Grey Gardens was robbed!!

[Blue-Eyed Wonder]

I ceratinly have the greatest respect for Spring Awakening as a very important show, but I can't help but express my sincere frustration with the fact that it clean up almost every big award last night. I completely believe that Grey Gardens was entirely short-changed and was much more deserving of half those awards that went to Spring Awakening.

[WaltSummersPI]

On the bright side, I bet CE and MLW are two very happy women this morning.

[Blue-Eyed Wonder]

Except for the inevitable hangover, yes. Although, I ahve to say that the Featured Actress catergory seemed to be completely set up so that MLW would win. There was no one else who could even begin to compete with her.

[Raviolisun]

I love Spring Awakening, but Grey Gardens at least deserved Book.

[ahmelie]

I have to agree with you.

People keep calling Spring Awakening innovative, but I think you have to be more willing to open your mind for a show like Grey Gardens than for Spring Awakening. Sure, Spring Awakening is rather controversial but the show is very in your face. It's all displayed in the open. For Grey Gardens you have to be emotionally invested in the show to appreciate and understand the beauty and heartache in it.

God, I love Grey Gardens.

[tazber]

Well said BEW, I agree completely.

[TechEverlasting]

Spring Awakening is a great show, but I agree that Grey Gardens should have at least taken the Best Book and Best Orchestration awards.

The scores are so different that I don't know how to rate one as being better than the other. Spring Awakening has that beat that all the kids like, I suppose.

At least with Ebersole's victory we don't have to worry about BWW posters running naked through Times Square or dressing up as Tony trophies and beating themselves with 2X4s.

[WaltSummersPI]

LOL. I also thought GG deserved book, at the very least.

Oh, well. Support the show by buying a ticket this week.

[burntplains]

But even though it didn't get twice as many awards as it should have.. a different audiance will keep GA alive....
The story, movie, show, and anything else is brilliant!

and remember that movie is coming out..
i'm alittle bit afriad though.. ahha

[Blue-Eyed Wonder]

Tech-very well said! I think I would never believe in the Tonys ever agin if anyone other that Christine and Mary-Louise had won.

[Bettyboy72]

I may come across as naive and uneducated about music ( which I am), but I would think it is easier to write in your face rock than the subtle melodies and wordplay of the music in Grey Gardens. I loved Spring Awakening with my whole heart, I just feel the music in Grey Gardens is just more advanced on so many levels. Just my humble opinions. The lyrics are genius in GG as well, and many of those songs including Revolutionary Costume are very tricky to sing well and articulate. Ebersole just makes it look easy. Yet another reason the music deserved some nods.

[TechEverlasting]

Is a more complex score necessarily the best one? (I loved the Grey Gardens score and was rooting for it, so this is more of a general question.)

Writing 10 part polyphonic tone rows with iambic pentameter in Esperanto would be even more difficult, but that doesn't mean it would make for a better Broadway score.

[Born To Reign]

Broadway is heading toward more pop and rock infused scores. I think this is a good thing. not only because I prefer them to more traditional show music, but because it will bring in a new audience. The Tony for best score just reflects the new climate of Broadway. Every Tony Spring Awakening won was well-deserved.

[doodlenyc]

I humbly disagree. I love Grey Gardens, but do think that SA deserved each award it recieved (save for sup. actor, which I wouldnt have scoffed at someone else winning) and I was expecting GG to win for book and Poppins to win choreography, but was so glad that SA won them because I think it was deserved. I definitely disagree that SA's score is easier to write or that it lacked the complexities of GG's score.

...and I'm a middle aged fogey!

Just my humble opinion...not to rain on your Garden parade

[Raviolisun]

I agree that SA didn't deserve choreography, but Bill T. Jones and his jumping onto the stage made me happy. What a great guy.

[jv92]

"Broadway is heading toward more pop and rock infused scores. I think this is a good thing. not only because I prefer them to more traditional show music, but because it will bring in a new audience. The Tony for best score just reflects the new climate of Broadway. Every Tony Spring Awakening won was well-deserved."

Excuse me? There's no new climate on Broadway. People like Frankel, Guettel, Kander, Sondheim and so forth will continue writing the way they've always written and will contiune to be superb at it. It's ridiculous that this thing made a clean sweep. I was actually feeling okay about it, but every prententious, annoying speech from Shiek, Mayer, Sater and finally those goddamned producers, made me feel more and more nausiated by the whole event.

[Born To Reign]

There is a new climate on Broadway. I'm a big Sondheim fan too but you have to remember that his shows are rarely financial successes. Look at the past 12 Tony winners:

Rent: rock (still running)
Titanic: traditional (financial flop)
Lion King: Elton John pop (huge success)
Fosse: traditional (now closed)
Contact: dance revue with canned rock/pop score
Producers: traditional (now closed)
Millie: traditional (now closed)
Hairspray: 60's pop
Avenue Q: pop (and some edgy traditional riffs)
Spamalot: somewhat traditional, but movie spoof
Jersey Boys: pop (albeit 50's/60's pop)
Spring Awakening: pop

Also look at the recent big financial successes:
Wicked: plenty of pop in this one
Mamma Mia: pop
Legally Blonde is also of to a promising start.

I don't think it's unfair to say the climate is changing.

[unckristen]

Admittedly, I loved Grey Gardens and have only listened to Spring Awakening, but I don't know that a virtual sweep was deserved. I have to wonder if we'll look back 5 or 10 years from now and wonder if it really deserved all of those Tony's or if voters were just caught up in something new.

[lyntom]

The beauty of broadway is the diversity...something for everyone. Next year it will be your show that wins. THe speeches? I don't know..I'd feel proud, cocky, whatever, if I spent 8 years on something and won the biggest prize there was for it.

[VIETgrlTerifa]

Spring Awakening, to the outsider (at least one that is music-conscious), sounds like bad alt. rock that most fans of the genre scoff at.

I loved Lea Michelle staring into the camera in the beginning of the performance acting as if she was one of the Pussycat Dolls.

[Tchi4Lif188]

AGREED. I knew this would happen, but I don't feel like Spring Awakening is deserving of BEST musical, especially when you have something like Grey Gardens out there.

[TechEverlasting]

"I have to wonder if we'll look back 5 or 10 years from now and wonder if it really deserved all of those Tony's..."

I think we will, given that a mere 12 hours later many of us are already looking back and wondering that very thing.

What's difficult to predict is how long Spring Awakening will hang on and how succesful it will be in the long term. I like to think that we'll see regional and touring productions of Grey Gardens for years, but I don't know that either.

[Born To Reign]

I don't know, tech. I think it will tour, but the hype was all around Ebersole so without her in it... I also think the show is just too quirky and demanding for regionals and won't make sense to an audience in some smaller places in an amateur production.

[Blue-Eyed Wonder]

I definitely see the changing face of Broadway right now, but I think that that is more recognized by Broadway freaks like ourselves. I feel that the general public, when going to see a Broadway show, really want themore traditional Broadway feel. People don't want to see something unusual and ground-breaking more than once and I think Rent was the show of that calibre for this decade. I have a feeling that once the initial interest in Spring Awakening wears off, the show isn;t going to be that long-lasting.

[unckristen]

Tech -- I'm sorry I wasn't very clear. I meant that I wondered if everyone who thinks that last night rightfully should have been renamed the "Broadway Tribute to Spring Awakening" and everyone who voted for them for all of those awards would look back and think "what was I thinking????"

I'm guessing that those of us asking these questions this morning aren't card-carrying members of that bandwagon.