Hadestown triumphs at Tonys

HADESTOWN, the brooding musical about the underworld, has reason to smile broadly — it’s the best new musical Tony Award winner and nabbed eight trophies on Sunday, including a rare win for a woman director of a musical.

Playwright Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman was crowned best play. Bryan Cranston, Elaine May, Santino Fontana and Stephanie J. Block all won leading actor and actress awards.

The crowd at Radio City Music Hall erupted when Ali Stroker made history as the first actor in a wheelchair to win a Tony Award. Stroker, paralysed from the chest down due to a car crash when she was 2, won for featured actresses in a musical for her work in a dark revival of Oklahoma! “This award is for every kid who is watching tonight who has a disability, who has a limitation or a challenge, who has been waiting to see themselves represented in this arena,” she said. “You are.”

Rachel Chavkin, the only woman to helm a new Broadway musical this season, won the Tony for best director of a musical for Hadestown. She told the crowd she was sorry to be such a rarity on Broadway.