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Sam. Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL, and welcome to Broadway Breakdown and an episode of Mat Reviews. We're back and foam, baby. Today's episode we are covering the Wild Party. Michael John Lachiusa and George C. Wolfe's the Wild Party, which is currently playing at City Center. Encores. Now, when this episode comes out, there'll be one week left of performances of the Wild Party. And those of you who are living in New York will have to rush to go see it. Those of you not living in New York who won't be visiting New York for some time won't get a chance to see it. And so sometimes we ask ourselves, why are we reviewing this one? Matt well, I'll tell you why, because this is Madame Podcast and it's really important to me to talk about this musical today because Lord knows when we're going to get a chance to see it on a New York stage at this level of professionalism. Again, U could be a while, could be next week, who knows? But at the moment it feels like it's going to be a while. So I want to talk about it and I want to talk about this production because it combines a lot of things that I think are important. It talks about the material itself, which I think is very fascinating to talk about. Performances, production, sort of expectations for shows, especially expectations for encores, and also sort of just about musical theater taste in general. So let's just dive into it, shall we? The Wild Party, for those of you that don't know, is based off of the 1920s poem by. Sorry, I always forget the name of the poet because it's Joseph Moncure March. The famous story about this poem. So it's basically March's poem is about a woman named Queenie and her live in boyfriend Burrs. And they are performers, the 1920s in vaudeville. He's a clown, she's a chorus girl. And they're feeling a little bit lugubrious. And to spice up their lives, they throw a raucous part that a lot of their friends come to and there's sex and drugs and alcohol and debauchery and it ends with the murder of Burrs. Spoiler alert. And it was a very scandalous poem at the time. It then sort of went out of fashion for a while and then Art Spiegelman made a illustrated cartoon of the poem and published it in the early 90s. And that's when both Lachiusa and Andrew Lippa found it and they both got inspired to write their own musical versions of the poem. And because the poem home was in the public domain, they did not have to worry about licensing. So there was no estate that had to sell the rights to either party. They both could just do it. And infamously, both lachiusa and Lippa's renditions of the Wild Party premiered the same season. Lippa's premiered at the Manhattan Theater Club Off Broadway about a month or 2 before the Lachiusa version. The Lachiusa version was meant to be off Broadway. It was being produced by the Public Theater, which was being run by George C. Wolfe, and they opted to then go to Broadway instead. They were supposed to come in the 1998-1999 Broadway season, but it was felt that there was more work that needed to be done on the show. So they moved it to the following season. And then Vanessa Williams, who was supposed to be playing Queenie, got pregnant and they had to push back the show even further. So it opened rather than opening earlier in the season, it opened right at the end of the season. And they had to hire Toni Collette instead. Had to. We're so lucky that they did hire Toni Collette. And while the Lippa version never made it to Broadway, both versions were not super well received at the time, critically, not even really commercially. As I said, Lippas did not transfer to Broadway. Lachius was met with sort of appreciation, but also disdain. It was nominated for several Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, a few other performances. But it did close after about two and a half months of official performances. And the Lipa version has proven to be the one that gets performed the most. Not frequently, like, this is not Guys and Dolls, but of the two, the Lippa one is the one that is performed the most and also performed the most in concert. Lippa has a bunch of songs that have become standards, like Raise the Roof, Life of the Party, I would say, look at Me now, what is it about her? These are all songs that people like to perform in their cabarets, and these songs work really well in cabarets. And it's a cast album that has a fan base, and I totally understand it. I've done the LIPA version. There's a lot of bops in that score. And it's a pretty strong cast of Idina Menzel and Julia Murney, Brian d' Arcy James, Taye Diggs, sort of like at the height of their power. So they all sound pretty fantastic. And there's, you know, there's a modern edge to it that I think a lot of People resonate with. But the show never fully works. The lachiusa version is a much harsher vibe musically, and just overall, it deals a lot more with race in a way that the LIPA version never really does. The LIPA version really just kind of focuses on Queenie and Burr's. Queenie's best friend, Kate, and the escort that Kate brings, Black, and this sort of love quadrangle in the Lippa version. In the lachiusa version, there's really no love quadrangle. Queenie and Burrs are very toxic relationship. Kate and Queenie have a very strong bond. Kate and Burrs definitely have a past. But Kate has no interest in getting with Burrs and is not vindictive of Queenie. She wants to help Queenie. They're best friends and sisters. Black and Queenie absolutely have a falling for each other, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Queenie's torn between him and Burrs. There's a lot of stuff going on there. And as I said, race is a major component in the lachiusa version, as is gender and religion. The lachiusa version definitely leans further into jazz and sort of dissonant modern musical theater. It's a harsher score, but I think a stankier score. And it's not as easy a pill to swallow. Neither show fully works. The poem that March wrote doesn't really have a story. It's kind of episodic. It's always sort of, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. And then it just sort of culminates with a showdown between Black and Burrs after Black and Queenie have slept together. Burrs getting violent, pointing a gun at Black. The gun ends up going off and shooting Burrs instead. And that's sort of how the poem ends. And it's really hard to figure out how to make the musicals make narrative sense and feel fulfilling in a way that audiences will feel like they got their money's worth or like their time was well spent. This is the first production that New York City has seen of the lachiusa Wild party since Broadway. We did have a production at Encores off Center, Encores of the lipa. One that was heavily rewritten, I think, to its detriment. This version has a very strong cast. The original Broadway production also had a phenomenal cast. It had Toni Collette, fresh off of her Oscar nomination for the Sixth Sense. It had Toni winner Mandy Patinkin, Tony winner Tanya Pinkins. It had Tony nominee and the legend Eartha Kitt. It had future Tony nominees Mark Kudish and Norm Lewis. It had Julie Jordan herself, Sally Murphy. It had Tony nominee Jane Summerhays from Me and My Girl. Some of you might know her as the chick that Samantha befriends in season three of Sex and the City and blows a finance dude under the table. She's iconic Nathan Lee Graham, Michael McElroy, who would also go on to be a Tony nominee for Big River, Brooke, Sunny Moriber. I feel like there are other people I'm forgetting, but it's just a really. That original company was really tight. And this production at Encores has also a really well rounded cast. The word from people immediately when this Wild Party started, performances was very much split. There were people who felt this was like one of the best encores they've ever seen. People who were turned off by the production, by the material, didn't really know what to make of it. Some people blame the material, some people blame the production. Here's where I am at with this Wild Party. Full disclosure, I adore this version of the Wild Party. So much more so than the Lippa one. Now, I am aware of this show's problems. It is not a perfect musical, but also perfectionism is severely overrated. I would rather be messy and fascinating than to be perfect and sterile. And this is the opposite of sterile. This is so much heat, so much emotion. Emotion. What's wrong with me today? Messiness. And it is a score that is sticky and stanky and just exciting and it's a fever pitch of fire. And I love it. I love this music so fucking much. If you want to hear more about