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[0:00] Gabe: Welcome back, listeners, to our tongue-in-cheek recap of what is television's most detailed depiction of the theatre industry. And yep, we're still talking about Smash, the NBC series that chronicled the creation of not one but two Broadway musicals, and all the drama that ensued along the way. We've been going back episode by episode to see how this supposed love letter to Broadway has held up over the past decade. In each podcast episode, we're looking to find the answer to these three questions. Did it represent Broadway then? Does it represent Broadway now? And is it any good? So let's dive in and talk about episode 11 of season 2, The Dress Rehearsal. Aaron, give us the stats.

[1:01] Aaron: I'll be happy to, Gabe. The Dress Rehearsal premiered on April 13, 2013. It was written by Julia Brownell, who last penned episode 6 of this season, and was directed by Mimi Leder, who last directed episode 7 from last season. The viewership of Smash hit its all-time run-of-show low this week, bottoming out at 1.80 million, which was down from the previous episode by 80,000 viewers. Self-reliant, it only goes up from here. We had all original songs, but nothing new this week. We were able to revisit excerpts from Bombshell's Let Me Be Your Star, Our Little Secret, and Dig Deep, all written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman, and a new a cappella prologue version of Broadway Here I Come from Hit List, written by Joe Iconis. And what happens in this episode, Gabe?

[1:53] Gabe: Happy to tell you. Even though he isn't an actor, director-librettist Tom Levitt is having actors' nightmares before Bombshell's invited dress. The run-through is riddled with mistakes. A surprise nude scene for Ivy, the house didn't come in for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and poor Brian pulls a muscle, which means that Sam might be going on for him. Aileen recommends canceling Bombshell's first preview, but Tom thinks it's an invitation to the press to sharpen their knives. So Aileen gives him a challenge. Fix all the problems by 3 p.m. today, or she's going to cancel the performance. Jimmy has been pulling all-nighters, writing nine new songs for Hit List, a task which he is sure has been laid on him by Derek as retribution for Karen and Jimmy dating.

Derek is finally inspired to make changes to Hit List, adding reprises and a new framing device that tells the story in flashback. Jimmy is having a fit about these changes, but it's hard to know whether that's because of his ego, his all-nighters, or his coke habit. Kyle and Ana are hype about the rapid changes Derek is making to Hit List, but Karen is convinced they are simply retribution for dating Jimmy. Tom isn't able to fix all the problems of the invited dress in six hours, but lies to Aileen so she doesn't cancel the first preview. But when he isn't able to get the intermission down to 15 minutes, Julia pinch-hits with a new staging idea for the top of Act 2 that allows it to be staged in the audience instead of onstage.

Even though Ivy's nudity in the dress rehearsal was a mistake, it's given the show a spike in both buzz and ticket sales. Aileen and Tom ask Ivy to keep the nudity, a decision she doesn't make until she's onstage for the first preview. When she finally decides to keep the nudity, it ends up making a show-stopping moment that is perfect for the scene. But not all is good with Bombshell. After not being put on to cover an ailing ensemblist, Sam quits the show, saying that his career is going in the wrong direction. And the New York Times publishes an article saying the spirit of Marilyn Monroe is alive and well on stage, but in Hit List. The Grey Lady calls Hit List edgy and occasionally brilliant, bound to take the theater season by storm, and leads the way for Hit List to move uptown toward the main stem.

[4:11] Gabe: Gabe, Gabe, you're here!

[4:26] Aaron: Gabe was here. Can I tell you the first thing I thought when I saw my 2013 face on screen? I was young. I was so young. I looked like a baby.

[4:36] Gabe: We were young. We were young back then. But before we get to Gabe, first we got Philippa Soo as Lexi, which I didn't even know that she was in the show with you.

[4:45] Aaron: Oh yeah, she was my cohort. We were like the Bobby and Jessica of Hit List, so we spent all the time together.

[4:51] Gabe: That's so awesome. I want to know that story. I wish the camera could just pan right and see Lexi and Gabe's take on everything.

[5:00] Aaron: So the very first time that I met Philippa was we were in these dressing rooms that were opposite each other. I go into this room, I don't know anybody there, and then I see this young woman across the hallway from me, and I'm like, hi, I'm Mo, and she introduces herself, Philippa, and both of us had never been on camera before. We didn't know what we were doing. We totally felt like the theater kids that were dropped into this world.

[5:26] Gabe: Oh, this is amazing. And on set, you spend a lot of time waiting. You're just basically in tech the entire time. And so I remember from that very first day, we knew that we would be sitting around a lot, and so Philippa had a book with her, and I was like, what's the book? And she's reading War and Peace, and she's like, oh, I'm working on this new musical, and it's based on this part of War and Peace, so I'm trying to read it, but it's a very long book. Of course, this is before Philippa did the off-Broadway production of what became Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, before Hamilton, before all of this stuff.

