← BroadwayRadio
BroadwayRadio
ToB: Feb. 13, 2025 | Andrew Barth Feldman Interview
00:17:45
Anika Noni Rose and Aisha Jackson to Lead Encores’ ‘Wonderful Town,’ New ‘Gatsby’ Casting, Andrew Barth Feldman Interview Since 2016, “Today on Broadway” has been the first and only daily podcast recapping the top theatre headlines every Monday through...
Loading summary
Transcript32 lines
- [00:02]
Matt Tammanini
Welcome to TODAY on Broadway for Thursday, February 13, 2025 on Broadway Radio's Matt Tammanini. We're going to come to you today with a hybrid episode. I'd originally thought that we'd run this episode on Monday, but we're gonna have something else in the feed on Monday coming out of the holiday weekend. But after I run through a little bit of news, Grace will have an interview that she did the other day with Andrew Barth Feldman talking about the new Joshua Harmon play We Had a World that he is co starring in opposite Joanna Gleason. It is directed by Trip. Then we'll begin performances from the Manhattan Theater Club at New York City center on February 25th. So stay tuned for that. Just got a little bit of news before we get into that, but I also want to let you know that tonight over at the Nederlander Theater, Idina Menzel's new show Redwood will officially open. That means we will have TODAY on Broadway late in the Patreon feed after the reviews come out. So if you are hoping to hear that immediately at 8 o'clock or whenever we drop it in Patreon, it will be delayed, but of course it'll be in the regular feed on Friday mornings like normal. So just wanted to give you that little programming announcement. But let's start with the big news coming to us on Wednesday as New York City Center Encores has announced who will star in the upcoming production of Wonderful Town. And it is, in a word, wonderful. The show will star Tony Award winner and Disney legend Anika Noni Rose, as well as one of the best voices I've heard on Broadway in recent years, Erstwhile Snow White from My beloved Once Upon a One More Time, Aisha Jackson. The show will play New York City center beginning on April 30th and is being directed by Zylon Livingston. And of course, Mary Mitchell Campbell will music direct, Anika obviously playing older sister Ruth and Aisha playing younger sister Eileen. They will lead the cast who will be announced in the coming days and weeks as we approach this production. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that this musical is based on the memoir by Ruth McKinney. Her and her sister Eileen grew up in Ohio and Ruth, of course attended the Ohio State University where she majored in journalism and she went on to work not only for the student newspaper the Lantern, but was also the campus correspondent for the Columbus Dispatch. So just putting that out there, the musical is one of the all time greats in the musical theater canon with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Condon and Adolph Green, features songs like Ohio, 100 Easy Ways to Lose a Man and Wrong Note Rag. It is absolutely one of the quintessential fun shows in Broadway history. Lauren Lotaro will choreograph and Ayodele Cassel will provide tap choreography. Very much looking forward to this one. Hoping I can be in town while this one is running. I probably will be in New York twice between March and May, so hopefully I can overlap my trips so that I can see one of my favorite performers, Anika Noni Rose and one of my new favorite performers, Aisha Jackson. Speaking of some fun casting news, yesterday we got two new principals that will be taking over roles in the Great Gatsby on Broadway. Last week while I was out, we found out that Sarah Chase will be departing her role as Myrtle Wilson as well as John Androsky will be leaving his role as Tom Buchanan. They will end their runs on March 30. Replacing them will be the once and always bad Cinderella Lineady Hanau as Myrtle and taking over as Tom will be original cast member and original Jay Gatsby understudy Austin Colby. He'll take over for Tom Buchanan. Yesterday we also found out that Noah Ricketts will end his run as Nick Carraway on March 13 as well, although we do not yet know who will take over for him. It's kind of interesting to me that Austin is taking over this role. He was in the ensemble and understudied Jeremy Jordan for Jay Gatsby. He left for a little bit to go do the out of town tryout for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Then he came back to the show. Presumably Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil will end up on Broadway here fairly soon, with Austin hopefully still in it. But he also led rapturous cheers before, during and after Sunset Boulevard when his wife Caroline Bowman got her one time to play Norma Desmond on stage. So love seeing good things for good people. Of course they join the current Broadway company that has Ryan McCarten as Jay Gatsby, Sarah Hyland as Daisy Buchanan, Samantha Pauley is returning for a second year as Jordan Baker, Charlie Pollock is playing George Wilson and the absolute Broadway and musical theater icon Terrence Mann is playing Meyer Wolfsheim. Going from show and casting news to some ticketing news yesterday we found out a little bit more details about this year's iteration of Kids Night on Broadway. This annual event will happen on March 4th. Tickets are on sale now and Here's a full list of the shows participating. We have Aladdin and Juliet, Buena Vista Social Club, Chicago, the Great Gatsby, Gypsy, Hadestown, Hamilton, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hell's Kitchen, the Lion King, maybe Happy Ending, mj, Moulin Rouge, Operation Mints, Meet the Outsiders, Redwood and Six. So what this means is is that kids under the age of 18 can attend any of those Broadway shows for free when they are accompanied by a full paying adult. While the official Kids Night On Broadway is March 4, Great Gatsby and six have slightly different schedules so they do not have shows on that Tuesday night, which is the fourth. So instead their kids night will be on March 5th. So if you are like me and you want to make sure that you can maximize your your efficiency and cost savings for Kids Night on Broadway, you can go to a show on March 4 and then another one on March 5. There are also a ton of theater district restaurants offering promotions to go along with Kids Night on Broadway. You can get a free kids meal with the purchase of an adult entree at a number of places. We will have that list in the show notes. You can also get tickets at Kids Night on Broadway using the code KIDSWIN25. And finally yesterday we found out that on March 10, the week after Kids Night on Broadway, over at the Town Hall, PBS will film a new edition of Broadway's Leading Ladies, a concert featuring an all star cast of Broadway women's performers. No cast has been announced for this, but it will include, as they say, Broadway royalty as well as the next generation of musical theater leading ladies. The concert will air on PBS at some point this year, probably in the fall, but we don't exactly know when. The performers will be backed by the American Pops Orchestra conducted by Louis Fraser. Alright, that is all the news that we have. We are going to now send you over to the one and only Grace Aki as she talks to the great and the good Andrew Barth Feldman as he gets ready to start opposite Broadway legend. She very well might be involved in that concert. Joanna Gleason in the new play We Had a World. If you would like to purchase tickets to this show after you hear this incredibly insightful interview, you can head over to the show. Notes.
- [07:10]
Grace Aki
Do indeed be this game and I am so sorry but also for background, just quickly like I think it's very funny that this timing is happening for this interview because I do Broadway radio but also I work in some level of Broadway like advertising and whatnot and I was quite literally with Helen last week doing the Huaboon.
- [07:32]
Andrew Barth Feldman
Oh, my God. We have the same one on in the room watching Love island right now. So I. I'm in.
- [07:38]
Grace Aki
I was like, I feel like this might or might not be in that home also. So what. What a time to be alive.
- [07:43]
Andrew Barth Feldman
It is a new addition to our. To our home.
- [07:46]
Grace Aki
Only once a month, watering. You can't get.
- [07:49]
Andrew Barth Feldman
I mean, why not? You have to take that. You have to take it. It's. There's no responsibility.
- [07:53]
Grace Aki
I kill everything. But sure, this is fine. So I. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us on Broadway radio today. I am very excited about this show. I love, like, a really deeply depressing retrospective of a family's life. And I feel like that's what this vibe is. But obviously we've fallen in love with you and all these different theatrical aspects and now with, like, film. But when I saw this cast list, I was like, you're going to get to be opposite Janet Gleason. Like, this is very exciting. Tell us a little bit about this journey.
- [08:24]
Andrew Barth Feldman
Yeah. I mean, everything you just said is absurd and true. This is my first time getting to do a play professionally. I've really only ever done one play. Even growing up, I've only done musical theater. It's also my first time originating something in theater. I've been replacing a bunch, which has been great. I've gotten to play so many dream roles, but to get to build something, and to build it with Joshua, who I'm playing a version of, and to build it with Joshua Trip Coleman, who is brilliant, and with Joanna and Janine Sarales. And it's really just us and our amazing stage management team in the room. We're all building this thing together. It's just the three of us on that stage. It is very sad, but it is also very happy. And that's really the question of the play. And the thing that Joshua is trying to examine in the writing of it, and thus the ritual of it, is how can things be so wonderful and then so awful in a family in the world? The title has a lot of meanings. There's connections to climate change as well, sort of. He's very passionate about conservation. And so naturally the character is. It's about losing things and wanting to appreciate them while you have them and looking back on something and realizing that you didn't really appreciate it while it was right there in front of you. And to get to explore that every night with these to brilliant women is, I can't wait. And then, you know, there's really a jury in this play. And that's the audience. So once that comes in and it's. We're in thrust. So it's on three sides, about 300 seats. It's very intimate. I'm gonna be making direct eye contact with people throughout the entire play.
- [10:08]
Grace Aki
Cause it's at New York City Center Stage two as part of mtc. So you're, like, so much more intimate than you would be at, like, the Samuel J. Friedman or something else.
- [10:17]
Andrew Barth Feldman
Oh, no, it's ridiculous. I mean, just rehearsing it in the room. They've set up chairs in the rooms that we get a sense for where people will be. And you're in it with us. You're implicated in things that are happening on the stage. A lot of the play is direct address. It's me telling a story to the audience, which is sort of my favorite thing to do. And not something I've gotten to do in the context of anything, but my own sort of solo work. The stuff I've done at, like, 54 below. So to get to really look people in the eyes and ask them what they make of all of this, that's the. The amazing foundation Joshua has built. So I just can't wait to get it in front of an audience and see how much it changes, because it's already changing so much in the room.
- [11:02]
Grace Aki
Because you're. I mean, you're working with an astounding playwright. Like, the way that people have fallen in love with Prayer for the French Republic and like, all these other works. Like, I think that you, as far as a play debut, you are in, like, the greatest hands with Trip Coleman. Like, every time I have seen an actor be like, well, I haven't done blank yet. And then they're working with Trip, I'm like, okay, that's right.
- [11:25]
Andrew Barth Feldman
That's right. Well, he just has such a vision for what this is supposed to be. And he and Josh really speak the same language. They worked together on significant other years ago, which is another. So many people.
- [11:36]
Grace Aki
I was going to say, did you read that? Did you ever see it?
- [11:38]
Andrew Barth Feldman
I read it. I've read every one of plays, and that one is gorgeous. And what's fun about reading all his old plays? And what if you've read them or seen them? What you'll see in this one is that these characters, his mother, his grandmother, and himself, they're in every single one of his plays now. He just gets to ask the questions directly that he's been asking indirectly in all of these other pieces. But Trip is just brilliant and so collaborative. We've really gotten to trust our impulses and make mistakes and screw up. It's been feeling like I'm in, like, an advanced learning class with the. Because it's so small, it's just me and Joanna and Janina. We all really care about this, and so we're building this thing together. And Trip could not be a better leader. He's really, really amazing. And what he's doing with this play is bizarre, kind of. It could go so many ways on the page because Joshua has written this very ephemeral, abstract, jumping all over the place sort of thing. And we're setting it sort of in a rehearsal room as though we're using theater to figure this out together. To bring back the ghost of my grandmother, played by Joanna Gleason, and sort of ask her questions and bring her in front of an audience, say, what do you make of these relationships? The only way we could do that is theater. So the plays acknowledging that and investigating that.
- [12:56]
Grace Aki
Well, I think it's funny because thank you for touching on what the kind of seemingly plot is of this grandmother communicating with her grandson about, like, what she wants people to remember and things like that. But it's wild that, like, on my specific algorithm, maybe it's just, like, age or something. But I am getting so many ads from these, like, companies that are like, give this book to your grandparent, and they'll write down all of their stories. And, like, all of these really, like, Jesus, they're like, don't wait till it's too late or something like that. And so, like, I was looking at, you know, the description of this show, and I was like, maybe this is a better medium for this conversation.
