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- [00:00]
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David Biancolli
this is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Biancooley. The 79th annual Tony Awards are this Sunday, honoring the best of Broadway from the previous season of stage plays and musicals. To note the occasion, we're revisiting interviews with two dynamic Tony winning stars from Broadway's past. We'll hear from Angela Lansbury, a six time Tony recipient, including for the musicals Mame Gypsy and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. And we'll start with Alan Cumming, who won a Tony for his role as the emcee in the revival of Cabaret. Both of them had a major impact on the New York stage, yet both came from the UK Angela Lansbury from England and Alan Cumming from Scotland. Alan Cumming was born in 1965 and has been acting in television movies, in the theater since the 1980s. As an actor, he's somewhat of a chameleon, shifting looks and accents to fit the occasion and the role. He played Hamlet on stage, a filmmaker in the Spice Girls movie and the desk clerk in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shuttle. He played Eli Gold in TV's The Good Wife and the Good Fight, the blue skinned Nightcrawler in X2X Men United, and another blue skinned character in the world of animation providing the voice of Gutsy Smurf. And while he continues to be involved in the stage, he won a second Tony in 2022 as a producer of the musical A Strange Loop. He's now having lots of fun on television. On the Emmy winning Peacock reality competition series the Traitors, Alan Cumming hosts a group of guests assembled to solve a mystery. Which of those among them are secretly working against him? This show is set in a castle in Scotland and Cumming as the host, leans into the outrageousness of it all. He wears kilts and flashy costumes and whenever talking to the competitors on the Traitors, turns his Scottish brogue up to 11. As in this scene from the show's most recent season.
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Alan Cumming
The first duty of society is justice, said Alexander Hamilton. And so here we are. Don't throw away your shot, players. The tear stained pages of traitor's history are filled with the blood of the innocent at this table.
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Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
And what a triumph it would be
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Alan Cumming
if you caught a traitor on the opening page. Look around you. Who at the table has your back. And who would sooner stab you in
- [03:02]
David Biancolli
it at the Tonys? This year the most nominated musicals are the Lost Boys and Schmigadoon, each of which is up for 12 awards. Alan Cumming isn't in that Broadway production, but he did star in the original TV version of Schmigadoon in 2021 on television. In the first season, which featured the same plot and characters now performed on Broadway, he played Mayor Menlove. And in the 2022 sequel, a take on darker musicals that was subtitled welcome to Schmacago. He played Dooley Blight, a butcher with a tragic past. It was a clear, loving homage to the title character of Sweeney Todd. And Alan Cumming is so good in it, I hope he gets to star in the next official Sweeney Todd revival. Listen.
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Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
There was a butcher who had a wife and daughter and a rich man who led them all like lambs to the slaughter. He tried to take the butcher's wife. When she refused, he took her life, blamed the butcher for the crime. And while he was doing time, his daughter came of age, forced to perform upon the stage. And to be clear, in this scenario, the butcher is me. But the rich man truly will pay for his sins. And this time duly will be the one who wins. For there's a debt that has yet to be repaid. So my course is set for the blood and the blade and the death, sweet death that will bring relief from the pain and the passion and the guilt and the grave. I'll heed the cold, Kill them all.
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David Biancolli
Alan Cumming, of course, already has killed in one musical revival. On stage and in the movies. Joel Gray had originated the role of the Berlin MC at the KitKat Club, a den of debauchery surrounded by the rise of the Nazis. And in 1929 and 1930, he was great in that role. Iconic even. Yet Alan Cumming has made it his own. His cabaret revival originated at the Donmar Warehouse in England in 1993 and came to Broadway five years later. Sam Mendez directed, Rob Marshall provided the choreography and Natasha Richardson co starred as Sally Bowles, the role played in the original 1966 Broadway production and 1972 film by Liza Minnelli. Years later, he appeared in a revival of the revival opposite such very diverse yet equally dazzling Sallies as Michelle Williams and Emma Stone. Let's hear how Alan Cummings sounded in the 2014 Roundabout Theater production, the same company that had produced the 1998 Tony Award winning production.
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Alan Cumming
Ladies
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Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
and gentlemen, gutenaven. Bonsoir.
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Alan Cumming
Good evening.
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Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
Do you feel good? Yeah. I bet you do. I am your host,
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Terry Gross
Alan Cumming. Welcome back to FRESH air. And congratulations. You're so wonderful in the show. It's so terrific.
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Alan Cumming
Thank you, Teddy.
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Terry Gross
Thank you. Thank you for coming. You've said, I think, that this revival was your birthday present to yourself. What does that mean? Did you initiate the idea of reviving it again?
- [07:05]
Alan Cumming
No, no, I didn't. But it was Sam Mendes who called me up a few years ago. And I mean, there's been sort of various attempts to redo it or to put it on since it ended. I mean, I finished, I did it for a year from 98 to 99, and it actually finished, I think in 2004 on Broadway. But anyway, so a few years ago, Sam said, you know, I think it's a good time. The kind of the rights are going to be up and so therefore someone else will do it. And, you know, maybe the estate wants us to do our production again. And I just sort of thought it would be. And the thing about the birthday is that I'm 49 and so I'll be 50 in January, January 27th next year. And so in my 50th year, I am singing and dancing in a Broadway musical and I'm dancing a kick line with, you know, girls who are 24. And so that was, that was kind of the birthday present to myself that I would be hitting 50 doing things that I couldn't do when I was, you know, 25.
- [08:07]
Terry Gross
Oh, that is nice. You couldn't kick like that or you just didn't have the opportunity.
- [08:12]
Alan Cumming
I was so out of shape and fit when I was 25. I've kind of, I think even when I did it 15 years ago, I wasn't as fit as I am now.
- [08:20]
Terry Gross
So why do you love doing the role?
- [08:23]
Alan Cumming
Well, I mean, just on a day to day, going to work and doing that, it's such fun. It's, you know, so kind of energetic. And it just takes up every single element of being an actor. It's your body is used to its capacity, both, you know, physically, vocally and emotionally as well. But also in a kind of larger way. I think it's a really important show in that the reason it's done again, the reason we're doing it again, is that it has something to say. You know, it's about the rise of Nazism and the fact that if you're not incredibly vigilant, oppression of some kind can slowly creep up and take over. And I think that the way that the show is like fun and you oh, it's sexy and they're hilarious and oh, and then you slowly, it slowly goes dark. You as an audience member have kind of become complicit in that. And that sort of mirrors the way that you see Nazism creeping in and people think, oh, I'll be fine, don't worry, nothing's, you know, it'll go away. And then slowly it doesn't, and it's too late.
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Terry Gross
I would like you to describe your character physically, what you're wearing, what your hair looks like.
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Alan Cumming
Well, initially I have jet black hair right now, which is not natural Terry, I'll confess. And so I have jet black hair sort of, you know, late 1920s, kind of floppy on top, short at the back and the sides in. The first costume I wear is I wear a leather coat, but I shortly take that off and I've got this. I've got kind of like black dinner suit trousers, but they're cut at the knees. A pair of big combat boots and this kind of strappy thing, kind of like suspenders. You know, it's almost like I'm topless, but I've got the suspender thing with a little bow tie at my chest, at my. What do you call that bit in the middle? Sternum. And then there's almost like a cantilever system to hoik up my manhood, if you will.
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Terry Gross
Yes, your manhood is kind of like italicized.
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Alan Cumming
It's in bold.
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Terry Gross
It's in bold letters.
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Alan Cumming
Yes, it's sort of like a Wonderbra for the male junk.
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Terry Gross
What is your take on the host, the MC that you play and the club, the Kit Kat Club that you're in? Do you have a backstory for him in your mind?
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Alan Cumming
I'll tell you, my sort of very slim backstory is he was a rent boy, a boy from the streets of Berlin who then kind of, you know, started working this club and was kind of kind of funny. And so he got kind of as he got a bit older, got a job, and the Kit Kat Club is basically a, you know, a den of iniquity. It's got a little show, but there's kind of, you know, sex going on, there's drugs going on. It's a very low life kind of place. So that's basically all my story for this man. He used to be, you know, he has a background as a sex worker who then becomes who you can sing a bit. And I don't know his name, I don't know where he, you know, I don't actually. Don't Think that's important. I don't worry about that, because there's a larger, broader, more overreaching thing about this character he's coined of. Like this. He guides the audience. He's like a puppeteer, almost, or a sort of a Pied Piper, if you like, who takes the audience on this journey, kind of tells them what to think at certain times, guides them into certain things, and then ultimately, because he's got their trust, can betray that trust or also make them worry for him and for what's going on in the show. So it's almost like a sort of a Brechtian character of standing outside the story and commenting on it as it's happening.
