Drama League Nominations Announced

The first major announcement of the 2010 awards season has been announced in the form of the nominations for the 76th annual Drama League Awards.  Bebe Neuwirth of The Addams Family and Kelsey Grammer of La Cage Aux Folles announced this year's nominees for the best plays, musicals, revivals and performances for the best of Broadway and off-Broadway for the 2009-2010 season.  And the nominees are ...

Distinguished Production of A Play
Aftermath
A Behanding in Spokane
The Brother/Sister Plays
Clybourne Park
Enron
Next Fall
The Pride
Red
Venus in Fur

Distinguished Production of A Musical
The Addams Family
American Idiot
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
Brief Encounter
Come Fly Away
Memphis
Million Dollar Quartet
Scottsboro Boys
Sondheim on Sondheim

Distinguished Revival of A Play
As You Like It
Brighton Beach Memoirs
Collected Stories
The Emperor Jones
Fences
Lend Me A Tenor
A Lie of the Mind
A View From the Bridge

Distinguished Revival of A Musical
A Little Night Music
Finian's Rainbow
La Cage Aux Folles
Promises, Promises
Ragtime

Distinguished Performance Award*
Nina Arianda, Venus in Fur
Laura Benanti, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play
Barbara Cook, Sondheim on Sondheim
Daniel Craig, A Steady Rain
Tyne Daly, Love, Loss and What I Wore
Hugh Dancy, The Pride
Viola Davis, Fences
Brandon Victor Dixon, The Scottsboro Boys
Colman Domingo, A Boy and His Soul
The Ensemble of Aftermath
The Ensemble of Brief Encounter
Katie Finneran, Promises, Promises
Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
John Gallagher, Jr., American Idiot
Victor Garber, Present Laughter
Montego Glover, Memphis
Mark-Paul Gosselaar, The Understudy
Kelsey Grammer, La Cage Aux Folles
David Alan Grier, Race
Lance Guest, Million Dollar Quartet
Jonathan Hammond, The Boys In the Band
Valerie Harper, Looped
Sean Hayes, Promises, Promises
Jessica Hecht, A View From the Bridge
Jon Michael Hill, Superior Donuts
Douglas Hodge, La Cage Aux Folles
Judith Ivey, The Glass Menagerie and The Lady With All the Answers
Scarlett Johansson, A View From the Bridge
Marc Damon Johnson, The Brother/Sister Plays
Leslie Jordan, My Trip Down the Pink Carpet
Levi Kreis, Million Dollar Quartet
Nathan Lane, The Addams Family
Angela Lansbury, A Little Night Music
Linda Lavin, Collected Stories
Jude Law, Hamlet
Laura Linney, Time Stands Still
Jan Maxwell, The Royal Family and Lend Me A Tenor
Marin Mazzie, Enron
Alfred Molina, Red
Jim Norton, Finian's Rainbow
Rosie O'Donnell, Love, Loss and What I Wore
Karine Plantadit, Come Fly Away
Eddie Redmayne, Red
Roslyn Ruff, Things of Dry Hours
Tony Shalhoub, Lend Me A Tenor
Jeremy Shamos, Clybourne Park
Anna Deveare Smith, Let Me Down Easy
Bobby Steggert, Ragtime and Yank!
John Douglas Thompson, The Emperor Jones
Michael Urie, The Temperamentals
Tony Vincent, American Idiot
Christopher Walken, A Behanding in Spokane
Benjamin Walker, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
Denzel Washington, Fences
Ben Winshaw, The Pride
Vanessa Williams, Sondheim on Sondheim
Catherine Zeta-Jones, A Little Night Music

*This award has eight recipients each year, but may only be won once by any given performer.  This year, eight previous winners of the Distinguished Performance Award will be recognized for their work on New York stages this year.  They are Norbert Leo Butz for Enron, Kathleen Chalfont for Family Week, Rosemary Harris for The Royal Family, Hugh Jackman for A Steady Rain, John Lithgow for Mr. and Mrs. Finch, Bebe Neuwirth for The Addams Family, Stephen Rea for Ages of the Moon, and Liev Schreiber for A View From the Bridge.

The Drama League announced the recipients of some special awards earlier this spring including the Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre Award (which went to Nathan Lane for The Addams Family) and the the Julie Hansen Aaward for Excellence in Directing (which was awarded to Kenny Leon for Fences).

La Cage Aux Folles

A revival of La Cage Aux Folles, the musical with a book by Harvey Fierstein and a score by Jerry Herman, opened last night at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway.  The revival, opening less than six years after the previous revival of the same show, was praised as being better than its source material, but then ... most productions of this show are.  And if this show's history on Broadway is any indication, a Tony nomination is in high order.  In 1984 the musical won 6 Tony Awards, including book, score, and musical, beating out the predicted winner -- Stephen Sondheim's Sunday In the Park With George -- and the 2005 revival, often called soulless and boring, won the musical revival Tony over revivals of Sweet Charity and Pacific Overtures.  Whether or not the show can pull off a win in its third incarnation waits to be seen, and it looks especially difficult in a year with such strong revivals as A Little Night Music and Ragtime, but one never knows.

This production was especially praised for the leading performance of Douglas Hodge as Zaza/Albin/Mama who seems likely as anyone to be nominated for a lead actor Tony.  In somewhat of a surprise, Kelsey Grammer (of Frasier fame) was also given some good notices for his singing and acting in this part, with most reviewers acknowledging the oddity of having cast him in a musical.