The Playbill Vault Celebrates Tony Award Nominee Alec Baldwin | Playbill

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News The Playbill Vault Celebrates Tony Award Nominee Alec Baldwin Stage and screen actor Alec Baldwin celebrates his birthday April 3. In celebration of the Tony Award nominee, the Playbill Vault takes a look at Baldwin's Broadway performances.

Baldwin made his Broadway debut in a revival of Joe Orton's dark farce Loot, about a teenager who, with the help of his undertaker friend, robs a bank and attempts to hide the loot in his recently deceased mother's coffin.

Directed by John Tillinger, this production originated at the Manhattan Theatre Club in February 1986, starring Kevin Bacon, Željko Ivanek, Charles Keating, Joseph Maher and Zoë Wanamaker. The play received favorable reviews and transferred to Broadway's Music Box Theatre on April 7, 1986, with Baldwin replacing Bacon in the role of Dennis.

Loot's Broadway mounting was critically acclaimed and received five Tony Award nominations, including one for Best Revival. It closed June 28, 1986, following 96 performances.

Read the opening night Loot Playbill here.

After appearing in a brief Broadway run of Serious Money, Baldwin starred in the 1992 revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. He took on the role of Stanley Kowalski opposite Jessica Lange as Blanche DuBois.

The production opened April 12, 1992, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and was well-received by critics. When comparing Baldwin to Marlon Brando, the original Stanley Kowalski, the New York Times' Frank Rich wrote: "His Stanley is the first I've seen that doesn't leave one longing for Mr. Brando...Mr. Baldwin is simply fresh, dynamic and true to his part as written and lets the echoes fall where they may."

The revival ran for 137 performances and earned Baldwin a Tony nomination, but the award went to Judd Hirsch in Conversations with My Father. Baldwin and Lange would later reprise their roles in a 1995 television version of the production, which also featured John Goodman and Diane Lane in the cast.

Read the 1992 A Streetcar Named Desire Playbill here.

In 2004 Baldwin returned to Broadway in Ken Ludwig's new adaptation of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's Twentieth Century (upon which the musical On the Twentieth Century is based). Walter Bobbie directed a cast that included Baldwin as Oscar Jaffe, Anne Heche as Lily Garland and Tom Aldredge as Matthew Clark. The production opened March 25, 2004, at the American Airlines Theatre.

The New York Times' Ben Brantley gave the "draggy" revival a lukewarm review. Of Baldwin's performance, he wrote: "Yet while he lands every punch line in Twentieth Century, often with finesse, he does not deliver an Oscar who is the all-controlling nerve center of a madcap universe. Instead, he seems like the glazed eye of a hurricane."

Twentieth Century ran for 84 performances before closing June 6, 2004. Heche and Aldredge were Tony-nominated for their work.

Read the Twentieth Century Playbill here.

Baldwin most recently appeared on Broadway in Lyle Kessler's Orphans. The show made headlines when Shia LaBeouf, who was set to make his Broadway debut in the production, left during rehearsals due to creative differences. (Read more about LaBeouf's departure here.)

Orphans opened at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre April 18, 2013, starring Baldwin, Tom Sturridge and Ben Foster, who replaced LaBeouf. It received mixed reviews and, after a downward trend in ticket sales, closed early on May 19, 2013.

The production played 37 performances and received two Tony Award nominations: Best Revival of a Play and Best Leading Actor in a Play for Sturridge.

Read the opening night Orphans Playbill here.

 
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