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Broadway Breakdown
Notebooks, Elephants and Protestors OH MY! (Reviews and Updates on the Season)
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Getting into the crazy chaos of the Spring
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Thank you very much. That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do, but Mr. Greg. Ahhh. Hit it. Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright lights, white light with the man romance. The train is late so while we wait, we're gon. Hello, all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history and 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 we're doing a little something not odd. We've done it before, just very rarely. We're doing a rare thing today and it's just a me episode, a solo episode, if you will. We are doing a little break from problematic as we get further into Tony's season. It's been a few weeks since our first episode with Mr. Dylan McDowell, friend of the pod. Hi, Dylan, if you're listening. And since that episode where we made some very bold, very early, very uneducated decisions and predictions, a lot of things have happened and I want to kind of get into a few of them. We're going to split it up into two parts. The first part is my initial reaction to some of the shows that I have seen since that episode. Then the second part will be discussing the transfer of Illinois from the Park Avenue armory to the St James Theatre, what that exactly means for the musical categories, as well as my take on Tommy, which I will be seeing during the break that we will have in the middle of this episode. So as of right now, I have not seen Tommy, and by the time we come back from the Patti LuPone break, I will have seen Tommy and I will give my thoughts on it. Also, while we're here, just at the very tippity toppity, if you are in New York City this week, this comes out on Thursday. If you are in New York City this week and have nothing to do on Friday, March 22, feel free to stop by 54 below and say hey for the My First Sondheim Birthday concert. It is gonna be hosted by myself and friend of the pod, Robin W. Schneider, who is also the host of the podcast. Broadway Bound has a whole bunch of cool folk in it. We've got Tony nominee Caitlin Kinnanan, Grammy Award winner Etai Benson. We have Samantha, myself of Fiddler on the Roof, Harmony's Sean Bell, Hamilton's Nikisha Williams. We have last year's Jimmy Award winner Nicholas Baron come see him now before he gets cast in Dear Evan Hansen. Probably. I'm assuming they're just going to revive it so he can be in it. That's how they tend to do these things. Who else do we have? We have James Soule from Come From Away and K Pop back when I was at Ars Nova. We have Natalie Walker, who some of you might know from social media, but she's also a wonderful actress. She's been in White Girl in Danger and Alice By Heart. We've got cabaret star Amy Jo Jackson and I feel like I said somebody. Oh, Sam Seamock. My dear friend Sam Seamock, who was on Broadway in Into the woods and Carousel and was in the national tours of into the woods and My Fair lady and the King and I. He's got a fun project coming up, this Pride, which I'm not allowed to say until it gets announced, but lo and behold, it's going to be a really fucking fun show. You know, Rob and I are just two gay idiots having a grand old time. I might be singing a little something. I don't know, maybe just to give you guys a little enticement to come see it or. Or live stream it. I'll give. I'll provide the link in the description for this episode. Now, enough of that promo. Let's get to the meat of some stuff. Your host here saw a couple of shows. We did see Off Broadway Teeth at Playwrights Horizons, but that is not Tony eligible, so we don't have to get into it very much. But I will say I enjoyed a lot of needs some work in my opinion, but it is a lot of the meat is there. That is my immediate take on Teeth, the Michael R. Jackson Anna Jacobs musical. I also saw Water for Elephants. I will have a review of that out on Instagram later today. By later today, I mean on this Thursday here, March 21st, the year of Our Lord. I also saw the Notebook and I saw An Enemy of the People. So with all of that, I've, you know, got a lot of thoughts about this Tony season now that I've been seeing a few more things. I know I mentioned a couple other shows on here and I've written reviews for other stuff on Instagram like Merrily Rollalong and I might have mentioned in passing seeing off Broadway plays like I Love youe so Much, I Could Die and Jonah and oh Mar. I saw the musical the Connector at mcc, the Jason Arbor Brown show. Not much to report on a lot of those I must say, the Connector, some really fun songs, some cool staging, some good performances, but disjointed. Oh, Mary is a blast. I hope that it transfers to another Off Broadway theater for a longer run. I don't think it should go to Broadway. Maybe they are trying to do that. I don't know. But I think that it belongs in, like, the Orpheum or someplace like that. Jonah was fantastic, and I'll talk about that a little bit more later. Just because of our director, Ms. Dana Taymor. And I Love youe so Much. I Could Die was just very odd but very beautiful and moving, and I enjoyed it immensely. Again, y', all, the plays are just mopping the floor with the musicals this season. Which brings me to two musicals that we saw on Broadway. First, let's talk about Water for Elephants, because that was the first one this lineup that I saw. Water for Elephants is a new musical with a script by Rick Ellis and a score by Pigpen Theatre Company. It is based off of the very popular novel. I forgot who wrote the novel, but. Oh, Sarah Gruen. Sarah Gruen wrote the novel that just came off of the back of my head. Go Me. Directed by Jessica Stone, fresh off of Kimberly Akimbo. And it's got a pretty packed cast. Isabel Michaela, who I always speak of highly on this podcast, is the female lead. We also have my husband. Husband Paul. Alexander Nolan. Sarah Gettle Finger. Greg Edelman is back on Broadway in this. And Grant Gustin of the Flash and Glee fame, making his Broadway debut as Jacob Jankowitz. Jankowitzki. Jankowski. Jacob Jankowski as Jacob Jankowski. Can you guess that I am recording this at 11:30 at night? So Water for Elephants. If you don't know the basic premise, the show opens with Greg Edelman as an older gentleman with who happens upon a circus. And Isabel Michaela and Paul. Alexander. Alexander Nolan are like, hey, old man, what you doing here? Why are you wandering around the grounds? And Greg Edelman's like, I used to be a part of the circus. I was part of a famous circus that had a very famous tragedy. And they go, ooh, tell us more about it. And we flashback to Grant Gustin as young Greg Edelman. And we basically spent the next two and a half hours going back and forth between Greg Edelman telling us stuff and being in the present day and then going back to the regular story and young Greg Edelman, AKA Grant Gustin. Jacob Jankowski was a medical student. He was studying to become a veterinarian because his father was a vet. And dropped out of school before his exams because his parents died in a car crash. And I guess they also had to foreclose the house and just everything kind of went to pot. And it's the Depression, so he just ran away and hitched a train. And it just so happened that the train he jumped on was a train for the circus, where he ends up accidentally becoming the circus vet. And he and Isabel Michaela start to fall for each other, which is bad news because she's married to Paul Alexander Nolan, who is the ringleader and owner of the circus. And he has demons. He is a typical toxic, controlling man, the kind that you hear about on true crime podcasts where he's, like, very charming and lovely one second, and then any hint of a threat in any way, he turns and he's just very insecure. And that turns into toxicity. He must assert his dominance and his masculinity, and it happens in very scary ways. And they end up