Mostly 'Modern Millie'

By PAUL LIEBERMAN and PATRICK PACHECO

June 3, 2002 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

NEW YORK —

Culminating a year in which Broadway worried about its survival, the theater community awarded its top honors Sunday night to a musical based on a film, “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” and to Edward Albee’s first new Broadway play in 19 years.

In contrast to a year ago, when the Tony Awards were a coronation of “The Producers,” the honors were spread around this time. While “Millie” led the way by taking home six--half the number of “The Producers”--the provocatively named “Urinetown, the Musical” won three of the most prized Tonys for a musical, for best book, score and director.

Noel Coward’s classic comedy about a bickering couple, “Private Lives,” also won three Tonys, one for best revival of a play.

Three veteran actors won second Tonys more than two decades after their first. But all four of the acting awards for women went to first-time winners.

Cantankerous Broadway favorite Elaine Stritch broke down in tears after her autobiographical one-woman show won her a first Tony at 77. The tears were not of happiness but frustration, however, when the curtain came down on her acceptance speech.

The revival of one of the most legendary of musicals, “Oklahoma!,” took home but a single award. The ABBA musical, “Mamma Mia!,” was shut out, despite earning five nominations.

“Into the Woods,” which premiered at Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theatre, won for best revival of a musical, besting the highly anticipated London import “Oklahoma!” “Into the Woods’” Brian MacDevitt also took honors for lighting design.

But the evening’s biggest winner was “Millie,” which opened on Broadway in April to mixed reviews, with the sometimes-host of another awards show, the Academy Awards, as one of its producers.

“It’s not a cynical show. It’s a piece of fluff,” said Whoopi Goldberg, who first planned to redo the 1967 film starring Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore. “But it’s a piece of fluff we’re very proud of.”

“Millie,” about a gold-digging flapper in 1920s Manhattan, “a canary ready to fly free,” came into the evening with 11 nominations, more than any other musical or play. The show had its premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse.

Goldberg said she once considered taking a role in the musical herself, but “now forget it--I’m not goin’ anywhere near it,” she quipped.

In addition to being named best new musical, “Millie” won for best choreography, orchestrations, costume design and two performing honors: best featured actress in a musical, Harriet Harris, and for best leading actress in a musical, Sutton Foster, who plays “Millie,” both first-time Tony winners. The 27-year-old Foster’s award was the culmination of a classic Broadway tale itself. An understudy in La Jolla, she was elevated to the starring role at the last moment.

“Millie” won the first two awards announced, including the choreography honor, which went to Rob Ashford in an upset of sorts, besting five-time winner Susan Stroman, who worked up the dance routines for the revival of “Oklahoma!”

But “Urinetown” then took the next two awards thanks to Greg Kotis, who won best book honors for the first musical he wrote, and minutes later collected a second Tony for best original score, sharing that honor with Mark Hollmann, who wrote the music.

Kotis later called the honors “a badge of credibility” that he hoped might prompt more theatergoers to risk seeing a show with such a risky title and story--about a rebellion against a pay-toilet monopoly in a time of drought. The show, which spoofs other musicals, premiered at the 1999 New York Fringe Festival and had bad luck in scheduling its transfer to Broadway--a preview that would have drawn many reviewers was scheduled for Sept. 11. Though that performance was canceled, the show was the first new production to open on Broadway after the attacks on the World Trade Center.

“Broadway was a wonderful beneficiary of the goodwill of the country,” Kotis said. “We were in peril and the city came together.”

Of the evening’s Tony wins, he said, “It means that it’s a show that’s safe to see. It’s getting them in the door that’s been hard.”

He acknowledged once considering titling the show with a cleaned-up pun on “Urinetown,” namely, “You’re In Town.”

Despite its less-than-stellar ticket sales on Broadway, there already are plans for a national tour that will include Los Angeles, and productions in Tokyo and London.

“We’re just so fortunate that we’re on Broadway,” said the director, John Rando, who won the show’s third Tony of the evening.

“Urinetown” was not the only winning show seemingly unlikely to even be showing in the nation’s most prominent theater district.

Chicago-based director Mary Zimmerman first staged the current version of “Metamorphoses” with students at Northwestern University. The play later was staged at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles before heading to New York, and even then, “there aren’t any famous actors in my play,” noted Zimmerman, who won for best direction of a play.

