Going on 70 years now, a sometime Italian theater critic named Antonio Gramsci wrote in one of Mussolini’s jail cells of the importance of the left to capture the culture, then the road, he predicted, would be open to capturing the state.
Since the ’60s, inroads have certainly been steadily made to capture our culture. Sunday night on CBS, the telecast of the prestigious Tony awards (now in its 57th year) for outstanding work in theater marked, you might say, the apotheosis of the culture finally being captured – at least in the realm of American theater.
The best play: “Take Me Out” about a homosexual baseball player coming out of the closet. Dennis Hare won the award for best featured actor in the same play. And Joe Mantello won the Tony for best direction of a play for the same work.
But the night belonged to “Hairspray,” a piece of high camp, that won the most – eight – awards, including those for best musical and best actor in a musical, Harvey Fierstein. Mr. Fierstein performs nightly in full drag, playing not a drag queen, but a woman and a mother. The audience was beside themselves with enthusiasm as he went up on the stage, dressed soberly all in black to accept his award.
In his “thank-you” speech, he good-naturedly complimented Antonio Banderas, considered a highly likely contender for the award, saying, “Next time you come to New York for a show, Antonio, you’ll remember to wear a dress.” Banderas chuckled good-humouredly. The audience roared.
In thanking the Tony audience (some 724 theater professionals and journalists vote) for the award for best musical score – again “Hairspray” – lyricist Scott Wittman bestowed a passionate kiss on composer Marc Shaiman. It was Adrien Brody and Halle Berry redux, except the principals weren’t so pretty.
According to the New York Times, which ran a picture of the kiss in its Monday edition, the two have been companions for 25 years. “I love you, and I’d like to live with you the rest of my life,” Mr. Shaiman said to Mr. Wittman, before the kiss was bestowed on national television.
Best actor and actress awards went to the stars of the revival of Eugene O’Neill’s celebrated drama of a singularly dysfunctional family. Miss Redgrave – who once used the podium of the Academy Awards to make a passionate political statement for the Palestinians, I believe, only to be reproved by Paddy Chafevsky – simply behaved decorously grateful for her award.
The New York Times fairly accurately, if overlooking the subtext, put it: “If the Tony Awards are Broadway’s way of sending a message, last night the commercial theater honored the 1960s, albeit very different versions of the decade: the beehive hairdos of ‘Hairspray,’ the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll of ‘Movin’ Out,’ and the short-skirted chic of ‘Nine.'” (“Nine,” a revival, is a stage adaptation of Federico Fellini’s classic film “Eight and a Half,” the tale of a director and the numerous women in his life.)
Despite the ongoing slacking off of tourism in New York – memories of terrorist attacks – this year Broadway pulled in a record $720.9 million in the 2002-3 season. Mind you, the big winner, “Hairspray,” is pretty lightweight, giddy stuff.
Has the culture really been captured, or are New Yorkers simply trying to get away from the harsh realities of the day? Is sniffing “Hairspray” for an evening like a sniff of glue? Better to think so, I suppose. If not, we are in trouble.
