Most of us watched this online but for those of us who didn't. Laura B. is a goddess.
The 2009 Tony Awards: What You Didn't See On TV
It’s great that CBS carves out a full three hours one Sunday each June for the Tony Awards, but as we’ve now learned all too well, the Tonys are a four-hour show. So unless you were watching the 7-8 p.m. portion-the pre-show, the creative-arts awards, whatever you want to call it!-online, you probably missed a few things. From our seat inside Radio City Music Hall, we gathered a few pre-Tony (not to mention between-commercials-on-CBS) highlights.
Shecky Benanti: 2008 featured-actress winner Laura Benanti (Gypsy)-who was emceeing the preshow with Actors Fund president and 2000 winner Brian Stokes Mitchell (Kiss Me, Kate)-mugged, quipped, and ad-libbed up a storm. “This is the most star-studded Tony ceremony we have ever had.” Pause for applause. “Yes! And I am here too.” Later, in presenting the first Tony, she described orchestrators as the people “who send the work of the composers from the piano right into the pits-and I do not think that is how they meant that. Oh, prompters!” Then, when absent costume designer Anthony Ward (Mary Stuart) won, and Stokes said they’d accept the award on his behalf, Benanti pretended to cram it down her décolletage and sneak away.
Ian MacNeil gets a Tony and points for honesty: As he clutched his trophy, the Billy Elliot set designer admitted “I’ve wanted one of these for so long. I think some people think I have one already. I don’t.” True: Many thought MacNeil he won for his stunning scenery for 1994’s An Inspector Calls; after all, lighting designer Rick Fisher and director Stephen Daldry did. But that was before the design categories were split into plays and musicals, and MacNeil lost to Bob Crowley (Carousel).
Guess the secret’s out! Upon winning for Equus, Gregory Clark informed the audience that he suddenly had “an enormous problem. I now, of course, have to tell my parents that I don’t actually work in a bank.” He also had a plan to get a gin and tonic.
Lee Hall, Tony winner, tear jerker: Librettist Lee Hall dedicated the award to his dad, who passed away earlier this year. “Billy Elliot is about me and me dad,” explained Hall. In the 2000 movie, there’s a scene where Billy’s dad goes to see his grown-up son dance; that moment isn’t in the musical, said Hall, but in November his dad did get to see Billy on Broadway. “I watched him watching himself up on stage…I think it was the proudest moment of his life,” said Hall. “This is the second.”
Matthew Warchus, Tony winner, loving husband: Winning God of Carnage director Matthew Warchus-who beat himself for his direction of the Norman Conquests trilogy-gave a loving nod to his wife, actress Lauren Ward (Follies, Violet): “Because she has maintained calm and harmony at home I have been able to manufacture marital mayhem on stage.”
Commercial-break fun! Once the telecast begins, the producers do everything they can to keep the audience entertained and keep their butts in the seats. (The last thing they want is a bunch of people running up and down the aisles when cameras begin rolling again!) So viewers inside Radio City were treated to, among other things: a Shrek “audition” sequence in which freak-flag-flying fairytale creatures belted out tunes from other Broadway musicals (e.g., a witch singing Wicked’s “Defying Gravity,” three little pigs singing Billy Elliot’s “Electricity,” Pinocchio-played by Avenue Q alum John Tartaglia-singing Q’s “Purpose” with a sock puppet on his hand); two numbers from the seemingly Broadway-bound musical Million Dollar Quartet, currently playing Chicago’s Apollo Theater, which centers on a mid-’50s recording session between Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis (the foursome performed “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’”); teasers for upcoming shows like the Bebe Neuwirth-, Nathan Lane-starring Addams Family (which got a huge reaction from the crowd) and Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark (eh, not so much); and the always-popular vintage commercials (among this year’s selection: the original production of Hair-which, incidentally, looked not so different from the current revival; the Kismet redux Timbuktu starring Eartha Kitt). Another off-camera treat for audiences-Neil Patrick Harris’ “magic” tricks! They went a little something like this…Harris: (to a person in crowd) “Think of a number.” He writes something on a sheet of white paper. Harris: “Was it 34? (Pausing) No?” Harris turns over the paper to reveal: “NO.” Uh, Neil, you were an awesome host-some might even say legendary!-but dude, don’t quit your day job.
