The Democratic presidential primary race is long over and the 130th running of the Kentucky Derby produced a winner in Smarty Jones, the race's fifth undefeated horse in history. Now all eyes turn to Broadway, where the Tony Awards administration committee, which makes eligibility rulings for the annual honors, will convene the season's final confab on May 6 and with it, the handicapping for this year's drive for thespian gold formally begins.
Among the shows slated to be discussed at the meeting: "Assassins," "Jumpers," "A Raisin in the Sun," "Bombay Dreams," "Caroline, or Change," "Frozen," and "Prymate."
Already this season the committee has met twice, on Jan. 8 and April 15. Each time, the group's 24 members—including League of American Theatres and Producers President Jed Bernstein, Actors' Equity Executive Director Alan Eisenberg, and producers Roger Berlind, Dasha Epstein, and Margo Lion—have issued rulings that will shape the Tony race in significant ways.
Like last season and the season before that (and the season before that), there has been a good deal for the committee to rule on. The interest in (and news coverage of) what the committee says and does has been increasing in recent years because it reflects how Broadway has changed: from the types of shows mounted on the Main Stem to such questions as what differentiates lead from featured performances, and whether over-the-title or under-the-title billing really means much. There are so many thorny, recurring questions for the committee to decide that its job is dominated by drama.
Consider just one new trend: well-known works that never played on Broadway but are now, for whatever reason, finding favor with producers. Twice this has happened to Sam Shepard: In 1996, his Pulitzer Prize-winning "Buried Child" was judged eligible as a new play due to "textual revisions," and in 2000, "True West" was similarly slotted. Last season, Terrence McNally's "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune," a 1980s Off-Broadway hit, fell into the same category, too. And how to view the rash of films being made into plays ("Judgment at Nuremberg," "On the Waterfront," "The Graduate") and musicals ("Saturday Night Fever," "Footloose," "Hairspray")? Some have been entirely rewritten; those are natural best play or musical contenders. Some have been harder to discern.
Two years ago, the contention that a years-old or decades-old play could agreeably be considered "new" was tested. Ivan Turgenev's 1848 "Fortune's Fool" was ruled eligible as a new play, and Rialto rumors ran rampant regarding who'd accept the Tony if Turgenev won, since he died in 1883. Edward Albee's "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?" took the prize, but the ensuing community debate ultimately persuaded the committee to redefine what a "new work" for Broadway really means. Specifically, it decreed that plays or musicals "in the historical or popular repertoire" shall no longer be thought of as new, even if they are new to Broadway, but would be eligible in the appropriate best-revival category instead.
Which brings us back to the current season and the questions facing the Tony Awards administration committee. The most hotly anticipated decision right now is whether the John Weidman-Stephen Sondheim musical "Assassins," first produced Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 1991, will be considered a new musical or a classic musical revival. The Roundabout Theatre Company production has enjoyed the kinds of raves that must be bittersweet for the 74-year-old composer-lyricist, who began the season hoping his new musical with Weidman, "Bounce," might be one of the contenders for best musical.
And, true to form, rumors are rife that Roundabout Artistic Director Todd Haimes will indeed ask the committee to name the show as new, despite only one song, "Something Just Broke," appearing in the current production that did not appear in the '91 version. The industry chitchat has grown so clamorous that the April 23 "On Stage and Off" column in The New York Times quoted Haimes as saying that "a good argument could be made" for such a ruling, since "so few people saw the original production…"
While Haimes said he would consult with Sondheim and Weidman before petitioning the committee, his Times quote may be viewed as something of a trial balloon, for shifting "Assassins" to the list of new musicals would have pluses, if weak ones. The 2003-04 Broadway season has produced only one bona fide musical hit, "Wicked," which often grosses $1 million a week despite the critics' ambivalence about the show. Absent the aim of "Assassins," the only other major best-musical contenders are "Caroline, or Change" (which won critical bouquets while at the Public Theater, but whose box-office potential remains unclear) and "Avenue Q" (still highly popular with audiences and reviewers alike).
