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- [00:00]
Matt Koplik
Thank you very much.
- [00:01]
Billy
That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do, but Mr. Gregson. Ah, hit it Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it so we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright lights, white light, rhythm and romance. A trade is late, so while we wait, we're going.
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Matt Koplik
Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history un legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, and we have our final review episode for the 20242025 season B. Now with these shows that I am covering, I I said with the final Tony prediction episode as well as when I did my reactions with Rachel and Will Anderson, AKA the Theater Lovers, I had seen everything but one show on Broadway and the one show that I hadn't seen was Dead Outlaw, which I saw off Broadway. So technically speaking, I had covered everything by the time that the Tony nominations came out. I saw one thing before my actual press seats, which was Real Women have Curves. I went with a friend of the pod, Juan Ramirez, and my press seats ended up being confirmed for the week after the Tony nominations. So I went with Juan so I could see it before nominations and then I used my own press seats so I could get a second opinion after seeing it. So this episode we will be covering in order, Real Women have Curves, followed by Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends and then Dead Outlaw. Before we do those three, I will also do a little bit of a bonus review because we saw Wonderful Town at Encores as well as the final performance of J2 Spotlight's Zorba. And I won't go too far into Zorba as that is the that show is now over. But if you are interested, the I believe today when this episode drops will be the first performance of their final show of the season, which is Drat the Cat. And I unfortunately will not be able to make it to that one, but I highly recommend that you guys do if this season is any indication of how good the production will be. Before we get into those though, we do have some new reviews I would like to acknowledge. P.S. if you haven't joined the Discord Channel yet, please do so. The link will be in the episode description and if you're having trouble with that, please reach out to me on Instagram at mycoplek. Usual spelling There were a couple of members of the Discord Channel who had all shown up to the same LinkedIn performance of Floyd Collins and then went to the LinkTix after party and a few of them met up and chatted and shared a picture on the Discord Channel. It was a lot of fun. So that's sort of a fun thing with the Discord Channel too. In addition to communicating about shows you're seeing or shows you're in, or questions about history, or if you have questions about tickets or Rush if you have a question about the podcast, if I said something incorrect, believe me, we have some listeners who correct me on the podcast. I said something slightly incorrect about Hershey K in the last episode with Evita and we had a listener correct me on that. So if you want to know what it was that I was wrong about, you can join the Discord Channel. Otherwise, keep listening. So this is all to say we have some more reviews. I'm going to spread it out again because you guys have really just been killing it with this and I want to give as much time as I can to each one. So I'm going to do two, technically three, but the last one's very, very short, so I'm going to do these three and then we'll get to the actual reviews. So hunker down. Okay. Cue the light in The Piazza Overture 5 stars this review is almost as long as the podcast. Sorry Written by Ida Ho Potato and Ho is H o e Love that. I've been listening to Broadway Breakdown for almost three years now and this podcast is truly one of the best theater podcasts I have found. Matt offers clear and decisive insight about every show he talks about, but gives evidence to explain his opinions. This is rare considering a lot of other podcasts I've found just hate on a show without explaining why or fangirl over something without taking time to address sometimes obvious flaws. As someone who really likes to analyze a show, which is very rare within high school theater, lol. I hope that means you're Are you a student in high school or a teacher in high school? I do don't answer that. It was it was very refreshing to be able to revisit Matt's outside insiders review after seeing it and finding that all of his points were well thought out and valid. Even when I don't agree with Matt, I can trust that carefully thought that that careful thought was put into everything he says. Thank you very much, Idaho, that's very kind of you. And I like to think that I do all of that. Next up. Okay, five stars. You want Broadway? Here she is. This is the most Thorough, well reasoned Broadway podcast out there. Matt does his research, is an active parsley participant in the community and brings extensive history and background to the table. In his reviews he gives shows a fair shake during Deep Dives. He highlights the core essence of the art form and shares little known information that brings theater to life. I find myself part of his conversation. The podcast guests he hosts bring their own crop of knowledge and perspective, enhancing an already well rounded theatrical dialogue. This is true. I do have good guests on here. I'm looking forward to doing Deep Dives again. Again. Matt has also created a safe kind community of theater lovers on his Discord Channel. Join if you haven't already. That's in the review. That's not me saying that. By the way. KT Howard says in parentheses join if you haven't already. They say it. He is kind and responsive to friends and audiences of the POD and is a gracious host. Thank you Matt. Thank you for this lovely gift of a podcast. Keep up the great work. No, thank you. What a wonderful, wonderful review. And so short. So short, but so lovely. Five stars. Five years and still going. Written by Gabby needs a life and the review is just love her. Thank you Gabby. You, you have a life and your life is this podcast. You love her, she loves you. Thank you ever so. What a. What a time to be alive everybody. And with that in mind, let me do a quick talk about Wonderful Town at Encores as well as Zorba at J2 Spotlight. I'll do quickly Zorba first, for those of you who don't know, Zorba is the musical by Kandarin Ebb with a book by Joseph Stein based on the novel Zorba the Greek which was also turned into an Oscar winning movie in the 60s. Zorba the Greek. It was the follow up to Cabaret for Kandern Ebb and a lot of ways it was a follow up to Fiddler on the Roof for other members of the team. It was optioned by the actor Herschel Bernardi, who was one of the more consistent Tevye's in Fiddler on the Roof and he brought it to Hal Prince who produced and directed it and had Joseph Stein, who I believe wrote the book for Fiddler. Or did Joe Masteroff write the book for Fiddler? What a great question. Why did I not have this in my notes? I know that I have it. I know that I do. Hold on. It is. Yeah, no book by Joseph Stein. So go me. I'm so. I love it when I'm writing. I think Masteroff might have written she loves Me. And that's why I have the two confused because those are. Are Bach and Harnick shows, everybody. But. So the show opened in, I believe, December of 68, around that time, and then was eligible for the 69 Tonys. It's one of my favorite lineups, actually, because that was the year that 1776 won. And it was up against Hair, Promises, Promises and Zorba. You could also just call it Zorba. And Zorba was sort of considered a mixed bag at the time. It was considered an artistic achievement by many, but it was also considered rather dark and dank and a bit of a letdown as a follow up to Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof, especially with Herschel Bernardi. And then Maria Karnilova, who originated Golda in Fiddler on the Roof, playing opposite Bernardi on stage. People were expecting sort of Fiddler 2.0. And Zorba is not that. Zorba is a sad show. It's very, very sad. And the basic premise is a young man named Nikos inherits a mine in, I believe it's Crete, you know, in Greece, and comes across sort of a. A low income man named Zorba who has a zest for life. It's very sort of peasant, Greek, anti maim. He's very like, you know, live for the now. And he agrees to sort of help Nikos with the mind and sort of oversee its prospects and recruit people from the town to be his workers and blah, blah, blah. They end up staying in a hotel run by Madame Hortense. Is that how you say her name? Hortense? Madame Hortense, who's a former French sex worker, woman of repute, and she now runs this hotel and she and Zoro start an affair. And then Nikos takes a liking to the town widow who is sort of ostracized for not remarrying after her husband dies. And there's a young man in the town who takes a liking to the widow. And when the widow takes the liking to Nikos, the young man kills himself. And the young man's father wants to avenge his son's unaliving. And there are other people who die by the end of the show. And the whole thing sort of ends sadly, but in a way of like. Well, when sadness happens, you have to kind of get your grief out. And Zorba gets his grief out by dancing very Meredith Grey in Grey's Anatomy. When she and Christina have those dance parties to get out their aggression. Can you tell that I've been watching Grey's Anatomy lately. Been watching a lot of things lately. American dad, too. I'm back on my. I'm back on my Roger bullshit in American dad, everybody. So buckle up. Zorba had a revival in the 80s that starred Anthony Quinn and Lila Kudrova, who had done the film version of Zorba. Lila won an Oscar for her performance and that revival kind of set the tone for Zorba from then on. And there was an encore survival with Marin Maisie that wasn't received too well. The thing about Zorba is that it was originally written to be sort of. I think they call it a bouzouki. It was like a semicircle and it was a show within a show. Very pirates right now, right? And it's a group of Greek folks, Greek villagers in a cafe. And they're singing and they're. And they're dancing and they're talking and they're fighting and they go, oh, you know, what else can we do today to pass the time? Oh, let's tell the Zorba story. And so the opening number is called Life Is. And they say, well, Zorba is a story about life and you know what life is. And then they sing Life Is, which is a great opening number. If you want to know more about it, you can watch it being performed on the Tony Awards. It's so good. And there's a woman who's sort of the narrator of the story. She's just of the group and she's very mysterious. But they all know the story and they all act out the story and they slowly sort of become this Greek chorus. As the story continues, we get further and further away from the fact that this is a cafe putting on this story and we just get more enveloped in the story. And then when the, when the, the show ends, we're back to where we were and reminded that everything we've seen was just make believe. But that doesn't stop the importance of how we felt about it. It's a lovely show. It's a weird show, but it's a Lovely show. And J2 Spotlight, I thought, did a really beautiful job. I want to give props to the entire company. This was a tight knit ensemble. Everyone was so well cast and everyone was really engaged with each other and present on stage. And it was very much a catching of each other, right? The Joanna Gleason Tony speech with into the woods, trapeze artists all catching each other. When you see a good ensemble, that is what you see. And I Saw it a few times on Broadway this season. I saw it with English. I saw it with the Hills of California, maybe Happy ending. Oh, Mary. Cult of Love. I said English, right? English. Eureka Day. People just catching each other left and right. And with Zorba, that's very important because everyone gets something to do in this show, but not everyone is always going to be the center of attention. And there was a lack of, from what I could perceive from the audience, there was a lack of ego from the ensemble. And there was no problem with letting some actors be the focus of the story. But that didn't mean that anyone on stage was any less present or giving any less or offering any less to anyone who needed it in the show. And that was really wonderful and it was very well designed. The AMT Theater, where J2 Spotlight now houses their productions, is a tricky theater. The band is mic'd and it's only three pieces, sometimes four, but I think usually just three. But the actors are not. And it's a very narrow hallway of a theater. And so depending on where you're sitting, it can be very difficult to hear the lyrics of shows. That was an issue I had with Smile. So I love it if some beautiful human being could donate to J2 Spotlight like a solid 5 grand so they could get their hands on like 10 to 15 body mics. Of course that makes stage managers of that show, of that theater company hate me because that's more cues that they have to call. But I do think it would help or at the very least add some mics to the stage for the ensemble so it can just get a little further back because it's not a large theater by any means. But sound is a weird thing and it doesn't always carry. But what I want to give props, especially to this show and to friend of the pod, Rob W. Schneider, who. Who we love. We love Daddy. And this is a few. One of a few shows I've seen him direct now. And this is a theme for the next show we're going to talk about. It's. People have asked in my Q and A's, how do you talk to your friends in shows when you go see it? Being a critic and you're honest, how do you handle that? And the honest answer is, my friends know that I don't lie. If they don't want my opinion, they don't ask for it. But I will also say that I've been very fortunate to be frustrated friends with artists who are very good at what they do, especially actors. But directors too. And some writers, and if something isn't working, they tend to know, but they tend to do good work. So even if I have a friend who's in something or working on something, I can tell them that I liked their work. And I'm not lying very fortunate that way. But with Rob, Rob understood the tone of the show. He understood what it was trying to be, what it needed to be, and he carried through on it. He did not impose himself on it. He saw what the show was about and he brought that to light. There is a sense if the best directors, I find, don't have an ego about that. Everything that they do comes from trying to make the story connect. And if there's any time where they show off, you know, that's par for the course. But the best work that they do comes from story. Even people who were giant egotistical monsters like a Jerome Robbins cared ultimately about story. He didn't care about stopping the show. The whole production had to work. And if the whole production worked, he was hailed as a genius. It didn't matter if, you know, he had two show stopping numbers. But the book sucked. He needed the book to not suck. That was always his aim. And Rob, I felt with Zorba, really understood the tone of the show, what it was about, the pacing, all that, and really worked with the ensemble to make sure that everyone was on the same page with it as well and kept things moving. And I say all of this because we are this. What a perfect moment to transition into New York City Center. Encores Final production of the season. Wonderful Town with Anika Noni Rose. I don't know if I mentioned this production earlier on the pod when they announced it to replace the Wild Party. Sort of last minute, not totally last minute. I think they announced the replacement of Wonderful Town for Wild Party, maybe like around December. It wasn't like yesterday, but it was. It was definitely a good number of months ago. And it was mostly just a scheduling conflict, I believe, with the director, Sahim Ali. So they sort of semi last minute did Wonderful Town, which is a repeat. They did Wonderful Town very famously in 2000 with Donna Murphy and Laura Benanci. And that production was hailed so much that eventually commercial producers got attached to it and about three years later finally came to Broadway, not with Benanti, but with Donna Murphy and Jennifer Westfeldt. And I saw that production and you can see clips of that production on YouTube. The Tony performance. You can watch Donna Murphy do conga and 100 easy ways to Lose a Man. There's a little clip of Murphy and Benanti, the Encores production, doing Ohio. I was excited to see this production. As we all know. I love my Anika Noni Rose. The rest of the cast is filled with people who I really enjoy. We had friend of the Pod, Itai Benson in this. The director of the piece is Zelan Levingston, who was one of the co directors of Cats, the Jellico ball. And I was like, ooh, I'm interested to see what they do. And it kind of seemed from interviews with the director that they didn't have much of a giant take they planned to do. They wanted to kind of do the show straight on. And I thought that was interesting. But then it became clear from press footage that I tried to steer clear of as much as I could, that no, there was going to be a take on this, because this is a multiracial casting of Wonderful Town. Wonderful Town takes place in 1935, New York City. It was written in 1953. And listen, New York City is a diverse city. It has been for a very long time. And Greenwich Village, where the majority of Wonderful Town takes place, also has been known to be very diverse and, you know, sort of the hub of bohemian life and artistic people and just sort of people who live there, often challenging the norms. And that's one of the major themes of Wonderful Town is a lot of residences in the show are people who are doing things outside of the American institution. And you may not think that that's such a huge deal now, but at the time, you know, a 1953 musical where side characters are a heterosexual couple who are living together, but they're not married, they are simply engaged. And then we find out that actually the woman becomes pregnant out of wedlock. You know, 1935, that was scandalous. 1953, that was scandalous. And Wonderful Town has a lot of fun with that as a musical. Ultimately, overall, I think we should just say because everyone has been wanting to talk about this and the buzz online has been bad. This production is bad. It's very, very bad. I kind of hated it. Hated almost all of it. And I'll tell you why. I got very mad when I had friends see it and they would message me and they would go, oh, like, I guess, like the show itself is bad. And I forgot that wonder that Encore sometimes does not good shows with fun numbers and calls it a day. I'm like, sometimes. Sometimes we get an I married an angel. Sometimes we get a love life where you're like, oh, you're Kind of a mess. But there's a lot of fun stuff here, and I get why you were big at the time. But something like Wonderful Town has been proven within this century to work as a musical. Not just the encores and then the Broadway transfer, but it was done at the Goodman Theater, like, nine years ago. Nine years? Isn't that very long? A lot of things in the culture has shifted in the last nine years, but our ability to recognize whether a Golden Age musical is worth reviving or not has not shifted that much in nine years. So it really bothered me when people were like, oh, I guess the show just isn't good. No, Wonderful Town is a good musical. Is it bulletproof? No. I would argue 99% of shows are not bulletproof. But you have to understand what your show is trying to be. Wonderful Town stems from a novel, actually a play that came from a novel that came from short stories from the New Yorker. And that is important to know, because in a lot of ways, Wonderful Town is a New Yorker fairy tale. A fairy tale that you would read in the New Yorker. It's intelligent, it's sarcastic, and everything kind of goes smoothly, but it doesn't not acknowledge a lot of the sort of seedier elements of New York. It just does it with the gloss. There's a running joke of the two main characters, Ruth and Eileen Sherwood, two sisters who move from Ohio to make it in the big city. Ruth, the older sister, is, you know, she's charismatic and highly intelligent, but she's very harsh, and she kind of repels people with her awkwardness. But she wants to be a writer. She wants to break into it as a writer. And her younger sister, Eileen, wants to be an actress. And Eileen is very beautiful. She's very charming, very sweet, and men just constantly fall at her feet. And the thing about Eileen is that she doesn't really notice that Eileen is unaware of the charm she has on men. She just walks around being a kind, considerate person, and men think fall over her. And Ruth is the one always telling her, like, Eileen, you know, the effect you have on men. And Eileen's like, oh, Ruth, you're so silly. Like, come on, let's go to bed. Like, Eileen is someone who is a good pal, and Ruth is someone who's a good pal. But the apartment that they move into in the Village, the landlord is a struggling artist, and they find out that the previous tenant was a sex worker. And a running joke is that men keep knocking on their door trying to find the previous tenant because they've you know, either their former former clients or friend of a former client. And it's not the way that the show is written. It's not scary. It's done for high comedy. Very sort of noises off, but it is acknowledging in 1953, like, New York City's got hookers in it. Right. New York City has bumbling cops. New York City has people living together out of wedlock. That's New York City. New York City is crowded. It's messy. They're blowing up underneath the ground to make for the new subway stations. It's constantly on the move, it's constantly changing and people are doing what they want all the time. And Wonderful Town has a lot of fun with that. This production doesn't want to have fun. They will sometimes allow for fun in production numbers, although I'll get to that in a quick second. But. But the number of scenes that just drop like a lead balloon, and it comes from many things. I'm not usually one to harp on performers. If someone is miscast, it's not their fault they got cast. They, you know, you try to just do your best with what you have, even if you're not quite a fit for the role. Sometimes a person is right for a role and then they're just terribly misdirected. This is sort of a combination of both. There are some people who I don't think are right for. For this show, and I also think that there's a misdirection. The tone of this production is sort of golden age light with a biting side eye is the best way I would describe it. It doesn't feel like the production team actually likes the material. It feels like they are trapped. Having to do definitely feels like a lot of the cast doesn't like the material as well as half the cast not understanding how to do golden age comedy, which is a very specific kind of comedy. And lines that I have seen get, you know, make an audience fall over laughing. 20 years ago, 15 years ago, met with absolute silence. Numbers that have been showstoppers in the past met with semi tepid, semi congratulatory applause. It breaks my heart to say that Anika Noni Rose is just both miscast and misused as Ruth. She has no gumption to her. She has no warmth to her. There are members of the company that are doing a lot. They're trying very hard, but they don't have the precision needed. Aisha Jackson, as Eileen, sings it well, she's giving it a lot of energy, a lot of bubbliness, but there's not as much sweet innocence to her. When Act 2 begins and Eileen is, technically speaking, in jail, long story, don't ask, but she sort of the joke is that end of act one, she gets arrested and act two begins, and we're in jail, and her neighbors and Ruth come to visit her and try to bail her out, thinking like, oh, poor Eileen, she's locked up with all those policemen who I'm sure just treating her terribly. And of course, that's absolutely not the case. All the policemen are in love with Eileen. They are doing her laundry. They are doing. They're taking phone calls for her. They just think she's the absolute bee's knees and she's running the show and not like a dictator. She's like. She's just like, oh, my God, what a cozy little spot. You guys are the best. Thank you so much. That's sort of the joke of the top of Act 2. And this production decides to make it a point that Eileen Code switches when she's with the police officers and puts on an Irish brogue with them and her regular voice with other people. And it's a production that wants to have race matter. They acknowledge it. There are lines that they've even added to the script that I read two different reviews that clocked the same line that I clocked. And it bothered me that they didn't bother to see if that line had been in the script before, because it makes no sense otherwise. Which is when Ruth and Eileen show up to New York and they're trying to find an apartment, and the, you know, Italian artist landlord persuades them to check out the apartment. He goes, hey, it's fine. Like, come on in. You know, listen, you know, I did not kidnap the Lindbergh baby, and I don't care if your tan ever goes away. Meaning, like, yes, I'm a. I'm a foreigner, but I'm not the one who kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. And, you know, your quote unquote tan, I don't care. And it's done with sort of like a slightly sinister, slightly comic edge met with zero laughs our night. And there were two critics who were like, oh, like, that line takes on a whole new meaning with black actresses. That line's not in the show. They added that line, which I'm just like, just fucking. Let them be sisters. Let them come on. Let them own the stage. This is all a microcosm, just a larger issue of a production team that does not understand the show, that doesn't want to understand the show. That doesn't get what it takes to do Golden Age light musical comedy, and a lot of people in the cast who don't know how to do it. Again, it's an. It's a very specific art form. You can't do a 1953 comedy like you would do a 2019 satire. You also can't do a Golden Age musical the same way. Like some would say, oh, well, we did have our Woke Lahoma recently. And you love your dark Carousel. Matt, Carousel is a dark musical. You would not perform Carousel the way you should perform Wonderful Town. That's what they tried to do in 2018, and I fucking hated it. And you shouldn't perform Wonderful Town like you perform Carousel in the same way that you would not do Long Day's Journey Into Night the same way you would do Noises off or Private Lives, and you wouldn't do Private Lives the same way you would do the Crucible. Just because something's a musical or something's a play doesn't mean that they're all the same. And just because they're from the same decade doesn't mean they're all the same. Wonderful Town is a fairy tale. It's a intelligent, cartoonish fairy tale, and you have to treat it as such, especially when some plot lines get rushed in the second act, which is a characteristic of a lot of Golden Age musicals. When there's a number that maybe feels like it's padding. It's padding, and own it and do the most with it. And by that, I mean give it some life, give it some flavor. I don't mean throw all the spaghetti at the wall, because that's the other thing is that when there are big production numbers, they are not done with any kind of character or storytelling. They're just done with how much movement can we do on stage? How can we throw our dancers into disarray? Numbers like conga, numbers like swing or, you know, Wrong note rag. It's just. It's the most dancing, and there's no build. There's no character. There's no story. There's no attitude. There's no humor. And first of all, it makes it messy execution. And I don't blame the dancers for that. It's just how the numbers are done. And when you watch Rosalind Russell do Conga Online, when you watch Donna Murphy do conga Online, you can see how these numbers can just sell with comedy. Conga is a number that I know would make a lot of people uncomfortable on paper, and Lord knows, in this Production. I'm sure it makes people uncomfortable, which is the idea that Ruth is thinking she's getting her big break as a reporter. You know, she wants to be a creative writer, but she'll take a job as a reporter for now. She ends up. The job ends up being, you know, not real, but she goes to a naval base where a bunch of Brazilian sailors come in, and she's supposed to interview them as a human interest piece, get their take on America, and all they want to do is the conga. They've learned about the conga. Ruth shows them the basic steps, and as she tries to interview them, they keep interrupting her questions and dancing the conga. And by the end of the number, they're basically throwing her around as part of the number. Now, throwing her around is a term that we do not enjoy. And some people have said, oh, this was kind of giving. God, what were they saying? There's something like. It was like kind of gang bang Y. There was a certain number that people were saying that reminded them of negatively, and I didn't agree with it. Oh, people were saying, like, oh, reminded them of Anita's attempted assault in west side Story. It's more Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie with the Shriners, if anything. But before things get too insane, because the thing about the conga is these sailors don't want anything from Ruth. They do not want her sexually. Like, if she were to walk off the stage, they would still keep dancing the conga. Now, is that realistic? No, but that's how this is a cartoon fairy tale. They are rabid to keep dancing, and they just want Ruth to dance with them. And they will throw her on their shoulders if they have to, just to. Not even if they have to, but, like, they are so up in the energy of their enjoyment of the number that she almost becomes like collateral baggage with them. She becomes like a fun dance partner. And she is fighting not to not dance, but fighting to get the story. So there are times when she is a part of the number while trying to take the story and times when she's trying to get away from it. But it's all light. It's Mamma Mia. You have one foot on the ground, one foot in the air. It's real to your character, but the actress to know what world they're in. And when you're doing something like this, there's got to be a light touch to it so the audience understands. No one's in danger here. This is just pure silliness because it's farcical. Farce has violence and danger in it, but we never watch it and go, oh, my God, that character's gonna die. You know that everything's safe and noise is off. You know that the actors are okay. You know that the characters aren't gonna die in the end, but they go through a lot of physical torment with each other. They assault each other in that show, too. It's all about how you approach it. To get a good idea of what it takes to sell musical comedy from the 1940s and 50s, to have the right tone, touch, and tightness, I want you guys to go online. I want you to watch Donna Murphy's 100 Easy Ways to Lose a Man from when she did it on Broadway. You can also watch her conga, but also watch Megan Hilty's Little girl from Little Rock when she did Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at Encores. Her little scene before the number, and then, like, she's got two or three lines afterwards, and it's perfection. She puts on a little bit of a voice, but nothing too insane, which gives the light touch to it. She has a rhythm to how she speaks, so she knows when to punch the punchline, but she also knows when to let a moment breathe. And her character takes it seriously, but she, the actress, knows that everything is silly. And when she's selling a number, she's selling it with all of her gumption and just enjoying herself. And you can tell that there's not a lot of joy from certain performers in this show. I do want to give a quick shout out to friend of the pot, Etai Benson. He plays one of Eileen's suitors, and he understands the assignment. He does. He knows how to do golden age musical comedy. He knows that it's. We've talked about this once upon a mattress, right? You make a bold choice, you do it tightly, and you do it quickly. Sluggishness is the death of comedy, especially in this era. Everything's got to be right, right on top of each other, one, right after the other. And if it's not, everything just drops like a lead balloon. So do I recommend this wonderful town? No. Do you? If you want to see it, go for it. But I'm telling you, this is actually a very good musical. Is it, like, top 20? No. I'm not entirely sure if I would say it's in the top 15 of, like, the 40s and 50s. It might be in the top 20 of the 40s and 50s, but I don't know if I would say top 15 or even top 10. It's just, it's, it's got some fat to it. The last 10 minutes, everything kind of wraps up a little too quickly. But it has a lot of intelligence to it. There's a lot of good stuff in there. And when you do it well, I'm not gonna say correctly, but when you do it well, it's a very fun night. It doesn't change your life, but it's a fun, joyful night. And this is not that, which is a shame. We should be doing better than that and we should be demanding better than that, even if it's just encores. And I don't want next season to be oh, well, we're going to go back and do musicals from the 90s, 90s and early 2000s. We are now getting into the 21st century where musicals from the 90s to now have the same distance of, you know, when encores was doing shows in the 90s and taking shows from the 60s and 70s. We have that same distance now. But there are still some shows from the 50s that could be done. Some shows from the 60s and 70s that could be done. I don't think we need to be mining 2004, 2005 just yet. Just saying. I went on for a bit for this one, so I apologize. I'll put in the description box when the timestamps are for each review. So we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to get into real women have curves. I promise. So let's take that break.
- [33:52]
Billy
Billy, I beg to differ with you.
- [33:54]
Matt Koplik
How do you mean?
- [33:54]
Billy
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.
- [34:09]
Matt Koplik
And we're back. So real women have curves. Like I said, I originally saw this the Saturday before the show opened with friend of the pod, Juan Ramirez. And then as it so happened, I was able to get press tickets that were not until the week after the Tony nominations. And after seeing it with Juan, I was like, I think I do want to go see this the second time and sort of get a second opinion on this. The musical is based off of the play and film by the same name, the play written by Josefina Lopez, and then the movie made for HBO by Lopez as well as George Lavou. I had seen the movie, which is probably best known now for kind of launching America Ferreira's film career. I had seen the movie, I want to say around 2004. The movie came out around 2002. And it was around the same time America Ferreira had done Gotta Kick it Up for a Disney Channel. And I, you know, I was a big fan of hers from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I know I'm basic, but that was the right age for me to like that. And then was so into Ugly Betty. My God, did I love that show. And from that, I went back and watched real women have curves. And I am still very much an America Ferrera. Stan. She's. I love her in Superstore. I'm one of the people who's super happy with her Oscar nomination for Barbie. I wish I had seen her play Roxie Hart in Chicago, but she only did in. In the West End, God damn it. And I never got to see Dog Sees God, but I. That cast was stacked. But so the musical, I had seen it a long, long time ago, but hadn't had no memory of it other than America Ferreira. It was, like, about America Fredda and her mother. And so I go see the movie, the musical, with Juan. I. Everything that's happening, the plot, I'm like, I remember none of this. And the first thing Juan says to me at intermission is, so are these women gonna have curves at some point? Because it had felt to both of us that for the first act, while the musical was sort of promoting body positivity with the title, with the ad campaign, with you know, all the interviews about the show, we didn't feel that the musical itself dealt with it much. A couple, aside from a couple of, you know, swipes from the main character's mother. And then I joked, like, oh, yeah, I'm sure. Like, you know, watch Act 2. They're gonna, like, whip. They're gonna whip out their biebs. And then, of course, act two, that's exactly what they did. And I was like. And then I. After the show, I went, oh, I really need to re watch this movie, because I have zero memory of this. So I go back and I rewatch the movie and I do some research, and I learned that the musical actually takes more of a page from the original play, which takes place in 1987 and has a subplot about immigration. Whereas the movie, from what I recall, and I say recall, like, I haven't watched it literally six days ago, but a lot has happened in six days. But there it the movie, if it doesn't take place in present day, 2001, 2002, they don't really do much to talk about it. And there was no immigration subplot with that it was really focused on the main character, Anna and her mother. And so I go back to see the musical, I take a friend of mine, hey, Steve. And he actually had a very similar feeling that I did the first time. And then my feelings improved a bit on the second go. But I still had a lot of the same thoughts. Overall, I enjoyed Real Women have Curves. Let's get that up front now before we get into the weeds with this. I enjoyed it. It's a fun time. It's a very sweet show. I can't say that I think it's great. And I couldn't really put my finger on it the first time and I feel like I was able to put my finger on it the second. The thing about the show that kind of underwhelmed me the first time was the buzz around it was really, really huge. Not out of town, out of town. There was absolutely no buzz coming into Broadway. There was no buzz. And it wasn't until previews started that there was. There felt like there was a major response from people about the energy of it, the message of it, how it makes you feel good, it's, you know, smart, it's, it's tuneful, all these things and you know, filled with amazing talent and people were hungry for another feel good show and one with, you know, an important message behind it. Aren't we all? All the time. And so I go and ready to have my mind be blown. And it wasn't really blown and I couldn't figure out why at the time. It felt a little clunky to me, well meaning and sweet, but a little clunky. And I spoke to a few different friends who loved it and I talked to them and a couple understood sort of where I was coming from. A few others couldn't at all. And I went, okay, well you know, I see it again in, you know, eight or nine days. Let's see how my feelings are then and going again, you know, Steve felt that it was a sweet show, a well meaning show, a well constructed show, but it just wasn't quite. Not to be say this in a negative way, but it's not quite special enough. And I agreed with him on that. And we were wondering what that meant really and why that was so in full context. The show Real Women have Curves centers around an 18 year old named Ana living in Los Angeles in 1987. She is an American citizen, but her parents are both Mexican immigrants. Her older sister is an immigrant as well. She immigrated to America with their mom when their mom was pregnant. With Anna and the sister was, you know, let's say like six or seven, maybe. Maybe a little older than that. It's unclear exactly what the age difference is between the two. Estella is the name of the sister. And Estella runs a dressmaking factory that the parents, you know, put all of their savings in so their daughter could become a boss. And she wants to be a dressmaker. Ana has just graduated high school and secretly applied to Columbia, where she gets a full scholarship and wants to go, but it's in New York and her family, she's afraid that her family will not approve, specifically her mother, because, you know, with. As she talks about it, with. As Anna says in her own words, with immigrants, you're sort of born in a deficit. And you are always sort of, as you grow up, you're always weighing what it is you owe your family, what they owe you, how much you can do for them. And anything you might want to do that takes you away from them is viewed as a betrayal. Because you are a pact. You are. You are. You are a family. And essentially, you know, her sister is okay with her going and sort of resents the idea that the mom thinks that everything will fall apart if Anna goes away. The father wants their daughter to pursue her dreams. The very real threat is that everything that the family has in Los Angeles is under Anna's name, because Anna is the only citizen. So she goes away. What could get taken away from them? And everyone who. All the women who work in Estella's factory are also undocumented immigrants, some from Mexico, some from Guatemala, many different southern countries. And the show is mostly Feel Good. Ana also has an internship for a newspaper that she gets to do some freelance reporting for. She meets a boy there. They fall in love. He's going to Wesleyan, so they're going to be like east coast college, long distance dating. On top of all this, Estella gets a huge break from this buyer, Mrs. Wright, who demands 200 dresses in three weeks. And it's, you know, it's a huge get for the factory. But if they can't make the dresses in time, the Mrs. Wright will take the dresses, but she will not. She will take the remaining dresses that they have, but she will not pay for it. So they are. They have to make the 300 dresses, 200 dresses in those three weeks. And they recruit Anna's help. And Ana is a slow learner, but eventually she does well and she sort of ingratiates herself with the other women in the factory. And by the end of the Show. Ana's mom finally kind of lets go and allows her and gives her blessing by the very end to let her go to Colombia. And she and Anna kind of have a meeting of the minds, and then Anna's gonna go off to Colombia. On top of all of this, Anna is a thicker girl, as is her sister, as is her mother, as are most of the women in the factory. They, you know, they all range in size. Some are, you know, perfectly, you know, healthy looking, or what society would deem healthy looking to what others would consider larger or some might even unfairly consider obese. And they're all happy and sad and tired and alive in this way that anyone is. But especially women, especially women of color, especially immigrants who are working multiple jobs and never sleep and have a family to take care of. You know, just all of these things. But the show ultimately wants to be affirming, right? It's kind of like we were saying afterwards, it's like kind of Kinky Boots meets Waitress meets in the Heights in the sense that, you know, it is a Latin musical. Not every Latin musical is in the Heights, but there is a lot of in the Heights, specifically Lin Manuel Miranda flavor to it. And there is a lot of working class people and their problems a la Waitress, as well as sort of a juxtaposition of tone. Because on top of all of this, there is a subplot with deportation. And the factory next to theirs has a raid, has an ice raid. And one of the. Spoiler alert, one of the workers does get taken by the government at the end of Act 1, and then eventually deported in Act 2. So this is all. It's a lot of plates to be spinning, right? And it has a lot of the highland Manuel Miranda energy. It also has the kinky boots, like we're in a factory, we're making things and fashion show and trying to balance working class characters with an expensive, clean Broadway production. And ultimately, what we kind of realized was our frustration with not fully loving Real Men have Curves really ultimately had to do with our frustration with modern musical theater, which is. This is a general complaint, and it's not. And it's an umbrella term that of course, doesn't apply to everything but a large. An abundance of shows. And I also just want to say this now as I keep talking about. This is as we talk about every show, right? I was saying this to a friend last night who disagreed with me on my initial take on Real Women have Curves. And he's a very judgmental person, and he loved the show and he's like, I haven't loved anything in years, and I loved this one. And so we didn't get into a fight so much as we were going back and forth. And I said to him, look, you know, because he said, I can't explain it anymore. Just I loved it. I felt so good afterwards. And I said, that's ultimately what all art is, and especially theater, because it's something you're experiencing live, supposedly, unless you're on your phone the entire time like some assholes. But when you're watching a show, you get a chemical response to something. And then afterwards, it is all of us trying to figure out why it is we had the response we had. And the more of theater you see, the more interpretations of a specific work you see, it alters your. Your own molecules. And so what might have worked for you 20 years ago May not work for you anymore now, and that's okay, but that is ultimately your chemical reaction. And with Real Women have Curves, I ultimately felt a sort of annoyance with the present state of how to write musicals, specifically Broadway musicals, because in a lot of ways, real Women Have Curves does a lot of things right. It has an energetic opening number that establishes a whole slew of characters. It establishes the environment, a lot of the tone, as well as sort of like, this is going to be where a lot of the action of the play of the musical happens, which is Estella's factory. And then we get an I want number from Anna after that, and we get a number where we sort of chronicle her figuring out how to juggle working at the factory as well as at the paper. Many characters get songs to sort of explore their inner life. Ana's mother, her sister, the boyfriend, one of the workers of the factory. There's a camaraderie with the women of the factory and an establishment of all of who they are and nuances to their characters that when there are certain jokes made in Act 2, there's a payoff for that. There's a reason for that. There is an inventiveness to a lot of the staging. I think the music is very alive and colorful and doesn't go for the rafters of women's voices, which I appreciate. I mean, there's some high belting here and there, but you're not watching it going like, oh, my God, a Vita 3.0 on ten lines of cocaine. It's not that there is, you know, some high notes, but overall, not that. So, as I said, like, in a lot of ways, it does things well. The clunkiness that I felt the first time was a little less so the second time. And maybe that's just because I was more used to the show by that point and what it was going for. But I do sometimes get a tonal whiplash between the comedy and the heavier portions. The comedy for me, you know, while there are very good lines, there are very good one liners in there, a lot of the performance of the comedy, the style of how it's being presented to us felt a little sitcommy Disney Channel acting, as we mentioned in an earlier episode, of a character coming and being like, don't you understand what I mean right now? But, but mom, what you don't understand is this. I gotta do it. It's very, it's. I said, as I said in the last episode, it's earnest, but it's not honest. And that is something that you can't. You know, when something is true, you just, you can clock it and you can say that a performance is true and I can disagree. And then an actual true performance will come along and we'll both clock it. I'll be like, that's what I mean. And similar to Wonderful Town, you know, something like Real Women have Curves. It is trying to be an upbeat, feel good musical. So you can't do it like Madea. But it does also have heavier subplots going on within it. And the heavier stuff is stuff that I think makes the show more interesting and unique to the lighter stuff. Because the lighter stuff for me is very prototype modern musical theater. It's not bad. It's just sort of same as always. It's the heavier stuff that I think gives some distinction to the show. But the heavier stuff doesn't land for me because the same style of acting from the, from the comedy sitcom is given to the heavier stuff. So again, it's earnest, not honest. And I know I'm supposed to be moved by it. I know that I'm supposed to feel something, but I ultimately don't. And when you watch something that you are supposed to be moved by and you're not moved, you feel like you're being manipulated, but it's also not working. So you don't. You, you just don't live in the peace like some people around you might be. And it's a weird feeling to have because as I said, what I'm. I would watch it and think, this isn't bad stuff. I'm just, I'm not clutching my pearls, I'm not jumping out of my seat, I'm not crying. To the floor. But I just, I'm just. I don't know, I just feel like I'm experiencing the same thing as everyone else, but not in the same way. And some things I can pinpoint as to why that is. The title number is a number that I think while everyone really enjoys the feeling of it and the sort of, you know, rah, rah sisterhood of it all, I do think it's a number that's not really earned. And when I rewatched the movie, a big thing that I felt adds to it is of what my disconnect was. The movie is not a super light hearted feel good movie. It's not Schindler's List, but it's an. It's a sardonic indie movie. And America Ferreira as the lead. Those of you who know her as Ugly Betty, Betty Suarez is a fighter. She's an optimist, but she's also a fighter. And what made America Ferrera such a good casting in that role is if you cast someone who gave you Disney Channel acting as Betty Suarez, the role would be insufferable and the show would be insufferable. But America already has an edge to her. And you watch her. And real women have curves. She's 18 going on 45. She's tired, she's intelligent, she's over it. And she fights as well as she takes. And her mom in the movie is, for lack of a better term, a shrew. She's always nagging at her and picking at her and domineering, dominating her, domineering over her. And a lot of the lines of the mom has in the movie are in the show, but they are done with a lighter touch. And I get why it's done that way because ultimately they reconcile in the musical, whereas they don't reconcile in the movie. In the movie, Anna goes to New York without her mother's blessing. It's actually the other thing. It's very Ladybird. It's