Drama Desk Nominees Announced; Ragtime and The Scottsboro BoysReceive Most

Brian Stokes Mitchell and Cady Huffman announced our Drama Desk nominations this morning during breakfast at the Friars Club.

The shows receiving the most nods, Ragtime and The Scottsboro Boys, have already closed. Each received nine nominations apiece, the most of any productions from this season. Ragtime never found an audience and closed after a short run; Scottsboro had been a limited run from the beginning.

Winners will be announced at our May 23 awards ceremony at the LaGuardia Concert Hall at Lincoln Center. Patti LuPone (in photo) will host. But before that, we'll celebrate Thursday at our annual cocktail reception for nominees, to be held for the first time at Churrascaria Plataforma, a Brazilian restaurant on West 49th.

So here are this year’s selections from our nominating committee:

Outstanding Ensemble Performances 
This year the nominators chose to bestow special ensemble awards for acting to the casts of two shows. (Therefore, individual cast members for these shows were not eligible for acting awards in the competitive categories.)
 
• Circle Mirror Transformation 
• The Temperamentals 
 
Special Awards: 
Each year, the Drama Desk votes special awards to recognize excellence and significant contributions to the theatre.
 
• To the cast, creative team and producers of Horton Foote’s epic The Orphans' Home Cycle: "We salute the breadth of vision, which inspired the exceptional direction, performances, sets, lighting, costumes, music and sound that made it the theatrical event of this season."
 
• To Jerry Herman "for enchanting and dazzling audiences with his exuberant music and heartfelt lyrics for more than half a century." 
 
• To Godlight Theatre Company for "consistent originality and excellence in dramatizing modern literature, and especially for the vibrant theatricality of its innovative productions."
 
• To Ma-Yi Theater Company for "more than two decades of excellence and for nurturing Asian-American voices in stylistically varied and engaging theater."
 
Nominations for the competitive categories follow:
 
Outstanding Play: 
Alan Ayckbourn, My Wonderful Day 
Annie Baker, Circle Mirror Transformation 
Lucinda Coxon, Happy Now? 
John Logan, Red 
Geoffrey Nauffts, Next Fall 
Bruce Norris, Clybourne Park 
 
Outstanding Musical: 
American Idiot 
Everyday Rapture 
Memphis 
The Addams Family 
The Scottsboro Boys 
Yank! 
 
Outstanding Revival of a Play: 
A View from the Bridge 
Brighton Beach Memoirs 
Fences 
Hamlet 
So Help Me God! 
The Boys in the Band 
 
Outstanding Revival of a Musical: 
A Little Night Music 
Finian's Rainbow 
La Cage Aux Folles 
Promises, Promises 
Ragtime 
 
Outstanding Actor in a Play: 
Bill Heck, The Orphans' Home Cycle 
Jude Law, Hamlet 
Alfred Molina, Red 
Eddie Redmayne, Red 
Liev Schreiber, A View from the Bridge 
John Douglas Thompson, The Emperor Jones 
Christopher Walken, A Behanding in Spokane 
 
Outstanding Actress in a Play: 
Ayesha Antoine, My Wonderful Day 
Melissa Errico, Candida 
Anne Hathaway, Twelfth Night 
Kristen Johnston, So Help Me God! 
Laura Linney, Time Stands Still 
Jan Maxwell, The Royal Family 
 
Outstanding Actor in a Musical: 
Brandon Victor Dixon, The Scottsboro Boys 
Douglas Hodge, La Cage Aux Folles 
Cheyenne Jackson, Finian's Rainbow 
Chad Kimball, Memphis 
Nathan Lane, The Addams Family 
Bobby Steggert, Yank! 
 
Outstanding Actress in a Musical: 
Kate Baldwin, Finian's Rainbow 
Montego Glover, Memphis 
Jayne Houdyshell, Coraline 
Christiane Noll, Ragtime 
Sherie Rene Scott, Everyday Rapture 
Catherine Zeta-Jones, A Little Night Music 
 
Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play: 
Chris Chalk, Fences 
Sean Dugan, Next Fall 
Santino Fontana, Brighton Beach Memoirs 
Adam James, The Pride 
Hamish Linklater, Twelfth Night 
Nick Westrate, The Boys in the Band 
 
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play: 
Victoria Clark, When the Rain Stops Falling 
Viola Davis, Fences 
Xanthe Elbrick, Candida 
Mary Beth Hurt, When the Rain Stops Falling 
Scarlett Johansson, A View from the Bridge 
Andrea Riseborough, The Pride 
 
Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical: 
Kevin Chamberlin, The Addams Family
Robin De Jesus, La Cage Aux Folles 
Jeffry Denman, Yank! 
Christopher Fitzgerald, Finian's Rainbow 
Jeremy Morse, Bloodsong of Love 
Bobby Steggert, Ragtime 
 
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical:  
Carolee Carmello, The Addams Family 
Carrie Cimma, Lizzie Borden 
Katie Finneran, Promises, Promises 
Angela Lansbury, A Little Night Music 
Kenita Miller, Langston in Harlem 
Terri White, Finian's Rainbow 
 
Outstanding Director of a Play: 
Jonathan Bank, So Help Me God! 
Jack Cummings III, The Boys in the Band 
Sam Gold, Circle Mirror Transformation 
Michael Grandage, Hamlet 
Michael Grandage, Red 
Ethan Hawke, A Lie of the Mind 
 
