2011 Tony nominations

Some thoughts on the 2011 Tony nominations, announced this morning:

I was shocked (but in a good way) by 12 nominations, including Best Musical, for The Scottsboro Boys, which closed in December after a brief Broadway run. I'm so happy for Joshua Henry, Forrest McClendon and Colman Domingo, all of whom received richly deserved acting nods.

I thought Scottsboro was inventive and compelling for the way it told the story of nine black teenagers falsely accused of rape in Alabama in 1931. One of the last musicals from John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, it was profoundly moving and entertaining in the best sense of the word.

I'm also glad the Tonys recognized other performances I enjoyed from shows that have closed: Laura Benanti as a wacky model in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; Hannah Yelland as a woman involved in a clandestine love affair from Brief Encounter; and Joanna Lumley's princess and artistic patron from La Bete.

And I'm thrilled for Judith Light, nominated for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as the wife of the Green Bay Packers coach in Lombardi. While I didn't love the play, I thought her portrayal of Marie Lombardi was sublime.

It's also great to see South Africa's Handspring Puppet Company receive a special Tony for War Horse. Their horse puppets were amazing and I was wondering how the nominators would deal with them. They don't fully belong in any category but they so deserve to be recognized.

Now, some disappointments.

The biggest surprise for me was Daniel Radcliffe being snubbed. He was so charming in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He sang sweetly, danced up a storm and had a flawless American accent. He should have received a nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. I would also have given a nomination to the lovely Rose Hemingway as Rosemary.

And I wish Nick Adams had gotten a nod for his very funny performance in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, which was shut out of the Best Musical category. I am happy his costar, Tony Sheldon, received a nomination. He totally inhabits his role as the transsexual Bernadette, an aging drag queen.

I also would have nominated David Hirson's La Bete for Best Revival of a Play. It got a lukewarm reception from the critics, even as they praised Mark Rylance's performance. But I absolutely loved the play. I thought it was clever, hilarious and thought-provoking.

The 65th annual Tony Awards, showcasing the best of Broadway, will air Sunday, June 12 at 8 p.m. on CBS.

Saying goodbye to 2010

Another year of blogging draws to a close. My posts on Gratuitous Violins declined rather dramatically beginning in April. I didn't get to the theatre much for the first six months of 2010 so I felt like I had less to say.

Plus I spent more time on Twitter, where I really enjoy being part of a running conversation with theatre fans from all over. Blogging can be kind of solitary. And besides, sometimes all you really need is 140 characters.

Despite a slow start, I did see some terrific plays and musicals this year. I was thinking how many of them had strong endings. And endings, like beginnings, are tough to get just right.

Since this is my final post of the year, I'll mention some of them. (I've been vague enough that I don't think there are any plot spoilers):

• The last couple minutes of Lend Me A Tenor, where the cast re-created the entire hilarious plot at warp speed.

• A tender moment between Albin and Georges in La Cage aux Folles, made all the more poignant because it was something they didn't do in the original production.

• The last line in A Free Man of Color and the final moments of The Scottsboro Boys were so compelling for what they said about the tortuous history of race in America.
  

• A perfect image of Laura Linney's photographer character in Time Stands Still.
  

• A sweet family portrait at the end of Elling that made me smile.
  

• When David Hyde Pierce's character in La Bete, the principled playwright Elomire, exits the stage.
  

• The very fun concert after the curtain call for Brief Encounter. Don't stop believin'!
  
  

Overall, 2010 was a good year. I saw lots of friends during my three trips to New York and met new ones. I visited Washington, D.C., one of my favorite cities, for the first time in a long time and reconnected with people I hadn't seen in years.

I made it to a couple more wonderful New York City museums for the first time: the Whitney and the Jewish Museum. And I learned an important lesson: you can't always judge a sandwich by its picture in a magazine.

To everyone who read my blog, left a comment, followed me on Twitter, friended me on Facebook, sent me an e-mail, joined me for lunch, brunch, dinner or a show during the past year, thank-you for the gift of your time and your friendship.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy and adventure-filled 2011!

