Transcript
A (0:07)
Welcome to a special interview episode of Broadway Radio. My name is Matt Tamminini. On today's episode, I'm in conversation with Karen McCracken and Simon Leary, the stars of the new Off Broadway play Heartbreak Hotel. McCracken wrote the show and stars as a woman living through the ups and downs of a particularly difficult breakup. In the show, Leary plays a multitude of different men in the main character's life as we see her navigate a minefield of emotions, both internal and external, on her path to healing. McCracken and Leary are both from New Zealand, and the show has played all over the world, including in New Zealand, in Australia, in London at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and is now playing at the Doctor 2 Theater in New York City through April 19. The show's unique structure highlights the messiness of a traumatic breakup while also explaining to the audience what is happening to them on a physical, scientific level as they go through such a breakup. Peppered with laughs, music and catharsis, the show is a unique look at a universally painful experience. Of course, I will have information in the show notes on where you can purchase tickets to see the final two weeks of Heartbreak Hotel off Broadway at the Dr. 2. Alright, with all of that out of the way, here is my conversation with Karen McCracken and Simon Leary. Karen, I wanna start with you as both one of the actors and the writer of the show. This feels like a very personal story. So without getting too much into the weeds of those origins, I did wonder like, though, did it start by saying, I wanna tell a very specific story or I wanna start by analyzing and explaining heartbreak? Because both of those aspects are there in the script.
B (1:55)
Yeah, I would say somewhere in the middle of those two things, I think I am prone to some extent to heartbreak. And I had had an experience where I was still very caught up about the end of a relationship a long time after it had ended. And I am an analytical thinker. And so I was like, there has to be a way for this to my two passions. To Jo Coin. Yeah. And I also was struck by the kind of absence of. In the media, there's a lot. There's so much noise about heartbreak in culture, but something that felt like very authentic and true and funny, but also not devastating or not unbelievable. So, yeah, they were the two drivers. I would say. Yeah.
A (2:54)
When you were putting this together, was there a fact about heartbreak or grieving that you learned whether you included it in the script or not, that was surprising to you. And then, Simon, as you were kind of going through this process as an actor. Is there something that you're like, oh, that's weird. But it also makes sense to you as a human with lived experience.
B (3:18)
I would say that for me, I was sick so much when I was like, after various breakups, but I get. I get so many colds and flus and learning in the science of that, that is. That's part of your body's response often because it's going into fight or flight. So it's reserving all your energy for inflammatory responses and shutting down your ability to fight viruses. For me, that was quite instructive, really, of like, wow, your body is really kind of taking the steering wheel when you're heartbroken. In some ways I found reassuring and bewildering.