When the Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre were established in 1994, the entire theater community rallied around them. Everyone enthusiastically endorsed the related ideas of creating a series of awards for Philadelphia theater artists that could help forge the local theater folk into a real community.

At first it seemed to work. Then, hardly unexpectedly, the losers began finding fault. Some theaters complained that they were discriminated against. Despite the complaints, however, the awards gave the local theater artists an opportunity to celebrate. They made visible a community that in 1980 began growing from its status as a road show stop to the city with the largest number of Actor’s Equity League of Regional Theatre (LORT) contracts anywhere outside of New York City.

The community has thrived. The Barrymores, whose 2003 awards ceremony was held October 27 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Center, have undergone some changes. All in all, they remain an asset.

At last week’s ceremony, lots of very deserving people were honored, none more so than Tom McCarthy, the dean of Philadelphia actors who received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Also deserving this year was the recognition given to the People’s Light and Theatre Company’s production of Suzan-Lori Park’s In the Blood, a brilliant production of a play that was a courageous stretch for our senior professional acting ensemble. It was about time that local actress Marcia Saunders was honored. She won the supporting actress Barrymore for her role in People’s Light’s A Delicate Balance.

In the realm of vanilla and chocolate, I was surprised and disappointed that the 1812 Productions offering of the creatively quirky Bat Boy: The Musical and Arden’s terrific rendering of Stephen Sondheim’s problematic Pacific Overtures didn’t receive more recognition. Had I been a voter, I would have chosen Bat Boy’s Ben Dibble over Green Violin’s Raúl Esparza, as good as he was, for the leading actor in a musical.

The ceremony itself has always been something of a self-indulgent affair, some of them more entertaining than others. When the producers tapped the terrific young local actor Tony Braithwaite to emcee three years ago, it looked as if we had found our own Billy Crystal.

He’s irreverent, appealing, hip, talented and very funny. This year, however, he went on too long. The ceremony, which came in at slightly more than two hours in the early days, took three and one-half hours (3:24, to be exact), a long period to keep people’s attention under the best of circumstances, let alone without any potty breaks.

With a few minor exceptions (the bits with the sign language interpreters went on too long, and the reading of the list of sponsors was extended beyond tolerance), Braithwaite was his delightful self. It would have been better, however, if he had delivered a shorter opening monologue.

The Barrymores should keep Braithwaite but find a way to get the awards ceremony back under two and one-half hours. This year not one of the winners went on too long, so it was the other stuff — Braithwaite, the excerpts from the musicals and the short synopses of the plays and some other business that wasn’t directly related to the awards — that needs to be tightened.

After nine years of awards, most of which have been won by Philadelphia-based artists, it’s time the Barrymores grew up and stopped complaining that actors from New York sometimes show up as nominees.

Also, the Walnut Street Theatre’s absence diminishes the program. Over the years the area’s largest theater has won several awards. It has also been denied nominations it probably deserved. It may be that the volunteer nominators and judges hold the Walnut to higher standards.

That’s a problem which could easily be overcome by training the nominators and reinstating an appeals process. If a theater thinks it has been wrongly overlooked, it could appeal, perhaps to a group of three or four theater professionals (critics, producers, artists, etc.) who would then take a look and either affirm or overturn the original decision.

With clear guidelines, the appeals process should help. It devalues the Barrymores if all theaters do not participate, especially the largest in town. The Walnut should swallow its pride and rejoin the fold.