Welcome back to Tony Talk, a column in which Gold Derby contributors Sam Eckmann and David Buchanan offer Tony Awards analysis. As the fall season on Broadway barrels forward, we discuss a trio of new plays and play revivals.
David Buchanan: Sam, we’ve had a very busy, very buzzy past couple of weeks on Broadway with the opening of multiple high-profile productions: Other Desert Cities, The Imaginary Invalid, and 860. Let’s start with the show with the most star-wattage, Other Desert Cities, which opened Oct. 18 and marks the first revival of the play since its Tony Award-winning original production in 2011. It also marks the long-awaited Broadway debut of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, which we both wrote about eagerly back in June; she’s joined onstage by theater stalwarts Allison Janney, Ed Harris, and Lily Rabe, plus fellow Broadway newcomer Joe Keery.
The production is the latest entry in a wave of plays boasting über-celebrity talent, including last season’s Art with Neil Patrick Harris, Bobby Cannavale, and James Corden; Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal; Glengarry Glen Ross with Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Bill Burr; and even Good Night, and Good Luck with George Clooney. With the exception of the latter, most of those productions fell flat with Tony nominators. But having really enjoyed this production of Other Desert Cities, I’m bullish about its Tony Awards prospects in some major categories. What did you think of this iteration, and do you feel similarly that it will buck this trend of Tony snubs?
Sam Eckmann: Other Desert Cities drew a scattershot of reactions from critics, ranging from praise to pans. But I fully expect the production to overcome this mixed critical reception when it comes time for this spring’s Tony nominations. The play is a riff on a classic familial drama where long-buried family secrets are unearthed to shocking effect — a proven crowd-pleasing genre.
Based on conversations I’ve had with voters, I strongly suspect this is one of the reasons why Purpose was able to pull off a victory over the buzzier-but-weirder Oh Mary! in the Best Play category. The genre gives off an air of importance, but it’s also incredibly accessible storytelling to the widest range of audience members. Director John Benjamin Hickey gives his cast the space to make us laugh and to punch us in the gut, so I think this show is firmly in the conversation for a Revival of a Play nomination.
The original Other Desert Cities debuted in November 2011 and featured Stockard Channing, Judith Light, Stacey Keach, Rachel Griffith, and Thomas Sadoski. Those actors made a meal out of their roles — Channing and Light were Tony nominated, with Light winning — and I can still vividly recall many of their best moments from the story. Although the recency of that original production makes it easy to compare the revival to its predecessor, the revival cast is charting their own unique course with the material and finding ways to make it resonate anew.
Case in point: Joe Keery, who most folks will know from Stranger Things, takes a role that often feels like he’s existing in the background and turns it into the showstopper of the evening. Keery is a complete natural onstage and creates a fully realized and physicalized character. With a cast that includes previous Tony nominees like Janney and Rabe, I didn’t expect a Broadway first-timer to be the most likely Tony nominee of the bunch. But I’d be shocked if Keery missed a nomination.
The big story, of course, is Louis-Dreyfus. I thought she acquitted herself incredibly well on stage, using the comedic rhythms she established on Veep to navigate some of the early comedic moments. Then when the script calls for a more serious performance, the Emmy winner displays a sort of shattered stillness that we rarely glimpse from her. I see Louis-Dreyfus ultimately earning a spot in the lead actress lineup. Would you agree with that assessment?
Buchanan: Yes, I wholeheartedly agree about Keery and Louis-Dreyfus! Those are my two most likely Tony nominees from the ensemble as well. As we know from her extensive television work, Louis-Dreyfus has an unparalleled knack for finding the funniest possible way to deliver a line and convey myriad emotions with her facial expressions. What made her performance on Veep so successful was not just that she was ferociously funny, but also that she found shades of tragedy and pathos in Selina Meyer, too.
All this to say that as fun and sharp as she is in the comedic scenes of Other Desert Cities, she also excels in the dramatic ones. By the time we arrive at the revelations in the second act, her truly moving performance recasts everything which came before, and we see just how performative Polly’s cheer and barbed wit have been. To add to your thoughts on Keery, I was most impressed with a fleeting moment in the second act after his standout, breezily-delivered monologue, in which Trip’s emotions finally explode to the surface. His delivery is so well-calibrated, simultaneously unexpected and very much in character, and not a beat too overdramatic.
Other Desert Cities could share some categories with The Imaginary Invalid, a new adaptation of the classic Molière play by sensational clown Bill Irwin, who also stars in the title role. This production, directed by Brandon J. Dirden — a Tony nominee for last year’s Waiting for Godot — feels to me like something Tony nominators will either be completely taken with or it won’t fit their sensibilities at all. Which way do you think the Tony nominators may slice?
Eckmann: It’s tricky to assess Tony odds of The Imaginary invalid at this early stage. The Revival of a Play category has the largest amount of contenders of any of the big four production categories so competition is stiff. To make matters even more challenging, many of those contenders feature themes that will appear incredibly timely or important. By contrast, The Imaginary Invalid is a classic farce. Can we glimpse some commentary about greed, ignorance, and a fear of mortality? Sure, but this comedy’s ambition lies less in delivering a poignant message and more in making the audience guffaw with a record-setting number of enema jokes. It’s hard to say if voters will gravitate toward toilet humor amid a sea of more serious offerings.
Bolstering the show’s chances is the fact that this production features a new translation of Molière’s script courtesy of Irwin. Per Tony Awards rules, this should mean that Irwin’s name appears on the ballot and he would receive a nomination alongside the production’s producers if The Imaginary Invalid is nominated for Best Play Revival. The Boys in the Band, A Soldier’s Play, Appropriate, and Eureka Day all recently won this category with their playwrights appearing on the ballot, so that could be a factor that ultimately helps the show get nominated.
I’m less sure of Irwin’s prospects in the lead actor race, but that’s only because that category is the most competitive race of the year; we already have at least nine men eligible for that category and other contenders will emerge from yet-to-be-announced spring plays. Irwin would make an inspired pick to join the lineup, however, as he puts his expert clowning skills and elastic face to perfect use as the worried hypochondriac at the center of the play. Even though he spends a majority of the show sitting in a chair center stage, he is able to execute a constant stream of physical comedy bits. Irwin’s clowning skills in the 2009 revival of Waiting for Godot were bizarrely overlooked by Tony voters, so a nomination this year would be welcome recognition.
Do you think any of the supporting plays of The Imaginary Invalid can score acting nominations? Rachel Bloom makes a confident Broadway debut, and has a ball as the one character who can consistently break the fourth wall. And one should never count out Broadway mainstay Brooks Ashmanskas. Two years ago, the Tonys were cool to the stage version of Smash, but that didn’t stop Ashmanskas from earning a Tony nomination. In The Imaginary Invalid, he gets to camp it up with two flamboyant characters and a master class in “cape acting.” On that note: Karen Perry seems like a shoo-in for a costume design bid for her fabulous creations that burst with color and texture. Who were you taken by?
Buchanan: I was indeed most taken by Bloom, who has great moments of both physical comedy and deadpan delivery, plus she so effectively undercuts the most extreme farcical elements of the show until she gets to really lean into it herself when she pretends to be a new doctor tending to Argan. Ashmanskas is a smart call-out, too. I thought his scene as Dr. Diafoirus in the second half of the play, in which he manically prattles off all of the maladies and various “-pepsias” that Argan will endure while Allen Lee Hughes’ lighting turns an increasingly nauseous green was a highlight of the production. I personally really enjoyed Dylan Baker’s performance as Argan’s brother and thought the plot mechanics really clicked into gear upon his arrival. But while he brings a lot of gravitas to the role, I fear he’s not overtly showy enough to break through among the other members of the ensemble.
I’d also single out Beowulf Boritt’s forced-perspective set for a likely Tony nomination for Scenic Design. Not only do the soft-colored pastel walls with black-and-white checkerboard tile and beautiful, scrolled proscenium appropriately set the stage for the world of this farce, but the opening of the production features the ensemble, in commedia dell’arte masks, assembling the set themselves to initiate the proceedings. It is a fun, very effective, and stylistic opening to the production that I think will linger in Tony nominators’ minds all the way to April.
You mentioned the extremely competitive Best Actor in a Play category, which is a terrific segue to talk about Billy Crystal‘s latest solo show, 860. The play uses the devastating Palisades fires of 2025 and the loss of his home as a frame to talk about his career, family, and memories of the house that they lived in for almost 50 years. Crystal, of course, won a Tony for 700 Sundays in the Best Theatrical Event category, but that honor has been defunct for over 17 years, so 860 will likely compete in the Best Play instead.
Depending on how the rest of the field shakes out, I think 860 is a definite contender for a nomination and for Crystal in Best Actor. This show and his performance are as hilarious as you’d expect of the expert comedian, but at almost every turn, he delivers an emotional wallop, like when he’s reminiscing about his late friends Robin Williams and Rob Reiner.
At the end of the show, when Crystal relives in painstaking detail how the embers engulfed his house and he juxtaposes photos of the family home from days gone by with images of the rubble, much of the audience was audibly sniffling. The whole evening is exquisitely written, and I have no doubt Tony nominators will be clamoring to acknowledge Crystal in one or both of these categories. Do you agree?
Eckmann: 860 is a profoundly moving and hysterical night of theater that only someone like Crystal could create. I imagine that Tony nominators will be quite taken with the star’s foray into deeply personal territory. Few other stars have the deft skill to wring laughs from impersonating luminaries like Williams or Muhammad Ali in one moment, and then deliver a devastating, introspective gut punch in the next.
Though I personally think 860 is worthy of Tony recognition, we are in a bit of uncharted territory with this one. If the Theatrical Event category still existed, 860 would be a guaranteed nominee and likely winner. But with that trophy out of the picture, it’s hard to know if nominators will embrace 860 in the Best Play race. The show is something like a memoir come to life and doesn’t neatly fit the definition of a typical play. I can picture some nominators choosing to throw their votes behind more traditional offerings instead.
While its prospects for Best Play feel like a bit of a toss up to me, I feel much more bullish on Crystal’s chances in lead actor. The script is designed to showcase the performer’s skill as a showman, and Crystal has us in the palm of his hand from the moment he walks on stage. He doesn’t just lead us through laughter and heartbreak, he makes it all look absolutely effortless. That looks like a Tony nomination to me.
