20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #1: LES MISÉRABLES, 1987

One day until the Tony Awards! We are at #1 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Oh my goshies, ONE DAY MORE!  So what could be a better selection than my number one Tony performance musical: Les Misérables?  If you don't know what this musical is, then you're living under a rock and have been living there since the eighties.  (Although, no, it's NOT about the French Revolution.  Sigh.  If I hear that again, I'll smack you.)

The show, based on the 1862 novel by Victor Hugo, is about the years before and leading up to the 1832 June Rebellion and the subsequent July Monarchy in France (No!  It's NOT the French Revolution!  If you don't count the end of the French Revolution as being Robespierre's death in 1794, then you definitely HAVE to count it as the rise of Napoleon in 1804.  Les Mis starts another decade after that.)  The story focuses mainly on the ex-convict Jean Valjean and his struggle for redemption; a love story that blossoms between his ward and a young student; and the students of the barricade in their quest for revolution.  It was turned into this masterful musical theater experience by composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyricist Alain Boublil and went on to become the second-longest-running musical in the world and the third-longest-running in Broadway history.

The show first began as a French-language concept album, with a show in a French sports arena running for a limited engagement.  Broadway giant Cameron Mackintosh was asked to flesh out an English version of the musical, and that version opened in London's West End in October 1985.  The critical reception for the show was negative, with diehard Hugo fans complaining that the creators destroyed classic literature with a mere musical.  But the public had a different opinion: the show was a hit.  The Broadway production opened in March 1987, and ran until May 2003, closing after 6,680 performances (If you count the 2006 revival cast production, the show has run a total of 7,176 performances on Broadway.). It is the third-longest-running Broadway show in history and was the second-longest at the time that it closed (after Cats and now after Phantom of the Opera).  The show was nominated for 12 Tony Awards and won eight, including Best Musical and Best Original Score.  And really, with a cast consisting of Colm Wilkinson (lovesies!), Terrence Mann (lovesies!), and Judy Kuhn, how could it not win best EVERYTHING EVER?

Well, there isn't much else that I can say about this show.  The rest is Broadway history.  It might just be the most perfect show ever written.  And with the Tonys tomorrow -- hey, it's just ONE DAY MORE!

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #2: TITANIC, 1997

Two days until the Tony Awards! We are at #2 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh, we are getting so close!  And the absolute best part of getting close in this countdown means that we are getting to the GOODS!  Yay!  Another musical that sits not only in my top ten of all time, but in my top FIVE of all time (Whew!  Now we're getting prestigious!): Titanic.  Quite frankly, there is nothing like this show.  And no, it's not the movie (The musical came first!).  No, there is no Jack and whoever-the-fuck Kate Winslet played.  No, there is no King of the World.

There is truth.  The show is based on the actual roster list and the actual events of what actually happened to the actual Titanic.  Yes, there are some fictional moments (Hello!  It's a musical!  They are singing; is that not fictional enough for you?), but overall, the story follows the truth of the Titanic's disastrous and infamous maiden voyage and makes you absolutely, unfathomably feel it.  There is no depiction of the Titanic more emotional than this show, and I will stand by that.  From rousing chorus numbers to the simplicity of the Strauses' love song, “Still," this show just packs the perfect punch.  I purchased the original Broadway cast recording when the show was new in 1997; I have probably heard it five hundred times since then; every single time, without fail, I cry my eyes out at “To the Lifeboats," when the fathers and husbands are saying goodbye to their wives and children.  Not just trickles of small tears, but I break down into a wretch of uncontrollable sobs, and someone usually has to pick me up off the floor.  Only the utter sincerity and perfection of this show has ever made me do that.  By now, my husband, when he hears me in the next room blubbering, “Oh no, they don't even see the iceberg, but it's right there!" knows to shout back, “Turn it off right now because they're all going to die miserable deaths, and you won't be able to bear it!"

