They wuz robbed

Let’s be clear: As always, we’re thrilled for the many hardworking Off Loop theater artists who scored nominations last week for the Joseph Jefferson Citations (the awards given to non-Equity plays and musicals). It’s especially exciting to see beautiful but under appreciated ensembles likes those in Griffin Theatre’s Time and the Conways and Steep Theatre’s Book of Days get their due props.

Now let’s be dishy: As with any nominations list, the talk will be less about who got nominated than who didn’t. The dilemma, of course, is that Jeff voters constantly find themselves faced with such a plethora of non-Eq work that some of the finest still get left out in the cold (unlike Broadway’s Tonys, the voters of which hold their breath each season in hopes that enough decent shows will open to warrant even a five-nominee category). No matter what, somebody’s going to get the fuzzy end of the lollypop, so this season we’re crying a river for the following:

The Glory of Living (Profiles Theatre) Not accorded a single mention, this storefront rendering of Rebecca Gilman’s crime-spree play was the year’s most criminally neglected. Director Carla Russell, designer Keith Pitts (we’ve stayed in that fleabag hotel) and actors Darrell W. Cox and Kelly O’ Sullivan were all aces.

4.48 Psychosis (The Hypocrites) Jeff has always loved the ’Crites, and this season their productions of True West and Death of a Salesman were both showered with noms. But artistic director and scenic designer Sean Graney probably reached a career high with his visually staggering promenade production of the late Sarah Kane’s suicide-watch play. It’s especially disappointing that 4.48 went empty-handed, as Stacy Stoltz’s haunting central performance made Kane’s indecipherable text accessible. Weirder still is that Stoltz, who also did exemplary supporting work as the aching mother of a child prodigy in the House Theatre’s Dave DaVinci Saves the Universe, didn’t get mentioned for that show, either. What, we ask, does a girl have to do?

Speaking of the House, it’s great that Stephen Taylor’s brainless scarecrow in The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz was nominated, but Cliff Chamberlain’s vicious Tin Man (truly a guy without a heart) was the show’s dark emotional anchor, and got cheated by Jeff. Meanwhile, Tommy Rapley’s cunning direction also went unmentioned.

Other noble neglectees include: Joey Steakley and Robyn Senchak, who transcended the genre of parody performance in Hell in a Handbag’s SCARRIE—The Musical; Derrick Trumbly’s full-to-bursting work as the Boy in Theo Ubique’s The Fantasticks; Mary Fons as a coke-addled exotic dancer in the Gift Theatre’s Hurlyburly; P.J. Powers’s piercing performance as a deceased German physicist in TimeLine Theatre’s Copenhagen; and the entire ensemble of the Side Project’s intimate staging of Sarah Kane’s maddening Crave.

On the design front, Backstage Theatre Company’s Sean Sullivan made a beautiful mountain of office junk in the molehill of a space at the Heartland Studio for Denise Druczweski’s Inferno. Keith Parham’s ethereal lighting of Copenhagen evocatively captured both the afterlife and the all-too-real world. And no designer made an impression this year like Grant Sabin, who, among other things, created two filmy neonoir hellholes for Mary-Arrchie’s Buried Child and Killers. For their work, said designers received bubkes, bubkes and bubkes, respectively.

Finally, Uma Productions’ smartly directed, inventively designed and giddily acted Recent Tragic Events received no nods, which means dazzling Audrey Francis played a Joyce Carol Oates sock puppet clad only in a T-shirt and panties for nuthin’.—Chistopher Piatt and Novid Parsi

Jeff Citation winners will be announced at the Park West June 5.