Matthew James Thomas & Rachel Bay Jones, Pippin

Ok, ok, they’re not actually nominated, but whatever: Rachel Bay Jones and Matthew James Thomas are wonderful in Pippin, and gosh darnit, they should be among the officially honored. Why? Because both manage to delivery thoroughly quirky, individual performances in the mega-watt machinery of a big Broadway musical—no small feat, indeed! For Thomas, this means his giggly sense of fun never gets lost; for Jones, it’s all about her particular, indescribable MO (you know what I’m taking about if you’ve seen the show). Their way with the material is unrepeatable and—in the very best sense—totally whimsical. I’m reminded of Jones’s wonderfully strange delivery of the line, “I was putting on my eyelash.” Pretty straightforward on the page, but fabulously odd as said by Jones. Thomas, too, is magnetic for how completely he does “his thing,” especially in his sweet interactions with his grandmother. These wonderful actors remind us that it is performers’ particularities rather than their “regularities” that make them most interesting.

Tony Shalhoub, Golden Boy
As a distraught, immigrant Italian father in this Odets oldie, Tony Shalhoub used a pitch-perfect accent as a direct channel to the pathos of his character. Shalhoub’s way around extended vowels and clattering consonants somehow make the role emotionally true; he used every Italian cadence and lifted phrase as another display of his character’s psychology, and the collective thrust was beautiful. If there’s any justice on Broadway, it’s Tony time for this real-life Tony!

Milly Shapiro, Bertie Carvel and Lauren Ward

The second act of Matilda reduced me to a blubbering snot-mess, in large part because of the title character’s touching relationship with her teacher, Miss Honey. The cross-generational bond is the heart of the show, and Lauren Ward as Miss Honey makes it work perfectly with easygoing, beautifully sung soul. The way she charts her symbiotic relationship with Matilda is expert and sensitive: Frightened, she and Matilda look to each other for strength, and in so doing receive it. It’s crazy moving, as is Ward’s simple and perfect delivery of my new favorite show tune, “My House,” itself a perfect pean to being satisfied with simple things. To boot, the show’s final sight—Ward cartwheeling into the sunset with Matilda—crystallizes all that is good about Ward and this production: their sincerity, their whimsy, and their sense of heart.

Photo by Sara Krulwich