If some really do like it hot, that group would clearly include the nominators of the annual Tony Awards. The new musical “Some Like It Hot,” which remakes the famous film comedy with old-fashioned razzle dazzle and a diverse and inclusive sensibility, received 13 nominations, the most of any eligible production.
The new musicals “& Juliet” (which combines pop megahits with a reinvention of “Romeo & Juliet”), “Shucked” (a corn-crazy, country-flavored musical comedy), and “New York, New York” (a cheery reinterpretation of the 1977 Martin Scorcese film) each received nine nominations and “Kimberly Akimbo” (a musical adaptation of a dark comedy about a 16-year-old girl with a rare medical condition that causes her to age rapidly) received eight nominations.
In terms of musical revivals, “Sweeney Todd” received eight nominations, followed by “Parade” and “Into the Woods” at six each. “A Doll’s House” received six nominations, with many other play revivals (including “Death of a Salesman,” “The Piano Lesson,” “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” and “Topdog/Underdog”) with only three or two nominations each.
Of the 38 Broadway shows of the season that were eligible for nominations, 27 received nominations. Productions that received no nominations included the gender-reversed revival of “1776,” a reinterpretation of “Bob Fosse’s “Dancin’,” the educational satire “The Thanksgiving Play,” the farce “Peter Pan Goes Wrong,” the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Bad Cinderella,” and the Neil Diamond bio musical “A Beautiful Noise.”
A big surprise was the strong showing by “Ain’t No Mo’,” a race relations satire that closed early in the fall (in spite of a grassroots campaign to raise its visibility) and still managed to receive six nominations including Best Play, just as many as Tom Stoppard’s acclaimed Holocaust drama “Leopoldstadt.” “Cost of Living,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about living with disabilities that received a limited run in the fall, received five nominations.
Nominated performers included Jessica Chastain (“A Doll’s House”), Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford (“Sweeney Todd”), Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee (“Some Like It Hot”), Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond (“Parade”), Sara Bareilles and Brian d’Arcy James (“Into the Woods”), Audra McDonald (“Ohio State Murders”), Wendell Pierce (“Death of a Salesman”), Victoria Clark (“Kimberly Akimbo”), Jodie Comer (“Prima Facie”), Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (“Topdog/Underdog”), Sean Hayes (“Good Night, Oscar”), and Samuel L. Jackson (“the Piano Lesson”).
Performers who were snubbed (assumedly the result of an abundance of eligible talent) included Danielle Brooks and John David Washington (“The Piano Lesson”), Sharon D. Clarke (“Death of a Salesman”), Gaten Matarazzo (“Sweeney Todd”), and Rachel Brosnahan and Oscar Isaac (“The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”).
This year’s Tony Awards will be held June 11 at the United Palace in Washington Heights, with Ariana DeBose serving again as host, and airing live on CBS. It is too early to begin predicting the winners, especially since this is a year with no dominating smash hit favorites (“think “Hamilton” or “The Book of Mormon”). However, as the nominations were announced on Tuesday morning, insiders began to wonder about something else entirely, namely whether and how a strike by the Writers Guild of America could affect the awards ceremony.
