A (12:16)

The.

B (12:16)

That I found very funny. Some people are going to find it in poor taste because this is theater. But I thought it was nice, a nice touch and sort of showed that everyone involved understood not only what they were, but everyone thought that they were. And they lean into it a little bit. So that was appreciated. So, stranger things. It's a very impressive spectacle. I imagine plenty of people will be underwhelmed by it. I'm sure that there are going to be a lot of theater people underwhelmed by it because again, the meat of it is just not super there. But there is stuff to it beyond the spectacle. I will say that as well. Next up on the list, I want to talk quickly about Glengarry Glen Ross, the Pulitzer Prize winning play by David Mamet, which is. This is the third time Glengarry Glen Ross has been on Broadway in the 21st century. And I was really hoping I could see it. This is where like my princess side is showing because we are trying to cover the entire Broadway season, see absolutely every show. And this is a very hot ticket. It sells out every night at full price. And I knew I couldn't get a press seat for it. We are too small potatoes to get press seats for things like this. And a friend of the POD who does get press seats, like they're on the Broadway League list, they go, they get to see everything. Actually invited me and I couldn't go because of a family commitment. I was very, very upset. So I knew in order to properly cover the season, I had to bite the bullet and go. And I was able to get a seat day of the show. It is far less than what I paid for. Good night and good luck. But it is more than I was wanting to pay just because I don't like putting money in David Babbitt's pocket. He is not a favorite person of mine. I don't think he's a good person. He has said some really wild things in the last few years and is committed to them. And he hasn't even done any good creative work in the last, you know, two decades to make anyone really turn a blind eye to it. Best you can say is that we have a couple of this plays from the 80s and early 90s that keep getting revived like American Buffalo and Speed the Plow and Glengarry Glen Ross. And it's frustrating. The existence of this play is frustrating to me. And the only reason why it's such a big seller, because they're in the palace, by the way, a very large musical house that many musicals have been unable to fill. And granted, Glengarry Glen Ross has closed off The Balcony. So they're just selling the mezzanine and the orchestra. But at this rate, they probably could sell the balcony if they really wanted to. And it's selling because it is a known property with three big names in it. Kieran Culkin, who just won his Oscar for A Real Pain as well as an Emmy for succession. Bob Odenkirk of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad fame, and Bill Burr, who is a very famous comedian. And that has sort of become the theme of this season as we eventually get into Othello and Good Night and Good Luck is recognizable title with a very large name. Sometimes lesser known titles with a very large name, such as Robert Downey Jr. With McNeil. But we see this with Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler with Romeo and Juliet, Jim Parsons as well as the entire mishmash of cast in Our Town. Denzel and Jake Gyllenhaal in Othello, Glengarry Glen Ross, what have you. And we're seeing it pop up again even more down the line with Alex Winters and Keanu Reeves with Waiting for Gadot and things like that. And listen, star casting in revivals is nothing new. You know, you look back into the 80s and you see Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton doing Private Lives, cashing in on the media attention that they've always had as a couple, even though they were twice divorced by this point. And it's not so much that I resent producers for still doing it. It's. It's a ticket that sells. And you sometimes need to put something like this up in order to then invest or produce lesser known works. Some producers are doing that. I have friends who are producers on Glengarry Glen Ross who are, you know, know also producing Buena Vista Social Club and, you know, works that are a little more. That at the time felt a little more of a gamble. And in order to keep investors happy, you do kind of have to have shows that return something. And something like this is an easy bet. I think they all were a little surprised just how lucrative it's been, but no one thought that this was going to be a tough sell. Not with three very recognizable names, one of whom has, you know, never been more relevant than he is right now. Again, in a play that a lot of people in theater know very well and consider to be good. And a movie version that has also kept the play's title in pop culture. And if you don't know the plot, Glengarry Glen Ross follows real estate salesmen and it's a struggling real estate firm. Everyone is Looking to land leads from their corporate office so they can get more sizable commissions, because the leads that they've been getting have been duds, and they just have been able. They've been unable to move any property. And the first act, which is, I think 40 minutes, is three different salesmen from the agency, each sort of talking about their predicaments separately to either a client or a coworker. The first is Bob Odenkirk. The second is Bill Burr. The third is Kieran Culkin, and that's all at a Chinese food restaurant. Then the curtain comes down and we have intermission. And then act two is the office. And I think it's the office the next day or two days later, and the office has been robbed, and they're doing a police investigation. Donald Weber Jr. Is the manager. And, you know, Kieran Culkin is sort of like the star salesman there, Roma. And he's nervous about his leads. He also just sold a commission to a very pricey property to basically an unsuspecting from Act 1, and he wants to make sure that that goes through. Bob Odenkirk, Shelley Levine, he's a more senior salesman in the agency, and he comes in all happy because he's made a whole bunch of commissions that has sort of broken his losing streak. And Bill Burr is just sort of, you know, flustered all over. He's both lost and not lost, and just basically says, peace out. He doesn't want to deal with any of this anymore. On. Michael McKean is also in it. And the play ultimately is. It's not Death of a Salesman so much as it is the death of the Career of the Salesman, as done through extraordinarily biting dialogue, like, very poisonous, viperish dialogue. That is what Mamet has always been known for. Mamet got his acclaim for portraying the toxicity of mankind in a very entertaining and very quotable way. I mean, just watch Alec Baldwin's monologue in the movie on YouTube. Coffee is for closers. Fuck you. That's my name. And no, you're fired. Do I have your attention? Now a character and a monologue, by the way, that's not in the play, added for the film improve makes the film an improvement on the stage show. And you miss it when you watch the play. But, you know, it is ultimately a. It's a play that has some heft to it, but because it is a very lean play, about hour and 45, including the intermission, and ultimately an entertainment, it can feel slight in the wrong hands. This production ultimately Feels slight. It's very dry. It's not offensive. It's not a total misfire so much as that it just sort of exists. There are some very good performances. Bill Burr is exceptional in Glengarry Glen Ross, as is Donald Webber Jr. Bill