Talking the Tony Awards

Handicapping the Tonys
Who'll win -- and who cares?
New York

You can count on one thing about this year's Tony Awards: The ratings will be lousy. They always are. Theater is an important part of American culture, but it isn't an important part of the life of the average American TV viewer, and even the highbrows who usually tune in the Tonys are more likely to be watching the last episode of "The Sopranos" Sunday night.

For those who care about theater, the news is in the nominations, and more specifically in four categories: best play, best revival of a play, best musical, and best revival of a musical. Of the 35 shows that opened on Broadway during the 2006-07 season, 16 have been nominated in these categories. Which ones will win, and which -- if any -- should win? It is in the answers to these questions that the Tonys offer a crystal-clear snapshot of the sickly state of Broadway.

The shows I expect to win are in italics:

• BEST PLAY: "The Coast of Utopia," "Frost/Nixon," "The Little Dog Laughed," "Radio Golf."


The surprising box-office success of Tom Stoppard's long, demanding trilogy of plays about the origins of Marxism would seem at first glance to bode well for Broadway's artistic health. But "The Coast of Utopia" was produced by Lincoln Center Theater, a nonprofit company far from the theater district whose status as a "Broadway house" is purely technical. New plays are rarely to be found on Broadway anymore: "Frost/Nixon" is a British import and "The Little Dog Laughed" an Off Broadway transfer that flopped, while "Radio Golf," August Wilson's last play, made the rounds of regional theaters for two years before finally coming to New York. Nor are any of the latter three plays good enough to deserve a Tony (though "Frost/Nixon" is vastly entertaining in its shallow way). Except for "The Coast of Utopia," only one new play of real literary distinction, David Hare's "The Vertical Hour," opened on Broadway last season.

• BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY: "Inherit the Wind," "Journey's End," "Talk Radio," "Translations."


R.C. Sherriff's hopelessly dated 1928 play about the horrors of World War I never found an audience and closes tomorrow, but it's likely to win anyway, propelled to victory by voters who see it as a statement against the war in Iraq. "Inherit the Wind" is a bad revival of a bad play; "Talk Radio" a good revival of a fair play. The Manhattan Theatre Club's production of Brian Friel's "Translations," by contrast, was a matchless revival of a great play -- but it originated out of town, at Princeton's McCarter Theater Center, meaning that Broadway gets no credit for its excellence.

• BEST MUSICAL: "Curtains," "Grey Gardens," "Mary Poppins," "Spring Awakening."


"Spring Awakening" can't lose. It's a rock 'n' roll musical about teen angst that's full of four-letter words and simulated sex. Unfortunately, it also has an unmemorable score. So do "Curtains" and "Grey Gardens." So did "Legally Blonde: The Musical" (which was passed over by Tony nominators who found it totally lowbrow). So did every other new musical that opened on Broadway this past season. That's not a fluke -- it's a trend, and a scary one. The only "new" Broadway musical of the 2006-07 season with a strong score is "LoveMusik," and its songs were written by Kurt Weill, who died in 1950. The new songs added to the stage version of "Mary Poppins" aren't bad, but much of the score is similarly recycled from the 1964 movie. Of the Broadway musicals I've reviewed since becoming the Journal's drama critic four years ago, the only ones with new scores that were truly distinguished were "The Light in the Piazza" and "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee."

• BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL: "The Apple Tree," "A Chorus Line," "Company," "110 in the Shade."


This one's anybody's guess. Me, I'd give the prize to John Doyle's revelatory production of Stephen Sondheim's "Company," but it wasn't quite so well received as Mr. Doyle's 2005 revival of Mr. Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd," so my guess is that "110 in the Shade," which got adequate notices (I loved it) and brought the incomparable Audra McDonald back to Broadway, will get the nod instead.

Note, however, that two of these shows, "110 in the Shade" and "The Apple Tree," were small-scale, limited-run productions by the nonprofit Roundabout Theatre Company, while "Company" came to New York from Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park -- yet another sign of creative trouble on Broadway. Fully half of the shows that opened there this past season were produced by nonprofit New York companies, or transferred to Broadway from nonprofit regional companies, or were imported from London.

As for the 16 shows nominated for best-play and best-musical Tonys, seven have closed or are closing shortly, while three others, "Company," "Radio Golf" and "Talk Radio," are struggling at the box office.

All this suggests that American theater is in the doldrums -- if you go by the Tony Awards. But when you venture out of the theater district of Manhattan, as I do most weeks, you soon discover that there's far more to American theater than Broadway. Most of the best plays I saw last season were either presented Off Broadway or by such regional companies as Baltimore's CenterStage, Boston's American Repertory Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Los Angeles's Geffen Playhouse, New Haven, Conn.'s Long Wharf Theater, San Diego's Old Globe, Seattle's Intiman Theatre and Washington's Studio Theatre. That's the new reality of drama in America. When Broadway is good, there's no place better -- but nowadays there are plenty of other places that are just as good, more consistent in artistic quality and infinitely less expensive