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Today the air in Seoul is very clear and warm. Today the smiles too are warmer than the norm. Though the change is not profound, there's a strong specialness going around. Let's enjoy the day watching from the window. Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history und legacy of American 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 have another bonus episode today because we have some shows to review. Tomorrow is going to be regular classique episode of the podcast, but we have a nice little review episode today. I'm getting it done now on this evening, Tuesday, November 12, because then for the rest of the week, I will be in rehearsals for the live stream of my play, yours truly. Yes, the thing that I have been alluding to for so long and been pummeling for weeks with fundraising pitches is finally approaching. It'll be live streamed via Streaming musicals on Saturday, November 16th at 7pm you'll see more information about that later on my pod on my Instagram, and then if you check out the Discord channel and hopefully some newsletters coming out via Streaming musicals and a nice little press release on that, but it should be On Streaming Musicals YouTube channel, I believe on November 16th at 7. And the good news is that after that happens, you won't hear me pitching for fundraising ever again. And hopefully any other times I talk about it will be about just news that comes down the pike and not me just talking about having a play. But that's that. So just start moving on with these reviews, shall we? But first, we have some other reviews to get to. Reviews of the podcast. Yes, since we last recorded, we got three new reviews on Apple podcasts and as we always do, we give them their due. So let us not dilly dally and jump right into it. Please play the Light in the Piazza Overture. Five stars. Great podcast. Great comprehensive view of shows. I generally agree with his takes, which is super helpful when picking shows to see. Thank you very much. You don't always have to agree with my takes, but if you do, that's wonderful. And if you don't agree, I hope that I at least explain myself in a way that you can understand where I'm coming from. Next up, two stars. Housekeeping. Seriously? You set a timer so you wouldn't go on with housekeeping too long? I'm 15 minutes in and you're still yammering. Uh, sorry, I don't know what episode that is referring to but I could have sworn when I set a timer I was going shorter. But maybe I wasn't. I don't know. I am trying though, so I apologize. Next up, five stars. Broadway Perfection. This is a fantastic musical theater podcast. The three hour deep dives are amazing. The reviews of current running shows are just an added bonus. Matt's insights are profound and he is always thought thoughtful and consistently funny and fun to listen to. Must listen for Broadway fans. Forest Run. Forest Run. Thank you very much for all of those reviews, even the two stars. You know I have never told you guys to not tell me what you think. I do hope that if you are not happy with the content I'm putting out and you want to express so on reviews you can do any stars you want to do. You can do one star, two star, three stars. I just ask that maybe be a little considerate. I try to be considerate when I'm negative about shows. Well, I'm about to eat my words about that with one show coming up. But I do try to be considerate for the most part. And I am a person and I'm not an entity. But I do understand if you are frustrated listening to me when I say I'm going to do something and then I don't and I talk on and on and on and that can be annoying. I understand. But there is a fast forward button as well, so if you don't like hearing the housekeeping, sorry, fast forward. Stop listening. I am trying. If I'm failing, that's just human nature, I guess. But let's move on. We have some reviews to do. We are going to be covering McNeil maybe happy ending, A Wonderful World, the Louis Armstrong musical and A Brief Little Spell on Strategic Love Play currently at the Minetta Lane Theater via Audible. I want to talk about Strategic Love Play for very long. Honestly, I won't talk about McNeil for very long. Strategic Love Play is starring Helena York and I'm always. I always forget how to say his name. Michael. Michael Zigen. Michael Zegen. Michael zan. He plays Mrs. Maisel's husband on Marvelous. Mrs. Maisel and I believe he was also in Bad Jews at the Roundabout. And he's a very good actor. I. I actually saw him in Trouble In Mind, the play that Roundabout did with Lachanze about two or three years ago. And Helena York, I'm just a very big fan of. If any of you have ever watched the other two, it's on hbo, Max, and it's so Funny and she's so good and she's just a very talented individual and I think a very smart comedic actress. This play is by Miriam Batty, B A T T Y E directed by Katie Posner. And I knew nothing about it going in. I was invited to it at the very last minute from my friend Brock. And we went and all we knew is that it was a two hander, possibly a love story. And that's really all there is to say about it. It's about two people on a first date. They met from a dating app and it's a first date that doesn't go well. They both are lonely and they both don't want to settle, but they also want companionship and they've both been burned and they're both trying to map out how to not be alone while also not giving up on themselves. Which sounds more interesting than the play is. It is 80 minutes of just two people talking about their ideals on love and gender and the world. But like not in a way that's compelling, not in a way that's dramatic. It's just, yeah, there's no tension, there's no sensuality, there's no sexuality. You don't understand what keeps them in the room together. Nor do you really understand what's pushing them apart from each other when, when they are drawn to each other, you don't understand why. And when they are retreating from each other, you don't understand why. Helena York and Michael Zegan are, as I said, they're very good actors. They can't really make this work though. Brock and I were saying about Helena York is like, she is such a good comedic actress, but she's not the kind of comedic actress who will just rely on her instincts if the material isn't there. Like when, when something like the other two comes on her lap, she doesn't have to work hard, she just drops in and she goes with what comes naturally. But when something's clearly not gelling, as this play isn't, she tends to push. That's how I felt when I saw Bullets Over Broadway. And in fairness to her, everybody was pushing in that show. It's how I kind of felt about her in American Psycho. But again, I didn't really think that show gelled very well. But it's. You're so. You're watching two people who are very smart and very talented try to justify material that just doesn't land. So ultimately this one was a miss for me. And it's a shame because I like both of them and and the premise is always fun and cute. So we'll just clear right along from that one and go right into the next one because this is also a very fast one. McNeil, the play starring Robert Downey Jr. At the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater. It is directed by Bartlett Sher. It is by. I never know how to say his name. Ayed Akhtar. I believe he wrote Disgraced. Is that. Yes, he is the Pulitzer winning playwright of Disgraced and also the Tony and Hominy for Disgraced and for Junk. And I only know Disgraced. I don't know junk. So this is the first time I've actually seen a work of his done on stage. Clearly a talented playwright, he's got two Tony nominations and a Pulitzer. So if he's listening to this, first of all, I apologize for not being better about boning up on your name. I could have done the professional thing and looked up a few YouTube clips, but it is late at night, I am tired and I have rehearsal tomorrow and I have been running all over this damn city being a fundraising whore and getting scripts and casting and emails together and contracts together, and I hate it. But all that said, I did see za play. I didn't think I was going to see McNeil because it is a very hot, very expensive ticket because the Vivian Belmont seats 1,000 people. It's only playing for two and a half months and it is starring Robert Downey Jr. Who is a major movie star thanks to Marvel and is hot off of winning an Oscar for