THE TONY AWARDS (SPOILER)

[EricMontreal22]

It's not just my love of Sondheim--but I think the whole Porgy and Bess revision is misguided. The opera is troublesome--absolutely. But I don't feel like the changes (and full disclosure I've only seen a bootleg) really help them. And they totally ruined Gershwin's own orchestrations, ruining half the drama from some of the best musical moments. The new take on Bess doesn't make sense with her fate, her telling the people off makes even less sense. It almost makes like her final leaving Porgy as celebratory. The fact that the producers call it The Gwershwin's Porgy and Bess (which ignores the point that most of the lyrics were not by Ira, but by Dubose Heyward, who wrote the original play and the libretto) just is head-shaking.

[EricMontreal22]

Ha! Here I am I think it just raised box office. It's a glorious show, to be honest, but (and I've only seen bootlegs) the changes do it no favour, and the set is horrible--the leads make it. Audra, singing Bess was set to win a Tony from the start. The show is troubled in any way you do it, but I think the changes made to it actually in a weird way make it more racist (I'm only partially black and I'm sure that doesn't give me any excuse to say that but oh well). Sondheim was right though--the best, and main, lyrics (Summertime, My Man's Gone Now, Bess, You Is My Woman Now) are all by DuBose Heyward, so the "Gershwins" title is just odd.

Sondheim's main beef was that they did sell it as offical. I think if they had simply called it, as it is, Diane Paulus (her being 1/3 black herself)'s Porgy and Bess there would have been no issue. But that probably has to do with right issues.

[EricMontreal22]

I've never been a bit NPH fan, but I thought he did a good job in the past. This time it just felt pat. It was an ok show, and not a brilliant tony year--I was glad Once won over the brilliantly talented but lamely choreographed Newsies guys (c'mon--doing a Tommy Tune newspaper bit?? shameful) and having been lucky enough to see the two top plays, I would have picked Other Desert Cities easily over the filled with clever and shocking one liners Clybourne Park, but Cities is already going to be made into a probably diluted movie, so.... Nice to see my fave younger AMC actor of the last while Flick WhitRock's revival of Salesman win, though nobody was surprised.