At a Tony Awards where the host and presenters were totally unscripted but the wins hewed close to projected favorites, the ceremony managed to feel both predictable and refreshingly spontaneous.
Hosted by Ariana DeBose, with a preshow of creative and honorary awards cohosted by Julianne Hough and Skylar Astin, the show pointedly opened on DeBose flipping through a binder of blank white pages titled “Script” backstage at the United Palace theater in Washington Heights. Due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, the Tonys had been in jeopardy of not airing at all, but a compromise was reached last month to allow them to proceed so long as nothing (besides a countdown and the words “Please wrap up”) appeared on the teleprompters.
After a rollicking dance number, DeBose, breathless, attempted to explain the nuances of that agreement to the crowd, which felt like a slightly tedious way to kick off the big show. Yet in the end, there was value in letting a group of people accustomed to improvising onstage have a little freedom. The joy and humor that came along with flubs and wrong turns, and watching the pros make things up on the fly, was unexpectedly energizing under the circumstances.
The heavily favored new musicals this season were the offbeat but heartfelt Kimberly Akimbo, about a high school girl aging prematurely, and Some Like It Hot, the big-budget stage adaptation of Billy Wilder’s 1959 film. These came away with four trophies each, the former snagging the highly coveted best-new-musical trophy as well as best lead actress in a musical (for Victoria Clark), featured actress (for Bonnie Milligan), and score. Some Like It Hot won best costume, orchestrations, choreography, and best lead actor for J. Harrison Ghee, one of two nonbinary actors to win awards yesterday evening—a first in Tony history.
For musical revival, the top award went to the critical favorite, Parade, starring Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond, about the trial and murder of Leo Frank in Georgia. (The show’s director, Michael Arden, who won for direction of a musical, gave a speech recounting the homophobic bullying he endured growing up that had to be bleeped, prompting much discussion on Twitter.) The two Sondheim revivals, Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods, were both blanked in the acting categories, with Sweeney’s wins coming earlier in the night for lighting design and sound design. This was less a sign of the two shows’ success, however, than of an exceptionally crowded field.
Of the plays, the predicted winners were Tom Stoppard’s Jewish epic Leopoldstadt (which won best play, direction, and featured actor for Brandon Uranowitz) along with Life of Pi, based on the bestselling book, which won for scenic design, sound, and lighting. One surprise in the acting categories was Sean Hayes’s lead-actor win for Good Night, Oscar. Though certainly a contender with glowing reviews, the odds were for Stephen McKinley Henderson in Between Riverside and Crazy, with genuine surprise registering on the faces of the other nominees when Hayes’s name was announced.
Best revival was Topdog/Underdog, by Suzan-Lori Parks, which won the Pulitzer for drama in 2001. As a lead producer of the recent production, Parks accepted the play’s award herself in one of the evening’s more satisfyingly full-circle moments.
With their wins for best featured actor in a musical and best lead actor in a musical, respectively, Shucked’s Alex Newell and Some Like It Hot’s J. Harrison Ghee became the first openly nonbinary actors to win Tonys. (Newell’s award came earlier in the program, so they were technically the first.)
Another remarkable first was English actor Jodie Comer’s win for her one-woman tour de force, Prima Facie. Her role as a barrister who defends men accused of sexual assault was her first on Broadway and in the West End before it.
This year’s Lifetime Achievement Tonys went to the eminently deserving and appropriately paired duo of John Kander and Joel Grey. Along with Fred Ebb, who died in 2004, John Kander made up half of the writing team responsible for Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and this year’s Big Apple tribute New York, New York, among other shows. Grey, meanwhile, famously won both the Tony and the Academy Award for his portrayal of the Emcee in Cabaret. Both men were presented with their awards—Kander by Lin-Manuel Miranda (his collaborator on New York, New York), Grey by his daughter, Jennifer—in the Tonys preshow that was not part of the main broadcast. To not air their speeches in prime time felt like a slight; we could have done without the “Sweet Caroline” sing-along from A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond musical, which was not up for any Tonys. Kander and Grey briefly appeared on stage after DeBose and Hough performed a dance number from Chicago, but it was not enough.
The air conditioning at the United Palace was apparently not award-winning, with rumbles on Twitter that things were getting steamy and a flushed Nathan Lane grabbing at his collar to ventilate. Unfortunately, he did not break into “Steam Heat” from The Pajama Game.
Without the guardrails of text on a teleprompter, presenters had more license to say what they wanted last night. When presenting the award for excellence in theatre education, the Gilded Age actress and Florida native Denée Benton referred to her home state’s autocratic governor, Ron DeSantis, as “the current grand wizard” of Florida, which was received with great applause. Later, DeBose completely forgot the names of the two presenters about to walk on stage (they were director Kenny Leon and playwright David Henry Hwang), resignedly pointing to undecipherable scribbles on her forearm and breaking through the seriousness of the evening.
After she was ruthlessly mocked for her rap at the BAFTAs in February, one wondered if DeBose’s Tonys hosting gig would be similarly cringe inducing. In fact, she was totally endearing, even good-humoredly quipping at one point in the night, “Alex and J. did the thing!”—a reference to a lyric at the BAFTAs that will no doubt follow her for the rest of her life.
…she’s simply got to! As the Tonys are essentially one big commercial for Broadway, it behooves them to feature one of the most popular and successful shows of the year—even if it was not awards eligible. Lea Michele’s turn as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl has been one of the biggest theater stories in recent memory, and her inclusion in the telecast seemed inevitable if somewhat unorthodox. Last night actually marked the second time that she has sung “Don’t Rain on My Parade” at the Tonys, after a first go during her Glee years in 2010. Her more recent performance felt rushed, but you have until September to see her do it at the correct tempo.
Given the unqualified triumph of Kimberly Akimbo over jukebox musicals or well-known adapted material, it is a sign that truly original work, based on new stories and brand-new music, can still grab an audience. Victoria Clark is a triumph and gives a performance that is worlds away from the turn in The Light in the Piazza that earned her her first Tony in 2005. Graver themes of antisemitism and brutality coalesced in Parade and Leopoldstadt, two of the night’s other big winners. With antisemitic hate and violence on the rise around the world, the power of these two pieces is clear—and happily their recognition at the Tonys has only amplified the urgency of their messages.