2014 Tony Predictions: Best Actress

Without a doubt, these next two categories are the most competitive of this year's Tony races.  There are some phenomenal performances being given by some of Broadway's best-loved actresses, and the Best Actress in a Musical race is particularly brutal this year.  I will also admit that I have particularly strong feelings about these two races which may be blinding my objective judgement, so if I get these two wrong you'll know why.  With that said, here are my thoughts on who will (and should) win.

Best Actress in a Play

Audra McDonald is apparently incapable of delivering even an average performance; all of her Broadway outings have been virtually flawless.

 

 

Nominees: Tyne Daly, Mothers and Sons; LaTanya Richardson Jackson, A Raisin in the Sun; Cherry Jones, The Glass Menagerie; Audra McDonald, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill; Estelle Parsons, The Velocity of Autumn

I think this Sunday will see Audra McDonald make history by collecting a record-breaking sixth Tony Award for her phenomenal work in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill.  If she wins, not only will McDonald have received more acting Tonys than any performer in history, she will also be the first woman to win in all four performance categories.  Anyone who has seen McDonald in Lady Day knows the singing actress is doing an uncanny job of channeling the late Billie Holiday, but Broadway's reigning queen goes far beyond mere impersonation.  She is Holiday reincarnated, with a performance that is free of the artifice and forced mannerisms that often plagues actors tasked with playing real people.  It is an impeccable piece of acting, and definitely a worthy role to propel McDonald into the history books.

The only person with even the slightest chance of unseating McDonald is The Glass Menagerie's Cherry Jones, but it is a long shot to say the least.  Even though this beloved actress gave what some termed the performance of her career, McDonald just has too much of a lead (McDonald has won every guild award she has been eligible for this year).  Tyne Daly, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, and Estelle Parsons will just have to take solace in the fact they even managed to get nominated in such a competitive year.

NOTE: I should probably mention that McDonald is also my all-time favorite Broadway performer (I will go see her in anything), so I fully admit some personal bias has entered into this article.

Will and Should Win: Audra McDonald, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill

 

Best Actress in a Musical

Performances on the level of Kelli O'Hara's in The Bridges of Madison County are rare.  If she doesn't win, the Tony voters will have lost major credibility points.

 

Nominess: Mary Bridget Davies, A Night with Janis Joplin; Sutton Foster, Violet; Idina Menzel, If/Then; Jessie Mueller, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical; Kelli O'Hara, The Bridges of Madison County

If Kelli O'Hara does not win her long-overdue first Tony Award on Sunday, I am declaring this year's awards null and void.  O'Hara was absolutely sensational in the gone-too-soon Bridges of Madison County, giving a performance that is frankly on an entirely different level from this year's other nominees.  Her brilliance isn't just because of her phenomenal singing, although O'Hara's crystalline soprano has never sounded better than it did singing the breathtaking melodies Jason Robert Brown wrote specifically for her.  Her ability to give a nuanced, deeply felt and believably acted performance while singing the most difficult music of the season was a master class in musical theatre acting and the heights it can reach.  Add in the fact that O'Hara is a perpetual Tonys bridesmaid (this is her 5th nomination in the past 10 years) that is almost universally respected and earns raves even when her shows are critically panned, and it is time Tony voters wised up and gave her the damn award already.

Sutton Foster was perfectly charming in Violet, and gets extra points for stretching herself artistically with a more dramatic role than she typically tackles.  Idina Menzel was even better than expected in If/Then, a performance which is significantly more nuanced and accomplished than her work in Wicked 10 years ago (for which she won).  I have not personally seen Mary Bridget Davies or Jessie Mueller in their respective shows, but I'm sure they are lovely.  However, Kelli O'Hara has earned this, and picking anyone other than O'Hara as the winner would be a grave mistake.

It must be said that Mueller does pose a legitimate threat to O'Hara, as the talented young actress seems to be Broadway's latest It Girl.  Mueller has gone from being an unknown to headlining a major new musical in just 3 short years, but the fact of the matter is Mueller will have plenty more chances to win a Tony or two.  I also cannot fathom what Mueller could be doing in Beautiful (a dull sounding jukebox musical that holds no interest for me) that tops O'Hara's career-best work in Bridges.

