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      Michael McGrath, Tony Winner and ‘Spamalot’ Veteran, Dies at 65

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      He clanged coconuts in the Monty Python stage musical in 2005; seven years later, he won a Tony for “Nice Work if You Can Get It.”Michael McGrath, who won a Tony Award in 2012 for his work in the musical “Nice Work if You Can Get It” and was a regular on Broadway, Off Broadway and regional stages, known especially for comedic roles and for his ability to conjure the likes of Groucho Marx, George M. Cohan and Jackie Gleason, died on Thursday at his home in Bloomfield, N.J. He was 65.His family announced the death through the publicist Lisa Goldberg. No cause was provided.Mr. McGrath was one of those stage actors who might rarely be recognized on the street yet worked steadily for decades, drawing good notices throughout. He did much of his early work at Theater by the Sea in Matunuck, R.I., where he appeared regularly from 1977 to 1991, including in the title role of a 1989 production of “George M!,” the musical about Cohan, the famed song-and-dance man.“Exuding confidence and manic energy,” Michael Burlingame wrote in a review in The Day of New London, Conn., “McGrath struts and crows like a bantam rooster.”By the late 1980s he was appearing in New York shows, including “Forbidden Christmas,” a 1991 holiday edition of the long-running parody revue “Forbidden Broadway”; in one sketch he was Luciano Pavarotti, “wearing,” as Mel Gussow wrote in a review in The New York Times, “a white shirt as big as a bedsheet.”A year later he made his Broadway debut in the ensemble of “My Favorite Year,” a backstage musical based on the 1982 movie about the golden age of television. That show closed after a month, but it was the start of regular Broadway work for Mr. McGrath — sometimes as an understudy or standby player, sometimes in featured roles.Mr. McGrath, left, as Patsy and Tim Curry as King Arthur in the 2005 Broadway musical “Spamalot.” Mr. McGrath played three roles and earned a Tony nomination.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHe played three different parts in “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” the hit 2005 musical based on “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” including Patsy, the servant who banged coconuts together to imitate the sound of a galloping horse. His performance earned him a Tony nomination for best featured actor in a musical.His Broadway run continued with “Is He Dead?” (2007), “Memphis” (2009) and “Born Yesterday” (2011). Then, in 2012, came his Tony-winning turn in “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” a musical that showcased the songs of George and Ira Gershwin. Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara got most of the attention in the lead roles, but it was Mr. McGrath (as a bootlegger) and Judy Kaye (as a temperance leader) who earned the show’s two Tonys, for best actor and actress in a featured role in a musical.Mr. McGrath with Judy Kaye in “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” for which they both won Tonys.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMore recently on Broadway, Mr. McGrath was in “She Loves Me” (2016) and “Tootsie” (2019), among other shows. In between Broadway roles, he worked Off Broadway and in regional houses. He also continued to perform in productions of “Forbidden Broadway” and, in 1996, a movie-themed offshoot, “Forbidden Hollywood,” in which he imitated both John Travolta’s character in “Pulp Fiction” and Tom Hanks’s Forrest Gump.That same year, he tapped his inner Groucho in “The Cocoanuts,” a revival of an ancient Marx Brothers show mounted at the American Jewish Theater in Manhattan. Mr. McGrath had always been known for doing a bit of ad-libbing from time to time. (“It’s gotten me in trouble with authors,” he acknowledged in a 1996 interview with The Times. “A lot of them don’t like you going off the script.”) But in “The Cocoanuts,” ad-libs, Groucho style, were expected.“There are a lot of guys who do better Grouchos,” Mr. McGrath told The Times, “but Groucho and I share the same sense of humor, so I find it very easy to ad-lib as him. I wouldn’t say my timing is as great, but we’re in the same ballpark.”He brought another famed figure back to life in 2017, when he played Ralph Kramden, Jackie Gleason’s role, in a musical version of “The Honeymooners” at Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.If Mr. McGrath wasn’t an A-list star, he sometimes went on in place of one. On Broadway he understudied Martin Short twice, in “The Goodbye Girl” in 1993 and “Little Me” in 1998. A Times reporter was in the audience of “Little Me” in December 1998 when Mr. McGrath stepped in for Mr. Short, who had a cold. Many might have been disappointed at first not to be seeing Mr. Short, but by the show’s end, The Times reported, the theatergoers “gave Mr. McGrath the special ovation for people who leap into impossible situations full throttle and soar.”Mr. McGrath understudied Martin Short in the 1998 musical “Little Me.” One night when he stepped in for Mr. Short, The New York Times reported, the audience gave him “the special ovation for people who leap into impossible situations full throttle and soar.” Ruby Washington/The New York Times“They rose to their feet, screaming, ‘Bravo! Bravo!’”Michael McGrath was born on Sept. 25, 1957, in Worcester, Mass. After graduating from high school there, he studied briefly at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, but he left after three months to start his acting career.Among his fellow players in the “Forbidden Broadway” series was Toni Di Buono. In a 1988 version of the show, he parodied Joel Grey’s “Cabaret” character; she did the same for Patti LuPone, belting out “I Get a Kick Out of Me.” Ms. Di Buono and Mr. McGrath later married.She survives him, as does their daughter, Katie Claire McGrath.In a 2012 interview with The Cape Codder of Massachusetts, Mr. McGrath talked about Cookie, the character he played in his Tony-winning turn in “Nice Work if You Can Get It.”“There is a little bit of Gleason in everything I do,” he said. “For Cookie, I’ve also incorporated elements of Groucho Marx, Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, Skip Mahoney from the Bowery Boys, and even a little Bugs Bunny.” More

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      Franne Lee, Tony Winner Who Also Costumed Coneheads, Dies at 81

