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

[0:12] Aaron Albano: And I'm Aaron Albano.

[0:15] Moe Brady: The greater the good, the harder the blow. When going to hide, know how to get there. And how to get back. And eat first. Welcome, listeners, to our miniseries about the Tonys, bringing you all the drama behind the drama of a theater season in Broadway history.

[0:32] Aaron Albano: In each podcast episode, we watch a telecast of a previous Tony Awards, not only the performances but the opening and the speeches to see how it all reflects on the season as a whole.

[0:42] Moe Brady: So let's dive in and talk about the 1988 Tony Awards.

[0:46] Aaron Albano: Yes!

[0:47] Moe Brady: The 42nd Annual Tony Awards were held on June 5th, 1988 at Broadway's Minskoff Theater and hosted by Angela Lansbury, at that time a four-time Tony Award winner for Best Actress in a Musical. Heading into the ceremony were her three shows tied for the most nominations, Into the Woods, The Phantom of the Opera, and the Patti LuPone-helmed Lincoln Center revival of Anything Goes.

[1:11] Aaron Albano: The season's other two nominated musicals, Romance/Romance and Sarafina!, both had five nominations. Also in the pack for Best Revival was a Joel Grey-led revival of Cabaret.

[1:23] Moe Brady: But aside from the telecast itself, what was happening at the time, Aaron?

[1:27] Aaron Albano: 1987 and 88 marked the beginning of the end of an era on the world stage. President Ronald Reagan was rounding out his last year in office, with Dukakis and H.W. Bush running to be his successor, and the Cold War was still alive and well, though soon nearing its own demise three years later.

[1:43] Moe Brady: While the latter was present in this season's Chess, the rest of the Broadway landscape was dealing with its own invasion from the British, namely Cameron Mackintosh. With last season's Tony winner Les Misérables at Broadway, Cats comfortably prowling along in its fifth year at the Winter Garden, and Starlight Express skating smoothly at the Gershwin, it seemed like nothing would temper the tempestuous force of the West End.

[2:09] Aaron Albano: On more serious notes, as the AIDS crisis continued to rage across the nation, 1987 and 1988 marked the founding of two organizations that would eventually become one, Equity Fights AIDS in October of 87 and Broadway Cares in February of 88. This season also marked the loss of two titans in the Broadway industry, Michael Bennett in July and Bob Fosse in September, both in 1987.

[2:33] Moe Brady: Both were mentioned in the broadcast, and Bennett was given an end-of-show tribute by past and present company members of Dreamgirls and A Chorus Line.

[2:42] Aaron Albano: Careful the wish you make, wishes are children. Careful the path they take, wishes come true, not free.

[3:01] Moe Brady: All right, as we always do, let's first pour one out for the non-nominated musicals. And this year, there were so many non-nominated musicals. Many, and they were all unequivocal flops in terms of their running time.

[3:17] Aaron Albano: I feel like there were a lot of Broadway productions in general that weren't nominated. It was just a big season, and you can only fill so many slots, I guess.

[3:26] Moe Brady: I want to bring up a few of those non-nominated shows. Now, most infamous is probably Carrie, the musical that had five performances at the August Wilson, with Betty Buckley, Charlotte Dembois, and Scott Wise in the cast.

[3:41] Aaron Albano: Almost equally known as a flop is Chess, which was at the Imperial, had Judy Kuhn and Judy McClain, but ran for 68 performances, so significantly better.

[3:53] Moe Brady: That's all?

[3:54] Aaron Albano: Yeah, isn't that wild?

[3:55] Moe Brady: That's all?

[3:56] Aaron Albano: I guess that's not what we wanted.

[3:57] Moe Brady: I guess not. I mean, a Cold War musical, that could be rough.

[4:01] Aaron Albano: Right. Some of the other short-lived musicals of the season were Male, which starred Michael Rupert and Brian Stokes Mitchell at the Music Box.

[4:09] Moe Brady: Work.

[4:10] Aaron Albano: Gospel at Colonus, led by Morgan Freeman, played 66 performances at the Lunt-Fontanne.

[4:15] Moe Brady: Wait a second, Morgan Freeman was in a musical?

[4:17] Aaron Albano: He was, like, the narrator. He was the messenger. So have you ever, have you seen the movie Camp?

[4:21] Moe Brady: Yeah. Duh. Who hasn't?

[4:23] Aaron Albano: Duh. Well, we're the right age for it. If you're listening to this podcast, you need to pause right now and go watch Camp.

[4:29] Moe Brady: Yeah, we'll see you in 90 minutes. Okay, so the opening of Camp is a song from this show, the Gospel.

