ProfMiller's 2013-2014 Kudos Awards: An Eccentric Alternative to the Tonys

I’m told there is some sort of theater awards event coming up in a couple of days—the Teenys?  The Tinys?  Something like that.  But surely, what the world really is waiting for is the announcement of ProfMiller's Kudos Awards for Outstanding Theatrical Achievement for 2013-2014.

Well, the wait is over, gentle reader. In the words of Stephen Schwartz:  “There is magic to do!”  So let’s begin.

For the record, the Kudos Awards encompass Broadway, Off Broadway, and Off-Off Broadway productions and do not take into consideration length of run, size or location of theater, or any life-after-New York touring potential.  What they do take into consideration are the personal biases and judgments of one theatergoer, underpinned by more than a half century of experience as a member of the audience. Do take it in that light.

And so, without further ado, the envelopes, please.

Special Award for Most Improved Theater Company

The first Kudos Award goes to the Roundabout Theatre Company for its consistently strong productions this past season, starting with a top-notch staging of THE WINSLOW BOY, followed by an even better MACHINAL and a splendid VIOLET at the American Airlines Theatre, plus CABARET at Studio 54, and BAD JEWS, DINNER WITH FRIENDS, and JUST JIM DALE at the Laura Pels. Roundabout has overcome a variable reputation for the quality of its productions.  This year’s feast demonstrates a sea change that deserves to be acknowledged and supported.  Kudos AND Bravo to Roundabout!

Special Award for Performing Shakespeare

It’s been a very busy year for the Bard, well represented as he was by multiple productions of KING LEAR, Julie Taymor’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, a Halloween-inspired MACBETH at the Vivian Beaumont, the current muck-infused staging of the same at the Park Avenue Armory, and the pairing of an oddball RICHARD III with the memorable TWELFTH NIGHT on Broadway. But the Kudos Award bypasses all of these and goes, instead, to the WorkShop Theater Company for its loving and gimmick-free production of THE WINTER’S TALE, reminding us that Shakespeare’s beautiful language triumphs over big production values.  

Special Award for Ensemble Acting

The Kudos Award for Best Ensemble Acting goes to the company of THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN. Much focus has been on Daniel Radcliffe, whose presence is certainly an important draw for American audiences, but the entire cast shines and coalesces beautifully, collectively capturing and delivering every bit of off-kilter humor from Martin McDonagh's play.

Individual Acting Awards – Plays

For Best Actress in a Play, the winner has to be Audra McDonald in LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR AND GRILL.  What can I say?  Her performance is gaspably perfect. 

For Best Featured Actress in a Play, we have a tie:  Celia Keenan-Bolger (THE GLASS MENAGERIE) and Kathryn Hunter (A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM). Celia Keenan-Bolger gave an exquisite performance as Laura, glowingly alive in her extended scene with Brian J. Smith as the gentleman caller, and then melting back into herself by play’s end. Kathryn Hunter was outstanding as Puck in Julie Taymor’s dream-like production of Shakespeare’s fantastical comedy at the Theatre for a New Audience.  

For Best Featured Actor in a Play, the winner of the Kudos Award is John Glover as one of the witches in Jack O’Brien’s production of MACBETH. Mr. Glover brought a real spark of otherworldly magic into every scene in which he appeared.  

For Best Lead Actor in a Play, the winner is Jeff Goldblum for his performance as the clueless, foot-in-his-mouth, idiotic stand-in for the likes of Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, and the pre-rehabilitated Bill Clinton in Bruce Norris’s DOMESTICATED.     

Individual Acting Awards – Musicals

For Best Featured Actress in a Musical, the Kudos Award goes to Linda Emond (CABARET). In a production in which pretty much everyone is called upon to play a “type,” she turns Fräulein Schneider into a memorable character, one with a very good singing voice to boot. 

For Best Lead Actress in a Musical, we have a tie:  Sutton Foster (VIOLET) and Jessie Mueller (BEAUTIFUL). Interestingly enough, they bring a similar country/rockabilly quality to their singing—better suited to Sutton Foster’s character, as it happens—but both are at the top of their game in their respective roles.     

For Best Featured Actor in a Musical, the winner is Joshua Henry (VIOLET). He brings grace and style to the role of Flick, and his rendition of “Let It Sing” is truly a showstopper. 

