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[0:00] Jess McAnally: Hello and welcome to Musicals with Cheese. It is I, Jess, joined as always by Andrew.

[0:09] Andrew DeWolf: How are you doing today, Andrew?

[0:11] Andrew DeWolf: Oh, I'm doing pretty well. How are you?

[0:13] Jess McAnally: I'm doing alright. You wanna go to lunch? Like, just for the sake of it?

[0:18] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, where are we gonna go? I could go for some grub.

[0:21] Jess McAnally: What are you craving? Are you craving Italian? Mexican? Everything? French Deconstructivist?

[0:32] Andrew DeWolf: Can we get everything? I'm down for everything, I think.

[0:35] Jess McAnally: Let's go to everything. Oh no! Everything has nothing!

[0:40] Andrew DeWolf: Well, that's not everything. That's like false advertising, I would say. I mean, I frankly, I'm outta here.

[0:47] Jess McAnally: Get outta here. Let's go to the French Deconstructivist place. Where nothing is how it seems.

[0:54] Andrew DeWolf: Oh no! Everything is how it seems! Wah wah! We did it again!

[1:00] Jess McAnally: Wow. This is the most subversive thing. Did Rian Johnson write this? My goodness.

[1:05] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, cause it's good. You know what? Now I get to make you watch Rian Johnson films in the rebrand.

[1:11] Jess McAnally: Have you ever watched a Rian Johnson movie?

[1:13] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, I've watched at least two.

[1:15] Jess McAnally: Which two? Oh, the Knives Out movies. Doy.

[1:18] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah. I've watched both Knives Out movies and I've seen the best episode of television ever put together.

[1:24] Jess McAnally: Uh, The Fly?

[1:26] Andrew DeWolf: I actually really like that one, too. I know everyone hates that one, but I thought that was a good one, too.

[1:30] Jess McAnally: Breaking Bad? Breaking Bad? We're bringing back the classics.

[1:34] Andrew DeWolf: I feel like this is kinda gonna be, uh, let's revisit the good times.

[1:40] Jess McAnally: Remember when it was only us two and no one else was here?

[1:44] Andrew DeWolf: And then we got bored?

[1:46] Jess McAnally: Well, the thing is, the reason why it's better when we have more people here is because when it's only you and me, we become like a married couple and we don't actually talk.

[1:52] Andrew DeWolf: We need a third party, an audience of some type, or else we kind of get mean.

[2:00] Jess McAnally: Like, actually mean.

[2:02] Andrew DeWolf: I like getting mean. That's the problem.

[2:05] Jess McAnally: The thing is, we start doing things for ourselves and stop caring about an audience.

[2:11] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah. And you know what? Running around restaurant to restaurant bickering like an old married couple? Well, that sounds like a Sondheim show.

[2:17] Jess McAnally: Back to square one!

[2:23] Jess McAnally: This week, in our final episode covering Stephen Sondheim's final musical, Here We Are. Cue the music.

[2:41] Jess McAnally: So Here We Are is a musical with a book by David Ives and music and lyrics by the late, great Stephen Sondheim.

[3:08] Jess McAnally: Based on The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie by Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière, and The Exterminating Angel by Luis Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza, the show has been in development for quite a while, since like early 2010s.

[3:26] Jess McAnally: And right during the pandemic, they had their first stage reading and Stephen Sondheim announced it on The Stephen Colbert Show, where he gave it the much better title, Square One.

[3:39] Jess McAnally: I've been working on a show for a couple of years with a playwright named David Ives, and it's called Square One. And we had a reading of it last week and we were encouraged. So we're going to go ahead with it. And with any luck, we'll get it on next season.

[4:00] Andrew DeWolf: Oh, my God. That's such a better title.

[4:00] Jess McAnally: However, before Sondheim's death on November 26th, 2021, Sondheim approved the final version of the show. They retitled it Here We Are, and yeah, they meant for it. It was always intended to have no songs in Act Two. It is totally not jarring and definitely something they intentionally meant thematically and nothing else. You'd be a liar and a communist.

[4:24] Andrew DeWolf: Even if Sondheim didn't die, there definitely wouldn't have been songs.

[4:28] Jess McAnally: Yeah, even if Sondheim was alive, he would have definitely just kept on no song in it.

[4:36] Jess McAnally: So the plot of Here We Are is the first act is based on The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, where six friends go in search of a meal and get stymied along the way. The second act is based on The Exterminating Angel, where the same group would have a meal, but inexplicably unable to leave the room where they've gathered.

[4:57] Jess McAnally: So, Andrew, what do you think about Here We Are?

[5:01] Andrew DeWolf: I have some complicated feelings about this one.

[5:05] Jess McAnally: What, you didn't love it?

[5:08] Andrew DeWolf: No, I mean, so here's the thing, and we've been working on this episode for a couple weeks now, so I've had a lot of time to think about this one. It's like our Into the Woods episode, you know? I just have opinions on it where there's a lot of stuff that I think is really good, but there's just some fundamental flaws in the character development, and in just the show feeling incomplete, especially when it gets to the second half.

[5:48] Andrew DeWolf: Because I think it is incomplete, so it's hard to fault it fully, because it's literally not done, but at the same time, if you're going to watch it as a finished product, it doesn't feel like a finished product.

[6:03] Jess McAnally: My question is, and Brent Black, our third host, kind of, said, basically, if no one knew that Sondheim wrote this, would we even be talking about it? Is it of value added enough to make it valuable? What do you think about that?

[6:21] Andrew DeWolf: I think if Sondheim didn't write this, it would have ended at the end of Act I. And I think that it still would have some value, and people would still be talking about it.

[6:37] Jess McAnally: I agree.

[6:38] Andrew DeWolf: Do you agree? You think it would have ended at the end of Act I, if Sondheim didn't write it?

[6:43] Jess McAnally: I don't think so.

[6:48] Andrew DeWolf: You think that they would have kept the two songs in Act II, and then the play that is the remainder?

[6:55] Jess McAnally: I do.

[6:56] Andrew DeWolf: If it wasn't Sondheim.

[6:57] Jess McAnally: I actually do. Because it's David Ives, who is equally as big a name as Sondheim. I know that we're a Sondheim show, but David Ives is no slouch, and part of the reason why this show even exists is because David Ives and Sondheim really wanted to collaborate. That is the long and short of it.

[7:19] Andrew DeWolf: I'm projecting onto the show what I want, which is I like the first act, and I feel like the second act just kind of meanders, and it doesn't feel like it has good momentum, because the songs just stop.