Outstanding Director of a Musical: 
Warren Carlyle, Finian's Rainbow 
Marcia Milgrom Dodge, Ragtime 
Igor Goldin, Yank! 
Terry Johnson, La Cage Aux Folles 
Michael Mayer, American Idiot 
Susan Stroman, The Scottsboro Boys 
 
Outstanding Choreography: 
Warren Carlyle, Finian's Rainbow 
Marcia Milgrom Dodge, Ragtime 
Lynne Page, La Cage Aux Folles 
Susan Stroman, The Scottsboro Boys 
Twyla Tharp, Come Fly Away 
Sergio Trujillo, Memphis 
 
Outstanding Music: 
David Bryan, Memphis 
Michael Friedman, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson 
Joe Iconis, Bloodsong of Love 
John Kander & Fred Ebb, The Scottsboro Boys 
Andrew Lippa, The Addams Family 
Joseph Zellnik, Yank! 
 
Outstanding Lyrics: 
Rick Crom, Newsical The Musical 
Kevin Del Aguila, Click, Clack, Moo 
John Kander & Fred Ebb, The Scottsboro Boys 
Dillie Keane and Adèle Anderson, Fascinating Aïda Absolutely Miraculous! 
Andrew Lippa, The Addams Family 
David Zellnik, Yank! 
 
Outstanding Book of a Musical: 
Joe DiPietro, Memphis 
Joe Iconis, Bloodsong of Love 
Dick Scanlan & Sherie Rene Scott, Everyday Rapture 
David Thompson, The Scottsboro Boys 
Alex Timbers, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson 
David Zellnik, Yank!  
 
Outstanding Orchestrations: 
William David Brohn, Ragtime 
Larry Hochman, The Scottsboro Boys 
Tom Kitt, American Idiot 
Tom Kitt, Everyday Rapture 
John Oddo, All About Me 
Daryl Waters & David Bryan, Memphis 
 
Outstanding Musical Revue: 
Fascinating Aïda Absolutely Miraculous! 
Million Dollar Quartet 
Newsical The Musical 
Simon Green: Traveling Light 
Sondheim on Sondheim 
 
Outstanding Music in a Play: 
Adam Cochran, A Play on War 
Adam Cork, Red 
Gaines, A Lie of the Mind 
Philip Glass, The Bacchae 
Hem, Twelfth Night 
Branford Marsalis, Fences 
 
Outstanding Set Design: 
Sandra Goldmark, The Boys in the Band 
Phelim McDermott, Julian Crouch & Basil Twist, The Addams Family 
Derek McLane, Ragtime 
Christopher Oram, Red 
Jay Rohloff, Underground 
Karen Tennent, Hansel and Gretel 
 
Outstanding Costume Design: 
Antonia Ford-Roberts & Bob Flanagan, The Emperor Jones 
Santo Loquasto, Ragtime 
Clint Ramos, So Help Me God! 
Bobby Frederick Tilley II, Lizzie Borden 
Matthew Wright, La Cage Aux Folles 
David Zinn, In the Next Room or the vibrator play 
 
Outstanding Lighting Design:  
Neil Austin, Hamlet 
Neil Austin, Red 
Christian M. DeAngelis, Lizzie Borden 
Maruti Evans, John Ball's In the Heat of the Night 
Natasha Katz, The Addams Family 
Dane Laffrey, The Boys in the Band 
 
Outstanding Sound Design in a Musical: 
Acme Sound Partners, Ragtime 
Jonathan Deans, La Cage Aux Folles 
Ashley Hanson, Kurt Eric Fischer & Brian Ronan, Everyday Rapture 
Peter Hylenski, The Scottsboro Boys 
Scott Lehrer, Finian's Rainbow 
Brian Ronan, Promises, Promises 
 
Outstanding Sound Design in a Play: 
Dan Bianchi & Wes Shippee, Frankenstein 
Dale Bigall, Underground
Adam Cork, Enron 
Lindsay Jones, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers 
Fitz Patton, When the Rain Stops Falling
Elizabeth Rhodes, John Ball's In the Heat of the Night 
 
Outstanding Solo Performance: 
Theodore Bikel, Sholom Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears 
Jim Brochu, Zero Hour 
Colman Domingo, A Boy and his Soul 
Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking  
Judith Ivey, The Lady With All the Answers 
Anna Deavere Smith, Let Me Down Easy 
 
Unique Theatrical Experience: 
Charles L. Mee's Fêtes de la Nuit 
Hansel and Gretel 
John Tartaglia's Imaginocean 
Love, Loss, and What I Wore 
Stuffed and Unstrung 
The Provenance of Beauty 
 
PRODUCTIONS WITH MULTIPLE NOMINATIONS 
Ragtime      9 
The Scottsboro Boys     9 
Finians’ Rainbow     8 
The Addams Family     8 
La Cage Aux Folles     7 
Memphis      7 
Red       7 
Yank!       7 
Everyday Rapture     5 
The Boys in the Band     5 
Fences      4 
Hamlet       4 
So Help Me God!     4 
A Little Night Music     3 
A View from the Bridge    3 
American Idiot      3 
Bloodsong of Love     3 
Lizzie Borden      3 
Promises, Promises     3 
Twelfth Night      3 
When the Rain Stops Falling    3 
A Lie of the Mind     2 
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson   2 
Brighton Beach Memoirs    2 
Candida      2 
Circle Mirror Transformation    2 
Fascinating Aïda Absolutely Miraculous!  2 
Hansel and Gretel     2 
John Ball's In the Heat of the Night  2 
My Wonderful Day     2 
Newsical The Musical     2 
Next Fall      2 
The Emperor Jones     2 
The Pride      2 
Underground      2 
 

The Drama Desk is an organization of theatre critics, writers and editors that honors excellence in all areas of New York theatre: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway and not-for-profit. It was organized in 1949 and presented its first awards in 1955. For more information visit DramaDesk.org.

