Jordan Cooper’s “Ain’t No Mo’ ” and Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” collected the most nominations, six each, in the race for best new play. In a bona fide anomaly, the three other nominees in the category — Stephen Adly Guirgis’s “Between Riverside and Crazy,” Martyna Majok’s “Cost of Living,” and James Ijames “Fat Ham” — are all prior winners of the Pulitzer Prize for drama, in 2015, 2018 and 2022 respectively.
The nominations, unveiled at a ceremony in Manhattan by Lea Michele, star of “Funny Girl,” and Myles Frost, a Tony winner last year for “MJ,” went to 27 of the 38 eligible plays and musicals that opened over a 12-month period, ending on April 27. Eleven shows garnered six nominations or more, an outcome that promises to make the 76th Tonys particularly competitive. Even the contests for best revival of a play and musical seem to be tossups: In the musical category, two popular Stephen Sondheim shows, “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” are up against “Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot” and “Parade,” with a score by Jason Robert Brown.
“Into the Woods” and “Parade” both originated as concert revivals off-Broadway, as part of the City Center Encores! program. And several of those productions’ stars are nominated: Sara Bareilles and Brian d’Arcy James earned best actor in a musical nods for “Into the Woods,” and Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt secured similar respective slots for “Parade,” a musical telling of the persecution and lynching of a Jewish man, Leo Frank, in the Atlanta suburbs in 1915. Julia Lester, who played Little Red Riding Hood to acclaim in “Into the Woods,” was named in the category of best supporting actress in a musical.
For best revival of a play, the contenders are August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” and Suzan-Lori Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog.”
The acting categories, too, offer some intriguing matchups: Jessica Chastain, nominated for best actress in a play for her role as Nora Helmer in “A Doll’s House,” faces Jodie Comer, in a blazing stage debut as a London barrister undergoing a personal trauma in Suzie Miller’s “Prima Facie.” The other formidable actresses contending for the honor are Jessica Hecht, in David Auburn’s “Summer, 1976” and Audra McDonald in Adrienne Kennedy’s “Ohio State Murders.”
Some 40 Tony nominators, representing a cross-section of theater disciplines, see every show and vote on the nominees in every category. The winners are selected by a larger group of Tony voters, numbering somewhere around 700. The Tony rules allow for flexibility in the number of nominees in each category; this year they ranged from four nominees for best actress in a play to seven nominees for best lighting design of a play.
The race for best actor in a play is particularly noteworthy, with both “Topdog/Underdog” actors, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins, picked for the category. Stephen McKinley Henderson was singled out for his powerful work in “Between Riverside and Crazy”; Sean Hayes, who portrays Oscar Levant in “Good Night, Oscar,” and Wendell Pierce in the revival of “Death of a Salesman” are also in the running.
Some other notable nominations in acting categories: Victoria Clark, Justin Cooley and Bonnie Milligan, for standout performances in “Kimberly Akimbo”; Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford for their portrayals of Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett in the revival of “Sweeney Todd”; J. Harrison Ghee and Christian Borle, competing against each other as best actor in a musical in “Some Like It Hot,” and Alex Newell and Kevin Cahoon, both nominated for best supporting actor in a musical for priceless turns in “Shucked.”
While the amassing of nominations gives important bragging rights to some shows, musicals always top the charts because they are eligible in more categories — such as orchestrations, score and book — than plays. So the titles named most often on Tuesday were all productions with songs: “& Juliet,” a pop riff on “Romeo and Juliet,” secured nine nods, as did the tourist-oriented “New York, New York” and “Shucked,” a cheeky musical comedy set in rural America. Close behind with eight each were director Thomas Kail’s “Sweeney Todd” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” the tenderhearted tale of a New Jersey teenager afflicted with a disease that ages her four times as fast as normal.
The Tony Awards will be broadcast on June 11 in two parts: A 90-minute pre-show, including the first round of awards, airs from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Eastern time on Pluto TV. That leads into the full broadcast at 8 p.m. on CBS and Paramount Plus.
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