the nuances of this show versus the Lippa show, you can actually go way, way back in the catalog and listen to me and Gunkle of the pod. Adam Elsbury compare and contrast the Andrew Lippa and Michael John Lachiusa versions, both their origins as well as how they both approach the poem and how they compare to each other. Spoiler alert. Gunkle. Adam also prefers the Lachusa one with me and he has said, and I've quoted him before on this, and I have his permission. He's always described as the music of the Lachiusa one. It's the sensation of like being a cat in heat and you're sort of like grinding your genitals up against the couch because you don't have anyone to fuck. So you're just basically you're pulling a J.D. vance and you're. And you're fucking the cushions. And that's kind of what it is. It's all of this horniness with nowhere to go. It's all of this sensuality, but nothing's really sexy about it. It's a hot show, but the sexiness about it isn't hot. There's all this sex, but it's not sexy. Does that make sense? Because everyone in the show is rather damaged and lost and putting all of their values into the wrong things, all of their energy into the wrong things. Lachiusa and George C. Wolf really kind of honed in on the opening line, which was the Queenie was a blonde and her age stood still. She danced twice a day in vaudeville. Gray eyes, lips like holes aglow her face was a tinted mask of snow. That really meant a lot to Michael, John Lachiusa and to George C. Wolf. And so that became the guiding star, the North Star, I guess you would say, of this adaptation for them, of everyone has a mask, everyone's hiding, everyone's trying to be someone else. So originally, when the show was being written, Vanessa Williams, as I said, was who Queenie was being written for. Vanessa Williams is a black woman, and her mask of snow was the mask she was doing to try to pass as white. She was dating Burrs, played by Mandy Patinkin, who's a white man, and his Burrs, his clown, was in blackface. So you had a sort of that yin and yang of racial composition there. And then you had people like Golden Goldberg, who are Golden Goldman, who are these aspiring Broadway producers who are Jewish and trying to not be so Jewish so they can assimilate and become successful in a rather Broadway Jew hating world. You have people like Eddie Mackerel, who's a former boxing champ, he's black. He basically gives up his life in the ring and willfully loses a fight, you know, throws a match. So he can then become a regularly employed person. But he does it at the expense of his pride because then he sort of becomes a performative boxer for a lot of white audiences and marries a white woman named maybe. And there's conflict with there. Everyone is just sort of trying to be something that they're not. And there's a lot of meat to that. The problem is that the poem just sort of ends and so the musical just sort of ends. It goes to this point where everything starts to dissipate and everyone's facades start to get melted away. And then the finale of the show has a really hard time sticking the landing because we've spent an hour and 55 minutes with no intermission of just chaos and frenzy and kinetic energy. And then Trying to wrap it all up really quickly and it's never really been able to do that. This production makes a slight change towards the end. They cut a couple of things and then they make a slight change towards the end. I'll talk about that in a little bit. But why not just talk about the show, Mrs. Lincoln? Why not talk about sort of what we saw? Okay, well then fucking I will. Stop yelling at me. Overall, with this production of Wild Party at Encores, I was pleased because I got to finally, finally, finally hear this score performed live. And as I've said, I adore this score. My hot take. Actually, this isn't a hot take. I'm going to say this. This is factual. One of the objective things that I'm going to say in this review is this score of the Wild Party by Michael John Lachiusa is one of the greatest musical theater scores of the 21st century. That is alongside Piazza and that is alongside Great Comet and Hamilton and in the Heights, I would even say Hadestown. Hadestown I have issues with as a musical, but I think the score itself is pretty fantastic. Hairspray. This Wild Party is up there. It's audacious and it is smart, but it's creative and it's exciting. And I think that's very important to understand. That is the number one reason why I was pleased with seeing this the other night, the other reason why I was pleased with seeing this. And this is the other full on objective thing I'm going to say. This is not subjective. This is objective. Jasmine Amy Rogers as Queenie is that bitch. Jasmine. Amy Rogers blew onto the scene last year in Boop. She followed that up with Olive Ostrovsky in Spelling Bee, which is a, if not a total 180, like maybe a 120 from boop. And her queenie is fully a 180 from that boop. Part of me wants to say it's a 180 from Olive, but then that means she's done a full 360. And Jenna Maroney doesn't understand that 360 is just a full on circle. But she has shown us in one whole year, in 12 months, the depths of her talent and of her intelligence and what she's capable of. She's far and away the best performance in this production. She's not fully there. She's about 90% of the way there. But that already is kind of extraordinary because Encores is not meant to be a finished product. Encores was always meant to be a fun excavation project of musical Theater Encores was built to present scores that we hadn't heard in a while with their full orchestrations, full orchestra, full voices, and give you the music presented as exceptionally as possible for a couple of nights. It's sort of this little, this little sort of, you know, bon bon of a week of musical theater. As the seasons progressed, the shows got to be a lot more staged and polished. The real turning point was Chicago, which was, yes, a musical that hadn't been seen in New York city for almost 20 years. It was not an undiscovered gem. Chicago was relatively popular when it first came out. A lot of the songs did quite well. It had been performed all over the country. People knew Chicago, but it was the first time in New York they had seen Chicago in 20 years. And everyone realized, oh, this show is actually really fantastic and it's so relevant to right now. And through sheer luck of the encore's presentation, it all just sort of fit in really well. And from there it just got bigger. There was more production value, there were more costumes and lighting. People started to go off script because people used to hold binders and just read from the script. And what used to be a couple of days rehearsal became a week and a half of rehearsal and then more sets and costumes and everything. And then there became this expectation of, well, what's gonna be the next encore show to transfer. And some things did. We had the Apple Tree with Kristin Chenoweth transfer to Broadway, you know, in a more fully realized production. Same thing with Wonderful Town with Donna Murphy, Panin's Rainbow with Kate Baldwin. The only two encores musicals to transfer from Encores pretty much as is Copy Paste were Into the woods and Once Upon a Mattress. Anything else that's transferred from Encores has had a little bit of time and extra money to enhance the productions, including this ragtime that came from Encores last year or I guess City Center. But you know, we know what we're talking about here. So with this production of Wild Party, it is a much more fully realized production than you would than we had, let's say, from High Spirits earlier this season. It is a full blown set. Everyone is costumed, everyone is off book. There is full blown staging. It is a pretty fully realized production. And that's a double edged sword because ultimately nobody can give this production fully what it needs in so little time of preparation and with such limited resources. You have to have the orchestra on stage in Encores. There's no orchestra pit at City center and on top of that, the orchestra is supposed to Be the star attraction. And so you always have them on stage. That's sort of the calling card of encores, which leaves not a lot of playing space in front of the orchestra. You also need to have lighting that allows the orchestra to see their music. You don't have a lot of time to stage this show, and so you need the actors to be able to see their places. It's a very shallow wing space and fly space at City Center. So it's not like you can have a lot of stuff move on and off stage or fly in and out from the flies. The actors do not have a lot of time to really dig deep into their performances with