Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, And this is a good old fashioned toe tapping, feel good event of the century that we like to call stuff you should know.
I cannot stop singing. They say the neon lights up ride a broad Way.
That's one of my least favorites. Is that from a chorus line.
I don't know I was singing that earlier. I was singing, give my regards to Broadway.
Wow, you haven't been singing the one I've been singing.
What have you been singing?
There's no bitess like show business, like no business. I know.
That's great. I do not know the neon lights when I should have looked that up, but I do know. Give my regards to Broadway. Is from Little Johnny Jones from nineteen oh four, written by Georgiam Kohen.
Neon Lights is a kraft Work song. You're way off, Oh well, Little Johnny Jones is the most like nineteen twenties play title or musical title I've ever heard.
I didn't know craft Work, uh as they say, is the neon lights so bright? Nowthers go.
It's a little different. Okay, it's really good though. I think it's actually the best song about Neon lights.
Oh that's a bold statement.
I know. I'm with you.
By the way, this is a listener suggestion, so big thanks to Sarah Nagy for sending this in.
Oh nice, thanks Sarah. We should probably say, for anybody who didn't bother looking at the title, we're talking about Broadway today. Broadway as in the American home of musicals, the Great White Way, you know, where musical theater goes to live and thrive and give it a shot at stardom.
It's right and non musical theater.
True. True. I'm more of a play guy than a musical guy myself. I remember going to see La La Land in the theater and being like, I had no idea this is a musical. Luckily it turned out really well, but okay, good. At first, I was like, you gotta be kidding me, kind of like you know when you go to drink take a sip of water and it turns out to be coke, but it's really shocking, but then you're like, oh, okay, cook's fine. It was a lot like that. The movie version of that.
Yeah, I think I've detailed this a little bit. But I've gotten more into musicals and I enjoy musical theater and Broadway, and we try to go to a show and we're in New York and now we're doing an annual Broadway only trip, like where we go see a few of them.
That's a pilgrimage, Yeah, pilgrimage.
But I do love the plays. And we are in fact going to see Glengary Glenn Ross in May.
Haven't you seen the movie?
I have? But this has got that killer cast on Broadway. I don't know if you've heard about it or not.
No, I haven't, Honestly, I haven't kept up with Broadway lately.
Yeah, this has got Glen Garrett, Glenn Ross with Kieran Culkin and Bill Burr and Bob Odenkirk and others.
Wow, that is a killer cast.
So I grab tickets for that right when they went on sale, and I'm going and my friends are like, ohd you get tickets, man, You're still lucky. I'm like, I just logged on and got them when they went on sale.
You logged onto your internet?
Yeah, you know, just get on a if you're into that kind of hanging. You just jump on a little like a Broadway Direct email list and then you'll get the aps on all the apps.
So you mentioned T is it t TKT Oh?
Yeah, the TS booth?
Yes? Are they online too? Or is that like a physically stand there in person kind of thing.
Yeah. That is the ticket service run for the not for profit Theater Development Fund, And that is if you're in New York and you're like, man, I wish I could go to a show, but I don't want to jump on a resale site and pay a ton of money. There are booths end Times Square and satellite booths at South Street, Seaport and Lincoln Center where you can get day of You can go get day of tickets for people that are like, I can't go Broadway. Can you help me sell these?
Yeah? And apparently if you go with like an hour or so before the booth opens, the line once it does open will only be about an hour. That's how long it takes to clear out typically, And people who are in line know what they want to see and they want the best seats, and that's what they're going for. That's why they're standing in line. But if you're like Hey, I'm in New York. Let's catch a show. I don't
care what show. You can just show up, like a couple hours after the thing opens and walk right up and pick a show.
Yeah, And I got to say, and you know, we'll get to this, or I might as well say it now. The largest Broadway theater. If you've never been, you might be used to like Broadway in your hometown at like the five thousand seat theater or something like they have.
Here at the Performing Arts Center, yeah, or.
The Performing Art Center. But in New York they're they're pretty small. The largest one is the Gershwin Theater at nineteen hundred and thirty three seats. The smallest of the how many theaters is it? Total?
Forty two forty seven forty one theaters forty one The.
Smallest is the Haze at five ninety seven. So you know, if you're in town, you want to check out a show in most of those theaters. Most of the seats are pretty great and it's fairly intimate.
I don't know much about it lately. Like I left off with Phantom of the Opera, that was probably the last musical I was ever really into. So but I know that since I've been into it, like they've become blockbuster productions, Yeah, very much, along like the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie franchise stuff where it's like, just put a ton of money into it, Yeah, and people come from all over and you'll make ten times what you put into it. Yeah, and that I mean, that's that's fairly
fairly new development. Is Is it like that basically across the board now? Or surely that's like a handful of powerhouse shows and the rest of them are more normal and hence ticket prices are more normal, do you know, I.
