One Gay More - Stop bitching, les miserables, there were no snubs at this year's Tony's. (or: "What sucked on Broadway that people assumed other people didn't think sucked.")
Okay, theatre people. Let me indulge you: this year’s Tony’s had no snubs. Crazy, right? Wrong.
A Catered Affair was the most boring shit this side of huffing Elmer’s Non-Toxic, which, actually, would yield far more entertaining results. Harvey Firestein: did you really take it upon yourself to adapt a Paddy C. tissue-soaker into a no-intermission non-musical musical? ‘Guess you did. 90 minutes of ballads about being broke. John Doyle’s massively overrated “minimalism” did that shit no help: whoever said art was dead on Broadway was more or less right. When they rolled out that taxi at the dramatic crescendo of the show (spoiler alert - whoops!), I actually laughed out loud. How much did you spend on that effect? It looked like something that rolled in from Sesame Street. Lesson? (1) with few exceptions, actors shouldn’t write and writers shouldn’t act, and (2) Hadassah: The Musical would’ve been a far better title (and a far better show). Keep the Borscht-Belt shit where it belongs: off-off.
Young Frankenstein: The Musical. Not that the title is bad enough, but it wasn’t SPACEBALLS, BLAZING SADDLES, or THE THOUSAND YEAR OLD MAN, all of which would’ve been better material to take a musical out of. $400 tickets didn’t help. A Broadway-centric cast coupled with obnoxious quasi-celebrities (Roger Bart? Megan Mullally? Even the gays can’t stand her…) that don’t pull in tourists can’t help. Alas, greedy producers, a lesson: formulaic big-box musicals are tired for a reason - they’re formulaic, they were tired in the first place. Also, it’s the first musical since Starlight Express that has the potential to turn out at least one new epileptic audience member per performance. Fuck that very literal noise.
Top Girls, the play, is ostentatious as shit, but supposedly one of the greats. But old hat on Broadway mixed with the going-nowhere misogyny that’s prevalent within the Velvet Mafia capos? Send your regards; it ain’t gettin’ nothin’ more. Even the Bluehairs are scared of this one, and they made it through Blackbird. Jesus.
The Little Mermaid. Honestly. Won’t even dignify this.
The Farnsworth Invention? If Broadway is anything, it’s patently uncool. And not that Sorkin is by any means “cool” (Hank Azaria and Jimmi Simpson certainly aren’t), but Sorkin writes with a certain..patois..that can only be described as a feeble attempt to make an audience perceive themselves as more intelligent for digesting more words per second than any other playwright ever has before. It takes moxie. It takes a dickhead. And it’s just as transparent as it is doomed to fail. This play actually had one of the best lines in the season, too (the one about the moon landing, if you were curious). Sadly: the line got the wrong reaction because (A) the direction was off, (B) Broadway’s tourists seeing that show are kind of stupid and (C) local Broadway audiences are far too sharp to be finger-fed their philosophical bite-size rice cakes by the mind who brought you Studio 60. This doesn’t go without saying that most people in this line of fucked-up fandom take that passive-aggressive stance of “if it don’t come from theater, it just isn’t theater” to justify enjoying all the shit they pay $100 for every year instead of just watching Friday Night Lights. But, really, they just write Sorkin off as a TV guy, tried and true, which he is. Bottom line: don’t put an A & E special on Broadway, no matter who the fuck writes it.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is, from what I hear, a “classy” production. Classy didn’t stop one of my friends from falling asleep in it. It wouldn’t be so bad if this were one of my friends who sees theatre routinely; it was one of my friends who doesn’t see theatre at all. And when you make them shell out $200 for the one time a year they see a straight-play on Broadway with a star-spackled cast and a casting concept for what only amounts to a decent show, you deserve to be sent packing with shit in your shoes. It didn’t deserve to be nominated, plain and simple. But that’s not why Cat got “snubbed.” Remember, now, that the same things were being said about Radio Golf last year. And that Thurgood - a show not nearly as good as Radio Golf, with a Big Hollywood Star - is going to get a Best Actor in a Play for Fishbourne. Still following? Showbiz story: in the weeks leading up to the Dreamgirls film coming out, a lot of talk about the original production became a routine topic. I was talking to an agent, and he recounted the following to me: Tony Awards, 1982. Dreamgirls sweeping up. A prominent producer leans over to the agent - “You know what’s amazing about this year? It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Jesus thanked more than the Shuberts.” The agent telling the story thought this was hysterical. Truth? It was fucking racist. And so is much of Broadway, still. They don’t think so, and they wouldn’t.
Sigh. All of that being said: people calling three nominations a snub have their heads up their asses (hence: the arrogance that got these things here in the first place. Awards are just money-wasting publicity whoring on the part of an industry that’s not out of touch so much as just arrogant elite, and attention starved. Bitterness, etc….