In a gift for Tony Awards headline writers, Maria Friedman’s gut-wrenching “Merrily We Roll Along” (nominated for revival of a musical) will do precisely that at Sunday night’s ceremony at New York’s Lincoln Center. And David Adjmi’s “Stereophonic,” a new play that does more than any other work in history to explain why great rock bands and great lovers so often break up, will surely top the Tony version of the charts. But when it comes to what is arguably the biggest prize of all, the Tony Award for best new musical, it’s a guessing game.
Why? None of this past season’s fresh-faced tuners really stands out from the others. They all have their fans. And when it comes to their worthiness for the big kahuna, they all have cases against them.
Consider. You have the suffrage musical “Suffs,” (on balance, my favorite), unquestionably the most emotionally stirring of this season’s selections (which is why) and the happy coming out of a genuine multi-hyphenate Broadway talent in Shaina Taub, who recovered fast from the trauma of “The Devil Wears Prada” in Chicago. But “Suffs” should have worked out its kinks out of town rather than asking Gotham critics to forget what they previously had seen at the New York Public Theater.
That sense memory hurt their reaction and caused them not to see some of the vastly revised show’s palpable strengths. Some claim “Suffs” is also derivative and it’s certainly true that without “Hamilton,” there would.
