Raul Esparza was robbed.

My first return-from-Europe post (Hi! I'm back! I've been back for a few days! More on that later!) will concern the Tony awards. Primarily the raping of Raul Esparza by David Hyde Pierce.
My predictions for the awards were mostly correct in the play categories (The Coast of Utopia swept bloody everything but that was to be expected--it was a three-play, nine-hour opus about Russian intelligentsia in the middle of the 1800s, written by Tom Stoppard. Really, what do you expect) but I vastly underestimated the winning power of Spring Awakening. I mean Spring Awakening is good but it isn't the second coming. It certainly didn't deserve best book--Grey Gardens should have won that. At least Grey Gardens won for Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson. Yay hurray etc.
The biggest destruction of the evening, however, was denying Raul Esparza the Tony for his playing Bobby in Stephen Sondheim's Company. Yes, David Hyde Pierce has excellent comic timing and he's having so much fun in Curtains and isn't he adorable and blah blah blah but he doesn't sing "Being Alive" or "Marry Me a Little" and he doesn't make me cry with his fiery intensity OKAY?! I mean jeez. Raul Esparza is such a force in the theatre world today and the Tony committee continues to deny him the recognition and acceptance he so justly deserves. He completely reinvented the role of Bobby and in so doing subverted what audiences expected of him--he cooled his demeanor, only to explode at the show's end when Bobby has his little epiphany. Raul's face when he lost was just heartbreaking--he clearly wanted it, and he clearly deserved it, and I love David Hyde Pierce as much as the next person but come on, give Raul a break.
Okay. Another Tonys done with. Now I need to get to New York and see the shows I missed...
...and maybe give Raul Esparza a hug. If he'd have me.