20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #3: RAGTIME, 1998

Three days until the Tony Awards! We are at #3 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Today we get another musical that sits nicely in my top ten of all time, the glorious Ragtime, based on the book by E. L. Doctorow and featuring the killer writing team of Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty and the stellar original cast of Brian Stokes Mitchell, Audra McDonald, Judy Kaye, Lea Michele, and Marin Mazzie.

Ragtime tells four different stories from four different points of view -- the African-Americans in the streets of Harlem, headed by Ragtime musician Coalhouse Walker, Jr.; the upper-class white family of New Rochelle, headed by Mother; the immigrants flooding into America at the turn of the century, headed by the Latvian Jewish immigrant Tateh; and the voices, triumphs, and disappointments of real-life figures who led the world into the twentieth century, such as J. P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, and Booker T. Washington, among others. When these worlds collide, what we get is more than a story: it is America unfolding.

The show opened on Broadway in January 1998, and ran for two years, closing in January 2000, after 834 performances.  The production received mixed reviews.  It was, indeed, a dazzling production, with fireworks, a working Model T automobile, elaborate costumes, and an $11 million budget (financed by Livent); and many critics felt this lavishness overshadowed some flaws in the script.  Regardless, the show led the 1998 Tony Awards with thirteen nominations, winning four, and giving the Tonys one of its closest contests in years, with tough battles between Ragtime, The Lion King, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Side Show, 1776, and Cabaret all competing in the same year.  Ragtime, mostly due to its lavish sets, was not a financial success, and many claim it was the undoing of Livent Productions, which had to declare bankruptcy after the financial failures of both Parade and Ragtime.

I, however, think this show has one of the most moving scores ever written and had one of the greatest original casts I could ever imagine putting together in one show.  And here they are, the entire cast in an abbreviated version of the introduction song, with Mazzie clutching that parasol for dear life and Mitchell pounding those keys like his heart will burst.  Simply doesn't get any better.

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #4: THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, 1998

Four days until the Tony Awards! We are at #4 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

The number four slot goes to an unlikely candidate, since the usually utterly ridiculous Frank Wildhorn has proven that even the darkest, most-intense shows are unworthy of anything but heartfelt belted love ballad after heartfelt belted love ballad.  But sometimes the passionate belted ballad pays off.  In today's case, it does.  Enter Douglas Sills, the man who -- yes, indeed, is STILL holding out that end note! -- can make any mundane thing into something fantastic, and you've got yourself an on-again/off-again version of the lukewarm Scarlet Pimpernel.

The show was standard Wildhorn.  When it gets to the point where someone can hear any random song and say, “That sounds like a Frank Wildhorn ballad," then you know your writing style has fallen into a predictable pattern.  But still, this show sparkles, even if not with self-awareness.  And luckily, in this performance, you get only the wonderful men and not the nearly unlistenable, wobbly, uncontrolled vibrato of Christine Andreas (How they chose her over the workshopped-cast choice of Carolee Carmello -- see yesterday's Parade if you need proof -- is just beyond me!), so that helps make this performance a true keeper.

The show opened in October 1997, in true Frank Wildhorn fashion, which is to say unfinished and unpolished and had to undergo several revisions throughout its run.  But with Douglas Sills, who won a Theatre World Award for Best Broadway Debut Performance and was nominated for the Best Actor Tony, and the-utterly-perfect-in-everything-he-ever-touches Terrence Mann, the original cast (minus Christine Andreas!) couldn't be beat.  The show was swiftly a victim of rapidly falling ticket sales, however, and it was slated to close before the Tonys, until some Frankophiles decided to give it another shot at another theater with a new cast (big mistake to get rid of Terrence Mann, people!) and a revised script, so it opened again in October 1998.  After changing-in three more leads (this time even getting rid of the perfect Douglas Sills, WTF?) and rewriting the show again (Jekyll & Hyde redux, anyone?), another version of it opened up at another theater in September 1999, then closed less than four months later.  And after all this, if you ask me, the first version with Sills and Mann is still the best, even though we finally got Carolee Carmello back on the third try.  Sigh.  (Read that as: There are multiple cast recordings of this musical, but the Original 1998 Broadway Cast Recording is the only one you need.)  And, like Frank Wildhorn's two previous shows to this point, Jekyll & Hyde and The Civil War (Who even remembers that show?  I saw it at the Fox Theater in Detroit!), the show closed having lost money.  The Scarlet Pimpernel was nominated for three Tony Awards, but I doubt that poor Wildhorn will ever win one.  When all your shows close without making money, you don't tend to be an academy favorite.