There is a possibility Mueller wins the Tony; you might even say there is a strong possibility, since Mueller just took home the Drama Desk Award on Sunday, beating out O'Hara in the process.  But Mueller beating O'Hara would be wrong, and I have to believe Tony voters can see that.  If they mistakenly select Mueller on Sunday night, I firmly believe in 10 year's time the general population will look back and agree that O'Hara was more deserving for what may well become her signature role (similar to how most people now agree Bernadette Peters should have won for Sunday in the Park with George, even though Chita Rivera is an immense talent and no one begrudges her a Tony or two).  With all due respect to Mueller, she can wait another season or two.

Will and Should Win: Kelli O'Hara, The Bridges of Madison County


And that covers all of the acting categories for this year's awards.  Check back tomorrow as I start to tackle this year's production categories, starting with the revivals.  And be sure to check out all of my previous Tonys coverage below!

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



God Bless Audra McDonald

Review: Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill

Has Audra McDonald just won herself a record-breaking sixth Tony?  It's hard to say, but no one can argue with the virtuosic quality of her latest Broadway endeavor.

When you enter the Circle in the Square Theatre, home of the Broadway revival of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, it legitimately feels like you've entered an underground jazz club.  After descending down into the basement lobby, you must enter the smoke-filled theatre proper to the quiet buzz of patrons talking amongst themselves as they find their seats.  A jazz trio plays to the steadily increasing audience, some of whom are seated onstage at tables that further increase the club-like atmosphere.  And then, just as the last few audience members take their seats, the lights dim and she appears.

Not Audra McDonald, the five-time Tony-winner with above-the-title billing on the evening's Playbill; you won't catch even a glimpse of her over the course of Lady Day's intermissionless 90 minutes.  With a jittery walk and a slightly unfocused gaze that belies her intoxicated state, the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday saunters onstage and begins her set, seemingly back from the dead.  The mannerisms, the stream of conscious rambling, and the distinctively mournful voice that expresses a life fully lived, are all hallmarks of Lady Day.  And for the rest of the evening, you are in the palm of her hand; she has control over you, even when she loses control of herself.

To say that McDonald is giving the performance of the season as Billie Holiday seems disingenuous, as she has accomplished what all actors aspire to but few actually achieve: she doesn't seem to be acting at all.  McDonald fully disappears inside Holiday, becoming the legendary singer so completely that she's virtually unrecognizable.  McDonald's heralded voice is completely changed as it adopts Holiday's vocal ticks and mannerisms, but the actress' musicality and song interpretation have arguably never been better.  She is so convincingly, measurably intoxicated throughout the evening that the audience audibly gasps when she falls off the stage, a move that in hindsight was obviously planned but at the moment felt like a legitimate threat to the McDonald's safety.

But make no mistake, her performance goes far beyond mere physical impersonation.  Although the show is essentially a 90-minute monologue, McDonald is so in the moment she never feels rehearsed (the only real giveaways that the evening isn't entirely improvised are the perfectly timed lighting and music cues).  You see McDonald's Holiday have the thoughts before she expresses them, and it genuinely feels as if this is the first time she's put these words in this particular order.  She has fantastic connection to and interplay with the audience - who she repeatedly, almost desperately refers to as "my friends" - which again contributes to the underground club vibe, and demonstrates a searing emotional vulnerability as she shares various and often painful anecdotes about her life.  While the Circle in the Square's small size certainly contributes to the feeling of intimacy, it is McDonald's performance and accessibility that allows you to leave feeling as if you truly know Holiday.

It is unfortunate that Lanie Robertson's script isn't fully worthy of McDonald's numerous gifts, although at the same time anything that provides a framework which allows the kind of performance McDonald is giving cannot be completely dismissed.  The writing nails the free-associative nature of an intoxicated individual so well that it ultimately robs the play of some of its impact, since the script lacks any discernible narrative arc or rising tension.  Perhaps this is by design (the play's central conceit is that no one, including Holiday, realized this would be one of her final public performances before an untimely death), but that doesn't negate the vague sense of dissatisfaction the work leaves you with.  Yet the play does provide a fleshed-out portrait of a deeply troubled artist, while simultaneously putting a personal face on some of the racial issues that plagued the pre-Civil Rights era and are unfortunately still problems today.

Director Lonny Price has seamlessly staged the evening, subtly nudging the production here and there to give it as much dramatic heft as possible.  He keeps the evening interesting and involving while doing remarkably little (James Noone's spot-on scenic design purposely doesn't give Holiday much space to move around), and has obviously helped enable and shape McDonald's performance into the master class it currently is.  As previously mentioned, Robert Wierzel's lighting design is just about perfect, and while costumer ESosa was only called upon to create one look for McDonald it is an absolute stunner.  And the jazz trio of Sheldon Becton (piano), Clayton Craddock (drums), and George Farmer (bass) make absolutely beautiful music together.

