Cynthia Erivo (74:08)
And we are back. So I just want to say quickly for those of you who've made it this far, thank you for bearing through the last two segments of this episode. We have a new mic. It's a blue Yeti. Yeah, blue Yeti mic that was suggested to us by a few different guests on the pod. And it's, it's relatively, you know, simple to maneuver, but we're still sort of getting our bearings of using it with two or more people in the room. And I'm using it now on my own just to kind of get more used to the fucker. And it's, it's, it's both, like, simple and yet tricky. So thank you for, for surviving this experimental phase of the podcast. As we have new technology, I'm hoping that my voice does not come off super insane. I talking actually at a pretty regular level and I'm rather far away from the mic right now. And we'll just see we'll see. I tested it earlier, but we'll see. Anyway. So this is the final segment. Segment of this episode where I talk a little bit more about the shows themselves that we saw on this trip. As you know, we saw comedy about Spies, Oliver, the Curious Case of. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I don't know what's going on with my mouth today. I haven't had any alcohol or anything. I'm wondering if maybe the jet lag is kicking in or something. Our fourth show was My Neighbor Totoro, and the last one was Dear England. So just sort of to break it down a little bit. The Comedy about Spies is the latest piece from Mischief Theater. They are best known in the States for the Play that Goes Wrong. And then after that, Peter Pan goes Wrong. They also have. I was talking to somebody in London. They had a show called, like the Comedy about bank robbers. I think something like that. So it seems that when they're doing something goes wrong, that is exactly what you expect it to be. It's. There's a performance that's supposed to happen and then over the course of two hours, things get progressively more and more wrong. Somebody, you know, drops a prop, a set piece breaks, and it all goes into absolute chaos from there. When they do a show that starts off with the comedy about. That tends to be more of a plot heavy show, as is the comedy about spies. And you could hear me and my mom talk about that show a little bit more in the first section of the episode. So I'll just sort of recap that. This is a very elaborate piece, a very extravagant production. It's a sizable cast. It's not just the core Mischief folks, although they are all in it, but there is also a genuine ensemble of like, I would say five to eight other actors. It's a. So it's a sizable cast. There's a treadmill on stage. There's plenty of very elaborate set pieces, a lot of art deco pieces. We mentioned the sort of Act 1 finale of the four different hotel rooms all on top of each other in one big square with bright colors. Very reminiscent of Bonnie Christie's set for Company. But the elaborate design and the elaborate staging does not take away from the humor of the piece. It actually just makes the whole thing feel more. I don't know how to describe it. This is the most like, I think, fully realized production on the end of the Mischief Company. They have always sort of been very clever and very kind of outside the norm. Kind of like ragtag, hasty puddings mentality. Right. Very Monty Python and all of that. And this feels a little bit more like. No, no, no. We are delivering within the system of commercial theater. We are going to give you a fully thought out script. Silly but fully thought out characters with trajectories and beginning, middle and end, as well as elaborate designs. And it was, to put it mildly, once again, like just a really enjoyable evening. And I know I'm biased because the director, Matt DeCarlo and I are very good friends and collaborators, but honestly, as I said in the past, like, it's just so. I'm very fortunate to know people who are good at what they do. And even if the thing they're a part of maybe isn't my cup of tea, I can usually say with confidence and honesty that their work is very strong. And I was very fortunate that with this production, both Maddie's work and the play itself were so much fucking fun. It's so silly, but it doesn't do dumb. It's not basic. It's not under baked. It's a fully realized, fully thought through, dumb show. And it's a real bomb of just joy and humor and silliness. And I highly recommend it. The opening scene definitely is a major bang with Agent Y, Agent U, Agent O. And you can watch the sort of. It's not the final version of the scene, but a close enough version of that scene on. I think you can see it on YouTube if you search up Comedy about Spies, I think it's not for the Oliviers. It might be for one of the annual charity galas that they do in London. But they do the opening scene from Comedy about Spies with all of the different agent code names. And with that, it sort of gives this big. And the one thing they don't do is they don't do the ending of the scene. They rewrote it for this gala to not spoil the actual ending for the show. But this is to say that opening scene is so zappy and snappy and zippy and whippy and all those, you know, amazing, delightful things you come to associate with high energy, chaotic, farcical British humor. And then after that, it sort of takes a minute for the show to kind of build back up again. Not that it's low energy, but because now after that first scene, the show is setting up an actual blueprint for who all the characters are, where we are and what's at stake and what needs to be done. And once all that groundwork is set up, the whole thing kind of just keeps on spinning and spiraling. And just very, very delightful fun. That's really it I can say about comedy, about spies. I don't expect it to come here to the States. It's probably just too expensive. But it. I feel like it would actually play here very well. The whole espionage and Cold War elements of it and sort of bumbling government officials is something I think a lot of people can find relief in and watch and being able to laugh at that. And I would love it if they brought it here. I don't know what theater I would put it in. Maybe like the Broadhurst. I feel like it would work comfortably in there. Yeah. Or maybe like, well, the Schoenfeld and the Jacobs are gonna be booked for a while. But yeah, I would say, like the Broadhurst would be a good spot for them. Or maybe like the Longacre or the Music Box. Like it should be in a smaller, medium sized house and they should just bring the whole company because that's how they do with mischief. All right, moving on with Oliver. As I said earlier, Oliver, this production is just absolutely delightful. As someone who is very big on the movie, but has never really cared about the stage show, having worked on it once in school and then seeing the Encore's production, I was like, yeah, I think that the show is middle and I think that the movie's a masterpiece. I still kind of think that. Because the thing about this production is great as it is, they do tweak the show. It's not the exact same script as it was originally produced in the 60s. They incorporate some elements of scenes that are in the movie that are not in the stage show that I'm pretty sure were added in the 90s when Macintosh produced the Sam Mendes revival, which this production is sort of inspired by, since Matthew Bourne is the director, co choreographer of this and Bourne choreographed the Sam Mendes production in the 90s and mid 2000s. Obviously he found a lot of inspiration from that and he wasn't really trying to reinvent the wheel so much as take what was a very elaborate production and fit it to a smaller size. It's still a pretty elaborate production for the size of theater that it's in. But this is not like a giant spectacle. You know, it's got a turntable, it's got a bridge that they sort of bring on and off, some projections, a couple of other items. It's a very craftily done production in terms of economy. And I know we talked sort of about some castings that didn't really do it for us. We. I think we had an Understudy for Artful Dodger, who just was very child actor y. And that's just a hard role to cast because you need a child actor who acts more mature than they are because that's sort of where the humor is with Dodger. And I just don't think that this performer really did that. But, you know, it's a. It's a tough role. It's a. It's a tough role to crack. And especially if you're an understudy, you're not really getting the nuance of direction from your director as the person who normally would play the role is doing. And otherwise. Yeah, I don't know what else to say about Oliver other than just. It took me by such surprise. They did a number of tweaks to the material. Not a giant overhaul, but some tweaks. Some things got moved around a little bit. One of the big songs that I wish they had cut and they didn't do it, they just moved it to later was I shall scream. Mr. Bumble. They went straight from the title song, Oliva, Oliva, right into Boy for Sale. I was like, oh, my God. They cut I Shall Scream. Fucking fantastic. I'm loving this. And then, lo and behold, much later into Act 1, they did do I Shall Scream. They moved it. And then the same thing for my name. When Bill Sykes first entered the stage in Act 1, which, by the way, in the normal script, Bill Sikes does not show up until act two to sing my name. He is absent for all of Act 1, but in the updated scripts, he now shows up in Halfway Through Act One after pick a pocket to deliver jewelry and items to Fagin that he has stolen. This is in the movie where they added it. They also added a little scene between Bill Sykes and Nancy that's also in the movie the. You love me? Of course I love you. I live with you, don't you? That kind of thing. But in his first entrance, they added a little bit of my name, and I was like, oh, they've moved my name to this moment. And they shortened it. Okay, I hate this song, but if we're gonna have it, this is the best way to do it. But then, though, they still had him do it at the top of Act 2, and the actor sold it as best he could, but I just don't like that song. But it was. The show was just musical theater joy. And the. Pardon me if I already said this in the first part of the episode. That was almost a week ago, so I can't really remember, but Something that I want to talk about with all of these shows that was really fascinating to me was the true ensemble building of all of them. These were shows where the