There was a point in the not-too-distant past when Broadway was considered not exactly dead, but definitely on life support. Other than the occasional Hairspray, Wicked, or Book of Mormon, most shows were forgettable and even Tony winners were shrugged off as settled-fors that might do well in a regional market. Snobs were self-righteously (and unjustly) turning their noses up at the growing trends of jukebox musicals and musicals made from movies. (They’re here to stay, only going to get more prevalent, and are keeping Broadway alive. Grow up and get used to it.) But the last few seasons have turned out a high number of quality and popular musicals (even both at the same time!) that have set exorbitant record ticket prices and record numbers for attendance (even if it means pandering to the “lowbrow” tourists, you snobs).
2016 hosted the infamous Hamil-tonys, which boiled down to a three hour commercial for one show (“Hamilton…Hamilton…some other guy from Hamilton…Hamilton….”) that didn’t need it. 2017 we had theatrical Mecca—a near unprecedented thirteen new diverse and high-quality musicals with more to offer than any other year in recent history, any of which could have been nominated (and most of which could have won) any other season—with two I can contest could have toppled even the “untouchable” Hamilton. (Yeah, we’re still a little bitter about that three-hour waste of prime TV time). Even 2018 was a better season than it looked on paper, due to the Tony committee-created sweep for critical darling The Band’s Visit. (Not saying it wasn’t a great or deserving show, just saying there were many other shows that should have won many of those awards.)
This season is admirable. No real breakouts, but a few forerunners and many enjoyable shows. Of course, Tony wouldn’t be Tony if they didn’t pull some inexcusable snubs and politically motivated nominations. Here’s a quick run down of the big players:
1) THE DARLING: The Prom: The show that few have seen but the industry adores. The problem is in the marketing, favoring a 2019 “we’re so inclusive” approach emphasizing the heartwarming story of a young gay Midwestern teen who wants to take her girlfriend to the prom. But the real story is the hilarious account of four washed-up Broadway has-beens who use the girl’s situation to get press for shameless self-promotion. Trust me, with a funny and clever script from the creator of The Drowsy Chaperone and a pumped-up score with hilarious lyrics from the composers of The Wedding Singer, it’s way better than you’ve heard. Here’s the one time the critics are right.
2) THE PHENOMENON: Hadestown: The hardest ticket to get in town this year and top nominated with 14 honors is this sensation from the production team of Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812. Updating the Greek myth of Orpheus’ descent into the underworld to rescue Eurydice, relocated in New Orleans and told with jazz and Cajun flair. Trust director Rachel Chavkin, who reinvented Broadway theatre with Great Comet, but received little to no credit for her sublime vision.
3) THE COMFORT FOOD: Tootsie: Based on the iconic 1982 movie starring Dustin Hoffman (full disclosure, my favorite contemporary movie), that’s basically where the similarities end. The plot is #MeToo revised, the characters are there but unnecessarily reinvented, and it’s been updated from the 80s universal world of soap operas (I owe a quarter!) to the fringe world of contemporary Broadway, but the reviews have been over the top. Yet, compared to the flawless screenplay and cast of the original, personally, it pales vastly in comparison.
4) THE QUESTION MARKS: Beetlejuice and Ain’t Too Proud: The first is one of the funniest, most surrealistic experiences on Broadway today and star Alex Brightman is a manic delight who obliterates any memory of Michael Keaton. But with literally no substance other than to shock and provoke laughs, is that enough for a best musical nod? The latter, the story of the Temptations, received lukewarm reviews in and out of town and little to no attention with all the other awards season ballots, yet has a shocking second high 12 nominations. Why did Tony adore what everyone else passed on, including the local Helen Hayes Awards (1 nomination, for performer Ephraim Sykes, zero for the show against a significantly shallower pool of competition). There were way better musicals that got ignored this season. Tony looks suspicious, especially when they included a rare 5th nominee, which they didn’t even do in the bumper crop of 2017’s 13 mostly high-quality new musicals.
5) Only two revivals, Kelli O’Hara, Will Chase, and Corbin Bleu in the #MeToo Kiss Me Kate, and Daniel Fish’s dark, sensual, utterly revisionist non-Oklahoma.
