Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, we'll learn about the first woman to captain a merchant ship. We'll speak with the author of the book The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love and Adventure at the Bottom of the World.

2026 is the year, the US celebrates the 250th signing of the Declaration of Independence. The director of programming from Fraunces Tavern, a building that was standing in 1776, will join us to discuss what New York looked like at that all important year. We will fill you in on our January Get Lit with All of It Book Club. It's our partnership with the New York Public Library, and we'll give you the details at the top of next hour. That's the plan, so let's get this started with the revival of play that won the Pulitzer in the '20s.

[music]

A hundred year old play finds new life at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. Eugene O'Neill's drama Anna Christie is the tale of an abandoned daughter looking for a new life while being followed by her past. Her estranged father sees her as an innocent child. A barge captain named Chris left Anna in Minnesota. She tracks him down and hopes to heal. He does, too, but along the way, she meets an attractive and raw sailor. That can't be good.

Anna Christie is a return to the stage for the star, Michelle Williams in that title role. Thomas Kail directed the play, and if you didn't know, they're married. It's a cast filled with talent, including our guest, Brian d'Arcy James. He plays her father, Chris. Last time he was on the show was for The Days of Wine and Roses, and Mare Winningham. She plays his wise lover, Marthy Owen. Anna Christie is playing at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn until February 1st. Everybody, welcome to the show.

Brian d'Arcy James: Thank you.

Mare Winningham: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Thomas, when people ask you what this version of Anna Christie is about, what do you say?

Thomas Kail: It's about two and a half hours-

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Room chat.

Thomas Kail: That old chestnut. It was a play that Michelle and I started talking about in 2019. One of the things that we were struck by in reading it was the way that anything true, especially in the performing arts, feels like somehow a writer like O'Neill was looking into the future while he was grappling with his own present tense, and so this idea of what it means to bring your past with you into any environment, or situation, and what it means to try to remake yourself. Can you remake yourself? Can you be loved for all the things that you were, just really resonated with us, and we just wanted to get together down by the water at St. Ann's and pack the cast with as many talented and wonderful humans as possible. I have two of them sitting next to me. What a delight.

Alison Stewart: Mare, when did you read, when did you see Anna Christie the first time?

Mare Winningham: I had never seen it, and I had never read it, so when I heard that I could possibly be in this, [chuckles] I read it for the first time. There's four acts. I'm only in the first, so I focused on that, and so as rehearsals went, acts two through four were revelatory for me. I felt like I was learning the play as rehearsals went on because I hadn't studied those acts. In some ways, I was a good audience in the rehearsal room because I was constantly fascinated, and my eyes were opening to the layers, and the depth of the play through the performances of Brian and Tom Sturridge, and Michelle.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn by observing the play?

Mare Winningham: That the struggles for a woman in that time have companion struggles in this present time, and that the tragedy, or the darkness inherent in the play is leavened with some wonderful. The language and the rhythms of the last two acts are just extraordinary, but I was left feeling unmoored, no pun intended-

[laughter]

Mare Winningham: -and heartsick, and also, I think, kind of championing Anna, and what she's grabbing at the end, what she chooses to look at, and what she chooses not to look at.

Alison Stewart: Brian, when did you read or see Anna Christie?

Brian d'Arcy James: I'd read it in college, but I just remembered just vaguely how it sat in my mind, and so I obviously reread it again with this production coming into focus. Yes, it was a reminder of just the language of O'Neill, which I had some familiarity with just from working on different things along the road, but my familiarity was pretty limited with this particular play.

Alison Stewart: How has that changed for you?

Brian d'Arcy James: Well, I think, like the great writers, I think of the one and only professional Shakespeare production I did, I didn't think it would be possible to do it just because of the intimidation factor of wanting to get to honor the language, and thinking that it might be impossible to do that. I had the same feeling and fear about this particular writer, and doing this production.

What I've learned is that is that once you get past that fear, and you're inside of it, and you inhabit it in a way that is different from reading it, which is a whole nother level of appreciation, but when you're living it the way that O'Neill has designed and devised, it's a totally beautiful wave that you can surf. That was something that struck me, and made me less intimidated, and ultimately, hopefully, able to do the job [chuckles] decently.

