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Broadway, Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking chance. Baby, I just wanna do you, do you, do you wanna do me? Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL and welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history and legacy of American theater's most exclus address. Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And this is going to be a nice, short, sweet episode for y'. All. We are starting to wind things down as I as we do a bit of a summer hiatus to do some home organizing for the podcast. But I would be remiss if I did not review this new musical that has helped kind of launch the new theatrical season. It is of course the Off Broadway musical Heated Rivalry, the unauthorized parody musical which had a popular reception at the Laurie Beechman for a one week concert, a session that has now turned into a technically speaking limited run at the McKittrick Hotel, but is for all intents and purposes probably going to be an open ended run. They keep extending in the same way that, you know, O Mary keeps extending and Operation Mincemeat keeps extending. And I wanted to do this one because it's a pretty barren summer for new theatrical works in New York. Obviously you know, there's other off Broadway things that one could see Girl Interrupted at the Public and whatnot. But I wanted a musical because I need something to excite me and I wanted something that I'd heard really interesting things about that I wanted to sort of see for myself. And the buzz from Heated Rivalry, even when it was at the Beachman, was really, really strong. So when the opportunity arose to see the show, I actually ended up seeing it twice because the first time I saw Jay Armstrong Johnson was out and I had to go back to properly evaluate the show with its original leads. I, I wanted to be able to get a take on it for myself. And that is exactly what I'm going to do. But before I do that, oh my God, can you believe it? We did get a new review on Apple Podcasts. So if you won't mind, cue the light on the Piazza Overture. Five stars, simply titled. Yay. From Faded Mist Warrior Cats with a Cat Face Emoji. That's the the author's name. I'm an aspiring stage actress and I love this show. Also, I' ma list all my theater things, things I've seen Annie, Beetlejuice, the Little Mermaid and A Dickens Christmas Carol shows I've been in Seasagull junior Alice in Wonderland junior Frozen junior Matilda, and I'm auditioning for Matilda junior soon. Who I've played Petunia, Middle Anna or Middle Anna? Yeah, because it's Frozen, Middle Ana and Matilda, Children's ensemble. I'll list my dream roles when it's not 1am because I just got home from tech. Heh heh. I love the chaos. Thank you very much. Honestly, that review kind of perfectly encapsulates who I am as your host of always listing the things I've seen and done and then going off on a little tangent and then just sort of ending my stories. And if today is maybe a little more of a messier discussion of this show, just know that it took so much effort for me to get to this mic today. First of all, I had a hard time scheduling a time to sit down and record this because I've had a lot going on with the podcast, with work, with my life, and trying to find time to schedule all the remaining deep dives that we have. And also seeing theater. And by the way, we've booked a trip to London that's coming up September 9th through the 16th. So if you're a London listener, hit me up. I would love to do a little London meetup at a pub somewhere while I'm there. But anyway, I digress. With all of this being done, I was pretty sure I wasn't gonna be able to have an episode this week, or if I did, it was gonna have to be a day or two late. And then, wouldn't you know it, on this day at work, I got sick. Very, very sick, and I had to go home and I spent the last seven hours in bed with Pepto Bismol and ginger ale and saltines and slowly but surely getting better. And I am definitely doing a lot better now than I was seven hours ago. But I am weak. I. At this point, all that is in my system is ginger ale, and even that is debatable. So if I'm maybe not my sharpest self, if I'm not my quick wittiest self, have a heart. I'm. I'm playing injured here, much like Shane Hollander does in the third act of heated rivalry. And if you know what that means, you're in for a treat. So I know we'll try to do this how we always, always do this, which is that I kind of lead up with my immediate headline opinion and then we'll go into the details of the show for anybody who wants to avoid spoilers. Although at this point, I Don't know what, how many spoilers you could really avoid because obviously this is based off of the TV show that blew up on HBO Max by Jacob Tierney that was adapted by a series of novels by Rachel Reed about gay hockey players. And it's just like taking the world by storm. And it's two male leads