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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. Granston, hit it. Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright Lies, White Light, Rhythm and Roman. So while we wait, we're gonn. Hello all you theater lovers, both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history und 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 it's the episode we've all been waiting for ever since I announced I was going to do this episode a week ago. It is my rankings of all the shows of this Broadway season 2023-2024. This is the shows that are Tony eligible. I have seen every single one of them as of this past Saturday. I just saw Uncle Vanya and I can now make my claims in this ranking. I will not be doing the sort of specialty events like Melissa Etheridge Come to My Window or. Or Alex Edelman just for us. You can watch actually just for us on hbo Max, or whatever it's called now. I think just Max. And it's really good. Highly recommend it. Melissa Etheridge was also fun, but, you know, it wasn't. It was a concert, not. Not a show. So, you know, those are going to be put aside. But everything else we will be doing today. Now, a few things before we go into this. Why a ranking? Well, because it's fun. None of it's real. You know, it's just, it's a way for me to kind of monologue an artistic discourse on all of these shows when I don't have a person opposite me to talk about it. It's a way to do it in a sort of structured manner, right? As I, you know, give these a number of my preferences, I can sort of explain why one is maybe higher than the other. You know, what worked for me, what didn't. Etc. Etc. This is not a definitive ranking by any means. And anyone involved with any of these shows who gets upset listening to it, I am terribly sorry. But also, you know, maybe your show did better than you realized or maybe it did a little worse than you realized. And then you can click this off and go somewhere else and, you know, do something else with your day. Also, the way to really think about this ranking, less so than, you know, what's officially the best or the worst of the year you know, when people talk to you about the shows that they like, if you didn't like a show and someone, like, comes up to you and talks about how much they loved that show, very rarely does that actually change your mind about the show. You know, sometimes you can, like, someone will convince you to maybe view it in a new context or through a new lens. And that's fun. But rarely, you know, if you hated some play and I was like, oh, no, I loved so much, and I go on and on about it, your opinion of the play isn't gonna shift. Your opinion of me is gonna shift because you realize I'm a person who likes this thing, this kind of thing, you know? So really, all this ranking will do for anyone who's listening is gives you an informed opinion about who I am, what kind of theatergoer I am, what kind of art I like, what I gravitate towards, etc, etc, rather than, you know, what actually is objectively the best or worst of this season. But I do hope to give some decent, objective insight into some of these things. You know, tbd. Maybe you'll. Maybe you will not agree with any of that. Also, some more housekeeping I want to get into. Last week we did our reactions to the Tony nominations. All of you guys wrote in, and somebody wrote in about the Life of the Party video where I sang Life of the Party from Adam. I was about to say Adam Gettle from Andrew Lippa's wild party for a fundraising cabaret for the New York City Gay Men's Chorus. And someone asked, well, you said you were going to post it. And I said yes, but we missed the deadline because I gave a goal for all of you guys to give some nice ratings and reviews for the podcast. And I said we had to hit 200 by the end of April. And that didn't happen. Then I said, okay, by end of May, if we can hit 215, I will post it. And I thought, okay, that'll probably get like one or two people to do a rating or a ranking. Because then I also said, if, you know, we get to that last week and we're closer to 210 if it's like 209. If we hit 210 by the end of the month, I would still do it. We are currently at 205 since last week, where we started with 198. So we've had seven new ratings and a couple of reviews since last week, which means if we keep going at this rate, we're gonna hit 215. And I will have to be true to my word. But we still got another five to 10 to go. So, you know, y' all keep on keeping on. I want to do my due diligence, though, because this is probably gonna be a long episode. I'm already rambling and we haven't even gotten to the ratings. Jesus. Plus, I have, you know, ads before the episode, after the episode, in the middle of the episode. I want to, you know, give the people who wrote these reviews their, you know, shot their roses now, because I don't want to make you wait 5,000 hours to hear your reviews. And these are very good reviews. And I and I want to, you know, do what I always do. So we're actually going to do these reviews at the beginning of the episode before we get into the rankings. Okay, Here. Here we go. Q. The Light in The Piazza Overture 5 stars Download this app for this review. Thank you. Been a lurker for a very long time now live in the rural south of the USA and most of my friends blanch if I ever mention Barbara Cook or if I maybe if I even mention Barbara Cook. So this podcast with a man who can casually reference romance romance was sort of a revelation. Romance. Romance. He certainly has the ability to read a show and his listeners to Phil, but he also approached approaches everything he says with the level of intellect and awareness I find impressive and admirable. Thank you very much. The romance. Romance. I wonder if I've actually ever referenced that show. Probably. I don't know. I've referenced a lot of things. Second one, we're gonna just keep this overture going. Five stars Broadway fan in Cleveland have been coming to see Broadway and off Broadway shows in New York City from Cleveland several times a year for the past 15 years. Good for you. Discovered this podcast this year and it was extremely helpful in analyzing shows to determine which shows I wanted to make sure I saw while in New York City. And it was interesting to hear the reviews of these shows. Many of Matt's opinions shared about a show were the same that I had of the same show. Guys, take a shot every time you hear the word show. I appreciate his perspective and will continue to listen as it helps me consider Broadway shows that otherwise I may not have went to see. Thanks for the great work and information. I will definitely keep listening. Thank you very much. And you know, once the Tonys are over, we will be back to our regular programming of doing our deconstructions and dissections and analyses of past shows. So we will do, you know, updates throughout the season but we're going to go back to old school Broadway Breakdown pretty soon after June 16th, so you're welcome, and I hope you like the regular format. All right, I gotta. Okay. I'm gonna actually have to relaunch the overture because this is a long one and it's a. This is a big one, and I have a feeling the person who wrote this either wrote this, you know, to maybe this. Like, you'll. You'll. You know what? Okay, me just read it and then we'll do a quick discussion of it, because it's a. It's a big review. Five stars in the pantheon of podcasts. Broadway Breakdown with Matt Koplik. Matt Koplik, a veritable. I already can't speak. Matt Koplik, a veritable deity in the podcasting realm, ushers his listeners into the hallowed halls of Broadway with Broadway Breakdown, a podcast that transcends mere entertainment to become a beacon of profound enlightenment. With the authority of a high priest and the insight of a sage, Matt unveils the mysteries of Broadway. Each episode crafted like a holy text, rich with wisdom and wit. His voice, resonant and commanding, calls down like a prophet's, turning complex show lore and whispered backstage tales into sermons that captivate and convert the uninitiated. Every Thursday, disciples of drama and comedy congregate to receive his teachings and each podcast a new scripture imbued with the divine spark of creativity and critical thought. The air around his words seems to shimmer with the magic of old Broadway as he weaves narratives that are both enlightening and awe inspiring. His recent communion with David lynch was nothing short of miraculous, a meeting of minds that produced a celestial symphony of laughter and learning, each moment resonating with the echo of mythic legends. Broadway Breakdown is not merely a podcast. It is a monumental epoch. I think I said that word wrong. I'm not learned in the evolution of cultural commentary. Under Matt Kovlik's guidance, it serves as both sanctuary and summit, a place where the spirits of past performances live on and new understandings are forged in the fires of conversation. With each dispatch from the Broadway firmament, Matt establishes himself not just as a broadcaster, but as an omniscient creator, shaping the future of how we appreciate art and theater in this golden age of media. Okay, so that last one, you know, if it's. If that is a review for real, the listener who wrote that definitely was, you know, thinking to themselves, how well would this scan with the landing of the Piazza Overture? Because it just. It is so articulate and well written and with very vivid imagery. My mom read and she was like, it's kind of religious. Yeah. I was like, yeah, well, you know, maybe I start a cult. Who knows? Don't, you know, limit me. But if it is a real review, thank you very much. That I don't think I could ever live up to those words, and I don't want anyone to think that I ever could. You know, I. I'm just dumb. Dumb with a mic. Who somehow was able to get network to pick them up. If it's more of a kidding review, which I'm more prone to believe only because I have friends who, you know, see that I share about the podcast when something cool happens. For example, last week we had two episodes in the top two trending episodes for Broadway Podcast Network and a couple of others that were sort of in the top 10. Not sort of. They were in the top 10. What am I saying? Sort of. And also, you know, I have friends who listen to the podcast and sometimes I wonder if they do things like this review to kind of like, you know, elbow me a bit, see if I can, you know, discern that it's them and not someone writing something earnestly. And also because I'm just never prone to believe that people actually would think that highly of me. It's hard for me to take something like that at face value. But if it is in earnest, then thank you very much. It is a very beautiful review, and I only hope that I can live up to half of it. So thank you for the time and the patience and the very carefully worded piece from all three of you. Honestly, all three reviews were wonderful and I loved them. And. And it was very moving. And, you know, in a. What's been a very weird week, I must say, nothing like terrible happening. Just, you know, sometimes you get the mean reds and certain things just sort of pop up in your brain that make you sad again, or people who hurt you pop up in your feed, and it all, you know, comes flooding back. It's been a weird week that way, and these reviews were very helpful to make me, you know, go from the mean reds to the medium greens. But enough of me showboating. You guys came for some rankings, so let us do some rankings. It is the 2023-2024 Broadway season, and I'm gonna have a little music cue before each number to give you an idea of what it's gonna be. I don't know what I'm gonna do for most of these plays. Only two plays do I have actual music cues for everything else. I gotta figure it out. I might just do like. I can't do a Billie Ibechner Div with youh because that's. That's our commercial break. But, hmm, I'll think about it. I'll think about it as we, as we go onwards. But we've got 36 shows to get through, so let us get through them. Number 36. That something wasn't right. Once Upon a One more time now this is gonna hurt some of y'. All. This is a jukebox musical that opened in the dead of summer using the song catalog of one Ms. Britney Spears, she who is now free. And it is an original idea supposedly coming from Britney's own mind. The lore goes that she was approached to have a jukebox bio musical and she said, no, that doesn't interest me. I would rather this thing about, you know, fairy tal princesses and finding their independence and their courage and their identity and use my songs while you're at it. And the book writer, John Hartmayer I think is his name, who was one of the book writers and the lyricist for Bear, a pop opera, which is a show that I have truly never cared for. He wrote the book for this. And basically the premise is Cinderella, Snow White and all the other fairy tale princesses. The Little Mermaid, I think Sleeping Beauty's in there. Cinderella gets her hands on the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which was a watershed moment for feminists in the 1960s. It was sort of what helped launch the second wave feminism. And you know, it had Justin Guarini, Jennifer Simard, a bunch of other Broadway folk. And it didn't last very long. It ran for about less than three months. And I really, really. Sometimes I'm really. I don't like to use the word hate, just, you know, dislike. It wasn't for me. But I gotta say, I hated this. I really did. I went with my straight cousin Scott, you know, he's an ally. And we imbibed beforehand because we wanted to leave our, you know, hoity toity expectations at the door. We said, okay, this is a jukebox musical. It's Britney Spears music, it's fairy tales. That's all we really knew about it. And we were going for free and we wanted to have an open mind. And I'd had some people see it and they're like, oh, it's fun. We're like, okay, let's get in the mindset for fun. But it was not fun for us. It's A show that really is like an SNL sketch. I mean, when you hear fairy tale princesses get a copy of the Feminine Mystique, it's like, oh, yeah. And that's. That's an SNL sketch starring Cecily Strong and, like, Aidy Bryant. But this is a two and a half hour musical with so many songs that some are, you know, fun and some just felt odd. A lot of the lyrics were rewritten to fit the story, which is like, I'm not totally against, but I know a lot of people were not really into that. It was like a sticking point for some people. They like, you know, they. They go. And the opening song is Hit Me Baby, One More Time, except they're singing Once Upon One More Time. And audience members that I was looking at were very confused because they wanted to sing along. Not that you should. We're not there to hear you. You know, Becky from Tenafly. We're here to watch Broadway people do this. But still, it confused a lot of people. Some pros about this. Justin Guarini played Prince Charming and he really nailed his assignment. You know, it's. I don't think the role was really much, but his attitude was very charming, literally. And he played that sort of fuckboy energy really well while not being off putting. And he also sang incredibly well. His dancing was phenomenal, which always feels like empty compliments for me. But with this show, the movement was really the show. The directors were the choreographers and they come from the Vegas music video world. And the choreography was very precise and very intricate. And there was a lot of port de bras is the best way I can describe it. Arm movement. And that was all very impressive. It didn't have anything to do with story or character, but it was impressive nonetheless. Of course, their actual direction, their staging, and from what I understand, the British director David Laveau was a consultant at one point. But it was very basic. People stopping and standing and looking at each other's staging. No movement, no levels. There was no point of view for this production. This. The design, I found to be incredibly lacking. An ending that made absolutely no sense. A world that was convoluted. And, yeah, there's not much else I can really say about it. I love dumb if it's clever, I love fun if it keeps going, you know, if it's. If it's always moving, if it's tight, right and tight. And this was none of those things. It was bloated, it was confused. And I, you know, I wrote my review about it. If you want to read that from a year ago, but it's closed now, so we can stop kicking this dead horse. Next up, number 35, the shark is broken. This is a play that is quote unquote about the actors Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. The three leads of the incredible summer blockbuster Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg. And if you know Jaws at all, first of all, you know it's about a shark in the water that's eaten a bunch of people. Very good movie. It's in the top 100 for American film Institute. Just, just so you know. But one of the famous stories about Jaws is that they built this mechanical shark to have all of these amazing shots of. But they didn't test the shark for salt water. They tested it in regular water, like tap water, but they didn't test it for salt water, which it was going to have to be in. So it was always malfunctioning. And so the production of Jaws was a nightmare. Of course this ended up being a blessing in disguise because what ended up happening was Spielberg had to cut most of the footage of the shark. And so we never really got to see Jaws. We always saw the victims of Jaws attacks from Jaws perspective. And that's a very iconic element of that movie and really changed the game of thrillers and big blockbusters at that point. And of course these actors on the set, all they can see is that they are what's in an obvious flop and just taking forever. And Robert Shaw, while he is a very esteemed actor, is also a drunk and quarreling with Richard Dreyfuss, who is very hot headed and takes himself very seriously. Roy Schneider is just like, I want to get out of this production alive. So those three actors played by Colin Donnell, Alex Brightman and Ian Shaw, who is Robert Shaw's son and also co wrote this play. It's just them on the boat in Jaws in between takes, waiting for the shark to be fixed so they can start shooting again. And in these moments when the cameras are not rolling, they talk about their lives, about their careers, about the film industry. And y', all, this for me is a giant. Why? You know, why this story? There's something you could maybe argue for. The idea of three hot headed men at different points of their careers. Robert Shaw is probably in the tail end of his career. Richard Dreyfuss is just about to explode with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this movie and Goodbye Girl sort of one year after the other. Roy Scheider is sort of in the middle of his height, he's got another about 10 years, I would say, of being super popular. And he's got his Oscar nomination in 79 for all that jazz. But they're at different points and they might have different perspectives on the world and on the film industry and themselves, but ultimately this play just comes down to three men with daddy issues. They all bond and vent about their fathers, how distant they were and how it messed them up. And you know, it's littered with lines that some people call Easter eggs. I call them, you know, they're not Easter eggs because they're not hidden. It's, it's fucking Stonehenge. You know, it's just out there in the open for all to see. They make a joke at one point when, you know, Richard says, oh, Stephen's thinking about making this movie about aliens and if all goes well here, I'm gonna do it. And Robert Shaw goes, a movie about aliens? What's next? A movie about dinosaurs. And everybody laughs because like, hahaha, that's a Jurassic park reference. I'm like, it's overt. It is in neon lights banging you over the head. I fucking hate that shit. And there's, there's just nothing for me to recommend this play. It's just so why. And in a time where people are willy nilly just doling out, oh, white men, you know, having problems is not the kind of theater I want to see. I was surprised how nobody really used that argument with this play, you know, to derail it or denigrate it. The people who didn't like it were just like, I don't know, it was boring, I didn't care. But then the same people who will go off about, you know, oh, I don't want to see a play about rich white people came to this place. Defense for reasons I can't understand, because it is truly about three, you know, white men who are all doing fine for themselves, complaining about their fathers. And there's no, there are no stakes. Nothing is lost, nothing is gained. You know, if you like Alex Brightman, you would have liked him in this. I found it to be very similar performance to Beetlejuice and School of Rock. Two performances of his that I really did enjoy. But with this one I went, oh, I feel like I'm starting to see the things that you do when either you know, maybe you don't have a director on hand or you don't think the material is up to par. He just kind of go for this manic, wacky, gravelly voice thing. It wasn't giving me Richard Dreyfus, I'll tell you that much. But I guess the only other thing I can say is Colin Donnell had two minutes on the boat where he was in a speedo. The idea was, you know, as production is just falling apart, he's always just trying to get moments of solitude. And so we had a two minute sequence where no one was on stage except he and he was trying to sunbathe in the speedo. And the moment he got to lie down, they called him on the intercom to get back to set and he brought out a bat and pretended to hit the intercom radio thingy out of frustration, but went about putting his clothes back on. And I was like, we didn't really need that. I'm thrilled I got to see Colin Donnell's body. The man is absolutely shredded. And he clearly was worked hard to get it there for this play, if not prior to this play. So props to you, mama, but, you know, other than that moment of male gazy, I, I, I have nothing else to really recommend this thing. All right, next up, 34. Actually, it's your royal highness. I need that. At the now Todd Hames Theater, produced by Roundabout Theater Company. I'm gonna keep this one short. Danny DeVito starred in this one. It was written by Theresa Rebeck. Some of you will know her as the creator of the TV show Smash, for which she then got kicked off of for season two. And this play. Someone once told me that a lot of Theresa Rebeck plays, or Rebeck, I think it's Rebeck. A lot of Teresa Rebeck plays feel like pilots for a TV show that are then elongated into 90 to 2 hour, 90 minute to 2 hour plays. And that's definitely what I need. That sort of feels like, you know, it is Danny DeVito playing a widowed hoarder. You know, his wife has been dead for a few years. His adult daughter, played by DeVito's real daughter Lucy DeVito, is sort of underwater as she's trying to navigate her work life. She just got offered this job that's out of state, but she has to help her father because he's been informed by the government that if he does not clean up his home, he will be kicked out, out of it. And she's trying to help him do that, but he's proving difficult. He also has a neighbor, played by Ray Anthony Thomas, who has been secretly stealing some of DeVito's items. Not that DeVito notices because he doesn't actually have any kind of structure to any of the Clutter. And eventually he kind of has a breakthrough and clears out all the clutter and has an actual home. And there's a reveal. Scenic wise, you know, the house, we find out, is actually on a turntable, so it turns. And we see exterior of his house. So we see him throwing stuff out. And then when the house turns back around, everything is clean and neat and all the clutter is gone. And everyone in the audience applauds. And then he has sort of a heart to heart with Lucy DeVito at the end of the play where he basically tells her she's got to go take that job. And then he's like, I want to go see your home. I've never seen your home. And we find out that actually she's started to become a hoarder due to all of the anxiety she's inherited from her father. And that is sort of the end of the play. But the ending of this play just went on for like, 20 minutes. It felt like, you know, I just sat there and I was like, I don't see how this is ending. I don't see where this is ending now. Because we had the moment. I was like, okay, this is where the ending is gonna be. And then it kept going. And I was so confused. You know, this play is not insultingly terrible. It's just incredibly forgettable. Everyone in that theater stood at the end and they cheered for Danny DeVito. And, you know, Danny DeVito is incredibly gregarious. He sort of played like a nicer version of Frank from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which. That's his character on It's Always Sunny. This is sort of like the sweeter version of that guy. And I'm sure a lot of audiences who love him on It's Always Sunny or Taxi or, you know, any of his films were happy to see him do the Danny DeVito thing in this not play like a total jerk. And they cheered at the end. But I guarantee you, within a week, they all forgot about this play. I know we are now here in early May, and I'm sure a lot of you are like, oh, yeah, I need. That did happen. It did, and we'll never remember it again. Moving on to number 33. Actually, it's your royal highness, Uncle Vanya. I am going to say this now in case anybody steals this at some point, because I'm going to use this title for my alternate show titles for my fake Tony categories. What? That I'm going to post on Instagram end of May, early June. My alternate title for this Uncle Vanya. Uncle Vanya? More like Uncle Yanya now. If you listen to this podcast, you know how much I was looking forward to this production. I was so, so pumped. This was like my event. I mean, Heidi Schreck doing the translation alone got me excited. I love what the Constitution means to me. Lila Neugebauer, who. Who just directed Appropriate, which is so Baller, you know, she's directed this production. And I was like, okay, these two women, something good's gonna happen here. And then they announced the cast. Steve Carell, Alfred Molina, Alison Pill, Anika Noni Rose, Jane Haudyshell, Jonathan Hattery, William Jackson Harper. I was like, jesus Christ. This is just baller after baller after Baller. And yet, I gotta tell ya, this thing was just a total dud for me, a crushing disappointment. My biggest heartbreak of the season by far. You know, it had moments of style. It had moments that I couldn't hold onto, but they were very fleeting. Everyone in this show is in a different show. Steve Carell as Vanya definitely going for a more comedic approach, at least for act one, which doesn't help. Then when act two, when it gets far more dramatic, the audience still laughs because he's giving the same timbre of his voice to those lines. And on top of that, everyone's coming in with the expectation of, oh, Steve Carell, funny, funny guy. Never mind the fact that, you know, he's an Oscar nominee for Foxcatcher, which is a harrowing movie, but he's in a different play from Alison Pill as his niece Sonya, who is trying so hard to have. Have all this fire in the show, but she's alone in it, so she just comes off manic and overacting, which is. Alison Pill's a wonderful actress. She doesn't overact. That's not what she does. But when everyone else around you is doing something more muted, it makes you seem ten times bigger than you actually are. And Alfred Molina as the brother in law, Alexander, Alison