[7:35] Jess McAnally: I guess, but that's kind of your review of Into the Woods, when we covered that, is you really liked Act I, and then Act II is just kind of mean and dark, and has less songs.

[7:46] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, but in that one, at least Act II, I can see why it's there. It's there to contrast the first act, and give the message of the show. Here, it's just, it feels like it's almost two separate shows. You could very easily divide them.

[8:04] Jess McAnally: You said the same thing about Into the Woods.

[8:06] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, but in Into the Woods, it clearly, thematically, it is connected. They're opposites of each other, almost. Not opposites, but they're contrasting aspects.

[8:17] Jess McAnally: Here, it just feels like you have two different shows that happen to have the same characters.

[8:22] Andrew DeWolf: I disagree. There's the contrast there. The first act is very open. We're going and exploring. We're doing different things. In Act II, you're trapped. Act I is open, and visiting, and doing things, and active. In Act II, you're stuck in a room.

[8:39] Jess McAnally: Sure, I suppose. I feel like, having seen it, it just doesn't feel like they necessarily need to be together. It's not like Act I is begging for, we need an Act II where they're stuck in a room.

[8:55] Andrew DeWolf: Now, I think that all goes back to the original Luis Buñuel films. Do you know anything about Luis Buñuel?

[9:00] Jess McAnally: I don't. He sounds French.

[9:03] Andrew DeWolf: He's Spanish!

[9:05] Jess McAnally: Damn it!

[9:07] Andrew DeWolf: But, that's a confusing thing. He renounced his Spanish heritage. He was exiled. He then became Mexican. He was basically a propagandist and a spy against the fascist Spanish government. He made a lot of dreamy works.

[9:33] Andrew DeWolf: There's the iconic... You've seen this image where the eyeball gets sliced open. That is him. He has done a lot of crazy work. In the meantime, I'm glad we've kind of dragged our feet here, because I've taken the time to watch the two films that this play is based on in that time.

[9:53] Jess McAnally: Are they good?

[9:54] Andrew DeWolf: Much like the show. The one where they're all going out is really, really interesting. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Beautiful film. Beautiful technicolor. Gorgeous cinematography. Really compelling. A lot of the same beats happen.

[10:10] Andrew DeWolf: The Exterminating Angel is an earlier work. It's much earlier in his career. It's in black and white. He quite hasn't nailed down the style. It doesn't feel as compelling in the same way that the respective acts of this story are. They're accurate to the themes, but I think that doing dream ideals or dream imagery or dream logic on stage is a little difficult if you're not going big with it.

[10:39] Jess McAnally: This does the movie version, which is like, as opposed to on stage where it's just kind of like, oh, things happen on stage sometimes.

[10:49] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, I feel like when you do a play, it's hard to convey when things are in a dreamlike state because they're kind of always in a dreamlike state in all plays. You're already asking, especially in musical theater, you're always asking for a little suspension of reality.

[11:08] Jess McAnally: I think it's more weird to a general human being that you're singing than it is that, oh my God, this soldier is walking in and, oh my God, there's a dead person back there and, oh my God, these cafes aren't literal.

[11:23] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, in film, you can show things realistically and then have surreal elements kind of pop up, whereas in plays, everything is always abstracted to a certain extent, so it's hard to abstract it and then portray some elements as more abstract than others.

[11:48] Jess McAnally: Am I saying that right?

[11:50] Andrew DeWolf: You are saying that right. Do you agree with me when I say this is probably Sondheim's most, I don't want to say personal because he's very big on nothing's personal. This is kind of a manifesto of theater, weirdly. At least that's my interpretation.

[12:05] Jess McAnally: I went into it knowing your interpretation and I tend to agree to a point.

[12:14] Andrew DeWolf: We should get into it.

[12:15] Jess McAnally: So Act One, let's just go through what happens.

[12:18] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, break down Act One for me.

[12:20] Jess McAnally: In Act One, we meet a bunch of kind of, I'm just going to sum them all up as annoying rich people.

[12:26] Andrew DeWolf: Annoying in an intentional way, I should say. They're written to be this way.

[12:39] Jess McAnally: Yeah, they are intentionally bad people. Effectively.

[12:45] Andrew DeWolf: Do you want me to read off their names real quick just so that if we refer to one, people know what we're talking about?

[12:51] Jess McAnally: Yeah, sure, that's fine.

[12:52] Andrew DeWolf: We got Marianne, Leo, they're married. Raphael, Claudia and Paul. Claudia and Paul are married. Fritz, who is someone we're going to talk about quite a bit. The colonel and the soldier, the bishop, the woman, and the man. Although only some of them at the start. I believe the bishop, the colonel, the soldier are all met later. They join like the Wizard of Oz characters.

[13:13] Jess McAnally: Yes.

[13:16] Andrew DeWolf: So at the start, you have the two couples, Fritz going around to restaurants.

[13:22] Jess McAnally: Fritz and Rafi.

[13:24] Andrew DeWolf: Fritz and Rafi are kind of the outskirts, uncoupled people.

[13:27] Jess McAnally: Yes, yes.

[13:30] Andrew DeWolf: And they're going to different restaurants to try to find something to eat. They first stop in a restaurant where they serve everything, called Cafe Everything. And the waiter explains that they have everything and everything is going to be phenomenal and they all order what they want and then nothing comes out. They don't have anything.

[13:50] Jess McAnally: And then they get very upset and the waiter commits sudoku.

[13:59] Andrew DeWolf: So they leave.

[14:01] Jess McAnally: Do you want me to break that one down first or should we just explain everything and then have me break it down afterwards?

[14:07] Andrew DeWolf: I think we should go through the whole thing so everyone knows the whole story so they can see where you're getting your concept from.

[14:14] Jess McAnally: That's fine. So then they leave and for whatever reason none of them are particularly traumatized by this event because they're all just awful fucking people. They don't see the server as a person, basically. And I think that it's worth noting that the... Okay, I'll bring that up. But the actors who are doubling different roles, I think there's meaning behind that. Okay, we'll get back into that then. Then they leave and go to...

[14:47] Jesse McAnally: ...to a French deconstructionist restaurant where the food is supposed to be a deconstruction of common French dishes or whatever it would be. It's supposed to be you order something and they give you something else that's like a commentary on it in some way. The exact wording they have is deconstructivist and that means nothing is what it seems. Yeah. But lo and behold they order stuff and exactly what they ordered comes out and eventually they find a back room where the chef is dead and they decide it's probably a good idea to leave this restaurant as well. So they go. Then they head to a third restaurant. I forget what the theming on this third restaurant is. It's just kind of a normal ass restaurant that they go to.

They just go to a normal restaurant. This one doesn't have anything crazy interesting happening. They have but they meet people here. The government shuts them down immediately. Exactly. I don't want to call it like COVID. Sure. The government shuts them down and they talk to a soldier who describes a dream that is shockingly similar to the actual events that are currently happening. So much that they appear like they the lights come up in the theater and they address the audience as if they are the actors on stage. Yes it's it's a dream that he's having that is essentially exactly what reality is. And the colonel and the soldier then join them and they go to another restaurant. And this is where they meet the bishop.

No they meet when they go to the embassy and they meet the embassy. Yes they could. They can't go to another restaurant because everything's shut down or whatever. So they go to the embassy and they meet a bishop and the bishop doesn't want to be a bishop because he likes smelling women's feet too much. And I think that's about the end of Act One at that point. Well then they finally go to this meal and I feel like you should you notice how you didn't talk about Fritz at all. I skipped all of that on purpose because I want to talk about your theory first and I feel like the Fritz stuff doesn't tie into it. The Fritz thing kind of dilutes everything. We'll get into Fritz. Don't worry Fritz fans.

I'm going to say that's just separate. We're just going to do that at another time because what your theory is and I guess I'll just quickly like it's basically that each stop that they make represents a different type of music theater or a different thing that's taking place in the Broadway sphere and Sondheim is giving his commentary on it in some way. I mean kind of. Yes. Yes that is kind of my opinion. So I could be wrong. I often am. If you've listened to this many hours of me talking you will know that more often than never I am wrong. But here I am. Put on the tinfoil hat with me and join me on this little trip. So I think that each restaurant is kind of representing a piece of musical theater in the modern day and sometimes personal critique with them.

So let's start with Cafe Everything. I think this represents jukebox musicals and like movie to musical adaptations. So like the Cher shows the Moulin Rouge is the thing and I think it's by movie to you. You're specifically meaning mainstream movies. Yes. Obviously this is a movie to musical adaptation. Yes. Technically I don't think this is what you mean. I feel like no one's going to hold this up with passion to be like oh they're just trying to capitalize on the Fox fans. No. So I obviously you're talking about like Lion King or something like that. Yes. The Disney vacation of Broadway so to say. So they promise you the world they promise you everything. They are really really keen to show how much they're trying to please you or enable you as this the text of this.

They call them that your enablers which you know and they promise you all these perfect things everything you ever wanted and then give you nothing and then are extremely depressed about it when you are unhappy with not being satisfied with the nothing you're given the no substance you're being given despite it being everything so much that if anyone even mildly critiques you you kill yourself which I see is sometimes criticism of modern theater in the populist sense where it's like you demand to be praised for doing nothing more or less which if this is maybe the harshest criticism just by virtue of the violent end of it it kind of comes across that way um though this is such a major part of if if you're take this theory and run with it this is a major part of the modern Broadway like it there are so many shows now that are like jukebox or based like you know like Beetlejuice and like we broke down everything currently running on Broadway and most of it was either a jukebox or a film adaptation yeah like it's it is a massive because I mean those are the ones that are the safest bets if you're going to place an investment into a show you want to pick something that you know has a built-in audience that people are asking for you know it's like so you know you have to offer you have to offer the populist stuff and then they don't really deliver anything that's thought-provoking or it doesn't really it doesn't challenge you in any way so I could see calling it an enabler um you know I don't I guess the only part I don't fully understand is the do they really take criticism that harshly like I so you and I in our experience on this podcast are we mean are we the bad guys we I have gotten emails from people involved in shows we talked about on this podcast and I feel like this is the if there's ever a time for me to reveal some of the stuff that's happened to us which is weird let's not get personal but I'm not gonna say anything but people from shows that were running at some point that's vague enough wrote emails to us because we were slightly negative or not glowing about a show currently running and saying that we are risking people's jobs and blah blah blah blah and how our criticism and the fact that we're held up to any regard is ridiculous we've gotten of course the famous caddy and crass email um they they have very thin skins broadway people so much that they are saying that critics are are ruining the art which no like literally they are falling upon the altar to blame themselves blame everyone but their own art for why things aren't working I guess you get you bring up a good point like I don't know I don't want to reveal too much but I mean we we are we're not particularly well liked in the broadway circle no we are not everyone is probably quite happy that this is our last episode you're wondering why we're leaving the theater space wonder no more kids they don't like us that much we are not well respected in most broadway circles and a lot of folks tend to think that we punch down but honestly broadway how can we punch down we're as low as it gets we're a fucking podcast exactly like people like how dare you punch down on us poor poor theater makers charging five hundred dollars ahead to watch we don't we don't even get five hundred dollars a month um and it's baffling to me how thin-skinned a lot of folks in the theater community are they are very public facing figures and I feel like that's part of the trade-off with being public facing even to our extent we we have a good shuckle about every negative review we have and then we move on I feel like that's the height of it yeah sometimes I'll get a little argumentative with Jess I never actually say anything to anybody but I'll just be like what are they talking about what are they talking about but then it's just like whatever I don't care yeah like at the end of the day we're proud of the work we do and we know that we put effort into it you're like and that's kind of what Sondheim's thing is like I I want to make art for the sake of art and he never forgot the audience but that kind of leads into the the next the bistro the deconstructivist bistro which I think represents revivals and modern reinterpretations of um old work by dead artists the chef is dead that that's an important element these first two I a hundred percent like you're dead on with these two like I feel like it's it's once you see it it's not even subtle like you know like what else is he talking about I mean this is we're talking about works the only thing I guess that maybe gets me is that it's he calls it deconstructivist and it's not what you would seem but like I guess a lot of the original works that are getting revived that are older those were those were kind of straightforward shows so like they're not really that much like well that leads me to this this statement I believe it's from Hal Prince about a little night music that Sondheim echoed several times and I think about it especially when it comes to this one he described a little night music which they wrote to be successful like that was their thing like they wanted a rebound hit show um Hal Prince described it as cake with knives where you will get an enjoying piece of cake you will get your fun sweetness but you're going to get a little stabbed at the at points like it is going to be cutting and we want to kind of reel you in and then get you with the content like actually give you something of quality when you're expecting basically junk food and that that was kind of a lot of what Sondheim did he wanted to entertain an audience but he also wanted them to think about what they're seeing um he wasn't just kind of he he always cared about an audience even if um audiences didn't love what he did there was obviously care put in for their sake and then we come to this uh the constructivist thing let's take I like this but I'm pretty sure Sondheim didn't um Oklahoma Oklahoma was the first musical ever written by Sondheim's mentor and surrogate father Oscar Hammerstein the second um and then in 2019 they made the the the Daniel Fish uh production of Oklahoma which makes a lot of things that were subtext text um it isn't it is what it is so to say like yeah there the underscored sex is now just out in the front and same with cabaret um both the most recent revival and the oncoming revival every time we do cabaret we kind of make the sexuality more obvious and we make it more sexual we make it the themes more obvious I okay yeah no now that you're putting that forward I definitely see what you're saying um so basically what used to be kind of interpreted like something you would interpret into the show when they revive it they're just like well this is like a fan theory so like it's just you know legit now it's just canon uh um and here's and they're taking the works of dead people even Shakespeare and just taking the subtext and making a text and I know Sondheim was not a big fan of it there was the famous time he criticized the Oscars for having Lady Gaga sing a medley of sound of music songs where he's like what the fuck does Lady Gaga have to do with the sound of music what why is this here which is a fair assessment and everyone jumped on his throat and he kind of came off as you know old man ways a cloud which he gets some sometimes in this show but all hills are alive with the sound of music with songs they have sung for a thousand a year me I think I mean on some level there is a place for just like Lady Gaga singing sound of music I don't think hurts anybody like it's it's it's just for fun right it's the Oscars when you're doing a revival of a show it's a little more like this is this is the modern version of the show so when you change it to remove any subtext you are actually kind of fundamentally changing what the show is um you know yeah um and I think he likes the idea of traditional musical theater that you can slide some some things in there you can slide some actual kind of meat into into the bread and then of course is the whole the the the chef is dead aspect which is you know it just it brings the whole theory together where it's like well he's talking about these shows that people are taking and just turning them into what they are instead of what we used to be implied and the guy who used to make them is literally dead then we have the next one which is a restaurant that they think is real they get served a little bit of food um

