‘A Strange Loop’ leads with 11 Tony nominations

“A Strange Loop,” Michael R. Jackson’s critically cheered theater meta-journey earned a leading 11 Tony Award nominations Monday as Broadway joined the national discussion of race by embracing an envelope-pushing 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.

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 has two reasons to smile Monday: Her book for “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 the songs of Bob Dylan 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 “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. “The Minutes,” Tracey Letts’ depiction of a small-town city council meeting that exposes the larger delusions in American history, also earned a best play nod.

MARC J. FRANKLIN/POLK & CO. VIA AP Jaquel Spivey, seen during a performance of “A Strange Loop” in New York, received a Tony Award nomination for best leading man, one of 11 nominations earned by the production.