My favorite theatre of 2010

Listing my favorite shows of the year is tough because even if I don't totally love a play or musical there's always something I want to mention, like a strong performance or a moment that really moved me.

But out of the 27 plays and musicals I saw in 2010, these stood out:

Brief Encounter - Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54

Brief Encounter was the most captivating theatre I saw all year. It was whimsical, magical, romantic.

Britain's Kneehigh Theatre Company adapted the 1945 film Brief Encounter, based on a Noel Coward play about a married man and woman who begin an affair after a chance meeting in a train station.

Hannah Yelland and Tristan Sturrock were enchanting as the couple, reminding me how sexy those old movies could be without the actors taking off all their clothes and jumping into bed.

I felt like I was watching an old black-and-white movie onstage - visually heightened by some imaginative effects and with all the boring parts left out. And those effects, along with Coward's music used throughout, enhanced the story. They never threatened to overwhelm it.

Brief Encounter runs through Jan. 2.

The Scottsboro Boys, Lyceum Theatre

Stunning would have to be the word I'd use to describe this final musical from John Kander and the late Fred Ebb. It was the most compelling theatre I saw all year and I thought the score was haunting.

The story of nine black teenagers falsely accused of rape in 1930s Alabama is told through a minstrel show, illuminating the era's racism in a way I found chillingly effective. Here, the white characters were lampooned while the African-Americans were treated with respect.

The Scottsboro Boys was musical theatre that made me think. With a superb ensemble led by Joshua Henry, I thought it was profoundly moving and immensely entertaining in the best sense of the word. It deserved a longer run on Broadway.

La Cage aux Folles, Longacre Theatre

My favorite new score of the year - well new to me anyway - was La Cage aux Folles. Hearing Jerry Herman's gorgeous songs for the first time - stirring, heartfelt, playful and utterly romantic - was unforgettable.

Based on the French film, it's about two men, partners in a nightclub and in life, who have raised a son. They now face a dilemma with his impending marriage to the daughter of a right-wing politician.

I saw Chris Hoch, Kelsey Grammer's understudy, as nightclub owner Georges and he was wonderful. He had great chemistry with the equally wonderful Tony-winner Douglas Hodge as the drag performer Albin. I was moved to tears watching them.

With warmth and wit, this musical goes to true meaning of family values: the love we show each other, the sacrifices we make.

La Cage aux Folles is an open-ended run.

La Bete, Music Box Theatre

I was nervous going into La Bete. I was afraid the play, written in rhyme and taking place in 17th-century France, would be musty and hard to comprehend. Well, this was the most pleasant surprise of the year for me. I was enthralled.

Mark Rylance as Valere, a bufoonish street performer, and David Hyde Pierce as Elomire, a principled playwright, were terrific, which I figured they would be. What surprised me is how much I truly enjoyed David Hirson's play. It was hilarious, thoughtful and entirely accessible.

As Valere and Elomire competed for the patronage of Joanna Lumley's princess, La Bete raised questions about artistic integrity and the debasement of popular culture that struck a chord. While I was laughing so hard, it gave me so much to think about.

La Bete runs through Jan. 9.

Mistakes Were Made, Barrow Street Theatre

As a would-be Broadway producer, Michael Shannon is giving a virtuoso performance in Mistakes Were Made. I've never seen anything quite like it.

Craig Wright's frenzied satire comes to New York from Chicago's A Red Orchid Theatre. In 95 minutes, it takes us through a day in the life of Felix Artifex, a producer who's desperately trying to mount a play on Broadway about the French Revolution.

Shannon's Felix is on the phone almost nonstop. He must talk to nearly a dozen different people, including a movie star he's wooing, the playwright, a potential investor and several people associated with the movement of sheep through a Middle Eastern country.

What's remarkable is how adeptly Shannon handles all of this. Every caller gets a different approach, a different tone of voice. I swear he had me believing there was someone else on the other end of the phone every time.

Mistakes Were Made runs through Feb. 27.

Fela!, Eugene O'Neill Theatre

Thanks to an amazing performance from Kevin Mambo, this musical turned out to be one of the most exhilarating experiences I had all year.

Mambo was incredible as the late Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. He was mesmerizing, making Fela a terrific storyteller and showman and truly evoking the charismatic part of his personality. Ok, maybe it doesn't tell his entire story but I did get some insight into his life and influences, what made him such a revered figure.

I loved the way Fela! meshed politics, history and personal narrative with the pulsating sound of Afrobeat. It was original and unique. The music and dancing was pretty much nonstop for 2 1/2 hours and I was into it the whole time.

Fela! runs through Jan. 2.

A Bronx Tale, Providence Performing Arts Center

Even though Chazz Palminteri has been performing the autobiographical A Bronx Tale for 20 years, and the events belong to his childhood, he makes them seem as fresh as if they had just happened yesterday.

Palminteri paints a vivid portrait of growing up in New York City in the 1960s. He portrays 18 people in this solo show, including an assortment of mobsters, his bus driver father and two versions of himself - an impressionable 9-year-old and a streetwise 17-year-old.

It's a masterful performance, the way he depicts these characters and their various idiosyncrasies with a change in his tone of voice, an expression, the way he moves around onstage. He makes them all distinct and memorable.

The Glass Menagerie, Gamm Theatre

I'm so glad I had a chance to see this classic play onstage for the first time.

I knew the shorthand for The Glass Menagerie: domineering mother, artistic son, unstable daughter, gentleman caller. But watching Tennessee Williams' play about a troubled family made me realize how little I really knew about it.

Diana Buirski brought out Laura's frailty; Marc Dante Mancini made me understand how trapped Tom felt; and Wendy Overly as their mother, Amanda, truly was a fading Southern beauty living in the past.

Williams crafted his characters with such care that I felt for what each one was going thorough in this intimate, absorbing production.

It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, at Trinity Rep

I wasn't sure what It's a Wonderful Life would be without Jimmy Stewart and the rest of the cast from the movie. Well onstage, it's pretty wonderful, too.

Joe Landry's adaptation is presented as a Christmas Eve 1949 radio broadcast. There's a minimal set and cast - five actors play multiple roles - but the story retains its charm and pull.

Fred Sullivan Jr. was so endearing as George Bailey, a man who's always put the needs of his friends, family and community over his own.

It's a Wonderful Life is a moving portrait of small-town American life. Maybe it's because I was sitting so close - in the front row, in a small theatre, but I was struck by how much the story resonated and how emotional it was to watch. In the end, there were tears in my eyes.

It's a Wonderful Life runs through Jan. 2.

The Scottsboro Boys and a haunting "Go Back Home"

Tonight at the Lyceum Theatre, The Scottsboro Boys concludes its too-brief Broadway run after 78 performances.

I saw the musical from a spot where I'd never sat before: the middle of the front row, right behind the conductor, Paul Masse. (Sorry again if I accidentally kicked you while I was trying to stretch my legs!)

Honestly, that seat was a little too cramped and it probably would have been better to be a little farther back. But I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

It really struck me how lucky I was to be sitting so close when I heard "Go Back Home," a haunting, lyrical ballad that took my breath away.

I thought, I'm listening to a new song from Kander and Ebb. This is what it must have been like during Golden Age, when you hear a song performed for the first time on Broadway and you know it'll become a classic.

I hope that happens with "Go Back Home." Joshua Henry and 12-year-old Jeremy Gumbs are spellbinding and heartbreaking.

I've written about my disappointment with the musical's closing. It tells a compelling American story about nine young black men and boys unjustly accused of a crime in the 1930s South. I thought it was tuneful, powerful, thought-provoking and entertaining in the best sense of the word.

I know there's talk about a tour, or bringing the show back for a brief stint in the spring, before the Tony awards. Whether that happens or not, I hope Tony voters don't forget The Scottsboro Boys and its superb cast. I know I never will.

The Scottsboro Boys to close on Broadway

The Scottsboro Boys is closing on Dec. 12, six weeks after opening night? I just can't believe it. I'm crushed.

