'Spring' livens up an otherwise dignified night at the Tonys

outhful cheers for "Spring Awakening" rang out from the back of the Radio City Musical Hall on Sunday night, even before Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s fresh, sexy and musically revolutionary new Broadway show blew a gale through the 61st annual Tony Awards. The edgy production won a dominant eight Tonys at the ceremony, including the coveted best musical Tony.

"It’s all about the hopes we feel as parents, and the wounds we feel as children," said an emotional Sater, picking up a Tony and summing up his show. Those hopes are surely realized. And any wounds are likely to run with golden blood.

"Spring Awakening" — a contemporary, conceptual, rock-music take on Frank Wedekind’s 1893 play about the painful price paid by 19th Century kids when parents fail to teach them about the perils of adolescent sexual expression — once seemed like a high-risk project that needed a comically large number of producers to raise the funds. But after a stellar (and shrewdly edited) prime-time performance on the Tonys, which captured some of the show’s excitement, "Spring Awakening" now will surely morph into a major hit that could update the dominant sound of the Broadway musical for good.

But when the show's crowd of producers stood up to take the stage at the end of the Tonys, it looked like someone had shouted "Fire!" inside Radio City.

In recent years, awards have been widely dispersed. This year, though, there was little drama, with David Hyde Pierce’s victory as best actor in a musical for his work in "Curtains," qualifying as the biggest surprise. As widely predicted, "Spring Awakening" dominated the musical awards, although, also as expected, Christine Ebersole’s astonishing two-pronged turn as Edith Bouvier Beale and "Little Edie" Beale in "Grey Gardens" took the Tony for best performance by a leading actress in a musical.

On the play side, other new works mostly were unable to compete with the huge canvas and company of star actors enjoyed by Tom Stoppard’s "The Coast of Utopia," which garnered seven Tony Awards, including a best director nod for Jack O’Brien. Eloquent in acceptance, Frank Langella won the best actor in a play Tony for playing Richard M. Nixon in "Frost/Nixon."

This year’s presenter-less Tony broadcast was efficiently produced and dignified, but mostly as predictable as the appearance of Bernadette Peters. Precious little drama or spontaneity was in evidence. As is typical at the perennial insecure Tonys, much energy was expended reminding the viewing audience that many of their favorite TV and movie stars also work in theater. And this year’s theme — which had the likes of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck reciting (or mangling) the tagline "There’s a little bit of Broadway in everyone" — was a reminder that the Tonys spend as much time pushing the Broadway brand as celebrating great work.

At least musical fans had Raul Esparza, whose nuanced-but-empowered rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s "Being Alive" from the Tony-winning "Company" was the performance highlight of the night, even though it was not enough to win him a Tony. TV viewers also had a thrilling taste of Ebersole’s remarkable performance.

Even though it was last year’s show, "Jersey Boys" got big play on the broadcast (far more, for example, than the current hit "Legally Blonde," which was confined to a B-roll segment). That will likely help ticket sales for "Jersey Boys’" upcoming Chicago run. And since the Alliance Theatre of Atlanta won the Tony for excellence in regional theater, that was enough of an excuse for replacement-cast member Fantasia to snag a prime, TV-friendly slot singing a number from "The Color Purple," which started in Atlanta.

In an uncharacteristic bit of irony, the American Theater Wing’s annual self-promotion segment was livened up by a "Phantom of the Opera"-style chandelier crashing down on the stiff dignitaries, whose speeches then were read instead by actors John Mahoney (of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company) and Jane Krakowski. On TV, it appeared that Mahoney’s conclusionary bit of mild profanity had awakened a CBS censor asleep at the switch (or already tuned to HBO), but one couldn’t be sure. Later in the night, "Spring Awakening" got away with a whole lot more.

source : http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com