2018 Tony Awards Final Thoughts

Well that certainly didn't go down as expected. The 2018 Tony Awards managed to be simultaneously surprising and rather uninteresting in a night that saw The Band's Visit essentially sweep with 10 wins (its only loss was Best Scenic Design to SpongeBob SquarePants). I have lots of thoughts about last night's ceremony, which for organization's sake will be broken into two broad categories: the telecast itself and the actual winners.

The Tony Telecast

Broadway alumni and 2018 Tony hosts Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles

While I have major qualms about the actual results of this year's Tonys, I have to say that overall I thought it was a well produced event. Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles proved to be excellent hosts, smartly playing up their musical skills while maintaining an easygoing, slightly self-deprecating vibe. Their opening number poking fun at their own "loser" status and name checking other famous Tony also-rans instantly diffused some of the tension in the room and allowed everyone to just enjoy the ceremony for what it was. The pair had some clever bits - including a rewritten, vocal fatigue focused take on Sia's "Chandelier" - and were fairly quick witted during the inevitable snafus of a live event (I was particularly amused by Bareilles' "magic delay" quip during the Harry Potter inspired bit).

When it came to the performance numbers from this season's shows, there were more good than bad, although not every show was a home run. The Mean Girls cast in particular seemed slightly terrified, an understandable case of nerves for a group where a high percentage of the cast was making their Tony Award debut. My Fair Lady also did itself a disservice by trying to cram 3 separate songs into their allotted time, which caused Norbert Leo Butz's normally showstopping "Get Me to the Church on Time" to appear unnecessarily manic and chaotic (Lauren Ambrose was in fine voice for her abridged "The Rain in Spain/I Could Have Danced All Night"). There were some odd sound issues with the Frozen number, although it still showcased the production well and demonstrated how surprising it was that neither Patti Murin or Caissie Levy netted even a nomination (Murin in particular is utterly charming).

On the positive side, Once On This Island absolutely *killed* it. From the recreation of the show's unique environmental staging to the phenomenally talented cast, they were easily my favorite performance of the night and would be the show I'd most want tickets for after the telecast (even before their Best Revival win). Tony nominee Hailey Kilgore was particularly luminous in her highlighted section, and Alex Newell just reaffirmed my assertion that he was robbed of a Best Feature Actor nomination. The divisive revival of Carousel also looked great with the surprising choice to do "Blow Low, Blow High;" in retrospect it was a brilliant choice that allowed them to highlight the show's strongest assets, Joshua Henry's glorious baritone and Justin Peck's Tony-winning choreography. And even the most cynical audience member had to be at least a tad charmed by Gavin Lee's tap-tastic "(I'm Not a) Loser" from SpongeBob SquarePants, proving the Nickelodeon adaptation didn't get all those Tony nods by accident.

The show also moved at a good clip, although that occasionally came at the expense of the winners' acceptance speeches. The telecast producers sure seemed to arbitrarily enforce the acceptance time limit, allowing certain (usually famous) winners to ramble on while others were cut off entirely. It seemed particularly egregious that they didn't let Jack Thorne, author of the Tony-winning Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, utter a single word while allowing John Leguizamo's rambling introduction of an equally rambling underscored monologue by Bruce Springsteen.

And while I have begrudgingly accepted that a lot of the "lesser" awards will be given out off air, they *really* couldn't make time for Broadway ROYALTY Chita Rivera and Andrew Lloyd Webber to receive their Lifetime Achievement awards on air?!? It's as if to say, "Thank you for dedicating your entire life to the theatre, but you're not as important as the Hollywood celebrities and recording artists that pop by once a decade or so." For shame, CBS. For shame.

The Winners

Lead producer Orin Wolf accepts the Best Musical Tony on behalf of The Band's Visit.

No point in mincing words: I was incredibly wrong about the way this season's awards would shake out (you can see just how wrong here). In my defense I don't think anyone expected The Band's Visit to do as well as it did, even those who expected it to win Best Musical. With 10 wins it becomes one of the most awarded productions in Tony history, and while I try to take a positive spin on this blog the fact of the matter is the show simply doesn't deserve a lot of them.