Mean from my experience stuff. You know, if you go to see some of the classics, they're you know, they're big productions, but they're not maybe not as like special effects heavy. They definitely I feel like have jazzed them up a lot more in more recent years, with more sort of jaw dropping moments of like kind of I can't believe they did that live kind of stuff.
Like when the Salesman from Death of a Salesman flies out over the crowd at that one scene.
But like, for instance, last time we went we saw the that's the best thing we saw. One of the ones we saw was the new Ish Death Becomes Her, which is I can't recommend enough. It is one of the funniest musicals you'll ever see. But it wasn't some lavish production, but they had a couple of very well placed sort of special effects that were very fun and so I think you need to sort of wow the crowd a little bit more these days.
Okay, So you're not going to find like a nineteen fifty sixties style musical comedy that isn't relying at all on special effects there anymore.
M No. I mean, but maybe not special effects, but the sets are still very big and there's a lot of money poured into it that your plays are you're going to be a little more like stripped down.
So okay, last question. Ticket price is, from what I've seen, are like eye popping.
Pretty Yeah. I think Wicked was the most expensive. It was two ninety average price.
Man out, So there's got to be tickets that are like that the normal person can afford, right.
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's the average ticket price. So the cheaper seats for like a show like Wicket or I don't know, probably in the one hundred and something, which is still I mean, that's a lot of money, but I don't know that you can go, like if you're a question is can you go see a Broadway show for like forty five bucks?
Yes, that's my question.
I don't know, and I doubt it.
Yeah, all right, well that's a bit of a shame I have to say.
Although I'll have to look at my Glengarry tickets. I don't know that those were like crazy expensive, but I'll check. Why you talk?
Okay, well I'm going to start talking about the history of Broadway.
Let's do it.
So Olivia helped us out with this. Kudos to her because this was a huge, huge topic and she wrangled it greatly. But the street itself, Broadway is really really old. It's actually built on an old Lenape tribe trail that connected the tribes along the thirty miles of Manhattan, So this is like pre contact. Yeah, Broadway was already in existence when the Dutch showed up and they said, this is New Amsterdam. Eventually we'll rename it New York.
Yeah.
They called it daher Strat, Yeah, which is Gentlemen's Way. So apparently here with two e's in the middle means gentlemen in Dutch. If you want to impress people at your next party. Yeah, but they just called it bread vague or broad way broad road in the English said, well, where's going to call that broadway from now on?
Yeah, So that's the street Broadway. The theater district is between Times Square to fifty third Street and then the side streets from six to eighth Avenues. And like I said, it's forty one theaters. And with that smallest one, the Hayes, being five ninety seven, they're all at least five hundred, almost six hundred. I mean, can you squeeze three more seats in there Hayes?
Maybe standing room moment.
And like I said, the Gershwin is the largest at nineteen thirty three. And you know that's where theater happens. And we're going to talk a little bit about sort of the early theater days, because if you're talking New York theater, you're gonna have to go back to seventeen thirty two to see the first or at least the first record of a performance of a play there. It was called the Recruiting Officer mm hmm, and that was some Londoners traveling through town, and it was the New
Theater on Nassau Street. But that was near Broadway, but not anywhere close to the theater district. It was way way downtown and what would now be the Financial District.
You're not going to mention the name of the owner of the new theater.
Building, Governor Rip van Dam.
Which is a really great hotel. Check in name.
Yeah, that's good, included just with the governor.
Yeah, governor, governor, Okay, I'll give you a special treatment.
Yeah.
So, yeah, you said that was in what is now the Financial District. So slowly but surely it started to kind of move to what was called the Long Acre Square. Yeah, but before that, there was a lot of theaters that had opened up sporadically away from what we now consider Broadway. And I think the first I don't know if we said it or not, because you corrected me when I
said like musicals. You're like, well, plays too, But most people when they're talking about Broadway things, think they're thinking about musicals.
Right.
So the first musical, as far as anybody can tell, that was performed in New York. It was called The Beggar's Opera. It was about thieves and sex workers. It
was a musical comedy. It sounds like it was somewhat like one of the plays that would come in the nineteenth century, or one of the musicals where there were like kind of breaks in between where they some stand up comedian would come out, or a juggler maybe, or somebody would perform a song, but the songs didn't have much to do with the story, if anything at all.
