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Tony Awards: Video highlights

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:40:00 +0000

In case you missed last night's Tony Awards, here are clips of five of the highlights -- from Neil Patrick Harris's "Spider-Man" joke extravaganza to Mark Rylance's poetic but baffling acceptance speech. For the full list of winners, click here.

1. Host Neil Patrick Harris tries to fit as many "Spider-Man" jokes as possible into 30 seconds:

2. Nikki M. James, winner of the award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical (one of nine total awards taken home by "The Book of Mormon"), gives an acceptance speech that is rambling, emotional, spontaneous -- and delightful:

“The Book of Mormon” leads Tony Award nominations

Tue, 03 May 2011 13:04:00 +0000

When the Broadway season began last year, a big brash musical about Spider-Man was supposed to muscle its way to multiple Tony Award nominations. Instead, a pair of goofy Mormons may be the ones to beat.

"The Book of Mormon" nabbed a leading 14 Tony Award nominations Tuesday morning, earning the profane musical nods for best musical, best book of a musical, best original score, two leading actor spots and two featured actor nominations.

The musical, about two Mormon missionaries who find more than they bargained for in Africa, was written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of "South Park," and Robert Lopez, co-creator of the Tony Award-winning musical "Avenue Q." The trio teamed up with Casey Nicholaw, who co-directed with Parker and choreographed.

It has received 12 Drama Desk Award nominations, six Outer Critics Circle Award nominations and a Fred & Adele Astaire Award nomination, which recognizes excellence in dance. The musical is also grossing more than $1 million a week and is selling out -- the place "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" was supposed to be before its implosion.

Hands off that Tony, Scarlett!

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:10:00 +0000

Hollywood actresses need to stay the hell away from the theater. Broadway is no place for them. At last night's Tony awards, Oscar winner Catherine Zeta-Jones won best actress in a musical for her role in "A Little Night Music," while the best featured actress in a play prize went to the plasticine Scarlett Johansson. Those women belong to the world of perfect studio lighting, multiple takes and on-location shoots -- not to the full-throated world of American theater. As a breed, Hollywood actresses gained stardom by compressing their emotions before the pitiless lens, by flattening their affects -- or, in Johansson's case, sliding by on the slight modulation of one facial expression. It's not fair for them to just swoop on to our stage, let down their hair, stamp about and then steal the spotlight from us.

“Red,” “Memphis” win big at the Tonys

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:39:00 +0000

"Red," the anguished two-man drama about painter Mark Rothko and the timeless tug of war between art and commerce, was a big winner Sunday at the 2010 Tony Awards, receiving the best play prize and five other honors.

"This to me is the moment of my lifetime," said "Red" playwright John Logan.

The play picked up Tonys for Michael Grandage, who won for best director of a play, and Eddie Redmayne, for featured performance by an actor in a play. Redmayne portrayed the young, increasingly disillusioned assistant to Rothko, the abstract expressionist who agonizes over whether to accept a lucrative commission for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York City.

"This is the stuff dreams are made of. Wow," Redmayne said, clutching his prize.

"Red," starring Alfred Molina as Rothko, was also awarded a Tony for best lighting design of a play, best sound design and best scenic design.

"Memphis," the rhythm 'n' blues musical set in the American South in the 1950s, won four Tonys, including best musical. A tale of segregation and integration, "Memphis" was also cited for its orchestration, original score and book of a musical.

Three Hollywood stars, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Denzel Washington and Scarlett Johansson, were first-time nominees and winners.

Everyone hates the Tonys

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Of all the major awards shows, the Tonys may be the most unloved. If the Oscars are the night of a thousand stars, then the Tonys are a mostly dark and windswept night. "People whose names and faces I didn't recognize from shows I haven't seen" -- that's how writer David Marchese described the experience of being backstage at the Tonys on Salon last year. And for most people, that pretty much sums it up; the Tonys are the broadcast equivalent of someone else's summer camp story. Hosted by Whoopi Goldberg.

"Do they even still have the Tonys?" my friend asked the other day. It's a fair question.

Strange but true

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Stew, composer and star of "Passing Strange," which has been nominated for seven Tonys, would have had a tough time pitching his semiautobiographical musical to Broadway investors if it hadn't already done smashingly well at New York's Public Theater. The coming-of-age story concerns a young, gifted and black man called only "The Youth" who rejects his church upbringing in Los Angeles, flees his earnest, Lola Falana-ish mom and heads off to the Netherlands, then Germany. Tossing convention to the skies, the musical explores radical politics, performance art and experimental music, and encourages young Americans to have lots of illicit sex with Europeans. The orchestra -- technically a rock band, some of them from Stew's L.A.-based pop group the Negro Problem -- performs all the songs on the stage. The actors, in a homage to Brecht, move among them, sometimes interacting with the narrator, played by Stew himself, a short, self-described "chubby black man" with odd ears and a fondness for fedora hats. Hooked?

Tales of the other Tony

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:18:00 +0000

Crowds of beautiful people decked out in gorgeous clothing. Music. Dancing. Yes, one of New York's most vibrant communities threw itself an amazing party Sunday night. Unfortunately, the Puerto Rican Day parade was ending just as I was due to take my place on the Tony awards red carpet and await the arrival of luminaries like Donnie Osmond and Doogie Howser.