According to Playbill, producers Barry and Fran Weissler and Jackie Barlia said:

"It's a show we felt we had to produce and we're proud and grateful to have brought this last great musical from Kander & Ebb to Broadway. We encourage anyone who loves challenging, provocative and original new musicals to see us in our final two weeks at the Lyceum."

Well gee whiz guys, if you felt you had to produce it couldn't you at least have given it a chance to build an audience? Doesn't a challenging, provocative work need time for the buzz to spread? Couldn't you plow some of the profits from Chicago into it to keep things going a little longer?

Like I said in my review, The Scottsboro Boys is a thoughtful, tuneful and powerful story about injustice. It gives voice to a group of 1930s Southern black men in a way that I found original and compelling and entertaining in the highest sense of the word. It also brilliantly uses the format of a minstrel show to illuminate the era's racism.

I have to wonder if we're seeing a trend toward quickly pulling the plug on a show.

It happened last fall with the revival of Brighton Beach Memoirs and last week with Elling, both of which closed a week after opening night. The Weisslers also produced the British play Enron, which had a very short life on Broadway this spring.

Are these shows so undercapitalized that they're basically being fronted on a wing and a prayer? (The Scottsboro Boys played to 59.8 percent capacity last week, with an average ticket price of $63.43.) Sometimes I think there's the mentality that we'll throw up a show and see if it sticks. If not, we'll get out quickly and move on to the next one.

Compare that with Passing Strange, which I don't remember exactly burning up the box office but the producers, including The Shubert Organization and Elizabeth McCann, at least kept it going for five months, through the Tony Awards. It won Best Book of a Musical and now has an afterlife in regional theatre.

Or Memphis, which started out slowly but has built an audience since winning the Tony for Best musical. Or Next to Normal, another musical about a difficult subject that will have been on Broadway for nearly two years by the time it closes in January, and has just started a national tour with Tony winner Alice Ripley. Or Fela!, another innovative musical, about someone little-known to most Americans, that's concluding after just over a year on Broadway.

I feel bad for the incredibly talented cast of The Scottsboro Boys, as well as for the rest of the creative team. Your work - hilarious, insightful, heartfelt - moved me so much. It was a thrilling and memorable evening of theatre.

The Scottsboro Boys

The Scottsboro Boys, at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre
Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

It's been more than 30 years but I can still remember the first time I saw a Kander and Ebb musical, the movie version of Cabaret.

There were parts of the story, set in Berlin as the Nazis are rising to power, that made me uncomfortable. But it also made me realize that a musical could explore a serious subject while still be entertaining in the best sense of the word. Cabaret was thoughtful, tuneful and powerful.

Watching The Scottsboro Boys, the final work from songwriters John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, I felt the same way. The story of nine black teenagers falsely accused of rape in Alabama in 1931 is profound, moving and immensely entertaining musical theatre.

The Scottsboro Boys is told as a minstrel show, a format in which, traditionally, white performers in blackface would mimic African-Americans. Here, minstrelsy is turned on its head: black performers imitate white characters. And it's used not to ridicule black people but to illuminate the era's racism, which it does with chilling effectiveness.

John Cullum, celebrating the 50th anniversary of his Broadway debut, is the only white cast member. Looking like Southern gentry in his white suit and top hat, he's the interlocutor, urging the nine to sing and dance.

The ensemble numbers, like "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey," that opens the show, were rousing and the choreography by Susan Stroman, who also directed, was thrilling.

But knowing what they represented, it made me uneasy to applaud. These were people being forced to "put on a show." And I think that was the point. The minstrel show, as hard as it was to watch sometimes, demonstrated how black men were viewed - as buffoonish objects of entertainment for white audiences.

Still, there's an important distinction in The Scottsboro Boys between how the nine are depicted when they're "performing" and how we see them when they're alone, in jail. (Beowulf Borritt's very simple set uses planks and silver-painted chairs to form cells, a courthouse and a train.)

Book writer David Thompson makes them far from stereotypes as their case winds its way through the legal system. He treats them as individuals and their stories with dignity and compassion. We learn about their lives, their hopes and fears, in a way that I found compelling.