actually, I would say the show is more kinky. Boots meets Lady Bird meets in the Heights. I take back the waitress moment. It's. Yeah, that's what it is. It's Kinky Boots meets Lady Bird meets In the Heights and the the scene in Lady Bird where Laurie Metcalf drops off Sir Sharonan at the airport and won't talk to her, won't say goodbye. And then she goes off the highway and then she comes back to try to find her, but she's already gone and she's crying because she screwed up. She missed her opportunity. They have that in the movie, minus the moment, you know, regretting it. And Anna goes to New York and goes to school, and she's thriving. And the musical wants the reconciliation because everyone's got to get along at the end of this musical if it's gonna sell. Everyone's. Everyone's got to be happy. There's got to be equilibrium. Make the audience feel good. It's very, you know, make them engaged, make them go, ah. When something bad happens. But everything is good in the end. Even the worker who gets deported writes a letter to Ana at the end saying, like, I'm coming back. I'm fighting to come back to America. Don't you worry. I've got a way in. It's gonna happen. So everything gets wrapped up with a neat little bow. Little Downton Abbey for my taste. And the movie, being an indie movie, isn't concerned with that. And body positivity is a much bigger issue in the movie. Anna's mother is constantly picking at her about her weight, always saying how big she is. And she eats too much. And eventually America Ferra snaps at her and she's like, you're big, too. You eat too. We all eat. Many of us are big. It's fine. And there comes a day in the. In the factory where the air isn't working. It's too hot. The women are all sweating. And America Ferreira is on is like, let's just take off our clothes and, like, work in our underwear. It's too hot to be putting ourselves through this. And her mom is like, don't you all dare. We're all too big to do that. None of us are Christie Brinkley. And the other women are like, oh, yes, yes, yes. We shouldn't. We shouldn't. We have cellulite. And America Ferreira is like, fuck it. And she takes off her pants, takes off her shirts, and she starts comparing her body to other women's, being like, look what I got. Like, what you got? Come on, let's do it. And other women in the factory start doing it as well. And it's liberation, but it's also sort of a fuck you to America Ferreira's mom. And in the musical, it doesn't. It doesn't come out of necessity. It just. It comes out of, I. I am beautiful. Let's all be beautiful together. The mom joins in. So all the women are naked. And it's a good. It's a well written number. It's well staged. Although there's a disco ball that I think should be cut out More on that in a second. But it didn't feel as earned for me as it does in the movie. Because in the movie it's a fun, liberating moment, but not too much. It's liberating from the fact that it exists and how these women just are enjoying it. And of course in the musical it has to be, we've got a message. It's not just that we're beautiful, but real women have curves. So fuck you. And I always get a little not defensive, but I get a little annoyed in musicals now because as I said before with the Pirates episode, with Boop, with Smash, these are things that I agree with, right? Like, and I would argue majority of the audiences seeing these shows agree with and I don't. If I am watching it feeling like it's a little ham fisted, a little heavy handed, a little on the nose, then I can't imagine that the message is coming across to someone across the aisle from me who walked in with the opposite opinion. Maybe it is, maybe I'm eating my hat, but. And it's not, as I said, it's not just real women have curves specific, but it's something about modern musicals in general of you have to state what your messages simply, loudly and in light, over and over and over again. There should be no confusion for an audience of which character we don't like, which character we do like, which character has a redemption arc, which character we sort of roll our eyes at when they say something a little silly and a bit offensive. And when the show is over, we should be feeling good about every character and about ourselves and in some ways go, ah, the work I did today because I saw a fun musical with a message, I. I'm starting to sound like Brooke Samanskas in Smash. I like a musical with a message, but when the message is obvious to me, I feel like I was not able to do any work today and I don't feel like the show did the work for me because it just sort of, it feels like a copy paste job, right? Like a label is put over. It's like if you were to type up a sentence on a piece of paper and then you were to do a giant white out strip over a sentence and just write in black marker like yolo. It's so obvious that that's not part of the original sentence, it's inserted in there for someone to see and have a reaction to. And it doesn't feel lasting to me. It doesn't feel intelligent or creative to me. And that was. And the Title number of Real men have Curves. Again, when you take it out of the show, if you were to, like. If they were to get nominated for the best musical Tony and they were to perform that number on the Tonys, it would sell them a million tickets. But in the show, for me, it does not fit because it does not feel earned, whereas the scene felt earned in the movie. And part of that is because the movie has a harder edge to it. It's funny, it's enjoyable, but it's a slightly drier, slightly more bitter movie underneath. It's got a little bit of that. It's got a little bit of a bitterness to it, a chalky undertaste, as Rosemary might say in Rosemary's Baby. And there's no chalky undertaste to real women have curves. It is a dessert, dessert, dessert. Bam. Here is vegetables. Back to dessert. And that's not something that is unique to real. Real women have curves. It's just something that's been around for a while now. On the specific side, I will say it's a very strong cast. Everyone sings well. There's some very strong performances. Again, though, I feel like the epidemic of Disney Channel acting is employed here as well as in other shows. The performance, I'd say the most, like, nuanced performance would be Justina Machado as the mother. What's the mother's name? Carmen as the mother. Carmen. And she has a hard job because the character in the movie really sucks. And in the musical, she has to say a lot of the same things but not suck so hard. And you watch her version be more sort of a tough love miscommunication with her, with both of her daughters. And I think she sells that very well. Even when there are scenes when I am watching the character and feeling like there's actually disconnect from what the character is saying and what they're trying to do with the character. She has a fully formed character. It's a very well earned Tony nomination. I will also say, Florencia Cuenca, I'm sorry if I mispronounce your name. I deeply apologize. She plays Estella, the older sister. She does a very good job. She has one of the better numbers, in my opinion, in the show, which is when she has this daydream of what it would be like if she could fly out of Los Angeles and become a very famous fashion designer. And it's got some very lovely music to it. It's some of Sergio Trujillo's best staging. A little over reliance on projections for me. There's one moment where the projections are done very well on pieces of fabric, and then other times when I feel like it's just. It's too much. I will also say another caveat I have about the show. I don't like the design of the production. I think it's a rather ugly set design, and that's a shame. I feel like it could be. I feel like there should be another go around at the set because I understand what they're going for. It's just. And I don't mean, like, unattractive of. Oh, my God, a factory. Ew. Like, I just. I don't like the aesthetic of the design. It's colorful, for sure, but it's just. It's an unattractive design for me. Any other. Oh, lcs. I want to give out a shout out to Aline Mayagueta. Or is it Maya? Maya Goisha. Maya Goisha. Yes. She. That was probably my big. She was my big standout the first time I saw it, and she still stood out the second time. It's not a huge role. She plays Itzel, who is the worker who gets deported in Act 2. And again, a very grounded performance, while also having it be large enough to carry across the footlights into the balcony of the Jones. It's a very hard thing to do. Again, it's a strong ensemble. Just. I would be lying if I told you that there wasn't a lot of sitcom y acting happening in a story that wants to be fun but also taken seriously. And I have sort of already said my feelings on that. I think that there needs to be a bit more of the One Foot on the Ground, One Foot in the Air, and having a little bit less of a presentational vibe. This is not Wonderful Town. This is a show that has a lot more to say and deals a lot more of the darker side of America. But, I mean, obviously, like, for it to end on a hopeful note, it can't be done super lugubriously. You have to find that balance. And I feel like there's a little too much of wanting to go for the light. And same thing with the design and same thing with the choreography of, like, when in Doubt, just go, like, a little extra harder to really sell this as a Broadway musical. And I feel like if there's one thing Jerry Mitchell got right with Kinky Boots was there was a lot of Broadway razzmatazz to it, but it came out of the reality of the factory and of these workers and, in fact, made certain numbers. I would argue like sex is in the heel or everybody say, yeah, actually sell even better. Because the fact that the workers were dancing on the treadmills alone was huge. And if everything was done a little too spectacularly, it would feel, it would ring a little too false. And Lord knows I'm not a kinky boots Stan. I was very much Team Matilda that year. Still am. But that is something that I think real women have curves on a production front. Could maybe take a note from. The title song doesn't need a disco ball. When we're doing. When we're doing Estella's fantasy number, that should. I think that should just come out of the factory. We don't have to bring in sliding projecting screens on to cut us off from it and do all of these stage pictures. The stage pictures can come from. We're already, you know, in a lineup with the sewing machines. Women can come out of that. In the fantasy to play all the different roles that Estella is imagining, that's just sort of constantly. Rather than overwhelming or bombarding your audience, surprising them. Give your audiences a surprise whenever you can. And there were times when it sort of felt like maybe from the influence of the Weisslers of we're doing a Broadway musical, be a big Broadway musical. And this is, you know, a medium sized musical. It's a human interest story and there's a lot of flair to it. But sometimes the flair is too much in my opinion. Again, it's not a bad musical. I actually enjoyed quite a lot of it. It's a perfectly sweet, perfectly enjoyable musical. It's not top of my list, if I'm being honest, but it's not bottom of my list either. It's like kind of. We'll get to the official rankings next week, but it's sort of like mid up there for me. That's all I can really say about Real women have curves. As I said, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a bit more on the second viewing, but it's not quite what I want it to be. Not even just text wise. Just like what I was hoping to get from it based on the exceptional word of mouth. It was a very engaged audience. It took them a while to really kind of get effusive with it. It was unfortunately sparsely attended, but. But by the end of the show they were very much on board. They were on their feet. Although, what does that mean anymore? Standing ovations mean nothing these days. Especially when we now have like had three or four shows with standing ovations. When I first saw it two weeks Ago, the title song got a massive standing ovation. Today it got very enthusiastic applause, but no standing O. A couple people towards the back tried to stand and get everyone else to do it, but it didn't happen. And I think you see more and more of that as runs continue and people feel less inclined to convince themselves that they are part of an event. That's it on Real Women have Curves. We are going to take a quick break and then we are going to do a double whammy of both old friends and dead Outlaws. So let's take that break.
- [64:05]
Billy
Billy, I beg to differ with you.
- [64:07]
Matt Koplik
How do you mean?
- [64:07]
Billy
You're the top.
- [64:08]
Matt Koplik
Yeah.
- [64:09]
Billy
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.