[6:02] Aaron: Wow. So you did like, what, I think I counted four scenes in this episode?

[6:08] Gabe: They were all of these little scenes, right? And no musical numbers. And one of the things that's interesting about—

[6:14] Aaron: You did one musical number.

[6:15] Gabe: Oh, right. The dress rehearsal for the—

[6:17] Aaron: I was like, you were part of the grand restaging that caused all the drama.

[6:21] Gabe: The grand restaging. Okay, so the first thing that I will say is that in our very first appearance, when we filmed that, Philippa and I had lines. So when they say, lights, camera, action, I had a line that was like, what are we doing? Why are we waiting here? And then Philippa had a line that was like, we're, this is weird. I don't even remember what the lines were. But basically, the way that you see it in the edit is like the fourth line that we filmed. So, and I knew this might happen. I feel like—

[6:55] Aaron: How dare they, though.

[6:57] Gabe: Like, and it ends up happening in every scene that every episode that I did in this season, we had lines that then eventually would get cut.

[7:07] Aaron: Were all of your scenes with Pippa?

[7:09] Gabe: Yeah.

[7:10] Aaron: So you guys were literally supposed to be the Bobby and Jessica of Hit List?

[7:13] Gabe: Oh, yeah, for sure.

[7:14] Aaron: Oh, my gosh. I'm so mad. How dare they? I quit the show.

[7:18] Gabe: And then the only other thing I'll say about this episode is that in the post-performance scene, where like everyone's sitting around the set eating food, of course, I'm eating chips.

[7:29] Aaron: Yeah.

[7:30] Gabe: Like there's—

[7:30] Aaron: Eating chips!

[7:31] Gabe: There's like a scene that just starts with me just like with my mouth full of Lay's potato chips. And I was like—

[7:37] Aaron: Just defining quality of Gabe. He loves his carbs.

[7:40] Gabe: He is, well, he's so young and so thin. He can just eat anything, that Gabe.

[7:45] Aaron: The advent of Gabe. I love it. He's going to be here for so many more episodes, too.

[7:49] Gabe: He is. We also got Alice in this episode, but lol, that's nowhere near as exciting as Gabe's origin story.

[7:55] Aaron: Can I ask about Alice in this scene? Because there was no context at all. So if you, I don't know who in the world only watched season two of Smash, but if you didn't know who Alice was, they didn't explain.

[8:06] Gabe: Oh, no, not at all. He was definitely there as like an insidery joke for season one.

[8:09] Aaron: Which I loved. I loved it, though.

[8:11] Gabe: Hey, Jamie Capero, get that money. Like, you got paid for literally a blink blink.

[8:16] Aaron: All right. I want to ask you about, let's go back to Bombshell, because this really is Bombshell's episode. Didn't we book the Velasco?

[8:24] Gabe: Did I make up that we booked the Velasco?

[8:26] Aaron: No, we straight up booked the Velasco. I don't know who Hilly Hayes is.

[8:30] Gabe: I looked up Lillie Hayes, not a real person.

[8:32] Aaron: Okay, great. That was the weirdest part about that whole thing. I was like, what's Lillie Hayes? Who's Lillie Hayes?

[8:38] Gabe: Lillie Hayes is no one. Helen Hayes is a grand dame of 20th century theater.

[8:43] Aaron: Yeah, and she has a theater down on the west of Broadway.

[8:46] Gabe: She has her own theater. I mean, Lillie Hayes would be a good name for a theater if you had to make one up, but I did think it was a little too close to the Hayes.

[8:54] Aaron: Sure.

[8:55] Gabe: So I want to ask you about Tom's challenge to fix all of these things in the show in six hours, right? Get a kid to memorize their lines, fix this transition, talk about the nudity. Is that a realistic timeline? Because it's like they're in the theater at 9 a.m. and he has to fix it by 3 p.m.

[9:14] Aaron: What I don't understand is you're in tech and you're about to be in previews. This is going to be a daily thing that you have to fix things in numbers of hours. Why is this an entire dramatic element where we're going to cancel the show if you don't fix them? I'm like, A, yes, all of these seem pretty fixable in six hours. And if not, then this is previews. The audience knows you're in previews. If something happens, they know. I feel like I lean so easy to lose an entire house of money to be like, let's just cancel it. Let's just cancel it. I'm like, you canceled a full weekend of previews in Boston.

[9:55] Gabe: Right. Shows do get canceled or postponed. This whole discussion about first previews being postponed is true. But your reminder that she not only canceled an entire weekend in Boston, but is also considering canceling the first preview.

[10:12] Aaron: And has no qualms about it. I'm like, you're losing money by the truckload. But I will say my favorite thing about watching these six hours in Bombshell and even in Hit List is that we got some actual rehearsing in this episode.

