Broadway Blitz

I thought Sean Hayes did a fine job hosting the Tony Awards despite a surplus of tech screw-ups and missed cues. Is it obligatory that every year, the opening musical number has to start with someone's microphone off?

But there were enough nice moments that I wasn't bored…and hey, who would have thought the steamiest heterosexual moment on television this year would be on the Tony broadcast and would involve Kristen Chenoweth and a gay guy? And Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth managed to achieve that rare feat: Being funny as presenters. (For those of you who thought Lane's quip about Passover sounded familiar, you're right. It's a famous line from the Academy Awards uttered there by Mr. Robert Hope.)

As usual, a lot of awards went to people most of us never heard of before for work in shows most of us will never see. But I suspect Memphis won big, not just in the awards department but in the real competition, which is to stage a scene from your show that will make people want to buy tickets. By contrast though, the excerpt from La Cage aux Folles had the opposite effect, at least on me.

I haven't been to New York in a while and have been hoping to get back there before the year is out, maybe before the summer is over. Wish I'd been there in the preceding months so I could have seen some shows and had some rooting interest.