'The Producers' likely to sweep Tony Awards

By Michael Kuchwara
Associated Press

"A powerhouse show," enthused Variety, calling it "the first major musical smash of the Broadway season." Better than its original source material, said others. "What was larger and droller than life has been puffed up and gaily tinted without being blown apart," burbled the New York Times. Cheers for the star, too, a major comic performer, according to the critics.

Lines formed at the box office every day. There wasn't a ticket to be had for months and months. And when Tony Award time came around, it received a record number of prizes.

We're talking about "Hello, Dolly!" — winner of more Tony Awards, 10 in all, than any other show in Broadway history. It is a record that has held since 1964, a record waiting to be broken Sunday by the current tenant at the St. James, a musical juggernaut called "The Producers."

That possibility will provide at least a little suspense during the 2001 Tony Awards tonight, which are expected to be dominated, if not owned outright, by "The Producers." Despite multiple nominations in two categories, the show could pick up as many as 12 Tonys, including the best musical award.

No wonder its rivals for the top musical prize — "A Class Act," "Jane Eyre" and "The Full Monty" — are feeling a bit neglected. Sort of like the shows that were steamrolled more than 35 years ago by "Dolly!" — it flattened even Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl."

"Dolly!" was based on Thornton Wilder's play "The Matchmaker," and starred Carol Channing, who won a Tony for playing the meddling Dolly Levi in the show. "The Producers" is based on the madcap Mel Brooks movie about a pair of bumbling showmen, portrayed by Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, who plan to produce the world's worst musical and flee with their investors' dough.

"Dolly!" was the brainchild of its canny producer, David Merrick, who was listed alone above the title. "The Producers" may have been the handiwork of Brooks, but its list of producers is a parade of 10 names that includes Hollywood moguls Bob and Harvey Weinstein, pop concert impresario Robert F.X. Sillerman and Brooks himself.

And then there's the ticket price. When it first opened, "Dolly!" charged $9.40 for the best seats on a Saturday night ($5.50 for the Wednesday and Saturday matinees). "The Producers" hit $100 for all performances the day the rhapsodic reviews came out.

You can bet good money its leading man, Lane, will win a Tony (his second), even though one competitor is his very worthy co-star, Broderick.

Brooks himself could be a triple winner. Not only is he a producer of "The Producers," he adapted the script for the stage and wrote the new songs. Brooks is a cinch then for best musical and best book, and the momentum could bring him a third for best score, too.

Susan Stroman, Brooks' cohort in creativity, has a lock on the Tonys for direction of a musical and choreography, an award she won last year for "Contact."

In the featured acting categories, things get dicier. Three actors — Roger Bart, Gary Beach and Brad Oscar — from "The Producers" are up against two actors from "The Full Monty" — John Ellison Conlee and veteran dance man Andre De Shields. Beach, playing extravagant director Roger De Bris, would seem to have an edge since he gets to lead the cast in Stroman's restaging of the show's most famous number, "Springtime for Hitler."

"The Producers" gets its toughest challenge in the featured actress-musical category. Cady Huffman delightfully plays the blonde bombshell Ulla, but she is competing against veteran character actress Kathleen Freeman, the old-time piano player in "The Full Monty," and Polly Bergen, who vocally steals the revival of "Follies" with her scathing rendition of "I'm Still Here."

Believe it or not, "The Producers" is not nominated in two musical categories — revival and actress. The musical revival prize seems locked up by "42nd Street," and the actress award most likely will go to the show's leading lady, Christine Ebersole. Play revival is rated a toss-up between "Gore Vidal's The Best Man" and Steppenwolf Theatre Company's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Big musical winners tend to dominate the production awards, too, so look for "The Producers" to come out on top in the categories of sets, costumes, lighting and orchestrations. Yet the magical settings Bob Crowley designed for Tom Stoppard's drama "The Invention of Love" could give "The Producers" some unexpected competition.

"The Invention of Love" also is nominated for best play, but will lose to "Proof," David Auburn's family drama about a young woman and her mathematician father. "Proof," already winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for drama and a New York Drama Critics' Circle award, seems destined to become the year's most honored play.

"Love," though, most likely will win a top acting prize for Richard Easton, who plays tormented poet A.E. Housman, and a direction award for double nominee Jack O'Brien, also nominated for his work on "The Full Monty."

Easton's strongest competition appears to be Brian Stokes Mitchell as the charismatic title character in "King Hedley II" and Gary Sinise, the rebellious mental patient in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Also nominated were the two actors in "Stones in His Pockets," Sean Campion and Conleith Hill.

Mary-Louise Parker, who portrays the distraught daughter in "Proof," appears to be a shoo-in for best actress, although Linda Lavin of best-play nominee "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife" gives a Tony-caliber performance, too. Definite long shots include Academy-Award-winner Juliette Binoche, "Betrayal"; Jean Smart, who played the diva-like star in a revival of "The Man Who Came to Dinner"; and Leslie Uggams, the mother in "King Hedley II."

August Wilson's "Hedley," the fourth best-play nominee, has its strongest chance in the featured acting categories — for Charles Brown's pragmatic and deadly con man and for Viola Davis, the title character's defiant wife.

Most likely, there will be surprises, and "The Producers" could lose a prize or two. Even "Hello, Dolly!" lost one award. Its solitary snub? Charles Nelson Reilly, who played timid clerk Cornelius Hackl, was beaten by Jack Cassidy, the duplicitous Lothario of "She Loves Me." That's show biz.