"Honeymoon In Vegas" on Broadway is More Fun Than it Should Beby Randi / February 12, 2015
First, the news, which gave me a valid reason to post this review so very much later than I should have. Michael C. Hall (yes, Dexter) will return to the role of Hedwig on Broadway TONIGHT for at least a week! Hall ended his fabulous run a month ago. Producers are saying it’s just for one week (till February 21) but current Hedwig star (and creator) John Cameron Mitchell injured his knee a week ago, and knee injuries are serious, so if he needs more time to rest he should take it. Although it’s a shame that ticket holders for this week’s performances won’t get to see the unparalleled JCM, at least he’s promised to return in due time, so hopefully they can go back later. But for all people in or near New York City who have the chance, run this week to see Michael C. Hall! He is incredible! End news. Begin review.
To everyone’s surprise and delight, “Hedwig & The Angry Inch” is still selling out on Broadway almost a year later. I mean selling out like seats, and necessitating standing room tickets, not ‘selling out’ like abandoning principles. Although, funny stream of consciousness connection time, when a Broadway production was announced, many fans of the super fringe, culty, super off-Broadway original Jane Street production thought that a Broadway run would leave the beloved show overly sanitized to be safer for the regular mainstem (old/white/wealthy) crowd. But it didn’t. It was superb and just as sharp as before, but now available to become beloved by many, many more fans. With current temporary star Michael C. Hall, it’s a must-see.
And I am definitely one of those new fans. I watched the movie version of “Hedwig” in college but wasn’t really paying attention so I didn’t get it and didn’t even realize what amazingness I was watching. But then Neil Patrick Harris brought Hedwig back to life last spring and it won lots of Tonys and it was the hardest ticket to get. Since I like to see everything every season, this was very difficult for me to accept. Luckily I did not have to learn a lesson in not getting everything I want, Broadway edition, because my super awesome friend at Ever the Wayfarer got me ungettable tickets to NPH’s final weekend! Best ever! It was his beautiful performance that made me an obsessive fan of all things Hedwig.
“Hedwig & The Angry Inch” tells the story of a young man named Hansel, a ‘slip of a girly boy’ living with his austere mother in East Berlin before the wall came down. NB, that was the really shitty side. Hansel met Luther, an American soldier, who lured him with lots of candy like he was driving a white van, and made Hansel an offer he couldn’t refuse: to marry him, and thus get out of East Berlin. Obviously, this was happening before gay marriage was allowed anywhere, even in Europe, and so Hansel would have to undergo a sex change operation to pass the physical examination. Hansel’s mother gives him her passport and tells him he can go by her name, Hedwig. And so the new Hedwig goes to surgery, and as you probably can guess from the title, it is botched, to say the least, and he’s “left with a one-inch mound of flesh where my penis used to be, where my vagina never was. It was a one-inch mound of flesh, with a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face.” I freaking love that line and had to share.
So he, now she, Hedwig, is moved to Junction City, Kansas to live with her new husband Luther, who soon leaves her alone, living in a motor home, working a checkout counter, left to watch the fall of the Berlin wall on television too soon after all she went through to escape.
It’s pretty damn depressing. But it gets better like they all say! Because here she is, for her ‘one night only’ Broadway performance (as the show is billed as), made possible by the previous night’s mid-show closing of the first performance of the fictitious “Hurt Locker: The Musical”. To play up this backstory, fake “Hurt Locker” playbills are strewn about the auditorium before every performance, so if you are lucky enough to find one, you should frame it. These fake playbills are HILARIOUS, from the list of songs in the fake musical (including gems like “Won’t you buy my porn DVD” and “Hot Desert Nights!”) to the castlist (including Bobby Cannavale, Taye Diggs, and D’Bree Dazeem (Adele’s sister)) to the standard Playbill “How many have you seen” section all full of made-up and hysterical shows (including “Streep No More”, “SoulCycle On Broadway”, and, my favorite, “Tyler Perry is Madea is Medea”). Whoever made this fake playbill deserved a huge raise if not his or her own Tony. I still can’t get over how incredible it is.