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Terry Gross
You've portrayed this character in three separate versions of this Sam Mendes production. First, when you were 28 years old in 1993, then when you were 33 years old in 1998, and now when you're 49 years old in 2014.
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Alan Cumming
Next time.
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Terry Gross
And I've seen the new production and I've seen excerpts of both of the other productions, and there's things that are very similar. One of the differences is that, you know, you've gotten older, and I think that changes the character. You know, rent boy turned MC in this kind of seedy club at age 28 is different from that same character at age 49, because that character hasn't made it out of that club still there at age 49. So in that sense, he becomes kind of even darker.
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Alan Cumming
I think that's absolutely true. I think this production of the production is darker partly because I'm older and because the sort of sex element of the show, the sensationalist kind of the thing in 1998, when we came to America, was so shocking and took up so much of people's perception of the whole show was this, you know, depiction of sexual freedom and hedonism and gay sex and bisexuality and all sorts of things that I think, in a way, took over a little too much. And now, I think, you know, partly because of that production and partly because the world has changed, that is still an element. It's still fun. It's still very much part of what the story's about, but it doesn't overshadow everything. And also it has allowed the kind of darkness to come out a little
- [13:45]
Terry Gross
bit more, you know, in speaking about the sexuality of this production, it's sexualized in a different way than, say, the movie Cabaret, which I think a lot of people are familiar with. In the movie version of Cabaret, Joel. Joel Gray starred in the Role of the emcee, of the host. And I think he played it kind of. He's great in it. And I think he played it kind of like a ringmaster in a circus of sexual deviance. And I think deviance is what they would have been called at the time. I'm trying to use a word from the period. And you play it like you are sexually seducing us into your kind of debauched world.
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David Biancolli
Woo hoo.
- [14:32]
Alan Cumming
Ha ha ha. I mean, I feel like. I mean, I do feel that. I feel like I'm saying, you know, the gesture I do at the very beginning of the show is my finger. I am going, come here, come here, come here. And that's, I think, a sort of overriding metaphor for what I think that character does. And he's going, come on, come on. You know, you want to. It's gonna be fun. And then of course, and the audience does want to, and they do come. And then of course, that's when they become complicit in the whole horror.
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Terry Gross
So the character that you play in Cabaret is very sexually ambiguous. I mean, in terms of sexual orientation. Gay, bisexual, who knows, into everything as I think, whatever he wants it. You came out as bisexual, I think, the same year that Cabaret was revived in the United States in 1998, with you starring in it. And you've been married for how long? You have a husband?
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Alan Cumming
I have a husband. I've been married to him for. Hang on, since 2007. So seven years.
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Terry Gross
So did you time coming out with the production of Cabaret?
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Alan Cumming
It was all a huge press campaign, a massive Machiavellian plot.
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Terry Gross
Clever. That's the point of sexuality, actually.
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Justin Chang
Power.
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Alan Cumming
Yeah, kind of is what I think you're getting at. I'll give you a little praise here that I hope will answer your question. I've always felt I was bisexual. I used to be married to a woman. Before that, I'd had a relationship with a man. I then had another relationship with a woman. And then I. Since then I've had, you know, relationships with men. So I thought I still feel, I still would define myself as bisexual, partly because that's how I feel, but also because I think it's important to. I think that sexuality in this country especially is very seen as a very black and white thing. And I think we should encourage the grey. You know, I mean, I don't kind of go around in my life thinking, oh my God, I'm gonna have to have sex with a woman soon because I said I was bisexual. I just. That's what I feel inside. It's like saying you're straight or you're gay or your biceps. It's just what you are. And whatever you're doing in your life is almost. It runs obviously parallel, but it's kind of secondary to how you are inside. And so that's how I've always felt and I still do, even though, you know, I'm very happily married to a really amazing man and I wish to be so for the rest of my life. The other thing is that the coming out thing, in 1998, when I came to America, there was such a huge explosion of interest in the show and in me. And I hadn't really, you know, I was kind of well known in Britain, but I hadn't really ever discussed my sexuality in a public way like that. And because of playing this character and all the kind of slight, you know, puritanical shock waves that were sending around America, a lot of people were just constantly, constantly, constantly asking me about it. And so I decided to take matters into my own hand and I did a interview and a cover story for out magazine and I thought that was a good forum for it to be discussed calmly and adultly. And so I did that. So it was kind of as a result of all the speculation and. But it was really funny. I remember people saying. So the first question in an interview for something like, you know, weighty tome would be, so, are you gay? And I would go, why? Do you fancy me? And then go, oh, no. Just someone in my office was asking and I was like, oh, really? Well, you know, I thought, really, is that the most important thing? And sometimes it is the most important thing because people can't. If people don't have a black and white answer, they can't get beyond that. And so you have to kind of, I think you just got to get out the way. And that's what I did. And it wasn't like I. It's one of those things when you become famous and people are more interested in your personal life often than your work. It's a weird thing because you think, oh, I. I seem to be sleeping with more boys now. Should I do a press release? You know, it's, it's a, it's a really difficult one to know when to, to announce.
