OK, people, time to start planning those Tony Award viewing parties for Sunday, June 10 on CBS.

We’ve got to get those dismal ratings up, so if you’re having people over, make sure they’re still setting their TiVos (and VCRs if you’re archaic) to record the telecast. If you’re a Nielsen family, do some creative figuring and say you watched the Tonys on all five of your TVs.

The show’s organizers have begun talking about what we’ll be seeing.

Audra McDonald will sing “Raunchy” from 110 in the Shade, for which she is nominated in the best actress in a musical category.

Christine Ebersole will sing “The Revolutionary Costume for Today,” which happens to be the best song in Grey Gardens, for which Ebersole is competing with McDonald in the best actress category.

The cast of Curtains, featuring David Hyde Pearce, will peform “Show People” and the adorable cast of Spring Awakening (so I’m biased — sue me) will perform a medley from the Duncan Sheik-Steven Sater score. The cast of Mary Poppins will perform — probably the TV-ready “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

The revival of A Chorus Line will likely trot out “One” again (we’ve seen that baby everywhere, from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to “The View”), and Raul Esparza will probably sing “Being Alive” from the revival of Company.

Fantasia, a recent replacement in the hit The Color Purple, is also slated to perform.

There won’t be a host (sorry, Nathan Lane) this year, but the list of presenters is impressive and includes Harry Connick Jr., Claire Danes, Neil Patrick Harris, Anne Heche, Marg Helgenberger, Felicity Huffman, Eddie Izzard, Jane Krakowski, Angela Lansbury, Robert Sean Leonard, Cynthia Nixon, Bernadette Peters, Christopher Plummer, Liev Schreiber, John Turturro, Usher, Vanessa Williams, Rainn Wilson and the cast of Jersey Boys.

Tony nominations were announced this morning, and to my great delight, Spring Awakening nabbed a leading 11 nominations, including two acting noms for Jonathan Groff (best actor in a musical) and John Gallagher Jr. (best featured actor in a musical).

Grey Gardens received 10 nominations, including one for Christine Ebersole (best actress in a musical), whom many consider the front runner.

In the play categories, Tom Stoppard’s mammoth, three-play cycle The Coast of Utopia snagged 10 nominations. In the acting categories, the best actress slot is filled with Broadway royalty: Angela Lansbury (Deuce), Vanessa Redgrave (The Year of Magical Thinking) and Swoosie Kurtz (Heartbreak House). Tough choice.

Bay Area theater fans got the first peek at several nominees:

Legally Blonde scored seven nominations: best book (Heather Hach); score (Music & Lyrics: Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin); actress (Laura Bell Bundy); featured actor (Christian Borle); featured actress (Orfeh); choreography (Jerry Mitchell); costume design (Gregg Barnes).

A Chorus Line received two nominations: best musical revival and featured actress (Charlotte d’Amboise).

Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me received one surprising nomination: featured actor (Brooks Ashmanskas).

One of the two nominees for special theatrical event is Kiki & Herb Alive on Broadway, which comes to San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater this summer. The other “special” nominee is the ventriloquism show Jay Johnson: The Two and Only.

For a complete list of nominations, visit the American Theatre Wing Web site.

The Tony Awards will be broadcast on June 10 on CBS. Start planning the party now.

Steve Kluger, a friend of Theater Dogs (FoTD), was so impressed by A Chorus Line in San Francisco (see the Aug. 25 entry) that he bought a ticket for a preview performance in New York.

Well, seems like the kids in the Chorus are poised to become a big hit…again.

Here’s what Steve has to say about his recent Broadway experience:

So I was at the first Broadway Chorus Line preview on Monday. Oh God, Chad. It was everything I wanted it to be. The applause and cheering were so consistent, it must have added 25 minutes to the running time. At the end of “I Hope I Get It”, when the cast is downstage with their headshots covering their faces, there are supposed to be four beats from the orchestra before Paul sings, “Who am I anyway? Am I my resume?” On Monday, there were 23. The audience just wouldn’t let the show go on.

My favorite part was afterward. The stage door is right on the street, so barricades were set up that would allow people to crowd against them but still permit the cast to have a narrow alley to get through. There were at least 75 people clamoring for autographs, and as each kid came out, he/she got an ovation. It generally took them each 10-15 minutes to get through the line. Stars are born. Just like in ‘75.

Sounds pretty exciting. Glad we got to see it first.

Received a fantastic e-mail from Steve Kluger, a novelist/playwright I’ve been corresponding with since I reviewed his play After Dark at the New
Conservatory Theatre Center. Kluger’s a wonderful writer — check out his novels Almost Like Being In Love and Last Days of Summer – and he brought his 9-year-old niece up to San Francisco recently to see the Broadway-bound revival of A Chorus Line at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.

Here’s what Kluger wrote about the experience:

Having seen various productions of varying quality in the years since the originals took over Broadway, I was hoping for a workmanlike production that would at least stand on its own and honor the legend. What I clearly wasn’t prepared for was having the top of my head taken off just like it was in 1975, when the same 19 characters left me equally incapable of speech once the curtain had come down.

Is this production as good as I think it is? … This is the first time in my musical theatre life that a revival actually defied the axiom “You can’t go home again.” It also confirmed that this f** show’s got a kind of magic that’s never going to be duplicated again.

Hard to disagree with that.

Kluger also mentioned that his new book, tentatively titled The Year We Grew Up, will be released next year by Penguin in hardcover.

Had two amazing experiences in one on Monday.

1) They actually let me into Skywalker Ranch in Marin, George Lucas’ incredible special effects compound where the biggest special effect of all is Mother Nature in all her Northern California glory.

2) They actually let me into the recording studio (Lucas’ scoring stage to be more precise) to observe the recording of three songs for the new cast recording for the revival of A Chorus Line, currently having its out-of-town tryout in San Francisco.

For a show tune enthusiast such as myself (if I ever slip on this blog and use the phrase “show queen” please know I use it with love), it was H E A V E N.

Just standing next to the 30-strong cast while they belted “Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love,” “What I Did for Love” and “One” was incredible and the closest I’ll ever get to feeling what it’s like on a full-throttle Broadway stage.

But watching the process of musical director, producer, orchestrator, composer doing their thing to make a classic recording for the ages in a SINGLE DAY was extraordinary.

The cast members seemed remarkably relaxed and were only told by producer David Caddick once to keep their “go-to-it energy” up.

Charlotte d’Amboise, who plays Cassie, is probably the biggest star in the bunch (along with Tony-winner Michael Barresse, who plays Zach), and her husband, Broadway star Terrence Mann (seen here in “Lennon” but more famous for his Javert in Les Miz and Beast in Beauty & the…) was lurking about lending moral support.

Between takes the cast members joked around, stretched, lounged on the floor, chomped lozenges and sipped from water bottles.

Jessica Lee Goldyn, who plays Val and sings the big number “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three” about, ahem, “orchestra and balcony,” clamped her headphones around her bosom and said: “Sing, boobies!”

The Chorus Line cast is writing up a storm on the show’s official blog. If you haven’t seen it, you must. A Chorus Line Blog

The crew from Broadway.com has made a terrific video of the recording session. Check it out
here