• The new musical “Hadestown” dominated the Tony nominations Tuesday, getting nods in 14 categories. Read the full list of nominees.
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Network,” two costly dramas that have been big hits at the box office, were not nominated in the best new play category.
• Among the bold-faced names nominated were Annette Bening, Bryan Cranston, Jeff Daniels, Adam Driver, Elaine May and Laurie Metcalf.
• The awards ceremony will take place at 8 p.m. Eastern on June 9 at Radio City Music Hall, and broadcast on CBS. James Corden is the host.
‘Hadestown’ and ‘The Ferryman’ get Tonys love
“Hadestown,” a folk-and-blues-inflected musical reimagining the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, led the Tony nominations on Tuesday, winning nods in 14 categories and becoming a front-runner in the hotly contested, and financially significant, race for the season’s best new musical.
An unconventional show nurtured by the downtown theater scene — sung-through, poetic, packed with emotion and politics — “Hadestown” will now face off against four others for the big prize. “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations,” an exuberantly sung and danced jukebox musical, garnered 12 nominations; “Tootsie,” a musical comedy adapted from the popular film but updated to reflect today’s gender politics, got 11. “Beetlejuice,” another movie adaptation, scared up eight nominations; and “The Prom,” about egotistic New York actors who insert themselves into a debate about sexuality at an Indiana high school, received seven.
“I can’t believe this is real — I never expected that this road was going to lead here,” said the singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, who fell in love with the Greek myth as a child and then, a dozen years ago, adapted it for the stage in a DIY-production that she packed into a silver school bus and toured around community theaters in Vermont.
Now she is a two-time Tony nominee, for the show’s book and score. “I just got captivated by the idea that there’s this character who believed that if he could make a piece of art beautiful enough, he could change the world,” she said.
The nominations, which come at the end of a lucrative Broadway season notable for the plethora of nonmusical plays, were striking not only for those recognized but also for those snubbed.
Neither “To Kill a Mockingbird” nor “Network,” two costly dramas that have been hits at the box office, was nominated in the best new play category. They did not come away empty-handed — “Mockingbird” was nominated for nine awards, and “Network” five — but it was clear that the nominators preferred fully original work in the best play category. (Aaron Sorkin based “Mockingbird” on the 1960 Harper Lee novel, while Lee Hall’s “Network” follows the plot of the 1976 film.)
The race for best new play is now likely to be a face-off between “The Ferryman,” Jez Butterworth’s gripping family drama set in a troubled Northern Ireland in 1981, and “What the Constitution Means to Me,” an autobiographical piece by Heidi Schreck inspired by her adolescent experience giving speeches about the Constitution to win scholarship money.
A group of 42 theater experts, who saw the 21 plays and 13 musicals eligible for awards, determined the nominations. The nominators are not allowed to have any financial relationship with the eligible shows.
Now begins the campaigning. Many acting categories appear to be hotly contested — the featured performances were especially strong this season — so watch for a lot of politicking, Tonys-style, over the next few weeks. The nominees will be showing up for gala dinners and fancy luncheons and giving a lot of interviews as they try to remind voters of their charm and skill.
The 831 Tony voters — actors, producers, writers, directors, designers and others active in the theater community, some with financial interest in the nominated shows — have until noon on June 7 to cast their electronic ballots.
The winners are to be announced on June 9 at the 73rd annual Tony Awards, held at Radio City Music Hall, hosted by James Corden, and broadcast on CBS starting at 8 p.m. Eastern. The Tony Awards, formally called the Antoinette Perry Awards, are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing.
(Excerpt) Read more in: The New York Times
