Wow, what a night. Everyone expected that Steppenwolf’s production of August: Osage County would win big at the Tony Awards last night, but to sweep five of the six categories it was up for is quite a big deal. I was at the Steppenwolf Tony viewing party in the downstairs theater last night, and the applause, yelling, hooting, and noise-making for every August win during the ceremony, projected on two large screens, was thunderous. Now, I know how my college sports fanatic friends feel when they’re sitting in their designated school bar during the NCAA championships games, because that’s exactly how I felt last night watching the Steppenwolf crew, Chicago artists all, take trophy after trophy - swoony, heady, feeling like I just got vacuum pumped with adrenaline. It was a glorious night for Chicago theater, and our folks gave the most sincere, most gracious, most elegant, most down-to-earth speeches of the night (unlike mega-diva Patti Lupone, winner of Best Actress in a Musical for the new Gypsy revival, who growled while the orchestra was trying to play off her extended, phoney, very arrogant-sounding acceptance speech, or Best Actor in a Play Mark Rylance who quoted a pretty long, obtuse passage from an obscure Minnesota writer instead of thanking anyone from Boeing Boeing, just to be different). Best Featured Actress in a Play winner, Rondi Reed, thanked her artistic families in her speech and dedicated her award to August playwright’s Tracy Letts’ recently passed father, Dennis Letts, who played the Weston patriarch both in Chicago and during its initial run on Broadway. Best Director Anna D. Shapiro brought goose-bumps and tears to many in the downstairs theater (especially me!) when she mentioned that her six nephews and nieces didn’t care about any of this, “they just wanted tickets to The Little Mermaid”. Best Actress in a Play, the magnificently unforgettable Deanna Dunagan, was so refreshingly honest and humble (again a contrast to her counterpart winner in the musical category, monster diva Patti) when she said “…none of us dreamed we would be (at the Tonys). I certainly didn’t. After 34 years in regional theater I never even thought about it. I watched it on TV like everybody else…” And of course the brilliant Mr. Letts, accepting the Best Play award (with the fabulous Steppenwolf Artistic Director Martha Lavey beaming by his side) concluded his speech with a huge thank you to the Chicago theater community “…who made this possible.” I was pretty bummed that we didn’t get to see the full acceptance speech that Barbara Gaines, Artistic Director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre gave for the Regional Tony Award, since the award wasn’t part of the telecast, but I think she summed it up beautifully for all of us who love this city, who scream our voices hoarse proclaiming the talent and artistry that this city overflows with, when she said that founding Chicago Shakespeare was a risk and that “…we only could have taken that risk in Chicago, a world class city, a place where the arts are cherished and where theater is celebrated with generosity and passion”. To anyone who says they’re flying to New York City to see a Broadway (or even off-Broadway show), I’d like to say to them, save the fare and spend it instead on seeing the plays at Steppenwolf, at Chicago Shakespeare, at the Goodman, the Hypocrites, Redmoon Theatre, Lookingglass, the Next Theater, and the other hundreds of theater companies in Chicago where real theater lives, breathes, and dynamically evolves. For a complete list of Tony Award winners, click here. Picture: Deanna Dunagan accepts her Tony, one of the most richly deserved in decades!
It’s all Tony Awards, all the time on From the Ledge this week. Not only because it’s going to be the coronation night of Chicago theater (specifically Steppenwolf and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater), or that I am one of the five people in my age bracket who has watched the show on CBS religiously for the past eight years, but it’s also been really difficult to catch up on blog content when you’ve been locked into a conference room on Madison Avenue for the past several days. There have been lots of new articles coming out about the stellar August: Osage County folks in these days leading up to the Tonys. Friend of From the Ledge, Storefront Rebellion posted a link to this roundtable discussion with many of the cast from Backstage.com. Amy Morton, Rondi Reed, and Francis Guinan, particularly, continue to be refreshingly direct. The New York Sun also put out an article on August director, Anna Shapiro. It’s interesting that when (not if) she wins this Sunday, she will be only the fifth female director to win in the Tony’s 61 years of existence, and of that five, nearly half will be from Chicago, Lookingglass Theater’s co-founder Mary Zimmermann (who won for the luminous Metamorphoses, which I really enjoyed) and herself. Wow. In non-August Tony news, various chatrooms and the New York Post’s much-vilified Michael Reidel, are predicting an upset in the Best Actor in a Play category. The early favorite was Patrick Stewart, Captain Picard himself, who got rave reviews in a revisionist staging of Macbeth, but it seems like Mark Rylance, former Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre and one of the leading Shakespearian actors in the world, will provide the upset win this Sunday, in ironically, the revival of a light-weight 1960s farce, Boeing-Boeing. I have always wanted to see Rylance live on stage, and thought of going to see him at the Guthrie in Peer Gynt earlier this year, unfortunately the thought of three hours of an Ibsen play in the middle of subzero Minneapolis temperatures was enough to dissuade me. I saw Rylance in Patrice Chereau’s abominable film Intimacy several years ago at the Chicago International Film Festival, which created a lot of controversy at that time for the graphic sex scenes. Uhmm, maybe I will see Boeing-Boeing the next time I’m in New York later this month. Finally, here’s a really enjoyable read on the Tonys from a “lifelong theater geek” published on Salon.com.
It has been that kind of a week. I am mentally and physically fried from having to work the weekend and really, really early mornings (4 am anyone?) as well as dealing with spring allergies and this crazy it’s summer-one-day, it’s-cold-and-rainy-the-next early June weather Chicago is having. So instead of writing on a focused topic, which I normally like doing, I’m just going to blog on a bunch of things. And, anyway, lots of bloggers blog on in this stream-of-consciousness manner all the time (and many of them are not even remotely close to William Faulkner’s talents…). I’ve also gone to a lot of things over the past weeks and months and have not had the catch up time necessary to write about them, and this is the time to do so.
The Tony Awards, the big Kahuna of theater awards in the US, has announced their nominations and special awardees this morning. And all of us in the Chicago theater community - artists and audiences alike - have so many reasons to celebrate. Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s much-raved about production of August: Osage County received 7 nominations: Best Play for Tracy Letts and the theatre (as one of the co-producers); Best Direction of a Play for Anna Shapiro; Best Leading Actress in a Play for the legendary performances of Deanna Dunagan and Amy Morton; Best Featured Actress in a Play for Rondi Reed; Best Scenic Design of a Play for Todd Rosenthal who created that masterful, memorable, three story house; and Best Lighting Design of a Play for Ann G. Wrightson. Amazing! Additionally, the Special Tony Award for Excellence in Regional Theater, previously won by Steppenwolf, Goodman Theatre, and Victory Gardens, is going this year to the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, making Chicago the only city in the US to have 4 Regional Tonys! (yes! and all the Chicago theater divas are now swooning and doing the wave!). I sometimes have mixed feelings about Chicago Shakes’ productions, as my blog readers know, but I definitely, strongly feel that this Regional Tony is well-deserved if only for their sophisticated, exceptionally-selected World’s Stage series, which this year brought James Thieree, Peter Brook, and the Shaw Festival to the windy city. Today’s Tony Awards announcement is significant, in my mind, because it demonstrates validation from the national theater establishment (which we all have to admit, regardless of how we feel about it, is New York-based and New York-centric) what we, Chicago theater creators and supporters already proudly know and believe in: that there’s no better city for original, creative, brave, exciting, formidable, provocative, INSERT YOUR SUPERLATIVE HERE, theater in North America than Chi-town! Go Chicago!
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