This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Will Armstrong: Coming up today, we'll talk to Will about his experience seeing the Nutcracker and the Four Realms at the El Capitan Theater and the very cool live entertainment they have before the movie.

[0:10] Lara Scott: Amanda Rafkin of BroadwayLA Unplugged joins us to talk about all of her projects, and there's a very exciting new musical about the real-life courtship of Ron and Nancy Reagan, the president and the first lady called In a Booth at Chasen's.

[0:24] Will Armstrong: We'll talk to the stars.

[0:38] Will Armstrong: I'm celebrity publicist and theater veteran Will Armstrong, along with radio host, writer, and theater enthusiast Lara Scott.

[0:44] Lara Scott: Welcome.

[0:45] Will Armstrong: We're very excited to talk to Amanda Rafkin and her work with BroadwayLA Unplugged.

[0:50] Lara Scott: But first, let's get to some LA buzz.

[0:52] Lara Scott: Yes, tickets are on sale now for Ragtime, the musical.

[0:55] Lara Scott: It's playing at the Pasadena Playhouse, February 5th to March 3rd. This great American musical returns to Los Angeles for its first major production in 20 years and tells the story of three families at the turn of the 20th century in pursuit of the American dream.

[1:10] Lara Scott: For information and tickets, check out Pasadena Playhouse.org.

[1:14] Will Armstrong: Well, Will, you were not too far from Pasadena earlier this week.

[1:18] Lara Scott: You were at the El Capitan Theater, right in the heart of Hollywood, checking out.

[1:22] Lara Scott: It was opening night for Disney's The Nutcracker in the Four Realms.

[1:26] Will Armstrong: I was so happy to be there. After we had Sharon, who's one of the managers for the tickets at the El Cap, I was so excited to go there and experience it for myself, and they do not disappoint.

[1:38] Lara Scott: Right. And in that episode when we talked to Sharon, we were focusing on the fact that you get a live show when you go see a film there.

[1:44] Lara Scott: It's not every showing, so you definitely want to check with them. I think it might just be on the weekends or like an opening night kind of thing. But there's always something cool happening in addition to the film.

[1:53] Lara Scott: But with this one, what did you experience when you walked in?

[1:56] Will Armstrong: We walked through the door, and I just love a Disney cast member. They're just so engaged and welcoming. They just know how to put on a show. Like, just from the moment I handed someone my ticket, and I walked in, and there were so many little girls dressed like princesses, like as far as I could see, and they were buying their cotton candy and their little snacks to go into the theater. And then you walk into the theater, and it is just so historically beautiful and elegant and wonderful, but the energy just from every single person in the house.

[2:27] Will Armstrong: And what was really cool about this production or this movie is that there was this big set of a music box on the stage, and then there was like a DJ booth right there on stage. And I didn't quite understand what was going on, but they were encouraging each and every person that was there to go up and get their picture taken on stage in front of the—

[2:37] Lara Scott: Yeah, an Instagram moment right there.

[2:47] Will Armstrong: Yeah, a hundred percent. And then all of a sudden, this—I think his name was PJ—he was the quote-unquote maestro or DJ for the evening, and he spun tunes like that in honor of all four realms. So he took you on a musical journey beforehand, and everyone, but he would get the crowd involved, and it was so hilarious to watch all these little kids having this theatrical experience with this guy who's just like spinning the hits and playing this music. And then he's like, "When we're gonna go to the next realm, you yell, 'Let's go, maestro!'" and like the kids all scream, and like there were kids that weren't even screaming words back to him, just like they were watching the Beatles or something.

[3:25] Lara Scott: Don't act like you weren't doing it too, Will. Come on.

[3:27] Will Armstrong: With the infectious—and then the movie started, and it was so beautiful, and so like the visual effects of this on this incredible stage and in this incredible screen with the amazing Dolby sound. It was just a wonderful, wonderful experience.

[3:43] Lara Scott: It's really beautiful. It's an instant holiday classic.

