Cyndi Lauper and Joan Rivers.

“I’m a believer that karma takes care of everything in the long run,” Gabriel Mann, who plays billionaire Nolan Ross on ABC’s prime-time soap opera Revenge, told Shindigger last week in a leathery corner of the Royalton Hotel’s lobby bar. In person, the former model is hardly anything like his über-preppy, vengeful TV character.

“I definitely look forward to creating something polar opposite to this, whether that be in a play or doing Shakespeare somewhere,” he said.

Shindigger suggested he give Broadway a go.

It worked for Vanessa Williams, who seems to be finding success on both TV and the Great White Way.

“It’s always great to be back on Broadway!” the Azadeh Riaz-clad actress proclaimed at the National Corporate Theatre Fund Chairman’s Awards Gala in the ballroom of The Pierre. “Once you’ve made it there, you truly are accepted, and frankly, you have to have the goods, because there’s no faking it on Broadway. It’s the greatest test of talent.”

We agreed with Ms. Williams and then wished the star a happy 50th birthday before she collected her award from James Lapine.

“I guess there’s no hiding that, either,” she said with a toothy grin and an even bigger eye-roll.

By Wednesday, at a press event in the Millennium Broadway Hotel, theater was on everyone’s mind, as the 2013 Tony Awards nominations had been announced the previous evening.

“It’s a dream come true,” exclaimed Billy Porter, who plays leading diva Lola in the hit Kinky Boots, amid a swarm of fellow nominees. “Theater saved my life, plucked me out of the ghetto,” he added in his fabulously raspy tenor. “It means that my life has value.”

Mr. Porter then shared a less serious thought with Shindigger:

“I’m always trying to stay moist during the show—I hate that word,” he cooed. “So I eat a lot of Sour Patch children to induce moisture, and the other night I ate too many and then I choked on my own spit on the stage. That’s not fun!”

This reminded us of a gripe we heard from Santino Fontana, who is starring as Prince Charming in the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, following a performance at The Collegiate Chorale’s Spring Benefit.

“People have lots of strong feelings about Prince Charming and Cinderella before they see the show,” he said. “The other day, I came out of the stage door after the show with my hat on, and a woman asked, ‘Who’d you play? Were you the raccoon?’”

She refused to believe that he had played the prince. When Mr. Fontana insisted, she said, “Then why are you wearing a hat?”

“I guess she wanted me in a crown,” the actor joked.

Back at the Millenium Hotel, other nominees were starting to tire.

“That’s it!” yelled Cyndi Lauper.

“Can we walk and talk, Ms. Lauper?” one frazzled camerawoman begged, chasing her toward the elevator.

David Hyde Pierce, up for his role in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, was considerably calmer.

“I was surprised at how happy I was—our show got six nominations,” he said, though he did have a complaint of his own. “We had a performance where there was a woman in the front row with the crinkliest plastic bag of the loudest chips, and she ate through the entire play.

“At intermission, we were all backstage—Sigourney Weaver and Kristine Nielsen—waiting to go, and we were talking about how incredible it was that this person would crunch through the entire show. She had no idea!”

Before they entered the stage for Act 2, the crunching recommenced.

“We lost it! We couldn’t even look at each other. It was like a contagious disease,” he laughed. “We had to struggle very hard to hold it together.”

The next day, Shindigger met Tony nominee Richard Kind at the after-party for the What Maisie Knew premiere hosted by Cinema Society, Tod’s and GQ at the Gallow Green.

“You’re the only one from your play to get nominated,” we blurted.

“I always thought I was a part of the community; I couldn’t validate that the community felt the same way about me,” Mr. Kind said. “Now they said yes, they said, ‘Come to the party.’”

On Sunday, everyone took a break from the Tony madness to recognize Off Broadway excellence at the 28th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards, hosted by Maura Tierney and Aasif Mandvi. Nominees Vanessa Redgrave, Jake Gyllenhaal and America Ferrera were in the house, as was presenter Zosia Mamet. (Robin Wright spent the evening on the arm of beau Ben Foster, and he never once let go.)

“What he’s created in New York is extraordinary,” gushed Cynthia Nixon, after presenting a lifetime achievement award to Todd Haimes, artistic director of Roundabout Theatre Company. “It seems like his vision goes everywhere, and he does it with such gentleness and humility. Man, if I ran one theater, I’d be like Mussolini!”

Quite a few glasses of red wine later, Shindigger was at the Top of the Standard, guzzling Moët at Peggy Siegal’s splashy Great Gatsby premiere.

“Why weren’t you at the Lortel Awards?” we chided the studly Billy Magnussen.

“I’m not good enough to be invited to that,” he laughed.

“How do you know that? You got a Tony nomination for Vanya!”

“I dunno, I was hanging out with Wendy Williams at the Broadway.com Audience Choice Awards. Her tits are so huge! I loved her.”

And with that, Mr. Magnussen had officially won Shindigger’s heart.

Tiffany with his Tony.

“I’m always pleasantly surprised when anybody wants to see a production that I’ve directed,” said John Tiffany over the phone from Glasgow two days after the Tony Awards, erasing all traces of false modesty with child-like wonder. “I kinda go, ‘Oh, wow!’ I feel humbled and privileged that people are actually interested. I’ve a strong philosophical belief that works should be accessible and popular—there shouldn’t be obstacles to anybody being able to connect with what you do—but I wouldn’t say I have a mainstream commercial gene in my body at all. All I know how to do is tell the stories in the most accessible way possible.”

