SPECIAL TONY AWARD EDITION – Here’s to the losers!

“And the Tony Award goes to…” (Watch the video, how many faces do you recognize?)

These will be the final words dozens of nominees hear tonight before: hearts’ break, dreams’ shatter and the realization sets in that they lost the American theater’s highest honor to someone else.

While everyone says, “It’s an honor just to be nominated,” no one believes that BS line.

However, time has shown that winning a Tony Award doesn’t make one a star, it’s the audience who makes that judgment call.  To those who will lose tonight, I’d like to console them with two actresses’ stories who confirm that it is the performance, not the accolades, that history ultimately remembers.

Wouldn’t It Be Loverly – 1957 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical

Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolitte in 1956’s My Fair Lady.

It’s hard to believe that Julie Andrews has never won a Tony Award, especially given that her name is synonymous with one of Broadway’s masterpiece’s My Fair Lady.  She was only 21 when the show opened in 1956, and a relative unknown, but her performance of cockney-flower girl Eliza Doolittle earned her cheers from audiences and critics.  Although, not from Tony Award voters who gave the 1957 Best Actress in a Musical Award to Judy Holliday for Bells Are Ringing.

What’s remarkable is that even though she lost the Tony, and even the film role to Audrey Hepburn, no actress has ever been to escape Andrews’ shadow as Eliza.  Many actresses have tried, but none have come close.  Fortunately for us, Andrews’ performance as Eliza was preserved on My Fair Lady’s original Broadway and London cast albums.

While a Tony Award for Andrews would have been great, it must be especially loverly knowing that 58 years onward, people are still cheering her performance!

Don’t Rain on My Parade – 1964 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical

How does one justify the fact that Barbra Streisand won an Oscar for her portrayal as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, but lost the Tony Award for Best Actress in 1964 for that very same role?  In reality, despite giving a knockout performance, Streisand had the misfortune of being nominated against another iconic actress/role, Carol Channing as Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!  History though had other plans!

Streisand was Funny Girl, and till this day her performance is still talked about! Don’t believe me, give the YouTube clip a list and prepare to be blown away!

Yes, this is aided by her performance in the 1968 film adaption of Funny Girl.  But since the original Broadway production of Funny Girl closed in 1967, no actress has ever come close to matching Streisand.  So great is the memory of Streisand’s performance, than many potential Broadway revivals have failed to materialize simply because of the memory of her.  Quite simply put, don’t rain on Streisand’s parade!

 A word to the nominees

Yes, it stinks to lose.  But Julie Andrews and Barbra Streisand’s examples demonstrates that history and the audience will ultimately judge who was the best that season.  Great actors don’t let awards define them; they allow their performance to do just that.

As for yours truly, I am a 2009 Tony Award holder.  And yes, the Tony medal feels great to carry!

Happy Liza Doolittle Day!

Next week, on the twentieth of May, I proclaim Liza Doolittle Day!

-My Fair Lady

Ok, it isn’t, Christmas or the 4^th of July, but every year on the 20^th of May, I look forward to Eliza Doolittle Day!

The 20^th of May reference comes from My Fair Lady’s Act I fantasy number “Just You Wait (Henry Higgins).”  While not an official holiday, Eliza Doolittle Day is the nearest event I’ll ever have to celebrating the brilliance of My Fair Lady because it conceptualizes the definition of a masterpiece.

My Fair Lady is about a professor named Henry Higgins, and his attempt to turn cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a lady by teaching her how to speak properly.  Underpinning the entire show is a romantic, dare I say sexual, tension between the two as they struggle to understand one another in their attempt to master the English language.

It wasn’t until last December when I finally saw My Fair Lady on-stage for the first time in an ill-conceived production at Washington, DC’s Arena Stage.  This revival had many errors including: poor casting, an over-stated and misguided focus on the issue of class relations, and the removal of the show’s glorious overture.  Why though, was I still applauding at the show’s curtain call?

Herein lays what defines a masterpiece and why My Fair Lady is one.

At its core, My Fair Lady addresses one of humanity’s great enigmas: the relationship between the sexes.   Despite attempts to re-frame the story, My Fair Lady’s book and musical structure are so solidly constructed that it’s impossible to lose focus on the show’s underlying theme.

A masterpiece is something whose integrity, meaning and impact never change throughout time.  Their statement on society is timeless.  One of the great attributes of this masterpiece, is that regardless of whatever future artistic interpretations may bring, nothing can diminish how the elegant-simplicity of Alan Jay Lerner’s lyrics, the beauty and innocence of Frederick Lowe’s score or the pitch perfect wording of Lerner’s book tell the story of Eliza and Higgins.

A lot of musicals have opened and closed since My Fair Lady first debuted in 1956, but none have continued to capture the public’s attention quite like My Fair Lady.

It’s a rare musical that can continue to please generations of thespians, theater critics and audiences, not to mention moviegoers as well.  So on this Eliza Doolittle Day, give the cast album a listen or the movie a viewing.  And remember, you’re in the presence of a masterpiece!

Just You Wait Henry Higgins – Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in the original Broadway Cast of My Fair Lady