Tony Awards (Theater Awards)

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    Tony Awards Unforgettable Looks: Cole Escola, Nicole Scherzinger, and More

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    On Sunday night, some of the biggest names in theater gathered at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan to celebrate the Tony Awards.From Hollywood royalty like George Clooney to Broadway legends like Audra McDonald — neither of whom won in their categories — there was no shortage of stars at this year’s awards.There was also no shortage of fashion. On the red carpet, there were sartorial references to past Tony winners and nods to current roles, all conveyed through cloth, beadwork and color.And, of course, it wouldn’t be live theater without at least a few costume changes.The event’s host, Cynthia Erivo, slipped in and out of at least a half-dozen outfits before the curtain closed as she belted out a parody version of a “Dreamgirls” song in a purple sequined number. That was another homage, lest you forget, as Ms. Erivo won a Tony in 2016 for her star turn in “The Color Purple.” Showbiz — it isn’t always subtle!Of all the stars who graced the seats of Radio City on Sunday, here are a dozen whose attire stood out among the ensemble cast.Cole Escola: Most ’90s Nostalgia!Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressWe 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

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      Nicole Scherzinger and Other Tony Winners Party After the Awards

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      On Sunday night, after all the Tonys had been handed out, the comedian Alex Edelman took the stage during the official after-party at the Museum of Modern Art.“One day more,” he sang, waving his arms, trying to recruit others to join him behind the microphone in a rousing one-man rendition of a song from the musical “Les Misérables.”“Another day, another destiny … ”Mr. Edelman, who received a special Tony Award last year for his one-man show “Just for Us,” slowly gathered his army of fellow performers: Betsy Wolfe, Jessica Vosk and Casey Likes. Soon, more than half a dozen stars were belting not just their own parts, but every part.A cabaret moment is a familiar scene for any theater party, even on a night celebrating an unusual Broadway season. It has been a banner year on the district’s 41 stages, thanks in large part to a flurry of shows with screen stars on the marquee: “Good Night, and Good Luck” (George Clooney), “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (Sarah Snook, who won a Tony Award for playing 26 different characters), “Othello” (Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal) and “Glengarry Glen Ross” (Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr and Kieran Culkin), among others.Many actors were making their Broadway debut.“I’m so lucky to get to do it,” Sadie Sink, best known for her role as the tomboy Max in Netflix’s science fiction drama series “Stranger Things,” said at the MoMA party, celebrating her first nomination.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

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      ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Wins the Tony for Best Musical

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      The musical, about a budding romance between two outdated robots, won six Tony Awards on Sunday night.“Maybe Happy Ending,” an original musical that is outwardly about a budding romance between two outdated robots, but fundamentally about contemporary themes of social isolation and the transformative power of connection, won a stunning victory as best musical at the Tony Awards Sunday night.The show’s triumph defied all the odds — it has a mystifying title, a subject matter that some find off-putting, and zero brand recognition in an industry often dominated by well-known intellectual property and well-liked celebrities. But “Maybe Happy Ending” has gradually won over audiences since opening last fall, and overtook several better-known, and better-funded, titles to win the award that traditionally has the biggest financial impact on the shows that receive it.The story concerns two discarded “helperbots” — humanoid robots previously used as personal assistants — living across the hall from one another at a robot retirement home in a near-future Seoul. The helperbots, played by Darren Criss and Helen J Shen, strike up a friendship and embark on a road trip, racing against their own expiring shelf lives as they seek meaning and magic, at first from the outside world, but then from each other.The show is written by two Broadway newbies, Will Aronson, who was born in the United States, and Hue Park, who was born in South Korea; it is directed by Michael Arden, a Broadway regular who won a Tony Award in 2023 for directing “Parade.”The score has a midcentury pop and jazz sound. The cast is remarkably small for a Broadway musical, with just four onstage actors. But the production feels big, because it has an unusually elaborate and high-tech set, designed by Dane Laffrey with video design by George Reeve, that is one of the most complex and sophisticated seen on Broadway.“Maybe Happy Ending” had a long and nontraditional path to Broadway. It had productions in South Korea and Japan, as well as a prepandemic run at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, before making its way to New York, where it opened in November to unanimously positive reviews. In The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green called it “astonishing,” writing, “Under cover of sci-fi whimsy, it sneaks in a totally original human heartbreaker.”The show began performances on Broadway last October and continues with an open-ended run at the Belasco Theater. A North American tour is scheduled to begin in Baltimore in the fall of 2026.The Broadway run is being produced by Jeffrey Richards and Hunter Arnold; it was capitalized for $16 million, and it is not yet clear whether it will recoup those capitalization costs, although the Tony will likely help. More

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      Cole Escola Wins the Tony for Best Actor in a Play

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      In “Oh, Mary!,” Escola plays a drunken, melodramatic Mary Todd Lincoln who yearns to return to cabaret.Cole Escola won the Tony for best actor in a play for their performance in the outlandish, ahistoric comedy “Oh, Mary!” This is Escola’s Broadway debut, and first Tony.Escola, who is nonbinary, plays a self-indulgent, scheming Mary Todd Lincoln, who aspires to become a chanteuse. As a result, her boredom — which includes pining to perform her “madcap medleys” of yesteryear — drives her to all kinds of antics. (With Cole prancing around in a hoop skirt, hilarity ensues.)The New York Times chief theater critic, Jesse Green, called “Oh, Mary!,” which Escola also wrote, “one of the best crafted and most exactingly directed Broadway comedies in years.”Directed by Sam Pinkleton, the show opened at the Lyceum Theater last summer after a sold-out and twice-extended Off Broadway run. The play has also been extended multiple times since it transferred to Broadway. (It was the first show in the Lyceum’s 121-year history to gross more than $1 million in a single week.)Escola, known for their roles in Hulu’s “Difficult People,” TBS’s “Search Party” and sketches on YouTube, came up through New York’s cabaret and alt comedy scenes. The premise for “Oh, Mary!” began with an idea, which Escola sat on for more than 12 years: “What if Abraham Lincoln’s assassination wasn’t such a bad thing for Mary Todd?”The Tony Awards, like the Oscars, use gendered categories for performers, and Escola agreed to be considered eligible for an award as an actor. Escola isn’t the first nonbinary actor to win a Tony Award.In 2023, J. Harrison Ghee became the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony for best leading actor in a musical, for “Some Like It Hot,” and Alex Newell became the first out nonbinary performer to win for best featured actor in a musical for “Shucked.” More

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      Lin-Manuel Miranda and Original ‘Hamilton’ Cast Reunited for a Tonys Medley

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      Marking the 10th anniversary of the show’s opening, the creator and cast reunited to perform “My Shot,” “The Schuyler Sisters” and other notable songs.The cast of “Hamilton” on Sunday returned to the room where it happened, at least metaphorically.To mark the 10th anniversary of the show’s opening, 28 members of the original cast — the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, along with the other stars, ensemble members, swings and standbys — gathered onstage at Radio City Music Hall and performed a medley of some of the musical’s biggest songs: “Non-Stop,” “My Shot,” “The Schuyler Sisters,” “Guns and Ships,” “You’ll Be Back,” “Yorktown,” “The Room Where It Happens” and “History Has Its Eyes on You.”They dressed not in the show’s period costumes, but in an array of high-fashion evening wear — all black with a few character-driven accents (Lafayette got a Frenchman’s beret; Burr a dueler’s cape; and King George the one splash of color: royal red).They didn’t say a word, but Cynthia Erivo, this year’s Tony Awards host and in 2016 the only musical performer to win a Tony for any show other than “Hamilton,” hailed the production.“Hamilton reinvigorated the American theater and changed not just Broadway, but how Americans views their own history,” Erivo said, before adding wryly, “or so I’m told.”“Hamilton” opened on Broadway on Aug. 6, 2015. The following spring, it was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards, and then, in a Tonys ceremony at the Beacon Theater, it won 11 prizes, including best musical. (The event was memorable for many reasons — among them, it took place hours after the deadly Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida, which led the “Hamilton” cast to drop the use of muskets in its production number, and prompted Miranda to give his “love is love” acceptance speech.)The show quickly became the biggest phenomenon Broadway had seen in quite some time, and in the decade since, it has only gotten bigger, spinning off touring companies, streaming a live-capture film on Disney+, grossing about $3 billion in North America, and still going strong.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

