Matt Koplik (27:17)

Billy, I'd beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top.

Ariana Grande (27:20)

Yeah.

Matt Koplik (27:21)

You're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire.

Ariana Grande (27:35)

And we're back. So I also, by the way, when I record these things, I don't know if it sounds like gibberish or not. So you just gotta, you know, hunker down with me and see where we go. So I've talked about this with Gypsy before, right? There's no totally right or wrong way to do it. With every revival, you know, you're kind of building from the ground up each time. And each show that you're reviving is built differently and thus how you approach it has to be different. There was a lot of talk in my circles about like, oh, God, you know, certain things in this production never would have flown if Scott Rudin were the producer. And listen, Scott Rudin, asshole that he is and was and always will be, I don't want us to glorify his taste level, that he had perfect taste all the time. He was meticulous, for sure. And he really did his Best to get all of his productions down to their best versions of themselves. He was very big on that. And it's why he and George the Wolf actually worked so well together, because he gave Wolf that time on things like Shuffle Alongs, really sort of work out all the Kinks and some of my favorite things he did produce, but he also had some clunkers. Best cased example, I would say, is the revival he did of hello Dolly with Bette Midler and then the very following season, Carousel in 2018. And I've talked about this before, but basically he approached the revival of Carousel the same way he approached the revival of hello Dolly. And I don't know if anyone's told you, but those are two very different musicals. That is like putting on a revival of Noises off and then doing a revival of Streetcar and going, let's go for the same vibes. That is not how you do this. So one wonders what he would do with a Gypsy like this. I think he worked on the Patty. One can't recall. Maybe not. Maybe I'm making that up. But with this revival, right there is baggage already. Of all the other women who have done it, it's been done well. We all know that the show works. Now we have the added element of race involved in. In this production. So how is that going to be done? Especially with an artist like George C. Wolf who does not shy away from this kind of stuff. I would say in the time of previews, Woolf has definitely highlighted a bit clearer the moments he wants to make about race. The best example, I will say, is in the transition of the act, when they're going from baby June and her newsboys to Dainty June and her newsboys. That transition is very famous in all productions of Gypsy for having the strobe light effect as the kids are doing the. What are they called? The chugs or something like that, you know, where they're flapping their arms up and down throughout the strobe light effect. And in 20 seconds, maybe even less, we flash forward like 10 years and we see these kids older, even though the act has stayed exactly the same. And they are still chugging along on the vaudeville circuit. And it's a very efficient economic piece of storytelling, which you always need for musical theater. Now, Woolf decided in this production that as the act gets older, the newsboys are replaced with white newsboys. They started off as an all black group, and then as they got older, the newsboys become white. So they can't do the original transition anymore because it just. It wouldn't make sense to a lot of audience members. And also because Wolf wants to make it a moment for the audience to see Rose making the choice to replace these young black boys with grown white boys. She also, in this scene, Wolf makes it even more of a point that she takes Louise Joy woods now and pushes her from the side all the way to the back and gives her top hat to a different newsboy and basically has her waving flags in the background. Part of it is because Louise has no talent. Part of it is because Louise is now the darkest skinned person on the stage. And because she is Rose's daughter, she's not going to fire her from the act. But she also doesn't really fit with Rose's idea of what will make the act successful. And I know I mentioned this in the last review, but it is something that ultimately fits with both Woolf's concept of incorporating race into the story as well as what's already in the libretto. All you have to do is read the script or watch any production of Gypsy to see how Louise's involvement in the act downgrades over the years. You know, it starts off with just her and June. She is the end company of baby June and company. And then she becomes one of four newsboys, and then she becomes one of six, and she's just pushed further into the back. And then when they go to grand Singer, she is the back end of a cow. So it's just. That's already there. But then you add the fact that June is light skinned, Louise is dark skinned, the rest of the act is white performers. And Louise's, I want to call