"I'll see you there around eight tonight..."

Live Blogging the 2009 Tony Awards

12:45 "Don't Twitter all my jokes when we're done!" Here's proof that the spontaneous NPH closing number was written beforehand, with the obvious winners (Angela! Liza! three Billys!), and only a few name changes in the middle. Still awesome.

11:03 Neil Patrick Harris sings us farewell. They supposedly wrote this number during the show, but since there were only two surprises, I bet it was done beforehand. (Notice how "Karen won a Tony tonight" could have been anybody.) Hah... "This show could not be gayer / If Liza were named Mayor / And Elton John took flight." And standing on your knees? "That only works to win Golden Globes."

10:59 Who but Liza to bring us home? I think she's eyeing Billy Elliot as her comeback role. She did Fosse dancing once, right? That explains her Banshee screams when Billy won Best Musical. Those three Billys are definitely going to take the day off school tomorrow. It's a pretty good excuse. "Sorry, prof, but I won a Tony last night and then had to go to two after-parties and drink non-alcoholic pina coladas."

Elton just reminded us how much we spent on scalper tickets to his show: "Thank you for opening your wallets."


10:46 David Hyde Pierce knew that Alice Ripley had her name all over Best Actress in a Musical for Next to Normal. Niles-O-Meter: back on the positive side. Whoa, she's passionate. Huge "contribution to the human spirit."

And Audra McDonald, who is amazing, is here to give the three Billys their Best Actor in a Musical. The kid who performed was so excited, he was ready to run up there when their names were read. Hah... first kid has one sister, second has two... and the third ups it to three sisters. If I won a Tony at age 15, I wouldn't be able to form coherent thoughts either.


10:34 Hair performs. Love that they're doing the title song, though the opening lyrics are pretty bad ("Hair that's a fright"). Poor bald guy just got attacked by Will Swenson and his real hair... Anne Hathaway had to settle for Gavin Creel's wig (which, in a show called Hair, doesn't look as flaxen-waxed as you'd think they want). Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Soprano are getting assaulted... you'd think they never left HBO. So much color, so much audience head-rubbing. This is a great Tony performance.

And here comes Kristin Chenoweth, wearing a wig. (She was just jealous.) But it's all good, cause Hair just got Best Revival of a Musical, baby! The producer's hair is as whacked-out as the cast's.

10:29 Oh, good, Angela's back. ("You blow the blues right out of the horn... Angela..." Close enough.) Jerry Herman's receiving his Lifetime Achievement Award for writing catchy, diva-centric showstoppers (and that includes George Hearn on "I Am What I Am"). Hah... "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" is from Hello, Dolly! and also from WALL-E. Wow, and there's old footage of Angela Lansbury in Mame. A nice tribute, and "I Won't Send Roses," amid all the razzmatazz of Jerry Herman, always gets to me with its simplicity.

10:18 Best Revival of a Play: Go Norman Conquests! You bring that British thing you do so well. If only I had 7 hours to kill, that's where I would be.

Best Play: We all knew God of Carnage, with the whole cast nommed, was a lock. Interesting that it's a new show when it's a French play translated into British English, then Americanized. An exhausting evolution. James Gandolfini has a mighty good track record. Ooh, and some producer watched the French Open this afternoon so he could compare the Carnage cast to champion Roger Federer.

10:16 Legally Blonde on tour made Billy Elliot's number now look "so much better."

10:05 How great that Elton John introduced the Billy Elliot number rather than Greg Jbara who just won the Tony for it. (At least they brought the whole Reasons to be Pretty cast to Radio City when only half was nommed.)

Billy Elliot number: Wow, Trent Kowalik is rocking out, if very angry. But hey, it is the "Angry Dance." He also looks much taller than I would have expected. Two shows have now represented themselves with dance rather than song. Not sure it's a good move on Billy Elliot's part. So much yelling and anguish, and more about impressive staging than great work from the kid. With no context, the audience looked perplexed. The voters just asked if they could rescind, and switch to Next to Normal.

Corey says: "I'm whipping out the 'Beaten by Riot Police' dance at my wedding."


