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Broadway Breakdown
Matt Reviews: ROMEO + JULIET, THE HILLS OF CALIFORNIA & Off-Broadway
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Thank you very much. That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do. But Mr. Grant, hit it. We're Broadway, Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright lies, White light, rhythm and romance. A train is late, so while we wait, we're gonna do a little dance. Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history and legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. This is another bonus episode because we got some reviews to share today. It's late at night. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all podcast hosts. And yeah, some reviews we're gonna do and a little bit of updates on our end. So let's get, like, the updates out of the way. The housekeeping, one might say. I know that's a triggering term for some people who listen to this podcast, but I swear we will be quick about it. In fact, I'm going to set a timer for myself to make sure that I don't go on and on and on. Many of you, not many of you, a few of you don't mind the length. I mean, this is Broadway Breakdown. We go for hours here. But when I say I'm going to talk about something, it's always frustrating to then have me go on for 20 minutes about something else before I get to the actual subject. So let me start my little timer here and make sure that I don't go on for far too long. First things first, we have a new review on itunes and I want to make sure that that person gets their due. I'm not going to call you out by name because the username you wrote down is a million letters that not equaling any sort of word or name, but nonetheless, it is a five star review. So we read Cue the Light in the Piazza Overture, my favorite podcast. Matt is one of the funniest, most educated scholars of musical theater one could hope to listen to, along with his intelligence, his insight into the industry, and fantastically bitchy opinions keep the listener coming back for more. We should all be grateful that someone with Matt's influence, intellect, and charisma is willing to record four hours of material on any given subject for us almost every week. If we can't have been at the manor to see his bad boy, I'm glad we have so many hours of incredible content to substitute. Although what could. It's true. My bad Boy, was something to behold. I'm glad that the manor has become the thing. I shared this on Instagram a little while ago and podmother Ali Gordon saw that and she was like, oh my God, the banner, it's become canon. I'm like, yeah, girl, it has become canon. Other things I want to mention, make sure you guys join the Discord Channel if you haven't yet, so you can get updates on when we're recording new episodes and you can submit questions or topics you want us to cover on those episodes. Also, if you follow me on Instagram, you know that I have been going through my playbill inventory and souvenir program inventory, and I have quite few, a quite a few gems in there and we're selling a whole bunch of them partly just to raise funds for my play. More on that in just a second. And also just to kind of clean house a little bit. I love my collection, but I do have so many and I would like to downsize my storage unit and maybe shave off like a hundred bucks a month from that. So you can join the Discord Channel and see what I have and what we're selling and for how much. A couple of fun ones just off the bat I can tell you about. I have a whole bunch of opening night playbills, like with a nice little sticker on the front for the Addams Family on Broadway and Big Fish and the original cast of Thoroughly Modern Millie, Dance of the Vampires. Weirdly enough. I also they don't have stickers on them, but I was at opening night for Gigi and Annie on Broadway. I have my little after party tickets inside as proof. I also have an opening night playbill for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Hamilton, the original cast of Hamilton on Broadway, opening night playbill, and then a few other older playbills that I'm pretty sure are opening night. They have the little header inside that says opening night. But I know that in the 21st century, those started to get printed a little more often close to opening night during previews. So you could have been like the second to last preview of a show before it opened and you would have that little header inside. But I think in like the 70s and 80s, they weren't doing that. So if that's the case, I have quite a few opening night playbills from those decades as well. I also have playbills to every Sondheim original production. I have original Evita, original Cats, original Les Mis, Chess. I don't have a playbill for Carrie, but I have a souvenir program for Carrie. And at the moment, I'm not sure if I want to sell it, but I might for the right price. But, yeah, plenty of cool things like that. I am in the Again, I'm in the middle of cataloging right now, so we just finished with the seas. I'm going to list everything from A, B, and C that is up for grabs in the Discord Channel, so you can take a look at that. Speaking of yours truly, the Plays fundraiser that you guys, I'm sure, are sick of hearing me talk about, but until November 16th and we do the live stream, you're not going to not hear me talk about it. The fundraiser has had some amazing updates. Next week's episode on Streetcar Named Desire, you're gonna hear a very inaccurate number of dollars we have raised because that's what we had raised three weeks ago when we recorded the damn thing. As of right now, we have raised over $12,400 for this reading, for this live stream presentation. And that's really fucking awesome. As I said, I'm not really used to people coming through and in such a way, and a lot of people. Have you guys got the ball rolling? A month ago, and I've now asked family and friends. I've now taken to Instagram. I have another video coming out soon on Instagram, so you have that to look forward to. The team has been sharing it. Our director, Matty decarlo's been sharing it. Mill Iron Studios has been sharing it. And now that we have raised what we've raised, our goal is still 20,000. If we don't hit it, we'll make do. We honestly were ready to make this happen with like 4000 and just scrap everything together and see what we could do. But with what we've raised so far, and if we can keep it going, we can pay actors enough that we can probably attract a few sizable names. I don't want to jinx it, but we have a list of people who we know who we've worked with on all of our fronts, both me and Mattie and Mill Iron Studios and streaming musicals. And now that we have decent funds, we can maybe get a few of them to say yes, and that'd be very exciting and give you guys an even more fun presentation to see and share and be a part of. So if you haven't donated yet, please do. I'll keep the link in the episode description. Make sure to tell your friends, even if it's $10, that helps. In so many ways. We've had Plenty of really sizable donations, which we're very grateful for, but we've also had $5, $10, $25, $50. Again, every little bit helps. If 10 of you who listen to this, who haven't donated yet and have been thinking about it, if you all donated 10 bucks, that's a hundred dollars. That goes right there. And that puts us to $12.5K, which is honestly a much more fun number. It's more sexy to say 12.5 thousand than 12.4 thousand, although who's gonna look that gift horse in the face, in the mouth face? Oh, no. It's 11:30 at night. I think that's all the housekeeping I have on that. I've been able to keep it relatively short and covered quite a few topics in this amount of time, so I think we're okay. Yay. Looks good. Oh, and also, I just want to say this. I'm sure all of you are going to do this anyway, but early voting has started in the US and as I'm recording this, it's the first day of early voting in New York City. I am going to vote on Sunday, Sunday morning, because turnout has been amazing. So I want to make sure that any of you out there who are eligible to vote in this election have a voting plan and are registered. Make sure to check your registration. Depending on your state, it's entirely possible you got bumped off the registration, which is scary and frustrating and angering. But the good news is that you can re register so quickly and so easily. As long as you do it on the day of voting, you are good to go. So make sure you have a voting plan. I know I do. Now, let's get into the meat of today, shall we? Because this is what we're here for. Oh, sorry. No, I take that back. Fuck. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. A little bit of housekeeping as well. This is from the Discord. If you listened to the west side Story remake episode with myself and beloved podcast friend Margaret hall, there are a couple of inaccuracies in that episode that were pointed out in the Discord Channel. Again, another reason to join is you can call me out when we are wrong. Hal Prince has never directed Porgy and Bess, to my knowledge, to the Discord's knowledge, to the Internet's knowledge. When that is referenced in the west side Story episode, it is most likely being confused with the Jack o' Brien production of Porgy and Bess that premiered at the Houston Opera and moved to Broadway in the 70s, I believe. And Margaret had said something about the remake with Anita's assault and the character of Baby John, of him being the one laid down on top of her, saying, oh, that's very important in this one because that's the first time that Baby John's the one to get laid down on Anita. This is incorrect. I don't want to drag Margaret for that. But I did check my script of the original Arthur Lawrence script, and it is indeed Baby John listed as the one who is placed on top of Anita before the assault is to take place. And it is Baby John in the movie. I'm sure other productions have changed this, but that is how it is originally written. Also, I didn't know this, but it's relevant to one of my reviews today. There's a line that I talked about in the balcony scene for the remake of west side Story where Maria says, I forgot why I called you. And Tony says, I'll wait till you remember. That is lifted from Romeo and Juliet, which I didn't realize. It's not in the Arthur Lawrence libretto, but it is not fully original to Kushner. That is his adaptation from Shakespeare. All right, now we're done. Moving on. So we have a couple of things we are reviewing today. We are reviewing on the Broadway the Hills of California. The transfer Playbill just dropped the transfer from the West End, which, if you listened to the episode Matt's London Trip with Mom, you will hear my mother and I talk about Hills of California when we saw it at the Pinter Theatre in London. But I was eager to see it on Broadway because, A, we really liked it, but B, there was a lot of talk that they had altered the third act and that was the act that we found the weakest. So we're very excited to see that. So I went and saw it and I'll give you my thoughts on that. Just a moment. We're also talking about the latest revival of Romeo and Juliet starring Rachel Zegler of West side Story fame. It's totally, totally coincidence that that episode came out the day that Rachel's Romeo and Juliet was opening on Broadway. Just how it all worked out. I had to pick up the Playbill and then. So those are the two Broadway shows. But we're also going to do a quick talk of three off Broadway shows that we saw Little House on the Ferry and which was at the Duplex, currently playing in the cabaret space at the Duplex, the most recent Forbidden Broadway that is closing in November, which I went to see with Friend of the Pod Sutton, Lee Seymour, and other friends of ours, including Gigi St. Croix. Hi, Gigi. To see our beloved John Wiscavage. Go on. And that was a lot of fun. So I'll just do a brief mention of that and also Vladimir, which is playing at Manhattan Theatre Club's Off Broadway Stage One. I'll get the Off Broadway stuff out of the way. Not that it's not important, but we all know why you guys are here. You want to hear about Romeo and Juliet and Hills of California. So first up, I'll start with Vladimir, because that I just saw today. And I'm just gonna go very briefly about this. The big thing that most of you might know about Vladimir is that it is starring Norbert Leo Butz. In fact, when the casting announcement came out for this, there had been a lot of speculation that Norbert was going to be herbie in Audra McDonald's Gypsy. That's what I was told for a very long time. And when he was announced for this, it was like, oh, I guess he's gonna do double duty. But no, it was Danny Burstein instead. So we're all like, okay, what is this Vladimir, then? It is by Erica Scheffer, directed by Daniel Sullivan, who is a Manhattan Theatre Club staple. And the best way I can sort of describe it is that it is a bit about Russia from around 1999 to 2004, primarily after Putin's re election and the Russian civilians who work in the press and how they. How his regime affects them, as well as the war in Chechnya at the time. And obviously there's a lot of talk about censorship and about dictatorship. And the one thing they do with this is when everyone's talking to each other in Russian. There are no accents. It's only when there's an American character on stage and they have to talk to them in English, that they then speak with an accent. I can't tell you much about this play, I'll be honest, because I didn't find it terribly compelling. It felt like it was produced because it felt like an important topic, but one that's hitting very close to home. There were quite a few walkouts at this matinee that I attended. A few people saying, like, no, can't deal with this right now. Don't want to watch this, and leaving. It wasn't a fully attended show at the start. It was like half full after intermission. It's not bad. I was mostly just founding. I found it to be dry, if I'm being perfectly honest. Well acted Norbert is very good. The lead actress, whose name I'm forgetting her name is. I think it's Francesca Fellow Faridaine. She is also very good. She's got a very husky voice, which always does it for me. It's a interesting design that I don't think is utilized very well. Over the course of the evening when you watch it, when you like walk into the theater and see the design, you're like, oh, that's kind of cool. Like it's sort of patriots meets network. But I. I never found that they did much with it. But even so, all the design, all the acting, all of the quote unquote importance of this play ultimately doesn't add up much for me because at the root of it is just sort of people talking, talking about important things but with no human connection. At least not for me. I'll be interested to see how the reviews are. I'm gonna imagine relatively positive. As I said, it's heavy subject matter and important subject matter, but it feels a little bit like eat your vegetables. And there are some plays that I'm willing to eat my vegetables for. I felt that way about Leopoldstadt a little bit. Although that is an enjoyable stoppard, but not this one. For me it was a bit of a. It was a pass, which is a shame. But we. We let go and we let God. Speaking of something being, you know, trying a lot, but ultimately weak material at the center is Little House on the Ferry. This is a musical that has been kicking around for a while online. There's a streamed video of it on YouTube that you can watch, I think from about a year ago that I was surprised to discover that a friend of mine was in. And it takes place on Fire island over the course of about 24 to 48 hours in 2011 when New York passed same sex marriage. And it sort of talk covers, I guess four characters really maybe five on this weekend in Fire island while this is happening and how they all respond to it. And there's a couple at the center of it and they're staying with their older friend, but. And that friend is single, having been basically widowed due to their partner's AIDS diagnosis, which of course is not revealed for almost like an hour of what exactly the friend died of and what it is that their current friend