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

[0:28] Mo Brady: Welcome listeners to our 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 the previous Tony Awards and discuss the performances, the telecast, and the season as a whole. So let's continue our conversation about the 2013 Tony Awards.

[0:56] Aaron Albano: Alright, we are talking about the performances. Are you ready? Okay, here we go. There were a lot of them. There were a lot, especially coming out in 1991. I was like, there are so many performances in this. Okay, so let's want to just go from the top. I think this is where we show our cards to the audience. Okay, you are more of a Matilda fan. I love Matilda. And I'm more of a Kinky Boots fan. So let's put that out there. And we will continue to know those things as we head down. Okay, so there's our biases out on the floor. Okay, so the first performance we have is Matilda's, where they performed a medley of naughty, revolting children, when I grow up, and then finishing with a sort of a reprise of naughty. Mo, what did you think of the performance?

[1:46] Mo Brady: On the whole, this is a good Tony performance. It is busy, like the show. I always think it's very helpful to think about Matilda as a pantomime in the style of British pantomime, right? It is supposed to be that like flashy, not so deep of characters show that you go to around Christmastime with your British family in England, right? That is literally the origin of Matilda. So I always think that it's helpful to be like, this is flashy. There's not very much that's deep there. And it's like bells and whistles, bells and whistles, bells and whistles. I'm gonna kill you. But okay, keep going. And so this did that. Lots of bells and whistles. We're like dancing on the desk. And we got the scooters and like people are doing all the things like Thane Jasperson is punching in the air. You know, coats are being thrown. We're doing the thing. I think it's a little hard to follow like the show itself.

[2:39] Aaron Albano: Interesting. Okay. See, I loved every second of it. I think I mean, again, because I love this. I love it so much. I think the show is so great. But I thought and maybe it was because it was first that I felt that sort of set the tone of the way a show uses the space of Radio City Music Hall. Sure. Because they had like 50 desks with 50 children. And I was like, oh, this show has taken over this space. And I am here for it. And again, when you have like a bunch of what third graders super excited to be at the Tony's and just raw, infectious energy, singing revolting children, like you can't help but get sort of drawn into that energy. And then we have Miss Honey that brings it down to the sentiment of it all.

If they had dropped those swings, I would have cried. I think it was a good variety package of what the show has to offer. It felt so young and so free. And I was here for all of it. And afterward, I had a hard time feeling like any other show really filled that space the way Matilda did.

[3:50] Mo Brady: I'm gonna give you that. I'm gonna give you that no other show filled the space. Yeah, there are so many desks. There are so many kids and they had all the swings on for revolting children. You're just like, there are so many kids. There's like twice as many kids. Well, the kids were double cast. So all of them were on stage. And then the ones they couldn't fit the kids swings in the show were the kids who were standing behind Miss Honey at the beginning. Because I love a show that incorporates their swings forever and ever on that. It is a good performance. We'll move forward. What did you think of Bring It On?

[4:24] Aaron Albano: This is a show that I like. I saw the show three times. I enjoy this song. I think it is a good song. What did you think of this song? It's all happening by the company of Bring It On.

[4:33] Mo Brady: I mean, talk about a show that did not feel like they filled the space. I thought that this was not a good choice for a Tony performance. I like the song. I think It's All Happening is a great song. But I'm like, it's Bring It On. We know the property. Where's the giant cheerleading routine? Instead we got and again, I love this creative team. I love the genius they're able to bring to a show. I felt like the storytelling of this song was eaten up by the space. And none of the cameras knew how to film it. Like no one knew what to look at. And I feel like and I love him dearly. Andy's choreography is too subtle for this space. At least in this number. I think it's a much stronger piece when it's on stage at the St. James.

[5:35] Aaron Albano: Here's the thing. This is after the show is closed and months after the show is closed.

[5:41] Mo Brady: No, I remember that this was like, hey, anybody who's in town, we're not going to house you. But if you want to come back, we'll stage a number for the Tony.

[5:48] Aaron Albano: Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, this happened with Spring Awakening too like, if you want to house yourself, you can come back to New York. But if you don't live in New York, then we're not going to house you fast. Like, so because Bring It On on Broadway had so many people who were not typically Broadway performers came from the cheerleading world. Those people went back to their non New York City homes after the show closed, and then didn't all come back to do this performance. So it didn't have it didn't have the kind of excitement of it.

[6:30] Mo Brady: What I think is kind of incredible watching the number is you're like, Oh my god, it's Adrian Warren, Taylor Louderman, Ariana DeBose. And then you've got like a company that also includes Gregory Haney and Neil Haskell and all the like, it's it's a fantastic company. And you're watching them perform. And you're like, you're all incredible. And you're gonna be doing incredible things in the next decade.

