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Thank you very much. That's all.
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But we have a great dramatic finish.
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Oh, I'm sure you do. But Mr. Graham, hit it.
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Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it, so we're leaving soon. Hello all you theater lovers, both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history and legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And oh boy, just one review right after another. We got another one today, guys. It is Schmig Dune, which opened last night at the Nederlander Theatre this April 20, 2026. And it is adapted by Single Paul from the two season Apple TV TV series that he had written. This is specifically adapted off of the first season. As we know, the first season was Schmegadoon. The second season was Chemicago. There was no third season, but that would have been into the Schmoods and Schmigadoon, for those of you who do not know, follows the adventures of a couple. They are named Josh and Melissa. They are from New York City. They're two doctors from New York City. They've been together a number of years. They go on a retreat to sort of recommit to each other, really kind of rejigger their relationship. And it doesn't go to according to plan. It's this like nature hike retreat. And they get lost in the woods on their own and they come upon the magical mystical town of Schmigadoon, which, wouldn't you know it exists within a 1940s slash 1950s musical. And it takes them by surprise at first. First they think it's a bit. They think it's a tourist attraction, only to realize that no, this is for real. And that they actually cannot leave Shmikadun until they learn true love and have true love for themselves. Spoiler alert. They are the true love that the prophecy speaks of. They recommit to each other by the end of the story and they eventually leave Shmikadoun, both of them with a little bit of a song in their heart. So that's the basic premise. We had spoken about this a little bit in our Tony episodes. Not really as a wild card. It was pretty clear to me and the pundits that Schminga Doon was going to be a contender for nominations. Unclear if it was going to be a contender for actual awards. Early word of mouth on the show was quite strong, I would say. But word of mouth on the TV show is also very strong. And I've been very vocal that the TV show Schmigadoon did not really register with me. A lot of theater in other mediums does not really register with me. I don't personally resonate when works in TV or film that are supposed to be for the theater fan are made because I find them to be either extraordinarily obvious and kind of pandery or like surface level attention. And I would argue maybe the best one in the last like 10ish years has been tick, tick, boom. But even that I found pandery from time to time and then things like, you know, Schmigadoon. For me, it was just sort of, as I said, it was sort of surface level knowledge of theater. And I did some research after the fact, after seeing the show on Broadway to learn sort of what Saint Gopal's relationship to musical theater was. And it became pretty because it was obvious to me in the theater what he knew. But I wanted sort of confirmed before I talked about it on the podcast. And the short answer is that Cincopaul did not grow up in New York or did not come to New York very often. And so his real exposure to musical theater as it was for a lot of people were the movie musicals of years past and his love of golden age movie musicals in particular, which is a very specific beast and actually quite different to golden age of Broadway. And I will talk about that in a second, but why don't we talk about the damn show for a second? Because, as I said, I wasn't the biggest fan of the TV show. I can't speak fully on it because the truth is that I only made it past the first two episodes of both seasons, fell asleep both times. Friend of the pod, Brian Nash, tried to introduce me to it. Couldn't really get into it, but I've never really been a stinker about it. I know people really enjoy the TV show. I've never gone into their DMs and been like, fuck you, and, you know, rained on their parade so much as when people come to me and go, oh, you must love Schmigadoon and Chicago. And I'm like, actually, so that's sort of where my history with the show has always been. But I went in with an open mind because ultimately I like so many people in this company, I'm a fan of Criscatelli. And just because something didn't work in one medium doesn't mean I can't find it works in another medium. And As I said, word of mouth had been strong. So I went in and I was, I would say for the most part I was pleased with the show, but I can't say I was effusive about it. I'll start with the positives first and then talk about sort of why I can't really give this overwhelming love and also why I can't give it like necessarily a Broadway breakdown. Critics pick. First of all, yes, it is extremely well cast. Everyone in the show is very game and very appropriate for their roles. I do think some people are a little more successful than others and I'll sort of talk about that a little bit later. But for me, the number one MVP of the show, no surprise really, but just considering I hadn't heard much about her going into