Fresh Air - Alan Cumming / Angela Lansbury

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

The Tony Awards are this Sunday. To celebrate, we’re listening back to two award-winners from our archive: Alan Cumming, who played the emcee in ‘Cabaret’ in three different productions, and Angela Lansbury, who starred in Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Sweeny Todd,’ as Mrs. Lovett who baked Sweeney’s victims into pies. Also, Justin Chang reviews two new horror films: ‘Obsession’ and ‘Backrooms.’ See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David B. and Cooley. The 79th annual Tony Awards are this Sunday, honoring the best of Broadway from the previous season of stage plays and musicals. To note the occasion, we're revisiting interviews with two dynamic Tony-winning stars from Broadway's past. We'll hear from Angela Lansberry, a six-time Tony recipient, including for the musicals, Mame, Gypsy, and Sweenie Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. And we'll start with a series. Alan Cumming, who won a Tony for his role as the MC in the revival of Cabaret. Both of them had a major impact on the New York stage, yet both came from the UK, Angela Lansberry from England and Alan Cumming from Scotland. Alan Cumming was born in 1965 and has been acting in television

movies in the theater since the 1980s. As an actor, he's somewhat of a chameleon, shifting looks and accents to fit the occasion and the role. He played Hamlet on stage, a filmmaker in the Spice Girls movie, and the desk clerk in Stanley Kubrick's eyes wide shut. He played Eli Gold in TV's The Good Wife and the Good Fight, the blue-skinned nightcrawler in X-2 X-Men United, and another blueskin character in the world of animation, providing the voice of gutsy smurf. And while he continues to be involved in the stage, he won a second Tony in 2022 as a producer of the musical A Strange Loop, he's now having lots of fun on television.

On the Emmy-winning Peacock Reality Competition series The Traders, Alan Cumming hosts a group of guests assembled to solve a mystery, which of those among them are secretly working against him? This show is set in a castle in Scotland, and Coming, as the host, leans into the outrageousness of it all. He wears kilts and flashy costumes, and whenever talking to the competitors on the Traders, turns his Scottish brogue up to 11,

as in this scene from the show's most recent season. The first duty of society is justice, said Alexander Hamilton, and so here we are. Don't throw away your shot, players. The tear-stained pages of Traders' history are filled with the blood of the innocent at this table. What a triumph it would be if you caught a traitor on the opening page. Look around you.

Who at the table has your back? And who would sooner stab you in it? At the Tonys this year, the most nominated musicals are The Lost Boys and Shmigadoon, each of which is up for 12 awards. Alan Cumming isn't in that Broadway production, but he did star in the original team. version of Shmigadoon in 2021 on television. In the first season, which featured the same plot and characters now performed on Broadway,

he played Mayor Menlove. And in the 2022 sequel, a take on darker musicals that was subtitled Welcome to Schmachago, he played Dooley Blight, a butcher with a tragic past. It was a clear loving homage to the title character of Sweeney Todd, and Alan Cumming is so good in it, I hope he gets to star in the next official Sweeney Todd revival. Listen. There was a butcher who had a wife and daughter

and a rich man who led them all like lambs to the slaughter. He tried to take the butcher's wife. When she refused, he took her life. Blamed the butcher for the crime. And while he was doing time, His daughter came of age, forced to perform upon the stage. To be clear, in this scenario, the butcher is made. But the rich man truly will pay for his sins,

and this time duly will be the one who wins. For there's a debt that has yet to be repaid, So my course is set for the blood and the blade And the death, sweet death, that will bring relief From the pain and the passion and the guilt and the grief. Alan Cumming, of course, already has killed in one musical revival. On stage and in the movies, Joel Gray had originated the role of the Berlin MC at the Kit Kat Club, a den of debauchery surrounded by the rise of the Nazis in 1929 and 1930.

