iTunes Exclusive Episode Love Letters

The following is a sooner orgator production.
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MANAGA
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I've never claimed to be a smart man.
I've never been good at math.
So,
just gonna put the disclaimer out there.
Because I love you people.
Allegedly.
I'm not alone for this particular episode
joining me across the desk,
as he tends to do,
is a man that can still fold a piece of paper
and the little thing where you pull it out
and you unwrap it and it turns into a note.
He is check, well, who's there.
So spelling and syntax, you're real real stickler.
I don't know.
Get count for squad, nope.
Okay, public school maths,
so now that we've got that clear.
Public school math.
South Florida.
Public school.
Ha ha.
Leave it, I don't think it's much better here.
Let's just say when you hear the one
that's actually 200,
you'll figure out the exact moment
that I realized I've made a mistake
because we all went deaf in the process.
No, no, no, you'll realize it before that
because like you will actually hear my brain lock up
and you'll hear our ear drums.
Shatter like glass.
Also joining us is the official fact checker of this show.
And a man, and you may not know this, sir,
but as of today, I have realized
you have something very interestingly in common.
I have something you do with him.
You may know him as fun, don't go and buy the other way.
Yes, that was completely out of grammar and syntax.
But his mom and name am done for it.
I'm going to calm down for it.
Welcome, sir.
Thank you for having me.
Ha ha ha.
My Canada math.
I do.
Do you know how many heavy objects are on this desk?
I can throw it to you right now.
But sure, it's casting your mind.
My Canada math, two plus two is 22.
Hey, fair enough.
Yeah.
All right, but what I haven't come with him
are you going to get to that?
We are going to get to it.
Okay, I see where.
Whenever we do one of these,
it is to review something.
This is no exception.
We are reviewing a stage production today.
The re-teaming of Love Story from 1970
has Ali Magra and Ryan O'Neill.
Two great fest beings in their own right,
getting together for a national tour
of the AR Grini's production known as Love Letters.
Before we start this whole thing,
we got to thank Cindy Evans and everybody at 18.
They are so great to us.
We have a win for Opera House for inviting us.
Thank you so, so very much.
Always take care of us.
Very nice ladies.
She's so good at this.
Thank you so much.
This is currently playing at the Winspir Opera House
through April the 3rd.
We got to go to Press Night the night
before we be recorded this.
Now, before we get into this,
and what it does,
we package this a moment ago.
Now chat, your wife is a British descent.
Nice, I checked.
Now this production deals with two fictional characters,
although at certain points I thought they were real
because of the way the betrayals went.
But I got to find, I lost my page.
She plays Melissa.
Wow, I lost my page.
Yeah, here we go.
She plays Melissa Gardner.
He plays Andrew McPeace, Lad the 3rd.
The 3rd.
The 3rd.
Now.
This entire production is a table, two chairs,
two glasses of water, and a couple of binders.
As O'Neill and McGraw basically read the letters
that these two characters write to each other
over about a half a century.
If I can estimate it correctly, about 50 years,
that's a half a century now.
Oh, no, that's what WickedWiki said.
And you make fun of my math skip.
Rakes wheel, wheel, wheel, grill.
Now, pen pals are an interesting thing,
and they're kind of losing their touch
in the age of technology, right?
Because there's not really a need to write letters,
especially for these kids with the clothes in the hair.
But, you or wife is of British descent.
And if you read Don's written review at www.theclubhousepodcast.com,
which is our website, I'm gonna let Don
talk about the opening paragraph of his review
of this particular production.
Believe it or not, I've actually had,
or I still have friends that start off as pen pals
from England.
It wasn't, I got an ad in Rolling Stone
and it sounded interesting to say,
the UK, you know, pen pals.
And right next to the one says,
women from prison, but I thought that you can't.
So, that's actually in the review,
and I was so hoping he was gonna do that.
Yes.
And, I had about, I've got a list of,
I spent a few bucks in the semi-lissive addresses
of people in the UK, and the one that,
to this day, who's been my pen pals
to say for 20 years, is Emma Compton,
who's my Facebook friend?
And when I went up to England,
years and years and years ago in England and Ireland,
I actually stayed with her and her husband
and her children and stuff like that,
and she showed me all around London.
But we wrote literally for years
like eight years before I physically met her and her family.
And we always sent Christmas gifts all that.
I have the box of all the letters that she sent me.
Oh, yeah, and stuff.
And it's some of the stuff we sent her.
I sent her like American money, you know,
I'm saying like a dollar bill.
She sent back a pound and some pants and,
you know, because that's kind of something there.
But literally, for 20 years, we have been friends,
but Facebook and makes a lot easier
than having a right now right and stuff like that,
which could basically kill the pen paling.
