Dancers, Rock Stars, and Spies in a Musical of His Own Making

My Life is a Musical at the Bay Street Theater

Howie Michael Smith and ensemble in My Life is a Musical.

            A common—and cliché, at this point—complaint about musicals is the implausibility of the characters breaking into song to express their emotions.  In every heavy-handed musical theater parody on sitcoms, in movies, and, less often, in stage shows, there is at least one moment when an actor steps forward into the spotlight, ready to deliver his solo, and a fellow cast member snipes, “Why are you singing?”  So it’s a relief, at least, to see a clever conceit based on this eternal complaint brought to life adequately in Adam Overett’s new musical, My Life is a Musical, running at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor through August 31^st. 

            Parker (Howie Michael Smith) is a mild-mannered accountant (somehow this character has become a musical theater mainstay) who, since childhood, has been plagued by the people around him bursting into song and dance at inopportune moments.  No one but Parker can see or hear the live, 24/7 musical, and Parker learns to cope by avoiding “emotional situations” and “new people, since they usually introduce themselves with a song.”  Through an administrative misstep by his firm, Parker gets sent out on the road as a tour accountant with a band called Zeitgeist, fronted by the egomaniacal Zach (Justin Matthew Sargent) and managed by the ambitious, easily hurt JT (Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone).  Parker falls quickly for JT (as someone who’s been avoiding people his whole life might be wont to do) and, noting the band’s awfulness, quickly finds a solution.  Parker will transcribe the songs he hears Zach singing every day—and Zach, not knowing he’s been singing at all, will have a set-list for his concerts.  (The sequence in which Parker first tries his hand at this fakery, covered by the song “Zach’s Rise to Fame,” is an example of the creative staging and writing that make the good parts of this musical great.)  Cyrano-style, Parker insists that Zach claim authorship of the songs to avoid revealing his perceived weirdness to the world.  But the band is pursued by a self-serious music journalist named, among other things, Randy (the fantastic Robert Cuccioli), who senses that something is rotten in the house of Zeitgeist.  Hilarity, as in most musicals, is bound to ensue.

            The quality of the show varies wildly from scene to scene.  The opening’s exposition—from the curtain’s rise ‘til Parker begins his songwriting scheme—is almost aggressively banal.  But from there on in, the fun increases exponentially, up to a disappointing ending.  Mr. Smith, as the reserved Parker, is mostly generic, fun only in his explosive reactions to the music that won’t stop following him around.  Mr. Sargent, as Zach, is very funny, and his first number, “Zach’s Song,” is a highlight—it’s a pity his character is underexplored.  It’s Robert Cuccioli, playing the faux-mysterious Randy, who steals the show.  The character is written (thanks to Mr. Overett, who’s responsible for book, lyrics, and music) in a malaprop-ridden style that makes him the funniest thing about My Life.  Slapstick seems to follow Randy, as in a scene at his hotel (called On the Corner, but set in the middle of a block) reminiscent of something out of a Howard Hawks film.  It also helps that Randy’s signature song, “What Have You Got to Hide,” is by far the score’s best-written.

            The show’s predicament can be best expressed by its final scene, when Parker finally reveals his secret.  The reaction is immediately accepting—no questions, no requests for elaboration.  This seems odd if only because Parker’s music-driven life is supposed to exist in the real world, a world where people react oddly if he tells them he’s living on, as he puts it “a 1950s MGM soundstage.”  In the world the musical presents during its dreary exposition, if Parker told anyone he heard music and saw dancing someone would institutionalize him, or at least medicate him.  But it’s easy to understand why Mr. Overett went this way.  Rather than being a parody of musicals, My Life is a Musical is trying to be real, old-fashioned musical theater (albeit with an up-tempo rock score in which most of the songs blend together).  Better, Mr. Overett, to stick to and heighten the parody.  A show can’t be constantly self-referential and stand on its own at the same time.

Youth, Reconsidered

This is Our Youth at the Cort Theatre
Kieran Culkin (L) and Michael Cera in This is Our Youth

            This is very important.

            Stop reading this review now.  If you’re at home on the computer, switch to another tab.  If you’re at work, go to the bathroom and do it on your phone.  If you’re lounging on the beach somewhere, get up and go somewhere you have access to a computer.

