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[0:00] Jeff Malone: Welcome everyone to Half Hour with Jeff and Richie, the podcast where we explore the latest shows we see, sharing our insights and opinions on the performances, storylines, and everything in between.

[0:08] Richie Grasso: In today's episode, we're discussing the off-Broadway production of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Whether you cannot catch the show in person or you want to expand your thoughts after seeing it, this episode is for you. And as always, we want to inform you that this episode will contain spoilers. So if you're ready to dive into this production, stick around with us.

[0:25] Jeff Malone: I'm Jeff.

[0:26] Richie Grasso: And I'm Richie, and we're thrilled to be your hosts for this episode today. But before we start the conversation about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, here are a few words from our advertisers.

[0:34] Jeff Malone: Welcome everyone to a new episode of Half Hour with Jeff and Richie. Today we're discussing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Benjamin Button isn't at the end of his life. He's at the beginning. Born looking like an old man in a Cornish fishing village on the English coast in 1918, he grows younger with every passing year. Bound to that fate, all he wants is to live a little life and find a place to belong. Told by a company of 15 actor-musicians, it's a folk-scored, time-bending love story between Benjamin and Eloine Keene, a love that defies all odds because time and tide wait for no man.

[1:07] Richie Grasso: Hmm. All right. So let's start things off with our bold three words about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. So let me hear what you have to say.

[1:15] Jeff Malone: All right. I'm going to choose three bold words to describe this. I would say odd, talent-filled, and slightly confusing.

[1:34] Richie Grasso: That's two words.

[1:35] Jeff Malone: Confusing.

[1:36] Richie Grasso: Is talent-filled two words, too?

[1:40] Jeff Malone: Talent-filled.

[1:41] Richie Grasso: Okay. I was going to say, for my three bold words, we have talented.

[1:49] Jeff Malone: Better use than I did, okay.

[1:52] Richie Grasso: Random.

[1:53] Jeff Malone: Mm-hmm.

[1:54] Richie Grasso: And cute.

[1:55] Jeff Malone: Okay. Well, I want to start with the fact that we both said talent is really important, and I want to start with that because I know that it's hard enough to put on a new show with actors and an orchestra. So the fact that already you're directing your actors in the space, and they're all playing all of this music completely from memory, that is really, really hard, and that is really impressive. So I just want to start there by saying, when I walked out of the theater, I said, wow, those performers are working, and it is so clear that the creative team had to put so much thought behind the orchestration, the sound design, you're moving instruments throughout, you have different instruments at different times. That doubles your rehearsal time. Wait, but I have to move this box, but then I have to stand up and play this instrument from memory, and I have to sing harmony? It's hard.

[2:47] Richie Grasso: Yeah. And then do some choreography? That is really, really hard, and have we seen this before? Yes. Hadestown does a lot of that. We've definitely seen shows that do that, but this just seems like, wow, what a well-oiled machine in terms of moving this along. I didn't hear any instruments out of tune, or no one dropped an instrument, or no one—everything seemed to flow so well. They're professionals, of course, but to sing, and dance, and act, and play an instrument, and to be a quadruple threat up there, that is where I wanted to start this conversation, because I feel like that is so important to say, because I know how difficult it is just to put a new show on, and what if the key changes, or they want to cut down a song? You have to tell everyone, and then rehearse it. Of course, you have to do that in a musical, too, when you have an orchestra, but this just was really impressive in that way, and I wanted to start by saying that.

[3:39] Jeff Malone: Totally. From a production standpoint, completely agree. I think there's so much talent happening up on that stage, and the fact that they are all playing instruments, and singing, and moving along, and it just is a lot that I think they are doing that is very exceptional as well. And then when you take that, and you then go into a little bit of what else is happening, so we know The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is this famous F. Scott Fitzgerald 1922 short story, and it was a big movie, of course, too.

[4:09] Richie Grasso: Which we have not seen the movie, so we're not going to—

[4:11] Jeff Malone: Yeah, I didn't want to see the movie before this, because I wanted to go in with a completely different blind look at this. And this had a successful London run, it wins the Best Musical Olivier Award, and then it comes here now in this off-Broadway production, didn't go right to Broadway, it goes to the public theater first. I think what's interesting is, it feels like all that incredible performance aspect of this, and then changing it into this, like, we're going to do it in this fishing town, and we're going to have all these cubes and boxes, and we're going to have this cool set. All of that works, but when it boils down to the original concept of the story, the book, the score, the music, the lyrics, and this, I hate to say, overly narrated, but I do think it is very overly narrated.

I felt like I was being spoon-fed and hand-held so much that I didn't even have a chance to take a second to formulate my own opinions of, wait, what is going on there? Because the second I would start thinking, oh, does he—a narrator is in my face telling me it. It didn't, there was no, unfortunately, I didn't feel like there was a trust of the audience. There was no chance of like, let the audience follow this story, don't overly narrate it. And you know, I have talked many, many, many times on this podcast about narration in musical theater and how overly done it is now. And the only time I feel like it has always really, truly worked the best is in Into the Woods when we have one narrator, because that is to mimic the fairy tale storytelling of narrators. And I don't think we need it all the time. And it was, it was so much narration in this. I just couldn't believe how much was being spoon-fed to me the whole time by narrators.

[5:47] Richie Grasso: Well, I think I understand the concept here, like around turning this into a folk tale. So if you are, you know, relating it very similar to what you're saying with Into the Woods, I understand it. It's also done in like A Christmas Carol where like you have this whole cast that is basically narrating the whole story and, you know, moments and times with Scrooge and the families and things like that in that play as well. But this is not a play, it's a musical. So when I look at something like this, I'm like, I understand where we're going with this whole folk tale style writing here, but it just felt like too much where it became random to me that we have all of these narrators and different storylines happening within the plot.

It did not give me enough to actually fall in love with the two main characters that are actually falling in love. And I think that was the biggest issue for me. Like we have this story going on. We have two people that fall in love. One is aging one way and one is aging the other way. And can love survive? Okay. Are we just watching a love story here? It just very much was, oh, okay. And then, and then, and then, and then, and I'm like, okay. And then what? Oh, and then it ends. Okay. I don't, I don't know if I took anything from it.

[7:18] Jeff Malone: And I think when you compare it to something like Merrily We Roll Along where there's narration and moving in different time directions and the narrators come as a 1970, whatever, you know, and they, it makes sense because it's so brief. It's, it's an interlude in between two timeframes and we get the narrator ensemble come out. But this was like during a scene, like in the scenes that the ensemble is narrating us to, it's not like they're just narrating us through scenes. If they were only doing that, like Merrily does and taking us from one time to the next time to the next time, which they do. And at times I did appreciate the narrators of this and the ensemble saying, the year is blank. Benjamin is now this age.

Okay, cool. We kind of see where, but a lot of it, while they're in the middle of kissing, while they're in the middle of creating their relationship and the narrators are just turning and telling us about it, it just seemed too much for me. And I didn't get a chance to breathe with the piece. The piece is not able to take the audience with them because instead it's like, I almost felt like there was this big thick glass wall between us and we were watching almost like a movie. There wasn't this like, let us breathe with the show a little bit, I feel.

[8:25] Richie Grasso: It almost kind of felt a little bit of like a show within a show moment that you see in a bigger musical that you're like, oh, this is the little folk tale that they're telling in the middle of this to kind of drive plot along. And then we go back into the major story that actually has like a bigger plot. And I'm like, okay, so we're just watching this for a long time. It's almost like what, two hours and 45 minutes being there? And I'm like, I don't know where we're going. And it left me a little bit of like, where was my emotional connection to this piece? And it didn't really feel like I had a big emotional connection because it didn't let me have one. And you know, one of the things that we were talking about when we left that show was the difference between stuff that does really well in British theater versus like what comes here and is really successful versus like what's in American theater and is really successful.

