By Sharon Eberson
Oh, the places you’ll go. Take Jaquel Spivey, who graduated from Point Park University last year with a degree in Musical Theatre. This year is a Tony Award nominee.
For his star turn in A Strange Loop, Spivey has been nominated as outstanding lead actor in a musical.
A Strange Loop led the way with 11 nominations for this years awards.
Reviewing A Strange Loop‘s pre-Broadway run at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Washington Post critic Peter Marks wrote, “Commit this name to memory: Jaquel Spivey. Or better yet, be a witness to the 23-year-old’s electric debut as the tormented queer Black songwriter in Michael R. Jackson’s marvelously inventive, Pulitzer Prize-winning A Strange Loop. It’s a guarantee you’ll never forget him.”
If the nominations of Spivey and Myles Frost for MJ – cast ss Michael Jackson at age 22 – represent Broadway’s new wave. In that case, their competition represents established stars: Rob McClure (Mrs. Doubtfire), Hugh Jackman (The Music Man), and, at 74, Billy Crystal, who also is nominated for co-writing the book for Mr. Saturday Night.
Veteran actor/director and previous Tony-winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Seven Guitars), whose mother hails from Clairton, was nominated in the leading actor in a play category for reprising his solo show, Lackawanna Blues, on Broadway. Santiago-Hudson spends considerable time in Pittsburgh as a supporter of the August Wilson African American Cultural Center and has lent his voice to the center’s new permanent exhibition, A Writer’s Landscape.
Another Wilsonian actor, Phylicia Rashad, was nominated as best featured actress in a play for her role Skeleton Crew.
Nominations were announced at 9 a.m. today. The 75th Tonys ceremony will take place at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, June 12, and will be broadcast live coast-to-coast for the first time. The telecast begins at 7 p.m. EST on the streaming service Paramount+, then at 8, it switches over to CBS (KDKA in Pittsburgh). Hosting is Ariana DeBose, the Oscar-winner for West Side Story.
For Broadway’s big return from the pandemic shutdown, there were 34 new Broday productions this season, 15 opening in April alone.
A Strange Loop, which previously was seen off-Broadway, is nominated along with Six, Mr. Saturday Night, MJ the Musical, and Girl From the North Country in the best musical category. Only three shows – Caroline, or Change, Company, and The Music Ma” – were nominated for best musical revival.
Lynn Nottage‘s Clyde’s, about a truck stop sandwich shop that offers its formerly incarcerated kitchen staff a shot at redemption, is a best play nominee and will lead off City Theatre’s 2022-23 season, starting Sept. 24. Other nominees for top play include Dana H. The Lehman Trilogy, The Minutes, and Dominique Morisseau‘s Skeleton Crew.
The Tony Awards and Carnegie Mellon University’s Excellence in Education Award winner, ” a K-12 theater educator in the U.S. who has demonstrated monumental impact on students’ lives and who embodies the profession’s highest standards,” will be recognized at the ceremony in June.
For a complete list of nominees, visit tonyawards.com.
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Feature Stories
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