Tag: theater

Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #193 (6/7/2025): TONY AWARDS 2025

This Rabbinical Reflection first aired June 7, 2025 on the Dave’s Gone By video podcast. 

Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections are heard on the long-running Dave’s Gone By radio/video podcast program (davesgoneby.com) and then archived as text and audio on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com, where a transcript of this Reflection may be read. 

Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage show, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon,” which played in NYC in Nov. 2011 and Aug. 2012.

© 2025 TotalTheater Productions. All Rights Reserved.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com 

 More on Rabbi Sol: shalomdammit.com

TRANSCRIPT:

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #193 (5/31/2025): Tony Awards 2025

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for June 7—Tony time!—2025. 

As the emcee in Cabaret says, “Where are your troubles now? Inside, outside—they’re goddamn everywhere!” But for one night, we dial back our anxiety and dyspepsia over the world around us and fixate, joyously, on art. The Tony Awards, honoring excellence on Broadway, is more than a bunch of navel-gazing artistes congratulating each each other because, at least for a while, they don’t have to get a real job. No, the American theater can be spectacular: meaningful, playful, beautiful, a temple—just without the yarmulke bin. 

And I make this synagoguian analogy because every year I do a special Rabbinical Reflection celebrating Broadway—in particular, the Jews who make it happen. Sure, the Great White Way isn’t that white anymore, and that’s a good thing, but let’s be clear: without us chosen, those curtains would be closin’. 

Just look at the winners of the special awards this year: Harvey Fierstein! Lifetime Achievement recipient for La Cage, Torch Song, Kinky Boots, he even played Tevye. There wouldn’t be Newsies without Jewsies! And besides, who but a Jew would title a musical, A Catered Affair?

If Harvey Fierstein is a ringer, let’s not forget another honoree: Michael P. Price. He spent 40 years in Connecticut regional theater doing a good deed for the Goodspeed. Price told the Jewish Ledger, and I quote, “The Jewish community is essential to any arts endeavor. I find it difficult to separate my work in the theater and my work as a Jew.” Personally, I find it difficult to separate anything about me from Jewishness, up to and including my prostate. But I digress.

I must say it is disappointing that all the Tony nominees for Best Play are as goyische as a ham sandwich dipped in a martini. These are the first names of the playwrights: Sanaz, Jez, Kimberly, Cole, and Branden. Hearing those names makes me feel like I’m on a trawler in Martha’s Vineyard. There’s a bit better luck with the musicals. David Yazbek did the songs for Dead Outlaw, and Will Aronson co-wrote the sleeper hit Maybe Happy Ending. I don’t think any of the creators of Death Becomes Her are Jewish, but the show is about two bitchy women constantly getting work done, so…close enough.

That said, where are the Jews in the performance categories? Lead actors run from the Irish George Clooney to the Korean Daniel Dae Kim, while the women range from Irish Laura Donnelly to Irish Mia Farrow. There’s one girl named Sadie but…not that kind of Sadie. At least a couple of the featured performers are tribal: Jessica Hecht of Eureka Day identifies as a reconstructionist Jew; Danny Burstein is only half-Jewish, but he’s playing Herbie in Gypsy and, like Harvey he was once a Tevye, so…we’ll take him.

Still, the paucity of Yidlach in this year’s Tony roster distresses me. Have my people stepped away—or been nudged away—owing to the gusher of anti-Semitism in which the liberal community now bathes itself? Are Jews last year’s news because audiences whoop at every Star Search yodel and smugly applaud every woke dogwhistle, but they’ve forgotten how to sit still and watch? Maybe Jews are sparse because Broadway producers pick one or two avatars to represent the race—say, Tom Stoppard and Joshua Harmon—but more than that feels excessive?

Whatever the reason, it would be nice to see a Hebraic renaissance at next year’s Tonys. Nominees will wear their Jewishness proudly—the actors putting on snug tuxedo pants that outline their foreskinless fazoozles, the actresses brazenly displaying their original noses. And when some deluded nominee strides the carpet displaying a Palestinian flagpin or a red hand for Gaza, may they be outnumbered by a sea of blue and white buttons, with six-pointed stars and a hamsa with the middle finger pointed straight up. 

Let me close by offering some lyrics from the admirable if ponderous musical revival of Floyd Collins, written by two Jews: Tina Landau and composer-lyricist Adam Guettel — who’s Richard Rodgers’s grandson, no less. At the end of the show, the lead character sings, “Only Heaven knows how glory goes, What each of us was meant to be. In the starlight, that is what we are; I can see so far.” And then he dies because he’s stuck inside a cave. Spoiler alert! Oops, I should have said that before I…but anyway: every artist working on and off-Broadway, no matter their race or ethnicity, is laboring to create a glimmer of glory, a wondrous escape from our cruddy world—even when they have to bury our noses in the crud to help us understand it. Music, drama, dance—they help us see what we are, and boy can they take us far. 

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Curtain up—and stay away from caves!

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