jordan is in a lawn chair the entire time. And sometimes I understand criticisms like that. It's like, oh, you love newsies and you love Great Gats. When you didn't read on this, you just saw that Jeremy Jordan was doing this and you love Jeremy Jordan, so you went to go see it and you were thrown by the whole thing. But there were people on the message boards who claimed to know Floyd Collins well and were still anti everything about this production at the offset, which confused me, like, oh, I love the show. I know everything about it. I've been a fan for years. And this production is just so bare and. And why is Jeremy in a chair? I'm like, then you don't actually know the show because that's always been the show. So a lot of people showing their ass in the first two weeks of previews with Floyd Collins. That's to say, I went in, you know, with that in my head, having heard those critiques as well as reading the reviews, some of which were very effusive and others were a little more mixed. But I was open minded because I love the score and I was like, you know what it is the people who brought it to life the first time. And it's a strong cast and I'm interested to see what they do. Because the thing about the Beaumont, the reason why many of us were baffled by it with Floyd Collins being an intimate show, is that the Beaumont is both an intimate space and a barn. The Vivian Beaumont was originally designed to be a repertory theater. When the theater at Lincoln center was going to possibly be like our version of a national theater like they have in London. And that didn't end up happening. But for a while there were shows being done in rep, and that meant that the thrust stage was going to be the main stage and everything behind it was going to store all of the scenery that would be brought in and out for every show, which is something they actually do at the National. There are a lot of shows that play the Same stage in rep. And when that kind of ended and Lincoln center picked up the theater on its own, first of all, the Public Theater picked it up first and then Lincoln Center. But eventually people were having more fun with this space. Some people would just use the thrust, some people would use all the stage in the back. And so you have this 1000 slightly under 1100 seat amphitheater with a thrust that can feel very intimate. And then this football stadium behind it that works very well for epic musicals and epic plays. So for something like a war horse or a Coast of Utopia, a carousel or canine or South Pacific, it can feel like a really intimate theater for a gargantuan musical. But when you're doing an intimate show and you're using the full space, it feels like a barn. And the thrust in Floyd Collins, every show at the Beaumont changes how they designed the thrust. And the thrust for Floyd Collins is like half the length that it's been for a lot of Bart Shera shows, if that gives you any sort of sense of scope. And they use the football stadium a lot, and not even all of it, by the way. From what I could gather, the psych for Floyd Collins comes in maybe 2/3 into the stage. So those of you who know the Beaumont or have worked at the Beaumont will know, like, yes, it's very deep for Floyd Collins, but it's not as deep as it could go. But that's to say, there is a lot of times when the Beaumont stage actually kind of swallows Floyd Collins the Musical. And that's a little disappointing because when we heard it was going into this theater, many of us are sort of going, oh, are they going to rethink the show design wise? Are they going to maybe put audience members on the stage to really make it intimate? Or are they going to lean into the fact that we're in a cave half of the time, which can feel very spacious and empty and echoey. And the answer is mostly just the latter. Now, there is a set. I've got a. There is a set for Floyd Collins written by the collective design team. Designed by the collective design team, Dots. And before I go any further, I should probably say this now. Hot take. Full disclosure. I really, really, really liked Floyd Collins, which is maybe shocking to some people. I don't know. I am a weirdo. I'm an esoteric fuck. But I've always really enjoyed this score. I had never seen the show live, but I've always enjoyed the score. And I think that when this production works, because it doesn't always work, and I'll give a little bit of feedback about that in a second. But when this production works, it's pure poetry. It's like. Because Gettel's music, to me, when Gettle does good music, it's just like melted butter. And Landau is not a director who I find is really great with actors. I don't even really think she's great with musicals in general or storytelling, if I'm being honest. But she has a keen eye for visuals and knows how to play with space. And when she's locked in, there's some imagery in this Floyd Collins that's absolutely fantastic. And when she knows what she's doing with a number, when she has a clear vision for it and kind of repurposes what she did in 96, but on a more expansive stage with better technology, and it's. It's beautiful. I mean, things like the Call, which is Jeremy Jordan's first number, where Floyd is exploring the cave. For me, there's nothing this season that's been better than the Call. There have been things that have been equal to it. Certain things in maybe happy ending, a couple of moments in Sunset Boulevard, hills of California. But there's been nothing this season that has been better than the staging, the design, and Jeremy singing and performance of the Call, the second song in Floyd Collins. That is an example of a high point in this show, of it being when it's good. Being so good that you're like, well, fuck me blue, I couldn't be happier. There are bumps, though. As I said, Floyd Collins is a weird musical. And seeing it live, I'm not entirely convinced that it's a phenomenal