Tony nominations reward surprise, Snob the Money grabs

It was the bravest of the moments, it was the most expensive of time. Tony Award's appointments, announced Thursday morning in New York, reflect the shared screen of a Broadway season divided by Mavericks and Mega-Stars.

The Mavericks behaved much better.

Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in “Othello”, George Clooney in “Good Night, and Good Luck” and the Oscars Newly created Kieran Culkin in “Glengarry Glen Ross” allowed producers to create a Broadway sticker shock. Magnets for the media and money, these productions have created a New York Buzz Capital of New York – as well as the growing feeling that Broadway is now an article of luxury products, affordable only in the super easy and in super advice on ticket discounts.

But from this group, only Clooney received an appointment for his excellent head performance as Edward R. Murrow in the scenic adaptation of the 2005 film. Culkin, the weak link in the renewal “Glengarry” otherwise robust, was adopted for a star actor's appointment. Bob Odenkirk, who shines as Shabby Shelley Levene, marked the only head of production.

Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in “Othello” at “Ethel Barrymore Theater” in Broadway.

(Julieta Cervantes)

Obviously, the Tony's appointment committee paid special attention. All the media -planned media in the world could not extract a single appointment for the “Othello” without rudder, despite the fact that Cassio by Andrew Burnap serves as an elegant model of Gyllenhaal, the Shakespearean verse.

The most memorable offers did not care about a work on product test strategies. Which marketing genius, for example, could have predicted that “Maybe a happy ending,” A jazz rom-comté on robots and mortality from South Korea, and “Dead outlaw”, An eccentric jam-session of a show on a butterfly bandit that has been surpassed by its more famous corpse, would be the most acclaimed musicals of this season?

“Maybe a happy ending” led with 10 nominations In a tie with the other best musical nominees “Buena Vista Social Club” And “Death becomes it”. “Dead Outlaw”, which opened on Sunday just before the deadline for the season for glowing critics, won seven impressive candidates.

From a purely commercial point of view, “perhaps a happy ending” and “dead outlaw” represent huge games. The two do not have the preexisting IP and Hollywood Star power which are the supposed requirements of Broadway jerseys. But the audacity combined with artistic ingenuity is always the best bet to hold its head in an American theater without security.

Cole Escola and James Scully in “Oh, Mary!” On Broadway at the Lyceum Theater.

(Emilio Madrid)

Discarding this lesson is “Oh, Mary!” Of Cole Escola. This wild ride of a room, which I saw last year off-broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theater, follows the machinations of an unstable Mary Todd Lincoln (originally played by Escola, who returned to this role) while she continues drunk her dreams of Cabaret.

Partly the Dragstem Hors -color, the part of the Carol Burnett style sketch comedy, the show survived its abundant comic goods to become one of the hottest Broadway tickets of the year. “Oh, Mary” is also a competitor in the best game race, having proven that it is lasting sufficiently so as not to depend exclusively on the delirium DROLLELY of Escola. (Betty Gilpin and Tags Burgess both served service visits.)

In addition, the category of the best games turned out to be one of the most competitive of the year. Kimberly Belflower's “John Proctor is the villain”, “ With Sadie Sink from Netflix Stranger Things, received seven nominations, the same number as “The Hills of California” by Jez Butterworth.

“John Proctor” initiates a conversation with “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller on the way in which the suffering of women in this American classic is painfully. The title may seem controversial, but the work, superbly led by the winner of Tony, Danya Taymor (“The Outsiders”), has a dynamic curiosity for the lives of young women and exists in its own independent terms. (Sink, Taymor and Gabriel Ebert in the role of PROTOR-ISH teachers, all named, are an integral part of the Excellence on the scale of the company.)

I am always haunted by “The hills of California”, Butterworth's richly imagined drama on the vigil of the deathbed, a group of sisters is for their mother, who sought to transform them into a copy of the Andrews sisters. Exquisite production filled with music, which had a race limited to fall, was too good to be forgotten. The magistrate of Sam Mendes and the heartbreaking performance of Laura Donelly were part of the very deserved nominations.

Broadway continues to recognize the brilliance of Branden Jacobs-JenkinsOne of the exceptional talents of this new generation of American playwrights. Last year, “appropriate” received Tony for Play Revival. This year, “purposes”, its domestic drama on the dysfunctional family and the checkered inheritance, received six nominations, including the best game. And it was edifying to see the award -winning game of the Pulitzer price of Sanaz Tossi “English,” What I met last year to the old globe, completing a list of the best games that constitutes the faith in the future of intelligent dramatic writing on Broadway.

It was a credit for the collective wisdom of the Tony's appointment committee that Leslye Headland's “cult of love”, one of the most struck family dramas I have seen for ages, was excluded, despite some solid support performances. And that “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” received a multitude of design appointments and a sign of the lead performance by Louis McCartney, but nothing for the disturbed script.

“Good night and good luck”, a skillful translation of the chronic film La Chronicle de CBS, Murrow, the heroic stand of the journalist by Senator Joseph McCarthy, the witch hunt, may not have been cutting dramatic writing. But Clooney is duly nominated to give life to the moral example of Murrow's Sterling at a time when the country does not need a blow in the arm.

Escola is likely to go out in mind in the race of the main actors, which I had the pleasure of seeing the place found for the beautiful work of Daniel Dae Kim in David Henry Hwang “Yellow face.” But I want to emphasize that “good night and good luck” is not a vanity exercise and that the best billing of a film star on Broadway is not necessarily the sign of a broken system.

The production, scrupulously led by David Cromer, evolves deeply in his public vision. Cromer, a winner of Tony for “The Band's Visit”, would undoubtedly have been nominated for his work if he had not nominated for his ingenious staging of “Dead Outlaw”. He, with Michael Arden, who won a Tony for his management of “Parade” in 2023 and was nominated for his direction of “perhaps happy fine”, maybe the most sharp authors in Broadway with the most discreet profiles.

Sarah Snook is the alleged head of the main actress in a play race for her solo tour de force in the extravagant multimedia version of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. But since it's wonderful to see Mia Farrow in the running for her work “The roommate” In front of a Patti Lupone game. Can producers find another excuse to collect this comedy duo?

Audra McDonald in “Gypsy” at the Majestic Theater in Broadway.

(Julieta Cervantes)

The Broadway performance that has reduced the deepest to me was Audra McDonald as a pink in the revival of George C. Wolfe de “Gypsy», A heartbreaking review of musicals through the historical prism of the race. She already has the record for the most of Tony's victories for an artist with six awards. The only thing on the way to a seventh is the reinvented of Nicole Scherzinger in Jamie Lloyd's “Sunset BLVD”.

The success of the “perhaps happy end” depends largely on the miraculous performance of Darren Criss, who plays an automaton with a secretly sensitive heart. The charm of this musical turned out to be ephemeral at all, and in a broadway season of invigorating long shots, the happy ending of the “perhaps happy end” seems almost guaranteed.