2014 Tony Predictions: Best Featured Actress

In my last post we discussed the supporting men, and today we discuss the supporting women who are up for Tony Awards in just a couple weeks' time.  Predicting these two categories will be tough, as both races are pretty wide open at the moment.  And then you have to take into account that the actress who should win is not always the person who will when, which throws another wrench into any sort of speculation.  But I am nothing if not persistent, so read on to see my best guesses for this year's big winners.

Best Featured Actress in a Play

The always charming Celia Keenan-Bolger was ideally cast as Laura in The Glass Menagerie, even if director John Tiffany let her down with some of his more bizarre choices.

 

Nominees: Sarah Greene, The Cripple of Inishmaan; Celia Keenan-Bolger, The Glass Menagerie; Sophie Okonedo, A Raisin in the Sun; Anika Noni Rose, A Raisin in the Sun; Mare Winningham, Casa Valentina

Many deserving women are nominated in this category, but at the same time there aren't any that seem to demand Tony recognition.  The Cripple of Inishmann, despite positive reviews and the presence of Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, has proven to be a bit of a non-event in terms of box office and awards potential.  That will hurt Sarah Greene's chances, along with the fact that her character comes across as a tad two-dimensional due to the broad nature of playwright Martin McDonagh's script.  A Raisin in the Sun's Sophie Okonedo and Anika Noni Rose will likely cancel one another out, with the final nail in the coffin being the lukewarm critical reception to that revival in general.  Okonedo is not entirely out of the picture, although she does face the significant handicap of playing the same role Audra McDonald inhabited to Tony-winning effect only 10 years ago.

Mare Winningham of Casa Valentina has been this season's stealth awards contender.  She didn't receive a lot of attention when the Harvey Fierstein dramedy opened last month, but has been a regular fixture on Best Supporting Actress lists and won the Outer Critics Circle Award for her work in the show.  She is probably Celia Keenan-Bolger's biggest competition, although the latter drew universal praise for her lonely, damaged Laura in last fall's The Glass Menagerie.  This is Keenan-Bolger's 3rd career nomination, and she still has a lot of goodwill left from her equally praised turn in Peter and the Starcatcher 2 years ago, which only increases her chances of finally winning.  I'm going to give the slightest of edges to Keenan-Bolger, but she and Winningham are so neck and neck that this is almost too close to call.

Should Win:  Toss-up between Mare Winningham (Casa Valentina) and Celie Keenan-Bolger (The Glass Menagerie)
Will Win:  Celia Keenan-Bolger, The Glass Menagerie                                                                     

 

Best Featured Actress in a Musical

Ingenues are deceptively simply roles to play.  With the wrong actress, they become boring or even worse, obnoxious.  Thankfully Lauren Worsham manages to avoid both of those pitfalls while looking absolutely *fabulous* in her Edwardian hat.

 

Nominees: Linda Emond, Cabaret; Lena Hall, Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Anika Larsen, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical; Adriane Lenox, After Midnight; Lauren Worsham, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder

This is certainly an eclectic group of nominees.  Lena Hall does a lot with very little in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but in this case I think the nomination is the win, and would be very surprised if she was actually called up to the podium on June 8th.  Adriane Lenox is the only previous winner in this group, and although she nails her two big numbers in After Midnight I suspect Tony voters will opt to spread the wealth.  And Anika Larsen is a complete wildcard; despite Beautiful's clutch of nominations I don't consider it to be a serious contender for most awards, but the sheer number of nominations for a show with such a small amount of buzz (despite steadily strong box office) means it must have impressed a lot of people.  Larsen may reap the benefits of that love, especially since Beautiful's subject matter allows her to do more serious "Acting" than many of the nominees in this category.  (Even in musicals, there's the usual awards bias towards dramatic roles, even if it is less pronounced than in plays or film.)