company really built a world together. And not only that, but whatever they may have lacked in singing, agility or clean dancing or acrobatic dancing or perhaps maybe super nuanced performances on child performers, everyone was creating full characters and making dynamic choices that benefited each other person on stage. It felt very much like the acrobatic trapeze effect that Joanna Gleason always talked about in her into the Woods Tony acceptance speech, where she talked about the original company of woods, that they were trapeze artists and everybody was just catching each other on stage all the time. And with all of these shows, I really felt that. And it kind of bums me out that I haven't felt that way on Broadway much this season, especially in musicals. There have been a couple of plays that have done that for me. English John Proctor is the villain Hills of California. I would even say oh, Mary Cult of Love. But I feel like the only musical I have that sense of this season was maybe Happy Ending. And that's kind of a small show. I mean, mincemeat, sure. All the ways I don't care for that musical. I will say that cast is absolutely melded together. There are performances in the company I don't enjoy, but they are. They are there for each other. But this. This theater trip, I was watching Oliver and Benjamin Button and comedy about spies and Totoro and Dear England, and it was so dynamic to see these ensembles at work. It felt really egoless and maybe not crisp and clean, but fully lived in and creative. And that made it more alive than almost any other shows I've seen this season. Musicals especially, you know, we have. I would say it's, you know, a stereotype, but still a somewhat true one. We do have better singers here. We do have better dancers here. We even had some really great actors to rival the actors, you know, in the uk. But they do have this sort of specialness in their performances in musicals over there that maybe it's in the training or the fostering of talent there. But I talk about this sometimes where, like with our BFA programs, they train their students to be machines and talented and professional, but there's always a little bit of something special lost when performers leave the programs that they enter in. Sometimes somebody comes out of a training program and still has their individuality intact. And that is someone who I feel is like Helen J. Shen, who went to Michigan, but remains very special. And there are plenty of people who are so lovely and professional and talented who've come out of Michigan and CCM and Carnegie Mellon and, you know, Emerson and boco and all those places, but not a lot of really special messiness. And I wish we would foster that a bit more because with all of these shows, while again, the singing maybe is not as dynamic as it is here or as clean here, there is something very special in these performances that I wish we would capture for Broadway. Moving on to Curious case of Benjamin Button. What I was talking about earlier with my mom when I said that, you know, the show began and I was kind of nervous. Of all of these productions, Curious Case of Benjamin Button is very much the most theater kid energy, if you will. Very sort of waiting for Guffman. It's an ensemble cast put basically performing the story of Benjamin Button. It's like part Zorba, part come from away, part once. That's sort of the three shows I would meld together for this on a set that looks like a more realistic swept away. And the opening number, it's this like eight or nine minute number. And it gave me a lot of welcome to the rock vibes because it. The entire cast is narrating while they're also playing out all the parts that they're narrating about. It's the leading up to Benjamin Button's birth and his father on the day that he's being born, and all the people in the town and what's going on on that day. And it's very cheery, it's very sweet, it's very showman like. And the two things that kind of made me worried were, one, the sound design. Because even though the Ambassadors theatre in London, I believe, has fewer than 500 seats, it's small and it's. And it's tight. But even with the ensemble playing their own instruments, the music was so loud and the lyrics so dense that I couldn't make out a lot of the lyrics in that opening number. I would be like, oh, something about a goat and a car and a baker and something about tea and beer and all these things. And I was like, oh, God, is this. Is it gonna be like this the entire time? Like, high energy. Show, show. Show. We're. We're storytellers here. And here's the. The pub that's made out of a crate and a net. And now this person's playing a goat and isn't that funny? And all these things. I was like, oh, God, is It gonna be this kind of schmaltzy earnestness with lyrics I can't hear because the music is too loud. But eventually your ear does adjust. And they had other songs after the opening that were quieter and smoother and able to allow your ear to adjust to the volumes after that. But also, Benjamin Button as a musical is so earnest in a way that can be very grating for some people. But if you allow yourself to go on board with what the show is doing, it is actually quite moving. That is why my mom was basically