In a season when an unusual number of boldface names appeared on Broadway, several came away with nominations, including Darren Criss, Daniel Dae Kim and Bob Odenkirk. But a bevy of major stars failed to get nods from the nominators, including Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal, Nick Jonas, David Hyde Pierce and Idina Menzel.
The race for best lead actress in a musical is seen as having two front-runners: McDonald, who is giving a blistering performance of an out-of-control stage mother in “Gypsy,” and Nicole Scherzinger, a former Pussycat Doll making a rapturously received Broadway debut as a has-been movie star in “Sunset Boulevard.” The other nominees in that category include both stars of “Death Becomes Her,” Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard, as well as Jasmine Amy Rogers, who brings Betty Boop to life in “Boop! The Musical.”
The race for best lead actor in a musical is wide open, with six nominees, including Criss of “Maybe Happy Ending,” Andrew Durand of “Dead Outlaw,” Tom Francis of “Sunset Boulevard,” Jonathan Groff of “Just in Time,” James Monroe Iglehart of “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical” and Jeremy Jordan of “Floyd Collins.”
Farrow, Sink and Snook are all included in the race for best lead actress in a play — Farrow as an Iowa divorcée whose life is upended when she takes in a tenant in “The Roommate,” Sink as an adolescent-with-secrets in “John Proctor Is the Villain” and Snook as 26 characters in a one-woman (plus camera crew) adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” They will face off against LaTanya Richardson Jackson, playing a formidable family matriarch in “Purpose,” and Laura Donnelly, who, in “The Hills of California,” played a mother in the first act and her daughter, many years later, in the second.
In the best actor in a play category Escola, who imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as an alcoholic wannabe cabaret star, is considered a leading contender. Clooney is nominated for playing Edward R. Murrow in a stage adaptation of the film “Good Night, and Good Luck” that has been breaking box office records. The other nominees include Kim, for “Yellow Face,” Jon Michael Hill and Harry Lennix, for “Purpose,” and Louis McCartney, the 21-year-old star of “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a spectacle-heavy stage prequel to the Netflix series. (Escola is nonbinary, but agreed to be considered in this category.)