He was great in that role, iconic even, yet Alan Cumming has made it his own. His cabaret revival originated at the Donmar Warehouse in England in 1993 and came to Broadway five years later. Sam Mendes directed, Rob Marshall provided the choreography, and Natasha Richardson co-starred as Sally Bowles, the role played in the original 1966 Broadway production and 1972 film by Liza Manelli. Years later, he appeared in a revival of the revival, opposite such very diverse yet equally dazzling sallies, as Michelle Williams and Emma Stone. Let's hear how Alan Cummings sounded in the 2014 roundabout theater production,

the same company that had produced the 1998 Tony Award-winning production. My gentlemen and gentlemen, good evening, good evening, good evening, Ellen, Bigger, come on, do you feel good? Yeah, I bet you do. I'm a comprehensive, I am your host. Welcome,

Welcome, welcome. Welcome. And congratulations. You're so wonderful in the show. It's so terrific. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for coming. You've said, I think,

that this revival was your birthday present to yourself. What does that mean? Did you initiate the idea of reviving it again? No, no, I didn't. But it was Sam Mendez who called me up a few years ago. And, I mean, there's been sort of various attempts to redo it or to put it on since it ended. I mean, I finished, I did it for a year from 98 to 99. And it actually finished, I think, in 2004 on Broadway. But anyway, so a few years ago, Sam said, you know, I think it's a good time. the rights are going to be up

and so therefore someone else will do it and the estate wants us to do our production again and I just sort of thought it would be and the thing about the birthday is that I'm 49 and so I'll be 50 in January, January 27th next year and so in my 50th year I am singing and dancing in a Broadway musical

and I'm dancing a kickline with you know girls who are 24 and so that was that was kind of the birthday present to myself that I would be hitting 50 doing things that I couldn't do when I was you know 25 oh that is nice you couldn't kick like that or or they just didn't have the opportunity I was I was so out of shape and unfit when I was 25 I've kind of think even when I did it 15 years ago I wasn't as fit as I am now so why do you love doing the role well I mean just on a day to day going to work and doing that it's such fun. It's, you know, so kind of energetic and it just takes up every single element of being an actor. It's your body is used to its capacity, both, you know, physically, vocally and emotionally as well. But also in a kind of larger way, I think it's a really important show in that the reason it's done again, the reason we're doing it again is that it has something to say, you know, it's about the rise of Nazism and the fact that if you're not

incredibly vigilant oppression of some kind, can slowly creep up and take over. And I think that the way that the show is like fun and you say, oh, it's sexy and they're hilarious and oh, and then you slowly, it slowly goes dark. You as an audience member have kind of become complicit in that. And that sort of mirrors the way that you see Nazism creeping in and people think, oh, it'll be fine, don't worry, nothing's, you know, it'll go away. And then slowly it doesn't and it's too late.

I would like you to describe your character physically, what you're wearing, what your hair looks like. Well, initially, I have a jet black hair right now, which is not natural, Terry, I'll confess. And so I jet black hair sort of, you know, late 1920s kind of floppy on top, short at the back and the sides. The first costume I wear a little leather coat, but I shortly take that off. and I've got this, I've got kind of like black dinner, dinner suit trousers, but they're cut at the knees, a pair of big combat boots, and this kind of strappy thing, a kind of like suspenders, you know, it's almost like I'm topless,

but I've got the suspender thing with a little bowtie at my chest, at my, what do you call that bit in the middle of it? Sterenum, and then, and then kind of, it's almost like a cantilever system to, hoik up my manhood, if you will. Yes, your manhood is kind of like italicized. It's in bold. It's in bold letters, yes.

It's sort of like a wonder bra for the meal junk. What is your take on the host, the MC that you play, and the club, the Kit Kat club that you're in? Do you have a backstory for him in your mind? I'll tell you my sort of very slim back. story is he was a rent boy a boy from the streets of Berlin who then kind of you know started working this club and was kind of kind of kind of as he got a bit older got a job and this and the kit cat club is basically a you know a den of iniquity it's it's got a little show but there's kind of

of you know sex going on there's drugs going on it's a very low life kind of place so that's that's basically all my story for this man he used to be you know he has a background as a sex work who then becomes, you can sing a bit. And I don't know his name. I don't know, you know, I don't actually don't think that's important. I don't worry about that. Because there's a larger, broader, more overreaching thing about this character. He's kind of like this.

He guides the audience. He's like a puppeteer almost or a sort of a pipe piper, if you like, who takes the audience on this journey. It kind of tells them what to think at certain times, guides them into certain things. and then ultimately because he's got their trust can betray that trust or also make them worry for him and for what's going on in the show.

So it's almost like a sort of a Brechtian character of standing outside the story and commenting on it as it's happening. You've portrayed this character in three separate versions of this Sam Mandi's production. First when you were 28 years old in 1993, then when you were 33 years old in 1998 and now when you're 49 years old in 2014.