[4:35] Aaron Albano: How Shall I See You Through My Tears is from Gospel at Colonus?

[4:38] Moe Brady: Yeah, for sure. Sasha Allen giving you that opening number with, like, the tears coming down her face.

[4:43] Aaron Albano: Right. That number is from this show. And so Morgan Freeman, because it's all sort of like a Greek chorus kind of style, he plays, I think, a role called the messenger. So it's, I think it's a spoken role.

[4:55] Moe Brady: Oh, interesting.

[4:56] Aaron Albano: In addition, we had Teddy and Alice, which was led by Len Cariou and Beth Fowler. It was about Teddy Roosevelt. Nancy Opel played Eleanor Roosevelt.

[5:06] Moe Brady: Remember, she was in one of our flops from last episode, 1998.

[5:10] Aaron Albano: Oh, you're right.

[5:11] Moe Brady: She was in Triumph of Love. So Nancy Opel, she got that good flop.

[5:15] Aaron Albano: Late Night Comic played four performances at the Walter Kerr.

[5:19] Moe Brady: Okay.

[5:20] Aaron Albano: And a musical called Rosa, which played 12 performances at the Royal.

[5:23] Moe Brady: I don't know much about it, but I'm just going to read from the description on Playbill Vault.

[5:28] Aaron Albano: Okay.

[5:29] Moe Brady: A former prostitute and concentration camp survivor takes care of the children of prostitutes in Paris, including one boy who is searching for his real parents.

[5:38] Aaron Albano: So a light comedy.

[5:39] Moe Brady: A light comedy.

[5:41] Aaron Albano: Wow. Okay. Yeah. I don't know any of these shows other than the first two we mentioned.

[5:45] Moe Brady: Yeah. I mean, we don't really have like four performance, five performance, 12 performance flops in that same way. You think about like the last time it happened, you would say like, oh, it was Glory Days or it was High Fidelity.

[5:56] Aaron Albano: But even those are more than 10 years ago now.

[5:58] Moe Brady: Yeah. I mean, and even like when we consider flops nowadays, aside from like those, they'll go like four months. They'll go like six months. They won't go 12 performances.

[6:04] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[6:09] Moe Brady: I guess we have more money saved up nowadays.

[6:11] Aaron Albano: I guess maybe.

[6:12] Moe Brady: Okay. Let's go to the telecast.

[6:14] Aaron Albano: First and foremost.

[6:15] Moe Brady: We're under two hours.

[6:16] Aaron Albano: We are under two hours again. It is possible, folks. It is possible.

[6:20] Moe Brady: It is possible. And this time we got all the awards. Did you notice that?

[6:24] Aaron Albano: Well, part of the reason that maybe we got through all the awards is there was no opening number.

[6:30] Moe Brady: No opening number. It was like an opening speech. The opening number, quote unquote, is Angela Lansbury, our host, performing a monologue about her grandfather giving a labor party speech and how it influenced her to pursue a life in the theater.

[6:45] Aaron Albano: Behind her, dancers mine performances inspired by the shows nominated for the season.

[6:52] Moe Brady: Yes.

[6:53] Aaron Albano: There is no singing and it's not like dancing. It's more like posing.

[6:57] Moe Brady: Like walking around, like parading.

[6:59] Aaron Albano: It's parading. I will say it's very elegant, but it's definitely this sort of Vondel probe of the stage instead of like an actual number.

[7:11] Moe Brady: I wonder if we'll ever find out where the jump happens from no opening number to opening number.

[7:18] Aaron Albano: Oh, sure. Because '91, we still didn't have an opening number, but '98, we did.

[7:24] Moe Brady: So it has to happen in that seven years, right? Theoretically, it does.

[7:28] Aaron Albano: There's only one way to find out.

[7:30] Moe Brady: Let's talk about some of the winners and their speeches, because this to me felt like more of a community party than any other Tony Awards that I've seen so far.

[7:40] Aaron Albano: Oh, I would wholeheartedly agree. I even wrote down, I was like, it feels so much chiller than when it's at Radio City Music Hall.

[7:47] Moe Brady: Maybe it's like the energy that Angela Lansbury brings, or maybe that's just what kind of the Tony Awards was.

[7:53] Aaron Albano: Oh, maybe. Possibly.

[7:54] Moe Brady: It was more of like the thing that we do, right? One of our very first winners is Judy Kaye for playing Carlotta in The Phantom of the Opera.

[8:03] Aaron Albano: She won and I was like, wait, Carlotta's a Tony Award winning role?

[8:06] Moe Brady: Yeah, for sure. Her speech is great. I love the reference to the role. She says, you know, in that Carlotta voice, these things do happen. I love that moment.