9:58 Glad that design awards spread of the wealth (Lighting Design-Play for Equus, Costume Design-Musical for Shrek... and I think Brian d'Arcy James should win the left foot of that Tony for being that giant hunk of green ogre).

Frank Langella is great, but he's talked so long that I forgot the category he's presenting. Oh yeah, Best Actress in a Play. It's either Jane Fonda or Marcia Gay Harden. I'm thinking Harden will squeak it out. Survey says: I win! More importantly, so does Marcia. "I tell my kids every day that bad behavior and tantrums and tears will get them nowhere. I don't know how to explain this." "The play is about marital strife, so I should start by thanking my husband." "I share this with James G., who brings out the worst in me every night." She's a marvel at acceptance speeches. Encore!

9:49 Very classy to quote the late Natasha Richardson, and then to sing "What I Did for Love." Farewell, Bea Arthur, George Furth, Eartha Kitt, Paul Newman, et al... they just dimmed theater lights for you all.

9:44 NPH+Jessica Lange? Kudos on the Jeremy Piven-mercury poisoning bit. And here's Best Actor in a Play: What a category! I only saw Thomas Sadowski and Raul Esparza, who looks genuinely pleased that Geoffrey Rush just won. (Unlike when David Hyde Pierce stole his Tony for Company. Boo Niles.) Rush's speech is amazing, making everything French. If only there were room for Bill Irwin and maybe even Nathan Lane from Waiting for Godot (and what about Dan Radcliffe?), this would have been an even sexier match. Rush had it in the bag the whole time. Character actor in films, but a star on Broadway. Who else would think to salute his new Tony with a Glo-stick?

9:35 Why can't they better mike Alice Ripley, future Tony winner? She got a little behind the orchestra, but she recovered. I think they're accidentally performing on the West Side set... chain-link fences, ladders around the stage, all that red... Good thing they're showcasing Ripley and J. Robert Spencer, but what about nommed Jennifer Damiano? That can't be her in that muscle T. What an odd choice for national TV; I have no idea what that show's about. And they admit it, a lot: "You don't know!"

9:32 Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Vote's on Haydn Gwynne (the Billy train). Whoa... Karen Olivo just sashayed her way to that Tony, for Anita. Oddly, again, Chita Rivera wasn't even nommed for the original production of West Side Story. Second surprise of the night, after N2N got Best Score.

Hah, Carrie Fisher's presenting about a show about manic depression. The Tonys rock.

9:30 Best Featured Actor in a Musical. Tough category; my vote's on Greg Jbara. And he gets it. Adorable/a little strange that he's brought his wife up on stage with him, but good for him. He was hilarious in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (and oddly the only lead who wasn't nommed that year). But sing Elton John, and start engraving that statue today.

9:27 Sneak peek of Brian Stokes Mitchell and Laura Benanti from the pre-show. Can Stokes come back to Broadway in a revival of Ragtime? Can we throw in the entire original cast?

9:23 Connie says: "So no believing and no rocking the boat for Josh." I am striking out on gerunds tonight. Good thing nobody's singing "Being Alive."

9:17 Wait, why is Oliver Platt (aka Nathan Detroit) not in the mission for "Sit Down"? Oh, Tituss Burgess, so uncomfortable. Did you just forget the words (understandably, with mike defects)? Here's what I'm seeing: a tenor in a fat suit, for no good reason; really bizarre projections of Heaven (so different than this revival, sadly); too much pushing for humor, like the "whiskey" joke.

Whoa, sit down, but raise the key, Tituss! And here comes the part Frank Loesser, musical genius, didn't write. (This is just what they "revised" "Brotherhood of Man" to be in H2$.) Holy mother, Mary Testa just scared me. And the ending kind of pittered out, because nobody knew what in the Hell (or what in the new revival of G&D... take your pick) just happened.

9:13 All the odds are in Liza's favor. Maybe this time, she'll win... and look, there's her Special Theatrical Event Tony. Just don't cut her off Elaine Stritch-style! She's absolutely crazy: "We were horrible. We were the pits." Another shout-out to Judy, from her daughter this time.

9:09 Guys and Dolls next. Great, they're going to ruin "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat." Go watch the 1992 revival with Nathan Lane to see how it's done, people.

9:03 Rock of Ages sings: "I'm no Andrew Lloyd Sondheim." Wow, is Liza a great sport (a "freak machine")! No. No. The coolness of the Glo-sticks has been eclipsed. Is Journey so ubiquitous that it's sung now on the Tonys? I just stopped believin'. Maybe James Gandolfini will cut it short--and will he live to tell about it? (Does anyone remember Constantine, btw?)

9:01 Stephen Daldry has been nommed for three Oscars (Billy Elliot, The Hours, The Reader), two of which were deserving. So it's only right that he gets another Tony for Best Direction of a Musical--Billy. Did he just forget the names of his cast? To be fair, they got seven noms for five roles, including three Billys, all in one musical. Talk about prime* material. (*My only math joke of the night!)

8:59 Best Direction of a Play. I predict Matthew Warchus for God of Carnage... and I am right! (What a season for him, also with the 7-hour Norman Conquests.) "I was hoping for another tie, actually." He's hilarious. "Marital mayhem in New York." Can we keep him on this side of the Atlantic?


8:50 Is it so difficult to film a group number adequately? Okay, now it's better halfway through, when Tony and Maria eye each other. New touch: the near-kiss when they meet. We can see now why Josefina Scaglione, so sweet and sincere, was nommed (oops, not for that last note), and why Matt Cavenaugh is awkward as a "gang leader" with a Kennedy-esque accent.

8:47 So why did Lin-Manuel Miranda not present Best Score? Oh, cause he's doing his bilingual Sondheim revision for West Side Story. Except nobody's going to sing in English or Spanish in their chosen number, "Dance at the Gym." And, like every other ensemble song tonight, nobody will be miked!

8:42 Excerpts from the nominated plays? You don't say? It's like the Tonys are recognizing how strong a year 2009 was for non-musicals in New York. Well, okay, 33 Variations got less than 33 seconds, so maybe the recognition isn't so high. At least Will Ferrell is here to bring in another 15 households (doesn't he look old?). And why oh why was Best Book presented off-camera? It's like we don't care about writers of words!

Best Score will determine if Next to Normal has a chance against the Billy juggernaut. The answer... Next to Normal! (The "better" show, as in past years, usually takes Score away from the "Best Musical". The Light in the Piazza won Score when Spamalot took the top prize; Urinetown got score over Thoroughly Modern Millie; Ragtime over The Lion King.) The night just got interesting.

8:30 Shrek's sitting right behind Angela. And she just won Best Featured Actress in a Play. Five Tony Awards for Angela Lansbury! And she's crying, and everyone stood. Please let her talk for an hour! "Who knew?" We all knew that you were an inspiring actress, Ms. Lansbury. "Well, you know how I feel..." She's such a class act. It can only go downhill from here tonight. ("Dancing Queen" played her off... could they be referring to her?)

8:25 The Shrek five minutes: Love Brian d'Arcy James. Shame the three Billys will steal his Tony. First Liza, now a Judy Garland reference (with Lord Farquaad's red shoes). His short costume is mighty impressive; I take it bathroom breaks are ruled out. So basically, we've learned that Shrek is yet one more self-referential musical in the vein of Spamalot/Dirty Rotten Scoundrels/Urinetown/Young Frankenstein. Good news: most of the people watching probably got the Wicked reference.

Yes, Neil, Obama Mia! would probably be a better show. Can Meryl play Michelle? Think of the money money money.

8:17 Roger Robinson wins the first award of the night for Joe Turner's Come and Gone. You know, that play the Obamas saw that closed down 44th Street last Sunday. He's supposed to be fantastic, as Best Featured Actor in a Play. Oh, and Bartlett Sher directed, which I didn't realize. He is responsible for The Light in the Piazza and South Pacific, so he's good in my book.

