2017 TONY AWARD NOMINEES

ABOVE: THE CAST OF NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 WITH TONY NOMINEE JOSH GROBAN (CENTER).

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‘GREAT COMET,’ ‘EVAN HANSEN’ TOP BEST MUSICAL CANDIDATES, WITH NEWCOMER LUCAS HNATH AND PULITZER WINNERS LYNN NOTTAGE & PAULA VOGEL AMONG THOSE VYING FOR BEST PLAY.

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AND THEN there were two.

The new musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812  topped the 2017 Tony Award nominations Tuesday with 12, followed closely by Dear Evan Hansen, which earned nine. The Bette Midler-led Hello, Dolly! has 10 nominations but will compete in the best revival (not best musical) category.

Even though 13 new musicals opened in the season just closed, the Tony committee saw fit to nominate only four for its top honor.

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, based on Volume 2, Part 5 of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, focuses on Natasha’s affair with Anatole, and Pierre’s search for meaning in life. Its cast of 30-plus sings, dances, climbs, sprints and engages theatergoers throughout the Imperial Theatre, which was renovated to provide an up-close, in-the-round experience in which the stage is nowhere and everywhere.

Dear Evan Hansen, in contrast, tells the story of one teenager’s suicide and another’s lie, with a cast of eight, examining truth, memory and Internet lunacy along the way.

Completing the category are Come From Away (the true story of 7,000 airline passengers stranded in a small Newfoundland town by the events of 9/11)  and Groundhog Day (adapted from the 1993 movie with Andy Karl in the Bill Murray role).

The best new play category was also held to four nominations: A Doll’s House, Part 2 by Lucas Hnath, Indecent by Paula Vogel, Oslo by J.T. Rogers and Sweat by Lynn Nottage.

Hnath’s A Doll’s House — a daring, widely praised sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s revolutionary 1879 portrait of marriage as a women’s prison — led all new plays with six nominations. Playwright Hnath is making his Broadway debut, as is Vogel, a Pulitzer Prize winner for How I Learned to Drive in 1998. Her Indecent retells the story of a Yiddish classic that, in 1923, featured the first-ever Broadway stage kiss between two women.

Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for Ruined. She won again this year for Sweat, a personal and political drama that looks at America’s industrial decline. Rogers’ Oslo dramatizes the efforts of two Norwegian diplomats in 1993 as they try to bring Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Yasser Arafat together.

The starry revival of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes also earned six nominations — including best revival and nominations for leading ladies Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon. The 1939 drama flays open a Southern family whose selfish pursuit of the American Dream destroys them and those they love. Linney and Nixon alternate in the roles of the fearless, conniving Regina Hubbard Giddens and her timid sister-in-law, Birdie Hubbard.

Clearly, there’s no Hamilton this season, but that’s the type of show that comes around once in a generation, if we’re lucky. Among this year’s surprises:

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  Two-time Tony winner Christian Borle, who was nominated for his featured work in Falsettos but not for the leading role of Willie Wonka in the highly anticipated, widely panned Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

• The entire Charlie and the Chocolate Factory team, which was shut out. The show was retooled for Broadway, even after running for more than three years in London and winning two Olivier Awards.

• Leading performers Laura Osnes and Corey Cott, neither nominated for the World War II-themed musical Bandstand.

• Leading lady Allison Janney, whose Six Degrees of Separation was nominated for best revival/play.

• The shutout of the new musical Amélie, based on the 2001 rom-com film and starring Hamilton’s Phillippa Soo.

File this under disappointments: Only two women — The Great Comet‘s Rachel Chavkin and Indecent‘s Rebecca Taichman — are among the eight competitors in the best director fields, a net increase of one from last year. Women fared only slightly better in the best play/musical categories, indicating that, while efforts toward gender equity are making a dent in America’s non-commercial theater, Broadway remains almost stubbornly inert.

Of special note to metro Atlanta theater-watchers:

• The Christians, an earlier play by Lucas Hnath, opens Actor’s Express’ 30th anniversary season on Sept. 16. Called “stunningly original” by critics, it features a battle of wills between two preachers at a mega-church and calls for a full-size choir.

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  A revival of August Wilson’s 1970s-set Jitney, which earned six nominations, featured former Atlanta actor Brandon J. Dirden as Booster and Alliance Theatre regular Keith Randolph Smith (C.A. Lyons Project, King Hedley II, The Whipping Man) as Doub. Neither was nominated, but the play is a best revival candidate.

• Tim Minchin, whose Matilda the Musical just played the Fox Theatre, is nominated for best original score for Groundhog Day.

What might we expect to see on tour at the Fox Theatre in the next few years? Groundhog Day and Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 are the right size and spirit for the 4,678-seat landmark. Don’t expect to see Josh Groban, though. He has missed a mess of Broadway performances and is unlikely to tour. And, even though it has been open for only two weeks, there’s already talk of a road production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. With its family-friendly appeal, it might not need to be a Broadway juggernaut.

Hello, Dolly! is possible, but producers would have to entice Midler to stay with it or find someone, anyone, of a similar stature — if such a person exists. Anastasia, expanded from the 1997 animated movie about the last surviving child of the Russian Royal Family, might find second life on the road. Despite a Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty score (Ragtime, Once on This Island), it earned only two nominations (costumes, featured actress Mary Beth Peil).

Atlanta audiences are less likely to see Come From Away, which has a cast of just 12, and the eight-person Dear Evan Hansen. Like Fun Home, which we have yet to see, sadly, both are likely too small for the expanses of the Fox.

The Tony awards telecast airs live on CBS at 8 p.m. June 11, with Oscar and Tony Award winner Kevin Spacey hosting the show, which returns to Radio City Music Hall after a few years’ absence. Pre-show activities — red-carpet arrivals, interviews and such — will stream live on the Tony awards website HERE, beginning no later than 7 p.m.

Spacey won a 1991 Tony Award for Lost in Yonkers and was nominated for The Iceman Cometh (1999). He last appeared on Broadway in A Moon for the Misbegotten (2007). His stage credits include Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Hurlyburly and Ghosts (all in the 1980s).

The full list of nominees:

Best play

• A Doll’s House, Part 2 by Lucas Hnath
• Indecent by Paula Vogel
• Oslo by J.T. Rogers
• Sweat by Lynn Nottage

Best musical 

• Come From Away
• Dear Evan Hansen
• Groundhog Day
• Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812

Best revival / play 

• Jitney
• The Little Foxes
• Present Laughter
• Six Degrees of Separation

Best revival / musical

• Falsettos
• Hello, Dolly!
• Miss Saigon

Best book / musical 

• David Hein and Irene Sankoff, Come From Away
• Steven Levenson, Dear Evan Hansen
• Dave Malloy, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812
• Danny Rubin, Groundhog Day

Direction / play

• Sam Gold, A Doll’s House, Part 2
• Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Jitney
• Barlett Sher, Oslo
• Daniel Sullivan, The Little Foxes
• Rebecca Taichman, Indecent

Direction / musical

• Christopher Ashley, Come From Away
• Rachel Chavkin, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812
• Michael Greif, Dear Evan Hansen
• Matthew Warchus, Groundhog Day
• Jerry Zaks, Hello, Dolly! 

Leading actress / musical

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