MUSICALSPLAININGHOSTED BYLINDSAY ELLIS AND KAVEH TAHERIAN
A podcast to unite people who love and hate musicals
Popular Clips
MusicalSplaining
Sneak Preview: 500 Open Tabs!
Wed Jan 10 2024
Hello. Everybody, and welcome to 500 open tabs. I am your host, Kava Taharian. And I'm Hannah Hillam. And welcome. Thank you for joining us on our very first episode. Our first episode. You never forget your first Anna. In Nagarro. Are you excited? I'm yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm very excited. Yeah. I love talking. I love talking to to to anybody, really. Yes. That's true. And I want the course to listen. Everyone's forced to listen. Yeah. So if you guys don't know us already, we are first, we're friends. Second, I it's it's about time we finally came public with the fact that we were actually free. You guys might know me from my previous podcast, musical explaining. I also have been working for years as a cartoonist, I've been doing the convention circuit in 2021 is when I met miss Hannah Hillam at LA Comic Con, and we became fast friends. Yeah. I my booth was, placed next to his randomly, of course. They just and I saw on your shirt, on your jacket, you were wearing a ongoing gloria ongo. Gub Gublour get the guy from always sunny in Philadelphia. Oh, okay. It's it's Derivative. Derivative. I saw you wearing that pin and I was like, oh, you know, we're gonna be friends. Friends. And it we hung up. It was it was an easy friendship. Yes. Easy friendship. We've done all these conventions together. Our joke is that we're now con dependent is, We're conjoined. Hilarious pun conjoined. I think you don't say it. I don't do it if that's if that's a thing anymore as much. Yeah. Yeah. I guess you're right. Conjoined twin. This is what they call them. You never know. Never know what Landminer you're about to step into by accident? No. No. Conjoined twins is fine. It's the other thing you can't pay. Fair enough. Anyway, so we've we've done a lot of these of these conventions together in
MusicalSplaining
Cabaret (Series Finale!!)
Tue Dec 26 2023
Antimatyaba, Capiret is a top three show for me, too. Like, for a lot of the same reasons that Lindsay said, there's also just, the things that it does, might in hindsight seem kind of obvious because a lot of shows have copied the way it kind of uses die diegetic numbers and, like, yeah, flippancy with this really heavy subject matter, but it's done so spectacularly well. And and the way it dares the audience to laugh about it in a way that it's like it was kind of ahead of its time. Yeah. I'm not about it in a way that is, like it was kind of ahead of its time. Yeah. Yeah. And it's and it and it's just that sad tragedy of time that it has aged very well, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that was, what like, I wanted to do it because it it like, especially, like, during the Trump administration, but in ways that are still very, very relevant, like, it has it has unfortunately aged well. Yeah. You know, I I guess, I mean that as a compliment and a condemnation. It is kinda one of those things that, like, you know again, because it takes place in Weimar, Germany and you have a lot of characters downplaying the menace of the Nazis. You have a lot of people talking about how it's not a big deal, like, especially one of the main Jewish characters just completely dismisses out of hand the idea that, like, Nazi ideology could go to its logical conclusion because that could never happen here, You know, it's, it it So it's kinda like Sound of Music in that sense or sort of lives in that little time period as well? That's what the show is about. Rather than with Sound of Music, it's just kind of in the background, and, like, the characters actually talk about it. And I think it's one of you don't really see a lot of shows talking about it with the sort of attitude of it couldn't happen here or, you know, the good times are gonna last forever. We don't need to take the facts seriously. Yeah. And then I think, you know, because we will talk about the movie because we, I think that is one of the big flaws of the movie because I think the movie just really isn't interested in that.