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      She worked on “Sweeney Todd” and “Candide” and also on the early seasons of “Saturday Night Live,” contributing to the look of the Blues Brothers and the Killer Bees.Franne Lee, a costume and set designer who while doing Tony Award-winning work on Broadway in the 1970s also made killer-bee suits and cone-shaped headwear for early “Saturday Night Live” sketches, helping to create some of that era’s most memorable comic moments, died on Sunday in Atlantis, Fla. She was 81.Her daughter, Stacy Sandler, announced the death, after a short illness that she did not specify.Ms. Lee did some of her most high-profile work in the 1970s while in a relationship with the set designer Eugene Lee. She collaborated with him on productions including an acclaimed “Candide,” directed by Harold Prince at the Chelsea Theater Center in Brooklyn in 1973. It moved to the Broadway Theater in Midtown Manhattan the next year and ran there for 740 performances.“The production has been designed by those experts, Eugene and Franne Lee,” Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times, reviewing the Broadway incarnation, “and they have knocked the innards out of this respectable Broadway house and made it into an obstacle course of seats, musicians’ areas, catwalks, drawbridges and playing platforms, with one conventional stage thrown in at the end of the space for good measure and convenience.”The Lees shared the 1974 Tony Award for scenic design, and Ms. Lee won another for costuming, her specialty. As the story goes, one person who saw that “Candide” was a young producer named Lorne Michaels, who was creating an unconventional late-night show for NBC. He was impressed and brought the Lees in as designers on the show that, when it made its debut in October 1975, was called “NBC’s Saturday Night” but soon became “Saturday Night Live.”The original “S.N.L.” cast quickly made its mark with outlandish sketches, and Ms. Lee was integral to the look of those now famous bits — dressing John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in black when they became the Blues Brothers, turning cut-up long johns into the yellow-striped Killer Bee costumes, and more.Dan Aykroyd, left, and John Belushi as the Blues Brothers on “Saturday Night Live.” Ms. Lee designed their costumes.Edie Baskin/OnyxIt was costume designing on the cheap. Ms. Lee’s father, a tool-and-die maker, came up with the bouncy springs that were the Killer Bees’ antennae, which she finished off by sticking Ping-Pong balls on the ends. John Storyk, who first met Ms. Lee in 1968 when both worked at the short-lived Manhattan club Cerebrum, recalled in a phone interview dropping by the Lees’ apartment and seeing on her work table the beginnings of the cones that became the defining feature of the Coneheads, the extraterrestrials who were a recurring presence on the show in the late 1970s and later got their own feature film.In an interview for the book “Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers and Guests” (2002), by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, James Signorelli, a longtime “S.N.L.” producer, said that Ms. Lee influenced fashion beyond the studio walls.“The way Franne Lee, our costume designer, dressed Lorne for the show suddenly became the way everybody in New York was dressing,” he said. “Lorne used to come out onstage wearing a shirt, jacket and bluejeans. Nobody had ever seen it. But before you knew it, everybody was sitting around in Levis and a jacket.”Laraine Newman, an original “S.N.L.” cast member, recalled one time when Ms. Lee herself became part of the action — not on the show, but during a photo shoot Ms. Newman was doing with Francesco Scavullo, the noted fashion and celebrity photographer. Ms. Newman was working a vampire look, complete with fangs.“Franne found me this incredible Edwardian black lace dress,” Ms. Newman said by email, “and we did wonderful shots with that, and then Scavullo had this idea that Franne should be my victim, and so there are shots of me like biting Franne’s neck. It was so hard not to laugh because Franne was making these faces trying to look horrified or drained of blood. It’s a wonderful memory, and it still makes me laugh when I think about it. She was so very talented.”Len Cariou, left, and Angela Lansbury in the original Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd.” Ms. Lee won a Tony Award for her costumes.Martha Swope/New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman CenterThat talent earned Ms. Lee another Tony Award in 1979 for her costume designs for the original Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd,” the Stephen Sondheim musical about a murderous barber who has his victims made into meat pies. The show was directed by Mr. Prince, who Ms. Lee said initially told her he was reluctant to take on the project despite her urging.“He told me: ‘You’re crazy, absolutely crazy! You can’t do a musical about people eating people,’” she recalled in a 2002 interview with The Tennessean newspaper. “‘I said, ‘Why not?’”Frances Elaine Newman was born on Dec. 30, 1941, in the Bronx to Martin and Anne (Marks) Newman. Her father had a small machine shop on Long Island, and her mother was an offset printing supervisor.Ms. Lee was studying painting at the University of Wisconsin, her daughter said, when she discovered her love of theater and costume design. She was married to Ralph Sandler at the time and relocated to Pennsylvania when his job took him there, doing costume and design work for local theaters. The couple divorced in 1967, and Ms. Lee relocated to New York.“Franne and I both answered the same ad,” Mr. Storyk said, recalling how they found themselves working at Cerebrum. Mr. Storyk designed the club; Ms. Lee was what was called a guide, leading patrons through the place, which promoted consciousness-raising and featured various interactive environments. It closed in less than a year.Ms. Lee, though, continued to pursue her theatrical interests, creating costumes for groups including Theater of the Living Arts in Philadelphia. She also met Mr. Lee. Among their earliest collaborations as scenic designers — with Ms. Lee still credited as Franne Newman — was a version of “Alice in Wonderland” staged by the director André Gregory in 1970 that drew rave reviews.Ms. Lee in 2015.Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State JournalThe two became a couple and Franne adopted Mr. Lee’s name, though the nature of their relationship remained hazy; Patrick Lynch, a longtime aide to Mr. Lee, said the two were never formally married. (Mr. Lee died in February.) In any case, their personal and professional partnership continued until 1980, the year Ms. Lee left “Saturday Night Live.”She continued to design costumes for shows in New York in the 1980s and ’90s, including a few short-lived Broadway productions and, in the mid-’90s at the Public Theater, Christopher Walken’s examination of the life and legend of Elvis Presley, “Him.”She also tried the West Coast for a time, working on a few television shows and made-for-TV movies. In 2001 she settled in Nashville, where she was involved in founding Plowhaus, a gallery and artists’ cooperative. She later lived in Wisconsin, and since 2017 she had lived in Lake Worth Beach, Fla., about 65 miles north of Miami, designing costumes for theaters in that area.In addition to her daughter, from her marriage to Mr. Sandler, Ms. Lee is survived by a son from that marriage, Geoffrey Sandler; a son with Mr. Lee, Willie Lee; a brother, Bill Newman; six grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.The frugal D.I.Y. ethos of her “S.N.L.” years stayed with Ms. Lee throughout her costume-designing career. In 2018 she worked on costumes for a production of Conor McPherson’s thriller “The Birds” (based on the same source material as the Alfred Hitchcock movie) at the Garden Theater in Winter Garden, Fla. It required a wedding dress, which she bought at a thrift shop for $45.“I’m a senior citizen,” she told The Orlando Sentinel, “so if I go on Wednesday, things are half price.” More

