EPISODE 922: TONY TONY, ALL THE WORLD IS YOU AND ME
Also, Welcome to Frociaggine Summer!
Hi and welcome to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, the newsletter that is here to serve and slay, or something, younger persons, is that how you say it? I’m Jim McDermott, here with your weekly dose of how do you do, including a very hearty Happy Father’s Day to everyone out there, especially the customer at Subway on Saturday who took one look at me and wished me a happy Father’s Day. I take that as a compliment, sir!
Today we’ve got news from the Vatican, a less dumb story about AI than usual, and a love letter to a bunch of shows and theater people that I loved this year. Let’s get into it.
Ooh, but before we do…I’m doing a 30% off sale on subscriptions during Pride Month! Tell your friends, call your neighbors, text your kids, they don’t like it when you call them!
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THE WOWND UP
In Rome, Pope Francis hosted a group of the world’s comedians, including Conan O’Brien, who based on his facial expression either just threw his back out trying to reach the pope’s hand or is having the Big One, he’s coming to join you, Elizabeth.
But the bigger papal news this week was that Pope Francis once again decided to drop a gay slur, this time to describe the problem within the culture of the Vatican.
Obviously, not our favorite moment in the history of the church, Francis, or Pride Month. But flop eras are like that. And based on the responses I’m seeing, the queer community is working it.
I’m also coveting the t-shirts.
Meanwhile, remember two years ago when suddenly people were creating wild artwork using AI, and then ChatGPT kids basically never had to write a paper of their own again, and we were like, oh no, AI is coming for all our jobs?
Those realities are all still true, but is it me or has AI become mostly a b.s. term that every tech company uses to try and make their product sound sexy but which is largely backfiring, because we all hate hearing it? It’s like code for “lying in your face right now.” I’m seriously expecting to go to the grocery store and see the produce tagged, “Now with AI!”
But even so, I was delighted to see Apple CEO Tim Cook give a talk this week announcing Apple’s take which redefined it as “Apple Intelligence.”
It’s all still nonsense until someone does something meaningful with it. The thing I liked about Cook’s presentation is that Apple’s approach is not to give you things you didn’t ask for, which is what everyone else is doing—like Facebook, which created AI personalities for you to talk to on Messenger that were weird and kind of awful—but to try and solve problems that people actually want solved.
NEW YORK CITY THEATER 2024: A LOVE LETTER
Tonight is the Tonys, or as we say in New York, the awards show that is actually good. It’s going to be a big night for Merrily We Roll Along, and probably also Stereophonic.
(The photo is actually not from the Tonys but the show New York, New York, which closed way too soon last year, and was such a love letter to theater, music and the city.)
Personally I like to think of Tony Sunday like New Year’s Day—it’s a moment to stop and think about what this year in theater has offered, not just on Broadway but in general. What did I see? Who got to me? What did I learn?
Here’s some of my favorite things from this last season.
WHOLESALE/OUTLAW: YOU CAN DO SO MUCH WITH SO LITTLE
Some (if not most) of my favorite shows this year were actually not on Broadway, but in small off-Broadway theaters scattered around the city. In the fall the Classic Stage Company did a production of I Can Get it For You Wholesale on its tiny thrust stage, where you got to sit so close I literally had to move my leg whenever actors were going off stage so that they didn’t bump into me.
And the show was captivating. Somehow the relative lack of room the actors had to work with made every choice more meaningful, more thrilling.
Similarly in the spring Dead Outlaw took what seemed like the tiniest of sets at the Audible Theater, just one little area in which a band played, and used it to tell one of the weirdest and most heartfelt stories I’ve seen in forever.
It’s a great reminder to me of how much the obstacles involved in telling a show—like the space you’ve got to work with—can actually create opportunities.
DANIEL RADCLIFFE
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If you were to ask 100 theatergoing New Yorkers what their favorite performance was this year, an awful lot of them would tell you about Daniel Radcliffe in Merrily We Roll Along. And almost all of them would talk about the specific moment early in the show in which his character Charlie Kringas is interviewed alongside his writing partner Franklin Shepard. Charlie, who is enormously frustrated with Franklin, slowly loses his mind, on camera, in song. (Part of which was somehow captured on camera, above.)
It’s an incredibly difficult song to perform, fast and funny and angry and sad and did I mention fast, God it’s fast. And Daniel does it 8 shows a week.
I saw an interview recently where someone asked whether it’s gotten easier doing that number. Daniel did the show for a bunch of months off-Broadway last year, and he’s been doing it for almost a year on Broadway. And he said the only difference was that he had finally managed to stop running the number constantly at home.
Ever since I can’t stop thinking of Daniel Radcliffe spending the last year running this one number in his head over and over every day, so that it lands every night.