Alison Stewart: Thomas, what did you want to honor about the original play, and what was something that you wanted to change about it for a modern audience?

Thomas Kail: One of the things that I adore about the theater is that by doing a work that has existed, you stand shoulder-to-shoulder and in line with all of the productions that have already existed, and then all that will come after you. There's something about being a link in a chain that I found very moving. The last time the production was done was in the early '90s. Before that, it was in the late '70s, and then there was one in the '50s, and then there was the original production in 1921. It's not a play that's been done particularly frequently. It's one of our finest and deepest writers.

It was the third of his 49 plays, so you're getting someone who's a real OG, but you're getting the early work, which I think is kind of fun to see, like, "Oh, what was the early discography?" I found that there was something about the way that you have to surrender to the work, right? Like the structure is the structure. It's a play that has basically four 30 minute scenes with an intermission. That's not the way most people write anymore. Most plays now, most new plays are 67 scenes, and two people are talking at once, and someone's on the computer while they're doing it. There's 63 characters and everyone's-- and by the way, I love those, and I've made those as well, and I love to watch those, but there was something about this which is, it sort of forces you just to sit and be in real-time. To watch this play that in some ways, the first half sets up the back half, but doesn't really-- there's something about the structure of this that is surprising, and shocking, that you think the play that started in that place, ends in this other place is quite remarkable to me.

I think what I wanted to do was trust the text, trust the company. We have an extraordinary company, and group of designers to really try to strip it away. Our production is done with great elegance from our design team. Christine Jones and Brett Banakis did our set, and with the rest of the group, the way that Natasha Katz lit it, and Devin Steinberg did the sound, Nick Britell wrote music for it, and Steven Hoggett helped us move, and create shapes throughout.

One of the things that we found was, if you take that all away and trust the people on stage, and the story that's being told, and there's a compression in O'Neill's work, there's a sort of melodramatic energy that if someone says there's a letter, 10 seconds later, the person who's going to get the letter is coming through the door, and so you have to own that and accept that. When you do that, you find that even with that compression, it is absolutely possible to get to the depth of human emotion, and the bottom of things.

This company, the people to my left and my right here, Mare and Brian, are evidence of that, from the way they bring us into the play, they let us know also, you're allowed to laugh. We can open with that. I think what that does is it lets everything else seep in. Those are the things that we were talking about earlier on.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing Anna Christie, which is being performed at St. Ann's Warehouse through February 1st. My guests are actors Brian d'Arcy James, and Mare Winningham, and director Thomas Kail. When we meet Chris, Brian, what's important to him in his life?

Brian d'Arcy James: Alcohol.

Alison Stewart: Alcohol, yes.

Brian d'Arcy James: Getting a drink. He's just come off the barge from a slow voyage from Norfolk, and he's hell bent on getting to the place where he has a little bit of family, and the familiars that he finds there. That's just his role respite. That's his go-to, and so that's where we meet him in this pub, in this bar. Not long after, Marthy joins who Mare plays. We have our session of drinking which is interrupted, and disrupted by this letter of the return of my daughter, my long abandoned. Well, I was going to say long lost, but basically, Chris Christopherson has abandoned his daughter for reasons that he finds to be justifiable and noble. Maybe not noble, but he's definitely wrestling with the why of those decisions in his life, and they come to the forefront when she returns.

Alison Stewart: What's important to him in terms of his life at sea? Is it important to him at this point?

Brian d'Arcy James: I think it's a love-hate thing because he rails against it at every turn, but-

Alison Stewart: The devil of the devil of the sea.

Brian d'Arcy James: -the old devil sea, and it is the thing that takes life, but in a strange ironic way, gives him life. It is really his raison d'être. The sea is his life. He can't escape it. He has a great little passage where he talks about how all the men in his village go to sea because there's nothing else for them to do. It's a life that he's been resigned to. Fate has resigned him to this life. I think that he finds his definition, and his lifeblood through it, but all at the same time, it's taken everything away from him, so he's constantly cursing it and very, very wary of it, and it's real. It's a real fear. Superstition exists in many places, but I think on board ships, and among people who are working at sea, I think there's a real strong sense of being aware of the force of nature, and how you have to be very respectful, and also cautious, and wary of it.

