Notes on the Tonys, 2014
Jun. 9th, 2014 02:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_whomNo TV station in Toronto broadcasts the Tony Awards. CHCH in Hamilton does, and its signal (I don't have cable) is just barely powerful enough to reach a basement apartment in Toronto—I ended up having to move one of my game shelves next to the TV and balance the antenna on top of that at a ludicrous angle. For a while I had to sit in a chair a foot from the TV and if I moved away at all the signal would be lost for some reason, but by the time the awards show began, I was (for some reason) able to move back to the couch to watch it from there.
The DJs on "Standing Room Only" are not doing their job. I've been listening to the show pretty regularly this year, and I've basically never heard of any of the new musicals (After Midnight, Beautiful, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder—and I've only heard of If/Then because of some "Adele Dazeem" jokes about it after the Oscars). Some of them have had their cast albums out for months. Falling down on the job, WERS.
A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is definitely the show I come out of watching this wanting to see. It's Kind Hearts and Coronets, the musical! I had no idea! The number they performed was pretty hilarious. And they do have one actor playing all the Alec Guinness roles.
I still really want to see Violet—probably more than A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder—but I was really weirded out by the directorial/makeup choice to make Violet's scar invisible to the audience. That is, the entire plot of the musical is centered around Violet's disfiguring facial scar, and when Sutton Foster came on without it, I figured, well, maybe the didn't have time to do the makeup for it just for one number in the middle of the awards show? But no, that's how they're doing it in the show itself—Violet's scar is visible to the other characters but not to the audience. I'm not sure what I think of that—I can imagine it working, but it's a very weird choice.
Not very impressed by Hugh Jackman as host (or, to be fair, maybe I'm just not that impressed by whoever writes his material). The opening was literally just Jackman… hopping. I didn't understand it. He joined in on the end of the performance from After Midnight, which I thought was kind of inappropriate; the performances from the nominated shows should be for the casts of the nominated shows to show off.
The first two times he won Tonys, Mark Rylance recited weird poems as his acceptance speeches. This time, he spoke of the history of Sam Wanamaker and his involvement in opening the modern Globe Theatre in London, which is cool, but I was hoping for another weird poem.
Emmy Rossum's synopsis of Les Misérables was a little disingenuous, wasn't it? "Our first nominated show for Best Revival of a Musical is an epic story of the struggle for revolution in 19th-century France" or whatever. It's not like anyone watching doesn't know what Les Mis is about. The introduction for Aladdin didn't think it was necessary to give a synopsis of the plot.
On the subject of Les Mis, I didn't really like the performance of "One Day More". A lot of the solo lines it had either weird rubato or just singers getting the rhythm wrong in a way that really didn't work for me. Also, it really seems like a missed opportunity that after the Les Mis performance they went straight to a commercial break without having Hugh Jackman make any Les Mis–related jokes or anything.
On the subject of Aladdin: was "Friend Like Me" the best choice for a number to perform? It was a good showcase for James Monroe Iglehart, who was the production's only acting nominee, but there's just no way it can compare to the song as it exists in the movie, since it's so inescapably written for animation. (The "can your friends do this"/"can your friends do that" lines, in the movie, refer to the genie, like, juggling his head and turning into a bunny. In the stage musical, they apparently refer to the genie… cuing the chorus to enter. My friends can do that, actually.) It's good that Iglehart wasn't trying to imitate Robin Williams and instead made the role his own, though. And the tap-dancing gag was funny. (Genie: Can you tap-dance? Aladdin: No. Genie: [zap] You can now!)
I refuse to believe that the huge roar of laughter from the audience when Idina Menzel was described as a "wickedly talented" performer was genuine. In other news, defying typecasting, Idina Menzel sings a song all about how "my new life starts right now."
Darko Tresnjak thanking his mother in Serbian was really sweet.
The best they could do for the performance from Rocky was one verse of "Eye of the Tiger", plus the fight between Rocky and Apollo Creed, huh. No original musical number, and barely any musical number at all—that was disappointing. Though the choreography of the boxing match itself—or at least, the fact that they performed it in a rotating boxing ring—was pretty impressive.
The winner of the Tony for best set design of a play is named Beowulf Boritt! That's pretty awesome.
Also awesome: Alan Cumming's accent. Where's he from? Scotland? (I assume he wasn't eligible for a nomination for Cabaret because he's already won a Tony for the same role, even though other actors in the production were eligible?)
Audra McDonald breaks the record and now holds more Tony Awards than any other actor! I really wish they'd had her perform something from this universally-acclaimed performance. It's not unprecedented for the Tony Awards to have performances of musical numbers from officially non-musical plays, and it would have been nice to get a chance to see what the fuss was about. They could have done it instead of one of the performances from musicals that haven't opened yet, or from a musical that's been open for 10 years (though in fairness, I thought the performance from Wicked was really good).
