Part one of two. Don’t sleep ‘til Broadway.
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There are solid seasons on the Great White Way, and then there’s this year. Evidenced by a slate of Tony Award nominees spanning 25 productions and some fresh ink in the record books—2018/19 was the highest-grossing and most-attended season in Broadway history—there was so much great work being done across-the-board on the boards that it could knock you out like you’re on the wrong side of the A Chorus Line finale kick-line.
So, when Tony voters crown the best of the best on Sunday night, here are the musicals and show-stopping stars I’ll be rooting for. (Check back tomorrow for my take on the plays!)
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role: Stephanie J. Block, The Cher Show
How hard it must be to embody a living legend in the most recent phase of her storied, divatastic life. That’s just one challenge that’s met and exceeded in Block’s performance (don’t call it an impersonation) that anchors a hit-or-miss show and infuses it with a blast of sparkling star power every moment she’s on stage. That includes the production’s best sequence: a this-is-what-Tonys-material-is-made-of Act II vignette where Cher learns of and deals with Sonny’s death. No contest.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role: Santino Fontana, Tootsie
Fontana is far from the first guy to strut the stage in sequins and stilettos. But his (literally and figuratively) well-heeled interpretation of the character’s journey from clueless to (perhaps) enlightened is surprisingly layered, believable and, most of all, makes for a really fun night at the theater. Showing off his substantial comedic and dramatic chops—along with blow-your-wig-back falsetto vocal maneuvering—at every turn, Fontana deserves to be crowned as one of Broadway’s biggest stars.
Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role: Amber Gray, Hadestown
The best and most overlooked part of 2017’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, Gray finally gets to take downstage center as a Greek goddess with penchant for booze that allows her to unleash her estimable talents. She turns in a fierce, fiery and skillfully nuanced performance, where the look in her eyes is as character-defining as the flick-wristed way she carries her bag and her rich vocal inflections that run the gamut from gleeful, to growling, to gut-wrenching (and back again). Gray grabs you and doesn’t let go until long after you’ve left the theater.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role: André DeShields, Hadestown
A veteran who commands every moment he’s on stage with the authority and weighted presence of his decades of experience, DeShields more than delivers as his show’s master of ceremonies—to the point where it wouldn’t be the same production without him in it. Working every moment for everything it’s worth with elegance, class and talent in spades, it’s (finally) his moment.
Best Original Book: Tootsie
Most screen-to-stage adaptations fall victim to being paint-by-numbers carbon copies of the original script, expecting that the people want to see what they already love, just live. That makes Tootsie’s book all the more ingenious: updating the movie’s remarkably outdated 80s take on gender dynamics with truly clever 2019-style shifts in setting and story arc, the writers manage to finesse the source material without losing the essence that made it a hit in the first place. Also, it’s hysterical. Sold.
Best Original Score: Hadestown
Anais Mitchell’s nearly decade-old folk opera concept album-turned-Broadway score sets classic Greek mythology to 40 can’t-get-‘em-outta-your-head songs that deliver beautifully orchestrated beats and achingly truthful lyrics. The moving, utterly memorable result is undeniably the year’s best.
Best Direction of a Musical: Rachel Chavkin, Hadestown
She probably should have scored this award a few years back for Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, but no use in crying over spilt vodka: Chavkin’s unique and seamlessly executed vision for Hadestown finally burst to life on Broadway after years of development in a fluid, fully realized production assembled with such loving care that it lodges itself in your heart and doesn’t leave.
Best Revival of a Musical: Oklahoma!
I was in a classic production of the show in high school (shout out to my younger Slim/Ballet Dream Sequence Curley self!), on-par with the mostly sweet way the show is always presented… but this ain’t your average box social, y’all. Daniel Fish’s dark-with-a-capital-‘D’ reimagining of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic reveals the raw brutality of turn-of-the-century life in the Great Plains, exposing—and, arguably, clarifying—the text in a way that interprets both story and character in an unexpectedly shadowy light delivered by a great ensemble and down-home hootenanny of an on-stage band.
Best Musical: Hadestown
I think my guts are still somewhere in the Walter Kerr Theatre’s ‘lost and found,’ because I left them in Seat Q132 when the lights came up. There was likely an almost-embarrassing heaping of Act II tears on the side, too. Hadestown comes galloping out of the gate strong and doesn’t stop until the final curtain call. Beautiful, moving, memorable and fabulous.