← Broadway Breakdown
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Thank you very much.
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That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do, but, Mr. Gregson, 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, rhythm and romance. The train is made. So while we wait, we're going to do a little dance.
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Hello, all you theater lovers, both out and proud 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 I do know that I told you we would be going on a bit of a hiatus for the rest of the summer, and in a way, we are. We aren't doing classique episodes of Broadway Breakdown for a bit, you know, where we do our historical deep dives. Sorry, I just. I just scarfed down my dinner before recording this, and I'm trying to do this one fast because I've got an interview episode for you guys that I'm recording immediately after this one. A nice little bonus episode with a Broadway person. But point is, is that as this current Broadway season has slowly started to rev up, I have been fortunate to get to see everything that's been opening. I got press seats to job, and I have press seats to another show later this week. Once Upon a Mattress. There will be an episode for that later on. So, in a way, Broadway Breakdown is on hiatus from the regular episodes, but we're going to continue doing the episode reviews of the shows of the season. I'm gonna try to do a couple more sort of grouped together and. And put those in singular episodes down the line, as opposed to like one episode for one show or one episode for two shows just because, you know, a. I don't want to have a new episode every week that's like 30 minutes long, about one show. That's not how we do things here on the Breakdown, but also because I do want to get back to our Classique episodes and we can have, you know, a review episode grouping like three or four shows together every, like, three to four weeks as sort of like a little breather in between, as we also kind of update ourselves about the season and Tony chances and things like that. So I will also say I'm probably not going to do many written reviews on Instagram. I might do a couple. I'm very lazy and they're very hard, and I don't love making them so if you follow me on Instagram and you're looking for more of those written reviews, you're probably going to have better luck on here. Also, as I start getting press seats for shows, it will have to be on the podcast because that's actually the great thing about you guys writing your reviews and doing your ratings is that we have now gotten enough traction that we can qualify as members of the press and go see these shows and not drain my bank account in a way that I have to now take out like three other jobs to keep up with everything. So you guys can hear my takes on stuff and feel well informed on shows if you can't come in to see any of them. So thank you for your reviews and your ratings and I actually have two new ones I got to read for you in just a second. But yeah, in order to keep doing those press tickets, I then have to talk about those shows on the podcast, not necessarily write reviews for them on Instagram. So that's sort of the new normal as we head into this season. So before we get to business, why don't we do a little bit of pleasure? I have two quick reviews to read, one I didn't catch until the other day because as some of you know with Apple Podcast, if you are from outside of the United States and write a review, I can't see it. I have to find other websites to read them, and I found one on a secondary website recently in addition to one that I found on Apple Podcasts itself. So let me do the oldest one first and just play the lightning. The Piazza Overture Music 5 stars. My new favorite podcast. A lighthearted, conversational style podcast with truly impressive levels of research to back it up. And because I think Matt reads these on the show. Indeed we do. What made you pick? You're the top as the transition music. Thank you for that one. I'll answer your question in just a moment as we continue with the second one. Five stars. Send in the cla. Nope, he's here. Matt is the jagged little pill of musical theater podcasts rude. He's fun, he's loud, he's so 2019. And he sometimes does choreography backward. I kid. But in all seriousness, I really enjoy this podcast. Matt makes me think specifically whether this is a good, well crafted show or do I just enjoy it and the distinctions. Thanks for making can't miss content. See you next Thursday. Thank you for that one, Jax. See you next Thursday. Was that a Schoolhouse Rock I missed? To quote Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City, Yeah, I don't know what it means to be so 2019 that I I don't love being called the Jagged Little Pillow musical theater podcasters, but I think you did that one because you know how I feel about that show. To answer Cal from from Canada, the reason why we have youe're the Top as Transition Music dates back to the very earliest episodes of Broadway Breakdown with my former co host John Wiscavage, who you can listen to on the Boys in the Band episode, which is a phenomenal episode I highly recommend was just like an inside joke that we had because somehow I want to say like around episode four or five, we decided to use it as a transition music depending on, you know, if we had a major cut we had in the audio to get to the next subject or something like that. It just was funny to us to have Patti LuPone. Billy, I beg to differ with you. And it just kept from there. And now that we're on BPN and we have commercial breaks, it just made sense to keep Patti there. And so yeah, that's why it's just as simple as that. It was a fun little joke for us back in 2017 when we started the podcast and then as I continued with the podcast it still brought me joy and it just makes me giggle every time and I think it's fun. So that's it. That's the only reason why there's no like deep meaning. So on that note, we've got two shows we got to talk about for a little bit and this is going to be a shorter episode because as I said, your Auntie Matt has a zoom to get to in about 50 minutes. So our first show we are talking about is Job by Let Me Grab My Playbook for a Second by Max Wolf Friedlich, directed by Michael Hurwitz, starring Peter Friedman and Sidney Lemon. It is a two hander currently playing at the Hell at the Hayes Theater which is normally the home for Second Stage Theater for their Broadway shows. But they didn't have anything for the summer. They don't usually. They usually rent out for the summer like they did with the Kite Runner and the Cottage and this was supposed to be the summer that rented it out to Forbidden Broadway Merrily We Stole a Song. But I think due to financials they had to move it off Broadway which allowed Job to come in at the last second and do a nice, you know, I think 12, 14 week stint with a possible extension. But I don't know if that extension is going to happen now. It's not selling super great and the reviews for Broadway were decidedly mixed, leaning towards negative. Which took a lot of people by surprise because it was so well received off Broadway that it. It premiered at Soho Playhouse. Soho Playhouse or Soho Rep. And maybe it's the same difference, I don't know. Sorry, it's getting late and my brain is fried. But it premiered there to huge acclaim and sold out houses. And then they transferred it off Broadway earlier this year to a commercial house for a limited run where it also did very, very well. So I know that I was very excited to see this. And the buzz around it was so big. And then reading a couple of reports back from previews, I was surprised to see how many people were sort of like, this was okay, this was good, this was fine. And then a lot of the reviews are sort of like, eh, it's fine, it's whatever. Because the buzz was so big about it earlier this year, I just assumed it was, you know, really going to take the summer by storm and shake up maybe the Tony race for a little bit. And I don't know if that's going to end up happening now.
