Best Musicals to not win Best Musical (Tony Award) — Page 3

While on the subject of plays that lost the Tony, initiated by JRBActor, I nearly punched out my television set when Herb Gardner's I'm Not Rappaport beat out John Guare's House of Blue Leaves in 1986, as well as Athol Fugard's Blood Knot and Michael Frayn's Benefactors. The Tony Awards at their most infuriating, where staid, safe pablum beats out shows of true artistic merit.

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"The House of Blue Leaves" was not eligible to be Best Play in the production you're talking about. It was a revival. The original play was done years before off Broadway starring Anne Meara as Bunny, Harold Gould as Artie, and Katharine Helmond as Bananas.

BillyWeeds -

You are correct that House of Blue Leaves had an Off-Broadway production in 1970, but wrong about the Best Play category in 1986. The Tony Awards "classic" rule didn't exist yet, and the Lincoln Center production of House of Blue Leaves was ruled eligible as a new play because it had never previously appeared on Broadway. (Same thing with Fugard's Blood Knot). That was the conventional wisdom at the time...which has since changed.

The Best Play category that year consisted of Benefactors, Blood Knot, House of Blue Leaves and I'm Not Rappaport. The Tonys had the chance to give the Best Play Tony to the vastly superior, wildly subversive House of Blue Leaves, but chose the inferior play, as always. (Guare got screwed a few years later too, when his brilliant Six Degrees of Separation managed to lose both the Tony AND the Pulitzer to the completely pleasant, but inferior Lost in Yonkers).

Here's the 1986 Best Play category from the Tony Awards website to prove I speak the truth!


1986 Tony Awards - Best Play

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Updated On: 5/21/04 at 09:55 PM