MJ, STRANGE LOOP LEAD TONY NOMS

Broadway shows featuring the songs of Michael Jackson and Bob Dylan have received Tony Award nominations for Best Musical, vying for the top prize with Mr. Saturday Night, Paradise Square, Six: The Musical and A Strange Loop.

MJ, the Jackson jukebox musical, earned 10 nods, while A Strange Loop, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for its Off-Broadway run, tops the nominations list with 11. The Lehman Trilogy received eight noms, the most for any play.

Among the MJ nominees are its star, Myles Frost, who is up for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical, Derek McLane and Peter Nigrini for Scenic Design, Paul Tazewell for Costume Design and Christopher Wheeldon for Choreography.

Creatives from the Dylan musical Girl From the North Country, which received seven noms, and MJ are up against each other in multiple categories: MJ’s Lynn Nottage and Girl From the North Country’s Conor McPherson are competing for Best Book of a Musical; McPherson and MJ’s Wheeldon are among the Director nominees; Simon Hale (Girl From the North Country) and Jason Michael Webb & David Holcenberg (MJ) will contend for the Best Orchestrations Tony; and Sound Design pits North Country’s Simon Baker against MJ’s Gareth Owen.

Producers of MJ include Lia Vollack, John Branca, John McClain, Sony Music, Martin Bandier and Doug Morris; Girl From the North Country producers include Sony Music and Sony Music Publishing, Len Blavatnik and Tommy Mottola.

For a full list of nominees, go here.