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So.
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So I'll say I had not seen this show off Broadway. I went with a friend who had seen it, went to their dress rehearsal at Soho and really liked it and said that, you know, they were interested to see it at the Haze because even though the Haze is the smallest theater on Broadway, seats a little over 500 people, it is, you know, like 10 times larger than Soho. So there is an immediacy, there is an intimacy, there is a vulnerability that isn't really being replicated by the standards of which the show was first. By standards with which the show premiered. So that's how my friend went into it. I went into it totally blind. Other than just being a Peter Friedman fan, both from Succession and from the Heidi Chronicles and Ragtime. He is the original Tatya, after all. So there will be some spoilers. I'll try to give you a warning if I'm about to get into a major spoiler about. About the plot. Otherwise I'm just going to try to talk about my feelings on the show and sort of why I think maybe the reviews were the way they were. And also trigger warning. There is some disturbing elements to the plot in the last 15 minutes of the play. A lot of people have made a lot of noise about the big twist of this show. There's a. There's a huge twist in the last 10 minutes. 10, 15 minutes. And I hadn't read anything about it. I just knew about that. And I knew about the opening image and that was all. And so I was intrigued. And if you don't want to know about any of it, you know, skip ahead, like let's say 20 minutes, 20, 25 minutes. And listen to the oh, Mary part of the episode. Otherwise, here we go. So Sidney Lemon plays a woman named Jane who is. Is working for this big tech company. The show takes place in San Francisco in January of 2020, which wasn't super clear to me when I saw it, but that's what it says in the script. And the play begins with her in a psychiatrist's office. It is Peter Friedman, who plays a character named Lloyd. It's his office, and the lights come up and she is pointing a gun at his face. And it's very tense, it's very quiet, and. And he is trying to get her to put the gun down. We don't know why she has it out. He clearly hasn't really known her before, so he's both scared shitless as well as incredibly confused. And the set is a very interesting set. The office is specific. We've got plants. We've got a couple of chairs. We've got the desk with the computer, but it's wall less. And it's set in the middle of the stage, which otherwise looks like a big black box, except for the wall, which reveals, as the show continues, boxes of light that will light up sometimes of different colors, purple, blue, green. And they pop up, from my understanding, as audio memories for Jane come in and sort of overwhelm her mental capacity in the moment, leading to a panic attack later, but also of things that are slowly kind of triggering her, as well as piecing things together for her in the moment. What we learn is that Jane had a breakdown at her job. She had a major meltdown. It was caught on video camera by a bunch of her co workers on their phones. It spread like wildfire on the Internet. She became an Internet meme. She became, you know, virally famous. And she had to be hospitalized and she was on paid leave. And finally, after months of persistence towards her workforce, they have agreed to let her come back to work, but only if a doctor signs off that she's okay to work again. Hence why she's at Peter Friedman's office. And over the next of this 80 minute play of the next 60 minutes, it is ultimately Lloyd. I'm just gonna call them. Peter Friedman and Sidney Lemon. I'm sorry. It is ultimately Peter Friedman for 60 Minutes, sort of probing and investigating Sidney Lemon of who she is as a person, why she's here, what led to the breakdown, all these things. And so it's mostly an investigation of her as a character. And she'll talk about college and her parents. And one of the bigger things of her adolescence was when she was in college, she had sort of a hookup buddy who she liked, but she could tell that he was emotionally immature and wasn't really able to commit to her, even though he very much had feelings for her. And I think sometime around her junior year, she got pregnant and had an abortion, but she never told him. But it did kind of kill their friendship, and he never really knew why. And she also kind of felt weird about college because a lot of her friends, classmates were of a higher tax bracket than she was, and she sort of felt like she was putting on airs being around them, and she didn't really like herself when she was around them. But what else could she do? She's a very progressive person. There are a lot of talking points she has about the generation gap and environmentalism and racism. And this is all, you know, right before COVID so. And before lockdown, before George Floyd, conversations that we were very much having but didn't have with this kind of vocabulary till post. George Floyd, I would argue. So it did feel a little to me, 2024 goggles talking about something in 2020. But that's not necessarily a playwriting faux pas. It's just sort of a pet peeve of mine, anyway. Throughout her session, Peter Friedman will event. Will occasionally reveal things about himself that she will probe into him a little bit. And when certain things are said, there is usually a kind of cue, a sound cue, like, cue. You know, he'll say something about having a son, and there's a light click and a sound click. And she'll ask about the son, and he's like, oh, he's 12, and he's very smart, and blah, blah, blah, blah. She goes, okay. And she then realizes that he graduated from Berkeley and met his wife when she was a graduate student, that he was teaching. And then they reconnected and had two kids. And she goes, oh, you have. You have two kids? He goes, well, I had a daughter. She was 13, but she took her life. And all these things are sort of piecing together for her, and we're not entirely sure why. We're just hearing him talk about his life in ways that are triggering her, and you know that something's up. And my initial thought was, either he's not who he says he is or he's not all he pretends to be. Or