

Tovah FeldshuhThe Broadway Beauty Pageant now in 7th year is a hilarious show benefiting the Ali Forney Center, NYC s leading resource for homeless LGBTQ youth. At the annual event male performer from current Broadway shows compete for the title. Award winning actress Tovah Feldshuh returned as host this year and the contestants were Callan Bergmann (Silence!
Bertie Carvel
The Broadway musical MATLILDA scored five Drama Desk Awards the most of any nominated show. The musical imported from Britain about a little girl triumphing over the evil adults ruling her world, won for outstanding musical, featured actor Bertie Carvel, lyrics, book and set design. MATILDA'S main competition for the TONY AWARDS, KINKY BOOTS, a new musical by Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fiersten was not nominated by the Drama Desk in those categories, however BILLY PORTER the star of KINKY BOOTS won for outstanding actor in a musical winning over some tough competition that included Tom Hanks and Nathan Lane.
By: David ShewardLaila Robbins (Nominee "Sorry"), Richard Kind (Winner "The Big Knife")This time of year in the New York theater is crazy with the amount of prizes handed out. The week started with a one-two punch of award shows--the Drama Desks on Sunday May 19 and the Obies on Monday May 20. For the last few years, the two have been scheduled this close together and are amazingly different. The DDs honors on, Off- and Off-Off-Broadway and while fairly eclectic in their nominations, the winners tend to be pretty conventional.
The steady drizzle didn't dim the spirits of the arrivals at the Red Carpet for the 58th Annual DRAMA DESK AWARDS held at The Town Hall.
Photography By Barry Gordin
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Click Here: Photos of the 2013 Drama Desk Award Winners
Winners List of the 2013 Drama Desk Awards
Richard Kind
Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812
By: David Sheward
It sounds like a recipe for disaster: a sung-through musical adaptation of a section of War and Peace employing a contemporary pop-rock vocabulary and preceded by a dinner service in a nightclub atmosphere. But this challenging immersive experience manages to capture the raw universal emotions of Tolstoy's sweeping classic in an intimate setting. It's as if each audience member is in the opera box next to naïve Natasha Rostov when she first catches a glimpse of the devastatingly handsome Anatole Kuragin or in the sweaty, vibrant club where cerebral Pierre Bezukhov challenges the arrogant Dolokhov to a duel.
New Dramatists 64th Anniversary Spring Luncheon
Seth Gelblum, Tonya Pinkins By: Isa Goldberg
I don't know about you, but if I were seeking someone in the theater to get warm and fuzzy with, I wouldn't choose a lawyer. Certainly not one with the reputation for being among Broadway's most prominent power brokers. Such is the reputation of Seth Gelblum, this year's New Dramatists' honoree.
The 2013 Drama Desk Award winners are:
Laura Osnes, Billy Porter
Outstanding Musical
"Matilda"
Outstanding Play
Christopher Durang, "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike"
Outstanding Revival of a Musical or Revue
"Pippin"
Outstanding Revival of a Play
"Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
Outstanding Actor in a Musical
Billy Porter, "Kinky Boots"
Outstanding Actress in a Musical
Laura Osnes, "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella"
By: David Sheward
Andrea Martin, Matthew James ThomasPippin is the ultimate razzle-dazzle con job, but it's a magnificently entertaining one. The story purports to advocate the joys of ordinary, workaday life, but only after stunning its audience with two and half hours of amazing theatricality. Bob Fosse, the director-choreographer of the original 1972 production, knew Roger O. Hirson's wafer-thin book and Stephen Schwartz's pleasant songs would not be enough to put over the slight story of a medieval prince seeking his identity. So he threw in every trick he knew to distract from the plot's deficiencies. And it worked. Pippin ran for almost 2,000 performances, and Fosse won Tonys for his choreography and direction (the latter over Harold Prince for A Little Night Music).
Nathan LaneNew York May 17, 2003: The Drama League announced the winners for the 79th Annual Drama League Awards at a star-studded luncheon hosted by Debra Messing and David Hyde Pierce in the ballroom of the Marriott Marquis Times Square. Nathan Lane won the Drama League's prestigious 2012-2013 Distinguished Performance Award for The Nance over a list of more than 50 nominees that included Cicely Tyson, Billy Porter, Tom Hanks, Bette Midler, and Alex Baldwin. KINKY BOOTS produced by Daryl Roth was honored as the season's Distinguished Production of a Musical, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike was named Distinguished Play, Pippin picked up Distinguished Revival of a Musical and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was named Distinguished Revival of play.
By: David Sheward
The Phone Smash Heard Round the Net
Phillipa Soo as Natasha in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812
It was the second act of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, Dave Malloy's pop-opera environmental adaption of a section of War and Peace, performed in a restaurant setting near the West Side Highway after a successful run at ArsNova.
I'll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers
By: Patrick Christiano
Bette Midler as Sue MengersBette Midler has returned to Broadway in her first non singing role as the legendary gossip loving "superagent" Sue Mengers, a part that suits the star's brassy yet warm, larger than life persona to a T. The vehicle for Midler's return after a 40 year absence is Tony Award winning (Red)playwright John Logan's affectionate new comedy, "I'll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers," helmed by director Joe Mantello as an intimate 75 minute entertaining evening of campy gossip with the former William Morris agent rehashing her heyday in 1970's Hollywood.
Fast and Funny at 54 Below
By: David Sheward
Peter Bartlett, Harriet HarrisThe New York Drama Critics Circle Awards are usually held in a crowded bar with all the honorees, critics, friends, and cast members standing up and pushed up against each other as if they were in the subway. This year, the ceremony, held on Mon. May 13, was moved to the more spacious 54 Below cabaret room. Critics mingled with actors, playwrights, directors, producers, and press agents and there was no bloodshed.
By: David Sheward
Jose Llana, Ruthie Ann MilesPop, rock, disco, politics, and stunning theatrical imagination combine in this innovative musical now at the Public Theater. This bracingly original event-one hesitates to call it something as ordinary as a show-stretches the musical genre in form and content. Conceived by David Bryne of Talking Heads and employing a richly evocative score by Byrne, Fatboy Slim, Tom Gandey, and J Pardo, Here Lies Love tells the story of Imelda Marcos's relentless rise to power as first lady of the Philippines. It's significant that Byrne does not indulge in an obvious comedy number about his subject's famous shoe collection. Neither he, his musical collaborators, nor the ingenious staging of Alex Timbers stoops to such clichés.
Billy Porter "Kinky Boots"The Drama Desk hosted a champagne brunch for the 2013 nominees to meet with the press in the Grand Salon of JW Marriott Essex House on Central Park South in New York. The 58th annual Drama Desk Awards will be presented in a ceremony at Town Hall on Sunday May 19. The Drama Desk Awards are presented annually to honor outstanding achievement by theatre artists on Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway. The Drama Desk Awards are voted on by theatre critics, journalists, editors and publishers covering theatre in the metropolitan area.
Photography: Barry Gordin
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Another Opening of Another Box Office Blockbuster: Star Trek Into Darkness
By: Ellis Nassour
Summer blockbusters are rolling off Hollywood's assembly lines so fast - and weekly breaking cineplex box office records, it's hard to keep up with them. There're sequels and prequels and remakes. Already, and still on screens, are Iron Man 3, with Robert Downey Jr. back as Tony Stark alongside Gweneth Paltrow as Pepper, and as the Mandarin, Sir Ben Kingsley; The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire; and upcoming, Vin Diesel in Fast and Furious 6 to be followed only days later by The Hangover III. 