Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Jonny Orsini, left, and Nathan Lane in “The Nance.â€This week Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood, theater critics for The New York Times, took readers’ questions about the Broadway season and this week’s announcement of the Tony Award nominations. Below are their answers to selected questions.
For Mr. Brantley, I was surprised by his lukewarm reviews for both “The Testament of Mary†and “The Nance.†Would he like to further talk about his responses to both plays? Did Mr. Isherwood also see these plays and respond similarly? â€" drjp1025, Los Angeles
Ben Brantley: I said pretty much what I wanted to say in those reviews, though you can always expatiate, I suppose. There was much I liked about the production of “The Nance,†especially Nathan Lane’s performance and the gritty sense the production conveyed of burlesque in its final days. But the script turned preachy and conventional, and in doing so, I think, betrayed its title character, who became more of a mouthpiece than any actor should have to be.
“Mary,†I felt, was betrayed by its production. It’s an excellent script, and in Ms. Shaw, it has a most compelling star. But the busy staging, by Deborah Warner, undercut as well as underlined the play’s insights and moments of revelation. I think I said all this in the original reviews, but we critics are always happy to elucidate.
Charles Isherwood: Unfortunately I can’t express much enthusiasm for those productions either. “The Testament of Mary†struck me as an unhappy match between talents. Having read Colm Toibin’s text in its published from, as a novella, I was transfixed by the dispassionate beauty of the writing. It seems to me the material drew its strength from the emotional restraint that was the keynote of Mary’s reflections - she seemed all but hollowed out by horror of what she had witnessed. Fiona Shaw’s performance had moments of intense quiet but these were overpowered by the general ferocity, not to mention the general busy-ness of Deborah Warner’s production. (I do find it bizarre, however, that the Tony nominating committee included “Mary†in the best play category without recognizing Ms. Shaw’s performance; take away the performance and the production consists of a vulture and an odd assortment of props. Go figure.)
As for “The Nance,†I wish Douglas Carter Beane had dug more deeply into the psyche of the main character, and that his young love interest had not been such a blandly idealized character. Also, I have to admit that I didn’t find any of that whiskered burlesque comedy even remotely funny.
Do you have any comments on why all nominated new musicals are adaptations? â€" Bethynyc, Massachusetts
Brantley: I could do a riff on the culture of recycling here. But for many years, many classic book musicals have been adaptations. “The Book of Mormon†is an most obvious recent exception. But think of the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon: “Oklahoma!†and “Carousel†are adapted from plays, and “South Pacific†from a novel. More recently, musicals are more likely to look to movies for inspiration, as “Kinky Boots†did this season and hits like “Hairspray,†“The Producers†and “Once†did in seasons past. Even Stephen Sondheim, whom one thinks of as conceiving shows out of air with his collaborators, has looked to the movies for his “Passion†and “A Little Night Music.†And “Merrily We Roll Along†was a latter-day variation on a Kaufman and Hart play.
Isherwood: Throughout their history Broadway musicals have been drawing on other sources for inspiration. Many of the classics - from “Show Boat†and “Oklahoma!†to “Sweeney Todd†- have found their origins in other mediums, so in a sense it’s nothing new. What is new is the tendency these days to simply musicalize movies, a sign I suppose of film’s dominance in our culture (and our decreasing literacy, perhaps). Three of the four nominated new musicals were based on movies. There’s no inherent reason why films shouldn’t make for fine musicals - I quite liked “Hairspray†- but the track record of the last decade or so is not inspiring.
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times A scene from the musical “Hands on a Hardbody.â€â€œHands on a Hardbody†was one of my favorite entries this season. I recall the reviews were mostly on the positive side of neutral, and remember discussing with friends my fear that NYC audiences wouldn’t “get itâ€, and that tourists would eschew it in favor of in-your-face blockbusters. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the show, and if you think anything could have been done to give it a longer life. â€" Chris, Orlando, Fla.
Brantley: I am sad to say that I missed “Hands on a Hardbody,†though I had every intention of seeing it, honest. I’ll leave it to Charles to speak of why it didn’t survive and how it might have been able to.
Isherwood: “Hands on a Hardbody†was human-scaled and, despite measures of comedy, fundamentally serious in its consideration of how economic hardship had pushed its characters to the edge of desperation. Broadway musicals mostly traffic in splashy theatrics, happy fantasies and “feel-good†stories - all the nominated musicals certainly did. (I am glad, at least, that “Hardbody†won a nomination for Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green’s eclectic, appealing roots-rock score.) I don’t think the show really belonged on Broadway, but unfortunately there really isn’t a viable marketplace for musicals Off Broadway - they are so expensive to produce. I would hope the show might have an extended life in regional theaters. It deserves it.
Which annual theater awards (e.g., Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Tony Awards, etc.) have you found over time to best reflect critical excellence? â€" Ed B., New York
Brantley: All awards are arrived at by compromise, which means they seldom reflect true originality or excellence.