musical. It's an interesting one, and it's overall a good one. Again, I think that the best parts of it make up for the weaker parts of it, but it is a bit long. It doesn't totally earn its length. I don't think that it's structured terribly well. Act one is very plotting, I guess I would say. There's one major inciting incident and then it's just a lot of tension of trying to get Jeremy Jordan out of the cave for all of Act 1 and making a little progress, then no progress, and then one final burst of progress at the end of Act 1 before Act 2 sort of dissolves into chaos and ego and greed from the community and people coming into the town to profit off of Floyd's misfortunes and the press, who are also profiting off of Floyd's misfortunes. But, yes, act one is slow and can feel a little tedious. That is a script thing. That is a Tina Lando as a book writer thing. And as I also said, for every time that I thought that Landau and her design team made beautiful use of the space, there were times when it felt a little clunky and a little. What's the word I'm looking for? Unaware, I suppose. Tina Landau and Ann Bogart created this technique called Viewpoints. And you can. They wrote a book about it that you can read. We had to read it in college at Emerson, especially when Anne Bogart came to direct a musical at Emerson. And it has a lot to do with spatial awareness and what it means when you place actors in a specific way, at a specific height, specific distances, what it relates to the audience, and what it can tell you about power and tension and everything. And there's a lot of viewpoints happening in Floyd Collins, a lot of moments of cast members in various spots on the Beaumont stage, in silhouette against the psych. And it creates these very often very beautiful tableaus. The design also is deceptively complex because it begins as a bare stage, but there are pockets of the stage that reveal platforms that come out of the ground, and they slide up and they slide out, and they will often create holes in the ground that characters will run into to represent characters going into the cave to try to rescue Floyd, coming out of a different pocket of the stage to show them. Now in the cave with Floyd. The way that the stage deck pops up and around, honestly, in the darkness as Jeremy is wandering his way around during the call is just absolutely magic, in my opinion, and shows you that, yes, this is ultimately a black box, but this is a black box with surprises in it. It reminded me a lot, actually, of the design of the sound Inside at Studio 54 with Mary Louise Parker, which was ultimately a black box stage, but would have certain things come out in the light that would reveal that this was a set with surprises in it, similar to Phantom. Phantom is a very similar design where often it was very simple, but something would come out of nowhere that would take you by complete surprise. And it gave you this sense of theatrical thrill. And as the show continues, Landau does slowly fill the stage more with. With lights and with pipes and with cranes. It was people trying to, you know, get Floyd out of there. And then when we get to the how the Glory Goes, or so how it goes to how the Glory Goes. Is that the name of the song or is it just Glory Goes. Sorry, one second. I'm doing this after a workout and like so much cups of coffee. So how Glory Goes, not how that glory goes. How Glory goes. When we get to How Glory Goes, it is a very spare, sad. Everything gets moved away and we are in sort of this. In between, between the world and the afterlife for Floyd and this weird sense of calm and foreboding, but also peace. And again, it's a way to show. It's a way to use the space in a very effective and simple way. Now, there are those who think of the Beaumont and they're like, I want sets, I want sets upon sets upon sets. You aren't going to get that here. You are going to get a set that is effective and, you know, applicable to the story, it's telling to the tone of the story. So you're not going to get spectacle, but you are going to get a design and it is effective for this production, in my opinion. There are some casting elements in this Floyd Collins that I wasn't super on board for. The. The music is given a five star treatment. It's an expanded orchestration, it sounds beautiful. The cast all have amazing voices. This is definitely a star turn for Jeremy and I'll get to him in a bit more in a second. But musically speaking, there's not a note. I have tens across the board, no notes. The acting gets a little trickier here. There are two rather important roles that I think are miscast from an acting perspective. One is Lizzie McAlpine as Nellie, who is Floyd's sister. She has a gorgeous voice and she sings this really difficult score beautifully. I cannot wait to listen to the cast recording for this. But as an actress, she's a bit at sea. Now, you could argue that this is intentional. We learn at the start of the show, once Floyd is trapped, that Nellie has been released from a psychiatric ward and she's kind of on a different plane than everyone else. And in fact, one of the things in the show is that Nellie and Floyd have this very intimate and very otherworldly connection. There's an indication that Nelly might have some sort of psychic abilities. She's able to connect with Floyd in the cave from the ground and she. And she sort of sees the world and sees everything around her and in a much different way from everyone, which makes her odd in their eyes. I did not find that Lizzie McAlpine was able to channel the oddness, nor was I able to feel that she was channeling the love. This is a very cold show in a lot of ways, despite how much emotion there is in the second act, because a lot of the oddness of it. There's a lot of coldness in there. And especially in a space as large as the Beaumont. It's sometimes hard to feel the emotion from the stage and