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Free standard shipping not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Exclusions and more terms apply. Details@lowe's.com Terms subject to change. Thank you very much. That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do, but Mr. Grab. Ah. Hit it Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in our show Bright lights, White light romance. The 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 und legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the podcast hosts. And we've got another review episode today. Yes, your beloved aunt saw Smash. A comedy about a musical is what I believe how they listed in all their advertisements. The the playbill says the bombshell is about to drop that I guess their their tagline. So I'm gonna sort of go. I'm basically going to have to do a spoilery review of it in order to then discuss the show. So full disclosure, if you don't want spoilers, you might want to skip this episode. If you don't care about spoilers, by all means continue listening. But it kind of ties into a similar thing we were talking about in the Boop episode as we go into this review of Smash. So if you hear me repeating myself, I apologize. But you know, sometimes we find certain trends happening on Broadway each season and they kind of still have to be discussed, especially when there's overlap in creatives between Smash and with Boob. But before we get to the official review for Smash, we have a new review for the podcast. As we had said earlier, we're trying to get to over 300 ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts. And then of course, any other new ratings you can do on Spotify or wherever are always helpful as we eventually submit Broadway Breakdown to the Broadway League so we can be on official press lists. So we have a new one and so I want to give them their flowers now before we get into the actual review. The Light in The Piazza Overture 5 stars Tony predictions I love this show. My only critique would be when they do Tony predictions, they do it in a more structured order like other awards podcasts do. Start with lower categories and end with the big awards. Much easier to follow along that way. Otherwise, it's really great. You know what, Van? You have a point. You're totally right. I Whenever we do Tony Predictions episodes, it's always kind of a little unstructured and a little messy. And this might be also because we just did one a week ago with Half Hour Jeff and Richie, and we specifically did not do all the tech categories because we didn't have a lot of time. So we just did all the big ones and we kind of went all over the place. I get that. And I think for the last Tony Predictions episode we do before nominations come out, because I think we're only going to do one more before nominations and then we'll do predictions of winners throughout May up to the actual ceremony. And when we do those, we will make those a little more structured. So thank you, Van. That was very wonderful constructive criticism. And guys, that's what we call a compliment sandwich. You start with something good, you then talk about where the thing needs work and then go back to something good. That is how many people are able to absorb constructive criticism. So thank you. I appreciate that. Moving on to Smash. Now, Smash is, technically speaking, inspired by the TV series from NBC that many of us know, or at least know of. It really kind of launched Megan Hilty's career into becoming a name, a recognizable name. It had many different Broadway actors in it, it had many Broadway creatives working on it, and was supposed to be a TV show about the makings of a Broadway musical. And then by the time the musical was complete on the TV show, that musical was then possibly going to premiere on Broadway. This was executive produced by Steven Spielberg. This was like a really big thing. He wanted to make happen because Spielberg loves musicals, even though he doesn't do many of them. And the show had a very promising pilot ending with the now iconic Let Me Be youe Star, sung by Megan hilty and Katharine McPhee. And the whole sort of struggle of the first season was these creatives, played by Christian Borle and Debra Messing, were writing a musical about Marilyn Monroe. And as they were doing a workshop and then out of town tryouts and then eventually goes to Broadway in season two, the question was always like, who's gonna be Marilyn? Is it Megan Hilty? Is it Katherine McPhee? Is it Uma Thurman? And so that was always sort of the quote unquote tension of the show. But then the show would always add other outside drama that didn't really matter. No one really cared about. And the show just got campier and campier because it took itself so seriously, but didn't really know how to create an actual dramatic television series. And on top of that, all the stuff that they were doing about the making of the Marilyn Monroe musical was super far fetched and convoluted and messy. And so theater people didn't really like it because it wasn't true in any way to life. And regular TV people didn't necessarily like it because the outside theater drama was all preposterous. And so the showrunner got kicked out, Theresa Rebeck, and they brought in a new showrunner for season two and things seemed to maybe be going a little bit better. But then it went off the rails again because they added another musical to the mix, Hit List, that basically became rent 2.0 with Andy Mientz. Spoiler alert. Getting hit by a car and dying and sort of becoming Jonathan Larson and Jeremy Jordan being his Marlon Brando y composer best friend. And the two shows ended up competing at the Tony Awards. It was all very, very, very crazy. And the thing that people would always say was they really should bring the musical about Marilyn Monroe bombshell to Broadway because so many of the songs made their way into the musical theater canon, if not necessarily the pop culture canon. Songs like Let Me Be youe Star, don't forget me, 20th Century Fox, Mambo n Pastime, things like that, they just keep moving the line. People really, really loved those songs. And people always felt, oh, this would really make a phenomenal musical. And there was always talk about it. There were. People were always sort of working behind the scenes on it. And then finally there got to be word that they were bringing Smash to Broadway or they were aiming to bring Smash to Broadway. There was a workshop about a year ago that was helmed by Susan Stroman and starting Robin Herder. And they did sort of an open invite workshop with audiences and did, I guess they did sort of audience report scores to sort of see what people were responding to, which I applaud them for doing, by the way. And reports from the workshop were kind of all over the place. Some people thought it was really fantastic. Some people thought it was a giant mess. There were plot points that definitely