So, Titanic: The massive production that almost sank.  The high cost of the huge three-level set made it impossible for the show to have out-of-town tryouts before its April 1997 opening, something traditional to most shows on Broadway.  The previews of the show were a technical disaster with the huge model set ship ironically not sinking when it was supposed to.  While most of these technical difficulties were resolved before opening night, the show received almost all negative reviews from every outlet, and the cast feared the show would close quickly.  After a few pep talks, an extremely receptive audience not writing the reviews, Rosie O'Donnell's public fanaticism for the show, and James Cameron's successful film opening in December 1997 to fuel attention in the Titanic disaster, the show became a surprise hit and swept the Tonys, winning all five of its five nominated categories, including Best Musical.

The show featured Michael Cerveris and the still-nearly-unknown-at-the-time-but-now-such-a-household-Broadway-name-that-if-you-don't-know-him-then-you-don't-know-Broadway Brian d'Arcy James.  There is nothing, notHING, NOTHING that Brian d'Arcy James cannot tackle, and he is hands down one of the best musical theater talents to come along in all of Broadway history. Ever.  Period.  Closed for debate.  (If you don't think I live and breathe for “Barrett's Song," then you apparently weren't there when I actually used that song as an audition piece for my turn as waitress Delores Dante in Working.  Yeah, I know -- Who does that?  I did that.)

So here it is, kids, my number-three favorite musical of all time at the 1997 Tonys: Titanic.  Sail on, Ship of Dreams!

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: #5: PARADE, 1999

Five days until the Tony Awards! We are at #5 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Jason Robert Brown is one of the greatest composing/lyricist talents in the post-Sondheim generation.  He has a musical that graces my top ten of all time (The Last Five Years), and he is a master of tackling tough and quirky topics with utter brilliance and compassion for his odd characters.  Seriously, I urge you, if you want something different, fresh, and remarkable in your Broadway breakfast cereal, check out Jason Robert Brown's work.

And topping his list of bests is today's musical: Parade.  The show dramatizes the 1913 trial of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank, who was accused and convicted of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old employee at his factory, and thusly sentenced to death.  The trial had heavy antisemitism leanings and the Governor commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, believing that a miscarriage of justice had happened during the trial, that the outcome was largely based on the fact that Frank was Jewish and not on any actual evidence.  The town, outraged at this commuted sentence, decided to take matters into their own hands, resulting in that rare, but necessary, unhappy musical ending that doesn't end with the raucous finale you hope it will.  The events surrounding the real-life investigation and trial led to three groups emerging: the revival of the defunct KKK, the birth of a premier Jewish Civil Rights Organization, and the emergence of The Anti-Defamation League.  If you watch the musical, you will better understand how such hatred and counter-mechanisms to that hatred were formed.  It's an absolutely brilliant and moving commentary on human nature.  Yet, through all the hate -- and the thing that makes Jason Robert Brown so amazing --, is the blossoming of a love story between Leo Frank and his initially cold relationship with his wife, Lucille.  Their story becomes the story of hope through all the hate, pain, and struggle.

Parade opened on Broadway in December 1998, and sadly closed in February 1999, far too soon, after only 39 previews and 84 regular performances; and due to poor audience reception (What's the matter, you can't handle a drama?), Livent Productions had to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  The show featured a cast led by the awesome Brent Carver and Carolee Carmello, won six Drama Desk Awards, and two of its nine Tony Award nominations.

So without further ado, here are Carver and Carmello and the remarkable cast of Parade at the 1999 Tony Awards.

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: #7: NEXT TO NORMAL, 2009

Seven days until the Tony Awards! We are at #7 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

I cannot say enough good things about this next show I'm going to introduce, Next To Normal.  It is moving, controversial, scary emotional, sad, beautiful, every emotion all rolled up into one hell of a perfect score and one hell of an original cast.  Although I'm sure it's no secret that I loved the original off-Broadway Brian d'Arcy James waaaay more than the Broadway-replacement J. Robert Spencer, both men nailed the leading male part, and Alice Ripley took home the freakin' cake, piled-high icing and all.  And I do mean icing!  Holy balls, she gives me the chills!

