Block, Gartshore, Mays, McElroy, Page, et al. Win 2006 Helen Hayes Awards

The Signature Theatre’s production of Urinetown, the splashy musical about a water-starved town in which an evil corporation makes citizens pay to relieve themselves, was the big winner at the 22nd Annual Helen Hayes Awards, earning eight awards, including Outstanding Resident Musical. Will Gartshore, Erin Driscoll, Stephen F. Schmidt and Jenna Sokolowski all won in their respective acting categories, as did Joe Calarco for directing, Karma Camp for choreography, and Jay Crowder for music direction.

The ceremony, honoring excellence in professional theatre throughout the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, was held on Monday April 17 at the Warner Theatre. It was hosted by Washington native Brad Oscar, who was nominated for playing Applegate in Arena Stage’s recent revival of Damn Yankees. Oscar performed a number of satiric song and dance numbers, with familiar show tunes having their lyrics adapted to the occasion.

In all, 13 productions from 10 theater companies shared the 26 prizes. The National Theatre’s I Am My Own Wife, Doug Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, earned the Outstanding Non-Resident Production award, as well as the Outstanding Actor -Non Resident Production award for star Jefferson Mays. Michael McElroy, who played Jim in Ford’s Theatre’s innovative production of Big River, shared the Outstanding Lead Actor-Resident Musical award with Garthsore, while Meg Gillentine, who played Lola in the Arena Stage revival of Damn Yankees, shared the Outstanding Lead Actress-Resident Musical trophy with Driscoll.

Stephanie J. Block, the green-faced Elphaba who becomes Oz’s wicked witch in the wildly popular Wicked won for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Non-Resident Musical for the show’s national tour (which played at the Kennedy Center). Scott Bakula, currently onstage in Ford Theatre’s Shenandoah made the presentation. “This started six years ago when I got a voicemail from Stephen Schwartz saying, ‘I’ve written three songs. Would you come over and sing them for me so I can hear them?’ And that later became Wicked, an amazing journey of blessings and heartache, and discipline,” said an emotional Block.

The Studio Theater won four awards: Richard Greenberg’s baseball comedy-drama Take Me Out was honored as Outstanding Resident Play, as well as for lead actor Rick Foucheux. The theater’s founder and artistic director, Joy Zinoman, was tapped for outstanding directing of a resident play for Caryl Churchill’s take on cloning, A Number, and Eunice Wong was named outstanding lead actress in a resident play for Rolin Jones’ The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow.

Wong was reflective while accepting her award. “The poet Philip Larkin once said, ‘I think the impulse to preserve lies at the bottom of all art.’ And I think that’s right, but theater, of all the arts, is the most ephemeral and fleeting,” she said. “So to have a performance of mine, which no longer exists and can never again exist in the same way, be honored by this tangible tribute is an incredible thing to me.”

Also receiving four awards was the Shakespeare Theatre Company, which was recognized for Simon Higlett’s set and Robert Perdziola’s costumes in Lady Windermere’s Fan and Charlie Morrison’s lighting for The Tempest. Patrick Page tied Foucheux as Outstanding Lead Actor for playing Iago in Othello. Among several special presentations were a look at the contribution to area theater made by veteran set designer Ming Cho Lee and his longtime colleague, costume designer Jane Greenwood.

Actor James MacArthur, the son of the late Helen Hayes and playwright Charles MacArthur, made a rare appearance to present Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company with the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play or Musical for its production of S.M. Shephard-Massat’s Starving, which focuses on African Americans living in a 1950s apartment building in Atlanta. “I love to write, and I’m looking for a way to make a living at this, so if anybody has any ideas, I’m sitting in the third row over there,” Shepard-Massat said to laughter and applause. “It’s a new play, it’s still in the works, and as soon as I finish working with real life, I’m going to get right back to it.”

For a complete list of nominees and winners, go to www.helenhayes.org.