Tony Award Post-Mortem (Literally)

Alright, I think I've recovered from Sunday night.

(And first off, sorry for the two week layoff of posting. For reasons that will become clear soon, what little creative energy I have was already taken, and blogging wasn't going to happen.)

I've been watching the Tonys yearly since 1994 (taping the show when I was too young to stay up for it), and this may be the worst ceremony I've ever seen. There are many reason, and I'll go into them, but we need to start with the primary problem:

The Tonys are a niche show. The best of that year's Broadway season will never have a wide audience, because most people simply don't care. We can try to get the word out, we can pray, but it will never have the same cultural centrality that it once did. So let go of this idea that by putting famous people with minor connections to theatre onstage, you can get people to watch. There is no fan of Will Smith rabid enough that they will watch a 3-hour award show because he is one of the presenters. Some rabid "Glee" fans might have tuned in because Matthew Morrison and Lea Michele performed, but they would probably have watched anyway. So what results is a show whose essential identity, a celebration of Broadway theatre, is constantly obscured, pissing off the people who actually care, while doing absolutely nothing to bring in people who don't give a shit. So please, CBS and producers, stop pretending. It won't work. Satisfy the people who will actually enjoy it.

(And by the way, why were they humping Green Day that hard? It's nice that they performed 2 numbers, but added to the song in the medley and the full production number, that's four in the total evening, which is pretty excessive. They fail to realize that Green Day doesn't count as edgy or revolutionary anywhere outside of 44th Street.)

But if it has to be that conceptually flawed, can't it at least be done competently? The sheer number of technical mistakes on this show was horrifying. Mikes went out repeatedly, lip-syncing got catastrophically off, shots revealed other cameras more than they did the stage, Sean Hayes sort of cut off Memphis' acceptance speech, and, in my favorite moment of the night, Katie Finneran won Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, while Karine Plantadit's name was displayed on screen.

And even when there weren't technical snafus, it was just poorly made: most of the numbers were shot in such a way as to minimize their good points (Fela! for instance had only a fraction of the electricity as its number that was on "The Colbert Report" last fall), the camera swung nauseatingly during the Play and Play Revival description segments, and the weird "scenes from plays remix" thing was just unfortunate.

The hosting was okay, I guess--Sean Hayes was a pleasant personality, and did a decent job with the lines he had. (Him showing up dressed as Billy Elliott with a gigantic bulge was a little tasteless, though.) Most of the actual laughs involved Kristin Chenoweth, his costar in Promises, Promises, who is hilarious. (Her dead faint on finding out she wasn't nominated for a Tony was priceless.) But Neil Patrick Harris was sorely missed. Presenters were a mixed bag, with Angela Lansbury, Nathan Lane, and Bebe Neuwirth being the most entertaining. Acceptance speeches were generally lovely, with Katie Finneran, Scarlett Johansson, and Viola Davis giving the highlights.

But the essence of the problem was...the season for musical sucked. There were, notoriously, only two musicals with original scores on Broadway this season: The Addams Family and Memphis. The score for the former is not as bad as its reputation (if nothing that special), but the number from the latter that we saw was sorely disappointing. The music and lyrics were so generic that I honestly can't recall them at all, except for the fact that the lyrics were dumb, and eventually just gave up and went "na na na na na na na".

And that left the jukebox shows. (And didn't we think they were on their way out?) None came off that well in performance: Million Dollar Quartet looked perfectly fine, but not that exciting (though Levi Kreis' Jerry Lee Lewis playing the piano backwards was pretty nifty), Come Fly Away looking more athletic than inspired (though my lack of fondness for Sinatra may be a factor), and Fela!, as I said above, not nearly showing off to its best advantage. American Idiot sounded good, and was certainly intense and stimulating, but I spent the whole number thinking how Spring Awakening and (especially) Passing Strange did it all way better.

As for the musical revivals, the brief number from Promises, Promises was eh, La Cage Aux Folles looked like fun and showed off Douglas Hodge, but "The Best of Times" is just not a very interesting song. Remarkably, the shortened "Back to Before" from Ragtime ended up the evening's best, simply because it didn't get fucked up by distracting camera movements.