But the show has some seriously glorious moments, like the one I'm about to show you.  And with this show and the classic 1776 revival competing in the same year, I think everyone was left feeling a little bit 18th-century nostalgic at this awards show.  So button up your breeches, fluff some ruffles at your chin, and whatever you do, hold out until that long note at the end!  It's worth it just to see where Douglas Sills keeps all that air!

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #6: 1776, 1998

Six days until the Tony Awards! We are at #6 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Some things in life are joys.  Like listening to a 1998 audience laughing at jokes about 1776 written in 1969.  But this gem of a show (and I DEFINITELY mean gem!  I love it ENDLESSLY!), 1776, is so triumphantly enjoyable that I can't think of enough wonderful things to say about it.  Forget the awkward movie that Nixon censored, forget the unfeeling distant-ness of the original Broadway cast.  I'm talking about the stellar REVIVAL cast of 1776 that just cannot be matched in awesomeness.

If you don't know the show, it is obviously about our Founding Fathers (are we still capitalizing that in this day and age?) writing the Constitution.  Yes, you hear that and you think, that sure sounds like a drag.  But I assure you, it isn't.  The show is charming and fun and witty and funny and mostly follows John Adams, as he persuades his fellow men into the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  The characters are fleshed out and thought-provoking and not at all reeking of the pretension that the writers could have very easily stumbled into in tackling such a topic.  In one word, the show is charming.  Absolutely charming.

Sure, some of it is fictionalized; it's a freakin' musical, already!  But what wasn't a necessary change for dramatic effect stayed fairly true to history, and even the history fact-checkers will have to agree that the fictionalized stuff is more enjoyable!  Ha!  The original production opened on Broadway in 1969, ran for 1,217 performances, and won three of its five Tony Award nominations.  But hey, I wasn't alive for that one, so let's get to the revival!  The show was revived by the remarkable Roundabout Theatre Company, opened in August 1997, and closed on June 14, 1998 (Really?  You couldn't make it to July 4th?), after 333 performances and 34 previews, featuring a cast led by Brent Spiner (Star Trek's Data!) as Adams.  The revival was nominated for three Tonys, including Best Revival, but sadly, it didn't win (Come on, though!  It was going against the stellar Cabaret!).

Q: If it's so good, then why does it only contain fifteen songs, two of them being Overture and Finale, and most of them being ridiculously short?  A: It's interesting that you asked, because here's a tidbit.  The answer is simple: the show contains a hell of a lot of talking.  So much so, that it led some critics to wonder why it was made into a musical at all and not simply performed as a conventional play (What?  And miss out on those FABULOUS songs?).  Scene Three of the show holds the record for the longest time in a musical without a single note of music played or sung – over thirty minutes pass between song numbers. Various songs had been tinkered with, but nothing ever worked, so what resulted was one of the most nail-biting unbroken scenes in musical history. The scene was dubbed “Big Three" by cast members and for the first time in Broadway history, musicians were permitted to leave the pit in the middle of a show.  So, there you have it.  Between the ridiculous “Lees of Old Virginia" and my personal favorite, “But Mr. Adams," you just have to sit tight and wait.  But it's worth it!

So here, my fine friends, is a taste of the charm of 1776 with the 1997 revival cast performing an updated version of the 1969 classic at the 1998 Tony Awards.  Ha!  Numbers.  Numbers are funny.

