Broadway history has just been made, as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton and the founding fathers, Hamilton, earned 16 Tony nominations.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and force behind Hamilton, is nominated for three individual awards, including for best book, best original score and best performance by a lead actor in a musical. The production seems likely to win prizes for musical, lead actor, supporting actor (for Daveed Diggs), supporting actress (for Renée Elise Goldsberry), book, score, direction, lighting, scenic design and orchestrations.
In the best play category, the contenders will be “King Charles III”, “The Humans”, “Eclipsed”, and “The Father”, while the shows competing against “Hamilton” for best musical are “School of Rock”, “Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed”, “Bright Star”, and “Waitress”. The awards ceremony, presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, will be on June 12, hosted by James Corden and broadcast on CBS. It’s virtually the first time McDonald has been on Broadway without a nomination-her six previous Tony performance wins are the record for an actor.
Sophie Okonedo received a nomination as best actress for her role in The Crucible, though Oscar nominated Saoirse Ronan was stunningly snubbed for what was probably a far more impressive performance in the same play.
The victor will be revealed at the 70th Tony Awards on June 12. The bluegrass-infused musical, created by the comic-musician-renaissance man Steve Martin and his songwriting partner Edie Brickell, earned five Tony nominations altogether. In a few categories, including lead actor and featured actor in a musical, performers from “Hamilton” will face off against one another.
The new musical Shuffle Along touts this season’s biggest collection of Tony alumni in its cast and creative team.
Alas no. Takei wound up tweeting about “Mad Max”, not the Tonys, and the Twitter account of his late show pledged allegiance to what else…”Hamilton”?
But “Hamilton”, which recently won the Pulitzer for drama, an accolade that only rarely goes to a musical, has officially become the hottest thing EVER.
Shuffle Along, meanwhile, picked up 10 nominations, and She Loves Me nabbed eight.
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In the best play category, two works by Arthur Miller are in contention: “The Crucible” and “A View from the Bridge”. They were nominated for their work on Best Musical nominee Bright Star. But Jessica Lange and Gabriel Byrne earned nominations for the revival of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, and Michelle Williams and Jeff Daniels got ones for “Blackbird”. From the start, the stellar advance box office made it obvious that the show would still be going strong come May and producers chose to set aside blocks of seats for the Tony Awards crunch time.