Best Actor is probably the most egregious mistake. First of all, Tony Shahloub was nominated in the wrong category, as his performance is a featured one and he was clearly only upgraded to leading status due to his fame. More importantly, his merely adequate performance in no way deserved to triumph over truly sensational work by Joshua Henry in Carousel or Henry Hadden-Paton in My Fair Lady. David Cromer's Best Direction win also feels exceedingly generous considering the superbly inventive work done by people like SpongeBob SquarePants' Tina Landau or Once On This Island's Michael Arden. And while I don't claim to be an expert in sound design, SpongeBob has a live Foley pit that produces the cartoon sound effects live each night; how is that not enough to win a Tony? And finally, I would like to point out that even the CBS producers clearly expected Tina Fey to win Best Book, which would explain why that category merited inclusion on the actual telecast instead of being relegated to the Tony preshow like Best Score (an award The Band's Visit both won and deserved).

The most common explanation offered for The Band's Visit's surprisingly strong showing is that Tony voters were rebelling against a season they felt was too overtly commercial. Which may well be true, but would also be a somewhat erroneous justification on voters' part as it is also based on a movie just like the rest of this year's Best Musical nominees. I guess the fact that it's an obscure movie makes it more palatable to voters? Regardless, it is not a show I foresee having a long life either in New York or afterward, nor do I think it will be much remembered or performed in 5-10 years' time.

In happier news, I was positively thrilled for Once On This Island's Best Revival win. While I would have been more than happy for expected winner My Fair Lady to take the crown, Once On This Island is the most heartfelt production of the current season and more than deserves the recognition. And Broadway baby Lindsay Mendez is another well deserving winner for her performance in Carousel, whose acceptance speech was equal parts charming and inspiring. Her speech is also a sobering reminder the recent discussions around diversity onstage are sorely needed, as whoever advised the now 35 year old Mendez to change her last name to get more work clearly did so in the past 10-15 years.

Overall, after some exceptional recent seasons this past year's crop of Broadway shows were a bit of an artistic letdown, particularly when it comes to new works. Yet it was also the highest grossing and best attended season on record, which provides little incentive for producers to change what they're doing. (Although it should be pointed out a good portion of that money comes from past seasons' blockbusters like Dear Evan Hansen, Come From Away, Hello, Dolly! and of course Hamilton.) It will be interesting to see if The Band's Visit's massive Tony haul affects what gets produced in the coming years, or if Broadway continues down the path of adapting relatively safe/known properties.

Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions in the comments, and keep an eye on this space for more reviews and opinions about all things Broadway!

2015 Tony Nominee React

Bruce Willis (who will make his Broadway debut in the fall) and Mary-Louise Parker (a past Tony-winner for her work in Proof) announce the 2015 Tony Award nominees. 

They're here! After weeks of speculation, we finally know which productions and performers will be competing for the 2015 Tony Awards. You can view a full list of the nominees here, but to check out how I did with my predictions see the list below. Asterisks indicate correction predictions, and asterisks in parentheses indicate a wildcard pick that made the final cut.

Best Play

*The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
(*)Disgraced
*Hand to God
*Wolf Hall Parts One & Two

Best Musical

*An American in Paris
*Fun Home
*Something Rotten!
*The Visit

Best Revival of a Play

*The Elephant Man
*Skylight
This Is Our Youth
*You Can’t Take It with You

Best Revival of a Musical

*The King and I
*On the Town
*On the Twentieth Century

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play

*Steven Boyer, Hand to God
*Bradley Cooper, The Elephant Man
*Ben Miles, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
*Bill Nighy, Skylight
*Alex Sharp, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play

*Geneva Carr, Hand to God
*Helen Mirren, The Audience
*Elisabeth Moss, The Heidi Chronicles
*Carey Mulligan, Skylight
*Ruth Wilson, Constellations

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical

*Michael Cerveris, Fun Home
*Robert Fairchild, An American in Paris
*Brian d’Arcy James, Something Rotten!
*Ken Watanabe, The King and I
*Tony Yazbeck, On the Town

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical

*Kristin Chenoweth, On the Twentieth Century
*Leanne Cope, An American in Paris
*Beth Malone, Fun Home
*Kelli O’Hara, The King and I
*Chita Rivera, The Visit

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play

Matthew Beard, Skylight
K. Todd Freeman, Airline Highway
Richard McCabe, The Audience
Alessandro Nivola, The Elephant Man
*Nathaniel Parker, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Micah Stock, It’s Only a Play

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play

*Annaleigh Ashford, You Can’t Take It with You
Patricia Clarkson, The Elephant Man
*Lydia Leonard, Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Sarah Stiles, Hand to God
Julie White, Airline Highway

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical

*Christian Borle, Something Rotten!
*Andy Karl, On the Twentieth Century
*Brad Oscar, Something Rotten!
Brandon Uranowitz, An American in Paris
*Max von Essen, An American in Paris

