Production and Director
The Best Production award for 1992 goes to the family tragedy Hamlet at the Shakespeare Theatre. With minimized political context and emphasis on inter-relationships, a searingly intimate drama, tightly focused, and powerfully and memorably staged.
The Best Director award for 1992 goes to Dexter Bullard for his exhilarating and creative modernization of Julius Caesar at the Next Theatre Company. Imaginatively staged within Washington, D.C. war rooms and board rooms, with Antony played by a woman in a strapless evening gown slit to the hip, and Caesar as a Las Vegas icon in a white tuxedo, killed in a hail of gunfire.
Performance
The Best Actress award for 1992 goes to Jenny Quayle as Viola in the English Shakespeare Company's Twelfth Night. Quayle plays Viola with charming expressiveness and pluck, a breath of fresh air for the self-involved denizens of Illyria.
The Best Actor award for 1992 goes to Tom Hulce in the sympathetic title role of Hamlet at the Shakespeare Theatre. Hulce's remarkable Hamlet progresses from petulant child to manic adolescent, finally becoming a resolute Prince in an intelligent and touching performance.
The Best Supporting Actor award for 1992 goes to Timothy Davies as the "time-pleaser" Malvolio in the English Shakespeare Company's Twelfth Night. Davies' hypocritical Malvolio, portrayed with wonderfully rigid and exaggeratedly proper manners, is a tall, lean, and angular model of propriety.
The Best Supporting Actress award for 1992 goes to Francesca Buller as a child-like Ophelia in the Shakespeare Theatre's Hamlet. Buller's Ophelia, thin and frail physically like a porcelain doll, is also emotionally fragile, and unlike Hamlet, cannot endure myriad emotional pressures.
Technicals
The Best Scenic Design award for 1992 goes to Takeshi Kawamura for Daisan Erotica's modern Tokyo-gangster A Man Called Macbeth. The hyper-creative production is staged almost entirely with a dozen black and white tatami mats - each emblazoned in Japanese with "perfection and wisdom" - variously employed on the floor or simulating walls.
The Best Costume Design award for 1992 goes to Claire Lyth for the English Shakespeare Company's Twelfth Night. Attractive designs on wonderful performers, from the colorful splash of the household drunkards, to the impeccable but rigidly formal attire of Malvolio and the Illyrian royalty.
The Best Lighting Design award for 1992 goes to Yoshiaki Kuroo for Daisan Erotica's A Man Called Macbeth. The production frames the action as a flashback by a chain-smoking police detective, starkly lit downstage right in noir smokiness, and cuts to a series of twenty-six garishly lit rapid-fire segments onstage.
The Best Sound and Music Design award for 1992 goes to David Zerlin for Next Theatre Company's Julius Caesar. Imaginative effects highlight a stunning production, with an omnipresent chorus singing the letter of warning from Artemidorus gospel-style, chanting Caesar's name repeatedly while stomping their feet in thunderous rhythm, and pummeling the stage with wooden staffs as Cinna is beaten.