Oppenheimer. Now it's hard for me to talk about this play. I saw it Wednesday night after seeing maybe as last week, as we all know was a shitty week. The first thing I did was I saw a matinee of maybe happy ending, which was by accident. A friend had an extra comp and I didn't know if I was gonna get my press seats for it later in the week. So I went with her and we were all the way to the side and so every. Nobody was happy. And then I went and got drinks with a couple of friends and then I went and saw McNeil and then ended up seeing maybe happy ending later in the week again with my press seats, which I'll talk about in my review. But. But. So I went into McNeil after one and a half margaritas, a little dazed from the previous 24 hours, but I was focused. I was there. I was never going to be seeing this play again because it is so difficult to get a ticket and I didn't want to Miss anything? Yes, the word of mouth had not been good. Yes, the reviews were bad. But I said, hey, there were positive reviews for Our Town and you didn't like that. There were positive reviews for Romeo and Juliet and you did not like that. So maybe the not positive reviews for McNeil means you'll like it. Since when has Matt Koplik ever been swayed by the critics? Well, let's just say the next day I went back and I read most of those reviews. Not because I was swayed by those critics, but because I needed to remember what happened on stage. I was not drunk at McNeil. I want to make that very clear. You could argue I was buzzed. You could argue, but come on, I am a 34 year old ingenue. I have been drinking margaritas for a long time. One and a half margaritas is not enough to get a girl drunk. Not this girl drunk anyway. Barely buzzed. The fact that I couldn't remember Almost anything about McNeil is more about McNeil than it is about my McMargherita. McNeil is, I suppose, a play about an author who has just won the Nobel Prize. And as that's happening, he has been experimenting with the prospects of AI and the play shows this in scenic transitions. When you'll hear Robert Downey Jr. S voice ask AI to pitch him text of a scenario in the style of his writing, and sometimes AI Will get back to him. Sometimes it'll say, I can't do that. Sometimes it will write something. You see projections of an AI Robert Downey Jr. On the screen. So in some ways you could argue the design. And the text is begging you to wonder what is real, what is fiction, what you know, what is the human brain and what is computer? When he wins his Nobel Prize, McNeil talks about how, I guess it's King Lear. Shakespeare's King Lear is, technically speaking, derived from a previous play that he did not write. And the argument goes that like 70% of Shakespeare's lyre is actually pre written text. And it's just things that he riffed off of. And so the question of originality and creativity come into play again, far more interesting concepts in theory than in reality. The opening scene is between Robert Downey Jr. And Ruthie Ann Miles, who is criminally underused in this play. She plays this doctor and she's basically telling him like his liver's shot to because he drank so much and blah, blah, blah, and he just keeps on waiting to hear if he won the Nobel Prize or not. Andrea Martin is his agent. She's less Underused, because she gets two scenes, as opposed to Ruthie and Miles's one. And it's like, typical Andrea Martin, fair. She's big, she's brassy, she's very New York. And she's, you know, pummeling for laughs. She gets a couple. We also find out that McNeil possibly stole a manuscript that his wife had written before she died. And his grown son is very estranged from him. And he also has an ex girlfriend who's furious with him that's played by Melora Hardin. And the rest is honestly a blur. Again, I was reading these reviews being like, what happened in this show? I can barely remember. I remember the first scene. I remember Andrea Martin's first scene. I remember a bit of Robert Downey junior's speech about Lear. I remember him having his argument with his son. I remember the set design. It's like a log cabin. I don't remember what the argument was about. They talked about McNeil's wife, the son's mother, and the context of that, I guess, and possibly the fact that McNeill stole the manuscript or the Sombelisi stole the manuscript. And then I remember he. His scene with Melora Hardin, or rather I have an image of his scene with me, Laura Hardin. She's on a park bench. And I remember the rest of the cast is on park benches behind them, sort of making a tableau. And I remember it was more about her. She spoke more than he did about what, I can't remember. I think it was about taking the stories of people's lives and using it for his own creative gain, which I understand. And also, as a writer, you're told to start with what you know. And sometimes that includes the people around you and what you know about them. And you may not have their permission, but it's. Sometimes a compelling story happens to someone you know and not you. And it's. Your talent is in how you craft it, how you shape it, how you narrate it, how you carry it over to an audience. You maybe don't have the creativity to come up with the story yourself, but you have the creativity to figure out how to spin it. Believe me, that's the boat I'm in. But the play, God, I mean, it's just. I don't know what to say about it. It's honestly just like a big nothing burger to me. Even the thrill of seeing Robert Downey Jr. On stage isn't much of a thrill. He's. Listen, he's a wonderful actor. He carries himself on stage. He does not get lost in the way that many film actors do when they, you know, aren't really trained for stage or haven't been on stage in a very long time. Look at Juliana Margulies in left on 10th. Look at Katie Holmes in Our Town. But Robert Downey Jr. Doesn't have much of a character. He's sort of like a boomer Guido. And by that I mean boomer Guido Contini in Nine and More. Also like just very antagonistic. He is always trying to push the buttons of the people around him. There's a scene he has, and I remember the visual. I don't remember the scene, but luckily all the reviews mentioned it. He has a scene where he's being interviewed by a New York Times reporter who is a bipoc millennial woman and he is intentionally trying to push her buttons by saying all the most sexist microaggression racist things and always being like, what? Did I say something? Did I say something? And it's almost like he's daring her to catch him in his bullshit. But there's nothing there. There's no drama, there are no stakes. The whole thing ends with a giant question mark of what was the point of any of this? Like, I didn't learn anything, I didn't feel anything. I don't even hate this play because I just don't remember so much about. Maybe infuriates me a bit. I understand again, I understand on paper why this would be done. A new play by a two time Tony nominee and Pulitzer winner, directed by a Tony winner who has had more hits for Lincoln center than he has had flops. Oh, and by the way, it's caught the eye of Robert Downey Jr. And it's 105 minutes with no intermission, in and out, bang, bang, boom. And you get to be the center of attention, but you also don't have to do major histrionics. It's all the things that you've known how to do via Iron man and Oppenheimer. Everybody wins. And Andrea Martin only gets two scenes and Ruthie Ann Miles gets a scene and then she gets to go to her dressing room and relax for a bit. Melora Hardin gets to get, you know, hold off till the very end and then she gets to relax. Everybody wins, right? Not really. Not really. It just, it makes no, it doesn't feel like it has any kind of dramatic purpose. Forget about political or moral purposes. I don't give two flying fucks about that. It's just so forgettable. Everything about it. You're forgetting it while you're watching it. And I have felt that way about a couple of shows. Some that I'm sure some of the listeners have loved. I famously said that about the almost famous musical. My friend Patrick and I watched it, and we were like, I'm forgetting this musical as I am watching it. It was the same thing at McNeil. I just. I could not. I walked out of the theater, and I couldn't remember a single thing about was. It was like memento in real life. It was eternal sunshine of the spotless mind in real life, which is crazy. So crazy. With all that intelligence and talent on stage for that to be the