By Robert Simonson
21 May 2010

Remember last week when the Tony Awards withdrew its nomination of Santo Loquasto for his costume design for Ragtime, because he was previously nominated for the same show in the same category in 1998? Well, it's happened again, only this time at the Drama Desk Awards.

The leadership of the Drama Desk has informed its membership that Loquasto's 2010 nomination for the Broadway revival of Ragtime have been withdrawn. They want the public to know that, of course, "The Drama Desk makes its own decisions." But, "when the Tony Awards withdrew its nomination for the Ragtime revival's costumes because they were not sufficiently different from the original production and when the lead producer and nominated costume designer Santo Loquasto did not disagree with the decision, we revisited the issue. The Drama Desk concurs that the excellent costuming was not sufficiently new to make it eligible. Therefore, the nomination will be removed from the ballot in the Outstanding Costume Design category."

The Drama Desk, however, went one better than the Tonys — they crossed out two nominations. The other was was William David Brohn's nod for Outstanding Orchestration for Ragtime, "because the highly regarded orchestration was not different enough from that of the original production to be eligible."

There was no word from Brohn as to whether he was OK with the rescinding of his nomination as Loquasto was.