Now We've Got Four!

While the Tony nominations were not as exciting as I had hoped (Cry Baby up for Best Musical? Grease for Best Revival of a Musical? Rufus Sewell for Best Actor in a Play? And who the hell is this Stew guy anyways? He's got Cheyenne's nomination), there was one shining spot besides Heights' 13 nominations (no Grey Gardens-ing this year, I'm predicting more of a Spring Awkening-ing), and that was Chicago Shakespeare Theatre's winning the Best Regional Theatre award. When Victory Gardens won a few years ago we became the only city to have 3 companies with the award, and now we've increased that lead. Despite double digit sales taxes, massive corruption, untravellable streets, and incompetent public transportation, the theatre scene keeps this city livable. The Outer Critics Circle awards were announced on Monday and may offer some clues to how the Tonys should play out. The ignoring of Y. Frankenstein and Catered Affair certainly presaged their almost ignoring here. It looks like it should be Patti's year, finally, but more on specific predictions later. The bigger surprises were Grease's inclusion for Best Revival but no other nominations, Little Mermaids's nomination for Best Score (and don't get me wrong, it's a great score, but it's already a movie score. I know the Tony Committee made a specific ruling about this, but if Mermaid could get a nomination, Xanadu should have too), and Andrea Burns's nomination. . .for Young Frank (while Megan is still a never-been-nominated, and Sutton's sure thing streak came crashing to an end too). While I'm not surprised that Max didn't get nominated (maybe in June he, Cheyenne, Matty Mo, and I can have a group comforting), I am surprised that Priscilla Lopez didn't. They Tony's are very feast or famine when it comes to subsequent nominations for their winners, and they've been on quite a famine streak since 2001,when Nathan Lane got his second, with only Christine and Audra picking up repeat wins since (at least off the top of my head I think that's correct, if you can think of any others, let me know). Anyways, you can view the entire list and some "official" commentary here (plus a reposting of my favorite picture; come on, doesn't someone who can take a picture like this deserve a Tony nomination?):

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/117686.html

The show is on June 15th, look for my commentary, assuming I've got time to write any between schoolwork, the week before. Gooooooo Patti!