For Best Lead Actor in a Musical, the Kudos Award goes to Neil Patrick Harris, who proves the charismatic equal to Hugh Jackman as the star of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH. 

Revivals

For Best Revival of a Play, the Kudos Award goes to Machinal, a wonderful expressionist work which saw an outstanding production.

The Kudos Award for Best Revival of a Musical goes to the terrific Hedwig and the Angry Inch. 

Directing Awards

Winning the Kudos Award for Best Director of a Play is Tim Carroll (TWELFTH NIGHT).  Every aspect of the production showed intelligent and original planning and led to a crowd-pleasing experience.   

For Best Director of a Musical, the Kudos Award goes to Michael Mayer (HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH). As with TWELFTH NIGHT, this is a production that shows exceptional planning—from the brilliant concept behind the stage design to the lighting to the sound to the outstanding performances. 

Writing Awards

For Best Writing of a Play, the Kudos Award goes to Randy Neale for THE FOOL’S LEAR, a funny and poignant comic drama that views the story of King Lear through the eyes of his fool.   

For Best Writing of a Musical, the Kudos Award goes to Robert L. Freedman, responsible for the very witty book and lyrics to THE GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER.

Best Overall Production of a New Play

The Kudos Award for the Best Overall Production of a New Play goes to The City of Conversation. This is one that ProfMiller hopes will move to Broadway from its current home at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center.  If it does, be looking for it as a strong contender for 2015 Tony nods (best play, best leading actress for Jan Maxwell).  


Best Overall Production of a New Musical

The Kudos Award for the Best Overall Production of a New Musical goes to the beautiful Beautiful:  The Carol King Musical.  

And that, folks, is a wrap. No speeches or bizarre poetry readings. Cue the music and call it a night!   Now, if you like, feel free to watch that other awards event on Sunday night.

Feel free to tell you friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment. 

Tony Awards: ProfMiller's Predictions for 2014

Prof Miller Predicts the 2014 Tony Award Winners

The theater awards season is in full swing, and the countdown is on as we approach the BIG DAY, the 68th annual Tony Awards on June 8. It is time for Prof Miller to stick his neck out and make his predictions.  So, let’s polish up the old crystal and see what pops up, starting with the acting awards.

For Featured Actress in a Play, the nominees are:

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)

In this highly competitive category, Prof Miller has narrowed it down to two. Although he didn’t care for the much-lauded production of The Glass Menagerie, Celia Keenan-Bolger was terrific as the preternaturally shy Laura. But she faces stiff competition from Sarah Greene, a standout among a very strong ensemble as the scary/impish Helen in The Cripple of Inishmaan.  In the end, though, Celia Keenan-Bolger gets the Prof’s vote for a richly layered, tender performance that rose above the noise of the co-dependent characters at the center of the Tennessee Williams play.

For Featured Actor in a Play, the nominees are:

Reed Birney (Casa Valentina)

Paul Chahidi (Twelfth Night)

Stephen Fry (Twelfth Night)

Mark Rylance (Twelfth Night)

Brian J. Smith (The Glass Menagerie)

The odds favor Mark Rylance, and Prof Miller might have agreed if only the actor had kept himself from edging away from the sublime toward the ridiculous in his performance as Olivia. Instead, we’ll give this one to Paul Chahidi, whose Maria was the highlight of the savvy and audience-friendly production of Twelfth Night. 

For Leading Actress in a Play, the nominees are:

Tyne Daly (Mothers and Sons)

LaTanya Richardson Jackson (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)

And the crystal says:  “Do you really need a crystal ball to tell you that Audra McDonald will win this?  Her performance as Billie Holiday soars beyond anything we’ve seen in a very long time.  Tony #6 is on its way!”  Prof Miller agrees!

For Leading Actor in a Play, the nominees are:

Samuel Barnett (Twelfth Night)

Bryan Cranston (All the Way)

Chris O’Dowd (Of Mice and Men)

Mark Rylance (Richard III)

Tony Shalhoub (Act One)

Hey, Hey, LBJ, it’s Bryan Cranston all the way!

For Featured Actress in a Musical, the nominees are:

Linda Emond (Cabaret)

Lena Hall (Hedwig and the Angry Inch)

Anika Larsen (Beautiful: The Carol King Musical)

Adriane Lenox (After Midnight)

Lauren Worsham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder)

Although I was disappointed in Cabaret overall, Linda Emond’s solid performance as Fräulein Schneider ought to carry her through to a Tony win. 

