What a difference 43 years makes! When the hit West End version of the French comedy Boeing-Boeing first crossed the Atlantic back in 1965, it was a fast flop, clocking up a Broadway run of just 23 performances - it opened on February 1 and shuttered on February 20, even though the original London production had run for over seven years and 2,035 performances after opening the year I was born, in 1962. But last night the transfer of last year’s London revival was named Best Revival of a Play in this year’s Tony Awards, and Mark Rylance took the top personal British honour of the night to win the award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play.
Boeing-Boeing’s success - over more serious-minded imports like Macbeth, and new local productions of Pinter’s The Homecoming and Les Liaisons Dangereuses — proves that comedy is a serious business, too; but then so is Broadway.
As Rylance told me the week before last in New York, he’s bowed to pressure to take the awards season more seriously than he used to. “I don’t lend much credence to the idea of that there is a best, so I started to boycott them in my last years at the Globe. But there are more important things to put my foot down about, and the producers have been so much effort and money into getting me here that I am going to go along. The awards are a shop window to sell shows, and if more people come to them because the Tony makes them feel confident that it is worth risking $99 on a ticket, I understand that”.
Boeing-Boeing, as I previously reported here, was one of six British exports that managed between them to clock up nearly a third of the overall tally of this year’s nominees for the awards; but half of them went home empty-handed. It’s a particular blow for the Menier Chocolate Factory originated production of Sunday in the Park with George, which was nominated in nine categories but secured no wins; neither did the now-shuttered transfers of Macbeth and Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll. But there were awards for Jim Norton - who can now put a Tony beside the Olivier he has already won for his performance in the transfer of the National’s The Seafarer — and two technical awards for The 39 Steps, for British sound designer Mic Pool and American lighting designer Kevin Adams. Amongst the slew of Brits nominated for their work on Broadway-originated shows, Katrina Lindsay took the Tony for Best Costume Design of a Play for her work on Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
But if they’ve each taken their Boeing-Boeing’s to Broadway success, coming home to Heathrow will be no laughing matter, or at least it wasn’t for me as I did this time last week. But at least two, and maybe three, of the major Broadway-originated winners last night might also have Heathrow arrivals in their sights in the coming month. Long-predicted Best Play winner August: Osage County is heading to London, with Deanna Dunagan who won the award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play telling the press room after winning the award, “I think we’re going to London in November, anyone who wants to go,” according to the report that Playbill.com’s senior editor Andrew Gans filed in his live rolling blog. The show took three more awards to win a total of five.
Also no doubt London-bound will be the current Broadway revival of Gypsy, featuring Patti LuPone as Mamma Rose who, nearly thirty years after her last Tony win for Evita, finally secured a second one last night. As she said in her acceptance speech, “It’s such a wonderful gift to be an actor who makes a living working on the Broadway stage and then every 30 years or so, pick up one of these.” The production, which also won featured (supporting) performance awards for her co-stars Laura Benanti and Boyd Gaines, has former Stage 100 top title holder David Ian as one of its producers, who is looking to bring it here next. A London revival is long overdue: it was last seen over here in 1973 when Angela Lansbury starred at the Piccadilly in a production that subsequently transferred to Broadway in 1974, where it has since also been produced in 1989 (Tyne Daly) and 2003 (Bernadette Peters) before coming around again now.
By contrast, we keep getting South Pacific — it was last revived in the West End at the Prince of Wales in 1988, then done again in a new production at the National Theatre by Trevor Nunn as one of his last parting shots there in 2001 - whereas the current production at Lincoln Center is its first-ever Broadway revival since its original 1949 outing; and last night took seven Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical, and awards for its leading actor Paulo Szot, director Bartlett Sher, and four of its designers (sets, costumes, lighting and sound), plus an additional posthumous special Tony award to recognise its late orchestrator, Robert Russell Bennett. But even though the show has been seen in London recently, I am told that there could still be plans to bring this production here. Watch this space.
I know you're a stickler for accuracy...(unlike Tim Walker). But are you sure that the present Lincoln Center South Pacific revival is the first broadway revival since the 1949 production.