- [18:55]
David Biancolli
Alan Cummings speaking with Terry Gross in 2014. He starred as the Emcee in Cabaret three times in a 1993 London production in 1998, where he won a Tony for his performance and again in a 2014 revival. Coming up, we'll hear more from Alan Cumming. And we'll hear from another world class Tony Award winner, Angela Lansbury. She earned six Tony Awards over her lifetime, including for her performances as Mama Rose in the Broadway production of Gypsy and the pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. More after a break. I'm David Biancooli and this is FRESH air.
- [19:35]
Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
So you see everyone in Berlin has a perfectly marvelous room. Some people have two people, Two ladies. Two ladies and I'm the only man. Yeah, I like it. Say like it. See, it's two for one.
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Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
Two ladies.
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Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
Today.
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Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
He likes it.
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Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
Today we like it. Fiddle Today let's do for one. I do the cooking and I mix a bet. I go out daily to earn our daily bread. But with one thing in common. She owns me.
- [20:53]
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- [21:36]
NPR Politics Podcast Announcer
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- [22:02]
David Biancolli
If you're just joining us, we're celebrating the Tony Awards this Sunday by listening Back to Terry's 2014 interview with Alan Cumming, who won a Tony for his 1998 performance of the Emcee in Cabaret. Cumming starred as the emcee three times in a 1993 London production on Broadway in 1998 and again in 2014. They all were directed by Sam Mendez. Here's Cummings singing the song money from the 1998 performance of Cabaret.
- [22:36]
Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
Money makes the world go round, the world go round, the world go round. Money makes the world go round. It makes the world go round a Mac, a yen, a buck or a pound, A buck or a pound, A buck or a pound is all that makes the world go round at the clinking, clanking sound can make the world go round. If you happen to be rich and you feel like a night's entertainment, you can pay for a gay escapade. If you happen to be rich and alone and you need a companion, you can ring ding a ling for the maid. If you happen to be rich and you find you are left behind by your love. Although you moan and you grown quite a lot, you can take it on the chin, cool a cab and begin to recover on your 14 karat yacht. Money makes the world go around, the world go around the world go around. Money makes the world go around. Of that we can be sure I'm being poor.
- [24:02]
Alan Cumming
Money, money, money, money, money, money, money,
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Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money.
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Terry Gross
That's Alan Cummings singing money from the 1998 cast recording of Cabaret, and he's starring now in the new revival of it. I really do love the way you sing, and I want to hear how you prepared to sing for this role. But before we talk about that, I want to play you something that John Kander had to say. I interviewed John Kander, who wrote the music, Fred Ebb wrote the lyrics for Cabaret, and I asked him what he did before composing the music for Cabaret and what he listened to. And here's what he told me.
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John Kander
For Cabaret, I listened to a lot of German jazz and vaudeville music, also of the late 20s and very early 30s, and then promptly forgot about it. It sounds like a very kind of crude way of doing research, but it works for me. You listen and you listen and you listen and then put it away and don't think about it anymore. And I have this absolute belief that the styles of the music that you've been listening to seep into your unconscious and come out in your own language.
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Terry Gross
And that was John Kander on fresh air in 2003. So John Kander said that, you know, he listened to all this music and then just let it seep in as opposed to actually thinking about it. When he was composing, what did you listen to? And did you have that attitude, too, that it would just naturally seep in?
