Michael Schulman, The New Yorker

The Tony Awards broadcast is an act of contortion, in which one medium (live theatre) simultaneously puffs itself up and scrunches itself down to fit into another (television). Every once in a while, the ceremony pulls off something that neither medium could have done on its own. Last night, it came courtesy of the eleven-year-old Sydney Lucas, who was nominated for “Fun Home,” which later won the award for Best Musical.

Lucas, one of three outstanding actresses who play the cartoonist Alison Bechdel at different ages, sang “Ring of Keys,” a reverie of sexual self-discovery, as the young Alison spots a butch woman in a diner and experiences a flush of eroticism and identification she can’t yet articulate. (“I feel….”) The stirring of pubescent lesbian desire is seldom represented in pop culture, yet here it was, reaching audiences far beyond Manhattan. Even in front of the cameras at Radio City Music Hall, Lucas transmitted the same texture and intimacy she has since the musical began at the Public.