Minimum Familiarity: You’ll probably get more out of this if you watched the Tony Awards, but that’s the only recommendation.
The Tony Awards happened a few weeks back, on June 16th, and I thought it was a great awards show overall. The Tonys tend to be at least twice as enjoyable to me as other awards shows, not just because I love theater but because the participants are generally familiar with speaking to large, live audiences in a way that rarely seems to be true at other awards shows. And the performances do such a better job breaking up the awards ceremony itself than half-hearted presenter banter and a few musical performances do at other shows.
My love for the Tonys aside, I realized I don’t actually have much to add to the Tony Awards discourse. The performances were mostly great, I was happy with the winners of the vast majority of the awards, even the surprises, and I have no idea what was up with the opening number. You can read most of my opinions in any of the post-show analyses that came out.
So I’ve decided to pivot this post from my original intent of analyzing the Tony Awards to something slightly more distinctive: I’m going to give my own awards to the most underrated moments of the 2023-2024 season. With the quantity of shows on Broadway this year, there wasn’t room to recognize every great moment, so I’m going to take on the responsibility of sharing my favorites that (for the most part) went unrecognized in terms of nominations and wins.
But first, I know my readers wait with bated breath to know how my predictions went, so let’s get that out of the way.
Prediction Performance
I correctly predicted 17 of the 26 winners. By some miracle, that total includes correct predictions in all four best production categories (New Play, New Musical, Play Revival, and Musical Revival), plus Best Book and Best Score. I even redeemed myself and my self-proclaimed passion for lighting design by correctly predicting the winners in both the play and musical lighting categories.
I didn’t really mind most categories I missed either, since many of them were closer to the outcome I wanted to happen anyway. In many cases, I just hadn’t expected my desired outcomes to come to pass (this was definitely the case with Maleah Joi Moon winning Lead Actress in a Musical for Hell’s Kitchen, and Kara Young winning for Purlie Victorious).
As I explain below, I think Here Lies Love did a better job at what Cabaret tried to do in terms of scenic design, so that surprisingly ended up being the category where I disagreed most with the ultimate winner.
That’s enough “analysis” for now, although I’ll include a quick list of the nine winners I did not correctly predict:
- Leading Actress in a Musical – Maleah Joi Moon for Hell’s Kitchen
- Prediction: Maryann Plunkett for The Notebook
- Featured Actor in a Play – Will Brill for Stereophonic
- Prediction: Eli Gelb for Stereophonic
- Featured Actress in a Play – Kara Young for Purlie Victorious
- Prediction: Sarah Pidgeon for Stereophonic
- Featured Actress in a Musical – Kecia Lewis for Hell’s Kitchen
- Prediction: Lindsay Mendez for Merrily We Roll Along
- Scenic Design of a Play – David Zinn for Stereophonic
- Prediction: dots for Appropriate
- Scenic Design of a Musical – Tom Scutt for Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
- Prediction: David Korins for Here Lies Love
- Costume Design of a Musical – Linda Cho for The Great Gatsby
- Prediction: Tom Scutt for Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
- Sound Design of a Musical – Cody Spencer for The Outsiders
- Prediction: Kai Harada for Merrily We Roll Along
- Best Orchestrations – Jonathan Tunick for Merrily We Roll Along
- Prediction: Adam Blackstone and Tom Kitt for Hell’s Kitchen
The Justins (Name Pending…)
And now for the awards for the most underrated moments of the 2023-2024 season. I’m going to organize them by production, although the order is mostly arbitrary:
Water for Elephants
“Anywhere/Another Train”
This show did receive a well-deserved nomination for Direction of a Musical, and I’m recognizing it here for the direction of the opening sequence. After some setup of the show’s conceit (present-day Jacob telling the story of his time with the circus during the Great Depression), we’re transported into the story in question. Grant Gustin (as young Jacob) arrives, and leaps into the air in a very cool lift that emulates a slow-motion jump onto a train. Gustin delivers the rest of “Anywhere” being whirled around on a ladder, and then on a platform that emulates the train he’s hopped on. The kinetic energy of the sequence, and this sense of our lead character flying from tragedy into the night, does a great job grabbing the audience’s attention and introducing us to the world we’re about to explore.
