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Thank you very much.
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That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish.
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Oh, I'm sure you do, but Mr. Gregson.
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Ah. Hit it, Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright light, rhythm and romance. The train is late, so while we wait.
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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 we are doing a lot late night recording session. Part of the reason why I am speaking at a, I guess, lower volume and lower register of my voice because everyone in the house is on their way to bed and I want to get this out now before the new episode this week of the Grab Bag series comes out. Because we saw some shows and we want to review some of them because we were invited to review some of them and then others we had to pay for like the commoner that we actually are. Before we get into any of that, I want to just give a quick little update to the fundraiser for my play, yours truly. Y' all have been pretty amazing about it. And in the upcoming Grab Bag episodes, you're going to hear differing amounts that we've raised because I recorded all of them in a very quick span about a week ago, week and a half ago, and there have been some updates since I recorded those. I just wanted to say we are currently at $2500 on the fundraiser. Over $2500, actually, just. Well, a little over 2,500 from 24 donations. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much from the bottom of my. Of my heart. It's been very moving and very inspiring to see just people come through. I'm not used to that in my life, not unless it's like immediate family. So to put something out into the world for many years and then be bold enough to even ask for anything and then to have people respond has been very wonderful and very heartening and very encouraging. So thank you very much. I want to give a quick shout out to everyone who's donated. I'll go down the list. I say this laughing because some of you guys did it anonymously. Totally fair. I think we can play a little fun music with that. I don't know. I'll figure that out in post. So. Q Music I want to say a quick thank you to our top donation oh, God, I'm so sorry. It's not Jose, but Jose. J, O S U E. Lopez, thank you very much for your donation. Our top donation so far. I want to thank Anna. Anto. Anto. Sweet. Sorry I'm so bad. A N, T, O, S, I, E, W, I, C, Z. I don't know how to pronounce that. If any of you guys heard that, I know how to pronounce it. More power to you. A N T, O S I, E W I, C, Z. Thank you very much, Anna. To my mom who donated to push us over 2,000. She's going to donate it again, but she thought she was doing it anonymously, but no, her name is up there. Thank you, Anonymous. And Anonymous. And Anonymous. Thank you, Peter Dombrowski. Broski. Thank you, Beth Livingston. Thank you, Ray Rackham. Thank you, Patty Murin and Ashley Carment. Thank you, Anonymous. Thank you, Sarah Bliss. Julie Wertheimer Meyer. Wertheimer Meyer. Michael Labadia. Labadia. Daniel Hopper. Jake Perlman. Tara Hutchison. Michael Rodrigo. Gustave Portman. That one I got Giandonado. Rosa. Rosa. I'm sorry if I butchered that one as well. Thank you, Jerry Sloan. Thank you, David Loach. Karen Bernstein. And finally, thank you, Anonymous. And that's all for that Housekeeping. I'll keep it quick because I got Red for filth about that. And what you guys all came for was to hear some reviews. I am reviewing Our Town, the Roommate and Sunset Boulevard. Sunset Boulevard, I will put last because gotta make you work for it. I am actually literally just back from seeing Sunset Boulevard, so it is fresh in my brain and I want to get through Our Town and the Roommate since they were the furthest away that I saw and I want to kind of get them on mic before I forget more of them by the minute. I also saw Drag the Musical at New World Stages. I won't speak much on that as they were still in developmental previews and making changes. All I'll say is that it is. When I saw it, it was two hours with no intermission, and I felt it should have been 30 minutes shorter, maybe even 35. It. There's a lot of fun stuff in there, a lot of other things I think they could do a lot of talent on stage. It needs cutting. It is longer than Barbie and has no reason to be. So with that in mind, let us start with Our Town, which was the first of the three that I saw. I saw it last week the night before they opened. This is the nth revival of Our Town by Thornton Wilder. Pulitzer Prize winning play for the 1930s, was made into an Oscar nominated film, has been done on Broadway multiple times, was done off Broadway by David Cromer and every high school in the country for years upon years. Many people, when they hear Our Town roll their eyes, because most likely your high school did it or your community center or some regional theater, it's a very easy play, a desirable play to produce because famously, it has no set and no props, minimal costumes. That's the whole point of Our Town, is that everything is mimed. And it has many, many roles. So you can cast a ton of people from school, from your community, men, women of different ages. And it's always just been a very desirable title. And it's very sturdy play. You know, you have to work really hard to fuck it up. And no matter how misguided or amateurish your production may be, the third act of Our Town always tends to land with audiences because it is terribly moving. And Thornton Wilder, hot take, was a good writer. Mann had two Pulitzers, both for plays that played fast and loose with the fourth wall of theater. Skin of Our Teeth really was sort of him going further, most likely dropped some acid and then was like, well, what if we really broke the fourth wall on this show? But Our Town, for those who don't know, is about the town of Grover's Corners, which has become a cultural touching point, touch point, touchpost for it's late for small town America. It takes place in New Hampshire, the turn of the 20th century, and it follows about nine years, nine to 12 years, something like that, in the lives of the residents of Grover's Corners. And the main character is known as the stage manager, and they are the narrator. They provide all insight into the town background on different characters. They will jump into the action and play