[29:34] Andrew DeWolf: And then they realize it's all made of wax and it's all an artifice and it gets shut down by the government, you know, kind of like what happens in early 2020 with COVID and Broadway.

[29:47] Jess McAnally: Yeah, I don't know why I didn't think of that because that's obviously, like if you're talking about modern theater, and especially when he was writing this, that is like the most obvious thing in the fucking world. But I just didn't think of that. The government is telling you, you can't enjoy this thing and it's fake anyway, so who gives a shit?

[30:07] Andrew DeWolf: Now, in that sense, though, do you have theories about the soldier and like, obviously there's the restaurants, but does the soldier represent something? Does he represent a breakdown of Broadway?

[30:16] Jess McAnally: See, this is where I think character work is very different in this world than the actual story structure. Like characters, I think is more David Ives. Like, I think that's more the playwright like saying his two cents and these song moments is Sondheim having his say.

[30:47] Andrew DeWolf: Well, the soldier's song in particular is the whole very like meta breakdown of the walls between audience and theater, like dream sequence. So what is he trying to say by that? Does it tie into COVID? Is it like how COVID moved into people's moved theater into people's houses instead of and it kind of opened it made it made theater a lot less like I don't know.

[31:20] Jess McAnally: I think that the characters like the literal characters, the Fritz and all that have very little to do with the themes here. I think that I think that this is one of those times where the soldier has this dream because in the movie, the soldier had dreams.

[31:37] Andrew DeWolf: OK, I do think that if there's anything that they do tie into, though, it's the main characters representing the mainstream Broadway audience.

[31:49] Jess McAnally: Yes. And my main characters, I don't mean the soldier. I don't mean the bishop. I mean the people with actual names. Yes. The ones who go from restaurant to restaurant, you have a bunch of kind of cultureless, rich people who are just looking for something to eat. And with them is like a progressive, younger, upper class person that we'll talk about.

[32:14] Andrew DeWolf: Yes. So maybe it is the time to break down these characters a bit. So we got Marianne, who is like this weird kind of daffy five Xanax to the wind woman that's barely there and just has bad memories and doofy, basically a comedy character. She's like a wine mom.

[32:37] Jess McAnally: Yeah. But she I don't even know if she has kids. All I know is that she hurts.

[32:43] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah. And then we have her husband, Leo, who is a billionaire, like ruthless, mean, crude, and kind of, you know, kind of a douchebag. But he also like invests money in drugs.

[32:56] Jess McAnally: Basically, he's the guy that bought the tickets and she's the one that asked him to.

[33:01] Andrew DeWolf: Yes. She kind of cares about the art. Like every time she goes into a place, she's like, oh, isn't this charming? And she's complimenting and being very nice to people. But it's always that he's just like, yeah, whatever. And then we have Rafi, who is, you know, he's trying to fuck all the women. Basic classic. And he's from a fictional place called Miranda. And he's the ambassador from Miranda. He's the one who gets revealed to be somebody else, right?

[33:33] Jess McAnally: No, he's just drugs. He sells drugs.

[33:40] Andrew DeWolf: Oh, no, he's just part of the drug ring. He's the one that offers himself to be sacrificed in Act two.

[33:45] Jess McAnally: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then we've got Claudia and Paul who are married. And Claudia is kind of like, you know, this lady who's cheating on her husband. And Paul is kind of a guy that barely exists. I don't remember a fucking thing about Paul. Holy crap.

[34:03] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, he barely exists. Then we have Fritz, who is the last one and probably the only really important one as far as themes and what these people have to say. I'm not sure how much of his Sondheim, how much of it is David Ives. Fritz is the character that almost ruins the show for me.

[34:21] Jess McAnally: You are not the first nor the last person to have that opinion. But the thing is, maybe this is me. I love Michaela Diamond as an actress so much. She is literally I think she's only 24, like she is a child. I'm not going to say anything about actresses or anything. It's literally just there is a subplot in the show that I feel like you could surgically remove it and the show would be almost unaffected and would probably be a better show for it. It's so weird and I just don't get why it's even here.

[35:01] Andrew DeWolf: She does not have a one to one analog in the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie. There is a revolutionary kind of character in that, but she immediately gets sexually assaulted and basically arrested.

[35:14] Jess McAnally: OK, so she's not a fake believer. Let's just quickly let's just quickly Fritz. The problem with Fritz is that it feels like Fritz is here for a reason, and I feel like it's because somebody either David Ives or Stephen Sondheim had something to say about modern politics and young people in it.

[35:34] Andrew DeWolf: Yes, Fritz is a younger, we'll say upper middle class to upper class person. I'd say I mean, they've got a trust fund, so they're rich upper class then. And she believes in radical politics and by radical, I mean full on revolutionary overthrow of everything.

[36:00] Jess McAnally: Politicalism, they equate the end of capitalism with the end of the world.

[36:06] Andrew DeWolf: Yes. She wants to donate a ton of money to a terrorist organization that is dedicated to ending the world. That's their statement of their goals, not mine. They say that they wanted to do that. It's very weird. I don't really get it, but it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism, as they say. So basically Fritz under the code name Apocalypse for this weird company, I think. What is it, Prada?

[36:45] Jess McAnally: It's Prada, which is people for the revolutionary something. It's like a thing. They say it like one time and then it's just called Prada. And then they make a joke about Prada, People's Revolutionary Anti-Domination Society. That's it.

[37:03] Andrew DeWolf: Yes. And so she's Apocalypse and she's on the phone constantly with someone called Inferno. And she learns that they need 50 million dollars to be able to put on their terrorist revolution. So she blackmails her two friends, I guess, to get that 50 million dollars because she knows they're involved in drugs. And it's very weird because it's very like it's incredibly easy for her to get this money. And she even tells them what she's going to use it for. And they're just like, OK, whatever. And what was it like put ourselves on the line or kill the destroy the world? Oh, you got a bargain.

[37:41] Jess McAnally: Yeah. And I mean, sure, that's funny. Like, yeah, I guess probably rich people would a lot of them would probably just be like, yeah, my money or the end of the world, we'll go into the world. So I suppose that's funny. But yeah. And but the important thing is she has all these values. She even states in Act One, like, hey, I've been gay since I was three. But that all changes when we have a representation of U.S. military and all that's good with America, a soldier with dreamy eyes who had a dream about her. And she immediately dropped not only her sexuality, her revolutionary tendencies and her morals because she saw a guy that she thought she could settle down with.

[38:18] Andrew DeWolf: It's so confusing to me because everything else about the show and I'm not going to like not getting super political, like it's not like far left or far right or anything like that. It's politics are confusing, so it's worse. Yeah. What it is, is that a lot of the show reads as a criticism of how, like, culture lists a lot of like the upper classes and like how they don't really care about anything. They just drive around and they want to get food, you know, like it reads that way. But then you throw into the middle of it and this basically an extremely reactionary, like right wing stereotype of a young person who just espouses like feminist and anti-capitalist and blah, blah, blah ideas.

[39:16] Jess McAnally: Just because you're anti fashion, anti fascist. Yeah, just just because it's popular and she only does it because it's popular. But the second that anything goes on in her life, she's going to drop all that like a like a rock, you know, like immediately they make her call her. She makes them call her Brits and they're like, I thought it was pretty. I remember when it was Florence, like making fun of choosing your own name and like a kind of underhanded way towards trans people.

[39:45] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, I mean, I'm not trying to say that they're trying to say anything specific, but it's certainly like one. This character doesn't have an analog to the actual movie. So this is something that they put in here on purpose to there's very little like follow through on this plot line. Like she calls forward the end of the world and then she gets very stressed out that it's going to happen. But then it just kind of doesn't know what happens. That's why they're that's another part of the reason why they're in their bubble.

[40:10] Jess McAnally: And it's happening outside and it happened when they leave, like when they exit to go, they are entering in the end of the world times.

[40:23] Andrew DeWolf: Oh, OK, well, I guess it happened then. But I don't. So so I don't know, it makes it even worse, honestly, because then they're trying to say that this type of person is going to literally end the world.

[40:36] Jess McAnally: Yeah, I. I don't want to be like the guy who's like, oh, my goodness, they're just being critical of my politics. But like, why is this here? What are we trying to say?

[40:46] Andrew DeWolf: Like, I do want to say, like at the end of the show, the joke is they are now searching for food in the end of the world where they are hunting for food as opposed to going to a restaurant like that is the punch line to the show, basically.

[41:01] Jess McAnally: OK. That's great. I just I don't really. I guess I just don't understand why this character is here. Like, why why do we need this?

[41:13] Andrew DeWolf: It's there to make fun of young people because they don't know what they believe in and the things that they do believe in are ridiculous and they don't actually believe in them. They just think they do. It is truly the most the part of the show that I hate the most.

[41:27] Jess McAnally: It really is just like, OK, grandpa, let's get you to bed kind of moment, you know, like.

[41:34] Andrew DeWolf: They don't believe in anti-fascism, really?

[41:37] Jess McAnally: Yeah, even though like a lot of the people like, OK, I'm just going to bitch about boomers for a second, I'm sorry, but a lot of the people that they're talking about are in their like 30s, you know, like some of these people that they consider young people who have radical politics, they're like fucking 35, 36, you know, like they're talking about millennials, a lot of them.

[42:02] Andrew DeWolf: I just had a really, really dumb epiphany here, which will lead us into Act two.

[42:10] Jess McAnally: Sure.

[42:11] Andrew DeWolf: So if we're extending the metaphor that these are Broadway theatergoers, which is what we've pitched or which is part of my pitch of what they are. And I think they are supposed to be that I even think Fritz is supposed to be that Fritz is supposed to be like a, you know, a young theater kid or whatever. Honestly, it's my opinion.

[42:34] Jess McAnally: And like my favorite thing about Fritz is he's like, just because you're a waiter, I don't see you as just a waiter. He's like, that's fine. I am a waiter. What do you want?

[42:45] Andrew DeWolf: Like she's virtue signaling.

[42:51] Jess McAnally: Yeah. And I understand that on some level. I mean, that is a real thing. Like there are people like this with that are like kind of faking it, kind of virtue signaling a little bit. But like, I don't know, it comes off. It comes off very mean spirited and very like dismissive.

[43:06] Andrew DeWolf: So because it is it doesn't just come off. It is that is what they're doing. It is exactly that. Yes. But but thinking back to what we're saying, what if Act two represents the effects of the pandemic where in Act one, we have them being shut down and Act two, we have them being locked away?

[43:28] Jess McAnally: Hmm. OK, no, you're making sense.

[43:31] Andrew DeWolf: That was just something that came to me as I'm just thinking about this, like, fuck, is this my metaphor expanding? And they're all dying and it doesn't matter, like they're all like it affects them just as much as it affects anyone else.

[43:41] Jess McAnally: It makes sense. The only thing you're missing is you needed you needed to have like a you needed to have the opposite of Fritz. You needed to have like the the middle age man who slowly goes down the queue rabbit hole and starts just spewing random because that makes a lot of sense, because people got fucking people did get radical during the pandemic. Yeah, like everybody did. So it would make it would make the Fritz character a little more tolerable if it was clear that they weren't just targeting a particular group and a particular politic if they were just being like, wow, politics got fucking crazy, right?

[44:22] Jesse McAnally: And so, like, what are they all doing? They have no entertainment, they all entertain themselves with, like, you know, charades and stuff, and they're running out of food, they're running out of resources, they're... they are just as fucked as all the rest of us poor people. Um, I guess we should go into Act 2 a bit.

[44:36] Andrew DeWolf: Do you want to go into a mid-show and do Act 2 afterwards?

[44:39] Jesse McAnally: Oh my god, when are we going to talk about these songs? I feel like we talk about the songs after Act 2. I have a lot less to say about Act 2 than Act 1, so.

[44:50] Andrew DeWolf: Okay, how about we go into this mid-show and then we'll talk about these... songs.

[45:02] Jesse McAnally: Hey guys, sorry to interrupt you in the middle of the show, but we've got a shillet of you. Today's show is brought to you by the extremely kind donations by our donors over at Patreon, and we're so grateful that you guys stuck with us for 300 episodes. A lot of you have.

[45:15] Andrew DeWolf: To the bitter end.

[45:17] Jesse McAnally: To a new beginning.

[45:18] Andrew DeWolf: It's true. We're literally back next week.

[45:21] Jesse McAnally: Yeah, you're not going to wait at all. Next week we're doing our... we're embracing our meme side and doing it. But this is kind of the end of an era and the start of a new one, and I'm grateful that you guys have joined us for as long as you have. We're going to revamp the entire Patreon with next week, give you more access to things, a lot more options for ways of participation. You guys have already given us suggestions for The Wheel, which a lot of them actually seem really good and really fitting for what we're trying to do here, so great. Someone suggested the Ramy Spider-Man trilogy.

[45:57] Andrew DeWolf: That's actually a good suggestion. I have a decent amount to say for that.

[46:01] Jesse McAnally: So I'm excited. I am more excited than I am anything else right now. Andrew, why don't you tell us who's currently supporting us?

[46:10] Andrew DeWolf: Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.

[46:39] Andrew DeWolf: Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.

[46:56] Andrew DeWolf: Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.

[47:04] Andrew DeWolf: Love you. Love you.

[47:08] Jesse McAnally: Isn't it pretty interesting? They all give us support that helps us keep the lights on and make musicals with cheese and the cheese wheel an even better experience for you guys. We have fun things planned, but they kind of require a little bit more funds and to keep the show interesting. Like Andrew wants to talk about roller coasters.

[47:28] Andrew DeWolf: I do want to talk about roller coasters. I actually have a shit ton to say too. So the show is going to get weirder and more interesting and more ambitious. Say what you will, there's not much more we can do to really amp up musical theater. But how about we get back to the show and talk about Act Two of Here We Are.

[47:44] Jesse McAnally: So, Act Two, they've collected all their buddies, they eat their dinner, and Inferno, who is the fella who is running the apocalypse thing with Brits, turns out he is he is the guy who is running the apocalypse thing with Brits. Turns out he is he is keeping them there and they can't leave this room. They are trapped inside. Isn't it more supernatural than that as well though? Like I feel like they it's beyond just he says they can't leave. They like literally can't leave. They like they try to leave and every time they were like, maybe not like no one could actively leave this building. It's very Twilight Zone.

[48:43] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, and dreamy dream logic kind of stuff, but it doesn't work on stage. So we kind of have this one person play and we didn't talk much about the songs here, but that is kind of the elephant in the room of this show. The songs just kind of end.

[48:55] Jesse McAnally: And the bishop goes to the piano and he's like, oh, the piano's dead. Rest in peace. And then the audience goes, aww, because they get what they mean.

[49:08] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, so Act Two is a lot less interesting than Act One, mostly for me, because one, it takes place all in the same spot, and two, there's no songs. And you know what, honestly, no, three, the characters are not that interesting. And it's very character focused in this part.

[49:28] Jesse McAnally: Yeah, it reminds me a lot of the only other play I've seen by David Ives, which is Venus and Fur, which is a weird kind of show about a playwright director trying to find an actress to play the female lead if his adaption of the sadomasochistic tale Venus and Fur. And turns out she's a little bit more of a mystical figure, and sadomasochism is really, and they're trapped in this room together, and the balances of control and who's in charge, that is played around a lot, and it reminded me a lot of that, in both good ways and bad. I like Venus and Fur a lot more than I like Act Two of this.

[50:10] Andrew DeWolf: So he has a thing for trapping people in a room.

[50:13] Jesse McAnally: Well, most plays do, but yes.

[50:15] Andrew DeWolf: Yes.

[50:17] Jesse McAnally: See the room.

[50:18] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah.

[50:19] Jesse McAnally: Oh god, the room doesn't even take place in one room, it makes no sense.

[50:23] Andrew DeWolf: I know, he's like, he fucked it up, he literally was like, I'm gonna write a play that's about one room, and then oops, it didn't do that.

[50:31] Jesse McAnally: Can't change the title.

[50:32] Andrew DeWolf: You could change the title though, it's whatever.

[50:35] Jesse McAnally: We gotta talk about the bear, though.

[50:39] Andrew DeWolf: The bear. Yeah, there's a bear that just kind of wanders into the room.

[50:43] Jesse McAnally: Yeah.

[50:45] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah. Does it even do anything?

[50:46] Jesse McAnally: Marianne just kind of talks to the bear a little bit, it's a surreal moment, and it works in the movie this is based on, because it's a real fucking bear. You're like, how the fuck did they get a bear? And there's other animals around too, it's not just a bear. And I'm like, you put bear on other animals, I start getting scared.

[51:08] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah.

[51:09] Jesse McAnally: But on stage it doesn't work that way.

[51:11] Andrew DeWolf: The dude in a bear costume.

[51:12] Jesse McAnally: It's just a dude in a bear costume, and you're just like, well, it's a bear. I mean, they're trapped in a room, I don't know.

[51:21] Andrew DeWolf: And we also reveal that Inferno, who is played by the same actor that played the server in Cafe Everything and a few other, you know, the Italian waiter, basically he's playing waiters and manservants throughout, until it turns out he's Windsor or Inferno. And the server becomes the one holding the reins on them.

[51:47] Jesse McAnally: Which I guess is a play on the fact that it's revolutionary action. I mean, I suppose the waiters take power over the idle bourgeois. I don't know.