seemed a little odd. But the most important thing that we learned from the workshop was that this was not the TV show. This wasn't even Bombshell. This was a whole new story about creatives making a Marilyn Monroe musical. So the premise of the TV show Smash is the same premise as the Broadway musical with character names, some character names still being in there, but basically every storyline from the TV show is out. Just the general concept of those storylines are still in, but they still do include most of the songs from the TV show, specifically from the Bombshell stuff. And word of mouth from previews was not great. But I go in with every show I see with an open mind a little bit at arm's length and eager to see what we got. The basic plot of the Broadway musical of Smash is Brooks Ashmanskas is the director choreographer of a new musical about Marilyn Monroe. Bombshell. Nigel is his name. I believe that's also the name of the director in the TV show. The show is being written by married songwriting couple Tracy and Jerry, played by Krista Rodriguez and John Bellman. It is starring Robyn Herter as Ivy Lynn. Ivy Lynn in this World is one of the most famous Broadway musical theater talents alive right now and actually might even be the most famous because they mentioned how she has like 3 million Instagram followers or Twitter followers or whatever. Whichever platform she has, she has 3 million followers. And I can't recall if they say she has four Tony Awards or four Tony nominations or maybe she's just been in many, many Broadway shows, but she's supposedly a really huge Broadway star. The role of Karen, played by Carolyn Bowman. She is in the ensemble of Smash and Ivy's understudy and has supposedly understudied Ivy a number of times in previous Broadway shows and they are very good friends. Karen's husband Charlie, played by Casey Garvin, is also in show. He'll be he plays Joe DiMaggio and or Joe DiMaggio in this production. And then Chloe, played by Bella Coppola, is Brooks Ashmanskis associate. She's A former Broadway ensemble woman who moved into the creative side because she was told she'll never be able to play leads because she's a thicker woman. She's more full figured than what most Broadway leads would be considered. There is also Anita, who is the producer of the show, played by Jacqueline B. Arnold. Scott is the. Is it Scott? Yeah, it's Scott. Scott is the intern on the musical of Bombshell, and he's there because his father put in a million dollars into the show in exchange for Scott getting a job on the show. So he's just sort of there helping run the social media. And then on top of all this is Susan Proctor, played by Kristine Nielsen. Now, who is Susan Proctor? Well, I'm so glad you asked. So when we open the musical of Smash, things are going relatively well. They're supposedly figuring out the opening number. They're figuring out exactly how they're going to use Let Me Be youe Star. The show opens with a big, you know, spectacularly opening number version of Let Me Be youe Star with Marilyn Monroe and the entire ensemble in full costume and sets. And then when the number ends, we are in the rehearsal studio and we realize that we've been rehearsing this number. And what we saw was the idea of what the number could be on a Broadway stage. And as they are working on this, Jerry and Tracy, right, those are the writers. They are sort of at odds with Nigel, the director, about how to write this musical, which I guess is still sort of in flux while they're in rehearsal, which is. We'll put a pin in that. Nigel has said that they intend to make this a big musical comedy. This is a musical entertainment. We're not here to show. We don't want the show ending with Marilyn Monroe dying in a bedsheet twirling from the sky. And Tracy goes and writes a song about basically writes secondhand baby grand or Sorry, sorry, let me grab my playbill. She writes secondhand white baby grand, which Ivy loves because she thinks that it actually shows more depth and nuance to the show. Jerry gets mad because his wife wrote a song without his knowledge, and he thinks that she's, you know, undermining him. So then he writes a song, which ends up being don't say yes until I finish talking, which doesn't matter. They stage the number behind everyone's back. They perform it once for the team, and then they never talk about it ever again. But while this is all happening, Tracy's been reading this book about Marilyn Monroe by a woman named Susan Proctor, who was one of Marilyn's acting coaches back in the day. Ivy gets a hold of the book, really likes it, and ends up contacting Susan Proctor from the Method acting school and decides to go super method and falls under Susan Proctor's spell and basically becomes a running nightmare on the show. And she makes a bunch of demands on the cast and crew that's driving everyone insane. At the same time, Ivy is also becoming erratic. She is not becoming the. The star that they all once knew, and she's just tormenting everyone. Eventually, Ivy kind of snaps to right before the show actually opens. It takes until opening night for her to snap to and fire Susan and become the Ivy that we knew from the first 10 minutes of the show. And by the time the show opens, spoiler alert. It is not received well because while they started it off as musical comedy with the nudging of Susan Proctor, who also is feeding Ivy pills, Ivy makes demands of adding more depth and drama and stakes and meat to the bone of the show, which Nigel keeps rolling his eyes about because, oh, God, now we're trying to become a comedy with depth. And he's like, that's sort of super stupid. And they're also all at the whim of social media because Ivy Lynn has a giant following. And then at the invited dress rehearsal, Ivy's not there and Karen, played by Carolyn Bowman, can't go on because she's been accidentally poisoned by her husb who was hoping to poison Ivy with a cupcake because Karen makes cupcakes. And so Chloe, Bella Coppola, the associate, she goes on as Marilyn for that one performance only ends up killing it. Social media is a flame about it. And then it becomes, well, who's going to play Marilyn? And the decision is still, it's going to be Ivy. She has we. They tried. They plan to fire her, but she has a contract. They can't. They acquiesce to her. Social media gets mad at them for all of two seconds about not going with Chloe, but ultimately, no one super cares and goes with and they still go with Ivy. The show opens to bad reviews, people, but the bad reviews are because young tiktokers are mad that they killed off Marilyn Monroe. So the joke is that young people don't know who Marilyn Monroe is, and they're mad that they made us care about her on stage only to kill her off. And that's that. And then again, spoiler alert. Ivy apologizes to everybody. Everything goes from being awful to just. To just fine over the course of three or Four hours that opening night. And