2018-19 Tony and Drama Desk Predictions

Eva Noblezada, Andre De Shields and Reeve Carney in Hadestown
Credit: Matthew Murphy

Once again the Tonys (presented June 9) and Drama Desk Awards (given June 2) will have significantly different results. In previous seasons, the two accolade-dispensing organizations would honor almost the same recipients and the DDs were seen as a theatrical equivalent to the Golden Globes with the Tonys playing Oscars. The essential difference between the two prizes is the Tonys, given out by the American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League, are only for Broadway shows while the Drama Desk, composed of New York-based theater critics, journalists and editors, includes on, Off- and Off-Off-Broadway productions in their celebration of the best of Gotham stages. Because of this discrepancy, if a show moves from Off-Broadway to Broadway in separate seasons, it would be up for a Tony but ineligible for a DD award since it was in contention previously.

This year, the prime example is Hadestown which played Off-Broadway at the New York Theater Workshop in 2016, had a London staging and now is at the Walter Kerr. The Outer Critics Circle, which gives out separate awards for Outstanding Play and Musical for on and Off-Broadway and considers both for everything else, judged the modern adaptation of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth different enough to be under consideration in all categories, winning Broadway Musical, Score, Director of a Musical and Featured Actor and Actress. The Drama Desk has deemed Hadestown eligible only in categories which feature new work for the Broadway production, so new cast members, Rachel Chavkin's direction and design elements are eligible, but not Anais Mitchell's score and book. The New York Drama Critics Circle membership was divided on the question of the show's eligibility and had a vote by email to determine its status. The result was a tie and Hadestown was deemed ineligible.

Broadway Update: Lane and Martin to Star in Mac's Gary and Network Moves

Andrea Martin and Nathan Lane

The weirdest press release of the year just came into my mailbox. At first I thought it was a joke. Tony winners Nathan Lane and Andrea Martin will be starring in a new comedy called Gary, A Sequel to Titus Andronicus by Obie-winning performer-playwright Taylor Mac. Weird title, huh? But it's legit. The show will be directed by another multiple Tony winner George C. Wolfe and begin previews at the Booth Theatre on March 5 with an opening set for April 11. (The Booth will play host to American Son with Kerry Washington and Steven Pasquale in a limited run in the fall. Also, Glenda Jackson's King Lear has announced an April 11 opening but no theater. So somebody will have to change their dates.)

B'way Update: 'Network' 'Glengarry' News; Dziemianowicz Out at the Daily News

Bryan Cranston in the London production of Network

The new Broadway season just got more exciting. In addition to Glenda Jackson playing King Lear and Elaine May appearing on a Broadway stage for the first time in 50 years in The Waverly Gallery, Tony-Emmy-Golden Globe winner Bryan Cranston will recreate his Olivier-winning performance as crazed newscaster Howard Beale in a transfer of Ivo van Hove's stage version of the Oscar-winning Network. Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) adapted Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay. Previews begin Nov. 10 at the Cort Theater in advance of a Dec. 6 opening. No announcement if the rest of the cast will be American or British. Michele Dockery (Lady Mary on Downton Abbey) took on the Faye Dunaway role of a ruthless network exec in London. She would certainly qualify as an international star. In one of van Hove's staging coups, audience members were seated on stage enjoying a five course meal prepared in an onstage kitchen. Characters would play scenes amidst the diners. There was nothing in the press release stating if the onstage restaurant would be recreated for the Cort, but the elaborate video design and numerous giant screens and cameras will no doubt make the transatlantic trek. Network was prescient in its vision of a reality-TV-mad society where rage and flash outweighed honest journalism. In the age of Trump, Beale's rants should resonate deeply.

This just in: Tootsie has announced specific dates and a theater: previews begin March 29 at the Marquis and it opens on April 23. Also Amy Morton (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Chicago PD) will direct an all-female version of David Mamet's profanity-laden Pulitzer winner Glengarry Glen Ross, set to open on Broadway next May. This should be interesting since all the characters are  testosterone-fueled real estate salespeople and casting them with women will shatter many stereotypes.

B'way Update: 'King and I,' 'Illusionists'

Oscar nominees Ken Wantanabe and Sally Hawkins in
Godzilla or We Need a Paycheck

As summer progresses, more Broadway shows are announced for the fall and winter. One of the most anticipated will be Lincoln Center Theater's revival of The King and I starring Kelli O'Hara and Ron Wantanabe, directed by O'Hara's South Pacific and Light in the Piazza stager Barlett Sher. We just saw Wantanabe in Godzilla on a double bill with Edge of Tomorrow at the Coxsackie drive-in last weekend. I'm still itching from the mosquito bites. I thought Edge of Tomorrow would be as bad as last year's Oblivion because both involved Tom Cruise going through some kind of time-loop or multiple-identity crisis. But it was actually pretty entertaining. 

Franco and Foster Join 2014 Bway Roster

James Fracno will star in Of Mice and Men 
on Broadway

Add James Franco and Sutton Foster to the growing list of hot stars coming to Broadway in 2014. Franco will be making his Broadway debut along with Chris O'Dowd of Bridesmaids in a revival of Of Mice and Men to be directed by Anna D. Shapiro (August: Osage County). Foster stars in a revival of the musical Violet which was such a hit at the Encores! Off Center series earlier this year. Violet fills the spring slot in Roundabout Theatre Company's schedule which was left vacant when The Real Thing with Ewan McGregor was pushed ahead to 2014-15. That Franco is a busy guy, while filming The Interview, he had time to make a shot-for-shot parody of a Kanye West video with his co-star Seth Rogen. Plus he's working on several movies including a film version of The Sound and the Fury and a bio of avant-garde author Charles Bukowski.

Other big names coming to Broadway include Denzel Washington, Toni Collette, Michael C. Hall, Michelle Williams, Alan Cumming, and Bryan Cranston. The Breaking Bad star will headline All the Way, Robert Schenkkan's play about President Lyndon Johnson and the civil right movement which was a hit at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. March and April are getting pretty crowded now, see the updated schedule below:

More New Broadway Plays Possible

Update to yesterday's Broadway update:

Bryan Cranston

In yesterday's NY Times, Patrick Healy puts a more positive spin on the new play situation for the 2013-14 Broadway season than I did. In addition to original works The Snow Geese and Outside Mullingar, he points out two adaptations of books--Act One and A Time to Kill--will be coming to Broadway. You could count those as new plays, so that makes four. Healy also writes that a few new plays are being eyed by producers for possible Broadway production, all by Pulitzer Prize winners. These include Disgraced, the Pulitzer winner for 2012 from Ayad Akhtar; Domesticated by Bruce Norris (Clybourne Park); and All the Way, a study of LBJ's struggle to pass Civil Right legislation by Robert Schekkan (The Kentucky Cycle). I've read the script of All the Way when I served as part of the New Play Committee for the American Theater Critics Association. It's a fascinating piece and it would make a rarity for Broadway--a large-cast new play. It will be produced at American Repertory Theatre this fall with Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad, so his TV chops might help a New York transfer. There's another LBJ play playing Off-Broadway this August called The Great Society which also hoped to make it to Broadway, but the producer told the Times in a separate story by Healy he would wait for the reviews. Other possibilities include a Broadway transfer of the National Theatre of Great Britain production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which was broadcast to cinemas around the world, and Jesse Eisenberg's The Revisionist which starred himself and Vanessa Redgrave when it played Off-Broadway last season. So here's an updated Broadway list including maybes: