dioo dcogioNsir o o i Curtain Call CONEY ISLAND Greek and American Cuisine OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK 154 S. Woodward, Birmingham (248) 540-8780 Halsted Village (37580 W. 12 Mile Rd.) Farmington Hills (248) 553-2360 6527 Telegraph Rd. Corner of Maple (15 Mile) Bloomfield Township (248) 646-8568 4763 Haggerty Rd. at Pontiac Trail West Wind Village Shopping Center West Bloomfield (248) 669-2295 841 East Big Beaver, Troy (248) 680-0094 SOUTHFIELD SOUVLAKI CONEY ISLAND Nine Mile & Greenfield 15647 West Nine Mile, Southfield (248) 569-5229 FARMINGTON SOUVLAKI CONEY ISLAND Between 13 & 14 on Orchard Lake Road 30985 Orchard Lake Rd. Farmington Hills (248) 626-9732 UPTOWN PARTHENON 4301 Orchard Lake Rd. West Bloomfield (248) 538-6000 HERCULES FAMILY RESTAURANT 33292 West 12 Mile Farmington Hills (248) 489-9777 Serving whitefish, Iamb shank, pastitsio and moussaka la INN 111•• Mall JINN ME NMI INN MIMI NM Ian II I Receive 10°1' o Off l I Entire Bill 1 6/2 2000 82 I not to go with any other offer I with coupon I I Expires 12/30/2000 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.