What Really Happened at the Tony's

Yes, yes I know; the Tony's were last weekend, but hey! I didn't even see them until this past Saturday and realistically, I did make some pretty good guesses on the musical awards; with the Broadway plays, I have never heard of half of them. But anyway, I'm really not all that shocked that Billy Elliot won almost every award it was nominated for. However, I had never heard much about Next to Normal and I was surprised that it was even nominated. Its story line doesn't sound too interesting and the songs are intense based on Alice Ripley's characterization at the Tony's. Of course, Ripley did win the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical and in the background, Sutton Foster sat in all her grumpiness ad disbelief. But then again, it's pretty rare for anyone to win 2 Tony's, let alone even be nominated for one. So I do congratulate Ripley on her chance to win and overall with the Tony's, I was quite content with the results.

Updates From Broadway

I am told that at the 2009 Tony Awards coming to you this Sunday, Wall-E, a popular animated character (by the way, Wall-E is one of my favorite movies of all time!) will be participating in a telecast tribute to composer Jerry Herman. The rumor is that Wall-E will be introducing the "Hello, Dolly!" part of the tribute. The tribute for Herman will be followed by a special lifetime achievement award. Now if you ask me, I think this is a rather experimental idea as I have never heard of an animated character be a part of the Tony's, let alone a life tribute. But I think that it's worth a shot and like I said, Wall-E is an amazing movie, so I think the fact that this sweet little robot will be part of the Tony's might actually attract viewers other than the usual New Yorkers and Broadway fans.

America, America

Everything that has ever happened to me in the theatre is a story worth telling, and this story has not yet been told. During the run of The Music Man, back behind all the scenery and such was the orchestra pit and every show, the Wa Tan Ye girls would hang out by the orchestra right before our cue for Wa Tan Ye. The song before this Native American number is "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean", a very patriotic song sung by the townspeople on the Fourth of July. Well, in honor of this patriotic song, during one show, the trombone player decided to bring an American flag without any of the Wa Tan Ye girls knowing it. So when we got to that song, our trombone player stood up and raised the flag. This totally surprised us, so we laughed while we sung (of course the audience didn't know about and they never will). As usual, the rest of the orchestra just put their hands over their hearts and laughed with us. On the last weekend of the run, all the members of the orchestra decided to bring American flags. So we got to that song and on the first note, again without us knowing, the whole orchestra raised their flags. This time, we cracked up because we weren't expecting any of this. But this was a true joy for the Wa Tan Ye girls and this will stay in my memory for as long as I am an actress.