This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tommy: Are there regional differences in theatre games?

[0:02] Jimi: Um, potentially, what do you call it?

[0:05] Tommy: Do you, I mean, do you play Zip, Zap, Zop?

[0:07] Jimi: Ah, Zip, Zap, Boing.

[0:08] Tommy: Or do you call it Zip, Zap, Boing?

[0:11] Jimi: We've already talked about this on a podcast.

[0:13] Tommy: You don't call it.

[0:13] Jimi: We 100% have. A really early days one.

[0:17] Tommy: Oh, geez.

[0:18] Jimi: Potentially Sweeney, which actually no one else does.

[0:21] Tommy: Wow, that's dramatic.

[0:22] Jimi: Because we talked about theatre games, and one of the questions we asked was, what theatre games do you play?

[0:27] Tommy: And I bet you it's because I said Zap.

[0:31] Jimi: Yeah, no, that's what, yeah.

[0:32] Tommy: Zip, Zap, Boink?

[0:34] Jimi: Zip, Zap, Boing.

[0:35] Tommy: Boing.

[0:36] Jimi: Boing, because you're boinging it back.

[0:38] Tommy: Not Bump It, Crump It, Queen Elizabeth?

[0:42] Jimi: Tap It.

[0:44] Tommy: Bop It, do you mean like that?

[0:47] Jimi: No, I was trying to think up, like, eternally British things, and the first thing I came up with was Bump It, Crump It.

[0:54] Tommy: Bump It, Crump It.

[0:55] Jimi: If you want to bump it, bump it with a crumpet.

[0:59] Tommy: The British version of Gypsy.

[1:04] Jimi: Will somebody get us another drink?

[1:05] Tommy: Welcome to Jim and Tomic's Musical Theatre Happy Hour.

[1:08] Jimi: I'm Jimi.

[1:09] Tommy: And I'm Tommy, and this is the only musical theatre podcast with Fermata.

[1:13] Jimi: And fermented beverages.

[1:16] Tommy: Sold it, well done.

[1:17] Jimi: Alcohol, thank you.

[1:18] Tommy: Here, we take apart your favourite shows, muddle them together with a shot of buffoonery, and pour you a refreshing glass of musical theatre conversation.

[1:28] Tommy: Jimi, what are you drinking today?

[1:30] Jimi: I'm drinking a delightfully quirky cocktail from the stick-zicks of blips.

[1:40] Tommy: Mmm, and why are you drinking that?

[1:43] Jimi: Well, I got a quiz question for you that perhaps will shed some light.

[1:48] Tommy: This make as much sense as what you just said?

[1:50] Jimi: Perhaps.

[1:50] Tommy: Probably.

[1:51] Jimi: People did really well with this one.

[1:53] Tommy: They actually did, they actually did.

[1:55] Jimi: Despite popular assumptions to the contrary, this musical is not the first musicalized mash-up of this author's work.

[2:01] Tommy: A previously created TV special stars, among other people, Kathy Najimy, Christopher Lloyd, Robin Williams, and an entire gospel choir.

[2:09] Jimi: What musical is the second musicalized mash-up of this author's work?

[2:14] Tommy: Well, Jimi, it could only be Sizzical.

[2:17] Jimi: After all of those years being stuck on a page, did you ever imagine you'd see me on stage?

[2:22] Tommy: Now I'm here, there's no telling what may ensue.

[2:27] Jimi: No, there's no telling what, but I'll give you a clue.

[2:41] Tommy: All the things you can think, all the things you can think, if you're willing to try.

[2:47] Jimi: Think invisible ink, or a kink with a stink, or a stare to the sky.

[2:52] Tommy: If you open your mind, all the things you will find, lining up to get lost.

[3:00] Jimi: All the things you can think, when you think about Sizz.

[3:09] Tommy: Sizzical, Sizzical.

[3:12] Jimi: Whichever way you say it, it has to be the muses.

[3:15] Tommy: I like Sizzical the musical.

[3:19] Jimi: Yeah, the soft S.

[3:20] Tommy: I actually really enjoy people call it musical theater.

[3:23] Jimi: Musical?

[3:24] Tommy: Musical, like mucosal.

[3:28] Jimi: Sounds like something that cures your sore throat.

[3:30] Tommy: Yeah, mucosal theater is something very different.

[3:34] Jimi: Tell us all about it.

[3:35] Tommy: Sizzical the musical, Sizzical.

[3:38] Jimi: See, now I'm thinking about it.

[3:39] Tommy: Yeah, but also, isn't it Zeus?

[3:42] Jimi: It would be Zeus in the native German, maybe.

[3:47] Tommy: Well, I think I've heard even in the native German, it's like Zeus.

[3:50] Jimi: So let's not go there.

[3:51] Tommy: Certainly Americanized, it is Zeus.

[3:54] Jimi: Sizzical tried out in Boston in the year 2000, and then moved to Broadway later that year, where it was not well received, which, hashtag, we'll get to it.

[4:05] Tommy: It closed in 2001 after only 198 performances.

[4:10] Jimi: Yes, indeed.

[4:10] Tommy: So it has music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and just after Ragtime, and both of them came together and decided that they could do the book.

[4:22] Jimi: Yes.

[4:23] Tommy: That's how I'm going to phrase that.

[4:26] Jimi: Yeah, Sizzical is, I had a friend describe it to me.

[4:32] Tommy: Before I knew what it was, he said, it's like Into the Woods, but with Dr. Seuss characters.

[4:37] Jimi: And I don't know if that description is demeaning to Into the Woods or a little too generous to Sizzical.

[4:44] Tommy: Yeah, it's a bit of both.

[4:45] Jimi: But there's some accuracy there.

[4:47] Tommy: I understand what they mean, it's sprawling.

[4:50] Jimi: Yes, it is certainly sprawling.

[4:52] Tommy: It takes a good 15 or so Dr. Seuss books and shakes them all up and puts them together in one kind of epic tale.

[5:03] Jimi: It's vaguely centered around Horton, the elephant, as he both hears a hoo and sits on an egg.

[5:09] Tommy: Yep.

[5:10] Jimi: And then we also have, we got a bunch of protagonists, but Horton and then Jojo the Kid, who is kind of the personification of childhood, maybe.

[5:22] Tommy: Oh, we're trying to analyze already.

[5:24] Jimi: I know, is a resident of Whoville, and plays a pretty leading role in the story.

[5:33] Tommy: And the whole thing is narrated, spurred on by, and interrupted by, the cat in the hat.

[5:39] Jimi: Because what would a Dr. Seuss story be without a bunch of cat in the hat everywhere?

[5:47] Tommy: Exactly.

[5:48] Jimi: So, in some ways, it does it successfully.

[5:52] Tommy: But on paper, it did not.

[5:55] Jimi: It did not.

[5:55] Tommy: Surely work out why.

[5:57] Jimi: Let's dive in.

[6:07] Tommy: So, McElligot's Pool, that's a reference.

[6:32] Jimi: Do you know what I'm going to say?

[6:33] Tommy: First off, first segue, not segue, what's the other one?

[6:36] Jimi: Like divergence?

[6:41] Tommy: Tangent, that's it.

[6:42] Jimi: Mute head and G.

[6:44] Tommy: First tangent of the day, I don't really know much about Dr. Seuss.

[6:50] Jimi: Really?

[6:50] Tommy: I know a lot about Dr. Seuss.

[6:52] Jimi: Yes, because you are American and I'm British.

[6:56] Tommy: And we will talk about this classic, get it on the t-shirt in a little bit.

[7:02] Jimi: But I just want to get that out now, if it sounds like I'm really clueless about the intricacies of all of these characters.

[7:09] Tommy: Like my knowledge of Dr. Seuss comes from Seussical.

[7:12] Jimi: The Simpsons.

[7:15] Tommy: Not The Simpsons this time.

[7:17] Jimi: Although there is a couple of references at various points.

[7:20] Tommy: But not The Simpsons, the actual musical itself.

[7:23] Jimi: Yeah, that's fair, which is fascinating.

[7:25] Tommy: Just as a disclaimer about my British ignorance.

[7:28] Jimi: Absolutely.

[7:28] Tommy: But on the synopsis, it is a laundry list of Seussian characters.

[7:34] Jimi: Some pivotal to the plot and some like, oh yeah, the Grinch.

[7:38] Tommy: Yeah, exactly.

[7:39] Jimi: He needs to come in somewhere.

[7:41] Tommy: Let's make it at Christmas at one point.

[7:43] Jimi: I'm here, I'm the Grinch, goodbye.

[7:46] Tommy: Yes.

[7:47] Jimi: The end.

[7:48] Tommy: A beautiful number.

[7:50] Jimi: Yeah, so let's go all the way back to the beginning.

[7:54] Tommy: Oh man.

[7:55] Jimi: So Seussical basically started in many ways as a response to ragtime.

[8:04] Tommy: Which is a weird thing to say, but that's quite true.

[8:06] Jimi: So if you've listened to a ragtime podcast, if not, go back and do that.

[8:12] Tommy: Because we talk a bit about the producer of ragtime, Garth Drabinsky, who met much controversy later on.

[8:25] Jimi: He basically acquired the rights to do Seuss on stage.

[8:32] Tommy: Yes.

[8:33] Jimi: Right?

[8:34] Tommy: Yeah, basically.

[8:36] Jimi: And obviously, having just worked with Ahrens and Flaherty, was like, you guys can take a book and make it magical.

[8:44] Tommy: Let's do it with these.

[8:47] Jimi: So that's how it kind of began.

[8:50] Tommy: That was its inception in it.

[8:52] Jimi: So it had some workshops in Toronto under his auspices.

[8:57] Tommy: But eventually, and you know, mired in theater history, who knows how exactly it went down.

[9:05] Jimi: He no longer was producing, or his company.

[9:07] Tommy: And instead, it was picked up by Barry and Fran Weissler?

[9:12] Jimi: Weissler, yeah.

[9:13] Tommy: Barry and Fran Weissler, who are notorious for a couple pretty specific producing tricks.

[9:23] Jimi: Their biggest success is the currently still-running Revival of Chicago.

[9:30] Tommy: But they were one of the first people on Broadway to kind of pioneer the current trend of stunt casting.

[9:38] Jimi: Yes.

[9:40] Tommy: More on that story later.

[9:44] Jimi: But yeah, one of the things that I find most interesting is right at the start, when they were still writing it, the involvement of Eric Idle.

[9:52] Tommy: Yes.

[9:53] Jimi: From Monty Python.

[9:54] Tommy: Yes.

[9:56] Jimi: So he basically was brought in as kind of like a co-conceiver, I think was what he was labeled as.

[10:01] Tommy: And basically wanted to work with Ahrens and Flaherty to write the book and make it into this really cool thing.

[10:11] Jimi: Because he had all these great ideas about how they can make it this huge kind of comedy spectacle, full of like slapstick and zania.

[10:24] Tommy: Which I don't think is a word, but should be?

[10:26] Jimi: It's a Dr. Seuss musical. You can make up a word.

[10:29] Tommy: Yeah, I'm gonna make up words.

[10:31] Jimi: Zania.

[10:32] Tommy: That's a great word.

[10:34] Jimi: And they were like, no, it's okay, we've got this.

[10:39] Tommy: We'll do the book.

[10:41] Jimi: And I don't know why they did that.

[10:43] Tommy: Yeah, I wonder so much about the inception of the show.

