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      Angela Lansbury Will Receive Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement

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      The star of stage, film and screen has already won five competitive Tony Awards, and starred in several Stephen Sondheim musicals.Angela Lansbury, an acclaimed and beloved star of stage, film and television, will be honored this year with a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement.Lansbury, 96, who has already won five competitive Tony Awards, will receive the lifetime achievement award on June 12, when this year’s ceremony is set to take place at Radio City Music Hall and to be broadcast on CBS.Lansbury first appeared on Broadway in 1957, in a farce called “Hotel Paradiso,” and in 1964 she starred in her first Broadway musical, “Anyone Can Whistle,” a flop that is remembered mostly because the songwriter was Stephen Sondheim.She was already a three-time Oscar nominee, notably for “The Manchurian Candidate” in 1962, when she landed her breakout Broadway role, starring as the free-spirited title character in “Mame” in 1966. She won her first Tony Award for that performance. More

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      in Theater

      Tony Awards 2022: Who Will Win (and Who Should)

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      A critic’s picks in a hard-to-predict Broadway year, plus nods to shows from Off Broadway and other, odder corners.Though I see hundreds of shows a year, I’m not a seer. Nor am I the kind of theater lover who easily sorts treasured experiences into tranches of good, better and best. Nevertheless, here I am with prognostications and preferences for the Tony Awards that will be given out on June 12.The Will Win category simply lists my predictions in a hard-to-predict year. The Should Win category indicates how I would vote if I were allowed to, with an exception: I get more wiggle room, including the chance to select two “winners” in some cases. Even then, I was often torn, cherishing nearly equally some shows and artists likely to win and some that weren’t nominated at all.Which brings us to the Should Have Been Nominated category. A larkish Times tradition allows me to include not just other work seen on Broadway but also (as indicated by an asterisk) artists and productions hailing from Off Broadway and other, odder climes.Potential “nominees” in this category are always too numerous to acknowledge — and this year I’m skipping some I’ll probably get to champion next year, like the cast and team behind “Kimberly Akimbo,” a terrific musical that played at the Atlantic Theater Company this past winter and transfers to Broadway in the fall.But even then I wanted to celebrate more of the work that helped us feel less alone in a chaotic year — hence my introduction of a noncanonical best ensemble category. After all, this was a season when merely making theater was a victory.Best PlayWILL WIN“The Lehman Trilogy”SHOULD WIN“Skeleton Crew”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED“Dana H.”“Pass Over”“A Case for the Existence of God”*The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, which will be given out on June 12, are the first to recognize shows that opened following the long pandemic shutdown of Broadway’s theaters.Season in Review: Thirty-four productions braved the pandemic to open under the most onerous conditions.Game of Survival: During a time unlike any other, productions showed their resourcefulness while learning how to live with Covid.A Tony Nominee: Myles Frost is drawing ovations nightly on Broadway with his performance in “MJ,” a musical about Michael Jackson’s creative process.The Missing Category: This Covid-stalked Broadway season has made clear that a prize for best ensemble should be added, our critic writes.Best MusicalWILL WIN“A Strange Loop”SHOULD WIN“Girl From the North Country”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED“Oratorio for Living Things”*Best Play RevivalWILL WIN“Trouble in Mind”SHOULD WIN“Trouble in Mind”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED“Cyrano de Bergerac”*“Wedding Band”*Best Musical RevivalWILL WIN“Company”SHOULD WIN“Caroline, or Change”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED“Into the Woods”*Best Actor in a PlayWILL WINSimon Russell Beale, “The Lehman Trilogy”SHOULD WINDavid Threlfall, “Hangmen”orDavid Morse, “How I Learned to Drive”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATEDJon Michael Hill, “Pass Over”James McAvoy, “Cyrano de Bergerac”*Best Actress in a PlayWILL WINLaChanze, “Trouble in Mind”SHOULD WINDeirdre O’Connell, “Dana H.”orMary-Louise Parker, “How I Learned to Drive”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATEDEmily Davis, “Is This a Room”Mary Wiseman, “At the Wedding”*Brittany Bradford, “Wedding Band”*Best Actor in a MusicalWILL WINMyles Frost, “MJ”SHOULD WINJaquel Spivey, “A Strange Loop”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATEDJay O. Sanders, “Girl From the North Country”Best Actress in a MusicalWILL WINJoaquina Kalukango, “Paradise Square”SHOULD WINSharon D Clarke, “Caroline, or Change”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATEDKearstin Piper Brown, “Intimate Apparel”*Best Featured Actor in a PlayWILL WINJesse Tyler Ferguson, “Take Me Out”SHOULD WINChuck Cooper, “Trouble in Mind”orRon Cephas Jones, “Clyde’s”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATEDBrandon J. Dirden, “Skeleton Crew”Brandon J. Dirden, “Take Me Out”Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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      in Theater

