This past weekend, Broadway
celebrated itself with the annual Antoinette Perry awards. Although, in this
era of streaming and binge-watching, no televised awards show can hope to
capture the Nielsen ratings it once enjoyed, for the viewing public the Tony
shindig is still the most entertaining of the bunch. Partly this is because those
savvy Tony folks give out their less exciting awards during commercial breaks,
so that we at home never have to sit through the honoring of the year’s best
sound designer or lighting maven. And each host is carefully selected on the
basis of sparkling personality, musical talent, and for being a familiar
living-room presence. For years, Neil Patrick Harris was the go-to Tony host,
and he made an amusing cameo appearance in 2019. Lin-Manuel Miranda has also
ably taken on the job. But in 2019 the role of the MC went to the ebullient
James Corden, who nimbly presided over the festivities on the gargantuan Radio
City Music Hall stage.
The Tony event, needless to
say, is always a celebration of the joys of live theatre, as epitomized by
Broadway. In fact, Corden’s splashy opening number emphasized the fact that
“This is live! . . . We are alive!” In other words, part of the excitement of
Broadway (ideally, at least) is its freshness, its spontaneity, its sense that
anything can happen. (Of course there are also drawbacks: cramped theatre
aisles, iffy air conditioning, rude seatmates, an endless line to the ladies’
room at intermission.) Award-winning actors are always insisting that the
theatre is their true home. Still, it remains true that many of Broadway’s
brightest stars spend most of their time on the tube. See, for instance, the
great Audra MacDonald (currently a regular on The Good Fight) and Laurie
Metcalf (The Conners), as well as Corden himself. Though this jolly Brit
was first introduced to America in 2011 as the Tony-winning star of an updated
Italian farce, A Man and Two Guvnors, he is today known and loved by
millions for hosting The Late Late Show, home of both “Carpool Karaoke” and
the even wackier “Crosswalk the Musical.”
Because TV is his bread and
butter, it makes sense that Corden’s opening number amusingly tap-danced around
the love-hate relationship between the stage and the screen. “We’re much better
than television,” he said at one point. In the next breath, he and his fellow
thespians quickly pointed out some exceptions to this statement: Game of
Thrones, Fleabag, Mrs. Maisel, Big Little Lies. And so on, and so
on. Eventually, Corden was forced to admit the truth: “We love you, TV . . .
you pay us so much more.”
This being so, it was no
fluke that some of the nominees in major categories were movie and Tv
personalities, whose box-office clout could help their stage shows to thrive.
Among this Best Actor candidates were two genuine Hollywood stars appearing in theatrical
versions of beloved movies. Jeff Daniel was cited for playing the Gregory Peck
role in To Kill a Mockingbird. (Yes, I know it was a novel first.) And Bryan Cranston, the ultimate Tony
winner, took on the part made famous on screen by Peter Finch, that of the
half-crazed news anchor in Network, he who’s “as made as hell and . . .
not gonna take it anymore.” Leave it to smart producers to understand
that the ticket-buying public prefers familiar faces and familiar plot lines.
And, in some cases, familiar costumes. Like the va-va-voom outfits that brought
80-year-old Bob Mackie a Tony for this year’s The Cher Show. Yes, we’d
seen them before.
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