Matt's London Trip w/ Mom

Summary

Broadway Breakdown – "Matt’s London Trip w/ Mom"

Date: June 13, 2024
Host: Matt Koplik
Guest: Tanni "Ticketing" Koplik (Matt's Mom)
Listen Here

---

Episode Overview

Matt and his mother Tanni sit down for a deep-dive, day-by-day recap of their recent six-day theater trip to London. With Matt’s signature passionate, irreverent tone, the duo break down London theatre, sightseeing, food, and local culture, delving into the four West End shows they saw (Operation Mincemeat, Standing at Sky’s Edge, Guys and Dolls, and The Hills of California), British audience quirks, and travel tips. Expect opinionated analysis, family banter, and plenty of four-letter words.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Travel & Arrival in London

• Both Matt and Tanni managed jet lag well with "No Jet Lag" homeopathic pills (00:45)
• Stayed in Holland Park/Notting Hill area; used "One Fine Stay" luxury Airbnb service (03:45)
• Discovered a love for Tesco Express (“favorite spot in London”, especially for odd-flavored crisps – 04:35)
• First dinner at Joe Allen’s (Covent Garden), compared to NYC’s iconic Joe Allen’s; found London’s to have less character, more personable but chatty staff, and baffling Broadway show posters (07:57)

2. Show #1: Operation Mincemeat (Fortune Theatre)

(10:15–34:55)

• Went in with high expectations after Olivier Award win for Best New Musical.
• Plot Recap: WWII British ruse to mislead Germans about Allied landings, involving planting secret documents on a dead body.
• Both struggled with jet lag during the first third (“nodded off…because I wasn’t terribly enjoying it” – Matt, 14:00).
• Found it “quaint,” clever in concept (5 performers, lots of cross-gender casting, minimal set/projections), but unsatisfying in execution.
• Humor, language, and references were “too British,” with much lost in translation for American viewers (“the vernacular is just so British…so much inside baseball” – Tanni, 14:46).
• Liked some moments, especially the song "Dear Bill," but found score mostly forgettable (“there are a lot of jokes I saw coming from a mile away” – Matt, 17:45).
• Noted the show’s playful self-awareness (making fun of itself as a musical, poking fun at audience Pavlovian reactions).
• Serious moments didn’t always land; emotional stakes undercut by “absurd” ending and lightweight tone.
• Both skeptical the show will translate to Broadway unless it’s “rethought” or rewritten for an American audience.
• Quote: “Save your money, there’d probably be a lot of other things worth the ducats.” (Tanni, 34:16)

3. Show #2: Standing at Sky’s Edge (Gillian Lynne Theatre)

(35:54–66:01)

• Jukebox musical using the back catalog of Richard Hawley.
• Tracks decades in a Sheffield housing project (Park Hill): newlyweds in 1961, Ghanaian immigrants in '89, and a modern gentrifier in 2015.
• Technical theatrical device: timelines interweave, characters cross over generations; visualized with “scoreboard”-like year markers.
• Spoke with local Sheffielders at intermission—got audience background and insight into regional references.
• Found it “far more British” than even Mincemeat (“References…you and I had to ask our seatmates during intermission” – Matt, 41:43).
• Noted British theater habits: eating ice cream and drinking full wine glasses at seats.
• Enjoyed atmospheric use of songs, though rarely did scenes break into traditional numbers.
• Praised for layered, emotional storytelling, “sadder In the Heights.”
• Applauded depiction of queerness (relationship of Poppy & Nikki) and generational change.
• Acted more as an atmospheric epic rather than a “plotty” musical; admittedly slow at times, but “never bored.”
• Both agreed it’s unlikely to succeed if transferred to the U.S. due to its Britishness and hyper-local focus.
• Quote: “I liked it. [It’s] a big uptick from the night before…a high pass or good B-minus.” (Tanni, 65:29)

4. Show #3: Guys and Dolls (Bridge Theatre)

(74:26–90:18)

• Experiential, environmental production at the Bridge (audience seated around/within the action, with dynamic, mechanical stage pieces).
• Classic musical, plot as in traditional productions.
• Immersive staging wowed at first (stage pieces rise/fall), but “blew the magic a bit” by revealing all tricks in the overture.
• Strong supporting cast, especially Tamika Ramsay as Adelaide (“bodalicious... a pair of pipes” – Tanni, 77:10).
• Bit let down by an understudy as Sky Masterson whose voice and physical presence didn’t fit (“didn’t inhabit the character physically…voice was…too high” – Tanni, 83:45).
• Noted that British theater feels less precious—boozy, casual, focused on overall experience for audience.
• Overall, fun if not earth-shaking: “Sure thing…a good chunk of fun. It didn’t blow my mind. We had fun.” (Matt, 89:56)

5. Show #4: The Hills of California (Harold Pinter Theatre)

(94:23–130:05)

• New play by Jez Butterworth, directed by Sam Mendes. Has announced a Broadway transfer.
• Flashback/forward family epic about four sisters and their overbearing, show-biz-mom, drawing on Andrews Sisters-type acts, echoes of Gypsy (“she’s a British Mama Rose”).
• Structure: family prepares for dying mother’s death, with secrets coming to light about eldest daughter’s trauma and why she left.
• Found first two acts fast-paced, “engaging” and “well-written.”
• Third act slower, dwelling on “broken, horrifying” eldest daughter (“it kept going on and on,” felt excessive – Tanni, 107:41).
• Poignant ending with no total resolution; praised for performances, especially Laura Donnelly (who memorably plays both mother and, in the third act, broken daughter Joan).
• Quote: “It’s engaging, well written, you just feel you’re inside the dialogue.” (Matt, 130:05)
• Grievance: Annoying audience member behind them, “dumb shit” asking basic questions.

6. Family & Theater Conversation

• Interleaved throughout are discussions about their theatre tastes, generational shifts, and what makes a “game changer” in the art form (e.g. Les Miz, Hamilton, Stereophonic).
• Side convos: watching British TV detective dramas, clothing for London weather, audience etiquette in both UK and US.
• Travel logistics, highlights, and mishaps (e.g. difficult airbnb, tube system, lack of VAT refund, love for Tesco, packing layers, Sunday roast tradition, surprising British absence of tea compared to coffee).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On British theater over-accessibility:
  “I thought perhaps London, because theatre is so prevalent in a niche way, would be a somewhat more discriminating audience…but I was surprised to see standing O’s.” (Tanni, 32:07)
• About Operation Mincemeat’s ending:
  “All of these red herrings… None of it matters. And a lot of the songs also felt like filler...” (Matt, 21:12)
• Advice on Operation Mincemeat for Americans:
  “If it’s about the original company, then the material isn’t as good as you’re trying to sell me on it.” (Matt, 34:32)
• On audience behavior:
  “They eat ice cream… and brought a bottle of wine. This is very normal. We get here, maybe a covered cup; there: full blown wine glass… with stems.” (Tanni, 41:43)
• On The Hills of California’s casting reveal:
  “Joan is played by the same actress, Laura Donnelly…went from high energy, manipulative mom to low energy, manipulative daughter.” (Tanni, 110:00)
• On British unstylishness:
  “It is a remarkably unstylish city, I will say that.” (Tanni, 138:04)
• Matt’s sense of self:
  “I have the frame of a mouse and the voice of a lion.” (Matt, 74:22)

---

Breakdown of Podcast by Key Timestamps

• 00:00–03:14 — Cold open & intro; arrival in London
• 03:15–09:44 — Getting settled, first impressions, Joe Allen
• 10:15–34:55 — Operation Mincemeat deep-dive
• 35:54–66:01 — Standing at Sky’s Edge discussion
• 66:02–73:08 — Audience etiquette, British vs. American theatergoers
• 74:26–90:18 — Guys and Dolls breakdown
• 90:19–94:23 — Other meals and sightseeing, Notting Hill, Sunday Roast
• 94:23–130:05 — The Hills of California: detailed analysis
• 130:06–140:22 — Recap, trip tips, travel anecdotes
• 140:23–end — Reflections, rankings, thank-yous, and outro

---

Show & Trip Rankings (129:02–129:41)

• Operation Mincemeat: 5/10 (Matt), 5.5–6/10 (Tanni)
• Standing at Sky’s Edge: 7.75/10 (Matt), 7–8/10 (Tanni)
• Guys and Dolls: 8/10 (would have been higher with the main Sky)
• The Hills of California: 9.5/10 (even with a long Act 3, “can get cleaned up”)

---

London Travel Takeaways

• Pack layers. Weather was cool, even in June.
• Oyster card (tube) is a must. Tube system highly praised.
• Be aware of inattentive foot traffic. “People do not care about you.”
• Shop elsewhere. Post-Brexit, VAT refund is gone; not great for value shopping.
• Skip “luxury” Airbnbs. Their flat was restrictive and too “personal.”
• Favorite snack stop: Tesco Express for water, coffee, and crisps.
• Tea over coffee? Not in modern London: “Every sort of kioski…everything was coffee.”
• **Do: Afternoon tea at small hotels, walk through markets and parks, experience pub roasts.

---

Memorable Moments

• Tesco adventures: “Tesco: Best coffee, everybody. That's a hot tip from my mother to you.” (145:50)
• Star guest cameo: Listener Thomas (or Tomas) says hi at the Bridge Theatre (133:43)
• Audience behavior: Full glass wine drinking, bottle sharing, ice cream eating, “all very normal.”

---

Final Thoughts

• Each London show outdid the last; their viewing order had them going from least to most successful by the end.
• London theatre strikes them as more relaxed, communal, and unconcerned with status than Broadway.
• Both would recommend The Hills of California above all, while “Operation Mincemeat” drew skepticism for Broadway potential.
• Their tasted and analysis integrate family history, New York comparisons, and a clear-eyed love for the best of theater.

---

For New Listeners:

This episode is a goldmine for Broadway (and West End) fans interested in cross-continental comparisons and warts-and-all show reviews. With warmth, wit, and occasional shade, Matt and Tanni paint a vivid picture of modern London theatergoing—crisps and all.

---

Ending note:
After bonus banter, mom and son agree to play out with “a Broadway diva” by listener’s choice—Philippa Soo.

(Outro begins at 149:11)

Transcript

[A]

A foggy day in London town had.

[B]

Me low.

[A]

And it had me down I view the morning with much alarm.

[B]

The British Museum, it lost its charm.

[A]

How long? Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history unt legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And with me today is a friend of the pod. Alum of the pod. Some of you know her, some of you love her. She's perhaps best known for her work around 1990 for a production she did that launched a major career for an icon, one might say this icon it is my mother, Tanni Ticketing Coplock. Hi, mother.

[B]

Hello, son.

[A]

How you be?

[B]

I'm great. How are you? Not at all jet lagged, so that's good.

[A]

You're not jet lagged?

[B]

I don't think so.

[A]

No. I don't think I am either. We just came, so we're recording this Wednesday, Wednesday, June 12th. This comes out Thursday, June 13th. And we just landed from London. Good old London town. Bip Bip Tridio. About 24 hours ago, I would say. Yeah. And we're doing pretty solid.

[B]

I think so.

[A]

Yeah. Well, we had those homeopathic pills.

[B]

Can we do a little plug here?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

No jet lag. It's turning terrific at it on Amazon. You take it on the plane, you take it as you're leaving and you do it in the other direction. And so far we've been pretty good.

[A]

Yeah, you take one pill as you take off and then one pill every two hours and then a pill when you land. And it worked for us when we got there, it worked for us when we came back. I. I mean, I fell asleep pretty early last night, but it wasn't dreadfully early. It was like 9:15.

[B]

And you woke up at a decent hour?

[A]

I. I Woke up at 5:45. I wouldn't call that a decent hour, but it was. It was eight hours. I got eight hours of sleep and some change. What time did you wake up?

[B]

I woke up around 5:15 and then again at 6.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But I went to bed even a little later than you because I wanted to make sure I was good and tired.

[A]

What time do you go to bed?

[B]

11, 11:30, maybe 11, 11:30. I wanted to stay up. And I get neurotic too, about putting things away before.

[A]

Sure, sure, sure, sure. But in terms of jet lag, we're doing. We're doing solid we are, but this whole episode is about our trip that we took to Foggy, because we went. We were there for six days, and it was quite an adventure. And people who follow the pod, who follow my Instagram, are all eager to know our thoughts on our time there, on the shows that we saw there. Because we did see shows. We saw four. We saw Operation Mincemeat, we saw Standing at Sky's Edge, Guys and Dolls, and the Hills of California. But I think the only way to really get into all of those shows is to kind of just go through each day of our London trip. Is that okay with you?

[B]

I think that makes sense.

[A]

Fantastic. So we leave on Tuesday night, we get in on Wednesday morning. Pretty unjet lagged. A little. I call a little like, airplane grody, but otherwise not too terrible. I watched three movies on the plane. I watched Moonstruck, I watched Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar, and I watched Erin Brockovich, and I love all three movies. Yeah. You didn't watch anything on the plane, right?

[B]

No, I didn't. I mean, I try. I think I watched a little tv and then Red or.

[A]

And then you. And then you slept a little bit.

[B]

A little bit, yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So we get there. We are staying in Holland park, which is right next to Notting Hill, right off of Hyde Park. And we had to sort of stall for a bit because we. Our Airbnb wasn't ready for us yet. We used a company called One Fine Stay, which does quote, unquote, luxury Airbnbs. And they're. They're supposed to have a concierge who greets you and they give you all this rundown for the apartment and what's nearby.

[B]

And they had a little swag.

[A]

A little swag. A couple of pieces of swag. And I had used it with my father the last two times we went to London, and it worked out quite nicely. I would say this was maybe not quite as good as the last two times, but the apartment was fine. We enjoyed it mostly, and it was a decent neighborhood. Once we realized where everything was around us, and most importantly, on the walk from our Airbnb to the tube, was your favorite spot in all of London.

[B]

Tesco.

[A]

Tesco Express, Yes. For those of you who don't know what Tesco is, it is basically stop and shop or shop right here in the US And I think Tesco Express is. I don't know if Tesco Express is the actual name or if it's Tesco. And we had an Express, which is like a smaller Version of that.

[B]

Yeah. It's basically like a bodega. That's the size.

[A]

Yeah, it was. It was small. I mean, they have like, you know, they had produce and they had other things, and they had snacks and they had things for your kitchen and bathroom and whatnot. But it was. It wasn't, you know, a major shopping center, but it was absolutely my mother's favorite place. The entire time we were in London.

[B]

We needed bottled water every day. So we did that.

[A]

We sure did. And we got some fun things there. We got crisps. We got Walker's crisps. I don't remember what our flavor was. It was like flaming broiled steak or something.

[B]

It was mesquite steak.

[A]

Well, they didn't say mesquite.

[B]

Oh, they didn't?

[A]

No. It tasted like mesquite, but they were. It was full on flame broiled steak. I was tempted to get. They have some weird flavors. I was tempted to get prawn cocktail, but I was like, it's like, if it's not good, I'm stuck with like six bags of it. So I went to the steak because I like. It'll. It'll taste okay.

[B]

Harrods, I got you the chardonnay and white vinegar or something. It was pretty bad.

[A]

I think it was. I think it. I don't think there was no. And I think it was chardonnay, white vinegar, but it.

[B]

But it's basically vinegar.

[A]

Yeah, it was. It was just vinegar. It was vinegar chip. There was no wine to be had on that. But Wednesday was mostly us getting a lay of the land. We walked about. We went to test.

[B]

Hang on a second. Can we just put a pink and no wine in that? Yeah, I want to just put a pin in that.

[A]

A pin in the wine chips in just wine. Wine.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. We're coming back to wine.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, great. We'll come back to wine. Just remind me. Rewind me. So we get a lay of the land. What else did we do?

[B]

Wednesday we went out for breakfast. We were lugging two suitcases, each on a major exploration. To try to find coffee.

[A]

Yeah, to find anything to go to. Because it was like 9:30 in the morning. A lot of stuff wasn't open yet, and we had no idea what. Where anything was. We finally found the. There's a. There was a shopping mall across the highway from us. And we found out how to get there. And we just got like, bagels and a muffin or something. Right. It was. It was a very basic breakfast.

[B]

And a muffin.

[A]

Yeah, that was what we got. And we stayed there for a minute until our. No, we. Then we walked around Westfield for a bit, and then we went back to.

[B]

An impressive mall from the luxury point of view.

[A]

Yeah, there was a lot of good stuff. And we went back to the Airbnb. We got set up. Our host of the Airbnb, or sorry, I should say the concierge from one fine stay fully thought that my mother was younger than 55. Because he was 55. And he thought. And he was like, oh, I bet you I'm older than you, ma'. Am. And he wasn't entirely sure if we were mother and son or kept boy and sugar mama. And so do you remember this? He said, you and your. And he, like, waited me for me to finish the sentence. I said, my mother, my mother. And he goes, oh, okay, good. It's your mother. Great. It's your mom. Great, great, great. But I guess he had made that mistake in the past where he's like, oh, you and your daughter. It's like, this is my girlfriend. But what did we do once we got situated? Because that was around 12:30.

[B]

We went out and walked around and went to Hyde park and sat there.

[A]

We did. We did sit in Hyde park.

[B]

And we eventually made our way to Joe Allen.

