This year’s winners feature several Broadway veterans, including Patti LuPone, who received her third Tony Award for her ferocious performance as an alcoholic married friend of the longtime single protagonist in “Company”; and Phylicia Rashad, winning a second Tony for playing a factory worker in Skeleton Crew. Among other performers who have received a Tony Award: Joaquina Kalukango, for her starring role as a 19th-century New York City tavern owner in “Paradise Square”; Matt Doyle, who played a groom with an odd case of wedding day anxiety in “Company,” and Deirdre O’Connell, who won for his remarkable lip-syncing while playing the part. a kidnap victim in the play”Dana H.”
“I really want this little award to be a passport for those who are wondering, ‘Should I try to create something that works on Broadway or something that can help me win it? the Tony award, or should I create that weird art that’s haunting me, that scares me, that I don’t know how to make, that I don’t know of anyone in the whole world Will the world understand? ‘” O’Connell said. “Please let me, standing here, be a small sign to you from the universe to create strange works of art.”
“A Strange Loop” tells the story of a Broadway opener named Usher who is trying to write a musical about a Broadway opener trying to write a musical; His thoughts, many of them self-critical, are portrayed by six performers, each appearing in multiple guises. The musical begins its life Off Broadway, with Produced in 2019 at Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73 Productions. After winning the Pulitzer, it had another production before Broadway at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington, DC, as Jackson continued to polish the show in preparation for this year’s commercial production on Broadway.
“Six” and “MJ,” while not succeeding in the six-stage race for best new musical, have racked up some big wins.
“Six” received a Tony Award for best score in the first minutes of the ceremony. Its music and lyrics were written by two young British artists, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, who came up with the idea while undergraduate students at Cambridge University, and who was discovered by a commercial producer after the first run of the buzz building at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The musical’s costume designer, Gabriella Slade, also won a Tony for her Tudor-style contemporary club outfits.
“MJ” has also won major awards, including for the lead performance by Myles Frost, a 22-year-old in his first professional theatrical role, and for choreography that delights audiences. author of Christopher Wheeldon, who also directed the musical.