And I've seen the new production and I've seen excerpts of both of the other productions. And there's things that are very similar. One of the differences is that, you know, you've gotten older. And I think that changes the character. You know, the Rent Boy turned MC in this kind of cede club at age 28 is different from that same character at age 49. Because that character hasn't made it out of that club. Yeah. Still there at age 40.

So in that sense, he becomes kind of even darker? I think that's absolutely true. I think this production of the production is darker, partly because I'm older and because the sort of sex element of the show, the sensationalist. The thing in 1998 when we came to America was so shocking and took up so much of people's perception of the whole show was this depiction of sexual, free...

and hedonism and gay sex and bisexuality and all sorts of things, that I think in a way took over a little too much. And now I think, you know, partly because of that production and partly because the world has changed, that is still an element. It's still fun. It's still very much part of what the story is about, but it doesn't overshadow everything.

And also it has allowed the kind of darkness to come out a little bit more. You know, in speaking about the sexuality of, of this production. It's sexualized in a different way than, say, the movie cabaret, which I think a lot of people are familiar with. In the movie version of cabaret, Joel Gray starred in the role of the MC of the host.

And I think he played it kind of... He's great in it. And I think he played it kind of like a ringmaster in a circus of sexual deviance. And I think deviance is what they would have been called at the time. I'm trying to use a word from the period.

And you play it like you are sexually seducing us into your kind of debauched world. Woo-hoo. I mean, I do feel like that. I feel like I'm saying, you know, the gesture I do at the very beginning of the show is my finger. I am going, come here, come here, come here. And that's, I think, a sort of overriding metaphor for what I think that character does. And he's going, come on, come on, you know you want to, it's going to be fun. And then, of course, and the audience does want to.

And they do come. And then, of course, that's when they become complicit in the whole horror. So the character that you play in Cabaret is very sexually ambiguous. I mean, in terms of sexual orientation, gay, bisexual, who knows, into everything, I think. Whatever he wants it. you came out as bisexual I think the same year that Cabaret was revived in the United States in 1998

with his starring in it and you've been married for how long to you have a husband I have a husband I've been married to him for hang on since 2007 so seven years

so did you time coming out with the production of Cabaret it was all a huge press campaign it was all up A massive machiavellian plot. That's the point of sexuality, actually. Power. Kind of is.

What I think you're getting at, I'll give you a little precia that I hope will answer your question. I've always felt I was bisexual. I used to be married to a woman. Before that, I'd had a relationship with a man. I then had another relationship with the woman. And since then I've had, you know, relationships with men. But I still feel, I still would define myself as bisexual, partly because that's how, what I feel,

but also because I think it's important to, I think that sexuality in this country especially is very, seen as a very black and white thing. And I think we should encourage the grey, you know, I mean, I don't kind of go around in my life thinking, oh my God, I'm going to have to have sex with a woman soon because I said I was bisexual. That's just, I just, that's what I feel inside. It's like saying you're straight or you're gay or your backside. It's just what you are. And whatever you're doing in your life is almost, it runs obviously parallel, but it's kind of secondary to how you are inside.

And so that's how I've always felt. And I still do, even though, you know, I'm very happily married to a really amazing man and I wish to be so for the rest of my life. The other thing is that the coming out thing, in 1998, when I came to America, there was such a huge explosion of interest in the show and in me. And I hadn't really, you know, I was kind of well known in Britain,

but I hadn't really ever discussed my sexuality in a public way like that. And because of playing this character and all the kind of slight, you know, puritanical shockwaves that were sending around America, a lot of people were just constantly, constantly, constantly asking me about it. And so I decided to take Madison to my own hand and I did a interview and a cover story for Out Magazine and I thought that was a good forum for it to be discussed calmly and adultly.

And so I did that. So it was kind of as a result of all the speculation. But it was really funny. I remember people saying, so the first question in an interview for something like, you know, weighty tome would be, so are you gay? And I would go, why?

Do you fancy me? and then go, oh no, just someone in my office was asking. And I was like, oh, really, well, you know, I just thought, really, is that the most important thing? And sometimes it is the most important thing because people can't, if people don't have a black and white answer, they can't get beyond that. And so you have to kind of, I think you just got to get out the way. And that's what I did. And it wasn't like I, it's one of those things.

