The Week in Review

Tony Awards Mania: There were few surprises at last night's Tony Awards, the nicest one being that the broadcast was funny, fast-paced, and well-designed. Neil Patrick Harris proved to be an excellent host, whether cutting up in the opening number, trading barbs with Hugh Jackman, or rapping a tribute to Broadway, by Lin Manuel Miranda, for the closeout. For once, all the excerpts from the nominated musicals looked good, possibly a result of the move from Radio City Music Hall to the more intimate Beacon Theatre. Steve Bass' production design, which made extensive use of video panels, was unusually strong, and the lighting, but Bob Dickinson and Ed McCarthy was typically professional. There were none of last year's sound glitches, either. Bono and The Edge showed up, submitting to Harris' lightning round of Spider-Man wisecracks; later, they introduced a number from the show, paying tribute to Broadway professionalism. The number, a quiet ballad, seemed an odd choice; why not the anthemic "Rise Above," which is the most heavily promoted tune in the score? And Best Actor Mark Rylance gave another one of his peculiar acceptance speeches, in which he reads from a totally unrelated piece of poetry. This gag, which he has tried before, is getting old. Is this a cry for help? Does he not want to be considered for awards? If so, that request is easy to implement.

Las Vegas -- The New Detroit?: That's the startling concept articulated by Howard Gold on the MSN website. "It was big news five years ago when Macau, the gambling Mecca near Hong Kong, surpassed the Las Vegas Strip in gambling revenues," the piece begins. "It's no longer even close: Macau's gambling revenues were four times those of the Strip in 2010." Among other startling facts: Home prices have dropped 58.1% since 2006. And consider this: "'Las Vegas,' said Robert Lang, director of Brookings Mountain West, a think tank affiliated with UNLV, 'has become a modern-day version of Pittsburgh or Detroit, which once relied on one sector for its growth to its detriment, the Las Vegas Sun reported. He compared Las Vegas to Midwestern and Northeastern cities with manufacturing plants and steel mills where the middle class had high-paying jobs, only to see those plants disappear.'" You can read the whole story at http://money.msn.com/home-loans/is-las-vegas-the-new-detroit-marketwatch.aspx?gt1=33032.) Florida Stage to Close: The well-known West Palm Beach, Florida theatre company Florida Stage has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and is shutting its doors. According to a report at Theatremania.com. "In a letter addressed to patrons of the theater that is posted on the company's website, producing director Louis Tyrrell cites a decline in its subscriber base, ticket revenue, and donations that has led the board of trustees of Florida Stage to make this decision. According to the Miami Herald, "The company, approaching its 25th anniversary season, is $1.5 million in debt. Ticket sales for the planned summer return of the musical Ella have been small, but more worrisome were 2011-2012 season-subscription sales. During its best year in the Manalapan quarters it occupied until moving to the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach a year ago, Florida Stage had 7,000 subscribers. Fewer than 2,000 had signed on for the new season."

Zarkana Gets Ready to Fly: Sunday's New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/theater/zarkana-gestates-in-the-womb-of-cirque-du-soleil.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=theater) ran a remarkably detailed account of the challenges involved in staging Zarkana, the new Cirque du Soleil show at Radio City Music Hall (This is the show for which the Tonys were exiled to the Beacon Theatre.) Among other things, reporter Jason Zinoman notes the tension between innovation and tradition as Zarkana, originally conceived as a rock opera, becomes more and more like a typical Cirque show. This one promises to be quite exotic, design-wise: A recent preview for the press showed off an acrobatic act staged with a spider-web motif featuring a spider-woman at the heart of the action; it wasn't clear that New York needed more spider-themed entertainment. Another, more bizarre, sequence featured projections of eyeballs floating in water, while, across the stage a drumlike contraption moved, on which was projected an image of a six-armed fetus with an enormous head, crying out in distress. Is this what summer tourists to New York City want to see? Stay tuned.