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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. Grant. Ahhh. Hit it. We're Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright lights, white light with a metro man the train is late so while we wait we're gon do a little dance. 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'm your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcasts hosts. And we are continuing our trajectory towards the Tony Awards. This is actually going to be the last episode where I am alone between now and the Nomin nominations. I've got a surprise interview coming up with a fun production member of two different Broadway musicals this season. And then I have two Tony episodes coming up that'll be sort of jam packed. So even though this episode is coming out on Thursday, April 18, and I'm actually recording this the night of April 17, so sorry about it. There will be an episode next Thursday as well as an episode the Sunday before and then a bonus episode at some point during all of that as well. So, you know, keep your eyes peeled. We are continuing our show marathon during this crowded April and we are also going to talk a little bit, just a little bit about some discourse that might have been going on the Internet the last couple of days regarding maybe the critical reception of a specific show and how people have just decided to not really think anymore and lead with their emotions, which is not great, but we'll get into that. So let's get into some shows first. I'm gonna start. We've got three shows I gotta cover that I've seen. We have the British import. We have Suffs, which came from the Public Theater, written by Shana Taub. And then we have the Great Gatsby, which came from Papermill Playhouse this past fall. I am going to start with Patriots. Get that one out of the way for you guys who don't necessarily care about plays. And then I will go into Suffs. We'll take a quick break. I'll get into Great Gatsby and we'll get into the discourse. So Patriots, as I mentioned, is an import from the West End where it premiered at the Almeida Theater. I always get confused on how to pronounce that word. A, L, M, E, I, D, A. It's where American Psycho premiered. It is written by Peter Morgan, who, if you're a theater person, you know from Frost, Nixon. If you are a Netflix person, you know him from the Crown, I believe he also wrote the screenplay for the Other Bolin Girl, which is, how you say, hot garbage. But, you know, she's a fun, campy time. It is directed by Rupert Gould, who directed King Charles iii. I believe he also did do American Psycho. Rupert is a very inventive director. He's got a lot of images in his head. You know, he is very vibrant with his, you know, palette, I guess. I'll say. And this show is no exception. This show essentially chronicles the rise of Vladimir Putin. Not in a kind way, for sure. It is mostly told through the lens of Boris Berezovsky, who was a Russian multi billionaire and was supposedly primarily responsible for Putin's rise in politics. The original production, I believe, starred Tom Hollander. Yes, Tom Hollander, who some of you will know from White Lotus. He also was in Travesties on Broadway a few years ago. I, of course, know him as Mr. Collins from the Keira Knightly, Pride and Prejudice, which is a phenomenal Pride and Prejudice. I don't care what any of you or Greta gerwig say, that BBC1 is lovely. I. I love the Keira Knightley one, and you can come at me all you want, but I stand firm. This production. Sorry, this production of Patriots is starring Michael Stuhlberg, who I don't think has been on Broadway since the Pillow man, which I saw him in. He played the brother of Billy Crudup, the mentally challenged brother of Billy Crudup, and was absolutely incredible. I still think about it to this day. But as any of you who listen to this podcast know, I talk about Pillow man all the goddamn time. Michael also was in the film version of Call Me by youy Name, a movie that is incredibly important to me and very much canon has been in many things. I think he was a serious man, that Coen Brothers movie. And, yeah, I think this is his first return to the stage in a long time. The only person I believe came from London, or at least any principal, actually. No, I take that back. I'm sure there are plenty of principals who came from London. The only name that I recognize is Will Keane. He's the one who plays Vladimir Putin. Michael Stulberg is the one who plays Boris, the multi billionaire. Now, that is pretty much the plot of the show in a nutshell. You know, multi billionaire is very influential in the politics of Russia and wants to maintain his Power and his influence. And up until now has done pretty much everything right. He's incredibly wealthy, he's incredibly influential, he's got connections, everyone owes him a million favors. He helps a lot people with their businesses and we eventually see his downfall while he helps a bunch of other up and comers and they do not return the favor. In fact, they sort of stab him in the back, Putin included. And we watch in his eyes, Russia begin to crumble. And I mean, honestly, in our eyes, it's not hard to watch and go, yeah, no, he's right. Whether he's a crooked businessman or not, he's right about what is happening to Russia. And the play is very smart, it's very British in that it is also quite cold, in my personal opinion. Rupert Gould has never been a director for me, where I have felt a lot. I have been engaged, I have been mentally stimulated, I've been visually stimulated, but I've never been emotionally involved. I've never been on the edge of my seat. I've always been impressed, but I've never been wowed, if that makes sense. Now, that doesn't mean that this show isn't worthwhile. As I said, it's incredibly smart play. I think there are many people who find it quite dry. I know that there were some people around me who were kind of fidgeting in their seats. It sort of felt like they were watching it. So they can say that they had seen it. You know, this was their version of doing the homework. And that's not a great way to view plays. I don't think of plays as homework. A good play should be really, really, really engaging. You know, I just went off last week about Stereophonic and how truly incredible I found that to be. It's not about grand issues. You know, Stereophonic is not about world hunger. It's not about the AIDS epidemic, it's not about Black Lives Matter. It's about a band in the 70s recording an album. But it is gripping, it is engaging, it is funny, it is tense, it has characters you care about. And you also watch the process of creativity and how difficult it can be, how stressful it can be, how much carnage you can leave in the wake of trying to create something magnificent, something that will make an impact. And it's just, you know, a beautiful, wonderful, fantastic play done so incredibly well. Patriots, you could argue, is about larger issues. But I don't find Patriots to be nearly as engaging. You know, Rupert Gould has done some very inventive staging. There's a lot of music and dance involved in this, weirdly. And, you know, the set is very sleek, it's very stylish, it's very cold, which obviously, you know, gives you Mother Russia vibes. But, yeah, this was one where it very much felt like the British import that a lot of people I know were kind of concerned it would be, and that's fine. You know, I think there are some people who really prefer intellectual theater. I have nothing against intellectual theater. I like it from time to time. It's sort of a nice little palette cleanser for me. But I always lead with emotion over intellect. You know, I would love it if there was something that was emotionally engaging, but very, you know, what's going for intentionally well structured, you know, uses its intelligence for good, for emotions and for dumb. And we've talked about that many times in this podcast. I talked about it with Heart of Rock and Roll. You can listen to the Mamma Mia episode where Kate Lumpkin and I talk about the intelligence of the stupidity of that show, or the episode on six where Katie and I talk about that show and the stupidity and how intelligent it is about it. You know, Patriots is very smart about how smart it is, and there's nothing wrong with that. We admire intelligence, we applaud intelligence, but I'm never really gripped by it. But. And that's a me thing. I'm sure plenty of you are hearing this and going, you know what? I know Matt's a little cold in it, but I kind of want to see it. And, you know, I will say Michael Stuhlberg, absolutely phenomenal. He is giving a powerhouse performance and is very much going to give Jeremy Strong in An Enemy of the People a run for his money. I'm also not sure what's going to happen with Will Keane with his role as Putin, whether he's going to go into leading actor or featured actor. Both he and Michael are above the title. It feels a bit more like Michael's show than Will show. I mean, Will absolutely makes an impact. He is, you know, he is not to be forgotten. But it definitely feels more like the Michael show. So perhaps we'll go into featured. It definitely adds a couple of wrenches to my Tony predictions for play. I think Patriots will get in for best play. Now I'm gonna predict. Now I see Mother. So this is April 17th. I'm recording this at 8:30 at night. Also, pardon me if I repeat myself, if I stutter a little bit. I just came back from dinner and drinks with the twins of drama, Connor and Dylan McDowell. Hi, babies. We Had a lovely time. We had a lovely catch up. I met Connor a few times in person. I've only really engaged with Dylan via text and interviews, so it was our first time meeting in person. It was lovely. They were off to see the Outsiders, and I'm saying this now to hold them accountable. They have agreed that I will come on the podcast at some point between now and the Tonys to discuss Tony's. Whether it's Tony reactions and us doing a crossover episode. But I'm saying it now. So Dylan, if you're listening, Connor, if you're listening, everyone now knows. And if