it downfall. But you know, her degradation, is that even the right word? But her downsizing, her demotion from one spot to another, that's already in the script, packs an extra punch when you add the race quota to it. And I think that is very effective and very intelligent and very well crafted. It's also done a lot tighter now than it was a month ago. That whole thing was like a two minute sequence a month ago. Now it's maybe 45 seconds, which is still twice as long as the original transition. But it is a shorter transition than it used to be. It doesn't. It's also not like really the crowd pleasing effect that it usually has because as the kids are doing their trenches, that's what they're called. As they're doing their trenches, they. The music gets faster as the strobe light gets faster. And so when it ends, the audience is like kind of exhilarated because of this cool staging effect. And that's not really happening here. Other moments of race, I guess you could say, is there are times when you see a white performer performing while Rose and the actor backstage. Like when she's trying to get the kids on stage after some people and pre Small world. But other than that, I would argue that race still isn't a major playing factor here. It's ignored when it's convenient and it is brought up when it is convenient. And I still don't fully believe the arc of Rose trying to assimilate the act to white audiences outside of the newsboy replacement and possibly the whitening up of June some more. I mean, when they're at Gringer's, her wig is definitely a lot blonder and her face is definitely a lot paler. But you don't really see any kind of change in the act itself, which is part of the point. When you watch Gypsy, part of the joke is that the act doesn't ever really change. Despite Rose's claim that it's a new act with the cow and everything. Like, it still has the extra extra. It still ends with the Uncle Sam, like, we love America motif. And they're all basically acting like they're seven. And so you can't really hide from that. But I think you could have more nuanced moments happening in staging and in choreography if that's sort of the. If that is the message we're sending. And it would help because then having Louise be successful as a, you know, out and proud, beautiful black woman as Rose herself sort of gets pushed to the background. That would be sort of the ultimate irony. But these are all very distinct images that don't tied together. They're fascinating and they are intelligent and they are totally like you can. They are postcards that you can absolutely sell somebody on, but they are not fully connected to each other. When you watch the show, it's more sort of you look back and you kind of have to try to tie it together yourself. And it's a show is a good show, should have conversations afterwards, right? You should be always talking about it for a little bit afterwards, but you shouldn't then go back trying to convince yourself of what you saw or maybe didn't see. It should be helping you in the moment, and then you can fully explore it more after the fact. And there is just so much that's not happening in this Gypsy. And I really don't care what any think piece tells you because I've now seen it twice and I'm looking for it. And I'm telling you, there is so much that's not on that stage connecting these themes. There are moments when it pops and it pops so well, and that's great. You just wish that it all hung together stronger. In terms of performances, I still maintain that Audra is probably now one of the prominent performances in the show. For me, I still stand by Melinda hall as Ms. Cratchit and Elektra, really just doing God's work with Bitstress material. Kevin was also very into what she was doing. And then Jordan Tyson as June is still really selling the thing. Her acting has even sharpened a lot. George Seawell gives her this moment in Grsinger's office when Rose is fully throwing her dream away, and he has her sort of step outside of the scene and go up against the pillar and have this sort of like, oh, no, woe is me moment, which she sells very well. It's just the staging part itself for me, is a bit hat on a hat, but she sells it quite nicely. And then vocally, she's just. She is doing what all good Dainty Junes do vocally. It's just that what she brings to it is her own fire and her own eagerness to make it and to rise above the material and sell it and herself. And I checked in with Kevin to make sure that he was okay with me talking about this. When they're doing Dainty June and her farm voice and they're doing the Caroline section, Jordan. When Jordan's doing the. She likes to move in the moonlight. And when she moves in the moonlight, like, she's. She's fucking up there. Her voice and her placement and her pinginess of it all, like, it's all just so perfectly lined. And Kevin let out a guttural Jesus Christ. When she was hitting that high note, which is doing the move in the moonlight, he just went, jesus Christ. And I started laughing because I was like, girl, same. It's. It's. It's