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Thank you very much. That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do, but, Mr. Griffin, hit it. Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. 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 exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And, of course, today is another review day. Three reviews to speak of. I sound. I may sound ungrateful. I'm not ungrateful. I'm very grateful. I'm just very tired. Guys. It's been very busy, and some of these shows I had to hold off on reviewing for a while because we were in the middle of deep dives and whatnot. So one of our reviews today is about, like, three weeks old since I last saw it, so. But I have my notes on it, so we can talk about it. But I digress. Today we are talking about Proof, Becky Shaw and Every Brilliant Thing. Technically speaking, all three are revivals, even though Becky Shaw and Every Brilliant Thing have never been on Broadway before. Part of the classics rule via the Tony Awards eligibility. So just, you know, we'll talk about that as we. As we get into Tony chances for all three of these shows. And I will get into all three of these shows in just a hot second. But before we do any of that, guess what, y'? All, we got another review. I asked and you listened, and I love it because we. We love it when children will listen. Right? No little. Little Sondheim rap for you guys. Okay, I'm gonna say cue the lightning of the Piazza Overture. It may come in quiet. I don't know why. I've been editing this, and I had the balance of the music. I thought, okay. And then when it played on Apple podcasts or on YouTube, it's, like, barely there. So I don't know what's going down with that, but we're. We're trying. We're trying when we. When we cue the. When we cue the Overture. But. Okay, enough of me talking. Cue the light of the Piazza Overture. Five stars from Michael Jeterfan. 90 mm. God, that's good. Another Sondheim reference. Matt could talk with more passion and detail about a show he thinks is a 6 out of 10 than most people could about their favorite musical. His knowledge and. Sorry, his love and knowledge of theater are on display in every episode, and his analysis is consistently smart, funny, and well articulated. Because of how clearly he explains his opinions, I can tell when a show he likes probably won't be for me, or when a show he doesn't like might be one I want to see, which is a sign of a truly great critic. Thank you. I also owe him a lot for introducing me to the 1994 carousel and the Lachiusa wild party. Highly recommend. You're welcome. Mike Earljeterfan90 I hope I've introduced a lot of people to the lachiusa Wild Party, because my God, talk about a musical theater score that fucks. And I'm glad that I've introduced more people to the 1994 carousel. I think it should surprise nobody that when I was teaching my workshops at the Florida Thespians this past March, we talked about Carousel a lot in my Analyzing Musicals workshop. And I talked a lot about motifs and about the bench scene, and I showed them a little bit of the opening sequence from the 94 production. And I had a lot. I weirdly had a lot of older high school boys who, like, went from sports into musical theater. Like, a lot of kids who were in soccer and lacrosse and swimming who found their way into musical theater and got to play Jack Kelly in Newsies or whatever and fell in love with it, as they should. And they all came up to me, like, each of them at different workshops, and they're like, so I'm not going to be watching this video now of the whole show because this show sounds like it rules. I'm like, it does rule, and you're very welcome. And also, like, if there's any justice, you'll all get to play Billy Bigelow in college. So look at the good I do. Look at what? Look how I. How I teach the children. Okay, enough of that. Let's get into actual summer reviews. Reviews. Before I do those three, I do want to have a quick shout out for the musical Mexic, which is currently playing Off Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theater after having just had a limited engagement at the Audible Minetta Lane Theater. I won't go into it too much, but just telling you guys now, if you are in New York at all, go see me. Exodus. It is, hands down, my favorite new musical that's come to New York theater this season. It's brilliantly inventive and creative, and the compositions are gorgeous and exciting and the lyrics are great. And it's a tour de force for these two performers, Brian Quijada and Nigel D. Robinson, who also wrote the piece, what they accomplished, you know, musically and what they accomplish on a technical level because of how, what they do with sort of the looping and, and with their own voices, it's just, it's, it's a masterful piece and I don't want to give too much away because if you are going to go see it, I think going in blind would be amazing for all of you. So yeah, just quick shout out Mexico at the Daryl Roth. See it, see it, see it, see it. We're going to start off with Proof right here. The first Broadway revival of the Pulitzer and Tony winning play by David Auburn. Proof tells the story. So, okay, I also will say this. If you're on the Discord or on the substack, it has a few people who are going to see a bunch of these shows during the season and they don't want any spoilers but they do want to know what I think of the shows. And so some people are waiting to listen to the full episodes until they see it. So they don't have the spoilers. So I think for this episode I'll start off by just saying sort of my immediate like one sentence impression of each of these and then I'll go into the details of what the shows are about and more details as to why I felt the way I felt to avoid spoilers for you guys who want to avoid the spoilers till after you see it. Proof. My impression of Proof, this was my first time seeing it live on stage. I only knew of the play and had read pieces of it in college. A lot of people do monologues from Proof or scenes from Proof. And this revival proved to me that Proof is a wonderful play. So I was very appreciative of the play itself. I was a little mixed on the production. I did not dislike it. There were things about it that I really enjoyed and things about it that I thought were sort of fine, a little warmed over. But overall it, it was enjoyable and there's some good work happening on stage. So that was my impression of it. It's not at the top of my list at the cer, but it's definitely not at the bottom. It's somewhere in the middle, maybe like above the middle. So that's my impression. For those of you who don't care about the spoilers, Proof is about a young woman named Catherine living sort of on the outskirts of Chicago and her father has just died, her father Robert, who was a world renowned mathematics genius and he unfortunately got very sick towards the end of his life. And was in a state of mental decline. And Catherine, who at the time the play begins, I think is 25, has spent the last five or six years taking care of him. And we learn through flashbacks and through very well placed exposition that she gave up a full ride at Northwestern to take care of her father and sort of lost out on a lot of opportunities for herself as a great mathematics mind herself to, you know, take care of her father. And it allowed her to bond with him and have good memories with him, but also had some pretty terrible memories. And in a lot of ways they're very similar. They both feel the same way about math, they have a great passion for math, they have these unique genius minds about math. But also Catherine is scared that her brain is going to go the way of her father's, that