Kevin Spacey pleaded with the event organisers for a bar. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Hello this week from New York. I've arrived just in time for the immediate aftermath of Sunday's 52nd Annual Drama Desk Awards. This prize-giving ceremony is to Broadway's Tonys what the Golden Globes are to the Oscars - a relatively free-wheeling affair that helps pave the way for the big night three weeks later.
Unlike the Tonys, the Drama Desks include off-Broadway productions, which means that A Moon for the Misbegotten's Eve Best found herself nominated alongside Meryl Streep. Best, who won the best actress award, seemed fully amazed. "I never thought I'd get to be in a category with Meryl Streep," she exclaimed, as the prize-giving threatened to move into a fourth hour. Best's co-star, Kevin Spacey, got one of the biggest laughs when he begged show organisers next year to provide a bar - "even a small one". (I'll drink to that.)
It was a good night for the Brits, and not just for Best. The victory parade included Mary Poppins' Bert, Gavin Lee, who all but galloped up to the stage in glee, and a characteristically tense-sounding Vanessa Redgrave. She won the prize for an outstanding solo performance for her Joan Didion monologue, The Year of Magical Thinking.
Earlier in the evening, Redgrave was made to field some impromptu questions from the ceremony's host - Broadway's reigning dizzy blonde, Kristin Chenoweth. Among other things, Chenoweth wanted to know whether and at what age Redgrave had graduated high school, which presumably beats a cross-examination about her political beliefs.
UK director Michael Grandage (Frost/Nixon) was singled out in best actor Frank Langella's acceptance speech as "a relentless, unwavering, immovable, impossible pain in the ass; Michael, I am very much in your debt". What of playwright Peter Morgan and Langella's co-star Michael Sheen? Langella didn't bother to mention either one.
Tom Stoppard's epic trilogy The Coast of Utopia took seven prizes, including best play and the directing trophy for Broadway (and Stoppard) veteran Jack O'Brien. It was a British show, yes, but served up in New York by a (mostly) American ensemble - 44 in all. "What a thrill that this challenge was met by Americans," said O'Brien.
His words will certainly not be music to the ears of the company of the newly opened $6m Broadway production of Coram Boy. That National Theatre play, like Utopia, recast for New York with local actors, and has announced that it will close next Sunday unless business improves.
Broadway can give, and generously, but it can just as readily send you packing.
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