Best Play
Best Play is not a thrilling category for me this year. The most original, bold works I saw this season mostly happened Off-Broadway, namely Circle Mirror Transformation and Clybourne Park. My favorite new play on Broadway, Enron, was unfortunately snubbed by the Tonys. The four we are left with are solid, but certainly not extraordinary. Time Stands Still is the standout of the bunch, a great story about the crutches we use to make our way through the world, and the results of those being stripped away. Donald Margulies’ script is both humorous and dense in emotional depth, and Laura Linney and Brian D’Arcy James both give incredible performances that breathe life into the lead roles of war reporters sidelined in Brooklyn. In The Next Room and Red are both fine works that are redeemable despite some fairly major flaws. In The Next Room‘s wonderful script by Sarah Ruhl outshines the production as a whole which featured some clunky performances and inconsistent pacing, while Red‘s Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne and director Michael Grandage manage to get more out of the play than its rather meatless script should allow. Rounding out the four is Next Fall, a minor work that slips into Lifetime-movie triteness time and again.
What Should Win Rankings:
1) Time Stands Still
2) In The Next Room, or the vibrator play
3) Red
4) Next Fall
What Will Win: Red
What Should Have Been Nominated: Enron
Best Revival of a Play
The Cort Theatre hosted back-to-back productions of two of the season’s best works: the revivals of Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge and August Wilson’s Fences. Both featured star turns by Liev Schrieber and Scarlett Johansson, and Denzel Washington and Viola Davis. The productions were both stellar, and while Bridge is my favorite to win, I will also be very pleased with Fences nabbing the category as I expect will happen. Rounding out the category is Manhattan Theatre Club’s wonderfully glamorous fall production of The Royal Family, and the Stanley Tucci-helmed Lend Me A Tenor, a production I didn’t particularly love, however, this season lacked a serious frontrunner to overtake that fourth spot.
What Should Win Rankings:
1) A View From The Bridge
2) Fences
3) The Royal Family
4) Lend Me A Tenor
What Will Win: Fences
What Should Have Been Nominated: —
