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[0:01] Ryan VanDenBoom: And honestly, even working on the musical, I was like, I had to, I had to sit back a little bit because my like, grad school mind was like, well, let's like, do all the research and try to slam this musical with truth. And then I was kind of like, I realized quickly that like, well, maybe as valiant as that may be in some circles.

[0:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You're talking to a guy where truth really doesn't matter.

[0:26] Ryan VanDenBoom: That's right.

[0:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome everybody to A Musical Theatre Podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theatre history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff.

[0:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Today we continue our American Dream miniseries with a look at the musical Barnum. A listener request from Winston who wrote in and said, quote, Barnum podcast, please. It's one of my faves. Love listening to Jim Dale on the album and watching the recording of Michael Crawford. I directed it at my school years ago and don't think enough people do it. By the way, Winston has taught high school for well over 16 years at this point. So let's all send him some hero love. I'm also very excited to record this. It's actually the show that inspired me to create the podcast. We'll talk about it. Here with me to discuss it is someone who you might not expect to have a Barnum connection. He's currently on Broadway in the mega hit MJ.

[1:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yep, that's right. Our guest for Barnum is in MJ. He's also been seen in Bandstand, Something Rotten, Annie. He was the choreographer for the recent mounting of Barnum at the Rev in Auburn, New York. Everyone, please welcome the incredibly talented Ryan VanDenBoom.

[1:56] Ryan VanDenBoom: Hello, friends. Hello, hello. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you, Jeff.

[2:12] Ryan VanDenBoom: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you, Jeff.

[2:32] Ryan VanDenBoom: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you, Jeff.

[3:00] Ryan VanDenBoom: It's a huge show.

[3:30] Ryan VanDenBoom: It's a huge show.

[4:01] Ryan VanDenBoom: The show was written on the page. And so I felt like there was a lot of opportunity there for a creative to do kind of their spin and culminated in a pretty cool production, I think. So yeah, that was sort of the long and short of how I got involved.

[4:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So that's really cool. What, I mean, if you may speak for your director slash artistic director, what led them to choose Barnum? Because you just don't see it in seasons anymore.

[4:25] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, so…

[4:27] Ryan VanDenBoom: A show from 1980, everyone just for context.

[4:30] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah. And it was kind of fun, actually, just as a sidebar, anecdotal. But a lot of people who had come to see the show in the area, in the Auburn, New York area, where the theater is located, were talking about how Barnum was like the first Broadway experience they ever had. They saw Jim Dale, you know, and like, yeah, so it's just kind of fascinating. And I'll be excited to hear, you said that it got you into making this podcast, I would love to hear more about that. But um, so Brett, he, from what I understand, he actually had seen the show, a couple different productions, one, I believe was in Florida. And then he saw one on the West End. That was, I think, like, I'm not sure which theater that was either, but that was fairly recent. But he was inspired by these productions. And he felt like he had like a great theater space, I think, and the community that would like, enjoy, embrace.

[5:27] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yes, thank you. That's perfect. Yeah. Sort of like take the show in and, and I think he was right. Like it was, you know, the space itself. It's an old merry-go-round. So it's like woody, and, and feels kind of like a barn. And so I feel like a show, I guess Barnum's like, what, 1850? He was born 1808? 1810?

[5:49] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah. Okay. So 1810. I mean, the circus, I think, comes like kind of later on his career. And he's, he's sort of creating the way in which we have media, right? He's, he's like, he's like one of our first admin, essentially, right? Like he's, he's putting out flyers and rewriting sort of history in a sense and creating a window to the rest of the world through his lens.

[6:16] Ryan VanDenBoom: You know, I think this is kind of where the conversation, this is not Brett's vision, necessarily. I'm not speaking for him. However, you know, it does lend itself to sort of looking at current day historical figures or historical figures from the recent past.

[6:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely. P.T. Barnum was a pioneer in many ways, and a fascinating person. I'm pretty sure that's why Hugh Jackman's obsessed with them. And we'll, of course, talk about Greatest Showman and a little bit about how these two share the same person and honestly, wildly different approaches to his story.

[6:51] Ryan VanDenBoom: But for me, I guess I'll just go ahead and tell you the story. So I was visiting a high school classroom, bringing their attention to shows that don't get produced very often. And my question was always, how am I going to help these kids care about this show that they probably have no interest in?

[7:12] Ryan VanDenBoom: The topic of conversation was Barnum. And I went in and it was during Trump's first administration. And we had kind of a conversation about the con man with dreams. Yeah, it was such a great conversation. And we I got done and I was feeling really good about it kind of cloud nine. So I went to the gym because I had energy. And I was working out and it just occurred to me, this is a podcast, like these conversations about these shows.

[7:42] Ryan VanDenBoom: That you might not think have any cultural relevance, or even emotional relevance to you. I promise they do. Because musical theater is number one, grounded in the human motivation of, of hope of wanting to express what it means to be human.

[8:02] Ryan VanDenBoom: And also so much of this art form, because it is somewhat modern, is about life that we understand and relate to. That's all to say that was back in 2019. Now we're here and we're still trying to do it. So I'm grateful that Barnum is finally here with its own episode.

[8:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Now, there are also several reasons why Barnum is the third musical in our American Dream miniseries, because I feel like it showcases number one, the style and sound of entertainment that like you said, that is uniquely American, that Barnum really created in many ways. We'll talk about that. And then of course, it's it stars a character that is celebrated in both American musicals, the music man, and culture. And that is, once again, the creative con man.

