Mickey Jo (2:30)

Last year's Tony Award winning Broadway revival of the Stephen Sondheim and George Firth musical Merrily We Roll Along. One of my favorite Sondheim scored shows, it must be said. I mean, at least in the top five. I refuse to commit to a definitive ranking, at least until I've seen all of them. Even then, that's gonna be like choosing between my. My 12 different children born decades apart. Honestly, what a career. What an oeuvre. God, less than five minutes into this video, I've already found a way to use the word oeuvre. This is gonna be a good one. Although I should point out that wasn't my first experience with this the musical, because the Broadway revival produced by Sonja Friedman, directed by her sister Maria Friedman, which made its way to the Hudson Theatre in New York via New York Theatre Workshop a couple of years ago, actually started its life more than a decade previously at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London before transferring to the Harold Pinter Theatre in the West End. Whereupon I believe it was filmed with the professional filmed recording of that production then starring Mark Umbers, Jenna Russell, Damien, humbly at the time being hosted on a platform called Digital theatre, which I don't believe exists anymore. But there was a pro shot recording. I saw the show in person. I also watched that capture which makes this production of Merrily perhaps the only production of a show to have been professionally filmed on either side of the Atlantic. In any case, they have taken this critically acclaimed, commercially successful show and turned it into a movie filmed on stage. And that very much is the wording that they are using around this production. They are not using language like pro shot, they are calling this a film, film version. And we'll talk more about the way in which it is filmed, but you can really tell within the identity of the thing as it's been captured that they don't want to clue you into the fact, like it's inherently still a stage production, but they're not showing the proscenium or anything happening beyond the proscenium. We don't even really get a clear shot of the entire band. You get close ups of. I was going to say fingering, but that sounds like something else is happening. You get close ups of the musicians during the iconic overture, one of the best written for musical theatre, but we don't see shots of the audience as such. I'll circle back to this idea. But inherently what this version feels like is a film created from a stage production, not unlike the Joseph or Cats back in the 90s. Anyhow, the reason I tell you all of this is because if you want to know what I thought of this entire production when I saw it on stage. You can go and check out my review from last year, the five star verdict that I gave the show, where I will share many thoughts today. I'm going to streamline my thoughts about this production, but predominantly tell you what I thought of the pro shot, what I thought of the filmed version, and what I appreciated more about the production because of seeing it through this particular specific lens. Because there's a real difference. You know when you're watching something on stage there is a certain amount of choice and you know they're trying to guide your eye and your focus. But you know when there's a lot happening, when there's a very rich sort of visual production going on, you can make choices about who you're paying attention to, especially if there are little pockets of reactions and things happening, but on screen they guide your focus. Much more specifically, you are seeing exactly what the director wants you to, which very much tees us up for a conversation about this film's production of Merrily We Roll Along. I would love to hear all of your thoughts in the comments section down below. I'm sure that everyone has a lot of opinions about this. If you have had the chance to see the film already, please let me know your thoughts. There will be a couple of different opportunities to weigh in on some big debate questions as we go through this. I will make sure to flag those as they arise and I would love you to share what you think in response to those particular ideas in the comments when we get to them. In the meantime, if enjoy listening to this and would like to hear my thoughts about the other shows that I see on stage, make sure you're subscribed here on YouTube if you haven't already, or go follow me on podcast platforms. But for now, let's talk about Merrily.

Mickey Jo (6:26)

Boy, talk about great ideas that I had moments too late. What if I'd done this entire video in reverse and started by thanking you for watching and like played my outro? Anyway, that's not what we've done. We're going to talk about the show. So to begin with a little bit, just the briefest overview of Merrily We Roll along as a musical and this production specifically the substance of the thing that has been captured. For this to be an entire review of the film version, we have to still talk about the thing that it is capturing. And Merrily We Roll along started its life as a bit of a musical misfire. It was this famous flop, which has been staged many times since but it had never made its way back to Broadway until last year when it was sort of redeemed in this new production by Maria Friedman. And you know, I think the writing had for some time been on the wall that there was actually a decent show there. And while it may not have been the first production to address the biggest errors of the original, which perhaps might have been the way that it was cast, with younger actors playing older and then aging in reverse, I should explain to you, for those of you who don't know what this show is about, because that's going to sound wild at this point. The show is about this lasting friendship between this trio of creat in mid 20th century America. You have Franklin Shepard, the composer who ends up being seduced by the idea of success and also by a woman who he encounters who is the star of various Broadway shows, including one that he and his writing partner, the lyricist Charles Kringas, have been enticed to provide a score for. As a result, Frank sort of portrays his ideals and his remarkable talent and ends up segueing his composing career into producing and making movies and making money and moving to the west coast, much to the chagrin of his partner and oldest friend, Charlie Kringas, who believes that nothing is more important than making great, meaningful and honest art. And who, in his final encounter with Frank in the show, which is in fact the earliest thing we see, has something of a breakdown on national television in response to the discovery that Frank has just signed a three picture deal which is only going to further delay the plans that they had to write a musical together. The musical that they have been attempting to write for their entire career, which keeps getting delayed in favor of more commercial opportunities, including taking their songs and rewriting them for a fun musical comedy which they are also convinced to adapt for film. It makes them famous, it makes them both a decent amount of money. It does not bring Charlie much artistic satisfaction. Then you have Mary. Mary is a writer, but she meets the two of them when they are all much younger. And they all, for years experience what it's like to be struggling writers and composers in New York, unable to get anywhere but with such determined termination. She also, for her entire life has been desperately and hopelessly and unrequitedly in love with Frank. And it's a decent enough story, but the thing that really turns it on its head and gives it a compelling focus is the fact that it's told in reverse. And we begin with this moment where Frank is looking around at his life with misery and regret. And reflecting on the mistakes that he has made. And then one jump at a time, we move backwards through the various years to see how exactly he got there, to see what happened. Finally ending at this place of optimism and belief in everything that they were going to go on to do and to achieve when they were young and hopeful and tomorrow seemed like it was full of opportunity. And that's Merrily We Roll Along. And just from the way I'm describing it, you get the sense of why it makes more sense to have age appropriate actors ish at the beginning who are then portraying their younger, more aspirational, more wide eyed selves later on, rather than to have really young actors kind of cosplaying as older jaded people that would always ring a little bit false, wearing a lot of T shirts that look just like the merchandise item I'm wearing right now that tell us who they are in a very non naturalistic way. The thing that Maria Friedman's production back in London, when it first professionally premiered, really got right was not just tinkering with some elements of the narrative and giving all of these supporting characters a real sense of a through line, but was also focusing the story on what has always worked about it, which is these relationships and how they transition and evolve and deteriorate and explode over time. It's painful enough watching a character pine for somebody else who they know they can never have, but to watch that happen between Mary and Frank and later on in the show, see this moment of longing when we already know from scenes before what the conclusion of it all is going to be, is somehow even more heartbreaking. It's really quite devastating and weirdly uplifting at the same time. To end in this place of hope and optimism with a song like Our Time. And Maria Freeman's production was so character driven, so centered. These relationships, not just of the trio, but also the shifting one between the seductive, enticing Gussie Carnegie, the Broadway star, the married Broadway star, and Frank. She has already, by the time she meets him, risen up in the world through some determination. As well as already various different husbands. There is also Beth, the perhaps naive first wife of Frank, and like I said, all of these other supporting characters as well. There are such brilliant details, which I don't think were always present in previous versions of Merrily We Roll along. But I've only ever seen one iteration prior to this production and it was a concert version. But there are little details. Like when Frank and Charlie have their TV interview, there's a passing line where he thanks the on air reporter. They're kind of doing it as a favor to her because she was a friend to him during his divorce. We then see her as a reporter holding a microphone later on where she agrees to kill some unflattering photographs taken during an argument between Frank and Beth, the mother, his child by this time, who is about to become his ex wife. He also, at the beginning when he's at this party full of vapid successful wealthy people in California, introduces a friend of his who invented the telephone answering machine. We see him, scenes and scenes later, years and years before, trying to pitch it to a successful Broadway producer and offering him an extraordinary percentage share which he turns down because he's like no one's ever going to buy it. We see Gussie go from miserable fading star to Broadway star at the height of her career to emerging talent to producer's secretary, and we can see her entire arc again in reverse. There is such an attention to detail that makes this production fantastic. There is such a brilliant amount of storytelling through not only the transitions and the staging, but also all of the aesthetics and the costume design that help us inherently understand what we are looking at from one decade to the next. Or should I say to the previous. Everything that has ever kept audiences at a distance from the brilliant writing of Merrily We Roll along suddenly didn't matter anymore with this production. And just like that, it was fixed. And not only that, it was also recorded. To hear more about why I love this show and this production, go listen to my Broadway review. But for now, let's talk about this filmed version.

