How much of the show changed during its Chicago tryout?
Hilty: What we learned in Chicago was that the audience loved—and what fits the show best—is when we really lean into its campiness. If anything is too slick, or… realistic isn’t the right word, but, like, the stair fall: we have been experimenting with that for a long time, and what we learned a long time ago, when we first had a stunt person doing it, is that to watch someone fall down the stairs is horrific. That is not the story we are telling. It took several iterations to get to where you saw it, where it takes a minute and a half for Madeline to fall down the stairs and end up in a pile. It works like gangbusters and stops the show every night, so we’re really leaning into that.
Simard: The minute we do land a heartfelt, serious tone, we pull it right back into joy and funny and camp, and then we taper that with something truthful and honest… It’s this great push-pull, and we never stay too long at the party with either. That’s a very sophisticated, subtle nut to crack.
It’s a huge production in a way I haven’t seen in a while but, to the show’s credit, it never feels like anyone’s lost inside of it.
Simard: Isn’t that great? The thing I love about our show is that, while it is two and a half hours of pure joy and escape like you want a big Broadway show to be, especially since the pandemic, it never loses the jewel box tone and small connective tissue that you might find off-Broadway. I could see it scaled down in schools across the country forever and still be hilarious.
Hilty: I would die to see a girl do Death Becomes Her, Jr—for the junior gays, honey.
Simard: Megan and I will come to your school if you do it.
What’s your favorite thing about the other to play off of?
Simard: You’ve never seen two actresses listen with their eyeballs more than Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard. We talk with our eyes and it’s astounding to me the level of complete sentences we are able to make in the moment for the various things that can happen on stage every night. To me, it’s analogous to that wonderful Jeff Goldblum moment in Jurassic Park when he’s describing chaos theory: the water falling off his hand is never going to fall the same way twice, and that’s live theater. It’s a science, and comedy in particular is a science.
