THE TONYS: Monday Morning Quarterbacking

 

Danny Burstein, Tony Winner for Moulin Rouge

Photo by Matthew Murphy

It has been a confusing and anxious time for everyone involved in the theater, and the very fact that the Tonys for 2019-2020 were presented last night marks an important milestone in terms of Broadway's return.

So no recriminations or second-guessing here.  Just some observations.

To begin with, I successfully predicted 15 of the 25 winners, largely owing to my thinking that Moulin Rouge would walk away with a Tony in pretty much every category for which it was nominated. Since the show picked up 10 Tonys, you can see that my crystal ball did me a service.

Regarding musicals, it does seem a shame that all three shows that were up for awards in that category were what we call "jukebox musicals," including the winner.  The others were Jagged Little Pill, and Tina -- a show whose star, Adrienne Warren, gave an extraordinarily powerful Tony-garnering performance.  

Unfortunately, with no original musicals in the mix, all of the shows that were nominated for Best Original Score were actually non-musicals (though, of course, with supporting music). My thinking is that the category itself should be confined to actual musicals with original scores.  Since there were none this go-round, that category should have been eliminated.  

And speaking of categories with too few nominees, there was the case of Best Lead Actor in a Musical, in which Aaron Tveit (Moulin Rouge) was the only nominee.  The Tony voters were directed to vote  yea or nay.  Fortunately, enough of them voted yea, so that Mr. Tveit picked up his award, but, really, this category should have been eliminated.  

By the way, for the record and from my perspective, the actual best performance in this category was given by Isaac Powell in West Side Story, a show that -- while it did open in February of 2020, prior to the Covid shutdown -- unfortunately did not make the cutoff date for the Tonys.  

Overall, there were few surprises, even among those categories where I failed to successfully predict the winner.  

I did wonder that the highly touted Slave Play, which garnered a dozen nominations and is returning for another run on Broadway, failed to win any Tonys.  I especially admired the performance in that play of Joaquina Kalukango, but I will say that Mary-Louise Parker's performance in The Sound Inside (itself a small, esoteric play) was stunning and deserving of the Tony she won for Best Lead Actress in a Play. 

I was also very happy to have erred in the category of Best Revival of a Play, since the winner, A Soldier's Play, was my favorite for the season.  In that, I especially admired the performance by David Alan Grier, and I was delighted that he, too, won a Tony (for Best Featured Actor).  I did have a difficult time choosing between A Soldier's Play and Betrayal, which was given a truly stellar production.

Apart from the awards themselves, I was somewhat puzzled by the televised two-hour "Celebration of Broadway" show, which seemed geared toward the in-crowd of the industry rather than an audience of potential Broadway theater-goers.  There were very few performances from the 2019-2020 season and none from the current season (other than that of David Byrne's American Utopia, which is returning to Broadway for another run).  

I have the fondest memories of growing up, watching the performances on the Tony show each year, looking forward to the day when I could get to New York and take in a Broadway show myself.  Who knew that someday I would live here and be able to attend Broadway and Off Broadway shows to my heart's content!

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Here are links to my reviews of all the shows I have mentioned above:

Jagged Little Pill

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/world/JaggedLittlePill2019.html

Moulin Rouge

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/world/MoulinRouge2019.html

Tina

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/world/Tina2019.html

Slave Play

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/world/SlavePlay2019.html

West Side Story 

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/world/WestSideStory.html

A Soldier's Play

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/world/SoldiersPlay.html

The Sound Inside

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/world/SoundInside2019.html

Betrayal

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/world/Betrayal2019.html

David Byrne's American Utopia

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/world/AmericanUtopia2019.html

 

TONY AWARDS. Long delayed but here we go...

There has been lots of mischigas about the on again-off again Tony Awards.  And, really, it's all understandable under the circumstances.  

Now is a time to celebrate the reopening of Broadway and to honor the hard work that went into the productions that did make it into the 2019-2020 Broadway season prior to the shutdown.

So, yes, tonight, it's on, though how it's being presented for public viewing is rather convoluted.

From 7-9 PM,  eastern time, you'll have to watch all but three of the awards being distributed on a streaming service, Paramount+.  To lure people in, they are offering a free week of viewing before the fee kicks in.  Up to you.  I'm not biting.

But starting at 9 PM, tune in to CBS for "The Tony Awards Presents Broadway's Back," a celebration filled with performances and the final three awards:  for best play, best play revival, and best musical.

For the record, I am posting my predictions here:

Best Play:  SLAVE PLAY

Best Musical:  MOULIN ROUGE

Best Play Revival:  BETRAYAL

Best Book of a Musical:  JAGGED LITTLE PILL

Best Original Score:  THE ROSE TATTOO

Best Lead Actor, Play:  TOM HIDDLESTON

Best Lead Actress, Play:  JOAQUINA KALUKANGO

Best Lead Actor, Musical: AARON TVEIT

Best Lead Actress, Musical:  ADRIENNE WARREN

Best Featured Actor, Play:  DAVID ALAN GRIER

Best Featured Actress, Play: LOIS SMITH

Best Featured Actor, Musical:  DANNY BURSTEIN

Best Featured Actress, Musical:  LAUREN PATTEN

Best Scenic Design, Play:  CLINT RAMOS

Best Scenic Design, Musical: DEREK McLANE

Best Costume Design, Play: DEDE AYITE (for Slave Play)

Best Costume Design, Musical:  CATHERINE ZUBER

Best Lighting Design, Play:  JIYOUN CHANG

Best Lighting Design, Musical:  JUSTIN TOWNSEND (for Moulin Rouge)

Best Sound Design, Play:  Daniel Kluger (for The Sound Inside)

Best Sound Design, Musical:  PETER HYLENSKI

Best Director, Play: ROBERT O'HARA

Best Director, Musical:  ALEX TIMBERS

Best Choreography: SONYA TAYEH

Best Orchestrations: KATIE KRESEK, CHARLIE ROSEN, MATT STINE &  JUSTIN LEVINE

Let's all find out together how well my predictions hold up.

