Tony Awards Tonight

The Tony Awards are tonight, and if you're like Gothamist, you're going to watch the shows because you secretly know more than you should, given how few musicals and plays you actually saw last year, about all the nominees because you just have too much time your hands (we love Audra McDonald, but if she gets her fourth Tony tonight, we're officially calling the Tonys the "Emmys"). That and Wolverine shimmying around in sequins. Yes, the other Tony will be season finale ing tonight, so we take the lead from the president of the League of American Theaters, Jed Bernstein: "First of all, 'The Sopranos' are going to be rerun all week, and I think people really should take that into account. And I'm sure that at 10 o'clock, Hugh Jackman will announce who was whacked." Well, actually we'll be watching the Sopranos as soon as the Tonys are over, thanks to the modern miracle of home entertainment recording devices.

Tonight's Tony Awards are particularly glammy, with the presence of Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Scarlett Johanssen, Ethan Hawke, and other celebs, plus Tony Bennett and Mary J. Blige singing (THANK GOD Nicole and Renee aren't singing). Check out the NY Times' Tony section. And one of Gothamist's guilty pleasures is Theater Talk, the WNET/PBS Broadway show co-hosted by NY Post theater writer, Michael Riedel, whose wit and bitchiness bulldozes everything and everyone, including his poor co-host, Susan Haskins. So we were excited to read New York magazine's profile of Riedel, who might be the new Butcher of Broadway, given reaction of some people NY called up when doing the article (Rosie O'Donnell told the NY reporter, "I hope you eviscerate him," while Rocco Landesman, producer of many musicals including The Producers, said, “He’s nasty, he’s cynical. He couldn’t tell Ibsen from Strindberg.”). While that may be, Gothamist loves reading crazy, bitchy writing about theater, because, frankly, that's what theater is all about - we saw All About Eve.