            You should—no, you must—immediately buy tickets to This is Our Youth at the Cort Theatre.

            The play, for starters, was written in 1996 by Kenneth Lonergan, who later wrote the screenplays to You Can Count on Me and Gangs of New York.  Set in 1982, it covers a two-day period in the life of three twenty-somethings who belong to a subset of yuppie culture—Upper West Side Jewish ne’er-do-wells whose parents fund their drug habits out of pure inertia.  It never feels dated or boring.  It’s red-hot from start to finish, replete with well-deployed comic affectation to match its deep and thought-provoking concepts of young life and death.  Mr. Lonergan is a master of playwriting, and this, the first Broadway production of his masterwork, is an opportunity to watch his words at work, guided by the always-capable director Anna D. Shapiro (August: Osage County) in a near-perfect world created by scenic designer Todd Rosenthal.

            Kieran Culkin is marvelously cast as a hard-living douchebag named Dennis Ziegler, the disappointing son of a cancer-ridden but still world-renowned painter.  Constantly spewing abuse at everyone around him, pausing to apologize, and then berating his companion for accepting his apology, Mr. Culkin’s total embodiment of the character is mesmerizing.  His natural likeability as an actor saves Dennis from veering into full-on villain territory, but his disregard for human frailty and never-ending vanity make him so much fun to hate.

            Relative newcomer Tavi Gevinson, an eighteen-year-old blogger and actress, plays Jessica Goldman, a neurotic anarcho-capitalist with a brash and entertaining sense of self.  Her performance is totally unique and inimitable, one of the best female turns on a Broadway stage in years.  Like the heroines of Hollywood’s classic screwball comedies, nobody in the audience can help but fall slightly in love with her by show’s end, and yet she’s not an empty shell or a viewpoint disguised as a character like many female leads of great recent plays.  She has inner thoughts and a complex ideology that can grate on her peers but always charms them, and in my mind, no one but Ms. Gevinson could have pulled off this two-sided act so masterfully.

            The down-on-his-luck dork head-over-heels for Jessica is Warren Staub, played in a show-stealing and history-making performance by—of all people—Michael Cera.  With this character, Mr. Cera singlehandedly escapes his seemingly unbreakable link to the line of mumbling milquetoasts he’s played throughout his career.  Here Mr. Cera has not just become Warren, he has created him—every tic, every movement, every reading is coordinated to full effect to bring a new version of this oft-attempted character to life.  (Warren has been played by, at various times, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, and Colin Hanks, among others.  After having seen Mr. Cera play the role, it’s near impossible to imagine anyone else.)  His back-and-forth with his two cast-mates is incredible--his rapport with Kieran Culkin is marvelous but expected, given their wonderful work together in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and his chemistry with Ms. Gevinson is potent and real.  Though Warren, the character, starts off a caricature, Mr. Lonergan pulls off one of the great character arcs in modern theater and turns Warren—with Mr. Cera’s help—into a wholly sympathetic character, one we root for and hope to see succeed.  Though he doesn’t, entirely (this is his youth, after all), one emerges from the theater with a sense of satisfaction and optimism that has been absent, at least for me, from much happier stories.  It doesn’t take long to realize why—this incredible cast and illustrious creative team has shown us definitively how to put on a great play.

Who Loses and Who Wins

                    Shakespeare in the Park’s King Lear

 

(L-R): John Lithgow, Glenn Fleshler, Jessica Hecht, Clarke Peters, Slate Holmgren and Jessica Collins in King Lear.

            One of King Lear’s many unpleasant metaphors used to describe his traitorous daughters comes midway through the play, when he and his company have been turned out of the house of his second child, Regan, and into a raging thunderstorm.  Insisting with acrimony that the travails of one befouled beggar must needs have originated with the man’s daughters, Lear pontificates, “Nothing could have subdued nature / To such a lowness but his unkind daughters… ‘Twas… those pelican daughters,” referring to the popular legend in the sixteenth century that infant pelicans fed on their parents’ blood.  In Daniel Sullivan’s production of King Lear at the Delacorte Theatre (it hasn’t been seen there since 1973), running through August 17^th, this venomous aside appears to be more than relevant.  King Lear himself, played with a surfeit of talent by John Lithgow, fills the play up with blood, and the actresses portraying his daughters drain it back out again.

