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    Unscripted or Not, the Tonys Were Mostly Predictable

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    The writing is on the wall: With or without writers, the Broadway awards are a strangely bland and canned way to celebrate a thrillingly live medium.No writers’ names crawled up the screen at the end of Sunday night’s telecast of the Tony Awards, and though the writers might not like to hear it, their absence made little difference. The names of the show’s producers and director were the same as always, and in television as in the theater, they call the game.Naturally, the strike by the Writers Guild of America against film and television conglomerates — including Paramount, which presented the event on its various platforms — had no effect on what was produced on Broadway during the 2022-23 season honored by these Tonys, nor on who won.Mostly those things bore out the predictions, and many people’s predilections too. “Kimberly Akimbo,” the sweet, intimate, tragicomic “nerdical” by Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire, won the most musical prizes, including one for its star, Victoria Clark, and one for the show itself. “Some Like It Hot” followed with a reasonable haul, and though “Parade” picked up just two, they were good ones: best direction of a musical and best musical revival.Producers and members of the cast and crew of “Kimberly Akimbo,” which took home the prize for best musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAmong the plays, “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s semi-autobiographical Holocaust drama, took the top awards, almost a foregone conclusion with that author and that subject — a subject he strangely did not mention in his acceptance. “Life of Pi,” a spectacular staging of the adventure novel by Yann Martel, fittingly won three technical awards, though I wish its astonishing tiger puppet had picked up one of the medallions in person, and perhaps eaten someone.Failing that, the only surprise, Sean Hayes’s win over Stephen McKinley Henderson in the leading actor category for plays, was not really that surprising, if a little disappointing.But since a little disappointment is normal, and probably desirable, all was comfy on the prize front. Perhaps too comfy. The pleasant predictability of the outcomes (and most of the performances) made the telecast, though once again divided awkwardly into two segments on separate Paramount platforms, seem canned, which is one thing we don’t want the Tonys to be. Leave that to programs that honor recorded performance, like the Oscars and the Emmys. The theater, a live medium, wants spontaneity and weirdness and even a taste of tackiness on its big night out.J. Harrison Ghee, the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony for best lead actor in a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlex Newell, the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony for best featured actor in a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs it happens, outness was a big theme, with J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell becoming the first openly nonbinary performers to win Tonys in acting categories. They were among the many winners and presenters who used their brief platforms to express support for diversity of all kinds: gender, orientation, race, religion, body type, ability, looks. But though heartening, that too was mostly dignified and predictable, except when the director Michael Arden turned a gay slur into a vector of vengeance upon winning for his staging of “Parade” and when the actress Denée Benton, introducing the education award to a teacher in Plantation, Fla., referred to Ron DeSantis as “the current Grand Wizard — I’m sorry, excuse me, governor” of her home state.For me, such vivid moments were striking exceptions in an even-tempered evening, if only for the brazenness of making political sentiments regardless of the risk of alienating some part of the audience that does not share them.Otherwise, the unscriptedness was a wash. Some performers offered banter that was just as inane as what writers usually provide. At one point, Julianne Hough, who with Skylar Astin hosted the first 90 minutes, on Pluto TV, ad-libbed, apropos of nothing, “When in doubt, shake it out.”Ariana DeBose, center, was the host of the main show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOn the other hand, the sententious segues and gassed-up encomiums to whatever B-list star was arriving onstage were eliminated. Near the evening’s end, the host of the main show, Ariana DeBose, seemed unable to read notes she had scribbled on her arm. “Please welcome whoever walks out on stage next,” she said.And the luck of her being a dancer meant that the lack of a purpose-written opening number