This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

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

[0:17] Kevin David Thomas: Happy throwback Thursday, everybody.

[0:20] Robert W. Schneider: Is it Thursday, Rob? I don't even know what day it is.

[0:22] Kevin David Thomas: It's someday. It's someday. Oh my god.

[0:25] Robert W. Schneider: Happy Thursday. No, you're listening to us today, so I'm telling you right now, listeners, it is Thursday.

[0:29] Kevin David Thomas: It is Thursday. You're so decisive. Oh my god.

[0:32] Robert W. Schneider: Rob, yes? Your little calendar goes, yes, yes, it's Thursday.

[0:34] Kevin David Thomas: I'm not disagreeing with you. It's Thursday.

[0:36] Robert W. Schneider: You've got something to say. I'm excited.

[0:42] Kevin David Thomas: Oh my god, Kevin. I was caught unawares today, I have to tell you. Please help me. So, I got to the point where I'm like, I need to have wine delivered to the house. Yes, this is first world problems. I'm like, I need wine in this home. We did tonight. We had it delivered today.

[0:55] Robert W. Schneider: So, I've never ordered alcohol before. I've never ordered it before, right?

[0:59] Kevin David Thomas: So, usually, I wait till some wino's asleep, and then I just steal it when they're sleeping, and then I just carry it back up to my apartment. Or people bring it as a gift to you.

[1:06] Robert W. Schneider: Or people bring it as a gift. It's like Manischewitz, you know, whatever, whatever.

[1:11] Kevin David Thomas: I see. Are you drinking white wine? Is that what you just had a sip of?

[1:14] Robert W. Schneider: I do have a little. I had a long day, and I'm...

[1:17] Kevin David Thomas: You can do whatever. Listen, you can...

[1:19] Robert W. Schneider: I taught today. The one day a week I taught, and I'm like, yes, I'm having a little...

[1:22] Kevin David Thomas: He has to unwind a little bit, folks. Okay. So, I was like, all right, I'm going to go to this new thing. I'm going to order the wine. Great, great, great. And I was like, perfect, perfect. So, I jumped to the shower, and I'm showering. And all of a sudden, I hear, like, what is that? That sounds like my door. Why would my door be buzzing? Whatever. Then my phone rings, and I had to stop Whitney Houston's I've Got to Dance with Somebody, which is the second song in my three-song shower rotation of Whitney Houston's essential hits.

[1:49] Robert W. Schneider: So, I'm not totally clean at this point. I'm like, all right, fine. What's going on? So, I pick up the phone. They're like, hi, your wine is here. And I was like, oh, shit. I'm like, can you bring it up? And he's like, yeah, I'm outside your door. And I said, I'll buzz you. And he goes, no, no, I'm outside your door. So, I'm like, answer the door, because every time it's a delivery guy, it's usually someone who's not very attractive. So, just open it. What do you care? Would you know, my luck, it was like the most attractive delivery guy. I mean, I could only see from the eyes up because he was wearing a mask.

[2:20] Kevin David Thomas: Well, of course, but those eyes for days.

[2:23] Robert W. Schneider: Those eyes, eyes for days, eyes for days. So, I'm just in a bad mood now. I'm just in a foul mood.

[2:27] Kevin David Thomas: I'm sure you really seduced him by showing him your alphabetical cast album wall. Can you tell our listeners?

[2:34] Robert W. Schneider: He saw me wearing a day glow yellow sunshine towel, dripping wet, squinting at him, looking like Zero Mostel in a rehearsal picture from Fiddler. I don't think this young gentleman was interested.

[2:53] Kevin David Thomas: Hey, hey, hey, Jude, don't let me down. Let's talk a little bit about happy birthday, Steve. Congratulations to everybody that made this thing happen. Hey, this was not easy. This was not easy. The level of coordination that had to go into this thing is just absolutely incredible. And so, a big hand to Paul over at Broadway World.

[3:17] Robert W. Schneider: Broadway World? Yeah, Broadway World.

[3:18] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, yes, most definitely. And it's her not-for-profit that they're helping out.

[3:26] Robert W. Schneider: Listen, brilliant tracks. God bless Raul Esparza for trying to host and then just being like, I can't, we're moving on. I mean, listen, he got fucked in that and God bless him because he still has a positive attitude. So thank you, Raul.

