Well, big weekly grosses and even bigger stars can’t guarantee a Tony Award nomination.
Broadway does what Broadway wants, so no Best Play nominations for huge moneymakers like Othello, Good Night, and Good Luck, Stranger Things: The First Shadow and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Same for the critical favorite Cult of Love.
While Good Night and Dorian Gray weren’t nominated for Best Play, their big stars – George Clooney and Sarah Snook, respectively, were nominated for their performances, as expected. In fact, Dorian Gray, in which Snook plays all the characters from the Oscar Wilde novel, has the distinction of being the most nominated solo show in Tony history, placing in six categories: Snook’s performance, Kip Williams’ direction, and nods for scenic, lighting, sound and costume design.
Perhaps the most surprising snubs involved two of the biggest grossing new shows: Othello and Glengarry Glen Ross. Neither were nominated in the Best Play Revival category (the nominated Our Town was the likely spoiler), and their stars Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal got zilch in the Leading Actor/Play category. Gyllenhaal especially was a shocker – he received near-universal critical praise for his energetic performance as Iago. On a happier note, the terrific Harry Lennix was nominated for for his role in Purpose, and Louis McCartney, who pretty much carries the massive Stranger Things on his back, got a well-deserved nomination.
And then there’s the snub of Glengarry‘s cast. Only Bob Odenkirk, who gave a terrific performance as the office sad sack, is in the running for a Tony. Kieran Culkin was thought to be a certain nominee, but nada. Same for his castmates Bill Burr and Michael McKean. Their absence from the Featured Actor/Play list gave the space to two very worthy contenders: Conrad Ricamora, who plays a very conflicted Abe Lincoln in Oh, Mary! and Gabriel Ebert, the creepy teacher in John Proctor Is The Villain.
The Best Musical and Best Musical Revival categories went off pretty much as expected, though big name directors George C. Wolfe missed the cut for his work on Gypsy, and no love for Tina Landau’s direction of Floyd Collins. Both Gypsy and Floyd Collins received nominations in the Best Musical Revival slot.
The Featured Actress/Musical category had some upsets. Broadway favorites Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga (both appearing in the Sondheim revue Old Friends), were missing, as was Michelle Williams (Death Becomes Her). The category does have some surprising, and deserving, relative newcomers: Julia Knitel from Dead Outlaw and Gracie Lawrence, who does a terrific Connie Francis in the Bobby Darin jukebox musical Just In Time. (Just In Time, surprisingly, was left out of the Choreography category.)
The Best Leading Actress/Musical also ignored a couple Broadway favorites: Adrienne Warren of The Last Five Years or Idina Menzel for Redwood. Unusually for them, neither were particularly strong critical favorites this year.
Other snubs, this time in the Director/Play category: Anna D. Shapiro, who directed the widely praised Eureka Day, and Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, the co-directors who kept Stranger Things: The First Shadow moving like a Rube Goldberg machine.
The only surprise in the Featured Actor/Musical category was the absence of Christopher Sieber, who makes a delightful foil in Death Becomes You. Two welcome additions, though, were the nominations of Jeb Brown, who serves as the narrator/band leader in Dead Outlaw and Taylor Trensch, the meek newspaper reporter who turns heroic in Floyd Collins.
