Jeffrey Karasarides said: "Kimbo said: "Schmigadoon wins in a walk.
This is now Schmigadoon’s to lose for two main reasons: its overall the best reviewed new musical of the year, and the voters en masse - not the road block, not the New Yorkers, but a majority of everyone - are generally not going to be keen on giving Best Musical to a chamber piece that’s essentially a two-character show two straight years in a row.
Then again, if Two Strangers does win, it'd be a scenario where voters likely don't care. They're just at the end of the day voting for what they liked most.
It may benefit from being in a slow year, but regardless that’s what will swing the vote in its favor- at a time when musicals are still struggling, a win for a big splashy old-fashioned show (not unlike my Will Rogers example) is good for Broadway, good for the business, and rightly or wrongly will be perceived as essential for the health of the art form."
While plausible, there may still be people within the industry who'd prefer to champion originality more than an IP-driven musical. Shortly after the 2018 Tonys, Michael Riedel wrote in the New York Post: "Broadway thumbed its nose at Tina Fey and touristy musicals Sunday night by showering The Band’s Visit,a lovely, human show, with 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
Its sweep of the Tonys is a sharp rebuke to the family-friendly franchise shows that are gobbling up Broadway.
Broadway is in danger of becoming a theme park, but Tony voters staged a revolution Sunday night, saying, in effect: No more shows based on famous movies or cartoons. Bring back smart, sophisticated shows for New Yorkers, not Iowans."
https://nypost.com/2018/06/11/the-bands-visit-bucks-trend-by-sweeping-tony-awards/"
An example that sort of proves my point; The Band’s Visit was more enthusiastically reviewed than Mean Girls (much like Schmigadoon was overall more positively received than any of the other shows so far this year).
Further, I remember thinking back then, Band’s Visit was no more original than Mean Girls, having been based on a hugely successful Israeli film (it swept the Israeli version of the Oscars, the Ophies, winning 8); it wasn’t the IP over here that Mean Girls was, but it had still been released in the U.S. and was very well-regarded. Schmigadoon is an interesting comparison in this respect, because while many are aware of the source material, it’s a cult TV show that’s not only less well-known than The Lost Boys or Titanic, it actually had a lower volume of viewers than even the TV version of Smash.
If originality wins points then sure, Two Strangers is the most original - and obviously if it were to win, the primary explanation would be that voters voted for what they liked most. I’m simply arguing there are other factors at play, as there always are- that all else being roughly equal, when it comes time for people to cast a vote, for some in the industry the optics of a big splashy old-fashioned show winning will trump the optics of a two-hander winning two years in a row.
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