[10:48] Jimi: So it had its Toronto workshops, then it had an out-of-town tryout in Boston that by the sound of it was not great.

[10:59] Tommy: There is, we'll put a link in the show notes, there's an opening night, I think it's a broadway.com interview, something of that ilk of all the creative team on opening night on Broadway.

[11:11] Jimi: And every single one of them, there's like, you can hear in the back of their voice, like, man, it's been a long journey and we got there.

[11:20] Tommy: It's like excuses, excuses, excuses, excuses.

[11:24] Jimi: Because to be honest, by that point, by Broadway, so much had already gone on.

[11:31] Tommy: There was a lot of hype right at the start because in Toronto, people thought it was amazing because it was really this kind of like scaled down, quirky piece that was just a bit peculiar, but took these beloved books and put them on a stage in a way that really worked.

[11:49] Jimi: But by Broadway, they'd scrapped the entire creative team.

[11:55] Tommy: They were all gone, designer, director, everyone was gone and they changed it for Broadway.

[12:02] Jimi: And basically the Broadway-fied it in many ways.

[12:08] Tommy: I saw one quote that was saying that they wanted to make, you know, the next Fantastics in terms of scale.

[12:14] Jimi: Fascinating.

[12:15] Tommy: And then you look at what it became and it's like, wow, you did not.

[12:21] Jimi: If you've never seen clips of the original Broadway, there's plenty of press clips you can look up and stuff.

[12:26] Tommy: It is fascinating to see because I think a lot of people's exposure to this is probably Amdram in high school.

[12:32] Jimi: To see how big and flashy some of this is, isn't a sense you quite get just from the cast recording.

[12:40] Tommy: Not at all.

[12:41] Jimi: And also remembering that it's still, in terms of like technical Broadway, still quite early days.

[12:46] Tommy: There's not a lot of, you know, we can like fly people in, maybe we can do some stuff, but there's no magic.

[12:52] Jimi: There's nothing that's terribly baffling, but they're doing the best they can.

[12:55] Tommy: You know, this is the pre-Confetti Cannons era of Broadway.

[12:59] Jimi: And then it closed.

[13:00] Tommy: And then it closed very, very quickly.

[13:03] Jimi: Not without some death rattles.

[13:05] Tommy: As we mentioned, stunt casting, Rosie O'Donnell and Kathy Rigby had some turns as the cat.

[13:12] Jimi: And my favorite, not my favorite, ironically, Aaron Carter, young Aaron Carter has a turn as JoJo.

[13:24] Tommy: And like, sings the whole thing like a boy band singer from the early 2000s.

[13:32] Jimi: Yes, it's terrible.

[13:34] Tommy: And it did.

[13:35] Jimi: Again though, weird comparisons between the Fantastics.

[13:38] Tommy: Sure.

[13:38] Jimi: Musical again, Aaron Carter.

[13:41] Tommy: He was such a Broadway prodigy.

[13:43] Jimi: All things considered, the stunt casting did help float the musical for a little bit.

[13:50] Tommy: To the producer's credit, it worked a little bit.

[13:55] Jimi: A little bit.

[13:56] Tommy: In the way that because, as far as I'm aware, it hadn't been kind of shoehorned or certainly not as kind of desperately as the Weisslers did it because it was so reactionary.

[14:10] Jimi: So like David Shiner, who played the original Cat in the Hat, kind of met lukewarm reviews at the start, at opening.

[14:21] Tommy: And obviously being the Cat in the Hat had to be iconic, I guess.

[14:25] Tommy: So very quickly he was asked to take a four-week vacation so they could put in Rosie O'Donnell. And then the Weisslers kind of shut down their communication with the cast. So much rumor mill started happening, and then David Shiner found out that he was basically being replaced by reading the news. Which is disgusting.

[14:51] Jimi: So terrible. But you know, producers are producers. They have a bottom line to fulfill. But it is fascinating that a lot of the origins of this show seem to be so much informed by the business of Broadway and not someone who's like, we must tell Dr. Seuss's stories.

[15:12] Tommy: We're so far from that now. We're so far away from, oh, what would be a great way to put these stories on a stage? Do you know what I mean? It's much more, how are we going to sell Cat in the Hat plushies? Basically, it's interesting, just kind of like historically, we are at a really interesting place on Broadway. This is kind of like the lead up to Wicked, where everything changed. And the internet is starting to creep in. I mean, we're coming out of the dark times. We're coming out of Review Central. And Seussical kind of ushers in this adaptation of Palooza on Broadway that we hadn't really seen before, that I would wager even Wicked is a part of. Wicked just happened to burst the bubble on that, that it can be successful in its own right. But Seussical was like, maybe yeah, I would wager this. Seussical was one of the first, like, quote unquote, recognizable commodities of this era of Broadway.

[16:22] Jimi: Or certainly was hyped to be.

[16:25] Tommy: Yes, yes.

[16:25] Jimi: Do you know what I mean? The anticipation of the show was crazy because it's so commonplace now that we know that, oh, you know, Dear Evan Hansen is in Washington. It's going so well. Ben Platt's amazing. I can't wait for this to come to Broadway. You know, same with Hamilton. Hamilton's at the Public. It's doing it. You know what I mean? We are watching these shows before they're on Broadway. We know how they're going to do. But at this point, we didn't, you know, the Internet wasn't nearly the beast that it is at the moment.

[16:55] Tommy: Yeah. And it shows that, like, there isn't, you know, I looked, there's not a lot, we get the sense that Broadway tryouts or Boston tryouts didn't go well. But we only get the sense, right? There's not, oh, I saw it in Boston and here's what I think about it on my blog, bostontryouts.blogspot.google or whatever.

[17:16] Jimi: Yeah, exactly. But regardless, like the hype was there and people were saying, like, this is going to be huge. This is going to be huge. It's, you know, Dr. Seuss is on in the Nederlander. They kind of like kicked out Footloose in order to bring it in.

[17:30] Tommy: Right.

[17:31] Jimi: It's kind of mad, the hype that was created and then for it to kind of come out and people be like, well, yeah. And like, you know, I think I think it was it was a victim of being overhyped.

[17:43] Tommy: Right. Yeah, absolutely. Because it didn't like it certainly flopped financially and critically, but not because of like one glaring thing.

[17:54] Jimi: Yeah.

[17:54] Tommy: You know, you don't read the contemporary review or the contemporaneous reviews and be like, and this was the bad thing that we didn't like. It's just a general sense of like, it was disorganized and just kind of meh and not what I expected.

[18:09] Jimi: Exactly. I think that's what it was, because, you know, people had heard rumblings all the way back from Toronto. And it was this really interesting, you know, all about imagination and inspiring that pops us really garish. Yeah. Bravado. Yeah. People were just a bit like, oh, it's that. OK, interesting. Yeah. And it ended up, you know, becoming I think this was like the first time they'd ever not been able to recoup to their investors, which is.

[18:43] Tommy: Yeah. Insane. But I don't know. I'm still kind of I'm still kind of interested as to why. Because, you know, I I enjoy Seussical.

[18:52] Jimi: Yeah, absolutely. Enjoy it. Absolutely. There's plenty of other stuff. I mean, Fiddler's, for example, just before, I enjoy that substantially less.

[19:05] Tommy: Yeah. No, Seussical is fun. Seussical has a heart to it. Seussical has good music.

[19:12] Jimi: Yeah. It is interesting. I I would wager I think it is tied to. The show, the original production got too businessy and lost some of the core of the art of what we do.

[19:26] Tommy: Yeah. Like lost sight of some of that. That's certainly.

[19:32] Jimi: I was going to say it was almost like it was too commercial too early. Yeah. You know, like if it was if this was now. Yes. It would probably be totally fine. It would probably be great.

[19:40] Tommy: Yeah. No. Because this is what we're used to. If this if this came out across the street from Shrek, Seussical would still be playing like. Yeah, man. Yeah. Like it was maybe before its time. I don't know. But not in a good way.

[19:55] Jimi: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Not in a revolutionary kind of way. It just, you know, or maybe Seussical like was a start of it all. Like maybe we've learned lessons from Seussical in the producing scheme that has made things like, you know, Shrek and Frozen and Tarzan and, you know, some of these Disney-fied franchise musicals. Disney's the interesting one, because obviously by this point we had Lion King and Lion King was now becoming this just stalwart of Broadway where it's like, well, this is it. This is it. And all of the shows were now having to kind of pull up their bootstraps because they were fighting against the mouse. Now on paper, Dr. Seuss, who is, you know, you've got Walt Disney and you've got Dr. Seuss and you've got America.

Yeah, exactly. So on paper that should be fine. Do you know what I mean? If there was ever going to be an opposition to the Lion King, it would be that, but it just didn't happen. It just didn't tick those boxes. And you wonder if maybe they bit off more than they could chew. You wonder if, you know, like the Grinch still does well on Broadway every December. Like maybe the massive multiplayer nature of it was its downfall that it was just so disjointed that it was, you know, difficult to follow or something.

[21:18] Tommy: Yeah. I think, I think kind of looking at the book is an interesting point because that's, um, if you ever read anything from Eric Idle, uh, after it closed, um, that's where he blames it. He says that, well, I mean, he says he should have written it. Sure. But he says that, um, that's where the main issues lie. Um, and I can kind of get it. Yeah. It's so sprawling. It's so sprawling. I mean, we're, you know, I was re-listening it to it today and, you know, uh, Gertrude, who is perhaps secondary protagonist in a show.

[22:01] Jimi: She's your, she's your female lead in many ways.

[22:04] Tommy: We don't get Gertrude's I want song till 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 songs into act one. Um, but because there's so much stuff we gotta get out of the way beforehand. And I think the thing that is difficult about it and why it doesn't work so well in the plot of this one is that it doesn't, it is an epic journey. It's not like into the woods where in the end we all end up together and this becomes one story that we've been weaving together and you see that revelation. It's just a bunch of separate stories that we've pulled tenuous relationships between.

[22:45] Jimi: Exactly. Um, and that kind of, because like, you know, where are the Wickersham brothers in act two, do you know what I mean? Nobody, nobody knows, but they're a significant part of the first, like the, what's the name of the vulture? Uh, Vlad Volodikoff. Right. Yeah. Who the hell is he? Or here, let's talk about General Genghis Khan Schmidt, who has a whole song to himself in act one and in act two is like, eh, war's bad. Um, right. Yeah. It's not good. Yeah. Um, like it's just kind of really basic stuff here. I would, I would say, I would challenge it's not good. I think there is something it has found success in. I don't.

[23:20] Tommy: Sorry. It's not good book writing. Yes. That's what I say. It is not an epitome of solid, well thought out book writing. This book was an accident. It's throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks. And drawing red yarn lines between it and pointing at it and going, Carol! Yes. Is that that reference again? There you go. I did it twice. Well done. Yeah. Um, yeah, that it's, it's just, but the thing is, is it's like, you don't, you don't, when you're watching it, you don't really hate it. You're not like, like sometimes you don't necessarily follow it, but you're having a good time.

[23:58] Jimi: Yeah. Yeah. And you relate to the characters and it's not difficult to follow per se. It's not confusing. It is. It's not confusing. Like ghost quartet is confusing. Right. It's not confusing, even in the way, even in the way that I would say into the woods, it's a little confusing. Um, um, yeah, I guess, but it's like, just like time. Yeah. Is that, is it really a factor? Sure. Um, and obviously things like science, it isn't really effective, but that's fair because it's a, an imaginary world, but even then, and like, this is an addition in a later version, but like, there's a framing device that this is a story that the cat's telling to a kid, but then the kid is Jojo, but we don't really explore that framing device beyond that.

