Guest Vituperation at the Tonys
by Sedgwick Clark
My friend and MusicalAmerica.com editor Susan Elliott bequeathed this piece to me the morning after Sunday’s Tony Awards show on CBS. She is rarely shy about injecting her own opinions into Web site pieces—which is one reason the site is so fun to read, in my humble opinion—but in this case, she wrote, “I don’t want to post it on the site because it’s pure, irresponsible opinion off the top of my head.” Which is why I’m pleased to rescue it from cyberspace.—S.C.
Denzel Washington accepted the award for Best Actor in a Play without knowing who was giving it to him: “Who is it that presents these things?” he asked without the slightest embarrassment. The American Theater Wing, you ingrate.
Theater actors strive for eons for these little statues. Hollywood actors take a few weeks off from their latest billion-dollar movie contracts, get gift roles (e.g., Troy Maxon in August Wilson’s Fences) and are rewarded for their marketing power at the box office.
Ditto Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desirée in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. On the Tony broadcast (less so in the theater), she performed the most God-awful rendition of “Send in the Clowns” ever—bringing new levels of nausea to the term “treacly.” Talk about obscuring the composer’s voice with your own affectations—small wonder the show ran into overtime, so long were her dramatic pauses between phrases.
The segment from American Idiot belonged on the Grammy Awards—bunches of quasi-talented punk rockers throwing their heads around to show how incredibly angry, tough, dangerous (pick one) they are. The broadcast’s distorted audio of their segment reminded me of a high school performance of Fiddler on the Roof viewed recently. Then there was the confused and occasionally out-of-focus camera work, inclusive of the show’s overused strobe lights, video screens (yes, it’s come to that, TV broadcasts of stage productions that use video), and all those angry young teenyboppers, looking like go-go dancers let out of their cages.
While it is not without its merits—thanks largely to the Brits and revivals—quality on Broadway is increasingly elusive. The Tony Awards broadcast certainly confirmed that.
My Own Take
In a remote area of New York I tuned in late to part of the Tony broadcast, arriving during the American Idiot segment that Susan didn’t warm to and proving my own alienation from much of the evening’s proceedings by hitting the mute button. I missed Lady Catherine’s “Send in the Clowns” but caught her acceptance speech and ecstatic boast, after thanking her husband Michael Douglas, that she was the one sleeping with him. Unlike the more laid back Oscars, the Tony mode is always in an unseemly race to finish by 11 p.m., and this year it missed the deadline by a couple of minutes. From what I observed, Zita-Jones’s pause-ridden interpretation couldn’t have taken more time than the interminable shuffling on and off of so-called producers (actually, for the most part, investors).
Come Fly Away
If “quality on Broadway is increasingly elusive,” as Susan says, I lucked out Tuesday night at the Marquis Theater with the Twyla Tharp-Frank Sinatra musical, Come Fly Away. Tharp “conceived, choreographed, and directed” this kinetic evening of dance without dialogue, and Old Blue Eyes appears courtesy of vocal tracks of his recordings backed by a live band of fabulous players. Without a storyline, the dancers enter and develop relationships, revealing an abundance of personality, charm, and allure. The less than two-hour duration, including a 15-minute intermission, is perfect. Don’t hesitate to see it.
Psycho at 50
Astonishing as it may seem, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho opened exactly 50 years ago yesterday. I watch it when I can on TCM (if only to hear Bernard Herrmann’s extraordinary score, which is the second main reason I watch Vertigo and North by Northwest so often, too). But my wife, who saw its first run with her sister when she was 11, adamantly refuses to allow it on the screen when she is home. As for the laserdisc and DVD copies I own, they remain shrinkwrapped. AOL ran an excellent appraisal of Psycho‘s influence yesterday and linked the shower scene. It looks so tame now in comparison to its gory successors, and far shorter than I remembered, but PK wouldn’t even consider watching it .