Twelve wins, including a pair for married stars, ties record for most-honored production in Colorado Theatre Guild awards history

After 20 years, we know this to be true: The annual Henry Awards are far more “all for one” than “one for all.” The question each year is simply: Which one are they all in on?

This year, the Colorado Theatre Guild’s judges were all in on “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” a screwball 1920s musical comedy lavishly staged by the Lone Tree Arts Center and lavishly rewarded in return with an astonishing 12 awards on Monday at the Arvada Center.

In a field that included heavyweight contenders in the Arvada Center’s “Come From Away” and the Denver Center Theatre Company’s “Next to Normal,” the judges favored comedy over consequence in naming Lone Tree’s delightful slapstick romp the outstanding musical of the Colorado theater season. It entered the night with a staggering 17 nominations.

Director Kate Gleason’s fun and frenetic staging now takes its place alongside the Arvada Center’s 2009 “Les Misérables” as the most honored musical or play in the 20-year history of the Henry Awards, which recognize achievements by the Colorado Theatre Guild’s member companies. 

“Nice Work” is a 2012 Broadway throwback that repurposes classic songs by George and Ira Gershwin into a Prohibition-era plot involving a wealthy playboy, a street-wise female bootlegger and hijinks, hijinks, hijinks.

In a mathematically improbable feat likely never to be repeated, five members of the “Nice Work” cast received individual acting awards Monday. And, in a twist even more adorable than the adorable musical itself, married co-stars Adriane Leigh Robinson and Marco Alberto Robinson shared the prize for outstanding lead performance in a musical.

(This is because, last year, the Colorado Theatre Guild morphed all 16 of its previous traditional individual actor and actress categories into eight genderless supercategories. So, instead of five separately nominated actors and actresses in 16 categories, there are 10 nominees in each of eight groupings — with the judges’ top two vote-getters sharing each award.)

The Robinsons’ shared award caps surely the cutest run by any married couple in pretty much the history of the civilized world. In December, the Robinsons were honored with a Denver Gazette True West Award for having played romantic partners in no fewer than three productions for three different Colorado companies in 2025 – one being Lone Tree’s “Nice Work.”

Adriane Leigh Robinson, however, did her husband one better by additionally winning one of the two awards for outstanding performance by a supporting actor. That was for her work in the Denver Center’s equally silly cabaret comedy “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors.” (And, yes, her husband was nominated for that one, too.) But his wife took the prize alongside another castmate, veteran Denver favorite Leslie O’Carroll.

That’s a lot of hardware for one family to haul home.

The couple, who met as students at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, have been married since 2017.

“We are so extremely grateful to do what we love together,” Adriane Leigh Robinson said. “And I guess we’ll have to get another bookcase now!”

“Dracula” will go down as both the longest-running (at six months) and most-honored play of the year, with four Henry Awards. But the actual outstanding play award went instead to the Denver Center Theatre Company’s “English.” In another bit of Henrys oddity, “English” becomes the second straight winner of outstanding play to not win any other award.

“English” is a Pulitzer Prize-winning play that explores the intersection of language, identity and cultural assimilation through the eyes of Iranians trying to learn the language.

O’Carroll accepted her award in a state of total shock. After spending decades on area stages (most enduringly as Mrs. Fezziwig in the Denver Center Theatre Company”s seasonal stagings of “A Christmas Carol”), this is her first Henry Award. Her husband, prominent area director Steve Wilson, has four.

“I feel like I can actually join the family now,” O’Carroll joked. “I’ll have my own little tiny something on the shelf next to his.”

O’Carroll drew the biggest laugh of the night when she shared her husband’s cautionary advice. “He said, ‘Now, remember: Comedies never win!'”

They do now.

Radical category shift

The Colorado Theatre Guild’s change to non-gendered categories remains a lightning rod of controversy within the state’s theater community, but it was born with the best of intentions. For years, gender-equality advocates everywhere have been asking organizers of all major awards shows – including the Oscars and Tonys – to reconsider how they categorize nominees when nonbinary performers do not define themselves as either male actors or female actresses.

For better and worse, the Colorado Theatre Guild actually did something about it last year. Even though very few Colorado actors identify as openly nonbinary, the consequences have been seismic – and the subsequent results have been received with a mix of gratitude, confusion and no small outrage.

This year, only four of the eight acting supercategories produced what would be considered a traditional male/female winners’ split. (And here’s another piece of the puzzle: The Henry Awards split most categories into two tiers, based on the size of a company’s annual budget. That means you have four winners for, say, lead performance in a play – two from productions with big budgets, and two more from those with small budgets. For the second straight year, none of Monday’s 17 acting winners is known to publicly identify as nonbinary.

Among large companies, the top two vote-getters identify as men: Bernard Dotson (Theatre Aspen’s “Driving Miss Daisy”) and Kenneth Tigar (Denver Center Theatre Company’s “The Happiest Man on Earth”). That means the 2026 Henry Awards will go into the record books without recognizing a single female performer in a leading role. Same scenario for featured performers in a musical (Jeffrey Parker, Performance Now’s “South Pacific” and Jason Rexx, StageDoor’s “Something Rotten!”).

Then again, it is only because of the Guild’s new approach that you could have the Robinsons sharing the same award for “Nice Work,” or Adriane Leigh Robinson splitting her “Dracula” award with O’Carroll.

Or the wildest outcome of all: Because of ties, three winners were named outstanding featured performer in a large musical: Elise Daniels, Jennifer DeDominici and Shabazz Green – all castmates in “Nice Work if You Can Get It.” That makes for five individual acting winners in one show. (In 2022, Performance Now made Henrys history by sweeping all four acting awards for its production of “The Drowsy Chaperone.” You can consider that unbreakable record now broken.)

When we say, “all for one,” we mean it. Six of the 11 nominees for featured performance in a large musical were from “Nice Work.” All five “Dracula” cast members were among the 10 nominees for featured performance in a big-budget play.

Green was the evening’s lone repeat winner. He was honored last year for his busy performance as all the victims in the Arvada Center’s “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.” But he wasn’t there to accept again on Monday. For varying reasons, only 11 of the 28 individuals winners were present to accept.

Despite the overwhelming love shown for “Nice Work” and “Dracula,” judges did manage to spread out what was left a bit. In the end, 13 of the Guild’s 57 member companies won at least one award, with the Denver Center accounting for seven. Firehouse, Performance Now and Carbondale’s “Stage of Life” won two each. SoL, as it is known, is expanding from its roots in children’s theater into grown-up fare. Adam Brett and Maura Fawley’s shared award for their work in “Cabaret” serves as notice of the company’s arrival.

Young music director Alec Steinhorn, who has been nominated three years in a row, won his first Henry, for “Nice Work.” Colorado Springs actor Steve Emily won his second acting award in three years, this time for Springs Ensemble Theatre’s play “Frozen” (not to be mistaken for the Disney musical). Emily, in fact, thanked judges for not mistaking his character (a child killer) for a singing snowman. He drew robust cheers for calling attention to teachers, including his own wife.

Jeffrey Parker, a double nominee this year, won his third Henry for his performance in Performance Now’s “South Pacific.” The crowd roared when solid longtime actor and director Kate Gleason won her first Henry Award for directing “Nice Work.” Christopher L. Sheley, producing artistic director for the longest-named troupe in the state – the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Theatre Company at Colorado College – won his third Henry for scenic design – for the play “The Roommate.”

The most emotional moment of the evening came when the Guild presented its annual Lifetime Achievement Award to Brian Kelly DDS, a veteran actor of four Broadway productions and a practicing dentist who, through his work with the Denver Actors Fund, has provided Colorado theater artists with $200,000 worth of emergency dental care since 2017.

Kelly is still an occasional actor who has appeared in past productions of both “The Full Monty” and “Damn Yankees” for the Arvada Center. His moving acceptance speech, which reflected his own early struggles with the artist’s life, ended with the dancing dentist breaking into “You Gotta Have Heart” – the very same song he sang on that very same stage while playing the baseball manager in “Damn Yankees” back in 2023.

Monday’s awards show was again a professional, fast-paced affair expertly co-directed by Arvada Center Associate Artistic Director Kenny Moten and Jessica Hindsley. Whatever controversy there is about the awards and the results they bring, they do not extend to the joyful annual gathering itself.

Still, Moten seemed to anticipate some inevitable backlash because of the evening’s “Nice Work” dominance, which, ironically, shut out his own stellar production of “Come From Away” for the Arvada Center.

“I know that every year these awards are met with side-eye text messages,” Moten said in his closing remarks. “…The Henry Awards are really given meaning by our community. They do not define the community.”

Last year, the judges conferred seven Henry Awards (including outstanding musical), to Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre’s “Come From Away” in Grand Lake. This year, Moten staged that same powerful tale of 9/11 humanity at the Arvada Center to overwhelming audience and critical response. Yet, it won nothing.

Any awards program is meant to live on as a reliable archive of the ground it covers, but the 2026 Henrys are unlikely to be remembered as a representative snapshot of all the remarkable theater staged across Colorado over the past year.