[8:18] Aaron Albano: Mo, first replacement.

[8:20] Moe Brady: Oh my gosh, here I come. Non-traditional casting. You know what Phantom of the Opera needs is more white men.

[8:27] Aaron Albano: Judy Kaye says in her speech, I love doing 62 cities in 18 weeks, but to be back here is great. So like she's referencing this sort of like touring life that she had, right? What did you think about her speech? Anything stick out to you?

[8:40] Moe Brady: It was very chill. It was very like communal. But the one thing that really hit it home for me was at the end where she says, and here's to absent friends, like her speech definitely takes a turn from being light and comedic and happy to this really sentimental moment where she looks up and like holds up her statue and says that. It really struck me deeply because also thinking about when this was, I was like, wait, this is 1988.

[9:07] Aaron Albano: Oh yeah. It's very much the very beginning of the AIDS crisis, not of AIDS.

[9:13] Moe Brady: Yeah. And so thinking about that, I was like, wait, because we just took stock of it in '91. I was looking around post that. I was like, there are no ribbons yet. And I just had to start wondering, I was like, is this still a silenced issue at this point? Like she can't say it out loud. She's referencing people that she has lost and the people the community has lost. Where in 1988 was the discussion about AIDS at that point? I honestly didn't know.

[9:39] Aaron Albano: I mean, and then reflecting on that, that like Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS, granted that's two separate entities, started this year. So I was like, this must have been very heavily on the community's heart at that point.

[9:51] Moe Brady: Sure. Well, we're going to get a huge tribute to Michael Bennett towards the end of the telecast. And he passed away from AIDS-related lymphoma.

[9:59] Aaron Albano: So, you know, we sort of start and end the telecast.

[10:02] Moe Brady: Yeah. OK.

[10:14] Aaron Albano: These best actress categories are stacked, Aaron.

[10:20] Moe Brady: They are stacked. They really are.

[10:23] Aaron Albano: Like you couldn't make this up. No.

[10:25] Moe Brady: For best actress in a play, it's Joan Allen, Blythe Danner, Glenda Jackson and Frances McDormand.

[10:32] Aaron Albano: For best actress in a musical, it's Joanna Gleason, Alison Frazier, Patti LuPone and Judy Kuhn.

[10:39] Moe Brady: None of these people are like sort of one hit wonders, right? They're all sort of like titans of the theater or the titans of the performing arts.

[10:46] Aaron Albano: And you're just like, oh, man, I didn't see any of them. So I guess I can't I can't tell you which was good because they're all really good actors.

[10:54] Moe Brady: Exactly. Well, because also like and no Tino shade, the Tonys are not above nominating Hollywood for Hollywood's sake. But these especially in the in the play category, these actresses are well-proven media.

[11:07] Aaron Albano: They're the real deal.

[11:10] Moe Brady: They're the real deal. Like I'm just like and like none of them are only great theater performers. It's like four legends, right?

[11:18] Aaron Albano: That's what I mean. That's what I'm saying. Because sometimes you'll like arguments can be made that people are nominated just because of their like star power.

[11:27] Moe Brady: Right. Sure. These are heavy hitters. Yes, these are heavy hitters.

[11:30] Aaron Albano: And then the musical category, forget about it.

[11:33] Moe Brady: Oh my gosh. Can we talk about the amount of people who weren't present?

[11:37] Aaron Albano: Well, not many people, but like three awards, two people.

[11:41] Moe Brady: Literally every time it happened, I wrote, oh, too cool. I started calling them the two cool Tonys.

[11:48] Aaron Albano: Well, two of them were for Maria Bjornsson for best scenic design and best costume design of The Phantom of the Opera.

[11:54] Moe Brady: I mean, I was like, I guess you couldn't hop over the pond for.

[11:57] Aaron Albano: I don't know. There's lots of other like the lighting designer of The Phantom of the Opera was there. Everybody else was there.

[12:02] Moe Brady: Maybe she was having personal issues.

[12:35] Moe Brady: Two-minute scenes performed. Like, John Lithgow and B.D. Wong do a scene from A Butterfly.

[12:45] Aaron Alvano: And, spoiler alert, the best play is announced after the best musical. I was shocked. I was so bored. I literally was like, because they announced best musical, and I was like, okay, cool, so we're done. And then Lily Tomlin came out. I know, and I was like, what is she gonna do? And I said, what? I said, wait, we haven't had this award yet? Yes, as children of the 21st century. Yeah, I just assumed at that point, yeah, the best play must have been announced, like, at, like, minute 35. It's probably... Yeah, that I just, like, missed or something. And I, like, after it happened, I feel like I remember a story where back in the day, in the days of yore, like, the Tonys, the musical and play would, like, alternate one year after the other, like, one year, like, musical would be the last.