The Scottsboro Boys focuses on Hayward Patterson, played by a spellbinding Joshua Henry. He's a proud, defiant man who won't be cowed into pleading guilty to something he didn't do. When he sang the gorgeous ballad "Go Back Home," it took my breath away.

But to me, the most heartbreaking was the youngest, Eugene Williams, portrayed with astonishing self-assurance by 12-year-old Jeremy Gumbs. His tap dance to the song "Electric Chair" was searing and nightmarish.

As Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon play the white characters - sheriff, guards, lawyers, the attorney general - with outrageous, hilarious exaggeration. Likewise, Christian Dante White and James T. Lane are terrific in dual roles as two of the nine - and as their female accusers.

McClendon has a memorable turn as Samuel Leibowitz, the Jewish lawyer from New York who was a tireless advocate for the Scottsboro Boys. He's wonderful in "That's Not the Way We Do Things," which cleverly points out the sometimes patronizing attitudes of Northern white liberals. (Speaking as a Northern white liberal myself, it made me chuckle.)

And just as the musical shines a light on racism, it also exposes the era's anti-Semitism. In "Financial Advice," there's a derisive reference to Jewish money paying for the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. Hard to hear, yes, but historically accurate and reflective of how Jews were viewed by white Southerners.

What The Scottsboro Boys did so well was remind me that the struggle for civil rights in this country occurred from the bottom up, sparked by ordinary black men and women who had simply had enough.

These were poor people, arrested while riding the rails to look for work in the middle of the Depression. Some of them couldn't read or write. But as the musical reveals, they left a legacy - one that stunned me and left me incredibly moved.

The Scottsboro Boys is a thoughtful, tuneful and powerful American story.

My Broadway wish list: fall 2010

I love this time of year, when every book and movie, TV series and CD, play and musical has the potential to be a hit.

I'll only be able to see a handful of shows in New York City and not nearly enough off Broadway. But you have to start somewhere, so here are the Broadway shows at the top of my wish list:

La Bete:
A comedy in rhyming couplets inspired by Moliere? I'm there. This is my chance to see Mark Rylance, whose Tony-winning turn in Boeing Boeing I missed. And it's been 3 1/2 years since I last saw David Hyde Pierce on Broadway, in his Tony-winning performance in Curtains. Much too long.

The Pitmen Painters:
Maybe it's because I loved How Green Was My Valley, or the fact that I've been in a coal mine, but I'm very interested in Lee Hall's play about a group of British miners in the 1930s who discover their artistic side. Hall, who wrote Billy Elliot, knows the terrain. New Yorker theatre critic John Lahr, who saw it in London, put The Pitmen Painters on his list of the 10 best plays of 2008.

Brief Encounter:
I've never seen the 1945 British movie, directed by David Lean, with a screenplay by Noel Coward. And I'm not a big Coward fan. Still, I like innovative work and this play, from Britain's Kneehigh Theatre, sounds so intriguing for the way it incorporates film footage into the action onstage. I can't even imagine what it'll be like.

The Scottsboro Boys:
The reviews from the pre-Broadway engagement at the Guthrie Theater have been glowing. It's got a score by Kander and Ebb. The cast includes John Cullum and Colman Domingo, both of whom I've enjoyed onstage. And I'm so curious to see how this shameful episode in American history is told through music.

A Free Man of Color:
I've read a little bit about the time in which John Guare's play occurs and it's fascinating. New Orleans in 1801, before the Louisiana Purchase, was a freewheeling place, where racial strictures were much less rigid. Jeffrey Wright plays the title character, whose life will be upended when the city is transferred from French to American sovereignty.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown:
I could not be more excited about a cast - Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti, both of whom I adored in Gypsy, plus Sherie Rene Scott and Brian Stokes Mitchell, whom I've never seen. And the musical is based on a Pedro Almodovar movie that I haven't seen, so it'll all be new to me. Plus, haven't we all been on the verge of a nervous breakdown at one time or another?

Of course there's more I'd love to see. I missed Time Stands Still with Laura Linney, so I'm hoping to catch the return engagement. And I want to see Spider-Man Turn off the Dark, but since previews don't begin until mid-November, I'll wait until they get that flying down pat.