That, apparently, is enough: His Once was Tony king at the recent ceremonies, raking in eight awards in all—among them those for Best Musical and Best Director.

Music has always been a key component in Mr. Tiffany’s theatrical pieces, but never before had he attempted a musical per se—let alone one that could be considered “a Broadway musical” and would compete as such and actually win, leaving whole chorus lines of energetic evangelists and high-flying newsboys-on-strike in the dust.

Once has none of the gaudy trappings of traditional Broadway musicals. If anything, it wears its source like a flag—a quiet cult film of 2007 where Guy (a Dublin busker) and Girl (a Czech immigrant) meet, make beautiful music together but not, bitter-sweetly, a lasting relationship. Notable among the songs is “Falling Slowly,” a ballad of soaring urgency that won the Academy Award. The rest of the score, written by the two leads (Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova), is a haunting, surging dirge to the finish line. No glitz. No buck-and-wing. No 11 o’clock number.

Mr. Tiffany hadn’t seen the film when he was first approached about doing its stage facsimile. “I was with a friend back in Glasgow, who said, ‘You will love the music,’ so the first thing I did was download the album. Loved it. Then, I watched the film.”

One scene in particular triggered a childhood flashback and prompted him to do the project: “Glen takes Marketa to a party where everyone’s sitting around doing a song, and that reminded me of when my dad used to play in a brass band back in Yorkshire,” he said in the press room at the Tonys. “He would take me along on some very drunken evenings with his bandmates and everyone would do their song. There’s something about the way working-class men can communicate through music in a way they can’t in words.

“I thought, ‘Wow! I wonder if we could get that going in the play.’ That’s when I came up with the idea of having a bar on stage—the actors singing as the audience arrives, then the audience going on stage and being able to get a drink from the bar. That was my first thought, and that’s what happened. It took quite a lot of pushing to get that on Broadway—‘Audience on stage? What?’ ‘Liquor on stage? What?’—but we got that. It was an open bar on the first night at New York Theatre Workshop, and Alan Cumming asked me, ‘Is it not a free bar every night?’ I said, ‘Alan, you just think every bar’s a free bar. It’s like the Queen thinks everywhere it smells of fresh paint.’”

He told The Observer over the phone, “We were amazed 1) that the show transferred to Broadway in the first place, and 2) that we were nominated for 11 Tonys. I keep saying to the cast and company and creative team, ‘We’re so lucky in that we’ve made the show we’ve wanted to make.’ We couldn’t be prouder of it and the way it connected with its audience. Then, to get this kind of recognition and acknowledgement for doing our job is just fantastic.”

Mr. Tiffany’s voice broke a bit as he pressed on. “The best thing about it is that it made my mum and dad really proud. My dad’s a kind of quiet Yorkshire man. He doesn’t give away compliments too readily. I spoke to him the morning after the Tonys, and he said he’s never been prouder in his life, and that meant a helluvah lot to me.”

Nobody noticed, but, when Mr. Tiffany accepted his award, he was wearing his roots in his lapel—a dainty white flower from Yorkshire. He meant it as a sentimental salute to his parents, “who gave me the gift of music. They weren’t musicians—my mum was a nurse, my dad was an engineer—but they both had music as hobbies, and I grew up with music. There was something about Once and the process of working on it that made me really connect to home. I live in Scotland now, but I spend a lot of time in America, and I just thought I want to wear something from Yorkshire.”

Otherwise, the 40-year-old deputy director of the National Theatre of Scotland looked very much like a stranger in a strange land—which indeed he was, jetting in just for the awards and then back to Glasgow the next day. He was steering his pal, Mr. Cumming, through Macbeth—all the roles in Macbeth—and left him after the final dress rehearsal in possibly the biggest multiple-personality pile-up since Sybil.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to come because we were right in the middle of the creation process when the Tonys were happening,” Mr. Tiffany said. “If I wasn’t co-directing this with Andy Goldberg, I wouldn’t have been able to come—but, luckily, I was, I could, and I did. It was an absolutely fantastic night. The really great thing about New York theater life is that, if they like you, by God, they let you know!”

This one-man, 100-minute Macbeth—which premiered June 15 at Glasgow’s Tranway Theatre and will transfer to New York’s Rose Theatre July 5-14 as part of this year’s Lincoln Center Festival—is the result of “a meeting of three minds”: Mr. Cumming’s, Mr. Goldberg’s and his. And, yes, as a matter of fact, the actor did come first.

“Alan approached me at the beginning of last year and asked, ‘You fancy doing Macbeth?’ He had the idea that the actor playing Macbeth (i.e., him) and the actress playing Lady Macbeth could swap parts every other night since there’s so much language and talk about masculinity and femininity, so we did a reading in New York. A good friend and collaborator of mine, the New York-based director Andy Goldberg, came to the reading, and afterward we were talking. He said, ‘I always thought a one-man version of Macbeth set in a psychiatric hospital would be great.’ That idea got us both suddenly excited, so we took it to Alan, and he went for it.”

They were preaching to the converted. The first Shakespeare that Mr. Cumming ever read was Macbeth—plus, he hails from Aberfeldy, in Perthshire, Scotland, where the play’s place names (Bertram Woods, Dunsinane) are a hop, skip and jump from home. Such a contagious kinship to the characters almost insisted he play them all.

