JayFublerHarvey.com

There’s always one award show each year that I can rely on not making me cringe, not writing stupid jokes for the presenters to deliver and always finishing on time. The Tonys were always the masters of intelligently produced extravaganzas…at least until this year…

The insertion of badly written comedic intros (for the most part) left the show with a taste right between the Grammys and the MTV movie awards. I fully expected to see Busta Rhymes and Martha Stewart show up next to present the Best Pimp Slap in a Musical or Revival award. Noone is interested in the comedy unless it’s written and delivered by the person speaking (i.e. Nathan Lane’s excellent bit….). Give up the pen and get back to giving awards.

What was most shocking was the unpredecented lack of professional mixing of the sound. This is something even the Busta-Award shows get right. Make all the appropriate level adjustments in rehearsal and be done with it. It’s not rocket science (or even 8th grade science). But after a full night of hearing so many vocals drowned out by the background music, I’m still left rather stunned. I did better mixing at the local dance recital last weekend…

And was it just my imagination or did Aretha actually sound bad last night? Something not right about her getting overpowered by Hugh Jackman…
(I would chalk that up to the mixing problem, but something tells me that wasn’t the case…)

Still…the show did have it’s moments….

• The great fall off the stage by Christina Applegate in homage to her real fall in Sweet Charity
• Hella-strong, high energy performance by the La Cage aux Folles ‘gals’
• Best of the night: Reverand Al Sharpton as the special guest speller in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (which is now on my definite must-see list)

And definitely appreciated that everything finished on time as usual (tho it didn’t give the Spamalot people enough time for their speech…)

Alright kiddies…remember what we talked about for next year.
Gotta get back to being as tight as Grape Nuts….