case. It just makes no sense to me. Okay, that's McNeil, and that's strategic Love Play and some of your reviews. We're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to get into A Wonderful World, A Wonderful World, the Louis Armstrong musical. And depending on how long I talk about that, we'll either go right into maybe happy ending or take a break and then get into maybe happy ending. So let's take that 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 Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire. And we're back. So A Wonderful World, the Louis Armstrong musical, which is, for some reason, very hard for me to say. I'm sure other people have a much easier time to say A Wonderful World, but it, for some reason is so hard on my mouth. I don't know. Maybe I'm just weird. So I'll be honest. I didn't know that much about Louis Armstrong as a musician and as an artist. I. I knew his name, I knew his voice. We all know. Hello, Dally. This is Louis D. We all know that. I mean, it's even on Gilmore Girls. Lorelei does it to. I think to Luke. At some point. It's. Or maybe it's to Max. I can't remember. But it's just. It's a very iconic rendition of that song. And he is a very iconic artist for his whole career. But that was that and the title song. And I think to myself, what a Wonderful World. That's. Those are two songs that I have always known that I feel like we all have known. And so that's. But I didn't know much about his career. I didn't know much about him as a trumpet player. I knew him as A personality. And I knew him for those two songs and maybe like one or two others, but I wasn't. This isn't a man that, like, I knew in depth. So I was actually kind of looking forward to this because I. I don't care for bio jukebox musicals in general. We've talked about this before, but post Jersey Boys jukebox musicals covering a specific artist's life no longer can be interesting because the estate of those artists want to have as squeaky clean a presentation of that artist as possible. Sometimes it's because the artist is still alive. For example, it's no coincidence that the Temptation that comes off the best in Ain't Too Proud is the Temptation that's Still Alive and whose memoir the show is based off of. Beautiful. The Carole King musical really kind of started this mold of what if? Our protagonist really was just like a major underdog that we just want to root for and root for and root for? Because in Jersey Boys, those four men are all complicated and they're all unreliable narrators. They say and do terrible things, but they are talented, but they do have humanity to them. It's what makes that show work. And yes, at Paper Mill, I kind of recognized some new flaws in the book, but those flaws do not negate all the wonderful things that that show does and does better than any bio jukebox musical. And A Wonderful World is so clearly in love with Louis Armstrong or at least wants to make his estate happy because the man comes off so good. And listen, maybe he was just a lovely man who did no wrong. I have to now go research him to find out for myself. He had famously had four wives. He married four times. In the musical, it's because the first wife would. He had to run away. He had to leave New Orleans and. And run away somewhere because he tragically witnessed a lynching of one of the members of his band. And so he left New Orleans and his wife wouldn't leave with him. And so they divorced, or like, kind of divorced. And he meets a new woman who plays piano for the band that he's playing in. And she kind of helps him skyrocket his career as a solo artist, but she won't go to LA with him. And so they break up and he goes to Hollywood where he has a new wife who's young and she's cute and she's kind of dumb and she's very materialistic. And she leaves him for his drummer, which they tell you like seven times, that she left him just in case you thought he Was a bad man. And then the fourth wife is the one that sticks. But he does cheat on her on the road with another woman and has a love child. We never meet that woman. We never meet the child. Only hear about it via a letter much later. But the wife stays with him, and they work it out like it's. It's a small little bump where she's looking over his finances, sees a letter from a woman named Sweetie, confronts Louis Armstrong about it. He tells her, and they figure it out. His other, like, vice is that he smokes weed, which they play for laughs, which, like, why. Why would you not play that for laughs? This. But that's, like. That's ultimately what makes him a fully rounded character, right? Is these things. He married four different times, but each time it didn't work out because the woman wouldn't, you know, be there for him. The. He has a dependency on weed. The other, like, kind of conflict they have with him is so, like, Louis Armstrong was a very famous jazz trumpeter and vocal soloist, famous also for scatting during Bridges. And they have a moment in the show that kind of is meant to be like, the moment he decides that he's going to start doing it. And he had no original songs. He did covers of songs. He was considered, you know, one of the greatest jazz artists of, you know, of history and more. And just on top of that, he had a Hollywood career. It was a, you know, headline player in Hollywood, which, for a black actor at that time, was very, very huge. But he often played roles that members of the black community found demeaning. He played butlers. He played, you know, wise black sidekicks. He even played a character called Uncle Tom. And many folks found his smiling demeanor to be him kowtowing to white audiences and white executives. And there's a moment in the show where you see that being addressed. When he's in Hollywood, the whole Hollywood sequence happens very fast. He shows up at the top of Act 2 already having, you know, featured roles, kicks up his. His movie career immediately. While that's happening, he's hearing backlash from members of the black community, doesn't think about it much more because his wife leaves him, and then he meets his fourth wife, and everything's going great. And. And then as integration in the south is heating up, he takes a very harsh stance against the president and against the country and talks about how he was considered a traitor to his race because of the roles he played. Now, that's all well and good, but we're seeing one point made 30 minutes earlier and then never addressed again or even shown to have an effect ever again until it's convenient in that moment in history, via Louis Armstrong's life. And we are trying to tell so much story in so little time. Right. You ultimately need to have a point of view of what it is you're trying to do with your subject. What is the point of this musical? What angle are we going at with this story for the Cher show? Granted, it got kind of convoluted by the time it got to Broadway, but the idea of there being three separate Chers, same thing with the Donna Summer musical. Three separate Donnas, three separate stages of her life that were very important to her. And in the Cher show, watching the three Chers interact with each other and commenting on their past selves while also having questions for their future selves and holding each other accountable for their mistakes as well as their successes. And kind of having to understand that even though your past self feels like a whole different person than who you are now, they are still you. You still did those things. You can't disassociate from your actions of the past. That's an angle. Another angle. Speaking of bio musicals, and we don't really think of it as a bio jukebox musical, but in a way it is. It's just. There's more musical theater craft to the score. Is Jelly's Last Jam, which I actually thought about a lot while watching Wonderful World, partly because of how it ends and also because of the style of music, also because of some of the locations and the use of women in the show, is somewhat similar to Jelly's Last Jam. The Jelly's Last Jam, if you didn't see it at Encores or you didn't see it on Broadway, or you don't know it very well, was a Broadway musical in 1992 starring Gregory Hines, written and directed by George C. Wolfe. He who is about to bring you all gypsy. And we all know how I feel about George C. Wolfe. Jelly Roll Morton was, you know, he considered himself like the father of jazz, which isn't really true, but he was masterful jazz pianist. He