she might be hallucinating him because she has visits from his ghost, or so she thinks. And sometimes she's unclear of exactly what the reality of her situation is. And she deals with a great deal of depression and guilt. Plus there's the tense relationship she has with her sister Claire, who lives in New York and is very, very successful. But Claire does not have the brain that Catherine has for mathematics, which Claire is aware of, nor does Claire, nor did Claire have the relationship to their father that Catherine had, which Clare is very aware of. But Catherine is also very resentful of Clare for getting to leave home and have a life and engaged and make money and have a career, whereas Catherine has all of this potential but does not necessarily know what to do with it, nor is she terribly motivated with what to do with it. And she's also at odds with what to do with her father's legacy, because a young man named Hal, who was a student and a mentee of her father, is going through the house to look through all of Robert's old notebooks to see if there are any mathematical proofs, proof, hence the title, that Robert might have written, that could be useful to the mathematics department that Hal works at, see if maybe there's anything that they could add to Robert's legacy and Catherine and all of its gibberish. But Catherine gives Hal a lock to a drawer that then has a notebook filled with the proof that we don't learn anything about really, except from Hal, that this proof could change the game in terms of multiple mathematical theories. And we find out that the proof wasn't written by Robert, it was written by Catherine. And there's debate as to how likely this is if anybody believes her, if, if they do believe her, what are they going to do about it? What's Catherine going to do if this proof gets published? It's all kind of up in the air, and it doesn't leave you with many answers, nor does it necessarily make you root for Catherine, because Catherine is a very. It's weird to say traditional, but really traditional antihero. She's hard to root for because while she's very smart and she's very funny and you feel for her, she is kind of like a dog in a cage. And she is. She has all of this frustration and all of this sadness that she doesn't really know what to do with. And she lashes out at anyone who gives her the opportunity to do so. And there is something about the way that the play writes her that I think makes it such catnip for an actress. Because Catherine is very smart and she is very funny, and there's a lot of things about her that can make her very charismatic. And it's. You kind of have to make a choice as an actress of how, quote, unquote, likable do I want to make her and how much do I want to sort of live in the grime of her and IO Adebri making her Broadway debut as Catherine. Her take kind of is living in the grime. And there's a lot of merit to that. But I will sort of discuss the difficulties around such a purely focused intention rather than being a little more multifaceted. As I said, this production is not bad. It's. I think it's fine. The design was a little wonky to me. I wasn't quite sure what was happening. So the whole thing takes place sort of in the backyard of Catherine and Robert's home. And the set for this is sort of the outline of the house. It's very kind of. I don't mean this negatively, but objectively, it sort of gives you that vibe of like a cardboard cutout of a house silhouette. But, you know, it has windows and a door and, you know, the paneling and whatnot. And what Thomas Kail, as the director, has decided with his design team, is that the house will also be kind of see through, but only at certain moments, usually during transitions, but primarily when Catherine is hallucinating her father in the first scene. It's actually a quite effective moment of when Robert and Catherine are having their first scene together. The house is sort of see through. You can see the staircase inside, you can see the pillars and whatnot, the. The beams. And the moment that Hal comes out and the door slams, the lights Shift. And all of a sudden the house goes from translucent to fully solid. And it's a. It's a very fun effect, but then they continue to use it during the scene transitions. And the house has a sort of lighting grid on the outline that. It sort of looks like a. A lighting thread that makes its. That outlines its way all around the house during these scene transitions. And perhaps I am dumb, but I took my friend Sarah to it, and she also couldn't quite make sense of what that outlining of the house was meant to be during these scene transitions. I was like. I wasn't sure if it was sort of in a way of physicalizing the connecting of the dots that Katherine sort of talks about. When she wrote her proof of how she. It was a lot of hard work, but what she really did, it wasn't like it came to her. It was like she was. She saw the dots and she was figuring out ways to connect them. So it's possible that this outlining with the lights during these scene transitions is sort of a physical representation of that. I don't really buy it. And the house, I think, is a little. The way that it's designed is a little too. Again, this is gonna sound nasty, and I don't mean it to be nasty, but just sort of. It's giving kind of college production on an aesthetic level. Like, this is sort of how I would imagine Emerson would have designed its set for Proof, with its, you know, $50,000 budget and students making the set like it's well made and whatnot. But it's not. It's. It's just. It's a little. Kind of simplistic. And. And. And I would rather it either go super, hyper. Hyper realistic or super, hyper surrealist and abstract. And it. It's sort of halfway. It has a foot in both worlds, and thus it doesn't fully convince as a house, nor does it fully conv. Design choice. So that's something that I was just sort of noticing. I can't say that Kael really has any particular take on the piece, which is absolutely fine. He doesn't really need to with this. Proof, again, as I said, has proven itself to be a great play. And it's not a play that lends itself to hyper directionality, which is a word I just made up, but you know what I mean, like, this isn't an Angels in America. This isn't a Joe Turner's come and gone. More on that. On that review. But it's. It's not. It's not a while it plays around with time and memory. It doesn't do so in a consistently fluid way. It's. It's a pretty traditional scene by scene play and you could obviously add some directorial touches to it. But Cal doesn't really do that. He sort of lets this be actor forward, which has sort of been his vibe. I would argue for most shows outside of like maybe Hamilton, that's really always been kind of his thing. He'll have like one little flourish that he'll do, but then mostly leave it to the actors to sell. The reason for the revival, looking at like Sweeney Todd where really only big take he had was like, what if they jumped on the floor at the end? Okay. And you know, he has good actors in this, which helps. IO is a wonderful actress. If you've watched her on TV and on film. There's a great deal of heart to what she brings to her roles and she is just a very natural comic. And Don Cheadle I've loved in films for years. My hot take is I felt he should have won the Oscar for Hotel Rwanda over Jamie Foxx or Ray. But I also have a gripe against bio movies in general in the same way that I have gripes against B jukebox musicals story for another da. We of course have mother Kara Young playing Claire. Last minute replacement, by the way, for anyone who forgot she replaced Samira Wiley of Orange is the new black in the role. And of everyone in the show, Kara is