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      How the ‘Purpose’ Writer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Cast Juggled Revisions

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      Ahead of the Tony Awards, the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the acclaimed ensemble reflected on the challenges of balancing the many script revisions.Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Tony-nominated play “Purpose,” set in the Chicago home of a family of Black upper-class civil rights leaders, seems, at first, to be inspired by the political drama involving the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s clan. But those assumptions are upended by the play’s highly original take on the themes of sacrifice, succession, asexuality and spirituality.The family saga, which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama, showcases even more of the vivid language, spitfire dialogue and sweeping sense of American history that garnered Jacobs-Jenkins a Tony Award last year for “Appropriate.” And like that production, this play’s ensemble has been nominated for multiple acting awards — five in all.Originally staged in 2023 at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, and directed by Phylicia Rashad, “Purpose” was revised, refined and expanded throughout its Broadway preview period. Jacobs-Jenkins readily admits that this process is not unusual for him, much less the writers he has studied intently, like August Wilson or Tennessee Williams. On a recent afternoon, however, a conversation about his collaboration with the cast turned lively with Jacobs-Jenkins calling it “family therapy.”We were sitting on the Helen Hayes Theater stage — at the dining-room table where the play’s most memorable fight plays out — with the show’s six cast members, Harry Lennix, who plays the patriarch and preacher Solomon Jasper; LaTanya Richardson Jackson, as the pragmatic and perspicacious matriarch Claudine Jasper; Jon Michael Hill, as the narrator and the monastic younger son, Nazareth; Glenn Davis, as the beguiling older son, Junior; Alana Arenas, as his windstorm of a wife, Morgan; and Kara Young, who plays Nazareth’s naïve friend Aziza. (Arenas, Davis and Hill are all the Steppenwolf members around whom Jacobs-Jenkins originally conceived of the play.)Purpose Broadway“This is so naked,” Jacobs-Jenkins said, “because I never had this conversation in front of you all before. I have all this in my individual journal.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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

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      ‘Suffs,’ the Tony-Winning Broadway Musical, Will Close Jan. 5

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      The musical, created by Shaina Taub, announced that it will play its final performance on Jan. 5 and start a national tour next fall.“Suffs,” a new musical about the American women’s suffrage movement, has a lot going for it: Its producers include Hillary Rodham Clinton and Malala Yousafzai, it won Tony Awards for its score and its book, and its audiences seemed energized by how the show’s themes resonated with the candidacy of Kamala Harris.But the show has struggled to sell enough tickets to defray its running costs, and on Friday night the producers announced that it would close on Jan. 5. At the time of its closing, it will have had 24 previews and 301 regular performances. The show announced plans for a national tour, which will begin in Seattle in September 2025.The musical, which takes place in the early 20th century, depicts two generations of women eager to win the right to vote, but divided over how best to do that. Shaina Taub, a singer-songwriter, wrote the book and score and stars as Alice Paul, an influential suffragist. It was directed by Leigh Silverman.The show began previews on March 26 and opened on April 18 at the Music Box Theater. A pre-Broadway production at the Public Theater received reviews that were mixed; the reviews of the Broadway production were somewhat better. Writing in The New York Times, the chief theater critic Jesse Green called it “a good show and good for the world” but said “to be great, a musical (like a great movement) must grab you by the throat. ‘Suffs’ too often settles for holding up signs.”The show’s grosses have been middling — during the week that ended Oct. 6, it grossed $679,589, which is generally not sufficient to sustain a large-cast musical.“Suffs” is the sixth musical to announce closing dates since early May, following “Lempicka,” “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” “The Who’s Tommy,” “The Notebook” and “Water for Elephants.” Broadway is always a difficult industry, and most shows fail, but the odds of success are particularly long now because production costs have risen, audience size has fallen, and a high volume of shows are competing for attention.“Suffs,” with Jill Furman and Rachel Sussman as lead producers, was capitalized for $19 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That money has not been recouped. More

