“Some Like It Hot,” a Broadway musical adaptation of the drag comedy film starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, garnered 13 Tony Award nominations on Tuesday, spotlighting a show that champions trans rights.
With songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and starring the nominated Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee, the play follows two musician friends who disguise themselves as women and join an all-girl band to flee Chicago after witnessing a mob hit. Just like in the movie, there are men in dresses trying to impersonate women. But this time, the dress awakens something in Ghee’s character, similar to a transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly.
“All we wanted to do was be honest and we wanted to treat these characters with dignity,” said Matthew Lopez, who wrote the Tony-nominated screenplay with Amber Ruffin and already has a Tony for “The Inheritance.” “Sometimes the best way to treat a character with dignity is to let them be flawed, scared, funny, brave, and human. So one of the things that was very, very important to us was to create characters on a human scale who go through extraordinary experiences.”
The musical comes at a time when the rights of trans people are under threat, and its message of self-acceptance and respect for all resonates with other Broadway productions, from a revival of “Parade” to “Death of a Salesman” with an actor. lead black and the new play “Ain’t No Mo’” and the new musical “Kimberly Akimbo”.
“I think the pandemic put a lot of things in perspective, both in terms of improvements we needed to make in the community and the way everyone feels about the world and being a human being,” said Ben Platt, a nominee for “ For the”. “The art that people are making has a real urgency and a real purpose.”
Three musicals tied for nine nominations each: “& Juliet,” which reinvents “Romeo and Juliet” and adds some of the biggest pop hits of decades, “New York, New York,” which combines two generations of Hollywood royalty Broadway with John Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and “Shucked,” a surprising musical comedy peppered with puns.
Betsy Wolfe, in her eighth Broadway show, earned her first nomination with “& Juliet,” playing Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife. She had just dropped off her daughter, almost 3, at her ballet class Tuesday morning when the nominations were announced. “I hope she addresses me correctly now that I see her,” she teased.
In the musical, playwright David West Read achieves an original story using “Romeo and Juliet” as the basis for mixing hits by Swedish blockbuster Max Martin, including “Oops! … I Did It Again”, by Brittney Spears”, “Roar” by Katy Perry and “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi. The musical imagines a happier ending for Juliet after a journey of self-discovery.
“It’s a beautiful story about second chances, which is honestly what we’re all going through right now,” Wolfe said. “We have all been given a second chance after this time that we have all been through. And so to have a musical that allows us all to celebrate in each individual way that we need to celebrate is very, very special and timely.”
The critically acclaimed “Kimberly Akimbo,” starring Victoria Clark as a teenager who ages four times faster than the average human, rounds out the best musical category and earned a total of eight nominations.
Clark, who was nominated for best actress in a musical, hopes to add a second Tony to her trophy case, having won one in 2005 for “The Light in the Piazza.” But more than that, she hopes more attention will be paid to her work, which she says has fallen “a little bit under the radar.”
“It is a special event that celebrates our collective humanity,” he said. “It does not say that life is perfect. The play does not say that there will not be strange and horrible people in your life. It does not say that life will be easy. But it does say that life is worth living. And I think that’s a message we need to get across. Life is worth living.”
In the best new play category, nominations were spread between Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” which explores Jewish identity with an intergenerational story, and “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-winning adaptation of “Hamlet” by Shakespeare set at a black family’s home cookout in the modern South.
The rest of the category is made up of “Ain’t No Mo’,” the short-lived but critically acclaimed work of playwright and actor Jordan E. Cooper, Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Between Riverside and Crazy” and “Cost of Living”, parallel stories of two caregivers and their respective patients.
“Ain’t No Mo,” which garnered six nominations, begins with the United States government emailing every black citizen with the offer of a free plane ticket to Africa, with each scene exploring how various personalities respond to the offer.
Cooper learned that he had been nominated twice, for best playwright and for leading actor, while visiting his childhood home in Texas. He and his family learned of his triumph in the room where, when he was 6 years old, he performed his first plays.
“It’s a bit bittersweet,” Cooper said. “We only got a chance to do about 60 features and this cast and creative team were some of the most talented you’ll ever see. It was unfortunate that people didn’t get a chance to experience it because we really felt like it was something special. The public felt that it was something special. And it is so beautiful to know that the work we do, that blood, that sweat and tears, are not in vain.”
“Parade,” a musical about a doomed love story set against the real-life backdrop of a pre-World War I Georgia murder and lynching, garnered six nominations, including one for Platt, who hopes to win a second Tony later. from his 2017 triumph with “Dear Evan Hansen,” and rising star and first-time nominee Micaela Diamond.
Wendell Pierce, who won a Tony for producing “Clybourne Park,” earned his first acting nomination on Broadway for a breakneck revival of “Death of a Salesman” and Oscar-winner Jessica Chastain for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (“ Tammy Faye’s Eyes”), earned her first Tony nomination for a simplified version of “A Doll’s House.”
Pierce will face off against the two stars of Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog,” Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins, as well as former “Will & Grace” star Sean Hayes of “Good Night, Oscar,” and Stephen McKinley Henderson, who earned his second Tony nomination after his first for 2019’s “Fences.”
Jodie Comer, the three-time Emmy-nominated star of “Killing Eve,” earned a nomination in her Broadway debut, though her play “Prima Facie” failed to earn a best new play nomination. Audra McDonald, who has won six Tony Awards, may extend her reign if she tops Comer for best actress in a play for “Ohio State Murders.” Last place in the category went to Jessica Hecht, star of “Summer, 1976”.
Another play that ended quickly garnered nominations: “KPOP,” which brought Korean pop music to Broadway for the first time. “KPOP” earned three mentions, including best original music.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s much-maligned “Bad Cinderella” garnered zero nominations, as did “A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical,” a stage biography of the singer-songwriter who has had dozens of hit songs. Hollywood’s Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan in “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” were left out of the shortlist, but Samuel L. Jackson earned his first Tony nomination for August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson.”
Two lauded revivals of the late Stephen Sondheim received nominations: “Sweeney Todd” with Annaleigh Ashford and Josh Groban, and “Into the Woods,” with an all-star cast. “Sweeney Todd” received eight nominations, including for Groban and Ashford, and “Into the Woods” earned six, for Brian d’Arcy James and Grammy Award winner Sara Bareilles, making it her third Tony nomination. “Almost Famous,” the stage adaptation of Cameron Crowe’s autobiographical coming-of-age story, earned just one nomination: for music by Tom Kitt and lyrics by Crowe and Kitt.
Choreographer Jennifer Weber had two reasons to smile Tuesday: Weber earned nominations for “& Juliet” and “KPOP,” her first Broadway shows. Puerto Rican-born actress Ariana DeBose will host the gala on June 11 from the United Palace Theater in New York, which will be broadcast live on CBS and Paramount+. It is her second consecutive year as emcee.