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, despite being a last-minute addition to the current Broadway season, is a high class affair that has been lovingly rendered from top to bottom.  While Lanie Robertson's script isn't fantastic, it provides the foundation on which McDonald builds one of the most impressive feats of acting I have ever seen.  In her last Broadway appearance, McDonald went operatically big in The Gershwin's Porgy & Bess and won a Tony for it; the fact that she is just as effective, if not moreso, in something as small and intimate as Lady Day proves there is nothing this versatile performer cannot do.  Billie Holiday died long ago, but thanks to McDonald she lives again nightly on Broadway.

Best Actress Bloodbath?

Rumor has it Audra McDonald has added an extra room to her Manhattan home; my guess is its to house all her Tony Awards.

As soon as Bronx Bombers announced it's closing date last week, rumors began circulating that the Circle in the Square Theatre would be the site of a sooner-than-expected Broadway return for 5-time Tony winner and all around theatrical goddess Audra McDonald.  Now those rumors are official, and this year's Tony race just got even more interesting.

One of the most gifted actresses to ever grace the Broadway stage, McDonald is tied with Angela Lansbury as the most decorated performer in Tony history.  Even more impressive is the fact that with the exception of the 2003 revival of Henry IV, McDonald has been nominated for every single one of her previous Broadway appearances.  Considering the theatrical community's overwhelming love of her, and her even more overwhelming talent, conventional wisdom states that if McDonald sets foot on a Broadway stage, she *will* get a Tony nomination.  Considering that her latest project, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, is a one-woman show with nothing to distract from the luminous and golden voiced McDonald, I see no reason why this year would be the year that trend changes.  The only question is, which performers' Tony dreams did she just make more difficult with her late in the game Broadway appearance?

Given that McDonald's chosen vehicle contains 18 songs made famous by the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday, the immediate assumption is that this would throw McDonald into the already crowded Best Actress in a Musical race.  This is a race that already includes all but assured nominations for previous Tony winners Sutton Foster and Idina Menzel, previous nominee Jessie Mueller, and perpetual Tony bridesmaid Kelli O'Hara (will someone please give this woman a Tony already??).  At this point, the one wild card spot is most likely to go to either Marin Mazzie - presuming she isn't deemed a supporting player in Bullets Over Broadway - or Michelle Williams, presuming Roundabout's remounting of their Tony-winning Cabaret is deemed eligible for awards consideration.  At this point, it's pretty obvious that someone, likely a very deserving someone, is going to get left out, and I don't think it will be McDonald.

However, as the Broadway.com article linked to above points out, Lady Day is traditionally billed as a "play with music."  Don't ask me how a show with 18 musical numbers gets considered a play; Tony eligibility rulings can be somewhat arbitrary, such as in 2004 when McDonald was deemed a supporting player in A Raisin in the Sun despite having just as much stage time and importance to the narrative as her costar Phylicia Rashad (the upside of that distinction is that it allowed both women to take home Tony Awards that year).  Should Lady Day be considered a play, McDonald becomes a major roadblock between Cherry Jones and her presumptive 3rd Tony Award, and road which already faces potentially stiff competition from Tyne Daly.  Fun fact: should McDonald win Best Actress in a Play, she will have won a Tony in all four categories in which a female performer is eligible.

Personally, as much as the classification may seem questionable, I hope Lady Day is indeed ruled a play and keeps McDonald out of the super crowded Best Actress in the Musical race.  It is already going to be hard enough for the long overdue O'Hara to finally win Tony gold without having to also contend with one of the greatest stage actresses of all time.  Also, I should point out that while anything is possible at this point, I don't actually expect McDonald to win whichever race she ends up competing in.  I think it is much more likely that McDonald wins her record-breaking sixth Tony Award should the rumored revival of 'night, Mother come to fruition.  Or, as I like to dream about, when Stephen Sondheim comes out of retirement and writes one final show for McDonald's singular talent, a hypothetical show which I would pay any amount of money to see.

However awards season shakes down, the big news of the day is that Audra McDonald is coming back to Broadway!  She is one of the greatest talents the New York stage has ever known, which is not something I say lightly, and we should all thank our lucky stars any and every time we are offered the chance to see her perform.