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      Sheldon Harnick, ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Lyricist, Dies at 99

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      His collaborations with the composer Jerry Bock also included “Fiorello!” — which, like “Fiddler,” was a Tony winner — and “She Loves Me.”Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist who teamed up with the composer Jerry Bock to write some of Broadway’s most memorable musicals, including the Tony Award winners “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Fiorello!,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 99. His death was announced by a spokesman, Sean Katz.Mr. Harnick’s lyrics could be broadly funny, slyly satirical, lushly romantic or poignantly moving. He gave voice to a broad range of characters, including starry-eyed young lovers, corrupt politicians, a quarreling Adam and Eve and, in “Fiddler on the Roof,” struggling Jews in early-20th-century Russia.When three unmarried sisters in “Fiddler” confront the village matchmaker, two of them hopeful and the third cynical, they all end up having second thoughts:Matchmaker, matchmaker, plan me no plansI’m in no rush, maybe I’ve learnedPlaying with matches a girl can get burned.So bring me no ring, groom me no groom,Find me no find, catch me no catch.Unless he’s a matchless match!When the leading man in “She Loves Me” is about to meet the woman with whom he’s been trading love letters for months, he practically sings himself into a nervous breakdown:I haven’t slept a wink, I only thinkOf our approaching tête-à-tête,Tonight at eight.I feel a combination of depression and elation;What a state!To waitTill eight.Maria Karnilova and Zero Mostel in the original Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” for which Mr. Harnick and Jerry Bock wrote the score. The show, which opened in 1964, ran for more than 3,200 performances and became the longest-running musical in Broadway history.Bettmann/Getty ImagesMr. Harnick met Mr. Bock in the late 1950s, and the two quickly realized they could work together despite their different temperaments. “I tend to approach things skeptically and pessimistically,” Mr. Harnick told The New York Times in 1990. “Jerry Bock is a bubbling, ebullient personality.”The team would break up after a dozen years over a dispute involving their musical “The Rothschilds.” But the combination worked extremely well while it lasted.The late 1950s was a challenging time for newcomers to the musical stage. The decade’s hit Broadway musicals had included “Guys and Dolls,” “The King and I,” “Wonderful Town,” “My Fair Lady” and “Candide.” “In those days,” Mr. Harnick recalled in a 2004 interview, “lyricists were consciously trying to be more sophisticated and literate. Now we’re in the Andrew Lloyd Webber vein, trying to hit bigger, broader audiences.”Mr. Harnick and Mr. Bock got off to a weak start in 1958 with “The Body Beautiful,” set in the world of prizefighting; it closed after a brief run. But they bounced back decisively the next year with “Fiorello!,” a breezy portrait of one of New York City’s most colorful politicians.“Fiorello!,” which had a book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman and was directed by Mr. Abbott, starred Tom Bosley as Fiorello H. La Guardia, the reformer who was mayor of New York from 1934 to 1945. Its score evoked a time when political corruption was rife.The song “Little Tin Box,” for example, suggests how a crooked party boss (Howard Da Silva) might have responded when a judge asked him how he has managed to buy a yacht, given his modest salary. The boss replies:I am positive Your Honor must be joking.Any working man can do what I have done.For a month or two I simply gave up smokingAnd I put my extra pennies one by oneInto a little tin boxA little tin boxThat a little tin key unlocks.There is nothing unorthodoxAbout a little tin box.“Fiorello!” ran for nearly 800 performances and won three Tony Awards, including the prize for best musical, which it shared with “The Sound of Music.” It was also one of the few musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.Jerry Bock, left, with Mr. Harnick in 1970. Their collaboration produced some of Broadway’s most memorable musicals.Barton Silverman/The New York TimesBut the Bock-Harnick team’s biggest success — and one of Broadway’s — was yet to come: “Fiddler on the Roof,” which opened in 1964 and ran for more than 3,200 performances. It became the longest-running musical in Broadway history, a record that stood for a decade.Directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, with a book by Joseph Stein based on the stories of Sholem Aleichem, “Fiddler on the Roof” told the story of a Jewish community facing expulsion from a village in the czarist Russian empire, with a focus on Tevye (Zero Mostel), the village milkman, and his family.In addition to “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” the score included a number of songs that would soon be regarded as classics, including “Tradition,” “Sunrise, Sunset” and Tevye’s humorously wistful lament “If I Were a Rich Man” (“There would be one long staircase just going up/ And one even longer coming down/ And one more leading nowhere, just for show”).“Fiddler on the Roof” was more than a hit show; it was a phenomenon. It won nine Tony Awards, including one for its score. It was made into a hit movie in 1971, has been performed all over the world, and has had five Broadway revivals, most recently in 2015. (A Yiddish-language production was an Off Broadway hit in 2019 and played a return engagement in late 2022.)Mr. Harnick, left, and Hal Prince, the producer of “Fiddler on the Roof,” in 2015.Damon Winter/The New York TimesAmong the Bock-Harnick team’s other noteworthy efforts was “She Loves Me” (1963), based on the same Hungarian play that was the basis for the movies “The Shop Around the Corner,” “In the Good Old Summertime” and “You’ve Got Mail.” The story of two workers at a perfume shop in Budapest (Barbara Cook and Daniel Massey) who finally realize that they have been trading romantic letters and that they are meant for each other, “She Loves Me” had no showstopping songs and was not initially a big success, closing after 301 performances. But it has grown in popularity after a series of revivals — although Broadway productions in 1993 and 2016 were equally brief.Their other shows included “The Apple Tree” (1966), three musical playlets (including one about Adam and Eve) directed by Mike Nichols, and “The Rothschilds” (1970), based on Frederic Morton’s biography of the Jewish family that rose from the ghetto to become a financial powerhouse.It was a dispute over who would direct “The Rothschilds” that ended the Bock-Harnick partnership. The show’s original director, Derek Goldby, was replaced by Michael Kidd at the urging of Mr. Harnick and others who wanted someone with more musical-theater experience. Mr. Bock was irate.“Jerry felt that Derek had gotten a raw deal,” Mr. Harnick recalled in 1990. “For a while, the feelings between us were very bad.” He added that “things changed for the better” when “Fiorello!” was revived in 1985 at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut and he and Mr. Bock met there to work on it. (It was revived again off Broadway in 2016.)Nonetheless, they never wrote another show together. Mr. Bock died at 81 in 2010.From left, Mr. Prince, Mr. Bock, Mr. Harnick, Fred Ebb and John Kander in 2004, when the Bock-Harnick and Kander-Ebb songwriting teams announced that they were giving their archives to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Yoni Brook/The New York TimesSheldon Mayer Harnick was born on April 30, 1924, in Chicago to Harry and Esther Harnick. His father was a dentist, his mother a homemaker. He took violin lessons as a child, attended music school as a teenager and earned money playing in amateur theatricals. After serving in the Army, he enrolled at the Northwestern University School of Music. He graduated in 1949.He began writing songs while in Carl Schurz High School in Chicago and became seriously interested in songwriting as a career after hearing a recording of Burton Lane and E.Y. Harburg’s hit 1947 musical, “Finian’s Rainbow.” At the urging of the actress Charlotte Rae, a fellow Northwestern student, he moved to New York in 1950.Mr. Harnick’s first song in a Broadway show was “The Boston Beguine,” which he wrote — music as well as lyrics — for the revue “Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1952.” He wrote numbers for several other revues, including “Two’s Company” (1952), before teaming with Mr. Bock. (One of his compositions from those years, the darkly satirical and deceptively cheerful “The Merry Minuet,” was popularized by the folk music group the Kingston Trio.)Mr. Harnick’s first marriage, to Mary Boatner, was annulled. His second, to the comedian, writer and director Elaine May, ended in divorce. In 1965, he married Margery Gray, an actress whom he had met when she auditioned for his show “Tenderloin.” (She later became a photographer and an artist.) She survives him, as do a daughter, Beth Dorn; a son, Matthew Harnick; and four grandchildren.After his split with Mr. Bock, Mr. Harnick went on to collaborate with other composers. He worked with Mary Rodgers on a 1973 version of “Pinocchio” performed by the Bil Baird marionettes, and with her father, Richard Rodgers, on “Rex,” a musical about King Henry VIII of England that had a brief Broadway run in 1976, with Nicol Williamson in the title role. He also worked with Michel Legrand on two shows: an English-language stage version of the movie musical “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” produced off Broadway in 1979, and a new adaptation of “A Christmas Carol,” staged in Stamford, Conn., in 1982. And he collaborated with Joe Raposo on “A Wonderful Life,” based on the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which has had a number of regional productions since 1986.Mr. Harnick in 2015. His lyrics could be broadly funny, slyly satirical, lushly romantic or poignantly moving. Chad Batka for The New York TimesMr. Harnick also became an accomplished opera translator, providing English librettos for classical works like Lehar’s “The Merry Widow,” Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” and Bizet’s “Carmen.”He wrote some original opera librettos as well, including “Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines” (1975), with music by Jack Beeson, and “The Phantom Tollbooth” (1995), a collaboration with Norton Juster, the author of the children’s book on which it was based, and the composer Arnold Black. “Lady Bird: First Lady of the Land,” an opera about Lady Bird Johnson, for which he wrote the libretto and Henry Mollicone wrote the music, had its premiere in Texas in 2016 and has been performed in New York and elsewhere.In late 2015, shortly before the latest Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof” opened, Mr. Harnick was in the studio making a demonstration record of songs from “Dragons,” an adaptation of a Russian play for which he wrote the book, music and lyrics, and which he had been working on for many years. In an interview with The Times, he said that he had no thoughts of retirement, and that he continued to attend every show on Broadway, as he had for many years. He added that he was working on a new show of his own.“I hope I live long enough to complete it,” he said. “I won’t tell you what idea I have, because you’ll steal it.”Robert Berkvist, a former New York Times arts editor, died in January. Peter Keepnews contributed reporting. More

