Jack O’Brien, artistic director of San Diego’s Old Globe since 1981, copped his third Tony Award at the 61st Tony Awards ceremony June 10. The coveted award for best direction of a play went to O’Brien for his Lincoln Center staging of Tom Stoppard’s three-part epic, “The Coast of Utopia,” which took home six additional statuettes. Just weeks before, O’Brien received the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his helming of “The Coast of Utopia.”
O’Brien’s previous Tony Awards were for his Broadway staging of William Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” in 2004 and the hit musical, “Hairspray” in 2003. The road to three wins in four years is not an example of overnight success: O’Brien’s previous nominations were for David Yazbek’s musical, “The Full Monty” (2001), Stoppard’s “The Invention of Love” (2001), Richard Nelson’s “Two Shakespearean Actors” (1992), and George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” (1977).
Of his most recent win, O’Brien said, “No award, given or withheld, could ever affect one way or the other the extraordinary experience we all felt in working on and realizing ‘Coast of Utopia.’ It is the most massive piece any of us will ever confront.”
“The Coast of Utopia” has a cast of 44 and its three parts unfold over the course of nine hours. The play follows a number of exiled Russians “” including the Bakunins and thinker, writer and revolutionary Alexander Herzen “” pre-revolutionary years spanning 1835-1868.
Of the Old Globe, O’Brien stated, “There isn’t a day in rehearsal or on this earth that I don’t celebrate, give thanks for and acknowledge my debt to my own theatre for the considerable good fortune I have been enjoying. Only the years I spent in happy and busy service to my beloved Globe could have occasioned in me the brave audacity to be able to tackle so many different kinds of events. I wonder if there was any mode of theatre that didn’t fall on me to pick up, complete or endeavor.”
O’Brien directs in an immense variety of genres including his recent, acclaimed Metropolitan Opera staging of Giacomo Puccini’s “Il Trittico.” He has staged more than 60 plays and musicals at the Globe. In the world beyond the Globe, he said, “I was the lad lifting the calf in the barnyard, and that calf grew to be a bull called ‘Coast of Utopia.'”
And what a bull it was, receiving ten Tony nominations in all and receiving a record-breaking seven wins, including O’Brien’s, best play (Stoppard), best supporting actor (Billy Crudup), best supporting actress (Jennifer Ehle), best scenic design (Bob Crowley and Scott Pask), best costume design (Catherine Zuber) and best lighting design (Brian MacDevitt, Kenneth Posner and Natasha Katz).
In his June 10 acceptance speech at Radio City Music Hall, O’Brien said, “I know what Everest looks like. “¦ I would like to thank Andre and Bernie [Artistic Director Andre Bishop and Executive Producer Bernard Gersten of Lincoln Center Theater] and the board of Lincoln Center for their bravery, some would say folly, in committing an entire year to us.”
Those privileged to have seen “The Coast of Utopia” know it certainly wasn’t folly and may be, as O’Brien says, not only the “ride of his life,” but the seeds of a national theater for the United States.
Meanwhile, back in San Diego, The Old Globe presents three Shakespeare plays “” “Hamlet,” “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “Measure for Measure” “” in rotation through September at the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre.
Opening in previews September 20 at the Globe is the world premiere of John Bucchino’s “A Catered Affair,” a new musical, with book by and starring Harvey Fierstein.
Through August 5 at the Spreckels Theatre, one may see The Old Globe’s sit-down production of “Avenue Q.”
Following that engagement the irreverent, Tony Award-winning musical, which features “full-puppet nudity,” begins a national tour.
Visit www.theoldglobe.org or phone (619) 23-GLOBE for information and tickets.