Tony-Winning Broadway Hit ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ comes to Detroit’s Fisher Theatre

All right, it won six Tony Awards, so you know it's good, including Best Musical. You know it's really good. It has been hailed as one of the best original... You gotta get it right, six. Yes, six. It has been hailed as one of the best original stage productions in years. Now the Broadway sensation Maybe Happy Ending has hit the Detroit stage at opening night last night. Cast members, James Soule, Brian Chan. Welcome, fellas. Thanks for having us. Thanks for being here. Yeah, very excited. How was last night, first of all? Oh my gosh, it was great. It was our first night in Detroit at the Fisher, and load-ins, meaning the crew has to take down the set for the previous city, which was Durham, and then drive all the way here, build it all back up in the span of, what, 36 hours, something like that? It's crazy. So it was hectic right up until the last minute, meaning right up until about curtain, which was 7.30. But I thought the show went off without a hitch. Yeah, that was great. That was awesome. We're really enjoying the city, too. A bunch of us have been going to restaurants. Exploring, yes. Exploring, yes. We are quite a foodie town now. Yes, absolutely. We've got great restaurants. Yeah, and all the development that's happening downtown, it's great. Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah, a lot of fun places. It is a little bit grueling, or you tell me the word that you want to use, to be part of a Broadway show on the road like this, or on Broadway. But isn't it, I mean, the pace and how many shows do you do and then moving cities? Yeah, we do eight shows a week, and our day off is a Monday, but that is also our travel day to get to the next city so you know what's great is that we're in Detroit for two weeks oh that's good yep and so we do get a proper day off in this town so uh we're looking forward to that okay tell everybody tell everybody what uh you know what roles you play on the show and then i want to hear about the premise i play a character called james which is also my real name and then I play his son, Jun Seo, and then a few other small characters, basically all the human characters in the show. If you come to see the show, you'll learn that the two main characters are what we call helper bots. So I play one of the former owners of the main helper bot, Oliver, and yeah, it's great. It's an amazing challenge. It's an amazing challenge because I get to play with both father and son in the exact same relationship. Yeah, that's crazy, isn't it? It's therapeutic for me because I get to explore the whys of why the father might do something and I also get to explore, you know, the son. It's like Freaky Friday up there. Yeah, it's a little bit of that. Actually, you're right. I've never heard that comparison before, but it's very similar. Yeah, yeah, very good. That's the movie for the young kids. That's the movie where mom and daughter switch brains. Yeah, there's two versions of it. There's the Hayley Mills and then there's also the Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis. Yeah, Jamie Lee Curtis. And Brian, you are an understudy. So you are closely doing all the things and waiting for your opportunity when it arrives, right? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a standby, and I actually understudy Oliver and James. Okay. So just last week. You've got to memorize a whole bunch of stuff. There's a lot of work. Yes. Wow. Yes. It's a lot of work, yeah. Okay, explain the role of AI, because we're all dealing with AI, and what does it mean to us, and does it have emotions or what? Yeah, so it's not, I'm going to say this, it's not a show about AI. It happens to have two main characters who are, again, what we call helper bots, who I guess are... Retired helper bots. Yeah, retired helper bots. So they are sentient, non-human beings. Okay. But I think that is the perfect device to tell a really smart romantic comedy because if you use human characters, it often gets very sentimental. Gets real messy. Yeah, it gets very twee and fake in a way, right? Not honest. So this is a device that our brilliant creative team decided to use to be able to tell this really smart, sophisticated romantic comedy. And show like the amazing euphoric things about being in love, but also the sort of more challenging things about being in love. Sometimes being in love can be hard. It can be painful. Yeah. And it's just like exploring the relationship between humans and the ever-evolving technology. I think that's a very important theme. How can we navigate love, connection, and loneliness in this kind of landscape? It is interesting. Yeah, we rely because technology does help keep us company. Sure. But at the same time, we need human interaction as well. All right. So all of this playing in a very fun, comical way, entertaining. Super funny. Definitely a romantic comedy. Yeah. I'm going to tell people how to get tickets. Well, you know how to get tickets at the Fisher Theater. And you guys are here for two weeks. Yes. From now until November 1st. There you go. All right. Well, welcome to Detroit. We're glad you're here. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much. And it sounds like a great show. Charlie.