[3:46] Will Armstrong: I went to a press screening earlier in the week. Absolutely loved the film. And I was wondering if they would have any ballet before the movie at the El Capitan.

[3:54] Will Armstrong: They do a great thing of tying it in. This is what's so cool, is that we had dancers from the LA Ballet company come, and they did the Pas de Deux, and then they had these three ballet dancers dressed as rats, and they did like this ensemble number of the five of them that was—

[4:10] Lara Scott: Wait, was it mice?

[4:11] Will Armstrong: Yeah, they were mice—rats.

[4:12] Lara Scott: Well, I mean, well, they were some kind of—

[4:15] Will Armstrong: Well, it's—they become a rat king, so I thought they were a rat and then the mouse king.

[4:19] Lara Scott: Yeah, okay. Well, from the ballet, they're rats.

[4:22] Will Armstrong: Yeah, it's—well, maybe I don't—okay. Anyway, it's some kind of furry tiny creature.

[4:28] Will Armstrong: Yes, and so—but this is what's super cool. Every single night for this entire season, they have a different local ballet company, whether they're from Calabasas to a company in Culver City. Like they just—so it's a great opportunity for all these fantastic, amazing local dancers to dance on stage for us local Angelinos and all these tourists that come through and have this amazing Hollywood movie musical theater ballet holiday experience.

[4:58] Lara Scott: It's a great everything. You got your cotton candy.

[5:00] Will Armstrong: Yeah.

[5:01] Lara Scott: You got everything.

[5:02] Will Armstrong: It's great.

[5:06] Lara Scott: Well, I'm glad that you had a magical night out in Hollywood, Will, with The Nutcracker and the Four Realms at the El Capitan. And for tickets and more info, because they have a lot of great stuff coming up, check out ElCapitanTheater.com.

[5:19] Will Armstrong: You're listening to West of BroadwayLA with Will Armstrong and Lara Scott. Amanda Rafkin is a Los Angeles-based composer, musical director, and pianist. She's the composer of the new musical, The Lightning Howler, formerly titled 300 Bones, and is also the host, producer, pianist, and musical director of BroadwayLA Unplugged, a bi-monthly acoustic cabaret show.

[5:39] Will Armstrong: Amanda, welcome to West of BroadwayLA.

[5:42] Lara Scott: So, you're also a therapist in addition to the composing and the musical directing and the piano playing, right?

[5:49] Amanda Rafkin: Somehow that is accurate, yeah.

[5:51] Will Armstrong: Wow. Will had made a comment, he said that probably helps you get through, right? Just with all the different hats that you're wearing.

[5:57] Lara Scott: What's your favorite thing, by the way, out of all the different roles that you play?

[6:02] Amanda Rafkin: I've gotta be honest, I'm still trying to figure out exactly where the niche is. Because I like the dramaturgical side too. Like, and I'm kind of doing everything right now to figure out what exactly I want to do more of. So instead, I'm just doing everything. I really like the feeling of writing music. I think there's like a mastery to that, but there isn't necessarily to the other components. I mean, I've been playing piano my whole life, so like learning how to play a song on the piano is like whatever at this point. But if you write a song and then like especially if you get it performed, like that's just really cool, and there's a sense of accomplishment to that where you're like, "There was a thing that didn't exist before, and now it's like in the world."

[6:43] Lara Scott: Is it scary though putting your baby out into the world? Because you're right, it's one thing to, you know, play or perform something written by somebody else, and you can, you know, make that your own and personalize it. But man, when it comes from your heart and soul, that's gotta be kind of a different feeling.

[6:58] Amanda Rafkin: Yep, and you know what? Some of the time, not as much 'cause I tend—I don't like to write lyrics. I love to have a good lyricist. And so I feel like the lyrics sometimes can be the more vulnerable piece. But in the times that I have written music and lyrics, and we did a—at BroadwayLA Unplugged, we did a mental health-themed one for Mental Health Awareness Month back in like May, June. And I had imagined that Girl, Interrupted would be a fantastic musical. And so I wrote a song for what I imagined that musical could be, and we performed it that night, and I was, we'll say, uncomfortable. But yeah, that was scary when I did music and lyrics. And wow, about three weeks ago, by the way, they made the announcement, guess what's gonna be a musical?

