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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.

[0:11] Mo Brady: And I'm Mo Brady.

[0:21] Aaron Albano: Welcome back, listeners, to our miniseries about the Tonys, looking into the drama behind the drama of a theater season in Broadway history.

[0:28] Mo Brady: In each podcast episode, we watch a telecast of a previous Tony Awards, not only the performances, but the opening and speeches, to see how it reflects the season as a whole.

[0:37] Aaron Albano: So let's dive back in and talk about the 2019 Tony Awards.

[0:41] Mo Brady: Woohoo!

[0:42] Aaron Albano: Alright, let's talk about these nominated performances. Now, this is our first year with five nominated performances for Best Musical, but only two performances for Best Revival. So we have seven shows, eight shows to discuss. We have the seven nominated musicals and Choir Boy, which is nominated for Best Choreography and Best Play, and we get to see a performance of as well.

[1:12] Mo Brady: So like we said in our part one, I was on tour for this season. So I did not see all of these. And when I did see them, it was way after the Tony telecast. So I did see all of them. So we'll specify which of these you have intimate knowledge of and which ones I don't. And all of them are post-Tonys knowledge, so.

[1:33] Aaron Albano: So they were affected, your theater growing experience was affected by these performances.

[1:37] Mo Brady: Oh, correct. They were all in their sophomore year, if I had seen them.

[1:41] Aaron Albano: Yes. Alright. Our first performance was Ain't Too Proud, The Life and Times of the Temptations. We had a medley of Ain't Too Proud, Just My Imagination, and I Can't Get Next To You. These are bops. These are just bops.

[1:55] Mo Brady: This was a great performance. The songs are awesome. And the songs are the songs. And they've been bops since, what, the 50s? The 60s? I have not seen the show. So I don't, I'm not completely clear on when the Temptations were at their prime.

[2:12] Aaron Albano: This is a great commercial for a jukebox musical. Like, you don't, you're not really getting any story, but you're getting performances, good performances of songs that you at least sort of know as part of the, you know, American musical canon. Ephraim Sykes is a fucking star. Who does a knee slide like Ephraim Sykes?

[2:30] Mo Brady: He's ridiculous. It's wild.

[2:35] Aaron Albano: Jeremy Pope, your notes are, that voice, those eyes, how dare?

[2:39] Mo Brady: How dare? How dare? He starts singing and it's, everyone melts. The entire Radio City Music Hall melts.

[2:46] Aaron Albano: Yeah, this very much was the Jeremy Pope Tony Awards. I mean, he's nominated twice for Best Leading Actor. So if it's a commercial, one of the things that the 2019 Tony Awards was a commercial for, is Jeremy Pope.

[3:00] Mo Brady: This had some technical aspects that I felt like were extras. Like we don't usually get to see tech elements.

[3:05] Aaron Albano: Oh, sure.

[3:09] Mo Brady: We get costume changes. We don't often.

[3:11] Aaron Albano: That was wild to me. I feel like those are not that common.

[3:14] Mo Brady: No, it's like Kelly O'Hara doing one that we like, also then get footage of on YouTube.

[3:19] Aaron Albano: Yeah. So five of your leads giving you full costume changes. I was very impressed. Ain't Too Proud is built by the team that built Jersey Boys, right? And Jersey Boys does a great job of leaving you at the end with a concert that you're like, ready for.

[3:36] Mo Brady: That was great, right? You know, director Des McAnuff and choreographer Sergio Trujillo have pulled out a similar style for this. And it again, works.

[3:46] Aaron Albano: It hits. Yeah.

[3:47] Mo Brady: We see the musicians on stage. There's a little bit of choreo. It's a concert that has sort of is like a celebration of the show that we've seen. And out of context on the Tony Awards, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to see that.

[4:01] Aaron Albano: It was wonderful. It was great. It was a good showcase for really great talent. Who could ask for anything more?

[4:06] Mo Brady: Tootsie performs Unstoppable.

[4:08] Aaron Albano: Unstoppable. I saw this. Mo, I saw this.

[4:11] Mo Brady: Good for you. I saw the show twice. I think once before and once after. This is a show that is not weathered well in my mind. And so watching it, I think I saw it through the months of it not aging well.

[4:24] Aaron Albano: Oh, okay. Interesting. That happens.