it, I actually was surprised at how much I did love her was Isabel Michaela. Izzy Michaela, for those of us who do not know her, but I've spoken, I feel like before that I am a very big fan of Izzy Michaela. I think she is a very smart and considerate actress who almost always understands her assignment in any show she's given. Now, her assignments have often been underwhelming. While Alyssa Green has a lot of potential as a role, I do think the role as written in both the Prom on stage and in the film is an under baked role. But Mikaela really brought a lot, especially to her chemistry and relationship with Caitlin Kinnnan, that she made the role seem more well written, more fully formed than it actually was. Her other role that I saw her in was in Water for Elephants where she was the female lead in that. And I found that role to also be rather underwritten. She had major emotional tent poles, but they didn't really connect to each other. But she was able to kind of fill in the blanks for us. So that way we could easily connect her character to all the major turning points of the story. But it was still pretty obvious to me what the material was giving her and what she brought to it. So I've always been a fan, but having not known what her role requires because I never got to the Ariana the pose section of the TV show. And again, because no one was really talking about her in the word of mouth for this show, I was very pleasantly surprised by what she brought to it. And really she was my mvp. And the reason for that is in order to do a show like Shmigadoon, you need to have one foot in both worlds. You need to understand that this is ultimately a spoof of a certain era of musical theater and play for the comedy of that. But also it is real for the characters of Schminga Doon. And these, for lack of a better term, archetypes of musical theater were played straight in the time that they were made in. And it's also why a lot of these golden age musicals have lived on. Because when you don't play it like a 1950s movie actor having to deal with the Hays Code, you'll actually find that there's a lot of depth to these roles. And Mikayla's role is sort of a parallel to Mary in Peru in the Music man, who is one of the best heroines of the golden age of musical theater, inarguably. And Michaela does play it with that earnesty. Earnesty. With that earnestness. Yeah. And because of that, when she then goes for comedy, she doesn't have to do much, just has to put a little bit of air off the ground and we get it. And it's very funny, but also genuinely moving. There are other performers, and I'll be a little more specific in a second, who go a little harder on the comedy in a way that it becomes almost cartoonish and it plateaus for me for what is essentially a two and a half hour musical. It's a lot of time to kind of be relentlessly two dimensional. But Mikaela, I think, absolutely nails the idea of being silly, but also having a touch of reality. Because also, in order for the ending to land, we actually do need the people of Schming of Dune to resonate with our leads, Melissa and. And Jake. That said, I also thought that Sarah Chase and Alex Brightman did very nice jobs. They are hard roles to do. Sorry, not Jake, Josh, Melissa and Josh. Josh is sort of the ultimate wet blanket. He's not a fan of musicals. In fact, he straight up hates them. He is the Reddit thread of the entire show always being like, ugh, they're gonna sing again. That's silly. Why would you do that? And Melissa, who is the lover of musicals, is the one who has, you know, a little more in depth knowledge about, oh, this character in this musical and this trope in this musical. And Melissa is not wrong in her knowledge of musical theater, but similar to Saint Gopal, it is pretty much exclusively tied to the movie versions of these musicals, which is fair. A lot of people, their knowledge of musicals are the movie versions. But as I said, the movie adaptations of a lot of these golden age musicals had to deal with censorship from the Hays Code. And so a lot of things that actually made them quite groundbreaking on stage, like the dealing of racism in South Pacific, like domestic violence and suicide in Carousel. Murder and. And classism and bigotry in Oklahoma are toned way down for their movie versions because there's more money on the line. They need to appeal to a broader audience. Again, their censorship. So you have these candy colored cinematography of Technicolor films with rather shallow acting. And so you assume that these are very silly musicals, but they're not. They're not silly musicals. And also, I would argue that Schmingadoon wants you to kind of have a basic knowledge of these musicals in the same way that Wicked wants you to kind of know the wizard of Oz. Schmingadoon wants you to kind of know these musicals because if you know them too well, you'll recognize when that Schmegadoud's analysis of these musicals stops right before giving enough information to actually undercut the point they're making about them. And a lot of the songs in Schmigadoon are direct copies of the musicals that they're, quote, unquote, you know, parodying. And if you know them well enough, then you already kind of know what the joke is and they become a little less funny. Which leads actually then to sort of My Dings. I'll have more positive things to say in a second. But that is my other ding about the show is that I wish