Loading summary
Transcript14 lines
- [00:00]
Ariana Grande
Hi, I'm Ariana Grande.
- [00:02]
Cynthia Erivo
Hi, I'm Cynthia Erivo and you're listening to the Broadway Podcast Network.
- [00:06]
Matt Koplik
Visit BPM FM to discover more.
- [00:13]
Cynthia Erivo
This episode is brought to you by Indeed. We're driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search. Match with Indeed. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com SBO terms and conditions apply.
- [00:42]
Ariana Grande
Thank you very much.
- [00:43]
Matt Koplik
That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish.
- [00:45]
Ariana Grande
Oh, I'm sure you do, but Mr. Grant. Ah. Hit it.
- [00:51]
Matt Koplik
Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright light, white light, rhythm and romance. The train is late, so while we wait, we're gonna do a little dance.
- [01:17]
Ariana Grande
Oh my God. Hello all you theater lovers, both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history UNTL legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, and this is our first episode of 2025, y'all. So far we have made it. Let us hope we continue to make it. This is in true fashion. We are not doing everything according to schedule. We said it was going to be one of the Deep Dive episodes. That's probably now getting pushed back another week or two, depending on scheduling. We may be recording a way too soon Tony prediction episode and that'll come out next. Either that or the next Deep Dive episode. But today, true to my fashion, we are doing a review episode. We have had so many requests and intel, and by we, I mean the royal we, meaning me. I, myself, Matt Koplik. I've had a lot of people reach out to me about Gypsy, specifically my thoughts when I saw it. And overall, I will say the response has been relatively calm. No one has, like, come for me for not liking it as much as I wanted to, for having issues with it, for having issues with Audra. I worked very hard to express all my frustrations in a way that could truly be absorbed while also giving credit where it was due at the time. And I did say when the episode dropped and also when I wrote my review on Instagram, like, this is probably gonna get good reviews. Gypsy tends to always get good reviews. That's just sort of the show that it is. It's one of the greatest musicals ever written. And even if you're doing an okay job with it, that's a successful night of theater for a lot of people not to, you know, know, picket old wounds. But like we all know, I'm not the big. I wasn't the biggest fan of the last Sweeney Todd revival. I called it, you know, no Blood, no Dirt, no Danger. It's. It was a perfectly acceptable regional production. There was nothing necessarily awful about it, but it was just so gutless and toothless for me. And I wasn't looking for a giant overhaul, but I was looking for a show that really kind of grabbed me by the throat. And this was a Sweeney that took me gently by the hand. And yet the reviews were extremely positive for it because Sweeney Todd itself is a brilliant musical and the revival didn't really do that much crazy stuff with it. It mostly was considerate and careful, which made it not terribly exciting for me, but not very mind boggling disastrous as well. And lo and behold, the reviews for this Gypsy were overall quite positive. I didn't read quite them in depth, I will admit. I didn't have to. Everyone sent them to me after I posted my review. And the general idea I was sort of given was that all the reviews were in agreement that Gypsy is a phenomenal musical and that Audra was unmissable. And then every other review was pretty up and down about the production itself. Some reviews pretty much didn't mention the production at all. It was just about Audra. Some were very positive about the production, others were sort of like, eh, this production's fine, but it's really all about Audra. And that bugs me. And I'll get to that later. But there was talk and questioning of whether I would go back to see Gypsy, because I did see it a couple of days before it froze. And George C. Wolfe is a director who's very famous for going down to the wire of his preview process before locking in a show. And I had some friends who had seen Gypsy when I did and then went back for the final week of previews when critics were there and they're like, no, you gotta go back. It really locks into place. It all totally works now. I had a couple of friends who saw it that same week who had never seen it before. Friend of the pod, Robert W. Schneider saw it and he was like, I don't know what you're all in a tizzy about. I think it's great. And so I made it a point that I was going to try to go back in either January or February. To see what that distance had done and what that amount of time had done for the production. And as it turns out, I ended up winning the lottery for this past Sunday. Sunday, January 5th. And I went with friend of the pod, Kevin Duda, who