And one of the things that you and I were talking about was around like this want or this yearning moment within musical theater in American culture. And when I'm watching this, I'm like, there was no I want moment in Benjamin Button. What did they long for? What did they give us that moment to actually connect with? And it didn't feel like it was there. And is that okay? Or is it like just how we like theater and maybe it's our opinion on theater that you and I like?

[9:54] Jeff Malone: Right. Like, because some people are really enjoying this. And I think that this bold take of like setting this in a fisherman's town in the early 1900s is different. I mean, it's very different of a concept. So it's creative in that way. I just feel like and the staging of it, like putting cubes in boxes and kind of showing multiple locales in this unit set totally works. But I just think in general, it just felt like we were missing something. Something seems missing from this. There's also this heavy reference in the lyric about the moon, the sun, time passing time. But every time I felt like every song was singing about the same thing. It just kept repeating the same theme of time. I get it.

We get it. We experienced that in the beginning. We don't need two and a half hours of music to constantly be reminding us about the passage of time. We get it. Like it was like, oh, we really want the audience to understand this. We're going to beat them over the head with this lyric and we're going to like feed them everything every inch. I'm like, well, this is exhausting because I'm not.

[10:55] Richie Grasso: I'm not able to breathe with it and kind of formulate my own opinions and follow it.

[11:00] Jeff Malone: Right. But it also didn't let us have that moment to actually connect with the actors.

[11:06] Richie Grasso: Yeah.

[11:07] Richie Grasso: And I think that's where it fell flat for us in some ways because I'm like, I don't know which way to go with this piece. I'm just watching this and I'm not having any moment where I'm having any emotional connection here. And where do we actually find them fall in love with each other if this is a love story?

[11:27] Jeff Malone: Yeah.

[11:28] Richie Grasso: You know, and I think like that is where it missed the mark for me because I see, yes, we have this pub style musical and this pub story style of storytelling, but like, that doesn't make sense to me. It's not like, is it a love at first sight that like, oh, they just looked at each other and then fell in love? I don't know. I mean, it didn't necessarily work for me or I didn't necessarily buy it in that way.

[11:53] Jeff Malone: Well, let's take a break and when we come back, we're going to talk a little bit more about the specifics of this production, the direction, the design, the actor performances in general. So we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back.

[12:03] Richie Grasso: Okay. And we're back. So let's get into the overall production here because I think there are some things that did work and there are some things that didn't, but maybe we should start off with the creative side of this and where do you think the direction landed?

[12:17] Jeff Malone: Well, we have the original London creative team here producing this, right? So we have the book and lyrics, director and scenic design, all Jethro Compton. So that's a lot of titles to hold right there. This is a big, big show, right? Music and lyrics by Darren Clark. Chi-San Howard is choreography. I think that it's a cohesive vision. And I think the vision was there. It was clear. Like I understood where we were. I understood the aesthetic of sound and music and this village and this community. And I didn't feel like we were all over the place in that way. So while I may not have agreed with how this was told, I will say that it was a cohesive concept. The concept worked. The costumes were nice.

There was also this lovely playing of the ensemble and gender-bendering different roles and playing different villagers and people and changing accents that made it theatrical. And the musicians, obviously being the actors, make it theatrical too. So I can really appreciate this feeling like theater. It didn't feel filmic. It didn't use heavy projection design, right? It didn't set in this techno way. It was very theatrical and heartfelt in that way. Again, I just feel like some of the choices that were made in the lyrics and in the way we were constantly over-narrating this, that just felt like it was a lot for me. Maybe that worked better in London. Maybe they didn't want to put this on Broadway right away because they wanted to kind of see how this would do in a smaller space first, downtown. But I didn't hate the direction of it. I just didn't know if I agreed with the constant use of the same things throughout. But the piece felt cohesive to me.