No, it's, that's a shame actually, because like that, uh, idea of it being just a bunch of kids, like a kid's idea actually kind of works because it's that kind of, uh, sort of ADD, my mind is sprawling all over the place. Here's a new idea. Oh, this let's go here. Now let's go there. You know? Yeah. I've got the whole doctors, this collection in front of me and I'm just picking out books. It's that kind of right. Yeah. And I will say like the it's, so I was in the show and a community theater junior year of high school. Um, and the published version at the time, the measure numbers it by the way you and I couldn't find my, uh, uh, libretto today, which sucks. Um, but I think it's at home. Um, right.

But the measure numbers, they kept consistent through versions. And so if they ever added measure numbers, it would be like measure one 17, a and B and C and all the way to X. Um, and like, it was interesting then to see, you could get a sense of like things that were added and revised and like later in the writing process. And a lot of the stuff that was added and revised were some of the things around, Oh, the things you can think. And, you know, the framing device of Jojo and like this becoming this sort of thing. Um,

[26:07] Tommy: yeah. And I think they were finally starting to pursue that. Maybe if they had taken another year off to, you know, rip it all up and start over again, they would've gotten there a little better.

[26:18] Jimi: I know. Or I don't know, maybe just kind of accepted the help. Dare I say it? Sorry, Arons and Flaherty. And this one, most of all, you know, Ragtime is one book. Once on this island is one story. Like this is a new story you've created. Yeah. In a sense. Um, and to do it alone.

[26:41] Tommy: One of the things that I wonder is, um, this is complete conjecture. Sure. But I wonder if like Lynn Arons was like, I'm not gonna have much to do because we're really just using most of the stuff. Yeah. As a direct steal from the book. So I want to legitimize my paycheck. And so I'm gonna give myself a book credit. Perhaps. Is that bad to say? I don't know.

[27:06] Jimi: Well, I also wonder with how much turmoil this went through between workshop and production. Like, who knows what happened there? Who knows, you know, how much of the book was Eric Idle? There's talk about, um, there's like a whole section about the Lorax. Yeah. That MTI now licenses as a like separate.

[27:25] Tommy: Like a little mini thing.

[27:27] Jimi: Mini piece that must've been good enough, but just didn't fit. Yeah. And like, it's, it's the Lorax, the Lorax is, you know, core Seuss. Is it? Yeah. Well here, let's, shall we, let's quiz Jimmy and see how much he knows about Dr. Seuss.

[28:03] ♪ Musical number ♪

[28:49] Jimi: Not one person is listening. They don't have any way of knowing.

[28:57] Tommy: Nobody knows that I have wings. I have wings.

[29:02] Jimi: And I can fly. I can fly.

[29:05] Tommy: All around the moon and far beyond the sky.

[29:11] Jimi: Well, someday soon, you will hear my plea.

[29:19] Tommy: One small voice in the universe.

[29:22] Jimi: One true friend in the universe.

[29:28] Tommy: Please believe in me.

[29:31] Jimi: Okay, so I know the Lorax is the little orange hairy guy.

[29:34] Tommy: There you go. Kind of looks like Danny DeVito.

[29:37] Jimi: Sure. He reminds me of, there's a character in The Moomins.

[29:40] Tommy: Okay. I don't know, is that a British thing?

[29:44] Jimi: No, it's Swedish. Or Nordic.

[29:49] Tommy: I think it's Swedish. Apologies. Or Finnish. It's Finnish.

[29:53] Jimi: All right. It's Finnish.

[29:57] Tommy: Yeah, what is the Lorax?

[29:58] Jimi: Have you heard of The Moomins?

[29:59] Tommy: No.

[30:00] Jimi: They love the laughter and they love the living, The Moomins.

[30:02] Tommy: Sleeping and sharing and caring and giving, The Moomins.

[30:05] Jimi: They're always happy and always a play.

[30:07] Tommy: The Moomins are having fun day after day, The Moomins.

[30:09] Jimi: It's like you've been possessed by something.

[30:11] Tommy: See, I can do, I do not like green eggs and ham.

[30:13] Jimi: I do not like them, Sam I am.

[30:15] Tommy: I could have done that before this musical.

[30:18] Jimi: Right. I could not.

[30:21] Tommy: That's fascinating to me.

[30:22] Jimi: Yeah, Cat in the Hat was, these were my children's books.

[30:26] Tommy: I had Cat in the Hat as a five-year-old.

[30:29] Jimi: Right.

[30:30] Tommy: And that was, so Dr. Seuss, who is great and also like a lot of these, you know, sometimes revered figures has also had some not so great things come out about him.

[30:44] Jimi: But the parts we like about him, he revolutionized children's book writing in America.

[30:53] Tommy: Before Seuss, a lot of children's books were very didactic.

[30:58] Jimi: They were very like, the traditional ones were see spot run.

[31:03] Tommy: It'd be like, this is spot. See spot. See spot run. Spot runs fast.

[31:09] Jimi: Oh.

[31:11] Tommy: And like teaching words by repetition of words over and over again.

[31:16] Jimi: And Dr. Seuss was like, you know, basically, fuck that.

[31:21] Tommy: Yeah.

[31:22] Jimi: Kids are smart. Kids deserve something interesting.

[31:25] Tommy: The Green Eggs and Ham was written as a challenge to see if he could write something with a very limited set of words.

[31:30] Jimi: Okay.

[31:34] Tommy: That's fun. That's why it's written the way it is.

[31:37] Jimi: You know, and so he, a lot of his eventual children's book authorship came from this motivation to write smart literature for kids.

[31:47] Tommy: Some of it, before he was a children's book writer, he was a political cartoonist.

[31:55] Jimi: Oh, okay.

[31:56] Tommy: Does he do his own illustrations?

[31:57] Jimi: He does do his own illustrations.

[31:59] Tommy: Everything you've seen was drawn by Dr. Seuss.

[32:01] Jimi: Brilliant.

[32:02] Tommy: So Yertle the Turtle is actually a character he created in his old political cartoons.

[32:09] Jimi: And Yertle the Turtle is Hitler.

[32:11] Tommy: Okay.

[32:12] Jimi: And the entire book is an allegory.

[32:14] Tommy: Wow.

[32:15] Jimi: About like, I'll stack up the turtles and stand on the back of, you know, all these turtles and stack as high as I can and increase the size of my kingdom. And all it takes is one turtle at the bottom to be like, no, no, no, no, no. And then the whole thing will fall over.

[32:30] Tommy: Yeah, of course.

[32:32] Jimi: So the Lorax is a, I think, a very unhidden metaphor for saving the trees.

[32:43] Tommy: Oh, okay.

[32:44] Jimi: There were a particular kind of tree that Dr. Seuss saw in, I think, California, where he lived, that they were cutting down. And like, he got so sad that he drew out the sketch for the Lorax and the Truffula trees on the back of a napkin.

[32:57] Tommy: Wow.

[32:59] Jimi: There's a book called The Butter Battle Book.

[33:02] Tommy: Which is in the musical.

[33:04] Jimi: Which is in the musical, briefly.

[33:06] Tommy: That's the war.

[33:07] Jimi: General Genghis Khan, whatever he's called. The Butter Battle is a, I forget who's battling. I forget their names, but one faction butters their bread butter side up and the other faction butters their bread butter side down. And so they're at war.

[33:20] Tommy: And it's an allegory for the Cold War.

[33:23] Jimi: The whole thing ends in they've created these two world-destroying weapons. And the two army people are standing on the other side of the wall and who's going to drop it first?

[33:34] Tommy: All of his stuff, especially some of his less-kid stuff, has some deep political motivations.

[33:43] Jimi: There's a lesser-known book, which is not in the musical, but it's called Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now?

[33:48] Tommy: Right.

[33:49] Jimi: And I believe it's about Nixon.

[33:54] Tommy: And he's got to get out of here.

[33:57] Jimi: We've got to get rid of him.

[33:59] Tommy: So there is certainly an undercurrent to all of this stuff.

[34:03] Jimi: And then all the other themes you see in the musical, like the embracing of the human spirit, creativity and imagination, especially that childlike spirit. You can travel to amazing places on your own, in your mind. And so you do see a lot of whimsical, childlike imagination themes throughout a lot of his books.

[34:27] Tommy: But also, do you know the Sneetches, who I don't think feature in the musical?

[34:31] Jimi: No.

[34:32] Tommy: The Sneetches are an allegory for the Holocaust.

[34:39] Jimi: Wow.

[34:40] Tommy: They get stars put on them. And in the fiction, it actually makes them, quote-unquote, better. But it's just an allegory about how we're all the same deep down inside.

[34:52] Jimi: Yeah.

[34:53] Tommy: There are some deep, deep cuts to Seuss's fiction, which is fascinating because not a lot of them are surfaced in this musical.

[35:01] Jimi: No, no, they really aren't.

[35:04] Tommy: That's really interesting.

[35:06] Jimi: Because obviously the chief comparison that I always make is Roald Dahl.

[35:10] Tommy: Sure.

[35:13] Jimi: Because in a very similar way, I don't know if their timelines match up or whatever, but Roald Dahl was the same.

[35:23] Tommy: He wanted to write kind of grown-up books for kids.

[35:25] Jimi: Yeah.

[35:27] Tommy: And are still very much the lexicon of children's reading.

[35:31] Jimi: Absolutely.

[35:33] Tommy: But I would say are more focused on the problems of children.

[35:40] Jimi: Yeah.

[35:42] Tommy: And they play on children's fears and things like that and making them go away.

[35:49] Jimi: Right.

[35:50] Tommy: Or telling you that you can stand up for yourself or that you can be strong.

[35:54] Jimi: Yeah.

[35:55] Tommy: That kind of thing.

[35:56] Jimi: It strikes me as a very British-American comparison.

[36:00] Tommy: Because I think they are contemporaries.

[36:04] Jimi: Dahl was alive 1916 to 1990 and Seuss was alive 1904 to 1991.

[36:10] Tommy: Wow.

[36:11] Jimi: I wonder if they knew each other.

[36:12] Tommy: I mean, this is 100% people will have spoken about this.

[36:15] Jimi: Absolutely.

[36:16] Tommy: But it is fascinating to me that Dahl's morals are very much around like, here are the terrible things that might happen to you, but don't worry, it'll be fine.

[36:24] Jimi: Yeah.

[36:25] Tommy: Whereas Seuss's stuff is like, it's the cat in the hat. You know, the two kids are bored on this day. Gosh, if only something exciting would happen. And the cat shows up and causes terrible mischief around them.

[36:36] Jimi: Right.

[36:37] Tommy: It's very, you know, British versus American.

[36:41] Jimi: Yeah, totally. Interesting.

[36:45] Tommy: But yeah, it's the fact that it doesn't, like these things don't come into musicals. Again, I wonder if that's a book issue.

[36:55] Jimi: Sure.

[36:56] Tommy: Because they just don't spend enough time on these stories. So really all you've got in the musical is imagination.

[37:03] Jimi: Right.

[37:04] Tommy: Because that's the kind of thing that ties all of his books together.

[37:06] Jimi: Right.

[37:07] Tommy: And you don't have a lot, like the themes they explore deepest are with the characters we see the most.

[37:12] Jimi: Yeah.

