'Spamalot' snaps up 14 Tony nominations

NEW YORK — "Monty Python's Spamalot," an offbeat musical spoof inspired by those quirky British cutups and their film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," grabbed 14 Tony Award nominations Tuesday, including a nod for best musical.

Close behind — with 11 nominations each — were two other, very different musicals: "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," about a couple of scam artists working the French Riviera, and "The Light in The Piazza," a complex, lushly romantic tale of love at first sight.

All three will compete for the musical prize, along with "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," a small, sweet show about youngsters learning how to win — and lose.

"Doubt," Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, and the revival of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" each scored something of an acting coup. The entire, four-person casts of both plays received nominations.

"Quartet would be a good word for us," Bill Irwin, nominated for his portrayal of the embittered, henpecked husband in "Virginia Woolf," told The Associated Press Tuesday. "I think we are as much an ensemble as we are a traditional hierarchal cast."

Also picking up nominations for "Woolf" were Kathleen Turner, as Irwin's boozy wife, and David Harbour and Mireille Enos, the young couple who stumble into an evening of boisterous, revelatory drinking. Albee will receive a special lifetime achievement prize.

"Doubt," John Patrick Shanley's parable about the innocence — or guilt — of a likable parish priest, gathered nominations for Cherry Jones as a dour, suspicious nun, Brian F. O'Byrne as the accused priest and Heather Goldenhersh and Adriane Lenox, the production's two supporting players.

"It just feels like we have done it all our lives," a jubilant Jones said of her cast mates. "This is my first experience with a new play that's taken off like this. I've worked on a lot of new plays, but I've never worked on one that immediately became a juggernaut."

Competing against "Doubt" in the best-play category are "Democracy," Michael Frayn's spy story set in Germany; August Wilson's mystical "Gem of the Ocean"; and "The Pillowman," Martin McDonagh's tale of murder and mayhem.

Jones and Turner face actresses who appeared in plays that have already closed: Laura Linney, the spurned woman in "Sight Unseen"; Mary-Louise Parker, a distraught housewife in "Reckless"; and Phylicia Rashad, an ancient, iconic figure in "Gem of the Ocean."