            Jessica Hecht, as Regan, Jessica Collins, as Cordelia, and, shockingly, Annette Bening as Goneril are so flat and listless that they render the A-story of Shakespeare’s celebrated tale of senility rather boring and, occasionally, seemingly endlessly long.  Not only are Ms. Hecht and Ms. Bening noticeably old for their roles (56-year-old Bening and 49-year-old Hecht play the marriageable daughters of the 68-year-old Lithgow) and Ms. Collins ill-suited to the role of Cordelia (managing to conjure only the mystery of the character, and none of what lies beneath), but all three extract much of the drama from this tale of royal espionage and murder.  Goneril and Regan’s partner in crime, Eric Sheffer Stevens as Edmund, bastard son of Gloucester, is not much better—he delivers his lines with the faltering interest of a high school student discovering the Bard for the first time, not the transformative ability of a seasoned actor.  Disappointing—and yet, who knows?  This could be a ploy by Mr. Sullivan to make Lear more appealing—after the hundredth bloodless exchange between Goneril and Regan, I was praying for the King to be set up in their castles and for the two of them to be thrown out into the rain.

            This unfortunate turn of events certainly allows the audience to appreciate what excellent performances we’re given.  The Earl of Gloucester, a Lear loyalist, is embodied entirely by the magnificent Clarke Peters, and his legitimate son, Edward, is well-portrayed by Chukwudi Iwuji, who is barred from equal greatness only by his perennially resurfacing—and slightly distracting—Nigerian accent.  Steven Boyer gives Lear’s Fool a slightly childlike, petulant air that adds significantly to understanding of his frustration.  And, of course, we are lucky to witness the explosive performance of John Lithgow as the old King himself.

            At the beginning of Lear, the King is trustingly—and, as we later find, stupidly—entrusting his lands to his three daughters in a state of ecstasy.  In the middle, he is to be found railing against the elements and going rapidly mad.  In the end, his spirit is broken entirely by the death of the daughter he judged too harshly.  Mr. Lithgow portrays this range of emotion with pitch-perfect attention to detail.  He is slightly young for the role (Lear is, in the play, meant to be eighty), but his hunching posture, slow, deliberate movements, and white beard contribute well to the illusion.  Under even Mr. Sullivan’s rather uninspired direction (the Druidic, imperial theme has been done to death, even in June's Macbeth at the Park Avenue Armory), Mr. Lithgow manages to shine.  While not exactly a tour-de-force (the flaws in the performance can be interpreted either as humanizing or oversights), it is certainly a turn that will be remembered beyond this summer, even if, thanks to the lukewarm results this time, Lear is not performed again at the Delacorte for another forty years.

One More Merry War

Much Ado About Nothing at the Delacorte Theatre

Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater in Much Ado About Nothing.

            To say that the Jack O’Brien-directed Much Ado About Nothing playing at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park through July 6^th is generally wonderful in every conceivable way is hardly a compliment.  I have yet to see a production of an original, unaltered work of Shakespeare at this locale about which I did not feel this way.  Nor is it any great kindness to say that Much Ado flows just as well, and is just as breathtakingly funny, as it ever was.  Much Ado, arguably the best of Shakespeare’s comedies, needs no help from any modern creative to be so.  The most accurate, and, I believe, the best accolade I could provide is that this version of Much Ado is excellently acted by all parties involved, and that makes for an exhilarating evening of theater.

            We begin, as any dealing with this play ought, with Beatrice and Benedick, the sparring lovers who exchange bursts of wit at which it is hard to imagine the Bard himself did not laugh aloud upon writing.  Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater have the good fortune to portray these two.  Both are ere of Delacorte productions past—Ms. Rabe in As You Like It, Mr. Linklater in The Comedy of Errors, and both in the Broadway transfer The Merchant of Venice.  Both are marvelous.  Mr. Linklater plays Benedick brashly and loudly, the “Prince’s jester” as a true soldier.  Ms. Rabe is dagger-tongued as his equally vociferous counterpart.  Their repartee is delectable to watch; their chemistry makes their eventual love all the more satisfying.

