A Closer Look at the Chosen and the Snubbed in This Year's Tony Award Nominations

BY NAVEEN KUMAR

Nominees for the 67^th annual Tony Awards were announced Tuesday morning in a line-up that is sure to leave plenty of open first-class seats between LAX and JFK come June. Many of the biggest Hollywood names on stage during the 2012-13 season were overlooked in favor of stage veterans and up-and-comers alike.

Kinky Boots and Matilda led the pack with 13 and 12 nominations each respectively, including Best Musical. Of the four nominated productions in this category, only these two are currently open and doing big box office—making this a clear two horse race. Tony voters tend to vote what they can see, and a sizable number of voters represent the interests of regional touring houses looking for the show most likely to do big box office on National Tour. Of the two other nominees, Bring It On has already been on the road, and A Christmas Story is strictly seasonal.

Jekyll & Hyde was the only eligible production that didn’t make the list for Best Musical Revival—no surprise given the rancor with which the show was greeted by critics (sorry, Constantine). Nominees in this category included Pippin, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella, for which Douglas Carter Beane was also nominated for Best Book of a Musical for his new adaptation.

But the real battles went down in the play categories, where Tony voters passed over many of the stars who hit the stage this season with varying degrees of critical and box office success. Bette Midler and Fiona Shaw were overlooked in the Best Leading Actress category, both highly acclaimed performers starring in solo shows that couldn’t be more opposite. Bette’s star-vehicle I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers, by Tony winner John Logan was also shut out, while Fiona’s one-woman play The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín received a nom for Best Play and little else.

Incidentally, three big name stars that did make the list landed in the Best Leading Actor category for their performances in new plays—Tom Hanks (Lucky Guy), Nathan Lane (The Nance), and David Hyde Pierce (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike).

Of the plays nominated for Best Revival, only Orphans features Hollywood names including Alec Baldwin and Ben Foster, who were both passed over in performance categories, though their co-star Tom Sturridge received a Best Actor nomination.

Other star-studded revivals were conspicuously overlooked in both production and performance categories including Glengarry Glen Ross (Al Pacino), The Heiress (Jessica Chastain, David Strathairn, Dan Stevens), Macbeth (Alan Cumming), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Scarlett Johansson).

Johansson, who won a Tony for her Broadway debut in A View from the Bridge in 2010, was critically praised for her return performance, though Cat received mixed reviews and eventually went limp at the box office. Pacino on the other hand, brought in big box office grosses (nobody seemed to care much what critics thought), but voters were likewise left unswayed.

Of all those overlooked, perhaps the most egregious (and surprising) was Jessica Hecht in Richard Greenberg’s The Assembled Parties. In addition to vying in a tight race for Best Play, Greenberg’s drama also saw Judith Light nominated for Best Featured Actress, the same category in which she won a Tony last year for Other Desert Cities. In a season that focused awards attention on experienced and respected stage players, of which Hecht is a shining example, hers was an unexpected omission that defied an otherwise clear pattern. 

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Follow Naveen Kumar on Twitter: @Mr_NaveenKumar (photos: )

'Pippin’ Revival Opens On Broadway: REVIEW

BY NAVEEN KUMAR

Of the incredible human feats being performed on Broadway, perhaps few are more spectacular than the acrobatics on display in director Diane Paulus’ revival of Pippin, which opened last Thursday at the Music Box Theatre. Circus performers and Broadway veterans alike move through the air with great ease, transforming the much loved though decidedly bizarre 1972 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Roger O. Hirson into something of a marvel.

Schwartz and Hirson’s story, performed for the audience by a group of players, is a string of trials and life experiments of a boy prince searching for an extraordinary life. In a fitting and imaginative twist on the show’s framing device, Paulus transforms the players into a troupe of circus performers, adding spectacle and structure to the musical’s episodic plot.

Patina Miller heads up the troupe as Lead Player (here reconceived as a female role), driving the production’s momentum with radiant energy and powerhouse vocals. Matthew James Thomas appropriately strikes a more ordinary note as the directionless prince Pippin. Though he goes along with the Lead Player’s spectacular schemes to give his life meaning, from waging war to sexual excess, in the end he seems destined for the conventional outcome that's in store for him.