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Alan Cumming
I'm a big believer in seepage. I am. I really am. The first time around. I read a lot of stuff about the Weimar cabarets and just generally the history of that time. What was great when we did it in London the first Time was that Steven Spender, who was one of the chums of Christopher Isherwood and W.H. auden, those boys who were, you know, in Berlin at that time, he was still alive then. He came into rehearsal to ask, to sort of, you know, talk to us, and we got to ask him questions. So that was amazing to have someone who's actually really there. And I said it was so funny because they said, you know, just be very respectful. Don't, you know, stay off the whole sex thing, blah, blah. So we were asking questions. I could tell we were getting along. And I said, so, Stephen, you boys from Oxbridge, you didn't really go across the air to kind of chronicle the surge of fascism and the change of this. So you really went there to get shagged, didn't you? You just went to get boys. And he's like, yes, of course we did. Yes, of course. And I just. I love the idea that this kind of amazing period of history has been chronicled so amazingly by Christopher Isherwood and many other people, but in this case, by him was actually, you know, a happy accident, because they really just went there. They were from England, you know, puritanical, shameful England, and they went to Berlin, where you could have sex with people all the time and go to dirty bars and no one would know. So that was a key for me into getting into this role and understanding what it was like in that time.
- [27:18]
Terry Gross
So you've met and performed with Liza Minnelli?
- [27:21]
Alan Cumming
Yes, Liza.
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Terry Gross
What did she mean to you before you met her?
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Alan Cumming
I mean, it's hard to. It's almost like she was like a movie star from a long, long time ago. Like the kind of. Like a. Like a silent movie star or something. She had that kind of sort of mist swirling around her. And I'd seen the movie of Cabaret, and I just. It was more like a lot of the thing. It's hard to describe it. It was more like I was aware of the effect, the effect she had on the world and on people, rather than knowing that much about her. Do you see what I mean? It wasn't till I was 30, I didn't really. I'd never been to America. I, you know, was aware of American culture and things in Britain, but I didn't ever sort of engage in it fully because I don't know why. I just didn't. And then, of course, when I met Liza, she came into my dressing room with Fred Ebb, and I was in this tiny dressing room. It was like a kind of size of a shoebox and she came in and gave me a hug and said, alan, I want to be your friend forever, which is such a darling thing to say. And then I saw Fred and oh, Fred. And when I finished talking to Fred, I realized that Liza had pushed herself against the wall and had her face in my wet towel, which was hanging on a hook on the wall in order for me because the room was so small in order for me to talk to Fred. And I went, oh, Liza, you're squashed into my towel. She's like, alan, I'd be squashed into your towel forever for you. She's just she's just the most a lovely, hilarious person. And I and so I've been doing these concerts with her and stuff and just I now I just think lovely, Liza, and we have a real laugh. And I think we just get on. I don't know why. We just we just have a really great understanding of each other.
- [29:11]
Terry Gross
Did she give you any advice about Cabaret?
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Alan Cumming
Well, I can't really say it.
- [29:18]
Capella University Announcer
That sounds good.
- [29:20]
Alan Cumming
It's more just a kind of a like when she came to see Macbeth, the Macbeth that I did last summer or the last two summers, she said this thing, which is a really great I actually love it. I love this saying I'll just do I'll paraphrase it. But she says, you know, just before I was about to go on, I was really terrified. She went, darling, take no prisoners and f bleep the wounded. And I think that's great. I mean, obviously not literally, but as a go get him and just, you know, don't let anything hold you back. It's a great sort of way of thinking about performing. And I I'm always a big I'm a big believer in that you just have to dive off the cliff. And and so is Liza.
- [30:10]
David Biancolli
Alan Cumming speaking with Terry Gross in 2014. After a break, another Tony Award winner, Angela Lansbury. She won six Tony Awards over her lifetime, including for her performances as Mama Rose in the Broadway production of Gypsy and the pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. We'll listen back to Terry's 1980 interview with Lansbury, in which she discusses playing Mrs. Lovett and what it was like to work closely with Stephen Sondheim. This is FRESH air.
- [30:41]
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- [31:13]
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- [31:36]
Justin Chang
Download Today the surreal horror film Backrooms is a smash. The Director is a 20 year old YouTuber and it's based on his popular web series. Why is this online phenomenon taking off at the box office? We get into it on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts
- [31:58]
David Biancolli
in honor of the Tony Awards this Sunday, let's continue our celebration of Tony Award winners. We love Angela Lansbury delivered unforgettable performances for her starring roles in the Broadway musicals Mame, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd. Her work on Stage earned her five Tony Awards, plus a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 2022. Lansbury, who was born in 1925, died in 2022 at age 96. And while a legend on the stage, she conquered other media as well, as she starred as Jessica Fletcher on the CBS mystery series Murder she wrote for 12 years. On film, she appeared in the 1944 movie Gaslight when she was only 19 and provided the voice of Mrs. Potts singing the title song to the 1991 animated movie Beauty and the Beast. In 1979, the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd swept the Tony Awards with eight wins, including best Musical and a best Actress award for Lansbury. The show was about a murderous barber in Victorian London. Lansbury played Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney Todd's accomplice. She baked his victims into pies.