The show is a painful journey into the heart of grief.  Addressing such issues as death of a loved one, suicide, drug abuse, ethics in modern psychiatry, and suburban life, Next To Normal doesn't shy away from pain, telling the story of a mother's struggles with worsening bipolar disorder at the death of a family member and the loss of her grasp on reality.  The musical is very careful to walk a fine line between what is real and what is imagined, what is actually happening and what is all in the head, so I will not give away the plot, lest you get a chance to go see this gem for yourself!  But if you do, bring along a box of tissues.  Ye be warned.

When the show first opened in its workshopping days, it was fairly panned, with critics claiming that too much focus was placed on the medical procedures involved with treating patients and not enough focus went to the emotions of the family.  Some felt it was a slap in the face for those helping with treating bipolar disorder, while others simply thought it lacked the one thing that audiences needed in order to feel for the characters: connection.  By the time the show was reworked and opened up on Broadway, no one could say that anymore.  Because, quite frankly, if you can't feel the emotions of this family, if your heart doesn't break for everyone involved in this story, then you don't really know what emotions are.  So your opinion doesn't count, you emotionless hater.  Yeah.  Face it.

The show went on to be the talked-about event of the year, winning the Outer Critics' Circle Award for Outstanding Score, winning three of its eleven (!) Tony nominations, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (only the eighth musical in history to do so), running for 21 previews and 733 performances, and even running a successful “Twitter-show," where they posted the show line by line each day, ending the last line of the show on the morning of the Tony Awards, and earning them a 2009 OMMA Award for Best in Show Situation Interactive.

So, here it is, folks, a kick-ass performance of Tony-winning Alice Ripley and (sorry, it's not Brian d'Arcy James!) J. Robert Spencer leading the cast in the medley of Next To Normal at the 2009 Tony Awards.

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #8: RENT, 1996

Eight days until the Tony Awards! We are at #8 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

When Rent opened on Broadway, it revolutionized Broadway for the new generation.  I don't think much more can be said on the matter than that, and I don't think that statement can be too wisely disputed.  Enough said.

Rent follows the lives of a group of artistic twenty- and thirty-somethings all dealing with their shifting lives and shifting selves in the time of HIV/AIDS, the coming millennium, changing times in Alphabet City, and finding the one artistic dream that will make each character somebody.  The show succeeded in touching our hearts because the characters are so alive, so vivid, so passionate, and so much like you and me (well, okay, if you're the artistic type!).  The show is a rock musical by Jonathan Larson, based on Puccini's opera La bohème.   Replace Puccini's tuberculosis with HIV/AIDS and 1800's Paris with New York's East Village in the late 1980's/early 1990's, and you've got yourself Rent.

In an extremely sad turn of events, Larson died suddenly the night before the off-Broadway premiere, which added a heartfelt passion to the show that the message, despite all the sorrow, must be brought forth.  The show won a Pulitzer Prize and moved to Broadway's larger, yet still intimate, Nederlander Theatre in April 1996, with an original cast including Taye Diggs, Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, and Daphne Rubin-Vega, and it closed in September 2008, after a 12-year run of 5,124 performances, becoming the ninth-longest-running Broadway show at the time, winning four Tonys, and grossing over $280 million.

Without further ado, the stellar cast of Rent in a (sorry, yes, it's quite shortened!) medley of the tear-jerker “Seasons of Love" and the rockin' “La Vie Bohème" (my personal favorite in the whole show!)

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: #10: JANE EYRE, 2001

Ten days until the Tony Awards! We are at #10 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Yay!  We finally get into a musical that makes my ACTUAL top ten list of favorite musicals of all time: Jane Eyre.  This old, well-known story got the royal treatment with this musical because every song feels like a burst of fresh air, and there's really not much wasted space in between the gems.  (Anyone who knows me knows that I don't say that lightly or often.)

