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Iwo
On Broadway
This year's Tony Award nominations demonstrate the
popularity of both musical revivals and straight plays.
ALICE BURDICK SCHWEIGER
Special to the Jewish News
T
he 54th annual Tony Awards
will be handed out this
Sunday, beginning at 8 p.m.
on PBS and continuing at 9
p.m on CBS. Kiss Me, Kate, with 12
nominations, and The Music Man, with
nine nominations, top the list of possi-
ble winners, both for Best Revival of a
Musical. Nominated for Best Musical,
The Wild Party, Contact and Swing also
grabbed multiple nominations. Dirty
Blonde, The Real Thing, A Moon For
The Misbegotten and Copenhagen top
the list of straight plays.
What's interesting about this year's
Tony Awards is that many performers
in the same show are up against each
other. Case in point — Contact players
Deborah Yates and Karen Ziemba and
Swing! actresses Laura Benanti and
Ann Hampton Callaway all are up for
Best Performance by a Featured
Actress in a Musical. In the category
of Best Performance by a Featured
Actor in a Musical, Kiss Me, Kate's
Michael Berresse, Michael Mulheren
and Lee Wilkof are pitted against each
other. Even more unusual, Susan
Stroman is up against herself in both
the Best Choreography and Best
Direction of a Musical categories for .
Contact and The Music Man.
"It's like having my whole psyche
exposed on the Great White Way,"
laughs Stroman, while at a luncheon at
the New York restaurant Sardi's, where
all the Tony nominees were being hon-
ored. "But both shows are a labor of
love and are very different — one ( The
Music Man) is a wonderful family show
and one (Contact) is more mature."
Stroman says producers from both
shows were terrific about juggling
rehearsal schedules. "I was doing Music
Man during the day and Contact at
night," she says. "Fortunately, Contact
opened earlier Off-Broadway."
Contact star Karen Ziemba says this
seems to be Stroman's year on
Broadway. "Susan knows what she is
doing and deserves all her nomina-
tions," she notes while making her
way through the crowd at Sardi's. "I
dancing, is also an all-singing, all danc-
ing musical.
Contact actress Deborah Yates agrees
that Broadway will embrace dance in
seasons to come. "Although Contact is
unique in a lot of ways and hard to
duplicate, dance as a means of story-
telling is very exciting."
This season, however, the Broadway
trend is a balance between musical
revivals and straight plays, according to
Jed Bernstein, executive director of the
League of American Theaters and
.
Producers, which presents the Tony
Awards along with the American
Theater Wing. "Two years ago was the
year of the musical; last year was the
year of the play, with Death of a
Salesman and Iceman Cometh; but now
the trend is a little more balanced."
And what about the British influ-
ence? "We do have Copenhagen and The
Real Thing, but we also have True West,
which can't get any more American."
As for next year, Susan Stroman,
who won a Tony in 1992 for choreo-
O
Top: Susan Stroman is up for
Best Director of a Musical for "Contact"
and "The Music Man."
Above: Bob Stillman, Claudia Shear
and Kevin Chamberlin in "Dirty
Blonde." Shear's play, a warm-hearted
biography o Mae West, is up for
Best Play, an the rincipals all are
nominated or acting awards.
also think it's thanks to Susan that
there will be a revival of dance on
Broadway. Her work lets people know
that you can tell stories through
dance, if it's done well."
Contact is divided into three one-
act vignettes told through dance,
although there is some dialogue.
Swing!, which includes 30 dance num-
bers and reflects all kinds of swing
graphing Crazy for You, may once again
take Broadway by storm. The word is
she will assume the job of director in the
Broadway musical version of Mel
Brooks' 1960s film The Producers.
Stroman's late husband, Mike Ockrent,
who died of leukemia in December, was
going to direct and Stroman was set to
do the choreography, but now it looks
like she may be doing both. Rehearsals
begin in January. There is also talk that
she may make a musical from The Night
They Raided Minskys, an undertaking
that her husband had planned.
❑
The Tony. Awards ceremony airs
Sunday, June 4, beginning at 8
p.m. on PBS and 9 p.m. on CBS.