Interview: Anthony Caporale Talks THE IMBIBLE Christmas Show and Why People Keep Coming Back

The Imbible series has three shows currently running off-Broadway including A Spirited History of Drinking, Day Drinking, and their newly-opened Christmas show, Christmas Carol Cocktails. All three shows combine music, comedy, education, and alcohol for a unique and unforgettable live experience.

Anthony Caporale, the creator of the series, recently chatted with BroadwayWorld about Christmas Carol Cocktails, how it differs from the other Imbible shows, and why audiences keep coming back for more!

Check out the full interview below.

Tell me a bit about the Christmas show that's opening soon.

So the holiday show was the third installment of The Imbible series, and we wrote that after opening in Spring of 2014, so our first full year was 2015, so we wrote it at the end of 2015. It's actually a retelling of A Christmas Carol. It picks up where the book ends and Scrooge is all happy about Christmas and he wants to host a Christmas party but he realizes he doesn't know how to make drinks. So he calls the spirits back, which is a play on words, and he goes out for another night of supernatural travels but this time they teach him about cocktails of past, present and future. He joins with the spirit of Christmas past and they learn about the origin of eggnog. Like all of the Imbibles, we serve all of the drinks we teach you about so it begins with the sillabub, which most people have not had but it has eggnog. Then we tell the entire story of eggnog and the cultural significance and the economic impact and how it became the holiday tradition that it is today. Then he goes tot he ghost of Christmas present and we talk about some of the issues that we face with alcohol consumption today and we make a hot drink, a mocha, which is obviously coffee and chocolate, super current, with scotch, and we talk about the history of chocolate. It's a little bit about the role alcohol currently plays in society, how that's changed. Then he goes to the ghost of Christmas future and we talk about the role drinking is going to play in the future and we usually do a very science-based drink. Last year it was a liquid nitrogen that we used to make alcoholic Dippin Dots live onstage, and we served that to the audience. This year it will be another liquid nitrogen drink. We are currently on the Rose train, the frozen wine, but instead of making a slushy out of it, we're actually going to freeze the wine itself with the liquid nitrogen. So it's going to be really cool. We actually make the drink right there in front of everyone's eyes with liquid nitrogen and then serve that as our last drink. Like all of the other Imbibles it combines lots and lots of education, but also lots of comedy, four part a cappella music. This show is all Christmas carols so everyone knows all of the songs. By the end of the show everyone is singing along. With comedy, music, and cocktails people end up learning a lot, having a really great time. You can take our shows on any level you want. If you just want to enjoy the music, the performers are phenomenally talented off-Broadway singers that are doing tight 4 part a cappella harmonies through the whole show. Lots of comedy but also lots of education and lots of information, so lots of different ways to engage with all of our shows. What we're finding is that the Christmas show, which this is our third year running it, and the first two years sold out every performance, and we've used bigger theaters every year. This year we're at 777 Theatre and we've added more performances than ever before, we have 31 performances this year. We're anticipating as we get into the holidays things will start filling up pretty quickly. What we find is that people not only are visiting The Imbible multiple times and they'll come see Spirited History, the original show, then they'll come see the brunch show, then they'll come see the holiday show. We have people who are very loyal to the Imbible experience and the Imbible brand, but we also find that because this is the holidays, it's become a tradition for people. People come the first year, the second year, and they'll come see it the third year. This has become their adult version of the Radio City Music Hall, and a way to take a night that is not all about the kids, which I think the holidays focus on and should, but this is a way for the adults to take time for themselves and enjoy the holidays as well in a way that's very fun, light, and holiday themed but also involves cocktails. So people love it, we've had people say this is the adult version of the Radio City Music Hall for them.

How did you come up with the idea to make this into a Christmas show?

When we started the original Imbible, that show was originally supposed to run for 5 performances and we sold out all of them. We got encored, we sold those out. That's when we opened off-Broadway for the run. What we found was that people just wanted more. We had people who were coming to The Imbible 2,3,4 times. There's a lot of information there. We had people taking notes during the show. We literally get into molecular formulas and things. People wanted to engage with the brand more and people would say "you should write a show about whiskey" or "you should write a show about..." whatever their favorite thing was. Or "you should tell the story of Ireland!" We wrote over the summer a show about rum just to see if we could expand the concept. We had only been running about six months, we didn't really know if it would work. So we wrote a show about rum. When the holidays came around about six months later, naturally, I've grew up in theatre, I've run theatre companies for over twenty years, you put on a holiday show. It's what you do if you run a theatre company. So I said "can I come up with something that would be an Imbible version of some sort of holiday themed show?" And it just hit me that Christmas Carol is definitely the most widely known Christmas story, it's public domain, and it follows a three-part formula and we serve three drinks. I just thought it was a great template to use, instead of talking about a particular spirit or particular place, we could talk about the evolution of holiday drinks in particular. People really enjoy that. You go not he food network during any of the holidays and all you see is "all about halloween candy!" Or "all about thanksgiving food!" So I figured we would do this live on stage and we would do it with drinks. So this is The Imbible's version of one of those Food Network shows but about the Christmas Holidays.

Has anything changed from when the Christmas show was first written or is it the same show every year?

We try to keep it fairly consistent but we own the property, I own it, so we do try and update some of the references. We always have current references to keep people on their toes. I am not shy about making political statements. I think art is a vey powerful way to comment on society. I don't like to hit people over the head, but there are definitely some references to current events in the show, which we try to update. We also like to change the drink of the future. Not drastically, but usually in all of our shows there is one drink that will change either seasonally or yearly. In the original show we change the Old Fashion, to give people more opportunities to come back. In this show we change the drink of the future, and usually I will take a look at what is going on in the industry and make some sort of prediction as to where I think drinks will be in the future and then we'll do something to represent that. So that tends to changes every year based on what I'm seeing. I'm actually the director of food studies at the Institute of Culinary Education so my job when I'm not producing these shows is to know what is going on in the beverage world. I work very closely with the liquor brands. I do consulting and development and training and things like that. This is M. Little way to say "hey here's where I think things are going as of today."

What do you think works so well about this type of theatre, because it is so unique?

I just had someone come up to me after the show last night, because I'm actually in A Spirited History, and I talked to the guests every night. The most common comment we get is "I've never seen anything like this." We had someone in the audience who has never seen a show before, they had never been in New York. They were like "this is amazing, apparently I love shows" and their friend was like "no, they're not all like this." People who have been producing on Broadway and off Broadway, media people, press people, they all agree that it's something that is just very unique. I think that one of the things about this combination of music, cocktails, and education is that you can take it on so many levels and it appears to a very wide range of people. Another comment I get, sitting at the other end of the theatre last night was a gentlemen and his wife and they told me a story about how she wanted to go to the theatre and he hated theatre and said "I'll only go if you let me pick the show." He read our description and said "we're going to that." She said "fine, whatever, I'll trust you" and they came and he said "we're shocked, we both love it, and I traditionally don't like theatre. I've seen a lot of theatre but I'm not a theatre person, and she is. It's amazing that I can go to the theatre and enjoy it as much as she is and we can have this experience, which is something that normally we don't see eye to eye on." So it's really something that you don't have to be that traditional Broadway audience member to really connect with The Imbible. You certainly can be, but there are a lot of points of engagement. I also think that, being smart is cool again, thank god. Being a nerd is a good thing. People walk around with NASA t-shirts on now and it's cool to be smart. I think people end up not knowing what they're getting into but when they walk away from The Imbible, another common comment is "I can't believe how much I learned." They appreciate that. They were like "it was fun, but I learned so much." And that's awesome. Then when you throw in three really good drinks it just kind of seals the deal for people.

Do your other two shows follow the same format as the Christmas show or is it completely different?

