What a shame. What a bore. What should have been a celebration of a pretty great Broadway season was, instead, the Berlin Alexanderplatz of commercials, a three hour blitzkrieg of advertisements interrupted every few minutes for a quick snippet of an awards show. I can't remember when the Tony Awards have ever been stripped of their customary razzle dazzle as they were this evening. You can't blame Christine Ebersole or Raul Esparaza or the cast of Spring Awakening (or Fantasia, for that matter) for doing their best, but they fought a losing battle. In recent years the Tonys, overproduced and overlong, have only hinted at the horrors of what could be. Tonight, it all came to pass. The show was not about excellence on Broadway, but about corporate shilling.
What should be remembered for The Coast of Utopia’s seven awards (a record, I think, for a non-musical), the canonization of Spring Awakening, the crowning of Ebersole and Wilson, the surprise victories of Julie White and David Hyde Pierce, and all the other fun stuff that came and went too quickly, will instead be remembered for the eight thousand commercials for some godawful-looking show called Viva Laughlin which CBS clearly thinks theater enthusiasts are going to embrace simply because it features Hugh Jackman (Tony winning wonderboy who saved The Boy From Oz from oblivion a few seasons past and proved to be a delightful Tony host on more than one occasion). How sad, we saw much more of Jackman’s costar, Melanie Griffith, than we did Vanessa Redgrave and Angela Lansbury combined.
It’s unlikely that anyone had it tougher than Jane Alexander. She appeared in the pre-show webcast to present the Regional Theatre award, then had to come back on at the end of the broadcast, nine hours later, to announce that she had given the award earlier in the evening. Poor thing. In between appearances, I hope she got to go home and take a nap.
What should be remembered for The Coast of Utopia’s seven awards (a record, I think, for a non-musical), the canonization of Spring Awakening, the crowning of Ebersole and Wilson, the surprise victories of Julie White and David Hyde Pierce, and all the other fun stuff that came and went too quickly, will instead be remembered for the eight thousand commercials for some godawful-looking show called Viva Laughlin which CBS clearly thinks theater enthusiasts are going to embrace simply because it features Hugh Jackman (Tony winning wonderboy who saved The Boy From Oz from oblivion a few seasons past and proved to be a delightful Tony host on more than one occasion). How sad, we saw much more of Jackman’s costar, Melanie Griffith, than we did Vanessa Redgrave and Angela Lansbury combined.
It’s unlikely that anyone had it tougher than Jane Alexander. She appeared in the pre-show webcast to present the Regional Theatre award, then had to come back on at the end of the broadcast, nine hours later, to announce that she had given the award earlier in the evening. Poor thing. In between appearances, I hope she got to go home and take a nap.
1 comment:
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