This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] ♪ Musical number: "My Favorite Things" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[0:18] Kevin David Thomas: Hello, listeners. This is Kevin David Thomas.

[0:21] Robert W Schneider: And this is Robert W Schneider.

[0:23] Kevin David Thomas: Hello, Rob.

[0:24] Robert W Schneider: Hello, Kevin, David Thomas.

[0:25] Kevin David Thomas: My dad finally got your name right.

[0:27] Robert W Schneider: Oh, I'm so glad.

[0:28] Kevin David Thomas: He was shamed on our last couple of podcasts.

[0:31] Robert W Schneider: I mean, oh, it's all in good love and very hard.

[0:34] Kevin David Thomas: How are you, Rob?

[0:34] Robert W Schneider: Oh my god, I'm so good. I am so so good. Thank you for asking.

[0:38] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, good.

[0:38] Robert W Schneider: Life is good. 54 Below is good. Working hard, lots of fun things happening.

[0:43] Robert W Schneider: I'm directing my, oh my gosh, this girl is so talented. Her name is Rebecca Spiegelman. I'm directing her cabaret.

[0:50] Kevin David Thomas: Fantastic.

[0:53] Robert W Schneider: It's 54 Below. She sang, and she blew the top off of it. Her cabaret is called 16 Going on 70.

[1:05] Kevin David Thomas: Brilliant.

[1:05] Robert W Schneider: And it's all about how in high school, if you look mature, you'll end up playing roles that you will never play for like 20 or 30 years. She has a really funny story. They did a Chorus Line at a children's theater, and because it was pay-for-play, there were 53 kids on the line.

[1:14] Kevin David Thomas: 53 kids on the line.

[1:23] Robert W Schneider: And at the end of the show, Zach literally had the line, "You're all so good, I don't know who to pick, so I'll pick all of you." And they all did the one finale.

[1:30] Kevin David Thomas: That's nice. That changes everything, doesn't it?

[1:35] Robert W Schneider: Also, were they at the Muni? Because how could they all stand across the line with it?

[1:39] Kevin David Thomas: She showed me a photo. It's like the line is like four or five people.

[1:43] Robert W Schneider: Well, good for them. At least everyone was included.

[1:46] Kevin David Thomas: Absolutely. So I'm working on the show right now. It's gonna be a lot of fun. October 6th. Come out and see it because she really is something else.

[1:53] Robert W Schneider: How have you been?

[1:54] Kevin David Thomas: Good. It is, I know this is a little different from what we usually talk about, but it is football season, Rob. This past week was the start of the football season.

[2:03] Robert W Schneider: I have to tell you, I know.

[2:04] Kevin David Thomas: Rob's like, what? What's that mean?

[2:06] Robert W Schneider: What is footballs?

[2:08] Kevin David Thomas: I don't want to like correct you, it's not called football, it's called "Pass the Football" from Wonderful Town.

[2:08] Robert W Schneider: Wonderful Town.

[2:08] Kevin David Thomas: It's not called football.

[2:17] Robert W Schneider: So I don't know why you're like, nothing you have ever seen.

[2:20] Kevin David Thomas: Not my, that's a skip song, hashtag skip song for me.

[2:22] Robert W Schneider: Like nothing you have.

[2:25] Kevin David Thomas: If anyone who doesn't stop right now and listen to "Pass the Football," because it kind of drives me crazy. And you will love it.

[2:31] Robert W Schneider: You will love it, but you don't.

[2:33] Kevin David Thomas: Or you'll skip it. Well, speaking of football, it is football season, and I've been watching a lot of games, and I have a fantasy football league I do.

[2:40] Kevin David Thomas: And the funny thing is the connection is that I have two leagues. Fantasy football, for those who don't know, is where you kind of pick players that are playing on football, and every week you kind of see how your players do, and their stats add up, and you play against someone else head to head with their players, and whoever has the highest points wins.

[2:54] Kevin David Thomas: Well, I have two teams, and one is my Les Mis team and one is my Little Night Music team because those are the two shows that we started a league in each of those shows, and they've been going. My Les Mis team is going for like nine years, my Little Night Music has been going for about six.

