Don't you want to be the life of the party?

Don't you want to be the cream of the crop?

Don't you want to feel those shivering fits

till someone calls it quits or someone calls a cup?

Don't you want to land for all of a lifetime?

Well, you better get down on one knee.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Next Best Theater.

I'm your host, Michael Schwartz, and I'm joined by my co-hosts, Nicole Ackman.

Hi, everyone.

Dan Bayer.

Got my bathtub gin already.

Casey Lee Clark. Hello. Cody Derrick's.

Come back to Broadway, Tony Colette. And Lauren LaMagna.

Hello, hello. Well, we are here to discuss not one, but two musicals tonight, although they share something very specific in common, we are talking about the wild party times two, as in the Andrew Lippa wild party and the John Michael Lucuzza wild party, both of which opened the same year based on the same source material, even with some of the same songs. sort of wild but you know what we are here to break it down talk about what we like what we don't like

compare the two talk about the weird fate that they would both debut within weeks of each other

and what it all means some 21 years later okay it's going to be to be a wild, wild party here on Next Best Theater.

So, break it down, we are going to time travel back to February 2000 when the Andrew Leppahua Wild Party premiered over off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theater Club.

This performance ran for only 54 performances, but it's worth made it's marking the

off-broadway circles. This is a show that's our Julia Marnie as Queenie, Brian Darcy

James is Burrs, Ted Diggs is Mr. Black, this up-and-comber named Dina Mansell as Kate,

and this is the only wild party that has led to some sort of resurgence. There was a 2015 encore revival.

But before we dive too far into it, I want to hear what did we all think of Elipa's Wild Party?

...