If you want to see rich, beautiful and/or talented people having near-nervous breakdowns, tune into the Tony Awards on Sunday, June 7, and wait for the announcement of the winner in the following categories: Best Musical, Best Direction of a Musical, and Best Performances by Actors in Leading Roles of a Musical. These are all going to be nail-biters.Best Musical: Conventional wisdom holds that this award is the only one that brings box-office lucre, and this year it’s a tight race between “An American in Paris” and “Fun Home.” Both received a total of twelve Tony nominations apiece and both are doing well at the box-office. They were also among the best-reviewed shows of the season. “An American in Paris” marks a number of Broadway debuts, including the first musical directed by Christopher Wheeldon, the British-born choreographer and one–time soloist of the New York City Ballet and Royal Ballet. He cast Leanne Cope and Robert Fairchild, also ballet dancers, to take on the roles originated by Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly in this adaptation of the 1951 Oscar-winning Vincente Minnelli film. The musical, set in post-World War II France and featuring a lush Gershwin score, is colorful, romantic, and easily digestible. “Fun Home,” on the other hand, is a highly original, daring, and challenging masterwork based on the illustrated memoir by Alison Bechdel about a young lesbian caricaturist coming to terms with both her sexuality and the volatile personality of her closeted gay father. In 1984, Jerry Herman’s brightly entertaining “La Cage Aux Folles” won the Tony Award over Stephen Sondheim’s far more accomplished and groundbreaking “Sunday in the Park with George.” That may well be the case on Sunday night.Best Direction of a Musical: Among the five nominees, there are three that stand the best chance of taking home the Tony Award: Wheeldon, Sam Gold (“Fun Home”), and Bartlett Sher (“The King and I”). Wheeldon is a lock to win Best Choreography for which he is also nominated, but the question is whether the voters will also acknowledge his direction. If “An American in Paris” sweeps the awards, that may be the case. But he faces stiff competition from Gold’s brilliantly inventive direction of “Fun Home” in the round at the Circle in the Square Theatre. He fleetly moves the action from a funeral home setting to a college dorm to a pivotal car ride between father and daughter at the musical’s bittersweet conclusion. It is among the best work ever seen on the stage from Broadway’s most daring director. And one can hardly count out Sher who marshals a cast of fifty-one actors, including dozens of children, in a stunning production of “The King and I” which is certain to win the Best Revival Tony Award. The voters are going to have a tough time marking their ballots on this one.Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical:Indicative of the competitiveness in this category is the supposition that the legendary Chita Rivera, who at 82 is giving a performance of a lifetime in “The Visit,” is not in the running. Leanne Cope (“An American in Paris”) and Beth Malone (“Fun Home”) are also giving Tony-worthy performances, but since the respective openings of the revivals of “On The Twentieth Century” and “The King and I,” it’s been a contest between Kristin Chenoweth for her delightfully daffy Lily Garland in the former and Kelli O’Hara as the entrancing Anna Leonowens in the latter. Anna is a role that won Tonys for actors in two previous productions, Gertrude Lawrence in the original and Donna Murphy in the last revival. Yet O’Hara, who has been nominated six times and never won, faces a headwind in prevailing against the comic hurricane that is Chenoweth, a previous Tony winner who will also be co-hosting the ceremony on Sunday night with Alan Cumming.Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical:The odds are almost even between Robert Fairchild, as ex-pat aspiring artist Jerry Mulligan in “An American in Paris,” and Michael Cerveris, as the tortured esthete and funeral home director Bruce Bechdel. There is also a possible upset by Brian d’Arcy James, brilliant as as one half of the brother team competing for the spotlight against William Shakespeare in the Elizabethan romp, “Something Rotten!”As expected of a ballet principal, Fairchild dances the role magnificently. But more surprising was that he credibly pulled off the acting and singing with little previous experience. The Tony voters also like to reward performers who come to Broadway from another discipline, as when they gave opera sing Paulo Szot the Tony for “South Pacific.” It’s anybody’s guess if they’ll welcome Fairchild with the same fervor. Cerveris is giving a much more nuanced and complicated performance in a role that is far from sympathetic. Bruce Bechdel is abusive toward his wife and children and seduces young men. And yet Cerveris’s performance is so blazingly honest that the actor goes a long way in making the family dynamic utterly heartbreaking. His remarkable performance is enhanced by his scene partners, including Judy Kuhn, as wife Helen, and the three actors who play Alison at various ages: Sydney Lucas, Emily Skeggs and Beth Malone. All of these principal actors have received well-deserved Tony nominations and will be among those who are the edge of their prime seats at Radio City Musical.
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