that the score were better. It's not bad. It's melodic. The lyrics are pretty clever. Mostly exact rhymes, which I'm very thankful for. But I can't say it's a score that either A, makes me laugh out loud or B, I find to be very exciting and fun. A lot of the songs kind of just end. They don't really have this really thrilling conclusion. And they often feel like they end right before they start to get going. This is all also a ding I have for the Lost Boys, but we'll talk more about that in depth after I see the frozen version of that, which will be in about a week from today. Yeah, about a week from today. So that's when Lost Boys review will be the last one to come out. And that'll be, technically speaking, after it opens by a few days. But we digress. I will say the score sounds good. It's a sizable orchestra. The orchestrations are great. The vocal arrangements are good. It's not the largest ensemble, but because. Because of that, I think that the show does a good job of balancing out all the vocal parts in the orchestra to make it sound fuller than it is. The ensemble also works their fucking ass off. They are singing their face off. They're dancing their face off. And they are very, very committed to the bit, which I really appreciate the show also, I think looks. I think it looks absolutely stunning. It very much leans into the 1940s, 1950s aesthetic of design. So there are a lot of backdrops, you know, a couple hydraulics here and there, but it's mostly, you know, a backdrop and a singular piece come on stage to create the illusion of a very full stage. But these backdrops are painted with such exquisite detail and depth and nuance, and it really. The show. The show's design plays with forced perspective. So these flats seem like they are much more in depth than they really are, especially the gazebo in the town square. The person I went with and I were. We were, like, debating for a solid five minutes afterwards just how in depth that gazebo was, whether it was completely a flat or if it was like two. Two layers that were just sort of close together. So, you know, I want to give major props to the design team on this show with the set design by Scott Pask. Very good set designer. Our costume designer, Linda Cho. We know Linda Cho from Gentleman's Gu and from Great Gatsby. I think Linda Cho also did Anastasia. Anastasia. Her costumes are very good. You know, it's not an overabundance of costumes. You start to notice ensemble members wearing kind of the same outfit consistently during scenes, which is fine. I think it's more that there were certain scenes where I thought there were missed opportunities for the company to have a different outfit for the sake of the bit or for the sake of the aesthetic. And the costumes that they have are good. I would say the aesthetic for Schmingadoon itself as a town and the townspeople is halfway between Oklahoma and the Music Man. And I do think they say that they live in Iowa. That's where they claim that the town is. And also, you know, the running joke is no one really knows what. What period this. That Schmigadoon takes place in. And that's not a Golden Age musical bit. That is purely a Schmigadoon bit. But I. I just. I found it really visually stunning. Again, it's not this overindulgence of design. It's not overwhelming. It doesn't bombard you with anything. And I think that's the correct way to go about it, because comedy will be defeated by the crushing weight of spectacle. And I think that this show gets away with doing just the right amount. And I know some people have said, oh, it's cheap, it's all flat and it's, you know, not a lot of set pieces. Those people are very stupid. This is absolutely. First of all, yes, I'm sure that they had only a very limited budget, but also I think they were very smart with the budget that they had and were very meticulous and mindful of how they designed the production because it does lean into, as I said, the aesthetic of the Golden Age. Lighting wise, you know, mostly good candy colored warmth and fills out the stage pretty well and the design pretty well. I also think that Christopher Catelli once again proves that he's one of our better choreographers of this era. I'm glad that he's no longer. He's moved on from his Newsies choreography. Granted for Newsies, the whole point of Newsies is that it's just so much dancing all the time, always, whether it's important to character or story or not. But he doesn't go over the top with this. There are some tumbling tricks here and there, but there is a specific focus with it. It builds to it. It's really nice to see a choreographer who knows when to say when and knows how to build a number and have a lot of attitude with his staging and with his dancers. They are not just bodies, they are townspeople. They have relationships with each other. If you pay close attention, you'll see ensemble members pair off with the same people all the time. So, like, that's their person, which is really nice. He also has a lot of Easter eggs in there. There's a music man choreography Easter egg in there, which is, you know, it's pretty obvious, but still it's in there. I'm pretty sure I saw Turkey Lurkey Time Easter egg. I saw them do like the Jingle bells bit just for a second. And I feel like there was another piece that I saw that was pretty Easter eggy. But whatever other people in the company who I think hold off very strong. Anna Gasteyer does very well. She