of the TV show have become super, super popular in like less than a calendar year, which is rarely happens these days, especially for tv, especially for queer characters. But something just like really blew up with this show in a way that we rarely see to the extent that this unauthorized parody musical was written almost immediately after the show came out and everything's just been happening very fast. The show is written by Dylan Markarell who is a Jonathan Larson Grant recipient and a Richard Rogers Award winning writer. He wrote the book music lyrics, also did the orchestrations. It is directed by Alan Clifford, it is co choreographed by Brooke and Tiffany Engine and Fun Fact, the lighting designer is Devin Cameron who went to Emerson College with me and not only went to college with me, he was the lighting designer of my production of Carousel that I directed. So it all comes back Six Degrees of Broadway Breakdown. Na mean up front, I'll say. I really fucking love this show. I It's early, but right now heated rivalry is the best. It's obviously the best new musical of the theater season since we're only a month and a half into the theater season and we're, you know, mostly going with this and the musical Play Girl Interrupted. But I have a sneaking suspicion this is better than Galileo is going to be. It's also, for my money, the best new musical that played New York in the last nine months. It is so it is more than just, you know, kooky, quirky and satirically spoofy. It is also very well written and very well structured and very tight. It is a show that knows exactly what it is and knows just how long it can hold our attention for. And it does everything in its power to constantly surprise us and titillate us as well as I don't say placate, but cater to what we're hoping to see. It has a really beautiful blend of those two things while also having a really tuneful score with really clever lyrics and very inventive staging. Really strong performances all around from the cast. It's very well designed while still kind of having like it's professionally done, but it also has that kitschy off Broadway vibe to it which adds a lot of charm to the show. This is not a show that you'd want to see on a Broadway stage. Part of the success of it is that you are in a theater that seats like 100 people in what looks like basically a converted bar and they make a lot of magic with very little. And so that is all that all contributes to the success. But at the root of the success of this musical is the fact that it is just a well written musical. And I should caveat this with I'm not a huge fan of the TV show. It has blown up with just about everybody. I have been sort of mid on it. I think it's six episodes, maybe seven. The TV the first season of the TV show and there's only really one episode that I really like and it's the third episode that has nothing to do with Shane Hollander or Ilya Rosenoff. It's with Scott Hunter, one of a fellow hockey player of I think Shane's. And it at the time that it aired a lot of audiences didn't really care for that episode because detracted from the. Sorry, distracted from the Ilya Shane storyline. But I really loved it. I thought it was really delightful and moving and well done. But that was really the only thing I had on that show. I even rewatched it because my mom wanted to watch it. And if you think that that's an awkward watch, just remember that I saw Brokeback Mountain with her and my dad like two months after I came out of the closet at the age of 14. So that's, that's my family for you. But I now watched the series twice and I now I sort of like it fine, but I'm not obsessed with it. So when I tell you that I really loved this musical, know that I did not go in with the intention to love it because it was about something that I held dear. And in fact I know people who love the TV show so much that they won't see the show because they fear that it is going to taint how they feel about the TV show. And I've tried to tell them that I think they would really enjoy it but maybe wouldn't listen to me then. They can listen to me now, as can all of you. So heated rivalry, as I said, based off of the TV show created by Jacob Tierney, based off of the novels by Rachel Reed. And it follows Ilya Rozanov, who is a Russian import to the American and Canadian Hockey League. I'm not entirely sure how all this works. It's all. It's a whole bunch of fucking sports. But Shane Hollander is a Canadian hockey player and they meet during, I guess it's like sort of training and then drafting picks for various hockey teams in Canada and in the US And Ilya gets drafted by Boston and Shane in his hometown in Canada. And during this time of the draft they, they sort of keep locking eyes at each other and passing glances and whatnot. And they start a sexual relationship in secret that spans many years. And it's long months and months and months of not seeing each other, of texting on and off, of, of meeting up in hotels when they are playing against each other and hooking up and again being very secretive and sort of constantly pushing the boundaries of how far they're willing to go with each other sexually because you know, first it's making out and it's beejes and then it goes into further territory, one might say X rated territory. But for many episodes I remember I just kept people saying like how hot it was. And I was like, what's so hot? They finish after like 20 seconds of oral sex, like why Wild Things was hotter than this. And that was the late 90s and about a gender that I'm not sexually attracted to. So that's that. But that is sort of the pivot point of, of the story. It's these two young men who over the course of like 10 years, I want to say eight to 10 years, keep sort of circling each other. And as they spend more time together, the sexual relationship they have and the familiarity they have with each other through their texting leads to an intimacy that takes them both by surprise and they start to realize how much they really actually start to care for each other, especially as they start to learn more about each other. And you know, both of them get very, very successful in the hockey world. They, they get very famous for the sport and they have their fans and they make a lot of money. But Shane leads a very isolated life. He very much is sort of not controlled, but he, he has a bit of a too close relationship with his parents. His mom is a bit of a momager and this leads to him again having a lot of financial success. He has endorsement deals, he owns a bunch of properties. He has this quote unquote cottage sort of in the country that's basically just like a giant gl. But we, but Shane has a lot of baggage with his sexuality. He has a lot of intimacy issues. It's implied but not expressly stated in the series. But I, as I understand it in the books it's stated that Shane is a little on the spectrum. So he has trouble reading social cues sometimes. Ilya has a lot of baggage from back home in Russia. His mother died when he was very little. His father is a very traumatic father, his brother is a partier. And both his brother and his father blow through all the money that Ilya sends them every couple of months. And they give him a lot of crap for being an American sellout, for being a pansy. Even though it's never openly stated to his family that he is gay or bisexual or sexually fluid. His father and his brother just sort of always have this inkling about him. And so they always speak negatively towards him. And then Ilya's father eventually dies. He has to go home for the funeral. And he finally unleashes all of this emotion that he's been bottling up the entire show for years and years and years. His whole aesthetic is that he's a very cold, closed off Russian. And Ilya starts to close himself off to Shane. Shane retaliates by dating this movie actress. But that doesn't go well because even they have. They try to have sex like once and it's a disaster. And so she's like, I think you're gay. He's like, yep, I'm gay and a total bottom. And so they become friendly. And then Shane gets hurt in an ice skating incident and through other circumstances. For example, a secondary plot following an older player named Scott Hunter, who we learn from his own singular episode, is also gay and closeted and falls for a smoothie barista named Kip and falls in love with Kip. Kip falls in love with him. But due to his pride and his fear of his reputation and his career, Scott cannot be out. And thus he and Kip break up. But two years later, Kip shows up to a championship game that Scott's team wins. Scott has no one to celebrate with on the ice. He sees Kip in the stadium. He brings Kip on the ice. They make out, making Scott publicly come out. This pushes Ilya to meet Shane at his cottage, his again, his very intimate 5,000 square foot cottage. Once there, they really kind of express their emotions to each other. They're finally open with each other about how they feel. And that is of course, when Shane's parents discover that Shane and Ilya have been together this whole time. Shane is gay, There are some emotions, but in the end they're okay. And that's the end of season one. And then this is also the whole plot of heated rivalry. The Musical. So in the musical, Jay Armstrong Johnson plays Ilya, the Russian Jimin Moon plays Shane Hollander. Many of you would know Jay from Hands on a Hard Body or he was in Scotland, Pennsylvania at Roundabout. He also has been on Broadway in Parade and Hair and Catch Me if youf can. And I think he was a Raul in Phantom for a while and did the Moulin Rouge tour. Jimin is more new to the scene but has worked fucking constantly. Was in Lempicka and most recently Sunset Boulevard, where he understudied Joe Gillis. And so they play the two leads. And then the ensemble is made up of three performers. Ryan Redmond, Cherry Torres