the craptacular

I mean, let’s be real. You can’t really go wrong with John Lithgow. He fairly oozes with smarts and debonair charm, whether he’s playing a con man or an alien, or narrating a PBS documentary about embryonic development.

In The Columnist, Lithgow plays a flamboyant writer grappling with the changing of the journalistic guard in the 1960s. The play itself is no easy jaunt. David Auburn’s words (and words, and words) are so intricately layered and spun that they could, in lesser hands, leave the audience feeling a tad exhausted.

But dude, John Lithgow would not let that happen. In a career of crazy good performances, I love this one the best. Both petulant and vulnerable, his Joseph Alsop is also unfalteringly suave, even when he’s falling apart. It’s a hell of a performance.

Sure, John’s already won truckloads of awards, but here’s a new one to add to his collection: The Tony of our hearts. Maybe he’ll even keep it on the shelf right next to his real Tonys.

What? The 57^th Annual Drama Desk Awards; June 3, 2012

Where? Town Hall, with its very cushy seats; The Liberty Theater, in all its random-hidden-secret location glory, decked for a party

With whom? Hosts Brian D’Arcy James & Brooke Shields, James Corden, Judith Light, Nick Westrate, Jeremy Shamos, Julie Halston, Oskar Eustis, Tom Edden, Tracie Bennett, Mary Testa, William Finn, Jeremy Jordan, Claybourne Elder, Melissa van der Schyff, Alex Timbers, Roger Rees, Rick Elice, Michael Musto, Richard Ridge, Jessie Mueller, Miche Braden, Kevin Earley, Marin Mazzie, Jason Danieley, Molly Ranson, Stephen Karam, Duncan Sheik, Bernadette Peters, ESosa, Alan Menken, Christopher Gatelli, Maury Yeston, Norm Lewis, and so fucking many other important theater people.

Talking points:

• We’re still not entirely sure why Brooke Shields was there, but Mr. D’Arcy James absolutely nailed it last night. He was dashing and hilarious. Also, he told the entire audience that presenter Jeremy Shamos was “the best lover in the room” which was actually priceless.
• Cutest moment of the entire ceremony? When Stephen Karam gave a shoutout to his parents during his acceptance speech his adorable mother, sitting a few rows away from us in the balcony, stood to wave proudly at her son. It was cuter than a basketful of puppies and rainbows. We almost didn’t survive.
• Presenter Oskar Eustis—looking like the fiercest lion this side of the Serengeti—cut one hell of a figure in a black suit with a deep teal bowtie and a badass pocket watch, whose shiny chain was visible even from the balcony.
• Speaking of cutting one hell of a figure—Carrie star Molly Ranson looked BANGIN in a slinky, knee length sequined number that was so tight she had to walk up the stairs sideways at the after party. AMAZING. Homegirl had the best dress at the Lortels last month, and again at the Drama Desks last night.
• Rushing to the ceremony post-Newsies,  Jeremy Jordan arrived just in time to lose to Danny Burstein—ugh, sorry Danny, but… ugh. At the after party we caught him close-talking with the beautiful/amazing Melissa van der Schyff at the same table where Jessie Mueller was sitting, but the best part of our Jeremy sighting? The big ‘ol backpack he had slung on over his suit. It made him look so deeply nerdy and ordinary and mind-bogglingly charming all at the same time.
• The criminally handsome Claybourne Elder, nominated for his performance in One Arm, chatted with us for a hot minute at the party. We’d like to thank him for being so charming while The Mick basically grabbed him by the lapels and DEMANDED that he audition for Giorgio in Passion so our dream casting can become reality. He’s a keeper.
• Alex Timbers, The Most Beautifully Coiffed Man Alive, was pretty easy to keep track of at the party. (Probably because he’s the approximate height of a tree.) Unfortunately, at the exact moment our friend was going to introduce us to Mr. Timbers, he actually ran away. The exact moment. Our timing was so excellently bad, you’d think we were in some kind of a movie.
• Philip Boykin is more badass than everyone and has so much swag we cannot even… There’s no way anyone on Broadway could rock a jaunty silk scarf the way he did last night.
• The gorgeous Jason Danieley was there with his gorgeous wife Marin Mazzie. Mazzie, who was nominated and performed at the ceremony, wore an absolutely killer green gown. Daniely wore… god only knows what. Looking at him is like looking at the sun—he’s so hot it hurts—so we never quite sorted out his outfit.
• Nick Westrate received of a Special Award because “his versatility in Unnatural Acts, Love’s Labor’s Lost, and Galileo was a highlight of the season.” We’ll admit to weeping a tiny bit during his speech. At the after-party, we didn’t get a chance to say congrats because there was a force field of power and intimidation around him basically all night.

