Best Play Winners Vs. Best Musical Winners

On the latest theatre talk Elizabeth Vincentelli pointed out how Harry Potter is most likely going to win because it’s bold and commercial, but for the best musical category Mean Girls isn’t going to win for that exact same reason. So why is there that discrepancy? Is this a common theme for most seasons? The bigger play wins, but smaller musical also wins? They used war horse winning as a similar example.

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It's certainly an interesting thing to talk about. But like many cultural discussions it suffers from a deficit of data points, which leaves the door open for a lot of speculation in any direction. I mean, a decade only gives you 10 pieces of Tony data, and tastes change so comparing decade to decade is pretty useless.

But I think there are some fair observations here. The most obvious being that there is a limited audience for small plays. I'm talking about ticket buyers. Producers, especially in regional non-profit theater love small plays. So there is a market for them. But audiences aren't drawn to them unless you have two huge stars opposite each other. So we have these plays with a touch of directing and set design spectacle like Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and the recent revival of The Crucible. (Steven Hoggett is making a career out of choreographing plays.)

At the other end of the spectrum there is a suspicion of big over-produced musicals. The large noisy musical is a cliché, and the reason most musical-haters hate musicals. It is almost a liability that must be overcome - something that most Disney shows stumble on (Lion King being the exception, of course) and Spongebob is faced with and largely manges to hurdle. Smaller musicals manage to both have and eat cake by being able to appeal to both the musical lovers and haters. Dear Evan Hansen feels like a contemporary play, and the fact that there is no spoofy tap number in it or The Band's Visit is a plus when you are trying to reach a crossover audience.

Curiously, this doesn't seem to apply to musical revivals where bigger is usually better. If you are going to do old school The King and I or Hello, Dolly! make it even more lavish than David Merrick could ever dream of. Stripped down "Teeny Todd" revivals are strictly for Off-Broadway.

The intersection of these two trends is that hit plays are getting bigger and small musicals are finding audiences and accolades.

Critics are another story. I don't think critics have changed at all. Critics like something that is new or surprising. They know that their opinion of a commercial juggernaut (Frozen for example) doesn't matter at all. But their opinion of smaller more daring work carries great weight. Their good word can get a smaller play or musical much needed attention. The can help people find Three Tall Women, which probably wasn't on any tourist's must see list before it opened.

Updated On: 6/8/18 at 01:19 PM

I think one other distinction is that we get far more big splashy musicals than big splashy plays which make the big splashy plays stand out more. There's only 1 or 2 Harry Potters or War Horses every few years which make them stand out and be harder to resist. But just this year alone we have big splashy musicals Mean Girls, Frozen and Spongebob, which not only makes any one of them less exciting or less "standoutish" than a big splashy new play, but also results in a smaller piece like The Bands Visit standing out even more.

Of the 5 plays nominated for Best Play this year, only 1 is currently running and that's Harry Potter. Sure, of the 800+ Tony voters some of them may have seen the other plays but most likely all of them would have seen Harry Potter this past month.

I always wondered whether Tony voters would just abstain their vote for Best Play if they haven't seen all the nominated plays in the category or simply vote for the ones they did see?