could be finessed. Instead she performed a wordless choreographed sequence that also functioned as a tour of the spectacular United Palace theater in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood.Not that I saw DeBose do it. Paramount did not win any allies in the strike standoff by offering what felt like a deliberately confusing menu for streaming the evening’s events online. During the switchover from Pluto TV, on which I saw the first part, to Paramount+, on which I saw the second, I found myself (along with many others, who tweeted about it) misled into watching the 2022 awards show — also hosted by DeBose — for several minutes instead of this year’s.That it took so long for me to realize the problem says almost too much about the blandness and sameness of the Tonys under any circumstances. Even when writers aren’t striking, the tone is set by the people at the top of the credits crawl, who since 2003 have been Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner of White Cherry Entertainment. (They also directed and produced the Oscars in March.) However competent they are at television, they do a mediocre job of presenting the excitement of live theater — and especially its excellence.When in doubt, shake it out. More

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      Alex Newell Earns First Tony Nomination For Their Role in ‘Shucked’

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      Alex Newell’s Monday night was already pretty great. They attended the Met Gala, landing a spot next to Jimmy Fallon and Glenn Close. “I was like, ‘I’ve made it,’” they said.Then boom — on Tuesday morning, their first Tony Award nomination.“I haven’t cried yet,” they said in an interview from the Pierre Hotel on Tuesday, “so I’m waiting for that little dime to drop soon.”Newell, 30, who uses they/them pronouns, was nominated for best featured actor in a musical, for their role as the big-voiced whiskey entrepreneur Lulu in “Shucked,” the new, countrified Broadway musical about a small farming town whose corn crop begins mysteriously dying.In The New York Times review of the production, Jesse Green wrote that Newell, who may be most recognizable for their time on “Glee” as the transgender teenager Unique Adams, turns Lulu “into a full-blown comic creation.” They have become the show’s breakout star, bringing down the house in the middle of the first act with the showstopping feminist anthem “Independently Owned,” a soulful, commanding number in which Lulu emphatically declares that she doesn’t need a man to be fulfilled. (Newell’s powerful voice is showcased in two Tony-nominated productions this season: Their high-energy bop, “Kill the Lights,” plays during the disco-inspired dance party at the end of “Fat Ham.”)Newell, operating on a few hours of sleep, discussed their first nomination, their dream role and their feelings about corn. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How does it feel to receive your first nomination?Surreal. Crazy. Absurd. I feel like I could throw up at any time.Your performance of the feminist anthem “Independently Owned” has been earning nightly standing ovations. Did that happen at the first preview?Yes.Were you expecting it?This is going to sound like the most pretentious thing in the world, but we built it for that. We made the song to make people lose their minds.It happens every night now, right?That’s the part that’s flabbergasting. The standing ovation isn’t jarring as much as the consistency of it. I’m beside myself a lot of the time because I’m like, “Y’all are really still standing up.”How similar are you to your character?Very, in the sense this woman has built her career and her livelihood on her own. I’m not saying I’ve done everything on my own without any help, but I’ve been making life decisions, moving cross-country on my own. So when I sing “Independently Owned,” it’s kind of my own anthem talking about what I’ve done for myself as well.You identify as nonbinary, and the Tony Awards use gendered categories. Why did you choose to compete in the best featured actor category?I look at the word “actor” as one, my vocation, and two, genderless. We don’t say plumbess for plumber. We don’t say janitoress for janitor. We say plumber, we say janitor. That’s how I look at the word, and that’s how I chose my category.Have you seen any of the other nominated shows?I saw “Some Like It Hot,” and I’m so happy that my friend J. Harrison was nominated. I haven’t gotten to see “Kimberly Akimbo,” but I’m superexcited that my good friend Bonnie Milligan is nominated.If you could have anyone in the audience at a performance, who would you choose?Beyoncé.What would be your dream role?I’m still gunning for Effie in “Dreamgirls.”Last question, and I must ask — do you like corn?My publicist says I’m not allowed to say it, but I do hate corn. OK, I don’t hate it. I’ll eat it from Chipotle, and there’s this lovely corn couscous dish at Glass House Tavern that’s tolerable. And my mom makes a great cornbread, so I’ll eat that, too. More

