The Tony Awards this year will focus on range, not brand recognition
Reporting from NEW YORK — The nearly 9 million people who tuned in to watch the Tony Awards last year saw the coronation of a pop-culture king: “Hamilton” won 11 prizes and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda gave an impassioned speech about the importance of unity.
Not so this year. When Broadway’s most glamorous awards show kicks off on CBS at 8 p.m. Sunday under the hosting hand of Kevin Spacey, fragmentation will be the name of the game. There is no one phenomenon to bring a diffuse TV audience together — nor to bring in a “Hamilton”-sized audience. Viewership is likelier to be in line with the 6.5 million of 2015.
But the 2017 Tonys ceremony, held at Radio City Music Hall, has a different selling point: a group of wildly diverse nominees that many Broadway observers have called the best in years.
“To use a fitting analogy, last year was a star-driven show,” said Glenn Weiss, who with fellow award-show veteran Ricky Kirshner is once again executive-producing the telecast. “And this year is an ensemble one.”
Many Americans won’t know most of the new shows, particularly the musicals, which have largely yet to break out beyond the Broadway bubble.
But those productions — in part because a few waited out last year’s Hamiltonian monster truck “Hamilton” — arrive in a logjam of originality: the emo social-media high-school musical “Dear Evan Hansen” (starring Broadway’s breakout star of the season, Ben Platt), the experimental Russia-set opera “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” (with Josh Groban), the 9/11-themed foot-stomper “Come From Away” and the philosophically and visually innovative adaptation “Groundhog Day.”
All will provide a range of models to gaze at as the telecast provides each show with its requisite production number, even as many will seem like lesser-known, custom-built jobs.
But how to get viewers to invest? Beyond the occasional Groban or Platt, there’s not much to grab on to.
Producers will try to highlight the element of discovery and give a sense, through television sets, of these shows’ boldness. That includes the flashy on-stage social-media screens used in “Dear Evan Hansen,” the whimsical production values of “Groundhog Day” and, most challenging, the immersive qualities of “The Great Comet,” whose action swirls all around audience members in its Imperial Theatre.
Producers also will lean on personalities who could broaden the show’s appeal. A duet from nominees Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, from “War Paint” (snubbed in the best musical category), will be on offer, as will a number from the already-closed but widely known “Falsettos.” The presence of Bette Midler — adored in her revival of “Hello, Dolly!” — will be leaned on too, especially given Midler has earned her first Tony nomination, as lead actress in a musical.
Producers won’t say whether Glenn Close — one of the theater world’s most translatable stars, who has been wowing this season in a “Sunset Boulevard” revival — will perform in addition to presenting. Because of Tonys rules, Close was not eligible for a nomination for her turn as Norma Desmond.
Other Broadway-connected figures with resonance in the larger culture will appear — “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” actress Rachel Bloom and “Hidden Figures” star Taraji P. Henson — as well as CBS fixtures, such as Stephen Colbert, with very few Broadway ties.
The biggest personality X-factor, however, will be Spacey.
The 1991 Tony winner (as featured actor in “Lost in Yonkers”) is returning to American theater with a special performance of a Clarence Darrow-themed show he’ll perform in the round at the U.S. Tennis Center next week. Having never hosted a major televised awards show before, Spacey was a surprise choice for the Tonys. He was selected in part because Weiss and Kirshner steered the Kennedy Center Honors, where the actor had a memorable turn saluting Al Pacino.
The Tonys has long been presided over by the likes of Hugh Jackman and Neil Patrick Harris; even last year’s first-time Tonys host James Corden was a veteran of live (or live-to-tape) television. In an interview before rehearsals one morning this week, Spacey said he was not cowed by the newness of the gig or the millions watching live.
“I come from the school of thought that hearkens back to Johnny Carson, who never thought about that, the people at home,” he said. “If you win over the room it will broadcast.”
He said he was unconcerned much of the audience won’t have seen the shows.
“You try to be sophisticated,” he said. “And if some of it is a little inside baseball, you hope it can make people interested in following the teams.”
Spacey said he didn’t plan on being political himself, though viewers could be forgiven for expecting some timely jokes from President Frank Underwood.
Despite Spacey’s lack of political ambition for the show, serious issues could make their way into the telecast nonetheless, particularly with the best play category, which is filled with woke nominees, such as Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat,” which underscores the plight of working Americans, and Lucas Hnath’s “A Doll’s House: Part 2,” which uses period drama to put feminism under a microscope.
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That could give the show, as it has given the season, a feeling of political consciousness some viewers might welcome.
“The reason these things feel like a breakthrough is because there’s a gap,” Hnath said. “And when the gap lasts so long, you have new work rushing in to fill it.”
(The ceremony will likely not contain the same mournful notes as last year, when it was held less than 24 hours after the Orlando nightclub shootings.)
Discovery will be an important theme: All of the new play nominees come from playwrights making their Broadway debuts, a nearly unheard-of development in an industry known for clubiness and patronage.
And musical innovation will be something producers hope to convey as well, especially with intricate shows like “The Great Comet” and “Groundhog” that don’t easily translate. One of the biggest challenges will be to ensure that viewers see that and realize Broadway is not the same staid place some still regard it as — its innovation, in other words, is the Tony Awards’ obstacle.
“I love and respect the Tonys shows we did 10 years ago, but it’s very different now; the challenge always seems to be going up,” Weiss said. “Broadway upping the bar has upped the bar for us. It’s energizing to come into a space and say — ‘how the heck are we going to do this?’”
‘The 71st Annual Tony Awards’
Where: CBS
When: 8 p.m. Sunday
Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT
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