Bash Compactor: An Off Night

Michael Urie summed up this past season of Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Awards last Sunday with one sentence: “It’s been a gay year.”

And while Urie, who won the Best Lead Actor award for his work in The Tempermentals, didn’t say if he meant happy or homosexual, they both work, because being gay, in either sense of the term, took top honors at the award ceremony Sunday night at Terminal 5.

The Lortel Awards are to Off-Broadway what the Tonys are to Broadway, give or take a couple zeroes at the end of each ceremony’s budget. The delightful event, which doubled as a benefit for The Actor’s Fund, was not without its stars, however. Alan Menken entertained with a medley from Little Shop of Horrors; Nina Arianda, Vanda in Venus in Fur, nabbed an Outstanding Lead Actress nomination (Judith Ivey won); and Hugh Dancy and Laurie Metcalf skipped the shutter clicks of photographers outside the event but showed up in time to present the evening’s first award: Outstanding Featured Actor, which went to Adam James for his role in The Pride. James “oh shit-”ted his way through his acceptance speech saying: “I’m not nearly drunk enough to make this speech,” before proceeding to do so anyway.

Two people who were apparently drunk enough for their speeches were Anthony LaPaglia and Justin Bartha. LaPaglia and Bartha, who fittingly starred in last year’s hit The Hangover, currently co-star in the Broadway revival of Lend Me a Tenor and joked about being bombed while stumbling through their presentation of one of the last awards—Outstanding Play— which went to The Orphans’ Home Cycle.

The group around my table wasn’t sure the intoxication admission was entirely in jest however. “He’s drunk,” gasped the fellow to my left of LaPaglia’s inability to read his lines. But his friend quickly slurred an admonishment for his outburst and pointed out the obvious: “Everyone’s drunk. We’ve been drinking since 6 o’clock.”