Theater Awards

Cinderella Star On Not Having To Compete With The Matilda Girls

Laura Osnes is very good in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, and as a result, she's one of the frontrunners for the Tony Award for best actress in a musical. One of the other frontrunners (or four of them, actually) would have been the girls who star in Matilda, alternating in the role. But in ... More >>

Meryl Streep, Duncan Sheik, and More: Announcing the 58th Annual Village Voice Obie Awards

Guess I'm giving a party on May 20th. I hadn't been thinking about this year's Obie Awards. I was too busy getting depressed about the state of the theater. (It's a known fact that critics always get depressed about the state of the theater.) So the theater, that tricky place, decided to cheer me up ... More >>

A WHITE-TRASH CHRISTMAS

Don't expect any sugarplum fairies

The Tony Awards Are Over! My Roundup

Here are the highlights from my very vivid three-hour viewing experience. Hold your applause till the end: Interviewed on the red carpet, Tyne Daly dismissively said the Tonys are a race meant for everyone else, "not for us." She wasn't nominated. How bad were the musicals this year? So bad that ... More >>

Spider-Man Turns On The P.R.

Ever since Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark didn't get a nomination for the Best Musical Tony award, they've been amping up the gimmick machine to get some press for the show. *First, they announced a special Tony Sunday performance for which anyone with the first name Anthony, Tony, Antonio, Antoinet ... More >>

The 2012 Obie Award Winners

Leap Of Faith Is Not The Shortest Running Best Musical Nominee Ever

Not by a long shot! Leap is the musical about a con man who connects with his faith and makes a disabled kid walk (if not exactly making people run to the box office). It just closed after a mere 44 performances on Broadway (including previews). But it's nominated for the Tony for Best Musical, ma ... More >>

Will Spider-Man Get the Nomination?

Next Tuesday morning, the Tony nominations will be announced, and people--even some people not on ropes--will be looking to see if Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is one of the four nominees for Best Musical. A year ago, that would have seemed as outlandish a proposition as a musical about a flying a ... More >>

Five Artists Who Should Cover Beyoncé At Some Point In The Near Future (And The Songs They Should Tackle)

​In honor of Beyoncé's four-night run at Roseland, which continues with a sold-out show tonight, Sound of the City is celebrating the singer with a series of features. While she's a singular artist with her own way of handling tracks, it's fun to imagine what would happen if other artists tac ... More >>

My Salmon Jacket Looks Great On Theater Talk Tonight

​Isn't it a theatrical experience unto itself? And beyond that, Patrick Pacheco (NY 1, L.A. Times), Jesse Green (New York magazine), and I offer sparklingly dramatic and in fact award-worthy comments about last Sunday's Tony Awards telecast, the best one in ages.

Spider-Man Has Opened! And I Have Spoken!

​The tangled web has sorted itself out and, after only eight years of waiting (or at least it felt that way), Spidey has finally swung his buggin' ass around for the critics--this time officially. Click here for my review in which I tell you whether the can of repellent is still called for, o ... More >>

Awkward Moment at Awards Show

​Last night at the Drama Desk Awards at the Manhattan Center, a man who was part of the Beatles revue Rain--which had just copped an award--started chatting me up. He and his wife turned out to be really nice and they even slipped me a ticket to get up to the after party. Everything was love ... More >>

Book of Mormon's Most Outrageous Outtake!

Behind the scenes at how South Park mounted a musical missionary-position

Broadway ChitChat From The Tony Nominees

​This week's column has my invigorating talks with various award nominees who sparkled up the Broadway season. Here are some extra tidbits from the stars: How did Mark Rylance (above), the volcanic actor who's Tony nominated for Jerusalem, feel about not also being nominated for his perform ... More >>

Daniel Radcliffe Snubbed By Tony Awards!

​Last year, the Tony awards fawned over Hollywood types, and a lot of died-in-the-wool theater people didn't have much of a chance against them. Well, this time the nominating committee obviously listened to the criticism about all that and swung the curve back to the real theater stars. (He ... More >>

Mo Rocca's Boyfriend Wrote Tony Awards Joke

​I ran into Mo Rocca last night and congratulated him on being one of the writers for the Tony Awards on Sunday. (Shut up. I thought there was funny stuff.) I asked Mo if he wrote the great line that host Sean Hayes said about how at the World Cup they yell "Goal!" but at the Tonys they shri ... More >>

Fela! Totally Hosed By The Tonys

​So the 2010 Tony Awards were dished out last night, and to the surprise/dismay of many -- and nobody more than the guy up there -- Fela! did not rule the night, ceding Best Musical (among others) to Memphis. Given our own bias, we, too, will have to check out Memphis soon, and like ?uestlove, ... More >>

2010 Tonys: Nominations Announced, Big on Idiot Material

​The 2010 Tony nominations are out, and the yearly ceremony that becomes more and more designed to persuade people from anywhere but New York City to spend money on theater is soon to follow. The idea behind the Tonys is simply to get Broadway to appeal to the rest of America in a big, fancy ... More >>

OH, BROTHER!