different, you know, minor people in the town. And in the third act, when one of our characters moves to the great beyond, the stage manager is sort of a friendly medium between the living and the dead. In the third act, the other major characters are. Emily Gibbs. Yeah, Emily Gibbs. I'm sorry, Emily Webb. Sorry, Emily Webb and George Gibbs. Emily becomes Emily Gibbs and their respective families. Emily's mom, Mr. And Mrs. Webb. George's parents, Mrs. Gibbs and Dr. Gibbs. George has a sister, Emily has a younger brother. There are many other people in the town, including a milkman and a cop and a choir conductor with a alcohol addiction. And everyone. It's. The first act is kind of slice of life. I don't remember if it takes place over 24 hours or 48 hours. But I think it's. Yeah, I think it's within one day of Grover's Corners. And then the second act flashes forward about three years and focuses on a specific event, otherwise known as the marriage of Emily and George. And then the third act flashes forward many other years and is about the death of Emily, who died giving birth to her and George's second child. And it jumps back and forth in time a little bit. Act one starts at the rise of the sun, as the mothers are getting the house ready for breakfast, as the kids are off to school. The moms then shuck peas and talk about wanting to see the world. And then stage manager sort of flashes forward a few hours as the kids get out of school. And then flashes forward another few hours as the moms are at choir practice and Emily and George are doing their homework by the moonlight in the window. And the main characters of Emily and George are teenagers, I guess you could say, but they're about 14. So they're becoming adults, but they're not quite adults. And when we flash forward a few years in Act 2, they are about 18, 19. They have fallen in love. They're about to get married. We are told they're getting married. And then we flash back to the day that their romance blossomed. We come back to the wedding. We hear inner monologues of George and Emily, of one of their mothers, of another woman in the town in this production played by Julie Halston. And when Emily dies in the third act, we never hear from the living, or, sorry, we don't hear much from the living. The scene opens very Hamlet esque of the gravediggers and not gravediggers in our town. Gravediggers in Hamlet. It's just townsfolk in our town, as far as I remember. But once the funeral begins, we do not hear from any of the living after that. I'm pretty sure we just hear from the members of Grover's Corners who are now dead and residing in the cemetery. And they are all much calmer and much cooler than they were when they were alive. And when Emily joins them, she's eager to remember everything on earth and wanting to experience everything on earth again. And she knows that she can go back to. To experience her memories. And she's told, when you go back to relive it, you don't just relive the day, you watch yourself relive it. So she picks her 11th birthday, and she's watching her mother make breakfast, and she's moved by how much younger her mother looks and she's getting all this pain watching the people come in and out of their house for her birthday, who she knows are going to die like her younger brother Wally, and other the newsboy dies in the war, things like that. The gift that George Gibbs leaves for her in her 11th birthday fills her with pain because she knows the love they're gonna have later on. She doesn't feel like anyone in her memory is appreciating being alive and absorbing one another. And she goes back knowing that when she was alive, she took it all for granted. And that's sort of how the play ends, while also saying, you know, life is precious and. And we should really enjoy the world in which we live. And the stage manager says basically the same thing. And that's the end of the play. So this production is directed by Kenny Leon, who last season did Pearly Victorious, which was a very pleasant surprise from all of us. This season he's already done Home at Roundabout, which I thought was incredibly forgettable. I hate to say it, but I thought it was Top Dog. Underdog two years ago was really great. But that is a play that is great. That is mostly a showcase for two great actors. And Kenny Leon really just allowed his actors to play ball and both were wonderful. Although Corey Hawkins, in my opinion, was the more impressive of the two. Not that that's a hot take. In the original production, Jeffrey Wright was considered the impressive one as well, and it was the same role. I've always felt that Kenny's talents lay with casting. He's really good at knowing who he needs for what role and then how to bond everyone as an ensemble and let them run free and trust their instincts. It worked for Pearly, it worked for Top Dog. I must say, it did not work for Our Town. Now I'm recording this after the reviews have come out. And Our Town mostly got positive reviews. It got a couple of mixed reviews, one or two pans, but overall the consensus was very positive. The New York Times gave it a critics pick from Jesse Green, Adam Feldman, and Time Out New York gave it four out of five stars. I'm not gonna lie. I was very baffled by this because I went with my friend who's a Tony voter and I had other friends in the audience that night and we all collectively afterwards went, that wasn't good, right? What this production does is two things. One is that they do the whole thing without any intermissions. Our town usually has two intermissions between acts. 1 and 2 and 2 and 3. In order to do this, they Made a couple of trims, and they sped up the pacing of things. I mean, Our Town isn't the longest play, even with the majority of material. Depending on how slow you do it, it could run anywhere between two and two and a half hours. And this production runs at about an hour and 40. So there were some trims. A lot of it was just like, really picking things up. The main design is sort of gray splashed wood all over, with a couple of chairs hanging and some benches, and then lanterns streaming out out of the set, out into the audience, forming almost a question mark. And it's a nice look when you enter the theater. They don't really do much with the lanterns for the whole show. There is a reveal that happens for the cemetery. I won't say what, but ultimately the lanterns, you do find out, kind of stem from the grave site. And Jim Parsons picks up a lantern that's on the