had not seen this production but knows Gypsy and qu incredibly well. And we went to see it again, to sort of see how we both felt about it. And we sat a little closer this time, which I also just want to say, a production shouldn't be great if you're only in the first half of the theater. You can catch certain nuances the closer you are to the stage, obviously. But a show, and especially a show like Gypsy, does have to reach the mezzanine, the rear mezzanine. You know, if you're playing the. If you're playing the palace or playing the Majestic, if you're playing the Broadway, your production has to hit the back wall. The closer you are to the stage, the more you see, but it should still hit. So enough, you know, meandering. Why don't we just sort of get to what you all want to know about, which is, how do I feel about Gypsy this time around? And comparing it to my scene about a month ago. I will say it has improved since I last saw it. But I still cannot rightfully tell you that I think the reviews are accurate. All of the problems that I had a month ago are still there. They're just softer now. They are softer problems than they were a month ago. It has definitely tightened, or at least it feels like it's been tightened since I saw it. It's still running around the same amount of time. Maybe they've shaved off, like two minutes since I last saw it. But I will say the first half of Act 1 definitely feels like a much more smooth and speedy production. Or I should say speedier. I can't rightfully say that anything in this production is speedy, but the transitions are a lot smoother and quicker. A lot of scene work has definitely had some of the air sucked out of it. I think a couple of tempos have been picked up a little bit. Not as much as I would like, but better. They have officially turned off the lights for the overture, so people are still talking during it, but whatever. That's been happening since the 30s and 40s. You don't have to bemoan the degradation of culture with that. Let's just sort of start from the center and work our way out. Because all productions of Gypsy do sort of live or die off of their Rose and Audra is if not the greatest singing actress of our time. Definitely in the top three. I think you could make an argument for a couple of people, and I would probably make an argument for all of them myself. But Audra is just. She's an extraordinary talent. She is a phenomenal actress and a terribly gifted singer with star presence and a really hard worker, and she takes risks, and that's sort of what we love her for. And she's always kind of banding about. She's always doing new things, and we love her for that. As we said before, as all of you know, her casting in this sort of threw a lot of people sideways, a lot of raised eyebrows with the idea of Audra as Rose. And some people it was the black casting of the role of having our, you know, first Broadway black rose. I want to say as well, by the way, when I posted my review last time in December, I had a little bit of a. There were a couple of people who were angry that I posted it as early as I did. They were like, you couldn't wait till, you know, the curtain went up on opening night. You had to post it like, that morning or like the night before. And I'm like, well, first of all, I'm not officially a member of the press with this. I didn't get press seats, so I don't have to abide by embargo. I didn't have to abide by the embargo. And also, people have been posting their reviews online and on their podcast as well. So I'm just sort of a drop in the bucket. But then someone else, I guess, had an issue with how I began the episode. I don't even remember how I started, but they said like, oh, I had to stop immediately because this is not how you speak of the first black rose in Gypsy. I'm like, first of all, she's the first black rose on Broadway. Don't forget, we've also had Leslie Uggams. In addition, I'm sure countless others all over the world that we just don't know about. I will say also, I did while watching Audra this time, I thought to myself, God, in another world, how amazing would Lena Horne have been as Rose? You know, it's sort of the what never was, what could never be. You know, Angela Lansbury as Rose in the early 70s is considered one of the greatest performances in musical theater. It's definitely. That's the production that kind of solidified Gypsy as one of the great musicals of Broadway and that it didn't need Ethel Merman to Survive. But part of me is also like, what if it could have been Lena Horne in that production? Not only would it have really revitalized that show, but it would have revitalized her career a lot sooner. She had the voice, she had the brimstone, she had the drive. Maybe she wouldn't sort of roll over for Arthur Lawrence, which is probably why he wouldn't want her. But we could have had so many other great roses who were not white for many, many years. So for a lot of people, Audra's casting