ROSEMARY HARRIS: Will receive Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre. (Pictured: Ms. Harris in Indian Ink in 2014.)  Photo: Joan Marcus

ROSEMARY HARRIS, TERRENCE McNALLY & HAROLD WHEELER

TO BE HONORED WITH THE 2019 SPECIAL TONY AWARDS

FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN THE THEATRE

New York, New York (April 25, 2019) – The Tony Awards Administration Committee announced today that Tony Award-winning actress Rosemary Harris, Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally and Tony-nominated composer and musician Harold Wheeler will be the 2019 recipients of the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.

“We are thrilled to recognize Rosemary, Terrence and Harold with the Special Tony Awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre,” said Heather Hitchens, President of the American Theatre Wing and Charlotte St. Martin, President of The Broadway League.  “They are pioneers in each of their crafts and their contributions to American Theatre and culture has been immeasurable.”

Rosemary Harris, a Tony Award winner for Best Actress for her performance in The Lion in Winter (1965), is currently starring as Mrs. Higgins in Lincoln Center Theater’s award-winning production of Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady. Her other 25 Broadway credits include Tony nominations for The Royal Family (2009), Waiting in the Wings (1999), the LCT production of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance (1996), Hay Fever (1985), Pack of Lies (1984), Heartbreak House (1983) and Old Times (1972).  She won the Theatre World Award for The Climate of Eden (1952) and was a founding member in Ellis Rabb’s APA-Phoenix Company (1960-67). Her London theater credits include Dame Laurentia McLachlan with John Gielgud in his farewell theatre performance in The Best of Friends (1988); All My Sons (1982); Desdemona opposite Richard Burton in Othello (1956, Old Vic); and at The Royal National Theatre, Ophelia with Peter O’Toole in Hamlet (1964) and Yelena with Laurence Olivier in his celebrated production of Uncle Vanya (1964).  Off-Broadway: All Over (Obie Award, 2003).  Films include Aunt May in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy and Tom and Viv (Oscar nomination). TV: An Emmy Award winner for “Notorious Woman,” and a Golden Globe Award winner for “Holocaust.”

Terrence McNally has had a remarkably far-ranging career, including at least one new work on Broadway in each of the last six decades. A revival of his play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune begins performance on Broadway on May 4, starring Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon.  In 2018 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a recipient of the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. He has won four Tony Awards for his plays Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and his musical books for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime. He has written a number of TV scripts, including “Andre’s Mother,” for which he won an Emmy Award. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards from the Dramatists Guild. In 1996 he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. He wrote the libretto for the operas Great Scott and Dead Man Walking, both with music by Jake Heggie. Other plays include Mothers and Sons; Lips Together, Teeth Apart; The Lisbon Traviata; A Perfect Ganesh; The Visit; The Full Monty; Corpus Christi; Bad Habits; Next; The Ritz; Anastasia; It’s Only a Play; Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?; and The Stendhal Syndrome.

Harold Wheeler is an accomplished orchestrator, composer, conductor, record producer and arranger. In a career spanning more than five decades, he has received numerous accolades, including Emmy, Tony and Drama Desk nominations and a lifetime achievement award from the NAACP Theatre Awards.   Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Wheeler began studying piano at age five, when he played for Sunday school at his church. He continued his studies through elementary and high school, which eventually led him to Howard University. While at Howard, Wheeler met other budding musical talent, including Roberta Flack, Donny

Hathaway and his future wife, Hattie Winston. Upon graduating, he attended the Masters of Music program at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. Although best known for his 17 seasons as musical director for the ABC show Dancing with the Stars, Wheeler has enjoyed many years of success over several mediums.  Wheeler started his career as an assistant program director for CBS-FM Radio and began composing his own music and coaching other performers. Wheeler’s talents led him to legendary composer Burt Bacharach, who hired him to conduct his musical Promises, Promises. At the time, Wheeler became the youngest conductor on Broadway. He would go on to work on some of Broadway’s most memorable shows, including: Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, A Chorus Line, The Wiz , Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music and Dreamgirls . He has earned six Tony Award nominations for his work on The Life , Little Me , Swing, The Full Monty, Hairspray and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels , and won a Drama Desk Award for his work on Hairspray. In addition to his theatre work, Wheeler gained extensive experience in television and film. In 1971, he formed his own jingle house. Throughout the decade he composed, arranged and produced more than 500 jingles for companies such Pepsi, Coca-Cola, TWA, United Airlines, McDonald’s and Folgers. Wheeler has served as musical director for special events, including the Primetime Emmy Awards, the People’s Choice Awards, the Democratic National Convention and the American Film Institute Awards, and served as co-musical director for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics. Wheeler was the second African-American to conduct the Academy Awards, and has done so on four occasions. In 2018, he earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Music Direction for his work on the 90th Academy Awards. Wheeler has arranged and produced for Aretha Franklin, Anita Baker, Peabo Bryson, Della Reese, Nina Simone, B.B. King, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, Freda Payne, Kathleen Battle, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Joe Cocker, Dizzy Gillespie, Gloria Gaynor, Whitney Houston, Stephanie Mills, and Debbie Allen among scores of other performers.

The American Theatre Wing’s 73^rd Annual Tony Awards, hosted by James Corden, will air on the CBS Television Network on Sunday, June 9, 2019 (8:00-11:00 PM, ET/delayed PT) live from Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The Tony Awards, which honors theatre professionals for distinguished achievement on Broadway, has been broadcast on CBS since 1978. The Tony Awards are presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing.

