Tony Awards (Theater Awards)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Sarah Paulson Wins Her First Tony for Best Actress in a Play

      by

      Sarah Paulson won the Tony Award for best actress in a play for her performance in the family drama “Appropriate.” This is Paulson’s first Tony.An Emmy winner who made her name in television, Paulson, in her first stage role in a decade, appears in the Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play as a sharp-tongued elder sister who is reunited with her siblings to deal with their deceased father’s estate.“Appropriate,” which won best revival of a play on Sunday, became one of the buzziest shows of the year, partly because of Paulson’s star power.The role takes endurance. Set at the family’s home in Arkansas, the play is largely propelled by the reactionary anger of Paulson’s character, Toni Lafayette, who is seeking to protect her father’s legacy from mounting evidence that he harbored racist convictions. Her approach involves searing insults aimed at her siblings, played by Michael Esper and Corey Stoll.Thanking Jacobs-Jenkins in her acceptance speech, Paulson said: “I will never be able to convey my gratitude to you for trusting me, for letting me hold the hand of Toni Lafayette, a woman you have written who makes no apology, who isn’t begging to be liked or approved of but does hope to be seen.”Though Paulson has found fame in television series like “American Horror Story” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” — winning an Emmy for her performance as the prosecutor Marcia Clark — her career has roots in theater. And she was exposed to Broadway early on. After she moved to New York City as a child, her mother worked as a waitress at Sardi’s, a Broadway haunt that just so happens to be next door to the theater where “Appropriate” opened in December.Paulson’s first job out of high school was as an understudy on Broadway for Amy Ryan in “The Sisters Rosensweig.” (Ryan, who starred in the play “Doubt,” was also nominated in the leading actress category this year.)The nominees also included two movie stars: Jessica Lange for “Mother Play” and Rachel McAdams for “Mary Jane.” Betsy Aidem was nominated for “Prayer for the French Republic.”Paulson’s win carried echoes of the Tony Awards in 2005, when her girlfriend at the time, the actress Cherry Jones, won the award for her performance in the original production of “Doubt.” Paulson, who was seated beside her, kissed Jones ahead of her acceptance speech, coming out publicly for the first time as being in a relationship with a woman.On Sunday, when she won the award, Paulson kissed her longtime partner, the actress Holland Taylor. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Stereophonic’ Wins the Tony Award for Best New Play

      by

      “Stereophonic,” which eavesdrops on a folk-rock quintet whose members make up and break up as they lay down tracks for what will become a smash LP, won the Tony Award for best new play on Sunday. Its 13 Tony nominations are the most a play has ever received.It was the fifth award of the night for “Stereophonic.” Daniel Aukin won for best direction of a play; Will Brill, who plays the band’s bassist, for best featured actor in a play; David Zinn, for best scenic design of a play; and Ryan Rumery for best sound design of a play.A meditation on the joy and torture of creative collaboration, “Stereophonic” — written by David Adjmi and directed by Daniel Aukin, with songs by Will Butler — is a transporting work of naturalistic drama and a star-making break for its cast. Set over the course of a year, first in a recording studio in Sausalito, Calif., and later in Los Angeles, it embraces the technical aspects of recording.“I took that as a challenge,” Adjmi told The New York Times. “So much of it, the banality of the process, is part of what’s so beautiful about it, the granularity of it.”“Stereophonic,” which opened in April at the Golden Theater, is a critical hit. “The play is a staggering achievement and already feels like a must-see American classic,” Naveen Kumar wrote in a review for The Times.Remarkably, many of the cast members had barely played an instrument before rehearsals began. And none of them had played professionally. But after an unusually rigorous rehearsal period, they became a band, supporting one another even through bum notes and fitful tempo.“We all hit wrong notes all the time,” Sarah Pidgeon, a star of the show, said. “But it still works because it’s real.”The other nominees for best new play were “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Mary Jane,” “Mother Play” and “Prayer for the French Republic.” More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ Was a Flop in 1981. Now It’s a Tony Winner.

      by

      “Merrily We Roll Along,” long considered one of the most storied flops in Broadway history, found redemption on Sunday when it won the Tony Award for best musical revival, belatedly establishing it in the pantheon of Stephen Sondheim masterpieces.The award, although widely expected, nonetheless represents a miraculous rehabilitation for a troubled title. The original production, in 1981, closed just 12 days after opening, dogged by terrible reviews and reports of audience walkouts. The current production — which features a major movie star, Daniel Radcliffe, alongside two popular Broadway performers, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez — has been a profitable hit met with near-universal acclaim, sold-out houses and high average ticket prices.“Merrily,” about the implosion of a three-way friendship over a 20-year period, features music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by George Furth. It is based on a 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and the original production was directed by Hal Prince. The debacle was notorious enough that it became the subject of a 2016 documentary, “Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened.”But the show lived on and has been repeatedly reworked in the decades since because, despite its difficult birth, a cadre of passionate fans has long found it profound and, with a widely admired score, worthy of reconsideration.Much has changed, in addition to rewrites, to transform the show from failure to success. The show unfolds in reverse chronological order, a device that was less familiar to audiences in the early 1980s than it is now. To portray characters who start the show in their 40s and end it in their 20s, the original cast was made up of adolescents and young adults. Later productions have gone the other way, generally relying on actors who are older, which has proved more emotionally effective for theatergoers.The current production’s starry, appealing cast, who also performed in a 2022 Off Broadway run at New York Theater Workshop, helped make the show a must-see even before audiences discovered that they liked the story and the songs and found the show both affecting and artful.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Chita Rivera’s Life and Career Are Honored at the Tonys