8:13 Glad they're acknowledging Plays and Musicals together with two giant marquees. Ooh, and 13 minutes in, we got a risque joke from host Neil Patrick Harris. [Update: Turns out the "headbanging" joke was actually about Bret Michaels smacking his head into the set. My bad. His bad, too.] Score two with self-deprecation ("And that's why I'm your host tonight," referring to the uber-expensive opening).

Question, though, NPH: is James Gandolfini really in the movies?

8:08 "Sometimes you're happy, sometimes you're sad." Sounds like Liza's life... and boy, does she sell it. More with spirits than with diction. Aww, someone invited Anne Hathaway. And now the gonna-win revival of Hair. "Let the Sunshine In" actually makes you cry in the show. Crazy thought: why couldn't Liza stick around to belt it out with her fellow '60s hippies? She'd fit right in. Oh, wait, there she is!

8:05 Stockard Channing walks on stage, and sort of finds the key, and everyone applauds because she's... whoa, she's seducing Aaron Tveit from Next to Normal, who is now very bewitched, bothered, and bewildered (mostly at the shoehorning of Rodgers-Hart into pop-rock). Hey, look, a Les Miz parody from the cast of Shrek. With this opening medley, the audience probably thinks Les Miz is a revival on Broadway right now, too.

Look at Allison Janney's I'm-the-best-part-of-9 to 5 face.

8:00 Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night... but the night that loses CBS a lot of ratings, like every year. Oooh, we start with Billy Elliot... and a poor miking job on Superstar Elton John (that's his official registered name now). I bet Dolly will appear soon, to lure in Middle America. Because Middle America loves boys who do ballet while gay men serenade them.

And Elton can no longer sing. But look, the Sharks are singing in Spanish! (What's up with the terrible miking? Somebody just got fired at Radio City.) Good song choices so far, though. If the "regular" audience will know anything, it's West Side Story and Guys and Dolls. Why didn't West Side choose the Quintet for their primary number? And why did Craig Bierko join the Jets there, when he's in a different show?

7:45 The pre-show opened on a tie between Billy Elliot and Next to Normal for Best Orchestrations. I haven't seen either, but variety is the spice of life, and a sweep by a trio of little dancer boys isn't desirable.

My first attempt at a live blog. Yes, the New York Times is following the Tonys, too, but with the Off-Broadway critic at the keyboard. Sensible?

It's Pronounced "GOD-oh"

Review: Waiting for Godot
Studio 54, New York
May 30, 2009

"Nothing to be done," Estragon (Nathan Lane) says when the curtain rises--well, after the obligatory look-it's-Nathan-Lane applause. He tugs, discouraged, to remove the shoe from his foot, and the resolution seems like it will never come. While it finally does, we hold our breath from the outset, waiting for something, and knowing--the time for spoilers has long passed--that it will not arrive.

The "it" is Godot, maybe an important man, but no more than a McGuffin in Samuel Beckett's "tragicomedy" (his word). Beckett deliberately evades meaning in his most recognized play, hiding any clue from the audience as to why these men need Godot, or who they even are. Old friends they are indeed, clowns from the vaudeville circuit who trade barbs on existential turf. The stage at Studio 54 was adorned with desolation: not just a country road, but a mountain pass with overbearing rocks into which the playing area has been carved out. As the script--and destiny--requires, there is one solitary tree, blossoming over the evening from a corpse to a nurturing Earth Mother, revived with leaves and shade for the actors.


All the world is a stage, and the quartet of men (plus one little boy) recognize they are presenting to an audience without disrupting the fourth wall. While Nathan Lane hams it up like a Borscht Belt wisecracker, Bill Irwin (Vladimir) matches him with befuddled insights, high-minded but impenetrable epiphanies, turns of phrase that tickle rather than cudgel. That they are not the perfect yin for each other's yang isn't really a drawback. Amid the one-liners, the emptiness resounds. These men are lost, toppling over boulders and the malapropisms on their tongue. The comedy isn't healing but isolating: Vladimir winces at his groin pain every time the laughs fly too freely.