[3:40] Kevin David Thomas: He was tweeting all the way through that. He was supporting, he was giving love. It was lovely.

[3:44] Robert W. Schneider: I was heavy into the Twitter for the entire concert.

[3:48] Kevin David Thomas: It was, yes, yes.

[3:49] Robert W. Schneider: Good man. He's a good man. First of all, it was so cool to see so many guests that we've had on the show popping up. It was like Joanna and Chip and Jason Alexander is going to be a guest coming up pretty soon, which we're very excited about. I liked it. I'm so curious, though, about some of the choices. And I just had some questions about some of them. That's all.

[4:10] Kevin David Thomas: It's very hard to do a Stephen Sondheim tribute because there wasn't a lot of up-tempo.

[4:18] Robert W. Schneider: Yes, that was definitely ballad heavy. Now, what's interesting to me is that usually when we do these concerts and usually people in the business who have done these, you guys know, you've done this before and people, laymen, who have been people in the audience, you should know, a lot of thought goes into these. Usually Rob has been the producer and director of many of these kinds of concerts where it's like many songs put together. And Rob is always, and I don't want to speak for you, but I think you're always trying to figure out like, you know, can't have too many ballads. We got to, you know, it's like putting together a cabaret, you know, and you really have to be careful.

[4:51] Kevin David Thomas: They're vetted when you have a concert, when everyone's live. But what I get the sense of, Rob, is they just said, everybody pick your favorite song, you can do whatever you want, and it's okay. It felt like nothing was vetted, which I'm not saying it had to be. But consequently, we had a lot of very, shall we say, serious Sondheim songs.

[5:11] Robert W. Schneider: And let me tell you, I still cried like a baby. Donna Murphy's Ending the Clowns was gorgeous. Chip's story about Into the Woods was great. I like how he put out his green hat for everybody.

[5:20] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, that was very touching. Who else was really, really good? Okay, I'm in the minority on this, because I've talked to a couple of people and said this was my favorite number of the evening, and everyone looked at me like I was fucking nuts. I love Someone in a Tree.

[5:34] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, sorry. I thought it was really weird. I loved it, folks. Sorry. That's all. I just, I loved it. That's the tweet. The Ladies Who Lunch, first of all, I'm like, Christine Baranski, I'm like, this is it. You've slayed me. And then they're like, oh, and here comes Meryl Streep. And then here comes Audra McDonald. I was convinced that Hillary Clinton was going to be on the fourth verse. I was like, if you can get all four of these legends in one place, first of all, when is Hillary going to go into a show? Why didn't she sing anything? She's basically in the Broadway theater every other night, it feels like. I mean, she and Bill go to see theater. They are dedicated theater goers. She could have done Everybody Says Don't. She would have been great.

She could have maybe sung something from Assassins if she wanted to. She could have sung, she and Bill could have sung Happiness from Passion. Or Unworthy of Your Love. She could have sung Unworthy of Your Love. That would have been really, really nice. Chelsea could have sang The Glamorous Life. Bernadette was my favorite. What's Bernadette doing? I want to sing all this song Steve wrote as exit music. She was like at our kitchen table.

[6:42] Robert W. Schneider: Well, Bernadette, you might be the last song of the evening. I want to sing Incidental Music from Flowey's.

[6:52] Kevin David Thomas: No, Bernadette, you actually need to sing like a song song.

[6:56] Robert W. Schneider: The Utility. The Utility. I want to sing The Utility. One time Steve was in an elevator with me and he hummed and I want to take that tune and sing it.

[7:07] Kevin David Thomas: No, Bernadette, we can't do that. Is there anything else?

[7:12] Robert W. Schneider: No one is alone a cappella.

[7:14] Kevin David Thomas: Okay, great, Bernadette.

[7:15] Robert W. Schneider: Yours. It's yours. It's yours.

[7:18] Kevin David Thomas: What I enjoyed, though, was that everyone did bring a reverence to it. They brought, obviously, of course, they have to. But there was such a, and there is a craft to what he does, and it was enjoyable to see these artists who are at the top of their game, doing an artist who is at the top of his game and bringing these songs to life. And this is going to go down in history. I mean, people are going to watch this a hundred years from now. Some of them, some of them, some of them. And it really is special.

