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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.

[0:08] Mo Bredy: And I'm Mo Bredy.

[0:21] Aaron Albano: Welcome listeners to our mini-series about the Tonys, looking into the drama behind the drama of a theater season in Broadway history. In each podcast episode, we watch an episode of a previous Tony Awards, not only the performances, but the opening and speeches to see how it reflects the season as a whole. So let's dive in and talk about the 2019 Tony Awards.

[0:41] Mo Bredy: The 73rd Annual Tony Awards were held June 9th, 2019 at Radio City Music Hall with James Corden hosting for his second time. Heading into the ceremony, Hadestown led with 14 nominations followed by Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations with 12, Tootsie with 11, Beetlejuice with 8, and The Prom with 7. For those keeping note, those are five nominees for Best Musical, the first time that we've discussed a five nominee for Best Musical year here on the Tony Telecasts. However, not the first year. The first year was 2015, the year of Hamilton and others. In the running for Best Revival of a Musical were just a pair of shows, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma and the Roundabout Theatre revival of Kiss Me, Kate.

[1:30] Aaron Albano: That's where they took the number. They just moved one over to the Best Musical category. But aside from the telecast itself, what was happening at the time way back in 2019, Aaron?

[1:40] Mo Bredy: Well, Mo, as you and I know, the 2018-2019 season was the last complete season on Broadway since the 2019-2020 season was cut short this past March for two weeks, for two months. Just kidding, we're still here due to the coronavirus pandemic, but I digress. 2019 marked the third year of President Donald Trump's term in office, and while he was rarely, if not ever, mentioned by name, his presence definitely loomed in the broadcast. From poignant speeches speaking out against demagoguery and systemic discrimination, to other beautiful speeches uplifting representation and opportunity for immigrants and the disabled, and even in the content of the work being celebrated itself, this telecast, and this season as a whole, seemed to stand against all the hate and intolerance being shepherded by the recent administration. Struggles that continue within the Broadway community, as well as throughout the world, even into 2021.

[2:37] Mo Bredy: We got the beat! We got the beat! We got the beat! We got the beat! We got the beat!

[2:46] Aaron Albano: So, how-

[2:48] Mo Bredy: This really hit you. I don't know why it didn't hit me, but you were like, deeply into the fact that this is the last Tony's that we had.

[2:55] Aaron Albano: Yeah, this hit me really hard. It surprised me as much as it surprised you, to be honest. But watching, in all the other years we've done, obviously, we've watched them sort of as a history of our industry. And so, watching this telecast, with it being so recent history, and having nothing afterward, Hadestown would still be open right now. Ain't Too Proud would still be open right now. So many of these presenters were presenting awards, but also teasing the shows that would have happened this year. Sutton Foster is teasing Music Man. Anthony Ramos is teasing the In the Heights movie. Jesse Tyler Ferguson is teasing the Take Me Out revival. Teasing all of these shows for next season, completely oblivious to what's going to happen. It just was a lot. It was really difficult to watch. And I think another reason why it was super striking to me, was that this is the first telecast we've watched in the Trump era.

[3:58] Mo Bredy: I don't know. Tell me if you agree or not. But that presence sort of felt like, to me, it loomed over the whole thing. And weirdly enough, no one mentioned him by name. I think that was on purpose. But the themes of the shows this year, like Gary, the sequel to Titus Andronicus.

[4:15] Aaron Albano: Oh yeah, Taylor Mac basically says, his synopsis of the play he wrote, Gary, is basically referencing Trump.

[4:23] Mo Bredy: And Heidi Schreck, hopefully we've all watched her play at this point on Amazon Prime, What the Constitution Means to Me. If you have not, go watch it. It's amazing.

[4:32] Aaron Albano: So good.

[4:32] Mo Bredy: But she also, in her synopsis, is like, we're envisioning a better, more humane future for this country. The acceptance speeches, Celia Keenan-Bolger's is about racial tension. Rachel Chavkin's, which we'll talk about more later, was about systemic inequity within our industry. Ali Stroker's, Sergio Trujillo's, Bryan Cranston's, they're all... All their speeches feel like they are in response to the Trump era.

[4:59] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[5:00] Mo Bredy: For sure. This definitely hit me as, like the 1991 Tony Award telecast felt, in some ways, to be in response to the Iraq War. This telecast felt like it was in response to the Trump era.

[5:18] Aaron Albano: And I can't tell if it felt so much more in response to the Trump era, because we know all of the clues.

[5:26] Mo Bredy: Yes. Yes.

[5:27] Aaron Albano: Or if that's just because more people, more speeches were kind of like us against them, us against hate.

[5:35] Mo Bredy: Yeah. I couldn't tell either. In 40 years, the Mo and Aaron of the future, will they be able to see this as clearly as we do? Or is it because we live here?

[5:46] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[5:47] Mo Bredy: And we've lived here for the past four years. It's wild.

[5:49] Aaron Albano: Well, the Tonys aren't always like this. You know, sometimes the tension in the Tony Awards is much more about the theater industry.

[5:57] Mo Bredy: Yeah.

[5:57] Aaron Albano: In 1987 and 1988, it's about the British invasion, you know, it's about our industry. So sometimes the overall message is something that is specific to our industry. This telecast, to me, felt very much like it was not about our industry, but...

[6:16] Mo Bredy: It was about the country as a whole, about the world as a whole.

[6:33] Aaron Albano: All right. So now let's get to our for real part one, which is where we pour one out for the non-nominated musicals. This to me is hilarious because I've seen all of these. Usually when we're talking about the non-nominated musicals, I'm like Raggedy Ann ran for eight performances.

[6:49] Mo Bredy: But these were all shows that at least I saw.

[6:52] Aaron Albano: I was on tour during the 2018-2019 season. So I think I've seen some of them, but definitely you will be the authority.

[7:01] Mo Bredy: I can tell you my extensive feelings about all of them. But I will just say there were six non-nominated musicals, one of which we did see in this telecast. Just in a historical perspective, the shortest of these runs was 30 previews and 40 performances. So now think back to, you know, shows that ran literally a weekend.

[7:23] Aaron Albano: Different time.

[7:23] Mo Bredy: It's a different landscape. Okay. So our six non-nominated musicals, Head Over Heels, Getting the Band Back Together, Pretty Woman the Musical, King Kong, The Cher Show, and Be More Chill. Four out of the six were running during this telecast. Pretty Woman, King Kong, The Cher Show, Be More Chill all ran through the end of that summer with Head Over Heels running through January and Getting the Band Back Together, I think was mostly just a summer show from the summer before.

[7:51] Aaron Albano: I had a funny thought experiment. What if COVID had caused a theater shutdown a year earlier?

[7:59] Mo Bredy: Interesting.

[8:00] Aaron Albano: Which of these non-nominated musicals would have ended up with, you know, 10, 11 Tony nominations?

[8:09] Mo Bredy: Interesting.

[8:09] Aaron Albano: If theater would have shut down on March 12, the last opening would have been Be More Chill. We wouldn't have seen either revival. We wouldn't have seen Hadestown, Tootsie, Beetlejuice. So-

[8:21] Mo Bredy: That's a lot, man. Wow.

[8:23] Aaron Albano: We would have had a Tony Awards full of Head Over Heels, King Kong, The Prom, Be More Chill.

[8:29] Mo Bredy: And Beetlejuice?

[8:30] Aaron Albano: No, Beetlejuice was-

[8:31] Mo Bredy: No, Beetlejuice wasn't open yet?

[8:32] Aaron Albano: Yeah. Don't follow me down this path because I'm going to spend way too much time thinking about it. But it's a curious thought experiment.

[8:38] Mo Bredy: But it's an interesting, like, it just shows-

[8:41] Aaron Albano: All of these non-nominated musicals, all six of them opened before March 12, 2019.

[8:48] Mo Bredy: The landscape would have been wildly different.

[8:50] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[8:50] Mo Bredy: Wow.

[8:51] Aaron Albano: It's a sort of show that we got, like, even though it only was two months before the cutoff, we really got a half season this year.

[8:58] Mo Bredy: Yeah.

[8:59] Aaron Albano: But luckily we did not-

[9:01] Mo Bredy: We had a full season, guys.

[9:02] Aaron Albano: We had a full season last year, which led to a full Tonys, which was great.

[9:08] Mo Bredy: I, but I want to go back to your first point, which is it hit you that this was the last Tonys we had and everyone's mentioning, you know, Take Me Out, Music Man, the In the Heights movie. This to me just felt like a friggin' commercial from start to end.

[9:22] Aaron Albano: Sure.

[9:22] Mo Bredy: The speech is a little bit differently, but on this spectrum of theater education versus Broadway commercial, like we are all the way over at Broadway commercial in this one. And so it was really hard for me to get sort of emotionally invested in the fact that our industry is on pause when so many presenters are talking about, Sienna Miller's talking about the capacity of Broadway audiences.

[9:48] Aaron Albano: You know, she's saying like, Broadway audiences were 90% full, which was great for the featured actor in a play nominees, you know, the way that they sort of like turned those speeches into nothing about the category and just like commercial statistics for Broadway in general.

[10:10] Mo Bredy: Sure.

[10:10] Aaron Albano: I didn't notice it at the time, but having watched so many older-

[10:15] Mo Bredy: It's very industry focused and not in like a lifestyle way.

[10:18] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[10:19] Mo Bredy: And it's not funny either.

[10:20] Aaron Albano: It's not about the art and it's not like, let me entertain the crowd at home and in the theater. It was very much, let's use these pre-category announcement sentences as commercials.

[10:35] Mo Bredy: Oh, sure.

[10:36] Aaron Albano: But I think some of that is also like, we're now in the era of the funny host.

[10:43] Mo Bredy: So all the comedy was reserved for the host.

[10:46] Aaron Albano: Sure, sure, sure.

[10:47] Mo Bredy: So should we start at the very beginning, a very good place to start?

[10:50] Aaron Albano: Start at the very beginning, this opening number, we do it live.

[10:53] Mo Bredy: Okay.

[10:53] Aaron Albano: So this opening number, we start off with James Corden, our host for the second time, on a couch watching TV and dreaming about live theater.

[11:07] Mo Bredy: Strangely premonition.

[11:09] Aaron Albano: To which, during his sort of dreaming and pining, the curtain comes up and we-

[11:14] Mo Brady: House of Radio City Music Hall. We realized that the couch was actually on the stage of Radio City Music Hall facing upstage. And so when they fly out the back wall, you see all 5,000 seats of Radio City. It's a good moment. It is a good moment. And then like dancers start climbing out of the couch and overtaking his fantasy. You get sort of what we sometimes see in these opening numbers, which is like 16 dancers in sparkly white, silver, or gold outfits. I was surprised how early the Bryan Cranston jokes started. We loved Bryan Cranston in 2019. He was the Hugh Jackman of 2019, where everyone was like, ooh, a straight man. Let's make jokes about him. But then we get a device we've seen before.

We get the casts from all the nominated musicals and even some non running across the stage because live theater is frantic. And from then on, it's just a big production number about how much better live theater is. Although we keep returning to the joke that practical things about the TV world are cooler. I didn't think it was about better, but it was like necessary as part of the landscape. That's more of what I thought the thesis of the opening number was. Yes, TV gets us fame. Yes, TV gets us more money. And there are interesting stories being told on television, but there's nothing like doing it live for an audience. Okay, that I think was the thesis of the opening. That was the ideal message of the opening.

[12:51] Aaron Albano: You're saying that didn't resonate with you, Mr. Albano? I don't think so. I mean, okay, because here's, do I think the number was good? Do I think it was entertaining? Do I think it was cool? Yes. Oh, I thought the number was fine. Two things. Two things that I like butted up against in this opening number. I feel like it was trying to be bigger.

[13:10] Mo Brady: When you say bigger, you mean the 2013 Tony Award opening number?

[13:16] Aaron Albano: Yes. Neil Patrick Harris, jumping through a hoop, doing a magic trick, coming down the aisle with newsies and hanging off the side of a Tony Award. Yes. All the shows coming out at the very end, this big love letter to Broadway, love letter to live theater vibes. And I don't think it was successful at that. Because there was something about, and I don't know if it was just like, oh, I know what they're going for, and it's not working. I feel like the jokes about TV undercut the message about theater. It felt strangely like incohesive and thrown together.

[13:54] Mo Brady: I think these numbers are often thrown together.

[13:59] Aaron Albano: Sure. And then this is my other theory, which I've been building, and this may be controversial. I do not think James Corden is an authentic performer. Okay. I don't think that he taps into vulnerability and truth very well. He's very good at looking at the side camera and saying, the Late Late Show on CBS, America's Most Watched Network. Funny, funny. Obviously, he appreciates theater. But I do not feel either in this telecast or in the film version of The Prom, that he is an empathetic entry point into a love for theater. Interesting.

[14:37] Mo Brady: And so my inability to empathize with him in a way that I don't feel with Neil Patrick Harris, or even Hugh Jackman, I don't tap into any emotional moment in this opening number. Interesting. At me, folks.

[14:53] Aaron Albano: You clearly did not like James as a host. I didn't mind him as a host.

[14:59] Mo Brady: Well, interesting that we were relying on the host to be the comedic relief. Having just watched the 87 version, what is the equivalent of these comedic routines? Practicing your losing face, James's dad taking a FaceTime call, the be more chill James in the bathroom, the fake beefs between Ben Platt and Rachel Brosnahan. These were all, actually, I thought decently funny moments that were quite good. But in the previous ones that we've watched, we have not relied on a host for this many lulls.