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      J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell, Gender Nonconforming Performers, Earn Tony Nominations

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      Even as gender identity has become an increasingly politicized subject in a polarized America, Broadway shows are featuring a growing number of gender nonconforming performers, and two of them scored Tony nods Tuesday morning.J. Harrison Ghee, one of the stars of a musical adaptation of “Some Like It Hot,” was nominated in the best leading actor in a musical category. And Alex Newell, who plays a whiskey distiller in the country musical “Shucked,” was nominated in the best featured actor in a musical category.Both performers use he/she/they pronouns, and both agreed to be considered as actors (rather than actresses) for Tony purposes.Another gender nonconforming performer on Broadway this season, Justin David Sullivan of “& Juliet,” opted out of awards consideration, rather than choosing between the actor and actress categories. More

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      Review: In ‘Shucked,’ a Glut of Gleeful Puns and ‘Cornography’

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      A countrified musical about corn, and filled with it, too, transplants itself to Broadway, with songs by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally.Puns, the pundit John Oliver has said, are not merely the lowest form of humor but “the lowest form of human behavior.” The academy agrees. In the 1600s, no less a literary luminary than John Dryden denounced lowbrow verbal amusements that “torture one poor word ten thousand ways.”You may know how that one poor word feels after seeing “Shucked,” the anomalous Broadway musical about corn that opened on Tuesday at the Nederlander Theater. For more than two hours, it pelts you with piffle so egregious — not just puns but also dad jokes, double entendres and booby-trapped one-liners — that, forced into submission, you eventually give in.Many of the puns, which I will not try to top, are of course about corn, from the title on down. The story is after all set in the fictional Cob County, where the locals, long isolated from the rest of the world by a wall of “cornrows,” live in the perfect “hominy” of entrenched dopiness. Or at least they do until the corn, like some of those puns, starts dying.That’s when our plucky heroine — obviously called Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler) — dares to seek help in the great beyond. Jeopardizing her imminent wedding to the studly but xenophobic Beau (Andrew Durand) and ignoring the advice of her cousin, Lulu (Alex Newell), she heads to Tampa. In that decadent metropolis, she seeks agricultural assistance from Gordy, a con man posing as a podiatrist she misconstrues as a “corn doctor.” Being grifty, Gordy (John Behlmann) returns to Cob County with Maizy not so much to cure the crop as to reap the wealth he thinks lies beneath it: a vast outcropping of precious gemstone.Like Gordy, the audience may have difficulty extracting the gems from the corn. For one thing, there is so much corn to process. It’s not just the relentless puns. The musical’s book, by Robert Horn, embracing what one of the genial songs (by the country music team of Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally) calls “cornography,” trades on all kinds of trite wisdom and low humor.Ashley D. Kelley and Grey Henson play a couple of winky storytellers who steer the audience past potholes in the story, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLow but hard not to laugh at. Beau’s brother, Peanut (Kevin Cahoon), a fraction of a half-wit, fires off bullet lists of random jokes for no apparent reason. Many adhere to the formula X + Y = Pun Z. (“Like the personal trainer said to the lazy client: This is not working out.”) Others sound as if the cerebral comedian Steven Wright had been lobotomized by the rubes of “Hee Haw.” “I think if you can pick up your dog with one hand,” Peanut twangs, “you own a cat.”“Hee Haw” is relevant here. “Shucked” was originally developed as a stage version of that television variety hour, first broadcast in 1969. Set in Kornfield Kounty, it featured country music and down-home comedy at a time when rural America was becoming ripe for spoofing by urban elites such as Eva Gabor. And though the rights holders eventually backed out of the venture, and all but three of the songs were discarded, the interbred DNA of Broadway and the boonies lives on.It makes for a strange hybrid. Somehow framed as a fable of both communal cohesion and openness to strangers, “Shucked” has very little actual plot, and what there is, much of it borrowed from “The Music Man,” is rickety. (The effect is echoed by Scott Pask’s lopsided barn of a set.) Minor love complications, as Lulu falls for Gordy even though Gordy is romancing Maizy, are only as knotty as noodles. And using a pair of winky storytellers (Grey Henson and Ashley D. Kelley) to speed past potholes does not exactly make for cutting-edge dramaturgy.Andrew Durand and Caroline Innerbichler as the betrothed Beau and Maizy.