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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.

[0:09] Moe Brede: And I'm Moe Brede.

[0:25] Aaron Albano: Welcome listeners to our miniseries about the Tonys. Looking into the drama behind the drama of a theater season in Broadway history. 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 reflects the season as a whole. So let's dive in and talk about the 1993 Tony Awards.

[0:46] Moe Brede: Let's dive in, Aaron. The 47th Annual Tony Awards were hosted by Liza Minnelli on June 6th, 1993. Presented at the Gershwin Theater, the theme of the ceremony was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of theater in Times Square. Heading into the ceremony, Kiss of the Spider Woman and The Who's Tommy led the pack with 11 nominations each, followed by Blood Brothers with six, and The Goodbye Girl with five. This season, there were no musicals nominated for Best Revival. But aside from the telecast, what was happening at the time, Aaron?

[1:20] Aaron Albano: Well, Moe, the 1992-1993 season saw the inauguration of the US's 42nd President, President Bill Jefferson Clinton, and the installation of the nation's first female Attorney General, Janet Reno. Outside of those momentous occasions, the country was mainly dealing with ongoing issues, both abroad and domestically. The United States was still dealing with the aftermath of the Gulf War, waged by the previous administration, and with the nation finally acknowledging HIV-AIDS within the last few years as a nationwide epidemic, the US found itself playing catch-up to dealing with a plague that was ravaging its citizens.

[1:56] Moe Brede: In New York, the Broadway industry and community were heavily laden by the effects of the AIDS epidemic, as we see in the telecast. Red ribbons everywhere, emotion overtaking hosts, presenters, and recipients alike, a nominated performance directly addressing the disease and its stigma, and even an honorary Tony being given to Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS for its leadership in the industry's fight against the disease.

[2:20] Aaron Albano: We ultimately find a community in mourning, even in this celebratory ceremony of the last hundred years of Broadway.

[2:27] Moe Brede: Swan is playing at the RKO. With the morning sun at our backs, we will this day write history with our...

[2:36] Aaron Albano: All right, let's pour one out for the non-nominated musicals, and I wanted to just highlight there are only three. Typically, we're looking at, you know, maybe eight between new musicals and revivals, and this season there are three. So as this Tony Awards is marred by the presence of HIV-AIDS in multiple ways, I think the fact that there are only three non-nominated musicals is one of those factors. We're seeing a dearth of creation in our industry, in part because we're seeing so many of our creators getting sick and dying.

[3:12] Moe Brede: Wow, I wouldn't even have put that together.

[3:15] Aaron Albano: I mean, this is gearing up towards, was it 95 when there were only two new musicals eligible for Best Musical? I think that was the Sunset Boulevard year.

[3:25] Moe Brede: Oh my goodness.

[3:26] Aaron Albano: Yeah, we're at the beginnings of seeing how HIV-AIDS is affecting our community, and the low number of shows is one of those ways. So this season we had three non-nominated musicals. My Favorite Year at the Vivian Beaumont Theater only played 36 performances, but it had a 17-member ensemble, including, this is the ensemble, Kevin Chamberlain, Michael Gruber, Michael McGraw, Alan Marocca, and Katie Finneran. I mean, that's in your ensemble.

[3:55] Moe Brede: Yeah.

[3:56] Aaron Albano: This cast is sick.

[3:57] Moe Brede: That's crazy that it's only 36 performances in a Lincoln Center show.

[4:00] Aaron Albano: Yeah, you would think there'd be subscribers to bolster up a few months.

[4:04] Moe Brede: Well, I mean, and just Lincoln Center is one of those places that feels like it is immune to all the ins and outs of the commercialism of Broadway, or at least it projects that it is. So the fact that it only has 36 performances, despite it being like part of their season essentially, is kind of a wild thing.

[4:25] Aaron Albano: Agreed. The other two musicals were Ain't Broadway Grand, 25 performances at the Lunt-Fontanne, and had a 21-member ensemble.

[4:33] Moe Brede: That's got to be like a review show, right?

[4:36] Aaron Albano: It's not.

[4:37] Moe Brede: It's not?

[4:38] Aaron Albano: I thought I could sort of parse it out, but no. It had a book.

[4:41] Moe Brede: Oh, wow.