[6:44] Aaron Albano: For real. Yeah, that's this is sort of messy. This is Yeah, I'm like, this is your entrance onto the scene in this number that is frankly forgettable.

[6:51] Mo Brady: Yeah. Cinderella in my own little corner slash impossible slash 10 minutes ago. Cinderella, another fine performance. Another fine performance. These drag race reveals those dress reveals are so good. Laura's was good. Victoria's was suspect a little bit. But Laura's, especially with that pull string, it reminded me of Elsa's change and frozen at the Hyperion.

[7:16] Aaron Albano: Correct. That is a correct feeling. You're correctly feeling that feeling. I can tell you that as a former performer, I would have spent literally zero time thinking about acting or connecting with other performers on stage. But prior to that, and I would have spent 100% of my brain cells thinking about pulling that string.

[7:33] Mo Brady: Correct. Like so mean. So mean. So rude. Oh, Motown the musical. Get ready dancing in the street. You're like ABC, stop the world. Like talk about a number where you don't need any set dressing to carry the energy of the piece. No, it's literally dancing in the streets at ABC. You're like, it's literally an entire company just like energy. Yeah, that medley, they're just they're dancing. And it's I do wish like, we had less sort of camera cuts. And we just got to see the whole thing.

[8:13] Aaron Albano: You ensemble lover, you would want to watch the whole thing.

[8:16] Mo Brady: Yeah, because it was great. But then we get to the Jackson five, who are also can we raise a glass to the late Eric Lawan Summers who was in Jackson five. He's one of my dearest friends, and we miss him incredibly. But one of my favorite sort of fun facts of this performance now in 2020, is that we just saw the Jackson five killing it on stage. Now we also have Aphrom Sykes, who will be playing Michael Jackson in the new Michael Jackson musical as one of the Jackson five behind the character he's going to be playing seven years later.

[8:54] Aaron Albano: Gosh, it's so good. I love Broadway. Eat that Broadway history.

[9:00] Mo Brady: Alright, Annie Annie, is there anything? Is there anything to say about Annie other than like looks like a production of Annie?

[9:15] Aaron Albano: Sure does. Like I felt like they did a really good job of saying like, you know, and this is Annie. Well, firstly, also, again, going back to our like, intros, where Spider Man introduces Annie.

[9:33] Mo Brady: Love it.

[9:33] Aaron Albano: I was like, what is the connection here? And I had to rewind because I missed it.

[9:37] Mo Brady: It's that they were both comics.

[9:39] Aaron Albano: Yeah, it's both. You are you're doing so much shade of these. I mean, I was like, wait, it's got to be before I rewound. I was like, it's got to be because they're both New York shows, right? It's got to be because they both take place in New York. And then I rewound and I was like, no, it's that they're both comic book.

[9:55] Mo Brady: They're trying. These people are trying so hard. Why do you? Why do you hate these intros?

[10:01] Aaron Albano: I don't hate these intros. I just think they're very funny.

[10:03] Mo Brady: You monster. A Christmas story. Red Ryder.

[10:07] Aaron Albano: Oh my gosh.

[10:08] Mo Brady: Red Ryder, BB gun and shoot your eye out. This is this is a Tony performance. This is like, where you say, Alright, folks, this is the most entertaining section. Is it about the leads in the show? Not really.

[10:20] Aaron Albano: Not even a little bit.

[10:22] Mo Brady: But it's a great number and it's going to make you pull out that credit card. So we're going to show it to you.

[10:27] Aaron Albano: Uh huh. You're going to find a production of Christmas story this Christmas and go watch and hope that it's as good as this number.

[10:34] Mo Brady: Because she is great. Caroline O'Connor is great in the number. P.S. Those of you wondering who that is. Not only was she in the Christmas story, but she was Roxanne in the Moulin Rouge movie.

[10:45] Aaron Albano: Yes, she was.

[10:47] Mo Brady: Uh huh. And she was just as electric in this as she was in that movie. Almost as electric as the young tapping kid, Luke Spring.

[10:57] Aaron Albano: I remember watching the show and being like, Shut up, shut up. You've never seen someone cleanly tap that well.

[11:04] Mo Brady: And he was like 10. They built a show around him.

[11:07] Aaron Albano: They built this whole number around him. And you're like, Yeah, that kid is rude. That kid is so rude. I'm mad.

[11:14] Mo Brady: I watched that and I was like, You must be joking. How dare he? You know that like Laura Osnes and Victoria Clark are just like nervous, beyond nervous about pulling the strings in their Cinderella costumes. And this kid is like not nervous at all about making the cleanest taps in his life.

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