      Why the Tonys Need an Award for Best Ensemble

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      The playwright Paul Rudnick scripted a delicious red-carpet moment into “In & Out,” his 1997 movie whose comic plot is set in motion by an acceptance speech at the Academy Awards.Before the ceremony, an entertainment reporter played by Tom Selleck snags an interview with a nominated film star, played by Matt Dillon.“Basically, to me, awards are meaningless,” the star says, with a slouching self-righteousness. “I’m an artist, it’s about the work, all the nominees are artists, and we shouldn’t be forced to compete with each other like dogs.”“Well, I hear ya,” the reporter says. “Good point. So then why are you here?”“Case I win!” the star says, and flashes a smile.Showbiz awards are inherently fraught. They’re also inherently tantalizing. That’s why we — artists and audience members alike — get so exercised about who goes home with a statuette. For performers, the investment is obvious: Winning can mean more and better work. And we spectators love to see our tastes confirmed when people we admire get the glory we believe they deserve. So when the Tony Awards are handed out on June 12, we’ll be rooting, as always, for the voters to have gotten it right — and grousing, as always, about who they’ve robbed.Still, I can tell you right now that there will be one egregious omission, a category that needs honoring. One in which cast mates would not have to compete with one another, like dogs or otherwise.There is no Tony Award for best ensemble. And there really ought to be.“Six” is a classic ensemble piece, in that it doesn’t actually want its performers to eclipse one another.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIF THIS CHAOTIC, Covid-stalked Broadway season has taught us anything, it’s that theater is a team sport.In theory, we knew that already: It takes a collection of artists working together to make each show. But during the industry’s fitful comeback — with its pandemic-fueled moods of terror and celebration, defiance and wariness — we knew it in our bones.We knew it each time we opened our programs to find those little paper slips, telling us which understudies were stepping into which roles for which actors who’d tested positive for the coronavirus. We got familiar with the uh-oh reflex those notices evoked in us — a gut-level assumption proved wrong each time we lucked into a wonderful understudy. We got familiar, too, with the relief we felt when we opened our programs to find no substitutes.The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, which will be given out on June 12, are the first to recognize shows that opened following the long pandemic shutdown of Broadway’s theaters. Season in Review: Thirty-four productions braved the pandemic to open under the most onerous conditions. Game of Survival: During a time unlike any other, productions showed their resourcefulness while learning how to live with Covid. A Tony Nominee: Myles Frost is drawing ovations nightly on Broadway with his performance in “MJ,” a musical about Michael Jackson’s creative process. The Missing Category: This Covid-stalked Broadway season has made clear that a prize for best ensemble should be added, our critic writes.A cast is a delicate organism, each actor altering the chemistry of the whole. But what ravishing theater a company can create when all its parts work in harmony — the group drawing as needed on the artistry of each member, including those who most nights fill the bench.WHEN A SHOW wins best play or musical, or best revival, the glory goes to the authors — and maybe even more to the producers, who tend to throng the stage. Those categories aren’t really about the casts. If actors win an award, it’s for a star turn.Not every piece is built for those, though — “Six,” for example, whose eight Tony nominations, best musical among them, include none in the acting categories. The show’s conceit as a singing competition would seem to encourage lunges for the spotlight. But “Six” is also a concert, and it makes sense that it succeeds best when its actors work in concert: that is, together.The first time I saw it, in London before it came to Broadway, I realized only afterward that two alternates had been on, one especially strong. But the entire cast had been impressive. It was impossible for me to pick a favorite — because “Six,” a classic ensemble piece, doesn’t actually want its performers to eclipse one another.I’m not arguing for an award limited to ensemble shows, though, or honoring only supporting players, which is another definition of ensemble. What’s needed is a prize for the entire cast of any kind of Broadway play or musical.It’s hardly an unprecedented idea. The Drama Desk Awards recognize an outstanding ensemble: This year, “Six.” As theater Twitter likes to point out, the Screen Actors Guild Awards have ensemble categories, too — though with eligibility for inclusion based on contract and billing. The Tonys could be more encompassing than that.As an adverb in French, “ensemble” means “together.” Which is the only way for actors to achieve the elusive, interconnected oneness of a truly great cast. And a cast that’s brilliant through and through is some kind of miracle.Sharon D Clarke, the star of “Caroline, or Change,” received the musical’s lone nomination for acting, bolstering our critic’s belief in the need for an ensemble award.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBACK IN THE FALL and winter, when I was so obsessed with the Broadway revival of “Caroline, or Change” that I saw it eight times, I would be tempted, on my way home from Studio 54, to send a tweet rhapsodizing over a supporting performance or two.I never did, because whenever I started drafting one in my head, the list always grew too long. I couldn’t possibly mention Arica Jackson as the ebullient singing Washing Machine, and Tamika Lawrence as Caroline’s wry friend, Dotty, without acknowledging the vocal powerhouse Kevin S. McAllister, who played the Dryer and the Bus.Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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      Myles Frost Stars as Michael Jackson in ‘MJ’ on Broadway

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      Just five years after he performed as Michael Jackson at a high school talent show, Myles Frost is making his debut in a Broadway musical about the King of Pop.Myles Frost was a college junior in Maryland, studying audio engineering, when he got the call that would change his life. Five years earlier, he had performed “Billie Jean” at a high school talent show, and his mom had filmed the performance on her iPad. Now an embryonic Broadway musical about Michael Jackson had lost its star, and Frost’s new acting coach, who had stumbled across the video on YouTube, wanted to know: Could the 21-year-old still sing and dance like the King of Pop?The truth was, Frost hadn’t revisited the material since he was 16. His only stage experience was in a trio of high school musicals. But he’d wanted to be a star since he was a little boy, and he’s not a believer in self-doubt. “Why say I can’t?” he thought. “Maybe I can.”Frost pleaded for a day to prepare, and then he taped a video to send to the show’s producers. It was good enough that they asked him to come to New York so they could see him in person. They liked what they saw.Now Frost, at 22, is on Broadway, drawing ovations nightly in the title role of “MJ,” a biomusical exploring Jackson’s creative process by imagining the final days of rehearsals for the “Dangerous” concert tour. The effect is uncanny: Although Frost insists he is not doing an impersonation, audiences describe feeling as if they are at a Michael Jackson concert.“You feel the excitement of discovery — one of the reasons we go to the theater — as you watch the electrifying Broadway debut by Myles Frost as Jackson,” Don Aucoin, the Boston Globe critic, wrote.Adrienne Warren, who won a Tony last year for playing Tina Turner, said on Instagram, “I have never seen anything like that on a Broadway stage … and I know the COST of THAT performance.”That performance made Frost a Tony nominee this month in the best leading actor in a musical category. He’ll face off against a pair of megawatt stars, Hugh Jackman (“The Music Man”) and Billy Crystal (“Mr. Saturday Night”), as well as Rob McClure (“Mrs. Doubtfire”) and Jaquel Spivey (“A Strange Loop”). “It’s beyond insane,” Frost said, still marveling a few days after learning of his nomination.“Billie Jean” performed by Myles FrostListen to Myles Frost, the Tony-nominated star of the Broadway musical “MJ,” sing one of Michael Jackson’s biggest hits. Audio from “MJ the Musical Original Broadway Cast Recording” (Sony Music).The history of Broadway is replete with stories of stars who seem to appear out of nowhere. Still, Frost’s arrival is remarkable, given that Broadway wasn’t on his radar screen: He had never been in a professional stage production. He had only ever seen one Broadway show (“Cinderella,” when Keke Palmer and NeNe Leakes cycled in to the cast). And he was not aware that a Michael Jackson musical was in development.In a stroke of luck, or fate, or divine providence — choose your adventure — during the pandemic he signed up for online acting classes with Lelund Durond Thompson, who happens to be the life partner of Jason Michael Webb, the musical director for “MJ.” Thompson found the “Billie Jean” video, and urged Webb to take a look. “It was meant to be,” Thompson said.The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, which will be given out on June 12, are the first to recognize shows that opened following the long pandemic shutdown of Broadway’s theaters. Season in Review: Thirty-four productions braved the pandemic to open under the most onerous conditions. Game of Survival: During a time unlike any other, productions showed their resourcefulness while learning how to live with Covid. A Tony Nominee: The actress LaChanze received her first nomination for best leading actress for her portrayal of Wiletta Mayer in “Trouble in Mind.” The Missing Category: This Covid-stalked Broadway season has made clear that a prize for best ensemble should be added, our critic writes.It was the spring of 2021, and the production was in a bind: Ephraim Sykes, the experienced actor who had led the cast through much of the grueling development process, had departed for a film opportunity.