[7:51] Will Armstrong: Yeah.

[7:52] Amanda Rafkin: Yeah. I saw that go by on Twitter.

[7:53] Lara Scott: Well, you know what? Okay, so speaking of social media, Amanda, that's how you and I connected because I saw this account called BroadwayLA Unplugged pop up, and I was like, "BroadwayLA Unplugged, what is this?" And it was kind of the run-up to the Rogers and Hammerstein show that you did recently at the Hotel Cafe, a really cool venue here in Southern California. So let's talk a little bit about what BroadwayLA Unplugged is, and we'd love to hear how the Rogers and Hammerstein night went.

[8:17] Amanda Rafkin: Oh man, it was so fun. So BroadwayLA LA Unplugged kind of in general, I—you know, LA is not as much of a musical theater city as I guess I wish it was. There's some great stuff out here, of course, and I love musical theater, just always want there to be more, of course. And so I was like, "How do I do that? How can we have more?" And so I decided to start this cabaret show. And I guess the unplugged part is a—if you remember MTV used to have a show called Unplugged, which was like acoustic set, you know, of people's music. And so at the cabaret, it's only ever just piano, and we use the original BroadwayLA piano conductor scores for everything. So it's kind of like being at a rehearsal for the BroadwayLA show in a way because it's like all the same scores, just piano, all that.

And I guess the thing that's a little different about the show is that there's always a high narrative component. So this past show, the Rogers and Hammerstein was probably about fifty percent narrative and fifty percent music. So there is always—like I always talk about, you know, whatever the show is that the song is from, some background about like the production of the show, and if there's any fun facts about the show or the song we're gonna do, I always do that. And obviously just like say a little bit about what the show is about and kind of put—the idea is to kind of put the music in context. So I think that for me is what is missing from cabaret sometimes, is that people who go may know the songs or may not know the songs, but it's not in any specific context. And so if you don't know the show, you're kind of just like, "Oh, that's nice," but it doesn't mean anything like Amanda would in context.

[9:50] Lara Scott: What do you think the most interesting of Rogers and Hammerstein trivia that you came across?

[9:58] Amanda Rafkin: No. Oh man, there's so much good stuff. There's some really good stuff about the clam bake song, but I'd rather say a different thing. I love Carousel, and I'm still really bummed I missed the revival. So that show had some really, really interesting musical treatment to it. So Rogers had written a lot of these nuances into the music to help kind of show characters' emotional arcs, I guess. And so we did three songs from that musical, and in each one, it kind of demonstrated this. So, you know, Carrie, who's one of the kind of supplementary characters in the secondary romance, is kind of an even-keeled person, kind of more relaxed, and so she sings that really famous song, "Mr. Snow," right?

That song has a lot of straight eighth notes. So, you know, it's "his name is Mr. Snow," kind of the back and forth because she's more of an even-keeled character. Whereas Julie, who's a little bit more restless, will say, her song we performed on "What's the Use of Wond'ring." And in that song, you hear a lot of dotted eighth sixteenth. So it's "What's the use of one." So it has this kind of unsteadiness to the rhythm that's supposed to kind of capture the emotional essence of that character. And we also did "Soliloquy," and that's, you know, by Billy, who's Julie's man. And in that song, he actually borrows some of her notation. There's that part towards the end where he's talking about like his daughter, once he realizes it could be a girl, and in that part of the song, he uses the same rhythm that's from Julie's songs, so it kind of shows that level of connection in the way that he's kind of taken her in to his being.

[11:57] Lara Scott: Sure.

[11:58] Amanda Rafkin: And I just thought that was like the subtlety of that and the intentionality of that and like the craft, I guess, of that really I love.