Credit: Linda Lenzi

So, what’s everybody doing for Tony night? We have no idea what we’re doing, besides feeling Raul Esparza’s pain and praying that Jeremy Jordan and Steve Kazee will tie, so they can give a joint speech, that is. As the Big Effing Night creeps closer, here’s what we’re chatting about…

• Second Stage will revive The Last Five Years in the spring of 2013. The two-person musical, which was written by Jason Robert Brown and is about Jason Robert Brown, will also be directed by Jason Robert Brown. No word yet on whether Jason Robert Brown will star. As either Cathy and Jamie, or both.
• The Public Theater has finally cast The Baker for this summer’s Central Park production of Into the Woods. We know, we know, Denis O’Hare probs got the gig cause he’s good at acting and won a Tony Award and stuff. But now, our True Blood-addled brains are totally re-imagining The Baker as a bloodthirsty vampire. Best idea ever, right?!
• Amanda Seyfried, Nick Jonas, Sheryl Crow, and Tyler Perry will all present at the Tonys. Now that’ll boost the ratings.
• In this week’s episode of The Truth is More Craptacular Than Fiction, Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye reported that Viva Forever, the Spice Girls musical, will replace Ghost: The Musical at the West End’s Piccadilly Theater this fall. Thank god the producers had already delivered the bad news to the cast of Ghost! Oh… wait…
• For Classic Stage Company’s 45th season, Ethan Hawke will do Chekhov and Duncan Shiek will score a Brecht play. This won’t be pretentious at all, you guys!
• Breathe your sigh of relief, fangirls and boys: The very much closed Leap of Faith will very much perform on this year’s Tonys. A note to the telecast producers: Lots and lots of closeups of Raul aggressively channeling his blind, bitter rage, please.
• The musical Hands on a Hardbody is Broadway-bound. We’d be excited for any opportunity to see the dashing Jay A. Johnson on stage, but a musical about a handful of hicks in a competition to win a pick-up truck? A competition that involves standing still with your hands on a truck? (We know, you’re disappointed the hardbody isn’t Jay’s abs.) We can’t wait to see how this works out.
• Doesn’t it suck when you’re all prepared to be haughty and condescending about something, because you have so much fucking taste and everything, and then you end up weeping like a child in the corner? Also, this is the first teaser trailer for the Les Miserables film.

Last month Clybourne Park star Jeremy Shamos nabbed himself a well-deserved Tony Nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his no-holds-barred performance as Karl Lindner/Steve. Between playing two characters every night and attending a gazillion awards ceremonies, Shamos took some time out to chat with us. Topics covered include: explaining acting to his children, growing up in Denver and attempting to tweet at The Fonz.

Mick: We wanted to kick this off with a question that, I think, the ladies get all the time. But we’re very curious. What are you going to wear to the Tonys?

Jeremy: Marc Jacobs is designing a dress for me.

M: Great! That’s fantastic.

J: I’m going to go with a tuxedo. From, uhm… what’s the guy’s name… I’m not actually trying to make a joke, I’m actually trying to remember the person… Oh! Kenneth Cole. Yeah. So I’ll be wearing a Kenneth Cole tuxedo.

M: As a dude, is there etiquette about how you choose your suit or your tux? Like, do you have to worry about what other guys are wearing?

J: Well I, look, I just hope that no one else is wearing a black tuxedo because that would be embarrassing.

M: Are your kids really excited about your nomination? Do they even understand?

J: I don’t think that they understand and I think that’s probably really good. My son just turned three and my daughter is going to turn five on June 18^th, the week after the Tonys, so I think it’s actually nice that they don’t understand it. I think it would be a little creepy if I gave them tutorials every night, like “Daddy is nominated for a Tony Award. Antoinette Perry was a wonderful…”

M: Do your children understand what you do for a living? How do you explain that to them?

