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[0:02] Ollie Southgate: Hello there, I'm Ollie Southgate, and from the Broadway Podcast Network, this is Putting It Together.

[0:07] Ollie Southgate: But on this month's show, I'm here to tell you to listen to a different podcast altogether.

[0:14] Ollie Southgate: On a cloudy day in March 2021, Ben Sprecker sat sobbing in a New York City courtroom.

[0:21] Ollie Southgate: The 66-year-old notorious producer had been humiliated two years prior when a New York Post photographer snapped a photograph of him in a t-shirt and gym shorts, being led out of his Harlem home in handcuffs.

[0:33] Ollie Southgate: It was a different type of press attention than Sprecker had been used to getting.

[0:37] Ollie Southgate: For the decade prior, he had been tied up in one of Broadway's most bizarre crime stories.

[0:43] Ollie Southgate: There were scheming Wall Street types, fake deaths, sabotage from the inside, millions of dollars just vanishing into thin air.

[0:53] Ollie Southgate: There was this stuff that probably would have made a great Broadway play had it not been so ridiculously hard to believe.

[1:05] Ollie Southgate: My mouth fell open, and I thought, you can't make this shit up.

[1:10] Ollie Southgate: As each thing unfolded, it seemed like could what could be worse?

[1:14] Ollie Southgate: He almost sounds like a bit of a sadist.

[1:17] Ollie Southgate: You think of, oh my god, how awful, how bizarre.

[1:22] Ollie Southgate: It's so unbelievable, and it's so it's so fucked up.

[1:27] Ollie Southgate: Just when you thought that it couldn't get any more evil.

[1:33] Ollie Southgate: It turns to that's what's also has been going on.

[1:37] Ollie Southgate: Like it's pretty dark.

[1:40] Ollie Southgate: This whole story is an opera of bad choices.

[1:43] Ollie Southgate: That was a clip from Burnt, now available on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[1:47] Ollie Southgate: And you guys, I listen to all five episodes in two days.

[1:50] Ollie Southgate: I'm so excited to be talking today to the reporter behind the series and its host, Blake Ross.

[1:56] Ollie Southgate: Blake, welcome to Putting It Together.

[1:58] Blake Ross: Hi, Ollie.

[1:59] Blake Ross: I'm so happy to be here.

[2:00] Ollie Southgate: I'm so happy to have you.

[2:03] Ollie Southgate: Before we get into Rebecca and Burnt and all of that, you've had kind of a fascinating career in the kind of Broadway journalism media space as well.

[2:13] Ollie Southgate: I was hoping you could start just by talking about who you are, what you do, where you've been.

[2:19] Ollie Southgate: Just give us the kind of resume rundown, if you could.

[2:22] Blake Ross: Sure. I started work with a man named Ken Sunshine, who runs an amazing PR firm called Sunshine Sacks, and I was a publicist, and I suggest anybody who wants to get into any sort of entertainment field. Publicists are always the first to be blamed and the last to be thanked, but it is a fascinating field, and you really are thrown into the deep end quite early on in your career.

[2:52] Blake Ross: So I was 20-something years old and I was going out on the road with Barbara Streisand, and I was repping Lynn Manuel Miranda early on in his career. And I just, you know, I found a niche for myself in the thing that I love, which is the theater. And I worked there for many, many years, and then I went over to run Playbill at a very interesting time in media when print publication was not it any longer, and digital publication was reigning supreme, and we had to figure out how to keep this hundred-plus-year-old print publication from disappearing.

[3:28] Blake Ross: And it was a really fruitful time during my tenure at Playbill. I was there for eight years, and then I went off to do my own thing and start my family. I have a three-year-old daughter, and the pandemic came, and by gosh, we all, anyone who is involved with the entertainment industry, but specifically Broadway, really learned that we needed to figure out some stuff really quick. So my contribution was getting to work and trying to help, namely the Actors Fund and Broadway Cares, try and figure out how to help people stay afloat during a crazy pandemic time.

[4:08] Blake Ross: And on the side, reporting on Burnt, because I needed something else to whet my appetite for juicy stories.

[4:17] Ollie Southgate: So absolutely. And yeah, kind of the perfect person to report a nice juicy story in all this painstaking detail that makes any true crime podcast so compelling. For those that don't know, could you introduce us to the story of Rebecca?

[4:34] Blake Ross: Ah, oh Rebecca, the gal I never get tired of talking about. Rebecca is the name of a musical that a producer named Ben Specker basically fell so deeply in love with and became so obsessed with that it became the bane of his existence. He thought it was going to be the next Phantom of the Opera, he thought it was going to be the next humongous colossal property in the musical theater world, and it ended up not only not coming to Broadway, but ended up destroying a lot of people's lives, including his own.

[5:12] Blake Ross: Everybody who touched that musical got burnt, which is why I called it Burnt. And so it's a really crazy twisty turny real true crime story of Broadway, which we don't get many. We get lots of gossipy stories, but in terms of the true crime of it all, Broadway thankfully has been not as prevalent as maybe Hollywood or other types of entertainment. But boy, this this is the exception to the rule. And the twists and turns of it all are reported now in Burnt, the show that set Broadway ablaze.

[5:44] Blake Ross: The name comes from one of what was supposed to be, I guess, one of the most iconic sequences in that production, but I'm sure would have been legendary on Broadway, in which I want to say that it's a staircase that catches fire before the audience's eyes, right?

[5:58] Ollie Southgate: Yes.

[5:58] Blake Ross: So the basic story of Rebecca, which most people know because it is quite a classic story, but it was written by Daphne de Maurier in the 30s and then became quite a popular Oscar-winning film by Alfred Hitchcock in the 40s, his first American film. And it's about a young, naive young lady who falls deeply in love very quickly with a dashing widower named Maxim DeWinter, and he whisks her off to his palatial, beautiful seaside escape called Manderley.

[6:32] Blake Ross: Um, and there they meet Mrs. Danvers, who is the home's caretaker, and she also acts as sort of this medium between the home of Manderley, which is inhabited by the ghost of Maxim's first wife, who is named Rebecca. And it's a very dark gothic tale, and Miss Danvers is the sort of spooky character in all of it. And at the end, spoiler alert for anybody who needs one on a book from the 30s and a book for the 40s, but spoiler alert is the end classically finds Mrs. Danvers standing at the top of the stairs of Manderley, and the whole place is burning to the ground around her as she's wearing Rebecca's clothes on the top of the staircase.

[7:23] Blake Ross: So this was all recreated during the stage production, which played in Europe and in other places around the world and was supposed to happen on Broadway.

[7:33] Ollie Southgate: Yeah, this big pyrotechnic illusion of the stairs and the whole house coming crumbling to the ground. I wanted to ask you, as someone who's poured over this show now and really dug into the weeds of all the plans that'd be made for it and the finances as they were supposed to be, at least. Do you think had it made it to Broadway, this show could have actually been the kind of unbelievable success that its producers were so sure of?

[8:07] Blake Ross: You talk a lot about, you talk a lot in the podcast, as do many of your guests about it being compared to Phantom for all sorts of different reasons. Is that actually the kind of hit you think they might have had on their hands if it had been a little more legit and all gone to plan?

[8:23] Blake Ross: Well, Ollie, I'm not a Broadway producer, so I can't say for certain, but I am somebody who's seen thousands and thousands of productions in my career. I never saw Rebecca in person. I have seen there's bootleg versions with subtitles, English subtitles from the German musical Rebecca Das Musical, which is no way to see a show. Very want to put that disclaimer out there. Do not judge a book by its bootleg, because that's never a good way to consume art, that's or consume theater. But knowing what I do know about it, I don't I don't think so, to be really frank with you. I think it was supposed to come of an age, and this was 2011, 2012, when the scene really changed, and this idea of an entire musical, a humongous mega musical built around something like a chandelier dropping or a helicopter landing on the stage or any other sort of spectacle.

[9:30] Blake Ross: While great, it doesn't a musical, a mega musical make. Um, and to me, I, you know, if I wouldn't have sat in that theater and thought, uh, let me sink millions of dollars into this thing, but I'm also not a producer, so I can't say for sure. But for my money, no. I don't know that it would have been. And to put the lens of everything that did end up transpiring back on the show. Obviously, the show does exist, you know, if only as a libretto, really in it. The English language version, I mean. Um, it's you know, it's a library in a few people's filing cabinets now. Do you think there's any chance we will ever see Rebecca on the Broadway stage, you know, 20 years from now, under perhaps more responsible stewardship, or is this whole thing just kind of doomed it forever?

Throughout the podcast and some of the bonus episodes, I've talked to podcasters who have done deep dives into other big classical flops or classical problem musicals like Sunset Boulevard, and uh which, you know, biggest advance in the world, but ultimately didn't make its money back and was a big flop, and uh Carrie, which is like the typical show that when you get one goes to when they're talking about flop musicals, and uh I mean they've each had very different circumstances than Rebecca, but they've each found life after um, specifically Carrie definitely has found life after uh a colossal failure. So never say never, but I don't know. I think they would have one hell of a backstory to tell, and that always helps when you're trying to put on a huge musical.

It always helps to have some good buzzy press about it. So, you know, if some enterprising producer wants to come about and sink a bunch of money into this show, they certainly would be coming off of you know a really buzzy, they'd have a lot of buzz behind it, I should say.

[11:36] Ollie Southgate: Yeah, absolutely. And as you mentioned, so many great interviews as well over the course of this podcast. We have the show's would-be star, uh Sierra Boggess, still a star in her own right, but I mean, you know, of Rebecca. Um, Michael Riedel, Robert Viagas, Trip Phillips, Christopher Hampton, David Camp Philip. Borough, you kind of run the full gamut of Broadway business types, artists, and other reporters who were covering all of this as it happened in real time. Now I know you obviously already knew a lot of the stories behind this show before you started the podcast from the career that you were alluding to before. But was there anything that you learned doing those interviews and making this podcast that just kind of blew your mind? Like anything that was truly shocking, brand new information?