the director, even if it's a phenomenal director, you just. You just don't have the time. And so for someone like Jasmine to get, like 90% there with Queenie is pretty extraordinary. And she is, in my opinion, the most fully realized performance and the closest to what you need. What she's missing as Queenie is a bit of vulnerability and a bit of fear. And I'll get to that in a second as I go further down the list, because I'm gonna. I'm gonna go down the list a little bit of performances from who I think is most successful to least successful. And this is not about a read on anyone so much as that this is the best way I can kind of be structured with my thoughts on this production. And I'll start with performances and then move into the production itself. As I said, Jasmine is my number one in this show. In addition to being just a genuine star, she's also proving to be a very versatile and talented actress. We already knew she was a wonderful singer. This role requires more of a womanly heft to her voice, which she absolutely provides. She is giving a more mature and aged performance than she was in Boop. And of course, as she would, is Ella Vstrovsky. She's about the same age as Toni Collette was when she did the Princess production. It was Toni Collette, who is, of course, white. Her Queenie was under a mask of snow because her Queenie was aging, and she was constantly trying to be the young ingenue, and so she was constantly powdering. Jasmine is young, and she is also not Caucasian. And so we leaned further into the Vanessa Williams trope of Queenie of trying to pass. There were things that maybe weren't helping with that. Jasmine's Queenie is not constantly powdering. She's never vulnerable. She's pretty much sure of herself the entire show until the last 15 minutes, I would say. And she gets to her breaking point really well. She shows all that emotion really nicely in the, you know, clinching moments of the show, but it doesn't really build to it. We don't see her desperation or fear or sadness. We mostly just see her vivacity and her charm. We see a little of her exhaustion, for sure, and her sensuality with Burrs. But we do need more of that insecurity as well, and we need to see certain major plot points really stick with her. There are revelations about Burrs that Queenie learns during the party, and we need to see it affect her, and it doesn't really affect Jasmine's Queenie. Again, we'll get to this more as we talk about other people as well as the direction. Number two in the cast for me is Adrian Warren with a bullet. Adrien is actually kind of pretty, pretty perfect for this role of Kate, which is Queenie's best friend. This was played by Tanya Pinkett in the original production, as opposed to Kathy in the last five years. This is a role that fits Adrienne Warren like a glove because Kate is a gladiator, she is a fighter, but she's also fabulous about it. She enters the show halfway through with her, you know, male escort, black, and they're in matching divine clothes. Kate is a chorus girl who's become a big vaudeville star. And there's a great line that one of the other characters says looking at her, and they go, oh, now you know you're a star when the shoes and the dress and the man all match. And you need that confidence and that swagger to believe why Kate would become a star and to see how well she wears success. And Adrienne Warren wears success very well. But she also has an earnest love for Queenie and you see her camaraderie with Jasmine very nicely. They have a really lovely bond on stage and you totally buy their history together. If she's not number one, for me, it's simply that Queenie is the much meatier role. Obviously, she has more stage time and there's more, more facets to Queenie as a character than to Kate. And so even if Jasmine is only like 90% of the way there and Adrian's probably 95% of the way there, sheer. By the sheer magnitude of the roles, Jasmine has a little bit of an edge over Adrian. But these are two, you know, top tier performances for me. Number three, this is going to be a hot take, is Joseph Anthony Bird as Phil d'. Armano. The Darmano brothers are a vaudeville act, black gay brothers. The poem implies a little bit of incest with them, that they're a little too close for comfort as brothers. Now, it's possible. It's never really explored in the musical and it's not even really explored in the poem, but there's a possibility that they're not even really brothers, that they are lovers who present as brothers. So that way they can get away with doing this duo act and, like, sharing an apartment, sharing hotel rooms when they travel. Believe me, they are not the first ones to have thought of this. That is not necessarily explored in this version. It's pretty much implied that they are absolutely brothers. And I think that is to push the boundaries of taboo, of this show, of. Okay, well, you thought you saw debauchery. Here are two brothers who are super doing it when no one's looking. And you know that they're doing it because there is. There is a bit of a competitive streak between them, but also a wedge is driven into them by the character of Jackie, played by Claiborne Elder. We get to him. Jackie absolutely sets his sights on Oscar, and it completely throws Phil for a loop. Not because Phil wants Jackie as well, but because Phil wants Oscar and probably has had Oscar and Oscar has had Phil. And by the end of the night, they stay together and they do not go with Jackie. Wesley J. Barnes plays Oscar Darmano, the other brother. Phil, for me, is the slightly better role of the two brothers. Pardon me for language that might offend, but this is the wild party we're talking about. Phil d' Amano is the faggier brother and was played by Nathan Lee Graham in the original. And because of that, he gets a lot of really great lines. He has a lot of attitude, a lot of style, a lot of flair. And so he's just. It's a little easier to make an impression as Phil for me than as Oscar. But Phil does not succeed if Oscar doesn't succeed with him. And Wesley J. Barnes as Oscar absolutely does succeed. They especially work really well the end of day at together. And so that's really great. As I said, Phil is just like the slightly better brother role. But they're both really fantastic and they're tight with their music and their movements. Yeah. Of all the male actors, those were the two that impressed me the most. And that is, I know, a hot take considering what a lot of people have been saying online about the male actors in this show. But I will explain my reasoning in a second. So that's 1, 2, 3, and 4. At number five is Megan Murphy playing Madeline True, the almost famous stripper. Madeline is a burlesque stripper and also a lesbian. She's very much lesbian. She shows up to the party with a drugged out, most likely heroin addict Sally, who in the original production was played by Sally Murphy and this production is played by Betsy Morgan. More on her in a second. The whole joke about Sally is that she is so zunked and she's not responsive to anything. And Madeline is projecting all this onto her, saying she's brilliant, she's beautiful, she's this performance artist. She's making commentary on the commercialism of our theater industry and everything. And Sally will just like have these random fits of shouting while she's in this sort of like drug manic high and everyone gets thrown and Madeline will just go, oh God, she's brilliant. Like she just thinks that Sally's this performance artist and she is so attracted to her and turned on by her and she's so eager for Sally to love her back. And yet Sally never says anything. And that's the one thing that Madeline will ever admit to herself. Now Madeline is absolutely a broad of a character and she only has one real big number, which is the song like Sally. And there's humor to her, there's sexuality to her. She needs to have a mixture of femininity and masculinity. She's a dom. I would call her a dominant feminine type. She absolutely wears her jewels and her clothes wonderfully. And there's a bit of an androgyny about her, but that androgyny comes from her dominant energy. And Megan Murphy absolutely channels all of this. She also has a great husky alto singing voice. If I had any real quips with her, it's just that because I know this score so well, there are a couple of high notes that she opted out of. And it's entirely possible that this was after. This was the final performance of a very long first week. They had, you know, sits probe, they had tech, they had their dress rehearsal, they had all these other performances. They had a two show day on Sunday. So it's entirely possible a lot of them were a little vocally tired. I