The first of the actors taking home second Tonys after long gaps was Frank Langella, who won back in 1975 for his performance in Albee’s “Seascape.” He won this time as best featured actor in a play, for his portrayal of a Russian “infamous fatuous fop,” as he described the character, in Mike Poulton’s adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s “Fortune’s Fool.”

“The trick is to stay at the table ... and wait for a winning hand,” Langella said.

John Lithgow, better known for his dramatic roles and his ongoing comedy turn on television, then took home the prize as best leading actor in a musical for his scheming gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker in “The Sweet Smell of Success,” though he said the other nominees “all sing better than I do.”

Lithgow won his previous Tony 29 years ago, for “The Changing Room.” This was his 17th Broadway show but his first in 14 years, as his career turned to film and television. “My next role should be Dolly.... ‘It’s so nice to be back where I belong,’” said Lithgow.

Noting that his last musical role was in 1970 summer stock, and that he’d never done a Broadway musical before, Lithgow said, “It’s nice to reach my age and have a first time experience at anything.”

Waiting almost as long for a second Tony was Alan Bates, who won in 1973 for “Butley” and this time as best leading actor in a play for portraying an impoverished Russian aristocrat, alongside Langella, in “Fortune’s Fool.”

Though a revival of an Albee play has won a Tony since, his last for a new work came in 1962, for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” This year, he was honored for “The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?” about a man who falls in love with a goat. It beat out, among other plays, “Topdog/Underdog,” Suzan-Lori Parks’ comic drama about warring brothers, which recently won the Pulitzer Prize.

“I wanted people to think about the unimaginable happening to them,” Albee said. One of Sunday’s most popular winners was Stritch for special theatrical event, the one-woman show, “Elaine Stritch at Liberty.” She surprised no one by talking on even when the familiar your-time-is-up music began and the TV show switched to a commercial.

Later, the veteran actress did not take this curtain in stride.

“I’m very, very upset about the whole situation,” she told reporters. “I know that CBS can’t let people do the Gettysburg Address up there, but ... it’s pretty emotional for a woman my age to win her first Tony, [and] to be cut down like that has spoiled it for me.”

Sunday’s ceremony, telecast for the first hour on PBS and then the last two hours on CBS, included a musical tribute to New York, but few overt references to the crisis that threatened Broadway since last year’s Tonys.

Though most all cultural institutions suffered after Sept. 11 as tourists became wary of taking airplanes, and even New York suburbanites gave second thought to visiting Manhattan, the impact was particularly severe on high-cost Broadway shows, which were in danger of losing millions of dollars.

Producers appealed to theatrical unions for wage concession, the city bought up 50,000 tickets for $50 each and a $1-million advertising campaign featured leading performers crooning “New York, New York” around the world.

A year later, even amid warnings from national political leaders of ongoing terrorists threats to such public landmarks, Times Square is crammed with visitors once again. The theater producers even wound up returning $1 million of the $2.5-million city subsidy, and restored union concessions granted while theaters were nearly empty in September.

“I think we really dodged a bullet,” said Jed Bernstein, president of the League of American Theaters and Producers.

In the June-to-June theater season just ended, overall grosses were down just 3.5% from 2001, and attendance down just 8%.

“It also encouraging that there were 38 new productions as opposed to 27 [last year]. No one knew if they would be able to raise money for new shows.”

Times staff writer Paul Lieberman and correspondent Patrick Pacheco reported from New York. Times staff writer Don Shirley contributed to this report from L.A.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Complete List of Winners

Here are the winners of the 2002 Tony Awards:

Play: “The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?”

Musical: “Thoroughly Modern Millie”

Book of a Musical: Greg Kotis, “Urinetown, the Musical”

Original Score: Mark Hollmann (music), Mark Hollmann & Greg Kotis (lyrics), “Urinetown, the Musical”

Revival of a Play: “Private Lives”

Revival of a Musical: “Into the Woods”

Special Theatrical Event: “Elaine Stritch at Liberty”

Leading Actor in a Play: Alan Bates, “Fortune’s Fool”

Leading Actress in a Play: Lindsay Duncan, “Private Lives”