[12:09] Lara Scott: Right, you're so right, Amanda, because let's say somebody gets dragged to the Hotel Cafe by their partner and they've never heard of yourself. Hearing that kind of setup makes you want to go and see it immediately and helps you understand what it is that you're taking in.

[12:22] Amanda Rafkin: Yeah.

[12:23] Lara Scott: Yeah, and I love doing songs from shows that are gonna be here. Like if the show's gonna be in LA, I always pitch it, say the exact days it's gonna be here, where it's gonna be here. I really want to try to get people interested in and excited about the theater and getting out to seeing live theater and having that human experience. You know, we're all on our phones and doing God knows what else all the time to be able to go be in the room with something that's live and that's active and it's like a living, breathing thing. I don't know. It's good for the spirit.

[12:51] Will Armstrong: Well, speaking of theater and now and being a part of it, something's going on in theater in Los Angeles right now, and it's Dear Evan Hansen, I believe you saw it twice.

[13:00] Amanda Rafkin: I saw it twice here and then once in New York last summer.

[13:02] Will Armstrong: Nice. Tell me a little bit about your experience.

[13:05] Amanda Rafkin: Here at this one?

[13:06] Will Armstrong: Yeah.

[13:06] Amanda Rafkin: Like as far as what did you think of the show in the production?

[13:08] Amanda Rafkin: Yeah, 'cause Almondson here.

[13:09] Will Armstrong: Yeah, here at the Almondson.

[13:11] Amanda Rafkin: Right. You know, I think it's always hard after you see the original cast, and this cast is fantastic. They did a really great job, especially given that this is the first national tour and they're stepping into obviously very big shoes after the critical acclaim of, you know, the show on BroadwayLA. And I just think this show is really well done if you think about the actual craft of the show. It's to me a perfect example of kind of all the elements of craft coming together in a really cohesive way to tell honestly what's really a very emotionally ambitious story.

[13:46] Will Armstrong: Absolutely. And I'm sure it speaks to your therapist side as well.

[13:49] Amanda Rafkin: Oh, totally. And I mean the creators of this show are aware of the fact that it should never have been successful. Like on paper, you know, a show about this person who kind of like tricks the family of a, you know, a suicide victim into you know, believing something like and just the heavy themes and trying to make the characters still likeable through all of this, um, you know, it probably you know, it was a hard sell in some ways um and they just did a really phenomenal job. I mean the score is I like the score. Um and if you like that type of music then you know there's a lot there. The set design, I don't know if you've seen it um but you know the set what they did with the set and the lighting design is just unbelievable and just helps disturb the story so much.

Um it's a pretty book heavy show and the scene you know there's a lot of scene work and it's really really well done and I mean what I think doesn't matter, the fact that everybody in the theater is crying every time I see it, you know, speaks to speaks to the excellence exact of it and the universality of it and like regardless of what you say about the craft like something's hitting in a way that matters and is impactful and you know is resonating with people and that's not easy to do.

[15:08] Lara Scott: Absolutely. So you mentioned that you've been playing piano forever but what sparked your love originally for the arts and for musical theater?

[15:16] Amanda Rafkin: Oh man well for musical theater um the earliest musical I remember liking I mean I know the whole Phantom of the Opera soundtrack like I can probably do it as a one woman show if anybody wanted to see that which I don't think anyone's lining up for but BroadwayLA Lamp plug the opera plugged there you go. Yes that's right. Oh man the one woman Phantom of the opera um oh boy you know lose all my lose all my followers.

[15:42] Will Armstrong: We'll be there.

[15:42] Amanda Rafkin: You guys and me fantastic on a private show. Um, you know, I think I always liked musical theater. I really did. Um, but I think what really made me like the maniac that I am now was writing this write writing a show. I don't think I when until you do it, I feel like it's har unless you study it, of course, like in school and the study craft or whatever. Um I think it gives you a whole new level of appreciation for like the inner workings and the mechanics and how how hard it is like it's so hard to write a musical and the step it takes you know, five to eight years to get an original show anywhere near even off BroadwayLA. Um so it's I don't know. I think that's honestly what like catapulted me into like maniac status um was writing um the music for a show.