For Featured Actor in a Musical, the nominees are:

Danny Burstein (Cabaret)

Nick Cordero (Bullets Over Broadway:  The Musical)

Joshua Henry (Violet)

James Monroe Iglehart (Aladdin)

Jarrod Spector (Beautiful:  The Carol King Musical)

Another strong competition here, down to two:  Joshua Henry and James Monroe Iglehart. Joshua Henry literally stops the show and fully earns the waves of sustained applause that follow his rendition of “Let It Sing” in Violet, but the edge goes to James Monroe Iglehart, who has his own showstopper with “Friend Like Me” along with the entire juicy role as the Genie in Aladdin. 

For Leading Actress in a Musical, the nominees are:

Mary Bridget Davies (A Night With Janis Joplin)

Sutton Foster (Violet)

Idina Menzel (If/Then)

Jessie Mueller (Beautiful:  The Carol King Musical)

Kelli O’Hara (The Bridges of Madison County)

Another tough call, down to two. Sutton Foster has found a perfect fit for herself in the beautifully performed (acting and singing) Violet.  Jessie Mueller shines as Carol King in Beautiful:  The Carol King Musical.  I’d like to call a tie, but I’ll go with the true crowd-pleaser, Jessie Mueller.

For Leading Actor in a Musical, the nominees are:

Neil Patrick Harris (Hedwig and the Angry Inch)

Ramin Karimloo (Les Misérables)

Andy Karl (Rocky)

Jefferson Mays (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder)

Bryce Pinkham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder)

Gotta go with Neil Patrick Harris here, and hope he will stick with Broadway down the road. 

Next, we’ll move on to the non-musical plays. 

For Best Play Revival, the nominees are:

The Cripple of Inishmaan

The Glass Menagerie

A Raisin in the Sun

Twelfth Night

Four strong contenders here.  Even though I did not care for The Glass Menagerie, I always appreciate strong work by a director who has a clear vision and is able to carry it out fully.  So thumbs up to John Tiffany… but, I’m calling Twelfth Night, under Tim Carroll’s splendid direction, as the winner. 

For Best New Play, the nominees are:

Act One

All The Way

Casa Valentina

Mothers and Sons

Outside Mullingar

Truth is, none of these hit the bullseye, but Bryan Cranston’s performance as LBJ plus the fascinating story of the powerful and complicated President make All The Way the likely winner.

For Best Director of a Play, the nominees are:

Tim Carroll (Twelfth Night)

Michael Grandage (The Cripple of Inishmaan)

Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the Sun)

John Tiffany (The Glass Menagerie)

As mentioned above, the more visionary work was done by Tim Carroll and John Tiffany, with Tim Carroll carrying the day for his work on Twelfth Night.

And now, on to the musicals!

For Best Musical Revival, the nominees are:

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Les Misérables

Violet

Loved the performances in Violet, but the book is paper thin, so Prof Miller predicts that Hedwig and the Angry Inch will take the Tony.

For Best New Musical, the nominees are:

After Midnight

Aladdin

Beautiful:  The Carole King Musical

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder was a cleverly presented Gilbert-and-Sullivan-like work, quite witty and charming and very well acted and directed, but Prof Miller sez the Tony goes to the musical that touched hearts—Beautiful:  The Carol King Musical.

For Best Director of a Musical, the nominees are:

William Carlyle (After Midnight)

Michael Mayer (Hedwig and the Angry Inch)

Leigh Silverman (Violet)

Darko Tresnjak (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder)

In for a penny, in for a pound.  Since Prof Miller predicts that Hedwig will win best actor and best musical revival Tonys, then Michael Mayer gets the directing award. 

For Best Book of a Musical, the nominees are:

Chad Beguelin (Aladdin)

Douglas McGrath (Beautiful:  The Carol King Musical)

Woody Allen (Bullets Over Broadway:  The Musical)

Robert L. Freedman (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder)

All four of these musicals draw from earlier sources, but it looks like this is where A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder will get its Tony.  The call is for Robert L. Freedman. 

For Choreography, the nominees are:

Warren Carlyle (After Midnight)

Steven Hoggett and Kelly Devine (Rocky)

Casey Nicholaw (Aladdin)

Susan Stroman (Bullets Over Broadway:  The Musical)

After Midnight boasts some mighty fine dancing, but not all of it was choreographed by Warren Carlyle.  Going to go with Casey Nicholaw’s work on Aladdin for this one. 