            For a backdrop, Mr. O’Brien has chosen sun-drenched Sicily in 1900, and thanks to John Lee Beatty’s reserved but well-rounded set and the lighting design of Jeff Croiter, “sun-drenched” has never been so well visualized.  It is intelligent on the director’s part to set his version, as the original, in Italy, as it has a distinctly Italian feel.  Small sections of dialogue are even delivered in Italian, and the songs included in the show (most famously the immortal “Sigh No More,” given a different musical treatment in every production—in this case David Yazbeck—but retaining Shakespeare’s lyrics) are played in Old World Italian homage reminiscent of Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella.

            But the most wonderful part of watching a comedy in the park, is that, more than any other theater, they are aware of how comical Shakespeare’s comedies are, and make the audience just as conscious of it.  Here that feat (as frequently with this play) is mostly accomplished by Beatrice and Benedick (the scenes in which they are effectively tricked into falling in love are as hysterical as ever), but the supporting cast makes miracles in the background.  Most surprising and entertaining is Brian Stokes Mitchell as Don Pedro, a triumph of casting who brings great humor to the Prince, especially in his deep-throated giggle that tickled the audience each time it was delivered.  Thankfully, he was also one of the singers of “Sigh No More,” and to hear that timeless voice delivered in such an acoustically conducive environment is magical in itself.  John Pankow as the malaprop-prone constable Dogberry is very funny but not as funny as he could be—Nathan Fillion played the role in Joss Whedon’s 2012 film version with just the right amount of under-emphasis and straight-faced idiocy.  Still, his rapport with the moronic men of the Prince’s Watch is quite entertaining, even if the role of the other great imbecile and constabulary partner, Verges, has been greatly reduced.  Even the Prince’s wicked brother, Don John, a traditionally straight role, is played with surprising comic dexterity by the delightfully surprising Pedro Pascal, late of “Game of Thrones” (fans of the show will excuse the pun).

            There are flaws—an unfunny bit with a moving wall, a slight disjointedness sparked by “Sigh No More” in the middle of a scene—but they are merely chinks in the armor.  Speaking of chinks, at one point Mr. Linklater actually flubbed a line, but his sheepish response actually provoked more laughter than the line probably would have.  Nobody’s perfect.

            But Shakespeare comes close, and in the jubilant final scene (which includes uplifting traditional dance by Danny Mefford), the joy pervading the actors and the audience is almost overwhelming.  Both the Bard and Jack O’Brien are evidently aware that nothing perks audiences up like a really good comedy executed really well.  This isn’t the first Shakespeare in the Park has produced, and it won’t be the last.

2014 Tony Predictions

The Tony Awards will air on June 8 on CBS with host Hugh Jackman (above).

            After this, a hit-or-miss season, the Tony Award nominations have emerged as a mostly representative basket of the cream of the crop (with some exceptions—more on that later).  Here are my picks for the best of the best.

Best Play

All the Way: A fast-paced and well-written script by Neil Schenkkan traces the period of Lyndon Johnson’s career from November 1963-November 1964 in which Johnson becomes and is re-elected President.  Historical characters swim in and out of Schenkkan’s story (Robert Petkoff as Hubert Humphrey and Michael McKean as J. Edgar Hoover are notable examples), but that’s all white noise compared to Bryan Cranston’s white-hot starring turn as the President.  Though the play is well-conceived, here it’s Cranston, not Schenkkan, who really makes the show, endowing it with such energy as to catapult it above anything else this season.  It should win with some jostling over the admirable Act One.

Best Musical

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder: Not since The Book of Mormon has there been such an obvious frontrunner for this award as Gentleman’s Guide.  An operetta pastiche concerning the travails of Monty Navarro, a poor boy who finds he’s ninth in line for an earldom and goes about dispatching those ahead of him, this musical is perfect in every conceivable way.  In terms of pure quality, it is one of the best new musicals I have seen in a long time, certainly the best since Book of Mormon, and by far the best on Broadway this season.  The book is magnificently witty, the score is ecstasy, and the performances have no rival on the Great White Way this season.  Years of tweaking by the team of Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak have elevated this show to musical theater heaven.  I can only hope they work together again soon, as there is a limited number of times I can see this musical without being labeled a groupie.

