Tonys final thoughts

No, I wasn't sitting there Sunday night blogging, although maybe I should have been.

You saw what happened, most of it predictable. "Spring Awakening" and "The Coast of Utopia" cleaning up. Nearly everything else an also ran.

First the casualties: "Company" which took Best Musical Revival and August Wilson's "Radio Golf" have announced closing notices. Hopefully "Company" will follow the path of John Doyle's production of "Sweeney Todd" and tour. It's pie in the sky to hope that Raul Esparza might travel with it. Still, I suppose stranger things could happen.

I don't know how he would have fared in a category with more than one other entry, but it was cool to see ventriloquist Jay Johnson take the Best Special Theatrical Event Tony. Johnson's from the Valley, and a helluva nice guy. I interviewed him and his producers/director over lunch at Art's Deli before he opened "The Two and Only" at the Brentwood Theatre. It later played the Colony, and now he wants to tour it.

I also got the warm fuzzies over David Hyde Pierce's upset Best Actor in a musical victory, largely because the guy worked his rear off to turn himself into a musical comedy leading man.

The evening's best acceptance speeches: Pierce, Jack O'Brien, Julie White and Mary Louise Wilson.