Anyway, Hedwig is here in her one-night only concert, using the Hurt Locker set (a blown up car, lots of pipes and dinginess) and singing her glorious songs for a huge NYC crowd while telling us the rest of her history. After Luther left her, she started babysitting for a kid named Tommy, and together they wrote unbelievable music as they fell in love, a love that has both sustained and plagued Hedwig since. See, as a young boy, Hedwig was enamored with the story of the Origin of Love, based on Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, which tells how humans used to be of three sexes in forms about double what we are now. When the gods got angry and scared of our strength, they split everyone into two, making us the size and shape we are now while simultaneously creating the idea of our ‘other halves’, our soulmates. This is considered the origin of love, as the two people, the two parts, form one whole, and the search for that other half is what will make you complete. It’s really a lovely story, and the performance of this song is my favorite part of the whole show, with superb simple animation projected on a screen.
But Hedwig takes this story a little too seriously, and has been searching for her other half her whole life. She believed she found it in Tommy, but he was reviled by her situation downstairs, and things fell apart. To add insult to injury, Tommy became a famous rock star stealing all the songs they wrote together, which crushed Hedwig. Despite Hedwig’s now marriage to one of her musicians, a male Jewish drag queen named Yitzhak (played to perfection by Lena Hall), and all the time that has passed, she is still heartbroken yearning for Tommy. In addition to Hedwig’s words, the show itself demonstrates her feelings for Tommy, as it begins with the highest energy, like a rock concert. It’s loud and energetic and totally awesome, with “Tear Me Down” and “Sugar Daddy”. But once we hear Hedwig’s anthem, “Wig In A Box”, the dynamic changes and the songs become more personal, more sensitive, more sad.
The fantastic, clever, and intriguing aspect of the story is the ambiguity of the relationship between the characters of Tommy and Hedwig. The set up is that Tommy, a huge rock star, is playing an enormous venue just behind the Belasco, where Hedwig is singing. The venues share a door that repeatedly gets opened by Hedwig or Yitzhak during the show, when we can hear Tommy’s Midwestern voice addressing his adoring fans. Because the actor playing Hedwig also plays Tommy, some people think they are the same person, and that Hedwig’s struggle that she’s been telling us about has really just been within herself. While the latter is definitely true, it seems more widely accepted that they are indeed two different people, but that they are so similar in many ways that they both need to go through this journey, and rather than becoming complete by joining together, they become complete by, in Hedwig’s case, letting the other go and, in Tommy’s case, recognizing how much their relationship meant to him and apologizing for the past. I love how the “Wicked Little Town Reprise”, after Hedwig’s stripping down and/or transformation into Tommy, is sung clearly in Tommy’s voice. I love how much this show plays with gender boundaries and how nebulous the whole ending is because it allows everyone to come to their own conclusions at the end. There are also people who think Hedwig is fictitious, and that it’s Tommy the whole time, and that the whole German persona is a way for Tommy to deal with some emotional issues. This is actually closer to the story of its creator, John Cameron Mitchell, whose childhood mirrors Tommy’s and who indeed created Hedwig as a means of expression, as all art is. It’s such a compelling story no matter what your interpretation of the whole thing is. The most important part, regardless of which interpretation you form, is that the ending has Hedwig, or Tommy, or both, finally accepting who he/she is and finding inner peace.
All of this analysis is as fascinating as it is because Stephen Trask wrote the most magnificent music to tell this story. Before I saw this revival, I only knew “Wig In A Box”, but I’m now obsessed with the entire score, which has become one of my favorites. Every song captures so much emotion in a different way. Also, it seems like there’s really no supporting cast, because it’s just Hedwig up there with her band, but Yitzhak is a crucial role. I didn’t appreciate Lena Hall’s performance much the first time. I thought, okay, she has an amazing voice and talks like a man pretty convincingly, but a Tony? But on second viewing, I was stunned. Her interplay with Hedwig is everything. Every look that passes between them, all the times she (well he, Yitzhak, but easier to say she because Lena) jumps up to help Hedwig and all the times she purposefully pisses him off. Hedwig’s treatment of Yitzhak is despicable, not only because she’s always saying how Tommy was her soulmate, in front of her husband! So the ending, when Hedwig lets Yitzhak get back in drag and shine as perhaps an even stronger performer than Hedwig, is as much about Yitzhak’s journey and growth as about Hedwig’s.