getting an elephant through circumstances, I guess. Yeah. They like their star attraction is a horse that they end up having to put down because they've overworked the horse. And they find that another circus has closed down, and they go to buy any of the animals that they have left. And the only animal they have left is a. Is an elephant. And so the elephant becomes the star attraction. And of course, Grant Gustin and Isabel Michaela fall deeper in love in Act 2, and Paula Alexander Nolan gets even worse. And there are some deaths and there is a tragedy, and then it just sort of ends. We come back to Greg Element and he's like. And that was 50 years ago. Or actually, no, he said all he says is that he and his Isabel Michaela were together for 50 years. Unclear if it was 50 years ago or 60 or 70. So my initial thoughts on Water for Elephants, I went in prepared for the worst because a lot of the online chatter about it had not been positive. I had seen. I talked about this before, trying to get me to shut up about it. I had seen a presentation of the first 20 to 30 minutes of the show at the Daryl Roth Theater in the summer of 2022, before they were heading out to Atlanta. And that was a half same cast. It was Ryan Vasquez instead of Grant Gustin. Isabel Michaela was still in it. It was Sebastian Arcellus instead of Paul Alexander Nolan. And I think it was Bill Irwin instead of Greg Edelman. And I remember thinking that the staging was really inventive and there was a lot of good things going on, but it was A little disjointed. It needed more focus. It kept going back and forth from present day to the past, present day to the past. And it wasn't seamless enough and we didn't care enough. And it sounded like from online that a lot of those problems remained. People were not really into this show. And I went to one of the last previews before they froze the show. I went with someone who is a. Is an intimate of someone on the, you know, production team. And they were looking for feedback. So this person, my friend and I, you know, saw the show, we got drinks afterwards, we talked. He took some notes down and brought it back to his person. I don't know if they implemented any of our thoughts, but, you know, I think we saw like they had two more previews after the one I saw before they froze the show. And my initial thoughts on Water for Elephants is that it's not bad. I don't think it's a bad musical. I don't think it's a great musical either. I would describe it in the same way I would describe how to Dance in Ohio, which is a. I think a worse musical than Water for Elephants. But both of them are shows that just aggressively exist. You know, they're just sort of. They're there, they're not specifically with Water for Elephants. It's not terrible. There are a couple of moments that make you go just a line here or there that's just very poorly worded. Every now and then there's a transition or a reveal. That's just not the gag they think it is. But every now and then there is a really beautiful moment. Jessica Stone has done some really fantastic creative staging. It's not a spectacle, which I think people are expecting because of the circus element. And the truth is that circuses themselves, at least at that time, they had a lot of grandeur to them, but it was very false. It's a lot of painted flats and canvas tarps and it's more about the animals and the death defying acts. It's about what people can do in a circus. A circus is not like a Vegas show. You're not getting the biggest of sets and costumes. They're kind of almost threadbare because they got to travel all over the country. It's the 1930s. And the musical production for this does kind of lean into that. It's more about what you can make out of nothing. There's a lot of theatrical, everyday construction stuff and backstage stuff that are used to create different scenarios. And some of them are really creative and striking. And some of them are a little less so. They can just sort of seem threadbare. The lighting is truly phenomenal, which I always feel like. Sounds like a read, you know, you sound like Liz Lemon in that episode of 30 Rock when she says, oh, every time I see Jenna in something terrible, I have to say one nice thing. And one of the things she says is the lighting was really neat, but, like, good lighting is really impressive, I gotta say. And especially on a show like this where the set is not the star, the lighting has to do a lot of the heavy lifting. And it did. It did that for me. Isabel Michaela has a costume reveal early on that's very, very simple. And I felt like, you know, it was effective in the sense that it worked, but there are people in the audience who lost their goddamn minds. And it's. It's like the equivalent of taking off a coat and having a dress underneath. And everyone's like, oh, my God, the reveal. I'm like, yeah, it was fun, but it wasn't. Like, we're not talking about the infamous Dreamgirls costume change in Heavy, where they're wearing a full blown gown. One second, a tinsel curtain drops in front of them, they go right on through and they're wearing a whole different gown in three seconds. It's not that, but it is cute. I will say that the performances are mostly strong. My personal favorites, obviously are Paul Alexander Nolan, who is just once again, he brings it to every ball. You know, he takes a character that is very easy to just fully hate and to also, like, hate immediately, and you get a sense of danger from him. He's also playing dual roles. He's playing someone in quote, unquote, present day, which we learn is the 90s or like the mid-90s. He's playing a person during that when Greg Element is giving his narrations and then he's playing. I think his name is August. Yeah, he's playing August in the 30s storyline. And you know, you get a sense of menace that there's something off with August when Paul's playing the role, but you don't know exactly what it is. And it's not until really towards the end of act one when he is. Bill Michaela and Grant Gustin are at a speakeasy and he gets. He doesn't get overly violent, but he gets a little too aggressive with his, like, drunken play. And. And it's meant to sort of be foreshadowing for what's to come. And it's just a really good turn because he starts playful and then he gets a little too insistent and then the insistence turns dark. And it's just really masterful acting on his part. He, of course, sings like a goddamn dream. And it's just, you know, it's definitely the best role in the show, but it's still not fully formed and he just makes a meal out of it. And it's really phenomenal to see him on stage every time. And he does exactly what you hoped he would do. And the best work of the other two leads honestly comes with him. He has a really great rapport with Isabel Michaela where, like in the early scenes with them, you can see why they were together, why she would marry him. You know, they have an intimacy, they have a camaraderie. And when Grant Gustin sort of becomes part of their trio, there's a friendship there that seems really nice. So you get it. Because I feel like in stories like this, when it becomes a love triangle, one person has to be so clearly the villain that we all go, oh, why would they feel know, why would they ever be with them? Clearly go with the obvious choice. And yes, you know, August sucks, but Paul does a good job in the first act anyway of showing you why there would have been a marriage to begin with. Because if you find that third person in the triangle to suck so hard, you kind of actually think less of the person in the middle of the triangle for being with them at all. And you don't think less of Izzy Michaela for being with him. So kudos to that. And again, Grant's best work is with all three of them together. Where the show is tricky is, you know, the book is kind of rough. The back and forth, as I said, gives you a lot of whiplash. And we don't really care a lot about the Greg Edelman narration. It's there for exposition, obviously, but you know, it's. They, the show cares too much about what's going on