{"id":3972,"date":"2018-06-08T22:44:30","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T22:44:30","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2019-04-16T12:37:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T12:37:00","slug":"its-tony-awards-weekend-thoughts-and-hopes-and-prayers-and-stuff-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laughfrodisiac.com\/2018\/06\/08\/its-tony-awards-weekend-thoughts-and-hopes-and-prayers-and-stuff-html\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Tony Awards Weekend! Thoughts and Hopes and Prayers and Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

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​Woof. And I don’t mean in the adorable doggie way. What a season we’ve had on Broadway this year! To be clear, I’m mostly talking about the musicals; I haven’t seen many plays this year. (Which is a shame, because the plays are a lot better.) But I’ve seen a lot of musicals, and man alive. Only one new musical was actually of the high caliber we expect on Broadway. Sure the others were still better than a lot of musicals on the West End (I will not stop criticizing West End musicals until they learn to live up to their potential), but nowhere close to what we would expect from Broadway professionals who shouldn’t be rushing apparent first drafts of work to the stage. Yet a lot of what is now playing in NYC feels exactly like that: first drafts that no one had the balls to say ‘wait this needs more work’ about before letting it go live and risking millions and millions of dollars. The worst part is that there are no new stories being told: Although our hero of the year, “The Band’s Visit”, feels new and fresh, it is actually derived from an Israeli film. Which is fine and well and good, especially since it’s a little known film so the story isn’t overdone in the least. But its three major competitors are much more well known and the sort where for even one of them you’d be like, that’s a Broadway musical now? but when you have all three together you are the embodiment of the smack-my-head emoji all day err day.<\/div>\n
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I’m talking of course about “Mean Girls”, “Frozen”, and “Spongebob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical” (real title)(is this the first Broadway musical to put ‘Broadway musical’ in its title??), all of which come from uber familiar properties and capitalize on existing fan bases. Although “Spongebob” actually exceeds expectations (and actually by a lot), it is still essentially silly fun best for kids, and although it deserves its 12 Tony nominations, it doesn’t deserve to win Best Musical (or Book, or Score). “Mean Girls” and “Frozen”, on the other hand, based on the decent-to-great movies, have been bloated beyond necessity to necessitate an intermission. The former has an unremarkable, boring score (not exactly the thing you want in a musical) and a too-long and stuffed structure, while the latter has shoehorned in new, uninspired songs and played with the structure like it’s Play-Doh in order to make “Let It Go” the finale of Act I, even though it occurs early in the movie. I don’t need to say anything about the other new musicals of the season, like “Escape to Margaritaville” (jukebox show of Jimmy Buffett songs…whooooo exactly was crying out for this?), “Summer” (jukebox show of Donna Summer…again I ask…), and “Rocktopia” (a rock concert that mashes up rock & roll with classical music and doesn’t pay its performers Equity standard), except to say that y’all should be ashamed of yourselves. Where is all the deep consideration that makes musical theatre art? And I’m looking for a better answer than “over at ‘The Band’s Visit.’” We need fresh stories that reflect all sorts of human experiences now, especially now, and to think that the best vehicle for those – the Broadway musical – is failing us so miserably is heartbreaking for me.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the musical revivals were a whole lot better than the newbies, for the most part. All three of them. One wasn’t so good, as you saw yesterday<\/a>, but the other two were SO good that it almost makes up not only for the musical revivals as a whole but for the entire musical theatre season. That’s pretty f-ing incredible, and they really are. The race is a toss-up right now between the two (I really truly hope just between the two, but you never know what kind of insane shit voters can pull) and honestly I don’t know where I would send my vote if I had one (and I should have one; have you seen how many Tony voters abstain from categories because they haven’t seen them all yet? YOU HAVE ONE JOB). <\/p>\n

At least we’re still getting the gift of great performances, as the best of the best of Broadway and beyond (I told you the best of the UK always ends up in NYC) are (mostly) giving their all 8 (mostly) times a week. Consequently, the acting races are hard to call and pretty darn stacked, so despite the lackluster season, the actual Tony Awards promise to be more exciting than in recent years, when gigantic hits were guaranteed certain awards. Let’s talk it through, team! MY choices are bold; my predictions are in the text (I want the impossible sometimes so the two don’t match up.)<\/p>\n

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​BEST MUSICAL<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n