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      Tony Awards Give a Box Office Boost to Prize-Winning Shows

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      “Leopoldstadt,” which was named best play, and “Kimberly Akimbo,” which won best musical, saw considerable increases in ticket sales.“Leopoldstadt” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” the two shows that took home top Tony Awards last week, saw big bumps at the box office in the days following that ceremony.The increases for the award-winning shows, which far outpaced a slight rise in the box office overall, seemed to support the industry’s argument to Hollywood’s striking screenwriters that a Tony Awards telecast can play an important role in sustaining struggling shows. “Kimberly Akimbo,” in particular, needed the boost; despite strong reviews, it had been soft at the box office.“Leopoldstadt,” a heart-wrenching drama by Tom Stoppard about the effect of the Holocaust on a Jewish family in Vienna, had the biggest assist: The show won the Tony Award for best new play on June 11, and its grosses for the week that ended June 18 were up 42 percent over the prior week. The grosses were most likely boosted by the fast-approaching end of the show’s run on July 2.“Kimberly Akimbo,” a quirky show about a high school student with a life-threatening genetic condition and a comically dysfunctional home life, got a 32 percent boost at the box office after winning the prize for best new musical. The show, written by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori, played to full houses through the week, which had not been the case previously.“After this won, I’m like, ‘I want to see this before I leave, just because it won a Tony,’” said Brad Steinmeyer, 30, who was visiting from Colorado and bought tickets to see the Tony Award winning-actors in “Kimberly Akimbo” on Saturday.Rhys Williams, 27, a theater actor from New York City, also said that watching the Tony Awards cemented his decision to buy a ticket for the show.“It made it something I didn’t want to miss,” he said.Overall, Broadway grosses were up 6 percent last week, reflecting some combination of recovery from the effects of the previous week’s wildfire smoke, the slow build of the summer tourism season, and heightened awareness of Broadway shows because of the awards ceremony and attendant media coverage.The other Tony-nominated musicals also saw improvement after their performances on the telecast, including “Shucked,” a corn-themed country-music show, which was up 23 percent; “& Juliet,” a revisionist take on “Romeo and Juliet” set to pop hits, which was up 18 percent; “New York, New York,” about two musicians making their way in the post-World War II city, which was up 17 percent; and “Some Like It Hot,” which was up 10 percent.“Parade,” which won the Tony Award for best musical revival, was also up 10 percent. The show is about the lynching of a Jewish businessman in Georgia in the early 20th century.Among plays, “Prima Facie” was up 17 percent after its lead actress, Jodie Comer, won a Tony; on Tuesday, the producers announced that the play had achieved the rare feat of recouping its capitalization cost, which was $4.1 million and means it will now begin generating profits in the days before it closes on July 2. But “Peter Pan Goes Wrong,” a madcap comedy that had no presence on the Tony Awards, was up even more — 22 percent — serving as a reminder of the capriciousness of grosses.Simply performing on the Tony Awards did not pay off for “A Beautiful Noise,” the Neil Diamond musical, which was not nominated for any prizes, and suffered an 11 percent box office drop after its cast performed a singalong version of “Sweet Caroline” on the telecast.Meanwhile, “Life of Pi,” adapted from the best-selling novel that had also been developed into a film, announced Tuesday that it would end its run on July 23. The play arrived from London after winning the Olivier Award there for best new play, and it received generally positive reviews upon opening on March 30 in New York, but never caught on with audiences. It picked up three Tony Awards for design, but was not nominated in the best play category; a North American tour is planned. More