can. I'll name a few others in a second. But you know, when she did sing, it was really fantastic and I was, I was really into her performance as well. These are the top five performances of the in the cast for me. Jasmine, Amy Rogers, Adrienne Warren, Joseph Anthony Burton, Wesley J. Barnes and Megan Murphy. At number six is Jordan Donica as Burrs. And this is going to be controversial because a lot of people think that he's actually the standout of the show, if not the standout of. At least they think he's the standout of the male actors, if not the standout of a whole company. And Danica is good in the show. I'll do. I'll say a couple of things. I've always been a little on the fence with Jordan Donica as a performer. Part of that is, you know, as good as his rich musical theater golden age baritone is in shows like Camelot and My Fair lady and into the woods, which he did at Encores. I've never fully bought that that's his natural singing voice. I've always felt that he was really a Barry tenor who leaned into the heavier baritone sound, and it's worked for him. You know, he gets work in this field because not a lot of people can do that. But I never bought that. It was naturally where his voice sat and sounded like. And Wild Party actually kind of confirmed that for me because Burrs is a full Barrett tenor role. It was originated by Mandy Patinkin, who is an Irish tenor, and it's Manny patinkin, you know, 20 years after Evita. So he's not hitting Bs like he did in that show. He's hitting GS and G Sharps. But that's still not like golden age Bariton territory. That's fully, like, you know, in the middle range. And Donica hits all those notes, and he does it with a nice ping and absolutely has, like, another step or two up there. So I'm like, okay, no, he's. He is a baritoner. And so that confirmed it for me. But also by stripping away that. That classical baritone Persona, it allows him to then be a little more at ease with just sort of going for it with the role of Burrs, which you kind of need to do. And Donica absolutely goes for it. Right. I want to commend him for unabashedly throwing himself into this role, which is a hard role, because Burrs is psychotic. Burrs is sexy. Burrs is scary. He can even be a little bit funny if you want to look more into this. The original production had a lot of issues during the rehearsal and preview process, mostly backstage. A lot of that came from Mandy Patinkin, who was. Who's a famous method actor and just really got in deep with the role of Burrs, to the point that he was just a terrorist backstage on that show. But the work proved to be potent on stage. Cause you watch him and he is dank and sexy, but incredibly scary. But what made Mandy scary was how erratic his birds was. You never really knew where he was gonna go, how he was gonna be. Every time he thought he was gonna have an outburst, all of a sudden he got very cool and quiet. And the moment you thought that you were gonna be safe, he would have an outburst. And it was. He just kept you on your toes all the time. And he would go into people's comfort zones and just attack. There's, you know, you can watch clips of the original production on YouTube or you can go to the library to watch it as well. And there are moments where you see. Because he's so possessive of Queenie, when he sees that in his mind territory getting infiltrated by Black, who is, you know, fully full falling into Queenie and she's falling into him. Burrs gets really unhinged. And you see moments where he's physical with Toni Collette in a way that it's not intimate. They have a sexually violent relationship. That's always been their dynamic. That's something that Queenie has always been into. And she's now learning that Burr actually has just been straight up violent, violent in the past. And that terrifies her. And you see hints of that when Mandy starts treating her different kinds of ways as the party gets more and more debaucherous and you fear for Queenie's safety, and you never really fear for Jasmine's safety in this. Now, granted, again, this is encores. We don't have a lot of time. There's not only so much you can do with Jordan Donnica's Burrs. When I say he goes for it, I mean he really goes to this animalistic place with Burrs, but he goes there, if not immediately, almost immediately. We're like 10 minutes into the party itself, and his Burrs really starts to just become unhinged and very shouty. And it's hard to have anywhere else to go from there because Burrs has to have a mental breakdown by the end of the show. He has a moment where he snaps in a song called How Many Women in the World? And the only way that Danica can really top what he's been doing all night is to basically set himself on fire, which he almost does. He, like, turns himself inside out during this 11 o' clock breakdown. And it's impressive. But again, I, for myself, was never fearful of him because after a while, he just plateaued and it all just became the same for me. You saw Moments of his performer elements in the opening when he's in blackface for Marie is tricky. When they're doing uptown with the Darmano Brothers, you know, you see him having a little bit of fun there during dry, he's having fun, but honestly, I would argue from, you know, uptown onwards, he just gets more growly and shouty. Now, that is, again, that is part of Burrs Persona, but it's not all he is. And if you're just doing that all the time, there's no element of suspense. There's no danger. You think about, you know, Oliver Reed in the movie Oliver playing Bill Sykes, and think about just how menacing and terrifying he is in that movie without shouting or raising his voice and at all. There's so much power in not saying or doing anything. Think of Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs as Hannibal Lecter. How cool, calm, and collected he is and how focused he is. The thing about manic people, about insane people, is that it all makes sense to them. It's all logical to them, but there's something in their brain chemistry that makes them not see actual reality, just their own version of reality. And because we can't see the reality that they can see, that's what makes them terrifying, because we're like, I don't know what the natural next step for you is. And with Danika, it's just sort of all manic all the time. Now, this is where I would say, if we had a longer production process, that's where we go in with a director, and we go, okay, now we'll start to finesse this. You are able to get to this place, and that's fantastic, but you are not allowed to get there for a while. And we can only show bursts of it here and there. Now, let's figure out other ways to throw Queenie, to throw Kate, to throw your other party guests off their axis. And I do think that is something he can do. He's proving himself to be a very smart intuitional. Intuitive intuition. A smart, intuitive performer. And he understands how. How grotesque this character has to go. Now it's about using this process to figure out how to scale back and get there later. It also will save his voice, because as we got towards the end of the night, it was definitely getting a little ragged. And I'm like, well, if you hold back a little bit on some of that shouting, it won't be so ragged by the end. This was something I was telling a lot of students when I was doing workshops and adjudicating at the Florida Thespian Festival, which is state high school theater competition, and kids are competing for monologue and solo songs and group numbers and duets and blah, blah, blah. And I also was doing workshops for scene study and analyzing musicals. And we talked about this a lot with both of them of like, you'd be surprised how for how much longer you're able to maintain yourself if you hold off on going for broke immediately. Because a lot of people want to sort of run, go out the gate and show what they can do immediately. I'm like, there's a lot of power in restraint guy. There's a lot of power in standing still. And I'll get to that more in a second. But, yeah, Donagha's performance is still very good, but because his menace for me stops being menacing because it gets so plateau y, that also doesn't allow Jasmine to have anything to go off of. As the party gets more debaucherous. She can't really get fearful when he's just sort of doing this all the time. She can't be put on her toes. We do see, again, a sensuality with them mostly in the very beginning during the Wild party number. You see that they've definitely had some fucking in the past, but after that, the relationship kind of goes away and it just sort of becomes, you know, antagonistic. And not in a sexy way, not in a we have history kind of way. But once again, this