“After Ephraim left us, we were in a bit of a spiral, to be perfectly honest, because it was quite late, and casting a Michael Jackson is not a particularly easy gig,” said Christopher Wheeldon, the musical’s director and choreographer. “We were all a bit panicked, and we saw a few people, and no one was working out.”Then came Frost, invited to audition as the production widened its search. “He very sweetly walked up to the table and said, ‘My name is Myles Frost, and I’m auditioning for the role of Michael Jackson,’ which was so endearing because it seemed like something he wasn’t used to doing,” Wheeldon said. “And his résumé was very, very short. When you see that on the page, you don’t want to discount someone, but this was going to be a project, for sure.”Myles Frost, foreground, stars as Michael Jackson in “MJ,” a biomusical that imagines the final days of rehearsals for the “Dangerous” concert tour.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFrost slipped on a fedora — yes, he brought a fedora — to dance “Billie Jean,” and when the production accidentally started playing the wrong song (“Beat It”), Wheeldon watched as Frost waited, frozen, in the back of the studio.“He stayed absolutely still — didn’t move a muscle — and I thought, ‘This is going to be interesting. This kid’s in the zone,’” Wheeldon said. “Then we found the right music, and he started to dance. It was very baggy — it wasn’t crisp — but you could see that he had an innate groove, and a natural understanding of the Michael vocabulary. And then when he sang ‘Stranger in Moscow,’ there was so much pain and power and grit in his voice that we all, instantly, sat forward.”Frost remembers that day, too, mostly because it was shaping up badly. The day before, he had cut short a practice session with Thompson, citing an allergic reaction to dust in the studio; he took a Benadryl, a Zyrtec and a shower, and fell asleep. When he arrived for the audition, he let instinct take over.“I closed my eyes, got into myself a little bit more, and when the music started, I did the thing,” he said. “My body felt like it had done it before. That feeling — this is deeper than music, this is deeper than acting itself, this is deeper than the show. This is a type of energy and a type of magic that comes over you.”Wheeldon viewed Frost as a godsend but also a gamble. “There was so much raw gift — more gift than I’ve maybe ever seen in one human being in a first audition,” Wheeldon said. But, also, “along with that came all of our fears: What if he doesn’t put in the work? What if he can’t put in the work?”The production offered Frost the role. He accepted.“It’s one of those things where it just kind of feels like the stars align a little bit,” Frost said, “and you get that call and it’s in the palm of your hands to either take and embrace or to drop, and I decided to take it and embrace it.”“MJ,” of course, is not just any jukebox musical. It’s about one of the biggest pop artists in American history, but one whose legacy has been tarnished by allegations that he sexually abused children. The show, with a book by Lynn Nottage, the two-time Pulitzer-winning playwright, is set in 1992, before the allegations became public, and does not address that issue, which has prompted criticism from leading theater reviewers. But thus far, the show’s box office is healthy — in recent weeks “MJ” has been among the top-grossing productions on Broadway. It picked up 10 Tony nominations, including one for best musical, and its producers, who include the Michael Jackson Estate, are planning to add a North American tour next year.Frost, during a pair of conversations about the show, was patient with questions about the allegations, but also chose his words carefully — taking a deep breath before answering, pausing often between thoughts — and made it clear that he would not be baited or badgered into expressing a position on whether Jackson was an abuser.“I believe everybody is entitled to their truth and to what they believe,” he said. “I don’t judge.”He said he believes the best thing he can do is focus on delivering the performance envisioned by the show’s creators. And what is that vision? “This show is about drive, this show is about understanding, this show is about faith,” he said, “and it’s about clinging on to the light at the end of the tunnel despite the darkness that’s surrounding you.”“I’m seeing the fruits of my labor, people saying, ‘I felt like I was watching Michael Jackson,’” Frost said. “That’s all I can ask for as an artist — that people leave with something warm and magical.”Donavon Smallwood for The New York Times“My responsibility, and my job, is to focus on the creative process of Michael,” he added. “People come here every day with different opinions and different feelings about Michael. It’s not my job to persuade or convince them of anything, but what I do want them to do is have a better understanding of the things that he had to go through — whether it’s financial or emotional — to put this tour together, because nobody can deny, and this is the bottom line, the impact that he has had on culture and on music.”In conversation, Frost is warm and gracious (he loves the words “humbled” and “blessed”), but also soft-spoken and measured, with a relentless positivity and an all-things-are-possible way of talking about his career. (“I want to be bigger than Michael Jackson,” he said. “Why not? Why would I limit myself?”)Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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      LaChanze, a Tony Nominee, Is Casting Herself in New Roles