[4:42] Aaron Albano: And then an adaptation of Anna Karenina had a 17-member cast at the Circle in the Square, so no ensemble, and only ran 46 performances.

[4:50] Moe Brede: So, Mo, this is your second host choice. Why did you decide to bring us to 1993?

[5:10] Moe Brede: This entire time I've been drawn to ceremonies that pit different kinds of shows against each other in the fight for best musical. So I loved that we had Blood Brothers, like a British musical. We've got A Candor Neb with Kiss of the Spider Woman. We've got one of the first Jukebox musicals with The Who's Tommy.

[5:28] Aaron Albano: Fair. Absolutely.

[5:29] Moe Brede: And The Goodbye Girl with a book by Neil Simon. So we've got these four very different kinds of shows. And then Liza Minnelli is host. I was like, we got to find out what that's about.

[5:41] Aaron Albano: Liza! Talk about this opening number, Aaron.

[5:44] Aaron Albano: So the telecast begins. We don't start in the theater, but we get sort of this somber, loving, give my regards to Broadway kind of underscore. And we cut to different clips of theater marquees around the country with the lyrics to give my regards to Broadway on them, which I lovingly called Marquee Karaoke.

[6:09] Moe Brede: But then we get into the theater and Tony winner Barry Boswick starts singing an original number called Celebrate Broadway. And I think during the number, he sings this original song and dancers dressed in iconic costumes of Broadway come out and fill the stage celebrating the industry and all hundred years.

[6:34] Aaron Albano: Yeah, there's like pantomiming dancer as Nellie Forbush that looking like she's doing Honey Bun.

[6:41] Moe Brede: Who is dancing. She's giving it. She's the first out and she just extensions everywhere.

[6:48] Aaron Albano: She's the choreographer's favorite for sure. And then Liza Minnelli comes in to ruckus applause. The audience freaks out and Liza legitimately sings and dances.

[6:59] Moe Brede: Oh, yes. She's giving us a number. She's performing.

[7:02] Aaron Albano: This is like a Liza with a Z concert in the middle of the opening number. But 21 years later.

[7:09] Moe Brede: Oh yeah, completely.

[7:10] Aaron Albano: She's crushing it. So then you get the Liza Minnelli concert. And then you get this sort of strangely wonderful vaudeville routine with the two stars of the current season's production of Full Moon, David Shiner and Bill Irwin.

[7:26] Moe Brede: Yeah, it's very reminiscent of Steam Heat.

[7:28] Aaron Albano: Kind of love.

[7:29] Moe Brede: It was great. And then it continues to like stack upon itself where different casts of current Broadway shows, Guys and Dolls, the Will Rogers Follies, Crazy for You, Jelly's Last Jam, Cats and Falsettos all come charging down one at a time to surround Liza.

[7:52] Aaron Albano: And it just continues to like spin out into this like bigger and bigger and bigger, bigger number celebrating Broadway.

[8:00] Moe Brede: It was I think we've made it very clear that we like an opening number that celebrates the community.

[8:05] Aaron Albano: Yeah, right.

[8:06] Moe Brede: Uh huh.

[8:07] Aaron Albano: Like the community and the industry. And with those companies storming the stage, like it does feel like there's like these fan favorites coming home again to the Tony Awards.

[8:18] Moe Brede: Yeah.

[8:19] Aaron Albano: You can see the audience cheering. I mean, probably because they're the producers of those shows and they're excited that their shows are still running and making money.

[8:27] Moe Brede: But they come into great applause for as clunky as the opening is with all of those lyrics about the musty musk of marquees and that weird marquee karaoke that you brought up earlier.

[8:39] Aaron Albano: Like it's it really sticks the landing.

[8:42] Moe Brede: I love it.

[8:43] Aaron Albano: I think it's great.

[8:44] Moe Brede: I mean, even with the ham-fisted lyrics at the beginning, this is a great opening number, man.

[8:49] Aaron Albano: Like I almost want to say that it's like the bigger of yesteryear.

[8:54] Moe Brede: Like it's the bigger of like the generation before us.

[8:58] Aaron Albano: And I'm not mad about it.

[9:00] Moe Brede: It was fantastic.

[9:01] Aaron Albano: Do you think it's better than Bigger?

[9:03] Moe Brede: No, Bigger, of course, we're referring to the 2013 Neil Patrick Harris.

