The 2007 Tony Awards

 Steve on Broadway has more coverage!

For all the local Broadway fans, the 2007 Tony Awards broadcast begins tonight at 8pm. on the CBS televisions network. Check this complete listing of the 2007 nominees. The New York press is full of the usual edgy, elitist commentary on the awards process.

Michael Riedel of the New York Post provides his typical unvarnished coverage of the Tony voters and has a few predictions in his article, Season of Spring.

June 8, 2007 — BEFORE we get to Tony predictions (easy-peasy this year), let’s talk about the Tony scandal. In a nutshell: Quite a few of the 740 Tony voters don’t bother to see all the nominated productions yet still vote in all the categories.

It’s a big no-no, but pretty much everybody does it.

(Full disclosure: I’ve occasionally transgressed myself; one year, I even skipped “Tango Argentina”!)

This season, fewer than 500 voters have caught August Wilson’s “Radio Golf” and “110 in the Shade,” which won’t stop them from voting for Best Play or Best Revival of a Musical.

The New York Times joins in the biting rhetoric with Campbell Robertson’s article, Handicapping the Tonys.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: That 800-pound mobster in the room. Remember TiVo, people? The theater industry is counting on you to use it.

Now to the business at hand.

The 61st annual Tony Awards ceremony caps an unusual Broadway season rich for theatergoers, though not so rich for producers.

Strangely, after a season so packed and so diverse, with a healthy dose of the unconventional and no runaway hit, the general feeling around Broadway this week is that the awarding of the Tonys is more or less a fait accompli: This one’s a lock, that category’s pretty much wrapped up, this actor can’t lose.

But there are more than 750 Tony voters from all over the industry — and the country — with their own tastes, preferences, friends, grudges and motives, ulterior or noble. So you never know for sure. Ask the producers of “Sweeney Todd,” one of the so-called locks last year.

In the meantime, as you pass the hours awaiting the 61st Annual Tony Awards watch this glorious video clip of Lea Salonga singing “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Miserables, a role in which she currently appears at the Broadhurst Theater. She is stunning in this role.