Burr's character's name, by the way, is Dave Moss. And Donald Webber Jr. Is John Williamson. And the first scene is between him and Bob Odenkirk. Ashelli Levine. Bob Odenkirk is much better in Act 2, Act 1. I found he was a little stiff, and you could argue that's the character. And in some ways he is. But it just sort of felt like he didn't know how to crack that first act. But he did know how to crack the second act. So he was really great in Act 2. Bilbo was great in both acts. Donald was great in both acts. Michael McKean did a very nice job. The only character, only actor in the show who I found to be really a misfire was Kieran Culkin as Roma. I just think he's miscast in the role. This is role that's been played by Al Pacino, Bobby Cannavale, Leah Schreiber. I think Joe Mantegna did it in the original. This is someone who has a bit more gravity to their personhood and a graveliness to their presentation and their speech and has to sort of be slick, but also have. I hate to say it, but like cojones and has to. And. And the Mamet speech has to kind of roll off your tongue again in a very fluid but venomous way. And Kieran Culkin is still sort of in succession mode. I felt the same way about him in real pain, if I'm being honest. I thought he was very good in a real pain, but he was playing sort of the sweeter version of Ronan in succession. And he's still sort of in that mode in Glengarry Glen Ross. He's not playing Roma. He's playing the parts he's played before and trying to broadcast it to such a large theater. And it's not as if it makes the whole production terrible. It just makes the whole production sort of feel okay. You walk out and you go, you know, I've seen worse. I've definitely seen worse. It is a good play that's given a perfectly respectable production. Considering the price tag on it, considering how much people are going to see it, you expect a bit more. Why do I bring that up, though? Because, again, this sort of goes into the theme of this episode, which is what is it that we do expect when we go see theater? Broadway in particular, because theater is everywhere. Theater can be accessible and there's far more financially easier pieces of theater, you know, easier on the wallet than Broadway. Broadway is an expensive price tag and just keeps getting more expensive. And with these shows, it can get really obscene. And we'll get to the super obscene ones after the commercial break. But the question is, what is it you want when you go see a show? Fundamentally, because there's various genres, various mediums, right? Like a musical is different from a play. But musicals have different subcategories. Some are reviews, some are, you know, paparettas, like a Les Miz or like just more of a dance piece like Illinois. If it is a structured story musical, there can be a jukebox musical, there can be an original score, it can be a Death becomes her or it can be a fun home, right? And the same is also true of plays. You can have something like Glengarry Glen Ross or Stranger Things. You can have How I Learned to Drive or Picture of Dorian Gray. So each show you go in to see, you're sort of going in on its terms, right? You are not going into Boop expecting My Fair Lady. You're not going into Les Miserables expecting Chicago. You have to get an idea of what it is you're signing up for. And then you become discerning of is it delivering what I signed up for? I think I said this in an earlier episode. I'm going to say it again because I want to put a pin in it for a possible post. I do for a writing piece at some point. But I personally find that the most unique, powerful and long lasting works share something in common, which is that it gives an audience what it needs is inside of a package of what it wants. By that I mean an audience going in saying we want to be entertained and giving them the entertainment. But inside the entertainment is a message that can challenge them, even if it's just slightly or give them a character that they might have empathized with that they didn't, that they never thought they would have beforehand. Same thing with the drama of I'm going to see something that's going to challenge me. Okay, you're going to get challenged. But how we're going to challenge you is very different. Well, how I Learned to Drive, I've said it before, I think is such a brilliant piece because the predator of that play is ultimately our protagonist's only ally in the play. And you watch him be her ally while also being her predator. And you watch how it affects her in real time as well as in the future. And you watch how she becomes somewhat of a mess of a person, which makes her hard sort of to root for. But we see the causes of those problems for her coming from him. Right? And your mind goes in a bunch of different directions because your empathy is getting manipulated and your willingness to like someone who's likable gets manipulated because the person who's likable is doing this really disgusting, monstrous thing. And the people who aren't doing the monstrous thing are very toxic and awful and you don't want to be around them. And so when I go see shows again, I go to every show with a blank slate. Ultimately, I want to be engaged. And if you're going to engage me, you have to a establish to me what it is I'm signing up for and then do the work for me. So even when you are being a dumb entertainment, you have to do all the math for me so I can turn my brain off. Don't expect me to actively power off my brain the entire time and just ignore all of the messiness because that's. That's just not. Theater is too expensive and our time is too fleeting and there is not, there are too few theaters for these things. For me to just accept blindly messiness or slop or badness for the sake of just going, oh, I want two hours to escape. I can escape anywhere. I can go home and watch four episodes of Grey's Anatomy back to back. And that is an escape. Okay, that's the other thing is that theater is competing with tv, streaming movies, sports, concerts. The actual whole real world is constantly challenging theater. And theater's not going to ever go anywhere. It's one of the oldest forms of entertainment we have. But Broadway is slow to understand what it is that keeps it relevant. It's not just a tourist destination in New York. It actually has importance. It has cultural cachet. And it used to be at front and center of the zeitgeist. So believe it or not, there used to be plays that would premiere on Broadway that the whole country knew about within a year because they made such an impression. Streetcar Named Desire, who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Death of a Salesman. We talked about it with Rob Schneider and Angels in America. Angels in America is an American play that the whole country knew about by the time it closed on Broadway a year and a half later. How many plays can you say that about with Broadway in the last 15 years? Maybe a handful that some People might go, oh, that name sounds familiar. But very few that everyone has heard of. Hamilton is one of the few musicals in the last 17 years, I would say maybe even 20, that the whole country, the whole world knows. And I'm getting to a point with this, but I don't want to get to the point too soon before I get to these next two shows after the break. So just say, think about that for a hot second and then we're going to come back to Othello and Goodnight and good luck, as well as a positive connection I want to make to the two off Broadway musicals. And we'll do all of that after this break.