not just Oshi singing her face off, because everyone's singing their face off these days. It's just that it just. It's so precise and it fits so well and it works so well for that character and on that material. So it's just brava, Jordan. I say brava to you. Danny Burstein has also made a stronger impression as Herbie. He's not. I wouldn't say he's exceptional in the role. It's really hard to be exceptional as Herbie, especially if you're not really connecting with your Rose. John Hattery really connected with Tyne Daly. They had this grown up sensuality with each other that didn't feel necessarily hot, but it felt real and it felt vulnerable. Boyd Gaines had very much a Willy Lohman sad sack energy about him, which made you really want to see him come out of his shell and be a grown up. And then John Dossett was just a very charming presence and his height alone opposite Bernadette Peters miniature stature gave him a good sort of dynamic with her. But it's really hard to ask Herbie to sort of come out and like own the stage. And I wouldn't say that Danny does that. He makes a stronger impression as a likable oaf who gets more grit as the story continues. But he's. I would argue he's still trying to find the big moments and land it. The breakup with Rose is fine. His final line of the be a good girl is done extremely well. But he has a couple of blow ups in that scene with Audra that just don't feel earned yet. And it feels like it's not really reacting off of Audra's rose. What she's bringing to the scene outside of maybe frustration because her rose is just so. Her rose can just be so space cadet idiot. And so you can, I guess you can hear anger in his voice from the frustration he gets. But it still sort of feels like now I just feel like we're shouting to shout. But as I said, he has found a lot more of his way with it. Joy as Louise, I would say for me has gotten to a point where she is consistently unobjectable. It's not a great performance for me. I wouldn't even really call it good. It's not a disaster. She's a very charming person on stage. I thought so and I can get it for you wholesale. I did not see her Audrey live. I know that the Discord Channel shared video of her Audrey with I think it was Matt Doyle. So I watched that and I thought, thought she did a perfectly nice job. I maintain though, she's so vocally overqualified for this role and I don't know if I spy her yet as a strong actress in this role. Part of it could be her, part of it could be the direction. The strip is still exactly how it was and still frustrates the absolute living shit out of me. They have still cut her first dialogue it so her feeling confident in this scene. They have the moment where you see her start to like it. But it's so fast now and. And so it Happens so quickly that it doesn't actually resonate. And then her next two strips are just also giant whatevers. And then they do the final one, the Josephine Baker, which a friend of the pod. I will not. I will not reveal their name. But when I wrote my review of, you know, the Josephine Baker coded dance, at the end, this person texted me and said, that's very kind of you to call it Josephine Baker. Because I was getting Elizabeth Berkley in Goddess in Showgirls, which, now that this person has said that, I can't not see that. But it is probably my favorite bit of choreography in the show. It is well structured. It is precise. It is. It has attitude and style. But because, dramatically speaking, it so misses the mark of what that final strip is supposed to be that I can't even enjoy it. I'm like, well, you know, bully for you. You did a good job with steps here, but the steps are so detrimental to this arc. Why do it? The choreography in general, still, I have my sore spots with it. I don't know if they've made any major changes to the choreography. I will say it bothered me less in the Baby June and Dainty June numbers. I can't say that I liked them, but I disliked them less. I think my two favorite pieces of choreography are still the Garden of Eden and the first transition some people reprise when Rose is in the car. The way they have the cast doing road signs and all of that, I think that's very well done, and nothing really is ever as good as that. The Garden of Eden is fun, as I said, it's precise, it has style, but it is dramatically so wrong that I can't even praise it. All I need is the girl is exactly the same and still misses the point. Dramatically speaking of that song. And it makes me angry to think about it, so I'm not going to talk about it anymore. Kevin, I think you say his name is Sherlock. He performs it very well. He was actually in very good voice yesterday and is a very nice and charming Tulsa. I just don't like the choreography for that number. But with Joy's Louise, you know, Louise is a very tricky role because if you listened to the episode on Gypsy with Preston Max Allen, they did say. And it was the first time I ever really thought about it. And it's pretty true. The one real flaw of the script is that there is no. There's nothing in it that