Winner-take-all may be a term more commonly associated with primary elections. But if the Tony Award nominations announced on Tuesday in New York are any indication, that phrase could very well apply on the night of the awards ceremony in June to the musical that has dominated this Broadway season like no other show in history.
To no one’s surprise, Hamilton, with advance sales heading toward $100 million and rows of accolades already lining its creators’ shelves, was the favorite of the Tony nominators, scooping up a total of 16 nods, including those for best musical, best score, best book and best direction. An astonishing seven cast members — including the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda — made the Tony cut as well.
The musical beat the previous record for most nominations, 15, set by The Producers in 2001 and Billy Elliot the Musical in 2009. The fact that no one is particularly surprised about that, either, suggests how massive Hamilton’s presence has grown on Broadway in the months since its Aug. 6 opening at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.
Although Waitress, Bright Star, School of Rock and Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and all that Followed were also nominated for best musical, don’t expect to hear those titles uttered too often when the envelopes are opened on Tony night, June 12. Shuffle Along, a reworking by director George C. Wolfe of a landmark black musical, came in second Tuesday, with a more-than-respectable 10 nominations. And Bright Star, the Steve Martin-Edie Brickell bluegrass musical, received five. The shows deprived of a best-musical nod included American Psycho, Tuck Everlasting and the tunefully infectious Gloria Estefan jukebox musical, On Your Feet.
With the disclosure of the nominations in 24 categories from among the 36 eligible productions, the Tonys this year present a considerably more diverse portrait of the entertainment world than did the controversial 2016 Oscars. While all 20 of the actors up for Academy Awards were white for the second year in a row, a total of 14 of the 40 acting nominees for Tonys this year are actors of color. Their nominations were spread out over five shows: Hamilton, Shuffle Along, The Crucible, The Color Purple and Eclipsed, a play that takes place in a Liberian warlord’s encampment. (The Tonys have double the acting slots because they hand out awards separately for musicals and straight plays.)
The mega-success of Hamilton, with music, book and lyrics by Miranda — who personally racked up three nominations, including for one best actor in a musical — has tended to muffle the fact that this has been a strong season for non-musicals, both new and in revival. The nominees in both best-play categories reflect this fact. The race for best new play among Stephen Karam’s The Humans, Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed, Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III and Florian Zeller’s The Father should be a lively one, although The Humans and Eclipsed seem the early favorites.