they all gather and they realize, hey, let's write our next show about what we know. Let's write a musical about people putting on a musical about Marilyn Monroe and all the trials and tribulations that came of it. And that is how the show ends. How to describe my feelings on Smash? So I had been. People had made it a point to reach out to me. People make it a point to reach out to me all the time about their thoughts on shows, which I love. I do love that. But sometimes it's not people wanting to share so much as that, it's people wanting to influence me. They almost want to debate me, or they want me to know before I see it what they thought. And I don't really care about that. My thoughts on a show do not get swayed by anybody else's thoughts. And my thoughts on a show after I've seen it don't get swayed by reviews or people say after the fact. I am very good at taking something as it is. I'm also very good afterwards of trying to figure out exactly what the creatives were going for and then deciding for myself if I felt that it was successful. With Smash, there was a lot of reaching out to me from people who had seen it. And it was. I won't beat around the bush. It was incredibly negative, with maybe like two people making a point to reach out to me and say, don't believe the bad buzz. It's actually a lot of fun and really good. So I, again, I went in open mind and I. Mostly, I. People used a lot of really big words about this on a negative side, again, words like disaster, trainwreck. I do not think those words are applicable here. For me, ultimately, I found it rather dull, which is harsh, I suppose, but it's just sort of the truth. I don't. I didn't find it terribly funny, which is a problem for a show that is angling to only be a comedy. Now, let me start with what I do like about this production of Smash. A lot of the songs of Smash. And we will talk sort of more about how there's kind of like a poisoned well in regards to putting on a musical. But a lot of the songs are very catchy, they're very well structured. Quite a few of them, I think, are objectively really wonderful songs. And I think that the music is given a five star treatment here. It is orchestrated really well, the arrangements are very good. Everyone sounds fantastic. I wish we had more of the music. The libretto makes it a point to not use a lot of the songs for their full potential. We will get. Instead of getting a full song, sometimes we'll get a verse and a chorus and then a final verse and then we close out, or we get a verse and a half and then we go into the next scene. Very rarely do we get a full blown version of any of the songs from Smash. On top of that, very rarely do the songs actually help continue on with the flow of the story. Sometimes they do. 20th Century Fox Mambo actually is a case where they use a song and stretch it out into sort of almost a montage element where we see passage of time and the disintegration of the show as this number is being rehearsed. So for me, that was a number that actually worked quite well for me. And I wish we had more of that because often what will happen is they'll say, okay, let's rehearse this number from the show now. And they will rehearse it. They'll do a shortened version of it and they'll move on. Sometimes we go into the next scene or something gets interrupted. So, for example, as we get closer to the end of Act 1 and they're about to leave the rehearsal studio and go into the theater for tech, they are doing a sits probe for Bombshell and Ivy is not there. And so they say, okay, Carolyn Bowman, sing Don't Forget Me. And so she does, and she sings about a verse, a chorus, and then goes into the bridge. So we miss a whole verse and chorus. And before she can get to the final verse, she gets comically interrupted by Robin Herder, who does show up in full Marilyn drag. And she's like, I am being undermined here. Oh, you know, everyone's out to get me. And Karen is here trying to steal my part. Now I'm the star. So we take it from the bridge. Here we go. She sings the bridge. She finishes out the song in full Marilyn drag as we transition into tech at the theater, which isn't. I think that that is a solid way to transition from sitz probe to tech. And I don't mind. I had a lot of people who were upset by that song getting interrupted. So we didn't get the full effect of the song. In theory. I don't mind how that song is done, I think because so many other numbers are also interrupted or we don't get the full breadth of the rest of the score, except for, like, again, something like Mambo, it can be frustrating. So when we only get a full scale opening number and then Everything else feels shortchanged. When you get shortchanged again on a big song like Don't Forget Me, it can really rile people who like that song. If we had more songs that had the full breadth of the song, then I don't think that that would annoy people quite as much because I like it in theory. I think that it's not bad what they're doing, it's just that it's like the 10th time that they've done it. So similar to how I talked about Defying Gravity in the movie of Wicked, how I feel like Elphaba breaking out of the window and starting to crash through the air is actually a really clever way to pivot an audience's expectations, who know the show and expect it to go right into the final chorus of Defying Gravity. But because we stopped the song like four times already, it gets a little frustrating. So that is the music of Smash. I think that on a music level, it is actually handled quite well in the sense that it sounds really good, the orchestra sounds full, it's well arranged. I do wish we had more of it. But what we do have, we have really well. It is a very strong cast. Not every performance is going to work for everybody. There's been talk about Brooks Ashmanskas as the director, Nigel. And, oh, is he just sort of Brooks Ashmanskasing? And he is, but that sort of. Brooks is an old school musical theater personality in the sense that he does certain things a lot, but he's really smart about knowing how to work it. It's very Nathan Lane of. He knows exactly how to work an audience, how to get a response out of them. And yes, sometimes that means he goes into what you would maybe cynically call a back of tricks to get them, but if the result is there, then you can't really complain. My complaint isn't that so much as. Because I've now seen Brooks in quite a few things and have honestly loved them in just about everything I've seen. If the material isn't really there, I don't have the element of surprise anymore. And the element of surprise is very important when it comes to comedy. When you can sort of expect what the punchline is going to be as well as how the performer is going to say it, it's really hard to laugh. And that is sort of where I was with Brooks, where I kind of. I can honestly say I predicted about 85% of his punchlines and how he was going to say it, which didn't make it funny or Unfunny. It just made me unable to laugh at a lot of it. But what he's doing isn't bad. It is solid, smart, no creative work on his end. I do think that Krystal Rodriguez and John Bellman tried to make the most of their roles. They are severely underwritten, I will say, but they really try to have an attitude in their scene work. They try to create a dynamic with each other. Even though the show doesn't really do much about their relationship or any of the tension that they have in Act 1. It all kind of dissipates by the time we get to the end of Act 1. And then John Bellman has his own subplot where he kind of becomes an alcoholic during the entire preview process. And all Crystal Rodriguez can do is reprimand him for that. But not even reprimanding. She's just like, seriously, you have a flask backstage. It's. You can't. Krystal Rodriguez is such an actress with attitude and conviction and grit on her side. And so it frustrates me when she's given scene work where all she can really do is be like, seriously, Seriously. And then there's no follow through. But she and John are good actors and they make the most of it. Carolyn Bowman, again, as Karen, doesn't really have a character to play. She's mostly someone who is very sweet but very insecure. The big thing about Karen that they mention once or twice is that she often beats herself up. So if she's not perfect, she gets very in her head about it. More on that in a second, because I think this is something that actually could create a better structure for her role as well as better payoff in the second half. Because the other thing about Karen is that she has no payoff. She sort of becomes this red herring of, oh, well, everyone comes in knowing it's Karen v. Ivy about who's going to be Marilyn. And then the moment that Karen actually gets the chance to go on for Marilyn at the invited dress, she gets accidentally sabotaged by her husband and can't go on. And then she has a bit of an ego bruise when Bella Coppola's Chloe goes on and crushes it. And then when the conversation becomes, well, is it going to be Chloe or Ivy who goes on as Marilyn? And she's like, well, was I ever considered an option? John Bellman says drunkenly to her face, no, you weren't. And it's meant to be a joke, but I feel like that that's something that could lead to a better second half of her arc as opposed to her story kind of just stopping there. And then she kind of snipes at Bella Coppola's Chloe in rehearsal. And that ends after two lines, after Bella Coppola's like, well, I never really wanted to be Marilyn. I want to be Brooks Ashmanskis. And Carolyn Bowman's like, cool girl, you go for it. And all that tension is dropped. And then finally, when Ivy apologizes to her in her dressing room after being awful to her for the better part of two months, Carolyn Bowman's Karen is just like, it's okay here. You know, we're friends, here's your opening night present. And they move on. Which again, we'll get to. The person who I probably have the most respect for because I think that they have the most difficult role in the show is Robin Herder. I feel like I've been very vocal on this podcast that I really like Robin Herder. I think she's a genuine triple threat, like beautiful, graceful dancer, but also can do various styles of dance. A really strong singer considering how great she is at dancing. She has no right to be as good a singer as she is. And also a very intuitive and smart actress. And she also has charisma. She knows how to own a stage. I think the first time I saw Robin Herder was in Nice Work if youf Can Get It. And I remember thinking that she was so funny and sparkling. And I've continued to feel that in everything I've seen her do, even when I don't love the material she has, I've always enjoyed her. And the same is true of her in Smash. I don't love the material she has as Ivy, but I see how she's working it. And I can't rightfully say that she's good because I don't think that the material itself supports her to be good. But she's not bad. And the fact that she's not bad, I think is a testament to her intelligence and her talent. Ivy is a frustrating role. She starts off as a very down to earth pragmatic and self aware person with talent and a hard work ethic. And the one note joke that they make is that Brooks Sashmanska says all actors are basically Brooks's. Nigel thinks that all actors are stupid and that you don't give them ideas, you just tell them what to do. And the show supports that theory by Krista Rodriguez giving her this book about Marilyn Monroe. And that's the running joke is all the time. Brooks Ashmanskas is like, this is Krista Rodriguez's fault because she gave Robin Herter a book. And of course, that's what spirals everything. And from one scene to the next, Robin Herder's Ivy goes from this super collaborative, kind and supportive leading lady, this leader of her company, to being an immediate diva in the next scene with a bunch of tics and no awareness. Only for the end of Act 1 and beginning of Act 2, she starts to have awareness because whenever she's alone with Christine Nielsen's Susan Proctor, she's like, everyone is hating me. I'm creating all these problems. I should probably apologize. And they treat it that Susan Proctor is the devil on her shoulder, giving her a pill and being like, no, no, no, you're amazing. You're a star. And they're jealous. And then it takes, I guess, until opening night without, like, a real come to Jesus moment where Ivy just sort of snaps out of it and is like, I've been awful. This isn't worth it, and I'm going to get rid of Susan. And what Robin Herder does is she tries to find the moments where Ivy is aware that she did something bad or when somebody says something to her as she's quote, unquote, in character as Marilyn, watching it affect her. And that is very smart because the script does not help her in any way. Her Ivy whiplashes back and forth all the time to whatever drama the show needs in that one scene for Ivy to be. That's how they write her. And Robin tries to connect the dots of figuring out this woman who has a lot of ego but also is being led astray and is sort of having this tumultuous inner monologue about her craft, but also what the show needs and if people are even liking her anymore and being aware that she's turning everybody off and nothing ever really comes at stake for her. She learns, I guess, but she sort of learns and goes back to who she once was. And everything is just sort of. Well, it all bombed. And it's really kind of Ivy's fault, but it's not totally Ivy's fault because Susan Proctor was really the villain and we kicked her out at the very end anyway. And here we go. 