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Mickey Jo (14:54)

So like I said, this production has been filmed twice because there was a professional capture in London and that one felt a lot more standard. I think it was during the real heyday and beginnings of National Theatre Live, when we were getting really good at capturing pieces of theatre on stage in a way that felt like you were among the audience. This does not feel like that. This feels like you are standing on the stage because there's a real extraordinary proximity. And a lot of the editing choices they make, certainly in the first few scenes of the film are considerably more intense and more intimate and more filmic, I think, than a lot of pro shots that we've seen before. The real hurdle with a lot of these things is how to make someone, you know, behind a screen feel like they are witnessing this in a theater. And anyone who has ever commented, I wish they would just like have a Steadicam on the entire stage so we can see all of the choreography, so we can see all of the staging, so nothing gets cut off because we want to see the whole thing the whole time. I promise you that watching a recording like that is such a miserable experience. I've had to do it on a handful of occasions for various reasons. It is not compelling whatsoever. It does not invite you because our eyes can do things and sort of fixate in ways that cameras can't. It doesn't make you feel as though you're a part of the experience. It's very emotionally distancing. This goes to the other extreme where we have these uber sort of Les Mis movie esque close up moments. And there's some parts of it that it's fantastic for. Like I said, we are centering the performances in this production. And so I want to see in gorgeous high definition on a big cinema screen the moment where Jonathan Groth can command a single tear to roll down his cheek like the theatrical wizard that he is. I don't know how he does that, but he did. Or the really haunting expression on Lindsay Mendes face when she's grappling with this inner turmoil of the love she has for Frank that she has decided to never fully express to him. That being said, there are also other moments that I think we lose in some of these close ups. And either it stopped being as intense a feature of the cinematography as we progressed, or I just stopped noticing it. I think certainly as we get into some of the older decades, it shifts a little bit. I was starting to wonder whether that was a stylistic choice to try and make the sort of filmmaking auteur style of each different time period more reflective of how films were shot during those time periods. I also wondered, and this might be a fun project for someone, if this is ever released digitally, who wants to try and do some editing. I wondered what it would be like to color grade the footage of this in different styles based on. I mean, even like an aspect ratio change might be quite fun. Although we only really go up to a certain decade. It's not like it gets really modern. But it was only in those earlier scenes where I found myself being actively frustrated by some of the things that were being cut off, some of the things that were happening outside of the focus of the screen. And it had to do with the earliest appearances of the ensemble as they are singing the introductory song lines of the show. We're just seeing Jonathan Groff's sort of haunted expression. But the first time that we saw two ensemble members in the frame singing was like, weirdly halfway through this bit of music. So it didn't feel like a very purposeful arrival because we were just so dedicatedly fixed on him the entire time. It's like, at that point, don't show those ones to us either. If you haven't showed them earlier at like a substantial moment when the music began. There was also a really egregious part when. And I love this scene I. That's really heartbreaking. And it's the thing that stops you from hating Gussie. Because the first interaction we see between her and the man who eventually becomes her ex husband, Joe Josephson, who she is married to or engaged to for much of the remainder of the show, because we're traveling backwards. That first interaction you see is him really down on his luck, begging her for money, basically, which she gives to him, but on the understanding that he's not allowed to ask her anymore and he can't keep coming around and doing this. He tells her that he's lining up back as for his next project, but it feels very much like that probably isn't going to amount to anything. And she clearly feels guilty about this entire interaction. So as she goes to leave to go and follow Frank to wherever it is that he's doing his TV interview, she turns back and says, I'm sorry. And then runs off, unable to even make eye contact with him, because by the time he looks up at her, she has fled. And we hear this, but we see just the worst of it because we see his face when she's saying I'm sorry. We don't see her deliver the line. And then he turns away from us to look at her almost immediately. And then we get a shot of her scarping the back of her head. It's just the most dissatisfying series of cuts elsewhere. Great Choices are made. But I just think in some of these earlier scenes, it's just too close. It's