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It’s great that CBS carves out a full three hours one Sunday each June for the Tony Awards, but as we’ve now learned all too well, the Tonys are a four-hour show. So unless you were watching the 7-8 p.m. portion-the pre-show, the creative-arts awards, whatever you want to call it!-online, you probably missed a few things. From our seat inside Radio City Music Hall, we gathered a few pre-Tony (not to mention between-commercials-on-CBS) highlights.
Shecky Benanti: 2008 featured-actress winner Laura Benanti (Gypsy)-who was emceeing the preshow with Actors Fund president and 2000 winner Brian Stokes Mitchell (Kiss Me, Kate)-mugged, quipped, and ad-libbed up a storm. “This is the most star-studded Tony ceremony we have ever had.” Pause for applause. “Yes! And I am here too.” Later, in presenting the first Tony, she described orchestrators as the people “who send the work of the composers from the piano right into the pits-and I do not think that is how they meant that. Oh, prompters!” Then, when absent costume designer Anthony Ward (Mary Stuart) won, and Stokes said they’d accept the award on his behalf, Benanti pretended to cram it down her décolletage and sneak away.
Ian MacNeil gets a Tony and points for honesty: As he clutched his trophy, the Billy Elliot set designer admitted “I’ve wanted one of these for so long. I think some people think I have one already. I don’t.” True: Many thought MacNeil he won for his stunning scenery for 1994’s An Inspector Calls; after all, lighting designer Rick Fisher and director Stephen Daldry did. But that was before the design categories were split into plays and musicals, and MacNeil lost to Bob Crowley (Carousel).
Guess the secret’s out! Upon winning for Equus, Gregory Clark informed the audience that he suddenly had “an enormous problem. I now, of course, have to tell my parents that I don’t actually work in a bank.” He also had a plan to get a gin and tonic.
Lee Hall, Tony winner, tear jerker: Librettist Lee Hall dedicated the award to his dad, who passed away earlier this year. “Billy Elliot is about me and me dad,” explained Hall. In the 2000 movie, there’s a scene where Billy’s dad goes to see his grown-up son dance; that moment isn’t in the musical, said Hall, but in November his dad did get to see Billy on Broadway. “I watched him watching himself up on stage…I think it was the proudest moment of his life,” said Hall. “This is the second.”
Matthew Warchus, Tony winner, loving husband: Winning God of Carnage director Matthew Warchus-who beat himself for his direction of the Norman Conquests trilogy-gave a loving nod to his wife, actress Lauren Ward (Follies, Violet): “Because she has maintained calm and harmony at home I have been able to manufacture marital mayhem on stage.”
Commercial-break fun! Once the telecast begins, the producers do everything they can to keep the audience entertained and keep their butts in the seats. (The last thing they want is a bunch of people running up and down the aisles when cameras begin rolling again!) So viewers inside Radio City were treated to, among other things: a Shrek “audition” sequence in which freak-flag-flying fairytale creatures belted out tunes from other Broadway musicals (e.g., a witch singing Wicked’s “Defying Gravity,” three little pigs singing Billy Elliot’s “Electricity,” Pinocchio-played by Avenue Q alum John Tartaglia-singing Q’s “Purpose” with a sock puppet on his hand); two numbers from the seemingly Broadway-bound musical Million Dollar Quartet, currently playing Chicago’s Apollo Theater, which centers on a mid-’50s recording session between Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis (the foursome performed “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’”); teasers for upcoming shows like the Bebe Neuwirth-, Nathan Lane-starring Addams Family (which got a huge reaction from the crowd) and Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark (eh, not so much); and the always-popular vintage commercials (among this year’s selection: the original production of Hair-which, incidentally, looked not so different from the current revival; the Kismet redux Timbuktu starring Eartha Kitt). Another off-camera treat for audiences-Neil Patrick Harris’ “magic” tricks! They went a little something like this…Harris: (to a person in crowd) “Think of a number.” He writes something on a sheet of white paper. Harris: “Was it 34? (Pausing) No?” Harris turns over the paper to reveal: “NO.” Uh, Neil, you were an awesome host-some might even say legendary!-but dude, don’t quit your day job.
Source