Joining me today is my friend Raven Snook, editor in chief and digital services manager at TDF and a theater critic for Time Out New York. She is also a Drama Desk nominator, which she describes as “sort of the Golden Globes to the Oscars.”
Watch or listen to our discussion at your leisure, and please like and share!
Edited excerpts from our conversation:
SER: Given that this is our Tony Awards special, what your thoughts were about the upcoming nominations? Any surprises?
RAVEN: It pretty much went the way that I anticipated in the big award categories. Overall, I think it was a very strong season. It was a sort of a weird season because I saw some shows that I think are going to be some of my favorites forever. And I saw definitely multiple shows that on my deathbed, I’m going to wish I had that time back.
There were some really, really bad shows this season, like startlingly bad, but they were not nominated, which was great.
But my big disappointment was just I loved Real Women Have Curves. I have fought with men who’ve said that I’m being dismissive when I tell them they just don’t get it. But the same way I just don’t get Glengarry Glen Ross … they don’t get Real Women Have Curves.
I mean, some do, but generally it got nice reviews, not raves. But every woman I know who’s seen it absolutely adores it. I adored it. And it only got, I think, two nominations. It didn’t get nominations for Best Musical. [SER: It was nominated for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical and Best Original Score.]
[Tatianna Córdoba] … didn’t get a nomination for [Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical] … She’s new to the scene, but she was just absolutely phenomenal.
That for me was the biggest disappointment. I was surprised that Dead Outlaw only had seven. I think it's a really strong musical. My favorite musical this season was Maybe Happy Ending and it tied for the most Tony nominations with Death Becomes Her and Buena Vista Social Club.
Death Becomes Her is a total hoot. It is such an improvement on a movie that people remember fondly, but don’t remember accurately because it’s really not that great a movie. [SER: That was rude. That was really fucking rude.]
There are great scenes and great moments [in the film] and [the musical] really found a way to expand on it and change it in a way that made a lot more sense, felt much less misogynistic and actually sustained the comedy almost to the end.
And Buena Vista Social Club, it’s like a joy bomb, right? Even though they’re going through the Cuban revolution, like they record this great album, 30 years later. So it’s wonderful. But I feel like Dead Outlaw and Maybe Happy Ending are the two most original musicals, not just because they’re not based on pre-existing intellectual property, but just in terms of their approach to quirky stories, having really strong books. Books are often the downfall of musicals.
So this is my long-winded way of saying it’s been a very good season. And my big disappointment was Real Women Have Curves, which is a very traditional musical, not getting more love. It’s not getting the audience it deserves, and I don't think it'll be around that long. And the lead in it, Tatiana Cordoba, is just stunning.
It's an absolutely stunning debut. So that was sad to me. It was also sad that Helen J. Shen, who's making her Broadway debut in Maybe Happy Ending and has done a lot of great work off-Broadway, she did not get a nomination. And I thought that was really unfair because she and Darren Criss — it’s not a two-person musical. There are other people — but it’s mainly a two-person musical and they both deserve to be nominated.
But it was tough. The toughest category this year was Best Actress in a Musical because you had Audra McDonald who was going to get nominated.
SER: Yeah, and she’s going to win, right? Is it just, she's going to win and everyone else is happy to be nominated? What do you think?
RAVEN: So I’m not a Tony voter, I should say, but I know many Tony voters. And I think the general sense is Nicole Scherzinger is going to win for Sunset Boulevard. Audra has many, many Tonys. This would be a record. It would give her seven, which would be the most individual performance Tonys for anyone if she won. And she is revelatory in the role. But there are people who didn't like the way she sang it. She doesn’t belt. She uses her legit voice in a lot of it.
I actually thought it meant I could appreciate the songs in a new and different way, and I think everyone agrees that acting-wise, her performance is spectacular. But Nicole Scherzinger was sort of an unknown quantity. Yes, she was a pop star, but she’d never done Broadway. And it’s a reinvention of a mediocre musical that she has a lot to do with. You know, Jamie Lloyd's vision is key but she was able to fulfill it because she's playing Norma Desmond, this aging silent movie star at the same time she’s playing an aging pop star. It’s sort of happening in two timelines and she holds it together.
I will be sad if Audra loses, yes, because I really think it was a revelatory performance where I think nNcole's is an incredible performance.
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