just too many close ups on these faces and we're having to jump between people. There are parts where you want to be able to see a wide shot of Jonathan as Frank giving advice to a young screenwriter. And you would like to have Gussie over his shoulder, sort of raising an eyebrow, unable to even listen to him, because the resentment between the two of them has grown so dreadful. I just feel like we wouldn't have had to have made choices to show one or the other if everything was that little bit zoomed out. And I think a part of it is the identity that it's trying to have of being a film rather than a pro shot. Like I said, you never see the audience. And I don't love an audience reaction shot. But even at the end, you don't really get a full stage picture. You don't see the proscenium. You would be forgiven for believing you hear the audience on occasion, but you'd be forgiven for believing that this wasn't filmed in a theatre at all, because there's very little sense of it. And that, I thought, was a puzzling choice. I don't know if it offers the project more commercial viability, if more people are inclined to watch something that they don't necessarily know was a theatrical pro shot, whether it sort of makes it feel inherently lesser than. Because it's a theater piece which is, you know, best experienced in person, but one which has been filmed. Certainly it's an interesting choice in the face of the fact that a Merrily We Roll along feature film adaptation is on its way in, like, several years. Because the filmmaker Richard Linklater, who has done this before with films like Boyhood, has been with a cast including Ben Platt and I think, Beanie Feldstein and now Paul Mascal as well, replacing the original star as Franklin Shepard, filming little segments like One year at a time so they will age authentically in reverse. Whether that project is ever going to actually come to fruition, I have no idea because it's already gone wrong once. Like, they already had to restart. And I just think there's. There's so much to be concerned about and we haven't had an update in a hot minute. So I am getting the littlest bit worried about the Merrily We Rol along movie. And if this is the only one we ever get, you know, the filming of the Broadway revival, then I'm perfectly happy with that. Because I think as it endures. And now that it's been captured for posterity, I think this will be remembered as a pretty definitive staging of the show. Which raises at least one other interesting question. Because unlike some other theatrical performances which have been shown in cinemas, like I went to go see Next to Normal earlier this year, which I loved, this, this did not feature an interval or intermission in the cinema screening where the original production at the theatre did. And so in the moment where a break would have been in the show when you saw it at the Hudson Theatre, they just plowed straight through. It went from the big climax at the end of the song now, you know, straight into Gussie's big number. And in fact, a time jump backwards would have happened, which is kind of implied by the interval usually, and I think implied well enough by just how triumphantly that song ends. And also, you know, they've talked enough about this show that they wrote decades before. When you finally see it, you understand what you're looking at and you can figure out what's happened. But it did make me curious about the prospect of this becoming known as like the great version of Merrily. People watching this film version, and perhaps not necessarily on Broadway or in the West End, but maybe elsewhere for other theaters, being inspired to do a one act version of Merrily. I think you gain an awful lot through the intensity and focus of doing the whole thing without a pause, without an intermission. I know that it does also become an accessibility issue because people, for a whole handful of very valid and legitimate reasons, may need breaks, may not be able to withstand. I think it's less than two hours all the way through if you don't do an intermission. I think at least that's what the film seemed to run at. Possibly excluding the overture and the bows on the end. I don't know. And there are certainly a lot of theater makers who are creating productions in the region of two hours without intermissions. Very Evo Van Hove. God. Imagine Ivo Van Hove's Merrily We Roll Along. I don't think that's something we need, actually. I think he'd make the audience come back to see one scene at a time every year over, over like a ten year period. Oh, I wish I hadn't spoken that into existence. It's definitely gonna happen now. But yeah, I saw Follies without an intermission, which a lot of people tend to believe is the best way to see that show because there's not a particularly great place to interrupt it. I think it was always Sondheim's preference to run it without an intermission. Merrily, it doesn't matter quite so much because you have these natural breaks in the narrative because you're jumping backwards every single time. And if they were to do it, I guess that someone would need to try and write a transition like in all of the other time jumps musically singing backwards through the years that we are progressing through. I just thought it was an interesting problem.

