Highlights From the 2023 Tony Nominations

Michael Paulson

As Broadway's rebound from the pandemic shutdown picks up pace, Tony nominators showered much-sought attention on a wide variety of shows, from razzle-dazzle spectacles to quirky adventurous fare.

"Some Like It Hot," a musical based on the classic Billy Wilder film about two musicians who witness a gangland slaying and dress as women to escape the mob, scored the most nominations: 13. But it faces stiff competition in the race for best new musical — ticket buyers have not made any of the contenders a slam-dunk hit, and there does not appear to be a consensus among the industry insiders who make up the Tony voting pool.

Three other musicals picked up nine nominations apiece: "& Juliet," which combines pop songs with an alternative narrative arc for Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers; "New York, New York," a dance-driven show about a pair of young musicians seeking success and love in a postwar city; and "Shucked," a pun-laden country comedy about a rural community facing a corn crisis. "Kimberly Akimbo," a critical favorite about a high school student with a life-altering genetic condition and a criminally dysfunctional family, picked up eight nominations.

The Tony nominations also feature plenty of boldfaced names. Among the stars from the worlds of pop music, film and television who earned nods are Sara Bareilles, Jessica Chastain, Jodie Comer, Josh Groban, Sean Hayes, Samuel L. Jackson, Wendell Pierce and Ben Platt. Another went to one of Broadway's most-admired stars: Audra McDonald, who, with nine previous nominations and six wins, has won the most competitive Tony Awards of any performer in history.

This year's Tony Awards come at the end of the first full-length season since the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close for about a year and a half. Given that tourism remains below prepandemic levels, many workers have not returned to Midtown offices, and inflation has made producing far more expensive, the season has been surprisingly robust, with a wide range of offerings.

"Entertainment is like food — sometimes you’re in the mood for an organic small plate, and sometimes for a burger and fries, and the best thing about New York is we’ve got the variety," said Victoria Clark, the Tony-nominated star of "Kimberly Akimbo."

Broadway shows this season had grossed $1.48 billion as of April 30, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League. That's nearly double the grosses at the same point last season — $751 million — but lower than the $1.72 billion at the same point in 2019, during the last full prepandemic season.

Other key metrics are better, too: 11.5 million seats have been filled on Broadway this season, compared with 6 million at the same point last season, but still down from the 13.8 million that had been filled by this point in 2019.

The Tony nominations, which were chosen by a panel of 40 theater industry experts who saw all 38 eligible shows and have no financial interest in any of them, are particularly important to shows that are still running, which try to use the vote of confidence to woo potential ticket buyers.

"It's all about what's going to make a show run longer and create more jobs for more people," said Casey Nicholaw, the director and choreographer of "Some Like It Hot." "Hopefully we’ll sell more tickets, and the show will be more of a success."

The Tony nominations can also boost the employment prospects, and the compensation, of artists. And, of course, they are a tribute to excellence. "It means something when your peers and your colleagues see beauty in something you make," said James Ijames, whose play "Fat Ham" was among the nominated productions.

Broadway is a complicated place, dominated by commercial producers but also with six theaters run by nonprofits, and the work this season, as is often the case, featured everything from experimental plays tackling challenging subjects to more mainstream fare that aims primarily to entertain.

Among the five nominees for best new play, three have already won the Pulitzer Prize in drama, including "Between Riverside and Crazy," Stephen Adly Guirgis's story of a retired police officer trying to hang onto his apartment; "Cost of Living," Martyna Majok's exploration of caregiving and disability; and "Fat Ham," Ijames's riff on "Hamlet," set in the North Carolina backyard of a family that runs a barbecue restaurant.

The two other Tony-nominated plays are each significant in their own ways: "Leopoldstadt" is Tom Stoppard's autobiographically inspired drama about a European Jewish family before, during and after World War II, while "Ain't No Mo’" is Jordan E. Cooper's outlandish comedy imagining that the United States offers its Black residents one-way tickets to Africa.

The nominations for "Ain't No Mo’" were especially striking given that the show struggled to find an audience and closed early. "I’m just so elated, I can barely find the words," said Cooper, who was nominated both as writer and actor. "There was a lot of turbulence, but we landed the plane."

Stoppard is already the winningest playwright in Broadway history, having won Tony Awards for four previous plays ("Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," "Travesties," "The Real Thing" and "The Coast of Utopia"). He is now 85 years old, and "Leopoldstadt" is his 19th production on Broadway. Stoppard said he was proud of the nomination, but sorry the play had come to seem so timely at a moment of rising concern about antisemitism.

"Nobody wants society to be divided," he said in an interview, "and I like to think ‘Leopoldstadt’ works against a sense of human beings dividing up and confronting each other."

Of the 38 Tony-eligible plays and musicals this season, 27 scored at least one nomination, leaving 11 with no nods. Among the musicals snubbed by the nominators were "Bad Cinderella," the critically drubbed new musical from one of the most successful musical theater composers of all time, Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as a progressive rethink of "1776," about the debate over the Declaration of Independence, which was revived with a cast of women, nonbinary and transgender performers.

One of the musicals that did not score any nominations, a revival of "Dancin’," quickly declared plans to close: A little more than nine hours after the Tony nominations were announced, the revue's producers said its last performance would be May 14.

Among the seven plays shut out was "The Thanksgiving Play," which is thought to be the first work on Broadway by a female Native American playwright, Larissa FastHorse.

The season featured shows examining a wide variety of diverse stories, and the nominations reflect that.

At a time when gender identity issues have become increasingly politicized in the nation, nominations were earned by two gender nonconforming actors: J. Harrison Ghee, a star of "Some Like It Hot," and Alex Newell, a supporting actor in "Shucked."

