Tony voters like to make history. They did so in 2001 when they garlanded “The Producers” with a record-breaking twelve awards. They did so again in 2014 when they gave a sixth Tony Award to Audra McDonald, making her the most lauded performer in the show’s history. “Hamilton” has the potential to make history by winning thirteen of its record-breaking sixteen nominations at the 70th Annual Tony Awards on June 12 — even more in the unlikely event that there’s a tie in two of the acting categories that feature multiple performers from the mega-hit. But the expected wave may strike a breaker in two or three categories, namely best actress in a musical.The nominees in that highly competitive race are Philippa Soo (“Hamilton”), Cynthia Erivo (“The Color Purple”), Jessie Mueller (“Waitress”), Carmen Cusack (“Bright Star”), and Laura Benanti (“She Loves Me”).The buzz is that the actor taking home the prize will be Erivo, who makes a stunning Broadway debut as the much-abused Celie in the revival of the musical based on Alice Walker’s epistolary novel. Indeed, LaChanze won the Tony Award in the same role when the musical was first produced on Broadway in 2006 — the only trophy it garnered out of its eleven nominations. This time around John Doyle’s revival has been nominated for four Tonys. Along with Erivo, the acclaimed show is also expected to win best revival of a musical. That means audiences are likely to see Oprah Winfrey, along with her lead co-producers Scott Sanders and Roy Furman, in the winners’ circle on Sunday night.Like Sophie Okonedo, who is nominated as best actress in a drama for “The Crucible,” Erivo is a British-born actress of Nigerian parentage. Having starred as Deloris Van Cartier in the touring version of “Sister Act” in the UK, the actor’s star began to rise when her Celie was first greeted with rave reviews in the Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of “The Color Purple” in London. Winfrey and Sanders quickly decided to transfer the significantly slimmed-down version to Broadway, where it again received across-the-board approbation.Jesse Green, the critic for New York Magazine, asked, “How can deprivation become joy? That’s not only the animating question of “The Color Purple,” the 1982 Alice Walker novel made into a musical in 2005, but also the operating principle behind John Doyle’s triumphant revival of that musical, starring the stupendous Cynthia Erivo in her Broadway debut.” An Erivo win would take nothing away from her fellow nominees. Philippa Soo, as Eliza Schuyler, the long-suffering wife of Alexander Hamilton, gives a tender performance that in any other season would almost guarantee a Tony win. And she may yet win if a “Hamilton” tsunami sweeps everything in its path. (Renee Elise Goldsberry, as Eliza’s sister Angelica Schuyler, is the odds-on favorite to win in the supporting category.) At only 26, the actor of Asian-American heritage born in a suburb of Chicago, has had a meteoric rise. Almost immediately upon graduating from Juilliard, she won plaudits for her love-struck role in the musical, “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812,” based on an excerpt of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.”Like Ervo, Jessie Mueller — last year’s Tony winner as Carole King in “Beautiful” — also plays an abused spouse, in this case in “Waitress,” the hit musical based on Adrienne Shelly’s 2007 indie film. Born in Evanston, Illinois, Mueller blazed onto Broadway out of Chicago in 2014 when she earned a Tony nomination for her debut in “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever,” and quickly followed up with “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and “Nice Work If You Can Get It.” One of four siblings who are all actors, Mueller has a nickname pegged to her versatility: “the Unicorn.”Laura Benanti’s bell-like soprano and comic chops are put to superb use as Amalia in “She Loves Me.” She infuses an exuberant and charming energy into Scott Ellis’s hit revival of the 1963 musical based on the Hungarian play about squabbling co-workers in a parfumerie. That source material also inspired three film incarnations: “The Shop Around the Corner,” “In the Good Old Summertime,” and “You’ve Got Mail.” A Tony winner in the title role in the 2008 revival of the classic “Gypsy,” Benanti is at the top of her game — and one of Broadway’s sexiest actors too boot.In a reverse career trajectory from Erivo, Carmen Cusack, born in Denver, Colorado, first made her mark in London’s West End in a stirring debut as Fantine in “Les Miserables,” this after she’d starred in a Manchester, England production of “Phantom of the Opera.” She also appeared in a West End production of “The Secret Garden,” before she made her way back stateside to tour as Elphaba in “Wicked,” a role that she also played in Australia. She finally got a chance to make her Broadway debut in “Bright Star,” the Steve Martin-Edie Brickell bluegrass musical about a star-crossed romance that spans decades. As Alice Murphy, a no-nonsense editor of a literary magazine with a troubled past, Cusack delivers a knockout performance which, as with all her fellow nominees, makes the vote on this particular category all that much more difficult.
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