'Wicked' tops the list with 10 Tony nominations

By Mike Boehm

May 11, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Two Pulitzer Prize-winning dramas, Nilo Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics” and Doug Wright’s “I Am My Own Wife,” will face off for best play in next month’s Tony Awards, while “Wicked,” a big-budget Broadway hit about the witches from L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz”; “Avenue Q,” an offbeat production in which puppets join live actors in portraying urban slackers; and “Caroline, or Change,” an autobiographical musical based on the Louisiana childhood of book writer and lyricist Tony Kushner, vie for best musical.

“Wicked,” by songwriter Stephen Schwartz (“Pippin,” “Godspell”) and librettist Winnie Holzman, led Monday with 10 nominations as the American Theatre Wing and the League of American Theatres and Producers announced contenders for the 58th annual Antoinette Perry Awards. The ceremony will be telecast June 6 from New York. Voters for best revival of a musical will have a choice between the serious and the more traditionally upbeat: Leading the nominees are “Assassins,” Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s grim portrayal of John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald and seven others who killed or tried to kill U.S. presidents, and “Wonderful Town,” a 1953 valentine to Depression-era New York with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

The sign-language-driven restaging of “Big River,” which started its life in 2001 at the tiny Deaf West Theatre in North Hollywood and moved to the Mark Taper Forum before landing on Broadway last year, rounds out the category, along with the critically disparaged “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“Assassins” received seven nominations, while “Avenue Q,” “Caroline, or Change,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Henry IV” each received six. “Wonderful Town” and “The Boy From Oz,” the fourth contender for best new musical, earned five nods.

Two Shakespeare plays, “Henry IV” and “King Lear,” are up for best revival of a play, along with Lorraine Hansberry’s classic, “A Raisin in the Sun,” and Tom Stoppard’s “Jumpers.” With “Henry IV,” Jack O’Brien, artistic director of San Diego’s Old Globe, will have a chance to win a best director award for a second year, having won last year for his staging of “Hairspray.” The text O’Brien worked from was adapted by Dakin Matthews, a veteran L.A. classical actor. Jefferson Mays, critically lauded for his handling of 30-plus roles in “I Am My Own Wife,” the story of an openly gay transvestite who survived the Nazis and the communists in East Berlin, is nominated for best actor in a play. The UC San Diego drama school graduate is taking on bigger names: Christopher Plummer, Kevin Kline, Frank Langella and Simon Russell Beale. Famous names also dominate the nominations for leading actress in a play: Phylicia Rashad in “A Raisin in the Sun,” Tovah Feldshuh in “Golda’s Balcony,” Swoosie Kurtz in “Frozen,” Anne Heche in “Twentieth Century” and Eileen Atkins in “The Retreat From Moscow.”

Hugh Jackman, who will host the Tony ceremonies for the second year, is also a contender for best actor in a musical for his turn as entertainer Peter Allen in “The Boy From Oz.” Only once before have two Pulitzer-winning plays vied for a Tony: in 1956, when “The Diary of Anne Frank” beat “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” That was news to Wright, this year’s Pulitzer winner, and Cruz, who won last year for his play about life in a 1920s Florida cigar factory. The two say they celebrated each other’s Pulitzers and feel no great competitive zeal as Tony rivals. “Nilo is a dear friend; it makes me feel we’re both coming of age in the same moment,” Wright said Monday. “It makes the whole process less fraught and more congenial.”

“I don’t do art to compete,” Cruz said from his home in New York City. While lamenting that “Anna in the Tropics” closed on Broadway in February after 113 performances, the playwright -- the first Latino to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama -- is looking forward to a passel of productions for “Anna” next season at regional theaters around the country, including the Pasadena Playhouse. “It’s unfortunate my show closed,” Cruz said, “but that’s the nature of theater.”