J: I think they do. But the whole idea of characters and stuff is a little vague to them. Because my wife is an actress too, I wonder sometimes if we ruin things for them. Like, you know, when we did Clybourne Park out in LA we went to Disneyland and there was this Star Wars Jedi Training thing and Darth Vader actually came out, live, like 20 feet away from us and was like “Children, come join the dark side” and everything. My kids were pretty freaked out, so I was trying to explain it to them so they wouldn’t be scared. I was like, ‘That’s just a guy named Bruce. Who just came to Disneyland and parked, actually, probably farther away than we parked, and he’s inside that suit and when he disappears, he’s probably with the guys that play the Storm Troopers, who are named like, Paul and Anthony, and they’re down there just hanging out and drinking Gatorade and making jokes with each other.’ And that made them feel better, but someone told me that I was ruining their experience.

M: OK, let’s talk about Clybourne Park.  Your character Karl, in the first act, is about as close to a bad guy as this play gets. But, how do you see Karl? Do you see him as a bad guy?

J: No, not at all. I don’t see him as a bad guy at all. I mean, I know that through a modern-day lens, he’s really backwards and confused about the way things are,he’s backwards about the way that he’s trying to affect change. I see him as someone who cares about his community and is frightened and trying to protect what he knows. And as [playwright] Bruce Norris said, 50 years from now, in 2059 when this play is done, the characters from 2009 will seem super backwards.  I think that it’s only with the lens of looking back that you can see just how confused people are.

I think, for the sake of simple storytelling, people do want a villain and a hero and I think Bruce is a good enough writer that I don’t think he gives people that. And I think that’s what makes the play so compelling and interesting.

M: So every night you play two characters, Karl and Steve – one in 1959, one in 2009. Do you see them as essentially the same guy in different decades, do you see them as two sides of the same coin? Both? Neither?

J: I genuinely see Act I and Act II as two completely different plays. And I feel like we let the audience make any kind of inferences about how they’re the same or different. We don’t go out of our way to make anything resonate specifically. We’ve backed off of giving the audience the chance to congratulate themselves for recognizing that something is resonating from both acts.

I have an advantage, because I’m playing Karl Lindner from A Raisin in the Sun, so I’m already kind of doing the second act of another play, in a weird way. So some things that I say resonate with people who are aware of A Raisin in the Sun. But I think, in general, it’s two different plays. Which is kind of an actor’s dream.  We all kind of feel like we’re getting to do two plays on Broadway instead of one, which is great.

M: So this play is obviously very much about race, and about what we do and don’t say about race. How did you handle that conversation offstage? Or did you?

J: We talked about it a lot less than people think that we talked about it. The play takes care of talking about it in such an interesting way that a lot of times we just talked about the play as if we were talking about any play. I remember we had a few discussions about race and, based on personal experiences and things like that.

M: Where did you grow up?

J: I grew up in Denver. I was actually born here in Manhattan. My parents were both born and raised in Manhattan and had me and my sister here. And when I was very little they decided to move to Colorado.

M: What was it like growing up there?

J: I went to a small school where I was actually a pretty serious athlete. I played soccer and lacrosse. I was like, an All State lacrosse player and I was on a travelling soccer team. But because I went to such a small school, I also was always in plays and musicals. It was just that kind of school where everybody got to do everything, which I really feel lucky about. By the time I was a sophomore or junior in high school I was involved in the local theater in Denver and played Eugene in Brighton Beach Memoirs. And I just always wanted to be an actor. I always felt very comfortable on stage and sometimes more comfortable on stage than I do not on stage, so…

M: We noticed that you just recently joined Twitter. How is that going for you?

J: I really, genuinely don’t know what I’m doing. I just don’t fully get it.

Last year, I did an event at Symphony Space hosted by Jay McIenerny about stories that are written in bars. I read the story that he ended up turning into Bright Lights, Big City. Afterwards, Jay was like ‘That was amazing. I just tweeted about how great that reading was.’ I knew what Twitter was, so I joined with my name, @JeremyShamos, just to read what he said.

That was like a year ago, so I had a Twitter account that was… let’s say, dormant. And then when I got nominated for the Tony I got all these emails saying “So and so said congratulations on your Tony Nomination, it’s so well deserved!” and like, all these nice things. So then I did my first tweet thanking everyone who congratulated me, and now I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. Like, Henry Winkler came to the show the other day and I just thought that was amazing. My stage manager sent me a picture of me with The Fonz and I tried to tweet it and I don’t know if I tweeted it, and then I tried to look him up to try and say thanks for coming. And I don’t really understand it. Maybe you can explain it to me. It’s probably a longer discussion. Is Twitter a good thing or an evil thing?

