The ceremony began, as it should, with a medley. Harry Connick, Jr. unnecessarily jazzed up showtune standards like "Give my Regards to Broadway" in a way that, unfortunately, wasn't the All That Jazz kind of jazzy, but instead as he even called it out the "New Orleans style" kind of jazzy, which brought me down from my Broadway buzz with memories of the Superdome.

I already miss Bernadette Peters, who opened the show last year with her spectacular belt and her fantastic, heaving breasts, and bygone host Hugh Jackman, who pranced his way around a medley like a showhorse celebrating oats.

Because it's the 60th annual broadcast, the producers ham-handedly make stabs at marking the event, booking sixty presenters instead of a host, unceremoniously raising sixty actors from the pit of the stage to just stand there, and, in a feat of anti-dramatic presentation that pretty much rivals nothing else I've ever seen, going full-screen on a still photograph that ran in the Times of all of the living Tony winners over the last six decades, sitting in theater rows and smiling.

Chita Rivera, beaming and radiant from (mumble mutter) years of being high on dance, introduces the award for Best Choreography alongside Bebe Neuwirth, whose withered flapjacks in a Hamptons cover-up make me hope Bernadette Peters is backstage, powdering them up to save us all. Thankfully, The Wedding Singer does not win, which, as I soon find out, is all high-energy bad 80's dancing (The Running Man! The Robot! Hey, remember?), but somehow, because they all move in sync, it's acceptable for the Broadway stage.

More television stars who have nothing to do with theater are trotted out (Kyra Sedgwick, Julianna Margulies), until--hooray!-- a performance from The Drowsy Chaperone hits the stage. I am a big fan of Bob Martin, who wrote the show and plays "Man in Chair"; I'm endeared by his mannerisms and am reminded of some of Kevin McDonald's characters, like the hatchet-offering old lady who got a visit from Dave Foley's casual axe murderer. He thrills, as I do, to the highlight of the evening: Sutton Foster's sublime star turn in "Show-Off. " Foster knocks em dead. I had a huge, shit-eating grin glued on my face watching her somersault through a hula hoop, blow on jugs, and doing the-- very 20's*--snake charmer bit. When she nods "Oh, yeah" after "I don't wanna change keys no more, " I am miles away from thoughts of Lestat or Good Vibrations, or what the hell Meadow Soprano is doing on stage, and am just enjoying the balls out of a pure, awesome moment of musical comedy bliss.

Hooray, continued! Drowsy wins best book over a nominated Tim Herlihy for The Wedding Singer (remember The Herlihy Boy sketch from SNL? "Please let me sleep in your bed. " "LET THE BOY SLEEP IN YOUR BED!" Anyway, he lost), and Martin's writing partner Don McKellar has the class to use his acceptance speech to thank The American Musical Comedy. Finally, somebody got around to doing itand it's a Canadian.

Drowsy's score wins, too, and composer/lyricist Lisa Lambert goes up to the podium carrying her purse, wearing a dress fresh off the racks of Hot Topic, and sporting a self-administered blow-dry. She proceeds to dorkily charm me. Things are looking up, and we're on a roll: Joanna Gleason introduces a performance from Sweeney Todd, which is appropriate, since it's obvious a madman once took a glistening, hot razor to her face.

It's time for the other brilliant performance of the night, and, even on television, Sweeney chills like you're in the front row. Gorgeous, intense Michael Cerveris, who can shave me and eat me anytime, rises from his coffin, Patti's voice is flawless and athletic, and it's all extremely thrilling. The two wrap their lion voices around each other while he sings to his razors and she sings to him. Sweeney thrusts his razor up to the sky and exclaims with spittle and intent, "At last, my right arm is complete again!," and I basically freak out. God, he's so amazing. I'll go on record for saying "No chemo, please!" if I ever come down with Cerver-al cancer.

It's time for an unintentionally-hilarious montage of line excerpts from plays, featuring seriously-delivered lines like, "You know what, Michael? I don't mind what you do--but I mind what you don't do" and a two-second clip from the play Latinologues, which manages to squeeze in shots of one guy "raising the roof" with his hands and another mopping up a floor in a janitorial costume.

John Doyle coolly and Britishly wins Sweeney's only Tony for Best Director, and thanks his romantic partner in his acceptance speech. People applaud to remind each other that they all approve of gayness, and then, when he thanks Sondheim, people clap harder.

At this point, it seemed to somebody like a good idea to get the living members of the Four Seasons take the stage alongside Joe Pesci, and they all introduce a performance from The Jersey Boys. A guy with eyebrows sings a song everybody knows into a microphone, and then, a procession of horn players walk out, face the audience at the same time, and then point their instruments back and forth while they blow into their mouthpieces. This is not theater. But people who are old enough to be my parents can't seem to get enough of it. They love watching young people sing old songs, and I guess they're more comfortable going to see theater than going to concerts, because that's really what they should be doing if they get such a goddamn charge out of this kind of thing. I haven't seen it, but from the Tony performance, Jersey Boys seems to be like Movin' Out with no dancing, or Il Divo, the jukebox musical. And it's making scads and scads of cash.

Like an oasis, Harvey "I am a gift" Fierstein presents a montage of Tony moments from the glorious past, and I shout, "hooray!" at Ben Vereen's invite to come and waste an hour or two followed by a speech by Mandy "I am Mandy Patinkin" Patinkin, declaring that the stage is his home, as if we didn't know.

