By Ben Brantley
The title is “The Grand Manner,” but the style of A. R. Gurney’s latest play, which opened Sunday night at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, is definitely on the cozy side. A homey needlepoint embroidery on Mr. Gurney’s encounter as a prep school student with the fabled American actress Katharine Cornell, this fantasy memoir allows the author’s younger, provincial self a seductive first glimpse of a world where being merely life-size isn’t enough.
BEST MUSICAL
BEST PLAY
In the Next Room, or the vibrator play
BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL
BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY
BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL
Everyday Rapture, Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott
Fela!, Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones
Memphis, Joe DiPietro
Million Dollar Quartet, Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (MUSIC AND/OR LYRICS) WRITTEN FOR THE THEATER
The Addams Family, Music and Lyrics: Andrew Lippa
Enron, Music: Adam Cork, Lyrics: Lucy Prebble
Fences, Music: Branford Marsalis
Memphis, Music: David Bryan, Lyrics: Joe DiPietro and David Bryan
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY
Jude Law, Hamlet
Alfred Molina, Red
Liev Schreiber, A View From the Bridge
Christopher Walken, A Behanding in Spokane
Denzel Washington, Fences
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY
Viola Davis, Fences
Valerie Harper, Looped
Linda Lavin, Collected Stories
Laura Linney, Time Stands Still
Jan Maxwell, The Royal Family
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Kelsey Grammer, La Cage aux Folles
Sean Hayes, Promises, Promises
Douglas Hodge, La Cage aux Folles
Chad Kimball, Memphis
Sahr Ngaujah, Fela!
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Kate Baldwin, Finian’s Rainbow
Sherie Rene Scott, Everyday Rapture
Montego Glover, Memphis
Christiane Noll, Ragtime
Catherine Zeta-Jones, A Little Night Music
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY
David Alan Grier, Race
Stephen McKinley Henderson, Fences
Jon Michael Hill, Superior Donuts
Stephen Kunken, Enron
Eddie Redmayne, Red
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY
Maria Dizzia, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play
Rosemary Harris, The Royal Family
Jessica Hecht, A View From the Bridge
Scarlett Johansson, A View From the Bridge
Jan Maxwell, Lend Me a Tenor
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Kevin Chamberlin, The Addams Family
Robin De Jesus, La Cage aux Folles
Christopher Fitzgerald, Finian’s Rainbow
Levi Kreis, Million Dollar Quartet
Bobby Steggert, Ragtime
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Barbara Cook, Sondheim on Sondheim
Katie Finneran, Promises, Promises
Angela Lansbury, A Little Night Music
Karine Plantadit, Come Fly Away
Lilias White, Fela!
BEST DIRECTION OF A PLAY
Michael Grandage, Red
Sheryl Kaller, Next Fall
Kenny Leon, Fences
Gregory Mosher, A View From the Bridge
BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL
Christopher Ashley, Memphis
Marcia Milgrom Dodge, Ragtime
Terry Johnson, La Cage aux Folles
Bill T. Jones, Fela!
BEST CHOREOGRAPHY
Rob Ashford, Promises, Promises
Bill T. Jones, Fela!
Lynne Page, La Cage aux Folles
Twyla Tharp, Come Fly Away
BEST ORCHESTRATIONS
Jason Carr, La Cage aux Folles
Aaron Johnson, Fela!
Jonathan Tunick, Promises, Promises
Daryl Waters & David Bryan, Memphis
BEST SCENIC DESIGN OF A PLAY
John Lee Beatty, The Royal Family
Alexander Dodge, Present Laughter
Santo Loquasto, Fences
Christopher Oram, Red
BEST SCENIC DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Marina Draghici, Fela!
Christine Jones, American Idiot
Derek McLane, Ragtime
Tim Shortall, La Cage aux Folles
BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A PLAY
Martin Pakledinaz, Lend Me a Tenor
Constanza Romero, Fences
David Zinn, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play
Catherine Zuber, The Royal Family
BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Marina Draghici, Fela!
Santo Loquasto, Ragtime
Paul Tazewell, Memphis
Matthew Wright, La Cage aux Folles
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN OF A PLAY
Neil Austin, Hamlet
Neil Austin, Red
Mark Henderson, Enron
Brian MacDevitt, Fences
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Kevin Adams, American Idiot
Donald Holder, Ragtime
Nick Richings, La Cage aux Folles
Robert Wierzel, Fela!
BEST SOUND DESIGN OF A PLAY
Acme Sound Partners, Fences
Adam Cork, Enron
Adam Cork, Red
Scott Lehrer, A View From the Bridge
BEST SOUND DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Jonathan Deans, La Cage aux Folles
Robert Kaplowitz, Fela!
Dan Moses Schreier and Gareth Owen, A Little Night Music
Dan Moses Schreier, Sondheim on Sondheim
SPECIAL TONY AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN THE THEATER
REGIONAL THEATER TONY AWARD
Eugene O’Neill Theater Center
ISABELLE STEVENSON AWARD
TONY HONORS FOR EXCELLENCE IN THE THEATER
Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York
B.H. Barry
Tom Viola
The Broadway musical “Memphis” and the recent revival of “The Royal Family” were the most recognized productions at Monday’s announcement of the nominations for the Outer Critics Circle awards, edging the John Kander and Fred Ebb musical “The Scottsboro Boys” and the critically reviled“Addams Family.”
“Memphis” received seven nominations including outstanding new Broadway musical, and Manhattan Theater Club’s revival of “Royal Family” also received seven, including outstanding revival of a play.
