Tony Awards!!!!! (Part IV: Plays)

PLAY NOMINEES

Generally, the plays are less exciting than the musicals.  This is still true, and therefore I shall try to fit all the plays into one post.  Comming into this year I was actually relatively excited about the plays.  I had heard of several of the revivals, a few movies I liked were being made plays, and lots of great actors were getting in on it.  I thought this would be a great year for the plays...I was right!

Arcadia is the first show to be talked about (because alphabetically it makes sense).  Unfortunately I have little to nothing to say about Arcadia.  I know that it's a show about Victorian era England that was nominated for best revival, but that's about it!  We barely even heard of it the entire night.  When we saw it was nominated for best revival it was a "Wait...what?  Where did that come from?" moment.  My guess is only a few revivals were done this year so it wasn't actually a real candidate for best revival.  I may be wrong, because there are plenty of good shows that don't get nominated for much.  But at it's core, this show just seemed boring!

Arcadia was nominated for 2 Tony award and didn't win either of them:

Best Revival of a play - nominated

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play (Billy Crudup) - nominated

Good People looked a bit more interesting.  As many popular plays, this show has a small cast and tells a modern story.  The plot of the show looked like nothing special.  Just one more show about a lower class person wallowing in his/her struggles when a rich guy comes in and drama ensues.  So with a concept as normal as this, it is left to the actors and writers to make the show worth seeing.  And apparently they did just that.  Since I didn't get to see the show and there's less about plays online, I can't know for sure but it looked interesting enough.  They did win an award (with one of the more exciting speeches I might add) for best leading Actress, so I was glad.  Although they didn't win best play, I suspect (as confirmed by Mrs. McDormand's speech) that the show will bounce around small professional theaters for quite some time.

Good People was nominated for 2 Tony Awards and won 1 of them:

Best Play - nominated

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play (Frances Mcdormand) - WINNER

The Importance of Being Earnest has been one of my favorite plays for quite some time now.  I loved the book when I had to read it in school, and to this day I concider it one of the wittiest funniest shows ever to grace Broadway's stage.  So, needless to say, I was excited to see that they were reviving it this year.  In fact, I believe that this revival is being filmed and will be coming out in movie format in a few years (like Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George and many others).  The show is a hillarious farce about four young people (two guys and two girls) who are in the craziest love triangle type confusion.  If you like quick wit and dry humor then this show will be the best thing since....well, since the show came out the first time!  The other interesting fact about this show, is that the character of "Lady Bracknel" the spinster old lady of the world, is played by director Brian Bedford.  Yes, a man does play the role of Lady Bracknel.  That's Broadway for ya!

The Importance of Being Earnest was nominated for 3 Tony Awards and won 1:

Best Revival of a Play - nominated

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play (Brian Bedford) - nominated

Best Costume Design of a Play - WINNER

Jerusalem was not at all like what I expected.  By the name I thought it was going to be some heartfelt story about Israel's struggles.  Then I saw the picture (see below) and thought it might be about a marathon runner or something.  I WAS WRONG!  It ended up being a really strange show about a band of misfits, led by a man who's lived in the woods for 30 years, who are protesting the demolition of the forest.  Now, there are plenty of great shows out there about a band of outcasts (RENT, "Spelling Bee" etc.) but this show seemed diferent.  From the looks of it it's one of broadways many MANY "R-rated" shows.  I kind of picture it like the comic strip Non Sequitur's "B.E." series.  Just a bunch of crude guys who live in the middle of nowhere with no since of purpose or responsibility but an "ample supply of drugs and alchohol".   I'm sure it's a funny show, but it doesn't look like it's for me personally.  However, it did ok in the awards.

Jerusalem was nominated for 6 Tony Awards and won 1 of them:

Best Play - nominated

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play (Mark Rylance) - WINNER

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play (Mackenzie Crook) - nominated

Best Scenic Design of a Play - nominated

Best Lighting Design of a Play - nominated

Best Sound Design of a Play - nominated

The Merchant of Venice happens to be the only Shakespeare work that I have read (unless you count West Side Story...which most people don't).  I love it because once you get past Shakespeare's language, you find a few comedic moments, but mostly a band of absoultely fantastic characters.  So this show I was already excited about, but then I saw the cast!  With Al Pacino (Micheal [The Godfather]) reprising his film role of Shylock, Jessie L Martin (Collins [RENT]) playing Antonio's lovestruck friend Gratio, and the hysterical Christopher Fitzgerald (Boq [Wicked], Igor [Young Frankenstein]) playing the only comedic role in the intire show: Launcelot Gobo.  This show was nominated for more awards than any other play, but unfortunately didn't do as well as I had kind of hoped.  It two had it's thunder stolen by The Normal Heart.