and Ryan Duncan, with two standbys, Shelby Acosta and Daniel Brackett. I saw Daniel Go on for Jay Armstrong Johnson, and I just want to say right now as I go forward with this review, he was fantastic. I was really impressed by him. And so if you. And he covers both Jay and Jimin as well as Ryan in the ensemble. So if you see that Daniel is on, you're in very good hands. Shelby Acosta. I saw Go on when I saw the show a second time and Jay was back in and she was on for Cherry Torres and she did a lovely job as well. So all. Everyone in the company is great. So if anyone's ever out, don't be discouraged. The musical follows the plot of the TV show pretty closely. They obviously cut some stuff, but the thing about the TV show that I always found so infuriating was kind of how slowly everything went. We, like go over years and years and years of a back and forth with Shane and Ilya of just like, fuck you, suck my dick. Yeah, don't tell anybody. Banter, banter, banter. I don't know how I feel. Fuck you, suck my dick. And just rinse and repeat. And for some people, that works. For me, I don't really consider that banter. I. But I'm more of a Heartstopper guy. I'm more of a. If you're gonna be sexy and moody and brooding and. And witty, be fucking witty. If you're. If the thing is about sex, like be sex. And Heartstopper never claims to be sex, and Heartstopper never claims to be witty. Heartstopper is just like pure sunshine in a jar. And I think they capture that. But heated rivalry clearly does that for a lot of other people. But. So the musical takes all the major story points of the TV show, boils it down to 70, 75 minutes, and gives it a nice framing device, which gives it some commentary on not just the show itself, but the impact that the show has had the reputation of its audience, of its. Of its major fan bases, because the thing about the TV show as well is that the actors who play Ilya and Shane on TV have these very rabid fan bases that have created parasocial relationships with them in the same way that, you know, Timothee Chalamet's fans have with him these, like, pretty guys who have something a little more that. That have this masculinity about them, but there's also something a touch feminine to them, which actually makes them even more endearing to female audiences. It's the David Bowie of it all, the Mick Jagger of it all, even, you know, like, the Elvis Presley of it all. And so the musical frames the show with a trio of women all named Susan, who are best friends and all love heated rivalry. And the three Susans are played by Ryan Redmond, Cherry Torres, and Ryan Duncan. And they play a bunch of other parts as well. But Ryan Redmond really is kind of like the main Susan narrator of the show, doing a nice. Dropping the gorgeous accent. Oh, my Susans. We're here to watch heated rivalry. Gay hockey players sucking dick in hotels. And it's just. It's. What makes it work is that everybody in the show picks a very bold color and sticks to it, but doesn't comment on it. They create mannerisms that are ridiculous, so that way they don't have to ever wink at the audience of I'm in on the joke. They play it. You know, I don't want to say play it straight, but they play it earnestly, which is the point, right? It's what makes something silly like this work. Because if they're always kind of looking up to the audience going, who wasn't that ridiculous? It becomes more sort of like a frat party. It becomes more like a Hasty pudding show. And that is, those are things that kind of, you know, maybe get a chuckle out of you in the moment, but don't last long much longer once you leave the theater. And heated rivalry, the musical, the unauthorized parody musical, is not really interested in only cheap, quick jokes. There are plenty of them in there, but they're more sort of sprinkled throughout. They're never the main ingredient, and it's always like little nuggets. The second time I went, I took our dear friend John Miscavige, and there were musical theater references that even I didn't get because they were songs that I didn't know. Like, I think he said that there's, like, a song from Elegies maybe, or Edges, Edges, Edges is the Pask and Paul show, right? Or maybe. No, it's the Kerrigan. There was a Kerrigan and Loudermilk song that heated the musical samples in the song. Towards the end when Shane is inviting Ilya to the cottage, like, when it begins, it's something along the lines of like, let me catch my breath. And John guffawed. And afterwards he was like, that was a sample from that Kerrigan and Louder Milk song. So I find that really funny. Like, there's all these little Easter eggs that even if you don't get it, there's another joke coming down the pike in five seconds that you will get, or that everyone's gonna get. Because sometimes it's not even just if, you know, sometimes it's just the way they portray it on stage. I will say you do need to see Heated Rivalry, the TV