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Alan Cumming
I wonder what the first things were they told you about it to explain what the show would be like.
- [33:18]
Angela Lansbury
Well, they took it for granted that I knew the legend because coming from England originally, I know all about Sweeney Todd. When I say I know all about Sweeney Todd, I know that he was almost a Grand Guignol character that was sung about and little doggerel rhymes were written about. You know, Sweeney Todd will get you if you don't watch out. He's a character almost Like Jack the Ripper in English folklore. And he turns up and people quote his name all the time.
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Alan Cumming
This is the third musical that Stephen Sondheim had a contribution to. Of course he wrote this, but he did the lyrics for Gypsy, which you starred in.
- [33:59]
Angela Lansbury
Yes. It's the third time I've worked with him, actually.
- [34:01]
Alan Cumming
Is he the kind of composer who will sit down at the piano with you and sing his songs for you to give you an idea of what he had in his mind?
- [34:08]
Angela Lansbury
Absolutely. Steve always auditions all his own work. And the thing he loves to do, when he has a new song, he wants you to come over and hear it. And when he's got a few, he'll say, come on over. I want to play you the song that I've written for you in such and such a place in the script. And I'll pop over to his house and he'll sit down at the piano and he'll sing the song. Kills himself laughing. When he was playing the Worst Pies in London. Can you imagine trying to play that and make all the sound effects and, you know, all the beats and so on, which are done with the dough and the rolling pin and all of that. He'd worked it all out. Every piece of business in that song Steve had written, it was right there on the music. She swaps the fly, she hits the dough, she pops her mouth or whatever she does, you know, at that moment.
- [34:54]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
And no wonder with a price of meat what it is when you get it Never thought I'd live to see the day Men think it was a treat Finding poor animals what are dying in the street Mrs. Mooney has a pie shop does a piece But I've noticed something weird lately all our neighbors cats have disappeared I've to wander to a what I calls enterprise Popping pussies into p Wouldn't do in my shop Just the thought of it's enough to make you sick and I'm telling you them pussycats is quick now Denying times is hard, sir Even harder than the worst pies in Lamb only lad and nothing more is than just revolting all greasy and gritty it looks like it's molting and tastes like well, pity a woman alone with Lee meaty to wind and that was fighting London Ah, sir, times is hard Times is hard.
- [36:12]
Alan Cumming
I want to talk with you about the character that you play. Now, you had said that finding the character was left completely to you. And you went back to books written about Sweeney Todd in the original book to find out a little more about the character now, you manage in the production to convey simultaneously meanness and humor, ability to be murderous, with an ability to be extremely warm and friendly and huggable, lovable. And you have the audience on your side as you're participating in these murders. What are some of the ways, do you feel that you're able to convey all of that and have the audience with you like that?
- [36:50]
Angela Lansbury
Mrs. Lovett is really a conglomerate of all of that knowledge that I have of English theatre going way, way back. She is almost a choreographed character. She is so broad in her scope. The idea is that she can do anything. She can slit your throat and you will love her as she's doing it because she does it with such a total childlike joy and amorality that anything goes. Now, this is everybody's dream of a companion, somebody who will adapt instantly to anything you would like to expect from her at that moment. Now, that's what we all long for. Sweeney Todd, lucky devil found the very one. Now, occasionally she goes off on her own little tangents, such as when she confides to him that her dream in life is really to retire by the seaside. But if she didn't, and if he didn't provide her with the little house by the sea, she would still do anything in the world that he wanted. Was why? Because she absolutely adores him and always did. Now, these are all the things that I know about Mrs. Lovett. I have to try and sell you on the fact that this is the case, about this old bag lady, but I do understand these things about her. And so that is what I am playing all the time. She is a victim of the gutter. She is on the edge of the establishment. Absolutely anything goes. The fact that they have no money and no food for the pies. The most obvious thing in the world to her is to utilize those poor fellows coming down the chute.
