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- [00:00]
Felix Salmon
This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. This is Felix Salmon from Slate Money and I'm here to tell you about Apple Card. Even as a seasoned traveler, things can still get stressful, which is why I use Apple Card on my international Trips and with 2% daily cash back on every purchase with Apple Pay, I'm actually earning daily cash as I travel. Instead of coming home feeling like I've drained my bank account, I I come back with cash back I can put toward my next trip. Apply in the Wallet app on iPhone subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs bank usa Salt Lake City Branch Terms and more at Apple Co AppleCardbenefits a better help ad.
- [00:47]
Mickey Jo
Hold on one second, I just need to. What if you had a room where no one interrupts, no notifications, no expectations, just space to talk with BetterHelp Therapy happens in a space that's yours. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy. Acast powers the World's best Podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend hello
- [01:26]
Brooke Devard
hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care, journeys, wellness tips and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well. Because we go so much deeper than beauty, I talk to incredible and inspiring, inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for Naked Beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us.
- [02:10]
Mickey Jo
If you're curious what the best plays in New York are right now, I within the last month saw around two dozen shows. And these are not just two of the best new productions of plays this season. These are two of the best shows on Broadway right now. Pieces period. And don't worry, I'm not going to keep you in suspense. They are the Ballisters at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club and Becky Shaw presented by Second Stage Theatre Company at the Hayes. And today I'm going to tell you what I loved about both of them. But just before I do, a quick introduction to me. If you happen to be meeting me for the very first time. Oh my God hey, welcome to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this double review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. Like I said, I was just in New York where I saw just under two dozen shows shows and these are two of the best things that I saw throughout the trip. The Ballisters and Becky Shaw. I love these so much and they so really aligned with what I enjoy about the contemporary American play. There's something about the way that they engage with modern, thorny conversation, the way in which they are deliberately incendiary and provocative. I think both of these plays very much fall into that category. As to recent plays like Eureka Day, the work of Brandon Jacobs Jenkins also springs to mind and I think what it is is a sort of a 21st century EVOL of the kind of celebrated plays that we used to see on stage. But this idea of what is truly going to provoke thought and conversation has shifted as society has shifted a lot of the notions in a play, like A Long Day's Journey into Night. Even who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Wouldn't necessarily be as scandalous these days as they were back then. So we have to write new plays. We have to stage new conversations with newly recognizable characters in order to expose the harsh and occasionally funny realities of our lives. And what both of these plays are doing similarly well is holding a mirror up to the audience and showing us what the world looks like in the 21st century. So I'm going to tell you a little bit more about each of them, why they're so brilliant, what they have in common, and why you should consider seeing them in New York before the end of their limited runs. But if you have had the chance to see any of these already, I would love to know what you think in the comments section down below. Share all of your thoughts about both of these plays plays. And as always, if you would like to hear more of my reviews, there are plenty more already here that you can go and watch or listen to. There are also many more coming soon, including from my most recent Broadway trip. There are more plays for me to discuss, including Proof Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Every Brilliant thing. Make sure that you're subscribed here on YouTube with the notifications turned on so you don't miss those as soon as they are released. Or if you want to stay up to date with everything that I share online and every piece of theatre that I get to see, you can sign up to my free weekly substack email newsletter at the link in the top of this video's description. For now though, I have two plays to review, beginning with the first one I saw. Let's talk about the ballot.
- [05:06]
Felix Salmon
This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. This is Felix Salmon from Slate Money and I am here to tell you about Apple Card. Even as a seasoned traveler, things can still get stressful, which is why I use AppleCard on my international trips and with 2% daily cash back on every purchase with Apple Pay, I'm actually earning daily cash as I travel. Instead of coming home feeling like I've drained my bank account, I come back with cash back I can put toward my next trip. Apply in the Wallet app on iPhone subject to credit approval Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs bank usa Salt Lake City Branch Terms and more at Apple co. AppleCard benefits
- [05:53]
Mickey Jo
Acast powers the World's Best Podcasts Here's a show that we recommend
- [06:00]
Brooke Devard
hello hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care, journeys, wellness tips and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey journey, you'll love this podcast as well. Because we go so much deeper than beauty. I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for Naked Beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us.
- [06:50]
Mickey Jo
First up then, is the Ballisters, a brand new comedy play by David Lindsay Abair presented by Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. I was desperately excited to see this one. I have enjoyed David Lindsay Abare's work previously, not just as a book writer for a handful of brilliant musicals, but also his play Good People, which I saw produced at the Hampstead Theatre here in London around a decade ago, and he writes these desperately funny, singularly witty and just slightly provocative explorations of the human condition in confrontation with this new play being fueled by a particularly combative anxiety. It depicts the meetings of the homeowners association in this picturesque fictional neighborhood of Vernon Point. We see this through the lens of the newest addition to the board, who is also the newest addition to the neighborhood, a black woman whose name is Kira. She has recently moved to the idyllic neighbourhood with her family, she has agreed to join the homeowners association. She has also agreed to host the meetings in her own home, where conversation quickly turns to the dangerous speed of traffic passing through a junction at the corner and the possibility of adding in a new stop sign, something which, unsurprisingly, proves immediately contentious because it would disrupt the natural, uninterrupted beauty of that particular street. And none of this takes place before Kira can be introduced to the other members of the group and asked why it is that she chose this neighborhood as a place to live. This seems like icebreaker conversation. It turns out to be a trap spearheaded by the president of the association, a man named Elliot Emerson, who has lived in Vernon Point for his entire life and is eager that it be maintained that it remain the way that it was during his childhood, even if that is already a little impossible. He is also one of the primary realtors in the neighbourhood and as such has significant control over the residents and the makeup of the community. Elliot's entire raison d' etre here is exemplified in one particular item that is discussed about another family, not seen on stage, not represented within the homeowners association, who have been observed to be remodeling their front porch, and who are installing within that, and get ready for the title, a aesthetically non analogous series of balusters. If you're wondering what balusters are, they are the vertical supports that exist as part of a wooden railing structure around a porch, for example, supportive beams or pillars whose function is briefly described in the play. We can draw, then, an immediate connection to why this is the title of the thing. Because they are beams, upholding the struct, maintaining the thing, maintaining the community. That is also how Elliot and the others on the homeowners association view themselves. They are supporting, they are enforcing with some sense of rigidity, because not only is there, as we find out later on, fairly minimal difference between the cheaper type of baluster that they have attempted to install and the slightly more historic version that Elliot would prefer. It also transpires that the entire reason behind the renovation is to install a disability access ramp, which brings us towards another component of this narrative, which is the thorny world of identity politics. You have a very diverse group of neighbors from a range of cultural backgrounds, navigating something of a ceaseless conflict and policing each other's language and behavior and opinions. And we notice this very early on when members of the association are beginning to arrive for the meeting. And Melissa, who is already close to Kira, arrives early to give Her a little bit of a lowdown about the other residents who she is going to meet. In the process, Melissa mistakes Luz, Kira's housekeeper, for Kira's mother, mother in law. This in part because she doesn't recognize her, forgetting that the two women have actually met before. She previously used to be the housekeeper for Elliot Mr. Emerson before working for a different family in the same neighborhood. Immediately a source of tension in spite of multiple characters insisting that it's not. But also because Luz, while working for Kira, is not wearing a uniform. When she worked for Mr. Emerson, she did. When asked about this, Loose says This is because Mrs. Marshall Kira did not want her to wear a uniform. Kira clarifies that she just wanted her to be comfortable, and she very plainly replies that she would be comfortable in the uniform or not, indicating to us some of the behavior that we're going to be lampooning here. Because Melissa describes her awkward encounter with Luz as accidentally doing a penny. She then tells Kira about Penny, who is among the next to arrive, who is an older woman who lives in the neighborhood who is constantly confusing Melissa with the other Melissa. Now, both women are Asian, but from very different parts of the continent. One of them has a husband, one of them has a wife. And 10, 20 years ago, this play may have taken aim at the older generation and simply criticized this kind of behavior in the sense of obliviousness and the sort of social ignorance that has been in critique for the last couple of decades. However, this is a slightly more progressive version of that narrative, where almost every character within the play, certainly the majority of the members of the homeowners association, are at one time or another shown to be hypocrites. And this early insinuation of Kira trying to assuage the guilt that she feels for employing another woman of color while living in this very wealthy and previously predominantly white neighborhood is palpable. And all of this continues and amplifies as we meet a vibrant array of additional characters. We meet Isaac, a local contractor who is concerned about the behavior of local children passing through the neighborhood and the potential of crime and vandalism. There is Ruth, an older Jewish woman who is something of a firecracker. She's constantly in competition with