Since the Tony Awards telecast is more about marketing Broadway than it is about handing out statuettes for excellence, it is only fitting that awards were spread out to 13 different shows, each of which can hang out the Tonys shingle for whatever box office boost that is worth.
As expected, there was no dominant winner Sunday night, with the revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch receiving the most Tonys (a mere four, for best revival of a musical, best lighting of a musical and for best actor Neil Patrick Harris and featured actress Lena Hall). The only award said to really make a difference in ticket sales is Best Musical, which went to A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. It earned only two other Tonys though, for director Darko Tresnjak and book writer Robert J. Freedman.
A Gentleman’s Guide is a very clever little show, but viewers of the Tonys broadcast will probably have to take my word for it, for the number the production chose to present seemed flat and clumsy, probably did little for ticket sales. Whose bright idea was it to exclude star Jefferson Mays — who plays the eight murder victims — from the show’s musical showcase?
Anyway, it was great to have Hugh Jackman back as the host of the show, even if I remain puzzled by the point of his opening number, a hop through the corridors and backstage of Radio City Music Hall as a lead-up to the ceremony. Still, Jackman is obviously game to do whatever the writers come up with, including tap dancing with the cast of After Midnight, rapping the lyrics to The Music Man’s opening number “Rock Island,” alongside L.L. Cool J and T.I., and romancing the Best Actress in a Musical nominees with special lyrics to “Steppin’ Out with My Baby.” Get this man a show on Broadway again soon.
The presenters of awards seemed to have even more tenuous relations with Broadway than usual, as the producers of the Tonys continued their desperate attempt to boost ratings by resorting to such movie and TV stars as Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Hudson, Kate Mara and Tina Fey. Why can’t they just be proud of the folks who toil onstage for a living and build the show around them?
More and more Tonys were shunted aside, presented before the telecast and represented in air by a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it acceptance clip. In their place were “entertainment” segments of dubious value, like a salute to Wicked on its 10th anniversary, a puzzling preview of Sting’s The Last Ship (due to open next season) and Hudson and four mute boys in pajamas in a musical number from the upcoming Finding Neverland.
It used to be that only the shows nominated for Best Musical would get broadcast time for an on-air live commercial. But also-ran musicals like Bullets Over Broadway, If/Then and Rocky were featured, further de-emphasizing the point of the awards show. (Rocky’s composing team of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens could not be pleased with the choice of what was shown, since the only music selected was from the various Rocky films — “Eye of the Tiger” and the original Rocky theme.)
Other stray thoughts on the Tonys ceremony:
▪ The show missed a good bet by not inviting John Travolta to introduce nominee Idina Menzel, thus giving him the opportunity to rectify his pronunciation botch of her name at this year’s Oscars.
▪ Also given a chance for a shameless plug was Clint Eastwood, hawking his upcoming film adaptation of Jersey Boys. Eastwood was only slightly more lucid than he was at the past Republican convention, and he stumbled over saying “Inishmaan,” as in The Cripple of …
▪ Mark Rylance certainly deserved his Tony for his featured performance in Twelfth Night, but I think some people give him their votes to see what bizarre acceptance speech he will present. Alas, it was surprisingly conventional and appropriate this year.
▪ Featured actress in a play winner Sophie Okonedo (of A Raisin in the Sun) grabbed some attention by describing herself as a “Jewish-Nigerian-Brit.” The label brings so many questions to mind. And apparently spontaneously, she began her acceptance speech by saying “Blimey!” Who knew the English really use the interjection?
▪ I have a running argument with the Tonys’s associate producer Andrew Kato (yes, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s producing artistic director) about the relatively little air time devoted to the Best Play nominees. This year’s segment was typically brief, but it did have an inspired idea, to feature the playwrights introducing and summarizing their works.
As I wrote previously, this was a hard year to handicap the Tony winners, but when the dust settled, I did get 18 out of 26 competitive categories right. Not great, but not embarrassing. I might have done better had I seen the revival of A Raisin in the Sun, but I had seen Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production fairly recently and Denzel Washington struck me as way too old to be convincing as Walter Lee Younger. Oh, well.
There is always next year, with better musicals than The Last Ship, I hope.