[A]

Yes. We had our first dinner at Joe Allen in the theater district. We walked sort of from this tube to through Covent Garden to Joe Allen, which was right behind Lion King. And that was okay. That was a decent meal and fun aesthetic. Joe Allen in New York. The whole point of the design is it's lined with posters of flop shows, plays and musicals. And over the years, the requirement for. For what was a flop poster for the wall to changed. Because it used to be. Oh, it had to run less than a certain number of performances. Then it became, okay, now it's gotta have lost at least a million dollars. And I think now it's like a whole bunch of stuff. And it's. They sort of just put posters up when they decide to. But this Joe Allen in London, they didn't have all of that. They. It was. They had flop shows, and then they also had posters from American shows that maybe didn't do well in London, but it was the posters from America. It's like they had the original 1776. I'm like, why do you have that up here? This isn't even the poster for London. This is the Broadway poster. They had the poster, I think, for. I think they had the poster for playing. They're playing our song. And then they also had, you know, Patti LuPone in masterclass in London. It was just. It was just all over the place. I wasn't quite sure what the purpose of all the posters were.

[B]

I don't know. I mean, the whole place seemed to have a little bit less character than New York. Kind of felt like there's no sawdust on the floor. Even though there isn't a Joe Allen in New York, it has that kind of feeling. I will also say though that or say yet I will say that the waiters in New York are much more diffident. The ones in, you know, they basically ignore you. The ones in London are much more personable.

[A]

Yeah, when you can get their attention.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

They are very personable. There was. It's almost to a fault because at Joe Allen we had a couple of servers sort of around us and there were two that were sort of our main ones. And it was hard to get their attention sometimes because they were being. They were talking with other tables for so long. And it was just about, you know, where they were from and what they were up to. And that's great. But we needed the check so we could go to see our first show.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

But it worked out. We got. We got the check and we got there in plenty of time. And our first show was.

[B]

Our first show was Operation Mincemeat.

[A]

Yes, at the Fortune Theater. Now, I picked this show for us when we booked our tickets to London because Operation Mincemeat had just won the Olivier Award for best new Musical. The Oliviers, for you uncultured fucks who don't know that is Britain's equivalent to the Tony Awards. Now that doesn't mean that every Olivier Award winning musical goes on to be a major player in the theatrical canon. Blood Brothers ran for a million years in London, won the Olivier and it came here for two years, lost best musical and lost a whole bunch of. And no one really does Blood Brothers in. In New York, but you and dad. You and Boo Boo sell blood brothers. Around the time it opened in. In London, right?

[B]

Yeah, it might have been. Was it our honeymoon or was it the next time?

[A]

When did you guys get married?

[B]

85.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

In about 89. We went again when I was pregnant with you. So it might have been then.

[A]

I don't remember might have been. It was playing by then. Blood Brothers opened, then it closed, and then it came back. And when it came back, that's when it lasted forever. And I think that was around 84, 85. I don't know.

[B]

Am I right that Petula Clark was in it.

[A]

She did it in New York. Yeah, she might have done it there, but she. I know for a fact she did it here. She didn't open it, but she did it for a long time here with the Cassidy brothers. But. So we went to go see this because it was highly recommended. Everyone really loved it. The thing with Operation Mincemeat was that one of the major selling points was the four writers of the show also starred in the show, plus one other person. And those four writers had all left about a month before we got there. So it was a new cast for the most part. Five actors, four of them were new and I think a month is enough time for them to sort of get their sea legs. And we went in with open eyes, not knowing much about it other than it was based on a true World War II story. I think they got inspired by a Netflix documentary about it. And what would you say Operation Mincemeat is overall about? Like, what's the plot of the show?

[B]

Well, it's a ruse that. That Britain, I think. Or was it. Yeah, Britain was staging against the Germans and setting up two places as decoy places of attack. So the Germans all rallied around these two places when in fact the attack came from somewhere else.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so it was all done on the down low. I mean, it was very secretive. And.

[A]

And the way that they got the Germans to think that they were attacking a different. It was. They were. They made the Germans believe they were attacking a different spot of Italy than they actually were. And the way they got the Germans to think they were doing this was. Do you remember this part?

[B]

They put out? They had double.

[A]

This was. This was the whole, like, twist of the story. They had a dead body that they planted as a decoy as a fallen soldier that had secret files about their bogus secret files about where Britain was planning to attack or where the Allies were planning to attack in Italy. And it was this whole setup. They had to. They had to find a dead body, somebody that didn't have much of a record. So they found a homeless man essentially, and I know had no contacts, wouldn't be missing or anything like that.

[B]

Let me be clear. They didn't kill him. He was already dead.

[A]

Yes, he was already dead. They did not kill him. That was the other thing. They weren't going to kill anybody. But it was tricky because they had to find somebody who had basically no record, so they could make up a record for them and they do it and everything ends up working out in the end. But there are Some mix ups that. Some of which I can't rightfully say I remember or understood at the time.

[B]

Well, timeout. We did nod off a fair amount of times, you know, both of us.

[A]

Yes, we. Despite the fact that we weren't totally jet lagged, we did start to nod off in the first, like, 30 minutes of the show. We were always awake. We never actually slept in the first 30 minutes, but we. My head especially was like slowly going down and you would poke me every five or so minutes. But also I was starting to nod off a little bit because I wasn't terribly enjoying it.

[B]

Yes, exactly. So I was gonna say in terms of the Oliviers, just a frame of reference that people might understand. It feels like it was a stolen election and quite rigged.

[A]

Well, in fairness, the show is very popular there and had massive acclaim. So it. I wouldn't say that its win wasn't earned because it clearly is resonating over there.

[B]

It struck a chord. But, you know, it's supposed to come to New York if. Am I jumping the gun? No, it's supposed to come to New York. And I think what we both were saying was that the vernacular is just so British and there's so much inside baseball in terms of the language and the illusions that we couldn't laugh at everything that was meant to be sort of humorous because we sort of didn't get it.

[A]

Well, yes and no. The thing that people who have loved this show and have come to its defense when talking about whether it should move to Broadway or not, they all say, like, well, it's too British. American audiences won't get it. And I don't think that's totally true. The next show we're going to talk about, I do think it's true. A show that I think is actually better than Operation Mincemeat. One of the things about Operation Mincemeat, it is five actors all playing multiple roles, various genders as well. Women dressing, playing male characters, men playing female characters, or male, female identifying. And it's a pretty minimal set. It's mostly chairs, desks, a staircase that kind of comes on and off. And then a couple of projections, they do this big reveal towards the end, which I won't talk too much about, but for a show that's relatively quaint, they kind of pull the stops out at the end to give you a big bang for your buck. And I was excited to see Operation Mincemeat. And you and I are both somewhat Anglophiles in different ways. I know you and Booboo were Very big on Fawlty Towers back in the day. You love that Judi Dench show. What's it called?

[B]

I do. It's as Time Goes By.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

And then there was another one, Keeping Up Appearances. I liked all that.

[A]

I mean, you're also always watching British detective shows on Amazon. Like, I come in and you're watching some drama with Brits, and I'm like.

[B]

What'S going on, Endeavor Morse? You know.

[A]

Yeah, Louis, you were watching Broadchurch before it became an American show. You are. You've always been on the Pulse, at least. At least when it comes to detective shows, but you have that. I'm, you know, very big.

[B]

By the way, I still need the subtitles.

[A]

Well, yeah, but you need the subtitles for American shows, too.

[B]

No, but I'm just saying, same language. I still need the subtitles.

[A]

Sure, sure, sure. I have my own stuff in terms of pop culture with the Brits, Doctor who, and of course, my beloved Paddington. I love all things Anne Boleyn. I'm so deep in her history, it's kind of embarrassing. And also, I do love a good number of British musicals. And that's just off the top of my head. There's a lot more to us, like, we're not. We're not the dumbest Americans coming in totally blind to British culture. We have a good sense of it if we're not totally engulfed in it. For me, with Operation Mincemeat, I just didn't think the show itself was quite good enough. Like, if there are British isms in. In it, the British seem to still just have a ball with men playing female identifying roles, more so than we do in America now. And so anytime a male actor was playing a female role, the audience just was on fire.

[B]

Hilarity ensues.

[A]

Absolutely. And there were times that I chuckled. There were some good moments. But also, there are a lot of jokes that I saw coming from a mile away when they. There's a twist that happens with one character who you think is kind of gonna undermine the entire operation, and turns out he's doing his own thing. And they were talking about one day possibly making this story a movie and how ridiculous that would be. And someone goes, well, at least it's better than a musical. And everyone. And I knew that was coming if they. Because they do a whole big of, like, a movie. And everyone laughs and go. And they're gonna talk about, well, at least it's not a musical. And they go, well, at least it's not a musical. And I thought that the score was just sort of meh.

[B]

It was weak. It was very weak.

[A]

There were two songs that I liked. I'm looking through the program now to.

[B]

Remember this wasn't quite good enough.

[A]

Yeah. So the first song that I liked was called Dear Bill. And that was the song that that female secretary sang. Because one of the things that they needed to do to sort of build up this. This dead soldier's fake. Dead soldier's profile was they needed to have documents about him that the Germans could find. And so they were writing a fake correspondence between this fake dead soldier and his fake fiance. And they're trying to come up with flowery, poetic love language. And one of the things that they often talk about in Operation Mincemeat is some of the characters don't really know what it was like to be coming of age during a war because they were on the younger side during World War I or not alive at all. But this secretary was. She was most likely in her romantic youth during World War I. And so she talks about all the things that you would say in a letter to someone who you're not sure you're ever gonna see again. And so she does this improv letter for them to get an idea of it. And it's actually quite a lovely song. It is two minutes too long.

[B]

Exactly. I mean, it was very powerful because you came to understand that this was something that she had experienced herself.

[A]

And I will give Operation Mincemeat credit that they don't go for silly the entire time. They do try to emphasize that there's, you know, realistic, real stakes here. I don't think that they always land that because it's more a line or two that cuts in to emphasize there's a war going on. And then it's sort of back to the silliness. There's one character that one of the actresses plays, she. It's the. It's like their boss, because all the main characters are doing this ruse. They've got a boss that they have to report to. And that boss at one point yells at them, like, I will not play chess with these men's lives, or something like that. Because the character who threatens to undermine the whole thing is very much a smarmy, egotistical character and thinks of the whole thing as a lark. And their boss is like, fuck you. It's not a lark. This is an actual war, you idiot.

[B]

And.

[A]

But moments like that never really landed with me. Dear Bill landed with me. But again, it went on too long because it started and I went Oh, I like where this is going. And I thought, oh, we're coming to the end. Nope, there were six more verses.

[B]

It had emotional stakes in it. You know, I mean, whatever credibility that engendered for most for that part of the show, and maybe there was some overflow into the rest of it, was completely obliterated by the ending. And no spoiler alert. But the ending is absurd.

[A]

The ending is absurd. Which obviously was their point. But it's hard. The pathos that the show wants is hard to really grab onto because ultimately all the things that they tell you are complications that are dangerous about it that could usurp everything don't end up coming to pass at the end. Everything works out swimmingly and everyone comes out fine in the end. No one really gets a bad ending. And obviously for a show like this that is trying to keep everything light, you don't want a lot of sadness. But all of these red herrings about, oh, that person's gonna deceive us. Oh, this won't work out. None of it matters. None of it matters. And a lot of the songs also felt like filler. Again, Dear Bill was the one that we liked the most. The other one I liked, I think it was the Act 1 finale. Just for tonight, possibly. I think that was the one that I liked the most. But also, like that song, it didn't build to a satisfying conclusion for me. There was a good motor to it and probably had the most inventive staging of the show. That was another thing for a show that's trying to sort of be 39 steps esque and make up all these scenarios with just two chairs and a ladder, it wasn't terribly well executed. The thing I liked most about that Act 1 finale was all the actors were playing multiple parts during the number and had to constantly switch during, you know, every 20 seconds. So that was cool. But other than that, I didn't care that much. The one thing that they did that I'm glad they did, because you were thinking this, and it's something that I talk about all the time on this podcast, is sometimes audiences are incredibly dumb and have a Pavlovian response to something because it's a bop, because the vocals are impressive, because the lights are shiny and they go, ooh, yay. And Operation Mincemeat does fuck with dummies at the top of Act 2. Are you remember where this is going?

[B]

Well, I remember the finale. I'm just trying to.

[A]

Act 2 opens with an absolutely unnecessary, like, German pop laser show number about the Nazis and it's very. And very intricate, strict choreography. And everyone's singing their face off. I can't sing you a single note of it. I don't remember it. And it ends with a big. Which is. You know how songs in Hamilton end and in the Heights end and the audience goes insane. And you were so upset because you were going, this is a song about the Nazis. Like, the fuck are you all doing? Why would you cheer for this? And then the lights come up on one of the actors looking out of the audience with their arms crossed and going, really? Really? You applauded that.

[B]

I was right.

[A]

You were right. And the audience laughs because I don't think an audience understands that the joke is on them in that respect, that they should maybe do better in the future. But they laugh because it's. The joke is on them. And ultimately. But they laugh because there is a joke, even if they don't always recognize it's on them.

[B]

It's also awkwardness, you know, when it's sort of back in your face, like, really? It's like, oh, God, you know? Well, so better make light of it.

[A]

I saw. So this actually won best musical over a strange loop when it transferred there. Although I read that it was at the Barbican, which is a huge theater. I don't know why strange loop was there. Point is, speaking of strange loop, Michael R. Jackson, the writer of that, had a musical last summer called White Girl in Danger at Second Stage, which I saw, and it was fascinating. It was pretty much a mess. It was three hours long. Didn't need to be. But there was a moment towards the end of the show where one of the characters, because it's half black, half white cast, but one of the black actresses sings this big barn burning number of just high vocals, like, amazingness, and the audience just goes insane for her. And then we go into this sort of ethereal space where the quote, unquote, writer of the show we've been watching comes out, not actually Michael R. Jackson, but an actor playing him, essentially talking about all the things he was trying to do in this musical and where he thinks he succeeded, where he thought he failed, and where he doesn't even know how to start. And it's this number that is very stream of consciousness. None of the lyrics rhymed, if I recall correctly. And one of the lines he sings is about how we cheer for black women when they sing their faces off on stage. But in. In its own way, isn't that a form of servitude?

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

Which was great.

[B]

It Is great.

[A]

But half of the audience went, mm. And I went, you're the people he's talking to. You just cheered this bitch who, granted sang her face off. And then you went, yes, Queen work. And then next scene, he's like, well, isn't that servitude? And rather than you going, huh, I guess maybe it is, you're like, ah, preach. There's a mirror right there. Look at it, is what I'm saying.

[B]

Exactly. Exactly. And then just getting back to Operation Mincemeat, I will just say not spoiling a whole lot, metaphorically. It was the baton twirling number at the end that kind of really eviscerated any respect that I felt.

[A]

Did you feel like you weren't understanding the show or that you weren't understanding why the audience was going so bananas for it? Because the audience was very responsive to that number, to the whole show, I would say. I don't feel like there was a ton of raucous laughter the entire night. There were a couple of moments, but they went insane when the show ended. So clearly it was us.

[B]

Yeah. And. And I think there's maybe different sensibility and. And different sense of how people want to be entertained. I don't know. I mean, I could see an American audience going crazy for that number, too, but it was just. It felt like it was from a different show.

[A]

Yeah. But I do think that was sort of the purpose of. We're gonna give you big spectacle. Exactly. We're gonna give you. Yeah, we're gonna give you your money's worth at the end, with a little nudge there. I. I think that's intentional. I think where you're coming from is it didn't work for you because that's how all theater is. Right. It's. Anything is a problem if it doesn't work. When it works, it doesn't matter. There's. There are a million things you could poke at with Les Mis of what's wrong with it, but ultimately, the show works.

[B]

There's nothing wrong with that, actually.

[A]

On that note, while we talk about these shows, I think the listeners should get a better idea of who you are as a theatergoer. Mother. What are some shows that you love? Musicals, plays throughout your entire life?

[B]

I tend to go for the things that seem to be game changers for me. Oh, no, cut that out. Edit that laugh out.

[A]

No, I love it. I love it. I tend to go for the things that are truly groundbreaking.

[B]

I didn't say groundbreaking.

[A]

You said game changer.

[B]

Yeah, well, they sort of Changed the metaphor going on. I mean, I thought that Les Mis did that. It was a very different kind of creative endeavor. I felt that with Hamilton, and then I think a lot of people felt it with Rent. I had to see it the second time for it to sort of do that for me.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I think there was something else more recently that I can't remember. But, you know, the oldies are great, but when I see something that sort of reconceives what the theatrical experience is like, and I don't mean Cats. I don't mean.

[A]

Well, you only.

[B]

Starlight Express.

[A]

To be fair, you only saw half of Cats.

[B]

I only saw half of it from behind a pedestal.

[A]

Yes. And then you did see Starlight Express in London with me.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Because this is. This was your first time back in London in 24 years.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. When I was 10 and we saw Mamma Mia. At the Prince Edward Theater about a year into the run, and I famously hated it. And then we saw Starlight Express at the Apollo Victoria. Because this, this is where I give 10 year old me a lot of credit. I said, I will never get a chance to see this show ever again. Not. Not at this scale. And I need to see it as a. You know, even then I wanted to be like a theater historian person. I was like, I need to see this.

[B]

You had a lot going on upstairs that nobody ever realized. Right. You were having very sophisticated conversations in your head that never really came out, I don't think.

[A]

No, but I remember saying. Because that's the only way I could have convinced any of you to go to Starlight Express because we. It was us, Yumi Boo, Boo Laura and Grandma. And we were only there for four days, I think, and there was. We had one night free and there was talk about maybe seeing another show. And I demanded Starlight Express. And we. You all went.