[3:05] Kevin David Thomas: So it's a fun way to keep connected, and we also get to talk sports. Well, now that we've lost our entire listenership, listening to me talk about sports.

[3:15] Robert W Schneider: No, that's really interesting. I didn't know that you did all that.

[3:17] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, no, it's fun. I look forward to it.

[3:20] Robert W Schneider: Did you play sports?

[3:21] Kevin David Thomas: I tried all of them except football, actually, which is the one sport I actually wish I had played, even though it's like the worst sport you can play because it'll give you brain damage. But I tried them all early high school. Like I did wrestling, I think, first year of high school, maybe middle school, and then I tried all the other ones. I played baseball a lot and all of that, but once I got to high school, you kind of had to pick. Like, are you gonna do music? Because I always did music, or are you gonna do sports? And it was always music and theater always.

[3:48] Robert W Schneider: When I was in high school, I loved wrestling.

[3:50] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[3:51] Robert W Schneider: I loved wrestling. Then I found out you had to be on a team. So I was asked to leave quite a number of games and parties.

[4:00] Kevin David Thomas: So, but you learn something new every day.

[4:04] Robert W Schneider: That's right, Rob. I didn't know that.

[4:06] Kevin David Thomas: So we've got favorite things to share with each other. I do have a favorite thing to share with you.

[4:10] Robert W Schneider: Oh.

[4:10] Kevin David Thomas: It's a YouTube clip.

[4:11] Robert W Schneider: Oh, a YouTube clip.

[4:12] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, we're going back to YouTube for a second. That's okay. I really love this actor. I really love this actor, and I think he is so talented, and he's so brilliant. And I think unfortunately, most people remember him from his participation like on game shows, and they don't remember him as being a brilliant performer. Charles Nelson.

[4:30] Robert W Schneider: The great Charles Nelson Reilly.

[4:34] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, I just sat up in my chair. I'm so excited. For those of you who don't know, Charles Nelson Reilly, for a long time in the golden age of musical theater, was usually the campy villain. He was Bud Frump in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. You might remember him as the first Cornelius Hackle.

[4:52] Robert W Schneider: Oh, right in Hello Dolly.

[4:53] Kevin David Thomas: I mean, he had a big game. And then in the late or the early 70s, he pretty much packed up and moved to LA and did a series of game shows, but he was a brilliant match game. He was always in match game.

[5:03] Robert W Schneider: He was on match game all the time.

[5:06] Kevin David Thomas: And I don't even know how to articulate what a Renaissance man of the theater was. Because in addition to his acting, he was a brilliant, brilliant director. He did and he directed so many actors to Tony Award-winning performances. His big muse was Julie Harris, the great Julie Harris. He directed all of her stuff. He was a professor of music at the Hart School of Music, specializing in opera.

[5:27] Robert W Schneider: Had no idea.

[5:28] Kevin David Thomas: There's a wonderful, it's not what my favorite thing for today, but before he passed, he did a one-man show called The Life of Riley, where he talked about his beginnings in his career, and it really is brilliant. The whole thing is on YouTube. You should watch it.

[5:41] Robert W Schneider: Yes.

[5:43] Kevin David Thomas: Didn't we? When we were at Jim Brochou's house, didn't we watch, oh it might be?

[5:47] Robert W Schneider: Yes, because remember he showed us, and if you Jim Broch, you listened to our previous interview with him a couple weeks ago, a couple months ago. But he showed us like a home video or something. Jim was the artistic director of the theater company where Charles did the show at for the first time, The Life of Riley. And Jim was really good friends with him. So go back and listen to our interview with Jim Brochure. Really great stuff. And this guy was just a genius.

[6:13] Kevin David Thomas: He was just a genius. And one of the funniest things I've ever seen him do, and they would never do it today, was they brought him out at the 1974 Tony Awards. The 1974 Tony Awards, and they let him talk for eight minutes. And he just does a stand-up comedy act where he sings all of his greatest hits from the successful shows he was in.

[6:35] Robert W Schneider: The irony being none of the shows that he had produced a massive hit for himself.

