Harry Potter play wins six accolades at Tony Awards
● Britain’s triumph at ceremony celebrating the best on Broadway
Harry Potter And The Cursed Child was a big winner at the Tony Awards.
The two-part spectacle captured six accolades, including best play, book, lighting, sound design, orchestrations and director for John Tiffany, who asked the crowd to sing Happy Birthday to his boyfriend.
The night also saw British actor Andrew Garfield win his first Tony, for best leading actor in a play, for playing a young gay man living with Aids in the sprawling, sevenhour revival Angels In America.
Garfield dedicated the win to the LGBTQ community, who he said fought and died for the right to love. He said the play is a rejection of bigotry, shame and oppression.
“We are all sacred and we all belong,” Garfield said.
He then referenced last week’s US Supreme Court decisionwhichruledinfavour of a baker’s right to deny a gay couple a wedding cake based on his beliefs.
“(Let’s) just bake a cake for everyone who wants a cake to be baked,” he said, to rousing applause.
Sunday night also saw Robert De Niro take to the stage to introduceaperformancefrom Bruce Springsteen, with an expletive directed at US President Donald Trump.
“I’m gonna say one thing. ‘F*** Trump’,” he said, which garnered him a sustained standing ovation from the crowd.
In other wins of the night, Glenda Jackson scooped a Tony Award for best actress in a play for her work in a revival of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women.
That show also yielded the featured actress win for Rosanne star Laurie Metcalf.
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and American actress Chita Rivera received honorary tributes, the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.
Thanking the audience, Lloyd Webber said: “I have to say, I am completely overwhelmed.”
He added: “What made me absolutely certain I wanted to be a musical theatre composer was the movie South Pacific. I devoured absolutely everything I could find by Rodg- ers and Hammerstein and all I wanted when I was ten years old was to be Richard Rodgers.
“I never dreamed that one day I, a Brit of all things, would be honoured with the same lifetime award that my idol won, by my peers and the true home of the musical, Broadway. “I’m absolutely humbled.” US musical The Band’s Visit was the other big winner.
The Band’s Visit, based on a 2007 Israeli film of the same name about an Egyptian band that goes to the wrong Israeli town, won ten statuettes including best musical, best direction and featured actor Ari’el Stachel.
newsdeskts@scotsman.com