Best Actor in a Drama 2007 | Ami Dayan | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Actor in a Drama

Ami Dayan

In this taut political play, written by an Israeli playwright, the first Intifada is covered from the perspective of a Palestinian family. Ami Dayan, who also directed, played the older of three brothers, Da'ud. This man was hardly likable. He was a compromised character, tough and clear-eyed, willing to shift, bargain, bully, do whatever it took to survive. As blame flashed among him and his brothers, it was hard to find the play's moral center. As an actor, Dayan has a strength and authority that's rare in this area, and he is committed to using his art to explore some of the most urgent questions of our time.

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama

Mare Trevathan

We've seen Mare Trevathan, one of the region's best actresses, far too little in the past few years, but her presence in what was essentially a cameo role galvanized Aphrodisiac, a play about a congressman and his mistress. Trevathan played Monica Lewinsky, and it was a tribute to her talent and conviction that the performance didn't evoke a thousand snickering late-night jokes. Blinking continuously, her Lewinsky was dopey but also somehow deep -- or at least full of emotion. When she spoke of her feelings for Bill Clinton and described how she wept on his chest after he'd refused to give himself fully by coming in her mouth -- because his attention was focused on his chair in the Oval Office -- we finally understood the tightness and intricacy of the sex-power knot.

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama

Josh Hartwell

Josh Hartwell is one of those intelligent, convincing actors who are never flashy but bring a low-key integrity to every role they play. As interpreted by Paragon, Hedda was almost a black comedy, a kind of nineteenth-century Heathers, but Hartwell's Tesman brought a depth and kindness to the evening. The character is usually played as a rambling, irritating bore, and while Hartwell was as blithery as the script required, there was also something concerned and sweet, a kind of suppressed awareness, flickering beneath his obtuse exterior.

Best Actor in a Musical

Scott Beyette

With the theater's skilled performers having all kinds of fun with the nugatory plot and animating Gershwin's fabulous songs with their fine voices, Crazy for You was an evening of pure froth and fun. Scott Beyette was a lithe, leaping, tapping wonder as Bobby, a young man trying to revive an old theater out west and win the heart of a skeptical local lass. In furtherance of his plan, Bobby impersonated impresario Bela Zangler. When A.K. Klimpke as the real Zangler arrived in town, he and Beyette mimicked and mirrored each other's astonished reactions in a priceless extended sequence of mime.

Best Actress in a Musical

Jean Arbeiter

Aldonza is the peasant wench that Don Quixote insists is his beloved Dulcinea. Jean Arbeiter, a fine singer and actress, made her so dirty and fierce, so angered by Quixote's fulsome praise ("Once, just once, would you look at me as I really am?") that when she finally capitulated, singing gently to the dying old madman, it was hard to hold back tears.

Best Supporting Actor in a Musical

Geoffrey Kent

Among many fine performances in musicals this season, Geoffrey Kent's Officer Lockstock stood out. It's a very clever, funny role as written, and Kent played it with relaxed authority: He made the officer-narrator stiff-necked and formal, but every now and then threw in a moment of pure gyrating lunacy.

Best Supporting Actress in a Musical

Genevieve Baer

The best comics actually get inside their characters; no matter how outrageous the people they play, they force themselves to believe every idiotic word and gesture. Think of the rich gallery of characters created by Carol Burnett and Tracey Ullman. Genevieve Baer is in this camp. She's a very talented mimic (as well as a good singer), but the best thing about her portrayal of Little Sally in Urinetown was that she resisted the temptation to parody a part that's pure parody itself, making the character part knowing street kid, part wistful innocent and altogether funny and watchable.

Best Season for an Actor

Leonard Barrett

Leonard Barrett is a tremendously appealing actor whose jazz-singing background shows in his work; there's always something improvisational and unexpected about it, and also a hint of hidden depths. There's kindness and humor, too. As Norman in Bas Bleu's The Dresser, Barrett's job was to get an egotistical actor whose mind and career were both waning on to the stage as King Lear. A fussy, sad clown with a will of iron, Norman's entire life was wrapped up in the old actor's career. In another extraordinary performance, Barrett played the Stage Manager in PHAMALy's Our Town, a role that calls on the actor to speak directly to the audience. It wasn't that Barrett breached the fourth wall, exactly, but that when he spoke, it simply wasn't there. There was just the actor talking quietly, humorously and profoundly to your very soul.

Best Season for an Actress

Simone St. John

We saw a lot of Simone St. John this season, from her tightly wound Jocena in Shadow Theatre Company's Four Queens through the angry little spitfire she created for the same company's Waitin' 2 End Hell. But she really outdid herself in the lighthearted comedy Plenty of Time, aging convincingly from a bratty sixteen-year-old to a dignified matron as her character explored politics, work, marriage and the meaning of love. Finally, St. John appeared as Martha Washington's slave, Ona Judge, in Curious Theatre Company's production of A House With No Walls, bringing passion to an otherwise rather talky and didactic play. We can't wait to see who she becomes next.

Best Performance in a One-Person Show

Diana Dresser

This light comedy by Theresa Rebeck had many sharp lines, but it pretty much stayed afloat on the charm and talent of Diana Dresser, playing a young mother about to re-enter the dating scene. Dresser tried on various items of clothing and a few pairs of shoes, periodically asking the audience for an opinion. Prone on the bed, she wriggled into her pantyhose in one of the funniest scenes we'd encountered all year. She was scatty; she was brash; she was scared; she was vulnerable. And we were with her every step of the way. It's almost de rigueur for a female comic to be plain and to make a trademark of rueful comments about her looks, but there's also a tradition of scatty, beautiful comediennes, from England's gorgeous Kay Kendall, who died far too young in the late 1950s, to the effervescent Jenna Elfman of Dharma & Greg. Dresser could easily join these ranks, but we have a suspicion she's equally good at the serious stuff.

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