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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm your host, Mo Brady.

[0:10] Mo Brady: While the New York theater season was cut short by at least six weeks, there was certainly much to celebrate this year. From spectacular visuals to musical masterpieces, Broadway stages were filled with memorable moments worth noting.

[0:20] Mo Brady: This week, I got a chance to speak to Ruthie Fierberg. In addition to working as Senior Features Editor at Playbill, she's also one of the most articulate people I know when it comes to describing what makes a theatrical moment work.

[0:33] Mo Brady: We had a spirited conversation about the trends she saw on stage this season, as well as her favorite musical and visual moments. Here's the first half of our conversation.

[0:45] Mo Brady: Hey, would you introduce yourself and tell us where you're calling from today?

[1:12] Ruthie Fierberg: Absolutely. Hi, everyone. I'm Ruthie Fierberg. I am currently the Senior Features Editor at Playbill, and I'm an arts journalist living and working in New York City, which is where I am during quarantine, up in my apartment in Harlem.

[1:28] Mo Brady: Man, living the dream, banging those pots at 7pm.

[1:31] Ruthie Fierberg: Hell yes, I am.

[1:33] Mo Brady: So I'm so glad to have this conversation with you. It feels like early to be talking about end of season awards, and yet we also sort of ended our season six weeks, eight weeks early, right?

[1:46] Ruthie Fierberg: Prematurely, for sure.

[1:47] Mo Brady: I don't think anyone was really ready to talk about end of season or even ready to think about everything we had seen as being a complete season. And yet, you get to see a lot of shows, right? You are not only a Playbill staffer, you're also a Drama Desk voter?

[2:04] Ruthie Fierberg: Yes, I am a Drama Desk voter. So I see 100% of Broadway, and I'd say like 50 to 60% of Off-Broadway. I don't know, there really is so much. There really is so much, but definitely at least 50%.

[2:18] Mo Brady: So you really must know what happened this season. I'd love to get your take on what trends you saw in the overall theatrical season.

[2:27] Ruthie Fierberg: Well, what I think is really interesting, actually, about the season ending prematurely is that the fall looked so different from the spring anyway. What came out between, you know, when the deadline ended last April and essentially like January and what we were expecting to open in the busy time of year, March-April, were such disparate things. So now to talk about the trend of like what it ended up being as a whole, it's like actually I do think there were trends.

[3:02] Ruthie Fierberg: The fall was really centered around this like experience of fun. Like just let's go out and just be entertained for a little bit, at least in the musical realm, because like the first big musical to open in the summer was Moulin Rouge! And like could that have been a bigger explosion of fun and entertainment and spectacular? I don't think so. Things like Darren Brown's Secret, which I think people were really like suspect of like is that a Broadway show? And it like totally worked and it was. And then you had things like Freestyle Love Supreme and American Utopia, the shorter engagements of like Kristen Chenoweth came to Broadway with a concert and Harry Connick Jr. came to Broadway with a concert.

And those are different from like Brink's Dean Come or even Barry Manilow, because Kristen and Harry are really like Broadway people. So there was something that felt different about that. But it was just like a night of entertainment on Broadway. And I think that in musical world too, it was all about like bigness, Tina and Jagged and Moulin Rouge! And actually like juxtaposed against these like very spare plays where you had The Inheritance that had a lot of people but was very minimalist and Seawall Alife, which was, you know, a night of two monologues and Betrayal, which was, you know, three people on a very spare and minimalist stage. So there was like this big contrast between what was happening in musicals and what was happening in plays for sure.

[4:37] Ruthie Fierberg: I love that. I love the sort of comparison of Jagged Little Pill is small and Six is small in terms of cast and in terms of production, but it's still sort of like an explosion high octane that lives in the same world as a Tina or a Moulin Rouge!

[4:54] Ruthie Fierberg: Yeah, even in like plays that made a lot of noise, like Slave Play, that was still a very intimate production compared to what was next door, you know, happening in musical land for sure.

[5:07] Mo Brady: Okay, so in this big season, do you think there was a theatrical event of the season? Was there like the musical in your mind?