[8:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So let's begin first with the circus. Let's talk about the circus. Did you ever go to the circus growing up? Where did you grow up? I just gave you four questions.

[9:00] Ryan VanDenBoom: All good. So I grew up in Michigan and Midwest, a pretty rural town. But I would say, yeah, I don't recall exactly. I think it's probably like a Ringling Brothers, but there was a circus I came through town and my parents took me. And I think in general, like variety acts. I had the opportunity to do some clown work in an American troupe. Their name is Parallel Exit.

[9:25] Ryan VanDenBoom: They did like a tour in Germany, where there were like these silent comedians who also tap dance and sang a little bit. And we sort of like move the story through with like different circus variety acts, hand balancer, hula hoop artists. And so I have like some also first hand experience and then like understanding also the craft and also the passion that someone has to kind of dedicate themselves to a particular skill.

[9:52] Ryan VanDenBoom: It's always been really fascinating to me. And then, you know, you think of a character like Barnum, someone who is not the act, but is also kind of the act, right? Like the selling of it.

[10:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's so interesting that you say craft, because if we're talking about circus, the craft of the circus entertainment is 100% European. They are the ones who took it seriously and made it into an art form. What we did over here and what P.T. Barnum did was make the marketing of it as big a star as any of the craft.

[10:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right? We're turning it into a three ring circus. We're adding exotic animals. When I first went to the circus, there was a huge metal sphere with motorcyclists going upside down and almost like running into each other. Like the thrill of all of that, which 100% is craft based. But the thrill becomes the new thing, right? To sell.

[10:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Like you said, the circus itself doesn't come until much later in P.T. Barnum's life when he teams up with his old partner for the greatest show on earth. And we'll talk about that when we're going through the show. But it's also fascinating to see how the marketing and how the creation of this new product led to artistic choices that supported it.

[11:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The sound of circus music with the calliope and these instruments that carry far and wide. The reason is because it's a traveling circus and they want to play music that you can hear miles away. You follow the sound of that calliope and boom, you're at the show.

[11:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Everything, the marching band going from state to state to try and get people to come and see it. These are all choices that are directly tied to making the show a success. It's not like they decided, oh, let's pick the calliope. It has such an interesting tone. They did it the reverse. And maybe this is the way that most art gets made. And then we kind of put another spin on it to try and help us feel more at home.

[12:04] Ryan VanDenBoom: It's artistic, but specifically with the circus, it feels like it was done this way. Let's sell the show. And then the show became the new standard of entertainment.

[12:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, yeah, 100%.

[12:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So P.T. Barnum, if you picture what you would think the mayor of Munchkinland might look like, that's kind of how P.T. Barnum looked. His name, of course, Phineas Taylor Barnum, born 5th of July, 1810, lived a long life until 81, born in the United States.

[12:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And do you know what? Before we start going through his life, let's talk about the history of the show a little bit more, because if we start talking about his life, we're going to have to talk about the musical.

[12:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: As I mentioned earlier, this show came out in 1980. A lot of people saw it as spectacle with not a lot of substance. What's interesting, though, is that it comes out the same year as Evita.

[13:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That is the Tony Awards season that it arrives. And Evita is often thought of as the beginning of the mega British musical, which makes me want to point out that I think in the past I may have led everyone to believe, and I'm not alone in this, that the British mega musical came in and invaded Broadway.

[13:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And then Broadway was like, Oh my gosh, how do we respond? And then they couldn't ever quite respond. And so they just kept being overwhelmed by Cats and then Starlight Express and Les Mis and Phantom and Miss Saigon. It just kept coming in.

[13:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: But the truth is, is that in the same season as Evita, there is also an American spectacle musical in Barnum. And when Les Mis comes out a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Rags. There is an epic, dark musical from America coming out. So there are contemporaries.

[14:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The Spectacle Musical was a huge hit and ran for two years. But still, when you're comparing Barnum to Evita, I think it's pretty undeniable which one has had the bigger footprint. So Barnum opens. It is also the first show that Frank Rich, like the first big show that Frank Rich, who was the New York Times critic, reviewed. He was known, of course, as the butcher of Broadway and could close a show with a single review. And Barnum was like his first big assignment for the newspaper. And I wanted to read just the first paragraph of this review because it says something about the excitement of the original production. This is how the review starts. Is there anything that Jim Dale can't do? Mr. Dale, who roared into town last night in a new musical called Barnum, is not your everyday song and dance man.

Oh, he sings just fine, in the bright style of the old British music hall, and he can kick up his legs until his feet nearly collide with his forehead. But for this fellow, such gifts are merely a point of departure. During the course of a busy evening, Mr. Dale shows off enough tricks to make all but a Houdini dizzy. He leaps from a trampoline. He rides a unicycle. He walks a tightrope. He conducts a marching band. He dons a carrot-colored wig and plays the clown. Yet his best stunt may be the simplest of them all. When the curly-haired Mr. Dale comes forward to address the audience, his arms spread wide as if to embrace the St. James Theatre entire second balcony, he immediately transforms a gargantuan circus of a show into his own joyous playpen.