And Catherine Zeta-Jones singing "Send in the Clowns"...well. She made strong choices. Unfortunately, they just came off weird. Perhaps because her scene partner wasn't on stage, she was whipping her head around like a lunatic, overplaying all of the emotions (and there are few songs less amenable to overplayed emotions), and generally coming off very strange. (And she gave the word "next" at least three syllables, which is an achievement of some kind, I suppose.) There was some surprise when she won Best Actress just after.

So yeah, a compromised core, an incompetent production, and a mediocre set of performances. At least I had friends over and good food. Because the show was pretty worthless

Two Broadway Items

To those who don't like non-Chicago news, move along. But I just can't not report this.

As reported by Playbill, there's a chance that the current revival of A Little Night Music won't close June 20th when the contracts of its current starts, Catherina Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, end. Because the producers are currently in negotiations with Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch.

Yes. Truly.

Now one could argue that both of them are sort of a stretch to play, respectively, Desiree and Madame Armfeldt. I have some sympathy with the idea, though I can see them both working. But more importantly, I don't care. I'm pulling my musical theatre dork card here. Both are stunning performers and utterly brilliant interpreters of Sondheim. And it's in A Little Night Music. Even if it doesn't work, it will be the awesomest train wreck ever.

Anyone want to buy me a ticket?

On a less interesting note: as Playbill also reports that the Tonys this year will open with a medley of pop songs currently featured on Broadway, describing the number thus:

Expect to hear tunes from most of the musical productions that debuted on Broadway this season, including Million Dollar Quartet (one of the 22 well-known songs featured in the production); Come Fly Away (one of the Frank Sinatra standards), Promises, Promises (one of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David classics), A Little Night Music (perhaps Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns"), American Idiot (one of the Green Day hits), Fela! (possibly the song "Zombie!") and more.

I am so tired of the efforts to make the Tony's popular with people who don't care about Broadway. It's not happening. Especially since none of those artists, with the possible exception of Green Day, is near the charts at this point. I doubt that many Bachrach/David fans are out there who will suddenly choose to watch the Tonys now. The same with the celebrity presenters. It won't work. I wish that CBS would just give up and give the Tony's to PBS, who could spend time actually getting into interesting theatre stuff. The current combination doesn't work at all.

Good News/Bad News

Before my longer post on How Theatre Failed America, I wanted to pass along two pieces of news, one very good and one very sad.

On a good note: the Tony Awards committee has announced that the 2010 Regional Theatre Tony will be going to the Eugene O'Neill Center in Waterford, CT. This is gratifying on a professional level--few theatres have a comparably stellar record for new works, particularly those which go on to production and acclaim elsewhere. But it's also a pleasure personally--I spent two weeks at the O'Neill in 2008 at the National Critic's Institute, which was the genesis of this blog and a major influence on my writing and career. It's a wonderful place to be and work, where you can focus on theatre while surrounded by gorgeous scenery and eating edible cafeteria food. In addition to seeing (and reviewing) at least ten shows in two weeks, I also treasure the friendships I established with the other critics and the way that members of every segment of the festival mixed and had fun. It didn't matter who were the playwrights, the actors, the critics, the interns, the National Theatre Institute students--we all hung out at Blue Gene's, the gloriously cheap bar, played cards and Mafia, and went swimming, before hopping the van to return to our dorm rooms. It was a wonderful experience, and I would love to go back some day. So congratulations to Executive Director Preston Whiteway, the heads of the various divisions, and the entire staff, and thank you to Leonard Jacobs, Dan Sullivan, Helene Goldfarb, and Mark Charney for letting me into the Critics' Institute and making my experience so wonderful.

However, in very sad news, Playbill reports that famed British actress Lynn Redgrave has died at the age of 67. It's not explicitly stated what the cause of death was, but she was treated for breast cancer in 2003, and last fall, when performing her solo show Nightingale, she announced that she was receiving treatments for Stage IV cancer at Sloan-Kettering. (She performed Nightingale seated and with a script in front of her.) She was nominated for the Tony three times and the Oscar twice, and occasionally appeared with her sister, Vanessa, and brother, Corin. Corin died only a few weeks ago, and Vanessa's daughter Natasha Richardson famously died last winter, so this has been a really horrible year for the Redgrave clan. I wish them all comfort, and hope that the family stays intact for a while.

Tony Tony Tony Tony.....

