What a year for theater. Broadway boasted record profits, because a bunch of celebrities crashed the party and demanded multi-hundred-dollar ticket prices. At the same time, the season was full of underdog success stories (alt comedy darling Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! becoming an unparalleled talk of the town), comeback stories (both textual and metatextual in the case of Sunset Blvd.), and innovative Broadway firsts (everyone’s favorite new show of the season, Maybe Happy Ending, is the first show ever to debut in Asia before opening on Broadway. Also: so much live camerawork!). And then, like a rousing 11 o’clock number in the awards race, wild interpersonal diva drama! All of this paved the way to the Tony Awards, where Cynthia Erivo steered the ship through an entertaining, surprisingly efficient, awards night. Here’s what we loved, what we didn’t, and what made us go whoa.
HIGH: Those notes Cynthia belted in the opening — literally!
Cynthia Erivo had a really smart strategy for the opening: joking to a minimum (not her strong suit), vocals on max (there’s no one better). The song was earnest, high energy, and gave her every opportunity to belt and dazzle, all while dressed like a glamorous Annie Warbucks.
LOW: Crucial categories like book and score being relegated to the Pluto TV Pre Show Island for Misfit Technical Categories
To say nothing of Harvey Fierstein’s Lifetime Achievement Award, featuring a beautiful introduction by Tony Kushner and a fabulous, moving acceptance speech from Fierstein himself. I get that they need time for all the performances in the main broadcast, but this sort of thing lends gravitas to an awards show! Harvey deserves it!
WHOA: Hue Park single!
Will Aronson and Hue Park won the final Tony of the pre-show portion of the night for Music & Lyrics for Maybe Happy Ending, and Park took the occasion to announce, “By the way, I’m still single!” Someone at the after-party better ask this cutie out!
WHOA: HwaBoon!
Broadway’s foremost socialite houseplant HwaBoon got pride of place in the opening number’s backstage prelude, held by Alex Edelman. This guy knows everyone!
HIGH: Brian Stokes Mitchell in his little Good Night, and Good Luck–looking announcer booth doing the announcing.
His voice is like honey, so of course he’s doing the announcing. But just as importantly, he’s got the face of an angel, so of course they had to give him a cute little setup to show him off.
LOW: Tom Felton is a Broadway guy now?
Tom Felton is soon to reprise his role as Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which means he has a very limited amount of time to figure out how he wants to navigate J.K. Rowling’s ongoing comments and political actions against the trans community. So far, uh, the future is not promising. On the red carpet, he fielded a question about the ongoing “Twitterverse” controversy, to which he said, “I have not seen anything bring the world together more than Potter,” a word he still says like he’s sneering at Daniel Radcliffe.
HIGH: Jonathan Groff’s Darin Megamix
I don’t even like the music of Bobby Darin. But when Jonathan Groff does his Just in Time megamix, singing his little heart out, every ounce of effort and joy plain on his face, it just makes me smile! He loves wearing his fedora! He loves saying “Mackie’s back!” He loves his showgirls! And to top it all off by giving Keanu Reeves the ol’ Hedwig special? Exuberance. While we’re at it: More shows need to end in a megamix! It’s something Just in Time gets so right.
LOW: Charli D’Amelio’s whispers
When presenting Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical, you could barely hear the TikTok star speaking into the mic. Adam Lambert should have taught her how to project into the mic. Beautiful gown, though. Gorgeous gown.
HIGH: Nicole Scherzinger teaches the world new ways to dream
The way her voice fills the room, the way her eyes flash and widen at a split-second glance at the camera. Her Norma is expressively just so very weird. A movie monster like the creature from the black lagoon. A stunner. I just wish they did a Tom Francis camera-walk lead-up. Not that she needs it.
WHOA: David Hyde Pierce’s whole deal
His little red nose. His penciled-on mustache. His big striped pantaloons. And then he struts out doing a washboard solo? What da heck? I don’t want to see this show, but it’s so hilarious to see the things that my king David Hyde Pierce chooses to do with his free will! Wow!
HIGH: Floyd Collins yodeling its way into our hearts
I think I forgot how gorgeous the Floyd Collins score is and how gorgeous Tina Landau’s direction is … love all those people in silhouette on that big big screen!
WHOA: The art of Broadway commercials lives!
During a commercial break a half-hour in we got a delightful look at Kristin Chenoweth’s Queen of Versailles musical, staging it like the documentary it’s based on. We need more formal innovation like this in the Broadway commercial space!
LOW: PureLeaf
Darren Criss’s PureLeaf Tea ad spot backstage, like Aaron Tveit’s American Express shout-out in the wings, was not, in fact, tea.
WHOA: Purpose beats Oh, Mary!
Though Purpose won the Pulitzer Prize earlier this year, the success of Oh, Mary! seemed like a runaway train heading into the ceremony. And in many ways … it was. Oh, Mary! still won Best Actor and Best Director at the ceremony, but the big award went to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s family drama about the scions of a Reverend Jesse Jackson–like figure. After last year’s big win for Appropriate, it looks like the Tonys might just love themselves some BJJ.
LOW: Maybe Happy Endings’s choice of musical number
I love this show. I think it’s just gorgeous, funny, and unique. And I love most of its music. “World Within My Room.” “Why Love?” “The Rainy Day We Met.” “The Way That it Has to Be.” “Jenny.” “Where You Belong.” “Hitting the Road,” Parts 1, 2, and 3. Fabulous. Cute in the right way. I do not count the sickly saccharine “Little Robot” firefly song among these modern classics. The Jeju Island firefly forest sequence is staged ingeniously in the show, but this song is cloying twee rather than funny, sprightly twee or the classic-sounding crooning of the show’s Gil Brentley numbers. Tony performances are a canon in themselves and I’m sad that this is the one for Maybe Happy Ending! Cute that they kiss at the end though?
WHOA: Nicole Scherzinger wins best actress
“It happened, Andrew!” Mere moments after Audra McDonald proved that her Momma’s got the stuff with a performance of her shattering take on “Rose’s Turn,” the award for Best Actress in a Musical went to … Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Blvd.! With Sunset winning for Revival, Actress, and Director, and George C. Wolfe not even getting nominated in the Directing category, that made the night a total shutout for Gypsy. The Best Actress race was the prevailing A-story main plotline of this awards season, with the two front-runners performing their variations on aging women driven mad by the bright lights of showbiz literally across the street from each other, and it stayed gripping until its conclusion. McDonald remains Broadway’s Streep, but I love Scherzinger’s take on Norma Desmond. Hard-fought win.
HIGH: Cole Escola makes history!
If you told me last year that Cole Escola would be the first gender non-binary person to win a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for their portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln, I would have said, “Of course they will, they are a generational talent.” Well … it’s nice to be proven right.
HIGH: Erivo singing everyone out
Erivo did a phenomenal job as host, staying extremely true to herself and letting herself shine rather than trying to do a more typical jokey hosting schtick. Not that she didn’t get laughs, just that she went about it in her own way, playing it straight and bright and intense. Her best bit of all might have been while the credits rolled, singing a variation on “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” about how these Tony nominees and winners now gotta clear out. Wonderful, I hope they have her back. Only 264 days until Wicked: For Good.
LOW: Cynthia Erivo singing the long-talkers off
It’s a sound bite, but doesn’t it feel mean? It makes it seem so much more personal when folks get their acceptance speech played off by the host. On the plus side, it also feels more dramatic when the person delivering their acceptance speech yells over Cynthia Erivo. But “My Way” is a really weird choice, no matter how you slice it. Is Erivo going to kill these people? Feels like a threat.
Related
HIGH: Cynthia Erivo singing everyone out. WHOA: Nicole Scherzinger wins best actress. LOW: PureLeaf.