absolutely the most successful performance. It's hilarious to see her play the older, more accomplished, more austere sister when she is half of IO's height and like 2 pounds soaking wet. They give her a very meticulous bob that's like gelled for the gods. And they definitely give her this clean cut, super tight, high strung aesthetic and she doesn't. To her credit, what Kara Young does is she doesn't make Claire an overly nagging or hyper type A personality. You see her doing her best, but ultimately she and her sister are just such fundamentally different people and they really don't speak the same language. And there is this well of resentment between them for different reasons. Claire resenting Catherine for her closer relationship to their father and Claire as well for being the one who has to go out and, you know, get a job to pay for all of the things that Catherine and their father needed because Catherine wasn't really working. But Catherine resents Claire for getting the chance to escape their house and go off and have a life. In Catherine's eyes, Claire has a real life and real freedom. In Claire's eyes, she has no freedom because she has to fund her sister and her late father and trying to connect with her sister. But as I said, they just speak such different languages. It's very, you know, like Lorelei Gilmore and her mother, Emily, of people who love each other. But the. What they define as love is so different that when they try to do an act of love for the other, it's misread, which leads to the constant conflict and there's no interpreter to help them. So it's just. It's a constant. And so with Kara, you see that love and you see that effort, which I really appreciate. The way that I.O. has playing Catherine is, as I said, it's so pain and anger forward that the humor that she naturally has is so welcome because it feels like she's trying to go against her instincts to go for the joke, which I appreciate that this is where then a director would sort of help her figure out a balance of it all. Because the thing about IO and the role for me is that similar to Katherine herself, IO's performance feels like a lot of potential that's not fully realized and doesn't really quite know which direction to take. When I was watching it, I. There would be moments when I would think to myself, I really can't wait to go to the library when this closes so I can watch Mary Louise Parker do this and see how she did this. Which is not what you want to think when you're watching a Broadway performance. And as I said, it's not cause IO is bad, but it's that I would watch segments of the show and go, this isn't really hitting me in an emotional way that I would like it to. And I would love to see what Mary Louise Parker did with it, because that's something that she's so good at. And Mary Louise Parker is also so good at wearing pain on her sleeve that she can do a lighter, airier interpretation of the role. And you'll still see the pain in her face. You'll still hear it in her voice. She doesn't have to push for it. It's always just there. Like, you can you like Mary Louise Parker? I always felt like carries damage. It was. Which whether she actually does or not is her own business. We don't need to know. But as an actress, I always felt that she carried damage, which makes even her comedic performances so unique. Because while she's a funny actress, watch her on Weeds. There's a detachment with the way that she plays her Pain that I think is very true to life of those of us who have our trauma and have our baggage. There are those of us who want it front and center, we promote it, and then there are those of us who are trying to put it behind us. But it has affected us so much that we've actually become a hollow version of ourselves, sort of going through the motions and not understanding that. And that is also kind of where Catherine, you could argue, is at during this play of. There's so much going on with her, she can't fully grapple with any of it. And so she drinks, she makes jokes, she's indecisive, she lays in bed. And it's very easy on the surface to play that with so much resentment and anger in your voice. And I feel like when I.O. is going lighter and going more dropped in. I don't want to say sincere, but for lack of a. For lack of a better word, sincere. When she's going for that, you can still feel the pain, but you're also drawn into Catherine's journey in that. In those moments. So even when she is being a bit of a brat, even when she is being nasty to someone, you're still on her page. Does that make sense? Those are the moments where I feel like IO's locked in. It's the moments where it gets more kind of like the drama of it all that I feel like she's pushing so in a direction that's not what we're used to, but she's doing it because we're not used to it, not because it's actually what the scene requires or where she organically wants to go. She's trying to play with our expectations of her, which I said is fair on paper, but doesn't always jive with the performance. I think that there's a great Catherine in her, and she's like 60% there. There's a lot about her performance that I like. It's more that the meatier moments are the ones where I'm like, okay, we need to take another pass at this. It's not bad, but we should take another pass. Jin Ha, as Hal, is good. He's charismatic. Hal's kind of. He reminds me of the men in Fallen Angels and in Beaches, where he's there basically to serve Catherine's story and aid in a bet, her dynamics with Claire. He and IO have a lot of scene work together and. And they have a good rapport, but not necessarily a chemistry. It's not a very sexual chemistry, which it kind of needs. To have, because ultimately, spoiler alert. Katherine and Hal do hook up, and there should be a little bit of a cat and mouse game of sniffing each other out of attraction. But also, I don't trust you, but I want to trust you. Where are we at here? And at the moment, it feels more sort of like a meeting of the minds, which it needs to be that plus like a meeting of the loins for, you know, sorry to be vulgar there, but that's really what it is. But he is ultimately solid in the role. The only person who really overwhelmingly disappointed me was unfortunately, Don Cheadle in the role of Robert the father. I just. I don't know when the last time Don Cheadle was on stage, but it kind of reminded me of people like Juliana Margulies, who I love on film and tv, but just doesn't really know how to make what she does on film and TV work on a stage in front of hundreds of people. It doesn't feel like Cheadle has learned how to take what he's doing and project it outwards. I imagine what if he did what he was doing on film, it would land a lot better. But right now it just sort of feels like. I don't like a. Like a deadline almost. It's. It's so small and so lack of energy. It just. It's. It doesn't feel hyped up to the medium in which he is currently performing in. And it's a shame because he is objectively a phenomenal actor, but also phenomenal actors are capable and even allowed to not always be great. Sometimes it's a lack of being right for the role. Sometimes a director doesn't help them. Sometimes they are just in over the head in a new space. And I do think with Cheadle, it is probably a combination of all three. I don't want to be presumptuous here. It's possible that he could be very right for the role. I don't know what the process was like with Kale in the rehearsal room. I don't know if once they got to the theater and it was a much larger space, things just weren't landing and he had trouble figuring out how to do it. But that's something that IO, I think actually does really well, is that she does actually scale her