British stage talent has dominated the nominations for the 69th Tony awards in the dramatic categories, with the plays based on Wolf Hall leading the charge and nods for actors including Helen Mirren, Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan.
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Wolf Hall plays, based on Hilary Mantel’s award-winning novels, secured eight nominations, making it the most recognised in the straight play categories. It was closely followed by a revival of David Hare’s Skylight, starring Mulligan and Nighy; and the National Theatre’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Mirren will be a strong favourite to win best actress for her portrayal of the Queen in The Audience, adding to a successful career playing the monarch – she won the Olivier for the play in 2013 and the Oscar for the movie The Queen in 2006.
Skylight is shortlisted in seven categories in the 69th Tony awards including best revival while all three actors, Mulligan, Nighy and Matt Beard, secured nominations in the acting categories.
Its Tony success is a stark contrast to its showing in the Olivier awards where it secured just a single nomination for best revival. Its director, Stephen Daldry, who is hoping to win his second Tony, said: “Who knows what’s going on? You can never predict the vagaries of any particular awards.
“I’m thrilled that it has done so well and particularly thrilled that all of the actors on Skylight got nominated. It is young Matt Beard’s first job in the theatre and he gets a Tony nomination … what a great moment in his life.”
He also paid tribute to the set and costume designer Bob Crowley, who gets four nominations for three productions: Daldry’s two plays, Skylight and The Audience; and An American in Paris. “It confirms him as a giant of international theatre, an amazing British export.”
The success of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, with six nominations, is no surprise. The National Theatre show dominated last year’s Olivier awards with seven wins and has been one of the best-reviewed shows in New York. “This is one of the most fully immersive works ever to wallop Broadway,” wrote the New York Times critic Ben Brantley.
The Broadway version stars Alex Sharp as the maths genius with autism Christopher Boone. Sharp, a young Englishman who left a life of call centres and renovating houses in the UK to get a place at New York’s Juilliard school, is making his Broadway debut.
“He is incredible,” the show’s director, Marianne Elliott, said. “When we met him he was still at drama school, he’d had no professional experience, no agent … he went to Juilliard on a whim, really. He just had something special and we just took a risk.”
Elliott, also nominated for best director, said she felt slightly in shock at the play’s success. “We had no idea when we started that there would be an audience for it at all. We knew the book was loved but sometimes it is dangerous doing an adaptation of something people imagine in a certain way. It is amazing to see the American audiences responding to it so vehemently … although it is set in Swindon the story itself is universal. All of us are Christopher.”
The success of the production, as well as that of Wolf Hall, is testament to the importance of the UK’s subsidised theatre sector. “It was important,” Elliott said. “Sometimes you work on a show you know you want to be commercial … it affects a lot of your decisions in the wrong way. This show grew slowly and incrementally.”
Mirren will vie for best actress with Mulligan, Geneva Carr, Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss and British actor Ruth Wilson for her role in Constellations. Mirren said: “It is an honour to be nominated and to become a part of the grand tradition of American theatre. I am very lucky that I speak American, albeit in the play with a very British accent. It is a very exciting season on Broadway, with many great plays, musicals, and performances, so just to be a part of that is a thrill.”
The eight nominations for Wolf Hall Parts One & Two include best play, best actor for Ben Miles (Cromwell); supporting actor for Nathaniel Parker (Henry VIII) supporting actress for Lydia Leonard (Anne Boleyn) and best director for Jeremy Herrin. It also was nominated for scenic design, costume and lighting.
Up against Nighy, Miles and Sharp for best actor will be Steven Boyer (Hand to God) and Bradley Cooper for The Elephant Man.
Richard McCabe’s convincing portrayal of Harold Wilson in The Audience won him an Olivier in 2013 and he is one of five actors in contention for the best supporting actor Tony.
The big winners in the musical categories were Christopher Wheeldon’s adaptation of the 1952 Gene Kelly film, An American in Paris; and the coming-out drama Fun Home – two shows which could not be more different.
Wheeldon, a star of the classical ballet world, has enchanted audiences with his production since it transferred to Broadway from the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, although it was seen as something of an underdog prior to Tuesday’s announcement.
The Guardian’s Alexis Soloski praised its “sublime songs and dexterous dancing”, while the New York Times critic wrote: “It weds music and movement, song and story with such exhilarating brio that you may find your own feet fidgeting under your seat before it’s over.”
It won 12 nominations, including best musical; best director for Wheeldon, and for its leading stars Robert Fairchild and Leanne Cope, mentions in the best actor and actress in a musical categories.
Fun Home, which also got 12, is based on the bestselling graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel, with a killer early line which sums up the plot perfectly: “My Dad and I both grew up in the same small Pennsylvania town. And he was gay. And I was gay And he killed himself and I … became a lesbian cartoonist.”
Among its nominations was one for Beth Malone in the lead role; and then three in the best featured performance by an actress in a musical.
While it was clearly a great day for British productions, actors and creatives, there were some notable snubs, particularly for American productions. It’s Only a Play, which starred Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane and Stockard Channing, got just one nomination. And Finding Neverland, Harvey Weinstein’s big budget JM Barrie musical starring Kelsey Grammar, fared even worse: nothing. Among the tipped actors missing out were Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal.
The nominations were announced at the Paramount hotel (in the “Diamond Horseshoe”) in New York by Bruce Willis, who will make his Broadway debut this year in Misery, and Mary-Louise Parker and follow meetings of the judging committees on Monday.
Other heavily nominated shows were the musicals Something Rotten! with 10 and the revival of The King and I with 9.
It was also announced on Tuesday that this year’s hosts of the ceremony on 7 June will be Alan Cumming and Kristin Chenoweth.
