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[0:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Lucie, I could literally sit and listen to you tell stories all day. You're one of my favorite storytellers. I remember the first time I met you, we were at some little function for one of the benefits that we were doing together, and I somehow got seated with you and three other people, and I just sat there in silence, because you guys were telling so many great stories. It was amazing. But can I tell you a story real quick?

[0:29] Lucie Arnaz: Yes, of course.

[0:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay, so when I first started this podcast, I wanted to try and walk this line of not alienating people who don't necessarily eat, drink, and live musical theatre, but also not bore the super serious fans. And so I tried to build in Easter eggs in the structure of the show, and if you see them and you get it, then you got it, and if you didn't, it's no big deal. Big deal. Character in West Side Story, Bob Fosse's last musical, that sort of thing, right? So the name of Musical Theatre Podcast is An Ode to a Chorus Line. The logo, which you can see on my shirt here, is an ode to I Can Get It For You Wholesale. And when it came time to create the theme song, I was a little stuck with that one. I didn't want it to sound like solely Golden Age. So Michael Willett, who wrote the music for me, asked, well, what would little Jeffrey be excited to hear each episode? And pretty quickly, I said The Overture to The Witches of Eastwick.

[1:33] Lucie Arnaz: See? Oh, wow.

[1:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right? Random. It feels, I don't know why, but it has always felt super magical. It's everything. It's dark. It's exciting. It's funny. And then it's twisted. And it's everything The Witches of Eastwick is. So that's what he did. And listeners, that's what you've been listening to for almost a hundred episodes now. And that's what you're about to hear, our theme music that begins with a little ode to The Witches of Eastwick.

[2:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome, everybody, to A Musical Theatre Podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theatre history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. Today, we are discussing the musical The Witches of Eastwick, which is obviously a personal fave, but was also a listener request from Cathro. I think I'm saying that correctly. From Brisbane. Did you say Brisbane or Brisbane? I don't know. In Australia. Brisbane. Brisbane. Brisbane, Australia, who actually caught the reference in the theme music. So well done, Cathro. Here to discuss this really fun show is a star of TV, film, and definitely musical theatre. She originated Sonja in They're Playing Our Song and also starred in Pippin and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on Broadway. Everyone, please welcome Emmy winner, Golden Globe nominated. How cool is that, by the way? We just had the Golden Globes. Yeah. And one of the original Witches of Eastwick. It's Lucie Arnaz.

[3:14] Lucie Arnaz: Yay! It's me. I'm here. Lucy, thank you so much for being here. I love it. Thank you.

[3:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: This is fun. Let's get this out of the way right at the top. You come from a showbiz fam.

[3:28] Lucie Arnaz: I do.

[3:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You do. And a family that has some Broadway running through its veins. So your father, Desi Arnaz, your mom, Lucille Ball, for those who may not know, I love Lucy fame, right? Had Broadway musicals. And so, and by the way, I want to shout out TCM's amazing podcast that you're on. That's all about your mom. It's incredible.

[3:50] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah, that was amazing, wasn't it? He did a great job.

[3:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh my gosh, it's fantastic. So if you want to hear more from Lucy about her parents, please listen to that amazing podcast. The Plot Thickens is what it's called.

[4:11] Lucie Arnaz: The Plot Thickens Lucy slash Lucy.

[4:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. But I would love to hear about what they thought of musical theater and how you grew up with it at home.

[4:17] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah, it's interesting because they met, my father did one Broadway show called Too Many Girls. Boy, boy, oh boy, was that a time. The story of his life. And then they sent him to Hollywood to make the film of Too Many Girls. And that's when he met my mother. So they actually met because of a Broadway musical. And Too Many Girls appeared, when it was on Broadway, at the Imperial Theater, where I did my Broadway debut, and They're Playing Our Song and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. How weird is that? And my mother did Wildcat. Another wild show. He actually produced part of it and was involved in it. She was on Broadway for a year and change and took us with her. And so we saw a lot of shows during that time.

We saw her show 27 times. And then I would go around on different days with my grandmother or whatever. And we would see Once Upon a Mattress with Carol Burnett. We saw the original Music Man with Robert Preston. We saw Miracle Worker with Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft. Just an incredible education when you're that young. I was nine. And then I was 15, and I went back to New York during the time I was on the Here's Lucy show with my mother. But I had some sort of public relations to do. And I was in New York, and I went to see Maine. I went to see Angela Lansbury in Maine. Which is weird, because my mother ended up doing the movie later on, like many years later. Degrees of everything. I saw Angela Lansbury walk down those stairs in the opening number, and I went, this is what I do.

It just was very clear to me. Before that, it was just fun, sort of a hobby. I chose my high school because they had a good drama department. And it was on my mother's show because I could learn a little bit, but I didn't know what I was going to do with all that. And I saw her and that whole thing and the overture and the people. And I said, that's a career there. This is what I do. This is what I do. Oh my God, this is what I do. And it was so different from my father and my mother, because they had done shows, but they never wanted to go back. They didn't really say, oh, I got to go back to Broadway. My mother was, she always said things like, oh God, I might get stuck in a hit. I might get stuck in a hit.

Can you imagine? Too much work. And my dad would have preferred to have been singing all the time, doing his shows. Even when he was on Broadway, he was doing three shows a night at the La Conga Club. So I was the only one who really went towards theater, but they both encouraged it like crazy, because they had such respect for people who could do that. They both understood that this was a lot of work for not much money or esteem. Yeah, comparatively speaking, it's like, I want to say it's missionary work in some respects.

[7:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Look, there's a lot of sacrifice.

[7:21] Lucie Arnaz: You know, really, compared to movies and television and all the money you can make and the residuals and all this stuff, we work really, really hard. We're on idle all day long, even if we're not working all day, we're getting ready to work. And when we get there, it's hours of prep and do and come down, and you have to be at the top of your game. It's got to be perfect every time. And you've got to live like a nun, you know, unless you're young and they're playing our song and you don't know that yet, in which case you get really tired and lose your voice, which almost happened once, but never actually did. So I was the person in the family that they could sort of look to, to represent theater, because music was represented, television was represented, production was represented, and I had theater. And that made me very happy that that was my Ballywick, you know, that was my corner.

[8:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's fantastic. I love that so much. I was just thinking about it, because I, even when you go back and watch I Love Lucy, there's the entire episode that revolves around Most Happy Fella, or...