Pill's character's father. He's doing far more traditional Chekhov than anybody else. And William Jackson Harper is the neighbor, friend, and alcoholic Dr. Astrov. He's kind of doing a sort of, I would call it like a more broken version of Chidi from Good Place. And it works maybe the best of any of the performances in the show. I see why he got Tony nominated. He's definitely the most engaging of the performances, but it still also wasn't totally, you know, fully rounded for me. And then Jonathan Hattery as the neighbor and friend Waffles. He. I guess he was fine. It's a small part. Jane Hadyshell is totally wasted in a small, small part of the grandmother. Anika Noni Rose as Alfred Molina's second wife, Helena. Although I think in this one they make it Elena. She's at sea. The show doesn't want it to be like, of any specific time or place. And yet they'll do things or say things that give away a time and place. Like they wanted to sort of be Russia, but not Russia, but they'll say bucks and dollars instead of kopecks. They'll make references to things that are very American. They'll use slang that's totally American. They'll use slang that's far more modern, and then have these elongated soliloquies that are very traditional Chekhov and much more, you know, ethereal and theatrical. But the show itself doesn't give a theatrical vibe. It's a theatrical design. I would say. They, you know, it's the Beaumont, so it's in the thrust and it's a very abstract design. But they'll say and do things that are just so specific to realism and to modern day. And rather than it feeling like a beautiful blob of ambiguity, it just feels inconsistent and like someone didn't look over the script clear enough. And it's a shame because I really, really wanted to love this. I thought this was going to be my jam and it just wasn't. There was a much, much better translation and adaptation of a classic text this season, but we will get to that in a second. Number 32, actually, it's your royal highness, Mother Play. Yet another crushing disappointment, guys. Actually, no, I take that back. This play, Mother Play for me was an embarrassment. It's one place above Vanya and two above. I need that just because there are moments in this show where it misses so hard and so big that it's actually camp. And camp, despite everything is memorable. So this is a more memorable piece to me than Vanya or, or I Need that or Once Upon a One More Time or Shark is Broken. But it is so low because I think this play was just so bad. And it's terrible for me to say that. I hate saying that because Paula Vogel is a Pulitzer winning playwright. How I Learned to Drive is one of my favorite plays and is one of the most stunning and nuanced and harrowing depictions of. Of sexual abuse and a complicated relationship to your abuser. As someone who went through a textbook definition of grooming, people use grooming far too often and There's a direct connection between younger folks using it on TikTok to drag people that mentally fucked with them but didn't, technically speaking, groom them. There's a connection between that and then the GOP using that for queer people and drag queens and using it incorrectly, by the way. But, you know, I was someone who was literally textbook groomed. Just I was in high school and watching how I learned to drive, I was like, oh, this is so uncomfortable and yet so compelling and so perfect. Perfectly real. You know, when you have these complicated feelings about someone who took so much from you but also gave you even more. Like Lilibet's relationship with her uncle. I think it's Uncle Peck is his name. You know, he assaulted her, he abused her, he manipulated her into thinking that their relationship was consensual, that they were soulmates and that they were in this together. And that robbed her of feeling safe with a man for a long time, if ever, of having true intimacy with a man of her own self worth for a while. It took her a long time to get that back. But what he also gave her was the confidence to pursue her goals. He expanded her mind with books and all these kinds of ideas that no one else in her family did. He believed in her in a way that no one else in her family did. And you could argue that that also is connected to his grooming, that he gave her this confidence so that way she would let him in emotionally and eventually physically. And that's partially true, but he still gave her those tools to make her smarter and make her better. And that is something that I dealt with myself. And watching that in How I Like to Drive, I was like, oh, my God, this play is so incredible. I will see anything this woman does. And Baltimore Waltz is wonderful and Indecent, while flawed, is beautiful. So I was really looking forward to this. And directed by Tina Landau and you know, Jessica Lange, who is an actress I love Celia Keenan Bolger. I've enjoyed a great deal Jim Parsons, I've never really liked on stage outside of an act of God. And that's very specific use of Jim Parsons, literally. But I do think he is talented. And seeing him on screen, you get that he's a good actor. But y', all, when I tell you that this play is just. It's amateur at every level. Every level. I don't get the reception to it overall. The only people I've spoken to have liked this. And I don't mean to be negative to any generation or group of people. It's just the only thing I've. Only pattern I've seen is that people over the age of 45 are the only ones I've spoken to who have liked this play. Everyone under has called it pure camp. You know, it's supposedly another very personal work for Paula Vogel. And it's about Selah Keenan Bolger sort of reflecting on her childhood into her teen years and then twenties up until present day, with her brother, played by Jim Parsons and their mother, Jessica Lange. And there are. It's called A Play in five Evictions because there are five evictions in the play, you know, physically out of apartments, but then also Jim Parsons being evicted from their home life when he comes out to them in the late 60s, early 70s as queer and, and or as gay. And Jessica Lange kicks him out. And see, like, you know, Bulger eventually comes out as gay and is cut off from Jessica Lange as well. And, you know, it flashes through 1962 to present day. We go through like almost 60 years of time in 100 minutes. And I would argue that the first hour, maybe our first 45 minutes, is dedicated purely from like 1962 to 1968. After that, we are just buzzing through years and events and Celia Keenan Bolger's on hand to give us pieces of narration to give us, I guess, insight and context for what we're about to see. Sorry, Burp. For the next scene we're about to see. But it doesn't help matters really. Jessica Lange's character is supposed to be both this seductive, almost like Lorelei Gilmore esque creature of the 60s. She's a young mother whose kids are in awe of her in a lot of ways. But she's also an alcoholic and she's a mean drunk, and she cuts them both down to size all the time. She clearly favors Jim Parsons over sielakkinan Bulger. And then as time continues and as her kids grow up and as the times get more progressive, she can't really get progressive with it. And they have a lot of sparring words and things get very dramatic. Jim Parsons character is a gay man, and we go from the 60s to the 70s and then eventually to the 80s. Now, in the 70s is when Jessica Lange sort of reconnects with Celia Kenan Boulter and Jim Parsons. And it's a opportunity for therapy. She does this immersive therapy where she goes to a gay bar with them in order to sort of like, see the queer nightlife. And in this scene is when Celia Keenan Bolger wears a Leather pageboy cap similar to susie on Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. And she hasn't come out yet. She hasn't said anything about being gay, but we all know she's a big old lesbian. From that hat alone, it is so clear to everyone. So when Jessica Lange sees her kissing a girl offstage, we're all sitting there being like, yeah, how did you not get that? She was basically holding up a sign to you saying, dear Mother, I like the lady folk. But alas, Jessica Lange's character can never see the signs. And all throughout their childhood, Jim Parsons character is very clearly gay. He keeps saying when he's feeling sad that he is secretly the Grand Duchess Anastasia. And he flits around the apartment pretending to be grand divas. And when he comes out, Jessica Lange is like, I had no idea. And I'm like, well then, bitch, you're blind. But he is a grown gay man in the 70s. And then we hit the 80s, and if you're thinking, huh, Jim Parsons is a grown man in the 1980s who is gay. And the next scene we see is them showing up at Jessica Lange's apartment and he runs straight into the bathroom and Jessica Lange says, what's up with him? With Carl? Where does your mind go with that? Hmm? If your mind didn't go to aids, then it's possible that mother play is for you, because then that reveal would have been a surprise to you. If your mind did immediately jump to aids, then you don't need to see this play because you're going to be 10 steps ahead of it all the fucking time. Celia Keenan Bolger literally has to say the lines to Jessica Lange. Mama, sit down. Mama, Carl's sick. Mama, it's bad. Mama, it's aids. Now, maybe I'm fudging that a little bit, but I would debate from a month old memory that I am 90% accurate on that line. Jessica Lang goes from 0 to 100 and starts breaking down into tears and tells Jim Parsons, you're going to live with me because I'm your mother and I love you and we're going to fight this. Immediately cut to the next scene, which is six months later, and she tells Ciela Keenan Bolger, I never liked being a mother. I hate being a mother. I don't want my son with me anymore. Get him out of here. So, you know, total whiplash. And Jim Parsons comes back on stage after she says this again, it's like five seconds later in I shit you not, a baseball cap straight out of Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. And then when Selekina Bolter says, you'll live with me now. And we transition to the next scene to show that some time has passed. Jim Parsons whips off that Tom Hanks in Philadelphia AIDS cap to reveal a whizzer in Falsetto's knitted cap. We went from one AIDS hat to another AIDS hat, and he huddles in a robe with his knitted AIDS cap as Celia. Kenny Bulger talks about how he got worse. And then she reads a letter that he wrote her from his deathbed. It's the letter that begins the play. And he basically says, I want a big, grand funeral. These are the things we hear all about in Angels in America as well. And the set moves away and they play opera music, and he floats off stage in the grand theatrical death that I'm sure Paula Vogel's real brother, if this is accurate to her real life, probably wanted. This show for me is 20 different Lifetime movies from the 90s chopped up and taped together. Every trope from these movies is here and from the viewpoint of an early 90s movie. Because everything about alcoholism, homosexuality, AIDS, you know, violence against women, adolescence, it is straight out of things we've seen 30 years ago. And it is regressive, it is simplistic. And I don't understand how people who do this for a living can see this play and say, yes, that is good. I am dumbfounded by the positive review the Times gave it. I am dumbfounded by Adam Feldman's review in Time Out New York. And I would love to speak with them one day and ask them, what the fuck? What the fuck? But that's not the only show this year that I feel that way about. Let's continue onwards, shall we? Great. Number 31. So you wanted to meet the wizard, the Wiz. Oh, so I mentioned this. Last week, I once assisted directed a production of the Wiz in college at Emerson College. It wasn't a very good production, but, you know, we did our best. I love the Wiz. Rather I should say I love the score for the Wiz. The score by Charlie Smalls is just. Oh, my God, it's just banger after banger. And so inventive and clever. And of course, Brand New Day is not written by Charlie Smalls. That's written by Luther Vandross. Just so everyone knows, if you're unfamiliar with the Wiz, it is a telling of the wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. And it was created in the mid-70s. And the whole purpose of the story of the Wiz the whole purpose of the show, the Wiz was, was that it was going to be viewed with a black lens. You know, upholding the excellence of black artists while also incorporating black history into the show. Some of it subtle, some of it very obvious. And famously, the show had a very troubled out of town process. What ended up happening was Geoffrey Holder, who was an actor and writer and director and choreographer and dancer and designer. He had designed the copy costumes for the Wiz and they were so stunning that they actually developed the entire design of the production around his costumes. But they don't hire him to direct or choreograph it. So they go out of town and it's a disaster. And they bring him in and he saves the day. He makes cuts to the book, he changes elements of the design that were changed after his own designs. And he redid some casting. He bumped Hidden Battle up from the ensemble to play the scarecrow. He changed Dorothy's costume. They cut numbers, they moved numbers around and it took the show a minute to catch on with audiences. But once it caught on, it caught on and it was never considered a great musical. It was a musical with moments of greatness. The book was always considered a bit of a tough sell because it's very flimsy. It's mostly just, you know, an excuse to get us from song to song. But the songs were just so wonderful and the original design was so inventive and clever. The irony is that, you know, because musicals being recorded for posterity is only a more recent occurrence. You know, it's. It really didn't start until the early 80s. There are a couple of shows from the 70s that are recorded, but I think only one or two for commercial use. And they're very poorly done. Things like Sunday in the park with George or Legally Blonde or, you know, Diana. That's. That's not something that you did in the mid-70s. So you only saw the stage version of the Wiz if you came to New York or you saw a national tour. So the movie version starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson is the version that most of America is familiar with. And that movie has many changes. Cuts a bunch of songs, redoes a bunch of songs, adds a few songs. Most importantly, they change the style of the piece. So it's no longer just a straightforward retelling of the wizard of Oz. It's got a whole other bent to it. Diana Ross wanted to play Dorothy and she was far too old. So they made it that Dorothy was a 30 year old schoolteacher or 25, something like that year old schoolteacher living in Harlem who had never gone beyond like her neighborhood. She was very childlike. And so this journey she ends up going on is to sort of help her grow up and be an adult. Which is, that's always been the journey for Dorothy. But in this one it's like a little more pathetic because she's twice the age of the actress who usually plays the role. And also the movie used the viewpoint of everything basically takes place in New York City, in different areas of New York City. So it's Oz. But like if Oz were Manhattan and the Bronx and Brooklyn and Queens, you know, mean old lion happens right outside the New York Public Library because the lion comes crashing out of one of the lion statues in front of the library. And Emerald City I think is like the financial district. They do this whole Emerald City dance. I wouldn't be caught dead red. I'd rather be seen green on a plaza. And it's cool looking. It's not really having anything to do with the wizard of Oz. But that's what most people associate the Wiz with now. And so, so many productions take that slightly more modern feel for the Wiz. There was a production out in La Jolla that Des Mackinaff directed that used like video and modern day dress and encores tries to do it. And even though they were trying to bring it back to its roots of the original, they still incorporated a lot of the movie stuff in there. There was the TV version that Harvey Fierstein wrote a new book for and they included stuff from the movie as well. And this version is incorporate stuff from the movie as well. What makes it ironic to me is just that, you know, people talking about the legacy of the Wiz for black artists. And the version that most people know is the one that was written and directed by two white men, Sidney Lumet and Joel Schumacher, you know, the stage show. While yes, there is William Brown, the librettist, who was white. Geoffrey Holder, who really kind of steered the whole thing to safety, was a phenomenally gifted black artist. And Charlie Smalls score helps keep that show afloat. And so it's just, it's just interesting to me that that's sort of people's argument of the Wiz when the thing they used to make that argument is from the minds of two white men. And in fact the design of the movie is from Tony Walton, who is a British white man. Again, very gifted. And I'm not saying that they don't have, you know, that they wouldn't have the abilities to work on something like the Wiz. But I think that it speaks for itself. It's just how not good the movie is. It's very wild. But when you think of, you know, upholding black excellence, as, you know, the actors, the people at the forefront, who you're. Who you're watching, and that is certainly true, but there are so many other creatives behind the scenes that can, you know, inform the work. And that was sort of what made the Wiz so special to begin with. Right? Is that, like. It was, for the most part, a very straightforward telling of the wizard of Oz. And it got a lot of flack at the time because the movie of the wizard of Oz is so beloved. It's still beloved. Over the Rainbow is, you know, one of the greatest songs ever written. And people went, well, what could they do? And then we have songs like Home, he's the Wiz. So you wanted to meet the Wizard Eason down the road. Be a Lion. I was born on the day before yesterday. You know, what I. What I would do if I could feel like wonderful, wonderful songs, that all it really was was just someone with a voice coming from a different perspective because of the life they've led. And that's wonderful when it works, you know, and that's what made the Wiz work. So with this revival. This is a long way to get to this revival. With this revival, what we have is a new production directed by Shelley Williams with a new book by Amber Ruffin that has basically been touring the country for almost a year and now planted at the Marquis Theater. Why is it so low if I speak so highly of the show, despite its flaws? Well, let me start with some good things here. I do think that Amber Gruffin might have actually written a good new libretto for this production. She does incorporate youe Can't Win. Instead of the original Scarecrow song, Born on the Day Before Yesterday, she incorporates another song. I forget what it's called, but it's an Act 2 for Dorothy. It was written for Stephanie Mills when they brought it back in the 80s as a, you know, touring revival. And they do a couple of other small changes. I think the original production, so youo Wanted to Meet the wizard and the Emerald City was actually in Act 1. And then be a Lion happened after that as the Act 1 finale. Now be A Lion happens before they go to the Emerald City, and it's still the Act 1 finale. And then Emerald City is top of Act 2. They make the actress playing Aunt Em the same actress that plays Evileen, and they Have Glinda, played by Deborah Cox, come out early to sing he's the wizard, basically by herself, but quote unquote with Adda Pearl, which just does that actress who plays out a pearl dirty. Because that's her one song and they took it away from her and, you know, they move it to modern day Dorothy is a city girl who's moved to Kansas now that her mother has passed, and then no, gets swept up in the tornado in Oz. And Oz, according to Shelley Williams, is not meant to be any specific time period or. Or place. It's informed by different eras and different places in the United States, while all kind of incorporating the black experience in America. And I can get behind that intellectually, or rather I should say I watch Shelley Williams say that in an interview, and I'm like, yeah, totally, go for it. I love that. I love that idea. But there's a difference between saying it and executing it, and that is not executed on stage. While I think Amber Ruffin might have written a good book here, I can't be totally sure because it's just not done well. The performers in the Wiz all have amazing voices. It's some of the greatest vocals on Broadway right now. The harmonies for Be a Lion, the arrangements for Be a Lion are just fan fucking tastic. But all of the book scenes are just. They die. You know, you got some actors who are going for broke with Hamminess and others who are trying to understate it. Everyone's clashing. There's no sense of urgency to any of these scenes. You know, Dorothy's trying to get home. She's got to ease on down the road. And yet she's, like, taking her sweet time with every encounter she has. Everyone with her is taking their sweet time, despite the fact that they all have wants and needs and they have a goal to get to. It's just everything is so lackadaisical. And the staging is basic. It's just. Everyone just stands there with eventually across here or across there. The design is poor, man. I mean, we're talking mostly projections that look like they were AI generated. They probably were. There's no panache, there's no style to any of it. And if we're going for all of the eras in the African American experience, why not heighten it, liven it up? It's the Wiz, you know, you're not actually in America. You're in Oz. And if Oz is going to be this sort of nowhere place of space and time, you have free reign there. So why Hamper yourself with realistic, with real world elements. You know, making the Wiz's show like kind of a Vegasy show, but it's like literally Vegas. It's not like Vegas Oz style. It's not, you know, like Munchkinland is sort of meant to sort of be a bit like New Orleans. At least that's the vibe I got. And it just. None of it made sense to me and it wasn't exciting. I thought it couldn't possibly be exciting because that score is so juicy and, you know, the cast is game for the most part, but there's just no. They're not being helped by any means. And it's a shame because it should be better than this. I wanted it to be better than this, you know, special shout out to Allison K. Daniel, who was on for Evileen and Aunt Em. She normally plays Addapearl, so her understudy, who was Judith Franklin, was on for Add a Pearl instead. And then also Christina Jones was on for Dorothy. Beautiful, beautiful voice. Also, one other thing, they talk about Eveline's sister in the show. You know, she's the witch that gets the house sat on her. And they all called her Eva mean. And I thought she's supposed to be pronounced Evemine, like she. Like she's ever mean. And no one ever called her that. No one said Evemine, Eveline, Evemine. But maybe that's just a me thing. Maybe I. That's just something that our production did. But isn't. If you, if you are a Wiz aficionado, remind me, is that something that other productions have done or is it just something that our production did? Eva mean. Eva mean. Alright, moving on. Number 30. Tommy, we have so much in common. Tommy, don't you agree? Tommy, we have so much in common. Go to the dance with me. How to dance in Ohio. This show had really great intentions and I want to take a moment to acknowledge the barriers they broke in representation. The historical significance of this show with its casting, with its. With its design, with it, with the story that it tells and how they tell it. That's all really wonderful. I imagine the bigger impact it could have had if it were better. It was just a very confused book, storylines that went nowhere. It's essentially, you know, it's a group of young adults who are all on the spectrum in some respect. And the Doctor who's sort of like their life coach, like leader of their group therapy. I'm sorry if I'm butchering too much of this. I have notes and I'm reading Them. But also, I'm going off of my memory from November, and they plan to have a dance to sort of celebrate the progress they've all made. A lot of them are graduating high school and hope to go to college. And some of them are out of high school and working jobs. But they are looking for connection and friendship and a chance to be in the world and use the skills and tools that they learn from this group to acclimate. Because even though the world should acclimate for them as well, let's face it, most of the world does not. And they have agency in that respect, which is wonderful. But the show focuses far too much on the doctor and his daughter. I don't know why she has all this plot. She's such a useless character. And they focus on the parents a lot, which I think you can definitely shorten that and focus more on the kids or the young adults, I should say. And it's a score that, for me, has no identity. You know, it sounds like so many other scores out there. Some on Broadway, some Off Broadway, some you see at readings. You know, it's like poppy boppy, but it doesn't have any motor behind it. It doesn't have any structure behind it. The lyrics, for me, all sort of felt first draft. And they were very heavy on imagery and not about character. And some of these characters are very emotionally intelligent and they articulate so well in scenes, what they're going for, which I actually think is kind of to the detriment also of the score. Because if you can speak so eloquently in a book scene, you have no reason for a song. The song is supposed to be able to explore fuller what you can't explore in the scene. And it's sort of the opposite here. We have characters who are able to mouth off exactly how they feel and why they feel it in a scene. And then we get a song where everything is basic. And I find that's also kind of a problem with musicals in general because we're not allowed to have nuance. We're not allowed to interpret. We're not allowed to have conversations afterwards. We have to know exactly what characters are feeling and what's supposed to be happening in this scene, what we're supposed to take away. And the songs are just meant to sort of put a little rubber stamp on that, and we move on. And that didn't do it for me. I'm glad that this show made a lot of people feel seen. And I'm sorry, you know, if you felt like it was sort of given the short end of the stick by Broadway, but ultimately, this. This is a show for me that came up short. Great intentions and just very weak execution. And to set that, you know, I know that they were taking, you know, their audience into account with the design, but I found the set to be extremely lacking. I do love a good turntable, though. Next up, number 29, the Great Gatsby. This one is big. It is brash. It might be for you, but it wasn't for me. You can hear my thoughts fuller on this show in a previous episode where I discuss the Great Gatsby as well as other shows like Suffs and Patriots, and, you know, it's just not for me. From the songwriting team of Paradise Square. That's. I knew already what I was getting myself into. I don't. I understand that they had to make a choice when adapting this material. And Great Gatsby is a difficult novel to adapt. In fact, no one has actually adapted it. Well, so far, every iteration that it has had has had criticism against it, but also, most of those iterations have done well, financially speaking. And this production just might. You know, it's selling well for the time being. We'll see how it continues. It only got one Tony nomination for its costume design, but, you know, this is a show that I'm sure younger fans will really flock to with Ava and Jeremy in the leads and a score that is very poppy and big, like songs that I'm sure kids are going to sing at, you know, their high school talent shows and your college showcases, because they do show off your range, but they don't do anything for the story. The team decided to kind of go for romance and lavishness, and I understand the romance part because you need some emotional depth to make your character sing. And that's hard with Gatsby because most of these characters don't have emotional depth. That's sort of the point of the story. But I also found that this show had no edge to it. It didn't have any of the sardonic wit of the book. It didn't have any of the complexity of the book. It didn't have any of the cynicism of the book about any of the characters or of the story. And I'm not asking for a direct translation, but I am wondering, if you're adapting this thing, why change the reason it exists? You know, something like, you know, Carousel being adapted from Lilium Lillium was always meant to sort of be a portrayal of the seedy underbelly of Budapest and of toxic masculinity and of abusive relationships and how they are the undoing of so many of us and how you can love someone and they can be so awful for you, and how some people are just born evil. And Oscar Hammerstein loved so much of Lilium, but he did not love that theme. So he did change the theme for Carousel because he was a more optimistic person. But the brilliance of Carousel is that he was able to keep a lot of the juice of Lillium and see how it could actually have the same ending with a slightly different tone of optimism, because you mostly need that for a musical while keeping a lot of the grit from the original show and a lot of the sexual danger and also trimming a lot of the fat, AKA the anti Semitism and a lot of weird bits that Molnar just put in. But that is, you know, taking the heart of something, keeping it while seeing how it can work in a different medium. And then also, you know, channeling it to a, you know, a similar conclusion with a different context. And Gatsby, you know, it keeps all of the events and the same conclusion, but its tone is just so off from the book and it just felt cheap. Sounds harsh, but cheap. You know, it is a very big show. It's a glittery show. It has this epic feel to it, but it all just felt very empty to me. This was an empty calorie show. And may it find its fans, may it find life, but I am sadly not one of them. All right, we are going to get to number 28 in just a second, right after Great Gatsby. But first, we should take a quick break. 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 shred of the feet of Fred. Okay, and we begin back. Thank you for taking that little break with me. I went and got myself some water to hydrate my voce. I also got a soup and some chips to nourish myself later. Don't you worry, listeners, I shall not eat on the pod. I have been yelled about that enough and I shan't do it anymore. But to recap on this ranking so far, we have at number 36, Once Upon a One More Time. At number 35, The Shark is Broken. At number 34. I need that number 33. Three, Uncle Vanya. 32, Mother play 31, the Wiz. And at number 30, how to Dance in Ohio. And number 29. The Great Gatsby. See how fast that was? Why am I talking so much? Whatever. Moving on, number 28, back to the future. This is not the worst musical I've ever seen. It's not even the worst musical this season. As you can tell, I have three other musicals below it. This, for me, though, was the laziest musical I think I've seen in a very long time. Now, I did write a review for this on Instagram back in, I want to say, September. And I got some flack for it, I'm not gonna lie. I. I rarely get, you know, pushback, and if I do, it's not from anyone in the community. I still don't get any pushback from people in the community, even if they disagree with me. You know, they recognize that I work very hard if I'm writing review to not be mean. If I'm angry, that's a different thing. And I will, and I'm, and I'm happy to explain why I'm angry about stuff, but I don't like going for the jugular, especially when a show is bad but well meaning or like, you know, is trying to make artistic choices that just don't land. When a show is lazy, though, I can't. I just can't. And for me, the show is incredibly lazy. I know it has its fans, and those are the ones who kind of gave me flack. I had one person who, I wouldn't call them a friend. They're like, they're, they're at this point more like a friend of a friend. They blocked me on Instagram and I didn't even notice. I had to be told by our friend of a friend. I won't say that person's name in case it gets back to the person who blocks me, but the friend of a friend who, you know, I am actually close with, I had drinks with him and his husband and the Back to the Future review came up for some reason. And he was like, oh, yeah, blank. You know, came to our home and bitched about you all day because of that and, you know, blocked you on social. And I went, oh. And then I looked it up and realized that he did. And this was like two months later, which I find to be like the ultimate read of. Oh, my God. I went through all this, you know, energy to block you, and it took you six weeks to notice. And it's only because someone had to tell you. Isn't that like kind of the ultimate burn? I didn't mean it that way, but just, you know, does make you feel a little as I shimmy my shoulders. But I'm not even gonna bother describing the plot of this show because most people know the plot of this show because it's the movie from 1984. 84, 85. With Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. It's a very, very famous movie. It was the most successful movie of its year. It launched a trilogy. It is a franchise. It has video games. There used to be a theme park attraction in Universal Studios for Florida. This is an incredible movie. I call the screenplay for Back to the Future a masterpiece of popcorn. It is so well structured. It is very economically done. It's not a terribly long movie. I believe it's under two hours. And it's funny. It actually has a lot of insight about nostalgia. How the past is never as great as we remember it being. You know, we were never as innocent as we like to think we were. We were never as clean as we like to think we were. Problems were always happening and sometimes things were actually worse. And you know, things may not. Not everything may be better now, but some things are better now. And we can't, you know, take that for granted. That's. And like our parents used to be kids just like us. And they made mistakes just like us. And they were horny just like us. And that's really insightful for what is a commercial summer popcorn movie. Like this screenplay was nominated at the Oscars for best original screenplay. That's like how well regarded the film is. The musical is 90% of the movie, 95% of the movie. Just put on stage with a bunch of songs that I honestly think all fucking blow. It is a book from the original co writer. It was Robert Zemeckis. And who is. It's Bob something, right? Not Bob Gale. IBDB to the rescue. Here we go. Bob Gale. Yeah, sorry. Trust your instincts, kids. That's what we're learning out here. Bob Gale, who is the original co author of the screenplay with Robert Zemeckis who directed that movie and then basically made it his life after that to oversee the franchise. He wrote the script for this and the music is by Alvin Silvestri, who wrote the score for the original Back to the Future and is an Oscar nominated composer. He's written scores for many other films. He's a very successful film composer. And then the lyrics by Glenn Ballard, who doesn't have any association with the original film, but he was a very popular lyricist for pop songs of the 80s. And he'd read the lyrics for Ghosts. So, you know, the 80s were a very good time for all of these men. These men are all incredibly wealthy and they did not need to make this musical, but they did make this musical. And when, you know, people come to the show's defense when we say it's a cash grab, they go, well, you know, Universal doesn't really have anything to do with it. I'm like, no. But the three, these three men did, two of whom were very heavily involved with the original film and have been very, have made a lot, a lot of money from the original film. And they see things like Shrek getting produced all over the world. They see Legally Blonde getting produced everywhere. Producers being successful on Broadway, Hairspray being very successful. And I guarantee you they went, we can do that. We can do that. Back to the Future. And they sure did. They put that movie on stage, they threw some songs into it. They designed the whole thing to look like the movie, right down to Marty's puffy vest. And these actors, all incredibly talented. Most of them are doing imitations from the movie. Hugh coles as George McFly is doing a literal Crispin Glover impression. And it makes me furious because he is clearly a talented dude and I wish that he could just play a part that is his own because this is not that. And anyone who's saying, oh, he's not doing a Crispin Glover impression, he absolutely is. If you can't see that, I don't know what kind of conversation we can have. You know, someone wrote on my review for this back in October, September, whenever it was, they said, oh, this is your first link, meaning my first lose, my first loss. That time will be kind to this show, that we will remember it fondly well. They have two Tony nominations. One I believe is for set design and the other is for Roger Bart. And it otherwise blanked at the Tonys. It blanked at the Drama League, an organization that famously gives out a million nominations to shows. And they didn't give one to Back to the Future. And they just had one of their other money losing weeks recently as we recorded this, they just posted what is if not their lowest grossing week, their second lowest grossing week. You know, a little over 800K, which is not bad for some shows. Like that's totally fine for something like Book of Mormon or Illinois. But Back to the Future, we know, costs about a million dollars a week to run, bare minimum, not including advertising, not including, you know, understudy put ins or anything like that. Just like bare running costs. So anything they're. Anything that grows under that is Immediately a loss. And then I'm sure there are many other factors going into it that hasn't been accounted for. So it might cost somewhere close to 1.1 million, honestly. So they've had money losing weeks and it's their first year of a show that won the Olivier for best musical over in London and is based off of, I can't stress this enough, one of the most popular films of all time, you know, and this was grossing 1.2, $1.3 million out of the gate for a. For a minute. These are not the grosses you want to be having in your first year. They haven't even come to the year point yet. We are still like at like month nine or ten. So I don't. I don't think time will disagree with me about this show. I do think it will close probably sooner than people realize and we will forget about it rather quickly. It happens all the time. You know, shows that have the fan base, that have the passionate fan base, and they say, oh, the hoity toity look down on it because it's just trying to be a fun time. And I'm like, first of all, I'm not hoity toity. I love a dumb bitch like anybody else. This is a lazy, lazy show. It just is. Sorry to tell you. Moving on. All right, number. Sorry, I forgot whatever we were at. Number. So that was 28. Number 27. Don't close your eyes. A painting is not a woman or a war horse or a glittery sky. Lempicka. So this is another show that has had a lot of fervor around it due to critical reception. More so with this show than Back to the Future. And I already went in on this show on a previous episode as I, you know, recently saw it. So I won't go into it too much, just other than to say this is a worse musical than Back to the Future. But it has greater and more honorable aspirations than Back to the Future. If Back to the Future script is not the mess the. That the script for Lempicka is, it's because the script for Back to the Future hews so closely to the screenplay 90% of the time, word for word. And the screenplay for Back to the Future is fantastic. So that part works. Lempicka script does not work. We fly through years, we fly through plot. Characters are inconsistent. Things are never explained or sort of just meant to understand. Things are happening with no context. The score is a whiplash of musical theater. A million genres, none of which congeal. They all just Clash. I don't understand the design. I'll just put it that way. You know, I don't want to say the design is bad. I just don't get it. I don't understand the style of it. You know, Rachel Chapkin, as a director, is someone who I've always associated with style, and for me, this has none. It also has no panache to it. What it has is it has a very good cast. Most of the company sings very well. Eden Espinosa, unfortunately for me, you know, vocally underwhelming and under pitch for this show. But she brought a lot of gumption to the role. She really works hard. You don't want to see your performer sweat. But for a big sing like this, you have no choice. And I'm thrilled that she's now a Tony nominee. I wish it was for a different performance, but alas, same with Amber Ammann. You know, it's everyone like Uncle Vanya. Everyone's in a different show. Like Once Upon a One More Time. The book is a mess. And unlike how to Dance in Ohio, this score does have an identity. It's just like 20 different identities. It's like Mean Girls dial to 11. Every song is a different genre, and it doesn't feel like a seamless tapestry. It's just a mishmash. But people have rallied behind it for. For its, quote unquote originality, for its being about a queer woman in an interracial relationship. And people have pointed fingers to a lot of different reasons why audiences aren't going and why critics didn't like it. What they have not pointed to is that those of us who don't like it don't think the show is good. It's not that we're uncomfortable, you know, theater, Broadway audiences, or should I say theater going audiences, especially those that go to previews of new musicals with no marquee stars. That is not based on popular ip. Those of us going to those previews, we are the people who this show should be appealing to. We are going with an open mind and open heart. And if the majority of us are not liking it, there's a reason, you know, it has its fans. I know people who have liked it, who recommended it to me before I went, and I went in ready to go, and I was just so disheartened the entire time, and it's a shame. I hope that the writers of Lempicka keep writing and, you know, have another show in them. I hope that they have more focus. And I just want to say you know, if you are the type of person, this is not just them, but this is everyone. If you're the type of person who can only accept feedback if it's positive, I don't know how that betters you. And if you. If you look at all negative criticism as a problem of the other person's, I don't know how you can grow as a human being or as an artist, that is President 45. Mind games you play. And I can't get on board with it. I'm sorry, I just can't. That's not the fault of the show itself. The show itself is just bad, in my opinion. But the discourse around it has also made it extremely toxic. But I had to put that aside and think exactly where Lempicka is. Lempicka is not the absolute worst of the year, but it is in the bottom third. Moving on, number 26. Actually, it's your royal highness, the Cottage. The cottage is, you know, Sandy Rustin, the playwright. It's kind of an homage to the plays of Kaufman and Hart, Noel Coward, things like that, with a bit of a modern feminist spin. But Jason Alexander, he of Seinfeld fame, he directed this and aimed to sort of make it a bit of a farce and make it sexy. You know, the curtain for the show had a lot of animals in the front lawn of this cottage, all fucking. And this show is not sexy. All the sex is happening offstage prior to the show. Everything else is just everyone in the living room talking all the time. And there are no stakes here. There's no danger. No one's. You know, there's just nothing going on in this. It just keeps on sort of going in circles. And there are some fun one liners. The design was beautiful, if not necessarily conducive to farce. And I would say my other really big positives about it were that we had Dana Steingold as Eric McCormick's other mistress. You know, it's like a sort of a sex force. Laura Bell Bundy and Eric McCormick are having an affair. And it turns out that Laura Bell Bundy is married to Eric McCormick's brother, McCormick. And Eric McCormick is also married to Lily Cooper, who is pregnant. But it turns out that Lilly Cooper has been cheating on Eric McCormick with his brother, Laura Bell Bundy's husband, and she's actually pregnant with his baby. So Laura Bell Bundy and Eric McCormick having an affair doesn't really matter because Lily Cooper wants to run off with Laura Bell Bundy's husband, and I forget his name. But he's the dude from SNL. And on top of all of this, Eric McCormick has a second mistress played by Dana Steingold. And she's got a husband who's terribly jealous and murdered her last two lovers. And it turns out that this husband is Laura Bell Bundy's ex lover from before she ever met her current husband. But it turns out that that husband isn't even a murderer. He's just like a nebbishy clerk who, you know, paid off Dana Steingold's lovers to leave town and he just told her that he murdered them. So everything is fine, everything is simple, everything is easy. And Dana Steingold as the second mistress, does a very good job. She's very funny. She almost, you know, I would say is the MVP of the show. But the real MVP is Laurie Bell Bundy, who granted, does not have a great role, but she has so much stage presence and she's so likable and she sells so many of her one liners. You watch her and you're like, oh, right, I forgot how well you can command a stage. And I would like to see her do something again at some point. Just, you know, not the cottage. Moving on. Number 25. Actually, it's your royal highness, Grey House. Greyhouse. I didn't know what to expect because they advertised it as a horror play, like the first real scary play Broadway has seen in years, directed by John Mantello. And it had Laurie Metcalfe and Paul Sparks. And I was like, okay. And the poster was really intriguing. And I was like, okay, let's see what happens here. This was not a horror play, you know, this was not a scary play. What this play mostly did was gave you a sense of unease. It was really good at setting a vibe and a tone rather than any kind of jump scares. It didn't have two. It had two jump scares, but that's two jump scare scares out of 100 minute play. So, like once every 50 minutes, once every Grey's Anatomy episode, you get a little woo. But what this play is, is like Paul Sparks and Tatiana Maslany. I think that's how you say her last name. They're a couple. It appears they're a couple around, like the 1970s. That's what their clothes indicate anyway. And they get into a car crash during a snowstorm and they happen upon a house, the grey house, that is inhabited by Laurie Metcalfe and five girls between the ages of, let's say, 12 and 16 and a silent boy. And they go there for shelter and hopefully to use their phone, but I don't think they have a phone. And they just end up spending way more time in the house. And Paul Sparks is injured from the car crash, and his injury gets worse and he gets worse, and it turns out that in the house they make moonshine. And Paul Sparks drinks the moonshine and it makes him go berserk. Now the long and short of it is, is that this house is sort of like a halfway point between Earth and the afterlife. And that these young girls in the house are actually the spirits of young girls of Earth who were assaulted and murdered by men. And they lure men to the house or like the house calls them, or men find the house and they usually feed these men moonshine, which as it turns out, is actually the spirits and memories of these girls deaths. At least that's what I believe it is. So Paul Sparks, while drinking these moonshines, he's inhabiting, or he's remembering the deaths of all of these girls, and he's all of a sudden becoming or he's representing all of these men who have harmed these young women. And by killing him among many other men that they have killed, it frees one of these girls, per murder, per sacrifice, to move into the great beyond. Laurie Metcalfe plays a woman of Earth who is basically tasked with being the den mother the house. And she can only leave when a new den mother can arrive. And that, as it turns out, is Tatiana Maslany. And she's going to leave, except once Paul Sparks has been murdered and one of the girls goes into the afterlife and Laurie Metcalfe leaves and Tatiana wants to leave. That's when a new spirit shows up, a new girl she has to care for and she decides to stay. Now, I learned all of this by going online and reading a million different takes. Because this play, it's almost like Miyazaki esque, like Studio Ghibli esque in the sense that it does not explain shit to you, it just does the thing. And you are to take as many context clues as you can to figure out what the flying F is going on. And you know, I watched it with my friend Ken and a bunch of his friends from home, and we all went afterwards out for a drink and we all were online looking up different theories. Not because we were so profoundly moved by what we had seen, but because we were all just royally confused and like, what the fuck was that? What happened? And so we were reading all these different takes and we kind of piled them together and picked out the ones that we thought made the most sense to us and figured out what we thought was going on. And I say Miyazaki because you watch something like My Neighbor Totoro or Spirited Away, and it doesn't really tell you what's going on. It'll give you a couple of clues about creatures and things and rules, but not a lot, because according to Miyazaki, none of that really matters. It's the emotional journeys of these characters that we're following. The two sisters in Totoro. What does it matter what creature Totoro is in the forest or who any of these other creatures are? That's not what's important. You know, who cares what, like, the bus schedule is for the cat bus? Dude, no one cares about that. Or rather, I should say the people who care about that are not the people that Miyazaki is interested in entertaining. So Greyhouse is a very similar vibe of, like, don't worry about it. We're moving on. And if you. And I guess that's all well and good, but often, you know, my sense of unease would be cut by my sense of confusion. I would be taken out by how much I wasn't understanding. And as I said, I'm both smart and a dum dum, and it wasn't quite tense enough for me to let go of my confusion. And, you know, for all the good things about this show that I think there are. There are plenty of other things that really kind of left me wanting. And that's all I have to say about Greyhouse. At number 25. Moving on. Number 24, Hell's Kitchen. This is the lowest ranking of our best musical nominees for this year's Tony Awards. And this is yet another musical. Another show this season, I should say not another musical, but another show this season that got strong critical reception. Not everywhere. There are some critics that were positive, but sort of weakly positive, and a couple that called out that it's a mess, but the New York Times gave it a critics pick. Adam Feldman once again gave it 4 out of 5 stars. He might have even given it 5. I can't remember. What I didn't expect critics to do was see it at the public, be mixed on it, and then see it on Broadway and go, oh, my God, they fixed it. It's great. They didn't fix it. Very little has changed from the public. This is 90 to 95% the same show it was at the Newman Theater. It's just a little bit more space, and they might have trimmed off five minutes. That's about it. This show, semi biographical musical of Alicia Keys. Libretto I believe by Christopher Diaz, directed by Michael Greif. Choreography by Camille A. Brown. Takes place in the early 90s in Hell's Kitchen, the neighborhood between 42nd and I think 50th street on 9th and 10th Avenue. A primarily queer neighborhood of which this show has absolutely no queer characters in it, mind you. Predominantly bipoc cast, which is great, but also, once again, not necessarily entirely representative of that neighborhood. You know, the show wants to deal with race, but it chooses ultimately not to. Rather it brings up talking points and trigger content, but not actually delving deep into any of it, not exploring any of it. We've got a central romance of our main character Ali, played by Malaya Joy moon, who is 17, biracial. Her father's black, her mother's white, her father's not really in the picture. He's sort of a traveling musician who always says he's going to call and then doesn't call, says he's going to be there, but then isn't it there? And her mother, Jersey, played by Shoshana Bean, basically gave up a life of being an actress to make a living and support her and her daughter. And they live in Manhattan Plaza in Hell's Kitchen, which is a home for artists mostly. Like, you know, it's, I'm not sure if it's government housing, but like it is a very coveted, like 25 floor building, 30 floor building on, I think it's 43rd Street, 43rd and 9th. And you know, again, it's mostly artist residence and it's very nice apartments. It's, it's a, it's a good space. I have a friend who lives there and you know, this is where Ally and her mother live. And it's sort of about everything that takes place around that building with them, with their neighbors and the people that Ally's friends with or wants to be around. For example, there's a guy named Nuck who does bucket drumming outside of the building with his two friends. And he gets, you know, they get the cops called on them a lot for disturbing the peace. And they imply it's not that they're disturbing the peace, it's that Ally's mom, Shoshana Bean, calls the cops a lot on them because she's friends with the cops and she's friends with the cops because she's white. First of all, I'm like, no, no, no. If you're bucket drumming every day in front of my building, I'm of course going to call the cops. Because this is my home. You don't get to make noise 247 in front of my home. I want to sleep or like, or I want to just get out to go to the grocery store. And I don't want to deal with three or four dudes bucket drumming, which by the way, is fucking loud. If you've ever been in the city, you know, bucket drumming is loud because it echoes, it ricochets everywhere. It's cool for a moment, like when there's good bucket drumming, you know, like any art, it's cool. But every day, every day at that point, it's just become noise pollution, loitering. So that always bugged me. But Ali likes one of these guys, Nuck, who is about eight years older than her. She's 17, he's like 25. And they want us to believe in this romance, that it's, you know, beautiful, it's powerful, it's meaningful. And even though they ultimately