Yeah, and we'll get to that. That was sort of the way it went for a while. It was sort of like songs and sketches and stuff like that. That was what a musical was. But we wouldn't have any of this stuff it hadn't been for some pretty notable people. The first one, well, he's actually the first Oscar Hammerstein. What would be two notable Oscar Hammerstein's.
Yeah, this is Oscar Hammerstein. I, that's right.
He moved from Germany, of course, to New York City in eighteen sixty four and was a cigar factory floor sweeper until he invented a cigar machine and made quite a bit of money doing so, such that he could start funding the opening of his passion, which was opera. So he opened the Harlem Opera House first in eighteen eighty nine and then that very first one in long Acre Square, which will be notable in about a minute and a half because you will learn what that became.
Hammerstein's Olympia Theater at Broadway and forty third and forty fourth, and then after that the Republic Theater was in eighteen ninety nine, which is still there but is now the new Victory.
Theater, Gotcha, which I think is for young audiences, right, is it? Sure? Yeah? I'm almost positive it.
Is like really body kids plays, Yeah.
Like Avenue Q.
Yeah, exactly.
So within like a decade, Oscar Hammerstein the first built like three major theaters in New York City, and he helped pretty much establish this theater district or the concept that New York had a theater district. Yeah, or it was a theater town, I guess. Plus, and this is probably a fairly overlooked component of it. The Inner Borough rapid transit system the train helped too, because it could get people around New York much more easily than before.
So with those two things Hammerstein and the irt converging, New York suddenly had like everything it needed, all the ingredients to become like a world class theater destination.
Yeah, for sure. So the riding was on the wall. He opened those theaters, other people are like, hey, we can invest money in this now that it's becoming a thing. The New Amsterdam Theater and the Lyceum Theater were both built around the same time in the early nineteen hundreds. And then, oh boy, we're probably more than a minute a half after I promised it. But in nineteen oh five, long Acre Square was renamed for the newly relocated New York Times offices, and thus it became Times Square.
That's it, that's it.
I was like, was it New York Times Square?
And I was like, no, dummy, Just Times Square.
Just Times Square. And it was around the same time that these three brothers, Lee, Samuel and Jacob Schubert, a very popular theater named to this day, they opened up a bunch of theaters in New York and elsewhere. And the Schubert Organization still owns and operates seventeen of those forty one theaters.
That's a bunch. That's almost half of the theaters on Broadway.
They got it locked down, baby.
So all of this hubbub and activity of building theaters and attracting like really good performers and plays and musicals by the time World War One rolled around, like New York was on the map for theater and Broadway was
the theater district for New York by this time. And one of the things that really helped things along kind of picked up where Oscar Hammerstein the First and the Irt left off to really like give things a real goose was the Zigfield Polly's, which I know we talked about in our episode on Vaudeville in November twenty twenty two.
We talked about that a lot. But the idea that like you could go to the theater and you could see some amazing performances and hear some funny comedy and see some crazy dances or great dances like that drew people the theaters like everyday people who might otherwise not have gone through the theater.
Yeah, for sure. And you know, some of the some of the songs that you you know, even if you're not a fan of this kind of thing, just kind of leaked into the public consciousness. Like give my regards to Broadway from George Cohen. He also wrote Yankee Doodle Dandy and over there. During World War One, this is
when Irving Berlin came around. One of it as you'll see, kind of a series of poor Jewish immag grant families that came to New York and the children of those families ended up being like these amazing Broadway writers and composers. He wrote things like Annie, get your gun and There's no business like show business, your old favorite.
That's right. He also wrote White Christmas, which I read is the best selling Christmas song of all time.
Which was not on Broadway.
No, well, it ended up on Broadway. It was in the movie Holiday Inn, and then they retro created a musical based on the movie.
They retconned it right.
Another pair that were really huge at this time, where George and Ira Gershwin brothers, another Jewish immigrant family. They created Funny Face Girl, Crazy Porgy and Bess and some of these, as we'll see, we're pretty kind of groundbreaking, especially at the time. But they also launched some stars careers like ethel Merman. Do you think of when you think of somebody singing there's no business like show business? I think ethel Merman.
Yeah, in the movie Airplane, right exactly.
That's where that's where I first learned about it. Ginger Rogers, Greta Stay are of course Greta Garbo Dance on air.
And it wasn't just musical theater at the time. This sort of post World War two era also had some pretty legendary plays like the Iceman Come Up from Eugene O'Neil and Lorraine Hansbury's Raising in the Sun. Of course, but it was times Square after all. So in World War two, that's when you started seeing some you know, the usual thing that would happen was like burlesque theater, eventually peep show, maybe regular movie theater, and then porn theater.