sort of made them raise an eyebrow because of that. How are they going to handle the race? It's George C. Wolfe. Is he going to really make it much of an issue? How do you make it an issue if there's interracial casting? What does that mean? Because segregation was very much a thing during the time of Gypsy. So Herbie and Rose wanting to get married, that's not really possible in a lot of the states that they live in. And then also a lot of people had qualms about Audra's singing, about what kind of singer she is. She is known as a classically trained mezzo soprano. We know her for Carousel and Porgy and Bess and Ragtime and using that very heavy soprano that she has. But I've always felt that Audra as a singer was far more versatile and far smarter about using her voice than people ever gave her credit for. And she does belt. She can do it. She's done it before. We know. We point to Carousel and like you listen to, give him to him good. Carrie, give it to him good. Girlfriend is hitting some Ds in there. And in Marie, Christine, she's definitely using a lot of her chest in that. And Florida flipping all over the place. You can hear some wailing in Dreamgirls. She's not really vocally right for Dina just because her voice isn't quite pop sounding enough, but she does attack that score at the angle that it's supposed to be attacked at. So, as I said, I've always felt that her voice was far more versatile than people ever gave it credit for. And I was interested to see how she was going to attack this score. And similar to a month ago, her voice does what it does. You either like what she can do with it or you don't. She does belt far more of this score than people would expect. And I would argue that the most exciting 45 seconds of this gypsy are the first 45 seconds of some people when the entire audience perks up. Because Audra is using that chest. She doesn't really start mixing until halfway through the song. And. And it is a little bit of a downer. The. But I at least gotta try. She does that in her Passaggio, and it's thin. And this ties back into my issue with her singing of the score and the keys that they put her in in a little bit. But there is a lot of power to how Audra sings Gypsy, which is ultimately all you really need if you're playing Rose, because Rose is a dynamo. She absolutely bulldozes her way through every situation. And there are ways to approach that with Rose, whether it's mental, whether it's emotional, if she's coming from a place of love or a place of ego. So many ways you can go about that, but the one thing you can't let go of is that she is a driven individual. She has goals, specific goals that she is determined to get. And. And these songs are written to reflect that. Very rarely is she singing with sweetness or affection. We have Small World, which is much more of a sly seduction than it is an intimate gathering. I would say that the two most intimate moments for her are you'll Never Get Away From Me, which is very playful and light, and then the reprisive Small World, which shows a great deal of vulnerability for the actress playing Rose in all of those moments. You know, Audrey sings it very well. She uses her mix and her soprano in a very light way, so it's not overly forceful. And in a lot of the big stuff, she does have it and she does bring it. As I said in the last review, there are times when they move the key of the song. Everything's Coming Up Roses and Rose's turn, where the song then suddenly sits in Audra's Passaggio. And that works a little bit in Rose's turn, as that number is a breakdown, it doesn't work as well, and everything's coming up Roses. And it really doesn't work as well. In the last 30 seconds of everything's Coming Up Roses when Audra gets to I had a dream. I dreamed it for you, June. It wasn't for me, Herbie. And if it wasn't for me, then where would you be? Miss Gypsy Rose Lee. That is in the mix, and it's good because it's raw, it's vulnerable, it's on the brink, and it doesn't have to be wham, bam, spank you, ma'am power there. It can. You can have vulnerability there. And that is reflected in how she sings it. Then she fucking flips into that chest. Well, someone tell me when is in my turn. She's using that. Don't I get a dream for myself? Like, it is coming out of that chest. And then we get to the final. This time, boys, I'm taking the bows. And everything's coming up Rose. And that is back in the Passaggio. And it's thinner than everything else we've heard. And it's the end of the number. And yes, it is a breakdown, but it is, objectively speaking, on a musical level, ending with power. Sort of like that last gasp of air before you collapse, you know, or like, you know when they say when people die of a heart attack, they tend to have, like an upswing right before they go it. That's sort of how I've always felt about Rose in Rose's turn is like, it's one last burst of fierce before all of the fight kind of leaves her. And it doesn't really come