[B]

We did go. Well, we'll let you go by yourself.

[A]

No, but you could have picked another show and dragged me along.

[B]

Well, yes, or we could have vetoed, which, you know, as we know, only one family member would take you to see Cats when you were young.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Everyone else said, no, thank you.

[A]

Yeah, I know, but Fran took me to Cats under the same guise that I convinced you all to go with me to Starlight Express, which was, this is important for me to see. I'll never see it like this again. And I. If I'm going to be able to talk about these and have the opportunity to see them, I need to go. And I mean, I don't think you or Booboo. Ever saw Starlet Express before then? So, yeah, it was. It was already. It was having closed in New York for 11 years at that point, it was still going strong in London. So we went and. I mean, it was. I didn't like it. I thought it was dumb. But I'm glad I saw it because I can say that I saw it.

[B]

Oh, I can add one more to the bibliography here, which is, you know, I know I'm dating myself, but I think Hair was. It was a pivot.

[A]

You love hair.

[B]

I love hair. Well, I love the soundtrack.

[A]

You know, the cast album. You love the cast album.

[B]

That's what I mean. Yes.

[A]

My mother is an OG, because I grew up on the Broadway cast recording of Hair, the 1968 recording with you. And so any recording of Hair I've listened to since then, I don't like, because even though the vocals are far better, it doesn't have the same personality. And when I went with you to see the revival of Hair on Broadway, while I rather enjoyed it, I remember you being extremely disappointed. We walked out and you went in 68. They were wearing clothes, now they're wearing costumes.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. They were fake hippies.

[A]

Yeah. Not a ton of body hair on stage. Most people were still shaving and waxing. That disappointed you?

[B]

I mean, yeah, it was just different.

[A]

We digress. But I just wanted people to get an idea of who you are.

[B]

As a Thursday, it was sanitized.

[A]

Jeez. What? You haven't seen much this season on Broadway, right? You saw Stereophonic.

[B]

That one also was game changing. Okay. Stereophonic, I absolutely adored.

[A]

Yes. You saw Enemy of the People, which you were sort of met on.

[B]

Yeah, it was okay.

[A]

You saw Appropriate.

[B]

I did.

[A]

You liked Appropriate?

[B]

I did.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I did. You know, going back to the London audience for a second, what they got and what. We've discussed this, and I didn't think. For some reason, I thought perhaps London, because theater is so prevalent in a. In a niche way rather than Broadway, I would imagine that it would be a somewhat more discriminating audience because I was surprised to see Standing O's, where we know everybody does it, regardless of the show in New York, because they're justifying the ticket price and their experience and whatnot.

[A]

Well, tickets aren't quite as expensive in London, but I do find British audiences to be less discerning than they used to be. Although of all the shows we saw, Operation Mincemeat was the only one that got an immediate standing ovation. It was the moment the lights went out. Everyone just shot up from their seats.

[B]

Baton twirling at the end. It was high energy.

[A]

It was high energy. The other three shows, which we'll talk about, the standing ovations eventually happened, but it was more piecemeal. People started to slowly come together and stand. But that was Operation Mincemeat. Any last things you want to say about it as we continue onwards?

[B]

I don't think so.

[A]

It is supposed to come here. The word I hear is that it's going to D.C. first, I think to build up some buzz, find its American sea legs and then it's coming to New York in the spring. The word is the golden, which is where Stereophonic is currently playing and will be playing until January. But things can happen. I am not super confident that it's going to land here. If it does good for them. But I just. I think that a lot of audiences are not gonna enjoy it because it's not. It is not clever enough in its design and its staging to make up for how threadbare it is. Because I don't care about spectacle. But if you're gonna be a 39 steps, be a 39 steps, which to this day is some of my most favorite staging I've ever seen in a show. If you're gonna be a gung ho, lots of gumption, musical have songs that actually do something, not just two. And if you're gonna be a British show, you gotta find a way to bring an American audience in. And I don't think they're gonna be able to do that unless they make a lot of changes.

[B]

I mean, I understand I'm speaking to an audience that will see anything any to their own personal anthology. But my thing would be save your money. I think, you know, there'd probably be a lot of other things that are worth the ducats.

[A]

I agree. A lot of people have informed me that with the original company, oh, it was just magical. And it's a shame that now that they're gone. To which I say you, if it's about the original company, then the material isn't as good as you're trying to sell me on it. Granted, there have been bad castings in the past that have absolutely weekend shows. But our cast wasn't untalented.

[B]

No. There's so much talent. More than five people in. In London are talented.

[A]

I thought there was like one person who I thought was maybe the weakest of the links, but everyone in it was doing good work. I just didn't like the show.

[B]

It was almost like they were pushing yeah, you know, because there wasn't.

[A]

Well, there was one male actor who definitely was pushing a lot and I thought he could have reeled it back a bit because the stuff that landed the best for me was when it was sort of straight faced stuff for me. Ridiculous stuff lands best in satire and kookiness. When it's done in earnest, not in over eager pushing. I can even handle a wink. But when it's pushing, that's when I go, lay off me. But that was Wednesday night. Thursday we go to the Victoria Albert Museum, which was very lovely. We go to afternoon tea, which was lovely. That was. That might have been the high point of the whole thing. That was at the number 16 hotel in Kensington, the Orangery. The Orangery, as they call it.

[B]

It was beautiful.

[A]

It was beautiful. Yeah. We had wonderful tea, great finger sandwiches and biscuits and little desserts. It was. We. We slayed that. We did great after that because it was tea. We didn't do dinner before our next show. We did a late bite at the Ivy Collection, I think it's called, because there were a couple of Ivys in London. But the Ivy that's next. Across the street from the Mousetrap is where we went for our late dinner. But before our late dinner, we then saw Standing at Sky's Edge at the Gillian Lind Theatre, which I told you when we got there, is best known for being the theater that Cats played in London for 18 years, 19 years, something like that. It's also where Angela Rubber Cinderella was, but no one cares about that either. Standing at Sky's Edge. What is it about?

[B]

It is about sort of the. You can look at it in one of two ways. I mean, I think it's really from the. From the human point of view. It's about the transients of people who came in and out of this planned community outside of London in a working class, maybe even just like blue collar.

[A]

I think the town is called Sheffield.

[B]

Yes, it's called Sheffield. And you know, it's how it worked, how it didn't work, how it's been reimagined. You know, it's basically a housing project.

[A]

Yeah, it was a housing project called Park Hill.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And it launched in the 50s, post World War II. Yeah. And went through ups and downs. And the idea was supposed to be this utopia for working class people and a place for them to have a community and have a nice life and be able to, you know, work their way up in the world. And we get three different storylines and three different points of Park Hill's history. The first is a couple that just move in after getting married in 1960, I believe. 60, 61, when Park Hill is sort of in its prime. And then we flash forward 28 years later, and we have three immigrants from Ghana, I think.

[B]

I think so.

[A]

I think that's where they're from. They come to live there. And Park Hill is definitely on its way down. It's not totally at the bottom, but it's starting to be. It's running down. Yes. And then the Next one is 2015 with a young woman. I think her name is Rose. No. Is it Rose?

[B]

I feel like it is.

[A]

Yeah. There was. There are so many characters.

[B]

There were so many characters. It was kind of. And it was asynchronous. Right. So it just was.

[A]

No, I think Rose is the married one.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

So Nikki is the lesbian girlfriend of Poppy. Poppy is the name of the woman who moves in. She moves in in 2015, once it's been renovated and they're trying to make it a hot spot to move to again. And so gentrification, essentially. And she moves there as a fresh start after a bad breakup. And the show weaves in and out of these three storylines, and we see how characters from each storyline actually play a part in the other storylines, because the son of the couple that moves into the beginning becomes the boyfriend of the young girl who immigrates in 89. They have a kid who ends up being the broker for the woman who moves in in 2015.

[B]

So there is a thread.

[A]

There is a thread.

[B]

Generational thread.

[A]

Yes. And they do have these little. They reminded me of the timers in a baseball basketball game. These little things that come down and tell you what year it is. Oh, yeah, it was like 1960, 1989. And then we flash forward two years, five years, things like that.

[B]

And you're talking about, like, the scoreboard.

[A]

Yeah, but no, it's not just the scoreboard.

[B]

Things don't drop from the ceiling and then recede in an arena.

[A]

No, but they do in this show.

[B]

Yeah. You said it was like a basketball game.

[A]

Yeah, I'm saying. But the thing. The item looked like that.

[B]

Oh, I see. Okay.

[A]

Not saying that that was how it happens at basketball game. I'm just saying it's what it looked like. Yes, sure, the scoreboard. Slay. Flay me alive, everybody. I'm terrible. I'm just dumb theater kid. But yes, that's not what I'm saying.

[B]

I'm saying just don't make sports analogies unless you know them for real.

[A]

I will do whatever I. Goddamn. One. This is my podcast.

[B]

Okay, fine.

[A]

Okay, fine. But. So it's using the number standing at Sky's Edge. It's using songs from. I have to look up his name now, because I don't. Speaking of things I know nothing about Richard Holly, who I guess is part of a band that I don't know at all. And these were songs from. They call it back catalog. So songs that not many people knew that he had written, inspired by Park Hill. And they had. The scriptwriter also, I guess lived in Park Hill at one point, so they had history with it. But it's a jukebox musical. We didn't know that at first. I think we didn't know until intermission or after the show that all the songs were not written for the show.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

But it's. But they felt like they were.

[B]

Ish. Yeah, mostly.

[A]

Well, most of the songs don't come out of dialogue. They are atmospheric. They. They're more to set a mood or to kind of launch a theme for a character. Sometimes characters come on and sing in a. You know, through a mic, and it's tells you what kind of character this person's about to be for the rest of the show. Or they sing something that's commenting on the action or setting a mood for the action, but it's never two characters. Don't have a fight and then burst into song. That's not how the show works. It's very Girl from the north country for any of you who saw that. And I found this much more exciting than Girl from the North country, but it is definitely that kind of vibe. This show I find to be far more British than Operation Mincemeat. Talk about references that you and I had to ask our seatmates during intermission.

[B]

Exactly. I was just gonna say part of that pin is that I was fortunate to be sitting next to five women who had gone to uni together. And uni was in Sheffield, and one of them.

[A]

Oh, this is where the wine comes in.

[B]

Yes, yes, yes. So they were geology majors or something, and they had done some project work there. And so they were very familiar with Park Hill and the history and everything else. And they were so interesting. Talking to them at some of the intervals was great. And so, yeah, two things kind of shook me that shook me, but very different in a British audience. They eat ice cream. Ice cream is for sale in these theaters, and they bring it back to the seats and they eat during the show. And I look over at these five birds, as they might say. And. And they brought a bottle of, like a whole bottle of. Back to their seats. And they all had wine glasses. And this is very normal. So they're pouring wine during the whole thing. But it's like not even a covered cup. Like, we get here.

[A]

Full blown wine glass and full blown glasses with stems and everything. I will say the British audiences that we had definitely were better than the Broadway audiences I've had in the past year or two. As far as I know, there were no cell phones went off. Maybe one went off during Standing at Sky's Edge, but I can't quite remember a lot of coughing, which pissed me off. It was. And the coughing was really egregious at Hills of California. That pissed me off. But we'll get to that eventually. And there was also a dumb dude behind you, and we'll talk about him.

[B]

But he was a dumb shit, actually.

[A]

He sure was. But no one was rowdy from the alcohol. It was just. It was part of the experience.

[B]

It was. I mean, you know, listen, this is. This is not like date night for them. They drink like this all the time.

[A]

Absolutely. We didn't drink all that much when we were out.

[B]

We didn't, but everybody else does.

[A]

Yeah, well, I'm just talking about me because I do enjoy the alcohols of the world, whereas you don't. Totally. It. We've gotten you on the thimbles of life, where what that means is when my mother and I have dinner at home and there's wine involved, I will have a glass and we give her like a shot glass that she fills up and to make it cute, we call it a thimble. And occasionally you'll have two thimbles, but usually just one. Yeah. Okay. Rarely you have two thimbles, but sometimes you have two thimbles. Mostly you just have the one, and even then you don't always finish it.

[B]

And I'm very good at, like, sharing. I mean, taking from someone else's glass.

[A]

Yes. You really like having a sip from whatever it is that I'm drinking. You hated whatever. Oh, you hated my Paloma at Joe Allen because you didn't realize it was mezcal, which is smoky. You liked my Old Fashioned from the Ivy, which was sweet but still really great. It was really good.

[B]

And it went with sort of the deco decor and feel of the place.

[A]

Yeah, the Ivy's awesome. I love it.

[B]

There's great.

[A]

Good. Good menu.

[B]

It's sort of like velvet banquettes, velvet seats at the bar.

[A]

Yeah, it felt very 1920s England, which when along with it being right across the street from the Mousetrap. Agatha Christie is the mousetrap. You know, you just expected PG Wodehouse or Noel Coward to come in at any moment and be like, the usual, sir, thank you. But we're standing at sky's edge. You know, I thought it was a little slow at first. The whole thing was on the slower side. I was never bored, but I def. Every now and then I was going along. But that is a show. So that premiered at the National Theater.

[B]

I think it also make you. Made you work hard, because the threads weren't always immediately apparent.

[A]

I called, and I think I told you at the interval that that real estate agent was gonna be. Yeah, you did. Was gonna be the daughter. Because Act 1 ends with the immigrant from Ghana. And any details I'm getting wrong, guys, please forgive me, but the basic idea of the immigrant girl from Ghana and the son of the married couple, they are teenagers who, you know, they date a little bit, and then over three years, they finally start to kind of consummate the relationship and she gets pregnant because of course they do. And act one ends with her not knowing what she's gonna do about it if she's gonna have the baby.

[B]

Well, he had an opinion.

[A]

He definitely had an opinion. And so Act 1 ends, and you don't know. And we were talking about it, and I said, well, she's gonna have the kid, and the kid's gonna grow up to be the real estate agent. And I remember you saying what? And I said, I think it's very, very specific because we had an understudy for the real estate agent and the real estate agent who we had and the normal actress were both mixed raced. And I said, that's not by accident.

[B]

No, you were right. You called it.

[A]

I did. And especially because at that point, we'd had a thread between the first two timelines, and I got. We have to have a thread to the third timeline. And it's got. And it's gonna be this. I just know it. I know it.

[B]

I know it. What device do you think that worked?

[A]

I did. Because they didn't do. At this big reveal, you realized who she was, or should say they revealed who she was at a party that Poppy was throwing for New year's in Act 2.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And the reveal that she was their daughter. That. That wasn't the point of the scene. The point of the scene was Nikki showing up, the lesbian ex girl fiance of Poppy, who we both loved. Great actress, great character.

[B]

Great voice.

[A]

Great voice. Yeah. But also I thought a really. And we'll get to Poppy and Nikki in a second. Because I thought that their conversations about their relationship were really interesting ones because Nikki is painted as this psycho ex villain who did the ultimate sin and really messed up Poppy. And, like, we're supposed to hate her. And to be fair, when she shows up, she is a little presumptuous, She's a little forward. And we go, oh, I can sort of see why this didn't work out. But there is a swagger to her. And I get why sort of Poppy might have been into her. Because Poppy is very uptight, beautiful, beautiful red hair, but very uptight and fidgety and. And over analytical, whereas Nikki's a little bit more go with the flow.

[B]

It also wasn't clear that she was gay until you saw Nikki, until that came into the picture.

[A]

And I think that was on purpose. Yeah. Because we have a scene with Poppy and one of her new co workers who also turns out to be gay. But in their first scene together, we're not quite sure if it's a date or not.

[B]

They weren't sure either.

[A]

Exactly. They make a joke of that. They both say later on at the New Year's party, which takes place two years later, of, how am I gonna let this person down? That I'm gay? And only to realize, oh, we're both gay. But Nick, they make a choice to.

[B]

Have, well, male, female. Right. So it was interesting.

[A]

They make it a point to have her. Poppy's ex, be named Nicky, because you don't know what gender that could be. You know, it's the same as Alex. Alex can be a man or a woman. It's Pat from Saturday Night Live. Is that what you mean, Pat? Yeah, but Poppy and Nikki, their whole. That scene where we find out the realtor is the daughter, that scene is about Poppy and Nikki's relationship. It's not about the realtor. So I thought that they did that. Well, what they. And I knew something had to happen with the realtor's father, that. Because eventually he's not part of the picture and we don't know why. And they hint that it's gonna be that he's gonna leave, that he's gonna walk away, but he doesn't. And how what ends up happening? I should have realized because the realtor says something about it at that party scene. Do you remember what I'm talking about? Because Nikki is talking about the gentrification of the building and, oh, you should be so ashamed, Poppy, for coming in here and taking these Working class people's lives is like, well, I used to live here. This was my apartment, actually. And I gotta say, you know, it's better than what it used to be. So if gentrification, as you call it, means people with money coming in and keeping this building safe and neat and clean and me in a job, I'll fucking take it. And then you realize where that. Where the root of that comes from. With her parents when she was a kid. And it was very sad.

[B]

It was.

[A]

Yeah. I realized it was about to happen about 30 seconds before it happened, but I still was like, no, especially because.

[B]

The dad was cute, you know, the fact that you're so prescient, does it. Does it ruin things for you, or is it just confirmation when it happens?