Yeah, and you better know the difference. Yeah, I say that we we take a break and we come back and we talk about the establishment of Broadway shows as we know them.
Let's do it, Stoffy Jaws.
So okay. So one Hammerstein did some amazing stuff, uh with Broadway, creating Broadway. But this family was showing off and they produced Oscar Hammerstein the Second, who was the grandson of Oscar Hammerstein the First, and he got together with a composer named Jerome Kern and they just started making some amazing groundbreaking for the time, especially new kinds of musicals that just they gave us Broadway as we know it today.
Yeah, Like, if you go to a musical today, not you're not assured to, but more than likely you're gonna be seen what's called the book musical. And that is when the musical when like the songs are central to the plot in the storyline and moving things. It's not just like, and here's a song to add to this musical review kind of thing. Right. They still have those some you know sometimes, but it's kind of a throwback
like these days. The book musical as a direct you know, descendant of Hammerstein too and Jerome Kern is sort of the way to.
Go, right. They came up with a Showboat Together, which was an enormously groundbreaking show. It combined both white and black performers on the same stage, which, if you remember a Harry Belafonte episode that was a no no well into the fifties and sixties. These guys made this show in nineteen twenty seven.
Yeah, I mean that people were not doing that at time. At the time. They also had blackface in that review because that was something they were also doing at the time. But it was also pretty you know, progressive in some ways by like having an integrated cast.
Yeah, and I mean a lot of the themes were about racism, and it just kind of took it head on. It was a serious, dramatic story. It wasn't like, you know, feel good forget your troubles, come on, get happy kind of thing.
Yeah, and just to be clear, it was truly integrated. I wasn't saying the blackface was integration. They had real integration and also blackface, which I don't quite understand.
But I don't either.
Yeah, I don't know how they were doing things in nineteen twenty seven.
Like when a woman is in an episode of Monty Python, it's like, why are you guys in drag?
Then?
Right?
Exactly, So Hammerstein is doing his thing, doing pretty well. Jerome Kern's great, but all of a sudden a dude lopes onto the scene named Richard Rogers, and Hammerstein said Rogers and Hammerstein, that sounds that has a nice ring to it. They're old buddies, old former classmates from Columbia years earlier. And Rogers approach Hammerstein and said, hey, there's
this play Greengrow the Lilacs from Lynn Riggs. Why don't we turn that into a musical, and why don't we do a little different like why don't you write the words to this thing first, I'll write the music and I don't know, let's use an exclamation point in the title, and let's just call it Oklahoma.
Oh Oklahoma. Right sure? So this show, this established Richard Rodgers in Oscar Hammer's sign like this is nineteen forty three. It set a record for the most performances at the time. It's long since been just totally demolished, but it had a record performance total of twenty two hundred and twelve.
That was just unheard of back then. So imagine, like, you know, you've got some pretty cool stuff under your belt, but all of a sudden you get together with this new collaborator and you create the show that has the longest running or the largest number of performances ever, just right off the bat. That's kind of like what these guys became. Like they were just the stars of Broadway productions.
Yeah, I mean giants to this day of the industry, South Pacific, the Sound of Music, the King, and I I mean It's It's their names are basically synonymous with musical theater.
I read Chuck also that at one point they had three of the longest running plays or shows on Broadway at the time, and three other shows in production to be adapted to films all at the same time. Giants Giants. Yeah, we could have just left it at that now that I think about it.
So there were some like huge, huge shows of the late twentieth century that sort of helped redefine Broadway. West Side Story was one. This was what kind of where the idea of the triple threat came along because they didn't have you know, for a while there there was like a separate chorus and that like did the dancing
and stuff. And West Side Story was one of the first ones in nineteen fifty seven to be like, hey, you're the lead actor, you're also singing, you're also dancing, because that's all part of it, and all of a sudden, the triple threat was a thing, and that was the real start of another giant abroad Way.
Steven Sondheim, Yeah, who would go on to direct Contagion, which we mentioned recently too.
No, he wrote the lyrics. And then another name he might have heard of, Leonard Bernstein, was a composer for West Side Story.
Yeah, he's great too. Cabaret was another one by this time. This is nineteen sixty six. Today you think of Cabaret and it's just a cult classic musical, But at the time it was groundbreaking in that it introduced a new kind of musical to Broadway, which is actually kind of a throwback to how it used to be. It's called the concept musical. And rather than you know, a through line story where the songs advanced the story and everything,
this was more like there was a theme. The theme was the show was said at the kick Hat Club in Berlin, I think in Weimar era Berlin. Yeah, and through the songs that all kind of have this share this kind of same theme, this concept is created. I think the theme was seen Cabaret, but I believe that it was a meditation on the rise of Nazism during the Weimar Republics kind of swinging days.