“You kinda have to see the show to see what Alan is doing—it’s incredibly fluid and subtle,” said Mr. Tiffany of the multitasking. “When we first meet him, he’s just arrived at the psychiatric hospital. Then, he starts to inhabit the characters and stories of Macbeth. As the production progresses, the reason he’s doing that becomes clear. There are no costume changes, no props as such. He’s trapped in this room.”

This is not Mssrs. Tiffany and Cumming’s first time at the gender-bending rodeo. Three years ago to the day of the Macbeth opening here, their National Theatre of Scotland version of The Bacchae bowed at the Rose and was a pretty rippin’ go at Euripides.

As Dionysus, that overheated hedonist and God of Good Times, Mr. Cumming made a rock-star entrance—handcuffed, dangling upside down by his ankles from the flies at the top of the theatre, wearing a kilt (and you know the old rumor about kilts).

Mr. Tiffany also tossed him the perfect one-liner when Dionysus overreacts and incinerates a whole set in a pique: “Too much?” he asks as an afterthought. (Fire marshals monitored the scene carefully, and a flash of heat warmed audience faces.)

Startling the audience is a specialty with Mr. Tiffany. In Black Watch, his stunner about a Scottish Army regiment in Iraq, soldiers make their entrance by ripping their way through a pub pool table. It won 22 awards, including an Olivier for his direction.

One of the people Mr. Tiffany specifically thanked in his Tony acceptance speech was Steven Hoggett, who, billed as “Associate Director,” kept the Black Watch cast in a sweaty state of perpetual motion with marches and military drills. Once gives him credit for “Movement,” and Peter and the Starcatcher calls him “Choreographer.”

“I’ve known Steven for 25 years,” said Mr. Tiffany. “Our kind of collaboration in life and work has been sustaining in so many inspirational and amazing ways. He’s incredible. His form of choreography and movement is, I think, truly innovative.

“Theater is so much more than just walking into an auditorium and sitting down and letting the curtain go up. It can be anything and anywhere, and I think we, as theater-makers, should start celebrating the ‘liveness’ of our form. Theater starts from the moment someone has the idea to go see a performance. Then, it’s about where to buy the ticket. It’s about how much that ticket is. It’s about what the marketing is, what the publicity is. It’s about where the nearest bar is to get a drink afterwards. Theater is a social experience from the first moment you hear about the possibility of going, and we need to celebrate every single element of that social experience. If that involves letting an audience go on stage during a big music session and have a drink from the set bar—and if that makes them more alert to the possibility of what that story might be or what theater can be—that excites me.”

The unifying theme of Mr. Tiffany’s shows is that they don’t unify at all. “They’re incredibly disparate,” he pointed out with some justified pride. “Theatre is a medium that can’t be digitalized. You actually have to buy a ticket and come into a space to see what we do. We really have to explore and exploit that sense of live experience.”

Seating was on the sidelines for Black Watch, bracing audiences for some theater different from what they’re used to. With Once, they go on stage and knock back a few. Macbeth has a comparable thing going. “I really like playing with audiences’ expectations, with their experience of what the event is,” Mr. Tiffany admitted. “Theater-makers should create work that is unique, that can only exist for an audience. Always, always, always think about your audience. The only thing you’re doing it for is an audience. Develop a generosity of storytelling and a desire to connect.”

editorial@observer.com

Rannells and Gad in The Book of Mormon. Photo via Joan Marcus.

People are talking about the Tony Awards this year, and not just to complain. (Clarification: Those few people who might talk about the Tony Awards are talking about them. Last year, the CBS broadcast of the annual awards show was viewed by seven million people, or a million and change fewer than watched a rerun of Two and a Half Men last week.)

There are several reasons for this: First, there is one widely admired musical that will not only win many of the big awards but actually deserves to do so. (Ahem, Memphis, last season’s so-called Best Musical.) Second, it’s been a fantastic year for plays, with four nominees—and another one or two that went unnominated—that could fairly be named the winner. And third, because this season the press, dropped as Tony voters two years ago, has been readmitted—at least, members of the New York Drama Critics Circle have—giving the professional complainers one less thing to complain about.

So what are all these people saying? Let’s look at the major award categories and detail the kibitzers’ consenses. (This effort has been helped immeasurably by the good people at StageGrade.com, who annually canvass a range of critics and tally their predictions.)

Best Play
This is the night’s big question mark. Both New York Times critics, plus those polled by StageGrade, agree that Nick Stafford’s War Horse is the favorite. That makes sense: this story of a boy and his beloved horse making their ways through World War I is a big, sweeping, gorgeous production that’s been impressing critics and wowing audiences. But there’s also a problem: pretty and puppetted though it is, it’s also a lousy play, a simplistic and cloying children’s story with frequently terrible dialogue. (Most expect its directors, Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, to win Best Direction of a Play, which is far more justified.) There are predictive undercurrents for David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People, which won the Drama Critics Circle prize, and Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, which the Drama Critics named best foreign play; I’d prefer to see either of those plays win.

Best Musical
And this is the night’s most predictable moment. The Book of Mormon will win—and should win, as everyone agrees. The only thing to wonder about: Will other shows have a shot at any of the other awards for musicals? Likely not. The Broadway soothsayers predict Mormon to be a lock for Best Direction of a Musical, Best Book of a Musical and, probably, Best Original Score (though that last one could, just possibly, go to The Scottsboro Boys, the final Kander and Ebb collaboration).

