The 75th Annual Tony Awards have just taken place, and there's so much to talk about. First things first, I overall got 15 out of 26 predictions correct, which is probably the worst I've done in a while. The categories I got wrong were…
Best Original Score: I actually had Six winning this for a while. Though when the New York Times' survey mentioned that the show apparently lost some heat among voters (at least in Best Musical), I started to have second thoughts. In 2017, I was one of many people who ended up predicting Rachel Chavkin to take home Best Direction of a Musical for Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 despite the Times mentioning that the show itself wasn't much of a factor in the Best Musical race that year. Yet on Tony night, The Great Comet only won 2 design awards while Chavkin lost directing to Christopher Ashley for Come From Away. Turns out the Times was right all along back then. This year, I settled on Michael R. Jackson for A Strange Loop due to how I was expecting that show to perform with wins. Looks like the catchy pop tunes of Six were more than enough to push it over the edge here. I'm glad that voters found a way to spread the wealth by acknowledging the overall contributions of creators Toby Marlow & Lucy Moss. I've mentioned before that in 2017, voters really had such an amazing opportunity to spread the wealth among the nominees for Best Original Score. Benj Pasek & Justin Paul were already winning that for Dear Evan Hansen, and they could’ve given Best Book of a Musical to Irene Sankoff & David Hein for Come From Away and Best Orchestrations to Dave Malloy for The Great Comet. Yet, Dear Evan Hansen swept through all three of those categories. It's also worth noting that for the first time since 2014, the Best Musical winner lost Best Original Score (back then, it was A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder losing to The Bridges of Madison County).
Best Costume Design of a Musical: While a number of people were predicting Six to win, I wasn't sure if it could given that the cast only consists of six people and apparently has no costume changes at all. My boss at Gold Derby, Tom O'Neil, keeps saying "In order to win, you gotta have the most of something. The most costumes wins Best Costume Design." Therefore, I was predicting The Music Man due to that show having a cast of 40+ people and more costume changes. Though in this scenario, quantity clearly didn't matter.
Best Scenic Design of a Play: While I knew it was possible for The Lehman Trilogy to win given that its set was part of the staging's impressive scope, I settled on The Skin of Our Teeth because I figured voters would find the set for that to be more colorful and imaginative.
Best Scenic Design of a Musical: While a number of people were predicting Company to win for its originality, I settled on Flying Over Sunset due to its scenery being highly praised (even from those who didn't care for the show itself). From its physical sets by Beowulf Boritt to its projections by 59 Productions, I thought voters would find the whole design to be more elaborate.
Best Lighting Design of a Musical: Again, taking the most rule into account, Six appeared to have had the most lighting out of all the nominees here (especially given how its intentionally staged as a concert). Yet, I underestimated legendary lighting designer Natasha Katz, who just picked up her 7th Tony for MJ.
Best Sound Design of a Musical: Those who've seen Six thought that the sound design was one of the strongest aspects of it. After all, that show is purely a pop concert. Yet, MJ, which is something of a concert, once again upsetted Six.
Best Orchestrations: Since the winners in this category have only been voted on by a small peer group in recent years, they've went for the eventual Best Musical winner. So I of course predicted A Strange Loop to win here. Though when it lost to Six for Best Original Score earlier in the night, I kind of started to have second thoughts. Yet, the peer group came through for Girl From the North Country, which became the first show to have won Best Orchestrations and nothing else on Tony night since this category was established in 1997.