performance to a Broadway stage. And I want to compliment her on that. I think part of that is her history in standup and knowing how to work rooms. She knows how to work the theater, so everything she's doing plays and hits The Back Wall without it being over the top. It's just now about taking the harder, messier parts and really kind of allowing her to go with what comes naturally first and then have that internal struggle of going against the grain of expectation. But, yeah, that's really proof, I think. I mean, ultimately, I do recommend it because this revival does not get in the way of the material, which proves itself to be really wonderful material. Very sharp, very funny. As I said, this is one that I appreciated. And the spectrum of performances goes from, you know, unsuccessful with Cheadle to mildly successful with Jin Ha and Ayo Edebiri to pretty successful with Kara Young. And it's not a. You know, that spectrum is not enough to kill any desire to see the show. But it's hard to read about how this play kind of took New York theater by Storm in 2000 and 2001, winning the Tony, winning the Pulitzer, kind of launching Mary Louise Parker to the next level of great stage actresses, which she was sort of teed up for with Prelude to a Kiss and with How I Learned to Drive. But then she. She, you know, goes into film and tv, she comes back, she does Proof, and this just sort of like, it wins her her first Tony and becomes a role that she's, like, deeply associated with. And again, as I said, gives her, like, this sort of new street cred as an amazing actress. And this production doesn't really give off that vibe. And so it's. That's sort of part of the reason why I also wanted to see this at the library eventually, when this production closes, because I'm interested to see what actress like Parker brings to it or if it is just the fact that this was a play of its time and this is sort of what audiences were hungry for. I'm not sure. It's interesting that this play takes place around Chicago because I was like. I watched it going, I would love to watch a Steppenwolf production of this. I would love to see what Steppenwolf factors bring to this with that Chicago realism and grit and passion and fire, you know. But, yeah, so that's. That's proof, I guess, when we're talking Tony chances, it does have a chance, I would say, for four or five things, I think Carrie Young has a shot at featured actress in a play. I don't think she's a lock. I don't want to say that, because ultimately, the only. Honestly, the only person who I think is, like, really a lock is Laurie Metcalf in Death of a Salesman. After that, who's to fucking say. But I do think Kara Young is a contender. I think she could absolutely get in there for a nomination. I think IO absolutely could be nominated. It is such a meaty role and she does well with it. I, at the moment, I don't have her in my predictions, but if she does get in there, I would not be surprised. That's it for performances. I think they could get in for revival. It's a respectable revival. It's not. I don't think it's mind blowing, but it is solid and it's currently playing, which helps in the minds of some Tony nominators. The thing that goes against it is a lot of those nominators will have seen the original production of Mary Louise Parker. A lot of them are of the age that they, you know, saw it and probably loved it. So they have that production to compare to this one. So not all nominators are going to look at this one as kindly, I would imagine. I think that the other two options that they have, that are actually three options, I guess, that they have that are like. That are very likely are set design, scenic design for play is. Is kind of sparse this year. I would argue that the Ballisters and no, not Giant Ballisters. Death of a Salesman, those are Fallen Angels. I think those are probably locks. And then it's sort of like, who's going to be the final two? Proof could get in there. It's just one of those things where even if I wasn't a big fan of the set, I can see why other people would vote for it. I think lighting design, it has a shot and actually music. There's original music in this production. It's quite beautiful. It's used frequently throughout the scene transitions. And as Sam Ekman and I talked about, best original score is a difficult one this year. So there's a world in which two, maybe even three plays get nominated here. And if it's three, then I think Proof definitely would be one of the three. But we'll see soon enough. Okay, moving on to Becky Shaw, which is also having its world premiere on Broadway, even though it is technically a revival at the Helen Hayes Theater. Produced by Second Stage. This is by Gina Gianfredo. I think I said that name correctly. Apologies if I did not. Basically. So okay. I guess so. Yeah, up front, Becky Shaw liked this a lot. I think the hype going into it definitely affected me. I try to not let it do that, but it's hard when you are told constantly about a play being perfect and Fantastic. Like when you're sharing that you're going to see a show and then like 30 of your DMs are like, oh my God, it's amazing. You're going to be bowled over by it. And then you go see it and you're not quite bowled over by it. You go, okay, I guess that underwhelmed me, but it's weird to say you're underwhelmed by something that you also really liked, you know, and that's sort of the problems with expectations. But also I, I do try to not have that affect me and then if it does, I then try to look back on it objectively, after the fact, in hindsight, and go, okay, but what, what was it that I saw? What was it I felt? What was it that I was feel that I, you know, experienced? So with that said, liked it. Liked it a lot. Moving on to the spoilery stuff. Becky Shaw up front begins with sort of a Wuthering Heights modern take in that it is about a young man. What's his name named. No, not Andrew. Max. A young man named Max, played by Alden Ehrenreich, who some of you might remember from Solo and from Weapons and Hail Caesar. He's actually, he's actually really fucking good in hell, Caesar. I forgot about that. But. So Max was a family friend of the Slaters, Susannah Slater and her daughter Susan Slater. Susan Slater and her daughter Susanna. Susan is played by Linda Emond and Susanna's played by Lauren Patton, Susan's husband. Susanna's father takes in and basically adopts Max when he's a boy because Max's mother dies and his father is a fuck up and is in jail for a while. And so their father takes him in and, and raises him and Max grows up to become a very successful finance manager. And then Mr. Slater dies, which is when the play begins. It's a few months after his death and Max is informing Susan and Susanna that the family is not broke, but close to broke because the father made a lot of bad investments. He was basically embezzling a lot of money from his company had he had all these private expenses that he wasn't telling his family about. There's a possibility the father was actually gay. And so Max's job is to have Susan and Susanna learn about the new lifestyle that they have to become accustomed to. They will not be on the street, he will not let that happen. Plus he has money himself, so he will help them out, but it's his job to make sure that they live within their means and never actually get broke. And he and Susanna, Lauren Patton have always had this will they, won't they again, this is the Heathcliff Catherine of it all from Wuthering Heights, plus, you know, Heathcliff getting taken in by Catherine, his father and Heathcliff becoming rich. And they've always had this sort of will they, won't they? Max is kind of brash and a little garish. He's, you know, uber