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Mickey Jo (26:06)

Now. I loved this production when I saw it on stage so so much. But there is an awful lot that I was able to appreciate about it even more when I saw it on screen. And performance wise I enjoyed Jonathan Groff an awful, awful lot. But I think I came out the of of that theater and sat down to film my review about it and I spoke about Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendes and watching the pro shot and seeing all of his choices in high definition, seeing the subtleties and nuances of his choices. The moment when he is convinced to end things with Gussie and go and meet Charlie and Mary that night that could have changed everything. And the moment he is then won over once again by her in her desperation. And seeing the way that he played that. Seeing those moments when a single tear rolls down his cheek. Seeing the early scenes with Beth, seeing the scenes with the young actor playing his son. He does beautiful subtle work that I think is best appreciated on a giant cinema screen because maybe it was slightly closer and subtler acting when Lindsay Mendez, because of the way Mary is written, was was broad and theatrical and Daniel too as Charlie because Franklin Shepherd Inc. Is such an explosion and Frank doesn't really have any kind of material like that. His most fascinating song, at least that he has as a little solo moment is a song called Growing up that was added after the original production, I believe or was cut from it was. It was. It happened subsequently. And again, again, a really beautiful performance to get to enjoy on screen. As far as the supporting cast go, I loved Crystal Joy Brown on Broadway, but I really appreciated Katy Rose Clark on screen because again, Crystal and Gussie's material is fantastic and scene stealing, but it's over the top and it's darling and it's broad. And the moments of hers that I loved the most in the film version were the moments of subtlety when she comes comes back and lets herself into the apartment and sits in the dark watching Frank play the piano. The moment when she, knowing that they're being watched from the balcony, doesn't visually react but tells him that she's planning to leave her husband. Those subtle moments of pain and fear and like when she at first tells him in the greenhouse that she's not very happy and sort of begins about her romantic manipulation of him. And this beginning of what I think to her is a very meaningful relationship that she actually does care quite dearly about. And she does sincerely love him, even though he is, as all men seem to have been for her, just another path to take. But yeah, with Katie Rose Clark as well, heartbreaking in Not a Day Goes by, but also so, so funny in some of her earlier scenes and these little comic choices that I don't know that I fully appreciated amidst the overwhelming brilliance that was Merrily we roll along on stage and Lindsay and Daniel, everyone is still fantastic on screen. It's just an inherently different medium, so things sort of read differently and speak differently. And the performances which were big enough to emotionally reverberate around an entire multi tier auditorium are different to the ones which are careful and subtle enough to really shimmer on screen. Screen. So I'm ultimately hugely appreciative of the fact that I had the chance to see both and appreciate all of these performances in this fantastic company in both of those settings. I think in terms of Maria Friedman's direction through this film and through the lens, you are even more tuned in to her perspective on the material and the characters and this friendship as the anchor around which the ship that is this complicated piece of musical theatre storytelling is allowed to sail. I don't actually think that's how anchors work. It's gonna surprise none of you to learn, I don't know that much about sailing. But it all stands to reason, because Maria is not only an actress herself, a celebrated, brilliant, emotive actress for decades and decades before she became an extraordinary creative, and I believe she still does, but both. But not only that, she was in a production of Merrily We Roll Along. So she has insights into these characters, she has a relationship to this material, and that's what really comes through. There is such an understanding of who each of them are, and you feel the history between them, because I think what you're really feeling is her history with the show, her history with Sondheim, that somehow has become infused into the creation of the Broadway production, and that has been captured. You feel the resonance of that in the creation of this film as well. So that is deeply special. Also, shout out to Tim Jackson, who has just made his Broadway debut as a director, but had already debuted as a choreographer, which is the role that he served on this production. And Merrily We Roll along is not an extensive dance show, but I don't know that I had appreciated enough the choreography that they are doing in the song Old Friends, like, when they actually sing it the whole way through and all of the movements and the way that they perform them, it's so meaningful and honest because the choreography they do is so believably like routines that they're recalling from years of friendship and little gags that they've had and little jokes they're playing on each other in real time and, like, surprising the third one or leaving someone out or making someone dance a little bit longer and, like, turning their back acts on them. It's so full of hijinks. There's so much crammed in there, but we believe every single step of it, it's all connected to feeling like a memory of something that has happened in the decades of friendship that they've had thus far. And that's the most important thing and another reason why this production worked so well. And I can talk about Jonathan and Lindsay and Daniel separately, but it's this trio that became great friends, I believe, during the entire process. You can see that on screen because you could fake it very, very well. And they're all great actors, but there's an honesty to the friendship in the moments they have together, which makes their separation and the cracks and the splinters even more devastating.