[16:37] Lara Scott: And that was the lightning or is the lightning howler?

[16:40] Amanda Rafkin: It is now the lightning howler, yes. It just had a uh name change.

[16:44] Lara Scott: Wow, so what's happening with that? Are we gonna be able to see it?

[16:48] Amanda Rafkin: You will actually. We um we are in revision, but we are about to I believe hold auditions for our next uh iteration of it. I think we're gonna we're still tweaking a few things from the last time we did a table read, and then I think the hope is to get our cast and do a couple, you know, private readings over the course of the next couple months. And our hope is to be able to put it up in the form of like, you know, like a park and bark, like a staged reading kind of performance. I think maybe January ish um is kind of what we're looking at. Um to get some feedback.

[17:24] Will Armstrong: Yeah, to get some I mean we yeah, yeah, it's pretty soon. We've done it a handful of times. Make sure you let us know so we can help promote when the auditions are 'cause some of our listeners might be able to do that.

[17:33] Amanda Rafkin: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think we want to have the auditions in just a couple of weeks, so I'll let you know.

[17:37] Lara Scott: Well, yeah, what's the best way for everyone to just kind of keep up with you, see what's coming next with BroadwayLA Unplugged and everything you're doing?

[17:43] Amanda Rafkin: Um Yeah, I mean, I have like social media, and then BroadwayLA LA unplugged has its own social media. Um, so I mean, my stuff is just my first and last name, Amanda Rafkin, and then BroadwayLA LA unplugged is BroadwayLA LA underscore unplugged.

[18:01] Lara Scott: Um keep it simple.

[18:03] Amanda Rafkin: Yeah.

[18:04] Lara Scott: Yeah. And there's always all kinds of stuff going on.

[18:07] Amanda Rafkin: Yeah, and so hopefully we'll get that up. Um we'd really love people's feedback on the next one. That's the goal is to get people in there who don't necessarily know me or my collaborator super well. Um, and kind of get them to see the show and be able to get some feedback on you know have like a talk back or something.

[18:24] Amanda Rafkin: Um get some get some feedback on it and kind of see what's working, see what's not working, so we can keep honing the script.

[18:33] Lara Scott: I was like, well, Will and I are a little biased because we already think you're amazing, but we're so excited to see what happens. And you know, Amanda, thank you for everything you're doing just to build a community around musical theater here in LA. So we're so happy we discovered you, and thank you so much for joining us on West of BroadwayLA.

[18:49] Amanda Rafkin: Of course. Thank you so much for having me. How so much fun to talk about theater?

[18:54] Will Armstrong: You're listening to West of BroadwayLA with Will Armstrong and Lara Scott. It was a first date that changed the world. In a booth at Chasen's new musical about the real life Hollywood romance of Ron and Nancy Reagan. It's at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood, November 9th through the 25th. And we would like to welcome the president and the first lady themselves to the podcast, Kelley Dorney and Brent Schindele. Welcome to West of BroadwayLA.

[19:17] Kelley Dorney: Yes. Thank you so much.

[19:18] Brent Schindele: Thanks for having us.

[19:19] Will Armstrong: Well, we are so excited about this musical. You know, it's one of the great things about just having so many theaters in LA that you have all these fresh productions happening. So maybe uh I'm not sure who wants to jump in and maybe just kinda summarize is the whole musical in one booth? How many years of the romance does it cover? Can you give us a little kind of overview of what this is gonna be about?

[19:38] Kelley Dorney: It's not entirely in one booth the whole time. We'll be a bit more exciting for our audience.

[19:46] Brent Schindele: Exactly. Uh it's you're kind of watching uh the the budding romance of of these two. It's so it starts when they first meet on their very first date and it leads all the way up to uh the marriage proposal. Uh and then there's just a little montage at the end to to kind of speed everybody through what what we already knew about the Reagans. Uh but the this show it really just concentrates on their their courtship and and how the two uh these two personalities came uh came together. Starts in nineteen forty nine at that first date uh at Chasens, which is such a great Hollywood spot for uh celebrities and uh VIPs.

