‘HAMILTON’ HITS THE BULL’S-EYE

WITH 16 TONY NOMINATIONS

The question was never whether Hamilton would dominate this year’s Tony Award nominations, but to what extent.

On Tuesday morning, the world found out. LinManuel Miranda’s groundbreaking, hip-hop-infused account of our “founding father without a father” reaped 16 nominations (including best musical, naturally), breaking the record of 15 shared by Billy Elliot and The Producers.

Miranda was acknowledged for his book, score and acting, and three other performers in the cast made up more than half of the featured-actor-in-a-musical field.

Hamilton is already the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a bevy of theater honors and accolades. Shuffle Along, or the Making Of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and

All That Followed, a Jazz Age chronicle that cast a critical eye on history without sacrificing exuberance, earned 10 nominations, including best musical.

A bold new Fiddler On the Roof by director Bartlett Sher (overlooked, surprisingly), earned nominations as a revival and for its leading man, Danny Burstein.

The more lighthearted School

of Rock — The Musical, adapted from the film, earned four nominations including best musical, as did a musical adaptation of the movie Waitress. Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s warmhearted Bright Star collected five.

Among musical actors, numerous members of Hamilton’s cast were joined by Cynthia Erivo and Danielle Brooks of The Color

Purple, another widely praised musical revival.

The play categories, too, showcase a wide array of talent and social consciousness, from Eclipsed, Danai Gurira’s searing look at the anguished “wives” of rebel soldiers in early-21st-century Liberia, to The Humans, Stephen Karam’s brutally intimate account of a middle-class family struggling to stay afloat.

Eclipsed and Humans grabbed six nominations each. For play, they’re up against King Charles

III and The Father. Charles’ Olivier Award-winning Tim PigottSmith will face competition from

Father’s star, Frank Langella, as well as Gabriel Byrne ( Long Day’s

Journey Into Night), Jeff Daniels ( Blackbird) and Mark Strong, star of a U.K.-based, five-times-nominated revival of Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge.

A revival of another American classic, Long Day’s Journey, earned the most nominations of any production of a play this year — seven.

The Tony Awards will be broadcast live from New York’s Beacon Theatre June 12 at 8 p.m. ET/5 PT.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA AS ALEXANDER HAMILTON, BY JOAN MARCUS

JOAN MARCUS Lin-Manuel Miranda, right, and multicultural sensation Hamilton were nominated for 16 Tony Awards, the most ever.

LEFT BY JOAN MARCUS; MATTHEW MURPHY Cynthia Erivo, right, was nominated for The Color Purple. but costar Jennifer Hudson was not. Inset. Ian Piggott-Smith was recognized in King Charles III.