she has another reason for being here besides needing clearance to go back to work. And this all leads to a big panic attack. Meanwhile, there is a gun in her bag. This entire time she's put it away. She says she doesn't know why she had the gun out. She just. Something triggered in her brain and she whipped it out. It was impulsive. It was subconscious. And every now and then we'll hear sounds of pornography. We'll hear sounds of her own viral video and things like that sort of playing in the background of her head during scenes with. With Peter Friedman. And after she makes this big. After she has this giant panic attack and also sort of keeping him hostage there, telling him that she can't leave until he gives her clear and so makes him cancel his next appointment, sort of is moving the chairs around, blocking the door, and sort of refusing to leave herself. She has this big panic attack. And then she talks to him about what exactly it is that her job is. Because she says that her breakdown wasn't because of her work. It was because she met up with her college fuck buddy again and they had a really lovely night, and she told him about the abortion, and he took it pretty much how she expected him to, but wasn't terrible. And then the next day she went into work and she had her breakdown. But she tells him, my job is essentially something like content management. It's this big tech company, and they have these bots to go online to make sure that either the sites that they host or the sites that they advertise on don't have content that is inappropriate or offensive or violent or illegal. And she says, you know, the bots can't catch everything. So my department, it's her and, like, three other people, they go into, like, the darkest sides of the web and they find terrible things on. On their sites, and they have to flag it and then remove it, and then it disappears from the Internet completely. And she said that she actually really loved doing it, that she would see these horrible videos and images. Racist, sexist people doing things to themselves, to other people. Violence, sexual violence, everything. Nazi propaganda. And it, you know, in her mind, she was doing good and she had power because she was able to clear it from the Internet and thus remove its importance and any kind of impact it could have. But, of course, all of that still lives in you. We are not robots ourselves. You can't unsee things. And maybe if you're lucky, you can get desensitized to it so it stops bothering you. As Much as it might have originally. But things have a way of logging into your. No, into your brain and into your heart that if there's overflow, of course could lead to some kind of psychotic episode. And she said that when she went on her leave, she felt powerless and she wanted to go back to work and they wouldn't clear her yet, and she would still do her job, but she didn't have the ability to delete things. She would just go online and find things, send it to her office, and no one would do anything because also while she was there, she was happy with her job so much that she convinced her bosses to get rid of the rest of the department, give her more money, and just have her do it alone. So unclear if there was someone there to replace her while she was on leave or if just no one was there to answer her emails. But while she was on leave and looking up all of this content, she would start doing investigating on the videos and on the photos and all these things of the people who posted them, because not everyone would show their faces. Some would. And she would try to try to track them down and either get them fired from their jobs or make sure that they're family members knew about, about all the stuff that they had put online, just try to hold them accountable, possibly ruin their lives. And she even met a lot of these people, you know, on their doorsteps and was surprised at just how dumb and pitiful they were in life. But there was one guy she was never able to fully crack. And that was, and I'm sorry for this disgusting, evil thing to say, but it was a man who would coerce his children into having sex with each other. And she talked about how sometimes he would yell, but mostly he was just caring. And they seemed to really think that he loved them and that this was their way of getting his approval. And she said he was very careful about not getting caught. He found all the back channels, he had his fans, he never really showed himself. I would see occasional things of like a hand or a corner of his face, like an eyeball, but also I would see things in the rooms. And she pieced certain things together through months and months of digging with him. First, that from a degree she found on the wall of one of his videos that this man had a degree from Berkeley, that he had handmade bracelets on his wrist, that he was known to make doodads and tchotchkes. And these are all things that Peter Freeman had said earlier in the play, that he liked to make doodads that he went to Berkeley, that he had two kids, a daughter and a son. And she says, oh, and the daughter also did die with this guy. And he made a compilation video of her, quote, unquote, best work. And he's. But he still made his son do stuff. And as she's saying this, Peter Friedman is sort of putting two and two together and telling her not to jump to conclusions. But she whips out her gun and she says, it's you. It's you. I know it's you. This is. It's why my hand reached for the gun. When I first walked in here, some part of me knew that it was you, and you're never going to stop. And I got to kill you. And he says, no, no, no, you're mistaken. And when that's not settling her, he says, what if I give you your job back? What if I tell your office that you're good to go? If you kill me today, both of our lives are over. But if you put the gun down, you can go back to work and you can get all those other people, and that's sort of how the play ends. And on stage, it's definitely open to interpretation of what she decides to do. This script that we were given, I think it's pretty clear that she chooses to not shoot him and go after more people and possibly, you know, maybe shoot him down the road. But the script also kind of gave me the feeling that maybe it wasn't him, that