2022 Oscar Predictions: Will CODA Tame Dog?

This year's Oscar race has been a fun one for me. Thanks to streaming services, I have been able to see most of the nominees in the major categories. The field is a broad and fascinating one, ranging from the satire of Don't Look Up to science-fiction outer worldliness of Dune. In previous blogs, I noted my journey of viewing as many nominated films as possible. Here are my predictions for the big night. The big battle for the top prize is between CODA and Power of the Dog while Dune will dominate the technical and design categories.

Best Picture
Prediction: CODA
Preference: The Power of the Dog or West Side Story

Jane Campion's psychological Western The Power of the Dog was the front-runner for the top Oscar for much of the pre-awards season, but with wins at the SAGs and PGAs (Producers Guild), CODA, a feel-good weepy about the hearing daughter of deaf parents and her triumph over adversity and unfair fishing laws, looks to be the likely winner. Dog is a much more challenging, disturbing film with its subtle exposure of toxic masculinity and repressed gayness. If the cozy CODA triumphs, it will follow an Oscar pattern of choosing the easy, conventional film over more challenging work without happy endings. Previous examples include Green Book over Black Klansman, Crash over Brokeback Mountain, Ordinary People over Raging Bull, Rocky over All the President's Men and, of course, How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane. However, in recent years, Oscar has occasionally chosen the more unique candidate such as Nomadland, Parasite and 12 Years a Slave. I am also rooting for West Side Story, Steven Spielberg's brilliant remake of the 1961 Oscar winner which was dealt a deadly blow at the box office because people under 50 don't seem to care about movie musicals.

Theater Memories Part 14: Sondheim

Sondheim
Credit: Erika Kapin Photography

Just yesterday, my husband and I were driving back from Philadelphia after a visit to my mother for Thanksgiving. For some unknown reason, I got the urge to listen to Sondheim. We had not been listening to the radio news, so I didn't know about his death. I punched his name into the Spotify search engine we heard A Little Priest, Another Hundred People, The Ladies Who Lunch, The Miller's Son, Hello, Little Girl, and Now You Know. A loving and unexpected tribute to the greatest musical theater writer of the 20th century. Then we get home, I opened my computer and got the shocking news.

He was 91, so it wasn't unexpected and he did go out on a high note. There are new productions of Assassins and Company playing as well as a new film version of West Side Story about to open. In addition, he was working on a new show, Square One, with David Ives. He recently revealed on Stephen Colbert's talk show, it had just been workshopped with Nathan Lane and Bernadette Peters and he was hoping for it to open on Broadway next season. Let us all pray that comes to pass.

B'way Update: West Side Kaput, Funny Girl Possible, 2nd Jersey Boys Film

The company of Ivo van Hove's
West Side Story
Credit: Jan Versweyveld

Scratch one more Broadway production. Ivo van Hove's radical re-imagining of West Side Story will not be re-opening at the Broadway Theater. This was the sixth Broadway staging of the beloved updating of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim and the first not to employ Robbins' original choreography. It opened on Feb. 20, 2020 and closed on March 11 along with every other show on the Main Stem due to the COVID pandemic. Von Hove, an internationally renowned director and Tony winner for his direction of A View from the Bridge, cut songs, employed huge video screens and color-blind casting which did not sit well with some fans of the show. Producer Kate Horton who took over from the disgraced Scott Rudin who has "stepped back" from his Broadway producing chores following reports of his toxic workplace behavior, put out the following statement:

"It is with great regret that we are announcing today that the 2020 Broadway revival of West Side Story will not reopen. This difficult and painful decision comes after we have explored every possible path to a successful run, and unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, reopening is not a practical proposition. We thank all the brilliant, creative artists who brought West Side Story to life at the Broadway Theatre, even for so brief a time, especially the extraordinary acting company, 33 of whom made their Broadway debuts in this production." The production was nominated for six 2020 Drama Desk Awards and won for Outstanding Projection Design. Administrators for the Tony Awards judged West Side ineligible for its accolades since too many nominators and voters did not get a chance to see it before it closed. A remake of the film version of WSS, directed by Steven Spielberg with a screenplay by Tony Kushner, is scheduled for release this winter.

This leaves only two previously-announced shows with no firm dates for the 2021-22 Broadway season: American Buffalo and Sing Street. 

2020 Drama Desk Award Predictions

Normally at this time of year, I would be making Tony and Drama Desk Award predictions. But the Tonys have been indefinitely postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent shuttering of all 41 Broadway theaters. In all likelihood, Broadway's top honor will not return until 2021 since the Main Stem will probably not be open again until next year at the earliest. If so, they might expand the eligibility window to combine the truncated 2019-20 season with whatever opens next spring. Voters will no doubt be invited back to returning shows such as West Side Story, Girl from the North Country, Moulin Rouge and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. Shows that have closed such as The Inheritance and Grand Horizons will be out of luck, because they will have to rely on the memories of the voters who saw them. Closed productions are usually shut out of the Tonys even in "normal" times.

But the Drama Desk is still going ahead with their award presentation on NY-1's On Stage show on Sun. May 31 with Tituss Burgess (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), James Corden, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, Beanie Feldstein (Hello, Dolly!), Santino Fontana, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jane Krakowski, Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, Cynthia Nixon, Ashley Park, Andrew Rannells, Ali Stroker (Oklahoma!), and Susan Stroman. Broadway and Off-Broadway are considered for all categories. Here are my predictions in the major slots along with my preferences (Disclosure: I am a Drama Desk voting member and have already cast my ballot)

Play:
Prediction: The Inheritance
Preference: Heroes of the Fourth Turning

Kyle Soller, Paul Hilton, and John Benjamin Hickey
in The Inheritance
Credit: Marc Brenner

The DD includes both Broadway and Off-Broadway in all of its multiple categories, but they usually go for the Broadway choice. With the shortened season, four of the five nominees in this category are Off-Broadway, but the voters will probably go for the only Broadway entry, The Inheritance, Matthew Lopez's two-part saga of the post-AIDS gay community loosely based on E.M. Forster's classic novel Howard's End. I voted for Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Will Arbery's drama of a reunion of graduates from a conservative Christian university in Wyoming, which had a short run at Playwrights Horizons and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.

Broadway Update: Sing Street Transfer, The Nanny

A scene from Sing Street
Credit: Matthew Murphy

Will the Once lightning strike twice? Sing Street, the musical based on the 2016 movie, will transfer to Broadway from its run at New York Theater Workshop. Many of the creative personnel including John Carney who wrote and directed the original film and book writer Enda Walsh also worked on Once which moved from its Off-Broadway perch at NYTW to the Main Stem, winning 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical. The general topic of both shows is similar: economically desperate Irish folk finding release and joy in music. Sing Street did not receive universal acclaim so the move is a risky one. The Broadway musical field is somewhat crowded this year and Street will face competition for awards and box office dollars from Tina, Six, Jagged Little Pill, Moulin Rouge, Diana, Mrs. Doubtfire, Flying Over Sunset, The Girl from the North Country and Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (though that last young-adult one probably won't receive much Tony love.) No show has emerged as the favorite to take the top Tony Award. Despite criticism from cramming in every social issue known to man from opioid addiction to global warming, Pill is probably the front runner right now to be the big winner on Tony night with the two-part, gay-history play The Inheritance as the favorite for Best Play. Sing Street begins previews at the Lyceum March 26 with an opening set for April 19.

2018-19 B'way/Off-B'way Update

Ivo Van Hove
Credit: Stephanie Berger

Several new shows have been announced for the 2018-19 Broadway and Off-Broadway season since our last update and they all sound intriguing. International avant-garde sensation and Tony winner Ivo Van Hove will direct his first Broadway musical with a revival of West Side Story. Heaven knows what the unconventional helmer with do with the Bernstein-Laurents-Sondheim-Robbins classic. He turned A View from the Bridge, The Crucible and A Streetcar Named Desire inside out and his current production of The Damned at the Park Avenue Armory just opened to reviews praising his daring. What's really weird is the show starts begins Dec. 10, 2019 and it is

Damon Daunno in Daniel Fish's staging of Oklahoma! 
at Bard College in 2015.

slated to open Feb. 6, 2020 at a theater TBA. That's almost two months of previews! Maybe van Hove, who is extremely busy with upcoming stage productions of All About Eve in London, A Little Life in Amsterdam, and Don Giovanni in Parsi and at the Met on his plate, needs time to work out his startling ideas. West Side Story is also getting a film update from Tony Kushner and Steve Spielberg as well as current productions at the Guthrie and Glimmerglass. Oklahoma! will also get the revision treatment when Daniel Fish's production opens at St. Ann's Warehouse in October. I saw this production at Bard College in 2015 and it treats the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic in a radically new and relevant style.