Broadway votes with their hearts — not wallets — at Tony Awards

Story by Michael Riedel

Once again the Tony Awards have made those of us with black, cynical hearts look ridiculous.
“Fun Home,” a small musical about a teenage lesbian and her secretly gay father, toppled “An American in Paris,” a $15 million tourist-friendly hit, to win the Tony for Best Musical.

The smart money — well, the dumb money, as it turned out — was on “An American in Paris.” It’s grossing $1.3 million a week on Broadway, and it’s destined to become a gold mine when it tours the country next year. We savants thought this was an easy call, since a lot of Tony voters stand to make a lot of money off the show.

“Fun Home,” while critically acclaimed, is never going to rival “An American in Paris” at the box office. And when it plays Peoria — hell, it’s never going to play Peoria.
But the Tony voters didn’t seem to care about any of that. They were moved by “Fun Home,” and they gave it Broadway’s biggest prize, one that is likely to ensure the musical a good, long run at the Circle-in-the-Square Theater.

This is not the first time voters have picked the modest show over the commercial juggernaut.
Last year, they went for “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” over the Carole King smash, “Beautiful.” The year before, they picked “Kinky Boots” over the favored “Matilda.” And a few years ago, they went for the pocket-size “Once” over Disney’s “Newsies.”

Most famously, “Avenue Q,” a puppet show, if you please, thumped that billion-dollar franchise you might have heard of called “Wicked.”
The inescapable fact is that voters have become immune to the lure of filthy lucre.
Perhaps it’s because Broadway is making so much money these days — $1.3 billion this past year alone — that they feel they can go with their hearts rather than their pocketbooks.

Or maybe they’re simply not as jaded as those of us who have been gazing into our (cracked) crystal balls far too long.
The voters also surprised us Amazing Karnaks by picking Kelli O’Hara, Anna in “The King and I,” over Kristin Chenoweth, Lily Garland in “On the Twentieth Century.”
Again, the smart (dumb) money was on Chenoweth. She is an indestructible musical comedy force, while O’Hara is a much more restrained, though lovely, performer.

Voters went for the dignified over the brash.
What’s a pundit to do?
Nothing!
The past is the past, I have no regrets, and I’ve already moved on to next season.
I can say with certainty that the 2016 Tony Award for Best Musical will go to the Munchner Kammerspiel’s acclaimed production of Stanislav Witkiewicz’s 10-hour musical adaptation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.”
I hear Hugh Jackman is angling for the lead.