off that way. Now, granted, Audra's not really playing a fighter as Rose. Her Rose. She's talked about this before, that she's. She comes out of the angle of love, that this is a woman who does love her daughters. And I've never felt in any of the past Roses that they. That they did not love their daughters, they just loved them in a very specific kind of way. But Audra is always kind of going for the emotional connection and not necessarily playing it bullish as Rose. And there's some merit to that. But the question then becomes, what is Rose's angle? Or, like, what does Rose actually think? Because there are so many times when Rose is stubborn and refuses to believe that anything is changing, that the kids are growing up, that Louise will ever get married, that June will ever run off all these things. Right. And you can blame tunnel vision for a lot of that. If you have a Rose like Tyne Daly who is so laser focused on her goals, everything else is incidental and she's just not paying attention. If you have someone like Patty, it's, you know, she's just so stubborn and willing everything into submission. Audra's Rose is seemingly more in tune with the emotional vibes of the room and doesn't seem as oblivious. But then you kind of question, like, is her Rose kind of stupid? And I don't mean Audra, but, like, the way she's playing the character. When you have scenes that confront Rose with the reality of the situation and. And she is willfully and earnestly denying it, not because it's too hard to grapple. Not because, you know, it gets in the way of her dreams, simply because she doesn't see what everyone else is seeing. You're like, well, are you dumb then? And she's like, they're babies. And it's, you know, Joy woods and Jordan Tyson, fully grown girls. The way she says it, it's definitely a woman who. It's one thing to infant infantilize your children, right, and always think of them as kids, but to watch her, Rose, just, like, not understand what's happening. It was the first time I ever watched it and I thought, like, oh, is Rose dumb? Because sometimes she is. But also, I don't know if that's the character or if that's how Audra is playing it or if just what Audra's interpretation brings out of that text for me, of some scenes where I'm just like, oh, I think she might. She might be an idiot. She's very good at haggling. She's very good at getting her way, but definitely doesn't see the writing on the wall half the time. Definitely doesn't see what's right in front of her. And when you have a Rose like Audra's, who isn't that steam train of just barreling forward towards a dream, but is rather constantly trying to check in and connect with her daughters and whatnot, it makes you wonder, well, what did you get from this check in? What did you take away from it? Because everyone else is taking away something else. Audra's Rose also, for me, is still pretty sexless. Not that she needs to be Mae west, but I do not find that Audra and Danny Burstein as Herbie have much of a connection, much of a chemistry. It's a friendly vibe for most of the show, but I don't really see an intimacy with them. And one could argue, well, she's playing him, is she not? It's really about her daughters, is it not? I'm like, okay, how can that justify then 10 plus years of stringing him along? There has to be a genuine, almost faux marriage here that keeps him around, that keeps everyone around them secure. In Herbie being there, there has to be love. Even if Small World is ultimately a seduction and a manipulation, there is absolute affection over the years. If Rose were to just have her be there for 10 years solely because of what he can do for them, then that makes her just a blatant sociopath. And everything else falls apart in terms of the emotional gravitas that people are trying to dig into with the role Right. So if the Herbie connection is sort of lackluster, it makes you wonder, well, what is even going on here? What is this even about? And if she loves her daughters and you wonder how she can be so out of touch with what's happening, because you watch Audra constantly checking in with them and then having to still play the scene as it's written. So there are times when what she's doing doesn't really jive with where the scene has to now go. It's still, you know, interesting. And I would say on an acting level, she has definitely come a long way. She is faster and she is funnier and she's definitely a harder rose than she was a month ago. She definitely has a bit more edge to her now. And you can see her angling and sort of hustling and figuring out the next move half the time. But there are still times when I do think that it's not quite as defined as it could be. And I'm not. You know, you're talking to somebody who found Patti LuPone's gypsy to be sort of half great. And I'll talk more about that as we continue on about this production. But I'm not someone who thought that the last production was iconic and the best