Broadway honours its best
Once, Clybourne Park take top Tony Awards
Irish love story Once won the Tony Award for best musical on Broadway Sunday while Clybourne Park, a satire on race relations, won the best play.
Broadway newcomer Nina Arianda won best actress for her sexy performance in Venus In Fur” while British comedian James Corden upset favourite Philip Seymour Hoffman to win best actor in a leading role in a play for his comic turn in One Man, Two Guv’nors.
Best musical revival went to The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess while “Death of a Salesman was named best play revival.
Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical was awarded to Steve Kazee for Once, while the Tony for best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical went to Audra McDonald for her leading role in The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.
Host Neil Patrick Harris performed a song-anddance number at the start of the awards show, televised live from New York’s Beacon Theatre, with nominees including Nina Arianda and Judith Light hitting the red carpet along with Hugh Jackman, who was to receive a special honorary Tony.
Once, the intimate stage musical adapted from the 2006 independent film of the same name, also won awards for best book, orchestrations, sound design and best direction for John Tiffany in his first Tony victory.
“Once is a story about when people believe in each other, they can move on in life, and so many people have believed in this project,” Tiffany said in accepting the award.
Esteemed film and stage director Mike Nichols picked up a Tony for his direction of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Nichols has won six Tony Awards for best direction of a play, more than anyone else. He also has been honoured twice as a producer.
“You see before you a happy man,” Nichols, 80, said, thanking Miller’s daughter Rebecca Miller for permission to stage the play. He also thanked Philip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield as “a cast straight from heaven” and said the play, which premiered in 1949, “gets truer as time goes by.”
Judith Light of Other Desert Cities won for best actress in a featured role in a play.
I feel like I am the luckiest girl in Ne w York tonight, Light, who first found fame in 1980s TV sitcom Who’s The Boss, sai d in accepting the award.
Other winners included Judy Kaye and Michael McGrath for their featured roles in the comedy musical Nice Work If You Can Get It, and Christian Borle for his hilarious turn in the Peter Pan prequel, Peter and the Starcatcher.