And a hugely enjoyable part of the show is how much can change depending on the lead actor’s interpretation. NPH was funny, so charming, and often sad. His Hedwig seemed wistful more than stuck. He was also really pretty as a woman! He was at least believable as a ‘slip of a girly boy’. And his jokes were hysterical, especially my favorite “what’s an eight track” line in “Wig”. His energy was unbounded, his “Sugar Daddy” was insanely fun and unparalleled, and his “Origin of Love” was also beautiful. While NPH’s Hedwig seemed a downcast victim of ill fortune, Michael C. Hall’s was graver, darker, with more edge to his jokes and his singing. MCH’s much more masculine physical appearance made a difference as well, as his butch and kind of garish Hedwig made it more obvious that the path Hedwig’s life took – becoming a woman, a wife, an ex-wife, leaving home – was not exactly the product of free will. His “Midnight Radio” was incredibly powerful and his “Wicked Little Town” so wrenching and lovely. Both performances are worthy of acclaim (and were given it), but Michael’s deeper misery made a huge impact on me and showed how many layers there are to this seemingly simple story. I’m insanely jealous of the people who have seen all of the actors in this revival, especially John Cameron Mitchell, who should be back next week (but will finish before I’m back in NYC. Time to learn that lesson.). If you have the chance this week to see Michael, it’s definitely worth it. And if you have the chance to see John Cameron Mitchell, then I hate you.
And I am definitely one of those new fans. I watched the movie version of “Hedwig” in college but wasn’t really paying attention so I didn’t get it and didn’t even realize what amazingness I was watching. But then Neil Patrick Harris brought Hedwig back to life last spring and it won lots of Tonys and it was the hardest ticket to get. Since I like to see everything every season, this was very difficult for me to accept. Luckily I did not have to learn a lesson in not getting everything I want, Broadway edition, because my super awesome friend at Ever the Wayfarer got me ungettable tickets to NPH’s final weekend! Best ever! It was his beautiful performance that made me an obsessive fan of all things Hedwig.
“Hedwig & The Angry Inch” tells the story of a young man named Hansel, a ‘slip of a girly boy’ living with his austere mother in East Berlin before the wall came down. NB, that was the really shitty side. Hansel met Luther, an American soldier, who lured him with lots of candy like he was driving a white van, and made Hansel an offer he couldn’t refuse: to marry him, and thus get out of East Berlin. Obviously, this was happening before gay marriage was allowed anywhere, even in Europe, and so Hansel would have to undergo a sex change operation to pass the physical examination. Hansel’s mother gives him her passport and tells him he can go by her name, Hedwig. And so the new Hedwig goes to surgery, and as you probably can guess from the title, it is botched, to say the least, and he’s “left with a one-inch mound of flesh where my penis used to be, where my vagina never was. It was a one-inch mound of flesh, with a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face.” I freaking love that line and had to share.
So he, now she, Hedwig, is moved to Junction City, Kansas to live with her new husband Luther, who soon leaves her alone, living in a motor home, working a checkout counter, left to watch the fall of the Berlin wall on television too soon after all she went through to escape.
It’s pretty damn depressing. But it gets better like they all say! Because here she is, for her ‘one night only’ Broadway performance (as the show is billed as), made possible by the previous night’s mid-show closing of the first performance of the fictitious “Hurt Locker: The Musical”. To play up this backstory, fake “Hurt Locker” playbills are strewn about the auditorium before every performance, so if you are lucky enough to find one, you should frame it. These fake playbills are HILARIOUS, from the list of songs in the fake musical (including gems like “Won’t you buy my porn DVD” and “Hot Desert Nights!”) to the castlist (including Bobby Cannavale, Taye Diggs, and D’Bree Dazeem (Adele’s sister)) to the standard Playbill “How many have you seen” section all full of made-up and hysterical shows (including “Streep No More”, “SoulCycle On Broadway”, and, my favorite, “Tyler Perry is Madea is Medea”). Whoever made this fake playbill deserved a huge raise if not his or her own Tony. I still can’t get over how incredible it is.
Anyway, Hedwig is here in her one-night only concert, using the Hurt Locker set (a blown up car, lots of pipes and dinginess) and singing her glorious songs for a huge NYC crowd while telling us the rest of her history. After Luther left her, she started babysitting for a kid named Tommy, and together they wrote unbelievable music as they fell in love, a love that has both sustained and plagued Hedwig since. See, as a young boy, Hedwig was enamored with the story of the Origin of Love, based on Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, which tells how humans used to be of three sexes in forms about double what we are now. When the gods got angry and scared of our strength, they split everyone into two, making us the size and shape we are now while simultaneously creating the idea of our ‘other halves’, our soulmates. This is considered the origin of love, as the two people, the two parts, form one whole, and the search for that other half is what will make you complete. It’s really a lovely story, and the performance of this song is my favorite part of the whole show, with superb simple animation projected on a screen.
But Hedwig takes this story a little too seriously, and has been searching for her other half her whole life. She believed she found it in Tommy, but he was reviled by her situation downstairs, and things fell apart. To add insult to injury, Tommy became a famous rock star stealing all the songs they wrote together, which crushed Hedwig. Despite Hedwig’s now marriage to one of her musicians, a male Jewish drag queen named Yitzhak (played to perfection by Lena Hall), and all the time that has passed, she is still heartbroken yearning for Tommy. In addition to Hedwig’s words, the show itself demonstrates her feelings for Tommy, as it begins with the highest energy, like a rock concert. It’s loud and energetic and totally awesome, with “Tear Me Down” and “Sugar Daddy”. But once we hear Hedwig’s anthem, “Wig In A Box”, the dynamic changes and the songs become more personal, more sensitive, more sad.
The fantastic, clever, and intriguing aspect of the story is the ambiguity of the relationship between the characters of Tommy and Hedwig. The set up is that Tommy, a huge rock star, is playing an enormous venue just behind the Belasco, where Hedwig is singing. The venues share a door that repeatedly gets opened by Hedwig or Yitzhak during the show, when we can hear Tommy’s Midwestern voice addressing his adoring fans. Because the actor playing Hedwig also plays Tommy, some people think they are the same person, and that Hedwig’s struggle that she’s been telling us about has really just been within herself. While the latter is definitely true, it seems more widely accepted that they are indeed two different people, but that they are so similar in many ways that they both need to go through this journey, and rather than becoming complete by joining together, they become complete by, in Hedwig’s case, letting the other go and, in Tommy’s case, recognizing how much their relationship meant to him and apologizing for the past. I love how the “Wicked Little Town Reprise”, after Hedwig’s stripping down and/or transformation into Tommy, is sung clearly in Tommy’s voice. I love how much this show plays with gender boundaries and how nebulous the whole ending is because it allows everyone to come to their own conclusions at the end. There are also people who think Hedwig is fictitious, and that it’s Tommy the whole time, and that the whole German persona is a way for Tommy to deal with some emotional issues. This is actually closer to the story of its creator, John Cameron Mitchell, whose childhood mirrors Tommy’s and who indeed created Hedwig as a means of expression, as all art is. It’s such a compelling story no matter what your interpretation of the whole thing is. The most important part, regardless of which interpretation you form, is that the ending has Hedwig, or Tommy, or both, finally accepting who he/she is and finding inner peace.
All of this analysis is as fascinating as it is because Stephen Trask wrote the most magnificent music to tell this story. Before I saw this revival, I only knew “Wig In A Box”, but I’m now obsessed with the entire score, which has become one of my favorites. Every song captures so much emotion in a different way. Also, it seems like there’s really no supporting cast, because it’s just Hedwig up there with her band, but Yitzhak is a crucial role. I didn’t appreciate Lena Hall’s performance much the first time. I thought, okay, she has an amazing voice and talks like a man pretty convincingly, but a Tony? But on second viewing, I was stunned. Her interplay with Hedwig is everything. Every look that passes between them, all the times she (well he, Yitzhak, but easier to say she because Lena) jumps up to help Hedwig and all the times she purposefully pisses him off. Hedwig’s treatment of Yitzhak is despicable, not only because she’s always saying how Tommy was her soulmate, in front of her husband! So the ending, when Hedwig lets Yitzhak get back in drag and shine as perhaps an even stronger performer than Hedwig, is as much about Yitzhak’s journey and growth as about Hedwig’s.
And a hugely enjoyable part of the show is how much can change depending on the lead actor’s interpretation. NPH was funny, so charming, and often sad. His Hedwig seemed wistful more than stuck. He was also really pretty as a woman! He was at least believable as a ‘slip of a girly boy’. And his jokes were hysterical, especially my favorite “what’s an eight track” line in “Wig”. His energy was unbounded, his “Sugar Daddy” was insanely fun and unparalleled, and his “Origin of Love” was also beautiful. While NPH’s Hedwig seemed a downcast victim of ill fortune, Michael C. Hall’s was graver, darker, with more edge to his jokes and his singing. MCH’s much more masculine physical appearance made a difference as well, as his butch and kind of garish Hedwig made it more obvious that the path Hedwig’s life took – becoming a woman, a wife, an ex-wife, leaving home – was not exactly the product of free will. His “Midnight Radio” was incredibly powerful and his “Wicked Little Town” so wrenching and lovely. Both performances are worthy of acclaim (and were given it), but Michael’s deeper misery made a huge impact on me and showed how many layers there are to this seemingly simple story. I’m insanely jealous of the people who have seen all of the actors in this revival, especially John Cameron Mitchell, who should be back next week (but will finish before I’m back in NYC. Time to learn that lesson.). If you have the chance this week to see Michael, it’s definitely worth it. And if you have the chance to see John Cameron Mitchell, then I hate you.
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Indecent at the Menier: A Glorious and Wrenching Jewish Triumph
It’s a special Theatre Tuesday! because last week’s Theatre Thursday was actually Yom Kippur so we were offline because as this show teaches you Judaism is important and deserves respect!
I’ve been complaining about how Jewishness is treated on London stages for as long as I can remember, and I know some of you are sick of it. Thankfully for you clowns, this week’s show, the new UK production of Paula Vogel’s Indecent at the Menier Chocolate Factory, tells its heart-breaking, full-bodied Jewish tale with respect for its subject matter and the people represented. Not that one show solves an endemic problem, but I cried through the whole thing and not just at the sad parts. At the fact that a Jewish story was being treated lovingly, and with actual Jewish people involved, onstage and offstage, (Joey Tribbiani voice:) IN LONDON! This beautiful production of the Tony-winning Broadway hit is nearly two hours long with no intermission — which as you know means I had to pee horribly for half the show (and true to form I got a UTI in post) — and I still loved it. That’s as much love I can send a show, truly.
Indecent treats a narrowly defined and unassuming subject — the lifespan of a Yiddish play from inception through celebration and on to suppression — on an epic scale. Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance is the (real) work, and we see a troupe of actors (well, various troupes, in various plays-within-plays, don’t think about it too hard too too hard) tell the story of Asch’s writing of the play, the first reading of it, the first production, and onto worldwide fame…and then censorship of it on Broadway, of all places. Asch’s play tells of a young Jewish girl whose father runs a brothel, and the girl falls in love with one of the prostitutes, and the girls’ father gets like, so mad. Likewise, people in the real world were equally displeased, Jews and goys alike. Two women in love! Jewish people treated as complicated living breathing beings and not paragons of perfection! The horror!
God of Vengeance was ahead of its time, but luckily a few people believed in it, recognizing its art and beauty and how tenderly it treated the central love story, and they helped make it happen. (Believing in art is necessary!) People like my man Lemmel (Finbar Lynch), a man who was at the very first reading of the play in someone’s living room, and was with it all the way through its Euro tour, to NYC, and back to Europe just in time to perform it in a ghetto attic in hushed tones. Yeah, this play gets to the Holocaust, and you might be like ‘ugh we get it the Holocaust’ but the Holocaust was a really big deal (“remember that we suffered!”)! Going in, I was most excited to see American queen Alexandra Silber and Molly Osbourne (double Tzeitels!) playing various actresses playing the lovers, and they were as great as I expected, but Lemmel was the one who really grabbed our hearts and broke them. His love for God of Vengeance and for the love story in that play is the real heart of this play. Like I thought the love story in GOV might be the central emotional core of Indecent but it’s really Lemmel’s love for the GOV love story that was the real one all along. The real good place was the friends we made along the way. Finbar was so good, and not just because you know how I feel about small old Jewish men (I don’t think he is Jewish but he is now on the official list of goyim who are allowed to play Jews) who make me sad, like Eli Wallach in The Holiday, oh man. So good. Right at those heartstrings.
Several times during the show, I thought hmm maybe this bit isn’t totally necessary, maybe like 10-15 minutes could be cut, like the Berlin cabaret scene that makes you feel like when you watch R-rated movies with your parents. But this is hundo p one of those shows that upon reflection you realize were masterfully set. Rebecca Taichman’s compassionate and thoughtful direction treats the piece so kindly and with such care that that’s its own piece of art. (And I’m not just saying that because I especially enjoyed all the Yiddish projected on the backdrop, proving you can learn from using Duolingo (I was so proud of how much I could read and understand.)) All the moving parts, all the various characters the actors portray prove to be necessary to show GOV’s trajectory as a parallel to the history of Jews during this time period. They’re all the puzzle pieces necessary to put the story of this underlying play together, and you know like not all puzzle pieces are the dogs’ faces but you still need the ones that make the grass and trees and stuff to make it all complete. Yes I have done one puzzle in the past 20 years and it was of a dog. No I don’t enjoy puzzles.
