‘Jagged’ musical leads with 15 Tony nominations
The sobering musical “Jagged Little Pill,” which plumbs Alanis Morissette’s 1995 breakthrough album to tell a story of an American family spiraling out of control, earned a leading 15 Tony Award nominations, as the Broadway community took the first steps to celebrate a pandemic-shortened season that upended the theater world.
There are three Best Musical nominees: “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge: The Musical” and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.” And there are five Best Play nominees: “Grand Horizons,” “The Inheritance,” “Sea Wall/A Life,” “Slave Play” and “The Sound Inside.”
Nipping on the heels of “Jagged Little Pill” for overall numbers of nominations is “Moulin Rouge!,” a jukebox adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s hyperactive 2001 movie about the goings-on in a turn-of-thecentury Parisian nightclub, that got 14 nods.
Two very different offerings are tied with 12: “Tina,” which tells rock icon Turner’s life with songs that include “Let’s Stay Together” and “Proud Mary,” and “Slave Play,” Jeremy O. Harris’ groundbreaking, bracing work that mixes race, sex, taboo desires and class. The dozen nods make “Slave Play” the most-nominated play in Tony history.
“The Inheritance” by Matthew Lopez nabbed 11 nominations. It’s a twopart, seven-hour epic that uses “Howards End” as a starting point for a play that looks at gay life in the early 21st century.
The nominations were pulled from just 18 eligible plays and musicals, a fraction of the 34 shows the season before. During most years, there are 26 competitive categories; this year there are 25 with several depleted ones.
The category for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical has just one actor — Aaron Tveit from “Moulin Rouge!”
One category — Best Musical Revival — had no eligible shows at all and was cut.
In another sign of a strange season, the Best Score category — an honor
Adrienne Warren is up for a Tony Award for playing the title role in ‘Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.’
for original music and lyrics that is usually dominated by musicals — is filled this year with five plays. It was a slap in the face for the sole original musicaltheater score that managed to open, “The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical.”
In the performance categories, Adrienne Warren got a Best Leading Actress in a Musical nomination for inhabiting the lead character in “Tina.” She is joined by Elizabeth Stanley for playing a woman battling addiction in “Jagged Little Pill” and Karen Olivo for bringing down the house with Katy Perry’s “Firework” in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical.”
In the Best Actress in a Drama category, MaryLouise Parker earned a nod with “The Sound Inside” and is joined by Laura Linney, who is looking for her first Tony win with the solo show “My Name Is Lucy Barton,” and Joaquina Kalukango, who gave a wrenching performance in “Slave Play.” Six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald wasn’t denied a spot because her revival of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” closed early.