August: Osage County takes best-play Tony

Author: GMANews.TV
Column: Entertainment

NEW YORK - "August: Osage County," Tracy Letts' scabrous tale of a dysfunctional Oklahoma family, was named best play Sunday at the 2008 Tony Awards ceremony, picking up two acting prizes as well as an award for direction.

Thanking the show's producers, Letts said: "They did an amazing thing. They decided to produce an American play on Broadway with theater actors."

The win was not unexpected since "August" already has won most major theater awards including the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.

Deanna Dunagan, who portrays the play's acidulous matriarch, took the actress prize while Rondi Reed, who plays her flighty sister, won in the featured category.

"This is so overwhelming," Dunagan said. "This whole year has been entirely unexpected and astonishing. ... After 34 years in regional theater, I never thought about it (the Tonys). I watched it on television like everybody else."

Anna D. Shapiro, who directed the production, which came from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, also triumphed.

"If you're really followed by a star, Tracy Letts hands you 'August: Osage County' and says, 'Wanna?' Then heaven opens up and you get the greatest cast you will ever work with in your entire life," said a tearful Shapiro.

The lavish revival of "South Pacific" picked up five prizes, including director of a musical, and "Boeing-Boeing, a 1960s sex farce filled with slamming doors and eager stewardesses, was named best-revival play. It also won the top acting prize for its star, Mark Rylance.

Rylance, who plays a nerdy visitor to Paris in the comedy, didn't give an acceptance speech rife with thank-yous. Instead, he riffed about wearing clothing appropriate to your vocation or avocation.

"Otherwise, it might appear that you don't know what you're doing, that you're just wandering the earth, no particular reason for being here, no particular place to go," he said. "Thanks very much for this."

Bartlett Sher, who oversaw "South Pacific," thanked the show's legendary creators, composer Richard Rodgers, lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, its original director and co-author (with Hammerstein) Joshua Logan and James Michener, who wrote the novel on which the show was based.

"They were kind of incredible men, because they seem to teach me particularly that in a way I wasn't only an artist but I was also a citizen," Sher said. "And the work that we do in these musicals or in any of these plays is not only important in terms of entertaining people, but that our country was really a pretty great place, and that perhaps it could be a little better, and perhaps, in fact, we could change."

"Gypsy," the main competition for "South Pacific," celebrated with two featured performer awards. Boyd Gaines won his fourth Tony, this time for portraying Herbie, the good-natured candy salesman in the show. And Laura Benanti, who plays the musical's title character, the ugly duckling who grows up to become the glamorous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, also was victorious.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the music and lyrics for "In the Heights," rapped his way through his acceptance speech for best score, saying: "I know I wrote a little show about home. Mr. Sondheim, look, I made a hat. (a reference to a lyric in Sondheim's 'Sunday in the Park with George') But there never was a hat - it's a Latin hat at that!"

And "In the Heights" managed two other musical prizes - for the choreography of Andy Blankenbuehler and for orchestrations.

But Stew, the star and co-creator of "Passing Strange" took the prize for best book of a musical.

"Yeah, yeah. Um. Yeah," said the almost speechless performer, who did not expect awards to be given out so early. "I thought this going to happen like an hour from now. I was looking for some M&Ms in my pocket."

He said that he and his team created the project on an "organic" level. "We dealt with this play like a kid or a good meal," he said.

Jim Norton, who played a cantankerous blind Irishman in "The Seafarer," took the featured actor-play prize and told the audience: "This has to be one of the happiest days of my life. I can't believe it."

"South Pacific" received awards for sets, costumes, lighting and sound of a musical. The design prizes for play were divided - two went to "The 39 Steps" for sound and lighting, while "August: Osage County" took set design and "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" costumes.

The CBS telecast from Radio City Music Hall opened with an elaborate number from Disney's "The Lion King," now in its second decade on Broadway, and finished with host Whoopi Goldberg, walking out dressed as the crab from another Disney musical "The Little Mermaid."

In a season that offered 36 productions, 23 of them were plays - 10 new works and 13 revivals. But despite the abundance of plays, it was a disconcerting year for Broadway. A crippling 19-day stagehands strike last November shut down more than two dozen shows during a particularly lucrative time of year, resulting in millions of dollars in losses. The strike most likely prevented the theater from having its first-ever billion-dollar season.

The total gross for the season, according to the Broadway League, was $937.5 million, about a million dollars shy of the previous year. Attendance slipped slightly, too, to 12.27 million, down from 12.3 million in the preceding season. - AP

Source: GMANews