show, in order to fully enjoy the musical. You don't have to see it to have to just have a good time. It's a good enough piece that you can watch it on its own, but it's meant to be a companion piece to the TV show. It's sort of, you know. Yeah, that's all I really can say. I was going to think of an analogy for it, but I think that stands alone, right. Of if you're going to see the unauthorized parody of something, you should probably see the thing that it's parodying. Because a lot of the jokes won't make sense. Some do, because it's just. It's fun and ridiculous. Like the first phone call that Ilya has with his father, Ryan Duncan's wearing, you know, a big bald cap and wearing super old school Russian oligarch medals and a uniform, like just straight out of Anastasia. And they're on the phone talking and he. And he starts to cough into his handkerchief and he goes. And then immediately turns the handkerchief over, shows that there's blood on it, and just goes. And it's one of those stupid, fun jokes that if you watch the show, you know he's going to die eventually. But also, if you haven't watched the show, you know he's going to die. Because it is in addition to a commentary on the TV show, it's commentary on that trope in general of a character who is eventually going to die. The number of times we see people cough and then we see blood, right? It's the Nicole Kidman and Moulin Rouge. Cough, cough, cough blood. And it's just a very fun moment that kind of perfectly has a foot in both worlds. Of you know the show or you don't know the show but you understand the trope and it's funny to everybody. The way that Jay plays Ilya is very much similar to the way that Connor's story plays Ilya in the TV show which is very stone faced but again like kind of goes to an ultimate extreme. Jay's version of Ilya is emotionless blank slate all the time. And part of that is because Ilya's first song is Big Ass Cold Heart which is also common on Connor stories physique because the thing that everyone talked about with the two main actors on the TV show was just like how insane their bodies were and how fat their asses were. And so they play on that with the show and it becomes actually a part of Ilya's traumatic childhood of he always had this giant badunkadunk. And in his intro song Big Ass Cold Heart, they flashback to like times when he's like a little boy in Mother Russia and he's trying to do things and everyone's just making fun of him for his big butt. He's at a store where he wants to buy some pants and he turns around too quickly and his butt knocks over a Faberge egg and the owner is like get out of here you childhood monster. Or he sits on the couch and he squashes the family cat. Just things like that. Stupid. It's so stupid. But it's also quite fun. And it gets away with it again because Marcarell has written a good song so you already have a musical theater comfort there. And then it is being performed well by the entire company. It's being directed with a lot of style and humor by director Alan Clifford. So even silly things like that have like a little touch of the fashionably absurd is how I would best describe it. Jimin's Shane is played very much like kind of A Howdy Doody, 1950s good boy. He's always skipping around, he's always got a big smile on his face. And it works because he is the Yang to J. Armstrong Johnson's yang. If Johnson's Ilya is stone faced and emotionless, Jimin's Shane is just like soda pop, bubbly all the time, always. And that counter to each other creates in my opinion better comedy than the combo of Shane and Ilya does for me in the TV show as sexual magnets. And it also warrants a lot of really wonderful jokes. A personal favorite of mine is because they also make it in the musical how Shane is. Shane's role in this sexual Relationship with Ilya is, is pretty much just that. He is a power bottom to be used and abused. And Shane just sort of takes it all with a smile and he has a song in the second half as things take an emotional turn when Ilya offers to make him a tuna, tuna melt, Shane sings a song that goes, this fuck was different than the last fuck. And it's this very simple kind of golden agey song with again, exact perfect rhymes, which I appreciate. But in it he talks about how, you know, this time he let me finish this time, you know, he said something more to me than just bend over pig. And he doesn't say it with disgust, it's just sort of earnest, you know, happy go lucky devil may care, come what may attitude. And it makes all of the stuff, all of the like sex stuff between him and Ilya all the funnier because to Shane it's as simple as describing the weather with a smile on his face and like, oh, so when they have their big like blow up in the second half of the, of the show when Ilya is, you know, closed off and he doesn't, and his father has died and he's sort of pushing Shane away and he, and you know, Shane's trying to push back on