[A]

No. Well, so it's like when people talk about rom coms, you know, and they say, what's the point? You know, they're gonna get together. And I think the best rom coms are about how they get together. And sometimes you can see where things are heading, but it's still fun to be along for the journey. I'm sure there are things that you watch where you can see it coming from a mile away, and yet you still get satisfaction out of it.

[B]

Yeah. British detective shows, not so much. It's hard to follow the thread sometimes, but.

[A]

Well, speaking of British detectives, I bought a book before we left, which is Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. And at the moment, I have no idea who actually did it, but I have a theory of one of the events that happened, of what it. What it. Why that event happened. Because the book wants you to think that that event wasn't planned. And I'm sitting there going, I think it was planned.

[B]

And I was reading Inspector Morse, which had been a TV show on BBC. It was terrific. And this was one of the novels of the series that preceded the television series and the one that I happened to open on our way over. Well, they all take place in Oxford, but this was almost a street by street map of Oxford. And we had considered taking a day and going to Oxford, but the weather didn't. Didn't agree.

[A]

The day we were gonna go to Oxford was Monday. And, yeah, the weather wasn't gonna be good.

[B]

No bueno. No bueno.

[A]

Although. So the weather the entire time you were there. Actually, this was the first week of June, and I believe the highest it ever got was 68 degrees.

[B]

Maybe.

[A]

Maybe in the sun.

[B]

At a.

[A]

At a moment. Yes, at, you know, 3:00pm with the sun fully out and us baking in It. Otherwise we were talking low 60s the entire time. Although it was never too cold. I feel like our first day was the coldest. It felt.

[B]

Well, it helped that I was always carrying like a cashmere scarf and I was wearing a jacket.

[A]

We dressed in layers, not heaviest layers, but I mean, I wore a sweater at one point I wore a cardigan and another. But often it was just button down, short sleeve shirt like I'm wearing now in my jacket.

[B]

I know as we were packing to go home, I'm looking at these T shirts and I'm figuring they're laughing at me. You know, these T shirts that are so beautifully folded from Marie Kondo, actually. And I never wore them. You never cracked them out because it was too cold.

[A]

It was, it was. You didn't bring anything to go along with the T shirts, so that's on you.

[B]

I did. I brought white jeans and.

[A]

No, but I'm talking a sweatshirt or a sweater, things like that to add on top of that. Because I was raised by a woman who told me when packing to go somewhere, pack clothes with layers. Because that way if it's colder than you thought, you can put another layer on. If it's warmer than you thought, you can take a layer off. So I do that every single time.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

Yes. But you didn't do that with your T shirts.

[B]

Well, the T shirts wouldn't. I mean, I had one sweater with me and I had the scarf and I had jackets. And then I brought two sweaters that are sort of transition that I often wear in the winter as well. And I rotated those. But I was very proud of my planning and my wardrobe. I said it reminded me of grandma. I had. I was rotating white off white or camel, I guess, and black and white. Oh yeah, those three. Just every. Everything I wore was some configuration of those. Always different. Different configuration.

[A]

But I feel like there were some blue in there. But maybe I'm.

[B]

Jacket.

[A]

Jacket. Yeah. And then eventually a purchase we made. Oh, we also went to Harrods that day. We walked through Harrods for a little bit.

[B]

You tried on shoes that I thought were. It was no bargain shopping in London.

[A]

I went through the toy department because I remember it being so epic when I was last there with Booboo and it's shrunken. They've cut it like in half now. It was. It upset me because I loved that toy department and now it's perfectly fine, but it's just. It's like any other toy department in any department store.

[B]

Big book, book store. I forget what floor it was on. Oh, maybe it was when I went down to the bathroom.

[A]

Parents had a bookstore.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Minus one level.

[A]

Okay. I didn't see it. So that would be it. Because I went to other bookstores. We are standing at Sky's Edge. So the. The pop. Yeah. Poppy and Nikki. So we. So we have the first married couple, which is Rose and her husband. I think Jimmy's the son.

[B]

Yes, I think Harry was his name.

[A]

Yeah, I think Harry was. That was the husband. The they. Harry was sort of. He was a manager. He was the youngest manager and I guess the coal mining company or whatever that they were that he was working at. And then due to the mining miner strike, which happened when Thatcher was elected prime minister, he was out of a job and then never got a job again. And that was a strain on their marriage and they end up splitting.

[B]

Well, he turned to the demon rum heavy.

[A]

Very much so, yes. He. He went from a cute, cute man to a disheveled dude in a chair. And so we see sort of the deterioration of that marriage and. And her sort of fighting to stay alive while being with him and then eventually moving out of the apartment. And then we have. Okay, I'm gonna look up their names. It's okay. It is. It's not Jenny. It's Joy. Joy is the. Is the immigrant girl. And then, yes, Jimmy is the boyfriend. Joy moves in with her aunt and cousin or two cousins, I guess, because her parents are still home trying to survive and they never really know what happened to them. And her storyline is getting pregnant, keeping the baby, and then being married to Jimmy and I think becoming a nurse. She. She was trained to be a nurse. Yeah. And Jimmy became like a watchman and just growing up, becoming an actual adult because she. We see her at 15 and then eventually at 25 and watch her. She doesn't become down and out with all the tragedies that happened to her during the show. She doesn't become a shell of herself. She's still a person. She is a traumatized person.

[B]

But Jimmy takes off for a while, doesn't he not. No.

[A]

He doesn't leave. As far as I know, He. He never left.

[B]

I think he came back, but he wanted his space. He wanted.

[A]

They talked about that. There was. There was a they again. They hint that he's gonna run away because they get married with the kid, and it's a lot of. There's strain on the relationship because they've got a child. They're both working, they're young, they're tired, their schedules don't line up because she's in the hospital all day and then he's on call all night. But eventually that ends up not being the case. They still find love for each other. Spoiler alert. What ends up happening is Jimmy comes home early, still late at night, but he's off his shift early, and a mentally disturbed man who's sort of wandering around the building attacks him because he's asking for money. And Jimmy ignores him, and he comes up to him and stabs him at the door. And that and leaving Joy a widow. And that is what her daughter, who becomes the realtor, is talking about in that party scene when she says, you know, people are getting stabbed in the hallways and you don't realize that that's the story she's referring to at first. There's also something in the show that I didn't know was part of it, which is the I love you, will you marry me? Sign, which apparently was graffitied over the building at one point, and then they turned into neon lights.

[B]

And it's still there.

[A]

It's still there. Yeah. And it's part of the set design. And as I said, the show's premiered at the National, I think, at the Olivier stage. Won the Olivier a year ago and then transferred to the Gillian Lynn for a commercial run of, like, nine months. It closes in August. I don't think it'll ever come to America. It's. Again, I think it's too British. The references are deep and. And it's just. It's just a stylization that we don't really jive with here. I think it's a lovely show, but I don't think it'll ever come here. The music is beautiful. We both really liked the music and the arrangements of the music.

[B]

Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if it would work here or not. I mean, I think they would have to change some of the colloquialisms. But, you know, in terms of. Yeah, no, I hear you. I just. I was gonna say something about. It reminded me of in the Heights, and.

[A]

Yeah, it's a sadder in the Heights, for sure.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

I mean, there is almost no violence in the Heights, and there is a death, but it's not a violent one. I mean, in the Heights, it was very much Lynne trying to counteract against the stereotype of violent Latinos and the stereotypes against them that the world had had. So it was a very Disneyland version of Washington Heights. But that was on purpose.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

This is. I want to say this is grittier, but there's more real stuff going on in this.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

There's also queerness in this show, which there wasn't in the original in the Heights. They added it for the movie, but yeah, The Poppy Nikki relationship. So we learn with Poppy that Nikki cheated on her with, I guess, her boss is what she says. And then she drops everything and moves out and Nikki shows up again. And we learn from their relationship that what. What led to Nikki cheating was feeling inadequate and unloved, which is not an excuse. But she's telling Poppy and everyone at the party as well. What sort of led to it. She proposed to Poppy three times before Poppy finally said yes. And then Poppy asked for a delay on the wedding because she needed time. And when she's telling Nikki that that was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for, Nikki was saying, it's not just that. That request came after years of you not taking me seriously and me doing these grand gestures and telling you how much I loved you and you never giving me anything back. I loved you way more than you loved me, and that was hard on me. I could tell that you didn't think I was a serious person. And she goes, and I know I'm not the most impressive, but I love you, and I wanted to do right by you, and you wouldn't give me that chance. She goes, so yes, eventually I did cheat because I needed to feel something with someone. And for a long time, Poppy is not accepting that until she sort of does.

[B]

Of all the flawed characters. Yeah, and we're all flawed. Of course. She was the least sympathetic. She was. Really?

[A]

You found Poppy to be the least sympathetic?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Why do you find Poppy the least sympathetic?

[B]

Because she was so frozen on the inside, and she was so sure, so certain of certain things. And, you know, I just. I felt like Nikki was all heart and emotion and she was more brain and very cold on the inside, so I just found her less sympathetic.

[A]

Interesting. Why just interesting? We come from a very cerebral family. I wouldn't say. Ours is a family that feels deeply, and I do.

[B]

What are you talking about?

[A]

Well, you cry a lot. I wouldn't say that's feeling deeply. You cry a lot. You cry at the drop of a tissue. But I also. I also think that our family is one that has trouble bending to other people. Does that make sense? We listen. I love you. We talk about this all the time. You've got very rigid rules and standards for the men that you go out with, which is great. You gotta have you have to have your rules. And especially with the crazies out there, you gotta have deal breakers. So it's like, no, no, we're not, we're not going on a second. But sometimes you have to talk. And I go, maybe think of it this way, you know, just saying you're not cold like Poppy. But I think everyone in our family is very analytical.

[B]

It's probably true.

[A]

I mean, the podcast I have. This is an analytical podcast, baby. I bring up my emotions from time to time, but I think I've only cried on the podcast once, probably.

[B]

That's impressive.

[A]

I know, I know. I. The period when I cried far more regularly, which was about a year and a half ago, I. Well, yes, we don't, we're not going into that, but I, I didn't record for like two months. It was, that was like, that was when I did my little break. And when I came back, I wasn't emotional. I was just pretty drained. And I thought I was gonna cry a couple of times because there were certain shows we were covering on the podcast. I, oh, this is gonna just hit home. And then they didn't. And then the only time I cried and I cut out them on when it happened was when Adam Ellsbury and I did Promises, Promises, just because Fran Kubelik's storyline very much hit my center. I digress. So Poppy and Nikki. So you found Poppy unsympathetic? You found Nikki more sympathetic?

[B]

I did. Well, eventually I thought she was selfish for a long time, and then as she was displaying more of the emotion. But, you know, there were, there were differences between the two. There was an educational differences, was a socioeconomic difference between the two of them. So there were some bridges, some, Some gulfs that.

[A]

Well, I think that is, that is something that people have trouble with a lot because they think, oh, we have nothing in common or we don't have a vernacular. But you can learn so much from someone who is so different from you. And if there's a love there, if there's a connection there, why not? We may or may not have had a family member who had said to us when they were dating, I can't date anyone who didn't go to an Ivy League college. What will we talk about? And I, I had to bite my tongue so hard when they said this.

[B]

Right, yeah, sorry.

[A]

I mouthed who it was to my mother. And they're not a bad person, but it was just a very tone deaf thing to say.

[B]

It was.

[A]

And I remember telling them, oh, and.

[B]

By the way, not so Productive.

[A]

But yeah, they're not with anybody. But I said, why would you limit your options out there when there are so few anyway? But also someone who could just. Someone can teach you so much. Just because they didn't go to doesn't mean they don't have a lot to learn. Isn't it even more impressive that someone who didn't go to an Ivy League college, who maybe only has a high school education, started a business, had a successful business and go out into the world? I think that's so cool.

[B]

Well, you know, the irony is that so many Ivy League folk, particularly of certain ivies that are more in the north, higher, Northeast, there are a lot of legacy students. So that's not such an accomplishment if you're a legacy student.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I went to elementary school with a whole bunch of fuckwits who went on to Ivy Colleges because their parents went and gave lots and lots of money.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And now they work for those parents companies. Because sometimes you just can't kill nepotism hard as you try. Final thoughts on Standing at Sky's Edge.

[B]

I liked it. I think it was a big uptick from the night before. It was definitely a different kind of creative enterprise. It was a different theatrical setting, different people there. So I liked it. I think we said one was like a pass and this was a high pass or a good mind.

[A]

So I asked you if this was a hit or miss.

[B]

All right. Right.

[A]

And you had said that you found Operation Mincemeat to be a miss. And you said you didn't think you were willing to call Standing at Sky's Edge a hit, but you're willing to call it like a pass plus plus. Yes, like a. Like a B. It was. It was a. It was a B grade, which I think is totally respectable. We were happy that we liked it as much as we did because after Operation Mincemeat let us down as it did, I was getting nervous that all the shows that are during our trip were not gonna do it for us.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But we liked it. And I mean, I don't like the theater. I think the theater is ugly as sin. And also it took forever to get out because there are no center aisles and we were dead center.

[B]

Going back to sports, it felt like an arena.

[A]

Yeah. And people took their sweet ass time. That's the other thing about.

[B]

That's because they drank a whole bottle of rose. They couldn't leave.

[A]

It's like water to them.

[B]

No, I know, but I'm saying they. I was kind of explaining something we.

[A]

Talked about when we were there. And London is not special in this respect, but I did feel it more egregiously when we were there than I have here is the absolute lack of spatial awareness anywhere. And it's not all locals. There is a heavy tourist factor in London. A lot of Europeans coming in for short stays and whatnot. Just oblivious to anyone around them. And then. But also locals as well, of just people cutting right in front of you and then stopping. Like, there was one woman who. When we were walking to the tube from our Airbnb. Yeah. She crossed in front of us and then started to come to a. Like a pause. And I just. I. I didn't even say a word, but I let out, like, a guttural. And she looked. Yeah, and she looked at us. She was like, oh, so sorry. And then went into where she was going to, and I was like, what are you doing? Like, we were not many feet away. We were literally right next to her.

[B]

We held our space, right?

[A]

Yeah, we were literally right next to her. We were in her peripheral vision. I don't know what she thought she was doing. And this wasn't some elderly woman. This wasn't some airhead. This, for all, from what I could tell, was a woman who seemed to be able to put her shoes on that day and yet did that. And she's not alone. There are so many people. By our second day, I was bumping elbows and shoulders with everybody because I stopped this way, that way. Yeah. With my elbows out, just because I had spent all of Wednesday ducking and swerving, trying to not hit people because they just were going at it anyway. And so finally I said, no, no, if they're gonna. If they're going to be that oblivious, I don't care. I will hold my shoulders strong so I won't break anything. But, no, they'll. And then there was some woman when we were walking down the street who. Her bag caught my jacket, I think it was when we were heading towards Little Venice to the point that, like, her bag, like, lifted off because it caught onto the button of my jacket and, like, went back and hit her. She didn't even move. She was still looking at what she was looking at. And I went, how. How is that possible?

[B]

You know, it's the old bumper car illusion. It just feels like everybody's living is.

[A]

You know what it makes me feel like? Makes me feel like Carrie Bradshaw in season two of Sex and the City and everyone else is Mr. Big. And I am obsessing about everything around me and Trying to make sure that I on the right track, that we are all copacetic and everyone else is just la de da, smoking their cigar, watching the game.

[B]

It's true. And a lot of baby carriages, they were really in the way.

[A]

Well, you know, people need to stop fucking.

[B]

Okay, well that's your, that's your particular slant on things. But you know, just like Times Square, they had babies out at 10 o' clock at night. 11 o' clock at night. Yeah.

[A]

Well there are people who bring their two weeks old to Disney World because it's free. And I go, congrats, you brought a loaf of bread to Disney World. Like what do you want me to do? When I saw Jennifer's Body, the R rated horror movie starring Megan Fox in college, people brought their two year olds to an 11 o' clock showing. And I went, you folks should not be allowed to own land, should not be allowed to buy food or procreate without a government official present. Because I don't trust you to breathe the same air as me. And yes, that's classes, but I don't know what their income was. I just know that they were being fucking dumb at 11 o' clock at night.

[B]

Exactly. Anyway, moving on.

[A]

Actually on that note, we gotta take a quick break.

[B]

Okay, Billy, I beg to differ with you.

[A]

How do you mean?

[B]

You're the top.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're an arrow collar.

[A]

You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet. And we're back. So we're moving on to Friday. Friday was a travel day because we had to go to South Bank. We had Guys and Dolls at 7:30 at the bridge Theater that night. Before then we went to the Waterloo station and went to the Leake street vaults which had all this graffiti on the arches. And that was really cool. We also stumbled upon a Phillies party because the Phillies and the Mets were playing the London series. When we were there, unbeknownst to us.

[B]

Philly, Philly jerseys all over London.

[A]

Camera crew watching, you know, taking footage of all the Phillies fans. And I didn't. So when we flew to London, I took a photo of my luggage and put it on Instagram by being London bound. And my friend Mike, who I went to college with, messaged me. He was like, oh my God, like you're there to see the Phillies and the Mets. I knew I loved you. And he was joking. Obviously he knew I wasn't there for that. But I just went, ha ha ha. I didn't know what that meant. I Went, lol. I didn't know what he was talking about. And then I think on our. Our fourth day, I texted straight cousin Scott, and I said, scott, what's the London series? And is this a regular thing? Because I had to look it up. And when Phillies and Mets. London, what. What. What is this? And people were writing about the London series, and Scott told me, apparently the mlb, the NBA, and the NFL, I think, as well, they each do a week every year in London, and it's two different teams every year, and it's the London Series, and this year was the Phillies and the Mets. I went, okay, because not just that day at League street, but all over London, we were seeing people with Philly jerseys.