could ever give you the indication that Louise might ever be Gypsy Rosalie. She never really makes a wry comment, a witty remark. You start to see that she has insight in Act 2 when she has to step up to the plate and become an adult. Now that June has left and she's the star of the act, she's one of the few people that sort of stands up to Rose by that point. And it's not even anger. It's just sort of, you know, a bitch slap of reality, a cold dose of reality. How much money do we got? With all the girls allowances combined? How much money do we have? We have to take this job. We are flat broke. So you see her come into her own as a woman, but there's nothing about that womanhood that ultimately reveals the intelligence and the comedy that is what Gypsy Rose Lee became famous for. And so it's up to the actress to make that arc in the strip work. You have to basically build all of Louise's ARC from Act 1 through Act 2 of the SHY wallflower who's hurting and who's lonely, who's a people pleaser, who's really sweet and just wants to be noticed and wants to be loved and find the joy as well as the sadness and not overplay any of it, while also communicating to an audience that, like, you yourself are not a boring person. You are playing someone who's kind of boring. And then in Act 2, you watch that character grow a backbone, have a little bit of pushback, have some more happiness, have some more sweetness. And you watch Louise take charge when they get to the burlesque house and tells all the girls what to do and what, you know, what they need to do to go on stage and how they have to get sort of all their ducks in a row and putting rows in her place and all this stuff. Like, you're watching all of that, and that's wonderful. That's all wonderful arc. And then it has this major curveball with the strip where Louise has to blossom into an icon in less than eight minutes before our eyes. And that's a really tall order. And it's very hard to do. As I said, I think only Laura Benanti really nailed it. There are a couple of women who. Who almost completely nailed it. Krista Moore probably is like 95% successful as Louise in that strip. And I would. I also say, like, I consider anyone above 85% successful in that strip to be fantastic, iconic, and should be studied. Laura, I would say, is 99% successful. Krista is 95% successful. I actually really love Zan Charisse on the Angela Lansbury recording. I wish there was video footage of her doing it, because on the recording, on the cast recording, Xan is giving me somewhere between 90 and 95 success rate. And the Tammy Blanchard, I would say was probably about 85% successful. Natalie Wood in the movie is about 80, 85% successful. And then Laura Pulver in London, I would say is about 85% successful. But Joy in this strip is, like, not even cracking 50% for me. Part of it is that they have totally botched the strip, and that is unforgivable. But also, I don't see her arc alone. It's just sort of. She starts at one, and then by the time we get to the second strip, she's pretty much a crystallized Gypsy Rose Lee, or at least I should say, like her, Louise now is confident in control and sensual. And then we do this giant heel turn. And now she's become this singing, dancing icon, which is. Goes so against the whole point of Gypsy Rose Lee's stardom and what makes her famous with Rose pushing so hard, the singing and dancing and. And all of that, Louise, who has none of that kind of talent, just comes out, is herself and turns the world on its head. And there's nothing really post that strip that makes you feel like we've had any time pass her. Gypsy now is maybe a little more confident in how she speaks. She's far more confident in, you know, the gowns and the bathrobes than she is in the trousers, I will say that. But you don't see a woman now, and a lot of people I know have issues with the final 10 minutes of Gypsy because they're like, well, there's no connection to the Louise that was to the Gypsy that is. And I'm like, well, that's sort of the point. She's putting on airs. She is manifesting a new Persona because she loves this new Persona. She loves what it's done for her in her life. And it's really only when she snaps at Rose in the dressing room scene that you see the Louise that is still there. It's the louise of Act 2, though, not the louise of Act 1. This is the Louise who confronted her mother at the burlesque house about how much money they had and why they had to take the gig. That Louise is still deep within Gypsy Rose Lee, but now she is putting on a drag queen Persona. And Joy isn't really doing that. Joy is. She's playing. She's going for glamour, she's going for maturity, and it's not bad. You're not watching, going, like, what are you doing? But you aren't really seeing the shift and you don't see the pain. You don't see the pushback against Audra. She. I mean, she shouts, turn it off. But it doesn't feel earned in the same way that Dany's shouting in his goodbye also doesn't really feel earned. Which ultimately leads me to, with this Gypsy, why everything I'm saying is, you know, it has improved since the last time I saw it. I don't think that this is a bad production. I think the improvements, though, have made this more consistently okay. Not a lot of highs for me. Not a lot of really superb highs. It's most. A lot of it is just mostly okay. There are still a couple of what the fucks. The strip being one of them. And I can't rightfully tell you that this production now is a must see simply because of Audra, because Gypsy is not Funny Girl. Speaking of Julie Stein musicals, Gypsy is a star vehicle. You know, Rose is the lead. It's like without. If you don't have a good rose, you really can't do Gypsy. But a great rose alone is not enough to make Gypsy worth it. There are so many other moving pieces. You need a great Louise, you need a great Herbie, you need style and you need good choreography and you need precision and you need speed and you need focus and you need humor and you need gravitas. And it's all got to kind of be firing off on all cylinders. Now Gypsy itself is such a great musical that even when you're not firing off of all cylinders, it's not a waste of an evening because it's a great show. And if you do it respectfully but not necessarily with much creativity, you still will have a decent time. But this is Broadway. Not just ticket prices, but the history und legacy of Broadway. The decades that the show has been in our consciousness, the many productions we've had of it, all the different interpretations we've seen, the different revivals of other musicals we've seen. When a revival really locks into something unique with its show, you can feel it. There's a crackling electricity about it. And as I said, not every show is built the same. And thus their revival is not always going to be the same. And when we think about really like the legendary revivals of the last 40 years, we think about the Guys and Dolls with Nathan Lane and Faith Prince, which was ultimately a candy coated nostalgia fest, but it was a candy coated nostalgia festival on top of a burning fire. Patti LuPone. Anything goes also nostalgia fest, but with a sly smirk in its, you know, in its eye as well as again, a finesse in a sexuality and energy and the surprise of the light hearted fare of the script and the score, the 94 carousel, the depth and the sadness and the pain that are so baked into that show that people were unaware of until that moment. The Sam Mendy's cabaret and how timely that show is and also how dangerous that show is. Chicago again, how timely, how sexy, how sophisticated in its way that it is the 1999 Kiss Me Kate South Pacific at Lincoln center revivals where it is both honoring what's there while also finding life within and really having it bounce off of the stage and into the audience and sometimes even spilling out into the street. Hi there, Sunset Boulevard. And I don't think that this revival is a disaster of Gypsy. And as I said, my expectations were so high, my hopes for it were so high that I was bound to be disappointed somewhat by it. And I still am disappointed in it. I'm more disappointed light. I think they have definitely made improvements to it since I last saw it, but ultimately a lot of my problems are still there and will always be there. No matter how much Audra and everyone else in the cast continues to find their way and improve. Some things just aren't going to get fixed. The spirit spacing of the set, the choreography, the absolute misunderstanding of the strip. You just without going back and overhauling that, there's no getting around it. Tony chances we'll talk about in the next episode because this is my opinion, this is how I felt seeing it. That's not to say that there aren't people who feel differently, people who maybe are on a nominating board, people who are in a voting group who will feel differently and might want to vote a specific kind of way. I will talk more about sort of where the community is at with this production that will be in the next week's Tony episode. And that's not me trying to spill any tea other than I do have an ear connected to what a lot of people in the New York theater scene say. If there's one thing I give myself credit for, it's that by being honest on this podcast and on Instagram. I have cultivated a lot of relationships in this community with people where I do get their unvarnished takes on things. And some of these people are voters and nominators. Some of them are producers or actors or in marketing or on the music direction team for show or whatever. And they'll reach out and they'll say, this is what I thought. This is what my whole group thinks. This is like what we all said at the bar afterwards. And it's important to hear all of that because there's what everyone will tell you to your face on social media or in an interview. And then there's how they actually feel behind closed doors. We talked about this in the Slave Play episode with Marcus Scott, right when those Tony Awards happened, Slave Play was absolutely touted to win the night, possibly four or five Tony Awards. They were