Monday, May 13, 2002
Thoroughly traditional Tony - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- To Broadway, where on the ‘Great White Way’ excitement and no doubt some disappointment reigns over the recent Tony Award nominations doled out by the American Theater Wing and the League of American Theaters and Producers. The Tony’s merit the finest achievement in drama and musical theatre on Broadway -- and perhaps the best in American theatre. It’s an award coveted more than the Emmy or even the Oscar. It’s prestigious as no doubt you’ll understand that theatre is tough. Unlike the movies or television there are no second takes, and there is of course the fact you have to repeat what is perfection, eight times-a-week.
This year the Tony’s have gone traditional. In previous years Fosse (1999) and Contact (2000) -- both musical dance productions -- won major Tony’s. This year, the nominees for Best Musical are this year’s attempts at being those musicals that are now musical theatre history -- being those with a story, book (dialogue), and score. The ABBA karaoke fest Mamma Mia! is nominated, as are the adaptations of Sweet Smell of Success and Thoroughly Modern Millie. Whilst Mamma Mia! is a musical revue set up like Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Smell and Millie are adapted from previous films; the fourth nominee is Urinetown The Musical. It is perhaps the most original of the bunch, as reviews for Sweet Smell of Success have been less than fragrant, and reviews for Millie have been not so thoroughly grand.
In drama, the nominees for Best Play include Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?, which stars Mercedes Ruehl (nominated for a Leading Actress Tony, and former Oscar winner). Also nominated are: the Mike Poulton adapted Fortune’s Fool, Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses, and the Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, Suzan Lori-Parks’s Topdog/Underdog.
As usual amongst the acting nominees there are a handful recognisable to film and television watchers, and the rest are names you hardly recognise. Former Penthouse model and Miss America, Vanessa Williams is nominated for a Leading Actress in a Musical Tony for her role as the witch in the Stephen Sondheim revival of Into the Woods. Williams, we’ve recently learned was offered the film Monster’s Ball, but turned it down knowing it was an Oscar winner, because she was uncomfortable (for her son) to do such graphic nudity. Another Tony nominee this year is a woman seen weeping when Halle Berry did cop the Oscar for Monster’s Ball this spring, former Oscar nominee (earlier this year for Gosford Park) Helen Mirren. Mirren is nodded for her Leading Actress performance in the play Dance of Death.
After playing Jim Carrey’s wife in The Truman Show, Laura Linney won an Oscar nomination for her turn in You Can Count On Me in 2000. She’d have won the Oscar if Julia Roberts hadn’t been Erin Brockovich. This year Linney is nominated for her Leading Actress turn in the adaptation of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Linney, Mirren and Ruehl will face Lindsay Duncan as the other half of Noel Coward’s acidic Private Lives. Duncan plays the role once inhabited by Elizabeth Taylor when she did it opposite Richard Burton in the 1980s. It so happens in the Leading Actress category, Burton’s own daughter, Kate Burton, has a nomination for portraying Hedda Gabler.
Another notable nominee this year is former Tony winner and Oscar nominee Liam Neeson. He’s nominated for the Leading Actor in a Play Tony for his part in The Crucible. Fellow nominees include Alan Bates in Fortune’s Fool. Bates, also has an Oscar nod under his belt. Billy Crudup is a film actor who one may recognise, and he’s in the same category for The Elephant Man. Emmy winner Alan Rickman gets a nod too, for his lead in Private Lives.
In Leading Actor in a Musical there are some friendly faces in John McMartin, who was previously nominated for Show Boat in 1995, and who played opposite Shirley MacLaine in the film version of Sweet Charity. McMartin is nodded for his lead in the revival of Into The Woods. Also in that category is Patrick Wilson, a fresh faced actor who was seen last year in the musical version of The Full Monty, and serenading Julie Andrews at the Kennedy Center gala in Washington last winter. Wilson is nodded for his lead turn in the revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic Oklahoma! Television fans will remember John Lithgow for his 3-time Emmy winning turn on 3rd Rock From The Sun. He finds himself nominated for his lead in the musical adaptation of the classic film noir, Sweet Smell of Success.