So, on an existential note, why do we allow ourselves to be entertained by Godot only to realize it's half a sham? Even at the end, these characters have learned but have neither accepted nor acted: "Let's go" induces hand-holding rather than walking away. It's as if we have entered either limbo or purgatory, where the innocent float along with the monsters (such as Pozzo, played to the hilt by an excellent, sadly not Tony-nominated John Goodman). Lucky, Pozzo's slave (John Glover), must take his words where he can, and so he regurgitates a learned progression of phrases, snarling at every syllable, salivating down his dusty tunic as a Joycean stream of un-consciousness flows from his mouth. Pozzo, on the other hand, contents himself with the comforts of sitting and lording over all around him. The funniest image I've seen recently is of Goodman, overcome with exhaustion, flopping on the ground like a beached whale. In that moment, even Pozzo is as vulnerable as the other men.

No man wins against nature, and no man can fully control his own circumstances. There may be hope in the end, but Vladimir and Estragon look as if they still await it. You may wonder, if you ever see Godot, whether you've really seen it or if it's still out of reach.

What a Piece of Work Is Man

Review: Hair
Al Hirschfeld Theatre, New York
May 30, 2009

Last Saturday, I sat down in the "be-in" box at the Al Hirschfeld (maybe my favorite Broadway theater, filled as it is with caricatures of that stage's ghosts). On the aisle, I was exposed to potential interaction with cast members. I didn't know yet a hippie would pat me on the head, thanking me for already being stoned. I didn't realize we'd be ushered onto the stage at curtain call, to wave our arms as the band rocked out to "Let the Sunshine In."

But at this matinee, the sun indeed shone in, and not just because of the latecomers. What lasts about Hair, a loose amalgam of neuroses and rebellion and 1960s revolution that no longer shocks, is the spirit of community. Our audience, before jumping up on the stage floor and jiving with Gavin Creel and Will Swenson, grew bonded to the Tribe and their raucous innocence. I was surprised that, with time taming the beast that is Hair, it remains an incredibly earnest vehicle, especially in the females' songs, "Frank Mills" and "Easy to Be Hard" (remember the Three Dog Night cover?).

Gavin Creel portrays Claude, the only individual in a show where the Tribe lives and breathes as one shapeshifting character, with all the sweetness and uncertainty of any of us, searching around (and without being too angsty!), seeking that distant Something More that doesn't seem to come from either Free Love or War. In such a presentational musical, the ending still stings for its lack of showiness: the whole company bonds together, watching one of them sent off to battle and knowing they won't return. The power of musicals like Hair, much like its World War II predecessors South Pacific and On the Town, is that all the robust jubilance of life remains at the forefront without selling short the imminent danger or the undying question of where we go.

Forget Your Troubles

Post #60, and I'm back after a month on hiatus. My plan: 15 posts for June (every other day, i.e.). So keep tuning in!

I stopped by New York this weekend, took in some theater, won the Hair lottery, and regained my appetite after a week of stomach pain. They've started something new in Times Square. Behold the pedestrian plaza, a.k.a. greater swarms of tourists. A very European concept, but done on the cheap so far. The green chairs above, I will say, were the most comfortable that I tried... and there are enough options that you could probably color-coordinate your clothes.

Note how the chairs in each block-long section of seating space have been segregated by color and style. At least the boy and girl chairs above are allowed to mingle.

This traffic cop's keeping those rowdy street-sitting slackers in check.

And just think: a mere row of orange cones separates the sitting-pretty from a torrent of Red Bull-fueled, cologne-reeking, New York-talking, harangue-spewing cab drivers pissed about the rerouting of Broadway.

Naturally, the cones also make nice chairs.

Feeling young and spry? Try a wheelbarrow for your own personal comfort on 46th Street. But only the red ones here... the other colors are confined to the other side of the street, under the CNN news scroll and the Come See Phantom Before It Never Closes poster.

Happy days are here again. The skies are clear again.

Speaking of which (train of thought: Barbra Streisand, Democrat, the Obamas), the president and first lady were in town to see Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and I left just before they arrived with their entourage. Which is fine, because apparently 44th Street was entirely closed off unless you had a theater ticket.

