he didn’t win: I’m disappointed that Audra McDonald didn’t win her seventh Tony Award. I’m biased, of course. but this is one of those times when cultural lovers intersect with hometown sports fans. I don’t care that I didn’t see any of the nominated performances or that Audra already has six Tonys to dust. When she’s nominated, she’s my favorite.
“A pin drop”: That’s how the New York Times described the audience’s rapt attention during Audra’s stunning performance of “Rose’s Turn” in her big Tony moment. I had read a lot about this pivotal moment in the show, and I interviewed some very astute people who helped analyze why it is a major moment in Broadway history, but all the research couldn’t truly prepare me for the raw, visceral, potent presence of Audra on stage. I felt like I was in the room with her, and I felt a connection as complete as if were both hooked up to the same throbbing, electrical current. If felt like more than acting — as if she caused a momentary disturbance in the socio-emotional norms of theater itself. It was stunning.
Afterward: As my friend Stephen Mintz asks: “Did you see Audra walk off the stage? Head sagging and tremors remaining from the deep emotion of that performance. Audra didn’t care about singing well. She was Mama Rose and ran through the gamut of the emotional swings.” I completely agree. Whereas other performers put on happy Tony-nominee faces as they walked offstage and immediately played the roles of grateful actor, Audra wasn’t able to wrench herself out of that intense place she’d just gone for us. She was still shifting back to herself, so to speak. She was that invested in her performance.
Related story: Will Tony voters bestow a 7th Tony Award on Fresno’s Audra McDonald? No one knows for sure, but these four local admirers are rooting for her.
The Tony goes to: Nicole Scherzinger also gave a strong live performance from “Sunset Blvd.” (and she would go on to win the Tony for the role), but Scherzinger seemed overly mannered to me — more like beautifully performed calisthenics than a soul-baring moment. When Audra didn’t win, I like to think there was a bit of regret in the hall. How could the Tony voters ignore that performance?
Speaking of: I think that if the Patti LuPone silliness — and, completely unrelated, the Time magazine cover proclaiming Audra as “Broadway’s Greatest” — had happened a few weeks earlier, when I’m assuming that Tony voting was still going strong, I think the outcome could have been different.
But: Audra gave it her all. Even though she didn’t win, her chance to perform “Rose’s Turn” in front of a national television audience was perhaps the best thing to come out of the Tony experience. If you could hear a pin drop in the hall during her performance, I can imagine much the same happened in many living rooms: people stopping their double-tasking or bitchy conversations (this is a theater crowd, after all) and sticking their eyes to the screen. It was that kind of moment.
Which reminds me: Why isn’t Audra a household name, at least in her hometown? Several friends posed that question to me over the past few weeks as the Tony race heated up. For me, the answer is sadly simple: Theater is niche. If Audra were a Super Bowl-winning linebacker, we’d probably have a parade after each of her accomplishments.
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Marketing possibility: But what if Fresno were more proactive in terms of promoting its Broadway royalty? (It’d be nice, for a start, for local media to bother covering something like Audra’s chance at a seventh Tony win. The closest The Bee got was a syndicated column about the LuPone incident. Oh, and it ran a story on Sunday headlined “Vehicle crashes into pole in front of Roosevelt High, causing power outage, police say,” a nod to Audra’s school.) How about a giant mural of Audra? A billboard campaign? An Audra walking tour? Hey, arts community, let’s put our collective heads together.