Veganizing "Friends": The One With 5 Steaks & An Eggplant by Randi / September 28, 2013|
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Hollywood studios love, and I mean looove, releasing similar movies at the same time to try to thwart their competition. Soon we’ll have ‘Captain Phillips’ and ‘All Is Lost’, both about a ship captain stranded at sea in some way. And who could ever forget the two First Daughter movies, one starring Katie Holmes and one Mandy Moore, that came out at about the same time?
When I first heard about the two new movies discussing sex addiction, I figured it was another studio battle royale in this vein. But having seen ‘Don Jon’ and ‘Thanks For Sharing’, I discovered that the shared topic is the only thing shared, as the two films discuss and view addiction in wildly different ways. And both are worth watching in their own right.
When I first heard about the two new movies discussing sex addiction, I figured it was another studio battle royale in this vein. But having seen ‘Don Jon’ and ‘Thanks For Sharing’, I discovered that the shared topic is the only thing shared, as the two films discuss and view addiction in wildly different ways. And both are worth watching in their own right.
Both films focus on the sexual behaviors of two male protagonists. In ‘Don Jon’, that man is Jon, a cool Jersey dude/bro played by Joey Gordon-Levitt (always Joey), who also wrote and directed the film. Jon is the guy who gets whatever girls he wants, does what he wants, parties in the club all he wants, and is kind of a douche when we meet him. He’s like Barney Stinson with a ridiculous New Jersey accent. (It’s not a bad accent, but during the very talky voiceovers, it can start to sound like Peter Griffin.) He tells us straight away, in a cute bit (which you can see in the trailer), that all he cares about in the world is his body, ride, family, church, boys, girls, and porn. And while we see a bit of all of these things, we see a lot of porn. It’s often funnily spliced together in almost cartoon fashion, evoking more laughs than discomfort, but it’s still pretty awkward.
Everything changes when Jon meets Scarlet Johansson’s character, who has the ridiculously unbelievable name of Barbara Sugarman. Just, no, that doesn’t work. It’s the name of a Florida grandmother, played by Shirley MacLaine, not Scarlett Johansson as a hottie. Anyway, Jon decides that Barbara is so hot that he’ll change whatever she wants him to change about himself. And boy, does she want to change him. Note: this is not a positive way to start a relationship. We learn that, as Jon is deluded by his porn, Barbara is deluded by her romantic comedies, thinking that she can mold real life into that sort of tale. Blinded by her hotness, Jon obeys for a while, not sensing that she’s not worth the trouble. She forbids him from cleaning his apartment himself, and orders him to use a cleaning service. She sends him to night classes so he would have a degree, ostensibly so he’d be a more appropriate match for her.
Some of the most effective scenes come from Jon’s interactions with his family, with Tony Danza as his a-hole father and a fantastic Brie Larson as his mostly-silent sister, and with his minister, cloaked in darkness in the confessional. Both types of interactions brilliantly show the various facets of Jon’s life, and serve as clever (and hilarious) backdrops for his emotional and intellectual awakening.
At school, he meets Julianne Moore’s character, an honest, no-bullshit woman with a tragic history. She helps Jon realize that he shouldn’t have to change who he is to make a woman happy, because this kind of unfulfilling relationship is what causes him to still rely on porn to meet some nebulous emotional need. This is where his obsession with porn comes from, and it’s an obsession that can easily be cured if he lets himself be vulnerable in a real relationship.
Not so easily fixed is the addiction in ‘Thanks For Sharing’, a drama, as opposed to the comedy of ‘Don Jon’, about true sexual addiction, helped but never cured by group therapy sessions in the style of Alcoholics Anonymous. Mark Ruffalo plays Adam, who when we meet him is 5 years sober – from sex, masturbation, porn, and all kinds of other things he needs to keep himself from. He knows the tricks behind staying clean by now, and he teaches new members like the always good and hilarious Josh Gad. When he travels, he has the TV removed from his room. He never takes the subway, as it’s full of unknown obstacles.
Despite his regimen of control, Adam meets and falls for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Phoebe, bringing up a new slew of issues for him to deal with. On their first date, Phoebe says she used to date an alcoholic, and asks Adam, “You’re not an addict, right?” to which Adam responds, “I am not an alcoholic.” It’s a tricky conversation to have so early, but you know that this untruth is going to come back to bite him in the ass. But how does a person tell someone he barely knows that he has this incredibly stigmatized and misunderstood kind of addiction?