 

WELCOME BACK! A consideration of the start of the 2021-22 New York theater season.

 It's been a while!

New York theaters are nervously moving forward with a new season that everyone hoped we could call "post-pandemic," or at least "pandemic-under-control."

Alas, neither of these defines the current state of things.  So, let's call it "nervously moving forward anyway, with fingers crossed and hoping for the best."  

It's hard to believe, but I have already seen seven shows on and off Broadway.  So let's chat a bit about them.

Things began for me in April, when I saw a production of Blindness at Off Broadway's Daryl Roth Theatre. The theater is named for the producer Daryl Roth, to whom I give a lot of credit for taking this early leap into the unknown.  

Blindness at the Daryl Roth Theatre

Photo by Helen Maybanks

Wisely or foolishly, I felt perfectly safe attending.  Given all that was at stake, I know that everything that could be done to ensure the health and well-being of all in attendance would be taken care of.  Indeed, the theater was super scrubbed, the audience was seated in a socially-distanced space, we were escorted individually to our seats, and everyone was masked.  

A little about the play itself:  Blindness was adapted by Simon Stephens from José Saramago's 1995 novel of the same title, It is a gripping tale about a plague of sightlessness that spreads rampantly among the inhabitants of an unspecified city and brings social order to its knees.  

So, not exactly a fun topic, but it was very well done nonetheless.  If you want to know more, here is a link to my review:  

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/ob/04_06_21.html

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Next up for me was another Off Broadway show, this one at the Cell Theatre.  Now we are into July.  Protocol for admission was proof of vaccination -- though after admission, seating was not socially distanced, and masks were not required.

This one was a seriocomic play called Fruma Sarah (Waiting in the Wings).  If the name "Fruma Sarah" rings a bell, it's the character of the deceased wife of the butcher Lazar Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof.  We never actually meet the real Fruma Sarah in Fiddler;   instead, she appears in an imaginary dream cooked up by Tevye in order to convince his wife that they should break the agreement with Lazar Wolf to let him marry their daughter.  Remember?  Good.

Jackie Hoffman and Kelly Kinsella

 Fruma Sarah (Waiting in the Wings) at the Cell 

Photo by Hunter Canning

Fruma Sarah (Waiting in the Wings) is a two-character play about a community theater actress waiting backstage to go on in the role of the dream version of Fruma Sarah. The part was performed with great élan by the comic actress Jackie Hoffman.  

Written by E. Dale Smith, the play gives us a woman whose own life is on the skids, but who lives for those moments when she can figuratively and literally soar as an actress.  If you want to know more, here is a link to my review:

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/ob/07_08_21.html 

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Third show, taking me into August.  This one marked the re-opening of the Delacorte Theatre, aka Shakespeare in the Park, the Public Theater's stadium-like open-air performance space in Central Park.  

Covid protocol: proof of vaccination and photo IDs to get in.  Masks required until and unless seated.  Special section set aside, socially distanced, for the unvaccinated and masked.

Before we get into the show itself, a comic romp titled Merry Wives, I want to take a moment to recognize all of the hard work by everyone involved to pull it off.  From the start, the production was plagued by a string of delays, canceled performances, an injured lead actor, and storm washouts -- not to mention the nerve-jangling specter lurking in the shadows.  And yet, the show prevailed and successfully ran until just last week when it closed on schedule.  

 

The Cast of Merry Wives at the Delacorte

Photo by Joan Marcus

Merry Wives is a modern take of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, adapted by playwright Jocelyn Bioh and   removed from England to Harlem among a population of African immigrants.  If you want to know more, here's a link to my review:

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/ob/08_09_21.html

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Then later in August, Broadway saw its first show of the season, and, yes, I was there.  It was Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu's play Pass Over, transferred from its previous Off Broadway production, with a revised ending, still on view at the August Wilson Theatre,  with masks, vaccinations, and IDs all around.  Now might also be a good time for me to mention that, thus far, audiences I've encountered have been compliant and well-behaved and considerate of one another.  

Namir Smallwood and Jon Michael Hill

in Pass Over at the August Wilson Theatre

Photo by Joan Marcus

Pass Over borrows imagery from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and from the Old Testament Book of Exodus to relate the story of two young Black men who are trapped in a stretch of urban space.  If you want to know more, here's a link to my review:

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/world/index.html

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Lenny Grossman and Francesca Ravera 

in Blackbird at the New Ohio Theatre

Photo by Bjorn Bolinder

September saw an off Broadway production at the New Ohio Theatre of David Harrower's disturbing play, Blackbird, which deals with the toxic fallout from a heinous act of pedophilia, a three-month-long sexual relationship between a 40-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl that took place 15 years before the play opens.  If you want to know more, here's a link to my review: 

https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/ob/09_16_21.html

 

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There are two other plays I have seen since, Sanctuary City at Off Broadway's Lucille Lortel Theatre and Lackawanna Blues, on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.  But I have not yet written those reviews, so you'll have to wait.