Ready, Set, Tony! Get to Know the Fab Five Up for Leading Actor in a Musical Tony Award

When the Tony Awards telecast begins on Sunday, June 9, 40 nervous and excited actors will take their seats at Radio City Music Hall, hoping to win Broadway’s biggest prize. Throughout the season, Broadway.com has photographed and chatted with the stars at press events, opening nights and visits to our studio. In advance of the 73rd annual Tonys, we’re looking back at all of the season’s nominees. Let's take a look at the race for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical.

BROOKS ASHMANSKAS | THE PROM
In a career spanning two decades, Brooks Ashmanskas established himself as Broadway’s go-to comedian, both in musicals (Little Me, The Producers, Something Rotten!) and plays (The Ritz, Present Laughter). Only an actor of his versatility could dream of getting a Tony nomination for playing “Comedy All Star” (i.e. backup performer) in the 2006 sketch show Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me. At long last, however, Ashmanskas is soaring in a Tony-nominated starring role that takes full advantage of his skills: actor Barry Glickman, a lovable narcissist whose generosity is awakened on a sojourn to Edgewater, Indiana, in The Prom. His show-stopping number “Barry Is Going to Prom” elicits laughter and tears for its portrayal of a gay man excited to attend his first high school dance. "I’m pleased that people sometimes find me funny," Ashmanskas said with typical modesty on Show People. "But in a really wacky, crazy, wild character, if you can find one moment of humanity, it makes all the funny stuff even funnier and also deeper on the other end. This part offers quite a few opportunities for that."
 

DERRICK BASKIN | AIN'T TOO PROUD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TEMPTATIONS
The best stage actors can take a small role and make it seem a lot bigger, as Derrick Baskin did in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (as “comfort counselor” Mitch Mahoney), The Little Mermaid (as evil eel Jetsam) and Memphis (as silent sidekick Gator). But after landing a part in Hulu’s Difficult People, Baskin felt it might be time to step away from musicals—until his agents presented an opportunity too juicy not to pursue: the leading role of Temptations founder Otis Williams in Ain’t Too Proud. It’s a mammoth challenge, involving not only performing more than two dozen hits but also narrating the action and serving as the Temptations’ peacemaker. “The reason why I can carry this show is because Otis Williams carries his group,” Baskin said on Show People, adding that Ain’t Too Proud "has brought joy for doing musical theater back into my life.: After receiving his first Tony nomination, he dropped by #LiveAtFive to celebrate. "I’ve never had to do this amount of work to make a role successful,” he said. “It just feels really good."
 

ALEX BRIGHTMAN | BEETLEJUICE
Alex Brightman credits his background in improv comedy for his success at handling the pressure of headlining two big Broadway musicals, Beetlejuice and 2015’s School of Rock, and the Best Actor Tony nominations that followed. "I’m very good at being present," he said on #LiveAtFive just before opening as the mischief-making title ghost in Beetlejuice. "It’s a testament to all the improv teachers I had, just to stay in the moment rather than think about what’s next." A friendly, low-key guy in real life, Brightman turns gleefully raunchy on stage, explaining, "It’s the id, the ego, the thing you want to say to people on the street who make you upset, so you channel that into a character. It’s bliss; it’s like an exorcism." Away from Broadway, Brightman is developing several musicals, including It’s Kind of a Funny Story, and was featured in John Mulaney’s IFC Documentary Now! sendup of Company. "None of this gets old," he said in a Broadway.com Spring Preview video, "because it is everything that, as a theater nerd and dork, I want to do."
 

DAMON DAUNNO | OKLAHOMA!
"Goodness gracious! I feel a thousand feet tall,"” first-time Tony nominee Damon Daunno said on opening night of Oklahoma!, an understandable reaction to the enthusiasm of audiences and critics for his performance as Curly McLain. This is definitely not your grandma’s Oklahoma!, starting with Daunno’s quietly sexy—and ultimately dangerous—portrayal of the cowboy who woos farm girl Laurey at the box social. "Strutting around with a guitar, singing these tunes, really feels amazing," he said in a Fresh Face profile, adding, "Particularly with theater, there are more projects now that celebrate folks that are musicians." In a weird twist, another show Daunno helped develop, Hadestown, also made it to Broadway this season, but he has no regrets about sticking with the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. "The material is so timeless and so rich, and it speaks to where our country is right now as potently as it did 75 years ago," he observed. Personally speaking, everything’s going Daunno’s way: "I’m extraordinarily grateful and overwhelmed with joy."
 

SANTINO FONTANA | TOOTSIE
It’s not easy being a woman, especially if you’re a man toggling between the sexes at a moment’s notice on a Broadway stage. For Santino Fontana, the Tony-nominated star of Tootsie, "The transformation from Michael Dorsey to Dorothy [Michaels] involves a lot of tape, a lot of tricks, a lot of straps and elastic and a bra," he explained in a Spring Preview feature. "I still don’t understand the bra." Of course, costuming is only part of the challenge for Fontana, a previous Tony nominee for playing the Prince in Cinderella. He mastered the art of singing in a much higher register than his natural baritone; he’s on stage throughout the show trading quips with Tony-nominated castmates Lilli Cooper, Sarah Stiles and Andy Grotelueschen; he has to make the audience care about Michael’s fate. So, was Fontana stressed out by taking on such a complicated dual role, created on screen by Dustin Hoffman? "No," he said on Show People. "It’s exciting. Anytime I have an opportunity to tell a story about somebody learning to empathize and become a better person in the process, that’s a story I will always want to tell."
 

Photos: Brooks Ashmanskas and Derrick Baskin photos by Caitlin McNaney for Broadway.com; Alex Brightman, Damon Daunno and Santino Fontana photos by Emilio Madrid-Kuser for Broadway.com | Design: Ryan Casey for Broadway.com