is afflicted with. And then they also have like this sassy friend who's like kind of slutty and sleeping with the pool boy. And if you've ever been to the duplex cabaret space, it's on the second floor, the duplex, is a very small bar. On the first floor is the piano bar. The second floor, the cabaret space. You know, it's. There's a stage and then like a 12 by 20 for seating. And I went with Sutton, Sutton Seymour. And we didn't really know what to expect. These were press comps, which we're very grateful to have. And I would say Sutton and I could not get over how inventively they designed the space and reconfigured it for this production. It's not environmental, but you are sitting along the walls. So the playing space is all in front of you, like, rather than proscenium setting. The actors are doing it basically, not in the round, but, like, in the rectangle. And they do use a little bit of the. Of the actual stage, but there's seating on there as well. And they've decorated all the walls, so there's driftwood and beads and sparklers and things like that. And very intricate lighting. We were very impressed with the design elements of this production. They make a lot out of very little. And again, for such a small space, really made the most of what they had. And I want to give also major props to the management team, the stage management, for keeping that production very crisp, which with what I would assume is not a lot of rehearsal time. Audio cues and mics were all good to go. Obviously, the music is canned, so that is something that you always have to time. And there's a lot. There's a lot of music happening in it. So there's a lot of music cues. Lighting was very inventive and very colorful. And the staging. We were very impressed by a lot of the choreography. But the truth is that at the center of it, we just didn't think there was really any show there. It's about 90 minutes, 100 minutes maybe without an intermission. And it doesn't really go anywhere, this show. The characters really don't make much sense. They want it to be campy, but also have heart, which is. I feel like that's the impossible dream for so many shows of. To be so silly and then really make you feel. I think if you're gonna have us take emotion seriously on stage, you can't go too big at the top. You have to. You can be light, you know, I think that's sort of what the best romantic comedies do, like a Sleepless in Seattle or a Notting Hill, although I'm not sure many people consider that best, but I really enjoy it. Or even a better one, Bridget Jones's Diary. There's a lot of silliness that happens in Bridget Jones's Diary, but we are treated at the top of that movie with a character who we are meant to take very seriously. Not like Sophie's Choice, but she this is a real person who says and does silly things because of their own insecurities and their own arc in the film, which makes it a very moving and heartfelt picture. It's why we continue watching it, because we love watching her journey. Something like Little House on the Fairy Tale. It's very over the top at the start. And then they want us to take certain moments very seriously. The older friend whose house they're staying at and his journey in New York and his romantic history with his partner who's now passed. They want that to be a serious moment. And it just. It just doesn't land for us. And the songs are all. All kind of sound like filler. And again, the characters just make no sense and are all kind of terrible people, which is fine. You don't need your characters to be saints. Saints rarely make good drama, but they definitely have two characters that they want you to feel are like the moral center of the piece. And they really aren't morally saintly. They make some bad choices, some messy, messy choices. And it was, yeah, good cast. The main guy, I forget his name. I'm sorry, they don't have a physical playable. You have to scan a QR code. And Sutton has the QR code on. On his phone, not me, so he would have to check. But there's the main actor who we both thought was very talented, made a lot with what we thought was not much material, killer voice. Everyone sings very well. There's a female ensemble of three, or at least three female identifying performers who were great, very talented, very tight unit. We were very impressed by them. And it's always fun to see off Broadway work. Right. This was. This reminded me a lot of, like, the queer musicals you would see off Broadway in the 90s, or at least how I imagine you would see them in the 90s. Like if you've ever seen the movie Trick with Christian Campbell and Tori Spelling. Christian Campbell's character is trying to write musicals and you get the vibe that he's writing these sort of old fashioned, kind of silly, probably not very good queer musicals that only will be seen at the duplex. And this had a lot of production value to it. So I don't want to make it seem like it was 2 cents and a prayer, but in terms of the writing, it did give me a little bit of that vibe. So I apologize to anyone I might offend with that. But that is how we genuinely felt afterwards. Finally, we have Forbidden Broadway. So if you listen to the Jekyll and Hyde episode, you guys know that I love Forbidden Broadway. That is not to say that they hit it out of the park every time. There's a lot of. There are a lot of shows to make fun of, and really, only the best ones are the ones that get recorded on any of their albums. And I was first introduced to Forbidden Broadway cleans up its act. So maybe I'm biased in thinking that's the best one, but I think it is pretty incredible. The ragtime sequence is amazing. Titanic is amazing. Jekyll and Hyde, the Matthew Bourne Swan Lake Cabaret with Natasha Richardson and Alan Cumming. Chicago with Bebe Neuwirth. I just think it's so funny. But there are also plenty of great ones. If you haven't listened to the Donna Murphy King and I, which is called the King is Her. It's so funny. And to give you context, that King and I came out in 96 and the whole thing was like the Carousel we love. Oh, they found the dark side of the King and I. And, oh, there's more sexual tension this time. And Anna's much more of a somber figure. Like, Anna came out in this production all in black because she was still in mourning. She was a widow, even though, I guess her husband had passed a few years prior. But that was sort of. The whole thing was she was the somber Anna, and this was the serious, sexy King and I. So when they begin the scene, whoever is playing Anna, I think it's Donna English. No. Maybe. Maybe Donna English. She's playing. She's doing the Donna Murphy, like, very serious. No, Louis. Father would not. Would have wanted us to be afraid. Not ever. And the actor playing Louis goes, mother, I think you're frowning when you play Anna. Like Foster from Stephen Sondheim's Passion. It's just very fucking funny stuff. So this is a return for Forbidden Broadway. And our beloved John Miscavige Got to go on. He does a very fun Eddie Redmayne, msa. There was a lot of good stuff to enjoy in this. You know, I think that Forbidden Broadway is at its best when it is specific. And not every performance was specific for us. I mean, Gerard is an amazing lyricist. He's so clever, it disgusts me. So even songs that didn't make us necessarily laugh, we were appreciative of the cleverness. So, like, they have one on and Julietta basically about how high she has to sing. And it was very well written lyrics. It just wasn't particularly hilarious to us. We weren't really laughing out loud. We were more just admiring the craft of the lyric. They have a whole bit with Back to the Future that was fun with Stephen Sondheim and having to save Broadway because they messed up the past, which was. That was pretty fun. The cabaret bit was really funny, and not just because it was John, but just sort of the evolution of cabaret becoming more and more grotesque and insufferable. And they did a thing with Ben Platt at the palace with. With his robe that he wore for maybe this time. And I don't know the actor's name. Let me find it. The actor who played Ben Platt did a really strong