For years, my (now former) upstairs neighbors Josh and Mariah and (Charles and) I have gotten together for pizza (or whatever) while we watch the big awards shows – Oscars and Tonys certainly, the Emmys sometimes. This has become more of a logistical issue since they moved to Manhattan. I’d actually been pondering trying to go to the ceremony this year, but will still daunted by a a many-hundreds-of-dollars ticket price to sit at the very tippy-top of Radio City. But I saw that Broadway-adjacent gadfly Seth Rudetsky was hosting a Tony watch party at the Triad cabaret space on 72nd Street. Thought that sounded like fun, reached out to J&M and got tickets for the three of us.

I’d gotten the impression when I bought the tickets (went for VIP level!) that there’d be drinks and food available, but the website I checked yesterday said no food, urgh, so we quickly planned a pre-show dinner at Arte Cafe on the next block up. We met there at 5:00, twas quite nice, and we split a caesar salad, then I had crabcakes which were really nice (and light) and they had other things.

Over to the Triad, where, by the time we showed up, the employees were already muttering to themselves that the ‘front was filling up’. Sure enough, I think when we sat down, it was really at the only place left, and it looked too small for three of us – but a little creative moving of furniture solved that. (Cabaret spaces are always tight.) Mariah was saying she’d seen the original Forbidden Broadway there back in the day, but the only other time I’d been there was years ago when the Blue Hill Troupe did their annual cabaret there once, the only year I performed at it (me and two buddies did Joplin as a French horn trio). Anyway, once we got settled, it wasn’t too bad and we got started on our first round of the two-drink minimum.

Other than seeing him on Broadway (in The Ritz), I’d never been to one of SR’s live chat shows or interviews or whatever, it was fun to see him live. We’d all been worried that he’d come around and talk to everyone, and ask us what our Tony predictions were. We had none, none of the three of us had seen many of this season’s shows. (I’d had to really think about it to realize that yes, I’d seen Chess.) But that didn’t happen. They did give out award ballots, and the idea was that you’d fill them out ahead of time, and then there were prizes. But this was not handled well – what they should have done is had everyone fill them out, then turn them in before the show started. I didn’t even try to fill mine out.

Seth did some pre-show patter and told people about what was going on, but once the show started (including the “Act I” part that was not shown on CBS), he basically just used commercial breaks to ask people for Broadway names so he could tell stories about them. This was amusing, but seemed kind of like he was just not sure what he was supposed to be doing. The show was projected on a large screen on stage, which was actually pretty cool, but was clearly being projected from a laptop. One of the bizarre things was that, in the first part on Pluto TV, twice when they came back to commercial, we would hear the live audio of the show, but on screen they’d be finishing up a commercial, and then we’d see the video matching the audio we’d already heard, some 30 seconds out of synch. The person operating the laptop had to basically do a ‘screen refresh’ of the TV app to get it to synch up again. That was weird, I wondered if that’s what happened to everyone watching that.

The show itself was quite wonderful, for the most part. Most presenters were great, most of the winners were great. I do agree with those who said (ahead of time) that Ragtime winning over Cats for best musical revival (which it did) would be a travesty, as Cats: The Jellicle Ball is a complete (fantastic) reimagining of the show, where Ragtime, as wonderful as it reportedly is, is just another standard mounting of the show. The one moment where Seth really rose to his hosting obligations was when he went on a really powerful rant about how the directing and acting categories should really be separated for original productions and revivals. Those are different jobs – creating a new show/role – particularly for the director, who often has influence on structural changes in the developing show – and mounting a revival of an established piece/role. That was a really well-reasoned take that I found myself agreeing with.

There was also discussion about making acting categories non-gendered, which I think the general feeling is, great idea as long as you don’t reduce the number of opportunities to win. Instead of having Best Male/Best Female Lead, just have Best Lead, but have two winners, maybe? Needs to be discussed and thought out. We also discussed the idea of having a best replacement actor, and Seth brought up the challenges involved – is it just the first replacement, or any replacement? Honestly, I didn’t see the problem – make it any replacement during a season, and maybe have it be two categories (musical and play) or four categories (male/female/musical/play) or eight if you want to go hog wild (lead/featured). Although as I think about it, it might be tough because straight plays don’t tend to run long enough to have many replacements, where musicals can go on for years. Oh, Mary! can keep giving opportunities to goofy funny actors forever, and Every Brilliant Thing also might be setting itself up for a daisy chain of stars, but not the other straight plays running right now.

So, anyway, I think we all three had a good time. Quick hug afterward as I grabbed a cab that showed up. Got home at 11:30. I don’t know if we want to do that sort of thing year after year, probably could have had an equivalent nice time in one of our living rooms, but it was worth trying out.