[5:14] Ruthie Fierberg: The musical in my mind is Moulin Rouge! It just is. I'm a humongous fan of it. I have seen it three times on Broadway. I saw it in Boston and was obsessed with it then and knew I would be obsessed with it now. I am so completely biased, not just in terms of my taste, like that to me was event theater because, you know, Derek MacLean's scenic design extended so far past the stage, not just in, you know, the passerelle that comes forward and the entrance points that spill into the audience and that front like cocktail area that really makes you feel like you're in the Moulin Rouge, but all the way to the back and into the mezzanine, MR monogrammed red fabric in the walls and the sconces that are windmills and the actual windmill, you know, in the house left box and the elephant in the house right box and the lighting and the feel of it was that you were walking into the Moulin Rouge and that they have the pre show of, you know, ensemble lists wandering around. It feels very like an enveloping experience.

[6:30] Mo Brady: Okay. Okay. Sure. Sure. Drama Desk voter, Ruthie Fierberg. And yet, if we look at the Drama Desk nominees, and I know that's not just you, but there were no Broadway musicals that landed on the best musical nominee list. Not that you have to defend the Drama Desk. What's the disconnect there?

[6:49] Ruthie Fierberg: Look, I'm not on the nominating committee that is separate and the nominating committee sees literally everything. So when I say I see 100% Broadway and about 50% of Off-Broadway or 60% of Off-Broadway, they see 100% of it all. They go to multiple shows a day. I will say I don't always agree with the Drama Desk nominations and this year is not necessarily an exception. Although I will say that, you know, when we were just talking about trends, I was focused on Broadway, but I do think that for the first time in a long time, Off-Broadway musicals hit a really exciting new level that normally Off-Broadway, I feel like we're seeing much more risk taking in plays and, you know, things that are smaller.

Musicals so often they do out of towns before they come to Broadway. Now, there are many fewer shows that do Off-Broadway before Broadway or even just Off-Broadway the end. But this was a season where we had The Wrong Man, Octet, Soft Power for colored girls is arguably still a play, but, you know, it's kind of something in and of itself, the choreopoem. And then like the Little Shop Revival, I think people were clamoring for tickets and those ticket prices were comparable to, you know, some of the most in-demand shows like A Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway. People were paying just as much money to go see that, which is something we really haven't seen in a while. So it's not to say that anything and a strange loop, I don't think anything was nominated that shouldn't have been nominated.

But I also think that the Drama Desk in doing what they do, which is nominating across Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway, I really think we need to do a better job of representing theater as a whole in all of those scenarios. And really considering if we're not nominating a single performance or a single designer or a single show from Broadway in this category, we better have a really good reason why.

[9:00] Ruthie Fierberg: Off-Broadway like far outweighs it and I think Moulin Rouge should have been in that category. I think that it's just so incredible. I think we also have this habit just as theater people in general regardless of awards to discount things that are a spectacle. That we automatically assume that because things are extravagant and because there is a lushness and because there is a flashiness that that means inversely there is no substance. And I actually think that that's where Moulin Rouge succeeds is that it has both. And it's an example of how you can have both just like The Lion King was. Like can you imagine us discounting The Lion King? No one would ever do that and yet we've gotten into this world of like oh if it's based on a movie we start to discount it.

Oh if it's really big and it has a massive budget no way it can't be good theater. And I just think that's not true. Love that. All right so let's talk about your favorite moments of the season. And maybe we should start with visual moments because we're on this spectacle train. Choreography, design, stage pictures. Like when you think back to this season what are the moments that still thrill you? I mean I guess I'll just stay on the Moulin Rouge train for a moment. Sonia Taya is a GD genius. I can't get over her. I think she's so smart in how she created this cinematic aesthetic through experimentation with the body while also telling deep storylines. The Tango Roxanne is crazy storytelling.

All of it's crazy storytelling. That show doesn't stop moving from pre-show to finish. But I have to say that my favorite number in that show is Backstage Romance. That's like the hybrid of Gaga's Bad Romance and Britney's Toxic. I think it's one of the most incredible numbers that we've seen in years. And I just think of like that moment where the stairs come up from the middle of the stage and they're not doing anything more than a shoulder click and it is so effective. And then that circle that they do at the end of the number where people are low crouched in almost like a baseball catcher's position and the knees are going in and out and in and out and people are going up and down and up and down.