floor, and that's how the play ends. What that means is up to you. Up to me. Up to Kenny Leon, I guess you could say it's another life in Grover's Corners. Another story of a resident of Grover's Corners that extends out into infinity. It's part of our legacy. It's part of our history. I guess you could say that it maybe means something else. I'm not entirely sure. I didn't find it terribly moving. I was mostly confused. The biggest crime of this, ultimately, what I guess is Kenny's biggest take on this, which is to make it modern and universal. The tagline is our town for our time. So not making it so traditional in the style of acting, which isn't a terrible idea. And leaning maybe a bit more into the humor of it, which is also not a terrible idea. It is a beautiful play, one of the most brilliant plays written in the English language. But you don't make something come alive by treating it with historical kid gloves. Right. More on that with Sunset Boulevard. You have to have some fun with it. So I agree with that mentality. The problem is that no actor on that stage is gelling with another actor. Everyone is in a different production of Our Town. Some of them are more traditional, some of them are more modern, some of them are God knows what. But everyone is sort of clashing. Even the most impressive performances don't fully succeed for me because they clash with others. I would say that Richard Thomas as Mr. Webb is the most successful. After that, I would say Donald Webber Jr. As. Sorry, what's Donald? Simon Stimson, that's the choir director. He was my second favorite performance. Billie Eugene Jones as Dr. Gibbs is fine. It's not that big of a role. It's not that impressive. And I like Billy. He was so, so fantastic in Fat Ham and very good in Pearly. Julie Halston as Mrs. Soames is fun, but again, like in a different production of Our Town from everybody else. Michelle Wilson as Mrs. Gibbs really rubs me the wrong way. For the first two acts, she landed the plane for the third act, but not in the first two thirds. I found Zoe Deutch as Emily Webb to be fun, quirky, a little too choppy in the first two acts of Our Town. She had her moments, though. She found a lot of humor, which I appreciated, but it was a little. Performative isn't the right word, but I didn't always find it ringing true. However, unfortunately, where it really mattered is when I felt she dropped the ball, which was in the third act. That is the real emotional arc of the show, especially Emily. And I just did not find that Zoe Deutsch was able to sell it. And Ephraim Sykes as George was doing a very contemporary spin, which, again, is not the worst thing. It just wasn't gelling with what Zooey was doing. It was clashing with what Bill Eugene Jones was doing. Everybody is clashing in this show. Jim Parsons as the stage manager. I did not dislike him as much as I thought I would, but I did not like him. I don't find that Parsons on stage has the gravitas that one needs for the stage manager. This is a role that Paul Newman has played in the David Cromer revival. Helen Hunt and Michael Shannon also played the stage manager. I saw Cromer do it myself in that production, which is still the best production of Our Town I've ever seen. Parsons is very likable on stage. Again, he can find humor in many different corners of dialogue you didn't really expect. But I did not find him the anchor of this show in the way the stage manager is supposed to be. I did not find him ethereal or all knowing or even charming. He was engaging. I didn't find him charming. He tried to be a more grounded version of himself. And I will always give him credit because if you look at the works that he's done on stage, Parsons does not play it safe with his stage work. He's definitely taken his celebrity and cashed it in for projects that he believes in. I would say the only two stage shows he's done that sound like Jim Parsons projects are an act of God, which is actually the One I thought he was most successful in because he was literally playing himself. Because the whole point of that is that God comes through the vessel of Jim Parsons to preach. And it was. It's a fun play. And Parsons, I thought, sold it very well, partly because he was being Parsons. The other one is Harvey, which is a fun, sweet play that I did not get to see. But I would imagine Parsons did a good job with that and it sounds like a revival fit for him. But doing Boys in the Band, the Normal Heart, taking a chance on a new play by Paula Vogel with Mother Play, much as I hated it, even doing man of no Importance, these are risks. Doing Our Town is a risk. People don't expect this of him. And do I think he succeeds? Not really, but I respect the risk. The other performance that I haven't really mentioned is Katie Holmes as Mrs. Webb. I'm not gonna cut corners here. Cut Grover's Corners here. Katie Holmes. Mrs. Webb might be giving the worst acted performance I've ever seen on a Broadway stage. It's bad. It's painfully bad. And I used to be not a Katie Holmes defender, but a Katie Holmes believer. I thought that she was fine in thank you for Smoking and okay in Batman Begins. Roles that only exist really to have the main character react off of. She was charming in Dawson's Creek, but she just doesn't have the juice for this. And it's a shame and it's frustrating when you know so many people out there who could do it. There are women in the ensemble of Our town who I have seen on stage before and know could give a better performance as Mrs. Webb. Again, props to her for using her celebrity for this, but it's not. It's just not it. It's just not it. Again, the reviews for this one surprised me, confounded me. Honestly, I think that this play is so phenomenal and it is so easy to mistake the greatness of the play for greatness of this production. This production is not great. It is choppy. It is kind of, I wouldn't even say misguided. I just don't see any guidance with it. Something that Kenny Leon. Kenny Leon stole something from the David Cromer production, which in turn, supposedly there was another production that did what David Cromer did. And if you don't want to hear this spoiler about the David Cromer production, skip ahead about a minute and a half. The David Cromer production mostly did everything that Our Town does, which is miming props and not having any sets. And everyone was in modern day dress. And it was actually acted pretty contemporary.
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And.