they don't mention me on the next week's episode, then you all know how much they just hate me. But we had a nice talk about all the shows that they had seen, and Dylan loved Stereophonics. So, you know, both Dylan and I tell you to go see it, so go fucking see it. But regarding Patriots, I think we have it in for play along with Stereophonic, probably Mother Play, which I see on Sunday the 21st. I see Mary Jane on Tuesday the 23rd, which I actually think is, weirdly, their opening night. I don't know how that happened. And I'm pretty sure Mary Jane is being considered a new play. But as of now, I think Stereophonic Patriots, Mother Play, Ja Jaw's African Hair Braiding, and probably Prayer for the French Republic. We could maybe swap out Mother Play for Mary Jane. Or maybe they both get in. But that's. That is my five right now. I think Michael Stuhlberg is in contention for actor with Jeremy Strong. I think Leslie Odom Jr. Is a lock at this point. And then probably Steve Carell for Uncle Vanya, which I don't see till May 4, so biting my tongue on that for now, unless Will Keane is considered lead. And then I think he would probably get in. I think they're probably gonna get in for direction along with Stereophonic and Appropriate. I think they'll probably get in for set and lighting design, and that's probably it. That's. Yeah, that's probably where I leave it for. For Tony Awards. But, you know, that's a solid number. And if I had to guess what they were most likely to be considered for, it would probably be lighting and actor. You know, the sound is actually quite good on it, but if anything is winning sound design of a play this year, it's Stereophonic, no questions asked. So. Bye, Felicia. Next up, we have Suffs the Musical, written and starring. Written by and starring Ms. Shaina Taub. Fun fact, as I'm pretty sure I mentioned on the podcast. Shaina Taub is an alum of Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Center. Take a shot, everybody. As you all know, I did go to Stage Door Manor Performing Arts Center. And if you are wondering, yes, I did go to camp with Shana Taub. I'm pretty sure I mentioned it before. I don't know. I. I've spoken so much on this podcast in general, I truly forget everything I ever say. In fact, I'm gonna forget everything I say once I finish recording this. So those of you who like to text me, or rather say, those of you who like to DM me quotes from the podcast, the day or the day after the episodes go up, when I tell you, did I say that? That's not me being facetious. I truly forget everything I say. It's. I say it, I forget it, and I edit it, and then I forget it. So you have to tell me that you're quoting me when you send me things, because otherwise I'm just like, why are you saying that absolutely disgusting thing to me? And you'll have to say, no, Matthew, you said that on mic in front of the world for your grandmother to hear, and the joke's on you. My grandmother doesn't know how to work the podcasts. I have to show her. So, as I mentioned, Shane and I did go to Stage Door. We did one show together. She was in west side Story with me, where she played Anita, and I did indeed play a shark. I had to wear bronzer. She did not. She was a phenomenal Anita. I also saw her play the leading player in Pippin, I believe, the year before, and then the same year as west side Story. She played Lillian lafleur in Nine, which that was actually a pretty fun production because the guido of that production was one Skyler Astin, then Skyler Lipstein. You know, I've always idolized Shana from Stage Door. She was just one of the most talented, one of the most intelligent, and one of the kindest people I knew there. You know, she was an absolute star when I showed up. And, you know, I was an absolute nobody. I was a pimply little quiet thing, which I know you're all laughing. Matt has never been quiet. The truth is that I did used to be quiet, and I can be quiet still. But I'm alone today on this mic, so I'm going to just keep talking. But Shana had, you know, basically just pissed all over Stagedraw Manor and marked the whole thing as her territory. But she was never Elitist and when, you know, there were teenagers of power who might have abused the power, she never made excuses for them. She never tried to cover up for them. She owned up to mistakes that she did or her friends did. And, you know, it's nothing real. If you want to see, you know, a little bit of that, you can watch the Stage Door documentary, but I don't know why you would. It's a bad documentary, but you can see, you know, Shayna kind of owning the stage for all of her friends who fucked up and being the grown up of the group. And she was one of the younger people of that group. So that just shows you what kind of, you know, powerful maturity she had even 20 years ago. And she was always very kind to me. I don't. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't remember my name at this point. Or at the very least she'd be like, that name sounds familiar. But I've watched her sort of take off, I'll be honest, in a rather slow way. Since Stage Door, she performed for a long time. She was in Natasha Pierre and the great comet of 1812 when it was in the tent in the Meatpacking District. And then when they moved to midtown, she did not go to Broadway with it. She was kind of doing her own thing as a singer, songwriter. Many shows at Joe's Pub, shows at Lincoln center. And the first time I saw her back on stage was in a production of a show called Old Hats with Bill Irwin and David Shiner at Signature Theater. She did a lot of the music for them and, you know, she did interludes and she performed and she was absolutely delightful and the songs were fantastic. And in fact, if you go To Broadway breakdown 1.0, I can't tell you which episode it is. But former co host of the pod, John Miscavige, made it a point to really kind of sing her praises. And she was one of the divas that we closed out with that week. And, you know, she is a phenomenal talent. Amazing singer, beautiful actress, very intelligent writer. She had a bit of a setback last summer, I believe it was. Yeah, last summer with Devil Wears Prada out in Chicago, where she wrote the lyrics to Elton John's score. And they are, from what I understand, going back to square one with that as they go to London. So I'll be interested to see what happens with that. But with Suffs, I was supposed to see this show down to the public in 2022, and they had to cancel my performance due to Covid, as was something that Was happening quite frequently at the time. It's very rare now that shows get canceled due to Covid. There are quite enough covers now. People don't have to be out on COVID leave quite as long. You know, isolation is a fraction of what it used to be. Every now and then there will be a non Covid related illness in the cast and the production will have to stop performances for a day or two. That tends to happen in previews when an understudy isn't ready to go on and they need the day to rehearse them. This happened with Tommy recently. It happened with Mary Jane, but so with Suffs. That was why I didn't get to see it. And the word downtown was very, very mixed. There were some people who thought it was fantastic. There were some people who thought it was absolutely awful. The word that I often heard because people, everyone thinks that they're clever with Suffs. People would say it's insufferable. In the same way that whoever thought of For Cats Catastrophe. You know, they just dined out that for 30 years. And everyone else thought that they were clever by doing it as well. So I didn't see the show. I made it a point not to listen to the score. I wanted to wait because I knew it was coming to Broadway. It was this open secret that they were working on it. They were working on it. It was coming, it was coming, it was coming. And then they finally announced and I know a lot of people who rolled their eyes, but the word had always been. They did a major workshop this time. Shayna sat out from playing the lead, Alice Paul, so she could really just be the writer. And everyone was talking really big about all the improvements for the show. Now I can't tell you how improved the show is because I didn't see the first time, but I did see what's currently playing at the Music Box. What will be opening on the day that this episode comes out. As I said, April 18, that Thursday. And I don't know what the reviews will be, but I will say I was pleasantly surprised. I did not love the show. I have some issues with it and I'll get to that in a second. But I did like it and I do recommend it. My number one takeaway from Sephs is that I think the score is really good. I think that there's some phenomenal music in there. I think that the lyrics, all the lyrics are strong. You know, this is not a show with embarrassing lyric writing, which is a theme this year. And oh boy, we will get to that after the break. But I think that the lyrics are probably their best and stuffs when they are at their cheekiest. And I didn't expect this show to be as cheeky as it was because the advertising for was quite, you know, see you next Tuesday. And everything I heard about it off Broadway was that it was kind of dour, that there were moments of humor, but they kind of stuck out in a show that was very self serious. And you know, I will say suffs is still a little self important. I don't think you can deny that. And I wouldn't necessarily begrudge them of that. I think that you can take a little of that importance out and to keep the show compelling, to keep it from seeming pandering. Because again, that is an issue I have is there are times when I found the show to be kind of pandering. You know, I. It's hard to say this and have people actually hear you because it makes it sound like you don't agree with what the politics are, what the messaging is. And of course I agree with the messaging. Of course I agree with the politics. I am a millennial homosexual Jewish boy who grew up in New York City living alongside his mother. If you think that I am anti woman, if you think that I am anti equal rights, if