she was mistaken. And the stage version, I had absolutely no doubt that it was him and that she was correct. And the playwright, Max Fried, has said in interviews that he does want it to be open for discussion, people to have their own interpretations. And I'm sure a lot of people love Peter Friedman from Succession, and so they don't want to believe that he's playing a character that's this awful. And the character is perfectly likable in the beginning of the play, so you don't want to think that about him. But something about that kind and calm demeanor, as well as the stoic way with which he was processing Sidney Lemon explaining in her, like, her qual, Hercule Poirot kind of way what she was discovering about this guy online. It was. It was very clear to me that she was correct, that he. That this was the guy. My friend who had seen it off Broadway and saw it on Broadway, thought there might have even been a chance that not only was this the guy, but that the whole session was a setup, that either her job or she alone did this whole sting operation to get him. So because he felt that it was just a little too coincidental, there was too much happenstance that she would be with him after months of trying to find him. And I don't agree with that, especially after reading the script. Because if so, if it were a sting operation, then there are no stakes at the end. If he says, I can give you your job back, what would that matter? Because there was no job to begin with. She's acting on her own accord. She's being Uma Thurman and Kill Bill and she's just being a wild card here. So it doesn't matter what he thinks he can offer her. There is no job. She set it all up. She sent fake emails from corporate and all this other stuff. But if it is real, then there are actual stakes. Now the question might be sort of like, well, to what end is this play about? And I think it has a lot on its mind in terms of themes. Ultimately, I think what makes the play worth seeing is that it is just a compelling two hander. It's a platform for two actors to work well off of each other. And it's 80 minutes, it's tight. And that's a pretty engaging argument for me. So many plays are so hopped up on elevated themes and having to be about a specific message and having something to say that the audience should go out and be able to parrot to everybody that there's not a lot of meat to chew on. And I think Job isn't necessarily a complex metaphor of something other than maybe our reliance on the Internet, our reliance on screens, the effects it has on us. But it's mostly just 80 minutes with these two characters. Now I think there are other maybe pockets of it that felt empty for me. I think as strong and charismatic as Peter Friedman is, his character Lloyd really exists to have someone for Sidney Lemon's Jane to bounce off of. And in that respect it works. She is an interesting character. She is flawed, she is manic, she has a lot of demons. She's clearly on the edge of a nervous breakdown again, which Lemon is very good about playing. And she's also very intelligent and very articulate, but she also is very judgmental and she doesn't really have self awareness and which leads to actually quite a bit of humor in the play, surprisingly, because of moments that she just doesn't recognize are hypocritical or things that are just silly on her part. And I can say that I was invested the entire time. And something that Jesse Green had said in his review was that it a leaves a bad taste in your mouth. But also he said that the twists in it, like, the final one, felt more sort of like for twist's sake. And I don't necessarily agree with that. I do think that the twist means something to these two characters. There is a purpose to all of that. I'm not sure if it's as massaged in well as it could be, because we're not. I mean, you don't want to give away the ghost too quickly. Tell us what it exactly is that Cindy Lemon does at this company too early, because then we might say, oh, what if he's someone she's trying to find? Because she's not, but he is someone she ends up finding anyway. God. I'm trying to think about how better to talk about this. The truth is. So I saw with a friend, and then I ran into two hosts of a podcast on BPN at the show as well, and we all talked about it for, like, a good half hour after the show and then walked away. And that was on Thursday. And I'm recording this on Tuesday, August 6th. And I gotta say, between Thursday and Tuesday, I haven't thought about it all that much. I reread the script. Sorry. I read the script to reacquaint myself with the material, but there was a lot about it that I kind of forgot or has become fuzzy. For me, there are things about the performances that are crystal clear. Both Friedman and Lemon moments of staging design. But in terms of the actual material, I can't say that it's lasted with me a whole lot. And that's really all I can hold on to in terms of my opinion on this. I'm not here to do dramaturgical work. I'm not here to criticize or beef up Friedlich as a playwright. I mean, this. This gent has a play on Broadway, and I do not. So that's already a massive achievement. And I'm not here to spit in the eye of that at all, but just going off of my personal response to it. I was not bored during it. I can't say I was actively engaged the entire time. And the last 15 minutes definitely were the most. I was on the edge of my seat. I wasn't on the edge of my seat, but the most on my. On the edge of my seat that I was for the day. Yeah, no, it's. There are so many shows out there that are very dumb or try, you know, have a low target that they miss completely or have really lofty ambitions and Just get lost in the sauce and can't figure themselves out and go up their own butt. Or just so dense and cold that you are counting the tiles in the ceiling during the show. And I think what Job has to its credit is that it is. Because it is a short show, it is a relatively tight show for 80 minutes, I do still think there's a little bit of fat. And because it is a platform for actors, when you have two really good actors, it can really go by well. But with sort of each passing day, I started asking myself, what is this play really about? What is this play trying to say? What does this play leave me with? And I slowly sort of started to pivot away from those questions and it just became like, what do I remember about this play? How do I feel about it? Will I remember it? Am I remembering it now? And I am remembering parts of it for sure, but in the same way where I will forever remember certain scenes of Mary Jane, specifically the final monologue by Rachel McAdams and the, you know, trials and tribulations of motherhood and the complicated bullshittery of the healthcare system and love and acceptance and placating to other people's comfort levels and letting go of the toxic positivity and embracing the fact that sometimes there are clouds in the sky and you have to just admit that, and then that can be very freeing. That's something that I'm holding on to from Mary Jane ever since seeing it in April. It still stays with me all this time later and Job really isn't staying with me. And I don't know if it's the subject matter. I don't know if it's the play itself. I don't know if it's that it was a doubleheader. And I saw oh Mary later that day. You know, I saw a job at 5 o' clock in O Mary at 8:30. Speaking of guns, it was a doubleheader of two gals with guns. But yeah, Jav is just. It was. I think I wanted a little more. I wasn't mad about it, especially after having seen Home at Roundabout earlier in July. I was glad to have the next play of the season be a bit more exciting, a bit more engaging, something more to talk about, some meat to chew on. I just. I was hoping for a little bit more of it. It's very clear that Friedlich is a very smart individual and has a gift. And the direction by Michael Hurwitz is very strong and the design is good. And as I said, the actors are fantastic. And I would love to see the next thing that everybody does because I think this is, I think we, if Hurwitz and Friedlich have the careers that I hope they have in their fields, we can look back on this as a really cool beginning of what should be strong careers. Yeah. And that's, I guess that's what I have to say about job. So let's do a quick break and when we get back, we will talk about. Oh, Mary, Billy, I beg to differ with you.
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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 tread of the feet of Freddy.
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And we're back. So next up, we have O Mary, which I saw earlier this year at the Lucille Lortel with my friend Ken. We saw it, I want to say, like January, February, something some time around then, maybe February. I think it was like the second week of previews. So they were still tightening some things up. But it was, the show was very similar to what is on Broadway now, and we really liked it. I'm a fan of Cole. I don't know if I've mentioned it on this podcast, but Cole and Jeffrey Self had a podcast called Breakfast Buffet that my friend Brian introduced me to and I really loved. It's a scripted show where Cole and Jeffrey play hosts of a fake morning show. And it's, you know, all audio but very funny and very odd and very much up my alley. And so I was very excited to see O Mary off Broadway, and we really did enjoy it. For those of you who haven't really paid much attention to it or only vaguely aware of Omari, it is a telling of Mary Todd Lincoln and her time in the White House as the Civil War is coming to an end leading up to Lincoln's assassination at our American Cousin. And it's completely fictional. Cole plays Mary himself in drag wearing a giant hoop skirt and what they call bratty curls. And they've said in many interviews and whatnot that they did almost less than no research on the project, just sort of relied on their second grade memory of Mary Todd Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln. And then everything else was their own wild fancy. And in this story, in this version of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, she is a raging, maniacal alcoholic with a penchant for cabaret, used to perform on the cabaret stage, and wants to go back and is feeling trapped, cooped up in the Oval Office and is lashing out. She has a companion that she is constantly tormenting Louise, played by Bianca Lee. And Conrad, Rick, Amora, Abe. In the Playbill, he's referred to as Mary's husband. And then Mary's teacher is played by James Scully. And I'm gonna try to withhold other names in terms of characters, just their titles, because a lot of the humor comes from finding out who people are or how they're related to each other. And then there's Harry's, Mary's husband's assistant, played by Tony. Mocked. So if you know Cole or if you just understand the basic premise of this piece, you get the idea that this is a very silly show, very stupid show. Also, 80 minutes, no intermission, much like Job. And like Job, we have a leading lady and. And a gun on stage. And the whole thing is very. It still has a very downtown mentality about it. You know, it's a very silly kind of show. I got a lot of Charles Bush vibes from it. If you listen to the podcast, you know, Charles Bush, the playwright and performer. Die Mommy, Die Psycho Beach Party, Lesbian Vampire. Lesbians of Sodom, I think, is the name of his first play. I also did Tale of the Allergist's Wife, and Charles often would play the leading lady of his shows and did it in a very sort of campy, dry way. You know, played it very straightforward, but with, like, a major tongue in cheek. Cole as Mary Todd Lincoln, doesn't do tongue in cheek. Plays it straight, but plays it a very broad straight. For example, when Mary comes on stage, the main set, I mean, there were maybe two or three set pieces total in the show, but the set that's used 80% of the time, 75% of the time, is Abraham Lincoln's Oval Office with a portrait of George Washington above the desk. And when Mary first enters looking for booze, sees the picture of George Washington and just throws her arms to it and goes, oh, Mother. And it's silly. It's stupid. People find it funny. I found it funny. And the way that Cole sort of runs around in their hoop skirt very much reminded me of Mark Rylance as Olivia in Twelfth Night. And, yeah, so in terms of comparisons of how it was from Off Broadway to Broadway, it's definitely tighter. It's fastier, it's fastier, it's faster, it's zippier. It's