Actors Over 50 Score 8 Top Tony Award Nominations

Talents over age 50 earned eight of the 20 lead acting honors when the Tony Awards nominations were announced April 30: Maryann Plunkett, 71, and Dorian Harewood, 73 (The Notebook); Brian d’Arcy James, 55 (Days of Wine and Roses); Betsy Aidem, 66 (Prayer for the French Republic); Jessica Lange, 75 (Mother Play); Amy Ryan, 55, and Liev Schreiber, 56 (Doubt: A Parable); and Michael Stuhlbarg, 55 (Patriots).

The 77th Annual Tony Awards ceremony will be telecast live on CBS on June 16.

Two Broadway shows, the musical Hell’s Kitchen, fueled by Alicia Keys songs, and the play Stereophonic, about a ’70s rock band, led the nominations, with 13 each.

A total of 28 shows earned a Tony nod or more, with the musical The Outsiders, an adaptation of the beloved S.E. Hinton novel and the Francis Ford Coppola film, earning 12 nominations; a starry revival of Cabaret starring Eddie Redmayne nabbing nine (including featured actress Bebe Neuwirth, 65); and Appropriate, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ searing play about a family reunion in Arkansas where everyone has competing motivations and grievances, grabbing eight.

Jessica Lange at the opening night after party for the Second Stage Theater play "Mother Play" on Broadway at Bryant Park Grill on April 25, 2024 in New York City.

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Rachel McAdams, making her Broadway debut in Mary Jane, earned a best actress in a play nomination, while Succession star Jeremy Strong got his first ever nomination, for a revival of An Enemy of the People. Best actress in a play nominees include Lange, Ryan and Sarah Paulson (Appropriate). The Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons, 51, earned a supporting nod for Mother Play, and Daniel Radcliffe in his fifth Broadway show, a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, won his first nomination.

Redmayne, in his second show on Broadway, got a nod as best lead actor in a musical, as did Brody Grant (The Outsiders), Jonathan Groff (Merrily We Roll Along), Brian d’Arcy James and Dorian Harewood. In the adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ romantic tearjerker The Notebook, Maryann Plunkett earned a nom for best actress in a musical (which she won in 1987 for Me and My Girl). Harewood, in his first Broadway show in 46 years, landed his first Tony nomination.

Steve Carell, 61, in his Broadway debut in a poorly received revival of the classic play Uncle Vanya, failed to secure a nod, but starry producers who earned Tony nods include Keys, Angelina Jolie (for The Outsiders) and Hillary Rodham Clinton, 76 (for Suffs).

The crown for best new musical will be a battle among Hell’s Kitchen, Illinoise, The Outsiders, Suffs (based on the American suffragists of the early 20th century) and Water for Elephants, which combines Sara Gruen’s 2006 bestseller with circus elements.

The best new play Tony will pit Stereophonic against Mother Play, Paula Vogel’s play about a mother and her kids from 1964 to the 21st century; Mary Jane, Amy Herzog’s humanistic portrait of a divorced mother of a young boy with health issues; Prayer for the French Republic, Joshua Harmon’s sprawling family comedy-drama that deals with Zionism, religious fervency and antisemitism; and Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, Jocelyn Bioh’s comedy about the lives of West African women working at a salon.