NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — The Tony Awards are Sunday with a usual host and a pristine venue, Lincoln Middle’s David H. Koch Theater in New york. Right here’s a information on what to search for and what to anticipate.
Academy Award winner and Tony nominee Ariana DeBose, who hosted the final two ceremonies, returns this generation and can put together and choreograph the hole quantity. Alternative hosts who’ve carried out it a couple of instances come with Angela Lansbury, Hugh Jackman, Neil Patrick Harris and James Corden. DeBose was once praised for conserving last year’s show afloat with out a script throughout the Hollywood writers strike.
The 3-hour major telecast will wind on CBS and wave on Paramount+ foundation at 8 p.m. Jap, with a detached pre-show — the place some technical awards shall be passed out — on Pluto TV at 6:30 p.m. That pre-show — formally referred to as “The Tony Awards: Act One” — shall be hosted by way of Julianne Hough and Utkarsh Ambudkar.
Presenters come with Angelina Jolie, Nick Jonas, Idina Menzel, Ashley Terrain, Jim Parsons, Wendell Pierce, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Josh Gad, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Sean Hayes, Taraji P. Henson, Julianne Hough, Jennifer Hudson, Pete Townshend, Tamara Tunie, Adrienne Warren, Patrick Wilson, Anthony Ramos, Andrew Rannells and Jeffrey Wright.
The casts of pristine musicals and revivals shall be acting numbers and medleys hoping to change into TV audience into theatergoers. Eddie Redmayne would be the super-creepy emcee of “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”; Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe will carry out for “Merrily We Roll Along” and search for some circus thrills when the musical “Water for Elephants” will get its highlight. Alternative presentations acting come with “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Illinoise,” “Suffs,” “The Outsiders” and “The Who’s Tommy.” In a last-minute transfer, CBS made room for “Stereophonic,” the raved-about pristine play games with song by way of former Arcade Fire’s Will Butler.
Two shows with a leading 13 nominations each explore the origins of music — a piano prodigy’s coming-of-age in “Hell’s Kitchen” and the back-and-forth struggles to create an album in the play “Stereophonic.” They are competing in different categories, best new musical and best new play.
Taking a look to overcome “Hell’s Kitchen” are the musical “The Outsiders,” an adaptation of the beloved S. E. Hinton novel and the Francis Ford Coppola film; “Illinoise,” the dance-heavy, dialogue-less stage adaptation of Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 album “Illinois”; “Suffs,” based on the American suffragists of the early 20th century and “Water for Elephants,” which combines Sara Gruen’s 2006 bestseller with circus elements.
Hoping to knock down “Stereophonic” are “Mother Play,” Paula Vogel’s look at a mother and her kids spanning 1964 to the 21st century; “Mary Jane,” Amy Herzog’s humanistic portrait of a divorced mother of a young boy with severe health issues; “Prayer for the French Republic,” Joshua Harmon’s sprawling family comedy-drama that deals with Zionism, religious fervency and antisemitism; and “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” Jocelyn Bioh’s comedy about the lives of West African women working at a salon.
OK, but not great. This past season grossed a cumulative $1.54 billion, down 2.4% from the previous season. There were 12,287,708 admissions to Broadway, on par with the data from the prior season. But expenses keep going up so flat numbers don’t bode well.
Broadway hasn’t fully recovered since the pandemic. The total gross is down from the record-setting $1.8 billion during the 2018-2019 season, the last full season before COVID-19 hit, and attendance is down 17%, too. But the average ticket price for the season just ended was $125.27, about 2% lower that last season’s $128.43 — good news for consumers.
There were some impressive firsts, including “Here Lies Love” with Broadway’s first all-Filipino cast, as well as mostly Filipino producers, including singer H.E.R., comedian Jo Koy and Black Eyed Peas’ Apl.de.Ap. And seven openly autistic actors starred in “How to Dance in Ohio,” a primary for Broadway.
There are some coincidences, like that Huey Lewis & The Information songs are heard in each his jukebox reveal “The Heart of Rock and Roll” and an unconnected musical of “Back to the Future.” Rachel McAdams, who made a leap forward within the movie model of “The Notebook,” is nominated for the play “Mary Jane” as the the musical version of “The Notebook” is also up for awards. Plus, “The Wiz” and “Wicked” now share Broadway, and Nazis were in both “Cabaret” and a musical about artist Tamara de Lempicka.
“I am really excited by the bravery. I’m really excited that there are so many writers and directors and composers that are interested in exploring new corners of storytelling, new communities to talk about and new ways to look at the world and new ways to see theater,” says director Jessica Stone, who helmed the musical “Water for Elephants.”
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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
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Extra at the Tony Awards: https://apnews.com/hub/tony-awards