a wreck in Act 2 and my sister wanted to get the fuck out of there by the time the show ended. But there was a question of. Because the show is planning to move to Broadway, I know this to be true. And the question of, is it too British? Is it too. Whatever it is, a little too British. There are. They adapt the story to take place in England, which I don't think Benjamin Button ever has. I know the movie takes place in America. Pretty sure the book takes place in America as well. But that's to say there are some references and some slangs that are obviously quite British and that can be easily fixed. I think that if they were to bring it to Broadway, they need to do a workshop or some kind of tryout to test aspects of it for audiences. Because. And while I really like the. And appreciate the sort of semi messiness of parts of it, some things do need to be a little tighter in this show, particularly in Acts 2, where there are a few different false endings and audiences will be a little less receptive to it if they kind of keep it as is. So just I feel like the creatives could go through it with a fine tooth comb and beef up some of the staging, shave off a couple of minutes on both acts and question, you know, when is the show in danger of getting to schmaltzy? Because it probably did get too schmaltzy when we saw it, but. And the fact that we were okay with it, I think, is a testament to how good the good stuff is, particularly the music, which is very, very beautiful. But there's also an intimacy to Benjamin Button in London that I don't think is going to be able to achieve on Broadway. There just simply isn't a house small enough that can also accommodate the show financially. They'll have to be in a theater like the Longacre or a theater like, I don't know, the Walter Kerr. The Walter Kerr actually might be there, a solid theater for it. But when you get. When you're further away from a show physically, it's easier to critique it and not get on board with its intentions. So I'm intrigued to see what happens with it. I don't think this is a show where they necessarily need to bring the whole cast over. I would love it if they did, and I don't. I can't. I personally can't think of actors right now who could do it, especially because everybody plays all of the instruments. I actually wouldn't be mad if we got Jessie Mueller back into the fold for this and had her play the female love interest. It's. What is the name? It's like Wellin or something like that. It's again, very, very English. But what is her name? Let me find it, Let me find it. Let me find it. Let me find it. Yeah. Alohen. Alohen Keane. I feel like that would be a good role for Jessie Mueller. And she. The role only really plays the piano and a triangle, so fine tune your piano playing skills, Jessie. But, yeah, it'll be a hard show to cast because it's. Everyone plays, like, four different instruments and has to sing and act and all that good stuff. And I know that there are far more singing instrument playing actors out there now than there were 15 years ago, but it's. It's still not necessarily like an ocean of. Of options. So we'll see what happens with that. And then my neighbor Totoro. Now, I've been very vocal about my love of all things Miyazaki in Studio Ghibli, and this movie, my neighbor Totoro, is no exception. It was, I believe this is the movie that launched Studio Ghibli into landmark status in Japan and then eventually all over the world. And Totoro in particular, is their crowning image, much like Mickey Mouse is for Disney. And if you don't know the movie very well, it is the story of two girls. Mei, who's about four. Her sister Sasuke, who is. I don't know if they ever say, but maybe like eight or nine. They move out to the country from Tokyo with their. Their father because their mother is in a hospital in the countryside with what I believe is. It's not said outwardly, but the online conspiracy is that their mother has spinal tuberculosis. So it's not airborne, but she has all of the symptoms of tuberculosis. And they move out there to be closer to the hospital so her mother. Their mother can hopefully recover. And the house they're in, they find out, is haunted. But it's not scary haunted. It's like spirited haunted. And there are these creatures that live in the forest outside their house. And one is this giant, giant troll that they've named Totoro. And ultimately Totoro and his companions in the forest are there for these girls to be sort of an outlet for them of their anger, their frustration, their joy, their confusion, their sadness, their happiness, and then ultimately delivers them to where they need to be most, which is with their mother at the hospital at the end of the story. And the play is a very literal translation of the movie. The movie is about an hour and 20, I think the show is 2:40, including a 20 minute interval. And it is very literal. It is pretty much the entire script on stage, spread out a little bit. There's live music, there's a lead singer who, who sings a lot of transitional songs as they get from one scene to another. The whole thing is done on a giant turntable. Again, the sets are quite literal, but very expensive and elaborately so. The puppetry is very gorgeous. This is not a