Helen Park, who is the first Asian American female composer on Broadway, was nominated in the best score category for the musical "KPOP." "The more authentic we are to our respective cultures and stories," she said, "the richer the Broadway soundscape and Broadway landscape will be."

Five plays by Black writers were nominated in either the best play or best play revival category, and four of the five nominees for leading actor in a play are Black.

"I broke down in tears," Pierce said about learning that he was among those nominees, for playing Willy Loman in a revival of "Death of a Salesman" in which the traditionally white Loman family is now African American. "I did not know how profoundly moving it would be. It was the culmination of years of hard work and a reflection on how much effort and toil went into the challenge of playing the role."

This was a strong season for musical revivals, and the nominated shows include two with scores by Stephen Sondheim — "Into the Woods" and "Sweeney Todd" — as well as the Golden Age classic "Camelot" and "Parade," which is a show about the early 20th-century lynching of a Jewish man in Georgia.

"We’re so happy audiences are taking to it, and we hope that Sondheim would be happy this morning as well," said Groban, starring as the title character in "Sweeney Todd."

The nominated play revivals are also a compelling bunch: a hypnotically minimalist version of Ibsen's "A Doll's House" adapted by Amy Herzog and starring Chastain as a Norwegian debtor trapped in a sexist marriage; a bracing production of Suzan Lori-Parks's "Topdog/Underdog," about two brothers ominously named Lincoln and Booth; a rare staging of Lorraine Hansberry's "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window," featuring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan; and a ghostly performance of "The Piano Lesson," August Wilson's classic drama about a family wrestling with the meaning, and monetary value, of an heirloom.

The 769 Tony voters now have until early June to catch up on shows they have not yet seen before they cast their electronic ballots. The awards ceremony itself will be held on June 11 at the United Palace in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan in a ceremony hosted by Ariana DeBose.

Julia Jacobs and Kalia Richardson contributed reporting.

Kalia Richardson

Helen Park was tucked in bed in her New Jersey home when her talent agent texted her news of her Tony Award nomination. Park, the first Asian American female composer on Broadway, was nominated in the best score category for the Korean- and English-language musical "KPOP," which follows three K-pop acts challenged by strict routines and personal struggles as they prepare for a U.S. concert tour.

"It was great to wake up to the news," said Park, who wrote the show's score and lyrics with Max Vernon. The production also received nominations for best choreography and costume design of a musical.

The Tonys recognition was significant given that "KPOP" struggled at the box office and closed after only 44 preview performances and 17 regular performances.

In an interview on Tuesday, Park reflected on her Broadway experience and the importance of productions that embrace the Asian American experience. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

How does it feel to be nominated next to other members of the "KPOP" creative team?

A lot of us have been working on this show for eight years and for people to be recognized, it really feels like a celebration and recognition of the hard work that everybody put in.

In a Playbill guest essay, you mentioned taking your son to see "KPOP" and how his favorite song was "Halfway," sung by the biracial character Brad. How have Asian and Asian American audience members responded to the show?

Our show really spoke for them, the experience of being an immigrant and being in between cultures. I’m surrounded by those people. I am one of those people. My son is biracial. I belong to both American culture and Korean culture, and I speak both languages and sometimes I feel like I have no language of my own.

How have you felt since it closed?

I’m still struggling with the closure of the show, because I do think that everyone who came to see the show really enjoyed it. It was a celebration of the genre and the diverse stories within the community of K-pop stars and Korean people.

We saw the potential and the growth of love toward the show after we opened. The fact that it was still too late to sustain the show — that was very painful.

Will "KPOP" come back to Broadway?

I certainly won't say no if anyone wants to bring it back! But, it feels like one step forward.

There are reasons K-pop is beloved across languages and cultures, and we wanted to capture that. This recognition definitely feels like an encouragement to continue. The more authentic we are to our respective cultures and stories, the richer the Broadway soundscape and landscape will be.

Jesse Green

Critic's Notebook

Surely it's a good season for new plays on Broadway when at least nine of the 17 eligible productions are credible Tony Award nominees — and three have already won Pulitzer Prizes.

Those three Pulitzer honorees — "Between Riverside and Crazy" by Stephen Adly Guirgis, "Cost of Living" by Martyna Majok and "Fat Ham" by James Ijames — were among the five works nominated in the best play category, along with "Ain't No Mo’" by Jordan E. Cooper and "Leopoldstadt" by Tom Stoppard. That preapproved quality ("Leopoldstadt" won Britain's Olivier award for best new play in 2020) makes the category the most competitive of the Big Four this year.

Or is best revival the most competitive? Though there were only six eligible productions in the category this season, and the nominees were thus capped at four, all deserved notice — and got it.

No skunking here: Even the two plays that did not make the cut were nominated in other categories. "Ohio State Murders," the belated Broadway debut of the playwright Adrienne Kennedy, 91, was honored for Audra McDonald's riveting performance as the survivor of an almost unimaginable crime. (It was McDonald's 10th nomination, with six wins.) And "Death of a Salesman," the Arthur Miller play revived with a mostly Black cast, was honored for Wendell Pierce's tortured take on Willy Loman (as well as for its lighting).

That left "A Doll's House," "The Piano Lesson," "Topdog/Underdog" and "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window" as the four best revival nominees, the last having sneaked in on the season's final day after a sold-out run earlier this year at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Yet it must have been odd compensation: Neither of its stars, Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan, got a nod.

Isaac was in a tough category, which aside from Pierce included Sean Hayes as Oscar Levant in "Good Night, Oscar," Stephen McKinley Henderson as a wily patriarch in "Riverside" and the tag-team of Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as the huckster brothers Lincoln and Booth in "Topdog."

But among the strong crop of plays this season there somehow weren't enough leading-actress roles to stock a full category, reducing the nominees to four. And though the odds-on favorites — Jodie Comer as a hard-driving defense attorney in "Prima Facie" and Jessica Chastain as Nora in a contemporary version of "A Doll's House" — are both excellent, the gender disparity remains glaring.

