Greg Stepanich

Dreadful Tonys show was a disservice to theater

It's not fashionable any more, but I always watch the Tony Awards, largely out of solidarity with all the friends I used to have when I did a lot of theater.

There's something truly special about live theater, and it's only when I go back and sit in an audience again am I reminded how enlarging an art form it really is.

The Tonys have the same problem the other major award shows do — a very small pool of works is up for all the honors — and there's something faintly silly about entertainers dressing up to be saluted by their peers. Yes, part of it's for the audience at home that they don't see, but nonetheless there's a good deal of phoniness connected with these shows.

Still, the Tonys are my chance to hear a little bit of the new music that's playing out on Broadway, see some production numbers, and check out some of the dramas. I always look forward to it despite how geeky it is; it's always worth getting a small taste of what's going on out there in that universe.

But this year's show was without question one of the worst Tony broadcasts I've ever seen, as well as a terrible awards show in general. It was not only frustrating to sit through, it was actually disrespectful to not only this group of creative artists, but the arts in general.

I know: It sounds dumb to defend people who are in many cases big stars, and I don't want to say we need to genuflect in front of theater people because what they produce provides solace and enlightenment, belly laughs and righteous anger. Far from it, especially when we consider all those anonymous folks who do the heavy lifting in society and keep it running smoothly.

But for heaven's sake: if you're going to put on an awards show, at least treat what you're awarding seriously.

The big problem with Sunday night's broadcast is that it gave us virtually nothing that made some Tony Awards shows in the past worthwhile — actual excerpts from the plays, substantial portions of the music — and gave us a bunch of useless stuff we didn't need, such as Hugh Jackman's solo piece, as well as his duet with Aretha Franklin.

We heard virtually nothing of the plays (in the past there have been good chunks of a scene) and saw an In Memoriam section in which major figures got a second or two of silent headshot exposure. But worst of all:

Thanks for everything, now hurry up and get off the stage. Edward Albee, one of the nation's most important playwrights of the past three decades, gave a very short, gracious speech in recognition of his lifetime achievement award. But he had to speak it over music, implying that he was out of time before he even started. He deserved more time to speak, and his time should have been preceded by about 5 minutes of career retrospective: scenes from plays, a review of his work.

Major figures died last year, but we can't tell you what they did. Lyricist Fred Ebb and composer Cy Coleman were among two major writers who died last year, but we didn't get a chance to recall what they'd done. Coleman in particular deserved a couple minutes of retrospective, so we could hear the contribution he made and weigh its impact on the present. That's the way we come to understand what a living tradition is all about.

We love regional theater, but only for a second. Minnesota's Theatre de la Jeune Lune got a couple seconds of stills and exactly one sentence of live airtime before the camera panned away to something else. Again, it wouldn't have killed anyone to devote two or three minutes of airtime to the work of this group. We would have enjoyed it, and most likely we would have learned something.

Next year, keep the production numbers from the major musicals, but get rid of most of the revival numbers. Don't let the host do anything but host, and don't bother adding celebrity singers coming on to sing a show tune. Give us play excerpts, dance excerpts, real time with the regionals.

People who work in art forms that aren't mass culture anymore need to educate us every time they get the spotlight. Show us why theater is a vital art, and most importantly, give us some sense of how good the best of our fellow Americans are at this, and why they do honor to their country when they're at their best. Our arts culture tells the rest of the world a lot about what kind of nation we are, what kind of people we are, what we think about, giggle about, sing about.

It certainly should say we know enough about our own artistic traditions to give them the proper respect when it's their time to stand up and be recognized.