- [64:23]
Matt Koplik
And we're back. Before we get into Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends and Dead Outlaw, I forgot to mention something else that had happened. I went back to see Death Becomes Her. I've seen a couple of shows twice this season to do a Second opinion, maybe Happy ending. Gypsy Sunset Boulevard went back to see Betty Gilpin and O Mary saw Hills of California in the West End and Broadway. Operation Mincemeat in the West End and on Broadway. Real women have curves. And now Death Becomes Her. I saw Death Becomes her in November, right before it opened. And I liked it. I didn't love it. I was obsessed with Simard and I thought there was some good stuff in there, but it didn't super tickle my fancy. And that's sort of where I left it at. And then the cast recording came out and I was listening to it and I went, oh. Some of these songs really hit differently in the studio when you can actually hear the words and there's an intricacy to the orchestrations that really kind of elevated it. And I went, huh? Like, I kind of want to see the show again and give it a new take. And so I ended up getting a TDF ticket. Lucky, lucky me. That ended up being for the night that the Tony nominations came out. And I was like, oh, shit. Like, either this is going to be a rock concert or this is going to be the angriest performance these people have ever given. And as it got closer to Tony nomination day, I got more excited because it became clearer to me that Death Becomes her was a lock for musical. And if that was going to happen, that M3GAN and Gen were going to get in, which we've talked about already. So we're not going to get to that too much. So it was all the vibe of that night was already pretty electric. On a second viewing, I will say I enjoyed Death Becomes Her a lot more. It's still not perfect. There are a couple of songs that still don't super do it for me. Oh, I also forgot to say, there are two songs in Real Women have Curves that I really dislike and wish would be cut. One that I can think of immediately is the sex number between Anna and her boyfriend. I think his name is Henry. And then there's a song in Act 1. Can't remember it now, but it's in the first half where I was like, we don't need this song here. And in Death Becomes where there's a song or two where I'm like, oh, we could cut this. It's not Death Becomes where isn't quite as tight of a musical as I would like it to be, especially for this kind of dumb, dumb dumbness. But it is beautifully designed. I do think that the score is better than I gave a credit for the first time around. Some numbers do not work as well on stage, unfortunately, and whether that is a flaw of the song itself, a flaw of staging, I can't tell you. Jennifer Smart has a number called let's Run Away Together that is, I think, iconic on the album. And it doesn't register as well on stage because there's a lot of physicality to the number and the words are coming like a mile a minute. And so a lot of jokes in the lyrics do not register with an audience, unfortunately. But Jen sells the absolute crap out of it. Jen has gone from being a 10 out of 10 to an 11 out of 10 for me. Megan Hilty also has improved immensely for me since November, as I rightfully predicted back then. As she got more comfortable with the show and did it more, she'd be looser with her choices and start making some weird decisions with the character and be a little more on her toes each night. And it's coming across and there's a lot more weirdness in what she's doing in a very, you know, meticulous and intelligent way. She's a smart comedic actress for sure. And her performance for me went from being about like an 8 out of 10 to probably like a 9, 9.5 out of 10. Like she's doing some really great work. Christopher Sieber as well has. I still think he doesn't have the best material, but he's actually selling it better than he was back in November. He's figured out A way to get a lot more laughs. And even Michelle Williams, she got a couple of laughs last Thursday, so good for her. And she still sings it absolutely incredibly. So Death Becomes her has actually gone up on my rankings this season. I wouldn't say it's shot up to the top five, but it's moved up a couple of spots from where it was. So props to ya mama. Moving on to Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, which is playing in Manhattan Theater Club. The review of Stephen Sondheim Songs as curated by Cameron Mackintosh and and directed by Matthew Bourne, with staging by Matthew Bourne and artistic consultant by Julia McKenzie and some choreography by Stephen Muir. This played at the Gielgud Theatre in London last year. Two years ago and a very good friend of mine who is a fellow Sondheim freak and a fellow Anglophile, saw it, loved it. I think he even saw it a second time and was very excited that it was coming over and was actually disappointed that not more of the British cast was coming. So I don't think he even went to go see it, but I went to go see it because a seeing everything this season. But also more importantly, it's the Broadway debut of two time Olivier Award winning actress Joanna Riding Joe, riding Everybody. Julie Jordan from the 1992 National Theatre Carousel, the one that eventually came to Broadway. I got to see Johanna riding do Pajama Game in London and it was a thrill of a lifetime and I got to see her make her Broadway debut and that was also great. There's not much to say about Old Friends. It is very much a review. It doesn't really have an angle on Sondheim's material. It's not really trying to tell a story. They don't do many of the numbers in very new ways. It is a rather elaborate review. It's a large company. It's about a 14, 15 piece orchestra. That sounds very lush. The sound design is incredible. A lot of projection work, a couple of, you know, random pieces of scenery on, on and off. And there are some performers who get to sort of show off a new side to themselves and that's very exciting. The biggest caveat I have with Old Friends is because Cameron Macintosh produced this and again sort of curated it and under the guise of oh, Sondheim is an old friend. We worked together for 40 years and I did many of his shows and I'm selecting pieces that we've worked on together. And that's a weird umbrella because the first thing that Macintosh ever did was a review called Side by Side by Sondheim that he, you know, produced and brought to the States. And then he also did the review putting it together. So you could argue that he could cover any Sondheim show because those reviews covered a bunch of Sondheim shows, the production. So old friends. The only Sondheim musicals I could tell that they didn't cover were the Frogs, obviously Assassins. Obviously. Do I Hear a Waltz? I don't believe there was anything from Anyone Can Whistle. And there was a. The only. Obviously, there was nothing from Here We Are. There was a tiny bit of bounce which was thrown in the middle of I Know Things now, which was sung by Bernadette Peters. Again, the whole thing feels more like kind of a showcase and, you know, an appreciation of Sondheim material for theater lovers. Not everything is successful, and not every song selection is successful. It's a weird batch of song selections. That's my biggest caveat is that Macintosh picks some odd ones. The whole. I would argue the whole section of into the woods, because they also will do, like, sections of shows. And the whole into the woods section, for me, was a giant dud. They do the prologue into, like, a verse of on the Steps of the palace, into all of Agony. Then Bernadette Peters coming on, doing I Know Things now with a little bit of bounce interwoven. And then she does hello, Little Girl. And then she and Lea Salongo do Children Listen. And it's. The whole thing is just odd. It's, for me, the epitome of what makes Sondheim so difficult to do well in a review and why putting it together has never really worked. Side by Side by Sondheim is fun, but I still don't think that that's totally successful. Sondheim didn't really write songs to be performed out of context. Some songs do work out of context, and it's wonderful, but they always work better in context. He didn't write to write hits. And in fact, when Sending the Clowns became a hit, it was very Anna Kendrick with Cups, where he was like, really? That happened. Weird. And it's not like an Ain't Misbehavin, right, where you have Fatswaller, who wrote all of these songs, like, a huge catalog of songs that never really were part of any narrative, were never really meant for a specific character to be singing at any moment. They were all just supposed to be hits. It actually had a whole bunch of music that had no lyrics to them at all. And Richard Maltby Jr. And his company sort of assembled it and crafted it to their personalities and built it into this fire blazing review. You can't really do that with Sondheim, so you have to kind of just go in and say, oh, I love this song. I love this song. Oh, I like this show. I like this show. Doesn't stop things from being awkward though. As I said, the into the woods section, incredibly awkward. I would say the most successful things for me are Bonnie Langford, Kate Jennings Grant and Joanna Riding did a very solid. You could drive a person crazy. I would say that they actually, they did a pretty okay A Weekend in the country and they did all of it. They did the entire A Weekend in the country and they did a very good job with it. But again, that's a number where it's like when it's not in a little Night Music, it doesn't land as well. Like all of Kate Jennings Grant as Charlotte, it didn't get laughs. Not because Kate didn't do a good job with it, but because like outside of the context of Night Music with Desiree and Anne and Charlotte and Count Carl Magnus and all that, like the jokes don't make sense. They only make sense when you have built up to it throughout all of Act 1. So I don't give them any bad feelings for not landing the jokes in that. There was no way they could. But that was a good job. Bernadette did a good Send in the Clowns. It was for me, it wasn't as good as it was in 2010. I said this before. If you listen to Putting it together, I've said this with Kyle on that show. Like for me, Bernadette has now sort of become the isms. And what I mean by that is she always has been an actress with quirks. She's. She's an alien. And she was never the most incredible singer. Like when it. When it comes down to her and Patty for voice, like, Patti has the voice hands down. And I would argue that, you know, Patti also has idiosyncrasies that have started to take over with her. But with Bernadette, she would make these weird choices in the past and have these new takes on lines that you couldn't figure out how she got there. And maybe they didn't always work, but they worked more frequently than they should. Think about into the woods with a so big or Cinderella. It's laughable. No, she's like actress of the capital A, but an actress who does these Madeline Kahn, Barbara Harris, weird choices that somehow fit and they also go into her musical numbers. But the older she's gotten, I have found, the more careless she's gotten with tempo and rhythm and phrasing and her own sense of taste of herself as a performer. And granted, a director has to help you helm that in. You don't know how you're coming across on the stage. But when you've been doing this as long as Bernadette Peters has, what part of you has to know, has to have some sort of sense of what works and what doesn't? And it felt like that wasn't really happening here. I feel a disconnect between the Bernadette Peters of now and the Bernadette Peters that I've seen in the past and the Bernadette Peters that I love. And it's always great to see a legend, but it's just for me, this was a miss for her of what? Of all the things she's done well in the past, she's doing again here. And in my humble opinion, not as well. Lea Salonga, though, does a very good job in this show, specifically in the Sweeney Todd section, which is towards the end of act one, they do Ballad of Sweeney Todd. Worst pies in London, my friends. Pretty women into a little priest. And first of all, I want to say about the Ballad of Sweeney Todd. This show has half the number of ensemble members and half the orchestra size of the last production of Sweeney Todd, and yet it sounds like it's 10 times the size. When they got into Swing youg Razor High Sweeney, and also, by the way, they had a whistle. Thank you, factory whistle. But when they all sang Swing your Razor High Sweeney, I was like, oh, my God. Yes. Finally, this music is washing over me. That's all I've wanted. Thank God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And Leia does a really strong Mrs. Lovett. Her worst prize in London is fine. It's not. I had heard a lot of great things about her. Love it. So I was a little underwhelmed with her worst prize. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't as interesting as I was expecting. But she does a really good job with a little priest. And it's also, like, fun to watch her have fun doing things that people don't expect from her. You hear Leia Salonga, you think Disney princess, you think Miss Saigon, you think regal, you think elegant, you think, you know, strong, maybe even a little cold, depending on the show you've seen her in. But in this, like, she. She's allowing herself to have fun and get a little messy. And that's really Cool to see she does a solid Loving you. It's a weird version of it. My friend told me that it's most likely inspired by the Michael Ball single recording of Loving youg from Passion. So it's. It's a little Disney fied and not like Leia's voice so much like the arrangement of it. Our Jo Riding does a phenomenal. Not getting married today. Really kind of puts her whole body into it and got a really great hand out of it. They do a lovely job with Sunday. You know, if you're good singers and you sing Sunday, I'm not going to not cry. They do the overture for Merrily for the Entr act and the. It's the full original overture with rich and happy in it. So yay happy to have that. They do the. They do the Quintet from West side Story, which, you know, the audience really loved. Leonard Bernstein wrote a whole bunch of great music for that. They do Broadway Baby, which is straight out of the hey Mr. Producer concert. And if you watch the Haymister Producer concert online, you watch that Broadway Baby. It's so good. They do that exact thing. But they. But it's not as precise. It's not quite as witty. They actually kind of. They. They start the joke too late and then they don't have it built quite as well as they do in hey Mr. Producer, in my opinion. But it's still fun enough. They do. Everybody ought to have a Maid. That's with Kyle Sella, Gavin Lee and Jason. What's Jason's last name? I don't know Jason very well. Jason Pennycook. Yeah, I guess that's who. And they do a good job with it. It's fun, it's clever. It's. It's a tight performance and I appreciated it. They do. You got to get a gimmick, which is. Okay. It's a little slow. Really. It should be. It should be tighter. Leia Salonga does a very good Everything's Coming Up Roses. It's forceful, it's belted. We love it. Beth Level does actually a very dropped in and restrained Ladies who Lunch, which I was very appreciative to watch. Bonnie Langford does a good. I'm Still Here. Gavin Lee does Could I Leave you. And it's. He does the best he can, but it's. It's the wrong song to put in the show. It's the wrong person to assign it to. And they have. They make him do this weird take on it and it's just. Yeah, not. Not for me. They then do not a day goes by the whole company. And that's sung to a slideshow of Sondheim on the screen with a whole bunch of photos of Cameron macintosh in there. So it's a little for my liking overall, I would say, you know, with old friends, it's. Is it worth it? Yes and no. I don't find it to be a terribly special review. It's Sondheim and we love Sondheim. There are a handful of really wonderful numbers in there. There are a handful of really strange song choices or songs that I think are handled oddly. Kate Jennings Grant does her best with the Boy From. And by that I mean she does a really good job. But that number, when you shove that number in a review of songs from shows that people know very well, like Sweeney Todd and Sunday park with George, that number doesn't register as well because people are. People are both eager to hear something they're not familiar with, but also eager to get back to the songs they know. So people were kind of chuckling throughout it, but they weren't laughing super harshly, which they should. And I think part of it is them sitting there like, waiting for the More Follies or the more Sunday, More Merrily, things like that. It's kind of how Oscar Hammerstein told the writers of Gypsy. You have to put that button in at the end of Rose's Turn because the audience isn't listening to the final scene with Louise. They're just waiting to applaud Merman. So you got to give the button so they can applaud her. And then they'll listen to the scene and then the show will end. And it's sort of. If you're going to do something like the Boy from, you got to incorporate other songs that people maybe don't know super well. And maybe don't include whole sections. Like don't do like a 10 minute, 12 minute into the woods clump. Don't do a 15 minute Sweeney clump and then throw in the Boy from. It's sort of like a part of. You might think that it's like a reset button or a palette cleanser, but it's not. It's. It's. People are going, wait, I want to. I wanted a 20 minute folly section. What. What's this number? And I'm always happy to hear it. I like it. But I could feel the people around me getting antsy for the next song. So that's sort of it. With Old Friends. It's fun. It's a fun time. I liked it fine. A lot of caveats. Did not love it. It doesn't have much of a purpose for existing outside of just allowing performers you like to do Sondheim and. And if it's Alaia Salonga, she's doing a lot of Sondheim you wouldn't expect from her. And if it's a Bernadette Peters, it's 90% the Sondheim you would expect from her because she's done it all before. She does Sunday. She does Not A Day Goes by she does Losing My Mind. She does Children Will Listen with Leia. And she does Send in the Clowns. She does do Gotta Get a Gimmick and Broadway Baby, which you would say, oh, well, what about that? She never did those on stage. Well, she did both of those numbers in hey, Mr. Producer. So it's a little bit of a. Of a, you know, hitting with the oldies with. With Bernadette on that, which I don't love. Some people love the familiar with that. I'm sort of like, I would love to watch Bernadette do a different song. Have, you know, have Kate Jennings Grant do Send in the Clowns. She would kill it. You know, if you're gonna do. I know things down with Balance, give that to Joe Riding. I would say it's not as evenly distributed of material as I would like. Lea Salonga and Bernadette Peters absolutely have the most material. And Bernadette's not as involved in the group numbers. I would say after Leia and Bernie, Beth probably has the next most material. And then after Beth, I would probably say it's a tie between Bonnie Langford and Joanna Riding. But you could give Joe more. You could give Bonnie more. Give Kate Jennings Grant more. My gad. Gavin Lee has a couple of good things, but I think that there's a lot of misuse of him. I think everybody ought to have a maid is the best use of him. And there should be more of that. But that's old friends for you. I feel like it's everything I said. Doesn't really change the needle for anybody. Anyone listening to this is like, yep, you basically said everything. I thought it was gonna be. Final show we have here is Dead Outlaw, Dead Outlaw I saw a year ago Off Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre. It's produced by Audible Theater, written by David Yazbeck, Eric Della Penna for the score, as well as a book by Itamar Moses, who did the book for Band's Visit with Yazbek. And this was conceived by Yazbek. It's the true Story of The outlaw Elmer McCurdy, played by Andrew Durand here, who. When he was shot in. How. When was it? It was like the. I think it was like the 1920s, 1910s, maybe. He. His body couldn't be claimed. No one, there was no kin who were coming to collect him. And so the coroner put arsenic into the embalming fluid to preserve him longer until somebody collected him. And then nobody collected him. And then he actually. The longer he stayed in the funeral parlor waiting to be collected and still didn't decomposed because of the arsenic, because arsenic is a preservative. He started to become an attraction. People wanted to see the dead outlaw. And then his body actually started getting thrown across the country by different entrepreneurs who would take advantage of him and put him in sideshow attractions. He got put into movies. He was part of PR stunts for movies. He would be part of rides. And then he was eventually discovered in, I think 1977 in a warehouse. Got a final coroner's report, autopsy, and then was finally laid to rest. The musical covers his life as well as his journey as a dead body. It mostly. It mostly goes in chronological order. The only two times that it goes out of chronological order is at the very beginning when we see the person discover his body, his dead body, and then brought to the coroner's lab. And then the coroner, played by Tom Sesma, is shown a couple of times throughout the hundred minute intermissionless musical. As we're going through Elmer McCurdy's story, we come back to the coroner's report as he's doing the autopsy on the body. And we learned that Elmer grew up in a, you know, relatively stable home with a mom, a father, a younger brother, an aunt who he found kind of odd. And then when his father died, his mother reveals to him, I'm actually not your mother. I'm your aunt. Your. Your aunt is your mother. She was young when she had you, and to avoid scandal, we said that you were mine. But now you're older and your aunt is older, so she's gonna take you. And then Elmer eventually comes of age and runs away, finds a job at a store, hangs out with a local girl. But he has all of these issues. He has anger issues. He's got a very hot temperament. He's prone to getting drunk and beating people up and getting himself thrown into jail. And eventually he leaves the town that he sort of settled roots into because it's not the life he wants and it's not the life that he's fit for. And he becomes a fugitive, he becomes an albine, and specifically gets involved with the gang to rob banks and then eventually rob trains. And none of it goes according to plan. He turns out to be a really terrible bank robber and a terrible train robber and gets abandoned by his fugitive gang and in a shootout with the police, gets shot, gets the embalming fluid. And then we watch his story as a corpse, and we watch sort of how the country and the people of this country use and abuse and take unrightful ownership over him until finally he's given the rightful burial many decades later. I really enjoyed this Off Broadway, and I had heard a lot of divisive things about it on Broadway, and people I know who saw it off Broadway and then saw it on Broadway said, I don't know, something about it being in a larger theater. It just feels like the specialness is gone, the intimacy is gone. And then, of course, it gets really wonderful reviews, gets a whole bunch of Tony nominations, and there's a feeling that it is the ultimate competitor to maybe happy ending for best musical. And it just so well might be. I think that Operation Mincemeat just hasn't really caught on with American audiences. They have a shot at best book, Operation Mincemeat, but I really don't think so. Buena Vista Social Club is doing very well, but it is ultimately a jukebox musical, and those are really hard to reward. Best musical at the Tony Awards. Tony voters have a prejudice against that. I think Death Becomes her is ultimately too big, too dumb and garish for some voters, for every person who loves it and it's their new obsession. I know a person who thinks it's ugly and unfunny. So it's down to Dead Outlaw and maybe happy ending. Dead Outlaw ultimately is probably too weird of a show for enough people to get on board with, but it is a very intelligent show and ultimately sets out to do what it is, what it wants to do. It successfully does what they want. Whether that's for you or not is another matter. I don't think that it's the size of the theater that really kind of handicaps the show. I think that the problem with that Outlaw is that now there is an expectation on it. People like me who saw it downtown saw it with no expectation. It really had no hype. We were excited for a new David Yazbek score, but that was really it. And people in the cast that we all enjoy, and then we see it and we're like, oh, this is. The music is cool. It's an Interesting story. It's a true story. It's a lot funnier than I expected. The staging is well done, the cast is great and it got people really excited. And when last season was kind of a dud for new musicals. Sorry, but it sort of was Dead Outlaw, you know, it wins the drama desk and it wins the outer critic circle. And I think they also won the Lucille Lortel. And so there was all this buzz of like, o, this is absolutely coming to Broadway. And when it does, like, this is going to be a competitor. And I know people like me sort of went in our heads, sort of thought