[8:26] Lucie Arnaz: Interestingly enough, Jeff, that whole show was like doing musical theater. It's not surprising that I felt comfortable in the genre, because they rehearsed like in a compact way, it was a week, not three weeks, maybe, but you rehearse just like you rehearse a play. And you do it from start to finish, just like you do a play. And there was music on almost every show, and there was live music at the, you know, the filming every week. And it felt like a compressed version of theater. So when I got out and did Summerstock and regional theater, I felt very much at home, like, oh, I've been doing this forever. Interesting, because it's live, you're performing for a live audience, you're rehearsing, you're not going to stop and go, oh, can we do that again?

You know, I screwed that up. Can I do that? You don't get to do that in theater. And we didn't do that on our show. Other shows do. Today, you go to a screening, you know, you go to the taping, filming, whatever they call it today.

[9:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Give her another take.

[9:22] Lucie Arnaz: The audiences stay there for eight hours. It's insane. They just keep doing things over and over and over again. And it's embarrassing. And they abuse the privilege of having a live audience. You know, why even have anybody there?

[9:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow.

[9:34] Lucie Arnaz: But yeah, so I'm just saying it was like live theater always, strangely.

[9:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's right. Who knows if this will go in the podcast. But one thing that I find is always missing from our musical theater canon is music like the stuff your dad did. So any chance that there's like a Desi Arnaz musical in the future?

[9:55] Lucie Arnaz: Well, we were writing one along several years ago, my husband and I decided that it would be a great way to tell the Lucy Desi story through his eyes. It would be, you know, different. Most people know a lot about her, but they don't know a lot about what he struggled with and the revolution and coming here with nothing and creating what he created, meeting her, the whole music scene, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s. And we were just calling it Desi the musical. But so many things happened during that time. And other people were doing Lucy, Desi. And I just said, there's too much. It's raining Lucy and Desi. I can't be the person doing yet another. So we shelved it, but we got a really good script we could still do to this day. And then, of course, last year, it truly was raining Lucy and Desi.

[10:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: There was a lot of saturation.

[10:41] Lucie Arnaz: It was a lot. It was good stuff.

[10:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It was really great content.

[10:46] Lucie Arnaz: But yeah, there should be a musical. It's like On Your Feet, you know, and it was the story of Gloria. It was great to hear that music. Strangely enough, when my father and his Desi and his orchestra were performing, they were finding their material primarily from Broadway. That's what people did. You know, there were many more songs covered from Broadway shows, maybe an occasional movie, but mostly from Broadway shows, all those great composers writing for Broadway. And then the singers, there weren't as many singer songwriters.

[11:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right. So singers would look to who's writing great music and they would go to Broadway.

[11:24] Lucie Arnaz: And my father's band always had this ability to play, quote unquote, American music, but with this Latin feel that made it a whole other thing, you know, which is what I always loved about it.

[11:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So in many ways, it's giving people something they know, something they're comfortable with, but then make it a little spicy.

[11:40] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[11:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's so cool. Well, thank you for talking about that with me. I've always been curious. So now, obviously, your amazing career, which continues to this day, also includes The Witches of Eastwick, which feels like, look, this is what I'll say about this show. If the success of a musical was based solely on how badly its diehard fans wanted it to succeed, The Witches of Eastwick would be huge. And I mean, in terms of success, because this show was huge. The production couldn't have been bigger. But just in terms of everybody knowing it, it's still a show that people really want to see it have its day and maybe still hasn't gotten there. But if you go back and listen to the cast album, the beautiful cast album that you guys produced, it's just full of so many yummy goodies.

[12:39] Lucie Arnaz: I agree. I agree. And I think if they go back, as they did once, I think John Dempsey, who wrote the book and the lyrics, and Dana Rowe wrote the music, they went back and did a production of it somewhere. It could have been here, somewhere in the Midwest, I forget, and used their original script.

[12:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, interesting.

[12:59] Lucie Arnaz: And the original script, I thought, was perfect. I thought it was flawless. I mean, it really, I say in my show when I talk about this, that it captured the sexiness and the fun and the darkness all together, like the movie with Jack Nicholson. So spot on. It was a perfect.

[13:20] Lucie Arnaz: Take that film. How do I make that into a musical? What songs do I musicalize? What scenes do I musicalize, right? I thought they did a spectacular job of that. I think it got twisted somehow when we got over to London. And I had a great time. I was very fortunate to be in. I was the only American cast in that show, which was an oddity. But they have a way of sending up American stories. Do you know what I'm saying? We're doing America.

[13:49] Yeah. If we were doing it here, we would look at New England and the witch hunt and all this stuff that it's supposed to be about, and bigotry and racism and whatever, all that, you know, otherness. We don't like othernesses. And we would take it on, you know, in a comical, but it ain't that funny kind of way. There was something cartoonish about what happened to Witches of Eastwick on stage. Not always the music, because what was left of the music was okay, but it was the visual and what it felt like. It felt, in the big picture, in the long run, a little too cartoonish. And that's what I heard from many, many people who came to see it. And you know how they're like, they wonder why it didn't come here.

And you go, well, when there's a musical in London, and people are running from here to go see it, and then they come back and they go, what'd you see? And you list and you go, Oh, how was that? And you go, Oh, my God. Or you go, it was good. We got a lot of, it was good. And that's not good enough. You know, that doesn't create the buzz that people, Oh, it's got to come here. It's got to.

[14:52] And then we had problems while we were over there too, because it was mad cow disease after we opened. So people didn't want, remember that? Mad cow. That's right. So nobody wanted to go to London because like, you can't eat the meat. You know, you can't go out to dinner. You can't go in. And then there was a tube strike. So it was like the entire subway system went on strike so they could get to the theatre. And that was rotten. Because we got some pretty good-

[15:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Rotten timing.

[15:19] Lucie Arnaz: Rotten timing. And Cameron McIntosh, bless him, kept putting his own money in during that time. So we'll just get through this. We'll get through this. But it's like it never quit. And so that combined with the fact that somehow the show twisted its intent, I want to say, you know?

[15:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Sure. Sure. That's fascinating.

[15:41] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah. So the show, based on John Updike's novel, The Witches of Eastwick, which came out, I believe, in 1984, was a huge hit and then became a movie a couple years after, which it blows my mind that George Miller, the guy who did all of the Mad Max movies, did this film version of The Witches of Eastwick. It's crazy to me. And I recently went back to watch it because it was on HBO Max. And I had seen it before, but coming at it with 2022 energy, the things that kind of came out to me, and by the way, just a very brief synopsis, because we will go through the show, three women, small town, get seduced by the devil and then realize their power to defeat him.

[16:29] That's the pitch. Going back and-

[16:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's the pitch, the elevator pitch.

