by Patrick Ball
A STRANGE LOOP leads the nominations. Photo © The New York Times / Sara Krulwich
Pulitzer winner A Strange Loop led the Tony nominations this morning but only by 1. Paradise Square a period musical about NYC's five points neighborhood, and the Michael Jackson musical MJ each scored 10 nominations. While Stephen Sondheim's Company was the clear frontrunner among the Revivals with 9 nominations. Voters nearly shut out two big glitzy musicals (Funny Girl and Mrs Doubtfire scored just 1 nomination each!) and the year's priciest ticket had mixed results with The Music Man scoring just 6 nominations. If you believe nomination counts predict winners (they do sometimes) your big winners in June will be the popular gender bent revival of Company, the box office struggling revival of for colored girls (which could get a big boost from these nods), and for original musicals and plays, A Strange Loop and the already-closed The Lehman Trilogy respectively.
The nominations after the jump include a lot of well loved stars (Jackman, Foster, Rashad, Negga, Crystal, Dratch, Aduba, Winningham) though several other "names" were snubbed (SJP, Feldstein, Craig) were left out...
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