Sara Chase (CFA’05) (center in pink shirt) as Melissa Gimble in a scene from Schmigadoon! Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Arts & Culture

BU Alums in the Running for Tony Awards

Five nominated for Broadway’s highest honor in acting, sound design, costume design, and producing

Sara Chase grew up listening to recordings of musicals written during Broadway’s heyday—shows like Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun and the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon.  

“I was obsessed with The Sound of Music,” says Chase (CFA’05). “I still believe the most beautiful melodies and lyrics come from this era, and that is why they endure. They are timeless and poetic.”

So it seems fitting that Chase is starring in this year’s Broadway hit musical Schmigadoon!, a send-up of those very musicals she loved as a child. The show is based on the popular Apple TV+ series of the same name that ran from 2021 to 2023. 

Chase plays Melissa Gimble, one of a pair of doctors whose romantic relationship has hit a rough patch, when they are suddenly transported to Schmigadoon, a mysterious, magical hamlet that makes itself visible to the larger world only once every 100 years. They become trapped in a musical, where the townspeople routinely break into song and dance. Alex Brightman (Beetlejuice, School of Rock—The Musical) plays Chase’s romantic partner, Josh Skinner. 

For her performance, Chase has been nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical. The Tonys—the American theater’s highest honor—will be handed out Sunday night in a televised ceremony airing live on CBS.

Watch a trailer for Schmigadoon! here.

“What attracted me to this show is that I not only genuinely love golden age musicals, but I also love comedy,” Chase says. “I have never been cast in a classic musical. However, in Schmigadoon! I get to insert myself into these classic shows and even dance—something no one would ever ask me to do otherwise!” 

Reviewing the production for the New York Times, Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote, “Chase is hilarious in the role, finding myriad shades in the most innocuous-sounding lines.” In “Baby Talk,” a number that has audiences laughing night after night, Chase must explain the mechanics of human reproduction to an ignorant resident about to give birth—set to the tune of “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound of Music.

Best known for her role as Cyndee Pokorny in Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Chase says the Tony nomination feels “surreal” (hers is one of a dozen nominations the show netted): “It’s such a pinch-me moment. Growing up I would tape the Tonys on VHS every year and rewatch them over and over again. I can’t believe I get to be part of them now.”

Her Schmigadoon! character is a marked departure from Chase’s last role on Broadway, as Myrtle Wilson in the 2024 musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Wilson, desperate to escape poverty, becomes the mistress of Tom Buchanan. While preparing for the Broadway opening of the show, Chase was diagnosed with cancer, requiring major surgery just 10 days before rehearsals started. She went public with her story shortly after the show opened. 

“Going through cancer therapy while also doing The Great Gatsby was, in many ways, hard, but ultimately I am so grateful,” Chase says. “I met people who were an incredible support system and the show gave me something to look forward to. I’m tremendously proud of what we all created. I’m also glad if I was able to help anybody by coming out with my story.”

The Sound Designer

Walter Trarbach (CFA’02) has also earned a Tony nomination for his work on Schmigadoon!, in the category of Best Sound Design of a Musical. (Trarbach was nominated for SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical in 2018).

He says that from the moment he became involved in a workshop production of Schmigadoon!, he knew the show was going to be a hit with audiences.

“It has a ton of heart, incredible humor, and great songs and dances,” he says. “I knew from the jump, I was lucky to be involved in the project.”

A veteran sound designer on Broadway, Trarbach says that the biggest challenge was ensuring that all of the dialogue could be heard. “The show is brilliantly written, and the actors are all complete professionals,” he says. “But the structure of the show makes it a little difficult. There are huge musical numbers and while they are happening, the show’s two lead performers are trying to have private conversations with each other. So it took some effort to make sure all of the relative volumes were calibrated in a way that would allow the entire story to be told.” 

Then, he says, “we have to consider that each musician is a character too, and try to get the entirety of the orchestra heard without sacrificing the vocals. It’s a balancing act for sure.”

