by Randy Sayer | Assistant to the Business Representative
“The Play is the thing!”
The American Theatre Wing’s 72nd annual Antoinette Perry “Tony” Awards were broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, June 10 on CBS. Bar none, it is my favorite night of the year! Sara Bareilles (Waitress) and Josh Groban (The Great Comet) had hosting duties.
The Tony for Best Play went to Harry Potter & the Cursed Child (the eighth story in the series, and the first to be made into a stage production!). Nominations had gone to Farinelli & the King – an exquisite play with music about the leading castrato singer of the time and King Phillipe of Spain (likely bipolar; a savant who could not cope with daily bureaucracy), Junk – an indictment of Wall Street, The Children and Latin History for Morons.
Best Revival of a Play truly had a packed field of timeless masterpieces: winner Angels in America (pictured above) – Tony Kushner’s epic saga of Reagan-era death and redemption, which began here at the Taper 25 years ago and recently competed a stellar run in London’s West End, has brought all seven and-a-half hours blazing back to Broadway, with excellent reviews for Tony winners Andrew Garfield as ‘Prior Walter’ and Nathan Lane as ‘Roy Cohn;’ Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh starring Denzel Washington; Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, starring winners Glenda Jackson; Lobby Hero and Travesties. I had been crossing my fingers that Six Feet Under’s Lauren Ambrose would receive a nomination for her starring role in Lincoln Center’s revival of My Fair Lady, but it was not to be…
A complete list of winners may be found here. Creative arts segments may be viewed here.
We currently have 58 Pink Contract productionstouring the United States and Canada! IATSE Pink Contracts will soon be issued for new productions of Anastasia,Roald Dahl’s Charlie &the Chocolate Factory, A Bronx Tale, Dear Evan Hanson, and old favorites:Falsettos, Fiddler on the Roof,Miss Saigon, and a multitude of others. Betty Buckley will tour in the revival production of Hello Dolly!opening in Cleveland in October. A new (fourth) National Tour of Hamiltonwill ‘return’ to the Orpheum Theater starting in February; this tour will first complete its casting and pre-production in Puerto Rico. CATS– which re-opened on Broadway in 2016, will begin a National Tour in Providence next year, playing San Jose in February, Hollywood’s Pantages Theater in March, Costa Mesa and San Diego in April (and Now and Forever…). This was my first big show back in 1985, with Wayne Herndon, Henri Coultas (Driscoll), and Carol Shurley at the Shubert Theater in Century City; extremely talented people whom I, and we all, owe a debt of gratitude; it is because of them – and about a dozen devoted touring theater people: Robert Bouvard, Butch Belo, Robin Church, Lynn Grassy, Jani Kleinbard, Suzy Mazzarese, Michael Moore, Kelly Muldoon, Lygia Orta, Terrie Velazquez (Owen) and others now passed – that we have a ‘Theater classification’ in Local 706 today! This month, we just had Head Over Heelsmaking its pre-Broadway premier at the Curran Theater in San Francisco; Soft Poweris now at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles, and will be heading for San Francisco’s Curran Theater, with Patrice Madrigal/Hair & Make-up Department Head at the helm…
Local 706 will be in active negotiations with San Francisco Opera and San Diego Opera this summer; both are Regional Theater Agreements; negotiations with NBC will commence as well, on our Network (Broadcast) Television Agreement in Los Angeles.
See you at the negotiating table, or see you in the wings!
Randy Sayer