plays the preacher's wife who's like the ultimate killjoy. And she's meant to sort of be the villain of the piece. More on that in a second. When it comes to the book, Brad Oscar is the mayor of the town. Yvonne Hernandez is the town doctor. They all do. Well, I would say that there is the people who maybe don't. Who don't nail it as hard as I would like them to. Part of it is the role, part of it is the attitude. I spoke Very openly earlier this season when I talked about Heather's that I thought MacKenzie Kurtz absolutely understood the assignment playing Heather Chandler. She grappled with the ice cold demeanor and imperious nature of Heather Chandler while also having that cartoon bubblegum pop aura that the musical has. And I thought she was the most successful out of everyone in the company. She does not really go as meticulous for me in this. She. What's the name of her character? It is, God, Betsy. She's like a farmer's daughter. And she's meant to sort of be the town jail bait. She is representative of the secondary female roles in music musicals that are comedic but also rather horny, like an 8o Annie in Oklahoma or what's her face in Brigadoon. I feel like everyone at Brigadoon, you can just call them what's their face like? How many of us. Show of hands. How many of us actually know every character name in Brigadoon? If you do, God bless you, you're in the minority. But that is sort of what she's meant to represent. And then the joke sort of develops of that. She's much younger than we realize she is, because everyone's always much younger than we realize they are in a musical. And MacKenzie has a great sense of comedic timing. She sounds great, she looks great. She's very game. She goes a little too far in the direction of, I am the comedic relief here. I am the dumb farmer's daughter. It needs to be real for her. And then she can allow her character to be silly in the same way that we watch and Juliet or Mamma Mia. It doesn't matter how ridiculous the circumstances are. It is always real for your character, which is ultimately what's going to make it funnier for us, because at some point, we just become aware of you, the performer, commenting on the material. And there are moments where mackenzie Kurtz finds new laughs within a line. That's not necessarily because the line itself is funny, but how she's doing it, and that's fine. But then there are other moments where she's so big and so broad that we kind of have plateaued with the humor from the start of the scene, and there's nowhere to go. There are no more surprises. And that's a shame, because I do think if she scaled it back by like 15% and then still did everything she did, it would be flawless. And, I mean, she probably is still a contender for featured actress in a musical. It's a pretty wide open field, but I would be willing to push for her more if she just held back a little bit more at the moment of everyone in the ensemble, Isabel Michaela is absolutely who I would be pushing forward, more so than Mackenzie or Ana Gasteyer. Ana does a very lovely job. There's just not much to her role. She mostly comes in and out of the first act to say, you know, a wet blanket line or talk about the Lord. There's a running bit of how she's talking about the good Book, but she's never quoting it correctly. And she's always looking for the mean things to say so she can judge people. But again, it's like every 20 to 30 minutes, she doesn't spend a lot of time on stage in the first act. And then in the second act, she, I guess, like, has this ulterior motives for a plot to take over the town. But it's so long until we get to that plot point. And then when we get to it, she is. She has, you know, a big number where she gets to wail. And that's great because Anna Gastire has a voice like steel, but then it gets. She gets overtaken almost immediately, which, sure, some could argue there are lesser Golden Age musicals that have those kind of things, but if we're doing a modern take on it, especially if we're sending it up, we can afford it to be a little smarter and better than the worst of those Golden Age musicals. And I think Saint Gopal could have found a way to have Anna Gasteyr's Mildred be used more thoroughly throughout the show and have her plot have the seeds of that plot get planted earlier in Act 1 and have other events in the show help her plotline. Because at the moment, a lot of the show is sort of episodic. It's. And. And this is another problem I have with two other musicals this season. I. But I'll get to those in those reviews of. It's what Trey Parker and Matt Stone say the worst stories are when you say this happens and then this happens and then this happens. The best stories are this happens, but then this happens, therefore, this happens. They have to connect and they have to propel the next thing to happen. And for a lot of the chunk of Schmincadoon, it's always Josh and Melissa are finding new ways of trying to get out of the town. The only real thing that happens in Act 1 that propels more story to happen is them breaking up. But there's a lot before that happens that is simply episodic. And then once they break Up. They have two immediate actions that are therefore. But then once again, it kind of goes into an episodic territory which, you know, cute and fun as it is, it starts to get a little tiresome and makes the show start to feel a bit longer than it actually is. But, you know, there are