[13:55] Richie Grasso: Yeah. Well, I do think that the piece moves in that way. I do think, right, when we come to the direction here by Jethro Compton, I see it. I see the vision. At least he's not starring in it as well because then it would be like another issue that is like, oh, and now you're also starring in it. But yes, is there a moment where we look at this and we say, you're wearing a lot of hats, you write the story, you come up with the scenic design, and you're directing it? Where do we bring other creative vision into the piece that I think could maybe help enhance it? And one thing I will say is it probably could come into how does it actually look on the stage because as well as it is directed and there is movement happening through the piece, I don't necessarily think this fisherman town look really leans itself to what the actual story is happening here.

There was no like magical moment that was truly happening in this piece. And I think that's something that I would call out from like a vision or direction here when you have two characters falling in love and when you look uptown and you see a show like maybe Happy Ending where their two main characters are moved throughout that piece and they fall in love and there is a moment of theater that is truly happening in there. I didn't even get one of those like big big moments in this piece that had this like magical like love connection. Like where was the firefly moment in a piece like this? And also I think that kind of leads into some of like couldn't we have done some cool theatricalities with makeup?

You know, Andrew Durand is playing this older man in the beginning and then younger. Could we have done something cool not to like overly do it but could we have done prosthetics? Could we have done some cool and then maybe the actors pull pieces away to show the youth of him? We could have done this like whole thing with showing the elderly aging going away. That's theatrical. Like that's theatrical in and of itself. We didn't play around enough with like makeup and wig and physicality of props and maybe design shadows and to show cool anti-aging or reverse aging. That's literally what the plot is and we didn't go theatrical with that. Instead we just said now it's this time and it took a narrator telling me how old he was and a narrator reminding me what year it was and it was just so we could have done that.

[16:15] Jeff Malone: Right, because is it nail on the head with like if they're aging him you know backwards and they're removing things? Sure, but isn't that the point? Yeah. Isn't that the point in this musical to kind of do something like that where it is giving us what we want? Like yes I'm seeing Andrew Durand up on that stage and I'm like oh okay well he just looks like he's his normal age so now we're aging backwards so it doesn't let me believe that the others up on that stage believe that he's actually aging backwards.

[16:44] Richie Grasso: Right. And that's where it's like the missed opportunity for me and am I supposed to suspend my disbelief in that and say like oh I understand what's happening in here? Sure, but it feels like a missed opportunity in my opinion.

[17:02] Jeff Malone: Yeah. You know so like that is a thing that doesn't really work in my sense.

[17:02] Richie Grasso: Yeah, yeah. I think in terms of some of the actor performances I think we do have, again I've said this strong, I think Andrew Durand very strong, Kelsee Kimmel, Brittany Coleman, a lot of the actors here doing some strong stuff. I liked the accent work, I liked what they were doing with the text was strong. Again I don't know if I agreed with how this text was formulated but I think the acting is strong.

[17:31] Jeff Malone: Yeah. I think there's some nice moments, I'm captivated by them. Yeah I think you know when you look at an actor like Andrew Durand who is working really well in the scene right now you know this is another leading role for him. He just came off of Rocky Horror, he did Dead Outlaw, he's been in Shucked and I'm like oh okay now we have another piece here with Benjamin Button and he is strong in this role but is this his strongest role? I don't know. That to me it's like this doesn't stand out among the other roles that he's recently played.

[18:02] Richie Grasso: Right. And I think he's doing well with what's given to him but I do think that this is not the strongest role here but you know.

[18:15] Jeff Malone: And now relating the show and style to other pieces in the Broadway space, where do you think that this falls? Because you know it's been referenced a lot to like Hadestown, it's been referenced a lot to Come From Away, it's been referenced a lot to Once and like do you feel like it sits in line with those shows and like where do those shows stand for you though?