I end this photo essay on 44th, though, with a different celebrity sighting. I was strolling thirty minutes before the Sunday matinee and found myself on my phone right next to Christine Ebersole at her stage door.

May the Force Be With Them

"My Old Kentucky Home" (Stephen Foster) just played, kicking off the Kentucky Derby. You expect that, with such a good song and with such a phenomenon, the singing would be mellifluous, voices raised along with mint juleps, Southern accents stirred with old-lady church-hymn mezzos. Alas, despite the Derby pedigree, the timid, off-key tune was sad to hear. Mine That Bird, thankfully, made up for it.

It's funny how, in the midst of such a magnificent enterprise, some things seem to really undermine its integrity. I wrote a paper on novelizations and movie tie-in editions of books earlier this week. Scouring the library for samples, I stumbled across an adaptation of Star Wars, from 1974, in the YA section. Authored by George Lucas, like the screenplay. As with "My Old Kentucky Home," I remembered this from my childhood. The nostalgia's faded. The movie and its (two) sequels are timeless, but all those spin-offs?

It was released in 1976, to amp up excitement for the original movie. Yes, the original, when it was just called Star Wars. Before the scroll read "Episode IV" and "A New Hope." Back in the days when Darth Vader was not Luke's father, Yoda existed only in Lucas' brain, and Greedo shot first.

It starts out well enough with our first sight of Tatooine:

It was a vast, shining globe and it cast a light of lambent topaz into space--but it was not a sun. Thus, the planet had fooled men for a long time. Not until entering close orbit around it did its discoverers realize that this was a world in a binary system and not a third sun itself.

The epigraph, from Princess Leia Organa, also hits the right note for this gun-smokin' spacechaser--the ultimate B-movie:

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally they became heroes."

But after page four, there are embarrassing passages. Even when I read this when I was ten (and no, I was not a sci-fi geek), I wondered about this interlude in the Obiwan-Darth Vader showdown:

"You sense only a part of the Force, Darth," Kenobi murmured with the assurance of one to whom death is merely another sensation, like sleeping or making love or touching a candle.

Novelizations bring up the question of canon. Can we safely ignore anything we learn from the book that's not from the film, such as Kenobi's knowledge of making love when he's been a solitary Jedi all his days? Then again, there are deleted scenes when Luke actually visits the Toshi station, and not to buy power converters. The Biggs/Luke subplot informs the film, though not when we have to slog through lines like this:

"Uncle Owen was pretty upset. He grounded me for the rest of the season."

Just how old is Luke these days? And there are redundant adverbs all over the place: Luke snorts "derisively," Biggs sighs "sadly." Some other moments, like Han's encounter with Jabba, work better than the book. Even though Jabba "jumped" when Han came in the room (can you picture that?), Han at least doesn't step on his tail or call Jabba "a wonderful human being" before the Hutt and his quadruple chins slime away.

I'm going to excuse the novelization in general. It's tough freelance work: writers generally get $5000 to $10,000 with no royalties, with a two-week deadline to expand 120 pages of a screenplay into a 300-page novel. Basically, they triple the size of each script page with interior reflection or authoritative narration or an expanded setting. Or, in a poor moment, mental disintegration that all transpires within seconds (when the sand people attack Luke):

Luke tried to view his situation objectively, as he had been instructed to do in survival school. Trouble was, his mouth was dry, his hands were shaking, and he was paralyzed with fear. With the Raider in front of him and a probably fatal drop behind, something else in his mind took over and opted for the least painful response. He fainted.

His maladroit uncle sent him to survival school? See what I mean about canon. Should I believe this as background, or as a deadline-driven novelist's fabrication? For what it's worth, the Han-Greedo incident is rendered as just "light and noise," no more elucidation. Despite that low-brow, wash-your-hands-afterwards feeling (on par with the Lifetime movie and the Real World reunion special), the novelization could be worse. And let's clear up a myth: this book was ghostwritten. If only George Lucas' dialogue for Attack of the Clones had been.