The season's other new musicals—"Taboo," "Never Gonna Dance," and "Jackie Mason: Laughing Room Only"—tanked; and while "The Boy From Oz" has Hugh Jackman's landmark performance and "Bombay Dreams" has Andrew Lloyd Webber's producing behind it, neither are seen as strong competitors for a best-musical win.
Trouble is, the idea of "Assassins" besting either "Wicked" or "Avenue Q," which both appeal to the sensibilities of the out-of-town producers who make up a huge bloc of Tony voters, is hard to imagine. Why Roundabout—or the committee—would want "Assassins" to avoid competing against this season's other musical revivals—"Wonderful Town," "Big River," "Fiddler on the Roof," and "Little Shop of Horrors"—is also hard to imagine. After all, the "Wonderful Town" grosses have weakened in recent weeks, and star Donna Murphy may soon depart the show to film a sitcom; "Big River," glowing reviews aside, was a limited run that closed last summer and is all but out of the Tony voters' minds; and the reviews for "Fiddler" were tepid at best.
That, then, leaves "Little Shop," and if the committee indeed deemed "Assassins" a new musical, it would likely enrage the show's producers. One of the longest-running shows in Off-Broadway history, "Little Shop" opened on Broadway last summer after a famously bumpy tryout period and the committee has already ruled it eligible for best musical revival.
Eligibility, Take a Bow
Then there are the acting categories, where the Tony competition is expected to be fierce. As reported in Back Stage earlier this season, the committee has already issued a blizzard of rulings: John Tartaglia and Stephanie D'Abruzzo, co-stars of the musical "Avenue Q," are eligible for leading actor and actress; ditto Euan Morton, who played Boy George in "Taboo," and ditto Noah Racey and Nancy Lemenager from "Never Gonna Dance."
With all their names above the title, meanwhile, the committee ruled that Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth of "Wicked" and Hunter Foster and Kerry Butler of "Little Shop of Horrors" are eligible in leading categories, whereas Tony winner Joel Grey, who plays the Wizard in "Wicked," is eligible in the featured category.
That still leaves unanswered questions. Will the "Assassins" actors, who clearly perform as an ensemble, be eligible as featured performances, leads, or both? Will Swoosie Kurtz, the two-time Tony winner whose groundbreaking work in "Frozen" is one reason why the play transferred from MCC Theater to Broadway, be eligible as a lead or featured player? What of the revival of "A Raisin in the Sun," with the names of all four stars—Sean Combs, Audra McDonald, Phylicia Rashad, and Sanaa Lathan—above the title? Will all be eligible for lead-performance nominations?
If the committee's previous rulings this season are any indication, another mixed bag awaits Broadway. In January, the committee said Danny Glover would be the only actor from the short-lived revival of " 'Master Harold'…and the boys" to be eligible for a leading-actor nod; ditto Robert Sean Leonard of "The Violet Hour" and Patrick Stewart of "The Caretaker." The three leads in the revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"—Ashley Judd, Jason Patric, and Ned Beatty—are all eligible for nods in leading categories; ditto three actors from the Lincoln Center Theater revival of "Henry IV," Kevin Kline, Richard Easton, and Michael Hayden.
When the committee rules on eligibility, other awards do not always follow. For example, the committee found Beatty eligible for a lead performance nom, but the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle slotted him as featured.
Finally, one last shot at "Assassins." If it is deemed eligible for new musical, its eligibility for best original score also comes into play. The committee has already deemed the score from "The Boy From Oz" ineligible because the Peter Allen songs were not expressly written for the stage; the score to "Taboo," while including a few Culture Club songs, was ruled eligible because George O'Dowd, aka Boy George, wrote almost all the score for the production.
A closer analogy might be last season's fracas over the eligibility of the score of "Urban Cowboy." The question was whether the songs written expressly for the stage comprised 50% of the score, the minimum for eligibility for a best score nom. At first the committee said the score failed to meet the requirement, then the producers squawked, then the committee recalculated. So if "Assassins" is eligible for best score, will "Little Shop" sprout a thorn?