May 14, 2008
‘In the Heights’ Leads Tony Nominations
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
“In the Heights,” a rap, hip-hop and salsa flavored musical about Latino families in Washington Heights, led the Tony nominations, which were announced on Tuesday morning, with 13 nods, including two for Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s 28-year-old creator and star.

But in a season where the revivals seemed to be bigger and brassier than the new shows — and thus more competitive in more categories — Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific” received the second highest number of nominations, with 11, including four for acting and one for direction.

To no one’s surprise, Tracy Letts’s ambitious prizefight of a family drama, “August: Osage County,” was the leader among the new plays, with seven nominations (a robust haul for a play), picking up three acting nods and one for its director Anna D. Shapiro. The play won the Pulitzer Prize in drama earlier this year.

Also picked for best musical revival was Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of “Sunday in the Park with George,” with nine nominations, including two for acting and one for direction. “Gypsy” received seven nominations, including one for Arthur Laurents, 89, who wrote the book for the show in 1959 and directed this production. The critically reviled “Grease” was also nominated in this category, though, it should be said, it was one of only four eligible shows.

Other shows in the best musical category are “Xanadu,” Douglas Carter Beane’s loving parody of the 1980 Olivia Newton John movie; and “Passing Strange,” the autobiographical rock musical about an African American artist in the European art scene, which received seven nominations; its creator and star, Stew, was given four, two of which he shared with his writing partner, Heidi Rodewald. The fourth slot in the category, which was the subject of intense speculation, went to“Cry-Baby,” a musical adaptation of John Waters’ 1990 movie about 1950’s Baltimore, which picked up four nods.

The winners will be announced at the 62nd annual Tony awards ceremony on June 15 at Radio City Music Hall.

Close behind “August” in the new play category, and yet so far away, is “The 39 Steps,” the minimalist comedic take on the 1935 Hitchcock film, which picked up six nominations, including ones for all the design categories — lighting, costume, set and sound.

Joining those in the best play category are “Rock ’n’ Roll,” Tom Stoppard’s multi-generational play about Pink Floyd, British Marxists and the fall of communism in the former Czechoslovakia; and “The Seafarer,” Conor McPherson’s chilly tale about five drunken Irishmen who come together to play cards one Christmas Eve. Four of the nominated plays in this category first played in London; the other, “August” was a production by the Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago.

As always, the omissions are as interesting, if not more so, than the nominees themselves. “The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein” and Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” the biggest shows of the season, both made light impressions, with three nods and two, respectively.

Star-studded plays like Mike Nichols’ production of “The Country Girl,” with Morgan Freeman, “A Bronx Tale” with Chazz Palminteri and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with James Earl Jones and Terrence Howard, were shut out completely. The financially successful revival of “Cyrano de Bergerac” starring Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner, picked up one nominations, for costumes. Nathan Lane, the star of “November” was not nominated, nor was the play itself, a new offering from David Mamet — though Mamet and Lane are as big names as they get in the theater.

In this season’s play revival category, Rupert Goold’s production of “Macbeth,” which came from London via the Brooklyn Academy of Music, was nominated alongside Dan Sullivan’s production of Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming”; Roundabout’s production of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”; and a London transfer of Marc Camoletti’s “Boeing Boeing,” which, if successful, may signal a revival of the whole sex farce genre.

Joining Mr. Miranda and Stew in the leading-actor-in-a-musical category are Daniel Evans, as George Seurat and his great-grandson George in “Sunday in the Park with George”; Paulo Szot, playing the French plantation owner Emile DeBecque in “South Pacific; and Tom Wopat, who plays the cash-strapped father in “A Catered Affair.”

In a showdown that has been anticipated for months, Patti LuPone of “Gypsy” and Kelli O’Hara of “South Pacific” will be battling it out in the leading-actress-in-a-musical category, which also includes strong performances by Kerry Butler (“Xanadu”), Faith Prince (“A Catered Affair”) and Jenna Russell (“Sunday in the Park with George”).

The women of “August” show up all over the actress-in-a-play categories. For leading actress, Deanna Dunagan is up against her co-star Amy Morton, who plays her daughter. They are joined by Eve Best, who dangles a houseful of men around her finger in “The Homecoming”; S. Epatha Merkerson, who plays a discontented housewife in the Manhattan Theater Club’s revival of “Come Back, Little Sheba”; and Kate Fleetwood, who plays Lady Macbeth in the Scottish play.

Patrick Stewart, as Macbeth, is the early favorite in the eclectic best-actor-in-a-play category; his competition includes Rufus Sewell (“Rock ’n’ Roll”), Mark Rylance (“Boeing Boeing”),Ben Daniels (“Les Liaisons Dangereuses”) and Laurence Fishburne (“Thurgood”). The nationalities of the nominees in this category are: British, British, British, British and American, respectively.

Ms. LuPone’s “Gypsy” costar, Laura Benanti, is in the featured-actress-in-a-musical category (despite the fact that she’s playing the title role), along with Andrea Martin (one of the three nominations for “Young Frankenstein”), de’Adre Aziza (“Passing Strange”), Olga Merediz (“In the Heights”) and Loretta Ables Sayre (“South Pacific”).

The featured-actor-in-a-musical category includes Boyd Gaines (“Gypsy”), Daniel Breaker (“Passing Strange”), Christopher Fitzgerald (“Young Frankenstein”), Robin de Jesus (”In the Heights”) and Danny Burstein (“South Pacific”).

On the play side, both Conleth Hill and Jim Norton of “The Seafarer” picked up nominations for featured actor, alongside David Pittu (“Is He Dead?”), Raul Esparza (“The Homecoming”) and Bobby Cannavale (“Mauritius”).

For best performance by a featured actress in a play, Rondi Reed of “August” is up against Martha Plimpton (“Top Girls”), Sinead Cusack (“Rock ‘n’ Roll”), Laurie Metcalf (“November”) and Mary McCormack (“Boeing-Boeing”).

The Antoinette Perry Awards, as the Tonys are called on the dotted line, began in 1947 with an Easter Sunday dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Twenty years later, the Tonys were first broadcast nationally, and since then the ceremony has become as much an advertisement for Broadway as an event to celebrate the industry’s talent.

The ceremony, which is produced jointly by the League of American Theaters and Producers, the industry trade association, and the American Theater Wing, a nonprofit service organization, is broadcast live on CBS from Radio City Music Hall. While the Tony ceremony may be the highest-profile platform for the industry as a whole, the profile has not been all that high recently. Ratings for last year’s Tonys were the lowest ever — though, granted, the broadcast was up against the final episode of “The Sopranos.”

This year, Whoopi Goldberg will be the host.