It's time again for theater fans everywhere to prognosticate about performers and productions vying for the Tony Awards, those exclusive silver medallions that honor excellence in New York Broadway shows.
The nominations for the 2011-12 season were announced earlier this month and the awards themselves will be handed out at a glitzy ceremony from New York's Beacon Theatre Sunday, June 10. (CBS continues its tradition of televising the Tony Awards, once again with celebrated out host Neil Patrick Harris, who memorably opened last year's show with the hilarious production number "It's Not Just for Gays Anymore!")
In the meantime, audiences journeying to New York have a chance to compare and contrast the nominees (if the shows they are nominated for haven't already closed.) A recent weekend jaunt to New York allowed me the privilege to see two top contenders for Best Actress in a Play, which is definitely one of the most hotly contested categories of the season.
It's impressive to see how Olivier Award-winning British actress Tracie Bennett and Tony Award-winning U.S. star Linda Lavin (Alice, Broadway Bound) are both operating at the height of their acting powers. Bennett previously triumphed as Judy Garland in Peter Quilter's play End of the Rainbow in London and a regional run at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and she's now blowing away audiences on Broadway. As for Lavin, she brings expert timing and new colors to her stereotypical role of a tough Jewish matriarch named Rita Lyons in out playwright Nicky Silver's dark comedy The Lyons.
As plays themselves, End of the Rainbow and The Lyons aren't perfectly constructed, which is probably why neither was nominated as Best Play. However, the leading ladies in both shows more than make them into must-see affairs—particularly for gay audiences who either worship the late gay icon Judy Garland or want to see a living comedy legend expertly deliver finely crafted cutting comic putdowns and remarks.
End of the Rainbow focuses on a fraught six-week period in 1968 near the end of Judy Garland's life as she was making yet another concert comeback in London and soon to marry her fifth husband, nightclub promoter Mickey Deans (a very boyish-looking Tom Pelphrey).
Switching back and forth between a suite at the Ritz Hotel and the stage of The Talk of the Town, End of the Rainbow shows Garland as a struggling addict and needy for love and attention. One moment she's petulantly sparring with the hotel manager over the phone, the next she's adamant about not being able to go on and perform.
As foils to Garland, Quilter offers Deans as both a reformer and enabler, and the fictional Scottish accompanist named Anthony (Michael Cumpsty doing his best at maintaining the difficult accent) to represent Garland's legion of gay fans who identify with her struggles. Jay Russell also doubles up in some great cameo performances ranging from a BBC radio interviewer to a prissy assistant stage manager.
But the focus rightly is on Bennett, whom you fear will blow out her voice at any moment replicating Garland's late-in-life raspy go-for-broke voice. Under Terry Johnson's fine direction, Bennett gets Garland's choreographed struggles with her microphone cord down perfectly, and she looks stunning wearing picture-perfect recreations of her iconic outfits by production designer William Dudley.
Bennett also cuts to the emotional bone of Garland, just straying to the right side away from imitation and caricature, but still disturbing enough to imperil anyone's idealized notions of the MGM star who died of an overdose at the age 47.
As a play with loads of music and a live band, End of the Rainbow sometimes too neatly positions the song selections to mirror or ironically comment on the scene that just happened. It's also a tad too obvious sometimes at offering up back story details and facts. But when you have such a galvanizing and giving-it-all-up performance such as Bennett as Garland, you're willing to overlook these faults and just bask in the fabulousness of her performance.
One fault with Silver's The Lyons is that it shifts focus from whom you think should be the main character (Lavin as Mrs. Lyons) to her overly sensitive adult gay son, Curtis Lyons (an endearing Michael Esper). And The Lyons also appears initially to be yet another play where bad parenting can once again be blamed for the messed-up lives of grown children.
But Silver is too clever for that, since he also lays plenty of the blame for the unhappy existences of the Lyons children at their own feet. The Lyons' overall message of overcoming one's self-centeredness and reaching out and connecting to others is slightly sappy, but Silver and director Mark Brokaw make sure that there are enough comic jabs and jolts on the journey to make it all worthwhile.
In addition to Esper, The Lyons features hilarious supporting work from Dick Latessa as the dying-of-cancer patriarch Ben, Kate Jennings Grant as the alcoholic grown daughter and single mother Lisa, Gregory Wooddell as the gorgeous but incompetent New York real estate agent and Brenda Pressley as the initially compassionate Nurse (whose name later becomes a major point of contention).
Yet it is Lavin who shines the brightest as the tough-love mother relishing her forthcoming freedom as a widow. Even though her character is frequently a controlling bitch, Lavin's perfect comic timing, expertly modulated inflections and strategic movements of the body all ultimately make her dark comic character into an admirable and unstoppable force of nature.
Competing against Lavin and Bennett in the Tony Award category of Best Actress in a Play are Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon in a now-closed revival of Margaret Edson's Wit, The West Wing star Stockard Channing in Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities and relative newcomer Nina Arianda in David Ives' Venus in Fur. Picking between these skilled actors is going to be a difficult one, so let's hope for a tie so that the Tony Award can be at least partially shared among these amazing leading ladies.