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And when Emily went back to Earth, there was a curtain in the theater that you just thought was like covering the sound booth or something, but they pulled the curtain back and there was a detailed early 20th century kitchen. And Mrs. Webb had come out in period clothing and she was cooking breakfast for Emily's birthday. And you could smell the bacon cooking off of the stove. And it was a powerful, powerful presentation of exactly what that scene means, which is when we're on Earth, we don't appreciate everything that we have. It's all taken for granted, right? We don't take a moment to smell the bacon, to see each other, to hear each other, to feel everything. We don't have time. And if you're going to actually live it, you can't spend every moment absorbing it. And so for this production of Our Town, the Kromer production, you didn't realize it, but everyone was sort of taking everything for granted. And it wasn't until Emily came back to Earth, it came back in vivid detail. Leon in this production, pumps bacon into the vents of the theater. When Emily goes back to earth, that's it. Everything else is as it usually is. But he does put in the bacon smell. And I'm like, you missed the point of the last production. You just remember the bacon. Because that's what everyone always was always talking about. Frustrating, frustrating, frustrating. Those are my thoughts on Our Town. Next up, the Roommate, starring Patti Lupin, Mia Farrow, directed by Jack o' Brien and written by Jen Silverman. Jen Silverman is mostly known for TV these days. She's written a few plays, but I believe this is her Broadway debut as a playwright. Let me make sure about that. Yes, it is her Broadway debut. The Roommate, from what I could tell, premiered it. No, it didn't premiere at Williamstown. It premiered somebody else. But it was last done at Williamstown and I don't have much to say about it. You know, I went on a whim. I didn't have the best seat, but I saw all the action. I saw the set. They called it partial, but it really wasn't. The premise is Mia Farrow lives in Iowa. Posts for a Roommate, I guess which Patti LuPone answers. And Patti LuPone's character is coming from Queens in New York and they're odd couple E at the start. Mia Farrow is a sheltered Iowan, although she's originally from Illinois. She'll keep telling you. And Patty is a hardened vegan lesbian from New York. And they clash until they Bond, and then they separate. And I don't really know why we have it on Broadway. There's no point in asking a playwright, why did you write this? You write what interests you. Or sometimes you just start writing a scene and it blossoms into a play. And we're not here to shame anybody. For, like, this is a nothing player. This is a giant. Why, Like, I do think that this play kind of is just sort of there. It's not bad. It's not good. It's just sort of. It just exists. It's not even into the Woods. Good, bad, nice. It's just. It exists. But I don't know why everyone involved said yes to doing it. Patti, for all of her talk about quality, and we've gotten dumber and we've lost our manners and all these things, and I'm leaving Equity. Bitch has a terrible track record when it comes to picking new works on Broadway. You know, women on the Verge, war paint, the anarchist, accidental death of an anarchist, her insistence on continuing to do Mamet, and now this. There's really no reason to see this play unless you are a fan of either Mia farrow or Patti LuPone and desire to see them on stage live in front of your eyes. Both do okay work. Patty is trying for a role that mostly is existing for Mia Farrow to react off of. Actually, that's not even fair. I would say the first half of the play is Mia Farrow reacting to Patti LuPone and the second half is Patti LuPone reacting to Mia Farrow. Mia Farrow is actually doing some solid work. The surprise of her effectiveness weared off for me. Wore off for me once I clocked how she was selling jokes. She has a certain cadence with which she does the dialogue. And once I realized what that cadence was, it was no longer funny to me because I just. I could predict how she was going to do the next reaction. The idea of this show is that Mia Farrow's character is so guarded and so caged and so innocent, almost to the point of cartoonishness like this. I don't know how this woman exists in the modern age. Not understanding computers and online, just being so simple. Because it's not even obtuseness, it's just innocence. Like she's practically a little girl, even though she's divorced. And she has a grown kid who lives in Chicago and he's a designer, but he's not gay. But he is dating a bisexual woman. It seems Mia Farrow refers to her as a lesbian, but because she dated women. But like she's most likely bisexual, and she doesn't have a problem with it. She says the play makes a lot of. Tries to make a lot of humor out of how unaware she is. And it's fine. It's not bad humor. I just did not laugh. But I don't think that the humor is poorly written, or at least not all of it. Patti LuPone's character is, we find out, sort of on the run. Not on the run, but she's trying to turn over a new leaf. She got into a lot of shady businesses in New York. That's how she made all of her money. She involved her daughter because Patti LuPone, we find out, used to be married. She loved a man even though she was gay. And they had a kid. And she and her daughter used to do these scams. But the daughter decided to go clean. And Patti LuPone, to sort of prove to her daughter that she could go clean, leaves New York to start over in Iowa and try something else. But there are a lot of questions left unanswered and not in a, oh, the big mystery of life kind of way. Just like storytelling things. Things that they pick up and then put back down and never come back to again. We never learn exactly how Patty and Mia met, how this roommate thing came about, why Mia Farah's character wants a roommate if it's just so she doesn't have to pay as much money on her house or if she needs some sort of income. Because we've never learned if she actually does anything. We don't know much about her ex husband or why they divorced. We don't learn much about Patti LuPone's ex husband and how they met and what that was all about. The journey, I guess you could say they go on is that as Mia Farrow learns about Patti LuPone's past, she gets intrigued by it and wants to try it and gets too good at it. And then Patty leaves because reasons. And Mia has a big God monologue while also then going on the phone with Patty. And we are meant to understand that she's grateful for the time she had with Patty, the connection that they had taking her out of her shell and growing and getting to the edge of badness, but ultimately stepping away from it and taking more of the lessons from that. And to be bolder and take chances and again appreciate her time with Patty, only for the end of the play to kind of be tempted to go bad again. I guess you could argue maybe the play is a statement on third acts in life, never too late. To try something new. Never underestimate the elderly about female friendship, I guess you could say. But it doesn't really go into much of any of that. The whole thing is rather surface level. And it's not even a showcase for the two women because they don't do much other than just react off of each other. Again, as I said the first half, when Mia is square and Patty is brusque, Mia's always reacting to Patty. And then as Mia decides she likes the dark side a bit more, Patty's the one reacting to Mia. There are no dynamics to it. The humor is not funny enough for it to be a light comedy. And it doesn't go deep enough for it to have any meat on the bone. It is a truly their play and Jack o' Brien doesn't really do anything with it. There's no tension to it. There's no direction. Isn't just about staging, but even so, there is no kind of inventive staging. There's a whole bit where they just sit on stools and stare out at the audience while they pantomime a scammer phone call. Or they'll just like sit opposite each other at the counter. It's very simple. And this, that design is fine. It's a very chic looking house for what's supposed to be kind of a square house in Iowa. The lighting is very beautiful. David Yazbek has written some incidental music that's nice. But yeah, for me, I just. This felt like a waste of an afternoon. I'm not gonna lie with this. In Our Town, I'm feeling very cynical. I was really hoping to love Our Town again. It's a brilliant, brilliant play and this production is just bad. It's not offensively bad. It's just you cock your head a lot. A lot of questionable choices and a lot of no choices. A show where the reviews really baffled me. The reviews for the Roommate don't baffle me. That got very mixed reviews, mostly praising Mia and Patty. And I wouldn't necessarily give them praise so much as they are doing solid work. And we all know that they're talented women. But I don't think we should confuse that for them doing great work. We can appreciate them, love their talent, love the careers they've had and what they've given us in the past. While acknowledging that this is not a great play, nor is it great work from them. It's really hard to do great work when you're not given much in the way of material or direction. You're kind of Just trying. And that's what this was. We're gonna take a quick break and then we are gonna get into Sunset Boulevard.