Best Featured Actress in a Play: As I previously said in my predictions, this was a tricky race to figure out. Variety mentioned that Uzo Aduba was the name that most often came up in this category from voters they spoke with. I was tempted to switch to her for Clyde's, but since her co-star, Kara Young, apparently got her share of support, vote-splitting seemed like a possibility. I stuck with Kenita R. Miller due to her narrative of spending most of the run of for colored girls... in the very late stages of her pregnancy. However, one of my colleagues at Gold Derby, Sam Eckmann, mentioned this in the message boards: "Every voter must log their attendance of every nominated show in the portal. The portal takes this information and generates a ballot based on what you have seen. If you were not able to attend a nominated production, any category where it is nominated is automatically pulled from your ballot. However, the honor system comes into play with absent performers. Let’s say a voter saw Company in March and logs their date in the voter portal, but Patti LuPone was out with COVID. This particular voter didn’t reschedule their tickets and saw an understudy for Joanne. The portal would not automatically remove Featured Actress in a Musical from this voter’s ballot because it only reads if you saw the show or not (there is no data connected to this system about performer absences. Incorporating that would be a monumental task). Voters are simply asked to recuse themselves from voting in a category where they weren’t able to see a nominated performer. Some will follow that rule, but I’m sure there are many who vote anyway if they’ve only missed one person because they want to have a say in the outcome." Since Kenita left for colored girls... a couple weeks before it closed to give birth, there is the question of if enough voters got to see her in it. With Phylicia Rashad being the most respected actress out of all the nominees taking on a role in Skeleton Crew that people argue could've contended in lead, that probably helped her a lot. Another one of my Gold Derby colleagues, David Buchanan, wrote a piece about whether or not predictors were underestimating her.
Best Lead Actress in a Play: The New York Times' survey mentioned that Deidre O'Connell had a modest edge in this race for Dana H., but the margin wasn't big enough to predict what would happen with any confidence. I was tempted to switch to her, but I just wanted to play it safe by going with the persumed frontrunner, Mary-Louise Parker for How I Learned to Drive. It's always tricky making last minute switches in your predictions because you just don't know if they're going to pay off until the end when the envelopes are open. I guess when deciding between the two, voters probably felt "Mary-Louise just won a second Tony last year, she doesn't need a third right away. I'm gonna let Deidre have her big moment in the spotlight now." Which I will admit, I do love seeing veteran character actors/actresses get such major recognition after working in the business for decades, especially if it happens to be for a rare leading role they took on. I guess if/when the New York Times says there's a tight race in any category again, I'm gonna settle on the contender with (reportedly) the slightest edge.
Best Lead Actor in a Musical: As I previously mentioned in my predictions, the Times said that voters were evenly split between Myles Frost and Jaquel Spivey. I predicted the latter to win given that he was in the Best Musical frontrunner (and eventual winner), A Strange Loop. Yet, Frost's skills as a triple threat must've pushed him over the edge as he prevailed for his performance as Michael Jackson in MJ. I guess it's official that if you're playing a real-life musician on Broadway, that's gonna give you a strong shot of winning a Tony. Just ask John Lloyd Young in Jersey Boys, Levi Kreis in Million Dollar Quartet, Jessie Mueller in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Stephanie J. Block in The Cher Show, and Adrienne Warren in Tina - The Tina Turner Musical. That means we should probably keep an eye out on Will Swenson as a potential threat to win this award next year for his performance as Neil Diamond in A Beautiful Noise. After all, voters who aren't as intimately familiar with the craft of acting are more easily able to recognize how a performer is nailing the real-life person they're playing.
Best Lead Actress in a Musical: In my predictions, I mentioned that no permanently closed musical production has won an acting award at the Tonys since Martin Short for Little Me back in 1999. In what was a tight race between Sharon D. Clarke for a closed show (Caroline, or Change) and Joaquina Kalukango for a currently running show (Paradise Square), the results proved that stat still very much stands today. Caroline, or Change didn't perform due to that production being a limited run from last fall, and Roundabout Theatre Company, which presented it, doesn't usually pay to have their closed musicals perform on the Tonys. So we'll never know how the audience at Radio City Music Hall would've responded to Clarke's rendition of 'Lot's Wife.' Though when Joaquina got a major standing ovation after her performance of 'Let It Burn,' it was easy to see why she was considered a force to be reckoned with.
