2012 Tony Predictions: Best Actress

Now we arrive at the two most competitive categories of the year:  Best Actress in a Play and Best Actress in a Musical.  With so many sterling performances by Broadway’s leading ladies this year, choosing just one seems criminal, but I will do my best.  Please keep in mind my two caveats:  1) I have not seen all of the nominees (at least in the play categories); and 2) Who will win is not necessarily the same as who should win, a difference I will explain in more detail throughout the body of the article.

Best Actress in a Play

Nominees:  Nina Arianda, Venus in Fur; Tracie Bennett, End of the Rainbow; Stockard Channing, Other Desert Cities; Linda Lavin, The Lyons; Cynthia Nixon, Wit

Where do I even begin?  All five of these women gave critically lauded performances in well-reviewed productions, meaning the eventual winner will be determined as much by buzz as actual merit.  While all of the nominees are Tony-worthy, I think Cynthia Nixon has the least chance of winning.  Yes, critics adored Nixon’s turn as a college professor with terminal cancer, and the same role won actress Kathleen Chalfant every acting prize she was eligible for when Wit premiered Off-Broadway 14 years ago.  But with her show now closed, Nixon doesn’t have the chance to remind Tony voters how well she stacks up against the competition.

Linda Lavin and Nina Arianda have the advantage of being in currently running plays, but they somehow haven’t amassed the same level of buzz as their competition.  Lavin famously passed on the Broadway transfers of both Follies and Other Desert Cities in order to do The Lyons, and despite her tour de force performance the show hasn’t really caught on with critics or audiences.  Nina Arianda is two for two when it comes to Tony nods (she was also nominated for her Broadway debut last year), but Venus in Fur opened so long ago that I fear she’ll be forgotten despite Venus being in the running for Best Play.  She could be a dark horse candidate, but by definition dark horses are not the most likely winners.

The real contenders are Tracie Bennett and Stockard Channing, who are both giving the type of over the top diva performances Tony voters love.  Channing finds every shade imaginable in her domineering mother character from Other Desert Cities, and for much of the season was considered the front runner for this award.  But then Tracie Bennett arrived and became the talk of the town for her performance as a drug-addled, aging Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow.  Convincingly portraying a beloved icon with such ardent fans is no small feat, and since she utterly dominates Rainbow (as opposed to the more ensemble-oriented Other Desert Cities), I think the Best Actress trophy is Bennett’s to lose.  I’ll be rooting for Arianda, who has twice proven she is an extraordinary talent and a superstar in the making, but the smart money is on Bennett.

Will Win:  Tracie Bennett, End of the Rainbow

Should Win:  Nina Arianda, Venus in Fur

Best Actress in a Musical

Nominees:  Jan Maxwell, Follies; Audra McDonald, Porgy and Bess; Cristin Milioti, Once; Kelli O’Hara, Nice Work If You Can Get It; Laura Osnes, Bonnie & Clyde

There is no doubt in my mind Kelli O’Hara, with her versatility and crystal-clear singing voice, will eventually win herself a Tony.  But it won’t be for Nice Work If You Can Get It, an underwhelming musical that is by no means her best work.  Similarly, if Laura Osnes continues to improve the way she has since getting her big break in the last Grease revival, she will someday find herself in possession of the coveted statuette.  But with Bonnie & Clyde unfairly trounced by critics and having shuttered ages ago, Osnes is also effectively out of the running.

The remaining three contenders have each done fantastic work this season, and a convincing argument could be made for any one of them to win Best Actress.  Ultimately, I think being a first-time nominee will keep the sensational Cristin Milioti from winning, with the Tony voters reasoning that she has plenty of time left to win the award.  That is not a knock against her amazing performance in Once; I would argue she is the best thing about that incredibly strong show.

But perennial Tony favorites Audra McDonald and Jan Maxwell have both exceeded all possible expectations this year.  Jan Maxwell was a revelation in Follies, stopping the show twice with her two big numbers.  She made the acerbic Phyllis endlessly compelling, slowly stripping away character’s icy veneer to reveal the damaged soul underneath.  It was a master class in musical theatre acting, and combined with the fact that this four-time nominee has never won, that makes her the one the beat in many people’s eyes.

Meanwhile Audra McDonald, the universally beloved singing actress, has one Tony for each of Maxwell’s nominations.  It would be perfectly logically for the Tony voters to spread the wealth, especially since we all knew McDonald would be excellent in Porgy and Bess, a role she was born to play.  But it is impossible to comprehend just how amazing her Bess is without seeing it, and I suspect even her biggest fans would find themselves surprised by what a masterful portrayal it is.  McDonald conveys more with her posture and body language than most actresses can in an entire song, and some of the most riveting moments in Porgy are the dialogue-free scenes where you watch Bess’ inner struggle to overcome her self-destructive tendencies.  And when McDonald does sing, she achieves such operatic heights of vocal technique and emotion that it is truly transcendent.

I’ve been agonizing over which actress is more deserving for months, and in many ways the race is still too close to call.  But call it I must, and my gut is favoring McDonald, despite her almost unprecedented four previous wins.  Unlike Maxwell, whose show closed in January, McDonald is still performing nightly and therefore reminding the Tony voters of her nearly unmatched talent.  Her Bess is one for the ages, and probably her best work to date, an especially high compliment when those four other Tony Awards are taken into consideration.  But if ever there was a tie for Best Actress, this would be the year.

