The
feel-good musical "Kinky Boots," with songs by pop star and Broadway
newcomer Cyndi Lauper, won a leading six 2013 Tony Awards on Sunday,
including best musical, best score and best leading man.
Christopher Durang's comical "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike"
won the best play Tony. "Matilda the Musical" and "Pippin" won four
awards and two other shows - "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "The
Nance" - shared three awards each.
Lauper, who wrote the hit "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," was part of
an impressive group of women who took top honors. Diane Paulus and Pam
MacKinnon both won for directing - a rare time women have won directing
Tonys for both a musical and a play in the same year. (It also happened
most recently at the 1998 Tonys.)
"Kinky Boots" also won for choreography and two technical awards, and Billy Porter won for leading man in a musical.
Porter beat "Kinky Boots" co-star Stark Sands and told him from the
stage: "You are my rock, my sword, my shield. Your grace gives me
presence. I share this award with you. I'm gonna keep it at my house!
But I share it with you."
Durang, whose other works include the play "Beyond Therapy," was a
Tony nominee for "A History of the American Film" and his "Miss
Witherspoon" was a Pulitzer Prize nominee in 2006.
Paulus won her first Tony for directing the crackling, high-energy
revival of the musical "Pippin," which also earned the best revival
honor and helped Patina Miller earn a best leading actress trophy. The
win caps a whirlwind few years for the Carnegie Mellon University
graduate, who was nominated for back-to-back Tonys for her first roles
on Broadway.
MacKinnon won for directing the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?," a year after earning her first nomination for helming
"Clybourne Park." Her revival of Edward Albee's story of marital strife
won the best play revival and earned playwright and actor Tracy Letts
his first acting Tony, which prompted an upset beating of Tom Hanks.
"The greatest job on Earth. We are the ones who say it to their faces, and we have a unique responsibility," Letts said.
Andrea Martin, 66, who won as featured actress in a musical, plays
Pippin's grandmother and sings the music hall favorite "No Time at All,"
stuns audiences nightly by doing jaw-dropping stunts that would make
someone a fraction of her age blanch.
The Tonys were broadcast live by CBS from Radio City Music Hall. Neil
Patrick Harris was back for his fourth turn as emcee and leads a show
featuring talented children and pulse-pounding musical numbers.
The big, opening number started with Harris simply holding a guitar
in a pub like "Once" but quickly morphed into a flashy razzle-dazzle
number that showcased performers from almost a dozen musicals - and even
ex-boxer Mike Tyson dancing. Harris sang "It's bigger! Tonight it's
bigger," jumped through a hoop, vanished from a box and promised a
"truly legendary show" before glitter guns went off.
Courtney B. Vance won for best featured actor in a play for
portraying a newspaper editor opposite Tom Hanks in "Lucky Guy." He
dedicated his award to his mother.
Judith Light won her second featured actress in a play Tony in two
years, cementing the former TV star of "One Life to Live" and "Who's the
Boss?" as a Broadway star.
She followed up her win last year as a wise-cracking alcoholic aunt
in "Other Desert Cities" with the role of a wry mother in "The Assembled
Parties," in which she goes from about 53 to 73 over the play's two
acts.
"I want to thank every woman that I am in this category nominated
with: you have made this a celebration, not a competition," she said.
Gabriel Ebert of "Matilda the Musical" won as best featured actor in a
musical. He thanked his four Matildas and his parents, stooping down to
speak into the microphone.
Cicely Tyson, 88, won the best leading actress in a play honors for
the revival of "The Trip to Bountiful," the show's only award on the
night. It was the actress' first time back on Broadway in three decades.
"`Please wrap it up,' it says. Well, that's exactly what you did with
me: You wrapped me up in your arms after 30 years," she said.
Lauper and Harvey Fierstein have given "Kinky Boots" - originally a
2005 film about a failing shoe factory that turns to making drag queen
boots - a fun score and a touching book that celebrates diversity.
"I want to thank Harvey Fierstein for calling me up. I'm so glad I
was done with the dishes and answered the phone," Lauper said.
The import "Matilda the Musical" is a witty, dark musical adaptation
of the novel by Roald Dahl that is still running in London. Its leading
woman is actually a man - Bertie Carver, who plays the evil headmistress
Miss Trunchbull.
Others musicals hoping for awards include the acrobatic "Bring It On:
The Musical," the hit-heavy "Motown the Musical" and "A Christmas
Story, the Musical," adapted from the beloved holiday movie. Top musical
revivals include an updated "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella" and a
cracking revival of "Pippin" with a circus feel.
Some of the telecast highlights included the stunning kids on
Broadway - the orphans in "Annie," the actor Raymond Luke Jr. as a
pre-teen Michael Jackson in "Motown the Musical," and the dancing tots
in "A Christmas Story, the Musical" - especially the young tap dancer
wizard Luke Spring - plus the four young women in "Matilda."
Harris got his face licked by the dog playing Sandy in "Annie," made
fun of Tyson and Shia LaBeouf, who left a revival of "Orphans" before
the show opened and then tweeted about it, and joined with "Smash" star
Megan Hilty, "Go On" star Laura Benanti and former "The Book of Mormon"
star Andrew Rannells to skewer theater stars who seek fame on TV with a
twisted version of "What I Did For Love" from "A Chorus Line."
Kenneth Posner, surprisingly, did not take home the award for best lighting design of a musical.
Of the four shows in the category, Posner had been nominated for
three - "Kinky Boots, "Pippin" and "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella."
But he lost to his only competitor, Hugh Vanstone, who designed the
lighting for "Matilda the Musical."
Presenters included Jesse Eisenberg, Jon Cryer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anna
Kendrick, Zachary Quinto, Sally Field, Audra McDonald, Alan Cumming and
Jesse Tyler Ferguson.
The Tony winners were picked by 868 Tony voters, including members of
The Broadway League, American Theatre Wing, Actors' Equity, the
Dramatists Guild, Stage Directors and
Choreographers Society as well as critics from the New York Drama Critics Circle.
The awards telecast faced competition for attention on Sunday night
from an episode of "Mad Men" on AMC and Game 2 of the NBA finals between
San Antonio and Miami on ABC. Last year's telecast was seen by 6
million viewers, down significantly from 2011's 6.9 million.
The awards cap a somewhat grim financial season on Broadway in which
the total box office take was flat and the number of ticket buyers
slipped 6 percent. Both numbers were blamed in part on Superstorm Sandy,
but high ticket prices and the lack of long term audience growth has
many worried.
Upset about the comments, the rapper responded at Ebro (also via Twitter @PapooseOnline), stating that he well aware of the performance. But, they continued to argue... with no conclusion on the matter. Monday morning (June 3), during Hot 97's "The Realness," the situation was somewhat cleared up with Peter Rosenberg explaining that, before the show, he got a call from Kendrick Lamar's people, who told him they would be bringing out Papoose. Supposedly, Rosenberg didn't tell Ebro, which is where the confusion came in. (Baller Status)