The limber ensemble and talented featured players relish in their performances, including Rachel Bay Jones as Catherine, Pippin’s ultimate love interest, and Terrance Mann as his father Charles. But it’s Andrea Martin as Pippin’s grandmother Berthe who gives the most down to earth and simultaneously high-flying (and show stopping) performance of the evening. Serving up sage advice with one of the musical’s better-known songs (‘No Time at All’), Martin brings a grounded quality that’s rare among the show’s more showy characterizations.

The production’s awe-inspiring circus elements were conceived by Gypsy Snider, a co-founder of the Montreal-based 7 doigts de la main (7 Fingers) circus company. Including choreography by Chet Walker (in the style of Bob Fosse’s for the original production), this revival’s use of spectacle goes a long way toward making up for weaknesses in the written material. Hirson’s meandering book does little more than connect the dots between Schwartz’s well-known score of musical numbers—most of which (though not all) withstand the test of time.

As with her recent Broadway productions of Hair and The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (a collaboration with Suzan-Lori Parks on a new book adaptation), Paulus highlights the clear merits of her original material while coming up with creative solutions to smooth over more problematic areas. If the story itself doesn't delight, the production's visual splendor undoubtedly will.

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Follow Naveen Kumar on Twitter: @Mr_NaveenKumar (photos: joan marcus)

Bette Midler Opens On Broadway In ‘I’ll Eat You Last:’ REVIEW

 

 BY NAVEEN KUMAR

One Hollywood legend is playing another on Broadway, and there’s a good chance you’ve only heard of one of them. But by the end of I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers, which opened on Wednesday at the Booth Theatre, everyone walks away feeling like old friends.

That includes Bette Midler, and every guest welcomed into the Beverly Hills mansion of Hollywood super agent Sue Mengers for this aptly titled and utterly delightful ‘chat.’ Written by John Logan, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (Hugo, The Aviator) and Tony-winning playwright (Red), the show offers a delicious insider glimpse into the seedy yet glamorous world of the Hollywood talent business.

Sue Mengers, whose career spanned nearly thirty years beginning in the 1960s, wasn’t just any agent. She discovered Barbra Streisand singing in a gay bar, landed Gene Hackman in The French Connection, represented Sidney Lumet, Mike Nichols and Bob Fosse. But loyalty is not a well-known virtue in this business—as the show begins, Sue is expecting a call from Barbra to fire her.

In the meantime, she spends the evening doing what she loves best: dishing, smoking (tobacco and otherwise), and picking up the occasional phone call from an A-list star. Ms. Midler proves her rightful place in the latter category with her gleefully engaging performance, delivered entirely from the comfort of her plush sofa. Why stand? We’re all friends here.

Under Joe Mantello’s fine direction, Sue’s stories take on a happy rhythm, punctuated with often-riotous punch lines. An opening example: regarding a certain legendary guest expected at her dinner party later in the evening, “Elton’s the easiest dinner guest ever: he’ll eat anything but pussy.”

Through the course of a tight 85 minutes, Sue delivers everything from behind-the-scenes gossip, straight-shot industry wisdom, and enough of the soft side beneath her brassy surface to bring us firmly on her side. Like any animated conversation (one-sided though this one may be), Logan’s script is built on non-sequiturs that nevertheless flow together naturally. Good agents can talk to anyone, and Sue’s certainly no exception.

From gathering courage to approach the most popular girl on the playground to a profession in schmoozing, through-lines from Sue’s formative experiences are simply drawn. But Logan’s economy with storytelling serves the play and its star well, who keeps her captive audience rapt with interest.

If we find Sue in the twilight of her career (Logan’s play is set in the early 80s, Sue died in 2011), her years have made her wise, though she’s no less passionate about show business. She loves the game with every fiber of her being (including her diaphanous kaftan), even as the game keeps changing and she loses her footing.

When she finally does stand to conclude our chat (spoiler alert), the feeling is pretty near momentous.  