worse problems than that for. For a musical. But that is something that I personally think would have pushed Schmagadoon up a level. There are, you know, plenty of good one liners, plenty of good jokes. Again, as I said, I smiled. I had a nice time. I can't say I laughed out loud a lot. I was appreciative of a lot of the humor. Other things, I could see the joke sort of coming from a mile away, and that was sort of frustrating because I wanted to be more taken by surprise by the comedy. That's ultimately what makes a joke make you laugh, is that it's unexpected. If you know it's coming, you. You can sort of nod your head and smile and appreciate the humor and the cleverness of it, but what makes you actually go aha is when it's unexpected. And those happened a bit for me, but not all the time. The other thing I'll say is, while I think Catelli is a really strong choreographer, I don't think. I still don't think he's quite there as a director, especially as a director of comedy. And this was something that I talked about in My Death becomes a review last season where a lot of the comedy in that show either came from the choreography, jokes in the costume design, or specifically what Megan and Jen were doing. There were a lot of missed opportunities I found for staging and for comedy in staging. You know, for example, let's Run Away Together. While that's a tongue twister of a song, I did not find that Gattelli fully mined it for the comedic gold that was there. Simard really did all the work there, and even then, there's only so much Simard could do. That song lands far better on the cast recording than it does in the theater. And I found that happened a lot in this show. There would just be transitions that would go on for, like, two seconds too long, or an actor would come to their reaction to a line half a second too late, or our attention wasn't always where it was supposed to be. For example, there's a big basket auction in Act 1, and it's supposed to be that Melissa gets progressively drunker during the auction. And while there is a light cue that draws our attention to Melissa, there's still, it happens like a second and a half too late and there's still too much happening next to her that not everyone in the audience realized what was going on. And the build of Melissa getting progressively drunker wasn't landing with the audience on the night that I saw it. So that is something that a director needs to be hyper aware of when they're doing comedy, especially a comedy like this, of keep it moving, keep it zippy, make sure our attention is where it needs to go, and make sure that the rhythm of the actors are such that the punchlines are actually punching. You can't do a beat then a punchline too often because then this. The whole rhythm of the show starts to get thrown off. And also, you need to make sure that if you're doing a visual joke that that is not getting blocked by anything. There's a number that Max Clayton does. It's his sort of like Billy Bigelow number, you Can't Tame Me. And there are things and that and his. What's. What is it? He has two. So it's you Can't Tame Me. And then I think it's, oh, Enjoy the Ride. Those are the two. And both songs are staged well. But there are moments of comedy in there, such as when Clayton is popping balloons with his heels or in Enjoy the Ride when Sarah Chase is popping off a gun with her hip, that it's not. It's like almost. It's a little off to the side and then and behind, like it's happening. The balloon thing is happening behind Clayton. So not everyone realizes that's what's happening at first, that he's doing it. And with the gun thing, it's sort of at a diagonal and it's not sharp enough. So not everyone's aware of what's going on. And while these seem like minuscule things to fix, they are things that can be fixed and there are things that need to be fixed. So while they got a chuckle on my evening, they would get far larger laugh reactions from an audience because the frame of reference is a lot sharper and a lot more prominent. Speaking of Max Clayton, this is his first principal role that he is originating. Good for him. We all like him. He's a very kind gentleman, as I understand, and very talented and very handsome. You know, he's playing the Billy Bigelow ish role and he is game. He dances super well and he sings a lot better than a dancer who looks like him should. Like, he can get away with having a much, far worse voice than he does. He has a very lovely singing voice. I don't find that he has natural comedic timing in the same way that Mackenzie Kurtz and Izzy Michaela do. So he's very game. But again, the night that I saw it, a lot of his punchlines weren't quite landing. What landed better were his setups for Sarah Chase's punchlines. So I think sort of what he does that I think Mackenzie Kurtz can maybe do a bit more of is that he is game and he is playing it more earnest. So when in doubt, if he can't land the punchline, he can at least set his scene partner up for a punchline, which is a very generous thing to do. But, you know, I think that he can have a touch more of Mackenzie Kurtz's own archness, and I think Kurt's gonna have a touch more of his earnestness. Brightman, you know, Josh is such a hard role to do because he is such a wet blanket, but Brightman is such a gregarious presence even when he's playing an absolute dick. In fact, I would argue that he's made his career on Broadway playing musical theater dicks. And so he's really quite appropriate casting for this. But he doesn't really get a chance to be comedic in the way that we love him to be. He's always sort of reactionary to everyone else, and you can only get away with that for so long before. Again, it's just that flavor just becomes numb to you. It starts to taste like, you know, gray mayonnaise. Sarah Chase's Melissa has a bit more to do in this respect. She's a little more game for what everyone else is doing. She sings more, but she doesn't get to be quite as silly as we know she can be. That said, while, you know, at the end of the show, Josh is going to sing, in fact, when you read in the program, the second to last song is called you'd make me want to sing, and you just know that that's going to be Josh. Even though the play ball doesn't tell you who sings what. To give Schmingadoon credit where it's due, you get to that moment, and even though you know it's coming, it is still very effective. And part of that is the magic of musical theater. And part of that is that Schmigadoon knows when to be earnest. Final thoughts on the show? Oh, they kind of touch on this a little bit of sort of the secret homosexuality that's sort of floating around in a lot of These Golden Age musicals, a lot of these shows were written by homosexuals sort of in glass closets. And they could never really write about themselves, but they invested a lot of who they were into their characters. Now, often those characters were the female roles, but Schminga Doone invests it more into the mayor and the preacher as they are repressed homosexuals who then of course come out. There's a whole other kind of talk I guess you could have about that, but I just, I, sweet as it is for me, kind of was, it was there. I didn't find a lot of comedy in there and I wasn't terribly moved by it. I just sort of was like, okay, yeah, that's fine, sure, whatever. But I think that's something that you can't really do in Schmingadoon because in order to have a joking academic conversation about Golden Age musicals, specifically actual Broadway Golden Age musicals, not the Hays Code censored versions, you have to talk about who the people were that were making them, what they got away with and what they couldn't get away with. So how they found other ways to get away with it. I mentioned this before, but like the character of Betsy represents roles in Golden Age musicals of women with sexual independence who are not punished by society for their promiscuity. And that is because they are the comedic relief. And that is ultimately how a lot of these writers were able to get away with, you know, women with sexual agency. And you can say that that's projecting. But I urge you, I urge all of you to read the Rogers and Hammerstein book, something wonderful that goes into both of the men's lives as well as the writings of their shows, the historical context in which the shows were written, and then their legacies. Because if any Broadway writers were truly given a double edged sword about Hollywood success, it was Rodgers and Hammerstein. Their movie versions of Oklahoma. And King and I, South Pacific and Sound of Music were huge box office successes. Carousel was sort of a medium success, as was Flower Drum Song. But they never had like a box office bomb in Hollywood with their shows. But in order for those shows to be made into successful movies, they had to change a lot of things. Like Billy no longer taking his own life, but falling on his knife and certain songs in South Pacific and King and I had to get cut and that. And while. And Sound of Music haven't going through a whole lot of changes. Sound of Music, while I think the movie is better than the stage show, the stage show is far more politically conscious than the movie is. It's also the only Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical that they only wrote the score for. Oscar Hammerstein did not write the book. He was far too sick with cancer at the time. Had he written the book, while there would have been some trite stuff in there, there also would have been more societal and political consciousness in the show had Hammerstein written it. And also might have been a little more. He might have fucked around a bit more with the conventions of musical theater had he written the libretto. Because Hammerstein is, bar none, the most groundbreaking of all the Broadway librettists. The things that he did with Oklahoma, Carousel, King and I, South Pacific changed the game and we still use today. This is to say with all of those movies, while they were huge successes over the time, as movies veered into more realism and avant gardeness, you know, the influx of foreign films and Fellini kind of becoming a cultural icon in Scorsese, and Spielberg taking over Forman, Lumet, Pollock and then eventually Tarantino. You look at those Rodgers and Hammerstone movie musicals and they become so saccharine. And that ruined their reputation as Broadway artists for a long time. Again, as I said, not until the 90s with carousel and then King and I and Oklahoma, with those revivals did people go, oh wait, these guys actually did fuck. And we should give them, we should put more respect on their names. And it would be nice if Schminga Doone could kind of get into all of that. But of course, in a two and a half hour musical you can't. And the point is more about Melissa and Josh's story, not about the inner