The chandelier crashes for a final time as Broadway’s longest-running musical, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s extremely ’80s Phantom of the Opera, closes after 35 years and nearly 14,000 performances. Vulture’s Andrea Long Chu assesses its cultural staying power.
This episode was produced by Siona Peterous, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Victoria Chamberlin ... Show More
Yesterday
Our Great Big AI Freakout
Fears of impending AI doom have burst into the mainstream. They still might not be enough for Washington to regulate AI. This episode was produced by Kelli Wessinger and Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Jolie Myers, fact checked by Danielle Hewitt and Peter Balonon-Rosen, engineered by D ... Show More
25m 39s
Sep 2021
A Broadway Show Comes Back to Life
<p><i>This episode contains strong language. </i></p><p>“Six,” a revisionist feminist British pop musical about the wives of King Henry VIII, was shaping up to be a substantial hit on Broadway after finding success in London.</p><p>On its opening night, however, in March 2020, Go ... Show More
31m 38s
Sep 2020
Bringing the Theater Back to Life
<p>Three months into Broadway’s shutdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, Michael Paulson, a theater reporter for The New York Times, got a call from a theater in western Massachusetts — they planned to put on “Godspell,” a well-loved and much-performed musical from 1971, in ... Show More
26m 4s
Mar 2024
Spider-Man's Surreal Adventures on Broadway
<p><em>Very Special Episodes is a new podcast hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English. Follow us down a different rabbit hole every Wednesday.</em></p> <p>In 2011, after many delays, one of the most anticipated musicals in theater history finally opened on Broad ... Show More
1h 4m