Tuesday, June 4, 2013

My Incredibly Inaccurate Tony Predictions

The Tony Awards are this Sunday!!!! I am excited, even if I don't invest in the awards nearly so much as I did when I watched my first telecast in 1998 and had my heart broken (really, Lion King over Ragtime? I mean, I was pulling for The Scarlet Pimpernel, but ... Lion King over Ragtime? Really?). And perhaps nothing will best the moment of triumph in 2004 when Avenue Q beat out Wicked. I think my face matched John Tartaglia's in that moment.
Like this, but excited.

Unfortunately, that was also the year a lot of ugliness was revealed about the motivations behind voting, and I started emotionally investing a little less.

But my investment in Broadway, in live theater, never waned, and the Tony Awards, if nothing else, are a celebration of that. So I still tune in, to cheer when people I admire get awards, to shrug when people I ... admire less ... get them, and mostly to enjoy the live performances during the telecast. I especially appreciate the latest trend of allowing shows which were not nominated to get an abbreviated performance, as a nationally-broadcast commercial. It's a real gesture of camaraderie, and represents the best kind of spirit in the Broadway community. Do I wish closed shows that were nominated also got to perform? Yes, but I can understand the logistics are more complicated to achieve that (Sorry, Edwin Drood).

Overall, I think it's been an exceptionally strong season. The number of "snubs" catalogued elsewhere is testament to that (my personal bugaboo is about the MTC revival (and new translation) of An Enemy of the People, which was so good I couldn't breathe. Ah well). We had so many good plays, and some really delightful musicals on the boards this past year, and I have definitely enjoyed myself watching them.

I haven't really been reading the chat boards, so I actually don't know what popular predictions are this year. I know there's apparently some Matilda backlash going on, but that's all I know. And that's dumb. Matilda is awesome.

Though I would like to take a moment, in light of the "Special Tony" being granted to the four Matilda girls (no doubt to prevent a repeat of the win for the three Billy Elliot boys), to acknowledge the high number of talented child actors currently working their butts off on Broadway. We've got the ragamuffins in Annie, belting it out every night, the two charming boys in Kinky Boots, and the young man in Motown doing triple duty, including a star turn as young Michael Jackson with the Jackson 5 (and, last fall, the boys in Chaplin as well). Well done, kids!

And now, my predictions, preferences, and paraphernalia: