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!

Evita on Broadway, directed by Michael Grandage. Photo by Richard Termine.

Webber and Rice’s Celebrity Expose

Evita is back–and at the right time, too. Celebrity worship wasn’t like it is now when Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice debuted Evita in 1975 as a concept album featuring Julie Covington of Rock Follies fame. There was no irony–or subservience–in their original idea of exploring the dubious sanctity of Argentine dictator Juan Peron’s fashion-plate wife Eva.  They created Evita as their second exploration into the cult of personality that began with Jesus Christ Superstar.

The music in both productions carries far more verve and melodious emotion than a schematic conceit. Webber and Rice’s modernist approach to legend was only mildly sardonic which explains why both shows have lasted–Superstar still moves the devout as well as the non-religious and Evita even fascinates political skeptics. Incapable of Sondheim’s cynicism, they displayed greater insight into fame than today’s brutishly condemnatory and cravenly obsequious media.

In the current Broadway version directed by Michael Grandage, Ricky Martin portrays Che (Eva’s foil), now understood as a common skeptic rather than a demi-oracle. Che’s failed revolutionary principles (crumbled like Communism after the Berlin Wall) intensifies the spotlight on Eva Peron who now stands as a perfect precursor to the celebrityhood of our time.

Appreciating Evita this way is a testament to Webber and Rice’s great instincts. They didn’t simply predict the celebrity era, they anatomized its origin. The show portrays the same mass hysteria seen at the mourning for Princess Di and Kim Jong Il. That’s why casting Madonna in Alan Parker’s disastrous 1996 movie Evita was not a stroke of genius; it was merely redundant since Madonna had already achieved dictatorial status in the Pop universe. (Her incompetent singing and acting underscored her fakery of Eva’s personality.)

Madonna could not accomplish Webber and Rice coup de theatre “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina,” the non pareil statement of celebrity and showbiz hubris. Understanding that song today, after the myriad examples of female pop icons from Madonna on up to the Daily Beast, the Huffington Post, Buckingham Palace and the White House, reveals Evita’s unsuspected political brilliance.

Che’s early warning “Eva beware your ambition!” comes to roost in “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina,” that Cinderella moment when the lower class climber reaches the peak of Buenos Aires power and shrewdly lords it over the people. The song is breathtakingly moving, devious and (knowingly) hollow–a command for attention that glories in the spectacle of self.

Line by line, Eva appeals to the admiration and envy of the servile throng (“All you can see is the girl you once knew/ Although she’s dressed up to the nines/ At sixes and sevens with you”). She dissolves her difference from them as a matter of happenstance.

Eva’s craftiness is stunning when she downplays fortune and fame as “illusions”–a word easy to coo, that floats on one long breath, smooth as a drug-dealer’s promise. Her admonition “They’re not the solutions they promise to be” is the slickest, clearest demagoguery until Oprah Winfrey came along a decade later. And like Oprah, Eva unctuously bleats “I love you and hope you love me.” There’s no bombast in this great theatrical moment, yet it’s as modest as Princess Diana’s wedding/coronation. Eva’s ballgown and new blonde beehive as she steps onto the balcony for her state address contrast the lullaby’s deceptive low-pressure; it’s the orchestration that surges, swaying along with the mob who are dazzled by the pretense of a public figure seeming to dismiss the power they dream of sharing.

To read the full review at CityArts click here.

Photo by Joan Marcus.

A new Jesus Christ Superstar revival lathers on the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber love

By Doug Strassler

Jesus Christ Superstar the show holds a godlike stature almost as ranking almost as high as the deity it portrays. Its status as an early ancestor of the rock opera – ancestors include The Who’s Tommy, Rent and Next to Normal – has granted it real estate in the pantheon of the most influential works of the modern musical era. To love the show, affectionately christened JCS by its myriad followers, is a religion unto itself.

For those not baptized in the waters of this game-changer, Superstar marked the emergence of musical writing team Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is an entirely sung-through, guitar-heavy re-enactment of the last days Jesus (Paul Nolan) spent on Earth and the oddly destructive yet inspiring triangle he formed with Judas Iscariot (Josh Young) and Mary Magdalene (Chilina Kennedy). Director Des McAnuff (who also helmed Tommy two decades ago) and his company have crafted a revival full of reverence, not so much for the greatest story ever told as much as for the two creators it lionizes here.

This isn’t a false idea. In Superstar, the music is the message, and you feel it in the audience the second you first hear the opening bars of the show’s title song. As energized as McAnuff’s production, which bowed at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and also ran at the La Jolla Playhouse, is, the show’s plot is surprisingly slender. Like Gertrude Stein once remarked of California, another place full of idol worship, there’s no there there.

So it’s the performances on which we must rely to make Jesus’ final passage a harrowing one. Only the clarion Young succeeds entirely at making us feel something, lacing his Judas with sensuality and envy, and suggesting that his betrayal of Jesus comes less as a result of feeling his friend has violated his beliefs and more of a result of coveting his connection to Mary Magdalene. However, he’s clearly the hypotenuse in this triangle, since neither Nolan nor Kennedy muster quite the same amount of passion. Nolan’s rock-god falsetto hits his notes impeccable in numbers like “Gethsemane,” but can’t always telegraph the sorrow of his betrayal and sacrifice. Likewise, the saturnine Kennedy can sweetly coo the immortal “I Don’t Know How to love him,” but she cannot suggest all the necessary sturm und drung that should lie beneath it. In numbers like “Heaven on Their Minds,” to his musing “Strange Thing, Mystifying,” only Young can fully enunciate the torn feelings battling within him.

Several supporting players are able to plumb beneath the surface of Superstar. Aaron Walpole is a beguilingly slick Annas, particularly in the Act One finale “Blood Money,” and the devilish Tom Hewitt clearly relishes his role as the flashy Pontius Pilate. McAnuff also lets Bruce Dow steal the early second act as King Herod. Howell Binkley’s lighting and Steve Canyon’s sound design also play a major role in McAnuff’s production. Canyon should especially be saluted for enabling a loud show that never once drowns out the mighty pipes of this talented ensemble.

Still, this revival doesn’t always know how to move us. What it ultimately serves as is a love note to the composers who first bore it. This Superstar celebrates two idols, to be sure, but neither of them have names beginning with “J.”

Jesus Christ Superstar

Neil Simon Theatre, 250 W. 52nd St. 877-250-2929. www.ticketmaster.com.