(Bottom image: Sue Mengers, 1976, by Ron Galella)

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Follow Naveen Kumar on Twitter: @Mr_NaveenKumar (photos: richard termine; getty images)

'Orphans,' Starring Alec Baldwin Opens On Broadway: REVIEW

BY NAVEEN KUMAR

Lyle Kessler’s 1983 play Orphans opened last Thursday at the Schoenfeld Theatre, making its Broadway debut in a powerfully charged production starring Alec Baldwin, Ben Foster and Tom Sturridge. A hybrid sort of drama built on contrivances yet grounded in emotional truths, the play becomes a vehicle for three outstanding star performances under Daniel Sullivan's nimble and dynamic direction.

Two orphaned adult brothers still living in their parents’ decaying house on the north side of Philadelphia, Treat and Philip have been fending for themselves since they were children. Foster plays Treat, who has supported himself and his brother as a petty thief, while keeping Philip (Sturridge) sheltered at home in an abbreviated state of development. Though Philip can’t read and doesn’t leave the house, he nurses his curiosity by watching TV or passersby, and underlining words in the daily newspaper.

Treat kidnaps Harold (Baldwin), who unbeknownst to him is not only a mobster but also a fellow orphan. Tables turn when Harold quickly escapes and offers a hand of support (and an encouraging shoulder squeeze) to both boys, effectively threatening Treat’s position as household father figure.

Baldwin is a natural fit for Harold, exuding the particular brand of polished panache for which he's famous. Foster — who replaced Shia LaBeouf after the star stepped off the production shortly into rehearsal, stirring up a Twitter sh*t storm on his way out — is fantastic as Treat, seething with resentful rage while exercising a sadistic protective grip on his brother.

But Sturridge’s remarkable performance as Philip is definitely the production’s most affecting and attention-grabbing. Though both brothers experience profound mental and emotional transformations by the play’s end, Philip has farther to travel. Sturridge brings a careful sensitivity to his every action, and traverses every inch of designer John Lee Beatty’s set with a bounding, agile grace.

Kessler’s play, though written with three roles tailor-made to showcase actor prowess, hangs upon a strangely stylized conceit that doesn’t ultimately add up to a wholly satisfying drama. That Treat just happens to kidnap a fellow orphan criminal is only one of several question marks looming in the play’s framework.

But Sullivan elicits fine performances from each of the three actors, and finesses some of the story’s more incredulous moments with a sure hand. Despite the engineered quality of Kessler’s conclusion, Sullivan’s production moves with a stirring momentum that can’t help but make an impact. 

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Richard Greenberg’s ‘The Assembled Parties’ Opens on Broadway: REVIEW

BY NAVEEN KUMAR

A finely tuned and resonant drama written with impeccable wit, Richard Greenberg’s new play The Assembled Parties, which opened on Broadway last Wednesday in a Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Friedman Theatre, manages to meaningfully encompass mortality, ambition, legacy, and the hidden nature of love—and that’s only in the first ten minutes.   

Set in a labyrinthian Central Park West apartment (beautifully designed by Santo Loquasto), the play follows the lives of an upper crust Jewish family across a twenty-year span, with the first act set on Christmas day in 1980, and the second on the same day in 2000.

When the play opens, a handsome young middle-aged couple, Julie and Ben Boscov (Jessica Hecht and Jonathan Walker) are hosting Christmas dinner—though all of the assembled parties are in fact, Jewish. Scotty (Jake Silbermann), their oldest son and family golden boy, has deferred admission to Harvard Law, derailing their idea that he’s destined for greatness.

Scotty’s friend and former classmate Jeff (Jeremy Shamos), who accepted his own admission and just completed his first semester, joins the family for dinner. Rapt by their posh sophistication, he makes a concerted effort to insinuate himself with Scotty’s parents, and Julie in particular.

Ben’s wry sister Faye (Judith Light) arrives with her husband Mort (Mark Blum), and their awkward 30-year-old daughter Shelley (Lauren Blumenfeld). Though their mother made her life miserable after Faye’s unplanned pregnancy with Shelley and shotgun wedding to Mort, Faye urges Ben to visit her in the hospital as she lingers on her deathbed.

Details about each intricately drawn character unfold strategically through the play’s end, even for those who don’t return twenty years later for its second act. The entire cast is top notch, though ultimately the evening belongs to Jessica Hecht and Judith Light, whose skills with language and emotional nuance are truly marvelous. 

Greenberg contextualizes his domestic portrait within broader historical patterns, with each act set during election years that marked the beginning of two double-term Republican presidencies (Reagan in the first, and Bush Jr. in the second). Both years also mark a naïve sort of calm before New York was thrust into the center of landmark national crises—the height of the urban AIDS crises, and the events of September 2001.

Our knowledge of what’s to come casts subtle shadows over the insular world of the play, as the classic mores of drawing room drama are carefully placed within a contemporary American framework. Greenberg’s New York is at once timeless and mythical, and decaying brick and mortar. Had Edith Wharton been a post-war Jewess, she couldn’t have written it better herself.

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Playwright Douglas Carter Beane is Back On Broadway With ‘The Nance:’ INTERVIEW

BY NAVEEN KUMAR

It’s been a busy season on Broadway for playwright Douglas Carter Beane. In addition to penning the new adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella that opened last month, his new play The Nance, starring Nathan Lane in the title role, opened on Monday in a Lincoln Center Theatre production directed by Jack O'Brien at the Lyceum Theatre.

Also the writer behind cult movie classic To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar, as well as Broadway cult hit Xanadu, Beane has a distinct way of crafting campy humor with a wry and clever hand. The Nance marks his first non-musical outing on Broadway since his much-acclaimed play The Little Dog Laughed in 2007.

Set in 1930’s New York, the play stars Nathan Lane as Chauncey, a burlesque performer whose stage specialty is the ‘nance’ routine. One of about a dozen different standard sketches common to burlesque, the nance is a caricature of an effeminate man, who is goofy, endearing, and speaks in rapid-fire double entendres.   

Lane’s character Chauncey also happens to be gay himself, which not many nance performers would’ve been necessarily—certainly not openly. In the play’s first scene, Chauncey meets a young man named Ned (Jonny Orsini) with whom he develops a tenuous, restless bond. The play follows their relationship through the tumultuous politics of the time, and the pressures put on the burlesque scene during mayor LaGuardia’s tenure.

I talked to Doug about his process writing the play, how politics can affect one’s sex life, and what’s next on the writer’s plate.

NAVEEN KUMAR: What inspired you to write this play? Did you know much about 1930’s burlesque before you started?

DOUG CARTER BEANE: I didn’t. I knew a little bit, because when I was a kid this was a big part of variety shows, like The Carol Burnett Show and Jackie Gleason and all those guys. That was my first encounter with it, and then it was back in vogue about ten years ago. There was a club in Los Angeles called Forty Deuce, and there were places in New York doing nights of burlesque.

We were doing a benefit [at my theatre company called Drama Department] and somebody suggested that we do an evening of burlesque. There are ten basic forms of each sketch; there’s a vague outline of a plot and then they would just insert jokes in. So [when] I would meet men over the age of seventy, I would ask, ‘Did you ever go to see burlesque when you were a kid, and do you remember any of the routines?’ They would remember these lines verbatim.

There’s one joke that Robert Altman remembered, there’s a joke that Herb Ross remembered—everyone’s dead now who gave me these jokes! So I put them in my versions of these sketches, and the benefit was very successful.

Then I went to a writers’ retreat, and I brought along the George Chauncey book [Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940]. I also had a Berenice Abbott photograph of the Irving Place Theatre, which is around the corner from my house, and I thought that was really beautiful (though it was torn down in the 80s). So it was the photograph, a book I was reading, and I had these sketches in my computer. It all pulled together into one story.

I wrote the first scene and I thought, who is ever going to be able to play this? The first person I thought of was Nathan Lane, and I thought, well, that’s never going to happen so come up with another list and keep writing. When I finally finished it years later, the first thing I did was to send it to Nathan Lane and he said, ‘I love this, when can we do it?’ We did a reading the next week and here we are now.

Read more, AFTER THE JUMP...