2023 Tony Awards: The best moments from the show

Because the previous showbiz adage goes, the present should go on. And the 76th Tony Awards, arguably Broadway’s greatest evening, did certainly proceed Sunday — albeit unscripted — regardless of an ongoing writers’ strike that hung a query mark over the occasion for weeks.

The awards present, hosted by Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose at New York Metropolis’s United Palace, was a history-making affair, shining a highlight on a Broadway neighborhood nonetheless recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Leopoldstadt,” by legendary British playwright Tom Stoppard, was named finest play, profitable over a crowded discipline that included “Ain’t No Mo,” “The Value of Residing,” “Between Riverside and Loopy” and “Fats Ham,” the latter three of which all earned a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The generation-spanning Holocaust drama was impressed by the 85-year-old playwright’s discovery of his Jewish roots later in life. The manufacturing, which is slated to shut on Broadway subsequent month, was presupposed to play in Toronto earlier than its Broadway bow. That Canadian run, nevertheless, was cancelled because of the pandemic.

Along with the award for finest play, “Leopoldstadt” additionally collected trophies for route of a play (Patrick Marber), featured actor (Brandon Uranowitz) and costumes (Brigitte Reiffenstuel).

“Kimberly Akimbo,” the candy but tender present a few New Jersey teen who ages quickly as a consequence of a uncommon genetic dysfunction, was the evening’s winningest manufacturing. It was topped finest musical and likewise earned awards for finest rating (David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori), main actress (Victoria Clark, incomes the second Tony of her profession) and featured actress (Bonnie Milligan).

Lindsay-Abaire additionally gained the prize for finest e-book, beating out Canadian author David West Learn, who penned “& Juliet,” the crowd-pleasing jukebox musical that landed in Toronto final summer time.

This yr’s prizes have been unfold extensively. Among the many nominated performs and musicals, no manufacturing obtained greater than 5 awards. In all, the 26 aggressive awards have been handed out to a dozen exhibits.

“Lifetime of Pi,” a play primarily based on the bestselling novel by Canadian writer Yann Martel, gained three Tonys for scenic design (Tim Hatley and Andrzej Goulding), lighting (Tim Lutkin) and sound (Carolyn Downing). However regardless of profitable the Olivier Award for finest new play final yr, the manufacturing wasn’t nominated for that very same accolade on Broadway.

“Some Prefer it Scorching,” a musical adaptation of the 1959 Marilyn Monroe movie of the identical identify, headed into Tonys with a number one 13 nominations. It walked out on the finish of the night with 4 wins, together with for finest choreography (Casey Nicholaw), costumes (Gregg Barnes) and orchestrations (Charlie Rosen and Bryan Carter).

J. Harrison Ghee made historical past with Alex Newell, who each grew to become the primary brazenly non-binary individuals to win Tony Awards for appearing.

“For each trans, non-binary, gender nonconforming human, whoever was informed you couldn’t be seen, that is for you,” mentioned Ghee, who earned the award for his or her main efficiency within the splashy musical “Some Prefer it Scorching.”

“Thanks for the humanity. Thanks for my unimaginable firm who raised me up each single day,” they continued.

About 40 minutes earlier, Newell picked up a featured actor Tony for his or her roof-raising efficiency within the corn musical “Shucked.”

“Thanks for seeing me, Broadway,” mentioned Newell, who performs Lulu, an unbiased, don’t-need-no-man whiskey distiller. “I shouldn’t be up right here as a queer, non-binary, fats, Black little child from Massachusetts. And to anybody that thinks that they will’t do it, I’m going to look you useless in your face that you are able to do something you set your thoughts to.”

Within the play classes, “Killing Eve” star Jodie Comer gained the most effective main actress Tony for her lauded efficiency within the one-woman play “Prima Facie.”

Sean Hayes, in the meantime, garnered a number one actor award for his flip in “Good Night time, Oscar,” by which he performs American live performance pianist Oscar Levant.

“This has received to be the primary time an Oscar gained a Tony,” Hayes joked.

Among the many revivals, “Parade” — a dramatization of the trial, imprisonment and lynching of Jewish-American Leo Frank — gained the Tony for finest musical revival, beating “Camelot” and two Stephen Sondheim musicals, “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd.”

“‘Parade’ tells the story of a life that was reduce brief by the hands of the idea that one group of individuals is extra precious than one other and that they is likely to be extra deserving of justice,” mentioned director Michael Arden, who additionally gained a Tony for his staging of the 1998 musical. “This can be a perception that’s the core of antisemitism, white supremacy, homophobia and transphobia and intolerance of any variety. We should come collectively. We should battle this.”

Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog,” a play about sibling rivalry, inequality and society’s false guarantees, nabbed the Tony for finest revival of a play. A brand new manufacturing of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play will open in Toronto later this yr, produced by Canadian Stage.

Along with the aggressive awards, two Broadway icons have been bestowed with a particular Tony Award for lifetime achievement in a pre-show telecast hosted by Skylar Astin and Julianne Hough.

John Kander, the 96-year-old composer behind such landmark exhibits as “Chicago,” “Cabaret” and “The Scottsboro Boys” alongside Fred Ebb, was offered the award by Lin-Manuel Miranda, his collaborator on the 2023 finest musical nominee “New York, New York.”

Kander thanked his mother and father, his husband Albert Stephenson and music, which “has stayed my buddy by my total life and has promised to stay with me till the top.”

Jennifer Gray handed her father, “Cabaret” star Joel Gray, the opposite lifetime achievement Tony. “Being acknowledged by the theatre neighborhood is such a present as a result of it’s all the time been, subsequent to my youngsters, my best, most enduring love,” the actor mentioned.

DeBose, internet hosting the Tonys for the second yr in a row, persuasively led a suprsingly breezy and brisk present, chock-full of performances however wanting the standard scripted banter that usually bogs down the present.

DeBose’s dance-filled opening quantity started with a shot of a clean script backstage, a nod to the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike. Later, she defined how the present was allowed to proceed due to a compromise between the WGA and Tony organizers, which stipulated that the awards present needed to be performed unscripted.

“So to anybody who could have thought that final yr was a bit unhinged, to them, I say, ‘Darlings, buckle up.’” DeBose warned the viewers early on.

That the ceremony was allowed to proceed is little doubt a win for the Broadway neighborhood, which has nonetheless but to return to pre-pandemic ranges of attendance. The 2022-2023 season, the primary full season for the reason that pandemic, noticed 12.28 million viewers members, nonetheless notably down from 14.77 million within the 2018-2019 season.

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