[6:41] Kevin David Thomas: It's so funny and so wild and so weird and so wacky, and he is such an eccentric personality. And it's a shame because I don't think there's anybody today who is on Broadway who is as crazy and as eccentric as him. And yet completely brilliant at the same time. I mean, like to us really brilliant. You know, to influence actresses and Tish like that. And that's incredible.

[7:04] Robert W Schneider: It's one of the funniest clips you'll ever watch because it also shows a great command of running with a joke. Because the joke is established right at the beginning, which is he's gonna sing all the songs that nobody remembers, and he just goes and goes and goes and wins that audience over, and it's really brilliant.

[7:22] Kevin David Thomas: And what's really cool is he does end with "It Only Takes a Moment," which is the one song he got to introduce in a musical.

[7:30] Robert W Schneider: What year was this again?

[7:31] Kevin David Thomas: 1974. All you have to type is in 1974 Tony Awards, Charles Nelson Reilly, or type in Charles Nelson Reilly 1974, and it'll be one of the first things that comes up.

[7:40] Robert W Schneider: It is brilliant, it is hysterical, it just puts a smile on your face.

[7:43] Kevin David Thomas: I love that.

[7:44] Robert W Schneider: Yeah, that's great.

[7:45] Kevin David Thomas: I'm not doing it justice, but God watched that clip.

[7:47] Robert W Schneider: He's always entertained me. Those much like Paul Lind, uh, you know, entertains me too.

[7:51] Kevin David Thomas: Like he's simple some I find them slightly similar.

[7:54] Robert W Schneider: Very similar.

[7:54] Kevin David Thomas: Dark people, slightly brilliant people.

[7:57] Robert W Schneider: Absolutely.

[7:58] Kevin David Thomas: It's gone too soon.

[7:59] Robert W Schneider: Gone too soon.

[8:00] Kevin David Thomas: And I think I think the difference is that Charles Nelson Riley was more versatile.

[8:03] Robert W Schneider: Yes.

[8:03] Kevin David Thomas: I mean, just the brilliance behind this guy.

[8:05] Robert W Schneider: So watch watch the life of Riley, but start with this hysterical clip from the 1974 Tony Awards.

[8:11] Kevin David Thomas: What do you got for us, Kevin?

[8:12] Robert W Schneider: I've got a cast recording.

[8:15] Kevin David Thomas: Back to the cast recordings.

[8:16] Robert W Schneider: That's right.

[8:17] Kevin David Thomas: I've got a cast recording that some of you may know, but a lot of you may not know.

[8:21] Robert W Schneider: It's from the last, oh, I would say 15 years.

[8:25] Kevin David Thomas: Okay.

[8:26] Robert W Schneider: Uh it was done on the Broadway.

[8:28] Kevin David Thomas: Okay.

[8:28] Robert W Schneider: It has a team that when you read the names, you're like, well, yeah, this should be a big ol' hit.

[8:34] Kevin David Thomas: It and and the cast.

[8:36] Robert W Schneider: I think I know what it is.

[8:37] Kevin David Thomas: What is it?

[8:37] Robert W Schneider: Is it sweet smell of success?

[8:38] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, it is.

[8:39] Robert W Schneider: Darn it all together.

[8:41] Kevin David Thomas: H E double hockey sticks, right?

[8:43] Robert W Schneider: Oh my god. You got that so quickly.

[8:45] Kevin David Thomas: Well, it's it's you summed it up perfectly. You described it perfectly.

[8:49] Robert W Schneider: I think, all right, so you guys. Marvin Hamlisch wrote the score with Craig Cornelia writing the lyrics.

[8:56] Kevin David Thomas: Um this I'm a I I'm a huge Marvin Hamlisch fan, obviously.

[9:00] Robert W Schneider: I mean he's not bad. Absolute genius.

[9:02] Kevin David Thomas: There's a whole other favorite thing I want to do on him later in the going down the road.

[9:06] Robert W Schneider: But he he was such a special musician and a and and a just intensely smart person.

[9:12] Kevin David Thomas: But um, so this was um based on the 1957 film of the same title.

[9:17] Robert W Schneider: Um and it's a basically about um like a really powerful newspaper columnist named JG Hunsaker, who's basically like Walter Winchell, if you know that.

[9:27] Kevin David Thomas: So who had in the in the 30s, uh in the 20s and 30s, had all of this power that like if they said something was a hit, then everybody went to go see it.