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Billy, I'd beg to differ with you.
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How do you mean?
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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 Astag.
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And we're back. So Sunset Boulevard, the Andrew Lloyd Webber music off of the Billy Wilder movie. This production is directed by Jamie Lloyd, starring Nicole Scherzinger. And it got a lot of buzz earlier this year when it premiered in London at the Savoy Theater and made the rounds on the Internet from the very first preview when photos of the curtain call came out of Nicole Scherzinger covered in blood. And everyone's like, the fuck is this? And the reviews in London were solid. They were not, like, straight across the board raves. They were mostly like, it's nice, which is fascinating. But it ended up being really big, sold out, hit. I had a lot of friends see it over there and really enjoyed it. Even those that weren't sure if they enjoyed it, they. Everyone said to me, I can't tell you if this was good or bad. I can only tell you I'll never forget it. Which was fascinating, actually. No, I think the show came out earlier than this. Beginning of this year, I think. I guess it was like October, November of 2023, because I think my friend Caitlin saw it in London and then we talked about it at her birthday. That was in November. Doesn't matter. The thing is that they ended up winning quite a few Oliviers and just garnered too much buzz for it to not transfer here. The funny tea that I have from people on the inside is that Andrew Lloyd Webber hates this production. He detests it. But because it did so well with the Oliviers and was a major financial success and is proving to be a, you know, hot ticket here, he's not going to deny it, because what that man wants more than anything is affirmation from critics and awards bodies and Americans. Even though he's had some of the most successful musicals around the world, even though he's had quite a few musicals do well here, he's never really been considered not elite, but, like, high quality. He's always been considered a guilty pleasure for critics. And you'll hear this in the Frank Wildturn episode with Jekyll and Hyde. But, like, his fans often scream like real people, like this music, and it's actually very brilliant. You're Just up your own ass. And like, Weber is a composer who absolutely understands where notes should go. He's got a chemical understanding of how a song should transition from another song. And I miss the days when he was a little weird. You listen to the original Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, and there's some weird music going on there. He actually took some risks. And then in the 80s, he kind of moved away from that as he became his own boss, as he sort of shuffled around with collaborators and really kind of overpowered everyone. And Sunset is definitely the last gasp for me of Webber taking a chance. I never loved the musical, I'll be honest. I thought it was okay. I knew the music. I finally saw it with Glenn Close. When it came to the palace in 2017 and seeing the whole thing on stage, I was just like, oh, this isn't. I didn't find it great. I didn't even think it was good. I thought it was sort of just blah. The movie by Billy Wilder is an absolute masterpiece. Holds up to this day. Everything that it covers was groundbreaking for the time. Very much pushed the envelope and made a lot of people in Hollywood uncomfortable because no one had really openly talked about, probably since pre Hays Code Star Is Born, no one had talked about in a movie the actual cynicism and dark underbelly of Hollywood, of the machine of it all and what it can do to very sensitive minded people. Which is ultimately what artists start off as, right? It's people with an insight and a talent that, that needs to be supported and nurtured. And something like Hollywood is a giant monster that gobbles you up until you're no longer of value and then spits you out with no feeling for your well being. And we see that at the beginning with Joe Gillis, the screenwriter who started off with some prominence and then has just hit the bottom of the barrel. But we also see that with our lead, Norma Desmond. The movie Sunset Boulevard also was just very blatant about how cruel Hollywood is towards women, both in small and large ways. The movie shows us this and the musical definitely emphasizes this. But in past productions always turned the character of Norma Desmond kind of into a gargoyle. You know, they tried with Patti to make her alluring while still making her very scary. In the last act, Glenn Close pretty much did kabuki makeup and kabuki acting. Betty Buckley dropped it down a little bit and got a little more in the. I don't even say Gloria Swanson mold, but just like the self involved mold. And actresses since then have really camped it up as Norma and done the most, while also trying to sing a score that is incredibly difficult, that not everyone has done well. Glenn was famous for not being the world's best singer. Although not a terrible singer, she sounds nice enough, just not powerful. Her acting never did it for me though. I'm in that camp, sorry to say. So I approached this Sunset Boulevard not as a traditionalist because as I said, I don't think very highly of the musical itself. I don't have an attachment to Glenn. I have an attachment to the story. I have an attachment to the movie. And ultimately, from everything that I had heard, I went in with the mind frame of Bring it on. What are you gonna do, throw it at me? Jamie Lloyd. And I'll say this. And early Buzz from people online was like, this is a run, don't walk production. Nicole Scherzinger is giving the greatest performance I've ever seen. Hand or the Tony. Now Audra McDonald, who. And it's really hard for me to trust early buzz. I also don't think that gay men have become the curators of culture like we once were. We're far too power bottomy for our divas of this world. Which I think also relates to Sunset because I've seen too many very intelligent and discerning homosexuals who are like, who slash to bits. Everything they see just gobble up this musical and say, oh, it's the only good webber. I'm like, it's. First of all, it's not the only good webber. And I don't even think that it's his top two. Probably it's at three, maybe four. I don't know, I. No, not. I guess maybe four or five then. Because I would say Evita's at number one, Jesus Christ Superstar at two, and then Joseph at three. And then depending on how much of a pot stirring mood I'm in, I might say Phantom or Cats at four. But that's depending on my mood. Sunset I've always found to be presentable. Its biggest asset is that it follows the original movie very closely in plot, in dialogue. But there are a lot of times where the musical misses the point. My go to example has always been the song the Lady's Paying, which is a fine enough melody and has lyrics that people love to quote, shut up, I'm rich, not some