Every May Mel Larch brings her listeners a special episode of Curtain Call devoted to the Tony Award Nominees for Best Musical. Since they were just announced a few days ago it’s time for the tradition to continue.

Wednesday afternoon on The AIR, you can hear samples of the nominees for this year’s Tony Award for Best Musical as Broadway is back to be saluted once again by Curtain Call.

You can tune in at the website, or you can just stay on this page, and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player mere inches away from this text.

At 3 PM Mel Larch presents a new hour of great musical theater on Curtain Call. It’s our annual Tony Awards preview, with songs each from the five nominated musicals, but before that, Mel opens with a song from the musical, BOOP!, which was inexplicably snubbed, garnering only three nominations, for Costume Design, Choreography and for its star, Jasmine Amy Rogers as Best Actress in a Musical. Doing her part to right that wrong, Mel opens the show with Tony nominee, Jasmine Amy Rogers, showing why she should win the big award.

The nominees for Best Musical are…

Maybe Happy Ending A South Korean musical with lyrics written by Hue Park, music composed by Will Aronson, and book written by both Park and Aronson. This musical follows two life-like helper-bots, Oliver and Claire, who discover each other in Seoul later in the 21st century and develop a connection that challenges what they believe is possible for themselves, exploring relationships, love and mortality. It’s basically boy robot meets girl robot.

Death Becomes Her features a book by Marco Pennette and music and lyrics by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey. It’s based on the 1992 film of the same name directed and produced by Robert Zemeckis. The show is basically a bitch-fight between two immortal, stuck-up frenemies. As such, it’s a laugh-riot.

Operation Mincemeat is a musical comedy with book, music and lyrics by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts (known as the musical comedy troupe SpitLip) This show is their first full-length production and it’s a doozy.
The plot is based on Operation Mincemeat, a real-life Second World War British deception operation centered around the invasion of Sardinia. This story is told with slapstick hilarity that recalls the work of titans of British comedy like The Goon Show and Monty Python.

Dead Outlaw is a musical with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna and a book by Itamar Moses. It is inspired by the life of Elmer McCurdy, a gunfighter in the 1800s who was shot dead, stuff, and went on to have a successful career in show business.

Buena Vista Social Club is a stage musical, with a book by Marco Ramirez and featuring the music recorded by the ensemble musician group Buena Vista Social Club. It’s based in large part on the aclaimed 1997 documentary of the same name directed by Wm. Wenders, and musically directed by Ry Cooder. The musical is set in Havana, Cuba and spans time from the 1950s to the 1990s, following the lives of four prominent musicians, the effect communism and the rise of Fidel Castro had on musicians at the time, and their eventual collaboration in 1997 on the landmark album Buena Vista Social Club. The original cast album is not due for release until after The Tony Awards, but Mel samples a couple of tunes from the original album that made it into the show.

Following the songs from the nominees for Best Musical, we get a taste of three of the four nominees for Best Revival of a Musical.

Check out the playlist:

Curtain Call 156

“Something To Shout About” from BOOP!
“World Within My Room” and “A Sentimental Person” from Maybe Happy Ending
“‘Til Death,” “That Was Then, This Is Now” and “Don’t Say I Didn’t (Warn You)” from Death Becomes Her
“Born To Lead,” “Bevan’s Update” and “Did We Do It?” from Operation Mincemeat
“Something From Nothing” and “Dead” from Dead Outlaw
“Chan Chan” and “Dos Gardenias” from Buena Vista Social Club
“Together, Wherever We Go” from Gypsy
“Sunset Boulevard” from Sunset Boulevard
“The Carnival” from Floyd Collins

The 2024 Tony Awards will be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Pluto TV and Paramount + on Sunday, June, 8.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evenings starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.