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. I was never really a runner. The way I see running is a gift, especially when you have stage four cancer. I'm Ann. I'm running the Boston Marathon presented by bank of America. I run for Dana Farber Cancer Institute to give people like me a chance to thrive in life even with cancer. Join bank of America in helping Anne's cause. Give if you can@b of a.com supportann what would you like the power to do? References to charitable organizations is not an endorsement by bank of America Corporation. Copyright 2025 hey there travelers. Kaley Cuoco here. Sorry to interrupt your music. 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Ask your doctor about eglis and visit ebgliss.lilly.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979. So I don't know exactly what the show is trying to do with that, and you could argue, well, it's just trying to be fun, fine, but you also have to still be telling a story, one that can make an iota of sense. Fun is not just glitzy costumes. It's not just good music. It's not just energetic choreography. And the choreography here is very energetic. It's mostly Josh Borghesi repurposing a lot of his stuff from the TV show, but shortened and trying to make it all proscenium and not just for camera and with fewer ensemble members. And there are some really awesome pictures that he makes. But I would also argue that none of the songs have any kind of build to them. They have style and some of them do tell story, but it's all kind of frenetic, I guess, is the way I would describe it. But so with Smash, I have this feeling with Bob Martin, between this and Boop that he is really resentful of the modern musical comedy or what people are trying to do with the musical comedy. From drowsy shrap, from drowsy chaperone to now, including things like the promotion, it feels like he's got a very old school sensibility of what comedies should be, not just what they are, but what they should be, which is joke machines. Be in light entertainment, be a good time. And he makes a lot of digs in Smash and makes a lot of them in Boop as well. He even made them in the Prom. And if we're being honest way back in drowsy chaperone of writers being up their own butt of musical theater today, wanting to pander and preach to audiences and not just entertain them. And there is truth to that. We've talked about this before, of preaching to the choir and going for easy cheers for the sake of an audience feeling like they have done any kind of work. But also on the other end of that spectrum is a show going for easy laughs, easy applause for the sake of entertainment. And there is a middle ground there, right? You don't have to be Company, you don't have to be Evita. You can be a light musical comedy that still has integrity in terms of its characters and its story. I might be just sort of in my head about this right now because I'm about two thirds of my way through the Elaine May biography. Ms. May does not exist. And this is something that Elaine May has always been really big on in all of her work, either in the stuff that she's written herself, stuff she's directed, or stuff that she has script doctored. Elaine May, if you don't know, if you don't listen to this podcast. Anyway, Elaine May is a comedic legend in both theater and in film and tv and is one of the few women to direct studio movies during the 1970s. And she's an Oscar nominee for her screenplay for Primary Colors and for Heaven Can Wait. She. She wrote the Birdcage, which is, in my opinion, still one of the best American comedies of all time. She was a groundbreaking comedic duo with Mike Nichols, who would go on to be a Tony and Oscar winning director. But she also is a major script doctor. And there are a lot of movies that she basically ghostwrote that you wouldn't know because she refused to put her name on them. But like, she fixed Tootsie and she fixed Reds and she fixed a whole bunch of other movies. And the thing about Elaine May, when it came to the script, she would write because she was a funny woman and she said, like, I can write a punchline tomorrow, but I care about truth and I care about story and I care about things making sense and about what's right for a character. And this is something that actually turned Neil Simon into a better playwright as he got older and worked with Mike Nichols on Broadway and then started working with Gene Sachs in the 80s. Because Neil Simon had these plays in the 60s like Barefoot in the park and Odd Couple and Sunshine Boys that were like joke machines and haven't really landed as well in modern day. Because what Mike Nichols did as a director was he brought a lot of truth and character to those original productions. And then people would lean into the jokes in later productions and the shows would kind of flop. But as he got into things like Plaza Suite or at least the first act of Plaza Suite and then Brian Beach Memoirs Lost in Yonkers, he really started delving into more complicated waters of characters where the jokes came out of the situations and came out of what we knew about those characters and you still laughed. But it also came from being invested in the story. And with Smash, for me, I was not really invested in the story. And also, let's be clear, what I am doing right now is what we all do, which is I saw a show, I didn't care for it, and I'm trying to figure out the reasons why. So if you liked Smash, by all means, you can turn off this review or you could still listen and be like, I see what Matt's saying, but I disagree. But this is me kind of not necessarily going, here's what's objectively, objectively wrong with this show and everyone should listen to me. But more me going, I watched this show, I had a reaction. Now I am looking at the material and what I saw that gave me this reaction. Because if something works for you, even if there are flaws, you care less about the flaws because the overall effect worked for you. And Smash just did not work for me. So I'm trying to figure out why. And I mentioned in my Boop review how there were jokes in boop, but the overall story just was kind of a mess and the characters didn't really add to anything and Betty Boop herself had no real arc. And you can say for a Betty Boop musical, who fucking cares? But by having a legitimate arc for your leading character, by having the characters be pivotal to the story, having every second count, in a medium where it is economic storytelling, it's what separates you from being a Mexican Hayride of the 1940s. And guys and Dolls, the show that, you know, Mexican hay ride, which runs for a year on Broadway, makes its money, gets decent reviews as a semi crowd pleaser. And being Guys and Dolls, which gets revived every decade, has been done all over the world and is considered, you know, a stone cold classic. And Guys and Dolls was not trying to change the world. Guys and Dolls was just trying to be musical theater entertainment. But everything about that show came from story. And so with Smash, so much doesn't come from story. A lot of the jokes come from name dropping or deep cuts or, you know, kind of a recurring joke of never liking somebody or talking about books. There's