is something that more time could allow for. But this is also why we don't go into encores expecting a finished product. And it's also why we don't tell people when encore shows should transfer, because you're really not setting actors up for success to give a brilliant performance in so little time. We shouldn't have that expectation. But also, that doesn't mean that when we see someone and we enjoy it, we go, oh, my God, this equals a Broadway ready performance. Very rarely have I seen an encores performance where I'm like, oh, that could go to Broadway right now. Very, very rarely. Next up at number seven is Betsy Morgan as Sally. It is such a minor role, it's hard to make a major impression, but I find that Betsy Morgan is able to do it. There's a lot of complaints about all the stage business in the show, and Morgan in particular has gotten some brunt of the criticism for just being distracting on stage with her antics. I find that really to be the case. Maybe it's because where I was sitting, I was able to get a nice tableau of everything. So Everything she did was, you know, it was a fun moment to see, but the moment she kind of settled, I was able to look on and see something else. She sings After Midnight Dies very well. And spoiler alert, the real twist at the end of the show is by the time the party's over, Sally has sobered up. And when everything gets really kind of awful and Madeline says to Sally, sally, let's go. Sally, let's leave. And Betsy Morgan is with Claybourne Elder. And she looks around and she just goes, who's Sally? And you learn that's not even her name. That's just what Madeline's been calling her. So we don't even know who the fuck this woman is. Sally Murphy played this role a little more catatonic than Betsy Morgan does. Betsy Morgan kind of plays it like she's constantly high, but there's like. It's more sort of like a thick haze over reality. She can see where she's at, but she doesn't really know who she is or what she's doing, doing. She has a sense of surroundings, and that's more just about getting drugs and getting gin. Everything else is beyond her. At number eight is Andrew Kober as Goldberg, one half of the Jewish producing team. He's doing some pretty solid work. I thought he was quite good. He's, I think, between him and kj, Hip and Steel as Gold, who also does a very nice job. I just think Cober is the slightly more appropriate casting of the two. Kj, you know, he sings it well, he's funny, but ultimately he's a twunk in glasses. He doesn't really have that nebbishy, aspiring producer vibe. Gold and Goldberg, I've always felt, need to sort of be in their late 30s, and for 1920s, late 30s means we cast them in their late 40s. They just. They can't. They have to have a little schlub about them. They're guys who maybe are picked last for sports teams, but because they have some money, because they have some connections, because they are on the up and up now, they're trying to have fun with who they think are the cool kids, which are, you know, these performers and these artists on the theater scene. And I think that Cober and Hip and Steel do that quite nicely. As I said, Cobra, I think, is a little more successful just because I think he's more appropriately cast. But they both are doing pretty solid work. That's 8 and 9. Now. At number 10 is where I have much more reservations. 10 is Tanya Pinkins. As Dolores. Dolores, this role was originally played by Eartha Kitt and Tonya Pinkins. Playing this role is a wonderful bit of meta casting because as I said, she was Kate in the original production in the year 2000. And Tanya Pinkins, I think is a really smart and fascinating performer. Her performance in Caroline or Change is one of my favorites. As Dolores, I was interested to see what she was gonna do because with Tanya, the thing you never really know is how's the voice gonna sound? Because for the last 20ish years, the voice has not necessarily been in the best of health. Now I will say she actually sounded pretty good. Dolores is not the biggest vocal stretch. It's a pretty low placed role. Eartha Kitt was not a really high power belter. So she sounded good on, on Moving Uptown and she sounded good on when it ends. My issue with her, Dolores was her attitude. She hit a lot of her punchlines quite nicely. Dolores has some great punchlines, but she, she doesn't have a lot of fire. Dolores is the absolute oldest person at this party and she is a survivor. She is the I'm still here from Follies, which of course Eartha Kitt performed in the London production of Follies. And Dolores was tailored to Eartha Kitt's Persona, her talents and her history. Wild Party was, I think, Eartha Kitt's first time on a Broadway stage in over 20 years. And Eartha Kitt had a very troubled performing history just for speaking her mind and speaking truth to power and getting essentially blacklisted for so many years. But she still maintained and she still survived. And especially for a woman of color for the decades in which she became prominent in America is really impressive. And that all translates into Dolores. But with that fabulosity also comes an anger and a fire. You know, Tanya Pinkins's Dolores is more sort of like that eccentric anti mame who's on maybe a little bit of ketamine, which is fun. But Eartha Kitt basically was like Larry Kramer in drag. Those of you who don't know Larry Kramer, he's the gay political activist and the playwright of the Normal Heart. And the Normal Heart might be the angriest play ever put to pep, ever put to paper. And you know, Larry Kramer himself was an angry, angry, angry gay man. And all of that anger you could find in Eartha Kitt, who was able to just stand stock still, stare down the audience and perform the 11 o' clock number when it ends with nothing but her eyes, her voice and her energy. This was a woman who's made it through so much, she's still standing. She gets what she wants, which is a contract to go to Broadway or at least uptown with the Golden Goldbergs. And she both has an antagonistic relationship with Queenie. You also see that she tries to help Queenie. She has an antagonistic relationship with Burrs. She's very self serving. She's not fanatic, vindictive. She won't throw other people under the bus. But she is always looking out for number one. And the way to do that is you have to be tough. But there's also an anger of why did I have to be tough? Why can't the world just be kinder? Why do I have to be a gladiator all the time? That's exhausting. But ultimately if you want to make it to the very end, you got to be a gladiator. And oh, you think that it's all just fun and games. No. One day it all is going to come crashing down and who are you and what are you going to have and who are you going to have around you? And that's an attitude of a fighter, of an angry fighter. And that's not who Tanya Pinkins is delivering to us. This is to say what she's doing isn't bad, but it's just not as compelling. She's wandering around the stage during when it ends. She's feeling up her body and sort of being a lot more sensual and that's fine. But you really just want especially because you know she can do it. You know that Tanya Pinkins can get get angry and she can stare you down. And that's all I want. I want her in those kitten heels to plant her feet. Look at 2200 people who, half of whom probably don't know what the they signed up for and are not sure why they're even here. And belt in their mouths. When it ends with the you will sit and you will listen because I am Tanya Pinkins and this song is incredible. And you. And we would have leapt to our feet the night I saw it. It was enthusiastic applause, but it was not voracious applause. And that's a shame because I think she could have done it. At number 11 is Maya Ro as Nadine. Nadine is the kid sister of May, the white wife of the boxer Eddie. Nadine is a tricky role. She's intentionally annoying. She's 14. She's the wannabe. She's like, you know, Gretchen Wieners meets Haley from Modern Family with Evan Rachel Wood from 13. She's younger than she wants to pretend she is. She wants to do so much. She aspires to move to New York and see and be one of the fabulous women like Queenie. In her mind, she can't see that the paint is covering brokenness. She cannot see the pain and the debauchery. She thinks it's all fabulous. And so she's trying to drink as much as she can, do as coke as much as she can, be sexual as much as she can. And that's all funny to an audience because she's so fucking annoying. Like when she sings her first bit in front of Queenie, Queenie's response is, what's this? And it's great. She's so much energy for the task. But ultimately it ends in trauma because Nadine, spoiler