back on it, like, oh, yeah, that show really did fucking rock. And that show is gonna rule everybody's worlds. And just you wait and I see it. And I had. I know I had great press seats, very, very happy with it. And no great view. Couldn't ask for anything more. And I'm watching, I'm like, oh, right, I forgot that there are, like, there are pockets of this show that are kind of slow and a little boring. But then there are also pockets that are incredibly funny, incredibly engaging. And I think the music is very good and the cast is great. Andrew Durand is a very compelling lead. But, like, I think nothing represents this better than Tom Sesma, who, when I saw it off Broadway, I said, oh, when this goes to Broadway, this is Tom Sesma's Tony. Because Tom Sesma, as I said, everyone except for Andrew Duran plays multiple roles, even Jeb Brown, who plays the narrator. And that's another thing. Tom Sesma, one of his roles is the coroner, and he has the final number of the show as the coroner when we come back to him at the end, and it's this big Broadway style, razzle dazzle musical number. And it totally stopped the show when I saw it, and apparently it stopped the show the entire Off Broadway run. And people like Tom Sesma, as well they should. He's an awesome, awesome performer. He's still my favorite Sweeney that I've seen live. And you go, oh, he's in a best musical contender. He has the best number in the show. He. He has so much in this and it's. And it's fantastic. And when he didn't get the Tony nomination, I went, huh, that's weird. And Jeb Brown got it instead. That's weird. And I go see it again. And I understand now how that happened. Jeb Brown's role, I remember being just the narrator, which isn't true. He narrates the show for sure, but he also plays the Head of the gang that Elmer McCurdy gets involved with. And ultimately that is I think sort of what like snatched him that nomination because he shows that he's not just a dropped in naturalistic presence with a good singing voice playing guitar. He also acts and can do different things and that allows you as an audience to go, oh, like he's a talented dude. And I'm sure allowed nominators to really enjoy his presence. And he's not quite enough of a lead for it to be super category fraud. It's an. If you were put into lead, it would make sense. Him being in featured also makes sense. He's sort of like on the line between it being category fraud and not. Tom Sesmo would truly have been a featured performance. But also with Tom Sesma, yes, his number is the one that makes the largest impression, but I forgot just how little he's showcased in the show as the coroner until that number. He has a couple of moments, but he's not as much of a presence as I remembered it. I think part of it is my own memory of it. But also just says when being a good performer and captivating on stage, it stays with you. So when the show ended, I was like, oh, I guess that's why he. He does have like the best number. And it's towards the end, but it's really that and it's hard to kind of give a nomination off of that. I have found that featured actress in a musical tends to be nominated towards, you know, a character that gets like a big song and that featured actor usually gets more vibes. And I would argue that this year there's only. There's one character, there's one actor in featured actor musical that has the song, which is Jack Malone for Mincemeat. But after outside of that song, it's a lot of vibes and everyone else in that category is vibes. And I would argue that pretty much everyone in featured actress in a musical is vibes. Vibes. Gracie Lawrence in Just In Time has the who's Sorry now and that's like probably her big song. But so it's just one nominee in each category that has that everyone else is sort of going off of vibes. Julia Knightle as well in Dead Outlaw playing a whole multitude of roles but never having like a show stopping moment. Her two biggest things are she plays Elmer McCurdy's love interest in the first half and she has about 10 to 15 minutes of stage time in that and she's very charming and does and has a Lot of. Of humorous moments, which is good. Sort of shows a diversity there. And she has a ballad when he leaves that is very sweet. But then she has a number where when Elmer is a corpse, he is sold to a movie producer who's going to use him for promotion for his horror movies. And when he's not being used for promotion, he just lives in the family's living room. And the producer's daughter, played by Julian Knightle, walks in one day to find him, freaks out, and then starts using him almost like as an imaginary friend. Diary. And we watch this girl's progression from probably like 9 years old to 14 to 19 over the course of three separate verses of one song. And it's funny, it's cute, it's endearing. And you watch Julia basically age 10 years within three verses and it's very impressive. And afterwards my friend Brock said to me, that's probably the number that clinched her Tony nomination. And it's true, it's not a Ladies who Lunch kind of showstopper, but it is, especially if you go into the show not knowing anything about it. You go, oh, that was good. And here's the thing. I actually forgot about that number after the fact. When the number happened on Broadway, I went, oh, right, right, yes, I remember this now, but I totally forgot it for a year. So that's like. In my mind, Julia's only real role was the love interest. So isn't it crazy how memory works? And I have a pretty good memory, but that's something that I totally forgot. The show has slow moments to it. That's just objectively true for a hundred minute musical. Maybe it's not quite as tight as some would like, maybe not as tight as I would like. But I do think that these slower moments give you a payoff for the faster, more chaotic moments. And it is a smart musical. It's. And it's. I think it's also like genuinely a musical. There is a lot of sort of concept songs going on in there where it's like cabaret singing and commenting on the action outside of the action. There is a lot of that. But then there's also a lot of songs happening within the story. It definitely is this hybrid of different genres in 100 minute piece. And when it ends, it weirdly ends. Like not with this giant musical theater high like you would in a Real Woman have Curves or I don't know, it's like another one from lately these days. Smash. Boop. You know, Death Becomes her doesn't end with a musical number. It Ends with a scene that then goes off on a laugh line and then one final sung line by Michelle Williams. Not like a big finale. And maybe happy ending doesn't end with the finale, it ends with a scene. And Dead Outlaw ends rather quietly and then goes with a raucous finale or raucous bows, I should say. And it is really, I think. I think I find that to be pretty bold, especially when there's so much raucousness happening within the production itself. So I guess what I can say is that this didn't bowl me over on a second viewing like it did the first time. But I also think part of that is because I had my expectations and I had my distorted memory of it and my building it up to something that it maybe wasn't the first time. But there is so much to enjoy here. There is a lot of humor here and Yazbek is a good writer, so there are songs to enjoy. And it's a great cast. And I think that this is some of Kromer's more inventive work. This is definitely him kind of leaning a bit more into his Michael Arden vibes of Unit set being done in multiple ways and coming up with stage pictures and multiple couch playing multiple characters and things like that, and playing around with space and lighting and tone and vibes. And so that's fun to watch, watch sort of this whole different thing. But it is also kind of. There's a dryness to it as well that I think will not be for everyone. I can't rightfully say that this is the front runner. I think that it's going to be too polarizing for people. I think that Andrew Durand is such a special singing actor. He's got a great voice and is a really passionate actor, the likes of which we rarely see in his generation of performers in musical theater. Again, there's usually a cleanness and a Disney Channel esque acting in musical theater performances these days. And so when you see someone like Andrew Durant, when you compare the acting and real women have curves to that of Dead Outlaw, and again, they are very, very different kinds of shows. But when we talk about like, oh, no, that's an honest performance, then you watch, you know, Durand in this and you're like, oh, that's. That's pretty fucking honest, right? When you watch Helen J. Shen and maybe Happy Ending, you go, that's a very. That's a sweet and earnest but also honest performance. And you can't, you can't fake it. It's there or it's not. And listen, sometimes honesty on stage isn't always the right vibe. As I was saying, with Wonderful Town, you need that sweetness and you need that performativeness in order to sell it. Because every show has a different vibe. Or not every show. Very many shows have very different vibes. You don't do Zorba the way you would do real. Real women have curves, but you wouldn't do like Dead Outlaw, which you wouldn't do like Wonderful Town. So these are all just things to think about, Right? Context is important. And you take everything brand spanking new each time. I do recommend Dead Outlaw, it's on this. It's on the higher end of my list, but it's not in my top five. Probably not in my top ten either. I don't know. We were making the final decisions on our official ranking of the whole 2024, 2025 season, which will be the next episode next Thursday while I am in London. So yay that if you don't follow me on Instagram yet, you should follow me now because you'll see all of my London adventures on Instagram during that whole week that I am there. And I also say while we're there, people were asking on the Discord channel if I had announced what shows I'm seeing. I don't know if I ever did. It wasn't ever like a big reveal. But we actually now are seeing five shows when we're in London. We are seeing comedy about spies because the director of my play, Yours Truly, is making his West End debut as a director for that Matty DeCarlo. Hey, Matty. So comedy about Spies, we're seeing all Oliver, we're seeing the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, we're seeing My neighbor Totoro, and we are seeing Dear England. So five shows, only two musicals. I think Totoro is a play with music. I don't think it's an actual musical, but we'll find out when we're there. Yeah. So that's it, guys. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that any of this made any kind of sense. I feel like I kind of rambled. But, hey, what are you gonna do? This is the last review episode, so part of me is also just spent. So make sure you catch us next Thursday on for the official rankings of the 2024, 2025 Broadway season. After that will be my London trip episode and then a couple more Tony episodes with the final Tony reaction episode. And that'll sort of just catch us all up through June again. If you haven't joined the Discord. Make sure to do so. The link will be in the description box. Make sure to give us a nice 5 star rating or review. You guys have been killing it with those lately. I love them, I love them, I love them. And the more we get, the more likely it is that the Broadway League will accept me on their official press list. So I can see all the shows next season. No problem whatsoever. I don't have to break the bank. And we can continue doing these review episodes in addition to eventually our deep dives again. And I will, I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise I will do an episode revealing what shows I am recording for the next series of deep dives for this episode. Her I think I'm going to close us out with Donna Murphy in wonderful town. Something that I remember a friend of the pod, John Miscavige, closed us out with once, way, way back in the day. And I would like to close out with her again because it was truly a wonderful performance. And that's it for now. We will see you guys in a week. Take it away, Donna. Bye.
- [102:14]
Billy
He takes you to a baseball game. You sit knee to knee. He says, the next guy up at bat, we'll bunt. You'll see. Don't say, oh, I should bunt.
- [102:24]
Matt Koplik
This game's too hard for little me.
- [102:32]
Billy
Just say bunt. What are you nuts? With no outs, two men on base and a left handed batter coming up, you'll walk right into a triple play just like it happened the fifth game of the World Series in 1923. That's a sure way to lose a man. A sure, sure, sure. A sure way to lose a man. A splendid way to lose a man. Just throw your knowledge in his face. You'll never try for second base.