Best Revival of a Play

The Glass Menagerie: Again, no contest.  John Tiffany has reinvented this greatest American play and earned it its first Tony nominations ever.  He will also earn it its first wins.  The story—an aging Southern matriarch tries desperately to find a husband for her crippled daughter, as her cynical son looks on—unfolds against the backdrop of the most beautiful set design in recent memory (by Bob Crowley).  Near poetic in its conception and practice, this show will live in the annals of Broadway history as not just the greatest revival of this show, but one of the greatest ever—or at the very least, one of the greatest I’ve ever seen.  Without Menagerie in this category, it would have been the most difficult to pick (Daniel Radcliffe brings great energy to The Cripple of Inishmaan and Denzel Washington to A Raisin in the Sun, and Twelfth Night is a masterpiece of traditional Shakespeare), but there it is, and it can’t be helped.

Best Revival of a Musical

Hedwig and the Angry Inch: It is a travesty that the still-lively Cabaret was not nominated in this category, pure and simple.  Late announcements in Tony eligibility confused the voters and resulted in its being left off the list, but had it been allowed on, it would have won, easily, thanks to Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall’s still-inspired direction and the tireless talent of Alan Cumming.  What’s left is a sorry sight, a three-musical category including the less-than-auspicious latest Les Mis, an exercise in money-making by Cameron Mackintosh, and the comparatively well-executed but somewhat boring Violet.  Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which I haven’t seen, has been well-reviewed, especially for Neil Patrick Harris’ apparently energetic performance.  By process of elimination, Hedwig walks away with an award at which it should never have had a chance.

Best Book of a Musical

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Robert L. Freedman): While it’s difficult for me to pick anyone over Woody Allen, that artist’s book for Bullets Over Broadway was mostly a rehash—though a very funny rehash—of the 1994 film (Bullets’ pizzazz really comes from its ‘20s score).  Robert L. Freedman’s for Gentleman’s Guide, meanwhile, crackles with supremely British energy and moves the story along at an exciting pace.  Mr. Freedman’s inspired methods of murder for the eight D’Ysquith heirs (entirely unique from those practiced in the 1949 film that partially inspired the musical, Kind Hearts and Coronets) are as hysterically funny as murder can be.  Lutvak and Freedman both have a wonderful way of getting us to root against the loathsome D’Ysquiths and for the murderous yet somehow charming Monty Navarro.  (A warning—this is only the second of many predicted wins for this magnificent show.)

Best Original Score

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Steven Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman): And here’s another.  Gentleman’s Guide has the best new score on Broadway in years.  It is roll-in-the-aisles funny in places and sweetly beautiful in others; in fact, it is often both at the same time.  Every note, every word is imbued with humor, wit, and knowing homage to the great operettas of the past—some of the best Gilbert and Sullivan comes to mind.  There isn’t a song I’d have removed from this production; unlike many others, it comes to the fore unburdened by narrative or musical dead weight.  In a category crowded with talented composers (though it should be noted that Alan Menken and the now-deceased Howard Ashman have written Aladdin, a good musical, while Tom Kitt & Brian Yorkey and Jason Robert Brown have written If/Then and The Bridges of Madison County, bad ones), this score should still win easily.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play

Bryan Cranston (All the Way): Had I seen Mark Rylance perform Richard III (the performance he is nominated for in this category) rather than Twelfth Night, this would have been harder to call.  I am certain that Mr. Rylance’s performance as that conniving hunchback was fantastic, but luckily (an odd choice of words) I missed it, so I can avoid having to choose between two great stage actors.  Mr. Cranston’s performance in All the Way, as I’ve previously said, made the play; he totally embodies Lyndon Johnson and, somehow, makes him loom larger than he already does.  Every second Mr. Cranston is on the stage (which is most of them), the theater crackles with electricity.  Regardless of Mr. Rylance’s probable talent, I would not be surprised if that life-changing performance of Mr. Cranston’s wins the Tony outright.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play

Cherry Jones (The Glass Menagerie): When I saw The Glass Menagerie in January, I called Ms. Jones’s performance “godly,” writing, “[She] shades her portrayal of the ultimate Williams mother with an acting ability developed over years as a paragon of her profession.  Like the play, there is not a wrong note in her rendering.  It could well change one’s perception of family, ambition, and that flighty characteristic we hesitate to call ‘sincerity.’”  There isn’t much else to say.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical

Jefferson Mays (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder): The ultimate challenge—two actors from Gentleman’s Guide nominated in the same category!  Choosing Mr. Mays (who plays the eight D’Ysquith heirs serially disposed of by Monty) over Bryce Pinkham (Monty himself) is rather easy, though, having seen the enormous effort necessary to play eight murdered aristocrats in the same evening (and twice on Wednesdays and Sundays).  The costume changes alone are worth some sort of special Tony.  The changes in character, both speaking and singing, and the utter embodiment of each D’Ysquith in a fashion that almost makes the audience forget that there is really only one of Mr. Mays, is worth a real one.  (Picking between Alan Cumming and Mr. Mays would have been a truly impossible task, but luckily the nominating committee forgot that Mr. Cumming existed.)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical

Jessie Mueller (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical): Another snub—Lisa O’Hare as the conniving Sibella in Gentleman’s Guide was robbed of a nomination in this category, despite her surplus of talent.  There’s not much left to choose from, but Ms. Mueller’s performance is eerily similar to that of the real Ms. King, and she relaxes entertainingly into Douglas McGrath’s script.  This category is stuffed with talented women in average or below-average musicals (Sutton Foster in Violet, Idina Menzel in If/Then, Kelli O’Hara in The Bridges of Madison County), and Mueller is the only one who has some really good music to work with.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play

Mark Rylance (Twelfth Night): Hands down.  No contest.  Mr. Rylance plays the funniest Olivia I’ve ever seen, and commits to the role in a way I’ve never seen a male actor replicate.  Mr. Rylance is, alongside Kenneth Branagh, one of the greatest Shakespearean actors alive.  Twelfth Night has three actors nominated in this category and deserves three awards, but Mr. Rylance will walk away with the one available.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play

Celia Keenan-Bolger (The Glass Menagerie): From a slightly annoying turn in Peter and the Starcatcher last year, Ms. Keenan-Bolger has moved to a startlingly and starkly beautiful performance as Laura, the “shy and damaged daughter” of Ms. Jones’s Amanda.  Her movements across the stage, dragging a leg slightly, are hauntingly beautiful, her obsession with her glass animals and developing love for the Gentleman Caller the marks of a great actress on the rise.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical

Nick Cordero (Bullets Over Broadway): I found Nick Cordero’s turn as the mobster/ghostwriter Cheech to be the best part of Bullets, and the nominating committee clearly agrees with me (see: Bullets’ single acting nomination).  He is a dancer and singer of impressive caliber, and, in a way, the glue that holds the big 1920s mess of Bullets together.  He brings a very funny casual bluntness to Mr. Allen’s writing in a way that Chazz Palminteri only touched on in the movie.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical

Lauren Worsham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder): As one of the love interests for Monty Navarro, his distant cousin, Phoebe, Ms. Worsham masterfully satirizes the simpering damsel motif so common in operettas.  Her range is impressive, and she hits all her comedic moments with aplomb.  She’s the only stand-out in a barely competitive category.

Best Direction of a Play

John Tiffany (The Glass Menagerie): This revival moved with such fluidity and grace, it may as well have been a ballet.  The master behind the scenes, Mr. Tiffany, is clearly responsible for the innovations that made it all so memorable, as well as facilitating the stage relationships of the four marvelous actors.  He is truly a director in all senses of the word, capable of working fluently with all aspects of the theater.  He is an actor’s director, but also a stage auteur, and he deserves recognition for both.

Best Direction of a Musical

Darko Tresnjak (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder): The clever machinations of the murderous protagonist are well-coordinated with the antics of his victims.  Mr. Tresnjak, Artistic Director of the Hartford Stage where Gentleman’s Guide premiered in October of 2012, knows how to lay it on just thick enough, and his style of homage is friendly, peppy, and hugely entertaining.

