Bumping for 2015 TONYS

^I had the same experience. I was utterly mesmerized by O'Hare and had that rare "a star is born!" thrill discovering her performance. Then Worsham got the nominations and accolades. (Worse still, O'Hare was the only one of the show's 4 stars not to be Tony nominated. Ouch.) But that's just one of many "Huh?" Tony moments for me.

Another vote for Lisa O'Hare. Nothing against Lauren Worsham, but O'Hare was by far the standout. Why couldn't they nominate them both?

Along with the EVITA mention, I must bring up the Best Book nomination that was given to "A Grand Night for Singing".

Basically, the show was probably 99% sung and maybe 1% dialogue....no monologues or anything earth-shattering. It is a lovely show, but there isn't really a BOOK to it.

The libretto, or book, of a show is not just the spoken dialogue. It is the entire structure of the show; how it is pieced together. Hence all operas having a credited librettist even though they are mostly through-sung.

Yeah last year's lack of Steven Pasquale and Lisa O'Hare were the worst! I remember one of the NYT critics said O'Hare was giving the best musical comedy performance all season (or longer) and thought she should win, and then she wasn't nominated, like wtf.

I hate to differ but Contact was not a musical. If I remember correctly no one sang. Is that correct? That should not have even qualified it in the category. It should never have won for Best Musical. I found it really boring. It would never be done today even if the rights were available.

I just saw Kinky Boots, and although I haven't seen Matilda, I can't though Kinky Boots was unworthy of Best Musical and Best Score. The last ten minutes were fun but all in all not a great night of theatre. I thought the book was the best part about it, and that was the Tony it lost.

OK, so here is my question about the whole Elizabeth A Davis thing and the nomination process:

Because ya, that of all of the recent nominations stands out as the absolute strangest for me.

The only explanation I've heard is that maybe they were thinking that it was the nomination committee's way of honoring the ensemble cast of "Once." OK cool.

But, if all of the nomination committee submits their ballots individually, and they just tally up the top 5 vote getters, how did so many of them land on Davis as their choice to honor Once? Like I can see if someone thought 'hmm I'd like to nominate someone from Once' but it doesn't seem likely at all that so many would choose Davis...

Did they have some sort of discussion beforehand where someone suggested 'hey, if you'd like to maybe honor the ensemble cast of Once, let me just throw out here the idea of Elizabeth A Davis' You know? Otherwise, I don't understand how this happened, because it doesn't seem likely that someone without suggestion would have singled out that particular performance I don't think...

Does anyone have any insight on this process?

For whatever it's worth, I took my mother to Once shortly after it opened and at intermission the first thing she said was "Who is that girl on the violin? She's great!" So Elizabeth A. Davis certainly made an impression on at least some people besides the voters before the nominations came out.