With all respect to the winners, the best thing in the 34th Elliot Norton Awards was guest of honor Mary Louise Wilson. Before her appearance Monday night on the Citi Shubert Theatre stage to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Boston Theater Critics Association, the audience watched a brief clip from a 2015 documentary about her with the apt title “She’s the Best Thing in It.’’ When the 84-year-old actress, who won a Tony Award in 2006 for playing the older Edith Bouvier Beale in “Grey Gardens,’’ did take the stage, she pointed out, “I’m probably the only one in this room who’s old enough to have been criticized by Elliot Norton. He liked me, thank God.’’
The American Repertory Theater’s “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,’’ the Huntington Theatre Company’s “Come Back, Little Sheba,’’ and the Lyric Stage Company of Boston’s “My Fair Lady’’ were the biggest winners at the ceremony, celebrating the best performers and productions of the past year, with three awards each.
Association president Joyce Kulhawik started off the upbeat evening by referring to the Elliot Norton Awards — informally called the “Norties’’ — as “world famous.’’ This was the night, she said to the theater community, “when we put down the poison pens; this is the night when we just love you.’’ She also paid tribute to the local scene, noting our social and political divisions — “Our theater companies have stepped into the breach and dared to talk about what needs to be talked about.’’
An unusual number of winners were not able to attend the ceremony because they were working elsewhere. Massachusetts native Jennifer Coolidge, who won outstanding actress, midsize theater for Nora Theatre Company’s “Saving Kitty,’’ was in Los Angeles; her message, read by Nora artistic director Lee Mikeska Gardner, said that she would love to receive an Oscar but that the Norton was “a much bigger deal from the town I grew up in.’’
Two others who were recognized Monday night, Matthew Aucoin and Johnnie McQuarley, are also currently working in Los Angeles. Aucoin received a Special Citation for his ART-produced opera “Crossing.’’ (His father, Boston Globe theater critic Don Aucoin, is a member of the association but did not vote on the citation or take part in the discussion of it.) Thanking his collaborators in a video segment, he said, “It takes a village to raise an opera.’’ McQuarley was named outstanding actor, midsize theater for the title role in Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s “Othello.’’ The award was presented by Tamara Hickey, who won a Norton Award last year. When ASP artistic director Allyn Burrows showed up to collect the award for McQuarley, Hickey said, “You look so much like my husband,’’ and gave him a big kiss. (Burrows in fact is Hickey’s husband.)
Among the most touching acknowledgments was the one by Zehava Younger, who won outstanding actress, small or fringe theater, for the title role in Boston Children’s Theatre’s “The Diary of Anne Frank’’ (the winner for outstanding production by a small theater); she thanked her parents “for schlepping me back and forth.’’ Tim Lawton, who won for outstanding musical performance by an actor, midsize, small or fringe theater, playing Mary Cheney in the Gold Dust Orphans’ “Thoroughly Muslim Millie,’’ squeezed the most thank-yous into his 60-second speech.
Lawton was also one of the evening’s musical stars, as the awards were interspersed with highlights from four of the nominated musicals. Performing “Near the Mosque Where You Live,’’ he invited the audience to sing along, the lyrics being projected behind him along with a bouncing ball. After Jennifer Ellis sang “I Could Have Danced All Night,’’ it was no surprise that she won outstanding musical performance by an actress, midsize, small or fringe theater, for playing Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady’’ as well as for her performance in Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston’s “Wonderful Town.’’
The evening ended with Steven Maler receiving the Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence. Maler is the founding artistic director of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, which for the past 20 years has presented free productions of Shakespeare — the last 19 on Boston Common — to “more than a million’’ spectators. In his speech, he described his company’s “gift’’ to Boston as a gift to himself as well, and he concluded by reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 29, the last lines of which read, “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings.’’
The awards are named for renowned Boston theater critic Elliot Norton, who died in 2003 at the age of 100.
Jeffrey Gantz can be reached at jeffreymgantz@gmail.com.