[18:38] Richie Grasso: Well out of all those shows you mentioned I find that Once is my favorite one because what I think Once did was take something very simple and just tell this beautiful simple wonderful love story with good music and good community feel. I feel like we're doing that more and more now. I think Come From Away is such a specific thing about a specific time and I think that that worked in that way. You know as I've said on the podcast before am I the biggest fan of Hadestown? No. And everyone's like oh my gosh why? I like Hadestown, I'm not obsessed with it, I don't love it. But what I feel like is, and I know this is not the intention of all the creative teams, but what it feels like sometimes with some of these shows is oh if all the actors are doing everything, if they're moving the scenery and they're playing the music and they're singing the harmonies, won't that be enough?

Won't the audience say oh that was it they were so amazing and yes they are amazing and the talent is there but I do think that that kind of covers up some loopholes and some plot and some book and some lyric and some concept here because the concept is let's all tell the story like this. They did that with the revival of Company when all the Company members played instruments on stage it was like a big deal but we're dealing with Company which was already a very strong book and score. So when we took a concept with that it worked because we already had the strong book and score. I don't know with these shows if that's just a little bit of like oh look over here like look at how amazing these performers are which is so great and true but I don't know if I'm connecting as much with it when we're doing so much of that wow impressive stuff. It's almost like maybe one thing too much with some of those productions.

[18:48] Richie Grasso: What I do know is that I feel like we're going down the path of folk music being oversaturated in the Broadway off-Broadway space you know and there's even more shows that we are not even naming when there are shows like Girl from the North Country or Bright Star or Swept Away and we have this whole like folksy style music that seems like it was at one time the underdog in the Broadway space and now it feels like everyone just writes in this style so it doesn't feel new and unique anymore in my opinion as well that this show doesn't stand out from a musicality standpoint other than the talent that is actually up on that stage that's playing it. And then on top of it that's why I think maybe Happy Endings' new score was this fresh jazz themed orchestra jazz orchestral for lack of a better way of describing that and I think when we have some even like with Schmigadoon winning and being this very like golden age musical theater sound with new music we haven't heard new gold orchestral golden age in a while so I think that for our palate cleanse of like our ear we need to keep having different styles of music on Broadway they're all styles of music belong on Broadway hip-hop rap R&B golden age musical theater or orchestral rock there's so many things but

[21:50] Jeff Malone: Finding in a lot of new musical theater, this like very folklore folk, which works sometimes, but it's a lot right now. And I kind of keep saying like, we're just getting so much of it. Or how to reinvent it. Like, that's what I'm saying here is like reinvent it in a different way. You want to write a folk score, great, but write it so that it's memorable. Or that, or like so many of these songs in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button sound the same. Well, because like most of them are reprises. Right. And then I feel like a lot of it feels like the same rhythm, the same tempo, the same key. I mean, yes, of course, some things are faster and slower. And the keys of course change and whatnot. But if on my ear, when I'm not literally looking at the music and I'm in the room listening to it, it feels like we're repeating the same, literally tempos and styles.

And it just felt repetitive. And then on top of it, the lyric is constantly, constantly, constantly reminding me of time passing and time passing. And it's like, I know time is passing. Like, I know. Like, I know. I get it. We know we're moving backwards. Like we've totally established that in the first 10 minutes. And if you want to start act two the same way, like bring us, give us another five or 10 minutes of like reminder. But to do the whole show like that without any sort of breath of like longing for emotional connection with these characters, instead of just consistently reminding me that time is passing, it seems to be, beat me over the head with the message a little bit too much.

[23:14] Richie Grasso: Definitely. So, all right, well, let's take another quick break. And when we get back, we'll get into our own questions about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and what we think could be next for this show. Okay. And we're back with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. So right off the bat here, where do you think might, right off the bat here, what do you think might be next for this show? Well, that's a big question because I feel like the elephant in the room is, does this go to Broadway? Right. And I was going to ask you a question about this to kind of volley back. Here's my question. This wins the Olivier Award in London for Best Musical. Do you think that just because a musical wins the Olivier Award for Best Musical, that it automatically should come to Broadway because then has a chance of winning the Tony Award for Best Musical?

