2023 Tony Awards

Another year, another Tonys! It was a stripped-down, streamlined show this year, per the American Theatre Wing’s agreement with the WGA to hold the telecast while still honoring the writers' strike. The ceremony emphasized performances and speeches, with hardly any “fluff” or “fat” in the evening.

Ariana DeBose was hosting, but given the conditions, her duties were incredibly light. Her monologue was just a few brief, off-the-cuff remarks about the strike and the importance of the Tonys, which bring a taste of Broadway into homes around the country. The opening number was purely dance, since they were able to compose music but not lyrics for the telecast. I liked that—they could’ve camouflaged the situation by having DeBose and co. perform a classic Broadway number or two that’s already been written, but they choose to highlight the absence of writers by performing a number that was conspicuously without words.

Other strike-induced changes extended to the presenters. As DeBose explained (and had the cameras demonstrate,) there was no teleprompter, so for the most part, each pair of presenters merely introduced themselves, their category, and jumped straight into listing the nominees. There were also no voiceover introductions, but the presenters’ names appeared on a marquee backdrop as they walked out onstage. Similarly, the musical performances were previewed with a title card and a very brief recording with a couple quick snippets of the show and a few talking heads. At the start of each performance, words appeared onscreen denoting any Tony nominees in the number.

The sparse intros to the performances, I realized, were the trickiest thing for me. I’ve been keeping up with Broadway very superficially over the past year, and I discovered that, without a few introductory remarks telling me about each of the new shows, I had less context to assign to the performances. As such, the revivals mostly fared better for me, since I was already familiar with them. For the newer shows, I found myself looking up some of them during the commercials, trying to get a little better understanding of what I just watched. It was smart of Kimberly Akimbo (along with Into the Woods and Parade) to open their performances with a bit of dialogue to set the stage for their number. Meanwhile, Sweeney Todd, performing “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” was like, “Introduction? We need no stinking introduction, because we’re going to sing a song that tells you what the show’s about!”

As usual, I’ll go into more detail on my favorite performances in a later post. For now I’ll just say that, in addition to the opening number and the nominated shows, we also had a “Sweet Caroline” sing-along led by the cast of A Beautiful Noise. Lea Michele and the cast of Funny Girl came out to sing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” And Joaquina Kalukango, who brought the house down for me last year with the performance from Paradise Square, sang “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” for the In Memorium (which was a bit of an In Memorium for Phantom too!)

Now, onto the awards. As usual, I don’t know much about the plays, but I was really excited to discover that Tom Stoppard has a new play out called Leopoldstadt. It took home Best Director, Best Featured Actor (for Brandon Uranowitz,) and Best Play! On the musical side of things, I was happy to see the revival of Parade do well, winning Best Director (for Michael Arden) and Best Revival. The Tonys also said, “Firsts? Ha! We scoff at your firsts!”, as the winners for both Best Leading and Featured Actor were Black nonbinary performers: J. Harrison Ghee for Some Like It Hot and Alex Newell (formerly of Glee) for Shucked. Some Like It Hot also won Best Choreography. The big winner of the night, though, was Kimberly Akimbo. After nabbing Best Book, Best Original Score, and Best Leading and Featured Actress (for Victoria Clark and Bonnie Milligan respectively,) it’s no surprise that it won Best Musical as well.