Part of that is a consequence of men long dominating the playwriting field, often preferring to write about what they care about most: themselves. But part is also a reflection of changes occurring right now in the theater, both onstage and behind the scenes.

Backstage, we see that in the reorganization and redistribution of power among producers, artistic directors and other gatekeepers, prompted by movements like #MeToo and We See You, White American Theater. As pointy hierarchies are flattened in the executive suites, the same is happening in plays.

Thus the rise of the ensemble cast. Traditionally the word "ensemble" suggested a musical, and in encouraging the addition of a best ensemble category over the years I’ve usually been thinking of shows like "A Strange Loop" and "Six," in which what used to be called a chorus is now, collectively, a star.

But this year, except for the 16 dancers in "Dancin’," the casts that seem most like ensembles are in plays. Five, including "Leopoldstadt," "Cost of Living" and "Ain't No Mo’," had no eligible leading performers at all — and yet, among them, six performers were nominated in supporting roles. "Peter Pan Goes Wrong" and "The Thanksgiving Play," both shut out of the nominations, likewise feature evenly distributed opportunities. In the case of "Peter Pan Goes Wrong," they are mostly opportunities for disaster.

We probably need both kinds of plays: pointy and plumb. The good news is that in the pointy ones this year, so many of the leading roles were for Black, Latino and, in the case of Arian Moayed of "A Doll's House," Iranian American actors. Six of the nine works nominated in the best play and best revival categories were written by Black authors. Whether or not the awards in June will reflect that change doesn't really matter. The change is happening regardless.

Sarah Bahr

Audra McDonald has been here before.

And before. And before. And before. And before. And before. And before. And before. And before.

The actress earned her 10th acting Tony Award nomination on Tuesday, for best leading actress in a play, for her role as the writer Suzanne Alexander in Adrienne Kennedy's 1991 play "Ohio State Murders," the 91-year-old Kennedy's Broadway debut. The feat ties her with Chita Rivera and Julie Harris as the most nominated individual performers in the 76-year history of the awards.

"It's an honor," said McDonald, who has won six Tony Awards, the most of any performer. "But the work is the true joy."

McDonald, 52, previously won four featured actress Tonys in the play and musical categories for her roles in "Carousel" (1994), "Master Class" (1996), "Ragtime" (1998) and "A Raisin in the Sun" (2004). She won leading actress Tonys for her performance as the strongheaded Bess in the musical "The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess" in 2012 and her turn as the famed jazz singer Billie Holiday in the play "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill" in 2014. She is the only person to win in all four acting categories.

In his review of "Ohio State Murders," which he called a "piercing production," the New York Times critic Jesse Green praised McDonald's performance, "ripped from her gallery of harrowing women," and noted that it builds to "a shattering catharsis."

In an interview during her lunch break from a workshop in Manhattan on Tuesday, McDonald discussed her milestone achievement, why it still feels special to be recognized for this particular production and what she hopes people took away from her performance. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

This is your 10th nomination, and you’ve already secured the record for the winningest performer, with six Tonys. Is it still special?

It's incredibly special. Being able to be a part of Adrienne Kennedy having her Broadway debut and getting her work seen by a larger audience was something that was very important to me. Even if I hadn't gotten a nomination, I’d still feel very proud of the work. I was honored that she trusted our vision and what we wanted to do with the play.

The older and younger versions of Suzanne Alexander are usually played by two different actors, but you played both. Why?

Because Suzanne is going back in time to remember these things, I thought being able to actually step into those memories and feel them in her body would inform even more when she stepped back out of them to a narrative, reflective place. So I asked Adrienne for permission for that and she said, "Sure, that's great, let's see what happens."

What spoke to you about the show?

How often do we have plays that really center a Black woman's experience? This is a chance for the character Suzanne — and it's semi-autobiographical, so Adrienne, to an extent — to be able to speak her experience. Being able to play this incredibly brilliant, wounded and, in some ways — at the end of the play — triumphant woman was very appealing, even though it was very, very difficult. And it was an indictment that needs to be delivered in terms of what systemic racism does to people, and how it destroys.

In his review, Jesse Green praised your "astonishing access to tragic feeling." Where did you go to find that?

When you’re playing a role you have to be that character's advocate at all times, even when you’re playing a villain. Part of being an advocate for Suzanne is trying to find the empathy for the pain and the terror and the tragedy and the trauma that she experienced. The powerful question in acting is, "What if that were to happen to me?" What would I be thinking? What would I be feeling?

How did your performance evolve over the course of the run?

Because the play is so incredibly dense and the language is so full and poetic, for me the evolution came in becoming more at ease with Adrienne's language, which I don't think I had at the beginning of the run.

Your character's babies are represented, not with dolls, but as slips of pink fabric. Why?

That was the brilliance of Kenny Leon, who's an incredible director. We knew that once you bring babies onstage, even if they’re dolls — which was one thought at one point — it was going to be very difficult to set them aside for times when the focus isn't necessarily on them. We wanted to make sure the audience wasn't distracted by them.

What do you hope people took away from the show?

I hope they had a broader understanding of the destructive power of racism. I also hope that people who are not Black could see that we are not a monolith. This is a woman, as a character, who is not always represented onstage, and I wanted this very educated and smart and brilliant, yet wounded, woman out there telling her story and centering her story and demanding that it be heard.

What did Kennedy tell you after seeing it?

She was very moved. I still speak with her. I got an email from her a couple of days ago, actually, and I’m going to go visit her in a couple of weeks. She was very happy that we had done it. She's had a lot of people play the role and I think loved all the interpretations of it.

How does it feel to have been able to bring a lesser-seen work to the stage?

Plenty of people have known who Adrienne Kennedy was for years, but there was a younger generation that was introduced to Adrienne Kennedy with that production, and that makes me happy.

Julia Jacobs

The Tony nominations on Tuesday included nods for Broadway newcomers who hail from the music industry.

"Shucked," by the country-music songwriting team Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark, received nine nominations, including for best original score, and the Swedish songwriter and producer Max Martin's jukebox musical "& Juliet" received nine nods as well. Both shows are contenders for best new musical.

The pop hits that make up "& Juliet" were not eligible for best original score because they were not written for Broadway, but Martin is also a producer on the show. The show features more than 30 songs from Martin's catalog, including Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone," Britney Spears's " … Baby One More Time" and Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream."

McAnally and Clark have seen major success in Nashville; they co-wrote hits for musicians such as Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves and the Band Perry. (Mariah Carey is on a long list of producers for the musical "Some Like It Hot," the most nominated show on Tuesday.)

Apart from the writers and producers, two performers who are chiefly singer-songwriters received acting nominations: Josh Groban for "Sweeney Todd" and Sara Bareilles for "Into the Woods."

Alexis Soloski

As the sly, exuberant, felonious Aunt Debra in Broadway's "Kimberly Akimbo," Bonnie Milligan has educated much of Midtown Manhattan on how to commit check fraud. "Just teaching the world how to get by," she said in a Tuesday morning interview.

Milligan, a belter with a thrilling range, who made her Broadway debut in "Head Over Heels," created the role of Debra Off Broadway, combining genuine love for her niece Kimberly (Victoria Clark) with a keen interest in federal crimes. That work has earned her a Tony nomination, her first, which felt, she said, "ecstatic and great." These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

How do we feel about Aunt Deb, a woman with an extremely wonky moral compass, who makes her niece an accessory to several major crimes?

I’ve known people in my life who have done some really terrible things, but I don't see them as terrible people. I see them as selfish or needing something desperately. Debra, she's a fighter. She's a survivor. She's only got herself, clearly. She's been hiding out in that library! The one connection she has left in the world is Kimberly. There's a genuine love there. I want to be very real in that love so that she's a genuine person that we’re looking at; she's a person who has been hurt a lot.

Did the show change when it moved to Broadway?

There were slight shifts that the team wanted to make, but they’re so small. I don't even know how much people pick up on it. What's so beautiful about the Booth Theater is that it's still so intimate. It just somehow feels better and stronger and also the same. Like magic.

After a decade and a half of professional work, what does the nomination mean to you?

It means the world. I grew up in a trailer in the Midwest, loving musicals. I didn't have connections. I didn't have money or an agent when I moved to the city. It took a lot longer for me to forge a path. I’ve been in so many developmental stages of different musicals that I do already feel such a deep part of this community among actors, designers, directors. Some of the texts I’ve gotten today have been like, ‘I knew it, I knew it. You’re finally here. Finally, the world sees.’

Historically, Broadway has preferred very thin bodies. Is that changing?

Listen, it's taken as long as it's taken me to get here. I got typed out of a lot of rooms. And I kept thinking, I have so much to give. I would do concerts. People would come up to me after concerts and say, ‘Why aren't you on Broadway?’ And I would say, ‘I don't know. I’m trying.’ My Broadway debut was a show in which I played a beautiful princess. Most of the reviews talked about my weight. I’m like, but can we talk about what I did onstage, about how I was pretty darn good? There's absolutely a bias within the industry. And it's like, we exist in the world! But I’m excited seeing some of those nominations today, even in my category, you have me and NaTasha Yvette Williams. There are multiple bodies onstage this season telling the world, ‘Look at us. We’ve got it, too.’ That gives me so much hope.

Alexis Soloski

That Jodie Comer should have received a nomination for her work in the solo show "Prima Facie," a role that already won her Olivier and Evening Standard Theater awards, should have come as a surprise to no one. Except apparently Comer.

"I’m in shock," she said from the back of a taxi late Tuesday morning.

In "Prima Facie," which also earned nominations in three design categories, Comer plays Tessa, an ambitious young barrister who finds herself transformed after a colleague rapes her. With compassion, bold physicality and raw, febrile emotion, Comer enacts that assault and its aftermath eight times a week, standing in the stage rain (which the backstage crew has usually, though not always, warmed up) as Tessa struggles to gain a new perspective on her life and the law.

Comer said she hopes that the play continues to generate discussions around sexual assault and hopes that her nomination is in service of the many women she endeavors to represent. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

How do you feel?

We’ve been on such a journey with this play. I never dreamed that this would be a point that we would be at. So it just feels incredible. The response has been beautiful, and I just feel very, very grateful that so many on the team have been recognized as well. I can't stress enough how much of a team effort this piece truly is.

On the night I saw the play, as it ended, I could hear several women weeping. Has the response here been any different than it was in London?

The only difference, I would say, has been to the humor. People find humor in different moments. But given the subject matter, which is so universal, the response has been very, very similar to the U.K. We’ve had a lot of people sending letters to us backstage, explaining their experiences watching the play and how it affected them. And we’ve had people reach out who came to see the play in London, and have also come to Broadway, expressing and confiding how their lives have changed within the past year. It feels like we can have the same conversation here.

The nomination is clearly a testament to a truly astonishing Broadway debut. But given what the play concerns, do you feel that the nomination honors something more?

I hope so. It has to. I have so many people to be thankful for and so many people that I am representing. This nomination has to mean more than just me.

What's the pleasure of playing Tessa, even knowing that this terrible thing happens to her?

What I love about performing this play every night is the journey that she goes on. The evolution of this woman, even through this really difficult time, her sense of self and strength and resilience, I really do love. She comes out of this experience definitely changed in some way, but by no means defeated. Tessa still inspires hope. We get a lot of messages like that, like, "I felt completely crushed, but also invigorated."