Because we know not all Tony Award winning best musicals become Olivier Award and not Olivier Award become, but to give it an opportunity to be Tony nominated or have Tony wins. My question to you is, do you feel like this should go to Broadway with the goal of wanting to win awards and go to that level?

[24:21] Jeff Malone: That's a loaded question because in my opinion, I don't think that this necessarily will do that well on Broadway. And I definitely do not think that it would win the Tony Award, but I could be completely wrong. Again, I don't think this stands out. Now, a show like Paddington that is coming this spring that we saw when we were in London, I think has a very, very, very, very big chance of winning the Tony Award, which also won the Olivier. So, you know, Benjamin Button was two years ago. Now Paddington was last year. And I think Paddington, if we're comparing both of these two works, which they probably shouldn't be because they're completely different shows, I think Paddington has the better chance of winning the Tony Award this year.

And does The Curious Case of Benjamin Button come to Broadway this year? I don't know. Does it wait a year? Does it do some rewrites? What I've heard from London coming here, it doesn't sound like they changed much, although there was no cast repeat, but the whole creative team came here and did it. I think it seems like they wanted to do this off Broadway first in a smaller venue to kind of just test the waters. It got some okay and good reviews. It got a few mixed reviews. I think the American audience is a little bit more hard on this, maybe, this piece than the London audiences were. I think this needs a little bit of cleanup, but if they don't want to clean this up or change anything and want to keep it as is, I think this might have a tough time on Broadway.

I think this is going to be difficult to get the mainstream audiences to get behind this. It's very different from the movie, from what I hear. I haven't seen the movie, but it's a different take. And I think it would be hard, especially when we had something like Swept Away, which was a folk show that didn't really do well on Broadway. And we've tried that, but I don't know. This is like an English fishing town folklore. Hadestown is like New Orleans jazz folk, and that's a very different kind of show, and that show's been very successful. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know how this would do on Broadway.

[26:24] Richie Grasso: Yeah, I agree with that because I think when you really look at the Broadway space right now, what is everyone super hungry for? And I think we're hungry for megas. I think we're really hungry for epic mega musicals to come to Broadway. But I think in two ways, in new works and in revivals. And I think that in new works, we are hungry for those Paddingtons. We are hungry for Warriors. We're hungry for whatever these big new shows that are coming. And then in revivals, I think we are hungry for the glorious sound of music revivals and these reinvented but high energy damn Yankees. And I think we want some of that passionate. And I look at this past year with Ragtime and then The Want for that lush score and that big production.

Then we had Schmigadoon and Lost Boys, two completely different shows were neck and neck for best musical. But look at the audiences are still loving both of those shows. Lost Boys is selling so well. Schmigadoon is selling so well. Two completely different shows. That leads me to believe that the kind of the grounds of Broadway in the next few years are really open. But we've been wanting this Dreamgirls revival forever now, and that's delayed now again. So, you know, there's so many things that people want on Broadway. But I think this I would I would hate to say it, but I wonder if The Curious Case of Benjamin Button would get lost in the Broadway shuffle. But that's why I think it works off Broadway, though, right?

[27:46] Jeff Malone: Yeah. And I think it works in a space like the public theater, which this was our first time going to the public theater to actually see a full production there. We've been to Joe's Pub, but we have not seen an actual production there before. So what did you think about your first experience?

[28:00] Richie Grasso: I love the public theater. I love Joe's Pub there, too. We've been there a few times and the public theater. It's just this big lobby that you always see someone in the lobby that you kind of know or recognize and it's right off the subway and it's downtown. But the public theater's mission was to bring the new works. We know Hamilton started there. We know Chorus Line started there. Some of these epic big shows, right? They do Shakespeare in the Park, which is like free Shakespeare, the whole like let's give Shakespeare to the masses for free outside in Central Park, like Joe Papp and the public theater and that whole mission of the 60s and 70s of what the public theater does in New York. Thank God that that is still around doing its thing.