from the characters. And when you have casting elements like Elizzie McAlpine who's. And I'm probably saying her name incorrectly when you have her as Nellie and she is singing with beauty, but her character work is rather lacking. There's a heart that feels like it's missing sometimes. I will also say another miscast in my personal opinion is Jason Gauthe as Floyd's brother Homer. Jason sings it beautifully. And this is not necessarily a fault of Jason, who I think is very talented and I've liked in many things. I loved him in Teeth. I find Jason as a presence to just be very. He comes off sort of naturally cold to me as well. Which again, is a detriment to this production that needs as much heart and warmth as. As it can get since so much of it takes place in the dark in a cave. And again is a small scale musical being done on a very large stage. And so you need a lot of warmth on that stage. And two of the most crucial roles for that are Nelly and Homer. And unfortunately, Lizzie is sort of not really at home as an actress. And Jason is not a warm actor on stage. At least when I've watched him, he, you know, he doesn't play Homer. He doesn't intentionally play Homer cold. He's going for connection and earnestness, but just something about his Persona. Whenever I see him on stage, there's always something a little untrustworthy in the characters that I've seen him play. And if you've watched him either in Teeth or if you watched him on the Gossip Girl reboot, which granted that was a piece of shit reboot, but still, you know, he's a very handsome guy, but it's a very brooding and icy feeling. And Jason Daniely in 96, who played Homer, very much sort of golden boy, all American, very much golden retriever with his light blonde hair and very 1940s movie star looks. And there was just this Labrador feeling about him. And I feel like with Homer, you do need a little bit of that golden retriever energy. Because then when Homer is getting slowly seduced by the possibilities of fame and money in Act 2 during the circus number, it doesn't feel in this production like a lot has been lost. So much as that it feels like Homer is leaning into his natural tendencies. We don't see someone who genuinely loves his brother and is willing to do everything he can to help his brother start to lose his way as fame and fortune start making their way towards him. So those were some of my biggest complaints with this production of Floyd Collins. Some of it is the material, the script is a little sluggish, and some of it is Tina Landau as a director, not really always making the most of the space. Some of it is casting two performances that I thought were musically beautiful and lacked a bit of warmth and heart where you really need it. I've already said, musically, I found this production pretty flawless. I think the design works very well with the show. The sound design. I had heard reports that the sound design wasn't good at first. It was pretty crystal clear at the matinee that I saw. And the echoing in the cave for the call and for the second half of act two, all worked really well. The lighting is beautiful. Again, very shadowy, but very specific and gives a sense of foreboding. And there's a nice sort of change of pace in Act 2 when we get to the carnival, where everything starts to get very chaotic and everyone's losing their way as Floyd is ultimately dying in this cave. And just a lot of different colors and feelings and energy for the design palette for me on this Floyd Collins. So that was really lovely to see. Ultimately, at the heart of this production is Jeremy Jordan as Floyd. I've always found Jeremy to be a very talented and captivating performer. Voice wise, I think he's pretty untouched. Acting wise. I always thought that he had a lot to offer, but just was never in projects that gave me anything. I first saw him in Bonnie and Clyde, and that was me going, oh, this is a guy who's putting his whole booty into this in a way that is raw and fun and a little messy. But, like, there's. He's. He's acting in a way that we don't see very often anymore in musicals, which is. He doesn't do what we call Disney Channel acting, which is very, you know, you put your hands sort of in a V as you move forward and you go, but don't you understand what I'm talking about? You don't. You don't know what I've been through. It's very presentational and it's earnest, but it's not honest. And Jeremy is sort of the opposite of that, I have found. And it's been. It's very refreshing to see him in this. That allows him the opportunity to have that raw honesty in a character. And it doesn't feel Too much, because the material and the story justifies his very highly theatrical, but again, very organic acting. And the material is also just strong enough for him to get pushed further. This is not a Gatsby. This is not, you know, Newsies. This is a much more complicated score, complicated character, and requires a lot of him. And the charting he does for the character of optimism and full of hope and promise, and then to see the fear settle in and the. The faith go out of his body and out of his eyes, and then to have it slowly come back again. And then the way that his Floyd comes to peace with his fate in How Glory Goes is. It's a commanding, captivating, and extremely impressive performance. It honestly has shot to top of my list of lead actor in a musical. It is the kind of performance that is not impressive because of physical elements. He is indeed sitting for a great deal of the show, but what makes it impressive is what he's able to inject into the piece. Part of himself, but also his. It shows his intelligence and his natural talent for being a performer and for being an actor, a singing actor. And it's all beautifully charted. He has it all mapped out, but it doesn't feel predetermined. It feels in the moment. And for a show that is not a star vehicle. He is the title