plait and was. I mean, did a great job the whole show, but his plot was. It's Chris Collins Pisano. Just so hilarious. Really nailed it. And I think that's sort of what makes the best for written Broadway performers, is you find specificities in the person you are mimicking and then blow it up. So it's not without truth, but you're not beholden to being just super accurate. For example, Jenny Lee Stern does a very fun Bernadette Peters. It is not the most accurate. I would argue that John and even Cole Lascola do much more accurate Bernadette Peters than Jenna Lee Stern did. But there was a kernel of truth to it, which she then blew up to epic proportions. And she was very, very funny. Jenna was probably the MVP of the night. She did so many fucking fun things, I can't even recall all of them. You know, what she actually did, which was surprising. They end with a thing about sephs and they tie it to Omar. And I didn't think it was possible to mimic Shana Taub, not because she's unimpeachable, but just because I didn't know she had, like, enough quirks that it would be super recognizable. But Jenna found a way to really nail Shayna's idiosyncrasies. And that was actually what made all of us laugh, was just the idea of someone who we weren't quite sure how. You do a characterization of them, and then to see it, you're like, oh, but of course, that's totally it. So that was fun. Forbidden Broadway is also just no joke as a performer. It is a marathon. You lose probably £10 doing it. It's also hell on your vocal cords. It's because it's just non stop. It's 90 minutes of non stop. When you're not on stage, you're changing into another costume and it's just. Yeah, I mean, John afterwards was totally wiped and I think that was his second show of the day. He doesn't normally go on, he's a swing. But part of the double edged sword of that is not only are you not going on as much, but when you do go on, your body isn't really used to it, it's not in your system as much. So yes, you're technically more rested, but your body isn't. It hasn't been your body's norm. So. Yeah. But John was wonderful. Everyone did a really lovely job. It was a fun Forbidden Broadway. Maybe not my favorite. I think Forbidden Broadway. Back with a Vengeance, I think it was called. It was the year that the Evita revival happened. That one was really, really strong and I think it was because Gerard was just so pissed off that year. So it was on the meaner side. But very funny. This one was a little less mean. I thought he could have gone a little more vicious. He did a really fun bit with the outsiders and basically how like all the cast is young and hot and like being a greaser is actually in. So they're not even outsiders, they are the mold and all of them trying to reject that. Yeah, just a lot of fun stuff. And. And they didn't repeat any classics. They did all new stuff, which I thought was very admirable because usually like when in doubt, they'll do the Lion King or they'll do Annie, but they didn't do it with this. So that was. That was nice. So that is it on our Off Broadway pieces. We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, I will cover the Hills of California and Romeo and Juliet. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire. And we're back. So the hills of California, played by Jez Butterworth, who wrote the Ferryman and Jerusalem, I believe the river, the play that Hugh Jackman did at Circle in the Square and starring Laura Donnelly, directed by Sam Mendes, currently playing at the Broadhurst Theater, unfortunately to, you know, 60% capacity or half empty, which is a shame because it's a very beautiful play. The thing about the Hills of California is that on the surface it may not seem like a quote unquote important play, not in the way that Vladimir wants you to think of. You know, it's not a subject matter that necessarily, when you pitch it to someone, makes you go, oh, well, it must be talked now, it must be done now, it must be performed now. The world must see. And I've never really appreciated when plays wear their importance on their sleeve. It makes me feel pandered to, talked down to. And I do think it ultimately makes us dumber if we can only recognize the importance of a piece if it's overt. You know, I've made jokes, I've alluded to it before, but it's actually what I think people don't understand about Barbie the movie is the political elements of it are basic and overt on purpose, because that is just the vibe of that movie. And in. By being a children's movie for adults, the message has to be made clear and be basic in order for it to tie in with the whole aesthetic of Barbieland. And then some people are like, well, no, it's not real feminism. It's. It's too simple. I'm like, yeah, yes, it is. Again, on purpose, because you then have plays on Broadway where they just tell you what you're supposed to think at the end. And that doesn't make it art. It makes it not propaganda, but just not good art. And Hills of California has actually very human themes to it. This is probably the most straightforward Butterworth play, at least that I can think of in a very long time. It's because it's ultimately a family drama, if you don't recall. It is about four sisters from northern England in the 1970s, and it flashes back between them in quote, unquote, present day and in the 1950s, when they were all teenagers or preteens, because they were all raised by a single mother who ran a hotel in town. It was called the Seaview Hotel. And then it was like Seaview Spa, Sea View Hotel in Spa. And the running joke is that it's called the Sea View, but you can't actually see. You can't view the sea from the hotel. Which is just one of many reasons that we're not meant to trust the mother figure. She's also perhaps fibbed to her daughters. Not perhaps, she's definitely fibbed to her daughters about the truth of their father, who he was when he died, if he died. One of the. The youngest daughter at one point talks about how she was not born yet when their father had passed. And the second oldest sister tells her, no, you were alive. She goes, no, I wasn't. And she goes, you were alive. And she goes, well, when did dad die? And the sister goes, well, that submarine, which you are alluding to was destroyed on this day. However, Mother has also claimed that father died a year later with this thing. And the younger sister says, well, what's your point? And the second oldest sister goes, well, Jillian, what's the name of this hotel again? Is it Jillian? I don't know if it's Jillian. It's Gloria, Joan, Jill, not Jillian, Jill and Ruby. The thing about Joan is that three of these sisters are there. Joan is not. The oldest sister is not there with them. And they're all back together because their mother is dying. She's upstairs in the hotel in her room, dying. And we never see the mother in her dying stage. The set, which everyone has raved about and as well they should, is ultimately the main lobby area of the hotel, as well as the back kitchen. And above them are nothing but stairs and doors, just going on and on forever and ever and ever. And there's a lot of stage magic to take us back in time and back into the present and meld the two together. Usually it's just. It's going from the present and then flipping back to the past. And then there is a moment in the third act where the two combine, and it's very, very powerful. And it wasn't in the version in the West End. I'll get to that in a second. And the point is, the sisters were meant to be a singing group in their youth. Their mother had a thing for the Andrew Sisters and modeled them after the Andrew Sisters and thought that that was going to be their ticket out of the town. And to become rich and fam. Lead very interesting lives. And very determined to make that happen. As my mom and I are currently watching Gilmore Girls. The way that Lorelai is about Rory going to Harvard of like, it's gonna happen, it's gotta happen. This is what Rory wants. And maybe a part of Rory does want that, but it is definitely instilled in her by her mother. And so while the daughters claim they really do want to be a successful