Finally had time to watch the Tony Awards. What a good show…and my sense is it's just gotten better and better since CBS dropped that silly two-hour time limit and let it go three-plus. The ratings were up a bit…amazing since there were few Big Stars nominated. And as I scan the web, I see generally rave reviews, especially if you discount the homophobic ones.
Neil Patrick Harris may well be the best award-show host in the business…not that there's a whole lot of competition for the title. He's funny. He can sing and dance and he seems to have the knack of getting first-rate Special Music Material. He also doesn't act like it's The Neil Patrick Harris Show. The Oscars tend to be all about the host for about the first fifteen minutes…then he or she largely disappears and the show is low on cohesion. Mr. Harris was nicely present throughout the proceedings without dragging your attention away from what the evening was all about.
What it's about, or course, is selling tickets to Broadway shows. The awards are nice and it doesn't hurt any show's ads to be able to say "Tony-Winning." But you don't tune in for that because you haven't seen all or probably any of the shows and don't know who half the nominees are. The Tony telecast is basically about what's currently playing and why you want to go see it. I thought the numbers from Sister Act, Anything Goes, The Book of Mormon and especially Catch Me If You Can did the job there. The number from Spider-Man looked pretty uninteresting…and I guess that's a problem they have promoting it. The special effects and flying can't just be done in any old theater.
My favorite parts? The opening number, singing about how Broadway's not just for gays anymore — like something's changed — was terrific. It got me to wondering to what extent a show like this helps the part of America that's uncomfortable with homosexuality get a little more comfy. Granted, a lot of those who need to stop agonizing over the fact that there are gay people on this planet are not going to be tuning in the Tonys…but some are and tolerance can be viral, spreading (albeit slowly) from one bigoted soul to another. A friend once told me that his father had been prejudiced against gay people until he figured out that Paul Lynde was gay. Yeah, you had to be pretty slow not to figure that out the first time you saw him but some folks are maddeningly slow. The father had to stop hating homosexuals because he couldn't bring himself to hate Paul Lynde.
I also liked the number from Catch Me If You Can, the latest disconnected Mark Rylance acceptance speech, the performance from Company and the fact that some of the presenters actually said things that haven't been said by dozens of other presenters at other awards shows. A nice show. If only they all could be that good.