you think I'm anti civil rights or anything like that, you know, congratulations. It must be incredibly easy to be you. But that is not the case. I absolutely agree with the messaging. I don't love being fed it like a pig at a trough. You know, it makes me feel a little like a pet animal. Now, there were many people around me who had absolutely no problem whooping and hollering for anything they heard that sounded like a political statement that they could, you know, put on their Instagram. I don't love that. It makes it all of a sudden a concert and the whole thing and not worse than a concert. It's, you know, how people were taking that Jesus Hamilton online and dragging it for filth. You know, the. The one that like Christian company or whatever that like did a bootleg Hamilton but changed half the lyrics to be about Jesus. So, like, that will be enough. It's like, I believe in Jesus. And it was like, oh my God, this is so cringe. How dare they? Or you watch, you know, sorry to trigger, but you watch a Maga rally for 45 and you see this, you know, almost kind of feral energy in the crowd in a way where like all sense of self has left the building and you're just whooping for all the things that you want to hear to, you know, emphasize your own self of worth, your own existence, I guess, you know, when you, when you whoop along with something, it's almost like you trying to prove to the people on stage that you're out there that you exist, that you're a part of this, that this is. They're not just performing for you, you're in it together. I don't love that because theater is a communal experience and not everything is meant to be, you know, a moment of losing yourself vocally, you can lose yourself emotionally, mentally, but to make a spectacle of yourself, you're drawing attention to yourself and not to the show. And it stuffs. There were times when I was like, I don't see the difference between what's happening right now and a maga rally. Outside of the politics themselves, obviously. If I were going to choose between one or the other, of course I would choose to be in the Music Box Theater. First of all, it'd be far more comfy. Second of all, I'd be at a Broadway show, so I'd be in my happy place usually. And third of all, as I said, I agree with the politics that's going on in sess. I just don't love being in a feral crowd. It makes me feel, again, not to trigger. It makes me feel like sheep. And I want to be a discerning individual watching a show and taking in a show. I don't want to be a part of a screaming mobile. Maybe the people around me were having genuine reactions. It didn't feel that way. It felt rather performative. And I want to say it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the show. But who knows? Maybe I just can't separate myself from that experience enough to really say so. But I again, I did really enjoy the score of this. I think that there are some wonderful songs. There's a lot of momentum to the music and stuff, which I appreciated. It really felt like a musical. And even the few new musicals this season that I have liked, like the Outsiders, like the Notebook, even Here Lies Love to an extent, they didn't necessarily feel like musical theater scores. You know, the Notebook has some gorgeous compositions. I found the Outsiders to have a lot of heat behind it, but they weren't necessarily scores that felt part of a traditional musical or even a non traditional musical. They felt like, you know, mood setters, atmosphere makers and suffs. Definitely feels like a musical theater score. It's not all razzle dazzle, jazz hands, but it is musical. If you don't know the story of Suffs, it is the suffragette movement or suffragist movement. They make that a point. In the show of the early 1900s, eventually spearheaded by Alice Paul and finally, after many years, getting women the right to vote in America. White women, I should say. That's something that is mentioned in the show quite a lot. And there's something that's interesting about Suffs, which I wish that they would do a little more of, that they would lean into. And I'm saying this for you guys, this is not for Shana Taub to hear. Not because I think that she'll hear it. As I said, I doubt she remembers who I am, but because, you know, when you're writing something, the last bit of feedback you ever should get from someone else is, this is the show you should have written. That's not helpful. She wrote the show, she wanted to, and maybe she, you know, hit stuck the landing on that. And that's fine. But I'll tell you part of the reason why I, you know, was a little removed from Suffs while also still appreciating it and enjoying it. You know, the show opens with, sorry, I'm looking for my Playbill. The show opens with Jen Colella as Carrie Cat, who, you know, had spent many years trying to fight for women's rights to vote. And she was an upper class lady and she was very polite, very dainty, very ladylike. And she had spent many years unsuccessfully, you know, campaigning for women's rights to vote in a way that men wouldn't be threatened by. And the show opens with one of her speeches. Let Mother Vote is the big song and no sooner does she finish than does Alice Paul show up, played by Shana Taub being like, I admire you so much, but let's go even further. And jenkillel is like, thank you so much, little girl. But also, get my name out of your mouth. One second. I'm taking a sip of water. Sorry. I tried to do that away from the mic because as I know some of my listeners have misophonia. I'm pretty sure I'm saying that correctly. If I'm not, I apologize. It's late and I've had two frozen margaritas. I'm not going to look it up right now because we're talking about surfs. This is sort of where the show begins and it's sort of the narrative that it continues going with because no sooner does Alice Paul form her group than does Nikki M. James as Ida B. Wells show up. And she's like, do you want the black women of America to join you? And this is where Alice Paul kind of draws the line. And the idea sort of is, you know, everyone is fighting for a cause and there are people who will fight for the same cause in different ways, or there are some people who will be fighting for a cause not realizing those they're leaving out. So Jen Colella is telling, you know, Shana Taub, you're going about this all wrong and you're gonna lose everything I fought for. Whereas Shana Taub is like, you haven't done enough. You know, I admire you, but you haven't done enough. And then you have Nikki M. James who's like, well, let me join. And Shana Taub is like, wait your turn. And outside of Nikki M. James basically having a big showdown number pretty early in the show, telling them, I will not wait my turn. That's all she really does for the plot. She comes in and out every now and then with her cohorts to kind of comment on the injustice of the suffragist movement excluding women of color. And supposedly at the public, this was an even bigger thing because they included not just black women, but Native American women. And the show is, you know, multi ethnic. There are women who play roles that are obviously not meant to reflect their ethnicity, which I don't mind necessarily. But when Nicki M. James and the other characters connected to her very much are about their race, it can get a little confusing. I will not lie. And I'm not one to be terribly confused by theater. You know, people confuse me, the world confuses me, relationships confuse me. You know, how any of my friends can stand me confuses me. But musicals I tend to understand pretty well. But every now and then there are choices that where I just go. I'm not entirely sure why this is happening or what it's supposed to be doing. So with the casting of Suffs, it can sort of undermine the potency of Nikki's storyline by having the multi ethnic casting the rest of the time. I would have loved it if the whole show focused as a triangle between Shayna, Nikki and Jen, where each one is sort of an antagonist to the other. You know, Jen is the antagonist of Shayna and Shayna is the antagonist of Nikki. And that's not ever really done showing how all three of these women are fighting in different ways and in some ways combating each other, yet they're all going for the same goal. There's a lyric that Shana has that I actually really love, which is gonna butcher this. I'm so sorry. But it's something like, why are you fighting with me? I'm not the enemy. And it's a repeated phrase. There are a lot of motifs that are repeated in the show, and not in a lazy way. Like, obviously it's intentionally placed. So that way it's, you know, a theme to come back to. And I think it's relatively intelligently done with all of that. But I would love it if that theme were applied not just to Alice Paul and her friends or, you know, anyone else they have come on to the cause, but Alice Paul and everyone. They have it between Alice Paul, AKA Shayna Tapp, and Jen Colella, AKA Carrie. But I think it's only once. And it would have been nice to have that as well with Shayna and Nikki, or Nikki and Jen. You know, they try to sort of make Jen and Shana the centers of the show, but Jen's not really in enough of the show for that to really happen. The show also tries to cover a lot of ground with many different characters and have as many points of view as possible. And as we've learned from other shows, that's not usually very successful. When you try to cover so much, you don't cover a lot very well. You're, you know, breezing over a lot of important stuff for a lot of important people for the sake of trying to check mark everything. There's been some negative criticism online saying that the whole thing feels like a Wikipedia page. I disagree with that. But I do think that there are a lot of moments that feel shortchanged because there's a larger goal in mind with the show. Or at the very least, it's trying to mention as many things as possible so that Gen Z TikTok doesn't come on and start ripping it to shreds. The truth is, you're never going to appeal and appease all of the Internet. Everyone's gonna have something to