role, but it's not a star vehicle. In a lot of ways. He is the focal point and the. The focal point and the. And the support of this entire show. It all rests on his shoulders and it's all focused around him. And if he were wrong, it all would fall apart. But he's so very right in it. And thus all the other bumpy elements of the production, while they are there and they matter, they are a little less harsh for me because the most important thing, which is Jeremy Jordan's performance as Floyd Collins, is so correct. And as I said, the Call is a wonderful number just in terms of how it's executed by Landau and her design team, but also what Jordan does as Floyd, how he. What he brings to the musicality of it and the character. And, like, that might be the one song in the whole show that gives voters a look at the physical things he's doing while he's performing. And it is impressive, but it's you. I. You don't watch it, and you think to yourself, like, oh, my God, how is it that Jeremy Jordan can do all of this? You're just watching, and you are enthralled by the storytelling of it all. And again, if he were lacking, you would maybe be more impressed by the physical elements of it, but you're just impressed by the overall package. And I consider that the highest praise you can give an actor where you aren't seeing the acting, but you're feeling it. And the music comes so from deep within his personage that it doesn't feel like a singing showcase. It just naturally soars, which is ultimately what you need when you're doing gettle. It's why Brian D'Arcy James and Kelli O'Hara came off so well in Days of Wine and Roses, because they are very good singing actors with the technical skills to get through the music. But are smart actors to know that they can't just rely on the music. They have to have it drilled into their bodies so it can just naturally come out of their bodies. It's ultimately the defining difference when you watch somebody who is working very hard at something that maybe isn't a natural fit. And then seeing somebody in role or with a score that fits them like a glove. And obviously that doesn't mean that they are laid back. They put a lot of work into it, but you never want to see the work. You want to feel the work. And this is a performance where it's 100% that. Another performance I want to give a major shout out to. There's been some talk about him on the Web, but I want to say it right here, right now. My other favorite performance in this Floyd Collins is Taylor Trench as Skeets Miller, the reporter who goes on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting of Floyd Collins and begins the show as a scrappy, underdog reporter looking for the scoop. And because he's so small, he's able to fit into the cave and get closer to Floyd than anyone else can and ends up bonding with Floyd. And a lot of his reporting on the story comes from Floyd's perspective. He does interviews with him, and he eventually gets so invested in it that he's one of the few people by Act Two who hasn't lost sight of what's important of what they are trying to do, which is rescue Floyd Collins and not worry about the media circus around it or any of the opportunities that can come from all the attention that he's getting. And Taylor does a really phenomenal journey with that. It's not much of a singing role. He's got some music, but it's mostly acting work. And it's beautiful acting work. And he picks up any slack that might be there when Jeremy isn't performing. When Jeremy's not having a scene. And it has to be Taylor. Taylor absolutely keeps it all together and it's a performance I hope gets recognized. It may not be. It's a weird field this year, but it's a beautiful performance and should be recognized and I hope that people do. That's all I can really think about for Floyd Collins. If I haven't covered anything that you want to know about, you can feel free to write it in the Discord channel or you can even reach out to me on Instagram. This is absolutely a production that I recommend. It is very up there in my rankings for me and that ranking system will come out in a week or two. But I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed Floyd Collins. Part of it is the music. It is a gorgeous score and it is given a five star treatment. Part of it is Jeremy Jordan's performance, Taylor Trench's performance. Some of it is the visual work that Landau and her team do. And again, it's not perfect. It has bumps to it. It's not top three of the season for me, but it is for me better than many of the musical productions this season, even ones that might have a smoother start to finish production than Floyd Collins. Because Floyd Collins hits some pretty extraordinary highs. And its lows aren't even garbage lows. They are just sort of. They are what I would call a tedious low. It's not amateur. It's just moments of it that don't fit as well. And it's more obvious when you compare it to the moments that fit so beautifully. Well, it is often gorgeous, moving. It can sometimes be slow and ponderous and a little theater kitty. Indoor theater kitty, which is Landau and Gettle to a table. But I would highly recommend it. Very much worth seeing. Surprise, bitch. Matt Koplik really, really liked Floyd Collins. I might go so far as to say that he loved it. I can definitely say I loved half of it and then really, really liked 25% of it and had notes on another 25%. But if you know me, that's a high percentage. So that's enough. Lloyd Collins. We're going to take a break and then we're going to get into pirates and then probably take one more break and get into just in time. So sit still 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 collar. You're the top. You're a coolage dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of 24 chefs, 24 culinary showdowns for 24 hours straight. Which chef will outcook, outpace, outlast the competition? No chef escapes the clock. All new 24 and 24. Last chef standing Sunday night at eight. See it first on Food Network stream next day on Max. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You might say all kinds of stuff when things go wrong, but these are the words you really need to remember. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique insurance needs, meaning you can talk to your agent to choose the coverage you need, have coverage options to protect the things you value most, file a claim right on the State Farm mobile app, and even reach a real person when you need to talk to someone. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Everyone has a reason to change. Growing old heartbreak, a fresh start. 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I listened to the cast recording a bunch 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 the cast of that pirates is very much, with the exception of Linda Ronstadt, classical singers. But it's not all in their coloratura. 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 fucker. And to boil it down, before I get into 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 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, you have, you haven't done anything because everyone knows that you guys are sims. 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, he tells the pirates that the Major General is not an orphan. And so the pirates 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. You. 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 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's. 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 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? 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 Gay Days, 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 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 going to give it. I'm not. I refuse 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 and 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 going to 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 smartdom. 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 a pore, 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 opin. And the lyrics are all like, we're sashaying through Yule Finch Quarter. And, like, we can be doctors and we can be presidents and we can be 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 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. Hashtag, you know, 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, ah, 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 and listing 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 strengths, 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. 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 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 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've 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, 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 talents. 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 Carl. 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 of. 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. The diversity of cartoons. With Ernesty, 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. Well, 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's just not what it should be. If you're going to 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 Karimlou 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 Kline 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 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 Romin is not one. He, 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. You know, 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 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 it's. She's maneuvering. She's. She's navigating the score. It's very similar to when I saw Adina 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. 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 in 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 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 types could end up knocking out Andrew Durand 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 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 it's 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 keep in mind what it was that the show was going for when it came out and if there are things that in the in its aging process over the decades that have kept it from reaching modern audiences, help it along, get it. 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 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. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire. Hey there, travelers. Kaley Cuoco here. Sorry to interrupt your music, great artist, BT Dubs, but wouldn't you rather be there to hear it live? With Priceline, you can get out of your dreams and into your dream concert. They've got millions of travel deals to get you to that festival gig, rave, sound bath or sonic experience you've been dreaming of. 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Ask your doctor about epglis and visit epglis.lily.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979. 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 in 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 Coppolk 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 coppa 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 within 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. Erika 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 ends up. 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, you know, thrown into show businesses 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 like, you don't know what my childhood was like. And all it takes is a simple Google search of Sandra Dean, like, 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 jubox 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 Grof 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. Wolfe. 