As it turns out, Utah theater fans will get to see a bit of Broadway on Sunday after all. Despite the strike by TV writers, the Tony Awards will air as scheduled.
That was very much in doubt a few weeks ago. And, as much as my sympathies are with the striking writers, that would’ve been too bad.
Most Utahns don’t get to make regular trips to Broadway — some never travel to New York at all — and most of us never get to see the original casts of, well, anything. But we do get to see scenes from the musicals and plays on the Tony telecast … and then we just have to wait a few years from the road productions to make their way to Salt Lake City.
I still remember Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin performing “A New Argentina” from “Evita” at the 1980 Tonys. Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel performing “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked” at the 2004 Tonys. Just a year ago, performances included numbers from “Six,” “The Music Man,” “Company” and “A Strange Loop.”
(Utah native Claybourne Elder was in the cast of “Company,” which won the Tony for best musical revival.)
(Mary Kouw | CBS) The cast of "A Strange Loop" performing at the 2022 Tony Awards.
Forget who wins what Tony — the performances alone make the awards show worth watching. And they’re SO much better than the renditions of nominated songs that break up (and sometimes mar) the Oscars.
But the televised Tonys were in doubt after the Writers Guild of America went on strike in early May. Which confused some people.
No, Broadway writers are not on strike. Hollywood movie and TV writers are. But the Tonys are on TV. Plus streaming. And the WGA remains dead set against its members writing anything for the Tonys telecast.
But after the producers promised they would air an unscripted ceremony, the WGA announced it would not picket the event. Although it has reportedly told its members to boycott the ceremony. (There are reports that the WGA relented after Broadway unions intervened.)
(Mary Kouw | CBS) Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman perform a number from "The Music Man" at the 2022 Tony Awards.
Anyway … all of this could make for a fascinating awards show, with a variety of possible outcomes:
• Will it be better than your average awards ceremony without the painfully unfunny, scripted patter that presenters are so often forced to present? You know — the lame introductions.
• Will actors be able to come up with their own funny and/or charming introductions without the help of writers? Will they even try? Will we see how actors fare on their own?
Nobody asked me, but probably better to just play it straight and not try to be funny. That’s the advice the leadership of the Television Critics Association has always given to its members before they present at the annual TCA Awards in front of not just the membership but a variety of high-profile actors, producers and entertainment industry executives.
Some critics don’t follow that advice, and the results are often disastrously unfunny. And, unlike actors, critics write for a living.
Which is not to say TCA members haven’t gotten laughs. My first time presenting — I gave Betty White our lifetime achievement award way back in 2009 — got laughs, but they came not because I wrote myself any jokes, but because I quoted funny things Betty had said.
I also got laughs later on when, twice in three years, I forgot to take the award itself with me when I walked out on stage to make the presentation. Duh. I was nervous.
Following a 90-minute pre-show special, “The Tony Awards: Act One” (hosted by Utah native Julianne Hough and Skylar Astin) on Sunday from 4:30-6 p.m. — on free streaming service Pluto TV — the 76th annual Tony Awards themselves will air from 6-9 p.m. on CBS/Channel 2 and stream on Paramount+.
The tribute to Broadway’s best will be several miles north of the Theater District — at the United Palace in Washington Heights, for the first time. (Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Broadway musical, “In the Heights,” was set in Washington Heights.) Viewers may notice the change from last year because the United Palace is a considerably smaller venue — 3,400 seats, compared to 6,000 in Radio City Music Hall, where the ceremonies have been held most years since 1997. But it’s larger than the Beacon Theater (2,600 seats), where the Tonys were last staged in 2016, and more than twice the size of the Winter Garden Theater (1,526), which was the site of the 2020 Tonys (which were held in 2021, because of the COVID-19 pandemic).
Oscar winner/Tony nominee Ariana DeBose will host for the second year in a row. We don’t know, at this point, if a big opening number — along the lines of the one she performed a year ago — was written before the WGA went on strike.
We’ll find out on Sunday.
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