The 2011 - 2012 Season: By the Numbers

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The 2012 - 2013 Broadway season has begun!


The first: Opening Night: June 14, 2011
The last: Opening Night: April 26, 2012

Somethings never change.  The talk of last season was the talk of most of this season.  At least Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark finally opened without a fatality.  It is still much in the news, for the good (it is making hordes of money and packing in the audiences), the bad (cast members continue to sue for injuries incurred) and the ugly (the Taymor lawsuit, the producers not getting paid lawsuit, etc.).  Other news of the season included the Sondheim vs The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess flap, where the king of Broadway got a bit testy about the team's attitude toward the venerable old chestnut and the alleged "improvements" that needed to be made.  The New York Theatre Workshop struck gold twice, with two critically-acclaimed productions moving to the big time: Once and Peter and the Starcatcher.  TV got into the Broadway act with Smash, all about the making of a new Broadway musical, with original musical numbers by Hairspray's Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman.  The show features a who's who of Broadway talent, including Megan Hilty, Christian Borle, Wesley Taylor, Leslie Odem, Jr., Will Chase, Bernadette Peters, Ann Harada and Savannah Wise, among many others.  And the cavalcade of stars on the Broadway stage continued this season, with a wonderful mix of stage and screen stars appearing this season: Andrew Garfield, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Angela Bassett, Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Lansbury, James Earl Jones, Eric McCormick, John Larroquette, Candace Bergen, Kerry Butler, Jefferson Mays, Michael McKean, Raul Esparza, Harry Connick, Jr., Stockard Channing, Michael Cerveris, Ricky Martin, Patti LuPone, Mandy Patinkin, Alan Rickman, Matthew Broderick, Kelli O'Hara, Judy Kaye, Estelle Parsons, Hugh Jackman, and pretty much the entire cast of Follies.

Let's look back at the season just ended simply by the numbers, without regard to critical and/or financial success or failure.

This season, the Tony Committee met four times to determine eligibility of productions that opened, starting with Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on June 14, 2011 through Leap of Faith on April 26, 2012.  They determined that  15 new plays, 8 play revivals, 8 new musicals and 6 musical revivals - 37 productions in all - are eligible for the coveted silver medallion.  Eight special event productions also opened, but are not eligible for award consideration.


SPECIAL EVENT PRODUCTIONS (8)

• Camelot (benefit 1-nighter)
• 8 (benefit 1-nighter)
• Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway
• An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin
• The Visit (benefit 1-nighter)
• She Loves Me (benefit 1-nighter)
• Shatner's World: We Just Live In It
• Hair (the summer return engagement is not eligible for Tony consideration)

Death of a Salesman

PLAY REVIVALS (8)

• Master Class
• Man and Boy
• Private Lives
• The Road to Mecca
• Wit
• Death of a Salesman
• Gore Vidal's The Best Man
• A Streetcar Names Desire

Seminar

Other Desert Cities

PLAYS (15)

• The Mountaintop
• Relatively Speaking
• Chinglish
• Other Desert Cities
• Venus in Fur
• Seminar
• Stick Fly
• End of the Rainbow
• Magic/Bird
• Peter and the Starcatcher
• One Man, Two Guvners
• Clybourne Park
• The Lyons
• The Columnist
• Don't Dress for Dinner

Evita

MUSICAL REVIVALS (6)

• Follies
• Godspell
• On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
• The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess
• Jesus Christ Superstar
• Evita

Once

Ghost: The Musical

MUSICALS (8)

• Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
• Bonnie and Clyde
• Lysistrata Jones
• Once
• Disney's Newsies
• Ghost: The Musical
• Nice Work If You Can Get It
• Leap of Faith

If I had a say...


With the Tony nominations less than 2 days away, here are a few things I hope the committee doesn't forget:

Bonnie and Clyde

• Reeve Carney and Jennifer Damiano in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
• The Frank Wildhorn-Don Black score of Bonnie and Clyde
• The set and particularly the projections of Tobin Ost and Aaron Rhyne for Bonnie and Clyde
• Bonnie and Clyde's Jeremy Jordan, Laura Osnes and Melissa van der Schyff
• The clever book and score of Lysistrata Jones, by Douglas Carter Beane and Lewis Flinn, respectively
• Pretty much anything to do with Once, the most beautiful musical of the season
• Pretty much anything to do with Follies, the most beautiful revival in years
• Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Kara Lindsay in Disney's Newsies

Evita

• Caissie Levy in Ghost: The Musical
• The choreography of Rob Ashford in Evita
• The lighting of Ghost: The Musical and Evita
• The score of Ghost: The Musical (Dave Stewart, Glen Ballard, Bruce Joel Rubin)
• The charming performances of Celia Keenan-Bolger and Adam Chanler-Berat in Peter and the Starcatcher
• Peter and the Starcatcher period - as a work and all aspects of technical theatre

Peter and the Starcatcher

• Stockard Channing, Rachel Griffiths and Judith Light in Other Desert Cities
• Jennifer Lin in Chinglish 
• David Korins' set designs for Chinglish and Godspell 
• Judy Kaye, Michael McGrath and Jennifer Laura Thompson in Nice Work If You Can Get It
• And Phillip Boykin in The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess

Jeff3.241@jkstheatrescene (Twitter); jkstheatrescene@yahoo.com (email); Comment below (Blogger)