platinum blonde bitch. But it's taken from a line in the movie where Norma takes Jo on a shopping trip to a very dusty store with attendance and everything. And it's very ridiculous because she's basically setting him up to dress like a man from her era, from the late teens, early 20s, and spending a shit ton of money on all of this. And while they're there, she's, you know, they're picking out suit material and they get to Vicuna and the attendant turns to Jo and says very quietly, as long as the lady's paying, why not get the Vicuna, which is the most expensive of the lot. And Joe sort of shoots him a look in the movie, it is telling us that Joe's situation with Norma is far more transparent than he thinks it is. It is painfully obvious to everyone that he is a kept boy. The musical is like shopping spree number makeover, make all the attendants super gay and ogling Joe. It's dumb. It's very fucking dumb. Is it catchy? Sure, but it's a dumb song. And it does not understand that moment of the movie. And it kills me. Luckily, it's been cut here, as has eternal youth is always worth a little suffering, whatever the fucking thing is called. So let's get into it. What exactly does this production do? Design wise, it is very sparse. It is pretty much a bare stage with some lighting towers on both sides. The main set piece is a projection screen that comes up and down frequently. There are cameramen who will shoot many close ups of different actors. Primarily Nicole Scherzinger as Norma, but also Joe and Betty and Max and other people. They have very intimate sound, so the voices are always heard, but especially when they're in a whisper. Everyone is in mostly black and white clothes. All relatively modern, I guess you could say. And it still, technically speaking, takes place 1949, 1950. They project that as such, and all references to silent movie era and things like that are still in there. But they also then blur the lines with doing the nae nae and having Nicole do a lot of basic Becky voices when she's playing Norma and things like that. There's also a lot of smoke. I guess you could say that this production, time wise, takes place in a limbo where it is both 1949 and 2024 at the exact same time. Ultimately, I would tell you not to think about it too much. I would also tell you not to pick it apart too much. There are plenty of things to destroy about this production. It is not perfect. I wouldn't even say it's a masterpiece. It's not a revelation. What it is, is a ton of fun. I went in open mind, just going, bring it on. What's it gonna be? Who's it gonna be the life of the party. And ultimately I was treated to a very fun night. Musically, this production is stellar. It's about an 18 piece orchestra. I want to say it sounds incredible. Weber and his collaborator, I think it's David Cullen, they have a knack for orchestrating Webber's music so that it just always sounds epic, so that songs that just repeat melodies sound like that. They're building due to a change in orchestration for every chorus. The cast sounds wonderful. It's a nice full ensemble with really phenomenal voices. I want to also say that we had an understudy for Max tonight. It was the normal Max is David Thaxton, which is a shame, but Shavi Brown was our Max this evening. He normally plays Cecil B. DeMille. We had an understudy for Cecil B. DeMille. Not that it matters, based on how they do it here. It's very sort of wizard of Oz with the giant head. I'll put it that way. This production is very good on vibe and also leans into the campy melodrama of the movie and the film noir of the movie. By using close ups, they have allowed us to sit intimately in certain moments and make it feel more earned in a way that just being in a stage show with a wide angle lens doesn't do for us. This is most beneficial for the Betty and Joe plotline. The romance in Sunset Boulevard between Joe and Betty works mostly in the movie because William Holden and Nancy Olsen play their parts as very hardened Hollywood people who fall in love in spite of themselves. It's not like super sweet, romantic, soupy. Like they're. They're tough, intelligent people who fall for each other against all odds. The musical wants them to be tough and yet they kind of soften to each other immediately. All of their music together is very sweet and saccharine in a way that is more Angel Lloyd Webber going, well, we need love music. We don't need hardened music here. Their love duet, Too Much Love to Care. I've never liked it. I've never bought it. I can't say that this production sells it to me. They sing it fine. The Betty and Jo in this production sell the hardenedness. They don't sell the romance. Which, again, I don't think the musical helps them so much with that. But you could work a little harder. You know, it's in the material that you fall in love. You gotta sell it to us. And I was reading an interview with a Betty where she was saying, like, my Betty doesn't. I'm not sure if she really falls in love with Joe or if she's just playing an angle, I'm like, that's some mental gymnastics you're doing to justify not wanting to sing this love song. But they have moments with the two of them that land all the ensemble stuff. Also, I think they use the cameras to really good effect. Like in the New Year's Eve party this time next year. They use the camera and the projections in a way that allows you to feel like you're in the chaos of a New Year's Eve party. And then they do quick cuts of Joe and Betty and even Artie, Betty's fiance, to show their attraction to each other. Artie's understanding of the attraction. Again, it's very cinematic. And because Sunset Boulevard is about Hollywood, it tracks, it connects. And even if you think that's a stretch, you can't deny that how it's presented does kind of work. It is effective. They also use the cameras and the projection screen a lot for Norma. A lot of it is very effective. They use it For Cecil B. DeMille, as I said, when she shows up at the studio, he is presented as sort of this giant figure. He's in a, I guess, outline. His head is done in sort of in an outline on the giant screen as Normal looks out. And he just seems so much bigger than her and domineering and almost fatherly, I guess, but like in a godlike manner. You understand just how small she is in this world when she shows up to the movie studio. And that is how DeMille is presented to her. They also have a lot of fun with it in the character of Max. He just sort of pops up a lot in close up. And it's very funny. This production is a lot funnier than you might think. They play a lot of shit for laughs. And I am grateful for that because Sunset Boulevard, the movie, is fucking funny. Norma is a larger than life character. She's delusional from the get go. It's just that her delusion makes her have a psychotic break in the end. And that's when she turns violent and completely untethered. I had said once before, like a modern day Norma Desmond is basically Jenna Maroney in 30 Rock. It's that in her mind, cameras are always on, there's always an audience. And there is no real Norma anymore that died