The 2007-08 Broadway season had dizzying highs: the revival of Gypsy; the arrival of August: Osage County; the transfers from Off-Broadway of In the Heights and Passing Strange; new plays by Stoppard, Mamet, McPherson, Rebeck, and Sorkin, among others; and revivals of plays by Churchill, Hampton, and Camoletti. It was also a season of shocks: the gleeful whimsy of Xanadu, the overblown mediocrity of Young Frankenstein, the inglorious Glory Days. Not to mention a stagehands strike causing angst all around.
It was also a season that finely represented a cross-section of genres, including revivals of modern plays (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Old Acquaintance; The Ritz; A Bronx Tale; The Homecoming; The Country Girl; Come Back, Little Sheba), old warhorses (Pygmalion, Cyrano de Bergerac, Cymbeline, Macbeth), and one play, Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, rescued from the dustbin of history. In addition to Gypsy, there were two more exquisite musical revivals (Sunday in the Park With George and South Pacific), two musicals from the über-commercial ranks (The Little Mermaid and Cry-Baby), one show whose raison d'etre is reality TV (Grease), and one that brought benefits even if it didn't fulfill its potential (A Catered Affair).
Thinking about all the season's performances — all the stars, newcomers, and rising talent — you get the sense that Broadway is on an upswing. How I wish all 40 nominated actors could win Tonys when they are handed out on June 15, broadcast on CBS; they deserve to. We hope you enjoy our salute to the 62nd annual Tony Awards — as we await a new season.
— Leonard Jacobs
National Theatre Editor
Daniel Evans, Sunday in the Park With George
Daniel Evans brilliantly portrays the deeply layered title character in Sam Buntrock's elegant, minimalist revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical. In the play's two acts, the versatile and passionate Evans depicts two distinct but related Georges: Georges Seurat, the 19th-century French painter, and a modern-day conceptual artist who is not sure if he is Seurat's great-grandson. Yet common to both Georges is the idea of the man as artist, torn between his work and his personal relationships.
In playing both artists, "Evans' body seems to pulse with irresistible energy as he transmits his ideas either onto canvas or into electronic images," wrote Back Stage critic David Sheward. "He also physicalizes the war between his artistic and emotional needs." Evans infuses not only his songs but his entire performance with vigor, while conveying a deep exhaustion as both Georges try to please various patrons, critics, and themselves. Evans' performance has many beautiful and disturbing facets and conflicts, emotional and mental and all unforgettable.
For this role, Evans was nominated for Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for outstanding actor in a musical. This is his first Tony nomination.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights
In the Heights, a vibrant musical about the Latino denizens of Upper Manhattan, finds author Lin-Manuel Miranda making a remarkable Broadway debut as Usnavi, a cheerful bodega owner. Even among strongly delineated characters and story lines, Miranda is an impressive standout; his performance is fresh, alive, invigorating, fearless, funny, and irresistibly moving.
Even more impressive, the New York City-born actor (a founding member of the hip-hop theatre troupe Freestyle Love Supreme) also conceived the show and spent years writing its score — a spicy mix of freestyle rap, salsa, and Latin beats — so Miranda's energy thrums with genuine heart. In the Heights, which opened Off-Broadway early last year and transferred to Broadway this season, is a tremendous accomplishment that owes a great deal of its success to its daring star, who poured his soul and imagination into every bit of the show, including his remarkable character.
This is Miranda's first Tony nomination. He has also been nominated for a Tony for best original score.
Stew, Passing Strange
An acclaimed singer-songwriter and solo artist (he formed his band the Negro Problem in the early 1990s), Stew is making his Broadway debut in Passing Strange, a quirky, clever, funny autobiographical show that he conceived and composed with Heidi Rodewald, who is Tony-nominated with him for best original score and best orchestrations.
With poignancy and an astonishing dramatic and musical range, Stew plays the gimlet-eyed narrator of a story that stars his younger self, played by Daniel Breaker (who is Tony-nominated for best featured actor in a musical). That means Stew must watch all the flaws and foibles of his past play out unrelentingly before him every night. As Back Stage critic Leonard Jacobs wrote, the audience "will no doubt identify with the show's central character, a wanderlust-driven black man...on a quest for his soul, for the core of self-identity." But Stew, wrote critic Charles Isherwood in The New York Times, "can also play a mean guitar, and when necessary he strides the stage like an evangelical preacher, or a preening rocker, to whip the audience into a froth."
His performance is at once measured and exuberant, calm and frenetic, arrogant and humble — a delicate balance, one absolutely true to life.
This is Stew's first Tony nomination. He won Drama Desk Awards for outstanding music (with Heidi Rodewald) and outstanding lyrics. He has also been nominated for Tonys for best original score, best orchestrations (with Rodewald), and best original book.
Paulo Szot, South Pacific
This category is awash in breakout talent, as Paulo Szot joins Broadway's ranks with a marvelous debut as the dashing Emile de Becque in South Pacific. An internationally renowned baritone, he is best known for his roles in Carmen and Le Nozze di Figaro with the New York City Opera, and he treats the audience to his beautiful voice in "Some Enchanted Evening" in the very first scene, setting up an electric performance that only grows in energy and excitement as the romance between Emile and Kelli O'Hara's Nellie Forbush deepens.
Szot clearly relishes the romance, the moods, and the potency of his character, bringing to the stage both the technical precision of a masterful singer and the emotional power of an absorbing actor.
For this role, Szot won a Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk Award for outstanding actor in a musical and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for outstanding actor in a musical. This is his first Tony nomination.
Tom Wopat, A Catered Affair
Last nominated for a Tony for playing Frank Butler (opposite Bernadette Peters) in an acclaimed revival of Annie Get Your Gun, Tom Wopat is once again hearing Broadway's cheers. Wopat, whose credits stretch back to 1978 and include seven seasons on TV's The Dukes of Hazzard, has created in A Catered Affair a character very different from those we've seen him play before. As Tom Hurley, the middle-aged cabdriver husband in the John Bucchino-Harvey Fierstein tuner, he plays a man who suffers through daily life in silence, putting up with his wife and somehow soldiering on despite losing his beloved son in the service.
As his neglected daughter's nuptials come to the fore, Wopat's Tom does a slow burn, hiding his anger until finally, in one explosive musical number, the character's long bottled-up feelings burst out. Back Stage critic Leonard Jacobs described Wopat's acting as "empathetic" but also noted that his character "lacks the words I love you," helping to explain his explosion. Wopat brings a sadness and depth to a portrait full of penetrating moments.
For this role, Wopat was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for outstanding featured actor in a musical. He was nominated for a Tony in 1999.