Frank Langella, is nodded for his Featured Actor in a Play turn in Fortune’s Fool. Langella is a former beau of one Whoppi Goldberg. Seems Whoop is compensating for her recent vacancy of the centre square on Hollywood Squares with producing. Goldberg is nominated for co-producing Best Musical nominee Thoroughly Modern Millie. Another familiar face is that of Elizabeth Franz, who last won a Tony for playing opposite Brian Dennehy in the smash revival of Death of A Salesman. This year Franz is nominated for Featured Actress in a Play (one of three) in Morning’s At Seven. The other two are Estelle Parsons, a former Oscar winner; and Frances Sternhagen a former Tony winner and Cliff Clavin’s mum on Cheers. Andrea Martin is also nominated for a Featured Actress in a Musical Tony for her work in Oklahoma! Martin, of course, late of SCTV.
Whoopi Goldberg is not the only notable producer nominee in the Best Musical category. Sweet Smell of Success boasts a producer credit for Roy Furman, a former Livent employee of disgraced Canadian theatre mogul Garth Drabinsky. (Actually, Sweet Smell of Success’s musical adaptation was born during Drabinsky’s run at the now-defunct Livent.) Ernest Lehman, who scripted the film version of Smell, is credited with producing this musical version; as are Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the brothers responsible for the films that are produced by powerhouse Miramax. Also, the Weinstein’s produced last year’s smash, and most honoured musical in the history of the Tony’s, 2001’s The Producers.
Cameron Mackintosh, the noted producer of such theatrical hits as Cats, Les Miserables, and Phantom of the Opera, is nominated for producing the revival of Oklahoma! There are only two nominees this year for the revival prize, that and Into The Woods. Harry Connick Jr. finds himself a Tony nominee for writing the music and lyrics to a show called Thou Shalt Not. A show, that I might add, has not another nomination this year. Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner, Marvin Hamlisch is co-nominated for writing the music (Craig Carnelia for lyrics) to Sweet Smell of Success. Hamlisch is noted for writing music for legendary musical A Chorus Line. Susan Stroman, a multiple Tony winner, including for last year’s The Producers (with which she won two Tony’s) is nominated again for choreographing Oklahoma! Trevor Nunn -- who was involved with Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard -- is nominated for directing Oklahoma!
Another interesting development this year is the prominence of the category of Best Special Theatrical Event. Dame Edna Everage’s Broadway hit got this award two years ago, and this year the four nominees are major works that got both good reviews and healthy box office. The nominees are: Bea Arthur on Broadway, Just Between Friends, which was sort of a love letter by Arthur on her nearly 40-year career on Broadway and in television as Maude and a Golden Girl. Elaine Stritch at Liberty, which was Stritch’s own reliving of past highs and lows on and off the stage she’s dominated for a good portion of the last 40 years. This show also got the attention of its own 60 Minutes piece. Mostly Sondhiem is a revue of Sondheim works, sung by the versatile and legendary Barbara Cook. And the final nominee is the performance piece Sexaholix... a love story, performed by former Tony nominee, John Leguizamo. All four were touted as possible nominees, but when the Tony nominating committee vetoed their nominations for acting prizes, they had to settle for this category.
The Tony’s are Sunday, June 2, 2002 on PBS and CBS. The CBS telecast is yet without a host, though some big names are being bandied about. However none of them include the name of Rosie O’Donnell, who hosted previously, but somehow angered many within the Wing and League irrespective of the fact she brought the Tony’s some decent numbers. (She lost those numbers however when she bombed in 2001.) Some of those now considered are: Nathan Lane, the irrepressible star who was last seen as the now-legendary Bialystock in The Producers. However, he is busy filming Nicholas Nickelby. Steve Martin, a previous Oscar host, has passed; whilst Whoppi Goldberg was reportedly vetoed because she just hosted the Oscars.
Angela Landsbury, a 4-time Tony winner, has been asked, but she’s unwilling to leave her ill husband in Los Angeles. She’d be an ideal choice, considering the Tony’s air during the hallowed CBS Sunday night, where Landsbury solved murders for over a decade on Murder, She Wrote. The triumvirate of Kathleen Turner, Alicia Silverstone and Jason Biggs was considered, however their production of The Graduate was ignored by the Tony nominating committee this year. Even Matthew Broderick and pregnant wife Sarah Jessica Parker have been mentioned, but are highly unlikely choices. Broderick co-hosted with Nathan Lane last year, but since they’re so associated with The Producers, bosses are afraid of giving the Mel Brooks masterpiece any more publicity. Brooks, himself, was consider for hosting chores, however he is so much a part of The Producers, he was immediately rejected.
Word has it that Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore have been individually approached, as has the foursome of Bea Arthur, Elaine Stritch, Barbara Cook, and John Leguizamo -- nominees in the Special Theatrical Event category. Whatever the case, the Tony’s expect to be a good show again.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .