* well at least while cooking dinner, which honestly adds up for me time-wise because no matter what your 30-minute recipe! bullshit is about it will take me those 30 minutes just to chop my onions so back off

Before I get to the ridiculous categories I chose to honor, I have to mention how much the Tony Awards have changed even just since I’ve been alive. Watching old ones has been enlightening. First of all, in like the ’80s, they literally NEVER cut off long speeches! They were like you just won a Tony? Amazing job! Thank everyone you want this is important shit! You wanna pause when it seems like you’re finished but then keep going? That’s wonderful dear! I wish they were still like that. I despise cutting people off who just had their life’s work recognized. (Unless they’re reading their speech. No matter what else has changed – and everything has – prewritten speeches that winners reeeead off paperrr are THE WORRRST.) Ugh and it’s awful when the producers not only bring up the orchestra but also cut the mic. That’s just cruel, because a) it prevents any amazing Bette-style complete ignoring of the music where the winner continues to yell over it for just ever (which is usually soo fun) like ‘are you kidding me get OUT of here with that nonsense’ I adore that, and b) winners always, always save thanking their families for last. (Which is its own bullshit. Thank your fam bam before Scott Rudin you moron. If I ever won a Tony I would grab the mic and scream at the top of my lungs THANKS MOM WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING THIS IS AMAAAZING I DIDN’T KNOW YOU COULD WIN TONYS FOR PETTING DOGS!!!)

Also, the Best Revival categories were mixed! Plays and musicals together like the Wild West. I guess it makes sense, though; there were fewer properties to choose from back then.

Once you hit the 2000s, the award show gets obviously bigger, louder, more raucous. (Change approved.) In part thanks to Neil Patrick Harris and Hugh Jackman’s hosting abilities (how lucky we are to be alive for the 2013 opener), in part just due to times changing and people wanting more, it’s quite the contrast to watch the modern Tonys with jaw-dropping 10-minute musical number intros after you’ve seen the 1991 Tony Awards hosted by I shit you not Julie Andrews and Jeremy’s Iron, who began the show in fancy British accents and were like “Hello and welcome to the 45th Annual TOE-ny awaaaahds. What a time to celebrate being a pahht of the theatuhhhhh. Here’s the first awaaahd” and like that’s it. So calm. Adorable.

As for future Tony Awards, I hope we have them. All thanks to CBS for airing them at all (you better keep it up), but I hope in the future they realize who they’re for. They’re never going to attract new uninterested viewers, so just stop trying. Stop getting random movie stars to present awards and then billing their presence in all the commercials. Like, no non-theatre but pro-Marvel fan is going to tune in just to see one of the Chrises present Best Choreography. Have they not realized this yet? In the ’80s, all the presenters were stage luminaries and it was exciting to celebrate them in this, their one arena for that kind of acknowledgment. Let the Tonys be for actual theatre fans. Let the telecast go on as long as you can give them, and let theatre people be involved, no matter how famous they are. And have plays perform short scene! They used to do this and it WORKED! It was great! And present Book of a Musical as part of the live telecast and not just when you think Tina Fey is going to win! (Although that surprise was one of my absolute favorite things about the last decade, when the producers did decide to air Best Book on the telecast just because they thought Tina would win and then she lost to Itamar Moses omg it was so funny.)

On that note, let’s share some other memories. Some of the videos below are just the entire telecast recording so just like enjoy.

Most Fun Performance for Posterity

There’s no question about this one. What can I watch no matter how I’m feeling and just laugh my ass off? Patti LuPone singing Buenos Aires at the 1981 Tony Awards. Why? Oh my dear, because of these (fake but come on, real.) subtitles. Sure there are 100s of incredible, perfect, soaring performances I could actually have chosen for ‘best performance’, but nothing compares to this gem.

My god I just watched literally 15 seconds of this and I am screaming and shrieking from laughter. EBBA DO ME!

Best Treat that Might be Cooler than the Tony Award You Just Won

Ten years after Patti sang about the laddad rat hat, Baby Daisy Eagen won the Best Featured Actress in a Musical Tony forThe Secret Garden. Baby Daisy was only 11 years old! Obviously she was crying and overwhelmed, and presenter Audrey Hepburn came back over to her and kissed her head. It’s the sweetest little moment but I imagine it didn’t help her outsized emotions to realize that Audrey Hepburn just kissed her head. LOVES IT.

Biggest “We Should Have Known“

In 2009, Susan Sarandon presented both Best Director awards (for play and musical). We should have known she was about to come out as a piece of a nothing when, despite reading a teleprompter and you know being a professional word-sayer, she said Matthew Warchus’s name wrong like 3 times. When she announced his win it came out something like Tathy Martis. SHAME. SHAAAAME. Almost as much as the shame you should feel for being so g-d stupid about politics. Nothing bother me more for the purposes of this sentence than when people say ‘actors should stay out of politics’ – that’s just nonsense, everyone affected should have a say – but when it comes to Susan actors should stay out of politics.

