Time Out for Tony Talk & "Hamilton's" Effect

People are always saying "it's an honor to be nominated" when they get a slot on the ballot for a top award like the Tonys. But that's more true than ever for most of the nominees in the musical categories for this year's top theater honors because the one sure bet for the Tony nominations that were announced yesterday morning was that Hamilton was going to get a lot of them. And it did.

The hip-hop-infused musical about one of the previously least known of the Founding Fathers, picked up 16 nominations, the most ever. Four of those went to Hamilton's creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda for Best Musical, Best Book, Best Score and Best Actor in a Musical. 

I'm going to go out on a limb—OK, a very sturdy one—and predict that Miranda and his show will win a bunch of those awards when they're given out at the Beacon Theatre on June 12.

That's left the other 10 musicals that opened this past season struggling for just the honor to be nominated. The consolation prize for the four that made it is the chance to better woo ticket buyers who can't get into the already-sold-out-through-next-year Hamilton but still want the bragging rights of going to a hot show, or at least one warm enough to have picked up the most coveted nomination.

The four that managed to do that are Bright Star (the blue grass musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell) School of Rock (Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Julian Fellowe's adaptation of the movie about a rocker turned music teacher) Shuffle Along, Or the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed (George C. Wolfe's all-star tribute to the show that helped kick off the Jazz Age); and Waitress (singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles' adaptation of the indie film about a woman who bakes her way out of a loveless marriage).

Which means that American Psycho and Tuck Everlasting, both of which recently opened to mixed reviews and middling ticket sales, are going to have a tougher time making a go of it. Disaster, the spoof of '70s disaster movies, has already announced that it will close this weekend. 

And although it's been rumbaing along nicely since the fall, I also feel a bit sorry for On Your Feet!, the exuberant bio-musical about the singer Gloria Estefan. It got just one nod for Sergio Trujillo's hip-shaking choreography and surprisingly, at least to me, not one for its terrific leading lady Ana Villafañe.

But there is some welcomed news for the ladies who are in the running for Best Actress in a Musical:  Audra McDonald, the six-time Tony winner and almost never loser, didn't get nominated for her role in Shuffle Along. I haven't yet seen it and so I can't yet weigh in on whether its 10 nominations (second in number only to Hamilton's) were deserving or if Audra got robbed.

However I can say that the nominating committee did a terrific job in the non-musical categories. There's not a ringer in their slate of nominees. And even though Eclipsed and The Humans each drew six nominations, including for Best Play, Best Director and assorted acting categories, those races are wide open. At least I haven't decided how I'm going to vote.

Ditto on the choices for the revivals, both musicals and straight plays (click here to see a full list of all the nominees). And continuing in this feel-good vein, the committee is also to be congratulated on selecting racially diverse nominees in nearly every acting category (take that Oscars) and even in the directing categories, with Liesl Tommy picking up a nomination for Eclipsed and George C. Wolfe picking up his eighth for Shuffle Along.

Of course I don't agree with every single choice the committee made but I agree with so many of them this year that it seems petty to nitpick. Instead, as we've done in past years, my theatergoing buddy Bill and I have recorded a brief conversation in which we shared some more specific thoughts about the nominations—and the Hamilton effect. Click the orange button below to listen in:

Flipping Over Being Featured by Flipboard

No new post today since I figure you’re probably still making your way through the mammoth one I did on Wednesday. Besides let’s face it, everyone who cares about theater, including me, is focused on who, in all of this year's unusually tight contests, is going to walk away with a Tony tomorrow night.

But if you are still looking for more to read in the hours between now and then, I hope you’ll check out "Broadway & Me: The Magazine," which you can find on the Flipboard site. And I’m feeling like a winner this Tony weekend because the Flipboard folks have chosen it as one of the magazines they're highlighting this week (click here to see it on their featured page).  

 

Inspired by that honor, I’ve uploaded a whole bunch of new Tony-related stuff. You can go directly to the magazine by clicking here and I hope you’ll considering subscribing to it too.