Promises, Promises

As long as the two leads, Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth, were onstage I enjoyed this Broadway revival of Promises, Promises, which is directed and choreographed by Rob Ashford, but the music (Burt Bacharach), lyrics (Hal David) and book (Neil Simon) aren’t strong enough to sustain interest without them.

Chenoweth I knew was born to do musical comedy and she’s appealing as Fran Kubelik, a young working girl in 1962 New York who is having an affair with a married executive at Consolidated Life, the company where she works. She doesn’t have much to go with in this seriously dated show, but she gives it her best.

Hayes was a complete unknown to me, although I might have been the only one in the theatre who had never heard of him. He had been on a TV series called “Will & Grace” and seemed to have many fans in the audience before he even opened his mouth. I was impressed that this is his Broadway debut. He is thoroughly winning as Chuck Baxter, a low-level Consolidated Life employee eager to get ahead and who also happens to have a major crush on Fran. Hayes’ voice, timing, movement -- everything -- seem right at home, as if he were a Broadway musical veteran. He gives Chuck just the right amount of sincerity and little guy charm, and skillfully handles the device in which his character frequently addresses the audience to comment on his situation.

But then there’s the rest of the show, which is based on the 1960 Academy Award-winning Billy Wilder film "The Apartment." The plot should be fun -- Chuck finds he can get ahead at work by allowing his higher-ups to use his small Manhattan apartment for their trysts. This spirals out of control as more and more execs turn to him and he finds himself out in the cold most nights. He suffers along admirably until he discovers that one of the women being brought to this little love nest is none other than his longed-for Fran.

This is the humorous part, but too much time is spent at the office and I really didn’t care about those people. At two hours and 40 minutes the show is too long for what it has to offer. It could happily lose three songs in the first act -- “Where Can You Take a Girl,” in which the married guys at the office sing about their frustrations in trying to have affairs, “Wanting Things,” in which the boss (Tony Goldwyn) shares his frustrations, and “Turkey Lurkey Time,” a bunch of gaudy busyness set in the office Christmas party.

The best of the bunch song-wise are the pop hits made famous by Dionne Warwick, “I Say a Little Prayer,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” done here as a nice duet between Hayes and Chenoweth, with Chenoweth playing the guitar, and “Promises, Promises.” These songs are at best pleasant little tunes, but the rest are limp, and forgotten as soon as the last note is sung.

The 1968 original show, produced by David Merrick, starred Jerry Orbach and Marian Mercer, both of whom won Tonys the following year for their work. It received six other nominations, including one for Best Musical and for Michael Bennett’ s choreography. It ran for 1,281 performances and was one of the first mainstream Broadway musicals to offer a score of commercial pop-sounding music.

For more information on this production, visit promisespromisesbroadway.com.

Fences

His first name is illuminated in huge letters on the marquee of the Cort Theatre: DENZEL. In much, much smaller form, and probably unnecessarily, is his last name: Washington. When you’ve got an actor with that kind of talent and charisma, plus two Academy Awards, you want to shout it out, and Washington does not disappoint in this first Broadway revival of August Wilson’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning drama, Fences.

His Troy Maxson is a disillusioned former Negro League baseball player who was too old to play by the time the Major League admitted blacks. Now working as a garbage collector, Washington’s Troy is believably vulnerable and human. But an even brighter megawatt star outshines him. Viola Davis gives a searing performance as Rose, Troy’s long-suffering wife. The show is hers as she embodies Rose’s pain, anger, love and, ultimately, strength. She left the audience gasping.

This isn’t surprising to me. Davis first impressed me six years ago when she starred in Lynn Nottage’s touching Off-Broadway drama Intimate Apparel, playing a young seamstress longing for love but strong enough to forge on without it when she is abandoned by the man she was to marry.

Davis impressed me again -- and won a Tony -- in Wilson’s 2001 play King Hedley II where she also stood out against a gifted costar, Brian Stokes Mitchell. And she was a steely force very much holding her own against Meryl Streep in the movie “Doubt,” playing a mother whose son may or may not be being molested by a Roman Catholic priest.

Davis’s performance is the reason I was more involved in Fences than I’ve ever been in an August Wilson play. I usually feel his work is too long and too predictable. This one is no exception in the too long category, clocking in at two and a half hours. The first act drags at times, especially at the beginning when characters gather in Maxson’s front yard to shoot the breeze and slip in some exposition. But in the second act, with the characters established, the plot explodes with developments that allow Davis to bring Rose fully to life as a woman who can take charge and direct her future.

On the other side of the casting scale, I wondered why director Kenny Leon chose Chris Chalk to play Cory, Troy and Rose’s 17-year-old son. Chalk looks to be in his mid-20s, far removed from the football-playing high school boy whose confrontations with his father are an important part of the portrayal of Troy’s flaws.

