Tony Awards, 1984: La Cage aux Folles

Oh 1984–I have such mixed feelings about the shows of this year.   We’ve got two shows that were duking it out for the win–La Cage, and Sondheim’s Sundays in the Park with George.    The first is socially revolutionary, the second is artistically flawless.

La Cage was an extremely brave show to have out in 1984–an attempt to humanize gay men at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and also a love letter to a time that was about to be over, and also looking forward to how society would change.   In 1984 the idea of two gay men raising a child together was foreign to middle class America, and positive portrayals of gay men were few and far between.   This was right at the time that AIDS was first coming into public consciousness–in fact 1984 was the year that AIDS got its name–before it was known as Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease (GRID).

I don’t think anybody can know what a dark time that was.  There was a disease where the causes weren’t even completely known yet, and whole groups of friends would grow suddenly ill and disappear.   People were afraid and suspicious, and for a long time there seemed to be little progress in understanding much less fighting this disease.   The president was receptive, and homophobia reared its head (one of the first gay jokes I ever heard was that it stood for got aids yet?)   I was just a child then, but I knew I was gay relatively early and in the eighties identifying as gay was akin to signing your own death warrant.

And no, this comedy doesn’t come close to touching the subject of AIDS, but it went a long way towards showing gay men as ordinary people, and putting on a comedy showing things being the norm was so refreshing in that time.   Plus I just adore Harvey Fierstein–his gruff campy sense of humor is all over this show, and that’s the biggest reason it shines.

The score?  It’s ok.  It has one big song I Am What I Am, which despite sounding like Popeye should sing it, is a rousing pride anthem.  It’s really very conservative–very necessarily so, because this show is all about making gay men approachable.  However, sometimes it’s too conservative, many of the songs would have fit in shows 20 years before this, and a lot of the songs repeat.

For all the reasons above this show deserved the Tony.   (Besides it was a smash).  However, I’m divided with Sundays in the Park with George–Sondheim’s most personal creation and his artistic peak.   The score here just shines–the sounds, as odd as they are, fit the show, and in 100 years I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Sundays in the Park was still relevant, while La Cage would seem like a cultural oddity.

Jerry Herman (whether purposefully or by accident) ruffled a few feathers by saying that “the simple hummable tune was still alive and well on Broadway.”   This innocuous statement can be read as thumbing his nose at Sondheim who was known for making music that was most definitely NOT hummable.    Personally, I don’t really get into the whole sophisticated vs. simple argument.  Jerry Herman and Stephen Sondheim are music makers that have completely different approaches and both of them succeed or fail in their own ways and there’s room enough for both of them in this world.

Tony Awards, 1983, Cats

Cats was the behemoth of 80’s Broadway until Andrew Lloyd Weber one-upped himself with Phantom of the Opera.   However, there’s a quote from Angels in America that really fits this show:  “Cats.  It’s about cats.  Singing cats.  You’ll love it.”

I don’t love Cats, but I find the show interesting.  The best way to consider this show is as the best theater for children ever made.   For children, this show is clever, fun, not too challenging, but with a little smidgen of thought that your average ice capades wouldn’t include.   As a Tony Award winning Broadway show—I think it’s a little bit weak.   Not that it shouldn’t have won, this show was one of the biggest of that era, It’s just very very simple, and not always in the good way, a bit too darling for my tastes, and the book could have been written by Spielberg when he was coming off of E.T.   And the whole thing just screams 80’s.    The costuming–how they look like if Kiss had made themselves some cat costumes by way of an 80’s mall.  (I mean look at this group up here and compare them to the USA in Africa group a few years later.)   And each one is just slightly different, so you can buy all the figures!!!!!   Talk about marketing!

This does have the huge song Memory in it–which deservedly is the breakaway song, however much it doesn’t really fit with all the other songs we hear.   Lots of feline dancing, a big junkyard, a tractor tire space ship to reincarnation.   Characters named Rum-Tum-Tugger, and Teacozy and I don’t know what.

