Episode Details

In this new episode of “THEATER: All the Moving Parts,” on CUNY TV, host Patrick Pacheco has a post-Tony Awards chat about the state of Broadway with: critics Helen Shaw of “New York Magazine” and Adam Feldman of “Time Out, New York” and; Jan Simpson, theater journalist and host of the Broadway Radio Show “Stagecraft and All the Drama”.

Included among the many topics covered was the controversial nature of two of the musicals which emerged with top Tony wins: four went to “MJ,” which relates the rise of Michael Jackson as a pop superstar, while the Best Musical Tony went to “A Strange Loop." The latter, Michael R. Jackson’s raw and uncompromising “big, black and queer [deleted]Ameri- can Broadway show,” was celebrated by the panel as a seemingly uncommercial artistic success in the tradition of musi- cals like “Fun Home” and “The Band’s Visit” which also won the top Tony Award. When asked if the explicit nature of “ Strange Loop,” should carry a warning label of sorts, the group concurred that theater has a long-standing tradition of sexual frankness that extends back to the Greeks and Aristophanes. The success of “MJ” at the Tonys and at the box-of- fice was at the center of a lively discussion of whether critics and audiences are able to differentiate between the appeal of art and the controversy that may surround its creator. There was also mention of the multicultural nature of this year’s winners—which included a plethora of Black artists, the gender-reversed revival of “Company,” which won Best Musical Revival, and the Best Original Score Tony for “Six,” written by Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow, who identifies as non-binary.

Pacheco says, “As you might have expected, the panel was nothing if not opinionated in discussing the just-concluded season which had more than a few bumps emerging from its long Covid shutdown. Critics are often derided as being un- feeling but that wasn’t true of this group. The most emotional moment came in the discussion of the winner in the cate- gory of “Leading Actress in a Play.” Surprisingly that went to Deirdre O’Connell, a veteran of off-Broadway and experimen- tal theater, who starred in “Dana H,” the short-lived Lucas Hnath drama. The panel was wowed by her acceptance speech which exhorted the audience to see her victory as 'a little sign from the universe to make weird art.’ The hope was that Broadway would hear the message.”

• Coming up on CUNY TV
• Recently aired on CUNY TV