Dancin’ Dan here. The Tony Nominations come out tomorrow and Nathaniel will be discussing them along with a couple new plays he's seen. He has yet to see this one, though.
I have been a lifelong lover of live theater. As much as I love movies, nothing beats the experience of seeing a play or musical live on stage. Even at its worst, there is still an intangible quality to watching a story unfold right in front of you at the same time you are watching. At its best, though, that turns into something transcendent – there is something about watching a person really live a moment while you watch that is indescribable. In the new Broadway revival of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful with Cicely Tyson and Vanessa Williams (and Cuba Gooding, Jr.), there were two moments when the power of live theater asserted itself so strongly that I wept.
The first moment is by far the broadest in Tyson’s wonderful, Tony-worthy performance. Having almost reached her childhood home of Bountiful, TX, Tyson’s Carrie Watts finds herself in a bus station with a young friend she made on the bus (a lovely Condola Rashad). First, she breaks out into the hymn “Blessed Assurance”, clapping and swaying like a revival preacher. Then, only a couple of minutes later, she drags Rashad through the dance she remembers doing at the first social dance she went to, which just so happened to be in the very town in which they find themselves. It isn’t merely the sight of the eighty-something Tyson singing and dancing up a storm that moved me, but the transfer of energy between audience and performer that can only take place during a live performance. As Tyson went on, the audience was right alongside her, clapping along and willing her into a bigger, more energetic display. Tyson was all too happy to oblige, alight with a glow from within, sending the audience’s energy right back out to them, earning every bit of the ovation she received. It was truly a sight to behold. [more...]
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Saturday, March 25, 2023 at 5:13PM 