There's so many smaller theaters of the public, too. We were just seeing this show in one of the larger ones, but this was a good step for them to come. Could this have gone right to New World Stages or right to more of a commercial off-Broadway space? Sure, but I think this was the right place for it to go. Now, it's running till early December. Part of me thinks it'll close and then maybe it'll take a few months until they figure out what they want to do next. I don't know if this would run right to a Broadway production this spring. There are a few open theaters, it sounds like, this spring. They could. Maybe they want to do a limited run just to see what the, you know, some producers might say, you know what, maybe this doesn't have a lot of longevity to it, but if we run it for three months, maybe we'll get some Tony nominations out of it.

Maybe that'll help with the marketing of it beyond the Broadway for licensing and things. But look at what Operation Mincemeat did. I mean, they came in saying, we're only going to come in for X amount of weeks. It's still running on Broadway today. It could easily follow suit and do something very similar just to test the water and see how people respond to a show like this. I mean, from a marketing standpoint, that worked for Operation Mincemeat and, you know, we weren't huge fans of that show, but many people do enjoy that show. And I think, like, you know, this is, again, just our opinion on this show. And many people have, you know, slid into the DMs talking to us about Benjamin Button and saying how much they've loved it.

And I appreciate that because I still kind of try to say to myself, like, oh, maybe I'm missing something, but I don't like to change my opinion just because someone else liked something. I think it's very easy and smart for us to have real conversations about a piece like Benjamin Button and, like, why we maybe didn't like it. I don't think, like, everything is meant to be liked by everyone. And what could we critique it on in saying, like, maybe it could have been a little bit better. Maybe we did. Maybe that creative team didn't think about the whole, like, oh, like, what would the audience feel in a piece like this? So, you know, it's, like, it's why theater is so important. It, like, it keeps this conversation going. And that's why we do this.

[30:38] Jeff Malone: Yeah, totally. Totally. It's great. Yep. Oh, my gosh. We're out of time. What are your final thoughts on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? Again, I think, you know, the show is middle of the road for me. It's not, you know, the most epic thing that I've ever seen. And it's not the worst thing that I've ever seen. I just think, like, it was missing something for me. And, you know, as much as it's entertainment, and there's so much talent happening up on that stage, I just felt like from the story part of this, like, I wanted more.

[31:04] Richie Grasso: Yes. And I would say it is full of talent. This cast and creative team worked really hard on this. And you can tell they did. And they should be receiving the accolades for and that wonderful applause they're getting to play this music live and sing and dance and act and play an instrument all at the same time is really, really hard. So good for them for doing that. But yeah, this is middle of the road for me, too. I wanted more emotional connection to the characters. I wanted less narration. And I wanted just to be able to connect more with it. And unfortunately, it wasn't as that much for me. But I wish them the best of luck with the rest of the run. I hope that they get the audiences in there. And wherever this goes next, hopefully they have as much success as possible.

[31:47] Jeff Malone: Yeah. And I mean, listen, if you enjoyed The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, we want to know why, because I think like that's the most important part of our podcast. It's like really having this conversation with us on saying like, oh, I loved it. And this is why.

[31:55] Richie Grasso: Yeah. And we love having those conversations and those healthy debates about it, because that's what it's all about. That's what makes this art form amazing is that we can all pull something different from it. And I love that. So let us know. Yes. Even you and I, sometimes we see shows and sometimes I love something more than you or you love something more than me. And we have our own discussions as we do on this podcast about it. We don't always see the same every time. So totally cool. Well, that wraps up our discussion for this episode, and we hope you enjoyed our deep dive into The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And remember, we want to hear from you. Continue the conversation with us on Instagram and TikTok at Half Hour Podcast, and drop us a comment on Spotify and let us know your thoughts on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Please also leave us a review. Your reviews mean so much to us. And remember to subscribe to our channel for all past and future episodes. Until next time, I'm Jeff.

[32:40] Richie Grasso: And I'm Richie saying ta-ta for now. Bye.