arts & life

Tony Time

PHOTO BY JOAN MARCUS

theate r

Fiddler on the Roof’s choreographer is nominated for a Tony.

PHOTO BY MATTHEW MURPHY

Follow your favorite
members of the tribe
nominated for Broadway’s
biggest award.

Alex Brightman in School of Rock

Sophie Okonedo stars in
The Crucible

54 June 9 • 2016

Nate Bloom | Special to the Jewish News

T

he Tony Awards,
given for excellence
in the Broadway the-
ater, are being broadcast on
CBS on Sunday, June 12 at 8
p.m. James Corden hosts and
the announced celeb present-
ers include Carole King and
Barbra Streisand, both 74. Here
are the Jewish nominees in all
but the technical categories.
Daveed Diggs, 34 (see
“Digg It” on page 51), is nomi-
nated for Best Featured Actor
in a Musical (Hamilton).
Alex Brightman, 29, is
nominated for Best Lead Actor
in a Musical (School of Rock).
This stage show is based on
the 2003 comedy film of the
same name which starred Jack
Black as a substitute teacher
who molds his students into a
great rock ensemble.
Brightman grew up in
Saratoga, Calif., a wealthy
suburb near San Jose. His
father, Alan, 69, worked for
Apple and then for Yahoo,
heading up company units
that make computing easier
for the disabled. In 2007, Alex
began a full-time music career.
His stage skills were honed as
he performed for two years
(2013-14) in Stars of David, a

musical show based on a book
of interviews in which Jewish
celebrities talked about being
Jewish.
Brightman first auditioned
for smaller roles in the musi-
cal, but the School produc-
ers quickly noticed that he,
like Jack Black, has a strong
rock music background,
including playing guitar
quite well. Another plus: He
looks a lot like Black. Much
to his surprise, he was ulti-
mately offered the lead role.
Brightman told Playbill that
his parents had tears in their
eyes when he told them he got
the lead role and his girlfriend,
he added, almost fainted.
The other Jewish acting
nominee is Sophie Okonedo,
47, for Best Lead Actress in
a Play. She plays Elizabeth
Proctor, the wife of a man
falsely accused of witchcraft
in the current hit revival
of The Crucible, by the late
Arthur Miller. Okonedo is the
daughter of an English Jewish
mother and a Nigerian father.
She was raised Jewish and
recently told a UK TV show:
“I feel as proud to be Jewish
as I am to be black.” Among
other honors, Okonedo got a

Best Supporting Actress Oscar
nomination for The Hotel
Rwanda (2004) and a Tony
Award (Best Featured Actress
in a Play) for A Raisin in the
Sun (2014). The Crucible is
nominated for Best Drama
(revival), as is A View from the
Bridge, also by Miller.
Other individual nominees:
lyricist Glenn Slater, 48, is
co-nominated with composer
Andrew Lloyd Webber for
Best Original Musical Score
(School of Rock); and Hofesh
Shechter, 36, an Israeli dancer
and choreographer, is nomi-
nated for his choreography for
the current Fiddler on the Roof
revival. He began as a dancer
with the famous (Israeli)
Batsheva Dance Company.
Two currently running
hits, Fiddler and She Loves
Me, are up for Best Musical
Revival honors. Both shows
won the Best Musical Tony
when first produced (1964
and 1965, respectively). Both
also were written by lyricist
Sheldon Harnick, now 93,
and the late music composer
Jerry Bock. The duo’s first
big hit was Fiorello (1959),
starring the late Tom Bosley.
It won the Pulitzer Prize and

Best Musical Tony. Another
Jewish-themed show the pair
wrote, The Rothschilds (1970),
starring Hal Linden, now 85,
won best original score. Given
this track record, it’s a surprise
that Harnick wasn’t given a
Lifetime Achievement Award
before 2016 — he’ll receive
this award at the televised
Tony ceremony.
In 2014, Harnick recalled
that it was the Detroit audi-
ence that alerted him that
Fiddler was going to be a mon-
ster hit.
He told the Conn. Jewish
Ledger: “When [scriptwriter]
Joe Stein, Jerry Bock and I
set out to do a show based on
Sholem Aleichem’s story, we
said, ‘If we do our job right
and communicate this beauti-
ful story, maybe we’ll run a
year or two.’ The first time we
realized that the show must be
special was when we did a pre-
Broadway show in Detroit and
there was a newspaper strike
so there were no reviews.
Next, we went to Washington,
D.C., and there were long lines
at the box office for tickets,
and we thought that the peo-
ple in Detroit must have called
their friends and relatives.”

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