The Heart of Rock and Roll
“The Only One”
An absolutely incredible moment in a show that I thought deserved more attention this season, the emotional climax of The Heart of Rock and Roll derives from Huey Lewis’s song “The Only One,” adapted here to help our protagonist reckon with the loss of his father decades prior. I think two things make this sequence so powerful:
- The innovative use of an up-tempo song for this moment that book writers would typically assign to a ballad
- Cott’s incredible acting and vocal performance
This was the moment that stuck in my mind the most when I left the theater and now I can’t stop listening to this track on the cast recording.
Here’s a backstage video Corey Cott posted from the final performance:
And a link to the full number if you also want to get it stuck in your head forever:
“Stuck With You”
The other moment that stuck with me from The Heart of Rock and Roll was a hilarious sequence in Act II during the song “Stuck With You.” The song starts as a proposal, with the boyfriend of lead character Cassie singing that he wants to be stuck with her for the rest of her life. Halfway through, though, the song morphs, the surrounds transforming into a suburban neighborhood (I was getting ‘50s vibes), where Cassie imagines exactly what being stuck with this guy would look like. In this particular case, it involves her vacuuming at home while her husband works, having a kid (which falls from the sky in a hilarious, if not scientifically accurate, moment), and being cheated on by her husband with a neighbor (who then also has a baby that falls from the sky). The nightmare ends quickly, with the world transforming back to the proposal and her fiancé-to-be innocently strumming his ukulele. It’s a great sequence all around that made me laugh out loud.
The Who’s Tommy
The Beginning of “Pinball Wizard”
They attempted to replicate this at the Tonys to limited success (it was subject to the same weird timing issues that seem to happen with all televised awards shows, plus Pete Townshend seemed to get confused with the timing). But as actually performed at the Nederlander Theatre, the beginning of “Pinball Wizard” is goosebump-inducing, which flashes of color running along the borders of the screens that make up the set, working their way up and over the stage with each chord of the iconic intro. Combine this with the electric (and unbelievably high) vocal performances and you have a moment that will stick with me long after the show closes.
Lempicka
The LED Strips
I didn’t love the Lempicka set, Tony nomination or not, but there was one element of it I absolutely did love: the LED strips lining the three-story structure. Embedded along the lines and curves of the Eiffel Tower-esque set, lighting designer Bradley King used these LEDs in a range of creative ways throughout the show, sometimes just to create a stunning static backdrop, and other times to accentuate key moments.
The LED strip moment that stands out particularly in my memory of this production is in the Act I finale, “Woman Is.” As we approach the climax of Eden Espinosa’s insane vocal performance, she lists off everything about her lover that she wants to touch. And with each part of her body a different segment of the set flashes to life, the LED strips bursting on in a way that emulates the excitement of discovering something for the first time. Gradually, the entire set comes alive. For me, the lighting was a key contributor to this moment hitting as hard as it did.
If you want to hear the sequence musically, check out around 3:19 in the song embedded below.
And as a neat bonus, these fixtures are also pretty cool for invoking general chaos. You can see a bit of that in the clip below, from another song in the show called “Perfection.”
Purlie Victorious
That Final Set Change
So Derek McLane did receive a nomination for his Purlie Victorious set design, but I loved it so much I still wanted to acknowledge it. The set in general was excellent, and a very cool example of creating an effective and creative set without requiring an absurd budget. The most memorable scenic moment has to be at the very end, when the horizontal overhead beams that have served as the ceiling for the entirety of the show fly out, and reveal that we have been inside Purlie’s church the whole time. With the ceiling fading away we are no longer in a cramped home on a southern plantation, but rather in a spacious church with intersecting wooden beams soaring the full height of the stage.
This moment stuns visually of course, but it also has an emotional edge to it because of what it means to finally see Purlie’s dreams realized, and to see a moment of joy in a world that has presented nothing but challenges to our protagonists throughout the story.
Mary Jane
The Set
In my opinion, the Tonys should have honored the scenic design of this show with a nomination. And this category is the rare case where I can share official video of exactly why I think it deserved that recognition. The first chunk of this show takes place in Mary Jane’s home, where she serves as a near full-time caretaker of her seriously ill young child with a remarkably positive attitude.
When her son’s condition worsens, Mary Jane has to take him to the hospital and continue to care for him there. To mark this transition (and tell us something about Mary Jane’s headspace), the until-now static set representing Mary Jane’s home lifts up in its entirety, revealing a hospital buzzing with activity. The kitchen table doesn’t move, only now we see it’s a table in a lounge area of the hospital.
Not pictured in the video below is that the entire apartment set hovers above the hospital, partially out of view, after making its dramatic reveal. It tells us that Mary Jane continues to see a return home as a possibility, and to see this hospital visit as merely another challenge she and her son have to face together. As the devastating conclusion nears, the apartment inches upward, sneaking out of sight (and out of Mary Jane’s mind) as the reality of the situation becomes clearer. All that’s left are the sterile hospital walls and a black void beyond, and it becomes clear this story is going to end in the hospital.
Days of Wine and Roses
The Book
I have a difficult relationship with the books of musicals, which I think mostly derives from the fact that it’s just really hard to write a good musical. And while I don’t think Days of Wine and Roses was a perfect show by any means, I thought its book by Craig Lucas deserved some recognition for taking on a difficult topic in a powerful way. Maybe this derives from the movie that inspired the musical, but I think I was surprised that this show had more to it than just “two married alcoholics,” which was the vibe I got from the social media buzz around the show. Don’t get me wrong, alcoholism is quite present in this show, but it’s much more about a husband and wife moving in opposite directions, the husband from alcoholism to sobriety, and the wife from sobriety to alcoholism. I thought Lucas did a good job articulating and interrogating this arc, and it came to life thanks to powerful performances from Brian D’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara.
Gutenberg
The Final Set Reveal
Okay yes, it’s another recognition for a set design moment, sorry! Gutenberg! The Musical! is about two guys pitching the musical they’ve written in an empty James Earl Jones Theatre. So the set for most of the show is intentionally designed to look like the theater we’re in when a show isn’t playing there. In an epic final moment, though, we get a glimpse of Bud and Doug’s dream coming true, and we see the “empty theater” set transform into a fully realized Broadway production, if only for a few seconds. We see the glimpse, the music swells, and the lights black out. When the lights come up for bows, the dream is gone and we’re back in the familiar humble setting of the empty stage. The level of effort from designer Scott Pask to deliver a moment that lasts only a few seconds is something I thought deserved some recognition.
Here Lies Love
The Set
It got nominated but it should have won. Here Lies Love transformed a theater in service of delivering a completely unique theatrical experience. Cabaret, which actually did win for Scenic Design for a Musical, transformed a theater for a unique pre-show experience, but the actual show itself didn’t feel like it needed that transformation to work. The staging feels like an alley set-up basically, with the audience split between two sides. It didn’t seem particularly immersive once the pre-show ended, whereas Here Lies Love was overwhelmingly immersive throughout, with cast members all over the theater and projection surfaces and lighting positions scattered around the entire building.
Cabaret did have the unique advantage of still being open on Broadway, and I suspect that may be what pushed Tony voters to recognize it in the end.
Once Upon a One More Time
I put this one at the bottom so you can skip it if you want to, because it’s a pretty deep cut that many people will probably find uninteresting.
The Act I Blackout
This show got zero Tony nominations (and I’m still a little bitter that neither Justin Guarini nor Jennifer Simard received nominations for their performances), but I’m going to go a bit more niche for this recognition: the blackout at the end of Act 1 of this show was excellent. Kenneth Posner is a master of epic blackouts, known most to blackout connoisseurs for the blackout at the end of “Defying Gravity” in Wicked. And yes, I used the plural of the word “blackout connoisseurs” because I know at least two other ones, even if they may be the only two other ones in the world.
Posner was in prime form once again in Once Upon a One More Time, delivering a very cool cue at the end of an otherwise fine Act 1 finale. All the princesses are standing in a line downstage, Cinderella says the final line of the act (which I swear to goodness actually is “Flatbush”), and then the button hits. Posner flashes to a silhouette look with white backlight from lights positioned on the floor upstage. This is accompanied by a flash of white across the upstage video wall (Sven Ortel designed projections/video). Then the wall bumps to black, and the upstage lights fade out while moving upward and color-shifting through a greenish off-white. All of this happens incredibly quickly, but it is so much more dynamic than a bump to black that typically signals the act is over. Plus, this “falling blackout” as I’ll call it aligns with the way the music sort of “falls off” after the button. Epic moment in a show with lots of great moments, but not a strong skeleton holding them together.
And that brings us to the end of the (still not officially named) Justin Awards. If my math is right I gave out awards to 11 moments from the past season. And sure, half of the award winners ended up being cool set changes or lighting moments, but I never claimed these awards would be broad in scope or interesting to most people!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed accompanying me on this journey. Now I can look forward to not thinking about awards for a bit. The Tonys are fun, but there are lots of other fun things for us to explore together, and I’m looking forward to getting back to that. See you soon!
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