Breaking: 2014 Tony Award nominees and reactions Who got the nod? Who was snubbed? Here are our first thoughts on the announcement of the 2014 Tony Award nominations. By Adam Feldman Tue Apr 29 20140 The stars are out at the Tony Awards! In a year packed with marquee names on Broadway, many of the most famous were omitted from today’s just-announced Tony nominations. (See below for a full list.) Denzel Washington, Daniel Radcliffe, James Franco, Michelle Williams, Zachary Quinto, Fantasia Barrino? Better luck next time. (Please come back!) Michael C. Hall, Toni Collette, Marisa Tomei? It’s been real. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart? Thanks for playing, gentlemen. But what does this mean, exactly? Not much. After all, two of the biggest names—Bryan Cranston and Neil Patrick Harris—did get nods, and are likely front-runners for the two Best Actor trophies in June. And in such a busy season, most of the celebrities who didn’t make the cut were simply squeezed out by good performances by lesser-known actors. We would have given slots to Washington and McKellen, but reasonable people will differ. Reasonable people, however, will have a tougher time defending the Tony-nomination committee’s strange and disappointing choices in other major categories. Best Musical, the most important field of all (in terms of box-office impact), is especially screwy. The dark lark A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and the Duke Ellington revue After Midnight were recognized, as expected. But while changes to the Tony regulations would have permitted five nominees in the category this year, there ended up being only four, with the remaining two slots going to the jukebox Carole King biomusical Beautiful and the Disney stage retread Aladdin. Absent from competition are most of the season’s original musicals: The Bridges of Madison County, a lovely effort that received generally strong and sometimes rapturous reviews, as well as Rocky and If/Then. (Bullets Over Broadway, which was also excluded, has a score of existing Jazz Age ditties.) Flawed as these shows may be in some eyes, it is hard to argue that Beautiful and Aladdin are significantly better—and both are a good deal less risky and inventive. The new Tony voting system, designed to expand the category in crowded seasons like this one, has instead only yielded more confusion and head-scratching. It is hard to understand why, based on merit, there were also only four choices for Best Revival of a Play (leaving out such worthies as Machinal, The Winslow Boy and No Man’s Land), while only the Best Play category was expanded to five nominees—of which the season’s most daring new offering, Will Eno’s The Realistic Joneses, was not even one. The Best Revival of a Musical field actually contracted to three slots, leaving out the superb Cabaret. There are still several heated matchups on the horizon, notably the showdowns for the Best Actress prizes (Kelli OHara vs. Jessie Mueller, Cherry Jones vs. Audra McDonald). But the Tony race just got a whole lot less interesting. Broadway is better than it’s letting on. RECOMMENDED: See complete Tony Awards coverage Below are the nominees for the 2014 Tony Awards: Best Play Act One All the Way Casa Valentina Mothers and Sons Outside Mullingar Best Musical After Midnight Aladdin Beautiful—The Carole King Musical A Gentlemans Guide to Love and Murder
Posted on: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 20:58:55 +0000
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