A look back at the Tonys

Afternoon all! Seeing as the Tony nominations were announced this morning, I thought I would re-post my thoughts on the awards from the last 2 years to get yourself fired up. To find a full list of this year nominees, click here. Leave a comment with your predictions on who's going to win, and see if you're right in June =)

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June 2016

While it's in my head now, and following on the tradition, I am going to give my reaction to waking up this morning to the news from last night's Tony Awards. The 70th Tonys in fact! And I would like to start by jumping in the deep end with the big elephant in the room. In the room where it happened, Hamilton, the new musical by In The Heights creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, won BIG, winning 11 out of its 16 nominations!

As well as winning Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book (funny as it is completely sung/rapped through, but never mind), it also won 3 out of the 4 Acting in a Musical category: Leading Actor for Leslie Odom Jr as Aaron Burr, Featured Actor for Daveed Diggs as Thomas Jefferson/Marquis de Lafayette and Featured Actress for Renee Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schyler respectively.

Though being a bit late in comparison to the Ham-wagon, I enjoy Hamilton as much as the next person and I'm really happy with all of these choices as I love listening to their moments on the album (particularly Goldsberry as Satisfied is my favourite number), and am looking forward to when it transfers to London in 2017. I guess the only sad thing is that due to the Ham-Monster, the other nominated musicals, including Andrew Lloyd Webber's School of Rock, Sara Barille's Waitress and the interestingly-named Shuffle Along, Or The Making Of The Musical Sensation Of 1921 And All That Followed, didn't really stand a chance....

Onto the musical revivals, while they were mostly shut out due to Hamilton too, there were a couple of lucky wins: firstly the revival of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's She Loves Me won 1 award for Scenic Design, while The Colour Purple won 2 awards, consisting of Best Revival of a Musical and Best Actress in a Musical for Cynthia Erivo as Celie - being British myself, it may be biased saying that I wanted her to win, but holy crap, if you've heard her version of I'm Here, you would understand why! All I'm going to say more than that is that I was SO happy she won, and check her out on YouTube....!

As far as plays go, Ivo Van Hove's production of A View From The Bridge (click here) won 2 Tonys: Best Revival of a Play, and Best Direction of a Play for Van Hove himself - well deserved Sir (click the link to find out more about it). Meanwhile, others that did well were Best Play winner The Humans, and Eugene O'Neil's classic Long Day's Journey Into Night, with 4 and 2 wins respectively.

I think that's it for now, other than it's worth checking out all the performances - the opening number, sung by host James Corden is a particularly good one to watch =)

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June 2015

So, last weekend was the Tony Awards over in NYC so I thought, like the Oliviers, I'd have a little chat about them. Now, I rarely have the time (or money) to be able to go to London very often, let alone New York - at the moment, going there is on the bucket list. However, seeing as the Tonys are the most prestigious awards in the theatre calender, why not talk about them right?

Oh and if you stay to the end, I will give you my personal choices to come from the Great White Way to the Shaftesbury Avenue....

So here we go. The first thing I would like to mention is that it was a pretty good night for the Brits in the play department, with British plays winning both Best Revival of a Play for Skylight and Best Play for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - now here come's a legitimate point because I feel that though I have not seen the Broadway version, this is the only nominated production that I have seen, I have the right to comment about it (click here to read the review  - you need to scroll down, it's at the bottom)! Now when I was seeing Curious, I was reminded just how imaginative theatre can be. You'll only understand this if you've seen it but it was definitely the most intelligent plays I have ever seen! If you haven't seen the play, stop reading and get tickets right now!!!

Anyway, like I said, among its 5 Tonys, it won Best Play (yay!), but also won Leading Actor in a Play for Alex Sharpe as Christopher - now I am not in the least bit surprised if he played it anything like Chris Ashby played him in Salford. Again, if you've seen it - or read the book for that matter - you will understand why that is such a rich role for any actor to play. Like he said in his acceptance speech, Alex picked up his degree from Julliard a year ago, so well done to him!!

This was not the only piece of British news as good old Helen Mirren won her first Tony (!), the Leading Actress in a Play for playing Her Majesty in The Audience, as well as Richard McCabe, winning the Featured Actor award for the same play just like he did in London - well done guys!