don't work out for reasons, it was a meaningful relationship. And I'm sitting there going, I think not. First of all, Ally as a character is insufferable. She is so, you know, she's so. She's so short sighted and she's so oblivious to everything. And that's fine. She can be. She's 17. But that's not what her journey ends up being. All the things that she realizes about the world, you know, don't come from the mistakes she's made other than the fact that she's, like, mean to her mom a lot. And then she realizes, oh, my mom actually doesn't totally suck. That's sort of as far as her development goes. She doesn't realize all the mistakes she made with Nuck. Lying to him about her age and then, you know, fucking him in her mom's apartment without her mom knowing about him. And then when her mom sees them half naked in bed together and reasonably gets upset, you know, Ally resorts to saying, well, it's because you're a racist mom and because you hate that I'm in love and you drove my dad away. And then it goes into a whole thing about police brutality because the cops show up and arrest Nuck, but then they don't even end up booking him. We find out they just take him downtown and take him out of the car because they did it to humiliate him. I'm like, this is 1993. No one's got a camera phone. Everyone's minds are going to forget about this in a week. What humiliation. But on top of that act One ends with Keisha Lewis doing this whole big number about the history of police, of police brutality. Sort of like a never forget number. And yet Act 2 begins and it's completely dropped. Never again do we discuss it. Completely forgotten. One might say we did forget. You might say, this is a show with a million themes it wants to show you, but it doesn't want to delve into any of them. It just wants you to know that they know songs that are shoved in. Ali's got a million different coming of age storylines that they want to portray. Her learning piano and loving piano. And her teacher, Keisha Lewis, who we don't meet till halfway through act two, and she only really has three or four scenes. Her relationship with her mom, relationship with her dad, her relationship with Nuck, her growing up and being a sexual woman, her being biracial. All these things. They want to do all these things and everything gets the short end of the lollipop and it just. Or the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop. That's what I meant to say. Sorry, guys, I should take a swig of water. I should also have some soup soon to revive my brain, but I will wait till the next commercial break to do that. I just. I hate, hate, hate this script. So why is it not all the way at the bottom? Well, we do have three wonderful central performances from Malaya Joy Moon, Keisha Lewis, and Shoshana Bean. Brandon Victor Dixon is also really good in what I think is a very underwritten role. There is some wonderful choreography here, some beautiful arrangements. I do like Alicia Keys. As a writer, I've always described her songs as like rollerblading through the park in the beginning of June. And I felt that, especially when I saw this show first in November, I'm like, this is a cold ass November day. And yet I feel like I'm rollerblading through Central park on June 7th. And I still feel that way watching this show. They do a good job with that while also, you know, beefing up the instrumentation. There is stuff in here that is good. This is not a disaster show. That book is a disaster. And not every number for me does land. The ones that land land hard. Which makes it even more frustrating when so many other things are so at sea. So that's why it is at number 24 and not 36, but it's also why it's at 24 and not number 12. Next up, number 23, Harmony. Did we have harmony? But that's just about all we have. Suddenly, A little harmony and the poverty's not so bad. Harmony. This show is another one based off of a true story. The life and careers of the Comedian Harmonists, a German boy band, essentially from the 1930s. And they were incredibly popular. They were extraordinarily popular. They were extraordinarily popular in Europe. They got somewhat famous here in America, but they all, you know, they sang in German, so it's hard for that to really translate to English speaking listeners. But their career died out and they became extremely forgotten. And, you know, that's something that always interested Barry Manilow, who wrote the score for this with Bruce Sussman, a longtime collaborator of his. And Bruce wrote the book for this. And this is a show that has been kicking around for 25 years. This show has been around for so long that Patrick Wilson was one of the original Harmonists in the, I think, the first production that was, I want to say, in Atlanta, but don't quote me on that. And, you know, Rebecca Luke was in this, I think, with Danny Burstein. And Danny Burstein, God bless him, is not a boy band age anymore. So that's how long the show has been around. And it finally made it to Broadway after a relatively well received Off Broadway run at the Yiddish theater. And the Broadway production was not very well received. This was another one like how to Dance in Ohio that was told, really sweet intentions. We're not pleased with your execution. And I get that. This is a show for me that, you know, on the one hand, there are some wonderful compositions from Barry Manilow. I think the orchestrations on Broadway were terrible and made it sound like a CD rom. So anything that was meant to sound epic just sounded chintzy. But also a lot of the songs that people point to, things like the song that Daniel sings to Sierra Boggess, something like Every other Day. Each and every day, something like that. It's this big love song he sings to her. And it's a. It's a very lovely song that sung 30 minutes into act one for two characters that we've only seen together once before. This scene, they had one scene sort of in the first 10 minutes of the show. First 10, 15 minutes, and then we don't see them again together for 10 minutes. And in their very second scene, she's like, I can't marry you because the world. And you're Jewish and what of. And the hate. And he goes, oh, every other day. This. No, it's. I don't. It's, it's, it's. It's not quite Singing if I loved you'd so soon. Because it's different. Because again, it's the lyrics. But I don't know, it's like. It's like. It's like Magnolia and Gaylord and Showboat singing you are loved immediately after make believe. Except you don't give the make believe. It's. You give Magnolia and Gaylord one scene being like, hey, love you, and then in the next scene they're singing you are love. It's not enough time. And that's sort of the problem with harmony in general, is we've got all of these members of the. Of the group. We have Sierra Bogges and Julie Benko, plus we have Chip Zion coming in as our narrator and central force of the show because he is older. Daniel, the character's name is Rabbi, and he is telling us the story of the group, of being in the group and giving insight to each character and the context of the era. Because it's the early 1930s in Germany. So of course, like the Nazis are starting to happen. And they want to imply that the band broke up because members died because of the Holocaust, because the Nazis were too much of a threat. Ultimately, what happened was they were very successful for a couple of years. They spoke out against Hitler while he was rising to power. And because of that, yes, the Nazis did basically force them to break up and did their darndest to erase their legacy. All the movies they made, any of their records, but all of the members survived World War II. Sierra Bagges also survives World War II. And the only character in Harmony that dies in World War II is Julie Banko, who plays the wife of one of the boys in the band, Chopin, played by Blake Roman. And as it turns out, Julie Benko's character is fictional. She is a composite of, I think, three different wives of Chopin. And I believe all of them survived, or if one passed, you know, Julie Benko's not based on that one wife, she's based on three. So she is a fictional character in the show and she is the one that dies, similar to Lempicka. You know, Amber Ammon. We never find out what happens to her in World War II. And they sort of say, like, oh, anything could have happened. She could have survived, she could have died. But also, Amberman's character isn't totally real. She is based off of a real figure that we know nothing about other than she was born in a whorehouse. We don't even know for a fact that she had a relationship with Lempicka. And if she Did. We don't know if it lasted as long as the show said that she had as much of an influence on her life. Lempicka had many lovers, but they make it that she has this love triangle between Amber Amon and Andrew Simonsky. And that's just, you know, that is fucking with history. So that way you can make the story you want to make, which at that point just write a different story. And Jesse Green talked about this in his review of like, it gave him the heebie jeebies. And it gives me the heebie jeebies to make up characters in a real story that are the ones that perish because none of the real life characters in your story perished in the Holocaust. And you need someone to perish because that's what we come to expect from these stories. And it just, it rubs me the wrong way. On the bright side, all of the comedian harmonists were very talented, very handsome. They all looked very good in their tuxedos. They performed well together. I didn't find any of their numbers particularly funny, but, you know, comedy is subjective. Warren Carlisle did do some of his better choreography in this. I was a big fan of Carlisle's work on Finian's Rainbow. I liked most of his work in the Follies revival. I hated his Lucy and Jesse, but I liked other things he did. And then he's been very hit and miss for me ever since. I did not like his work in Music man because that was just constant twirling. I liked his work in After Midnight. I was semi on his work for hello Dolly mostly because the stuff I liked the most was the stuff that was just Gower Champions, but this, he actually did some good stuff. He had some very inventive staging, some inventive choreography. But, you know, choreographers these days keep on keeping on, and they do often, too much, too often. And for every beautiful stage picture that he made, there was one that did not work. The set, which was sort of like a mirrored black box with lights. It was designed for three specific moments and in those moments it looked gorgeous. And then every other time it did not look very good. And that was a shame. But I do know that the show has its fans and you can keep being a fan if that's your jibe. Alright, next up, number 22, spam a lot. The only thing I'll really say about this show, Spamalon has never really been my musical. I enjoyed it fine in 2005 with the original cast, and then I saw it about a year and a half later. With some replacements. Marin Maisie was the lady of the Lake at that point, I believe Jonathan Hattery was King Arthur. And, you know, I've always just felt that this show was Rocky Horror for straight people. I'm a fan of Monty Python. I love the original film and they, they write some clever new jokes for Spamalot. But, you know, this is a score that I think just exists. It's not very musical, it's not very funny. And everything that was working in this revival, it was stuff that was done from the original, like the coconut tap dancing and certain costume reveals and things like that. The set is even heavily inspired from the original. Now, granted, this was a Kennedy center last minute production when Kiss of the Spider Woman got cancelled and it moved to Broadway so quickly. And they were basically not. Basically, they were given no extra money and they were given no time to change anything. And so it was just get it done and get it fast. And on the upside of that, a lot of people enjoyed themselves at the show and for how quickly it was put together. It didn't look half assed in that respect. It was very well rehearsed and everything moved seamlessly, but it was rather cheap looking. It looked like a set designed to tour. And everything that worked for me was stuff that I had seen 19 years earlier. And that's fine. Josh Rhodes has done some wonderful work. I loved his stuff on Diorworld at Encores. And everyone in the cast I've seen be amazing before and some worked well for me here. Ethan Slater, Taran Killam. You know, I love Leslie Kritzer. I was not a fan of her lady of the Lake. And I guess what I'll say is having seen Sarah Ramirez in the original, what Sarah did really well. And I'm sure this was partly their own vibe backstage, but their lady of the Lake was an actress who was so above everything happening on stage and was so pissed off that they had to be there and, you know, demean themselves to be in this. And when they were allowed to unleash their voice, it was a powerhouse. It was rich, it was full and it filled the space. And Leslie can sing like nine notes higher than where that score goes, which is why she does all these option ups. Because as written, the final notes of like Diva's Lament doesn't sound impressive on Leslie's voice because she's like, whatever, it's a B, it's a B or C. And Leslie also kind of went more for camp and like one of the boys, let's all mug vibes And I'm sure that works for some people. It was not for me. I prefer her work in Beetlejuice and Legally Blonde and Robert Bridegroom. She was so much fun in Robert Bridegroom. I wish y' all could have seen her in that. But, yeah, no, Spamalot is not my musical. And this revival, all I'll say is it did not. It did not make me think less of the musical, but it did not sell me on it either. It was. It just this revival existed for me. That's number 22. Number 21, actually. It's your royal highness Doubt. You know, another heartbreak that I had wasn't seeing the show, but it was before I ever got to see this show. As some of you know, I adore Tyne Daly and I was so ready for her sister Aloysius in Doubt. And then some dumb illness, some bug had to wipe her out and take her out of the show. Luckily, we got Amy Ryan, who is awesome. Gone, baby, gone. The Office. She has a great recurring bit part in Broad City as a sort of elite mother of the Upper east side in New York City. That Alana, you know, whose kid Alanna babysits. And she's. She's just so funny. She's so funny. Alana, please don't get him a slice again. How was university? She's just. She's such fun. I love her. She did not really do it for me in this production. I found her, Aloysius, to be very reserved. Everything about this production for me was reserved. Whereas the original production was for weirdos going balls to the walls with drama, this production was a very placid and thought through and a very methodical production. I did not feel heat from anyone. I did not feel emotion. I saw emotion. I didn't feel it. You know what it did for me? Whereas Spamalot was a revival that I felt really nothing for, a show that I've never really felt nothing for. Doubt was a show that I've always kind of had animosity towards because it took away Tony's from the Pillow man that I thought the Pillow man deserved. And the movie did not help his case in any way. Watching it at the library, I went, oh, this can be really compelling. And then watching this revival, I thought, this is a great play. I think this production is perfectly ordinary, but this is a great play. So at the very least, this revival did that for me. I don't have any doots about doot. I had my doots about this production. Next up, number 22, people stranded at sea two people stranded are we, Are we? We are. Sometimes I feel like I'm a dozer in the desert with all this water everywhere with all this water everywhere. Days of wine and roses so, like Hell's Kitchen, this was another show that I had seen off Broadway and then saw it again on Broadway to give it a second chance. Despite the rumblings, I had heard that nothing had really changed. And this was another show that got, I would argue, more positive reviews off Broadway than Hell's Kitchen did, but not necessarily rave reviews. And then it opened on Broadway, mostly unchanged, with a couple of hydraulics added and, you know, maybe a couple of nips and tucks here, but relatively the same show. And I wouldn't say that the reviews across the board were rapturous. This is a masterpiece. But there were a good number of reviews that were positive off Broadway that became raves on Broadway and reviews that were mixed off Broadway that became positive on Broadway. And I can't tell you that my mind changed from off Broadway to on Broadway. I was so ready for this show. Days of Wine and Roses is based off of the movie starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, about a couple that meet and basically bond over drinking. And as their alcoholism plunges them deeper into the valley of the human condition, one of them is able to get out while the other one doesn't, or refuses to. I should say, at this point in the story, it's a very depressing movie, brilliantly acted by Lemon and Remick, and actually a very insightful and accurate depiction of alcoholism for 1961, if not necessarily a true understanding of the root of alcoholism as well as treating it. But how it depicts those characters in their addiction is actually very harrowing and realistic. And when I saw the announcement that that was being made into a musical starring Kelli o' Hara and Brian Darcy James. Yes. God. Sweet Smile of Success reunion with a score by Adam Gettel, a book by Craig Lucas. The People that Brought Us Light in the Piazza, one of the most beautiful musicals of the Last 50 Years, directed by Michael Greif, who at that point, I had not seen Hell's Kitchen yet. I had not seen Notebook, but I believe Notebook had just gone out of town to rapturous reviews in Chicago. And Gryff, you know, did rent in Great Gardens and Next Normal. He's a good director, and I was so ready. And I just kept being disappointed at the Atlantic when I watched felt like ideas of a musical, like when you see a concert of someone where they're like, I had this idea to adapt this thing into a musical. I'm gonna play you 12 of the songs that I've written. So this is the song that happens when X does this and you listen, you're like, oh, yeah, that's totally gonna slap on stage. Or like, okay, so this is when Y meets Z and they get into lmnop and you go, oh, okay. And you listen, you're like, ooh, okay. Beautiful. Fascinating. I wonder how that's going to work. It felt to me like Adam Gettle wrote this score on his own while watching the movie and then had to make Craig Lucas figure out how to write a book into all of it. Because these songs rarely flow in and out of dialogue. Half the time they are jarring in how unseamless they are. It is a choppy, choppy musical. Some beautiful moments. I would say the first 10 to 15 minutes are quite lovely. There are numbers that sound beautiful even if they stick out like a sore thumb in the scene in which they take place. There are some songs that aren't very beautiful that feel like a first draft, I must say. And Kelly and Brian are absolutely wonderful. They did not disappoint me. They gave truly well rounded human performances while also singing like goddamn dreams. This is the messiest I've seen Kelli o' Hara be in quite some time. She's never really done mess before. Light in the Piazza Pajama Game in South Pacific. There was horniness to her in those shows that I really appreciated. It really brought the heat up in those productions. There was a lack of composure that made sense for someone like Clara. She's got the mind of a child. And someone like Babe, who comes from the Midwest, and someone like Nelly Forbush, who comes from the south and talks about how uncultured she is. But after that, I felt like most of her roles had a composure to them that felt so reserved and a little icy, I gotta say. And it worked for some things like King and I. It didn't work for me in things like Kiss Me Kate or Carousel and Lincoln Center Philharmonic. And so it was great to see her in this because I felt like there was a relaxed nature to her performance and then a true ugliness to how raw she got in the second half. And of course, it goes without saying that Brian does the exact same thing. But Brian, I've never had that issue with. Brian has always, for me, been in it and has been able to pitch the temperature of his performance to the tone of any show he's in. So it's not like he's giving a performance in Days of Wine and Roses that he gave in Something Rotten or Hamilton, but the same things apply. He only comes off reserved or rigid in a show where he's meant to be. When I saw him do King George in the public production of Hamilton before Grafzas joined, he did that pompous rigidness so well. And in fact, I preferred him to Graf because he was so juxtaposed to everything else that was happening in the show. He felt like the old guard that was trying to hold on to his power and was so stuffy. And it was sort of the epitome of, okay, Boomer, and it was great. But he can also be a very anxious leading man in a comedy and Something Rotten. And he can be a broken human in Days of Wine and Roses. And so he and Kelly combined made this show worth seeing for me. That is why it is at number 20, because the two of them made this not a total mulligan. And there are moments in Gettle's score that are quite compelling. But overall, the thing was far too unfinished for me to place this really any higher than number 20. And you're going to get mad at me because there are going to be some shows here that are not nearly as artistically ambitious as Days of Wine and Roses, but congealed better for me. Even if they weren't necessarily impressive or good, they at least flowed more consistently. Days of Wine and Roses, I start with a 10 minute, not high, but, you know, pleased. And then after that, it just. It wasn't even up and down. It was mostly just placid sailing with a couple of nice bumps and a couple of sad valleys. All right, that was number 20. Next up, number 19. That draws me to see what you're seeing. Water for Elephants. Again, some of you are going to be very mad at me that this is one step above Days of Wine and Roses. And let me be very clear, I don't think this show is terribly good, but I do think it worked better than Days of Wine and Roses, starting with the fact that Jessica Stone and her design team really covered a lot of the speed bumps in this material. You know, I mentioned. I think I mentioned this in one of the prediction episodes, but I know I've definitely said this to people. Jessica Stone, for me, proved with Kimberly Akimbo that she can helm a well, a well written, well crafted musical and, you know, direct a perfect cast, an ensemble of actors that are all in the same show, that are catching each other serving the Material, you know, she can helm that. And if, you know, maybe the staging in Kimberly Akimbo isn't the elaborate staging you see in something like, you know, Water for Elephants, that's fine. Her direction of the material and of the actors and helping shape that piece is what for me earned her Tony nomination and earned her the right to do another show, Water for Elephants. Maybe the material itself didn't totally come into focus. I think she had complete control over tone of the show, but the material itself still needed another go round. In my opinion. The score needed two go rounds, but this was the show where she did inventive, elaborate staging, you know, not spectacle. Because circuses are never really about spectacle, they're about stunts. Especially a circus in the Great Depression that's suffering. They aren't going to have the most beautiful sets and costumes, but, you know, it's about illusion and what the eye doesn't see and making things seem more elaborate than they really are. And that's what her staging is. And it's almost Fosse esque in that respect. Like with Pippin, where it's like this. The stage becomes this box of imagination and you're more eager to see what the next stage picture she's going to make is and how. And when she does, you get very pleased because it surprises you almost every time. And she keeps things moving, which is wonderful. She's got a good sense of musicals and their tempo and their rhythm, which is good because a lot of directors don't. And she has a very solid cast. She's got Paula Alexander Nolan, who of course does a brilliant job with an okay role. Izzy Mikayla, once again an underwritten role that she makes almost a human being. And the only reason she doesn't fully succeed is because she is so undermined by the material. But she is a very special ingenue that we have working right now and I would love to see her get a true meaty bite into the apple kind of a role. There are some other people who are doing good jobs. Stan Brown as Camel is really great. Wade McCollum as Paul Alexander Nolan's right hand man is really compelling. He plays a. His character. He's basically just sort of Paul Alexander Nolan's butt boy. He not sexually just, you know, he does all the tasks and does all the things that Paul tells him to do. And he's always at his beck and call. And you watch how his character, while he is definitely broken a little bit mentally. He's almost like in a cult with Paul Alexander Nolan, like Nolan is a cult leader with, like, one congregate. Because everyone in the circus, they fall in line, but they know it's wrong. McCollum is just so beholden to him and so reliant on him. And you watch how that. You watch that monster kind of unleash from their relationship in the second act. And it's very. It's very interesting how that happens. There's a lot of good stuff in Water for Elephants. I wouldn't say that it is a good musical, but I think that a lot of its flaws are easily. They are easy to wipe away for the things about it that do work. Whereas Days of Wine and Roses, maybe, because my expectations were higher and because it was trying to go for something more complex that I think it ultimately fails at. Whereas Water for Elephants, I think, is trying to do an escapist musical with intelligence. I think it gets the escapism part right, if not necessarily the intelligence. But it's also not a total shit show. There are things about it that work and then things that don't. It's why it's at 19 and not 29, but it's also why it's at 19 and not 7, you know. All right, we're going to do one more, and then we're going to take one last break. So number 18, actually, it's your royal highness, Prayer for the French Republic, the second Broadway play by Josh Harmon, but not the first or second play by Josh Harmon. That didn't make any sense. What I mean is that this is not the second play of Josh Harmon's, but it is the second play of his to go to Broadway from Off Broadway. I saw Prayer for the French Republic at Manhattan Theater Club's Off Broadway theater in 2022, I think. March of 2022. And my friend and I were very hesitant about it because all we knew was that it was three and a. It was over three hours long, close to three and a half hours. And it dealt with anti Semitism in Paris and that it, you know, was written by Josh Harmon. That's all we knew. And we're like, oh, God, like Harmon wrote an over three hour play. Is this going to be the most about anti Semitism in Europe? Is this going to be the most insufferable thing ever? And. And we were actually surprised at how not insufferable it was. It was funny, it was smart, it was emotional for us, it flew by and had a lot to say about the world, about the rise of antisemitism, Something that we're Seeing right now that we're always going to see, unfortunately, and makes a lot of compelling arguments and has, you know, characters who are flawed, characters who are smart and yet just the worst characters who are on the right side of history, but you just never want to be around them, who say terrible things while also being right or are wrong while being kind or nice. And it flashes forward between, you know, 2015, 2016, and 1945. 