See you after the Tonys.

How Almost Everyone—Particularly Viewers and Theater Lovers—Came Away A Winner From this Year’s Tony Awards Ceremony

The question is the same every year:  should the Tony Awards be a celebration for Broadway insiders and their fellow travelers (like me) or should the televised ceremony be basically a commercial that sells the currently-running productions to regular folks who just want to know which shows to see? Well, the wonderful thing about this year’s telecast is that it was both.

Almost everyone agrees that the show was one of the best in the Tony’s 67-year history. As the Los Angeles Times said, “If anything could restore faith in the American theater it was Sunday's exuberant Tony Awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall.”

And the ratings bear that out. They were up an astonishing 20% over last year. Which is impressive in its own right but even more so when you consider that the show was up against Game 2 of the NBA Finals and the finale of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

Much of the credit for the ratings boost—and the terrific show—has to go to Neil Patrick Harris, the best host of any awards show since Bob Hope in his heyday as the go-to MC for the Oscars in the 1950s and ‘60s.   

I’m sure CBS loves having Harris do the Tony honors because of the synergy with its hit sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.”  But we theatergoers revere NPH because he’s as smitten with the theater as we are. Plus he can sing, dance and tell jokes as well as most of the nominees.

The opening number of any awards show is tricky cause it has to grab the attention of the viewers at home and entertain folks in the live audience who mainly want to just get on with the trophy giving.  That first number also sets the tone for the rest of the show to come. 

 

Harris and his collaborators (a special shout out to director Glenn Weiss for getting the cameras where they should be) aced it on all accounts. The opener was a terrific mashup that gave every musical now playing on Broadway a chance to strut its stuff (click here to see the result). And everyone involved—particularly NPH—looked to be having so much fun that who wouldn’t want to join the party? 

 

And the team kept things bouncing along, despite a couple of rambling acceptance speeches.  Most, however, were gracious and heartfelt and you can hear them all by clicking here. 

 

The show finished with a great riff on Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” in which Audra McDonald took over the Alicia Keys accompanying role, while Harris summed up the evening with hip-hop lyrics that Lin-Manuel Miranda and Thomas Kail wrote as the show was unfolding. 

Alas, some viewers around the country didn’t get to see it because the show ran over by four minutes and their numbskull stations switched away. But you can see the whole thing by clicking here.  

Now I’ll admit that I may be biased because the Tonys have always been my favorite awards show of the year.  It's an event that gets the Super Bowl treatment in my house. 

I fix a dinner that my husband K and I can eat on TV trays (this year’s menu: Teriyaki chicken legs, asparagus and cannellini bean salad in a lemon-and-tarragon vinaigrette and a bottle of rosé) and then we turn off the phone and settle ourselves in front of the set and root for our favorites.

I keep score of the wins.  K keeps the wine glasses filled. Yelling out loud and high-fiving are allowed.  A former pit musician, K actually got up and gave a standing O when Hal Prince, on hand to mark the 25-year run of Phantom of the Opera, cited his pride in having a full orchestra of 28 musicians for the show.  

  

There were lots of other things to cheer as well.  Four of the eight acting awards went to African-Americans (Patina Miller for Pippin, Billy Porter for Kinky Boots, Courtney Vance for Lucky Guy, and the great Cicely Tyson for The Trip to Bountiful).  And the two directing awards went to women (Pam MacKinnon for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Diane Paulus for Pippin).  In fact I’ve no complaints about the winners, even when my personal favorites failed to take home the prize. (Click here for the full list.)

 And even shows that walked away with no awards could claim some victory:  I’ve seen several bloggers and website commenters talking about how the production number from Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella prompted them to buy tickets for that show. 

 

Like most theater lovers, my buddy Bill and I were eager to hash over the show and so we decided to do another of our occasional recorded discussions to share some of what we thought with you.  Click the orange button below to hear us sound off on our favorite moments from the telecast:

 

Did the Tony Broadcast Do Its Job?