[15:34] Aaron Albano: It's a trope that we definitely are more accustomed to in the 2000s, in the 2020s. I think it was weird because while they were funny, it was very, again, geared towards TV audiences. It was super like, our ratings suck, so we need to be more like the TV people. So when the camera hits your face and you lose, what are you going to look like? Which I was like, yo, these digs at Chris and Chenoweth are funny, but way harsh, Tai. K-Chen got some digs in this telecast. K-Chen, oh my gosh. But then like, and then the same thing with like, we need more drama, we need more like real housewives. And then showing how Broadway is actually really nice to each other. I found it funny, but there was definitely like a TV focus to this telecast.

[16:25] Mo Brady: Let's talk about how we do the plays, which was totally new, right? We let the playwrights speak.

[16:46] Aaron Albano: We don't show, we don't show B-roll. We don't do anything on stage. We don't put props on a pillar. We bring out the playwrights and we let them talk for 45 seconds or something. What did you think about this?

[16:58] Mo Brady: I think it worked for some, didn't work for others. Because I think it's like, if you're going to give the playwrights time on the passerelle, they got to stay on message, man. Yeah. Like from the get, Jez Butterworth went rogue. I think it was inconsistent in its success. And that was a problem of the form rather than the performers. Like Taylor Mack, a performer, explains this show in an interesting way. Heidi Schreck, a performer, like she literally uses the opening of her show as, so it felt like a performance in some way. And then she like, and then she like loops back in her mom, which is a part of the show. Like it was good, in my opinion. It was almost one of my favorite acceptance speeches, even though she didn't win any awards.

Correct. Yeah. Right. But then Jez Butterworth goes off script talking about his wife and how his wife was the inspiration for the play. And the writer of Ink is like clearly not a performer and very nervous to be up there as he's fidgeting with his hands. So I don't, it was successful, but I think it was successful because of the delivery of it. Not successful because it was a good way to show the place. The form was only successful if the executor, that's not the right word. If it was executed well.

[18:22] Mo Brady: Yeah. If it was executed well. Yeah, I would agree with that. So good effort, 2019.

[18:39] Aaron Albano: Let's end this part one with a look at the In Memoriam. Yeah. Which starts with Brian Stokes Mitchell honoring Marin Mazzie. And then Cynthia Erivo sings Can You Feel the Love Tonight. To this. I thought it was a gorgeous, of the ones that we've seen, again, it's a newer addition to the Tony Awards. I thought this was a really beautiful tribute in the ones that we've seen. I think it was really great to get really, really deep. This is the thing that hit the hardest in terms of the COVID reality that we live in, because this was only a year ago and I had forgotten the amount and who we had lost last year. And then thinking towards the next Tony telecast, just how much this section is going to have to grow because of the people we've lost this year. And it was that thought that I had to like, pause my playback because that was really, that was really hard. That was the hardest thing to watch for me.

[19:42] Mo Brady: It is interesting. I mean, just having watched 87, they only talked about one person who died.

[19:48] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[19:48] Mo Brady: Robert Preston, like Robert Preston got 10 minutes of performances. And you know, a straight white man got a 10 minutes of performances, a 76 trombones.

[19:59] Aaron Albano: And a Tony.

[20:00] Mo Brady: And a Tony. And now we do it in this completely different way, where we highlight different people in different parts of the industry. And we do we show their pictures. I mean, it's not the model we need to use forever. But it does show that this aspect of the telecast has evolved over the years. And certainly in light of 2020. And the shutdown. It is a section of the show that is ripe for reinvention, because there's just a lot more to more.

[20:33] Aaron Albano: Yeah. And I hope there's a way to re envision it where the somberness and reverence can be maintained. But not at the sacrifice of the lightheartedness of the telecast as a whole. But I just don't know what that formula is. Because I think there is something to the way we do this now is more appropriate and preferable to the way we used to do this. But and it's a pretty good model. Like I liked this one. I liked the Cindy Lauper two colors. I think it works when you find the right performer and the right song. We're just gonna have a lot more to more in this year.

[21:11] Mo Brady: We're just gonna have some it's Yeah.

[21:15] Aaron Albano: We promise you that part two of 2019 is going to be more positive than this.

[21:28] Mo Brady: So stick around, come back for part two. This time we asked on Instagram, which Tony ceremonies you our listeners wanted us to review and discuss. And thanks to Joan for this great suggestion of looking back at our most recent telecast to join us again for part two of our 2019 recap. Join us on Friday.

[21:47] Aaron Albano: The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Aaron Albano, and me, Mo Brady. Special thanks to Wassup Sammy for the background research on this week's Tony Season. Please rate and review The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network.

[22:05] Mo Brady: Our Patreon members have on demand access to our full archive, including full conversations with our guests and early access to episodes like this one. You can support us for between $5 and $20 a month at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist.

[22:20] Aaron Albano: Thanks for listening. Until next time.