Tonys time, V. 2010-2011

A chipper telecast almost disguised the fact that this was the most predictable crop of winners in recent years, with a few personal disappointments (Bobby Cannavale can console himself with his Drama Desk, and I don't get the Norbert Leo Butz love this time) but few surprises in the lot, not even in the design categories (which were shoehorned in more gracefully than usual), not that I'm complaining about my War Horse peeps. Congrats to Nikki M. James for shaking up her category with her supporting win but even that was part of a Book of Mormon tide (which, to be fair, did not carry away its lead actors). The 2011-2012 Broadway season begins on Tuesday with the opening of the most anticipated musical of last season, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark...and let me just say that if you enjoyed the ballad on tonight's telecast, those sweet and simple moments are few and far between.

Mormon converts Tony

Tony nominators are believers, too, with 14 nominations going to The Book of Mormon and another 12 to the long-shuttered Scottsboro Boys musical. But it looks like Daniel Radcliffe will be sticking close to us Drama Desk voters--he didn't make Tony's cut (nor, alas, did the wonderful but woefully overlooked Aaron Tveit, star of Catch Me If You Can). On the other hand, the equally bygone Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (pictured) got a set design nod for Donyale Werle...were the nominators reading Live Design?

Tonys time

My Twitter feed (look to the right) shows what I was feeling in the moment, but doesn't tell the whole story. Trying to avoid the chatters, who tend to trend catty, I thought the show made what it could from a fairly dry season; the star power came in handy, and winners Catherine Zeta-Jones and Scarlett Johansson threw off some heat. Alas, the evening's best moment, Marian Seldes' delightful "speechless" reaction to winning her lifetime achievement award, was relegated to the first hour; if you don't have NY1, which telecast it, you didn't see it, nor much of the design winners, which always irritates me. The musical numbers always come off as somewhat canned, particularly when the sound system is faltering, and solo performers like Zeta-Jones are better off performing their songs rather than acting them in a vacuum. (On the other hand, non-nominee Kristin Chenoweth was much sunnier and more relaxed here than onstage in Promises, Promises.) No one has ever solved what to do with the plays, twas ever thus. So, a New York "whatever," not bad, some nice moments (Douglas Hodge's La Cage vamp of a game Matthew Morrison and a Will Smith)--and hopes for a jazzier 09-10 season that gives the show more to work with. The Tony-winning Memphis is pictured.

Tonys nominations announced

Drama Desks yesterday, Tony nominations today. Fela! and the La Cage aux Folles revival had the biggest hauls, 11 nominations apiece. The chatters erupt. La Cage nominees Douglas Hodge and Kelsey Grammer try to stay above the fray.

And the winner was...

Geoffrey Rush, who heads back to Australia following the June 14 closing of Exit the King with five New York acting citations under his belt, including Tony and Drama Desk Awards. This courtesy of David Sheward at Backstage, who had the philanthropic/insane notion to collate all this stuff.

Tonys nominations announced

Tony Awards announced; chat room explodes. Where's The Seagull? Desire Under the Elms? So, Elton John and Billy Elliot the Musical are good enough for Tonys, but Chekhov and O'Neill aren't? (Pictured is one of the three Billys nominated on the same line, each Billy being exactly as good as each other Billy and all. There's an assembly line out there putting together Billys to precisely the same specifications.)

Tony time: Another perspective

The nominations for the 2007-2008 season Tony Awards are out today, and I think it's true: The Drama Desks really are a bellwether for the Broadway event. Not for those of us who are Drama Desk nominators, mind you--our nominations are a solid mix of Broadway, Off Broadway, and Off Off Broadway shows--but for the Tony nominators, who seemed to have split the difference with us. We went for Cheyenne Jackson in Xanadu; they went for Kerry Butler. We gave the nod to Kevin Kline's Cyrano; The Tonys embraced Patrick Stewart's Macbeth. We nommed Marisa Tomei for Top Girls, they nommed Martha Plimpton for the same show. We dined out on A Catered Affair; they got all choked up over Cry-Baby.

A poor choice by the way, whatever support it has from the chattering classes. The reasoning must be that A) Rob Ashford's standout choreography, which we did nominate, will look good on TV, and B) the show could tour, if it gets enough audience support here. But it really shouldn't--a bad movie has made for a significantly worse musical. The nomination of Grease for best revival is equally embarrassing, but apparently Tony voters are obliged to vote for a full slate of nominees in all categories, quality be damned, so it got in on that outdated technicality.

Then again, I'm not knocking my brethren. I now know something about the calculus of awards decision-making now, and even if the Tony voters had only 35 shows to consider--a walk in the park, an obligation I could fulfill standing on my head--there are calls to be made, even if they turn out all wonky. But I must say that, with those same shows to consider plus hundreds more, our Broadway choices are a wiser mix. (And I must say that, as our nominations seem but a distant memory now.) It's better, I think, to have six discerning nominators rather than a committee of 21. That, however, is showbiz, and how different sets of rules play out.

