2012 Rogue's Gallery, part 6

Supporting Actor (Drama)

Richard Payton, A Bright Room Called Day, Ringwald Theatre
•Stephen Blackwell, Snowbound, Planet Ant Theatre
•John Manfredi, Race, Jewish Ensemble Theatre
•Paul Riopelle, Mary Stuart, Meadow Brook Theatre
•Jordan Whalen, Mary Stuart, Meadow Brook Theatre

In dichotomous roles, Blackwell was both a hardened, stubborn pit of spite and an inquisitive consummate gentleman traversing a slippery slope of privilege and philanthropy. Super-rich defendant Manfredi’s radiating resentment and codified vileness at being subject to the law anchored him as a willing villain in a quagmire of a case. Riopelle took a simple role as a mouthpiece for standing up for what is right and made it a memorable turn by the vital feeling and stakes that sounded the depth of his character. As for Whalen, it was the purity of his selfless enthusiasm for the cause that made his reversal to selfish motives all the more appalling. Yet Payton takes it almost in a single scene, recounting a critical — almost unfathomable — moral dilemma and defending his actions with gut-wrenching honesty.

Supporting Actress (Drama)

K Edmonds, Ruined, Plowshares Theatre
•Heidi Bennett, Time Stands Still, Performance Network Theatre
•Alysia Kolascz, Fiction, Tipping Point Theatre
•Trudy Mason, Mary Stuart, Meadow Brook Theatre
•Madelyn Porter, Burying the Bones, Detroit Repertory Theatre

Thrust among a trio with complexities befitting their long history, Bennett held her own as the newcomer without retreating to outsider status. Kolascz’s hooded motives, necessary for incremental plot reveals, were as plainly traceable in retrospect as they were intriguingly obscure in the moment. Confidante Mason was a font of strength and comfort, even more so in honest commiseration as her imprisoned queen confronted the bleakness of her impending fate. A gossipy veneer allowed Porter to fly under the radar as a humorous respite, then raise an absorbing moral quandary, and finally take hold of the narrative with thunderous and terrifying finality. But the honor goes to beguiling Edmonds, playing into an oppressive system with brilliantly layered intentions — not just to survive, but to succeed at a game of her own making.

Lead Actor (Drama)

Guy Sanville, A Stone Carver, Purple Rose Theatre Co.
•Council Cargle, The Whipping Man, Jewish Ensemble Theatre/Plowshares Theatre
•Joe Plambeck, Southern Baptist Sissies, Ringwald Theatre
•Mark Rademacher, Red, Performance Network Theatre
•Orson Wingo, Driving Miss Daisy, The Box Theatre

Sage Cargle preserved order in a catch-as-catch-can postwar household, navigating an untenable living arrangement and the bilious resentments therein with stately, buckling grace. Plambeck’s heartbreaking turn was two-fold: first in deep resurgent shame for failing to surmount his hated sexual identity, then in the hurtling, horrible finality of the character’s only perceived way out. Treading the line between serving-class subordination and careful, rightful agency, Wingo tirelessly proved his immeasurable worth, with grace and generosity enough to humble a saint. In embodying the unimpeachable visual artist Mark Rothko, all impetuously stern philosophies and old-guard temperament, Rademacher the actor disappeared altogether. However, Sanville’s hilariously easy barbs of disapproval, and the complex logic that circled a sour relationship and rooted in a secret home of real loss, was a purely masterful creation.

Lead Actress (Drama)

Suzi Regan, Time Stands Still, Performance Network Theatre
•Qamara Peaches Black, Pretty Fire, Threefold Productions
•Linda Rabin Hammell, Fugue, The New Theatre Project
•Jaclyn Strez, Snowbound, Planet Ant Theatre
•Charlyn Swarthout, A Stone Carver, Purple Rose Theatre Co.

Carrying not just her own story but the weighty cargo of her ancestry, Black preserved generations in beloved, sparkling, hilarious, momentous character portraits. In beats of comic relief as well as spiteful ignorance, Hammell so exalted her character’s defects that the murky mystery of her life courted the viewer in wild pendulum swings of love-hate. Strez infused her adolescent pioneer woman with harrowing strength that grew criminally withered by her attendant lack of power, setting up an impasse intended to crush the viewer as utterly as it did her. Repeatedly disarmed and hopelessly outmatched, prim (and secretly scrappy) Swarthout took the curveballs sent her way by a disapproving future father-in-law and made a game of coming back for more. Ultimately, Regan’s outwardly and inwardly wounded photojournalist, forced to pause and take stock of her life and relationship, wins out for her brutally real portrayal of a stimulating crossroads, with no discernible right or wrong.

Best Drama

The Whipping Man, Jewish Ensemble Theatre/Plowshares Theatre (director Gary Anderson)
•Burying the Bones, Detroit Repertory Theatre (director Leah Smith)
•Fiction, Tipping Point Theatre (director James R. Kuhl)
•A Stone Carver, Purple Rose Theatre Co. (director Rhiannon Ragland)
•Time Stands Still, Performance Network Theatre (director Kate Peckham)

Engagingly frank and frequently shocking, Burying the Bones blossomed into something grander than its cause-and-effect premise, spinning outward into an exemplary snapshot of a splintered political climate with a rhythm all its own. As a demonstration of how a largely cerebral play — a story about stories — could be simultaneously an intellectual challenge and a gripping narrative, the wily Fiction was fact. A Stone Carver showed sharpness in its acerbic humor, finding welcome solace in the golden-hued history of home even when the intimacy of family proved hysterically elusive. Immediacy and a haunting brand of realism were the currency of Time Stands Still, presenting life as a string of actions and interactions marked by arbitrary setbacks and uncertain, often fleeting, rewards. Yet The Whipping Man’s systemic, inescapable tension between former master and former slaves, and the necessity and shared history — both upfront and secret — that bound them, was a heartrending exploration of human resilience in the face of dually welcome and terrifying change.