MusicalSplaining
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Tue Dec 12 2023
Bit more about Hedwig's backstory. And so Yeah. So basically, Hedwig was born Hansel Schmidt in East Berlin, during obviously, when when the Berlin Wall was up and during the Cold War. And, like, I think pointedly, Hedwig says that her mom, like, went to East Berlin specifically. Like, it was just, like, I'm getting up and going over there just to kind of paint it. I wanna go to that side. Yeah. Just to kind of paint a dark comic picture. And so, like, she she grew up, like, listening to, like, a lot of, like, American rock and roll, like Lou Reed. I think she specifically calls out and, like, David Bowie and stuff like that. And then, in her 20 I think they're getting it through, like, the military radio specifically as to how she's able to access all that. Right. Right. Through American radio. And then in her twenties, she meets, this American GI named Luther? Luther Robinson. Yeah. There's a really funny joke that I forgot that was in here where she's like, I had already finished, like, my dissertation on rock and roll and, like Right. In philosophy called you you can't always get what you want. Career was over. Yeah. But so basically, Luther proposes to Hansel, but Hansel can't leave East Berlin. And so is basically kinda pressured into having a sex change operation and taking up the name of his mother, Hedwig, which is where Hedwig comes from, and then taking his last name. And so, Shionne goes this, and ends up getting botched, hence the angry inch that we talked about. And again, a lot of this will will dissect as I'm recoupeding this. Yeah. Yeah. I will unpack it. I promise. But, so she goes over to the United States, ends up in junction City, Kansas, and Luther leaves her immediately. Yeah. Immediately, he's just like, bye. Bye. And he just like leaves Bye. I found a trink. Bye. Yeah. Yeah. And then like the and also that same night, the Berlin Wall is torn down. And so it's kind of, like, this realization that everything up into our life has happened for for naught, essentially. And so she's like, well, you know what? I'm just gonna lean in, like, makes this decision, like, I'm just gonna lean in. I'm going to, you know
MusicalSplaining
Notre Dame de Paris (1998)
Tue Nov 28 2023
I will say, like, I am I am past that. I feel I have my feelings have evolved and changed. They have not evolved and changed about Hadestown. Another thing I'm extremely obsessed with, I'm gonna be wearing a lady of the underground t shirt right now. But before all of this, for me, aged 14, I think, there was Notre Dame de Paris. And Notre Dame de Paris was my introduction to being obsessed with a thing. I was quite shocked actually, like, I I was listening, to it in the car on the drive over here thinking to myself, I haven't listened to this in actually many years. I should just remind myself, and I can still say all the words. I I can still sing. I mean, I you know, to the extent that one can sing the songs. I knew all the words for 100 percent sure. Every song that has, like, 2 key changes in it. Oh, at least at least 2 key changes. Yeah. Right? At least. But, like, this was the other thing that you need to know about me in this case is that I grew up in Quebec. Like, I grew up, I I was born in Ottawa, but I grew up in Elmer across the river, on the Quebec side. And, I, you know, was growing up in a very bilingual environment while being trilingual. Like, we spoke Arabic at home, French at school, and English just kinda seeps in. English just kinda you can't avoid it. Right? So and and I had like, my exposure to musicals at that point had consisted of, mostly like Disney films, like Disney animated films and Arabic musicals, like, political allegory musicals from the 19 seventies specifically. Like, if anyone listening to this is familiar with, like, any of the, Rehbani brothers, like, Fayrou's vehicles that that were from the seventies, like Jber Suin or, Vincent Harris or anything of like, I I knew those, but they were like my parents' things, and they weren't
MusicalSplaining
Gypsy (2015)
Tue Nov 14 2023
Not give a fuck. She gets up there. She's, like, ruining the other kid's costume. She's, like, directing Popping the balloon. Yeah. It's just, like, it's this kid wearing all balloons as their costume. She just pops it. She's, like, get the fuck away. Yeah. She's, like, do you want basic badass behavior. I want my kid standing around my fat that fat balloon is, like, what she says. It's, like, it's just right up the front. She's cold. And so, like, they get kicked out, and then it's like it goes back to, like, her house in Seattle, and her dad's there and religious. And basically, Rose is trying to figure out a way to get more money to, like, beef up the app so they can get on, like, a bigger vaudeville circuit. Yeah. Trying to go to Los Angeles specifically is where they wanna go. She's like, I need to get I think it's, like, $83 or something to be able to get to Los Angeles. $88. I'm sorry. It's 88 miles an hour. Yeah. Alright. So You won't get 88¢ out of me. Really? Sorry. I know. This this thing's hard to explain to me. No. No. No. And then so she singularly focused on this, you know, seemingly, she singularly focused on the career of these girls. She's been divorced thrice, I believe, or twice. Yeah. Twice at that time. Something like that. At that time. Yeah. Yeah. She and her dad's, like, just don't worry about it. Settle down. Get married. And she's just, like, I don't give a fuck. Like, what the fuck is another man gonna do for me? Which admittedly, you're, like, yeah. What the fuck else? Right. Right. Right. So she's, like, I'm I'm gonna make sure I give my daughter an opportune my daughter's the opportunity that I never got and Right. Basically sort of like bull in her dad's and she's like I don't wanna end up like you with the fucking gold stupid ass like plaque on the wall for having worked your whole life and not gotten anything And he's just, like, well, that's a that's that's a great thing that I did an accomplishment. But she's, like, yeah, dad would ever go to sleep. And then as as soon as he goes to sleep, she seals it and pawns it and takes the fucking money and runs. Right. And then there's, like, a little montage on the road where, like, there's basically, like, yell yanking other kids away for their act as they're on the road. And then, they end up basically, it there's it's like kind of like a really great, like, little time shift as to, like, oh, they've kind of beefed up the act and now you have dainty June and her, like, farm boys or whatever. Or it's or it's baby June or farm boys. The backup dancers. And, right. And, as they're on the road, she meets this former agent named Herbie who, like, used to be in sales then or used to be in talent then got into candy sale.