“The world is changing around you and you can’t see it,” Rose tells Troy when he wants Cory to stick with his part-time job as a grocery store clerk and give up his dream of a football scholarship, citing his own regrets over his aborted athletic career, which he blames on racism. The Cory character needs to look more like a boy, half afraid, half defiant, but here it looks more like two men going at it.

The other members of the cast serve well: Stephen McKinley Henderson as Troy’s longtime friend, Jim Bono; Russell Hornsby as Lyons, his son from a previous relationship; Mykelti Williamson as Gabriel, Troy’s war-damaged brother; and SaCha Stewart-Coleman alternating with Eden Duncan-Smith in a role I won’t describe for fear of giving away a second act surprise.

The world in which all of these people live and interact has been beautifully created by set designer Santo Loquasto. His brick house, with its worn paint and comfortable front porch and yard made me feel I could step right into that Pittsburgh community in the years from 1957 to 1965 in which the play unfolds.

I also loved the original music composed by Grammy-winning saxophonist Branford Marsalis that opens the show and transitions between scenes. Brian MacDevitt’s lighting furthers the mood and Constanza Romero’s costumes round out the look of the decade, one of 10 Wilson captured in his decade-by-decade cycle of plays about the African-American experience in the 20th century.

The original production of Fences, starring James Earl Jones, won four Tony Awards including Best Play, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, three Drama Desk Awards, including Best Play and the NY Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.

Washington, who made his Broadway debut in Checkmates in 1988, was last on Broadway as Brutus in Julius Caesar five years ago. He won Oscars for "Training Day" and "Glory" and received nominations for "The Hurricane," "Malcolm X" and "Cry Freedom."

Fences’ 13-week engagement ends July 11. For more information, visit www.FencesOnBroadway.com.

Where Do Good Sopranos Go? Sarah Rice in “Screen Gems: Songs of Old Hollywood”

BY MARY SHEERAN

Zing zing zi zi zi zi zing…Yesterday, I found myself humming through Victor Herbert’s Italian Street Song (who needs an iPod?). I hadn’t thought of that song in years, but I’d just been to Sarah Rice’s Bistro-award winning (Best Theme) show at the Laurie Beechman Theatre. Screen Gems: Songs of Old Hollywood is a well-constructed and shimmeringly performed look at music from, and inspired by (in the case of silent films), movies circa 1919 to 1971, settling mostly in the 1930s. (I have some difficulty with including the late 1960s/early 1970s in a tribute to “Old Hollywood,” or am I being oversensitive?)

While waiting at the West End Café for a friend, a couple came in for dinner. Hearing there was a show, they asked, “Who is Sarah Rice? Is she good?” “She played Johanna in the original Sweeney Todd,” they were told. (See photo) The man’s response was, “Oh, a soprano – and wasn’t that 30 years ago?” and they went in to dinner.

It occurred to me that high soprano voices have largely been in hiding for a generation or more. Well, there is opera and there are choral groups where sopranos can gather and, yeah, there are musical revivals, but in the cultural shift, Broadway went to belting or to the model of Bernadette Peters’ little girl voice. Some musicals use the soprano voice for the young and pure (think Sweeney Todd), or the high soprano voice has been used to spoof the type as the actress descends in a bubble or caricatures a brilliant artist. Even the gentlest vibrato is suspect. Today, the high soprano has to shuffle a deck of vocal skills and might only reveal her lyric lightness in context with other styles in popular entertainment. Perhaps in our cynical, suspicious age, the high soprano voice cannot be taken seriously for its own sake as it was for centuries before us. But I think that there is a longing for it now, and I felt that the other night. Because we heard a beautiful one.

Focusing on early films is exactly what a high soprano can do in a cabaret program because the vocal type was taken very seriously then. Even so, Rice had to negotiate the traps. She did. But I wish she hadn’t had to.

She dedicated Monday’s performance to the late Kathryn Grayson, one of the last of the great film sopranos, who was both beautiful and beautifully trained. My friend didn’t know who Grayson was; I had to remind her of “Kiss Me Kate” and “Show Boat,” the obvious examples but certainly not the only ones. In only a decade after Grayson was making pictures, it would be difficult for a soprano to sing her songs straight, and roles for the soprano practically vanished (right, Julie?)

Rice avoided the high soprano trap in her program by injecting a considerable amount of humor into it, particularly in the first half. She set the scene by name dropping with “At the Moving Picture Ball” (Santly, 1920) and “The Vamp” (Gay, 1910), the latter a tribute to Theda Bara. Rice waved her arms and tried to get us to vamp, with marginal success. She swept through songs with a rich and vibrant voice and dazzling technique (“The Sheik of Araby,” “Hindusatan,” and “Paradise”) and kept punching the humor key, assumedly so we would listen to a voice that hasn’t lost one inch of sheen in the last decades.

We howled when she informed us that Rudolph Valentino had had both a condom and a candy named after him and that the humming in “Paradise” had, in its day (1932), been deemed too erotic for radio play. But when Rice actually sang “Paradise” (and she did so not two inches from me), her eyes took on a magical look and the slight giggling in the audience when she started to hum stopped as she continued singing. The humming was beautiful and no longer erotic or exotic but contained feelings that could not be expressed in words. The fun facts she’d told us so we would listen to the song didn’t interfere with her singing of it and could even have sent us on the wrong path. I am not sure if Rice intended that, but her singing had the effect of lulling us into hearing her seriously, of hearing the ways a soprano can uniquely affect our emotions, a secret that goes back for centuries and that many artists, Mozart for example, knew how to channel. Rice must have felt she should begin with humor (and with good reason) for the complex, now out of our silent planet songs she would sing, but in the process, alas, her singing and patter (both excellent in their own ways) became schizophrenic, and more alas, she managed to dismiss a brilliant period of film history as just a silly time even if her singing did not bear that out.

