According to the pundits, the Tony Award for best actor in a musical will go to “Hamilton” when Broadway’s highest honors are announced on June 12. Indeed, most of the special, hosted by James Corden, will be devoted to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s mega-smash musical about American’s Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. But the question is who from “Hamilton” will take home the trophy: Miranda, who plays the title role, or Leslie Odom, Jr., who plays Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s nemesis who killed him in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey on July 11, 1804.With Miranda a sure bet to take home two other Tony Awards — for best book and best original score — one can assume that the creative force behind Broadway’s biggest hit in years would want Burr to vanquish Hamilton once more. Miranda already has a bower of awards on his shelf, beginning in 2008 with the Tony Award for best score for “In the Heights,” for which he was also nominated as best actor. That musical, about romance and aspiration in the working-class neighborhood of Washington Heights in Manhattan, was also short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize — an honor that came to Miranda this year for “Hamilton.” He also collected the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best musical when the show played in early 2015 at the Public Theatre.While Miranda has concentrated his firepower on the theater, Odom had heretofore been known largely for his television appearances in “Smash,” “Person of Interest,” and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” He made his Broadway debut, at 17, as a replacement in the long-running “Rent,” and had a featured role in “Leap of Faith,” the short-lived Broadway musical based on the Steve Martin movie. Indeed, in 2013, just before he was angling to be cast in “Hamilton,” he was so discouraged with how his career was going that he was looking for a menial job to support himself.While Miranda gives a marathon performance in “Hamilton,” appearing in practically every scene in the show, what may well tip the Tony Award to Odom is his show-stopping performance on one of the most popular songs from the Grammy-winning score: “The Room Where It Happens.”As occurs with every award competition, the race between the favorites obscures exceptional performances among the other nominees. Danny Burstein has earned his sixth Tony nomination, effusing new energy and emotional nuance into the classic role of Tevye in the revival of “Fiddler on the Roof” at the Broadway Theatre. In fact, if the stars of “Hamilton” should split the vote, the popular actor could emerge as the dark horse winner. Zachary Levi, best known for playing the title role in the TV series “Chuck,” is making a worthy Broadway debut as a starry-eyed romantic in Scott Ellis’s vibrant revival of “She Loves Me.” And 29-year-old Alex Brightman, after featured roles in two ill-fated Broadway shows, “Glory Days” and “Big Fish,” plays Dewey Finn, a struggling rock star who becomes a pied piper to a fourth-grade class.The musical, based on the 2003 Jack Black movie, is sweet vindication for its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is the first hit for the legendary music man since “Phantom of the Opera” in 1988. Lloyd Webber is also nominated this year for his “School of Rock” score. But he will happily take a back seat to Miranda, whose talent he has effusively praised since the phenomenon of “Hamilton” began. Yet with nearly three decades between commercial hits, Lloyd Webber is a cautionary tale about the vagaries of Broadway.
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