with him in his day to day, and we don't really need it. It's similar to the check that Harmony tries to write with Chip Zion. Also, this is like just a season of narrators. We've got so many goddamn narrators in shows, specifically, you know, or just men looking back on their lives because Merilee isn't a narrator, but Jonathan Groff is looking back on his life through the whole show. We have all these like male narrators just, you know, talking about whatever. We got Dorian Haraway in Notebook. We've got Greg Edelman in Water for elephants. Chip Zion in Harmony, we have. What's his name? It's Anthony Edwards. Was that his name in prayer for the French Republic? Just these guys just coming out and giving up big old speeches about their lives. And it's like, okay, whatever. But with Greg, I think part of the reason is he is too young and too virile for the part. I thought he kind of read as a mid-60s boomer who was probably considering. Considering retirement later on. And I said, you know, okay, but maybe they're trying to make him pass for 70 and I'll accept it. The magic of theater. And then I find out from my friend afterwards, no, he's supposed to be like 93. And I said, absolutely not. Greg Edelman is not playing 93 in this show. So there's no frailty with him. You don't feel like any moment could be the moment that triggers him. So that makes you less compelled to sort of hear from him. But also bringing it back to Harmony, you know, with Chip Zion, they keep implying, like, oh, why is Chip the member that we're hearing from? What happened to the others? Oh, no, World War II is coming. We have an idea of what could be happening next. And he's got this big 11 o' clock number, the you could have killed Hitler number, which to some people is powerful. To some people, it's full camp. I will let you decide for yourself where I stand on that. But, you know, the whole number is about, like, why is it me? Why must I be the one to tell the story? And the answer by the end of the show with Harmony is like, well, you lived the longest, you know. No, none of them died in the Holocaust. The one character who dies in the Holocaust in Harmony is Julie Benko, and she's a made up character. So. But with Chip, it's okay, well, you made it to 94, that's why. And with Greg Edelman, you learn, like, yeah, you know, they survived the circuit. And the tragedy at the end of Act 2, which is very rushed in this show, but then, like, he goes on to live a lovely life and. And, you know, his wife isn't with him anymore. But, like, his, his children can't really be there because they're busy. But, like, they want you to feel bad about it. But the reason they give for, like, his son. His son, like, comes to visit him every Sunday. And this is like the one Sunday he doesn't show up because he. He's like a nurse or something. And someone at the hospital called out, so he had to Work. And they make it seem like the, oh, your son's too busy for you. It's like his son's fucking working. It's not as if his son called to be like, something came up. And, like, I gotta go do a thing with a friend. He's like, I'm saving people's lives at the hospital. I'm so sorry, Dad. I will see you next Sunday. So he walks into the circus being like, little old me at 95 years old. Never mind the fact that I look back better than any of your parents. He's also. Greg is still terribly handsome, and it just needs to be said. The other thing that's an issue with Water for Elephants is the score. The score got read a lot online, and if you're listening to this podcast, chances are you're somebody who likes to read reports online. So this can't be news to anybody. And maybe you've listened to some of the music on YouTube or whatever for yourself. I didn't find the score to be bad. If you're listening to this before I write, before I release my review on Instagram. Apologies for, you know, repeating myself, but the way I sort of described it is like the score is mostly, like, pure liquid to bring it, you know, to the water of it all. But it's, you know, it washes over you nicely enough. Like, in the moment of a song, you are sort of sitting there with the music and just sort of being like, yeah, sure, fine. It's washing over me. It feels nice enough. And then when the song ends, it just rolls off your back like water off a duck's back, as Jinx Monsoon would say. And obviously, when it comes to, like, hum ability or memorability, that comes from repetition, as Sondheim always likes to say. When people say, oh, your scores aren't humble hummable, he's like, well, I don't do nine reprises during the night, so you're walking out remembering it. And I mean, the same is true for Water for Elephants. There's not a lot of songs that get repeated, but you also don't feel like you got any oomph from the songs. There are, like, two or three songs that are. I don't call them showstoppers, but, like, have a bit more heat to them, have a bit more dramatic fizzle. But also they are accompanied by these major stunts by the ensemble, which, you know, everyone's working their butt off, and that ensemble is doing some major stunts, but there's nothing in it that's, like, very compelling musically. That Makes you lean in. They've got this one duet between Grant and Isabel in Act 2 in a hotel room and with, like, a midnight sky behind them. And my friend and I just kind of looked at each other and, like, this is kind of Bridges of Madison county, right? This is A Million Miles to Go. That scene, it's very that. But, like, the song isn't quite as good. So, yeah, that's sort of where I'm at with Water for Elephants. There's another actor in it who's quite good, a supporting player. Who does he play? It's. His name is Camel. The actor, Stan Brown. He does a really lovely job in the show. I'm also very glad that Sarah Gettlefinger is back on Broadway. She doesn't have much of a role, unfortunately, but she does do well with what she's got. I think the costumes are quite lovely. The lighting is lovely. The set, you know, I found it to work well. It's sort of like a Scottsboro boy situation where it's less about, you know, the spectacle and more about how well it's used. So it could still be a nominee for set design, but I could see it faltering if there are nominators who are like, there wasn't enough of a set or they just didn't find it attractive enough. I found it attractive enough. There's also. Grant has this sort of like 11 o' clock number after he gets bonked on the head, Don't Ask. And sort of like, goes through the events of the show while also going through his past pre show, his parents dying and what led him there. And it's both a musical number for him, like a song as well as a bit of a dream ballet. And it goes on far too long. There were people around me who were starting to giggle because it just kept going, going, and that's not good. I don't know what changes have been made since I saw it. From what I understand, they were able to trim like 5 to 10 minutes off the show between the first preview and when I saw it. So maybe they were able to trim off another five. That's really all most shows can do now in previews. If you are lucky, you get a How to Dance in Ohio or Bridges of Madison county that is willing to fully cut songs during previews. But you're not going to get major reshaping. That's something that Shuffle along did where they did a week or two of previews, shut down production for a week to implement major changes, tech it all and then go back up again. And I think if you're gonna do something like that, you have to be willing to. If you're gonna do a preview process, you have to either go in confident that your show works and that any changes you make are just slight tightening moments, or give yourself the money and legroom to make major changes. And yes, it's expensive to put up a show, but this is where we're at now. Moving on from Water for Elephants, I will now go into the Notebook. This is a musical that I was very excited to see. I had heard all the word of mouth from out of town and it was so, you know, the praise was just incredible. And I