a little more manic, I would say, you know, everyone's sort of entering the stage immediately with heat in a way that wasn't totally the case at the beginning of the Off Broadway run. It really was like Cole as Mary was the hurricane that came in and revved everybody up. We had Conrad and Tony entering first. And, you know, there was an agitation to the way that Conrad played Abraham Lincoln in terms of how he thinks about Mary. Abraham is not really in love with Mary Todd Lincoln. She's pretty much a nuisance and gives him all this kind of anxiety. And not to mention, he's got all these homo tendencies and urges that he's trying to suppress but can't. And very much is a womanizer and thinks of, you know, the pretty boys around him as sex objects. But in the. In the Off Broadway production, I remember thinking that it was taking a minute to really get to the, like, the fast or funny. Sorry, I'm getting all these messages. It's dinging. While I record He's. I felt that off Broadway, the fast and funny didn't really happen until Cole came on stage as Mary and. And with Conrad and Tony, it was sort of like setting the scene of, like, here's where, you know, everyone's at. Here's what, you know, this is what a normal day would look like until Mary comes in and. And fucks everything up. And now it's sort of. Everyone comes in immediately with the frenzied antics. And it's great in that sense. And it's built up for Broadway. You know, everyone's energy is playing to the back of the house. What it misses a little bit for me is some of the dryness that it had Off Broadway. There were certain moments that were milked a little bit longer and certain line deliveries that were played a little more. Not brash, that weren't played as brashly, I guess, is the word I'm trying to say. Just certain lines just, like, landed a little stronger for me off Broadway, but the overall effect of Broadway is still good. And it's similar to me from when Natasha Pierre and the great comet of 1812 transferred from the tent to the Imperial. The number one pro thing that Chafkin and Sam Pinkleton have done is taking the. The environment, the vibes of the Off Broadway production and making it work in a larger theater so everyone from the last row of the balcony can feel what everyone's feeling in the theater. And that is no small feat. So major props, you do lose a little bit of the unique edge from when you didn't have to push quite so much. But that's just sort of something that happens naturally when you are playing in a larger space to a Broadway crowd. It's not a fault of anyone's. It's just like the natural order of things. So I can't even really say that it's a critique because it's not like a choice that they made that ruins anything. And it doesn't. Like the show is not ruined. The show is still a fucking bonkersly good time. But it did take away a little bit of something that made it so special for me. Off Broadway it's so. It just. It plays a little differently, as I said, faster, subjectively funnier, brighter, zanier, zippier, but also like a little bit of that weirdness is gone. But like the, the play itself is still quite weird. There's so many lines, so many jokes, so many things about Mary, antics of Mary that are just like cuckoo bananas. So it doesn't even matter if it's like, well, we're playing this more like Disney Channel stars. The things they're saying are still fucking ridiculous. I mean, I don't want to give too much away in case any of you are trying to see it or want to see it or plan to see it, whatever. You know, there's a major twist towards the end of the show that's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. It's still lands like a dynamo. And Cole is really fantastic in the role of Mary. Conrad is still quite strong as Abe. I found James Scully as Mary's teacher to be. It's hard to say this and not like sound like a dick because I like James. I've seen him in a couple of things on film and TV and I think he's very talented, very funny, very charming. If you see him in Fire island, he is very sweet in what is a very dull role. And in O Mary he's playing a character who's very sort of stereotypically swoon worthy and overly nice and he is able to infuse it with some personality which early in the Off Broadway run he was having a little trouble with. But there's a, an edge to his character as Mary's teacher know there's a reason why he is being so forgiving of so much. And it's not that it all like lines up when you sort of understand his character, but it. You buy into him a lot earlier on Broadway than I than at least I did off Broadway. And then Bianca Lee is Mary chaperone. She mostly exists to be a punching bag for Cole as Mary and Laura de Chicago play that punching bag. Well, I will say it was very interesting to watch 900 people really kind of collectively get so much of the show. I think that's a credit to the writing of Cole and the direction of Sam and the ensemble work of the piece, but also of everyone coming in and not just sitting there and going, I paid money to see the hot thing and I'm going to enjoy it, but actually actively absorbing it and wanting to enjoy themselves and allowing themselves to enjoy it and listening. Because there's all this physical comedy to the show as well. But it is an actually well structured play. It's chopped up almost like vignettes, I guess, like sketches with a lot of blackouts. But the overall arc of the play, there is a forward momentum to it and it does move at a steady clip. So you have to pay attention because there's a lot going on. But ultimately it does come down to the one liners and a lot of recurring jokes. I've mentioned this before, so this one's not really a spoiler, but like, Mary doesn't understand really that the war has happened and who's at war and for what. And so every time the south is brought up, her response is, the south of what? And it's very funny and everyone always loves it. And it was very heartwarming to watch a lot of different people because it was people my age, people younger than me, like Gen Z. There were Gen Xers and a couple of boomers around me and different mentalities in that room. And I would say the vast majority collectively finding the show hilarious, worthwhile, really loving all of the twists and turns of the