[16:33] Lucie Arnaz: Going back and see the movie, though, the two things that really came out to me, number one, how horny this movie is. This would never get done nowadays on that kind of a scale. It's so expensive. It has so much money behind it. It's a gorgeous looking movie. And they're talking about sex, honestly, the entire time. But also, number two, how kind of unsettling it is. The death scene with all of the cherry pits, the woman, Vomino, it's actually, I don't get any satisfaction about watching that woman go through that. It's quite disturbing. So it's this, like you're saying, it's this combination of sexy and scary, and also really beautifully produced stuff as well.

[17:22] A fascinating IP that has also been a little controversial because I think that people are interested as to what the intention of the show is, or of this story. Is it a send up of small town America? Is it a takedown of the patriarchy? Is it a story of women empowerment? Or is it ultimately just showing that women's lives constantly revolve around a man?

[17:48] Yes.

[17:55] Lucie Arnaz: Yes. Thank you, everyone. Good night. I think you analyzed it very well. And I think it's a little bit of all that stuff, which good musicals, good stories really are. It talks about this, talks about that. You can look at it from all those angles. It's women, I think in the long run, what do we learn? We learn that women can empower themselves to say, no, I don't have to do what you tell me to, even though you made me feel kind of great that you told me that. But you've been saying that to everybody, so I don't trust you. And you have ulterior motives, and I'm going to do what's right for me. And I'm going to get the guts and the courage to get that out of my life. Whatever that represents, like, is the devil a devil?

Is the devil a person? Is the devil an addiction? What is it that they are fighting against? Something that gave them power, showed them how beautiful they were, showed them how powerful. My God, we can do that? We can do that? It's almost like, sure, it could be a little bit of what goes on with women's lib and everything. For years, women just believed that they shouldn't do this, they shouldn't do that, they can't do this, they mustn't do that. And then it's like, wait a minute, we can? Oh, and we do? And we're good at it? What? That's exciting. And then wait a minute, you can't tell us we can't do that. We already found out we can, stop it. Can't put it back. No. And there was something about this wonderful spirit, let's call him, that came in and gave them all of this stuff.

But then he wanted to manipulate it, and he didn't want them to do what they wanted to do. And he wanted to control them and make them do this. And they went, whoa, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don't get to do that. We're still in charge, right? They got in over their heads. And then they realized that what they were asking for was not all it was chalked up to be, it was something else entirely. And so in a way, it is kind of like addiction, isn't it? It's like something that makes you feel really good, and you feel empowered, and I could do so much more when I'm on this drug. And then you go, God, this drug is screwing me over. It's ruining my life. I got to get rid of this.

[20:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Taking over my life.

[20:03] Lucie Arnaz: It's so easy to get rid of the demon, right? It's not so easy to step aside from the darkness. And he represents the darkness.

[20:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's great.

[20:12] Lucie Arnaz: Darkness can be very seductive. One of the things that I was thinking about is how we can't really choose when either privilege or trauma comes into our life, but we can decide what to do with it.

[20:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right. Exactly.

[20:32] Lucie Arnaz: Here are these women who have conjured up this entity, this energy that brings them a lot, but then it is ultimately up to them to decide what they do with it and decide if it's going to continue with them for the rest of their lives or not.

[20:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. We all have an enormous power inside of us. We don't even realize how much power we all have. Spirit-like almost, like magical. Magical stuff. How do we use it? What do we do with that? Because we can do bad stuff with it because we're very powerful people and we can use our words and we can use seductive techniques and our creativity and we can put it to terrible use and destroy things or we can put it to good use and help people. It's our choice. It's all about choices.

[21:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's great.

[21:20] Lucie Arnaz: All right. Let's actually talk through the show because I think so many things are going to come up, including some of your crazy experiences flying over the audience, all of those sorts of things I want to touch on. The show begins, obviously, with the Overture, but we're introduced to this town of Eastwick. A little conservative New England town.

[21:43] Lucie Arnaz: Which I think is important because when we do talk about the history of the Salem witch trials and things like that, New England has kind of a history. I think that's where they said it in the film and we didn't mess with that. That's what it was and so that's what we did. There's a Protestant-ness about it, like a very Puritan-ness about this particular town and the woman who basically runs it and who creates... She's the tea party head and she's going to say what goes and what doesn't go for all intents and purposes.

[22:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So this woman that you're talking about, she's kind of the antagonist of the whole story. Her name's Felicia.

[22:19] Lucie Arnaz: Felicia. She ends up with the cherries, like you said before.

[22:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, yeah. Poor thing. And she's definitely the town busybody, but also in many ways is like a Daryl in terms of control. She wants to control all of the elements of this town and how everything is seen and run, but I would say all from a superficial standpoint.

[22:41] Lucie Arnaz: Totally. Totally. She wants everything to look perfect, but not necessarily be perfect, because deep down she knows that's not possible. I mean, her marriage, for example. And she's so upright and asexual in that respect. She can't imagine that women are having a thing with this guy and she's probably very attracted to him herself and she can't even let herself believe that. And she's married to a nebishy guy who, he's smart, but she overpowers him all the time. It's like once upon a mattress, the queen and the mute king.

[23:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The queen. You're totally right. You're absolutely right. Her husband is actually having an affair with one of the witches themselves. Now, do you feel like these three women who kind of make up this coven, the character that you played, Alexandra, and then there's also Sookie and Jane, these three women who are a little ostracized by the town, who feel very different, who feel that there's not a place for them as we discover in the opening number, Eastwick knows, but do you think that they are witches from the get go?

[23:43] Lucie Arnaz: I always lived in the metaphor of the play. I didn't really ever think we're witches, even though we had spells and dry ice all over the stage. I just always felt that we were somewhere in our head. We were somewhere in our head about trying to find our power. That's all. And we were women who were to some extent uptight, just like the rest of the town. Maria Friedman, she was uptight. She was having an affair, but not like a salacious, hey, baby, affair. She was just like, oh, she can't even speak three words. And Joanna Writing played Jane. And Jane was uptight in her own, I'm in my music, and I couldn't possibly. And then she has a forehead on all three of them. It's tight sexuality. The play is about that a lot.

And it's about, as I say, the Tea Party, the far right, whatever, the evangelical religion people who take away the joy from everything that has anything to do with your body or your mind. Fear-based religion. You're going to go straight to hell. Don't ever let a man touch you there. All those crazy things. And it's all about that. So I don't think they were witches. I think they were women who had not discovered their sexuality yet.

