|
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
7
Mixed:
8
Negative:
2
|
Critic Reviews
Jun 11, 2018
Jun 11, 2018
Jun 11, 2018
Season 72 Review:
Throughout, Groban and Bareilles kept up this happily effervescent, optimistic but never cloying energy--up until the show’s end .... It was a show defined in large part, of course, by its winners, but one whose claims of sympathy with the losers felt genuine, too. Even as the production numbers may have been smaller than in years prior, the show’s heart was big beyond measure.
Read full review
Jun 13, 2017
Season 71 Review:
[Kevin Spacey] has a sense of play and fun. What mattered all the way through is that he was game. ... An evening with so many scheduled high points, so many moments of focused energy, can have a cumulative enervating effect. And yet, I will be honest, I choke up regularly and reliably through the Tonys.
Read full review
Jun 10, 2019
Season 73 Review:
The host started strong and had one sharp musical interlude mid-show, but elsewhere delivered strained comedy bits that felt familiar, safe and thematically generic. ... Thankfully, the Tonys is less about the host than the award recipients and the shows they represent, and on that front, the ceremony delivered some stirring speeches, a couple of stellar performance interludes in an otherwise mixed bag, and some welcome, and long overdue, respect for playwrights.
Read full review
Jun 10, 2019
Season 73 Review:
A practiced vaudevillian, [host James Corden] seemed to pitch every comic bit from a defensive crouch, as if convinced that anyone watching the Tonys was doing it by accident or was hoping to see Neil Patrick Harris instead. ... This year, the playwrights themselves gave descriptions of their plays. It may have felt like listening to book reports, but it gave us the chance to see Heidi Schreck, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and, in monster-drag regalia, Taylor Mac.
Read full review
Jun 10, 2019
Season 73 Review:
More Corden would have given the show more life, and a more unfettered Corden might have been able to cut through some of the gauze of earnest sanctimony that enveloped the ceremony to an even greater extent than in recent years. ... In its main job of drawing paying customers to the plays, the night was a mixed bag. The biggest musicals fared the worst in the production numbers.
Read full review
Jun 13, 2017
Season 71 Review:
[The Tony Awards] had trouble figuring out what to do with Kevin Spacey, the evening’s host, making use of him in ways that ranged from torturous (the opening number) to tolerable (he does pretty good Johnny Carson and Bill Clinton impressions). It fared far better when it was about the work being honored and the people who did it.
Read full review
Jun 13, 2017
Season 71 Review:
Spacey did a great job explaining why he was host (using riffs on the nominated musicals to make his point), but he was playing to a home crowd. If you didn’t know anything about “Dear Evan Hansen” (and you should), you wouldn’t understand why he had a cast on his arm (and, later, on his leg).
Read full review
Jun 13, 2017
Season 71 Review:
Spacey is a brilliant actor, but warmth and humility are perhaps not his strongest suits. So opening on the defensive, with a messy mashup of songs from current-season musicals that he repurposed to head off any eventual criticism of his hosting performance, started the show on a strained note. ... What the 2017 Tony Awards ceremony did have going for it was an element of suspense around some of the major awards.
Read full review
IndieWireJun 13, 2017
Season 71 Review:
Midler’s ebullient phone-book-length list of thanks was, indeed, a highlight of the Tony telecast on CBS. Considering what a wonderful season it was in terms of quality and even quantity on Broadway, the telecast can only be regarded as a dutiful but hardly dazzling, and often dull, celebration of a season that deserved a more vibrant tribute.
Read full review
Jun 10, 2019
Season 73 Review:
The musical numbers, always the highlight of the Tonys and designed to sell as many tickets as possible, were a bust on the telecast. ... As for Corden, this was not his finest hour. The opening number, written especially for the telecast, was a dud, and he seemed a bit tired throughout the evening.
Read full review
Jun 10, 2019
Season 73 Review:
[Host James Corden's] opening number, which began with the “Late Late Show” host sitting on a couch, was premised on the idea that there is simply too much good TV on nowadays, before making a muddled argument that theater is better than TV because it is actually live. ... Corden just kept coming around, with the notion of the excitement around live theater de-emphasized each time by the staleness of his material. ... Little on the broadcast carried the charge of a performance coherent from beginning to end, one designed to tell a story rather than simply cow the audience into submission.
Read full review
Current TV Shows
By MetascoreBy User Score