Daniel Radcliffe Won’t Compete With Jonathan Groff For Tony Award: ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ Co-Stars Eligible In Separate Categories

deadline.com:

Daniel Radcliffe won’t be competing against his Merrily We Roll Along Broadway co-star Jonathan Groff for a Tony Award next June, and the reason has nothing to do with performance quality: The awards administration committee ruled today that Radcliffe will be eligible in the featured performer category, apparently leaving the lead category to Groff.

Lindsay Mendez, who plays Mary Flynn, the musical’s most prominent female character, will, like Radcliffe, who plays Charley Kringas, be eligible in the featured slot (the Tony’s equivalent to Oscar’s “supporting” categories).

While Groff’s character of Franklin Shepard has traditionally been considered the main character of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical, this year’s hit Maria Friedman-directed revival included the three stars’ names above the title, leaving some wiggle room with regard to the category decisions.

Indeed, audience members might be hard-pressed to decide which actor goes where: While Merrily‘s plot more or less revolves around the trajectory of Groff’s Franklin, the trio of characters/performers far more often than not share the stage, and, in this revival anyway, Radcliffe, as the idealistic Charley, delivers one of the night’s biggest showstoppers: The rapid-fire, comically bitter “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” And precedence won’t help: The original 1981 production of Merrily We Roll Along received only one Tony nomination, for Sondheim’s score (he lost to Nine composer Maury Yeston).