| Tonys broadcast chase the wrong audience | |
| Posted by: peter3053 04:39 pm EDT 09/28/21 | |
| In reply to: It's a new stage for Tony telecasts, but still no time for plays - WaymanWong 04:01 pm EDT 09/28/21 | |
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| I can't help feeling that the Tonys broadcasts of recent years, especially this year, lose ratings because they try too hard to reach out to an audience that doesn't exist: namely, people who don't care much for theater but do like pop (pop in the broadest sense). I found a lot of this year's broadcast to be like a pop concert; much of the music and lyrics didn't have the specifics of character and wit that is what attracted me to Broadway in the first place. It was begrudging loyalty alone that kept me looking at the thing. It felt not so much as if Broadway was back, but that, by turns, screaming or lugubrious pop had triumphed over the craft of writing. Of course, the problem also stems from what is put on stage - Broadway itself has increasingly offered vaguely-written pop trash to the public because that's what the public wants. But does it? Don't many tourists go to Broadway to take in a Broadway show, the status of the address, so to speak, overwhelming their reluctance to go to the theater at all? If Broadway producers set the standards higher in terms of dramatic and humorous content of the lyrics and music, and chose more untoward subjects than the latest pop bio-musical, or quasi-juke-box show, the public would still go, and perhaps grow more deeply satisfied as a result, as we once were by the theater and musical theater that we saw. This would have a flow-on to the Tonys. People who like pop don't need the theater and don't need a broadcast celebrating the theater; and people who like theater don't need a broadcast that seems more like a pop concert. A Tonys broadcast that reflected a Broadway that promoted craft over craft-less populism would find the right audience - it would be a high point of television that a theater-loving audience would yearn for and be certain to tune in to. Think of the great moments of Tonys past, such as Judy Kuhn and Dick Latessa doing "Rags", and Michael Jeter doing "We'll take a Glass Together" and Patti Lupone doing "Anything Goes" and so many other moments that were charged with theatrical skill, theatrical talent, theatrical writing - songs that suggested powerful character-driven stories or joyful wit. Musical theater writing is a different beast to any other kind of song writing. That's what would draw an enormous theater-loving audience to the TV and drive up ratings. I think the short-shrift to plays you mention, Wayman, is indicative of this wrong-headedness by the Tonys producers. Theater lovers across the nation would LOVE to see excerpts of the plays, and thrill to the properly shaped, dramatic and comic writing of the very best of the Broadway tradition. Recently my heart leapt up when Sondheim said he was working on a new show - until I pondered, yes, but would Broadway even know what to do with it, or even want to put it into a Broadway theater? |
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| Previous: | re: Another problem is many of the plays have closed - ryhog 05:46 pm EDT 09/28/21 |
| Next: | re: Tonys broadcast chase the wrong audience - EvFoDr 06:07 pm EDT 09/28/21 |
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