Penny for who can find the most comfortable seat during these prolonged meetings. She also shares with Kira that she's personally surprised she hasn't employed a White House keeper and how she hopes that her ancestors are finding some sense of joy in her employing Germans to work in her home. There is Brooks, the gay man, who suspects that the local shop Assistant may be homophobic. There is Uber Woke Willow, who challenges Alan on use of language, but is also revealed to be something of a hypocrite herself, as is almost everyone involved. And there's such raucous, escalating comedy in these prolonged meetings, a handful of which make up the scenes of the play. We also have a couple of interludes in the days between meetings when a couple of characters meet separately in order to share personal agendas and expand a little bit on other characters and their motivations and different insights, and a little bit of neighborhood gossip, some of which is shocking enough to elicit a symphony of gasps from the auditorium. And it's ultimately a modern comedy of manners that ascends to total hysteria as power is threatened and corruption is exposed and challenged, but also allegiances are built and then damaged. And the inane politics of a homeowners association in this historic landmarked neighborhood, which bears some similarity, I gather, to the Brooklyn neighborhood where the playwright lives, is such great fodder for theatricalization. It's very familiar of the play Eureka Day, recently seen at the same theatre on Broadway. Certainly the way in which relationships commence and then shift and evolve over the course of the play is very similar, with the central protagonist being a woman new to the group, trying not to make too many waves, but eventually being the voice of change and sparring with some of the most prominent forces in the room. And I don't want to spoil too many more of the specificities for you, because watching the whole thing unfold and unravel is the real joy of it all. It becomes a roller coaster ride that you are strapped into. And I laughed hysterically. Funniest thing I saw on Broadway. I do want to tell you about some of the cast and creatives. Anika Noni Rose plays Kira and the way that she performs this inner conflict between the version of herself that she is trying to present to the world, the version of herself she needs to assume, assert, that is palatable to this community, that fits in in the social class that she has risen to. There's an entire thing about the wedding china that she has that she has never had the opportunity to use, that meant a great deal to her mother, that she would be in possession of this versus her principles, versus being authentic and true to herself, in addition to this layer of duplicitousness and this slight hypocrisy that begins to creep in towards the end. Richard Thomas, meanwhile, is in the other corner of the boxing ring as Elliot, giving this magnificent performance of a very well mannered individual who is reduced to mania by this play's conclusion, as he has challenged on his principles and his ideals for the neighborhood, and his recollection of the idyllic version from his childhood, one in which an Italian ice ice cream server represented the neighborhood's diversity and as such can't be conscientiously reconciled with a 2026 society. In that same generation of characters, you have Penny, played by Mary Louise Burke, who gives probably my favorite supporting performance in this company, but that's a tough race. And her bubbling confrontation with Melissa, who she still has confused for a different Melissa from the neighborhood, amounts to this really interesting inversion of what we think is going to happen here as we realize that Penny may be unfairly judged for a situation that hasn't been managed well, and her earnest, even giddy delivery of so many of her lines is just wonderful. Margaret Collin is another one who is just sensational as Ruth David Lindsay Abair writes terrific material for women and she fully inhabits this character. I would love to see her wielding a martini glass and singing Ladies who Lunch. It's that kind of abroad. But one of the most compelling performances that sneaks up on you is Maria Christina Oliveiras as Luz, and it's she who gets to sing the final note of the Thing, as it were, as well as delivering some of the most impactful dialogue as we come to find out why she stopped working for Mr. Emerson and began working for Kira. All of this accelerating under the careful direction of Kenny Leon, who does great work with character here and gets out of the way of the script like in A Eureka Day. The material is compelling enough, full enough of character and wit, and sensationally funny. All you need do is stage the thing in a set space and allow it simply to play out. The set is static and stunning. I heard a rumor that it's based on the playwright David Lindsay Abair's own home, and if that's true, then kudos to him. It's also decorated, per Kira's arrival, with high class black art. Derek McLean is the designer of the set, a gorgeous classic central room with further rooms that we can peer off into. Absolutely stunning. The set transitions are quite interesting because they are slightly prolonged, they're not necessarily slick. I do think we need a little bit of processing and digesting time in between each of these occasionally volatile exchanges, but the stylistic choices made with them are quite interesting. There is bright, colorful graffiti projected onto the set, loud hip hop music blasted over the top as if to bring the very deliberate, careful shelter of the neighborhood into collision with that exact thing that it's trying to avoid. There's a throwaway line delivered by Elliot earlier on that lands heavily on the ears of the audience about other homes nearby, other classic traditional homes that were demolished in order to make way for the projects, and how their own neighborhood had been saved from that. And charming and quaint as their surroundings may deliberately be, the Ballisters erupts into a riot on Broadway. Regardless, this is a brilliant play. Go and check it out at End the
- [18:42]
Felix Salmon
this message is a paid partnership with AppleCard. This is Felix Salmon from Slate Money and I'm here to tell you about Apple Card. Even as a seasoned traveler, things can still get stressful, which is why I use AppleCard on my international trips. And with 2% daily cash back on every purchase with Apple Pay, I'm actually earning daily cash as I travel. Instead of coming home feeling like I've drained my bank account, I come back with cash back I can put toward my next trip. Apply in the Wallet app on iPhone subject to credit approval Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and more at Apple Co AppleCardBenefits
- [19:29]
Mickey Jo
Acast powers the world's best Podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Do you like being educated on things that entertain but don't matter? Well, then you need to be listening to the Podcast with Knox and Jamie Every Wednesday we put together an episode dedicated to delightful idiocy to give your brain a break from all the serious and important stuff. Whether we're deep diving a classic movie, dissecting the true meanings behind the newest slang, or dunking on our own listeners for their bad takes or cringy stories, we always approach our topics with humor and just a little bit of side eye, and we end every episode with recommendations on all the best new movies, books, TV shows or movies. To find out more, just search up the Podcast with Knox and Jamie wherever you listen to podcasts and prepare to make Wednesday your new favorite day of the week. ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Friedman Theatre. Next up courtesy of Second Stage down at the Hayes Theatre I saw Becky Shaw and in terms of over overlap between the two plays, there is, I think, some tonal similarity. This is less a comedy of manners and more a question of morality. A friend described this as a great play about and for terrible people, one which I think has only become more pertinent in the years since it was first written. This is technically per the classics rule, a Revival on Broadway, as the play was actually written some years ago, originally premiering back in 2008 at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky, before being produced by Second Stage Off Broadway. Written by Gina Johnfredo, it acquaints us with a quintet of dysfunctional characters, four of whom are essentially an extended family unit and one of whom is an outsider to this, known as Becky Shaw. The play wades through morally grey terrain as it positions the audience to question what it is that we might owe to each other and to what extent we are responsible for the damage that we may inflict upon one another. To begin with, we have a little prologue in which the character of Susannah is grieving for the recent loss of her father, in contrast to her mother, Susan, who is not grieving so much as commencing an inadvisable relationship with a significantly younger man. Susan has ms, but lacks empathy and certainly has no patience for her daughter's emotional response to the death of her father. They are meeting in a hotel room, which has been arranged by Max. Max is the sort of surrogate son to Susan's surrogate brother to Susanna, having been adopted by the family some years previously and essentially saved from his own parents, his social status elevated in the process, he has become very successful, very wealthy, he is hugely committed to his work and this sort of Patrick Bateman esque lifestyle that he leads. We simultaneously gather, though, that there is a distinct lack of warmth about the way that he is embraced into the family and that every individual that we meet here is, for their own reason, a little unusual. That's really hammered home when Spoiler alert. At the end of this prologue scene, Max and Susanna share an amorous night of connection. Flash forward just eight months. We are now in Providence, Rhode island, where Susanna is living with her husband Andrew, played by Patrick Ball. They are getting ready for something of a double date at home, to which they have invited Max as well as one of Andrew's colleagues, a young woman named Becky Shaw, who he describes as fragile. Max and Becky meet and are acquainted in a style familiar of a nature documentary, before leaving together to go to a restaurant, the atmosphere in the apartment having become tense sense both because they have discovered that Susan, Susannah's mother, has checked into a medical facility using her insurance, but isn't responding to her calls. But also because there is a distinctly uncomfortable air between Susannah and Max and anyone who dares to try and get in their way, it's clear that there is some ongoing and to some extent forbidden romantic tension between the two of them. And when Becky and Max later meet with Andrew and Susannah respectively, they each confide that the evening took something of an unexpected turn as they were robbed at gunpoint before subsequently sleeping together, after which Becky longs for reassurance and support that Max has no interest in providing. But is Becky really craving it from Max, or is she using this to try and get closer to Andrew? We begin to suspect ulterior motives in many of these characters, some of which are plainer than others, and not all of which are necessarily perceived by the characters themselves. Andrew, for example, when he makes himself responsible for Becky's mental well being, doesn't notice the way in which he may be deprioritizing his own marriage in order to play the role of the white knight. Susanna, meanwhile, having only ever known this kind of social dysfunction, is trying to wrangle all of this into an ongoingly manageable situation while considering whether she is willing to give up her own preserved intimacy with Max. Max believes the way in which he leads his life to be perfect and ideal. And Susan is capable of seeing everyone else's shortcomings but her own. She is brilliantly portrayed by the masterful Linda Eamond and a character very much in