This man can create magic, the magic of infectious charm, even on those rare occasions when he's standing still. I mean, talk about a glowing review, you know what I mean? I didn't want to ruin the punchline, but I was like, in my mind, I think I did find that review, and I was like, if I remember correctly, I think it's just like a big old Jim Dale love story. And yeah.

[16:10] Ryan VanDenBoom: It's a Jim Dale love.

[16:13] Ryan VanDenBoom: The guy, so this, by the way, if anybody has seen Pete's Dragon, he's a money, money, money by the pound. Anyway, he's done many more things, and I'm sure Pete's Dragon isn't probably the first on his list, but he does live rent-free in my brain because of that. Now the review goes on to say that like there is no book, that it's essentially the script is just a series of words that allow us to get to the next big spectacle trick for Mr. Dale. But it feels like, at least from the research that I've done, that this show was always meant to be a little bit different.

[16:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[16:54] Ryan VanDenBoom: In the script, it says that the show begins at half hour.

[16:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right.

[16:58] Ryan VanDenBoom: So talk to me about how immersive was this show for you guys, remembering that like theater wasn't that immersive in 1980.

[17:05] Ryan VanDenBoom: So ultimately, you know, what Brett decided to do, which I was totally on board with, and I love this kind of show, was like, do like a Pippin kind of thing, like the players. These are like the players that are telling the Barnum story. There's like these ringmasters that come up throughout the show, and each actor in the show had a ringmaster line. So they like had a moment to step up.

[17:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: They were all sharing the responsibility.

[17:33] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah. So, you know, that was one piece about the show that I was really excited about. There's like a show within a show model. And we also got Jim, our Barnum was also Jim, to come out into the house a little bit and just deliver a lot of his songs, like, right to the audience.

[17:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, and just like Mr. Ridge said, for all of the spectacle, a character like Barnum is only successful if he can convince everybody around him that he's just one of them.

[18:02] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, exactly.

[18:04] Ryan VanDenBoom: He's clearly not one of us.

[18:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right.

[18:06] Ryan VanDenBoom: Right. And yet, he can approach us and talk to us like, hey, I'm just one of you guys, give me your money and come and see, you know, the oldest woman that has ever lived. And I can speak to that, like the guy who played Barnum in our production, Jim Stanek, his name, I don't know if you've looked him up, but he is awesome.

[18:26] Ryan VanDenBoom: And it was perfectly cast for the role. He just has, I think he did a really good job of playing up the, like, I just see the world and like, it's colorful. And like, I think on the page, that can sound like a little like, this is cheesy. But when someone embodies that and really believes it and delivers it well, it's quite compelling. I love podcasts like this, or like, you know, even just discussions like this, because I do think taking these little artifacts of theater literature, pulling them out and kind of dusting them off or investigating them, pulling them apart, understanding a little bit more about the time in which they were written, what was going on then, I just think that it helps us move forward.

[19:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, love that. That's beautiful. The writers of Barnum are people that we've discussed before on the podcast. They're well-known guys. Cy Coleman wrote the music, who is, Cy Chameleon should be his name, because every musical of his sounds completely different from the other. Barnum does hold hands, however, quite fervently with the Will Rogers Follies that comes out about almost a decade later, in that it's a very charismatic American figure with a very specific brand, who's also, you're every man who can talk straight to the audience. We, of course, covered the Will Rogers Follies, and that show has the musical styles of the Follies of country Western music. Barnum happens about 50 years earlier than the Follies would have, so we're getting even more earworms from old school Americana.

John Philip Sousa marches. We're getting, like I mentioned, these big circus orchestrations, and then some jaunty, lovely old school musical theater pieces as well. The lyrics, which there are so many lyrics. Now, as a choreographer, I know that sometimes we try to use lyrics to help our cast members remember the movement. Don't expect me to ever memorize the lyrics of this show. Every word in the human language has been shoved into this music. My cast would tell you that I misquoted the lyrics many a time. Like, please don't listen to me.

[20:54] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, yeah. Do as I'm telling you movement-wise, but not as I'm saying, because I'm not the lyric police of this one.

[21:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The lyrics were by Michael Stewart, who was, up until this point, a book writer, and a successful one at that. He did Hello, Dolly. You also know that I have my beef with him because of what he did to Mac and Maple, but still, he's a very important figure in musical theater, and turns out, a great rhymesmith, because he is not without quite a few clever patter lyrics in this show.

[21:31] Ryan VanDenBoom: It's all over the place.

[21:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: All over the place. His collaborator for the musical that takes Broadway by Storm the next season, 42nd Street, was Mark Bramble. Bramble was the book writer for this show. Now, like we mentioned, the story is pretty light, but honestly, I don't mind it. And this is where we'll kind of get into the greatest showman of it all. When I saw The Greatest Showman, I was like, oh, you thought that Barnum had a bad book. The Greatest Showman is so—and forgive me if I'm spoiling this reveal, but you've never seen The Greatest Showman, correct?

[22:09] Ryan VanDenBoom: That's correct. I just have not gotten around to it.

[22:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I told you, what did I tell you before we recorded this? I said, do not change that.

[22:17] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, yeah.

[22:17] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Please don't.

[22:18] Ryan VanDenBoom: Don't worry about it. Yeah.