come for if you create a good enough show. You can have defenders come back and clap back at critics with, well, no, here's what the show does so well. Here's what it's doing, and here's what you're not getting. Here's what you're misinterpreting. You're projecting onto something that isn't actually there, as opposed to. No, no, we. We did talk about that. We did cover that, but we didn't cover about it very well, which is why people are now angry about it. Just, you know, do what you do and then go as deep and as detailed as you can. To quote Ron Swanson, don't. Half ass. Two things. Whole ass. One thing. I don't think I've ever quoted Parks and Recreation on this podcast. Fun Fact. I quite like that show. It's not my absolute fave. I'm much more of a 30 Rock dude. But Parks and Rec, she's a fun time. The thing about SUS that they do, you know, acknowledge is the idea of eventually, when is it that you stop fighting? When do you achieve your goal? When is your goal maybe too much for you at one point? When are you smaller than what you can accomplish or what you're trying to accomplish? Or when is it that your time is up and someone else has to take over? Something about Alice Paul in the show that is acknowledged but not, in my opinion, explored enough is how determined she is, how much tunnel vision that she has that a lot of things get hurt on her way to her goal. And there is a death that happens with one of her companions on the trail towards equality. And, you know, we won't go into it too much, but they don't even really address how Alice has some indirect responsibility for said death. Oh, sh. I said death. Fuck. There is a death. There's a death that happens. I won't say who, I won't say how, I won't say when. But Alice Paul is partially responsible. She didn't, you know, make the person die, but she tells, like, the person's like, I'm tired. I don't want to go back out there. And I'm dealing with stuff at home. And Alice Paul in the moment, at the time, you're like, yeah, sure, it's motivational. She's like, go out there and show them what you're made of. And then the person does and she dies. And Alice is never like, fuck, I told her to go out there. She starts being like, I have to arrange for a funeral. Like, she does the thing that you do when you're in shock, you start trying to be productive, and then you break down. That's. Which is always very nice, but it's feels a little rushed. You know, there's a hunger strike and an imprisonment, and there is some discourse that happens, some dissension that happens between Alice and her friends, but it doesn't go beyond the pale of, you know, I'm hungry and I'm tired and I'm mad. It's never about, like, when is enough enough, when do we eventually give up and when do you give up. When will you stop dragging us down with you? Because in Alice's mind, it's, you know, this is for all of us. So why shouldn't you be willing to give up as much as I am? Here we see this, actually, with Stereophonic as well, right? The. The composer. No douchey boyfriend. When he's being held, put the task of, you're being awful to the band. You're being too demanding and rude. He's like, why don't the rest of you care as much as I do? I want this to be ours. I want this to be important. This is for all of us. And Alice Paul sort of a similar way. And I wish that there was maybe a little more conflicts about that. It's addressed, but it's not really dealt with. Does that make sense? Like, there's a difference again, there's a difference between addressing something and dealing with it or exploring it. And I feel like a lot of shows right now address but don't explore. And I wish that they would explore more because there are things that Sephs explores which I appreciate. Other things that kind of were negatives. For me, it's not the most pleasant physical production. You know, the original set Off Broadway came under scrutiny with the steps and the columns. There are no steps now. It's mostly a series of sliding wooden walls and doors. It's very, like, University Club esque and, you know, Corinthian columns on both sides, and there's some Hydra Hydraulics and a Psych. And it's very simple. It's not ugly. It just feels a little cheap. And I don't mean that in the way of like, oh, it's not a. It's not a spectacle. I don't need it to be a spectacle. But the design didn't feel like, oh, we're making the most of very little. It felt a little bit like, well, they didn't give me the money I wanted, so here's what you get. And that was unfortunate because, you know, with budget cuts can come a lot of ingenuity. There's a very famous story of the original production of Pippin going out of town and not having the money for all of the elaborate sets that Tony Walton had designed. So they really only kind of kept like a third of his designs. So you would have the framing of a scene, or you would have a map for a scene, or like a column or a tower for a scene, but never the full thing. And it ended up working out beautifully because they were very specific about, okay, if we can't have the whole thing. What can we have? And let's figure out, you know, how to make this look like it was intentional. And it worked out because Tony Walton ended up winning best scenic design over Boris Aronson for a little Night Music, which had those sliding elm birch tree panels. So there you go. I would say the costumes for sophs are actually quite nice. It's definitely going to get a costume design. I found the staging to be a little mixed. I have a friend who's a Tony voter who went and he thought that the direction was ace. I will say everyone in the show is in the same show. So, you know, props to that. Props to Lee Silverman for keeping everyone on the same foot on the same page, and again, keeping the show moving. But I didn't find it terribly, inventively staged. A lot of sort of two people in profile on the same plane. Not a lot of messing around with angles and viewpoints. Not a lot of surprise. Not a lot of, you know, necessarily striking imagery. And that was sort of disappointing for me because I think that could have brought this show to the next level. Having a design that, even if it were simple, was striking or effective. Having staging that was maybe a little more creative and a little more flowing as opposed to just fine. Because, again, the music is very strong, the score is a very good score, and the performances are all quite good. Everyone's gonna have their favorites. I'm sure that Jenn Colella and Nikki M. James will be really campaigned hard for featured actress in a musical. I think that Nikki's role, while having some weight to it, it's unfortunately off stage, far too much. Emily Skinner, God bless her, does not have nearly enough to do, in my personal opinion. I also want to say at my show, Jen Kalel opened the show to major cheers and Nicky M. James came on later to quite a strong applause. Emily Skinner came on to no applause. And I have to say, if you are someone who goes to see Suffs and you cheer for Jen Colella but not Emily Skinner, then you do not deserve to celebrate Pride this year. And I said that on Maine, and I stick to it. Good day to you, sirs or madams. I think that what this show will probably get is strong reviews, possibly a couple of raves. I doubt it'll get panned. I really don't. I can't imagine it getting panned unless probably the post. But the post is the post. I feel like it'll get encouraging to strong reviews. It may not be across the board. Raves but of course, Famous last words. I do think that this will be a major nomination contender. I don't know what it might win because there has really been nothing this season on the musical front that both the critics and the Community have gotten behind. The Community and the critics have gotten behind Appropriate, they've gotten behind Stereophonic, they've gotten behind Enemy of the People a little bit, but that's sort of it, you know, and Merrily, obviously. But in terms of new musicals, there really hasn't been anything. You know, Back to the Future is still running. It's doing well financially. It's not doing great financially. I know that the producers of that were hoping for something a lot better and more consistent. You know, what they made at the height of spring break was what they thought they would be making throughout all of January and February. That was not the case and they will most likely be getting very few nominations. As I said, the Community does not think highly of Back to the Future. But there hasn't really been anything else so far this season that has taken off like a rocket. The Outsiders is doing well. It's not doing great. Notebook is doing well. It's not doing great. Outsiders got better reviews than the Notebook. Water for Elephants got sort of in between Notebook and Outsiders. It's the only one of the three that got a critics pick. But Water for Elephants also was starting to do decently and now it's kind of on the fence with where it's at. So we shall see. I think Suffs will get in for musical. I think it'll get in for score. It's very likely it'll get in for book. I think there will be probably one featured actress nomination. On the top of my head, I'll say Jen Colella, with a caveat of a possible Nicky M. James, the actress who I would like to give a quick shout out to. First of all, Hannah Cruz does a very lovely job. I really enjoyed her in the Collector musical that I did not love very much, but I thought she was quite good in it. Grace Maclean is of course, always a treat, although she doesn't have a ton to do as President Woodrow Wilson. But there is an actress named Allie Bonino who plays sort of Alice Paul's right hand lady. She's got a beautiful song towards the end of the show where she basically says, like, I'm done marching. I did my moment. I'm glad. I am proud of what I've accomplished. But I out and I sort of want to rest. I want to go take a big old Nap. And she's wonderful, and I would love to see her get recognized. Probably won't happen. It's not quite a showy enough role, but sometimes these things do happen. Elizabeth Davis, for once, you know, as I