Home Television No Tony Awards This Year, Maybe Next Year, So Who Gets Hurt...

My friends at Variety theyre smart people, but they just realized there probably will not be any Tony Awards this season. Thats because the coronavirus stopped the Broadway theater season in its tracks. The season, which runs from June to April, is over.

So what happens to the shows that did open? Clearly, the winner of Best Actress in a Musical would have been Adrienne Warren in the Tina Turner musical, Tina! She would have won even if all the other musicals had opened as planned. Warren is a spitfire on stage. When I say her performance is incendiary, people whove seen it know what I mean. She makes that big wheel keep on turnin.

There were two great performances by actresses in plays. First there was Mary Louise Parker in The Sound Inside, which might also have won Best Play. Adam Rapps play, directed by David Cromer, was exceptional. It would have gone on longer but Parker had already agreed to star in a revival of How I Learned to Drive, which was unnecessary. I hope The Sound Inside can return sometime.

Laura Linney was equally sensational in My Name is Lucy Barton. The one woman show was a fake off because Linney- who can do anything and seemingly never wrong also played Lucys mother so persuasively you would swear she was a separate actress. Based on Elizabeth Strouts novel, the adaptation by Rona Munro gave Linney one of her greatest moments on stage (and there have been plenty). Since we cant see this now, the only alternative is watch Ozark season 3 on Netflix, where Linney is on track to win the Emmy award.

As for male actors: Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley, and Ben Miles got thisclose to opening in The Lehman Trilogy, which had already played in New York and London, and can be seen in a television taping. There would have been nominations from The Inheritance mainly John Benjamin Hickey, who might have also been nominated for directing possible nominees Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker in Neil Simons Plaza Suite.

Well never know now what would have happened to the best show of the 2019-2020 season, David Byrnes American Utopia. I suppose the Tony committee would have given it a special award, since it was Byrne using his old music. Maybe he could have won Best Actor in a Musical. The show was supposed was supposed to re-open this fall. Whenever Broadway returns, I hope David Byrne does, too.

And Best Musical? So we had Tina, and maybe American Utopia, Moulin Rouge (not my favorite), the still to be opened Diana, plus Sing Street and Flying over Sunset. Of what already opened, Girl from the North Country would have been my choice, with nominations for Jay O. Sanders and Mare Winningham (who was going to have to fight off Adrienne Warren) who gave the best performances of their lives.

Should we just have the awards? Why not? Everyone Zoom in on June 7th, or least hum the songs. Maybe CBS could do some kind of Best of 2020 show with clips. But real Tony Awards? Not now.

Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. He wrote the Intelligencer column for NY Magazine in the mid 90s, reporting on the OJ Simpson trial, as well as for the real Parade magazine (when it was owned by Conde Nast), and has written for the New York Observer, Details, Vogue, Spin, the New York Times, NY Post, Washington Post, and NY Daily News among many publications. He is the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

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No Tony Awards This Year, Maybe Next Year, So Who Gets Hurt the Most? David Byrne, Adrienne Warren, Mare Winningham, Jay O. Sanders - Showbiz411