Linda Emond probably deserved to win for her long-suffering wife in the Phillip Seymour Hoffman-led Death of a Salesman (writing these predictions, I'm realizing just how much I disagree with the way the 2012 Tony Awards turned out).  Although I haven't personally seen the show yet, I'm sure Emond is excellent in Roundabout's resurrected Cabaret, but the Tony committee's distaste for that production is probably her biggest stumbling block.  Which leaves us with newcomer Lauren Worsham, who is making a sensational Broadway debut in A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder.  Like 2011 winner Nikki M. James, Worsham plays the reliably winsome ingénue in a comedy dominated by two hilarious men, and like James, I think Worsham's ability to turn a potentially boring part into a fully formed, believable character will net her Tony gold this year.

Should Win:  Linda Emond, Cabaret
Will Win:  Lauren Worsham, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder

That takes us through all of the Featured categories; check back soon for my predictions for Best Actor and Actress.  And in the interim, check out the rest of my 2014 Tony Awards coverage below!

2014 Tony Nominations React
Best Direction and Choreography
Best Book and Score
Best Featured Actor

Insanely Early 2014 Tony Predictions: Part I

It's never too early to start discussing Tony Award contenders (at least, not for me).  And since we're in the middle of the winter no man's land between the fall and spring Broadway offerings, now is as good a time as any to look back on the first half of this season on the Great White Way.  Obviously we have a lot of shows left to open, so at this point only those who have made a major impression on the theatre-going community can be considered true Tony contenders.  As I do at the end of each theatre season, I'm going to go through all of the major Tony categories and note which productions and people I think have a real shot at recognition come nomination time. 

WARNING:  Occasional snark and a great deal of speculation to follow.

Best Musical

Smartly written and expertly cast, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is easily the best of the fall's new musical offerings.

There were actually (surprisingly) a fair number of productions eligible for the Best Musical category over the past six months.  Unfortunately, there are also a lot more new musicals on the horizon, and this fall's shows (especially the ones that have closed) stand a good chance of being overshadowed/forgotten come Tony time.  If I were to pick the show with the highest chance of securing a Best Musical nomination, I would go with A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, which in addition to being hilarious is one of the smarter book musicals to come around in a long time.  If a second fall show sneaks into this category then the well-reviewed After Midnight has a shot, although it's status as a revue rather than a book show hurts its chances with the sometimes snobby Tony voters.

I personally enjoyed Big Fish, but it was a divisive show and that decreases its chances immensely, especially in the face of the formidable-looking spring line-up.  There's also the off chance that Baby Boomer baiting Beautiful scores a surprise nomination, but despite its rosy box office prospects I think it will ultimately be passed over by the more discerning voters.  A Night with Janis Joplin and First Date are ultimately slight entertainments unlikely to gain any serious awards traction, and if Soul Doctor gets mentioned at all on the Tony telecast it will likely be as the butt of somebody's joke.  I mean, does anyone even remember Soul Doctor happened?  And what is it going to take to get a show that lasts more than a few months into the Circle in the Square?

Best Play

As of right now, this is the weakest this category has been in years.  Most of the plays from the fall were star-driven revivals, with only A Time to Kill and The Snow Geese even eligible for this award.  Both were met with critical and audience indifference, and there are enough interesting-sounding plays scheduled for spring that I suspect both will be shut out of the Tonys.  *If* (and that's a very big "if") one of these plays were to be nominated, it would probably be Sharr White's WWI drama The Snow Geese, but I find that highly unlikely.

Best Musical Revival

In something I consider a celebration, there were no musical revivals on Broadway this fall.  Every tuner that premiered was a new show, so currently this is a wide open race.  There are also only 4 revivals scheduled for the spring, and that's assuming Roundabout's remounting of their Tony-winning Cabaret is even deemed eligible for competition (which I suspect it won't be).  So basically, everyone gets nominated!

Best Play Revival

Did anyone think that a 400-year-old Shakespeare comedy would be one of the critical and commercial smashes of the fall season?  But Mark Rylance and the all-male company have made Twelfth Night must-see, hysterical theatre.