HERE LIES LOVE
If you weren’t in New York over the summer or early in the fall, you might not have heard about Here Lies Love, the David Byrne-created bio-musical about Filipino leader and fascist Imelda Marcos. It was the first Broadway show to ever have an all-Filipino cast, and it also went at the story in an incredibly creative way, with a lot of the audience on the ground floor standing in a fabulous Studio 54 disco kind of set up, where they were invited to dance and literally follow the action as the stage moved around them.
It was a very cool experience, one that matched well with the show’s underlying concept of the characters as all essentially performers trying to seduce the audience. I’m so glad I got experience that.
STEVE CARELL
TV and film star Steve Carell came to New York this spring to do Uncle Vanya at Lincoln Center. And it was one of my favorite lead performances of the year, filled with unexpected choices that made the show feel spontaneous and alive and real.
And more than that, it was an enormously generous performance. Rather that commanding the stage as the title character, Carell instead stayed around the edges for the first act, so much so that having not seen the play before I went to intermission wondering why exactly it was called “Uncle Vanya.”
But that decision meant that the rest of the cast was given that much more room to play, and they created some really wonderful performances. I don’t know if William Jackson Harper will win a Tony tonight against the Stereophonic juggernaut, but he was tremendous.
Carell comes originally from the world of improv, which seems like a weird marriage for Chekhov. But it seems like those foundations gave him the freedom to see himself as part of a bigger story and ensemble. I admire the hell out of him for taking that approach. The show was so much the richer for it.
STAN BROWN
I stumbled into Water for Elephants on a rainy Wednesday afternoon during previews, not really knowing what to expect. And while a lot of fans will talk about the circus work, which is extensive and tremendous, for me the most striking element of the show was the work of Stan Brown, who plays the life-long carny Camel that befriends young Jacob Jankowski as he’s looking for a new life.
There’s something so deeply authentic about Brown’s performance, a humanity that is well-worn and played with such a light touch. The central story of Water has enormous earnestness, which is part of its charm. But earnestness can also wear thin. Stan’s Camel, along with Gregg Edelman as the elderly Jacob, are like a leaven, adding a warmth and gentleness that is really expansive.
The fact that it was also Stan’s first show on Broadway is also such a wonderful gift.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO SPEAK THE TRUTH
Speaking of generous, human performances, David Hyde Pierce’s turn as an archbishop questioning his vocation in Stephen Sondheim’s final show Here We Are was a fantastic piece of work.
I wrote about the show here earlier this year. And I continue to be moved by a scene halfway through the second act where David and Rachel Boy Jones’ Marianne talk about the meaning of life. In exchange for getting to hold her high heels (lol), the Archbishop agrees to answer the question, “What is being?”
Oh being, he says. Well. First of all you might say we’re here. Actually, here, on Earth, most likely. Though perhaps not. As are other people, and also objects like these beautiful satin slippers.
Yes. And? Marianne says.
And that means…something. That we’re here. We mean something, apparently. We are what you might call matter that matters.
Or not, depending on who you read.
So we’re here, for a time on, possibly, Earth, with very soft satin slippers, and other people, etc., and we live our lives.
Then we die. And spend eternity with God. Or go to Hell. If there happens to be one.
Or else, we pass into complete nothingness. A total void, forever and ever. That we are actually unaware of, because we’re not here, any more.
The end.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that scene. Why does it seem so hopeful when it’s filled with hesitation and the possibility of, as he says, “complete nothingness”?
Part of it is clearly David’s light-touch delivery. But it’s also that it’s written with such simple, unadorned honesty. Especially when it comes to religion and The Big Questions, things are often either overwritten or filtered through one or another kind of propaganda machine that refuses to fully acknowledge the realities that we know are there.
To have a religious figure speak in a way that is both consistent with who they are and resonant with our actual lived experience is an unexpected and tremendous relief.
GREAT SHOWS TEACH YOU A NEW LANGUAGE
For me one of the two most unexpected theater experiences this year was Illinoise, a show about a young man grieving the deaths of his best friends, told entirely through dance, while three singers wearing gorgeous moth wings stood above the action, singing songs written by singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens.
Everyone I know that sees this show talks about how disorienting it is initially. For the first half hour maybe you’re just not sure what you’re watching. A lot of it is beautiful, and sometimes also pretty strange, but what is it?
I don’t think that’s a glitch on the show’s part. That time is there to teach us a new language for experiencing story, so that when we get into the heart of things we’re ready for it. And it’s true, once the main character’s story begins things really lock in. And suddenly you’re moving forward with the story but also backward, as your brain translates what you just witnessed. Which is kind of an extraordinary experience.