Like Scarlett’s Barbara, Phoebe is not very likeable, not very accepting of Adam, whose judgment, like Jon’s, is probably clouded by Phoebe’s looks. Consumed by the effort to make his addiction less of a problem, Adam even overlooks hints of Phoebe’s own serious behavioral issues. Unlike Don Jon, Adam learns that the best thing to control his addiction is not an eye-opening and paradigm-shifting relationship, but the community provided by his mentor and other addicts in the group. Along with Josh Gad, a standout in this group is, actually, Pink, in a good, energetic, and amiable performance. The blossoming friendship between Gad and Pink becomes the most interesting relationship in the movie, and it proves that you need to have a solid support system to get through any hardship.
This seems to be the message of ‘Thanks For Sharing’, that a person needs the help and camaraderie of friends and loved ones in order to overcome serious problems. In contrast, ‘Don Jon’ seems to say that, like in romantic comedies, sometimes things can be solved by one lovely, caring person. Both messages are valid, since they are dealing with discrete kinds of problems, but it’s interesting to note the difference.
If you can only see one film that shows copious amounts of porn, make it ‘Don Jon’. While ‘Thanks For Sharing’ is well done and helps convey the severity of this often-mocked addiction, ‘Don Jon’ is fun, funny, and an incredibly well-edited triumph from Joey Gordon-Levitt. Also, there’s nothing better than seeing Joey driving while singing aloud to ‘Good Vibrations’ (the Marky Mark version, not the Beach Boys).
Everything changes when Jon meets Scarlet Johansson’s character, who has the ridiculously unbelievable name of Barbara Sugarman. Just, no, that doesn’t work. It’s the name of a Florida grandmother, played by Shirley MacLaine, not Scarlett Johansson as a hottie. Anyway, Jon decides that Barbara is so hot that he’ll change whatever she wants him to change about himself. And boy, does she want to change him. Note: this is not a positive way to start a relationship. We learn that, as Jon is deluded by his porn, Barbara is deluded by her romantic comedies, thinking that she can mold real life into that sort of tale. Blinded by her hotness, Jon obeys for a while, not sensing that she’s not worth the trouble. She forbids him from cleaning his apartment himself, and orders him to use a cleaning service. She sends him to night classes so he would have a degree, ostensibly so he’d be a more appropriate match for her.
Some of the most effective scenes come from Jon’s interactions with his family, with Tony Danza as his a-hole father and a fantastic Brie Larson as his mostly-silent sister, and with his minister, cloaked in darkness in the confessional. Both types of interactions brilliantly show the various facets of Jon’s life, and serve as clever (and hilarious) backdrops for his emotional and intellectual awakening.
At school, he meets Julianne Moore’s character, an honest, no-bullshit woman with a tragic history. She helps Jon realize that he shouldn’t have to change who he is to make a woman happy, because this kind of unfulfilling relationship is what causes him to still rely on porn to meet some nebulous emotional need. This is where his obsession with porn comes from, and it’s an obsession that can easily be cured if he lets himself be vulnerable in a real relationship.
Not so easily fixed is the addiction in ‘Thanks For Sharing’, a drama, as opposed to the comedy of ‘Don Jon’, about true sexual addiction, helped but never cured by group therapy sessions in the style of Alcoholics Anonymous. Mark Ruffalo plays Adam, who when we meet him is 5 years sober – from sex, masturbation, porn, and all kinds of other things he needs to keep himself from. He knows the tricks behind staying clean by now, and he teaches new members like the always good and hilarious Josh Gad. When he travels, he has the TV removed from his room. He never takes the subway, as it’s full of unknown obstacles.
Despite his regimen of control, Adam meets and falls for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Phoebe, bringing up a new slew of issues for him to deal with. On their first date, Phoebe says she used to date an alcoholic, and asks Adam, “You’re not an addict, right?” to which Adam responds, “I am not an alcoholic.” It’s a tricky conversation to have so early, but you know that this untruth is going to come back to bite him in the ass. But how does a person tell someone he barely knows that he has this incredibly stigmatized and misunderstood kind of addiction?
Like Scarlett’s Barbara, Phoebe is not very likeable, not very accepting of Adam, whose judgment, like Jon’s, is probably clouded by Phoebe’s looks. Consumed by the effort to make his addiction less of a problem, Adam even overlooks hints of Phoebe’s own serious behavioral issues. Unlike Don Jon, Adam learns that the best thing to control his addiction is not an eye-opening and paradigm-shifting relationship, but the community provided by his mentor and other addicts in the group. Along with Josh Gad, a standout in this group is, actually, Pink, in a good, energetic, and amiable performance. The blossoming friendship between Gad and Pink becomes the most interesting relationship in the movie, and it proves that you need to have a solid support system to get through any hardship.
This seems to be the message of ‘Thanks For Sharing’, that a person needs the help and camaraderie of friends and loved ones in order to overcome serious problems. In contrast, ‘Don Jon’ seems to say that, like in romantic comedies, sometimes things can be solved by one lovely, caring person. Both messages are valid, since they are dealing with discrete kinds of problems, but it’s interesting to note the difference.
If you can only see one film that shows copious amounts of porn, make it ‘Don Jon’. While ‘Thanks For Sharing’ is well done and helps convey the severity of this often-mocked addiction, ‘Don Jon’ is fun, funny, and an incredibly well-edited triumph from Joey Gordon-Levitt. Also, there’s nothing better than seeing Joey driving while singing aloud to ‘Good Vibrations’ (the Marky Mark version, not the Beach Boys).
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The Lehman Trilogy on the West End: Incredible Acting in an Early Draft Play
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is The Lehman Trilogy, currently playing in London’s West End at the Piccadilly Theatre until August 31.
When you walk away from a 3+ hour play thinking, “why didn’t they accomplish anything with that amount of time?”, you know something’s wrong. With The Lehman Trilogy, ostensibly about the Lehman Brothers global financial services firm but mostly about the family dynamics of the previous generations, you learn zero about what this company did in the modern age. You learn tons, tons about the three founding brothers and their marriages and their interactions with their kids (fictionalized of course) and how the kids acted in school and who their kids married and why…but literally nothing about why this behemoth financial company failed in the 2008 market crash. And so this shockingly well-received play feels like an early draft that needs work. If you wanted to write a family drama, why frame it as being about the Lehman Brothers? Why not just write a family drama instead of suggesting it’ll have to do with the financial world at all? They could have easily swapped this family for any other family’s story and had the same effect.
Perhaps that was the goal of Italian writer Stefano Massini: to show the inner workings of the Lehman family’s personal lives and struggles instead of sharing any substance about their infamous company. But then I ask with even more urgency, why?! What do we care why billionaires had to divorce their wives, or why one billionaire spent a lot of time betting on horses? Were we supposed to relate to their troubles, because I don’t. Why choose the Lehmans if not to talk about the last incarnation of the company and its 2008 collapse? The huge financial crash we all lived through felt like the elephant in the room for Acts II and III, like ‘um, guys, why aren’t we talking about that, or seeing what’s going to cause it?’ It’s such a strange choice, to focus the play on what the various Lehman generations were personally like yet to skip over everything relevant to our lives.
I discuss play length frequently, because it’s so interesting to see what different people can do with different amounts of time. Despite what you’d assume from the writing on this site, in my regular life I cherish efficiency. With more than 3 hours, you assume a play can make its point, yet here it was so much wasted time. We had endless jokes about the youngest brother being a potato; we had too much time wasted on one of the descendant’s annoying wife; we had a long, slow list of names of bankers (unrelated to the characters) who committed suicide; we had literally 10 minutes of Adam Godley doing the twist through the 20th century, instead of telling us what the company was doing to bring about its downfall. This play feels like the second draft, a work in progress that needs a dramaturge to help find its purpose.
Clearly the play wanted to be about the family, especially the three founding brothers – and the part that was about them, the first act, was the most compelling part. In the beginning, they managed to successfully portray the brothers’ dynamics while also showing what the actual company was like at the start, what kinds of financial decisions they made and why. So it can be done. (And as we’ve seen in superior plays like Enron, you can have interesting characters (who actually interact and don’t just narrate to the audience, a wearying trend) while simultaneously teaching about the financial industry, the company’s role in it, and how it all went to shit. Enron even had dinosaurs help us learn.)
But then the following two acts feel like a battle between the playwright’s objective – wanting to stick with the family biography – and everyone else’s expectation that the action was ‘supposed to’ get to the later incarnations of the company as a financial giant and, of course, the 2008 crash. I kept thinking ‘surely now they will get to the relevant part? Surely…now?’ By the time it did, it was too late to do anything worthwhile, and so they simply didn’t. They didn’t really mention what the work was even like in modern times. In fact, the last 5 minutes of the show felt like a mad dash of the entire creative team to the finish line, like everyone was shouting “OH SHIT WE ONLY HAVE A FEW MINUTES LEFT AND WE’RE IN 1980 QUICK LET’S SAY DECADES ARE PASSING AND THEN OH NO IT’S 2008 WE CRASH THE END.” I’m pretty sure that’s the ending verbatim. It felt that sudden, that unplanned. The surprise of a dozen otherwise unused actors standing in a boardroom sadly at the end felt equally misguided.
I have to believe that other critics are raving about this play entirely because of the acting. With the stellar trio of Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles, and Adam Godley, the acting is absolutely top-notch. Sam Mendes inventively directs them not just as the three founding Lehmans, but as their wives, their kids, their grandkids, as they seemingly effortlessly weave in and out of various personas with the bat of an eye, a slight change in voice. Their acting skills were as impressive as it gets, but they deserve a play that delivers too.
INFORMATION
The Lehman Trilogy runs just under 3 hours and 20 minutes, with two 20-minute intervals (which is the best way to do long shows). As is the despicable trend among London theatres these days, they held the curtain for latecomers to arrive. MY DUDES. Stop holding the g-d curtain for latecomers. If they’re late, let them wait till the late seating time. If there is no late seating, then actually respect your own policy and don’t forking let the latecomers dictate the schedule for everyone else. It’s so rampant now, this issue, that we all may as well take our sweet ass time getting to the theatre 5-10 minutes late because it doesn’t matter anymore, there are no rules, they will hold it for you. APPARENTLY. SMDH.
It was also one of the smokiest rooms I’ve ever been in, and I was seated in the stalls. This is because the main lobby’s entrance doors were open and there’s a bar next door and no staff gives a good g-d that people were smoking literally in the doorways, to such an extent that the smoke traveled through all the stairs and hallways and into the stalls at full strength. That is inexcusable. Aren’t there RULES?!
Tony Awards 2014: What Is This, The Golden Globes??
“The Bridges of Madison County” which should be the big story here but nooooo.
The Tony Awards are here! You guys remember how balls-out crazy I got for the Oscars? The Tonys are like 100 times more important to me. And to the world. Because THEATRE! Music! Dancing! Hugh Jackman and/or Neil Patrick Harris without fail every year! & this year, both of them (Jackman hosting, NPH 100% winning)! But the Tonys are not all kick lines and high Es and people who say ‘the-ah-tuh’. No, there’s shit going down.
So here’s the 411 on Mr. Tonys. We all know it’s called show business for a reason, but recently the actual reach of poisonous business interests has been made clear to me. Due to the Tony voting body comprising many road producers (read: for those tour companies that come to your little podunk town), NYC producers, and other kinds of people who are like the oil barons of the theatre, the Tonys are really a way for people who want to make more money to ensure that they have an easier time at it. Meaning, often the shows that win awards are the shows that are the most bankable for the masses, because having “Tony-award winning” in front of a show’s title will draw more crowds. This means that maybe the best, most deserving shows (*cough* Bridges of Madison County *cough*) of the season will be ignored in favor of shows like “Aladdin” and “Beautiful” that will likely make the most money. It’s not surprising that the Tonys are like ALL other awards, in that the best isn’t necessarily what wins, but it’s sad nonetheless.
Regardless, I hold out hope that, even if the nominations never get it really right, the awards will at least produce some justice. We can all rant that awards mean nothing (because they really don’t), but everyone still wants to win! So below are my thoughts on the main categories, what I think will go down, what I hope will occur, and what I can’t understand. Tune in to CBS on Sunday, June 8 at 8pm to see how I do. And more importantly, how Hugh Jackman doooo.
Regardless, I hold out hope that, even if the nominations never get it really right, the awards will at least produce some justice. We can all rant that awards mean nothing (because they really don’t), but everyone still wants to win! So below are my thoughts on the main categories, what I think will go down, what I hope will occur, and what I can’t understand. Tune in to CBS on Sunday, June 8 at 8pm to see how I do. And more importantly, how Hugh Jackman doooo.
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BEST MUSICAL
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“Gentleman’s Guide“, the funny and charming romp about an 8th-in-line descendant of an earl who knocks off every relative ahead of him, should definitely win out of this admittedly less than stellar group. “Beautiful” is the spoiler because of the aforementioned road producers: it would tour soooo successfully, and a Tony would help that (though it wouldn’t be necessary). “After Midnight”, while exceedingly entertaining (at least for an hour), was a straightforward jazz, dance, big band revue, not a musical with any sort of plot, so I don’t know who the show slept with to get nominated here.
