Want to know how you can tell it was a good season on Broadway? In most years, the nominators have to struggle to find shows, performers and designers to fill all the categories. This season, there was enough quantity — and even quality — to afford a surfeit of snubs.
Significantly absent from the nominations list announced this morning were Finding Neverland, the movie-to-musical about J.M. Barrie’s inspiration for Peter Pan, and Fish in the Dark, Larry David’s Broadway debut in a play described as a live Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. Neither got much critical support, but have done healthy business and probably did not need Tony nods.
Far weaker at the box office has been It Shoulda Been You, the musical sitcom about a contentious wedding. It, too, was shut out of nominations and may be the first to close among the empty-handed.
Also coming up short was the critically drubbed musical version of Boris Pasternak’s Nobel Prize novel Dr. Zhivago and Living on Love, the backstage comedy starring opera great Renée Fleming. Already closed, but expected to be remembered with nominations were such out-in-the-cold musicals as Side Show and Honeymoon in Vegas, along with a star-studded revival of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance.
Nominations flowed strongly to the four nominees for best musical: Two light-toned shows, American in Paris (12 nominations) and Something Rotten! (10), versus a pair of darkly dramatic shows, Fun Home (12) and The Visit (5). The Visit, the final effort by the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, had been in development for the past 14 years. It stars 83-year-old Chita Rivera, who copped a best actress nomination for what is likely to be her last Broadway appearance.
Rivera will be testing the sentiment of Tony voters, for she is in what looks to be the most competitive category this season. Also vying for the best actress in a musical award are two Broadway fixtures — Kristin Chenoweth as the comic diva in On the 20th Century and Kelli O’Hara, Mrs. Anna in the acclaimed revival of The King and I. The category is filled by Beth Malone of Fun Home and Leanne Cope in An American in Paris.
Much of the results in the best play category was predictable, including slots for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s two-part Wolf Hall (8 nominations), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (6) and Hand to God (5). Also nominated was Disgraced, Ayad Akhtar’s 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner on Islamophobia, arguably taking the place of The Audience, the Olivier Award winner about Queen Elizabeth II and her weekly meetings with British prime ministers.
Helen Mirren’s tour de force as Elizabeth seems to be the comfortable front-runner for the best actress in a play Tony. She, of course, already has an Oscar for her performance as the same character in The Queen. Her closest competition is probably Carey Mulligan in a revival of David Hare’s Skylight. Also up for the award are Geneva Carr in Hand to God, Elizabeth Moss in The Heidi Chronicles (closing this Sunday) and Ruth Wilson in the closed, limited-run Constellations.
The four nominees for book of a musical mirror the best musical category: An American in Paris, Fun Home, Something Rotten! and The Visit. With the Gershwins’ score for American in Paris ineligible for the best score Tony, Sting takes its place for his much-admired compositions for The Last Ship.
In other observations:
* Three of the four best musical nominees saw their directors nominated. Only The Visit’s John Doyle was left out, replaced by The King and I’s Bart Sher and On the Town’s John Rando.
* Similarly, only Kimberly Senior, the director of Disgraced, failed to make the list of best play directors. In her place is Skylight’s Stephen Daldry and You Can’t Take It With You’s Scott Ellis.
* The entire cast of Fun Home scored nominations, including leads Michael Cerveris and Beth Malone. That leaves Judy Kuhn, Sydney Lucas and Emily Skeggs all vying for the featured actress Tony.
* The same goes for the whole cast of Skylight. Bill Nighy and Matthew Beard join Carey Mulligan in the running for Tonys.
* The Curious Incident … is not a musical, but it does have two choreographers, Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, who were both nominated in this dance-heavy season.
* My nomination for most curious nomination goes to Wolf Hall for its scenic design by Christopher Oram, essentially a concrete bunker which the audience has to stare at for six hours.
The Tony Awards will be presented on Sunday, June 7, broadcast on CBS-TV, beginning at 8 p.m. EDT.