Theater News

Crystal Balls

When it comes to predicting Tony Award winners, Filichia knows only one thing: The best nominees don’t always get the prize.

Victoria Clark at theOuter Critics Circle Awards party
(Photo © Joseph  Marzullo)
Victoria Clark at the
Outer Critics Circle Awards party
(Photo © Joseph Marzullo)

Michael Riedel thinks I’m a fool. You may hear the notorious New York Post columnist mock me this Sunday morning on A&E’s Breakfast With the Arts. We taped the show on Wednesday, May 18, along with Melissa Rose Bernardo, the theater critic for Entertainment Weekly. She may very well think I’m a fool, too; but if she does, she wasn’t upfront about it on the air.

We were Elliott Forrest’s guests for one purpose and one purpose alone: To make predictions on who will win this year’s Tony Awards. Granted, Riedel was on his best behavior after we’d been asked who will take the Best Actor in a Play trophy and I’d predicted Billy Crudup for The Pillowman. My feeling is that because Doubt will take the Best Play prize (and some others, too), Brían F. O’Byrne won’t win and The Pillowman will be rewarded through Crudup’s performance. During the commercial break, Riedel leaned over to me and said in a sobering voice, as if breaking the news to a child that there’s no Santa Claus: “No, Billy Crudup won’t win.”

Fine. Maybe not. Who can say? It’s all guesswork, anyway — though I’d be surprised if anyone who saw Crudup in the show would think that he doesn’t deserve to win. But what really made Riedel freak out was my response when Forrest asked me for my Best Musical pick. “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” I immediately answered, to which Riedel shrieked, “WHAT?!?!?!”

To be frank, I’m not sure as I write this, two weeks after the taping, that I still believe it. Oh yes, I want DRS to win; I do feel in my heart of hearts that it’s the season’s best musical. But these days, as we learned from Avenue Q last year, an aggressive advertising campaign can swing many votes. Monthy Python’s Spamalot so wanted to win the comparatively less important Drama Desk Award that it invited voters back to see the show a second time. (Where did all those seats come from? I thought they were doing great business! Anyway, the strategy apparently worked, for Spamalot did win.) Meanwhile, On Golden Pond so wants James Earl Jones to win the Tony for Best Actor in a Play that it offered each of the voters not the usual two tickets, but four. (Little Women, now closed, had made the same generous offer.)

I did expect a more aggressive advertising campaign from Dirty Rotten. True, they sent out a faux wallet with mock-currency in it, each bill representing a Tony nominee. Cute. They dutifully sent each of us the original cast album. Terrific. And, most recently, we received a 10-minute DVD with scenes from the recording session. No great big stuff, but nice treats, topped by the best of all: An invitation to see the show again, which I took quicker than you can say “Yazbek.” But if DRS held a big party like the one that Avenue Q held at John’s Pizzeria (where I became convinced that the show would win the Tony), I wasn’t invited to it.

Speaking of Avenue Q: It was an important component in my rebuttal to Michael’s “WHAT?!?!?!” When he said that Spamalot would win (and I won’t be surprised if it does), he remarked that it would do so largely because it’s the most financially successful show of the year. “So was Wicked,” I said. Now, I hate writing down predictions. William Goldman’s all-too-accurate statement about Hollywood savants, “Nobody knows anything,” applies to Broadway just as easily. Why do we even bother? But, on the Friday before the 2004 Tonys, I was interviewed over the phone by Rick Charwin, who hosts a radio show on WDVR in Sergeantsville, New Jersey — and when he unexpectedly asked what I thought would win, I told all of Hunterdon County, “Avenue Q.” (Go ahead, ask him. He’s at rick@rickcharwin.com. Tape recording available upon request.)

To quote from a Bob Fosse show, “Big deal,” and to quote a Fred Ebb lyric, “So what?” On Breakfast with the Arts, after I picked Light in the Piazza star Victoria Clark to win Best Actress in a Musical, Riedel pooh-poohed this and said, much too disparagingly, that Clark’s lack of celebrity will keep her from winning the prize. He picked Sweet Charity‘s Christina Applegate — but in this past Wednesday’s Post, he wrote that he now expects Clark to beat Applegate. Hey, I understand. I’m not mocking him. I know that he’s been going around town asking voters whom they’re selecting. He’s apparently heard too many people saying “Clark” and not enough saying “Applegate,” so now he’s changed his mind. That’s the prerogative of any theatergoer. Nobody knows anything.

Looking back over the years, my first I’m-absolutely-sure-of-it Tony predictions were that Barbra Streisand would win Best Featured Actress in a Musical for I Can Get It for You Wholesale in 1962 and Best Actress in a Musical for Funny Girl in 1964. She lost both races. In 1968, I assumed that The Happy Time would win Best Musical because it was still running and Hallelujah, Baby! was not. (Wrong again.) The following year, I was shocked again when 1776 beat Promises, Promises for Best Musical — but I hadn’t yet seen 1776 when the Tonys were announced. Once I did, I heartily approved.

In fact, not seeing all the shows because I lived in Boston was certainly an ingredient in my guessing wrong. Once I moved to the city in 1977 and began seeing most everything, my only real boo-boos came in assuming that Dreamgirls would beat Nine, Charles S. Dutton in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom would emerge victorious over the now-forgotten Barry Miller in Biloxi Blues, and Tovah Feldshuh of Golda’s Balcony would win over Phylicia Rashad of A Raisin in the Sun.

Who can explain it, who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons — and, as Michael Riedel has implied, I am one. But I’m certainly aware that the decisions of Tony voters aren’t solely based on merit. I know a guy who worked for one of the three major theater owners; he would routinely check off shows that played his organization’s theaters, whether or not he liked them. Another person I know wouldn’t vote for a certain person because she never remembered his name whenever they came across each other. Yet another voter told me that he’d never vote for a certain actor because the guy once wrote him a snarky e-mail. So I will make an airtight, easy prediction that the best nominees won’t necessarily cop the Tony trophies this Sunday night.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]