Tony Awards Telecast Leaves Chorus Line of Puzzlement

By MICHAEL PHILLIPS

June 8, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES THEATER CRITIC

Like all probing artistic explorations of the human condition, Sunday’s Tony Awards telecast dared to provoke the unanswerable questions.

What’s up with that number from “The Civil War,” for instance? Thirty seconds into “Freedom’s Child,” a poorly filmed mess featuring the music of Frank Wildhorn and two guys running across the stage with flags, you could hear the scramble for remotes all across this mighty nation.

At the other end of a harried telecast, presenters Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews reminded viewers to please, please, “Go see a show!” Behind the game smiles of these two, the implicit desperation of such a line couldn’t be disguised. Really. You don’t hear Jennifer Lopez reminding people to “Buy a CD!” on the Grammys.

Another year, another Tony Awards show. Overnight Nielsen ratings indicate a steep 28% drop-off in viewership from last year’s CBS telecast, which was hosted by Broadway’s most rabid fan, Rosie O’Donnell.

In O’Donnell’s place, the Sunday CBS affair deployed an unwieldy slew of Broadway, film and television stars as rotating rent-a-hosts, working in wee frantic shifts. Lined up at the beginning of the show, Calista Flockhart next to Bea Arthur next to Kevin Kline, everyone appeared to be auditioning for an award-presenters’ version of “A Chorus Line.”

The Chicago-born 50th-anniversary revival of “Death of a Salesman” came out the big winner Sunday, winning Tonys for best revival of a play, best actor (Brian Dennehy), best featured actress (Elizabeth Franz) and best director of a play (Robert Falls). “Salesman” aced out the Kevin Spacey-headlined revival of “The Iceman Cometh,” the latter coming up zippo for the night.

Both, however, got trampled by another telecast misstep. No one’s ever really figured out how to excerpt straight-play nominees for the Tony broadcast. In past years, reenacted scenes from a given play have come across stiffly, not quite theater, not quite television.

This year, standing behind podiums, Dennehy, Spacey and other actors performed a Reader’s Theater-style vocal “mosaic.” They traded lines from “Salesman,” “Iceman,” “The Lonesome West,” “Twelfth Night” and “Side Man,” the last of which won for best new play. The vignette played like a first-year directing class exercise and didn’t work.

In recent years PBS has been responsible for the “Launching the Tonys” prequel to the two-hour CBS main event. That first hour has tended to make for much better viewing, and it did again Sunday.

Here, at least, you learn a couple of things about what designers and directors do for a living (or would they’d like you to believe they do). The documentary-style footage, too slick by half but entertaining anyway, this year featured everything from dancers from this year’s best musical, “Fosse,” doing “Dancing Man,” to “Iceman” scenic designer Bob Crowley talking about his favorite saloons in New York.

In that first hour, “Iceman” headliner Spacey hit one nail on the head. The question’s posed every time a star of a certain magnitude returns to the stage: Why? Eight shows a week, money that pales next to the electronic mediums--why do it?

“There’s simply nothing like getting up there every night,” Spacey said, “and getting another whack at it.” If next year’s Tonys CBS telecast is to go Rosie-less, it’s definitely time for producer Walter C. Miller to take another whack as well. As long as it’s a whack in a new direction.

The 1999 Tony Award winners:

* Play: “Side Man.”

* Musical: “Fosse.”

* Revival-Play: “Death of a Salesman.”

* Revival-Musical: “Annie Get Your Gun.”

* Book of a Musical: Alfred Uhry, “Parade.”

* Original Score: Jason Robert Brown, “Parade.”

* Actor-Play: Brian Dennehy, “Death of a Salesman.”

* Actress-Play: Judi Dench, “Amy’s View.”

* Featured Actor-Play: Frank Wood, “Side Man.”

* Featured Actress-Play: Elizabeth Franz, “Death of a Salesman.”

* Actor-Musical: Martin Short, “Little Me.”