“The Scottsboro Boys,” which was presented Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theater and is transferring to the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis this summer, received six, including outstanding new Off-Broadway musical. “The Addams Family” received five nominations, for set design, actor (Nathan Lane), actress (Bebe Neuwirth), featured actor (Kevin Chamberlin) and featured actress (Carolee Carmelo), as did “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” including new Off-Broadway musical and director of a musical (Alex Timbers).
Tony and Drama Desk Award-winning actors Brian Stokes Mitchell (Ragtime, Man of La Mancha) and Cady Huffman (The Producers, Will Rogers Follies) announced the nominations for the 55th annual Drama Desk Awards May 3 at 9:30 AM at the New York Friars Club.
The short-lived Broadway revival ofRagtime and the recent Off-Broadway musical The Scottsboro Boys each received nine nominations apiece, the most of any productions of the season.
Tony winner Patti LuPone will host the May 23 awards ceremony at the LaGuardia Concert Hall at Lincoln Center. (The nominees will receive their Nomination Certificates at a cocktail reception May 6 in Manhattan.)
“THAT GIRL” flirts with “Mad Men” in the set design for the new Broadway revival of the 1968 musical “Promises, Promises,” a frisky tale about trysting in the ’60s that stars Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth.
The sets — which range from an office building and a Chinese restaurant to a dive bar and a bachelor pad — are the work of Scott Pask, whose period-savvy creations strike a balance between kitsch and Le Corbusier. (Mr. Pask’s twin brother, Bruce, the director of men’s fashion for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, designed the jewel-toned and slimly silhouetted costumes.)
Scott Pask’s other recent work on Broadway has also reinterpreted the look and feel of decades past, from the 1940s (“Pal Joey”) to the 1980s (“9 to 5”). With “Promises, Promises,” as he did for the current revival of “Hair,” Mr. Pask re-evaluates the colors, shapes and interiors of the early 1960s with nods to Modernist furniture design, Abstract Expressionism, popular television shows and films, and International Style architecture.
Before the show opened, Mr. Pask, 43, spoke about some of those influences in an interactive feature.
Thanks to Mad Men fever, the time is right for a revival of Neil Simon, Burt Bacharach, and Hal David’s 1968 musical Promises, Promises, itself based on Billy Wilder’s 1960 film The Apartment. But there’s nothing opportunistic about this production, directed and choreographed by Rob Ashford: He and his cast revel in the show’s modest but potent charms instead of attacking the material with superior everything-was-so-corny-back-then winks and nudges. It treats Bacharach’s melodies as the buoyant, intricate structures that they are, not just weird curios from another age. Set in 1962 Manhattan, the show is pleasingly retro without being a kitsch comic book: Even its Eames-a-go-go sets (by Scott Pask), as colorful and fun as they are, speak more of cocktail-cabinet sophistication than yard-sale tackiness.
Musical plays are easy; revues are hard. You still have to satisfy all those pesky Aristotelian needs, but you don’t have story and character to help you out. Fortunately, conceiver-director James Lapine has come up with a fertile premise for “Sondheim on Sondheim”: The great man comes to us. Who wouldn’t want to spend an evening with Broadway’s musical-theater Shakespeare discussing his work and dishing about his experiences? Through the magic of Peter Flaherty’s video design, imaginatively integrated with Beowulf Borritt’s gorgeous abstract set based on rectangular shapes suggestive of Scrabble tiles, “Sondheim” engages and entrances as much through the songwriter’s chatty, intimate patter as through the top-drawer performances of the gifted eight-person cast. The resulting show is wise, warm, witty, and entirely wonderful.
Bottom Line: Stanley Tucci’s expert staging and a terrific cast makes this unremarkable screwball farce come to comic life.
When it premiered more than 20 years ago, Ken Ludwig’s “Lend Me a Tenor” felt like an uninspired attempt to write the kind of screwball farce that was so popular decades earlier. It seems no less so with its current Broadway revival, but there’s no denying that director Stanley Tucci has staged the hell out of it. The play itself might be derivative, mechanical and devoid of real wit, but this production starring Anthony LaPaglia, Tony Shalhoub and Justin Bartha is at times hysterically funny.
The gauzy draping that usually trims productions of “The Glass Menagerie” has been packed up and put away. Do not come to the Laura Pels Theater, where the Roundabout Theater Company’s terrific new revival of Tennessee Williams’s career-igniting play opened on Wednesday night, looking for a standard dose of weepy Southern lyricism.
Instead you’ll find something unexpected, namely the fiercely moving and seriously funny play Williams actually wrote, in a production directed by Gordon Edelstein that’s lightning-lit from within by the tough, compelling and first-rate Amanda Wingfield of Judith Ivey, giving what is surely the performance of her career. Ms. Ivey’s achingly real and often hilarious turn shares much in common with the shattering Blanche DuBois of Cate Blanchett seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last fall.
The bite of the humor will disarm and delight those willing to see the play with fresh eyes and hear it with open ears, just as it may inflame the sensibilities of those who prefer their Williams slathered in cliché. As a memory play framed by the lyrical recollections of the narrator, Tom, a stand-in for the young Williams, “The Glass Menagerie” is particularly susceptible to productions that shroud it in a mist of elegy. Read the rest of this entry »
Upon Ragtime’s official opening night performance at Broadway’s Neil Simon Theater last November – when the curtain rose and the crowd saw fancily-clad Americans (in early 20th century chic) standing atop a three-story steel and wood set – the audience erupted in applause. And the clamor did not die down for a full two minutes. The combination of colorful costumes and an omnipresent, multi-tiered set made an immediate impression on theatergoers that night. The contrasts of the different classes of people and their physical surroundings are certainly integral to a show about cultural and class collisions in an America where immigrants are pouring in the world over. Read the rest of this entry »