Alison Stewart: What's going on in Marthy's life when you meet her?

Mare Winningham: She's also coming off the barge where she's been staying with Chris. You get a lot of information from her about her life, about their life, and about really maybe what it's like to be houseless, and itinerant, and okay with that. [chuckles] She says at one point she's been camping with bargemen for the last 20 years, so I think she has found a way to make it work. I think she's more comfortable with men, maybe, than she is with women.

Alison Stewart: That was my next question. She seems to really hold her own with the men.

Mare Winningham: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Why is that?

Mare Winningham: Which is fascinating, because when we were researching and looking at, and even reading O'Neill's accounts of it at that time in the 1910s, 1920s, there had to be a women's entrance to a bar, and for a period you couldn't smoke, but she seems to be [laughs] pushing through all those things. I think what's most important is that she's there when Anna enters. Sorry, and when Anna comes in, that's a fascinating setup for the rest of the play, I think, for how she's the person who sees Anna as she is, because she's not putting anything on at that point. Anna isn't, and so their conversation is an amazing marker for then watching what happens to Anna as she meets up with her father, and then meets the man that she will become desperately attracted to, and everything that befalls the play after that.

Alison Stewart: It's funny because when you come on, you're hysterical. Your faces are hysterical. Mare and Thomas, if you could talk a little bit about the role of comedy in this play, which so many people think of as a dark play, as having a sadness to it, but in that first act, there's a good deal of comedy.

Mare Winningham: Yes, there is. I think Tommy said it well, that it's a wonderful precursor for it allows the audience right into this world, which is a drunken.

Alison Stewart: It's a bar, they're carrying on.

Mare Winningham: Yes. I think it's a great setup to relax the audience, and it's chock full of information. You find out so many things about what's in store. I keep learning about it just from doing those first two scenes, first with Chris, and then with Anna. There are many nuggets in there that tell us the trouble that's to come. As you say, it's very funny what O'Neill has written, the pace of it. Tommy found a couple of new laughs for me. He knows I really laugh a lot.

Alison Stewart: A couple of new laughs? Explain, please.

[laughter]

Mare Winningham: Timing.

Thomas Kail: When you're working with the legend, you just got to get out of her way. I'm like everybody else.

Mare Winningham: When I first met him on a Zoom, I said, "I really want to do this. I have no idea what to do, or how to do it." He said that I had that in common with the leads, with the three great [crosstalk]

Thomas Kail: And with the directors, we were also like-- [chuckles]

Mare Winningham: We were all like, "Hmm, okay, here we go."

Thomas Kail: I think that role, what Mare speaks to is, when I think about directors who move me, Billy Wilder, The Apartment, I think, is one of the great examples of this, which is, when you are laughing, what you're saying is, "I understand," what you're saying is, "I see something in myself reflected back." What you're saying is, "I'm listening." What you're saying is, "I care< and you're making investments. It's a way to audibly understand investment, especially the way that I think the laugh evolves in our own production, which is not at, but is with, and is in communion with. Yes, that's the truth. The truth is we have to vocalize.

When I think about the first 20, 25 minutes of Long Day's Journey, it's hysterical. What he says is, "We're going to set up this family in that play, and we're going to show you what they're fighting for over the next three hours of this evening as they descend into their darkness," in his later work. I think we really found with this, there's an opportunity in that bar with the looseness of it, and all of that looseness has been carefully calibrated by this company. These are people that make you want to be better at your job because they care about everything. Everybody who's stepping on that stage, that entire cast is investing in those moments. I think what that does is it makes us, as an audience, invest, and it makes us wrapped up and held.

The other thing that we talked about a lot is because we're not doing Hamlet. This is not, as I would say to them, no one's wondering how we're going to do the soliloquy in the second. Like, that's not this play. It's effectively a new play. It's a play, we've heard the name.

Alison Stewart: Heard about.

Thomas Kail: Yes, we know that writer, but we don't really. Maybe we know the first line, but after that, we're having an experience that is brand new, and that's what we've really been, I think, so enamored by at St. Ann's. The audiences that find the play, they're seeking the play out. They're coming to be at a place which is known for its adventurous spirit-

Alison Stewart: For sure,

Thomas Kail: -for theatricality, for expressiveness. We're, also, I think, in our attempt trying to honor O'Neill by lifting him out of naturalism, and letting it live in a way that can have elevated sensibility to it, which is why there's a stylization to some of the movement, or there are moments that feel like they're not quite in reality, even if what the company is playing is desperately true.

Alison Stewart: Brian and Mare, how does Chris feel about giving old Marthy the heave ho so his daughter can come to town?

Brian d'Arcy James: I think it's hard. I think it's devastating in a way, because he loves her. I think they have a relationship that is just-- they're pals, and they have history. As he says, "I don't want to make her feel bad," and yet, he has this opportunity, he senses an opportunity to do something for his daughter that is kind of a miracle out of the blue, and so he immediately puts that into the pole position. It's devastating, and Marthy, Mare can speak to the character about this better than I can, but from my point of view, she's completely selfless about it. She lets him off the hook. She understands what this is, and off she goes in her kind of, I don't know how to describe it. Well, as he says, "Oh, she's a good girl. She's a good girl, Marthy."

[laughter.

Brian d'Arcy James: She does a very gracious thing.

Alison Stewart: Is she gracious?

Mare Winningham: Yes, I think once she protects your ego a little bit, [laughs] that it was your idea.

[laughter]

Mare Winningham: Yes, I think. It's funny. I had a really close, close artistic friend who said she's not going to make it when she's going to die under a bridge somewhere after this, and I didn't feel that. I felt like a survivor. I don't know. I think, I'm not sure what O'Neill means by that because I really respect this person, and that is what they get from it. Maybe that's a beautiful tension that we have to wonder about any of these people. Are they going to make it? What happens when holding that lamp and leaving, and Anna--

Brian d'Arcy James: Well, can I just say that there's some beautiful things in this production that have never existed in this play before, which are some transitional elements that continue the storytelling, which I found to be breathtaking, which I'm always fascinated, and wonder when directors can say, "Well, this is what we're going to do, and you think you can do that?"

[laughter]

Brian d'Arcy James: That's possible. Of course, all of a sudden you're in this whole new dimension of the play that you never knew existed, and so things like Marthy's departure are, there's an additional element in the storytelling that Tommy and Steven have created to have echoes of other possibilities that maybe aren't necessarily in the writing per se, but exist because of this particular production.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing Anna Christie at St. Ann's Warehouse. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All of It.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We're discussing Anna Christie, which is being performed at St. Ann's Warehouse through February 1st. My guests are actors Brian d'Arcy James, and Mare Winningham, as well as Director Tommy Kail. Let's talk about the staging of it. You started to talk about this before the break. The set is manipulated by a group of men who are also in the play. These large platforms are moved about. They can be arranged to a variety of things. A dock, a bar, and they aren't kabuki, like, at all. It's not like you're supposed to not see them. They're, like, they're there. They're dancers, and you worked with movement director, Steven Hoggett, right?

Thomas Kail: That's right.

Alison Stewart: First of all, why did you want to do this? What was it like for you to work with a movement director? Let's start with you, Thomas.

Thomas Kail: Well, you know what, Tommy, for you.

Alison Stewart: I'm sorry.

Thomas Kail: No, no.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I've known you for a long time.

Thomas Kail: Thomas is just what I type. That's just what I type. I thought, for real, though, I'm going to tell this really breaking news. Tommy Tune is probably the most famous Tommy director, right? He was Tommy Tune, right? Two syllables, one syllable. Like, I couldn't be Tommy Kail, so I made it. I was like, "You know what? I'll be Thomas Kail."

[laughter]

Thomas Kail: No one has ever cared, or asked that.

[laughter]

Thomas Kail: Anyway, I can't wait to. Sorry for all the emails you're going to get about that. [clears throat] Steven Hoggett and I had the chance to work together on Sweeney Todd, which we did a couple of seasons ago on Broadway. The first time I became aware of Steven Hoggett, and the first time I became aware of St. Ann's Warehouse was their production of Black Watch in 2007, which was John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett, who are a duo that have worked together [chuckles] to great effect, and to great acclaim for many years now.