was also an insane racist. He was called Creole, which is that he was, I believe, French descent and a half white, half black artist, multiethnic artist. And in that time, for where he lived, he and his family considered themselves better than the average black person. And you watch this in Jelly's Last Jam as you watch Jelly Roll Morton have all this hatred for black people. And it's subtle at first, but it becomes much More present and almost violent as the show continues. And so Jelly's Last Jam is framed as Jelly Roll Morton, basically on his deathbed, you know, going about to go to the afterlife and having to reckon with his own life and his messy, intense feelings about his race, the history of race in his country, and just coming to terms with it. And they deal with that through his music, through his family, through the women of his life, through the one woman who he ever really loved. And, you know, though it gets messy in terms of storytelling, that is the angle, and it's a good angle. And it would have been interesting if Wonderful World had an angle like that. Or honestly, any angle, because ultimately the whole show is just. And then this happened. And then this happened. It opens with Louis in a rehearsal for a concert and immediately talking to his rehearsal pianist about his life. And we, within, like, less than three minutes, jump back to his youth in New Orleans and James Monroe Iglehart, as Louis Armstrong, will narrate from time to time, breaking the fourth wall and talking to us just to give us, like, more information, more exposition. It's not. Half of it's not necessary. Half of it's just to kind of cut to the chase so we know who we're about to see on stage and not have to shove that exposition into dialogue. And then when we finally get back to that moment in rehearsal in Act 2, it's like, okay, now we're ready to do the concert. It's like, oh, so in order to do the concert, your rehearsal pianist had to just know your entire life. But of course, the concert doesn't happen because Louis sick and he's. And he's about to die. Now, of course, the show foreshadows this all the time because throughout Louis life, he had a very bad cough. Every now and then he would cough right before he played the trumpet. And then 50 years later, the coughing got too much and he's diagnosed with cancer. And he tells his fourth wife, but I still gotta play. I must play. A curtain comes in, he's called to the stage. He comes on, and he thinks he's going to perform for a large audience, but he realizes that it's his swan song before he goes to the AfterLife and all four of his wives are there. And it's meant to be very, you know, cathartic healing, which is odd, because he did not end on good terms with his first three wives. And until that moment, whenever they sort of pop in as omnipresent narrators or commentators of his life, it's in A more sinister and I hate to use the word, but like, nagging way. And so having them be there in the afterlife for him be like, we're ready for you. We, you know, we're here to love you and have you love us. And like, that's very convenient for a wholesome ending. And everybody comes on stage and looks out of the audience as we sing Wonderful World. It's just all very pat. It's all very pedestrian in my mind and basic, you know, there's no tension, there's no drama. The best things I'll say about it are that the music is given great treatment. It is orchestrated well, it is sung incredibly well. There is some solid choreography. There are two separate choreographers. One is for tapped and one is for tap dancing and one is for everything else. The tap I found to be solid when it was solo work. There's a tapping duet between Louis and another actor when they. When they're singing smile and the whole world smiles with you. And that's great. It's when it's ensemble tapping that I found it to be kind of, meh, not terrible, just sort of just not. Not as creative. When it's not tapping and it's ensemble work, I found that to be actually quite nice. That was. That actually did remind me a bit of Jelly's Last Jam and even a little bit of that. Like Graziella, Danielle and Ragtime Energy. Like a lot of hip hop and off the beat moves. It was very. I found it to be quite creative. So like, the choreography for me overall was solid. There were some like B plus pieces, a couple of A minus pieces, a few B minus C plus pieces, but nothing out and out terrible. You know, more just sort of things that worked very, very well. Things that worked kind of well and things that were just basic costumes were all technically okay, but looked, I hate to say it, but a bit on the cheap side. It was like, God, how do you say this without making it sound mean? But some of those costumes looked to me like the Paper Mill Playhouse's production of like Ain't Misbehaven or After Midnight, where it was like, the idea is there, the color scheme is there, but like, maybe the fabric, the material is like one notch below what it should be. So certain costumes are stiffer than they should be, they're slightly ill fitting than they should be, or they just seem like kind of, you know, store bought. And obviously that's not the case. I'm sure all of these costumes were handcrafted. It's like there's like, if you go see it, tell me what you think. Because, again, it's one of those things where you look at the costumes, you look at the design, you're like. You have the period mostly down. You have an eye for color. You know, there's nothing here is bad, but it just feels like two levels off, a little cheap, a little, you know, cutting corners. The set overall, I found to be kind of ugly. Somebody told me that it reminded them of the wicked set, but, like, covered in, like, brass, which is, I guess, okay and fair. There's. There's a whole bunch of suitcases on both sides of the stage that they frame the stage. I'm not entirely sure why it's. It felt like a. Like a set that was trying to fill Studio 54 and didn't really know how. Lighting is okay. Not great, but just okay. The talent on stage, as I said, is very good. Again, the whole thing is sung incredibly. There's some tricky acting going on here. James Monroe Eichelhart does an uncanny Armstrong impression, but I don't get a fully formed performance from him. And I read a few reviews that felt like he did give a fully formed performance, and that's their prerogative. And he said, talented, charming man. And he brings that charm to the stage. Like, you like watching him. You can't help but want to watch him. He's very magnetic. But in the more dramatic scenes, when Louis Armstrong is sick, when Louis Armstrong is fighting with one of his wives, when Louis Armstrong witnesses the lynching, when he's sort of retaliating against the president, you feel like Iglehart's a bit out of his depth, which is ironic because he's now one of the co directors. The show has three directors, and it shows because it's pull. It is both pulled in every direction while also staying completely still. And you don't get depth or heart or passion from it, nor do you get it from Iglehart. And some people might may just want a perfectly pleasant night. Two and a half hours of Louis Armstrong with not a lot of pushback. You know, any kind of drama that's on stage, I'm assuming if you watch it, is the kind of drama where when it's over, you sit there and you go, well, I understand that I am correct in finding that terrible. You know, it's the thing I've always said about shows like Kinky Boots, which is a perfectly fine show. It's well structured, it's decently written and a good deal of fun. But anytime I saw it And I ended up seeing it a few times because of friends who had been in the show. I'd watch it and I'd go, yeah, the show is solid, it's well built. But I watched the audience and it never felt like applause. It felt like the sounds of 1500 people patting themselves on the back for understanding what the message was, for identifying who the homophobes were. Like, that's the bad man, that's the good man. It felt like homophobia for dummies or Sesame street for homophobes. And listen, some people do need it at that entry level. I totally get that. But that is also sort of the case with Wonderful World. And it bothers me when people who don't need it at that entry level still go. And they go, mm, I'm. I'm just. I've done such work. And thus I know that this moment is very tragic. It's like, yeah, no fucking shit. An innocent man is murdered. That is tragic. You know, America. America is racist. We know this. We keep being reminded of this when it's shown, when it's honestly shoehorned in. For me, that is almost insulting, because then it just feels like pandering of. Well, it doesn't matter what our point is with this show or the fact we have nothing really to say about Louis Armstrong, or that we're not going to present you with much drama. All we have to do is have moments like this where a character says and does this, in a way, therefore, you, the audience, will always have, you know, a Pavlovian response and go, but of course. Bravo. So brave. Nothing gets achieved by that. I want to give a couple more positives. As I said, it's incredibly well sung. Actually, I went with my cousin, Straight Ally Scott, and he really loved the Act 2 opener, which is. One moment, please. Oh, and this. It was oh, when the Saints Go Marching In. And it was sung by James Monroe Iglehart and Jason Forbach. Hi, Jason. Scott really loved that number. He thought it was very, very, very delightful. I was a very big fan of Darlesia Circe, who played Lucille Wilson, Louis Armstrong's second wife. She, I thought, gave the most well rounded performance in the show. First of all, sang like a goddamn beast, but also was able to find her character's strength, her focus, while also being a person on that stage. Obviously, she wasn't doing Mother Courage, she wasn't doing Sophie's Choice or Zone of Interest, but she was being a human being in the world that this musical had set for her. And was believable and was engaging. And you wanted to see more of her. You bought her attraction to Louis Armstrong. You understood her passion for music, her knowledge of music, her business smarts, her artistry. And when things got to her, you could see it. It made sense. And I found that really compelling. I found that really impressive. She is definitely a contender for the I see what you're doing and tbh Bravo performance of the season when we get to our fake Tony categories at the end of the year. Also, another shout out to where is she? It is. God damn it. Sorry. I'll find it. I'll find it. Oh, no. Sorry, I made. I made a mistake. Darlesia Circe is the fourth wife. She's the one who he meets and she sings Back of Town Blues or no, sir, she sings that's my Home. I apologize. No, God damn it. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one he meets in New York. That's Lucille Lucille Wilson. Darlesia Circe. She's also great. She's actually my second favorite performance, so as the fourth wife. And she does an amazing your Daddy Son on YouTube if you want to look that up. My friend Danny showed it to me because he. She. Darlesia, I guess she understudied or she replaced Audra in Ragtime. And there's a video of her doing your Daddy's son at 54 below. And it is incredible. I do highly recommend. The one who gives my favorite performance is the actress playing Lil Hardin. That's Jenny Harden. Harney Fleming. Yes. Yes, that's. That's right. Because Jenny Harney Fleming is the daughter of Ben Harney, the Tony winning actor who played Curtis in the original Dreamgirls. So everything I just said about Darlesia, I apologize. That's actually for Jenny Harney Fleming. But Darlesia also does a wonderful job. Darlesia does all the things that I said Jenny does, but I think with actually a less good role, also sings the loving bejesus out of it. But she has less. She has fewer interesting traits in the show. Her character does. And maybe that's because that's the wife that sticks. And therefore maybe her memory is more important to the estate of Louis Armstrong because she's the one that, you know, is married to him until he dies, but she plays as well as she can. All four of the wives are very good, but those are the two who really stuck out the most to me, and I want to give them their due. Yeah. You know, it's the. It's the tough of the road when you have musicals like this. We're never gonna get a bio musical on Broadway that genuinely delves into the messiness of these artists and what made them a phenomenal artists. Because so much of the time it's like, well, we just want to hear the greatest hits. And so the script goes, well, then I did this song. Some people didn't think it was gonna go, but I had faith in it anyway. Dancing Queen, like, it's. It is that same tune over and over and over again. That's literally how they cover the hello, Dolly segment is. He's like, I sang it. I forgot about it. And then all of a sudden, it blew up and I had no idea. Who knew? That's not exciting theater. That's just a Wikipedia page in concert. And I don't. I'm not here for it. Listen, is A Wonderful World the worst time I've had at the theater? No, it's not the worst time I've had at the theater this season or even in the past week. Not with McNeil and strategic love Play. But it's not great. I wouldn't even say it's good. It is fine at. At its best, it is fine. At its worst, you know, it's severely under baked. I. It. I don't think this is a show. You would go and you would think to yourself, like, how did this make it to Broadway? You can see how it made it to Broadway with the way that the music is handled, with the talent on stage, and with some of the moments of the show with the choreography and how it all gels together. You go, oh, there is something here. But it is, overall, a very tepid show. It never gets hot, never even really bubbles. It just kind of sits there. It's not insulting. It's just bland. It's not forgettable like McNeil, but it is bland. And that is honestly just as bad as forgettable in my opinion. You need to add some spice to the mix, have some honesty and some messiness to your show. It's. It'll set you free, I tell you. All right, that's it. On A Wonderful World. We will take one last break, and then we will get into maybe happy ending. Billy, I'd 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. And we're back. So with maybe happy ending warning, I will be giving spoilers on the plot of this show. So if you don't want to hear any of that, I'm sorry, you might have to skip the rest of this review. But I to put you out of your misery, I will at least say my immediate opinion up front before delving into the rest of it in case you were like. But I want to know Matt's thoughts. I just don't want to have spoilers. Totally get it. Okay. So as I said, I first saw the show Wednesday afternoon with my friend Elena. We were all the way to the side and we both kind of enjoyed it, but we didn't love it. Part of it was the day, part of it was where we were sitting. And then I ended up going Saturday afternoon with press seats, which I didn't have confirmed until the day before. So I was glad I got to see it Wednesday because I just wasn't sure if that was going to happen Saturday. I was in a better mood. And also this truly helped a lot. I had much better seats. I was toward. I was not even towards the center. I was directly center in the middle of the orchestra. I was like, row G, row H. Like fully dead on. It was. I could not have had a more perfect seat. And it really did affect my opinion on the show because overall, I must say, I really, really liked this musical. Maybe happy ending. I have thoughts on it. I don't think it's perfect. I'm glad they got the reviews that they got. I can't say that I fully sign off on the five star raves across the board, but it definitely has a recommendation for me. It's definitely in the top tier of the current crop this season. I will give my personal rankings of everything this season at the end of the episode. But rest assured, maybe Happy Ending is absolutely up there. I think it does have some, you know, blips to it, but it's an absolute recommend on my end. So know that. And if you don't want any spoilers, you have, you know, my little opinion there. And no more further details. You can get into the details after you see the show. So maybe Happy Ending is by Will Aronson and Hugh Park. It's been kicking around for a while now. It premiered in Korea in 2016 and then premiered in America at the Alliance Theater at the beginning of 2020, right before COVID So this is its Broadway debut, even though it's technically like eight, nine years old as a musical. And it is about two helper bots, which are basically human robots. Takes place in Seoul, Korea, in the not so distant future where relatively Wealthy civilians have helper bots, human like robots that basically just sort of do whatever for them. And they have a million