That was what ended up happening last week with my predictions for Sunday’s 66^th Annual Tony Awards, honoring the best of (a so-so) Broadway season. Though many of my predictions came true – including the wins in the Best Play (Clybourne Park), Musical (Once), Revival of a Play (Death of a Salesman), Actress in a Musical (Audra McDonald got a fifth Tony for The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess), and all four featured acting winners.

But in several other categories – including the other three leading acting categories – I got it wrong, a rare poor entry given my track record for award horse race calculations. Instead of Philip Seymour Hoffman winning for Salesman, James Corden won for One Man, Two Guvnors; Tracie Bennett didn’t win for End of the Rainbow; new star Nina Arianda did for Venus in Fur; and instead of Jeremy Jordan triumphing for Newsies, Steve Kazee won a Tony for Once.

And you know what? These surprises were the highlights of my night. Both Kazee and Corden gave teary, heartfelt speeches, the former in honor of his late mother, and the latter in tribute to his girlfriend, with the rare combination of humility and poise, surprise and articulation that usually only those in public speaking and performance lines of work can do. Arianda squealed that the man who read her name – recent Oscar-winner and legend Christopher Plummer – was her first crush. McDonald, too, emotionally declared that for her the theater was the only place where, as a young, awkward child, she felt she belonged. And winners Judy Kaye and Judith Light both dedicated their moments of the evening to very recently deceased fathers.

And thank heaven for these talented winners and their dignified speeches. They were the only real moments in an overlong ceremony that seemed to do little to further the Broadway League’s mission of drumming up interest in New York theater throughout the rest of the country. (Sunday’s telecast, hosted for a third time by Neil Patrick Harris, was the lowest rated Tonys telecast. Ever.)

Almost all of the current musicals and musical revivals on the Great White Way got a slot to perform a number on the CBS show, as well as Best Musical nominee Leap of Faith, which had already shuttered. And as opposed to last year, where musicals performed catchy numbers that made sense even out of context, virtually none did this year. Criminally, instead of putting together a montage of numbers like Porgy did, Follies only featured Danny Burstein singing “Buddy’s Blues,” a number that comes at a point in the show that befuddles even some sitting through the whole damn thing. How is that possibly going to entice non-Sondheim fans?

A cryptically assembled look at scenes of the nominated plays hired actors to appear in shadow, kinda sorta re-enacting moments from the nominated shows. It didn’t work, now did it really give a good idea of what these clever shows were about. And did anyone else notice the couple dry-humping during the Venus in Fur description?

Overall, this year’s telecast was a disengaging affair. I’m happy for this year’s hard-working winners, but I’m already indoctrinated into the world of theater. This telecast shows that the sphere may only be getting increasingly smaller, preaching to the choir. Given the amount of talent within that choir, its audience should be ever-expanding.

Yesterday I posted my predictions for the winners on Sunday’s 66^th Annual Tony Awards telecast. Below, my feelings about who will and who should go home with the gold in the musical categories:

Best Musical: Nominees include the already-shuttered Leap of Faith, Newsies, Nice Work If You Can Get It, and Once. This is a rather humdrum list. Once is truly a play with music, as End of the Rainbow and Peter and the Starcatcher both identified themselves this season, but it opted to classify itself as a musical, so I’ll play it as it lays. And it lies at the head of the pack here, challenged only by the crowd-pleasing Newsies. Who would have thought that Newsies, based on a bomb Disney movie musical from twenty years ago, would be the Goliath in this race? I still find it a middling musical, and as the more commercial one, would benefit less from a Tony win than Once, which could use the push. I, perhaps foolishly, grant the win to Once, which succeeds better on its own (slightly problematic) terms than the other nominees.

Will win: Once

Should win: Once

Should have been nominated: absolutely nothing else this season

Best Direction of a Musical: Nominees include Jeff Calhoun (Newsies), Kathleen Marshall (Nice Work If You Can Get It), Diane Paulus (The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess), and John Tiffany (Once). Tiffany will likely prevail here, and should: he managed to fuse a lot of unorthodox moving parts to turn Once into The Little Show That Could. Personally, I’d vote for Follies’ Eric Schaeffer over this quartet, but he didn’t make the cut.

Will win: Tiffany

Should win: Tiffany

Should have been nominated: Eric Schaeffer, Follies

Best Leading Actor in a Musical: Nominees include Danny Burstein (Follies), Jeremy Jordan (Newsies), Steve Kazee (Once), Norm Lewis (Porgy), and Ron Raines (Follies). Sometimes I play this game, where I put my money on the actor I want to win less, as karmic insurance that the one I want to win more will prevail. So even though the general consensus has it that long overdue veteran Burstein will win for his definitive portrayal of Buddy, I’ll stick the much-hyped Jordan instead. All the while, I feel that a solid Lewis and especially Kazee are being overlooked in the mix, particularly the latter nominee, whose delicate work headlining this year’s sleeper hit absolutely deserves recognition.

Will win: Jordan

Should win: Burstein or Kazee

Should have been nominated: no one

Best Leading Actress in a Play: Nominees include Jan Maxwell (Follies), Audra McDonald (Porgy), Cristin Milioti (Once), Kelli O’Hara (Nice Work), and Laura Osnes (Bonnie and Clyde). I’m a huge proponent of Maxwell’s work this year; her rendition of “Story of Jessie and Lucy” slew me, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it all year. Also, Milioti’s idiosyncratic blend of tenderness and pluck was a big driving force behind Once’s success – her “The Hill” has also haunted me all season. But this one looks like McDonald’s race to lose, and that rankles me. Though it’s her first award as a leading performer, McDonald will set a record with five acting wins – tying Julie Harris and Angela Lansbury – and I just don’t think her Bess is harrowing or transcendent enough to earn that career milestone (one that took Lansbury an additional four decades to hit, at that). Still she’s a beloved member of the community, and a win seems all but assured.

