Critics Circle: San Diego’s Tony Awards

Charlene Baldridge | Noticias del Centro

Thirty 2013 Craig Noel Awards were handed out Feb. 10 at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, in La Jolla, for the annual San Diego Critics Circle Awards. More than 500 actors, directors, patrons and friends turned out to socialize, feast, celebrate and be celebrated.

The Critics Circle instituted the awards in 2003 to honor Craig Noel, first artistic director of he Old Globe, who devoted his life to developing and enhancing theater in San Diego. During his tenure at the Old Globe, Noel staged in excess of 500 productions.

A group of winners display their awards at the post-ceremony reception for the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle’s 2013 Craig Noel Awards on Feb. 10. From left: Ion Theatre co-founder Trina Kaplan (Ion won the Don Braunagel Award for Oustanding Work at a Small Theatre); Zoe Sonnenberg and her mother, Moxie Theatre artistic director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg (with awards for Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Dramatic Production for Moxie’s coproduction of “The Bluest Eye” with Mo’olelo Performing Arts); San Diego Repertory Theatre Artistic Director Sam Woodhouse (with the Outstanding Resident Musical award for “In the Heights”), “Bluest Eye” underwriter Dea Hurston; and Javier Velasco (who won for his choreography in “In the Heights.” (Photo by Ion Moe)

Current members of the Critics Circle are David Codden (San Diego CityBeat), Carol Davis (Examiner, sdjewishworld.com), Bill Eadie (SandiegoStory.com, TalkinBroadway.com), James Hebert (U-T San Diego), Pat Launer (KSDS-FM), Ruth Lepper (freelance), Jean Lowerison (sdgln.com), Jeff Smith (The Reader), and Anne Marie Welsh (independent arts writer).

It was a big night for Moxie Theatre co-founder Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, whose production of “The Bluest Eye” (an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel, co-produced with Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company) received San Diego Theatre Critics Circle awards for Ensemble, Direction and Outstanding Production.

It was also a big night for the Old Globe. Their production of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” received awards for New Musical, Direction of a Musical (Darko Tresnjak), Lead Performance (Jefferson Mays, whose outrageously amusing video acceptance speech was taped back stage at the Broadway theater where the Tony-Award winning work is still playing, is posted on the Critics Circle web site), Orchestrations (Jonathan Tunick), and Scenic Design (Alexander Dodge).

In addition, Miles Anderson received Lead Performance in a Play for Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” and Don Sparks got the plaque for Featured Performance as Doolittle in “Pygmalion.” York Kennedy received an award for his lighting of “Other Desert Cities.” Randall Dodge, who received an award for Actor of the Year for his 2013 body of work, performed in this season’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” His other 2013 credits were two productions of “South Pacific” (Welk Theatre and Moonlight Stage), “The Wizard of Oz” (Moonlight), Chicago (Welk), and “The Sound of Music” (San Diego Musical Theatre).

A capacity crowd of 500 guests at the San Diego Theatre Critics’ 2013 Craig Noel Awards ceremony, held Feb. 10 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, in La Jolla. (Photo by Ion Moe)

Moved to tears and choking up, Dodge called his wife, performer Brenda Dodge, his two young children, and all his directors the Master of Thank You and the key to his amazing success performing in six shows during a single calendar year.

For the first time ever there were two Actor of the Year awardees. The other was admired actor Linda Libby, who appeared in “Grey Gardens” at ion theatre and “The Importance of Being Earnest” at Cygnet Theatre Company. “It was a great year,” she said. “As women in theater we fight for parts, sometimes feel we are standing in quicksand. Right now, the floor just got a bit more solid.”

Sean Sullivan — an actor raised at the Old Globe who also met his wife Lynne Griffith there — received Solo Performance honors for his San Diego Fringe Festival appearance in Philip Dmitri Glass’s “Baby Redboots Revenge.” Todd Blakesley, a longtime proponent of establishing a San Diego Fringe Festival, accepted the award for Sullivan, paying tribute to Sean’s late mother, Diane Sinor, who worked most of her life at the Globe, first as an actor and then as education director. “Hey, Diane, your kid got a Noelie,” Blakesley said.

The Fringe Festival received a Special Event award and so did La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival.

Ten-year-old Abby DeSpain, foreground, holds her award for Outstanding Young Artist for her performance in New Village Arts’ “Wait Until Dark.” She’s surrounded by the cast of “Wait Until Dark” at the San Diego Theatre Critics’ 2013 Craig Noel Awards ceremony, held Feb. 10 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, in La Jolla.(Photo by Ion Moe)

In addition to those previously mentioned, Outstanding Performance awards went to Phil Johnson for Bottom in Intrepid Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Musical,” Yolanda Franklin for multiple roles in Diversionary’s “The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler,” Erin Davie and Emily Padgett for La Jolla Playhouse’s “Sideshow,” and Deborah Gilmour Smyth for Lamb’s Players Theatre’s “Wit.” In accepting the award for Smyth, her colleague Cynthia Gerber said that Deborah writes she is south of the border watching whales, drinking tequila with her husband, Robert Smyth, and growing her hair back.

Sam Woodhouse received Outstanding Direction of a Musical for his San Diego Repertory Theatre production of “In the Heights,” produced with staff and students from the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts. The musical’s choreographer, Javier Velasco, was also a winner.

Of his theater’s success, Woodhouse said, “I just open the door and invite the right people in to play.” It follows then that San Diego jazz trumpet player Gilbert Castellanos received a special award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a play — the Rep’s “Federal Jazz Project.”

A complete list of awards and recipients may be found at the Critics Circle web site, sdcriticscircle.org.

—Charlene Baldridge moved to San Diego from the Chicago area in 1962. She’s been writing about the arts since 1979, and has had her features, critiques, surveys and interviews included in various publications ever since. Her book “San Diego, Jewel of the California Coast” (Northland Publishing) is currently available in bookstores. She can be reached at [email protected].