Profile for TheBroadwayMaven

From today's Broadway Maven's Weekly Blast:

The Tony Awards broadcast is Broadway’s annual opportunity to shine well beyond New York City. Tourists buy tickets to see shows that won — or had great musical performances. Theatergoers who never visit New York learn from the Tonys which shows to see on tour. And the entire Broadway world has one night to celebrate what makes the art form special.

But at this year’s broadcast on CBS June 11, the talented Tonys team won’t be able to do its best work.

That’s because the Writers Guild of America (whose members pen much of the witty banter in awards shows) is on strike and twice refused to grant the Tonys a waiver. It was openly prepared to demonstrate in front of the Tonys, knowing that the heavily unionized Broadway community would not cross a picket line.

Please note that the WGA isn’t a Broadway union. Its members write for screens, not stages. To be fair, screenwriters have good reason to be upset, with streaming and other rapid changes in the industry making the life of the scribe ever harder – all while the threat of AI displacement looms. But that is not a Broadway controversy. The WGA is a Hollywood-oriented union that chose to make a splash in its labor struggle by essentially holding Broadway hostage.

Now, several leading Broadway playwrights including Tony Kushner and Jeremy O. Harris have been celebrated for “saving” the Tonys with a “compromise” between the award show and the WGA (which includes many playwrights who also write for screens):

• There will be no picket line;

• Most Broadway people will be able to participate in the Tonys, which will be televised;

• WGA members will stay home, instead accepting their awards via pre-taped video or by proxy;

• Lin-Manuel Miranda will not write his planned opening number;

• The previously written script has been scrapped; and

• Instead, expect unadorned award announcements, improvisation, and plenty of shoutouts to the WGA.

Such a solution undercuts the professionalism – and the fun – of the Tonys and benefits only the relatively small number of Broadway people who also belong to the film and TV writers union (including Kushner and Harris and company).

Truly saving the Tonys would have involved...

Read the rest here.

 

From today's Broadway Maven Weekly Blast:

ESSAY: Recent news stories have highlighted school cancellations of productions of shows like Indecent and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. But there’s another kind of censorship that’s been happening for decades — Broadway shows losing “adult” content in the official “Jr.” versions — or just being changed (illegally) by individual directors.

Note: clips of the original and the edited versions of each example are included in this video.

Avenue Q: The song “The Internet is for p*rn” becomes “My Social Life is Online,” which makes a completely different point. Given that schoolchildren are fully aware — too aware — or the existence of internet p*rnography, I’m not sure the change is necessary.

A Chorus Line: Instead of “Tits and Ass” in the song “Dance 10, Looks 3” Val sings “This and That.” It’s awfully prudish but actually works pretty well.

Anything Goes: In “I Get a Kick Out of You,” Reno Sweeney sings of getting “no kick from cocaine,” which is sometimes changed to “perfume from Spain.” It’s strange to cut a lyric in which a character disdains a dangerous drug, but the particular “fix” is quite nice, because it allows the song to keep the rhyme in the lyric “I’m sure that IF I took even one SNIFF” — since cocaine and perfume are both things that you sniff.

Rent: Two interesting changes in “La Vie Bohème.” In that list song, “to leather, to dildos” becomes “to leather, to latex,” which at least adds some alliteration. And the original’s line about Mark Cohen’s inability to “hold an erection” on the High Holy Days becomes the denuded “make a connection.”

Annie: In “It’s a Hard Knock Life” there’s a quick reference to making Mrs. Hannigan “drink a Mickey Finn” — essentially a date-rape drug. In the age of #MeToo that’s not OK, so some productions replace that line with “throw her in a looney bin” — thus replacing one problematic lyric with another. (Do we really need to mock mental heath facilities?)

Grease: The original lyrics to the song “Greased Lightnin’” were quite naughty, including phrases like “You know it ain’t no ****, I’ll be getting lots of tit” (becomes “You know without a doubt, I’ll be really making out” “the chicks’ll cream” (becomes “the chicks’ll scream&rdquo and “**** wagon” (becomes “dragon wagon&rdquo.

Chicago: In “Cell Block Tango,” the lyric “You’ve been screwing the milkman” gets adjusted in various ways (like “messing around with” or “seeing&rdquo.

 

I share in people's sadness that the show didn't work -- it's exactly the kind of show that needs to be in the mix on the Great White Way. But there was no chance of a Tony nod in such a crowded category (this year) as Best Revival. And that was its only hope.

To me, the key to the brilliance of his performance is you felt like you were seeing two performances -- a callow youth in the first act and a world-weary leader in the second.