[20:25] Kelley Dorney: Sure.

[20:25] Brent Schindele: And uh in in nineteen fifty one is when he actually proposed marriage to her. So it's uh it's basically two years.

[20:30] Lara Scott: Very cool. I am in love with the photo of the two of you for the for the poster. Um what is the process for you two uh to get into character? 'Cause he looks just like them.

[20:39] Kelley Dorney: Oh my goodness.

[20:44] Brent Schindele: Um I I definitely listen to uh I'm a big audio book fan because you're in Los Angeles, you're in your car all the time.

[20:50] Kelley Dorney: Sure.

[20:51] Brent Schindele: So I listened to a lot of books uh about the the Reagans and tr really try to focus mostly on their early life, but uh the later years definitely um you know, it it sheds a lot of light on what their early years were like too. So just a lot of research on the two of them. I tried to watch as many interviews of them together to see how their dynamic when they were um when they were were together on the campaign trail and even when they were in the in the White House.

[21:20] Kelley Dorney: Yeah, I think you want to uh at least uh uh honor the what we remember of them uh without trying to get into impersonation, because that's kind of a a big trap to fall into.

[21:30] Brent Schindele: And it's easier. I think of Daniel Day Lewis playing Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln film, and he was so uh lauded for that. But of course we don't really know what Abraham Lincoln really looked like, sounded like we all know what Ronald Reagan looked like and sounded like and what Nancy Reagan looked like and sounded like. So we want to approximate that, but we also have to honor the script that's been written for us and make that script come to life and make the scenes really crackle and play with all the romantic tension and and excitement that was in this um this young couple's romantic story.

[22:00] Kelley Dorney: So it's kind of a walking a a middle line, I think, between um bringing these characters to life that we remember, at least sort of in a hazy way, and and then but playing the story that's in front of us, uh just as Brent and Kelly are as well.

[22:13] Brent Schindele: And you have an incredible team putting that story together and kind of making this happen. Two time Academy Award winner and Tony nominee Al Casha, who wrote the morning after from the Poseidon Adventure. I was like, Yes, multiple award-winning hit songwriter Phil Swan and acclaimed author and poet Sam Bennett. What was that like stepping into this project?

[22:32] Kelley Dorney: It's great to have the writers here because um with any new project you want to kind of let it grow during the rehearsal process, and they've just been uh so available to us, and uh we c we come up with ideas in rehearsal and they come up with new ideas, you know, seeing how we're playing a certain scene, and so it's just been an ongoing thing.

[22:50] Brent Schindele: We have to be ready every day coming in for new rewrites and new changes, and even now we're kind of just changing things on the fly left and right. But it's it's nice to not have it be fixed and you know, you're stuck with it. It's more like a a growing uh living thing that we're building right now.

[23:07] Kelley Dorney: You're all discovering what works, what doesn't work, what what needs to be fleshed out, what what is great as is, you know, all those all those elements don't make sense on a page until you really see it up on on a stage.

[23:20] Brent Schindele: Yeah, so many stage properties it is what it is, and you kinda try to make it work or fly as best it can, but it's nice to be able to uh feel like, Oh, if this isn't working, maybe we could change it. We could rewrite it and make it even better. So we and these writers are so good and so uh understanding and sympathetic and they uh they just come up with great ideas on the fly, which is exciting to watch.

[23:39] Lara Scott: What was something surprising or that you didn't expect to learn from playing these two characters?

[23:45] Kelley Dorney: Um I guess uh this is a chapter of their lives that I really wasn't familiar with. Um I mean, obviously you think of Ronald Reagan being the governor of our state and certainly the president of the country.

[23:56] Brent Schindele: Of course.