Sarah Bahr

Alex Newell's Monday night was already pretty great. They attended the Met Gala, landing a spot next to Jimmy Fallon and Glenn Close. "I was like, ‘I’ve made it,’" they said.

Then boom — on Tuesday morning, their first Tony Award nomination.

"I haven't cried yet," they said in an interview from the Pierre Hotel on Tuesday, "so I’m waiting for that little dime to drop soon."

Newell, 30, who uses they/them pronouns, was nominated for best featured actor in a musical, for their role as the big-voiced whiskey entrepreneur Lulu in "Shucked," the new, countrified Broadway musical about a small farming town whose corn crop begins mysteriously dying.

In The New York Times review of the production, Jesse Green wrote that Newell, who may be most recognizable for their time on "Glee" as the transgender teenager Unique Adams, turns Lulu "into a full-blown comic creation." They have become the show's breakout star, bringing down the house in the middle of the first act with the showstopping feminist anthem "Independently Owned," a soulful, commanding number in which Lulu emphatically declares that she doesn't need a man to be fulfilled. (Newell's powerful voice is showcased in two Tony-nominated productions this season: Their high-energy bop, "Kill the Lights," plays during the disco-inspired dance party at the end of "Fat Ham.")

Newell, operating on a few hours of sleep, discussed their first nomination, their dream role and their feelings about corn. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

How does it feel to receive your first nomination?

Surreal. Crazy. Absurd. I feel like I could throw up at any time.

Your performance of the feminist anthem "Independently Owned" has been earning nightly standing ovations. Did that happen at the first preview?

Yes.

Were you expecting it?

This is going to sound like the most pretentious thing in the world, but we built it for that. We made the song to make people lose their minds.

It happens every night now, right?

That's the part that's flabbergasting. The standing ovation isn't jarring as much as the consistency of it. I’m beside myself a lot of the time because I’m like, "Y’all are really still standing up."

How similar are you to your character?

Very, in the sense this woman has built her career and her livelihood on her own. I’m not saying I’ve done everything on my own without any help, but I’ve been making life decisions, moving cross-country on my own. So when I sing "Independently Owned," it's kind of my own anthem talking about what I’ve done for myself as well.

You identify as nonbinary, and the Tony Awards use gendered categories. Why did you choose to compete in the best featured actor category?

I look at the word "actor" as one, my vocation, and two, genderless. We don't say plumbess for plumber. We don't say janitoress for janitor. We say plumber, we say janitor. That's how I look at the word, and that's how I chose my category.

Have you seen any of the other nominated shows?

I saw "Some Like It Hot," and I’m so happy that my friend J. Harrison was nominated. I haven't gotten to see "Kimberly Akimbo," but I’m superexcited that my good friend Bonnie Milligan is nominated.

If you could have anyone in the audience at a performance, who would you choose?

Beyoncé.

What would be your dream role?

I’m still gunning for Effie in "Dreamgirls."

Last question, and I must ask — do you like corn?

My publicist says I’m not allowed to say it, but I do hate corn. OK, I don't hate it. I’ll eat it from Chipotle, and there's this lovely corn couscous dish at Glass House Tavern that's tolerable. And my mom makes a great cornbread, so I’ll eat that, too.

Jesse Green

Critic's Notebook

Rebuilding the habits of theater-making and theatergoing after the full stop of Covid made this an atypical season on Broadway, with occasional absences and delays.

But in terms of new musicals, it was a surprisingly typical season as well. Leading the nominations in the best musical category are shows that represent a familiar division between smallish sweethearts and biggish blowouts that goes back at least to the 2004 awards, when "Avenue Q," which won, fought it out with "Wicked," which is still running.

"Kimberly Akimbo," with eight nominations, is an especially sweet sweetheart. Like many of its ilk, it came from Off Broadway, with an emphasis less on spectacle than complex emotion. (It concerns a 15-year-old girl aging at four times the normal rate yet finding joy in her short life.) Another show punching above its apparent weight is "Shucked," the deliberately downscale cornfest, which nabbed nine.

Leading the blowouts are "Some Like It Hot" (13 nominations) and "New York, New York" (nine). Like many of their ilk, they came from Hollywood. "Some Like It Hot" is an update of the classic Billy Wilder gender comedy; "New York, New York," a paean to the city, is based almost unrecognizably on the Martin Scorsese film. Both are blow-the-roof-off types, with Golden Age scores — an entirely new one in the case of "Some Like It Hot" — and dancing and visuals to match.

If those four shows, which together reaped most of the available nominations, could not be more different, that's probably a good sign. Broadway needs both kinds of musical to flourish: one to keep the form moving forward, the other to keep it solvent.

And probably a third kind as well, I hate to admit: the jukebox musical. This year, though, the "J" wasn't always a scarlet letter, as "& Juliet," with nine nominations, proved. An upbeat, feminist take on the Shakespeare tragedy, it featured, aside from danceable music from the pop hitmaker Max Martin, something quite rare in the genre: wit.

It must be galling for the team behind "Bad Cinderella," another revisionist (but less credibly feminist) take on a classic tale, to have been skunked when "& Juliet" got so much love. But with "The Phantom of the Opera" having closed recently, this is apparently the year in which Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote the lumpy "Bad Cinderella" score, may loosen his iron grip on Broadway.

Musical revivals seem to be in retreat as well. With only six eligible entrants this season — three fewer than last season — the best revival category was capped at four instead of the usual five slots. Three of the slots were taken by the best-reviewed shows: "Into the Woods," "Parade" and "Sweeney Todd," two of them featuring scores by Stephen Sondheim.