[25:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And do you know what? This is so cool, because I had never put this together. All three are artists in their own way. Alex is a sculptor. She's a sculptress. Jane is a musician. Suki is a writer, right? All of these women are in a creative field in a town where creativity, the actual act of creation is totally against the rules. And the first scene that the three women have together is a girls' night out. They seem to have their weekly get-together. And they are immediately talking about sex. These are women getting together and having real conversations. Where do we go? I'm trying to think of another musical before this that did that, where women just got together and spoke frankly about sex. I'm not entirely sure I can think of one off the top of my head.

[25:52] Lucie Arnaz: Well, did we speak frankly about it? I don't remember that part. I read the script. There are two scripts online that I ran into. The one that I followed most closely to the cast recording is the one that I think that you had. Jane says to you, because everybody's having an affair with somebody, and Suki says, it's not like I'm not trying to steal him away from his family, Alex. It's just sometimes I need someone. And then Jane says, it's no different than you. And what's his name this week? Meaning like Alexander's constantly getting some. And then you said, or Alexander says,

[26:39] Lucie Arnaz: Just making up for lost time since the divorce, Jamie.

[26:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I don't remember any of this dialogue. This sounds like a script that was done somewhere else.

[26:46] Lucie Arnaz: Oh, really? Maybe.

[26:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, okay. Interesting. So, maybe they made it a little bit more sexy time. I don't know. Anyway.

[26:55] Lucie Arnaz: They may have because I don't remember that. I think that would have changed the focus of who we were and why we were there. That's bizarre.

[27:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Interesting. Okay, cool.

[27:05] Lucie Arnaz: It is interesting. I didn't know that they had done that, but it doesn't surprise me. When you think a musical didn't work and you want to do it again somewhere, people start messing with the book and make it, oh, well, let's make it more about this. Let's make it more about that. But apparently that didn't work either because nobody's doing it.

[27:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. So, this is interesting. So, what you remember is this idea that these three women are artists who are trapped from exploring that true passionate side of themselves.

[27:26] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah, they're stuck. They're stuck in a lot of ways. They're just stuck. They're stuck with their martini glasses and this ridiculous thing they do every night. The town thinks they're too wacky, too hippie, too boring, too something. I don't know what, but unlike them. And they just have each other and then they dream about the Prince Charming like women do as if a Prince Charming is going to freaking make you perfect. Well, you got to find your guy. If you find your guy, then your life is going to be fine. I think this is all about, no, I'm actually okay by myself. And how cool that, speaking of the song, when they're talking about who could this person be, you can't really escape the culture that you're swimming in. Even if you are an artist, even if you have these great dreams, these women are still living in this town. And so, of course, they're thinking maybe a man could solve the problems. Because you're still swimming in the culture.

[28:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, absolutely. So, this Night of Conjuring brings out, literally, maybe from hell, Daryl is the man's name. Thoughts on this guy? Because he has to be a little bit disgusting and a little bit charming. You know what I mean? That's that Jack Nicholson type.

[28:57] Lucie Arnaz: Every woman's favorite bad boy. Yeah. Gals have their bad boy period. You know, I certainly did. And you're just going to go after them because they're trouble. And it's sexy. It's hot. Until you realize it's not. It's actually terrible. It is terrible. You can get hooked on the kind of, there's a look in their eye. There's a great line from that Amy Schumer movie, Trainwreck, where she's like, I should be with the best sex of my life guy. And her sister's like, no, the best sex of your life guy's in jail. You don't want that guy.

[29:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Sometimes you can have both.

[29:45] Lucie Arnaz: There you go. Sometimes you can marry both. And it doesn't mean it stays that way for 43 years. Because you get over it after a while. And it's like, eh, doesn't matter. That shit doesn't matter anymore. But if you keep looking for that, you will never find longevity. You have to start with friendship and kindness and then hope that the rest of it works. So let's talk through these seductions. Because Daryl has his moment with each of these women separately, before they all realize that they've kind of joined a harem. The first one is your role, Alex. And what is the kind of end that he sees with her? Because he's very perceptive. I mean, you got to hand it to him.

[30:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: He tells her that she can be a great sculptress. And she doesn't believe that. She doesn't believe she really, she believes she'd like to think she has talent, but nobody else has ever said that. They don't like what she does. She makes these little boobie things that they don't know what this is. And they look at her crazy, like, why are you doing that with your life? And he comes in and lies to her, basically, and says, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. You're the most talented. So somebody who sees you for the first time, you know. And she doesn't trust it, because she's kind of the most weary of the three. But he wins her over. It's a hard win, because she wasn't as susceptible. But I guess she really needed to be told that she was good at what she did. You know, as different from the other girls had other problems, but she needed somebody to say, keep going, you're good.

[31:25] Lucie Arnaz: Do you think, because she's also the oldest of the three, do you think that plays into it at all?

[31:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, probably. I mean, we always said she was more the mothering of the three, and hence more worried about who this guy is and not trusting him. But also, she's older, and you know, time's fleeting, and she doesn't have her life together yet. And he really paints a picture that, you know, it's like, well, it's now or never. And maybe it's now, and maybe you're the guy. And then maybe it's all here. Maybe you're the one that makes this happen for me. I don't know. Wow. Amazing. That could happen.

[32:01] Lucie Arnaz: She, at least from the clips that I've seen online, and the scripts that I've gone through, you had so many great zinger lines, you know?

[32:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, she has.

[32:09] Lucie Arnaz: It reminds me of even like Muriel in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, just so many great lines. When did you realize that, like, you had that talent, that you had that ear, the rhythm for delivering those zingers? Because I think it's something you can, you can teach it, but like, you either got it or you don't.

[32:26] Lucie Arnaz: That's funny. Yeah, I think you either hear it naturally, and probably I grew up with it. You know, my mom was known as the drop gag gal when she was in movies, B pictures, before she was discovered to do great comedy and did I Love Lucy. And she was great at that. And I always loved those movies, you know, with the old dames that had to walk in a room, say something, slam the door, you know, Stage Door full of those people talking like that, love that movie. And so I understood that dry comedy, you know, say it, drop it. It's not funny, go. Because we didn't actually do that on the Lucy show wasn't like that. The I Love Lucy show wasn't like that. And Here's Lucy wasn't like that. There aren't very many scripts that I got a chance to do that were like that.

That is fun, fun to play people like that. It's so fun. And I, you know, for any of my Gen Zers who may be listening, go back and study these types of movies, because it's a sense of comedy that's really important to this art form. And it's, it's going to disappear if we don't, you know, it's great about what's great about that, that kind of comedy, is that underneath it is not a very happy person at the moment. Usually it's somebody a little ticked off. No, I'm not going to say something kind and sort of deal with it. They're going to go what that I bump up, you know, it's a rhythm. And I'm Cuban, you know, I was 50% Cuban, and my father's big in music. So I like lines that have rhythms, you know, I do.

