iTunes Exclusive Episode Finding Neverland

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My name is Rob, I'm the executive producer of the Clubhouse podcast, and I'm not going
to say I've never been accused of refusing to grow up.
I'm totally okay with that.
But I'm not alone for this particular episode, joining me across the desk as he does is
my co-host, and that is the fact that he and I both have in common as that refusal
to grow up.
He is Chad.
Welcome, sir.
You have even more credibility in that standpoint, because you worked at Toys R Us.
I did.
But let's be honest, Toys R Us is in a completely different level of retail health.
This is true.
You weren't really a Toys R Us kid.
You were serving the Toys R Us kid.
No, I was serving the Toys R Us kid's parents, which was even worse, in the Ritzi section
of town.
Boy, I can tell you all stories, you're just saying.
During the Power Ranger era.
Sorry for your luck, I wish it was just Power Rangers, but that's a whole different topic
for a whole podcast.
I think we've addressed that a couple of times at a time.
I mean, it's been seven years now, so whatever we do one of these, it is to review something
this is no exception.
The very popular film turned into a musical, might have picked up an award here or there,
has now come to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in a national touring type deal.
It is finding Neverland, and before we get rolling, I mean, normally we have Don here
to do this part, but Don's out on assignment today, but we want to thank everybody over
at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, the wind spear opera house, Cindy Evans,
everybody over there that gives us the chance to come check this stuff out for you and review
it for you so we can tell you if it's worth your money.
Gorgeous building, gorgeous venue, love everything about you, oh my gosh, you ain't lying.
And I will tell you this, if you're going to go see this, get there a little early, keep
your eye on the chandelier.
Yes.
You may not figure it out at first, it took us a couple of minutes, but then we got it.
That was pretty cool.
All right, so for those of you that aren't aware of what this is, it is a musical based
on a book that came out many, many years ago, not many years ago, but like, basically it's
the story of J.M. Barry and how he created the story of Peter Pan, which has been told
so many times, it's timeless, it keeps going, it's being told again today, I mean, not
like right now, I mean, it could be somewhere, I don't know.
There was a movie I've been talking about a couple of years ago with the Johnny Depp.
Did very, very well.
So let's talk about it, shall we?
Okay.
First of all, let me just say it visually, absolutely gorgeous.
Yes.
I was impressed visually, I was impressed with the choreography.
The sound was great.
This is one of the very few times I can say I could not find any flaws in the AV presentation
of a stage production that we've seen.
We've been doing this almost four years now.
They took the concept that we felt so deeply in love with when we saw dirty dancing a while
back with rear projection and having that be a little bit less so than dirty dancing because
dirty dancing had all the video walls and stuff.
Yeah, I do see where you're going with that.
Like, you know, just when they're traveling through their dreamscapes, when they're going
through the water and the mermaids and that was beautifully done.
But when you say audio visual, there is one moment in this good Lord right before the
intermission, right before, right before act one, drops curtain, this sub will make your
nose bleed.
Yes.
Make sure you go to the restroom before you go in.
That was a subwoofer hit that I think even Jurassic Park would have gone.
That's kind of loud.
Yeah.
I mean, everyone just one hit either.
Because it's supposed to be and because it's what it is, is it's Captain Hook is talking
to J. M. Barry because Captain Hook was a fictional character in his head, right?
But was his darker side, right to speak manifest now the subwoofer heads meant to signify
the cannons that were being fired off the boat, and you know what?
I felt a cannon ball getting in a couple of times and that's a good thing.
It's not a bad thing.
That's a good thing.
It was definitely that my nose going, oh my God, it's going to fall off my face.
Yeah, when we, when the lights came up, I looked you in it.
You know what that last number needed more subwoofer.
I got a fever and the only prescription is more subwoofer.
I mean, I've never felt bass like it and I, it's a basic, I've seen prints five times.
I've seen Michael Jackson twice.
They never put out bass like that.
A great cast, Billy Herrigan, Thai, I believe it's how you say his name, playing J. M.
Barry.
Now for those again, you don't know the story.
He was a very popular playwright in London.
Even quite find that next big thing until he met a young lady and her four sons.