Best Revival of a Play
In another pleasantly packed category, with three productions that could plausibly be winners—the lovely and moving Al Pacino Merchant of Venice, the winkingly elegant Brian Bedford Importance of Being Earnest, and the stark, stunning Joel Grey-George C. Wolfe staging of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart—all the predictors agree that the latter will take the prize, and deserves to.

Best Revival of a Musical
Here’s another easy one. There were only two musical revivals on Broadway this season, and therefore only two nominees. One of them—How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, starring Daniel Radcliffe—wasn’t very good. That leaves Kathleen Marshall’s staging of Anything Goes, which is fun and energetic and offers the twin pleasures of Cole Porter and Sutton Foster. It’s not revelatory, but it’s enough. It should and will win.

Best Actor in a Play
Nearly everyone agrees, tepidly, that this will go to Mark Rylance for his remarkable performance as Rooster Byron, the feral Pied Piper in Jerusalem. (His cause is helped by his equally impressive turn in the less-lauded La Bête earlier this season.) But lead Times critic Ben Brantley is a prominent dissenter, predicting Al Pacino will win for his Shylock. Others note that they wouldn’t be surprised for this to go to Mr. Pacino or to Joe Mantello, for his surprisingly endearing Ned Weeks in The Normal Heart. I thought Bobby Cannavale, another nominee, was revelatory in The Motherf**ker With the Hat. But I’d put my money on Mr. Rylance.

Best Actress in a Play
Further unanimity here: This award will go to Frances McDormand for her subtly shaded performance as a tough, embittered working-class woman in Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People. This will mean overlooking Lily Rabe’s strong performance in Merchant and Nina Arianda’s eye-popping Broadway debut in Born Yesterday—“We have a new Lucille Ball here, and attention should be paid,” New York’s Scott Brown told StageGrade—but such are the tough realities of awards shows.

Best Actor in a Musical
This is a tough one to call. Many of the critics are predicting a win for Josh Gad, as the slow, sloppy, accidentally successful missionary in The Book of Mormon. (I checked his name on my Tony Awards ballot.) But it’s also possible that he and his castmate Andrew Rannells, another nominee, could split the Mormon vote. The Timesmen still give it to Gad; the StageGrade predictors see it going to the beloved Norbert Leo Butz for his role in the unloved Catch Me If You Can. I’m rooting for Mr. Gad, but I predict Mr. Butz.

Best Actress in a Musical
Easy: Sutton Foster, for her bravura turn as Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes. No one else comes close.

editorial@observer.com

New York: "A grim referendum on the last Harry Potter movie." Third sentence.

Los Angeles Times: "Harry Potter won't be taking home a Tony Award this year." First sentence ("Daniel Radcliffe" also third and fourth words in headline, after "Tony Awards").

The Atlantic: "But this year is a different story, marked chiefly by the snub in Best Actor in a Musical favorite Daniel Radcliffe, whose performance in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was considered a frontrunner to win." Third sentence.

Village Voice: "But though they did include names like Al Pacino, Frances McDormand, and Edie Falco, they left out Daniel Radcliffe, whom a lot of folks assumed to be the front runner to win Best Actor in a Musical!" Fifth sentence (and fifth paragraph, in its entirety), though the article is illustrated with a photo of Mr. Radcliffe and its headline mentions his name before the Tonys'.

New York Times: "Somewhere, Lord Voldemort is surely smiling while "Harry Potter" fans are heartbroken: Daniel Radcliffe leveraged his years as the star of that boy-wizard franchise to play J. Pierrepont Finch in the current Broadway revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," and spent months in vocal and dance training to get up to speed for the role." First sentence, and illustration. (To be fair, this was but one story of several on the nominations--one focused specifically on snubs!)

Playbill: "Among the performers and productions that theatregoers may be surprised to see missing from the nominations are How to Succeed (and "Harry Potter") star Daniel Radcliffe, who made his Broadway musical debut as the nimble lead..." Beginning of fifteenth paragraph. God bless the trade publications!

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

On a Tuesday night last summer-July 14, Bastille Day-I saw my first play as The Observer's new theater reviewer. It was Vanities, an awful Off Broadway musical at the Second Stage, and the evening was memorable only because it was also the night the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, the trade groups that together produce the Tony Awards, announced they were kicking out the theater press from among the ranks of Tony voters.

It must have been something I said (and I hadn't yet said anything).

In March, finally, a deal was reached. Members of the New York Drama Critics Circle (a small and shrinking group of fewer than 20) will be allowed to vote, rather than, as before, the full roster of the so-called First Night Press List (the 100 or so reviewers, reporters, editors and, according to a version of the list I saw once, a certain aged Sulzberger, all of whom are invited to all press previews). But that deal doesn't kick in till next season.

So, for this year, we have only our columns. Here, then, are my picks for the 64th annual Tony Awards, to be presented Sunday night at 8 p.m. and televised on CBS.

BEST PLAY

Nominees: In the Next Room or the vibrator play, Next Fall, Red, Time Stands Still

Will Win: Red

Should Win: Time Stands Still

Alfred Molina gives a ferocious performance as the Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko in Michael Grandage's impressive staging of Red, by John Logan. And I forgave the play's didacticism on the grounds that Rothko was, by all accounts, a didact. The great celebrity performance, the play's snob appeal, its excellent reviews and the fact it's still running should give it the edge. But Donald Margulies' Time Stands Still, an MTC production from earlier this season, was insightful, subtle and moving, and with Laura Linney, Brian D'Arcy James, Eric Bogosian and Alicia Silverstone, it had perhaps the most perfect cast of the season.