Mickey Jo (32:35)

So that, I think, is everything that I need say about this filmed version of Merrily We Roll Along. I enjoyed it an awful lot. There are little things about the beginning that I don't think are necessarily my Favorite way to enjoy a filmed theatre production. But my inclination will always be for it to be that. For it to be a inherently theatrical capture of something that existed on stage and that wasn't necessarily the ambition here. And I think that's a really interesting prospect. All these shots facing into the wings, capturing things that no Broadway audience member would have been able to see. We saw a lot more of people's exits and entrances than anyone necessarily had the chance to at the Hudson Theatre. And I think what is exciting is for directors to have the opportunity to creatively reimagine their stage creations and film them in that way. I think it's a really intriguing concept. It makes me very curious about what the Hadestown pro shot, which has already been filmed earlier this year, is going to look like. Like, because that's another one where I feel like a getting intense close ups of some of those moments is going to be agonizing. But also it would be curious to see different character perspectives on things that the audience never really has the chance to see. I'm very curious about whether this sets a trend for sort of more artistically realized filmmaking around stage production, rather than just, you know, trying to just like, camera A, camera B, the National Theatre live version of relaying it as faithfully as possible to an audience who isn't necessarily in the theater, but empowering them to feel like they are, which hopefully all made sense. I feel like I may have rambled a little bit about this one, but I also promised you some moments to weigh in in conversation. Did you like the close ups and what we gained from them, or were they an issue for you? Would you prefer to have pro shots where you're not really necessarily distracted by the choices being made, where it's just facilitating you seeing a stage production as it was? Or did you like the fact that it had more of a specific artistic identity? Because I have seen commentary either way. I've seen some people saying that they didn't like the close ups and it was a problem. I've seen other people saying this is the best pro shot of anything that has ever existed. And the work that has been captured is so, so good. Like, the substance is extraordinary. I still don't know if it necessarily touches the likes of the Hamilton pro shot, which was really just exceptional on so many fronts, to my mind. But it was all in all a pretty terrific filming of a really extraordinary show and one that was born of such initial chaos. If nothing else, let everything that happens to Merrily we roll along now, including this, including the upcoming film adaptation that may or may not be upcoming. Let that all be a light at the end of the tunnel to any theater makers whose work is not debuting in the way that they had hoped may be flopped, has maybe closed early. You never know what is going to happen to it 40 years down the line and 40 years from now, who knows what productions of Merrily We Roll along we will have had the chance to see. It feels like this was such a definitive staging of this version of the material. Any sort of big revival we get subsequently might have to take a very different look at it. Maybe we put the Hills of Tomorrow back in and try and find a way for that to work. I'm very curious. Maybe we do the Eva Van Hove thing where everyone has to watch it over a decade, one scene at a time. I'm not against it. I can. I can clear my calendar for like 15 minutes once a year. I can be available for that. And who knows as well what pro shots we will be able to enjoy over the next 40 years, which I feel is a great opportunity to ask another question down in the comments after this pro shot of Merrily We Roll along, which theatrical piece would you like to see captured next? Share all of your thoughts about this and other musical theater pro shots in the comments down below below. And while you do that, I will thank you for listening to today's review. I enjoyed sharing these thoughts with you. There is nothing I love more than talking about a production of a Sondheim musical, which I loved. I have another Sondheim review coming later this very week because on Thursday I am heading to the Bridge Theatre in London to go and see the very anticipated new revival of into the Woods. Not just my favourite Sondheim of all time, actually my favourite musical of all time. I am, to quote that show, excited, excited and scared. But I will be bringing that review to you as soon as possible. If you don't want to miss it, make sure you're not only subscribed, but make sure you have the notifications turned on. Press that button that looks like a bell somewhere below my face and you will hear about it as soon as it is here on YouTube. If you prefer, you will also be able to find it on podcast platforms. There will be other reviews and other theater conversations between now and then and I will welcome you back for all of those as well should you wish to join me in the meantime. I have been Mickey Jo and as always I. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey. Thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.

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Fantasy Fangirls Podcast Hosts (38:50)

Are you a fantasy reader looking to cure your book hangover? Then welcome, welcome welcome to the Fantasy Fangirls podcast. I'm Lexi, older sister and fantasy lore nerd. And I'm Nicole, younger sister and romantic at heart. And we love exploring these stories, worlds and characters well beyond the last page. Fantasy Fangirls is not your typical book. Deep Dive Podcast when we say deep dive, we mean Deep Dive where every episode covers a stretch of chapters and is structured with five segments to easily follow along. We are currently deep diving Quicksilver by Callie Hart in the lead up to its highly anticipated sequel, Brimstone. We're so excited. We hope you join us as we travel through the Quicksilver to dive deep into literary and character analysis, theories, lore, themes and so much more.

Acast Announcer (39:33)

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