[23:56] Kelley Dorney: Um, it's a little before our time to to know that, but we really didn't know the story of them when they were movie stars. And he was the president of the Screen Actors Guild and he was coming out of this really hard divorce, uh, from another movie star, Jane Wyman. And the way our story takes place, I'm playing Ron Reagan, uh he's really wrecked by that. And he of course he kinda plays it off in his breezy, charming, laconic way. But I think what I really discovered was uh he was a guy with a big heart that um that was really wounded by that. And and that's that kind of brings some some tension to this romance with Nancy because uh he's not really sure he's able to get back into that vulnerable place again.

[24:35] Brent Schindele: Not quite ready to commit.

[24:40] Kelley Dorney: Um I think for me it's similarly, uh you always heard about this how in love they were, or at least that's what I knew from from their presidency and everything they talked about, and and uh you would think, Oh, so they met the mom and they were immediately whipped off into this honeymoon. And it no, it was years of kind of Nancy waiting around for Ron to you know, put up or shut up, basically. And uh so I had a great line, um, the writer Sam Bennett. She said something about it's this classic case of uh she says I chased him and chased him until he finally caught me.

[25:19] Brent Schindele: Yes.

[25:19] Kelley Dorney: And I think that really does kind of sum up their courtship in some ways.

[25:23] Lara Scott: Well, it sounds like it's gonna be a romantic musical. It sounds like it's gonna be something that honestly applies to a lot of relationships now. And we're glad that we get to see a lot of you two because you're the only two characters in this, right?

[25:35] Kelley Dorney: That's right.

[25:35] Brent Schindele: It's all on us.

[25:37] Kelley Dorney: No pressure.

[25:40] Brent Schindele: Yeah.

[25:41] Lara Scott: Well, we'll let you guys know. It'll it'll be kind of a whirlwind thing. And so Kelly and I are kind of just now realizing this roller coaster, we're gonna have to climb onto every single performance.

[25:56] Kelley Dorney: Wow, and it's come that roller coaster is coming fast because opening night is coming up on Sunday.

[26:00] Brent Schindele: Well, the press opening I know is Sunday, November eleventh. We are so excited for you.

[26:04] Lara Scott: Kelly and Brent, thank you so much for joining us on West of BroadwayLA. We hope everybody sees this in a booth at Chasen's.

[26:10] Will Armstrong: 17 performances only at the El Portal Theater. You can grab tickets at in a booth at chasens.com.

[26:17] Lara Scott: It's so interesting, Will, because when I think about Ron and Nancy Reagan, I don't necessarily think about them dating. Like what Brent said, you know, that was uh sort of part of their lives that we really don't know that much about. You think about what a scrutinized relationship that was. I feel like get a little bit of a history lesson, maybe.

[26:31] Will Armstrong: No, uh, and also a lot about love and about the wounded heart. And like you don't think about the president of the United States to be vulnerable or to go through and like I think that that really humanizes him to hear that part of the story.

[26:43] Lara Scott: Yeah, I'm fascinated by this. And again, just the excitement of a brand new musical.

[26:47] Will Armstrong: Sure.

[26:47] Lara Scott: And yeah, there's so much more I want to know about that. Kelley Dorney, come on.

[26:51] Will Armstrong: So good.

[26:51] Lara Scott: I love her.

[26:52] Will Armstrong: We loved her and the world goes round.

[26:53] Lara Scott: Yeah.

[26:53] Will Armstrong: Candoran Ep Review. It's great.

[26:54] Lara Scott: So our friend Melanie is going to be there for the opening of In a Booth at Chasen's. So we will be talking about that after she sees it.

[27:01] Will Armstrong: And that is going to do it for today. You can check us out online and catch up on previous episodes at westofbroadwaypodcast.com.

[27:07] Lara Scott: You can also subscribe on iTunes. Thank you for doing that. And you can reach out to me, Lara, on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Lariscott Media.

[27:15] Will Armstrong: And I'm Will Armstrong, PR on all platforms. Thanks so much for joining us here on the podcast. And if you're looking for us, you can find us just west of BroadwayLA.