So the annual commercial for Broadway was broadcast last night. This was reportedly one of the best seasons in years, but the real brilliance was in the new plays and, especially, the revivals. As for the musicals, only Billy Elliott and Next To Normal on the new side and Hair and West Side Story on the revival end caused much excitement. However, scenes from plays are not popular at CBS, who broadcasts the awards--apparently they aren't exciting enough, and the people demand more glitz. As a result, the plays were only presented through brief descriptions and maybe 15 seconds from a pre-taped scenes. In fact Best Revival of a Play was going to be presented before the televised ceremony until Kevin Spacey and others raised a stink. Therefore, the season looked less exciting than it actually was. Ah well.

While many of the awards were seen as tossups this year, they tended to go to the front-runner in most categories. The big winner, of course, was Billly Elliott, with 10 awards. After that, the wealth was spread around quite evenly--God of Carnage and Next To Normal got three awards each, Joe Turner's Come and Gone got two, and another ten shows got one a piece.

I didn't do great on my predictions--I missed nearly all of the design categories, and thought Next to Normal would take the award for Best Book while Billy Elliott would take score, when they were in fact switched. However, I got 3/4 of the production categories and 6/8 of the acting categories, so I made out alright.

The first show to close after winning no Tonys has been announced (more are doubtless to come). Neil LaBute's reasons to be pretty will shut down on Sunday. Still, it can doubtless look forward to a long and productive life in storefront and college theatres in the years to come, so I won't cry for Neil LaBute.

Herewith, a few more thoughts on the show:

--That opening number was the singing, dancing definition of a clusterfuck. Who thought that putting numbers from nine or ten shows on simultaneously was anything like a good idea? It was confusing and ugly, and sounded terrible. Also, apparently Brett Michaels of the band Poison got hit in the face with a backdrop. He's alright now, but eep.

--It started in the opening number and continued throughout, but the miking was terrible. Balances were off, we couldn't hear things, and Titus Burgess' mic in "Sit Down Your Rocking The Boat" died entirely, so we got to hear a stagehand panting out "I'm going, I'm going" while running him a hand mic. To his immense credit, he didn't skip a beat.

--The song itself, though, was pretty pedestrian. There just wasn't much passion (and the background projections were awful) until Burgess and the invaluable Mary Testa started riffing at the end. They were very impressive, but how can the production mess up a number that foolproof?

--Also on the debit side for performances Shrek (a few laughs, but pretty dumb), and the three touring shows (unnecessary and not very good).

--I have no idea what I saw in the Rock of Ages number, but it sure was...something. I think I was getting high from the hairspray fumes, and I know the cast and creators were.

--I enjoyed the "Dance at the Gym" from West Side Story--a little short of amazing, but it's always a stirring number. The piece from Next To Normal was intriguing--I'm not sold, but I'd like to see it. Billy Elliott actually gave me chills. Even if the description--of Billy doing an angry dance while riot police dance around him with truncheons and shields--sounds silly, the number still worked. I now understand why the Billys won for Best Actor. And I thought that the cast of Hair doing the title number were pretty fantastic, but my love for that production is well established.

--There was a tie this year for Best Orchestrations, with Normal and Billy both getting the nod--the first in 15+ years! It's a less heralded award, but it's still pretty cool.

--My favorite acceptance speeches included the very classy Roger Robinson, Karen Olivo crying, Gregory Jbara bringing his wife (and her boobs) onstage to thank her, Geoffrey Rush talking about how French existential absurdist tragicomedy rocks, Matthew Warchus thanking the casts of both shows that he was nominated for directing, though he only won for God of Carnage, and the Billy boys, adorable in their adolescent awkwardness. Alice Ripley's shouting quotes from JFK was clearly passionate and well-intentioned, but came off as downright unhinged. Then again, I imagine that playing the bipolar lead in Next to Normal would make someone a little highly strung.

--And finally, high marks for Neil Patrick Harris as host. Though I'm not sure what his suit was made of (Leather? Shiny velvet?) he looked damn good in it. He wasn't given much stage time but he had some very clever jokes--his bit about Jeremy Piven and sushi was priceless--and his closing number was absolutely fantastic. I hope he hosts the Tonys again--and does another Broadway show soon.

And now I'm off to an event more suited to this blog--the Non-Equity Jeff Awards are tonight, and I'll be there cheering on Brian Plocharczyk of Stage Left's After Ashley and everyone else responsible for this fantastic season in Chicago. I'll report back tomorrow!