[9:08] Aaron Albano: Yes.

[9:09] Moe Brede: Yes.

[9:10] Aaron Albano: We I mean, we all know that we you and I both love Bigger. It is the standard by which we judge all opening numbers at this point.

[9:18] Moe Brede: I honestly I'm not sure because I loved this and I thought it did all the things that Bigger did.

[9:27] Aaron Albano: Plus has Liza Minnelli.

[9:30] Moe Brede: So I honestly couldn't tell you like it's really good.

[9:34] Aaron Albano: What did you think? Did you think it was?

[9:36] Moe Brede: I don't know if it's better. I think it's a clear second though. I really do enjoy this opening number.

[9:41] Aaron Albano: The thing about it is you're getting a Liza Minnelli concert in the middle of an opening number to the Tony Awards, which like that's something you can't shake a stick at.

[9:51] Moe Brede: No, of course not.

[9:52] Aaron Albano: Yes.

[9:53] Moe Brede: Neil Patrick Harris is a fantastic showman, but Liza Minnelli is Liza Minnelli.

[9:58] Aaron Albano: And so she's it's like a whole other level of performance that is really fun to watch.

[10:03] Moe Brede: It all has the bones of everything that we love about these opening numbers. We have like the community represented, we have the shows represented, we have opportunities for all of the shows new and old to sort of shine.

[10:16] Aaron Albano: In this one, we also get like a showcase of like the iconic shows, whether it's their cast or not.

[10:21] Moe Brede: We had a Nellie Forbush like giving you fierce attitude.

[10:27] Aaron Albano: We have these two like West Sharks and Jets like knee sliding down the stage.

[10:33] Moe Brede: We have a fake Cassie, a fake MC.

[10:35] Aaron Albano: It's really and we have a fake Dolly.

[10:37] Moe Brede: We have a fake Dolly.

[10:38] Aaron Albano: We have a fake.

[10:39] Moe Brede: Oh yeah.

[10:40] Aaron Albano: With the with the feather with the red feathers.

[10:42] Moe Brede: We need to have a full podcast that's just you and me discussing which is a better opening the 1993 or the 2013 awards 20 years apart.

[10:52] Aaron Albano: Perfect.

[10:53] Moe Brede: All right.

[10:54] Aaron Albano: I'll see you there.

[10:55] Moe Brede: Yep.

[10:56] Aaron Albano: So let's dive into Liza, Liza Minnelli hosting the Tony's.

[11:12] Moe Brede: At the beginning, she is catching her breath, right? She comes out for her opening monologue post-performance and she cannot get her breath together.

[11:19] Aaron Albano: She just gave it because she was just giving it.

[11:22] Moe Brede: Yeah, I love it.

[11:25] Aaron Albano: She thanks everyone, the dancers, the members of the current Broadway musicals, Barry Bostwick, the Full Moon guys.

[11:30] Moe Brede: Yeah, it was.

[11:31] Aaron Albano: And I feel like that struck me because I was like, hosts don't do this.

[11:35] Moe Brede: It upped her level of class for me as a host.

[11:38] Aaron Albano: I don't really know why. One thing we've seen time and again is how effective it is when people seem authentically gracious on the Tony Awards.

[11:46] Moe Brede: Like, we just like it.

[11:48] Aaron Albano: It feels good.

[11:51] Moe Brede: And so she feels so authentic.

[11:54] Aaron Albano: She's like, this is it. This is Broadway's biggest night.

[11:58] Moe Brede: And she says it and you're like, it is, Liza, it really is.

[12:03] Mo Brady: 21 presenters, each of them a Tony winner of their own. There's a different energy, and we see that throughout. People being really excited to get their Tonys from certain presenters, like there's just like a real cool sense of like a community event. Maybe the last community event, maybe we've found it. Yeah, and I think what's also striking, and I just thought of this now, there's 21 awards. That's all the awards. I feel like there was no the 10 before, what was it called? The first 10. There was no first 10. I think there was something, and maybe this is why, which we'll get to in a second about how fast it was trucking along, and how they were trying to speed through everything. But because it was such a celebratory night, they made sure everyone got on TV. The technical awards, the revival awards, the play awards, everything was shown, because it was a big deal of a night.

[13:01] Aaron Albano: Anything else about Liza as host that stood out to you?

