6 takeaways from the 2022 Tony Awards

Jackel Spivey (center) plays Usher in a rare episode that won Best Music at the 2022 Tony Awards.

The 75th Annual Tony Awards marked the first full season of Broadway after the outbreak stopped. Several award shows were scheduled to open in 2020, until theaters unexpectedly closed for a year and a half.

One of the producers of The Lehman Trilogy, in his acceptance speech for Best Play, said that "between the fourth and fifth editions, there were 577 days".

However, these Tony Awards didn't just reveal how tough the COVID virus is in the industry. Tourists did not beg to return. Instead, the show was surprisingly warm and welcoming, thanks in large part to its host, Ariana Debus.

Here are the six things that surprised me when I watched the Tony Awards Sunday night:

1. Let Ariana Debus host it all.

DeBose, who won an Academy Award for his role in Steven Spielberg's West Side Story, provided a key lesson in how to host an award show, or indeed any show. She was playful and playful, posing with the audience and sitting on Andrew Garfield's lap. She was moving and shedding tears as she talked about her acting guide. She was honest and kindly commented on racial disparities in the acting industry. (“I feel like the Great White Road has become more of a title than a guide,” he said.)

Most importantly, she was engaged. He has not run awards like the Hollywood Improv; He wasn't competing for laughter or attention with anyone else on stage. Instead, it was if he took his hand from the audience warmly and invited us into his living room, so we could watch the show together. It looks like he was having a good time.

In the end, she said, "She's back on Broadway, baby, and she's waiting for you!" We believed it.

2. Tony included! Except when they are not.

Wow, for a while it seemed like this year's Tony winners would be almost exclusively white. Much of the show focused on welcoming everyone to the stage, the nominees varied, but in the end the winners... they weren't.

In the background of The Tonys, it sounded like the new musical A Strange Loop, about a gay black man in distress, which ended the night with 11 nominations and no awards. Best Music Director, Best Music, Best Landscape Design, Best Lighting Design? All of these went to other shows. The Tony Awards have spent some time bragging that L Morgan Lee from A Strange Loop is the first transgender artist to be nominated for a Tony Award. But when the crisis came, Best Leading Actress in a Musical went to Patti Lupone for her work with the company.

But then it turned around. A Strange Loop won Best Book (which it almost earned, winning a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020) and it's awesome! It also won the Best Music Award.

Other winners were people of color, including Felicia Rashad for Skeleton Crew, Miles Frost for MJ, and Joaquina Kalukango for Paradise Square (who received a standing ovation, the only one of the night, for her moving performance at the awards ceremony).

But the big winner of the evening was the United Kingdom. Winners Simon Russell Beale, Sam Mendes, Marian Elliott, Toby Marlowe, Lucy Moss, Bunny Christie, S. Devlin, Gabriella Slade, John Clark, Ben Bauer...all Brits.

3. Shout for students (and get ready, swing, theater

The theme for tonight was a deep gratitude to the people who didn't celebrate and who kept the show going, especially when the big names came up with COVID. Ariana Debus herself has stated that she started her career on Broadway as an alternative; He noted that student Mallory Maidick, who sang several new SIX songs at the Tony Awards, received a warning hours before proceeding. Other winners, such as Jesse Tyler Ferguson, thanked the students who stepped aside and waved their speeches. In addition, the director of the Paradise Square Theater was introduced to the cameras. And 150 Broadway COVID safety directors received tickets to the awards ceremony: they waved to the TV audience from the balcony.

Quick note: it is often assumed that whoever takes on the role of the actor is the surrogate. But the students play in the group and then play the main roles if necessary; Reserves are the performers waiting behind the scenes in case an actor can't keep up; Swinging covers many group roles.

4. Jennifer Hudson has an EGOT

Hudson had already won an Emmy, a Grammy, and an Oscar, and tonight he won a Tony. She is listed as one of several co-producers of A Strange Loop, which she joined once she moved to Broadway. She is the seventeenth of the EGOT rank, and the second is black.

5. Dana H finally got the recognition she deserves

Dana H, which closed last November, was so little known that hosts mispronounce it. (George Takei calls her Diana and Josh Lucas calls her Donna H.) But it was an unusual and horrific sight. Playwright Lucas Hanath collected recordings of his mother telling the story of her kidnapping while her son was in college, then actress Deirdre O'Connell lip synced with the tape. O'Connell is lonely on stage most of the time.

Playwright Mikhail Viksel took home the award for best sound design, which seemed like an "appropriate" moment, as the entire play was based on sound.

But unexpectedly, O'Connell, who faced the likes of Mary Louise Parker and Ruth Negga, won Tony. Speaking in his speech, he said, "If you need a cue from the universe, make weird art, here it is."

6. Everyone misses Stephen Sondheim

Even before the Tony Awards, there was a feeling the company could win Best Revival because its music and lyrics were written by Stephen Sondheim, who died on November 26 last year. she did.

But Sondheim was also celebrated in a beautiful tribute that caught a video of him talking to Bernadette Peters singing "Children Will Hear" from the 1987 Broadway musical In the Woods. He's nostalgic, but not intoxicated, thanks to these Sondheim videos on arts education. Like the rest of the award ceremony, it was held outdoors to attract the audience.

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