With the revival of "1776" largely dismissed by critics, the fourth slot could only go to "Camelot" or "Dancin’," each with strong positives: beautiful music-making and visuals in "Camelot" and exciting Fosseism and arrangements in "Dancin’." The Tony nominators were apparently more willing to ignore the countervailing negatives in "Camelot," which wound up with five nominations, than in "Dancin’," which wound up with none.

On another occasion I’ll point out what seem to be unfortunate errors of omission and commission; the nominators have a tough job and can't please everyone. And overall, they provided a pretty good snapshot of a season offering extreme ideas of what commercial musical theater can be. From the "KPOP" score by Helen Park and Max Vernon to a Kander and Ebb (and Lin-Manuel Miranda) spectacular in "New York, New York" is, after all, quite a spectrum of styles.

And even if the awards in June narrow that spectrum to just a couple of big winners — most likely "Kimberly Akimbo" and "Some Like It Hot" among the new shows, and "Into the Woods" and "Sweeney Todd" among the revivals — the ever deeper exploration of sweethearts and blowouts strikes me as healthy. As the farmers at "Shucked" could probably tell you, a field with only one crop is asking for trouble.

Scott Heller and Alexis Soloski

Not everyone can wake up to good news on Tony nominations morning. Then again, with a panel of voters often un-wowed by celebrity, the roster typically turns up left-field choices and anoints young talent.

So it went Tuesday. Broadway royalty didn't get the royal treatment — nor did the actors playing King Arthur and Guinevere in "Camelot." But a 24-year-old Katy Perry-singing Juliet, and a playwright who stepped into the high heels of a whirlwind named Peaches, found themselves in a very welcome spotlight.

Here are some of the snubs, surprises and further observations about the nominations list:

By commercial measures, Jordan E. Cooper's scabrous comedy "Ain't No Mo’" was a Broadway failure, closing after 23 previews and only 28 performances. But the Tony committee gave the show's team something to laugh about, lavishing six nominations, including two for Cooper himself: best play and best featured actor in a play. Cooper, who portrayed a saucy airline hostess named Peaches, gave it his all, onstage and off: When the show's sudden closing was first announced, he took to Instagram to rally audiences. "They’ve posted an eviction notice," he wrote, "but thank God Black people are immune to eviction notices." His urgings led the play to stay open another week — perhaps long enough for more Tony nominators to see it.

Responding to what they saw as pent-up demand to see "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window" after a sellout run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, producers pulled a surprise by adding the revival of Lorraine Hansberry's 1964 play to the Broadway season on the last possible night. Yet Tony voters passed on nominating Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan for their sexy, impassioned portrayals of a fraying couple in 1960s Greenwich Village. Only Miriam Silverman, as Brosnahan's starchy sister, got an acting nod in her supporting part.

The race for leading actor in both plays and musicals was going to be tight, given the bounty of big performances in big roles — including several productions with two potential competing nominees. It wasn't out of the question that only one actor would get in, but Tony nominators decided otherwise, recognizing both Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as the brothers Lincoln and Booth in "Topdog/Underdog," and Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee as jazz musicians on the lam in "Some Like It Hot." Share-and-share-alike didn't apply in all cases, however, as only Jessica Hecht was nominated for "Summer, 1976" — a two-hander with Laura Linney the only other performer onstage.

Along with Linney, already a five-time nominee, other members of Broadway royalty woke up to a gloomy morning. Neither the former winners Nathan Lane nor Danny Burstein, beloved and vibrant Broadway presences and stars of "Pictures From Home," secured a nomination. Then again, the six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald did get her 10th nod, for her fierce yet fragile performance in "Ohio State Murders," where she’ll face off against Jessica Chastain ("A Doll's House"), Jodie Comer ("Prima Facie") — and Hecht, in an oddly sparse roster of four performers.

Amid the starrier names announced on Tuesday were a handful of lesser-known actors who have provided years, sometimes decades, of astonishing work Off Broadway. Arian Moayed, a versatile and ardent actor and a co-founder of the theater company Waterwell, was nominated for his turn as one of stage history's all-time worst husbands in "A Doll's House." David Zayas, a familiar face in the early plays of Stephen Adly Guirgis before TV fame in "Dexter" and other series, received a nod for playing a wounded caregiver in "Cost of Living." So did Kara Young, a firecracker of an actress, nominated for her brassy, anguished work in the play (Young's second nomination in a row). And that's not to mention Silverman, so canny and intense in "Sidney Brustein's Window."

The producers of Larissa Fasthorse's "The Thanksgiving Play" didn't have much to be thankful for Tuesday morning. Thought to be the first play by a Native American woman to have a Broadway run, the show was entirely shut out. The play is a comedy that shows four white Americans fumbling toward a devised work that celebrates Native American Heritage Month, but it is also a parable of Native American erasure, which makes the exclusion disconcerting.

Seems like that "happy dagger" turned out pretty happy after all in "& Juliet," an infectious jukebox musical that imagines what might have happened had Juliet found her way back out of the tomb. With competition from the likes of Phillipa Soo ("Camelot"), Patina Miller ("Into the Woods") and Anna Uzele ("New York, New York"), a nomination for Lorna Courtney, the 24-year-old actress playing Juliet, seemed anything but assured. But with the love of the nominating committee, Courtney has something to roar about.

Portraying a legendary pop performer has become a sure path to a Tony. Just ask Adrienne Warren ("Tina"), Jessie Mueller ("Beautiful") or Myles Frost, who helped announce the nominations after winning a prize last season for playing Michael Jackson in "MJ." Will Swenson won't be as fortunate, as his impressive impression of Neil Diamond in "A Beautiful Noise" went unnoticed, as did the musical as a whole. "So good, so good"? Not today.