capitalist and a realist, which in his mind makes him a truth teller, which makes him the only adult in the room, but it also makes him a bit of a dick and not very kind and not very graceful. And he has this bond with Susanna that is a little brother, sistery, but also a little will they, won't they? And they do kind, they do eventually have a they will moment and they hook up. But a few months later, Susannah marries a man named Andrew in this sort of big sweeping romance. And they decide to set Max up with Andrew's co worker, Becky Shaw, played by Madeline Brewer. Andrew, by the way, is played by Patrick Ball from the Pit. And Max and Becky go on a date. It does not go great. And Max tries to cut her off, but Becky ultimately does all she can to get back in front of Max again and still kind of pursues him, which leads to a lot of unspoken truth being revealed about Max, about Susannah, about Andrew. And then it all sort of culminates with a new change in dynamics in Max and Susanna's relationship and Susanna's relationship with her mother Susan, and. And sort of how Becky of all people, is the one that kind of shake all of this loose. And it's not because of anything Becky says or does necessarily. Becky does not herself, you know, make anyone do anything. But her actions and her words cause these people to have reckonings about themselves. And it is a very, very funny play. It's a very, very quotable play. But I will say I, when I saw it, I had a few friends who reached out to me afterwards and they're and said that they were frustrated because they felt like it was a play where not a lot happened. And it's true. This is a very slow moving play. The first act is like kind of one long stretch for Max and Becky to go on that date. Act one ends with them heading out for their date. And it's a long time to get to that. Granted, the dialogue is so good, it's not really a hardship. And the cast is pretty fantastic. That. Pretty fantastic. They are fantastic. It's a pitch perfect cast. The cast is so good and the dialogue is so good, it's not a hardship to get there. But you do kind of feel a bit of that slog of getting to this pivotal moment at the end of Act 1. And then these revelations that happen in Act 2 are not terribly shocking. Some of them are actually quite obvious to see happen. There's a great deal of debate about the title role of Becky Shaw and what she's about and what the playwright is going for. I was watching a little bit of a theater talk interview with the playwright when this show premiered about 14 years ago at Second Stage. And Michael Riedel was talking with the playwright, as was his co host, and they were talking about how manipulative Becky is. And she's a total monster. And the playwright's like, it's so weird because I did not write her with that intention. I did not think she was a monster. I think she's incredibly direct and she's very honest, and that's what drives people insane and makes them uncomfortable. And I do think that the playwright is being a little bit of a pot stir with that. I don't think she fully. I think she likes her character because you want to like your characters. You. You write these complex people not to judge them, but because you're interested to see where they go. And Becky's a very interesting character. Of all the people in the show, she is the least like an adult because while she is around the same age as a lot of our characters here, she has no money. She is a temp, barely, you know, making it get by in her apartment. She doesn't really have money to go out for dinner. She's. She lives in the area, she's from the area, but she doesn't really know any of the restaurants to go on a date with with Max, because again, she has no money to go to these restaurants, she doesn't own a car. She's. She basically like walks everywhere. She's kind of on an adult level in the way that we view adults of having a job, having income, having an apartment, having a relationship. She's kind of a mess. She's also a mess romantically. We learn of her past relationships where she throws kind of everything in her life away to be with a man. The moment a man says that he likes her, she puts everything into him. And then the moment all goes wrong, she's left with nothing. And she doesn't have to really learn her lesson. All of her value kind of goes into these relationships. And yet she's incredibly perceptive and she's incredibly insightful, and as the playwright said, she's very honest. She's up front. She doesn't hide anything. She definitely has motivations. And I think she's someone who isn't aware that she's being manipulative because it's not her initial intention, which I guess then asks the question of it. Can someone be manipulative if it's not their intention to be manipulative? Right. I feel like that's sort of. I feel like that's such an obvious question with such an obvious answer, but it really isn't, because not to talk about myself for a second, but to bring it to the play that I wrote. Yours truly. There is a scene in the second act between the character of Jon and the character of Arryn and their phone call. And it is a scene where Aaron ultimately is getting John to answer the things that she wants. So she is being manipulative, but she is also being very honest about how she's feeling, but in a very controlled way. She is controlling the situation, but she's not necessarily lying. And she's not making anyone do anything. It's just a matter of having a. Having a specific goal in mind. And then everything you say or do is in relation to that, even if you're unaware of it. Which sounds like word salad, I'm sure, but I feel like we all know people like that, who. They're not, like, sitting there being calculating. Right? Like, no. It's very rare that you see these, like, Disney villains who have, like, a Claire Danes in a homeland cork board with pictures and string of like, okay, in order to get this, I must do this, and this grand evil scheme. And oftentimes people who are manipulating don't know that's what they're doing. They just have what they want, and they kind of shift their tactics of how they act. So that way what they want comes to them, which you could argue answers the question, can someone be manipulative if they aren't aware that they're being manipulative? And you could say yes, or you could say no. And I think Becky Shaw is this conundrum of somebody who is unaware of how what she's saying or doing affects other people. As far as she's aware, she's just living in the world, and if she wants something, she'll say it's what she wants. She tells Max, we had a good time. I felt a connection with you. We slept together. I think we should go on another date. Max saying no is not her listening to him and respecting his wishes, he says no. And she goes, okay, understood. Can you tell me why you don't think so? What is it about me that you don't like? And then when he tells her, she argues with him, which he acknowledges. But you watch how someone like Max, who is so strong willed and an asshole, not be manipulated by Becky, but get kind of exhausted by her. And then through the sheer fact that his foundation of support, which is really his relationship with Susannah, gets altered and they are. And he is no longer allowed to have the relationship with her he once had. She is no longer comfort. She's no longer, you know, the pillar that he once had. They can still talk on the phone, but they can never be alone in person ever again. And what they talk about is sort of limited now. And so everything that he believed to be true about his life, about what he valued and who valued him, is weakened by the end of the show, which then leaves him alone with Becky and then makes you ask the question