BEST MUSICAL
SHOULD WIN: The Prom; WILL WIN: Hadestown
Let’s be clear in my mind there isn’t a foregone winner; no Evan Hansen or Hamilton, no critical darling like The Band’s Visit. It’s a very safe year for nominees, and two of the best and most original shows aren’t even nominated. And if we’re being honest, Beetlejuice and Ain’t Too Proud don’t even belong. The first is manic nonsense, hilarious but pointless, and the second is the most common kind of jukebox musical, theoretically Tony poison. Be More Chill and The Cher Show do what they do but better and with more creativity, and the virtually across-the-board Cher Show snub in particular emphasizes that 30 years after the Mask debacle, the industry still doesn’t take her seriously (hopefully at least resulting in another landmark “follow this, you bitches” Bob Mackie awards show get-up). Of the three nominees in the running, The Prom and Tootsie are by-the-book musical comedy, with The Prom at least being not nearly as predictable with a hilarious book making fun of show business. But Hadestown is different. The score is jazzy but rather forgettable, but the artistic team and the cast are first rate, so it is something, like Great Comet, that looks better on stage than on paper. It’s the more artistic and most diversely cast of the three, important criteria for what Tony is looking for. But The Prom is the only original story of the three, and a very well executed one with some welcome surprises. Tootsie is the weakest of the three but received inexplicably amazing reviews for a very ordinary show and has the biggest star turn. The insiders like The Prom, the artists like Hadestown, and the mainstream like Tootsie. Nothing will surprise me
GOT ROBBED: The Cher Show, Be More Chill for all the reasons above.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: Tootsie. Honestly, I don’t understand all the industry love for it, but the reviews are amazingly strong.
BEST ACTOR
SHOULD WIN: Santino Fontana (Tootsie); WILL WIN: Santino Fontana (Tootsie)
This is virtually the one guarantee of the evening
POTENTIAL SPOILER: None. Brooks Ashmankus is a scream as a washed-up old theatre queen in The Prom and Alex Brightman is a force of nature as Beetlejuice, but Fontana is the only triple-threat in the game and he’s nailing it in heels. He’s the breakout star of the season.
GOT ROBBED: Will Chase (Kiss Me Kate), Will Roland (Be More Chill) and Andrew Durand (Head Over Heels). Chase is always the dependable leading man who makes it look too easy. Roland jumps from sidekick to strong leading man and keeps Chill from being the juvenile fluff critics accuse it of being. Durand gave an outstanding comedic performance in and out of Shakespearean drag, trapped at the center of an Elizabethan love quadrangle while emoting to the sounds of Belinda Carlisle and company (in her key), all the while making it funny and believable.
BEST ACTRESS
SHOULD WIN: Stephanie J. Block (The Cher Show); WILL WIN: Stephanie J. Block (The Cher Show)
Full disclosure: We have one of my all-time favorite Broadway performers portraying one of my all-time favorite legendary icons. Not going to pretend I’m not biased, but in a real world there is no other winner than the long-overdue Block. If Block loses, Radio City should go up in flames and take every last Tony voter down with it. She was already robbed for her performance in Falsettos (if only for her 4-minute master class delivery of “I’m Breaking Down”, but she layered a brilliantly sensitive performance in a major character arc of the show on top of that), and what better way to make up that slight than by earning the award for the role of a lifetime that no one can do like her. Giving stellar performances for 15 years since debuting as Liza Minnelli in The Boy from Oz, she’s been the brightest spot in every show she graces. Block has the unenviable job of recreating a larger than life persona with one of the most distinct sounds in pop history that could easily in lesser hands come off as a cartoon or a Vegas legends performance. But her Cher is wise, wise-cracking, outspoken, and ultimately vulnerable and introverted underneath all the Bob Mackie flash. She nails the vocals, the mannerisms, the syntax, and looks amazing in the Mackie classics. Once a decade there is a performance that should be billed as “is”, not “as”. Stephanie Block IS Cher. And she finally IS a true star.
GOT ROBBED: Samantha Barks (Pretty Woman). Although the reviews for Pretty Woman were anything but, Barks is the luminous center of it who salutes Julia Roberts’ star turn while making you forget her. Sometimes a worthy performance can emerge from a less-than piece.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: Beth Leavel as a washed-up, Liza-esque Broadway diva in The Prom. She’s a comic and vocal powerhouse and Tony loves her, but she already has an award and isn’t doing anything we haven’t seen her excel at already.
BEST FEATURED ACTOR
SHOULD WIN: Andre de Shields (Hadestown); WILL WIN: Andre de Shields (Hadestown)
This is the category Tony got completely wrong. Tony had their blinders on and missed some of the most dazzling performances of the season in arguably the strongest category. Of the selected nominees, de Shields is an old school master, having created the title role of The Wiz and performed in the extraordinary definitive original cast that launched the sorely missed Nell Carter in Ain’t Misbehavin’ at the start of a 40+ year career with no wins. He is the one who truly deserves, and looms above his fellow nominees.