Best Original Score: I actually had Six winning this for a while. Though when the New York Times' survey mentioned that the show apparently lost some heat among voters (at least in Best Musical), I started to have second thoughts. In 2017, I was one of many people who ended up predicting Rachel Chavkin to take home Best Direction of a Musical for Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 despite the Times mentioning that the show itself wasn't much of a factor in the Best Musical race that year. Yet on Tony night, The Great Comet only won 2 design awards while Chavkin lost directing to Christopher Ashley for Come From Away. Turns out the Times was right all along back then. This year, I settled on Michael R. Jackson for A Strange Loop due to how I was expecting that show to perform with wins. Looks like the catchy pop tunes of Six were more than enough to push it over the edge here. I'm glad that voters found a way to spread the wealth by acknowledging the overall contributions of creators Toby Marlow & Lucy Moss. I've mentioned before that in 2017, voters really had such an amazing opportunity to spread the wealth among the nominees for Best Original Score. Benj Pasek & Justin Paul were already winning that for Dear Evan Hansen, and they could’ve given Best Book of a Musical to Irene Sankoff & David Hein for Come From Away and Best Orchestrations to Dave Malloy for The Great Comet. Yet, Dear Evan Hansen swept through all three of those categories. It's also worth noting that for the first time since 2014, the Best Musical winner lost Best Original Score (back then, it was A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder losing to The Bridges of Madison County).
Best Costume Design of a Musical: While a number of people were predicting Six to win, I wasn't sure if it could given that the cast only consists of six people and apparently has no costume changes at all. My boss at Gold Derby, Tom O'Neil, keeps saying "In order to win, you gotta have the most of something. The most costumes wins Best Costume Design." Therefore, I was predicting The Music Man due to that show having a cast of 40+ people and more costume changes. Though in this scenario, quantity clearly didn't matter.
Best Scenic Design of a Play: While I knew it was possible for The Lehman Trilogy to win given that its set was part of the staging's impressive scope, I settled on The Skin of Our Teeth because I figured voters would find the set for that to be more colorful and imaginative.
Best Scenic Design of a Musical: While a number of people were predicting Company to win for its originality, I settled on Flying Over Sunset due to its scenery being highly praised (even from those who didn't care for the show itself). From its physical sets by Beowulf Boritt to its projections by 59 Productions, I thought voters would find the whole design to be more elaborate.
Best Lighting Design of a Musical: Again, taking the most rule into account, Six appeared to have had the most lighting out of all the nominees here (especially given how its intentionally staged as a concert). Yet, I underestimated legendary lighting designer Natasha Katz, who just picked up her 7th Tony for MJ.
Best Sound Design of a Musical: Those who've seen Six thought that the sound design was one of the strongest aspects of it. After all, that show is purely a pop concert. Yet, MJ, which is something of a concert, once again upsetted Six.
Best Orchestrations: Since the winners in this category have only been voted on by a small peer group in recent years, they've went for the eventual Best Musical winner. So I of course predicted A Strange Loop to win here. Though when it lost to Six for Best Original Score earlier in the night, I kind of started to have second thoughts. Yet, the peer group came through for Girl From the North Country, which became the first show to have won Best Orchestrations and nothing else on Tony night since this category was established in 1997.
Best Featured Actress in a Play: As I previously said in my predictions, this was a tricky race to figure out. Variety mentioned that Uzo Aduba was the name that most often came up in this category from voters they spoke with. I was tempted to switch to her for Clyde's, but since her co-star, Kara Young, apparently got her share of support, vote-splitting seemed like a possibility. I stuck with Kenita R. Miller due to her narrative of spending most of the run of for colored girls... in the very late stages of her pregnancy. However, one of my colleagues at Gold Derby, Sam Eckmann, mentioned this in the message boards: "Every voter must log their attendance of every nominated show in the portal. The portal takes this information and generates a ballot based on what you have seen. If you were not able to attend a nominated production, any category where it is nominated is automatically pulled from your ballot. However, the honor system comes into play with absent performers. Let’s say a voter saw Company in March and logs their date in the voter portal, but Patti LuPone was out with COVID. This particular voter didn’t reschedule their tickets and saw an understudy for Joanne. The portal would not automatically remove Featured Actress in a Musical from this voter’s ballot because it only reads if you saw the show or not (there is no data connected to this system about performer absences. Incorporating that would be a monumental task). Voters are simply asked to recuse themselves from voting in a category where they weren’t able to see a nominated performer. Some will follow that rule, but I’m sure there are many who vote anyway if they’ve only missed one person because they want to have a say in the outcome." Since Kenita left for colored girls... a couple weeks before it closed to give birth, there is the question of if enough voters got to see her in it. With Phylicia Rashad being the most respected actress out of all the nominees taking on a role in Skeleton Crew that people argue could've contended in lead, that probably helped her a lot. Another one of my Gold Derby colleagues, David Buchanan, wrote a piece about whether or not predictors were underestimating her.
Best Lead Actress in a Play: The New York Times' survey mentioned that Deidre O'Connell had a modest edge in this race for Dana H., but the margin wasn't big enough to predict what would happen with any confidence. I was tempted to switch to her, but I just wanted to play it safe by going with the persumed frontrunner, Mary-Louise Parker for How I Learned to Drive. It's always tricky making last minute switches in your predictions because you just don't know if they're going to pay off until the end when the envelopes are open. I guess when deciding between the two, voters probably felt "Mary-Louise just won a second Tony last year, she doesn't need a third right away. I'm gonna let Deidre have her big moment in the spotlight now." Which I will admit, I do love seeing veteran character actors/actresses get such major recognition after working in the business for decades, especially if it happens to be for a rare leading role they took on. I guess if/when the New York Times says there's a tight race in any category again, I'm gonna settle on the contender with (reportedly) the slightest edge.
Best Lead Actor in a Musical: As I previously mentioned in my predictions, the Times said that voters were evenly split between Myles Frost and Jaquel Spivey. I predicted the latter to win given that he was in the Best Musical frontrunner (and eventual winner), A Strange Loop. Yet, Frost's skills as a triple threat must've pushed him over the edge as he prevailed for his performance as Michael Jackson in MJ. I guess it's official that if you're playing a real-life musician on Broadway, that's gonna give you a strong shot of winning a Tony. Just ask John Lloyd Young in Jersey Boys, Levi Kreis in Million Dollar Quartet, Jessie Mueller in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Stephanie J. Block in The Cher Show, and Adrienne Warren in Tina - The Tina Turner Musical. That means we should probably keep an eye out on Will Swenson as a potential threat to win this award next year for his performance as Neil Diamond in A Beautiful Noise. After all, voters who aren't as intimately familiar with the craft of acting are more easily able to recognize how a performer is nailing the real-life person they're playing.
Best Lead Actress in a Musical: In my predictions, I mentioned that no permanently closed musical production has won an acting award at the Tonys since Martin Short for Little Me back in 1999. In what was a tight race between Sharon D. Clarke for a closed show (Caroline, or Change) and Joaquina Kalukango for a currently running show (Paradise Square), the results proved that stat still very much stands today. Caroline, or Change didn't perform due to that production being a limited run from last fall, and Roundabout Theatre Company, which presented it, doesn't usually pay to have their closed musicals perform on the Tonys. So we'll never know how the audience at Radio City Music Hall would've responded to Clarke's rendition of 'Lot's Wife.' Though when Joaquina got a major standing ovation after her performance of 'Let It Burn,' it was easy to see why she was considered a force to be reckoned with.