[7:45] Robert W. Schneider: I loved it. Listen, like I said, I cried like a baby. God bless Paul and Mary and Raul for putting this whole thing together and all the people that it took to edit it and coordinate it. It was just really fantastic. And I think one of the cool things about watching it was that every single person who spoke had such reverence for him. And it was so clear that they knew either at the time they were performing it originally or when they were performing it now, they knew they were it's almost like they're being handed like a sacred text.

[8:13] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, yeah. Oh, you know. Yes. Yes, definitely.

[8:16] Robert W. Schneider: And it was and it was and it was there was so many adorable things like Sudden Foster's kid was it was adorable. Like you said, Kelly O'Hara, Donna Murphy, the clowns. Where's that revival? Put her in. It was great. That's it. I got nothing else to say.

[8:32] Kevin David Thomas: Rob, for instance, have you seen this? You're not a Twitter person, so I don't know if you've been able to see it. There's an actress. She's an improv person from L.A. She's she's had some measured success. Her name's Mary Neely. Have you seen her videos where she's lip syncing famous duets and scenes of the American musical theater canon? Rob, it is truly.

[8:52] Robert W. Schneider: No, it's not my favorite thing, but it could be.

[8:55] Kevin David Thomas: But I would like if you if you just if you're on Twitter, Mary and Mary Neely, I'm telling you guys, they are she's like articles are being written about her. It's a huge thing because there's must be like 15 to 20 scenes. And she she finishes it up. The last one, her opus is the opening of Beauty and the Beast. She plays all the characters. She's got more wigs than Moira Rose. That's a Schitt's Creek joke. And and it's it's I cannot describe it to you. But if you guys if anyone's watched these videos, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And they are. It's really just well done. Can you can you do a Moira Rose impression like every gay man in New York City?

[9:31] Robert W. Schneider: Do you have a favorite thing?

[9:36] Kevin David Thomas: I do. And it's a funny favorite thing. And I can't talk. I can't talk about it too much, folks, because I do not want to ruin the surprise. You need to watch it and then you need to get back to me, folks. There was in the 1980s a fantastic comic duo known as French and Saunders. That is Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. You know them. You know Jennifer Saunders because you have watched Absolutely Fabulous at some point in your life. And you know who Dawn French is because she was the vicar of Dibley on PBS, which I know you've all watched at some point. French and Saunders was one of the funniest sketch comedy TV shows to come out of London. Well, these two women are brilliant. They are hysterical.

And they are putting a bunch of their older clips up onto YouTube, or I should say I'm just discovering a bunch of these clips. And they have a little bit of a theater bent inside of them. I watched two clips that put such a huge smile on my face that I would like to pass them all off to you as well. So the first thing you're going to do, folks, is you are going to go onto YouTube and you are going to YouTube search French and Saunders, S-A-U-N-D-E-R-S, musical film parody, where they literally recreate parts of the 1980 version of a chorus line with full Alison Reed hair. They are very, very detailed in this. I don't want to give anything more away. I just want you to Google YouTube French and Saunders musical film parody. Get ready to laugh on it.

[11:08] Robert W. Schneider: Great. But now here's the hard one, folks. This is this is the one that made me I'm not going to I'm not ashamed to admit this. I almost peed my pants laughing. This other one they did. You know, those if you've seen company and original cast recording, you will know what this is. They do a mockumentary, a 10 minute mockumentary about two washed up opera divas coming into a recording session. And it's like one of those like great performances, PBS documentaries. And they're going to sing French and Saunders with Sarah Walker, who, if you don't know her, is an incredibly acclaimed opera diva. And so the real Sarah Walker comes into the sketch and sings with them. What they sing and how it's performed is they capture opera singers so brilliantly in this.

The running joke is that Dawn French literally will eat anything under the sun. And when she eats it, she just looks at the camera and taps her throat and goes and just mouths it. It's for my voice. What she's eating. This thing made me laugh so hard. I won't even tell you what they end up singing. But it's French. You have to find this. Now, this one isn't on YouTube. It's on what's known as DailyMotion.com. And so I will put up a link for this in our podcast description for this week. But it is French and Saunders featuring Sarah Walker. The sketch is called Opera Divas. Get ready to laugh and get ready to recognize, especially if you're one of those. I don't know about you, but I remember like I was in like choir.

I couldn't sing, but there were some people there who could like my voice. I have to save the gift. Oh, the gift. We always joke about the gift. We tap our throat. We're like, oh, the gift. Yes. And they play this perfectly. There's an actor, and I don't know who it is, who plays their producer, who is literally like every single hanger on who's not really talented, but thinks. And like it's so it's just wonderful. It's just wonderful. So it's French and Saunders featuring Sarah Walker, Opera Divas. That's mine. And then go on to YouTube. You can watch, which is on YouTube, French and Saunders musical film parody, and then go look at some of their other stuff. If you don't know who they are, they are two geniuses.

I'm hopefully that you'll recognize them from their independent work, one in Absolutely Fabulous and the other one in The Vicar of Dibley. But in for the longest time, and they still do sketches together, which is great. Go watch it. It's so funny. That's mine. I don't want to talk about it too much because I don't want you to. I don't want to give anything away. You don't oversaturate it. I've already found it on Daily Motion. I want to say, Rob, this is exactly why I'm after all all these years. I'm so thankful that we have this podcast because you you bring up something that I think just when I think, oh, gosh, we've run out of favorite things. And then all of a sudden you were like, this is so brilliant.

I love British humor. I'm a huge a little Britain fan. And I love Matt Lucas in that world. But I'm also Sutton and I are huge ab fab fans. That being said, I don't know French and Saunders at all. I don't I know of them, but I've never watched. So I'm so excited.

[14:10] Robert W. Schneider: Well, did you watch it? I'm so sorry. Did you watch Absolutely Fabulous?

[14:15] Kevin David Thomas: Of course. Always. Yeah. So, you know, her, you know, of course.

[14:20] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, I know her very well. I don't I don't know the other one as well. I'd never watched the Vicar of Dibley.

[14:24] Kevin David Thomas: It's so funny. And the other funny thing about this show is that they were given one of the largest budgets in BBC history. So the recreations of things like they had money was spent. Money was spent on these things. It's brilliant. It's really, really.

[14:40] Kevin David Thomas: You can also YouTube a cat commercial. There's a very funny sketch they do with a cat commercial. It does not fit into the umbrella of what we're doing, but I would love for you to look for it anyway.

[14:51] Robert W. Schneider: Yes, fantastic. French and Saunders. What do you got, Kev?

[14:55] Kevin David Thomas: That's a really good one. Well, mine is not nearly as funny as yours. I mean, I wish it was. Mine's more of a memory favorite thing. So we lost an artist that I think I wish we would have interviewed. He is somebody that I'm worried will be completely – well, I think he already is a little bit – completely forgotten to the annals of musical theater history. He wrote two shows that were on Broadway. He just died this past week. He died at almost 100. He was 99 years old, born in 1920. His name is Milton Schafer.

[15:28] Kevin David Thomas: Milton Schafer is a composer of the American musical theater, but he has his roots in classical musical theater. He wrote two shows that unfortunately were not hits, and he's somebody to me that reminds me of just how fickle this business is. Rob and I have interviewed over 200-plus people. We've heard from all of them. Most of them, the theme, whenever someone says, oh, Kevin, what do you hear from the most people? And I always think – my go-to thing, Rob, and I'm curious what you say, but my go-to thing is what I learned is that a lot of people got quote-unquote famous or had their break or whatever you want to call it because opportunity met talent. They had the right chance, but they were prepared to meet it.

So they needed an opportunity. And so what makes me think of is that so many of these people that we're interviewing are the people who got the chance. There are tons of people, though, who have the ability, who have the talent that just never got the right chance at the right time. I think Milton Schafer is one of them. I do. I really do.

[16:30] Kevin David Thomas: So the musicals that he wrote are 1962 and 1965. The first one is Bravo Giovanni, which starred Michelle Lee, Cesare Seppe. Our old – one of our first guests, George S. Irving and his wife, Marie Carnitiellova, were a famous Broadway couple. So he wrote Bravo Giovanni, and then he also wrote Drat! The Cat! with Leslie Ann Warren and Elliot Gould and the famous Barbra Streisand, which she made famous because she was married to Elliot Gould. She was married to Elliot Gould, who was in it at the time. Yes. And so Yes, She Touched Me, which is actually sung by Elliot Gould in the show. The rain will never be the same. I love that song.

