Published: June 5, 2007
It's a little bit unfortunate that the final episode of The Sopranos will air at the same time as the 61st annual Tony Awards ceremony on Sunday, June 10. But I know which one I'll be watching. Yes, siree! I'll be tuned to CBS, breathlessly watching the outcome of the Tonys along with the other 322 theater queens across the nation. Besides, we love the show.Here are my Tony Tips for the major categories. Stand by Sir Tom Stoppard. And the envelopes, please!
The winner for best play is Sir Tom Stoppard for his prestigious snooze, The Coast of Utopia. Only a minority of the 785 Tony voters will actually have seen the epic trilogy about 19th-century Russian intellectuals, but that won't stop the rest of them from voting for it in a tidal wave of insecure Anglophilia.
Like two or three distinguished drama critics I could name, I dutifully attended all three parts of The Coast of Utopia, but cannot claim to have been present throughout. Would the Tony voters admit as much? Would those who were actually there confess that they might have nodded off?
There ought to be a Tony rule: No ticket, no vote. Be that as it may, in my view Tom Stoppard has written better plays than The Coast of Utopia (though none as committed). Perhaps—just possibly—there might be an upset. My own vote for best play goes to August Wilson's Radio Golf, his final play, (written as he was dying), which completed his cycle of fantastic dramas about a century of African-American life and yearning. I, for one, would like to tip my hat to Wilson for his enduring achievement as one of the greatest playwrights this country has known and thank him with the Tony for best play.
Three of the four nominations for best director of a play are unsurprisingly British—on Broadway, the War of Independence has yet to be won. The nominees are Michael Grandage for Frost/Nixon, David Grindley for Journey's End and Melly Still for the maligned Coram Boy. The winner is certain to be the American, Jack O'Brien, for The Coast of Utopia (a British play).
The award for best actor is said to be a close race in an unusually hot field: Liev Schreiber, Talk Radio; Christopher Plummer, Inherit the Wind; Brian F. O'Byrne, The Coast of Utopia; Boyd Gaines, Journey's End; and Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon. Not to be a killjoy, but where's the raved-over Bill Nighy, whose relaxed and riveting performance as a philandering doctor single-handedly came close to saving David Hare's The Vertical Hour early in the season?
In contrast, Mr. Gaines' performance as the solid, pipe-smoking World War l British soldier in Journey's End, was, well, solid; Mr. O'Byrne is a specialist in contained killers and neurotics, as opposed to the romantic intellectual heroism of Alexander Herzen; and Christopher Plummer could have shone in his sleep playing the Clarence Darrow role in Robert E. Lee's 1955 courtroom potboiler, Inherit the Wind.
Mr. Schreiber's electric virtuoso performance as the self-hating radio host in Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio will battle for the Tony with Mr. Langella's star turn as an unusually sympathetic President Nixon in Frost/Nixon. Mr. Schreiber has said that Mr. Langella will win, and Mr. Schreiber is right.
The Tony for best actress is between two very different theater legends—Vanessa Redgrave for her monologue in Joan Didion's untheatrical adaptation of her best-selling memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, and Angela Lansbury for Deuce, by common consent the worst play Terrence McNally has written. (Another fancied nominee for best actress, Eve Best as the mythic earth mother of O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten, is a shade too South Kensington for my vulgar taste.)
Ms. Lansbury is playing a former doubles tennis champion, if you please, in what is intended to be a touching, light comedy in partnership with Marian Seldes. Ms. Redgrave is battling alone onstage with questions of life and death (not to mention Ms. Didion's first play). No matter what she does, the beautiful Ms. Redgrave can do no wrong in my corner. Seeing her act is how I imagine it must have been to witness Dusa onstage. She gets my vote.
On the other hand, the beloved 81-year-old Ms. Lansbury has returned to Broadway in Deuce for the first time in almost 25 years—and she's won a Tony the previous four times she's been nominated, for Mame, Dear World, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd. All musicals, true. But possibly a sign.
Spring Awakening will take home the Tony for best musical or my name is Trudy Kockenlocker. Grey Gardens is popular, but I'm looking to Tony voters to embrace the thrillingly new and young on Broadway and vote en masse for Spring Awakening. My vote also goes to its innovatory director, Michael Mayer, over Michael Greif of Grey Gardens. The retro Cowardesque score of Grey Gardens' first problematic act is its weakness. The Tony for best original score surely goes to Spring Awakening's remarkable Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater.