Will Win:  Audra McDonald, Porgy and Bess

Should Win:  Audra McDonald AND Jan Maxwell (they are both perfection)

Check back soon for my Best Actor predictions.  Until then, catch up on my previous Tony articles:

Best Featured Actor

Best Featured Actress
Best Score and Book
Best Direction and Choreography

Tony Watch: Assessing the 2011-2012 Broadway Season Part 4

Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti in Once

There are so many shows opening these days on the Great White Way, I don’t even have time to come up with a pithy opening paragraph.  Picking up right where I left out, let’s talk about the Tony nomination prospects for:

The Road to Mecca

This has not been the best season for the Roundabout Theatre Company.  The once-mighty non-profit has overindulged in its habit of producing merely adequate revivals of merely adequate plays, trapping well-respected theatrical talent in productions that are frankly beneath them.  The Road to Mecca has done nothing to change that trend, and will likely be forgotten by all of the major awards-granting bodies.

Wit

Manhattan Theatre Club, on the other hand, continues to win over both critics and audiences with highly praised revivals of acknowledged classics in addition to their adventurous new works.  The first Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit will certainly be among this year’s Best Revival nominees, and MTC’s artistic director Lynne Meadow is a contender for the Best Direction award as well.  Cynthia Nixon’s universally praised star turn makes her a shoe-in for a Best Actress nomination, although winning said award will be a much trickier feat.  On both the musical and play fronts, there has been spectacular work from Broadway’s leading ladies this season, and the Best Actress races are shaping up to be two of the most exciting and unpredictable of the this year’s awards.

Shatner’s World: We Just Live In It

This one man show’s run was so brief that even if the Best Theatrical Event Tony still existed, William Shatner might not qualify for it.  Without that category to compete in, this show doesn’t stand a chance.

Death of a Salesman

Take an undisputed theatrical classic, add an unmistakably talented Oscar winner in the lead role, mix well, and you have one of the event shows of the spring.  One of several Pulitzer Prize winners to grace Broadway this season, Salesman is top tier material, and this revival has been embraced by the entire theatrical community.  Although he is about 20 years too young for the role, audiences have been entranced by Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s searing portrayal of the doomed Willy Loman, and Tony voters will surely follow suit by granting him a Best Actor nomination.

But Hoffman isn’t the only thing critics are raving about in this Salesman.  It scored high marks across the board, making it a contender in several of the big categories and an assured Best Revival nominee.  Of the actors, Linda Emond stands the best chance of being nominated alongside Hoffman for her portrayal of Willy’s wife (also named Linda), but the supporting cast can’t be counted out.  With seven Tony Awards for direction already to his name, Mike Nichols is in as good a position as anyone to snag one of the five hotly contested Best Director nominations, and if it wasn’t a reproduction of the original 1949 design and therefore ineligible, the much-ballyhooed scenic design would be a contender as well.

Once

In recent years, the Best Musical race has invariably come down to a competition between the slickly realized Commercial Success and the artistically daring Critics’ Darling.  Once will surely be this season’s representative of the latter category, putting it in the company of shows like The Scottsboro Boys, Fela!, and Next to Normal that have all attempted to take down their more mass-market competition.  The good news for Once is that the Critics’ Darling always winds up with a host of Tony nominations; the bad news is that it tends to lose out in the major categories.

Once will surely be nominated for Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score, by virtue of its strong reviews and weak competition.  It even stands a good chance of winning the latter two awards, although a Best Musical victory is something of a long shot due to Tony politics best dealt with at a later date.  By virtue of starring in one of the season’s best reviewed musicals, lead performers Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti cannot be counted out of the acting races, although Kazee is more likely to actually score recognition than Milioti, whose category is shaping up to be a bloodbath.

Jesus Christ Superstar

Let’s be honest: there’s really only one Best Musical Revival slot still up for grabs.  Follies, Porgy and Bess, and Evita are all but assured nominations, and I suspect Jesus Christ Superstar will end up with the fourth and final slot.  I’ve already mentioned how the critically lambasted On a Clear Day doesn’t stand a chance in this category, and Superstar is simply a better-realized production than last fall’s Godspell.  It doesn’t hurt that this Superstar arrived on Broadway due to merit and popular demand, and it earns brownie points for solving a lot of the problems inherent in mounting this notoriously hard to stage work.

Other than the revival race, its prospects for awards are pretty grim.  The acting amounts to little more than pained looks, as all of the performers are clearly more focused on getting through Webber’s beast of a score than emoting.  I wouldn’t rule out Des McAnuff’s direction from the nomination pool, as he is largely responsible for what makes this Superstar special, and has been nominated for far less impressive work (Jersey Boys remains one of the most overrated musicals of the past 10 years).  I would really like to see a choreography nomination for Lisa Shriver’s surprising work on the show, but with song and dance spectacles making a comeback and several perpetually nominated choreographers (Kathleen Marshall, Rob Ashford) eligible for this season’s Tonys, Shriver faces an uphill battle.

I’ve just over a week to speculate on the 15(!) remaining productions of this season, so look for another one of these Tony articles sooner rather than later.