From those early films she moved to Walt Disney (as opposed to Disney) because, she said, all generations have been touched by his movies. Okay. I was startled because even though her between-songs explanations were intelligent and well researched, yet she said nothing about the importance of “Snow White,” arguably the most important film of 1937, as well as the biggest moneymaker. (And it made Gable cry!) Rice sang a medley with “I’m Wishing” and “Someday My Prince Will Come” beautifully (at the piano, Seth Weinstein sang a lovely echo that held not one bit of ridicule), as they deserved to be sung. I do not know why she felt it necessary to sing “The Age of Not Believing” before the “Snow White” material. For one thing, it’s from “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” (1971) which is not “Walt” Disney or early Hollywood. It’s a lovely song, but its loveliness makes us miss the bitterness of its words. Besides that, it had nothing to do with “Snow White” and Rice’s singing told us all we needed to feel in that medley.

Her passionate trio of “Temptation,” “Jalousie” and “Revenge” were hilariously received, and I loved her joke with her castanets (she revealed what we all knew; she was finger synching with percussionist Bobby Sher doing the diligence). But still, these were all strictly for funsies. Not that I don’t like laughing. But either knowingly or not, Rice was setting us up to get used to her voice, which is so lovely that you take it seriously even when you’re laughing at what she’s doing; she put her experience in comedy and drama to use, and she used the first part of her program as a strong shoulder to stand on for the second. For after skipping effortlessly through Victor Herbert’s “Italian Street Song,” every note shimmering and solid, she moved into Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald territory, so often wrongly spoofed. She didn’t spoof. She brought in a wonderful baritone, Mark Watson, for duets (“Wanting You” and “New Moon”). I could have listened for hours. They sang sincerely and beautifully. Then she handed us a brilliant interpretation of Kurt Weill’s “Pirate Jenny,” which by itself deserved an award.

She included a few other songs that were not really “Old Hollywood” (“What Is A Youth” from Zefferelli’s “Romeo and Juliet “and “My White Knight” from the stage production of The Music Man, what the film turned into “Being In Love”) but please forgive her because she mixed the latter with a breathtaking interpretation of “Bill” from “Show Boat.” Her final song, “Love Is Where You Find It,” came from one of those silly MGM toss- offs, 1948’s “The Kissing Bandit” starring Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson, and here she infused the song with more feeling than the original did. Her encore was “Moon River,” set in the context of her father’s dreams, and sung with feeling and care.

Rice was smart enough to work with an expert team, which well figured in the success of this program. Her director was Joanne Yeoman; she shared the stage with the excellent Ritt Henn on bass and the wry Sher on drums. At the keyboard, as noted, was the wonderful Seth Weinstein, whose attention to detail is well known, and there were a few instances during the show when a lesser hand might have completely altered the proceedings, always a danger in those happy times when the singer gets a little too relaxed with the audience or becomes deeply involved in a song’s emotion. My only real quibble: I thought Rice’s targeting the song “He’s So Unusual” at Weinstein was unnecessary, and she didn’t carry the idea through anyway. It might have been an attempt to prove rapport with the pianist, something that’s almost a requirement in any show, but Weinstein proved his rapport by taking complete care of her and the other musicians.

What struck me is how beautiful Rice has kept her voice and how solid technically she was. She even let out a few very gentle, very, very high notes. This takes skill, faith, and talent, and that requires daily, dull homework. Her personality sparkles, and when she stopped the spoofing, she could convey deep, mature experience, and have I mentioned that I wanted to stay and listen for hours? I hope she gets more chances to use her splendid gifts and that she may be encouraged to be even braver in using them.

“Screen Gems—Songs of Old Hollywood” with Sarah Rice. JoAnn Yeoman, Director; Seth Weinstein, Piano; Ritt Henn, Bass; Bobby Sher, Drums. At The Laurie Beechman Theatre at the West End Café, 407 W 42nd Street. April 30 (last show!) at 8 PM. $20 cover. For reservations, call 212-695-6909.


Writer and singer Mary Sheeran has sung through several operas, song recitals, and cabarets, including several performances of her "Songs From the Balanchine Repertory." Her novel, Who Have the Power, an exploration of cultural conflict, feminism, and Native American history set on the American frontier, was published in 2006 after she earned a Master of Divinity degree from New York Theological Seminary. Her novel, Quest of the Sleeping Princess, which unfolds during a 1988 gala performance of the New York City Ballet, will be published later this year.

The 24th Annual Easter Bonnet Competition

“Life is a blessing and then you die.” That beautiful spin on a gloomy saying was offered by the cast of Memphis yesterday at the 24th annual The Easter Bonnet Competition, the final element in a six-week fundraising effort during which Broadway and Off-Broadway performers raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (BC/EFA) and its charitable efforts.