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical

Victoria Clark, Gigi
*Judy Kuhn, Fun Home
Sydney Lucas, Fun Home
*Ruthie Ann Miles, The King and I
Emily Skeggs, Fun Home



I may rethink my decision to attempt predicting the Featured Actor/Actress nominees next year, because they really dragged down my accuracy rating. Overall, I correctly predicted 75% of the nominees (77% if you count my wildcard pick of Disgraced for Best Play as correct). Had I stopped at the production and the lead actor races, I would have had a 97% success rate, with the only thing preventing a perfect score being the surprise inclusion of This Is Out Youth in the Best Play Revival category.

Of course, all of this comes with the caveat that in almost every case the Tony committee nominated less people than I was expecting, which is probably the most surprising thing about this year's nominations. It definitively proves that the committee has no desire to honor the maximum number of nominees just because they can, and that last year's narrower than expected Best Musical race was no fluke. On the one hand, I like that this philosphy retains the prestige of an actual nomination - they automatically mean more if less people get them - but on the other hand it leaves a lot of deserving people out in the cold. In general, I have to say I don't mind the committee's selectiveness, as there aren't any overlooked productions or performances I feel strongly about...

...except in the Featured categories, in which the nominations generally came from out of left field and included a whole host of people that weren't on anyone's radar. In retrospect, I should have foreseen the critical adulation of The Elephant Man placing Patricia Clarkson and Alessandro Nivola into contention (how "Jim Parsons-lite" Micah Stock managed to sneak in there remains a mystery). But in general, I feel the cast of On the Town got snubbed, both the men and the women. That revival is packed from top to bottom with fantastic performances, and the fact that only Tony Yazbeck (who is beyond deserving) got nominated is suspicious to me.

I have always maintained that for an actor to be snubbed, there needs to be at least one nominee you would be willing to bump to make room for your preferred performer. I'm going to be somewhat controversial here and nominate Victoria Clark as that person, as I would have much preferred my beloved Alysha Umphress or her costar Elizabeth Stanley in that slot. While I have not seen Gigi, I did see Clark's last two Tony-nominated performances in Sister Act and Cinderella, and in both shows she gave perfectly lovely performances that in no way matched the tone or spirit of the piece she was in. Given what I've read about Gigi, I suspect the same thing has happened again, and while there is something to be said about ensuring your performance is good regardless of the production quality, there is more to be said for being a team player. Both Umphress and Stanley (and their male counterparts, Jay Armstrong Johnson and Clyde Alves) are consummate team players, and it's a shame none of them were rewarded for their efforts.

Other thoughts:

-Something Rotten! better watch out, as its presumptive Best Musical win is now seriously in jeopardy. Both Fun Home and American in Paris scored more nominations, which means that Ben Brantley might not be the only guy in town who was underwhelmed by the showbiz satire.

-This year's tightest race remains Best Actress in a Musical, with Kristin Chenoweth and Kelli O'Hara giving sensational performances in two very different shows. I lean towards O'Hara because in addition to being perfection, she should really just have a Tony already, but I have to admit that if I were a Tony voter I might have to give it to Chenoweth for a flashier performance that exceeded all expectations. (I still love you, Kelli!)

-I'm absolutely thrilled for Brad Oscar, who I thought was joke for joke the funniest cast member of Something Rotten! I'm glad to see he wasn't completely overshadowed by his flashier costar Christian Borle, who like the aforementioned Victoria Clark has a tendency to have an acting style that doesn't really relate to his costars.

-There was a time a few months ago when several people were predicting that Finding Neverland and Doctor Zhivago would be the shows to beat this spring (for the record, I was *not* one of those people). Neither show received a single nomination.

-I am saddened but not surprised to see Honeymoon in Vegas completely excluded from the nominations. I highly enjoyed that production, and I hope that someday soon Jason Robert Brown achieves the elusive critical and commercial hit his talent deserves.


And those are my gut reactions to this year's Tony nominations. Throughout the next six weeks you can expect this blog to feature lots of speculation, predictions, and even another review or two. In meantime, you can take a look at my coverage of the 2015 Tonys so far (and read just how misguided my Featured Actor and Actress predictions were) below:

Tony Rule Change
2015 Tony Nominee Predictions: Production
2015 Tony Nominee Predictions: Actor
2015 Tony Nominee Predictions: Actress
2015 Tony Nominee Predictions: Featured Actor/Actress