Tony Awards history was made on Sunday when Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee became the first non-binary people to win Tony Awards for acting as the Broadway community moved forward despite a Hollywood writers’ strike that left no script to the most important night of the theater.
Thank you for humanity. Thank you for my amazing company that raised me every day,” said Ghee, winner of the Lead Actor in a Musical award for “Some Like It Hot,” the adaptation of the classic drag comedy film.
The soulful Ghee wowed audiences with his voice and dance skills, playing a Chicago musician, on the run from gangsters, who tries on a dress and transforms.
Newell, who plays Lulu, an independent whiskey distiller who doesn’t need anyone in «Shucked,» has wowed audiences with her signature number, «Independently Owned.»
“Thank you for having me, Broadway. I shouldn’t be up here as a fat, non-binary, little black queer baby from Massachusetts. And to anyone who thinks he can’t do it, I’m going to stare him in the face that he can do anything he sets his mind to,” Newell said to a standing ovation as he won the award for best featured actor in a musical.
A total of 26 Tony Awards were delivered Sunday for a season that featured 40 new productions: 15 musicals, 24 plays and a special engagement during the first full post-pandemic season.
«Kimberly Akimbo,» an intimate, funny and sad musical, bested its glitzier rivals on Sunday to win best musical.
Victoria Clark, as the show’s headliner, added a second Tony to her trophy case, having won one in 2005 for «The Light in the Piazza.»
Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” which explores Jewish identity with an intergenerational story, won best play and also garnered awards for director Patrick Marber, with the costumes of actor Brandon Uranowitz and Brigitte Reiffenstuel.
Stoppard, the Czech-British playwright who now has five Tony Awards for best play, joked that he won his first in 1968, saying that playwrights «were becoming progressively devalued on the food chain» despite being «the sharp ends of the inverted pyramid».
Host Ariana DeBose opened a blank script backstage before dancing and bounded her way to open the main show with a frenetic opening number that gave an electric jolt to what is usually an upbeat, confident and friendly night. . The writers’ strike made the celebrated awards show honoring the best of musical theater and plays confident in spontaneity in a new venue far from the theater district.
Before the pre-show began, DeBose revealed to the audience the only words that would be seen on the teleprompter: «Please break up.» Later that night, practically out of breath after his speechless performance, he thanked labor organizers for allowing a compromise.
The winners demonstrated their solidarity with the striking writers either on stage or on the red carpet with pins. Miriam Silverman, who won the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play for “Sidney Brustein’s The Sign in the Window,” ended her speech with: “My parents raised me to believe in the power of work and that workers are compensated and treated fairly. We stand with the WGA in solidarity!”
Jodie Comer, the three-time Emmy-nominated star of «Killing Eve,» won the award for Lead Actress in a Play for her Broadway debut, the one-man show «Prima Facie,» which illustrates how today’s laws fail horribly. in regards to sexuality. assault cases.
Sean Hayes won the award for Lead Actor in a Play for «Goodnight Oscar,» which dramatizes a long night’s journey into the scarred psyche of the late pianist Oscar Levant, now unknown but once a star. of TV.
“This has to be the first time an Oscar has won a Tony,” Hayes quipped. (It is not.)
The show took place at the United Palace Theater in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, a new location for the ceremony, many miles from Times Square and the theater district.