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      The veteran actress, nominated for her work in “Trouble in Mind,” is championing Black artists, producing on Broadway and relishing being cast as the love interest.A Tony Award-winning actress walked into a bar, and before long, she was talking about racism.“I have noticed in my career,” the actress, LaChanze, said, “that roles that I’ve gotten are roles of women who have experienced trauma. Major, major trauma. People feel comfortable making me, as a dark-skinned Black woman, a victim of some kind of violence, a victim of trauma. A victim.”The subject of racism — and the various ways it can manifest in the theater industry — came up repeatedly during a lively conversation on a recent rainy Friday afternoon in an Upper West Side wine bar.But don’t get it twisted. LaChanze is thankful — for her career and for the opportunities she’s had over the years.She just received her fourth Tony nomination — her first for best leading actress in a play — for her portrayal of Wiletta Mayer in the Broadway debut of Alice Childress’s 1955 play “Trouble in Mind.”LaChanze, who uses a mononym but was born Rhonda LaChanze Sapp, received glowing reviews. The Times’s theater critic, Jesse Green, wrote that she got the character’s “arc just right in a wonderfully rangy compelling performance.” LaChanze “dazzles,” embodying Wiletta with “breathless ease,” Lovia Gyarkye wrote in her review for The Hollywood Reporter.Every aspect of “Trouble in Mind” seems to comment on racism in some way. There were plans to take it to Broadway in the mid-1950s after a successful run in Greenwich Village, yet the show didn’t make it there until 2021. As a Black writer intending to highlight the unfairness in the theater industry, Childress, who died in 1994, ran headlong into it.“She is finally getting her day in the sun,” LaChanze said of Childress after the show was nominated for four Tony Awards, including best revival of a play.Childress’s comedy-drama is centered on a group of mostly Black actors, with an all-white creative team, rehearsing a Broadway-bound play about the events leading up to a lynching. Wiletta, the main character, is a proud veteran musical-theater actor, excited to be in her first play. She just has a few notes about the script. But the white director is not receptive to Wiletta’s suggestions and feedback. And as she summons the courage to be more forceful, pointing out that some of the dialogue and actions in the script are not authentic to what Black people would actually do and say, the resulting conflict has dire consequences.LaChanze knows the feeling.“I remember having an argument with a director once, saying, ‘A Black woman would never say this about herself.’ And he said, ‘I think she would.’ And he was a white man.” There was an “organic” connection for her with the character of Wiletta: “I have literally lived it in my 40 years of being in this business.”LaChanze as Wiletta Mayer with Michael Zegen as the director Al Manners and Danielle Campbell as the ingénue Judy Sears in “Trouble in Mind,” which ran last fall at the American Airlines Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat changed with “Trouble in Mind,” whose director, Charles Randolph-Wright, was “the first Black director that I have had as a leading actress on Broadway,” LaChanze said.Describing LaChanze as a “goddess,” Randolph-Wright praised not only her acting (“I knew what she would do with this, but it was even beyond my imagination”) but also her spirit (“She led that company with grace, with humor — it was brilliant”).And the two of them had a “symbiotic” relationship while working on the show, he said, adding: “It would be late at night and I would have an idea about something, and I would go to dial her number — and my phone would be ringing. She would call me at the exact same moment.”Over a glass of wine, LaChanze was straightforward. Matter-of-fact. She was also luminous, quick to laugh and her eyes shone when she talked about her daughters. Her eldest, Celia Rose Gooding, is now starring in the TV series “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” after starring in the Broadway musical “Jagged Little Pill.” Her youngest, Zaya Gooding, is a linguistics major in college. Coincidentally, Celia’s “Star Trek” character, Nyota Uhura, specializes in linguistics, giving the younger daughter a chance to show off a bit for her older sibling. (“She calls her sister and she advises her on certain things,” LaChanze beamed. “How cool is that?”)Performing started early for LaChanze. As a child, one of her brothers played trombone; the other played drums. “We would make our own songs, and we sort of fashioned ourselves after being like the Jackson 5,” she said. Hers was a military family, so they moved a lot, but her mother always made sure LaChanze was in some sort of dance class or performing arts program. “I thrived there. It’s where I felt the most comfortable to be an outgoing, expressive child with this extra energy.”After attending Morgan State University in Baltimore for two years and then studying theater and dance at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, LaChanze landed in New York “so broke” in the mid-1980s.