Ethan Hawke stages A Lie of the Mind

Jane Krakowski

The Critic Gets a Callback

What readers need from reviewers—if there are any readers left

Jack Nicholson Doesn't Know It All

That's the message of this week's column, in which Jeff Daniels--currently in the rom-com The Answer Man--tells me that when he worked with Jack ages ago in Terms of Endearment, he was amazed to learn that the superstar isn't always the answer man himself. Daniels also tells me about whether he's g ... More >>

Tony Awards Committee Drops Critics from Voter Rolls

The Tony Management Committee has stopped letting critics vote on the Tony Awards for achievements in Broadway theater, on the grounds that the reviewers have a conflict of interest -- as opposed to actual theater artists and producers who, we guess, monkishly abstain from allowing personal relation ... More >>

'Summer Broadway Festival'

Bret Michaels' Statement on Near-Beheading Onstage at the Tonys: I'm Fine, Thanks for Nothin', and Man, I Missed Anne Hathaway

He lives. He types. Per Vulture comes news of Bret's official statement regarding his rather unfortunate run-in with a piece of scenery live onstage at the Tony Awards Sunday night. A few rather unpleasant pictures, too. He's trying to laugh this off, people, give him credit. Key graf:

Billy Elliot Takes 10 Tonys

The Tony Awards producers did not take our suggestions, but the show still moved at a relatively brisk pace and had some nice moments, such as the acceptance of the Best Actor in a Musical Award by the three nice young men who alternate the lead in Billy Elliot; they were physically poised as you ... More >>

5 Ways to Maybe Get People to Watch the Tony Awards

Another year, another unwatched Tony Awards show. Let's face it: this Sunday's prize party isn't even getting you excited, is it? Sure, the Tonys provide the MDR of greasepaint 'n' glamour we learned to love as lonely, introverted children. But as a quick look back at, say, the justly famous 25th An ... More >>

My Tony Predictions, World!

Here's who's I say is going to win the Tony awards for Broadway excellence this Sunday. Then again, I'm at a disadvantage because I've actually seen the shows. I'm even a Tony voter! Best Play: God of Carnage Best Musical: Billy Elliot Best Actor: Geoffrey Rush, Exit The King Best Actress: Jane ... More >>

Quick Hits

Some guy's leg and foot on the subway, via twitpic. We love Mary Louise Parker as much as anybody, maybe more, but find it hard to credit her claim that she was "goaded" into a nude scene in an (upcoming!) episode of Weeds and is "bitter" about it. She's, like, naked in everything. Here is a practic ... More >>

Tony Award Nominees Announced

The Tony Award nominees have just been announced. The best musical nominees are Billy Elliot, Next to Normal, Rock of Ages, and Shrek the Musical. (Rock of Ages being a jukebox musical, its place in the Best Score category was taken by 9 to 5; [title of show] replaced it in the Best Book list.) Best ... More >>

Get Your Tony Nominations And Cry

This is my big day--when the announcement of the Tony nominations sends an insular yet powerful world of Broadway thesps and businesspeople shrieking into the street with either glee or despair! And they're not acting! This year's batch of honorees is a distinguished bunch led by the Billy Elliot g ... More >>

Clip Job: Albee Wins an Antoinette Perry

Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archivesMay 2, 1963, Vol. VIII, No. 28Theatre News"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" playwright Edward Albee's first Broadway entry, has six new awards this week to support its reputation. Voted best play of the season by the Drama Critics Circle, "Who's ... More >>

Clip Job: The 4th Annual Obies

Will Rihanna Go Hollywood?

Uptown Saturday nights are more fabulous all the time. Meanwhile, back at the Tonys . . .

Counting Tony Awards With Counting Crows

The 2008 Obie Award Winners

Who Will Get Tony Nominations? Only I Know--Or Care

Haven Can Wait

Rehab as a beautiful experience, plus cracks about pies. Psst! Ted Haggard was a top.

2006–2007 Obie Award Winners

Obies, She Wrote

Delayed Transmission

Václav Havel finally collects his Obies

1956

1996

1998

Proclamation: Office of the Mayor City of New York

Watering the Off-Broadway Garden

The founder of the 'Village Voice' Obies recalls what led to their inception 50 years ago

Stage Left

Tony Awards look to Off-Broadway for excellence.

The Sour Smell of Success

NY Mirror

The Wild Party 3

The 45th Annual OBIE Awards