BEST MUSICAL

Nominees: American Idiot, Fela!, Memphis, Million Dollar Quartet

Will Win: Memphis

Should Win: Fela!

This is a depressing category: There was nothing on Broadway this season that properly deserves to be called a Best Musical. But Fela! is the only show that comes close. It's enjoyable, entertaining, interesting and exciting-so what if it doesn't really have a book. Memphis, the only other serious contender, is terrible; it's entirely cynically constructed, with derivative music, banal lyrics, an irritating male lead and an ersatz civil-rights message that leaves one hungering for the nuanced depiction of 1960s race relations found in Hairspray. Still, inexplicably, people seem to like Memphis. And it'll tour much better than Fela!-remember, the press isn't voting this year, but all those out-of-town producer still are-so it'll win. 

BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL

Nominees: Fela!, Memphis, Million Dollar Quartet, Everyday Rapture

Will Win: Everyday Rapture

Should Win: Everyday Rapture

Sherie Rene Scott's adorable biographic cabaret has the only nominated book that isn't terrible. Even better, it's actually quite good: deftly constructed and very, very funny.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Nominees: The Addams Family,
Enron, Fences, Memphis

Will Win: Memphis

Should Win: None

It was such a bad season for musicals that half of the Best Score nominations are plays. And while Branford Marsalis' interstitial jazz for Fences was probably the best of the nominated music, you just can't give Best Score to a non-musical. (Yikes, or can you?)

BEST REVIVIAL OF A PLAY

Nominees: Fences, Lend Me a
Tenor, The Royal Family, A View From the Bridge

Will Win: Fences

Should Win: Fences or View From the Bridge

It's a toss-up between Fences and View From the Bridge-both tremendous productions of classic works with blockbuster leading men. But Fences is a slightly better play, and, though I think Liev Schreiber's Bridge performance was stronger than Denzel Washington's in Fences, Fences is still playing, which will give it the edge.

BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL

Nominees: Finian's Rainbow,
La Cage Aux Folles, A Little Night Music, Ragtime

Will win: La Cage

Should win: La Cage

You could make a decent argument for three of the four nominees to win. (The less said about Finian's, the fourth, the better.) But Ragtime was a commercial failure and Night Music, while excellent, never quite caught fire. So the sweet, scruffy La Cage it is.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY

Nominees: Jude Law (Hamlet), Alfred Molina (Red), Liev Schreiber (A View From the Bridge), Christopher Walken (A Behanding in Spokane), Denzel Washington (Fences)

Will Win: Denzel Washington

Should Win: Liev Schreiber

Mr. Schreiber is arguably the best stage actor working today. But Mr. Washington is a huge movie star. He'll get the award, partially because he deserves it and partially as a thank-you note from a Broadway desperate to keep the Hollywood stars coming east.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN PLAY

Nominees: Viola Davis (Fences), Valerie Harper (Looped), Linda Lavin (Collected Stories), Laura Linney (Time Stands Still), Jan Maxwell (The Royal Family)

Will Win: Viola Davis

Should Win: Linda Lavin

In truth, any of these five women deserves the award.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL

Nominees: Kelsey Grammar (La Cage), Sean Hayes (Promises, Promises), Douglas Hodge (La Cage), Chad Kimball (Memphis), Sahr Ngaujah (Fela!)

Will Win: Sahr Ngaujah

Should Win: Sahr Ngaujah

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL

Nominees: Kate Baldwin (Finian's Rainbow), Montego Glover (Memphis), Christiane Noll (Ragtime), Sherie Rene Scott (Everyday Rapture), Catherine Zeta-Jones (A Little Night Music)

Will Win: Montego Glover

Should Win: Montego Glover

All of these actresses were wonderful, but Ms. Glover managed to shine in an otherwise dreadful show. That's impressive.

BEST DIRECTION OF A PLAY

Nominees: Michael Gandage (Red), Sheryl Kaller (Next Fall), Kenny Leon (Fences), Gregory Mosher (A View From the Bridge)

Will Win: Kenny Leon

Should Win: Kenny Leon

BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL

Nominees: Christopher Ashley (Memphis), Marcia Milgrom Dodge (Ragtime), Terry Johnson (La Cage), Bill T. Jones (Fela!)

Will Win: Terry Johnson

Should Win: Marcia Milgrom Dodge

I really liked the two revivals. But I was more impressed with Ms. Milgrom Dodge's minimalist Ragtime, as compared to the over-the-top original, than I was with Mr. Johnson's delightful seedy La Cage. But Mr. Johnson's show is running and Ms. Milgrom Dodge's failed, and that is what will make the difference.

BEST CHOREOGRAPHY

Nominees: Rob Ashford (Promises, Promises), Bill T. Jones (Fela!), Lynne Page (La Cage), Twyla Tharp (Come Fly Away)

Will Win: Twyla Tharp

Should Win: Rob Ashford

Mr. Ashford (and a very game cast) accomplished the impressive feat of making a terrible show look fantastic.

editorial@observer.com

Gawker notes that Scarlett Johansson is now a Tony nominee (for A View from the Bridge), but manages not to get too offended. The Journal touts the Johansson nomination in its headline alongside Denzel Washington. Ben Brantley is primarily pleased to see who got snubbed--like The Addams Family, Race, and A Steady Rain. He writes:

I love the theater more than anything--except for books and a couple of people. But do I have to pretend to be excited about a prize-giving ceremony that usually registers as being as insular and provincial as the Junior League achievement awards for civic responsibility?

