Broadway’s Best Gathered for Anna Wintour and Bee Carrozzini’s Annual Tonys Dinner
With two short weeks to go before the 77th Tony Awards—set to take place, for the very first time, at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater—on Sunday evening, Anna Wintour and Bee Carrozzini hosted their joyous annual dinner fêting the best of the Broadway season.
Sprawled between the garden and parlor levels of Wintour’s Greenwich Village home, guests representing some 24 different productions mingled over cocktails before being seated, at about quarter after 8:00 p.m., for a feast of lobster gnocchi, sorbet, and—as per tradition—themed cakes created by Charlotte Neuville.
In remarks delivered during dinner, Wintour and Carrozzini offered a sweeping accounting of the last year in theater; from the head-spinning number of shows that opened (39!); to the directors who did double—or triple—duty (see: Lila Neugebauer of Appropriate and Uncle Vanya, Schele Williams of The Wiz and The Notebook, and Michael Greif of The Notebook, Hell’s Kitchen, and Days of Wine and Roses); and the dominance of American playwrights Joshua Harmon (Prayer for the French Republic), Jocelyn Bioh (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding), David Adjmi (Stereophonic), Paula Vogel (Mother Play), Amy Herzog (An Enemy of the People and Mary Jane), and Branden Jacobs Jenkins (Appropriate). So, too, did they look eagerly ahead to next season—including the imminent transfer of Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre.
Much has already been made of the singular starriness of the 2023-2024 Broadway season, but the fact of it was almost overwhelming at last night’s dinner, as Jeremy Strong (An Enemy of the People) posed for “an Amy Herzog picture” (his words) with Rachel McAdams (Mary Jane); Sarah Paulson (Appropriate)—a vision of early summer cool in a sand-colored sheath dress and matching blazer—affectionately greeted Eddie Redmayne (Cabaret), in a natty knit; and Liev Schreiber (Doubt: A Parable) and Alicia Keys (Hell’s Kitchen) slipped discreetly into their seats mere moments before dinner service began. (Asked—quickly—what it meant to have a show that she’d been developing for over a decade be so rapturously received, Keys replied, “I could not talk to you about that in three seconds…but there’s no words.”)
Elsewhere, Andrew Rannells—one half of the hysterically funny Gutenberg! The Musical! crew—chatted animatedly about his recent stint in London, where he was shooting Lena Dunham’s new Netflix series, Too Much (a gift to Girls fans everywhere); and a floral-clad Kelli O’Hara—endearingly worried that her dress “matched the tablecloths”—was preparing to return to the world of The Gilded Age after affecting turns in Days of Wine and Roses and, at the Metropolitan Opera, the first revival of Kevin Puts’s The Hours.
If a few attendees seemed slightly dazed as they stopped for portraits in the garden, that was with good reason: “I just finished a show,” explained Ali Louis Bourzgui, the young star of The Who’s Tommy. What does a post-matinee wind-down typically look like for him? “I play guitar, so I usually go home and my roommate and I jam.” Dorian Harewood, a first-time Tony nominee this year for his performance in The Notebook, also leans into favorite pastimes at the end of a show day: “I’ll get some food and then I’ll go play pool,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s for everybody, but it’s gotten me through a lot.” Representing the fabulously talented cast of Stereophonic, Sarah Pidgeon, who had finished her own matinee a little after 5:00 p.m., wryly confirmed that she was “hanging in there” before cheerfully catching up with Daniel Aukin, her director, and the compulsively charismatic Adjmi. (Will Butler, the genius musician behind Stereophonic’s earworm-y classic-rock hits, would arrive just moments later.)
This is a dinner that always feels warmly familiar—because of the hosts and the intimate setting, yes, but also because the New York theater world is so close-knit. As ever, Sunday’s gathering teemed with mini reunions, including between Hamilton alums Jonathan Groff (Merrily We Roll Along) and Leslie Odom Jr. (Purlie Victorious); Rannells and Nikki M. James (Suffs), who did The Book of Mormon together; and longtime collaborators Bioh and Jacobs-Jenkins (Appropriate). “We cut our teeth together,” Bioh tells me, fondly, of starring in a string of Jacobs-Jenkins’s earliest productions.
Yet the sight of pairs like Jeff and Rick Kuperman—the brother–choreographers behind The Outsiders—and Broadway It couple Sam Gold and Herzog redoubled that sensibility, as did the queue to offer gentle hugs (and heartfelt congratulations) to Lindsay Mendez, who, despite being visibly pregnant with her second child, has said that she will carry on with Merrily We Roll Along until the show’s run ends in July. (How, you may ask? She doesn’t seem entirely sure herself.)
As the events and pressure ramp up ahead of Tonys night—“Everything feels important and fancy, and we’re used to being in rehearsal rooms in sweatpants,” noted James. Shaina Taub heartily agreed: “I did not have the clothes ready”—such communities and connections feel especially important. “I am glad that I have a couple of Tony-winner close friends that I could talk to about this kind of thing,” Kecia Lewis, of Hell’s Kitchen, tells me. “But nothing’s like it once you’re in it.”
But the prevailing sentiment on Sunday night was gratitude—even from those, like Brian d’Arcy James of Days of Wine and Roses, who have seen and done all this many times before. (He is now a five-time Tony nominee.) “It’s always the same. If you’re lucky to kind of be anywhere near this, it’s like, wow,” he said. “I still get a kick out of it.”
Photographed by Hunter Abrams1/38Alicia Keys
Photographed by Hunter Abrams2/38Bee Carrozzini, Anna Wintour, and Oliver Carrozzini
