2019 Tony Awards

This was a year where I went into the Tony’s not knowing a whole lot about the major shows nominated.  I’d heard rumblings about pretty much all of them, and there were definitely shows I was interested in, but I didn’t really have any picks locked and loaded for who I wanted to win in various categories.

James Corden was hosting, back from 2016.  While he’s not the singer that some hosts from recent years are, he was game for anything and threw his all into the opening number, which focused on the theme of Broadway being live, not “streamable,” “tweetable,” etc.  I cracked up at the interlude in the middle, where Corden went off the rails remembering all the great TV shows that are out there and had to “apologize” to television (“Audra McDonald made me say it!”) before getting the number back on track and returning to the special thrill of live theatre.  He also had a series of mostly-decent bits (I liked him recruiting various stars to practice their “gracious loser” faces) and another number with last year’s hosts, Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles – I’m guessing the song was a Be More Chill parody, and it was enough to wet my appetite for that show.

Performance-wise, I’d say it was a middling year.  We had our jukebox musical showings (Ain’t Too Proud, The Cher Show,) our based-on-a-movie musical showings (Tootsie, Beetlejuice,) our revivals (Oklahoma, Kiss Me Kate,) and our few original musicals (The Prom, Hadestown.)  There was also a musical performance from the play Choir Boy and the always-great Cynthia Errivo singing “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” for the In Memorium segment (Brian Stokes Mitchell introduced the memorial by talking about Marin Mazzie, and I instantly teared up.)  Some of the shows surprised me:  I wasn’t expecting to enjoy Beetlejuice so much, and while I’ve never really liked Oklahoma!, that cast did a terrific job.  Others, meanwhile, didn’t grab me as much as I was hoping:  Tootsie was just kind of “meh” for me, and as awesome as the dancing was in Kiss Me Kate’s performance of “Too Darn Hot,” I kept thinking that it should be a crime to perform a Cole Porter song and only sing a single stanza of his amazing lyrics.

Like I said, I didn’t have too much foreknowledge of most of the shows, so I didn’t have many major horses in the game for the awards themselves.  After Ali Stroker’s performance as Ado Annie in the Oklahoma number, I was happy to see her win Best Featured Actress in a Musical, and as (I assume) the first actor in a wheelchair to win a Tony, I liked her speech about representation for actors with disabilities (although her being backstage when the award was announced led me to believe the stage was otherwise inaccessible for her – boo!). I was pleasantly surprised to see Stephanie J. Block win Best Leading Actress in a Musical for The Cher Show (I don’t care about that show, but I love Stephanie J. Block) – when she won, I noticed two men standing to applaud her, and my heart likes to think they were her Falsettos compatriots Andrew Rannells and Brandon Uranowitz.  Also, The Boys in the Band won Best Revival of a Play!  That made me happy and totally renewed my excitement for Ryan Murphy’s upcoming Netflix adaptation.

It was a year with some big winners.  Although neither side got the virtual clean sweep – this wasn’t a Hamilton situation – The Ferryman was the favorite for the plays, while Hadestown took a lot of the major musical honors.  Hadestown looks neat anyway, but I love that it came from the mind of a female composer and was brought to life by a female director, both of whom won in their categories.  The latter, director Rachel Chavkin, used her speech to call out the fact that she was the only woman directing a musical on Broadway this past season and made it clear that “this is not a pipeline issue.  It is a failure of imagination by a field whose job is to imagine the way the world could be,” calling for more gender and racial diversity on Broadway and among critics.  Slay!