The only unfortunate thing about this particular performance is that it is far too rushed so that it will fit into the Tony Award time slot, which is an absolute tragedy for this beautiful piece; but well, considering it got completely overlooked at the Tonys, winning zero of its five nominations (The Producers swept that year), I suppose we are just lucky that the cast got to perform at all!  A death at the Tonys is a death at the theater, and Jane Eyre closed only days after the winner-takes-it-all awards show left the cast empty-handed, with 36 previews and 209 performances under its belt.

A chance to see James Barbour, the man who plays Edward Fairfax Rochester in this incredible show, perform ANYWHERE, ANYTHING, at ANY TIME is a chance you absolutely must take, however, even if it's a rushed performance of a glorious song.  Because, seriously, he is one of those performers who, if his name is on the cover, the CD is in my hand.  He has a baritone voice that will make your jaw drop.  So, without further ado, I'll let him show you for himself.

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #11: WICKED, 2004

Eleven days until the Tony Awards! We are at #11 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Today we don't just defy gravity, we defy everything about conventional theater and launch into an entirely new era of the Broadway show.  The late nineties transformed musicals for the next generation, and the new millennium did nothing for musicals if not solidify that transformation.  Leading the pack of early millennium musicals was this bad boy (bad girl?): Wicked.

I doubt I have to say much about this show because there probably isn't a one of you out there who hasn't at least heard of it.  But have you heard it?  Based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the musical tells the story of Elphaba and Galinda (later Glinda), two unlikely friends who grow to become the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North, respectively.  They struggle through opposing personalities and viewpoints, and then rivalry over the same love-interest, while they learn about the Wizard's corrupt government and witness Elphaba's public fall from grace.

The original Broadway production opened in 2003, won three out of its ten Tony Award nominations, garnered six Drama Desk Awards received one Grammy Award, and has gone on to break box office records all over the world, still remaining one of the highest-grossing shows on Broadway, performing nearly 4,000 shows and still selling out at capacity, and now ranking as the 12th-longest-running show in Broadway history.

And with an incredible original Broadway cast of Idina Menzel, Kristin Chenoweth, Norbert Leo Butz, and (holy shitballs!) Joel Grey (!), and with music and lyrics by the incredible Stephen Schwartz, how could this blasted thing NOT defy gravity?  But don't let me be the judge of that: sit back and watch Idina Menzel (pretty sure those are real tears because she's singing ON THE TONYS!) take to the sky in this stellar 2004 Tony performance.

I can't embed this one, so just view it here.

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #12: URINETOWN, 2002

Twelve days until the Tony Awards! We are at #12 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Today's musical is witty and bizarre and damn-near perfection: Urinetown: The Musical.  The meta-ness and self-awareness of this musical is at-once cerebral, hilarious, refreshing, and mind-blowing; and the talent of the original cast was top-notch.  Not to mention, bursting at the seams with inventive, fabulous choreography.

First of all, Jeff McCarthy, the actor who opens up this segment of the Tony piece as Officer Lockstock, is one of my favorite Broadway actors of all time (Hello, SideShow!  Can I just ask why no one thought of HIM to play Javert in the movie version of Les Mis?  At least I wouldn't have to chew my fingernails off worrying that “Stars" will get slaughtered!).  And seriously, can Hunter Foster be any cuter or more energetic?

In the words of Wikipedia: “[The show] satirizes the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and municipal politics.  [It] also parodies musicals such as The Cradle Will Rock and Les Misérables, and the Broadway musical itself as a form.  In reverse-pantomime style, the unconventional plotline shatters audience expectations of a somewhat pleasant ending."  Boom, couldn't have said it better.  In other words, the show is utter cerebral perfection.

The idea started with one of the original writers traveling in Europe, encountering a pay-per-use toilet, and thus getting the inspiration to write a musical about a twenty-year drought that has caused a terrible water shortage, making private toilets unthinkable.  All toilet business must be done in public toilets where the user has to pay the controlling Urine Good Company for the use of the amenities.  If the people don't comply, they are sent to the penal colony called Urinetown.  If you go to Urinetown ... you don't come back.  Enter Assistant Urinal Custodian Bobby Strong, and we get ourselves a rebellion story worth singing about.