film, third act of the show. And also like leaning into the dumb, semi gross out humor of the piece because there's sort of like a counterculture aspect to this kind of comedy, which you see in Charles Bush, which you would see in a John Waters movie, right. Of. It's not just a pop culture reference. It's not like a meta commentary. It is creating distinguished characters with specific bold personalities making bad decisions and having those bad decisions spiral into worse decisions. And everyone is just sort of on the edge of a breakdown and seeing how the pot boils. You see that, you know, in Pink Flamingos and you see that in Die Mommy, Die, and you see that in. Well, the lady in question isn't really that, because the lady in question is much more of a throwback to like, Joan Crawford movies. But, you know, it's this idea of you're making art and it's art for an audience, but it's not an art for everybody. I was, I. I did an interview with someone recently and where we talked about, like, being, being happy with your work. Right? Like, and. Or or creating something and not really knowing who it's for. So something like, as an artist, you're hesitant to ever say, oh, I did a good job there. But then there are some artists where it's like, well, I don't care if anybody likes it. I like it. And I think there's sort of a medium there. And I had this thought, and I wrote it down, and I wanted to say it here because I think it's apropos with something like, oh, Mary, you know, if you're never happy with your work, why ever do it? But if you're always happy with your work, why ever show it? Because if you're never happy with it, you know, by that I mean, like, truly, like, every time you put something up, you're like, oh, God, that was terrible. It's like, well, then why do you keep doing it? There's the creation. The creative process itself is painful, and I hate it. But every now and then you put something down on paper and you go, oh, that was good. It does not. It's not all the time, but sometimes you write a line, you go, that was awesome. And then if you are always happy with your work, I ask, why ever show it? Why even show it? Because there's no point in presenting it to people. It always pleases you, and thus it is for you. You create something to be put out there to be discovered and absorbed and responded to and reacted to. And it doesn't. If it's liked by everyone, or at least is middle of the. Of the road for everyone, then you didn't actually create something worthwhile. You can create something that a large number of people like or something that a small group of people like, and there's validity in both. But I think leading with what interests you and then tailoring it so that way other people can understand what. What you see is a real gift. Because you can have intelligence, you can have talent. They don't always go hand in hand. A lot of talented people actually aren't intelligent about how they use their talent. And a lot of smart people don't have the talent to bring about what they talk about. I am sometimes that person. I will be honest with you about that. And I think Cole is someone who is very smart and very talented and has spent many years figuring out exactly what that talent is, how to use it. And I think Omar is a wonderful example of their talents as a. As a writer. They have a twisted mind, but also a very deft hand at dramatic structure, a surprisingly strong hand at it and character. Development. I mean, Mary has this really. I mean, if it weren't in the play. Oh, Mary. It would be a really lovely monologue for, like, auditions. It's a monologue about, you know, a perfect day. Have you ever had a perfect day? And it's a really nice speech that comes, like, in the middle of just all this insanity and then goes right back to the insanity. But Cole also is very gifted performer, plays the drag element of Mary Todd Lincoln incredibly straightforward, camps it up. So that way you always know that they're in on the joke, but they're not commenting on it. It's similar to how I talked about once, like, Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, right? When you watch her play the role of Cher Horowitz, what makes that movie work is that Alicia understands what is funny about the movie, but she plays the character completely straight. It is my number one piece of advice for any actress who's playing Anne in A Little Night Music is to watch her in that movie and then apply that to 20th century, or I guess it's early 1900s, Sweden, somewhere between the. Somewhere around the turn of the century. And I think Cole's very good about playing ridiculous earnestly. So that way we're laughing, but we don't feel like it's too much. And to Sam Pinkleton, the director's credit and everyone else in the company's credit, no one else is really commenting on the piece because it's just too wacky. Comment on, like, there's no way you can sort of wink to the audience in a. Oh, I know. This is ridiculous, too. It's too over the top for us to think otherwise. This isn't a Diana situation where we're sitting there going, are you aware that this is insane? They are aware it's insane. I think maybe Conrad sometimes goes a little much. But again, it is a larger space this time, and it's a. And it's a faster, buzzier version of the show than it was downtown. And so his amped up Abe Lincoln makes sense in this context. I'm trying to think what else I can talk about. I mean, it's hard to discuss the show without too many spoilers. Although I did spoil a lot of job for you guys. So I guess I'll say this. If you don't want to hear the spoilers about O Mary, skip ahead like three minutes. And if you do want to hear or you don't care, keep. Keep listening. So in order to keep Mary occupied, Abe gives her acting lessons. He hires an acting coach, basically, so she can be distracted and not think about cabaret right now. And he says, okay, like, we'll think about getting on the stage at some point when the war is over. And her acting coach is one John Wilkes Booth, the least successful actor of his three brother. He and his two other brothers are all actors, and he is the least successful one. And as he's teaching Mary Shakespeare, he falls in love with her, and she falls in love with him, and she starts to take the