From the Lodz section onwards, my crying was real bad. The audience was so quiet, and I was so nervous that I would do my choking-hiccupping crying loud enough to disrupt the theatre so I had to do the Joey-thinking-about-Chandler thing and distract myself a little bit and the only thing that I could think of (because it was still relevant subject matter, at least) was the Crazy Ex Girlfriend song I quoted above, ‘Remember that we Suffered”, so while I was crying outwardly at Lemmel my dude, in my head I was going “The sweet and the bitter/Remember that we suffered/Streisand and Hitler/Remember that we suffered/Spielberg and Hitler/Remember that we suffered/Have we mentioned Hitler? I’m just saying that we suffered!” It’s the best song. Anyway. The impact of seeing the words ‘an impossibly long line’ projected again towards the end broke me, absolutely broke me. It was brilliant and powerful writing and also so mean, because I was wearing two masks and it’s really hard to cry with two masks.
I knew from friends who had seen it on Bway that ‘the rain scene’, when you finally get to see what everyone had been talking about the whole time, was the most beautiful and emotional part, but I didn’t even imagine what the context would be. That aspect — who is imagining that scene and why — is something that I will both treasure and be haunted by.
Above all, it was glorious to see (during the high holidays no less) a play about Jewish people and Jewish subject matter actually performed and created by Jewish people. And in London! It’s a 5782 miracle! I hope it’s a sign of permanent change, although the fact that the Guardian review of this play felt it at all appropriate to say ‘hey you know who else is a Jew, Philip Roth!” as a way to shoehorn in yet another message about their view of the Israel conversation (that’s def what they were doing, btw) shows how much work this place still has to do.
But I digress, like the Guardian writer. This play will stick with me, and I’m sure many other audience members, as a paradigm of caring, protected, heartfelt, authentic theatre-making. I’m so grateful that this was well done, so grateful to the people involved for giving Jews one little corner of respite in a year filled with disrespect and other shit.
INFORMATION
Indecent plays at the Menier Chocolate Factory (not a chocolate factory) until November 27. I recommend you get tickets and if you’d like to get me one too I would go again (the NHS loves giving me antibx).
The Menier asks audience members to wear masks, but like every other theatre, it doesn’t have a mandate. So other people don’t have wear one and many won’t, although this crowd was better about it than at any other theatre we’ve been to recently.
Toilets are down the stairs in the restaurant part of the cafe, so if you will have to run at the end, you want to sit near the aisles, because the rows are suuuuper long, all the way across the theatre jawns.
I don’t know if any of the cast are stage-dooring because I didn’t try, because we are in a pandemic.
Tony Award Nominations are Out! Thoughts, Snubs, Surprises, Rudins
More surprises than usual – both good and not so – make the 2019 Tony Awards already more exciting than you’d expect, especially considering how disappointing most of the new musicals were this year. We do have one standout (Hadestown, obvs) but having mainly a slew of mediocrity fighting to fill out the ranks means no one could have guessed completely accurately. This season was much more impressive for plays, and then the surprises over in playtown are even more incredible, as in you really cannot believe it. Let’s get down to business.
Why not start off with the biggie! There’s really nothing controversial in here. We’re mostly happy that the sweet little musical that could, The Prom, squeaked its way in (although considering how many surprise noms it got, it’s not exactly ‘squeaking’ its way in here, is it) (by the way, discussion of award shows is the only situation where use of the word ‘noms’ is allowed). Beetlejuice got much more favorable reviews (I’m talking real ones and not the celebrity twitter rave reviews which have been oddly prevalent for this show…) than the average person actually seeing (well, hearing, as the visuals are wonderful but the score is naaaat) the show expected, which explains its inclusion here. And wow, Tony Voters really loved Ain’t Too Proud! Older white people do love them some Temptations. But the show to beat – the show with a whopping 14 noms today – is the unbelievable, fantastic Hadestown. It deserves to win most of the big ones, and as this year’s best musical it should absolutely be this year’s Best Musical. Fun fact: it was snubbed entirely from the Olivier Awards, because London just doesn’t get musical theatre like Broadway does. I have a whole TED Talk on the subject if you’re interested. Also the Oliviers are mostly garbage.