But to this day, we still I am.
She comments and some must have been there.
And they are friends on Facebook,
because I just looked at up just now.
She've commented on the stuff
when I did that interview with Hugh Jackman.
Very nicely.
She'll see a little thing from her on there.
But yeah, to this day, 20-year-wise,
your wife, a British descent, one of his oldest friends,
also a British descent.
Oh, okay.
Dude, it's got layers, bro.
So now that we've talked about that,
that's gonna lead us into talking about this production.
Walking in,
I was a little concerned.
So as I, because I like,
I see the stage set up and I'm like,
they're just gonna sit there and read,
like, reading,
like, going to the library and seeing,
or going to a bookstore and seeing an author,
read their stuff.
But in the back of my mind,
I was hearing,
dude, think about who they are.
It should be okay.
Right?
So we sit down, they come out,
still both amazing.
Huge fans of both of these people.
And they start to read these letters.
And over the next hour and a half,
I stop seeing them and I see what I see in my head
of them as the characters they're portraying.
There's no getting up and walking around.
There's no backdrops.
There's no props.
There's not even any other actors,
no extras, no nothing.
Costume changes.
Just a makeup.
Exactly.
Well, there's probably some makeup.
Well, I'm just saying it.
But as far as stage makeup,
they do this so well and doing a little bit of research
on the production itself.
Almost every iteration, this is how it goes.
Because when it debuted off Broadway,
there's a list of people as long as you're armed
and did this in New York.
And what they did is he would just switch people out
periodically.
So they wouldn't have a lot of rehearsal time.
So what he found is them just reading from these binders
gave the actors a chance to more focus on the material
and not the presentation.
Okay.
So what I saw as this thing went on
was these two characters,
the actors kind of cease to exist for me.
And that was amazing.
Yeah, you kind of lose yourself in it.
Yeah, because you see these people grow.
And she gets real emotional,
I got real emotional in a couple scenes.
Oh, she totally broke.
And that really brought that sense to there.
Now, I've been in my review.
I said, hey, if you're looking for
huge stage sets, music, singing,
don't, huge cast.
This is the one.
No, no, there's a, and it's very simplistic.
But do you know what it works?
It's totally works.
It's surprised.
And it took me a while to really get into it.
But after time, I'm like, go in.
Okay, this is the same person
because I got a little confused up front.
But that's not hard to do.
Right.
Okay, want to hand them out and all that.
But after a while, it's like,
you really felt these people
and you felt these people grow in life
from just hearing these letters.
To me, this is about,
this is an example of one of the more compelling ways
to tell a story because you don't have
all those crutches to fall back on.
You don't have elaborate sets.
You don't have musical numbers.
All you have.
All you have.
The MTV unplugged of stage pretty much.
Pretty much.
All you have is your raw ability and your,
and your talent laid bare.
And this is how we tell a story.
And it's, it's very bare bones.
But it, it works on so many levels
and on, and a lot of levels that you wouldn't even expect it to.
Like, I know that you and I were talking as we were leaving
that at, at some point, you can almost see
how they were conveying the passage of time
by how they spoke, the inflection that they used,
the way they just body language very, very,
very subtle changes of the way that they would stand up
really straight and be real perky as,
as elementary school students talking about,
was it a vase books going all the way into their adulthood
and how their speech became a little slower
and a little bit more deliberate.
They were a little bit more slouch
and you could tell that they,
that the passage of time had worn on them.
And give some credit to director Gregory Mosher
to get them into that place.
That can't be an easy thing to do.
Regardless of the, right, the actor is,
because you've got so very little to work with
other than who you're working with and that's it.
And one of the things that really melted my brain here
and you and I talked about this on the,
on the drive back home last night,
they were sitting right next to each other.
But when there were parts in the story
where he was in Japan and she was in Colorado,
you really felt like they were continents away from each other
but they could have reached out and punched each other in the arm.
Yeah, like that's how good the chemistry
and how good the performance and how good the dynamic is.
In the silence, the silence makes it.
I don't know.
The silence just, the silence actually spoke words.
And you know, I kind of put on in the past,
how I said like you take the movie,
Mucky Kingdom, which we reviewed.
Absolutely.
And how Tina Fey made that part on the narration.
Okay, because instead of we had a 65 year old old guy
from England doing the documentary,
it'd been totally different film than when Tina Fey talked
about the monkeys.
Absolutely.
Yeah, you take the same people here
and you try some people who are not that great.
I think it can be a bad performance and a bad production
if you don't have the right people.
Oh, totally agree with you.
Totally.
Imagine no fans, me and Chad going in.