The young lady Sylvia Luwamon Davies, played by Christine Dwyer, an amazing performance
by the way.
I mean, she's been wicked.
So you know, she's got skins.
And she and her four children would, one of whom named Peter would go on to inspire
the characters in Peter Pan, right?
I saw something in this musical that I don't know that I've seen before.
Now we've seen some amazing performances.
We've seen some great people do some great things.
But in show business, there's a saying, there are two demographics that are the hardest
to work with, children and animals.
I don't know that I've ever seen a group of kids as good as these four.
Now, these are going to rotate depending on when you see them.
And I didn't, I don't have a note of who played who when we saw them.
But these four were amazing.
They, one of the things I talk about in my written review, conveniently located at www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
That is our website.
They act like kids without acting like kids.
There's an organicness to it that they weren't showbiz kids.
You know what I mean?
They really, really captured the essence of those four boys very well.
They understood the concept of space.
I never felt like somebody was trying to wedge themselves into something that they weren't.
These four kids were really, really good.
I had a little bit of an issue with the kid that lay Peter, just a tiny bit.
Okay.
Because there were times when he was trying to emote and show how damaged he was by the
whole experience that led up to this, that it came off a little bit tantra me and not invoking
the proper emotion.
I mean, I can see how you see that.
I just kind of saw it as part of the deal.
Yeah.
He kind of like kind of stamped his feet and just folded his arms across his chest and
threw himself on the floor.
Whereas when he's dealing with what he's dealing with in that particular scene, I don't
think that is the kind of emotion he would be displaying because I mean, it was genuine
pain.
It wasn't just anger.
But maybe that's what he was going for.
Maybe so.
Maybe so.
It seemed a little too.
It would be the way that somebody maybe three years younger than him would have acted.
And what I liked about Dwyer is she plays it right below the radar, which I think is what
that character requires.
Yeah, it is.
She didn't overstate it.
She works really well with tie in the roles that they're in.
There's a genuine chemistry there that I dug.
Yeah.
That's another thing that's very, very rare.
You see romantic leads that really click and click at the right moments.
It wasn't like eyeball, eyeball, violins.
There was, there was an evolution there, right?
It's not small feet.
It doesn't come off.
Right.
It's hand-fisted or anything like that.
I mean, you can watch it develop, which is also very difficult to do when you've acted
with someone.
You've done this so many times.
It's hard to remember how to build that emotion up and they do it very well.
It's hard to fall in love with them all over again, night in, night out.
And then we talk about somebody else in the thing.
Oh, my God.
So Barry has his producer at his theater, Charles Frelman, who we find out later.
I mean, I don't know if this is a spoiler or I don't think it is, but he becomes the
inspiration for Captain Hook.
Because he's carrying around a cane.
And you and I tend to, I mean, I tend to just scan the number so I know where I'm
at in an act.
So I know where you're at.
Yeah, that's about all that.
I've got issues.
So I know where we're at because as you know, I'm very time conscious.
I don't do a lot of digging into the cast and crew.
We've made this mistake.
We've made this mistake once before, but almost a year ago to the day with Pippin.
So we're watching this and Frelman comes out and there's a smattering of applause, exactly
the word.
I know.
And you and you and I were like, well, you know, people maybe he's got family in the
audience or whatever.
And we go to your mission and you have this look on your face.
At this moment of clarity is the only way I can find shock is what it was.
And I was like, dude, are you okay?
And you're like, did you see who's playing Frelman?
Not the king, not the sausage king of Chicago.
I said, no, he goes, look, and I look and ladies and gentlemen, we have a John Davidson
signing.
Yes.
That John Davidson.
That's incredible.
Hollywood squares.
Like, I mean, because again, we haven't seen him in so long.
You and I have it.
I mean, I looked him on my IMDB.
He's been doing a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
But I mean, honestly, outside of that tiny little role he had in Edward Siserhands where
he's playing a talk show host, I've never really seen the man act stark white hair long
in a ponytail.
And he killed it.
Oh my God.
Absolutely amazing.
He.
I mean, I don't know how you would describe this role that it is.
There's so much meat on it from both sides of the role that he's playing.
He nails it.
It's one of the, I'm going to say it.