“I had decided I wasn’t going to go back to school. I was going to stay in New York and do this Broadway show ‘Uptown … It’s Hot!’” she said. Her character was, in her words, “third girl from the left.” Alas, her Broadway debut was brief: “It closed in four days.” (Technically the show closed after 24 performances, but it’s safe to say it was absolutely not a smash hit.)LaChanze ended up sleeping on an ex-boyfriend’s aunt’s couch.“He wasn’t even my boyfriend anymore. But his aunt and I were so tight,” LaChanze recalled. “She gave me a ring to pawn. And it was, like, $600 I got for the ring. And she said, ‘When you get your job, you’re going to go back and get my ring for me.’” In just under a month, LaChanze said, “I was able to get her ring back for her.”A few years later, LaChanze landed the role of the peasant girl Ti Moune in the 1990 Broadway musical “Once on This Island.” Although the Caribbean-set fairy tale with a predominantly Black cast was based on a novel by the Trinidad-born Black writer Rosa Guy, Black people were not involved in writing the lyrics and music, nor in directing or choreographing the show.It was a hit, and in 1991, “Once on This Island” was nominated for eight Tony Awards, including best musical. LaChanze was nominated for best featured actress in a musical and won a Drama Desk Award. She went on to play Marta in the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical “Company.” And three years later, she stepped into a production of “Ragtime,” a stage adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel exploring the lives of three families at the turn of the 20th century. It was another production with a lot of Black cast members but a white creative team, including the same music and lyrics writers as “Once on This Island,” and Terrence McNally, who wrote the show’s book.At the time, LaChanze was thrilled with the role. But now she views some aspects of the show with a more critical eye. “Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful,” she said. Still: “It was for me the first time that I realized that — aha — here we have white people deciding, culturally, what Black people are doing.”Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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      In a Chaotic Tonys Season, It Was an Honor Just to Open

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      If the roster of Tony Award nominees announced on Monday looks even odder and more random than usual, well, it’s been an odd and random season. For that matter, it wasn’t even really a season. The surfeit of nods — many categories that usually feature five nominations this year feature six or seven — pales in comparison to the scope of eligible productions, the first of which (“Girl From the North Country”) opened in March 2020, just before the pandemic blew an 18-month hole in Broadway. If my math is correct, that was 100 years ago.The pandemic that distorted the season also distorted the awards process. Of the 34 productions the 29 nominators were allowed to consider, 15 opened in April — six in the last week of that month alone. It couldn’t have been easy. I know that for critics it was a maddening game of Whac-a-Mole, trying to hit each show as it popped up before suddenly vanishing, riddled with shutdowns and star absences. In the end, I missed two: “Mr. Saturday Night,” which received five nominations, and “The Little Prince,” which was ineligible and by all accounts unintelligible.The nominators presumably missed none, and of those 34 eligible productions, they honored a whopping 29. No musical, not even the dreadful “Diana, the Musical” was skunked, even if some awfully good plays, including “Pass Over” and “Is This a Room,” found themselves forgotten. Was that because they were among the first to step up in the wishfully post-Covid Broadway reopening that began in August? Having opened perhaps too early they definitely closed too quickly.Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker in the revival of Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite,” which received a nomination for costume design.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut those shows are also more cutting edge than commercial awards typically know how to handle, using downtown theatrical formats to present difficult dramatic material. (“Pass Over” is a surrealist look at violence against young Black men; “Is This a Room,” a spoken transcript of an interrogation about government secrecy.) The nominations suggest a willingness to accept only one of those challenges — just as, at the other end of the spectrum, they seemed ready to welcome plays that are hackneyed in form or content but not both. The revival of Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite,” starring Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, received one nomination, for Jane Greenwood’s costume design.Still, poring over my personal Tonys spreadsheet, which I keep in a special air-locked safe with my original cast