[34:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's so true. Literally with I mean, what's the old ad is like, but I'm right. My stepfather, Gary Morton, he used to say something when he would think it was funny, and then they all died. Two, three, four.

[34:12] Lucie Arnaz: It would just count afterwards.

[34:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Two, three, four. Okay, moving right along.

[34:21] Lucie Arnaz: Oh, that's great. I love that. Okay, next seduction. We got Jane.

[34:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Next seduction. We got Jane who's, she plays the cello.

[34:33] Lucie Arnaz: The cello. Yes. And she plays it very rigidly. She's very technique based. And there's, it's just this amazing song that Joanna Riding did called Waiting for the Music to Begin. A great lyric. Oh my gosh, right? You're playing music, but you're actually waiting for the real music to begin. When does the passion take over? John Dempsey. Imagine? And there's nothing in the movie really that represents that. There's just an essence of it. There's nothing there that says that. And he found that and made that song happen. And you just see so much more about that character when it's musicalized like that. That's what we do in musicals. You know what I mean? You can do the deep dive into who this person is just with a lyric and the way you make the music. It's a just perfectly constructed song. It's so great. And Joanna Riding sings the crap out of it.

[35:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The, all three of you women, by the way, just sound phenomenal. You have this, such a unique, beautiful silvery tone that really is kind of the MVP, in my opinion, of the three-part harmonies, because you fit right in there so beautifully and make it just shimmer.

[35:43] Lucie Arnaz: Thank you so much. It was, you know, that was, I know you're not talking about this right now, but since you brought it up, one of the hardest things for all three of us to do, because there were three leading ladies in this show. And the musical director, David Kaddick, who does a lot of Cameron's shows, he kept reminding us that we are a chorus, that we are singing together. And we have to do three-part harmony, and we have to be concise with how we hit the notes. We can't improvise like all three of us do when we're doing our club acts or something like that.

[36:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh sure.

[36:15] Lucie Arnaz: Right? Oh, I think I'm going to over the bar here. I'm going to do, and we were all used to that. It's like, no, no, no, you're going to march in step. You know, you're part of a chorus line now. And it was fascinating, I mean, to really have to hit a note a certain way. And he's a taskmaster too, because, you know, if you weren't right there, right on it. And I was, you know, a year and a half of just really learning how to sing, which was great.

[36:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow. Well, like I said, all three are amazing. In this song, Daryl kind of helps unleash the beast, so to speak. And so Jane, while playing the cello, not only discovers her music, but discovers her orgasm as well. And it's, I mean, it's so great. You have to listen to it, everybody, if you don't already know it. The third seduction is with Miss Suki, and it's a little bit more innocent, because like you said, she is, she is timid. She can barely put together a sentence. And yet she's a writer. So she has this belief, this shadow belief, this story, this old story that she's telling herself that she can't find the words. And what a perfect way to embody that by creating a patter song.

[37:28] Lucie Arnaz: Mm hmm. I have to give it to Maria too, because I don't even remember what she sang before. But it seemed good enough. It seemed like a good song. And unbeknownst to the rest of us, she was meeting secretly with John Dempsey and Dana Rowe and saying, you got to give me a better song. I'm not going to play with this. I need a song. I need a song. I can kill a frickin' song, but this isn't the song I can kill. And she was right. Because it was a good song. Then she came back one day, and with that words, words, words, and we all went, excuse me? I didn't know there were other things on the menu. I thought, what's in front of us? You know, like, what? You got to do, what did you just do? How did she get that? How did she get to order a Showstopper off the menu?

[38:17] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's great. That's hilarious.

[38:21] Lucie Arnaz: No, no, she was right. And they listened, and they went, okay. She really lobbied for it. She was bold, and I wouldn't have had the guts. I'm like the girl with the coffee cup. Hi, I'm here. I'm going to learn my part, and I'm going to be good. She was like, yeah, I need a better song.

[38:37] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's a great song.

[38:42] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah. That's why I said more power to you, Maria. That's amazing. By the end of this song, she's talking so fast that you can't even believe it. She has found her word. She's found her voice, which I think is the end for giving into Daryl, is her gratitude for that. Even though she always had it, and I think that that's kind of the Wizard of Oz moment for all of you in this show, is that you always had it.

[39:05] Lucie Arnaz: That's right. That's exactly it. They're very similar in that respect. Somebody telling you the simplest thing that makes you go, oh, is that what it is? I had it all the time. Now, I got to hand it to John Updike, because he really did pick kind of the most salacious thing for it to happen in a small town, because I grew up in a small town. While there may have been little town gossip, there was nothing like this.

[39:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No.

[39:33] Lucie Arnaz: Which is that this stranger comes into town, buys the biggest house that sat empty forever, and has the three women join him constantly for little rendezvous. The whole town sees them coming and going and coming and going. That gives way to this huge production number, which, by the way, I listened to the cast album again for the thousandth time yesterday.

[39:58] Lucie Arnaz: All of these songs are huge numbers, like huge production numbers. This Dirty Laundry number goes on and on and on. So talk to me a little bit about the tech process of the show, because it was a biggie. Well, we rehearsed for this show for four months.

[40:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh my gosh. Yeah. When does that ever happen?

[40:19] Lucie Arnaz: Never. Never. Well, first of all, we had to fly. So there was that. So they allocated almost an entire three weeks just to us getting good enough to know what to do for this to work, and to be safe. And you've got to train a little bit. But it was a long process. I don't know if it was what they do in England. They give you more. It was a brand new musical. Did they give you more time? I don't know. But I went April, May, June, July. I got there in April, and we opened on my birthday, July 17. So four months. And Bob Avian was our choreographer, and Stephen Muir was his associate. Stephen Muir now is a huge choreographer in his own right.

[40:57] And you have Mary Poppins, most famously.

[41:00] Lucie Arnaz: They did several versions of each one of these numbers. You have no idea. We made so many changes during rehearsals, during previews. But the production numbers were insane, and they just kept getting bigger and bigger because of the ideas they had to what to do. And we had such an incredible chorus. The ensemble was so talented that Bob would throw something at them, Stephen, whatever, and they would just kill it. And he'd go, oh my God, well now we know we can do that. We can even do this. And it just kept growing and getting bigger and getting more wonderful. But you know, it's weird. There was even a whole new opening. There was an opening you never saw, with an empty stage and this ship that goes by in the background, to sort of set the scene of where we are in New England. And then you sort of zoom in, and you come up, and then you realize where you are. It's like an aerial view, and it was remarkable. The little girls singing at the top. They cut all of that.