[37:13] Tommy: You know, Horton's, you know, An Elephant's Faithful 100%. You know, like we explore that theme, which is the theme of, I would say, both Horton Hears a Who and Horton Sits on the Egg, Sat on an Egg, whatever it is. You know, and so we have more time to explore some of that.

[37:32] Jimi: But then a lot of it just, like, it makes me wonder, like, can we just cut so many of the extraneous characters? You know, hack and slash that thing to bits, make it Horton Hears a Who the musical.

[37:44] Tommy: Yeah, exactly.

[37:45] Jimi: Well, they made a film, didn't they? Like, quite recently?

[37:47] Tommy: They did make a film, which is basically the core plot of Seussical.

[37:51] Jimi: It's a 3D animated film. It's pretty good.

[37:55] Tommy: But it's just the story.

[37:56] Jimi: It's not.

[37:57] Tommy: It's just the story. There's no songs.

[37:59] Jimi: Okay.

[38:00] Tommy: You know, it is only, they are both adapted from the same literature, but I would say they don't share a lot in common. Like, the Cat in the Hat's not in it.

[38:07] Jimi: Cool.

[38:08] Tommy: Okay.

[38:09] Jimi: You know, that sort of stuff. Because I think that's where the issue is, because, like, Horton makes great sense to be a protagonist.

[38:15] Tommy: Yeah.

[38:16] Jimi: And same with Gertrude as well. But because it's Dr. Seuss, you need the Cat in the Hat.

[38:23] Tommy: Right.

[38:24] Jimi: Well, but it's almost like this is the mistake they made.

[38:28] Tommy: Yeah.

[38:29] Jimi: If Disney was like, oh, we're doing The Lion King, we're Disney. Aren't people going to want to see Mickey Mouse? Is there a way we can get Mickey Mouse into this thing?

[38:39] Tommy: And, like, that's the choice they made with Dr. Seuss.

[38:42] Jimi: And I think that is true. I think people want to see the Cat in the Hat in Dr. Seuss, because he is so emblematic of, you know, just the Seuss brand.

[38:53] Tommy: Yeah.

[38:54] Jimi: Like, you know, that's the catch-22 of the thing. But then, I don't know, if you did just, if you just had him at the start as it kind of is now, where it's like the hat on the stage and he pulls out the show.

[39:07] Tommy: Right.

[39:08] Jimi: And then you never see him again.

[39:09] Tommy: Yeah.

[39:10] Jimi: I think that would be fine.

[39:11] Tommy: I, the way the show is structured, I think the show would just be kind of boring.

[39:16] Jimi: Do you think?

[39:17] Tommy: Yeah.

[39:18] Jimi: Well, can we talk about the characters?

[39:20] Tommy: Yeah, okay.

[39:21] Jimi: Fly on a mountain or lost on the sea.

[39:24] Tommy: Sooner or later I'll find it.

[39:29] Jimi: I have a picture of how it will be.

[39:33] Tommy: On the day I do, Troubles will be through, And I'll be home with you.

[39:49] Jimi: I have a picture of how it will be Troubles will be through And I'll be home with you.

[40:09] Tommy: Sooner or later I'll find it. I'll be home with you.

[40:20] Jimi: I'll be home with you.

[40:31] Tommy: I'll be home with you.

[40:40] Jimi: I'll be home with you.

[40:46] Tommy: Sooner or later I'll find it.

[40:52] Jimi: I'll be home with you.

[40:58] Tommy: Sooner or later I'll find it.

[41:04] Jimi: And I'll be home with you.

[41:16] Tommy: And I'll be home with you.

[41:26] Jimi: And I'll be home with you.

[41:56] Tommy: And I'll be home with you.

[42:06] Jimi: And I'll be home with you.

[42:16] Tommy: And I'll be home with you.

[42:26] Jimi: And I'll be home with you.

[42:36] Tommy: And I'll be home with you.

[42:46] Jimi: And I'll be home with you.

[42:56] Tommy: And I'll be home with you.

[43:13] Jimi: I keep bringing up Hippin as a comparison. Weirdly, I brought it in as a comparison of Fantastics. What's going on there? I think you just want to do Pippin.

[43:19] Tommy: I think I just want to do Pippin always. But again, there's another character where things happen to him. He's kind of led down a path. Admittedly, he's led. Horton isn't necessarily led. Pippin has some agency in his story. He is deciding, this isn't for me, that isn't for me, I want to try this. He has some decision moments. Horton doesn't make any decisions in this show.

[43:37] Jimi: Well he doesn't, but he's got like his moral compass.

[43:43] Tommy: Sure. Which he sticks to.

[43:47] Jimi: Yeah, but he spends Act 2 sitting. He literally spends pretty much all of Act 2 sitting on a tree.

[44:00] Tommy: Sitting, yeah. Physically sitting, like how much more sedentary can you get?

[44:07] Jimi: That's because an elephant's faithful.

[44:14] Tommy: Right. 100%. Whatever. An elephant's faithful 100%.

[44:20] Jimi: That's amazing to me. Oh, is that the phrase 100%? Okay. Oh, I just don't know that.

[44:23] Tommy: Right. That might as well be tattooed on my arm. That's not in my lexicon.

[44:30] Jimi: Yeah, but you don't know S-E-O-TROT, S-E-O-TROT, TEG-RE-BEG, TEG-RE-BEG. Did you shimmy shimmy cocoa pop? Are we going to do like that?

[44:38] Tommy: Exactly. That's my lexicon. Anyway. Yes. Okay. Fair. But you know, that's just him. But maybe if the cat in the hat was like snipped out, there'd be more room for Horton to do things.

[44:43] Jimi: Sure. I just don't know what else he'd do. He certainly couldn't do it. That doesn't make sense for his character.

[44:50] Tommy: Right. Okay. You know, he is protective to a fault. Whereas the cat is, you know, the cat is the trickster God, right? The cat is the one who appears as like, ha ha, your day was going well, but now I'm here.

[45:00] Jimi: But see, wouldn't that be interesting? Right. If you were taking your monomyth structure and applying that to Suzuko, turn it around, make the cat the antagonist.

[45:12] Tommy: I wish. Well, and that's the thing. And like, this is the problem. I think this is the problem with a lot of fictionalizations of the cat in the hat. I don't know. You haven't watched the Mike Myers movie, have you?

[45:25] Jimi: I've seen lots of it, mostly in gif form.

[45:33] Tommy: Right. It is. It's not great. But like, you know, is the cat chaotic good? Chaotic neutral? Chaotic evil? And no one can really decide.

[45:41] Jimi: I do think the show would be better off if the cat was more... I think this is a thing you can even do in the current structure of the show. Make the cat the one that is pulling the rug out from underneath people. And it's something that actually got a little lost. So a day with the cat in the hat is a number that was notoriously cut from the published version and is supposed to be like, that is the cat in the hat story. That's like the book, the cat in the hat and its place in the musical. The cat shows up, causes mischief in your house, leaves and you get in trouble for it.

[46:20] Tommy: Yes. And that's what gets Jojo in trouble basically. And like, and I see why they cut it because this show is too long and they need to focus on Jojo more than they need to focus on the cat. But if the cat was more of a trickster god, like even in act two, like you're having a hunch, which is, we're getting up to the climax of the show. And it's this spooky, well, tap dance number. But like, if the cat was more causing the trauma and causing the spooky, like there's some scary Dr. Seuss out there. And if they leaned into that a little more, it would do a lot to help the show.

[47:06] Jimi: And I think it's the sort of thing, you know, you've got the script of this thing, the whole thing's written, every other line's like, yeah, and then the cat, you know, does whatever. Like you could do that. You could make the cat a little more mean with this show.

[47:20] Tommy: I think so. Like almost like a kind of leading player kind of character, you know? I think that would be quite interesting because actually, you know, to pull back to the comparison against Roald Dahl, like Roald Dahl is never afraid to go into the scary.

[47:38] Jimi: Oh, sure.

[47:39] Tommy: I mean, all of his books are filled with really dark, dark stuff.

[47:42] Jimi: Talk about the witches. Talk about how-

[47:44] Tommy: Oh my God, the witches.

[47:46] Jimi: All these children basically die in Willy Wonka.

[47:49] Tommy: Yeah, exactly. It's really, you know, dark, dark stuff. And he's always there with it. That's the thing is, I would say, talking about the Dr. Seuss brand, is that there's a special that you should absolutely watch. October's coming up. You would love it. It's called Halloween is Grinch Night. It's one of a few animated specials that Dr. Seuss actually worked on.

[48:12] Jimi: Oh, wow.

[48:20] Tommy: And so like had, you know, approved the whole dang thing. It's not a book. It only exists as like a 20 minute or so television special. Centered around the Grinch, but on a vaguely Halloween themed thing. The whole thing is filled with- I had nightmares about this television special as a child. It is scary.

[48:41] Jimi: Is it like Nightmare Before Christmas? Because I just feel like they're mashing up the Christmas and Halloween together.

[48:50] Tommy: It is. It has. I wonder how much of Tim Burton's style is inspired by Seuss's style.

[49:01] Jimi: Tremendously. The eclecticism.

[49:05] Tommy: Yeah. And like some of the absurd, but also like totally barren seeming ridiculous lands. And like, if you dive deep into some of Seuss's books, there's some imagery in All the Places You'll Go, and in Sala Salou, and a couple of other places. That's just scary. That's just kind of spooky scary. And that, other than Having a Hunch, which is a lighthearted tap dance number, nothing's scary in Seussical. You know, nothing's really that dangerous.

[49:40] Jimi: It's not, because even like, point to the villains. The Sour Kangaroo? No, not really. They all have redeeming qualities or are just kind of bland. The Wickersham Brothers are just, you know, mischievous kids.

[49:53] Tommy: Exactly. That, what was the vulture again? Vlad? Vlad the Impaler?

[49:58] Jimi: Vlad the Impaler, the vulture. Yeah. But even like-

[50:00] Tommy: He's probably the most evil.

[50:02] Jimi: Right. Yeah, sure.

[50:03] Tommy: He's in it for a second?

[50:05] Jimi: A second. And like, even the most, you know, maybe the second most dangerous moment when the clover's falling is paused in real time so the cat can sing like, hey, but you know, it could be worse.

[50:16] Tommy: Yeah, exactly.

[50:17] Jimi: And like, at the end, you know, the people versus Horton the Elephant certainly is dramatic, but we've set you up. You don't think for a second that they're just going to kill all the whos.

[50:28] Tommy: No, exactly. And it's, it's too happy a number.

[50:32] Jimi: Yeah. Yeah.

[50:33] Tommy: Do you know what I mean? It's too fun and dancy and jazzy a number for it to end in any sort of tragedy. Because that's the thing, it's like, it's not like there's all this fun and comedy that actually everything is ironic.

[50:47] Jimi: It's just fun.

[50:48] Tommy: It's just fun.

[50:49] Jimi: And comedy.

[50:50] Tommy: Yeah. Well, and even they don't do a really good job. Actually, the movie does this better. In the movie version, Jojo is, you know, a stereotypical emo teen. He like hides away in his secret hideout and like doesn't want to talk to his dad. And then the thing is a metaphor for him or a journey of him finding his voice. And so then he stands up and screams, he's the last one to make a noise and goes yop. And that's the thing that gets their attention. Whereas in this one, Jojo's journey is like he gets in trouble for thinking and gets sent to the military and then runs away and then saves everyone.