said, costumes, they think they'll get in for, and possibly orchestrations. I think Shayna Tabb has a very strong shot. And nominations for best actress in a musical. It's a weird category and there aren't many Lockes, but nominators might feel like giving her a nomination for score and book is enough. And she's already the face of the show. She doesn't need to know to go with the full Lin Manuel and Suffs isn't quite the major hit that Hamilton is. I mean, even if it gets good reviews, it's not going to get Hamilton level level of reviews, no matter how hard Hillary Clinton, you know, campaigns for it or tweets about Barbie and he, you know, I will see if the nominating committee is willing to give Shayna that full sweep of noms, but I think she's got score locked for a nomination. Very strong contender for book as well as actress. I don't see them getting in for direction. I don't see them getting in for choreography. You know, again, costumes really the only design thing. The sets just sort of there. The lighting is fine. Maybe sound, but there's enough going on with sound this year that it could get lost in the shuffle there. But, yeah, I mean, I think right now, if I were to pick the five musical nominees, I would say Outsiders, Notebook, Water for Elephants, Suffs and Illinois. I think there are a small handful caveats that could get in there. We have two closed shows that were very well liked by critics. Days of Wine and Roses and Hero Lies Love. I don't really see either one getting in at this point, but stranger things have happened. And then, of course, we've got Hell's Kitchen opening this weekend, this coming Saturday. As I've been very open on this pod, I did not like Hell's Kitchen. I think that book is bad. I haven't spoken to anyone who disagrees. I've spoken to some people who have enjoyed Hell's Kitchen, but with the understanding that they didn't necessarily think it was a great show, but they had a nice time. And I'll be interested to see what happens with the Tonys. You know, they had a very good first two weeks of previews, but they went under a million dollars this past week. And I think they will continue to be under a million dollars the rest of April, I'll be interested to see what the critics say. They were sort of lukewarm to it off Broadway while giving a lot of feedback about what they needed to change. And they haven't really changed all that much. So either the critics will be like, I'm more used to it. It's fine now. Or the critics will get angry and be like, I took the time to tell you what I felt needed changes, and you didn't do any of it. Now I'm mad at you. But we'll go into that in a second after the break, as well as our third and final show of this episode, the Great Gatsby. So before we get into Great Gatsby, let us take a quick break. Really, 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 tread of the feet of Fred. And we're back. Thank you so much for your patience. Next up is the Great Gatsby, the musical based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald book that also has a version coming at the art this May. This version of the Great Gatsby premiered at Papermill Playhouse in the fall winter, and the production wasted no time to transfer to Broadway to beat the art production. And if you think there was any other reason, you are sorely mistaken. Moving to Broadway, whether your show is going to succeed or not has nothing to do with whether you think the show is ready, whether you think the timing is right. Sometimes it's just about beating someone else to the punch and having that sweet, sweet Broadway cred so you can have a nice deal for your licensing, which, honestly is how it feels with this. If you didn't read the book in high school, well, you're one of the few, because it tended to be required reading in most schools, is considered the great American novel by a lot of people. I have never been infatuated with the novel, but it is a good piece of writing. Hot take. It's a good piece of writing. And what it is goes into is fascinating because it has been a notorious book for being so difficult to adapt for dramatization. It has had four motion picture adaptations, none of which have ever been well received critically, although I believe three of them did well financially. It has been adapted to the stage as a play in the 1920s, where it did very well, even though F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife both hated it. It's been adapted into a TV movie. It's been adapted into an opera, a play, sorry, a ballet. The opera, I know, also not well received, but again, a major sellout. There was Gats by the Elevator Repair Service Theater Company, which also was a major sold out hit, but that was more of a play where it was about a group in an office reading the book out loud and acting it out. This is, as far as I know, the first, first commercial production of Gatsby as a musical, at the very least on the New York stage. And it takes place in the early 1920s, you know, the roaring twenties, before Great Depression. We're still in, you know, Prohibition. And we're following a small group of characters. Daisy Buchanan, her husband, Tom Buchanan, her best friend, Jordan Baker, who's an amateur golfer, semi famous. Daisy's sort of distant cousin, I want to say second or third cousin, Nick Carraway. Nick is our eyes and ears into everything. He enters the scene after having just fought in World War I and coming from the Midwest. And he stays on a part of Long island called West Egg, which is very known for being new money. His cousin Daisy is living on East Egg, which is where the old money and the actual classy people are the important people. And he watches sort of Daisy's life. He becomes friendly with her friend, Jordan Baker. He watches as Daisy's husband, Tom, has an affair with a woman named Myrtle Wilson, who is the wife of a gas station attendant near their home. And Nick also lives next to a Jay Gatsby. And Jay Gatsby has all of these parties all the time that are very elaborate and very loud. And as it turns out, you know, Jay Gatsby invites Nick to a party and he and Jordan, you know, enjoy it. And Nick meets Gatsby. And as it turns out, Gatsby knows Daisy, Nick's cousin. They had not. They met a little while earlier, a few years prior, before Daisy met Tom and fell in love. And then Jay had to go off to war, and because he was poor, Daisy couldn't marry him. So he decided when he came back from the war, he was going to make his fortune and prove through the acquiring of the American Dream, that he was worthy of her, that he was worth something and that they would be happy together. And all of these elaborate parties, him sending notes to invite Nick over, were all just ways for him to get Daisy's attention because he didn't want to outwardly go and call on her. He wanted her to be aware of him. And eventually they do sort of meet up again and they start an affair. And Gatsby tries to get Daisy to Leave Tom for her. That doesn't end up happening. And I'll get into, you know, reasons why. And then there is a hit and run. Myrtle, Tom's, you know, Tom, Daisy's husband, the woman he's sleeping with, Myrtle. She gets hit by a car. We find out that it's Daisy who drove the car with Jay Gatsby in the passenger seat. And Myrtle's husband thinks that Gatsby is the one who drove because he believes that Gatsby was having an affair with Myrtle, thanks to Tom. And Nick basically washes his hands of everyone as Daisy and Tom get away with literal murder. And Myrtle's husband kills Gatsby out of jealousy before killing himself. And that is pretty much how the story ends. It is about rich narcissists who are vain and dumb, who get away with everything because they are rich. And that is how America treats the wealthy. It is how the American dream is not really real. You can find success, you can obtain money, but there are always going to be people who think they are better than you. And it doesn't matter why. We see this all the time. Every repressed demographic has a hierarchy. You see it in a prison system. You see it in the queer community, the black community, women, men, everything. It's. It's always. It doesn't matter who or what or where or why. There's always going to be people who go, no, no, no, no, you cannot join. And that is what Gatsby learns. Because in the showdown in the Plaza Hotel before Daisy, you know, does the hit and run with Myrtle, we find out that Gatsby made all of his money while bootlegging, which is illegal and kind of scummy. He's dealing with the Mafia. And up until then, in the book, Daisy's all up in arms about Gatsby. Oh, he's so dreamy. Oh, I love him. Oh, he's so rich. Oh, all these beautiful shirts that he owns. And when she finds out that he actually made his money doing bootlegging and dealing with, you know, criminals, all of a sudden she goes, oh, actually, never mind. Even though she does admit she still loves him, her reason for not picking him is very clear. It has nothing to do with her, you know, obligation to her husband or a love for her husband. It is because Gatsby is now considered crass to her. Because Daisy is vain, Daisy is shallow. And that's just the truth. Gatsby refuses to believe that his dream girl could be less than what he idealized her to be. And that is his fallacy everyone in the book is not a good person. Nick Carraway is the best of the bad people. But even he has his faults. He's an unreliable narrator. He has no self awareness. He considers himself honest. And yet when he meets Jordan Baker and starts to flirt with her into a possible relationship, we learn that he actually is unfianced back home and is planning in his head the letter he has to send his fiance so he can, you know, start going with Jordan while not feeling tied to this girl back home. And also, there are a lot of things in the subtext of Nick possibly being gay or at the very least mixed on his sexuality. Now, the Broadway musical of the Great Gatsby does away with all of this and I understand why to an extent, because so many of the characters in the Great Gatsby do not have an inner life and most of them are