The Winners Take It All

And now we take you to the Tony Awards press room high atop magical Rockefeller Center, where the 2003-2004 season’s lucky winners and gracious presenters — but not the crestfallen losers — are brought once they leave the Radio City Music Hall stage, having expressed their gratitude on national television during the 58th annual ceremonies.

The number 58 isn’t as exciting a landmark year as 55 or 60 but this year’s ceremony had its excitement factor all the same. The CBS telecast featured as performers and presenters a number of big stars who aren’t necessarily associated with the theater; hence the appearances of LL Cool J, Mary J. Blige, and Tony Bennett. Also, suspense was hiked by the introduction this year of some determined campaigning — mostly by the producers of Avenue Q, who were as aggressive as Rod the puppet in cozying up to prospective partisans. The gasp that went up among the theaterati collected in the Rainbow Grill when Avenue Q was announced as the year’s best tuner may have attested to general shock at the triumph of the producers’ maneuvers. It could also be taken as a sign that, in the future, Tony campaigns will increasingly resemble Oscar races. (Somewhere, Harvey Weinstein may well be smiling over this East Coast appropriation of his West Coast strategies.)

So, who said what in the press corral? As the winners paraded across the podium, the bulk of the chat seemed to center on two subjects: 1) what are the winners’ thoughts on politics because, in the current election year climate, many people want to be perceived as engaged; and 2) what are the winners’ upcoming projects, a subject evidently of crucial interest to many of the journalists present.

The producers of Avenue Q, glorying in their victory, resolutely refused to discuss politics. Speaking for them at one point, Kevin McCollum said that, in his view, Avenue Q was tapped because people this year “voted their heart.” (Asked if he was implying that the shows in competition with his were lacking in heart, he replied that he didn’t mean that at all.) The closest he came to admitting the political nature of his outfit’s vote-wooing was to assert that it was in keeping with the show’s wit — that, in an election year, it made sense for their marketing to spoof electioneering. Co-producer Robyn Goodman did make a crack that the show’s gregarious gay puppet Rod — voice always supplied by the quick-tongued John Tartaglia — would be addressing the Log Cabin Republicans during their late-summer New York City conclave.

Speaking less spoofily about the convention, which has named a number of Broadway shows but almost none of the nominated entertainments as Republican-friendly, Michael Cerveris (Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for his performance in Assassins), personally invited every Republican to see the Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical. He went on to remark that the show subliminally asks, “If our inalienable right is to our own happiness, does that really lay the seeds of a lot of disastrous events?” Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez, the prize-winning Avenue Q tunesmiths, mentioned that they regularly receive compliments from all sorts of audience members. They noted that even “straight guys from Texas” come up to them, although Marx averred that Texas citizen George W. Bush hasn’t been among them. According to the songwriters, the 43rd President hasn’t seen the show yet but his predecessor, Democrat Bill Clinton, has. (When quizzed about the Avenue Q win possibly suggesting a Tony Kushner backlash, which it may well have done, Marx said only that “Tony Kushner is fantastic.”)

Phylicia Rashad, in discussing her Best Actress in a Play for her role as the matriarch in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, spoke more generally about politics and society. Of the country’s mood, she said, “There is a change. The play I’m in addresses it.” She said that young people today seem to feel, “You need money, you need lots of it, and there isn’t enough for you.” Rashad also pointed out that in her next project, August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean (due this fall), “The question is, ‘What is freedom? What does it mean to be free?'” Rashad’s Tony-grabbing colleague, Audra McDonald (who took her fourth medallion home last night), commented that the maid she plays is different from the maid roles that many African-American actresses dislike playing: Hansberry shows the character at home and not simply moving through a white household.

Librettist John Weidman, asked about the very positive reception that Assassins has enjoyed this year — the win for best revival being a token of it — also alluded to the winds of social change. “I think people are in a very different place than they were 13 years ago, he said. Weidman added that 9/11 altered things, that people were “knocked off balance” and now, “in a sense, are ready for anything, so filled with rage that they would commit violence.” He claimed that, these days, “people will listen” more readily to a dark musical in which president stalkers state their warped cases. Anika Noni Rose, who carried away the Best Featured Actress in a Musical award, is in a show with “change” in the title: Caroline, or Change. She said a few patently sincere words about her generation’s taking for granted some of the changes brought about by previous generations.

Carol Channing, who rapped for the Tony audience in her presenter role, rapped to the scribes about a celebrated political figure, the very recently deceased Ronald Reagan. When he was running for president, she recalled, “I made as much trouble as I could for him.” Then she encountered him at a Hollywood do. “He opened up his arms,” she reported, “and I said. ‘I guess he doesn’t know.'” She was told, “Oh, yeah, he knows. He just loves you anyway.”

What of the stars’ upcoming activities? Sean Combs, swearing allegiance to Broadway now that he’s joined the ranks, will segué immediately to the Council of Fashion Designers of America gala, where he’s up for yet another award in that field. He said that he expects to lose it and, humility itself, revealed no rancor at not being nominated for a Tony. (Combs remarked that he loved Carol Channing’s rapping because there are “no barriers on her eyes.”) Edie Falco, who filled her presenter obligation just before the Sopranos season finale episode aired on another channel, isn’t sure whether she’ll be in the ‘night, Mother revival next season; if she is, she’s not certain that Brenda Blethyn will be with her. John Rubinstein, who earned marvelous reviews for a just-closed Off-Broadway production of Elmer Rice’s Counsellor-at-Law, hopes to reopen in the play at another venue. Bernard Gersten, gabbing about Henry IV‘s win for Best Revival of a Play, wouldn’t vouchsafe anything about the next LCT season beyond reiterating that Adam Guettel’s Light in the Piazza will show up and that two other productions are “coming into focus.”

On the plates of other Tony winners: Frozen‘s Brían F. O’Byrne is off this morning to shoot a one-day role in Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby. Wicked‘s Idina Menzel will soon jet to Africa for a two-week shoot of Ask the Dust, starring Colin Farrell. Jeff Whitty, whose book for Avenue Q came up aces, is getting excited about a project but wouldn’t name it. He did say that, despite his never having his eye fixed on the Great White Way as a kid, “I guess my purpose is to write Broadway musicals.” Best play nabber Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife) will go off fairly soon to find his way into a new piece. In the meantime, he’s adapting the Maysles Brothers’ documentary Grey Gardens — all about Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s eccentric relatives Edith and Edie Beale — into a musical.

Chita Rivera will play herself in a show based on her life that’s being written by Terrence McNally. Wonderful Town‘s Kathleen Marshall, as has already been ballyhooed, will direct Carol Burnett (as the Queen) in a new television version of Once Upon a Mattress. Jack O’Brien is currently working on the musical adaptation of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and then it’s back to Lincoln Center — whence his win for directing Henry IV emanated — to helm Tom Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia. Of the revisions to that trilogy, which bowed at London’s Royal National Theatre last summer to mixed reviews, he infoed, “I have been working assiduously over the last year and a half [with Tom Stoppard]. We have an affinity for one another. And what’s up next for Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara? “We just say, ‘Keep breathing,'” Stiller joked.

That’s not a bad motto for Broadway and the Tonys, which — despite falling ratings over the past few years — keep breathing, as fabulous invalids are expected to do.

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[For a complete list of this year’s Tony Award winners and nominees, click here.]