Best Choreography

Susan Stroman (Bullets Over Broadway): Susan Stroman, who also directed Bullets, seems the most obvious and the safest pick here.  Bullets is above-average work by the incomparable Ms. Stroman, the director/choreographer of The Producers and 2000’s The Music Man, and Bullets is similarly ebullient in its execution.  The spirit of the 1920s, so lovingly portrayed by Mr. Allen’s book and brought to life by his choice of the songs of the era, is equally present in Ms. Stroman’s wildly energetic dance numbers.  Each classic song is matched perfectly with one of her inspired creations, each more glorious fun than the last.  When you’re working with such eminently dance-worthy numbers as “Let’s Misbehave” and “Tiger Rag,” you can’t really go wrong.  It also helps to be Susan Stroman.

Best Orchestrations

Jonathan Tunick (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder): Orchestral master and EGOT-award winner Tunick is, at 76, still riding high on a career peak that began around 1970.  He is the orchestrator of nearly every Sondheim musical since Company (and all their revivals)—Sondheim calls him “a standout in his field”—not to mention his arrangements for Promises, Promises, Dames at Sea, Titanic (the Best Musical of 1997, not the Best Picture of 1997), Nine, and The Color Purple (plus film work on Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein).  His work on Gentleman’s Guide is bright, exciting, and appropriately deferential to the tradition that inspired it.  It’s a worthy successor to his past work, and ought to wow the Theatre Wing into giving him his second, well-deserved Tony.

Best Scenic Design of a Play

Bob Crowley (The Glass Menagerie): The most talented contributor to an amalgamation of great talent, this season’s revival of The Glass Menagerie, is the scenic designer, Bob Crowley.  In Mr. Crowley’s reimagining, the Wingfield apartment, where the play is set, is done in three hexagons of varying sizes, sparsely furnished and dimly lit, set among a stage flooded with an inky black liquid—the ocean of the world, in which the Wingfields, on their island, are suspended.  As Tennessee Williams intended, the apartment is thus transformed into the dreamscape of Tom Wingfield’s past, a surreal time he can’t quite remember.  Mr. Crowley had more influence over the story and direction of this revival than any scenic designer had this season.  He deserves the Tony perhaps more than any of his colleagues on Menagerie do.

Best Scenic Design of a Musical

Santo Loquasto (Bullets Over Broadway): Mr. Loquasto’s set design is big, loud, and beautiful, like the decade in which Bullets takes place.  The enormous, open stage of the St. James Theatre functions equally effectively as a mob-owned jazz club and a balcony looking out over Broadway.  The memorable start of the show, wherein Cheech (Nick Cordero’s mobster) shoots the words “Bullets Over Broadway” into the stage’s backdrop is one of the many great moments made possible by Mr. Loquasto’s efforts.  It will take some effort to overcome Alexander Dodge’s clever designs for Gentleman’s Guide, but if anyone can, it’s he.  (Don’t forget, however, even in your happiness for the talented Mr. Loquasto, that Cabaret was robbed in this category too in the lack of a nomination for the illustrious Robert Brill.)

Best Costume Design of a Play

Jenny Tiramani (Twelfth Night): Brilliant work by Ms. Tiramani, among other behind-the-scenes professionals like musical director Claire van Kampen (Mark Rylance’s wife), brought to life the immersive 17^th-century experience that made Twelfth Night so joyously fun.  The tall black dress she designed for Mr. Rylance’s Olivia, with its capacity to aid in the frequent gag that made Mr. Rylance appear to glide across the stage, practically made the character.  Making the illusion real is the responsibility of the costume designer, and Ms. Tiramani has done her work with great gusto here.

Best Costume Design of a Musical

Linda Cho (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder): Anyone who can design costumes that look like Ms. Cho’s but can be changed in to and out of in a matter of minutes deserves some sort of award.  Whether she will actually win it remains to be seen, given that William Ivey Long, Chair of the American Theatre Wing, is also nominated in the category for Bullets Over Broadway.  He’s deserving, too (and worked on The Producers, which gives me a bit of a soft spot for him), but the costumes in Bullets are slightly gaudier and less necessary than those in Gentleman’s Guide.  It’ll come close, but by all rights Ms. Cho should come out on top.

Technical Awards

Best Lighting Design of a Play

Natasha Katz (The Glass Menagerie)

Best Lighting Design of a Musical

Howell Binkley (After Midnight)

Best Sound Design of a Play

Dan Moses Schreier (Act One)

Best Sound Design of a Musical

Brian Ronan (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical)