The Little Mermaid at The Tony Awards
On Sunday, June 15, the 62nd Annual Tony Awards came off at Radio City Music Hall. Various awards were doled out to the deserving few, and among those who went unrewarded was Disney’s newest baby, The Little Mermaid.
The award for best original score (music and/or lyrics) written for the theater went to Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote (and stars in) this year’s favorite, In the Heights.
Best lighting design went to Donald Holder for South Pacific.
Aside from a spotlight and exposure that the show will gain from having had a performance on the telecast (not that the show needed more - if nothing else, Disney is expert at advertising!), Mermaid gets absolutely nothing from the awards this year, even the pre-Tony recognitions. Then again, they did Part of Your World as their chosen piece - again. I’m pretty sure everyone who wanted to see that song has already seen it. (Sierra Boggess still looks like she has a tail growing out of her butt.)
It’s still a fan favorite and continues to do well at the box office week after week, so I doubt the folks at Disney are breaking their hearts too badly over the lack of recognition.
Alan Menken on Being Nominated
Says Alan Menken in response to his Tony nomination:
“I was getting ready to leave my home in upper Weschester for rehearsal. We’re doing a workshop for Leap of Faith, which is coming in next season, and Tom Schumacher gave me a call from London, saying, ‘Well, you’re nominated!’ I was like, ‘What? Oh, OK. That beats a stick in the eye.’ [Laughs] No, it really brightened my day, and it’s wonderful to get the acknowledgement of my peers. I wasn’t even looking, to be honest. I’ve been prepared for quite a while for the idea of The Little Mermaid not to get any nominations. And to me, The Little Mermaid has already won. It’s an enormous hit at the box office. Audiences love it. Everything I wanted to achieve with it, we’ve achieved, and I’m really thrilled with the show. It’s wonderful to get the acknowledgement of my peers. I’m being inducted into the songwriter Hall of Fame next month, too. So June’ll be a very nice month for me!”
[Source: Broadway.com]
The Little Mermaid and The Tony Awards
The nominations for the 2008 Tony Awards were announced this morning. The Little Mermaid, which continues to do well in both weekly gross and capacity on Broadway, did not do so well in the hearts and esteem of the Tony voters.
Coming in at only two nominations, The Little Mermaid does not apparently live up in the eyes of over 750 theater professionals. The Little Mermaid was recognized for Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for Theater, which I assumes to mean only the new songs that have been added to the score and Best Lighting Design of a Musical.
Despite her eligibility, Sierra Boggess received no notice of her portrayal of the strong-willed, red-headed teen mermaid.
Does anyone else find it shocking that there were no nominations for things like costume design (wow, heelies!) or acting? Very shocking indeed.
I wonder if Disney yet regrets the decision to close a still profitable show to open one which has come to very little acknowledgment from theater peers.
TLM on Broadway Linkspam
It’s a bit late to the party, but here are just a couple of reviews about The Little Mermaid on Broadway in the press. Most range from negative to mixed-negative, but if you’re just looking for the positive reviews, you might just want to check out the AP and TIME Magazine. (Also, there are a bunch of potshots at Beauty and the Beast on Broadway, so take their predictions that TLM will fail for what it’s worth).
The UK Telegraph: “The stage version almost sent me screaming from the theatre…”
TIME Magazine: “The trouble, to oversimplify just a bit: I like most Disney shows; the critics hate ‘em.”
The NY Times: (In a word: OUCH).
London Finanical Times: “It is neither a travesty of the 1989 animated Disney feature on which it is based nor a successful re-imagining.”
The Associated Press: “The Little Mermaid” has found its own unique on-stage sea legs.
Variety: “… Figures sound more like Ice Capades refugees than the enchanting inhabitants of a persuasively rendered, magical underwater kingdom…”
Talkin’ Broadway: “What’s missing is any sense of the kind of magic and wonder that the better Disney stage shows trade on… There are no anthropomorphic candlesticks with burning hands or gravity-defying transformations a la Beauty and the Beast…”
Newsday: “… The most amazing part of Disney’s latest musical is its amazing shortage of originality - not to mention magic or cross-generational wit.”
USAToday: “… The new Mermaid is ultimately less than the sum of its impressive parts, offering neither the richly imaginative spectacle of The Lion King nor the old-fashioned vitality and charm of Mary Poppins.”
LA Times: Poor TLM reviews leave 2008 Tony’s race wide open.