[51:31] Jimi: Yeah.

[51:32] Tommy: It's not a good through line of a journey.

[51:36] Jimi: Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't like you'd never, you know, you never get to Jojo's character other than like, you know, he's kind of close to his family, but feels isolated.

[51:47] Tommy: Sure.

[51:48] Jimi: Like, yeah, that's really the depth that you will descend to when you're exploring Jojo. I quite like that kind of emo kid vibe, making him a little bit older.

[51:56] Tommy: I think you would like the animated version. It's pretty good.

[51:59] Jimi: Yeah.

[52:00] Tommy: Carol Burnett is the sour kangaroo, I believe.

[52:02] Jimi: Brilliant. So is the sour kangaroo in Horton, Here's a Who?

[52:07] Tommy: So one of the things I wanted to look up, because I've thought this about the show, they must have made up some of these characters. And the one I wanted to look up was General Genghis Khan Schmidt.

[52:16] Jimi: Right, yeah.

[52:17] Tommy: Because I was like, there's no way. He's a character. He is in a Dr. Seuss book. I don't think.

[52:22] Jimi: Sorry, but what I mean is like, because what I can't get a grasp on is like, who's meshed with who?

[52:28] Tommy: Who belongs in what universe? Yeah.

[52:31] Jimi: Yeah. It's like Gertrude McFuzz. Is she the love interest of Horton?

[52:35] Tommy: I think Gertrude McFuzz, if my memory serves, Gertrude McFuzz has her own story with Maisie.

[52:44] Jimi: That would make sense.

[52:45] Tommy: And that's about where it ends.

[52:47] Jimi: Okay. Whose egg is it?

[52:50] Tommy: You know, maybe they are in the same story. It's been a while since I read Horton Sits on the Egg.

[52:54] Jimi: Yeah, because the egg, the egg one, because obviously in the musical, it's Maisie's.

[53:00] Tommy: Right. I'm sure there are people on the other side of their headphones screaming at us right now.

[53:06] Jimi: Yeah, which is fair. I did my disclaimer. Okay. But yeah, I guess this is where I get confused because I'm like, they're, they're obviously think like Yertle the Turtle, for example.

[53:21] Tommy: Right.

[53:22] Jimi: Being the judge.

[53:24] Tommy: Is just, it's just a throwaway.

[53:25] Jimi: It's just to get him in.

[53:27] Tommy: I think in the greater Seuss universe, perhaps Yertle lives in the jungle of Nool.

[53:32] Jimi: Yes.

[53:33] Tommy: I don't think he's present.

[53:36] Jimi: So I think, yes. So Gertrude is a secondary story in the Yertle the Turtle book.

[53:46] Tommy: Wow. Okay.

[53:48] Jimi: Kind of implying all these things exist in the same world. Maisie is actually a character in Horton Hatches the Egg as laying the egg and then abandoning it.

[54:01] Tommy: So oh.

[54:03] Jimi: I am. Maisie is also, uh, I don't think Maisie is in Gertrude. I don't know. See, and these books are awful.

[54:14] Tommy: Yeah. I don't think she's in the original Gertrude story.

[54:20] Jimi: Fascinating. But their stories mix so well together.

[54:24] Tommy: Because they do, like Seuss has, there is that implication. And Dr. Seuss has this kind of like cabal of jungle characters, which is why they seem to fit so well together. And the Who's as living on this tiny desk spec exist both in Horton Hears a Who and in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, where like How the Grinch Stole Christmas is an entirely Who universe story. There's never any danger to them from outside sources in that. So like he does reuse some of these things, and it feels as if there's a sense of a greater Seussian universe. But not, you know, the Cat in the Hat doesn't live in the jungle of Newell.

[55:03] Jimi: Yeah. And so that, but might seem closer to living in the more suburban setting of Whoville.

[55:13] Tommy: Yeah. Which is why they put him with Jojo there. But the kids in the Cat in the Hat aren't Whos?

[55:19] Jimi: No, they're just kids. Like the Cat in the Hat, the Cat in the Hat has a couple stories. There's a Cat in the Hat, there's a Cat in the Hat Comes Back. The Cat in the Hat also in, like, there's another animated special that Seuss oversaw that's just a retelling of a bunch of his stories. That isn't, none of them are the Cat in the Hat, but it is narrated by the Cat in the Hat. And so he did become this emblem for Seuss stories.

[55:41] Tommy: Yeah. I think just because Dr. Seuss liked him. Even in the subject of our quiz question, which is a documentary called In Search of Dr. Seuss, of course, the whole thing is narrated by the Cat in the Hat, who acts as this trickster God and leads Kathy Najimy playing a reporter on a weird and bizarre adventure. Like, yeah, that's his MO. But it is, I can see the temptation to want to tie all these things together.

[56:16] Jimi: Like, that's real. You know, I think they, you know, they may have chosen poorly in the way they attempted to pursue it.

[56:22] Tommy: Yeah. I mean, I guess you, you do kind of have to commend them because it's, it's no mean feat. Like, you know, they always say like the Pixar universe is all connected. You know, I mean, if you tried to do that, right, that would be really difficult. But I don't know. And there's still a story there. I mean, it's still not totally bizarre. You're right. It's just not as satisfying as it could be.

[56:45] Jimi: I think that's it. Yeah, that's the problem. Like, they're something better to tie them all together. You know, or if like, if Jojo or the kid is a separate character, who at the end, like, you know, the who's are about to be boiled and like all these things are going wrong and the character is like, wait, I think I have an idea. And then the kid starts creating the story in that moment, like kind of big fish style.

[57:23] Tommy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that, you know, diving into that framing might fix it a little better. You know, or it is interesting. I think a lot like Into the Woods, a lot of different productions have different ideas.

[57:38] Jimi: As to how book-centric these are, like, physically. Like, do all the characters come out of books or are we simply representing these worlds? Like, where does the physical metaphor end? And that indecisiveness points to me towards some sloppy fiction creation. But it's hard. It's hard when you have, you know, can you... This is a thought I had in the car ride today. Can you imagine if there was a musical called, like, What the Dickens? That was all of Charles Dickens' characters thrown together into one big menagerie of a musical. Well, so see, this, the thing though, it's not that. Seussical isn't that. Sure. Because that would be Into the Woods. Sure. And that might be okay. But what Seussical is, is I'm trying to tell 20 stories at once.

[58:29] Tommy: Yeah, that's fair. If that's where it's tricky. If Seussical either embraced the meta more or less.

[58:37] Jimi: Yeah. Like, was more about like, whoa, we're in the wrong story. Or was less about, ha ha, we can just snap our fingers and I'm the Cat in the Hat. And I'm in this, you know, yeah.

[58:50] Tommy: Yeah, it's kind of like pick your battles. I really think that. Because yeah, it's not like subspace emissary style.

[58:55] Jimi: Right. From Smash Brothers, where it's like everyone coming together. Right. And this feels great, because that always feels amazing. It's like, honestly, one of my favorite things is when disparate characters are brought together.

[59:10] Tommy: Right. Because it's just like, cool, because you see how all these different people interact with each other. Right. And that's a lot of fun. But, you know, when you're trying to tell Gertrude McFuzz's story in opposition to Horton the Elephant's story.

[59:20] Jimi: Right. And mash that like, it's, it's grating.

[59:30] Tommy: Yes. Every, every other song or transition seems shoehorned.

[59:36] Jimi: Yeah. How do we get from A to B? Well, we'd fly in our news chopper there, clearly, which is the thing that actually happens. Well, there you go. You don't have them in Dr. Seuss's books. That's the other thing that frustrates me about some of this, is like they go and, you know, clearly, I haven't reread all the books on the way, but like, there's one point where they go to Palm Beach in this, which is a real place. But also they go to Whoville and the Jungle of Newell. Like, there's not a good, you know, I get that the Cat in the Hat is the genie, that he can pull some of these contemporary out of time references. But you got it, you have to draw some borders around your magic. You have to, you know, put some limits on this stuff.

And they don't do a good job of that. Especially centered around the Cat in the Hat, like when he starts hosting a talk show. You know, our topic today is, you know, psychic elephants who hear voices. Like, funny, sure. Not in world. And also not something the cat does in the books.

[1:00:35] Tommy: Exactly. You know, he can be creative and bonkers in this universe.

[1:00:42] Jimi: Yep. Maybe. Who knows? Not Ahrens and Flaherty.

[1:00:47] Tommy: Oh, no, they did great. It's fine. I do enjoy it. I do enjoy it.

[1:00:53] Jimi: I know. It's weird. It's just enjoyable. Yeah. It is, I will say, a show that I enjoy. And that is one, like, as a, working in positions where Seussical is absolutely something we might do every year. It's something I don't particularly want to do from, like, a design creation standpoint.

[1:01:19] Tommy: Yeah. I don't find it very inspiring that way. However, it is one of my emergency productions. If there's gonna be a tough year or the director gets fired or something, we're gonna do Seussical. We're gonna write Seussical. Super easy. Pull all the costumes out of a trunk. We can all wear shirts that say Seussical the musical on them. You know, the tree is a ladder. Like, it's Seussical and it's done and it's gonna sell well. People will come see it and people will love it.

[1:02:01] Jimi: Damn right. Coming to you this fall.

[1:02:07] Tommy: Well, should we... Toyskill. Do people, should we, let's talk about Amdram productions of Seussical, why don't we?

[1:02:31] Jimi: Yeah, I think we absolutely should.

[1:02:36] Tommy: Order, order, order in the court. The defendant is charged with talking to a speck, disturbing the peace, and loitering on an egg. Your honor, this clover is exhibit A.

[1:02:43] Jimi: There who's here? There are who's here? Smaller than the eye can see.

[1:02:47] Tommy: She's plain cool in the jungle of blue. It's true, sir. Here's who's who, sir.

[1:02:52] Jimi: He's a who and so is she. She's plain cool in the jungle of blue.

[1:02:55] Tommy: Order, order, order in the court. Call to the stand the star witness versus Horton the elephant. Raise your right hand and swear.

[1:03:08] Jimi: I swear that he's the biggest plain fool in the jungle of new as it testifies long ago.

[1:03:17] Tommy: Biggest plain fool, just a fool, fool, fool and a mother like me should know. Judging him trunk to toe, you better thank, thank, thank. Oh, please throw him in the sink.

[1:03:31] Jimi: Talking to a speck, talking to a speck, talking to a speck of dust. Objection. Overruled.

[1:03:37] Tommy: Six gone and egg, six gone and egg, six gone and egg. Objection. Overruled.

[1:03:43] Jimi: A production's a production, no matter how small.

[1:03:47] Tommy: Well, okay, so...

[1:03:51] Jimi: That was good. Come on.

[1:03:54] Tommy: It was good. Do people do Seussical in the UK?

[1:03:55] Jimi: Yes. Okay.

[1:03:57] Tommy: I've seen two different productions.

[1:03:59] Jimi: All right. All right. I could probably throw a rock and hit a production of Seussical in Denver right now.

[1:04:02] Tommy: Yeah. It is really, really popular, but mostly, again, just for the reasons you listed.

[1:04:13] Jimi: Yeah. Well, I would say it does, and I'm out of my lane here, but it does kind of fit that, like, panto feel and appeal.

[1:04:20] Tommy: Oh, it's completely.

[1:04:26] Jimi: Family friendly, you know, a protagonist that addresses the audience, room for improv, you know.

