Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Top Five Performances: 2019 Tony Awards


For me, this was a Tonys without any real instant “wow” moments, no performances that I spent the next day rewatching a minimum of 10 times (hello, Sydney Lucas in Fun Home!)  However, there were still some good performances here, some of which I wasn’t really expecting.

Oklahoma!

As I said in my review of the ceremony, I’ve never liked Oklahoma!  It could be in part because I’ve only seen high school productions of dubious quality, but it’s never grabbed me.  So imagine my surprise when this wound up being one of my favorite performances of the night, enough so that I want to figure out more about this Circle in the Square production.  Ali Stroker, who won a Tony shortly after, killed on “I Cain’t Say No,” and the cast’s performance of the title number was energetic, well-sung, and sort of lived-in – you really got a feel for the community the characters were living in as they sang it.

 Hadestown

The show I was most looking forward to.  I can’t deny that the Hadestown number was great, led by Tony winner Andre de Shields and featuring cool-as-hell choreography and atmospheric lighting that instantly brought us into Hadestown.  I loved the haunting quality of Orpheus’s “wait for me” refrain.  As much as I enjoyed it, though, it also provoked a strong sense of wanting to see more.  Which, I suppose, is the number doing its job – when I start poking around online for other clips of the cast performing, it’ll be because of the performance they gave here.

 Beetlejuice

I was not prepared to enjoy the Beetlejuice performance as much as I did (I’d put it at SpongeBob levels of surprise from last year’s Tonys.)  But it was great!  The song was fun with tons of winking lyrics (some of which had clearly been jazzed up with references specific to the ceremony,) and Alex Brightman was terrific.  It occurs to me that he’s now starred in two musicals based on movies that largely hinged on the unique energy of their male leads (the first being School of Rock,) and each time, I’ve been impressed at how well he’s captured that spirit without just doing an impression of Jack Black or Michael Keaton.  Maybe I should stop doubting him!

 Ain’t Too Proud

Another one I wasn’t expecting.  I couldn’t tell you much about the Temptations and their music, so I wasn’t really predisposed to be into this (and biomusicals that frame a lot of the numbers as in-show performances aren’t really my thing,) but I thought the cast did great here.  All the guys sounded incredible, the dancing was fantastic (the show took home the award for Best Choreography,) and everyone had energy to burn.  Just a great time all around.

 “James Corden, Sara Bareilles & Josh Groban in the Bathroom”

Really fun.  Like I said, I haven’t heard much of Be More Chill yet, but this parody definitely had me wanting more.  Even though I didn’t know the song it was based on, it was still funny, with James Cordon and last year’s hosts Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban working out their insecurities about hosting the Tonys during a bathroom freakout.  All three sounded really good here, and some of the rhymes were delightfully fun – I especially liked, “Afraid I’ll make a stage gaffe / In front of Laurie Metcalf.”

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