As for the telecast itself, let me begin by talking about how great the hour-long pre-show on Paramount+ titled The Tony Awards: Act One was. I thought it started off with such a clever opening number about "setting the stage" led by its hosts, Darren Criss & Julianne Hough. I loved how well paced it was, especially with getting presenters on and off stage in a good amount of time. The clip packages that were made for the presentations of the awards were really neat in showing a brief look at the process of creating designs, choreography, orchestrations, and scores for the theatre. It's great having a platform where categories that have usually been presented before the telecast and/or during commercials broadcast someplace. If the Oscars want to continue with presenting a select amount of awards before its ceremony officially begins, they should have them streamed live on Disney+ or Hulu. Although I think it definitely would've been nice if the Tonys did a quick recap of the winners from the Paramount+ portion on the CBS broadcast that way those who weren't able to catch the former would be kept in the know with other categories. They've been doing that long before CBS' parent company even had a streaming service.
A couple months ago, I did a poll for Gold Derby asking people which former Broadway co-stars they’d like to see reunite on stage during this year's ceremony. Len Cariou & Angela Lansbury, who both won Tonys for the original production of Sweeney Todd in 1979, finished in first place. It came very close to happening as Cariou was there to present Lansbury her Lifetime Achievement Award, but she wasn't able to make it (nor send in a recorded acceptance speech). Although the New York Gay Men’s Chorus paid tribute to her with a shortened rendition of the title song from Mame.
As for the main telecast, I thought Ariana DeBose did a pretty great job as host. She wasn't heavy on humor like how most awards shows emcees are nowadays, but she still managed to bring a ton of energy to her musical performances. The opening number alone in my opinion perfectly highlighted different musicals and speeches of Tony history. During Broadway's first season back in operation since shutting down on March 12th, 2020, performers were still calling out sick with COVID-19, so understudies, swings, and standbys really came to the rescue throughout. As Ariana is someone who actually started out as an understudy herself, it was so smart of her to acknowledge those who've helped out a lot within this past season.
One thing I especially enjoyed about this year's telecast was all the presenters who happen to be reuniting with co-stars from previous Broadway gigs. None of them were included in my aforementioned poll, but it was still cool how they highlighted any main stem production in general. Among them were...
-Kelli O'Hara & Ruthie Ann Miles, Tony winners for the 2015 revival of The King & I.
-Sarah Paulson & Josh Lucas, who worked together on the 2005 revival of The Glass Menagerie.
-Phillipa Soo & Renée Elise Goldsberry, who played sisters in the original cast of Hamilton.
-Andrew Garfield & Nathan Lane, Tony winners for the 2018 revival of Angels in America.
-Bryan Cranston & Tony Goldwyn, who starred opposite each other in Network.
-Tony Shalhoub & Danny Burstein, Tony nominees for the 2012 revival of Golden Boy.
-Cynthia Erivo & Danielle Brooks, who worked together on the 2015 revival of The Color Purple (the two of them even ended up presenting Best Lead Actress in a Musical to Joaquina Kalukango, who was also in that production).
Not to mention that before Best Musical was presented at the end of the night, Ariana, who most recently played Anita in Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of West Side Story, appeared on stage with Chita Rivera, who originated that same role in the original Broadway cast of that same musical back in 1957. It was the multi-verse of Anita's!
In 2017 and 2019, the producers of the telecast in my opinion perfectly highlighted the Best Play nominees by having each of the nominated playwrights appear on stage individually throughout the night to talk about their work. In 2018, it was thrown completely out the window. This year, we only got a clip montage of each playwright getting asked quick questions about their work just before Best Play was presented. If you ask me, they should just stick with the format from 2017 and 2019. In that instance, things felt like there was just as much of a build up to the presentation of Best Play as there was for Best Musical. It can be hard to showcase the plays due to the difficulty of presenting scenes from them out-of-context (which the Tonys used to do way back when).
