Two Musicals Split 20 Tony Nominations

In a hit-short but nonetheless prospering season, Broadway’s Tony awards committee Monday dropped two musical awards categories for lack of quality contenders and split 20 nominations among just two musicals.

The two most-nominated shows were “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,” which got three of its 10 nominations in the featured-actress category, and “Black and Blue,” whose 10 nominations included two each in the categories of best actress and featured actor.

Those shows and “Starmites” were the only nominees in the best-musical category, which in better seasons has four contenders.

But there were four in the best-play category--rubber-legged Bill Irwin’s “Largely New York” (co-producers include Walt Disney Studios), “Lend Me a Tenor,” “Shirley Valentine” and “The Heidi Chronicles.” The last is already the winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama.

In the best-revival category, nominations went to three plays--”Ah, Wilderness!,” “Cafe Crown” and “Our Town”--and to the musical “ ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’, “ which was on Broadway only 10 years ago.

The winners will be announced here June 4 on CBS in a two-hour show hosted for the third consecutive year by Angela Lansbury, star of CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote” and a four-time Tony winner.

The Tony administrators also announced a special Tony award for the Hartford Stage Company, of Hartford, Conn., for achievement in regional theater.

The elimination of the categories of best book and best score--there usually is a total of 19 Tony categories--surprised few observers, given the slim pickings in musicals this season.

Nor was the action unprecedented. Three categories of musicals were dropped in the 1984-85 season.

Things could have been worse this time around.

On Thursday, the Drama Desk, a 40-year-old organization of New York theater writers, dropped an unprecedented eight categories from its awards nominations, which include Off-Broadway shows.

The only major surprise at Monday’s Tony nominations, held at Sardi’s, the famed theater restaurant, was the five nominations given “Starmites,” whose plot concerns a woman and her favorite comic book.

Save for a favorable New York Times review, the show was panned by most major critics.

There was a small surprise: the choreography nomination given Irwin and Kimi Okada for “Largely New York.”

The 10-member Tony committee permitted it even though the show--a comedy in which Irwin mimes and dances through a series of sketches--has no dialogue and was nominated as a play.

The big winner in drama nominations was a comedy, “Lend Me a Tenor,” which got seven, followed by six for Wendy Wasserstein’s comedy, “The Heidi Chronicles” and five for Irwin’s show.

The best-known name among the nominees: Mikhail Barynshnikov, who won a best-actor nomination, his first, as the tormented clerk in Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”

His Tony rivals in his category are Philip Bosco and Victor Garber in “Lend Me a Tenor,” and Irwin in “Largely New York.

Television’s Ed Asner didn’t get a nomination for his work in the revival of “Born Yesterday.” But Madeline Kahn, the revival’s Billie Dawn, was nominated in the best-actress category.

So were Joan Allen of “The Heidi Chronicles,” “Pauline Collins of “Shirley Valentine” and Kate Nelligan of the now-closed “Spoils of War.”

Eligibilty for nominations ended on Sunday.

Despite this season’s dearth of hit musicals, Broadway remains prosperous, said George Wachtel, a research official with the American League of Theatres and Producers, which with the American Theater Wing runs the Tony show.

He said that when this season ends May 28, the Broadway box office is expected to exceed last season’s record $253 million gross. Last season’s record $223 million for road productions of Broadway shows also will be topped, he predicted.