[4:27] Mo Brady: To me, this looks like excellent regional theater. Like something about the costumes and like the staging with the like choreography of running sachets.

[4:32] Aaron Albano: It's very, it's very walkography.

[4:39] Mo Brady: The song is one note. Nothing happens in the song. I do agree that this is the song from the show that you put on the Tony Awards. The thing that was most remarkable to me is this is the musical by the previous Tony Award winner for Best Musical. David Yazbek wrote the score to The Band's Visit. And the next year he's here with Tootsie. And it's fine.

[5:05] Aaron Albano: Sure. I mean, I also I do feel like because I agree, it feels like it doesn't really go anywhere. I actually think it's pretty clean. I think the like the walkography, it moves well. It makes the stage travel when it's not really traveling. I think where it bumps up for me is that it travels but sort of at the same pace the whole time. There's no dynamics to the number. It stays because again, the cool part of the number is when Santino changes from Michael to Dorothy. But we needed some stuff to give him time to change. And the distracting geography was a little lackluster because then we also needed to see these posters, these marquees that we couldn't see very well.

[6:01] Mo Brady: Yeah, the jokes actually are funny. Like Les Mis and Mis being like MZ period is funny. And yet it sort of like falls flat on the poster to me. I don't know. It just doesn't like...

[6:05] Aaron Albano: I wonder, do we think that might be also just like a camera blocking problem? Because I would say like, oh, it's a funny joke that works better in the theater than in Radio City Musical. But it's it was in the marquee. Like that's a big ass theater also. So it's not like it's a space problem.

[6:22] Mo Brady: Yeah, maybe it was the camera tried to find the jokes and missed them.

[6:27] Aaron Albano: The show won best book of a musical. Yeah, it was a show with a lot of laughs in it. I mean, that marketing campaign after the Tony Awards, where it was said that was the funniest show on Broadway, it showed images of audience members laughing and nothing from the show itself.

[6:44] Mo Brady: Interesting that they didn't double down on the humor in the performance and take us like a little bit away from the man and address of the performance, which was sort of the cultural conversation I think that happened around Tootsie in the spring was does this story feel too dated to be sharing in 2019?

[7:00] Aaron Albano: Correct. Well, I think because that that's what's also difficult is that like, I think you hit it on the head, they showed us a lot of people laughing, but didn't show us the content they were laughing at, because the humor could be considered the problematic part of the show. I feel like a lot of the best humor in the show had nothing to do with a man being in a dress. You know, it was the Sarah Stiles character.

[7:20] Mo Brady: Sure. It was the best friend character. It was the dumb, pretty guy with abs character. Like those are actually the things I remember as being like really funny about Tootsie.

[7:29] Aaron Albano: I would agree because I did the same. But if they're banking on Santino winning, you're gonna do a number with Santino.

[7:42] Mo Brady: Yeah. And how do you do a number with Santino where you're, he's not in a dress?

[7:52] Aaron Albano: Ready? Okay. Hi. I'll be your guy. I'll be your G-U-I-D-E to the other side. Beetlejuice.

[7:59] Mo Brady: Beetlejuice. The banana boat song and the whole being tempted. I saw this. I did see this.

[8:05] Aaron Albano: Catherine O'Hara introduces it like what a career for theater lovers, for them. She does a perfect introduction, which refers to her, has a joke, but then she's like talks about Beetlejuice as a magnum opus about our mortality. It is the most life affirming show about death that you will ever live to see. I was like, that's the intro. That is the intro. Delivered by Moira Rose. Like, it's great.

[8:29] Mo Brady: Yeah, exactly. It's great. I think the use of the banana boat song, both in this and the Thanksgiving Day Parade performance, it's just weird to me. Like, I don't need to be reminded that the banana boat song was in the movie. Do you? Do I? Hmm. I'm trying to think in terms of because again, I saw this show after I saw these Tonys. So I'm trying to think my fresh head watching the Beetlejuice number. It did give me a like, oh, I know this song jolts of adrenaline going into the number. Whereas if it just started with Alex Brightman and the house with the song, it would have taken a little bit for me to rev up to it.

[9:15] Aaron Albano: Is it necessary? Who's to say? But I think it's an easy gateway into the show. And it does provide that great turn of Alex being in the audience.

