can you imagine being stuck in a elevator with Heche AND Raquel Welch?
Yes, I have imagined that. Often.
I found it too difficult to post without spoiling while you tape-delay people were watching the show, so I went to bed.
Last night was the most enjoyable awards show I've watched in quite some time, and that's mostly do to the happy surprises of Avenue Q winning the awards it won. There were some good speeches and the usual lame banter - but The Tony Awards still beats all other award shows.
And, in reality, it's an advertisement for Broadway. That's why that swooping shot of Radio City Music Hall (which is not a Broadway theatre) gives the viewing audience a wrong impression. Most Broadway houses are intimate, with no customer too far from the stage. You wouldn't know that from the broadcast.
The person I had dinner with on Tuesday did not win.
Another thing that happens every year: shows shoot themselves in the foot by picking the wrong number to televise. The heavily cut Swing didn't serve Wonderful Town well, and I expect it will close soon. Caroline, I suppose, HAD to show Lot's Wife, but that won't sell a lot of tickets, and I expect it, too, will close soon and we'll go from having two Jeanine Tesori musicals on Broadway to none rather quickly.
I Am Not the Boy Next Door is a terrible piece of songwriting, so, it would seem, the show about a songwriter isn't really about the quality of his songs. Hugh Jackman amused me muchly at several points during the broadcast.
I'm not the first to say it: Tonya Pinkins and Idina Menzel sounded horribly flat, as did Mary J. Blige (what show is she in? I won't attend). Could the problem be a difficulty hearing the orchestra on the Radio City stage? Or, the more likely hypothesis: they've hurt their voices screaming so loudly eight times a week.
Finally, something I say every year: ALL these shows, in the theatre, are nothing like what they're like on television. The ability to entertain a live theatre audience has precious little to do with the ability to look good on the tube. Avenue Q, for censorship's sake, showed one of its less funny numbers. The magic of the personified machines in ... well, I won't say in which show ... you wouldn't know by watching the Tonys. Ripped out of context, the number from Assassins failed to provide chills. And so it goes. (Ooh, a Tony-winning orchestrator reference!)
