.New York takes the annual Tony Awards not, as we do with the Oliviers, with a pinch of salt, but with all the (self-absorbed) importance of a major competitive event. The entire Broadway season is timetabled towards it – hence the onward rush of shows that open in April and early May to get in under the wire of eligibility for being nominated – and then comes the announcement of the nominees, which happened on Tuesday morning, before the awards themselves are presented on June 11. So there’s another month of Tony fever to go, and this is where the Tony’s really kick into gear: the way they’re used as a marketing opportunity, and one full of political and personal lobbying. Of course, the fact that the awards are decided by a very large constituency of “Tony voters” – over 700 of them, from theatre owners and producers to practitioners and even theatre journalists – means that there’s a lot of lobbying to be done.
And though there can only ever be one winner in each category, there will be plenty of losers. But spare a thought for those who’re not even in the running to lose, having failed to secure a nomination, which stretches from such high-profile Broadway visitors as Julia Roberts (snubbed for her sell-out stage debut in Three Days of Rain), to Britain’s Maria Friedman, passed over for Best Actress in a Musical for the now-shuttered The Woman in White, though she made headlines there when she got a breast cancer diagnosis just days into previews for the show there, had surgery and returned to the show in time for the first night. Both were in contention for strong leading actress categories, to be sure, but in each case it’s a surprise, nonetheless: in the leading actress in a play category, all five of those that are nominated are for performances in plays that have already shuttered; and in the leading actress in a musical category, one of those nominated is Chita Rivera in her also shuttered career retrospective show, The Dancer’s Life, in which she merely played herself.
Another surprising omission: Antony Sher for surely one of the performances of the year in the Broadway transfer of Primo. Then there are entire productions that have been overlooked, or mostly so: Festen failed to secure a single nomination for its Broadway transfer (and is scheduled to close this weekend), and Disney’s Tarzan and Warner’s Lestat proved that corporate producing might doesn’t translate into Tony recognition.
