Girls still wanna have fun — and win Tonys in the process.
Kinky Boots composer and 1980s rock star Cyndi Lauper was honored for best score at the 67th annual Tony Awards on Sunday evening, one of four trophies the musical picked up during the night.
"I can't say I wasn't practicing in front of the shower curtain for a couple days for this speech," Lauper said. "All right, I gotta thank my mom for sharing all that wonderful music. I wrecked all her Broadway musicals when I was a kid, the cast albums. That's how I learned how to sing, and I want to thank her for sharing the music with me.
"And I want to thank Harvey Fierstein for calling me up. I'm so glad I was done with the dishes and I answered the phone."
Boots' Jerry Mitchell was honored for choreography, John Shivers won for best sound design, and the honor for best orchestrations went to Stephen Oremus, who spoke about seeing Lauper perform in 1984, when he was 13: "It blows my mind to this day knowing that I collaborate with her."
Matilda the Musical had three wins: first-time nominee Gabriel Ebert for featured actor in a musical, Rob Howell for scenic design and Dennis Kelly for best book of the musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's story of a 5-year-old girl who discovers she has telekinetic abilities.
It was the Matilda creative team who "trusted and allowed me to step into their immaculate vision with my crazy alligator-skin shoes," Ebert said. "To be in this room with these paragons of men, I'm so honored and humbled and grateful and slightly freaked out."
Andrea Martin of Pippin hoisted the Tony for featured actress in a musical, and Diane Paulus picked up the trophy for best director of a musical. She dedicated the secondPippin win to her family: "To my parents who gave me the best gift a daughter could ever hope for: the encouragement to do what you want with your life, which for me was the theater, and I can only hope to be as good a mother to my two daughters, Natalie and Katharine, who are at home watching. This is for you, you are my joy."
Pam McKinnon won for best director of a play for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, her second consecutive nomination and first Tony. She gave a shout-out to playwright Edward Albee "for his fantastic play and for giving my career a shape, for giving my career a spine."
The Assembled Parties star Judith Light received the award for featured actress in a play, her second in a row — she also won last year for Other Desert Cities.
"I want to thank every woman that I am in this category nominated with. You have made this a celebration, not a competition," Light said.
She also thanked "all of you in this community for your discipline and your devotion and your dedication. You lift your culture with your dedication and your artistry. You inspire me and I cannot tell you how grateful I am to be a part of you and call you my family."
A two-time Tony nominee, Courtney B. Vance won featured actor in a play for his role in Nora Ephron's posthumous Lucky Guy.
"Mommy, this one's for you. Which way do I go?" Vance said.
Broadway veteran William Ivey Long won best costume design of a musical for his work on Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella, while Ann Roth was awarded for her costumes for the play The Nance, a tragicomic study of a gay burlesque performer.The Nance also won for sound design (Leon Rothenberg) and scenic design (John Lee Beatty).
In her speech, Roth saluted the show's star, a nominee for leading actor: "I don't know if a man can be a muse, but Nathan Lane is my main guy. I think he's the best actor in the whole wide world. I mean it."
Boots, about a cross-dressing entertainer who helps a struggling owner of a shoe factory, is nominated for best musical alongside Bring It On: The Musical, A Christmas Story, The Musical and Matilda the Musical.
The musical Pippin is up for best revival against Annie, The Mystery of Edwin Droodand Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella.
In the play categories, two-time Oscar winner and Lucky Guy star Tom Hanks goes for his first Tony in the lead-actor category against fellow screen stars Lane and David Hyde Pierce (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike), Cicely Tyson is nominated for leading actress in a play for The Trip to Bountiful and Tony Shalhoub is in the featured-actor race for Golden Boy, one of its eight nominations.
Golden Boy is also up for the best revival along with Orphans, The Trip to Bountifuland Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? while Lucky Guy,Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, The Testament of Mary and The Assembled Parties will compete for top play.
In a pre-show ceremony hosted by Jane Krakowski and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, lifetime achievement awards were given to Bernard Gersten, the 90-year-old executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater since 1985; Paul Libin, president of Circle in the Square Theatre School; and Ming Cho Lee, a Chinese-born American theatrical set designer and a longtime professor at the Yale School of Drama.
"I share this Tony Award with everyone who made it possible," Libin said.
"It takes a lifetime to get from there to here," Gersten said in his acceptance speech, in which he also thanked his wife, daughters and four grandchildren. "This beloved family has been my lifetime achievement."
Lee joked that he holds "the unbroken record of being a total failure in Broadway theater. I have more flaws than anyone can count.
"I never thought I'd be 82," he added, "and here I am. Old age is not for sissies."
(Source: USAtoday)
Latest-celebrities-gossip.blogspot.com is supported by Ozealglasses.
0 Yorumlar