THE TONYS: Meh

The Tony Awards are a week away and … I got nothin’.

Little has really mattered to me this season, which makes me a touch melancholy. I don’t blame producers for mounting what they mount in the hopes it might sell. Times are hard. But this Broadway season mostly interested me not.

The best piece of theater, by far, that I witnessed was the Tony-nominated revival of Ragtime, which I’ve written about, and have now seen twice, and have tickets for a third and final time on what will be (I think) the show’s closing performance in August. I can’t believe it won’t get the Tony for Best Musical Revival, but I wouldn’t bet on that either. Cats, after all, is forever, god damn it.

Of the Best Play nominees, I did see Little Bear Bridge Road and wrote about that here. It really isn’t a great play; it simply contained a great performance by Laurie Metcalf. I hope to see The Balusters because I’ve liked David Lindsay-Abaire’s work in the past, but I’m not revving to go. Giant I frankly haven’t the stomach for — my admiration for John Lithgow is more than counterbalanced by my abhorrence of Roald Dahl. And Liberation recently won the Pulitzer Prize, so it hardly needs moi.

The name-franchise rebranding of some revivals continues to be off-putting: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman; Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror [no Picture] Show. The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess started this business a few years ago and it’s become damned irritating. August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone is quite a mouthful. As for Oedipus (Why not Sophocles’ Oedipus? Well, because this production really wasn’t Sophocles’ Oedipus), I actually saw Oedipus (pardon the allusion). You can read about that here.

Best Musicals? Oy. I caught Titaníque once upon a time in a club somewhere and thought of Stephen Sondheim’s dismissive line about cheap parody: “That’s what we used to do in my dorm room at Williams College.” I watched Schmigadoon! in my own apartment and thought of Stephen Sondheim’s dismissive line about cheap...

Now both are on Broadway. I tittered a bit the first time with each. But not again.

I won’t be seeing The Lost Boys either. Why? Because it’s The Outsiders with vampires. The Outsiders (as I’ve written before), is more than my favorite book, it helped me to find myself as a lost boy of twelve. I couldn’t bear to see The Outsiders as a musical; I certainly can skip it with vampires. (I can’t believe I just typed that sentence).

I did see Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). It’s very nice. I doubt it will win. Too sincere.

I would give all the remaining Tonys to Joshua Henry in Ragtime, if I could. What a performance! I bet he could even play Willy Loman if Scott Rudin wanted him to.

Speaking of which, how about Scott Rudin as Willy Loman?

That I would go to see.