[B]

Totally.

[A]

And people on our flight back, the.

[B]

Headline is, I'm really charmed that you. You reached out to straight cousin Scott to find out what this was.

[A]

He's an ally. He is an ally. He and I went to Stereophonic together, and we went to Once Upon a One More Time Together. So, you know, one end was the Britney Spears jukebox musical that we got to see for free, and the other one was Stereophonic. But, you know, he does the Lord's work with me a lot. So I reached out to him because I knew it was a safe space. I said, straight cousin Scott, you. You know me, and you know sports. What is this? Because I couldn't text Boo Boo, he would answer it to me.

[B]

I have a sister, too, who's a big Met fan, so.

[A]

But Laura would then go around the office and say, hey, guys, look at my gay brother. Text Aid. Ha ha ha. And then she would tell me. Scott wouldn't tell everyone. He would chuckle to himself, give me the answer, and then all would be right in the neighborhood. Yeah, I needed a safe space. And I love my sister and I love my father, but they're not safe spaces.

[B]

I hear you.

[A]

If y' all think that I'm condescending with my opinions and my knowledge. Meet Boo Boo again. I love him dearly, but that Kimberly Akimbo episode did not do justice to how he talks out in the wild. So are in South Bank. We're seeing the Phillies. We're seeing the Philly fans. I should say we go to the Tate Modern, which was nice. What? Did you prefer Tate Modern or did you prefer Victoria Albert?

[B]

I like them both. But what I liked at the Tate was the. And I didn't think I would. The Yoko Ono exhibit.

[A]

Yeah, it was good.

[B]

Yeah, it was really good. And there were parts that were interactive, so you got to hammer a nail, I got to trace my shadow with a blue curve crayon.

[A]

The blue crayon was the other room. The chasing the shadow was that with chalk or something?

[B]

It was a marker.

[A]

And then there were blue markers in another room with a boat.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you got to write in stuff. And it was. Yeah, that was really cool.

[B]

And then there was a mother room where you got to write a note to your mother and post it on the board, which I did. And a little piece of family lore is, you know, mama, I love you, love your number one son. Which is how my father fucked me up by referring to me as number one son.

[A]

I mean, not wrong. Stop. Why do I call dominant energy.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Yes. I say my mother has dominant energy, which she takes as a dig. And I don't understand it. I wish I was dominant. I'm such a meek little mouse. But I. I have the. I have the frame of a mouse and the voice of a lion. That is true.

[B]

That's true. So Guys and Dolls was going to be our sure thing.

[A]

Yeah, we knew that we were. That that was gonna be a thing because it had been so acclaimed over there and everyone I knew had seen it, loved it. And it's Guys and Dolls. It's a good musical. And I last went to the bridge with Boo Boo when we saw Alleluia, the Alan Bennett play. And when we saw it, it was in a proscenium theater. And the bridge theater. What's so cool about it is that that whole auditorium can be fucked with. It can be proscenium, it can be thrust. It can be environmental.

[B]

It can be everything, practically.

[A]

Yeah, no, it was. It was fully in the round. We were sitting in one of the stalls in the part of the theater that would have normally been the stage. And I could see stage exits, you know, to the. To the dressing rooms and whatnot, from where we were sitting. But leaning up to Guys and Dolls, we did the Tate. We did the BFI Cafe, where we had a very nice snack. We did the book fair, where I bought a couple of books. You took some photos of me. Outside of the national, we had our dinner at the 17something distillery, which was perfectly fine. And then Guys and Dolls. Talk about Guys and Dolls for the uncultured fucks. What is it about, first of all?

[B]

Well, it. It's about some low. Low. I'm gonna say low life. It's not that low scale. Insignificant guys who gamble and throw dice and whatnot.

[A]

And there is some might call a few of them gangsters.

[B]

Well, I guess, but they were, they were not like dons. They were, they were low level street gangsters.

[A]

Yeah, they, they, they, they gambled and they played around and they went to nightclubs. It was. Yeah, they're not like. Yeah, they're not. Most of them are not in the.

[B]

Mafia and exerted their influence, if you know what that means. You know, a little twisting of arms and stuff like that.

[A]

And the dolls that go along with them.

[B]

Right, yes. Right. So one of them gets in trouble with the bookie and then it's. How is he gonna get the money to pay the bookie? And by the way, he's supposed to be marrying this poor long suffering Adelaide who is very cute thing that when she's unhappy she supposedly gets a cold and he's been putting her off for so long and so she's trying to get him to marry her and she has one of the really roof raising numbers.

[A]

She's got three. Yeah, well, girlfriend gets all the best songs.

[B]

She had great, great songs and she was really. She had a pair of pipes. That was just.

[A]

It was a good Adelaide. It was not the OG of this production, Marisha Wallace, who was our Adelaide, but because she was, she was my favorite of the four. It was. Adelaide was played by. Let me find her. Tamika Ramsay. Tamika Ramsay, that's her name. She was great.

[B]

And she used her bodalicious body like.

[A]

You know, she's a fuller figured woman. Yes. And, and, and very, very sexy, very sweet, very endearing. Good comedic timing. There's the other plot line. Sky Masterson, the major heavy hitter gambler and who he ends up with Sarah Brown, because Nathan, the bookie we were talking about, he runs a craps game and he needs money for a down payment for a location for them to do it. In order to get it, he makes a bet with sky that he can't take this missionary, Sarah Brown, to Havana, which sky ends up.

[B]

Well, he can't seduce her because, yes, she's a, she's a missionary. Sort of like a Salvation army kind of woman with the kettle. Very close. But they also have like revival meetings and stuff.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. They're trying to save souls, bring people in. And the missionary is doing terribly and they might have to shut it down. And sky sort of comes in and offers them a bunch of sinners for the big meeting for their General Cartwright when she's there. And so Sarah does agree to go to Havana with him. They fall in love. Antics ensue and there's a will they won't they. But eventually they do, and Nathan and Natalie do get married and all is right in the world. And it's a brilliant show. A show that I didn't like as a kid. And then I saw a really terrible Broadway revival in 2009 with Nanny with your mom. It starred Lauren Graham of Gilmore Girls fame. And we saw it because I got Nanny hooked on Gilmore Girls. When I would stay with her in.

[B]

High school, she played Adelaide.

[A]

She played Adelaide, Yeah. She wasn't good, but she could have been good. She was terribly directed. But I've told you this, and I think I've told the listeners this. When I went to the professional children's school from seventh grade through 12th grade, my grandmother, Nancy Tickton, she only lived like four blocks away. And there would be times when I would end up staying with her because of just there. It wasn't. I wasn't be able to get out back to New Jersey at the right time for your dad to pick me up, or I had to be in New York at a very early hour the next day. That wasn't just school, but something else. And it just made sense to be there that night so I could be there for that morning. In high school, I ended up staying there a lot more often because I started doing applause and other things as well. But Nanny. So nanny got DVR. She was the first person I knew who had DVR. It wasn't TiVo. We had TiVo. Everyone had TiVo. Nanny got DVR. And I was DVRing Gilmore Girls because they were having reruns on ABC Family. And about two months in, I come over for the weekend. She goes, matt, there's this show in my DVR list, Gilmore Girls. What is this? And I go, oh, you know, it's the show about such and such. She goes, okay, well, I'm liking it. She's been. She was watching it without me. And then she eventually just started watching it on her own, and then we would watch it together. The one of the jokes I talk about, everyone in my family has certain physical traits that they don't like about different celebrities.

[B]

Yeah, right, right, right.

[A]

Nanny's thing is big foreheads. So she doesn't like Reese Witherspoon because she's got a big old forehead.

[B]

Anne Hathaway.

[A]

She doesn't like Anne Hathaway?

[B]

I don't think so.

[A]

Oh, poor Anne. But she didn't like Alexis Bledel for so long because of her forehead. And granted, Alexis wasn't the world's best actress at the beginning of the show. But season four or five? No, season five. Season five. I come over one day. Nanny goes, you know, Alexis is really growing on me. I think she's. I think she's become a better actress. And I said, it's not that she got bangs. She covered her forehead. And now you like her. It was funny. But Nanny and I went to go see Lauren Graham in that Guys and Dolls, and she was very excited to see Lauren on stage. And I think halfway through act one, she turns me. She goes, is it just me or is this boring? I went, yeah, it's boring. It was directed by Des Macanough, who just had Tommy this season. And Des is best known for directing Jersey Boys and Tommy in the 90s and Big River. He actually did a pretty great revival of how to Succeed in business in the 90s. But this guys and Dolls is like one of those all time revival disasters. But seeing that revival, even though the production was terrible, I was watching, going, this show still kind of works. Even though everything going on on stage is. Is awful. I'm like, this material is good. And I felt that way ever since. And watching this production at the bridge, I was like, this is a great musical.

[B]

It is.

[A]

They don't really do anything with it. Like, they don't do it. They don't with it too much.

[B]

Yeah. The whole experience, though, is worth noting.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Well, so with the bridge, with the stage. So again, it was. It was environmental. Very heroized Love, where everything, all the action happened in the center and there was audience sitting all around it, plus audience on stage. But what did they do with the stage?

[B]

Well, they were standing room and then they manipulated the different parts of the stage so that some things happened on one level, some things happened on another. But every time they moved a piece of the stage, the whole standing room crowd had to shift.

[A]

Yeah, well, the, the levels, the state. Like literally the floor would rise in different sections.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And they, they. Which was really cool.

[B]

It was Jenga. Ish.

[A]

Yes. And they had so at Her Lies Love. They had operators telling you where to move and they were in jumpsuits and all that. And it was very. It was fine. I did standing room for Here Lies Love. I didn't like that experience all that much. It looked a little cleaner and smoother for the guys. They were just as cops. But also because of how the stage operated, everyone didn't have to do a lot of maneuvering. It was just sort of shifting around. Yeah. Because with Her Lies Love, it was platforms that were coming rolling on and off and had to be turned around, guys and dolls. Things just fucking lifted. It was really cool. Where I thought they kind of shot their wad a bit too early was that they showed you in the prologue, the overture prologue, how the stage worked. They had all of these scenarios all over New York City, and they would show you which parts of the stage were gonna rise, how high they could rise, how they could be all at one. They could be in little pieces. And they did it all. They showed you every single inch of that situation in the opening, and it was really cool. But then anytime they did it again, it was no longer impressive.

[B]

That's true. It was a novel by then.

[A]

Yeah. Which maybe it didn't need to be impressive after that. But it did make me go like, well, the magic of that is kind of gone. I'm no longer going, ooh, how is the stage gonna be reconfigured now? But outside of that, it wasn't a terribly groundbreaking revival. It was very. I thought it was mostly well done. It was. There were times when it was a little slow. There were a couple of accents that maybe were going in and out. The biggest gripe we have.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

You know, I hate to say this. We had an understudy for sky who just was not up to snuff.

[B]

Unfortunately, he wasn't even close. He didn't inhabit the character physically. And his voice was, I don't know, too high.

[A]

Yeah, he. This was like, obviously a tenor. I think he's from Australia. An Australian tenor and dancer. He has a dancer's body. He was very like, you know who he actually kind of reminded me of? Christopher.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Maybe a little shorter, but it was hard to tell from that, from that angle. But very thin, like sinewy. He wasn't, you know, skin and bones. He had muscle, but it was a very petite muscle.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Yeah. And he didn't have a big booming voice. He had a light, tennery voice that didn't fit the score at all. His acting was okay. He didn't really have much chemistry with the Sarah, but her. This Sarah was bit more of a ball bustery character. And, you know, he. He got the job done in the sense, like, he didn't mess up in any way. He didn't hit any bum notes. No, that's a lie. He actually hit a couple in his big song. I forgot about that. Whoops. But it was just an underwhelming performance where I. And because Adelaide and Nathan, I thought, were so strong, our Sarah was just sort of only fine that half of the production Would sag for me. It did this, I think, with this era, and it's the regular. Sarah was the woman who opened the show in 2023. What's her name? I'm gonna look it up. It is Celined. Celined or Celined? Celined.

[B]

Shoon.

[A]

Shoon maker. She has a good voice. She has a good voice, but her voice was more of, like, a Beltery voice. And so she would go to those soprano notes and. And they. She would hit them, but they would be kind of on the thinner side. And that just wasn't very exciting for me. And her characterization was fine. Was very dry. You know, again, like, you know, forceful Sara, but with a Sky that wasn't able to command opposite her. It just felt off. And Adelaide and Nathan were so good that things would just sag. The only thing they did that was kind of like, we're fucking with it a bit was when sky and Sarah go to Havana, they frequent a gay bar, which I didn't understand. And then sky dances with a twink. And I didn't understand that either. Yeah. I mean, I also. I'll say this, I didn't find the choreography to be terribly impressive.

[B]

No. Well, it was hard because they were jumping levels and everything else.

[A]

Yeah. They didn't make it easy for them. The crapshooters dance in Act 2 when they go to the sewers. It was on, like, a very thin stretch of platform. And I felt bad for those six dancers. Was like, you have to do some weird shit with not a lot of room. And if you. And if you miss. You fall into the audience. Exactly. But it was overall a really fun night. I think it was.

[B]

It was. But also, you know, during the interval also, the whole area that had been the stage fills up again with cafe tables and people are drinking wine and they're eating their ice cream. It becomes a whole thing. Which makes me think that in a certain way, British theater is about making the experience enjoyable for the audience. It's not just the product, but it's, you know, it's the bottles of wine, it's the ice cream, it's the general. It's a little bit more hedonistic, you know, in a good way. Yeah.

[A]

Well, it doesn't feel as fancy. It's not a privilege. It's something you do. And I think there's something really great about that in Broadway. The Golden Age. I think it's Miles Kruger who says this. And Miles is a basket case. But he had. He's correct in this respect, where Broadway didn't Used to be a luxury item. It was something you just went to. And that's also why it was so.

[B]

Think Shakespeare.

[A]

Yeah. It was also why it was so part of the pop culture, because everyone just went and everyone had an opinion about stuff. It wasn't. Not everything was amazing because you weren't paying all this money to go see it. And it had to be. You paid your $50, and if the show sucked, you could walk out or you would. Or you wouldn't stand at the end and you would tell people it sucked. Don't see it. Go see. Don't see. Fucking Time of the Cuckoo. See Death of a Salesman. And that was the conversation. Now everyone is in Broadway anyway. Everyone's walking on eggshells. Everything's got to be amazing because then people are out of jobs and everything costs so much to see. So you got to have it be worth it. I'm like, no, first of all, if it's. If you're paying so much, you should be even more demanding.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Sit there with your arms crossed and be like, prove to me that this was worth a 250. Because not everything is. And we didn't pay nearly that much for these three shows. I think we paid 70 pounds for Operation Mincemeat, 60 for standing at Sky's Edge, and 70 or 87, 70 for guys and Dolls. Yeah. But overall, would we say this is the best of the three?

[B]

Yes. So far.

[A]

Yeah. Any other takeaways from Guys and Dolls that you have?

[B]

No, I enjoyed it. I was just. I felt that it was really. Its potency was cut by Sky Masterson, who was just weak.

[A]

He was weak. And it's not his fault for getting cast and being made that understudy. You've just asked the creatives, you know, what is your. What is the point of view of your Sky? And have understudies that can uphold that when the regular sky is out. And if you are casting someone and setting them up to fail, I'm not gonna be mad at the actor for failing. I'm gonna be mad at you for putting them in that situation.

[B]

Not look like a thug. He did not look like.

[A]

Well, Sky's not a thug.

[B]

Well, he's. He comes across, you know, whether he's got the pinstripe suit and the big.

[A]

Hat and Peter Gallagher did it in the 90s. Yeah, he's not Peter Gallagher.

[B]

Right, right, right. I mean, I don't mean one of the guys who, you know, in the street who does the. Does the hard work, you know?

[A]

No, he's Another way to view it, you know, Marlon Brando played him in the movie. And I wouldn't say Marlon Brando was the best casting, but the idea of a kind of swoon worthy leading man who has to have presence, who has to be able to own the stage and be able to combat Sarah and for this production that has a very ball busting Sarah to have an understudy for sky who is very petite, and it was that his presence was weak. He couldn't command the stage the way you needed him to.

[B]

And it's not a surprise. I mean, I can't say it's not a surprise when they get together, but you don't see the dichotomy in the way you would want to see it in another production.

[A]

He didn't melt in the way like Poppy melted in standing at Sky's edge. Right. Her guarded heart gave way. Sky's guard. He didn't have a garden when we saw it. Yeah. So that was a shame. But it was overall a really strong production. Again, I think a little overpraised, but it was a good chunk of fun. It didn't blow my mind. I just had. We had fun.

[B]

What was our. Sure thing?

[A]

Yes, exactly. Saturday we would. We did the Notting Hill Portobello Road market where we both got sunglasses.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That suited us both very nicely.

[B]

2 for 20.

[A]

Yeah, 2 for 20. It was 1 for 15. 2 for 20. We had a nice lunch at the Bonaparte. Prince Bonaparte. Something.

[B]

Something like that.

[A]

Arms. Yeah. And then what did we do for dinner that night? Oh, we, I, we. We went to that publisher on our way back to the Airbnb because Deshum wasn't available. Yeah, but I think.

[B]

Is that the day you did was that Sunday?

[A]

That was Saturday.

[B]

Saturday.

[A]

Saturday. And that's when I went to the retro gay bar, met up with the listener of the podcast, had a beer and then walked through the theater district in Soho and made my way back to you. Sunday we did the Sunday Roast.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And.

[B]

Well, explain to people what that is.

[A]

It's a meal.

[B]

It's a tradition.

[A]

It's a tradition every Sunday and there are various versions of it. It usually involves some veggie of. Of a sort, carrots or cabbage. There is Yorkshire pudding. There is meat of a kind.

[B]

Usually like a prime rib.

[A]

Yes, I had prime rib, although I did. Sunday night I had dinner with Stephen Arimis and I ended up having another roast, but I had the, the mushroom Wellington.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Which I was looking at the day we did Sunday Roast and ended up not doing It. So I got both roasts that I wanted. But, yeah, it's a tradition, and you can do it at any pub. A lot of them fill up with reservations because of it, and I enjoyed my roast. You didn't get a roast. You got the.

[B]

The veggie burger.

[A]

Yeah, you did. Which. Which you.

[B]

It was very rich for some reason, and the vegan cheese was not a hit.

[A]

But what else? I know. I went to a couple of bookstores. I went to Waterstones. I went to Gay's the Word. I eventually went to Hatchards. What else happened that day? Did you. You went again to Harrods on Monday, right? Yes, yes. But I feel like there's something else we did. When we got out of the pub, where did we go?

[B]

You mean after the Sunday roast? Yeah, where did we go? Oh, I went to some museum. Sloane Museum. And you went somewhere else.

[A]

No, you went to Som. Oh, no. Yes, you did. Shit. Shit, Shit. Or was some Saturday. So. Might have been Saturday.

[B]

I have it.

[A]

Yeah. No, because you went so. So on Saturday, because that's when I went to gaze the word and Waterstones. And then we came back. Sunday was, I think, a little Venice.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[A]

We went to. We walked to. Or, sorry, we walked somewhere. Got to Paddington Station and then got our Paddingtons. You got your Paddington. I got a Paddington for Sarah's daughter Julia. And then we walked along the little Venice Canal through Regent's Park. Yeah, and then. And then headed back. Yeah, yeah. And then Monday was a surprise fourth show because we only had three shows planned. But then Sunday, you. We had. We had room for one more thing. I was debating getting us tickets Sunday matinee for Two Strangers Carry a Cake across New York, which some folks had said nice things about, that ended up not happening. And because we weren't gonna go to Oxford anymore on Monday because the weather was gonna be shitty, we decided on another show. There were a couple of options. It was down to Cabaret and the Hills of California, which had just announced it was coming to Broadway by Jez Butterworth, directed by Sam Mendes. And you decided on the Hills of California?

[B]

I did. I said, you know, Cabaret is playing in New York. It will be forever revived and come to London and see something new.

[A]

Yeah, well, at the very least, see something before it heads over.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

I was interested in using Cabaret because I did not like the production here, and I had heard so much about how. Much about how it was better in London, and I. I also wanted you to see this production and us not having to pay 300 bucks to see it because that's the cheapest ticket in New York. And over there, we could have gotten to see it for like £60. But I'm not mad that you picked Hills of California. We go, we have dinner at this Italian place nearby, and then we go.

[B]

That was a good dinner.

[A]

It was a very good dinner. You liked it a lot. And we go to the Harold Pinter Theatre, which is a pretty intimate theater, I think, like 700 seats, very old school, similar. Like the Fortune Theater and the Harold Pinter Theatre were very like traditional Western theater. So I was happy. We went. What is the Hills of California about, Mother?

[B]

Well, it's a generational story, in a way. It's. It's about four sisters and a mother. The mother is, as you would say, sort of like a mama rose. But we can't figure out yet who she's crossed with.

[A]

We can't. She's. She's an English. Because it's northern England. She's a British mama rose. But, yeah, we're trying to figure out who. What other.

[B]

I think you'd have to find a character in fiction.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know whether it's the mother of the little Women or whatever there is. You know, you have to find a mother who is.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That's not the right one. But anyway, she. She is desperate for her kids to become hits sensation, you know, singing sensations. They are really schooled in. In song and harmony. And she teaches them songs by the Andrews Sisters and they develop an act.

[A]

Yes. Very much modeled after the Andrews Sisters as well.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And the mother is alone and she owns this hotel.

[B]

She owns this hotel which, you know, it's called Seaside, I believe.

[A]

Sea View.

[B]

Sea view. And there is no view of the sea.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It is landlocked and kind of weird. But anyway, the kids are delightful. They sing well. And the plot sort of turns when this agent comes around. And the mother is just so determined on making her kids stars. And they're all sort of of equal importance, even though there is one. The eldest is very rebellious. Go sneaks out in the middle of the night, drinks, smokes.

[A]

But they. But they do love each other and they do. Yeah. And they respect each other. They're just. They're kids. And because she's the oldest and she's the coolest, she's rebellious. Yeah. The other sisters look up to her a lot. And the mother, Veronica, often tells her she levels with her a lot because she's the oldest. She was like, you know that your sisters look up to you. You have to set an example. She goes, and also, we're gonna be professional about this. And if you're late again, you're cut. I don't care. Like, yeah, this is what we're gonna do. Also, these are. Everything we're describing is a flashback because the main. I would say the, the main plot throughout the show is flashing forward 20 years.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or 25 years.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because we're back at the Sea View and Veronica, the mom, is sick and dying and the daughters are grown and they. They're all sort of spread out three. The oldest one is in America and the other three are all still in England, but the youngest is living with their mother at the hotel. And the other two sisters come back to sort of be there for their mother dying. And they bring their husbands and their kids and there's a nurse there. And the question is whether they're gonna give their mother morphine to have her pass away. Assisted suicide, essentially, or like let her ride it out. Because they're waiting for the oldest sister, Joan, to show up because the mother wants to see Joan. And they haven't seen Joan in 20 years. Since they were kids.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And we don't know why for a long time, but we eventually find out why.

[B]

Well, yeah, and there's also. Yes, we do find out why she's so estranged and so far away.

[A]

Yes. Before we find out why, let's take a one last break. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean?

[B]

You're the top.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're an arrow collar.

[A]

You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble thread of the feet. And now we're back. So Joan is the sister, the oldest. It's Joan, Gloria. Gloria, she's the second oldest. Ruby Rube, she's the second youngest. And then Jillian, Jillian is the youngest. Rube has a husband. I think she's got a kid as well. And then Gloria has two kids and a hubby. And Jillian is alone, she's a 30 year old virgin, we find out, living at their mom's. And Joan went off to America to become a professional singer and never corresponded with the family when she left at like 16. And Jillian has informed them that she wrote to Joan that their mother is dying and Joan said she was gonna be there. So they've been waiting and waiting and waiting.

[B]

And Jillian is the only one who really idolizes Joan, Right?

[A]

Well, they all did. Jillian's the only one who still kind of has positive feelings for her at that moment. And one of the reasons why she wants them to wait for Joan is that their mother keeps asking for her. And we don't see the mother in the present day. She upstairs. The way. How would you describe how the set is?

[B]

Multi story. It mostly takes place in the kitchen.

[A]

Yeah, the kitchen and the main sitting area. When it's. When it's present day, it's the main sitting area. When it's the past, it's the kitchen.

[B]

Right. And you know, it's very retro looking and it was an interesting set.

[A]

Staircase and stairs going off into. All up into the flies, off into nowhere. And you see people exiting doors from really high up and walking.

[B]

That's their second story. Where the bedrooms are.

[A]

A couple of stories.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And all the hotel rooms are named after states of the United States. Yes, yes, I know. I was just. I was being a little. Okay, Mississippi. Yeah, Mississippi, Texas, Alaska, things like that. And you know, they had a border.

[B]

They had one.

[A]

They had a few borders when they were young. Yeah, no one's there anymore. But they had borders when they were kids. They had people who visited and then they had people who stayed there. Like it was, you know, like in Thoroughly Modern Millie, the Hotel Priscilla. All these young women live there. It's their apartment, essentially, even though it's technically speaking a hotel. So they pay every week to be there. And Veronica is a single mother and they have a border. Who's a clown who has the information for.

[B]

Seriously? A clown? A real clown?

[A]

Yeah, he's an actual clown. That's what he does for a living. And he has the information for the contact information for an agent who represented. Not anymore, but used to represent. Discovered Nat King Cole and represented him up until recently and represents a few other people. So like this is a real dude, real deal. And that's how Act 1 ends. Act 2 is when the girls audition for him and they do their number, which is a full blown Andrew Sister act. And the agent is telling Veronica, I can't do anything with this. The Andrew Sisters are so passe now. And Veronica is clearly obsessed with the Andrew Sister.

[B]

Well, she's out of touch.

[A]

Yeah. But she's still living in that in war era. Yeah, she's. She has no idea what's hip or what people are listening to anyway. Yeah, yeah. He says her, do you know, have you heard of Elvis Presley? And she goes, I don't know what that is.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it was a good line.

[A]

Yeah, I know. And then he said. And then he says, elvis Presley again. And she goes, goes, I don't know what you're saying to me. And it's. It was very good. And eventually he just tells her, you know, your girls are not singing the music that people want to hear. And he says, and they're not that good. Yeah. He says, they're perfectly fine, and they're cute, but they're not good enough to.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Branch out. And he goes, you only have one kid who's. Who I see potential in, and that's your oldest. That's Joan. And they. She brings. And Veronica is so eager for the. For the girls to just be anything. She says, more than just being stars. She wants them to experience life, which I think is an important line, because when we see them in the present, they really haven't. None of them have. Eventually, when Joan will come back as an adult and she has experiences, but life has not been what she hoped it would be. And part of the reason for this is. Dare we get into it? Sure, sure. Joan comes into the kitchen when she's 15 to sing for the agent on her own. And he says, I can't tell if she's any good. The acoustics in this kitchen are terrible. Is there anywhere else we can go? And we already know where this is heading. And Veronica is hesitant to say anything. And Joan pipes up and says, we can go to Mississippi. It's one of the upstairs bedrooms. And he goes, I just want to go with Joan. I don't need you there, Veronica. And Veronica tries to pitch him herself. She says, I like, maybe we can go up to Mississippi and talk about this. And he was like, what? Like, you're not the talent. I. It's all very tense because nothing is being outwardly said. He's not even totally implying anything he didn't know. He's just saying things that have. That could have another meaning if. If we are being on our guard about it. And so when she says, we could go upstairs and talk about this, he's. And he just blatantly says, you're not the talent. Why would I want to listen to you? So for all we know, maybe that's just what it is. He's like, I just, like, I want to. And also he's established that he doesn't trust Veronica because he thinks that she's too much of an influence over the girls. He's asking Joan what the songs she likes are, what song does she want to sing. And every time Veronica tries to cut her off, and he's like, stop it. So he. So they're already setting up this idea that he might want Joan away from Veronica because he sees potential in her if she got away from her mother. But they go up to Mississippi. Gloria, by the way, overhears all of this on a separate staircase. And Veronica freaks out. And for about two minutes we don't hear anything. And she's lashing out at one of the borders and all this other stuff. But then we hear Joan finally singing from upstairs, and Veronica breathes a sigh of relief. Okay, it's true. He just wanted her to sing. And that lasts for 30 seconds. And Joan stops singing mid song. And there's about 10, 15 seconds of silence. And you can infer the rest, you know, Exactly. It was exactly as we feared. And the lights go out at the end of the second act.

[B]

What's interesting to me, though, is it's never really said, but did Joan understand what was going to happen?

[A]

I think so.

[B]

I do too, because she was out in the world. She was really being naughty at 15, right?

[A]

She. She was 15. She was. Her brain was, scientifically speaking, still that of a child. But she wasn't naive. She was experiencing the world already more so than her sister. She was the one who was smoking. She was the one who was going out late with boys. We got the understanding from the playwright that Joan at 15 was. And also, there's a difference between 15 and 1955 and 15 now. Far more experienced than most 15 year olds right now. But also, she absolutely understood what was happening. And she. And she took command and said, mom, it's okay. We're gonna go to Mississippi. And then you even have an Act 3 when we flash forward. And Gloria sort of lashes out when Joan arrives because the other sisters, like, say to her, we heard. Mom told us. We're so terribly sorry that happened. Like that. That's awful. And Gloria goes, that's bullshit. Mom did not serve Joan up on a platter. And Joan was the sacrificial lamb. She goes, joan led him up there. She's like, I was listening at the door. And he asked her, what do you want? She goes, I want to be a big star. And he goes, oh, is that right? She goes, oh, yes, do it, please. Like, she was. She was taunting her with all this. But adult Joan is so comatose at this point.

[B]

Oh, my God, she's a basket case.

[A]

Yeah, but, like, she's a basket case. But she isn't actively jittery in any way, right? Like, she shows up in her shaggy hair and her long penny.

[B]

Hot, right? It's hot there.

[A]

They're all cold.

[B]

And she's in that big heavy coat.

[A]

Yeah. And that big Penny Lane from Almost Famous coat. She looks like one of the group, one of the band Aids from Almost Famous, even though she's like 36 at this point. Smoking every second she can. Going through a cigarette every two minutes with this. With an American accent at this point.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And talking. It's sort of almost a monotone. And anytime one of the girls, one of the women, I should say, lashes out at her, including Gloria, who throws the reality of her version of that reality in her face. Joan's like, okay, right? She's like, if that's how you remember it probably happened. She's like, I have. Have not a total recollection of that day. She goes, but if that's. If that's what happened. As you say, like, if you say that's what happened, that's what happened.

[B]

Oh, she's. She's stoned. She's like permanently stoned.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Point.

[A]

And has her own reasons for being there, which don't include seeing their mother before she dies. And we were watching because it's a three hour play. The reviews were positive out there. They weren't effusive. They were all saying, like, this is very compelling, but it's not his best. And so we went and kind of be like, okay, like, we'll see how this goes. And for act one, we turn to each other in the interval and we.

[B]

Said, well, like, I don't understand what the flaws are. This is pretty good. And I passed so quickly. I can't believe it's already the. The first interval.

[A]

Yeah. And then the second act happens and we get to the second interval and you say same, same.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But then the third act happens.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the third act is probably the longest of the three acts, which is. I would already call that a flaw.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

You don't want that third act to be the longest. There are some other things that you and I both were feeling, but I want you to talk on it. Your takeaways from that third act, especially after having loved Act 1 and 2.

[B]

Well, it was all. It was all broken, Joan. And whereas that kind of puts a. Puts a period at the end of the sentence, we know what happens. She's like, broken, horrible woman. There was just stuff about it that felt excessive. You know, it's like, okay, we get the point. We really get the point. But it kept going on and on and on and. Yeah, so that was the basic takeaway. Ultimately, they. There's a great nurse. We forgot to mention the nurse who has Been terrific. And she brings in a doctor to assist with the. I can't say the suicide, but you know, an assisted death, I guess.

[A]

Yeah. Fast forwarding their mother's passing, essentially.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Making her no longer suffer. I think Penny. Penny is the name because Jill keeps calling her Penny. Peggy, right? Peggy. She goes. It's Penne. Yeah, yeah, Peggy Penne. Penne Peggy. Yeah. The nurse. Penny is a lovely character. She's not used a lot, unfortunately. She's kind of there to.

[B]

Well, she plays the maid earlier on.

[A]

Yeah. And well. Which I found an egregious double casting because the maid is so unnecessary in the flashback. She didn't need to be there. So to have her play both roles, it just felt a little.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not. Yikes. I was like, that's just. Wasn't necessary. But I guess they want those actors to not feel totally wasted, you know. Oh, you're off stage now for an hour. But no, come on and say two lines.

[B]

Write a bigger part.

[A]

Yeah. What did you think of the acting overall?

[B]

I thought the acting overall was great. I was. I didn't never realize. I mean, is it a giveaway to say the character.

[A]

Yeah. So we'll spoilers for anyone who wants to hear spoilers. If you don't flash, you know, fast forward like maybe five minutes. But we're gonna talk about some things about casting that that are a surprise when you see the show.

[B]

Okay. So Veronica is. Is really well played, you know, the actress who does that. That part, I think, was terrific.

[A]

Laura Donnelly.

[B]

Laura Donnelly. And in that after the second interval, which really was more of a pause than anything else, she's obviously upstairs dying. But Joan is played by the same actress, Laura Donnelly. And it was a striking transformation to go from this woman who looks like a product of the 1930s with the house dress and the oxford shoes and the, you know, the sort of weird hair, she comes back as a full fledged stoner, groupy looking person, even though she was, I guess, the star for a while. So that was a big transformation. And also now she's speaking with an American accent, and it was a very different demeanor. She went from a high energy, manipulative mom to a low energy, manipulative daughter.

[A]

Yeah. Well, Veronica, when the mother. When she's sort of at the height of her powers, is this no nonsense commander of a ship, the way she deals with those girls. Because when we say she's Mama Rose mixed with somebody else, it's because she's more loving than Mama Rose. She's not like super warm and fuzzy. But she shows affection and she gives credit when it's due. She's sort of like Mama Rose mixed with a British schoolteacher.

[B]

Yeah. And also Mama Rose was sort of her fulfilling her own lost prophecy. Right. And this, you don't get that feeling from Veronica.

[A]

And Messier and hurtful. Veronica doesn't do monstrous things or allow monstrous things to happen, really, until the last 15 minutes of Act 2. And it's not just the Joan stuff. She says some stuff about her other daughters.

