After half-century on Broadway, Frank Langella has received his seventh Tony nomination for a heartrending performance as a man disintegrating into senility in “The Father,” while the British actor Mark Strong marked his Broadway debut this season winning a nod for his searing portrait of Eddie Carbone, the obsessively jealous dockworker in “Arthur Miller’s ‘A View from the Bridge.’” Whether the Tony voters choose to celebrate a career capstone or roll out the welcome mat will be decided on June 12. Or they could very well — and with good reason — choose any of the three other masterful actors vying for the Tony medallion: Jeff Daniels (“Blackbird”), Tim Pigott-Smith (“King Charles III”), or Gabriel Byrne (“Long Day’s Journey into Night.”)If extra credit were given for the number of lines, Byrne’s marathon performance opposite Jessica Lange as the guilt-wracked paterfamilias of the Tyrone clan in “Long Day’s Journey into Night” would surely win. O’Neill’s gorgeous arias of despair and regret are expertly rendered by the Irish-born actor, who has previously won acclaim on Broadway in two of the playwright’s other classics, “A Moon for the Misbegotten” (2000) and “A Touch of the Poet” (2005). The role of James Tyrone has brought Tony nominations for three of Byrne’s predecessors: Frederic March, who created the role in 1958; Jack Lemmon, who followed in 1986; and Brian Dennehy, who, like March, won the Tony in 2003. O’Neill memorably described his masterpiece as “a play of old sorrow written in tears and blood.” And Byrne’s commitment has wrung every bit of emotion in this superb Roundabout Theatre revival directed by Jonathan Kent.The British actor Tim Pigott-Smith is best known in this country for his numerous film appearances, from “The Jewel in the Crown” (1984) to the James Bond thriller, “Quantum of Solace” (2008). But he is also highly respected stage actor, with bona fides established with the Royal Shakespeare Company and in such contemporary plays as “Enron,” in which he played Kenneth Lay. He also once narrated a documentary on Britain’s Royal Family — hence, he was a natural choice to play the title role in “King Charles III,” Mike Bartlett’s fantasia of Prince Charles’s ascension to the throne after the death of his mother. Inspired by Shakespeare — there is even the ghost of Princess Diana floating through the palace rooms — the playwright wrote the drama in blank verse, largely in iambic pentameter. That was no challenge to Pigott-Smith, who also convincingly conveyed the anguish of a man whose first royal acts threaten his family’s power and prestige. For the actor who made his Broadway debut in 1974’s “Sherlock Holmes,” it was elementary.Jeff Daniels’ riveting performance in David Harrower’s “Blackbird” is a reprise of a role he first played off-Broadway in 2007. Now, again under the direction of Joe Mantello, he is finding even more layers to bring to Ray, a 55-year-old man besieged by his past when he is tracked down and suddenly confronted by a woman whom he sexually abused 15 years earlier, when she was twelve. In the off-Broadway production, Una was played by Alison Pill. In this incarnation, Michelle Williams is the young woman who keeps the ground shifting from under her former lover-nemesis, who served time in prison for his sexual offense. Daniels, who made his Broadway debut in 1977 in “Gemini,” has periodically returned to the stage, even after winning fame in such films as “Terms of Endearment” and “Dumb and Dumber.” In 2009, he received his first Tony nomination for “God of Carnage,” in which he gave as good as he got with James Gandolfini. With Daniels at his best in “Blackbird,” Williams, who was also nominated, is a worthy opponent in the corrosive drama.Mark Strong won the 2015 Olivier Award, the English equivalent of the Tony, for his towering performance as Eddie Carbone in “A View from the Bridge.” Whether or not he adds a Tony to his mantle, Strong emerges out of this season serving notice that he is extraordinary on stage. Heretofore, American audiences have known the London-born actor as a villain in such films as “Revolver,” “Tristan & Isolde,” “Sherlock Holmes,” and “Robin Hood,” or co-starring opposite Helen Mirren in “Prime Suspect.” His acclaimed performance as the tormented Eddie evokes the Greek tragedy elements in Ivo Von Hove’s radical production of the Miller classic.At the age of 78, Frank Langella is at the top of his game in Florian Zeller’s “The Father.” The Manhattan Theatre Club production is also up for best new play, which is largely due to the performance of the actor capping a career that began in 1966 with a Broadway debut in “Yerma” in 1966. Since then he has won three Tonys, beginning in 1975 for playing an erudite human-size lizard in Edward Albee’s “Seascape,” in 2002 for “Fortune’s Fool,” and yet again in 2007 as a shape-shifting Richard Nixon in “Frost/Nixon.” (He was also nominated for an Oscar in the film version.) But it was his sly Tony-nominated performance in the title role of “Dracula” in 1977 that brought him into the first ranks of stage actors. Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, Langella has certainly proved to be a scrapper, no more so than when he published his 2012 memoir, “Dropped Names,” a scandalous backward glance that skewered some of his peers (Richard Burton, Anne Bancroft, Laurence Olivier) while praising others (Raul Julia, Jill Clayburgh, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis).According to seven experts at the awards website Gold Derby, the contest is largely Langella’s to lose with Mark Strong as strong second.
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