Now, as far as musicals were concerned, the ones who won the big guns were The King and I, winning Best Revival of a Musical, and Fun Home, winning Best Musical. Fun Home in the end won 5 awards in total, which also included Best Score and Best Book - this is significant as they were both won by women composers/lyricists Janine Tesori (God I hope I've spelt that right!) and Lisa Kron, which is amazing considering this is normally a testosterone filled category. More on Fun Home will come later, but in the mean time, well done ladies!

As well as winning Best Revival, The King and I had a lot to celebrate in that it won both acting catagories Leading Actress and Featured Actress in a Musical. First well done Ruthie Ann Miles, I'm sure you were great (must have to beat off Bway legend Judy Kuhn and 11 year old Sydney Lucas who looks like a real-star-in-the-making (both for Fun Home)); but I would like to focus now on the show's star. Her name is Kelli O'Hara, and this was her first Tony win.... after 5 other nominations over the past decade! Now, I was starting to feel for this girl because she has a lovely voice and obviously gives a great performance every time to get nominated so often, and I had a horrid feeling that she would be left out this year too, due to 2 VERY BIG Broadway giants also being nominated. Fristly is Kristen Chenoweth for her work in farce On The 20th Century, which sounds like a role made for her! Secondly is the one and only Chita Rivera (the original Anita in West Side Story and Velma in Chicago!) in Kander and Ebb's last musical The Visit - which before I forget, looks really __________ creepy!!!!!!!!! In the end, neither of these musicals got any Tony love, but despite that, it was really nice to catch Kelli's acceptance speech on YouTube the next morning and to see her finally get recognition of what she does and that she deserves.

The final show I would like to give a quick shout out to is the new adaptation of the Gene Kelly film An American in Paris. Now this, as well as Fun Home, was the favourite to win for Best Musical, but instead won 4 awards, all for behind the scenes work (notably for Best Choreography, which I am not surprised about as it is STUFFED with ballet). I would have been a lot more suspicious if this did beat Fun Home for the top prize/if it had managed to sweep the board, but hear me out. The Tony awards were sponsored by this show! Now, I'm not sure if there is any politics behind the voting but am I the only won who feels that the Tony Awards (or Olivier Awards I suppose, or hec, any awards show) NOT be nominated by one of the nominated shows?! Like I said, it didn't sweep the board or anything so I'm not massively suspicious and I'm not one to judge, but I found it really really odd.......

Now, that's all I can think of for the Tony coverage this year, but now I am going to give you my picks for what has debuted on Broadway but (as far as I am aware), has NOT made it across the pond, so here we go:

1. Fun Home - I told you there would be more on this show! Fun Home is based on the graphic novel of the same name, and the life of it's creator, lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It covers her life back and forth from child to student to adult leading to her coming out, as well as her own father's coming out story. I've only managed to listen to the cast recording a couple of times but there are definitely some catchy tunes in there (I will have Sydney Lucas singing Ring of Keys in my head for a week!). I'm glad it won the big one, and I would love to see it in the UK, as I think it is, like Curious, a piece of really creative theatre that London needs
2. The Little Mermaid - Everyone loves Disney right? This show may not have got as much love as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast did, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't come here right...?
3. Aladdin - Now this IS rumored to be coming to the West End next year, but of course, it's not confirmed yet. I just hope it's true; AND that James Monroe Iglehart reprises his Tony-winning performance as the Genie....?
4. Something Rotten - This original musical about the world-first musical won 1 award this year for Christan Borle and his performace as leather-clad-rock-star William Shakespeare (yes you read that right), and again, I have heard a tiny rumour it's going to make a transfer, so fingers crossed. This is definitely one to look out for if you (like me) like shows such as Spamalot and The Producers - it looks HILARIOUS!!!!!
5. Aida - I know this is a lot of Disney produced productions, but this show seems to have been everywhere EXCEPT the UK!! It's been 15 years already, it's about time!!!

So there we have it! Fingers crossed I'll be able to cross New York off the bucket list at some point - but for now, there's cast recordings