[9:21] Mo Brady: Mm hmm. Which is successful.

[9:28] Aaron Albano: Yeah. Alex Brightman is so frigging good.

[9:34] Mo Brady: Yeah, he's fantastic. This is not a contract. This is not a hot take. But like, I mean, no, I grew up with Alex Brightman, and he was good at eight years old. So this is really not a hot take. Like he's really fantastic, annoyingly fantastic and everything he does. He commands the stage. He is funny. He's doing that voice that like, doesn't make sense how he's doing it. Like it. And my thing is, I'm like, these are completely new lyrics to this very wordy opening. And they had a matinee that day, they had a full week of shows that week, with other lyrics to that I was like, you better nail this entire new number that you had to learn for one night.

[10:13] Mo Brady: I think this performance 100% works. The show looks like fun. The staging is fun, the music, it just it looks good. And you're like, I'll spend $140 on that. Sure. It's a very strong number. No notes. It's great.

[10:25] Aaron Albano: Speaking of no notes, let's talk about the pro performance of tonight belongs to you. And it's time to dance prom. I did not see this live. I am sad, sad, sad to say that I did not see this live. I'm a prom stan. And this is like having already I think I'd seen the show twice at this point, maybe three times. This was the performance that I wanted. Like, when you know, when shows are nominated, you imagine what they might be doing at the Tony Awards. And I was like, what they need to do is they need to do a mashup of the finale of Act One to the finale of Act Two. There's a great key change in there. Just like give me like some like great Matt Scalar music, like I want it. And they did exactly what I was dreaming of.

And I was like, thank you. Congratulations. We got to see Brooks Eshmantgis and Caitlin Kinnunen. We got to see the choreography. We got to have like a celebratory everyone in lines doing uniform movement towards the house. Like it just it built well, in my mind. So I never got to see the show live.

[11:31] Mo Brady: Secrets don't tell anyone. I watched the movie for another podcast. Nobody listens to this podcast.

[11:38] Aaron Albano: So I watched the movie for a different podcast. But before watching the movie, I decided I needed to know the source material. I found a slime tutorial to watch the live show before I watched the movie. Shush don't tell. We can discuss my relationship with bootlegs on another day. But what I find interesting about the prom, in both iterations, is I feel like the show itself is fine. What I think is the strongest parts of the show is the finale of Act One, and the finale of Act Two. And when you get the best parts of your show and put them together to advertise your show, I think it's going to be the right move. And that's what they did.

[12:25] Mo Brady: I think maybe what I love about this also coming from my, you know, ensemble list place is that whereas I feel like Alex Brightman was the star of Beetlejuice. This was really an opportunity for the ensemble to yes, yeah, it's the camera angles. But I felt like I saw Drew Reddington. I saw juice Mackens. I saw Kalen West and they were all hitting it so hard.

[12:53] Aaron Albano: Yeah, the dance arrangements for this show are so good. Every single dance break in the show is so well crafted and well arranged. Like your heart just starts pumping harder. Whenever like these dancers jump in, not only because they're great dancers, but like everything is sort of lining up that it's affecting you in a very visceral way. Every single one of those accent hits is like making you more and more emotional. It's great. It's fantastic. Again, no notes. It's a wonderful performance.

[13:25] Mo Brady: What's the difference about this no notes versus Beetlejuice no notes? In your mind, which is a better Tony performance?

[13:29] Aaron Albano: It's hard because I feel like they both show their shows very well. What would you spend your $140 on Aaron? You only have $140. If I'm going off of the night where I had not seen either of these, you're sitting in your home in Ohio, you are going to fly to New York and go on your theater trip where you get to see one show and eat at the Hard Rock Cafe. What? From the performance, probably the prom.

[13:57] Mo Brady: A person tries to kiss a girl. I know she ought to give this face a smack. But as soon as someone kisses me, I somehow sort of want to kiss them back. I'm just a fool.

[14:11] Aaron Albano: Oklahoma, I Can't Say No, and Oklahoma. Oklahoma, I did not get to see this production. I heard it was amazing though. The Ali Stroker singing I Can't Say No, she does it very well. To me, it had Sidney Lucas, Ring of Keys, Fun Home vibes. It felt like Tony Awards 2015, where we're just like, we're gonna watch this great.

[14:31] The Ensemblist: Welcome back to The Ensemblist. We're diving into the 73rd Annual Tony Awards, which took place on June 9, 2019, at Radio City Music Hall, hosted by James Corden for his second time.

[15:01] The Ensemblist: 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.

[15:31] The Ensemblist: In the running for Best Revival of a Musical were just a pair of shows: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! and the Roundabout Theatre revival of Kiss Me, Kate.

[15:51] The Ensemblist: 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... er, for two months... just kidding, we’re still here, due to the coronavirus pandemic, but I digress.

[16:11] The Ensemblist: 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.

[16:31] The Ensemblist: 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.

[16:51] The Ensemblist: So, let’s take a closer look at some of the performances and moments from the night that really stood out.

[17:11] The Ensemblist: First up, we have Ain't Too Proud, which showcased a vibrant performance that captured the essence of The Temptations and their incredible journey.

[17:21] The Ensemblist: The choreography was electric, and the ensemble truly brought the energy of the music to life.

[17:31] The Ensemblist: Next, we have Beetlejuice, which delivered a quirky and fun performance that perfectly encapsulated the spirit of the show.

[17:51] The Ensemblist: The ensemble's comedic timing and dynamic staging made it a highlight of the evening.

[18:01] The Ensemblist: Moving on to Hadestown, which presented a hauntingly beautiful performance that left the audience in awe.

[18:11] The Ensemblist: The blend of music and storytelling was masterfully executed, showcasing the talent of the entire cast.

[18:31] The Ensemblist: The Prom followed with a heartwarming performance that celebrated inclusivity and acceptance.

[18:51] The Ensemblist: The ensemble's joy and enthusiasm were infectious, making it a memorable moment of the night.

[19:11] The Ensemblist: Finally, Tootsie brought a hilarious and energetic performance that had the audience laughing and cheering.

[19:31] The Ensemblist: The ensemble's commitment to the comedic elements of the show was evident and truly entertaining.

[19:51] The Ensemblist: Overall, the Tony Awards this year were a celebration of talent, resilience, and the power of storytelling through musical theatre.

[20:11] The Ensemblist: Each show brought something unique to the stage, and the ensemble performers were at the heart of it all.

[20:31] The Ensemblist: It’s important to recognize the hard work and dedication of these artists who often go unrecognized.

[20:51] The Ensemblist: They play a crucial role in bringing these stories to life and deserve to be celebrated.

[21:11] The Ensemblist: As we reflect on the performances, let’s also consider the messages conveyed through the art.

[21:31] The Ensemblist: The themes of love, acceptance, and resilience resonated deeply, especially in the context of the world we were living in at the time.

[21:51] The Ensemblist: It’s a reminder of the importance of theatre as a platform for change and a voice for the marginalized.

[22:11] The Ensemblist: Thank you for joining us as we celebrate these incredible performances and the ensemble artists who make it all possible.

[22:25] The Ensemblist: We look forward to sharing more stories and insights in future episodes.

[22:45] The Ensemblist: Until next time, keep celebrating the unsung heroes of Broadway!

[23:05] The Ensemblist: This has been The Ensemblist, part of the Broadway Podcast Network.

[23:25] The Ensemblist: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review.

[23:45] The Ensemblist: Your support helps us continue to share these important stories.

[24:05] The Ensemblist: Thank you for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

[24:25] The Ensemblist: Stay safe and take care!

[24:45] The Ensemblist: Goodbye for now!

[25:05] The Ensemblist: This has been a production of The Ensemblist and the Broadway Podcast Network.

[25:25] The Ensemblist: For more information, visit our website.

[25:35] The Ensemblist: We appreciate your support and look forward to connecting with you again.

[25:45] The Ensemblist: Until next time!

[26:05] The Ensemblist: Keep shining a light on the ensemble performers who make Broadway magical.

[26:25] The Ensemblist: Thank you, and goodbye!

[26:45] The Ensemblist: We’ll see you soon!

[27:05] The Ensemblist: Take care!

[27:25] The Ensemblist: And remember to celebrate the arts!

[27:45] The Ensemblist: Goodbye!

[28:05] The Ensemblist: This has been The Ensemblist.

[28:25] The Ensemblist: Thank you for listening!

[28:53] The Ensemblist: Until next time!