The Tony Awards

The Lightning Thief isn't bad, you're just mean

Something Old

It’s finally Tony Awards season, and the nominations were announced yesterday. All of my thoughts on this year (and I have a lot of them) will be in the next section, but first let’s dive into the history of theater’s most prestigious award.

The Tony Awards are named after Antoinette Perry, an actress, director, and founder of the American Theatre Wing. When she passed away of a heart attack in 1946, her friends and colleagues in the American Theatre Wing (notably Brock Pemberton) decided to honor her with a series of awards given in her name. Thus the Tonys, an award named for a woman who managed to be a director in the 1930s and yet has only given a Best Direction award to ten women in seventy-three years, was born.

All awards, especially ones in an industry as fake-progressive but fundamentally conservative as theater, are flawed. Even still, I love the Tony Awards and they’re considered one of the top honors you can receive in theater, so we are carrying on.

The first ceremony was held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel on April 6, 1947. Vera Allen, the new chairwoman of the Wing, hosted the evening of dinner and entertainment. They awarded eleven Tonys in seven categories, as well as eight special awards. Over 1000 people attended the first dinner.

During the first two years, there was no “Tony Award”. The winners received a scroll (very cool) and a little gift like a gold money clip for men, or a compact for women (less cool). In 1949 the designers’ union, United Scenic Artists, held a contest for an award model. The winner was a disk-shaped medallion designed by Herman Rosse, which as we all know actually spins on top of its little base.

For eighteen years they continued to host the event in hotel ballrooms, with television coverage starting in 1956. In 1967 The Broadway League (then called the League of New York Theatres) co-presented with the Wing, in front of a broadcast television audience for the first time. It was also the first year that the event was held in a theater (The Schubert). CBS took over broadcasting in 1978, and has aired it every year since.

The Tony Awards have been defined by their musical performances for decades. Traditionally each show nominated for Best Musical or Best Revival showcase themselves in a short performance interspersed between the awards. For the vast majority of people watching at home, this is the first exposure they have to shows and can ignite ticket and/or album sales, especially if that show goes on to win big. I know this from personal experience, since my entire family became obsessed with In The Heights after they performed at the 2008 Tony Awards and it became my first Broadway show the next year. Iconic performances from Broadway stars can go down in history, and ones from the past few decades can be revisited over and over again on YouTube.

Since my “Something New” section is quite long this week I’m going to wrap this up here, but I’ll leave you with some Tony Awards fun facts:

Hal Prince has the most Tony Awards of any individual, with a staggering twenty-one awards.

Audra McDonald has the most Tony Awards of any actor, with six awards. She also is only the fifth person to be nominated in every acting category and currently has nine nominations, more than anyone in history besides Julie Harris and Chita Rivera, who both received ten. As McDonald is only fifty, we can be confident that she will blow past this record soon.

If you look at the Wikipedia section for “firsts,” you can depress yourself by noticing how recent a lot of them are and how many things don’t appear on that list yet.

Something New

This newsletter is usually almost entirely the history section and I keep the news item brief, but this week I am using this as my soap box, so let’s talk about the 2020 Tony Awards.

This year is a train wreck. Mostly for reasons that the Tony Awards cannot control, e.g. the pandemic and the necessary closure of theater as an industry. However, the lack of major financial support coming from the wealthy producers of Broadway for the thousands of unemployed cast and crew members of every theater production in the country leaves a bitter taste as they turn their attention towards awards. This could be turned around if they intend to use the Tony Awards ceremony as a major fundraiser for an entire industry left without means to feed their families, but there are no signs of that so far.

Beyond the failure of wealthy producers and patrons to properly support the people who make theater, the nominations this year are downright comical. While the play categories are well filled out—fifteen plays opened this year, and Slave Play set a new record with twelve nominations—only four musicals opened before the new COVID-induced cut-off date. Unfortunately most musicals aim to open in the spring to pack the maximum punch for awards season, but this bit favorites like Company and Six squarely in the ass. We are left with four new musicals and no revivals: Jagged Little Pill, Moulin Rouge, Tina, and The Lightning Thief. The former three were running at the time of Broadway’s closure whereas the latter had already finished its sixteen-week limited run. The Lightning Thief was the only original score on Broadway this year, since the other three are jukebox musicals.

As could have been widely predicted, Jagged Little Pill, Moulin Rouge, and Tina were all nominated for almost every award. Jagged Little Pill squeaked into the top spot with a large number of acting nominations. Meanwhile, The Lightning Thief was completely shut out from any nominations. This would not be surprising in a normal year, as it’s a comparatively low-budget show aimed primarily at kids. However, as it was the only musical eligible for Best Original Score, this year all score nominations went to plays (a play is usually only nominated if its music is a particular stand-out, like Angels in America, and they certainly don’t win the category). It also had one of only two male leads eligible, so Moulin Rouge’s Aaron Tveit is the ONLY nominee in his category.

So, why did the nominating committee hate The Lightning Thief so much? The show actually got good reviews Off-Broadway, but its low-budget campy charm didn’t translate to Broadway and spawned a slew of bad reviews. That’s not the end of the world, since it was on a limited run and already had a dedicated fan base that was propelling it right back onto tour. I saw The Lightning Thief on its previous tour; I found it charming with a lot of great songs, and actors who were completely committed despite a clunky book. In a normal year it wouldn’t be surprising to see it shut out of the Tonys, and while Broadway’s elitism would continue to annoy everyone below the age of thirty, we would pretty much just move on.

But this year… even leaving aside most of the categories, those two historical exclusions are downright comical. A score category without any musicals? An acting category with no competition? Give me a break.

The nominators had two choices: stick to their strict vision of what deserves a Tony Award nomination, or relax their idea of a great musical and give a few nods to a youthful show. They chose the former, and I think it’s a mistake. Even if you think The Lightning Thief is a terrible musical (which to be clear, it’s not—and even if it was, terrible shows get nominated all the time), it has an incredibly dedicated young fan base that are obsessed with every person involved in the production. Yet again, the Tony Awards Committee demonstrated that they don’t care about young people who can’t afford top dollar tickets. That’s insulting in a normal year, but downright foolhardy this year. No one can buy top dollar tickets right now, you buffoons. You could do with an army of young people dedicated to supporting theater when everyone needs to rely on new methods of production and distribution, but instead they decided to demonstrate once again that those people don’t matter to them. Not to mention that young people grow up to have jobs and buy theater tickets, and the TikTok generation is just not going to be impressed with you reviving The Music Man yet again in 2040.

Some people argue that they shouldn’t give out “participation trophy nominations” just because The Lightning Thief is the only original score this season. But there’s a difference between shoe-horning a show with lower production value to every category and recognizing them for some categories where they did stand out in the field. The Lightning Thief may not have a Sondheim-level score, but it’s solid, original, and a hell of a lot better than the music in The Inheritance. Chris McCarrell is a great actor who happens to be in a show that some people think is juvenile, and he’s a lot better actor than… no one?

Nominating them in those two categories would have invigorated a huge audience that would have tuned in the Tonys, but instead they chose to sour a huge group of people against the Tony Awards as an institution… yet again… during a pandemic when everyone is unemployed and they’re not helping. The American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League are so devoted to their narrow idea of what Broadway should be that they resist rewarding what theater could be, and it’s never been so obvious how little they care about the majority of their workforce and audience than this year.

P.S. I historically go to bat for youth-driven musicals, and I’m happy to do so, but I really wish we could get people who aren’t white men driving these projects. I mean that’s true for literally everything on Broadway, but I would appreciate it if the kids could fall in love with something with more diversity on the creative team next time.

P.P.S. I know I’m kind of describing Six but we’ll get there when we get there, okay?

Something Borrowed

On a happier note, there is an embarrassment of riches when choosing which Tony Awards performance to share. I’m actually going to highlight my favorite opening performance, Neil Patrick Harris's 2013 extravaganza, but you should also check out these stand-out performances.

Something Blue

Today I’m recommending following Laura J. Brown, who is always hilarious and has some of the best/funniest commentary around the Tonys I’ve ever seen.

Epilogue

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