‘Kinky Boots’ and ‘Vanya’ Win Top Tonys
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Neil Patrick Harris, the host of the Tony Awards show at Radio City Music Hall, performed with cast members of “Kinky Boots” during the opening number on Sunday night. More Photos »
The crowd-pleasing Broadway show “Kinky Boots” pulled off an upset victory as best musical at the Tony Awards on Sunday night, edging out the onetime front-runner, “Matilda the Musical,” while also scoring wins for Billy Porter’s lead performance and Cyndi Lauper’s music and lyrics in her Broadway debut as a composer.
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‘Kinky Boots’ and ‘Vanya’ Take Top Tonys
Dave Itzkoff and Charles Isherwood live blogged the 67th annual Tony Awards. Live commentary, ballot updates, photos from the show and the red carpet can be found here.
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Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Neil Patrick Harris hosted the Tony Awards on Sunday. More Photos »
The unusually fierce head-to-head competition in 11 categories between the sunny “Kinky Boots,” about a drag queen who helps save a struggling shoe factory, and the darker “Matilda,” about a young girl battling against cruel adults, dominated the night — though the musical revival of “Pippin” also proved to be a major force. That show earned four Tonys — including best revival of a musical and two prizes for its actresses — as did the critically acclaimed “Matilda.” “Kinky Boots” ended up with six.
The Tonys for plays were spread relatively widely among six comedies and dramas, with the bittersweet family satire “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” winning for best play — the first Tony in the playwright Christopher Durang’s decades-long career. The Tom Hanks vehicle “Lucky Guy,” however, one of the season’s biggest hits, was denied the biggest prizes.
It was a history-making night for female artists, and a huge one for African-American actors. Ms. Lauper became the first woman to win the Tony for music and lyrics solo; in the past other women have shared the award with male writing partners. And it was only the second time that two women won in both best-director categories: Diane Paulus for “Pippin” and Pam MacKinnon for the revival of Edward Albee’s drama “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” which also won for best play revival.
Meanwhile, at a time when only 15 to 20 percent of actors on Broadway are black, half of the major acting awards went to African-Americans. Cicely Tyson, at age 88, won her first Tony for best actress in a play as a neglected mother in “The Trip to Bountiful”; Patina Miller, best actress in a musical as the Leading Player in “Pippin;” Mr. Porter, best actor in a musical as the drag queen Lola in “Kinky Boots”; and Courtney B. Vance, best featured actor in a play as a newspaper editor in “Lucky Guy.”
In Ms. Miller’s case, it was also the first time that a woman and a man have won a Tony for playing the same role, according to a spokesman for “Pippin.” Ben Vereen won the Tony in 1973 as the Leading Player in Bob Fosse’s original production of the musical.
The longest standing ovation of the night went to Ms. Tyson, the oldest person to ever win a Tony, as she stepped gingerly to the Radio City Music Hall stage in a striking, shoulder-to-foot ruffled purple dress.
“It’s been 30 years since I stood onstage, and I really didn’t think it would happen again in my lifetime,” Ms. Tyson said of her role in “Bountiful,” a mixed-race production in which she plays a character conceived for white actresses. “Except I had this burning desire to do just one more — one more great role. I didn’t want to be greedy. I just wanted one more.”
Mr. Porter, whose two-decade career in New York theater has sputtered at times, credited the “Kinky Boots” director, Jerry Mitchell, for “reaching back and lifting up an old friend.” And Mr. Vance thanked his wife, the actress Angela Bassett, for urging him to return to the stage in “Lucky Guy” to appear opposite Mr. Hanks’s tabloid columnist character.
The biggest surprise of the night was the loss by Mr. Hanks, a two-time Academy Award winner making his Broadway debut in “Lucky Guy,” for best actor in the play. That honor went to Tracy Letts for his acclaimed performance as George in “Virginia Woolf” — a win that seemed to surprise even Mr. Letts, who looked stunned at first.
“It’s overwhelming,” said Mr. Letts, who is also the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of “August: Osage County.” He went on to thank his confederates in his hometown — “all the actors in Chicago and in storefront theaters.”
The best-musical win for “Kinky Boots” was not unexpected — a wide cross-section of Tony voters said in interviews that they were supporting the show for its vibrant spirit — but still a bit of a shock for the producers and artists on “Matilda,” which set a record in London for winning the most Olivier Awards (the Tony equivalent) and which received the best reviews of any musical this season. (The young American actor Gabriel Ebert won for his supporting performance as Matilda’s scurrilous father, Mr. Wormwood.)
Ms. Lauper was visibly emotional as she climbed the steps to the stage in tears.
“I can’t say I wasn’t practicing in front of the shower curtain for a couple days for this speech,”she said, going on to thank her mother for introducing her to Broadway cast recordings as a child, and Harvey Fierstein — the “Kinky Boots” book writer — for asking her out of the blue to join the creative team.
“I’m so glad I was done with the dishes and answered the phone,” she said.
Mr. Durang, in accepting the award for “Vanya,” also thanked his mother as he recalled writing his first play in second grade in 1958.
“It’s been a long road, but I’m very happy to be here,” said Mr. Durang, who appeared onstage with a cane — he has been recovering for many months from a fall — but otherwise looked hale.
In featured actress races, Judith Light earned her second consecutive Tony as a world-class kvetch in the play “The Assembled Parties,” while Andrea Martin won as an unexpectedly acrobatic grandmother in “Pippin.”
Ms. Light became the rare performer to win a Tony two years in a row: She took the trophy on Sunday in the same category she won in 2012 for “Other Desert Cities.” (Ms. Light, who returned to theater after a long career in television on “Who’s the Boss?” and “Ugly Betty,” was also nominated in that category in 2011 for “Lombardi.”) Other repeat winners include Stephen Spinella in both parts of “Angels in America” (best featured actor in 1993 and best actor in 1994).
Ms. Paulus, who had been nominated earlier for her Tony-winning revivals of “Hair” and “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” hailed the “Pippin” composer Stephen Schwartz as a “treasure to the American musical theater,” and paid particular thanks to the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, where she is artistic director and where “Pippin” began last fall. She gave a shoutout to the “incredible Boston audiences” who saw “Pippin” there and thanked her board for supporting her forays on Broadway.
One of the toughest losses of the night — three of them, actually — befell the lighting designer Kenneth Posner: He was nominated for “Kinky Boots,” “Pippin” and “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” but saw the award go to Hugh Vanstone of “Matilda.” One consolation: Mr. Posner won the Tony in 2007 for “The Coast of Utopia.”
The Tonys ceremony opened with a breathless number led by the host, Neil Patrick Harris, who leapt through a hoop (a stunt from “Pippin”) and was hoisted aloft by cheerleaders (from “Bring It On: The Musical”) as he promised that the Tonys would “make it bigger” to celebrate the show’s return to Radio City Music Hall after two years at the smaller Beacon Theater.
He poked fun at Broadway marketing to families by noting all the musicals with children and teenagers in the casts: “They’re the reason this whole season seems to look like Chuck E. Cheese’s.” Among the dozens of Broadway performers in the number was a tuxedoed Mike Tyson, who had a one-man show last summer, and backed up Mr. Harris with “It’s bigger!” and “Go, Neil, go!”
Mr. Tyson was great fodder for Mr. Harris the entire night, as the host would appear periodically onstage with his latest Tyson joke: “Mike Tyson just gave three of the four Matildas face tattoos” and “You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Mike Tyson in a pair of kinky boots.”
Tony Awards for lifetime achievement were presented to Bernard Gersten, the departing executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater since 1985; Paul Libin, a producer and the owner of the Circle in the Square Theater, one of Broadway’s 40 houses; and Ming Cho Lee, a set designer who won a Tony in 1983 for the play “K2.” The playwright Larry Kramer (“The Normal Heart”) also won a special humanitarian award.
Only Broadway shows are eligible for Tonys, which are chosen by a pool of 868 voters — a mix of theater producers, directors, designers, actors and tour operators, some of whom have financial and personal interests in the outcomes. Ten musicals and plays won at least one Tony, out of 38 eligible shows.
‘Kinky Boots’ and ‘Vanya’ Win Top Tonys - NYTimes.com
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