singing group. And who's to say if that's something they would have gravitated towards on their own, or if it's just been drilled into them by their mother. And not only that, they all love and respect and kind of fear their mother and want to make her happy, and this would make her happy. But ultimately, they do not succeed as a singing group. We see that we are Shown that at the very beginning, as they are older, when Jill is sorting out laundry and smoking while her mother's upstairs dying. And we realize that Jill has stayed with her mother this entire time. Ruby left and married a man and came back. And we don't know what she does now, but it's not singing. And Gloria also is married with two kids, and Gloria doesn't sing anymore. Joan is the only one who supposedly sings. But Joan's now in America, and they're waiting for Joan in hopes that she'll spread see their mother before she dies. And as we go back and forth, we learn why it is that the group did not succeed and why Joan went off to America. Long story short, their mother was able to secure a break for them. Her mother had all these tenants in the hotel, and one of them was a clown who had a lot of connections to the industry and basically was staying for free at this hotel on the wave of good faith that he was going to connect them to people in the industry. And eventually he comes through and ultimately takes advantage of the mom. They barter a sexual trade so she can get the information of Nat King Cole's agent. And the agent does show up for a presentation. The girls perform. It goes fine. And ultimately what the agent says to her is, you want your girls to be something that is outdated. The Andrew Sisters haven't been hip for 10 years, maybe even longer. And your girls are good. They're not great. The novelty of them doing this wouldn't sell. You only have one daughter that I see potential in, and it's your oldest, Joan, who is 15 at the point that this happens, and this is a fully grown man. And ultimately, spoiler alert, this whole thing is a ruse for the agent to assault Joan upstairs in one of the rooms. And Joan does make it happen. He asks Joan to come back and sing for him. With the mother present, she does. He says, no, the acoustics in here are terrible. Is there a different place we can go? And Joan says, yes, we can go upstairs to one of the rooms, knowing what he is implying, because she watched her own mother barter with one of the tenants for this agent's information. So she knew what he wanted and she was going to do it. Because Joan thinks of herself as an adult, her mother has told her, you are the leader of your sisters. They look up to you. You are smarter than them, you're more talented than them, you are cooler than them, but you have. With that comes responsibility. So in this moment, Joan thinks that she's older than she is and more mature than she is. And we don't see the assault happen. The way it's done is they go upstairs. The mom absolutely knows what's going on. She lets it happen. You can see it killing her, but she still lets it happen for the chance of one of her daughters being successful. And we hear Joan start to sing from one of the rooms upstairs. And for a moment you think, oh, thank God. That is ultimately what he wanted. He just wanted to hear her sing in a better room. All is well in the hood. And halfway through her song, she stops, and it's very clear that she has been interrupted and all is not well. And we lose a little bit more faith in humanity in that moment. And then we flash forward again to the present day, and Joan does arrive, played by the actress who plays the mother, Ms. Laura Donnelly. The third act of Hills of California in essence, is the same as it was in London. It is 15 minutes shorter. There might have been some trims in Act 1 and 2, but I don't think so. But the majority of the cuts have come from the third act, so it is tighter, it is more focused. So just cutting things alone has helped by making it shorter. As I mentioned, there's a staging bit when Joan arrives and she has her powwow with her sisters. They say, well, mom's waiting for you. You should really go upstairs. And so Joan goes to the staircase, which then starts to turn. And as she starts to walk up, the actress who plays her younger self starts to come down, clearly post assault. And Joan can't bring herself to go up. Joan, who in the present day is speaking with an American accent, is very hippie, dippy ish, cool as a cucumber, almost unaffected, it seems, and yet she can't bring herself to do it. And she eventually explains why, as I said, that moment was in London, but it wasn't staged in the way that they staged it here. And that was already very effective. Other changes that I noticed, Joan realizes that she wants to give her sisters gifts, like little tokens as a. As a peace offering for having been away for 20 years. And she doesn't actually have gifts for them. She's basically just finding stuff on her body and in her bag that she can give her sisters. And she gives one sister a ring right off of her finger. She gives another sister her cigarette lighter. And she gives Gloria. She's trying to find Gloria an instrument because she said that, well, Gloria, you used to play the harmonica. And I had this harmonica. I wanted to give it to you. And Gloria is very tense this whole time, and she is not eager to see Joan in the way that Ruby and Jill are. And she goes, well, Joan, it was actually a ukulele and fuck you. And this ties into the fact that Joan is also being a bit of a space cadet. She remembers the piano in the kitchen being in a different spot. She remembered so many things about their childhood differently. And as things start to unravel with the four sisters, because Ruby and Jill are happy to see Joan, but also Gloria is not being welcoming. And all of the issues that they have bubble to the surface. Jill informs Joan that their mother told Jill about the assault recently, which she then informed Ruby and Gloria. Gloria's like, I was there, and I remember exactly what happened. I heard you at the door. I heard what you said to him. You manipulated it. You wanted it. You were not raped. You were, you know, being advantageous. Which Joan just sort of lets her say it and says, okay, well, if that's how you remember it. And then there's a great moment after this major, major confrontation with the other three sisters where Gloria is yelling, and then Jill yells at Gloria and there's a beat. And then Joan just sits up with her cigarette and she goes, oh, my God, you're right, Gloria, you're right. It was a ukulele that you played. And it gets such a laugh because after this super tense moment and dramatic moment, it's cut. Reeling back to the moment a few minutes prior. It's very well done. And that wasn't in London. The giving of the gifts was not in London. The bit about the ukulele was not in London. There was more fighting in London. And in the Broadway version, there's really only one central fight between Gillian and Gloria, of Gloria sort of losing it, and then Gillian kind of giving it back to Gloria. There is now a whole monologue that Jones talks about herself and about their sisterhood and what happened in the past in London. It was revealed that Joan also had a baby that she brought with her to. To England and leaves it with Jill to take care of that is not on Broadway. They have cut that whole subplot, which I think is fine. Ultimately, Joan discusses how the reason she can't go upstairs is because the girl she was when she went up there died and never came back down. And who she is now is very different. And she can't go back up there and says to Gloria, you weren't actually there. What you remember is most likely not what actually happened in the same way that how I remember Things may not be entirely what happened. And she talks more about her life in California and her singing career, the stops and starts that it's had. And one of the central questions of the play is, you know, who is to blame for a dream not being realized? Is it you? Is it your circumstances? Is it someone who maybe undermined you? And then that begs to ask another question of like, well, was it ever really your dream to begin with? Why was it your dream? Was it an even achievable dream? And I think that's something with Joan's experience leaving home and traveling to America and really giving it a go and having some success, but also a lot of failures. She is sort of at peace with, you know, any dream unrealized that she had is on her. Same thing with Gloria's dream and Jill's and Ruby's and their mothers. And it's very touching, it's very potent. And you watch them heal in real time. As I said, this is not a play that's, like, about assault with a capital A. There's no scene where someone makes a passionate monologue about a woman's autonomy or what consent means. They have conversations, they have arguments about it in the context of Joan, of her age, of the power dynamic of the time in which it happened, the circumstances in which it happened. But it's not a 10 minute debate. It is among four sisters who are fighting. And it makes it a very human piece, which I think ultimately the best plays are. Death of a Salesman is a wonderful commentary on the fallacy of the American dream through the lens of one family and characters that we care about. It is not a message play in the shape of a message. It is a message play in the shape of a play. And I think the same is true of Hills of California. It is a beautiful show. I highly recommend it to anybody. And if you say, well, 2 hours and 45 minutes, that's a long time. It's half an hour shorter than stereophonic. It's the same exact length as Hamilton. Honestly, it's the same length as Wicked. I think you can sit through it. And the first act is very short. It's a tight first act and. And then act two speeds by with aplomb and then there's like a brief three minute pause before they start act three. And it's just there were two women behind me who couldn't get on board with it. They thought it was about nothing. And listen, everyone has their opinion. And the whole point of art is how we all respond to it differently. But it's like, it's not about nothing. And if you really think that, that just tells me more about you. I was on the phone with my dad afterwards because he was in town and had just seen it with my grandmother a few nights before I did after my mom and I had talked it up to him so much. And he really, really loved it, as did my grandma. And so when I called him and told him what these two biddies behind me said, we went on this long conversation, he was just like, it's not about nothing. I was like, I know. It's about so much. So if you are able to see the Hills of California while it's playing in New York, please do. It's not hard to get a ticket. It's on tdf. You could win the lottery in a second. You could win Rush in a second. It's unfortunately a play that is not setting the box office on fire, but it, it should be doing better. And Laura Donnelly is incredible. The whole cast is wonderful. The four young women who play the younger versions of the sisters are all great. They sing beautifully, their acting is really impeccable. And you know how I feel about child actors, but this is a good bunch of kids. And then, yeah, the actresses who play the older versions of the sisters, Helena Wilson as Jill, Ophelia Lovibond as Rube, and Leanne Best as Gloria, all fantastic. It's a strong cast overall. Highly recommend. Really doesn't. I mean, listen, I'm sure it could get better than this. There are better plays than the Hills of California, but the Hills of California is a very, very good play that is wonderfully acted and very well directed and beautifully designed. And there's not much of that on Broadway right now. Which leads me to Romeo und Juliet. Now, some of you might have seen my review for this on Instagram. I hope to write a review for Hills of California when I am rested and have a minute. If you don't know the plot of Romeo and Juliet, well, then you are literally an uncultured fuck. Because at this point, the plot is immaterial. The characters have become shorthand for star crossed lovers, for ill fated lovers. And there are so many versions of it. There's the Franco Zeffirelli film from the 60s, which is very beautiful. There's the Baz Luhrmann version with Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, which has its backlash and its fans. I am somewhere in the middle. Hailee Steinfeld did a version a few years ago. It's been done on stage so much. It was On Broadway with Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad. I remember Lauren Ambrose did it in the park many years ago. Apparently Cynthia Nixon did it at the public in the 80s. I mean, it's done all the time. Tom Holland just did it in the West End. This version is directed by Sam Gold, who I want to say now has directed three of my favorite pieces of the revival of Enemy of the People last season. A Doll's House Part 2 with Laurie Metcalfe and Fun Home, also at the Circle in the Square. Fun Home, which I saw many, many, many times. The most I think I've seen any Broadway show in one production. Shakespeare is a brilliant playwright, hot take, I know. And Romeo and Juliet is a wonderful play. I remember reading it in middle school and learning so much about how to analyze dramatic works through that class. I also want to say that Rachel Zegler in West side Story, I maintain is one of the best movie debuts of this century. It's not a perfect debut, but it is a brilliant debut. The camera loves her, she sings beautifully. She does so many wonderful scenes in that film. And again, being 18 filming it, it's insane. Kit Connor, so swoon worthy in life and in Heartstopper. Gaby Beans, who I liked in Skin of Our Teeth and then loved in Jonah. These are all folks who've done amazing work in the past. So I say this in context with my Instagram review, which was just pictures which most people took, you know, with a grain of salt and in good faith and good humor. And then a couple of people either commented or reached out to me directly on Instagram, finding it mean spirited. That is their interpretation of it, I think, because I did not write anything and it was just images, there was a lot more to interpret. I left far more to how people absorbed it than to write out a million slides. So I'll say this, this production of Romeo and Juliet is not a full blown disaster, which some had claimed a line that it was. I also don't think it's good. The best things about it are Kit as Romeo Kid is by far the best performance in the production. And I'll talk about that in a second. And there's a really solid design element to it now, not all of it, but I will say the lighting, which sounds so was lemon. The lighting was really neat. But I do mean it. The lighting design by Isabella Bird, who most recently did Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, which say what you will about that cabaret, and Lord knows I find it insufferable. I do think the lighting in that production is gorgeous and very stark and very specific. And there are a lot of beautiful stage pictures in this production, I think primarily due to the lighting, because the set is fine. The set mostly exists for the actors to play off of. What Sam Gold does is he really leans into the youthful energy of Romeo and Juliet. Because these characters, the majority of the characters in this play are teenagers. Lusty, impetuous, impulsive teenagers. And that is sort of what Sam Gold is leaning into for the TikTok era. Right? So a lot of flashing lights, lot of tongue pops and sort of bi Felicia eye rolling and Shore Jan eye rolling. And there are some Jack Antonoff songs mixed in. One really only makes sense in my mind, which is the one that Juliet sings at the Capulet party. They do two other songs. Rachel sings another one, and I found it sort of just shoved in there. The thing is that ultimately this production didn't work for me in two respects. One is that it felt very try hard in the sense that it was a team desperately trying to connect with a generation a little beyond them. And it didn't ring true. It rang very how do you do fellow kids, as well as that SNL sketch of high school theater drama where you are