The Tony Awards won’t be boring this year, that’s for sure.
The June 13th telecast on CBS will feature Green Day, the punk group that inspired Best Musical nominee, “American Idiot.”
Plus, the Tonys just announced they’re bringing back performances from the Best Plays — new and revived. This will include Denzel Washington and Viola Davis from Fences; Justin Bartha, Anthony LaPaglia and Tony Shalhoub from Lend Me a Tenor; Jan Maxwell and Rosemary Harris of The Royal Family; Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson from A View from the Bridge; Laura Benanti and Michael Cerveris from In the Next Room or the vibrator play; Patrick Breen and Patrick Heusinger of Next Fall; Laura Linney and Brian d’Arcy James from Time Stands Still; and Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne from Red.
The show will also include Antonio Banderas, Cate Blanchett, Michael Douglas, Scarlett Johansson, Lucy Liu, Helen Mirren, Chris Noth, Bernadette Peters, David Hyde Pierce and Raquel Welch. Plus Catherine Zeta Jones and Kelsey Grammer will perform, respectively, from A Little Night Music and La Cage Aux Folles.
Viola Davis is going to win Best Actress in A Play, but if Cate Blanchett’s “Streetcar Named Desire” had been on Broadway– and not at BAM in Brooklyn–things might have been different. That would have been some campaign!
One name I don’t see yet: Valerie Harper, nominated for “Looped” as Best Actress, playing Tallulah Bankhead. Harper, a four time Emmy Award winner as Rhoda Morgenstern, should be a presenter.
But don’t expect to see Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth from The Addams Family. They weren’t nominated and neither was the show. There will be no snapping at this year’s Tonys. And yet: the terrible musical continues to gross an average of $1,2 million a week. It gets the Tony for Most Critic Proof Show in Broadway History!