In fact, I wish they would actually show us more than five-second clips of each of the nominated plays, so we could get a better sense of what the plays are like. Having the authors of the Best Play nominees describe their own plays was a nice touch though.
I really hate that the Tonys for Best Book and Best Score of a musical are awarded during the pre-show or commercials or whenever they do the "technical" awards. To someone who's more likely to see another production of these same musicals someday than the current productions on Broadway, those are basically the most important awards. Also, if a show is going to win the Tonys for Best Score and Orchestration, you'd think they could have a song from it in the Awards show instead of un-nominated Rocky or not-yet-existent The Last Ship or whatever.
In one of Jason Robert Brown's acceptance speeches for Bridges of Madison County he said he hopes women will be "well and better represented" in future Tony seasons; good for him. Also a lot of people saluted the work of famous African-American actors, writers, singers, etc., in acceptance speeches for Raisin in the Sun and Lady Day.
Apparently the Regional Theatre award can go to a (non-Broadway) theater in New York.
Jessie Mueller really does look and sound a lot like Carole King! I'm impressed.
The DJs on "Standing Room Only" are not doing their job. I've been listening to the show pretty regularly this year, and I've basically never heard of any of the new musicals (After Midnight, Beautiful, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder—and I've only heard of If/Then because of some "Adele Dazeem" jokes about it after the Oscars). Some of them have had their cast albums out for months. Falling down on the job, WERS.
A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is definitely the show I come out of watching this wanting to see. It's Kind Hearts and Coronets, the musical! I had no idea! The number they performed was pretty hilarious. And they do have one actor playing all the Alec Guinness roles.
I still really want to see Violet—probably more than A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder—but I was really weirded out by the directorial/makeup choice to make Violet's scar invisible to the audience. That is, the entire plot of the musical is centered around Violet's disfiguring facial scar, and when Sutton Foster came on without it, I figured, well, maybe the didn't have time to do the makeup for it just for one number in the middle of the awards show? But no, that's how they're doing it in the show itself—Violet's scar is visible to the other characters but not to the audience. I'm not sure what I think of that—I can imagine it working, but it's a very weird choice.
Not very impressed by Hugh Jackman as host (or, to be fair, maybe I'm just not that impressed by whoever writes his material). The opening was literally just Jackman… hopping. I didn't understand it. He joined in on the end of the performance from After Midnight, which I thought was kind of inappropriate; the performances from the nominated shows should be for the casts of the nominated shows to show off.
The first two times he won Tonys, Mark Rylance recited weird poems as his acceptance speeches. This time, he spoke of the history of Sam Wanamaker and his involvement in opening the modern Globe Theatre in London, which is cool, but I was hoping for another weird poem.
Emmy Rossum's synopsis of Les Misérables was a little disingenuous, wasn't it? "Our first nominated show for Best Revival of a Musical is an epic story of the struggle for revolution in 19th-century France" or whatever. It's not like anyone watching doesn't know what Les Mis is about. The introduction for Aladdin didn't think it was necessary to give a synopsis of the plot.
On the subject of Les Mis, I didn't really like the performance of "One Day More". A lot of the solo lines it had either weird rubato or just singers getting the rhythm wrong in a way that really didn't work for me. Also, it really seems like a missed opportunity that after the Les Mis performance they went straight to a commercial break without having Hugh Jackman make any Les Mis–related jokes or anything.
On the subject of Aladdin: was "Friend Like Me" the best choice for a number to perform? It was a good showcase for James Monroe Iglehart, who was the production's only acting nominee, but there's just no way it can compare to the song as it exists in the movie, since it's so inescapably written for animation. (The "can your friends do this"/"can your friends do that" lines, in the movie, refer to the genie, like, juggling his head and turning into a bunny. In the stage musical, they apparently refer to the genie… cuing the chorus to enter. My friends can do that, actually.) It's good that Iglehart wasn't trying to imitate Robin Williams and instead made the role his own, though. And the tap-dancing gag was funny. (Genie: Can you tap-dance? Aladdin: No. Genie: [zap] You can now!)
I refuse to believe that the huge roar of laughter from the audience when Idina Menzel was described as a "wickedly talented" performer was genuine. In other news, defying typecasting, Idina Menzel sings a song all about how "my new life starts right now."
Darko Tresnjak thanking his mother in Serbian was really sweet.
The best they could do for the performance from Rocky was one verse of "Eye of the Tiger", plus the fight between Rocky and Apollo Creed, huh. No original musical number, and barely any musical number at all—that was disappointing. Though the choreography of the boxing match itself—or at least, the fact that they performed it in a rotating boxing ring—was pretty impressive.
The winner of the Tony for best set design of a play is named Beowulf Boritt! That's pretty awesome.
Also awesome: Alan Cumming's accent. Where's he from? Scotland? (I assume he wasn't eligible for a nomination for Cabaret because he's already won a Tony for the same role, even though other actors in the production were eligible?)