Lots of people are upset because Sunday night’s Tony Awards drew only 6 million viewers, a big drop from the 6.9 million who tuned in last year. I could try to put a positive on that by pointing out that only half as many people (2.7 million) watched the season finale of “Mad Men” but that show’s ratings are rising, particularly among the chattering classes who determine what’s cool, so the comparison probably won’t make anyone feel better. 

Still, all in all, it was a good Tony show. Host Neil Patrick Harris was his usual charming self. There were some surprises (James Corden pulling out an upset win over Philip Seymour Hoffman for Best Actor in a Play and The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess trumping Stephen Sondheim’s Follies for Best Revival of a Musical).   

And there were some nice speeches (particularly Steve Kazee and Judy Kaye’s tributes to parents who have recently died. Click here to listen to them and to other speeches,  here to see the entire broadcast and here for the official list of all the winners.

There have been some nice wrap-ups about the broadcast too.  And you can click here and here to read a couple of my favorites). 

But I’ve got other fish to fry in this post.  Because let’s face it, while the job of the Tony voters is to celebrate the artistry of Broadway, the job of the Tony broadcast is to sell the shows, particularly the musicals, to as wide an audience as possible. Broadway producers—and those of the broadcast itself—are getting bolder about fessing up to that.  Although I’m not sure they’re getting better at doing it.

In the past, a show had to earn a Tony nomination in order to qualify for a spot on the telecast but the producers have been widening the club in past years and they threw the doors open almost completely on Sunday:  every musical this season, except for poor Spider-Man—the Rodney Dangerfield of Broadway shows—got  a chance to strut its stuff.  There was even a controversial presentation from a cruise ship production of Hairspray, courtesy of Royal Caribbean, one of the broadcast sponsors.

But the coveted opening spot went to The Book of Mormon, which is not only a show from last season but certainly doesn’t need any help selling tickets (it sold out 102% of its capacity last week).  Still, putting it at the top of the broadcast may have been a smart decision, judging by the performances that the other shows offered.

Exposure on the Tonys is cheaper than buying an ad to reach a similar number of people would be and surveys have shown that viewers like to see numbers from the shows and really do use them to determine which ones to see. So a lot of thought goes into what will convey the essence of each show and make people willing to pay money to see more of it.

Broadway insiders like to tell stories about low-grossing shows that had their fortunes turned around by a great performance on the Tonys. Last week, Ken Davenport, the producer of Godspell, which has been playing to only half-full houses of heavily discounted seats, admitted that the show’s future was riding on the response to its appearance on the broadcast.  That response turned out to be not so good.  Yesterday, Davenport announced the show would close on June 24.  

But very few of the performances came off well. What explodes on the stage can sometimes come across as a whimper on the TV screen. The dynamic dancing in Newsies has people cheering in the theater but you wouldn't have known that from what came across on TV.   

Maybe it’s the fault of Glenn Weiss, who directed the telecast, but the dancers looked as nimble as Newsies' crippled character Crutchie as the camera zoomed in and panned out on them in a herky-jerky fashion.

Ghost did itself no favors either.  In fact, I imagined viewers at home turning to one another and asking, “What the hell is going on?”  They probably felt almost as confused by the Follies number in which Danny Burstein performed a somewhat frantic version of "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues."   

Evita's producers put their money, yet again, on the allure of Ricky Martin and pointedly did Che's "And the Money Kept Rolling In" number so Evita didn't get to sing at all in the Evita sequence.

The folks at Porgy and Bess decided not to recreate just one number but to do a quick succession of excerpts from several songs that viewers would recognize— “Summertime,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now." 

Some critics didn't like that approach but I thought the  segment played like a smart movie trailer and I bet it would have paid off at the box office even if P&B hadn’t won the Best Revival prize. As is, the show, which had been chugging along at three quarters full, reportedly saw its ticket sales jump 50% on Monday.

