Last Minute Tony Predictions

With less than one hour to go before the Tony pre-show when the present the technical awards here are my predictions for tonight (which are also on GoldDerby.com):

Play: Curious Incident

Musical: An American in Paris

Revival (Play): You Can't Take it with You

Revival (Musical): The King and I

Actor (Play): Alex Sharp, Curious Incident

Actress (Play): Helen Mirren, The Audience

Actor (Musical): Robert Fairchild, American in Paris

Actress (Musical): Kristin Chenoweth, On the 20th Century

Feat. Actor (play): Richard McCabe, The Audience

Feat. Actress (play); Annaleigh Ashford, You Can't Take It With You

Feat. Actor (musical): Christian Borle, Something Rotten!

Feat, Actress (musical): Sydney Lucas, Fun Home

Dir. (Play): Marianne Elliott, Curious Incident

Dir. (musical): Christopher Wheeldon, American in Paris

Choreo.: Christopher Wheeldon, American in Paris

Book: Lisa Kron, Fun Home

Score: Jeanine Tesori, Lisa Kron, Fun Home

Set Design (play): Curious Incident

Set Design (musical): An American in Paris

Costume Design (play); Wolf Hall

Costume Design (Musical): King and I

Lighting Design (Play): Curious Incident

Lighting Design (Musical): An American in Paris

Orchestrations: An American in paris

This is who I think will win, not who I voted for. I want Fun Home to win Best Musical, but I think the more commercial American in Paris will win and they will give Home the consolation prizes of Score and Book (sort of like Thoroughly Modern Millie and Urinetown or Jersey Boys and Drowsy Chaperone). I also voted for K. Todd Freeman (Drama Desk winner) and Julie White to take Featured Actor and Actress in a Play for Airline Highway, but it will probably go to Richard McCabe (Outer Critics Circle) and Annaleigh Ashford (OCC, DD).

Looking forward to the show and particularly Ted Cruz's reaction to the number with Fun Home with an 11-year-old girl singing about her awakening sense of being a lesbian.

Broadway Update: 2015 Beckons

Airline Highway at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre
(Credit: Michael Brosilaw)

As 2014 winds down, it's time to look forward to 2015. As usual, the spring is crowded with openings in order to qualify for the Tonys. It's a little early, but the frontrunner for Best Play is still The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Dog's biggest threats are also from Britain--The epic Wolf Hall and Helen Mirren in The Audience, both featuring royalty (Henry VIII in Wolf and the current monarch in Audience.) Both have snob hit written all over them. Mirren will probably take Best Actress so she can have a Tony for playing a queen to go with her Oscar and Emmy. Wolf is a two-evening spectacle and could give Dog a run for its money as Best play--both are based on novels which never stopped The Grapes of Wrath.The design categories still belong to Dog, though Wolf will probably win for Costumes.My choice for Best Play so far is from off-Broadway: Samuel D. Hunter's Pocatello. Lisa D'Amour's Airline Highway looks fascinating and has received excellent reviews in Chicago plus Joe Mantello, of Wicked, Take Me Out, and Assassins fame, is at the helm. D'Amour's Detroit is one of my favorite plays and this one about displaced New Orleans residents celebrating the life of their dying den mother in a rundown motel could be a big winner. It's the last show of the season and will be fresh in voters' minds. But it's American and the Tony people love their British theater. 

B'way Update: Spring is Gettin' Springier

A scene from the Royal Shakespeare Company's
production of Wolf Hall
Credit: Keith Pattison

That title comes from the Blossom Dearie song "A Fine Spring Morning." As more productions confirm their openings, the warmer months of 2015 are filling up in a race to beat the Tony deadline. So far March has three definite shows while April has seven, eight if you can the separate evenings of Wolf Hall as two. Overall, 2014-15 has 30 definite productions, far short of last season's 42. There are still a few which might be coming in such as Amazing Grace. Let's take a look at some of the recently announced candidates for Tony glory. The aforementioned Wolf Hall, a two-part historical drama about Henry VIII and his devious counselor Thomas Cromwell, is based on a best-selling series of novels and was a smash hit in London--two factors which spell automatic snob hit. Finding Neverland has been in a holding pattern for months, but the musical about the genesis of Peter Pan has been cleared for a landing at the Lunt-Fontanne once Motown vacates. The knives are out for this show since producer Harvey Weinstein forced his way onto last season's Tony Awards with an excerpt featuring Jennifer Holliday in a sparkly gown singing to a bunch of little boys in Victorian pajamas. Weinstein garnered some publicity recently by subjecting New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel to the ice bucket challenge. Doctor Zhivago is another musical which has been on the "Upcoming" list for years. The material sounds perfect for a Broadway musical--sweeping romance, epic revolutionary battles, a familiar title. Plus there has been a run on Russian shows lately with Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and the gorgeous Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. But great Slavic source material is no guarantee of success. Let's not forget the flop 1992 musical Anna Karenina which closed after only 46 performances. Fun Home was a hit Off-Broadway and may be the show to beat when it transfers to the Circle in the Square. It's subject matter of a lesbian coming to terms with her closeted gay father may be a bit much for family audiences, and Tony voters may want to go for the safer comedy of Honeymoon in Vegas or the nostalgia of An American in Paris.   

B'way Update: 'Fun Home' Finds a Home

Obie winner Syndey Lucas and Michael Cerveris in Fun Home
Credit: Joan Marcus

There have been a lot of Broadway announcements lately. Love Letters and Side Show are getting revivals, Larry David will make his B'way debut as both actor and playwright in a comedy called Fish in the Dark, and Fun Home will move to the Circle In the Square one year after its acclaimed Off-B'way run at the Public. The oval space surrounded by audience presents interesting challenges for director Sam Gold. Fun Home will join other shows such as Urinetown, Next to Normal, Avenue Q, In the Heights, and Grey Gardens which played Off-Bway and on in separate seasons and were therefore eligible for Obies, Drama Desks and Outer Critics one year and Tonys the next. That leads to some weird differences in the awards, like Urinetown and Avenue Q getting a bunch of Tonys but no DDs. Fun Home did get the Lortel, Obie and NY Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical as well as the Outer Critics Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical, but lost the DD to A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. It's too early to tell what Fun Home's competition for the 2015 Tony will be. There will probably be a big push for Sting's The Last Ship and this year the Best Score category will definitely be on the air since the 16-time Grammy winner will be nominated. You'll recall that in 2013, Cyndi Lauper got to accept her Tony on TV for Kinky Boots, while Jason Robert Brown who nobody knows outside of drama clubs across the country, had to pick up his two Tonys for score and orchestrations of Bridges of Madison County during the commercials. Here's a rundown of the Broadway season on and Off-Bway so far: