A (0:00)

Thank you very much.

B (0:01)

That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish.

A (0:03)

Oh, I'm sure you do.

B (0:04)

But Mr. Greg, hit it. Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright lights, white light, rhythm and romance. A trade is made. So while we wait, we're going.

A (0:37)

Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history un 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 we've got a biggie today. We got a new review that we gotta do. It is a little's known show, kinda underground, starring a whole cast of nobodies that have absolutely no following whatsoever. It's not like it's an anticipated event of the season or nothing. It is Gypsy. Starring six time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, Tony winner Danny Burstein and a whole bunch of others. Directed by two time Tony winner George C. Wolfe. Choreographed by Camille A. Brown. Y' all have heard me talk about this production know coming up and how much I was looking forward to it, how high my expectations were. You know, this was, this was a big one for me and I can't wait to talk to you guys about it. Primarily because I am recording this as I am writing my review for this on Instagram. I did not get press seats for this show. I paid my own money to see it, to get a solid view of the stage and thus I can also write a review for it on Instagram. And I'm still kind of debating if I am gonna do it or not. Writing reviews on Instagram are really fucking hard. I don't really enjoy doing them anymore. And the Internet is wild. And so you put all this hard work and craft and care into it and then everyone just in bad faith or good faith or you know, surface level faith, just go on in. And even though the whole point of my reviews is that it's a take on work that people have done, I try to put a lot of thought and care into it. So it's always fun to do the same and then have people just write four words of just stupidity in the comments. So tbd, if I do that, if I do post it, it will be probably the last one I put on Instagram. Just because it's, I'm. I'm tired and I'm done and I'm not really all that excited to do it anymore. Before we get into the review on the podcast though, we did have a new review for Broadway Breakdown, so I just want to give that its due. And then we will head right into Gypsy. So cue the light and the Piazza Overture Music 5 stars Review from A Suburban mom it's pretty accurate. I stumbled across this podcast over the summer while trying to figure out why Lempicko was getting critically shredded while my kids couldn't stop singing along. Say what you will, the songs are total Bob's smiley face. We're a casual theater going family making it to two, three shows a year, so plenty of the references in Broadway Breakdown fly right over my head, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying Matt's sharp and insightful takes. His reviews have helped us discern what shows are up our alley or at least avoid a few missteps. As a big podcast fan, my usual lineup leans toward hosts like Peter Attia and David Puder. Heavy on the science, light on the sas. Matt, on the other hand, is a delightful change of pace. Fun, fiery and full of personality. Keep doing what you're doing, Matt. Us suburban moms are here for it. Thank you very much. I like that the moms are here for me. Or some mothers. Speaking of mothers, we got ourselves a mother today. Mother Rose. Mama Rose. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to go about talking about this. As I said, I'm in the middle of writing my review for this as well on Instagram, so there's going to be a lot of overlap with what I say. So you can either skip this or you can skip the Instagram review. Who cares? Nothing matters. Whatever I had said in the past Never underestimate Audra McDonald. Never underestimate George C. Wolf. These are two of my favorite artists to work in musical theater. George C. Wolfe has given me some of my favorite productions and even ones that I didn't get to see live, but I researched and went to the library to watch. I'm just in awe of As a writer and director, he's one of the smartest men to ever grace Broadway, and he has a particular fondness for the era in which Gypsy takes place in, which is to say, the 20s and early 30s, the heyday and then downfall of vaudeville. Look at the Wild Party and Shuffle along and Jelly's Last Jam. And he also is not afraid to tackle race in a way that might make audiences uncomfortable, but do make them think once again, Shuffle along and Jelly's Last Jam. But also Caroline or change Top Dog, Underdog, Bring in De Noise bring in defunct his original play, the Colored Museum, which is what really sort of put him on the map in New York City. So when it was announced that Audra was going to be starring in this, I, along with a lot of people, was a little throne. She was not really who I would have thought of for this role. My go to had always been in my dreams that George C. Wolf would direct this starring Toni Collette. And if not Toni Collette, then Heather Headley. And Audra is absolutely one of my favorite musical theater artists, definitely, who's currently living, but also just sort of of all time. She's so powerful on stage and she's such a smart actress and she's such an enticing actress. And her voice is, you know, one once in a generation kind of voice. Just the sound and the power of it. And a lot of people were on guard about this production for two reasons. One was, okay, would a majority black casted gypsy work? How would that work? And is Audra's voice going to be suited for this? Because a lot of people are used to, let's just say it, Belters in the role or Belter adjacent. The role of Rose was originated by famous belter Ethel Merman. It has also been done by Patti lupone, Bernadette Peters. Bette Midler did the TV film. I would argue two of the most iconic performances of Rose in Broadway history are probably the two weakest singers who've done it, Angela Lansbury and Tyne Daly. Lansbury had a strong voice, but I would not call her a belt her in the way that we call Patty or Ethel. And Tyne isn't really a strong singer, but she had a musicality to the way she sang Rose. And the cast recording with Hein Daly, which granted is still my favorite, if only from like the sheer fire of it all you have to do is watch videos of Tyne Daly and you know that she sounds so much better in the theater than she did on the cast recording. She famously had laryngitis. The Weisslers are penny pinchers. And so they would not move the recording date for Tyne. They did her very dirty. So her voice, her vocals on that recording are not the best, but they are better in the theater. Which is to say, you know, we've had a lot of singing actresses play Rose and maybe people are misremembering or they're conflating the past of just. Rose has always been played by these power Belters. She hasn't. Many different voices have played her. The key thing with Rose is that she has to have power in her voice. She has to have strength, command, even. So even if it's not a merman high belt, it has to be able to control the room and the audience. Because the one thing that Rose is, and this really isn't up for interpretation, is that she is driven, she's determined girl has tunnel vision. That is evident in the script where she's called a pioneer woman without a frontier and always in the middle of a sentence and just sort of dominating everybody. It's in the music. All of her music is very energetic and motorized. I wouldn't necessarily call it forceful. It ebbs and flows in its intensity, but it is always on the move. And I mean, even the opening notes of the overture are her I had a dream motif. And so you need that power when you're singing Rose. And it doesn't matter necessarily what you sound like or what kind of color you have in your voice. As long as you have the strength when you do it, you're on the right track. So I'll start off this way with Audra McDonald as Rose. Is that, yes, she actually does belt it more than a lot of people would assume. That's just a fact. She does. She begins some people and you're like, oh, like we're in a nice heavy chest voice, one we probably haven't heard since. I'd argue Marie Christine. And it's, you know, it's Audra. So there's a heaviness there. Audra definitely sings on the heavier side. And there are times when she is able to manipulate into her mix head voice and it's totally fine. I would argue the majority of some people is totally there. The only real section of that song that kind of was underwhelming for me is the. Towards the end, the Goodbye to Blueberry Pie. Goodbye to blueberry Pie. It's just not. It doesn't sit in her voice. Well, I would have preferred that they either upped the key two or lowered the key one, because where it sat was right on her passaggio, right on her break. So it just sounded thin. And this is a running motif in this show with her is that when her three biggest songs are at their most forceful, that's where they decide to change the key. So we've been hearing Audra sing in chest for so long now. She is in her head voice and it's not quite high enough to be powerful. So she's always like, kind of on a thinner, breakier side. Some people have argued to me that this works fine For Rose's turn at the end because she is having a breakdown. Fair, you're allowed to have that be your thing. I. It's harder for me to get on that train because the music goes against that. She is having a breakdown. But there is power in her commitment to the bit. You know, the majority of her breakdown is pre the end. You know, you're watching a woman slowly lose her grip on reality throughout the number. And then when we get to the most forceful part, though, someone tell me when it's my turn. It's a little bit of like a snapback too. Right. It's very clear headed and very focused. And thus the music reflects that. And whoever's playing Rose has to reflect that in how they attack the music. And this is where the music department has upped the key so much that Audra is now sitting in the break again. And it was disappointing for me because that. Because until then her voice was really in command of Roses Turn. Same thing with Everything's coming up Roses in command for the majority of the song until they upped the key. And I don't need it to be, you know, I loves you porgy high operatic. But if it's going to be in her head voice, it has to be in a part of her head voice where it is dominance. And it just wasn't that for me. That said, there is a lot of the score that she sings very well and I think that it is disingenuous to claim otherwise. You've had a lot of people online who say like, oh, she can't sing it. It's not a fit. She's not what you're used to. And then other people going like, yeah, it's not what you're used to. But like, God, is it thrilling. And I'm of the opinion that it's somewhere in between. There's a lot of what she's doing vocally that is wonderful. But I can't tell you that it works all the time, which is a shame on an acting perspective. The way I felt about Audra's Rose, and I've said it before, you know, Tyne Daly is my guiding star of women who've played Rose. Every actress has done something that I have found enjoyable and other things that I have caveats for. Of the Roses I've seen live, Bernadette is still my favorite. I can look back on that time and listen to her and watch videos of her and recognize where maybe she has some vulnerability in her performance that other Roses don't. But I also think she had a take on it that other roses couldn't, by being so feminine and cutesy and small. You know, Bernadette's Rose was a firecracker, but she also was very. You had a lot of sort of like the Ghost of Christmas Past with her when it came to watching June's act or watching Louise's act. And you saw the fire of what could have been and how these young women were born from this mother. And it's always hard to kind of remember that, that Louise and June come from Rose, that any intel, any intellect, any instincts, any talent comes from somewhere within her. But roses are also, again, as I said, they have to be driven, they have to have direction, they have to have a hustle. Rose is always hustling. There's always an angle to any scene she's in. Sometimes it's seduction, sometimes it's force, sometimes it's love. And that doesn't mean she doesn't feel those things genuinely as well. But there's always a little antenna in Rose that is on the attack and on the prowl, even when she's supposedly having a genuine moment with Herbie. And you'll never get away from me when they're doing together, wherever we go, she's always hustling. And Audra, as Rose, is much more interested in the woman, and primarily in the brokenness of the woman and the sensitivity of the woman, than she is in the shark. Her Rose has energy and she has drive. I'll say that she's got some drive, but her Rose doesn't really have a hustle, and her Rose doesn't really angle. She's pretty much more like a ball of energy with no place to put it, which is a fascinating idea for Rose of this woman who's got so much to give but nowhere to really let it out and. And thus puts it all in her kids. But that's the thing, is that she still does put it somewhere, whether it's in the act, whether it's in her children, whether it's in the strip or anything like that. She is always putting a little too much energy into the task, but she is putting it somewhere. And Audra, from what I saw, was much more just unable to find a pinpoint. In her scene with Uncle Jaco at the top, she is all this energy and momentum coming at you, which makes total sense. But then we go into the scene at her father's house right before some people, and it's just. She's not holding ground. She's not looking around. She's not working the room. She's not switching on a dime. She is just sort of. I don't want to use the word floundering because it's not messy. It's just. It's just muddled is what it is. It's not as razor sharp as it could be. And part of the reason why that's a problem is because this is also still musical comedy of the 1950s. There is a lot of that traditional DNA in Gypsy that you kind of have to have in your bones, and you do kind of have to gift if you're gonna sell the show to its best ability. There is so much meat in Gypsy. It is very much a family drama as well as a musical fable and musical comedy. It's what makes it such a rewarding yet challenging piece to do and why Rose is considered like the Mount Everest of musical theater roles. But you have to be able to play all those things. You can't just play the drama, you can't just play the comedy. You can't just play the monster, and you can't just play the vulnerability. What I've always felt with Audra McDonald as an actress, what she can do sort of pretty much better than anyone, definitely right now, but, you know, for many years is be this raw, open wound of just exposed nerves. She can tap into this watery well of emotion like no one else can. You see it in your daddy's son and Old Maid. If you saw Ohio State Murders, she did that. Even though I really did not like Ohio State Murders, that was something she was able to channel. And she can work a crown and she can work a room, and she's blending that into her Rose. But the vulnerability, the rawness she's giving the character doesn't always feel connected to what's actually happening. My feeling is when the character of Rose is pissed off, that is when Audra as an actress becomes suddenly locked into the role. Because now Rose has some one or somewhere to direct all of her energy and emotions at. When she's told by Gran Singer's secretary that she's got to stay away from June, the way she comes at Melinda hall, it's, you know, it's pointed, it is focused. It is everything that Audra's been working on on stage with a point of view. Now when she's doing Everything's Coming Up Roses, she is singing to Joy, she's singing to the audience. She has directive, and it works. When Herbie leaves and she's convincing Louise that she's got to go strip the way she goes about. Could be a little faster, as could this whole production, but she has a target and she has a, you know, a bullseye to get to. And that is when, for me, Audra is really strapped into the role. She has more trouble for me in the scenes where Rose has to be funny to an audience and Audra is funny. You know, as I said, just watch her in Carousel. She's a funny, funny gal, and she's funny in Gypsy. She's not like a killjoy. I don't want to make anyone think she's a wet blanket, but it does need to be sharper. Part of that is her. Part of that is the direction. You know, George C. Wolffe is such a brilliant man. I would not call him a musical comedy director. And especially of this era of writing, which is a shame, because this is an era of American history that he loves and loves exploring, but much more from a modern perspective. He's had trouble with revivals in the past. He had an infamously misfire, infamous misfire with on the Town in the late 90s. And this is not to that level. But I also do not think that this is the triumph I wanted it to be. People are asking about the race component of this show, and it's not my place to speak on the journey of a black woman in America. Much as I, you know, connect with every character in the Color Purple, that is not my place to speak on. As an authority, what I can tell you is what I saw and how, you know, maybe it was a disconnect from what I was hoping or expecting. The truth is that it's entirely possible my expectations were just far too sky high. As someone who's again, spent years wanting George C. Wolfe to be the director of the next revival of Gypsy, ever since Arthur Lawrence died and we could get it out of his clutches, I was like, great. This is a man who will infuse this show with the blood, sweat and tears that it needs again. Because we had gotten to a point with Gypsy where it was almost treated with curator gloves of. It's this great work. It's musical theater lore, and we must respect it as such. And, yes, you respect the material, but you get your hands dirty while doing it. You have fun with it. And when you add the race component, I was like, oh, this is a man. George Seawolf is a man who has put blackface on the Broadway stage more times than. Than you would care to think. This is a man who has a fascination with the 1920s and 30s. This is a man who really has no problem putting the uncomfortable on stage for people while marrying with showbiz razzmataz. And when the casting breakdown came out for Gypsy of oh, we now have Dainty June being played by an actress who's going to be mixed race and Louise has to be darker raced. And we're going to have black newsboys and then when they're older, they're going to be white. We're doing something. You're like, okay, okay, we got a point of view. The bottom line is that race is actually not a huge component of this production and it doesn't have to be, but it touches on race enough that for me, I wanted it to go further. Obviously, it's clear in the casting and in the wig design that June is put to the front not just because she's more talented, but because she's lighter skinned and as she's a kid, she gets blonde highlights in her hair and then has a much blonder wig and she's older. And I thought there could have been more done about that. You know, have Rose kind of absent mindedly always powdering June and June has to do it herself now and just constantly leaning into the idea of white presenting white audiences crossing the barrier to make it to the other side. And the way they do the transition of the newsboys from when they're younger to older, it's no longer the flashing effect, the strobe light effect of the original, which was a very concise and very clear way to show the time had passed. But because we are now swapping out the boys, we can't really do that strobe light effect anymore. And what we have instead is a transition where it's like three minutes, maybe four of Audra coming on stage periodically and swapping out a boy with a white older newsboy. And then eventually, you know, slowly putting Louise closer to the back of the act. That is Louise going to, you know, the, the digression of Louise from being the company of Baby June and company to being one of the newsboys, to being put in the back to being in the cow. This is something that is already in the script, right? And it's something that actually marries very well with the concept of casting these actresses as light skinned and dark skin and swapping out the newsboys for white newsboys. That's where you don't actually have to change a word of text. Just how the show already does that fits the that that perspective already. And that's a wonderful marriage right there. There is nothing really else about it. Though that is touched on. There's nothing about the act in its aesthetic. There's nothing about the act in its musical stylings because the show, in a lot of ways is still married to the original orchestrations. There are some new dance arrangements, but it is still in the style of the gypsy we have come to know and love. And so there's no real change in the act from when it's an all black act to a mixed race act. Not aesthetically and not musically. Outside of, you know, June having a slightly blonder wig and Louise being in the cow, the dancing is not all that different. The attitude is not all that different. It's maybe a little smoother and a little less harsh, I would say, because they definitely direct Baby June to be a much harsher child performer, which I am totally here for. But also. Yeah, it's just, it's. It's one of those things where the idea is there and it's bubbling, but it hasn't fully cooked. And we tie this to Joy woods as Louise when she becomes Gypsy Rose Lee. And her final strip, somebody wrote how that final strip actually worked very well for them. And what that was, was Joy comes out and does the first strip of the Let me entertain you. And they have, by the way, cut the dialogue that she has when Rose says to her, say something. And she says hello, and then notices that everybody's paying attention to her and says, everybody. And does the whole June line. My name is Gypsy Rose lee. What's yours, Mr. Conductor, if you please. They've cut all of that and I'll get to why that pisses me off in a second. But so we then have the second strip where she does a little bit of patter. The third strip where she does the akadesiast monologue, which is normally in the fourth strip. And I was like, why did they put that in the third strip? What is she going to do for the fourth strip? And then they do the fourth strip, which is set in the Garden of Eden. And she is dressed up to look very much like Josephine Baker. That is not projection. It's legitimately what she's looking like. And you can read articles that state, like, this is intentional. And someone wrote online, because I was watch. I was reading Other Perspectives to see exactly like what other people were getting from it, that maybe I was missing or how it connected with them, that it didn't connect with me. And if that maybe altered anything about my opinion. And someone said, well, you know, Rose is spending the whole show trying to appeal to a white audience by whitening the act. And then Louise comes into her own blackness and the exoticism of her ethnicity for these audiences. And that ultimately is more successful than Rose could ever hope for. That is why, like with the Josephine Baker style of it all and embracing the beauty of her ethnicity. And I'm like, okay, I get that in theory we have a point A to point B, and those are really powerful pictures to have on the bulletin board. The problem is there is really no string strong enough to connect the two outside of just the images themselves. There is nothing throughout the production that supports that. There are moments here and there that sort of poke at it lightly stir the pot, I would say, but nothing that fully cooks it, nothing that fully draws a line that says, and it does not have to be overt. Lord knows I hate things that are overt. But I would argue it's not even really subtle. It's not even nuanced. It's just little tiny moments that kind of tickle at it without making it an actual through line of Rose loving the blonde wig, but Rose not doing really anything else outside of swapping out the newsboys and loving the blonde wig that would insinuate she is trying to gain a white audience. There is nothing else that insinuates that Rose is longing for a white inclusion or uncomfortable by white inclusion. There's no code switching in this production. It's pretty much everyone is pretty much intermingled. There's no subtle racism from white characters in the show towards the black characters. It's all just sort of the race doesn't matter in this production except for the couple of moments where it does. And it's not anything that bothers me per se, because I could do a color conscious casting of Gypsy where no, it. It's all blended together like the 94 carousel, where it's like, this is a fable. We're on a stage, deal with it. Everyone here is going to bring their talent and their own life perspectives to these roles. But George C. Wolfe is not a director who normally does that. And he brings some of his intelligence and his digging of race in America to the show, but not a lot and definitely not as much as I was expecting. So maybe it's my own fault for thinking there was going to be a bit more of that brashness and that, I don't want to say touchiness, but like, you think about how he and Lachiusa collaborated on the Wild Party and what, you know, race meant to them in that show. And I mean, that's going Pretty far with race in the entertainment industry and in America and of that era. And this, I mean, this is like beginner kitty version of that. I don't need it to go full blown Mandy Patinkin and blackface, But I would have liked a little more because, as I said, that connection from Baby June and company with the blonde wig and her being lighter skin to Louise becoming basically Josephine Baker coated is an interesting arc to go on, but the arc actually isn't there. We just have our beginning and we just have our end. What pisses me off about that strip, not the Josephine stuff, but what pisses me off about that strip is taking away the dialogue from the first and the last segments. Because Gypsy as a musical bears about as much resemblance to the real Gypsy Rose Lee's life as Funny Girl does to Fanny Brice, which is to say, not a hell of a lot. And part of that is because Gypsy Rose Lee was a famous liar and her memoir was also like, basically a novel and not an actual memoir. And Arthur Lawrence kind of just made up whatever he wanted for the sake of the musical. The one thing that they made a point of getting right, though, and this is because Gypsy Rose Lee was still very much a public figure when the musical came out, was they got right what made her famous and what made her special, which is that she took the lowest rung of entertainment, that of being striptease in burlesque, turned it into an art form, and became internationally famous for doing so. And she didn't really sing, she didn't really dance. She could do a little bit of both, but never to the extent that she would be the star of a musical number. She didn't even strip all that much. She would. She would go through degrees of undressing in her acts, depending on how she was feeling that night. Sometimes it would be a glove and a shoulder strap, sometimes it would be right down to her underwear. But what she did was that she spoke to the audience. She spoke on whatever she wanted to her thoughts on politics, books, foreign policy, with a wit and a sophistication and a charisma and command that most women at the time, and let's be honest, still today have trouble owning. You know, this country is notoriously sexist, has been for its entire history, and continues to be. Maybe, you know, we've had progress over the years, but we still see how much further we need to go and how we keep sort of pulling back from. From that kind of progress. So for Gypsy Rose Lee to take the thing that so many people don't want women to do, which is talk, speak up their mind and make that not only her gimmick, but what makes her absolutely successful and what makes, you know, what. What is her drawing power. People pay to watch her do that. There is so much strength in that and so much dynamics to that, and it's important to see that spark happen on stage. Now, granted, the text that I was referring to in the strip of the hello, everybody and all of these jokes, that's not in the original 1959 Arthur Lawrence libretto. He's been very vocal. Was very vocal. He's dead. He was very vocal that Sandra Church, who was the original Louise, was not the greatest actress, and she could do the wallflower stuff, but she couldn't really do the transition into Gypsy Rose Lee as well. And so they cut a lot of dialogue in those strips, and it just became sort of pantomime. But with the Angela Lansbury revival onwards, which I believe came to Broadway in 74, maybe 73, and was in London the year prior. So for over 50 years now, the text has. That text has been in the Gypsy script, and it has become what we all know, and it absolutely improves the second act. And this revival does include some of that text still, just in different places. So we can't even argue. Well, in the original script, which they're following, they're not doing that. They're still using the edits just differently and, in my opinion, weaker. We don't see the moment in that first strip when Louise accidentally says hello, looks out and realizes that everyone's paying attention to her, that she has a superpower. She can talk and everyone will listen. June can sing and dance, they'll applaud. Rose can steamroll into an office. People will sort of relent. The other strippers can parade around with their skin exposed for hoots and hollers, and then sort of walk off stage. But Louise controls the room simply by being Louise and by saying whatever she wants. And she doesn't immediately become Gypsy Rose Lee in that moment, but it's when the seed has officially begun to sprout. And we know that Louise wants to control the room. We know that Louise wants to be noticed. That's the whole point of All I Need is the girl. And I'll get into that in a second with this production. But by cutting that and then by making her final strip, not even a strip, but just a dance number, we've actually now robbed that character of what makes her fame special as a woman. She is famous for talking, and she has taken the least respected performance style and made it respected. She has become a celebrity. For is not about owning your exoticism. It is about owning your power. It is about tricking an audience into submitting to your power. You can find a way to blend that into the exoticism of being a bipoc woman in this country. But I think personally have her still, you know, be Josephine Baker coated with her wig and her outfits, but still fucking do the ecdesias monologue and that whole bit around the passerelle, talking to the audience for five minutes straight and just commanding the room. You make her a dancer and she's just like any other performer. She's not like any other performer. That's why we have a musical about her, because it is ultimately still about her. It's called Gypsy. You know, Rose is the lead, but Louise is the major arc. She is who gets the payoff in the end because she's the character that the whole thing is based off of. And so it just bugs me because this is something that I don't understand why George C. Wolfe and Camille A. Brown decided to lean into. It feels more to me like the idea of incorporating historical components into the show without actually acknowledging what makes certain pockets of that book take off. You know, some people will really enjoy the newness of it, but a lot of us who have seen the show before, and this is the problem with revivals, they get done because we know that the show works. And for something like Gypsy, it's been done many times, so we know that it has worked many times. And you want someone to bring something fresh to it. But when moments like this get altered, it makes me question how well they understand the material. It's almost like the green M and M test of, like, how Van Halen would put on, like, the fourth page of their contract in the third paragraph, only green MMs in the dressing room. And it was a test to see if the venue read through the entire contract because they had a lot of safety concerns with the pyrotechnics of their show and the sound equipment for their show. So if they walked into a dressing room and saw that there were green MMs in the dressing room, it meant that the venue read through the entire contract. And if they weren't in there, it meant that the venue did not. And that is sort of what ultimately made or broke their playing anywhere. And I didn't think that the strip would have to be a green M and M test for me with Gypsy, but right now it kind of is of like oh, you cut the thing that makes Louise Gypsy Rosely, and you've changed it for, you know, something else that doesn't really make sense and isn't connected to anything else. So that is something that bugs me. There are other things that I do like, and I will get into that, as well as other things that I want to discuss after this break.