- [13:32]
Andrew Barth Feldman
I think it definitely is. It's. I mean, you know, if you want to bring capitalism into your relationship with your grandparent and have them write something down in a corporate book, that's. That's fine. That's better than them not writing anything down at all. But this is really making a case for the fact that the only way, really to have that conversation, specifically, I would say, with Joshua and his grandmother, is through the writing of this play. He's brought her back to life, and he's roped his mother into it somewhat unwillingly to. As though this is therapy for her. You know, there are moments in the play where I'm like, almost want to shake Jeanine, who's playing my mother, and be like, go to therapy, please. Journal, like, seek treatment.
- [14:21]
Grace Aki
Please.
- [14:21]
Andrew Barth Feldman
Do something, please. I'm trying to help myself. You need to try to help yourself. And I feel like we have that with so many people in our lives, especially our family. And this play is that the play is him investigating that for himself and hoping that that brings some catharsis to his mother as well.
- [14:40]
Grace Aki
Do you feel like it feels kind of like a trap between dramedy and comedy and catharsis and that type of thing. How do you feel in terms of tone? What do you think that people can expect?
- [14:52]
Andrew Barth Feldman
Yeah, I think dramedy is as concise a description as there can be. But much like these relationships, it's all over the place. There are things that are depressing. There have been tears in the rehearsal room every day. It's a very, very moving piece. But it's also Joshua Harmon. So it's really funny because the most dramatic things that happen in your family on one day are devastating and on another day are hilarious.
- [15:20]
Grace Aki
The funniest thing you've ever heard and you're like, wow, we were upset about that.
- [15:24]
Andrew Barth Feldman
Now we can sit and it's hilarious that that happened to us. And there's another. The easiest thing for me to do is quote the play, which is understanding that two people or even three people can look at the exact same thing and see something entirely different. That's. That's what this play seeks to explore and display. That even objects carries so such different meaning for different people in a family, in a collection of individuals. It's sometimes funny and sometimes sad and sometimes it doesn't have to.
- [15:59]
Grace Aki
Yeah, it doesn't have to be binary. It doesn't have to be one thing. But I think that when there's always like a new property, I always like to like tell people, here's what vibe wise, it would be like to this. So I appreciate that a lot.
- [16:09]
Andrew Barth Feldman
You will definitely laugh a lot. You will probably also cry.
- [16:15]
Grace Aki
That's my favorite kind of play, though. I don't think that you get to earn crying if you've not made me laugh. Oh my God. I have to feel something for you. It can't all be this, like, SAP moment. It has to go somewhere. So.
- [16:28]
Andrew Barth Feldman
No, it's not a misery play. It's not at all. But you might be sad sometimes.
- [16:34]
Grace Aki
Listen, I laughed a lot during prayer for the French public. I don't even know if that was right, but I did.
- [16:38]
Andrew Barth Feldman
It's funny. He's so funny. The circumstances he's written are so funny. And then looked at one other way or staged differently or something. They're devastating. And that's again, why theater is the perfect place to be having this conversation.
- [16:52]
Grace Aki
No I'm very excited about it. Performances start February 25th, so you guys are in the middle of rehearsal right now for We Had a World, but I can't wait to see it. It's gonna be great. I was excited when the announcement of this even happened. So this is a real gift to get to talk to you and get all of our listeners to get excited about it. So thank you so much for joining us. Andrew.
- [17:12]
Andrew Barth Feldman
Thank you, Grace. Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast.
- [17:20]
Matt Tammanini
All right, everybody, that's all we have for today. Thanks for listening to Today on Broadway. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram BroadwayRadio. You can follow me on Instagram at bwwmatt. Have a wonderful day. We will be here late in the Patreon feed tomorrow after reviews for Redwood are released. So we will talk to you then.