Dolly has been nominated for Best Score of a Musical for the music and lyrics of 9 to 5. She isn’t going to win. I just think Dolly’s amazing.

On a less happy note, it’s arguable that the members of the Tony Award nominating committee should resign en masse. By failing to hand even a single nomination to Ian Rickson’s raved-over production of The Seagull, starring the outstanding Kristin Scott Thomas, either the doddering Tony committee has a lamentably short memory or it doesn’t know diddly from Dolly.

Four of its five Best Actress nominees are from just two plays: Marcia Gay Harden and Hope Davis, God of Carnage; Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter, Mary Stuart. The fifth is Jane Fonda as the valiant terminally ill heroine of 33 Variations.

No room, then, for The Seagull as Best Revival—and not for Ms. Thomas’ supreme Arkadina nor Carey Mulligan’s phenomenal performance as Nina for the Best Featured Actress category.

Twenty-five years ago in the West End, I first saw the amazing Natasha Richardson onstage: She was an ingenue then, playing the ingenue actress Nina to the Arkadina of her mother, Vanessa Redgrave. Her Nina was kissed by God and, for me, the performance has been the benchmark for the role ever since. It’s the highest compliment to say of Carey Mulligan that her blazing talent, her attack and dreaminess, reminded me of the 20-year-old Natasha Richardson.

Best Actress in a Play
Between Marcia Gay Harden and Janet McTeer-Up-the-Stage. Watch out for the heavily campaigning Jane Fonda.

Will win: Marcia Gay Harden

Best Featured Actress in a Play
Between the beloved first lady of Broadway, Angela Lansbury, for her dottily irresistible Madame Arcati in the mediocre revival of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and the amazing Amanda Root for her hilariously exact portrait of British middle-class bossiness and bristling resentment in The Norman Conquests.

Will win: Angela Lansbury

Best Featured Actor in a Play
It’s a pity that, in another serious lapse by the nominating committee, John Goodman didn’t receive a nomination for the best work of his career as the sensational Pozzo in the revival of Waiting for Godot.

Will win: Roger Robinson, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

If there were a best ensemble award—like the Olivier Awards have in London—the extraordinary all-British cast of The Norman Conquests would be duking it out with the extraordinary, starry all-American cast of God of Carnage. It would be a close and exciting call—and there would have been room for many other nominees in several categories.

Best Actor in a Play
A split vote between James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels of God of Carnage. I wouldn’t rule out Mr. Gandolfini, however. I wrote of Geoffrey Rush, nominated for Exit the King, that he’s giving one of the finest virtuoso performances I’ve ever seen—but Ionesco’s absurdist romp about mortality tends to put him in the rarefied high-culture category of “He’s wonderful—but What Does It All Mean?” Then again, the gifted Raúl Esparza of Speed-the-Plow could win, though he’s in danger of becoming the Susan Lucci of the Tonys.

Will win: Geoffrey Rush

The Award for Best Play

A shoe-in. Neil LaBute’s Reasons to Be Pretty has struggled to find an audience. The late Horton Foote’s admired Dividing the Estate closed too long ago for Tony voters to have seen it. The best new play of the season—this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, Ruined, by Lynn Nottage—isn’t eligible. (It’s an Off Broadway production.) Which leaves 33 Variations, the Lifetime disaster movie of the week (with a dash of Amadeus for amateur musicologists), competing with the commercial hit of the season, Yasmina Reza’s 80-minute breeze of a boulevard comedy of ill manners, God of Carnage, which the pretentious Ms. Reza mistakes for Kierkegaard.

Will win: God of Carnage

Best Actor in a Musical.

In its wisdom, the nominating committee has also ruled that Tony voters need see only one of the three boys who play Billy in Billy Elliot for all three of them to win a collective Tony as Best Actor in a Musical. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.

Will win: David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik and Kiril Kulish, Billy Elliot

Best Revival

The new Billy Elliot rule does not apply, however, to the revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy of plays, The Norman Conquests, which requires voters to swear on the holy bible of St. Ethel that they’ve seen all three. But the Tony for Best Revival usually goes to Lincoln Center, which makes everybody feel good about themselves except me. The Flintstones Waiting for Godot isn’t a strong contender. There’s no nomination for the admired—and now departed—Desire Under the Elms. The battle for Best Play Revival is therefore a close call between The Norman Conquests and Lincoln Center’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.

Will win: The Norman Conquests

Best Director of a Play

Will win: Matthew Warchus, the most gifted director of farce on either side of the Atlantic, for The Norman Conquests

Best Musical?

Will win: Shock! Billy Elliot

Best Director of a Musical
Another shock!

Will win: Stephen Daldry, Billy Elliot!

Best Costume, Best Set Design

Prepare yourselves for Billy Elliot all night. The British mega-musical, which created the showbiz first of coal miners dancing merrily in tutus, will sweep everything in its category (including best peanuts). The only exception I can imagine is Best Costume, and possibly Best Set Design, for Shrek. (Green is good.)

