Put away your grade-school uniforms and bring out the transvestite footwear. After Sunday night’s 67th annual Tony Awards telecast, Matilda is out and Kinky Boots is in fashion.
The Cyndi Lauper-Harvey Fierstein musical walked off with six statuettes including Best Musical in what has to be considered an upset over the Olivier Award winner from London. (Translation of “upset”: I didn’t pick it in my predictions.)
The broadcast itself ran smoothly enough, settling into a formula of the four times that Neil Patrick Harris has hosted the ceremony. It opened with a clever, elaborately produced musical number that began with Harris strumming a folk guitar, in the style of last season’s big winner Once, then offered a montage of musicals from current nominees to long-running Broadway mainstays.
Probably the best special material sequence featured Broadway veterans Andrew Rannells (The Book of Mormon), Megan Hilty (9 to 5) and Laura Benanti (Gypsy), each of whom left live theater for a potentially more lucrative television series, all of which were soon canceled. They sang parody lyrics to familiar show tunes about the experience, as Harris — who has a popular series (How I Met Your Mother) — tweaked them for their misfortune.
The broadcast ended a few minutes overtime with Harris singing a rushed song that recapped the award winners of the evening. It’s a neat trick, though not as astonishing as the first time he did it, and it could have been more effective if Harris has a little more room to breathe.
Pacing the three-hour show remains a problem. It begins fairly leisurely, then speeds up and cuts off acceptance speeches as it falls behind the planned schedule and eventually — as it reaches the most important awards — it is in frantic mode. I get nostalgic for the days when PBS and CBS shared the show and it not only gave all the awards out on air, but the whole ceremony could breathe a bit.
I love seeing scenes from the nominated shows, but the broadcast is now so stuffed with entertainment segments that the awards seem an afterthought. I really didn’t need the number from the Rascals revue or, for that matter, the tribute to Phantom of the Opera. And the Tonys continue to do a lousy, half-hearted job of introducing the Best Play nominees.
As to the winners, I guessed 18 out of 26 right, expecting a lot more love going Matilda’s way. The more I watch scenes from it on YouTube, where I can actually understand Tim Minchin’s lyrics, the more I admire that show.
And I love the fact that Tracy Letts beat out Tom Hanks for Best Actor in a Play. Letts’ performance as George was unlike any I’d ever seen in the countless times I’ve seen Virginia Woolf, a true revelation, and just the fact that a journeyman stage actor beat out a movie star — in a play that had closed long ago — gave a legitimacy to the Tonys that it has been needing.
I am also pleased that the revival of Pippin did so well, but did anyone else notice that it took until producer Barry Weissler accepted the Tony that the name Bob Fosse was uttered? You can set that show in a circus or on the moon, but it would never have existed in the version we know without the meddling and mentoring of Fosse.