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesEvidently the authors — and the director, Jack O’Brien — meant to glue the show together with groaners, a gutsy if not entirely successful move. As the jokes wear down your resistance, they also wear you out. Nor do they provide the narrative structure that typically gives characters in musicals reasons to sing. Maizy and Beau have some nicely turned, strongly hooked numbers, and Innerbichler and Durand perform them well, but we aren’t invested in them enough to care. With their needs so flat, the extra dimension of song seems like overkill.Oddly, it’s only the secondary characters who are complicated enough for music — well, really just one of them. Newell turns Lulu, a whiskey distiller and freelance hell-raiser, into a full-blown comic creation, which is to say a serious person who puts comedy to a purpose. If her dialogue is wittier than the others’, that’s partly because it engages the story, however thin, but mostly because of the intentionality of Newell’s delivery. Flirting with but also threatening Gordy, Lulu says, “The last thing I wanna do is hurt you.” She pauses and locks eyes with him. “So we’ll get to that.”Lulu also gets the show’s best song, a barnburner of a feminist anthem called “Independently Owned.” (“No disrespect to Miss Tammy Wynette,” she sings, “I can’t stand by my man, he’ll have to stand by me.”) Newell — having absorbed the whole vocal thesaurus of diva riffs, shouts, gurgles and growls — stops the show. But after the ovation, I found myself wondering what such a huge talent could do with a more commensurate role, like Effie in “Dreamgirls.”John Behlmann as Gordy and Alex Newell as Lulu, whose barnburner of a feminist anthem has been getting standing ovations.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOr for that matter what “Shucked” might have done if it had set its sights a bit higher. O’Brien’s staging is deliberately old-fashioned, filled with simple effects and modest outlays meant to match the content but that somehow undershoot the mark. Tilly Grimes’s costumes, though apt enough, look as if they were thrifted. Sarah O’Gleby’s choreography reaches its zenith right at the start, and not even with humans: A mini-kickline of plastic corncob Rockettes slays.Still, with all its fake unsophistication, “Shucked” is what we’ve got, and in a Broadway musical season highlighted by an antisemitic lynching, a murderous barber and a dying 16-year-old, some amusing counterprogramming is probably healthy. You may even find its final moment moving, as the paradox of separation and inclusion is resolved in a lovely flash.Just don’t expect intellectual nourishment; forgive me, I’m breaking my promise, but it’s mostly empty calories you’ll find in this sweet, down-market cornucopia.ShuckedAt the Nederlander Theater, Manhattan; shuckedmusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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      Alex Newell From ‘Shucked’ Sings Their Favorite Whitney Houston Song

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      After growing up listening to powerhouse voices, the actor brings their own back to Broadway.Amid the sweet, folksy ballads (and many, many corn jokes) of “Shucked,” the new Broadway musical opening April 4, comes a soulful, commanding number performed by Alex Newell that provides the show some unexpected heft — a song full of riffs and modulations and belted notes that seem to reach both ends of the actor’s expansive range.Roles that showcase the breadth and power of Newell’s voice are familiar territory: The actor made their Broadway debut in 2017 as the maternal goddess Asaka in the revival of “Once on This Island” (1990) and may be most recognizable for their time on “Glee,” from 2012 to 2015, as the transgender teenager Unique Adams. But their character in “Shucked” — Lulu, a whiskey entrepreneur — and that song, “Independently Owned,” offer the chance to inhabit something new: “The expectation of plus-size people is that they cannot be sexy; all my life, I’ve heard you’re either fat and jolly or fat and a bitch,” says Newell, 30. “So to have this dimension of this person, to just exude sex, is so much fun for me because it doesn’t happen often — especially on the Broadway stage.”