‘Potter,’ ‘Band’s Visit’ are big winners
NEW YORK — The acclaimed and sprawling British import “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and the shimmering, American, grownup musical “The Band’s Visit” were the big winners at the Tony Awards on Sunday.
“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 seven — best direction, orchestration, sound design, best book of a musical, lighting and featured actor Ari’el Stachel, who gave a heartfelt speech about his past.
“For so many years of my life I pretended I was not a Middle Eastern person,” he said, addressing his parents in the audience. He thanked the creators of the show “for being courageous for telling a small story about Arabs and Israelis getting along at a time that we need that more than ever.”
The show’s director, David Cromer, said the musical is also about loneliness and despair, and asked everyone to reach out to anyone for whom “despair is overwhelming.”
The two-part spectacle “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” captured six, including best play, book, lighting, sound design, orchestrations and director John Tiffany, who asked the crowd to sing “Happy Birthday” to his boyfriend. They obliged.
Andrew Garfield won 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” opposite Lane. He won his third, for best featured actor in a play.