A (29:16)

Billy, I'd beg to differ with you.

B (29:18)

How do you mean?

A (29:18)

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

B (29:34)

And we're back. So our last two expensive tickets are Goodnight and Good Luck and Othello. Now, I will say right here, right now, I was very fortunate that I got invited to see Othello. And the truth is that if I hadn't been, I would not have been able to see it and thus my coverage of the season would have been fully blown to smithereens. Good night and good luck. I had to bite the bullet, find my ticket and just deal with the consequences later. Before we get to that, though, on a sort of palette cleanser, as we tie into all of this, I want to give props to Friend of the Pod, Rob Schneider and J2spotlight's production of Smile, which at the time of this recording will be wrapping up its run. Don't bother to see it anyway. It's fully sold out. I was very, very fortunate to see this production. Rob invited me for their first weekend and listen, J2 Spotlight, they've been around for a while. They have a budget. They. They pull in good talent. They are in a very nice theater. The AMT on, I think it's 44th Street. 44th or 45th. And the truth is that, you know, they put on really lovely, intelligent, you know, and creative productions with not a lot of resources and smiles. It's not like, you know, wicked, but it's a big show and it's big for them. So what they were able to pull off with as little time as they had, with as little money as they had, with as little space as they had, I found very impressive. I already was, you know, a sucker to see it because I got to finally see Songs Like Shine and Until Tomorrow Night and Young and American, you know, live. And in front of me, it was fully a dead Sunday matinee audience. There were a couple of other homosexuals there around my age who I guess, had not known Smile super well. And so they were laughing at the all the right jokes and they were appreciating the intelligence of the lyrics. But a lot of the other audience members, while they said as they were walking out how much they enjoyed it, they were just very, very quiet. So if anyone involved in Smile is listening to this, know that I, the keeper of the keys of what makes Smile good, am telling you, you guys did a great job. And you understood the comedy, you understood the. The themes of the show. Honestly, like, it. It works very well. It's also kind of jarring. I don't think that the audience was expecting. This is sort of what we're tying into. The audience wasn't really expecting it to be as biting as it was and to go as harsh as it does in Act 2. I think they expected a comedy musical about a beauty pageant from the 1980s. And they were like, oh, pretty girls dancing around. It should be fun. And maybe like, I'll get a chuckle here and there from the 1980s references. And then we're very thrown by the Maria plot line. Not because it's racist, because it's not. And we've talked about it. But what Howard Ashman is saying by having her character in there about the unfairness in the world at large, but especially this country and the false promises that this country keeps on feeding people and how it just. It's this. The deck is stacked against anyone who is not white, cisgender, preferably male, and honestly of a certain tax bracket. Right. It does it in a comedic tone. It does it with very fun music and characters that you are interested in watching. But that's ultimately what it's getting down to. And I think that it's actually a very clever example of giving an audience what they think they want by opening with songs like Typical High School Senior, which is very catchy, with really great, clever lyrics, and then sneaking in little bits of satiric edge at the beginning. For those of you who know the show, the opening song is Girls Introducing what a Young American Miss Is, which is, she's a typical high school senior and she's got a 3.0, she's on student council and she likes to bake and blah, blah, blah. And then the lyrics then include, you know, she frequently smokes, but not in front of her Folks and puts rum in her Cokes like me and. And I. It starts off light and cheeky like that, and then it gets just darker as it goes on. And it was fun to see that show done so well. And it was very soothing to see people who cared, people who weren't willing to settle for just okay and went for the best of their abilities and what their company could accommodate and accomplish and really just, like, go for the gold as often as they could. And I thought that that was very admirable, and everyone evolved to be very proud of themselves. The other show that I got to see, I was invited to see the Keen Company's premiere production of a new musical that's been developed by Adam Guan called All the World's a Stage. I didn't realize that I had heard rumblings about this show. We had an interview with Andrea Grady Grody. Sorry, let me look this up. Andrea Grody, the music director from Suff. We had an interview with her about a year ago, and she had mentioned, I believe, that she was working on this show. And she was, you know, she was the music director for this production. And it was, as I said, produced by the King Company at Fiedoreau. I don't know how long it runs till, but check out if you can. I'll say right now, look into tickets if you can, because spoiler alert. I really, really enjoyed this production, as I said, written by Adam Guan. It stars Matt Rhoden, Elizabeth Stanley, and then who are the other two performers? Elizabeth Pagel. Pagel, and then John Michael Reese. And it ultimately is a musical about a young man who moves to a small town to teach math. He's, you know, very passionate about math and very passionate about teaching. And apparently the school that he's going to or like the county he's in, has a really great program and is very prestigious for math. But he's gay. And it's not specified what year it is. At least I don't recall if they specify it, but it felt like it was the late 90s to me, maybe early 2000s. It's around the time that the book that the Notebook is released. So maybe 2000, 2001. And Matt Roden plays the young man who is a closeted homosexual in this small town and becomes very friendly with Elizabeth Stanley, who also teaches at the school. And her brother is a pastor at a very religious church in the county. We learned that the town that he's teaching in is a very religious town. And he lives, you know, he lives in A neighboring town that's a little more progressive, but not much more progressive. And he comes across a female student in the high school who desperately wants to submit herself for this theater competition, for this scholarship to. So she can go to college and go to a liberal arts program and get out