Tony nominations reward audacious risk-taking on Broadway
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It was the bravest of times, it was the priciest of times. The Tony Award nominations, announced Thursday morning in New York, reflect the split-screen reality of a Broadway season divided by mavericks and mega-stars.
The mavericks fared considerably better.
Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in “Othello,” George Clooney in “Good Night, and Good Luck” and newly minted Oscar winner Kieran Culkin in “Glengarry Glen Ross” allowed producers to create sticker shock on Broadway. Magnets for media and money, these productions created momentous New York buzz — along with the growing sense that Broadway is now a luxury goods item, affordable only to the super affluent and the super savvy about ticket discounts.
But of this group only Clooney received a nomination for his excellent lead performance as Edward R. Murrow in the stage adaptation of the 2005 film. Culkin, the weak link in the otherwise sturdy “Glengarry” revival, was passed over for a featured actor nomination. Bob Odenkirk, who shines as shabby Shelley Levene, scored the production’s only nod.
Clearly, the Tony nominating committee was paying close attention. All the advance hype in the world couldn’t extract a single nomination for the rudderless “Othello,” notwithstanding Gyllenhaal’s sleekly sinister Iago and Andrew Burnap’s Cassio serving as a model for how Shakespearean verse should be spoken.
The most memorable offerings didn’t care a whit about product-testing strategies. What marketing genius, for instance, could have predicted that “Maybe Happy Ending,” a jazz-infused rom-com about robots and mortality that originated in South Korea, and “Dead Outlaw,” a quirky jam-session of a show about a butterfingers bandit who was outshone by his more famous corpse, would be the most acclaimed musicals of this season?
“Maybe Happy Ending” led with 10 nominations in a tie with fellow best musical nominees “Buena Vista Social Club” and “Death Becomes Her.” “Dead Outlaw,” which opened Sunday just before the season deadline to glowing reviews, earned an impressive seven nominations.
From a purely commercial perspective, “Maybe Happy Ending” and “Dead Outlaw” represent huge gambles. Both lack the preexisting IP and Hollywood star power that are the assumed requirements of Broadway juggernauts. But audacity combined with artistic ingenuity is still the best bet for holding one’s head high in an American theater devoid of safety.
Epitomizing this lesson is Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!” This wild ride of a play, which I saw last year off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, follows the machinations of an unsteady Mary Todd Lincoln (originally played by Escola, who has returned to the role) as she drunkenly chases her cabaret dreams.
Part off-color drag act, part Carol Burnett-style sketch comedy, the show has survived on its bountiful comedic wits to become one of the hottest Broadway tickets of the year. “Oh, Mary” is also a contender in the best play race, having proved that it’s durable enough not to depend exclusively on Escola’s delirious drollery. (Betty Gilpin and Tituss Burgess both served tours of duty.)
Hearteningly, the best play category has turned out to be one of the year’s most competitive. Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain,” starring Sadie Sink from Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” received seven nominations, the same number as Jez Butterworth’s “The Hills of California.”
“John Proctor” initiates a conversation with Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” about the way the suffering of women in this American classic is given painfully short shrift. The title may sound polemical, but the work, superbly directed by Tony winner Danya Taymor (“The Outsiders”), has a buoyant curiosity about the lives of young women and exists on its own independent terms. (Sink, Taymor and Gabriel Ebert in the Proctor-ish teacher role, all nominated, are an integral part of the company-wide excellence.)
Theater makes me anxious. What if I hate a play and can’t leave? But “John Proctor Is the Villain” at the Ojai Playwrights Conference New Works Festival changed all that.
I’m still haunted by “The Hills of California,” Butterworth’s richly imagined drama about the death-bed vigil a group of sisters is holding for their mother, who sought to turn them into a copy of the Andrews Sisters. The exquisite music-filled production, which had a limited run in the fall, was too good to be forgotten. Sam Mendes’ magisterial direction and Laura Donnelly’s heartbreaking performance were part of the trove of well-deserved nominations.
Broadway continues to recognize the brilliance of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, one of the outstanding talents of this new generation of American playwrights. Last year, “Appropriate” received the Tony for play revival. This year, “Purpose,” his domestic drama about an illustrious civil rights icon’s dysfunctional family and checkered legacy, received six nominations, including best play. And it was uplifting to see Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “English,” which I encountered last year at the Old Globe, rounding out a best play list that shores up faith in the future of intelligent playwriting on Broadway.
It was a credit to the collective wisdom of the Tony nominating committee that Leslye Headland’s “Cult of Love,” one of the hokiest family dramas I’ve seen in ages, was excluded, despite a few strong supporting performances. And that “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” received a slew of design nominations and a nod for Louis McCartney’s sad-creepy lead performance but nothing for the deranged script.
“Good Night, and Good Luck,” a deft stage translation of the movie chronicling CBS newsman Murrow’s heroic stand against Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch-hunt, may not have made the playwriting cut. But Clooney is duly nominated for bringing Murrow’s sterling moral example to life at a time when the country badly needs a shot in the arm of courage.
Escola is likely to come out on top in the lead actor race, which I was pleased to see found room for Daniel Dae Kim’s fine work in David Henry Hwang’s “Yellow Face.” But I want to stress that “Good Night, and Good Luck” is no vanity exercise and that a movie star’s top billing on Broadway is not necessarily a sign of a broken system.
The production, scrupulously directed by David Cromer, is deeply moving in its public-spirited vision. Cromer, a Tony winner for “The Band’s Visit,” would no doubt have been nominated for his work were he not nominated for his ingenious staging of “Dead Outlaw.” He, along with Michael Arden, who won a Tony for his direction of “Parade” in 2023 and was nominated for his direction of “Maybe Happy Ending,” may be Broadway’s sharpest auteurs with the most discreet profiles.
Sarah Snook is the presumed front-runner in the lead actress in a play race for her solo tour de force in the multimedia extravaganza version of Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” But how marvelous to see Mia Farrow in contention for her work in “The Roommate” opposite a game Patti LuPone. Can producers find another excuse to bring this comedy duo back together?
The Broadway performance that cut the deepest for me was Audra McDonald as Rose in George C. Wolfe’s revival of “Gypsy,” a harrowing reexamination of the musical through the historical prism of race. She already holds the record for the most Tony wins for a performer with six awards. The only thing standing in the way of a seventh is Nicole Scherzinger’s sublime singing in Jamie Lloyd’s fearless reimagining of “Sunset Blvd.”
The success of “Maybe Happy Ending” hinges in no small part on the miraculous performance of Darren Criss, who plays an automaton with a secretly sensitive heart. The charm of this musical has proved to be not at all ephemeral, and in a Broadway season of invigorating long shots, the happy ending of “Maybe Happy Ending” seems all but guaranteed.
George Clooney, Sarah Snook and Bob Odenkirk score Tony nominations in Broadway debuts; Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal and Kieran Culkin are among the snubs.
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