WHILE I WAS WATCHING "THE BLUE DAHLIA".

All my life I've loved and collected Broadway musicals, and until recent years never missed the Tony's. So today many friends are asking, "Did you see the Tony's?" and the answer is "no" for several reasons.  Foremost is that I refuse to watch any program that requires me to sit through as many as sixty commercials, especially when I know the network could make a fortune by running a third as many and that is only greed that creates this profusion of pharmaceutical and automobile ads. Additionally, brilliant and inspired as Broadway is, it has become too slick for me. I don't relate to rap music like that in Hamilton, nor do I respond to what I regard as screaming rather than singing in shows like  The Color Purple, nor am I charmed by manufactured musicals like those cranked out by Disney that are no more than ice shows without skates. Yes, the dancers are incredibly athletic and attractive and enthusiasic, but the routines are predictable and tired. I know everyone I speak to loved The Book of Mormon. Sorry, I'm not interested in any show whose libretto and lyrics are incredibly vulgar. (I wouldn't want to hear Mama Rose or Maria Von Trapp constantly saying fuck and shit.) Yes, Broadway still has musicals I love like She Loves Me and Fiddler on the Roof, and dramas I would want to see like Long Day's Journey Into Night and A View from the Bridge.  Now theater is an elitist indulgence and I'm not willing to attend any new show when it costs upwards of $100 for a seat and has already been over-hyped by unsophisticated critics. My last theater mistake was August, Osage County, for which I paid $125.00. Everyone said it was brilliant, breathtaking, a masterpiece. I thought it was a claustrophobic soap opera redeemed by the performance of Estelle Parsons and distinguished by a magnificent set. Broadway had its Golden Age, now what was solid gold has been painted over, again and again. Another reason to avoid last night's Tony's was the horrific slaughter in Orlando. Not only does that not put you in the mood for singing and dancing, but one suspects that many winners of awards will make some kind of maudlin "aren't I wonderful, feeling human being" speech that is
incongruous to the nightmarish event.