Tony Nominations

The 2008-2009 Tony nominations were announced today, an event of great interest to me even though I have no access to New York or other big city theater and, as earlier noted in this blog, I can no longer sit still to enjoy public events, whether theatrical, cinematic, musical, or sporting -- I'm just too fidgety, and need to pause and move about. So my enjoyment of theater has to be mainly at a conceptual/imaginary level, but since I have always been a devoted reader of plays, that is nothing particularly new. I do wish more theatrical performances were memorialized on film or video, as PBS did regularly in the Seventies and Eighties.

Despite the economy, Broadway had more new productions this year (43) than it has in 25 years. It also achieved record grosses. Some might see this as a counter-intuitive phenomenon, but I don't. As commentators have pointed out, play-going falls into the category of "affordable luxury" (as opposed to that trip to Tahiti). And I believe that people do need the arts and turn to the arts in times of stress. Not just frivolous stuff, either; there were a high number of "serious plays" on Broadway this season.

Another factor in Broadway's surge is that doing theater has become a very hot career move for screen actors. Among the Tony acting nominees this year are Jane Fonda (in 33 Variations, returning to Broadway after a 45-year absence), James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, and Marcia Gay Harden (all in God of Carnage); Stockard Channing and Martha Plimpton (Pal Joey); and Allison Janney (9 to 5: The Musical). Other nominees, especially British Commonwealthers, have split their time between stage and screen over the years -- Geoffrey Rush (Exit the King); Angela Lansbury (Blithe Spirit); Janet McTeer (Mary Stuart) -- and still others are primarily stage-associated -- Raul Esparza, whom I've written about before (Speed-the-Plow); Hallie Foote, daughter of the late playwright Horton Foote (Dividing the Estate); Harriet Walter (Mary Stuart); and Brian d'Arcy James (Shrek: The Musical). By any measure, it is a most distinguished group, and competition for those nominations was fierce: among the actors who didn't score noms are Nathan Lane, John Goodman, and Bill Irwin (Waiting for Godot); Susan Sarandon and Andrea Martin (Exit the King); Daniel Radcliffe, shedding his Harry Potter persona (Equus); John Lithgow (All My Sons); Kristin Scott Thomas (The Seagull); Frank Langella (A Man for All Seasons); and Brian Dennehy (Desire under the Elms).

If your mouth doesn't water reading those names, you don't like actors much!

Notice, too, the distinguished playwrights represented on Broadway this year -- Beckett, Ionesco, Schiller, O'Neill, Chekhov, Mamet, Foote, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Noel Coward, Robert Bolt (and August Wilson and Alan Ayckbourn plays were also staged). It used to be that the London theater had the classic drama market cornered, but no longer.

The stage, you will perceive, is an eminently cool place to be again. It was never all-the-way uncool, to be sure, but many American screen and television actors felt for decades that no particular energy needed to be put in the direction of the theater; I don't think that many of them feel that way now. (And Broadway is scarcely the only place they can appear; Off and Off-Off Broadway, London, Chicago, Los Angeles, and the broad array of regional theaters all beckon too.) This summer, for example, a young film actress whose career is taking off like a rocket, Anne Hathaway, will appear in Twelfth Night at New York's Shakespeare in the Park (along with the ubiquitous Raul Esparza, Audra McDonald, and Michael Cumpsty). It's a great move for her (and of course has a symbolic appropriateness too, since a much earlier Anne Hathaway was Shakespeare's wife!).

POSTSCRIPT: I've heard rumors that the Yasmina Reza play God of Carnage, which James Gandolfini helped to bring to New York after seeing it in London, and which by all accounts is the hottest ticket in town, will be made as a film with Gandolfini and his knock-out co-stars. Makes all the sense in the world; can't wait to see it.

UPDATE (5/17/2009): Ben Brantley sums up the season well here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/theater/theaterspecial/17bran.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

UPDATE (6/7/2009): Also at the New York Times, Dwight Garner has a nice piece about reading instead of seeing the Best Play nominees, which for obvious reasons appeals to me:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/theater/theaterspecial/07plays.html?partner=rss&emc=rss