[B]

Yeah. She's verbally abusing. Abusive.

[A]

Yeah. To this agent. But she's doing it in the heat of desperation. She's trying to make something happen, and she's just selling it any way she can. And it's just hurtful because, like, these are your kids, they're not your clients. And you watch her in Act 1, and you see her teach them in a way that clearly, you know, she does. She cares for them, obviously, but she's manipulative and she withholds facts from them. We find out that she straight up lied about Gillian's father and what happened to him and always changing how he died In World War II, the year the reason. Blah, blah, blah.

[B]

She was, like, raising trained seals, kind of.

[A]

Yeah. And when we get to her, her old age, and we never see her in her old age, we only hear about her and she's withered and she's wearing a wig and she looks terrible.

[B]

And it is cancer, by the way.

[A]

Yes, they say it's cancer, but they talk about how she ultimately is their mother. And for all the complicated feelings they have about her now, they do still love her and even respect her a little bit for all that she managed to do with so little. Joan is the only one who doesn't say anything about their mother. When we get to present day, when Joan shows up again, Right. They talk about her and they talk about the past. And Joan rarely reflects on it. Joan kind of sits there and lets them say what they want to say and then goes, okay. And then we'll talk about her own stuff about America and what she got up to. But that's. Joan clearly has unresolved feelings about their mother. And she said part of the reason why she came back was she felt she would regret it if she didn't. But now that she's there, she doesn't feel any necessary urge to go upstairs and see her.

[B]

Well, I think every bit of love and sentimentality has been kicked out of her or drugged out of her, and she just has nothing left inside.

[A]

Yeah, she's lived a life in America that is, it's experience after experience, but nothing is grounding. And she, she floats in a way that isn't euphoric. She floats like in a constant state of tranquility. And, and it's frustrating, I'm sure, to be in the room with her as a character when you want so much to get a connection out of her. But as an audience member, you're sort of watching her and going like, is she gonna. Is this the moment that she tears up? That she tears up that anything happens? And there are a couple of moments where she gets a little more emotion out, but it tends to be more passive humor. Does that make sense? Like she, she'll kind of smirk at things that she's talking about, about a memory with, with the Andrew Sisters or when she's listening to her sisters talk. But she's, she rarely shows anything other than just being slightly comatose.

[B]

Comatose and just sort of an empty vessel. Because she does mention the multiple abortions she's had.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, and you would think, if someone is smart, fool me once, fool me twice. But then what happens? Why do you have multiple ones? Well, there's a brief moment of humanity.

[A]

Where when you say that, what do you mean is she clearly wasn't being careful with her sex life or herself. She didn't have much regard for herself, be sexually active. But if, you know, you don't want to be a mother, you have to take precaution when you do that. And she clearly wants. Wasn't doing that. That is what you're saying.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, listen, I, I'm glad it was available to her. I mean, you know, that's, that's the point there too. But she was very careless with her life and didn't really bear much responsibility for anything.

[A]

Still doesn't.

[B]

Right. Because in the end, what happens? What's the.

[A]

We find out. We find out she has a baby, a five month old, six month old, something like that, that she brings with her and gives to her sisters as she walks. She says, oh, this is just while I'm. Well until I get myself on my feet again. But that kid is staying there.

[B]

And there was only one sister would take care of. The other two were like, no.

[A]

Yeah, well, Gloria, the second oldest, already has two kids and she, she just couldn't do it. There was a moment where Ruby thought about it and the idea of taking on another kid gave Ruby such a panic attack.

[B]

Yeah. Hyperventilating.

[A]

Yeah. Ruby we find out is. We find Out. I think in the second act, she's prone to asthmatic panic attacks. And she has a second one in. In the third act with the baby, when she's holding the baby, because she. The other thing is Joan doesn't, like, bring the kid along with her and introduce her in the car. Leaves her on the front porch. So there's this whole scene. Granted, you know, it's three in the morning probably, so the kid's asleep, but still, like, just leaves her out there while she comes in and does this scene. And then Ruby goes out for a minute and like 10 minutes later comes back out holding the kid. And she's like, the fuck? So Jillian, the youngest, is the one who ends up deciding to take care of her. Because I think it gives Jillian a sense of purpose.

[B]

Yeah. But by default, not by default, she actively.

[A]

She chooses to.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. She's not like, oh, I guess it's me. She says, I'll do it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I think it gives me hope for Jillian's character.

[B]

Well, yeah. And, you know, she's lived her life for her mother all this time, and now she has something. Something positive. She has something that's not dying. It's growing.

[A]

Exactly. Oh, look at that. That was a good. That was a good wordage, Mother.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Good verbiage, baby.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[A]

I guess. I guess I do come from your loins.

[B]

Well, in one manner, but, yes, I. I think so. I mean, you're. You're a master of the language. So thank you. I appreciate it. I don't think I am, but it was amazing how indifferent she was to just sort of ditching the kid, ditching the baby.

[A]

There was. There was a moment where.

[B]

There was a moment where.

[A]

Where it was clear she. That it affected her a bit.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But overall, it's hard to tell if she was disassociating, if she was talking out of her ass or if she was saying what she needed to say to get out of there. When she sang, it's till I get myself on my feet. Till I get myself on my feet.

[B]

And the months kept going on and on and on. It was just a couple weeks, then three months. Months and whatever.

[A]

Yeah. She goes, yeah, just for like a week or two, maybe a month, three at the most. Yeah. And again, which we all know means that kid's there for the foreseeable future, if not forever. But then they had a moment when she left because they were singing, because they have a moment where they all sing together. And then as Joan goes through the stage, we see the four girls as sisters, as young girls again.

[B]

Switch turns.

[A]

Yes. There's a turntable surprise. And Joan walks through the main area where the young sisters are and walks past her younger version of herself and then leaves. Did that resonate with you? Did that mean anything to you?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I always think stuff like that is tying a knot at the end of a. You know, making a bow at the end of a thing. But, yeah, it did. It was. The whole thing was powerful, I thought.

[A]

I mean, for a play that doesn't necessarily end on a total resolve, it ends on a revolve.

[B]

Yeah, there you go.

[A]

But not a resolve.

[B]

You couldn't be outdone, huh?

[A]

But, yeah, it felt to me as if it was Joan. Kind of.

[B]

There's connecting to her past.

[A]

Kind of. There's that Sex and the City episode where Miranda thinks she has a ghost in her apartment. And they're talking. They're all talking about it. Samantha goes, well, that's what you're supposed to do. Confront the ghost, ghost, acknowledge its presence so it can be released. The whole point of having a ghost is you're supposed to be like, I see you. I hear you. Now leave me alone. And I think Charlotte's like, how do you know that? And Samantha goes, everyone knows that. But I feel like that was Joan showing up again after all these years was her way of sort of confronting the ghost, acknowledging its presence, her seeing her younger self. Acknowledging her younger self and then moving on. Not to say that Joan's now healed and will finally succeed, but there was a part of her that is slightly less destroyed than it might have been.

[B]

They're all very damaged. I mean, did you notice that the nighttime scene, I guess, when. When Ruby finds the baby, she's wearing a nightgown that looks like a child, and her hair is in braids like.

[A]

It was when she was a kid.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because when we first see Ruby, she is looking like a model. She's got wavy hair. She's got a, like, all jean jumpsuit. Looks incredibly. Looks incredible. Yeah, she looks fucking hot. And. But when Joan shows up again, she's the one. She's, like, back to being a little girl. Gloria just, like, turns into a banshee at some point. It was.

[B]

She does.

[A]

She does.

[B]

But, you know, she comes in this little night white nightgown, virginal looking, with little puffy sleeves, and her hair's in braids. And it was just such a counterpoint. Of course, she also has this idiot husband. Both husbands are weak, which is interesting.

[A]

Gloria has the better husband.

[B]

She does. And he was patient. And you got the feeling that he knew exactly what was going on and he was. He was there to stay. Even though they all talk about leaving their husband, like, being apart from their.

[A]

Husbands, they talk about it just because it's like, I just need to say it. I'm not. Neither Ruby or Gloria are leaving their husbands. But they say, again, it's confronting the ghost. It's. I just need to say I'm not happy every day, and I have fantasies of walking away. Great. There we go. Moving on.

[B]

Yep. Exactly. Exactly. And they both sort of lucked into. Well, the second husband isn't so hot, but.

[A]

No, the second husband is.

[B]

Ruby's husband is also a child.

[A]

Yes, he's a waste of space, but he does care for her. And the last time we see him, he's in better shape than he was when we first saw him. So we know that he's not a dud all the time. Oh, the dude behind you. The dude behind you.

[B]

Well, he was talking. He was. I don't think he was American, but he didn't sound like he was British. He did have a slight British accent. I don't know if he's from Australia, New Zealand or something. It wasn't a strong accent, but it was enough. Not American. And the woman he was sitting next to was older and definitely British. And he kept asking her questions like, you know, what is it that's going on? What's happening? And the woman had to keep saying, now he also. Fade out, fade in. Was talking about how he's such a literary person and you get the feeling that. Does he teach literature? But how could he be so obtuse about what's going on on stage?

[A]

He didn't understand what. Because. Because older Joan doesn't show up until the third act. She's only spoken of. We only see the younger version of Joan. He kept asking what her deal was in America. Is she a big star there? I don't know. And like, he was asking questions about everyone's relationships, the time period.

[B]

He's putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable.

[A]

Exactly. He was asking the kind of surface level questions that are pretty obvious. He also. He didn't understand why. So at the end of Act 2, when. When Joan goes upstairs with the agent, one of the. One of their boarders in the hotel plays the piano for them and he drinks. Like, everybody drinks. But he maybe is like slightly more of an alcoholic, but he's not. He's not in any way.

[B]

He's not Abusive.

[A]

He's not abusive. And he's not detrimental to their acts when he plays for them. But he shows up and he goes, veronica, where's Joan? What's wrong? And Veronica lashes out at him, says, ah, you were shut up late. You were drunk, you missed keys, you missed nosing. That's why we're gonna fucking flopping. I want you out of here by the end of the week. Get out. Get out. And obviously she's lashing out because she feels pain and guilt for what she's just done. And there's. And he was the one who was there. And she can't say, I'm a monster for what I just did. And also, I was wrong to think that my girls could go anywhere. So I'm gonna point it at you because it's easy. I need to get it all out. The gentleman behind you did not understand any of that. He didn't understand why she lashed out at him. He thought that was very rude. And he said, did he do a bad job? I don't understand. And it's saying that he's literate and he goes out to the theater. Just goes to show you can be someone who goes to see a play every day of the week, still be a dummy.

[B]

He sounded like he was an editor, a fiction editor. And really, could you be that obtuse and do that job?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, he could be. I love when every time I write something for myself and I'm starting to feel doubt, I do two things. I look through reviews, great reviews for things that I think are bad, and then I look through bad reviews for things that I think are great. There is a famous New Yorker review for the wizard of Oz, 1939, that said it was joyless, lacking of any imagination or creativity and any sense of style. Now, if there's one thing you can't say about the wizard of Oz is that it lacks style and imagination. And it's like a very famous reading.

[B]

It's almost too much imagination for me. I mean, I never liked it, but, you know. I know.

[A]

Well, you can also read the New York Times review of it, and you basically was like, the New York Times liked the wizard of Oz, but they did say it does feel like MGM is trying to outdo Walt Disney, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Like, there are times when you just go, okay, calm down. But I don't know. It's a brilliant movie and it stood the test of time. But again, I read through those things because people whose job it is to see these things and give their honest reaction to it, but also, like, be able to understand if it's going to go anywhere, if it's going to do anything for the culture. And sometimes critics just get it so terribly wrong. No one bats a thousand. The closest critic I can think of, whether for film, theater, tv, that was the. That had the best track record, in my opinion, was Frank Rich. I think he was a little harsh on some shows, but by that I mean he would give, like, a mediocre review for something that I thought was like an 8 out of 10. But, like, he was the only critic at the time who recognized that Les Mis was great. He recognized that Cats wasn't terribly good, but that it was gonna run for a while. He recognized the same thing in Phantom of the Opera. He was the one that brought the British carousel over. But even he had his duds. People could be doing this for a living and still get it wrong. You don't really know until time goes by. As time goes by, one might say. So we might be in the wrong when Operation Mincemeat comes over in next year. And be the Americans who didn't like it, whereas every other American will love it. Who's to say? I'm sure we have some British listeners who are going to be mad at us for all the things we didn't like about it.

[B]

I'd be curious to see it again. I just don't want to pay our prices for it. So you got to work on that.

[A]

Yeah, well, I'm on press lists now, but so far no one's offered me tickets to anything. They've just been sending me announcements.

[B]

Well, maybe after they hear this, that you've already seen it in. In the uk.

[A]

Yeah, I know. I'm waiting for an email that's saying, hey, come see home at Roundabout. Not an email that's going, hey, Robin Herder's extended in Chicago. I don't give two shits. Anywho. So that was Monday. And after the show was over, we went right back and we packed and we left on Tuesday and all was well in the neighborhood. What did you watch in the airplane when you came home? Mother?

[B]

Erin Brockovich, at my son's recommendation. Yay. And it holds up. It was great.

[A]

It holds the fuck up. That movie is great. They're called Boobs at.

[B]

Yeah, right. They're called Boobs, Ed.

[A]

Yeah. I think we got off on the wrong foot. That's all you got, lady, Two wrong feet and ugly fucking shoes.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

It's so good. And Julia Roberts is incredible. In it. I love that movie. Everyone, if. If you walk away from this podcast today with anything holding on to you, watch Aaron Brockovich. Watch Moonstruck. Moonstruck is great. It's weird. It's a bonkers ass movie. It's a rom com that's obsessed with death. I don't know what film Nick Cage is in, and yet somehow it totally works. I don't understand. Like, he, He. He comes out of a fucking melodrama, and everyone in that bakery that works with him is also, like, in this theatrical melodrama, but he almost felt like.

[B]

He was overacting over and over.

[A]

But watch Moonstruck again. Like, he comes out like a bear. And everyone in that bakery with him, they're just, like, in a different world from everyone else in that movie. There's a woman. There's a woman who works in that bakery who has a whole line that doesn't need to be there. But she said, like, it still works. She's like. She goes, this is the most tortured man I've ever met. I love this man. She says it to no one. She says it to herself. And, like, the woman next to her, she goes, and I love this man, but he'll never love me. And he'll never know that I love him because he's too broken from his last love. And then they go to the next scene. I'm like, that's fucking out of a play.

[B]

Yeah, right?

[A]

Not necessary, but it's whatever. But also, watch Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar and watch Dirty Dancing. I watched it on the flight back and I forgot how much that movie slaps.

[B]

It does.

[A]

It's so good. And that soundtrack is weird because it's both 60s music and 80s music. Like, they play Wipeout and then they play I Had the Time of My Life. And, like, what the fuck is this thing? It's great. Yeah. So our rankings of our shows from this trip.

[B]

Four, three, two, one.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. No, what? I mean, the fourth one we saw, I thought was the best.

[A]

Oh. So we went in ascending order as we saw it.

[B]

Oh, in ascending.

[A]

No, like, so each. Each show is better. Each show is better than the last. Operation Mincemeat. At four out of ten, what would you give? Mincemeat?

[B]

Six. Five and a half. Six?

[A]

Yeah, I would probably give it a five. Standing at Sky's Edge. Good.

[B]

Seven plus seven. Seven to eight.

[A]

Yeah. 7.75.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Great. Guys and Dolls.

[B]

It's sort of a gimme. So I guess I would give it eight minus a Shade. You know, just because it was.

[A]

I. I think if we had the regular sky.

[B]

Yeah. It would have been a nine.

[A]

Yeah. Maybe an 8.5. But I'll get. Well, I'll give it an eight. And then hills of California.

[B]

Nine and a half.

[A]

Nine and a half. Okay. Even with the third act that we think needs to get another pass.

[B]

Yeah. Because, you know, it can get cleaned up.

[A]

Yeah. It was still compelling. It was still engaging.

[B]

It was. It was. I thought it was well written. I thought it was well acted. Held our attention for something that was so long.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I never zoned out at all.

[B]

I. Wait, that was the first act that went so fast.

[A]

Absolutely, absolutely.

[B]

It's engaging. It's well written. You just feel like, you know, you're inside the dialogue.

[A]

Yeah. And then for London takeaways from London, things we. Things we will hold on to. Us. Mind the gap.

[B]

Mind the gap. This needs salt.

[A]

Yes. My mother needed salt on everything she ate. Every. Everything was fried, but nothing was salted.

[B]

And I don't salt things normally. I mean, I cook with salt, but I don't salt my food.

[A]

You haven't salted food that. That much since you used to do those cinnamon altoids that burned your taste buds and left you numb.

[B]

Exactly. I gave those up right quick.

[A]

Yeah. Because I remember. Do you remember the day that you realized something was up?

[B]

No.

[A]

We were at River Palm and you were salting the salad and you realized what you were doing. You went, this isn't right. And I think you went to the doctor later that week because you're like, I'm salt. I'm salting a salad.

[B]

Yeah. No, no, no, I. Those things burned. Burned my mouth out.

[A]

They sure did.

[B]

Thankfully, the taste buds, they came.

[A]

They came back.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they kind of went away again at one point. I don't know if it was Covid or it was something else, but.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. But anyway. Yeah. I think. Didn't I say, like, everything tasted the same when I burned out my taste buds?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like an apple. Tasted like cheese. Tasted like chocolate.

[A]

Yes. That's exactly what you said.

[B]

Exactly. Right. Highlights. Tea was just perfect. London.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it was out of another era.

[A]

Yeah. I highly recommend if you go to London to do an afternoon tea, really do your homework on where to go, because there are plenty of wonderful teas everywhere. This one I found from an article about teas on a budget. And it wasn't cheap. It wasn't cheap, but.

[B]

But it wasn't outlandish.

[A]

I think our tea was 60 pounds, maybe 55 pounds a person. If we were to do tea at the Drury Lane, which is the theater that Frozen was at. We walked past it a few times. It was on our way to Operation Mincemeat. They do tea in their foyer. That's like £130 a person. But then there are places that do tea. That's £20 a person.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I think. I think if you can find a place that's over 45 pounds a person, you're gonna get a good bang for your buck. But you also want a nice atmosphere.

[B]

We had the best atmosphere.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, it wouldn't be in a big hotel. This was charming. And the hotel had discreet rooms on the first floor, small reception area. They had a little drink room, which was it beautiful. Small, little, like, tea cart with booze on it, and another reading room. It was. It was really charming.

[A]

Yeah. You mentioned possibly staying there if you were to go back to London, which I'm. And Kensington, I think, is a good neighborhood for you.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Other. Other. Oh, I forgot to mention one of the days, because I would go running in the morning. For the first, like, four days, I went running. And I think on my second or third run, I ran all the way down through Hyde park into South Kensington and went to this French patisserie to get us some. To get us some baked goods. And I got myself an Americano. And who was I standing behind but Oscar winner Emerald Fennell, or Emerald Fennel, I don't know how to say this. Won her Oscar for the screenplay of Promising Young Woman, and then sort of kind of wrote the book for Angela Weber's Bad Cinderella. But from what I understand is that she kind of came up with the treatment and then left because he was such a nightmare. But she was right. She was right in front of me, and I was very eager to say something. I didn't. No one did.

[B]

She.

[A]

I think as she walked out, one person stopped her and was like, are you. And then mentioned Camilla on the Crown, and that was it. But I was. I wanted to be like, I like you. I think you're fun. Saltburn was a lot of fun, but that was sort of my big celebrity sighting in England. You didn't have one of those?

[B]

Sadly, no, I didn't. I didn't. But I. I give, you know, 10 stars to the tube in London.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, my God. That is a mighty system. And Terrific. And everybody rides it. I don't think there's any reason to take an Uber anywhere.

[A]

No, no, no. Unless you're Going someplace outside of the city. But even then the tube goes out to different zones. We. It was always just so convenient. Oh, shout out to listener of the pod. Thomas or Tomas. I think it's Thomas, but apologies. It's either Thomas or Tomas who works at the Bridge Theater, who said hello to us in the lobby and it was very amazing. Yeah, it was very lovely. My mom got a big kick out of that. So thank you, sir, and thank you for, you know, helping us out there. And, and we had a lovely time there. And he said there was a member of the company who also listens to the podcast, someone in the company at Guys and Dolls, but he said that they were out that night. Maybe it was Sky Masterson, maybe, Who knows? So just know you were missed, sir, if it is indeed you.

[B]

That was a charming thing. I like that a lot.

[A]

Yeah. Any advice for people if they go to London?

[B]

You know, dress warmly. It was really sort of surprising. We only had. We never really had full on rain except at night. We just had a lot of like spitting water and I managed to sneak by without bringing an umbrella because I forgot it. But it was, it was lovely. Don't go there to shop because since they left the European Union, there is no VAT refund, no value added tax refund. So things are more expensive. Between the exchange rate and no refund of the tax, it's expensive. And if you decide to ship to avoid the tax, you get to pay shipping and a duty when it comes into the US So not worth it. Don't bother. Spend your money on, you know, food and tea and.

[A]

Yeah, there wasn't a lot of stuff we wanted to buy anyway and as.

[B]

I call it the Oscar card, when it's really an Oyster card.

[A]

Yes, their Oyster card, which we still have and have money on. And that's great, we can use it next time we're there. Be very mindful of the foot traffic. People do not care about you, so you have to be ready to go. Also be wary of cars. The, the traffic there. Those cars drive insanely. But we didn't see any accidents. No, there it was. It was. They have a system that I guess they all know and it works for them. By like our third day, I noticed that there weren't any accidents and there wasn't any issues, but it just, it just took me for a loop at how quick everyone goes, how, how tight they'd make turns and how up to like the line they stop.

[B]

We didn't see any fast food delivery things on E bikes and motorcycles. So that was good motorcycle you did. You saw delivery?

[A]

I saw. I saw deliveries on. On motorbikes.

[B]

Were they going in the right direction?

[A]

They were. They were not here, and they weren't going on the sidewalks, but they were going. And they were. They also went against traffic. Like, they would cut lights and things like that. But no, they didn't go on sidewalks. So we. At least there's that.

[B]

What was very helpful. And it's like, when are we going to unify all this stuff? But it would say, look right, look left. Because they drive on the other side of the street, and traffic comes from an unexpected direction. We normally look right, but the traffic's coming from the right.

[A]

Something they also left them from right. Something they also do with traffic lights there. That I appreciate is they do. Because we do green to yellow to red. You know, go slow down, stop. They do a yellow before it turns to green as well to prep the cars that they're gonna go soon.

[B]

Oh, that's good.

[A]

Yeah. Because when it's red, then it turns yellow, and then it turns green. And I thought that was really clever because. Also because here in New York, the walking signs will go 15 seconds before the car's light goes. So sometimes people will jaywalk, not knowing when the light's gonna go on. And as they. They'll get, like, in the middle of the street, and the light will turn green and they have to run. But if you see that that light's about to turn yellow, it's turning yellow. You're like, oh, that's turning green now. I'm not. I'm not gonna jayw.

[B]

I'm not gonna walk. We're lucky. In our neighborhood, there are a lot of delayed greens. So you can cross. When it says don't walk the other going. The traffic in the other direction hasn't started yet.

[A]

No, no, no. Yeah. Anything else?

[B]

You just look for the beautiful spots. Look for the rustic parts. You know, I always say that I'm not necessarily looking to absorb culture, but rather the culture. I like to be around people and seeing what they're doing and reading and thinking and eating and how they live their lives. So I think that's good. It is a remarkably unstylish city, I will say that.

[A]

Yeah, there was. We didn't see anyone. That really made our heads turn. Although you stopped a few people for their sense. You were very one.

[B]

One woman. No.

[A]

You told that dude at the toy store.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true.

[A]

Yeah. You were very impressed with the sense of London. It smelled a lot Better to us than New York usually does. Well, because there's also a lot of foliage, a lot of trees, a lot of flowers and everything like that. A lot of parks, millions parks.

[B]

Sneezing.

[A]

A lot of sneezing. Parks are beautiful. There they were. Yeah. Hyde park is great. Regents park is great.

[B]

Well maintained. I mean, they're very. It's very rare to see a lot of trash on the street. And, you know, neighborhoods change really quickly. The same way they do in Manhattan, but mostly charming. I mean, you know, even just to see the. All the houses. The residential houses are almost like row houses. They look uniform. It has a kind of a nice Disney feel when it's all uniform like that.

[A]

Definitely gives you some Mary Poppins, Paddington vibes. It was a very pleasant time for all. Yeah. How was I as a travel companion?

[B]

You were good. I think you had had enough of me, you know, a couple of times.

[A]

Well, no, I. That's me with everyone.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

I can't be around anyone for, like, six days straight. I need a minute. I think when I was allowed to go off my own for a little bit.

[B]

Run out, you just. I would never.

[A]

No, but no one. You know what I mean? Like, when the schedule allowed. Running in the morning was really nice. That was an hour and a half to myself, and I really enjoyed that. And then seeing Steven getting a drink with that other dude, like, that was. That was good. It rejiggerated me.

[B]

Well, it was also convenient or a happy coincidence that the night you went out to dinner, I felt awful. I felt sick. I don't know if I had hit the wall. And I ate peanut butter and the rest of that baguette. So that was what I ate.

[A]

Yeah, no, that worked out fine. And you were able to relax. And when I got back, we watched some tv. There was that Scottish sitcom that we couldn't make a single word out.

[B]

No, not a word.

[A]

Not a word. Fascinating. Fascinating times. And our one fine stay. Homeowner, the apartment that we stayed in, asked us to water their plants.

[B]

Not hardly outside plants.

[A]

Their outside plants if it looked like they were thirsty. So I was like, oh, so you want me every day to look outside and check your plants?

[B]

I don't think so.

[A]

No.

[B]

And they were pretty mangy plants. It wasn't like a beautiful garden or anything.

[A]

No. And it rained enough that. They were fine.

[B]

They were fine. They were fine. It's interesting staying in someone else's abode. I mean, you know, they're always Improvement. That I would have made. Not. Not expensive ones, but like, let's say non slip strips in the tub, because that was a huge porcelain tub. Well, you had to climb over.

[A]

It was also a million knobs. I told you. And I mentioned this on Instagram, our. When we got there, and I think. I think our concierge had left by that point. And he had said also, which was telling.

[B]

He's a greeter. I wouldn't call him a concierge.

[A]

That's what they call them. That's a greeter. Fine greeter. He had said also with one fine stay. That a lot of the people that send in their apartments to be used, sometimes it's their pied a terres or it's, you know, or they have multiple homes. Some of them, it's their main home. And you can tell when it's the main home because a lot more things are off limits. And it was very clear that our apartment was. Was the only home that this person had, because 90% of the apartment, everything was taped. Everything was taped off. We had almost no room to put our clothes away. I had a. They put out a clothes rack for a clothing rack for me. And I was. For a second, I was like, oh, that's nice. And I realized, oh, no, it's because 80% of the space was closed off, which I thought made no sense, but whatever. The.

[B]

There was no mirror in my bedroom.

[A]

There was no mirror in your bedroom. My only mirror was inside of my closet. Your room also only had, like, one outlet behind the. The nightstand. And then there were no outlets in the bathroom.

[B]

And, well, that's by law, apparently. I found that out. They're not allowed to.

[A]

Go figure. But also the shower. So I go. When the. When the greeter left, I went upstairs to shower because I was feeling airplane grody. And I turned one knob and the handheld shower head sprayed right onto the wall, which was luckily a mirror, not wallpaper or anything. And I had to turn that off. Turned it, turned a different knob, and then it sprayed me. So I was like, oh, I don't know what knob I just turned, but I thought I changed what it was gonna go to. Then I turned a different knob. Nothing happened. Then I turned a different knob, and finally water came down or water came through the bath. And then I changed again, and then it came down in the shower. So I got in. So great. I got this worked out. It was ice cold. So I realized, like, one knob was for whichever faucet it comes out of, while another knob is for water, another knob is for. For hot and cold. It was it was a lot.

[B]

Well, you failed to mention that. It's one of those rain showers, so it comes from directly above in the middle.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So let's say you're someone who doesn't really want to get their hair wet every time. It was, like, virtually impossible.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To do it.

[A]

You would have had to have an airtight turban on to do that.

[B]

Yeah, something like that.

[A]

Yeah. But. So you got your sunglasses. I got my sunglasses. I got some books. I got Agatha Christie. I got a couple of children's books. I got Julia, Alice, Little Paddington. You got a Paddington. I got a Paddington sweatshirt. And that was.

[B]

I bought. I bought Harrod's baked goods and stuff as gifts.

[A]

Yes. And I bought some candy, wine gummies. And we're gonna go online and find ways to get Walker's Crisps, because I think we should start branching out to other ones. Josh says that the prawn cocktail actually tastes good, but we won't know until we try ourselves.

[B]

Yes, yes. The chardonnay white wine vinegar thing, that was not good.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Which is a shame. I bought that at Harrods. You know, like. What?

[A]

She got it at Harrods. That just goes to show you, doesn't matter how fancy the establishment is, sometimes crap is crap. You know what I mean?

[B]

I do. I bought a skull there that we shared.

[A]

Yes, you did. And we had a carrot cake across the street at Cafe Whatchamacallit. Concerto.

[B]

Cafe Concerto, which we liked.

[A]

We did. Like. Lot of. A lot of chains there that we, you know, already knew, like Tesco and Cafe Narrow. And there are some other ones. Gail. Gail's Bakery.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And then also a lot of chains that we have. They have McDonald's, Burger King, pizza Hut, Pret A Manger, Chipotle. I think I said Taco Bell. Taco Bell, kfc, kfc, Joe and Juice, Starbucks. It's, you know, it's taken all over the world. It's. It's everywhere.

[B]

Oh, here was the striking thing. When you think of England and you think of London, you think of tea, coffee everywhere. You never really saw tea shops. Every sort of kiosky type shop, snack, coffee, pastries, all that. Everything was coffee.

[A]

Good.

[B]

Startling to me.

[A]

Good.

[B]

Yeah. That was good. And we had good coffee. From where? My favorite place. Tesco.

[A]

Tesco. Best coffee, everybody. That's a hot tip from my mother to you. Exactly. I just love it. I love how much you loved Tesco.

[B]

I did, and it got me down from 5% yogurt to 0%. So that was good.

[A]

Yeah, Fantastic. Way to go, mom.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, Mother. This has been delightful.

[B]

Yes, it has.

[A]

Thank you for coming on to talk about all this with me. I normally ask my guests, where can people find you if you want them to find you? But I don't know if you're someone that you want people to find.

[B]

Well, no, I'm on LinkedIn. You know, if you wanted to find me there, I'm on Facebook. Sure. Give me, give me a holler if you want to talk.

[A]

And I'm on Instagram. Matt Koplik, usual spelling. If you like the podcast, you can give us a nice 5 star rating or review. We got a couple of new ratings while we were over in London. No reviews though. So I would like to get some new ones soon. We don't have to get any reviews, but just more ratings. I would like to up the number. I'm thinking of setting another goal soon and maybe having a. Another. What's. We're looking for something to put out with. With the goal. Because I did, I said 215 by the end of May and I would send put out the wild party life of the party video on Instagram and we hit like 2:25 by the end of May and so I put out the video and now we're at 2:30. I'm like, I don't know, maybe if we get like.

[B]

You want to put out a bonus?

[A]

Yeah, maybe like we get to 250 by the end of June or something. I'll do something.

[B]

Yeah, you should sing.

[A]

Sing. Maybe Tyler wants to film scenes from my, my play and maybe I can agree to film one scene and we can put that out if we, if we had 250. 255. Yeah, maybe. Maybe the scene that got my play into the semifinals for the Terence McNally incubator because you had to submit a 10 page scene before they read the whole thing. And that was the scene that made me go into the semifinals. So maybe I'll do that.

[B]

Yeah, why not?

[A]

Yeah. Okay. We'll set that. If by the end of June we're at 2:30 right now, by the end of June we get to it. 255.

[B]

Why not?

[A]

Why not? And if we don't hit 255 by the end of June, then we gotta hit 270 by the end of July.

[B]

Get on it, people.

[A]

If you've already put in a five star rating, get friends to put in a five star rating. Is that cheating? Kind of. But you know what we do? What we got to Do. Because we got to get that algorithm up. The. The numbers of downloads have been up so much in the last couple of months, and it is because y' all have put in the ratings. You put in the reviews. People listen. You know, they listen. They listen to what people have to say, though, so.

[B]

Well, you were telling me how many different countries you get listens from. It was startling.

[A]

Yeah. Uk, Australia, Brazil, Spain, a couple of other ones I can't remember off the bat. Sweden. Those are the things I remember showing you. But, yeah, again, it's. It's any grubhub or Yelp or whatever, you look at the ratings, you look what people have to say because you want to make sure you're gonna do okay. And people trust when they see a large number of ratings. We're at 4.8 out of 5. We used to be. When I started this, we were five out of five. Then it got down to 4.9, then 4.8. Then we went back up to 4.9. We're back down to 4.8, but with 230 ratings, I think that's still okay. But I would like to get us higher.

[B]

So let's get to that 5.0.

[A]

I don't think that's ever. I don't think that's ever going to happen.

[B]

Listen, if we know nothing else about, we know that I am an inveterate stage mother. So you're.

[A]

You are better than Veronica and Mama Rose.

[B]

Thank you. That's. I guess Dan would think, praise, but still and all.

[A]

Yes, still. It's true. Thank you so much. Yeah. Anyway, Mom, I. In post, I put in a little song to play us out of the episode, and it's always a Broadway diva. Is there any Broadway diva you would like to play us out today?

[B]

Well, I know you love Patty, so maybe a Patty.

[A]

I like Patty. I don't love her. Do you like Patty?

[B]

Yeah, enough. I mean, she's, you know, she's got a very definitive sound.

[A]

Yeah. She says what she thinks, and for that, we say, okay.

[B]

No, do another.

[A]

It's your choice, woman.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

Who do you like?

[B]

Yeah, I like a lot of people. I'm not.

[A]

That's not true. You like nobody. I'm surprised you like me. Okay. Give me a show you love.

[B]

Well, you could always do Eliza, you know, I love Eliza, but that's not really upbeat and whatever of Hamilton. Yeah.

[A]

Philippa Sue. You want Philippa Sue? We'll do Philippa. Great. Fantastic. We're gonna do Philippa Sue. All right. Thank you so much for listening, guys. Join us next week when we do our reactions to the 2024 Tony Awards. You know it's gonna be wild. Take it away, Philippa. We'll see you next week. Bye.

[B]

Way I'm about to change your life by all.