[17:14] Kevin David Thomas: So the reason why I want to bring up Milton Schafer, because there's tons of people who wrote two shows that never did anything, but I want to put on my musician hat for a minute and tell you that when you look at his scores – because I listened to the – I have the albums, I have the LPs of both, and I listened to both again. I've listened to them before, but in Drat! The Cat! I have the score on my computer, so I followed along the handwritten score. So Milton Schafer was a – he studied piano, classical music. He studied – he really – he wasn't just a pop songwriter like so many of the people of the Tin Pan Alley days were. He was of another ilk. He was of more – like less Irving Berlin, more Vernon Duke.

Vernon Duke, of course, was a classically trained artist with a – off the top of my head, I don't remember his European name or his Russian name, but it was not Vernon Duke. It was like Dushevsky or something like that. But these were classic musicians. There were a whole bunch of them that wrote songs versus the ones who were more sort of pop songwriting at the time period.

[18:16] Kevin David Thomas: So Milton Schafer, though, he traveled to Europe. He studied with the famous mentor Nadia Boulanger, who was the – she was the mentor to people like Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson, Philip Glass, Michel Legrand, Astor Piazzolo, all these great classical musicians. And so – and Milton Schafer studied with them, and then Milton Schafer came back to the United States. He toured a little bit as a concert pianist, and then he worked as a music assistant to Bob Merrill of – how much is that? The Window fame. That's right. Of course, he went on to do Carnival and so many other things. But he was sort of his piano player, his right-hand man, his assistant. Vernon Duke then signed him to Frank Music, as in Frank Lester's music theater company, and then he eventually wrote Bravo Giovanni and Drat! The Cat!

[19:03] Kevin David Thomas: Bravo Giovanni, you guys, I have to just give you a quick summary of the plot because it is the wackiest, weirdest show. Basically, it takes place in Rome, and there's a pizza guy who has a down, like friends and family kind of pizza place, and then like a big conglomerate opens up next door. And so the guy that has like the smaller pizza place in order to compete decides – because the guy's going to take away his business through friends and all that. They're going to build a tunnel underneath, and they're going to go into the kitchen of the other place and then take their food and then bring it over to the other place and sell it because they're taking so much business they're going to take from them.

So the set literally was like a set where there was above ground and below ground. Shenanigans ensued. It was – George S. Irving was the competitor, and then Cesare Seppe was the local guy. And then, of course, the local guy becomes big and then wants to outsource and do all these things, and then the whole musical is sort of about that he almost becomes the bad guy. He almost sells out, if you know what I'm saying.

[20:05] Kevin David Thomas: I hope he doesn't. I hope he doesn't. If Michelle Lee has her way, he will not, and he doesn't. And it all gets summed up in the last five minutes just like a musical does. The score is very of its era. However, Milton Schafer was a great musician. He was a good composer. He wrote with great harmony and texture and a palette that is more than just boom-cha, boom-cha, boom-cha, boom-cha, boom-cha, which is what you heard a lot of times from lesser-known artists. And I guess the reason why I want to celebrate him and make my favorite thing and make sure he's not forgotten is that he was an artist who was special in my opinion. I think that for whatever reason, he didn't get the right chance at the right time to make – to give him his big hit show. I think he just – the luck wasn't with him for whatever – and I'm sure there's – of course, with a musical, there's a thousand reasons why it doesn't work.

[21:00] Robert W. Schneider: Sure.

[21:00] Kevin David Thomas: But this was not – these two – I mean Drat! The Cat! closed after a week and then Bravo Giovanni, which was supposed to be a big hit, closed within – it was 76 performances. Incidentally, that was nominated for a Tony Award and not for Best Score and not Forum. Fun fact.

[21:18] Robert W. Schneider: Really?

[21:20] Kevin David Thomas: Mm-hmm.

[21:21] Robert W. Schneider: Mm-hmm.

[21:22] Kevin David Thomas: Forum didn't get a nomination.

[21:24] Robert W. Schneider: Not for Best Score.

[21:25] Kevin David Thomas: Wow. That's so cool to know. I didn't know that.

[21:28] Robert W. Schneider: Mm-hmm.

[21:29] Kevin David Thomas: Bravo Giovanni, I think, also has such great songs. That is Thin Crust, Thick Crust.

[21:34] Robert W. Schneider: I hate you.

[21:39] Kevin David Thomas: I hate when you do stuff. You make me so mad because you're so funny. And Merry Marinera, which was Michelle Lee's part that was cut on the road. It was originally done by Priscilla Lopez.

[21:50] Robert W. Schneider: Peppy Pesto.

[21:51] Kevin David Thomas: Peppy Pesto was a fun one.

[21:53] Robert W. Schneider: Was that one called Peppy Pesto?

[21:55] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, Peppy Pesto.

[21:56] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, Peppy Pesto. Great group number.

[21:58] Kevin David Thomas: No, really, really solid. Like, really, really fun. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. No, in 1963, it was Oliver, Bravo Giovanni, Little Me, and Stop the World I Want to Get All.

[22:09] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, well, those are actually really great scores. I kind of now see why. You know, it's very interesting. And you know who won? It was Oliver.

[22:15] Kevin David Thomas: Oliver won.

[22:16] Robert W. Schneider: Oliver won?

[22:17] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, for Best Score.

[22:19] Robert W. Schneider: That Little Me score, though, is so good.

[22:21] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, well, of course. But that was, you know. So I just think it's interesting. And I think that Milton Schafer really just, unfortunately, didn't get the chance that he deserved. And so I just would like to. And if you have a chance, go listen to Drat! The Cat! Bravo Giovanni is on Spotify.

[22:35] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, great.

[22:36] Kevin David Thomas: And it's actually, it's very Italian. I mean, you have to, if you listen to the original, and that's really all you can listen to, do put on your sort of, like, time-traveling goggles. And really, Cesare Seppe was a metropolitan opera baritone. It was one of the first times that we really, you know, well, not the first times, but it was very popular to have the crossover. And, you know, he's.

[22:59] Robert W. Schneider: Didn't he do Carmelina, too?

[23:02] Kevin David Thomas: That's right. Not the recorded one. He was not recorded. But yes, I think so. I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

[23:10] Kevin David Thomas: But both scores hold up. They are tuneful. They are of the 60s, of the Golden Age. And if you have, if you are someone who loves that era and those kinds of scores, and you have not listened to these, I would highly recommend listening to these two scores because they are fun. And the Drat! The Cat! particularly, I think, has some really great tunes in it. And if you can find the Leslie Ann Warren, she is, Leslie Ann Warren, really, she was something special. She really was. She was great. She was so contagious. And so the Drat! The Cat! one, I should note, the pressing they made of that is not an original cast recording. It is a soundboard of the original production. And so you're not getting, the quality is a little tougher to listen to, but you are getting an actual live performance. And they also did that concept album, remember, in the early 2000s?

[23:59] Robert W. Schneider: Yes.

[24:00] Kevin David Thomas: Jason Groff. Yes. You can also listen to that as well. And I think Susan Egan, I think, is in that one.

[24:05] Robert W. Schneider: Based on what you're saying, that's not what I should be doing.

[24:07] Kevin David Thomas: No, no, no. That's lovely. No, no. It's good. I'm an original person. I like to go back to the source. And I will take the soundboard, and then I'll listen to the, probably after I get off with you, I'll probably go listen to that studio recording, actually, just to compare.

[24:21] Robert W. Schneider: Nothing be the same.

[24:24] Kevin David Thomas: That's a good song. And also, I Like Him. There's a song called I Like Him that she sings. There's another song called Steady Steady that, oh no, that Steady Steady is from Bravo Giovanni. I'm sorry. I Like Him is from Drat! The Cat! Drat! The Cat! is Steady Steady. Bravo Giovanni is a steady, a steady.

[24:40] Robert W. Schneider: I did keep thinking of, like, our good friend.

[24:43] Kevin David Thomas: Sergio?

[24:44] Robert W. Schneider: Yes. The whole time I thought, oh my goodness. You know, they thought to revive this in the 80s with Sergio Franchi.

[24:49] Kevin David Thomas: Yes. You know, they wanted to. I'm up for the role. Every time a guest, Rob, says the Coconut Grove Playhouse, I look at you in the interview because I want to start laughing because all I can think about is.

