Latino musical leads Tony Awards nominations
CHRISTINE DOLEN
MiamiHerald.com
May 14, 2008
NEW YORK -- In the Heights, a tender-hearted musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda, leads an eclectic crop of Broadway productions in the race for the 62nd annual Tony Awards, which will be presented June 15.
Announced Tuesday by Tony winners (and former Spamalot costars) Sara Ramirez and David Hyde Pierce, the nominations favored classic musicals: 11 for the sumptuous revival of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's South Pacific (including performance nominations for its leads, opera star Paulo Szot and actress Kelli O'Hara), nine for Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George (and a lifetime achievement Tony for Sondheim himself) and seven for the much-lauded production of Gypsy, which earned its 89-year-old book writer Arthur Laurents a best-director nod (and will likely get star Patti LuPone the Tony as best actress in a musical).
But no show earned as many nominations as In the Heights, with its exuberant melding of Latino music and hip-hop and its story of love and loss in Manhattan's Latino Washington Heights neighborhood.
Miranda, its multitalented 28-year-old creator and star, saw a musical he began working on during his sophomore year at Connecticut's Wesleyan University earn nominations for best musical, best book (by playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes), best score (Miranda), best actor (Miranda again), best director, best featured actor and actress, best set, best costumes, best lighting, best sound, best choreography and best orchestrations.
One of the two Heights nominees for best orchestrations is Alex Lacamoire, the show's musical director and a high-school alumnus of Miami's New World School of the Arts. Lacamoire infused Miranda's score with the sounds of salsa, merengue, mambo and more; fellow nominee Bill Sherman supplied the hip-hop and reggaeton.
Two other South Florida-raised theater talents are also Tony contenders.
Actor Raúl Esparza, nominated last season as best actor in a musical for Company, is one of two acting nominees from the now-closed revival of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming (he is up for best featured actor in a play, with his former costar Eve Best nominated as best actress).
Adam Epstein, a Miami Beach native and lead producer of the musical Cry-Baby, saw his show (based, like Hairspray, on a John Waters movie) earn four nominations, including the box office-boosting best-musical nod.
Competing with In the Heights and Cry-Baby for the season's best musical are two extremely different shows: the campy Xanadu, based on a 1980 Olivia Newton-John movie, and Passing Strange, an adventurous, rock-driven piece by Stew (just the one name, Stew). Another do-it-all talent like Miranda, Stew wrote his show's book, lyrics, co-wrote and co-orchestrated the score and earned a best-actor nomination for his performance.
In drama, Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County, a darkly funny and emotionally intense piece about a dysfunctional Oklahoma family, earned seven nominations, the most for any play. Two of its stars, Deanna Dunagan as the pill-popping matriarch and Amy Morton as her beleaguered eldest daughter, are nominated for the best-actress Tony; Rondi Reed, who plays Dunagan's cutting sister, is up for the best-featured-actress award.
The June 15 Tony Awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall will be telecast from 8 to 11 p.m. on CBS. Tickets are available via the Tonys site at www.TonyAwards.com.