[41:56] One night, they came in and they went, yeah, that's all gone.

[42:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: What do you mean? We're just going to open with the little girls singing.

[42:04] Lucie Arnaz: That was a lot of money. Like a million dollars just went out the door. I said, if somebody could just go run, catch that truck, you could put on a whole new musical with what we just gave away. Just look at what's there and create another show.

[42:15] And create another show with just that opening shot. There's so many props and so much set that just disappeared. Unbelievable.

[42:27] Yeah. And Cameron would come in sometimes, and they would have choreographed an entire scene, and the devil would be singing or doing whatever. And Cameron would go, that doesn't work. I don't like it. I just don't like that. And so Eric Schaefer, who had not worked with Cameron before, doesn't know that Cameron likes to do that. And that Cameron likes to come in and say what he thinks doesn't work, but Cameron doesn't always know how to fix it. He's a great producer, but he's not the director, but he likes to direct. Trevor Nunn's contract, I was told, it says that Cameron doesn't get to come to any of the rehearsals until they're about to open.

[43:04] Well, that's somebody who's worked with him before.

[43:07] Lucie Arnaz: He likes to say, do this, do this. He's like a too many cooks in the broth kind of thing. And some of his ideas are good, but you need a really strong director with a vision to say, I know, it doesn't work yet. We know how to fix it. But thank you. You're right. It doesn't quite work yet. And okay, I'll fix it. Instead of, well, what do you think we should do? Oh, well, I think you should cut that and make him do the, you know, like, the rest of us are going, no! You know, don't do that! You know, you cut what? You know, so.

[43:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Interesting.

[43:41] Lucie Arnaz: That's why I say it'd be interesting to see the original show put on with the original script, the original songs, except for Maria's words, words, words. I guess we'll switch that one. We'll give it to her. That was a good one.

[43:56] That's insane. Now, the one thing that I did see that is pretty easily found is the whole I Wish I May number, which is what comes up right now. The women have, you know, by joining forces, by all kind of agreeing that this is what we're doing, we're all going to be dating Daryl at the same time, that it's worth it. It's worth what I'm getting. And so you all kind of came forward in these huge ball gowns, which I don't know where you got these. I don't know if Daryl got them for you or what, but they're these gorgeous dresses, right? Exactly. Like I Dream of Jeannie.

[44:38] So you each come forward and you kind of tell a little story and song about who you were as a child and how you want to connect back to that girl. Once again, a huge number, very long number on the album, I think it's almost 10 minutes long, where you each have this story and then your voices combine and Daryl then uses that to teach you how to fly, how to tap into those wishes that you had when you were little. And it's how the first act ends. And to see you all fly, like it gives me goosebumps just to think about it, because you're all sitting on this sofa in your beautiful dresses with your eyes closed. And as your eyes close, you just slowly rise up off of the sofa and not only rise up into the air, but then you have patterns and traffic. There's traffic in the air as you come out into the audience and cross lines. And it's incredible. I know that this was a while ago, but this flying and these special effects hold up. I've never seen anything like it.

[45:47] Lucie Arnaz: That's why we had so much time in rehearsal with it, because it was kind of a new system. And they kept saying, it's very, very safe, very, very safe. If anything ever goes wrong, it automatically stops. It locks and it's not going to fall. Nobody's going to fall. It's just going to stop. And a few nights it did stop, to be clear.

[46:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh my God. I mean, you're laughing, but you say we're sitting on the couch and we close our eyes and the music, as you know, goes very orgasmic in tone, right?

[46:13] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah, sure. And then we lift off the sofa, except some nights we don't.

[46:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh gosh.

[46:22] Lucie Arnaz: A couple of nights we did not lift off the sofa and we had to just keep... And there's no way we can even get up and walk around because we're already connected from our weight to the wires. Because while we were sitting there having this dialogue, the crew is crawling around behind us, hooking up our gowns to the harness so that we can fly. And then they tap us on the side and we know, okay, we can... We're good to go. We're good to go. And then they leave. They crawl back into their hole, whatever. And then the music stops and we're supposed to lift off. But sometimes you don't. The live theater, man.

[47:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: What did you do? Did you just have to sell it?

[47:03] Lucie Arnaz: Absolutely no sense because the song just keeps modulating and getting bigger and more. And we're just sitting there. And the devil, Daryl, is standing in the corner. He's supposed to watch us out there. My little ones, my little fabulous people, you wonderful. Look what I've done. Look what I've done. And now just looking at us sitting on the couch. Look what I've done. Look at what I've done. Nothing. You've done nothing. You're sitting there.

[47:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You've done nothing. But boy, they look happy, don't they, folks?

[47:31] Lucie Arnaz: There's no curtain. So it's not like... It's an intermission break after that. And so you can't just draw the curtain and say, okay, now come in. Somebody come in and get these kids out of here. The house lights just went up. And so then they had to watch the guys come and unhook us. And the audience doesn't know that we were going to fly. They don't know that. They just know something is wrong with this scene. And then one night we went up and out and crossed. Maria and I were on the outside and we came back and Joanna didn't. She just hung out. She was hanging and wasn't going anywhere. And then the house lights came up and she's still hanging above their heads. And she has a line in the show. I forget how it came about, but somebody makes a comment that she doesn't wear any knickers now.

[48:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, that's right.

[48:26] Lucie Arnaz: And she's not wearing underwear. So she wouldn't say knickers because that's an English term. It's like she didn't have anything on underneath that. And somebody had remarked about it. So as she's hanging there and the house lights come up and there's people underneath her looking up her ball gown, she goes, well, you know, I didn't wear any knickers.

[48:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: National treasure, Joanna writing. That's amazing.

[48:48] Lucie Arnaz: Into the audience, a ladder and grab her and take her down and unhook her. I mean, it's hilarious. I love that stuff, man.

[48:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Theater. That's why we do theater, right? Because it's going to something like that's going to happen every night. Something.

[49:01] Lucie Arnaz: The worst case scenario, I mean, I don't want anybody to get injured, but the worst case scenario for an audience is like, I was there the night that this happened.

[49:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly.

[49:10] Lucie Arnaz: And I mean, what a gift. It's horrifying when it happens to you and you're there and you go, oh my God, I can't believe it. An hour later at Joe Allen's, it's funny, you know, I mean, oh my God, this happened. And that's why we're in live theater. That's we know, because we keep going. We do. It's minute to minute, moment to moment.

[49:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Audience has no idea how many things are going wrong every night, but you just keep swimming, you know, like we just keep doing what you do. They won't know.