GOT ROBBED: Everyone, most notably Jarrod Spector (The Cher Show), George Salazar (Be More Chill), John Behlmann (Tootsie) and Corbin Bleu (Kiss Me Kate). These four omissions should be de Shield’s competition and are inexcusable. (In a lesser year, even Oklahoma’s James Davis as a horndog Will Parker and Patrick Vaill as a Jud Fry that you actually root for would have made the cut.) Bleu, following the lead of his former castmates Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, has finally graduated the stigma of High School Musical and emerged as a full-grown, full-blown star. A dashing leading man in a supporting role, he wraps a smooth tenor around Cole Porter’s vocals and tears up the set with amazing dancing skills, especially in old school tap. To pilfer Porter’s lyrics, he’s Too Darn Hot not to have been nominated. Salazar is a charming, scene-stealing delight who delivers and nails the season’s most iconic new song of the American musical canon with his wallflower’s lament “Michael in the Bathroom.” Behlmann is the only character change that works in Robert Horn’s revised, updated cast. Instead of the veteran star of a long standing soap opera, Max van Horn is now a 20-something reality TV megastar spreading his wings on Broadway. As such, he’s pretty (and defines the concept of abs as a character choice) and dumb as the thick brown hair on his head. But dumb/funny goes a long way, especially when he May/December falls for the older Dorothy Michaels, the only person in show business who is nice to him. But the most egregious oversight of all (it will never be a true Tony discussion if that phrase can’t be worked in somewhere. Thank you, Julie Andrews.) is Spector who, like Block, IS Sonny Bono. In another performance that could have easily become a cartoon, Spector is everything Sonny was—charming, funny, intense, and ultimately the Svengali that was his undoing. But when the audience first hears him sing his opening strains of “I Got You Babe”, it’s one of those rare instances of theatre magic.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: Of what’s left, Ephraim Sykes (Ain’t Too Proud) as David Ruffin if there’s anything to the motivations of the questionable 12 nominations, and Andy Groteleuschen (Tootsie) is admittedly scene-stealing hilarious in his re-envisioned Bill Murray role. With two Hadestown nominees and two Ain’t Too Proud nominees that could potentially split each other out, Groteleuschen could emerge from the fallout.
BEST FEATURED ACTRESS
SHOULD WIN: Sarah Stiles (Tootsie); WILL WIN: Ali Stroker (Oklahoma)
Stiles is a neurotic powerhouse who breezes in and out of Tootsie in Teri Garr’s role getting maximum mileage from a never-ending patter song. But there’s been too much attention for Oklahomato go home empty handed, and all the other performer nominees are lost amongst the star power. Stroker is a bright spot who gives a heart to the stock loose girl trope and makes the character, usually played broadly for laughs, actually make sense (thanks also to unrecognized James Davis as a completely co-dependent Will Parker). She is the first wheelchair-bound leading performer to ever be nominated, if not the first known to ever perform on Broadway in the Deaf West Spring Awakening revival. She’s a great and inspirational morning-after story.
GOT ROBBED: Bonnie Milligan (Head Over Heels) and Micaela Diamond (The Cher Show), both giving stellar performances in their Broadway debuts. Milligan was inspirational as a plus-sized, sexually fluid, comic Elizabethan princess who tears the rafters off the palace belting out Gogos tunes. 19-year-old Diamond lives up to her surname as young Cher, before show business and life jaded her. She’s the refreshing, youthful center of the show as Cher untouched, and with her big voice and warm optimism, and is perfection when coupled with equally flawless Spector in the duo’s formative years. Again, their “I Got You Babe” is a highlight of the Broadway season, and they ARE Sonny & Cher.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: If Lily Cooper and Stiles split the Tootsie vote, and Mary Testa and Stroker split the Oklahoma vote, Amber Grey (Hadestown) could slide in with her second strong performance following Great Comet.
BEST REVIVAL
SHOULD WIN: Oklahoma; WILL WIN: Oklahoma
“Words You’d Never Hear Mark Say” for $1000. But Director Daniel Fish has taken the creakiest of classics, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s least impressive, most overrated piece (or, as I have called it since the first time I could actually sit through it to completion, “Three and a Half Hours About Who This Bitch is Taking to the Dance?!”) and re-envisioned it into, according to him, something that was there all the time: a dark and sensual potboiler about life on the isolated prairie. Without changing one word or lyric, Fish has done the impossible: he’s made Oklahoma make sense. He has pulled out a darkness and blurred the lines between the good guy and the bad, as well as updating the orchestrations to a more contemporary country western sound, which can’t help but integrate them better than they are given too much credit for already. Kiss Me Kate is pretty perfect with dynamite performances, but it’s actually been diluted trying to update it with yet more unnecessary #MeToo foolishness. It’s a huge mistake when you think you know better than both Cole Porter and Shakespeare. The end result is still wonderful but expect Tony to favor the artsy over the artistic. Oh, and Oklahoma serves you chili and cornbread, so there’s that.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: Kiss Me Kate (what else can it be?)