In songs, dance, skits and jokes these show folks filled the Minskoff Theatre with energy, talent and joy, entertaining the audience as well as competing to see which show created the best Easter bonnet. The performances were lively, such as the one led by Jim Brochu, star of the one-man play Zero Hour, in which singers sang “The Bonnet” to the tune of “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof and ritualistically passed around their bonnet from person to person. Others were touching, such as the cast of Billy Elliot’s singing “The Stars Look Down . . . in West Virginia” as a memorial to the 29 miners who were killed there earlier this month, adapting this new song from one in their show.

Other shows participating with either a bonnet or performance were Dancers Responding to AIDS, Fela!, In the Heights, La Cage aux Folles, The Lion King, Mamma Mia!, Million Dollar Quartet, Next Fall, The Phantom of the Opera, R.Evolución Latina, and Wicked.

Between numbers a series of hosts offered timely humor, such as Dylan Baker’s announcement that the touring cast of In the Heights had wanted to participate via video link but they had been detained in Arizona for documentation verification, and Michael Urie’s comment that Sarah Palin wasn’t coming -- “although she can see it from her house.” “She’s still pissed that she didn’t get the lead in American Idiot,” he said.

Other rotating hosts included Chard Kimball, Tony Constantine Maroulis, Corbin Bleu, Colman Domingo, Jan Maxwell, Michael Mulheren, Laura Osnes and Loretta Ables Sayre. The poised and adorable children from South Pacific offered insiders jokes under the topic of what they had learned backstage -- you can’t get out of a math test by saying you had mercury poisoning (an allusion to Jeremy Piven’s dropping out of the 2008 Broadway revival of Speed-the-Plow using that claim) and “When I grow up everyone will be able to marry,” which drew a huge round of applause.

The diminutive Leslie Jordan made me want to see his show, My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, after he shared a funny and sensitive story from his southern childhood. His father was a high-ranking military man and “I was not the son he had in mind.” Jordan, an excitable child, remembered being taken to a wedding when he was three. He squirmed and fidgeted and wouldn’t sit still until he spotted the bride walking down the aisle and was riveted.

Later, when he was taken to see Santa Claus at the downtown department store, he proclaimed for all to hear that he wanted a bride doll for Christmas. His father was horrified, but his mother assured him that young Leslie would forget about it. When Christmas Eve came around, though, their son was excitedly talking about the bride doll Santa was going to leave for him. His mother said to her husband, “Are you going to explain it to him?” His then father put on his coat, headed out in the rare snowstorm and drove from store to store until he found a bride doll that was almost life-size for his tiny son. The next day, upon spotting the doll under the tree, Jordan said, he squatted down and “peed myself.”

The Easter Bonnet competition is being repeated today, with the winner being announced, as well as which show raised the most money from their post-show pitches during this annual spring fund drive. My friends and I over dinner voted the La Cage aux Folles hat the best, which seems appropriate since the competition began 24 years ago in the basement of the Palace Theatre with the original cast creating a few colorful hats, voting on the best with dollar bills and raising $1,200.

Since then these fundraising efforts, which this year involved more than 50 shows and touring companies, have raised $35,784,000 for BC/EFA, supporting AIDS service organizations around the world. Urie read a moving letter from one of those sponsored organizations in Charleston, SC, where recipients had been astonished to learn that their help was coming from people who work on Broadway.

The evening had begun with an appearance by, and standing ovation for, 106-year-old Doris Eaton Travis, an original Ziegfeld Follies Girl (1918-1920) who looked smashing in white pants and a glittery gold jacket. “I don’t do the things I used to,” she said, before kicking up her legs (with supporters on each arm). “I’m becoming more sedate.”

It concluded with another dynamo, Memphis costar Montego Glover, singing “Help Is On the Way,” the David Friedman song made famous by the late Nancy LaMott as BC/EFA’s anthem. It was a powerful ending, under the musical direction of Mary-Mitchell Campbell, who accompanied Glover on piano.

In a letter printed in the program, BC/EFA executive director Tom Viola wrote about how “amazing” it is that so much money has been raised over the years. “But what is most remarkable is how much more than money that ($36,784,000) figure truly represents. It is made up of tens of thousands of acts of outrageous creativity and extraordinary kindness, incredible generosity of talent, time and energy; hilarious onstage antics and heartfelt, quiet moments of remembrance and loving embrace.

“I truly cannot think of any other industry that for over two decades has put aside all contentions, controversy and competition to come together time and again, season after season in ways large and small, to raise funds collectively and offer support as a community to those facing a now wide-variety of crises and challenges.”

I have certainly experienced this generosity of spirit in the community for many years. Irving Berlin definitely got it right when he said there’s no people like show people. Congratulations and blessings to all involved. It was a wonderful evening!

New York Theatre Ballet: The Best of Time Is Now

BY MARY SHEERAN

“You see handsome young people – girls and boys with a bounding or delicate animal grace…To watch their lightness and harmonious ease, their clarity and boldness of motion, is a pleasure.” So wrote poet and dance writer Edwin Denby (1903-1983) in 1943 of the most basic of pleasures of watching ballet, but I’m sure he must have been prescient enough to mean the New York Theatre Ballet, which I had the pleasure of seeing Saturday evening. This chamber ballet group, now in its 31st season, presented four ballets that were as old as 70 years, but fully ready for inspection with nary of fleck of dust to be seen.