They're all completely different. The original show A Spirited History of Drinking started out being based on lectures and seminars that I had been giving for five to ten years at restaurants and at liquor company events and cocktail conventions and things. They were very high-level, we literally throw the molecular formulas at them all up on a screen and people are like "cool" and they write it down. On the back of the comment cards we get people writing down the molecular formula of ethanol. But people call that show a musical TedTalk, and it was really supposed to be bringing the high-level knowledge of cocktails and spirits that would normally only be accessible to bartenders and restaurant people and seeing if anyone in the actual consumer world would be interested. But rather than just have me get up there and talk, I brought in folks form the theatre company I was running at the time, including my co-producer and our director who said, "if you guys do this, and we do it at Fringe, let's see if we can knock this out of the park. Let's do it with sort of a Greek chorus behind you who can help act out the stories, and bring in full four-part harmonies." I'm a big fan of a cappella music, I've been singing a cappella my entire adult life. I was singing with a barber shop choir at the time and I said "barber shop is public domain, I love it. Again, it's something the average person hasn't heard a lot of. It fits very well with the story of classic cocktails, from a timeframe standpoint." So that show was supposed to be a one-man show but it turned into what almost has a Godspell feel to it, where I'm telling the stories and then the Greek chorus is acting them out and there's song and lots of costumes and tons of comedy. The Christmas show I actually took source material and mapped our story onto this very familiar Christmas Carol story that everyone knows, so there's a familiar feeling to it. It's more character-driven. Scrooge is right there, everyone knows where it's going. There are quotes directly from the book. Each of the scenes opens with a passage from the book which will anchor people firmly in the story. Day Drinking, which is our newest piece that open in June, we were looking for something to run as a matinee and Spirited History has an evening feel to it. So I thought brunch is a great drinking occasion and has a phenomenal story behind it. So for Day Drinking we tell the story of the origin of brunch, where it came from, why we have it, and the three most popular brunch drinks which are bloody Marys, Irish coffees, and Bellinis. Again, as we teach the story we actually serve them to you but that is a completely original story that I wrote. It's about four friends in New York City that are trying to get together for brunch and as we all know, they're over scheduled, they're constantly connected. It takes them months to come up with a date and when they wake up the morning of they realize none of them are ready for brunch and they all have other things to do. They all promise to bring something so they spend the show running around trying to find something to bring to brunch and they visit the green markets. I'm a big fan of the New York City green markets and all of the farm to table stuff that we're doing. As they're looking around trying to figure out what to bring, they run into these very passionate vendors who tell hem the story of, for example, the Bloody Mary, and why you drink it, where it came from, all kinds of great stuff. Then he's off to brunch with a Bloody Mary. So that show is completely original and the music in that show is also original. I mentioned the first show is mostly barbershop, the Christmas show is Christmas carols. This show, Day Drinking, is completely original music composed by Josh who has been our composer since we started. He's a musical savant and he's written 45 solid minutes of amazing music that drives the story, and four part a cappella harmony. That's another signature aspect of The Imbible. I'm a big fan of that. That show is original soup to nuts. They all have different experiences but they all have the feel where if you've been to one Imbible, you know what to expect. You're going to laugh a lot, you're going to learn a lot, you're going to have some drinks, and hear some great singing.

Anthony is a true pioneer in the beverage world, internationally known for being the first to bring mixology to both YouTube, with his seminal web video series Art of the Drink TV, and then to the stage in The Imbible series. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Broadway Theatre Studio, as well as the Director of Beverage Studies at New York's award-winning Institute of Culinary Education. Anthony has appeared in over 500 consecutive performances of The Imbible: A Spirited History of Drinking, wrote and directed the three other Imbible shows, and is a regular guest on national TV programs like The Dr. Oz Show, FOX Money, The Better Show. He received a dual BSE in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from Duke University, where he also studied vocal performance. Anthony has served as the National Brand Ambassador for Drambuie Scotch Liqueur, the Cocktail Ambassador for Truvia Natural Sweetener, the Managing Editor of Chilled Magazine, and the host of Spoon University's Mixology 101 video series. He can also be seen making drinks with the hottest theater personalities each week on Broadway Bartender. anthonycaporale.com

For tickets and more information about any of the Imbible shows, visit imbible.nyc.

Photo Credit: Russ Rowland

 

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