BEST DIRECTION
SHOULD WIN: Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown); WILL WIN: Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown)
Chavkin, possessing one of today’s brightest visions, was robbed for her innovative creation of Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812, wherein she literally blew apart the boundaries of traditional Broadway theatre, transforming the Imperial Theatre into a giant Russian tea room, moving the stage to the audience and the audience to the former stage, then connecting them all to the house and the balcony for a whirling, head-spinning immersive extravaganza never before seen in a Broadway house. The end result was a breathtaking 360° retelling of War & Peace literally reinventing theatre on the way. She will never be given that flexibility again after the fallout sequel (Mandy Patinkin, Poison Oak, and the Great Fake Racial Debacle of 2017), but she puts another creative spin on Greek Mythology via way of the Big Easy as only she can.
GOT ROBBED: Jason Moore (The Cher Show). Moore has worked with Cher herself to rework the book from a less than successful Chicago try-out and the new result is a slick, fun, insightful evening that celebrates Cher’s spectacular career and explores her introspective psyche. He’s cast it perfectly and coaxed stellar performances from his cast that all salute Cher in the best way without making fun of her, at least any more than she does herself.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: Daniel Fish has done something no other director has done in 75 years–make sense of Oklahoma. Without changing a word or lyric he’s made it feel contemporary and real, which is no easy feat. And Scott Ellis directed two “best” nominees, and honestly, should have instead been nominated for his far more impressive effort in his other backstage entry, Kiss Me, Kate. Tootsie is an old-fashioned, by-the-numbers musical comedy, but he may get a nod for his combined work. Not to mention for the last two years running, Tony has rewarded the least innovative, safest director nominated.
BEST SCORE
SHOULD WIN: The Prom; WILL WIN: Hadestown
The Prom is a very underrated score by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin (The Wedding Singer) that travels down parallel languages of pop for the high school kids and Broadway showstopper parodies for the over-the-hill egotists. But Hadestown is the jazzier score with the bigger buzz.
GOT ROBBED: Truly no one, since all five eligible composers who weren’t jukebox musicals were all nominated, but even then Tony couldn’t do it without the slap in the face of nominating the background music in To Kill a Mockingbird along with them. They really need to tighten up this award so it only pertains to musicals. That’s just crap.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: Be More Chill is fresh, clever, and funny (“Michael in the Bathroom” is the song of the year), and the only chance this cult favorite has at an award. Some critics have favored Tootsie, but David Yazbeck’s derivative score sounds like his regurgitated Full Monty, which couldn’t be more wrong for the sound of this musical. Plus he just won last year for his much more immersive Band’s Visit. He’s not worthy of a repeat here.
BEST BOOK
SHOULD WIN: The Prom; WILL WIN: Tootsie
Every critic has raved about the book as the second biggest asset of the show after Fontana. But the original screenplay by some of the heaviest hitters in 80s Hollywood (Barry Levinson, Elaine May, Larry Gelbart) is absolutely flawless, every scene funny, concise, and coming back into play later on. The revised version has even been deemed “the funniest book since Book of Mormon” (which it absolutely isn’t). But Robert Horn has taken far too many steps to distance himself from the movie and changed the script entirely to “update” it and, of course, #MeToo the crap out of it. In the meantime, however, he threw out 80% of the humor. Gone is the hilarious shenanigans of the soap opera world, instead Dorothy Michaels is the hit star of a silly new Broadway musical. We can’t have weak, dependent female characters saved by men, so the Jessica Lange role has been watered down to drivel. She’s not dating the director (who’s now just a goof and not the supreme ass Dabney Coleman made a career out of playing in the 80s), and is already strong and smart, and thus in zero need of Dorothy Michaels (correction, a strong woman, not a man) to inspire (not rescue) her. And we can’t be afraid of the gay kiss, that’s homophobic, so that scene is over at the end of the first act instead of the pinnacle that necessitates Dorothy’s demise. It is very funny, but only a watered-down remnant of its superior iconic source material—and only as funny as Fontana, Groteleuschen, Stiles, and Behlmann can make it. Bob Martin’s showbiz insider follow-up to his hilarious debut with the underrated Drowsy Chaperone is funny, clever, sensitive, and a little biting at times. By far the best of the nominees, but he makes it look too easy in a show that also appears less than it is.
