We know that saying “it’s an honor just to be nominated” is a way to make you feel better when you lose the actual prize. But in a Broadway season as competitive as 2013-14 — and as chock-full of celebrities — getting nominated truly was an honor. This was such a busy year that, by April, we’d forgotten Orlando Bloom was even here!
Tuesday morning’s Tony announcement — see tonyawards.com for the full list — had its share of surprises. Here are just a few of them:
The shocker isn’t that Tony-winning machine Mark Rylance was nominated: It’s that he was nominated twice: once as lead in “Richard III” and once as supporting in “Twelfth Night.” Even more surprising — but delightful — is the nod for his “Twelfth Night” co-star Samuel Barnett in the lead category. Another surprise: Chris O’Dowd getting recognized for his part in “Of Mice and Men,” which won mixed reviews. What wasn’t surprising was seeing his co-star, James Franco, get snubbed.
Still, my money is on the fifth man: Bryan Cranston in “All the Way.” He’s a celeb, he’s good, he carries his show — Tony voters eat that stuff up.
Another awards fave, Audra McDonald already has five Tonys on her mantelpiece, and she earned yet another nomination — her first as lead actress in a play — for her technically impeccable impersonation of Billie Holiday in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.” At this point she’s getting nominated for just stepping onto the stage.
And speaking of mimicry, it paid off in musicals as well, with both Jessie Mueller and Mary Bridget Davies getting noms for playing, respectively, Carole King (“Beautiful”) and Janis Joplin (“A Night with Janis Joplin”).
The lesson: Come awards time, good bio-acting can transcend a mediocre show. That Davies won a nod probably aced out Michelle Williams for “Cabaret.”
The nominators picked five nominees for Best Play but only four for Best Musical: “After Midnight,” “Aladdin” (whaaaa?), “Beautiful” and “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.” This means only one of the Best Musical nominees has a 100 percent original score (“Gentleman”); the other three use entirely or partially recycled ones.
This list also means the committee willfully snubbed big tuners like “Bullets Over Broadway,” “If/Then” and “The Bridges of Madison County.” Any of them would have been nominated in a lesser year, so not using the fifth slot strikes me as plain ridiculous — I find it hard to stomach “Beautiful” getting nominated over “Bridges.” This result probably has to do with the voting threshold needed to get a slot, and those three shows must have split the votes, but still …
At least “Bridges” and “If/Then” turn up in the Best Score category. While Jason Robert Brown’s work in the first is often hauntingly beautiful, the score is the weakest point in “If/Then” [scratch head some more].
Staying with musicals, Alan Cumming gave one of the best performances of the year in “Cabaret,” but he won for the exact same part in 1998 and so was ineligible. This left room for Neil Patrick Harris in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and not one but two reps from “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder”: Jefferson Mays and Bryce Pinkham. This show may end up a big winner in June.
While there were plenty of new musicals this year, the crop of new plays was lackluster. How much so? The utterly mediocre “Act One” and “Mothers and Sons” each got nods while “The Realistic Joneses,” which at least is ambitious, got snubbed. F–k me gently with a chainsaw, as they say in “Heathers” — off Broadway, where things can get saltier.