of, okay, does this mean Becky got what she wanted? Is this what she wanted all along? Is anyone really that masterfully clever? Or is this just sort of how life works sometimes? And is this how people can sometimes end up together? Is it really a meeting of love and mind and matter? Or is it two people finding each other in their most vulnerable moments and saying, fuck it, why not? There's so many relationships that continue to go on despite the fact that they are built on a foundation of toxicity. And sometimes it's only a matter of time before those foundations rot and the relationships crumble. I've seen it, we've all seen it. And sometimes people go to the bitter end. And. And Becky Shaw, as a play, definitely kind of explores that with three different relationships. There's a discussion of Susannah's father and her mother, Susan, the relationship they had. Susan is only in two scenes, the top of Act 1 and the end of Act 2. And Linda Mendez is so good. I mean, it's a juicy, juicy role, but she's really, really good in it. And she. And she's very austere. You know, it's very. Speaking of Gilmore Girls, Kelly Bishop originated the role 15 years ago, and there is a lot of Emily Gilmore in her. And there's a whole storyline that happens off stage with her and a much younger male lover and blah, blah, blah, blah. But Susan, the mom, tells her daughter, you know, your father and I do not know everything about each other. We did not tell each other everything. And that's how it should be. Complete honesty, never works. You tell each other what you need to tell each other to keep each other on the same track. And you ultimately are a team. But I don't need to know. I did not need to know everything your father did. Was your father gay? Possibly. I never really saw any evidence of it, but it's entirely possible that he had gay urges. Whether he did anything with them, I'll never know and I honestly don't care. This was the life we had. And Susanna ultimately kind of takes that to heart because she and Andrew are, for lack of a better term, very woke. Liberals. Right? They're very. They're very progressive and they. And they want to be very mindful. Susanna starts working in a psychiatric hospital as well. She's getting her master's and Andrew's currently working as an office manager, but he wants to be a writer. But they think of themselves as the most fully realized people in their lives, and they soon learn that they're not. Susannah is incredibly judgmental and biased, and she doesn't have mental capacity for people different from her different minded. Whether it's not to her level of progressive thinking, whether it's people who, you know, do not have the same kind of jaded response to something being weird or crazy. And then Andrew has a savior complex. He's most attracted to women when they are at their lowest, which is when he met Susanna. They were. They. She was on a trip to mourn her father and kind of learn to move on. And that's when she met Andrew and that's when he fell in love with her and proposed to her. And now that she's like, kind of sturdy and on her two feet again, he's getting disenchanted with her. And he finds a lot to love about Becky as she's becoming this damsel that he must sa. And he gets called out on it, Susanna gets called out on it. And they have to understand the fact that they are not perfect. They will do better for each other. And there's also a lot about each other that they just do not need to know of. Okay? You told me that nothing happened here. I will not investigate any further. You told me that you had feelings for her or you had feelings for him. And they might always still be there, but you're not going to do anything about it because you're committed to me. Fuck it. Fine, that's good enough. And there is a bit of a maturity about that, of understanding that your partner's not perfect, that your partner's gonna fuck up and deciding for yourself what Your threshold is for pain with your partner. How much are you willing to what? When is it accepting a partner's flaws and when is it tolerating the pain that they're giving you? And Susanna and Andrew ultimately come to the conclusion that they do love each other, that they are right for each other, that and that there are people in their lives who will not help their relationship. And they've decided their relationship is what's important. Whether they last or not. Who's to say? But there is something to learn from someone like Susannah's mother, who granted, has a lot of terrible values, but every now and then says a little bit of wisdom. The other joke, by the way, is that Susan, of all people, connects with Becky Shaw the most. She thinks Becky is awesome. She thinks she's clever, she thinks she's strong willed and that she has a bright future ahead of her. Of all the people. Right. As I said, I really, really enjoyed this play. It's not. Of all the things that I talked about, the play, I don't feel like delves into all of this quite as deeply as I was saying, it is much more of a play that you watch and then you discuss after the fact. And it's a play that you mostly enjoy. Some folks had talked about it sort of like deconstructing the romantic comedy, which put me on edge because that's very much what my play does. And it really isn't that this play is not a rom com tilted on its side. It's. It's not that at all. The play's like not even really about romance. Romance is in there, but it's. I would argue it's much more a play about responsibility and adulthood and grappling with the possibility that you're not always a good person and that you're not always right. And to figure out when those moments are and to also understand when relationships are done. Not even romantic ones, just any relationships are done. It is an incredibly quotable show. I highly recommend that if you aren't able to see it, that you read the script because my God, the one liners just like keep on coming. And as I said, the performances are all stellar across the board. I do see this Tony chances wise getting nominated for best revival. I do think Alden Ehrenreich is gonna get in. Whether he gets in, whether he's deemed featured or lead, we'll see. I think especially in this production, he is the lead. He's just. He is the leading role. It's not that he is. It's not Even just that he has no stage time. This production makes him the sole focus. He is the pinpoint of everything. So I view him as the leading person in this show, and I. My gut is telling me that that's what he's gonna be deemed. But everyone might just be deemed featured, which is fine. I think he's getting in no matter what. Whether it's lead or featured, everyone is very good. I don't think that Patrick Ball will get in. I just don't think it's that kind of role unless Alden gets put into lead, in which that leaves a slot open and featured for Patrick. Lauren Patton, I think, is great. Linda Eamid has the benefit of opening and closing the show and being the oldest person in the show, so that makes her stand out. She is the only one who is like, this austere, mature woman, and that makes her stand out. And she has wonderful dialogue. Madeline Brewer, as Becky Shaw, has the benefit of coming in later into the show and being the real major switch in the. In the story, which makes her effective and memorable. And so I think Brewer and Eamond are more likely to get nominated than Lauren Patton, who is really good in this. But that's just a matter of me being objective and realistic about Tony nomination chances. I don't think that Trip Coleman will be nominated for director. I just think that there are too many people ahead of him right now in people's minds, like Joe Mantello for Death of a Salesman, Whitney White for