I was really there to see Three Virgins and A Devil, Agnes de Mille’s 1941 work, mostly because of that awe-full ballet word, legacy. The cast of its original Ballet Theater production included – just imagine – Lucia Chase, Eugene Loring, Jerome Robbins, and de Mille herself. (I’d been reminded of Robbins’ extraordinary career just the night before when seeing Sondheim on Sondheim.) Well, I forgot all about THEM while watching the crystal clear performances of Amanda Garrett, Carmella Lauer, and Elena Zahlman, as the Priggish, Greedy, and Lustful Virgins, respectively.

Are those words out of date? Well, not one program note was needed for the audience of all ages in the hall, a credit to the late Sallie Wilson who staged this production. Wilson, one of this country’s finest dramatic ballerinas, was a Ballet Mistress and coach with NYTB for 22 years until her death in 2008. I didn’t even have a chance to reflect that this ballet’s point of view was dated as the characters were so specifically drawn. And if any tale teller lends himself to the three virgins’ bumps and grinds interspersed with prayerful attitudes, it’s Boccaccio (the libretto is by Ramon Reed after a story by Boccaccio. I’m sure the old fellow would have enjoyed seeing his tale enhanced by the striking costumes and set courtesy of American Ballet Theater).

Capriol Suite, Frederick Ashton’s imaginative and delightful musings in 1930 of sixteenth century dance forms, comes to us from the Ballet Rambert family tree. Sixteenth century courtly dance consists of slight movements and gestures that can carry playful or erotic significance, and while this may be difficult for us to fully appreciate on our side of history, Ashton puts that point across in two ways: first, by alternating the courtly dancing with more lively peasant brio and second, by inserting into the dance an amusing rivalry of lovers (Steven Melendez and Stephen Campanella) for their charming partner (Carmella Lauer). Placing this piece in the program, before the de Mille and Limón pieces, also underscores the roots of ballet itself – from popular dance to royal court to ballet forms that continue to evolve. The luscious costumes, loaned by the Rambert Dance Company, were made by Anne Guyon.

José Limón’s Suite from Mazurkas (1958), set to music by Chopin (winningly played by pianist Ferdy Tumakaka) further demonstrated that relationship of popular and classical forms as well as music and dancer. I liked that Limón has the dancers pay ever increasing homage to the pianist, from a bow or a nod to an open flirtation in Rie Ogura’s solo. It’s a wonderful piece, which perhaps inspired Robbins’ own Chopin offerings, particularly Dances at a Gathering (1969). I particularly enjoyed Elena Zahlman’s precise and here-I-go-ready-or-not attitude (she always was) and her partner, Kieran Stoneley’s fine-with-me-let’s-go response. Mazurkas was staged by Sarah Stackhouse, who was a principal dancer and partner to Mr. Limón from 1958 to 1969.

Throughout the evening, the dancers were well served by both pianists, Mariko Miyazaki and Mr. Tumakaka, the latter who also played Debussy’s Valse Romantique as a musical interlude, underlining the importance of music to this company.

I’d purposely not studied the dancers’ names or pictures before sitting down, and I particularly did not pay attention to the notes about the guest artist. I preferred to get acquainted on my own. With NYTB’s chamber group, you can see a dancer in several pieces during the space of two hours; the Florence Gould Hall is intimate enough so you can know a dancer pretty well in that time – and that’s a pleasure, too. I was drawn in particular to one young man whose dancing was both intelligent and fervent, not to mention funny in the Mattachins section of Capriol Suite. His solo in the Mazurkas, in its back and forth of self wrestling and noble fire proved mesmerizing and moving.

Well, it turns out he was the artist I had tried not to know, namely Steven Melendez, who’d begun his training at age 7 in NYTB’s LIFT, their community outreach program that provides scholarships, books, clothing, mentoring, and other help to children from New York City shelters. Melendez is currently a principal artist on leave from The Ballet Company of Yokohama. And while I don’t mean just to single him out solely – there was an awful lot of happiness and intelligence danced on that stage – he distilled it all in his dancing.

The company opened the evening with Antony Tudor’s charming Soiree Musicale (1938), which I would like to see again. This is its first performance in decades and was dedicated to Sallie Wilson’s memory. The company staged this piece from its 1962 Labanotation score (which the cast learned to read). It seemed far from the darker worlds of other Tudor pieces and nicely introduced us to the company’s “bounding animal grace.”

Back to Denby who also noted that “…as you watch, [the dancing] will often evoke in passing an intensely poignant fantasy image of human relations…it is fantasy of the highest imaginative honesty.” Denby was writing about George Balanchine’s works specifically then, but his point can be extended to all ballet, which is always in the present and always with the past, just like the rest of us, be that such fantasy comes alive. Legacy is a difficult word for ballet because it’s – well – difficult when “in the moment” is assumed to be only “in the moment,” and when it’s assumed that audiences are only interested in the new. Nevertheless, forward thinking ballet companies treasure their legacy works as if they are works for today’s audiences, admittedly a daunting task. This company manages that task beautifully. The question, beyond a work’s history is, Do you want to see it again? The answer here is, in this context, is oh, yes.

New York Theatre Ballet will recreate classic ballets by Antony Tudor, Frederick Ashton, and José Limón on May 14 and 15 at 7 p.m. at Florence Gould Hall, 55 E. 59th St. Tickets are $25; student tickets are $15 (plus a $1 facility fee). Go to www.nytb.org for online reservations or call Ticketmaster at 212-307-4100 or the Box Office at 212-355-6160.

