They wuz robbed

First, the good news. The nominations for the 2008–09 Equity Jeff Awards, announced last week ahead of the October 19 ceremony at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, get so much right. Among many heartening findings—including that, in a season when the marginalization of female playwrights has been a hot topic, all five nominees for new plays are by women—there aren’t many among the 179 noms that we’d strike from the roster.

But we’re here to root out the egregiously overlooked, the deserving artists Old Joe missed. Interestingly, this year some of the rightly nominated make the Jeff committee’s omissions all the more glaring.

Northlight’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, for instance, gets a well-earned Best Production nod; scan the rest of the list, though, and it would seem the only individual aspect that made it worth rewarding was the truly astounding blood effects by Steve Tolin (who, nonsensically, is in competition with fight choreographer Ned Mochel and video designer Mike Tutaj). We guess director BJ Jones’s metronomically precise pacing had nothing to do with the production’s success; nor did Cliff Chamberlain’s darkly charming portrayal of the titular assassin.

Two of the year’s best musicals, Caroline, or Change and A Minister’s Wife, picked up six nominations apiece. It’s astounding that not one was for Kate Fry, whose stellar performances in both shows were central to their appeal.

While Collaboraction’s terrific Jon netted noms for Tutaj and adapter Seth Bockley, JoJeff apparently didn’t notice how much of that show’s allure depended on the savvy turns by leads Lucas Neff and Kelly O’Sullivan as reality-deprived teens, not to mention Guy Massey’s supporting turn as their mentor-captor.

And as glad as we are to see Hollis Resnik’s Grey Gardens star turn represented, we searched the supporting categories in vain for the names of her intrepid costars Tempe Thomas, Ann Whitney, George Keating and Patrick Sarb.

Grey Gardens scenic designer John Culbert’s accomplishments go strangely unrecognized, too, as do Todd Rosenthal’s artfully grungy environment for Edward II and Dean Taucher’s appropriately depressing office-park lunchroom in Blackbird. The absence of Ray Nardelli and Joshua Horvath’s sound design among Rock ‘n’ Roll’s three nods, meanwhile, strikes us as particularly ironic; Stoppard may have prescribed the songs, but the designers created a sonic experience unlike anything we’ve heard at the Goodman before.

Speaking of rock, kudos to the committee for acknowledging Nick Garrison’s exquisite performance under Jesse Klug’s dazzling lights in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. (It’s small comfort for the total snubbing of the rest of American Theater Company’s outstanding season: The People’s Temple and Celebrity Row were ineligible for nominations, since Jeff’s first-nighters declined to recommend them, while the bracing True West–Topdog/Underdog experiment in collaboration with Congo Square just slipped voters’ minds since January.) So where’s Hedwig’s Production nod?

Also, for the second year, many awards have been partitioned into semi-arbitrary “Large” and “Midsize” subcategories, a move that’s well-meaning but misguided. If the Jeffs won’t cut the glut and put everyone back in the same league, the committee should at least hit reset on the musical category. If it does, we can start with good news again next year.

For a complete list of nominees, visit jeffawards.org.

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