Nathan Lane Salutes David Letterman

(Tipped by JMG reader Colaboy29)

2013 Tony Award Nominees Announced, Cyndi Lauper Scores Big For Kinky Boots

The 2013 Tony Award nominees were announced in NYC this morning at a press conference hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Sutton Foster. Topping the list with 13 nominations is the Cyndi Lauper-scored Kinky Boots. Notably shut out was Bette Midler and we've got dueling gays in the Best Leading Actor In A Play category. Via Broadway.com:

Best Musical
A Christmas Story
Bring It On
Kinky Boots
Matilda

Best Play
Lucky Guy
The Assembled Parties
The Testament of Mary
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
 
Best Revival of a Play
Golden Boy
Orphans
The Trip to Bountiful
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Best Revival of a Musical
Annie
Cinderella
Pippin
The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Best Leading Actor in a Play
Tom Hanks, Lucky Guy
Nathan Lane, The Nance
Tracy Letts, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
David Hyde Pierce, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Tom Sturridge, Orphans

Best Leading Actress in a Play
Laurie Metcalf, The Other Place
Amy Morton, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Kristine Nielsen, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Holland Taylor, Ann
Cicely Tyson, The Trip to Bountiful

Best Leading Actor in a Musical
Bertie Carvel, Matilda
Santino Fontana, Cinderella
Rob McClure, Chaplin
Billy Porter, Kinky Boots
Stark Sands, Kinky Boots

Best Leading Actress in a Musical
Stephanie J. Block, The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Carolee Carmello, Scandalous
Valisia LeKae, Motown: The Musical
Patina Miller, Pippin
Laura Osnes, Cinderella

Gay authors Harvey Fierstein (Kinky Boots) and Douglas Carter Beane (Cinderella) are nominated for Best Book. Hit the link for the full list.

Nathan Lane Opens In The Nance

Last night I attended a press event for The Nance, the Broadway show starring Tony-winner Nathan Lane that opened this week.  From the four-star review in the New York Daily News:

Set in 1937 New York, the action follows Chauncey Miles (Lane), a performer with a niche role in a ragtag theater company. Chauncy plays the nance — a stock character who was a flamingly effeminate homosexual. “I like to play with the organ,” quips Chauncey. “I love, love, love when the organ swells? Oh, you brutes.” It was fine to swish and dish on stage, but it wasn’t okay to be gay offstage. A kiss between two men could get them pummeled by police and tossed in the clink. All the more so, thanks to Mayor LaGuardia’s morals crackdown in advance of the World’s Fair.   The action moves from burlesque theater where bawdy acts play out, complete with a tatty orchestra, to Chauncey’s Village apartment to a downtown automat where Chauncey trolls for assignations. John Lee Beatty’s evocative set spins its way to each location. Lane has won Tonys for musical star turns in “The Producers” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” Under Jack O’Brien’s assured direction, he’s funny, sad and touching as the conflicted Chauncey.

Speaking to The Slant, playwright Douglas Carter Beane cited the "holy trinity" of television's nance performers: Charles Nelson Reilly, Paul Lynde, and Alan Sues. Beane then provided some Depression-era theater history on nance characters.

In the early part of the 1930s there was something called the "Pansy Craze," and every nightclub, burlesque, vaudeville, and Broadway house had these gay characters. There was an explosion of this particular type of comedy and it was hugely popular. And then by the late 1930s there was a backlash. There was a new mayor of New York and a new administration: Fiorello LaGuardia was probably the best mayor the city ever had, but he was very Catholic and very uptight. He couldn't stand burlesque. He thought it was cheap and vulgar and so he hired a man named Paul Moss as the commissioner of licenses. You couldn't perform in New York without having a license first, and Moss basically took it upon himself to shut down burlesque, not only for women stripping, but also for "deviance on stage." That meant any portrayal of a gay person in a play. You couldn't make a reference to a gay character even in a Broadway show.

You'll find quite a few references to modern day politics in The Nance, particularly in Lane's gay Republican title character and in the closeted Ken Mehlman-like license commissioner determined to keep gays off the stage. And if you like the rimshot groaners that were the stock of burlesque - those are nonstop. I'll give you just one. Dressed in a drag as an aging hooker, Lane says, "He said to me, 'Hortense, you are nothing but a two-bit hooker.' So I hit him with my bag of quarters." Bah-dum-dum.  Highly recommended.

Broadway Stars - It Gets Better

Susan Blackwell of the Tony-nominated [title of show] brings together Nathan Lane, Wilson Cruz, Terrence McNally, Denis O'Hare, Cherry Jones and dozens of other well-known Broadway stars for their It Gets Better message.

(Tipped by JMG reader Beau)

Broadway Friday

- Legendary playwright and Tony nominee Charles Busch (left) has opened Off Broadway with his latest, The Divine Sister, in which he plays Mother Superior of St. Veronica's, where "dark secrets are rampant." Early reviews are boffo.

- Nicole Kidman returns to Broadway next fall in a revival of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird Of Youth. The original 1959 production starred Geraldine Page and Paul Newman.

- Jodie Foster, Kate Winslett, and 2010 Oscar winner Christopher Waltz (Inglorious Basterds) will star in Roman Polanski's movie adaptation of the Tony winning drama Gods Of Carnage. Although the play is set in Brooklyn, filming will take place in France because, well, you know.

- The cast recording of the revival of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein's La Cage Aux Folles has been released. Kelsey Grammer's vocals are reviewed as "rough."

- Playwright and gender-bending actor David Greenspan stars as Queen Elizabeth in the Off Broadway revival of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, now running at the Classic Stage Company.

- Jerry Seinfeld will make his Broadway debut as the director of former SNL cast member Colin Quinn's one-man show, which begins an 11-week run at the Helen Hayes on October 22nd.

- The musical version of Steven Spielberg's hit movie Catch Me If You Can is scheduled to land on Broadway in the spring. The show had a well-received tryout in Seattle last year.

- Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrman is creating a stage version of Strictly Ballroom.

VIDEO: Broadway star Nathan Lane teases the ladies of The View about how their guests greet them.

Broadway Friday

- You've still got a few days to get tickets to Monday's gigantic marriage equality fundraiser, Defying Inequality. Appearing: Jane Fonda, Keith Olbermann, Cyndi Lauper, Harvey Fierstein, Nathan Lane, the casts of many hit Broadways shows, and many more.

- Will Ferrell's smash one-man show about Dubya, You're Welcome America, has recouped its investment in just a couple of weeks.

- GLAAD Award winning gay comedian Judy Gold plays Joe's Pub on March 20th in Judy Gold Is Mommy Queerest.

- Gilligan's Island: The Musical is touring Florida. Hopefully for more than three hours.

-The fifth annual Broadway Purim Shpiel plays the Hudson Theater on March 7th. Xanadu's Jackie Hoffman will host.

- Christine Jorgensen Reveals, the story of America's first and most famous transsexual, begins previews on February 26th at the Lion Theater. Bradford Louryk stars in the title role.

- Next To Normal comes to Broadway on March 27th at the Longacre Theater. J. Robert Spencer, Aaron Tveit, and Alice Ripley will star.

- This Beautiful City, a new musical about the rise of the evangelical movement in Colorado Springs, opens Sunday at the Vineyard Theater. Written by Steven Cosson and Jim Lewis, music and lyrics by Michael Friedman.

This Beautiful City is a play with music, created from interviews with actual persons, that explores the Evangelical movement and its unofficial U.S. capital. Because of the presence of several national Evangelical headquarters, the influential megachurch New Life (formerly led by Ted Haggard), and numerous and diverse churches, questions surrounding religion and civic concerns are brought to the foreground of everyday life in this city. The Civilians’ project looks at Colorado Springs as a microcosm of issues facing the country as a whole—the shifting line between church and state, changing ideas about the nature of Christianity, and how different beliefs can either coexist or conflict within a community.

Tickets for This Beautiful City are available here. Below is a promotional clip. Looks great!