The show opened up in September 2001, ran for 25 previews and 965 performances, was nominated for ten Tony Awards and won three.  September 11, 2001, altered a lot of controversial shows on Broadway at the time, and Urinetown was no exception.  It was originally scheduled to open September 13, but it contained several references that would no longer be politically correct and would have to be mulled over before the show could open on September 20, with, after all that, only one line removed from the script.  That seems a fitting remark to the parody of the show.

So here is the original cast, including my darlings McCarthy and Foster, taking you on a raucous freedom-loving trip through Urinetown.  Not the town, of course: The Musical.

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.

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #14: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, 1988

Fourteen days until the Tony Awards! We are at #14 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Today's musical pick will probably astonish you if you know me at all.  As a Stephen Sondheim fan, I'm not allowed to be an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan (Right?  Isn't that how it works?  I mean, with the exception of Evita and Sunset Boulevard, right?), and the older I get, I fall into that category as a theater snob.  Sigh.  Some things were just meant to be kept sacred.

So, I know, I know.  I hate this musical and all its Broadway-hogging self-entitlement.  But remember when The Phantom of the Opera was new?  Remember back when I was seven years old, and this was new?  And we hadn't heard it a thousand times, and we didn't know there were pyrotechnics that would shoot up in front of our faces, and we didn't know a chandelier would fall on our heads, and we didn't know the masquerade ball could ever look so fantastic or that a woman could ever hit those notes!?

Well, in 1986, The Phantom of the Opera was new, and when it finally came to Broadway in 1988, this Tony performance was breathtaking.  Yes, yes, we know that the show went on to win the 1986 Olivier Award and 1988 Tony Award for Best Musical (along with six other Tonys!), then went on to be the longest-running show in Broadway history (Just had its 10,000th performance on The Great White Way in February!), the second-longest-running West End (London) musical, with total worldwide box office receipts of $5.1 billion, a record-setting Broadway gross of $845 million, then further went on to become the highest-grossing entertainment event (Period!) of all time, the most financially successful theatrical show in history, seen by 130 million people in 145 cities in 27 countries by 2011, and officially the most successful entertainment project in history.  Whew, take a breath!

All of this led us to say, “Oh, give it a rest already, ALW!" but I can't very well post the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime and not include the one that revolutionized modern-day theater, much as it stings to admit it.  Sigh.  Alas.  Wish I could because I hate the sucker.  BUT, I want you to listen to it again with fresh ears.  Because in 1988, I -- like the rest of the world -- was as enamored with this show as Christine was enamored with The Phantom, and when I watch it through a 7-year old's eyes, sometimes I still get that feeling that I've lost my breath.

So, without further ado, The Phantom of the Opera when it was new, when it still blew our minds, when we still couldn't believe those incredible notes!

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #15: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, 1994

Fifteen days until the Tony Awards! We are at #15 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Some shows are all music.  Some shows are all dance.  Some shows are all spectacle.  And some shows are all three.  When Beauty and the Beast came to the Broadway stage in 1994, its sets, design, costumes, and quick, breathtaking scene changes could be hailed as nothing other than “Disney Magic."

With seven new songs written for the stage production -- including the show-stopper, “If I Can't Love Her," sung by none other than the unbeatable Terrence Mann (seeing a pattern here?) --; a stellar cast consisting of Mann, Susan Egan, and Burke Moses; the impeccable orchestrations of Danny Troob; and the Tony-winning costume design of Ann Hould-Ward, Beauty and the Beast opened in 1994 and went on to play 5,464 performances, to become the eighth-longest-running show in Broadway history, and to lead the way for Disney to take over Broadway (With three Disney shows currently running on Broadway, I'd call that “taking over," wouldn't you?).

Here is a kick-ass medley from the original cast, performing some of the best songs from the show at the 1994 Tony Awards.  Spectacle, indeed!  Look at how effortlessly Disney works its magic!  I am so terribly in love with Lumiere from this show, that when he pops out in front of the curtain to set us up for one of Disney's (and Alan Menken's!) best songs EVER, I must confess, I squeal with delight and line up for the kick-line!  Yes, every time.  Enjoy!