of her town and maybe pursue her dreams and not be, you know, sort of what's going for. Bound by the confines of her town, by her school, by her parents, and the sort of the religious dictatorship of the church's leanings, right? And Matt Rodin's character is at first very hesitant to sponsor her for this competition. He kind of doesn't want to ruffle any feathers. He then meets a man who runs a bookstore in the town that he's living in. And even though the bookstore isn't necessarily queer, the man is queer, and he definitely has some queer displays in the bookstore. So they start to kind of have a thing. Matt Rodin ends up sponsoring the high school girl. She eventually finds out that he's gay and has her own sort of grappling issues with that, not because she's homophobic so much as that he's keeping it from her. And she doesn't know what she is. She just knows that she's weird and different from all the other kids. She's not well liked by the other kids. Elizabeth Stanley is trying to be an ally to the student as well as to Matt Rodin, while not knowing that he's gay. And it's 100 minutes, no intermission, with a lot of really phenomenal songs. And it's very funny, it's very cute. It shades the Notebook a lot. Madam Guan has a lot of things to say about the Notebook, but it also has a lot of heart, and it is also very well constructed. It's very intelligent, and it's very nuanced. No one is made into a stereotype. And it's the benefit of the show zeroing in on these four characters, Elizabeth Stanley and the other two actors who are not Matt Rodin, they double as sort of like a Greek chorus, sometimes playing other members of the town and the principal and things like that as a bundle, in addition to the three specific roles that they play. And by having such a narrow focus, by being so specific in the story, it allows Adam the time to develop these characters and their arcs and give each of them moments to flesh out their stories. So we care, and it feels earned in any changes that they have, any pivots that their story takes, we buy. Listen, is the show perfect in my Eyes. No, I have some feedback. All constructive because as I said, I really did love this. And everything that I have is more. Every piece of feedback I have is more just about mostly trims I would do. Because While it is 100 minutes, it could probably be like an even tighter 95. Just that my rule of thumb is always like, when you think it's finished, just know that there's probably five minutes you can shave off somewhere. But I say this because ultimately the bones of the show are there and it's set, the story is set, the characters all make sense to me. The songs are so good. At this point, it's just about killing your darlings and being even more precise about when we need idiot time, when we need serious time, how much time are we giving a character alone on stage for this turning point in their arc? But for a show that is ultimately about acceptance and coming into your power and coming into your strength and owning your identity and, you know, trying to be both pragmatic while also brave, I think that the show does a really adult, nuanced and intelligent job of displaying that no one does a total 180 in a second like some characters do in other shows. There's no message falling out of characters mouths. That feels like political propaganda. And I say that just because it doesn't matter if you agree with what the propaganda is, it is still, technically speaking, a lot of ways propaganda. It feels forced into. It can feel forced into a story. I talked about this a little bit in my BOOP review, right, of the elements of girl bossiness that they throw in an act two very shoehorned in. And I took offense to it just because it felt so sloppy and unearned. And the difference between something like a BOOP and an all the World's A stage is earning that kind of stuff. You don't get to just get away with it because you're saying, well, we're trying to be feel good. You can be feel good, but level, level your butt up. And it's disappointing that something like all the World's A Stage, which has probably been in development a hell of a lot less than boop, has, so much less money than BOOP does and exposure than BOOP does and fewer people on its creative team, has been able to come so much farther than BOOP has in terms of being in entertainment and being moving and being engaging and being very astute and discerning about just how far to go, how long to go, and what it takes to keep your audience engaged and not talk down to them while still being an entertainment. Right. It is the kind of musical that Bob Martin and Rick Ellis and I didn't mention Rick Ellis's name in my Smash review, so I apologize for that. But it's the kind of musical that Bob Martin and Rick Ellis make fun of a lot in Smash. Every time Brooks Ashmansk is his character, the director goes, oh, God. So now we're a musical comedy with a message. And I'm like, yeah, those. A lot of those shows, when done well, can succeed and live on for a very long time. You don't have to have a message in a musical comedy. Right. I would argue Guys and Dolls doesn't really have a message, but it is a well crafted, well constructed story with characters that make sense and we care about and songs that apply to the story and apply to the characters. And that is why we do Guys and Dolls instead of doing Mexican Hayride. That is gonna be my go to every single fucking time. But it's true over and over again. So ultimately, I want to say bravo to everyone at King Company for doing this show and doing such a wonderful job with it. And I tie this back into Good Night and Good Luck and Othello as well as Glengarry Glen Ross. I did not know what to expect with all the worlds of stage. And so part of that is the stigma that these other shows have of me kind of feeling like I know what I'm going to get when I go in. But also the truth is that I did get what I thought I was going to get going in. How I felt about it altered from show to show because I did. I enjoyed Good Night and Good Luck more than I thought I would. Or rather, I should say I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would. There are pockets of Good Night and Good Luck, the George Clooney play at the Winter Garden that I actually found quite compelling. It is the story of Edward r. Murrow on CBS Openly and defiantly defying Senator Joseph McCarthy during the McCarthy era. And it's very, you know, it's prevalent to our times. It's always, it's always going to be prevalent, you know, very close minded people with a lot of charisma and an ability to drum up fear in the masses. It is the story of the world. We see it time and time again. It never lasts. This, this fear mongering and this kind of rallying. How long it