Isherwood: We are certainly awash in theater awards these days, and I cannot claim to keep track of how the chips fall from year to year. Even the most esteemed award, which is probably the Pulitzer Prize for drama, has a far from perfect record in terms of selecting plays that, with time, have proven their enduring worth. Laurel-bestowing makes the award-givers and the award-getters feel good, but I’m not sure we should look to awards tallies for measures of true artistic merit. Maybe only history can give that verdict (and, heck, even history probably gets things wrong now and then).
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times A scene from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?†with, from left, Madison Dirks, Tracy Letts, Carrie Coon and Amy Morton.I know how Mr. Isherwood felt about “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?â€, but how did Mr. Brantley feel about the show? â€" Monica Reida, Chicago
Brantley: I am always happy to see a solid production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,†one of my favorite plays. If I was less enamored of this version than Charles was, it was because I felt that Tracy Letts’s George overpowered Amy Morton’s Martha, and that the marital battle needs to be evenly matched for maximum impact. Mr. Letts was superb, though, and his performance offered me new and provoking insights into George. This alone made the production worth attending, and it had much more to offer than that.
Do you feel that, with the majority of performance nominees being first-time nominees or being simply younger than typical, and that, with a lot of older, previous Tony nominees being passed over, that a new era of Broadway performers has been ushered in, and that we may be seeing more new works featuring new or younger actors?â€" Phil, Philadelphia
Brantley: Broadway, like any creative vampire, always needs new blood, so I’m glad if the Tony nominations reflect a fresh infusion of talent. Experience has taught me to ruminate, though, that many of the brightest young talents, having used the stage to announce their presence, are likely to be lost in the mills of television and film making, rather than develop into theater stars.
Isherwood: I wasn’t particularly struck by the preponderance of youth among the acting nominees, actually. Perhaps in the musical categories there were more fresh faces or at least new-ish names, from Stark Sands and Billy Porter to Santino Fontana and Laura Osnes. I hope for the sake of Broadway’s future that these performers and others can continue to develop their careers, but the business has contracted over the decades, and great musical theater roles are harder to come by. I do think there’s something a mite cheering in the fact that the nominators didn’t seem to factor in celebrity quite as much as they normally do, including the likes of Tracy Letts and Amy Morton, theater stalwarts whose show had closed. (That said, Bette Midler was robbed!)
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Seth Numrich, left, in “Golden Boy.â€What have been the shows that most pleasantly surprised you this year? Alternatively, have there been any shows you were eagerly anticipating that disappointed you? â€" Ali, New York
Brantley: I went with limited expectations to Richard Greenberg’s “Assembled Parties†(and, please, can somebody change that title, which is impossible to remember). I hadn’t thought much of his adaptation of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,†which had opened on Broadway not long before. But this was a return to top form for Mr. Greenberg, with a production full of eloquence and stylized wit. This sort of comedy of manners is much harder to pull off than it appears - it needs to create the illusion of an effortlessness that is in fact very hard-won. And I was sorry that neither its superb leading lady, Jessica Hecht, nor its director, Lynne Meadow, were nominated for Tonys. On the other hand, not really. If it weren’t part of my job, I wouldn’t even look to see what was nominated.
Isherwood: I was most pleasantly cheered by the excellent revival of Clifford Odets’s “Golden Boy.†Although its director, Bartlett Sher, had done a wonderful job with another Odets play, “Awake and Sing!,†I was nevertheless impressed by how vibrant and alive the play felt (and was glad the Tony nominators gave it plenty of love: 8 nominations, more than any other production of a play, old or new). Maybe that’s why the biggest disappointment of the season - among quite a few, alas - was the less effective revival of Odets’s “Big Knife.†The play considers some of the same themes (the corrupting influence of money on the soul, etc.) but hasn’t weathered the years as well, and I’m not even sure the sympathetic touch of Mr. Sher could have made a powerful case for it.
Why so much talk about awards? Why isn’t there more conversation about differences of opinion? Why the persistent avoidance of conversation about actual artistic content? â€" Craig Lucas, Putnam Valley, N.Y.
Brantley: If I had a choice, I would ignore all award ceremonies (except the Grammys, which are a hoot). I find them embarrassing to the point of excruciation. They are not, and cannot be, objective measures of worth. It’s not just that it takes time to uncover lasting merit, but most awards are arrived at by a kind of horse-swapping procedure wherein nobody’s true favorite is likely to win. But people, being people, have a hunger for lists and prizes that quantify merit. It makes the world seem a little more manageable, I suppose. Newspapers are necessarily in the business of giving the public what it wants to read, and I work for a newspaper. Hence I try to write with some enthusiasm about awards in which I personally have little interest.
Isherwood: We live in a culture that’s obsessed with competition, like it or not, and seems to become only more so. Witness the huge popularity and proliferation of talent contests on television, not to mention the multibillion-dollar industries that are major league sports. (And even college sports.) And nothing brings out differences of opinion more than the hoopla surrounding who did and who didn’t get nominated! I can tell you writing about matters Tony-related is not, ahem, one of the most appealing aspects of the job. But it’s also unavoidable.
