The 27th annual Lucille Lortel Awards, hosted by Mario Cantone, were handed out last night at NYU’s Skirball Center. Among its seven nominations, Once converted three of them into wins: Best Musical, Best Choreography (Steve Hoggett), and Best Lighting (Natasha Katz). No other musical walked away with any prizes, but no other musical had received more than two nominations – not unusual since the Lortel’s creative categories are mixed, with both straight plays and musicals competing against together.
Laura Benanti
Laura Benanti presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to producer Richard Frankel, currently represented on Broadway with Leap of Faith, and Willem Dafoe inducted Richard Foreman onto the Playwrights’ Sidewalk. Others presenters included Alexis Bledel, Christian Borle, Michael Cerveris, Will Chase, Anna Chlumsky, Oliver Chris, Hugh Dancy, Paige Davis, Tate Donovan, Halley Feiffer, Steve Guttenberg, Rose Hemingway, Steve Kazee, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Fran Kranz, Norm Lewis, Lucy Liu, Constantine Maroulis, Cristin Milioti, Patrick Page, Annie Parisse, Sarah Paulson, Condola Rashad, Jeremy Shamos, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Josh Young.
Benanti also performed, as did The Broadway Boys, Voca People, and featured dancers Brad Barnes, Marc Heitzman, Ricky Kuperman, Reed Luplau, Sean McKnight, Holly Shunkey, and Matthew Tiberi. The creative team for the evening was Michael Heitzman (direction), Henry Aronson (musical direction), and AC Ciulla (choreography).