The Nominations for the 2019 Tony Awards will be announced live, by Bebe Neuwirth and Brandon Victor Dixon, on Tuesday, April 30, 2019 from the New York City Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The event will be streamed on Facebook LIVE (at Facebook.com/TheTonyAwards), and covered by CBS This Morning at 8:30am ET.

Follow the Tony Awards on Twitter and Instagram for real-time updates on the nominees as they are announced (@TheTonyAwards). The entire announcement will also be available on TonyAwards.com after the event.

The post Rosemary Harris, Terrence McNally & Harold Wheeler to be Honored with 2019 Special Tony Awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre appeared first on StageZine.

SISTERS OF THE EMPIRE: (left to right) Rosemary Harris, Romola Garai with Bhavesh Patel in ‘Indian Ink.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

INDIAN INK
By Tom Stoppard
Directed by Carey Perloff
Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre
111 West 46th Street
212-719-1300, http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/

By Scott Harrah

An epic about an English poetess and an Indian painter in British Raj-era India circa 1930 is heady, tricky stuff for a stage saga.  This formidable revival depicts, in exhausting detail, a story that goes back and forth between colonial India and 1980s England, using limited, colorful sets as a backdrop for this overstuffed tale of Anglo-Indian politics and art, Hinduism and metaphysics, and Britain’s exploitation of its “Empire.” It is this glorious culture clash of two worlds that gives Tom Stoppard’s 1995 drama its consistently riveting force.

When the ailing poetess Flora Crewe (Romola Garai) arrives from England in Jummupur, a native region of India (ironically, in the same year as Gandhi’s famous salt march), she is greeted by subservient men who place marigold garlands around her neck and carry her in a sedan chair as if she were actual royalty. Back home, Flora was anything but regal.  She wrote a scandalous book, A Nymph and Her Muse, and was vilified by the press and public for creating an “obscenity,” but in this land of saffron and oppressive heat, she is an instant celebrity. She will be painted by artist Nirad Das (Firdous Bamji) while fighting off the affections of a garish rajah and a British colonial officer, and struggle keeping the truth about her illness a secret.

Juxtaposed amongst all this romancing of the Raj is time travel back to England in the mid-1980s and Flora’s sister, Eleanor Swan (Rosemary Harris). Eleanor must contend with American author Eldon Pike (Neal Huff), a man determined to get some juicy tidbits for a possible biography and a book of Flora’s letters.  While serving Victorian sponge cake and lots of tea, she must also deal with the probing questions of Anish Das (Bhavesh Patel), the son of the painter Nirad.

Staying focused on everything happening in India and England simultaneously is challenging.  In addition, there is much chatter about “rasas”, tonal schemes uniting forms of Indian art, the blue hue of the god Krishna, and dialogue peppered with endless Anglo-Indian words and phrases. All this might be impressive to British Indian historical scholars. However, talk of going “up the country” and being “sent back to Blighty in a dooley feeling rather dikki” is downright confusing to modern American audiences.  Regardless, Mr. Stoppard’s play keeps us enthralled with many twists about the mysteries of Flora’s Indian escapades. Indian Ink is based on Mr. Stoppard’s 1991 BBC radio play In the Native State, but here, with the help of Neil Patel’s gorgeous sets, everything unfolds magnificently  in the dusky yet vivid colors of the subcontinent.

It is always a pleasure to see the great Rosemary Harris, a nine-time Tony Award nominee and a veritable stage legend.  Her Eleanor is elegant and musical, and we are enraptured by her very presence anytime she is on the stage. Ms. Harris gives everything she has and more to this supporting role.

Romola Garai is winsome in all the right places as Flora, exuding the right mix of charm and enigma to the role.

Besides Ms. Harris, there are many other fine supporting performances, particularly that of Mr. Patel as Anish Das, the dashing son of the painter with whom Flora allegedly had an “erotic relationship.”  Neal Huff is also quite effective as the Texas professor Eldon Pike, a man who is a composite of every scurrilous American biographer digging for dirt.

Director Carey Perloff makes all the time and locale-shifting action gel, but that is a tall order indeed with the complications of Mr. Stoppard’s sometimes bombastic dialogue.  As in many of Mr. Stoppard’s works, it is draining just comprehending everything at times, for all the visual and verbal symbolism gets tiresome.  Still, Indian Ink, although hardly one of Mr. Stoppard’s better plays, is worthwhile for many reasons, particularly its portrayal of the inane self indulgence of the English during the “Empire” era.  Granted, the British Raj is an endless source of nostalgia for Anglophiles, but Mr. Stoppard brilliantly shows what nincompoops the colonial Brits truly were, “ruling” a faraway land that didn’t belong to them.

STAGE LEGEND RETURNS: The great Rosemary Harris with Bhavesh Patel in ‘Indian Ink.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

‘RASAS’ ARE ALL THE RAJ: (left to right) Firdous Bamji & Romola Garai in ‘Indian Ink.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

ARRIVAL IN JUMMAPUR: Romola Garai (center), Ajai Naidu (with umbrella) & cast of ‘Indian Ink’. Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 1, 2014
Reviewed at press performance on September 27, 2014

The post Tom Stoppard’s ‘Indian Ink’: Romancing the Raj appeared first on StageZine.