Yeah. Yeah, I always wanted to see Cabaret.
Yeah, well, let's go see it together for the first time.
Then I don't know that it's is it running? Is there a revival going on?
Oh man, I'm gonna get myself killed. I'm talking about the movie. There's movies for all of these pretty much, so we can just see the movie.
There really is. There's two West Side stories in fact.
Yeah, Steven Spielberg did one.
Yeah, it was good hair. We have to talk about hair from nineteen sixty eight. This is a musical that and Livia points us out it wasn't just commenting on what's going on in history at the time. It really helped kind of shape it in real time. It was the first rock musical something I'm a big, big fan of. Oh yeah, like the jukebox music. Juke juke box. I
have such a hard time with that. Musicals are okay, not my favorite, but those seventies Jesus Christ super Star and Joseph in the Amazing Technical or dream Coat and hair like that stuff is so groovy and so cool because it's like sixties and seventies.
Yeah, no, it is super groovy hair. If there's one word to describe hair, it's groovy, Yeah. If the other there's If you want one more word, it would be nude.
Yeah, or murkin' because that was in all the whole cast was nude, very famously in one scene. But it did help launch the careers of Diane Keaton was in that original production, as was meat Loaf, a man whose house I have been at.
Oh, of course, so I have no follow up questions whatsoever to that? Instead? Well, okay, what were you doing in Melof's house?
I'll tell you offline.
Okay. Cool. So Stephen Sondheim, who you already mentioned he was. He made a name for himself by writing the lyrics of West Side Story, but apparently his big breakout was something called Company, which was a bunch of vignettes about romantic relationships. I have not seen that one either. I feel like a rube talking about all these things that
I haven't seen. But I did read about it, and I read that if the whole thing starts at the main character's thirty fifth birthday party, he walks into the birthday party, and then these vignettes start, and then the thing ends, I think with him walking into the thirty fifth birthday party. To make it like this all took place in just a moment in time. All of these vignettes did super cool.
I have not seen it either. Sondheim also very well known for Sweeney Todd, the Demon, Barbara of Fleet Street.
I have seen that.
I have not seen that, but friend of the show Scott Ackerman highly recommends it, said it's like one of the best shows he's ever seen.
It's great.
Yeah, I gotta check it out.
A chorus line another movie that one's kind of meta. There was another concept musical where the whole thing takes place in an audition. Yeah, so the whole thing is about theater life, about theater people, but it's actually a musical show. Pretty cool.
Yeah, And that began a run in nineteen seventy five of like a dozen years where some of the giants of all time were launched. The chorus line Chicago in nineteen seventy five, Le Miz in nineteen eighty seven, Cats in nineteen eighty two, which we'll talk about that a little more in a sec and then Phantom in eighty eight. But Cats very famously was a very very long running show that like, some people love, some people hate, some people think it's brilliant, some people make fun of it.
But lyricist Tim Rice got together with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, the Weber Rice Team. They did the Amazing Technical or dream Coat Jesus Christ Superstar Avida, and then they said, hey, let's turn this T. S. Eliot Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats into a musical and have real people dressed up as cats.
Some people say, like, if you could build a time machine, what would you do? I would go back and prevent Andrew Lloyd Webber from having that thought.
I've never seen any iteration of cats. I want to see something.
It's the only time, outside of an airplane, where I tried to make myself go to sleep in public that I was like, I can't I can't even just sit here. Yes, it was at a performance, like I can't just sit here, Like I have to not be conscious for this. Oh boy, now I was too young to leave. I don't think I was driving at the time. Was with my family.
Oh no, you couldn't be like fake sick or anything.
No. I think I don't have a recollection of the show after a certain point, so I think I might have been successful in falling asleep.
Your dad would have been throw up in this bag, You'll be fine. And then Phantom was eighty eight, and I think that's it's another Andrew Lloyd Weber show. But I think that was one of the first ones to really ramp up, got real designy and included some special effects, and I think that kind of started that trend of making things a little bigger.
Yeah, for sure, that one I can sing along with basically from start to finish. I love that one d exactly. I knew exactly what you were doing, just think because I'm so familiar with it.
We tried to see Phanom at the Fox Theater here in Atlanta, and I actually just joined the Broadway season for next season. The season's run from May to May. I think on regular Broadway, I'm not sure about the Fox. I think it may be about the same. But we tried to go see Phantom years ago, but we're both
so distracted. It was when we were trying to buy our first house and we were obsessed with this house we were trying to get a bid on, and were It was just one of those deals where we were not there, our head was elsewhere, and we finally just looked at each other and we were like, we need to get out of here.
You should definitely see it again. It's a really great show. The music.
I gotta see it.
There's like a one ton chandelier that falls to the stage.
Like.
It's a good show. And I think you're right that it did kick off kind of the mega productions ran for thirty five years, and as far as I know, it holds the record still for the most performances at thirteen nine and eighty one.
Wow.
Remember Oklahoma said something at like twenty two hundred before.
Oh yeah, that's I mean impressive at the time, but yeah, that's thirty five years is impressive.
It's pretty amazing. So yeah, I love that show. I'm just gonna say it probably five more times throughout this.
So we got to talk a little bit about Times Square. Even before the seventies came along, it was a pretty rowdy place, and the early teens that was a one am curfew because it was such a rowdy place. There were speakeasies there during Prohibition, burlesque in the thirties, and then from the sixties and into the nineties. I think I've mentioned this before. When I first started going to New York in the mid nineties, there were still peep
shows there. It was right before the final cleanup happened thanks to a few different mayors, but Mayor ed Koch, certainly David Dinkins, and then eventually Giuliani would finish up the work of cleaning up Time Square.
Yeah, David Dinkins was the one who I think maybe had the biggest impact or we should mention John Lindsay. In the early seventies, he created a text incentive where if you built in Times Square a new building, you could get a pretty good text break, but you had to build a theater on the ground floor to try to bring the theater back to the area. I thought
that was a pretty ingenious idea. But to me, David Dinkins probably had the biggest impact, good or bad by making a deal with Michael Eisner, who was running Walt Disney at the time, and he said, just do your thing here, Disney, Like, we got a lot of perverts running around here. We need some Disney to counterbalance this stuff and maybe even overwhelm it. And it worked, like if you pour enough Disney onto an area, yeah, the perverts just turn and run.
Right. So they started they dip their toe in the pond with renovating and renting out the New Amsterdam Theater, which at that point New York City had acquired in nineteen ninety two as part of the forty second Street development program. Because it was one of those that followed the for less theater than movie theater than porn theater model.
I don't know if that was an official model, and then as they were remodeling that in ninety four, before they were finished, Disney opened Beauty and the Beast at the Palace Theater, of course, the adaptation of the ninety one animated film, and it was almost a twelve million dollar budget, the most expensive musical ever at the time, and ended up running for about thirteen years to total grosses of about four hundred and thirty mil.
That's just insane even today, but this was the mid nineties.
Yeah, I mean the returns on Broadway. If you can get a smash hit going, you know, it's not like you have to sink two hundred million dollars into it like you do a big budget movie.
Yeah, there's a lot of front loaded. But then yeah, after you get it up and running and it's going, it can just go by itself, basically.
For sure, should we take our second break?
Oh jeez, I wasn't expecting that, but sure, let's do that.
All right, We'll be right back and finish up on Broadway right after this.
Stuffy Jaws.
All right, So Broadway you can go for Escape of Spare you always have been able to. You still can. But starting in the mid nineties with Rent, people really started tackling some heavier topics. Jonathan Larson's rock musical talked about addiction and suicide and poverty and aids about Rent was another one I left. It was fine, but it was another situation where I was with friends and everyone. I can't remember. There was some weird distraction where everyone's like,
do you want to leave? I think our seats were bad or something, and it just wasn't happening. But I want to see Rent again. Larson very tragically died at thirty five years old of an aortic aneurysm the night before it premiered off Broadway. I know that's insane, Just a brutal, brutal story.
Yeah, because it's such a legendary show. To just have this show that you probably I'm sure he was like, I think this is going to be big and then he dies right before even seeing it perform once. That's just sad to me, very sad. And then another thing
that kind of came along. There were plenty of escapist shows, we should say, and there still are, and a really good example from fairly recent times is Mama Mia, which is one of those jukebox it is hard to say, isn't it a jukebox musical, which is it takes existing songs everybody knows and loves and then puts creates like a musical around them. And Mama Mia did that back in two thousand and one with Abba songs.
Yeah, and then you know, I haven't seen many of those, but they did one of like the eighties rock. The Billy Joels had one, Bob Dylan had.
One, don't forget a Dee Snyder from Twisted's sister had rock.
Yeah, that's when I met the eighties rock one that was rockabates right. But you know, it's a thing I prefer something with. I mean, they have stories built around the songs, like you said, so they can be okay, but I prefer something something a little more straight ahead, not based like original music, I guess is what I'm trying to do.
