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The final number was aFreestyle Love Supremerecap rap (re-rap?
The energy after so much gravitas was wrong, and as a ceremony-culminating gesture, it was a dud.
But at least it was an instructive dud.
The Broadway apparatus itself, so much of which is built around revivals, is deeply nostalgic.
No wonder this years biggest winners wereMoulin Rouge!
The only specter having any fun at all is the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Looking back while looking forward was the impossible job of this years Tony Awards.
How could a celebration honor Broadways 560-day shutdown?
How could it acknowledge the sheer scale of our grief?
Well, actuallythatpart the show did pretty well.
We television watchers were strangers at a wake, meant to keep quiet, to let the family grieve.
Speaking of the CBS cameras man.
These Tony Awards were an object lesson in how digital tactics can cut both ways.
If that sort of digital record is available to voters going forward, it could change the game.
But streaming theater can alsorestrictreach, given a bad enough rollout.
The tiers of access were quite revealing.
Some awards, like the honor given to Woodie King Jr., appeared nowhere.
The first two streaming-only hours contained such small-fry awards as Lead Actor and Actress.
Then the prime-time Broadways Back special barely nodded to the Tonys, giving out onlythreein two hours.
And this is where the practical point of the Tonys comes into play.
The American Theater Wing is, in part, a trade organization.
The Broadway League is a chamber of highly specific commerce.
We should all know by now that the Tonys are not disinterested pronouncements about quality!
Still, any theater nut will drag out their list of shows thatshouldhave won and didnt.
Many of the musical numbers on the broadcast came from those shows, in fact.
Ditto most of the stuff you heard by Stephen Sondheim.)
There was no flavor of the plays, scarcely any footage, and no presentation by the nominated playwrights.
Talk about leaving cachet on the table!
Yet, in what seemed to be a pointed rebuke to the controversial piece,Slave Playwon no awards.
Garnering zero wins out of 12nominations sent a shock wave through the Tony-watching community.
Voters certainly chose against it again and again.
But the telecast had chosen against it from the beginning: Viewers at home never even got apeekat it.
Why is it important?
Closing their eyes to plays meant that the Tony awards didnt do a full job of looking back.
But what about the looking forward part of their remit?
when he accepted his.
as the rattling sound of tap dancing sounded through the Winter Garden like gunfire.
The Broadway Advocacy Coalition even got an award for demanding diversity onstage and behind the scenes.
When folks whodidntfit the white male mold won, they remarked on how alone they felt.
There is clearly a great division between the progressive 40-odd nominators and the conservative 800-odd voters.
When will it change?
Our next Tony Awards are just around the corner in June 2022.
I want to be hopeful, but I also know its the biggest ships that are slowest to turn.