Stay tuned to June 8 to see how well Prof Miller’s predictions turned out to be.  As a reminder, last year, he (ahem) did better than either Charles Isherwood or Ben Brantley of The New York Times. 

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‘Irma La Douce’: Encores! Production of Frothy Musical Fails To Froth

Irma La Douce is a French cream puff of a musical that should float and dance and soar like a kite caught in a rambling breeze. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the two charming stars at its center, the Encores! production rarely breaks loose from the tug of gravity and remains earthbound. 

There have not been very many revivals of this show, which dates to 1956 and a highly successful run in Paris (4 years) and then London (3 years). It landed on Broadway in 1960 in a production that was helmed by renowned director Peter Brook and choreographed by Oona White. Starring Elizabeth Seal, Keith Michell, and Clive Revill, Irma La Douce was a moderate hit here, running a little over a year on Broadway before making the rounds of summer stock (which is where I happened to see it for the first time) before more-or-less disappearing, save for the original cast album (still in print).

The plot is really just an excuse to pull off a lot of silliness, dependent on a pretense that gets out of hand. Nestor le Fripé (Nestor “the disheveled”), a poor law student, falls in love with Irma, a highly successful prostitute.  But he quickly decides he no longer is comfortable with her career (which pays the bills for both of them), so he invents a rich older man, “Oscar,” who will become her only client, while Nestor will be her “mec” (pimp). The gag of the show is that “Oscar” is actually Nestor, donning a two-bit fake beard that somehow manages to fool everyone.

Things work out for awhile, but all that flip-flopping between  “Oscar” and Nestor is getting to be an exhausting enterprise for our hero, so he decides to get rid of “Oscar” by drowning him in the Seine. Immediately, Nestor is arrested for murder, is convicted, and is packed off to Devil’s Island, along with most of the rest of the cast. The show wraps up with a sequence of events worthy of the Marx Brothers that eventually reunites the two lovers once more.       

I mention the Marx Brothers because that’s the level of wackiness it would take to pull off a winning production of Irma La Douce.  I envision actors swinging on ropes, falling from the rafters, and running up and down the aisles of the theater.  Alas, there is precious little of this kind of zany staging in the Encores! production, and, unfortunately, scenic designer John Lee Beatty, who is retiring after two-decades with Encores!, has chosen this time to build a solid fixed set, when sparse, fly-away pieces would better serve the style of the show. 

Under John Doyle’s less-than-inspired direction, Jennifer Bowles exudes a great deal of charm as Irma, and shows lovely loose-limbed skill as a dancer in the two numbers that give choreographer Chase Brock the opportunity to let loose his imagination (the exuberant “Dis Donc” in Act I, and the absurdly improbable “Arctic Ballet” in Act II).

Rob McClure—a very gifted comic actor—tries his best to raise the level of fun as he manically switches between Nestor and “Oscar.” But truthfully he did something similar and with far greater success in the Encores! production of Where’s Charley three years ago, in which he transformed frenetically between the roles of the title character and his “aunt.”   

What Irma La Douce has going for it is the original music by French composer Marguerite Monnot, including “Valse Milieu,” “Our Language of Love,” the Piaf-like title song, and the bouncy “Dis Donc.”  The always reliable Rob Berman conducts the small (10 players) orchestra performing the original score, allowing the delectable music to come shining through. The English language lyrics by Julian More, David Heneker, and Monty Norman are generally not much more than serviceable, though, and sometimes are forced to the breaking point in order to push a rhyming line.  Example:

                        It's clear to you, it's clear to me

                        This precious moment had to be

                        Other moments outclassing,

                        Guardian angels are passing.   

I do believe a production in French (with supertitles if necessary) might do a better job of capturing the show’s helium-balloon spirit.  

Ah, dis donc!

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Cabaret: Willkommen Back, But Should We Care?

Alan Cumming and Cast of 'Cabaret'
Photo by Joan Marcus

“You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.”

This quote, attributed to Josef Stalin, is a good way of explaining why the current revival of the 1998 production of Kander and Ebb’s iconic musical Cabaret—which takes place, after all, in Berlin in the midst of the rise of Nazism—fails to even remotely perturb its audience. And that, I think, is a problem. 