(The video says 1992 Tony Awards, but it is actually 1994.  Trust me.  I know these things.)

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #16: ASSASSINS, 2004

Sixteen days until the Tony Awards!   We are at #16 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

Today we venture into a little musical that could: my all-time favorite musical ever, Assassins.  Sadly, this gem of a musical's original cast didn't perform at the Tonys because she opened up Off-Broadway.  Add to that the fact that she opened up right at the height of Operation Desert Storm and the Persian Gulf War, and well, wartime is not really everyone's favorite time to see a show about killing presidents.  The original cast, including the stellar Patrick Cassidy, Victor Garber, and Terrence Mann, ran for 73 performances, was hailed among Sondheim fans, and ridiculed among conventional reviewers.

But the show is deep.  It prompts us to consider the motivations of assassins and would-be assassins in a way we probably haven't comprehended before, something deeper and more meaningful than just, “They're all batshit insane."  It pulls out parallels to our everyday society, makes victims and heroes out of the common man and audience members alike, and makes for one hell of a revival cast, when, in 2004, Neil Patrick Harris, James Barbour, and Michael Cerveris created one of the most wet-dream-worthy revival casts in Broadway history, finally making it to Broadway, and raking in five Tonys in the process.  Dude, you know it's good when it prompts Sarah Vowell to write Assassination Vacation, wherein she starts out the book attending a performance of Assassins.

But even the revival show was plagued with political war issues.  Originally scheduled to open in 2001, the show was postponed until 2004, due to the sensitive subject matter in the light of September 11, 2001.  And well, wartime is not really everyone's favorite time to see a show about killing presidents.  The show ran for 101 performances and won the coveted Best Musical Revival slot, so without further ado, let me introduce the opening song, one of Stephen Sondheim's greatest and creepiest, with the revival cast of Assassins at the 2004 Tony Awards.

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #17: CHICAGO, 1997

Seventeen days until the Tony Awards!  We are at #17 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

I take you today to a hot time in the old town tonight, as we watch Ann Reinking and Bebe Neuwirth tear up some serious screen in the glitzy, Prohibition-era revival of Chicago.  We all know the story of the satirical spin on Prohibition criminal justice and the celebrity criminal; we've all seen the Academy Award-winning film version.  But man, you ain't seen nuthin' until you've seen Reinking and Neuwirth shimmy-shake in one of the finest dance sequences ever inspired by choreographer Bob Fosse (who choreographed the original production in 1975) and in the longest-running American musical, the longest-running Broadway revival, and the fourth-longest-running overall show in Broadway history.  The revival show won six Tony Awards in 1997, including all the major categories of Best Revival of a Musical and Best Leading Actors, as well as Best Choreographer, which isn't always major, except for one thing: Ann Reinking not only starred in the show, but she also choreographed it.  Yeah, I know!  Badass.

But the show's satire is rooted in history.  The musical is based on a play of the same name by reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, who was assigned to cover the 1924 trials of murderesses Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner for the Chicago Tribune.  Ann Reinking and Bebe Neuwirth stand in for your murderesses, and without further ado, here they are in the 1997 Tony Award full-cast performance of “All That Jazz" and the foot-stompin' dynamic-duo performance of “Hot Honey Rag."  Hotcha!

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #18: COMPANY, 2007

Eighteen days until the Tony Awards!  We are at #18 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

If you know anything about me at all, you know that, like all theater nerds who are truly theater nerds, I live and breathe (and eat and shit) Stephen Sondheim.  The man is a witty, brilliant, impossible, perfect lyricist and composer genius bastard, and Company is one of his all-time greatest shows.    The original Company did not come out in my lifetime, but in 2006, there was splendidly a revival of it that knocks my socks off, complete with a new cast recording and a filming of the staged production (that you can stream on Netflix!), and led by the stellar Raúl Esparza.  Esparza plays the perfect Bobby, an approaching-middle-age single man whose singleness is the obsession of his married and completely dysfunctional, destructive, and relationship-retarded friends.  They want a say in everything he does relationship-wise, while thinking they all know best; and he observes their dysfunctionality with confusion and fear, unable to get his feet wet or to take any plunge, lest he turn out like _these people_.