M: Well, I think it’s a little bit of both. I think it would be a little scarier if I were an actor just because it’s probably difficult to block or filter feedback.

J:  You mean if someone wants to say something shitty about you?

M: Yeah, if someone wants to say something shitty to you, you can’t block them. Well, you can, but you’ll probably see it first.

J: Like, if someone says “@JeremyShamos is a total douchebag and that guy doesn’t deserve a Tony Nomination. He’s an asshole!” Then I would have to read that?

M: Yeah, it would show up in your replies.

J: But that’s okay, because that would confirm my psychological feelings about myself and I would be like “Oh, you’re right. I’m a fraud. I wanna follow that guy, he’s smart!”

M: So what’s your favorite play, ever?

J: My favorite play ever? I know the answer to that, but it’s maybe a little bit boring. My favorite play ever is The Three Sisters. And having said that, I don’t know that I‘ve ever seen a really good production of it. To me there’s something about it. It’s a Holy Grail thing. I know that it’s a great play and I love it but I’ve never seen a great, great, great production of that play. And there’s something about that that makes it even more my favorite play. Because it feels to me like sort of… unfinished… in this way.

M: Do you have a dream role?

J: There’s a couple of roles that I’ve played that I would love to play again. There’s a play called Engaged by W.S. Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan and it’s one of the most tremendous comedies ever written and it’s totally unrecognized. And in grad school at NYU, I played Iago in my third year, and I would love to do that again. That was one of the best acting experiences of my life. Barry Edelstein directed the production and Daniel Sunjata played Othello and I played Iago. We were, you know, third year graduate acting students but it felt really special. It’s an amazing play, it’s like a Ferrari. You just give it a lot of gas and you can’t even believe how amazing it drives… if that makes any sense at all.

M: What is the last book that you read?

J: The last good book I read? Or the last book that I read?

M: Either/or.

J: I think, I was on a real roll when I read Freedom [by Jonathan Franzen] and A Visit From the Goon Squad. I think A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan was the last really good book that I read. Now I’m reading How to Raise the Perfect Dog by Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer because we’re about to get a puppy. Our dog died—we had a 16 year old miniature daschund—who died last Thanksgiving and so we are going to see a litter of puppies this afternoon.

M: What are some words you use too often?

J: Listening to myself in interviews lately, I think I use the word ‘like’ too much. I thought I had gotten over that in the Valley Girl days. And I think I sort of glommed onto a few words, like ’disparity.’ I think I talk about the disparity between things a little too much. I can’t stand when people use the word ‘literally’ when they don’t need to. So I try not to do that. And I think maybe it bothers me because I used to do that.

M: Do you have a favorite mid to late nineties pop song?

J: Mid-to-late nineties. Wow. That’s challenging. I guess… “Creep.” That was it for me. I never really went back. I’m a big Radiohead fan now.

M: Last question, and then you are home free! On a night out, what is your signature, go-to beverage?

J: I used to go with the Makers Mark Manhattan on the rocks, perfect. But lately I haven’t been drinking. With the show there’s just a lot going on and I haven’t been really feeling like having cocktails and so I’ve been having club soda with bitters. It’s a little bit boring compared to the Makers Mark Manhattan on the rocks, perfect. But it’s a good after-show, when people want to go out for a drink, it’s a good cozy non-cocktail-cocktail. I’m also a huge fan of water. I just really like water. I think water is the shit.

There’s a number of things one can do to win the Tony of My Heart:

1) be grin-inducingly good at what you do
2) be unconventionally cute
3) be a big nerd
4) look good in skinny jeans

Ding ding ding, we have a winner ladies and gents: Christian Borle, your floppy hair and angelic voice in Legally Blonde secured you a place on my radar (I was a tad too young for Spamalot…) and your major acting chops in Angels in America made sure you stayed there for good. Then you went and got yourself cast in Smash as a character who had enough sass to smackdown Angelica Houston.

But your biggest success of the year has got to be Peter And The Starcatcher. You swashbuckle your way across the stage in a perfectly campy pantomime of villainy, all while rocking a big mustache. In a season of strong plays and strong performances in plays, you stood out and proved what we all already knew: you’ve got ridonkulous amounts of talent.

I think you have a real chance of striking Tony gold this year, but even if you don’t, you without a doubt win the Tony of My Heart.

Follow SophieGangsta (@SophG6) on Twitter.

Ok, so On a Clear Day… wasn’t exactly a huge megahit. The same cannot be said for its  colossally talented young star, Jessie Mueller, who made her Broadway debut in the show and stole basically every scene she stepped into. No small feat, considering that she was playing opposite the physically and vocally formidable Harry Connick, Jr.

Who said there was no money to be made in the theater?

This was a record-breaking week on Broadway from a financial perspective — which is pretty impressive considering that 24 of Broadway’s 36 open shows reported losses compared with the previous week. Still, Broadway reported a ton of good news this week, which helped make history.

The Book of Mormon once again broke the house record of Broadway’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre, filling the theater at a capacity of 102.6% for the 34th time in a row. The megahit also earned $1,609,477.71 — it’s third best week ever. And ticket prices, 13 months after the show opened, are still getting higher and higher. In fact, this week was the highest average ticket price Mormon has seen in its entire run, at $183.90. The top ticket price still sits pretty at $477 — a number that hasn’t changed since June, 2011. (Meanwhile, Dave still hasn’t won that damn lotto. Hasa diga ebowai.)

Not to be outdone, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman broke two records in one week. First, Salesman crossed the million dollar mark for the first time in its run, grossing $1,014,413.31 in only seven performances. Seems like everyone and their mother is paying through the nose (top ticket price – $475) to see “The Tragic Tale of Willy Loman” before it closes. And for the eleventh time, the show broke the house record at the Barrymore Theatre, filling more than 99% of seats. But here’s the interesting thing: in its entire run, Death of a Salesman has yet to fill 100% of its 7,252-seat theater.

And then there’s Once. Or as we like to call it, “The Little Musical that Could.” The 11-time-Tony-nominated musical had its best week ever, taking in a solid $820,323. Once has hands-down seen the biggest benefits of the Tony nominations. The show’s capacity percentage, average ticket price, and revenue have grown almost every week since the nominations were announced. For a small show about romance without any flashy sets, costumes, or traditional choreography, that’s a pretty big feat.

But as we said, despite success for Mormon, Salesman, and Once, grosses were down just about everywhere else. Still, this was the highest grossing week-leading-up-to-Memorial Day on record. A stellar $26,588,408 total came in this week. Hot damn!

Oh, and if that weren’t enough, the numbers for the end-of-season as a whole are in, and holy shit, did we collectively spend a lot of money seeing shows! Altogether, in the 2011-2012 season (May 30, 2011 – May 27, 2012), Broadway shows grossed $1,139,311,457. That’s the highest-grossing season on record, up 5.4% from last season. Broadway broke attendance records as well, with 12,334,312 people attending shows. That means each person spent roughly $92.37 on Broadway shows — not that much, when you think about it. Is that us justifying our theater spending habits? Why, yes. Yes it is.

Grosses are provided courtesy of The Broadway League. Click here to read this week’s complete list of grosses.

More from NineDaves and LovelyLinda can be found on their respective blogs.

The gowns! The tears! The epic, occasional what-the-fuckery! The Tony Awards are a pretty interesting social experiment in what happens when theater kids are allowed several hours of annual TV time. Here are some of our favorite moments from Tony history that qualify as distinctly… odd.

Br-Broo-Brooke Shields
We’re sure you haven’t forgotten this, but… remember that time Brooke Shields was supposed to help Neil Patrick Harris out and sing a line or two in his opening number at the 2011 Tonys? And she lost her whole damn mind and fucked up repeatedly? And needed a cue card to finish on her third attempt? We do! All we can say is thank god the Tony writers were making a super timely joke about crotch Twitpics, because otherwise there never would have been any payoff.

