So that was the Tonys that was. Not too many big surprises or upsets. Our TONY predictions were, as usual, mostly spot on: We correctly predicted 23 out of 27 awards. (The Best Orchestrations tie for Billy Elliot and Next to Normal counts as one for us.) After a rather confusing and poorly sound-mixed opening clusterhump-medley of the season’s new musicals and revivals, the kids of Hair pulled it all together, stage-rushing Liza and levitating Radio City Music Hall on a psychedelic wave of peace, love and tribal rock. As universally expected, Billy Elliot swept with ten statues, but the love was spread to Next to Normal, which snagged Best Score. (Sir Elton John was the perfect gentleman when accepting Best Musical, giving an encouraging shout-out to N2N’s songwriting team Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey.) Neil Patrick Harris was an affable and nimble host, if not the sassy comic trickster we would have liked. His farewell song, written to the tune of “Tonight” and lyricized with last-minute jokes and allusions to winners, was quite funny at the very end.
God of Carnage won Best Play, which surprised no one, but disappointed those Horton Foote fans who hoped for a posthumous honor for the great American dramatist’s Dividing the Estate. The producers of reasons to be pretty were even more downcast: Since the Neil LaBute drama didn’t win that category, they’ve posted a June 14 closing.
Of course, with any Tony ceremony, there was plenty to complain about: namely, the absurdly abbreviated look at nominated plays, which seemed to be allowed about nine seconds of video each (damn you, Les Moonves!), and the inclusion of moldy musical numbers from touring shows Legally Blonde, Jersey Boys and Mamma Mia! Still, you could make an argument that these segments, although irrelevant to the actual season under consideration, are important, reinforcing the fact the Broadway is not just a New York–tourist-local thing, but happening all over the country all the time. In other words, a national pastime. Maybe we’ll elaborate on that point as we continue our Tony Awards postmortem throughout the day. Check in later, reader!
When our Helen Shaw reviewed the new Off-Off Broadway musical Kaspar Hauser: a foundling’s opera, she didn’t say anything about heroic actors jumping down onto subway tracks to save a fallen straphanger from the onrushing train—because it hadn’t happened yet. The New York Times reports that Chad Lindsey, an ensemble member of that show currently playing at the Flea Theater, actually saved an older gent who fell onto the tracks and hit his head. The guy did his heroic duty, then promptly caught a train. Where was the newly minted subway hero heading? To a reading, of course. Let’s give Lindsey one heartfelt standing O.
Producers have announced that the search is on for Eugene Jerome, the smart-aleck Brooklyn teen at the center of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, which is scheduled to open on Broadway this fall in a revival directed by David Cromer (Our Town). On Broadway back in 1983, the part was played by Matthew Broderick. Here’s the description from the casting notice: “For the role of Eugene, the creative team is seeking male performers between the ages of 16 and 21 that are intelligent, attractive and have a winning personality, ironic sense of humor, and excellent comic timing. The play is about a family in Brooklyn in 1937.” Our nominee for Eugene? Conservative prodigy and professional annoying child Jonathan Krohn. The 14-year-old (he’s young but precocious!) recently addressed CPAC and is hard at work on the second edition of his self-published manifesto, Define Conservatism. After the jump, J-Kro’s audition reel. Read more »
Leslie Kritzer kicks back.
This week’s opening article in the Theater section is on the terrific Leslie Kritzer, and I must admit, this is a piece I’ve been waiting to write for some time—since 2006, in fact, when I saw her for the first time in her Joe’s Pub triumph, Leslie Kritzer Is Patti LuPone at Les Mouches. (I ended up seeing the show three times, which—given the sardine-can compression of my schedule—testified to just how much I loved it.) No footage of that show is publicly available, unfortunately; although it was recorded, it was never released. But other footage of Kritzer does exist, and so we’ll give you a small taste of the magic…after the jump.
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The first time I saw Thomas Sadoski on stage, I didn’t realize I’d actually seen his work before (as a hit-man-hiring hubby in the 2004 revival of Reckless. Sorry, don’t really remember him). But sometimes an actor doesn’t make an impression the first time. It has nothing to do with talent and more to do with the character—not to mention the viewer’s own life. When I watched Sadoski in Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty last season Off Broadway, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Yes, I admit, he was absolutely adorable in a schlubby slacker sort of way, but it was more than that. As Greg—a smart but directionless underachiever trapped in a dead-end job who grows up in the wake of a brutal breakup—Sadoski reminded me of an ex. Okay, the ex. You know, the one I dated and dumped and more or less moved on from but still cyberstalk on Facebook. Read more »
Osnes dines out on her talent.
Laura Osnes was unfairly swept up in the wave of critical derision that greeted 2007’s appalling revival of Grease. Everyone wanted to trash the show, and few took time to notice that the lovely Osnes—despite having been cast through a televised reality show that everyone rightly deplored—was very appealing as Sandy.
Perhaps Osnes will get a fairer shake in her latest Broadway role, which was announced earlier today: that of the romantically inclined nurse Nellie Forbush in Lincoln Center’s beautifully staged, massively popular revival of South Pacific. (Osnes will take over the role on March 10, when Kelli O’Hara begins her maternity leave; O’Hara is scheduled to resume the part on October 6.) Let’s hope that she can use this role to wash that Grease right out of her hair.
Nepotism is to show business as toxic waste is to nuclear power: inevitable and a source of pollution. It’s just not fair that Sophia Coppola can raise millions for her twee little flicks, or that Ashlee Simpson was allowed to leave her sister’s compound. We recently ended eight years under a dynastic President who was barely fit to run a Chuck E. Cheese. And yet, in acting, sometimes talent really does run down the family tree. After the jump, this week’s fresh face.
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