Category Archives: awards

Tony, Tony, Tony

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Tony nominations were announced this morning, and to my great delight, Spring Awakening nabbed a leading 11 nominations, including two acting noms for Jonathan Groff (best actor in a musical) and John Gallagher Jr. (best featured actor in a musical).

Grey Gardens received 10 nominations, including one for Christine Ebersole (best actress in a musical), whom many consider the front runner.

In the play categories, Tom Stoppard’s mammoth, three-play cycle The Coast of Utopia snagged 10 nominations. In the acting categories, the best actress slot is filled with Broadway royalty: Angela Lansbury (Deuce), Vanessa Redgrave (The Year of Magical Thinking) and Swoosie Kurtz (Heartbreak House). Tough choice.

Bay Area theater fans got the first peek at several nominees:

Legally Blonde scored seven nominations: best book (Heather Hach); score (Music & Lyrics: Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin); actress (Laura Bell Bundy); featured actor (Christian Borle); featured actress (Orfeh); choreography (Jerry Mitchell); costume design (Gregg Barnes).

A Chorus Line received two nominations: best musical revival and featured actress (Charlotte d’Amboise).

Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me received one surprising nomination: featured actor (Brooks Ashmanskas).

One of the two nominees for special theatrical event is Kiki & Herb Alive on Broadway, which comes to San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater this summer. The other “special” nominee is the ventriloquism show Jay Johnson: The Two and Only.

For a complete list of nominations, visit the American Theatre Wing Web site.

The Tony Awards will be broadcast on June 10 on CBS. Start planning the party now.

Congratulations, Peter — AGAIN!

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San Francisco playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb has won yet another award for his play Hunter Gatherers.

Here’s some of the press release that came out of Louisville, Ky., on Saturday:

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has selected Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Hunter Gatherers to receive the 2006 Harold and Mimi Steinberg /American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award.

The presentation occured March 31 at Actors Theatre of Louisville during the Humana Festival of New American Plays. The award includes a cash prize of $25,000 — the largest monetary prize for a national playwriting award — and a commemorative plaque. Two others, Michael Hollinger and Jeff Daniels, will receive citations and $7,500 each. All are first-time recipients of these prizes.

“The long-standing partnership between the Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the American Theatre Critics Association has recognized some of today’s greatest writers, and helped identify the great playwrights of tomorrow,” said trustee Jim Steinberg. “We’re delighted to help support the unique telling of tales on the American stage.”

Hunter Gatherers is an inky dark comedy portraying two seemingly civilized couples descending into the chaos of primal urges. It was first produced in June 2006 at Killing My Lobster in San Francisco.

And to think we got to see it first. As you may recall (if you don’t, see below), last weekend, Peter won the Glickman New Play award, which is presented to the best play to have its premiere in the Bay Area.

Congratulations, Peter

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San Francisco playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb (above) accepted his Will Glickman New Play Award Sunday at a reception hosted by Theatre Bay Area. Peter won the $4,000 award for his play Hunter Gatherers.

This Saturday, Peter will be in Louisville, Ky., for the Humana Festival of New Plays. He’s been nominated for the Steinberg Award, a $25,000 award to new plays administered by the American Theatre Critics Association. Check back here on Monday to see who won (two runners-up receive $7,500 each, which is also not too shabby).

At the lively Glickman reception Sunday afternoon (hosted by Tom Driscoll and Nancy Quinn), Peter told us that a theater on Cap Cod will be doing Hunter Gatherers later this year. He’s also under commission from the Encore Theatre Company, and we’ll likely see that play in 2009.

Hunter Gatherers was selected by the Glickman committee of local theater critics, including yours truly. In a rare truce between writers and critics, Peter posed with the attending critics below (Karen D’Souza of the San Jose Mercury News was sidelined by an injury and unable to attend). From left: Robert Avila (SF Bay Guardian), Chloe Veltman (SF Weekly), me, Peter, Robert Hurwitt (SF Chronicle).

Visit Peter’s Web site here.

Bay Area critics hand out awards

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The Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle’s 2006 award winners were announced last week, and the recognition was spread out pretty evenly. American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and California Shakespeare Theater all received four awards, while Aurora Theatre Company, SF Playhouse and San Jose Repertory Theatre each received three.

In the musical category, Broadway by the Bay led with nine awards, and Foothill Music Theatre had five awards.


The outstanding drama award was shared by Berkeley Rep’s The Miser (left, which actually originated at Minnesota’s Theatre de la Jeune Lune) and Aurora’s Salome.

Outstanding musical awards went to three winners: Broadway by the Bay’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Foothill’s Urinetown and TheatreWorks’ Vanities.

In the dramatic acting categories, principal performance awards went to Rita Moreno (below left, The Glass Menagerie, Berkeley Rep), Susi Damilano (Reckless, SF Playhouse), James Carpenter (The Master Builder, Aurora) and L. Peter Callender (World Music, TheatreFirst). Supporting awards went to Delia MacDougall (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Cal Shakes), Nancy Carlin ( TheImmigrant, San Jose Rep), Sue Trigg (Noises Off, Willows Theatre) and Dan Hiatt (The Immigrant, San Jose Rep).

In the musical categories, principal performance awards went to Jessica Raaum (Annie Get Your Gun, Foothill) and Rick Williams (1776, Willows). Supporting awards went to Tiffany Marie Austin (Miss Saigon, Broadway by the Bay), Mary-Pat Green (Putting It Together, SF Playhouse), Maureen McVerry (Pardon My English, 42nd Street Moon), David Settler (Miss Saigon, Broadway by the Bay) and Paul Araquistain (Miss Saigon, Broadway by the Bay).

Director awards went to Barbara Damashek (Laughter on the 23rd Floor, Center Repertory Company) and Alex Perez (Miss Saigon, Broadway by the Bay). Ensemble awards were given to San Jose Rep’s The Immigrant, Center Rep’s The Marriage of Figaro and Berkeley Rep’s Passing Strange.

Touring productions cited for excellence were Doubt, Hairspray and Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake.

For a complete list of winners, visit www.theatrebayarea.org.

Oscar, You’re the One That I want

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The Academy Awards came and went without making much impression. Ellen DeGeneres was fun, just as you’d expect.

The nicest surprise to me was the best foreign film winner, The Lives of Others. Fantastic movie. Deserves every prize there is.

Enjoyed watching best supporting actress winner Jennifer Hudson wipe the floor with Miss Beyonce during the Dreamgirls best song medley. Glad none of those songs won because they’re just not as good as the songs from the original show. Sad that Randy Newman’s “Our Town” (a fine, sad song from Cars about the death of the American small town) didn’t win, although I can’t begrudge Melissa Etheridge anything.

Loved Ellen’s line: “Without blacks, gays and Jews, there’d be no Oscars…or guys named Oscar for that matter.”

If you were watching the Academy Awards instead of “Grease: You’re the One That I Want,” well good for you. If you’re not reading Seth Rudetsky’s weekly wrap-up on Playbill.com, you’re missing out. Go there now.

Here’s a sample of Mr. Rudetsky’s (right) brilliance (and whey he’s so much more fun than the actual show:

First of all, from the low cut-ness of the negligees the girls were spilling out of, I thought it was going to be a medley from Boobs: The Musical (which actually played the Triad Theatre). Zowee! Also, they cut the “Fongool” lyric. I know it’s an Italian curse, but nevertheless I felt gypped. I was sitting on my couch saying out loud to no one, “Where’s the fongool?” Not unlike the time I saw the “Evita” movie and was in a rage asking, “Where’s the aristocracy?” (“All my descamisados expect me to outshine the enemy, [the aristocracy]. I won’t disappoint them!”) Why did Madonna cut that lyric? And, on a related note, didn’t the real Eva Peron have a vibrato? Why didn’t the movie version?

Apparently this week there was singing, dancing and acting by all the potential Sandys. Now aren’t you glad you didn’t watch. Oh, and the special guest was Frankie Avalon.

The cuts were: Kate Rockwell and Kevin Greene. Next week – can you believe there’s a next week? — it’s all about the Dannys.

Hunting and gathering awards

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Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Hunter Gatherers is the 2006 winner of the Will Glickman Playwrights Award.

The annual award — given to the author of the best play to make its world premiere in the Bay Area — comes with a $4,000 check.

An esteemed group of theater critics _ including me, naturally _ met to discuss the merits of some 200 new plays that took a bow last year. And, as they say, cream rises to the top. The critical contingent, which also includes Karen D’Souza of the San Jose Mercury News, Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle, Robert Avila of the SF Bay Guardian and Chloe Veltman of the SF Weekly, wasted no time in selecting Nachtrieb’s dark comedy as the best of 2006.

The first full-length play by San Francisco sketch comedy troupe Killing My Lobster, Hunter Gatherers ran last summer (and ran and ran) at the Thick House. The show was by turns hilarious, sexy and a little scary. It’s the story of two young Bay Area couples and their IKEA-cozy lives. One night, after the slaughter of a lamb for a dinner party, things fall apart, and everyone gives in to their most primal urges. Here’s what I said about the play when I included it in my Top 10 list:

Of all this year’s comedies, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s world premiere for sketch troupe Killing My Lobster was the meatiest. Maybe it had something to do with the onstage slaughter of a lamb at the play’s start. Or maybe it was the huge chunk of roasted meat that factors into the play’s bloody end. Whatever, this was an aggressively funny play about our primal, cave-man impulses, man’s need to hump (or kill) everything in sight and woman’s need for chocolate.

The Glickman award, named for the late comedy writer and playwright Will Glickman, has been bestowed since 1984 and is administered by the Will Glickman Foundation and Theatre Bay Area. The award was created to encourage the development of new work. Previous Glickman winners have included last year’s winner, The People’s Temple by Leigh Fondakowski and her team of writers, Liz Duffy Adams’ Dog Act , Denis Johnson’s Soul of a Whore and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

For information about Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, visit his Web site at www.petersinnnactrieb.com.