lasts varies from century to century. And you want it to die as soon as it begins. If it has to begin at all. But it never overall lasts. But people have short memories and Good Night and Good Luck started off as a movie written and directed by George Clooney that starred David Strathern or Strathairn. And George Clooney is now playing that part on Broadway in what is ultimately not quite a copy paste job from the movie, but not. Not a copy paste job from the movie. It is anyone who's seen the movie will see a lot of the characters and the material that they know from the film. It is done respectfully, if not terribly imaginatively. There is intelligence in the writing. There is relevance in this story. It is a large scale production. It is a. It is a big set that takes up the entire stage. It's a large company. I cannot say that the production itself is as inventively done as what Daldry and his team does with Stranger Things. It is overall a pretty literal minded representation of the movie. But because the story resonates and because every time Clooney, as Morrow, goes on the air to defy McCarthy, we as an audience get a collective high from it. And that's the part of the show that for me makes the most the best case for its existence. But why is this show here? Let's put a pin in that for a second as I talk about Othello for just a quick bit. Othello. Not much to say. It's Shakespeare, it's Denzel Washington, it's Jake Gyllenhaal, directed by Kenny Leon, set in the near future. All I'll really say is that it's long, it's not tragically terrible. It's mostly similar to Glengarry Glen Ross. It's mostly dry. There are a couple of choices that are weird. The scene transition into Desdemona's bedroom before, spoiler alert, Othello kills her. That scene transition is fucking weird. It's bold, but it's weird. Denzel Washington is not a disaster in the role as others had claimed at early previews. He knew his lines. I could understand him. His Othello is. I can't rightfully say that Shakespeare rolls off of Denzel Washington's tongue as fluently as I wanted it to, having seen him in Tragedy of Macbeth on film. Part of it's because Denzel just knows how to be a goddamn movie star and a good, actually I would say great film actor. I think I expected it to be a little more natural on his body on stage. But I also think that this production in general is just so meandering that he's not really being honed as a performer. He's kind of just doing whatever, not knowing what's working. And it's a shame, because there are two performances in the show that do work. One is Jake Gyllenhaal as Iago. And Jake is very good, I would argue, the inverse of Denzel. Reports of Jake being extraordinary are, in my humble opinion, overblown. Jake is very good, and I think compared to Denzel, comes off a lot better. Iago is also just the better part, has always been the better part. Othello, we see go into madness, but Iago is just so deliciously evil that that's fucking catnip for any actor. Arguably the best performance in the show for me was Andrew Burnap as Casio. And, yes, I do enjoy Andrew Burnap. I have enjoyed him since the inheritance. I think he's a very smart, special actor. He's the one for me whom Shakespeare felt alive with. The text came off of his body, naturally. He made it sound. He was able to convey the text that did not feel shortchanged, but also shortchanged in its. In its poetry, I guess, and its floweriness, but also was able to convey its meaning. You understood everything going on with Cassio at every given moment. And I'm not talking about enunciation. I'm talking about genuine energy and character and feeling. 247 with Andrew Burnup on that stage. During intermission, I turned to my friend. I was like, since when do we care about Cassiope? Which is the joke is just that Othello is supposed to be about Othello and Iago and somewhat about Desdemona. Cassio is a pawn in Iago's plan to take down Othello by telling Othello that his wife, Desdemona, is cheating on him with one of his soldiers, Cassio. Cassio, meanwhile, is, you know, in love with another woman. He does have a thing for Desdemona, but he's ultimately in a relationship with somebody else. Cassiope is, again, he's not important. Important. He's not really a powerful character. He is there as a pawn in Iago's plot. So to come out of Othello and go, well, Andrew Burnett. Ves Cassio, like, that was the performance of the production. Something's off. Something is absolutely off. As I said, this is a very. It's not an embarrassingly poor production of Othello. It's just sort of inert. There's enough good in it that it's hard to fully pan, but there's very little great about it that justifies its existence and justifies its ticket price. So why is it that everyone has no problem paying up to $900 to see Othello? And let's also be clear, not everyone is paying that much to see Othello. My friend ran into someone else he knew across the aisle from us, and he had paid a measly $400 to sit in the orchestra. He was able to get a ticket that afternoon for the show. And granted, the ticket he bought probably was going for twice the price three weeks ago, but the theater was full, so they are not. Every seat at Othello is $950. There are seats that are a lot less than that. But also you can spend a lot less than $400 to see maybe Happy Ending, to see Gypsy, to see Picture of Dorian Gray. Hell, you can pay, you know, a fifth of that, maybe even less than that, to see all the world's a stage which is so delightful and so worthwhile, right? So the question is, why? Why? Why is everyone clamoring for Othello? Why is everyone clamoring for Goodnight and good luck? It is ultimately to see famous people on stage. And if it's a title that they recognize, a Shakespeare title, sign them up a movie. George Clooney was nominated for multiple Oscars for that. You know, maybe not the whole world saw, but enough people saw that it can fill the winter garden for 10 weeks. Sign them up. And the scarcity of the tickets, because there's only so many seats in the theater, they're going to do eight shows a week for a limited run. So even at full capacity, we're talking like, what, 80,000 people seeing good night and good luck, 70,000 seeing Othello out of not just the whole world, but the whole city. It's not a lot of people. And a lot of people want to pay for the bragging rights of having seen the thing, the thing that's hard to get, the thing that's expensive, and the thing where they got to be in the same room as a major, major celebrity. And if you think that I am being cold about that, when George Clooney came out on stage for his first scene for Good Night and good luck, I shit you not a third of the audience whipped out their cell phones to take a photo. And those