46. The legacy of this one Jewish family in France and what it means to be Jewish, how to survive as a Jew, what it is to be proud as a Jew. Whether you can afford to be proud when the world is so against you. Fleeing to Israel is the answer. Oh, boy, you know, did that not age well for this show. Because in 2022, people's feelings on Israel were quite different than they are now. And it moved to Broadway, and I was very excited. And I have to say, I liked it less on Broadway for two reasons. One is there were some casting changes from off Broadway, and I don't think any of the casting changes for Broadway were improvements from off Broadway. Luckily, all the cast members that stayed from off Broadway delivered just as well on Broadway as they did off. The other thing is, even though the Friedman Theater is not a terribly large theater, it's about 600 seats, I want to say six to 700 seats. It is structured a bit spaciously. It's a very high theater. When you're in the mezzanine, you can feel a little far, far away. But even so, it is three times the size of its original theater. And with that enlargement, with that scale, with that distance. Some shows, I said this before, something like Kimberly Akimbo actually blossoms on a larger stage. Hamilton, clearly, when I saw it at the Public, I'm like, oh, you're waiting to go to Broadway. You're not fitting on the Newman right now. And they go to the Richard Rodgers, which is a larger stage, and it fits so fantastically. And by being given the chance to expand and blossom, they explode off of the stage. Something like Prayer for the French Republic. Actually. It doesn't get swallowed up, but by having that distance, you can tell now where the air is in the play. When I saw it off Broadway, I didn't think that it felt like 3 hours and 15 minutes at all. It flew by for me. And then I saw it on Broadway almost two years later, with some distance, larger space, some new cast members, and I thought, oh, I can see where some of the fat is. I can see where we can make this you know, 2 hours and 45 minutes, 2 act. Not 3 hours and 15 minute, 3 act. And of course, we say this as we head into hour two of the podcast, but this is. This is who we are today. And you guys have known this about me. I tend to speak long windedly and I joked earlier on my Instagram that I was going to make this three hours because we had 36 shows to cover and maybe it still will be. We are currently at number 18 and we've got, you know, we've been doing this for two hours, but who knows? Who's to say? But yeah, you know, this is. This was a good play. This was an intelligent play. A very important play. Important in quotation marks. But it wasn't quite as compelling as it was. I've been saying compelling a lot today. That means it's time for the commercial break and for me to have my soup so I can think of new words. But it wasn't as invigorating on Broadway as it was off Broadway. If I were ranking this show from its off Broadway run, this would be in the top 10 for sure. It's been knocked down a couple of pegs from the Broadway production. Betsy Item as the main character. She's the matriarch of the French family. She's absolutely fantastic. She was fantastic. She still is. And I'm so happy that she got a Tony nomination. So there we go. All right, that is number 18, Prayer for the French Republic. We will move to number 17 after this break. Billy, I beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah, you're an arrow caller. You're the top. You're a coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of. And we're back. Thank you for your patience again. I think some of you might be listening to this and me going like, wow, there are some shows that Matt put way lower than I expected, and there are some shows that I thought were going to be absolute at the bottom of the barrel. And he hasn't even gotten to them yet. I am shocked. Well, you know, that's life. But I will say I did look over the next 17 items and I was like, I feel like there are a couple here that might have been put a little higher than I meant to. And there were two that are a little lower now in the top 17. They are still in the top 17, but, you know, they were closer to 10 than I originally intended, so. Well, or say not 10. They were like closer to the top five. I'll say that than this one was actually a little closer to five than 10. Don't want to give anything away, but let's do a quick little review, shall we? So far we have at number 36, Once Upon a One More Time 35. The Shark is Broken 34. I Need that 33. Uncle Vanya 32. Mother Play 31. The Wiz 30. How to Dance in Ohio 29. The Great Gatsby 28. Back to the Future 27. Lempicka 26. The Cottage 25. Greyhouse 24. Hell's Kitchen 23. Harmony 22. Spamalot 21. Doubt 20. Days of Wine and Roses 19. Water for Elephants 18. Prayer for the French Republic which brings us to number 17. Don't say can't when you could say can. You only get one chance to be a star. Tomorrow is tonight. Gutenberg. This musical I only really knew from its Off Broadway incarnation a little bit. I never listened to it. I never watched it. But because of Christopher Fitzgerald and Jeremy Shamos, I had heard a lot of things from friends at the time who loved it. You know, who actually loved this musical in 2006, 2007, and of the. Of the podcast Podmother, if you will, Ali Gordon. She loved this show when we were in high school, and I never got into it. I truly just never listened to it. But this was my first experience with Gutenberg, and I was interested. I went in thinking it was just going to be kind of similar to Once Upon It One More Time, an SNL sketch that was going to run too long. And the truth of the matter is, is that, yes, that's very much what it is. Even though this is number 17 out of 36, we're not at the area yet where I'm talking about shows that I loved or even really liked. This is still very much the section of, like, I have things that I liked and things that I didn't. And with each number increasing, the things I liked are starting to get a little larger. But the things that I disliked are still very prominently there. You know, I would say 36 through. Yeah, I would say 36 through 24. Yeah. Up until. Up until Hell's Kitchen were shows that I just. Or 26, 36 through 25. Or. No, I take them back. I'm all over the place. 36 through 26. So once upon a One More Time through the Cottage. Those are all shows that I just, just did not like. And even if there were things about them I could pinpoint of, like, that was nice. That Was good. Overall, I just did not enjoy my time there. 25 gray house through hell's Kitchen, Harmony. Spamalot, Doubt, I would say were things that I didn't totally like, but I didn't dislike vehemently like it was. There were things that either you have something like Hell's Kitchen, where it's like you have things that I thought were genuinely good alongside things that made me mad, which evened out to a, I didn't care for this that much. And then you have something like Harmony, which, you know, very few moments that made me hate it. There are a couple of moments in Harmony that I think are kind of campy. But overall, I was just sort of watching it, seeing potential, not really get realized. I just kind of watched me going, this just isn't good. So, yeah, again, sort of disliked, but not with a vengeance. Spamalot, I've already said it's kind of a wash. Doubt also a wash. Made me realize I liked the play, didn't like the production. Then we have 20 through, I would say, or 20 and 19 days of wine and Roses and Water for Elephants, which are two shows on opposite ends of the spectrum where the aspiration for one is greater than the other, the execution for the other is better. And, you know, for all the things about the great Aspiration one, I can't rightfully say I enjoyed it or think it was terribly good. And I don't think that Water for Elephants is very good, but I enjoyed it more. Does that make sense? You know, it's. It's. I think, or I'd rather say I think that Water for Elephants is probably more successful at what it's trying to do than Days of Wine and Roses. Not by much, but enough to put it one over. Days of Wine and Roses and Prayer for the French Republic is on the lower side. I think partially because of my disappointment from the Off Broadway to Broadway transfer. It was. I thought. I thought it was so enticing Off Broadway. And then on Broadway, I felt it kind of sagged under the glow up that it had for Broadway, as well as the weight of its own quote, unquote importance. But I digress. We have 17 Gutenberg. I go in to see Gutenberg, and yes, it is too long. It is two hours with an intermission. It should be 90. No intermission with Andrew Reynolds and Josh Gad playing to, you know, musical theater wannabe writers. And the gag is they wrote a musical about Johann Gutenberg, who invented the printing press, but there's nothing really available about him online. So they Just make it all up. And they also are not very good musical theater writers, and they don't have the budget to do a real presentation. They blew all their money on renting out the theater, the James Earl Jones Theater that we're in. So they have to play all the parts, and they have all these different hats portraying all the different characters. And they have no set. They keep telling us what the sets are going to look like. You know, there's a running gag where Andrea Randalls keeps saying the roof is made of dirty thatch. And what I didn't expect from the show was that it was actually going to have a bit of heart, you know, despite all the gags of, you know, them being terrible writers, of them being woefully unresearched, of the show being unintentionally hilarious, they, the two characters and the theme of the show hold onto the idea of go for your dream, which sounds so gummy, right? It makes you just roll your eyes. And I think because the show itself is so silly and dumb, that when we do get a moment of heart, it's very welcome because it keeps the. The whole thing from seeming too trivial. And they give us enough insight into the characters that Rannells and Gad play. It's. It's Bud and something. I. I forget the two characters names. I just remember one. His name is Bud. But we get insight into who they are as people. We also get information about their lives, what brought them there, how they know each other. You know, we start to. Even though the show they wrote is bad, we start to kind of like them. And that's a really interesting, you know, conflict we as an audience have. It's. It's so easy to be turned off of someone when you see the thing that they love to do most in the world, and they're bad at it. You know, I may or may not. I've had friends be in stuff that I thought was bad. I've been very lucky that, you know, usually I see friends perform, and my friends are all very talented and they're all very smart. So even if I don't like the show they're in, I tend to usually like them. And if I don't like them, I can chalk it up to another issue because I've seen them be good at something else. But, you know, I did also kind of was seeing this actor for a minute, and I had. Before we had gotten together, I had seen him in a couple of things and didn't like him in those things. So when I Saw his show when we were kind of together, I was very nervous because I was like, oh God, is this. Is this gonna be a rinse and repeat? And then I gonna think differently of him now. And luckily I ended up liking him in the show. Although one wonders if that was my rose colored were in love glasses. Not. Not what was actually there. Although, you know, he got well reviewed for it. So I don't think I'm alone in it. But this is to say you watch something like Gutenberg and you watch the show be bad and you're like, oh God, like, how can I like these two guys? They're not good at what they want to do and yet you still like them. Part of it is that Andrew Reynolds and Josh Gad are likable guys. They have wonderful chemistry, but also the characters that they play are very sweet guys. They don't mean to make fun of musical theater. They think they've studied it brilliantly and they know all the things that make a winning musical. And in a way they're right. Like they put up a lot of this stuff that we see on a Broadway stage all the time. And we kind of laugh at ourselves for having liked it in the first place for another show. But for that other show it worked. It's just that with Gutenberg, it doesn't work. Now the downside of that kind of humor is you can only deal with that, you know, oh, it's so bad, it's funny for so long. Which is again why it shouldn't be two hours. It needs to be 90. I mean, I guess you could say it's technically speaking an hour and 45 because they have that intermission. But yeah, you could easily cut out 15 minutes. Also the score, you know, there's some decent music going on in it, but it's not a very funny score for a show that itself is very funny when it's not singing. You want the score to be funny and it's hard to do a funny score. Not many musicals have funny scores. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is one, but that's the only one I can think of at this very moment. I'm sure there are others, but that's the one that comes to mind. But yeah, Gutenberg, it's at a solid 17 out of 36 at this point. We are slightly above the halfway point. Things that I liked, things that I didn't. Ultimately, it is Andrew Reynolds and Josh Gad that hold the thing together. Alex Timbers also has done some very inventive staging with this. There's a lot of talk about the turntable that they hope to have for the real production that they have to sort of fake maneuver on stage. And all the work for the hats is very clever. There's a lot of cleverness to it. There's a lot of humor to it, a lot of heart to it. My ultimate objection is too long for the show. It is. And you know, ultimately in the space it's in. But, you know, it was a fun time. I wasn't mad that I saw it. Number 16, Cabba Ray Cabaret to its intimates, one might say I originally had this flipped with another show and then I ultimately decided to re flip it because of the two revivals that we're talking about now. And you'll know what the other revival is in literally a second. This is the better musical, the other one is the better production. But both productions have their issues. And I'll talk about the other one's issues in a second. But, you know, Cabaret is a masterpiece of musical theater. And it is, even when you fuck with is just so commanding and so magnificent that you can't. It's hard to walk away having an awful, awful time. And I know people who saw this production and had an awful, awful time. I did not, I surely didn't love it. Now, I have been very vocal on Instagram and on this podcast that everything I had seen from this revival of Cabaret that released itself to America because it started in London where it is still playing, everything I had seen, photos, videos, it made me roll my eyes. It just looked so. Try hard. Because ever since the Sam Mendes Rob Marshall production that blew up In America in 98, every production of Cabaret since then has tried to outdo that production. You know, we had the original with Hal Prince, which was a very seductive, traditional looking, I should say, musical that fucked with the fourth wall, that fucked with our own engagement with the. With the story and the characters being innocent bystanders or being active in the rise of the Nazis in the story. That's why, you know, we have the famous mirror that Prince put into the scenic design by Boris Aronson. And then you had the Bob Fosse movie, which didn't completely overhaul the show, but is a major departure from it and I would argue went grittier and similar to the Wiz that became the version that everyone knew because it was able to reach so many more people. So, you know, Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles became what people thought of as Sally Bowles. And people didn't know that, you know, Cliff is Actually American, not British, and his name is not Brian. And he actually has. Has a song. And there was an older couple and there was a pineapple song and all these things. And that's partly why Hal Prince did his Recreation revival in the late 80s on Broadway to, you know, remind people that he did it first. And this is what cabaret is. When you do cabaret, the show, you know, you don't get mein hair, and maybe this time you get the telephone song. And then Sam Mendes, you know, went even further in the early 90s at the Donmar Warehouse. And I'm bringing up the Mendes production specifically in connection to this one for a lot of reasons. And you'll understand why. The Mendes production premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, where Sam Mendes was the artistic director. SA Mendes or Mendes, I'm saying Mendes. Sam Mendes was the artistic director of Donwar Warehouse and Alan Cumming was the MC there. And the whole gist was. The entire space was the Kit Kat Club. We were all in the Kit Kat Club. It took Hal Prince and his concept of we are all, as an audience complicit in this story and took it a step further. It's not just a mirror now. You are at the tables. You are in the world. You are here with us. You. You've got nowhere to hide, and you are active and a willing participant now. And he went grittier. He took, you know, the Fosse mentality of make it more realistic, make it darker, make it smokier, make everyone, you know, a little less in shape and not as good of a dancer or a singer, unless you're Liz Minnelli. And he went further with that. And you can watch the video of the Donmar production, and what you see there is the seed of what became the Broadway version. You know, a lot of things, like the design is the same. Alan Cumming, the. The general idea of his MC is already in place, if not necessarily the entire aesthetic. But like a deconstructed tuxedo is what he's wearing with some skin showing. There are certain images that remain for the 90 gay Broadway production, but they. They redid the ending for Broadway. They also, you know, moved around some of the songs. The Mendes production cut a lot of the superfluous songs from the original. The Telephone song, Cliff's why Should I Wake Up Mies Kite, but they put in mine hair instead of Don't Tell Mama. And Mendes also went for the vein of Sally Bowles is not a talented performer. She's not a good singer. She's not Liza Minnelli. So Jane Horrocks, who some might know from the movie Little Voice, some might know her from Absolutely Fabulous. She played Sally Bowles. And Jane Horrocks actually is a solid singer. I wouldn't say she's an amazing singer, but she's a fine singer. And she purposefully went more shouty in the 93 Mendes Donmar production and did Sally Bowles cabaret. A bit of. As a meltdown, she was in a black dress, stationary at this mic, and does the whole thing in place, as opposed to Liza, who's very gay and all over the place. But of course, in the movie, Sally Bowles is singing the title song after she's had her abortion, whereas in the show she has it before she has the abortion. It's the song that makes her make up her mind. Whereas in the movie, with Liza, it's sort of not a breakdown so much as an official disconnect from reality. She has made the decision to not care and not look at it and put gauze over her eyes and. And it's, you know, viva la life. And with Jane Horrocks, and by extension, Natasha Richardson, it is, I am going to make this ultimate decision to terminate my pregnancy. Cut me off from any responsibility, cut me off from being with someone who cares about me. Even if, you know, we can't be a romantic couple because he is gay and we tried, but he is who he is. I don't want that. I would rather continue seeking my independence, and if that ends in my demise, so be it. And it's defined and it's scary now. When the production finally came to Broadway five years later, Rob Marshall signed on not only as choreographer, but as co director. And what those two had as a partnership is something that neither of them has ever really had again. They both had one really fantastic cinematic achievement with their debuts. Sam Mendes with American Beauty and Rob Marshall with Chicago. I don't think either one has really ever done a movie since that has matched their first movie. Mendes has had some good ones since then, if not, in my opinion, all great. I think that Revolutionary Road is bad freshman year of college acting, but whatever. Sam Mendes is a probably more visionary and intelligent director than Rob Marshall, but Rob Marshall understands the bones of musical theater and the temperature of musical theater in a way that Sam Mendes doesn't. And even though I really liked his Gypsy, you can sort of see it in his Gypsy. And Rob Marshall doesn't have the vision to do something like Cabaret on his own. He can't get to the dark spaces and recontextualize the script in the way that Mendes can. But Mendes also can't make the songs. He can't integrate them into the show the way that Marshall can. He can't make them build in the way that Marshall can. And all you have to do is just watch the opening to see that. You know, the opening Vilkmann in London is like a rough draft of what it became on Broadway, and what it became on Broadway is thanks to Marshall. You know, it. It extends into the introductions of all the cabaret girls, the cabaret boys, Sally Bowles, how, you know, the music is built in the dance numbers, how they do the final two minutes of the song. They, you know, move mein hair from Sally's introductory song to her second song, and they bring Don't Tell Mama back as the introductory song. And in the London production, they have her doing mine hair on a giant chair holding a rose, kind of like a little kid. But Marshall was like, what if we made that Don't Tell Mama because she's being a child about her mother, and that makes more sense. And we can make mine hair sexier and stompier and just all these wonderful things. And that's what made that revival so incredible, because it had the seediness that Mendes wanted, but it still gave musical theater lovers something to hold on to. You know, Natasha Richardson's Sally Bowles is still my favorite Sally Bowles for many reasons. And I'll go into acting later as I talk about this revival. Sorry, Long way to get to this revival. But, you know, her singing voice, she's not Liza Minnelli. She never was, and she knew she wasn't. But her voice was pleasant. It was on pitch. You were not. It wasn't harsh on the ears. In fact, when she sang maybe this time, it was really lovely. She could do the Smokey Lounge singer really well. But, you know, she had. She had a nice voice. It wasn't you. Like, you weren't gonna ever listen to her cover Don't I Know I Parade. But you weren't sitting there going, like, why is this gal in a musical? She sounded fine. And it was rough enough that you understood why Sally Bowles is working in the KitKat club. But also, she wasn't so incredible that you thought, oh, she's gonna get out in two seconds flat. You also were never worried necessarily, that the songs weren't gonna play like songs. They were an extension of Sally when they needed to be, like, in maybe this time or Cabaret. And when they were performance numbers, Natasha's Sally loved to perform, so she had a sensuality about her. She had a vivaciousness about her. The important thing about Sally Bowles when she's performing the Kit Kat Club numbers, is that when she's on stage, you cannot tell her that she is not the one. And it's that I don't give a fuckness. That confidence and that charisma that makes you want to watch her. They talk about it in the Berlin stories. I think it's called Goodbye to Berlin. When Isherwood's talking about Sally, when she's singing, he was like, she wasn't good. But there was such a blatant here I am quality about her that you couldn't help but watch. And not in a snickery kind of way. You just. Like, I'm. You were. You were drawn to her. And ultimately, what that revival is known for, the legacy it has thus left behind, is the seediness, the how far can we push the boundaries and revival since then? And any major production you see since then, you know, taps into that. They first of all use the version of the script that that revival used, because prior to Mendes Marshall, there was no version of Cabaret that had Mein Hair and Don't Tell Mama. And maybe this time that was the first rival to do that. They also made alterations to the script. So that way Cliff was much more of an overt homosexual. You know, in the original 60s production, he was just a very bland, straight dude. They. In the movie, he is bisexual. In the 80s revival, they tweaked it a bit to incorporate some homosexuality, but they still gave him that song, why Should I Wake Up? And then, oh, no, he had a new song in the 80s. They wrote him a new song because it was Greg Edelman. And they're like, let's write him a good song. But still, like, Cliff is not really a character who sings. He's the camera in the play I Am a Camera, which is based off of the Berlin stories of which Cabaret is adapted from. Sally Bowles is not the camera. Clifford is the camera. He is the one who is taking it all in, who's taking shots of everything, remembering everything, writing it all down. And he's at his worst as a writer. When Sally is making him get involved in everything, he has to separate in order to be productive. That's how writers kind of are. You know, you. You live to have the stories and to have the emotional experiences that you can then capture for your writing. But in order to write, you have to separate yourself at some point and fucking write it. And I bring. I bring up all this preamble as we talk about this cabaret, which is currently at number 16. And I had it a little higher originally, and I lowered it a couple of spaces. But because I did not hate this revival as much as I thought I would, I went in really thinking I was gonna hate it. I was supposed to go to a Wednesday matinee and they had to cancel. And I ended up, luckily, going to see the Thursday night show. And I was eager because the reviews were mixed to negative. Word of mouth has been all over the place. But everyone kept claiming how fantastic it was in London, even though everything I'd seen from London was bad, including the Olivier performance that I hated. I think it was Amy Lennox was the actress. So I watched this, and yes, the space is fantastic. They work really hard to disorient you when you enter. So if you've been to the August Wilson Theater before, it takes you a minute to realize exactly where you are in this space. Because you enter from the back alley and then essentially enter through house right. You know, house left is. Takes you out into the street, whereas house right is behind the theater. And, you know, yes, there are. There are bars. There's a pre show. The pre show doesn't really add anything other than, I guess, ambiance. But the show is a very different ambiance to the pre show. But it's a very impressive feat, the design. And then the opening number begins. It's a little slow. And Eddie is definitely very mannered. I don't like his performance at all, but I understand why some people do. He takes the whole impish, not realistic being a few steps too far, in my personal opinion. But I wasn't watching the opening number going like, oh, they've ruined it completely. I was