[1:04:32] Tommy: Actually, I...

[1:04:33] Jimi: Like, we totally get it. And that's the thing is, like, all of the issues that I just talked about can be excused if you frame it like a panto.

[1:04:41] Tommy: If you frame it like a panto, exactly. And I wonder, that's fascinating. Maybe you should have opened on the West End first.

[1:04:47] Jimi: Yeah, exactly. I know. No, because the Cat in the Hat is a character you would totally get in the panto.

[1:04:54] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:04:54] Jimi: And it would be fine, because panto is so wishy-washy, which is a character in the panto.

[1:05:02] Tommy: Wait. Good.

[1:05:05] Jimi: Yeah. So I've seen, yeah, I've seen two, I think two productions of it. Thoroughly enjoyed them both.

[1:05:11] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:05:12] Jimi: And they were just nice and simple.

[1:05:19] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:05:20] Jimi: Did they...

[1:05:20] Tommy: And it was like, kids having fun.

[1:05:23] Jimi: Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, that is the appeal of this. You've got your Ahuvians, you've got your Jungle of Nulians.

[1:05:30] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:05:31] Jimi: You've got a couple big girls.

[1:05:32] Tommy: You can have 4,000 birds if you want.

[1:05:34] Jimi: You can have so many people in this.

[1:05:37] Tommy: Like, it is a hugely adaptable show. Everyone has their star turn. There's a bunch of female roles. The cat can be played by a girl.

[1:05:44] Jimi: Jojo can be a girl.

[1:05:47] Tommy: Screw it. Horton could be. Like, there's not a lot of, maybe we'll talk about it more, but like, you know, he's an elephant.

[1:06:01] Jimi: He is an elephant, you're correct.

[1:06:02] Tommy: Right. You could, you know, bend it all sorts of ways.

[1:06:06] Jimi: Like, it is no doubt this thing is popular. And certainly, I think Seussical has found its home, is one of a few musicals that owes its contemporary place in hearts and minds, not due to its original Broadway production, but due to its amateur belovedness.

[1:06:28] Tommy: Yeah, it's one of those. And it is beloved. It's absolutely beloved.

[1:06:33] Jimi: You know, people, it's so strange to compare it to its Broadway life, because people will happily go and see a production of Seussical in a high school.

[1:06:42] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:06:42] Jimi: Because it's so fun and a really nice evening.

[1:06:45] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:06:47] Jimi: You know, whereas in Broadway, they balk at the idea.

[1:06:49] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:06:50] Jimi: So strange. And I think that's what stopped it from becoming like Ahrens and Flaherty's shame.

[1:06:55] Tommy: Right.

[1:06:56] Jimi: Is because it's had such an incredible life.

[1:06:58] Tommy: Yeah, that there is something there that's worthwhile. It's almost like the budget limitations of amateur theatre have improved this show.

[1:07:08] Jimi: Yeah. But this, so this is exactly it. They, originally, back in Toronto, they had budget limitations.

[1:07:18] Tommy: Sure.

[1:07:20] Jimi: And in many ways, they were fine with that. And that was kind of the story they wanted to tell. I think, was it Eric Idle? It might have been the designer, or it might have been Kevin Chamberlain. I can't remember. I'll find it and I'll put it in the show notes. Anyway, someone talked about it being like, what's so great about the show is that you let your imagination tell the story.

[1:07:39] Tommy: Right. And that's the moral of the show.

[1:07:45] Jimi: Exactly. And I'm like, oh, my God, that fits so well. Like, of course, have it sparse, hold a tube and that can be whatever the hell you want it to be, you know what I mean? Sit in a block and that can be your egg.

[1:07:55] Tommy: Yeah. And they do, it's interesting to look at the final production design, because you can see bits and pieces that are informed by that. Like, you know, Horton wears basically street clothes. The cat, as he's often done, is not a cat, but is wearing like a tuxedo with tails.

[1:08:15] Jimi: And a ridiculous hat. But like, doesn't need to have whiskers, let's say.

[1:08:22] Tommy: Oh, exactly.

[1:08:23] Jimi: You know, or a cat nose. Like, he can just be a personification. Because like, you look at the cat in the books, he doesn't look like a cat anyway.

[1:08:30] Tommy: No.

[1:08:32] Jimi: But so...

[1:08:33] Tommy: He looks like Sam from Green Eggs and Ham.

[1:08:35] Jimi: Right. Because Dr. Seuss only knows how to draw like six things.

[1:08:38] Tommy: Exactly. I've never understood that.

[1:08:39] Jimi: Anyway.

[1:08:42] Tommy: Oh, also, just a side note, I can do a really good Who face.

[1:08:46] Jimi: This will be perfect for our audio-only medium.

[1:08:51] Tommy: I'll take a picture and I'll put it in the show notes. I've had a haircut recently, so I don't mind doing a selfie.

[1:08:55] Jimi: Yeah. What does it look like?

[1:08:57] Tommy: Can I do it for you now?

[1:08:58] Jimi: Yeah, do it. I'll describe it.

[1:08:59] Tommy: Hang on. Let's do some prep.

[1:09:03] Jimi: All right. I'm excited. It's pretty effective.

[1:09:06] Tommy: It's pretty good, right?

[1:09:08] Jimi: He looks like a who. He looks like he's straight out of the Jim Carrey, How the Grinch Stole Christmas movie.

[1:09:14] Tommy: The big cheeks. Yeah.

[1:09:15] Jimi: Yeah.

[1:09:17] Tommy: So there you go. I'll take that picture for you.

[1:09:19] Jimi: Put that on your resume.

[1:09:20] Tommy: Anyway, sorry. Thank you.

[1:09:23] Jimi: Yeah, like that's, you know, allowing your audience to fill in the blanks. They can become a part of the story because everyone's using their imagination and everything's delightful.

[1:09:33] Tommy: Yeah, absolutely. But it's not a pantomime. Like, that is the thing that I think makes it appealing. Like, there are messages to be had in this, where I would wager I'm not going for a pantomime to walk out learning a moral, you know?

[1:09:45] Jimi: Unless it's like...

[1:09:55] Tommy: No, you're very correct. The moral is often just like, be happy and love Glasgow.

[1:10:01] Jimi: Right.

[1:10:04] Tommy: That's kind of the moral.

[1:10:05] Jimi: Which there isn't an undercurrent of, you know, be happy, life is good to this. But there are some, you know, deeper, not too deep, but somewhat deep themes in this. Do you think?

[1:10:17] Tommy: Yes, I would agree. Shall we discuss?

[1:10:20] Jimi: Sure.

[1:10:28] Tommy: Thank you, Maisie.

[1:10:58] Jimi: I'm amazing, Maisie. That's better, that's better can be now. Amazing, Maisie. It was all for sale. Amazing, Maisie. The birds are all whistling at me now. Amazing, Maisie. Baby, that's my tale.

[1:11:21] Tommy: Okay, you want to talk about being gay and physical?

[1:11:25] Jimi: Do you want to know a secret?

[1:11:26] Tommy: You're gay?

[1:11:28] Jimi: Well, yes, that. Not a secret.

[1:11:31] Tommy: Okay.

[1:11:31] Jimi: You'll find this a more surprising secret.

[1:11:35] Tommy: Do you know why I auditioned for Seussical as a community theater piece my sophomore year of high school?

[1:11:41] Jimi: Oh, well, Tommy, I've told you my hand on my heart. I think you'd be an incredible Horton. I think I should re-roll.

[1:11:49] Tommy: Oh, that would be fantastic. I was not cast as Horton. I was cast as a swamp thing in the Jungle of Newell. That iconic, iconic Dr. Seuss character, swamp thing.

[1:11:59] Jimi: Swamp thing.

[1:12:01] Tommy: I think it was a reused costume.

[1:12:03] Jimi: Or just extra fabric that they made a costume out of.

[1:12:05] Tommy: Oh my god. Oh, was it that, like, green kind of sequin-y tulle fabric?

[1:12:10] Jimi: And I'm not saying that I'm bitter that I missed a phone call asking if I would, the director called and asked if I would come back in and re-audition for the Wickersham Brother, except she called the wrong number, and so then they double-cast Genghis Khan, Schmidt, and the third Wickersham. Not bitter.

[1:12:26] Tommy: Oh my god. I hate them. I'm with you.

[1:12:30] Jimi: But do you know why I auditioned for this show?

[1:12:33] Tommy: Why?

[1:12:34] Jimi: Because my girlfriend was auditioning for this show.

[1:12:36] Tommy: Oh, gasp!

[1:12:38] Jimi: I know, my last girlfriend. We broke up during this show.

[1:12:41] Tommy: The one that changed it all.

[1:12:44] Jimi: Well, due in no small part, I think, for the fact that I realized this was not a part of my life.

[1:12:52] Tommy: But it holds a part. Okay, you scoff at, like, gayness in this show, but there is an undercurrent of the show that Jojo is a kid misunderstood by the people around him who is sensitive and a thinker, and the way to fix that is by putting him in the army.

[1:13:17] Jimi: The military is where a boy becomes a man, and he runs away from that because he wants to live in McGillicud's pool, he wants to be, you know, he dreams of far-off places where things are better. I think that is one of the core positive things about this show, is that whatever your differences—for me it was gayness—but whatever makes you the outcast is something you can read into Jojo's story.

[1:13:45] Tommy: It's interesting that often outcast stories are often queer allegories.

[1:13:50] Jimi: Sure.

[1:13:54] Tommy: I don't—I can—yes, okay, what I'll give you is I'll give you that you can relate to it from that perspective. I would not say that it's a core theme. I don't really even think it's hinted.

[1:14:09] Jimi: Not that he's gay, but that he—the idea of being different and watching his parents accept his differentness.

[1:14:18] Tommy: Yes.

[1:14:19] Jimi: That's a gay metaphor.

[1:14:22] Tommy: It is, isn't it?

[1:14:24] Jimi: It's a simple one. It's not even complicated.

[1:14:28] Tommy: No, you're not wrong. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I guess. Why not? Why not?

[1:14:34] Jimi: It's just, as emotional sophomore me in high school, it spoke to me a lot.

[1:14:39] Tommy: Yeah. And Kate, I actually find his relationship with Horton quite interesting.

[1:14:46] Jimi: Sure, yeah.

[1:14:48] Tommy: Because it's a proper—it's not father-son.

[1:14:51] Jimi: No.

[1:14:51] Tommy: It's not brotherly.

[1:14:53] Jimi: No.

[1:14:54] Tommy: It's—

[1:14:55] Jimi: It's not romantic. It's not—

[1:14:57] Tommy: It's not romantic. It's just kind of, I don't know, like mentorly, but they help each other.

[1:15:04] Jimi: It's just kind of friendship across the universe.

[1:15:09] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:15:09] Jimi: Which is pretty inspiring. You don't see a lot of, you know, it's like—

[1:15:13] Tommy: You don't see a lot of friendship across the universe.

[1:15:16] Jimi: You don't see a lot of friendship not bound by some other similarity. You know, it's the—it's the—it's the Marty McFly and Doc Brown. Like, why are they friends? Who knows? It's a John Mulaney joke. Like, who knows how they met each other? Doesn't matter. Moving on.

[1:15:34] Tommy: Like—

[1:15:35] Jimi: Yeah, I guess.

[1:15:38] Tommy: I mean, obviously they bond because they're alone in the universe together, and they—

[1:15:42] Jimi: Sure. And I think some of—

[1:15:43] Tommy: You know, they vibe that, but I think it's just an interesting dynamic that they have.