[22:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Don't worry about it. Here's what I'll tell you about when I saw The Greatest Showman, is I thought, oh, wow, everybody thought Barnum had a bad book, but it actually tells the story of P.T. Barnum much more closely than this film. Also, The Greatest Showman is very effective in its own way. I watched it for the first time. I didn't see it in the theater, so I watched it at home. And I'm watching it and making like all these sounds and, whoa, what? And mainly because I felt like all of the stories that they were telling about him weren't really painting a true picture of the actual person.

[22:57] Ryan VanDenBoom: And my then boyfriend came out after it was over because he didn't want to watch it. And he said, so how was it?

[23:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I was like, oh, it just makes me so mad because like at the end, like he's sitting there and his daughter comes and sits in his lap and he tells her that he will always love her. And like I'm starting to cry, like retelling how the ending that I hated.

[23:20] Ryan VanDenBoom: Right. Like I didn't. The reason I was retelling the ending was because I wasn't happy with it. And yet I like got emotional talking about it. And I think that that's like the perfect representation of how I feel about that movie is that it's very effective. And it also drives me a little nuts because I think it's the great story of somebody like P.T. Barnum, but not him.

[23:41] Ryan VanDenBoom: Well, you know, what's coming to me right now is just saying this is like, you know, from what I understand in my research, like Barnum would readjust his tinker with his autobiographies throughout his life to sort of change the narrative.

[23:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Interesting. So maybe it is a perfect example.

[23:57] Ryan VanDenBoom: So it's like, it's almost meta.

[23:58] Ryan VanDenBoom: It's almost like the fact that like now, even to this day in his spirit, the capitalistic world is like shifting the narrative to sell, you know, intrigue.

[24:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: To sell more books.

[24:11] Ryan VanDenBoom: Exactly. Like, I don't know. I mean, maybe that's exactly what it's supposed to be. And honestly, even working on the musical, I was like, I had to sit back a little bit because my like grad school mind was like, well, let's like do all the research and try to slam this musical with truth. And then I was kind of like, I realized quickly that like, well, maybe as valiant as that may be in some circle. You're talking to a guy where truth really doesn't matter.

[24:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's right.

[24:40] Ryan VanDenBoom: And so it begs the question, though, like, where are you coming to, where are you coming from as you approach this work?

[24:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I love the meta viewpoint on that. The whole show when it was first conceived was incredibly meta. Like I said, there wasn't a lot of immersive theater at the time. And yet, when the show was pitched, the audience was supposed to come in. The show was already supposed to be happening in the lobby. There are lines written in the script to be said in the lobby. It was meant to be different, very experimental. And breaking out of the traditional proscenium Broadway musical, which I mean, more power to them. Now, from my research, the show was in big trouble out of town, which is no surprise, especially if you're doing something this different. And in fact, I think most shows out of town are probably pretty terrible. By the way, you've done so many new shows. Have you ever had a true out of town or have you mostly done workshops straight to Broadway?

[25:41] Ryan VanDenBoom: Mostly workshops straight to Broadway.

[25:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Isn't that crazy?

[25:44] Ryan VanDenBoom: It is crazy. Like, talk about a cultural shift.

[25:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, yeah. I mean, in the instance with Anstan, I got to see the show out of town before I was a part of it. So that was just fascinating to have that perspective, see a show, kind of take that formation.

[25:57] Ryan VanDenBoom: Totally.

[25:57] Ryan VanDenBoom: Where were they?

[25:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: They were at Paper Mill, saw the show. But yeah, I mean, it can be massive, the way that a show is restructured. It's just so expensive to mount things fully out of town and then transfer them into Broadway. But that was the tradition for many, many, many years. And I mean, without knowing exactly all of the... Because I didn't see the physical space. I watched the PBS production. It was like a West End production, I think with Michael Crawford.

[26:27] Ryan VanDenBoom: The Michael Crawford one.

[26:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So I was able to see that. And obviously, they have the people in the box seat. Or there's a lot of immersion, as you said. The patriotic bunting, just yards and yards of patriotic bunting. They created box seats where there were none, just to kind of extend that space. And to your point, Barnum was a hit for a couple of years on Broadway, and then it goes to London. And in many ways, Barnum has continued to be more of a West End presence than... I mean, where's the Barnum revival? Nowhere, to be perfectly honest. But there have been, of course, the recent tour in the UK. And then the big original one, starring Michael Crawford. And that was the show that basically got him Phantom of the Opera, believe it or not. Lloyd Webber knew of him because of that, and wasn't sure if he could really handle a dark, romantic role like the Phantom. But took a chance on him anyway. And then Norastos history. So once again, cultural footprint of Barnum.

[27:36] Ryan VanDenBoom: There you go. Pretty huge. I've got two for you, just as an anecdote. So I had worked years and years ago choreographing a little music video for a friend starring Lilius White, who made her Broadway debut in Barnum, in the ensemble. And she remains a good friend of mine. So that was kind of fun to rediscover that and re-realize that. And then...

[28:00] Ryan VanDenBoom: Another one, when I was doing a production, a new show called Only Gold at MCC, I shared a dressing room with Terry Mann. And he talked a lot about Barnum.

[28:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Terrence Mann.

[28:13] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, Terrence Mann. Original Javert, original Rum Tum Tugger. I mean, everybody. Major, right? Also got his Broadway debut, I think, in Barnum, if I'm not mistaken. And I think he was like a circus guy, Terry. And did he also cover Barnum?

[28:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I'm not sure. I should find that out. I'm sure he would have been amazing, too.

