2019 Tony Award Nominees

[+ purplekow]

On one hand, I love Stephanie J. Block. (I saw her in the Falsettos revival a few seasons ago - she was fabulous.)

 

On the other hand, last night's musical excerpt was embarrassingly bad. I've settled on the following description: "a Chippendales routine, headlined by a drag queen who was still recovering from serious dental surgery."

 

I suppose it also didn't help that I HATE THAT SONG!!!!!!!! (But that has nothing to do with her odd performance, or the staging of the number itself. It just made it that much more annoying to me, lol.)

 

(Fun fact - for a long time, I though that song was about promiscuity. "Do you believe in love after love after love..." I never got that the first "L" word in there was "life." Regardless, i still find the song to be supremely annoying.)

I believe it was the Kennedy Center Award in which Adam Lambert did a version of Believe that brought a tear to Cher's eye and a lump to my throat. It is not a great song, but he did a great interpretation. Worth Googling youtube believe Adam Lambert. The next one to come up was Cindy Lauper and Adam doing I Got You Babe and then Adam And Leonna Lewis doing Little Big Town's I Got a Girl Crush. All three were a delight to the ears.

Edited June 11, 2019 by purplekow

[edjames]

Viewers for Sunday night's telecast was 5.5 million. An ALL TIME LOW for the telecast and a 15% drop from last year1

[bostonman]

Viewers for Sunday night's telecast was 5.5 million. An ALL TIME LOW for the telecast and a 15% drop from last year

 

I tend to think that if I weren't in the biz and/or wasn't such a diehard theatre person in general, I might have hit the remote after the tdious, sloppy and pointless opening number and the overbusy (and musically sloppy) Temptations medley. Not very encouraging.

 

But really, I think the expectation is that the ratings are never going to be exactly stellar, even if this year was worse than usual.

[bostonman]

A few thoughts on some of the other performances:

 

Choir Boy - LOVED it - though I tend to wonder (similar to the Hadestown medley) if the action was just too confusing out of context.

 

Hadestown - likewise, confusing to watch, even though I love this material. (And this is the show I was rooting for the most.) However, everyone sounded great. And hey, I could listen to Reeve Carney sing "I'm comin'" all night lol.

 

The Prom - sorry to say, my only impression is that it's a quasi-retread of Hairspray. And Hairspray has much better songs.

 

Beetlejuice - much more entertaining than I expected - makes me want to find out about the rest of the show. Though I've heard a lot of negative things, so we'll see. I've also decided that at some point, Alex Brightman should play the multiple D'Ysquiths in A Gentleman's Guide.

 

Oklahoma! - I should have expected this, knowing what I know of Fish's direction, but why the hell were they all so angry? Ali Stroker, however, is an inspiration, and her acceptance speech had me crying. I like the new orchestrations (and in fact, the choral arrangement for the title song sounded just about the same as the iconic original one - it was nice to hear them NOT futz with that).

 

Kiss Me Kate - I only wish they had had a little more time to do more of the vocals and build the number a bit more. But I liked the dancing. And speaking of futzing with scores, it's so nice to hear this arrangement, sounding more in the spirit of the original (the 1999 revival version kept flirting with a quasi-West Side Story tonal world, which I really don't get.) Love the solo clarinet writing.

 

Tootsie - let me start by saying that ever since I first heard the CD of The Full Monty, I've been an instant David Yazbek fan. I adore the score to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, I think that Women On The Verge is very fun (and deserved a better break), and The Band's Visit is absolutely gorgeous and very emotional. I can't name you one song in any of those shows that doesn't excite me in some way. And then there was that very disappointing number from Tootsie. I'm hoping that the rest of the score is better (I haven't had the chance to spend time with the recording yet), but I hope they just picked the wrong number to showcase. A real letdown.

 

Be More Chill - well, we were told there wouldn't be a number from this show. But then Corden (or should we say "Ja-ames?") started singing one, ("MIchael In The Bathroom") with new lyrics that composer/lyricist Joe Iconis didn't write. At first I wasn't sure what this was supposed to be - until Groban and Bareilles joined in, and then it really did become fun. Really loved this. My only complaint, indeed, is the sloppy title lyric. "Corden" actually has 2 syllables to match the original song's "Michael" - why they settled on "Ja-ames" I don't know. That's amateur parody writing at its most flagrant.

 

Best performance of the evening - hands down - the classy arrangement of "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" movingly sung by Cynthia Erivo and accompanied by a wonderful chamber group. (Loved the string writing.) It was a fitting accompaniment for the "In Memoriam" segment. If only the cameras could have been more respectfully still.

Edited June 12, 2019 by bostonman

[+ sam.fitzpatrick]

One of the things I noticed about the production is that there were several times that the camera angles told me the cameraman had to be on stage. If I had been in the live audience, it would have bothered me that I've made the effort to dress for the occasion and the camera crew is ruining the production.

[RyanDean]

@bostonman: I'm a big Yazbek fan and this one's good but definitely not great. Everything feels a bit on the nose, though tentatively so, which is weird. In performance, the only great song is Sarah Stiles' solo. A tour-de-force comic masterpiece ala Benanti's solo in Women on the Verge. But Tootsie shines (and fades) on the strength of its supporting cast and the really funny material they're given to play with. (I'm of the mind that both SF and SJB got the big prizes because they're exceptionally gifted and charismatic troupers who made impossible roles and innumerable quick changes seem effortless.)

 

And Beetlejuice is actually surprisingly fun, with excellent work from the whole cast. What Brightman does with his voice is really effective. (Heard an interview about how he developed the sound; really cool.)

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

This year's show was just crap. So bad in fact that I couldn't watch it all at once, even fast-forwarding.

 

Why they didn't have SJB sing The Way Of Love is beyond me. She sounds great on it:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/theater/tony-nominations-concert.html

Be More Chill is a grand experiment gone wrong... And their producers didn't want to bid on a Tony slot. I don't see it lasting much longer, even with a small, but vocal fanbase.

 

Oklahoma tries so hard. You can see the actors working feverishly to squeeze new meaning out of a very, very dry lime.

Beetlejuice is better when you're drunk. I have a friend in it, so I've been more than once. The first time was sober and absolute crap. The second time was with a few double G&Ts in me. While it's still a show better suited for a theme park, it was an easier pill to swallow when the poop jokes make me chuckle.