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. 

And the Envelope, Please. Announcing the 2012 ProfMiller Kudos Awards

As the theater community’s annual awards season edges towards next week’s Tonys, it is time to announce our own ProfMiller Kudos Awards for Outstanding Theatrical Achievement, 2011-2012.

In accordance with the selection criteria, the results are solely a reflection of my personal biases and judgments, underpinned by a half century of experience as a member of the audience. 

These 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.  Eliminated from consideration were any of the four Tony-nominated plays, since all of them (Clybourne Park, Other Desert Cities, Peter and the Starcatcher, and Venus in Fur) arrived on Broadway this season following successful runs Off Broadway last year; Other Desert Cities received the Kudos Award for Best Play in 2011. 

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

Special Awards

A Special Kudos Directing Award goes to the fabulous and indefatigable Estelle Parsons, currently delighting audiences in the musical Nice Work If You Can Get It.  This award is not in recognition of her acting, however, but for her inspired directing of Kurt Weill’s Johnny Johnson in a staged reading for the ReGroup Theatre Company.  Held last December at the 47^th Street Theatre, the production-on-a-shoestring was a winner from start to finish.  I attended out of curiosity, simply because I had never seen this rarely-performed anti-war musical. I expected mildew. Instead, it turned out to be highly engaging, entertaining, and one of the more pleasant surprises of the season.  Kudos to all involved!

The next special award is for the season’s Most Underappreciated Play, where the standout winner is In Masks Outrageous and Austere, Tennessee Williams’ final fully-realized play.  I admired it for its trippy comic sensibility, especially after the ponderousness of a number of the playwright’s other late works, and I found David Schweizer’s direction to be spot-on and perfectly attuned with the play. In Masks Outrageous and Austere reminded me of the surrealistic ventures undertaken by Edward Albee, John Guare, and Tony Kushner.  It must have been disappointing for those who were looking for the Williams of A Streetcar Named Desire or The Glass Menagerie, but it was one of my favorites of the season. 

Non-Musical Plays

In the category of Best Revival of a Play, I found nothing on Broadway to be nearly as compelling as The Merchant of Venice or The Normal Heart, which tied for last year’s Kudos Award.  But there were several strong contenders Off-Broadway, whence comes the winner, Edward Albee’s The Lady From Dubuque.  Director David Esbjornson and a powerhouse cast breathed new life into a play that has been dismissed for a very long time as a lesser work.  This emotionally-charged production showed there is nothing lesser about it. 

For Best New Play, the Kudos Award goes to J. T. Rogers’ Blood and Gifts, a remarkable and engrossing work about politics, counter-intelligence, and how we came to be mired in the war in Afghanistan. 

And for his masterful work in guiding the multiple intersecting elements of Blood and Gifts, Bartlett Sher wins the Kudos Award for Best Director of a Play. 

Non-Musical Acting

For Best Actress in a Play, a truly strong category this year, we have our first tie. Kudos Awards go to Tyne Daly for her incredibly rich portrayal of opera diva Maria Callas in the splendid revival of Terrence McNally’s Master Class; and to Tracie Bennett, for her breathtaking no-holds-barred performance of a drug-addled walking id known as Judy Garland in Peter Quilter’s bio-play, End of the Rainbow. 

For Best Featured Actress in a Play, another category with strong competition, we have another tie.  A Kudos Award goes to Condola Rashad, whose comic timing and powerful presence was the centerpiece of Lydia R. Diamond’s family drama, Stick Fly.  She shares the honors with Linda Edmond, whose portrayal of Linda Loman in the revival of Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman offered not a hand-wringing observer of her husband’s downfall, but a determined and strong-willed partner doing battle to keep her family together and functioning against all odds.   

Likewise, we have a tie for Best Actor in a Play. The first winner is Jefferson Mays, an actor of great depth and complexity, who takes home a Kudos Award for his performance as a burned-out British diplomat in Blood and Gifts.  The second recipient is Frank Langella, who gave a mesmerizing performance as the ice-hearted, manipulative businessman in the revival of Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy. 

For Best Featured Actor in a Play, the winner of the Kudos Award is John Glover as Willy’s brother Ben in Death of a Salesman.  Glover, as he appears in his brother’s addled imagination, is the perfect stand-in for Willy’s wishes, hopes, and dreams, the man who walked into the jungle at the age of 17 and came out a millionaire at 21. 

Musicals

Hands down, the Best Revival of a Musical was James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. With its glorious cast and full-sized orchestra, we are not likely to see as rich a production of this magnum opus for a very long time indeed.

Follies also provides us with Best Acting Awards for Jan Maxwell as the embittered Phyllis, and for Ron Raines, as the superficial and self-centered Ben.

The Kudos Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical goes to Tom Hewitt, as the conflicted Pontius Pilate in the revival of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar.

And, finally, for Best New Musical, the Kudos Award goes to Once, the gentle, soulful romance (Enda Walsh, playwright, with music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová) that has been given a first-rate production, abetted in no small part by the on-stage musicians who are the glue that holds it all together.    

For their work on Once, Kudos Awards also go to John Tiffany for Best Director of a Musical, and to Steven Hoggett for Best Choreography. 

And that, folks, is a wrap. Cue the music and call it a night!

Feel free to tell your friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.  And if you can't get enough of ProfMiller, check out his column, ProfMiller@The Theater, at BroadwayShowBiz.com.

And the Envelope, Please: Announcing the 2011 ProfMiller Kudos Awards

In the spirit of the theater community’s annual awards season, I bid you welcome to our own ProfMiller Kudos Awards for Outstanding Theatrical Achievement, 2010-2011.

Once again, I am please to report that as a committee of one, I was able to reach unanimous decisions in all of the categories.  Needless to say, the selection criteria I have employed reflect my personal biases and judgments, and ties are not unheard of when I deem them to be appropriate.  As I am an equal opportunity theatergoer, these awards encompass both Broadway and Off Broadway productions.

And so, without further ado, the envelope, please:

We begin with a special award, for the Most Underappreciated Show, which goes to The Scottsboro Boys.  While I imagine the Kander and Ebb trunk holds more songs that may yet see the light of day, this was the team’s final fully realized musical following lyricist Fred Ebb’s death in 2004.  But no sentiment need be attached.  This simply was an excellent show, an edgy retelling of the true story of a group of African American teenage boys who were falsely accused of raping two white women in segregated Alabama in the 1930s.  This was one of the few transfers from Off Broadway to Broadway that made a fitting transition to the big stage, with a first-rate cast and strong directing and choreography by Susan Stroman.  It’s nice that it received 12 Tony nominations, but it is likely to be squashed under the juggernaut that is The Book of Mormon.   

 

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In the category of Best Revival of a Play on Broadway, we declare a tie between The Merchant of Venice and The Normal Heart—the former, exquisitely directed by Daniel Sullivan, the latter by Joel Grey and George C. Wolfe.  At the performance of Merchant that I attended, the audience, many of whom had quite probably come to see Al Pacino and had little prior knowledge of the play itself, audibly gasped at a couple of key plot turns.  When is the last time Shakespeare was able to garner such a reaction?  As for The Normal Heart, it could easily have come off as mired in yesterday’s headlines.  Instead, it resonates deeply with today’s audiences and reminds us of the potential for theater to fully envelop viewers in both powerful drama and emotional intensity.  When is the last time a speech given by a character in a play (in this instance, by Ellen Barkin) stopped the show by drawing waves of sustained applause? 

In a similar vein, we declare a tie for Best Revival of a Play Off Broadway.  The Kudos Award goes to the Atlantic Theater Company’s production of a double bill of one-act plays by Harold Pinter, The Collection and A Kind of Alaska, and to the Signature Theatre Company’s brilliant production of Tony Kushner’s masterwork, Angels in America.  The Pinter plays, under the direction of Karen Kohlhaas, were a revelation of flawless style and splendid acting. Angels in America, stunningly directed by Michael Greif, managed to juggle all of Kushner’s deeply complex ideas without once dropping a ball, and boasted a cast that poured themselves into layered and emotionally honest performances.   

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For his performance in The Normal Heart, the Kudos Award for Best Actor in a Play goes to Joe Mantello. This has been quite a season for Mantello.  In addition to his tour de force performance in Larry Kramer’s drama about the early days of the AIDS crisis, he directed two terrific productions—Other  Desert Cities at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater, and The Other Place at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Other Desert Cities, a family drama steeped in politics, takes the Kudos Award for Best New Play, while The Other Place serves as the vehicle for Laurie Metcalf’s outstanding performance as a mentally and emotionally fragile medical researcher, a portrayal that earns her the Kudos Award for Best Actress in a Play.

For Best Featured Actress in a Play, the Kudos Award goes to Estelle Parsons, for her turn as a busybody landlady in Good People.  It’s unfortunate she was not nominated for a Tony for this funny, quirky, and compelling performance. 

For Best Featured Actor in a Play, the winner of the Kudos Award is Christian Borle, who did outstanding work in both Peter and the Starcatcher and Angels in America.   Watch for him in Steven Spielberg’s new NBC TV show, Smash, which depicts the efforts of a group of people to put on a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe.

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Moving on to the musicals, we’ll start with the Kudos Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The winner is Laura Benanti, for her wigged out performance in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.  She’s likely to win a Tony for the same role, but in the category of Best Actress in a Featured Role.  I’m not bound by the Tony rules, and thought hers was the one truly outstanding performance in this mishmash of a musical. 

For Best Actor in a Musical, the winner is Rob McClure, for his  funny and charming performance in Where’s Charley? Mr. McClure played the title role in the Encores! production of Frank Loesser’s lighter-than-air musical, and was outstanding in taking on the mantle that has been indelibly associated with Ray (“Once in Love With Amy”) Bolger.  

Both Mr. McClure’s performance and the show itself were a real treat, earning Where’s Charley? the Kudos Award for Best Musical Revival.  A sheer delight, thanks to a stellar cast, sharp directing by John Doyle, and brilliant musicianship of the orchestra, under the baton of Rob Berman.  

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Finally, in the category of Best New Musical, the Kudos Award goes to The Book of Mormon.  Likewise, the show’s directors Casey Nicholaw and Trey Parker win for Best Director of a New Musical. This odds-on-favorite to win the Tony Award for best musical deserves all of its accolades.    

And that’s a wrap. Cue the music and call it a night!

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