They did this production, and it absolutely took the top of my head off. I just said, "Who is he? Who is this person?" Then he did a show called Beautiful Burnout a couple of seasons later, also at St. Ann's that I went to see. Then I just started watching anything I could that he would make. He did Harry Potter, he did The Glass Menagerie a few seasons ago. He did Curious Incident, he did Rocky, he did The Neil Diamond Musical, he did American Idiots, he did Peter and the Starcatcher. Turns out he's good. I've been wanting to work with him for a while. The Sondheim Production gave us an opportunity to do that. I just thought of him immediately with this, the way that he works with actors, and talk to actors, he makes shapes, but he thinks and speaks like a poet. Darn it if you don't want to be better at your gig when you're around Steven. I just adored having him in the room.

Michelle and I had, again, as we started talking about this, when I saw the way that Steven, and Annaleigh Ashford, and Josh Groban worked together with Sweeney, I just said, "Michelle, you are going to flip for Steven." They found each other, and that was like a house on fire. It was a thrill to bring him into the room because I knew what we could do together collectively was going to be greater than me standing there. It's one of those things where anybody that hasn't had a chance to work with him has probably wanted to. Steven had a deep affinity for the two people I'm sitting with now, and so I'm so keen to hear about how your experience was with Steven. Just-

Alison Stewart: Yes, what was it like?

Thomas Kail: -nothing better than having him in the room.

Brian d'Arcy James: It was extraordinary. I'd seen probably, of all the shows that Tommy just mentioned that Steven has done, it's probably 75% of those shows I'd seen. In fact, I didn't even know that he did a couple of them. My regard for him was high, but what was it like? It was very nurturing in the sense that he created a physical world for all of us as actors to become one unit of an organism that's working together, and trust. All the kind of things that you hear about in acting class, in college, or wherever when you're starting to create community and create connection. He does that in a very highly elevated way, and as Tommy said, poetic almost way, so that, first and foremost creates a family unit of actors who are really, really in tune with each other as physical occupiers of space. That, to me, was amazing thing.

Then the way that he would infuse his perspective with suggestions of physicality to accentuate certain moments, or certain passages, or certain beats was, I found, to be always right. Kind of like we've talked about how anecdotally, some great actors in the past have always used O'Neill parentheses stage directions to always trust them as being the absolutely right thing to do. Likewise, I found that whatever Steven said to make a particular moment ring truer, or louder, or have more resonance. It was always the right thing to do.

Alison Stewart: Mare, what do you like about working in the round? It's three sides for the audience, and then the actors in the middle.

Mare Winningham: I don't like it. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Really?

Mare Winningham: I struggle a lot. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Oh, I love it.

Mare Winningham: I did one play in the round, and I was so frustrated, and I realized it's my problem.

[laughter]

Mare Winningham: I have this sense of, "Well, they didn't see that over there, and they're not going to see that over there." I think I will give myself a little leeway that in a small role, you might find your head exploding, think it might take more emphasis than it obviously shouldn't take any emphasis, but because you're on a limited amount of time, if you're in a play for two hours, and you know that there you will be moving around. I was feeling it, and had to let it go. I've talked to my husband about it because he's come three or four times, and he's just like, "You've got to let it go. I've been all around the theater. It doesn't matter. You've got to trust your director." [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Have you been able to let it go?

Mare Winningham: Yes, I think so, but I just had to acknowledge that it was an issue starting out. I won't lie. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Oh, I assume you like to work in the round, Thomas?

Thomas Kail: I've had a chance to do it. I did a play at Circle in the Square about 15 years ago, which was my first time doing that. What I really was struck by is that there's an opportunity when you're working in the round. We're sort of three quarter, but play it as the round. That's a lot of how we were thinking about it is, in a way, it gets you out of anything presentational because there's no opening up, and when you're playing in the round, you know with the exception of the voms, where those stairs are, you try to find those angles, but someone's always on your back, someone's on your side, someone's on your front, which is a little bit like life.

I think that there's something that can be ultimately liberating if you give in to that. Look, we also have a play where, as called for, there's two people sitting at a table. When there's two people sitting at a table, as much as I would say, "What if we were on a big turntable, and it slowly turned, and in five minutes you got everything." Which, by the way, I look forward to doing on our next production on barge, but there is something about, again, that word just like surrender you give over to. Like, that's what the play asked for, and we tried to serve, and there are really fun ways that Mare and I were able to have conversations as I bounced around the theater to make sure that if you're not getting this part of Mare, then you're getting this part of Michelle, if you're not getting this part of Brian, so there's always something to eat for the audience in that regard.