One of the best portrayals of Captain Hook I've ever seen in my life.
And you've seen quite a few, sir.
I love this story.
Your portrayals, your portrayals outnumber the ones I've seen.
Yeah.
I adore Peter Pan.
I love Peter Pan as a story.
And to see John Davidson just get his, no, I'm not going to say hooks into it.
No.
He just wraps his arms around it and just wears it like a, like a co-hats.
It's bizarre.
And you look at the pseudo-slip side of his coin with Karen Murphy playing Sylvia's mother,
Ms. Dumayet.
I thought she's amazing.
She definitely becomes a character you're not that fond of.
And it's neat when you see how it tides because I haven't seen the film.
I've seen bits and pieces of it.
I've never seen it before.
So to see how the characters tie into the characters in the, in the Peter Pan story is
really because we've seen Peter Pan because it's on the 360 a couple years ago.
But I loved all of these performances.
I thought everybody was rock solid.
The choreography was great.
It kept my attention now.
If I have an issue and I do, I felt like, by the way, did you see who wrote the music
to this?
No.
Your wife would be very interested to see who wrote the music to this.
Gary Barlow.
Uh-huh.
Watch this.
Hey, Jules.
Come here.
How about to be made a fool of here?
Or I'm about to be made a fool of one of the two.
All right, Jules.
I'm going to say a name.
Oh, she's going to know this.
And if I, if I say a name, I need you to tell me if you know who this person is.
Gary Barlow.
Yep.
See?
She had that look because she's of that generation.
Yes, she is.
He was the former lead singer of Take That.
Uh-huh.
He wrote, he co-wrote the music for Finding Neverland.
Yes.
Which was also the guy that wrote it with him was a guy that wrote a lot of Take That Songs.
Yeah, but, but, you know, that's, that's your generation.
That's your, that's your area.
That's your section.
Elliot Kennedy.
Yes.
Okay.
He wrote a lot of songs for a lot of pop groups, especially in the mid 90s.
The music itself, I'm a fan of.
My issue is, I felt like some of the music was kind of shoehorned in.
There were moments that I was just like, I'm kind of with you on that.
And I'll give you an example of, of a time where I felt it was shoehorned in,
even though I really dug the song.
I got to find the thing here.
Sylvia's Lullaby.
Gorgeous song.
Absolutely beautiful song.
Dwyer kills it.
But it just felt weird.
Now, there's a couple of moments in here that I think it hits.
I was a big fan of circus of your mind.
That entire sequence, I thought was amazing.
Because it's done by so many different characters feeding it to us.
And how it rotated in the stage.
I thought that was really cool.
Something about this night, the two-parter there, I was a big fan of.
But too much of this music, it just, I don't know, there was an awkwardness to it.
It felt kind of extraneous a little bit.
It was like, we have to have this many songs in here.
And these are the songs we want.
Make it work.
Well, I remember whenever you saw Frozen, you said this.
Then you started.
You said that the main, your main gripe with it.
Too much singing.
Too much singing.
And that's almost how I felt about this.
Almost.
I was just like, I could use a little bit more dialogue and a little less song and dance.
But at that point, I feel like we're really looking for something to pick this thing apart.
Now, it did stick out to me.
Don't get me wrong.
I agree with you.
We are kind of splitting hairs.
It did stick out to me in a way that it doesn't very often in musicals.
But it wasn't enough to take me out of it.
Yeah, it bogs it down a little bit, but it doesn't ruin the experience overall.
I mean, the story is very well told.
It's very entertaining.
It's very engaging.
Great performances.
I mean, I'm a fan.
I mean, just the visual presentation, the tricks that they pull off as far as incorporating
Tinkerbell and Pixie Dust and the way that it's done.
And it's, I'm still trying to figure out some of that stuff.
Close to the end.
You're talking about it.
Yeah, that was brilliant.
I sat there with that, with that, you know the moment I'm talking about, with my jaw.
Just, I was speechless.
That was impressive.
Yeah.
And you don't know whether to cry or applaud because of the technical expertise it took to pull it off.
Absolutely.
It's just, it's much less the technical expertise to contain said moment in the way they do.
Right.
