Best supporting actor

Following a season in which he played a series of demanding leading roles, John Hutton took a backseat to his fellow Denver Center Theatre Company actors and, in the process, introduced audiences to his performing persona's seldom-seen byways. The lanky leading man rendered an authoritative portrait of a browbeaten bliss juggler in the world premiere of A Hotel on Marvin Gardens, and although The Winter's Tale provided him with precious few scenes in which to project Leontes's tragic depths, Hutton perfectly captured the "diseased mind" of a character often referred to by critics as an Othello who is his own Iago. In Side Man, he veered through the part of a trombone-playing heroin addict with cooler-than-hep fluidity. As Hutton himself has often done in the past, his multifaceted creations intrigued without casting a harsh glare on peripheral concerns.