The nominations are in! Some initial thoughts....
*Gideon Glick made a big splash in "Speech and Debate" several years ago. This was one of Stephen Karam's early plays--Karam would go on to fame with "The Humans" (soon to be an Amy Schumer movie)--and Glick was great in it. Though I've not yet seen "To Kill a Mockingbird," having Glick play a child version of Truman Capote just seems right, and having him win a Tony for that particular role seems right (to me), as well.
*Could an adult credibly inhabit the body of a small girl, Scout, in TKAM? Yes, if that adult is Celia Keenan-Bolger. Again, there seems to me to be a cosmic sense of "rightness" to this bit of casting, and if Celia wins, as well, that would be nice. (That said, CKB did *not* make a big splash as Eponine, the show-piece role in "Les Miserables," a few years ago. People have mixed opinions on the Greatest Eponine of All Time. Some throw their weight behind Frances Ruffelle, the oddly shriek-y original, who did win a Tony Award, and who certainly performed with conviction. Some feel the Greatest Eponine was Sutton Foster, or Lea Salonga, or Samantha Barks. You decide. Did you know that, in the original Broadway "Les Miz," the guy playing *Enjolras* won a Tony? Anyway. I digress.)
*"The Prom" is not as smart as it could be. Such talent! Tony winner Beth Leavel! Brilliant musical theater scholar Jack Viertel, the writer behind "The Secret Life of the American Musical"! And the graceful young woman who plays the central lesbian--and who is now actually going up against Leavel in the Lead Actress category....
Viertel knows precisely when a big dance number should happen, when the audience should have an extended moment with the star, and when a subplot should take over for five to seven minutes. He explains this structure in his (fabulous) book. If you mapped the songs of "The Prom" against the songs of--say--"Hello, Dolly!"--you would see that big dance numbers happen in predictable spots, big solos happen in predictable spots, etc. An example: It's musical-theater Gospel that you need to open Act Two with a light, throwaway number, because the audience is still mentally half-invested in Intermission. You don't want a great deal of exposition here.
So--in "Hello, Dolly!"--we get the guy from "Frasier" doing a disposable comic monologue at the start of Act Two. And, in "The Prom," we get one of the lesser comic characters explaining (unnecessarily) some Bob Fosse-esque Rules for Living. Clever. Crafty.
*All that said, "The Prom" relies on a fair number of B-/C+ jokes, and the audience laughs, because the audience has paid quite a bit of money and wants to believe that the thing it is witnessing is actually funny. Also, as the Times observed, the lead gay man has a big solo that should be scorching or dazzling, but that actually falls flat. And Christopher Sieber's number is also a mess--and actually a bit insulting in its stupidity.
*So--I'm always happy to see Leavel on-stage, and again, I thought the main lesbian was terrific. But a Best Musical Tony for "The Prom"? Even a Best Musical nomination? I'm not sure I can get on-board here. More later.
*Gideon Glick made a big splash in "Speech and Debate" several years ago. This was one of Stephen Karam's early plays--Karam would go on to fame with "The Humans" (soon to be an Amy Schumer movie)--and Glick was great in it. Though I've not yet seen "To Kill a Mockingbird," having Glick play a child version of Truman Capote just seems right, and having him win a Tony for that particular role seems right (to me), as well.
*Could an adult credibly inhabit the body of a small girl, Scout, in TKAM? Yes, if that adult is Celia Keenan-Bolger. Again, there seems to me to be a cosmic sense of "rightness" to this bit of casting, and if Celia wins, as well, that would be nice. (That said, CKB did *not* make a big splash as Eponine, the show-piece role in "Les Miserables," a few years ago. People have mixed opinions on the Greatest Eponine of All Time. Some throw their weight behind Frances Ruffelle, the oddly shriek-y original, who did win a Tony Award, and who certainly performed with conviction. Some feel the Greatest Eponine was Sutton Foster, or Lea Salonga, or Samantha Barks. You decide. Did you know that, in the original Broadway "Les Miz," the guy playing *Enjolras* won a Tony? Anyway. I digress.)
*"The Prom" is not as smart as it could be. Such talent! Tony winner Beth Leavel! Brilliant musical theater scholar Jack Viertel, the writer behind "The Secret Life of the American Musical"! And the graceful young woman who plays the central lesbian--and who is now actually going up against Leavel in the Lead Actress category....
Viertel knows precisely when a big dance number should happen, when the audience should have an extended moment with the star, and when a subplot should take over for five to seven minutes. He explains this structure in his (fabulous) book. If you mapped the songs of "The Prom" against the songs of--say--"Hello, Dolly!"--you would see that big dance numbers happen in predictable spots, big solos happen in predictable spots, etc. An example: It's musical-theater Gospel that you need to open Act Two with a light, throwaway number, because the audience is still mentally half-invested in Intermission. You don't want a great deal of exposition here.
So--in "Hello, Dolly!"--we get the guy from "Frasier" doing a disposable comic monologue at the start of Act Two. And, in "The Prom," we get one of the lesser comic characters explaining (unnecessarily) some Bob Fosse-esque Rules for Living. Clever. Crafty.
*All that said, "The Prom" relies on a fair number of B-/C+ jokes, and the audience laughs, because the audience has paid quite a bit of money and wants to believe that the thing it is witnessing is actually funny. Also, as the Times observed, the lead gay man has a big solo that should be scorching or dazzling, but that actually falls flat. And Christopher Sieber's number is also a mess--and actually a bit insulting in its stupidity.
*So--I'm always happy to see Leavel on-stage, and again, I thought the main lesbian was terrific. But a Best Musical Tony for "The Prom"? Even a Best Musical nomination? I'm not sure I can get on-board here. More later.
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