June 12, 2022, 7:00 p.m. ET Jesse Green Leading theater critic The American Theater Wing and the Broadway League call tonight’s ceremony the 75th annual Tony Awards, but as our colleague Michael Paulson has pointed out, this is not exactly true. It was not annual. there were no awards in 2020. This is of course due to the pandemic, which closed Broadway from March 12, 2020 until Bruce Springsteen reopened “Springsteen on Broadway” on June 26, 2021. That was 15 months of dark scenes. I expect tonight’s presentation to recognize this, as well as the awkward reopening of Broadway, in both direct and indirect ways. Direct: nods to people who are not studying, to waiting, cots, Covid screens and others who were continuing their concerts when it seemed an almost impossible task. Indirect: Some of the content that was honored reached Broadway because the closure paved the way for authors, works, and styles they had rarely seen before. I mean, we would have seen “MJ”, Michael Jackson’s jukebox, irrelevant. But I wonder if we would have “A Strange Loop”, even with the Pulitzer Prize on Broadway, and for 11 awards, without the pandemic burning things up a bit. Or “Trouble in Mind”, which is ready for the best revival of a project. Dana “Dana H.” Ή “This is a room”. I hope so…