watching, going, okay, I don't love this, but I don't hate it either. I was expecting the moment it began for me to hate it, and I wasn't hating it immediately. Things went more up and down as the night continued. I bring up the Mendez Marshall collaboration because the biggest gripe I have with this production is that I don't think anyone on the production team actually understands musicals. They don't understand how they work. They don't understand how they flow. They don't understand how they build, because none of the numbers in this production builds to anything. They don't. They're not staged or designed in a way to flow in and out of the scenes and then to build to a cathartic finish. The only reason they kind of do is because the songs, as written do that. And the songs are so fantastic. You can't really kill these songs. And there are a couple of times where I don't think that they were trying to, but there were a couple of times in this production where I felt like they almost did die. And the fact that they didn't was just because they were too good to die. The book scenes definitely have issues because on one hand you have Steven Skybell and Bebe Neuwirth as Frau Schneider and Herr Schultz doing beautiful work when they are on stage together, the audience is so happy. And Bebe's voice, she's never been a singer. She, you know, youth and gumption and having a semi okay instrument got her through Sweet Charity and Damn Yankees and Chicago, but as she's gotten older, that vibrato has wa. Ah, I didn't. Steven, of course, sounds beautiful. He's. He's a beautiful man. Their intimacy with each other, their sweetness with each other, though, is what really becomes the highlight of this production. Because everything else is so. I don't know how to say it. I mean, it's divisive. I know, because people have been at odds with their reactions to it. But, you know. So, for example, like, okay, we have Gayle Rankin as Sally, who I was very interested to see because I saw her play Fraulein Cost in the revival of the Mendes revival, which also. I think it's interesting that we have had four productions of Cabaret on Broadway prior to. To this one. The first was the Hal Prince revival. Sorry. The first was the Hal Prince original, which then had a Recreation revival with Joel Gray reprising his role as the mc. And then we had the Mendes Marshall production, which had a recreation revival in 2014 with Alan Cumming reprising his role as the MC. And now we've got this one, which makes me Wonder if in 12 years we're going to get a recreation of this one and Eddie Redmayne's gonna play the MC again. It just seems like this happens with Cabaret far too often. If I had a nickel for every time it happened, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice. But Gale, her. Sally. You know, I read the reviews, and some people have been saying, like, oh, she shouts through everything. So the moment Don't Tell Mama happened when it started, I was like, oh, God, here we go. And of course, like, the very first thing she does is she shouts, Mama thinks I'm living in a convent. And it made me laugh because she's dressed like a baby, essentially, so it was almost her whining for her mama. And then the rest of the song. Maybe she took the reviews into account, maybe she read them. She actually sang most of the song. There are a couple of moments where she, like, would do a meh, but overall it was as sung. But then she did mein hair. And that was absolutely screamed the entire way through. And was also done at a snail's pace. It wasn't like super slow and then built. It was just slow the entire time. And I do not know why. Maybe this time she actually sang it quite beautifully. I will say cabaret. She started it somewhat singing. And then by the second verse onwards, it was just all spoken and shouting. And it needed more. It needed more. That song carries you through the breakdown. You don't need to add more on top of it. And if you are a good actor, which Gale is, but you also need a good director there to hone you in. Because you don't know how it's coming across from the stage. You can only feel it. But you're blowing your wad way too soon if you are playing the breakdown by the second verse. But all of her book scenes, which are mostly played with Ado from Slave Play fame as Cliff, her Sally, it's almost like she's got borderline personality disorder. She's very up one second and very down the next. And it's not like, from scene to scene. It happens, like, 20 times per scene. And she's very aggressive and she's very defensive. And there were moments where she would add an edge to a line or an interaction that, you know, it just didn't make sense to me. Especially because, you know, throughout all of it, she has this kinship with Cliff. You know, they try lovers for a second. It obviously doesn't work out. But they do have an intimacy and a love for each other. And the moment they meet, you know, Ada really doesn't give Gale anything. He plays detached so much. And while, yes, Cliff is a camera, he is eager to see Berlin and experience Berlin. As I said, to write, you have to experience things before you write about them objectively. And Eidos, Cliff doesn't even feel like he's experiencing any of it. It's like he's already at a distance from the start. And so he doesn't engage with Gale, he doesn't entice her, he doesn't challenge her. There's a moment in their scene in her dressing room right after she's done Don Tam Altma and right before she does mein hair. And she's talking about Max. And he goes, oh, is that your lover or your husband? And she goes, no, he's just the man I'm sleeping with this week. I say, am I shocking you? And he says. I say, are you trying to shock me? And I believe her next line is something along the lines of, oh, you're wildly intuitive or something. And usually it's played as a meeting of the minds of a. Oh, you're. You know, you see. You see right through me. Which. Sorry, I just sounded like Minna from Veep. Selina, you see right through me. It's because we are closest sisters. And, you know, Gale doesn't play it that way. When he says, are you trying to shock me? She gets upset. And she, like, repeats it to her in her head, like, am I trying to shock you? Like, it's not. It's not an insult. He's calling your bluff. He sees that you're putting this on right now. And, you know, this is not the worst thing to be called out on. And in order for us to buy that you and Cliff have a connection that maybe you don't have with somebody else, enough of a connection that would get you fired from the Kit Kat Club, enough of a connection that you would move in with him the next day that you would sleep with him and even considering raising a child with him. We need to see that immediately because also it allows us to see just exactly. We lose when everything disintegrates, but we don't see any of that. They don't have a relationship of intimacy, not of friendship, not of romance, nothing. And it really dampens all of Sally's scenes. And I wonder if Ado was more of a scene partner, and maybe this is the production's decision to have him be so distanced all the time and closed off. But if Ada was more of a challenging seat partner to Gale, I wonder if her Sally bowls would be less erratic or, you know, or her erraticism would, you know, maybe not quite so extreme, because that's something that's. That turned off a lot of critics and some audiences is that her Sally is just so up and down, up and down in a way that just doesn't feel, you know, dramatic. It just feels. Feels like she's, as an actress, is bored and throwing spaghetti at the wall and not even caring if it sticks. And you have to create an arc for your character. We have a certain amount of time with you, and the scenes are there, the songs are there for a reason. You can't just put on your own storyline. It's there. And so I would see moments with Gale where I was like, I see what you're doing and I think that part works, but that doesn't. And that what you just did there actually undercuts what you're going to have to do in 20 minutes. And that would be frustrating when you would have something that you liked and then something that you didn't like. And then again when you have something like BB and Steven, who are selling everything they have with aplomb and everything around them is just chaotic. And a lot of imagery that the director Rebecca Frecknell has for, like, the rise of the Nazi Party and conforming and whatnot. It's. It's all clever. It's not moving, is the best way I would describe it. There is some gorgeous design in this show, as I said. The space is beautiful. The way they use the stage is cool. The stage is sort of a turntable that also can rise and fall. Like tears, I would say. And for the most part, that is used. Well, the one time I got angry about it, it's the, you know, just let the actor act shit that I want that so many directors refuse to do. When Bebe Neuorth is singing what would you'd do? Which is Frau Schneider's final song in Act 2, when she has broken up her engagement with Herrscholtz because she just knows that the Nazis are coming to power, despite what everyone else says, and she has to survive. And it's something she regrets, but it's something she feels like she has to do. And she sings, what would you do to Cliff and to Sally? And she has her bridge that ends in the elongated lyric, I, who am not at war with anyone, not anyone. And she holds this big, long note. It's a powerful moment. And the director decides that's a great moment, to have the stage rise with Bebe in the center of it. And I was angry because, first of all, when the stage rises like that, again, it's the bear stage, the second level and then the third level, and the walls around those tiers are, like, glittered in gold. Like gold eyes, I want to say, but. And it's been a minute, so my memory might be faulty, but there is a design on them. So even if it's in darkness, as they, like, try to make it do, it still gives off a golden hue around her, but on top of that, again, it's a staging effect that we don't need. And I'm like, Can we just let Bibi sell the song? Can we not have a wedding cake right now in the final third of this song? Can we just let BB sell it? So that pissed me off. But things like, you know, Sally falling through the floor at the end of Cabaret was a. Was. I thought that was a solid choice. There are other choices that I was less solid on. You know, the lighting is beautiful. The sound design is really incredible. The orchestrations work for the most part. And again, Steven and Bebe sell it. Natasha Diaz, friend of the pod, plays for all in cost. She is very good. Henry Gottfried plays God. What's his face? Ernst. And he's fine. You know, he definitely reads like Nazi youth. And he's very charming and friendly and sweet and innocent at the beginning. And of course the audience always gasps when that Nazi armband comes on. And that was. That's always a fun thing to watch. And this was also the first time I had seen Cabaret where if you could see her didn't get applause. And I appreciated that. And I think that's something the production actually does do well, is that they try to kill that applause as much as they can. So I'm sure if you've seen it on another night and it did get applause, I can't imagine it was like wild applause, which it did get when I saw it with Alan Cumming in 2014, which made me upset because it felt like everyone was so busy applauding the performer they forgot that they were applauding an anti Semitic song. Intentionally anti Semitic. And yeah, that's Cabaret at. It's at. Jesus Christ. I've been talking so much. That was at number 16. Moving on, number 15. Tommy. So this is the show that I said it's a worse show than Cabaret. Cabaret is a masterpiece. Tommy is. Is fine. This is a slightly better production. It's still a production I don't love very much. It is. I find the style to be unappealing. It's a color palette that I find quite unappetizing. It's like mostly black, white, gray. And then they choose piss yellow as their bold color. You know, speaking of American Beauty, from the last number, American Beauty uses red, bold, bright red as its distinguishing color. And Tommy chooses yellow as its identifier. And not canary yellow, not golden yellow. It's like a piss colored yellow. A dehydrated piss. I. I don't understand it. This production also. And you can hear more of my in depth thoughts on an earlier episode where I discussed Tommy as well as I believe the Outsiders and some Others. This is a vocally very powerful show. The music for Tommy has always been fantastic. The story has left some people confused and some people moved. I'm sort of halfway. I find the story odd, but fun until the last 10 minutes where for me it always just falls apart. Especially so in the stage musical where they, you know, just try to make it feel good, stand and sing. I hear the music and I just. I'm always left confused. The vocals are great. It is way over choreographed, you know, which is a theme for Broadway overall. The cast, the ensemble. This ensemble is the hardest working ensemble on Broadway. They sing their faces off, they dance their faces off, and they are making a million costume changes a second. The opening sequence alone, which is, if not a direct replica of what Des Makinoff did in the 90s. It is very close to it. There's a lot in there that is from the original, maybe with some fewer hydraulics. And obviously, you know, Wayne Cilento is not the choreographer this time. Lauren Lotaro is. So she puts her own spin on whenever there is movement. But there is a lot of the original staging in there and you just have to watch even a bootleg of the 90s version. The people I know who have loved this are either people who don't have much association with the show or have association with the album. The people I know who have not liked this have actually hated this are people who have a deep association with the 90s stage show. That production was very important to a lot of people. It was a watershed moment for Broadway. And I feel like this production is trying to capture that same energy and that same response while obviously trying to do new things, but not too many new things. They want to keep the bone structure, they want to keep the skeleton, they want to keep the. The moments that worked last time, but, you know, dress it up in new colors and maybe alter a dance move here, maybe cut that lyric there, which is not, you know, a crime. That's what a lot of revivals do. And when it works, it works. It's a little. It's easy to side eye when it's the same director as the original. You know, it's like when James Lapine did Into the woods and then when he did Falsettos, those who saw the original into the woods, those who saw the original Falsettos, most of those audiences were less accepting of the revivals. And I think a, it's because they were familiar with the original, but also by having the same director come back instead of going, oh, you're looking, you're a new director looking at this with fresh eyes, and you're not trying to force new ideas, you're just seeing what ideas come. You were going, oh, you've done this before. So you're looking at the material eagerly trying to think of opportunities to change it. And that's not really the most compelling argument for a revival, you know, but, you know, the thing moves, it does have energy. And if that's what you want from your Tommy, that is here in spades. It is one of the better projection heavy designs of the year. There are some images that are gorgeous than others that are very busy. I believe our own eyes, or my own eyes, is just, in my opinion, way too overstaged. Acid Queen is kind of clunkily staged. And I know some people are annoyed that there are no actual pinball machines. It's just, you know, the impression of one, which I suppose leans into this aesthetic that I found for the show, which was like simulation. The whole thing feels like it's an active simulation because, you know, we start this production in the future with everyone wearing these helmets that, you know, in the musical and in the album, Tommy makes his followers wear. So they can also be blind, deaf and dumb. But if you don't know that that's what it is and you're just watching it, it looks like they're all at an arcade doing a virtual reality game, which, honestly, they could be at that point. It could be that with those helmets, they then are in a simulation. But, yeah, Tommy is at number 15. Number 14, actually. It's your Royal Highness, Patriots, yet again. Another show that I've covered on the podcast earlier. I will be very brief on this one. Written by Peter Morgan, directed by Rupert Gould. Its only Tony nomination this year is for Michael Stuhlberg. And that's a shame because I thought Will Keane as Putin should have been nominated. But I guess there's some optics to nominating someone playing Vladimir Putin. But he. He does do a great job. It's. It's more annoying to me that Keane wasn't nominated and Jim Parsons was from other play. Once again, I will never sing that show's praises. Patriots, you know, it's at number 14 because it is very smart, it is very creative. There is some phenomenal acting happening by our, you know, two central men. I didn't find it terribly boring, but I did find it rather dry and very British. You know, it's intellectual. It's intellectual. It's not even intellectually stimulating. It's intellectually engaging. It's not emotionally stimulating at all. And I don't love that kind of theater, but I can appreciate that kind of theater. And this is, you know, it's well done and has a flair for style. But ultimately I walked out appreciating it and happy I saw it and no desire to ever see it again and not necessarily giving it a two thumbs up. This is the end of our sort of half yes, half no section because now we go into 13 and now we are in the I liked it overall section with a couple of caveats. So at number 13 I want my sisters to know I was here. I want my great granddaughter to know I was here. I want my students to know I was here. I want my niece to know I was here. I want your great granddaughter to know I was here. Stuffs again I talked about the show a bit on the podcast Suffs. The show is about the sufferest movement and our one of our main characters is Alice Paul, played by the writer of the show, Shana Taub. We also have Jenn Colella, Nikki M. James, Emily Skinner, My Lord, Hannah Cruz, Allie Bonino. This is a very what's rolling for? It's entertaining, it's smart, it's intelligent, and it is perhaps one of the few musicals this season that really feels like a musical, a rather successful one at that. Where the show fails for me is a Whereas a lot of craft went into the writing and the ensemble work of this show, I didn't feel there was a lot given to it on a design element. And I don't need Gatsby level sets, but I do need meticulous sets. I need a team to go, okay, if we only have $10 for what are the things we can buy with it and how can we use it overall for our show? And I did not feel that way with Suffs. It felt more like the set was out of necessity. Necessity. I was trying to make a pun out of that with set and assess necessity. No, I failed. The set design felt more like it was out of necessity than out of creativity. And sometimes with restrictions on your creativity, you actually can become more creative. Rachel Bloom has talked about this a lot with Crazy Ex Girlfriend, where when the pilot got dropped by Showtime and moved to the cw, the writers actually had to get more creative with their jokes and the storylines because there were certain things they couldn't say or do, whereas on cable you can say and do anything. And it pushed them to think outside the box. And I felt like with Suffs, the design team sort of like, ah, well, you know, this is the money we have. So we're going to give you a really nice wooden door and two really nice Corinthian columns. And I feel like they could have gone a little further than that. The other thing is that while the score I found to be very smart, very cheeky, which I appreciated. I understand. It wasn't really cheeky at all downtown. It was a little too self serious. The Broadway production is not. Some people have called this sort of like a Wikipedia page of a musical. And I wouldn't say that because they do try to delve into the emotions and the mental states of some of these characters. The problem is that by covering so much, those introspective moments are so fleeting and there are so many people going on in the show that it's hard to find people to latch onto. Nicky M. James character is a close one, but she. She's very in and out of the proceedings and it doesn't help that her first number is actually a good representation of another problem I have with this show, which is pandering. And that is a very tricky word to use openly about writing. Right. And especially for a show like Suffs, which is political, you know, it's a very. It has. It deals with a very political element and it's very relevant today. And you want it to. It seems that Shayna Taub and everyone involved with Suffs decided they wanted this story to be more of a rallying cry for the converted. And that's fine. It makes me feel a little bit like it's an easy shot. If you have 900 people who are already on board with your message, anything you then say promoting that message is going to be greeted with raucous applause. And you can say that you succeeded at that. That's fine. That was your goal. You did it. We did it, Joe. But I find that to be a kind of low bar, easy shot. I would much rather go see a show and learn something about myself and by challenging my own perspective and what I've thought and how I'm feeling than walk out feeling validated, I guess, but that doesn't even seem like the right word. But you can walk out of this show learning something about this movement, but you won't walk out learning anything about yourself or the people around you. And I wish that the show was willing to get a little bit of his hands dirty in the messiness of these women, of their perspectives, of, again, the idea of we're all fighting the same fight, but we all have our own blinders. And I think that could have been explored more because they touch on it a little bit in the sense of the old guard having to make way for the new guard, but less so about their own prejudices. Like, it's. It's. It's mentioned, it's implied, but it's fleeting. And I. And when you're. When you're tackling something so epic like this, you know, you. You have to choose your battles of what you're going to really spend time on. And I think I just wanted more of the emotional. I wanted more of the emotional meat to be cooked in this, whereas it was more sort of just seasoned so that way we could stay invested in the next story beat. And that just wasn't enough for me. But that doesn't take away from all the things that the show does do well. So I do have this confidently at number 13. All right, next up, number 12. I know that when my number's up, when I am called by God above, don't have my name inscribed into the stone. Just say, here lies love. Here love. Here lies love. This show was so heralded at the public. Many shows from the public here on this list, you know, we got Here Lies Love, Hell's Kitchen, Soufs, you know, Here Lies Love. Telling of the story of Imelda Marcos done to a disco beat in a giant club. You know what Cabaret does for the August Wilson Theater. This show did for the Broadway. They didn't really overhaul the lobbies or anything like that. They mostly just did a lot of pink lighting. But the theater itself got a total makeover, and it was so cool. The music was very catchy. The staging was inventive. The design was impeccable. For me, this was a marvel of technology, design and staging, but not a marvel of storytelling. You know, this was sort of like disco Evita. People have been trying to compare Lempicka to Evita, which I don't get outside of, you know, I keep saying, you know, I don't. That's something my sister does. I think I picked that up from her outside of the big sing of Lempicka and the. Maybe the design of one of Eden's outfits that they've been using a lot of her press with, like the box hat and the skirt suit. But Here Lies Love is much more of a Philippines Evita with Imelda Marcos and. And her passion for. For fashion and her dictator husband and her desire to be loved by the people. But Evita isn't a good musical. I've said this before. It's not Evita is an exciting musical when it's sung well, when it's staged well, when it's done with energy, you know, get Andrew Lloyd Webber the fuck away from it. Take out yout Must Love Me because that song has no place in the show. And take him away from the rehearsal room because he's just going to make all of those tempos a funeral dirge. I want that hot, hot tempo that Paul Gemignani gave it on Broadway. Pick up the speed, make it exciting, make it a fever dream almost. Because then you get caught up in the theatrics of the diva worship and you become complicit in her rise and. And Here Lies Love. Similar to how this cabaret takes Sam Mendes cabaret one step further in the audience's complicity with everything that's happening. Timbers kind of does the same thing with her Lies Love versus Evita. We are no longer just sitting in the audience watching the fever dream happen. We're now on the dance floor dancing along with her as she is selling us a nice disco beat. And it doesn't land with the emotional, political thud sounds dispiriting. I don't mean thud and like, oh, clunk. But, you know, it doesn't land politically and emotionally, I think, the way that they wanted to, or at least it didn't for me. It might have for some people. I found the ingenuity and creativity of the show to be very impressive. And it was in the final third where I went. I don't see this selling how they think it's selling. And that lack of emotional pull is what kind of keeps this out of the top 10 for me. It puts it above 15, 14, 13 because of so much the creativity. And again, the score is wonderful. And so many wonderful performances. And there was so much to keep you excited and engaged, but never moved. And I think 90% of the show isn't necessarily looking for you to be moved, but they do want you to stop and reflect at the end. And I can't tell you how many people did that at the end of Here Lies Love. I think too many people were too busy dancing anyhow. That's A solid number 12. A solid, confident number 12. Here lies Love, number 11, the Notebook. This is a quite solid musical, I find. It may not be as exciting as Here Lies Love. It may not be as sexy as other shows, but this is a perfectly fine musical. I saw this towards the end of March, right before they opened, and I had been through a desert of musicals at that point. I had seen quite a few none did it for me. And I thought I might be dead inside. And I was really, really, really hoping because of the wave of good press that this show came in on from Chicago, because word of mouth from previews was solid, but not as effusive as it was in Chicago. I was so nervous and so desperate for the show to be good, and I was happy that it was. I wonder if I had seen the Notebook now, after having seen a couple of other shows that are above it, if my liking of it would lessen, if I maybe would have noticed flaws sooner, or if they would have mattered to me more at the time. Because there are things about this show that detract from it. You know, the lyrics I've said already, Ingrid Michaelson's lyrics. Sometimes they're very specific and very well crafted. Other times they feel a little concept album. Y the music is always very beautiful. Sometimes it's a little interchangeable, but very well orchestrated, well arranged. It is sung fantastically by this cast. The book is solid. They flip between the ages of the different of the characters very well. They have it structured very well. If I had one major issue with the script, it was how they treat Allie's engagement in between Noah at the beginning of their courtship and Noah after he builds the house. One of the things I always enjoyed about the movie was that, you know, when Rachel McAdams thinks that she is that Noah is lost to her and she has to move on with her life, she starts taking up with James Marsden, who is a little castled right now, but his character is handsome, he's sweet, he's rich, he's kind and considerate, like he's not a dud. And it makes her choices all the harder because she does love Noah, but he gives her nothing but trouble. It's always drama with them. Whereas James Marsden, like, it's not so much that it's easy, but, like, it's grown up, it's smooth sailing. And that shouldn't be a bad thing. People thinking like, oh, well, if it's easy, then it's not love because you don't have to fight for him. Or what if you're two adults who hear each other out, anytime there's a disagreement, you don't have to throw dishes out of passion to know that it's love. And with Ryan gosling and Rachel McGowan, it's like, that's all it is. And ultimately that's what she chooses. And I guess it ends up working out for them. But in the musical, they make Ali's fiance a total dud. And just to make it. And it just makes it easier for her to choose Noah. And that's sort of the plight of musical theater, I guess, is, you know, these days where we want the easier choice. We want it to be simple for us to know who someone's going to choose and not feel bad about it, you know. But that's my biggest gripe with the book. I have other small tinklings here and there, some other minor characters that I think are sort of given a shit. No deal. But what makes this show really sore for me is Dorian Harewood and Marianne Plunkett as the older Allie and Noah. They are absolutely the central couple of the trio of Allie and Noah's because we have, you know, youngest Ally, middle Ally, oldest Ally, youngest Noah, middle Noah, oldest Noah. And we have, you know, John Cardoza and Ryan Vasquez as the other two Noahs, and then Joy woods and Jordan Tyson, I think. Yes. As the other allies. And they are all charming and sing beautifully and they have good chemistry. But Marianne and Dorian are the heart of this show. And Marianne, in particular is giving my favorite acting performance in a musical this season. She is absolutely my choice right now for that category. It'll probably go to Kelly, which will be the first time a Tony winning performance has been given to someone in a musical, in a musical that had closed in 25 years. First time for everything but Marianne's performance because her character has Alzheimer's. And you can sense the panic in her, the defensiveness in her, the anger in her when she's a child, when she's a ghost of a woman. And there are times when she just sits there and listens to the story or watches the characters. And as wonderful as the younger actors are, my eyes are always glued to Marianne. You know, she is. She plays such a haunted person so well, and you just want to hug her. You want the world for her. And that's so hard to do when you've got Joy woods belting her face off to have your attention go to Marianne. I'm just sitting at the piano bench. Plunkett, like that is. That is compelling to the nth degree. And then Dorian is a wonderful scene partner for her, and I'm glad that he was recognized as well. You know, this is a solid musical. I think I want it to be a little bit better. In retrospect, at the time, I was very pleased with it. It did make me cry. And I have it solidly at 11, you know. So here we go. Moving on. Number number 10, New York, New York. Is it ever Sing, they say no place that I'd rather be where else can you do a half a million things? I'll let a quarter to three when they play that music. Talk about one of the biggest surprises of this season, the heart of rock and roll, the Huey Lewis jukebox musical. I mentioned it already in a previous episode. This show is dumb, dumb, dumb, and fun, fun, fun. I am always a little wary of jukebox musicals. I'm always wary of shows that sell itself on we're just trying to be a good Time. Because those that are defending themselves as just a good time usually are poorly done. They're poorly written, poorly staged, poorly designed. And they use the goal of fun as an excuse for their sloppiness. And I've said it before, if you're going to be dumb, be smart about it. You know, don't make me do the work. You do the work for me so I can just enjoy the ride. And, you know, if you're going for lightness, if you're going to be a jukebox musical, if you're going to be an original story, keep it interesting. Keep surprising me. And there are a lot of times in Hard of Rock and Roll where they keep on surprising you. And it was very fun to see. The highlight, of course, is the Act 2 dream sequence where Mackenzie Kurtz imagines what her life would be if she were to marry Billy Harrigan. Tye, it is so funny, so clever. Babies dropping from the sky, a single white female reference. There's also some great stuff with Tamika Lawrence. Tamika and Billy should have been nominated for Tonys. There, I said it. I know who I would absolutely kick out for them, but they'll just have to settle for one of my fake Tony categories at the end of the month. I also think that this should have been nominated for best book. This is a stronger book than Water for Elephants. It's a stronger book than Suffs. It's definitely a stronger book than Hell's Kitchen. You know, it's. Just because it's silly doesn't mean it's not good. Especially when we see silliness done poorly rewarded or recognized. You know, I don't appreciate people going, well, it's artistic achievement might be wanting, but its artistic merit is, you know, exceptional. I'm like, I don't care what your goal is. If you miss the goal, you're still missing the goal. You know, I might have a little more respect for someone who tried to reach really high or Try, you know, aimed really high and didn't reach it. I might have a little more respect for that person shitting the bed than someone who was like, oh, you know, my goal was to, you know, put my foot out of bed. And I missed it by a mile. I'm like, how can you miss that? You're. There's your foot, there's the floor, you're on the bed. Do it. But if you aim low and hit it dead on, I'm still gonna say you hit it dead on. And that's what. What. That's what heart of rock and roll does. I wonder how it has fared since I saw it, because I saw it a couple of days before they froze the show. And even though they were never going to do the major changes, I want, like, cutting the intermission, cutting three songs from act two, trimming some more book scenes to make it a tight 100 minutes. That was never going to happen. There were still things they could have tightened scene wise. They could have done two different transitions with dialogue that I would have liked to help with story, continuity. But this is a fun cast, doing a good job, very well done arrangements. I don't really care for the set, but, you know, they did what they could to fill up the space. And I don't really care for the choreography. But that was sort of their attempt to have it both ways of being a campy tongue in cheek, girls want to have fun show and a big Broadway musical. And I think they succeed more often than they don't in this one, which is why it is at my confident number 10. Number 9. Pick yourself a road. Get to know the countryside soon enough. You're merrily, merrily practicing dreams. Dreams that will explode. Okay, some of you might be a little annoyed that I have Merrily We Roll along at number nine and not in the top five. Hear me out. I love the score for Merrily We Roll Along. I always have. I think that music is brilliant. Those lyrics are incredible. There are some songs that make me cry every time. Watching Bernadette Peter sing Not a Day Goes by in concert makes me cry every time. I have a very deep relationship to the song Our Time. Take a shot, everybody. It's related to Staged Row Manor. Stagedoor Manor has a traditional cabaret every summer. So it means Stage Door has three sessions. Each session is three weeks. And every three weeks, you know, it's a new turnaround of shows. What is consistent is what is called the Our Time Cabaret. And it is billed essentially as a master class of musical theater. And the two things about Our Time Cabaret that I like, love are one, it has an opening number that was arranged by Jeanine Tesori. Before she was Broadway's Jeanine Tesori, she was a counselor and music director at Stagedoor Manor, and she arranged this opening. But the finale of the Our Time Cabaret is, you guessed it, our Time from Merrily We Roll Along. And the thing about nostalgia with memories, when it's, you know, when it's the good memory, you're thinking of a happy, safe, warm memory. When you can tie that into some kind of art, a movie, a painting, a song, that item will always have a bit of significance for you that something else won't, even if something is maybe objectively better or more well known. And it can mean something powerful to a lot of other people. But, you know, the song Our Time has a very special meaning to me as it does to anybody who was in the Our Time Cabaret and liked their time in the Our Time Cabaret, I should say, because not everyone liked their. Their times at stage door. Not everyone liked their times being in the Our Time Cabaret. All that said, our time and not a day goes by don't make me cry When I see Merrily We Roll along and I've seen Merrily We Roll along four times now. I saw a production in college. I saw a production, I want to say, like 2015, 2016. And then I saw this revival twice. I saw it in February, and everyone was in except for Lindsay. It was Jameela, her understudy, who went on, who was fantastic. And then I really wanted to see Lindsay before the Tonys. And about a month ago, I think I talked about this on the pod. Yeah, about a month ago, TDF had tickets up because Daniel Radcliffe was going to be out for those two days. It was already a scheduled absence. He was going to be out for the Wednesday matinee and evening. And I was like, well, I don't want to be cynical about this, but I doubt Lindsay's gonna call out if Daniel will be out. So I'll go to the matinee. And I did, and he was out and she was in. So I've seen everyone now in the show, and what this production does well is the camaraderie of Frank, Mary and Charlie, you understand, why they're together, why they put up with each other and all of their bullshit for so long, what breaks them, you know, all of that. The show also does a pretty good job of the time travel going backwards. The show does not solve the continuity errors of the Script. It does not solve the Gussie problem, where with each incarnation of the material, Gussie gets more and more into a cartoon. And I don't think that the show necessarily solves the Beth problem either. Beth is a character who has to. Her entrance is to sing Not a Day Goes By. You know, we've never met her before. We've only heard about her in passing. And she has to come on and deliver 10 years worth of history and 10 years of heartbreak in three minutes. And it's no fault of Katie Rose Clark that she doesn't do it. I've never seen anyone be able to do it. That song is heartbreaking out of context. It's more heartbreaking in Act 2 when we realize that it's their vows and we watch Beth sing it along with them from afar because she loves Frank. But the show doesn't solve any of that for me. The show also has some very odd directing choices. I found some staging moments that I didn't understand. It's very big on bits and some of them work really well. Some of them don't. I think that Merrily also has a very simplistic and almost high school level view of success and compromise, and that is fine. I don't need a biting indictment of the art industry and the entertainment industry for this show. It's. I can get that from other pieces, and believe me, there are other pieces. I don't think the show necessarily is all that cathartic. Maybe for some people, it never is. For me, I'm more appreciative of the ambition of the show. And I love the score out of context. That is sort of where I'm at with Merrily. We have J. Groff as Frank, who is very charming and very suave and I think makes that role work better than most. I wish that there was a little more. Not masculinity, but more of a lothario element to his Frank. Is that the right word? I'm trying to think of. I don't find that Grof has much chemistry with his romantic partners in the show. I honestly think that the person he has the most chemistry with is Daniel Radcliffe. Like their, their friendship and the intimacy that they have with each other is just like, off the charts. And I didn't realize how solid Daniel was until I saw his understudy. Not that his understudy was bad, but I. I was watching how the show worked without Daniel, and it does work, but with Daniel, there is an element that. That spices it up a bit. And yeah, I think that this is a very strong revival of a troubled show that will never work. I think that its greatness has been a little exaggerated. But, you know, because to talk about this revival that they like fixed it implies that you can do this production with other actors and it will totally work. And I don't think that's true. I think that there's. There are enough bumps in this revival for me to keep it out of the top 10 revivals, not only of all time, but probably of this century. But I think this is a strong revival. I do. I do. And I encourage people to see it because I don't know if we're going to see Merrily on Broadway again. Certainly not with this degree of scale. So, yeah, I encourage people to see it. I will also say Rich and Happy is a better song than that, Frank. And I make no apologies for that. So bye. All right, next up, number eight, the Outsiders. I don't know much more what I can say about this show that I haven't said in my previous episode, other than, you know, it was. I was very surprised how much I enjoyed this one. It still has its bumps. The lyrics are not great. The opening number is fine. There's a bit too much use of narration, although not nearly as bad as Hell's Kitchen or Harmony, believe me. But the theatricality that this show has, more so than Water for Elephants, which, again, as I said, uses its flair to cover up a lot of the weaknesses of the material. I think the Outsiders is a stronger musical than Water for Elephants, by far. And I also think that the heat of its theatrical flair brings it up another 10 degrees. This is not the best musical of the last couple of years. This isn't even. This is still like, number two in musicals for me, of the season or, you know, eligible musicals. But it is really exciting. A lot of it is. The Rumble, in particular, is so phenomenally done. And if I didn't cry at the end, that's not a dig at them. I cried at the Notebook sort of against my will. I didn't mean to. It just sort of happened. That's like. It's a compulsive response. You shouldn't measure something by how much you cried or how much you laughed or how much you applauded. It's, you know, it's just what's working for you in the moment. And a lot of the Outsiders worked for me. It took about 5ish minutes to warm up. But truly, it was after the opening number that I started to really get into it. And it maybe doesn't have the dramatic motor of other musicals that I would personally like, but it's almost never boring. And when it works, it fucking soars. So there we go. Number eight, the Outsiders. Okay, Number seven, a customer, Pearly Victorious. Once again, another delightful surprise this season. I don't know how many of you were on the boards at the beginning, you know, around like August, September, but Pearly Victorious was originally a bit of a joke because first of all, Leslie Odom Jr. Did not exactly leave Broadway on the best of terms. He was famously a giant dick. When he left Hamilton, he went off to Hollywood, got an Oscar nomination for one night in Miami, did a lot of voice over work, Central park and Murder on the Orient Express. Basically took that Tony win and that Hamilton clout and ran off to Hollywood as fast as he could and booked as many things as he could, not knowing how long it was gonna last him. And when he came back with Pearly Victorious, there was a little bit of schadenfreude within the community of people wanting it to not be good of it, of people wanting it to fail. Mostly because it was riding off of the name recognition and box office power of Leslie. This was gonna be the thing that proved whether Leslie was actually a draw outside of Hamilton. Because everything he's done in Hollywood, he was never the star of. He was always part of an ensemble. And if he was somewhat of a lead, he was like a co lead with three other far more famous people. People. But he is a name. And with Broadway, you know, it's something like Pearly Victorious. It's a thousand people a night. And if you have a million people who know who you are and half a million people are maybe willing to pay tickets to see you in something that could possibly sell out 130 performance run at a thousand seat theater. And the short answer is that it did not do that. It did not become an instant sellout. But what it did become was one of the best reviewed shows of the year, and rightfully so. This is a revival of a play from the 60s that was, you know, like a minor hit and then turned into a musical in 1970 simply called Pearly and was a bigger hit there. Most people just know it as the musical. Now that was another dig against this revival where people going, well, why aren't they just doing the musical? Especially if it's Leslie. And it ended up being surprisingly delightful. You know, this play I think is very well written for what is a farce of a very tricky subject matter, which is, you know, it's Plantation humor, but from the perspective of a black writer. And it covers characters who are doing the wrong thing for the right reasons and. And bumbling racist white slave owners, or, I guess, former slave owners, I should say. It's post slavery. And then you also do have characters who are white saviors, but not framed as the sacrifice they do for nobility, but rather the games they play, similar to their black counterparts doing the wrong thing for the right reason and understanding that they are doing it with their privilege in mind. They are using their privilege for good. And it's also just fucking funny. And Leslie was very commanding on stage. Carrie Young, which is the Melbourne Moore role in the musical version, so fantastic having a whole scene where she is trying to put one over on Jo Sanders and selling it very. It's a very hammy performance, except for the last third, where she has to be a little more vulnerable because she's nervous for the fate of her and Pearly. But for most of the show, it's more of a comedic performance, and she is very, very funny in the role. If I had one complaint, two complaints, I guess, you know, this set design, it was sort of fine. It has a beautiful reveal where everything pulls out and we realize we're now in a church. And that was really fantastic. But my other only real complaint is that Kenny Leon is a director. He's really good at casting good actors for the right roles and then letting them find their footing and honing that. But he's not necessarily a visionary or inventive director. And Pearly Victorious is a romp. It's a farce. And Kenny's not really a director who can do slapstick. You know, you need someone who can choreograph these misunderstandings and these almost fights and these near fights, and he can't really do that. And there were a couple of moments in Pearly Victorious where that was needed, and he didn't do a great job with them, but that didn't take away from the rest of the show. This was still very much a pleasing night, so we're happy to have that. So that was number seven with Pearly Victorious. Number six, Illinois. This is my favorite musical experience of the season. This was a dance piece created by Justin Peck, based off of the album by Sufjan Stevens. I did not know this album. I only really knew Sufjan from Call Me by youy Name because I am basic. And I made it a point not to listen to this score. Before I went into the theater, the only people I knew, a few people who had seen this when it was at the Armory earlier this year, before it, you know, made the immediate transfer to Broadway. And all the word of mouth from the Armory was great. My own mother saw it and she was like, oh my God, Matt, you gotta see it. And I was like, yeah, okay, sure, Jan. And I go to see it. My only really negative is that I was sitting behind a bunch of, you know, 12 year old girls who were sitting behind their mothers. And the 12 year old girls could not be bothered with the show. They were talking to each other the entire time, texting the entire time. Really wanted to spit gum in all of their hair, but I didn't have enough gum on me. So I did my best to just sort of focus on the show. And luckily that was pretty easy to do because I have been very open. I have not liked Justin Peck's choreography in the past, hated his carousel mid on his west side Story. The dance he did for this was beautiful. And the aura of this show, the lighting, the sound, the orchestrations, all beautifully put together. And most importantly, I was finally introduced to this work by Sufjan, which is absolutely gorgeous. I mean, I cannot stop thinking about and listening to the predatory WASP of the Palisades is out to get us that song. I mean, some pieces of music just get under your skin and get into your heart and we talk about. Crying is not a metric for something success. But I don't think I've been able to listen to that song once without getting a tear or two in my eye. It starts off deceptively intimate and indie folk music like. But then it takes a wild turn into this epic sound that feels like young love, which is. No, that's. The song is about. About young love. Young queer love too. And you know, it's so free and flowing and it makes you just want to run. And then when you get to the end, as it sort of quiets down and simplifies the. The words in this song just. And part of it is my own personal experience. Like, I don't. I know I've alluded to him a little bit today in this episode, and I haven't spoken about him much in a few months because we're trying not to do that. But those of you who remember from the Torch Song trilogy episode with my mom, we talked about the guy I was involved with, who we will only refer to as Bub. And he's been alluded to in a few episodes of problematic. He was alluded to in Carousel. He was alluded to in Promises, Promises. I think it was alluded to in maybe even downstate. I don't know, something either downstate or the prom. One of the two. And, you know, there's a lyric that Sufian has about, you know, because the whole song is being in love with his best friend, of he and his best friend being in love with each other. That is one of the recurring lines in the. In the middle of the song is the, we were in love. We were in love. And we get to the coda and he, you know, we only get little pieces of what happened after that. Because the whole point of the predatory wasp is it's both a physical wasp, but it's also a reminder of, you know, the obstacles in the way of their love. And I don't know much about Sufian's life. I did a little bit of reading afterwards, but a lot of people have described the predatory wasp as sort of a symbol of the church because Sufjan was raised Christian and raised in, I believe, the Midwest. And to be growing up in, I guess, the 70s, 80s, and exploring your sexuality with the person who matters the most to you and realizing that it's not just a phase. You have a deep connection and a love for each other, but the society in which you're being raised in is hovering over you and squandering that joy. And if you're lucky, you both make it out alive. More likely, one of you is going to succumb to the pressure and conform to what you know, from what we gather from. From Sufjan. Sufjan made it out. He still has a tricky relationship with God, but he's living his authentic life. But his friend is nowhere to be seen. He's got the lyric, my friend is gone he ran away. I can tell you I love him each day Though we have sparred, wrestled and raged I can tell you I love him each day and I got it. When I tell you. I sent this song to my friend Josh, who I met because of Bub, and he has a very complicated relationship with Bub as well. Josh and I were talking about that song afterwards because Josh, I sent it to, not knowing he was at work. And I didn't think he was gonna listen to it. Immediately. He texts me. Five minutes later, he's like, not me sobbing at my desk. And I was like, I know, I know. It's. It was just do yourself a favor and just listen to it. It's beautiful. The whole album is fantastic. And not all of it is, you know, heart wrenching music. And I wouldn't even say that predatory wasp is heart wrenching because it's not punishing, it's just he's so matter of fact about it. And you are given this high of this young love he and his friend have and the joy and the safety and then it gets pulled away. And you watch that on stage in Illinois and it's beautifully carried out by Ricky Obeyda and through Justin Peck's choreography and all the other performers. And there is a story. There's a structure to it with live vocals and it's, it's, it's maybe more heavy, more heavily reliant on dance than most musicals you would see not so much on book scenes in terms of dialogue, but there is a structure to it. There is a story to it, there are characters to it. The songs serve a purpose. The dance is an extension of the songs. So in my mind, this is a musical. It is. You know, if you only have very binary definitions for your dramatic works, maybe you wouldn't. I don't have that kind of feelings about shows any. You know, if something uses music for the majority of its time, not like a play with music where there are songs interspersed. I'm talking about an overwhelmingly musical story that is a musical to me. In the same way Les Mis is a musical to me, in the same way that ain't Misbehavin is a musical to me. I don't need it to be dialogue song, dialogue song. If you are using music and dance as your primary forms of storytelling, you are a musical and this is a musical and it's. I found it very lovely and I would like to see it again. Until then, I have the album number five appropriate. This show is, along with Cabaret, the most I paid for a theater ticket this season. Now, I have been very fortunate this year to see quite a few things for free. I also was very cunning and was able to get a lot of deals on shows. Of the 36 shows this Broadway season, I tallied it up, how much I spent divided by the number of shows. And I spent an average of $42 per show. That tells you how many shows I saw for 30, 40 and $50 and how many shows I saw for free. Because Cabaret and appropriate were both $150. That's not the most I've ever personally spent. The most I've ever personally spent was $1.99 on my fair lady the night before the Tony Awards. I've seen shows with family members and their tickets were more expensive because they wanted to sit in specific spaces. And I was along for the ride. But I try not to spend more than 200 if I can, because I just don't agree with that. But this was the first ticket I bought this year that was over $100. That was actually over. Over $70 at the time. I hadn't spent more