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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to Tony Telecasts from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Mo Brady. And I'm Aaron Albano.

[0:29] Mo Brady: Welcome listeners to a new miniseries, bringing you all the drama behind the drama of a theater season in Broadway history. In each podcast episode, we will watch a telecast of a previous Tony Awards to talk about the performances, the speeches, and the season as a whole. So let's dive in and talk about the 2013 Tony Awards. But first, Mo, take us back to 2013.

[0:51] Aaron Albano: Alright. The 67th annual Tony Awards took place on June 9th, 2013, after two years at New York's Beacon Theatre, the show was broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall. From the moment the nominations were announced, the ceremony seemed destined to be a showdown between Kinky Boots and Matilda The Musical, with revivals of Pippin, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood following close behind. Hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, the ceremony featured one of the most lauded openings in Tony Awards history, titled Bigger. Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tom Kitt, and featuring the iconic line, We Were That Kid, Bigger featured more than 100 Broadway performers, and eventually won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music and Lyrics. But aside from the telecast itself, what was happening at the time, Aaron?

[1:40] Mo Brady: 2013 was a lighter time, with seemingly less impact on the Broadway season as a whole, at least based on the more insular nature of the telecast and the speeches. President Barack Obama had just entered his second term in office, and the country's economy had essentially returned from the 2008 recession. The one major event that affected the industry as a whole that season was Hurricane Sandy that occurred the previous fall of 2012. Broadway shut down from Sunday through Wednesday in late October, effectively losing half a week of performances and $6.5 million in Broadway grosses. Again, thanks to our rousing opening number, Bigger, we were treated to a glimpse into the Broadway landscape of the 2012-2013 season.

In addition to the season's newcomers, some Broadway staples that year included Once, Newsies, Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, The Lion King, Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia!, Chicago, Rock of Ages, and The Phantom of the Opera. Some fun notable shows that opened this season off-Broadway were Bear the Musical, Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, Peter and the Starcatcher, and Second Stage's revival of The Last Five Years. Lastly, for our Smash listeners, hi guys, this is also the season that the fictional Bombshell and Hit List productions would have been a part of. Surprise! Always comes back to Smash.

[2:58] Aaron Albano: First, I want to say, Aaron J. Albano, you buried the lead. Because I didn't ever remember that you were in this telecast. Oh, how did that not come up when we picked it? I mean, I was in this telecast, but it wasn't like a focal point of the telecast. It was just, we did the opening. It was nice. And we introduced Matilda.

[3:34] Mo Brady: Okay, as someone who's been on the Tony Awards precisely zero times, how many times have you been on the Tony Awards, Aaron J. Albano?

[3:40] Aaron Albano: Twice. So the year that Newsies performed, and then the year that Newsies presented Matilda. So 2012 and 2013. Twice. That's it. Because someone should be able to tell us about the Tony Awards if they were actually there.

[3:59] Aaron Albano: Oh my gosh. Yeah, it was great. I mean, what was cool about it was it was a year that I was at the Tonys, where I had little to no stock in the season that was competing. Like the year that Newsies performed. It was like, oh my gosh, so much high tension. So much. Are we gonna win? Are we gonna lose? What are we gonna win? La la la la la. Let's go to our Tony party. Let's go get dressed. Let's go get ready. Let's all the hype, all the excitement. This year, we did the opening. We hung out, sort of said hi to some people. And then I went home and watched the rest of the telecast at home.

[4:50] Aaron Albano: Well, what's cool is that like a small little shout out, because one of my closest friends from childhood, Colin Israel, was performing in the Matilda performance. And so it was a nice sort of like, throwback to childhood moment where I was there for his first Tony performance. And I was able to be a part of the people introducing his Tony performance, which was a really nice moment.

[4:55] Mo Brady: When did you find out that you were going to be a part of this Tony performance?

[4:59] Aaron Albano: I want to say about a week before.

[5:02] Mo Brady: Oh my god.

[5:04] Aaron Albano: I want to say it was about a week before because, you know, because, you know, all like these Tony performances get sort of thrown together within like a week or two prior. And I want to say, initially, they had the whole bigger opening planned. And I think it was just going to be a handful of newsies. It was like a handful of newsies that followed Neil down the aisle. And I think if I remember clearly, what was cool about our show is that because a lot of the original company got to do the Tonys before, they made the decision that like the new company members were going to be a part of this year's. I think after maybe the first rehearsal, they realized that they wanted more newsies to sort of fill out the entire aisle of Radio City Music Hall.

So that's when they called the rest of us and were like, we want all the newsies. So there was like a good like maybe like half a week to a week where the original company newsies were like, okay, we're bummed that we don't get to do the Tonys, but we're good because that makes sense. And y'all need to have your moment at the Tonys too. And then we all got sort of surprised that we all got to be part of it, which was fun. But I think that's when we had to sort of crash course what the plan was and crash course learn all of the choreography for the final chorus of the song.

[6:29] Mo Brady: Yeah. But I want to say we did not find out until very late.