Liberation, Robert Ick for Oedipus. Coleman could get in. I think he's. I think he's definitely in the mix, but I think we're talking, like, fifth slot possible, and it's like, going to be a squeaker there. But he does do very good work. I could imagine this getting in for set design. There's a big reveal in the latter half that I'm sure a lot of nominators really enjoy for the most part. Part, it's a pretty simple set of all black, done at a diagonal, portraying a couple of different locations. But it's not necessarily a set that lends itself to fluidity. The scene transitions are solid, but part of me was kind of hoping for a little bit more of a cinematic approach to scenes melting into scenes. I felt that could have really helped the show. But that's fine. That's not a huge ding. That's just something for my own personal aesthetic. So, yeah, I imagine revival and Alden getting in for sure, and then strong possibilities of Linda and Madeline. Trip possibly and possibly set. And that's probably where the nominations would end for me. If Alden is put in featured, he currently would have my vote for featured actor in the play. If he's put in lead, you know, it's just happy to be a nominee, but he's really just fucking fantastic in this to the point where you watch when you go, okay, so, like, what, what play are you gonna do next season then? What are we casting you in now? Because Hollywood doesn't know what to do with you, and you should be a matinee idol. You're handsome, you're charismatic, you're funny, you're. You're powerful. You can. Honestly, I feel like he can just do it all. So let's cast him in a lot more things. Everybody, let's do it. Alden, come on, baby. Let me be your manager. Last but not least, we have Every Brilliant Thing currently starring Daniel Radcliffe at the Hudson Theater. Once again, this is our classics ruling of a revival. Even though this has never been on Broadway, it was last onto the Barrow Street Theater. You can watch the film of that on HBO. Max. This is written by Duncan McMillan and Johnny Donahue. Johnny did the production at the Barrow that you can watch on hbo. And this has been licensed, you know, all over the world, basically. Premise? Oh, I guess, you know, major takeaway. This is a wonderful, wonderful showcase for a performer and specifically in this case, for Daniel Radcliffe. It absolutely proves not just what a lovely actor he has become, but how incredibly charismatic he is and the skill sets that he has to unite 900 strangers in a theater all alone for a full hour and like 10 minutes, that's a really amazing skill set. I also don't think it's much of a play. More on that later. But that's sort of my ultimate take on this. Daniel is worth watching and it's a really moving experience, but it's not, in my opinion, a great play or much of a play to begin with. The basic premise is Daniel Radcliffe plays a young man who learns at a very young age that his mother suffers from depression and that his mother has trigger warning but has, you know, tried to take her own life and, you know, die by suicide. And in order to, in his young seven year old brain, try to help her and heal her, he starts writing a daily list of things that he thinks are brilliant that makes life worth living. Hence every brilliant thing. And the list, you know, goes on for a while and it gets very, very long. She never acknowledges the list, but she, he does know that she's read it. That she's seen it. And for a while, he thinks it's helping because there are periods where it seems that they are, quote, unquote, out of the woods. And life goes on, and he gets older, and then he comes back to the list through, you know, reasons and starts adding to the list again and having other people in his life add to the list. And then once again, the list sort of gets put away. And he falls in love and he gets married, and his mother, unfortunately, takes her own life successfully this time, and he falls into his own depression and he divorces from his person and then starts up on the list again. And that's sort of the story. What makes the play special is the person playing the central role only plays themselves. To play all the other roles, they. They. They bring in people from the audience to portray those people. They enlist people from the audience. That's what I was looking for. Jesus Christ. So there will be somebody in the audience who he, he or she, because it's been played by various genders, and Mariska Hargitay is going to be playing it after Daniel Radcliffe. But they enlist people from the audience to come on stage. So one will play their father, one will play their librarian, one will play the person in school that they really are into a friend, so on and so forth. And there's an improvisational quality to that. Sometimes Radcliffe will tell someone, okay, I'm going to say something. And every time I say something, your response needs to be, why? So no matter what I say, just say why. They go back and forth. Maybe they go back and forth. And then when doing a scene with the person that they fall in love with at school, there's a really masterful, not manipulation, but, like, massaging with that person of getting them to say what they need to say in order for the scene to then continue without it feeling forced. It all sort of is improvised. But Radcliffe has steered each person to get to the point that they need to get to with each scene. So that already adds a little bit of a unique flavor to the production of Every Night's A Little Bit different, because you never know who's gonna be playing a person in the story. You never know exactly how it is they're gonna say what they need to say. And it also puts the audience a little bit on the edge of their seats of, how is this gonna work? Who's going to say what? Where is this? How is this gonna tie into stuff? And the audience is also pulled into the community of it all, because for all of these brilliant things, There are people in the audience where, before the show begins, Radcliffe and management goes out into the theater and gives papers to random individuals in the orchestra, in the mezzanine, in the balcony, on stage. And through very strong sound design, he will shout number one, number seven, number 39, number 272, 3051. And. And people have these papers, see what their number is, and they shout the brilliant thing that his character has written down. And then everyone in the audience gets one thing that they. That we all get to say together. And it's a fun, as I said, communal exercise. The play itself doesn't really grapple with suicide and depression. These are things that are sort of happening on the outskirts of this individual's journey and how it's affecting them. Depression eventually sinks its way in the last third of their story. But for the most part, this is a story of someone learning about very dark things at a very young age and how they innocently go about trying to overcome it, not just for themselves, but for other people, which is a really, you know, moving and lovely thought to have. And if there's one thing I would say to recommend this show outside of Radcliffe being just, you know, charm up the butt, is that it is a very beautifully moving exercise of communal support. Every day that the show performs for an hour and 10 minutes, it turns 900 strangers into a true community of everyone bound together by this singular experience and being a part of it together by not making it about any individual one of us, but rather how we all feel in the moment together, which is what theater is supposed to do. And that is how I've always felt about theater. And it's why it always bugs me when people go on their phones or when people talk or when people try to sing