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      Inside the 2023 Tony Awards After-Parties

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      Spirited celebrations that included a block party in Washington Heights and a gathering at the Carlyle Hotel extended past 4 a.m.It wasn’t hard to spot J. Harrison Ghee at the official Tony Awards after-party outside the United Palace theater in Washington Heights on Sunday night — they towered over much of the crowd in a vibrant blue gown, with a statuette in hand and a trail of well-wishers close behind. After their groundbreaking win for best leading actor in a musical — they became the first out nonbinary performer to win in the category — the gown color, it seemed, was fortuitous.“I felt like this is such a Cinderella moment,” they said.Hundreds of the ceremony’s attendees spilled out, shortly after 11 p.m., almost directly into the party: a tented extension of the fuchsia carpet and its lush floral backdrop, with catering that reflected both the culinary traditions of the neighborhood’s surrounding communities (paella, ceviche, mango on sticks) and also the immediate hunger of nominees who had sat snackless for hours. (About 800 hamburgers from Shake Shack were gone within 90 minutes.)Suzan-Lori Parks, left, with LaChanze at the after-party near the United Palace theater. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesThe Tonys, which celebrate Broadway’s best plays and musicals, were held uptown for the first time this year at the United Palace — an ornate movie house at 176th Street in Washington Heights, nearly eight miles north of Times Square. The theater is tucked within the largely Dominican neighborhood where Lin-Manuel Miranda shot the 2021 film adaptation of his musical “In the Heights.”“To show off one of the cultural gems of the city to a national audience is super exciting,” Heather Hitchens, the president and chief executive of the American Theater Wing, which puts on the Tonys with the Broadway League, said in an interview on Saturday.“The after-party is always important, but to celebrate that we made it through a season and we gave some awards out and actually had a telecast?” she said, continuing, “We haven’t been able to do that for so long.”Sunday’s ceremony was certainly an unusual one. With the Writers Guild of America still on strike, the show featured unscripted commentary from presenters, abundant musical performances from the year’s productions — plus Lea Michele’s rendition of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from last season’s “Funny Girl” — and a wordless opening dance number by Ariana DeBose, the show’s host.Kelli O’Hara, a presenter at the Tonys, at the party in Washington Heights. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAbout 800 hamburgers from Shake Shack disappeared within 90 minutes at the after-party outside the United Palace.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesBowls of Frosted Flakes were scattered around the official after-party. Tony the Tiger attended the Tonys this year.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times“Ariana DeBose,” Wayne Brady, who is set to star in the 2024 Broadway revival of “The Wiz,” said later in the evening, shaking his head. “She was tremendous. She can improvise like no one’s business.”“It went so smoothly,” said Bonnie Milligan, a Tony Award winner for best featured actress in a musical for her performance as a scheming aunt in the offbeat musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” which was the top winner of the night with five trophies overall. “So many people were able to speak in solidarity with the strike.”With a long list of celebrations still ahead, many of the night’s winners and nominees stayed at the official after-party only briefly before moving on to smaller soirees hosted by individual productions across the city.Myles Frost, last year’s winner for best leading actor in a musical for playing Michael Jackson in “MJ,” at the official after-party. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesJulia Lester, a nominee for her turn as Little Red Riding Hood in the revival of “Into the Woods,” was leaving with her father as many attendees were still arriving. Ms. Lester said she was “just seeing where the night takes me.” She wore a voluminous green ball gown, sheer elbow-length gloves, a black choker and a bow in her red curly hair. “I’m wearing a hoop skirt, so I can’t do that much. Sitting down was a nightmare.”Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, donned a sparkling scarlet outfit meant to elicit, he said, “Big Red Riding Hood.” His after-party plans, he added, would extend “until the hood falls off, which is literally impossible. It’s pinned, glued, sewn — I probably won’t be able to take it off to go to sleep.”The event at the Carlyle Hotel, hosted by the theater publicist Rick Miramontez and the producer John Gore, picked up after midnight. Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesBy 12:30 a.m., many had left the official after-party, and most of the nominees began heading to the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side, where the theater publicist Rick Miramontez — dressed in a white blazer with red-and-white striped shorts — was hosting his famed late-night shindig for several hundred guests with the producer John Gore.“This is the party,” Mr. Brady proclaimed from a couch nestled alongside an open bar near the hotel’s entrance.Kolton Krouse, who starred in a recent revival of “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” and uses the pronouns they and them, also opted for business-on-top-party-on-the-bottom, sporting a black blazer that barely covered their torso atop gold heels.Bonnie Milligan, left, who won the Tony for best featured actress in a musical, and Miriam Silverman, who won for best featured actress in a play, at the Carlyle Hotel.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesVictoria Clark, who won the Tony for best leading actress in a musical for her role in “Kimberly Akimbo,” at the Carlyle party.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJessica Chastain, with her grandmother Marilyn Herst, whom the actress said she brings to “all the parties.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times“Congratulations!” they said, lunging to stop Jessica Chastain, who was wearing a caped, sunshine-yellow Gucci gown, her long red hair in a high ponytail, as she swept in around 12:30 a.m. — accompanied by her grandmother, Marilyn Herst.“I bring her with me to all the parties,” said Ms. Chastain, who was nominated for best leading actress in a play for her performance as the housewife Nora Helmer in Jamie Lloyd’s bare-bones revival of “A Doll’s House.”The English actress Jodie Comer had won the category for her performance as a lawyer who defends men accused of sexual assault in the one-woman show “Prima Facie,” but you would not know it by Ms. Chastain’s cadre of photographers, who temporarily clogged the passageway between the upper lounge and a bar area, and a receiving line of those congratulating the actress after the play’s final performance this past weekend.“I hope it’s not over forever,” Ms. Chastain said as shutters clicked away.Alex Newell, left, and J. Harrison Ghee at the Carlyle, hours after becoming two of the first out nonbinary performers to win a Tony Award.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, at the Carlyle. His after-party plans would extend “until the hood falls off,” he said.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesBuckets of Moet & Chandon champagne were placed around the room, while waiters in white blazers ferried silver trays of sliders and cartons of French fries around four rooms. On side tables sat slender trays of nuts and chips, which nominees appreciatively munched.In a back room alongside a bar, a cabaret singer crooned Frank Sinatra’s “Nice ‘n’ Easy” accompanied by a pianist and a cellist. (The Tony-winning soprano Kelli O’Hara, in a feathery white gown, bopped to the music.)Julia Lester, a nominee for “Into the Woods,” arriving at the Carlyle party, hoop skirt and all.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesBen Platt and Micaela Diamond, the stars of “Parade,” at the Carlyle.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesZachary Prince, left, with Brandon Uranowitz, who won a Tony for best featured actor in a play for his role in “Leopoldstadt.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesThe party began to pick up around 1 a.m. Ben Platt, accompanied by his fiancé, Noah Galvin, in a matching black suit, got a hug from Micaela Diamond, his co-star in “Parade,” which won best revival of a musical. Ms. Lester — whose night had apparently taken her to the Carlyle — was deep in conversation in a corner with Julie Benko, the “Funny Girl” alternate for Michele’s Fanny Brice.Attendees discussed the beauty of the United Palace, a dazzling remnant of the golden age of cinema, which many had been inside for the first time that night.“I am so in love with that house,” Mr. Brady said.Natasha Katz, who won the Tony for best lighting design for her work on the Josh Groban-led “Sweeney Todd” revival, received a hug at the Carlyle.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesShortly before 3 a.m., many of the performers began heading out, though the party would last until after 4 a.m.“I’m excited to have a shot at the Tonys next year,” Mr. Brady, “The Wiz” star-to-be, said around 2:30 a.m., before heading for the door.“In the bigger sense, I’m excited about making history with such a melanated cast, a mostly Black creative team.” More

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      Tony Awards Viewership Increases to 4.3 Million

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      Awards shows have seen steep ratings declines in recent years, but the modest uptick for Sunday night’s Tonys followed recent increases for the Oscars and the Grammys.The CBS telecast of the Tony Awards drew 4.3 million viewers on Sunday night, the second consecutive year that the broadcast has seen a bump in the ratings, according to Nielsen.The modest increase in viewership at a moment where people are fleeing broadcast television qualifies as a win these days. And the fact that the Tonys gained audience share is part of a trend where award shows have stopped the bleeding after years of steep losses. This year’s Oscars and Grammy Awards both increased their viewership, too.Still, for the Tonys, which is a relatively niche ceremony compared to more popular awards shows, Sunday’s ratings represent the third-lowest viewership total since records have been kept. Last year’s ceremony drew 3.9 million viewers.The fact that the Tonys happened at all took no small effort. Just a month ago, the televised ceremony was in jeopardy after the union representing thousands of striking movie and television writers — who have been on strike against the major Hollywood studios since May 2, arguing that their wages have stagnated despite the streaming production boom — threatened to picket the event.The writers have deployed aggressive tactics to hurt the studios during the strike, and a live event broadcast on CBS was lining up to be a good target. (The writers had already successfully disrupted the MTV Movie & TV Awards last month, which prompted the cancellation of the live ceremony; MTV and CBS share the same corporate parent, Paramount.)But a group of playwrights lobbied leaders of the Writers Guild of America, the union representing the writers, arguing that the cancellation of the event would hurt the theater industry more than it would hurt CBS. The Tony Awards represent a vital marketing tool for Broadway as it still makes its slow recovery out of the pandemic. Given the relatively low viewership of the Tonys, the show has always been more of a prestige play for CBS than a profit machine.The W.G.A. relented, and the end result was an awards show that went heavy on live performances and introductory videos, and went without scripted material or pre-written bits. Presenters did little more than introduce themselves and announce the nominees and winners. The striking writers were given repeated shout-outs throughout the night.W.G.A. leaders expressed approval on Monday morning, with the union’s Eastern branch tweeting, “A big congratulations, and a big thank you to the Tony Award winners who stood with the #WGAstrike in their speeches. Thank you to attendees wearing #WGAstrong pins, and to everyone who showed solidarity with the writers during last night’s unscripted awards show.”The unscripted ceremony, which was hosted by Ariana DeBose, was mostly well received. Jesse Green, The New York Times’s theater critic, observed, “Previous Tonys telecasts have often wasted their ‘bumpers’ — the gaps between the end of a big performance or award and the commercials that follow — with unconvincing scripted nonsense. Guess what? No script, no nonsense.”In 2021, the Tony Awards drew a record low of 2.8 million viewers when the pandemic-altered ceremony aired in September, three months later than its traditional mid-June slot. The highest-rated Tony Awards in recent years was in 2016, when a “Hamilton”-fueled ceremony had an audience of 8.7 million viewers.The top-rated markets for Sunday’s telecast were, in order, New York, West Palm Beach, Fla., and San Francisco, according to Nielsen. More

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      Unscripted or Not, the Tonys Were Mostly Predictable

