Tony Committee Scraps Award for Replacement Performance

The Tony Award for Best Performance in a Re-Created Role is no more; the Tony committee unanimously voted last week to abandon it, according to The New York Post's Michael Riedel.

Earlier this year, the Tony Committee had founded the new award category to honor distinguished performances in roles that had been created by other actors. However, a bit of a brouhaha was caused by the committee's decision not to award either of the two actors who had been nominated: Fiddler on the Roof's Harvey Fierstein and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' Jonathan Pryce.

"What was intended as something positive turned out to be negative...And the theater does not need a negative award," an anoymous committee member stated. The committee's decision was partially fueled by Pryce's dissatisfaction with their choice (he had also reported to the press how only 16 out of 24 voters had turned out to see his turn as Lawrence Jameson in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels).  "His performance was highly valued, and the award should have been presented to him. It was our mistake that it was not," commented another committee member.