Its list of winners bears no evidence of blue-chip companies like the Arvada Center, Curious Theatre Company, Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company, Miners Alley Performing Arts Center, the disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company, Candlelight Dinner Playhouse, Vintage Theatre, Creede Repertory Theatre, Buntport Theater, Theatre SilCo, Local Theater Company, Aurora Fox, Thunder River, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Su Teatro, The Catamounts, TheatreWorks and more. Not to mention member companies that have proactively removed themselves from consideration, such as the Littleton Town Hall Arts Center.

None of which deterred Colorado Theatre Guild President Betty Hart from delivering a state-of-the-Guild speech steeped in gratitude and greater good.

“I want to remind all of you that every time you breathe life into work, you matter,” Hart told those gathered. “Every time you hit that note, every time you build that set, every time you teach that choreography, every time you create safe spaces for intimacy, you are doing something to allow audience members for a little while forget about what a crazy world we live in and begin to dream of the world we could live in..”

The Henry Awards are named after late, legendary theater producer Henry Lowenstein, who on Sunday placed No. 36 on The Denver Gazette’s list of the 150 Colorado cultural pathmakers of the past 150 years.  

John Moore is The Denver Gazette’s Senior Arts Journalist. Email him at [email protected].

2025-26 Henry Awards winners

(To see a full list of nominations, click here)

Outstanding play

• “English,” Denver Center Theatre Company

Outstanding musical

• “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” Lone Tree Arts Center

Direction of a play

• Gordon Greenberg, “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors,” DCPA Cabaret

Direction of a musical

• Kate Gleason, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” Lone Tree Arts Center

Musical direction

• Alec Steinhorn, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” Lone Tree Arts

Performance in a play, large companies

(Two recipients in each of the next eight categories)

• Bernard Dotson, “Driving Miss Daisy,” Theatre Aspen
• Kenneth Tigar, “The Happiest Man on Earth,” Denver Center Theatre Company

Performance in a play, small companies

• Jeffrey Bigger, “Another Medea,” Bas Bleu Theatre Company
• Martha Harman Pardee, “Alabama Story,” Firehouse Theatre Company

Performance in a musical, large companies

• Adriane Leigh Robinson and Marco Alberto Robinson, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” Lone Tree Arts Center

Performance in a musical, small companies

• Adam Brett and Maura Fawley, “Cabaret,” Stage of Life Theatre Company (Carbondale)

Featured performance in a play, large companies

• Leslie O’Carroll and Adriane Leigh Robinson, “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors,” DCPA Cabaret

Featured performance in a play, small companies

• Steve Emily, “Frozen,” Springs Ensemble Theatre
• Dia Kline, “The Last Yiddish Speaker,” Theatre Or

Featured performance in a musical, large companies

• Elise Daniels, Jennifer DeDominici and Shabazz Green (tie), “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” Lone Tree Arts Center

Featured performance in a musical, small companies

• Jeffrey Parker, “South Pacific,” Performance Now Theatre Company
• Jason Rexx, “Something Rotten!” StageDoor Theatre

Outstanding ensemble

• “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” Lone Tree Arts Center

Choreography

• Christopher Page-Sanders, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” Lone Tree Arts Center

New play or musical

• “Godspeed, by Terence Anthony, Denver Center Theatre Company

Costume design, large companies

• Madison Booth, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” Lone Tree Arts Center

Costume design, small companies

• Charlotte Campbell, “The Little Mermaid,” Performance Now

Lighting design, large companies

• Charles R. MacLeod, “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors,” DCPA Cabaret

Lighting design, small companies

• Josiah Croegaert, “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol,” Breckenridge Backstage Theatre

Scenic design, large companies

• Christopher L. Sheley, “The Roommate,” Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College

Scenic design, small companies

• Jim and Carla Brookman, “The Cottage,” OpenStage Theatre

Sound design, large companies

• Max Silverman, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” Lone Tree Arts Center

Sound design, small companies

• Madison Kuebler, “Alabama Story,” Firehouse Theatre Company

Lifetime Achievement

• Brian Kelly

Henry Awards/All for one

The CTG is historically known for crowning its winners in landslide fashion. Some recent data:

• 2026: 12 awards for Lone Tree Arts Center’s “Nice Work if You Can Get It”
• 2025: 7 awards for Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre’s “Come From Away”
• 2024: 4 awards for Performance Now’s “The Music Man”
• 2023: 9 awards for Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company’s “The Royale”
• 2022: 8 awards for the Denver Center Theatre Company’s “Rattlesnake Kate”
• 2021: No awards
• 2020: 6 awards for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center’s “The Bridges of Madison County”
• 2019: 7 awards for the Denver Center Theatre Company’s “Oklahoma!”
• 2018: 5 awards for Miners Alley Playhouse’s “Fun Home”