Yeah, there's some good ones. So there's a there's a Carol King basically bio musical that I didn't either. I didn't either, big.
Fan of Wicket, still recommend it. Finally saw it last year on Broadway.
Uh.
Unfortunately it was not the wickedly talented Adele Desime, but that's where she made her name, along with who was the original? Was it Kristin chenow with I believe.
Yes it was.
Yeah.
I always loved her in uh, Pushing Up Daisies. Do you remember that show?
I do, but I did not see that.
Oh you should go back and watch it. I saw it not too long ago, and it really holds up. It is a very charming show.
We should call this episode Josh and Chuck haven't seen.
This, Yeah, pretty much, just put a colon before it and we can add that.
Okay, Hamilton is one I did not see, but we would be remiss if we did not mention it because it was such a landmark play Lynn Manuel Miranda. Of course, that one hip hop into historical context on Broadway, which is a huge smash it. And I saw it on the you know, the TV version of the film the musical, so and listen to it quite a bit, but I never saw it live.
That's okay, Chuck, I'll let you the hook. It was too expensive, Yeah, it really was, wasn't it. Those were some high priced tickets for a while because everybody was talking about that show well and.
It was all sold out, So the only way to get tickets was to pay like twelve hundred bucks at the time. It would probably be even more now, but now you can go see it, and I bet you can get tickets for regular price.
Sure. I got to mention this one. I've not seen this, believe it or not, everybody. It's called Dear Evan Hanson.
It's from twenty sixteen, but I did read a couple of articles on it, and it sounds totally off the wall, where the title character is mistaken for the best friend of a teenager who's just died by suicide, and so he suddenly becomes very popular and like everybody wants to know what this kid was like, and he uses it to basically become popular and liked, whereas otherwise he was just kind of overlooked, you know, kid on the sides, and there's all this horrible stuff that starts to happen
and unravels, and I think he's publicly unmasked at some point.
Yeah, I need that's on my list. A couple of good friends have seen it and said it's great, So I'm gonna go see that soon. I hope these these make a lot of money. Like I said, Wicked set
a weekly record in December of this past year. Obviously, buoyed by the popularity of the movie, but the first ever show to have a five million dollar week and last season, the twenty three to twenty four season again ran from May to May, total grosses of one point five to four billion dollars more than twelve million attendees over seventy one productions, with an average occupancy of eighty nine point nine, so that they're you know, the average
Broadway show isn't even sold out. It's close to ninety percent.
Wow. Can we talk about a few flops?
Yeah, I'm going to pick out a couple of these. I'm going to pick out Moose Murder from nineteen eighty three. It is a farce, obviously, but it was bankrolled by an oil heiress named Lily Robertson and directed by her husband and starring the oil heiress Lily Robertson who bankrolled it, which should tell you it's not headed toward a great thing.
Also because it's called Moose Murders and it closed after one single performance, and New Yorker art critic Brendan Gill said that it would insult the intelligence of an audience consisting entirely of Amba's.
Yeah, I read about that it seems like it was just a completely amateur production from start to finish, like everybody was basically had no idea what they were doing. And if you want to just be delighted, go read articles about the flop that was Moose Murders, because it's widely considered like the worst show that ever hit Broadway
in a lot of ways. Though it's tough to qualify that, because there's plenty of bad shows out there and some have been forgotten, but for some reason, Moose Murders just became like the symbol for the worst shows on Broadway.
Yeah, I mean there's different ways to qualify it, like is it just bad bad or is it notoriously flop because of how much money it costs? Then it flopped. That was the case with a couple of them. But Kerry An adaptation of the Stephen King horror novel as a musical in nineteen eighty eight, closed after sixteen previews and five regular performances at an eight million dollar budget. So it's it's widely considered one of the biggest sort of just expensive flops of all time.
Yeah, there's a song about killing a pig in it. I think to get the blood to pour on. Yeah, and the lyrics it's a simple little gig, you help me kill a pig.
Yeah, And believe it or not that it wasn't like an amateurist production. It was directed by Terry Hans, who ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for thirteen years, and was choreographed by Debbie Allen. So it was a big money thing that just was sounds like not a very good idea.
It was a terrible idea and I'm rid it was terribly executed too in the end that they just you know, they really tried though. I think that's the difference.
Well, it has been revived with cult status off Broadway like in the twenty tens, So it's one of those.
I would go see that. I would go see that.
Yeah.
And then I think the biggest flop as far as money goes is Spider Man Turn Off the Dark from twenty eleven. That's another one that just anybody who has anything to do or any interest in Broadway they know about this flop. Yeah.