poor ushers were running up and down the aisles trying to catch everybody, and they still were catching people throughout the show. But that's what people were there for. They were there to see George Clooney. People were there to see Denzel Washington, some to see Jake Gyllenhaal. No one was really there to see Othello. No one was there to be challenged by Shakespeare. Now, to a lot of that audience's credit, a lot of people who did not know the story of Othello, who it felt like, were drawn in by the play, because, spoiler alert, the play is good. Good night and good luck. A little less so. I would argue people were not as drawn into it. They were more drawn in every time George Clooney, quote, unquote, went on air as Murrow and, you know, gave his addresses about McCarthy. But where I would vouch that good night and good luck almost kind of justifies its existence is in the last 10 minutes, which has come under a lot of scrutiny for being preachy and obvious. And that is true. It absolutely is. The bottom line is, at the end of the play, Clooney, you know, Clooney goes up against McCarthy. He's one of the few people on air who's speaking openly against him. And it does come at a cost. Not everyone agrees with him. A lot of people are afraid of McCarthy. And it ultimately loses his character, his normal spot on the air. He's still on the air, but less frequently and at a different time. And his friend, played by Clark Gregg, has taken his own life at this point out of fear of McCarthy. We as a nation got past McCarthyism. We were able to find a way out of it and move on. And I think the biggest revenge is how few younger generations know about McCarthy outside of, you know, just the Red scare of the 50s and early 60s. Right. You know, McCarthy, in a lot of ways, is a footnote in American history. What he did is vile and. And that is a large chapter, but he himself, the man, less so. His name now is a brand, but he himself is nothing but a skeleton. This is to say the other thing about the play is sort of the importance and the integrity of journalism and of the truth and of one's principles and morals. And Clooney comes out at the end of the play to give this speech at what looks like a banquet that his character is at. And they then play what's probably a three minute montage that shows the progression, slash regression of media, starting with, like I Love Lucy and I think the Honeymooners, going into new shows and reality TV and I think even YouTube culture, finally kind of culminating with January 6th. They show September 11th, they show the recession, they show Covid, they show January 6th, they show Biden. And then it ends with a shot of Elon Musk doing his, let's also say this, his Nazi salute at that press conference. Let's also be other very clear, it was a bad Nazi salute. I watched it. I was like, that's like the Nazi salute meets Richard Nixon's final goodbye off the helicopter. Like, lame, lame, lame, lame, lame. Awful and hideous, but also lame. That said, the entire audience gasped. And I'm sitting there going, we all witnessed this. We all saw this happen when it was happening. Why are we acting brand new? As I said, a lot of people's memories are very short and they forget and they want to forget. They want to move on. They want to move on and don't we? All right? And sometimes the best revenge you can do is to move on and belittle the people who try to have power over you. But you also can't totally forget. You can move on while still not forgetting, right? Live your life and succeed and thrive, but also don't forget. And I'm watching and I talked to my dad about this the next day because he, you know, he grew up during this whole thing and he knows everything about this story with Murrow and McCarthy. And of course, he saw Goodnight and Good Luck, the movie and probably saw it, Forrest, five times. He said to me, no, I probably know as much about this whole endeavor as anyone could because I can't imagine there's anything about this play that would teach me anything or that would excite me. And you know nothing about that. Those final minutes of the play would really make an impact with me because I'm sitting there going like, yeah, I, I concur. It's vile and we have to stand up and be better. But why are you yelling at me about that? Like, why are you hitting me with that? In a weird way, this play is not for my dad. And it sucks that it is so exclusive of a ticket and running so short and is only going to be seen by a certain number of people. But in a way, by having that theater be filled with rich people who want the cloud of having seen the expensive, hard to get thing. So people with millions, some possibly even with billions of dollars, who have been in rooms with, you know, our current president and Musk and others like them who may even have, you know, helped them on the campaign trail with donations, as well as people who saved up just to see a celebrity because that's what's most important to them. They are who needed to see those last five minutes and to see this story of the importance of conviction and integrity and truth. That doesn't mean that the play itself is exceptional. It's not. The story it's telling is an exceptional one and needs to be reminded. And this is ultimately a fortunate accident that this play justifies its existence by being the expensive, exclusive ticket that it is. It is not to the credit of any of the producers or any of the, or any of the creatives on this show, but it ultimately accidentally became a piece of medicine for this audience in a weird way. Again, by total freak of nature accident, goodnight and good luck gave that audience what they wanted and inside of what they wanted was ultimately what they needed. Now, did it do it as impressively as they could have? Probably not. But that is what we will. That is the grace we will give it. The question, I think also then just becomes, is this where we are heading with Broadway? Is it a lot of celebrities coming for 12 to 15 weeks to do a show and not ruffle any feathers. Best case, best case scenario, they surprise everyone. You know, middle of the road scenario is the production itself is fine test usually going to be tested material. A masterpiece like Waiting for Godot, a masterpiece like Othello, a Pulitzer Prize winner, that's actually a better movie like Glengarry Glen Ross with an established director, David Cromer, Kenny Leon, Patrick Marber, Jamie Lloyd, Sam Gold, with, you know, these, these A listers or B listers, if you want to be sketchy or, you know, on the rise. A listers and charging an arm and a leg for these limited runs. What does that actually do for Broadway? Listen, it keeps the theater occupied. The actors who, the other actors who get to be in those shows, if