The program features live music and an informal discussion following the performance. Founder and Artistic Director: Diana Byer; Executive Director and Associate Artistic Director, Christina Paolucci; Ballet Master Lance Westergard; Lighting Design, Brett Maughan; Set Design, Gillian Bradshaw-Smith; Costume design: Sylvia Taalsohn Nolan.


Writer and singer Mary Sheeran has sung through several operas, song recitals, and cabarets, including several performances of her Songs From the Balanchine Repertory. Her novel, Who Have the Power, an exploration of cultural conflict, feminism, and Native American history set on the American frontier, was published in 2006 after she earned a Master of Divinity degree from New York Theological Seminary. Her novel, Quest of the Sleeping Princess, which unfolds during a 1988 gala performance of the New York City Ballet, will be published later this year.

La Cage aux Folles

Director Terry Johnson’s staging of my beloved La Cage aux Folles didn’t clicked with me in this latest Broadway revival. Maybe it’s because my memories of the last revival, in 2004, are still so strong and loving. I saw that production twice and the original once.

My major problem was that the relationships weren’t convincing. Relationships are the heart of this show -- the love between two men who have raised a child together, and the relationship of that grown young man to his parents and to the woman he wants to marry.

Broadway producers make a bargain with the devil when they cast a TV or movie star with the hope that she or he will help fill the house. In this case it’s Kelsey Grammer (left in photo) in the costarring role of Georges, the owner and master of ceremonies at a St. Tropez drag club. I never for one minute felt he loved Albin (Douglas Hodge, right), the star of his show and his partner for 20 years.

What’s more, he doesn’t belong in a musical. He does OK with a mid-range belt, but talks his way through the higher notes and is often off-key. This is especially disappointing in the tender love song “Song on the Sand” that he sings to Albin. I’ve always loved this scene but here it’s painful, both in terms of the singing and the lack of connection between the two.

Unfortunately, the pain is likely to get even worse because after Grammer has ruined the role of Georges for six months he’s going to switch to playing Albin. That should be an even greater disaster.

I felt that same lack on involvement from Hodge, a classically trained British actor best known in England as a collaborator with Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter. Albin has helped raise Jean-Michel (A.J. Shively), Georges’ son from a one-night stand, his only heterosexual encounter engaged in merely to see what it was like to be with a woman. Albin considers himself Jean-Michel’s mother, yet I didn’t feel one shred of maternal sensibility from him.

I also didn’t detect any of the insecurity Albin should grapple with, leading to his conquering Act One closer, “I Am What I Am.” And I am mystified as to why he often spoke with a cockney accent. They’re all supposed to be French, but accents are up for grabs -- Jacob (Robin De Jesus), the maid, sounds as if he’s channeling Rosie Perez.

The most unconvincing is Shively, who seems to have no passion for anything, his parents or his intended, Anne (Elena Shaddow). Actually this is understandable since they are not people who would inspire much passion. Anne is sweet, but dull, so they should be a good match.

With these lackluster performances, Jerry Herman’s songs that I love so much -- the ones I’ve mentioned, as well as “With Anne on My Arm,” “Look Over There” and “The Best of Times” -- have little emotional impact, so the originals from my cast album kept crowding them out in my mind. (Harvey Fierstein wrote the musical’s book based on the play by Jean Poiret, which also inspired the 1978 French film and the American version, “The Birdcage,” in 1996.)

“The Best of Times” was actually Broadway Blessing’s first sing-along song. I had asked our then music director Darryl Curry if the Choir could sing it and he suggested we have the audience join in. That was the start of what is now our popular closing feature in each year’s Blessing.

The performers who have the most spirit are "the notorious and dangerous Cagelles,” the transvestite chorus boys who perform the dance numbers. Nick Adams, Nicholas Cunningham, Sean Patrick Doyle, Yurel Echezarreta, Terry Lavell and Logan Keslar playfully execute Lynne Page’s unimaginative choreography, which relies heavily on cartwheels. Those guys can really move in high heels and Matthew Wright’s skimpy, gaudy/glittery costumes, camping it up to give the show what little life it has.

I also enjoyed Mme. Dindon (Veanne Cox) as the repressed wife of the ultraconservative traditional values political candidate (Fred Applegate) who wants to shut down establishments like Georges’. The Dindons are Anne’s parents and their visit to meet the family of Anne’s intended is the basis for the farce that is the main action of the play. That’s the comic side; the heart of the play is the fact that love doesn’t have to be traditional to be real and the theme of acceptance, both of others and of self -- “I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses.”

This revival of La Cage is the latest transfer from London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, which recently gave us revivals of Sunday in the Park with George and A Little Night Music. Hodge played Albin in there as well, winning the 2009 Olivier Awards Best Actor in a Musical, while the show won for Best Musical Revival. That production transferred to the West End's Playhouse Theatre, where it is still running. I guess the difference in that effort, which is popularly and critically thriving, and the Broadway version is that it doesn’t have Kelsey Grammer!

The original Broadway production ran for 1,761 performances and won six Tony Awards in 1984, including Best Musical, Best Score (Herman) and Best Book (Fierstein). The 2004 revival won Tonys for Best Revival of a Musical and Best Choreography.

Tickets for the current show are available by calling Telecharge.com at (212) 239-6200, by visiting www.telecharge.com/lacage or at the Longacre Theatre box office, 220 W. 48th St. Visit www.LaCage.com for more information and a video introduction from Grammer and the Cagelles.