I mean that had all the right ingredients to Broadway legend and film director Julie Taymor, who directed The Lion King on Broadway. They got Bono in the edge to write the music. It was huge special effects and it was just problem after problem after problem all like you know, kind of front page or at least front page of the arts headline kind of problems.
Yeah, So when you're performing a show or putting on a production, you have what are called previews where people can come. The critics are not allowed to see it yet, but normal people can come and watch it, but under the understanding that they're going to be stopping in the middle of performance, taking notes, maybe giving notes. There's going to be technical glitches, and it's they're working it out
still in front of an audience. And I think the first preview of Spider Man went three and a half hours for the first act alone, and there were It holds the record for the largest number of previews, more previews that have, the more problems you have. Obviously it had one hundred and eighty two preview shows before it ever opened.
Yeah, and I've been to some previews. I saw Sarah, Jessica Parker and Broderick do the which one was it? The Neil Simon one a couple of years ago, and that was in previews. Don't let like the idea of a preview turning off because like usually they just straight through and it's just like a regular performance. Like I've never seen a preview that where anyone stopped and did
anything weird. And critics do actually see those because they will review the show before opening night because they have seen the preview.
Okay, I thought I've read somewhere that critics are not allowed, So maybe there's like a special preview.
Or maybe a window or something. Yeah, yeah, that would be my guess. I'm not sure how that works, but I know it's always I'm not sure if it's like movies. I know movies, sometimes they won't let the critics see it before it's release, and that always means it stinks. Yeah, so I'm not sure if Broadway does that or not.
Actually, well, Chuck, that's Broadway. We could keep talking about this for hours and hours and hours, but I feel like we we probably haven't seen most of the stuff we would talk about.
I've seen quite a few in recent years, and I'll be going to more and more, so maybe we'll revisit this in ten years and I'll be more up to speed.
Okay, fair enough, sounds good, and we'll have seen carry together by then.
I hope so. And before we end, I think we would be remiss if we didn't mention that we recently learned that we have, like for sure, literally inspired not one, but two Broadway shows from this show.
Right, Yeah, it's pretty amazing, Chuck. I think we first learned about it in Town and Country magazine. They did an article called how a secret British spy mission became a Broadway hit, and I think someone sent it to us and I was like, oh, that's interesting, And as I read a little deeper, I found that they mentioned us specifically as the inspiration for this hit musical.
Yeah, that's amazing. And the other one we found out from the producers of the show they emailed us the one I think is it off Broadway on Tzacho and Vinzetti.
Right, that's right, Yeah, so big thanks to those guys for letting the world know that we helped inspire that, because that is quite an honor. And I think we would also be remiss to not say, break a leg. That's right. Do you have anything else?
I have nothing else?
Okay, Well, since Chuck said he has nothing else and neither do, I think it's time for listener now.
Yeah, I'm going to call this rare shout out. We don't do shout outs much just because we get a lot of requests too, and it would just be shout outs every week, but this one touched me. And this is from Cody in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hey, guys. In twenty eighteen, my dad passed away, leaving behind my mom, who, after fifty four years of marriage, had never lived alone.
She struggles with grief and anxiety induced insomnia as a result, so I suggested she listened to Stuff You Should Know for middle to night companionship to help her get her mind off her troubles. She did, and she's been a huge fan ever since. She calls you my guys, and this parasocial relationship has been a true life saver for her. When I call her up day or night, the podcast is off and on in the background, keeping your company
while she does dishes or rests. Y'all are about the same age as me and my brother, so she feels like and she feels an anti like affection for you. Her eightieth birthday is in April, and I believe we've already missed it by the time this would come out.
But I've been struggling with what to do for her as a fun surprise outside the party she's having this week, and Cody asked for us to send like a video or something, but I said, how about this, We'll do a rare shout out and say hello to your wonderful mother on her eightieth birthday, Bonnie Nichols. Bonnie, we love you and we feel like you are Auntie Bonnie as well, and it makes me feel really happy to know that you're out there with us listening to us, so that
parasocial relationship goes both ways. So happy birthday, Auntie.
Yeah, happy birthday, Bonnie. You can't see me right now, but I'm making a heart out of my hands.
Yeah, that's lovely.
That's really great. Seriously, thanks for listening to us, Bonnie. I'm glad we could help and keep you company. And if you want to be like Bonnie, Wait, who was it that road in her son?
Yeah it's Cody.
Cody. If you want to be like Cody and tell us about the Bonnie in your life, we love to hear that kind of stuff. You can send it via email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.