I made Chad want to, I'm very uncomfortable right now.
But it just, it works so well.
And you feel what they feel like these two are,
I mean, they've been in a game a long time.
Do you think about the fact love story was 46 years ago?
I was even born.
Nor was I.
And I got gray hair, Chad, that couple.
Um, I grew the bus.
You served it up, I was just waiting.
I was just waiting.
I was just waiting.
I thought I was coming a mile away.
But it's, I walked away completely in awe of this production.
This to me is the absolute perfect date night.
Yep.
Yeah.
It's because there is something in this script that everybody can identify with.
We have all, we have all been through at least one section of what these two characters
go through at some point in our lives and probably more than once in some case.
And see, this hit home, I knew Emma back and forth before I physically met her and her
family and her husband and her kids.
They were the, they treated me like family.
I wasn't a stranger.
She wasn't a stranger, because for eight years, we wrote in, wrote, and wrote in.
And that's awesome.
And you get into your books.
You get into your books.
I'm absolutely terrified.
I had a title because my family had writing.
It's true.
Well, some people have to remind me to return emails.
It just, but the power that you realize of letters and having that, that relationship
with somebody that may be destiny wants you together, but maybe it doesn't.
And the way they interact with each other through these letters and how they talk about
things that happen in between the letters afterwards, this is wonderful and delightful and
heart-wrenching and hilarious on every level.
Anything else anybody want to add for you to final analysis?
You get to, you get to see them warts and all.
And there are times when you really don't like what you see because they go through phases
where they're really not the best people in the world.
They're not the best versions of themselves, but indeed.
But it's, it's really impressive to see that through all of this, how their relationship
no matter if it's a peak or a valley, their relationship indoors.
And with these people we had last night doing the show, they could had no lights on and
done this audio, just pure audio, and they still would have knocked it out.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
The message would have come through.
All right.
Let's get to the final analysis.
The way we do the final analysis on this show, we're not going to give you thumbs-up
thumbs-down, we're not going to give you letter grades, stars, rankings, anything like that.
We're audience whom we affectionately refer to as the Empire, like us to dig a little
deeper.
So that's what we're going to do.
I'm going to ask these gentlemen two questions.
Question number one, is would you see this film again?
If the answer is no, we're done here.
But if the answer is yes, then I want to know.
If they go to see this again, where is the best place that they're going to need to sit?
How much are they willing to pay to see it again?
So let's check.
Let's start with you.
Would you see this again?
I believe I would.
Where you want to sit?
We had fantastic seats where we did.
We were just right in front of the mixing board just a little bit to the right.
But I wouldn't mind being a little bit closer just to get the facial expressions.
Okay, because so much is told through facial expressions, especially in a production like
this.
Don, would you see it again?
Yeah, where do you want to sit?
Because it's so simplistic and there's no sets, no music, no nothing.
It doesn't really matter where you sit just as long as you can hear, I think.
And so I put in like the second level, the second level, you know, we're on the
first floor level, the next level.
Let's say second level.
I'm going to agree with Chad.
I would definitely see this again, but the closer I can get the better, because I really
want to see the nuance of body language and facial expression and nonverbal tone, if you
will.
That makes any sense.
But you don't even need it.
That's the great thing.
You don't need it, but I would really like it.
Oh, yeah.
But I'm saying that it can be done without it.
Before we end this thing up again, we have to thank Cindy Evans.
Thank you so much, Cindy.
But the ATT pack and the Winspir Opera House for the invite.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The AT&T Performing Arts Center is such an amazing campus.
It's an amazing complex.
And if you haven't had a chance to see a production at any of their venues, do yourself
a solid, especially the Winspir Opera House, which is an absolutely gorgeous room.
And it runs through April 3rd.
Yes.
And if you're not here in the Metraplex, find out when it's coming to a sitting near
you and go check out Love Letters with Ryan O'Neill and Allie McGraw, you will not be disappointed
on that note.
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I end now.
I'm at chat in PG69.
I'm at Fondango and you can email me at Don at the Clubhousepodcast.com.
Email Don for information on how we can come to a live show for you.
We've got some great live shows coming up, so make sure you pay attention to our social
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You can email me if you'd like questions, comments, concerns, tell me to go pound sand.
I am Rob at the Clubhousepodcast.com.
And chat at Clubhousepodcast.
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And I am going to safely assume that Joe's mom can do whatever she did.
She did indeed.
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So until next time, for Don, for Chad, for the Empire, I'm Rob, Clubhouse's close.
Pretty pumped.
She writes me letters every year.
She's really, really short, and on the front of her calendar.
The preceding was a sooner or later production.
Get a go!
Why?
Because I have to.