a long time ago because she put her value and herself into the hands of a public that has turned on her on a system that has spat her out because she was no longer of use to them. And what this production does with Nicole ultimately is she's not a star of the silent screen. She is a former pop star. This is not rewritten lyrics. This is not even outward. This is just the meta casting of Nicole Scherzinger in the same way that Gloria Swanson's casting was meta, as she was a silent film star who eventually left when talkies came into the mix and made a return. Norma Desmond and Nicole's career, in a lot of ways, does mirror Norma. She got a lot of fame as the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, but the Pussycat Dolls did not have the major impact that other girl groups did. They were around, they had some songs, they have their fan base, but they kind of petered out. And Nicole didn't really get the respect and recognition that we all think she deserves now. When the group sort of dissolved, she tried to transition into musical theater here. And that didn't go super great. It wasn't like a disaster or anything. It was just. It never led to bigger opportunities. She did rent at the Hollywood Bowl. I believe she was Maureen in that she did Annie Live or she was Grace and did a very lovely job. But no one was like, eager to have her on Broadway. For some reason, she turned to the West End and that's where she sort of became Andrew Lloyd Webber's go to and now has come back to America, finally made it to Broadway. I'm pretty sure this is her Broadway debut. Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely. Yeah, it's her Broadway debut. Finally made it to Broadway starring in this show where she is playing a former star who has been denied and in some ways is coming back more glorious than ever. Right. I think ultimately that's also why Sunset Boulevard attracts so many gay men, both in movie form and musical form. It's divas, diva ing being bigger and weirder and louder, singing their faces off wearing glamorous outfits while also being an odd duck saying iconic lines. And we are honoring and worshiping the character of Norma as well as the actress we love playing her. And some things just sort of defy logic with this show. Right. Like, with one look is a fun aria that fits in an actual opera where you don't have to sing for four minutes and have it progress the plot or be character insight. In Sunset Boulevard, though, it is still a musical. There's recitative, but there's dialogue. It's structured like a musical. So something that like with one look, which is a four minute long, one statement song stops the show because diva and it's a fun Melody. I will also say this production pulls what Jagged Little Pill pulled what Aladdin and Something Rotten pulled, which is Aladdin had Friend Like Me. Something Rotten had a musical. Jack. A Little Pill had. You Ought to know. And this. With one look, the number ends and the actor stands there waiting. So we applaud and keep applauding because the show just isn't continuing. Audiences will stop applauding when it's clear that the show is just going to continue whether they like it or not. But if something happens like a. With One look, which ends on this big, big note and just epic, like in your face, and then they just stare out at you, sort of commanding you to keep applauding. We're gonna keep applauding. People are gonna start standing. And you can recognize that the show is playing you like a fiddle and not care. But you cannot tell me that it is a genuine, impulsive response that the audience is having to the song. I've watched it happen too many times before to tell you that tonight when I saw sunset with one look, it got a partial standing ovation, which happened because Nicole just didn't move. She just stood there and waited. Finally, once the applause started to die down, that is when she started walking around. The only time I've seen a standing ovation happen for a song that was genuine was all three times I saw the Color Purple. When Cynthia Eriva finished I'm Here, the audience leapt to their feet. And to her credit, she did not stand facing the audience for all eternity. She stood. She soaked it in for a little bit, but then she started walking to the back of the stage and taking her chair, getting ready, planning herself center stage to get the whole scene ready to go. But she did not stand there and just milk it, waiting for everyone to rise to their feet. We all jumped, and then she kept going. And even though she kept going, we kept going. Nicole's performance as Norma is fascinating. It's good. It's a. It's a. Honestly, I'll say it's a great performance. She does Jenna Maroney. It's a modern Norma. She understands the lack of self awareness, the total self seriousness of a Norma Desmond, while also toeing the line of making us want to observe the acting tics. She plays around a lot. Her Norma is clearly a Norma who does yoga. She does splits, she twirls around. She's in great shape. She's just sort of feeling herself in the stage at all times in the way that a. Again, like a modern Norma would. Someone who's at One with the stars who eats, clean and does hot yoga and moisturizes and probably sleeps in a Vaseline cocoon. That is who this woman is. She's always ready to go, ready to be observed and enjoying every ounce of herself. There is nothing funny about her to Norma, but she is allowed to find joy. And I think Nicole nails all of that. She gets what makes Norma funny, she gets what makes Norma tragic, and she gets what makes Norma fun and complicated. And when everything falls apart in the third act, she gets very. A little. I'm sorry, she gets a little scary, as one should when she's doing the phone call to Betty, it's very intense. She's pointed, and she is a mission. When we get to the final breakdown, and I don't want to spoil how they do the death of Joe, which is. That part is not a spoiler because this is. This movie is 74 years old and the musical is 30 years old at this point, 32 years old at this point, so that's not really a spoiler. But when Joe dies, I won't spoil how they do it or exactly what. Why Nicole has blood all over her at the end of the show. But I think if you look at the lyrics of the enormous breakdown, you can guess which lyric the blood shows up on. But it is a truly uncomfortable mad scene while also allowing us to have the final button of a nebber musical. It's sort of having your cake and eating it, too. There are some things in this show that only make sense to Jamie Lloyd. I don't know what the point is of doing the title song at the top of Act 2, going all through the theater, out into the street, then back into the theater and ending on the stage. Other than the fact that it's really cool that they're able to achieve it, I don't know what the thematic reason for it is. I can tell you that Tom Francis sounds great doing it and he looks good doing it, but, yeah, I don't know why, because he. During the Entra, we see him from his dressing room go down the stairs into other people's dressing rooms. They make a