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      The writing is on the wall: With or without writers, the Broadway awards are a strangely bland and canned way to celebrate a thrillingly live medium.No writers’ names crawled up the screen at the end of Sunday night’s telecast of the Tony Awards, and though the writers might not like to hear it, their absence made little difference. The names of the show’s producers and director were the same as always, and in television as in the theater, they call the game.Naturally, the strike by the Writers Guild of America against film and television conglomerates — including Paramount, which presented the event on its various platforms — had no effect on what was produced on Broadway during the 2022-23 season honored by these Tonys, nor on who won.Mostly those things bore out the predictions, and many people’s predilections too. “Kimberly Akimbo,” the sweet, intimate, tragicomic “nerdical” by Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire, won the most musical prizes, including one for its star, Victoria Clark, and one for the show itself. “Some Like It Hot” followed with a reasonable haul, and though “Parade” picked up just two, they were good ones: best direction of a musical and best musical revival.Producers and members of the cast and crew of “Kimberly Akimbo,” which took home the prize for best musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAmong the plays, “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s semi-autobiographical Holocaust drama, took the top awards, almost a foregone conclusion with that author and that subject — a subject he strangely did not mention in his acceptance. “Life of Pi,” a spectacular staging of the adventure novel by Yann Martel, fittingly won three technical awards, though I wish its astonishing tiger puppet had picked up one of the medallions in person, and perhaps eaten someone.Failing that, the only surprise, Sean Hayes’s win over Stephen McKinley Henderson in the leading actor category for plays, was not really that surprising, if a little disappointing.But since a little disappointment is normal, and probably desirable, all was comfy on the prize front. Perhaps too comfy. The pleasant predictability of the outcomes (and most of the performances) made the telecast, though once again divided awkwardly into two segments on separate Paramount platforms, seem canned, which is one thing we don’t want the Tonys to be. Leave that to programs that honor recorded performance, like the Oscars and the Emmys. The theater, a live medium, wants spontaneity and weirdness and even a taste of tackiness on its big night out.J. Harrison Ghee, the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony for best lead actor in a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlex Newell, the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony for best featured actor in a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs it happens, outness was a big theme, with J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell becoming the first openly nonbinary performers to win Tonys in acting categories. They were among the many winners and presenters who used their brief platforms to express support for diversity of all kinds: gender, orientation, race, religion, body type, ability, looks. But though heartening, that too was mostly dignified and predictable, except when the director Michael Arden turned a gay slur into a vector of vengeance upon winning for his staging of “Parade” and when the actress Denée Benton, introducing the education award to a teacher in Plantation, Fla., referred to Ron DeSantis as “the current Grand Wizard — I’m sorry, excuse me, governor” of her home state.For me, such vivid moments were striking exceptions in an even-tempered evening, if only for the brazenness of making political sentiments regardless of the risk of alienating some part of the audience that does not share them.Otherwise, the unscriptedness was a wash. Some performers offered banter that was just as inane as what writers usually provide. At one point, Julianne Hough, who with Skylar Astin hosted the first 90 minutes, on Pluto TV, ad-libbed, apropos of nothing, “When in doubt, shake it out.”Ariana DeBose, center, was the host of the main show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOn the other hand, the sententious segues and gassed-up encomiums to whatever B-list star was arriving onstage were eliminated. Near the evening’s end, the host of the main show, Ariana DeBose, seemed unable to read notes she had scribbled on her arm. “Please welcome whoever walks out on stage next,” she said.And the luck of her being a dancer meant that the lack of a purpose-written opening number could be finessed. Instead she performed a wordless choreographed sequence that also functioned as a tour of the spectacular United Palace theater in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood.Not that I saw DeBose do it. Paramount did not win any allies in the strike standoff by offering what felt like a deliberately confusing menu for streaming the evening’s events online. During the switchover from Pluto TV, on which I saw the first part, to Paramount+, on which I saw the second, I found myself (along with many others, who tweeted about it) misled into watching the 2022 awards show — also hosted by DeBose — for several minutes instead of this year’s.That it took so long for me to realize the problem says almost too much about the blandness and sameness of the Tonys under any circumstances. Even when writers aren’t striking, the tone is set by the people at the top of the credits crawl, who since 2003 have been Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner of White Cherry Entertainment. (They also directed and produced the Oscars in March.) However competent they are at television, they do a mediocre job of presenting the excitement of live theater — and especially its excellence.When in doubt, shake it out. More

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      Tony Awards 2023: The Best and Worst Moments