      by

      Chita Rivera, who dazzled Broadway audiences for nearly seven decades, died in January at the age of 91. She “was a Broadway star as long as anyone — and maybe longer,” our chief theater critic, Jesse Green, wrote in an appraisal. Rivera, whose father was born in Puerto Rico, was best known for starring as Anita in “West Side Story” and Velma Kelly in “Chicago,” but had a long list of credits to her name. (She detailed her life in career in “Chita: A Memoir,” written with Patrick Pacheco, in 2023.)The New York Times has extensively covered Rivera’s life and career. Here is a look at some of our recent work remembering her. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Daniel Radcliffe Wins His First Tony for ‘Merrily We Roll Along’

      by

      Daniel Radcliffe is one of the world’s most famous actors. But he’s never won a major award. Until now.Radcliffe won the Tony Award for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical, for his work in the smash hit revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.” The show is Radcliffe’s fifth on Broadway, but the first for which he was even nominated for a Tony, despite mostly admiring reviews all along the way.Radcliffe, 34, will forever be known as the actor who played the title wizard in all eight “Harry Potter” films. But even before shooting of those films concluded, he had begun making the adventurous choices — onstage and onscreen — that have helped him accomplish the rare transition from child star to respected adult actor.In “Merrily,” Radcliffe plays Charley Kringas, a lyricist-turned-playwright whose long friendship and collaboration with a talented composer (a character named Franklin Shepard, played by Jonathan Groff) has imploded.Radcliffe’s enormous star power is a significant factor in the success of this production, which promises to forever alter how “Merrily” is viewed because the show’s original production, in 1981, was a storied flop.Radcliffe has been with the production since 2022, when he played the same role, with the same co-stars, during an Off Broadway run at the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop. The Broadway production opened last October, and is scheduled to conclude on July 7.He has repeatedly shown a willingness to try new things. Radcliffe first arrived on Broadway in 2008, starring in a revival of “Equus” that required him to appear nude; his next role, in a 2011 revival of the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” required him to sing.He has since returned to Broadway to star in two more plays, “The Cripple of Inishmaan” in 2014 and “The Lifespan of a Fact” in 2018, and he also starred in an Off Broadway play, “Privacy,” in 2016 at the Public Theater.He has continued to make movies, many of them indie-ish projects including “Kill Your Darlings,” “Swiss Army Man” and “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.”In an interview last month, two days after being nominated for the Tony Award, Radcliffe said that he keeps returning to the stage “because I love it.”“There’s something thrilling about doing something that scares you, live, a bit, every night,” he said. “And just the connection with the audience — being in a room full of people and feeling them react to the story. We’re very lucky it’s such an emotional show: There’s a lot laughs, and there’s a lot of comedy, but you can also hear people being emotionally affected by it towards the end, and that’s a very rewarding thing to be a part of.” More

    • 75 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Tony Award Winners 2024: Updating List

      by

      The Tony Awards begin on Sunday at 8 p.m. E.T., live from Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater.Follow the latest live updates and photos from the Tony Awards.After a very crowded spring in which 18 Broadway shows opened in two months, theatergoers and actors alike can finally exhale — and celebrate.On Sunday night, the Tony Awards will hand out its annual honors at Lincoln Center during a ceremony hosted, for the third year, by the Oscar-winning actress Ariana DeBose. A handful of awards were presented during a preshow on Pluto TV before the main ceremony at 8 p.m. on CBS and Paramount+.This Broadway season — comprising plays and musicals that opened during the eligibility period between April 28, 2023, and April 25, 2024 — featured scores of screen actors who took to the stage. Daniel Radcliffe picked up his first Tony nomination for a revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” (his fifth Broadway show); Jeremy Strong is nominated for his role in “An Enemy of the People”; Rachel McAdams for “Mary Jane”; and Sarah Paulson for “Appropriate.”In a season packed with star-studded revivals and productions, 28 of the 36 eligible shows picked up at least one nomination, with “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Stereophonic” tied for the most at 13 each. Viewers can expect lively performances and musical numbers from “Cabaret,” “Water for Elephants” and “Illinoise,” among other acts from Tony-nominated shows.An updating list of winners is below.Best Book of a MusicalShaina Taub, “Suffs” (Read our feature.)Best Leading Actor in a PlayJeremy Strong, “An Enemy of the People” (Read our feature.)Best Featured Actor in a PlayWill Brill, “Stereophonic” (Read our review.)Best Scenic Design of a PlayDavid Zinn, “Stereophonic” (Read our feature.)Best Scenic Design of a MusicalTom Scutt, “Cabaret”Best Costume Design of a PlayDede Ayite, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” (Read our Behind the Scenes.)Best Costume Design of a MusicalLinda Cho, “The Great Gatsby”Best Lighting Design of a PlayJane Cox, “Appropriate”Best Lighting Design of a MusicalBrian MacDevitt and Hana S. Kim, “The Outsiders”Best Sound Design of a PlayRyan Rumery, “Stereophonic”Best Sound Design of a MusicalCody Spencer, “The Outsiders”Best ChoreographyJustin Peck, “Illinoise” (Read our feature.)Justin Peck won the Tony Award for best choreography for “Illinoise” during a preshow ceremony on Sunday night.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest OrchestrationsJonathan Tunick, “Merrily We Roll Along” (Read our feature.)Special Tony Award for Lifetime AchievementJack O’BrienGeorge C. Wolfe2024 Special Tony AwardAlex EdelmanAbe Jacob (Read our feature.)Nikiya Mathis (Read our feature.)Isabelle Stevenson AwardBilly PorterRegional Theater Tony AwardThe Wilma TheaterTony Award for Excellence in Theater EducationCJay Philip, Dance & BmoreTony Honors for Excellence in the TheaterWendall K. HarringtonDramatists Guild FoundationThe Samuel J. Friedman Health Center for the Performing ArtsColleen Jennings-RoggensackJudith O. RubinThe Wilma Theater More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      5 Ways This Year’s Tony Awards Reveal That Theater Is Changing

