REVIEW: Broadway’s Back(log) Takes Center Stage at the Tonys

The Tony Awards would really, really, really, really like you to know that Broadway is Back.

So it was said numerous times during this year’s ceremony, which took place this past Sunday night. So it was also said in the run-up to the ceremony, and so it was said with the opening of every major production over the past year. It was said, too, to announce last September’s ceremony, which was actually celebrating the 2019–2020 season.

But just in case it wasn’t clear, Ariana DeBose, this year’s host, said it one more time to close out the show: “Broadway’s back, baby!”

I can’t exactly blame the Tonys for wanting to make the point extremely clear. After all, the award ceremony exists as a commercial for Broadway ⁠ — the show is presented in part by the Broadway league, the trade association for the Broadway theatre industry. Now, after three years without such an advertisement ⁠(last year’s ceremony was much smaller and very unorthodox) and with some audiences still hesitant to return to the theatre, the pressure was on to get people back into seats.

And what better way to get people back into seats than by reminding them of why they love theatre in the first place? That, I assume, was the logic of the producers behind this year’s show. It’s the same logic that likely led to the opening number mash-up of dozens of the most popular musicals to ever grace the Broadway stage ⁠ — Chicago, Rent, Hamilton, Wicked, etc. It’s also the same logic that likely led to this year’s extremely traditional revival of The Music Man taking the first performance slot.

Broadway’s back, baby, and it’s just as you remember it!

And yet, right smack dab in the middle of those two performances was a speech from DeBose about how much Broadway has changed over the past two years. “The Great White Way is becoming more of a nickname as opposed to a how-to guide,” she said, before listing all the ways in which Broadway, and the Tonys, have become more diverse and inclusive. It’s certainly something to be celebrated, but considering the performances it’s sandwiched between, the celebration made for an odd juxtaposition. It’s like if in the middle of an Old Boys’ Club meeting, someone stood up and said “Thank god this isn’t an Old Boys’ Club.”

That juxtaposition was illustrative of the ceremony’s main struggle: trying to celebrate the new and exciting, but struggling under the weight of the old and familiar.

It was true in many of the awards handed out. The first award of the night went to Jesse Tyler Ferguson, a household name. The second went to Patti LuPone, an even bigger household name. Both director awards went to previous winners and staples of the industry. The winners of others were less familiar, but they were often “safe” bets. That’s not to say that any of these winners are undeserving, but rather that when given the option to celebrate newer, often riskier choices, awards repeatedly went to known entities.

To be sure, that’s not entirely the Tonys fault. It also speaks to a larger issue with Broadway as a whole right now, which is that this year’s slate was an odd mixture of productions conceived in the last year or so and productions that were supposed to open in 2020 but never did, many of which had been around already for a few years at that point.

Six the Musical, which has been hailed for its originality in presenting Henry the VIII’s wives as feminist popstars, first premiered in 2017. Best Play winner The Lehman Trilogy premiered in London in 2018, then played off-Broadway in 2019, then played London again in 2019, before it was supposed to finally transfer to Broadway. And the gender-flipped production of Company that won Best Musical Revival first opened on the West End in 2018.

That backlog of shows meant that much of what has been talked about as new and exciting, including at this year’s Tonys, has been talked about as new and exciting for several years now, and, frankly, no longer feels new and exciting.

It doesn’t help that many of the “post-pandemic” productions that actually do feel new and exciting are plays, and despite being in its 75th year, the Tonys still haven’t figured out how to effectively advertise the wealth of interesting non-musicals put on Broadway every year. That’s particularly disappointing this year, because as much talk as there was about how much more diverse Broadway is now, a great deal of that diversity was in plays.

There are exceptions to all of this, of course, the most obvious being A Strange Loop, the critically-acclaimed meta-musical that took home Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical later in the night. It’s an innovative “big, Black, queer-ass” show, and I sincerely hope that its win signifies the end of the backlog and a sign of what we have to look forward to in the next season.

This season, though, the Tony Awards clearly struggled to celebrate three years of change all at once. Still, they did get their message out loud and clear: Broadway is Back. It’s just still playing catch-up to Better Than Ever.