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BEST PLAY
“Act One” “All the Way” “Casa Valentina” “Mothers and Sons” “Outside Mullingar” |
Although many are putting “All The Way”, about Lyndon B. Johnson, as the frontrunner, my vote would be for “Casa Valentina”, about which I have written but not posted the review. Harvey Fierstein wows again with a show about 1960s men who secretly loved to wear women’s clothing. At times heartwarming and at times heartbreaking, “Casa” was a wonderful, somehow old-fashioned-seeming night at the theatre.
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BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” “Les Miserables” “Violet” |
Oh man, this pathetic category. Three nominees? Yeesh. “Les Mis” is done well, but who isn’t sick of this show right now?? Because I sure am. “Violet” is well done and people are flipping out over it, but it didn’t win me over. Read about why here. The unstoppable winner is “Hedwig”, or the Neil Patrick Harris show. I haven’t seen it because tickets are like $500 but it’s a definite winner.
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BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY “The Cripple of Inishmaan” “The Glass Menagerie” “A Raisin in the Sun” “Twelfth Night” |
Now this is an interesting category!! All four of these productions were wonderful, and three were so stellar as to be mind-blowing. “Cripple”, with Daniel Radcliffe, was incredibly well done and entertaining, thanks to a top-notch ensemble. “Menagerie” is widely thought to be the greatest production of the play ever, with Cherry Jones and Celia Keenan-Bolger giving benchmark performances. But even these stellar shows can’t top the all-male “Twelfth Night” straight from the Old Globe, which provided a perfect, hilarious, authentic theatrical experience.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE IN A MUSICAL
Mary Bridget Davies, “A Night With Janis Joplin” Sutton Foster, “Violet” Idina Menzel, “If/Then” Jessie Mueller, “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” Kelli O’Hara, “The Bridges of Madison County” |
Hot damn. This is the category that is giving me agita. Jessie Mueller is giving a star-making turn as Carole King in “Beautiful” and will be deserving when she wins the statue on Sunday. But my vote would have gone to O’Hara, the greatest current leading lady on Broadway who isn’t Audra McDonald, for her unbelievably perfect performance in “Bridges”. She won’t win Sunday, but in a few years the theatre community will be like, “WTF how did Kelli not win for “Bridges” in 2014? F-ing f-ers, those voters!” Truth.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE IN A PLAY
Tyne Daly, “Mothers and Sons” LaTanya Richardson-Jackson, “A Raisin in the Sun” Cherry Jones, “The Glass Menagerie” Audra McDonald, “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” Estelle Parsons, “The Velocity of Autumn” |
Another very crowded category, Best Actress in a Play is not without some controversy. Some people think “Lady Day” should have been categorized as a musical instead of a play, and so Audra would be in the list above. I believe the committee got this right, because the music in “Lady Day” is presented in a concert format; it doesn’t drive plot or story or anything. But even if it were considered a musical and Audra was moved, she’d still win. In both categories. In every category. Although Cherry Jones was incredible as well, people want to see Audra make history with her sixth Tony, making her the first person to win in all four acting categories.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE IN A MUSICAL
Neil Patrick Harris, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” Ramin Karimloo, “Les Miserables” Andy Karl, “Rocky” Jefferson Mays, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” Bryce Pinkham, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” |
Speaking of crowded categories! My favorite of the season, Steven Pasquale (“Bridges”) was pushed out in favor of the surprise Pinkham, but everyone in here is giving wonderful performances. Ramin is a butter-voiced, ab-baring angel, Andy Karl as “Rocky” was utterly charming and amazing, and Mays gives not just one but eight wonderful performances playing all the doomed heirs in “Gentleman’s Guide”. Mays would be a shoo-in in a different year, and still may surprise, but it would indeed be a surprise if anyone but NPH won, as he is giving the performance of his life as the post-op trans woman Hedwig. Someone buy me a ticket?