lot of fun gags. They have Norma, they have Nicole in her dressing room writing Mad about the Boy on her mirror. They show you the monkey. They have a cutout of Andrew Lloyd Webber. They're having a lot of fun with the show, which I appreciate. And then he goes out into the street. He goes up Sunset Boulevard's theater. He goes across the street down to Shoopert Alley, and then back Cast members join him. He comes back into the theater, ends the number on the stage, and we applaud because it's just like, well, that was really fucking cool. Couldn't tell you why it happens. There's a lot of really interesting staging with the ensemble. Let's have Lunch is pretty simple in how it's done, but they. They do some cool things. Every Movie's a Circus is actually one of my favorite pieces of staging with the ensemble. Again, very simple. Everyone's in a chair in a row, facing the audience, but popping up and using the cameras. It's. It's very. I think I found it simple but effective. How they do the Betty and Jo confrontation at Norma's mansion. There are many Normas. What they're doing, again, only makes sense to Jamie Lloyd. I couldn't tell you. There are a couple of times when we have the cameras on and projecting onto the screen. I'm not sure why it happens again. It only makes sense to Jamie Lloyd. Things like DeMille being projected onto the screen and being larger than Norma and shrinking her. Things like having projections of the young Norma as she's singing about herself. There's a. The way they do new ways to dream. When Norma and Jo are watching some of her old movies, they have a really effective cross cutting between Nicole and the woman playing young normal. Because first of all, Nicole's 40. Maybe like 42, something like that. How old is Nicole Scherzinger? She is 46. She's 46, right? Only four years away from Gloria Swanson's age when she did it in the movie. And Gloria Swanson looked great for being 50. And Nicole, when you're watching her the entire show, you're just thinking like, she looks amazing. I don't know what we're talking about. She hasn't aged out of anything. And the actress who plays younger Norma is clearly like 20 years younger than Nicole. And when they cut back and forth to her, Nicole doesn't look grotesque in any way. But you're aware that time has passed. There are some things that, you know, moisturizer and skincare routine and even plastic surgery and staying out of the sun can't totally hold on to in a way that just being 26 allows you to hold on to. And the way they cut between young Norma and her during that number is very effective. The way they do close ups of actors driving to the studio, to Sunset Boulevard. Again, it's all very film noir and it's very fun. I really enjoy it. Again, I think this production is just Fun. It's not a reinvention of the show. It's not how I want to see the show done all the time. I also don't ever want to see this show done all the time. But it understands fundamentally that for a musical, we need the music taken care of. It understands having fun with the material again and trying some bold things. Other complaints I guess I would have. I found all of Norma's tempos to be far too slow, like as if we never said goodbye and with one look are at a deadly pace. Nicole clearly wants to enjoy her time in the spotlight the way that she does with one look. I guess you could say it's Norma relishing the spotlight and performing even bigger for an audience. But part of me was like, we can just take this up a skosh. It would still be too slow for my liking, but it would be faster than this. And it's a shame, because things like let's have Lunch and Every Movie's a Circus are done at a good pace. You could also argue that time slows down when you're with Norma. But even if that's true on a chemical level, you need some of these songs to have more momentum. So that was frustrating. Is this a 10 out of 10? For me, probably not. I would say it was like an 8.5 out of 10. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. It's a great deal of fun. Musically. It's awesome. Some really wonderful things happening in it. Some bonkers things happening in it. I am not gonna go out and say brilliant. I'm gonna go out and say wild and cool and very much worthwhile. Will the reviews matter for this? I don't know. I saw 1600 people lose their minds tonight in a way that I haven't really seen them do this season, other than oh, Mary of just genuine, genuine happiness with what they saw and engaged. Everyone was very engaged. I'm interested to know if anyone who doesn't know the show and doesn't know the movie, like, just doesn't know the story at all, if they would be able to follow it watching this production. Because there are a lot of things that just. If you don't know it, I don't think you would get it. The lack of props, the lack of specificity and time. Characters not always being memorable so you know who they are when they pop up again. Just. I don't know. I don't know. I would love to hear from people who've never seen the movie or the show what they think of it, if they can make sense of any of it. But I do think it's worthwhile. I think because of the buzz and everyone's truly genuine reactions for it, it'll be a moment in New York theater for a while. Will they be able to maintain till the Tonys a long time away? And I wonder if once the newness of it wears off, if we will continue having this excitement about it. Then again, I was wary that Omar was gonna do as well as it's done so far, which. And it just keeps crushing. A lot of people were concerned that Merrily wasn't going to be able to sustain itself from October all the way through the Tony Awards, and it absolutely did. So maybe Sunset is, again, one of those exceptions. The gentleman next to me at Sunset was going on and on about how he just couldn't believe Gypsy was going to be anything more exciting than Sunset because Sunset was just such an. It was such a different kind of production. And I just want to say, never, ever underestimate George C. Wolfe. You never bet against Audra. So is Nicole the frontrunner for Actress in a Musical right now? Sure, at the moment it's her and Sutton Foster, but there are many other performances coming down the pike. Nicole's is just the first one of the season that is truly exciting. She is great. If she were to win, I wouldn't be mad about it, but we have a dozen more performances to see. Let's hold off on making predictions just yet, but it is nice to be excited about something. That's it for now, guys. If I missed anything about Sunset, please let me know in the Discord Channel. I'd be happy to talk more thoroughly there. If you haven't joined the Discord Channel yet, please do so and stay tuned for the next episode, which will be Uncheckle and Hyde. We'll close out with Nicole because why the fuck not? She deserves it. It's her moment to shine and I want you guys to enjoy her and maybe go see her. And that's it. We'll see you soon. Take it away, Nicole.
- [67:49]
B
Bye. This time I'm staying I'm staying for good I'll be back where I was born again with one look I'll be back.