along. So many people now, because theater is so expensive, because of whatever, have decided that theater is a singular, personal just for them experience. It's not about you. It's not about the people on stage. It's about me. I'm shouting because I want Shoshana Bean to know that I'm here. I'm going to take a photo of Kieran Culkin on stage because, God damn it, I paid $300 and I want that photo. Oh, I'm going to, you know, eat my three course meal in the theater, because, God damn it, I'm here. So what if I'm 45 minutes late? It's my ticket. I'll do what I want. I'll talk to my friend if I want to. I paid $5,000, which never makes sense to me, because if you paid so much money to be there, wouldn't you want to then absorb as much of the thing you paid for? Right? You can eat at a restaurant, you can talk literally anywhere else. Why not sit and have an organic reaction to the thing you're watching? Sometimes that is an exclamation. There was somebody who actually had an exclamation at every brilliant thing, but it was genuinely from what they were watching. It wasn't because they wanted to be special. It's not because they were talking to their friend. It's because they had a genuine reaction. But the. The idea of singing along or talking or all these things, I go, this is a very selfish act. What makes theater unique is that it is all of us together. This experience will never be replicated. The show will happen again tomorrow, but the. This configuration of audience members will not be duplicated. And even if it were, we are all going to have a very different day if it gets duplicated than the day we had today. The actors will have a different day. Something might go off, something might go brilliantly. Who's to say it? No performance is ever exactly the same. And that is why you go and why you sit and you live in it. And no thing is a better example of that than every brilliant thing, right? Of just every performance. While it is a story that gets replicated, it's never exactly the same. And I think the knowledge of that, plus the fact that this is a show that invites an audience to be a part of it, allows everybody to really be engaged on their best behavior and understanding, maybe for the first time in a long time. That fear is about all of us. You have your memory of it, but your memory is impacted by everyone having their own memories together. Right? You are the main character of your life when you're in a theater, you are an ensemble member of a giant ass ensemble. And that is important to remember. So even though I don't necessarily find every Brilliant Thing to be necessarily a fantastic play, it is episodic and sort of a this happens, then this happens, and then this happens. I don't think it necessarily delves meaningfully into mental distress and into suicidal ideation and whatnot. It is ultimately an effective theatrical exercise. And that, to me, is just as important as any other kind of dramatization of this story that could be. Yeah, it's not the top, top, top of my list this year, but it is, you know, it has a very nice spot on the. On the list right now, this season for anyone who's wondering. I will have my full rankings in a few weeks. Don't you worry, kitties. In terms of Tony chances, I don't see this being a revival nominee again. I don't think that people who are on the nominating committee are going to watch this and and preach the production itself or even the play itself. The praise goes to Radcliffe mostly, who absolutely deserves it. And I do think Radcliffe is a lock for a nomination. I think we're looking at Nathan Lane, Mark Strong, John Litzko and Radcliffe. I think those are our four locks and then our fits. You know, whether it's Alden for Becky Shaw or if it's, I don't know, Will Harrison for Punch possibly could be Adrien Brody for fear of 13, but I'll talk about that more in my fear of 13 review. I do think that if Daniel's getting in, I think that would be a very nice thing and would really round out the category because you have a little bit of everything with each nominee for best actor in a play. I could also see them getting in for sound design because the way that you are able to hear what every person in the the theater says when they recite their brilliant thing. It's a small thing, but it's a very well done thing and I hope people appreciate that for themselves. That's really all I got to say about every brilliant thing. It's a short one, I know, but whatever. I think for three shows plus a little shout out to Mexico and reading a review from Apple Podcasts where currently an hour and three hour and four minutes. I think that's fine. Well done. Well done me. Thank you so much for listening, guys. If you haven't yet, make sure you get your tickets for the next Broadway Breakdown live show at Green Room 42. It'll be literally a week from today as we release this May 3rd. Green Room 42 reviewing the 20252026 season that includes Broadway and Off Broadway with guests Chelsea Williams and Nicholas Baronet, I will be singing Caviar Dreams from Queen of Versailles. We have the sheet music. We will be doing a lovely acknowledgment of all the wonderful ladies in straight plays that I can't represent necessarily with their own songs because these women didn't sing. If you haven't joined the Discord Channel yet, join the Discord Channel for all things Broadway Breakdown Tony Awards the theater season Ticket Advice if you have a show you want to promote, you can promote it on there. If you want to watch media of the shows that we're covering People have been finding clips on YouTube and in Reddit to drop on the Discord channel. So if you want to watch a show that we talked about, someone most likely has dropped a link there. You can join the substack with new exclusive content coming very shortly. You can follow me on Instagram, icoplic, usual spelling. If you want to watch me do this, you can go to the YouTube channel. The link will be here as well. I will say again, the YouTube channel for considering we have not been promoting it much, much, and considering that I have not invested in new equipment for like, a camera and all this other stuff to make it more of, like, a super luxurious watching experience. The numbers have been steadily increasing, which is fun. So I'm glad that people are enjoying my beautiful, beautiful face as I do this. Yeah, I think that's it. Five star rating or review always helps with the algorithm. And you guys have been killing it with reviews. You always do. You guys always kill it with a review. So I really appreciate that. Or, you know, five stars on Spotify, if that's where you're listening. Our numbers have been, you know, steadily increasing over the last couple of months, which, you know, thank you so much, you guys, for spreading the word. I super appreciate it. We're plugging away here. We want to keep this going. Diva. Diva. We want to close out with. Why don't we. You know what? Okay. Linda Eamond was in Cabaret on Broadway, but there was no cast recording for that. But she also did 1776 in the 90s, and I believe she's on the cast recording for that. So I'm going to find that and we're going to close out with that. If that is not the case. Case. Sorry about it. Then what I will do is I will close out with Lauren Patton, but only if I can't find Linda Eamon in 1776. So y' all will find out at the end of this episode which one it is. All right, So I will see you guys for the next review episode. Take it away. Bye. We've gone from Framingham to Boston and we cannot find a pin don't you know there is a war on Save a trace with a grin well, we will not make salt, Peter, until you send us pins. Pins, madam? Saltpeter. Pins. Saltpeter. Pins. Saltpeter. Saltpeter. Peter. Peter.