vinyl recordings and Playbills printed on papyrus, I am impressed with the nominators’ determination to spread the wealth.There are plenty of familiar names, of course, including the previous Tony winners Mary-Louise Parker, LaChanze, Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster, Phylicia Rashad and Patti LuPone — the last two superlative in supporting rather than leading roles.But there are plenty of breakthrough names as well. The contest for best performance by a leading actor in a musical is likely to pit Broadway newbies Myles Frost (the star of “MJ”) against Jaquel Spivey (the star of “A Strange Loop”) — never mind Jackman or Billy Crystal in the same category. The nominees Sharon D Clarke (“Caroline, or Change”) and Joaquina Kalukango (“Paradise Square”) are likewise the pair to beat for best performance by a leading actress in a musical — never mind Foster.That those four leading contenders are Black underscores that the Tonys, like the season itself, are making some progress in their push toward greater diversity. By my count, more than a third of the 136 total nominations honored shows and people you might not formerly have seen much of on the Great White Way — which I think we can finally stop calling by that name.Not that you “see” all of that diversity even now. We are also benefiting from diversity backstage, including many of the directors and designers and choreographers behind “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” “Paradise Square” and “The Skin of Our Teeth.” Inclusion is insufficient if it’s merely public facing.A lot of that new-to-Broadway talent arrived not individually but en masse, thanks to Black authors, directors and producers who made diverse hiring a priority. One result is that this was a season of ensembles, including the six “thoughts” featured in “A Strange Loop,” the seven abstract nouns portrayed by the cast of “Thoughts of a Colored Man” and the seven colors of “For Colored Girls.”When the group is the star: The women of “POTUS” include, from left, Vanessa Williams, Julianne Hough, Julie White, Suzy Nakamura, Lilli Cooper and Rachel Dratch.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn some of those shows, as well as in “Six,” “The Minutes,” “Clyde’s,” “Skeleton Crew” and “POTUS,” there are no leading roles at all; the group is the star. When that’s the case, it can seem perverse to single out just one performer from a carefully balanced company, though the nominators did just that with their nods to Kenita R. Miller in “For Colored Girls,” Rachel Dratch and Julie White in “POTUS,” and John-Andrew Morrison and L Morgan Lee in “A Strange Loop.”Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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      ‘A Strange Loop’ Star L Morgan Lee on Her Trailblazing Tony Nomination

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      L Morgan Lee made theater history on Monday, becoming what production officials described as the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for a Tony Award for her performance as a featured actress in “A Strange Loop.”Lee’s Tony nod was one of 11 for the musical, which opened April 26 and is a meta-work about a Black gay writer trying to make art while being distracted by his intrusive thoughts. Lee plays one of those thoughts — “Thought 1.”In a telephone interview on Monday hours after learning of her nomination, Lee, who made her Broadway debut in the musical, said she found her nomination “overwhelming.”“I know of many trans and nonbinary and gender-expansive people who are out here trying to be seen and trying to put stories out into the world,” she said. “Having this happen today helps more people know that it’s possible.”Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.This was your Broadway debut. Tell me about what it was like to see your name on the screen this morning with a Tony nomination.I’m still trying to wrap my head around the importance of a Black trans woman in a principal role on a Broadway stage, period. And the importance of that, especially in a time when so many of us are simply fighting for our basic well being. So to be able to be part of a story that is challenging the form in so many ways — challenging what people have known Broadway to be — it’s a gift.It is all bigger than me. I’m really excited about what will happen after these steps. I’m very excited about who is in the audience that will see this show or my performance or now this nomination and know that it is possible for them to pursue theater.What does it say to you that a show that describes itself as a “big, Black, and queer-ass Great American Musical” can be the big winner of this morning’s nominations?I would like to say that it means that there is hope. I’m careful with the word change, because in order for us to be in the type of world and space we want to be in, it’s not as much about change as much as it is about growth. You’re not going to suddenly get rid of all the people who don’t agree with you. But we do need to figure out how to make space so that all of our stories can actually be told.To that point, for anyone out there who says “Hey, this got 11 nominations — I’m interested — but I’m not sure this musical is for me,” what would you tell them?Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More