Sunday, June 5, 2005

CO-HOSTED BY BILLY CRYSTAL'S EGO: A few thoughts on tonight's Tony Awards:

1. The award for Outstanding Performance by a Garment in a Supporting Role goes to Bernadette Peters' brassiere.
2. I know the scenic design awards are presented in the pre-show, but could you maybe show us a quick shot of the design work? And I'm shocked that the brilliant design work in Act II of Glengarry was not recognized.
3. Anne Hathaway, you need to talk to a hairstylist. Bangs may work on Ian Somerhalder or Benjamin McKenzie, but not you. Also, green flower? Not a good idea.
4. I know it's hard to do snippets of the nominated plays that work on TV out of context (especially when one of those plays is a Mamet play in which every third word is not TV-safe), but is it too much to ask for something from the play?
5. Wow, this is David Mamet's first Tony award? Yep. Glengarry got beaten by Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing in 1984, and Speed-The-Plow got beaten by M. Butterfly in 1988. American Buffalo didn't even get nominated.
6. I don't know what was more shocking about the necrology--the general lack of applause or the lack of inclusion in the main necrology of Jerry Orbach? And could the post-necrology number have been any worse photographed?
7. The shocks of the night? Bill Irwin beating Brian F. O'Byrne and James Earl Jones in Lead Actor in a Play and the complete shut out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from the tech categories.
8. I was not overly impressed by any of the musical performance numbers. While the Spelling Bee number was hysterical, it was not particularly strong on the singing. And Spamalot's supposed to be hysterical, but the number turned into a generally uninteresting AI sendup. "Great Big Stuff," from Scoundrels, was so heavily bleeped and edited as to be incomprehensible. This is in sharp contrast to last year, in which Avenue Q's "It Sucks to Be Me" had the audience in stiches, and Wicked's "Defying Gravity" tore the roof off the sucker.
9. Dan Fogler's acceptance speech for Featured Actor in a Musical is a solid contender for the coveted "acceptance speech of the year award."
10. It's a pleasure to watch an awards show that spreads out the love rather than letting one show sweep everything. While Doubt dominated the play side of the awards, the musical awards were spread out over a wide variety of shows.
11. What's unusual about the Tonys is that the obligatory "you're great!"s to the other nominees never feel forced, as we saw with John Patrick Shanley's and Cherry Jones' acceptances for Doubt, both of whom gave due dap to their chief competitors.
12. Aretha Franklin does not look well.
13. Man, David Yazbek has a really big head. Maybe even bigger than a fivehead, it could be a sixhead.
14. Show most likely to be announcing a quick closing? Sweet Charity, which got shut out, despite being in what may be the least competitive category in years--revival against La Cage and the long-closed Pacific Overtures.
15. Worst taste in jackets for the night goes to Python Eric Idle, who didn't get an acceptance speech at all.

All in all, an entertaining show, but certainly a step down from last year, which was oodles of fun and comedy.

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