You Won a Tony! Now What? Looking Ahead with the 2005 Tony Winners
Sure they just won their Tony Awards, but tonight's honorees are already looking ahead. What is prized playwright John Patrick Shanley up to? Where will you next see Billy Crystal? Will Adriane Lenox return to musicals or keep doing more straight plays? Read on for Broadway.com's list of what the 2005 winners will be working on once they wake up from their Tony night dreams.
Best Musical
Spamalot
Spamalot has yet to announce official plans for a national tour but producers promised road presenters that unlike last year's Tony winner, Avenue Q, Spamalot will indeed be hitting the road. Director Mike Nichols also mentioned backstage at the Tony Awards that the show will also be making its way to the West End.
Best Play
Doubt
Doubt will undoubtedly hit the road some time in the near future. Scribe John Patrick Shanley has also been talking about directing a film version of the intimate work. In addition, the prolific playwright has recently finished a new theatrical work, which is expected to have a reading this summer, and is writing two new movies, including a project with Norman Jewison who directed Shanley's Moonstruck.
Best Special Theatrical Event
700 Sundays
Author and star Billy Crystal plans on taking 700 Sundays which ends its limited Broadway run on June 12 on the road and possibly bringing it to the West End, for what will certainly be another successful engagement. He is also in talks to play Wilbur Turnblad in the big screen adaptation of the Tony-winning hit Hairspray.
Best Revival of a Musical
La Cage aux Folles
The show will likely hit the road with Robert Goulet, who is currently lending his legendary voice to the Broadway production, onboard. The Cagelles will continue to squeeze into their corsets nightly at the Marquis Theatre.
Best Revival of a Play
Glengarry Glen Ross
The show is scheduled to end its limited engagement at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre which you may know as the Royale Theatre, if you haven't yet absorbed the name change on August 28, but with this win, an extension announcement is certainly a possibility. Producers Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel have announced that they will present a revival of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. Richards also has the new musical Girl Group Time Travelers and a revival of The Pajama Game on his slate of upcoming projects.
Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical
Norbert Leo Butz, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Butz is contracted to stay with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels through February 2006. What he'll do after that is anyone's guess.
Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical
Victoria Clark, The Light in the Piazza
The Light in the Piazza is scheduled to run at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre through September 4, and Clark will remain with it to the end. A theater regular, she has also been attached to plenty of shows still in their development phase. What will happen next for her? It's not yet set in stone.
Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play
Cherry Jones, Doubt
Jones has a featured role in the film Swimmers. The piece premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and should be seen at other theaters in the future. She will also be seen in the film Aftershock alongside one of this season's other leading ladies, Jessica Lange, which has not completed production yet.
Best Featured Actress in a Play
Adriane Lenox, Doubt
Lenox starred in the pre-Broadway tryout of the musical The Color Purple, but is not expected to be in the show on the Great White Way. She is with Doubt for a while and, backstage at the Tony Award following her win, she said she is currently looking for her next gig. "Anybody got anything?" she asked jokingly. We're sure they will.
Best Featured Actor in a Play
Liev Schreiber, Glengarry Glen Ross
Schreiber, who is scheduled to be at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre through August 28, adapted Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated for the big screen and is recently directed the motion picture based on the novel. He also wants to return to the Public Theater to star in Macbeth, but it is not a done deal just yet. On the other hand, who would turn him down?
Best Featured Actor in a Musical
Dan Fogler, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee In addition to exercising his magic foot, Fogler is set to play carpet installer Carmen Marconi in the film The Marconi Brothers, which is still in the development phase.
Mike Nichols, Spamalot
Nichols is best known for his film work, and he will soon return to that medium. He has numerous big screen projects in development including 1001 Nights with Jeffrey Wright, a period drama about actresses Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse entitled The Rivals and Skinny Dip, based on Carl Hiaasen's novel of the same name.
Best Director of a Play
Doug Hughes, Doubt
Hughes is one of the hottest directors out there. His production of Jon Robin Baitz's The Paris Letter is currently in previews at off-Broadway's Laura Pels Theatre. In the fall, he will helm the Manhattan Theatre Club production of Tally's Folly at the Biltmore with Cynthia Nixon and then quickly move over to Studio 54 to direct the Roundabout Theatre revival of A Touch of the Poet with Gabriel Byrne.
Best Choreography
Jerry Mitchell, La Cage aux Folles
Mitchell will soon be taking on new challenges. He is set to co-direct with Jack O'Brien and choreograph the Hairspray movie. He is also attached as director and choreographer of the upcoming stage take on Legally Blonde. If that is not enough, expect Mitchell to repeat his duties on the La Cage aux Folles tour. Not to mention his work on the annual Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS benefit Broadway Bares. We also hope he takes time to breathe.
Best Original Score
Adam Guettel, The Light in the Piazza
Guettel said backstage after his Tony win that he could not name his next project for "legal reasons." We're not exactly sure why that would be, but he did say it would be a "fairy tale adventure" and involve "a lot of sword fighting." Could it be he is working on a musical version of The Princess Bride?
Best Book of a Musical
Rachel Sheinkin, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Now that Sheinkin has won the Tony Award, she told Broadway.com she was "going back to all things that were before." She has a grant from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation to work on a new piece entitled Serenade with Swedish composer Nils Olaf Dolven and choreographer Benjamin Millepied. The show has already had some readings in Gotham and very well may be Sheinkin's next produced work. However, it is not the only thing on her plate—she will soon go to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in Connecticut to develop an evening of three one-act musicals.