[52:03] Andrew DeWolf: It gets a lot less clear here, but there are some great scenes in this, some fantastic scenes in this. But it also kind of slows down. Like, I love the interludes. I really like the moment between the bishop and Marianne where they're eating books.

[52:24] Jesse McAnally: Eating books, basically. Eating paper.

[52:27] Andrew DeWolf: They don't like reading, so.

[52:30] Jesse McAnally: Yeah, well, that comes into my passion rant later. Um, I think my real issue with this is it doesn't feel like we get anywhere.

[52:42] Andrew DeWolf: Well, Leo dies in a heart attack.

[52:45] Jesse McAnally: Well, so he does, but he doesn't, though. He dies, but then he comes back later. And then they just, what ends up happening is they end up having to remember where they were when they decided to stay the night and choose not to stay the night.

[53:00] Andrew DeWolf: Yeah, and then they need to choose not to stay the night that time. And then they leave.

[53:04] Jesse McAnally: So they kind of get out of the Groundhog Day bubble. I don't know. It's very weird. It doesn't feel like the characters see a ton of growth throughout it. So you just kind of end up with a couple, like, vignettes almost, where it's like, oh, she meets a bear. Oh, they eat books. And then it just ends.

[53:25] Andrew DeWolf: You know the only one that seems to have an actual arc?

[53:29] Jesse McAnally: The bishop.

[53:30] Andrew DeWolf: Who's that?

[53:31] Jesse McAnally: The bishop. Yeah, who is, ironically, a character not introduced until the very end of Act One. He's one of my favorite characters in this story.

[53:40] Andrew DeWolf: Do you want to talk about the bishop?

[53:42] Jesse McAnally: I mean, I have my theory for what he represents. So we didn't get to him because we ended at what you consider the COVID one. So after they go to the restaurant that closes down, they end up at the embassy where they meet the bishop. The bishop sings this really good song called The Bishop Song, basically, where he says he doesn't want to be a bishop. He doesn't think he's particularly good. He thinks he's a little over the hill. Despite loving God and all those other things, he'd be so many other things better, which is from the original film. In fact, the bishop becomes a gardener in that. And then he discovers his father was killed by a gardener. That movie's weird, but there's a whole other kind of arc for him there. He learns to be a bishop and how to be there for others and truly believe through this experience. And at the end, he does find his faith and his purpose through it all.

[54:47] Andrew DeWolf: And you have a theory as to who the bishop is.

[54:49] Jesse McAnally: I think the bishop is kind of Sondheim. He has done ironic. Like there's the famous song God that he wrote for Sondheim on Sondheim. And I also use very soft lead pencils. They're called black wings and means they wear out very quickly. So you can spend a lot of time sharpening. These pencils are very hard to find. God, I mean, the man's a God, wrote the score to Sweeney Todd.

[55:21] Andrew DeWolf: With a nod to decide.

[55:22] Jesse McAnally: Well, he's odd.

[55:23] Andrew DeWolf: Well, he's God.

[55:28] Jesse McAnally: He's joking that people refer to him as a God, and he's very self-deprecating in it. And here you have a man of the cloth claiming that he has no value and he no longer sees a place in what he once really, really felt compelled by. And in this song, very on the Sondheim of him, he doesn't rhyme. Like it's a Sondheim patter song without any rhymes, which feels a little pointed. And with all these connective tissues, I can't help but see like, oh, that's him finding his place in all this, which is kind of a part of the upper crust and kind of one with all these other people. And these people want to hire him and do things, but also they're like, oh, we don't want him. You almost have to read it as like older Sondheim. At his old age, recognizing where he fits into everything.

[56:20] Andrew DeWolf: Despite feeling like an outsider at that point.

[56:23] Jesse McAnally: Yeah, which is interesting and possibly why that character is the only one with an arc. And kind of because there is a bishop character in the films, but it doesn't really have a one-to-one with what this guy is doing in this story. You know what I mean?

[56:40] Andrew DeWolf: Well, what does the bishop do in Act Two? Why don't you run through that really quick?

[56:43] Jesse McAnally: And in Act Two, he is like a spiritual guide for everyone. Everyone kind of looks to him for that, especially Marianne. And he does have like the really great interlude scene that I brought up, where he basically gives what is usually done in song, a moral to leave the story with. And I guess of note, he was also the one who goes to the piano and says that it's dead.

[57:08] Andrew DeWolf: Yes.

[57:09] Jesse McAnally: You know, he is the one that says the piano died. But he says, the meaning of life, that's not important. Basically, being here means that we have value. Here we are, and therefore, we must keep living.

[57:29] Andrew DeWolf: Which would have been a great song, I think, if they had actually written it.

[57:36] Jesse McAnally: It maybe would have salvaged the title as well, instead of making us want it to be Square One instead. They say Square One so often, it would have been her.

[57:45] Andrew DeWolf: They do. And then at the end, they return to Square One by starting over at the beginning, essentially.

[57:52] Jesse McAnally: We pass into complete nothingness, a total void forever and ever, that we're actually unaware of because we're not here anymore. The end.

[58:01] Andrew DeWolf: I like that.

[58:03] Jesse McAnally: And then it just starts snowing. It's a weird show, and Dreamlogic, all that kind of stuff. But also, that is the closest thing to a moral and an emotional core in Act 2. And I like it. I'm really compelled by it. I don't know. Talking about it, there's so much interesting stuff that you can read into this. And there's so many things.

[58:26] Andrew DeWolf: But the Fritz storyline holds it back a lot.

[58:31] Jesse McAnally: Everything with Fritz absolutely drags this down.

[58:35] Andrew DeWolf: It's like an anchor on the show.

[58:37] Jesse McAnally: I disagree, because I like Fritz's songs.

[58:41] Andrew DeWolf: I'm talking about the storyline, though. All of that. It's like an anchor on the show. And then Act 2 just kind of wanders for me. And I know that you like some aspects of it, and the ending is pretty decent. But Act 1 is just so much better, and it really just feels incomplete.

[59:00] Jesse McAnally: It really does. That being said, though, I don't think it's bad. There's just too much that's interesting in this, and too much...

[59:09] Andrew DeWolf: Like, there's enough to talk about here that we've probably talked about this show for like three hours at this point. Um, so... And it's definitely interesting. Like, it is a compelling show. It is definitely something, you remember watching it, you remember, like, I go back to our Do I Hear Waltz episode, where it's like, this is a nothing show, there is nothing to latch onto here. What it, what it is, is it's, it's, it's a show that I don't think is completed. But all of the themes are still there. And it's not lazily put together. And there was clearly thought behind everything. Or we're just reading into it way too fucking far. But honestly, I don't think we are. I don't know. I feel like we're not the most brilliant minds of theater in the world.

