Billy Crystal performing a “Yiddish scat” routine during the 75th annual Tony Awards, June 12, 2022. (Screenshot)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Billy Crystal gave this year\u2019s Tonys a jolt of Jewish shtick when he coaxed the audience into a call-and-response \u201cYiddish scat\u201d routine, as part of a live performance to promote his Broadway musical, \u201cMr. Saturday Night.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a good-faith mockery of Fitzgerald\u2019s own famous \u201cscat\u201d routine, Crystal, in character as his show\u2019s fading comedian star Buddy Young Jr., let loose on the Sunday night telecast with a series of nonsensical guttural sounds vaguely approximating Yiddish. <\/p>\n
He then gleefully entered the audience for a bit of crowd work, messing with attendees Samuel L. Jackson and Lin-Manuel Miranda \u2014 who unwittingly became a Jewish \u201cHamilton\u201d alter ego: \u201cI\u2019m Alexander Rabinowitz.\u201d (Miranda has proven his Jewish-theater bona fides before: He sang \u201cTo Life\u201d from \u201cFiddler on the Roof\u201d at his own wedding, and also performed in Hebrew in a college a cappella group.) <\/p>\n
After briefly cursing \u201can old Jew\u2019s worst nightmare: stairs,\u201d Crystal ended his routine by leading Radio City Music Hall in a giant \u201cOy vey\u201d chant. It was surely a nice consolation prize, given that \u201cMr. Saturday Night,\u201d based on Crystal\u2019s 1992 movie of the same name, left the evening with none of the five awards it had been nominated for (the top prize for Best Musical instead went to Pulitzer Prize winner \u201cA Strange Loop\u201d).<\/p>\n
Some other Jewish-adjacent nominees were more successful. \u201cThe Lehman Trilogy,\u201d an expansive play about multiple generations of the Jewish banking family, took home Best Play and four other Tonys. \u201cCompany,\u201d a gender-swapped revival of the classic Stephen Sondheim show that premiered shortly after the Broadway titan\u2019s death, won five awards including Best Musical Revival. And \u201cTake Me Out,\u201d a restaging of Jewish playwright Richard Greenberg\u2019s 2002 play about a professional baseball player who comes out as gay to his teammates, won for Best Revival of a Play, as well as for its lead actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson.<\/p>\n
\u201cGirl From the North Country,\u201d a jukebox musical that reimagines Bob Dylan\u2019s songbook for a Depression-era story about American hardship, also won a Tony for Best Orchestrations. During the broadcast, \u201cNorth Country\u201d star Jeannette Bayardelle delivered a showstopping live medley of Dylan\u2019s \u201cLike a Rolling Stone\u201d and \u201cPressing On\u201d (the latter from the raised-Jewish rocker\u2019s Christian conversion phase in the 1970s and \u201980s).<\/p>\n
And there was one more Jewish appearance at the Tonys, as \u201cSpring Awakening\u201d star Lea Michele reunited with that 2006 show\u2019s cast for an anniversary performance.<\/p>\n
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