While I purposefully skipped last year's show altogether, I am aware that they hit an all-time low in the ratings with just 2.8 million people tuning in. While viewership definitely improved this year by 39% (resulting in 3.86 million viewers), it was still down 35% from the pre-pandemic ceremony in 2019 (which only had 5.5 million). Given how ratings for most awards shows have been declining in recent years, the Tonys bucking that trend is good news, even if viewership will likely never be anywhere near what it used to be again. After all, there has definitely been a rise in streaming lately, so there is the question of how many more people only caught the live stream on Paramount+ as opposed to regular TV. I doubt we'll ever know the answer to that since streaming services rarely ever reveal their viewership data.
As one Broadway season ends, another is about to begin. So far on the musical side, there's new works such as Almost Famous, A Beautiful Noise, Kimberly Akimbo, KPOP, and Some Like It Hot as well as revivals of 1776, Camelot, and Into the Woods on the way. As for the plays, there's new works such as The Kite Runner and Leopoldstadt as well as revivals of Death of a Salesman (with Sharon D. Clarke; here's hoping she'll have better luck winning next year), The Piano Lesson, and Topdog/Underdog coming. Be sure to keep on following me throughout the 2022-23 season.
-Kelli O'Hara & Ruthie Ann Miles, Tony winners for the 2015 revival of The King & I.
-Sarah Paulson & Josh Lucas, who worked together on the 2005 revival of The Glass Menagerie.
-Phillipa Soo & Renée Elise Goldsberry, who played sisters in the original cast of Hamilton.
-Andrew Garfield & Nathan Lane, Tony winners for the 2018 revival of Angels in America.
-Bryan Cranston & Tony Goldwyn, who starred opposite each other in Network.
-Tony Shalhoub & Danny Burstein, Tony nominees for the 2012 revival of Golden Boy.
-Cynthia Erivo & Danielle Brooks, who worked together on the 2015 revival of The Color Purple (the two of them even ended up presenting Best Lead Actress in a Musical to Joaquina Kalukango, who was also in that production).
Not to mention that before Best Musical was presented at the end of the night, Ariana, who most recently played Anita in Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of West Side Story, appeared on stage with Chita Rivera, who originated that same role in the original Broadway cast of that same musical back in 1957. It was the multi-verse of Anita's!
In 2017 and 2019, the producers of the telecast in my opinion perfectly highlighted the Best Play nominees by having each of the nominated playwrights appear on stage individually throughout the night to talk about their work. In 2018, it was thrown completely out the window. This year, we only got a clip montage of each playwright getting asked quick questions about their work just before Best Play was presented. If you ask me, they should just stick with the format from 2017 and 2019. In that instance, things felt like there was just as much of a build up to the presentation of Best Play as there was for Best Musical. It can be hard to showcase the plays due to the difficulty of presenting scenes from them out-of-context (which the Tonys used to do way back when).
While I purposefully skipped last year's show altogether, I am aware that they hit an all-time low in the ratings with just 2.8 million people tuning in. While viewership definitely improved this year by 39% (resulting in 3.86 million viewers), it was still down 35% from the pre-pandemic ceremony in 2019 (which only had 5.5 million). Given how ratings for most awards shows have been declining in recent years, the Tonys bucking that trend is good news, even if viewership will likely never be anywhere near what it used to be again. After all, there has definitely been a rise in streaming lately, so there is the question of how many more people only caught the live stream on Paramount+ as opposed to regular TV. I doubt we'll ever know the answer to that since streaming services rarely ever reveal their viewership data.
As one Broadway season ends, another is about to begin. So far on the musical side, there's new works such as Almost Famous, A Beautiful Noise, Kimberly Akimbo, KPOP, and Some Like It Hot as well as revivals of 1776, Camelot, and Into the Woods on the way. As for the plays, there's new works such as The Kite Runner and Leopoldstadt as well as revivals of Death of a Salesman (with Sharon D. Clarke; here's hoping she'll have better luck winning next year), The Piano Lesson, and Topdog/Underdog coming. Be sure to keep on following me throughout the 2022-23 season.