And then the other year, play would be the last. And so maybe that's what happened. But a part of me thinks that I just made that story up. So I don't know. It's a great story, though. What do you think of the performances?

[13:47] Moe Brady: They are like full two-minute audition scenes. Of the play performances that we've seen thus far, this is by far my favorite.

[13:54] Aaron Alvano: Me too. It just worked. It just worked. With the exception of three of the four of these plays, this worked really well. I'd say Walk in the Woods was a little rough.

[14:05] Moe Brady: It was a little rough. That's the one on the park bench with Sam Waterston.

[14:09] Aaron Alvano: Okay, very young Sam Waterston. Yes. Oh, my God. So young. So young, which you know, when you look and you're like, Oh, that looks like a young Sam Waterston. And you're like, Oh, it is a young Sam Waterston. I know I lived. I mean, that performance aside, I was pretty riveted. I was like, Okay, these are great scenes to be marketing for these shows. Like, I'm interested to see these shows. Like when we talk about like a musical having a good Tony Award performance number in it. I was like, Oh, M. Butterfly has a good Tony Award performance scene in it. Like it was so it was it was clean. It was concise. It was funny. It told you what the show was about. It didn't give away too much. And it totally made me want to see more. And it made me see why B.D. won. Yeah, like it was the perfect scene.

[15:00] Moe Brady: Well, and the best part is to like, we had a scene from Speed the Plow. If this was a musical, we would have like seen all the numbers with Madonna in it. No question.

[15:07] Aaron Alvano: Sure. But because this was a play, and we wanted to represent the play as best as we could, like Madonna's in the show. However, we chose this two-man scene with mammoth banter for two minutes straight. Like I was like, Oh my God, I got my first thought I was like, Wait, this is a mammoth show. There's got to be so many f-bombs that we're just censoring out right now. They had to have practically learned a different scene for the Tonys.

[15:54] Moe Brady: My favorite performance of a non-musical at the 1988 Tonys was Madonna presenting the regional award for best theater to South Coast Repertory. Honestly, maybe say okay, so first off Madonna comes out and she introduces herself saying, I'm Madonna. What's work? No, we know. Like nobody doesn't know who you are. You're Madonna. She stops herself because the microphone has been like lifted up too short for her. She says into the mic, this microphone is too short, tries to fix it, and is yelled at by an unseen male voice saying don't touch that. She then responds into the mic. Okay, I'm obeying orders. She goes on says her speech stops herself halfway through. As she's leaning over this short mic saying this is ruining my posture. You can feel like the audience is like a little not on her side.

[16:41] Aaron Alvano: Oh, for sure.

[16:41] Moe Brady: Then she flips it. She says, I'm being punished for not coming to rehearsal today and the audience roars and you just feel like their minds you just feel the tension drop you can feel the sense of like judgment towards her drop and it just was like so perfect.

[17:05] Aaron Alvano: Yeah, it was that line that I was like, this is why you're an icon. You have a good you have a pretty good stage presence. Uh-huh. You're Madonna. Did any other speeches stick out to you?

[17:11] Moe Brady: Well, I loved Stephen Sondheim's speech.

[17:17] Aaron Alvano: Oh, yeah. Sort of reminded me of the Audra McDonald third win we watched in 1998. Where like, he didn't need to seem as gracious as he was. He seems really gracious.

[17:24] Moe Brady: Sure. To be winning this award for best score for Into the Woods. I almost think that that graciousness might have been a little bit in response to the applause that the audience gave because arguably this stopped the show for a little while. Would you agree or no?

[17:40] Aaron Alvano: I would agree. What we're seeing in real time is the backlash to the British invasion. I thought it would be that might be what it is. Because I was like, this was the award that was like, really between the two icons. Sure. Yes, the shows are the shows. But like, this is legit Sondheim versus Andrew Lloyd Webber. And Sondheim came out on top, and the American audience loses it. I never really realized that this whole British invasion and the backlash against it had a Tony Awards that was two shows really pitted against each other, right? The most revered British musical theater composer against the most revered American theater composer of the time.

[18:20] Moe Brady: Yeah, right. And like you said, this is an award where we're really saying do we like Sondheim or do we like Andrew Lloyd Webber?