than, I think 60 or $70 this season when I saw Appropriate in December. And I wanted to see it because the reviews were so fantastic. It was a hard ticket to get. And I. I heard it was a compelling drama. Compelling, again, the word that keeps coming back. And it was, you know, this is an engaging and very capturing piece that is cloaked in hundreds of years of toxic racism and prejudice. The. The story is of a family that is cleaning out the home of their patriarch, their father, who has died after years of dementia. And we have Sarah Paulson, who's been divorced. She's there with her kid, her brother Corey Stoll, and his wife, Natalie Gold, and their two kids and their third sibling. I forgot the actor's name, but their brother, who basically was run out of town 12, 15 years ago and has returned with Elle Fanning. Now it's someone Benning or Beatty. It's Warren Beatty and Annette Bening's daughter. Forget her name, though. But I saw it with Elle Fanning, this white girl who names herself River. And they show up and they're all trying to basically, like, get their piece of their father's financial pie while also having to sell all of his items, sell the house. You know, they all need the money and they want to sort of just be done with it. But Sarah Paulson's the only one who's trying to hold on to the memory of their father because it's all she really has to hold on to. And as they keep sort of boxing up the house, the more they uncover of their father's past. That is very troubling. And I don't want to give too much away, but the signs keep pointing towards his racism, his prejudice of the evil roots in his life that they keep denying, even when there is evidence of staring them straight in the face. And they all have their reasons for it. When it becomes clear that selling some of the more damning stuff would be financially important for them, Corey Stoll sort of changes his tune about their father. And Sarah Paulson never wants to believe ill of her father at all because she has good memories of him. And her life has kind of gone to shit now. And she doesn't want to let go of the love she had for her father and her and her Good feelings for him, because when she lets that go, then she basically has nothing left to tie her to this world. Not even her son, who she loves. But he's difficult, and, you know, she can recognize that poison in herself. She has a standoff with her two brothers at the end where she basically is like, we're going to get rid of all the rest of this stuff. We're gonna let this house die, and you and I are never gonna see each other again because you bring out the worst in me, and I don't want to be that person. And there is a finale to this play with no words whatsoever, just lighting and scenic cues that is so impressive. It is such a coup de theatre that I was flabbergasted. You know, all of the play mostly is just a family drama that is, you know, speaking on a larger issue. But ultimately, what you are watching is a bunch of family members fighting. And then the metaphor of the house and what it represents for them and their family history is played out in the last five minutes of the show in a way you didn't expect it to. And it is stunning. It's just good theater. It was just good, good theater and I loved it. Yes. We are now in the part of the list. I would say seven. Onwards. Pearly. Victorious. Onwards. We are in the loved it category. We went from really liking it to loving it. Next up. So this is number five. Next up, number four. We got Mary Jane. Mary Jane starring Rachel McAdams at Manhattan Theatre Club. Some of you might have listened to my interview with Susan Porfar, who is in the cast of Mary Jane by Amy Herzog. And we spoke a bit about the story and her character and what I loved about it and what they all do with this show. This is a very heartbreaking piece. It is not punishing. Nobody in this makes it difficult to watch. It is Rachel McAdams playing the title role of a single mother with a child with a debilitating illness. I believe they say it at one point in a very hurried 911 call. And I didn't catch it, so I apologize. But it's not listed anywhere in any reviews or information on the show. So I don't think Herzog necessarily wants us to get the full scale of what. Of what is going on with Rachel's child. Just that he's on a ventilator half the time. He has to be in a wheelchair all the time. He's got all of these needs, and he's almost three and it's a lot. And she's Got a very good handle on it. But there are good days and bad days and she tries. And she has people in her corner helping her. She. There are people not in her corner or people who make it difficult. We never get to see them. All of the troubles are off stage. They are discussed and we see their impact on her on stage, but we don't see them. And the brilliance of this piece is how you can keep watching the hard times and the suffering, and you don't feel like you're intruding, you don't feel like you are, you know, suffering yourself. You hurt for that, for the character of Mary Jane, you like her, you want her to succeed, you want Alex to get better. And there is a sadness in knowing that he never will. You know, he can hold on for a while, he's held on this long, but he's not gonna make it in the end. And the heartbreak will be just as bad, but there will also be a guilt about the release of that suffering, you know, and I think Jesse Green talked about this in his review as well, of like, also the other sense of loss in addition to a mother without her child, but also like a mother not sure what her purpose is anymore. Because for all of this time of Alex's life, she's basically had to give up everything to be his caretaker. She has help, thanks to a good health benefit system with her current boss, that she will eventually have to leave because she's had to take too many six days to take care of her son. But this has been sort of her life for so long. She had to put on hold her desire to be a teacher so she could take care of her son. And she has all these different conversations with all these different women, different points of their life, some who are going through a similar thing to her, some who are four years ahead of her, two years behind her, some who don't have kids, some who are teenagers or work at a hospital, doctors, nurses, the like. And it's all just very organic, intimate conversations. Some may be a little more heavy handed than others, but never in a way that makes you feel like you're being force fed. It. It all feels appropriate. And there's a wonderful scenic reveal that I won't spoil at the moment. There's a lot of humor to the show, what Rachel McAdams does. I know I talked about this with Susan, but I want to say it now because I've read some people talk about her performance, even the ones that like her, and they're not understanding what she does at the beginning, because everyone goes. I've read a few things where people went, oh, you know, Rachel starts a little rough, but she finds her footing about half an hour into the show. And I thought at first, too, then in the first scene that she was a little much and she wasn't maybe comfortable on stage. But as the show continued, her performance morphed. And it wasn't that she was getting more comfortable with the play. It was a specific take she had on the character of Mary Jane. Because the thing about Mary Jane is she is an apologizer. She is glass half full. She is always look on the bright side of life because she's had her depressive spells, she's had her hard times, but she's gotten this far and it's worked out. And she knows what an imposition Alex is on so many other people because he's got all these things tied up to him. He's expensive, he's loud, he. There's so much about him that people don't understand or people can't handle. And she gets that, and she apologizes. So that way she can, you know, be allowed to be in other people's spaces, despite the fact that this is the world and we should all be allowed in everyone's space. Not like private spaces, but you know what I mean? Like any public space, anyone should be allowed. And eventually that facade starts to wear off, and we see as Alex has a very bad spell that takes him to the hospital. Mary Jane really kind of starts to feel like she's crumbling, and she feels like no one's helping her, and she just feels so alone as everything's sort of going to pot. And you see a little bit of that darkness, the bad day, if you will. And you realize that in the first scene and somewhat in the second scene as well, Mary Jane is performing, not Rachel McAdams. She's being overly friendly and overly bouncy and making dumb small talk with the super of her building. And Brenda as the super. Obviously, she's perfectly at ease. She's comfortable. And her natural responses to Rachel are what make the scene work. Because Rachel is going so hard and Brenda is just not caring, then you're aware of the juxtaposition of their energies. And it's a performance she's doing. Mary Jane is always on when there are other people around because she has to apologize for her situation. She has to make people feel comfortable in her home, comfortable with Alex. And it's such an interesting and honestly brave decision because you risk alienating the audience or making Them feel, oh, no, she's not comfortable in this medium. And as the show continues, you see more of the real Mary Jane. Not that her friendliness isn't real, but the more people she's around, who she knows, the more comfortable she is. And then when she gets tired and you see actually how underneath that sunniness is a darkness. It's just a wonderful turnabout because then the final moments of the show are hopeful, with a major pang of sadness, but they are hopeful. And it's sort of like a blending, finally, of the two faces she's been putting up for the whole show. And it's a masterful performance, and I loved it, and I loved her, and I loved everything about it. Go see it if you can. It is stunning. Number three, Ja Ja's African Hair Braiding. Again. This might have been the number one surprise of the season for me. More so than Pearly Victorious, more so than the Outsiders or Heart of Rock and Roll, Jaja's African Hair Braiding is. You know, it's 90 minutes. This was the Manhattan Theater Club. It was the first show of the season. I'm going to butcher her name. It's Jocelyn Bio. She wrote. She's the playwright. Sorry, she's the playwright of Jaja's African Hair Braiding. And it is basically 24 hours of this hair salon in Harlem. And it is just day in the life. You know, it's like kind of Steel Magnolius meets, I don't know, Steel Magnolias meets Harlem. So Jocelyn also write all the Way by the Road. By the Way also wrote Schoolgirls or the African Mean Girls play, which I believe was at McCarter four or five years ago. And, you know, Ja, Jaws, it's. It's all such that a lot happens. Again, we're more just sort of spending time with all of these women, with their different clients, with their different personal dramas. We learn more about their lives from the countries they immigrated from. Believe Trinidad is one. Possibly another one was Ghana. I should look it up again because I haven't read the script since I've seen it, and I saw it in November. So I'm really just going off of that one night that I saw it. But this was a brilliant ensemble of women who were fully formed characters working off each other in a magnificent way. This show was funny, it was light. You wanted to spend as much time with these characters as possible. Everything they said and did, you were on the edge of your seat. Not because it was tense and not because it was dramatic, but because you Were just so happy to be there. And there is a dramatic turn in the final act. Jah Ja, the title role. It's her hair salon, and her daughter's running it while she's saving up to go to school. And Jaja's not there because she's getting ready for her wedding for a man that she met six, nine months earlier. And she shows up in her wedding dress to get ready to go to the courthouse, and they have a lovely little party, and she heads off. And then about 20 minutes later, her daughter is informed that Jaja was actually captured at the courthouse. Because the man, I think his name is Steven, that she was going to marry, turns out worked for icu, And Jaja was an illegal immigrant, as are many of the women in the hair salon. And as the play comes to an end, her daughter, you know, is rightfully freaking out. And one of the women in hair salon tells her, like, no, no, we're gonna. We're gonna fight this. It's gonna take all of you, and it's gonna take all of me. But you're not alone, and we're gonna make this happen. And I've known a lot of people who said that the final 10 minutes of the show feels like a different play, and I get that. I kind of feel the same way myself. It's not a bad new play that we've leaned into. It's just a bit of a heel turn from everything we've gotten. But in a way, you could argue that that's on purpose, because for these women, they don't get to just live lived in lives every day. There's always the fear that it's going to turn on them. And then, of course, when they have their guard down, that's when it does. For all of the opportunities that they get in America, for as much as life is probably better here for them than it is in their home country, there is a fear that they have here that they don't have in their home country that they let go of for 90 minutes. And it's in the last five that it gets to them. And you realize that, you know, despite what, like what Sub says, you're always fighting. And in Jar Jar's like, yeah, they're always fighting. Even when they're trying to thrive, they have to fight to stay alive. And not just for themselves, but for their own. And that's a really powerful message. Whether the show earned that heel turn or not is up to you to decide. I think, because I was so happy to be with these characters for so long I didn't mind the heel turn so much. I did feel like it was a switch, a very sudden shift. But it did not work for me. And I am so happy that the show got the Tony recognition that it did. I wish some of the actresses had gotten nominated. It's difficult. Featured actress was so tough this year and again this show had closed and it's such an ensemble piece. But you know, for a while this was my number one show of the season up until the new year. Because we have two more shows left that I got to get to. Alright, number two. An Enemy of the People Translated by Amy Herzog Directed by Sam Gold Starring HE of the Method Acting Jeremy Strong this is adapted from Ibsen and I gotta tell you guys, I did not know what I was gonna think of this thing because as we learned with Uncle Vanya, not every translation from an award winning writer is going to work out. But when I tell you that this thing fucks, I. Oh boy. I've now seen this show twice. I saw it famously the day that the climate protesters came. And that was a fascinating moment. And then my grandmother asked to see it, so I took her. And no protesters were there during the town hall scene. So I was able to watch it just as it was meant to be. And you know, I think if I had to give, you know, one caveat to the show, and it's not even my own, but it's sort of, I could understand where someone would maybe be iffy. The first 20 minutes are a little. Not slow but like it's world building. You're figuring out who the characters are, the relationships to everybody. There's a lot of exposition dumping. Things are kind of happening in and out. Your mind might wander a bit and that's fine because the plot hasn't kicked in yet. You're just sort of getting a sense of everyone's relationships and where we are and what's going on. The intricacies of everything maybe won't sink in with you. They'll sort of fly right past you. But the moment Jeremy Strong's character gets the letter about the water for the town baths, because the town that they live in has just opened up these giant baths and spa and like hotel that's gonna be a huge moneymaker for them because this town has been struggling and now they finally got something that's gonna really sell. And Jeremy Strong is the town doctor and very well respected and he's relatively rich and his brother is the mayor and he finds out because he'd had These suspicions about the baths, because people were going and they were getting sick, and they all just assumed, oh, they were sick, you know, probably when they got there, or they got sick when they left. But Jeremy Strong did some investigating, and he brought some scientists along. And, no, it turns out that the water in the baths is contaminated because it's linked to pipes from the town tannery, which has toxins in it, and it's making people sick. And he says, you know, no, not everyone exposed to them will die, but a couple of them will. And those that will die, we will always know that it's us. And at first he's got people on his side, but then eventually, people turn on him. Corruption reigns supreme, and people would rather, you know, save the economy of the town and their own jobs than do the right thing, do the honorable thing. And then those people who claimed to be honorable and then turned their back double down and start rewriting the narrative of Jeremy Strong's character, of who he is as a person and his honor, in order to make themselves feel better. And throughout all this, Jeremy Strong's daughter, played by Victoria Pedretti, who I thought was robbed of a Tony nomination there. Yes, I said it. Robbed. I am hypocritical, like I was told last week. No, I don't mean she was actually robbed. She was not nominated, and there was a nomination this year that I could easily have seen gone to her instead, and I was disappointed that it didn't. But no actress in that category robbed Padretti of it. There are just nominators who I think have questionable taste is all. But she plays Jeremy Strong's daughter, and in this translation, her character is a combination of his daughter and his wife. Not literally, but in the original Ibsen, there's a wife character and a daughter character, and Herzog has combined them into the. Into just one daughter. And they have a very respectful dynamic. You know, they listen to each other, they respect each other. They actually have a conversation. Because you learn with Victoria, the men around her who listen to her have ulterior motives. There are men who claim to be on her side, who believe in her, but then it turns out it's because they just want to marry her. And she's beautiful and she's smart and she's funny, so I get it. And she makes a great hot toddy, but she's more than that. And she doesn't even want that. And that's fine, but it's like, you know, being on the Bachelorette, I guess, and the contestants telling the Bachelorette how much they respect her, how much they love her, how much they want to be with her. And the moment they get cut, they go home and find a girl in five seconds. And you know, you'll say anything to put to bring up the person you want to be with because you want them to think highly of you, because you think highly of them. But that's not the case with Victoria Pedretti and Jeremy Strong because they're father daughter. They actually have a close friendship of mutual respect and trust. And, you know, the show is very timely as well as being timeless. This is a very compact adaptation. It's tight, it is smart, it is funny, it is tense and brilliantly acted by this company. It's got style, it's got panache, it's got everything. You know, the moment that Jeremy Strong gets that letter about the baths, we are off to the races. And if you don't find the show engaging, after that letter to the end of the show, I don't know what to tell you. You know, Sam Gold is very hit and miss. For every fun home, there's a King Lear with Glenda Jackson. For Every Doll's House Part two, there's Glass Menagerie with Sally Field. This is a wonderful return to form for him. I adored this piece. I was disappointed he wasn't nominated for director again, one or two that I could have replaced him with. But I'm glad this revival was respected as much as it was by the Tonys, by the New York Times and is doing as well as it does. You don't need a climate protester to make it an interesting night of theater at An Enemy of the People. And my grandmother loved it and she's 100, so there you go. All right, last one, baby. Number one. Y' all knew this was coming. The moment we got to the top 10, you didn't see its name, immediately you're like, oh, I know. It's gonna be the number one show. And it is stereophonic. This is a wonderful play with phenomenal songs and a perfect cast of actors. Yes, it is three hours and 15 minutes. Yes, it pretty much flies by. I think there may be two sections of the whole show where I was like, I'm starting to feel a bit of the length, but only for a few minutes. And then we went right back into it. This is, you know, I've spoken about this already in the stereophonic episode. So I'll keep it tight, I'll keep it brief, but this may not be my favorite play of all time or of the Century. It is absolutely my favorite thing this season, and it stands up to just about anything that I have loved in the last 10 to 15 years. This play about this band, this didn't gut me emotionally. Significant Other or Fun Home, that's not really what the purpose of this play is. It's not there to reach you by the heart and make you suffer. It's an insight into a situation with certain people that you can maybe learn more about yourself from out of watching it. Learn about the people around you out of watching it. How other people react and respond to these stories. If it doesn't got me, like, you know, Fun Home or Significant Other, this is probably a better play than Significant Other, which I do think is a good play. But also, I've acknowledged that I can't be objective about that one. But I do think this is a better play than Significant Other. And it probably has a larger outreach due to its heat than Fun Home. Because Fun Home is a very, you know, beautiful, moving and emotional show. It's not hot in the same way that there is, like, a lot of heat to Stereophonic, there's also a lot of tension to Stereophonic. Like, there are whole scenes where you're just like, there's no gun on stage. There's no violence, really. There's emotional violence. And there's the being unsure of what's gonna happen next. But it's. It's. It's things that feel so low stakes, out of context, just writing it down on paper. But when you're in the moment, there's nothing more scary than not knowing how a character is going to react from being told that they're dragging during take number 52. You know, there's nothing more unsure than knowing if this is finally going to be the take that makes it. And it just keeps going to that place of anxiety and stress. And it's really a beautiful and thrilling depiction of the creative process. People who think, oh, writing songs is easy, acting is easy, singing is easy. And you watch how, no, it's not easy. Not only is there the stamina, the physical demands, there's the. Everyone's a critic. So you write one thing and someone's got an opinion, another person's got an opinion. You know, writing and rewriting, arranging and rearranging over and over and over again and making it the best it can be, whatever that means, in any way. It's. It's fucking hard. And there's a mental, an emotional toll to it because you're asking so much of yourself, of others, and Going to places that people shouldn't be going to on a regular basis, and for what? So a million people can like a song you wrote. How draining will it be for you after the fact? I just finished reading Capote's Women, which is about Truman Capote and his Swans, which is the book that Feud Season 2 is based off of, and they talk about. After Truma, Capote wrote In Cold Blood, which is one of the greatest books of all time. You should absolutely read it if you haven't. It is, first of all, perhaps the greatest work of nonfiction written and definitely created the formula forever of narrative nonfiction, things like Seabiscuit and books like that. But Capote, after writing In Cold Blood, was just so emotionally devastated after it that he was never the same again. And he created his best and most famous work. And the cost was, you know, he never could write like that ever again. He still wrote. He had things published, but never a book again and never with the frequency that he once did. Something about that process broke him. And unclear with the characters of Stereophonic, if any of them will be broken by this experience, I don't think so. They all seem to be able to walk out with their heads on their shoulders. But you watch the toll that it takes on all of them, on their relationships with each other, on their mental state, on their emotional state. And when it's all over, they've got an album. But, you know, where are they all at, personally? That's the question. And it's an exciting one and it's a fun one. You know, this isn't a show that's dealing with AIDS or sexual assault or racism in America. This is dealing with a band in the 1970s making an album. And yet, for my money, it's the best thing of the season, bar none. And I am so glad that it is getting the recognition that it so rightfully deserves. And I hope I've convinced a few of you guys after either watching my video review of it on Instagram or listening to this episode or listening to the previous episode, that you will be enticed to see it, because I think it's going to do quite well at the Tony Awards. And it's. This has been a really exciting year for plays. I mean, I don't know if you've noticed, but my top five in this 36 have all been plays. And in fact, at that moment. Let's do a quick review of this ranking 36 1, shall we? All right, at number 36, we have Once Upon a One More Time 35. The Shark is Broken 34. I Need That 33. Uncle Vanya 32. Mother Play 31. The Wiz 30. How to Dance in Ohio 29. The Great Gatsby 28. Back to the Future 27. Lempicka 26. The Cottage 25. Greyhouse 24. Hell's Kitchen 23. Harmony 22. Spamalot 21. Doubt 20. Days of Wine and Roses 19. Water for Elephants 18. Prayer for the French Republic 17. Gutenberg 16. Cabaret 15. Tommy 14. Patriots 13. Sephs 12. Here Lies Love 11. The Notebook 10. The Heart of Rock and Roll 9. Merrily We Roll Along 8. The Outsiders 7. Pearly Victorious 6. Illinois 5. Appropriate 4. Mary Jane 3. Ja Jaws African Hair Braiding. 2. An Enemy of the People and One Stereophonic. And that is all she wrote. And we are done. As I'm looking at my recording, it is 3:59:45. I'm sure it's longer than that with the ads and with my little musical interludes. If you like this podcast, guys, please give us a nice five star rating, a review. Write some more of those beautiful reviews if you. You can. If not, a simple five star rating will do. At 205. We are getting so close to 215 and we still got another three weeks to go. So a lot of you guys are going to be showing me up and making me post that Life of the Party video on Instagram. And that's it for now. Join us back next week for a special Tony episode. And let's see, who should we have play us out today, I wonder? No one from this season, I think. No, you know what I'm gonna do? In honor of a score that I love, that I don't think was given its proper due, I would like to close out with the Wiz with Ms. Stephanie Mills from the Wiz. That's who's gonna close this out today. All right, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening, guys, and we'll see you next week. And this is officially the longest episode of Broadway Breakdown. I don't think I'll ever get longer than this, and I apologize. I hope that this lasts you all month long. Take it away, Stephanie. Bye. A world full of love like life.