‘Strange Loop’ earns a leading 11 nominations
‘Paradise Square,’ ‘MJ’ tie for second with 10 nods each
“A Strange Loop,” Michael R. Jackson’s critically cheered theater meta-journey, earned a leading 11 Tony Award nominations on May 9 as Broadway joined the national discussion of race by embracing an envelopepushing Black-written and Black-led musical.
Jackson’s 2020 Pulitzer Prize drama winner about a Black gay man writing a show about a Black gay man earned nods for best musical, best leading man in newcomer Jaquel Spivey and best featured actress for L Morgan Lee, who becomes the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for a Tony Award. The show also was nominated for scenic design, lighting, sound, orchestrations, Stephen Brackett’s direction and John-Andrew Morrison for featured actor.
“I hoped my collaborators would be acknowledged. That actually, in a weird way, was much more exciting to me,” Jackson said. “Even if we hadn’t gotten any nominations, I would have been disappointed, but I also would have known how powerful the show has been resonating with people.”
Jesse Williams, the “Grey’s Anatomy” star making his Broadway debut, got a nomination for “Take Me Out,” as did his co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson of “Modern Family” fame. Playwright Lynn Nottage had two reasons to smile: Her book for the Michael Jackson musical “MJ” was nominated for best book and her play “Clyde’s” got a nod for best play.
Right behind “A Strange Loop” is a tie with 10 nominations each for “MJ,” a bio musical of the King of Pop stuffed with his biggest hits, and “Paradise Square,” a musical about Irish immigrants and Black Americans jostling to survive in New York City around the time of the Civil War.
The rest of the best new musical category includes “Six,” the corrective feminist take on the six wives of England’s Henry VIII, “Girl From the North Country,” which uses Bob Dylan songs to weave a Depression-era story in the Midwest, and “Mr. Saturday Night,” a reworking of Billy Crystal’s film about a bitter, old insult comic chasing a last laugh.
Two of the best play nominees are about economics — “Skeleton Crew,” Dominique Morisseau’s play about
blue-collar job insecurity in a Detroit auto stamping plant in 2008, and “The Lehman Trilogy,” Stefano Massini’s play spanning 150 years about what led to the collapse of financial giant Lehman Brothers.
There’s also “Clyde’s,” Nottage’s play about a group of ex-cons trying to restart their lives at a truck stop diner, and “The Minutes,” Tracey Letts’ depiction of a small-town city council meeting that exposes backstabbing, greed and the larger delusions in American history. “Hangmen,” Martin McDonagh’s look at an executioner-turned-pub owner forced to grapple with his past when capital punishment is made illegal in the United Kingdom, also earned a best play nod.
There were four musical revivals during the season, but only three got nominations,
including “The Music Man,” which celebrates America’s soul with a traveling con man in a small Iowa town and stars Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, who each have two Tonys and were each nominated this time as well.
The two other entries are “Caroline, Or Change,” Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s show that explores America’s racial, social and economic divisions in 1963 Louisiana, and “Company,” Stephen Sondheim’s exploration of a single person’s conflicted feelings about commitment, this time with a gender-switching of the lead character. That left “Funny Girl,” the classic American show starring Beanie Feldstein about the rise of a comic star of the Ziegfeld Follies, out of the running — it got only one nod, for Jared Grimes as best featured actor in a
musical.
Grimes, a triple threat whose heroes include Sammy Davis Jr. and Gregory Hines and whose performance includes an electrifying tap dance number, took the traditionally white character Eddie Ryan and remade it as a young Black man. “Eddie Ryan is a big leap for us in the direction of just understanding that we can be everything and anything. We just need a chance,” he said. “I like to think that we’re making good strides.”
Nominations for best play revival are “Trouble in Mind,” Alice Childress’ play about a Broadway play that explores the racial divide in the 1950s; “How I Learned to Drive,” Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memory play told by the survivor of childhood sexual abuse, starring two nominees,
Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse; and “American Buffalo,” David Mamet’s look at loyalty and greed set in a junk shop starring Laurence Fishburne, Darren Criss and Sam Rockwell, the latter the only actor in the play nominated.
The others are “Take Me Out,” Richard Greenberg’s exploration of what happens when a baseball superstar comes out as gay, and “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enough,” playwright Ntozake Shange’s exploration of Black womanhood. That work also made history: Camille A. Brown became the first Black woman to direct and choreograph a Broadway play since 1955, and Brown earned nominations in both categories.
Neither Matthew Broderick nor his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker, earned nominations for a revival of “Plaza Suite,” but Patti LuPone got one for “Company” and so did LaChanze for “Trouble in Mind.” Ruth Negga was nominated for “Macbeth,” but her co-star Daniel
Craig came up empty.
Tony winner Phylicia Rashad got her first nomination in more than 15 years with “Skeleton Crew” and “SNL” veteran Rachel Dratch was nominated in the feminist farce “POTUS.” One eye-raising decision was not to hand Katrina Lenk a nod for her work in “Company.”
The musical “Mrs. Doubtfire” earned only one nod, for Rob McClure, stepping into the Robin Williams role of an actor who poses as his children’s portly, Scottish nanny in order to spend time with them after a divorce.
Ariana DeBose hosts the Tony Awards on June 12, which will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+.