alert. Gets assaulted. She. She parties too close to the sun, too young to the sun, and doesn't realize that with all of this debauchery comes a lot of baggage and she ends up having to get a lot of, again, trauma to go along with this. And Maya Rowe, I think, is. I feel like she understands the narrative that Nadine is the character that so many people find the most annoying. Brooke Sunny Moriber, in the original production kind of got read for filth for going so overboard with how annoying she was, but I think you kind of need that. Everyone in the show is bold personality and it all kind of starts to water down again as the facades go away. I could have used a little bit more of that boldness with Maya Rowe as Nadine. She sings the ever lovin shit out of this, though. Her lights of Broadway towards the end of the show. She sounds fucking incredible and so props to her. And, you know, she also goes for it. I just would have liked a little bit more of that annoying, neurotic energy. That's Maya Rowe at number 11. And number 12 is Claiborne Elder as Jackie. Jackie is a former rich boy who basically has been cut off by his rich family, has his own sexual trauma, which we'll get into in a second, and has become sort of this, like, party monster. Very Macaulay Culkin in the movie Party Monster. Jackie has a lot of life. He's got a lot of sensuality, he's got a lot of charm, but again, a lot of brokenness. And he's the one who assaults Nadine. He's the one who gets into, in this production, a threesome with the two Darmano brothers. He's ambisextress, as he likes to say. This was played by Mark Kudish in the original production. And Clayborne sings it well, his voice was sounding a little tired, but he hit all of his notes, you know, really clearly. And he gets the charm part right, he gets the sensuality part right, but he doesn't really find the broken part of Jackie, which you need to have in the second half again, as everything starts to fall apart and as he, in his coked out haze, starts to. Sorry to trigger anyone with the R word, but rapes Nadine and then gets pulled off of her. And you see him start to spiral out. And Claybourne doesn't go for that. He goes for like, I'm okay, everything's fine. I don't know what everyone's talking about, but the way that the material is written, he is absolutely being manic and spiraling there. It's the, come on, we're all just having fun. Everyone's having fun, right? I didn't do anything bad. We're just having fun. Jackie's just having fun. And you learn that part of the reason why Jackie is this way is because when he was a child, his father used to sexually abuse him. And so that is how Jackie perceives sex is. It's something you do. It's something that we all do. Even if someone else doesn't want to do it, you do it anyway. It's just what adults do. And that's not really something that Claiborne gets into. That's number 12. And number 13 is Jelani Aladdin as Black, the moocher, the hustler. Black is also a tricky role. I think Black and Nadine might be the two trickiest roles in the show because Black doesn't have a lot of stage time. Again, he shows up halfway through the musical and kind of immediately has to start locking in with Queenie and selling this love narrative that many people don't buy. And Black doesn't have a ton of material to go off of. He really has two songs to sing. He's got Taking Care of the Ladies and People Like Us. You gotta sing those well, which Jelani does. But at the very least, you gotta have some charm and you gotta connect with your Queenie. And Jelani doesn't do that. He's very wooden, he is standoffish, and he's just not really locking in with Jasmine, who is giving him a lot to work with. But he's just being straight Lace leading man. Now, that's also something that Yancy Arias did in the original and appropriately got criticized for. I would love to see a black who genuinely can turn on the charm and have a Persona that is enticing and personable and then see how that energy kind of flips when he's really connecting with Queenie. I hate to bring it back to, you know, well worn territory, but it's what I love about Michael Hayden and Carousel. As Billy Bigelow, when he has his hill scene with Sally Murphy, you see his Billy put on charm at first and then how she starts to throw him with her answers and how she is and her earnesty. You see the charm go away and he starts to just connect with her. And he's almost embarrassed to be connecting with her because he doesn't do that, but he is anyway because there's something special about her and something special about what they share. And those 11 minutes with Billy is ultimately the last hour with black, and you really need that. And that's not really what Jelani does. So he sounds good, he looks great. The abs are abbing, but that's really all I can say about it. At number 14 is Evan Tyrone Martin as Eddie. The voice is fine. If you know this show, you know that Norm Lewis had a lot of high notes that. That Evan does not hit. They also cut Golden Boy, which is a big sort of falling out moment dramatically for Eddie in the second half. They cut that for him. So that gives him less material to really shine with, but he's just sort of there. And then at number 15 at the end of the cast list for me is Leslie Margarita as Mae. Listen, yes, her voice was not in great shape this week, but I also just. I'm sorry, I will say this. When she was announced, I knew she wasn't gonna be able to sing this role. Mae is a comedic role. That is true, but it's also a singer's. Leah Hawking in the original is a singer. She sings her face off while also being funny. Also, the kind of comedy that Leslie does is not the kind of comedy that I think you can get away with in this show. Leslie does a specific kind of comedic drawl that similar to Annaleigh Ashford. It's not that it's bad, it's just that once you've seen it, you'll always see it. Having seen her in Matilda and Dames at Sea and Gypsy and Emoji Land, like, I'm sorry, this is just. This is what she does. And it's fine for a lot of people. It's not bad comedy acting. I'm just. I know it now. I can predict what she's gonna do before she even does it. And the way she says lines, she has. The way she does in Matilda. You chose books. I chose looks that drawn out, sort of dry monotone. She does it in Gypsy as Tessie Torah. She does it. She did it in Emoji Land. She did it in the mc and she's doing it in this as well. The that's my friend Kate and now I'm fat and she's a star. That's just what she does. And it bothers me. A, because I'm already expecting it, but B, because May has to has the rug get pulled out from under her later. And we have to feel a little something for that because, yes, she's married to Eddie, but she also now has to watch Eddie make a fool of her by flirting with Kate and ignoring her. And when Kate, when May is trying to have her own fun, Eddie's berating her. And then May lets on that she actually knows more about Eddie's indiscretions than she lets on. She knows that he's been fucking around. She has one of the great lines in the show and one of my favorite lyrics of all time, which is when they're fighting in the song Gin Wild, she sings to him, you get more ass than a toilet seat. And I bet you make them all call you the champ. Someone who's truly fucking dumb and out to lunch does not have the ability to give a quip like that. May is a little more simple minded, but she's not fully dumb and she is aware and she needs to have that pain. She's holding on to all of this and you just don't get that with Leslie. You just don't. It's just pure, you know, on the surface comedy. She does try to go for hurt, as Eddie kind of keeps embarrassing her during the party. But for me, it's too little too late. Now, the other thing about this is Wild Party is a very dark and intense piece that requires a lot of invention and creativity. George C. Wolfe, you know, created this with Michael John Lachusa and staged this when he was really at the height of his power. And the original production very much embraced the aesthetic of vaudeville. The whole apartment was on a turntable which required constant movement. It was more like a black box. And there was a lot of shadows and people would go in and out of scenes from each other. And there was a fluidity to the staging because as George C. Wolfe says, parties don't stop or rather just say, there are no intermissions in parties. They Constantly move until they just die like a shark. And this production is a very literal design and a very literal staging. It's a unit set of the apartment, which is designed by Arnel Sanchianco. And it's. You know, they try to do dark painted colors, a little bit of dirt to sort of