You don’t toss an ““egregious’’ in the face of Broadway’s precious Tonys every day. Andrews was fuming because no one else from her hit show had gotten a nod from the Tony committee. But lots of lesser stars were furious, too. It was the first time in memory that the Tony express had passed by every Broadway-born production in the glamour category of best musical, nominating instead four shows that had originated in nonprofit theaters: ““Rent,’’ ““Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk,’’ ““Chronicle of a Death Foretold’’ and ““Swinging on a Star.''
In a way it was historic, a refusal by the 14-person committee to rubber-stamp splashy shows like ““Victor/Victoria’’ and the recently arrived ““Big.’’ ““Rent,’’ which got 10 nominations, and ““Noise/Funk,’’ which got nine, were no surprise, but the other two nominees had quickly vanished from the stage months ago.
If the Tony judges were attacking Broadway’s complacency, they were hardly consistent: passed up for best musical, ““Big’’ was nominated for best score and best book. The book is an adaptation of the popular 1988 Tom Hanks movie about a 13-year-old boy who finds himself in the body of a 30-year-old man. But the score, by composer David Shire and lyricist Richard Maltby Jr., is Broadway professionalism without inspiration. Everything is OK – cast, sets, costumes – but the closest thing to breaking through the OK barrier is Susan Stroman’s choreography for a hormonally juiced gaggle of teeny-boppers.
The Tony tempest made a nice sound effect for the end-of-season rush of compelling shows. ““A Delicate Balance,’’ Edward Albee’s 1966 study of death-in-life in suburbia, seems subtler and warmer 30 years later. There’s career work by director Gerald Gutierrez (Tony-nominated) and a brilliant ensemble: Rosemary Harris (also T-n) as the wife who thinks madness might be better than sterile sanity; Elaine Stritch (T-n) as her sister, the booziest of bitches; Mary Beth Hurt as the daughter who can’t stay married, Elizabeth Wilson and John Carter as the friends who bring a plague of nameless terror. In his last-act confession of emotional inadequacy, George Grizzard (T-n) as the husband touches a peak of American acting.
Albee dissects the American family; Sam Shepard blows it to smithereens. A rejiggering of his 1978 ““Buried Child’’ marks Shepard’s first appearance on Broadway in his 32-year career. His play is a brilliant Gothic comedy of family values, such as incest, infanticide, catatonia, drunkenness and lunacy. Three generations of a farm family collide with one another like particles in an atom that can’t split and can’t cohere. Director Gary Sinise (T-n) has risked stretching the play’s domestic scale to mythic proportions; it works. Another fine ensemble includes James Gammon (T-n) and Lois Smith (T-n) as the most guilt- ridden patriarch and matriarch in American drama.
Oddly, Oscar Wilde makes a logical trio with Albee and Shepard: in his 1895 ““An Ideal Husband,’’ Wilde’s flittering epigrams are like butterflies dropping bombs on Victorian hypocrisy. His end-of-century Britain looks just like our end-of-century Britain, with seemingly upright politicos caught right between the uprights. These shenanigans are observed with relish by Lord Goring, an idealized self-portrait of Wilde, a role in which Martin Shaw performs the feat of wallowing elegantly, just like Oscar. Director Peter Hall’s English company is to the manner born. But in a season of superb ensemble acting, the most exciting and moving were the explosive young unknowns in ““Rent.’’ Their communal passion deserves a communal Tony.
