How did I do in picking the winners of The Tony Awards?
There were 27 awards given away on Sunday night. I got 6.5 wrong (that dang tie for orchestrations threw everyone for a loop) for a score of 76%.
No honor roll for me this year!
Here’s what I missed and why:
THE FEATURES
I got a disastrous three of the four featured categories wrong. The only one I got right was Angela, and something tells me the defensive lineman for the Chicago Bears could have called that one (at least I did call the standing ovation). In hindsight, there was a lot of love shown to people with strong theatrical careers. There’s not a person in the biz who doesn’t love Greg Jbara. Karen Olivo has had two strong performances in two strong shows, two years in a row (and she was against a brit). And as Roger Robinson said in his speech, it took him over 40 years to get to that stage. Voters love to not only reward greatness, but also to reward those who have been great many times (I’d put money on Raul Esparza winning whatever he is up for next, for that reason alone).
THE DESIGNERS
I’m going to have to start paying closer attention to those designers next year, especially in the play category. I got three of the four design awards for PLAYS wrong (I hit all the musicals right on). I should have known that Mary Stuart would have won for costumes (period costumes for Queens are a shoe-in, pun intended). But the other two I missed, lighting design and sound design, seemed to not only be an acknowledgement of the great work by the designers, but they also seemed to be a nod to the plays themselves (Equus and Joe Turner’s), since they weren’t going to be recognized in any of the bigger categories.
You know what I should have done? I should have cheated! I should have looked at how the majority of you voted in my Tony Pool because, for the 2nd year in a row, the majority kicked butt.
When lumping all of your votes together, and looking at the nominees with the highest percentage of votes, you all picked the winners in all but ONE category! You missed sound design and went with Equus instead of Exit The King (come on, even I got that one right!).
The winners of the pool and the $500 will be announced tomorrow!!!
Podcasting
Ken created one of the first Broadway podcasts, recording over 250 episodes over 7 years. It features interviews with A-listers in the theater about how they “made it”, including 2 Pulitzer Prize Winners, 7 Academy Award Winners and 76 Tony Award winners. Notable guests include Pasek & Paul, Kenny Leon, Lynn Ahrens and more.
