Not only are the winners and losers at the 2023 Tony Awards unknown, so is the shape and content of the show. With the Writers Guild on strike, and most honorees in the theater world sympathetic to their cause, scripted matter is verboten and comic numbers, long a Tony Awards specialty, have been nixed.
Instead, expect more songs from Broadway musicals, self-penned acceptance speeches that don’t cross the line into something scripted and maybe some unexpected improvisation. It’s live TV, after all.
Let’s hope the bosses at the Broadway League and American Theatre Wing are smart enough to deliver some kind of blanket, we-all-support-the-writers endorsement at the start of the broadcast, ideally something witty and moving, thus freeing everyone else from the need to virtue signal in their acceptance speeches. That kind of repetition will do little for the folks watching at home, especially given the complexity of the strike, and will hurt Broadway if only by encouraging bored viewers to look away.
The winners themselves are by no means all locked up. You can expect some surprises and much spreading of the bounty.