The nominations for the third annual Dorian Theater Awards include a unique category: The Broadway Showstopper Award. It’s a great idea. These musical numbers or standout scenes are often what we most remember (let’s face it, sometimes the only thing we remember) from a show.
Five from the 2024-2025 season have been nominated. Take the poll below to choose your favorite.
Death Becomes Her – “For the Gaze,” performed by Megan Hilty
(From my review: Madeline (Megan Hilty) is performing a show that we see on the marquee is called “Me! Me! Me!” – and the musical number she’s performing with the entire company, “For The Gaze,” is hilarious for its excess but also entertaining in its extravagance.)
Gypsy – “Rose’s Turn,” performed by Audra McDonald
(From my review: Audra McDonald is certainly entertaining in “Gypsy.” In the first part of Rose’s Turn, she gets fully into the suggestive and sexy moves of a stripper, albeit as the middle-aged Rose would interpret one…But her greatest contribution to this production might be the way she connects us to Rose’s feelings, and to our own.)
John Proctor Is the Villain – “Green Light,” performed by Sadie Sink, Amalia Yoo
(From my review: Sink and Yoo, in an act of defiance, dance a really fierce, and forceful finale to Lorde’s “Green Light”)
Maybe Happy Ending – “Chasing Fireflies,” performed by Darren Criss, Helen J. Shen
(From my review: In forty years, there will still be fireflies, and there will still be love. But fireflies will only still exist on Jeju Island near Seoul, Korea, and when Oliver and Claire (Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen) travel there to see them, they don’t realize yet that they’re in love. As robots, the two are not programmed for that emotion.)
Sunset Blvd. – “Sunset Boulevard,” performed by Tom Francis
(From my review: While he sings of Sunset Boulevard, Francis is not actually on stage at the St. James. Rather, there is a giant screen on which his image is being projected live and in real time…Francis himself is actually at this moment out on the street, the camera accompanying him, having shown him making his way from his dressing room through the labyrinthine backstage area, greeting individual cast members, including one in a chimp costume. Now we see him passing under the marquees of Broadway as he sings about the temptations, ruthlessness and corruption of Hollywood – a clever wink of comparison. )
The Dorians, voted by the theater wing of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, will announce the winner on June 2. But you can choose your winner now.
Have a favorite Broadway Showstopper in the season that was not nominated? Choose “Other” and then write in what it is (or put it in the comments section below.) Here are some other choices:
BOOP! The Musical – “Where I Wanna Be”
BOOP! The Musical – “Something to Shout About”
Buena Vista Social Club – “El Cuarto de Tula”
Buena Vista Social Club – “Dos Gardenias”
Buena Vista Social Club – Flute Solo
Dead Outlaw – “Dead”
Dead Outlaw – “Up to the Stars”
Death Becomes Her – “If You Want Perfection”
English – The conversation in Farsi
Floyd Collins – “How Glory Goes”
Floyd Collins – “The Dream”
Gypsy – “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”
Gypsy – “You Gotta Get a Gimmick”
The Hills of California – The Staircase Switch
Just in Time – “Mack the Knife”
Just in Time – “Splish Splash”
Just in Time – “Who’s Sorry Now”
Maybe Happy Ending – “The Rainy Day We Met”
Maybe Happy Ending – “When You’re in Love”
Operation Mincemeat – “Dear Bill”
Pirates! The Penzance Musical – “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General”
Purpose – Morgan speaks up at dinner
Real Women Have Curves – “Flying Away”
Real Women Have Curves – “Real Women Have Curves”
Redwood – “Great Escape”
Romeo + Juliet – The Balcony Scene
Smash – “Let’s Be Bad”
Smash – “Let Me Be Your Star” (Act 1 Finale)
Smash – “I Never Met a Wolf Who Didn’t Love to Howl”
Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends – “Sunday”
Stranger Things – Bathroom Nightmare Sequence
Stranger Things – The Mind Flayer takes over
Sunset Blvd. – “As If We Never Said Goodbye”
Sunset Blvd. – “With One Look”
A Wonderful World – “Hello, Dolly!”
Dear Bill
Are you going to combine the votes for Operation Mincemeat – Dear Bill. As a write in – it has different variations – and each variation is getting a separate entry in the final poll.
It’s clear that “Dear Bill” is very popular, which is certainly eye-opening. The five choices that are listed explicitly in the poll are those that were nominated for the Dorian Theater Award. It looks as if they should have nominated “Dear Bill” too, but they didn’t. There is no easy way to “combine votes” after the fact using the Google form, and in any case this is not a scientific poll. I think it’s enough that people can see the results — and see how many respondents “wrote in” Dear Bill from Operation Mincemeat.
It’s a shame Dear Bill wasn’t nominated. I realize the logistics, but it would be great if perhaps when the poll closes, you could aggregate the Dear Bill write-ins and total them.
Dear Bill needs to be aggregated as it has several categories which give it a large number of votes