Michael Paulson

The cast of "Some Like It Hot" was all together this morning, gathered to perform a number on the "Today" show, when the nominations were announced. "Some Like It Hot" got the most nods: 13. "Everyone was just looking at each other and pumping their fists," the show's director and choreographer, Casey Nicholaw, said in a phone interview. "Hopefully it means we’re going to sell a lot more tickets!"

Julia Jacobs

Wendell Pierce was sitting in the living room of his New York City apartment in a bathrobe, just a few hours after returning home from last night's Met Gala, when he heard his name announced on television as a Tony Award nominee for his performance in last year's revival of "Death of a Salesman."

"I broke down in tears," Pierce said on Tuesday, shortly after hearing the news. "I did not know how profoundly moving it would be. It was the culmination of years of hard work and a reflection on how much effort and toil went into the challenge of playing the role."

Pierce's stint as the spiraling salesman Willy Loman was the first time that a Broadway production of the show featured a Black family, which included Sharon D Clarke as Linda Loman. It was Pierce's first Broadway appearance in more than 30 years, earning him his first Tony nomination for acting. (He was a producer on "Clybourne Park," which won the award for best play in 2012, as well as for a 2007 production of August Wilson's "Radio Golf," which was a nominee.)

The actor, 59, best known for playing the detective Bunk Moreland on the acclaimed HBO series "The Wire," discussed the arc of his career and the physical and psychological commitment of stage work. ​​These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

When you started acting, where did you imagine your career might lead?

My greatest goal was just to be a working actor, to take the thing that is my vocation — the thing I am called to do — and hopefully make it my occupation. If one day it is not my occupation, it will always be my vocation. I could take off my workman's clothes and go to a small community theater and do a play. I just hoped to get into the world and become a part of the American tapestry of theater, film and television.

Are you saying that retirement from acting isn't something you’re looking toward?

Absolutely. I was actually just talking about this with another artist. They said they were retired, and I said, "But I’ve seen your work." So I guess you never retire. The thing that "Death of a Salesman" taught me is the fact that my best days are not behind me.

Before taking the stage as Loman, you had been focused on film and television, most consistently on "The Wire" and "Suits." How does your experience of stage acting compare with being on camera?

The strength of the acting muscles to sustain themselves for that three-hour period is a different one than you use in film with three- or four-minute spurts over a period of months. I think the attention and the dedication is the same — it's just stretching a different muscle. While you end the filming day and you feel drained, with "Death of a Salesman" people were always surprised by how energetic I was. When you’re on the stage and there's a give and take of the energy between the audiences and performers, it fills you up by the end of the evening and it takes you awhile to come down. It would take me almost all night. To do a challenging role like Willy Loman takes every fiber of your being.

Michael Paulson

The Tony nominators recognized both Brian d’Arcy James and Sara Bareilles, who played the Baker and his wife in a revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Into the Woods." They also gave nods to both halves of another Sondheim pairing: Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford, who play the vengeful barber and his loving accomplice in a revival of "Sweeney Todd." Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond, who play a businessman accused of murder and the wife who champions his defense in a revival of "Parade," each earned nominations as well.

Plus, Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee picked up nominations for playing a team of down-on-their-luck musicians (and best friends since childhood) in a stage adaptation of "Some Like It Hot."

The nominations for musical performers were drawn from a broad array of shows, reflecting the diverse array of style and subject matter represented in this season's productions.

"Some Like It Hot," the most-nominated musical, also picked up the most acting nods among musicals, including not only Borle and Ghee but also Kevin Del Aguila and NaTasha Yvette Williams.

But others were close behind: "Kimberly Akimbo" notched three acting nods, for Victoria Clark, Justin Cooley and Bonnie Milligan, as did "Sweeney Todd," with Ashford, Groban and Ruthie Ann Miles, and "Into the Woods," with Bareilles, James and Julia Lester.

Michael Paulson

Broadway plays always attract starry performers, drawn to the seriousness of theater and the challenge of eight performances a week.

This year's Tony nominees for best actor in a play all have thriving onscreen careers but took time away to throw themselves into challenging dramas on the stage.

Wendell Pierce, who is well known for his work on "The Wire" and many other television shows, has wanted for years to play Willy Loman, the downwardly mobile businessman at the heart of one of the greatest American plays, "Death of a Salesman." He originated the role in London before the pandemic, in a new production in which the Loman family, usually depicted as white, is now African American. It transferred to Broadway last fall.

Pierce reminded the world of his passion for "Salesman" just last weekend, when he posted on social media that he had misplaced his annotated script after riding a New York City taxicab, and pleaded for help finding it. He then located it himself in a clothing store where he had been shopping.

I have lost my life's work. Last night in NYC, I misplaced my journal from DEATH OF A SALESMAN on Broadway. This distillation of all I have ever experienced on my creative journey culminated in this production. A document of all the defining moments of critical self reflection

Pierce will face four other performers in a formidable field for best performance by an actor in a leading role in a play.

Sean Hayes, best known for the television series "Will & Grace," is nominated for his wrenching portrayal of an obviously mentally ill Oscar Levant, a 20th-century pianist and talk show raconteur, in "Good Night, Oscar." Stephen McKinley Henderson, a prolific character actor on the stage and screens large and small, is nominated for the leading role in "Between Riverside and Crazy," about a retired New York City police officer facing a variety of challenges as he seeks to hang on to his longtime apartment.

And both actors in this season's blistering revival of "Topdog/Underdog" picked up nominations: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who has done a number of superhero films ("Aquaman," for example), and Corey Hawkins, who was in "The Walking Dead" and "Straight Outta Compton."

The featured actor in a play category also features two famous names: Samuel L. Jackson, who appeared in a revival of "The Piano Lesson," and Arian Moayed (who plays Stewy on "Succession"), who is in a revival of "A Doll's House."

