Nominations for the 36th annual Carbonell Awards have been announced, and those sounds you hear are champagne corks popping in Palm Beach County, plus some crying or loud indignation (righteous or otherwise) in Miami-Dade and Broward.
With a runaway lead of 25 nominations, most for its productions of the musicals Crazy for You, The Sound of Music and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre helped Palm Beach County companies score a dominant 43 nominations for their 2011 shows. Miami-Dade theaters chalked up 28 Carbonell nods, while Broward troupes got 26. The nominees will find out who wins on April 2, when the awards are presented at Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Center for the Performing Arts.
Those three Maltz musicals are in contention for the best musical Carbonell, competing against the Coral Springs-based Broward Stage Door Theatre’s The Light in the Piazza, which got nine nominations, and Song of the Living Dead at Davie’s Promethean Theatre, which earned five.
Notably absent from best musical contention is the boisterous production of Hairspray done at Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables. The show’s director and leading “lady” David Arisco (he played big mama Edna Turnblad) was also snubbed.
On the drama side of the ledger, Actors’ production of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County is in contention for best play, though Arisco was again passed over for his direction. Also nominated for best play honors are Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Palm Beach Dramaworks; Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park (which won the 2011 Pulitzer) and the world premiere of Michael McKeever’s Stuff, both at the Caldwell Theatre Company in Boca Raton; and the production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman by Fort Lauderdale’s relatively new Infinite Abyss Productions. Coral Gables’ GableStage, which has often won the best play Carbonell, got shut out of the category this time.
McKeever’s Stuff is also in contention for the best new work Carbonell, a category that this year largely celebrates South Florida’s growing community of playwrights. Also vying for the honor are David Michael Sirois’ Brothers Beckett at the Miami Springs-based Alliance Theatre Lab, Christopher Demos-Brown’s Captiva, a Zoetic Stage production that premiered at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, and Carter W. Lewis’ The Cha-Cha of a Camel Spider, the last show presented at West Palm Beach’s Florida Stage before it folded in June.
Several nominees have multiple reasons to celebrate, and two of them live in the same household. Avi Hoffman is nominated as best actor in a play for Superior Donuts at GableStage, best supporting actor in a musical for Hairspray at Actors’ Playhouse. Hoffman’s wife, Laura Turnbull, is nominated as best actress in a play for August: Osage County at Actors’ Playhouse, best supporting actress in a play for Lombardi at Plantation’s Mosaic Theatre.
Other multiple Carbonell contenders are Mark Martino, up for his direction of the Maltz musicals Crazy for You and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (he also got a choreography nod for Joseph); Chrissi Ardito, nominated for her choreography of The Music Man at Stage Door and Song of the Living Dead at Promethean; and Ellis Tillman, honored for his costume designs for Actors’ Hairspray, Promethean’s Song of the Living Dead and GableStage’s In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play).
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