Like, with all respect to us, I feel like we can't have been the only ones to make these connections here. And I was really down in the dumps. I forget what we were covering. But I kind of went on a rant about how compelled I am by this show, because of the effort, the thought and the fact that it has so much more to say than, than most things, most pieces of art. Yeah. And it was Saturday night, it was Saturday night, where I'm like, it's weird, because this show says nothing. And what he ends on says so much, despite also being very flawed. We've done this for 300 episodes. And I think if there's anything to learn from covering this much artistic material in a single genre or anything, it's like, most art doesn't have anything to say.

Fuck if you ain't right. There's just and I'm not saying that as like, all art sucks. I think there's plenty of art that has nothing to say that's perfectly entertaining. Look at Smiling Friends. Yeah, like, you don't need to have something to say to be entertaining. But when you happen across something where there is, there's meaning to be derived from it. And not just like a shallow, like, I'm overanalyzing a Disney movie. Like, like, you know, like, there's like something real in there. And we've talked about other shows like this. And I feel like we've generally been positive about most of them. Um, how about we talk about some of these songs really quick.

[1:01:31] Andrew DeWolf: Um, so the waiter song is one of your favorites, right?

[1:01:55] ♪ Musical number: "The Waiter Song" — performed by Andrew DeWolf ♪

[1:03:27] Andrew DeWolf: I like the waiter song because I thought it was pretty fun and I like how fucking dark it gets at the end. The rhyme, specifically. It is a little... So it's been, what, 20, 30 years since Sondheim's last Broadway show. So it's weird to see his references get updated to things like Teslas and Bitcoins. But there's a line in this show where someone asks for latte and he says, we're also out of latte. What? We do expect a little latte later, but we haven't got a lot of latte now. No, there's clever little things like that. And I just kind of, I like the waiter character and I like the concept of the song. So but the thing is, I actually like both of the numbers about the restaurants. It is what it is. It's also very, very good. Yeah.

[1:04:20] Andrew DeWolf: Any specials?

[1:04:41] ♪ Musical number: "What's Going On Back There?" — performed by Andrew DeWolf ♪

[1:06:11] Andrew DeWolf: I know you're going to hate me, but I need to talk about the soldier song. I think that you have to mention the soldier song because it's very meta and strange. And I'm sure there's something you could read into this, but I've got fucking nothing, honestly.

[1:06:34] Andrew DeWolf: I was in a cafe which looks somewhat like this, sitting next to a girl who looks something like you. And she whispered her name. I've forgotten her name, but the name was like music. And you and you were there. And you and you and you all wearing shroud. Shroud. Anyone? Shroud. And then I noticed that you'd all been dead for years. Except for the girl with a name like a rainbow. Oh, my God.

[1:07:49] Andrew DeWolf: Okay, Andrew, I'm sorry. I thought I would never get another Sondheim ballad again. And hearing this, my jaw was on the ground when I first heard it. I loved it. I still love it. Its meaning is still baffling. I am still unpacking exactly what it's trying to say. Its connection to the Fritz storyline does kind of diminish it a little bit, but it steals from one of my favorite Sondheim musicals, Passion, quite a bit. And Andrew, if you don't mind, in the doc, I did play a lot of references to other Sondheim works just in this song. If you wouldn't mind just playing a montage comparison of that now.

[1:08:37] ♪ Musical number: "It's Only a Play" — performed by Andrew DeWolf ♪

[1:09:28] Andrew DeWolf: All this happiness merely from a glance in the park. So much happiness, though. How could I forget when we never had met? Then I looked in her eyes and I thought, oh my God. Perhaps you'll join me and my cousin one day. But like, there's references to the frogs and passion, and it just feels very melodic. But it is where people, a lot of critics do claim that this is Sondheim kind of falling into hack-fraudery by referencing his own work and just being out of ideas. Or I think they are intentional references. Especially if it's only a play part sounding like children will listen, it feels like it. But specifically from Shine, I hate—I'm going to make you do this again. Shine has many lines about Marianne not liking to read.

Her lyrics are, all these polished leather books, I do not mean to read. I don't mean to read. No, no, not to read. But by the way that they look, I like things to shine. Shoot me. I like things to glow. Why can't I be free to like what I see and not what I know? That part right there, identical to Fosca's line, like, melody-wise. I do not dream to think. I do not read to learn. From I read, where they're both singing about why they don't read. These polished leather books, I don't mean to read. No, no, not to read. No, I mean the way it looks. Not that we want to be superficial. I do not read to think. I do not read to learn. I do not read to search for truth. I know the truth. The truth is hardly what I need. I read to dream.

[1:11:46] Andrew DeWolf: I feel like that has to be intentional, right?

[1:11:49] Andrew DeWolf: You know, I think that it is intentional, and I think that Sondheim has earned the ability to reference himself a couple times. Yes. I mean, he lived long enough where he should. And history has shown that it's impossible not to. But I don't want to linger on too many songs, so there's really only one more I want to talk about, and that's the Bishop song. The Bishop song is the funniest song, probably, because he likes to smell feet. He thinks feet are sexy. It is a weird thing to give a bishop a foot fetish. He just likes her slippers. They're very fetching. Yeah. And it's also played by Niles from Frasier. I feel like it's a good song. It's a good song. I don't know if I have a lot to say about it, but it's fine.

I think another reason why this show doesn't work for me as much as I think it could have is the casting. They cast a lot of very good actors who I just don't think are right for their respective roles. I think about the readings that they had where Nathan Lane was Leo, and Bernadette Peters was Marianne, and Sierra Boggess was Fritz, and Heidi Blickenstaff was in there, Michael Cerveris, Jen Simard. Matthew Morrison was in the mix, probably as Rafi. And I'm imagining that, and I'm like, ooh, I would be really compelled because of their actorial history, where here it's a lot of new actors, a lot of fun character actors, and I'm just kind of like, you don't have the Sondheim connections I wish that you did for this last piece. I wonder if this will ever get additional...

[1:13:34] Andrew DeWolf: Revivals. I don't think it's going to be big in communities. Actually, it might be. I think it would be... I want to see other people's interpretations of the text. You know what I mean? I think you could make a shorter version of it, just cut out all the Fritz stuff. Or just stick with Act One. Yeah, you could just make Act One and probably call it a whole thing.

[1:13:55] ⚠ About 15 minutes of audio could not be automatically transcribed.