Not On Chicago Theatre

First off, I've been blogging a lot the past few days--in fact, my total number of posts for May has already passed the total for April. So please, check them out and give me some comments!

Now, on to our regularly scheduled post.

Those of you who feel like too much attention is given to Broadway would do well to skip this post. The Tony nominations were announced on Tuesday, and herewith are a few of my thoughts, plus a list of the nominations. You can also find this list at Playbill, the New York Times, and the official Tony site, as well as all sorts of chatter from all sorts of other blogs.

--First, and most importantly: I CALLED IT. What did I call? In September, when the Public Theatre announced the transfer of Hair to Broadway, I wrote that (if they moved to Broadway with it) we could expect Tony nominations for leads Jonathan Groff, Will Swenson, and Patina Renae Miller. Groff and Miller didn't move to Broadway (Groff is in Prayer For My Enemy Off-Broadway and is nursing a film career, while Miller is playing the Whoopi Goldberg part in the musical version of Sister Act that just started preview in London), but Swenson is right up there among the nominees! His Berger is absolutely scorching, and he seems to be an early front-runner for the award. Hair walked away with 8 nominations, also including musical revival, actor (Gavin Creel, in Groff's former role of Claude), director Diane Paulus, choreographer Karole Armitage, as well as the costumes, lighting and sound. West Side Story only got 4 nominations, so the showdown of the revivals might already have been decided. (Hair is, incidentally, the only nominated production I have seen.)

--This year provided a starker example than most that Tony nominators have incredibly short memories. The most shocking example of this is the inexplicable absence of the revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull from revival of a play, or star Kristin Scott Thomas from actress in a play. The production was hailed by many critics (and my parents, who saw it, the lucky bastards) as the best imaginable production of Chekhov. It was, reportedly, transcendent. It also closed in January, and apparently any transcendence was lost in the rash of openings in the month of April. Don't cry for the producers of The Seagull, though--they have their acclaim to keep them warm, not to mention the fact that they turned an honest to God profit doing Chekhov on Broadway. This may be even harder than doing a perfect production of a Chekhov play.

The bias towards late openings is most obvious in the play revival category. All four nominees--Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Mary Stuart, The Norman Conquests,  and Waiting For Godot--were extremely well-received, and doubtless belong in this category. However, all four also opened in the last two weeks of April. Plenty of other closed shows were virtually absent--such as the popular revivals of Equus and All My Sons. The only closed show that has received significant nominations is Horton Foote's Dividing The Estate, and I fear that Foote's recent death may have had something to do with breaking the trend.

Other interesting things:

--Billy Elliott got 15 nominations, tying The Producers' record, including a single best actor nomination for the three boys playing Billy. The show will be in competition with Next To Normal, the musical about bipolar disorder, which apparently improved greatly on the road from Off-Broadway to Arena Stage in DC to Broadway. Next to Normal is much smaller and darker than Billy Elliott, but it is also an American show. Should be interesting.

--In what has got to be some kind of record, all four cast members of The God of Carnage--Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, and Marcia Gay Harden--were nominated in their respective lead categories. How many plays have four real leads?

--Jane Fonda got nominated for best actress for 33 Variations. Her performance got a strong response, but does anyone think she would have been nominated if she weren't Jane Fonda?

--Fonda possibly aside, most of the household names nominated got rave reviews, and plenty of celebrities who got raves weren't nominated: Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin, John Goodman, John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Daniel Radcliffe, Richard Griffiths, Jeremy Piven (hmmmm, wonder why?), Susan Sarandon, and Rupert Everett, to name a few. Meanwhile, it's heartening to see so many stalwart theatre actors, who are anything but household names, among the nominees.

--I already have some predictions for who will win the awards, but I'll leave that for closer to the ceremony. One major one, though: I think this year will spread the wealth. Enough excellent shows open that I don't think any one can sweep. We'll see.

So, what are your thoughts? Seen any of the shows? Have any reactions? Let us know?