a joke about Manny Patinkin in the very little known musical the Knife. And if, you know, you know, jokes about Julie Andrews and Hugh Jackman, things like that, some of which I thought were perfectly fine, even if I didn't necessarily laugh. But the story of the musical of Smash does not was. I did not find it compelling so much, just ultimately didn't matter. It didn't matter who was going to play Marilyn in the end because the, the one character who was sort of a threat to Ivy, Bella Coppola's Chloe, never wanted it to begin with. And, and so there's just no tension there. There's nothing at stake for that. If I were to make one major change right now, it would be at the top of the show. Everyone is coming together to make this Maryland musical. And everyone involved up until now has done musical comedy. And they realize that they have the wrong approach for a Maryland musical. Because Brooks Ashmanskas in this production says, you know, we. We're not. We're going for light. We're going for entertainment. We don't want to see her dead at the end of the show. Spoiler alert. Marilyn Monroe did die, right? She died tragically young. She did not have a fantastic life. She got very famous. She was super adored. But she was a troubled woman with a troubled past and a troubled career, troubled private life. She had a lot of sorrow. And you can't make that musical comedy. You just can't. You don't have to make it revenge porn like fucking Anna De Armas's Blonde. But you can't do what Brooks F. Shromanskas character wants because that's actually really bad taste. And Smash, the musical, wants us to believe that Brooks's character was always right and that's what it should have been from the start. And in some ways, you could argue maybe he was. Because a lot of the songs that Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman wrote for Smash lend themselves to musical comedy. A lot of the songs in Smash, the TV show, don't really lend themselves to a book musical because they were written to be standalones. They were written to both be a possible song in a possible Marilyn Monroe musical that also happened to comment on the action of that week's episode of Smash. It's all very cabaret, right? And some of them, I think, work quite well. Like let's Be Bad, I think works very well. And Let Me Be youe Star works very well. There's another one that I actually kind of liked. Oh, they have the Never Give all the Heart, and then actually they kind of repurposed it in the second season, I thought worked very nicely there. But a lot of the songs are kind of more. I don't want to say simple, but they're kind of presentational. I think Mr. And Mrs. Smith is kind of very old school musical theatery. And History Is Made At Night is very old school for a story that kind of needs more depth. And that's where I think the crux of Smash could have been of all of these great songs that they had been writing and the story that they've been coming up with. And then they're realizing as they're putting the show together, as it's being put up in the rehearsal room, that there's not a lot of Depth, and they kind of have to have it. And as they're all kind of figuring it out, Ivy, played by Robin Herder, realizes that she's sort of out of her depth because she's only ever done musical comedies. But now not only is she playing this icon, Marilyn Monroe, but they're going for a much deeper version than what she originally signed up for. And she gets in her head that she needs someone to help her to go further. And that's when she reaches out to Susan Proctor. That would make sense for me. And then you could see how everything would spiral from there. You can get there even sooner by adding Susan Proctor and then seeing how things progress from there. And it could be that at first, what Susan's giving Ivy is working. It's actually making her performance more fully rounded. She's getting positive feedback about it, which leads her to go deeper into this madness and then go even further alone with Susan and locking herself off from the rest of the company. And it could be that the songs that are being written just aren't getting deeper enough, that it turns out like Nigel doesn't even like this turn that they're going down anyway, but this is the turn they're going down, and everyone is just sort of not understanding what to do. And then it all culminates in the Act 1 finale of they're at the invited dress, and Ivy, either through a standoff or through first preview nerves or something, refuses to go on stage and leaves the building and goes to her home in Connecticut. And that is when Karen is supposed to go on. And then, of course, Karen can't go on because of some other reason, and Chloe ends up going on and crushing it. And then when Act 2 happens and becomes the. Well, could it be Chloe? Could it be Ivy? Have Chloe be a little tempted by the idea of getting to be Marilyn, because the whole reason she went into the associate world was because she got eventually rejected from the performing world. And while she does ultimately want to be an associate, a little part of her likes the positive reinforcement of going on for Marilyn and having it go really, really well. Meanwhile, the entire time, as Nigel gets more and more hands off on the show because he doesn't like the direction it's going and he can't handle Ivy. Chloe's the one who's secretly been kind of stepping it up and shaping the show and working on scenes. There could be a whole number that Nigel can't work in rehearsals, and then Chloe ends up fixing it. And then in act two, when it becomes Chloe versus Ivy, who's it going to be? Karen wonders why was it never me who was asked? And she realizes she has to a stand up for herself, not be so hard on herself and let herself enjoy performing again. Because the thing we always see about Karen is that she's always scared, she's always nervous, she has the goods, but she's always like, oh, no, please, I don't. I don't want to ruffle any feathers. And it's like, well, girl, if you want to be considered for Marilyn, you gotta ruffle some feathers. So she learns to speak her truth and ruffle some feathers. And even though maybe it doesn't make her popular in the moment, it makes her memorable. And so maybe what happens is she goes from being the understudy to being the standby or even the alternate, because it turns out that the role is just too much for one woman to do eight times a week. Which would be a great inside joke, because all of us who know Smash have always said if they actually made Bombshell a musical, that score would kill any woman who tries to do it eight times a week. And then Bella Coppola's Chloe ends up going, actually, you know what? I was tempted for a second to be Marilyn. I don't want to be Marilyn. I want to be Brooks Ashmanskas. And ends up taking over for him because he doesn't. He cannot handle the show anymore, and the show does. Can succeed or not succeed, what have you. But