show that it's worn down, but it's ultimately just one big old unit set where nothing moves and everyone kind of just has to weave their way in and out of different. Different rooms. This is a mistake. The costumes are fine by Linda Cho. They're mostly purity appropriate. I wish they could have a little more style to them. I don't love how Tonya Pinkins is dressed, for example. I think that there could be a little more flair to some of the costumes. I think Adrienne Warren's costume's great. The lighting by Justin Townsend is okay. There are times when it's fully locked into the period and to the shadowy vibe that the show gives. The majority of the party itself is done in rather bright lighting. The whole production, honestly, for me, was giving Stage Door Manor. Everyone take a shot. Stage Door Manor. A lot of unit sets made of wood and a lot of bright lighting because you don't. They don't have the money to make a million sets for each show. It's sort of. You get the one set and that's it. And this is a production where I really felt like the director and the design team, the director, of course, being Lily Ann Brown, they should. I feel like there could have been more fun with abstract design and allowing for more fluid staging and allowing things to take place in different pockets of the apartment that the party is being held in. Without making it so literal. It's sort of how I feel about any production of Follies. The best productions of Follies are not so literal with the design and not so literal with the staging. People can be downstage, right, but that doesn't mean they're downstage right at the party. That means they could be up in the flies having a conversation. You never really know where you are, but you do get a sense of where you are. And it allows you to make various stage pictures. It allows choreography to flow better. And I will say the choreography, which is by Katie Spielman, is solid. There are parts of the choreography is really well done. I think her choreography for Dry is good. I don't mind her staging for Gin Wilde. I think she could stand to have a bit more fun with sort of the blob of it all. But there is good stuff there. I wasn't a big fan of her opening choreography with Queenie Was a Blonde. It was a little too many lifts. Ultimately, I think there should have been a little more bump and grind to it. This show has nasty stank to it in a good way. It's intentional. And you want to see that in the design. You want to see that in the staging. You don't really get that. The closest it gets is during the Black As a Moocher, which is a number for Adrian Warren that turns into an orgy. And this production goes for it. They have everybody in dark, dim blue lighting, full on fucking, and I'm here for it. It's not hot, it's not sexy, it's not meant to be. But it shows you that everyone in this company is on board. Everyone has signed the release that, like, yeah, we're all gonna go for it. And so it makes you wonder if they're all willing to go for it, why does it feel like not everyone is? And I think the ultimate problem is Lily Ann Brown as director. Now, I've read some interviews with her. I've listened to what she has to say about the show, and I was very excited to see what she did. I was interested to have a woman's voice on this, to have another person of color, because George Z. Wolfe, of course, is a man of color. And it sounded like she was eager to really dive into the messiness of the show and wasn't gonna apologize for it. She wasn't gonna cut the blackface or anything like that. And that's great. The worst thing you could do for the show is try to make it easy for anybody. That's not what she does. But she also, with such limited time, doesn't really have a visual point of view, and she doesn't really allow the cast to congeal and doesn't give enough of them stuff to play off of with each other, which is sometimes what happens in encores. It's sort of like there's not enough time. You cast the people who you think are the most right for the roles, who you think will bring the most to the table on day one and have them sort of figure it out through rehearsals and then through performances. But you also, as a director, do want to guide them and say, hey, from the table, Donica, you're getting. You're starting to plateau with the shouting right now. And, like, it's great that you can get there, but I need you to hold off more. Give us fits and bursts of I need you I want you to throw Jasmine and keep her on her toes. Throw her off her axis. Her Queenie needs to be scared of you sometimes in addition to turned on, in addition to repulsed by you. Give her something. Give her something to keep her guessing. And Jasmine in contrast when he's giving this to you, have it affect you. It can't all just be disdain. It can't all just be laissez faire. And to know, say to Claiborne Elder as Jackie, like you're, you're nailing the charm. But like, as we get to the second half, at this point onwards in the show, I need you to start mapping out where your character starts to fall apart mentally, right? Or saying to Tanya Pinkins, like, you're nailing the comedy, Tanya. But now I want you to really channel all of the things you've gone through in your own life. Think about that time when you were in Jelly's Last Jam and you were doing a soap opera at the same time and you got served divorce papers at the stage door. And after the show was over you were broke and you were struggling and wandering the country trying to get custody of your kids and getting any job you could like, you shouldn't have had to go through that. And you're here now and that's amazing. But why did you have to go through that? That's so unfair. It's a testament to you that you're still standing. But you should, we shouldn't have had to make you go through that channel that rage and have it pour out of your eyeballs and your vocal cords. That's where a director comes through. Not just in staging, but in the attitude. And on both cases I felt that Lily Ann Brown sort of dropped the ball. A lot of discussion again of like too much stage business. We didn't know where to look. And that is also true. That is also where I think that not having it be a full on unit set comes into play and you can have furniture sort of move all over the stage so lighting can kind of zone in on the other pockets of the apartment and we can focus on a scene over here before we go to a scene over there. But again, you know, you only have so much space in an encore stage and the orchestra has to be on stage with you. It's sort of part of the gig. So there's only so much a design team can do with that apartment and with all of those pieces. And even if we did do a more abstract design and allowed the couch and the bed and the doors to all sort of move about so, you know, we can start emptying the space and have the lighting get darker and have it become really scary. At the end of the day, there's still an orchestra on stage. So even when Donica's doing How Many Women in the World and when he brings out that gun to threaten Queenie with, even the lighting was not so bright, brightly lit. If it was darker and more scary, you still have a 15 piece band above them. And it always will remind you that this is a performance. And that's just sort of the double edged sword of encores, right? Of you have to try to give the grace of God for stuff like this. But it is difficult when a show like Wild Party kind of needs all the help it can get. Because brilliant as I think this show is, it is not foolproof. It is in fact, because of its messiness, because it's doing so many different things. You really need as much creativity, precision and prep as you can. Now, I hope that with this production, it inspires people to go listen to the original cast recording, to go to the library to watch it, because there is so much brilliance in that original incarnation of Wild Party. This production doesn't make a ton of changes. As I said, they cut one song, Golden Boy, and then the only other real change they make is to the finale. Finale is a weird word to call the final scene, but like in the original Lippa version of Wild Party, Andrew Lippa has the whole confrontation between Queenie Black and Burrs. It's a whole number. It's called Make Me Happy. Lachiusa doesn't do that. He doesn't make it a song. He just makes it a scene with very tense music playing underneath. And I think that that actually adds a level of tension and fear to it because you're not worrying about the high belting, you know, pyrotechnics. You're worrying about the very real circumstances of a character might get shot in front of you. And the way that Queenie pleads for her life during that music is really