[12:23] Blake Ross: Well, two things. I ended up tracking down Mark Hotton, and so it was my first introduction to the world of criminals and talking to somebody in jail and communicating with somebody who is in prison and uh learning how that whole side of the world works. And it was interesting, and it was very interesting hearing his side of the story. He and kind of being led down a similar path that Ben Sprecher was led down, meaning, you know, you're dealing with a criminal who's got a long, long history of conning people. And so I was thankfully privy to that information prior to talking to him, but it didn't make our conversations any less interesting. Back to probably made it more interesting. Um, and so just talking to him was a fascinating exercise in and of itself. And if you listen to the podcast, I mean, there's I find him living his new life, which is something interesting.

[13:26] Blake Ross: But something I definitely learned through the reporting of this from most of my off-the-record conversations is just how tricky raising funds for Broadway can be, and why good producers are important to have. There's some regulations around raising money for the theater, but not nearly enough to make it a business that is laudatory. It's you know, you can do things by the skin of your teeth, and people skirt the rules all of the time because it's show business and it's art and it's messy and it's hard to raise money for the theater. Um, and so I've learned a lot of just how tricky it is and the importance of having a good lead producer as leader of a production because it really is not only just a piece of art, but it is a corporation, it is an entire mini community running with uh the producer, which is your CEO essentially, and you need to make sure that that person is sound in their judgment and um their business skills to be able to pull it off because it's a living, breathing thing, it's not even just raising money for a film and then you put it out into the world.

I mean, it's a thing with running costs every week and real human collateral and things like that. So it's a tricky business, and you need to have somebody who knows what they're doing, not only someone who's passionate about it, but somebody who knows what they're doing.

[15:08] Ollie Southgate: Absolutely. Um, and you talked in some of the bonus episodes you did at the end of the series about some of the kind of other great scandals that have befallen Broadway. I mean, I feel like none of them quite reach the same heights as uh as Rebecca did, but um, and there's definitely been a few. Is this a one-off for you? Can we expect any more Blake Ross snooping around Broadway with a magnifying glass and a trench coat?

[15:34] Blake Ross: Well, as long as people keep behaving badly, I'll be there to uh report on it because my goodness, there are some people. I think because we the theater is so insular and so small, and frankly, so few people, I mean, this isn't so few people pay attention to it. It seems so much larger than it is. Um, I think because I've worked outside of Broadway too, I realized just how insular the Broadway community is. That people get away with some very bad behavior. But man, it's interesting to talk about. But yes, the bonus episodes are all about people just unearthing other people, other interesting criminals or interesting bad behavior of people on stage. Um, which I think it's interesting. My favorite was Adela Holzer, who just recently passed, but she was a producer.

She mostly was a fun, you know, raised funds for the theater. She was on the original Hair in the 70s, and she was just this grifter. She told people she was married to David Rockefeller. She had pictures cut out of magazines all over her apartment. She was hailed in the New York Times as like the next, you know, humongous big woman producer on Broadway in the big boys' club that was Broadway or that still is, but that was Broadway in the 70s and 80s. And she was a mastermind criminal and ended up spending, I think like 13 years in jail or something. But man, she was so fascinating. The fact that she operated in our circles was to me just fascinating.

[17:15] Ollie Southgate: Um, you guys, as I told Blake when I first reached out to her a few weeks ago, when the network and I were coming out with this podcast with Putting It Together, I'd always had in the back of my head, oh, I could do a few episodes on Rebecca at some point. That would be fascinating. And I kept meaning to get around to it. And it sort of sat there as an idea I wasn't really doing anything with. And then I saw this podcast come up on my podcast app, and I thought, ah, I missed it. I'm too late. And then I listened to it, and I was so thrilled that I was beaten to it because this is just so well done and so well reported. It's, you know, very respectful to the fact that this was about real people's money and real people's jobs and reputations while also being kind of HBO level drama and storytelling.

It is called Burnt. It's available in the same place you're listening to this one right now, uh, on your podcast app of choice or at Broadwaypodcastnetwork.com. Just search for Burnt there. Blake, thank you so much for talking to me.

[18:08] Blake Ross: Thanks, Ollie. I had a great time.

[18:11] Ollie Southgate: Putting It Together is produced by Dory Berenstein and Alan Seales for the Broadway Podcast Network. Our theme music is by Eulis Pican, and our work and editing is by me, Ollie Southgate. You can find me on Twitter, I'm at OllieSouthy, or check out my website at OllieSouthgate.com. That is spelled with an IE, not a Y. I'm signing off for the holidays now. I will be back in 2022. Do check your podcast feed on Friday, February 4th, when we'll be back and seeing what Broadway looks like on the other side of its first holiday season since it returned, as well as being in the midst of its first full winter. We'll talk about it all then. Please do have a safe and happy holidays and goodbye.