American Repertory Theater

I then watched the June 1st, 2025 bootleg recording of the show, which features Sam Tuddy as Dougal and Christiane Pitts as Robin.

This was filmed during the show's pre-Broadway run at the American Repertory Theater, and it was provided to me that the recording was provided to me by the one and only Elizabeth.

Thank you, as always, Elizabeth.

Watching the bootleg greatly enhanced my appreciation of the score.

That's all I wanted to do.

'Cause you met Ethan at ART, right?

No.

I was at ART, and then I came to New York, and it was Sophistry.

Oh, okay.

Got it.

It's played internationally, but famously, they were both arriving in world premiere productions around the same time.

And Florence's Gatsby, Gatsby: An American Myth, played at the American Repertory Theater in Massachusetts, never made it to Broadway, but is allegedly being workshopped here in the UK, so we may get to see it on stage at some point, and crucially, hear this score, which I have heard good things about.

Some others coming up even sooner are Imitation of Life, playing later this year off-Broadway with a score from John Legend, and the West End transfer of the musical One Day, with a score from the members of the band Johnny Swim.

Now, this is coming to London.

Literally, yes.

For those who don't know, Maya was in Gatsby and American Myth, aka, I'm probably referring to as Boston Gatsby throughout this, at American Repertory Theater in Boston this past year, was also in what do you call it, Gatsby, Broadway Gatsby is what I would call it, but she was in it at Paper Moon Playhouse before, transferred to Broadway, and now in Julia Poison Queen Palermo at PAC NYC in June, which probably after this comes out, but great to have you on today.

Yeah, yeah.

Glad to be

show.

In the second hour, famed actor Paul Giamatti and ART artistic director Diane Paulus joins us to talk about their great hit play, Rhinoceros.

And here's the show.

Continuing to join us now at the BPL is our good friend Ken Casey, front man of the Dropkick Murphys, dropkickmurphys.com. Hello, Ken Casey.

And I read it with him.

We spent about a year reading it out loud to each other.

We read every part to each other and worked on the original adaptation for the ART, which is the version of the show that we're doing.

And it was undeniable that this play had resonance.

Villagers at first are horrified, then groupthink takes over.

And that, of course, is what happens in the incredible Ionesco World War II-era play Rhinoceros on stage at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge.

Here's some sound from the show.

What is

Running through September 27th.

For more information, AmericanRepertoryTheatre.org.

Joining us now at the library desk, Tony Award winning director and the artistic director of the great American Repertory Theatre, Diane Paulus.

Diane, it's great to have you.

To say that this show got eight Tony nominations and didn't even get a single Olivier nomination is absolute madness.

But it did charm audiences in London, and soon enough it was announced that the show would be heading Stateside, not to Broadway initially, but to the American Repertory Theater in Massachusetts, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I also had the chance to see it.

And I was particularly eager to experience the show with an American audience and find out how they would respond to it, whether they would accept it as a kind of genuine portrayal of their culture.

It turns out, though, I needed to wait until I saw the show in New York at the Longacre Theatre to experience it with a New York audience, because there is the American perception, and then there is the New York crowd.