Stars nominated for 2010 Tony Awards

NEW YORK (AP):

Star wattage will burn bright at the 2010 Tony Awards with Denzel Washington, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Kelsey Grammer among those receiving nominations yesterday.

Washington and Law were each cited for best actor performances in Fences and Hamlet, respectively. Zeta-Jones was nominated for best performance by a leading actress in a musical, A Little Night Music, and Grammer was nominated for lead actor in a musical, La Cage aux Folles.

Coming home

Washington said that being on Broadway again - he last appeared in 2005 in Julius Caesar - was "like coming home again for me, and sharing a Tony nomination for Fences, with so many wonderfully talented people associated with this play, makes it seem like one big family reunion."

Fela! - nominated for best musical - and La Cage aux Folles - nominated for the best musical revival - each received 11 nominations, followed by Fences with 10 nods.

Nominated for best play were In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) by Sarah Ruhl; Next Fall, by Geoffrey Nauffts; Red, by John Logan; and Time Stands Still, by Donald Margulies.

Best musical nominations went to Green Day's American Idiot; Memphis; Million Dollar Quartet; and Fela!

Winners will be announced June 13 during a ceremony at Radio City Music Hall.

"I am very proud and humbled by this extraordinary recognition of our work today," said Michael Grandage, artistic director of Britain's Donmar Warehouse, who was nominated for directing Red. John Logan's engrossing, often enthralling new play about art, an artist and the act of creation, received seven Tony nominations.

Besides Washington and Law, the actor-play nominees include Alfred Molina, Red; Liev Schreiber, A View From the Bridge; and Christopher Walken, A Behanding in Spokane.

In the actress-play category, the nominees were Viola Davis, Fences; Valerie Harper, Looped; Linda Lavin, Collected Stories; Laura Linney, Time Stands Still; and Jan Maxwell, The Royal Family.

Harper, whose play has closed, said the nomination was "bittersweet". "That was sad and disappointing, but boy does this sweeten the pot," she said. "And we have a 10-week commitment in Toronto. So there is an afterlife for the play, and that's exciting."

Competitors for actress-musical prize

The performers competing with Zeta-Jones for the actress-musical prize were Kate Baldwin, Finian's Rainbow; Montego Glover, Memphis; Sherie Rene Scott, Everyday Rapture; and Christiane Noll, Ragtime.

Scott, also nominated with Dick Scanlan for best book of a musical for Everyday Rapture, got the news yesterday from her husband and she said they had a "celebratory vegetable juice" and soy muffin. What do the nominations mean to her?

"That I have to be forced to wear dresses, that's what this means," said Scott. "I'm really happy for this one, actually, because we created it from nothing."

Besides Grammer, the actor-musical nominees were Sean Hayes, Promises, Promises; Douglas Hodge, La Cage aux Folles; Chad Kimball, Memphis; and Sahr Ngujah, Fela!