Next year, theatreWashington President Linda Levy promises, the Helen Hayes Awards will be bifurcated, with separate awards going to productions based on the number of Equity cast members. It couldn’t come soon enough, one suspects, for Washington-area small theaters, who saw this year’s nominations dominated by the big theatre companies.
Arlington’s Signature Theatre received twenty nominations, including six for Hello, Dolly! (which the company co-produced with Ford’s Theatre), five for Gypsy and five for The Last Five Years. All three musicals were nominated for Outstanding Resident Musical.
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company hauled in sixteen nominations. Half of them went to Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird, more than any other production received, and five went to The Convert. Both were nominated for Outstanding Resident Play.
Posner pulled off a rare Helen Hayes triple play, receiving a nomination for the Charles MacArthur New Play award for his Stupid Fucking Bird script, as well as being nominated for Outstanding Director of a Resident Musical (for The Last Five Years) and Outstanding Director of a Resident Play (for Folger Theatre’s Romeo and Juliet).
Shakespeare Theatre Company garnered fifteen nominations. Its venture into musicals, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, received seven nods, including Outstanding Resident Musical.
Round House Theatre’s Glengarry Glen Ross also received seven nominations, including Outstanding Resident Play and the Robert Prosky Award for Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor, which went both to Rick Foucheux and to Alexander Strain.
The complete list of nominees is here.
The 30th annual Helen Hayes Awards presentation will be held Monday, April 21st, 2014 at The National Building Museum. Speaking at last night’s live stream of the nominations, Levy predicted this year’s celebration will be “the grandest of them all.”