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE IN A PLAY
Samuel Barnett, “Twelfth Night” Bryan Cranston, “All the Way” Chris O’Dowd, “Of Mice and Men Mark Rylance, “Richard III” Tony Shalhoub, “Act One” |
Cranston, in his Broadway debut, is winning over crowds and Broadway snobs with his impressive turn as LBJ in a threeeee-hour play. A win for this fun-loving drug dealer would be deserved. But my vote would be for Barnett, a lovely as hell Viola in the lovely as hayell “Twelfth Night”. I also just love that Chris O’Dowd was nominated for a Tony. He is adorable. I hope Franco wasn’t too upset.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A FEATURED ROLE IN A MUSICAL Linda Emond, “Cabaret” Lena Hall, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” Anika Larsen, “Beautiful – The Carole King Musical” Adriane Lenox, “After Midnight” Lauren Worsham, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder” |
Okay. So. This category feels like a total crapshoot. Lena Hall is the frontrunner, even though she wasn’t nominated for the Drama Desk, because of her star-making turn (so many of them this year!) in “Hedwig”. Emond is her close competitor, but I admit my tickets for “Cabaret” aren’t until July. I loved Anika in “Beautiful”, but it doesn’t seem like a Tony role. Worsham was fine, but how she got the nom over her castmate Lisa O’Hare I’ll never understand. Lenox was f-ing fantastic unbelievable astounding in “After Midnight” (again, review written but not posted, I’m behind)…but she is onstage for literally 4 minutes. It would be worse than Dame Dench’s win for “Shakespeare in Love”. So, I would say Hall. But whatever, man.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A FEATURED ROLE IN A PLAY
Sarah Greene, “The Cripple of Inishmaan” Celia Keenan-Bolger, “The Glass Menagerie” Sophie Okonedo, “A Raisin in the Sun” Anika Noni Rose, “A Raisin in the Sun” Mare Winningham, “Casa Valentina” |
CELIA!!! Celia is always perfection, but her Laura was super perfection. She will deservedly win her first Tony, although Winningham and especially newcomer Greene impressed me greatly. But CELIA!!!
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A FEATURED ROLE IN A MUSICAL Danny Burstein, “Cabaret” Nick Cordero, “Bullets Over Broadway” Joshua Henry, “Violet” James Monroe Iglehart, “Aladdin” Jarrod Spector, “Beautiful – The Carole King Musical” |
Oh man, I’d be happy if ANY of these fine men won. Danny B is a often-nominated, beloved Broadway workhorse who is always terrific, but it’s just not his year (again). Nicky C was the greatest part of “Bullets” (again…review coming) but his nomination is enough of a reward. Joshy H is the greatest part of “Violet“, mostly because of his amazing solo “Let It Sing“, and Jarrody S is my new favorite. But James..um.. I (doesn’t really work with I) is playing the freaking Genie. In “Aladdin”. So, yeah, he’s gonna win. They made up a special Oscar for Robin Williams because of that role! Can’t lose! I want to play the Genie. I would totally make you order off both columns.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A FEATURED ROLE IN A PLAY Reed Birney, “Casa Valentina” Paul Chahidi, “Twelfth Night” Stephen Fry, “Twelfth Night” Mark Rylance, “Twelfth Night” Brian J. Smith, “The Glass Menagerie” |
This is a tough one, because the “Twelfth Night” love can work to cancel some votes out. But Rylance, always just the best imaginable at any role he plays, is again the best imaginable, this time as Olivia, hilarious and ridiculous and perfect. The only strong contender I can see taking it instead is Reed Birney as “Charlotte” in “Casa”, as a homophobic transvestite with lots of good speeches.
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BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
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SERIOUSLY IF JASON ROBERT BROWN DOESN’T WIN FOR “BRIDGES” (and for Orchestrations) THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN THE WORLD AND I WON’T ABIDE IT. I WON’T ABIDE IT!
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Well that’s all folks. As you can tell, my favorite show of the season, “The Bridges of Madison County”, was unfairly snubbed in most categories. It had the most beautiful music in years, and some of the best performances, but it didn’t sell enough tickets, it closed too early, and will not be properly rewarded (because, as we learned earlier, giving a Tony to a closed show won’t make you any money!). “Gentleman’s Guide” is the next best possible winner, but it’s not as incredible and life-changing as people are hyping it to be. I think the hype is a product of the general consensus that this batch of nominees is a bit unexciting, so people are trying too hard to convince themselves and others that that’s not the case in order to feel better about it all. The real story going into Sunday, though, is that Hugh Jackman can do anything and I mean en neh thang; NPH can also do pretty much anything and will win his first and last Tony; and you should go buy the “Bridges” cast recording because hot damn.
Enjoy the show!!!!
Enjoy the show!!!!