Ilya, oh, you're. You don't say what you feel. And I think you like me more than you say. And Ilya's like, why would I like you? You're this, you're that, you're this. And Shane goes, I don't like any of this. And he goes, and the worst part is you don't even douche. Big laugh. And then Jimin's, Shane just, he gets so crestfallen and he goes, wow, I may not douche or even know what that means. And it's, I can't describe it. I think that's such a perfect response to that because it lines up with the simplicity that Jimin and Marcarel have created for this Shane of like kind of like a slight idiot, like a hot, you know, positive energy idiot. And so rather than be truly crestfallen because of the, of being so wounded by such a personal specific attack, he understands the tone of the attack and the joke is like. But he also, but he also just doesn't know even what the attack means. I may not douche or even know what that means. And it's, I don't know, for me, that works really wonderfully. And they, they hit all the moments in the TV show that are iconic. Their first real will. They won't they, when they're working out in the hotel gym during their first week where they meet each other and they're on the ellipticals with each other, the song is done sort of like, it's like a techno pop, gay club dance beat as they, you know, are on the ellipticals together. And so that's already fun. That already has a fun little musical theater edge to it. But then to add stupidity to stupidity, Margarell and Clifford have Ryan Duncan come out as an elderly woman who is also staying at the hotel doing her own little workout, while Shane and Ilya are sort of making passes at each other. And she is so obtuse to everything that's going on. She's. She's lifting her five pound weight, she's in her little jogger outfit and, and she. There's a joke where she finally does kind of realize what's going on. And something like, I can't believe my eyes. These boys are about to sodomize. It's. That's not the exact lyric, but it is something like that. And then another one towards the end with something like Detox or Docs. I'm going to switch to Equinox. And these, these lines that are just so silly and so fun the way they. This is also a big spoiler. So if you're going to go to the show, just bear in mind that this could happen to you. If you see heated rivalry and you're sitting towards the front, and if you are a male presenting audience member, there is a decent chance that you will be asked to participate in the show as the role of Scott Hunter because they do a brief detour in the middle of the show to do the Kip and Scott storyline. And it's ultimately just one big song for Ryan Duncan. But what happens is Ryan Duncan and Sherry Torres are on stage as Kip and his friend working at the smoothie shop, and they're waiting for Scott to come on. And that's when Ryan Redmond's Susan comes on. She goes, oh, I just forgot, one of you is going to be playing the role of Scott Hunter tonight. And she brings out a little binder and she finds someone in the audience to go on stage and play the role. And the joke is that you are asked to read absolutely everything that is in the script. No, no hesitation, no questions asked. And the show has it figured out that everything you read will work with what the actors are doing. So you're always going to be in good hands. No one's going to make fun of you if you are allergic to bananas. That is something you should let them know because you will have to eat a banana. But from both times that I saw it, it's pretty clear that they are going for audience members who are not only male presenting, but potentially a little bit on the older side. Because there is a line in the song about how Scott is older than Kip. Because that's a running joke in the TV show is that Ilya thinks that Godhunter is way too old, that he's like a grandpa. So they do have to say. They sing something along, along the lines of like, he's the hottest oldest guy I've ever seen. So they're not. If you're like a 25 year old twink, I don't think they're gonna pick you. But if you're like over 40, if you have facial hair, there's a good shot. And they go for, you know, all, all body types, all races. I think it's just male presenting over 40 and usually with some facial hair is what they're looking for. Someone who could give a little daddy to Ryan Duncan or even to Daniel Brackett, should he ever go on as Kip. Maybe he has gone gone on. I don't know. It's having seen Daniel go on for Ilya and knowing that he also covers Shane, I would be very interested to see how he does in Ryan Duncan's track because that is really the clownish track. And Daniel Brackett is very much like a pretty, pretty, pretty boy. And of course pretty people can be clowns. But it's just my first exposure to him was in a more stoic track. So I'd be interested to see how he does. But that is an example of the joke of that section with Scott Hunter isn't even about whether you know the show or not. It's not even the, like the writing of the material, although it is very good, the joke there is the inclusion of the audience member. So everything that they do is not, you know, making the audience member the butt of the joke, but just the fact that they are participating is the butt of the joke. And that is. That is something that's universal to the entire theater. And they bring it back in a really wonderful way. When Scott and Kip reunite at the end of the championship on the ice, if you are playing Scott Hunter, do not worry you will not be kissed without your consent. They find a way around that. You do not do anything you don't want to do. So if you're nervous, there's nothing to be nervous about. If you don't like audience participation, just don't make eye contact with Ryan Redmond when she's looking around in the audience trying to find a Scott Hunter. And maybe don't sit super close to the front. There is a little bit of moving around the audience from the actors. It's. It's not environmental. It is done in a proscenium state staging. But every now and then they come up the aisles. Jim and Shane goes by the bar that's next to House, left for a beat when they're doing the. The club scene where Shane meets the movie actress, whatever her fucking name is, played by Ryan Redmond. And God, Ryan Redmond has another great moment. I can't remember the exact line that prompts it, but it's. She. She has her song and scene with Shane after they meet where she's basically like, you know, I. I think you're gay. And she sings this big song of like, you're a really wonderful gay guy. You're very, very gay. And finally Shane says, yes, I am gay. And he's like, I. I do like kissing boys. And she's like, yes, you do. He goes, and I. And I've learned that kissing anyone but Ilya does absolutely nothing for me. Or like a naked body that isn't a male does absolutely nothing for me. And Ryan Ferm takes a beat. She goes, ouch. But yes, and it's just love that kind of stuff. I think it's the. That sort of irreverence, when done well, is so contagious. And it's rarely done well as the thing. I think that Titanique does it very well. Did it better off Broadway, but still does it very well on Broadway. I don't personally find that Schmigadoon does it really very well. It does it fine. It does it clever. I don't think it does it very funny and heated rivalry. I think because it is such a. A tight, compact piece. It always keeps moving. There's a. There's another song to get to. We. We don't take very long in between songs. It's just. If ever there's a moment that doesn't work for you, the next moment that will is right around the corner and coming at you fast and loose. So there's always, or, you know, I guess in Ilya's case, fast and in Shane's case, loose but a bump. But I want to commend. I mostly want to commend Dylan Markerell for taking something that could have been considered in really poor taste and Opportunistic. And it is opportunistic. He. He jumped in on this knowing. Seeing how popular it was and knowing that somebody was going to do it at some point and thinking to himself, why not me? But not just relying on the fact that it's the first one. Really taking the time to craft a theatrical piece that can stand alongside the TV show. As I said, it's really a companion piece, but, you know, it has really strong music, really smart lyrics. I think it's such an intelligent compression of the TV show and it's beautifully aided by this really strong cast. I think everyone in it is really fantastic. I mean, listen, if I had to give a real mvp, I don't want to because I think everyone does such wonderful work, but if I had to, I would give it to Ryan Redmond, who I think as the MC Main Susan, as well as playing multiple other roles, she gets to show off a lot of colors to her Persona as an actress, flavors to her voice. And she. I mean, she has to kind of start the evening off. She has to end the evening. She has to kind of keep everything going along and keeps. She sets the tone of light, fun, stupid intelligence from the jump with, of course, wonderful Aids by Ryan and Cherry. But this is a piece where it's like, I don't know, I. For all of the massiveness of current musicals that, you know, if you were listening to our episode with Sean Nyberg, who actually is a producer on Heated Rivalry, he talked about how he's feeling like Broadway musicals are actually going to start pivoting into big again spectacle again. They're not gonna. Audiences want something massive on stage, something tangible that they can. That they can see their money on. And I think there's truth to that. But also, when you have something that doesn't really do do that, but tells a good story with the. At the exact right amount of time, with the right tone, with good songs and a strong cast, like when there's really no weak link to be had, audiences will crave that as well. And you don't need huge sets. I mean, I think that the design team of this musical have actually done a really brilliant job of having enough design to it that you still feel like you're watching a show. It's not just sort of this UCB improv troupe. But again, it doesn't go overboard to the point that you feel like it's trying to do too much. It's the right amount of cheap. It's the right amount of production value so that it still has Off Broadway kitsch, but also doesn't feel like it's half assed. And I think that's a really hard line to it. You see people miss the line all the time. You see something in like Big Gay jamboree throw like $3 million worth of production value on stage and that actually harms what the show is trying to do. You see, you see shows that like City Center Encores, which want to be these economic revivals for Broadway transfers, but they just look cheap. And I think the Heated Rivalry is really a great example of knowing what kind of aesthetic your show needs. And obviously there's no tried and true rule. The aesthetic for Heated Rivalry will not work as an aesthetic for Ragtime. But that's why Dramaturgy matters. You have to ask yourself, what is it we're trying to do here? How does every department help make that happen? And how do we make sure that we're all on the same page all the time? Always. And not for nothing, this is a musical that everyone is on the same page with every single second. My only complaint is that it's on 28th street between 10th and 11th Avenue. The McKittrick Hotel, which is where Sleep no More used to be before they shut down towards the top floor. So it's like not the easiest space to get to, but it's not super hard either. I think that if you are looking for something fun and short and sweet to see this summer or this fall, this is a good one to see. I highly recommend. That's going to be it for us on Heated Rivalry. If you have more questions, you can ask me on the Discord or no, I'll save. I'm going to save that announcement for next week. So here's what's gonna happen next week. I'm going to. Next week's episode is going to be an official breakdown of what the next couple of weeks of the podcast are gonna look like as well as the future of Broadway Breakdown. Nothing scary, but just really, I think fun developments that are very important for me if we're gonna keep this shit going. And I hope you guys will be on board with it. I. I don't wanna lose any of you. I think you. I'm so appreciative that you've all been along for the ride with me, but yeah. So next week I'm going to talk about what some of those changes are going to be as well as what you can expect from future episodes. After that, we will have two more deep dives. We've got Light of the Piazza coming up, which I have recorded with Goncalod pod Adam Elsbury. And then after that, our final deep dive is on next to normal. I will. You will find out who the guest is when that episode drops, because even though he has confirmed with me and he's somebody who has done a deep dive but not for a very long time, I want to make sure that. That we actually get the episode recorded before I say anything, because he travels a lot and anything could possibly happen. But, yeah, that's it. We will see you guys next week for that announcement episode, which will be shorter than this one. And that's all great because I will say this. The line of the Piazza deep dive is the longest episode, or it's the longest deep dive we've done on Broadway Breakdown in over a year. So get ready, because this week and next week's episodes are short, but they're to make you catch your breath before you get the big haul with me and Gunkle and Piazza. So that's it. I want you guys to take care of yourselves this weekend, and I hope you're as excited about next week's episode as I am. And who should we close out with? Ryan kind of had a song in Bring it On, but not really. So I don't think we can really close out with her. Uh, I don't think there's anything with Sherry Torres, I guess. Hmm. Who should we close out with? I am going to say. Well, you know what? Okay. They just announced that the Dolly Parton musical is officially coming to Broadway, which we all had heard whispers about that it was. The whispers was that it was coming to the August Wilson in the spring. It has now been announced that it's coming into the St. James in the winter. I believe it starts previews towards the end of November and then opens in early January. We'll see how they do. But with that, I would like to close out with some Dolly singing from Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. I would like that very much. Yeah, that's what I would like. So, yeah, we'll see you guys next week. Have a great weekend. Take it away, Dolly. Bye. Young boys looking for sand now we used to get a lot of roughnecks when the old boom was high but hey there, get a little rowdy. Thank God the field run dry it's just a little bit country place.