Meanwhile, Once, the winner of the Best Musical honors, saw its ticket sales multiply five-fold even though it had already been playing to full houses.  As it ever was and ever will be, success sells.

Shows to See, Whatever Happens at the Tonys

It’s finally Tony time and people who see only a few shows a year often use the Tony broadcast (on CBS this Sunday night at 9 p.m. eastern time) to decide which ones they should see.  That makes sense to me, particularly for the folks who’ll be vacationing in the city this summer and want to get some bang—or at least some bling—for their bucks.  But this has been a really fine year for Broadway (lots of original musicals, lots of original plays, lots of terrific revivals) and the Tonys can’t tell you everything you need to know about the season’s shows so I’ve decided to throw my two cents in on not just what you should see but why—and on which of you might enjoy each choice the most.

I’ve already given my shout-outs to: 
The Book of Mormon, the sure-fire winner for Best Musical but it’s sold out for months
 
Jerusalem, with its sensational people-will-be-talking-about-it-for-years performance by Mark Rylance 


Anything Goes, for Kathleen Marshall’s sensational dance numbers and Sutton Foster’s game performance, both also frontrunners in their Tony categories 


And Sister Act, not a big Tony contender but big on good old-fashioned fun. 

Now, here are six more that you should at least consider, and, in some cases, consider pretty quickly because Tony losers tend not to stick around too long after the ceremony:

Born Yesterday. This revival of the old Garson Kanin comedy about the political education of a not-so-dumb blonde isn’t doing that well at the box office but it should be selling out for Nina Arianda’s terrific performance. Whether she wins a Tony or not on Sunday, Arianda's performance has made the young actress a star and if you love great acting, you’ll want to be able to say that you saw her in the show that made it happen.

The House of Blue Leaves.  John Guare’s black comedy about a group of misfits on the day of the Pope’s visit to Queens in 1965 is directed by the hot director David Cromer and jam-packed with big names (Hollywood’s Ben Stiller and Jennifer Jason Leigh, Broadway’s Thomas Sadoski and Alison Pill) but the best thing about it is a heartrending performance by Edie Falco.  TV fans who have loved her as Carmela Soprano and Nurse Jackie should treasure the chance to see Falco disappear into the role of Bananas, a sad pill-popping wife who isn’t quite as crazy as her name suggests.

The Normal Heart.  You might think that this revival of Larry Kramer’s cri de coeur about the AIDS crisis in the ‘80s is outdated or too political but that means you’d miss a truly affecting love story, lots of laugh-out-loud moments and the best acting ensemble on Broadway this season.  The final moments alone are worth the price of admission and should be seen by serious theater lovers and everyone who believes that gay rights—be it the right to good health care or to marry and make a life with whomever you love—are human rights.

The People in the Picture.  This musical about a Holocaust survivor didn’t get great reviews and, to be honest, I don’t think it deserved them.  So why, you ask, have I put the show on this list?  Simple answer: Donna Murphy.  She’s giving a knockout performance in the show—actually she’s giving two knockout performances, as she portrays the same character in the 1930s and in the ‘70s.  Murphy's totally convincing in both eras and deserve to be seen. I’ve read that the show regularly brings tears to the eyes of the people who lived through the horrors of World War II. So this show might be just the one to take your bubbe or zeyde to see. 

Priscilla Queen of the Desert.  Just about everything in this musical version of the 1994 movie about a road trip taken by three drag queens—the singing, the dancing, the costumes, co-star Nick Adams’ amazing abs—is outrageous.  If you’ve got a sweet tooth for high-calorie camp, then this is the treat for you. 

War Horse. Steven Spielberg is already making a movie version of this children’s book about the cruelties of war experienced by a boy and his horse during World War I but no matter how splendid the movie may be, it won’t be as wondrous as this show, which is the odds-on-favorite to take Best Play honors tomorrow night. For all the animals in the stage production are portrayed by life-sized puppets the likes of which you’ve never seen.  This, as the saying goes, is a show for children—or inner-children—of all ages.  It’s what the magic of theater is all about.