Again, like all the other mega-musicals, the star is a thing–here it’s the dancers’ makeup.   There’s no progression, just song after song after song, which get samey after a bit.   Gotta say one thing–Andrew Lloyd Weber certainly knows what to bank on.   This show was HUUGE.

Tony Awards, 1979, Sweeney Todd

There was never any doubt on this one.  Not only is Sondheim the Meryl Streep of the Tony’s getting nominated for any musical urp he lets out, this movie was the trendsetter of that season.

Sondheim switched gears here, and honestly he never made anything like this since–moving away from his character studies, he embraces the dark musical, completely undermining the toothy smiles and tap dancing that Broadway always had in large abundance.  (Want to know what bi-polar feels like?  Just chase this with Annie and you’ve just about got it.)   I wonder if the success of Annie allowed for this to have such an impact–because we’ve got quite another story of an impish redhead living in poverty right here.

We start with a dark undertone, and the darkness never relents.   I’m amazed at how well this play works, by breaking all the rules–by following such a penny dreadful pattern, by having all the characters being ghastly exaggerations.  It’s like watching a funhouse mirror.   The Phantom of the Opera’s ersatz darkness can’t hold a candle to this story.

Oh well, we’re done with the seventies.   Andrew Lloyd Weber is about to bust the door down and start things over again.

 

Tony Awards, 1977: Annie

 

Many of the musicals I have revisited, I grew to like a lot more than I remembered.   Annie, however, is not one of them.  At first, while listening to this soundtrack I almost thought my mind would have changed, but unfortunately no.   Not to say it didn’t deserve a Tony–this musical was an outright smash, and brought the family musical to Broadway (which I have mixed feelings about, but attests to its influence if nothing else.)  Not to mention that Annie laid out the template for Disney which carried all the way through the Disney renaissance (outside of not being an orphan, how is The Little Mermaid all that different?)

Let’s start with the positives–Hard Knock Life, Maybe, Tomorrow, and We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover are all great songs, and quite enjoyable to listen to.   The Herbert Hoover song in particular gives a wonderful view of depression era life which gives Annie a smidge more grounding than it otherwise would have.   Also its sarcastic tone is refreshing against the rest of the score.

Now for the downside–it might be appropriate for Annie’s characters to all be cartoonish–it was based off a comic strip after all–but these characters are really really annoying.   Miss Hannigan is a screeching harpy, the orphans are all cute and winsome, Daddy Warbucks is the grouch with the heart of gold, and Annie is so gosh-darned optimistic and spunky you’ll want to side with Miss Hannigan now and then.

The worst comes in when you get the screechy orphans coming in to sing songs being cute–other than Hard Knock life–their voices are just too shouty and shrill.   Oh and what about the shmaltzy stuff with FDR?   Ugh.

 

Tony Awards 1976: A Chorus Line

In a way it’s a shame that One became the identifying song for A Chorus Line.   When I was a kid I had the wrong impression of the show–I thought it was a silly gold lamé thing where people got in lines and kicked.   Really, the song is supposed to be generic–the characters are singing about the admiration they wish they could get, despite the fact that they are in a line where everyone moves and sings exactly the same, thus erasing their individuality.

And we really mine into their individuality–the rest of the show are all the characters telling their stories–woven into each other in such a manner that this group gets its own identity that’s far more interesting than the 2 minute piece they get to do in the end.   The other song that people might know is “What I Did For Love”  a big schmaltzy song about the love of dancing.  However, contextually the song is supposed to be schmaltzy–the woman singing this song is not singing what she believes so much as what she tells herself she believes.  She has to think of herself as doing a labor of love to make it all worth it.

The stories are mostly about growing up, which makes sense since most dancers are younger.  They are all desperate to get recognition and to get some stability, and they all have worked very hard.   It’s a montage of how all these people from all these different backgrounds have found themselves in the same situation.   The director delves into all their motivations and has them express their stories in a sort of group therapy that’s funny and touching.

The thing is, he’s not delving to get them to pull out a performance from their very souls–he’s delving to smooth out their edges so they can be a conform group where no individual really sticks out.     And the number at the end, as slick as it is, comes off as so much shallower than the group as we see them develop and let out their feelings.    And yet, that finale is very satisfying–it’s hard to say why.

1976 was a very strong season–many could argue that Chicago should have won.   Chicago has certainly eclipsed A Chorus Line, but A Chorus Line so much hit the moment–if you watch audiences you can hardly hear the finale for all their cheering, that I agree with the Tonys on this one.   Chicago is a great musical, but A Chorus Line really knocked it out of the park.

Tony Awards 1975, The Wiz

First, forget the terrible movie version (I swear half my reviews could start this way), the Broadway show The Wiz was an incredibly gutsy show from the start.   First, we get a black musical version of what must be one of the whitest stories there is–and the music is up-to-the-moment in tune with urban music of that time.   Then, their version is the most faithful to the book The Wizard of Oz, most of the things that happen here happens in the book (while the 1939 movie changes quite a bit.)   Third, it’s one thing if they remade some other children’s story, but The Wizard of Oz is such a beloved franchise that if they did the slightest thing off you’d hear howling from New York to LA and back again.

Fortunately they pulled this off perfectly–the music is punchy, the script sly, and there’s this incredible energy that thrums from this show from the design to the actors to the sets–nothing, and I mean nothing, was more deserving of the Tony Award in 1975.

The only unfortunate thing was that this show was so Zeitgeisty that by the time the movie came out (just three years later) the music was already out-of-date.    This was lightning in a bottle–the exact right show coming out with the exact right people at the exact right time.

Unfortunately the movie has none of this charm–we’ve got Diana Ross being the worst Dorothy ever, ugly urban sprawl, and Michael Jackson already doing his creepy man-child schtick (I know there’s people who love him, but I find him disturbing.)    But let’s not let that raincloud spoil this show, which really has it all.

Tony Awards, 1974: Raisin

Can I start out this review to say I love Debbie Allen in just about anything?   She has such a huge personality and adds such fire to whatever she’s in, that even when she shows up in an otherwise mediocre sitcom I have an internal thrill when she shows up.   Debbie Allen has that characteristic where whatever she shows up in, your eye just follows her around to see what she’s doing.

However, this isn’t the Debbie Allen show, this is Raisin, the musical version of A Raisin in the Sun–the play by Lorraine Hansberry.   What we get is a story about a black family trying to move ahead in America.  The father had recently died, and the mother inherited a large sum of money from life insurance.  Of course everybody has ideas as to how to spend it.   The mother wants to buy a nice house–which she does, but it’s in a white community that doesn’t exactly embrace them moving in.   The son wants to open a liquor store.  The daughter wants to go to school.

This show is very likable.    The score is not incredibly strong, but works pretty well despite that, and there’s no faulting the story as providing a backbone.  My only criticism is I simply don’t see the need to musicalize A Raisin in the Sun.  As a play it’s tight and touching and nearly perfect.  The musical lets a little air out of that balloon, just enough to distance the action from the audience so they don’t get drawn in.  Also while the play has a bittersweet ending, the musical’s ending is all out happy–which slightly undercuts the complex issues the story brings up.

Those are only minor quibbles though, of all the shows that year, Raisin certainly deserved a win.

 

Tony Award Winner: 1965, Fiddler on the Roof

I have a horrible story to tell about Fiddler on the Roof.  When I worked in the college library, we would do a fair share of helping with student papers, particularly the 100 levels.  One such composition class had its students every year watch Fiddler on the Roof and write a paper about it.  Very simple, almost high school level.    Most of the papers were incredibly boring, but one student’s paper was one of the most judgmental, ignorant things I ever read. In it she talked about how lazy all the people were there, how they all just sat around singing, how their traditions were stupid, and how her father was a Baptist minister and if they were not going to worship the one and only Jesus Christ, then they deserved whatever treatment they got.

This really doesn’t have to do with the musical, but I just had to put that story out there, because although I knew there were ignorant people in the world, I never thought I would come face to face with such meanness that went along with it.