[10:26] Gabe: We don't just present numbers.

[10:31] Aaron: No.

[10:31] Gabe: We don't just already know every number and then show it to a television audience. When they're problem-solving about how do we get this plane on and then they present this montage about like, all right, let's work on this. You're going to climb over here. However, I feel about the number because it's different from how I feel about the sequence. I thought it was a really exciting moment of the rehearsal because you watched all of the actors, all of the ensembles get excited that they get to make choices in rehearsal. They get to try stuff out and then we watch it succeed in the first preview. I was like, this is, oh, look, rehearsing. Oh, look, this is fun. Oh, look, this is what we actually do.

[11:15] Aaron: What it reminds me of in spirit is back in season one, the montage of going to Boston, another opening, another show.

[11:24] Aaron Albano: Yes. And I feel like this might be the next time we see a montage. We don't use montages very often in Bombshell. We don't. Montage is not really a language that we use. And yet, two for two, it's very exciting and a very good way of showing sort of the process of doing the thing, the actual thing that happens in theater versus the fake things that Smash tells us happen in the theater. Yeah. But let's talk about the most important question about this number is, what happened to public relations? What happened to our old act two with the plane? We've seen the number. The number is good. So we're just cutting the number? Like, I don't think it's... Well, because the whole reason for this is to get the plane on stage, right?

[12:11] Mo Brady: Sure. So public relations happens immediately after this number. My only issue with that is, A, it's no longer the act two opening, because this is now the act two opening. B, so we're taking the acting class song, putting it at the opening of act two, and then leading straight into a travel in. Contextually, this sounds like a mess. Yeah. It doesn't sound like a solution.

[12:39] Aaron Albano: No. I mean, it sounds like a solution to solve your tech element, but you just threw a big wrench in your narrative, which doesn't make sense, but maybe that's why they didn't get written about in the Times. Maybe that's why they got overshadowed by Hit List.

[12:59] Mo Brady: Let's talk about Hit List. Okay. So this whole restaging scene. Which again, actual rehearsing, I live for it. Yours and Lexi's first scene was one of my favorites in the whole thing. I was like, oh, look, a director in rehearsal, a cast in rehearsal. We're creating art and that's exciting. Then it all goes somewhere else.

[13:25] Aaron Albano: Like Karen and Jimmy get all butthurt about quote unquote their song or her song. And I'm like- What do you think about this concept of "Broadway Here I Come" being Karen's song?

[13:36] Mo Brady: I think it's annoying. I think we've just watched Karen make her ultimate transition into being one of us garbage theater people. Because I'm just like, what is your issue? Stated in the episode, her issue is this is supposed to be Karen's song and the diva singing at first takes away the fact that it's Karen's song. But then Derek's like, she's going to sing it in four scenes and she's going to sing the whole thing. So arguably it's still Karen's song. There's just a pre-prize, if you will, of Anna singing at first. But that's big drama because now we're not going to hear Karen sing at first. It's annoying. I hated it. I thought it was ugly.

[14:22] Aaron Albano: What it does do is it finally gives Anna some agency. This is the first episode where I feel like Anna's a real character. Not even the episode where she sang a solo singing from the ceiling. I was sort of not jazzed about that. But here she actually has stakes and something to play.

[14:38] Mo Brady: Oh no, I loved that. Her fight with Karen. I mean, that's when I was like, oh, Karen's the villain now. She's a garbage theater person. This is why we thought we loved Ivy and didn't care for Karen. It's because we'd gotten to this point. These are the episodes we remembered on the backend.

[14:55] Aaron Albano: Yeah. Yep. And here we go. So much for garbage people. I would like to talk about Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam and his intense swing shaming. Okay. Because I think I'm going to shock the entire Ensemblist community because I'm not convinced it's entirely swing shaming. This is when Sam is quitting.

[15:14] Mo Brady: Yes. He says, I've been in seven Broadway shows. I was just a featured role on a national tour and now I'm a swing. I'm going in the wrong direction.

[15:25] Aaron Albano: You would argue this is not swing shaming. It's nuanced for sure. Because does that sentence make swinging sort of the bottom of the pyramid? Arguably yes. Is swinging the bottom of the pyramid? Arguably yes. A, I don't think it is. But there are people even in our industry who while love swinging, don't want that to be the end goal of their career. I'll even attest to that in my own career. I'm like, I love swinging. I think the swing is great. There are moments when I want to be on stage and have a track for myself. That's not me diminishing the value or the contribution of what swings do. But I know after I've swung for a while, I want to have my own role in a show. And I think that's sort of what Sam's doing here more so and maybe I'm just projecting.

But I think that's more what Sam is doing here where like, I've been a swing. I've been a featured role. I don't want, this is not ultimately where I want my career to go. So staying here would not be beneficial to me. It's less of a reflection on the role of a swing and more of a reflection of Sam in relation to being a swing under the grand arc of his career.

[16:46] Mo Brady: Okay, let's move on. Let's talk about nudity.

[16:49] Aaron Albano: Yeah. Okay. How'd you like this subplot?

[16:52] Mo Brady: I actually thought this subplot was good in terms of like Smash storytelling. This feels like drama that would come up from making a show.

[17:01] Aaron Albano: I agree. I agree. I like, I mean, I think this whole episode was a good turnaround into the right direction. What I did love was in their lobby talk, Sam's line to her when she's just wondering whether she should do it. And he says, they do not need to see you naked to feel you naked. I literally got chills when he said that. I was like, Ooh, yeah, it was such a good line. And I was like, that's good. Because do you agree that if someone's naked in a show, that's what the show becomes about?

[17:35] Mo Brady: I do. Yeah, I do. Like thinking about shows, Take Me Out, Equus, like the Nicole Kidman one, The Blue Room. The top thing I think about in those shows is the nudity, or maybe Daniel Radcliffe nudity, and then sure. Absolutely. Nudity.

[17:53] Aaron Albano: The one that I pinged upon when I was thinking about all of these was because Kelly O'Hara does have that bathtub scene in Bridges of Madison County. Does she get naked? I don't remember that.

[18:03] Mo Brady: She gets, that's what I'm saying. It's not a big memory in the show. But then that also means it wasn't a big impact on the show, because that's not what the show is about. If you're using nudity well, it runs the risk of becoming what the show's about.

[18:20] Aaron Albano: Right.

[18:21] Mo Brady: And so it's an interesting conversation.

[18:24] Aaron Albano: It's like H22. If it feels right, then it may not make the show any more memorable. And if it feels wrong, it may be the only thing that people remember.

[18:33] Mo Brady: Fascinating. Yeah. Did you think that the placement in the show that she used was a stronger choice or?

[18:39] Aaron Albano: Oh, yeah, for sure. I liked it. Now, does it fulfill Julia's desire to have Marilyn Monroe viewed through the men that she was perceived by?

[18:51] Mo Brady: I think maybe it does the opposite of that, right? I think Julia's argument that Marilyn being undressed by JFK at the end of the song is good because it makes her feel like a prop, like an object. I think that's truer with Julia's vision of Bombshell. However, I think a better musical would be one where your leading character is not an object and is actually the full-fledged human being that you want to care about.

[19:18] Aaron Albano: Fair.

[19:18] Mo Brady: And in that case, letting your leading character have agency and use tactic to get things that she wants feels like a better way to write a musical.

[19:30] Aaron Albano: Yeah. So Bombshell goes off without a hitch. Hit List has its first run through for the press. And this article in the New York Times comes out where it's basically slamming Bombshell for Hit List. This is where the animosity begins between the two shows.

[19:47] Mo Brady: Right. This is where the rivalry starts.

[19:49] Aaron Albano: Yeah. How do you feel about the way this was sort of revealed?

[19:54] Mo Brady: I loved it. I mean, I think it's so well done. It's like the rivalry we needed from the start. You know, this to me feels like theater drama that I'm used to. Like, which show are you going to vote for for the Tonys? And what's going to win Best Musical? Like, that's all the rivalry that we are sort of like familiar with. And so the fact that we are starting to have that kind of rivalry, I was like, yeah, I'm here for it. Is it going to be the little show that could or is it going to be the big blockbuster? I like it. And the fact that so many players are kind of have been in both worlds makes it all the more interesting. The fact that Karen and Derek were team Bombshell and now they're team Hit List. And Julia infactually is really kind of part of both.

[20:41] Aaron Albano: Yeah. That scene though, I mean, again, it was the one time that I was like, oh, this, I haven't liked Tom this entire time, but this hurt is very well earned. This, this betrayal by his best friend and roommate, by his grace, for lack of a better term, like, this is heavy. I was like, wow. And yeah, and I agree. This is, this is the drama that we signed up for. This is the drama that I'm interested in. And this is the drama that I'm intrigued by because instead of, it's personal drama, but it's personal drama within. It's drama about people in the business. This is not Julia cheating on her husband. This is not Karen not wanting to get engaged during tech. This is drama between two writers of two musicals that are ending up competing in the same season or a producer and a journalist who are dating and they have to decide whether their alliance is more with their work or with the relationship.

[22:02] Mo Brady: Yes. To keep up to date with next week's recap, be sure to watch season two episode 12 of Smash entitled "Opening Night." You can find Smash episodes on either the NBC app or on NBC.com or on the forthcoming Peacock app. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Aaron Albano. And me, Mo Brady. There are two great ways you can be helping the Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And the second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash the Ensemblist. Please follow the Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening, guys. Until next time.