New York: The Tony Awards are being nicknamed this year the “Hamil-Tonys” in recognition that Hamilton is the show to beat.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop-flavored biography about the first US treasury secretary earned 16 Tony Award nominations on Tuesday, breaking the 15-nominations record held jointly by The Producers and Billy Elliot the Musical.
Hamilton earned nods in all 13 categories it was eligible.
“I feel really grateful that they kind of spread the wealth,” Miranda told The Associated Press. “Theatre requires collaboration and I’m lucky to be working with some of the best people in their respective fields alive right now.”
Hamilton’s star and composer, Lin-Manuel Miranda (Image Credit: AFP)
The awards will be handed out June 12, with James Corden playing host from the Beacon Theatre. Hamilton will be hoping to break another record: The musical with the most Tonys is The Producers with 12.
At that ceremony, Hamilton will compete for Broadway’s biggest crown — best new musical — with Bright Star, School of Rock, Shuffle Along and Waitress.
The other top nominees Tuesday were Shuffle Along, a show that explores a groundbreaking 95-year-old musical starring, written and directed by African-Americans, which got 10 nominations, and the revival of She Loves Me, which earned eight.
Hamilton earned seven acting nominations - Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Groff, Christopher Jackson and Renee Elise Goldsberry. It also earned nominations for best musical, scenic design, costumes, lighting design, direction, choreography, orchestrations, best book and best original score.
Jessie Mueller in Waitress on Broadway. (Image Credit: Joan Marcus)
The musical has already won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, a Grammy, the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant.
The loudest screams in Miranda’s house Tuesday morning were for the announcement of Jackson, who plays George Washington. Jackson was one of the first people to audition for the show in New York in 2002. “To see him get recognized got a particularly loud scream from my parents and my wife and I,” Miranda said, laughing.
Goldsberry earned her first Tony nomination after appearing in four previous Broadway shows and said she will go to the theatre Tuesday night holding aloft the banner of Hamilton.
“The 16 of us represent every single person that worked on this show and we’re really grateful to get to do that,” she said.
Waitress, a musical with songs by singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles that is adapted from a 2007 film about a waitress trapped in a small-town diner and a loveless marriage, earned four nominations.
“I’m so grateful to have found my way back toward the theatre community. I grew up doing theatre. It’s how I learned to listen to music,” said Bareilles, who got a nod for music and lyrics. “This experience of working on Waitress has so changed my life in personal ways and professional ways.”
School of Rock, the adaptation by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Julian Fellowes of the Jack Black-led movie about a wannabe rocker who enlists fifth-graders to form a rock group, earned four nominations, including best musical, book, original score and best leading man in Alex Brightman.
“It’s a funny season this one, isn’t it,” said Lloyd Webber from London. “As you know, it’s the ‘Hamil-Tonys.’ We’ve gotten everything we could have hoped for — and that’s all we’ll get. But it’s lovely in this season of all seasons to get score and musical and book. We’re terribly pleased.”
Bright Star, a complex love story set against the American South by comedy god Steve Martin and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Edie Brickell, earned five nominations and few were more pleased than Martin, who earned his first Tony nod.
“This is very, very exciting to me. It’s almost, like your emotions betray you, you don’t allow yourself to know how excited you are but then when it happens, the body just takes over and you think, ‘Gee, I must have really been nervous about this!’ So I am so pleased,” he said.
Who got snubbed?
There were a few surprises Tuesday, including Jennifer Hudson being overlooked in The Color Purple and only a costume design nomination for Tuck Everlasting, a well-received musical based on the 1975 book by Natalie Babbitt. Also, the hit show On Your Feet!, which follows the lives of Gloria and Emilio Estefan, earned just a choreography nod.
And American Psycho, an adaptation of the novel by Bret Easton Ellis about a materialistic serial killer, only captured nominations for scenic design and lighting. Its actors and songs by Duncan Sheik were snubbed. Some Hollywood stars didn’t do so well on Tuesday, with Clive Owen, Al Pacino, Bruce Willis, Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan and George Takei all missing out on nods.
But Michelle Williams and Jeff Daniels got ones for the revival of Blackbird, David Harrower’s unsettling play that centres on an older man, a much younger woman and what happens when they meet 15 years after their brief relationship has ended.
Daniels compared his and Williams’ work to the film The Defiant Ones starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier, who appeared onscreen chained together.
“That’s what it feels like because there’s such a yin and a yang, act-react to it. I told her in February, ‘Half my performance is in you,’” he said. “So I was thrilled for her as I was for me.”