The nominations for Best New Play has everyone in theatre scratching their heads – except me. I get what you were doing Tony voters, at least what I hope you were doing, and I am HERE FOR IT. The conspicuous AF mess-up here is that the new Aaron Sorkin penned adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird is missing. TKAM is the biggest new show, the hottest ticket, and to many the greatest achievement, of the year. Its nominations in sooo many other categories show that the nominators thought extremely highly of it. FFS it even got a Best Score nomination! The love in every other category, plus the love it gets across the theatre spectrum as inarguably one of the greatest plays ever, in my book is a clear statement to producer Scott Rudin: You Suck. All season, Rudin has been destroying other productions of TKAM – not the Sorkin version, literally just all other stage productions of this famous, classic work – from the was-ready-to-go UK tour to forking school productions, so that he could have the only production, because he is a bully. Who shuts down school productions?? Someone who doesn’t actually love theatre, but loves power. That’s him, and that’s what I am choosing to believe the voters were trying to say by nominating TKAM for everything it could except the one award that goes to the producer. (It’s a shame the Tonys still haven’t sorted out how to reward the actual playwright as they do with musicals (with Score and Book rewarding authors separately from producers), because Sorkin shouldn’t have to take the fall with Rudin (unless he is also part of this shut-down of other productions.)) Anyway, this clears the path for the absolutely exquisite The Ferryman, which I was rooting for anyway.
If you follow this site, you know that in (completely unrelated) previous posts, I’ve railed about how Broadway couldn’t conjure up a ‘third revival’ this season. This is what I was talking about! There are only two musical revivals this year. It’s kind of embarrassing to look at this, especially since so many other categories had six nominees (also embarrassing, make your choices, you have one job). Oklahoma! is going to win and this is literally the least exciting category.
This is a race between my girl Rachel Chavkin and Daniel Fish. Chavkin’s show should be winning like WHOA on Tony Night, and her creative, magical direction is a huge part of what makes the show great. She was also robbed (ROBBED)(okay the winner was worthy as always but still) of a Best Director Tony for Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 a few years back. Her inventive, unique vision is one of the most exciting things happening in modern theatre. But Fish is her main competition, having created a shocking, super-dark, super-relevant version of the beloved classic people thought they knew. This is my most interesting race.
Six nominees? What is this, the Emmy Awards? I can’t be too mad about including a play in this bunch since I adore Adam Guettel’s music (but the other musical writers this season can be!). I could say a lot about the overrated Be More Chill music, the surprisingly pedestrian Tootsie score from one of the best working composers (?? what happened Dave), the average Beetlejuice score, the sweet but not ground-breaking Prom, but all I really have to say is, Hadestown, guys. Anais Mitchell (not to be confused with Anais Nin, as I did in the past) has written a SCORE, babies. A score that is beautiful, original, soul-shattering, chill-inducing, just marvelous. Give her and this show all the awards; they deserve them.
Despite how surprising the double whammy noms for The Prom are, I can’t be too mad, because it brings together O’Hara and Kinnunen as fellow nominees, years after playing mother and daughter in one of my all-time faves, The Bridges of Madison County (don’t knock it till you’ve seen in three times and cried the whole time and then seen the final performance sitting next to Keala Settle who is also sobbing but she’s also punching her fist in the air at every amazing moment, which is constant, because she’s hilarious and awesome anyway we’re besties). I’m so excited for both of them to be considered for #SteerOfTheYear (it’s a Bridges thing), but this is Block’s award, hundo p. She is the best thing about The Cher Show, along with the Bob Mackie costumes, which will also probably win. It’s a shame Eva (who is lovely but whose character is the least interesting in her show) is in while Rebecca Naomi Jones for Oklahoma! is out, but neither would win anyway. The real snub here is that of young Sophia Anne Caruso, the one Beetlejuice nom that should have been a lock.
SANTINO! This is Santino’s and I am HERE FOR IT! I’m going to pretend his Tony is also an Emmy for his work on Crazy Ex Girlfriend, in which he was impeccable, but yeah his work in Tootsie is deeeefinitely winning. Well unless all these surprise nominations for Beetlejuice result in an upset here but that would be bad, BAD. Santinoooooo!