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      With a clever opening number and repeated support for striking writers, the Tonys celebrated Broadway’s shows, performers and creative teams.“I’m live and unscripted,” Ariana DeBose, the host of this year’s Tony Awards, said at the start of Sunday night’s show. An out-of-breath DeBose had just danced her way around the majestic United Palace theater, joined by dancers and musicians in a wordless opening number that began with her backstage, paging through a binder labeled “Script” filled with blank pages, and then gradually making her way onto the stage. It was a thrilling start to a night that almost didn’t happen because of the ongoing screenwriters’ strike. We didn’t get the scripted banter, but we did get a ceremony that looked great and delighted in working around some of the limits posed by the strike. Here are the highs and lows as our writers saw them. NICOLE HERRINGTONA real feeling of communityThe medieval residents of “Camelot” during a production number on Sunday.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPrevious Tonys telecasts have often wasted their “bumpers” — the gaps between the end of a big performance or award and the commercials that follow — with unconvincing scripted nonsense. Guess what? No script, no nonsense. At this year’s ceremony, a camera merely scanned the collision backstage between those who had just finished belting their butts off (like the medieval residents of “Camelot”) and those about to go into battle (like the Elizabethans of “& Juliet”). You could see at a glance the love among performers in different shows, whom we often think of as opposing football teams. With hugs, high fives, hooting and sometimes mime — have to be careful with those vocal cords, after all — they demonstrated in visual shorthand that the “community” Broadway people are always talking about is real. JESSE GREENA win-win for nonbinary performersAlex Newell accepting the Tony Award for featured actor in a musical, “Shucked.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJ. Harrison Ghee accepting the Tony Award for best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical, “Some Like It Hot.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPerhaps the only thing comparable to the absolute delight that is Alex Newell’s performance in “Shucked,” brimming with spicy line reads and downright blazing vocals, is Newell’s Tony win for best featured actor in a musical. The award was presented by Tatiana Maslany and Wilson Cruz, who shouted out the L.G.B.T.Q. community for Pride Month. That was fitting for a win by, in Newell’s words, a “queer, nonbinary, fat little baby from Massachusetts.” The night got even better when J. Harrison Ghee of “Some Like It Hot” won for best leading actor in a musical. Newell and Ghee are the first openly nonbinary performers to win acting Tonys. In an industry that has been so historically defined and bolstered by queer artists, and for an awards show that lacks a way of honoring people who don’t fit into one of the two prescribed gender categories, it’s heartening to see these stunning performers make history. MAYA PHILLIPSBeaten by a pianoSean Hayes won his first Tony for portraying the witty but troubled pianist Oscar Levant in “Good Night, Oscar.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNo disrespect to Sean Hayes, who won the Tony for best performance by an actor in a play. And I guess he did give the best piano performance, pounding out parts of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” at the climax of “Good Night, Oscar.” But I have to say that Corey Hawkins in “Topdog/Underdog” was at least as thrilling even without a Steinway, and Stephen McKinley Henderson, in “Between Riverside and Crazy,” was unforgettable. His portrayal of a cranky, crafty former police officer with a great apartment and a wicked secret was one for the ages. It’s a shame that after decades of service in small, priceless, often unheralded character roles, he got the chance to own the whole stage, only to be skunked by a little Gershwin. JESSE GREENA win for inclusivity“You belong somewhere,” said Bonnie Milligan, who plays a grifter in “Kimberly Akimbo” and won the Tony for best featured actress in a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBonnie Milligan, who is known for her belting and wide vocal range, took home her first Tony Award on Sunday night and used her acceptance speech to decry size discrimination and other types of bias in the theater industry. “I want to tell everybody that doesn’t maybe look like what the world is telling you you should look like, whether you’re not pretty enough, you’re not fit enough, your identity is not right, who you love isn’t right — that doesn’t matter, because guess what?” she said. “It’s right, and you belong somewhere.” SARAH BAHRMusical numbers that really sangThe cast and musicians of “New York, New York” performing the show’s title song.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMost years, the live performances at the Tony Awards simply aren’t the highlights that they ought to be. In past ceremonies, the performance capture has suffered from wonky camera placement and nonsensical moves between close-ups and wide shots. This year, the musical numbers were pure confection, ferociously sung (Jordan Donica!) and elegantly and judiciously filmed. In a few cases — “New York, New York,” significantly — the numbers looked even more seductive and sumptuous onscreen than they had onstage. ALEXIS SOLOSKIKander and Grey deserved betterThe composer John Kander was honored with a Tony for Lifetime Achievement. He has written the score for 16 Broadway musicals, from “A Family Affair” in 1962 to “New York, New York,” which opened in April.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe composer John Kander is a titan of the musical theater and he deservedly received a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater. Yet that was part of a preshow that streamed on the streaming service Pluto TV, not the main telecast on CBS. Kander’s big moment should have been part of the main event, especially since he rose to the occasion with a lovely speech that started with a nod to his parents, who urged him to “consider the possibility of happiness.” Making matters worse, he and Joel Grey, who had also received his Lifetime Achievement award during that earlier segment, were brought out for a brief appearance in prime time that felt almost random. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIBest balance of stylesBeowulf Boritt accepting the Tony Award for best scenic design of a musical, for “New York, New York.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTony voters struck a perfect equilibrium with the awards for scenic design. Beowulf Boritt won for the musical “New York, New York,” a big, buoyant throwback of a show whose aesthetic is decidedly classic Broadway.“There’s no video wall in ‘New York, New York,’” he assured the audience, which sounded glad to hear it. “It is good, old-fashioned paint on canvas.”But the very next award, for scenic design of a play, went to the set designer Tim Hatley and the video designer Andrzej Goulding for “Life of Pi,” which casts its surreal spell with an intricate, near-magical overlay of video on a clever physical set.Recognizing such different kinds of excellence, the Tonys gracefully embraced both tradition and tradition-breaking. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESSmall is beautifulVictoria Clark and Justin Cooley sang “Anagram” from “Kimberly Akimbo” at the Tonys.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesConventional wisdom holds that you need to go big when presenting a number at the Tonys. But the excerpt from “Kimberly Akimbo” was “Anagram,” a quiet song led by Victoria Clark that highlights not just the score’s melodic, aching grace, but the way Clark subtly acts out her character’s emotions. This strategy echoed the decision to have Sydney Lucas’s “Ring of Keys” represent “Fun Home” (another show scored by Jeanine Tesori) at the 2015 Tonys. That daring approach was widely seen as paying off at the time, charming telecast viewers into discovering the show. I can only hope the same will happen for “Kimberly Akimbo.” ELISABETH VINCENTELLIThe close-ups that weren’tThe director Patrick Marber, wearing a pro-union badge, accepting the Tony Award for best direction of a play, “Leopoldstadt.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I hate to complain,” Patrick Marber said with a charming hint of mischief, accepting the Tony for best direction of a play: “Leopoldstadt” by Tom Stoppard.“But did you notice how, when the actors’ names were mentioned for their prizes,” Marber asked, “the camera went to them, and they smiled, and they said ‘Hello, Mum,’ and they got a little private moment of glory? Not so the directors! No one wants to see our ugly faces — not even the director of this show.”It was the right call, he conceded good-humoredly; directors “belong in the dark, we belong backstage.”What a missed opportunity, though, and not only because aficionados want to know what directors look like so they can spot them at the theater. The actor Lupita Nyong’o, who presented the award, wore a beautiful, curling design traced on her bare scalp — which would have made a perfect visual complement to the tattooed head of the director Jamie Lloyd, nominated for “A Doll’s House.” LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESBroadway came to slayThe playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and her husband, Christian Konopka, before the ceremony.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMyles Frost won his first Tony Award last year for his Broadway debut as Michael Jackson in the musical “MJ.”Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressThe carpet was fuchsia this year, and the backdrop had the feel of lush foliage. Then came the Broadway stars, parading a sea of pinks, blues and golds. Pink it was for the “Topdog/Underdog” playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and last year’s best actor in a musical winner, Myles Frost, who made his shirtless look work. The comedian and writer Amber Ruffin, who co-wrote the book for “Some Like It Hot,” and the “Kimberly Akimbo” best actress winner, Victoria Clark, opted for strapless gowns in shades of blue, as did the “Some Like It Hot” Tony-winner J. Harrison Ghee, who looked radiant with a dramatic collar, long gloves and a neck bedazzled in necklaces. MADISON MALONE KIRCHER and MINJU PAKIs that a punchline in your pocket?Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, riffing as they presented an award at the Tonys.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNo one turns to the Tonys for scripted banter. The lack of comebacks and skits, a necessary sacrifice to the writers’ strike, meant that the ceremony — impossibly — ended on time. But while a skilled improviser like the “Freestyle Love Supreme” alum Utkarsh Ambudkar could easily ad-lib a laugh line (he introduced himself as Marcia Gay Harden), other presenters floundered when invited to supply their own material. Even a gifted clown like Nathan Lane struggled, first with an “is it hot in here” riff and then with a groaner comparing the United Palace, a former “Wonder Theater” movie palace, to “Beyoncé’s screening room.” ALEXIS SOLOSKI More