functions. They can retain a bunch of memory. They can do services for you. They can research things for you. They can all these things. And helper bots, like an iPhone, have different models. As the years go on, the companies that make them create newer models and each model is supposed to have more what's looking for, not like more apps, but more features, I guess. So, you know, model five is going to seem much more like a human than Model 3, but. But with each new rebrand, there's always problems. So this is to say the musical is about two helper Oliver, who is a model three, and Claire, who's a model five. Claire is much more human like than Oliver. She has sarcasm. She doesn't have certain bugs, like always saying, you're welcome anytime someone says thank you. But she also has weaker battery life than Oliver. He's able to charge and maintain battery life for like 10 times the length of Claire. Both of them have been abandoned by their owners in this apartment complex for helper bots. It's sort of like Hudson Yards, but for robots. So in a way, it's very kind. They're not like, literally thrown into the junkyard, but they are sort of left there to die. They. It's just that, you know, dying means that they eventually their functions wear out. You know, they get deliveries every couple of weeks for new parts. They get. Oliver always gets a magazine, a jazz magazine, but nobody comes to visit them. I guess you that you can hang out with other neighbors in your building, but it's implied that Claire and Oliver are the only two helper bots left, either on their floor or in their entire building. And Claire knows that her owner is never coming back for her. She has a. She unlocked her memory that her owner originally deleted to inform her why she was getting sent away. Some of the things that, I guess helper bots can't know their own password because if they did, then they could delete their memory or, you know, I guess power themselves off or something like that. And an owner has to give their helper bot their password in order for them to be able to do that. And so Claire's owner did that for her. Oliver believes that his owner is coming back for him, even though it's been 12 years and he's saving up money so he can, you know, leave the. You know, flee the co op and. And go find his owner and be with him. And Claire clearly is aware that her shelf life is not lasting much longer. Her. No, they. They meet because for the first time, because Claire's charger has broken and because her battery is weak. You know, she drains through battery very quickly. She always needs to be charging. And with her charger broken, she needs to borrow Oliver's. And so that is how they're able to meet. And then they continue to meet because with her charger broken, she has to borrow his charger every day to, you know, just have her functions. She ultimately agrees to leave the apartment complex with Oliver to find his owner, even though she's pretty sure that there's a reason why the owner has not come to pick him up. And we get flashbacks to Oliver's time with his owner. We get flashbacks to Claire with her owner. We see them sort of go through their whole wacky adventure to get to Oliver's owner. They don't have, like, a lot of obstacles. Nothing's really stopping them from getting there. It's more. Because the show is more about how they connect the idea of these two creatures who are not meant to feel. They were not designed for it. And yet, because of all of the experiences that they've had with humans of everything in the world, through osmosis, they've been able to kind of progress and upgrade to a point where they pretty much have all the same emotions of a human being, even if it's expressed in. In their own robot ways. And what we're watching is their journey towards falling into each other. We're not watching Oliver find his owner, James, and all the obstacles it takes to get there. They get there, and we find out that James died quite a few years ago. And the whole reason why Oliver's owner, James, left him was because James had a son that he was sort of estranged from. And the son wanted to reconnect with his father because his father was sick and he wanted to get closer to him before he died. But his one condition was that James could not bring Oliver, because Oliver clearly had a huge impact on James's life and meant a great deal to him. And James's son did not want to compete with Oliver. So when Oliver shows up to James's address, the sun is there and informs him of all of this. And Oliver and Claire eventually make it back to the apartment, not before checking out the fireflies, because that's something that Claire wanted to do, was see the fireflies on the island that James was living on. And there's a really lovely reveal with the fireflies and the orchestra. It's really, it's very sweet. And when they get back, they realize that they're in love, and they are together for a while, until Claire reveals that she probably only has a year left before her whole system wears off and she has to power down forever. Oliver reveals he probably has three years left because he's more durable. And they decide it's ultimately too hard to deal with the idea of loss. They've already had loss in their lives. They couldn't lose each other. And so they originally planned to just separate and convince themselves they're no longer in love. But then James's son comes because he wants to retrieve some of Oliver's memories of his father. And as a form of gratitude, he gives Oliver Oliver's password. So Oliver now has the function to delete memory. So he and Claire decide that that's what they're going to do. They're going to delete each other from their data bank. And the last scene of the show, we're sort of back to where we were at the beginning. Oliver starting his day. He's brushing his teeth. He's saying hello to his plant, Wabu, and Claire ends up showing up at his door because her charger's broken and she needs to charge just like she did before. It's very eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Of like, of course they're gonna see each other again because she's. They're the only two robots in the building, she has weak battery life. She's forgotten that her charger is broken. She's gonna have to borrow Oliver's. So Oliver lets her in, she gets the charger, and it is actually revealed that Oliver did not wipe his memory, and he's going to be around Claire, possibly in the hopes that she falls back in love with him. Or maybe not. He just couldn't bring himself to do it. Which says something about the progress of Oliver as a robot, that he ultimately made a decision based off of emotion and not logic. Since he is an earlier model than Claire, one would assume that his functions would not allow him to progress that way. I will say this ending was one that kind of. It was very, very sweet. It wasn't the ending that would have worked for me. Part of it is that maybe. Happy ending. I'll get the negatives out of the way first because the positives are way longer. It is about 15 minutes too long, maybe. Happy ending. There is some air that you could absolutely suck out of it, especially in the second half. They say it's 90 minutes. It is not. It is an hour and 50. It also has a couple of different times where it feels like it is ending and it doesn't, which adds to the length because you keep going like, well, where is this heading? Where is this heading? Where is this heading? And so the last 15 minutes feel like probably four or five different endings. And the final ending is a very sweet one. But because you sort of prepared to say goodbye three times before that, for me, it did not have the same punch. So should they decide to come back to this at some point and do some tweaking, my response would be like, look at the last 30 minutes and see where you can shave off 5 to 10 minutes. Especially at the end of, like, getting to that final spot. Another thing is just technical. This is a Michael Arden production, so sight lines are absolutely an issue. They are always an issue with his shows, unfortunately. And that is what I mean when I say that seeing it from the center heavily influenced my opinion of the show, because I liked it the first time, I really liked it the second. And part of it is because there was just more I could see. Now you still get a sense of the scale and of the story and of everything. You know, no matter where you sit. It's not like massive obstructed views if you're