2017 Tony Awards

*Disclaimer: I wrote this review before I knew about the allegations against Kevin Spacey. Here, it’s particularly gross that Spacey’s hosting duties include a closet joke, when he in fact didn’t come out until he wanted to control the narrative after being accused of trying to assault a 14-year-old boy, giving fuel to homophobes who equate gay men with pedophilia. Way to throw the community under the bus, creep.*

 
Last year’s Tony’s, at least on the musical side (which is the one I’m most equipped to talk about,) were basically the Hamilton Awards.  Now, that show deserved every award it won, and then some, but I did feel a little bad for some of the other nominees in the musical categories – based on the performances, it seemed like it was a great year, and it was unfortunate for other shows that they happened to come out the in the same season as something as incredible as Hamilton. 

This year wasn’t quite like that.  The eventual Best Musical winner, Dear Evan Hansen, was quite the powerhouse and won multiple big awards, including Best Book, Best Original Score, Best Leading Actor, and Best Featured Actress.  However, it wasn’t entirely Dear Evan Hansen’s night.  While it was the clear takeaway of the night for me, the show I was most interested in checking out, Hello, Dolly! took home the other two acting awards along with Best Revival, Come From Away won Best Director, and there was a decent spreading of love among the technical and design awards, particularly for Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.

It was also different because, for me, it wasn’t a night that made me want to run out and buy cast recording after cast recording.  This was a year where I came in knowing very, very little about the nominated musicals – which isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for the telecast – but other than Dear Evan Hansen, none of the new shows really wowed me.  (Speaking of the Best Musical winner:  I’m still not entirely sure what it’s about, and the teenness of it all brought to mind Spring Awakening, but overall, I’d say it looks more interesting and better written than that previous teen-centric juggernaut, which I enjoy but don’t adore.)  Nothing really struck me as bad or gave me “this show looks like a mess” impressions (which can happen,) but nothing else quite sizzled.  Andy Karl was quite good in the performance from Groundhog Day, the cast of the Falsettos revival was to die for, and the Josh Groban-led performance from Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 was exuberant.  Still, the whole thing was a little “meh.”  I feel like a number of shows might not have chosen the most fitting song to perform, like I wasn’t quite seeing their best.

Some of my favorite awards/speeches of the night ended up being more on the play side.  I didn’t know more about any of them than the musicals, but all four of the new plays sounded really interesting, especially Indecent.  Cynthia Nixon, Best Featured Actress, had the best political remarks of the evening in her speech, and I teared up at Best Featured Actor Michael Aronov’s beautiful tribute to all who helped him on his road to becoming an actor, especially his parents.  (Also, the second Mark Hamill came out, I knew he was there to introduce the “In Memorium” segment, but my lip still quivered when he was talking about those we’d lost this year and concluded it with, “…and a princess.”)

I do have to say, I really enjoyed Kevin Spacey as the host.  While the opening number was a little tricky for me, since it parodied all four Best Musical nominees and I didn’t know any of the music from them, Spacey sang it fairly well and carried it with a kind of off-hand charm.  He had plenty of self-deprecating jokes throughout the evening, along with an entertaining spate of impressions (I especially loved his Johnny Carson) and an amusing bit complaining about the trend of giving out snacks at award shows.