Broadway Will Go Off-Script at This Year’s Tony Awards

If Broadway is in recovery mode from Covid, it seems safe to say that it has made substantial progress in terms of both quality and range. The 2022-23 season being represented at this Sunday’s Tony Awards, set to air live on CBS from Upper Manhattan’s United Palace, offered some of the most impressive choices that nominators and voters have seen in years, as reflected particularly in the categories of original play and musical and revival of a musical.The plays in contention include no fewer than three Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as a London-based Obie Award winner from our most searingly articulate living dramatist. That would be Tom Stoppard, who dug into his personal roots to create “Leopoldstadt,” a characteristically brilliant and devastating work tracing a family of Viennese Jews through the catastrophic period between 1899 and 1955. The Pulitzer winners, all richly deserving of that honor, are “Cost of Living,” Martyna Majok’s haunting account of disabled people and their caretakers; “Between Riverside and Crazy,” Steven Adly Guirgis’s darkly witty, deeply humane account of a retired police officer’s practical and moral struggles; and “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’s briskly imaginative, uproarious twist on “Hamlet.” Jordan E. Cooper’s similarly irreverent “Ain’t No Mo’” completes the field.In the musical revival category, productions of two Stephen Sondheim masterworks, “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” are up against director Michael Arden’s revelatory staging of an essential but less-perfect work, “Parade.” (A disappointing revisionist take on “Camelot” is also in the running, but you’d have better odds on a slug in a horse race.) Like “Leopoldstadt,” “Parade” focuses on historical anti-Semitism, a subject that appears to finally be garnering renewed attention in the creative community, where Jews have always been prominent. Excellent play revivals were recognized as well, among them a hilarious, harrowing production of Suzan-Lori Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog” helmed by Kenny Leon — who, criminally, was snubbed in the director category — and LaTanya Richardson Jackson’s lyrical interpretation of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” both Pulitzer-winning works. Anne Kauffman’s staging of Lorraine Hansberry’s freewheeling swan song, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” was anchored by a high-octane performance by Oscar Isaac, another curious omission from this year’s list of nominees; Jamie Lloyd’s minimalist spin on Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” was, by comparison, too coolly cerebral, though Mr. Lloyd was the only director here tapped by nominators.In the field of original musical, those nominators also enjoyed more substantive options than they have in some time. True, “New York, New York,” a self-conscious, cliché-ridden affair based very loosely on the Martin Scorcese film, redeemed only by some Kander and Ebb tunes and Susan Stroman’s typically exuberant choreography, managed to snag a total of nine nominations. So, even more inexplicably, did “& Juliet,” a bubble-gum-pop-fueled shot of lite feminist camp that critics somehow preferred to the shut-out “Bad Cinderella,” which at least delivered an intermittently amusing book by “Killing Eve” showrunner and “Promising Young Woman” screenwriter Emerald Fennell. The contest will be a three-way race between the remaining contenders. “Shucked,” a wacky, warm-hearted satire with a winning score by Nashville hitmakers Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, also received nine nominations in total, while “Some Like It Hot,” a very contemporary adaptation of the classic film comedy dazzlingly helmed by director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw, topped this year’s list with 13 nods. Yet the critical favorite, which is also ranking high on predictions lists, is “Kimberly Akimbo,” adapted from David Lindsay-Abaire’s bleakly funny, stirring play focusing on a high school girl with a rare aging disease; featuring music by “Fun Home” and “Caroline, or Change” composer Jeanine Tesori, the musical earned heady praise and high-profile awards for its previous off-Broadway incarnation.Alli Mauzey and Victoria Clark in ‘Kimberly Akimbo.’ Joan MarcusThese productions and others yielded a wide array of star turns. The race for best performance by an actor in a play is especially tight, with “Topdog” leads Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins competing against longtime theater favorite Stephen McKinley Henderson, who was typically masterful in “Riverside,” and stage and screen stars Wendell Pierce and Sean Hayes, who respectively appeared in a U.K.-based re-imagining of “Death of A Salesman” and the new play “Good Night, Oscar.” Those vying for the lead musical actor prize include previous Tony winners Ben Platt (“Parade”) and Christian Borle (“Hot”) and adult-contemporary singer-turned trouper Josh Groban (“Sweeney Todd”), as well as rising performers J. Harrison Ghee (“Hot”) and Colton Ryan (“New York”).The prize for best leading actress in a play will likely go to “Killing Eve” star Jodie Comer, for her breathtaking first-ever stage performance in Suzie Miller’s politically charged solo piece “Prima Facie,” though the nominees also include Oscar winner Jessica Chastain (“A Doll’s House”) and perennial Tonys darling Audra McDonald, already a six-time winner and star of the long overdue Broadway premiere of 91-year-old Adrienne Kennedy’s “Ohio State Murders.” The always delightful Jessica Hecht was also tapped, for David Auburn’s two-woman showcase “Summer, 1976,” though her co-star Laura Linney, who was just as winning in a juicier role (and is more widely famous), was somehow overlooked by nominators.Nominees for leading actress in a musical range from singer/songwriter and “Waitress” composer Sara Bareilles, for her clever, charming spin on The Baker’s Wife in “Into the Woods,” to Broadway’s most reliably quirky leading lady of the moment, Annaleigh Ashford, for her frisky Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd.” Feisty “& Juliet” ingénue Lorna Courtney and Micaela Diamond, who is wrenching and sings gorgeously in “Parade,” are also contenders, though my money and my heart are with Victoria Clark, a five-time nominee and winner for 2005’s “The Light in the Piazza,” up this year for her devastatingly authentic portrait of the titular heroine in “Kimberly Akimbo.”The featured actor and actress categories also spotlight some hefty talent, from stars such as Samuel L. Jackson (“Piano Lesson”) and Arian Moayed (“Doll’s House”) to Nikki Crawford, Bonnie Milligan, and Crystal Lucas-Perry, who were rip-roaringly funny in, respectively, “Fat Ham,” “Kimberly Akimbo,” and “Ain’t No Mo’.” I’m also stumped in trying to choose a favorite for featured actor in a musical, given the ferociously entertaining performances by Alex Newell and Kevin Cahoon in “Shucked” and Justin Cooley’s immensely endearing work from “Kimberly Akimbo” — not to mention the robustly charismatic Jordan Donica, who was by far the best thing about “Camelot.”All of this bodes well for Sunday’s ceremony, which in deference to the striking Writer’s Guild of America, which counts many top playwrights among its members, will air without a written script. After all, in what medium does an actor’s ability to improvise or roll with the punches that can complicate live performance matter more than theater? No pressure, thespians, but I’m looking forward to this show.

Broadway Will Go Off-Script at This Year’s Tony Awards

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