think part of that comes from expectation, right? You know, people went into the Notebook in Chicago being like, oh, God, a musical about that book, movie, gag me. Now I can just, you know, imagine what it's going to be like. And then we're quite surprised that it was done in a more artistic way than expected. So there was a lot of hype about it coming to Broadway. You know, the moment they announced, everyone's like, okay, it's our front runner. Especially because. And let's call it like we see it, this has been a very, very disappointing season so far for new musicals. As I said before, the plays have been Ma Bang, the Floor, Appropriate, Ja Ja's African Hair Braiding, you know, even Prayer for the French Republic, which I liked more off Broadway than on Broadway. Still, you know, a strong play. Pearly, Victorious, delightful. I will get to An Enemy of the People in just a second. So, the Notebook. I win the lottery and I go with my friend Caitlin Frank, who, yeah, she's actually been on this podcast before, but. So Caitlin and I go to the. I want to say it was a Saturday matinee. That sounds about right. And we actually had pretty solid seats. We were in the orchestra towards the left. We missed the way that the set is built. It's sort of like a barn with like a second tier deck. And there's one part at the front of the stage on the second level where you miss someone if they are a little too far back, if they come like right to the edge where the bars are, you can see them. But if they were like two steps back, you couldn't. So that was the only thing Caitlin and I ever missed, which means we missed like truly 3% of the show. Everything else we saw. So the Notebook, for those of you who've been living under a rock, is a story about an elderly gentleman at an old folks home who reads a Love story from a handwritten notebook to a woman in the home who has dementia. And as he's reading her the love story of a couple named Allie and Noah, over the course of the pages, she starts to realize that the story is about her. It's about them. He's her husband. They are Allie and Noah. And I never read the book. The way it was always described to me was like it was an airport bathroom read, which is very Nicholas Sparks. Just these books were. It's like not great literature. He's not a good writer, but he has really good ideas for stories, even if he tends to punish his female characters with a lot of illnesses and. And whatnot. And it's also very white. But listen, whatever people do, how they do, the movie was a really big hit and remains a cultural touchstone. And part of that is because it was the. That was the year of Rachel McAdams. You know, she had Mean Girls that April and then the Notebook that summer, and then I think she had Red Eye in the fall, and then Wedding Crashers was the following year, just like Girlfriend blew up in a matter of months. And, I mean, it's so stupid to say now because of the careers that they have had and how, you know, amazing. We all know they are, but like Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling, who played Noah in the movie, like wonderful actors. They are phenomenal actors. They are so special. You know, he's a weird duck for someone who is as dreamy as he is. He is such an oddball, which makes him such a phenomenal choice for someone like Noah, because he's no swoon worthy, but he's also a freak. And she's beautiful, but, like, she's got grit and passion. And you watch that movie, like, their scenes are electric. Yeah. Like, yes, it's a. It's a schmaltzy movie, but the two of them, an amazing chemistry, and they like the way that they fight. It's very intense and real. Like, they make that movie work. And for the musical, you want something kind of like that. So this all comes back to what did I think? I liked it. I quite liked the Notebook a lot. Was it as good as I wanted it to be? Probably not. Would I have liked it as much as I do in. If this season were better? Like, if this were coming last year and I saw Kimberly Akimbo, which I loved, Slum look at Hot, which I was underwhelmed by, but I thought was, you know, okay, Shucked, which I enjoyed but thought needed to be 100 minutes. Would I have liked this as much? Probably not. I probably would have made this third choice, but as it stands, it's my favorite of the new musicals so far. Now, granted, I haven't seen the Outsiders yet, and I want to take this moment to just say the Outsiders might weirdly become the hit of the season in terms of new musicals, which kind of came out of nowhere. But also again, goes to show you how expectations can change everything. Because the Outsiders went out of town and got very middling reviews and word of mouth was sort of like, oh, they got a lot of work to do and they come to Broadway with Angelina, Angelina Jolie as one of their producers. God bless. And. And you know, their social media game has been really on fire. One of the main producers is a merchandising company that has been selling really fantastic merch, which helps promote the show. It's a cast of young hot guys, so it's like a violent Newsies, and at this point it's sort of like, well, is the show any good? It's like, at this point, who cares? You know, I don't necessarily think Newsies is a great musical. It's got some bangers, and I think Fierstein's script for the musical is leagues better than the script for the movie. It's not nearly as boring and makes far more sense. But I was never on the newsies train as much as other people were. But that didn't stop it from running for two and a half years and having a rabid fan base. So the same thing could happen for the Outsiders. Haven't seen it yet, but I've had some friends see it who are really into it already. And if you look online, like, tickets are going pretty quickly. We've come to a new point with ticket Buying Post Covid, where people aren't as willing to buy tickets in advance. Lord knows I am learning this with the 54 below. Show people like to buy week of. They like to buy day of. Very rarely do people buy weeks in advance now. And yet if you look at like the first three weeks of the Outsiders, you'll see a lot of tickets are sold. And that's saying something. Part of it is, you know, it is a story that a lot of people know. The book is a staple in a lot of middle school English curriculums. I read it. I'm sure you read it or someone you know read it or your parents read it. It was made into a movie in the 80s which, like, did okay. It wasn't great, but it did okay. And it had a very famous cast or a cast that is now famous. And I think just, you know, if they get even, like, somewhat positive reviews, that's all they really need to go off of. And, you know, word of mouth is surprisingly strong, I think, because everyone went in going well. It's not supposed to be terribly good. And everyone I know who went in for it didn't love the material that they were sent. But it might be one of those shows that, like, it works just better in context. It works with the production. It works with the director, Dana Taymor, who, again, I said her work on Jonah was my introduction to her. I think she's a very smart, talented, thoughtful director. She's got a lot of panache and style, and I would like to see what she does with this. I think this also can be a major competitor in a lot of categories, at least for nominations. Musical book, direction, choreography, for sure. Obviously not for the win, and we'll get to that after the break. But with the Notebook, they split it up into three couples. As many people know. There's the older Allie and Noah, the middle Allianoa, and the younger Ally and Noah. The older Ally and Noah in this production are very clearly the leads. They are the ones who get the last bows. They are Marian Plunkett and Dorian Harewood. And when I tell you that Marian Plunkett is giving one of the best performances of the season, I truly mean it. It's like. It's also. It's very man in chair. You know, she doesn't sing until the very, very end, but everything she does, she is so lived in. It's so natural. It's sweet and sad without