her wheelhouse. There's a wonderful moment in which she criticizes everyone around her before insisting that they go to the prison in order to visit her arrested lover. Her unironic delivery of the line, but now we have to go to jail is priceless. And really, it's the characters that make this play, because even as the narrative continues, it doesn't amount to that satisfying a conclusion. On the page. You have to see the way in which they evolve and the concessions that they make and the choices that they arrive at and the people who they choose and the people who they leave behind. Lauren Patton's discernibly jealous, perhaps even selfish Susannah is fascinating. Patrick Ball's very deliberately, naively crafted Andrew is also brilliant. His utter selflessness in conjunction with the way that he is described by his wife when she recalls that pornography makes him cry. Brilliant. And Madeline Brewer, fascinating as Becky Shaw. Just fascinating. I don't think this play would work on the level that it does. It ascends to something slightly higher and more intriguing and more complicated because we have uncertainties about her and the extent to which she is being willfully manipulative and the circumstances of her past, some of which are explained, some of which makes sense to us, but there are still gaps, there are still questions about her personality and how it is that she has come to be who and where she is in the world. She becomes a necessary foil to Max Alden Ehrenreich's character, who is probably the most compelling in the play. And it's all of the work that she is doing with her eyes. There is just some sense of alternate perspective just lingering behind her expression from towards the end of the first act onwards. Alden, though, is the undisputed force of this play. And the gravity of his portrayal doesn't necessarily come into focus until he returns, until we jump eight months forward in time. And he has these additional components to his motivation. Until he has something of a chip on his shoulder about his sister, basically, and her new husband and the woman that they have brought for him to date. He is very Patrick Bateman, but also a little Shonda Rhimes, know it all very how to Get Away with Murder. And he has the kind of masculine charisma that concerns itself not with being well liked so much as being right and insisting on that. Becky Shaw is both the catalyst and the focus of the plot. But in this production, directed by Trip Coleman, the focus really feels as though it is on Max. It feels like a story about him and these members of his family and his sister's new husband and this woman who is brought into his life and the way in which it forces him to, in the slightest of ways, begin to reckon with himself. What it does to him to lose total dominance and control over every individual within his life and the people who truly matter to him, in spite of the demeanor that he portrays and this idea of the person that he may have to become and truths that he may have to accept. The staging of this on a set designed by David Zinn is very interesting. It's sort of deliberately dark and plain, with various doorways emerging from a diagonal wall for the majority of the play before the whole thing rotates around to reveal a substantial aesthetic departure. And I don't know that there's necessarily enough within the material and within the context of this setting to justify such a huge reveal, other than the kind of trend in fashion for more big, decisive late stage set reveals currently happening in New York theater. I did thoroughly enjoy the use of sliding screens in the proscenium to shift our focus between different locations. Something very cinematic about that. But ultimately, Becky Shaw is this emotional explosion of diabolical choices and consequences and difficult questions that the characters will have to address and consider as much as the audience do. It is also exactly the kind of play that I go to New York to see. Those have been my thoughts then about these two terrific plays. They are both Tony nominated. Go and check them out right now on Broadway. They have various details in common, particularly the way in which they are received by an audience, the way that they're going to make you feel, the conversations and the thoughts that they are going to provoke. But additionally, they each share great performances, great creative choices and really great writing. Go and see them on Broadway. Thank me later. And if you have already, I would love to know what you think thought in the comments section down below. Share all of your thoughts with me about Becky Shaw and the Ballisters. For now, that's everything I have to say, but there will be many more reviews from my recent New York trip coming very soon, as well as more reviews from London. Make sure you're subscribed here on YouTube or following me on podcast platforms so you don't miss any of my upcoming content. You can also sign up to the free Weekly Substack newsletter in the description of this video to stay up to date with absolutely everything that I see and talk about. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to this. I hope you enjoyed and as always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theater. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson. And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy. And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before. That's right. Hei hei. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter. And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong. News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts. A vacation rental shouldn't come with surprises. It should come with Verbo Care and 24. 7 Life Support.
- [30:46]
Brooke Devard
If the hot tub's broken, that's a verbo care thing. If my teenager starts calling me Leslie,
- [30:50]
Mickey Jo
that's a family thing. Leslie Vrbo Care and 24. 7 Life Support. If you know you've erbo terms apply, see vrbo.com trust for details.
- [30:58]
Felix Salmon
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