scary. You can feel the barrel of the gun on Queenie. Both Toni Collette on the cast recording, Jasmine, Amy Rogers on stage in a way that I don't fear for Queenie's life during Make Me Happy, you know, yes, she's pleading with Burrs in the song, but she's pleading to him through song and high belting and it takes you out of it. The lip aversion for me has that problem of Diana, the musical of when you're focused on Making things bops and high flying, adored vocals. I'm impressed by the vocals, I'm impressed by the compositions, but I am not in the story. It becomes a concert, not a story. To me, that's a me thing. You may feel differently. This version does two things. When Burrs goes insane, he puts his black face back on and he shows up to his bedroom where Queenie and Black are in bed post coital. And Black has taken off some of Queenie's makeup. I want to see you. You're beautiful. Greet the day with your natural face. In the original text, when Burrs comes on in his blackface, he starts shouting to nothing as if he's talking to all the people. He starts divulging everybody's secrets. He and pardon the language, but this is how it is in the text. He says of the Darmano brothers, Phil, Oscar, do you know the song? And forgive the phrasing, but this is what it is. Good coons take it in the rear. And he says, you don't know it. Jackie will teach you. His father taught him. That's important to hear you. Audiences sometimes miss the reference to Jackie's sexual abuse in his song Breezing Through Another Day Day. It's made explicit in that moment. This is followed up with Burrs shouting at Dolores, who Dolores has told Burrs, you're going to help me get in with Golden Goldberg because I know a bunch of your secrets, like the fact that you were married and you beat your wife till her lips turn blue, which she does divulge to Queenie. And Burr shouts to the Dolores that isn't there. I know a great deal about you. I hear you're one part black and a great deal Jeff. Dolores is hiding that about herself. Dolores Montoya, as, as portrayed by Eartha Kitt, is pretending to be Latin, a fiery Latin. And it turns out she's actually mixed raced again. Everyone's pretending to be something they're not for the sake of erasing the past that you know haunts them or to get something ahead of them that they think will make them more complete that they need or they want. He then starts to shout about Eddie and May and their abusive relationship. And then it goes into the gun sequence. They have cut all of this dialogue for Danica and I wish that they hadn't. I think it's really, really compelling material. It's harsh, it's upsetting material and it's upsetting wording, but that's on purpose. Then when Black does shoot Burrs in the tussle, Originally, once the shot happens, it goes in this giant cacophony of Queenie was a blonde into the final phrase of Queenie singing by herself and greeting the day. Before we get to the cacophony, we have now added a choral section where the cast on the sides of the stage sing in a cappella choral harmony. The directions of what happens to Burrs post gunshot of him tilting his head, falling to the bed, the blood rushing out. I would assume that this is lines directly from the March poem that most likely was cut during previews of the Wild Party on Broadway, because lachiusa's Wild Party has always been intermissionless. And it was just a matter of cutting it down to a length that was agreeable to people. I believe in early, early workshops, it was like five hours long. And then by the time they got to their first preview on Broadway, it was about two and a half hours. And then by the end of previews, they got it down to two hours. And by the end of the Broadway run, it was about an hour and 50. The orchestra was speeding up that shit like none other. I wish that this production also, by the way, I would like to ask. I understand that it's a short period to put up a show, and so sometimes sound issues happen. I don't understand how Encore's that's been doing this now for almost 35 years. Why they haven't really figured out how to make it work sound wise. Or why they can't sort of nail it down quickly. Obviously, you don't really know what the sound's gonna be when you're in tech and then you have everybody else in the audience. But I'm like, I don't know. You've done this enough times. Shouldn't you be able to kind of get it fixed after the fir, you know, by the first preview? Because they do tech. They do a dress rehearsal, which there's an audience for, and then there's a first performance. Like, by the second, like, official performance, it kind of should be. You should have it figured out. So that's what I don't understand, especially with a show like this, where I. You need that music to wash over you, especially the drums. Like, this is a show that has drum beats that are dark and dangerous. And bt, I mean, get your hands on the bootleg of the final performance on Broadway, because that drummer is banging like he's going to die tomorrow. And it is sexy. Oh, God, I love it. So that is another thing for me is like sort of the sound is sort of imbalanced and it's really important to have that in a show like this. I don't know how I feel about the choral singing there. I guess it helps sort of express to an audience clearly what has happened. Wild Party has always had an issue with just sort of the ending. It just sort of kind of ends. And it's not. It's not even like a Follies ending where even though it kind of ends on such a bummer meh note, you still feel like it has earned that. Wild Party doesn't feel like it kind of earns that, but that's sort of the beauty of a flawed piece like this. It has such amazing highs. And the lows aren't even low, they're just the lows are these flaws that are going to kind of keep it beautifully imperfect and always makes you strive as an artist to make it all fall into place. And there could be a production and a cast down the line that makes that happen. As it is, I think that this production shows that this is a really worthwhile piece and I hope more people get obsessed with it and want to do it from now on. That's really all I got to say about Wild Party. I hope that this has been enjoyable for you guys. I can talk more about this during the Broadway Q and A My My Broadway My Broadway Breakdown Birthday Q and A, which I'm going to release on Thursday. I've posted the option on the Discord Channel for you guys to post questions for me on there that I can answer for that episode. I'm also going to post on Instagram when this episode drops if you want to submit anonymous questions. Of course I won't get to all them, but I can talk and answer more specific questions about Wild Party for you if you want to hear my thoughts further. If I haven't explained everything, I mean, I've been talking for an hour and seven minutes at this point, so I have to imagine that I've covered everything. But if you feel like I haven't, you can submit a question on Instagram or on the Discord channel and I will answer it more fully in the birthday episode coming up. And that's it for now. Once again, join the substack Join the Discord Follow me on Instagram Matcop like usual spelling, make sure to give a nice 5 star rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you like us. And you know, it helps with the algorithm and helps really boost our download numbers. We're doing quite well these days, but I feel like we can. We should be striving to go even bigger and greater and wonderful. And you guys have been a wonderful audience. So I hope that you are supportive of that, of us trying to expand the audience and you guys can expand the community of Broadway. Breakdown. I ran into a listener at Wild Party, actually, and that was really fantastic. I also ran into some listeners at Death of a Salesman, which I will do a review of soon enough when that show opens as well. So to those listeners at Death of a Salesman, hello. And you'll hear my thoughts soon enough. You know what? Because she's such an icon and a force, and I feel like we don't give her enough credit, we're going to close out with Eartha Kit in the Wild Party, and I hope that you guys. Guys take some time to really listen to that cast recording go on YouTube. There's a bootleg of that as well. It's not the best quality, but it gives you an idea and it's just fun. And by fun, I mean it's just. It's exciting and interesting and fascinating and troubling and. And sometimes you need that for theater. You know, it tells you who it is. All right, that's it for now. Thank you so much for listening, guys. Take it away. Eartha By. I've been there and there and there and clean enough. So you better hope to Jesus or Mohammed or whatever.