feeling saccharine or cloying. It is definitely the best performance in the production. She is also the. She's what everything hinges on. The show would not work for those of us who liked it if Marian were bad. And even those who didn't like the show have all agreed that Marian is giving an extraordinary performance. Dorian is also doing a really, really beautiful job, actually. I think all six actors are great in very different ways. You know, John Cardoza and Jordan Tyson as the younger Allie and Noah are very endearing. They sound gorgeous. And, you know, I think if there's one thing I'm missing from them is I'm missing a little bit of that heat. Some of the fire. You know, the movie shows how Allie and Noah's courtship burns so bright because it burns so fast. You know, they argue all the time, but they are so into each other, they're making out all the time. Like, they're very horny for each other, obviously. And they have this very immediate, strong connection. And the musical goes in a more sort of ponderous route with this. They talk about how they feel a lot. They sing about how they feel a lot, as you should in a musical. But there's not a lot of, like, gotta have ya, need to have ya, you know, passion, it's. Water is a major metaphor in the show. There's a lot of water in this show. And to bring it back to metaphors, I think it could use a little more fire. But I thought that the music was overall, very, very pretty. Again, super memorable. Probably not, but again, there's nothing that's, you know, repeated a lot for us to remember. Ingrid Michaelson's lyrics. Some are quite nice, some are kind of rough. The opening number has some rough lyrics, I must say, but there are some songs with the younger and middle Allie and Noah's where it gets very specific about how they're feeling. Like when Allie and Noah are gonna try to have sex for the first time. The lyrics for that are very specific and very good. When Allie and Noah reconnect 10 years later and she's engaged to someone else, and she comes back to the house that he built for them, you know, the lyrics there are fantastic. Where the show does kind of trip up, where the movie did a lot better, is the secondary characters. Ali's parents. Noah's father is spoken of in the musical, he's never shown, whereas he's a slightly larger part in the movie. Noah's friends, who we get to know a little bit better in the movie and lose some of them, they're kind of more passing in the musical. Also, Ali's fiance, I think, only has, like, two scenes. The fiance that she meets when she thinks that she'll never see Noah again. And then she runs into Noah again and has to decide between the two. We don't get a lot of her fiance in this, and the little that we do get is very basic. So it makes the, you know, connected to Water for Elephants. It makes us feel a little less of Ally when we see her fiance. Someone who's like, just such a blank slate. And, you know, why is she tormenting herself over who to pick when it's like, well, clearly Noah, right, he's the one we're spending all the time with and all these other things. And, you know, the movie, it's Ryan Gosling and James Marsden. And already James Marsden is very handsome and very charming, but they also give the characters some nobility and grace, which I appreciate. The musical doesn't really do that. The musical is really just all about Allie and Noah. And, you know, the reviews for the show have been kind of all over the place. The New York Times did not care for it. A lot of people online did not care for it. There have been some positive reviews. I think Variety was one. Wall Street Journal might have been another one. You know, it's not. It wasn't a panned show. It wasn't even an across the board middling review. It's like it got a couple of bad notices, a couple of mixed, and then a couple of positive, which some people have said now writes it off as a contender for best musical. It does not. There have been best musical winners in the past that did not get the best of reviews. Reread Ben Brantley's review for Thoroughly Modern Millie. He fucking hated it. Read, you know, Walter Kerr's review for Evita in 1979. He hated it. And those shows went on to win. It's just sometimes the show gets the momentum, sometimes the show has the narrative, and sometimes it's just the divide of, like, you know, yes, the critics didn't like it, but we did. And as I've also mentioned, there's a difference between nominators and voters. You know, maybe Notebook gets only alone six Tony nominations. Score, book, musical orchestrations, lighting, and, you know, Marian Plunketet and, let's say Joy woods for featured actress. Just like, you know, off the top of my head. And Meanwhile, Outsiders gets 12 and Hell's Kitchen gets 10 and Water for Elephants gets 19. But Water for Elephants goes home totally empty handed and, you know, the Notebook ends up going down the line winning all of its categories. That can happen. It's happened before. I bring it up all the time. My beloved carousel of 94 had fewer nominations than she Loves Me. Everyone assumed she Loves Me was gonna, you know, win the night out. And Carousel ended up winning every single one of its five nominations, and she Loves Me only won one of its nine. So these things do happen also. I mean, you can look at a bunch of Frank Rich reviews and see a lot of the shows that he didn't care for that ended up winning. For as many musicals that are the juggernauts that win, there are also musicals that maybe got not the best reviews of its category and still won. Millie got worse reviews than Mamma Mia and you're in Town and it won. Will Rogers Follies got trashed by the New York Times, which loved Once on this island, really liked Miss Saigon and was sort of half and half on Secret Garden, Will Rogers Follies absolutely had the worst reviews of that category. And it won Crazier for your got a rave in the Times, but Falsetto's got a bigger rave. And Jelly's Last Jam was also very well praised. And yet it went too crazy for you. Case of the Spider Woman Frank Rich was not into He Loved Tommy and Spider Woman won the day. So who knows? The truth is, who knows? I think that Notebook does the memory piece a lot better than Water for Elephants, a lot better than Harmony. Again, because it's all about. It's very focused on who is the memory and what we're talking about and what it's all about. And it's laser focused on this being the romance. So that's in my opinion, in its favor. But not everyone is going to be for it. And Michelson's score is not rousing you out of your seats. It's like a slightly softer Bareilles score on Waitress. You know, Bareilles work on Waitress had that twang. She's also a Broadway baby in her own secret way. And so she did write a score for character and for energy and comic relief as well as introspective. And Notebook is really all about atmosphere, as is Water for Elephants. I would say they're both very atmospheric scores rather than theatrical scores. I think Notebooks is better, but you know, it's. I would give that score a gentleman 7 out of 10. That is what I would say for that. Moving on to An Enemy of the People, which I saw on a critics night. Yes. The very same night that got interrupted by climate change supporters, you know, the, the protest group. I won't go into it for much just because I'm sure y' all have read about it. They picked the exact moment to do it. And I'm pretty sure Jesse Green said this in his review, but like, it's very clear that they had someone go scout the show for them in their organization maybe to find the exact moment to do it, because it was in the middle of the show during a town hall where Jeremy Strong's character is informing the town, or at least the town council, of the contaminated waters for the baths that they just put up that is going to be the center of their economy. And as he's talking about, you know, so all this happens, there's like a brief. It's not an intermission, it's like a six minute break where they make a little bar on stage, because it's in the round, and people can come up and