Tin Speaker

Check the nomiroonios here (or here if you don’t want to support the godless Commies at the NY Times). Let’s consider the nominees for Best Musical, Best Play, Best Musical (Revival) and Best Play (Revival). Predictions, too!

The Tony Awards always come with a bit of a disconnect for me, since I obviously don’t get the chance to see most of the potential nominees. Does that stop me from having strong opinions, shouting at people in the street, and spreading hateful rumors about Awards committee members? Of course not.

Let’s start with Best Musical. Did no one see the musical I put on a few weeks ago when my roommates were both away? It was pure magic. The score, at least, should have put it ahead of the tripe that is Rock Of Ages. Whatta load of bacon fat. Besides that, though, I’m sure these are all fine productions, but I’ve not seen a one of them. And I really am a bit surprised about Rock Of Ages. I’ve never been one for hair metal. The winner will be Billy Elliot (even though where’d the extra ‘t’ in the title character’s surname go? Elliott, fool. Or else Eliot, if you want to go T.S. or George (okay, Mary Anne) style).

Best Play … hey, I actually saw one of these! Dividing The Estate! Whoo! Except I didn’t think it was that good. I just didn’t care about the characters. All they did was yap about dividing the estate and getting that paper, and, okay, great, these people are greedy and they’ve lost the old values that used to make this small town so wonderful, but why do I want to spend my money (well, only $20 for a student ticket, but still) and time watching a bunch of rump roasts run rampant? The only characters I actually liked — the old, white matriarch and the old, black servant — ended up dying (What, were you going to see the play? Come on, you’re not fooling anyone), so I really couldn’t catch a break. There was at least one moment of beauty, though. When those two were the only ones on stage, earlier in the play, I could feel their world-weariness and acceptance of the changing world, and I got a real sense of wisdom from them. I took this as a testament to the actors’ skill. Well done, Arthur French and (especially) Elizabeth Ashley. I have to cut Dividing The Estate some slack, though, because I did come in with rather high expectations. Old Brantley over at the Times practically spilled his coffee all over his nice new slacks in his rush to praise it. Given his review, I was expecting another August: Osage County. Of course, that sort of expectation can almost never be fulfilled, so I guess I will say sorry to Dividing The Estate for not approaching it with an open enough mind. Sorry, Dividing The Estate. Also, Mr Brantley said that the play was really super hilarious, but … not so, I fear. I think it may have just been old-person humor that wasn’t ironic or subversive or derisive in the way my twentysomething mind is attuned to expect from comedy. Oh, modernity!

I also saw The American Plan, which wasn’t terrible, but which didn’t exactly thrill me, either. Maybe it was just the setting (Catskill Mountains, 1960), but I found the acting to be somewhat less than believable; I just couldn’t imagine people actually talking like these people (the three younger characters, specifically — not so much Mercedes Reuhl (though her accent was not exactly familiar) or Brenda Pressley). The first act, especially, bored me a bit. It picked up in the second act, though, so it wasn’t a wasted evening. I’m still not surprised it wasn’t nominated. In the binary rating system (1 or 0, yea or nay, thumbs up or thumbs down — popular among computers, Congress, Vice Magazine, and Roger Ebert), Dividing The Estate and The American Plan would each get a zero, from my broke perspective. If you’ve got money to burn, though, then I would say go for it (except both plays closed already). As for the Tony, God Of Carnage will win, no doubt.

Best Revival of a Musical is a wild one, no? Haven’t seen any of these, either. I would like to see Hair, though, or West Side Story. I remember old Michael Cavanaugh in Movin’ Out, that was pleasant. That’s all I have to say about that. This could be a tight race between WSS and Hair, but I see the hippies pulling out a victory.

Now comes the most interesting category – Best Revival of a Play! Wheee! I’ve seen all four of the nominees in this categ… what? They didn’t get nominated? None of them? Wow, some year for revivals, huh? Wait, not even The Seagull? Are you su…? Okay. Wow. Hmmm. I guess I have some catching up to do, then. All right.

Wow, actually, thinking back now, practically all I saw these past months were revivals of plays: Equus, Boys’ Life, The Seagull, Speed-The-Plow, Desire Under The Elms. Plus I’m going to see Mary Stuart next week and I’ll almost definitely see Exit The King at some point, too. Hornblower loves him some revivals (this is a(n?) historic(al?) fact: all-time favorite is Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? with Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin (and Mirielle Enos, for any fans of Big Love out there (or anyone who has seen that episode of Medium where Ms Enos’ character drowns her baby or something … not a fan of that show)); August: Osage County is a close second, though, so maybe this theory is crappo).

I’m sure the nominees are all fantastic, but I don’t see how The Seagull got blanked. The production seemed perfectly composed from the Chekhov factory, each element exactly calibrated to realize the full dramatic potential of the play. Seeing The Seagull made me judge other plays more harshly, not forgiving actors’ laziness or failure to commit fully to the scene. Desire Under The Elms, with its suspended house, giant boulders and electronic music score, seemed pretty cool when I saw it, but next to The Seagull it seems a tad overblown. I still enjoyed it a lot, as you already know (right? right? right?); perhaps an apt analogy would be that Desire::Seagull as The Dark Knight::Casablanca. Except that TDK and Casablanca are way apart, genre-wise. Whatever.

Anyway, Joe Turner’s Come And Gone is supposed to be fantastic, so that’ll win.

Stay tuned for my totally uninformed, biased and amateurish thoughts and predictions on the other categories!

This entry was posted on 06 May 2009 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Raspy Thoughts. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: 33 variations, billy elliot, boys' life, broadway, daniel radcliffe, dividing the estate, entourage, equus, god of carnage, hallie foote, harry potter, horses, horton foote, jane fonda, jason biggs, kristin scott thomas, mackenzie crook, nominations, predictions, richard griffiths, rock of ages, snub, the dark knight, the seagull, tony awards, tonys