The Tony Awards recognize and award myriad New England theaters and their numerous influential satellites.
New England has a long history of being a Broadway theater test lab. This year’s Tony Award nominations are just another example, with 13 going to plays and musicals that originated in Massachusetts regional theaters.
On The Town (with four nominations including Best Musical-Revival) started at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield, MA. The Williamstown Theatre Festival sent three productions to Broadway this year including: The Visit with Chita Rivera (five nominations, including Best Musical and one for Rivera), The Elephant Man (four nominations including Best Play Revival and Best Actor for star Bradley Cooper) and Living on Love with Renee Fleming, the only of the three not to get a Tony nod. (Finding Neverland, the other musical to make it to New York that was snubbed by the Tonys, had its tryout at Cambridge’s American Repertory Theater.)
Bradley Cooper in a pre-Broadway The Elephant Man at Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2013 | Photo by T. Charles Erickson
While the number of New England regional theater productions making it to New York — five — is higher than usual, the number of Tony nominations is not. For the last 50 years, the theaters have been feeders for New York City award-winning productions. Last season’s Best Musical winner, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, originated at Hartford Stage. New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre has sent over 30 plays to New York, among them Wit and The Gin Game. The Yale Repertory Theatre, also in New Haven, has sent ten shows to NYC. Connecticut’s Goodspeed Musicals has given Broadway 19 musicals, including Man of La Mancha, Annie, and Shenandoah.
Goodspeed Musicals Founding Director Michael Price isn’t surprised by lower New England’s reign as a Tony tryout. “Connecticut and Massachusetts have the greatest number of professional theaters per capita than any other region of the country,” he says. “The quality of life in New England and the proximity to New York, where the talent pool is the greatest, are two major factors that, when added to the cultural values of New Englanders in general, encourage the sustainability of these theaters.”
Reid Shelton and Andrea McArdle in Annie at Goodspeed Opera House in 1976. Annie moved to Broadway the following season | Photo by Wilson H. Brownell
Back in the Golden Age of Broadway from the 1940s to the 1960s, theater producers assembled their composers, lyricists, writers, directors, and designers in New York to create and rehearse a new show. Then, they sent the show “on the road” to try out before audiences in other cities, fix the problems, and bring the final show to New York. Classics such as Oklahoma, A Streetcar Named Desire, My Fair Lady, and South Pacific did their shakedowns at New Haven’s Shubert Theatre, while Annie Get Your Gun, Carousel, La Cage Aux Folles, Company, and Follies fine-tuned in Boston.
Today, Broadway still looks to the non-profits as a major content source. Three of the four nominees for Best Musical this season originated in non-profit theaters here and abroad, and all four nominees for Best Play came from the non-profits, according to American Theatre magazine associate editor Rob Weinert-Kendt.
“It is not the incubation of productions for Broadway that is the force of creativity for the New England professional theater,” says Price. “It is the desire to satisfy an educated and culturally diverse population that produces theater of a high artistic quality, some of which ends up on New York stages.”
Chita Rivera, Tom Nelis, Chris Newcomer and Matthew Deming in The Visit at Williamstown Theatre Festival | Photo by T. Charles Erickson
Broadway has rewarded the New England regionals with Tony Awards for their contributions to the Broadway theaters (and touring houses around the country). Goodspeed Musicals has two, and other Regional Theater Tony winners include Yale Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, and Hartford Stage in Connecticut; Trinity Repertory Theatre in Rhode Island; and Williamstown Theatre Festival, Huntington Theatre, and American Repertory Theater in Massachusetts.
You can see some excerpts from the current nominees on the Tony Awards broadcast Sunday, June 7 on CBS, and then run to discount ticket websites like BroadwayBox.com to snag tickets to the winners. The Theatre Development Fund, which offers the discount tickets at the TKTS booth on Times Square, has a discount theater program for students, seniors, military, non-profit organization workers, teachers, and more.