Top Ten Tony Awards Performances - Part Two - Honorable Mentions

It's hard to identify just ten performances from the Tony Awards.  So, here are four amazing performances that just missed the cut.  I think each does its main job - making you think "I HAVE GOT TO SEE THIS SHOW!"

Annie 1977.  Today, most musicals only get 4-5 minutes to perform.  This medley is nearly 11 minutes!  If you want to know why Annie was a huge hit - and wasn't always considered a sacharine show, watch this medley.  In the Easy Street segment, you will see why Dorothy Loudon won the Tony Award for her performance as Miss Hannigan.

Side Show 1998.  This show was a financial flop.  In 2014, the show was revived with alterations - what is sometimes called a "revisal".  It also flopped.  But, the score has lived on - and this clip helps explain why.  Side Show was about the Hilton Sisters - conjoined twins who became stars in vaudeville.  The show had closed months before the Tony Awards, but the stars Alice Ripley("Violet" on the right) and Emily Skinner ("Daisy" on the left) came on the broadcast, without costumes or sets, and let loose on one of the show's two power ballads - "I Will Never Leave You".   Alice Ripley actually flubs an early line but Emily Skinner covers the error.

The Wedding Singer 2005.  This was a musical version of the Adam Sandler movie.  The show was struggling at the box office, but this opening number with its high energy and catchy tune and lyrics set the box office aflame the day after the broadcast.  However, the rest of the show paled in comparison and the show was not a financial success.  But this opening number always brings a smile to my face.

Ragtime 1998.  E. L. Doctorow's sprawling novel was given the musical treatment in 1998.  The first number in the show is nearly 10 minutes long - but for the Tony presentation, it was cut down to four minutes and restaged.  Still, you get an accurate sense of the immenseness of the show - even without sets!  

Top Ten Tony Awards Performances - Part One

1   Every year since 1947, the Antoinette Perry Awards have been handed out by the American Theatre Wing of the Broadway League. They are known as the Tony Awards. Only certain productions which have played certain theatres in New York City in a calendar year are eligible.

The Tony Awards have been broadcast on television since 1967 and is usually the best televised awards show of the year. Now, the Tony Awards are basically an advertising gimmick - like the Oscars and Grammys - and so the televised show gives viewers a small taste of some of the shows which were nominated that year. Well, a show used to have to have been nominated - that has been relaxed in the last few years. Little known fact - the shows which perform pay the Broadway League to be on the show, in addition to the costs of transporting set pieces and paying the performers. So, shows which have closed prior to the Tony Awards do not always perform even if nominated.  Still, a Tony Award performance may help a show stay open or at least have a life in regional and community theatre production. Or a show with major financial backing may perform - such as Finding Neverland in 2015 - which performed despite not garnering a single nomination.   Over the next several posts, I am going to identify my personal "top ten" of Tony Award performances from nominated musicals.