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!

Photo by Joan Marcus.

There’s a great star to be found in Leap of Faith – and it isn’t Raul Esparza

Somewhere, 1992 is laughing its ass off. Sister Act, which hit screens almost exactly twenty years ago, is a solid Main Stem hit, while two less-successful films also released that same year – Newsies and Leap of Faith – have just added their names to marquees alighting the Great White Way. Whodathunk that the year that saw the Heights learn how to talk to an angel and Bill Clinton evict George H. W. Bush from his White House bunker would bear so much fruit?

Alas, not all of it is ripe for the picking. Leap is an underwhelming star vehicle that even most Steve Martin purists leave out when combing his oeuvre about an evangelist suddenly changed when making a pit stop in a small town full of aw shucks hucksters. The film source may have been less inherently musical, but it shares theatrical DNA with everything from The Music Man to Elmer Gantry to The Rainmaker and its musical adaptation, 110 in the Shade. Leap writer James Cercone and Tony-winner Warren Leight (Side Man) have been brought in to remold the work, but, as directed by Christopher Ashley, it’s still a few prayers short of a miracle.

One problem is Cercone and Leight’s decision to frame the evening as though theatergoers were actually attending a revival themselves in the St. James Theatre, with Jonas Nightingale (Raúl Esparza) and his scheming sister Sam (a good Kendra Kassebaum) calling people sinners and taking tithes from those in their seats. It’s discomfiting and doesn’t fully work as the show’s actual plot – small town Kansas sheriff Marla (Jessica Phillips) is onto Jonas’ game, and then later, into him – unfolds back in more traditional rhythms. The book also withholds two key pieces of information regarding Jonas. Was he ever a good guy and a true believer? And which members of his traveling choir believe in him, and which know he’s a fraud?

Another problem is actually its raison d’etre: star Raúl Esparza, who exists in an odd limbo between what Jonas needs to be and who he needs to be for Jonas. Esparza is a smart actor but one who hews to the dark side of delivery. Jonas needs to be a jaded manipulator but one who, incredulously, lets himself be won over at the particular juncture in his life at which Leap takes a peak. Esparza’s Jonas never feels truly threatening – would he really bilk a wedding ring from a grieving widow? – but he also never seems to buy into the show’s messages of redemption and community; he’s too savvy for platitudes. The performer seems to stand outside of Jonas rather than immerse himself in the man. And without a believable transformation, the sturdier stuff around the center weakens.

That stuff includes Kecia Lewis-Evans as Jonas’ choir leader, Ida Mae, as well as Krystal Joy Brown and Smash’s Leslie Odom Jr. as her children, both bathed in the gospel that Leap strives to include. All three of them are excellent, as is Phillips, who enjoys several of Leap’s best ballads. Other songs, however, from the team of Alan Menken and Glenn Slater (who also did the music for the Sister Act adaptation), are a mixed bag of exalt-us jubilance and plaintive country time-fillers, like “Rise Up!,” “If You’re Faith is Strong Enough,” and “Fox in the Henhouse.” Very few are memorable, as is Sergio Trujillo’s choreography.

I’ve saved one piece of the Leap puzzle for last: young Talon Ackerman, who plays Jake, Marla’s disabled pre-teen son. This wheelchair-bound character has faith in the power of healing and in Jonas, and through his eyes, we see just what draws a soul to these revivals. And whenever this talented, present performer took the stage, I became a believer too.

Leap of Faith          

St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St. 212-239-6200. http://leapoffaithbroadway.com/ $47 – 137. Thru May 13.