NOTES FROM THE TONY AWARDS PRESS ROOM
The press does not sit in the audience of Radio City Music Hall. We're next door at the Rainbow Room on the 64th floor of Rockefeller Center. We dress in tuxes, watch the awards on two TVs, and the winning actors are ushered into our hideaway for a mini-press conference of sorts.
The weirdest moment occurred at about 8:30 PM, when it was unexpectedly announced that CURTAINS had won Best Score. Sound weird? It should. The press people had misinterpreted seeing John Kander onstage as meaning that CURTAINS had won the award, which in fact had not yet been decided. It was a scary moment because it occurred to me - What if CURTAINS is going to beat SPRING AWAKENING for best musical?
So, let's go through what notes I scribbled down during the interviews, in no particular order...
Boyd Gaines will join JOURNEY'S END co-star Jefferson Mays in the Roundabout revival of PYGMALION, probably to play Pickering opposite Mays' Higgens.
I asked the producers of JOURNEY'S END why the show closed today - since they all but knew it would win Best Revival, why not wait at least another week to see if grosses picked up? The producers claimed they did it because Stark Sands, Hugh Dancy and Boyd Gaines are all about to begin new projects, and having the show run an extra week would have cost them months of future work.
David Hyde Pierce was on the verge of tears while speaking with us. Clearly, he was both surprised and stunned that he had won. We were surprised too...
Fantastia unexpectedly came to the press room after having performed late in the broadcast from COLOR PURPLE. I asked if she had read her reviews. Her voice was unexpectedly very hoarse. I couldn't really understand what she said, but she appeared to thank God quite a number of times.
I asked the Lincoln Center people, high on their COAST wins, why they decided to produce Shakespeare's CYMBELINE in the fall. Bernie said that it's his favorite Shakespeare play, that it's easy to do badly and hard to do well, and that they begin casting it this week.
Asked Bill T. Jones, choreographer of SPRING, what Jonathan Groff's crazy hand gestures in "Totally F&*cked" means. He referred to how those movements are used throughout the show, as when Lea and the girls caress their chests and arms. He referred to this as "the virus." So in "Totally," the pace suddenly speeds up and it is out of control.
I will write up more of my notes tomorrow. As luck would have it, I was able to get into the SPRING AWAKENING post Tony party, which was one of the most elaborate Tony parties I've ever attended, which filled all three floors of a trendy Times Square nightclub. Not much to report from that, just that it felt great to be there, part of the moment. Or, as Sondheim would say, I was "Someone in a Tree," somehow part of the event.