However, the award for best book will go to playwright Doug Wright for Grey Gardens—if only for his memorably sardonic line, "It's very difficult to bring up a girl 56 years of age."
Christine Ebersole was the clear favorite for best actress in a musical for her supreme performance in Grey Gardens—until four-time Tony winner Audra McDonald gave us the best reason to see Roundabout's revival of hokey old, nearly forgotten 110 in the Shade. If you can believe the glamorous Ms. McDonald in the role of plain spinster Lizzie, you'll believe anything. She enchants us in song. But remember that Ms. Ebersole plays two roles—her patrician Edith Bouvier Beale in Act I, and her unforgettably nutty, middle-aged Little Edie in Act II. She accounts for the risky show's memorable success, and she should get the Tony.
Her stage partner, Mary Louise Wilson, is the perfect embodiment of Little Edie's smothering, bedridden mad mother in Act II. Sentiment would like me to say that Charlotte d'Amboise's moment has come for her Cassie in the revival of A Chorus Line. But Ms. Wilson will win the Tony for best featured actress in a musical.
Audience favorite David Hyde Pierce is charmingly appealing as the detective in the somewhat laborious musical Curtains; Michael Cerveris' portrait of Kurt Weill in LoveMusik is widely admired; and Jonathan Groff in Spring Awakening is smashing. But Raul Esparza's stirring performance as the eternal bachelor Bobby among the ladies who lunch in Stephen Sondheim's Company is my tip to win the Tony for best actor in a musical.
Best musical revival? I fear the Tony voters will buy into director John Doyle's production of Company and its gimmicks borrowed from his previous staging of Sweeney Todd, in which everyone onstage plays a musical instrument, badly. The 110 in the Shade production is small and provincial, in spite of Ms. McDonald's star power; The Apple Tree was threadbare and foolish, in spite of Kristin Chenoweth's cutesy star power. For me, Michael Bennett's A Chorus Line will always remain a source of wonder, and my Tony vote goes to the current, loving revival.
No surprises for best play revival: R.C. Sherriff's 1929 Journey's End—which failed to find an audience and closes, with high irony, the day of the Tony Awards—will win the Tony.
Quickly! (as I run out of space). Best featured actor in a musical? Dunno! Either John Cullum for his understanding old dad of 110 in the Shade or David Pittu for his smelly Brecht of LoveMuzik.
Each five of the nominees for best featured actress in a play appeared in a show that has now closed. It will therefore be Jennifer Ehle, for her multiple roles in The Coast of Utopia, who wins.
Best choreographer? They might throw a bone to Jerry Mitchell for Legally Blonde: The Musical, but more likely to Matthew Bourne and Stephen Mear for Mary Poppins.
Finally, the really big one! So prestigious is the Tony for special theatrical event of the year that we have only two nominations. It's an even bet between Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway (though even their biggest fans would amend that to "Half Alive"), and Jay Johnson: The Two and Only. Mr. Johnson is a true master of ventriloquism—an art form that was thought to be confined nowadays to cruise ships. Kiki and Herb aren't, of course, ventriloquists. They are camp. They will win.
(Source: The New York Observer | Arts & Culture | It's Tony Time for Sir Tom... and Kiki and Herb)
Want to watch "110 in the Shade"? CHECK WHERE IT IS ON!!!
Or, BUY A CD OF THIS SHOW
.Want to watch "A Chorus Line"? CHECK WHERE IT IS ON!!!
Or, BUY A CD OF THIS SHOW
.Want to watch "Company"? CHECK WHERE IT IS ON!!!
Or, BUY A CD OF THIS SHOW
.Want to watch "Curtains"? CHECK WHERE IT IS ON!!!
Or, BUY A CD OF THIS SHOW
.Want to watch "Grey Gardens"? CHECK WHERE IT IS ON!!!
Or, BUY A CD OF THIS SHOW
.Want to watch "Legally Blonde"? CHECK WHERE IT IS ON!!!
Or, BUY A CD OF THIS SHOW
.Want to watch "LoveMusik"? CHECK WHERE IT IS ON!!!
Or, BUY A CD OF THIS SHOW
.Want to watch "Mary Poppins"? CHECK WHERE IT IS ON!!!
Or, BUY A CD OF THIS SHOW
.Want to watch "Spring Awakening"? CHECK WHERE IT IS ON!!!
Or, BUY A CD OF THIS SHOW
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