Tony nominations are in; so are the snubs
The Tony nominations must have been especially hard to pick this year. The season was busy, varied and filled with many plays and a few musicals I'd tell my best friends to see. (Now you know my private reality check.)
Gone are the years when I would regularly scream crazy-lady stuff at the decisions by the anonymous nominating committee. Either I've totally lost my garbage meter or the choices seem more carefully considered these days, and the omissions less egregious.
How odd, then, that respect for the nominations isn't taking the hurt out of the snubs. As performances and plays I cherish disappear into the void with the rest of history not on the national Tony broadcasts, it feels right to mention a few of the real heartaches.
DANIEL RADCLIFFE
What does this unusual, multitalented young artist have to do to get the attention of the Tony nominators? In 2008, he quietly transfigured himself from adorable boy wizard to horrifically unstable (and briefly naked) stable boy in "Equus," his remarkable stage debut. No Tony nomination. Now he sings, he dances, he totally charms as Finch, guiltless corporate climber, in the revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." I'm not saying he should get a Tony nomination for really trying. He may not have the biggest voice on Broadway or the most spontaneous dance technique, but Radcliffe is the real thing -- brave, smart and really fun to watch.
'BENGAL TIGER' AND ROBIN WILLIAMS
Even in a season with a heartening number of new grown-up plays, it's criminal that this play and this performance have both been lost in the shuffle. How disappointing that the nominators failed to recognize Williams' gorgeously restrained, shrewd portrayal of the mangy jungle cat whose tiger's-eye view informs this darkly entertaining story about the Iraq war and the nature of all us beasts. The deliriously original playwright is Rajiv Joseph, who made a smashing Off-Broadway debut this year with his two-character relationship play, "Gruesome Playground Injuries." With "Bengal Tiger," a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist, he deftly moves onto a big fantastical canvas without losing the intimacy. I'm delighted that Arian Moayed, terrific as the soulful translator, has a featured-actor nomination. But that's not nearly enough.
'MISS DAISY,' JAMES EARL JONES AND BOYD GAINES
What a relief that Vanessa Redgrave, at least, has a nomination for her devastating, elegiac portrayal of the obdurate Jewish-Southern widow in this deeply felt revival. But that's it? This production was a shimmering triumph of interlocking life studies, with Redgrave matched -- beat by heartbeat -- by Jones as her equally proud black chauffeur and Gaines as Miss Daisy's assimilating grown son. Yes, Alfred Uhry's 1987 Pulitzer winner is shamelessly manipulative. But it was supremely elegant manipulation, magnificently staged and performed. Not incidentally, except for Al Pacino in "The Merchant of Venice," this was the only long-running hit of the fall season. How quickly some people forget.
'PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT'
Really? No nomination for best musical? Just two nominations -- one for the wonderful Tony Sheldon, as the drag queen Bernadette, and one for costumes? I understand the 14 nominations for "The Book of Mormon" and I respect the nominators' decision to honor the altogether honorable, if obvious "The Scottsboro Boys," which closed for lack of interest in December. But does it really deserve 12 nominations? And I hate to mention names, but come on . . . how could "Catch Me If You Can," which has a new score but almost no inspiration, get nominated for best musical, and not "Priscilla," which has a jukebox score but the production values and breezy confidence of big-party theater? And has anyone actually listened to the sniggering, absurdly vulgar lyrics for the boogying nuns in the mindlessly cheerful "Sister Act," which got five nominations, including best musical? In its own special, out-there way, "Priscilla" has taste.
'THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES' AND BEN STILLER
I'm glad Edie Falco got a nomination for her bone-honest portrayal of the helplessly disturbed Bananas, but I'm so sad about the exclusion of everything else in David Cromer's intentionally dark, less zany revival of John Guare's woozy and wonderful tragicomedy about the absurdity of celebrity and star-struck dreams. And I'm sorry that Ben Stiller's tightly wound, even scary interpretation of Artie, the aging zookeeper and yearning, terrible songwriter was ignored. The production doesn't have the virtuosic, grotesque adorableness of the equally terrific 1986 revival (with Swoosie Kurtz and Stockard Channing), but this one goes for the kind of laughs that also hurt.
KIEFER SUTHERLAND AND JIM GAFFIGAN
"That Championship Season," despite the 1973 Pulitzer, never was more than a solid piece of middlebrow message-naturalism. And it hasn't aged well. But I keep thinking about Sutherland's daring at having chosen to play against action-hero expectations as the bland, mediocre school principal -- and playing him with such wrenching delicacy. And who knew that the comic Gaffigan, in his Broadway debut, could be so impressive playing a minor-mouse mayor with rat-fink ambitions? In a season with less acting competition, perhaps these actors would have been remembered.
While I'm listing performers who should not have been forgotten, let's add Benjamin Walker's breakthrough as the deliciously narcissistic title character in the audacious, politically savvy and politically incorrect "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson." And Robert Sean Leonard and the surprisingly solid Jim Belushi in the delightful revival of "Born Yesterday." And Colin Donnell as the dashing, but never pushing, leading man in "Anything Goes." And Lia Williams, holding the galloping brains and passions together in the underappreciated revival of "Arcadia."
And, speaking of galloping, let no one mistake the gifted young Seth Numrich in "War Horse" as just a body with a pulse to play off the puppets. He is an inextricable part of this magnificent show.