on the side of the orchestra or if you're up in the mezzanine or the balcony. It's just that there are details that. That are carefully thought out in the design, in the set, in the lighting and the projections. It is a beautifully designed show, and there are so many details that actually enhance the storytelling, that make things a lot clearer. And if you don't get them, you don't realize you're missing anything. But when you see them, you understand, oh, I would have gotten this plot point a lot sooner had I been able to see this. I would have been able to know this was happening if I could see this sooner. But. So that's a frustrating thing. But that leads to how I would have viewed the ending, which was either I would have wanted an entire eternal sunshine where they do both wipe their memories and they just find their ways back to each other or something else where. So the way that the scene ends on Broadway is she comes in, she gets her charger, she says she's clear. She's like, oh, maybe I've seen you around, blah, blah, blah. And Oliver takes out his jazz magazine and he's talking about how threes have much more durable battery life and blah, blah, blah. And they do this and that things that he had said the first time they met. And then he says, oh, but you know, fives have really great functions too. And. And starts saying things like that. And they look at each other and, you know, I think she says, like, do you think it'll all be okay? And he says, I hope so. And then we fade out and. And with a spotlight on the plant, Wabu. And then that's the end. I would have loved it if the ending was we get. We got back to where we started. They've, as far as we know, they've cleared their memories. Oliver's brushing his teeth, brushing his eyes. Claire comes in to borrow his charger because her battery is low. She comes in, they're acting cordial but, you know, distant to each other. And she's asking about the plant, she's asking about him. And he starts talking about the durability of A3's battery life. Oh, but fives have wonderful functions too. And saying things that he had said the first time. And then after a beat, she turns to him, she just goes, oliver. And he looks at her and he goes, claire. And then we fade out. And we know that actually neither of them wiped their memories and they couldn't keep themselves away from each other. And they were gonna try to put on the facade for the sake of the other one, but they both realized they couldn't do it. And that's the end. That is, for me, what would have been a really powerful ending. Now, the ending they have is very sweet and a lot of people really like it. And it's clearly the ending that the writers wanted. So for fuck my drag. But that is my feedback on that. And I don't know if I would have been able to come up with that ending had they not written this ending. So thanks to Springboard off of. Let me get to the positives because there are many, many, many. First off, the show looks beautiful. It is designed incredibly. One could argue it's like maybe over designed because it is ultimately a small show. It's four actors and it doesn't require a lot of high tech. Even though these are robots in the future, there's a lot you could do with just practical effects, right? You don't necessarily need all the projections. And I would love to see an intimate production of this show. I think that this show fits probably better in like a 500, 600 seat theater. Of course, on Broadway that is not economically feasible. So they do it in the Belasco where they can hopefully make a profit even though their grosses haven't been great. Right now, that said, if you're going to do a show like this on Broadway and you're like, no, we are going to do Spectacle. This is absolutely the happy medium. It doesn't feel overblown, it doesn't feel over the top. Would I prefer, like, 15% smaller? Yes. But what they do is very impressive and never feels too much, which is quite the feat in this day and age. And. And again, like it. It's all very precise. They. They do a lot of panel work, which is part of the reason why there are sideline, sightline issues in the show. But it is very intricately designed. It is very tight. I do think that it works well with the projections. The way that they do flashbacks or the projections is really cool. And I, Yeah, I was very impressed by all of that. It is a sweet story. Is a. I won't say it's a thin story, but it's a concise story that is drawn out a little too long. It's very Pixar with a little bit of Miyazaki, and I think they could have had a pinch more Miyazaki into it. By that, I mean, if you've ever seen a studio Ghibli movie, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Kiki's delivery service, Ponyo, Miyazaki is very big on. You know, there's an emotional truth that we're telling, and all the mystical stuff is really unimportant. And I will only give you the information that's necessary to the story. You don't need to know what creature Totoro actually is. You don't need to know the schedule for the cat bus. You don't need to know the hierarchy of all the creatures of the forest. That doesn't help these two girls deal with their mother's almost deathly illness. Right. And so for maybe happy ending, there are times I'm like, we don't need to wrap up this part. We don't need to wrap up that part. We don't need a whole bunch of information on this stuff. Some things can be left unsaid. In fact, it's that snake eating its own tail. The more questions you answer, just the more questions I have. And so for this show, there are times when I felt that we could have streamlined that a bit. But that is to say, having the Pixar in there a gives it a great deal of color, but also gives a great deal of charm and warmth. And it's. That's the thing is that this is a very warm musical and one that doesn't feel precious. There's enough humor to it. There's enough adult humor to it, actually, that it doesn't feel trite. And I. I very much appreciated that. I'll also say this is a really lovely score. I've been able to hum quite a few of those tunes since seeing it. Granted, I saw it twice in one week, but still, there are, like. I can hum the basic melody line of the opening number. I can hum the basic melody line of Claire's first song, the road song that they, you know, sing on their way to. I don't remember the name of the island, but the island where James lives. And part of it is repetition. Yeah. You know, it's brought up a couple of different times in the show, but this is a very lovely score. It's like, kind of how I wanted Amelie to sound when I saw Amelie. And I know people really, you know, vouch for that show and they're allowed to, but when I think intimate musicals, when I think a modern Day She Loves Me, I think of a score like this where it's not bold. There's no high belting, there's no barn burners. The songs all flow in and out of the story and are realistic to the characters and very much in touch with the atmosphere that the show takes place in, the time period and the energy and the attitude, and I really love that. I mean, this is going to be an album that I will listen to quite a bit. It's just very sweet and very memorable, and I can't remember the last time I felt that way about a new score. I've heard bops before in new scores, but not, like, ones that just sort of feel like a little. Like a little bit of warmth, like a scarf around your heart, you know, it was just really sweet. Darren Criss as Oliver and Helen J. Shen as Claire are fantastic. I've never found Darren to have, like, the greatest of voices, and he's not, like, selling me powerhouse vocals in this. Neither is Helen J. Shen. It's clear, though, with her that it is a choice not to go for big, bombastic singing. She is using her head voice as much as possible to keep the lightness of the story going, to keep the lightness of the music going. And with Darren, I don't know if it's necessarily a choice so much as, like, he's just not an incredible singer, but he is a fine singer and he has a good sense of musicality and he's a very good actor. So he makes it all work. He really has down all of the mannerisms for Oliver that you really buy it. I read in Jesse Green's review that he has found Chris a bit stiff on stage in the past, and I think that actually works to his advantage in this. Because Oliver is a stiff character, both literally and metaphorically. And Helen J. Shen is able to do a lot opposite him just by being a polar opposite in terms of temperature. He is a little more cold, she's a little more warm, she's sassier, she's friendlier. She's just more human, like. And it says something to their performances, to their chemistry, to the arc of the story that you buy their connection with each other, because I will. It's not so much like that. You watch it and you go, how are they gonna fall in love? Or like, oh, I don't buy that they're into each other like they're robots. It's not like it's hot and heavy. It's just a connection out of all the loneliness, right? And falling into each other in a way where you recognize all of the good stuff about another person that keeps you content. And you watch them be content with each other. Not settle, but content. And it is very, I hate to say realistic, but it is. It's. It's. You watch so many movies or musicals and you wonder, like, how do these characters fall for each other? I don't understand. And it's not the, you know, having similar likes and things. It's not bonding over one major thing. It's not about having incredible chemistry sometimes. It's just about, like, spending a lot of time with another person, sharing experiences with a person, and bit by bit, seeing facets to them that you like, having a bond with them that you didn't expect. And that can lead to love. So many love stories happen incredibly differently, right? People talk about love at first sight. People talk about, oh, we were friends for 10 years and then we fell in love. Oh, I had to go through a lot of frogs before I found my prince. And with these two, you know, they're robots, They've spent many years alone after not understanding the human experience and having their own human experience together. And through the sheer force of companionship after so much isolation and having an actual human being, you know, journey that all sort of combines to them connecting. And you buy it. I think you really do buy it. Again, it's not a show that I find to be perfect. 10 to 15 minutes too long, A couple too many endings at the end, and maybe not the ending that I would have done. But it's the ending that they wanted to do. And I wish that Michael Arden would, like, sit in the, you know, third to last row on the side of the mezzanine and see how much of the show he can view from there, because I guarantee you, he. I. I don't want to think that he doesn't care. I just don't think that he thinks about it because it's just. It's a problem that's happened every time he's had a Broadway show. And it's a shame because he is such a talented director. He's got a great eye, he has a great sense of story, and he's really good with actors. And I've honestly just. I've been more impressed with each show that he's done. I famously was not the biggest fan of his Spring Awakening. I thought it was fine. I didn't love it. I really, really liked Once on this Island. I really liked Parade, and I really like maybe Happy Ending. And I think some of it is his best work. Some of it is, you know, him falling into old traps. But there's so much good going on here that I'm so willing to recommend this to people despite having bumps or see it. And if you disagree with my bumps and find different ones, let's talk about it. But I. More. More than anything, I just want to say see it. I think it's really good, and it's very good for the soul to see something that is endearing and sweet without being sugary and cloying. You know, that's very hard to do. And this show was a big surprise for me, and I highly recommend it. So that's it on maybe Happy Ending. I don't really have much else to say. I should have asked in the Discord if there were things that people wanted me to cover with any of these shows. But at this point, I'm kind of drawing a blank. There are two other actors in maybe Happy Ending. I want to give them their due as well. There is Marcus Choi, who plays James Oliver's owner, as well as a few other people. Jun SEO, who I think that's James's son. And then he plays a whole bunch of other small characters throughout the show. And then DEZ Duran, who plays Gil Brentley, a jazz singer that James Oliver's former owner used to love. And Gil Brentley will often just sort of sing a lot. The music is both, like, kind of modern ish. How do I describe it? Like, I don't say like modern ish. Korean. Like, it it reminds me a lot of the score of Extraordinary Attorney. Woo. If you haven't watched that on Netflix, my God, please watch it. It'll make you cry with like a hint of Pixar to it as well. But then also these songs that sound like full blown jazz standards sung by like Michael Buble and that's who this actor plays and he'll pop up and sing songs that sort of comment on the action. Very cabaret like. And it's nice if I ever were to make a musical out of Streetcar Named Desire, that's honestly how I would write it is I would write these jazzy songs from the radio that people would be singing that just happened to be kind of commenting on the action or setting the atmosphere. Not necessarily Blanche dubois herself singing in the living room, you know. But yeah, so that's all I got to say on maybe happy ending. Join me tomorrow for I think it's fat ham. Yes, I believe tomorrow is fan ham. And then if you haven't decided yet, you can still, technically speaking, donate to the fundraiser for the Yours truly livestream. We have assembled our cast. I don't think I can say everyone's names just yet. I think the press release will be coming out in a day or two. But let's just say we have a Tony nominated actress in it who spent a few seasons as a co lead on a TV show on cbs. We have a drama desk nominee who has played a high schooler a couple of times on stage. Maybe one a little more plasticky than another, but still one or two high school shows. I think she also did my favorite musical out in dc. I'm pretty sure we have a Lucille Lortel nominee for an off Broadway musical that eventually transferred to Broadway. Post Covid. They were not in the transfer. They were too busy replacing a vaccine denier in a hit Broadway musical. Post Covid. He's also in a recent indie movie. Who else do we have? Oh, we have a former newsie, an OBC newsie who has been in more Broadway shows than I have fingers. Absolutely crazy. He was actually just on Broadway last season in a Tony nominated musical that we all felt should have had more love but couldn't have that much love because it did not last very long into the season. But still there was love. It was here. Anyone else I'm not thinking of? We have another gentleman who toured the country in a hit Broadway musical. If you believe enough, then maybe he'll say hello to you. And then he also was off Broadway in a musical that I mentioned earlier today. On this episode and did maybe a pro shot of said musical with perhaps a former teen pop icon who's coming back to Broadway in the spring. I've been talking in riddles this entire time. And our final actress is someone who's been in a couple of Broadway shows, a couple of Broadway tours. They may or may not have been in a musical that I've made a punching bag of mine that opened post Covid that famously had money problems. Anyway, that's it. I'll say the full thing at some point, or you'll just see on Instagram or the Discord channel, but that's it. If you like the podcast, give us a nice 5 star rating or review. If you don't like the podcast and you want to tell me you absolutely can again, I just request that you be maybe a little kinder with your words. You can say your feelings, but just remember, I'm a person saying things like yammering on, just. I don't. Yes, I talk all the time. I know that, but I don't, I don't appreciate that kind of verbiage. It's just, it's. It's intentionally pointed. And I try to discourage that kind of talk because those words go someplace. They go to me. Yeah. So that's it. I'm gonna close this out with little miss Helen J. Shen in maybe Happy Ending, because I really like that score and I want you all to get into it. So that'll be it. Join us for the new episode tomorrow and then a couple of new episodes after that. And then I'm probably going to on a bit of a hiatus just to relax, post this reading and we'll be back soon enough. All right, take it away, Helen. Bye. Don't resist the way things are. Don't forget how good it's been. It's the way that it always was. It'll be okay. It'll be okay. A robot does what she always does. It's the only way It'll be okay. You know you're stronger than you think.