ARE THE HELPMANNS CREDIBLE?

Peter Pinne suggests there’s something jingoistic about Australia’s annual Live Entertainment Awards, which will be announced at the Sydney Opera House on Monday night. He accuses organisers of snubbing imported classics to promote local producers, with a bias towards subsidised theatre.

Looking at the theatre nominations for this year’s Helpmann Awards I find it astonishing that two of the most awarded and most popular shows that have played in our theatres this year have not had one nomination. I’m referring to War Horse and Driving Miss Daisy.

War Horse has been recognised as a groundbreaking production wherever it has played, likewise Driving Miss Daisy received Tony nominations on Broadway and Olivier nominations in London yet both productions have been ignored by the Helpmann committee. Why?

I spoke with half a dozen Helpmann Award voters about this and they were as non-plussed as I. I even called the Helpmann Awards office but no one could tell me why these two shows never received one nomination.

Someone suggested it might be because they were not Australian, but that could not be the case because War Horse has a completely local cast. Of course there might be an argument that Angela Lansbury, James Earl Jones and Boyd Gaines are not local actors so therefore they are not eligible. But if that’s the case then why does Bartlett Sher get a direction nomination for South Pacific, Jerry Mitchell one for Legally Blonde and Sergio Trujillo for choreography for The Addams Family. None of these gentlemen are Australian either.

More sinister motives occasionally drive Tony Award nomination omissions. Broadway columnist and critic Peter Filichia’s mentions in his new book Strippers, Showgirls and Sharks that he was chairman of the Drama Desk Tony Award nominating committee in 1995-1996, the season in which A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was revived. “Hey,” said one nominator with a gleeful look on his face. “Let’s not give Nathan Lane a nomination. Won’t that burn his ass?”

Is that what happened with Angela Lansbury? Did someone say, “Let’s not give Angela Lansbury a nomination. Won’t that burn her ass?”

He also asks: how many nominators have refused to vote for artists who (1.) have done them dirty, or have alleged to (2.) have achieved “too much” success, or (3.) were hired in jobs that nominators themselves wanted to get?

Not one commercial producer is represented on the Helpmann Awards Theatre Panel for 2013, which is drawn exclusively from the subsidised theatre. I don’t like to suggest a bias but it clearly looks that way.

One industry insider suggested to me that War Horse was probably not nominated because it already had too many awards. That’s absurd. It should be about the best of what has played on Australian stages during the year. If a dance company comes from Cuba, Russia or Arnhem Land, if they’re the best, then they should get a nomination.

Forget the agendas and the jingoism and let’s nominate the best.

If anti-American or British sentiment is allowed to hold sway at the Helpmanns then it could come back to bite them in the arse. If the Tony Awards held this narrow attitude then Tony Sheldon would not have been nominated for Priscilla, nor Geoffrey Rush for Exit the King, or John Frost for his 1996 production of The King and I which won Best Musical!      

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Editor’s Note: Controversy over this year’s nominations rages even wider than Peter’s discussion. Melbourne media reports accused the awards of being Sydney-centric, citing the overwhelming imbalance of nominations in dramatic fields in favour of Sydney. Holding the presentation ceremony in Sydney each year certainly does little to alleviate this perception, despite the organisers’ best efforts in holding simultaneous nomination announcements across the nation.

Controversy doesn’t end there, with the heavily nominated King Kong only in previews when the nominations closed.

Ful list of nominations