By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
From Hello, Dolly! to Dear Evan Hansen, the best of Broadway will be celebrated Sunday at the annual Tony Awards.
The 71st annual awards will be broadcast at 7 p.m. Sunday on CBS.
I invited Jason Crespin, Amarillo Little Theatre's education director and one of the only people in town whose as obsessed with Broadway as I am, to the studio Tuesday to chat about the season and our predictions for some of the big winners. Check it out below:
Here's Crespin at the announcement of the 2017 Tony Award nominees in May:
I've also put together a playlist of some of my favorite tracks from (or representing) this year's musical nominees (and take care, because some of the songs have some adult language):
And if you're not as plugged in yet about this year's major nominees, check out the links below, and click here for a complete list of nominees.
Best Play
A Doll's House, Part 2
Lucas Hnath's drama imagines what would happen if Nora, the heroine of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, returned home after slamming the door so decisively. All four performers — Laurie Metcalf, Chris Cooper, Jane Houdyshell and Condola Rashad — were nominated for Tonys; the show scored eight nominations overall.
Indecent
Playwright Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) unearths a little-known bit of Broadway history — when a 1907 production of the Yiddish drama God of Vengeance was shut down on indecency charges because of a lesbian storyline. It netted three nominations.
Oslo
J.T. Rogers crafts a thriller based on the crafting of the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Reviews for the show have been stellar, and it received seven nominations.
Sweat
Lynn Nottage won her second Pulitzer Prize for drama for this play about how the threatened closing of a steel plant in Reading, Penn., upends the lives of its workers. It scored three nominations.
Best Musical
Come From Away
This musical finds hope and optimism in the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., focusing on the residents of far-away Gander, Newfoundland, and the 7,000 passengers of 38 flights from around the world who were diverted there and stranded for five days. It was nominated for a total of seven awards.
Profile of Beverley Bass, a Dallas pilot featured in the show
Dear Evan Hansen
Ben Platt (Pitch Perfect) stars as an awkward teenager who gets caught up in a horribly painful lie after the death by suicide of a classmate. It was nominated for a total of nine awards.
Groundhog Day the Musical
In this adaptation of the cult classic 1992 comedy, jerky weatherman Phil (Andy Karl) is trapped in a day that keeps repeating ... and repeating ... and repeating. Nominated for seven awards.
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812
This innovative musical, with Josh Groban and newly minted star Denée Benton, adapts a sliver of the weighty War & Peace. It's this year's most-nominated show with 12.
Best revival of a play
August Wilson's Jitney
The late Wilson play made its Broadway debut this season and tells the story of unlicensed cabbies in the 1970s. It was nominated for six awards.
John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation
Before the movie helped set off the "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" craze, this was a Broadway drama. It's back with Tony-nominated Corey Hawkins (24: Legacy, Straight Outta Compton) in the role Will Smith played in the film, and Allison Janney and John Benjamin Hickey as the rich New Yorkers he scams. Nominated for two Tonys.
Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes
Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon swap roles nightly as the ruthless Regina and beatific Birdie in this classic drama. It's up for six awards, including for both actresses.
Present Laughter
Kevin Kline returns to Broadway in this revival of the Noel Coward classic about a preening actor worried that he's aging. It was nominated for three awards.
Best revival of a musical
Falsettos
A gay man in the late 1970s struggles to remain close to his son and ex-wife while also pursuing a relationship with a man in the first half of this musical by James Lapine and William Finn, originally staged off-Broadway in 1981 as March of the Falsettos, followed in 1990 with Falsettoland, where the characters are now in the 1980s and facing a mysterious disease that's killing their friends. The two were combined as Falsettos and staged on Broadway originally in 1992, then again in 2016-17. This production was filmed for PBS and will air later this year on Live from Lincoln Center, and it's up for five Tonys.
Hello, Dolly!
The inimitable Bette Midler returns to Broadway for the first time in 50 years to star as the meddling, loveable matchmaker Dolly Levi in this classic musical. David Hyde Pierce (Frasier) co-stars as her love interest. It's up for 10 Tonys, including nominations for Midler and Pierce.
Miss Saigon
Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s follow-up to Les Misérables was an enormous hit when it debuted on Broadway in 1991, and it's back in a new production that had a solid run on the West End in London. It's up for two awards.
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and on Facebook.