- [38:34]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
Well, you know me, bright ideas just pop into my head and I keep thinking Seems a downright shame Shame Seems an awful waste Such a nice plump frame what's his name as add has nor it can't be traced Business needs are lift Debts to be erased Think of it as thrift, as a gift if you get my drift. Now, seems an awful waste I mean, with the price of meat what it is when you get it, if you get it.
- [39:20]
Alan Cumming
Ha.
- [39:21]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
Good, you got it. Take for instance Mrs. Mooney and a pie shop Business never better Using ugly pussycats and toast and a pussy's good for maybe six or seven at the most and I'm sure they can't compare as far as taste.
- [39:37]
Len Cariou
Mrs. Lovett, what a charming notion. Eminently practical and not appropriate as always. Mrs. Lavin. How I've lived without you all these years I'll never know.
- [39:45]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
Think about a gentleman or soon be cannon for a shame. Won't they think of choice.
- [39:52]
Len Cariou
Oh, what's the sound of the world out there?
- [39:57]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
What, Mr. Todd? What, Mr. Todd, what is that sound?
- [40:00]
Len Cariou
Those crunching noises pervading the air?
- [40:04]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
Yes, Mr. Todd, yes, Mr. Todd, yes, all around.
- [40:07]
Len Cariou
It's man devouring man, my dear, and who are we to. Ah, these are desperate times, Mrs. Lovett, and desperate measures must be taken.
- [40:23]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
Here we are now, hot out of the oven.
- [40:28]
Len Cariou
What is that?
- [40:30]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
It's priest. Have a little priest.
- [40:33]
Len Cariou
Is it really good, sir?
- [40:35]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
It's too good, at least. Then again, they don't commit sins of the flesh, so it's pretty fresh.
- [40:44]
Len Cariou
Awful lot of fat.
- [40:46]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
Only where it's at, haven't you got
- [40:48]
Len Cariou
poet or something like that?
- [40:51]
Angela Lansbury (singing/performance)
Now you see, the trouble with poet is how do you know it's deceased? Try the priest.
- [40:59]
Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
Mmm.
- [41:00]
Len Cariou
Heavenly. Not as hearty as Bishop, perhaps, but
- [41:03]
David Biancolli
that was Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou singing a little priest from Sweden. In 2022, Lansbury won her sixth Tony for Lifetime achievement. She died that same year at the age of 96. The Tonys are scheduled to be televised Sunday night on cbs. Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews the horror films, backrooms and obsession. This is FRESH air.
- [41:28]
NPR Newsmakers Announcer
This week on Consider this the drama at CBS News. Some of the most respected journalists in America say their corporate ownership is bowing to political pressure.
- [41:37]
Alan Cumming
It's intimidation. They've created a climate of fear to
- [41:40]
David Biancolli
make the news organization unwilling to tackle
- [41:43]
Alan Cumming
the problem and report the news.
- [41:45]
NPR Newsmakers Announcer
Longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Croft. This week on Consider this Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [41:52]
David Biancolli
The horror films, backrooms and Obsession defied expectations by claiming the top two spots at the box office last weekend in what many are calling a game changing moment for the movie industry. Both are relatively low budget first features from 20something directors who got their start making short films for their YouTube channels. Our film critic Justin Chang saw them both in 2019.
- [42:19]
Justin Chang
A photo posted on the message board 4chan gave rise to the creepy concept of the backrooms, an endless maze of what appeared to be abandoned corporate offices with beige carpets, yellow walls and fluorescent lights. The idea of being doomed to wander this mundane, liminal space proved popular enough to inspire a horror meme and a web series directed by a teenager named Kane Parsons. Now Parsons is 20 and his new Backrooms feature is the number one movie at the box office with more than $80 million so far. It's already made back its budget and then some. It's an elegantly disorienting movie with a number of riddles that, at least initially, it wisely avoids answering. It's set in 1990 in the suburbs of Santa Clara Valley, California. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, a middle aged alcoholic with a failing furniture store business. One night in the basement of his store, he somehow walks through a wall and finds himself in the backrooms. He wanders the space for hours, and his mad curiosity stokes ours too. Who built this ugly labyrinth? And why? And what is the strange, hulking creature he hears and sometimes sees? Clark returns to the backrooms day after day, obsessively mapping out the different levels and marveling at the sometimes eccentric design choices and furnishings. Some of the chairs and shelves might have come from his store. At one point, he convinces his work assistant and her boyfriend to join him and film the place with a camcorder, at which point the movie briefly becomes a spooky found footage thriller in the style of that innovative 90s horror classic, the Blair Witch Project.