Here is a complete list of the nominees:

Best play

“Anna in the Tropics” by Nilo Cruz

“Frozen” by Bryony Lavery

“I Am My Own Wife” by Doug Wright

“The Retreat From Moscow” by William Nicholson

Best musical

“Avenue Q”

“Caroline, or Change”

“The Boy From Oz”

“Wicked”

Best book of a musical

“Avenue Q”; book by Jeff Whitty

“Caroline, or Change”; book by Tony Kushner

“The Boy From Oz”; book by Martin Sherman; original book: Nick Enright

“Wicked”; book by Winnie Holzman

Best original score

“Avenue Q”; music and lyrics, Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx

“Caroline, or Change”; music, Jeanine Tesori; lyrics, Tony Kushner

“Taboo”; music and lyrics, Boy George

“Wicked”; music and lyrics, Stephen Schwartz

Best revival of a play

“Henry IV”

“Jumpers”

“King Lear”

“A Raisin in the Sun”

Best revival of a musical

“Assassins”

“Big River”

“Fiddler on the Roof”

“Wonderful Town”

Best performance by a leading actor in a play

Simon Russell Beale, “Jumpers”

Kevin Kline, “Henry IV”

Frank Langella, “Match”

Jefferson Mays, “I Am My Own Wife”

Christopher Plummer, “King Lear”

Best performance by a leading actress in a play

Eileen Atkins, “The Retreat From Moscow”

Tovah Feldshuh, “Golda’s Balcony”

Anne Heche, “Twentieth Century”

Swoosie Kurtz, “Frozen”

Phylicia Rashad, “A Raisin in the Sun”

Best performance by a leading actor in a musical

Hunter Foster, “Little Shop of Horrors”

Hugh Jackman, “The Boy From Oz”

Alfred Molina, “Fiddler on the Roof”

Euan Morton, “Taboo”

John Tartaglia, “Avenue Q”

Best performance by a leading actress in a musical

Kristin Chenoweth, “Wicked”

Stephanie D’Abruzzo, “Avenue Q”

Idina Menzel, “Wicked”

Donna Murphy, “Wonderful Town”

Tonya Pinkins, “Caroline, or Change”

Best performance by a featured actor in a play

Tom Aldredge, “Twentieth Century”

Ben Chaplin, “The Retreat From Moscow”

Aidan Gillen, “The Caretaker”

Omar Metwally, “Sixteen Wounded”

Brian F. O’Byrne, “Frozen”

Best performance by a featured actress in a play

Essie Davis, “Jumpers”

Sanaa Lathan, “A Raisin in the Sun”

Margo Martindale, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”

Audra McDonald, “A Raisin in the Sun”

Daphne Rubin-Vega, “Anna in the Tropics”

Best performance by a featured actor in a musical

John Cariani, “Fiddler on the Roof”

Michael Cerveris, “Assassins”

Raul Esparza, “Taboo”

Michael McElroy, “Big River”

Denis O’Hare, “Assassins”

Best performance by a featured actress in a musical

Beth Fowler, “The Boy From Oz”

Isabel Keating, “The Boy From Oz”

Anika Noni Rose, “Caroline, or Change”

Jennifer Westfeldt, “Wonderful Town”

Karen Ziemba, “Never Gonna Dance”

Best scenic design

Robert Brill, “Assassins”

Ralph Funicello, “Henry IV”

Eugene Lee, “Wicked”

Tom Pye, “Fiddler on the Roof”

Best costume design

Jess Goldstein, “Henry IV”

Susan Hilferty, “Wicked”

Mike Nicholls and Bobby Pearce, “Taboo”

Mark Thompson, “Bombay Dreams”

Best lighting design

Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, “Assassins”

Brian MacDevitt, “Fiddler on the Roof”

Brian MacDevitt, “Henry IV”

Kenneth Posner, “Wicked”

Best direction of a play

Doug Hughes, “Frozen”

Moises Kaufman, “I Am My Own Wife”

David Leveaux, “Jumpers”

Jack O’Brien, “Henry IV”

Best direction of a musical

Joe Mantello, “Assassins”

Kathleen Marshall, “Wonderful Town”

Jason Moore, “Avenue Q”

George C. Wolfe, “Caroline, or Change”

Best choreography

Wayne Cilento, “Wicked”

Kathleen Marshall, “Wonderful Town”

Jerry Mitchell, “Never Gonna Dance”

Anthony Van Laast and Farah Khan, “Bombay Dreams”

Best orchestrations

Paul Bogaev, “Bombay Dreams”

William David Brohn, “Wicked”

Larry Hochman, “Fiddler on the Roof”

Michael Starobin, “Assassins”

Regional theater Tony Award

Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park

Special Tony Award for lifetime achievement

James M. Nederlander

‘Wicked’ tops the list with 10 Tony nominations

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