young, you are bold and brave, and you pretty much have no taste level, but you also have all the confidence in the world. I've often said that, like, I wish I could as a performer get back the confidence I had in high school with the talent and taste level I have now, because I think I'm actually better now than I was then. But my confidence level has gone through the floor. I blame college for that one and this. And there's talk in some interview that Rachel and Kit did where it was like, oh, the vibe is a bunch of teenagers break into a Broadway theater and just do Romeo and Juliet. I'm like, eh, I don't get that vibe. There's too much polish to the production of it. But there is an element of taking over the theater. Like, Sam Gold has the cast running all over that space. Not just on the stage, but up and down the aisles in the goddamn flies. Like, there's. There are catwalks above you in, like, the lighting grid. They're. They're fully doing scenes on those catwalks. They are lit so you can find them when they're doing the balcony scene, you know, Rachel comes down in a hanging bed and Kit is sort of running all over the theater before he eventually gets to her. I was five feet away from him for a solid two minutes during that Balcony scene as he was holding onto a ladder on the pillar next to us. So I was five feet away from him with a direct view of his armpit. And I said to myself, self, you will not be a cougar, Mrs. Robinson. Do not be a cougar, Mrs. Robinson. But I have to tell you, it was really difficult. I have been crushing on Kit, honestly, since season two of Heartstopper. Season one, I thought he was very sweet and adorable. And then season two, I was like, oh, he's getting quite sexy. And then season three was just a whole other ballpark. And then his online presence did a number. And then he's just gotten so jacked. And he really carries himself so maturely and just has this charisma about him that really makes him not only a good actor, but a star. And I just. I couldn't take my eyes off of him. But I am pleased to report that he is also giving a wonderful performance in this. He is not perfect, he's not brilliant. Because I ultimately think that the production itself is too scatterbrained. And so there are scenes of his that don't land as well because they don't congeal with the whole concept. What his Romeo does though, is he is. He leans into the heart on sleeve Romeo, which is ultimately who the character is. If you read this script, if you ever see a production of it, Romeo is much more of the die hard romantic who likes. He loves fast and he loves hot. Because when you first meet him, he's like pining over Rosalind and forgets about her immediately once he sees Juliet. And Juliet also is burdened hot for Romeo, but she is being a bit more logical and thinking about next steps. She's the one who is like, we're gonna get married now because we're in love. And that's what you do. And I'm not allowing up into my bedroom until you put a ring on it. And Romeo totally goes for it. But before she sets those boundaries, he's willing to just pardon my crassus, but pump and dump. And you watch Kit not try to take advantage of Juliet. His Romeo is very much a hot and horny puppy, but he is channeling it through pure earnest desire and affection. You watch him become obsessed with Rachel's Juliet and it's not creepy, it's not ridiculous, it's very sweet. And that is very welcome in a production that often rolls its eyes during the Shakespeare. Not at the Shakespeare, but during. Because being sincere has become a dirty word. Being honest and open and earnest really make People uncomfortable, especially with Gen Z and now, I guess Gen Alpha, who've been raised on screens and then these generations also had pivotal times of their lives in lockdown. So just human emotion and interaction makes them uncomfortable or a lot of them uncomfortable, I should say. So this production of Romeo and Juliet is a little bit of a shorejan meme through a HBO euphoria filter. And in the middle of all that is Kit, who is truly just playing Hart. And it works. You can't help but fall in love with his Romeo. He and Rachel have fine chemistry. Her best scene is the balcony scene. She really leans into the analytical elements of Juliet, of how she plans and how she talks herself through things. But you never really get hot passion from her. You don't get all consuming love and obsession. Which is something that bothered me about Maria in the west side Story remake was that it was so analytical. She was so determined to make Maria strong and intelligent that she never felt vulnerable and in love to me. I always felt she was in like in the movie, not in love. And I sort of feel that way with her and Kit in Romeo and Juliet. It's like she's in really big, like with Romeo, but not in love. And with Kit, you buy the love. Rachel, I'd say was probably the fourth most successful performance for me in this second was Gabby Beans as Friar Lawrence and the Prince and Mercutio. Gaby does a really good Friar Lawrence. Her Mercutio is fine. There's a lot of double casting in this and I'll talk about that as well. Her Mercutio is fine, but it's indistinguishable for me from Friar Lawrence, the actor who plays both Lord and Lady Capulet. That is Solothadoran. They also. That was my third favorite performance. They were able to distinguish between their characters a little better, but not great. Tommy Dorfman plays both Tybalt, Juliet's cousin and Juliet's nurse. I probably enjoyed Tommy more as Tybalt, although they had a better. They had a more defined take on the nurse. But I liked their performance as Tybalt better. My issue with Tommy, with Rachel, with most of this cast, except for really Kit, is that Shakespeare does not drip off their tongue as naturally. Now it could be that I'm just a basic bitch and it's that Kit is British and we associate Shakespeare with British, but I don't think it's just that. I have watched Americans do Shakespeare and do it very well. I think there's an at home court advantage of being British. But it's more that Kit is able to wrap his mouth around the poetry of the language while also communicating the meaning behind it and the emotion behind it. And I'm not precious about. You know, you have to enunciate this word or you have to do it in the iamic pentameter. The best production of Shakespeare I've seen still is the old Globe. The Globe Twelfth Night that transferred here with Mark Rylance and Samuel Barnett and Stephen Fry. And, yes, like, it was done physically in a very traditional manner. But the way that Mark Rylands played Olivia, you tell me that that's a traditional Shakespeare performance. It is not. He was mumbling, um, the entire time and made it so funny and so surprising, the way Mark Ryland said, how now, Malvolio. There's a clip of it online. You can find it. Absolutely brilliant. So it's not about being precious about the Shakespeare. It's simply just about having a balance between the two, because you have to. You have to embrace the language while also making the audience understand what it is you're talking about. You don't have to literally translate, but we have to be along with the emotional journey. And there were many performers in this who I felt weren't able to do that, who were too busy either trying to make it sound modern or were too up in the floweriness of the poetry and just couldn't bring the. The two hands together, really. Only Kit, Gabi, for me, was able to do that as Friar Lawrence, not really as Mercutio. And even then, when they were okay as Mercutio, as I said, indistinguishable from Friar. Yeah, it's. I would say that Sola, probably more than Gabi, was the second most successful at the. At the language. But something about Gabby just notched that performance up a little bit over Sola for me. Rachel, for me, had had issues with. With the language, of just making it sound organic. And I would. I would probably say Tommy Dorfman had the biggest issues for me of sounding organic. I just. I did not buy Tommy's performance as the nurse at all. It was very Valley Girl over it vibes, which, again, is a take. And if it worked, I would have been over the moon about it, but it just didn't land for me. And when you have a cast where no one's really coming together, doing a very famous play where the language isn't scanning in a production that has a take but feels so forced, no matter, it's the opposite problem of Vladimir or Little House on the Ferry. It is a brilliant piece of material at the center that isn't able to come alive due to all of the other elements. There are moments in those other elements that work, but never together and never consistently. It's always pockets. You know, as I said, for every beautiful stage picture, it then becomes tiresome or melds into a much more convoluted or confused stage picture. There's a big reveal with a flower bed that is very cool when you see it. And then it stays there for so long and just stops. All magic of it is gone and you start to notice all the details of it that make it chintzy and underwhelming. It's this, as I said, this is not a God awful production, but it is not good in my opinion. But listen, it is also selling like a motherfucker and it's bringing kids into the theater to see Shakespeare. And I know that there were so many critics who were rolling their eyes at the Baz Luhrmann, romeo and Juliet, Romeo plus Juliet in the 90s with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio. And I'm sure that version still has its detractors, but that group is a lot smaller now. It has proven to be a mainstay for a lot of Gen Xers and millennials and sort of kicked the door open for bold interpretations of Shakespeare for the mainstream. I'm sure there are people who saw the Zeffirelli version and we're like, oh God, this piece of mainstream trash. There's nothing wrong with trying to bring Shakespeare to the young. Shakespeare was meant to be performed for the masses. As I said, I'm not precious. I don't need petticoats, I don't need Elizabethan garments. It's these things are not negatives until they don't work. I think it's something that Lindsay Ellis had once said in a podcast of like, when you're talking about all the things that you found, that you're talking about all the things that you found bad in a piece, what you're ultimately saying is the piece didn't work for you and you're trying to figure out why and you're pointing out all these things, but when the piece works for you, all of those things aren't issues, they are helping the matter. So you can go with a friend to see this and you can hate it and they can love it or vice versa. And every reason why one of you loves it is the reason why one of you hates it. That's kind of how it works and why we talk about it. It's why it's okay to say the negative stuff. You don't want to be crass and you don't want to tear somebody down. But saying simply you didn't like a piece of and why is not tearing somebody down. Tearing somebody down is tearing down their character, their existence, maybe making slanderous statements about them. That is tearing somebody down. And Lord knows I've had many of those done to me publicly. We know we love to quote the Daddy Issues Review. His averageness works. People coming for me in reviews on this podcast of how I talk, how long I talk, how off topic I can get, my attitude about shows I don't like, someone saying that I'm condescending. I'm like, how do you talk about a show you don't like and not sound a little bit condescending? You know, even if you try to be kind, that can sound condescending, like a therapist or something. But this is where we're at. This is the season so far. I put together my rankings of the Broadway season so far, and I must say, at the moment, Romeo and Juliet is pretty low on the. On the list for me. It's. Yeah. So right now I have it. Number one, hills of California. Number two, O Mary. Three. Yellowface. Four. Four job, five. Once upon a mattress. Six. Our town. Seven. The roommate. Eight. Home, and then nine, Romeo and Juliet. Now, listen, I have not seen McNeil yet. I probably won't. And I will sleep just fine having not seen McNeil. But if I did see McNeil, I guarantee you that would be below Romeo and Juliet. I've been hearing things about a couple of shows that are in previews right now that if they are correct, those probably will also go below Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is in last place right now simply because I've only seen nine shows. Once I get to 20, I'm sure it will not be at the absolute bottom of the barrel. There are things about it. To say that there are no things in it that make it at all worthwhile is a lie. But if I were to tell you that it's a bold interpretation that totally lands, I would also be lying. It had some good reviews. Friend of the pod, Juan Ramirez, who you will be hearing this week in Streetcar Named Desire, gave it a very lovely review. I disagree with him on that. But he also gave Hills of California a lovely review and I totally agree with him on that. So what are you gonna do, guys? It's theater. And on that note, I think it's time that we Call it a day and give you guys a few days to rest before the Streetcar episode. Make sure to join the Discord if you haven't. If you want to check out Playbills Dubai if you want to send in questions and topics for the next episode. And you can also find out what episodes are being recorded. If you haven't donated to the fundraiser yet, now is a great time. Somebody mentioned the idea of maybe doing a Broadway Breakdown happy hour as a way to help raise funds for the play, and I thought that would be a pretty fun idea. I wouldn't know exactly how to do that. So, Linda, maybe reach back out to me and tell me what you're thinking. Or if any of you on the Discord hear this and you're like, ooh, what? What's that about? Let me know. Maybe we can talk about on the Discord. Also, Brian, listener of the pod, Brian, who's made some amazing merch in the past, not for me, but in general, has offered to make Broadway Breakdown shirts if I sort of organize the design of it on this website he told me about. And he wants to include the quotes from the west side Story episode. This is not the Twilight Zone. You're just an asshole. Which is, I think, referring to Arthur Lawrence's mentality about the world, thinking that he's like, the only one who sees things for what they really are. And it's like the Twilight Zone. I'm like, nope, you're not in the Twilight Zone, Arthur. You're just an asshole. Also wants me to use one from the quote of the Miss Saigon episode where I say, the only person who can kill Kim is Kim. That's the. Another thing that the Discord Channel has is when people listen to episodes, they will go, and we have a button, a channel for merch. And people can write in quotes that they like that you can possibly put on a T shirt. So as we're ramping that shit up, maybe that's something we'll start doing. But stay tuned. Yeah. So, yeah, Discord Channel fundraiser. That's it for now. If you like the podcast, nice. Five star rating wouldn't hurt. Or another review. Broadway Podcast Network reads all of your guys's reviews. They get notifications all the time. And they told me that they're like, we don't know what it is you're doing, but your listeners write you reviews far more than any other podcast we have. I'm like, well, first of all, the people who I don't like to call you guys my listeners, I don't own you. The people who choose to listen to this podcast fucking rock. And they're good writers. They take after me. And so thank you for doing it. And please keep doing it. And that's it for now. I want to close this out with Rachel because much as I found her disappointing in Romeo and Juliet, girlfriend is a very good actress in general and an amazing singer. She sounds just as good live as you would hope. She's also so tiny, it was shocking. She's the smallest thing I've ever seen. She is 17 pounds soaking wet. What a time to be alive. Yeah. Anyway, we'll see you guys for the Streetcar Named Desire episode then. Take it away, Rachel. Bye. Tonight tonight it all began Tonight I saw you and the world went away Tonight tonight There's only you Tonight what you are what you do what you say.