Miss Saigon or The Will Rogers Follies

[Phantom of London]

With a revival of Miss Saigon in the offering.

The Will Rogers Follies famously beat Miss Saigon to the 1991 Tony, this must of been one of the biggest upset in Tony history? Was Will Rogers Follies a far superior musical than Miss Saigon?

[JoeKv99]

I enjoyed Will Rogers more. To me Miss Saigon seemed way overwrought. They both got huge a response from the crowd when I saw them. I do remember it being a bit of an upset but I wonder if Rogers was helped by the idea that Miss Saigon was a show about the helicopter.

[Wildcard]

Will Rogers being more American helped in having it win. There was also the negativity concerning casting going against Miss Saigon. But years later, we're still talking about Miss Saigon. The Will Rogers Follies rarely gets brought up.

[Jon]

...and both Secret Garden and Once on This Island had better scores than Will Rogers Follies. I think the Tony comittee just wanted to reward Comden and Green for what seemed likely to be their last show.

[mb87]

I think Will Rogers is a fantastic show. I've yet to see Miss Saigon, so I can't offer an opinion as to which is better. I just love will rogers follies as a show.

[SondheimFan5]

Part of the Tony loss was the upset with Equity.

Jonathan Pryce (a white Brit) was perfect as the Engineer (an Asian-European role). He originated it in London and won the Olivier. When it transferred to Broadway, AEA would not let Pryce play the role because they thought that a white Brit playing an Asian was offensive. Thus, Mackintosh decided to cancel the production. After a lot of negativity towards AEA (Charlton Heston and John Malkovich, among other actors, famously threatened to leave AEA if Pryce was not allowed to perform), Equity realized that Miss Saigon would employ a lot of actors, particularly those of Asian descent, and they agreed to let Pryce perform the role. Pryce won the Tony, and the show went on to run for 10 years. (Though I believe that all of the replacements for the Engineer were Asian).

There are always a lot of politics in awards. But all-in-all, Will Rogers was a more "American" show (it's a perfectly good, fun, big, Broadway-style show), and it was written by Cy Coleman, Betty Comdon, and Adolph Greene, 3 legends of the American musical theatre who were getting on in years.

[AEA AGMA SM]

"(Though I believe that all of the replacements for the Engineer were Asian)."

That was part of the agreement for Equity to finally grant the concession for Pryce to come over with the production (that all replacements in the role would be actors of Asian descent).

From what I have been told it wasn't even so much the controversy over Pryce but just a general resentment towards the British mega-musicals taking over Broadway, as it was seen in that time period, which led to The Will Rogers Follies being given the big prize. At that of Miss Saigon's opening A Chorus Line had been closed for just over a year and I would guess by that point the signs that it would be eventually overthrown as the long run champion by one of the currently running mega-musicals (Cats, Les Mis, or Phantom) were probably already beginning to become apparent.

ETA - The voters couldn't have been that upset over Pryce himself as he did manage to win the award for Best Actor.