The Entire Year of 2009
When thinking about truly craptacular, ‘what the fuck even just happened?’ moments, we kept coming back to the year 2009—a black hole for WTF. First, Sir Elton John’s mic was out. Then there was an unintelligible medley of songs with the word ‘tonight’ in them from West Side Story and Guys and Dolls. Then there was Poison, and Bret Michaels ‘missed his mark’ and took a set-piece straight to the dome. And then, there was a bad-sounding medley of Pal Joey’s “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and Next to Normal’s “I’m Alive” that seems to have occurred just because the word ‘I’m’ is repeated a lot in both songs. Even Aaron Tveit’s handsomeness in a tight purple t-shirt couldn’t save it. And that was just the opening number, folks! The WTF just keeps on coming! Chief among those was Alice Ripley’s acceptance speech, wherein the Best Lead Actress in a Musical just shouted at us about art while trying not to cry. It. Was. Epic. You stay cray, La Ripley, you stay cray.

The (Really) Civil War
In this 1999 clip from The Civil War, the Frank Wildhorn/Jack Murphy musical about… um… The Civil War, has never failed to send us into spasms of purely craptacular joy. Like, we pull this one out at parties sometimes. Fault cannot really be placed on the cast — do you guys remember the amazing Keith Byron Kirk? — but what the hell is this song? It’s a gently grooving soft-rock pean to freedom and ideological loyalty, that’s what. Throw in some slow-mo fighting, some business with flag-waving, and Matt Bogart looking wicked effing determined, and you basically have my favorite musical, Les Civil War, and its sequel, The Wildly Oversimplified War. Without any wins, this show closed a week after the Tonys. As another revolutionary once said, “Can’t think-a why.”

The Life, Which Is Still About Hookers
Context is everything. And removing a musical number from all of its meaning-making context is what the Tony Awards do best, you guys! Take this number from The Life, which is a musical about hookers. It might be a good show. It might be a terrible show. But watching this from your living room in Montana in the spring of 1997, your chief takeaway may very well be that Lilias White is amazing and you’re sure you first heard this song in a tampon commercial.

Donna Murphy Wins… at Everything
Remember 1996 when Julie Andrews pulled that totally bullshit move where she like… renounced her Tony nomination? Like she was renouncing the crown of Genovia or something? Yeah, well the Tony voting committee symbolically told her to shove it when they chose Donna Murphy as Best Actress in a Musical. So many bonus points for the amazing (amazing!) look on Donna’s face when her name is called, and for Bernadette Peters, who pronounces Daphne Rubin-Vega’s name so it sounds kind of like Daphne Rutabega.

Madonna Talks… and Talks…
You think the endless whoring of Hollywood on Broadway is something new, maybe? Yeah, no. Bear witness to this Tony moment from 1988 wherein Madonna fumbles through her presentation of the regional theater award. She starred in the original cast of Speed the Plough that year and received disastrous critical notices, but that didn’t stop the Tony Awards geniuses from giving her eons of airtime. Still, we find this clip kind of endearing. Right around the same time, Madonna’s day job was lying on church alters in bustiers, so it’s kind of sweet to see her, swathed to the chin in black with a bunch of weirdly symmetrical pink flowers, trying super hard not to make fun of everyone.

Starlight Express, Starring Angela Lansbury
Roller skates! Codpieces! Faux-gospel! Andrew Lloyd Webber! Roller skates! We kind of love how Angela Lansbury’s aggressively vertical, shawl-collar dress makes it seem like she could be in the show. Now that ticket, we’d buy.

This Is What Cats Looked Like in the 80s
This 1983 performance starts with a song about “Jellicle Cats.” And 600 years later we’re still not entirely sure what Jellicle means. (It sounds kind of like popsicle?) But we do know what these ‘cats’ can do, because for 3:30 on the Tonys we heard a whole long list of those things.  Examples? Walking on wires. And walking up walls. And prancing around a stage in a way that looks vaguely feline, while wearing a whole lot of spandex and looking like the mange set in a century ago. Then we have “Memory” wherein badass Betty Buckley teaches us that cats can be heartbroken, too. Homegirl emotes with the best of them, even when she’s wearing REALLY pointy press-on nails, but let’s be real here. What this Tony number really taught us is that Cats doesn’t get any better up close.

Liz Taylor is Unintentionally Hilarious
Liz Taylor can do a lot of things. Like act. And make perfume. And marry lots of men. Something she can’t do? Read, apparently. This video, from the 1981 Tony Awards, is truly the gift that keeps on giving. First Liz can’t keep a straight face, then she calls the Great American Book Musical a cultural ‘import’ instead of an ‘export’ and you think you’ve seen it all. But hold on, y’all, hold on. Because there are plenty of golden moments of WTF left. Like the time she mispronounces Nederlander as ‘Needleheimer’ and the audience almost dies of laughter. Wouldn’t you?