The Merchant of Venice was nominated for 7 Tony Awards and didn't win any of them:

Best Revival of a Play - nominated

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play (Al Pacino) - nominated

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play (Lily Rabe) - nominated

Best Direction of a Play - nominated

Best Scenic Design of a Play - nominated

Best Costume Design of a Play - nominated

Best Lighting Design of a Play - nominated

The Mother ****** with the Hat was not my favorite show after just hearing the title!  I did find it funny how every time it was in the media it had a different name, the one I chose was as conservitive as I could get it without calling it "The Mother with the Hat" (like the Tony Awards did) and thereby confuse people.  The show does have some big names such as Chris Rock (popular TV guy, I know him from his voice of Marty in Dreamworks's "Madagascar"), and Bobby Cannavale (Who we know from dating Sutton Foster) star in this show.  It looks like it might be an interesting show about life in a bad part of town.  From what I can tell its kind of like RENT except without any epic music, talented actors, or good plotlines.  (ok that might have been a bit harsh, but I'm just explaining that I'm pretty sure RENT was better than this).  I suppose if someone wasn't offended by language or "adult themes" this would be a relatively enjoyable show, but it's not for me.

The Mother ****** With the Hat was nominated for 6 awards and didn't win any of them:

Best Play - nominated

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play (Bobby Cannavale) - nominated

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play (Yul Vázquez) - nominated

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play (Elizabeth Rodriguez) - nominated

Best Direction of a Play - nominated

Best Scenic Design of a Play - nominated

The Normal Heart was the talk of the night.  It won the first two awards of the night and then went on to dominated the revivals for most of the ceremony.  One interesting thing that I noticed was that every single Tony recepiant from The Normal Heart always mentioned the message of the show.  They obviously felt really strong about the moral of this story.  It wasn't until the final speech of theirs that we got to see what that moral is.  Apparently it is about people (or more specifically one person) dealing with HIV/AIDS.  It definately looks like a heartfelt show that really would move people.  And the cast seemed pretty close, there's not very many of them (as in many plays) but they certainly appeared to have a bond stronger than the other nominees (but that's just by judging the speeches and crowd reactions, which isn't that reliable).  I'm not surprised this show did as well as it did, it looked like a real quality show.  Another fun fact about this show is that it was co-directed by Joel Grey (Wizard [Wicked], Emcee [Cabaret]).  So it was pretty cool that he won both best revival of a play, and revival of a musical!

The Normal Heart was nominated for 5 Tony Awards and won 3 of them:

Best Revival of a Play - WINNER

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play (Joe Mantello) - nominated

Best Performance by an Actor in Featured Role in a Play (John Benjamin Hickey) - WINNER

Best Performance by an actress in a Featured Role in a Play (Ellen Barkin) - WINNER

Best Direction of a Play - nominated

Warhorse was the spectacle of the evening as far as the plays were concerned.  It had the highest percentage of wins in the play catagory, and was the coolest to watch throughout the whole ceremony.  Heck, the Handspring Puppet Company (who worked on the show) won an award especially designed for them!  The show sounds like it's a relatively mediocher plot: A boy loves his horse; horse goes into the military; boy enlists to find horse; horse saves boy's life.  So it (Like Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark from what I hear) relied on visual spectacle instead of quality plotline to carry the show.  The puppetry for the horses were just amazing!  They were lifesized, sturdy enough to be ridden upon, moved much like a real horse, and each took three people to control.  It was really no surprise that it was going to win best play because it just stole the show everytime it was nominated...LITERALLY!

 War Horse was nominated for 5 Tony Awards and won 6 of them (I know it's crazy!):

Best Play - WINNER

Best Direction of a Play - WINNER

Best Scenic Design of a Play - WINNER

Best Lighting Design of a Play - WINNER

Best Sound Design of a Play - WINNER

Special Tony Award (Handspring Puppet Company) - WINNER

Other Notable Plays:

One big trend in this year's plays was the hollywood presence.  The major ones not mentioned above are: Jim Belushi (Born Yesterday), Vannessa Redgrave, James Earl Jones (Driving Miss Daisy), Ben Stiller (The House of Blue Leaves), David Hyde Pierce (La Bete).  THAT'S ALOT!  Add to that the ones that were mentioned above (Al Pacino, Chris Rock etc.) and you can see that once again Hollywood actors are realizing that theater is better!