[13:05] Mo Brady: This medley she sings with her sister?

[13:10] Aaron Albano: Oh yeah, Lorna Luft comes out, apropos of nothing, and they do a duet. I loved it. I don't even think these songs like have anything to do with them. They just picked them, but like they sing Let Me Entertain You. On Wikipedia, it said that it was a sister's medley. So I think it was around the idea of like characters or songs about sisters. Except, let me entertain you. Okay, Baby, June and Louise, but is there a version of I Got Rhythm in a Gershwin show that exists where they have a... I was like, the one that's running currently is Crazy For You, and Polly doesn't have no sister.

[13:45] Mo Brady: Yeah, if mama was married.

[13:47] Aaron Albano: That was funny. That I lived for. Not while I'm around. I'm like...

[13:50] Mo Brady: From Sweeney Todd.

[13:53] Aaron Albano: Yeah, that's not a sister. Toby ain't got no kind of sister, nothing. So I think that doesn't retain water. But that said, these songs, all four of them, I was living for.

[14:04] Mo Brady: I'm here for it. It was so good. Speaking of being so heartfelt, I think one of the most touching moments is when Liza is announcing the special Tony Awards that were given to Iotsy and Broadway Cares.

[14:16] Aaron Albano: Yes. I mean, she's nice about Iotsy, but...

[14:19] Mo Brady: It's really about Broadway Cares.

[14:21] Aaron Albano: Talks about Broadway Cares, that they started the red ribbon campaign for the 1991 Tony Awards.

[14:27] Mo Brady: Is that true?

[14:28] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[14:29] Mo Brady: That's amazing. Because especially because we noted them in our very first episode of this, like when we were watching 1991, and how people were wearing them, but not very many people were wearing them. That's really what got Broadway Cares on the map, were those ribbons at that awards ceremony in 1991. Fast forward just two years, and everyone has them on.

[14:49] Aaron Albano: Yeah. You can tell that Liza's reading a teleprompter, and yet the words that she's saying really feel emotional.

[15:00] Mo Brady: Oh, 100%. You can feel her emotions about AIDS and about people dying from AIDS. It's really heartfelt. I think that's what's crazy about watching this telecast, is because she gets choked up, and we know why, and everybody knows why. I feel like you feel that from a lot of people in this telecast, because despite this celebration, there's real hurt happening.

[15:28] Aaron Albano: So, did you hear the story of the jump?

[15:33] Mo Brady: Will you talk about the playoffs, Aaron?

[15:36] Aaron Albano: So, I thought that 2007 was bad. That did not hold a lick to this one. We had 15 playoffs of the 21 awards we saw. People were getting just kicked off of the stage by the orchestra, time and time again, in a way that felt so vicious, it was comical.

[15:57] Mo Brady: Comical is right. I mean, I think even from the get, when Liza's explaining the way the night's going to go, and I think at that moment, the orchestra's just underscoring her, but it feels like they're trying to play her off, and she's playing up this moment that they're trying to play her off. Whether it's a bit, or it's real that she thinks she's being played off, she just keeps going throughout her speech. She's like, I'm hurrying. I'm hurrying.

[16:23] Aaron Albano: I know. She mentions it multiple times. The amount of playoff music, even people who weren't even getting awards. Matthew Broderick comes out to explain the regional theater Tony award. He's saying the things that he's being told to say. And they start playing, which again, I think is just underscoring him, and he looks to the side, so angry, being like, am I slow? It's just an energy of the night.

[16:52] Mo Brady: And everyone comments on it.

[16:54] Aaron Albano: Yeah. Andrea Martin, she just starts, she gets a second through her speech, they start playing her off, and she's like, are you kidding me? George C. Wolfe saying, I can talk loud. Because about at the halfway point, everyone just started being like, fuck it. We're just going to barrel through this. Freaking... Tony Kushner says, this is a scary orchestra in his acceptance speech. And that was the second playoff, because Angels won best play, and the producer accepts it, he gets played off, they don't leave, they just push Tony forward.

[17:43] Mo Brady: And he starts talking to which the orchestra has to play him off again. And I would just like, yo, Angels got two playoffs. They said, nah, brah, we're gonna let our playwrights speak, y'all can fuck off. It was, and you know what, bravo. I applaud it.