[49:39] Lucie Arnaz: That's amazing. That's amazing.

[49:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: In the second act, I got a shout out last night at Daryl's or another night at Daryl's.

[49:49] Lucie Arnaz: Another night at Daryl's.

[49:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Because you sound phenomenal on it. I mean, were you so excited to have that song? What a showcase.

[49:56] Lucie Arnaz: I never thought that song worked.

[49:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Really? Oh my gosh, it's so great on the album.

[50:02] Lucie Arnaz: It's not a, it's not a showstopper though. Like Maria, you know, Maria was right. Her song stops the show. Jane's song stops the show. Mine was like, that's cute. It wasn't a showstopper. And we tried, when we went to the Prince of Wales Theater, we moved to the second theater. We tried to take some time to fix it and it never really fixed. They didn't do what they would have had to have done to really correct it and give it the punch that it needed to, maybe it sounds good on the CD, but it doesn't, it didn't really land in the house. The jokes weren't really funny, like the unveil of the giant boobie that she had done, you know, and then there was a lot of, it was choreographed of a lot of sexual innuendos, like a strip number.

[50:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Like burlesque sort of thing.

[50:44] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah, and haven't we seen like enough of that? It wasn't, it didn't really take it to the next level. It was still just that and somebody who's going, I'm so excited to be with, but it didn't have what Maria's had, you know, the like, look at all those words, look what she's doing with her mouth. Oh my God, how does she do that? And Joanna, she's the high notes and the, and it just kept getting, I mean, there's that thing took off. My number never really took off and it was fun, you know, but I have to say, it was one of the reasons when I left the show, I was like, you guys aren't ever going to fix this, are you? And they kept saying that they would, but they never really did. So I'm like, okay, so I didn't miss.

And then I went back to see it a couple of weeks after I left the show. And the person who took over for me had a new number, same number, entirely different arrangement, entirely different orchestration, entirely different staging, same idea, but it landed. And there were a lot of the things that we talked about, but just never happened. They just never somehow had the time or whatever. I left, they put a new girl in and they fixed all this stuff. So you never know. That happened to me too when I was at Seesaw, the national company of Seesaw and Michael Bennett had had it on Broadway and they ran out of time and he couldn't fix all the things he wanted to fix. So when I did the national tour, he took that opportunity to come in and really improve the numbers and really give Gittel a spectacular breakdown number instead of giving it to the chorus, you know, to sing right out the storm.

He gave her a whole wonderful breakdown song. And that's all that needed to happen. But it's an okay. Another Night at Daryl's is fun. It's just as far as if you're going to, you know, put them up for who's really going to take the stage. It didn't really cut the mustard.

[52:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, that's interesting. Well, I mean, it just goes to show that, like you said, landing in the house, landing in the theater is a whole other thing, right?

[52:37] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[52:40] Now, I just want to put in there, it's probably my least favorite part of the plot. Of course, it's the Ingenues. But Alexandra has a son by the name of Michael, who's in love with the old bitty Felicia's daughter, who's named Jennifer. And they are constantly dreaming that they're going to be together someday, somewhere. And Daryl kind of meddles into that. Daryl takes Michael and teaches him how to be a quote, unquote, man, which is basically just a lesson in toxic masculinity. And in doing so,

[53:48] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah, yeah. Young girl, like how dare she come in here with her tiny body and huge stiletto heels. And then they realize, wait, we're totally misdirecting our anger. Yeah. Yeah. Who did this to us? Did she do this to us? Or did he do this to us? Right. And did we let him do this to us? Yeah. It wasn't really the young girl's fault. She was trying to find herself too. It was only interesting. It was like, gosh, you can be any age and that can appeal to you. The other kind of nail in the coffin, so to speak, for this whole thing to break down is that Felicia dies a really horrible death above throwing up all of these different objects. Another crazy amount of special effects that I can't even believe how they did all of that.

They had a real expert magician working with us and props and stuff. Amazing stuff. She dies. Clyde also dies. In the script that I read, his tie gets caught in a garbage disposal and he gets strangled to death. Is that what you remember? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, pretty gruesome. So this young girl who Daryl is now obsessed with has lost both of her parents. And so he asks her to marry him and she says yes. So now we're skipping to the end. There's this wedding. There's this wedding everybody in the town is invited to. It's Daryl and this young, young girl, which is incredibly creepy. And it's up to the witches to take him down, to use what he has taught them against him. And it's done through this sort of like puppet or voodoo doll, right?

Yeah. I mean, if I don't believe they're really witches, then what does that represent? I mean, it's all a fantasy, right? So is that real? I mean, but they have like picked up some tricks of the trade along the way, including learning how to fly, including this voodoo stuff. Yeah. And what is voodoo anyway? Is it just intent? Is it marking your intention and following through on it, saying this is what I'm willing to have happen and I really want this and, and everybody putting your energies together and seeing what the universe comes up with? Is that what it is? It's not a voodoo doll really, you know? I don't know. But yes, the idea was if you're using the witches as a metaphor and, you know, black magic and all the things that he represented, they were going to spin it around and give him a dose of his own medicine because he was only doing that as I, now that you're talking about this, I'm remembering, he kind of only went with a young girl to spite them because they were telling him goodbye, right?

They were saying, okay, thanks. We've had enough. I appreciate it, but goodbye. He was like, no, you don't. I will go get her then, you know, and he does. And they went, no, you know, excuse me. We're not letting that happen to her. What just happened to us? And they, first they're mad, but like you said, then they're like protection, you know, she doesn't have any idea what she's getting into. We have to save her. Yeah, that's great. I love this sequence. It's perfectly preserved on the cast album. Joanna riding, belting at the top of her lungs and you guys are just really handing it to him. It's great. The movie ends with him like turning into this crazy Jim Henson type creature and sinking down into hell.

What was the destruction like for him in the stage version? Do you remember? He kind of like the Wizard of Oz. He melts, you know, the church explodes and he kind of goes up in smoke. He goes up in smoke. Yeah, was quite a procedure. The special effects on that were astounding as we're all standing on stage and the church explodes behind us, you know, fire and smoke and all this stuff. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's insane. The very, very ending is Jennifer and Michael come back together. So the ingenues end up together and Look at Me is how the show ends with the three ladies coming together talking about I found the magic, the love, the moon up above, just fully owning their and live and standing in their own power.