[28:35] Ryan VanDenBoom: But it was fun to know a little bit of Terry's history with the show. He spoke highly of the experience.

[28:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's wonderful.

[28:43] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, yeah. I was like, oh, that's kind of fun. These people that I have relationships with that came through that pipeline, once again, that footprint. It's kind of fun.

[28:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And even though it was a huge show, there were only 17 people in the ensemble.

[28:57] Ryan VanDenBoom: How big is MJ?

[28:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I think on stage, it's like almost 20 of us total.

[29:01] Ryan VanDenBoom: So a show about the biggest circus you ever did see has a smaller cast than MJ. That's saying something. They very specifically chose a tight ensemble of people who could make this happen.

[29:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Barnum was originally directed by Joe Layton, who was a Broadway legend. Apparently did a fantastic job to, once again, create this kind of unusual take on the Broadway musical and do it with not very many people. So bravo to all of them for creating something. I think that the people who saw it loved it and remembered it maybe for the rest of their lives.

[29:38] Ryan VanDenBoom: What I want to do now, with the time we have left, is go through the show a little bit because, like I said, it is interesting and this character is really fascinating. Barnum begins, like I mentioned, 30 minutes before the show begins. But then when you think of the typical opening of a show, it is Barnum himself who is addressing the audience and helping everybody get to know him and his outlook on life.

[30:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The first song that he sings is a lyric based on a popular phrase that was attributed to him. I don't know if he actually said it. There is no proof that he actually said it, but it is a phrase that is attributed to him.

[30:19] Ryan VanDenBoom: There is a sucker born every minute. The idea being that there is no greater capitalist in America than P.T. Barnum, who believes that if you can access these suckers who are just everywhere and allow them to feel seen and heard and give them a little bit of hope to hold on to, they will give you their money and you can become a success.

[30:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Now, this is something that is in our musical history. The Music Man, Harold Hill himself, is selling a boy's band that he has absolutely no business leading, using only the think system. Politicians have definitely created huge careers for themselves doing this very thing, looking down on their constituents and selling them something that they know that they'll buy. I can think of no greater example than, for better and worse, our current president of the United States. When we're talking about the American dream, what is this relationship between hope and grift, and why does it feel so distinctly American?

[31:29] Ryan VanDenBoom: Well, I think it's also the sheen that's put on it too, right?

[31:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, absolutely. It's the showmanship.

[31:36] Ryan VanDenBoom: It's that showmanship, right? And I think that, to sort of hark it back to the previous conversation, this painting a picture of the everyman, right? That we're just like you, we're the same. It's something that I'm thinking a lot about right now, to be honest, and it perplexes me. I think that's why I get excited about bringing forth a story like Barnum, because I think even for myself, I'm trying to understand it. And to be perfectly honest with you, there's also a real innate showman part of my training. I was a hat and cane. That was a thing that I worked on as a young performer. And so to have a character like this, in a musical like this, with a sound like this, it was really exciting. I'm excited about what The Greatest Showman Broadway is going to do. I'm curious also.

[32:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It also means there probably won't be a Barnum revival.

[32:41] Ryan VanDenBoom: Probably not. Unless someone really wants to take that on.

[32:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly. It's wild party style, where it's Barnum versus The Greatest Showman.

[32:49] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, the Gatsby, whatever.

[32:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The Gatsby of it all. Absolutely. But also, what you said is so interesting. If we talk about theater from a more woo-woo spiritual side, we talk about the exchange of energy, right? That you're on stage giving something to the audience, they're giving it back. And hopefully, if you're tapped into that give and receive, you create something magical. If you look at it from a more capitalistic or dare I even say cynical point of view, it's about manipulation. What do we do to get an audience excited, get an audience to trust us, get an audience to lean in and invest themselves in the story? That tightrope, pun intended, of manipulation, but with the intent to create something special versus create something that could be damaging. That is tricky, right?

[33:47] Ryan VanDenBoom: Right. Totally.

[33:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And so, I think with this American dream that gives a lot of people hope and gives people a lot of motivation to move to the country, to try to create something bigger and greater for themselves, that hope, that promise comes with it a very tricky tightrope where you will also possibly be manipulated into fulfilling someone else's dream and be taken advantage of for it. So, the character of Barnum, I think, skews very sympathetically towards the side of we want to love him, we want to appreciate everything that he did for American culture, but there is that little kind of dark underbelly of lying, of grift, of manipulation, of humbug.

[34:36] Ryan VanDenBoom: Now, humbug is a term that we mentioned earlier. He defines it himself as something designed to deceive or mislead. And when you think of A Christmas Carol, and Scrooge is always saying humbug, right? It's that he's calling Christmas and the spirit of Christmas, he's calling that humbug. Now, the interesting other side of the coin, once again, pun intended, of Barnum's character in the musical is his wife, Cherry, originally played by who? Glenn Close.

[35:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right? Truly, Glenn Close made her big debut as a musical comedy star, and then very quickly went into Les Liaisons d'Injurieux and then kind of changed course forever. Now, when Barnum's talking about his wife, this is right from the script, he says, Give her a mess of hard facts, and she's as happy as a clam. Serve her up a bit of fancy, and she turns up her nose like it was yesterday's fish. So she's not buying what he's putting down. She's very, like, facts, continuing on. But whether you end up thinking humbug's a blessing or a curse, you're still gonna buy it. Why? Because every 60 seconds in this world, a delightful phenomenon takes place which absolutely guarantees it. A sucker's born every minute.

