Musical spurned by audience grabs 7 statuettes at Carbonell Awards
By Bill Hirschman

Floyd Collins, the dark musical that won critics' praise but struggled in vain to find an audience, won a small measure of vindication Monday as it swept most of the 2003 Carbonell Awards recognizing excellence in South Florida theater. The Actors' Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre's production about a trapped caver facing his mortality earned seven statues including best musical, best director of a musical for David Arisco and best actor in a musical for Tally Sessions. "For everyone who said this is a box office risk you were right," Executive Producer Barbara Stein joked. "People will come to understand plays like these and, little by little, we'll cultivate them into appreciating other kinds of theater, not just mainstream theater."

Choreography award Reggie Whitehead accepts his Carbonell Award for best choreography in a musical for Zombie Prom during the Carbonell Awards at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. The award honors members of the theater arts community in South Florida. (Freelance Photo/Ginny Dixon)

The 28th annual celebration at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts was more star-studded than usual featuring appearances by the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes and a special presentation to playwright Nilo Cruz, the first Hispanic to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama with last fall's Anna in the Tropics, a work commissioned and premiered by Coral Gables' New Theatre.

Cruz, whose story of cigar makers in Ybor City opens Sunday on Broadway, thanked the crowd for a standing ovation. "A great poet said one cannot know a country without knowing its literature. I feel like that by honoring me tonight here, you're making my work, words, characters be a part of literature."

Laura Turnbull set a landmark in the awards' history as the first person to win the top acting prizes for performances in both a play and a musical.

Nominated for three roles, Turnbell was honored for her anguished mother in Willy Russell's musical Blood Brothers and for the most introverted of the quirky MaGrath sisters in Beth Henley's play Crimes of the Heart -- both produced by the up-and-coming Shores Performing Arts Theater in Miami Shores.

"You got bookends," said Shores Artistic Director Rich Simone.

Broward productions were nearly shut out of the evening, but Palm Beach County's venues scooped up much of the rest of the statues designed by and named for sculptor Manuel Carbonell.

From Boca Raton's Caldwell Theater, the Turgenev comedy, Fortune's Fool, brought a best actor award for area favorite John Felix and best director honor for Michael Hall.

Manalapan's Florida Stage claimed best ensemble as well as best play for Constant Star, Tazewell Thompson's stirring play with music in which five actress-singers simultaneously portrayed African-American reformer Ida B. Wells.

The award for best new work did not go to any of the more conventional entries, but to Tin Box Boomerang, a comic look at trailer trash by Ivonne Azurdia, resident playwright at Miami's edgy, youth-oriented Madcat Theater Co.

The evening's roster of entertainers and presenters included Kate Mulgrew, currently incarnating Katharine Hepburn in Tea at Five; Rupert Homes, creator of The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the George Burns biography Say Goodnight Gracie and Paulette Ivory who sand a song from Elton John's rock musical Aida, the role that won her the best actress award for nonregional road shows.

More than 25 Carbonell Awards are given annually by critics and theater professionals. Proceeds from the ceremony provide scholarships for students in the tri-county area.

Fuente: SunSentinel
Noviembre - 2003