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Britons up for theatre awards
16.05.07
Tom Stoppard's trilogy 'The Coast of Utopia' received 10 nominations including best play
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British artists achieved success across the board in today's nominations for the 61st annual Tony awards. British playwright Tom Stoppard's epic trilogy about 19th century Russian intellectuals received 10 nominations, including Best Play.
Stoppard's trilogy, The Coast of Utopia, came second only to the new American rock musical Spring Awakening about the sexual longing of 19th
century German teenagers, which scooped 11 nominations. Three out of the five contenders for the Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play were British, as were three of the four nominees for Best Direction of a play.
The Tonys, which celebrate "excellence on Broadway", will take place at the Radio City Music Hall in New York on June 10. The British nominees for the best leading actress were Eve Best for the Old Vic production of A Moon for the Misbegotten, Vanessa Redgrave for The Year of Magical Thinking, directed by David Hare, and London-born Angela Lansbury for her performance as a tennis legend in Terrence McNally's
Deuce. Lansbury already has four Tony awards to her name.
Donmar Warehouse artistic director Michael Grandage was nominated for Best Direction of a Play for Frost/Nixon, along with David Grindley for Journey's End and Melly Still for the National Theatre production of Coram Boy.
The final nominee, the only one in the category who was not British, was Jack O'Brien for The Coast of Utopia. John Doyle was nominated for Best Direction of a Musical for Company, the
category he won last year for Sweeney Todd.
Briton Jennifer Ehle will go up against Martha Plimpton, her co-star in The Coast of Utopia, for Best Featured Actress in a Play and the play's male co-stars - Billy Crudup and Ethan Hawke - will also go head-to-head for Best Featured Actor.
The play also received nominations for design, costumes and lighting. Besides The Coast of Utopia, the nominees for best play were: Radio
Golf, the final chapter in August Wilson's decade-by-decade look at the black experience in 20th century America; Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan's docudrama about the celebrated interviews between British journalist David Frost and Richard M Nixon; and The Little Dog Laughed, Douglas Carter Beane's social comedy about Hollywood hypocrisy.
Mary Poppins, a lavish adaptation of PL Travers' novel and the classic Disney movie, is still running at the West End's Prince Edward Theatre
and picked up seven nominations, including: Best Musical, Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for original West End star Gavin Lee, Best Choreography for Matthew Bourne and Stephen Mear, and Best Scenic and Costume Design, both by Bob Crowley.
Legally Blonde, a fast-paced stage adaptation of the Reese Witherspoon movie, failed to pick up a coveted best-musical nod - important because
nominees get a number on the nationally televised awards show - but the show did get seven other nominations, including ones for book and score of a musical, as well as for its leading lady, Laura Bell Bundy.
Other successes included Grey Gardens, a musical look at two of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' more eccentric relatives, which received 10 nominations, and Curtains, a backstage whodunit set during a theatrical rehearsal in Boston, which received eight.
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