acting seriously. She's absolutely terrible, but she's taking it seriously. And he gets her an audition for the new play in town, Our American Cousin. Somebody dropped out at the last second, and you're. You're going in to audition for a kid. And so Mary does and tries to audition with a sonnet from Shakespeare, or I think from. Oh, was gonna audition as the nurse from Romeo and Juliet, but she forgot her script. So she tries to improvise something, and it goes terribly. And then goes to a bar across the street to celebrate with her bar buddy friends, because, as we said, Mary's a raging alcoholic. And while she's there, she spots her husband, Abe, John Wilkes Booth talking. And we realize that the whole thing is a conspiracy, that John Wilkes Booth is actually Abe's gay lover and has been going along with all of this to be with Abe. And now that the job is done, that Mary's been fully distracted, Abe has no more use for John Wilkes Booth. Plus, Abe has moved on to his assistant. So John is terribly jealous. Mary hears all of this, understands that not only is John not in love with her, there was no audition. The whole thing was a setup. It was all fake. So she gets blisteringly drunk, has a moment with John out in the rain where he never actually admits to her the truth, but he's trying to gain information about. About what's going to happen, you know? Oh, you and Abe are going to the theater tomorrow. I'll see you there. And so we know what's happening. And then the very next scene is Abe and Mary at the theater in the booth, watching the show. And John Wilkes Booth shows up in the shadows, and he sits down next to Abe, and he goes, I just want to talk to you. I love you. I want to be with you. I'm trying. Like, please give me a second chance. And in that moment, Mary's had enough. She's had enough of Abe telling her what to do, of trying to control her, telling her she can't do cabaret. She overhears Abe telling John in the bar that she was Never a cabaret star, that she had no talent, that people walked out on her show and that she's a nuisance and he hates her. And John says, I hate her too. She disgusts me. Mary stands up, fed up, points the gun at Abe and shoots him. Drops the gun in John Wilkes Booth's lap and shouts, help. This man just shot my husband. Blackout. And then we end with Mary finally back in her happy place doing cabaret, doing a nice madcap medley. People come for the short legs and the long medleys. And she sings, I'm a little teapot. She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes. Her name was Lola. Just a lot, a lot of good stuff. It's very, very fun. It's very stupid. It's very silly. And that's it. That's it. About Omari, I highly recommend seeing it if you are at all interested. I know it's expensive. I was able to get a $55 seat very randomly. This is not a show that I would say pay $350 for. But to be fair, I've never felt that way about any show that I've ever seen. So you do you. If it's in your budget and you want to see it badly enough. It is, it is such a fun time. It's such a special time. Between this and Catch the Jellicle Ball, it's a very fun gay time to be in New York City and then also with Kamala and Tim Wallace. Like we're all just walking on sunshine right now. Waltzing on sunshine as they say. And it's playing right now through November. I think from what I understand they have a couple of extensions, negotiations. It may not be with Cole. Cole has said themselves that they would like other actresses to try the part. This is definitely something you can do some stunt casting with. Get Amy Sedaris in there for two months, Molly Shannon in there for two months, Kristen Wiig, all those SNL ladies, have them all come in for a six week stint each and have it sell like gangbusters. But I think with Omari, after Home and Job, Omari is really the true beginning of this new season and I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the season has to hold for us. And that's really it for now, you guys. This is a short one kind of meandering. I apologize. But we will have our deep dives coming back pretty soon. You did get two. You got a Seven Brights for Seven Brothers and a Boys in the Band right after the Tony Awards. So we've got more of this stuff happening for a while, but the Deep Dive Soul should be happening again around September, maybe mid to late September. And that's it. Stay tuned next week for two episodes for my review of Once Upon a Mattress, as well as my interview with Andrea Grody, the music director and music supervisor and vocal arranger of Suffs. So very exciting stuff and very exciting, very exciting stuffs. Stuffs. I was trying to make a joke there, but it's late. Let's see. We should close out with a diva today. I don't think there's any clean, professional audio of Cole singing. So you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna. Because of Mary Toddlingen's Madcap medley at the end, I will play out a little bit of Lainey Kazan's Copacabana. And that will be our diva for this week. All right. So thank you so much for listening. If you like the podcast again, five star rating, please, or if you're feeling compelled to write a review, those two reviews were wonderful. Every rating helps with the algorithm. We'd love to bring our star rating back up. We were at a 4.9 for a minute and then we got that one star review and now we're back to 4.8. And I would love to get to back to 4.9, but if we're going to be at 4.8, I would love to get a certain number of reviews for that because people will trust it more. Also, I'm gonna make a challenge for the end of August, but I'll wait to announce that because there's a fun announcement coming about my play for September that you'll hear soon enough. But more information on that will come forward later and I will set a challenge for if we can hit a certain number of ratings on the podcast and then I will reveal more about it. But more to come on that. And that's it. Yeah. Follow me on Instagram if you want. Matt Cop like usual spelling. That's it for now. Have a great week, you guys. And take it away, Lainey. Bye.
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B
She just drinks herself half blind. See, she's lost her youth. She lost her Tony, and now she's lost her mind at the Cobra Sa.