[25:02] Robert W. Schneider: Yes.

[25:03] Kevin David Thomas: I. The Coconut Grove. I am talking to Emani Eisenberg. We talk about the maybe I have come back. I do a Bravo Giovanni at the Ritz Theater and they say, no interest from the public.

[25:20] Robert W. Schneider: Is that how you say it in English?

[25:23] Kevin David Thomas: You can speak in Italian the whole time.

[25:25] Robert W. Schneider: Like the whole all of his lines.

[25:27] Kevin David Thomas: I don't. I can't. I have a gluten allergy. I cannot eat the gluten. So they all make a special pizza for me. It was a made a cardboard. It was a me and a deal. We were in the show together. We were in the workshop at eight. Ninety a Broadway or as I like to call it. Or Chente, Niente, a Broadway.

[25:53] Robert W. Schneider: That was fast, fast translation.

[25:56] Kevin David Thomas: That was impressive. I am a fast, but I cannot get out of my contract with Bally's in Atlantic City. It comes to the chain. And my wife is telling me he said because I am not the talented. That is why I don't do the show. She say I am untalented for 15 years.

[26:24] Robert W. Schneider: Rob speaks Italian.

[26:25] Kevin David Thomas: Now she's telling me a dinner is ready. And to spite me, she has made an all gluten meal.

[26:33] Robert W. Schneider: You've been watching a lot of Sopranos because you're Italian.

[26:37] Kevin David Thomas: Thank you. That's all I know. Or Golden Girls. I don't know. Maybe you've been watching a lot of Sophia episodes. You've been watching.

[26:43] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, I love those Sophia episodes.

[26:44] Kevin David Thomas: Where Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty try to play Italian.

[26:48] Robert W. Schneider: With Estelle without a wig.

[26:50] Kevin David Thomas: The flashback ones I love.

[26:51] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, I love those.

[26:52] Kevin David Thomas: Salvatore.

[26:54] Robert W. Schneider: Salvatore. Her face always looks frozen in this thing.

[26:58] Kevin David Thomas: Salvatore. Come on, you big bunch of galoop. We gotta go.

[27:03] Robert W. Schneider: She never blinks.

[27:06] Kevin David Thomas: It's always done in a monotone. That I gotta tell you. Her line readings were so bizarre.

[27:10] Robert W. Schneider: Which one? Estelle or Bea?

[27:15] Kevin David Thomas: Estelle Getty. But so perfect.

[27:18] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, Bea Arthur. You think she has weird line readings too, Bea Arthur?

[27:21] Kevin David Thomas: Not weird. Just brilliant. Like just out. Just not. And the way her stares and her. Because I've been watching Golden Girls. That's sort of been my comfort food. It's my comfort. But I love watching them when they're not talking. That's my favorite. When they're listening.

[27:35] Robert W. Schneider: Yes.

[27:37] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, God. These are old comedy queens. There's a hurricane a-coming. And they're like, what did you say, Ma? And just like no blinking. There's a hurricane a-coming. There's a hurricane a-coming. Salvatore told me. I could feel it.

[27:53] Robert W. Schneider: They're like, all right, Estelle.

[27:54] Kevin David Thomas: I love it. Me and Estelle, we do a torture song trilogy. At Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. But we only do.

[28:04] Robert W. Schneider: Palazzo de Cesare.

[28:06] Kevin David Thomas: Palazzo de Cesare. We only do two lines. You have to get to the buffet. So she come out. She go, you're gay. I no like. I say, Mama, I'm gay. I love you. Curtain falls. Everyone go get a shrimp cocktail. It's like Bloomer Girl on Amazon Prime.

[28:22] Robert W. Schneider: Bloomer Girl.

[28:23] Kevin David Thomas: I no do Bloomer Girl. It's like my wife always tell me. You dumb bastard.

[28:30] Robert W. Schneider: Well, make sure you watch French Saunders and talk to Signora Milton Schaefer about this play.

[28:41] Kevin David Thomas: Indeed.

[28:42] Robert W. Schneider: About Bravo Giovanni. You can listen to a little Sergio Franchi, too.

[28:46] Kevin David Thomas: Arrivederci.

[28:48] Robert W. Schneider: Arrivederci, friends.