by Nathaniel R
Andrew Garfield in "Angels in America"
Oscar fanatics have it easy. Each year roughly 300 movies are eligible for the Oscar race and those same titles (with very few exceptions) are also eligible for all the other movie awards on this continent. They're even (with a few more exceptions) the same slate of movies that are eligible ACROSS the ocean at the other major English language film awards (the BAFTAs). Not so with theater!
Theater awards, a nichier beast altogether, are ultra territorial and when there is crossover it can feel accidental or play out like an echo rather than a harmonic convergence. The Olivier Awards, for example, just honored Lin Manuel Miranda's blockbuster "Hamilton" which the Tony Awards honored two years prior but the only real crossover for this year's Tony Awards is likely to be Angels in America which just transferred here with most of its London cast intact...
Angels won two Olivier Awards for Best Actress (Denise Gough as Harper) and Best Revival but it lost its other nominations. Will it fare better at the Tonys? We're guessing now Three Tall Women might be standing in the way of those two statues at the Tony Awards in June. We'll find out more on May 1st when the Tony nominations are announced.
Theater prizes here in the States come in all shapes and sizes: the Obies, the Lucille Lortels, the Drama League, the Drama Desk... and none of those are true "precursors" to the Tony Awards since they have a much broader pool of eligible titles. Unlike the Tonys they include Off Broadway titles which adds up to far more plays and musicals since to qualify as "Broadway" a NYC theater has to have 500+ seats (the bulk of theaters in Manhattan have far fewer seats than that).
Awards season can all feel a little overwhelming especially with very few people operating from the "I've seen everything!" place of argument and solidarity the way Oscar fanatics are sometimes able to. In short there's far too much to cover and less direct correlation from person to person and awards body to body. Still, we feel it's worth sharing a few brief notes on awards players for those film fans reading who also have a side-long yearning for live performance arts.
Sean Patrick Doyle is nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for "Jerry Springer - The Opera". You may remember we interviewed him for his work as the singing voice of the drag villain of the Oscar nominated Animated Feature The Boxtrolls
LUCILLE LORTEL AWARDS
The Lortel Awards stick to Off Broadway. This year's ceremony takes place on May 6th and the nomination leader is an Off Broadway musical called K-POP which is about, you guessed, it the music phenomenon of K-Pop. I missed that one but I did see two of its competitors: Desperate Measures (a hilarious musical riff on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure - discussed previously right here), and Jerry Springer-The Opera which I think is truly underappreciated almost by default as if to recognize how aggressively heightened it was conceptually and how bold and amazing its music was, you'd have to admit that you loved something called Jerry Springer - The Opera. I will because I did!
But my favorite of the Lortel nominees this year is a show called The Lucky Ones (closing April 28th) nominated for Best Choreography, Best Actor, and three Featured Actress nominees (from five slots!). It's kind of a hybrid theater piece: concert, memoir, and musical all mashed up together. The composers are a husband and wife duo The Bengsons (who are also nominated for a show called Hundred Days at the Lortels so they've been busy) and it's a dramatization (with sprawling cast) of the wife's home-schooled upbringing and a violent tragedy that changed her extended family forever. I sat through the whole thing slack-jawed and wet-faced it was so emotionally absorbing and musically ecstatic. I dont know if I hallucinated recently Oscar nominated Sufjan Stevens a few rows ahead of me in the steep bleacher style seats but I really do think I saw him in the audience. And why not? The music was ravishing enough for him to appreciate.
Adina Verson and Damon Daunno star as young lovers in "The Lucky Ones." They are two of the four acting nominees from the wrenching epic musical.
DRAMA LEAGUE AWARDS
I served on the Drama League nominating committee once during the Aughts. It was an interesting experience. They cover Off Broadway shows (of a certain size) and Broadway shows alike. Their huge ever-rotating team of nominators grades shows throughout the year. They don't have much in the way of categories or size limits, opting instead for a massive list of "distinguished performance" at season's end. Their play and musical lists are much the same, everything which scores at a certain consistently high level gets nominated, and the cut off as to what's nominated emerges organically from the scoring so some year's the list is longer or shorter depending on what's out there. Let's share their nominee lists shall we. It reads like so:
DISTINGUISHED PERFORMANCE AWARD
* Tony eligible performances
Jelani Alladin, Frozen*
Lauren Ambrose, My Fair Lady*
Annaleigh Ashford, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Laura Benanti, Meteor Shower*
MaameYaa Boafo, School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play
Anthony Boyle, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child*
Juan Castano, Oedipus El Rey
Billy Crudup, Harry Clarke
Eisa Davis, Kings
Ariana DeBose, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical*
Noma Dumenzweni, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child*
Deanna Dunagan, The Treasurer
Eve Ensler, In The Body of the World
Chris Evans, Lobby Hero*
Johnny Flynn, Hangmen
Alfie Fuller, Is God Is
Andrew Garfield, Angels in America*
Harry Hadden-Paton, My Fair Lady*
Rebecca Hall, Animal
Harriet Harris, The Low Road
Brian Tyree Henry, Lobby Hero*
Joshua Henry, Carousel*
Tom Hollander, Travesties*
Oscar Isaac, Hamlet
Chukwudi Iwuji, The Low Road
Glenda Jackson, Three Tall Women*
Joshua Jackson, Children of a Lesser God*
Hailey Kilgore, Once On This Island*
LaChanze, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical*
Katrina Lenk, The Band’s Visit*
Robert Sean Leonard, Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo
Taylor Louderman, Mean Girls*
Elizabeth Marvel, Julius Caesar
James McArdle, Angels in America*
Laurie Metcalf, Three Tall Women*
Jessie Mueller, Carousel*
Patti Murin, Frozen*
Alex Newell, Once On This Island*
Sahr Ngaujah, Mlima’s Tale
Seth Numrich, Travesties*
Deirdre O’Connell, Fulfillment Center
Ashley Park, Mean Girls* and KPOP
Billie Piper, Yerma
Karen Pittman, Pipeline
Condola Rashad, Saint Joan*
Lauren Ridloff, Children of a Lesser God*
Roslynn Ruff, X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation
Amy Schumer, Meteor Shower*
Tony Shalhoub, The Band’s Visit*
Paul Sparks, Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo
Katy Sullivan, Cost of Living
John Douglas Thompson, Julius Caesar
Michael Urie, Torch Song and The Government Inspector
Denzel Washington, The Iceman Cometh*
Dianne Wiest, Happy Days
Incredibly there is only ONE winner each year. So whoever wins this this year will have bested 54 other people to the honor! But, here's the catch, you can only win this once in your lifetime so some theatrical giants treading the boards this season like Bernadette Peters and Nathan Lane were not eligible for this honor.
OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION OF A BROADWAY OR OFF-BROADWAY PLAY
* also Tony eligible
Animal
Hangmen
Harry Potter and The Cursed Child*
In the Body of the World
Is God Is
Meteor Shower*
Oedipus El Rey
School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play
Until the Flood
As you can see it was a rough year for plays on Broadway. Only two of these are Tony eligible and it's kind of a mystery as to which plays Tony nominators might go for! Here are the Tony eligible plays from this season.
OUTSTANDING REVIVAL OF A BROADWAY OR OFF-BROADWAY PLAY
Tony eligible*
Expect "Three Tall Women" to gather up plentiful Tony nominations in two weeks.
Angels in America* (reviewed)
Children of a Lesser God*
Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo
Hamlet
The Iceman Cometh*
Lobby Hero*
Saint Joan*
Three Tall Women* (reviewed)
Torch Song
Travesties*
Yerma
With 7 Broadway nominees featured here some will not win the same honor at the Tonys which can have a maximum of 5 nominees. We suspect both Three Tall Women and Glenda Jackson are frontrunners for Tony Awards.
OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION OF A BROADWAY OR OFF-BROADWAY MUSICAL
The Band's Visit *
Bella: An American Tall Tale
Frozen*
Hundred Days
KPOP
Mean Girls*
SpongeBob SquarePants* (reviewed)
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical*
Woody Sez: The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie
It was widely considered a "weak" season for Broadway musicals but the Drama League apparently didn't think so honoring five different Tony eligible musicals. We think the Tony committee will only nominate 4 this year (though they're allowed five) which means one of these will be left hanging with the other probable shutout: Escape to Margaritaville (reviewed) and Prince of Broadway (reviewed).
Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub star in "The Band's Visit" the inarguable frontrunner for the Best Musical TonyFYI I will be moderating a screening of the movie The Band's Visit (2007) on May 20th here in NYC with a Q&A before the film begins featuring a representative from the stage adaptation (name TBA) if you'd like to come.
OUTSTANDING REVIVAL OF A BROADWAY OR OFF-BROADWAY MUSICAL
Carousel*
My Fair Lady*
Once On This Island *
Pacific Overtures
Only three revivals are eligible for the Tonys this year. Will they nominate them all or just have a head-to-head between two of these three? And, if so, which of them gets the honor of losing to Once on This Island?
ARE YOU EXCITED FOR THE TONY AWARDS THIS YEAR? NOMINATIONS ARE ANNOUNCED MAY 1ST AND SARA BAREILLES AND JOSH GROBAN WILL BE HOSTING THE CEREMONY ON JUNE 10TH