- [44:10]
Alan Cumming
So it's like, what, like an empty office building in here? Sure, but it's like it was made
- [44:16]
Justin Chang
by a bunch of construction workers on acid. There's even a pool.
- [44:20]
Alan Cumming
There's a pool? Yeah, kinda.
- [44:24]
Alan Cumming (singing/performance)
Keep up.
- [44:25]
Justin Chang
Clark also talks about the backrooms to his therapist, Mary, a wonderful Renate Reincefe who becomes an important secondary character. At one point, we hear Mary articulate some of the movie's themes a little too bluntly. We all have our loops, our habits, she says. Behaviors that keep us walking in circles. Clark's new playground, in other words, is a kind of prison, a metaphor for how we get stuck in traps of our own making. But that's just one of many psychological readings that can be projected onto the backrooms. For some viewers, they will evoke the thrill and the terror of extreme isolation. For others, they'll remind them of the pandemic when office buildings everywhere stood empty. These are fascinating ideas, but it's when Parsons begins trying to nail them down that his movie becomes a smaller, more conventional thing than it was at the start. Backrooms is full of mysteries within mysteries. It would have been better to leave more of them unsolved. Even so, at its best, backrooms can be unnervingly effective. It also isn't the only horror movie that has defied expectations this Summer. Since its May 15 release. The Ultra low budget supernatural thriller Obsession has grossed more than $100 million, making it one of the year's most profitable films. On the surface, it's a less conceptually ambitious piece of work than backrooms, but it's also, I think, the better and more genuinely subversive movie. Michael Johnston plays Bear, a reserved young music store employee who's smitten with his friend and co worker Nicky, played by Indy Navarretti. When he buys a novelty item at a crystal shop that claims to grant its owner a single wish, Behr half heartedly wishes that Nicky would love him more than anyone in the world. From there, the 26 year old writer director Curry Barker spins a story that's basically the Monkey's Paw meets Fatal Attraction. Nicky and Bear become a couple to the bewilderment of their friends and co workers. Before long, Nicky's magically induced feelings for Bear begin to manifest in increasingly disturbing, shocking ways, from extreme clinginess to jealous, even homicidal fury. Obsession is thus the latest riff on the old adage to be careful what you wish for. But what gives it its peculiar power is that it presents Nikki, not Bear, as the story's true victim. Bear's wish is a supreme violation of her emotional, spiritual and physical autonomy, and Navarretti's astonishing performance dramatizes an internal clash between two Nickies. She doesn't just go off the rails, we see her at every step, struggling to stay on the rails. By the time Barker drops a direct reference to the Exorcist, it's already clear that Obsession is a demonic possession movie. It uses the prism of genre to speak to issues of consent, male loneliness and how even a guy as seemingly kind and sensitive as Bear can become a woman's worst nightmare.
- [47:40]
David Biancolli
Justin Chang is a film critic at the New Yorker. He reviewed Backrooms and Obsession, now in theaters on Monday's show in celebration of the 15th anniversary of the Tony Award winning musical the Book of Morbin. The two original stars, Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad, will make guest appearances in a Broadway revival. We'll talk to them both about the show and how it changed their lives. They're both really funny on and off stage. I hope you can join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews. Follow us on Instagram @NPR. Fresh air. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel@YouTube.com thisisfreshair. We're rolling out new videos with in studio guests, behind the scenes shorts and iconic interviews from the archive. Fresh air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our senior producer today is Thea Chaloner. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Tina Calicay. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. And cooley.
- [49:07]
NPR Newsmakers Announcer
This week on NPR's Newsmakers, former first lady Jill Biden. She reveals Joe Biden's 2024 debate performance was so alarming, doctors checked him after he got off the stage.
- [49:17]
Terry Gross
I was terrified. I thought, oh, my God, what's happening? Is this a stroke?
- [49:21]
Angela Lansbury
What is this?
- [49:22]
NPR Newsmakers Announcer
Inside the traumatic month that followed, leading to one of the biggest decisions of Biden's presidency to walk away. This week on newsmakers, you can listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.
- [49:31]
Capella University Announcer
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