Another year, another Tonys come and gone. I went in not knowing much about the nominated shows, but I had a really good time. This year’s telecast offered up a delightful host in Cythia Erivo, an eclectic variety of neat performances, and some lovely speeches.
I’ve still flying high from last week’s release of the Wicked: For Good trailer, so I was absolutely ready to spent the evening watching Erivo. Her voice, as always was exquisite, from the fun opening number, to the In Memoriam (“Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” in a lovely duet with Sara Bareilles,) to the Tony-themed rewrite of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” for the closer. It was no surprise that her singing was going to be fantastic, but Erivo was also charming and funny throughout. She had a number of cute bits but kept things moving, and I think she may have come back from every commercial in a new outfit. Also, she interacted with Kristin Chenoweth more than once, which was obviously fabulous.
I’ll save a more thorough discussion of the musical performances for a Top Five post sometime next week. For now, though, I’ll just say there were a lot! In addition to Erivo’s numbers and the nine Best Musical/Best Revival nominees, there was also a special 10-year-anniversary performance from the original cast of Hamilton—in which I died and was resurrected multiple times—along with numbers from Just in Time and Real Women Have Curves. Pretty sure there were as many musical performances as Erivo had wardrobe changes!
Since I didn’t have much foreknowledge about any of the shows, I didn’t have any real skin in the game when it came to the awards. Maybe Happy Ending was the musical that I was most interested in, so it was neat to see it do so well. It came away with the top award of the night, also snagging Best Book, Best Score, Best Director, and Best Leading Actor for Darren Criss. Sunset Boulevard was the big winner on the revival side, taking home both Best Revival and Best Leading Actress for a very emotional Nicole Scherzinger. Jak Malone took Best Supporting Actor for Operation Mincemeat, and Natalie Venetia Belcon was beside herself for her Best Supporting Actress win for Buena Vista Social Club. All the actors’ speeches were lovely, and Jak Malone’s outfit was the best! Also, when Michael Arden won Best Director, I fell out at his winking comment, “And if there are any queer people watching…” Happy Pride, indeed!
A number of the plays caught my attention this year as well. I enjoyed the Great Performances broadcast of Yellow Face and probably would’ve been rooting for Daniel Dae Kim anyway, but the bits they showed of Oh, Mary! were wild, so if it couldn’t be Kim, I was happy to see Cole Escola win Best Leading Actor. Their speech, and dress, were fantastic! As for Best Supporting Actor, I was rooting for Escola’s Oh, Mary! costar Conrad Ricamora out of pure bias, but Yellow Face took home the prize there! Francis Jue gave a beautiful speech, honoring the Asian actors who came him and sharing a lovely story about the support he got from Alvin Y.F. Ing. I’m also interested in learning more about English and super intrigued by John Proctor is the Villain.
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