It was interesting, too, having spent almost 2 hours immersed in the show, when I left the theater the world seemed filled with the possibility of great beauty. It was like in giving me a language for understanding itself, Illinoise gave me a new way of looking at life.
ANDREW ROBINSON
Artwork by June Vigants
The number one most unexpected theater experience of the year for me was seeing Sleep No More, a long-running off-Broadway show in which you spend three hours wandering freely through a five-story building in which scenes from Macbeth, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, and the Paisley Witch Trials are being performed all around you, once again entirely through movement, most often dance.
As I tried to write for Fordham recently, there is simply nothing like Sleep No More. One of the things that I loved about it, once I got used to it, is that rather than offering one extended narrative experience, the show gives you dozens of unexpected and unique moments to take with you.
Within the building sits an old-timey hotel lobby in which the hotel’s porter works. A lot of his story ends up being about interacting with different guests needing help. But early on he is “on stage” by himself. His job at this point is to get the lobby ready for the day to come. But because he’s alone, as he does his chores he dances through the space, and also on tables and couches, and with the sheets that cover the furniture. It’s like we’ve been allowed a glimpse of this man’s inner life, or perhaps his inmost dreams, and it just beautiful.
The night I saw this moment, the role of the porter was being played by Andrew Robinson, who is an incredibly talented dancer and performer. He brought to the moment this irrepressible freedom and joy. It was like watching Fred Astaire do Singin’ in the Rain all around you. As it turned out, I was actually alone in the lobby for much of that scene. I felt so humbled both to be allowed that kind of glimpse into this character’s life, and to be alone witnessing the work of such an amazing performer.
NATALIE JOY JOHNSON
One of the early casualties of the spring season has been Lempicka, the true story of a Jewish woman in Russia who fled with her husband to Paris during the Russian Revolution and became a tremendous painter and a queer icon. Reimagined as a musical, Lempicka follows the title character from her days in Russia to her final years in Los Angeles, and had some big stars in it, including Eden Espinoza, Amber Iman and Judy Kuhn.
It also had Natalie Joy Johnson, who plays the queer bar owner where Lempicka and her lover meet. In addition to being on Broadway, Natalie is an incredible cabaret performer. Her shows with long-time collaborator Brian Nash present as comedy—she wears a big wig and loves a hilarious on the spot gummy-fueled ramble.
But then she’ll deliver in rapid fire a series of songs that in quick succession have you howling with laughter and then stunned into silence by their emotional impact. One of the last times I saw her, Miss Natalie took a song from the musical Working and turned into a tune about being a Real Housewife. It sounds ridiculous, I know, and going in we definitely expected it to be comedic. But instead it was this quietly devastating moment that left me wondering what the hell just happened.
That’s Natalie in a nutshell: You show up for a kiki, and you leave wondering what the hell just happened, while feeling honestly so grateful that you don’t know and hoping you can experience it all soon again.
Natalie started doing a Thursday night set at Friki Tiki in Midtown during the show. I can’t recommend it, or her, enough. She’s a goddamn star.
WHERE I AM WHEN I’M NOT HERE
This was a wild week for me writing wise. I had an explainer on season 3 of Bridgerton; a bunch of reviews of movies from Tribeca; a piece about the statue that sits near the TKTK booth in Times Square; a deep dive think-y piece into the work of John Patrick Shanley; and a piece on why Catholics should love a Pride parade.
ALL I WANT FOR MY BIRTHDAY IS FOR SOMEONE TO BUY ME PART OF STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S HOUSE
They’re auctioning off 450 pieces from Stephen Sondheim’s estate tomorrow, and I am obsessed. Like, that photo above? That’s Lot 342, a game for teaching children about ornithology. I’ve never known such a thing exists, but knowing that it does and that it was owned by Stephen Sondheim how am I now supposed to live without it?
Or there’s Lot 341, “The Cottage of Content, or Right Roads and Wrong Ways,” which looks like the most intricate and gorgeous version of Chutes & Ladders, and has the best subtitle of any game ever: “A Humorous Game.”
How could that not be meant for me?
If you, too, want to see a world of wonderful things, the auction is Tuesday morning 10am EST, happening not only in person but online. You have to register by end of today tomorrow if you’re going to bid, and FWIW, some of the stuff in the catalogue is in theory pretty cheap. Like this “S”, Lot 31, which Sondheim was given after a benefit concert in his honor, is estimated at $100-$200.
It’s like they’re giving away the Mona Lisa!
MOMENT OF WOW
Here’s a great moment of Miss Natalie. Hope it brings you joy.
See you later this week with more Wow!
I love your reviews and theater experiences, and also Happy Father's Day, but only Gene Kelly should ever perform 'Singin' in the Rain' and I will go to war on that
Thanks for these few glorious minutes with Natalie Joy Johnson! XOB