So right there from the top of the show, we have these two entities. We have Barnum, we have Cherry. She's always like, Get a job at a factory. Do honest work. And he's like, I have these colors inside that I want to fill the world with, and I need to find a way to do it. And guess what? It probably isn't going to be conventional in any way, shape, or form. What's interesting, though, is that they do complement each other. And she often gets her way by taking out this coin and saying, All right, fine. We're in a disagreement. Heads, this happens. Tails, this happens. She flips it, and every single time, you know, by chance, she wins. What's really fun by the end of the show is that we realize that the coin that she's been using all this time is two heads or two tails?

[36:48] Ryan VanDenBoom: Two heads, yeah. I think it's two heads.

[36:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Two heads. So, like, no matter what, she was always going to win and was doing a little bit of humbug herself. I think it's probably my favorite part of the script is that revelation. But this play back and forth between him being this dreamer and wanting to break the rules to do it, her being a rule follower, but also in doing so has the practicality to inspire him to keep moving forward in his dreams. It's a really great match. I think I love these characters more together than I even do separately.

[37:24] Ryan VanDenBoom: Totally. Yeah. And in fact, that really rang true in our production. They had real chemistry, and they really complemented each other, as you said, both the characters themselves and also these actors. I do think that the love story does kind of come out of the script in a nice way in Barnum. I don't think I'm talking too much out of school, but, you know, Brett, our director, also did a little bit of, like, Frankensteining, specifically the I Like Your Style. He brought that back a couple times. It's one of their fun little numbers. Kind of a lilting duet. Potato, potato. Exactly. And kind of used it as a motif. And by the end, I think it's in the second act when they have their reconciliation, Charity was using that lyric a little more declaratively. So that was a nice, I think, moment that helped ground the story a little bit for our production.

[38:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No. Well, look, the original show has three reprises of The Colors of My Life.

[38:23] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think there was a couple of nip and tucks here and there that I think also helped the show. It was fun. It was fun to take an older piece and just shift it around. One that's rarely done, I think, because it's rarely done. People are probably less precious with it, too, right?

[38:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly. Exactly. So even to talk about the choreography part of it, with all the bands, I could not get out of my body and my spirit, that tuba phrase, as having a... It had a backbeat to me.

[39:01] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, it's kind of funky, right? It's kind of funky, which once it kind of lands into the marching band sort of pocket, then it shifts your brain for a second. But I think in the beginning, when it's just the tuba or trombone, I was just like, stank to it. And so I leaned in a little bit on some of the vocabulary there to sort of let some of that live. And I think the payoff was great because the cast, I think, really dug performing that number. And we did it sort of like Manson Trio-esque.

[39:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, sure, from Pippin.

[39:36] Ryan VanDenBoom: I think brought it into a little bit more of a contemporary musical theater lens, essentially.

[39:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. This is a great conversation to, I think, help people who are doing their own mini revivals wherever they might be, right, of how to approach this older material for a newer audience. And we have such a rich history to call upon, to better serve our audiences or manipulate them, whichever side of humbug you may be on.

[40:02] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, that's right. I mean, we're seeing it a little bit on a big scale, as you just kind of alluded to, like the Cats revival that's coming, that's sort of like reset into the ballroom culture. These are really exciting frameworks to be looking at some of these works. So I encourage it and look forward to more. It's also no surprise to me that some of these shows that have often been criticized for not having a book, like Cats infamously won best book of a musical, even though you're like, what, huh? But these types of shows, even like Barnum, also give you a lot of liberty and freedom to try different things with it, right? You're not tied to the page maybe as much as you would be with an airtight book.

[40:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: A hundred percent.

[40:47] Ryan VanDenBoom: So to everyone, they're Dulcinea.

[40:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[40:53] Ryan VanDenBoom: Just going through his life a little bit, at the beginning, he is not circus bound. He creates these museums of oddities. This is where, honestly, his attention to diversity is both applaudable and also a question mark, like was he giving employment to people who maybe were often ignored in society? Yes. Was he doing it at their expense? Probably. Were people pointing and laughing at them? Most definitely. Once again, it kind of rides this tightrope of was it a good thing or not, but he created this museum full of oddities, like the oldest woman that ever lived, which was originally the great Terry White. And then Lilius White took over after she left. And then Tom Thumb, the actual person with dwarfism. The museum burns down and Cherry is, of course, the one to pick him back up and encourage him to build things one brick at a time. I love a Cy Coleman like, come on, pull up your bootstraps type thing.

[42:00] Ryan VanDenBoom: I also think of "Seesaw," that song that Tommy Tune sang in "Seesaw." What is it? It's not where you start, it's where you finish. Do you know that song? Anyway, that's another just... Cy Coleman loved these types of songs back in the day. The New Museum becomes a traveling show. Maybe like a... you'd think of it as a freak show, maybe a traveling freak show or something like that. In the second act, which is kind of interesting. Cherry, and I don't know if this is actually true, but Cherry convinces P.T. Barnum to go a little bit more black and white, not so colorful. He gives up the entertainment life to try his hand at politics, a couple of other things. He becomes the mayor. Is it Bridgeport?

Yeah, Bridgeport, Connecticut. And that is real. He really did become the mayor and had quite a few liberal platforms, including abolition and, you know, applaudable things. But it is interesting in the show, because there's this great number called "Black and White," where he's trying to go by the rules and live by the rules, but he can't help but let his color and grift sneak in, especially if it comes to winning an election. Are there any other pieces that I'm... Oh, and then, of course, the Ginny Lind of it all. Can you help us with that section of the show? That's a very important part.

[43:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, the Ginny Lind. So this is where my research was coming up against... Oh, a lot of conflicting statements.

[43:34] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, for sure. So there's an affair that is illustrated in the story, but to my knowledge and my reading of the story... He was just obsessed with her and spent all of his time with her, but there was no affair.

[43:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, I think that... I don't know. I wasn't picking up on that personally, but I mean...

[43:52] Ryan VanDenBoom: Interesting. Yeah, you have to sort of read between the lines to sort of get the picture of the historical context, right? Ultimately, is the Ginny Lind, who's known as the Swedish Nightingale, she's never enough, never enough, if anybody wants to put it in those terms. Is that, I'm trying to remember, is that the thing that drives Mrs. Barnum, Charity, and Barnum apart?

[44:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. So in the musical, I guess that's what I was bucking up against. I don't necessarily doubt that there was probably weirdness in the marriage, because he ended up with... Charity died, and then he was with someone like...

[44:30] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, spoiler alert. We love Charity, but she doesn't make it to the end of the show.

[44:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, and he was with someone right after... Historically, he was with someone like three months later. He marries someone.

[44:40] Ryan VanDenBoom: Oh, wow. Well, look, he is the type of person who needs a cheerleader, if nothing else.

[44:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's right. So I don't doubt that maybe there was some other proclivities there, but... In the musical, there are these riffs, whether it's him choosing his entertainment over a regular job, being obsessed with Jenny Lind and spending more time with her than he is with Charity, that ultimately drive a big wedge in between them. They do reconcile before she dies in the second act. And then following the death is when James Anthony Bailey comes to P.T. Barnum and is like, "Hey, you ever thought of joining the circus?" And Barnum's like, "No, no, my wife is gone." And he's like, "Come on, give it a whirl. Join the circus." The show ends with Barnum and Bailey creating what is one of the biggest entertainment achievements in our country's history, which is the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

It went on for years and years and years, and probably still is to this day, just to maybe a smaller or different degree. The show has a bit of an epilogue after this big join the circus number. And it's P.T. Barnum, very old, now he's an old man, lamenting on how his brand of humbug is nowhere to be found, just like all of his exhibitions and performers that he had discovered or given the stage to, they're gone. And so is his kind of line of entertainment. And I think that when the musical first came out, the 70s were a really interesting time for musical theater. A lot of interesting stuff was born. Hello, Stephen Sondheim. But also it was the death of what had previously been considered the Golden Age musical.

And so I can't help but feel like the ending of Barnum is more of a commentary on how the art form of musical theater has changed in addition to how circus entertainment has shifted over the past 100 years. The thing I don't buy, however, is that humbug is not a thing. I think that that continues to be, once again, for better and worse, an American staple.

[47:04] Ryan VanDenBoom: I would say that it probably depends on how you act that last moment, right? I'd be curious if Jim Dale, what his performance or his interpretation of that moment was, because I feel like in our show, that little epilogue that you described, there's a little bit of a wink to the audience.

[47:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, interesting.

[47:22] Ryan VanDenBoom: In terms of like, he's-

[47:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Like it's gone, right?

[47:25] Ryan VanDenBoom: Exactly, but is it? I mean, we're still talking about me. We're still doing a show about me, so maybe it's not gone. I don't know. I cannot speak to Jim's performance, but that was my takeaway. You just sat through this two and a half hour musical about me talking about humbug, and so I don't know what your experience was, but I think it might still be around.

[47:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I love that interpretation. That makes me like it more.

[47:52] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, I think that there's room for that. Maybe it crawls onto your skin a little bit.

[47:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely. Maybe the next Barnum's more of a cabaret.

[48:01] Ryan VanDenBoom: Sure. Yeah. Honestly, to talk a little bit extra, I did a lot of research on the Joyce Heff character, actually.

[48:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, cool. Yeah, this is the oldest woman that I keep talking about.

[48:15] Ryan VanDenBoom: I did a bunch of pre-pro. This was actually a part of a feminist theory practice in theater class that I was taking through my MFA program.

[48:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh my gosh, Ryan, I love you.

[48:24] Ryan VanDenBoom: I went really far into the Joyce Heff of it all and created a number of, thank God I'm old, where I can see that she died at the end of the number. Historically, she died in Barnum's care or under his employ, however you want to look at it, and then he displayed her body and did a live autopsy.

[48:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Ryan.

[48:51] Ryan VanDenBoom: And so I decided to stage that version of the number, which was somewhat received. I think that I still got away with some of the physical vocabulary that I thought invoked that idea, but wasn't like, this is an autopsy that you're witnessing. At the end of the number, as I staged it, the Joyce character is standing on a trunk, and she gets pushed to one side, and the ensemble supports her body, and they're checking out her arm, and then she gets pushed back onto the box. She's just being totally manipulated. And then we flip her around to face upstage, and we flip her upside down backwards, so her face is facing out that way, but she's upside down.

[49:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: In the audience.