[1:15:48] Jimi: Yeah. Yeah. I do wonder, because that's actually, you know, of all the—it seems kind of forced in the show, but of all the plot points is, I believe, lifted straight from the book.

[1:16:01] Tommy: Right.

[1:16:02] Jimi: That Horton has this, you know, mild relationship with Jojo. That's something I'd be interested to know from, like, an author perspective of why he chose this. Because, obviously, Horton feels older. He doesn't feel young.

[1:16:18] Tommy: Right.

[1:16:18] Jimi: He's not like a teen elephant.

[1:16:20] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:16:20] Jimi: He just feels like an older man.

[1:16:22] Tommy: Well, I mean, by the end of it, he's a father, so.

[1:16:25] Jimi: Yeah. But it doesn't feel—it's not creepy. Do you know what I mean? I don't think there's anything sordid.

[1:16:31] Tommy: Yeah. There's something really nice about that.

[1:16:35] Jimi: It's just nice.

[1:16:35] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:16:36] Jimi: And it is, you know—that, I think, is a good thing that Dr. Seuss has done, is, like, I think a lot of times adults assume kids have kids' problems, and kids assume adults have adult problems. And we don't bond a lot about, yeah, we're all figuring this out as we go.

[1:16:59] Tommy: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that is a really nice thing, isn't it?

[1:17:03] Jimi: Yeah. And I think it's encompassed in some of the most beautiful songs in the show. I think Alone in the Universe and Salsa Lou are just gorgeous pieces of musical theater, and they're the JoJo Horton songs. And it is, of the, like, two disparate worlds that we experience in this show, the deepest, most important connections we have. To the point where, like, I almost want to abandon Act Two. Like, who cares about the egg?

[1:17:35] Tommy: Well, who cares about the egg? It's just appeared out of nowhere and ruined everything.

[1:17:40] Jimi: Right. But it's the Act Two complication. You know, we needed to keep the story going, unfortunately.

[1:17:49] Tommy: There's many other things that could have gone wrong.

[1:17:51] Jimi: Absolutely. You know, the clover gets bopped around or whatever. I mean, I guess the egg as an actual story is fine. But yeah, that's the thing. It is a lovely relationship that they have, but we never get to go deep with it. They never get to have conflict because there's just no time for it.

[1:18:14] Tommy: And the resolution of the story is not... Like, this is an interesting thing to me. Like, both of their modus operandi is that they are alone. They're loners. No one else is out there for them. And at the end of the story, I mean, Horton kind of gets Gertrude to not be alone. Jojo realizes that he has a family in that kind of teenage way, maybe, but not in a big, sound-the-trumpets kind of way. And, you know, there's also, I think, a thought in Alone in the Universe and A Bit in Sala Salu that, like, it's okay to feel alone. Like, that this doesn't, you know, this can, like, loneliness is not the end of the world.

[1:19:10] Jimi: Yeah.

[1:19:11] Tommy: Which is an interesting moral. But then if that's, like, the sense you get from that song, it's not a conflict that then you can resolve later in the show. Like, you're not alone. You know, and so it feels... That is very complex to me.

[1:19:30] Jimi: I agree. I wish they explored it more.

[1:19:34] Tommy: I know, because that thing is, I don't know whether it's complex.

[1:19:38] Jimi: Well, it's obviously not their idea, because it came from the books.

[1:19:44] Tommy: Sure.

[1:19:46] Jimi: And obviously, them being children's books, a lot of it, you have to kind of analyze yourself.

[1:19:49] Tommy: Right.

[1:19:50] Jimi: But it would have been great if we got to do a bit more deep diving in the musical.

[1:19:50] Jimi: I don't know.

[1:19:53] Tommy: Yeah. About, you know...

[1:19:53] Tommy: Then we end with Into the Woods. You are not alone, known as alone.

[1:19:56] Jimi: Right, right.

[1:19:58] Tommy: The parallels are maybe more extreme than I first thought.

[1:20:02] Jimi: But it is, you know, for being a fluffy conglomeration of a lot of Seussian pieces, there are these, like, deep moments. Like, I always have been curious about some of the gendering present in this show.

[1:20:18] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:20:18] Jimi: And how different characters are coded, and how that implies certain things. And like, JoJo, in plenty of productions I've seen, has been cast as a trouser's role, as a girl playing a boy. I don't know if I've ever seen it played as a girl, which is fascinating to me, because I have seen it as a trouser's role, and I don't know what it would change.

[1:20:46] Tommy: Like, some of the lyrics in the General Genghis Khan-Schmidt song don't quite work, but that's about it.

[1:20:55] Jimi: Yeah, in terms of the actual story, it would have zero impact.

[1:21:01] Tommy: Right.

[1:21:01] Jimi: Um, there's—and then the whole Maisie and the egg, and motherhood versus fathership, and some, you know, pretty implied metaphors going on there.

[1:21:17] Tommy: Yes.

[1:21:18] Jimi: Is really fascinating to me.

[1:21:21] Tommy: Um, yeah, because it's one of those things, because we're dealing in a complete fantasy world.

[1:21:26] Jimi: Right.

[1:21:27] Tommy: Things like race, and gender, and sexuality, and all of that no longer exist.

[1:21:32] Jimi: Right. They're only as invented as we want them to be.

[1:21:35] Tommy: Exactly. And I'm kind of surprised that they didn't take more advantage of that.

[1:21:41] Jimi: Yeah. Well, there is—I mean, I think definitely around Maisie, who, even in the front matter of the script, I believe Aarons and Flaherty give some pretty good expansion on the characters, but they say about Maisie, Maisie LeBird, self-centered, selfish, and vain. Maisie will never admit to her own flaws. She manipulates anyone she can into doing what she wants. But Maisie isn't all bad. In giving up her egg to Horton once and for all, she has a moment of generosity. She realizes she isn't the kind of person who'd be a good parent, and she does the best thing she can for the egg.

[1:22:17] Tommy: Um, in the front, like, from the horse's mouth, uh, Maisie, not a villain.

[1:22:20] Jimi: Maisie, pretty close to a villain, but not a villain.

[1:22:26] Tommy: I don't—she never seems like a villain.

[1:22:28] Jimi: Sure, but she's cast in that role, um, but she has reasons behind what she does, including, like, to—to peel back the metaphor, like, giving up her child for adoption?

[1:22:40] Tommy: Adoption, yeah.

[1:22:41] Jimi: This is the metaphor. Um, but then—

[1:22:44] Tommy: And thankfully, as well, like, not getting her comeuppance because, you know what I mean, she doesn't, like—

[1:22:49] Jimi: Well, and that's the thing, and, like, she doesn't even get her comeuppance for being vain.

[1:22:55] Tommy: Like, there is a, like—

[1:22:56] Jimi: Quite the opposite.

[1:22:57] Tommy: Well, she can't fly very well.

[1:22:59] Jimi: She can't fly very well, but it's not really a big deal. Um, like, you know, if—if we're using the human metaphor of, you know, plastic surgery, um, like, there's still a moral here that's like, hey, you know, some people get plastic surgery. And it's not good for everyone, but it's good for some people.

[1:23:18] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:23:19] Jimi: Um, and, like, that's—that's a real intense, deep moral there. It's not—

[1:23:25] Tommy: It's one of the—it's so strange that it's in Seussical.

[1:23:30] Jimi: I know, right? Because, like, you know, the kind of other themes in—in Seussical are very, you know, child-specific.

[1:23:39] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:23:39] Jimi: But then out of—out of nowhere, we have this whole theme about—and it's just—it's out and out, dance 10, looks 3.

[1:23:49] Tommy: That is literally what Amazing Gertrude and Amazing Maisie is.

[1:23:53] Jimi: Sure.

[1:23:53] Tommy: But I—I would wager, you know, I work with middle schoolers. Like, everyone has body issues. Um, and, like, how—how deep and specific of a metaphor are we getting, right? Because we are imposing these meanings on, as you said, this fantasy world, right? But they go to—she goes to a doctor—

[1:24:12] Jimi: That's true.

[1:24:13] Tommy: —to get a pill.

[1:24:14] Jimi: That is fair.

[1:24:15] Tommy: You know what I mean?

[1:24:16] Jimi: No, that's fair.

[1:24:18] Tommy: Like, it's very—

[1:24:19] Jimi: I wasn't wagering that in the argument I was about to build.

[1:24:22] Tommy: Yeah, but that's—as it is, it's really overt.

[1:24:24] Jimi: And that's, like, of all of the things that are quite subversive, this is overt.

[1:24:28] Tommy: This is like—

[1:24:29] Jimi: Yeah.

[1:24:29] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:24:30] Jimi: Aaron Zavlarity, we have opinions about plastic surgery.

[1:24:34] Tommy: Right.

[1:24:34] Jimi: And we're going to talk to you about them.

[1:24:36] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:24:36] Jimi: Weird.

[1:24:37] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:24:37] Jimi: No, it's strange.

[1:24:38] Tommy: Well, and I would say opinions about parenthood and children and—

[1:24:43] Jimi: That's, like, all of that, that I think is brilliant.

[1:24:45] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:24:46] Jimi: Because I think the family dynamic between Jojo and his parents, and Horton and Gertrude and the egg, and Maisie and the—like, that's all great.

[1:24:58] Tommy: It's great.

[1:24:58] Jimi: Even Sir Kangaroo and her child.

[1:25:00] Tommy: Yep.

[1:25:01] Jimi: Well, it leads to, like—

[1:25:02] Tommy: Fantastic.

[1:25:03] Jimi: You know, you'll teach him Earth and I'll teach him Sky, I think is—

[1:25:06] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:25:06] Jimi: —one of the most beautiful lyrics in the entire show.

[1:25:09] Tommy: Totally.

[1:25:11] Jimi: But it still doesn't quite gel.

[1:25:14] Tommy: Like, Horton and Gertrude and Jojo's parents, who I don't think have names beyond the mayor and his wife—

[1:25:22] Jimi: I think so, yeah.

[1:25:24] Tommy: —and then the sour kangaroo and their kid don't have that no one is alone moment that the witch and the baker's wife and Cinderella all have at the same time.

[1:25:41] Jimi: There isn't that, like, thematic drawing together at the end. Instead, we sing I do not like green eggs and ham and do a funky dance.

[1:25:50] Tommy: Which is a missed opportunity.

[1:25:53] Jimi: Yeah, because that's—

[1:25:54] Tommy: I think that's—

[1:25:55] Jimi: I've never thought about that before, but that would be really nice to tie the mothership.

[1:25:59] Tommy: Yeah.

[1:26:00] Jimi: Or family and kids.

[1:26:01] Tommy: I would say parentship, because it's even saying—

[1:26:03] Jimi: Yeah, exactly.

[1:26:04] Tommy: This is why Jojo and Horton are two peas of the same pod.

[1:26:10] Jimi: Like, Horton, despite being entirely made fun of about it and brought to a circus for being an anomaly, is still absolutely ready to be this quote-unquote stereotypical motherly figure and sit on this egg.

[1:26:57] Jimi: He could present himself as a sort of father figure to Jojo, but the kind of father figure who is reckless. And, you know, I think I can't remember the actual trope term, it might be like the temptress, but it's not the temptress because that's a sexual thing. But like, there is definitely a trope. Yeah. But this, you know, there's someone who is like pulling you away from the good and trying to bring you more into the dark side. Yeah. Palpatine. Yeah, it kind of is Palpatine in a way. And then, you know, Jojo could have a realisation that actually, no, that takes me somewhere bad and goes back to his parents and realises the value of family. His parents could go through a similar realisation, mirror it with Horton.