GOT ROBBED: The Cher Show and Head Over Heels. Cher is cleverly penned by Tony winner Rick Elice (Jersey Boys) and has the same kind of tongue-in-cheek fun as he had in his former award-winning book, but on a bigger, bolder, funnier, and more introspective scale in his currently snubbed work. Jeff Whitty and James Magruder cleverly adapt Sir Philip Sidney’s 16th century pastoral comedy The Arcadia and juxtapose the Elizabethan setting, costumes, and prose with the music of the Gogos, and the result is pleasantly surprising and funny, unlikely moving from rhymed couplets directly into “Heaven is a Place on Earth” or “Mad About You”.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: Truly none of what’s left. Scott Brown and Anthony King’s Beetlejuice has the best chance, full of self-aware witty to hilarious one liners, but Hadestown is more dependent on it’s score and visual storytelling. Ain’t Too Proud doesn’t even belong, and is only included more for author Dominique Morrisseau’s other work as a major up-and-coming playwright than her actual work in this.
BEST CHOREOGRAPHY
SHOULD WIN: Kiss Me Kate; WILL WIN: Kiss Me Kate
Warren Carlyle’s work is big, fun, splashy, traditional, old-timed musical theatre, and that is always what Tony favors.
GOT ROBBED: The Cher Show, passed over for the straight play Choir Boy, again, an inexcusable major slap in the face. NO straight play musicality will ever compare to what is involved in a musical. And never mind the rest of his first-rate choreography throughout, Christopher Catelli deserved the nomination for his breathtaking vision in staging “Dark Lady” alone, the most inspired dance number of the season.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: Sergio Trujillo for Ain’t Too Proud, the only nominated show to have anywhere near the amount of visual flair Carlyle had to create. But if it happens, Trujillo should thank the Tony committee for snubbing Catelli.
BEST COSTUMES
SHOULD WIN: Bob Mackie (The Cher Show); WILL WIN: Bob Mackie (The Cher Show)
Never mind that he’s up against the legendary William Ivy Long twice, this is the no-brainer of the night. The legendary Bob Mackie recreating the legendary Bob Mackie created for his über-muse Cher in a show about his über-muse Cher, there is no substitute in this lifetime. No one got robbed, no one can spoil, they should have closed the category with the master and given him the award already. Again, if anyone else wins, Radio City in flames.
BEST SET
SHOULD WIN: Beetlejuice; WILL WIN: Beetlejuice
As scattered and absurdist the rest of the show is, set designer David Korin’s twisted, out-of-the-box design for the old Maitland home and its new supernatural components are unparalleled this year.
GOT ROBBED: The Cher Show. Like Bob Mackie faithfully replicated his own designs for the costumes, Christine Jones and Brett J. Banakis painstakingly recreate all the all the old iconic sets for all four incarnations of their television variety shows (original The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, post-divorce The Sonny & Cher Show, and solo outings The Cher Show and Cher) as well as the UK’s Top of the Pops and various other locales from LA to London to a super flashy Vegas montage. More than anything else, this snub reflects the fact that Cher-by-association still gets zero respect, because instead of this diligent work highlighted with glamour, they nominated Oklahoma for designing a plywood barn dance. With chili.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: King Kong. Don’t laugh, but the one thing the big ape gets right is the tech, and it’s spectacular artistry.
BEST LIGHTING
SHOULD WIN: Beetlejuice; WILL WIN: Hadestown
Kenneth Posner and Peter Nigrini start the immersive mood lighting the minute you enter the Winter Garden, and they are instrumental in augmenting Korin’s supernatural, spooky set. But unless it’s a spectacle, Tony doesn’t understand lights and usually gives it to the forerunner.
POTENTIAL SPOILER: I would like to hope it’s The Cher Show, in, obscenely, only its third nomination of the evening, traversing from the worlds of TV to Vegas to Hollywood to the introspective recesses of our leading ladies’ mind. But, obviously, Cher-by-association…..
BEST PLAY
I just have to say that after all the disgusting actions of super greedy producer Scott Rudin, I applaud the Tony committee for refusing him a Best Play nomination for his To Kill a Mockingbird. He’s an embarrassment to the theatre community with his excessive greed and hubris. And, OK, I might still be holding a little bit of a grudge that he forbid Bette Midler from performing at the 2017 awards in the event show of the season. (#StillBitter). So look for The Ferryman to take top honor and a whole bunch of TV stars to win the performance awards where nominated.