The Tony Awards Administration Committee made several rulings last week designed to help categorize the season's hard-to-classify productions. For example, while "Movin' Out" will be eligible for Best Musical, "La Boheme," the storied Puccini opera which has never played before on Broadway, will be considered a "classic" and thereby eligible for Best Revival of a Musical. The committee tabled the question of how to regard the opera's three casts--specifically whether all the performers, or just those who played on opening night, would be Tony-eligible.
There were more rulings from the Jan. 16 meeting as well. "Imaginary Friends," a musical play by Nora Ephron, will be eligible for Best Play, but the show's songs, by Marvin Hamlisch and Craig Carnelia, will be eligible for Best Score, as will the show's orchestrations and choreography in their respective categories. The committee agreed that the revival of "Flower Drum Song" is, in fact, a revival, but will allow David Henry Hwang's all-new script to be eligible for Best Book. And finally, the rhyme-scheme-slamming "Def Poetry Jam" will be eligible for Best Special Theatrical Event, the award that went to "Elaine Stritch at Liberty" last season.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Rule
However one may applaud or deride the classifying of "La Boheme" as a classic--or any other rule-influenced decision made this season--at least the Tony Committee is sticking to its guns: They created the "classic" rule after the industry grumbled last year that "Fortune's Fool" was eligible for Best Play even though the playwright, Ivan Turgenev, died in 1883. The ruling reads: "A play or musical that is determined by the Tony Awards Administration Committee (in its sole discretion) to be a 'classic' or in the historical or popular repertoire shall not be eligible for an award in the best play or best musical category but may be eligible in that appropriate best revival category." "La Boheme" certainly fits that bill, but insofar as wanting to avoid nominating dead playwrights, it does differ from decisions made in the past by the committee.
In 1974, for example, the committee ruled that "Ulysses in Nighttown," an adaptation of James Joyce's literary masterpiece, was eligible for Best Play, although the piece had originally run Off-Broadway during the 1958-59 season and Joyce died in 1941. Another example comes from 1983, when T.S. Eliot, who died in 1965, won the Tony for Best Score with Andrew Lloyd Webber for "Cats." The committee had ruled that the material was Tony-eligible because it had never been presented onstage before.
Quibbles aside, it's important to also note that the creation of the "classic" rule is only the latest in a string of decrees from the committee. And the "classic" designation does boast some logic: Why should long-dead Turgenev (or long-dead Puccini, for that matter) be considered Tony-eligible when their work is so clearly part of the world's acknowledged repertory? That their work hasn't appeared before on Broadway, the committee seems to be saying, has relatively little to do with how to properly categorize such a work.
Perhaps the ever-changing nature of what comes to Broadway can be blamed, if blame is the right word, for the bewildering morass of rules and rule changes that have been issued through the years. In recent times, the rulings have been coming at an especially fast clip--and not always with consistent results. In 1998, the score of "High Society," featuring a mixture of Cole Porter standards and trunk songs, was deemed ineligible for a Tony, yet the show was eligible for Best Musical. Two years earlier, in 1996, the committee ruled that only four Rodgers and Hammerstein songs from "State Fair" were to be considered for Best Score; producer David Merrick promptly launched a $2 million lawsuit against the Tonys that was dismissed only days before the ceremony.
Nor was that the first time the committee's rulings had incited legal action. In 1968, NBC, then airing the Tonys and in the perennial search for better ratings, wanted the cut-off date for nominations to be pushed up to March 15 from April 11. The committee agreed, leaving two musicals, "George M!" and "Hair," knocked out of contention for that year. Faster than you could say "Give My Regards to Broadway," David Black and Michael Butler, the respective producers of "George M!" and "Hair," sued in protest. Their legal actions were tossed out of court, and both musicals were Tony-eligible the following season.
For some reason, the 1968 Tonys were just chock-full of rules-related rancor. In a separate decision, the committee also ruled that the nonprofit APA-Phoenix Repertory, which had received multiple nominations the season before, was now Tony-ineligible, claiming the awards were open only to commercial productions. An outcry ensued, and the committee wound up awarding a special Tony to the group, eventually scrapping the rule altogether.
Bending the Rules
Perhaps the inconsistency of the committee's rules can best be illustrated by how the acting categories have been handled over the years. In the same 1967-68 season as the lawsuits and the ineligibility of nonprofits, Zena Walker won a featured-actress Tony for her work in "A Day in the Death of Joe Egg." Seventeen years later, Stockard Channing won a Tony for the same role--in the leading-actress slot.
Of course, Channing's name in that production was above the title, and there is a rule of thumb stating that actors with names above the title generally contend for leading-actor slots, and actors with names below the title vie for featured-actor slots. But there is also inconsistency on this as well. Last season, Frank Langella's name was above the title of "Fortune's Fool" and he won the featured-actor Tony. His co-star, Alan Bates--whose name was equal to Langella's--won for leading actor.
A most peculiar puzzlement is how the committee handled the Tony eligibility of the actors in the 2000 mounting of Sam Shepard's "True West." Since Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly played both roles, alternating every other week, industry insiders expected them to be nominated as a unit. There was also precedent for this: In 1966, Donal Donnelly and Patrick Bedford were nominated together for "Philadelphia, Here I Come!"; in 1975, John Kani and Winston Ntshona won a single Tony for "Sizwe Banzi is Dead" and "The Island"; and in 1997, Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner were nominated together for "Side Show." This time, however, the committee broke with tradition, making Hoffman and Reilly separately eligible. And in a truly odd case, the committee declined a request from the producers of "The Sound of Music" in 1998 to consider the seven children as a unit, despite the fact that they had been so nominated when the show first ran in 1959.
In all fairness, the committee does strive to foster as fair a process as feasible. In 1970, Dean Jones left "Company" after only a month; the committee named Larry Kert, who succeeded him, as Tony-eligible. In addition, the committee deserves credit for long-term thinking. In 2000, "Squonk," a genre-defying show, opened and closed quickly at the Helen Hayes Theatre. The committee declined to make it Tony-eligible, saying it was neither a play nor a musical. The snubbing prompted producer Bill Repicci to protest, and a year later--with an upsurge in nontraditional Broadway shows an unavoidable reality--the committee ruled on a new category, Best Special Theatrical Event.