A stunned-looking Molly Ringwald, who officially represents the 80's because they couldnt get a pile of cocaine to read a cue card, introduces The Wedding Singer, whose number needs an on-screen CHYRON, apparently, for it to make any sense. The lower third of the screen reads, "Ridgefield, New Jersey, 1985" before the song starts, so we're all on the same page. To its credit, the producers are functioning in the great tradition of theater pioneers like the Greeks, who had to chisel their Chyrons in stone before productions of Oedipus Rex.

The Wedding Singer number is aggressively mediocre bachelorette party-grade entertainment, ala The Donkey Show and The Awesome 80's Prom, but the dancers, to their credit, seem to be getting a fantastic workout. It occurs to me that this is the show that mines the nostalgia of assholes in their early 30's, instead of Jersey Boys, which is, apparently, for schmucks in their 50's.

At this point in the evening, I check in with the message board, All That Chat to peruse threads with titles like "YAWN! " and "Sara Ramirez is HUGE! " posted by users with handles like "Dr. Broadway" (who, in case you were wondering, majored in Razzmatazz). Everyone, for the most part, agrees that this year's show is a dud.

A horrifying performance from Threepenny Opera is next: Cyndi Lauper and Alan Cumming warble to each other in their underpants, and it's as unsettling as watching fat goth kids wearing Jack Skellington t-shirts make out at the mall.

Christian Hoff from Jersey Boys cries after winning Best Featured Actor in a Musical, thanks his wife, as well as their "new baby in her womb right now" and exclaims to the heavens, "God bless Broadway!" And Ann Coulter calls us Godless.

Baritone heartthrob Brian Stokes Mitchell, whom I call "Stokes!," introduces a tribute to producer Hal Prince with (another) decidedly non-theatrical display. This one represents all of Prince's shows with a tableau line-up of actors just standing there in costume. Hal, sporting the "Where are my glasses, again? Oh that's right, they're on my head" look**, manages to not mention Stephen Sondheim in his thank you speech, and then we all have to listen to "Music of The Night," starring the wine stain birthmark on the mask side of the Phantom's mouth that, even though it is grease paint, should never be shown in close-up.

Cynthia Nixon wins Best Actress in a Play for Rabbit Hole, and kisses her homely gal pal in celebration. I cant help but think that Nixon's got to be able to find a foxier lesbian willing to scrounge around inside her rabbit hole, but to each her own.

It's time for Julia Roberts to come out in a dress that shows off the sides of her stomach, because she's a movie star, and say, assininely, "I just want to take this opportunity to say: you people are insanely talented people." I think of angry Corky in front of the Blaine Chamber of Commerce. The word "people" twice in a sentence is so funny.

Then, Harry Connick, Jr. and Kellie O' Forgettable belt affectedly at each other, and I don't care at all for any of the jazzy (you know in what way) liberties they take with the Pajama Game score. There's no such thing as a Pajama Game purist--it's a dippy, fun show. But when Fosse did "Steam Heat," with Verdon and Haney, it was a sexy and hip number. This production made Fernando's Hideaway look like the lamest place to be in the world.

It is now when Jonathan Pryce announces that Pajama Game wins best musical revival over Sweeney, and I kind of lose my shit. I don't throw people out, or even cry, but Julie Klausner the Cheerful Party Hostess quickly becomes Moody Crankypants the Petulant Baby. "The Tonys are bullshit!" I exclaim to my guests, and eat another Tofutti cutie, even though I am not hungry. Not even Alfre Woodard's breasts distract me from the reality that my Tony fever has evolved into full-blown Tony AIDS.

Oh, great, it's Oprah. With nauseating hyperbole, she introduces The Color Purple, which is (finally!) a musical about domestic violence. Oprah financing a Broadway show is like that movie Brewster's Millions. How can the richest person in the world get rid of her money? Sink it into what she calls, in possibly the worst sentence ever, "A story that could only happen via the magic of the theater."

Sassy actresses wearing aprons sing a song called "Hell, no!" about not being cool with letting a dude kick your ass. "If a man raise his hand, hell no!" The audience cheers, in agreement with beating women being wrong. Has it really come to this? Do we need a Broadway musical to get that message across? And how many scumbags who beat their girlfriends cut it out after being exposed to persuasive musical theater?

Michael Cerveris, ignorant that he can only be consoled by my warm caress, loses the Best Actor in a Musical category to Eyebrows from Jersey Boys, whose performance the announcer, in faint praise, calls "energetic." I begin to wonder whether the Tonys are mob-run.

FINALLY, Bernadette Peters comes out and, yes, her breasts look fantastic, but are not as flashily displayed at this year's ceremony. I figure out, classily, that they must be at half-mast because her husband passed away this year. She announces the robbery of Patti LuPone for the Best Actress Tony, which goes to newcomer Lachanze, from The Color Purple. Hell, no.

Finally, fucking finally, Julie Andrews gives the Best Musical award to Jersey Boys, and a Dr. Weill-looking man with a huge beard stands up and comes on stage with a thousand dudes in their 50's, who stand behind him and try to pretend that enjoyingnay, financinga show where four young dudes belt out Four Seasons songs isn't gay.

And then it's over. Jersey Boys is the first jukebox musical to win Best Musical, and Patti LuPone gave the performance of her career in the role of a lifetime in order to lose to a girl who has this website. John Doyle's re-imagining of Sweeney Todd revolutionized storytelling and challenged its actors and audiences, only to lose to a middle-of-the-road revival of a show that was cheesy in the 1950's. At least the fantastic, nostalgic, Broadway love letter called The Drowsy Chaperone Charlestoned away with the Best Book and Score honors. Not a subtle reminder that things used to be better.



*thanks, Neil
**thanks, Jonny A.