Unlike most Sondheim shows that open and close rather quickly due to their obscure subject matters and quirky melodies, the original cast of Company performed for 705 performances.  The 2006 revival, in which the actors act and sing while ACCOMPANYING THEMSELVES on their own instruments (!), ran for 246 performances and won a 2007 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.  Here is the great Raúl Esparza at the 2007 Tonys, accompanying himself on piano, playing the perfect, Tony-nominated lead role of Bobby, and singing one of the greatest Stephen Sondheim songs ever written, the show-stopping “Being Alive."  Wait for that ending, kids.

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #19: BARNUM, 1980

Nineteen days until the Tony Awards!  We are at #19 on my 20-day Countdown of the Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime.

I'm going to take you back to the year I was born with one fantastic, raucous ride of a musical, as sneaking in at #19 is the back-to-back performance of “Come Follow the Band" and “There is a Sucker Born Ev'ry Minute" from the fabulous original Broadway cast of Barnum.  There is nothing quite like the spectacle of this show, and nothing quite like its original cast, consisting of Jim Dale, Glenn Close, and Terrence Mann.

The show chronicles the life of circus-creator P. T. Barnum from 1835 through 1880, and combines elements of musical theater with elements of the circus, including incredible performances by trapeze artists, jugglers, and clowns and depictions of real-life personalities like Tom Thumb.  The show ran for 854 performances, won three Tony Awards (including Jim Dale for Best Actor in a Musical), and is still one of my favorite get-up-and-go musicals ever written.  Watch how fun it is for the audience to see the band march down the aisle; and man, oh, man, just wait until Jim Dale knocks it out of the park with his stellar performance of the no-time-to-breathe “Sucker" number.  I've seen Barnum in theaters twice.  I've NEVER seen a Phineas Taylor Barnum quite like Jim Dale!

20-Day Countdown! The Top 20 Tony Performances of My Lifetime: #20: RAGS, 1987

Twenty days until the Tony Awards!  Everyone knows the PERFORMANCES are what the Tonys are all about, so let's get the countdown started with some of my all-time favorite Tony performances of my lifetime.

Three things: I'm only posting videos that happened in my lifetime.  Why?  Because the Tony Awards changed my life, but they didn't change my life in 1967, no matter how awesome Joel Grey was in the original cast of Cabaret, because I wasn't born yet, see?  So this is personal.  The second thing is that this is NOT the greatest random musical performances of my lifetime, it is the greatest TONY performances of my lifetime; ergo, limited to what performed.  Considering the original casts of four of my Top 10 Musicals of All Time never performed at the Tonys--and another one of them is ABOUT TO on June 10th, but hasn't yet--, well, you have to keep the two things separate.  Third, I just want to say: Please watch them.  These people are the cream of the crop, and you just never know; you might actually enjoy it.  It's pretty moving stuff.  So, without further ado, let's roll out the #20 slot.

Number 20 comes from a little-known musical from 1987 called Rags.  It is a Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Working, The Prince of Egypt, Pocahontas, Godspell) musical of immigrants coming to America at the turn of the century and trying to thrive in a harsh environment.  The show and the music are fantastic, and just listen to Judy Kuhn's flawless notes (and oh! that ending!) as she sings the title song with Dick Latessa.  I know, it's so good, right!?  So why have you never heard of this musical before?  Well, this little gem had the misfortune of running up against one of the greatest shows in musical theater history: this underdog show called Les Misérables, you might have heard of it?  Needless to say, Les Mis swept most all of EVERYTHING that year, and Rags closed after only four performances.  Not that Judy Kuhn minded, really: She went on to play the original Cosette in Les Mis, a role that launched her career into the stars.  Broadway is so fickle!  (Also, I apologize for the bad sound quality.  It's a very quiet recording, but it does sound great in headphones!)