[9:35] Robert W Schneider: If you if that person's a failure, no one's gonna see them.

[9:38] Kevin David Thomas: Uh and he just with the power of his pen could could really make or break you.

[9:41] Robert W Schneider: And there's a love story involved and with his his sister, and he ruins the relationship that she's gonna have with this upstart columnist.

[9:48] Kevin David Thomas: So the people in this though, mind you, 2002 is when this came out.

[9:52] Robert W Schneider: They developed it in the in the late 90s, 98, uh, and then uh, but it opened on Broadway in 2002.

[9:58] Kevin David Thomas: John Lithgow plays Hunt Sicker.

[10:01] Robert W Schneider: Uh you've got um Kelly O'Hara, one of her first sh roles.

[10:05] Kevin David Thomas: Um you've got Brian Darcy James as the lead, lead lead, um, as the you know, the upstart.

[10:10] Robert W Schneider: Jack Knowsworthy plays the love interest uh to Kelly O'Hara.

[10:13] Kevin David Thomas: Uh and it's just the music is sublime.

[10:17] Robert W Schneider: It's jazzy, it's brassy, it's very intelligent.

[10:22] Kevin David Thomas: I mean, there's not a all the the the harmonies in it are so intense.

[10:26] Robert W Schneider: The ensemble is sort of like a Greek chorus, and that they're voicing um the opinions and the feelings of the characters as they're singing around them.

[10:36] Kevin David Thomas: So it it's a very it's it's kind of I want to say it was ahead of its time, but I feel like right now on Broadway, we're seeing like the ensemble moving in like in Bright Star, for instance.

[10:46] Robert W Schneider: That ensemble worked their butts off, even though they weren't necessarily the focus of the piece.

[10:50] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[10:51] Robert W Schneider: But their movement, it's same thing with Hamilton.

[10:53] Kevin David Thomas: I mean, look at Hamilton, and there's all this movement, and you're like, oh, that movement's affecting how I feel, but it's not necessarily about the movement.

[10:59] Robert W Schneider: Well, that's the kind of stuff they did uh in Sweet Smell, and I saw Sweet Smell's success years ago.

[10:59] Kevin David Thomas: The choreography is by uh Christopher Wheeldon, whom we know today because not only was is he a choreographer for the m you know American ballet theater and was a classically trained ballet uh dancer and teacher uh choreographer, but he did American in Paris.

[11:18] Robert W Schneider: Yeah.

[11:19] Kevin David Thomas: Uh and so I think it's interesting that when he was only like 30, uh he was doing this this you know, major Broadway show, and the choreography at the time was very original and very different from what we're used to seeing on Broadway.

[11:31] Robert W Schneider: I think that show was brilliant because I saw it too.

[11:35] Kevin David Thomas: I think it was it's one of those shows that unfortunately after 9-11 exactly.

[11:39] Robert W Schneider: Nobody wanted to see.

[11:41] Kevin David Thomas: It's dark.

[11:41] Robert W Schneider: I mean, it is definitely a dark story.

[11:43] Kevin David Thomas: People died at the end.

[11:44] Robert W Schneider: I mean, it's not because there weren't there a bunch of shows that did come out like after 9-11 that people like Thou Shall Not, I feel right on that or are we Christian?

[11:55] Kevin David Thomas: You're exactly right.

[11:58] Robert W Schneider: But Thou Shall Not was uh that season, even off Broadway, Spitfire Grill we talked about in previous podcasts.

[12:03] Kevin David Thomas: A lot of like more sentimental, you know, it that was the season that you're in town won, and Mama Mia was was a big hit.

[12:11] Robert W Schneider: Yeah.

[12:11] Kevin David Thomas: So you so this isn't these are audiences who don't want to go to to wallow in any sentimentality, but they want to go to forget.

[12:19] Robert W Schneider: And that that pervaded Broadway for a long time.

[12:21] Kevin David Thomas: And Thoroughly Modern Millie, sorry, Thoroughly Modern Millie was that was that all that is more fun on the scapist like Hardware.

[12:26] Robert W Schneider: Exactly.

