Tony Night

Sorry about not posting much over the past couple of days, but I had a lot to do to get ready for last night's Tony festivities. Not just the awards for the best Broadway has to offer, but also the chance to finally learn the fate of the other big Tony, Tony Soprano. (Spoiler alert: if you taped or TiVo'd the Sopranos finale, things will be revealed later in the post that you won't want to know.)

First, the Theater Wing of America's Antoinette Perry Awards. I thought the broadcast itself was relatively well done, especially considering they get probably 1/50th the number of viewers that the Oscars gets. The audience was mostly dressed very elegantly and with a lot of class. No fashion train wrecks like one gets on Oscar night -- except for the woman (can't remember who) who wore the dress with a collar that looked like the pop-top from a 70s era beer can. Angela Lansbury looked terrific, the speeches were mostly elequent and gracious, and the musical numbers exciting and well-staged.

As usual, it was also the gayest night on TV. I think the first two couples shown during the TV broadcast were gay and lesbian, and it seemed like half the male winners were gay: David Hyde Pierce, Steven Sater, Bill T. Jones, Jack O'Brien, all the design winners, the producer of "Spring Awakening." Even the lone child on stage was already clearly on the road to being a member of the Family.

Best acceptance speeches came from female actors: Mary Louise Wilson (who, after saying she wondered that if she ever won a Tony would she feel as if someone had made a mistake, said: "And I don't.") and Julie White (who was genuinely shocked to have won for her role in "The Little Dog Laughed" yet had something prepared that acknowledged the shock and allowed her to give thanks with both grace and humor.) I'm also glad "The Little Dog Laughed" won something (the link I just gave will take you to the report from the trip when I first saw the show off-Broadway).

Also glad "Spring Awakening" took home eight trophies, including Best Musical. Broadway needs to encourage risk-taking, creativity and the desire to develop a new audience.

Now, on to the other Tony. I'll keep this brief, as the blogosphere is filled with commentary about the show. At the very end of the episode, the very end of the series, Tony is meeting his family at a North Jersey diner (famed, apparently, for its onion rings). Tony, Carmela, Meadow and AJ are all arriving separately. Once Tony is inside, every person in the diner seems to be suspect in some way. Every time the door opens, we wonder if someone will enter who is going to whack Tony. There's a guy sitting at the counter who seems especially suspicious. Creator David Chase does a terrific job of establishing a sense of the kind of tension Tony must be feeling: who's a threat? Who's not? The suspicious guy at the counter walks past their booth...then goes into the bathroom. A foreshadowing of "The Godfather" when Michael Corleone retrieved the gun from toilet tank to off one of his rivals?

Then...darkness. No music. No sound. Just black for a few seconds, then the credit roll.

Here's where I think Chase displayed his greatest genius. Prior to the finale, Vegas oddsmakers were taking bets on whether Tony would be whacked or not. But with the ending Chase chose, a strong case can be made to say both that he survived to say that he was killed. In the episode prior, we get a flashback to when Tony and Bobby Baccalieri talk about what it would be like to be shot in the back of the head: "Everything goes black. You probably don't even hear anything." was the gist of their conclusion. So is that what happened to Tony? Did the guy come out of the bathroom and pop a cap in the back of T's neck? Or with Phil Leotardo dead, did Tony consolidate his power and continue on as boss? A strong case can be made either way, which leaves the Vegas boys with a bit of a conundrum.