Will win: McDonald

Should win: Maxwell

Should have been nominated: Bernadette Peters, Follies

Best Featured Actor in a Play: Nominees include Philip Boykin (Porgy), Michael Cerveris (Evita), David Alan Grier (Porgy), Michael McGrath (Nice Work), and Josh Young (Jesus Christ Superstar). Except for McGrath, all of the nominees here are nominated for revivals, and even Nice Work dusts off a bunch of Gershwin standards. I give McGrath the edge over Cerveris, but for me, Boykin stands out the most. His Crown was riveting, memorable and incredibly well-sung. He buoyed Porgy to places it didn’t go when he wasn’t onstage.

Will win: McGrath

Should win: Boykin

Should have been nominated: Patrick Page, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (yes, really)

Best Featured Actress in a Musical: Nominees include Elizabeth A. Davis (Once), Jayne Houdyshell (Follies), Judy Kaye (Nice Work), Jessie Mueller (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever), and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Ghost the Musical). Mueller was the bright light in an otherwise execrable misfire, and Houdyshell brought humor and subtlety to a small but memorable part. Still, I said it in my review http://nypress.com/hard-work/, this is Kaye’s to win. Note to those who want a Tony: put a chandelier in your show, too.

Will win: Kaye

Should win: Houdyshell or Mueller

Should have been nominated: Melissa van der Schyff, Bonnie or Bryona Marie Parham or NaTasha Yvette Williams, Porgy

Let’s see how my predictions go!

Tracie Bennet as Judy Garland. Photo by Sara Krulwich.

Tracie Bennett soars over the rainbow as Judy Garland

By Doug Strassler

Judy Garland is more than an icon. As one of the original movie stars of the Hollywood studio system, the triple threat bounced between family musicals and adult dramas with a precision and a talent that remains largely unmatched. Like Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball, she created a template that the powers that be have forever been trying, with varied levels of success, to replicate.

She also created one of the most storied cautionary tales in the industry, thanks to her the many excesses and insecurities that led to her early death by overdose. End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter’s new bio play just opening at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre, is far from the first work to take advantage of Garland’s topsy-turvy life. And why wouldn’t people mine the woman’s story for narrative gold? She sang! She danced! She drank! She drugged! She was promiscuous! Oh, the music! Oh, the drama!

Quilter’s window into Garland’s world takes place in London during what would become her last few months, as she heads to London with fiancé-manager husband Mickey Deans (Tom Pelphrey) for a run of performances at the Talk of the Town nightclub. Whether you’re a die-hard fan or just have a passing knowledge of the actress, a star among stars ever since leaving Kansas in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, most people know of Garland’s life and struggles, so Quilter’s play itself offers little in the way of revelation. That is, its rewards are limited if you come searching for something new about Garland. If you’re looking to discover a new star, however, then attending this Rainbow is asking to uncover buried treasure in the form of its inimitable leading lady, Tracie Bennett. As Garland, Bennett dazzles. It’s one of the great stage triumphs of the year.

Bennett, better known across the Atlantic, was already nominated for an Olivier Award for the West End run of Rainbow, directed by Terry Johnson. And it’s a star vehicle. For all Garland’s interaction with Deans – whose youth and ignorance Quilter exploits for Garland to drop kernels of exposition about her career and marriages to Sid Luft and Vincente Minnelli – and, more effectively, her relationship with gay pianist/audience surrogate Anthony (Michael Cumpsty), Johnson only compels during Garland’s emotional ebb and flow and when Bennett performers such signature numbers as “Get Happy,” “The Man That Got Away,” and “The Trolley Song.” (Rainbow bills itself as a play with music.)

Bennett has Garland’s look and gait down, the way the woman’s slight but intense frame could project shades of iron will, carnality and anxiety all at once. More importantly, she’s a dynamo when it comes to recreating the wounded woman’s songs at Talk of the Town, which were a mixed bag from night to night based on how far under the influence she was. With a combination of powerful vocal chops and fraught emotion, Bennett doesn’t just mimic these signature numbers, she uses them to further tell Garland’s complex story. In a way, it’s the same technique used to portray Cabaret’s Sally Bowles (a role for which Garland’s Daughter, Liza Minnelli, won the Oscar; oddly Rainbow never mentions Liza or any of Garland’s children). Yet what’s impressive about Bennett’s performance isn’t the surface similarities to Garland but how deep she is able to dig. She makes Garland’s pain palpable.

Back in her London hotel suite (excellently adorned by William Dudley, who is also an ace with the show’s costumes), Quilter’s play offers diminishing returns. Structurally, there are gaffes; certain scenes feel redundant and a breakdown scene makes more sense as a first-act closer than it does appearing in the second act. And he pays short shrift to the notion that both Anthony’s and Keith’s relationships with Garland were symbiotic; they both used her, to certain degrees, for their own purposes. Johnson wrangles varying results from his other players. Cumpsty is a marvel in his own right, showing Anthony’s devotion and also a desperate need to keep Garland sober and performing. Pelphrey, a solid actor, only gets to paint Mickey in broader brushstrokes as pill pusher. (Jay Russell is convincing in several small roles.)

Garland’s world, one can gather, was a sad one. She was a performer trying to stay alive and also trying to stay a star. It was a two-pronged quest that, Quilter’s play tries to posit, had mutually exclusive goals. Bennett’s triumphant turn provides something new to Garland’s story, though: a happy ending.

End of the Rainbow  

Belasco Theatre, 111 W. 44th St. 212-239-6200. www.telecharge.com