A few observations:

*No surprise that August: Osage County and its powerhouse ladies, Amy Morton and Deanna Dunagan (pictured), were nominated. And no surprise that In the Heights got shown major love, too, after setting toes tapping at last year's Drama Desk awards. I did think it played better on Broadway, with the addition (finally) of a song for veteran co-star Priscilla Lopez, but not that much better. Too sugar-spun for my palate.

*So-called "mistakes" made by us were duly "corrected". (Broadway lovers can't see past our mandate of across-the-board excellence.) S. Epatha Merkerson got a slot, and The Seafarer found somewhat safer harbor. No suck luck, again, for the not-too-loved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or November or the other shows that tumbled through the cracks, though Cat's James Earl Jones is getting a special award at our ceremony this Sunday. So, DD doubters: Did Tony get it wrong, too, or could it be that the shows just didn't add up?

*I liked Stew's performance in Passing Strange, but co-star (and co-Stew) Daniel Breaker does the heavier, leading-man lifting.

*I'm happy to see Bobby Cannavale, Mary McCormack, and A:OC set designer Todd Rosenthal being honored for their fine, and duly considered, work.

*Design dish: The 39 Steps is strong in every way except the minimal Tony-nominated set. The Tonys are to be commended for joining the 20th century a few years late and honoring sound, with play choices that should please Anglophiles. This I give to the Tonys: It distinguishes between design elements in a play and a musical, something the Drama Desk should do (and does do with sets), given the vast quantity of shows considered. On the other hand, only the Drama Desk honors projection, as of this this season.

The Drama Desk Awards are this Sunday, May 18. The Tonys are on June 15.

A Tonys Triumph

My friend Rosemary Rotondi sent this over to me from YouTube. Funny stuff. Surely Triumph should host a show "with ratings so low NBC is considering it for a series...Osama Bin Laden is hiding onstage."

A sound decision

Finally, the Tony Awards has decided that sound design is more than just wiring actors with mics, a practice members of the old guard still detest. But it's never too late to catch up with late 20th century modes of thinking (and with the Drama Desk Awards, which has long had audio as a category), and I applaud the painfully overdue decision to make sound design a category for plays and musicals. The 2006-2007 winners should surely have been the soon-to-close Talk Radio, with its exquisitely rendered and multitiered audio design, and Spring Awakening, which pokes a little fun at onstage mics.

Tony and the Tonys

A rare summer TV season faceoff has ended in our house, and it was pretty much a tie. Like others in my theater- and Sopranos-loving circle, I thought we would watch the first televised hour of the Tony Awards on CBS, switch over to The Sopranos series finale on HBO, then track back to the awards, followed by a middle-hour recap of the Radio City Music Hall action on our DVR. But once the Tonys started, and The Coast of Utopia and Spring Awakening began their marches through the categories, we had to stick with them. Tony cooled his heels for a while.

The Tonys were pretty much a surprise-free zone, as if anyone could topple Christine Ebersole from winning for Grey Gardens (as I predicted a whole year ago). Coast picked up seven awards, a record for a Broadway play, and Spring dominated the musicals category. Company and Journey's End, whose journey has ended, were deserved revival winners. The shocker, if it could be called that in this most genteel of awards telecasts, was David Hyde Pierce clipping Raul Esparza's wings; I can only assume the voters felt sympathy for Pierce's having to carry the iron Curtains on his back through sheer professionalism and likabilty.

My eyebrow went up a little when Julie White won best actress in a play, her show, The Little Dog Laughed, a rare comedy, having closed some time ago. But it had a healthy off Broadway run and if she had lost we would have been deprived the most entertaining acceptance speech of the evening. Other excitement came from John Mahoney's belated bleep during his poorly scripted bit and the pre-bleeped Awakening number. The Tonys bashers are out in force but despite missteps here and there I always find the show a refreshing way to recap and wind down from the season, and there was a nice symmetry to CBS' former first lady of Sunday nights, Angela Lansbury, begin and end the program.

The Tony bashers will clearly be baying for Sopranos creator David Chase's blood over the final episode. I never bought into its greatest TV show ever rep; once the crucial Nancy Marchand had passed away the program was rudderless for some time, with very uneven stretches thereafter. Its sadly-never-ended HBO stablemate, Deadwood, may lay claim to the title. But the first two seasons are extraordinarily good, and over seven it never ceased to be appointment television, even when we went about two years between appointments. Last week's tense and shockingly action-packed episode satisfied viewers who were into whackings; the finale was more reflective and "Chase-ian," with its big hit exaggerated into over-the-top black comedy, and a sudden-death fade, after a nerve-jangling buildup putting us squarely into Tony's shoes, scored to the (ironic?) strains of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing." Not that there wasn't some information for us to go on to create our own perfect ending, but I suspect viewers will be dissatisfied at the perceived cop-out. Check here for what will be provocative postings.

And now I can prety much catch up on my DVD viewing for a few months.