Bigger stars than Donnie and Doogie also strolled down the ruby rug, but the truth is, the Tonys, Broadway's big toast to itself, are a decidedly low-wattage event. For every star who strolls into Radio City Music Hall accompanied by a chorus of pleading and first-name calling (Liev Schreiber, Ethan Hawke, Felicity Huffman), there are two or three eager thespians who saunter down the carpet at a snail's pace, occasionally glancing over to the press gang with the hopeful look of dogs at the pound. Sorry, Xanthe Elbrick ("Coram Boy"), David Pittu ("LoveMusik") and Orfeh ("Legally Blonde: The Musical"): You haven't been in enough movies for earn the paparazzi's attention and you weren't in the night's big winners, the rock musical "Spring Awakening" and Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia."

Politics as unusual?

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 11:00:00 +0000

Political theater is thriving in America -- just not on our stages. Most weeknights, more than a million people tune in to Comedy Central for a satirical double act by those matinee idols Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Their brand of headline-riffing humor may not have a long shelf life (my "Indecision 2004" DVD has grown dusty), but it acts as a comic purgative to a long day's news cycle. These fake-news shows also enjoy a pedigree of politicized vaudeville (Will Rogers, Lenny Bruce, "Saturday Night Live") and, given the crude theatricality of the current administration, seldom lack for material. "[Bush] is not a very good actor," Arthur Miller noted tartly after Sept. 11. Not for nothing has Washington been called a Hollywood for ugly people.

But what does that make Broadway -- Hollywood for the powerless? When it comes to actual theater -- you know, with tickets, ushers, curtains and the whole live performance thing -- it's harder to spot a tradition of biting political commentary. That's because America doesn't have one. At a time when every aspect of life has been polarized both right and left -- when buying a red T-shirt at the Gap is supposed to fight AIDS in Africa, and SUV drivers support the troops from their bumper magnets -- mainstream drama is still content to be expensive highbrow escapism. Anyway, how can producers expect people to pay $100 a ticket to be hectored for their complacency, when attending a play is already perceived as an elitist, blue-state activity?

Spirit of success

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:00:00 +0000

Usually, when an actress is preparing a role, she avoids seeing previous performances of the part. But Christine Ebersole, widely considered a shoo-in for the best actress Tony for her performance in the musical "Grey Gardens," which opened on Broadway in November after a sold-out run at New York's Playwrights Horizons, says she watched the 1975 Maysles brothers film on which it was based "breakfast, lunch and dinner." And that was before she had any idea the movie was going to be made into a stage show.

The cinéma-vérité documentary by Albert and David Maysles that exposed the deeply dysfunctional relationship between Edith Beale (Big Edie) and her daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale (Little Edie), and the unsanitary condition of their East Hamptons manse (fleas, mold, 52 cats), inspires perversely intense devotion among its fans. For many, the first sight of the formerly glamorous cousin and aunt of Jackie Kennedy eating out of cans, bickering and vamping is akin to a religious experience.

Curtains for musical comedy?

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 11:00:00 +0000

Six years ago, Mel Brooks hit New York with his smash hit phenomenon "The Producers" and inadvertently ushered in a new era of musical theater, one in which the old-style musical comedy -- the kind with a book, lotsa yuks, pretty girls and grandstanding performances -- was rushed back into fashion. For nearly three decades, that sort of feel-good enterprise had been locked in the deep freeze, first by the lumbering domination of the British mega-musicals, then by the heady, medicinal exercises of the atonal Sondheimarati. Brooks reminded theatergoers what they had been missing: fun.

But that era -- which resulted in the long runs of such self-mocking and satisfying shows as "Hairspray," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and "Spamalot" -- may now be over. When Brooks' new stage show, "Young Frankenstein," makes its expected bow on Broadway this fall, it might be too late to enjoy the era its author created, the atmosphere in which a show like "Frankenstein" would blossom. The reason? Two shows: "Grey Gardens" and "Spring Awakening."

Blue Glow

Fri, 01 Jun 2001 17:42:00 +0000

Series

Fox pulls Freakylinks (9 p.m. Fri., Fox) out of mothballs for a few weeks. This is the sci-fi series about a guy who maintains a Web site chronicling paranormal happenings. Can't wait for the next "Survivor"? Here's the kiddie version of "Survivor," Bug Juice 3 (8 p.m. Sun., Disney Channel), a reality series in which 12- to 14-year-olds tackle summer camp in New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Let us return now to the mid-'80s, when pastel linen menswear was cool and Philip Michael Thomas was a household name. Yes, it's the long-awaited "Miami Vice" episode of E! True Hollywood Story (9 p.m. Sun., E!). Carrie greets her 35th birthday wondering if she'll ever find her soul mate on the season opener of Sex and the City (9 p.m. Sun., HBO). A second episode follows (9:30), in which Carrie is asked to model in a charity fashion show and Charlotte finally takes a good long look at herself. Six Feet Under (10 p.m. Sun., HBO), the new series from "American Beauty" writer Alan Ball, is a one-hour comedy-drama about a family that runs a Southern California funeral home. Death, family secrets and suburban existential angst run through this series, which has a fine cast (Peter Krause as the screwup prodigal son and Frances Conroy as the odd, repressed mom are especially affecting) and a habit-forming tone of quiet desperation. Unfortunately, Ball laces the show with the kind of surreal flourishes -- fantasy sequences, dead character who hangs around offering advice to the living -- that have become an overworked staple of "quality" TV; and, hey, this isn't supposed to be TV, it's HBO! It's still a decent piece of work, though, that will do nicely as a Sunday nightcap.