Fiddler on the Roof is one of the great musicals of all time, in fact I can say if there is one Broadway musical that will be saved from the 20th century, it will likely be this one.   It’s a literary show, filled with allegory, messages, intelligence, and a huge breathtaking scope.   As a kid I didn’t really like it because I did not understand it–that’s one thing about this show, many musicals are easily keyed into by children because they are that basic–not Fiddler, this is very adult, and its meditations on change, on suffering, on aging, on tradition are ones that still resonate today.

The music in it is almost too well known–Tradition; Far From the Home I Love; Sunrise, Sunset; If I Were a Rich Man–you’ve likely heard these songs before.   The music is rich and deep and I have to give Zero Mostel huge kudos for playing the lead–this is not the character he normally plays, and he just wins it.

This is well worth your time.   This is the show you need to see, not necessarily the one you want to–and it will change you.

Tony Awards, 1964, Hello Dolly

 

While everything that became popular in 1964-1965 is usually attributed to the Kennedy Assassination, there’s a strong case for Hello Dolly.   I wasn’t alive then, but after any national trauma entertainment tends to go into an escapist comfort food place.   So while satires on contemporary times were all the rage the last three or four seasons, Dolly is a very traditional musical, not all that different than a Rogers and Hammerstein production.  Not that I’m complaining, the music is incredibly solid, Carol Channing is delightful, and this musical broke a ton of records.

I must mention something about the records here–now on Broadway shows tend to have very long runs–5 years+ for a successful show, back in the mid-sixties a big show might run 2 years, most shows ran less than that.  If you look at listings of Broadway productions around that time, it wasn’t unusual for there to be 20-30 new musical productions a year.  Now we’re lucky to get more than 7.  I’m not saying that this is better or worse, though very often things stick around on Broadway much longer than they deserve to these days.

Also I have to warn you about the movie–people will watch it and get the wrong impression.  Don’t get me wrong, Barbra Streisand sings great here (though Walter Matthau is not a great singer at all.)   However, the movie Hello Dolly is completely different–trying to revive the old style MGM musical–and it ends up looking like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.   The Broadway Musical is much more fun and interesting and just oozes personality.

There’s rumors of bringing this back to Broadway, and while there are oodles of women who would just love to play the part, I’m wondering if they could pull it off.  It’s turned into one of those community theatre shows that has been done nearly to death.    I hope they would work hard to find a fresh new take without ruining the central character.   Nothing else could have possibly won the Tony that year.

Tony Award Winner(s), 1960, The Sound of Music and Fiorello

Well in 1960 there were two Tony awards for Best musical, which is slightly lame because I’m half expecting one year them to say “you’re all winners” and just hand out awards for free.   Anyway, The Sound of Music was the shoo in.  A major hit, and the last Rogers and Hammerstein work, there is something about it that is indelibly classic.   There’s very little I can tell you about it that you don’t already know, except that Mary Martin really works very well in this.  She’s a bit more formal than Andrews, but after all it is the stage, and her voice has a lovely purity that really goes with her character.  All in all it’s the perfect cap to the traditional 3 act musical that R&H perfected, and a glorious swansong.

As for the present (for 1960) we’ve got Fiorello.   This is the sort of Broadway show that could have only have succeeded in 1960, not before and not after.   The optimism here is high even by broadway standards, and it’s simple (and very romanticized) story basically upholds the idea that a hard working everyman can outdo all the grifters and shysters if he just tries hard enough.   The show was a smash, and clearly hit a nerve at the time.   However, it is severely dated  now.  While The Sound of Music is universal, Fiorello is so specific, I can’t imagine it succeeding at any other time, and with any other people.   I don’t have the heart to begrudge this show its Tony though, it’s so exuberant, and while the show is very simplistic, it doesn’t come across as inauthentic.

And for the future, the show that was nominated, and did not win, the indelible Gypsy.  I don’t blame Tony for not giving it best musical, even though it is one of the biggest classics on Broadway.   I love Gypsy, but Ethel Merman’s version is about Ethel Merman more than Mama Rose.   She just about eats it all up–story and all.   For all of Tony’s flaws, I get the sense that they really try hard to give the award (at least at that point) to the best all around show, and avoided giving too many awards to star vehicles.