that it's ever going to be, and everything needs to be just like that. If I'm being honest, I was more in tune with the Bernadette Peters revival. Granted, I was 13 when I saw it, but a lot of it did stick with me. I've also been very vocal that the Tyne Daily production, which I did not get to see live, but I cherish my recording of it. Both my album, which Tine is not in great voice for, as well as my bootleg, she's just. That production is, for me, the best version of Gypsy to this point, because it has the momentum, it has the energy, it has the humor, it has the sex, it has the razzmatazz, but it also has so much nuance to it. And it also, by the way, is like 20 minutes shorter in length than the current Gypsy. So that's what we're talking about when it comes to speed and drive. So I guess to say it in summation, on a vocal level, for me, Audra is like an 8 out of 10. There's so much that she does vocally that I think is really fantastic. And then there are moments where it is not bad. We're not talking, like disastrous vocals here. It's fucking Audra McDonald, but it is. There are still pockets of the score that don't fit as well and could fit so much better with just key alterings. You know, whether it's chest or head, voice or what have you, like, there are just moments of that score where it absolutely has to have power in it. And they are choosing the thinnest part of her range to. To set it in. And I don't. I still don't understand why Moments in Roses turn make sense to me. Everything else, it does not. And again, as an acting performance, it is strong. It is twice, three times as good as it was a month ago, but it's still not fully complete for me. It's not fully crystallized. I'm sure she. And if this is how far she's come in the last month, I'm sure it's gonna just keep growing and refining up until the Tony Awards. But, you know, this is. With all the reviews that have come out, I was kind of expecting like a 180 and it's not fully there. There's so much good of what she is doing, but it is not a fully crystallized performance for me. Part of that is also in the production around her. There's not as much support for Audra as you would hope. I won't go on about, like, the physical elements so much because none of that's really changed. The lighting has gotten a little bit better. People have found their light this time, which they didn't a month ago. The set is still the set. I still think that it is so poorly plotted. There is a football field's worth of dead space during the together wherever we go scene. There's so much dead space in the burlesque house. There are times when they seem to get it okay, but I mean, even the All I need is the girl scene, it's just. It's just so much dead air. And I don't understand why we have all this wide open space because that is a stage that is deep, is narrow, and you feel all that empty space all the time. And the cast is already fighting, playing this show to a 1700 seat house. Now they have to fight with so much empty space. And you're like, what are we doing? Let's set them up for success, shall we? And as I said, also, there's still no real cohesion to the design of the show. Some things are played, are designed far more realistic. Some things are designed more theatrical and impressionistic. And we have. I forgot about these moving proscenium pillars that we have on both sides of the stage that sometimes slide in and slide out ultimately for no reason. There are. They have. They've slided. I know. For the Grand Singer scene. They slide in for the first strip in Louise's strip, and it just makes no sense to me. There's also the passerelle that they use and I feel like maybe they've cut down on using it so much, but it is still overly used. But yeah, as I said, the design is still the design. Some people seem to enjoy it. A lot of people hate it. I don't hate it so much as. I just don't understand why. Why we have. What made us think that, you know, we needed 40ft of stage for a one person dance number. Right. There are so many moments that require intimacy and this production can't really land the plane because of things like this, of just having so much dead air. And then things like, you know, Grandsinger's office actually uses the space very well. It's really just one backdrop and a desk and a door, and that's all they really use for the office. But because of where it's placed on the stage, it fills up the space a lot better. I'm like, we could have really used more of that shit. But, hey, it's what we got. I'm going to go into the staging, the themes and the rest of the cast right after this break.
- [27:18]
Matt Koplik
Billy, I'd beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top.
- [27:20]
Ariana Grande
Yeah.
- [27:22]
Matt Koplik
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.
- [27:36]
Ariana Grande
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.
- [61:23]
Matt Koplik
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.