Michael Paulson

James Ijames has already won a Pulitzer Prize for "Fat Ham," his "Hamlet"-inspired barbecue comedy, but he's still thrilled to have been nominated for a Tony this morning for the production now running on Broadway. "What we’ve made has touched a lot of people, which is all I want to do anyway," he told me in a phone call from Philadelphia, where he lives and works. "And it means something when your peers and your colleagues see beauty in something you make."

Matt Stevens

It was not all that long ago that Micaela Diamond was performing in a high school production of "Gypsy." Or then, rather suddenly, making her Broadway debut in "The Cher Show."

On Tuesday, at age 23, Diamond earned her first Tony Award nomination for her work as the leading woman, Lucille Frank, in the revival of the musical "Parade."

"It's kind of insane how it can happen so fast," she said in a telephone interview early Tuesday morning, less than an hour after her name was called.

Diamond, the only child of a single mother who moved to New York to allow her daughter to pursue theater, stars opposite Ben Platt, who also picked up a Tony nomination for playing Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was murdered in Georgia in 1915. (Michael Arden, the show's director, also got a Tony nod.)

Diamond praised her collaborators and gave thanks to her mother. The pair still live together in her New York apartment, she said. And Diamond said her mother "was sobbing" when her name was called, because, for both of them, the announcement carried real stakes.

"It really is a mix of all the hope we’ve had for the last 23 years, and relief," she said. "A lot kind of felt on the line today, if you will."

Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Tell me about your morning.

I got to be with my mom and my partner and sit on my couch. They woke me up just before the nominations began. It was kind of this perfect moment. My mom was holding me. Every single roast chicken bone I’ve ever had, I’ve wished for this.

As was pointed out on the telecast, you’re still only 23.

When I was younger and wishing for this moment, it felt like such an individual prize. And I think it is such a company win. And I am so happy that I get to kind of learn that lesson young.

Still now, but especially during "Cher" — you have to allow yourself to fail in high places. I was going to go to Carnegie Mellon for musical theater and I would have learned a lot there and probably failed in class. Instead, I had to fail on a Broadway stage on 52nd Street eight times a week and kind of figure it out from there.

I’ve asked for a lot of help because I’ve had to start so young. And that's kind of, for me, the key. If you’re not going to climb a ladder, you have to ask as many people for help as you can.

You mentioned you were with your mother. Tell me about your relationship.

She moved me here when I was 10 because I wanted to do community theater. She's a special woman. We’ve lived our lives having each other and not necessarily money or a bedroom — she slept on a pullout couch for a long time. We still live together. It's a crazy, beautiful relationship. She is a perfect theater mom, because she has never done theater in her life, but she really enjoys seeing it. She is this perfect middle of supporting and loving what I do while having no idea.

What made you want to take the leap with "Parade"?

It's been so beloved in the musical-theater canon for so many years. And so it's so nice that it can be reinvented in this way during a time that people are able to see and appreciate the gray area of it. I was kind of drawn to it because Jason Robert Brown writes so specifically and beautifully for Jewish characters. And that's few and far between: There's Fanny Brice and "Fiddler."

It feels so beautiful and at home for me. I’m just Jewish. I don't have to be Jewish. Ben [Platt] and I are cut from the same cloth — we both grew up in synagogues and now we get to say the shabbat prayer onstage in the beginning of Act 2 every night. It's a beautiful way to go back to some of the religious part of the religion I kind of moved away from throughout my teens. We both repped Star of Davids last night at the Met Gala. We’re mishpacha. We’re family.

Julia Jacobs

This year's Tony-nominated productions included two works that grappled with the horrors of antisemitism at a time when it has become, once again, a growing concern in the United States and beyond.

"Leopoldstadt," a contender for best play, is inspired by the playwright Tom Stoppard's belated reckoning with his Jewish roots. It follows an Austrian-Jewish family from 1899, when they are thriving assimilated bourgeoisie, to the height of the Holocaust, and then to 1955, when the surviving members are dealing with catastrophic loss.

In "Parade," which is up for best musical revival, Ben Platt stars as Leo Frank, the Jewish pencil factory manager who was convicted of murdering a teenage employee in a trial that was rife with corruption and antisemitism. After his death sentence was commuted amid a public outcry over the conviction, Frank was lynched by a mob. The first preview performance on Broadway was met with a small neo-Nazi protest outside the theater, prompting condemnations from the production.

"If there is any remaining doubt out there about the urgency of telling this story in this moment in history, the vileness on display last night should put it to rest," the producers said.

Later this year the musical "Harmony," about a German singing group upended by the rise of Nazism, will open on Broadway with songs by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman, his longtime collaborator. And "Just for Us," a one-man show by Alex Edelman, a comedian who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home and turned online antisemitic abuse into material for his monologues, will open on Broadway this summer.

Last year also saw the Off Broadway production of Bess Wohl's "Camp Siegfried," a drama about a 1938 Nazi youth camp on Long Island. In June, there will be a production of Robert Icke's "The Doctor," a moral thriller about a Jewish physician whose life and career come under threat by accusations inflamed by bigotry, at Park Avenue Armory.

Nicole Herrington

Last week the new Broadway revival of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford, announced that its cast album will be available later this year. In January, Jesse Green took stock of the recent crop of Broadway cast albums, including recordings of the new shows the 2023 Tony nominated shows, including "Kimberly Akimbo," "Some Like It Hot" and "& Juliet." (The "Almost Famous" cast recording was just released last month, and the one for "KPOP" is scheduled to land next week.)

What's the true value of cast albums — beyond the preservation of a beloved musical? "Some improve on the shows they preserve merely by jettisoning most or mercifully all of the book," Green wrote. "In other cases, you can actually hear what the authors had in mind, which you can't always do amid overexcitable stagings."