Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony
Okay, so here’s the breakdown, and here’s the observations.
Mark’s right about a lot of things, including:
Some say the main function of the Tony telecast is to serve as an infomercial for Broadway, and that the real winners are those whose presentations drive buyers to the box offices. I can’t see how most of the selections this evening could prompt purchasing, especially the scenes from the nominated plays which were too brief to generate the slightest interest. Even Spamalot, which I just know is not a dull show, looked like a dull show.
I didn’t get the Al Sharpton thing either. But we didn’t get the “gibberish” he mentions on the West Coast telecast, at least not in Seattle. However, I did hear someone (The conductor? A prompt-choreographer) counting down beats during the Sweet Charity number featuring Christina Applegate not exactly worrying the ghost of Verdon.
ETA–Best eye-candy: Emmy Rossum, to whom I clearly have not been paying enough attention. And about whom the following:
- Annabel at 19.
- Yes, I’m saying she was the best eye-candy on a show that also featured Anne Hathaway. I’m as shocked as you are. But Anne needs to fire her hairdresser. Now. Dressmaker, too.
- Do you realize Ms. Rossum was born the year Pet Shop Boys got to number one with “West End Girls?” I’m desperately, desperately old.
And now back to our Tony takedown.
The opening with Billy Crystal was good, but perhaps went on a bit too long, and the joke on Applegate’s entrance was nicely Kelly Bundy-esque. Hugh Jackman is a god, but Nathan Lane made me miss him as host.
Mark also notes the oddity of “saluting” Stephen Sondheim with a song for which he only wrote lyrics. And the arrangement and Aretha Franklin’s performance both paled next to the lovely record she made of the song with Quincy Jones, who’s said he wants it played at his funeral. And hearing it, you get why.
Mark ends by saying:
I know you can’t ever get Zero Mostel and Robert Preston out to re-create their great musical moments…but these things used to be about performances, and now they’re about walking to the stage to thank your agent and life partner.
Which reminds me, in a roundabout way, of something I noticed and may, in an even rounderabout way, have something to do with why I’ve put away my dream of being a playwright and decided, god help me, to try for the screen.
(I mean, apart from having been so embittered by my one experience so far that I screamed “HA!” tonight every time they started talking about how in the theater, the author’s words are sacred and the director’s job is to interpret them through the actors. What an interesting theory. I wonder if anyone in…but nah, skip it.)
Now, not having seen any of the nominated plays or musicals I may be wrong, in fact, let’s assume I am. But hey, if they wanted me to know what the shows were really about they could have fucking told me.
But anyway, it sure seemed to me like a lot of them were about one or more of the following things:
Religion in general and Catholicism in particular is repressive and abusive.
Homosexuals really, truly, are people too.
In other words, things that anyone with even the faintest intelligence can only repsond to with the following:
“Fucking DUH!”
The point being, it just reinforced for me the idea that theater, or at least Broadway theater, has become an exclusionary and elitist place for people to tell themselves truths they already know or lies they want to believe. Which is William Goldman’s definition of a Hollywood movie, and it can work splendidly on screen or stage, but it’s not particuarly challenging or confrontational.
