- Network: CBS , Tony Awards
- Series Premiere Date: Apr 1, 1956
Critic Reviews
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This year’s ceremony leaned directly into the earnestness--and it was all the better for it. ... Bareilles and Groban were great anchors throughout the evening, popping up every so often to provide a sense of continuity without eating up too much screentime.
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Broadway is about entertainment and escape--as Groban and Bareilles sang in their opening number, “In a world that is scary and hard to endure, if you make art at all you’re a part of the cure”--and this year’s Tonys delivered both, in restorative doses.
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Bareilles and Groban aced their duties on their own terms, displaying terrific chemistry and making it less about themselves than their infectious enthusiasm as out-and-proud theater geeks.
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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.
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The show as a whole ran like clockwork, without any significant gaffes but also no particularly memorable outbreaks of emotion or eccentricity.