liars and not honest with themselves. That is very difficult to do with a musical. How do you write a song for a character like Daisy Buchanan who has no thoughts in her head, who cries because she sees a beautiful expensive button down shirt? You know, it's not about an inner meaning. She is really just a dumb bitch. And that's not necessarily okay for the world. We don't want anyone to be dumb, but there are indeed people who are dumb bitches. And all you gotta do is look on Bravo. All you gotta do is watch the Real Housewives of XYZ and you'll see some dumb ass people. Not just the women, but the men. And they all have money and they've got fame and notoriety and turns out they don't have much of an inner life. And it's not that it's okay, but it's the facts. And this version of Great Gatsby wants us to believe that everybody is actually much deeper than you would believe. That Jordan Baker isn't just cynical about the world and bored with her privilege, but she actually has a 20, 24 mentality on marriage, on women's rights, on monogamy, on equality. And it just feels very shoved in. It's there to make you feel okay. It's not interesting, it's not accurate, it's not complex, it's just, hey, I'm now a mouthpiece. The music, as we all know, has nothing to do with the twenties. And I don't need a direct replica of the time period. I don't even need a full blown homage. But when you say we're doing something modern and hip because we want it to feel fresh, the truth is that you're doing it because you can't do it any other way. We're talking about the songwriting team of Paradise Square. Do you think that those gentlemen are writing songs about the 1920s in a way that is appropriate to the period? No. They don't know how. And I gotta tell you guys, this score is bad. It is bad. There are indeed big melodies in the mega musical frame. Jeremy Jordan sings the name Daisy multiple times on a big long sustained note. But Daisy is not a poetic name to sing on a sustained note. This is not Clara in Lightning the Piazza. Imagine singing Daisy to someone earnestly, romantically, on a long sustained note. Daaaazy. That's not what you imagined in your head to be. As opposed to Clara. Clara. That is a much more poetic name done on a light, frilly note. It's just very lumbering. Not to mention there are other songs with incredibly embarrassing lyrics and. And just very odd choices for stylization. An Act 2 opener with the mafia man that Gatsby is involved with. With an ensemble in trench coats flapping around like we're in Diana the Musical doing Snap Click, don't ask me why. Myrtle Wilson finds out she's pregnant and she's going to go tell Tom Buchanan. She has a line where she says, though I may not be showing, there's a baby growing. Kill that lyric with fire. All of Ava Noblezada songs as Daisy Buchanan are terrible. And I love Ava. I think she's such a talented force. All of her songs are an under use of her voice and it honestly just feels like she and the entire cast are left out to see to figure out their characters on this massive stage with no direction, with no material. You know, this is a cast of people who I think are incredibly talented. I've seen them give amazing performances in the past. Samantha Pauli in six, Eva Noblezada and Miss Saigon in Hadestown. I forget the name of the actor who plays Tom Buchanan, but he played a character in Jonah this year at a Roundabout and he was great in that. Jeremy Jordan I enjoyed in Bonnie and Clyde and Newsies. I don't recall what I've seen Noah Ricketts in. Have I seen him in anything? Let me go. Sarah Chase, who plays Myrtle Wilson, you know, Unbreakable, Kimmy Schmidt and first and First Date. She's so much fun. Noah Ricketts, Okay. He was in Frozen and Beautiful on Broadway. I didn't see Two My Girls. Oh, he was just in Fellow Travelers. Good on them. American Gods. Oh, High Fidelity. Yeah, that's what I've seen him in the Hulu version of High Fidelity. Very good in that. I was expecting more spectacle from this show considering how much people were talking about all the money that was spent about. Oh, if you want a big budget, bold musical, this is the one. You know, there is a set. It is actually surprisingly heavy on projections. There is a major LED screen in the back. It's their very intricate projections. They are detailed, but they are projections. And there's a lot of, you know, small flies that come in and out to sort of create the scene. A lot of, you know, singular wall with windows coming down to represent the house or an apartment or a cottage. There's a whole sequence where Tom and Myrtle are in Harlem fucking, while Nick sort of has to sit there and twiddle his thumbs till Tom is done. And the scenery is, you know, a wall with four doors, similar to Cabaret. Then a couch that sort of keeps swirling. And anytime somebody came in or out of the doors, that wall just swayed back and forth. I went with my friend Len, and we had our drinks from the bar, which were doubles because you couldn't order anything less than a double. And I gotta say, there were many times during the show where Len had to physically restrain me because I couldn't believe it. Just. It felt like no one understood the novel or they blatantly decided to go in a different direction from the novel just in terms of what it was about. And, yes, we're talking about an adaptation. Not everything has to be a direct replica. But the thing is, they keep all of the action from the novel. Everything that happens in the novel happens in the show. A lot of times they change the reason or they change the tone of what happens and make it much more cheesier. Musical theater, like, you watch Gatsby and part of you goes, this is the version of a Great Gatsby musical that people who don't like musicals imagine. And I've been reading about people who've loved it, and their defensiveness of it is, get off your high horse. Don't analyze it to death, just go along for the ride. And I have said that myself about certain shows, but I've said that about shows that I do think do the work for you, that know what they are, stick to it, and never, ever fall out of line. They work hard to keep a tongue in cheek tone. A Mamma Mia, if you will, you know, a Titanique. Great Gatsby absolutely wants to be a big, bold, impressive musical. It's not trying to be escapist or if it is. It absolutely once again misses the tone of the book because, yes, there are the big, elaborate parties of Jay Gatsby. Yes, it is set in the Roaring Twenties, but the book is an indictment of that lifestyle. It is telling the readers, this isn't made to last. These giant parties, the Roaring Twenties, these, you know, grandiose lives, they can't be sustainable. Everything will fall at some point because these people don't know what they're doing. Everyone's a child with too much, you know, money and too many hands in the cookie jar. And F. Scott Fitzgerald ended up being correct because the Great Depression happened not many years after that. And everything about the Roaring Twenties came to a crack, crashing halt. But that is not what the musical is interested in. Even with the very end, when everything goes to shit, they were like, well, we gotta do the Titanic, Ragtime, Notebook, Outsiders, Water for Elephants. Ending of the Big Money note, all ensemble on stage, big sound, so the audience can go out on a high. Now, I get that. That's musical theater 101 for a lot of writers. Like, if your show ends on a downer, how do you make the audience still go out on a high while not cheating the story? It's Les Mis having everyone be fucking dead. And yet still having the entire ensemble come on as ghost. And singing a reprise of do you hear the people sing? It's musically powerful, dramatically. It's compelling. It's in line with the tone of the show of eternal optimism in the face of hardship and depression. Gatsby. I have no idea why it ends the way that it does. Nick is disillusioned with everything that he has seen. He's disillusioned with the lifestyle and of the people. And. And yet when he thinks back on Gatsby, he thinks back on the parties, and the ensemble comes back out to do a reprise of the opening number of basically which way to the party? I think it's called Roaring On. But they're basically like, where's the party? And we want another party. And is there another party somewhere? And it exists solely to put the audience out on a high. Now, is there anything wrong with musical theater manipulation? Not necessarily. All musical theater really is manipulation. It is the human experience told in a certain amount of time. And when you add songs, half of the time you are telling audiences how to respond. You are giving them a big money note. You are giving them a big swell. So that way they will applaud the performer, like Jeremy Jordan, who sings as well as he do. And everyone in the audience who Came to hear Jeremy Jordan do his thing, feel like they got their money's worth. If that's for you, that is for you. I love it though, when people say things like get off your high horse. Oh, you hoity toity types thinking that they're punching up. You are being just as bullying as you think you are being bullied. If you felt like I was attacking you just now for liking the Great Gatsby, when I said I hated it, that's fine. I'm not calling you names. I am trying to understand why you would like it without making it seem condescending. Because again, theater is subjective. But when you go all out on the attack, what you're telling me is you're calling the thing I like to dumb, therefore I am dumb. And that is unacceptable to me. So clearly the problem is you. Sometimes the problem is us. Okay, and on that note, let us lead into a little bit of discourse that's been happening on the Internet because, y', all, the Internet has lost its damn mind. Now, I spoke on this podcast last week my thoughts and Lempicka and I thought that I was relatively measured. I did call it a disaster and I stand by that. But I tried to explain carefully why I thought so. And on Instagram I went even more careful and measured. The reviews that Lempicka got were overwhelmingly