Hamilton 16. Awards Up The Wazoo. Week in New York Theater

Hamilton 16

Hamilton received more Tony nominations than any show in its 70 year history. Other things are happening besides the Tony Award nominations, and other theater awards – including some two dozen plays and musicals opening in May – but who’s noticing?

Week in New York Theater Awards

2016TheaterAwardscollage2016 NYC Theater Award Guide

Tony Award Nominations

Survey: What are YOUR picks (not predictions) for the 2016 Tony Awards?

Hamilton may not be a complete sweep at the Tonys

New York Drama Critics Circle Awards: Shuffle Along, The Humans

Lucille Lortel Award Winners

Theatre World Award Winners

Astaire Award Nominations

Alana Arenas and Phylicia Rashad
Alana Arenas and Phylicia Rashad
Ben Platt as Evan Hansen
Ben Platt as Evan Hansen

Alana Arenas (performing in the Public Theater’s Head of Passes) and Ben Platt (in Second Stage’s Dear Evan Hansen) win the Actors Equity Foundation Clarence Derwent Awards for promising newcomers.

Lois Smith and Bill Camp win the annual Richard Seff Award presented by the Actors’ Equity Foundation to a veteran male and female character actor for the best performance in a supporting role in a Broadway or Off-Broadway production.

New York theater artists Lynn Nottage and Taylor Mac are among the 21 performing artists to snag $275,000 Doris Duke Performing Arts Awards.

Week in New York Theater Reviews

Brandon Victor Dixon and Audra McDonald in Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, © Julieta Cervantes
Brandon Victor Dixon and Audra McDonald in Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed,
© Julieta Cervantes

Shuffle Along

George C. Wolfe’s revival of the 1921 all-black musical is cataclysmically entertaining…That, however, refers to the musical numbers. Wolfe’s ambition to tell the story behind the musical…quickly starts feeling as if he were a PhD student defending his thesis about the significance of this ‘sadly neglected’ musical…Luckily, Wolfe the savvy showman often wins out over Wolfe the passionate pedant, and there are moments of ‘Shuffle Along’ that are as electrifying and sublime as any this season on Broadway.

Evan Hansen 3

Dear Evan Hansen

The title character in the musical Dear Evan Hansen is a clinically anxious high school student who is so friendless that he can’t get any classmates to sign the cast on his broken arm, except an even worse misfit named Connor. But then Connor commits suicide, and his death turns Evan’s life around.  

In other hands, it might be difficult to suspend disbelief in the series of unlikely, near-satiric events at the heart of this original musical..[But] Composer/lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul have fashioned a tuneful, affecting pop-rock score. Director Michael Greif has created a first-rate, resonant production…Beneath the fanciful plot, ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ digs towards some insights into several aspects of human nature; the show acknowledges that even good people see a tragedy through the prism of their own needs, and sometimes use it to their own advantage.

Week in New York Theater News

DisasterforCalendar

The first Tony Awards casualty: Disaster, with just one nomination (Jennifer Simard as a guitar-singing, slot-playing nun) says it will close Sunday, having played 32 previews and 72 regular performances.

FindingNeverlandcCarolRosegg 2

Finding Neverland to close August 21, after 33 previews and 565 performances

 

Jed-Bernstein

It was an affair with a subordinate, against policy, that led to Jed Bernstein’s resignation as president of Lincoln Center, the institution  finally reveals.

cumminginMaxandAlan

Alan Cumming writes and performs in “Max & Alan,” inspired by German Expressionist Max Beckmann’s life & death in NYC. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 10

Always great Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks 2016: plays by Julia Jarcho, Eric Dufault, Ethan Lipton

Renée-Elise-Goldsberry_Emma-Pratte_03

 An Interview with Renee Elise Goldsberry

SamRudy

Sam Rudy, Hamilton’s “Gatekeeper” (i.e. publicist.)

 

 

 

GloverJamison

Savion Glover and Judith Jamison discuss race, dance and “Shuffle Along”

Lupita

Why I chose a small play over the big screen, by Lupita Nyong’o

Inspired reaction by The Humans to the Tony nominations for featured actors Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell

HumansFeeltheBirn HoudyshellHumans

Author: New York Theater

Jonathan Mandell is a 3rd generation NYC journalist, who sees shows, reads plays, writes reviews and sometimes talks with people.

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