Lion King where it's like the impression of Totoro, the impression of his friends, it's like, no, no, it's literally them. But everything is tangible, everything is physical. It's not a projection show. Even the opening sequence, which they have the title of the piece on the scrim, there's no curtain but the scrim. And then they do a whole gag with the lettering because my neighbor, as written in English, is N E I G H B O R. And that's how it's spelled in the movie. But because this is England, they have a U in the title for this. So they did a whole funny gag of entering the U into the word. And halfway through the gag, my mom and I turn to each other, we go, oh, that's real. That's not a projection on the scrim. Like those are actual letters that are on, that are on there, that they are maneuvering behind the curtain. It was very, very cool. And yes, the performance is very good. The actresses who played Mei and Suzuki. Sorry, it's not Suzuki. I can never say the name correctly. Movie Satsuki. Mei and Satsuki were very phenomenal. Victoria Chen played Mei. I looked it up. She was nominated for the Olivier for this, rightfully so. This was production. This was a production produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company that premiered at the Barbican center and then moved to the Gillian Lynn for what I believe is an open ended run. And then Amy Akumura Jones played Tatsuki and she was also really fantastic. And part of it is their stature they are. They were deliberately cast for being smaller than everyone else on stage, but also just their mannerisms, their physicality, their. Their whole interpretation of their roles. It was. It was a performative version of a child, but one that was rooted in truth. And so you bought it pretty immediately. I think it took, like, all of 15 seconds for my mom and I to get on board with them as. As these children. And it was just like a very sweet, delightful show. My mom did cry again. How can. How can she not? She cries all the time. And it was very lovely to see children all throughout the theater, mostly being well behaved, but just fully engaged with the piece. And I don't know how many of them knew the movie ahead of time. It was also a lot of adults in the audience, many of whom were giant Studio Ghibli fans. So it was sort of a nice blend of the two. Because the thing about Studio Ghibli is that they definitely make movies that are for children, but they are mature in how they deal with children. They don't pander to them. They're very colorful. They've got all these wonderful, kooky characters in them, but the things that the characters go through are very real. The sisters in my neighbor Totoro are just dealing with the possibility of their mother's death. And they talk about it openly in the third act of the piece. And it's. It's hard. It's hard to watch. These kids have to talk openly about the possibility of death, mortality, of losing their mother, of not knowing what to do, of not being able to do anything. And obviously, that's when the kids in the theater were getting a little more restless because Totoro hadn't been on stage for, like, 25 minutes. But you hope that some of those kids were listening and maybe they could take it with them and grow from that. I think that that's really powerful material to give children for entertainment. And I understand people. Someone was telling me this when we were talking, when I was talking about Totoro in London. They were saying, it's similar to Bluey. And I've never watched Bluey. My best friend's kid likes to watch it, and I've babysat her a few times, and I sort of let her watch it while I call my phone. She also likes Bear in the Big Blue House. There's also another one with dogs that she likes to watch. But I've never actually sat down and absorbed Bluey. But apparently Bluey does a lot of similar things where it's colorful, it's sweet. It's characters that the kids like, while they also deal with a lot of emotional storylines, so good on them. I'm glad that that exists for children to hopefully be smarter, not just get smooth brains. Super young. And then finally, dear England, as I mentioned, this was a return engagement at the national on their Olivier stage. This won Best Play at the Olivier Awards, I believe, last year, 2024. If not 2024, then 2023. But I'm pretty sure it was 2024. And, yeah, it's based on a true story. It was not bad by any means. We did like it. I had heard from a few different London listeners who I reached out to about it, Charlie and Tom included, and they both were like, I don't care about football. It's never been my jam. But I really loved this. I thought it was so magnificent, and I think the size of it and the creativity of it is what's so impressive and possibly magnificent. But when you're on sort of the outside of something of a story and of an energy, of urgency and of palpable connection, like the rest of the audience had with it, all you can really grab onto is the design, is the staging, is performance, and not necessarily the subject matter, not necessarily the themes. And that's okay. Not everything has to blow you away. Things can still be worth it, even if they're just good, you know, and it's objectively good. This is an objectively good