In five weeks’ time, actors, actresses and the occasional lighting designer will adorn clothes nearly as nice as those at the Emmys and gather for the Tony awards. On Tuesday, a marginally amused Bruce Willis and a pale Mary Louise Parker stood in the Paramount hotel in New York and delivered the list of nominees. It was startling to hear the wealth of nominations for British imports. We all know that the economics aren’t kind to new American plays (Disgraced closed fairly early, Hand to God has been doing middling box office despite rave reviews, everyone has already gratefully forgotten about The Country House), but neither it seems are the awards.
This was only an average season on Broadway, with 37 new shows opening, but several of those were still left out entirely and for the most part deservedly – Doctor Zhivago, Holler if Ya Hear Me, Love Letters, The Country House, The Real Thing, A Delicate Balance, It Shoulda Been You, Living on Love, Fish in the Dark, Honeymoon in Vegas – or mostly excluded, like Gigi, which snuck in a nomination for the eternally classy Victoria Clark. There was also The Heidi Chronicles, which gave a nod to Elisabeth Moss, and This Is Our Youth, which appears only in the best revival category. It was somewhat surprising to see that The River, a transfer from the Royal Court in London, went without a nomination (is Hugh Jackman’s head now buried in his beautiful, beautiful arms?), as did the cult favorite Side Show. And somewhere, right now, Finding Neverland producer Harvey Weinstein is probably yelling.
The Last Ship earned a justified nod for its score, although that prize should likely go to Fun Home, with The Visit also a possibility. I was a little sorry not to have seen Roger Rees of The Visit get a nod for a lead, or Bob Balaban and Clare Higgins of A Delicate Balance and Jill Paice of An American in Paris recognized for featured roles. On the subject of An American in Paris – it’s very nice that the committee offered a couple of other nominations for choreography, but everyone else can probably just go home.
For best play, I’d expect it to come down to either The Curious Incident or Wolf Hall, as Disgraced didn’t crackle quite the way it did off-Broadway; that prize also goes to comedies less frequently, though Hand to God is quite a dark one. And the musical award will likely go to An American in Paris, though Fun Home is a wonderfully strong contender and Something Rotten! (which has a decent shot at a book award) will have the support of out-of-town voters who will want it to tour.
Play revival is a contest between the sheer delight of You Can’t Take It With You and prestige productions such as Skylight and The Elephant Man. Revival of a musical looks likely for The King and I. The direction categories are both quite strong (though I would have liked to have seen Michael Longhurst recognized for a masterly handling of Constellations and Joe Mantello for corralling the Airline Highway ensemble). None of the acting categories are exactly a lockdown.
I wouldn’t like to be the bookmaker on best actress in a musical, with Chita Rivera, Kelli O’Hara and Kristin Chenoweth (who will co-host the awards with Alan Cumming) all competing. A somewhat weaker category, best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play, is the only one to have taken advantage of a new rule that allows for six nominees when the final two or three are tied, or nearly. The most varied category is probably best performance by an actor in a leading role in a play, which has the film stars Bill Nighy and Bradley Cooper alongside Wolf Hall’s Ben Miles, off-Broadway darling (deservedly) Steven Boyer of Hand to God and newcomer Alex Sharp of The Curious Incident. Those last three, less starry, are all giving superb performances.
We’ll see how it all shakes out on 7 June. With luck, Harvey will have relaxed by then.