workings of golden age Broadway. But that's also why I always kind of have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder about this stuff because it's all very surface level. And when people say, oh, this is for, you know, musical theater nerds, I'm like, eh, maybe sort of, kind of for some musical theater nerds. Not for all of us, but that's sort of where we're at. For me, this is, you know, it's a nice show. It's perfectly fine. There's nothing that's bad about it. They're just things that I wish were better. The score is not bad. I just wish it were better. The humor is not bad. I just wish it were better. I wish it were a little tighter. Cast is strong. There are some people who I think could still maybe dial their performances a bit more, fine tune them a bit more. But they're all. Everyone's on the right path with their roles. Anharada God bless her, doesn't have much to do, but she is. She's solid. In terms of Tony chances, I mean, it's such a weird season. And I think that most of the talk of Schminga Doom still stands. Musical, book, choreography, I think are all pretty much locked for nominations at this point. Could it win? Sure, maybe. I think at this point anything could win for book or for musical. I would have. I would put more of an edge towards Titanique's book for myself, but. And you know, that's up to the tastes of 850 different strangers. But right now, I do think musical book and choreography are locks for nominations. I would also argue scenic design and costume design. Orchestrations, perhaps, not sound design. I actually found the sound design to be quite weak. A lot of Josh and Melissa's one liners in the middle of group numbers got lost due to imbalance of sound. If we're talking performers, I think Sarah Chase has a very strong chance of getting in there just because there are five options for best actress in a musical as opposed to best actor, which is most likely going to be four. And Brightman just his role while he has. He has to play the long game in the end, it's just not as much fun as Melissa. If we're talking featured performers, I think, well, Izzy Michaela is my favorite. I think Mackenzie Kurtz and Anna Gasteyer are more likely to get the attention of nominators. They just. They have. Gasteyer has sort of the last really big barn burner song of the day of the show. And Mackenzie Kurtz is used more frequently throughout the show, whereas Izzy Michaela isn't really in Act 1 at all. She's more in Act 2. But I don't know, maybe that also helps her case because we see more of her than we see of MacKenzie in the second half and she's more integral to the story. Featured actor, possibly Brad Oscar, maybe. I don't personally see it myself, especially with Jellicoe Ball and Ragtime and possibly Titanique really kind of taking up all the other slots. But Max Clayton could as well. He doesn't have as much to do as people really assume that he does. He spends a lot of time off stage in between his big moments. So I would say we're really kind of looking at two or three Jellicoe Ball nominations, possibly a Ben Levi Ross and then probably Ali for Lost Boys. So we'll see. We'll see. I do. I think Oscar and Clayton have chances, but I don't think that they're lockster nominations. I wouldn't even say that. They're like super strong contenders. They are a possibility. That's it for this review of Schmingadoon. I have to run, guys. So I hope that this covered enough ground for you. If this isn't as long as you'd like it to be, I'm sorry. You can join the Discord and ask me direct questions on there or on substack. You can also follow me on Instagram at mccoplike usual spelling. If you have liked the podcast up until now. Again, five star rating or review on Apple podcast. Five star rating on Spotify. Helps with the algorithm, helps people find us. We're also on YouTube now so you can watch some of the videos on YouTube. The num. The numbers on YouTube are climbing. Considering we haven't really done anything with the videos, we don't have a green screen. We're not really heavily promoting it. You know, we went from the low double digits to now we're in. We're now cracking the triple digits within the first two days of videos going up. So that's fun. So thank you guys for watching and thank you for listening. And yeah, if you join the Substack or the Discord, you can talk to other members of the Broadway breakdown community. We have over 300 members on both the Substack and the Discord. The Discord channel is popping right now as more shows are opening and there's discussion about the Tony Awards and how things are going down. A lot of discussion about the drama league nominations which came out the other day. Weird nominations. But that's the Drama League for you. Let's see, who are we going to close out with today because she doesn't have much to do in this show. We're going to close out with Ms. Ann Harada. She rules. We love her so much. So, yeah, let's do that. Let's close out with miss Anne. Thank you so much for listening, guys. We'll see you for the next review. Take it away, baby. Take it away. Ms. Anne. Bye.
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Why would a fellow want a girl like her? A frail and fluffy beauty why can't a fellow ever ones prefer a solid girl like me? She's a frothy little bubble With a flimsy kind of charm and with very little trouble I could break her little arm why would a fellow want a girl like her?