Well, the Tonys have been and gone, again the theme seems to be oddball and humor and I am not complaining! Monty Python’s Spamalot took out Best Musical and best Supporting actress (Tim Curry didn’t win anything – booo!).

Spamalot is excellent, very funny and topical while still having classic elements. Of course with Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce and Hank Azaria what can you expect? The lady of the lake songs are brilliant, especially What Happened to My Part. I also love the song You Won’t Succeed on Broadway. I deem this musical good for a laugh and sits well alongside Avenue Q.

25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee did very well, it seems to be a little out of the blue for me (not being in NYC – Boo!) but it is very funny and original. It has a nice combination of humor and sweet personality.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a great concept for a musical and I enjoy some of the songs, but I have to admit that some of the songs seem a little incongruous (Like Great Big Stuff – which is very Syncopated and wanders between rap and jazz and several others) usually I like incongruity, and I cant debate it gets in your mind. I will see after I listen to the album a few times. The best bit on the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels album without a doubt is the message from John Lithgow that tells everyone to go out and buy tickets because he wants the money.

The Light in the Piazza took out almost all the Technicals. It was the only non humorous musical on offer really and sounded quite pretty – but not really very original (IMHO) I thought it sounded very Derivative of Sondheim – nothing wrong with that, it was pretty – but I didn’t think it was anything to write home about.

Speaking of Sondheim, they celebrated his 75th Birthday at the Tonys with a duet between Hugh Jackman and Aretha Franklin. There were two crimps in this otherwise perfect plan – Aretha Franklin is quite old now and, as happens with age, her voice is degrading. She sounded breathy and had difficulty reaching the notes. This was really really depressing. (And I am still getting over hearing Julie Andrews singing on Princess Diaries II – Same thing) They also chose Somewhere from West Side Story as the piece. Considering Sondheim only wrote the lyrics maybe one of his Songs that he wrote in entirety would have been good. But ah well.

Other than that I was in my happy place as Nathan Lane, Tim Curry, Megan Mullally, Bernadette Peters, Hugh Jackman and John Lithgow was there. *sigh*