      by

      As Broadway prepares to celebrate the best of the season, our theater reporter explores what the nominations tell us about the industry and the art form.Tonight’s Tony Awards ceremony will celebrate the best work on Broadway. For those of us who spend a lot of time in and around theater, the event is also a prompt, encouraging us to reflect on what the current crop of shows tells us about how the industry and the art form are doing.Here are some things I’ve been thinking about as this awards season unfolded:Nonprofit theaters are struggling. They’re also developing the most-praised work.Short of money, nonprofit theaters around the country are staging fewer shows, shedding jobs, and in a few cases, closing. Some observers worry that the model that has sustained regional theater for the last half-century is broken.But, at the same time, this year’s Tony Awards tell an amazing success story: 100 percent of the nominees for best new musical, and 100 percent of the nominees for best new play, were developed at nonprofit theaters.Among plays, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Mary Jane,” and “Prayer for the French Republic” were all staged on Broadway by the nonprofit Manhattan Theater Club. (“Mary Jane” had an earlier Off Broadway run at another nonprofit, New York Theater Workshop.) “Stereophonic” was transferred to Broadway by commercial producers after an enthusiastically received Off Broadway run at the nonprofit Playwrights Horizons, while “Mother Play” opened directly on Broadway, presented by the nonprofit Second Stage Theater.Among musicals, “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Suffs” were first staged at the nonprofit Public Theater before being transferred to Broadway by commercial producers. “Water for Elephants” had a pre-Broadway run at the nonprofit Alliance Theater in Atlanta, and “The Outsiders” did the same at the nonprofit La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. “Illinoise,” a dance musical, had a particularly nonprofit nurturing: it was staged at Bard’s Fisher Center, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and the Park Avenue Armory before commercial producers took it to Broadway.The season was also a big one for American artists.Broadway often frets about the perceived advantages of British productions, which have historically received more government support, cost less to develop, and can benefit from the Anglophilia of some American theater fans. The last five winners of the best play Tony Award all transferred from London (though one of those, “The Inheritance,” was written by an American).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Ariana DeBose, Tonys Host, Just Might Be the Busiest Woman on Broadway

      by

      Back in New York City after filming a movie, the actress has been racing to shows while also rehearsing for Sunday night’s ceremony.“Baby,” Ariana DeBose confided, “you are always on.”DeBose, an Oscar winner and a longtime Broadway phenom, was speaking of herself, in the second person, last Saturday evening. Dressed in a beige ribbed tank, athletic shorts and chunky heeled boots, she was still glistening from a rehearsal for Sunday’s Tony Awards broadcast. “On” is an understatement: This will be her third time hosting the ceremony, and her first time producing and choreographing.“Why I did that, I’ll never know,” she said. “Dear lord, the Tonys is just one giant learning experience. You have to be humble.”Humble. And very busy. DeBose is 33 but still very much a theater kid. Her speech was fast, excitable, and when not vaping from a hot pink pen, she had a tendency to reach out to pat my arm or leg, an intimate form of emphasis. Soon, she would take herself out for a hurried plate of pasta before racing to an evening show. For the past two weeks, DeBose has been on a mission, however implausible, to see all of the nominated plays and musicals.Until the end of May, DeBose had been in Winnipeg, Manitoba, shooting an action film, “With Love.” She arrived in New York City the Saturday before Memorial Day and saw her first show that Sunday. On the day we spoke, a week before the broadcast, she had just three shows remaining. (One, “Water for Elephants,” she would see that night.) And this was in addition to arduous rehearsal days.DeBose has said that she will take a break as Tonys host, in large part because she hopes to return to Broadway. OK McCausland for The New York Times“These are opposite processes,” she said of hosting and spectating. “They’re very different disciplines, but you can’t host if you don’t know who’s involved. So to me, it’s a requirement.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More