The actress, director and educator Phylicia Rashad, 73, won the Tony for best featured actress in a play for her performance in “Skeleton Crew,” which was also nominated for best new play.
“You don’t come to this place alone. You’ve heard others say it tonight, and it’s true. It’s the work of many people,” Rashad said. “It’s wonderful to present humanity in its fullness and to feel it received,” she added.
In the show, Rashad portrayed Faye, a factory worker who has been at the same plant for 29 years and is facing a significant bump in her pension after 30 years. Jesse Green, The New York Times chief theater critic, called it “a wonderfully ungrand performance,” in which she wears flannel shirts, big jeans, work boots and “a look of sour contentment.” He added that in scenes with her co-star Brandon J. Dirden, the two veteran actors “get to use every tool their years onstage have put at their disposal,” and audiences “can’t look away from the many things they’re doing at once.”
In 2004, Rashad became the first Black actress to win a Tony for best actress in a play for her role as Lena Younger in a revival of “A Raisin in the Sun.” (She later reprised her role in a 2008 TV adaptation, for which she won an NAACP Image Award.) Last year she wasnamed the dean of Howard University’s College of Fine Arts.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