[6:33] Aaron Albano: What a New York dream. You like find out you're going to be on the Tonys and you're like, quick, teach me the choreo. We're going to be on the Tonys. That is such a theater dream. I'm obsessed. All right. So first, let's pour one out for the non-nominated shows. The non-nominated musicals are Scandalous, Hands on a Hard Body, Chaplin, and Jekyll and Hyde. Did you see any of those?

[6:54] Mo Brady: I saw Jekyll and Hyde. I think that's the only one though. I didn't see the other three.

[6:57] Aaron Albano: I saw four of them.

[6:58] Mo Brady: Oh, you saw all of them? Work.

[7:00] Aaron Albano: Yeah, I saw four of them because I wasn't performing on Broadway that season. So I had the time. I remember thinking Scandalous was just that. I remember thinking that Jekyll and Hyde, it was like, why is this on Broadway? This does not feel like a Broadway show to me. I remember having a lot of esteem for Chaplin, although not thinking it was like a show that really hit me. I liked Hands on a Hard Body. It's kind of like the, you know, it's like an ensemble pop rock show. And so it sort of fits up in my alley. I remember thinking it was problematic, but...

[7:28] Mo Brady: Well, both of those shows, I think Chaplin and Hands on a Hard Body are examples of shows where I'm like, I wish there was more footage in places because I didn't really know any of it. And I feel like at the time, all of us were like, meh, meh, meh, meh, meh, like theater snobby, annoying people, which is sort of the reason why we wanted to do this to begin with, to call out these shows that were sort of lost to time because they didn't get the acclaim that they could have had on these Tony performances. Because this was essentially, would you say that it was Rob McClure's like sort of entrance onto the Broadway scene?

[8:02] Aaron Albano: Yeah, I think at this point, all he had done was Princeton and Avenue Q. And people were like, oh, who's this guy who all he did before was replace in Avenue Q. And now he's like, incredible. Yeah, there was basically...

[8:13] Mo Brady: And now he's like a Broadway icon. Because I remember whisperings and mutterings of him being great in Chaplin, but there's enough stuff.

[8:19] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[8:19] Mo Brady: And I wish there were.

[8:20] Aaron Albano: Yeah. This is also the season in which Jesse Mueller and Andy Karl are in Yellowface.

[8:27] Mo Brady: Yes, they are.

[8:28] Aaron Albano: In The Mystery of Edwin Drood. I just want to sort of like acknowledge that.

[8:33] Mo Brady: With a side note that I think that the show, The Mystery of Edwin Drood sort of justifies like, oh, isn't it weird that these Caucasian English actors are dressed up as Indian actors wearing yellowface?

[8:49] Aaron Albano: The conceit of the show, and it's suspect anyway, but the conceit of the show is that it's this troop of actors playing these roles. It's sort of very similar to, do you remember that scandalous production of The Nightingale that happened in La Jolla Playhouse? It was an old Duncan Cheek Steven Sater show that got a lot of press because it was a show featuring a lot of Asian characters set in China that was cast not that way.

[9:16] Mo Brady: Got it.

[9:17] Aaron Albano: And I think the conceit of the show, much like The Mystery of Edwin Drood, is that it is a troop of actors that are playing these roles. And you know, it's not great.

[9:30] Mo Brady: It feels like in the world of 2013, not feeling that long ago, I was like, would we still do this? I mean, would we not cause a ruckus as a theater community, as a quote unquote, woke theater community?

[9:43] Aaron Albano: I mean, definitely now. I mean, apparently, again, like in 2013, we were all in this like very heavy veil of ignorance where we thought we were past all of this. And in recent days, we've realized we are absolutely, absolutely, absolutely not. So yeah, I don't think this could happen now.

[10:02] Mo Brady: Like unless you're watching Fox News, and then racism doesn't exist. So congratulations.

[10:09] Aaron Albano: Congrats.

[10:30] Mo Brady: Let's talk about this opening number.

[10:32] Aaron Albano: The opening number is the best.

[10:34] Mo Brady: Is there a better opening number in your mind?

[10:37] Aaron Albano: Is a mid 30 year old person who probably has not seen the majority of Tony Award telecasts? The only one that jumps out to me is the 2004 One Night Only with Hugh Jackman.

[10:49] Mo Brady: Oh, I did like that one too. Yeah.

[10:51] Aaron Albano: That one's really great. And that's that one. Hopefully we get to watch that at some point in this.

[10:56] Mo Brady: Put that paper in the basket.

[10:57] Aaron Albano: I know, right? Put the paper in the basket. Because that one did a lot of the same things where like it included shows that weren't in the season that year, because I remember it started with the three girl groups of the season, not even of the season that year, but like of the season that were on Broadway at the time.

[11:14] Mo Brady: Right. It was the Dynamites from Hairspray, it was the Urchins from Little Shop, and it was the Radio from Carolina ReChange.

[11:22] Aaron Albano: And it was awesome. And then it went into like the Rockettes. So they were like brought in this like Radio City theme. And then like this production, it ended with like a big blowout of all the shows that happened to be on Broadway at the time. And I loved it. I loved it a lot.

[11:40] The Ensemblist: Break it down. For someone who hasn't seen it or is not in your camp, why is the 2013 Tony Award opener the best Tony Award opener?