the shows have a large enough company, they get to be employed for a while. It does, technically speaking, bring eyes to the theater district, but as I said, in shows like Back to the Future, I would argue it doesn't actually. This is not a tide that lifts all other boats because those shows are not about the theater. They're about the performer. Hamilton being the sensation it was Rent being the sensation that it was. And shows like that were what helped Broadway because they became sensations because they were theater, not because of who was in it. And when eyes are on the thing, anything else in its orbit gets, you know, a touch of spotlight osmosis. And you don't get spotlight osmosis when all the news of Good Night and Good Luck is George Clooney. Alana Glaser is in Good Night and Good Luck and no one's talking about it. Clark Gregg, Paul Gross. My God, my beloved Paul Gross from Slings and Arrows, who is looking mighty fine with silver hair, by the by. And we support Ilana Glaser's Broadway debut. It's. I support actors going outside of their comfort zone. And this is very much out of her comfort zone. I can't say that I felt she fully succeeded, but that's also because maybe my own prejudice of how I fell in love with her is through Broad City and things like Broad City. And so it's harder for me to see her in a straight laced piece like this. But as I was getting at by having these productions happen this way, I can't argue that, that the audiences are going and falling in love with theater. They might have a good time, but ultimately it's because they wanted to see the person. And if they're fortunate, the production is solid enough because the play is going to be good enough. As I said, they're doing tried and true material, but they will be entertained. And when they walk away in a few days time, what they'll say is, I saw so and so on stage. I saw Denzel, I saw Jake Gyllenhaal, I saw George Clooney. They're not saying, oh, I saw this wonderful play, this wonderful production of this play. Right. And I want us to think about that when, as we continue the conversation about this season with theater tickets and scarcity and supporting the arts and supporting Broadway. Right. Because you can love this art form and demand more from it. That's okay. We were talking about this, I think in the. It might have been smash or it might have been last five years, I can't remember which one. But the idea of you can love something and it doesn't always live up to your expectations or your standards for it. And the same is true of people, of artists. I mean, you know, people in our lives, of course, but like artists, right? If someone is really a good artist and a smart artist, they're going to take big swings from time to time just to spice things up, get out of their comfort zone, you know, strengthen their own skills by not just falling into the same routine. And sometimes that is a high risk, high reward situation and sometimes it's a swing and a miss, and that's okay. It does not take away from all of the wonderful things they've done in the past or that they will in the future. But it also doesn't behoove us to sit there and just go, I'm here to support it, I'm a supporter. And thus it is good and they are good. And I don't want to hear anything about it because that is also complacency. And the last, and I the last thing you ever want to be is complacent. Right? You can understand when something or someone is doing their, has done their absolute best and it's not enough for you and you can acknowledge the effort on their end and then walk away. But for something like theater, I really want you guys to think about this. Not just what's been popular in the community, but what has actually broken through outside of Broadway to reach the outer realms. And it's also never been easier to reach the outer realms, despite all of the competition theater has in the world in pop culture, with the outreach of the Internet of social media. It's never been easier for millions around the world to see what you are doing on, on that stage and to be interested in it. Right. Rob and I were talking at intermission. There were people from London coming to see Smile this two week run, not even two weeks, this 10 day run at this 120 seat theater on 45th street of a musical that ran five weeks in the 80s. People were coming from around the world to see it. So it's not hard to get the word out. But really think about this in the last couple of years, what has reached the outer realms, what has once it, what is a show that after it closed is still spoken of with the excitement and reverence it was spoken of when it was running. Because that's also what I think about when I talk about these shows. And then I will get pushback from people. Oh, you don't know what you're talking about. Oh, you're narcissist. Oh, you're negative, you're a pessimist, whatever. I, you know, the Times loved it, so what do you know? And I go, okay, you know, Jesse Green's been smoking a lot of things this season. We have all been talking about it. There are a lot of critics picks that he has given out that we've all side eyed. Right. And either the Times matters or it doesn't. I ultimately think that the Times doesn't matter. It's just the largest readership of people who read reviews for theater. But I am very okay with people disagreeing. There are times when I sit there and I go, I think that time is going to prove me right. I really do. Whether positive or negative. I remember seeing light in the Piazza at the very sensitive, tender and in my case, very Sexy, age of 15. No one else is sexy at 15, but I was, I'm just that Special. And I saw it with my grandmother, with. With Nanny, and it was. It had just opened and we were. It was playing to like a 70% capacity theater that night. And at intermission, we went into the lobby and spoke to some of her friends because Nanny used to work at Lincoln center. And so some of her friends were there and we went into the, you know, members lounge and they were talking about it. And 15 year old me was like, that's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. And they were all like, ugh, I don't know. It's just so dry and whatever. I just don't know what to make of it. They're like, I don't think this is gonna do much. And I remember at 15 going like, just, you know, I just have to wait because I. I can feel it in my bones that this is good and that this is gonna last. And it has, it has lasted. I felt the same way about Caroline or Change. I felt the same way about Groundhog Day. Messy as it was. I was like, there's enough good here that, you know we're gonna remember it. And then there are shows that have run for two or three years or didn't run for very long that had very passionate fan bases