Here we have The 75th Annual Tony Awards, a recent awards ceremony from 2022, so still pretty fresh and the director of all this was the eternal Glenn Weiss again, who has directed so so much in terms of big awards ceremonys over the years. No, decades. But even with him, there is no guarantee that this is not gonna suck like most American awards shows do these days sadly. As for the writers, they are also pretty experienced, at least two of the three, so not sure how it all went wrong. Maybe the reason is the general perception of what in the world of entertainment can be considered quality these days. And how mediocrity or even very flawed material is mistaken for such quality as long as the agenda is right. Anyway, this even consisted of two parts this time. The first was short with 50 minutes, the second was long, the main part, with over two hours. These numbers do not include commercials, so the entire thing with commercials lasted maybe for four hours approximately. The first part had two hosts despite how short it was, namely Julianne Hough (cannot say too much about her) and Darren Criss and if you look at all the tragedy happening to the Glee cast, he is really the one who is the exact opposite with his previous awards glory and also the (theoretical) honor to host events like this. The main show was hosted by Ariana DeBose. I still don't see too much talent from her, a lot of it feels forced, but surely people right now are appreciating gay artists that are partly Hispanic, partly Black. Perfect timing. Maybe she was the only host in the second part because of how big a name she is after the recent Oscar season. At the end of the first part they said that it is the first time that the Tonys are also shown live at the West Coast, but for that it really should have been a better event. Much better. Probably not too many were watching there and it was even a round anniversary. What a shame how this turned out! The first part was maybe still slightly watchable at times, but also only around a 3/10 while the second was just a mess as a whole.

One of the most nominated pieces was Six here, even if it did not win a lot. Early on, the love got divided among the nominees, including a Bob Dylan piece and "Company" (focus on office work),which was also fairly successful. Oh and there was also an African-American centered piece with the most ridiculous title that had several nominations. I found it embarrassing, almost to a degree where the title tells us that suicide thoughts are harmless. Just accept the rainbow (LBGT?) and you will be happy. I thought it was abysmal and does not do justice at all to the severity of even considering such a dark path. Pretty telling that they also used "For Colored Girls" as part of the title, another title of a film that feels very close to discrimination and exclusion and don't even get me started on "enuf". It's not smart or sexy or creative to use this kind of language. On the contrary, it is fairly racist to put people with a certain color in a corner and say they are often uneducated, don't know proper spelling, no matter how much truth there is to it. This way you keep them there. On a completely different note, did I see Daniel Craig there briefly for Macbeth? Cool. With Viola Davis on something else, I am even less sure, but don't like her anyway. Oh yes, there was also a Michael Jackson musical that made some solid waves. The actor portraying him won big for example. Seemed expected. And there was another Michael Jackson (in pink clothes) that won as well. Tonys are always difficult for me as a foreign guy to cheer for somebody/-thing because you cannot watch these plays in movie theaters, so you have to be there on Broadway in New York and I am not even sure if these shows, surely not all of them, also travel the country, so it is even difficult for Americans to see most of them. As a consequence, you can ask how much sense such an awards show makes. Or at least how much sense it makes on a national level and if a small NY event would not be more fitting.

To keep the national attention and make the headlines, of course they included politically correct mentions like Pride Month or gave the wins to many people from the LBGT community, already the very first one there somebody born as a male, but wearing women's clothing and makeup. I always think it is best to keep politics and agendas out of events like this, but this is something everybody thinks about differently. Oh yeah, it was quite disrespectful to act like how everybody loves Angela Lansbury and then not even put her on the main event with her career award. She was not even mentioned there, but of course the LBGT winners were referenced again and again. Unbelievable. At least she wasn't there to get humiliated on location. I hope she wasn't even watching. Most people in the first hour (act one) I was not familiar with. Maybe my loss because with stage musicals etc. I am not exactly an expert. Judith Light and the Asian guy from Star Trek are familiar faces, Jesse Tyler Ferguson too as I like Modern Family. Phylicia Rashad maybe also, even if you don't know Bill Cosby's works. The first part was in general a lot about the design of the nominees, in terms of both audible and visual production values. As for the second (long) part of the show, DeBose really did not impress me at all with her hosting. Lots of effort she put in, but never funny, entertaining or memorable. Rather loud than dignified. How she mentioned her West Side Story success at the beginning and end was as embarrassing and cringeworthy as her constant mentioning of broadcaster CBS. As for the show, the big names were not the winners, rather those presenting the awards or the ones that were part of some skits. We have Hugh Jackman, Andrew Garfield (okay that was mildly funny because of the other fella),Jessica Chastain, Samuel L. Jackson, Sam Mendes, Laurence Fishburne (impersonating Daffy Duck huh?) and the mustached Sam Rockwell and heavily-bearded Bryan Cranston. I liked seeing David Morse nominated in one category (shame he lost) and I mourned Robert Morse in the in-memoriam segment. Oh well, he will always live through Mad Men. Said segment was also a huge mess from the music perspective. I feel bad for the deceased featured in there. About as poor as the aforementioned Lansbury disaster.

The idea of reenacting some extracts from the plays and musicals is a good one, but also so obvious that you cannot really praise them for that. It is not possible with films of course at the Oscars that they just reenact scenes from the nominated movies. But even these segments here were not too memorable. Even icons like Crystal or Jackman that I adored on many occasions felt soulless with their performances here. As for the acceptance speeches, not good either. Many of them felt fake and this includes especially the one who won for portraying Michael Jackson. Does not live up to the name of MJ. Probably the great music carried him. With this one and others, the show (including the nominees) was very African-American heavy, maybe because they were scared of criticisms. Almost a bit too much. I mean Bob Dylan I personally remember as White as it gets, but somehow they found a way to get color in there too. Perhaps only for the sake of doing so, not really for creative reasons. Of course, with events like this, the political references must also not be missing. I briefly mentioned this earlier already, but fascism (right-wing of course) in America was a subject on one occasion and I am even a bit surprised that they left Putin and the conflict in Eastern Europe out of the show completely I think or almost completely at least. Maybe it is not a big thing in America for the society as a whole because of the distance, but here in Europe it is pretty much everywhere. Maybe they were also scared this could take away from the race issue references. Already by picking DeBose, they made a massive statement there. Which is fine and I approve of it as I am strictly against all discrimination, but this would have been enough for the entire show. Instead, they stuffed it in everywhere they could and took away attention from where they shouldn't, namely the awards and nominated achievements.

To finish my review, a few more words on the terrible host. It was embarrassing how she constantly tried to get in politics or statements that went beyond what this show should have been about. It was all there that she was going fo:. Non-binary, transgender, skin color and so on. Everything you would expect from American mainstream television was there. I am still worried all this emphasis is making the gaps even bigger instead of bridging them, but oh well. At least this gives everybody more to complain about then. Aside from DeBose, the worst announcers that night were maybe RuPaul (with Jennifer Hudson, pity as she is okay sometimes) and ice princess Sarah Paulson in terms of her presentation, but also with her attention-seeking outfit. I will not discuss the dresses in detail now. Gonna leave that to the girls and everybody else who wants to. This is it for my brainstorming about the most recent stage equivalent to the Oscars ceremony. I would say the artists here deserve better, but I feel like they are happily enjoying this chaos and all the atrocities coming with it. So let's say instead that the audience deserves better and especially the legends from early Tony Awards ceremonies deserve much, much, much better than what this has turned into by now. It will be a long and hard road to get back to convincing quality for it all. Shameful stuff in 2022. I wish them well though for the future. Watching a nicely acted and nicely crafted play on a stage can still make for a glorious evening, no matter if in Europe or New York or wherever else and this craft should not be represented in a manner so messy like we saw it at the 75th Annual Tony Awards. Highly not recommended.

There is plenty of explanatory dialogue by both the presenters and the trophy-grasping recipients who tell us exactly why these are fabulous shows that are not to be missed. Remember, there is just nothing quite like live theater.

If those are the highlights and great moments from the current Broadway season, imagine how boring the performances must be in their entireties.

Paris and Prince Jackson introducing a Michael Jackson tribute artist was a bit odd. The IN MEMORIUM interlude was even more odd.

"Talk amongst yourselves." ~ Linda Richman.