It was an emotional moment when Alex Newell of “Shucked” became the first out nonbinary person to win an acting Tony, taking the prize for best featured actor in a musical. He then earned some of the night’s loudest cheers when he triumphantly reclaimed the slur while pointing out that he now had a Tony. He added his own story of how, growing up, he often had been called the “f-word,” referring to a homophobic slur. It is so, so important, or else we are doomed to repeat the horrors of our history.” In his acceptance speech for best director, Michael Arden echoed the play’s somber themes: “We must battle this. “Leopoldstadt” went on to win best play, while best musical revival went to another searing work about antisemitism: “Parade,” starring Ben Platt as Leo Frank, a Jewish man lynched in 1915 in Georgia. Uranowitz, who won for featured actor in a play, also joked that the thing he wanted most in life was to repay his parents for the sacrifices they made - only he couldn’t, because he works in the theater. Brandon Uranowitz of “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s sweeping play about a Jewish family in Vienna, thanked the celebrated playwright “for writing a play about Jewish identity and antisemitism and the false promise of assimilation,” and noted his ancestors, “many of whom did not make it out of Poland, also thank you.” Afterward, DeBose warned anyone who may have thought last year was “unhinged”: “Buckle up!”ĭeBose, who performed in the original cast of “Hamilton” and won an Oscar for “West Side Story,” also passionately explained why the Tonys are so crucial to the economic survival of Broadway, and to touring productions around the country.Ī TIMELY REMINDER OF ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE …Īn early award brought a sobering reminder of the horrors of antisemitism. Instead of words, DeBose and others spoke with their dance moves, doing a brassy number in the theater’s grand lobby, staircases and aisles, complete with gravity-defying leaps. Speaking to the audience before the pre-show telecast began, she explained nothing would be scripted and told winners the only words they’d see on teleprompters would be “wrap up please.” When the main telecast began, she appeared on camera reading a Tony script, but the pages were blank. Oscar winner and Broadway luminary Ariana DeBose, hosting for the second year running, immediately addressed the elephant in the room.
“Thank you for coming uptown - never in my wildest dreams,” quipped Lin-Manuel Miranda, who has helped bring events to the venue in the neighborhood where he set his “In the Heights.” The afterparty was held in tents outside the building instead of the usual festivities in the fancy food halls of the Plaza Hotel near Central Park.
High spirits cast movie#
The ceremony took place uptown in Washington Heights, in the ornate, gilded United Palace, a former movie theater filled with chandeliers and carpets and majestic columns. It was on Broadway, yes, but miles from the theater district. It wasn’t just the writers strike that made for a different evening. And of course there was more room for singing and dancing - including from current shows not in competition - and nobody was complaining about that. In the end, the lack of scripted banter didn’t much dampen the proceedings, and little wonder: Broadway folks are trained in improv. The ceremony also touched on the specter of antisemitism in very different places: World War II Europe, with best play winner “Leopoldstadt,” and early 20th-century America, with “Parade,” winner for best musical revival. Harrison Ghee, made history by winning their respective acting categories.
It was a night of triumph for the small-scale but huge-hearted musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” about a teenager with a rare aging disease, but also a night notable for inclusion: Two nonbinary performers, Alex Newell and J. The event was scriptless, to honor a compromise with striking writers, but chock-full of high-spirited Broadway performances drawing raucous cheers from an audience clearly thrilled just to be there at all. There was plenty of uncertainty in the run-up to this year’s Tony Awards, which at one point seemed unlikely to happen at all because of the ongoing Hollywood writer’s strike.īut the ceremony went off without a hitch on Sunday night.
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