play. It's a great production. Rupert Gould is somebody who I never really feel does emotion well. He does, you know, story, and he's creative. He's got a million pictures in his head, and he knows how to fill a stage. But I've never gotten anything that I can connect to from him. I felt that way with King Charles iii. I felt that way with American Psycho, Tammy Faye, and I felt it with this as well. Patriots. You know, he's so smart and he's so clever and creative, but it's not. He's not a director who makes me feel anything. And part of it might have been the play. I didn't feel much about the material itself, but by having it be on such a stadium like stage, it is ultimately keeping you at a distance. You're watching what seems like a small story on a magnificent canvas, and for everything that's impressive about it, it doesn't always allow for connection. Now, granted, that is me and my mom being the anomalies here, because the rest of the Olivier theater that night lost their shit when the. When the lights went down at the end. They were engaged. They were, you know, responsive. But it wasn't like an effusive crowd during the play. It was. Once it ended, they just roared. I would say the two most enthusiastic crowds were Oliver and Dear England. I tell you, comedy about spies 2. If I were to rank audience response post show, it would probably be number one, Oliver, number two, comedy About Spies, number three, Dear England, four, Totoro, and then five, Benjamin Button. And Benjamin Button's audience was very responsive at the end. They really did enjoy it. But it's such a quiet show that it's not really one that when it ends, everyone's like, oh, my God. American audiences would do that. But maybe not so much British audiences. That's it for now. If you guys want to ask more questions specifically about any of these shows or about the London trip, you can join the Discord Channel, which I will have the link in the description box for this episode. And if that stops working, you can always reach out to me on Instagram. Natkoplick Usual spelling. We are at almost 300 members on the Discord Channel. Very, very, very exciting. If you like the podcast, make sure to give us a nice five star rating or review. We actually have two new reviews, but I'm going to hold off on reading them until the next episode because of my jet lag. I'm going to butcher my reciting of these reviews and I want them to be read as well as I possibly can do. So. You'll have to wait for next week for those reviews, but if you haven't written one yet and you're planning on doing it, please do so. We have one prediction episode for the Tonys coming up. We have hopefully a retrospective episode on Tony's and then we have our final Tony reaction episode. And then we're gonna take a nice big break for the summer before we come back with a little bit of a. Not a rebrand, not an overhaul, but just a tweak to the release schedule of Broadway Breakdown. That's it for now. I am going to close us out with. Part of me wanted to say Oliver, but I'm not gonna do that. I'm going to. You know what? Fuck it. We're gonna do. Do I want to do Shani Wallace from Oliver with her oompapa or her as long as he needs me? No, we're gonna do Benjamin Button. We're gonna do a little clip from Benjamin Button, the cast recording. Not sure which one yet, but we'll figure it out and that's it. For now. We will see you guys in a week and I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for dealing with all of the audio issues. I hope they weren't too bad. We're doing our best. We're figuring, we're figuring out it's new technology, we're artistic types and we're doing it on our own. So just making the most of it. All right, that's it for now. Thank you so much, guys. Have a good weekend. Happy Memorial Day. Happy Memorial Day. Take it away, Benjamin Bushen. Oh, I'll drink till it's done oh, I'll never be free from the way she looked so poor hey there. I'm Alan Seales, host of the Theater Podcast, a weekly podcast that takes you behind the scenes with int personal conversations that include the biggest stars on Broadway, TV and film. My podcast has over 350 episodes with guests including Stephanie J. Block, Kerry Butler, James Monroe Iglehart, Andrew Barth Feldman, Alex Brightman, Patti LuPone, Ramin Karimlou, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and even TV stars like Isaac Bizrahi, Ariana Maddox, Michael Urie, Eddie Izzard, and literally so, so many more. My guests have spilled secrets, told coming out stories, discussed their fears and successes, and even had huge epiphanies live in the episodes. So you're bound to hear some things from my guests that you've never heard anywhere else. I've also got many deep dive takeovers on the podcast, which are consecutive episodes dedicated to casting creatives from a single show like the Outsiders, Back to the Future and Juliet, wicked, Beetlejuice, Hadestown, Frozen 6. I could go on. Can you tell I like theater. I've definitely got something you're gonna enjoy, so go ahead, search for your favorite star and listen to their episode. You can find all the info about the podcast at VPN FM FM TTP on the Broadway Podcast Network or anywhere podcasts are found. If you need that link again, it's BPN FM TTP.