Trarbach says he is “surprised and delighted” by his Tony nomination. He got the news while he was working on a TV industry event. “Word started to ripple through the stagehands that I had been nominated and they all congratulated me. It was very fun.”  

The Costume Designer 

This year is also the second nomination for David Reynoso (CFA’03). He was previously nominated for Best Costume Design of a Musical for his first Broadway show, Water for Elephants, in 2024. This year, he is nominated in the same category for his second Broadway outing, Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, based on the 1975 cult film. 

Originally from Mexico, Reynoso and his family moved to Texas when he was 12. He recalls passing a local seedy movie theater each day on his way to middle and high school and seeing ads for midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Friends told him he should see it, but it wasn’t until college that he finally attended a screening. “I thought, ‘This is the most bizarre and joyous and wonderful and strange thing I’ve ever seen,’” he says. 

Reynoso had designed the costumes and sets for an earlier production of the musical that was to be staged by American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco in 2020. That show, like the current Broadway production, was directed by Sam Pinkleton. But the musical never opened. The first day of rehearsal, COVID shut the show down. The two subsequently worked together on another show and, when a decision was made to mount a version of Rocky Horror on Broadway, Pinkleton called Reynoso and asked him to design the costumes for the new production. 

What Reynoso came up with was completely different from his designs for the ACT production. 

“The thing that really felt like a North Star for this production on Broadway was that we wanted to ensure that it fully honored the original film and its fans,” he says. “We wanted to find that balance between honoring the legacy of the film and finding our own voice.”

He praises Tony nominee Luke Evans (Frank-N-Furter) for being “incredibly courageous. We had months of text exchanges about what fishnet stockings and what shoes he’d wear and whether he’d wear something as revealing as he did. And he just went for it…. I wanted to ensure that the cast felt strong and unencumbered in their performances, and I feel like we had a lot of success with that.”

Reynoso says he’s been thrilled to see fans of the Broadway show coming back a second and third time dressed in outfits inspired by his costumes. “When the fans are starting to make their own versions of the costumes that you’ve designed, it’s so cool,” he says. 

The design team studied B movies, sci-fi films, posters, and pulp stills for inspiration. “The show needed to have a sense of the kind of grit and trashiness that you love about Rocky Horror,” Reynoso says. “We have references to the film in the show, but we kept saying throughout the design process, let’s take things from the film and other productions of Rocky Horror, and sort of throw them all in a blender and then have them kind of escape and pour out in different and unexpected ways.” 

Reynoso was at home in San Diego getting his 12-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son off to school the morning the Tony nominations were announced. They watched together in front of the TV. “Never, in my wildest dreams as a kid, did I imagine that, first, I would get to design on Broadway, and then get to do it twice, and then be nominated twice for a Tony. I’m so fortunate that I get to live this life.”

Watch a trailer for The Rocky Horror Show here.

In addition to Chase, Trarbach, and Reynoso, producers Stewart Lane (CFA’73) and Jay Marcus (COM’07) have been nominated for a Tony Award for Best Musical for The Lost Boys, an adaptation of the 1987 comedic horror film starring Kiefer Sutherland, Corey Haim, and Jason Patric. This marks Lane’s 17th Tony nomination (he’s the recipient of six Tonys to date) and the fourth for Marcus, who is also nominated this year as a producer in the Best Revival of a Musical category for Cats: The Jellicle Ball (his production of Sunset Boulevard won that award in 2025). Producer Sue Wagner (CFA’97) is nominated for Best Revival of a play for Oedipus and producer James L. Nederlander (CGS’80) is nominated for five Tony Awards this season: Best Musical for Lost Boys, Schmigadoon!, Titanique, and Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York); and for Best Play for Giant.

The 79th Tony Awards will be broadcast live on CBS and Paramount+ from Radio City Music Hall Sunday, June 7, at 8 pm ET, with a special Act One live preshow at 6:40 pm ET on PlutoTV.