Stage Door: What's in the running for Tony nominations this year?
Sunday, April 14, 2019 at 3:48PM
NATHANIEL R in Broadway and Stage, Tony Awards, musicals

With Emmy nomination voting still two months away, the Awards calendar is now strictly focused on the Broadway stage: it's Tony season!

The 2019 Tony Award eligibility runs May 31st, 2018 through April 25th, 2019. The eligible shows will find out their fate when Bebe Neuwirth and Brandon Victor Dixon announce the Tony nominations on Tuesday, April 30th. A Tony win, even moreso than an Emmy or Oscar triumph, can result in a huge change in the financial fortunes of the nominee/winner. That's especially true if the show doesn't come with a major marketing hook like "based on a popular movie" or "hear all your favourite songs by so & so!" in the case of jukebox musicals. 

So what's eligible this year? It's not time for predictions yet but we've compiled all the titles for you in chronological order because that's more interesting than alphabetical...

The Tony nominating committee (about 50 voters wide who serve three year stints), like most mainstream awards committees, has issues with their memory, often shunning early openers for brand new shiny things... which is why you see so many shows opening in April each year. There are exceptions to this. The Drama Desk nominating committee, for example (which honors both Broadway and Off Broadway), meets throughout the year, which theoretically levels the playing field a bit for the early openers.

Shows in red have already closed.

BEST MUSICAL

I personally loved "Head Over Heels" but its Tony chances, even for the hilarious cast (MVPs Bonnie Milligan & Andrew Durand both to the left in this photo), seem slim given lukewarm reviews and an early closing.

This season we've got 4 originals, 4 movie adaptations, and 3 jukebox musicals competing for the four nominations. Overall it's a much stronger field than last year where even Frozen (which is bad) was nominated. The Prom and Hadestown appear to be the frontrunners (?) but there are plenty of options for the other two slots.

BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL

A new stripped down take on Oklahoma! has been divisive among audiences but the critics love it.

Years where there are so few eligible productions sometimes have unusual decisions made by the Tony Awards committee but given that both of these shows were well received, we expect the category to move forward with everything that's eligible nominated. The major question, given the lack of competition, is how well they can score in the categories where they're competing with all of those original musicals (i.e. everywhere except book, score, and best musical)

BEST PLAY

Bryan Cranston takes on the ghost of Peter Finch in the stage version of "Network"

A competitive category with a much higher ratio of eligible players to nominees than the other categories. Since plays have shorter runs than musicals there's always the issue of whether or not voters will look back to earlier in the season or just go with the hits of the right-now. 14 titles are vying for the 4 nominations. The only certainty is that The Ferryman will be there. The three plus hour Irish drama has already extended long enough that there's a new cast now.

BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY

The revival of Burn / This officially opens tomorrow. What will the reviews be like?

This should be an interesting test case in memory since Boys in the Band (which opened before the actual Tony awards last year so it was really early out of the gate), The Waverly Gallery and Torch Song all opened quite a long time ago (in showbiz time that is) to Tony-worthy raves. It's hard to imagine a category without any of them but will the category have room for all three given that the other titles are so fresh in mind?  

SORRY, THAT'LL BE NEXT SEASON
We don't know much about next season yet even though it's just a few months away-- Broadway plans are always tentative because theaters have to open up first. Opening a show costs a ton of money and requires the schedules to align for lots of in-demand people. The first confirmed musicals arriving will be the stage adaptation of Moulin Rouge! in mid summer and Jagged Little Pill in the early fall (Alanis Morrissette jukebox musical but not a biography). The first play arriving will be another revival of Frankie & Johnny in the Claire de Lune (with Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon) in May. Rumored productions for this next season include Tea At Five (with Faye Dunaway playing Katharine Hepburn), another revival of West Side Story, and a Broadway transfer of London's sensationally reviewed / gender-flipped take on Stephen Sondheim's Company. As for movies becoming stage musicals beyond Moulin Rouge! there are a TON in development (if a movie has any reknown whatsoever in this era of nostalgia/familiarity being the #1 marketing hook, it's been optioned for a Broadway adaptation at this point) but for every Tootsie or Beetlejuice that actually arrive there are dozens more rumored titles that never materialize. Some currently rumored titles include Some Like It Hot, Almost Famous, and Empire Records. But even when a title sounds PERFECT and has a star attached it doesn't always happen. A couple of years ago we were hearing that we'd get Kristen Chenoweth doing Meryl Streep's role in a musical version of Death Becomes Her but as awesome as that sounded, it didn't happen.  

OR THE YEAR AFTER THAT
Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster are definitely starring in a revival of The Music Man (as previously mentioned) but it's scheduled for fall 2020 which means it'll be part of the 2021 Tony season.  

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
See website for complete article licensing information.