That was, that blew me away.
Yeah, I don't know.
I really don't know how they pulled it off.
And when you see this thing, you will know exactly what we're talking about.
It ain't going to take, I mean, it's going to take long.
It's going to take long because it happens later in the musical.
Yeah.
But when you're there, you'd be like, oh, that's the thing.
Yeah.
And it hits you like a sledgehammer.
It hits you like the subwoofer at the end of Act One.
I'm going to giggle about that for a week.
Anything else you want to cover before we get to the final analysis?
It's, it's, this definitely takes you on a journey that you enjoy being on.
Fair enough.
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really a beautiful thing to experience.
All right.
The way we do the final analysis on the show, we're not going to give you thumbs up, thumbs down, or hooks up hooks down.
We're not going to do that.
We're not going to give you letter grades, numbers.
You know, we're not going to give you flying fairies, anything like that.
Although there's a very interesting reference to that in the musical.
We're going to ask two questions.
Question number one, we always ask us, would you see this production again?
If the answers know we're done here.
If the answer is yes, this is a stage production.
It's a little bit different from our movie reviews.
Where instead of how far are you going to go?
The, the performances are pretty much standard.
The question becomes, where would you sit to see this again?
Because the closer you sit, the more money you're going to commit, and the more you're likely to do it again.
Chad, would you see this again?
Oh, gosh, yeah.
Where are you sitting?
I mean, it's, I don't even know if it's, it's a question of where I would sit.
I mean, it, it, it, it deserves every penny that it gets from me.
I mean, they're, I almost want to see the things several times from several different perspectives
because of everything that's going on.
I'd love to sit, you know, up close in, in front of the control board.
Like maybe within the first 10 rows.
I'd love to sit up on the, the balcony right up above it or right up above where we're sitting,
just to get a different perspective on it.
I would go see this multiple times, not just, not just one time.
I'd go see it two or three times probably.
I would see it again.
There is something that works against this musical as we are in mid-July.
And the thing that works against this musical for me is the other musicals we've seen this year.
This has been an incredibly strong year.
Well, if you're going for musicals, you start, I mean, they're ending strong.
I mean, this is their last performance at the wind spear for this season, correct?
Yeah, this is the last one of this season because the next season starts in September.
Right, I mean, if you want to end on a high, this is a good high to end on.
I would still see this again.
I'd be okay with balcony seats.
I don't need to be right down there in the thick of it.
It's good.
Yeah.
And it's definitely not the bottom of my list.
No, no.
But it's also not the top of my list either.
It's kind of in that weird gray area.
Right.
That I would encourage people to see this, especially families.
Yeah.
Like, I'd love to go see this with a bunch of kids.
And they're doing a special performance for kids.
Oh, are they?
Yeah, during the run of this because it runs through July 23rd at the wind spear opera house in downtown Dallas.
Again, we love that place.
But go take the kids.
Make a day of it.
Yeah.
It's a great, it's a great story.
It's magical.
It's fun.
It's finding Neverland.
And it's part of the AT&T performing arts center who we love dearly sending everybody over there.
They're so nice to us.
Thank you so much.
It's not nicer than they ever have to be.
So thank you guys so much for having us.
Go check it out.
And if you're not in the Dallas Fort Worth area, go check out their website.
Find out when this show is coming near to you.
And so maybe you can take your family to see it.
That being said, we're going to do the plugs.
Visit our website.
We've mentioned it at least once.
www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
Find out everything you need to know and some stuff you don't.
You can follow us on social media.
Twitter is at ClubhouseShow.
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Also, you can email him for information on how we can come to a live show for you.
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Questions, comments, concerns.
Tell me to go pound sand.
I am Rob at theclubhousepodcast.com.
I am Chad at theclubhousepodcast.com.
Charlotte Parker is on Pinterest because Remora we are obligated to say that.
And I would say to say Jules enjoyed this.
Yes she did.
Our normal show every Sunday night, 7 Eastern Ford Pacific is your one stop shop for all things pop culture.
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So until next time for Chad and the Empire, I'm Rob.
Clubhouse is closed.
I'm telling you, there's plenty of room for Brittany Palmer in this.
I'm just saying it.