A full list of nominees is below:

Nominations for the 2009 American Theatre Wing’s Tony Awards®
Presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing

Best Play

Dividing the Estate
Author: Horton Foote
God of Carnage
Author: Yasmina Reza
Reasons to Be Pretty
Author: Neil LaBute
33 Variations
Author: Moisés Kaufman

Best Musical

Billy Elliot, The Musical
Next to Normal
Rock of Ages
Shrek The Musical

Best Book of a Musical

Billy Elliot, The Musical Lee Hall
Next to Normal Brian Yorkey
Shrek The Musical David Lindsay-Abaire
[Title of Show] Hunter Bell

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

Billy Elliot, The Musical
Music: Elton John
Lyrics: Lee Hall

Next to Normal
Music: Tom Kitt
Lyrics: Brian Yorkey

9 to 5: The Musical
Music & Lyrics: Dolly Parton

Shrek The Musical
Music: Jeanine Tesori
Lyrics: David Lindsay-Abaire

Best Revival of a Play

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Mary Stuart
The Norman Conquests
Waiting for Godot

Best Revival of a Musical

Guys and Dolls
Hair
Pal Joey
West Side Story

Best Special Theatrical Event

Liza’s at The Palace
Slava’s Snowshow
Soul of Shaolin
You’re Welcome America. A Final Night with George W. Bush

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play

Jeff Daniels, God of Carnage
Raúl Esparza, Speed-the-Plow
James Gandolfini, God of Carnage
Geoffrey Rush, Exit the King
Thomas Sadoski, Reasons to Be Pretty

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play

Hope Davis, God of Carnage
Jane Fonda, 33 Variations
Marcia Gay Harden, God of Carnage
Janet McTeer, Mary Stuart
Harriet Walter, Mary Stuart

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical

David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik, and Kiril Kulish – Billy Elliot, The Musical
Gavin Creel, Hair
Brian d’Arcy James, Shrek The Musical
Constantine Maroulis, Rock of Ages
J. Robert Spencer, Next to Normal

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical

Stockard Channing, Pal Joey
Sutton Foster, Shrek The Musical
Allison Janney, 9 to 5: The Musical
Alice Ripley, Next to Normal
Josefina Scaglione, West Side Story

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play

John Glover, Waiting for Godot
Zach Grenier, 33 Variations
Stephen Mangan, The Norman Conquests
Paul Ritter, The Norman Conquests
Roger Robinson, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play

Hallie Foote, Dividing the Estate
Jessica Hynes, The Norman Conquests
Marin Ireland, Reasons to Be Pretty
Angela Lansbury, Blithe Spirit
Amanda Root, The Norman Conquests

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical

David Bologna, Billy Elliot, The Musical
Gregory Jbara, Billy Elliot, The Musical
Marc Kudisch, 9 to 5: The Musical
Christopher Sieber, Shrek The Musical
Will Swenson, Hair

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical

Jennifer Damiano, Next to Normal
Haydn Gwynne, Billy Elliot, The Musical
Karen Olivo, West Side Story
Martha Plimpton, Pal Joey
Carole Shelley, Billy Elliot, The Musical

Best Scenic Design of a Play

Dale Ferguson, Exit the King
Rob Howell, The Norman Conquests
Derek McLane, 33 Variations
Michael Yeargan, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

Best Scenic Design of a Musical

Robert Brill, Guys and Dolls
Ian MacNeil, Billy Elliot, The Musical
Scott Pask, Pal Joey
Mark Wendland, Next to Normal

Best Costume Design of a Play

Dale Ferguson, Exit the King
Jane Greenwood, Waiting for Godot
Martin Pakledinaz, Blithe Spirit
Anthony Ward, Mary Stuart

Best Costume Design of a Musical

Gregory Gale, Rock of Ages
Nicky Gillibrand, Billy Elliot, The Musical
Tim Hatley, Shrek The Musical
Michael McDonald, Hair

Best Lighting Design of a Play

David Hersey, Equus
David Lander, 33 Variations
Brian MacDevitt, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Hugh Vanstone, Mary Stuart

Best Lighting Design of a Musical

Kevin Adams, Hair
Kevin Adams, Next to Normal
Howell Binkley, West Side Story
Rick Fisher, Billy Elliot, The Musical

Best Sound Design of a Play

Paul Arditti, Mary Stuart
Gregory Clarke, Equus
Russell Goldsmith, Exit the King
Scott Lehrer and Leon Rothenberg, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

Best Sound Design of a Musical

Acme Sound Partners, Hair
Paul Arditti, Billy Elliot, The Musical
Peter Hylenski, Rock of Ages
Brian Ronan, Next to Normal

Best Direction of a Play

Phyllida Lloyd, Mary Stuart
Bartlett Sher, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Matthew Warchus, God of Carnage
Matthew Warchus, The Norman Conquests

Best Direction of a Musical

Stephen Daldry, Billy Elliot, The Musical
Michael Greif, Next to Normal
Kristin Hanggi, Rock of Ages
Diane Paulus, Hair

Best Choreography

Karole Armitage, Hair
Andy Blankenbuehler, 9 to 5: The Musical
Peter Darling, Billy Elliot, The Musical
Randy Skinner, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas

Best Orchestrations

Larry Blank, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas
Martin Koch, Billy Elliot, The Musical
Michael Starobin and Tom Kitt, Next to Normal
Danny Troob and John Clancy, Shrek The Musical


* * *


Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre
Jerry Herman

Regional Theatre Tony Award
Signature Theatre, Arlington, Va.

Isabelle Stevenson Award
Phyllis Newman

Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre
Shirley Herz

* * *


Tony Nominations by Production

Billy Elliot, The Musical - 15
Next to Normal - 11
Hair - 8
Shrek The Musical - 8
Mary Stuart - 7
The Norman Conquests - 7
God of Carnage - 6
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone - 6
Rock of Ages - 5
33 Variations - 5
Exit the King - 4
9 to 5: The Musical - 4
Pal Joey - 4
West Side Story - 4
Reasons to Be Pretty - 3
Waiting for Godot - 3
Blithe Spirit - 2
Dividing the Estate - 2
Equus - 2
Guys and Dolls - 2
Irving Berlin’s White Christmas - 2
Liza’s at The Palace - 1
Slava’s Snowshow - 1
Soul of Shaolin - 1
Speed-the-Plow - 1
[Title of Show] - 1

Things I Have Yet To Comment On

I've been lax about writing, but a flurry of posts are coming in the next few days (hopefully). Here are a few things I have failed to mention recently:

The nominations for Chicago's Non-Equity Jeff Awards have been announced. You can see the full list of nominations here, but here are a few thoughts:

--Congratulations to Brian Plocharczyk, nominated for Lead Actor for his work in Stage Left's fall show, After Ashley. He was exceptional. I'm disappointed that The Day of Knowledge didn't get any nominations, but we knew that was coming when the committee failed to recommend us. Ah well, you can't please all of the people all of the time.

--David Cromer's hugely popular production of Our Town (which I never got to see) was nominated for Production and Director, but had no acting or design nominations. Given that the praise was spread pretty widely for that show, I find that pretty shocking. (Cromer now has a version of Our Town running Off-Broadway which opened to similarly rave reviews, and similarly sold-out houses, and just won the Lucille Lortel for Best Revival and Best Director.)

--An advance congratulations to Amanda Hartley of The Robber Bridegroom, the only nominee for Supporting Actress in a Musical. Work on that speech.

--Have The Hypocrites gone equity since Our Town? I'm shocked at no nominations for The Threepenny Opera, which was one of my favorites of last season.

--Congratulations to Joanie Schultz! She directed me in Saint Joan when I was an undergrad and she was getting her MFA at Northwestern, and her production of In Arabia We'd All Be Kings got nominations for Production, Director, Ensemble, Leading Actor, and Supporting Actress.

--I'm not sure what was going on in the "New Adaptation" category, but neither of the shows in that category that I saw were successful adaptations. The Picture of Dorian Gray at Lifeline was not terribly scary (though Supporting Actor nominee Paul S. Holmquist did do strong work) and generally confused. And Scoundrel Time at City Lit somehow managed to take all of the drama out of the story of Lillian Hellman and the blacklist--quite a feat, but not quite nomination-worthy.

--Overall, it reminded me of how much theatre I don't see. I don't think I made it to more than six or eight of the nominated shows. Need to get on that in the future.

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There has been shockingly little mention in the press of the death of Augusto Boal on Saturday. Boal was the legendary Brazilian director and educator who pioneered the "Theatre of the Oppressed," which used performance to engage people with their lives and political situations. Anybody who works in theatre education and creative drama has made use of his work, even if they haven't read his works. He  has left an exceptional legacy.

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The Tony nominations are tomorrow, and today the committee announced the special awards. The winners include composer Jerry Herman, who won a Lifetime Achievement Award, and Washington DC's Signature Theatre, which won the Outstanding Regional Theatre award. Full details on Playbill.