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      Ron Simons, Who Brought Black Stories to Broadway, Dies at 63

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      He left a career in tech and found success as a producer, winning four Tonys. His mission: staging productions about underrepresented communities.Ron Simons, who left his job as an executive at Microsoft to pursue his dream of acting but later found his métier as a theatrical producer — one of the relatively few Black ones on Broadway — and won four Tony Awards, died on June 12. He was 63.His death was announced by Simonsays Entertainment, his production company. A spokesman declined to say where he died or provide the cause of death.Mr. Simons had been acting for about a decade, but was unhappy with the roles he was being offered, when he started producing in 2009. He believed that his experience as an actor and businessman would serve him well as a producer.“I’ve found that many businesspeople can handle the question of financial viability but can’t judge a good story, so as an artist I also have that area of expertise,” he told DC Theater Arts in 2020. “Plus, even if it’s a good story, it has to be crafted to take it to the stage, so the leadership must understand how to get it there.”Success came quickly. He was a producer of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” starring Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis, which won the Tony for best revival of a musical in 2012. Mr. Simons won a second Tony a year later for best play for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” a comedy by Christopher Durang about three middle-aged siblings.Audra McDonald, center, in the musical “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” which Mr. Simons produced.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFrom left David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielsen and Sigourney Weaver in the Tony-winning “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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

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      ‘The Outsiders,’ a Broadway Adaptation of the Classic Novel, Wins the Tony for Best Musical

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      “The Outsiders,” a muscular stage adaptation of the classic young adult novel about class conflict between a pair of high school gangs, won the coveted Tony Award for best musical on Sunday.The show, which has been gaining steam at the box office, is set in Tulsa, Okla., in 1967, and is based not only on the best-selling 1967 novel by S.E. Hinton, but also on Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film adaptation.The musical is gritty, bloody and relentlessly youthful — the creative team eliminated virtually all adult characters, and the show features some of the most effectively vivid violence seen on a Broadway stage, using a mix of fight choreography, strobe-like lighting and percussive sound design to evoke the brutality pervading these adolescent lives. The show is saturated with water and dirt, but also with poetry and literature, as its orphaned protagonist turns to reading and writing to escape the circumstances of his childhood.The show received mixed reviews from critics; in The New York Times, the chief theater critic, Jesse Green, wrote that “many stunning things are happening on the stage of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater — and from the sobs I heard the other night, in the audience, too.” But, he said, “structural problems mean its achievements don’t stick.”Nonetheless, in recent weeks the show has been playing to full houses, fueled in part by healthy interest from young patrons, and it has been grossing about $1 million a week, which is solid but not spectacular for a show of this scale. The Tony Award should provide the show with a box office boost.“The Outsiders” features a score from the country duo Jamestown Revival in collaboration with the Broadway musical artist Justin Levine; the musical’s book is by the playwright Adam Rapp, also in collaboration with Levine. It is directed by Danya Taymor — a niece of “The Lion King” director Julie Taymor, she is helming a major musical for the first time — and choreographed by the brothers Rick and Jeff Kuperman.The musical began its production life with a run last year at the nonprofit La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. The Broadway production, which opened in April, has a huge producing team led by the Araca Group, established by two brothers, Matthew and Michael Rego, and their childhood friend Hank Unger. The show was capitalized for $22 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.To win the best musical Tony, “The Outsiders” bested “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Illinoise,” “Suffs” and “Water for Elephants.”A cast recording of “The Outsiders” was released in May by Sony Masterworks Broadway. And the musical’s producers have announced plans to start a North American tour in the fall of 2025, opening at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center. More