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #9: SIDE SHOW, 1998

Nine days until the Tony Awards! We are at #9 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

When my two girls, Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley come out onto the Tony stage as conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton, there is so much fierce intensity in the air that it just ripples through you like an electrical current.  Their show had been canceled, but the show had made these two women Broadway's darlings, and this performance should let you know why.

The show is Side Show, sitting easily, easily, and evermore and always in my top ten favorite musicals of all time, it might be the closest to a flawless show I could ever imagine.  Not a wasted note, not a wasted breath.  The music is fabulous, the orchestrations are brilliant, the costumes, set, design, characters, story ... everything ... flawless.  And the best part of it all?  The casting was utter perfection, putting five of my favorite Broadway actors of all time: Ripley, Skinner, Jeff McCarthy, Hugh Panaro, and Norm Lewis (in his tremendous turn as Jake, the hunchback!), into the headlining roles.  Perfection.

The story of Side Show is a story of survival, heartbreak, and love against all odds.  Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton are taken from the Side Show/freak show and put into the Vaudeville limelight by two suave men who walk the line between trying to make a buck and honestly, innocently, fiercely feeling intense human emotions for the girls.  A story of naiveté blossoms into an adventure of the self, of what's important, of unfathomable loyalty in the midst of loneliness; and if your heart doesn't burst into a flood of emotion you can no longer hide, then you don't have a heart to be broken.

The show was a risk right from the beginning, with expensive sets and a totally original story that wasn't based on anything audiences might have already been familiar with, and it ran for less than two and a half months.  Despite closing well before the Tonys were even announced, the show was still nominated for four, and Skinner and Ripley performed in front of a stark curtain that juxtaposed the glitz of the show and spun an air of sadness over the already-kinda-sad song.  Because the two girls are Siamese twins in the show, they have the same amount of stage time, and thus this was the first and only time two actresses were co-nominated for Best Actress in a Musical as a team, meaning if they had won, they would have both won together.  Sadly, they didn't win, but at least we have this to remember them by:

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #13: CABARET, 1998

Thirteen days until the Tony Awards! We are at #13 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

This gem of a musical gets me excited every time.  I wasn't alive when Joel Grey breathed life into the Emcee role in 1967, but in 1998, the world was lucky enough to get the modern-day version with someone equally as comparable: Alan Cumming.  Yes, willkommen, ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking about the (second) revival cast of Cabaret!

In 1967, Hal Prince wanted to make a new kind of socially-responsible musical theater.  Something uncomfortable and stinging, something where the kicklines weren't Vaudeville, and the banners weren't jolly, and the center stage wasn't entirely ethnocentrically American, yet it would still drip with metaphorical parallels.  Drop a Nazi flag down the stage during a production, and wa-la, you've got yourself some discomfort.  But the story rings true, even today.  Sally Bowles represents the people who close their eyes to the changes in the world; Clifford Bradshaw, the novelist, represents those who can no longer sit idly by while the world changes; and the Emcee represents the entirely changing world and the conscious awareness of it.

When the show first opened in 1967, it was flawed.  It was trying to pave the way for new, uncomfortable, socially aware, concept musicals, while at the same time still holding on to archaic theater elements that were expected at the time (a romantic leading couple and a comedic secondary couple, for example) and shying away from things that would end up getting too censored.  In 1972, Bob Fosse (lovesies!) made a film version that stripped the traditional stuff and bulked up the juicy meat.  By 1987, when the first revival show came back to Broadway, Hal Prince had cleaned it up fit for an uncomfortable audience, put the previously censored homosexuality back into the show, and paved the way for the newer and most-uncensored version to date, the 1998 revival cast starring the stellar Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson (R.I.P., you perfect woman, you).  I loved Joel Grey's 1967 creepy, mechanical Emcee portrayal, but man, Alan Cumming just sizzles!

The revival cast ran for 2,377 performances, making it the third-longest-running revival in Broadway history; and the show was nominated for ten Tony Awards, winning four, including the top slots for Best Musical Revival and Best Leading Actors.  So here to take you away is Alan Cumming as the Emcee in the opening number.  I don't need to introduce it; it introduces itself.