get alcohol. And then once that's done, they have audience members sitting on stage with cast members to sort of fill out the space and make it a town hall. And all the lights are up. You know, there's some show lights, but mostly it's house lights. And as Jeremy's talking, someone comes down the aisle and started just talking about, you know, the show and art and making change and no theater on a dead planet going on for a while. And it's very calm, and everyone on stage is sort of just like, looking at this person intently. And we all thought for a solid two minutes that it was part of the show, because, again, it happened very seamlessly. It was the exact right moment to do it. And if we're being honest, it kind of sounds like something Sam Gold would do in one of his productions, like part of the Amy Herzog translation. And when that person got escorted out, you know, I think 80% of the audience was still on the. On the belief that it was planned. And then a second person popped up and she got escorted. And then a third person got up, and stage management went on the God mic and told actors to clear the stage. You know, this will be a moment. Some actors were staying in character and interacting, and others got clearly upset as human beings, not as the characters. And I went with my Tony voter friend. He was still convinced after the show that it was totally part of the show. He was totally convinced. I had to wait till I texted my friend who is a producer on the show, and I was like, so this happened and it's not part of the show, right? And he was like, oh, my God, absolutely not. And then he said, oh, shit. I just got, you know, the report from management about it. So, yes, it wasn't part of the show. A lot of people were still convinced after the fact that it was. But I will say this. There's not much I can say about an Enemy of the People about this revival, other than I think it's fantastic at this moment. It is my favorite thing of the Broadway season. It has officially usurped Jaja's African hair braiding as my favorite thing this season. And if you are wondering, yes, I have made a list of everything I've seen this Broadway season, and yes, I have it all ranked. I'm going to take away all of my Off Broadway editions. So no Jonah, no oh, Mary, or I love you so much I could die, or any of the encores or teeth and they will say my top shows in order of ones I loved the most to least. Although again, these are still shows that I quote unquote recommend. Number one is Enemy of the People. Two is Ja Ja's African Hair Braiding. Number three is Appropriate. Four is Pearly Victorious. Five was the Notebook. Six was Merrily We Roll along. Seven. Gutenberg. Eight. Here Lies Love. Nine Prayer for the French Republic. And then Ten Days of Wine and Roses. And the truth is like after Pearly Victorious, we are out of the I loved it mentality and into the I liked it. And I have caveats, which is Notebook and Mary Levy Roll along as well as Gutenberg and Here Lies Love. Then we have the oh, and I guess Prayer for the French Republic. But then we go into Days of Wine and Roses where it's like, I didn't really like this. I liked parts of it, but definitely not the whole. And that is why that is there. Followed by Water for Elephants and then Doubt. Oh, I don't think I mentioned Doubt on here. I saw Doubt also post Tony episode. I Gotta tell y'. All. You know, if you've listened to past episodes, especially the one about the National Theater where Ali Gordon and I talk about the Pillow Man, I was so big on the Pillow man the year it was on Broadway with Billy Crudup, I loved it. It fucking changed my mentality on what theater could be. And I was furious that it lost to Doubt because Doubt had all the heat. I have since changed my tune on Doubt, not on its winning. I still maintain Pilliman as the greater play, but since the movie, since watching it at the library to do an episode on Doubt last year and now seeing this revival, I must admit Doubt is a wonderful play. It's a fantastic play. Especially because this revival is just sort of okay. The positive reviews for it I think speak more towards the play than anything anyone's doing on that stage. The acting is mostly fine. Amy Ryan is okay. Liev Schreiber is okay. If Miscast, and that's really it. I can see it getting some acting nominations. Leading actress in a play is kind of thin this year in a weird way. So I think Amy could get in. Liev could get in. But I mean, if Uncle Vanya ends up slapping as hard as I want it to, I think Doubt could be the show that gets left in the dust in terms of revival of a play. I think it could be Pearly, Victorious, appropriate, An Enemy of the People, and Uncle Vanya. And we will withhold on full on predictions until we see Vanya But I will say right now, An Enemy of the People has usurped Appropriate as my frontrunner for that category. It is a phenomenal production. It's just so fantastic. Everyone in it is great. Jeremy Strong is wonderful. Michael Imperioli is so well cast and doing a lovely job. And then Katie. Sorry, not Katie Broad. Victoria Pedretti, who plays Jeremy Strong's daughter. I believe she's a combination of the daughter and wife from regular versions of the play. But Amy Herzog's translation has combined the two to create a major female character with agency. Victoria Pedretti I thought was so wonderful. I think the whole everyone in the cast is great. And I could see a world where both Michael Imperioli and Victoria get nominated and featured. Victoria could maybe be pushed into lead. She's the largest female role, but she's not really a female lead, if that makes sense. The design is very exquisite. The costumes are all very period appropriate. The set is, you know, it's abstract. It's a. It's, you know, it's a roof and it's a floor with little bits of pieces of furniture and lamps. But it's very detailed and you get the environment. The lighting is phenomenal. I thought it was just a wonderful, wonderful production. A beautiful translation, I think Amy Herzog now has done two translations back to back that have just done it in for me. This and Doll's House. And now I'm excited for Mary Jane in a few weeks, which I'll be seeing. I have tickets now for Tommy, Stereophonic Patriots, Mary Jane, Mother Play, Sus Lempicka, and, oh, yes, Illinois, which we will get to after the break. Speaking of which, I think now would be a great time for us to take that break so I can go see Tommy and then give you my thoughts on Tommy and my thoughts on Illinois and what its transfer means for the Broadway season. So with that, let's go take a break while I go to the Nederlander Theater. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble thread of the feet of. Well, well, well. What a difference, you know, 16 hours make. I thought I was going to be seeing Tommy the who's Tommy? This afternoon, Wednesday, March 20, and wouldn't you know it, I did not. A couple of things happened this morning and this afternoon. Lots of switching around and somewhat chaos. As I mentioned in Part one, the Outsiders is secretly becoming A hot ticket of the new musicals this year. I mean, it's not like Hamilton Hadestown level, but it's selling very well, especially post Covid where, you know, again, people don't tend to buy very far in advance anymore. But if you look, you know, for the first, like the next two weeks on tele charge for the Outsiders, there aren't a ton of seats available. Now, some of that is because those seats are held for critics. They are held for industry folk. They're held for Tony nominators, Tony voters. Something that people don't seem to realize is Tony voters and nominators don't go after the opening of a show. They can get invited during previews. Once the show is frozen, they get invited. This is especially helpful when a show opens at the very, very end of the season and needs to, you know, get nominators in to see it under the wire. They will tend to go, you know, to opening the first performance after the opening or like the first couple of previews prior to the opening. But even so, the Outsiders is still selling very well. I bring this up because I bought myself a ticket for the Outsiders this morning. I woke up and was like, you know what? Fuck it. I have been very fortunate this year to see pretty much everything this season and did so through many ways. I got invited on a couple of different press nights. So I did see about nine or ten shows for free, which is great. And I'm very, you know, fortunate for that. Other ones were I won rush or lottery. Others were tdf and sometimes I just purchased a ticket early enough that it wasn't terribly expensive. The only show up until now that I had paid over a hundred dollars for was appropriate, which was worth it. There was no way I was going to win the rush for that on Today Ticks and it pretty much was sold to the high heavens. The only thing I could do was buy a sort of third to last row mezzanine seat for $150 three weeks in advance, which I did. And all was good. And everyone was in thank. Thank goodness. And so. And so I bring this up because the outsiders became the second show that I paid over 100 bucks for. I paid 130, which is a lot in my opinion. Not as much as, you know, people are paying for merrily, but like $130 for mid mes for about a week from now. And I was like, okay, you know what? I think considering how much I have spent on everything else, the average is still very good. I think I'm doing just Fine. And of course, wouldn't you know what, I go to the gym and I get an invite to the prep to a press night, literally later that day. And before you go, well, Matt, why didn't you wait? You know, clearly you're getting invited to these things. I'm not. I am not necessarily part of the press. I have people who are far fancier than I am who get invited and I get to go with them sometimes, you know, that's just how my life has been working. So I get invited by the friends, not by the staff of the show. And you never know when it's gonna happen or what, you know, what day you can go. But so I had to finagle, you know, that. And then I put my ticket up on for sale on the app Theater that's T H E a T R, which is a wonderful app where people resell tickets that they purchased because they can't go anymore. And there's sometimes a lot of last minute tickets or tickets in advance. And you know, people try to sell them at face value. The closer you get to the actual day, they tend to go down a bit. Mine currently is up just under face value. Most likely will go down if we're being honest. But so I got all that settled. And then again, speaking of theater, I used that same app to buy my Tommy ticket. And while I'm at the gym and I finally figured out all my outsiders finagling, I get a text from the person who sold me their Tommy ticket. And Tommy has cancelled their matinee because two of their leads are sick. They needed an emergency put in that afternoon. It makes sense. We are coming out of winter and flu season, heading straight into allergy season, and Tommy has been in nonstop previews for almost two weeks. They just did B roll footage. So this cast is exhausted and if you're tired and sick on top of that, you're gonna, you know, have to call out a little bit. Especially since Tommy opens in just a few days. They need those leads rested and ready to go for critics and also so they can be well on opening night and be Tony eligible. So I will go see Tommy on another day. Sadly, that means I cannot review it for y'. All. Now. I think I mentioned Merrily a bit on the Tony episode with Dylan McDowell. I know I reviewed it. You can go on my Instagram to read said review. I did. Overall, really like Merrily. I think it's not the masterpiece of a production as some people think it is. There are a couple of performances in it that are not good. And some performances that are great. I understand why the set design is the way it is. It is, however, a very ugly set design which has been a big, you know, theme this season for musicals. A lot of ugly set designs. Harmony, how to Dance in Ohio, the Spamalot Revival, Merrily Revival, Days of Wine and Roses, Once Upon a One More Time. Just ugly, ugly sets. I'm just going, what are we fucking doing here? But, you know, didn't ask me. Moving right along. So as we have recently heard, there is one more addition to the already jam packed April that is this Broadway season and I'm already seeing a whole bunch of stuff in April. So my, you know, spring is getting just as packed as, you know, a Loose bottom on Fire Island. I don't know, I am very tired today. My witchy, sexual, you know, puns or whatever are not gonna do it for anybody today. But that's fine. Whatever. Illinois. The Sufjan Stevens album that has been choreographed by Tony winner Justin Peck is coming from the Park Avenue Armory straight to Broadway at the St. James Theatre. Going right in after Spamalot closes. They open directly on Broadway, I believe. April 24th. Yeah, I think it's the second to last day of Tony cutoff and there are no previews, they just open straight, which makes sense because A, they've already been performing the show for two months at the Armory. The show is set in stone. Everyone knows what they're doing. They don't need to, you know, finagle anything. Critics have already seen it. I'm sure they'll get reinvited to a later day. But they need, you know, it's a very quick turnover. They need to re load in the show and re tech the show for a new space, make sure everyone is feeling good, feeling safe and get it in under the wire. So also Tony nominators can go see it because it will be Tony eligible. Why else would they bring it in on that day if they didn't care about Tony nominations, they would have waited till, you know, mid May or something, or even junior July. So Robbie Fairchild could do it and not miss it because he's going to be doing the Artist in the West End. So obviously this is helping shake up the Tony season. Questions some people have asked, will this be considered a musical? For my money, yes. In the same way that Movin out was considered a new musical, Fosse Dancin in 1978. Yeah, 78. You know, a musical doesn't necessarily just mean a story with song and dance and speech. It can be a lot of different things. We've had musical reviews like Ain't Misbehavin or Me, Nobody Knows, Side by Side by Sondheim, Black and Blue, Blues in the Night getting nominated for best musical. We've had more like creative dance pieces like Moving out or even Bring Into Noise, Bring Into Funk. Also reviews like Smokey Joe's Cafe. We've had infamously Contact Nominated and winning best musical in 2000, although that was what then launched the special event Tony, which then got discontinued, but that's what finally won Elaine Stritch her Tony Award. So the answer is yes, Illinois will be considered a new musical. Will it be considered for best score? No. Some people have tried to cite things like Jesus Christ Superstar, Hadestown, Evita, even, you know, even Tommy as examples of pre existing scores that made it to Broadway and then were Tony eligible. The difference between Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Hadestown and this is that those previous three were written to be stage shows. The quote unquote concept albums were sort of, you know, they were proof of concept to get interest and investment in a stage show. They were never meant to be a standalone album, which is honestly what Tommy was supposed to be. Tommy was never meant to go on stage. It was supposed to be a standalone album which then got turned into a movie and then a stage show. And when Tommy was nominated for best score and then tied with Kiss of the Spider Woman, it actually caused a little bit of controversy. And their reasoning at the time was the score was written for that story and thus it was deemed eligible. Things got a little more muddied in 1996 when David Merrick produced Rodgers and Hammerstein's State Fair on Broadway and tried to get that eligible for best score, which it did end up being nominated for, but only for four of the songs because everything else was written either for the movie, State Fair, or pre existing Rodgers and Hammerstein songs that were cut from other shows. And there were only four songs that were written specifically for that production. So when voters were listening to the scores to decide who they were going to vote for, they were told they could only listen to those four songs. That's what they were considering. And then after that, the best score category was given a major line in the sand, which was it can be a compilation score and still be eligible, but either it has to be 50% or more of what's presented on stage was written for that version. Which is why something like Thoroughly Modern Millie was eligible, because there were songs from the movie, a couple of standards from the 1920s, they did a whole jazz suite based off of the Nutcracker. But a lot of songs were written for the show, not for the life of me. Gimme, gimme. I turned the corner, Forget about the boy. They also rewrote lyrics for Mammy, which became Moochin. And then also. What was that one? The speed test. My eyes are fully open to my office situation, so I'm writing you a letter to demand an explanation, which is from Pirates of Penzance. So for Illinois, the album that Sufian Stevens created almost 20 years ago was never meant to go to the stage. It was just an album because that's what Sufjan Stevens does. And Justin Peck took said album and made it into what he did. So it won't be eligible for score. It'll probably be eligible for orchestrations. Actually, no, it'll definitely be eligible for orchestrations because I know that they do sort of a. They do some tweaking with the music to suit three voices and not just have it be a Sufyan album. It'll be eligible for musical. Definitely. Definitely. Choreography. I understand that there are a couple of performances that are very heavily featured that, you know, there is a story or a thematic story, if you will, and it focuses on Ricky Ubaidah and Ben Tyler Cook mostly, and they could be in consideration for their dance performances. Dance performances have been nominated in the past. Not yet one. As far as I'm aware, only Karen Zymba in contact, but she had book scenes for that as well as her dancing. Anne Reinking and Wayne Cilento were nominated for Danson. They did not win. Many dancers from Moving out were nominated. Did not win. Matt Kavanaugh, who was the head of the band for Moving out, was also nominated. He did not win. So, you know, even a singer in Illinois could get nominated. It'll be tricky because we've got a lot of featured cat. We've got a lot of candidates for featured actor and actress in a musical, and it's going to be so packed, it'll be difficult to imagine nominators giving many slots to Illinois for that. I mean, I feel the same way about a lot of shows. I just. I don't think we're going to see any musical this season with a lot of nominations and featured. I think best case scenario, a show might get two slots in a category, but which show that is, who knows? You know, I think that Joy woods and Jordan Tyson will be eligible and featured. From what I understand, the production for Behind. The production behind Notebook is going to petition Marian Plunkett and Dorian Harewood for lead. They do get the last bows after all. But also, you know, there's Marilee and Cabaret. Someone tried to pitch to me that Marilee was going to get three featured actress nominations, to which I say, calm down, maybe they'll get two. I really don't think so. I think it's going to be Lindsay and that's it. You know, I stand by Lindsay and Bebe Neuorth being sort of Locke's. And again, I haven't even seen BB but it's just. It's. It's that kind of role. Cabaret is that kind of show. She's BB Fucking Newerth. I stand by that. I think either Jordan or Joy could get in for Notebook, and now that Outsiders is kind of coming in hot, something could happen there. So you never know. You never do know. I also want to reiterate that Keisha Lewis and Shoshana Bean are very much in the conversation with Hell's Kitchen. Depending on how well that show does financially, I don't think terribly well, but, you know, they are wonderful in what is a very flawed show. And then, of course, Lempicka has just started previews. I had a listener ask me what I had heard about it because they were considering buying tickets for it. As I have mentioned, I am seeing Lempicka on April 4. I have two friends who went to the invited dress and of course, it's not really verboten to talk about what happened at a final dress, but it is sort of considered crass to publish thoughts and luckily they didn't. They just told me in confidence. But I will say it was a very divided reaction. One thought the show was beautiful, one thought the show was kind of a mess. And if you go online, you'll see a sort of similar reaction. It's majority positive with like one or two detractors. And I think the detractors will get larger and I think that the positives will get louder as we move forward into previews. But we're hopeful. We want some fun stuff going on this season and that's really all we're at today. I wish I could tell you more about Tommy, but alas, sickness done them in. But hopefully the next time we come back to one of these, I will have seen a few more shows. I am seeing the outsiders now on April 1st, and then Lempicka on the 4th. I think after Lempicka, I have Patriots, then Suffs, and then Stereophonic. I don't have uncle vanya until May 4, so that'll be after nominations, but that should probably be the last show of the season that I see. I don't have tickets yet for the Wiz. I don't have tickets for Great Gatsby or Heart of Rock and Roll, but I am not terribly nervous about that. I think I should be fine in either of those. I also have tickets for. I feel like there's something else I'm missing. Oh, I have tickets for Mother Play and Mary Jane. That's sort of towards the end of April. I don't have a ticket for Hell's Kitchen, but again, I saw it off Broadway and I think best case scenario, that show is going to have, you know, 5% difference from off Broadway, larger stage and more hydraulics. That'll be it. And, oh, yeah, and then Illinois. I see Illinois at the very end of April. So, yeah, it should be a fun time. And we're gonna have some more Tony prediction episodes coming up and conversations about the season and what to expect and how sort of do some smart betting on nominations and then once the nominations come out, how to do some smart betting on the winners. Yeah, that's it for now. Stay tuned for my review of Water for Elephants on Instagram, which will be out later today, this Thursday, March 21st. And if you are in New York City, March 22nd, Friday at 7:00', clock, you can come to 54 below and see my first Sondheim with myself, Rob W. Schneider, Etai Benson, Kaitlyn Kinnanan, Samantha Mycel, Sam Seemock, Kate lepreste, Nikisha Williams, Nicholas Baron, Sean Bell, Natalie Walker, Amy Jo Jackson, James Soule. It's going to be a fucking stellar night. And you can meet my parents. They're both there to support me and, you know, hear me say terrible, terrible things. It'll be a fun time. Anywho, that's it for now because we missed out on Tommy. I think I'm going to close this out with a little bit of Tommy. Whether that's Acid Queen, Pinball wizard, who knows? Usually it's a diva. But fuck it, we'll do whatever today. So I'll see you guys either next week or in a short couple of weeks. It's gonna be a little sporadic between now and June. There probably won't be an episode every week, but there will be enough episodes during the next couple of months that you should feel okay. You shouldn't feel terribly like you're going through withdrawal. And that's it for now. You're welcome. On what is probably the shortest episode of the last three years. One that isn't an interview with so and so and. Yeah. Have a good week, guys. Talk to you later. Take us away, Tommy. Bye. A young boy I played the silver ball From Soho down to Brighton I must have played them all But I ain't seen nothing like him in any amusement hall that Def D blanket so plays a mean bed ball he stands like a statue Reading all the bumpers.