[18:26] Aaron Alvano: Yeah, he seems so grateful. He makes a joke out of Lee Remick's presenting joke about Anyone Can Whistle being six of the happiest days of her life. He shouts out his ensemble. He shouts out James Lapine and their Sunday in the Park with George collaboration. And he ends by shouting out his rehearsal pianist, which is so classy. I was like that I was like, I mean, you know me, I'm like, obviously gonna love anybody who shouts out an ensemble. So I was like already melted. But then when he shouted out his rehearsal pianist, I was like, I'm done. Sondheim, you can do no wrong.

[19:11] Moe Brady: One night only. That's all you have to say.

[19:20] Aaron Alvano: I want to talk about the passing of Bob Fosse and Michael Bennett. Okay, one who gets an incredible amount of acknowledgement in the show and one who gets some. Yeah, but not. I mean, this is showing my bias. But like, I think like as someone who never saw A Chorus Line on Broadway, never did A Chorus Line on Broadway. I think of Fosse in 2020 as like more of a musical theater titan than Michael Bennett. That is my own personal bias. And so to see this ceremony where Michael Bennett is like lauded, revered in an in memoriam tribute. But then the only mention of Bob Fosse is when Chita Rivera uses her presentation to honor Bob Fosse. She absolutely does. When she's presenting Best Choreography.

It's fascinating to me. It's very, it's very, it's very fascinating. Because towards the beginning of this telecast, I realized that this was the season with the Michael Bennett tribute. I've never seen this before. It's one of my favorite Musical Mondays videos. We'll get there in a second. But knowing that that was coming, and then when Chita spoke about Bob Fosse, that's when I was like, wait, did they pass away the same year? Because I had no idea. And I couldn't help but be like, okay, what politics were here? And I didn't I don't know the politics either. But it feels like it must have there must be something right.

[20:39] Moe Brady: I mean, I mean, I guess at the end of the day, not that it's like a competition, but Fosse does get a whole show that's gonna win like in a decade or two. But I mean, of course, A Chorus Line is still running on Broadway in 1988. It doesn't close until 1990. So it's still we've got that sort of the show that changed Broadway.

[20:59] Aaron Alvano: Yeah, 13 years earlier is still running. And I'm also wondering if it's also an aspect where because this is not history at this point, this is real-time events. As we saw in Fosse/Verdon, he actively tried to leave Broadway behind and go become a film director, film producer. And so I'm wondering if that had something to do with it. I don't know. This is all speculative. I don't know anything.

[21:18] Moe Brady: Let's talk about this number. Let's leave the competition aside. Why is this one of Aaron's favorite Musical Mondays videos?

[21:24] Aaron Alvano: Oh, because it's amazing. It's I mean, I have nothing else for you.

[21:29] Moe Brady: Hey, okay. Okay. Okay, let's go. Yes, I've done A Chorus Line. I love that show. I love the choreography. I love the history of the show, all the above. And also Dreamgirls is iconic. It's beautiful. I love it. It's wonderful. Seeing the original dreams singing One Night Only and strutting across the stage, weaved together with Chorus Line dancers and Donna McKechnie. Forget about it. I like was I live my life. But there's something about watching 70s and 80s performers dance 70s and 80s choreography that is so raw. That kind of hunger. I think it's thrilling to watch every single one of those people. And then when Donna comes out, it's iconic. I love it. I love every minute of it.

[22:16] Moe Brady: Okay, we're gonna split this into two. Yeah, parts again, because there's just too much to talk about. Next episode, we're gonna talk about the nominated performances and give our Yelp review.

[22:24] Aaron Alvano: Oh, yes. And our Yelp review. At the end of this part one, we're going to randomly select the next Tony Award telecast to watch. So you have a full week instead of only four days. Yep. You're welcome, everyone.

[22:35] Moe Brady: All right. So here's our fifth Tony Award telecast. So yeah, so let's select our fifth Tony cast. Tony-a-cast. This is our fifth Tony cast. It's not bad. I know, right? Okay, I put a handful of infamous Tony years, although there are less now, into a basket and I'm going to pick, drumroll please, Moe.

[22:57] Aaron Alvano: Next week's Tony telecast that we will be watching is from 2009.

[23:04] Moe Brady: Tony telecast that we will be watching is from 2009. 2009! Was that In the Heights?

[23:14] Aaron Alvano: Billy Elliot vs. Next to Normal.

[23:20] Moe Brady: Oh, okay. All right. To be prepared for our next week's recap, be sure to do your homework with us on the 2009 Tony Awards, but join us on Friday to finish out the 1988 Tony Award recap. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Moe Brady.

[23:31] Aaron Alvano: And by me, Aaron Alvano. Special thanks to Wasif Sami for providing the background research for this Broadway season. There are two ways you can be helping The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and the second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts, on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening, everybody! Until next time!