going to announce their Broadway return on the stage that night and then they ended up goose egging. And that is because the industry at large didn't like that play. They admired its importance. They appreciated that, the conversations that it started. But a lot of people, and we said this in the episode, like a lot of black women in the Broadway community hated that play. I mean, I have no physical proof of this, only a game of telephone. But there are some Tony winning black actresses who really hated Slave Play and made it a point to say so at all Broadway gatherings while the, while the voting was happening for that Tony Awards. And one wonders, like, what are people saying about Sunset and Gypsy and maybe happy ending and all these shows when they're not going on their stories and tagging it and promoting it, when they are at Glasshouse Tavern with six friends, what is it that they say? And I will talk about more of that next week. But I will say for now, for my opinion, as I said, this production has improved. I still don't think it's amazing. I would say the high points are still, you know, the Dainty June stuff. Dainty June and our Farm Boys. I think Rose's turn is 85% thrilling. It's really just the last bit of Rose's Turn that kind of falls for me, which is a shame because everything leading up to that is pretty great. As I said, Audra really is phenomenal being this raw, exposed nerve on stage and by leading with heart with her. Rose. Her breakdown in Rose's Turn is almost that of a child. Like you're watching her just turn herself inside out. She's a major crier. And it's so fascinating to watch Rose's turn with her because there are moments when the audience is whooping and hollering, but it's so evident to me watching this woman have a breakdown. Something that Patty also did, in my opinion, far more overtly than I ever would care to see. Like, Patty played the breakdown, Audra played the passion of Rose. And it's this weird Dichotomy of watching this talented performer who you love, who you're there to see do their thing, doing their thing on stage and loving it. But also the character of Rose is giving her all to an audience of zero, which is kind of sad and scary. And when you. When your brain can sort of understand that, it's really difficult to start whooping and hollering and shouting, yes, girl, work. Like I said to Kevin afterwards, I was like, if you're the kind of person whoops during Rose's turn, you're also the same person who, like, whoops right after the title song in cabaret. Like, I don't. I don't want to know you. There's another song in Gypsy that, like, someone was trying to whoop. I'm like, if you're thinking, oh, oh, it was after Little Lamb, someone tried to woo. I was like, if you're the kind of person who woos after Little Lamb, like, kindly fuck off. Because Little Lamb is not a woo song. And you're doing that because you think it's what's expected, maybe because you love Joy and you want her to hear your woo. That's not a song that you bring down the house with. It's just not written that way. Rose's Turn does bring down the house, but it has its cake and it eats it, too, because it is a showstopper that is also a giant mental fuckery. And I do think that Audra gets to that fuckery very well and gets to the heart of it very well. I just wish that on a vocal level, it ended on the high that the rest of that number is at. Does that make it worth seeing? Maybe not with the prices that they're quoting, but if you were sort of on the fence before and you're like, well, does it work now? My answer is it works better now. I still don't think that this production is great, but it is less upsetting to me this time around. Whether to you that means a rave or a recommendation, that's on you. I'm just gonna say, you know, it's. They did. They did a lot of work, A lot of it for the better. It just wasn't enough. So credit where it's due. But I can't tell you that I saw the Gypsy that Jesse Green and Adam Feldman and Juan Ramirez all saw. I saw an improved version of what I had already seen. Mostly improved. That's it for now. I will see you guys next week when we do way too early Tony predictions. And after that should be the next deep dive from picking out of a bowl and all that good stuff. The grab bag series. Who should we close out with today? I'm gonna close out with Krista Moore today because she's so undersung and we all love her. She's great. Yeah, let's do that. So, yeah, I'll see you guys in a week. That's. That's really all it is. I have nothing else to say. I'm really bad at these sign offs. Yeah, we'll see in a week for way too early Tony predictions and I look forward to that and I hope you guys do too. Take to quote sue from the substance. Take care of yourself. Alright, bye. Take it away, Krista.

Matt Koplik (61:23)

Being eyed by two young fellas who run marathons in Boston. All that romantic hocus pocus like a movie in soft focus. But my life is not like a movie is. And it's dumb to stand here and say gee whiz when it's crisis time in the kiddie quiz. Here we go again.