When you become famous and people are more interested in your personal life often than your work, it's a weird thing because you think oh I seem to be sleeping with more boys now should I do a press release you know it's a it's a really difficult one to know when to announce Alan Cumming speaking with Terry Gross

in 2014 he starred as the emce in cabaret three times in a 1993 London production in 1998 where he won a Tony for his performance and again in a 2014 revival

coming up We'll hear more from Alan Cumming. And we'll hear from another world-class Tony Award winner, Angela Lansberry. She earned six Tony Awards over her lifetime, including for her performances as Mama Rose in the Broadway production of Gypsy and the pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. More after a break. I'm David B. & Cooley, and this is fresh air.

So you see, everyone in Berlin has a perfectly marvelous roommate. Some people have two people. beautiful. Billy-de-lid-lid-lid-lid-lid-lid-d-d-d-dee two ladies. Two ladies. And I'm the only man, yeah. I like it. Billy-Di-Di-T-D-D-D-D-D-T-E.

They like it. Disto for one. If I go out daily Two ladies To lady Didid today All cheese day We like it

Fit I go out daily To earn a daily bread But we've one sing And come in He And me She and me

Zaki Billy Dede If you're just joining us We're celebrating the Tony Awards this Sunday by listening back to Terry's 2014 interview with Alan Cumming, who won a Tony for his 1998 performance of the MC in Cabaret. Cumming starred as the MC three times, in a 1993 London production,

on Broadway in 1998, and again in 2014. They all were directed by Sam Mendez. Here's Cumming singing the song Money from the 1998 performance of Cabaret. Mani makes the world go round A mark, a yin'en, a buck, a buck, or a pound, a buck, or a pound, a buck, or a pound, is all that makes the world go round, that clinking, clanking, sanking, can make the world go round. Money, money, money, money.

If you happen to be rich and you feel like a night's entertainment, you can pay for a gay escapade. If you happen to be rich and alone and you need a companion, you can be tingling for the mate. If you happen to be rich and you find you are left by your lover, though you moan and you grown quite a lot, you can take it on the chin, call a cab, and begin to recover on your 14 carot yacht.

Money makes the world go around the world, go around, the world, go around, go around, Money makes the val go around of death. We can be sure. I'm being poor. That's Alan Cumming singing Money from the 1998 cast recording of Cabaret, and he's starting now in the new revival of it. I really do love the way you sing.

And I want to hear how you prepared to sing for this role. But before we talk about that, I want to play you something that John Cander had to say. I interviewed John Cander, who wrote the music Fred Ebb wrote the lyrics for Cabaret, and I asked him what he did before composing the music for Cabaret and what he listened to, and here's what he told me. For Cabaret, I listened to a lot of German jazz and vaudeville music, also of the late 20s and very early 30s,

and then promptly forgot about it. It sounds like a very kind of crude way of doing research, but it works for me. You listen and you listen, and you listen, and then put it. it away and don't think about it anymore. And I have this absolute belief that the styles of the music that you've been listening to seep into your unconscious and come out in your own language.

And that was John Kander on Fresh Air in 2003. So John Kander said that, you know, he listened to all this music and then just let it seep in as opposed to actually thinking about it when he was composing. What did you listen to you? And did you have that attitude, too, that it would just naturally seep in? I'm a big believer in seepage I am I really am

the first time around I read a lot of stuff about the Weimar cabarets and just generally the history of that time what was great when we did it in London the first time was that Stephen Spender who was one of the chums of Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Oden

those boys who were in Berlin at that time he was still alive then he came into rehearsal to ask to sort of, you know, talk to us and we got to ask them questions. So that was amazing to have someone who's actually really there. And I said, it was so funny because they said, you know, just be very respectful, don't, you know, stay off the whole sex thing, blah, blah, blah.

So we were asking questions. I could tell we were getting along. And I said, so Stephen, you boys from Oxbridge, you didn't really go across the air to kind of chronicle the surge of fascism and the change of this. So you really went there to get shagged, didn't you? You just went to get boys. And he was like,

yes, of course we did. Yes, of course. And I just, I love the idea that this kind of amazing period of history has been chronicled so amazingly by Christopher Ishwood and many other people, but in this case by him, was actually a happy accident because they really just went there. They were from England, you know, puritanical, shameful England. And they went.

to Berlin where you could have sex with people all the time and go to dirty bars and no one would know. So that was a key for me into getting into this role and understanding what it was like in that time. So you've met and performed with Liza Minnelli. Yes. What did she mean to you before you met her? I mean, it's hard. It's almost like she was like a movie star from a long, long time ago. like the kind of like a like a silent movie star or something she had that kind of sort of mist swirling around her

and um i'd seen the movie of cabaret and i just i i it was more like a lot of the thing it's hard to describe it was more like i was aware of the effect the effect she had on the world and on people rather than knowing that much about her do you see what i mean it wasn't till i was 30 i didn't really i'd never been to america i you know was aware of american culture and things in Britain but I didn't ever sort of engage in it fully because I don't know why

I just didn't and then of course when I met Liza she came into my dressing with Fred Ebb and as in this tiny dressing it was like a kind of size of a shoe box

and she came in and give me a hug and said Alan I want to be your friend forever which is such a darling thing to say and then I saw Fred oh Fred and when I finished talking to Fred I realized that Liza had

pushed herself against the wall and had her face in my wet towel which was hanging on a hook on the wall in order for me, because the room was so small in order for me to talk to Fred. And I went, Liza, you're squashed into my towel. She's like, Alan, I'd be squashed into your towel forever for you. She's just the most lovely, hilarious person.

And so I've been doing these concerts with her and stuff. And now I just think, lovely Liza. We have a real laugh. And I think we just get on, I don't know why. We just have a really great understanding of each other. Did she give you any advice about cabaret? Well, I can't really say it on the radio. It's more just a kind of a, like when she came to see Macbeth,

the Macbeth that I did last summer, or the last two summers, she said this thing, which is, I mean, really great. I actually love it. I love this thing. I'll just do, I paraphrase it. But she says, you know, just for us about to go on, I was really terrified. She went, darling, take no prisoners and F, bleep, the wounded. And I think that's great. I mean, obviously, not literally, but as I go get them and just, you know, don't let anything hold you back. It's a great sort of way of thinking about performing. And, um, I, um, I, um, I. I'm a big believer in that you just have to dive off the cliff, and so is Liza.

Alan Cumming, speaking with Terry Gross in 2014. After a break, another Tony Award winner, Angela Lansberry. She won six Tony Awards over her lifetime, including for her performances as Mama Rose in the Broadway production of Gypsy and the pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. We'll listen back to Terry's 1980 interview with Lansberry. in which she discusses playing Mrs. Lovett and what it was like to work closely with Stephen Sondheim. This is fresh air.

In honor of the Tony Awards this Sunday, let's continue our celebration of Tony Award winners we love. Angela Lansberry delivered unforgettable performances for her starring roles in the Broadway musicals MAME, Gypsy, and Sweeney Todd. Her work on stage earned her five Tony Awards, plus a lifetime achievement Tony Award in 2022. Lansbury, who was born in 1925, died in 2022 at age 96. And while a legend on the stage, she conquered other media as well. She starred as Jessica Fletcher on the CBS Mystery Series murder she wrote for 12 years. On film, she appeared in the 1984 movie Gaslight when she was only 19, and provided the voice of Mrs. Potts singing the title song to the 1991 animated movie

Beauty in the Beast. In 1979, the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd swept the Tony Awards with eight wins, including Best Musical and a Best Actress Award for Lansberry. The show was about a murderous barber in Victorian London. Lansberry played Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney Todd's accomplice. She baked his victims into pies. I wonder what the first things were they told you about it to explain what the show would be like. Well, they took it for granted that. I knew the legend because coming from England originally, I know all about Sweeney Tard. When I say I know all about Sweeney Tard, I know that he was almost a grand gignolle character that was sung about and little doggerel rhymes were written about, you know, Sweeney Tard will get you if you don't watch out.

He's a character almost like Jack the Ripper in English folklore. And he turns up and people quote his name all the time. This is the third musical that Stephen Sondheim had a contribution to, of course, he wrote this, but he did lyrics for Gypsy, which you starred in. Yes, it's the third time I've worked with him, actually. Is he the kind of composer who will sit down at the piano with you and sing his songs for you to give you an idea of what he had in his mind? Absolutely. Steve always auditions all his own work, and the thing he loves to do, when he has a new song, he wants you to come over and hear it, and he'll when he's got a few, he'll say, come on over, I want to play you the song that I've written for you

in such and such a place in the script. And I'll pop over to his house and he'll sit down at the piano and he'll sing the song. Kills himself laughing when he was playing the worst pies in London. Can you imagine trying to play that and make all the sound effects

and all the beats and so on which are done with the dough and the rolling pin and all of that. He'd worked it all out. Every piece of business in that song Steve had written. It was right there on the music. She swaps the fly, she hits the dough, she pops her mouth or whatever she does, you know, at that moment.

And no wonder with the price of meat what it is, when you get it, never thought I'd live to see the day, men think it was a drink, finding poor animals, what are dying in the street, Mrs. Mooney has a pie shop. Does a business, but I've noticed something weird. Lately all her neighbours' cats have disappeared. I've to wind it to her what I calls, Enterprise, Popping poohie sinter pies

Wouldn't do in my shop Just a thought of it's enough to make you sick And I'm telling you that pussy cats is quick Now denying times his home Even harder Only loud and pretty I want to talk with you about the character that you play Now you had said that finding the character

Was left completely to you And you went back to books written about Sweeney Todd in the original book To find out a little more about the character now. You manage in the production to convey simultaneously meanness and humor, an ability to be murderous with an ability to be extremely warm and friendly and huggable, lovable, and you have the audience on your side as you're participating in these murders. What are some of the ways do you feel that you're able to convey all of that and have the audience with you like that?

Now Mrs. Lovett is really a conglomerate of all of that knowledge that I have of English theatre going way, way back. She is almost a choreographed character. She is so broad in her scope. The idea is that she can do anything. She can slit your throat and you will love her as she's doing it, because she does it with such a total childlike joy and amorality that, anything goes. Now this is everybody's dream of a companion, somebody who will adapt instantly to anything you would like to expect from her at that moment. Now that's what we all long for.

Sweeney Todd, lucky devil, found the very one. Now occasionally she goes, she goes off on her own little tangent, such as when she confides to him that her dream in life is really to retire by the seaside. But if she didn't, and if he didn't provide her with the little house, by the sea, she would still do anything in the world that he wanted. Why? Because she absolutely adores him and always did. Now, these are all the things that I know about Mrs. Lovett. I have to try and sell you on the fact that this is the case about this old bag lady. But I do understand these things about her, and so that is what I am playing all the time. She is a victim of the gutter. She is on the edge of the establishment. Absolutely.

anything goes, the fact that they have no money and no food for the pies, the most obvious thing in the world to her is to utilize those poor fellas coming down the shoot. Well, you know me, bright ideas just pop into my head and I keep thinking. Seems a downright shame. Shame? Seems an awful waste. Such a nice plump frame. What's his name as? ad has nor it can't be traced business needs a lift debts to be erased think of it as thrift as a gift as a gift if you get my drift now no waste i mean with the price of meat what it is when you get it if you get it huh good you got it take for instance mrs mooney and a pie Stop. Business never better using ugly pussy cats and toast.

And a pussy's good for maybe six or seven at the most. And I'm sure they can't compare as far as taste. Mrs. Lovett, what a charming notion. Well, it's a pretty practical. You're appropriate as always. Mrs. Lovett, how I'd live without you all these years. I never know how electable. I'll soon be coming for a shame, won't they?

Fislevard choice, hurry. Oh, what's the sound of the world? out there. What, Mr. Todd, what, Mr. Todd, what is that sound? Those crunching noises pervading the air. Yes, Mr. Todd, yes, Mr. Todd, yes, all around. It's man devouring man, my dear. And who?

The desperate times, Mrs. Lovett, and desperate measures must be taken. Here we are now hot out of the oven. What is that? It's priest. Have a little priest. Is it really good? Sir, it's too good, at least. Then again, they don't commit sins of the flesh, so it's pretty fresh.

Awful lot of fat. Only where it's that. Haven't you got poet or something like that? No, you see, the trouble with poet is how do you know it's deceased? Try the priest. Hmm, heavenly. Not as hearty as bishop. That was Angela Lansbury and Len Carreou singing a little priest from Sweeney Tahn.

In 2022, Lansberry won her sixth Tony for lifetime achievement. She died that same year at the age of 96. The Tonys are scheduled to be televised Sunday night on CBS. Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews the horror film's backrooms and obsession. This is fresh air. The horror film's back rooms and obsession defied expectations by claiming the top two spots at the box office last weekend, in what many are calling a game-changing moment for the movie industry.

Both are relatively low-budget first features from 20-something directors who got their start making short films for their YouTube channels. Our film critic, Justin Chang, saw them both. In 2019, a photo posted on the message board, 4chan, gave rise to the creepy concept of the backrooms. an endless maze of what appeared to be abandoned corporate offices, with beige carpets, yellow walls, and fluorescent lights. The idea of being doomed to wander this mundane, liminal space, proved popular enough to inspire a horror meme,

and a web series, directed by a teenager named Kane Parsons. Now Parsons is 20, and his new backroom's feature is the number one movie at the box office, With more than $80 million so far, it's already made back its budget and then some. It's an elegantly disorienting movie, with a number of riddles that, at least initially, it wisely avoids answering. It's set in 1990, in the suburbs of Santa Clara Valley, California. Chihuethegivore plays Clark, a middle-aged alcoholic with a failing furniture store business. One night, in the basement of his store, he somehow,

walks through a wall and finds himself in the backrooms. He wanders the space for hours, and his mad curiosity stokes ours, too. Who built this ugly labyrinth, and why? And what is the strange, hulking creature he hears and sometimes sees? Clark returns to the backrooms day after day, obsessively mapping out the different levels, and marveling at the sometimes eccentric design choices and furnishings. Some of the chairs and shelves might have come. from his store. At one point, he convinces his work assistant and her boyfriend to join him

and film the place with a camcorder, at which point the movie briefly becomes a spooky found footage thriller in the style of that innovative 90s horror classic, The Blair Witch Project. So, um, it's like, what, like an empty office building? In here? Sure. But it's like it was made by a bunch of construction workers on acid. There's even a pool. There's a pool? Yeah, kind of. Keep up. Clark also talks about the backrooms to his therapist, Mary, a wonderful Renata Reincefe, who becomes an important secondary character. At one point, we hear Mary articulate some of the movie's themes a little too bluntly.

We all have our loops, our habits, she says, behaviors that keep us walking in circles. Clark's new playground, in other words, is a kind of prison, a metaphor for how we get stuck in traps of our own. own making. But that's just one of many psychological readings that can be projected onto the backrooms. For some viewers, they will evoke the thrill and the terror of extreme isolation. For others, they'll remind them of the pandemic, when office buildings everywhere stood empty. These are fascinating ideas, but it's when Parsons begins trying to nail them down, that his movie becomes a smaller, more conventional thing than it was at the start. Backrooms is full of mysteries within mysteries.

It would have been better to leave more of them unsolved. Even so, at its best, backrooms can be unnervingly effective. It also isn't the only horror movie that has defied expectations this summer. Since its May 15th release, the ultra-low-budget supernatural thriller, Obsession, has grossed more than $100 million, making it one of the year's most profitable films. On the surface, it's a less conceptually ambitious piece of work than backrooms, but it's also, I think, the better and more genuinely subversive movie. Michael Johnston plays Bear, a reserved young music store employee,

who's smitten with his friend and co-worker, Nikki, played by Indy Navarretti. When he buys a novelty item at a crystal shop that claims to grant its owner a single wish, bear half-heartedly wishes that Nikki would love him more than him. anyone in the world. From there, the 26-year-old writer-director, Curry Barker, spins a story that's basically the monkey's paw meets fatal attraction. Nikki and Bear become a couple to the bewilderment of their friends and coworkers. Before long, Nikki's magically induced feelings for Bear

begin to manifest in increasingly disturbing, shocking ways, from extreme clinginess to jealous, even homicidal fury. Obsession is thus the latest rift. on the old adage to be careful what you wish for. But what gives it its peculiar power is that it presents Nikki, not Bear, as the story's true victim. Bear's wish is a supreme violation

of her emotional, spiritual, and physical autonomy. And Navarretti's astonishing performance dramatizes an internal clash between two Nickies. She doesn't just go off the rails. We see her at every step, struggling to stay on the rails. By the time Barker drops a direct reference to the Exorcist, it's already clear that obsession is a demonic possession movie. It uses the prism of genre to speak to issues of consent, male loneliness,

and how even a guy as seemingly kind and sensitive as bear can become a woman's worst nightmare. Justin Chang is a film critic at The New Yorker. He reviewed backrooms and obsession now in theaters. On Monday's show, in celebration of the 15th anniversary of the Tony Award-winning musical The Book of Morbin, the two original stars, Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad, will make guest appearances in a Broadway revival. We'll talk to them both about the show and how it changed their lives. They're both really funny, on and offstage. I hope you can join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash This is Fresh Air. We're rolling out new videos with in-studio guests, behind-the-scenes shorts, and iconic interviews from the archive. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our senior producer today is Tha Challoner. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Tina Callagay. Our interviews in our interviews in reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorak, Anne-Marie Baldinato, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez

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