There are these amazing angles as they clap and clap and clap off that beat. That is thrilling entertainment right there. And that is amazing storytelling in this idea of highs and lows of a backstage romance. That's genius. So that is one of my favorite, favorite pieces of choreography from the season. I'll also shout out to Travis Wall who choreographed The Wrong Man. And there was this really, really intense domestic abuse moment in that show where he really was able to tell that story in an authentic way without being upsettingly graphic. Like it was definitely moving and upsetting, but it wasn't traumatizing. His dancers were unbelievable and he was able to like show the story of a knife fight without props and like that was incredible. And then of course, Camille Brown in For Colored Girls. So those are like my choreography people. Did you see a Christmas carol, Mo?

[12:32] Mo Brady: I did not.

[12:33] Ruthie Fierberg: I did not. It was so good. And there's this moment where like basically Scrooge's heart is growing three times bigger than it was kind of thing. He decides to have this Christmas feast over at Tiny Tim's house. And there's this amazing thing that Matthew Warchus did when he directed it. He was like, let's gather all these things. We're going to bring the feast to their house. And it's not just like people bringing food onto the stage. They created like shoots out of fabric from the mezzanine to the stage where they like rolled oranges down them and rolled vegetables down and like rolled a freaking turkey down. And it was just, again, this idea of like storytelling and design in a way that you felt like they were going the extra mile and everything was coming together and everyone was coming together because it went from the mezzanine and the balcony of the Lyceum Theater that is so tall all the way to the stage.

[13:30] Mo Brady: Oh, you're so good. Let's talk about musical moments. Is it is it compositions? Is it vocal arrangements? Is it full songs, passages of songs? What has stuck with you from this season?

[13:44] Ruthie Fierberg: I have an example of all of the above. Dude, I jumped out of my chair after Lauren Patton's You Oughta Know in Jagged Little Pill. Jumped out of my chair because for me that was that was the moment of like Alanis Morissette is in the building like her energy was there. The righteous anger was there. The emotion was there. And she was just giving everything while also being so vocally sound that it was amazing. Adrienne freaking Warren. Every moment she opened her mouth is a musical moment to remember. But absolutely with like River Deep Mountain High when she like starts off tentative and like that's dramatically the moment in the show where Tina Turner finds her voice, like how she calibrated that performance to start out as a person who doesn't know the voice, even though like she's done this a bazillion times before.

So like she obviously Adrienne herself has found the Tina voice and to be able to go backwards to like the unsure moment and grow into the fully realized Tina voice was nuts. And then I'd say like orchestrations and arrangement wise, like Justin Levine, who are you? You are a freak of nature in the best way. He was the music supervisor and arranger and orchestrator on Moulin Rouge, of course, because we're always going to end up back there. I am obsessed with his arrangement of what they call Shut Up and Raise Your Glass, which is Walk the Moon's Shut Up and Dance with Me, Pink's Raise Your Glass and Whitney Houston's Want to Dance with Somebody. How did we ever think that those three songs did not belong together?

How will they ever live apart? Slash, they do live apart, and yet they simultaneously live together. I'm obsessed. And then I also have to give props to Toby Marlowe and Lucy Moss, who wrote Six, because I think that that show like there's so many clever lyrics in it. But the thing that caught me when I first listened to the album long before I saw the show just like six weeks ago, I've been listening to that album for a year and a half. And when I heard like the techno version of Greensleeves come in as the underscoring to Ex-Wives, I was like, you guys are geniuses. Like, that's insane. I am a historical, like I love historical fiction, and I particularly love Tudor England. So I have been reading like about Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon and Kitty Howard and Catherine Parr for like years.

So I knew about King, you know, Henry VIII writing Greensleeves for Anne Boleyn. And so like the fact that they could bring that historically and musically into this pop musical and such as weird and awesome and like subtle, yet completely in your face way.

[17:00] Mo Brady: Come on, come on. God, I love how much you love all of this. All right. I'm definitely splitting this into two episodes. So we're clear.

[17:05] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Ruthie Fierberg for sharing her stories with us today. The Ensemblist was produced today by Jackson Klein and me, Mo Brady. There are two great ways you can be helping The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And the second is by becoming a Patreon member, which you can do at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that be on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or at our home of Broadway Podcast Network at bpn.fm. And make sure you're following us on Instagram. One last note, Ruthie is launching her own podcast. Why We Theatre is the intersection of theater and social justice, where she digs into the issues brought up on stage by those provocative artists and then welcomes a panel of experts who work in that particular field to create real world change. Look for it on Broadway Podcast Network. Thanks for listening. Until next time.