2021 Tony Awards

Well… 2021 Tony Awards-ish. Annoyingly, the brunt of the actual Tony Awards aired exclusively on Paramount+ (why?) The only awards announced on the telecast were Best Revival of a Play, Best Play, and Best Musical. Granted, it was a tricky awards year, given that Broadway has been dark for about a year-and-a-half, and so the Tonys were honoring the shows that had a chance to open in the 2019-2020 season before COVID shut it all down. This led to sparse categories like Aaron Tveit being the only person nominated for Best Leading Actor in a Musical (spoiler alert: he won!) and there being no award at all for Best Revival of a Musical. Still, the Broadway community, like the rest of us, have been through an awful lot since 2020, and it would’ve been nice to see these artists recognized on primetime for their work, not hidden behind a streaming service.

So what aired last night then, in addition to those final three awards? Branded as “The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back,” we had a host (Leslie Odom Jr.!), scripted banter, live performances (the Best Musical nominees mostly performed broadcast from their respective home theatres, while special additional performances took to the stage at Radio City Musical Hall,) an In Memorium segment, and a comedic wrap-up performance summarizing what we just watched. In other words, pretty much everything else that accompanies a typical Tony telecast.

A quick COVID note first. While seeing a packed indoor theatre definitely made my skin crawl, it was gratifying to see everyone in the crowd wearing masks. Odom explained that the Tonys were following the same rules as Broadway in its reopening, with everyone in the theatre vaccinated and/or tested and everyone in the audience masked. I suppose it would be hard to sell “it’s safe to come back to a Broadway show!” if the Tonys were held outdoors or with social distancing, when the theatres aren’t doing that for their eight shows a week. Also, it was fun playing “Who’s that Celebrity?” under the masks.

While it was disappointing to tune in and find out most of the awards had already been handed out, I certainly didn’t hate what we did get. The performances are the biggest draw at the Tonys anyway, so we still got all the best bits. Odom made for a dapper host and kept things moving along. Based on checking out the announced winners from earlier in the evening online, none of the “big three” awards surprised me – A Soldier’s Play for Best Revival of a Play, The Inheritance for Best Play, and Moulin Rouge! For Best Musical – but the speeches were all good. The director of A Soldier’s Play gave Ibsen and Shakespeare their due but insisted that “the table needs to the bigger,” the playwright for The Inheritance acknowledged that he shouldn’t have been the first Latine playwright to ever win his award, and a producer from Moulin Rouge! said that, after the hardships of the last year-and-a-half, every musical on Broadway was really the “best musical.”

I enjoyed the performances from the three nominated musicals. It was a very “pre-existing IP” year, but the performers all did well with their material. The Moulin Rouge! performance was energetic, colorful, and can-can-tastic, though I wish they’d done a medley so we could’ve gotten more from some of the principles. Jagged Little Pill intrigues me, and honestly, the brief glimpse we got at a couple songs from the show in context makes me even more curious about it. And the performance from Tina handily demonstrated how Adrienne Warren earned her Best Leading Actress in a Musical award for her portrayal of Tina Turner. (Side note: I couldn’t figure out what I recognized Warren from, and since she was obviously singing like Tina Turner, her voice didn’t give me any clues. I finally Wikipedia’d it and figured it out – she played Danielle in the original cast of Bring It On! She was great in the show.)

It was the extra performances that really did it for me, though. The telecast showcased a nice array of eclectic numbers that all resonated in some way with what’s been happening in the world. A group from the Broadway Advocacy Coalition put on a powerful spoken word/dance performance as a call-in oward antiracist wor. Ben Platt and Anika Noni Rose gave a beautiful rendition of “Move On” from Sunday in the Park with George (no lie, I cried.) Odom tagged in former host Josh Groban to join him in singing “Beautiful City” from Godspell, set against a backdrop of images of New York City reopening. Andrew Rannells and Titus Burgess were equal parts delightful and sweet performing “It Takes Two” from Into the Woods. The show ended with Lin-Manuel Miranda, members of Freestyle Love Supreme, and some special guests (including Christopher Jackson and Wayne Brady) delivering a 4-minute reenactment of the night.

My favorite part of the night, though, came just before the finale. Odom promised some of Broadway’s most iconic duos, and he was not messing around! First were Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel doing “For Good” from Wicked. Chenoweth was so emotional she could hardly keep it together at one point, and Menzel had a lipstick kiss on her cheek, obviously planted on her by Chenoweth backstage! Then came Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal to sing “What You Own” from RENT. My god – 25 years, and their voices haven’t changed at all. Awesome! And then Brian Stokes Mitchell and Audra McDonald graced the stage with, of course, “Wheels of a Dream” from Ragtime. Impeccable from top to bottom. Throughout all three performances, I was grinning through my tears – so, so good! Thanks for that, Broadway!