“Shucked” is set in a small farming town with a thriving corn crop — until the stalks start dying, spurring a local woman (Lulu’s cousin and confidante, Maizy, played by Caroline Innerbichler) to leave home in search of a solution. Newell heard about the piece through a friend, who did an early reading before the pandemic. But they didn’t see the script, written by Robert Horn, until the show’s musical director and orchestrator, Jason Howland, texted Newell about the role. They were immediately drawn to the show’s humor — nearly every line is a pun or punchline or both, the laughs offset by a warm score from the country songwriting duo Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark.Newell grew up singing in church in Lynn, Mass., and listening to other big voices, Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, Patti LaBelle, Jennifer Holliday among them. They had early aspirations of becoming a gospel artist, but performing in a choir proved challenging — “I mean, I never fit in. I was always loud.” After seeing a local production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” when they were 11, Newell began thinking about a career in musical theater.When Fox held an open call for “Glee” hopefuls to audition online in 2011, Newell, then a sophomore in high school, submitted a self-taped clip performing “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from “Dreamgirls.” (Starring as Effie, a role in the musical originated by Holliday, has long been a goal.) Newell later started making pop music, including the queer anthems “Kill the Lights” and “All Cried Out,” and in 2020 eventually returned to TV as Mo, a gender-nonconforming D.J. on the musical series “Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist.” But for now, Newell says, they’re content to stay onstage: “The endorphins that are released after you’ve sung and everyone is standing and screaming and that wall of sound is pushing right back at you: It’s beautiful.”Ahead of opening night, T asked Newell to sing and discuss their favorite song by one of their idols: Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know” (1985). More

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      Alex Newell Finds Inspiration in Whitney Houston, Billy Porter and ‘Dreamgirls’

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      The “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” star talked about the performers he recognizes himself in, coming full circle with Mariah Carey and his signature banana pudding.It’s the line repeated every awards season — that it’s an honor just to be nominated.But Alex Newell sounded pretty convincing last month as he discussed his Critics Choice nomination for “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” which returns to NBC on March 28.“I was like a toddler seeing Christmas for the very first time,” he said of his best supporting actor recognition for Mo, the self-embracing, gender nonconforming building manager whose serious pipes reverberate through Zoey’s apartment wall. And sometimes in her head.“When you’re in front of the camera, you don’t get instant gratification like you do on a stage, where you can control how the audience feels,” Newell, 28, said. “You just have to hope that what you’re doing is brilliant and resonates and makes somebody feel something.”Alas, Newell didn’t win. But he has been making people feel a sweeping range of emotions since his performance on the reality competition show “The Glee Project” led to a guest spot that morphed into a recurring role (and for a season, a main cast credit) on “Glee” as Wade/Unique Adams, a transgender teen.But by his early 20s, Newell had determined that life in Hollywood “was going to be just about my appearance,” he said. So he moved to New York in search of greater acceptance and not long after raised the roof in his Broadway debut as Asaka in the revival of “Once on This Island.” Jesse Green, the chief theater critic of The New York Times, proclaimed him “ferocious.”Newell has since found a support system among his idols — some of whom, like Billy Porter and Tituss Burgess, grace his list of cultural essentials, which he elaborated on in a call from Vancouver, where “Zoey’s” is shot. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Whitney Houston She was my all-time icon. She is the voice of a generation and those to come after her. She is a hot topic right now in my friend group with how we idealized the Fairy Godmother [in “Cinderella”] for so long. Her take on that role with such beauty and grace and vocal prowess was just wonderful. Even having that behind-the-scenes moment of her nurturing a talent like Brandy, when she was so young, was just everything that I strive to be for the generation coming after me as well.2. “The Preacher’s Wife” That movie was such a staple in my household — with my mom and my dad and I watching for as long as I can remember — every holiday season. Seeing the Black church in such a palpable way, and the hardships of keeping a small church open in tough times. Also, my love of gospel and the Georgia Mass Choir that Whitney was singing with was amazing. I remember listening to them every Sunday with my dad as he was driving the church van. I lost him when I was six, and that heart of the memory is still topical with who I am.3. “Dreamgirls” I am talking about the good old Broadway version with Jennifer Holliday, Loretta Devine, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Cleavant Derricks. I first discovered that musical right around the time that they were announcing the movie, and it really shaped who I am today. We all know the Supremes story that the musical is loosely based on. But when I read the synopsis and listened to the music, Effie White rang true to who I am. You see this beautiful Black woman who was passed over because she was not as thin or as commercial as her friend who she grew up with. And I’ve gotten passed over for a lot of things because I’m not as thin or not as commercial. I’ve had people tell me that I was too big to play a role. I’ve been cut out of scenes in musicals because I didn’t fit the costume plot. And it does take a toll on you. You do get very angry and jaded and spiteful because you see all of your own self-worth, but nobody else is seeing it. And then you feel that everybody’s turning on you. It’s one of those things that I watched in Effie — how you have to jump over the mental hurdle of that and find solace in yourself and the beauty in life.4. Family Cookouts I loved family cookouts because it was when I got to see everybody for a good amount of time. To see family and to have so much food and laughter and love and joy around, even if it were just for one day — even the drama of it all — was always something fun to do to reset the year.5. “The Watsons Go to Birmingham — 1963” by Christopher Paul Curtis I remember reading the book as a kid and just being so intrigued by it. My mother is from Birmingham, and she was a child around the time that the book took place. In reality, she was at a church down the street from the church that was bombed on that Sunday. And to think that that could have been her church, or that I personally couldn’t have been here had anything happened to her, is something that as an adult rings so much truer.6. “Charmbracelet” by Mariah Carey The first album that I bought with my own money. Don’t ask me why it was that one, but I played that CD until I lost it. I think my mother took the CD and broke it. I still hold in the back of my mind that I sang Mariah Carey to Mariah Carey. I sang “Hero.” I don’t tell people because I hated the performance. But my mother has a picture of me and Mariah Carey after with her with this big smile and me being me. It was the whole full-circle moment.7. Banana Pudding It’s this random connection that me and my mom have. Any time there’s a function where food will be made, banana pudding is what people ask both of us to make. I remember my mother making banana pudding from actual scratch in the kitchen, and I’d be like, “I don’t have the time to sit here and stir the pot for 20, 30 minutes while it’s on the stove.” If I told anybody I wouldn’t be famous anymore, but mine is the same exact recipe.8. Billy Porter and 9. Tituss Burgess I remember when I heard Billy Porter’s voice eons ago when Billy was in “Grease” as Teen Angel, singing “Beauty School Dropout.” And I was first introduced to Tituss Burgess when he was doing “The Little Mermaid” on Broadway as Sebastian. The first time that you see someone that sounds like you and reminds you so much of who you are, you obsess and fawn over them and you learn how they sing and how they perform and how they act. And when you meet them and they’re all that you could have wanted and still human at the end of the day — and they lift you up and praise you — I say, “Thank you.” It’s just this mutual respect. I appreciate and adore both of them so much. They keep me wanting to strive for more daily.10. Nell Carter My mother cultured me a lot by putting me in front of the television and letting me watch all of these old shows that she grew up with, countless hours of PBS performances. And I remember the replay of “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” which I had seen at my local theater a couple of years prior. Seeing this plus-size woman being phenomenally talented at singing and how light on her feet she was and her acting beats and the chops that she had. And how she could hold an entire audience in the palm of her hand with such confidence and control. And how she was just so self-aware of her body and who she was. The love that you could see that she had for herself was amazing. More