negative. There were a small number of critics who were pointedly cruel. Johnny of the New York Post specifically. But the New York Post is a specific kind of publication. They want attention grabbing headlines. They want pull quotes from their articles that will get people to click and read. That is their mo. It's what makes them a disgusting rag. That doesn't mean that Johnny necessarily writes bad reviews. He has written some strong ones in the past and I don't always agree with his taste by any means, but when he writes a review that I agree with, you know, I give props to you, mama. But a lot of the reviews for Lempicka were negative, but they were thoughtfully negative. They spoke openly and candidly and insightfully about what they thought didn't work about the show while giving praise where they thought it was due. They didn't have much to praise, but if they had it, they said it. They weren't, you know, looking for clickbait. And the response from the theater community has honestly been embarrassing. It happens every now and then when a show doesn't get great reviews and everyone rallies around it for some reason thinking that it's a major social cause. I don't know why we've Chosen Lempicka, maybe because the people behind Lempicka got ahead of it and got very vocal about, if you're not supporting us, then you're supporting the enemy. And apparently the enemies are critics. When the truth is that everyone's a critic. Those are the people who are getting paid to do it. But everyone has an opinion on the things they see. If you like everything you see, you don't actually have taste. You just have no taste buds. Everything tastes like yogurt to you. And if you like yogurt, that's great. But don't, you know, tell me your opinion on something? If you do like everything, not everything is going to be good. You have to stop and think about that. And I feel like I am preaching to the chorus right now with this podcast, because if you listen to this podcast, we talk about this all the time, right? When we do our deep dives in problematic or the big move, as we've been doing this Tony season, y' all are really good about taking the time to think through about the shows that we cover. Even if you disagree with me, and many of you have been very open about how much you disagree with me, but you listen to what I have to say, you absorb it, and then you come up with your own opinions or you alter your opinions or stand by your opinions after having listened to what I said. And I think that's fantastic. I would rather that than digging your heels in, leading with your emotional gut and just saying, well, no, you're problematic and you're toxic and you're the enemy. Critics kill theater jobs because everyone wants to be employed. Yes, everyone wants to be employed. But theater is one of the few, if possibly only ecosystems where when one group of jobs goes away, a new group of jobs comes in every year, no matter what, no show runs forever. And the jobs that are being created by Lempicka were only created because the jobs for Lea Polstadt had to shut down. The jobs for Diana had to shut down La Cage Aux Fall, Boeing, Boeing Ain't Misbehavin, all the shows that opened in that theater before it. You know, in order for Hell's Kitchen to be running at the Shubert, something like It Hot had to close. And you can say, well, if it wasn't that theater, it was going to be another theater. If every show is open, what show can come in? We can't say we need more stories. And then bemoan when a show closes, we only have so many theaters. They are the ones that hold the stories. So sometimes a show will close. It is a capitalist venture. You are creating something, yes, because it comes from you and is a vulnerable naked spot to be in. But if you put something out there and a lot of people don't like it. And these critics who didn't like Lempicka are not the anomaly, let me tell you. Because every Broadway person you have seen this week who has shared that video of Matt Gould at the curtain call of Lempicka, who has shared Sara Bareilles video indirectly talking about the critical reception of Lempicka, I guarantee you any of those Broadway people you follow who shared them have DMed me about Lempicka and were not kind. In fact, were probably meaner than the reviews that you read. Because Broadway is a very open community in a lot of ways. It's also a very discerning community. It's very judgmental. Everyone is competitive. When there is good work, when there's things that you love, they are very open about it, they will champion it. But if they don't like something, they'll say one thing to your face. They will go around the corner and say something else entirely. And they will say it meaner than anything in print in the New York Times. And that is a fact. I have heard it. And that is not me throwing anyone under the bus. I am willing to talk about my feelings on everything and I do it in a way where I'm trying to be not nice, but fair. Nice doesn't get us anywhere. If you disagree with my views on Lempicka, if you are someone involved with Lempicka and got mad about my views or a critic's review, think about it. Why is that? It's not that I'm problematic. What about the show do you love and why does. What about what I said is not true? What about what someone else wrote isn't true? If you're going off of the fact of we need to support the show because it's original. Okay, so then anything that anyone writes as an adaptation is immediately lesser than. And they should what? Go jump in the river? Notebook, Outsiders, Water for Elephants, Great Gatsby, Days of Wine and Roses, Suffs. If we're talking about things based off of, you know, real life stories, which again, Lempicka is Light in the Piazza, Gypsy, Chicago, Cabaret, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, you know, Phantom of the Opera, Les Mis, A Chorus Line is technically an original idea, but it's all the material is based off of pre recorded tapes. West side Story, Oklahoma. The King and I, Carousel Showboat Porgy and Bess. You know, original does not mean better. Original just means you're not going off of previously written source material. And if you did a great job, you did an amazing job and we're proud of you, that doesn't make you better people then saying, well, it's about a queer artist and we need more queer storytelling. And clearly these men don't like it because it's about a queer woman. It's about bipoc people. First of all, the show actually isn't about bipoc people. It has bipoc and actors playing white characters. That is a choice that they have made. It's a fine choice. They can go with it all they want, I don't care. But the people they're playing are not bipoc. They are bipoc actors. Let's get that out of the way. But if you're saying, well, these white men don't like it, first of all, I say first of all, I've been saying first of all a lot tonight. A lot of these critics aren't all men. There are quite a few women. In fact, one of the critics that was taken to task by Michael R. Jackson was a woman for a phrase that I think was dumb for him to come for, which was that she opened with by saying, you know, can we. I would like to request that we put a hold on the whole starting the show from the end and how did we get here? And then flashing back and, you know, moving towards the end, and Michael R. Jackson's like, how about you don't tell artists how to write? Like you're sitting on high asking for your, you know, bon bons. Which is clearly not what she was doing. She was addressing a trope that was being overused this year in addition to something like the narrator of a musical. And rather than artists all looking at each other going, huh? We all came up with the same idea. Maybe I should start thinking of other things in the future. Nope. Apparently it's the critics who have a problem with it because they saw nine shows in a row do the exact same trope. And they all were like, eh, it's overused. Now, if you're fighting for that, you're fighting the wrong battles and will never move forward as a society. And the Republicans will eventually win. So get your head out of your ass in that respect, everybody. But to say that the show is being disliked by critics because it is queer, because it is female, because it is bipoc, that is, I'm sorry, a slap in the Face to all of the artists who are bipoc, queer, female, what have you, who have all had their work praised in the past. That is a slap in the face to Lorraine Hansberry, to Suzanne, Laurie Parks, Paula Vogel, Terrence McNally, George C. Wolf, August Wilson, Lillian Hellman, David Henry Huang, Lisa Crone, William Finn, Stephen Sondheim. I got, you know, people who Larry Kramer, Tony Kushner, people who wrote works all throughout their lives, some of which were praised early, some of which were not. Some which got, some of which got panned, they did work on it, got praised later on. Look at merrily, look at appropriate. Are we saying that their positive reception doesn't count because Lempicka didn't get good reviews? Which, by the way, is a writing team of two white people, both queer, I'm pretty sure, although that's not my business. But two white people and a white woman directing it. So already you lose the bipoc, you know, story in the same way that somebody tried to tell me that I was racist for disliking Paradise Square because it, quote, had black people in it. And my response was, you know, that it was an all white writing team and they didn't have a response to that. If the praise matters, then so do the criticisms. And if the criticisms don't matter, then none of the praise matters. And then neither do the Tony Awards and then neither does anything. If art is only for the artist, then why make it at all? Why put it out there? You're supposed to be doing this because it's what you know how to do, because it's what makes sense to you. It's how the world makes sense to you. And you have to get it out of you and put it out there. Once it's out there, it's out of your hands and it no longer belongs to you. You can give information and background on what got you there, of why you did