So this is that shit I was referring to in the beginning, about what constitutes a bad surprise. Strangely missing from this category is forking GLENDA JACKSON as KING LEAR. GLENDA. JACKSON. KING. LEAR. This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime pairings of actor and role, and she isn’t nominated? What the FORK, guys? And there are SIX NOMINATIONS! Emmy-style again! This is like when the Emmys nominated seven supporting actresses in a comedy and none of them were the best ones! Don’t make me go back to those dark times. The only salve for this burn is that Elaine May was always going to win anyway – Glenda’s deserved nom would have been a ‘it’s a shame she can’t also win’ situation – but STILL! All the other five nominees are great of course but getting in over Glenda Jackson is FORKING WEIRD. I’d be embarrassed, as I hope the voters are. Shaaaame.
Okay, we always knew this would be difficult. Horrible, even. Best actor in a play was the most stacked category this season, which we should see as a gift, I guess. But it’s hard not to bemoan the lack of one of the greatest actors ever, Tracy Letts, in here. Or John Lithgow, who is always wonderful. Or Jonny Lee Miller, or freaking Nathan Lane – you can always BET on Nathan getting nominated! It’s just too stacked. The real one that hurts here is the snub of Michael Urie, whose performance in Torch Song was one of those special ones that aren’t just like Letts or Lane or Lithgow simply “always” being good. Darn. As is, this is super hard, because Paddy and Bryan both won Oliviers for these roles, but Daniels is considered the frontrunner, and he will probably thank Rudin in his speech, which I guess he has to do but it would be cool if he was like ‘Hey Scott thanks for making this production and letting me star but also you are a mean old bully and you don’t actually love theatre if you don’t support theatre, anyway thanks everyone.’ I should be a speech-writer.
I am SO excited for Ali Stroker and I am SO excited for Mary Testa and I am SO excited for Sarah Stiles and I am SO excited for Lilli Cooper (even though she shouldn’t have been nominated over Leslie Kritzer for Beetlejuice or, most of all, Stephanie Styles in Kiss Me, Kate, or really Michaela Diamond for The Cher Show, who should have been a frontrunner, so I guess I’m not actually SO excited for some of them…) but this better forking be Amber Gray’s. Her command of the stage, of the audience, of the atmosphere in Hadestown is pure magic, a masterclass in humanity and humor and that ineffable quality that makes a star shine brighter when in the perfect role for her.
I take it back, this is my hardest category. The two Hadestown guys, oh dear god, I wish they could tie. Page’s Hades should probably get the win, if only for his soul-shaking, earth-shattering performance during “Why We Build a Wall”, but I adore, ADORE, Andre De Shields’ wondrous performance that makes a narrator so much more. Congrats to the other nominees – and HELL YEAH Jeremy Pope getting two nominations this season! – but the absence of Corbin Bleu here (Kiss Me, Kate) is a damn shame that really taints the whole thing.
Thanks to the voters naming Nielson a featured role and not a lead (she’s the lead, right? come on) and thus likely having her split votes with her Gary costar Julie White, CKB will finally win a Tony, the Tony she was certain she was going to get a few years ago for The Glass Menagerie (okay she wasn’t certain but the rest of the world was). I love me some CKB and she is always perfection, so this is a happy occasion.
I LOVE ALL THESE MEN! I am most excited for Robin de Jesus (more fun if you don’t know to pronounce it in Spanish) to finally be a Tony nominee, but all these guys, man alive this is A WONDERFUL group. I have zero clue who will win and I am SO EXCITED to find out.
To quote Forrest, that’s all I have to say about that, at least at the moment. As for categories I didn’t picturize, Tootsie will likely win Best Book because it has a lot of funny jokes, and people think that’s what a book is (although, voters did prove that they know better last season when they awarded The Band’s Visit over Tina Fey’s jokes, so there could be a similar sitch of Hadestown also winning Book, which I wouldn’t be sad about nope wouldn’t be sad). The scenic elements and production design award are actually exciting this year, because you have the visually stunning Beetlejuice set against the beyond impressive King Kong puppetry, although with King Kong’s puppet team getting a special Tony, perhaps that changes things. I don’t know, all I know is this is a very interesting, strange year, and I am into it.
