quick thoughts on the tonys before the tonys
as i typed this, illinoise beat the outsiders for choreography
Tonight is the Tony Awards so I am writing this. Also because I promised myself that I would write at least one blog post a month. Also this is about new musicals, not plays and not revivals. I didn’t see any of the plays this season and didn’t really follow them at all. I did see a lot of the revivals and they were really great.
So back to Broadway’s biggest night and my biggest confession this season: I did not like The Outsiders.
Before this spring, it had long been my most anticipated new musical and a small caveat to my disappointment with the adaptation obsession wreaking havoc on the theaters. To me, The Outsiders, presented a return to choreography-based ensemble productions with fanatic enthusiasm (aka filling in the gap that Newsies left behind and Six almost filled). I happily bought a ticket and walked through a torrential downpour in Times Square to see it (that picture of my shoes was me trying to dry them before Lempicka).
Well. While I think it has an opportunity for true greatness and that glimmered through the set and the choreography, I was disappointed by the surface-level engagement with the truly bountiful sources (a timeless book and star-studded movie) and the music. While trying to search for a reason why not a single song was memorable in a (theoretically interesting) twangy, bluegrass-inspired musical, I found my answer in a brief comment from the composers – the band who wrote the music anecdotally mentioned that they had never really seen a musical.
Follow me down the line of thought that I think happened behind the scenes. Basically, Broadway had an opportunity to fill a theater with a highly-anticipated new musical with a cherished book from school. (Not Gatsby, the other one, The Outsiders.) It was the perfect source material to fulfill the niche mentioned above. It has lots of characters, lots of electrifying scenes, and lots of overwhelming emotion (that’s why it got popular in the first place). One good solo song could replace “Santa Fe” in audition rooms everywhere. But that is all pretty expensive: a huge, new cast and choreography for the rumble in the rain? So someone focused on the needs of the audience, the audience needs a production that they will spend $800 a ticket on and they can’t think this is a musical or something. This means someone cut down the middle and instead of doing a musical, they essentially opted to make a live soundtrack with dancers. While I love anything that plays with the rigid form of theater, this feels colder, like a business choice rather than a true engagement with the opportunity for folksy sounds in musicals. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this, but too many things in The Outsiders just seem to be the latest of many decisions fueled by ticket sale projections and not a love of the opportunities.
The whole season feels like this, opting for familiar stories that audiences can comfortably spend lots of money on or producing something with music that the crowd already knows the lyrics to. Looking at the Wikipedia page for tonight's awards, something like 6 of this year's new musicals were adaptations of books or movies and something like 4-5 were jukebox musicals. Of the ones that were left, a handful were composed by non-theater musicians, two are history-based, and one is based on a documentary. In grand total: this leads to zero musicals that I would consider to be totally randomly original works. This makes last year’s (already closed!) Kimberly Akimbo and Shucked feel very, very far away.
If you couldn’t tell, this feels fairly catastrophic to me. Adaptations, non original source material, and jukebox musicals are crucial to the theatrical environment (and I love a lot of them) but it has to be balanced with tangible originality - new characters, new ideas, and new audiences. And if we can’t have that, then at least be proud to be a musical, it’s not embarrassing. Broadway’s theaters are not a repository for other original works to be turned into songs, it’s a space of its own that can lean into emotion, physicality, and live talent like nothing else. In fact it is very proud of this fact. Why else would it tear apart the August Wilson Theater to build the Kit Kat Club? Why else would it give Merrily We Roll Along a long-awaited second chance? These all feel reminiscent of a time when theatre was confident in being theatre.
Sure, Broadway has never been a place for wild innovation and creativity, that is usually regulated to off-off Broadway or regional theaters, but I do see it as a place where creative endeavors can be excitingly actualized, a protector of live performance, and ultimately a very surprising niche that I fear could disappear.
When I look back at the Tony Awards over the current decade, I can recall triumphant moments like A Strange Loop’s deserved best new musical trophy, the ongoing highly-awarded Sondheim revivals, Joaquina Kalukango's tear-stained performance of Let it Burn from Paradise Square, Jennifer Hudson’s EGOT, Patti Lupone’s return, or last year’s historic wins from J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell. (All theatrical moments.)
But in all honesty, that list was pretty hard to come up with because I kept thinking of the disappointing moments instead: like toeing the picket line in 2023 with the unscripted telecast, anything involving the Funny Girl revival, and the humiliating exclusion of Chris McCarrell from best actor that literally still gives me hives if I think about it too long (and the equally embarrassing, single category nominee – Aaron Tveit — who deserved at least some competition for his decade of work.) These moments bring up the more frustrating side of the theatrical moment we’re in, moments that treat it all like business bets.
This season for new musicals on Broadway has been incomplete, un-challenging as a group, and frankly lackluster with a few notable standouts. Ultimately when what feels like a million adaptations and jukebox musicals open on the same week due to the theater turnover of original productions, it makes the whole season feel bleak. Exciting and innovative work on Broadway feels unseen and unawarded and totally uninvited. I haven’t even bothered to predict who will win tonight. I am hoping for a cooler season next year.