It's like it's everything that we want as gay men. Yeah. To tell is to have these women tell us how to stand in our own power. I mean, that's the reason I'm obsessed with this. Let's be honest. Well, it's a good metaphor. I mean, it is a good thing to say. He has to he had to make some statement at the end as a as an author, you know, and a book writer. I don't know what it was in the book. John Updike book. I don't know if there was one. I don't know what it was. But I think that Dempsey wanted them to empower themselves and say what they're really looking for. And that was it. Yeah, they found themselves. However, they had to find it. I know that the the book ends very, very differently where Jennifer dies, like the women actually give her cancer.

And so she dies and but then they feel bad about it. And I right, there's some remorse. And then they kind of conjure up their individual guys and continue life that way. It's a very different ending. But interesting how it goes from the book to how are they going to say that in a film to how are they going to take a film and a book and make it into a musical? And what story do you want to tell? Yeah. And that's why I do love musical theater is because like, if you're going to have characters sing, they have to sing from a sense of truth and honesty at some point. Absolutely. And so like, what do you want these characters to say? Like, what do you want them to believe? Exactly. Are you going to be speaking to Jonathan or Dana?

No, no, I would like to. But by the way, a shout out to both of them who also have Zombie Prom, which is a great show. The Fix, which has a really great score. Yeah, I'd love to have them on the show. I don't think they're writing music together anymore. I'm writing musicals. It's too bad. They never really broke through because Witches was a big shot and it didn't really do it for them. But through no fault of their own, I'm telling you, they were the best things about it. And I thought they were magnificent to work with and for and I keep in touch with both of them. That's so great. That's great to hear. From what I read in the script, there's like at the very end of Look at Me, they've had this really great empowering moment.

And then I think it's you talking to Suki, you say like, are you thinking about Daryl? You know, or something like that. Like, who's thinking about him? We sense it. We sense it that somebody's like having a lot's wife moments and looking back. And they all claim that they're not. And then there's a big thunder strike. And all three of you realize you're pregnant. That was what was in the script that I read is that everybody reached down and touched their like, you know, their midsections, their tummies, and then looked at the audience like, oh, no, we didn't. Okay, thank goodness. Thank goodness. Because I read that and was like, what? That may have been in somewhere. I don't remember that.

Or they may have put that in if they put all that other stuff in. They may have done that. That's why I said, there had to be something at the end that said, the beat goes on. It's like, you know how at the end of Pippin, the little guy wants to go off with a circus and you go, oh, no. We're starting all over again. The young kid runs off and the parents go, oh, shit, you know. It's a little bit Peter Pan, same thing, you know, that grows up and then his kids want to go off and join the circus too, you know. I think what happens is with like everything else, if you've had one of those relationships, and let's say it was the best sex you ever had in your life, and it's really seductive and the chemistry with this person is just, oh, I can't even.

But there's something about it that you cannot have. He's married, you're married. He's a, you know, he's a crook. He's a criminal, whatever. There's something that's like, no, no, no. And you go, yeah, you're right. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm never going to do that. It's terrible, but then it's like, just five more minutes, you know, like, give me just five more minutes. Just hit the snooze button real fast. It doesn't completely go away. What they loved about this guy never really left. They just sort of said like, snap out of it, you know.

[1:02:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Speaking of Cher.

[1:02:31] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah, speaking of Cher. Well, you know, I mean, that goes to your addiction metaphor as well, right?

[1:02:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, totally. I mean, they're addicted to him. They're addicted to the sex. They're addicted to everything he was doing for them and everything that came with it, the drinking and the, you know, they made it look like just, and let's not forget, they were, they was made to look like they were all having sex together. I mean, it was a lot. And then I think they just went like, wait, wait, how old are we going to be before we stop? Like, really? I mean, it's a little much. I'm glad I tried it, but no. But no, thank you. Yeah. No, thank you. We can do without that. But God, that was fun. You know, there's always that little, are you still wishing? Yes, but I'm not gonna. So there.

[1:03:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I love that. Lucy, thank you so much for going through this with me. This is so much fun. You know what? I haven't thought in detail about this musical for a long time. And it's interesting that so much of it, like you said, oh, we'll just start talking and it'll come back to you. It really does. It all kind of, I can visualize stuff I hadn't thought about in a long, long time. I should write about it someday. If I write a book, I'll write several chapters on Witches of Easter because being in the middle, the making of a musical is a fascinating thing. You don't get a chance to do that very often. You know, they're playing us on Witches of Easter. Usually, you know, you're doing something that's been created by somebody else or when you get to create a role and see how a show is put together, it's really fascinating stuff.

[1:04:01] Lucie Arnaz: Yeah, especially one on the scale. Yeah, right. Yeah.

[1:04:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: As always, if you have recommendations for shows you'd like us to cover on a musical theater podcast, you can always email me at amusicalpodcast at gmail.com. I'm starting this thing this new year, you guys, listeners. If you want to get a full year of Patreon exclamation point, which is our bonus content for subscribers, write a review. Write a review for the show. I want to start off this year with a bang. Write a review. Take a screenshot of it. Send it to me at amusicalpodcast at gmail.com. I'll give you a free year of our Patreon account. How about that? That's going to be great. We also are on social media, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, at Amusical Podcast. We have our TeePublic store. We thank you so much for everyone who bought products on our TeePublic store because we were able to make that donation to BCFA at the end of last year. Oh my gosh. You all know I'm grateful for you. Thank you so much. Happy 2023. This is going to be a great year. Hey, Lucy, what do you got coming up? Anything you want to plug?

[1:05:00] Lucie Arnaz: You can follow me at luciearnaz.com from my website. I just had a knee replacement surgery. Then before that, there was COVID. I am rebooking my shows as we speak. I'm opening. I'm luckily sold out again at the Purple Room in Palm Springs for two nights, February 34th. I'm going to Kenya to do a gig and be on safari. Hello. You can do that too. Go to the website and look if you want to come with me to Kenya. That's right after that. That's February 8th through the 18th. It may be too late to get on that junket. Then I'm just going to go back and start rebooking these gigs that I unfortunately had to cancel again after cancelling and COVID because I had to fix my knee. Next summer, I'll be back at 54 Below with I Got the Job, songs from my musical past. I'm putting that out as a CD, live at the Purple Room. That's fantastic.

[1:05:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Should be out in another three weeks. Just going back to work.

[1:05:58] Lucie Arnaz: You put on such a great show and you have so many great stories. Highly, highly recommend. Five stars.

[1:06:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Thank you. It's a pleasure.

[1:06:06] Lucie Arnaz: It's a pleasure talking to you. Listeners, thank you for listening. Remember, what should the tagline be for this?

[1:06:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Be careful what you wish for.

[1:06:12] Lucie Arnaz: Careful what you wish for and always wear your knickers.