Plenty of local talent showcased at Tony Awards
From Lupone to Lansbury, a look at which of this year’s winners have performed in Connecticut
It’s rare to find a Broadway talent who hasn’t worked at a Connecticut theater at one time or another. The state has more major regional theaters than any other. Not only have many shows moved to New York following tryouts or workshops in Connecticut, many New York theater talents like to work here between Broadway opportunities. With some of the best theater training programs in the country at Yale, Wesleyan, Uconn and the University of Hartford, a lot of careers started here.
Many names familiar to Connecticut theatergoers were heard on Sunday night’s 2022 Tony Awards broadcast. Some of the nominated writers, from Lynn Nottage to Paula Vogel to the late Thornton Wilder, nominated for the revival of his “The Skin of Our Teeth,” have taught at Yale. Some of the actors started out at theaters like Hartford Stage or the Long Wharf, or by doing readings at new-works labs like the Eugene O’neill Theater Center in Waterford.
Here are some of the local credits accrued by winners of the 2022 Tony Awards:
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play for the baseball drama “Take Me Out,” co-starred as one of the trouble-prone twins in Shakespeare’s “A Comedy of Errors” at Hartford Stage in 2000.
Patti Lupone, Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for “Company,” lives in South Kent, famously podcasting from her basement in the early months of COVID. Lupone has performed her concert act throughout the state, including at the Garde Arts Center and the Shubert Theater.
“Company” composer Stephen Sondheim lived in Roxbury and died last year at the age of 91. He was given a special tribute on the Tony’s broadcast, and “Company” won for Best Revival of a Musical. One of Sondheim’s first theater jobs was as an apprentice at the Westport Country Playhouse in the summer of 1950.
Christopher Wheeldon, Best Choreography winner for “MJ: The Musical,” hasn’t worked directly at any Connecticut theater, but his work has been seen here on tour. His Broadway hit “An American in Paris” toured to The Bushnell in 2016 and years later, after a COVID hiatus, to the Shubert Theater and the Waterbury Palace this season. Wheeldon also choreographed a piece in a Dance Theatre of Harlem concert at Connecticut College in 2018.
Phylicia Rashad, winner for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for “Skeleton Crew,” was at Hartford Stage in “Blues for an Alabama Sky” back in 1996. She has also worked in the state as a director, helming productions of “Fences” at the Long Wharf in 2014 and “A Raisin in the Sun” at Westport Playhouse in 2012. Rashad had been preparing to direct in Connecticut again when the Broadway “Skeleton Crew” opportunity arose. If the play Skeleton Crew sounds familiar, it’s because Westport Playhouse did its own production of it in 2019.
Simon Hale, winner for Best Orchestrations for the Bob Dylanbased musical “Girl from the North Country,” works primarily in Chicago but was part of the world-premiere production of “Stuck Elevator,” by New Haven playwright Aaron Jafferis and composer Byron Au Yong, presented by the International Festival of Arts & Ideas at the Long Wharf Theatre in 2013.
Montana Levi Blanco, winner for Best Costume Design of a Play for “The Skin of Our Teeth,” is a graduate of the Yale (now Geffen) School of Drama, he first met his frequent
collaborator and “Skin of Our Teeth” director Lileana Blain-cruz. The play was written by the legendary playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder, who lived in Hamden from 1929 until his death in 1975. Blanco did memorable work at Yale for the musical “The Visit” in 2013 and the premiere of Kate Tarker’s “Thunderbodies,” a play which was later seen in New York, in 2014. He and Cruz returned to New Haven in 2019 for the sensational Greek tragedy update “Girls” by Branden Jacobs-jenkins at the Yale Repertory Theatre. Besides “The Skin of Our Teeth,” Blanco’s costumes were seen on Broadway this year in “The Strange Loop,” which won the Tony for Best Musical on Sunday.
Matt Doyle, winner of Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical for “Company,” appeared in readings of “Picnic at Hanging Rock” and “Bogwog” at the Eugene O’neill Theater Center in Waterford in 2009. These are among the actor’s earliest credits.
The team of Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, winners of Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre for “Six,” worked on their new musical “Diva” at Goodspeed Musicals’ Johnny Mercer Grove, a retreat for musical creators, in 2019 after they’d already established themselves with “Six,” which premiered at Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival in 2017, and “Hot Gay Time Machine.” Marlow and Moss appeared as guests on an episode of the Goodspeed’s “In the (Home) Office” podcast last year after “Six” was on its way to becoming a Broadway success.
James C. Nicola, who received a Special Tony Award for having led
the New York Theatre Workshop for the past 34 years, (and is retiring at the end of this month, is a Hartford native. Among the shows originally nurtured by the new-works-friendly New York Theatre Workshop that have toured through Connecticut recently include “Rent” and “What the Constitution Means to Me.”
You could have seen 2022 Lifetime Achievement Tony winner Angela Lansbury 45 years ago at two different Connecticut theaters. First, in the premiere of two Edward Albee plays, “Counting the Ways” and “Listening” at Hartford Stage in January of 1977. Then, a few months later, starring in a tour of “Gypsy” at the Oakdale Theater in Wallingford. That’s the sort of versatility and prolificity that makes one a legend.
The Court Theatre, which won a Tony for Best Regional Theater, is known to Connecticut audiences. The inventive scaled-down Court productions of the musicals “Man of La Mancha” and “Carousel” traveled to the Long Wharf Theatre in 2007 and ‘08 respectively.
Among the many dearly departed theater folk acknowledged in the Tony’s “In Memoriam” segment was Tony Walton, the internationally renowned theater designer. He designed the sets and costumes for a lavish revival of “The Boyfriend” directed by his ex-wife Julie Andrews at the Goodspeed in 2005. That show eventually toured the country. Some, like Arlene Dahl who died at age 96, appeared in pre-broadway try-out shows at the Shubert in New Haven. One of Dahl’s efforts, “Questionable Ladies” in 1946 closed on the road and never made it to Broadway.