[12:26] Kevin David Thomas: Exactly.

[12:27] Robert W Schneider: I think this show will come back.

[12:29] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, this score.

[12:30] Robert W Schneider: I mean, it was nominated for a Tony, but it won it lost to Urin Town.

[12:33] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, it didn't.

[12:34] Robert W Schneider: It was if you listen to the score, you're gonna you're gonna be like, what? How have I never heard of this score before?

[12:40] Kevin David Thomas: John, it's it's your one of my skip songs is on it, but it's your favorite song, Don't Look Now, the John Lithgow song.

[12:47] Robert W Schneider: Yeah.

[12:47] Kevin David Thomas: And for Susan.

[12:49] Robert W Schneider: Really?

[12:50] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, like for Susan.

[12:51] Robert W Schneider: See, now I like so to give you a sense of some of the jazzier score.

[12:55] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, you've got the that's those are the more character-driven.

[12:57] Robert W Schneider: Yes, and I'll tell you why I like for Susan. Because you can hear it in John Lithgow's recording as he talks about her, it goes from something very gentle to something very obsessive.

[13:07] Kevin David Thomas: And if you listen to the nuance as of what he's doing as a performer, it's really brilliant.

[13:11] Robert W Schneider: Yeah.

[13:12] Kevin David Thomas: But I mean showstopping.

[13:14] Robert W Schneider: He's totally given you character songs like that.

[13:17] Kevin David Thomas: He's given you these very period style songs.

[13:21] Robert W Schneider: Kind of Wild Party, Wild Party, I'd put in that same kind of category of they are a throwback to the 20s, but the 20s didn't have music anywhere near as complex as this.

[13:31] Kevin David Thomas: But like uh I cannot hear the city, one track, uh Laughing All the Way to the Bank.

[13:35] Robert W Schneider: These are like sort of little pistache numbers that to me are just as good as any jazz song of that era.

[13:40] Kevin David Thomas: Uh and then you've got like the main Darcy James like I want song, the At the Fountain, which is Which is probably one of the best I want songs ever.

[13:47] Robert W Schneider: I mean, it's just incredible.

[13:48] Kevin David Thomas: It's absolutely incredible.

[13:49] Robert W Schneider: Um and then a young Kelly O'Hara singing, you know, what if or that duet she sings with uh Jack Knowsworthy, Don't Know Where You Leave Off.

[13:56] Kevin David Thomas: It's gorgeous singing.

[13:57] Robert W Schneider: This show will come back.

[13:58] Kevin David Thomas: This show will come back at some point.

[14:00] Robert W Schneider: Unfortunately, you know, and you know what? Bring back that cast.

[14:02] Kevin David Thomas: I don't care if they're all 15 years older.

[14:05] Robert W Schneider: That cast was amazing. It it it it was it didn't it did not run long enough.

[14:08] Kevin David Thomas: And it we and thank goodness we have this cast recording, so you can listen to uh some really fun, fun music.

[14:16] Robert W Schneider: I don't if you can, I don't know if there'd be a bootleg or something. That staging was brilliant.

[14:20] Kevin David Thomas: The choreography was brilliant.

[14:22] Robert W Schneider: Nick Heitner, right?

[14:22] Kevin David Thomas: Nicholas Heitner, yeah.

[14:23] Robert W Schneider: But you really get a sense of the the darkness, the smokiness, like that the grit.

[14:28] Kevin David Thomas: It's about the media and like how it's all about dirt, and it's all about getting, you know, like getting the byline and getting like you know, finding some greed, too.

[14:36] Robert W Schneider: If you guys are looking for a show to do at a community theater, you're looking just go, go sweet smell of success.

[14:42] Kevin David Thomas: Or listen to it in the meantime, yeah before you can see a live production.

[14:44] Robert W Schneider: So Charles Nelson Riley, 1974, Tony Awards.

[14:48] Kevin David Thomas: Sweet smell of success.

[14:50] Robert W Schneider: All right, till next time.

[14:51] Kevin David Thomas: Take care.

[14:52] Robert W Schneider: Bye everyone.

[14:52] Kevin David Thomas: These are a few of my favorite things.

[15:01] Robert W Schneider: These are a few of my favorite things.