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Lindsay: Hello! Here we are, Theatrefolk. We're on a little bit of a road trip this
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week. We are in New York City. Craig: Woop woop!
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Lindsay: And it's raining. We're looking out the window and it's pouring. But that will
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not deter us because we are here and we've already seen two shows. Craig, first one is?
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Craig: First one was Anything Goes and what was really interesting, well, the first thing
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about it is we planned on seeing... Lindsay: Something else.
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Craig: We planned on seeing Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin's show.
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Lindsay: Yeah, and Mandy Patinkin, which we were very excited about because I've never
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seen Mandy Patinkin live, and we just wondered what songs they would do, and how they would
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interact, and we thought that would be lots of fun. But we got to the TKTS booth and...
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Craig: Patti's not in the show today. Lindsay: We thought, "Why would we go see
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a two-person show when one of the people isn't in it?"
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Craig: Now, literally, that's how the TKTS person told us. "Patti's not in the show today!"
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Lindsay: Luckily, we had sort of a backup plan.
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Craig: Which was Anything Goes. Lindsay: Which was Anything Goes for a couple
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of reasons. One, I've never seen it. The only thing I've ever seen is the big tap number
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on the Tony's a couple of times. I've seen it this year with Sutton Foster and Patti
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LuPone did it a couple of years ago, and that's all I know about the show other than it's
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a classic. Craig: Yeah, it's a big Broadway show. It's
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a classic written in the 30s. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter. And what I loved about it
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was that it was about a time when theatre was really literally just about escaping realities.
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It was set during the Great Depression except the play celebrated opulence and over-the-top.
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And it comes at a time where, it's funny, I was sitting there thinking, "Wow! Everything's
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just so straight-forward." You know, if a character says, "I love you," they mean I
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love you. There's no subtext, no hidden meaning, and it struck me while I was watching it.
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This was before, you know, Freud and this was before...
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Lindsay: The method. Craig: This was before the Stanislavski method.
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This was before any of this type of acting technique that involves, you know, subtext
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and back story and all that stuff. Lindsay: Inner work.
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Craig: Inner work. And so, I really appreciated that the cast actually just did the play straight
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too. There was no winking, no hinting. Lindsay: They just did it and I have to tell
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you, this Sutton Foster, she is a... What a star. It's impossible not to watch her.
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What I really appreciated was how generous she was when she was with other actors.
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First of all, every other actor who was in a scene with her was at their best and she
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was never trying to take focus away from them. A really great example there is a song I never
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heard before about a guy who's a straight-laced Englishman and he sings about having a little
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gypsy inside of him and it was a fabulous number and she's sort of the second banana
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in it and she just let him be the lead even though, of course, she's the star. And that's
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pretty something else, too. And the other thing that I really enjoyed
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was the dance numbers. Just stunning, stunning. Love those big cast dance numbers and I will
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say -- now we're going to get to what we didn't like about it -- holy cow, that first act
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is really long. First of all, lots of songs that sound the same, no dance numbers until
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we get to the very end of the act. It was an hour and a half.
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Craig: An hour and a half first act. Lindsay: Oh, my gosh! And, you know, when
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everyone already says what they're thinking, I'm not quite sure why we need an hour and
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a half. Craig: Yeah.
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Lindsay: And the second act was awe! I've never seen a play so saved. I've never seen
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a play saved by its second act. The second act was fast. It was...
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Craig: Breezy. Lindsay: Breezy, funny, lots of dance numbers,
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lots of funny songs, it set it out, it whipped it all up, we got married and it was all done
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in less than an hour. Craig: I think the second act brought the
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whole show back up to a nine out of ten. Lindsay: Yes! Yeah, we were looking at a six
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or a seven and that second act, awesome. Craig: So, that's Anything Goes.
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Tonight, we're so excited because we're going to be seeing a show that was written in the
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70s? Lindsay: Yeah, '71.
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Craig: 1971 called Follies that evokes that era and does put all of that psychological
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stuff on it so I can't wait to see how that's handled.
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Lindsay: Can't wait to see that. And then, in another video, we're going to talk about
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the New York Neo-Futurists and Eugene O'Neill's stage directions.
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Stay tuned!