when they were running. And I would sit there and I would just go, yeah, that show's gonna close and people are gonna forget about it like that. And that has happened way more often than we're willing to admit. Good night and good luck. Glengarry, Glen Ross and Othello are going to leave Broadway by the summer. And you know, Glengarry might win a Tony for Bill Burr. They might even win Revival. I don't think they should. I would give it to Yellow Day to Yellowface or Yerka Day over Glengarry. Good night, good luck. Might have some tech nominations. George will probably get nominated. I think Othello has Jake Gyllenhaal nominated. I would love to get Andrew Burnap a nomination. And featured probably won't happen, but here we are. But after the summer, they'll close and we're going to forget about it. That's just the fact. I'm going to keep thinking about all the world's a stage after this episode for a while. I'm going to think about it and I look forward to hopefully seeing it at some point in the future, whether it's at King company or a new production of it, or if Adam does more work on it. And I want to see sort of the new iteration of that in the same way that I'm also looking forward to seeing Zorba at J2 Spotlight and seeing what, how. What they come up with with that show. Yeah. That's all I want us to think about ultimately from this episode as we finish this season and look to the next season. And as we once again have major stars coming to Broadway and these known titles and new big splashy musicals and revivals, what is it we want from theater? Think generally first and then specifically with each subcategory of show that you see and is it. And when you go see the thing, is it delivering that and is that enough? I would argue while ticket prices have never been higher, the quality on Broadway has never been more inconsistent. I think this has been a better season than last, specifically with musicals. But I also thought last season with musicals was pretty anemic plays. It's pretty equal. We've had quite a few plays this season that I thought were very good. Same as last year, some wonderful performances, but it's been uneven for me. And we'll talk about that more when you do our final wrap up in May. And that's it for now. Thank you for making it this through, guys. I hope any of this made any kind of sense. I put off drinking any evening so I could speak with some sense of cogency. Is that the right word I want to say? Despite the fact that I've had absolutely no alcohol, the words are now just leaving my brain and I am sounding dumber than the book of Smash. Ho ho ho. What an easy punchline I now have. Move over, Finding Neverland, Paradise Square, Back to the Future, Jagged Little Pill, I've got a new punching bag and it's the libretto for Smash. Bob Martin and Rick Ellis. If I ever meet them, I'll tell them that I have no problem saying that. I don't care what Jesse Green says. That book is bad, anywho. And you can have it and you can enjoy it. There are things to enjoy about Smash, but that libretto is objectively bad. And it ultimately tells you that what makes a musical go from promising to bad is allowing actors to have ideas. Is specifically allowing women to read books. That is a common recurring joke in the show. And it would be less upsetting to me if the whole show were smarter and better. But it's not. And they keep coming to that. Well, and it's the main crux of the drama of that show is that Robin Herder gets her hands on a book and it turns her into a monster and she turns the whole show bad with her ideas. And I am sitting here going fuck you, libretto writers, librettists. I don't want to end on that sour note. Go see all the world's a stage at King Company if you can. It's at Theater Row. I highly, highly, highly recommend it. I know it's on tdf. I'm sure there are some papering sites as well. But also like if you have the scratch, like get a nice real ticket. You know, don't save up for the last corner seat of Othello or good night and good luck. Pay. Use that money to pay for like a real seat for all the worlds of stage. It's better. I think you'll like it more and it's sweet and special and reminds you that there are good librettos in musicals. Very lovely. I am going to have us close out because the cast album dropped this week. I'm going to close out with Megan Hilty for Death Becomes Her. No, I take that back. We're going to close out with Jennifer Simard only because while re listening to the album, Jen has this song that I liked in the theater and I love now and it's called let's Run Away Together. So I'll to make it up to Megan. I'll have Megan close us out in a future episode between now and the Tonys because I do love M3gan, but I really fell in love with this song on the cast recording. Not every song, but this song I really love and has some amazing lyrics. So that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna close out with Jen Simard singing let's Run Away Together for this episode. Join us for the final round of Tony nomination predictions. I'm going to hold. I've decided also I'm going to hold off on announcing what shows we're covering in the next series. Deep dive just for a little bit because we're so in the weeds with Tony stuff right now. I don't want to get. I don't want to announce it and then not do it for two months. I want to announce it a little closer to when we plan to release those episodes. So hang tight. We will be announcing that soon enough. Specifically what shows we're covering and if you're on the Discord channel, you know at least one of them because I already recorded one episode and asked the Discord channel for topics they wanted us to cover. But that's it. Yeah. Again, five star rating or review if you can. We really want to push past 300 on Apple Podcasts we're over 100 on Spotify. I don't think we're going to hit 200 by the end of May. But we can hit over 300 on Apple by the end of May. Hopefully even by the end of April, if we can. And yeah, we've got some more reviews coming out soon. Pirates. Floyd Collins. Just in time. Old friends. Real women have curves. Dead outlaw. It's gonna be a fun time. Fun time, fun time. And yeah, that's it for now. You guys have a great rest of your weekend and couple of days and I'll see you soon. Take it away, Jen.

A (72:30)

Bye. It will be quick, just how you like it. Zero mess Unless you've got a bonesaw.

B (72:37)

No, we'll be precise we'll stage a.

A (72:40)

Story of an actress cast out for.

B (72:43)

A rage they'll think she's cracked a.

A (72:46)

Trip Tragic end for all to see Our final act they'll eat it up and we'll be free on an My fingers in your hair While madam's decomposing in the ground let's run away together let's run away to Parry let's go make love.