Case in point.  As the Emcee, Alan Cumming invites a couple of members of the audience onstage to dance with him.  At the performance I attended, the following conversation took place:

            Emcee to audience member:  What’s your name?

            Woman:  Laurie.

            Emcee:  Hi, Laurie.

            Woman:  Hi, Alan. 

Of course, Mr. Cumming is a pro. Though clearly taken aback at the breaking of the mood, he covered up by asserting that he was not “Alan,” whoever that is, but the emcee at the Kit Kat Klub.  The audience laughed, and the show went on.

Silk gloves. 

So my question is, why go through all the trouble of reconfiguring the seating so as to simulate the milieu of the decadent club and then offer up a show that is so incredibly tame? By comparison, the Nazis in The Sound of Music are more disturbing. 

Before I go further, let me explain that I did not see the previous incarnation of this production—though I did see the 1966 original and, of course, the memorable movie with Joel Grey repeating his performance as the Emcee and Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles. My understanding, however, is that what is now on view at Studio 54 cleaves closely to the 1998 Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall staging, so forgive me if I am raising questions about points I very well might have brought up a decade-and-a-half ago. 

I’m not suggesting that the initial interpretation of the role is sacrosanct. But one thing I liked about it is that the Emcee seemed not to be human, but the kind of being that might have been conjured up by Ray Bradbury for the carnival of lost souls in his shiver-inducing novel Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Among such company, the Kit Kat Klub becomes a scary place to visit. We risk losing our own souls if we are not very careful—for instance, by getting caught up in the song “If You Could See Her Through My Eyes” and being hit in the face with its final anti-Semitic line.  That moment is truly disconcerting, not because it offends (although it does), but because it forces us into being complicit.     

The Emcee should be our amoral guide through the hell that is taking shape all around us—an opportunist willing to go in whichever direction the wind happens to be blowing.

But with this production, he is now an Everyman, clearly pretending to be naughty, repeating his same old shtick night after night (“Ladies…and gennlemen”) and someone we can picture removing his makeup and living a very ordinary life at the end of the performance. This Kit Kat Klub is no more scary than La Cage Aux Folles.   

Towards the end of the evening, as the Emcee becomes less steady, we are perhaps meant to identify with him, to share his sense of entrapment until the final image that is supposed to make us gasp.  The trouble is, with this reconceptualization no one has bothered to give the Emcee a backstory or any personality at all other than that of the ever-present overseer.  How are we to empathize with him when we don’t get to know anything about him? How much more effective would that final scene be if it were Herr Schultz we see in the hands of the Nazis? 

So, like the reporter at Ford’s Theater interviewing Mary Todd Lincoln right after her husband was shot, you might want to know “aside from that, what did you think of the play?” 

The songs are grand, of course, including those interpolated from the film, and Mr. Cumming and the rest of the Kit Kat Klub crew of performers and musicians are in solid form.  If some of their movements seem jaded and rote (especially in the opening number), that actually is appropriate and in character. It’s easy to imagine that the Emcee and his colleagues have been performing the same bits forever, so that they have become routine for them. 

As for the rest of the cast, only Aaron Krohn as Ernst and Gayle Rankin as Fräulein Kost, both of them Nazi sympathizers, capture the spirit of their roles. Linda Emond and Danny Burstein are fine as the middle aged couple who are drawn together out of mutual loneliness and a certain degree of affection, though their connection as a couple remains so tenuous that, frankly, it is no great loss when it falls apart. 

Much the same could be said of Bill Heck as Cliff, present as an observer of the scene, and Michelle Williams as Sally Bowles—a character who has been raised to a level of great significance by Liza Minnelli’s take on her but who seems to be just another lost and unaware wanderer. Neither the characters nor the actors portraying them in this production add much to the sketchiness of their roles, so that they seem to be cut from the same mold as Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schultz. 

In the end, all of them are types rather than flesh and blood people that you can care much about. You could say that Cliff represents America as it blandly watched the rise of the Nazi state; that Sally represents the self-absorbed British; that Fräulein Schneider represents the ordinary German people who cast a blind eye and declared that they were helpless to do anything about politics; that Herr Schultz represents the German Jews who rationalized themselves into Concentration Camps; and that the Emcee represents the general corruption of the times.  

It all makes for a nice thesis, but, as Ms. Edmond’s character Fräulein Schneider sings early in the show, “It will all go on if we’re here or not. So who cares?  So what?” 

Feel free to tell you friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.