there's got to be something that works in the end, because these people have been going back and forth of what could work, what couldn't work. And it could be that in the end, all the mess turned on something really fantastic. It could be, no, most of it didn't work, but there were two or three things that went well. Or it could be. This would be a fun twist, that it actually goes over well with audiences and with critics. But the team knows that it could be better and that they're a little disappointed in themselves and a little disappointed in the community for not recognizing that what they put up was only 70% of what it could be. And then sort of with that in mind, going like, well, listen, if we were able to get people to like what we did 70% of the way, let's, you know, be a more united front and do something more full assed the second time around. Very movie of Bring it on. When the Toros get second place, and they're like, listen, like, we got second place after only a month worth of rehearsing and coming up with a new routine. Next year is going to be even better. And then Ivy kind of realizing that she does actually have it within her to go deeper as an actress and go outside of her comfort zone. And she doesn't need a Susan Proctor. She just needs a team that believes in her. That is what I would have to say. But that doesn't seem to be the message that Bob Martin wants to write for Smash. He wants us to believe that musicals with any kind of musical comedies with importance are dumb and that having a message is dumb. Which makes me think that he may be resentful of the feminist messaging they sort of shove in in the third act of boop. And that he also thinks that millennials are dumb and Gen Z is dumb and that social media is not important. It doesn't make sense. And listen, social media doesn't make sense. And social media influencers, we've talked about this before, they don't actually make any impact on any show because they are invited to go and promote the show. And so many young theater fans don't even know their theater history. They just know what's currently playing. But there are young people who genuinely love this art form and have continued to research it and learn more about it. And there is a lot of cynicism in Bob Martin's book, but it doesn't come at the benefit of a payoff. It doesn't even feel like an insider y musical to me. Some people have said that, oh, this is a musical comedy for theater insiders. It really isn't. It's more like Broadway fan fiction. Not just because all the things that make no sense in the actual legitimate, professional world of Smash, but just because so much of it is, again, a lot of random name drops and deep cuts catering to literally every aspect of the musical theater fandom demographic. For the Golden Age lovers, for the Stephen Sondheim lovers, for the current Gen Z lovers. And it just, it all feels scattered to me. And more importantly, I felt very disengaged with it. I wanted it to be fun. I wanted it to be a good time. And it's not atrocious. I think that again, I think it's well cast. Everyone's giving it their all again. I said I think the music is given a top notch treatment. And even I was given some, you know, people reach out to me about the design of the show, which I don't even think the design is terribly bad. I think the design is fine for what it is. They, they have to float in and out of a realistic Ish rehearsal room and then sort of like a fantasy esque Broadway stage. And then when they're in the real Broadway theater, and yes, when they're doing the real Bombshell on Broadway, it's a little sparse, but it's not. It's not uninventive. It's fine. I think there are moments of creativity in the design. I think there's moments of creativity in the staging. And yes, there are some moments in the book that are, you know, funny enough, I suppose. There's also a whole bit with Brooks Ashmanskas wanting to date a chorus boy in the show, but being told by the producer in act one, you can't do that, you're his superior. And Brooks says, I know, I know, it's just that I fell in love with him, but I won't do anything. And all we know is that in the very first scene, Brooks clearly has an attraction to this young man. We don't hear anything else about it for about 50 minutes into Act 1 when the producer says, you can't date him. And Brooks says, I know. And then we don't touch on it again until Act 2, where, spoiler alert, the team decides they have to fire someone as a scapegoat so the press can think that the production of Bombshell is back on track. And they fire Brooks and he says, fine. The first thing he does is he calls the chorus boy who he has a crush on, and he kisses him without, you know, any kind of, I want to make sure that you're into me. He just grabs him and kisses him. The audience is like, woo. And then they go off stage. It's a plot line that is unnecessary. It adds nothing to anything. It doesn't even help us with Brooks's character of any kind of sides to him. It's just another thing that he does. It's another thing that this character does. It's another thing. Everything in the show is just sort of like another thing that somebody does. And it doesn't always make sense to their character. It doesn't add a different facet to their character. Notice I didn't say depth. We're not talking about digging deep necessarily, but just showing different sides to a character's personality. I was talking to someone who has guested on this podcast before, who enjoyed Smash and was talking to me about Brooks's character and about sort of when I was saying there was a bit of a been there, done that with the role and how a lot of the characters just sort of felt one note. This person countered that, well, you know, you watch Golden Girls and you know that Blanche is going to make a joke about sleeping with men, and you know that Rose is going to make a joke about, you know, St. Olaf, and it doesn't make it any less funny. And I thought about it, and they are partially true. They're partially correct about that. But as I listened to the Golden Girls Deep Dive podcast, hosted by my friend Patrick Hynes and everybody's friend Jennifer Simard, they talk about this all the time, too. How the women of Golden Girls challenged the writers to give their characters new things to do, to not just always go back to the well, of Dorothy is unattractive and sassy and that Rose is just dumb and, like, Swedish and that Blanche always likes men. Give them new things to do, put them in different situations, have them play different power dynamics in episodes. And yes, they will. Every episode, you will have, like, a moment of the norm for each of them. But also, you will see many episodes where things change, where Rose, all of a sudden, in a moment of panic, Rose is the one who commands the room, and she gets everyone in line so they can, you know, get out of the pickle that they're in. Or, you know, Blanche all of a sudden