certain things that you did, give context for people who might be confused or want to know more. But once it's out there, the interpretations come flying in and it's out of your control. And if you define your value by the reception of one show, then are you, you know, is this really the world for you? And you can say to me, matt, what makes you the expert on this? What makes you think that you're so safe from this? Would you have as tough a skin if you were publicly ridiculed like this? First of all, last week I openly read a middling review I got on this podcast which wasn't even for the content I was putting out, the negatives of the review were about me, myself, as a person, how I speak. I did a showcase a few years ago back when I was trying to act. Although, fun fact, I am sort of weirdly acting again. I just did a reading last week. Props to you, mama. But a few years ago, I did an agent showcase because I was trying to get an agent so I could get on more appointments, so I could get seen more. And for the showcase, our director, who works on Broadway, told me to sing Honeymoon in Vegas. I love Betsy. And I enjoyed the song. I liked it, but I was not totally in my body about it. It wasn't totally in my voice, but I figured it out and everything that was going on, it ended up being a rather overthought process. I was proud of the work I did, but I wasn't pleased with the work I did. I think if I had to do it all over again, I would have stood my ground a bit more about how I wanted to do it. But I went along with what I went along with. And let me just say, with these agent showcase, you get note cards written back to you from these agents from like 40 of them, all anonymous. And there were plenty of cards that were very encouraging with constructive feedback. And there were a couple of cards that were cruel, not about my performance. Some were blunt breath was off. Oh, that note was off. Oh, they shouldn't do this song. Oh, their presentation's off. But notes about me as a human being feedback. That said, there was a question of what type would you categorize this actor? This was meant to be helpful for us to know what roles we should be going out for, how we should be starting to present ourselves and look for casting breakdowns, what we could go in for. And because I sang Honeymoon in Vegas, someone wrote, He's a Rob McClure type, or at least he wants to be. And it's like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that? I've been very open on Instagram about that review and even on here when I did Daddy Issues, that said that my averageness worked. That's not about my performance. My performance was called colorless. But saying my averageness worked is about me. It's about who I am that is out there in print. It's easy to find. There are other reviews of the podcast out there that are about me. Again, he goes on tangents. He gets distracted. You have to brave the sound of his voice. That is not about the work I'm doing. That's about me. And yet I keep coming back and doing this podcast. I have still gone out there and I put my face out there. I am willing to hear that. I don't know about you. I'm pretty sure I haven't coughed once on this podcast today. I don't think I've cleared my throat. I'm trying not to do any tongue clicks, but who knows? Sometimes when I go off on tangents, anything can happen. But I am listening. And if I think there's some merit to something that someone's saying in a review or a feedback, no matter how cruel it might sound, I'll absorb it. If I think that there's something there, if it's their problem and I have no flaws, that makes me a narcissist worthy of running somebody over in the Great Gatsby and getting away with it. But I'm not rich enough to get away with it. I don't want to be a narcissist. I want to be held accountable and I want to live in reality. I want the people around me to like being around me and not talk about me behind my back. I want the work that I do to be good. It's not going to be liked by everyone. But the people who I respect, I would hope that they like it. And if they don't, they have reasons that I can understand and then I can do something in the future that they will like. I don't want them to say nice things to my face, then go around the corner and tell other people something different. And that is where we're at right now. And I do not care for it. And I do not care for how insane the Internet has become about it. Take a breath. Art is subjective and shows will close. And sometimes as an artist, you did do a bad job. I have done a bad job. You will do a bad job. That doesn't mean we won't do a good job in the future. It doesn't mean we didn't do a good job in the past. You know, each one is new and as Ms. Sara Bareilles said, I hope it doesn't make people stop making art. But if you can only make art when you're being praised, then you are not an artist. That is just a fact. You can be confident in the art you made. You can stand by it. F. Scott Fitzgerald knew that the Great Gatsby was his greatest work, and yet it was not well received when it came out. It sold almost no copies. It only took another 15 years for it to get reappraised and become a major success. But if you only can handle it when you are getting showered with attention, you are not an artist. You're just not. And if you think so, maybe join us in reality one day. And that is how harsh I'm willing to be today, because I'm fucking sick of it. This has nothing to do with the cast of Lempicka, although I do want to point out Adam Feldman of Timeout New York made a comment on social media about how it's not the job of a critic to promote a show. It's their job to assess a show and tell their readers what they thought. And if the show closes, that's a shame. But hopefully something else maybe better comes in. To which one of the producers of Lempicka said, oh, thank you for telling us what's worthy art to produce. You know, like adaptations and plays starring movie stars. First of all, this producer tweeted this on the same day that their company announced that they were producing Romeo and Juliet with Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler. So eat your fucking hat. And also by trying to make a point that saying Adam Feldman was determining what was worthy art, this producer then just demeaned to other forms of art. Jeremy Strong wants to do Ibsen. Let him have, you know, 100,000 people discover Ibsen anew. Kate Connor and Rachel Zegler want to do Shakespeare. Great. Get the gen zers and the tiktokers to Romeo and Juliet. And just because something isn't brand spanking original doesn't mean it's a lesser work. Do you think that Sweeney Todd is a worse show than Paradise Square? Paradise Square isn't based on any pre existing material. Sweeney Todd is. And if you're telling me that it. That it is better because it's original, again, it must be very easy to be you. And on that note, let's call it a day because I am tired and I'm a little angry right now and I would like to have, you know, maybe some tea or something to get myself back on my feet. I'm sorry if this ended on a little more cynical note, but I'm just tired, y'. All. I don't like it. I don't like this discourse. It's a dumb discourse. And for something I love very much, I really, really hate to see the dogs driving the car and all of us being like, it's okay, let them. And if you. And if you don't let them, then you know something's wrong with you. This is bad. We need to have critical Discourse. It's how we keep our brains functioning. If everything is great, everything is pleasant always, then it is pleasant ville that is gray and black and white. And you need pushback. Even if you disagree, you need pushback. And that is where we stand. And I know, again, as I said, I'm preaching to the choir. Because if you've been listening to the podcast this long, chances are you are somebody who has been able to come to their own conclusions on anything that they see and stands by their opinions, has thought through their opinions, but is willing to listen to a dissenting opinion. Maybe you'll learn something new about yourself or somebody else, or maybe it will just embolden what you already thought. Unclear. But isn't that a fun way to live? If you only want to shield yourself from the dissenting opinions, how is that any different than President 45, who in his mind has never done a bad thing in his entire life, who has no critics, just people who are losers? I don't understand the difference outside of the obvious. Politics, right? You know, we all are like, no. Absolutely. Like, everyone should have rights. And that's wonderful. But the mentality of, no, I didn't do anything wrong. It's you. You're the problem. You're the enemy. We think we're punching up. We're not. We're just punching each other. We're just starting a brawl. And that's not great. That's not great. That's it for now. As I said, this is the last solo episode before the Tony nominations come out. We've got a couple of fun ones coming your way. I'm recording again on Friday, again on Sunday, and then again on Monday. TBD of what the order of all those episodes will be, but should be fun anyway, as I said. This is Matt Koblek of Broadway Breakdown. I'm trying to think of what diva we should close out with. We don't have any new reviews right now. The last review I read was that three star review that didn't like my voice or my way of speaking. And I apologize. But how about. You know what? Because she did such a lovely job with Serfs, and because we appreciate her and we support her, I think we'll close out with Ms. Shaina Taub, alum of Stagedoor Manor. Not sure what song yet. I'll figure that out in post, but that's it for now. Thank you so much for listening, guys. And I hope that this wasn't too much of a downer for you. I enjoyed recording it even if I was alone and slightly tipsy. And we'll see you next week. Bye, Foring. We're always behind you so bang down the door and keep marching Keep Foring. And let history sound the alarm of hell the future demands that we fight for it now it will only be ours if we keep watching Keep watching.