There's more there. There's so much more there. That's a lovely theme to talk about. And in a family show, a show that they really wanted to be Lion King style for adults and for kids alike. Yeah. What a great way to do it is like, here's a show about your family. Right. And the struggles you go through and how you overcome them.

[1:28:07] Tommy: Yeah. And the most important thing at the end of the day is about being a family. Right. No matter who you are in your family.

[1:28:12] Jimi: Exactly. But instead we spend an entire song watching Aaron Carter sing about fish while floating above in his bathtub.

[1:28:21] Tommy: Yeah, exactly. Like it's such, you know, it is so disjointed in its morals and ideas, which is such a shame because there are these deep threads and these deep cores there. They just exist as like little blips. It's like, but that's the thing is I feel like they're just relics from the books that have just circumstantially come into the musical via the book, as opposed to Ahrens and Flaherty setting out to tell a story. Yeah. Perhaps the best, like maybe the two morals that they've most imbued into the thing are, like, oh, the things you can think, you know, imagination is a great thing and life could be worse. How lucky you are. Like those are perhaps their most salient contributions. And they're so bland. They're just so bland.

[1:29:29] Jimi: Exactly. There's no sucker punch. Yeah. Man, ain't imagination great. But there's not any imagination in this, you know, except Jojo alone in the bathtub, you know, or like life, life, life could be worse. You know, let's explore that. Life could be worse. They don't.

[1:29:47] Tommy: No. Not even in the song.

[1:29:52] Jimi: Like, why do you cry? A cloudy sky, an empty purse, a crazy universe. My philosophy, simple things could be worse. Like, yeah, be happier here. It could be worse. Tell me how now.

[1:30:05] Tommy: Yeah, exactly. It just could. Okay. It just could. So shut up. I do not like green eggs and ham. Do not like them, stay away. Do not like green eggs and ham.

[1:30:15] Jimi: And it's such a bop, too. It's a good song. Play off. But, you know, I still enjoy it.

[1:30:20] Tommy: I know. I still really like it. I feel like we've never shit talked a musical this much that we still both just really enjoy. Just really enjoy. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because it's just as fun, isn't it? It's fun and it's nice. Well, and it is, you know, this this is a thought I did have. It is very musical theatre.

[1:30:39] Jimi: Oh, gosh. Actually, we've not even mentioned it. The music is brilliant.

[1:30:42] Tommy: The music is brilliant. And I do think is this is the thing I've thought several times. Ahrens and Flaherty do a fantastic job of adapting their style to whatever they're doing. We talked about it in Ragtime. Like, it sounds like stuff straight out of, you know, that century. Absolutely. And, you know, once on this island in the kind of Afro-Caribbean. Absolutely. Like, amazing. Seussical certainly has its, like, bizarre percussion section and weird instruments here and there. Yeah. But I do think Seussical is about as close as we get to, like, the core of Ahrens and Flaherty. Like, this is their unseasoned, you know, without the extra salt and pepper version of what they write. And it's great.

[1:31:27] Jimi: Yeah. We have this thing. You will have this. It fits directly into that reference called Salt and Shake. OK. So it's a bag of potato chips, crisps, that are plain. And it comes with a tiny little salt sachet that you salt and then you shake.

[1:31:44] Tommy: We do have some not like that sort of stuff. Burger King for a while did a thing like that with cheesy fries where you got a little packet of powdered cheese and that was delicious. You're making a face, but it was so good. American fast food is second to none. I don't know if that's good or bad. Apparently. Yes. But yeah, sorry. That is it. You're right. Because this is it's kind of they can do what they want. Yeah. And they do. They stretch their muscles. They go from, you know, calypso to jungle to traditional musical theatre to jazz.

[1:32:22] Jimi: Power rock ballad. Yeah. All over the place. And it's it's it's well written. And even like just from a structure standpoint, like the the reprised themes and like it's good. They did a good job with it. That's one of the shames of it is that it is from that perspective, very constructed. And so I guess that's it for the people who go to musical theatre to have their fun night at the theatre. Seussical is perfect.

[1:32:49] Tommy: Yeah. Well, it is. You know, I do think most American musical theatre can be summed up by the idea of like unbridled optimism in the face of insurmountable obstacle. And that's Seussical. You know, that's a lot of musical theatre. That's into the woods. That's, you know, even some like deep cuts of musical theatre are very exemplified by like, you can defeat the villain just by thinking about how happy you will be when you do it. And like, yeah, that's Seussical too, even for all of its flaws and faults.

[1:33:36] Jimi: Yeah. I also forgot the whole circus bit as well. Oh, God, it's such a pain. That actually when we did it, that was when I had my costume change. I played Thing 2.

[1:33:50] Tommy: Blue hair?

[1:33:50] Jimi: Blue hair. And you know what Thing 2's job was? To push around Horton's tree, which was quite the ordeal because it was very large and had a big nest in it. And my like clown blue hair wig, of course, wasn't hairpinned to my head. So I would stand up and my hair would get stuck to the nest and I'd walk away and my hair would stay, you know, still attached to the nest. It was. And that, Jimmy, is why I swore off girls forever.

[1:34:18] Tommy: Yeah, I would too. Good golly. What did your girlfriend do? Was she in it?

[1:34:26] Jimi: Yeah, she was a Jungle of Nulian.

[1:34:26] Tommy: Was she a bird?

[1:34:34] Jimi: She wasn't a bird. Oh, I don't know. We had a lot of... she might have also been a swamp thing. They must have done something with swamp things previously. Just a bunch of leftover options.

[1:34:39] Tommy: What song are the swamp things in?

[1:34:43] Jimi: We were, you know, this is the case of the people versus Horton the Elephant. There's no swamp! I know. You know, I never really thought about the title of that song either. It's not the case of the people versus the Horton the Elephant. They're literally all animals in that moment.

[1:35:27] Tommy: They're literally all animals, but animals are people too. That's not how that works.

[1:35:45] Jimi: A small voice in the universe. One true friend in the universe. Who believes in you.

[1:36:25] Tommy: The adventures were over. The sky became pink. And then guess what happened?

[1:36:34] Jimi: Well, what do you think?

[1:36:37] Tommy: All the things you can think. All the things you can think.

[1:36:45] Jimi: All the things you can think. All the things you can think.

[1:36:49] Tommy: Sewers!

[1:36:50] Jimi: Sewers!

[1:36:51] Tommy: Sewers!

[1:36:52] Jimi: Sewers!

[1:36:53] Tommy: Sewers!

[1:36:54] Jimi: Sewers!

[1:36:55] Tommy: Sewers!

[1:36:56] Jimi: Sewers!

[1:36:56] Tommy: Sewers!

[1:36:57] Jimi: Sewers!

[1:36:57] Tommy: Sewers!

[1:36:58] Jimi: Sewers!

[1:36:58] Tommy: Sewers!

[1:36:59] Jimi: Sewers!

[1:37:00] Tommy: That, Jimmy, was Sewcical the Musical.

[1:37:04] Jimi: Or Suecical the Musical.

[1:37:07] Tommy: Seecical the Meecical.

[1:37:10] Jimi: Sizeical the Moisecal.

[1:37:13] Tommy: I like that one the best actually.

[1:37:15] Jimi: When did we just turn to a Meissner exercise.

[1:37:19] Tommy: How's that Meissner?

[1:37:21] Jimi: Isn't Meissner the one where you just like repeat things at each other?

[1:37:26] Tommy: I did not do well in my collegiate acting classes.

[1:37:30] Jimi: You have a quiz question for us.

[1:37:31] Tommy: I truly do.

[1:37:33] Jimi: Okay.

[1:37:34] Tommy: Rumour has it, rumour has it, that this musical is cursed. During out-of-town tryouts, the ladies' bathroom in the theatre caught on fire. A dancer overran into the pit, injuring a saxophonist, who would later die of a heart attack after being rushed to the hospital. And the leading actor dropped dead in the wings during the second preview. My gosh, what show?

[1:38:03] Jimi: What show could it be?

[1:38:04] Tommy: I also like the, I keep a catalogue of British pronunciations that are different than American pronunciations. What do you call someone who plays the saxophone?

[1:38:15] Jimi: A saxophonist.

[1:38:16] Tommy: Not a saxophonist?

[1:38:18] Jimi: No, a saxophone-a-ain.

[1:38:21] Tommy: Saxophonist.

[1:38:22] Jimi: Saxophonist.

[1:38:23] Tommy: Flutist.

[1:38:24] Jimi: That's fun.

[1:38:25] Tommy: My favourite is, how do you say-

[1:38:26] Jimi: You don't call that a flutist, do you?

[1:38:28] Tommy: No, we call it a flutist, yeah.

[1:38:30] Jimi: No!

[1:38:30] Tommy: We probably say a flute player.

[1:38:32] Jimi: You've sickened me.

[1:38:33] Tommy: What do you call someone who plays the piano?

[1:38:36] Jimi: Pianist.

[1:38:36] Tommy: I call them a piano player.

[1:38:39] Jimi: But for other reasons.

[1:38:41] Tommy: If you want to get in touch with us, our show Twitter is at Jim and Tomek, or you can join the Reddit discussion. Links are in the show notes, in your podcatcher right now, or at jimandtomek.com. And while you're there, you can check out our Patreon if you would like to financially support the show.

[1:38:55] Jimi: We want to send out a big thank you to all of our current patrons. Also, we do surely appreciate a little review over on Apple Podcasts. They do help us out, everyone says it, but they do.

[1:39:08] Tommy: They absolutely do. I will also add in here, you may have heard, we recently joined the Broadway Podcast Network, which has officially launched. We're really excited about it.

[1:39:19] Jimi: We truly are.

[1:39:21] Tommy: It's one of the coolest things to happen to this podcast.

[1:39:24] Jimi: It's one of the coolest things to happen to me, first of all.

[1:39:28] Tommy: Deliver your life.

[1:39:29] Jimi: Oh, it's so cool. The thing you need to know is nothing's changing. We're still here. You can still expect me to mispronounce words, and the show to be exactly the same as it's always been.

[1:39:43] Tommy: Yes, indeed.

[1:39:45] Jimi: But we are really happy and we're really excited to be working with the BPN family. So yeah, go check them out.

[1:39:54] Tommy: Yeah, go check out all the other podcasts on the networks. Our photos are surrounded by famous people, Jimmy.

[1:40:01] Jimi: Exactly. We're colleagues with Donna McKechnie, ladies and gentlemen.

[1:40:05] Tommy: Oh man, out of my wildest dreams. And of course, most of all, it helps us when you recommend this podcast to your friends who you think might like it. I keep seeing on the Twitter, other people popping up and they're like, I'm late to the show. And I'm like, honey, you're not late to the show. I'm glad you're here.

[1:40:20] Jimi: You're never late.

[1:40:20] Tommy: We were holding the curtain just for you.

[1:40:23] Jimi: Oh, it's so true. Hey, that's all, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for listening.

[1:40:30] Tommy: Cheers.

[1:40:31] Jimi: Cheers.

[1:40:45] Tommy: I'm just a very versatile actor, as they say.

[1:40:48] Jimi: As they say, your verse.