TONY Awards, 2004

Thanks for posting this, LW.

Have any of you seen Caroline, or Change? in its current incarnation or off-B'way? I'm very interested in hearing more about it.

I'm assuming you tried a Google search. Also try the Internet Broadway Database:

http://www.ibdb.com/default.asp

Thanks for posting this LW. The only ones I'm familiar with are the revivals.

Tony Kushner of "Angels in America" fame wrote the book for "Caroline, or Change"

Hugh Jackman starring in "The Boy from Oz" may be the only sure bet. He's been on many talk shows recently so that could be somewhat of an unfair advantage.

I saw Caroline, or Change on Broadway last week, and thought it was excellent. I'm not entirely sure it needed to be sung through (more like an opera than a conventional musical), but it worked well enough. Tonya Pinkins is superb, as is pretty much everyone else in the cast, from Harrison Chad as the little boy (who is supposedly based on Tony Kushner himself), to Anika Nona Rose as Caroline's daughter (she won a well-deserved Tony nomination as best featured actress in a musical), to Veanne Cox (in LW's photograph, with Tonya Pinkins) as the little boy's stepmother (she's one of those New York theater actors who toil away for years, always giving good performances and never getting a lot of name recognition).

I've also seen The Boy from Oz, which I thought was absolutely dreadful, apart from Hugh Jackman's performance. I don't think it's ever a good idea to string together a bunch of pop songs and use them as the score of a Broadway musical, and it's an even worse idea when the songs are the kind of dreck that Peter Allen wrote. However, Hugh Jackman gives an absolutely sensational performance, and when he wins the Tony (as he will), it will be because he's giving the kind of performance that people will talk about for years, not because he's appeared on a lot of talk shows.

Thanks for the personal reviews, bree. That's exactly what I was looking for!

I've read several articles about Caroline, or Change, and as I'm an admirer of Kushner's, I'm always glad to hear that his work is being produced. Maybe it will run long enough for me to get to NY again and see it.

Thanks for the tips, LW. I was looking for more eyewitness information.

You could hardly get better or more reliable advice than bree.

You're too kind...

Well, I also enjoy the cheese.

(I know, it's a homonym).

By the way, there was an article in the New York Times yesterday that may be of interest to some of you Tony-mongers. The article was written by Daniel Okrent, the "Public Editor" of the Times (a position that was created after the Jayson Blair controversy, to serve as a kind of in-house critic of the Times and its policies and practices).

In the article, Okrent blasts the Times for the amount of coverage it gives to the Tony awards, calling them "an artistically meaningless, blatantly commercial, shamefully exclusionary and culturally corrosive award competition" (whew!) Essentially, his point is that, because the Tony awards are restricted to shows that are produced in Broadway theaters (not off-Broadway or off-off), they leave out much of the good theater that's done in New York, and serve the interests of the "Big Three" organizations that control the Broadway houses.

Here's a link to the article (which will be good for a week), for anyone who wants to read the whole thing:

There's No Business Like Tony Awards Business

They should include off-Broadway efforts.

Or perhaps give more publicity to the Obies...

That's certainly true.

What an upset. "Avenue Q" did it!

A funny and revealing Washington article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22081-2004Jun7.html

My favorite play was "Raisin in the Sun". As far as the musicals go, I didn't care for any of the music associated with the plays.

That's a bit strange for me, as I love music and dance.

And the winners are:

http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/nominees/winners.html

"Avenue Q's" complete score is a hoot and so is "Wicked" and "The Boy from Oz." Haven't heard the others. The stage presentations came off as a bit rough to me -- not the quality of past years. I think they had a lot of problems that are in the Washington Post article with trying to do this at Radio City.