The Dallas Morning News Lawson Taitte Column

Jun 11, 12:05 PM

Current Headlines: By Lawson Taitte, The Dallas Morning News

Jun. 11--The pundits were pretty much right: Spring Awakening and The Coast of Utopia cleaned all the other shows' clocks at the 2007 Tony Awards.

Together they won 15 out of the 22 awards presented -- even though none of the four top acting winners came from either show.One of those winners amazed pretty much everybody including himself -- best actor in a musical David Hyde Pierce, the only performer in the Kander and Ebb swansong Curtains who is not a seasoned song-and-dance pro.

In contrast, Christine Ebersole has been considered a shoo-in for more than a year as best actress in a musical. She collected every other New York award last year for the preliminary off-Broadway version of Grey Gardens. From the moment its move to Broadway was announced, everybody in the theater community assumed she would add the Tony in 2007. She did -- against formidable competition -- which only goes to show that momentum can survive agonizing delay if it's big enough.

Julie White, a Dallas favorite after her stint in Bad Dates at the Dallas Theater Center two years ago, picked up the best actress in a play nod for the long-closed comedy, The Little Dog Laughed. Best actor in a play went to Frank Langella for his uncannily accurate and surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of President Richard M. Nixon in Frost/Nixon.

Except for Mr. Pierce's genuine upset over the heavily favored Raul Esparza in the revival of Company, all this was pretty much as expected. Anybody who predicted the Spring Awakening and The Coast of Utopia sweeps a year ago, however, would have been called a nut.

At the beginning of last summer, the long-postponed Spring Awakening was finally getting a berth at the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Company after eight years. This musical version of a century-old German expressionist drama -- with a jagged score by has-been pop singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik -- was considered too edgy, not to say marginal, to have much of a chance to even make it to Broadway.

On Sunday the Broadway transfer took home eight of the Great White Way's highest honors, including best musical -- the prize that brings people to the box office. In his acceptance speech, one of the show's producers held the show up as proof that Broadway can rock.

Also considered from the vantage point of a year ago, Lincoln Center Theater's completely re-imagined version of Tom Stoppard's monumental trilogy about 19th-century Russian intellectuals and political theorists, The Coast of Utopia, was certainly anticipated as the intellectual adventure of the 2006-2007 New York season.

But the three plays (12 hours long when performed end to end) had not been a success in London; no one expected that its limited run would be stretched out an additional three months -- the longest time that the commitments of the many stars in the large cast could be cleared.

Thus The Coast of Utopia's seven Tony wins, including best play, can be also called a surprise -- over the long view.

The two shows' domination of the 2006-2007 Tonys made this the most adventurous, most intellectual year ever for the awards.

Winning Coast of Utopia director Jack O'Brien thanked the Lincoln Center producers for "the bravery, some would say folly, of investing an entire year on us."

"Now let's have no more nonsense about the state of the American theater," he added, expressing the glee the evening's results brought to the serious wing of American theatrical artists.

The Tonys' influence over the rest of American theater is debatable. Often the winning play is picked up by theaters all around the country -- but it seems unlikely that many regional companies will mount the huge and expensive Coast of Utopia.

Even on Broadway, the more commercial folks might not have been too thrilled by these results. Several of the top awards went to shows that have already closed -- including best revival Journey's End, which had the final performance of its abbreviated, financially disastrous run only a few hours before the ceremony.

The biggest impact usually comes on the musicals side: The winner almost always runs a long time and gets a lucrative tour. Whether that will happen for Spring Awakening remains to be seen. The show is sexy and subversive as well as intellectual. Lots of observers are hoping that the show's teenage angst and alienation and the genuinely alternative score will bring new, young audiences to Broadway. What the touring presenters are going to make of it is another matter. As the excerpt the Spring Awakening cast sang demonstrated, this one is strong stuff for the provinces.

Among the big, popular musicals that provide the bread and butter for both Broadway theater and touring shows -- such as Legally Blonde The Musical, Curtains and Mary Poppins -- there were just two wins: Besides Mr. Pierce's victory, only Bob Crowley's set for Mary Poppins prevailed. And that medallion was given out during a Web-only pre-show before the three-hour CBS broadcast.

Our own touring presenter, Michael A. Jenkins and the Dallas Summer Musicals, got on the winner's board -- and Mr. Jenkins on the Radio City Music Hall stage -- among the producers of best special theatrical event, the ventriloquist show Jay Johnson: The Two and Only! Incoming Dallas Theater Center artistic director Kevin Moriarty had a reason to celebrate, too. His mentor, director Michael Mayer, was the winning director of Spring Awakening.

Dallas producer Jerry Frankel had a good night, as well. He is one of the producers of two of the big winners, Spring Awakening and The Little Dog Laughed.

But it's likely that The Coast of Utopia will never get a Dallas production, except maybe at a college.

Anybody taking bets on when we'll get to see Spring Awakening? Of course, the times really may be a-changing, and a year from now that show will seem as mainstream as it seemed way-out 12 months ago.

TV viewers who flipped to the Tony Awards as The Sopranos ended Sunday night may have seen the Broadway show's best moment: Dallas favorite Julie White reacting to her win as best lead actress in a play.

"Oh, you Tony voters -- what a bunch of wacky, crazy kids!" enthused the Texas-raised Ms. White, who charmed local theatergoers in Bad Dates at the Dallas Theater Center a few seasons back.

Ms. White edged out tough competition including Angela Lansbury and Vanessa Redgrave with her performance as a vile talent agent in The Little Dog Laughed.

For an upset winner, Ms. White had plenty of quips at hand. Her best: "I played a hideous agent, and my agents have never been hideous -- to my face."

A rather weak year

It's been said that while all were fine shows, the new musicals in contention at the 2007 Tony Awards lacked the heft or populist appeal to excite interest beyond New York City, as Wicked and Spamalot did in recent years.

The Tony show's producers apparently accepted that view. To set the tone with their opening number, they chose music from the one of the nominees for best revival, A Chorus Line, first seen on Broadway in 1975.

It took just 16 minutes to get to the first Sopranos reference. David Hyde Pierce, a surprise winner of the musical lead acting award for Curtains, made it during a promo: "Ladies and gentlemen, the first soprano has just been whacked," he said before the mob show's final episode had even begun. It happened backstage at the Tonys, he joked, not on HBO.

"I left Hollywood when they told me I was over the hill ... now I'm standing here with this award, over the hill in the role of a lifetime." Christine Ebersole, musical lead-actress winner for Grey Gardens.

"Heaven must feel like this." John Gallagher Jr., winner of featured actor in a musical for his Spring Awakening role as a student tortured by fear of failure.

"Tony voters select the other awards, but this event is decided by a knife fight on 51st Street that's going on right now." British comic actor Eddie Izzard, introducing the two-nominee special theatrical event category. The winner was Jay Johnson: The Two and Only!

"Musical theater rocks." Duncan Sheik, whose score for Spring Awakening, the musical of teenage sexual anxiety, is the closest thing ever on Broadway to real rock.

"I know what Everest feels like." Director Jack O'Brien, whose The Coast of Utopia dominated the dramatic awards.

Staff writers Lawson Taitte and Mike Maza and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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