In an exceptional Broadway season, the anticipation for Sunday’s Tony Awards is palpable. This week, the Broadway League and American Theater Wing hosted a swank cocktail party at the Sofitel Hotel. So packed was a second floor banquet hall, waiters could not move their trays through the crush of Broadway elite: former Tony winners, current contenders, and hopefuls.

Jefferson Mays in his trademark straw hat took up duties serving drinks when the bartender somehow disappeared. Christian Borle in shaved head chatted with Andrew Rannells. David Hyde Pierce, Laurie Metcalf, Jayne Houdyshell, Chris Cooper, Johanna Day, Daryl Roth, Sam Gold, and Lucas Hnath were just some notables we ran into. Working hard, Sam Gold, director of The Glass Menagerie revival and A Doll’s House, Part II, is working on a production of Hamlet opening mid-July. Having completed her run as Amanda Wingfield in Glass Menagerie, Sally Field wants to continue acting on Broadway.

A big surprise, Lucas Steele, the handsome Russian cad from Pierre, Natasha, & the Great Comet of 1812, is sweet as can be. A music prodigy who plays violin in this musical, he grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and improvised on a toy piano at age 3, figuring out a tune his mother was struggling to play for church. And John Douglas Thompson of August Wilson’s Jitney is now Cassius in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar to open this week.

Last Friday, the Broadway League produced its annual lunchtime concert, “Stars in the Alley.” Literally held in the space between Junior’s Restaurant and the Booth Theater, this revue of Broadway shows featured Tituss Burgess as M.C., who snickered at every diva – Bette Midler, and that Glenn Close who just had to be Norma Desmond one more time—for stealing work from him. Performers from Bandstand, Anastasia, A Bronx Tale, Phantom of the Opera, School of Rock, and many more made for an exciting smorgasbord, an outdoor matinee.

Regina Weinreich

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