Best Actress in a Musical

Will win: Alice Ripley for her suicidally depressive heroine in Next to Normal

Best Revival of a MusicaL

Finally, the Tony for Best Revival of a Musical is between the tougher, bilingual new production of West Side Story, directed by the always modest Arthur Laurents; and the vibrant, nice, clean Brazilian wax production of Hair, directed by Diane Paulus.

Let the sunshine in!

Will win, must win: Hair, beloved tribal love-rock musical of my generation!

jheilpern@observer.com

And everyone should've won the Tony pool if you took his advice on voting for the "heavily favored" South Pacific in all categories. The Broadway revival took home seven Tonys, including best Revival-Musical, best actor in a musical for Paul Szot and best directing, which will surely make 90-year-old Gypsy director Arthur Laurents. According to Mr. Heilpern, "Mr. Laurents ... has complained with others that nonprofit theater productions like Lincoln Center’s lavish South Pacific are at an unfair advantage and should in any case be barred from competing in the commercial arena at the Tonys." Mr. Laurents might have a point, but that's the Tonys for ya.

Of course, August: Osage County deservedly won best play. In the showdown between art-rock autobiography Passing Strange and Latin-infused In the Heights, hip-hop (so hot right now) rose to the top. The director was a hometown favorite with 13 nominations and picked up four awards. Stew's journey of self-discovery only got one out of seven nominations.

All in all, there weren't too many surprises at this year's Tony awards. Liza Minnelli showed up to present an award but, whatever. A short highlight was John Waters introducing a production number of Cry-Baby. "I'm not here to talk about 'August: Osage County,' although I do have a warm spot for dysfunctional pill poppers," he said, referring to Tracy Letts' Tony winning play about a bickering family. In introducing what he called a "rockabilly prison number," Mr. Waters added, "One wonders if there are actual prisoners who are watching the Tony show tonight. Talk about a new minority. Well, if so, I imagine they're a little upset, and so are we."

Here's the complete list of winners, courtesy of the Associated Press.

Complete list of winners for the 62nd annual Tony Awards:

Play (and playwrights): "August: Osage County" (Tracy Letts).

Musical: "In the Heights."

Book-Musical: "Passing Strange" (Stew).

Original Score (music and/or lyrics): "In the Heights" (Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda).

Revival-Play: "Boeing-Boeing."

Revival-Musical: "South Pacific."

Actor-Play: Mark Rylance, "Boeing-Boeing."

Actress-Play: Deanna Dunagan, "August: Osage County."

Actor-Musical: Paulo Szot, "South Pacific."

Actress-Musical: Patti LuPone, "Gypsy."

Featured Actor-Play: Jim Norton, "The Seafarer."

Featured Actress-Play: Rondi Reed, "August: Osage County."

Featured Actor-Musical: Boyd Gaines, "Gypsy."

Featured Actress-Musical: Laura Benanti, "Gypsy."

Direction-Play: Anna D. Shapiro, "August: Osage County."

Direction-Musical: Bartlett Sher, "South Pacific."

Choreography: Andy Blankenbuehler, "In the Heights."

Orchestrations: Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman, "In the Heights."

Scenic Design-Play: Todd Rosenthal, "August: Osage County."

Scenic Design-Musical: Michael Yeargen, "South Pacific."

Costume Design-Play: Katrina Lindsay, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses."

Costume Design-Musical: Catherine Zuber, "South Pacific."

Lighting Design-Play: Kevin Adams, "The 39 Steps."

Lighting Design-Musical: Donald Holder, "South Pacific."

Sound Design-Play: Mic Pool, "The 39 Steps."

Sound Design-Musical: Scott Lehrer, "South Pacific."

___

Previously announced:

Regional Theater Tony Award: Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

Special Tony Award: Robert Russell Bennett.

Lifetime Achievement Award: Stephen Sondheim.

Who do you think is going to take home the Tony for Best Sound Design of a Musical? Sound is pretty essential to a show, of course. (“Sing out, Louise!”) You could almost say that without it, the show wouldn’t be the same. But who on earth knows a thing about sound—except, of course, for sound designers and their nearest and dearest?

Nevertheless, I’m boldly predicting the proud winner for the coveted Best Sound Design Tony will be Scott Lehrer for his fine, unobtrusive work on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific.

When in doubt during your Tony sweepstakes, vote for the heavily favored South Pacific in all categories.

That’s why the one and only Ms. LuPone’s lonely, heroic battle in Gypsy to wrest the Tony for best actress in a musical from sweet, adorable and bland Kelli O’Hara in South Pacific will be the pivotal drama of the evening. I have just the slightest bias in favor of Ms. LuPone. After all, Mama Rose is the ultimate challenge among all musical roles; not for nothing has the lady been called Mrs. Lear.

Ms. LuPone was born to play Rose. There ought to be no contest between her and Ms. O’Hara’s nice, clean, cockeyed optimist Nellie Forbush. Not everyone agrees, however. The Times is strongly backing Ms. O’Hara (“The Ingénue Who Roared”). The outcome is said to hang in the balance. Here’s my prediction:

Will win: Patti LuPone.

Should win: Patti LuPone.

Best actor in a musical? I’m afraid that I found the Emile of South Pacific’s Paulo Szot (“Some Enchanted Evening”) unswooningly wooden. Be that as it may—

Will win: Paulo Szot.

Should win: the dynamic Lin-Manuel Miranda of In The Heights.