[17:53] Aaron Albano: All right, Aaron, how did we do the plays in the 1993 Tony Awards?

[18:01] Mo Brady: How did we do the plays? So this time, we had Jonathan Pryce come out to announce the winner for best play. But before he did, he wanted to give the audience a glimpse at each play. But the convention we decided to use this year was...

[18:19] Aaron Albano: Don't blame this on us. This is not our fault.

[18:22] Mo Brady: The convention they decided to use was to take you through the development of a show from audition to tech. And we started with the audition where he introduces K. Todd Freeman reading, quote unquote, a monologue from the Song of Jacob Zulu, to which then we get table work by the cast of Sisters Rosenzweig. Then we get scene work with the two men from Someone Who Watched Over Me. And then we finish with a tech rehearsal of Angels in America, Millennium Approaches. But it's all within this convention of leading into the scene, quote unquote, scene with a director or a stage manager explaining the rehearsal or the audition.

[19:19] Aaron Albano: So it's Jonathan Pryce introducing other people who are introducing the scenes from the show. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And some of the scenes are being done with script in hand, and some of them are being done fully teched. Those middle people are performers who are in the other shows.

[19:32] Mo Brady: Yes. Uh-huh. It's wild.

[19:33] Aaron Albano: So we're seeing these great little acting moments through this incredibly strange convention that is just layer on layer on layer on layer. I don't know. I didn't think it worked. What did you think?

[19:45] Mo Brady: I didn't hate it. I'm not going to lie. It's a contrived concept, but I feel like once you can, if you, if, if, big capital I-F, if you can get past the concept, I feel like we see a lot, some good work up there. K. Todd Freeman giving, yes, he has a paper in hand that he's clearly not reading. He delivers. The Sisters Rosenzweig, they deliver. Like, all of these performers deliver on the shows that they're advertising. It's just wrapped up in this weird device that they, like, thought could unify it all. You get half credit, 1993 Tonys, because, again, you had to, like, get past the concept to see some good work, and I don't have faith that everyone got past the concept. Partial credit.

[20:49] Aaron Albano: Uh-huh. If it was a pass-fail class, they would have passed.

[20:54] Mo Brady: The audience goes apeshit for Agnes DeMille.

[20:57] Aaron Albano: Oh my. Presenting the award for best choreography. This is so good. Forget it. She gets this long-standing ovation. She makes the audience laugh with this story about not being able to give away her opening night comps to Oklahoma.

[21:06] Mo Brady: I love it because there's an age in our industry, or in our community, where once you pass it, you can't help but have this who-gives-a-shit attitude, and we watch it on TV, and it's the best. Like, Agnes DeMille is on TV in her wheelchair and couldn't be fucking bothered, but, like, that dryness is exactly what's so charming about her presence there. And that the way that she describes Oklahoma, I think, is so interesting. She talks about the show being about our home, our roots, the importance of home.

[21:39] Aaron Albano: Yeah. You know, and that when the show opened, servicemen were in the audience who were about to go off to war to die for their home, and how that affected the audiences in the theater. It's such an interesting way to think about Oklahoma, because I don't think we would deny that that's there. But also, like, the last production of Oklahoma we saw on Broadway was not focused on the importance of home and how great it is to have one.

[22:05] Mo Brady: No, yeah, that sentimentality was definitely not there in the last version of this show that we had. But what's cool about this speech, and I loved this speech, is that, like, I feel like extending that analogy out to Broadway in general, which is basically why she's telling the speech. This is the celebration of Broadway. It's that even in the way we see Oklahoma now, like, however you feel about the show, Oklahoma is sort of a micro version of, despite how you feel about Broadway and our industry, it's still why we want it to come back. It's our home. It's the way we feel. It's why we, like, cling to this community, cling to this livelihood, that despite its flaws, it's our roots, it's our home, and we want it back.

[23:06] Mo Brady: Thanks for joining us for the first half of our discussion of the 1993 Tony Awards. Join us again on Friday when we will discuss the performances by the nominated shows and give our unsanctioned Yelp review.

[23:18] Aaron Albano: Yay! The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady, and by me, Aaron Albano. Please rate and review The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. Our Patreon members have on-demand access to our archive, including full conversations with guests and early access to episodes. You can support us there for between $5 and $20 a month at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Thanks for listening. Until next time!