[49:35] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, exactly. And then she sings her last note upside down, as people are holding her up, and sort of inspecting her from above, was sort of the idea. And then it kind of ends with her sitting on the trunk, like she's back alive. But I wanted to just sort of create sort of a manipulated feeling where she was not in control of her instrument, because I suspect that she did not have a lot of autonomy in this situation, especially at that age, to then be kind of like—

[50:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And just also constantly be under a magnifying glass, right?

[50:11] Ryan VanDenBoom: 100%.

[50:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[50:13] Ryan VanDenBoom: Looking at you objectifying her. I wanted to get to the underbelly of that a little bit in storytelling, and I didn't really get to fully realize the idea, but I had to quickly move through it, because I was like, well, okay, you start there. It's sort of like the first ensemble number, because you mentioned there's a sucker born every minute, and the next number is this number. So I didn't want to villainize him too much right off the get-go, because we got to hang out with this character for quite some time.

[50:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: They got to come back out during a mission.

[50:47] Ryan VanDenBoom: But I wanted to show that he was profiting off of a manipulation, right? That felt important.

[50:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, that's interesting.

[50:55] Ryan VanDenBoom: Yeah, it's a fascinating number, because once again, I did watch the Michael Crawford West End, and actually, it even says in the script that the people have tambourines, and they dance with tambourines, and I was like, okay, we're not doing that.

[51:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Cakewalk time.

[51:13] Ryan VanDenBoom: We're not doing the tambourine thing, because I just don't see why we need to do that. Nope, it's been done. I don't think we have to have tambourines for this one, y'all, so we're gonna not. And actually, what I substituted with, which I also didn't quite get to fully realize, was coin bags. So I had coin bags that were...

[51:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Dude, these are great ideas.

[51:36] Ryan VanDenBoom: They were percussive, and they also were the payment to Barnum. They were like that exchange. And another thing that I wanted to also illustrate was this money was missing Joyce. She was not getting the money. The money was going through her to him. I really wanted to illustrate this guy was profiting off of other people.

[52:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow, a fascinating character.

[52:02] Ryan VanDenBoom: For sure. I love when, and I think that that's always kind of been my problem. Well, it was certainly my problem with "Greatest Showman," and to a certain extent, this show. When something as cheerful as circus music is accompanying a story like this for the whole time, it's difficult to pull out those complexities. And like I said at the beginning of this talk too, it's a kind of show that I love. Everyone, someone pulls out a prop from a trunk. They turn around. They become this person. They take it away, and everything kind of swirls and moves, and the audience really gets to take in the creation of it all.

[52:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: How cool. Ryan, thank you so much for doing this with me.

[52:42] Ryan VanDenBoom: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. I'm really grateful for the context that you were able to bring to this, because it's a fascinating show, a fascinating person in history, and I'm glad that it's still being done, particularly by artists like you.

[52:55] Ryan VanDenBoom: I appreciate that.

[52:55] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So thank you for being here. As always, if you have recommendations for shows you'd like us to cover on a musical theater podcast, email me at amusicalpodcast at gmail.com. I promise it'll get on the list, and I'll do my best to make it happen. Be sure to share all of our episodes and the reels and content that we make on social media. We're both on Instagram and TikTok. We'd love to see you there. Also, come and join us on Patreon, exclamation point, where for only a few dollars a month, you can join one of our tiers and receive bonus content, including bonus episodes, polls, essays, trivia games. There are so many fun ways to participate in our community over there. I'm grateful to all of you who are joining us at Patreon, exclamation point.

Remember, we also have a TeePublic store with great designs, and the profits we receive from those go to Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS. More than anything, I'm just really grateful you're here to be part of this great podcasting community. There's always a place for you, and I hope you enjoy these episodes.

[53:57] Ryan VanDenBoom: Jeffrey, before you go, please share with us how we follow you, and is there anything you want to plug?

[54:03] Ryan VanDenBoom: So if you want to find me, you could probably check out my Instagram. It's just my name, Ryan VanDenBoom. I don't update a lot on there, but I'm hoping to start re-upping sort of like my process of becoming more of a movement director and choreographer, as I'm like stepping into, yes, revivals of shows and reinterpreting old material, but honestly creating new content, new shows, new ways of telling stories through physicality. That's sort of what I'm most excited about and most curious about, and so look out for me. And if you have like a new idea for a show that you're trying to create movement vocabulary for, like hit me up, reach out, let's collaborate.

[54:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's amazing.

[54:43] Ryan VanDenBoom: That's amazing. You seem so down to play in the sandbox.

[54:46] Ryan VanDenBoom: I'm super curious, especially, like I said, I came from this song and dance man background, so Barnum was a nice little dovetail, and even MJ, right, for his part, like he is sort of an interesting cross-section of a thing that I'm currently working on.

[55:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Where you're Fosse, but you're also in his world.

[55:06] Ryan VanDenBoom: Exactly, and so I'm really curious about the conversation about that these figures in dance and movement are having with the time in which they were creating work and how that sort of is in conversation with what we're doing now and how we're making work. So yeah, I'm super curious about that, and yeah, I honestly just love to move my body, so I'm excited about whatever kind of comes next, so for sure.

[55:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And if you're in New York, go check him out on MJ.

[55:32] Ryan VanDenBoom: For sure, yeah.

[55:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And give him a standing ovation.

[55:34] Ryan VanDenBoom: Much appreciated. All right, everybody out there, thank you for listening, and remember, join the circus.