Audra McDonald breaks the record and now holds more Tony Awards than any other actor! I really wish they'd had her perform something from this universally-acclaimed performance. It's not unprecedented for the Tony Awards to have performances of musical numbers from officially non-musical plays, and it would have been nice to get a chance to see what the fuss was about. They could have done it instead of one of the performances from musicals that haven't opened yet, or from a musical that's been open for 10 years (though in fairness, I thought the performance from Wicked was really good).
In fact, I wish they would actually show us more than five-second clips of each of the nominated plays, so we could get a better sense of what the plays are like. Having the authors of the Best Play nominees describe their own plays was a nice touch though.
I really hate that the Tonys for Best Book and Best Score of a musical are awarded during the pre-show or commercials or whenever they do the "technical" awards. To someone who's more likely to see another production of these same musicals someday than the current productions on Broadway, those are basically the most important awards. Also, if a show is going to win the Tonys for Best Score and Orchestration, you'd think they could have a song from it in the Awards show instead of un-nominated Rocky or not-yet-existent The Last Ship or whatever.
In one of Jason Robert Brown's acceptance speeches for Bridges of Madison County he said he hopes women will be "well and better represented" in future Tony seasons; good for him. Also a lot of people saluted the work of famous African-American actors, writers, singers, etc., in acceptance speeches for Raisin in the Sun and Lady Day.
Apparently the Regional Theatre award can go to a (non-Broadway) theater in New York.
Jessie Mueller really does look and sound a lot like Carole King! I'm impressed.
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no subject
Date: 2014-06-09 11:51 am (UTC)Darko Tresnjak is almost as good a name as Beowulf Boritt.
Cumming is indeed from Scotland. I love his vowels.
I am so very glad that Audra MacDonald won. I have never, ever seen a performance that demanded an award as much as hers did. But... they didn't have her perform???? That makes no sense at all! What a missed opportunity! I completely agree with you in general about showing clips from unopened shows (that's... basically just advertising, right?) and un-nominated shows &c. over nominated plays and things that won Best Score, but I'm really confused that there weren't already clips from the latter. They showed un-nominated shows, but there were shows nominated for other awards that weren't given slots for numbers? How does that make sense as a decision to anyone? Or rather, they gave performance slots to all the shows nominated for Best Musical and Best Revival, and then had some left over, but gave them out to... like, how did they decide that? How is "oh how about a show that was nominated for Best Score but not Best Musical" not an obvious choice? Or am I not understanding something?
ETA: I didn't realise that A Gentleman's Guide was Kind Hearts and Coronets!
no subject
Date: 2014-06-09 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-09 05:45 pm (UTC)On looking into it more, it seems like the numbers from currently-running shows are also very literally "just advertising", in that the producers have to pay for them to appear on the Tony Awards. And The Bridges of Madison County closed a month ago and lost money, so presumably the producers couldn't pony up the money to have it featured on the show (and might not even have been able to get the cast back together a month after the show closed, anyway). But I still would have liked to see it. Apparently JRB made a wisecrack about it during one of his (not broadcast) acceptance speeches—when the orchestra played him onstage with a tune from Bridges when he came to accept his award, he said "I hope you enjoyed the play-on; that's all the music from Bridges you get to hear tonight."
I still think we were cheated by not getting anything from Lady Day though.
Here's the performance from A Gentleman's Guide; it looks pretty hilarious, and is introduced by Jefferson Mays in the Alec Guinness rôle(s).
no subject
Date: 2014-06-09 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-09 06:01 pm (UTC)*Yes, methtasisis, like metathesis but increased in magnitude as if under the influence of illegal drugs.
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Date: 2014-06-09 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-10 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-11 06:25 am (UTC)Okay, so the thing that bothered me this year was that "Hedwig" and "Violet" seem to have fallen into a no-man's land in which they can never be considered for Best Book/Score nominations. As far as I can understand, they are revivals because they have previously been performed in Manhattan, and revivals can't get writing nods, but they were also ineligible for writing awards during their original runs since only productions at official Broadway theaters can be nominated. The only thing I can figure is that this dates back to a previous era, when the model was that off-Broadway shows stayed off-Broadway and Broadway shows went directly to Broadway from out-of-town tryouts. Given that that model seems to have changed, I'm surprised they haven't changed the awards rules. (For my money, either one of those shows has a better score than "Bridges".)
I kind of wish someone would write a Standard Idina Menzel Starting My New Life Song, like that Standard Rodgers and Hammerstein Motivational Song in "Musical of Musicals".
no subject
Date: 2014-06-11 03:03 pm (UTC)The rule isn't specifically "previously performed in Manhattan" that rules out eligibility for book/score nominations, but apparently whether, in the judgment of the Tony committee I guess, it has "entered into the popular repertoire." Which is kind of vague and subjective, and does seem pretty unfair to shows that entered the popular repertoire before ever appearing on Broadway.
I'd listen to that idina Menzel song.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-11 03:11 pm (UTC)