Biggest “We Really Didn’t Need That But Thanks?”

In 2014, Emmy Rossum introduced the performance from Best Revival nominee Les Miserables because I guess one of the telecast producers mixed up two classics. She introduced the performance by unironically, completely sincerely describing the plot of Les Mis as if it were this new thing no one knew about, as if every fucker in that audience and at home didn’t know every single word of that show by heart since they were children. Lol I was HYSTERICAL.

Cutest Outdated Joke

In 1986, Rupert Holmes won Best Score (for Drood) and then 10 seconds later won Best Book of a Musical. In his second speech in two minutes, he quipped “Wow I hope my home VHS recording is working.” Man remember not having technology, woof. Anyway it was adorbs, and watching someone win Tonys back to back made my heart grow even bigger, another reason why they should air Best Book on the live show.

Best Slogan for Life Learned from a Speech

In 2005, the great Mike Nichols (RIP) won for directing Spamalot and in his speech he said to the losers, “Cheer up, life isn’t everything.”

Worst Change for Tony Performance But a Cute Little Coincidence Makes it Okay

One of my favorite productions ever was the 2005 The Light in the Piazza, introducing me to that gorgeous, soul-buoying score and to my queen Kelli O’Hara. But their Tony performance, hoo boy. For some reason, instead of just singing the beautiful opening song, they had Victoria Clark in character be like, ‘Hello, I’m Margaret Johnson, and this is my daughter Clara. It’s her first time in Italy!’ ahhh it was beyond cringe. But soon afterwards, Norbert Leo Butz won the Best Actor in a Musical Tony (for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and in his speech he thanked his daughters Clara and Maggie – the names of the LITP characters! Cute!

Best Host Sentiment Continuity Decades Apart

In 1987, host/ledge Angela Lansbury talked in her opening monologue about how during an early pre-Broadway tryout (in Philly!), she was thinking about how she didn’t belong there and how she wanted to be home in California. Later in her career, in another leading performance on a Broadway stage, she realized that she was home. She said from everyone tonight who is coming home to Broadway to celebrate, welcome to the Tonys. It felt very much like the precursor to what would be the best opening of all time – Neil Patrick Harris’s 2013 song, in which he said, to the kid in the middle of nowhere, “So we might reassure that kid, and do something to spur that kid, ‘cause I promise you, all of us up here tonight, we were that kid.”

Best Sixth Win

My other queen Audra McDonald winning her sixth Tony Award, for Best Actress in a Play for Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, expressed more gratitude and humble appreciation and overwhelmed joy at belonging to this community than most first-time winners. What a ledge. The audience’s reaction was wonderful too. And yes, I agree that Lady Day was rightfully considered a play, as all the music was presented in a concert format.

Best Line From an Opening Number

As I’ve said, the greatest opening number of all time is NPH’s 2013 behemoth, never to be topped (it’s below ps like I’d ever write this sort of nonsense post of my thoughts and not share the vid). It continues to blow my mind every day, 7 years later, and I’m particularly OB. SESSED with this part:

Hats off to Berry Gordy
He runs Motown like a boss.
He dominates Top 40 and he banged Diana Ross!
He wrote his own libretto which is really kinda ballin’
He took every Motown classic and he said “Eh, put ’em all in!”

The audience’s shocked laughter at the Diana Ross line, my god it was AMAZING. And I just adore how Neil says “eh put all ’em all in!” It’s perfect, while also kind of a burn at how overstuffed Motown the Musical was!

A close, close second is this line later in the song, about all the children on Bway that season:

They barely come up to your knees
But God they’re singing like MVPs
And they’re the reason this whole season seems to look like Chuck E. Cheese!

If you didn’t know Lin-Manuel wrote that song, you did when you heard the assonance in that line.

Best Line from a Closing Number

Another NPH performance, this time from the end of the 2009 telecast, had the unforgettable line:

Chris Sieber! Please! Performing on your knees? Dude that only works to win Golden Globes.

Forking classic.

BEST ACCEPTANCE SPEECH NEVER TO BE TOPPED

Forget his official works, Lin-Manuel’s first ever Tony win, for the score of In the Heights, is responsible in itself for a new era in musical theatre. Reminding everyone that he’s just as talented freestyle-rapping as he is with the written word, his genuinely heartfelt speech managed to on-the-fly make an unforgettable proclamation to Chris Jackson’s talents as well as an incredible reference to Sondheim’s greatest work about making art. Perfection.

MOST.

Alright, it’s time to just share the best opening of all time, the best Tony Awards celebration of all time, the best just simply, best. The 2013 opening number. I’ve watched this at least twice a week every week since 2013, so, you know, a lot, and every time it still brings me to happy tears. ENJOY!

What did I miss? What are your favorite Tony moments?

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