The 2024 Tony Awards (2024) We never miss this show every year, even though we never get to see any of the nominated plays or musicals unless someone eventually makes a movie out of them.....
How could we not? Film and TV awards shows, because they all pile up between January and March, start to all look the same.....the same people from the same lists of films and shows reveling in self congratulation and Uriah Heep-ish false modesty.
After all that dust clears, the Tony awards for Broadway shows and performances pops up at the start of summer. And for sheer ego-driven spectacle and...uh....theatricality, no other show equals it.
Liberally peppered with staged excepts from nominated musicals, the show drips in tearful sweat to perpetuate a grand illusion. We're supposed to believe that the Broadway community is one enormous, generous happy family, whose members dote on each other and cheer themselves on as if each one's a loving parent of the other......
Bullshit. We spent our younger years writing plays for theater companies so we know whereof we speak.....
In cold hard reality, theater folk are insecure, ego-driven and addicted to their own personal dramas worse than any opioids. And as they publicly clap their hands bloody in praise of their colleagues, privately, they pray for their failure.
All of this behavior goes on full display at the Tonys.....and even as the musical casts sing and dance themselves into an exhaustive frenzy, for sheer melodramatic pageantry, they can't compete with the groveling self-aggrandizement of the winners' acceptance speeches.
Almost all the winners come fully prepared with a carefully composed, solo one act play. This lengthy brain fart usually begins with their Oliver Twist-Little Orphan Annie childhoods and ends with their redemption and deliverance by the lure of the stage.....plus the laundry list of thanks for everyone they ever met in their life.
We're not denying that this stuff is fun to watch, but here's the elephant in the room.....the ridiculously overpriced elephant in the room.
These Broadway babies babble on about how they're bringing the illumination and perception of the theater arts to the world at large and doing their bit to make us all better people in a better world to live in.
What none of them ever speak of......the cheapest tickets to their shows are in the neighborhood of 70 bucks and prime orchestra seats can run up $300 a seat or more.
Broadway box office is primarily fueled by travel agencies throwing in show tickets as part of their 5 days-6 nights in New York packages. And tourists prefer a couple hours of singing and dancing before moving on the Statue Of Liberty tour.
Like everyone else, we'd love the chance to see these shows in their entirety.....but that would require taking out a second mortgage on our house, and existing solely on pizza crusts plucked out the dumpster behind Domino's....
In a way, the opening of this year's Tonys was the most perfect encapsulation of the entire show. Host Ariana DeBose kicked things off with a generic song and dance number that had absolutely nothing to do with Broadway theater, but did a good job celebrating.....Ariana DeBose. A legend in her own mind.
Then the audience, nominees and winners duly followed after in the same spirit of fake brotherhood and preening pride in themselves.
And that's showbiz, folks! But if you love musicals, by all means stream it for a box-o-chocolates sampler of the current hits......you'll save yourself at least $800,000 in ticket money.....
The Tonys itself? When they stop talking about how their shows improve the world and start talking about how to lower the astronomic costs to see their shows, we'll give them more than....1 star (*).
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