is the one who actually has some insight into relationships and monogamy and gender norms. Sometimes Dorothy is the one who actually is in a very hot and heavy relationship or has something really insightful to say about emotional stuff. And. And it's. It doesn't betray their characters because they are reacting to things how their characters would, but you learn something new about their characters, which makes the character more interesting, but then also provides more opportunity for comedy. If they just stay the same, then everything becomes repetitive. And you have to allow a character to shift not just because that's what human beings do, but just as an opportunity for comedy. You get more of it if your character starts to shift. Right. So that's just sort of where we're at right now with this. I don't know, other things about Smash, I guess to say that Tony chances. I don't see it gutting in for musical or book. I don't think the score is eligible. Right. It shouldn't be. If it is eligible, then I'm sure. Why not? That could happen. Somebody's asking me if the choreography would be eligible, considering that a lot of it is choreography that Bert Gacy had done before. And that's ultimately what made Warren Carlisle ineligible for hello, Dolly. If Berghese is eligible, then I do think they get in for Choreography. If he's not. There we go. I could see costumes. I think the costumes are well done. I could see orchestrations. I think the orchestrations are well done. Performance wise, I think Brooks and Robin are probably going to be deemed lead of the show. And if that's the case, I don't see Robin getting in just because leading actress is so crowded. And again, her part doesn't make a ton of sense. Brooks might. I don't personally buy it. If he's deemed featured. I think he has a really good shot at getting in, but that's really it. And there's nobody else in the cast who has enough to do or a really special moment that would make them pop off and go into Featured. Because Bella Coppola only really has one major moment and it's the end of Act 1 and she sings the loving shit out of Let Me Be youe Star. But again, her character just doesn't really exist or have much to do besides that. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. Listen, when this comes out, the reviews will be rolling out at the same time and it could be ranging anywhere from raves to pans. Who's to say? Many of the people in my row and around me were really loving it. There's a new thing that people. I've found that I don't mean to be ageist, but it's just because of the people who were in my row. Older gay gentlemen of a certain age have started to applaud while they laugh, doing a ahaha. And I find it really grating. It's almost as if, like, they're trying to create applause for every joke. In the same way that, you know, when people say something super empowering, somebody will clap to try to get applause going. And that happened once at Smash, and then one time somebody tried to make that happen and it failed miserably and it was kind of hilarious. But, yeah, listen, there are people around me who were genuinely loving it, and I'm not yucking their yum. But if you're asking me why I felt the way I felt, this is why I felt the way I felt. And that is all we have to say about Smash today, everybody. So please, if you do go see it, go with an open mind. Maybe you'll love it if you were on the fence about seeing it and this made you come up with a decision. There we go. Yeah, it's just that we're in a weird time right now with musical comedy. I haven't really found any in a while that I have loved some that have tried hard and have done fascinating, interesting things, but not none that have really, kind of really gelled for me. Probably not since Book of Mormon and before then, drowsy chaperone of like a genuine musical comedy. But also like Book of Mormon is a, that is a well structured show. You may not like the comedy of it. Trey Parker and Matt Stoner are not for everybody, but it is a well structured musical. And a lot of the things that Matt Stone and Trey Parker do on south park, they always talk about the integrity of story and the integrity of character. They don't. It's part of the reason why they had a two part episode against Family Guy saying, you know, that they don't dis, they don't hate, hate Family Guy. They just think it's lazy because Family Guy is all of these jokes that cut away from the story for random gags and they're like, we hate, hate, hate random gags. We want things to be real within the world of the episode we've created. And south park has had gags before, but the gags pop off from moments in this story. And I find that there's a lot of integrity in that. So if the writers of south park are two men who say story first and that show has had the cultural impact it's had, I don't think that Broadway has a moral high ground to stand on and say, we're just trying to be a good time. Like, who cares about story? We claim that Broadway is the cornerstone of commerce and art, right? And the people who work on that are supposed to be the best of the best. We claim that art can change lives. We claim that art can move. We claim that entertainment can really help people. I don't believe in sort of shooing away criticism for the sake of. For the desire for success and for the safe space of self esteem, so to say. And we're talking about someone here, by the way, who gets read for filth all the time, whether it's in reviews or on Reddit or on Instagram. I've gotten my fair share of harsh, harsh criticism. And I read it all. And some of it I think that there's truth in it. And I work on it. And some of it I read it and I go, I don't think that actually really applies to me. And I move on. So if anyone from Smash listened to this and felt that there was no truth in anything and anything I said, then fine, move on. But if there was anything you latched onto, I hope you I hope you remember that and talk to me because I'm not a hater. I'm a genuine lover of theater and I just wanted to talk about what I thought worked and didn't work and what we could make better about Smash. And that's that. If you have any questions, you can join the Discord Channel in the link in the episode description. Again you can give us a nice 5 star rating or review. We will be doing more Tony predictions later this month as well as in May as we lead up to the Tonys and some Tony Awards retrospectives with some friends of the POD in May as well. And that's it for now. I'm going to have us close out with Ms. Robin Herder. I am a fan. I think she's so talented and I look forward to seeing where she goes in her career once she's finished her journey with Smash. I think that'll be a nice ride to be a part of. So yeah, that'll be it. We'll see you guys soon enough. And take it away, Robin. Bye. You when you see someone say don't forget me don't forget me when you walk through the heavens with someone you love.