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 Groff 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 I'm sort of sitting here going, we can love Jonathan Groff all 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 he just like what he's physically able to get through in that show for two and a half hours. It's impressive in, you know, in terms of vocal agility. He get, you know, 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 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 at 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, of the thing that makes this show worth seeing is a double edged sword for me because it's, 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. He, 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 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, 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 a 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 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 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 it's. I feel like that there could be a little bit more, and that's sort of where I'm at with. 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 Erica Henningson for Sandra Dee is pretty impeccable. Gracie Lawrence for Connie Francis is impeccable. 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. 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 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, Groff 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 yet. It's just not the Bobby Darin show. That's it for now, guys. Thanks 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 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. Matt Kopplek Join the Discord Channel. If you like this podcast, give us a nice 5 star rating or review because you guys have been great. Killing it with the reviews. And it's going to help us with the theater wing. I just know it. And that's it. Now it's it. Take it away, Gracie. Bye to the end. Just like a friend I tried to warn you somehow.
- [96:08]
Jeffrey Scott Parsons
Hey, everybody, this is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. I have just realized that I don't like the sound of my own voice, which is hilarious because I've started a podcast. Here's the deal. When we are younger, let's say 8 to 10 years old, we find filters through which we relate and understand the world. They're usually artistic in nature. Sometimes we find books, music. A lot of people find movies. For me, I found musical theater. Musical theater was my little Instagram filter through which I began to relate to the world. And that meant that the reason I knew about FDR and the New Deal in school was because of Annie. And the reason I could name all 12 tribes of Israel at church was because of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And if I'm being totally honest, a few years later, as I got older, the way that I was able to process the death of my close family members was by watching Ragtime. That's why I wanted to create a podcast, was to have conversations about musical theater that felt more profound than the razzmatazz that we usually use to get people to buy tickets. Because, let's be honest, I don't care if you think that musical theater is cool. Cool is overrated. I live in Los Angeles, so I know that cool is very overrated. But I do know that musical theater is important. And those are the conversations that I want to be having on this podcast. Here's how it's going to work. Every week we're going to pick a show, and for that show, I'm going to have a guest and we're going to have a conversation about that show, about that musical. So what are the musicals we're going to cover? These musicals can be hits. Maybe they're not. There's no shortage of musicals, let's say, okay, the first musical to win the Tony Award for best musical was in 1949, Kiss Me Kate. Right. So now we're in 2019. So if we just did the best musical winners, and that's not even including the musicals that didn't win best musical, like Beauty and the Beast or West side Story or Wicked or what else? Funny Girl, Gypsy. I think what will be really fun is that every guest is going to bring something different and everybody has different tastes in terms of what they like the shows to be. Some of these shows will be some of my favorite shows. Some of them will be favorites of the guests. Some of them might be your favorites. And that might mean that we're covering a musical that I don't really care for. I'm looking at you, Mamma Mia. But it's one of the longest running shows in Broadway history, so who am I to say that people aren't connecting to it? So we'll look at it and we'll at least come up with a hypothesis as to why people connect to the show and why it's bringing them joy. So I want to hear from you. If you have an idea for a show that you would want us to cover, just email us@amusicalpodcastmail.com or you can always contact us on Twitter. Sign Musical Podcast. I'm excited to hear your thoughts. Tell me what show you want us to cover and then you have to give me a good reason. It can't just be. Well, maybe it can just be. I did the show in my community theater and I want to hear what you guys have to say about it. If that's it, just be honest. I want to hear your reasonings. Why? Be sure to, like, comment. Subscribe to the podcast whenever you can and share it with your friends. Because at the end of the day, you're another day older. No, at the end of the day, I want this to be a community where people can come and celebrate this art form in a way that maybe doesn't get explored as much. So please call me Jeff and bring along your show albums, because we're about to get turned up. No, that's terrible. So please call me Jeff and get ready because a musical theater podcast is starting now.