Rylance honoured as best featured actor
NEW YORK — Hugh Jackman kicked off the Tony Awards Sunday night with a bounce, hopping up and down like a kangaroo during his opening number as he made his way to the Radio City Music Hall stage.
The bearded Australian, back as host Sunday after a nine-year absence, greeted many of the night’s featured performers as he bounded past them backstage. He then joined the cast of the musical After Midnight for a rousing rendition of It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got that Swing).
The first award of the night was for best featured actor in a play and it went to Mark Rylance, who won his third Tony for playing the countess Olivia in Twelfth Night. Rylance, who previously won for Jerusalem and Boeing-Boeing, was also nominated for best lead actor honours for his evil title character in Richard III.
The best featured actress in a musical Tony went to Lena Hall in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, playing a woman who dresses as a man and plays Neil Patrick Harris’ boyfriend. Hall wished her dad a happy birthday and gave a shout-out to her soonto-be-born niece. “Friendship is magic,” she said.
Darko Tresnjak won for directing the musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder and thanked his mother, a skydiver during the Second World War, now too frail to be there. Kenny Leon won his first Tony for directing the revival of A Raisin in the Sun. He thanked, among other, his star Denzel Washington, and the women in his life. He even managed to plug his next work, Holler If Ya Hear Me.
Jackman lost none of his style, affability and humour since he last hosted.
Stars helping present awards included Bradley Cooper, Kevin Bacon, Clint Eastwood, Leighton Meester, Kenneth Branagh, Kate Mara, Emmy Rossum, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Zachary Quinto.
Some Hollywood royalty who showed up onstage this season like Washington, Daniel Radcliffe, James Franco and Rachel Weisz didn’t win nominations.
Some 870 Tony voters — members of professional groups such as the Wing, the League, Actors’ Equity Association, the Dramatists Guild and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society — decided the final 26 competitive awards. Only Broadway shows that opened in the 12 months ending April 24 were eligible.
A music-heavy lineup included all the best new musical nominees — Aladdin, After Midnight, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder — and some overlooked ones, including Rocky, Bullets Over Broadway, and If/Then.
After Midnight, a musical celebrating Duke Ellington’s years at the Cotton Club nightclub, was the first to be featured with Patti Labelle, Gladys Knight and Fantasia singing On the Sunny Side of the Street and then the group number.
Three revivals — Les Miserables, Violet and Cabaret — were also featured. Wicked, which is celebrating a decade on Broadway, had its current Glinda and Elphaba sing For Good, and there were songs from two shows that have yet to arrive: Sting was to perform from his musical The Last Ship and Jennifer Hudson was to sing from Finding Neverland, the musical about Peter Pan.
This year, Broadway producers have a reason to party. The season’s box offices hit a record total gross of $1.27 billion — up from $1.13 billion the previous season — and attendance was up 5.6 per cent to 12.2 million.