Jesus Doesn’t Even Go Here
Welcome to the 1972 Tony Awards Israel in 4 BC. Where there is no mass communication. But there are like, a lot of diapers for adults to walk around in. And enough hairspray to create beehives the size of Texas (?). And the biggest toothpick full of olives you’ve ever seen, for which the matching martini never quite arrives. Probs because Jesus throws a temper tantrum and ruins the whole party so he can sing some depressing shit about how his father is going to make him die in a really messy way. Mary Magdalene tries to save the day, sharing that vaguely flower shaped microphone with Jesus, but really, what can a hooker do? Especially when her show isn’t even nominated for Best Musical.

Hair Occupies The Tonys
We’re obsessed with this clip from 1969 for one reason: Harry Belafonte’s epic intro speech about theater taking responsibility for the peaceful unification of civilization in divided times. Whether he wrote it, or it was written for him, it’s clear that someone felt that Harry could credibly pull it off, and he does. I mean, can you imagine if Scarlett Johannson got up this year and did that before presenting the Tony for Best Lighting Design? Huzzah for more earnest times — and longer attention spans.

Ah, the week in American theater… Actually, because we’re so close to the Tonys, let’s call it theatre with an -RE…

• At some point, the creators of the new Annie revival were like, “You know what would be ideal for Miss Hannigan? If we cast someone who can sing, act, and remember her lines.” Enter Katie Finneran. Thank God.
• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is getting a London production in 2013, according to… um… our interview with David Yazbek. You read it here first. Literally.
• Breaking Tony News: The shows nominated for Best Musical are all performing at the ceremony this year! Oh, wait… except… what’s the name of that show again? With the tent and the preacher? Ah yes, Leap of Faith, which was mysteriously absent in the performance announcements. If anyone’s looking for an inexpensive way to present the eleven o’clock number, we have a black sheet and an extra string of Christmas lights…
• Actor Michael McKean was hit by a car this week while he was walking on the damn sidewalk. You can choose from either the Jan Maxwell joke, or the “break a leg” joke — which McKean already made himself. What? Neither of those, you say?
• If you’re still watching Smash next season — are you still watching it this season? — you’re going to have far fewer men to ogle, apparently. Dev, Ellis, Michael, and Frank have all been canned. That’s Raza Jaffrey, Jamie Cepero, Will Chase and Brian d’Arcy James, for the uninitiated. We’re… not sure how this is going to work. Unless they let us replace those guys with Aaron Tveit, Jeremy Jordan, Steven Pasquale and Jason Danieley. That works.
• Off-Broadway’s best attempt at being Las Vegas — Million Dollar Quartet — is closing. We’re truly sad to see handsome hunks of burning love Eddie Clendening and Robert Britton Lyons go.
• Because Benjamin Walker is at his hottest when he’s covered in blood, the folks behind Baberaham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter have wisely released a red band (read: unrated) trailer. It’s gore porn. We’ve watched it a million times already.
• Ace Young and Diana DeGarmo got engaged live on the American Idol finale this week. Because they met on the Broadway — where they were a very terrible Berger and Sheila together in 2010 — this counts as theater news, we suppose. Also noteworthy? Young plugged the name of the jeweler who designed the 1-carat ring, mid-proposal. I gotta tell you, if my proposal has to be turned into a commercial, I better be getting a ring the approximate size of the sun. For the uninitiated, that’s a bit larger than 1-carat.
• Prince of Broadway, the Hal Prince review slated to open in the fall, has now moved its opening date back to fall, 2013. Our first thought? What of the fabulous Sierra Boggess, who has managed to get herself cast in nearly every postponed show this season? Our vote — FYI, we don’t get one — is that she should head back to the literally flaming Rebecca, which at least has an actual opening date and an actual booked theater.
• Our favorite casting news of the week? The wonderful Lindsay Mendez will star in the musical Dogfight off-Broadway alongside Annaleigh Ashford, Josh Segarra, F. Michael Haynie, and lots of other youthful, big-singing, crushable folks.
• In a subtlely-mentioned-on-page-3 kind of way, Jim Parsons officially came out this week. We’re very happy for you, Jimmy, and please do bring your adorable other half with you to the Tonys.