Thanks to the repertory productions that took Broadway by storm, there are already plenty of play revivals eligible for this year's Tonys.  The double bill of Twelfth Night and Richard III in particular has been a box office and critical sensation, and I would be shocked if Twelfth Night wasn't nominated (in fact, at this moment I think it's the likely winner).  And while I personally hated it, most critics and audience members have been over the moon about this latest production of The Glass Menagerie, so I'm going to name it the second sure thing in this category.  I also wouldn't be surprised to see one of the Patrick Steward/Ian McKellan shows nominated (probably Waiting for Godot), although their slot is the most endangered should the spring revivals prove particularly strong and/or popular.  Despite fantastic reviews, the Roundabout's revivals of The Winslow Boy and Machinal lack the star power to be serious contenders, and the producers of the Daniel Craig-led Betrayal will likely have to content themselves with the millions of dollars they made from that sold out but not necessarily well-reviewed production.  Betrayal always had the air of being an event that was separate from rather than a part of the Broadway season, and the competition is simply too strong for even the mighty James Bond to conquer.


That's my take on the production races and where they stand so far.  There of course is always the chance for surprises, but history has taught us that shows which fail to make a major impression in the fall don't stand much chance at Tony love once the spring shows open (especially if the fall shows have shuttered before nominations are announced).  I am also making some of these predictions based on the assumed strength of the spring's offerings, so if that becomes a surprise in either direction (really strong or really weak overall), then things will change as well.

Check back soon for my thoughts on how the acting races are shaping up so far.

The Worst Shows of 2013

Every year, I like to do a snarkier, far less goodnatured companion to my Best Shows of the Year lists (which you can see here and here).  Because as much as I wish it wasn't so, some shows are just bad, and there's no excuse for that in a city with such a wealth of talented, knowledgeable theatre professionals.

So here, for your reading enjoyment, is my Worst Shows of 2013 list.  Just like my Best Shows list, for a production to be eligible it must have: 1) opened during the 2013 calendar year; and 2) been seen by yours truly.  The good news is that this year, I couldn't even come up with my standard list of 5, which means either the shows were generally better this year or I was better at avoiding the real stinkers.  The shows with the "honor" of making this list were not just bad, but so bad that I found them to be an insult to the art form and those of us who love it.  I know there's at least one choice that's going to cause some controversy, but I fully stand behind my naming these shows the four least enjoyable things I've seen this year.

4) The Glass Menagerie

Cherry Jones and Celia Keenan-Bolger; two superbly cast, horribly directed actresses in Broadway's latest Glass Menagerie.

I'm sure many will disagree with this choice, as the current Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie has ended up on many critics' Best Of lists, with several going so far as proclaiming it the best production of the play they've ever seen.  I don't know what production those critics saw, but the show I witnessed was a prime example of good material ruined by bad direction.  Menagerie may be a "memory play" with a certain dreamlike quality to it, but that doesn't give director John Tiffany permission to hopscotch from abstract concept to abstract concept mid-performance.  Celia Keenan-Bolger's first entrance from inside the couch is a striking visual, but it sets up a convention that is never again revisited and therefore seems extraneous in hindsight (no other characters makes an entrance or exit nearly as interesting).  The choreographed interstitials, seemingly left over from Tiffany's Tony-winning musical Once, are the definition of random, and provide no useful service to either character development or narrative structure.  The four actors are well cast, but then poorly directed to the point where none of the roles land the way they need to for the piece to truly sing.  While I appreciate Tiffany's choice to emphasize the play's comedy as a way to free it from the baggage of being a Great American Drama, he has defanged the play (and the character of Amanda in particular) to the point where the final scenes have none of the poignancy or resonance they were clearly meant to.  I know I'm in the minority with this opinion, but I truly don't understand what all the fuss is about, which is doubly disappointing as this was one of the fall shows I was most excited to see.

3) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

At least Scarlett Johansson and Benjamin Walker are easy on the eyes.

On paper, reviving Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Tony-winner Scarlett Johansson sounds like a surefire recipe for success (and you haters can shut your mouths, because she was outstanding in A View from the Bridge).  But the first of many poor decisions made by the producers was booking the cavernous Richard Rodgers Theatre, which is simply too big for the scale of this play.  The actors were practically swallowed by the gargantuan set and playing space, and compensated for it by screaming most of their lines in a desperate attempt to fill the space.  This need by the entire cast to push, perhaps at director Rob Ashford's encouragement, robbed the play of all subtly and variance in emotional intensity, resulting in a very long evening of deeply unhappy people yelling at each other.  And not in a good way, as in other Pulitzer Prize winners like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or August: Osage County.  Here's hoping the critical and commercial failure of this production doesn't scare the supremely talented Johansson away from Broadway forever.

2) Little Miss Sunshine

"I can't answer the question, 'Are we there yet?' No one knows what direction this show is headed in!"

The best word I can think of to describe the film version of Little Miss Sunshine is "quirky," which is one of the hardest traits to convey onstage.  But if anyone was capable of pulling it off, it should have been James Lapine and William Finn, whose collaboration on The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was the definition of "quirky" and a surprise critical and commercial success.  Unfortunately, lightning failed to strike twice, and the Off-Broadway premiere of Little Miss Sunshine was a borderline painful experience.  Lapine and Finn seemed unable to decide if they wanted to emphasize the comedy or the drama, and splitting the difference resulted in neither one being particularly successful.  Structurally the show was a nightmare, with most of Finn's songs serving little to no purpose and in several cases making character motivations and feelings more obscure rather than clearer.  The supremely talented cast - including Tony-nominees Stephanie J. Block, Rory O'Malley, and Will Swenson - all struggled mightily to overcome the frankly terrible material, and unfortunately none of them emerged entirely unscathed from the debacle.  Heavily rewritten after its original premiere at La Jolla Playhouse, perhaps it's time the creators declare this show unsalvageable and move on to other ventures.

1) Cinderella

You're right, Laura.  It's NOT fair that you two have to act in this debacle.

I really struggled with whether to crown Little Miss Sunshine or Cinderella the year's worst show, but ultimately the complete debacle occurring nightly at the Broadway Theatre is the more egregious waste of money and talent.  Although officially titled Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, this completely reworked version of the 1957 telemovie bears such little resemblance to that work it might as well be a new show.  For reasons I will never understand, Douglas Carter Beane was contracted to rewrite the show's book, despite his work on Lysistrata Jones and Sister Act proving that he wouldn't know proper story structure or quality character writing if it bit him in the ass.  Beane's postmodern sensibility is at complete odds with the earnestness of Rodgers and Hammerstein's score, and he burdens the show with a kindergarten-level lecture on the merits of democracy that is so simplistic it is actively insulting.

Forcing Laura Osnes to act in such drivel is almost criminal, especially considering how ideally suited she is for the Cinderella Rodgers and Hammerstein originally wrote.  Harriet Harris is saddled with the brunt a bad jokes and a character "arc" that makes even less sense than the translated menu at a Chinese take-out restaurant, and watching Ann Harada struggle to act out both sides of the Evil Stepsister dynamic (since Beane has decided to make the other stepsister more sympathetic) is just sad.  To borrow a phrase overused by pretty much every character in the show:  "Seriously?"  The Broadway Theatre has hosted some truly awful productions over the past few years, and unfortunately Cinderella is right up there with Promises, Promises in it's ability to insult and torture anyone unfortunate enough to wind up in the audience.


And there you have it; the worst shows of 2013.  I recommend avoiding these works at all costs, and spending your hard-earned cash on something that actually advances the theatre.  Hopefully this list will be even shorter next year.  Happy New Year!