Tonys' Net Is Wide, With Nods to 'Once' and the Gershwins - New York Times

By Kassie Bracken

TimesCast | 'Once' Leads Nominations: May 1, 2012 â€" The musical “Once” received 11 Tony nominations on Tuesday, including votes for best musical, director, actor, actress and choreographer.

The romantically bittersweet Broadway musical “Once” found plenty of love at the Tony Award nominations on Tuesday, receiving the most â€" 11 â€" in a year when the Tonys paid attention to more shows than usual and set up exceptionally competitive races for best play and in several acting categories.

The estates of George and Ira Gershwin also did well, with two musicals built on the brothers’ song catalogs â€" “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” and “Nice Work if You Can Get It” â€" receiving 10 nominations each. Disney had its best performance since “The Lion King” in 1998. That company’s new song-and-dance show, “Newsies the Musical,” received eight nominations, making it a leading contender against “Once”; it also helped develop the top-nominated play “Peter and the Starcatcher,” a prequel to Peter Pan that received nine nominations.

Among the biggest losers were “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the record-setting $75 million musical and audience favorite, which received just two nominations, and the revival of “Godspell” and the new plays “Seminar” and “Magic/Bird,” which were shut out entirely. (Hours later “Seminar” and “Magic/Bird” said they would close this month.)

And in a season when relatively few star actors signed up for Broadway, even many of the boldface names who did were snubbed: Matthew Broderick, Tyne Daly, Ricky Martin, Bernadette Peters and Alan Rickman were all passed over, as were Bono and the Edge of U2 for their debut Broadway score for “Spider-Man.”

In all, Tony nominations went to 30 out of 37 eligible Broadway shows, a greater spread than in recent years, which were dominated by the hit musicals “The Book of Mormon” and “Billy Elliot” and the crowd-pleasing plays “War Horse” and “God of Carnage.” The absence of any juggernaut will make for ferocious competition during the next five weeks of Tony balloting before the June 10 ceremony.

The four best-play nominees, for instance, are all critically acclaimed, with crackling dialogue and Tony-nominated performances; choosing among them â€" “Clybourne Park,” “Other Desert Cities,” “Peter and the Starcatcher” and “Venus in Fur” â€" will be ruthless business for the 851 Tony voters.

Not to mention a dizzying ride for the playwrights and actors. Bruce Norris, who last year won a Pulitzer Prize for writing “Clybourne Park,” called the nomination “surreal” on Tuesday, recalling that he was quietly eating instant oatmeal on Nantucket when the calls and e-mails began pouring in. Jon Robin Baitz, the playwright of “Other Desert Cities,” said that he was reading a recipe for sunchokes when the congratulatory texts began, and that he was quickly caught up in the whirlwind.

“In elementary school at swim meets, I would turn to see if anyone was behind me, and then slow down so they could catch up â€" I thought it vulgar to compete,” Mr. Baitz said. “Now that I am impossibly old, I want desperately to win.” (He is 50.) “And if this is as far as it goes,” he added, “it has already been magic to have come this far.”

Only Broadway shows are eligible for Tonys, which are voted on by theater producers, tour presenters and others who may have commercial interests in certain shows. This year’s nominations also turned out to be a tacit celebration of the vibrant pipeline of nonprofit American theater that often leads to Broadway.

The best-play nominees, all written by Americans, were also all transfers from Off Broadway, a rare feat. Among the musicals, “Once” had its start last year at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., and then Off Broadway at New York Theater Workshop, while “Newsies” began at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey last fall. Those two shows are up for best musical, along with “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” which was developed at Goodspeed Opera House a decade ago, and “Leap of Faith,” which had a tryout in Los Angeles in 2010 before undergoing a script overhaul for Broadway.

James Nicola, artistic director of New York Theater Workshop, where “Peter and the Starcatcher” was also developed, said that the nominations were a happy byproduct of his and other nonprofit theaters’ primary mission.

“We try to support artists we believe in and connect to, and help nurture wonderful work by staying focused on the relationships rather than dictating the end product,” said Mr. Nicola, whose theater is now a producer of “Once” and “Peter” on Broadway.

The 10 nominations for “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” were perhaps the sweetest for any creative team and cast, given that this musical was one of the most contentious of the season when performances began in December. It went on to earn respect from critics, solid box office and now nominations for the title stars, Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald (up for her fifth Tony), and for best musical revival, among others. The show’s director, Diane Paulus, also a nominee, said she broke down in tears while reading about the nominations aboard the Acela train to New York on Tuesday, overwhelmed with happiness for several of her actors and designers.