Wednesday afternoon at 3 PM The AIR brings you an episode of Curtain Call from June that was billed as a special show devoted to the Tony Awards that weren’t. Now that The American Theater Wing has decided to proceed with a virtual Tony Awards, it seems that Curtain Call host,  Mel Larch, was not far off the mark. You can tune in at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

3 PM sees an encore of Mel Larch’s 2020 Tony Award Nominees show on Curtain Call.  This was rather tricky to assemble, since the fate of the 2020 Tony Award was uncertains, and there haven’t been any live performances on Broadway since the middle of March.

So with no nominees and no shows currently running, Mel brought you the hypothetical nominees, with selections from several shows that could have been in the running for the Tony Award for Best Musical, had the awards been awarded on schedule. The 2020 Tony Awards ceremony still has not been scheduled. However, last week The Wing did announce their nominees for the 2020 Tony Awards, and as you can see, if you compare Mel’s show to the list that was announced last week, she pretty much nailed it except for American Utopia, which was not submitted for consideration. However, since it’s just recently turned up on HBO Max, it still works here.

You will hear selections from Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Jagged Little Pill, Six, American Utopia and Moulin Rouge. In the background of Mel’s introductions you’ll hear Oscar Peterson playing “Something’s Coming,” from the musical, West Side Story, which just missed being in contention for best revival of a musical, unless it was as bad as everybody who saw it in previews said it was. This was as close as we could get to bringing you the annual Curtain Call Tony Nominees show back in June.  I think we did a pretty good job of guessing the nominees.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM and 9 PM, Friday at 10 AM and Saturday at 6 PM. An all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight, and an additional marathon can be heard Sunday evenings from 6 PM to midnight.