After a 46-year absence from the stage, Jane Fonda returned this year to star in Moises Kaufman’s 33 Variations, a heartbreaking drama about a terminally ill music professor (with Lou Gehrig’s disease) trying to patch up her relationship with her daughter and solve one last musical mystery before her inevitable demise. The 71-year-old Fonda gave a tour de force performance in the show, which closed on May 21, with critics hailing her “ layered crispness” and her “ Pure enthusiasm, toughness tempered by vulnerability, and that distinctive voice which makes every line fascinating.” She will compete for a Tony this Sunday along with four other grande dames for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, and she’ll be a fierce competitor.
Joan Marcus
The longtime Cosby Show matriarch—and Tony winner for the recent revival of Raisin in the Sun with Diddy— hopped onto Broadway again on May 26, taking over the role of matriarch Violet Weston in August: Osage County. The play, which won last year’s Tony for Best Play, became the longest running play ever on Broadway on May 30, surpassing The Fourposter by Jan De Hartog with 633 performances. The producers haven’t watered down the cast over time—the 60-year-old Rashad is said to be tough and fiery in the role, not simply a big name slotted in to sell tickets. After her limited run on Broadway, Rashad heads to London’s West End to reprise her leading lady turn in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (she appeared in the play on Broadway last year).
Robert J. Saferstein
Allison Janney may be best known for her role as C.J. Cregg on The West Wing, but at 49, her career is careening into even bigger things. After co-starring in 2007’s twee hit Juno, she appears in this year’s indie darling, Away We Go, which opens this weekend, and she’s also belting her guts out on Broadway in Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5. Though the show has received mixed reviews, most critics have agreed that Janney is a delight as Violet Newstead (aka Lily Tomlin from the film), and she is up for a Tony for her performance. Janney already has a bit of musical prowess in her history: She played Prudy Pingleton in 2007’s Hairspray film and will reprise the role for Hairspray: 2 in 2010.
When she spoke to The Daily Beast last week, Janet McTeer praised the number of amazing leading women on Broadway—and she is certainly one of them. The 48-year-old’s starring role as Mary, Queen of Scots in Mary Stuart is a stunning piece of work, and she is a prime candidate for the Tony Award on Sunday. Read more from our interview with the 6-foot-1 McTeer for her comments on aging in the theater, female solidarity, and the troubles of finding a dress at her height.
Joan Marcus
The 50-year-old actress is already known as one of America’s best; she won an Oscar for her work in Pollock and was nominated again for Mystic River. Since February of this year, she has lent her talents to Broadway, starring alongside Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, and Jeff Daniels in the excellent marriage comedy God of Carnage, which ends in mid-July. Both Harden and Davis earned Tony nominations for the show, proving that two leading ladies can coexist in the theater, after all.
Joan Marcus
Speaking of divas coexisting, the prime example of grande dames working together can be seen every night in Mary Stuart, where Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter share the stage as women battling against each other for power. The 58-year-old Walter, who plays Queen Elizabeth to McTeer’s Mary, Queen of Scots, plays the queen as cold, calculating, and a definitive leader—but also one who grapples with her duty as a female. Offstage, the two women get along famously, and though they are both up for Tony Awards in the same category on Sunday, McTeer claims they are “not at all competitive.”
Joan Marcus
After a 37-year absence from the stage, Susan Sarandon—screen goddess, mother of three, and five-time Oscar nominee—returned this season in Exit the King. Her tour de force performance opposite Geoffrey Rush in Eugene Ionesco’s tragicomedy is both hard-edged and touching. The 62-year-old actress more than holds her own as the spurned wife of Rush’s aging king, leading one to wonder: Susan, what took you so long?
Another Leading Actress Tony nominee, the 45-year-old Davis has always brought comedy and quirk to her roles. On screen, she played Harvey Pekar’s wife opposite Paul Giamatti in American Splendor and a deranged therapist in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. She currently stars on HBO’s In Treatment, confessing her neuroses to Gabriel Byrne as the wry Mia. Now she is on stage (again—she has been in several off-Broadway New York productions) and on Broadway in God of Carnage, and going for her first Tony win.
Joan Marcus
The consummate Broadway star, Tovah (nee Terri) Feldshuh has been acting in Broadway theaters for more than 35 years. She made her debut in the 1973 musical of Cyrano opposite Christopher Plummer, and played Yentl on Broadway, though Barbra Streisand famously played the role on screen. Her most memorable role to date is arguably as Golda Meir in the one-woman show Golda’s Balcony (2005), which became the longest running one-woman show on Broadway. Now, she is playing Irena Gut Opdyke, a Catholic woman who saved Jews during the Holocaust, in another Broadway show, Irena’s Vow. Though there is no Tony nomination for Feldshuh this year, there is no denying that she remains one of theater’s most celebrated—and hardest working—actresses.
More West Wing stars taking to Broadway! This time, Stockard Channing—or first lady Abbey Bartlet—arrived on stage in November in the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey. Though critics panned the show, Channing received a Tony nod—perhaps a late recognition for her brilliant work as Rizzo in the original Grease?
Joan Marcus
Ripley, 45, is a veteran of the theater: She has been on Broadway since 1993, when she appeared in The Who’s Tommy. Since then, she’s been in Sunset Boulevard, King David, Side Show—she played one half of a pair of Siamese twins and was co-nominated with her other half, Emily Skinner for a Tony, the first time two actresses have ever been nominated to share an award— Les Misérables, and The Rocky Horror Show. Ripley’s big break, however, came this year, when she landed the starring role in Next to Normal, a musical about a mother battling bipolar disorder. Though the premise sounds strange, the show is an absolute hit, making Ripley a clear front-runner for the Tony on Sunday.
Though many Americans are unfamiliar with Haydn Gwynne, the British actress has already been nominated for a BAFTA, Tony, and Olivier award in her 48 years. Her Tony nomination this year is for her role as Ms. Wilkinson in Billy Elliot, the darling of Broadway and a sure bet for Best Musical this year. She originated the part in London and traveled with the show here to win over American audiences, and she has accomplished her goal—she need no longer toil in British obscurity!
Hallie Foote has always had a leg up in the theater, but she took a while to capitalize on it—the daughter of the late, great playwright Horton Foote, she began her stage career at 33, when her father cast her as the lead in his off-Broadway production of The Widow Claire. From there, her career took off, reaching a zenith this year. Foote starred in Horton Foote’s acclaimed Dividing the Estate, and though she lost her father in March of this year, the 56-year-old Hallie picked up a Tony nomination for the role. As Mary Jo Gordon, Foote portrayed a woman vying to inherit her Texan mother’s estate in the dark satire about family and money. If she wins the Tony for Best Performance by a Featured Actress this year, her victory will be bittersweet and a true tribute to her father in the year of his death.
Joan Marcus
A Briton who is certainly not obscure to American fans, Angela Lansbury is still doing her thing at 83, making her the grandest dame of the bunch. The four-time Tony Award winner (for Sweeney Todd, Gypsy, Dear World, and Mame—in that order) is up for yet another, for Featured Actress in a Play for Blithe Spirit. Lansbury began her run in the Noel Coward comedy—about séances and exorcising the dead, no less—in February, opposite Rupert Everett and Christine Ebersole. Here’s hoping the other actresses on this list are still working at 83, and that Lansbury keeps on keeping on!