And so to the best musical revival—

Will win: South Pacific.

Should win: No contest.

Best director of a musical—

Will win: Bartlett Sher for his loving, somewhat overcareful production of South Pacific.

Should win: Ask Arthur Laurents.

Mr. Laurents—the veteran 90-year-old director and book-writer of Gypsy—has complained with others that nonprofit theater productions like Lincoln Center’s lavish South Pacific are at an unfair advantage and should in any case be barred from competing in the commercial arena at the Tonys. Mr. Laurents might have a point. But he’s never made it before. …

WHEN IT COMES to plays on Broadway, it’s usually British and, of late, Irish. Three of the four nominees for Best Play are British and Irish. Four of the five nominees for best actor are British. Three of the four nominees for best director are British and Irish. All four plays in the Best Revival category were written by Brits.

Never mind.

Tracy Letts’ all-American gothic soap opera August: Osage County, hailed as a modern masterpiece on a par with O’Neill, is the clear favorite for Best Play over Tom Stoppard’s political parable Rock ’n’ Roll and Conor McPherson’s ghost story about the usual Irish drunks and ghoulies, The Seafarer.

Will win: August: Osage County, or my name is Barack Obama.

Should have been nominated in a perfect world: Black Watch, Gregory Burke’s fantastic drama about heroic and doomed soldiers in Iraq, which is the best play I’ve seen for many a season. Alas, Off Broadway productions don’t count at the Tonys. (If only.)

August: Osage County ought to receive an award for Worst Title of the Year, next to The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island (Or, the Friends of Dr. Rushower). We need simple titles in theater, like Boeing-Boeing.

Best Revival of a Play is an unlikely competition between the serious Shakespearean theatah of Macbeth and the knockabout bedroom farce of Boeing-Boeing. Virtuous Tony voters are duty bound to reward a three-hour British import of Shakespeare on Broadway. Watch out for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, however—an average production, but a popular historical drama with sex.

Will win: Macbeth.

Scandalously not nominated: Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls—the outstanding revival of the season (also by a British playwright).

Will win best director of a play: Anna D. Shapiro for August: Osage County.

Should win: Anna D. Shapiro.

The best-actor-in-a-play race is a tough call. It’s between Patrick Stewart (Macbeth) and the comparatively unknown Mark Rylance (Boeing-Boeing). Both are leading British classical actors. Unquestionably fine though the veteran Mr. Stewart is, greatness eludes him. Mr. Rylance, on the other hand, is a great actor who’s giving the best comic performance I’ve ever seen. Mr. Stewart is said to be the favorite, however.

Will win: Mark Rylance.

Should win: Mark Rylance.

Should have been nominated: Kevin Kline for his remarkable, understated performance in Cyrano de Bergerac.

Best actress in a play? Most Tony voters won’t have seen the mercurial Eve Best—another Brit, incidentally—who’s been nominated for Harold Pinter’s long-since-closed The Homecoming. The Tony battle is therefore between Deanna Dunagan for her drug-addicted hysteric Violet, matriarch of the dysfunctional Western clan in August: Osage County, and Amy Morton’s emotionally raw and resentful daughter, Barbara, in the play of the same awkward name. Ms. Dunagan has the showier role.

Will win: Deanna Dunagan.

Should win: Amy Morton.

Scandalously overlooked: Elizabeth Marvel for her smashing performance in Top Girls.

This has been a season defined by new talent in the Broadway musical—gifted neophytes like Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Stew and Heidi Rodewald of Passing Strange, and the Jon Stewart generation cynicism of David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger (of the 1950s spoof Cry-Baby). Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (directed by Susan Stroman) and Disney’s The Little Mermaid have been snubbed.

But I believe that the celebrated new musicals don’t represent a breakthrough in either form or message; they’re essentially retro. The sound is new to Broadway only in the case of the remarkably talented Mr. Miranda’s rap score for In the Heights. (Many years ago, Off Broadway, I saw a very witty rap version of The Comedy of Errors.) Stew’s Passing Strange is basically a staged rock concert with a very familiar coming-of-age story attached; and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ book for In the Heights sweetly enshrines good old-fashioned corn and the American Dream come true.

Best Book of a Musical—

Will win: In the Heights.

Should win: Douglas Carter Beane for Xanadu.

Best Original Score—will it be Mr. Miranda, or Stew and Heidi Rodewald?

Will and should win: Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Best Musical—will it be In the Heights or Passing Strange?

Will win: In the Heights.

Should have won in a perfect world: Off Broadway’s innovative, simply terrific 90-minute production of Elmer Rice’s watershed play The Adding Machine—my favorite new musical of the season.

“There is no path so steep as that of fame: no labour so hard as the pursuit of excellence,” William Hazlitt famously wrote about life in the theater. Whatever my preferences and biases, I wish all the very best to each and every Tony nominee. And, as J. J. Hunsecker puts it in Sweet Smell of Success: “We shall see what we shall see.”

jheilpern@observer.com

Only four women have received that honor: Julie Taymor (The Lion King) and Garry Hynes (The Beauty Queen of Lenane) in 1998, Susan Stroman (The Producers) in 2001, and Mary Zimmerman (Metamorphoses) in 2002. Can this Windy City native and Broadway newborn (this is her first time!) make the cut? John Malkovich might not think so! "One time, very early on, John Malkovich took me out to dinner just to tell me how much he hated a play of mine," Ms. Shapiro told The Sun.