Jeff [hearts] Equity Theaters

By Justin Sondak in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 13, 2005 2:17PM

Nominees for the 2005 Joseph Jefferson Awards for Equity Theaters, or Jeff Equities for short, have been announced. The nominees are selected from a pool of shows that impressed members of the Jeff Nominating Committee (a.k.a. “Jeff Recommended” productions). You can peruse the full list here.

The Jeff Committee loves the big splashy musicals. Beauty and the Beast, a classic fairy tale, and Sweeney Todd, a classic cannibal tale, received 7 and 6 nominations, respectively, with Sunset Boulevard and the uberhit Wicked picking up 5 each. Among straight plays, Court Theatre’s staging of the Albee classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Chicago Shakespeare’s exotic, sometimes bizarre, but ultimately satisfying Kabuki Lady Macbeth lead all contenders with five nominations. Two Jeff-nominated shows are still running-- Marriott Theatre’s A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum and Second City’s Red Scare—and another, Provision Theater’s Christmas Carol, will be remounted this fall.

Tickets to the November 7 awards ceremony at Drury Lane Water Tower Place are $65 for us regular folk, $50 for Equity artists. If you’re wondering when that kickass show you saw in a basement produced by some scrappy young company will get its due, you’ll have to wait until next spring for the Jeff Citations.

Images via Yahoo! and IMDB