Alison Stewart: You have a full beard, Brian.

Brian d'Arcy James: [laughs] I do.

Alison Stewart: Very different look than Days of Wine and Roses, which is the last time you were on the show. Your choice?

Brian d'Arcy James: Yes. I definitely wanted to age Chris in a way, and there are so many great descriptors of him in the play. Barge, rat, ape of a man, I don't take these home with me, but maybe I do.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I'm glad.

Thomas Kail: Sounds like he kind of did.

Brian d'Arcy James: Kind of. No, there's a particular image that I had for a man who lives his life on the sea, has lived his life on the sea, and is not necessarily concerned about his outwardly image, let's put it that way. Particularly now in this stage of his life where now he's working on a slower paced barge life which doesn't require as much heft, or as much peril. All of which to say, yes, definitely intentional. I guess you could accuse me of working outward to inward, but I do find that there was something helpful in finding the contours of him through my physicality, and through particularly, what this beard can say, because it is. We're in weird beard territory, let's face it.

Mare Winningham: It's beautiful.

Brian d'Arcy James: Which I love. I love, because it makes him like the characters intended to be other than. There's a bit of otherness, I think, that comes with this beard, which I am packaging, and marketing for $7.99 each-

[laughter]

Brian d'Arcy James: -and sell them on the 14th Street, Brooklyn at 45 Water Street.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Paul Tazewell did the costume. They're beautiful. People know him from Wicked Fame, from Death Becomes Right. I think he did as well?

Brian d'Arcy James: Correct. Yes.

Alison Stewart: You have a very specific hat that you wear.

Mare Winningham: I love my hat.

Alison Stewart: Tell me about the hat.

Brian d'Arcy James: [laughs]

Mare Winningham: One of the first fittings I went in, and everything that I'm wearing, I'm wearing in the play, he just put on the stuff, handed me the hat, and yes, that just worked. That was just a very successful costume.

Alison Stewart: What does it do for you when you wear that hat?

Mare Winningham: I don't know that I have words for it, but I feel like it satisfies every Marthy need that I had.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Thomas, you've worked with Michelle Williams on stage, on TV. What's the difference of the way she performs on stage versus how she performs on TV that you had to adjust being a director?

Thomas Kail: Well, I've spent more time with her offstage than I have with her making stuff. The one thing about her that I find remarkably consistent is she only knows one way to do something, which is completely and thoroughly. That's the same whether you're shooting three scenes that day, or you're working on one scene, or doing the play. She's invested from top of her head to her toes. She loves acting, she loves actors.

I think, in many ways, she's, I don't know how maybe she's made 50 movie. She'd a 35 year career, and she started working when she was 12 years old, and she's done more of that than she has been on stage. Her presence on stage, and her ability to emanate truth, there is no distinction between those two things. When she was doing a television show with the wondrous Mary Beth Peil many years ago, about 25 years ago, and Mary Beth, who became like a mentor to her, Mary Beth, obviously, had spent a tremendous amount of time on stage, both in opera and theater said, "There's a place for people like us, and it's New York." She would let her go and stay in her apartment.

Michelle would drive up from North Carolina on the weekends, and go see three plays, and sleep on Mary Beth's couch, and said, "Oh, there's others like me." I think that in that way, we all join the circus, whether we're making theater, or making TV. Like, we all ran away to the circus, and we hope that the people there understand something because we're there for a very distinct reason, but there is something that brings us there. She's someone who makes me have a deep desire to be better at the thing that I've committed myself to. That's what I find to be most remarkable and consistent about her.

Alison Stewart: Anna Christie is being performed at St. Ann's Warehouse through February 1st. My guests have been actor Brian d'Arcy James, and Mare Winningham, and Director Thomas Kail. Thanks for being with us.

Thomas Kail: Thank you, Alison.

Brian d'Arcy James: So happy to be here.

Mare Winningham: Thank you.

Brian d'Arcy James: Thanks, Tommy Tune.