June 8, 2003—The Tony Awards

Sometimes, you don't gotta have a gimmick: For as long as I've been watching them -- and I'm only speaking from 20 years or so of experience, so I may be wrong -- the annual Tony Awards telecasts have all succeeded in at least one respect: they got me excited about the theatre. Especially when I was growing up, passionate about music and drama and dance, the Tonys were my ticket, literally, to New York. Every year for two or three hours, television became a window on a world that otherwise existed only in my imagination and within the covers of original cast recordings and scripts that I devoured in my tiny rural midwestern town.

Even as an adult (and an adult so blessed to be working in the industry I love) who finally had the opportunity to routinely travel to the Big Apple itself and see the shows firsthand and meet the professionals who made the magic and, sometimes, to just stand in the middle of Times Square and bathe in the lights, sounds and chaos of Broadway -- even then and now, the Tonys were special. Sacred. A night when the phone came off the hook, a big bowl of popcorn was produced and libations were chilled in anticipation of a TV program not to be missed.

Earlier this week, I turned down two dinner invitations (from gay friends, even! What were they thinking?!) because tonight they'd be doling out the Tony Awards and I wouldn't miss 'em for the world.

I should have gone to dinner. TiVo would have preserved the highlights. The Tonys let me down tonight.

I've accepted that politics play a large role in the nominations and voting. I've made allowances that stilted, scripted banter is an awards telecast given. I've even made my peace with the fact that the technical categories are going to get shafted for screen time.

What I can't accept is that for one night each year, the theatre is given an opportunity to shine, that our profession is alloted three hours of valuable television time to present a commercial endorsement of the magical, powerful art of live performance and it's been terribly squandered. Across America and around the world and, yes, even in tiny, rural midwestern towns, the shrinking audience that tunes in for the Tonys is switching off the set after a long, largely boring broadcast and shrugging its collective shoulders. Theatre? Meh. The Tony Awards producers were given a chance to make the case for Broadway (and, by extension, for the vital, living theatre beyond Manhattan) and they failed, miserably.

A few observations:

• Hugh Jackman was a charming host, inasmuch as he was needed, but it should tell you something when several of the presenters begin their remarks by disclaiming, "I suppose you're wondering why I'm here." Mike Wallace? Barbara Walters? Jackman himself? Lovely people all, but it was clear the producers were often stretching to stack the show with bold-faced names rather than turning to some of the people who make the theatre what it is.
• The excerpts from the nominated musicals were mostly enjoyable but certainly not presented to their advantage. In fairness, it's nigh impossible to capture the electricity of a Broadway show when it's ripped from its intimate theatre habitat and plopped into the great barn at Radio City. It's harder still when it seems like the broadcast director had never seen any of the shows and had no idea where to point the cameras next. And on a live TV show, you only get one shot. As much as you want to make the show exciting for the audience sitting in the house in New York, the Tonys absolutely have to be good -- preferably great -- TV. At the risk of heretical wishes, I'd almost rather they work it out with the unions and go into the theatres themselves, shoot two or three performances under better controlled conditions, and edit them into video presentations that really show off the performances. The audience at Radio City is there because they already love the theatre. Give middle America and the world a chance to see why.
• I was glad to see Hairspray do so well. It is not the best musical ever, nor is it necessarily the best musical from this Broadway season, but it is bar none the best time I've had in a New York theatre in a decade and deserves its success. I'm a bit disappointed that my pal Corey Reynolds didn't win as best featured actor, but that the award went to the courtly Dick Latessa is a nice consolation. And I just want to hug Marissa Jaret Winokur to bits. She's such a sweetie!
• Who the hell did the cutting of "Rose's Turn" and what did they use? A rusty machete? That excerpt, combined with the unfavorable buzz about Bernadette's Rose and the loss to Nine will probably doom the Gypsy revival prematurely.
• Speaking of: Yes, yes, yes. We get it. Antonio is a revelation. But I'd rather have seen Chita dance, and I'd wager it'd have sold more tickets. He's hot but when she cuts loose, she's incandescent.
• Best acceptance speeches: Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan; Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (also, best kiss on the Tonys since Spider Woman); Michele Pawk; and the incredibly gracious Brian Dennehey.
• Was anyone else afraid Isabelle Stevenson's face was going to snap and put out someone's eye?
• Amour got shafted. It was a foregone conclusion it wouldn't win anything, but to receive only a brief video montage rather than a staged excerpt was insulting.
• We don't have the time or interest any longer to do excerpts from the nominated plays but Def Poetry Jam -- a fine performance, mind, that closed last month -- gets two highlights? One with wonky audio? And we wonder why drama is dying on Broadway?
• If Hugh Jackman is going to sing, could we at least give him a whole number? Hell, how about a preview of The Boy From Oz?
• In case you blinked, Cy Feuer was "honored" for lifetime achievement with five seconds from his speech at the earlier ceremony, and the great folks at The Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis received the Regional Theatre Tony. It's a pity more prominence isn't given to the regional companies each year -- it's been at least six or seven years since the Tony telecast did a respectable overview of theatre outside New York -- since, increasingly, that's where the new musicals and plays are being born to give a moribund Broadway commercial theatre new life. (The utterly winsome, Tony-nominated A Year with Frog & Toad, for example, was born at, yes, The Children's Theatre Company.)
• Robert Sean Leonard, will you marry me? No? Matthew Morrison? Please?

Everything else is gone: Ed Sullivan, Playhouse 90, the hour-long TV variety show, Rosie O'Donnell, even the way-the-heck-too-perky Caroline Rhea Show has been cancelled. The Tony Awards are the live theatre's single shot at reaching America with the news that the theatre can be a vital, thrilling, relevant and warm place to pass a few hours, in New York or in your hometown.

This year, that shot missed the target by a mile.

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