Moulin Rouge! The Musical dominated the musical categories at the 74th Tony Awards, a long-delayed, abbreviated contest honouring the best of the 2019/2020 Broadway season, cut short by the Coronavirus pandemic.
The lavish stage version of the Baz Luhrmann 2001 hit movie Moulin Rouge! won the Best Musical prize, beating out just two other nominees, Jagged Little Pill and Tina – The Tina Turner Musical.
Nine other awards also went to Moulin Rouge!, including nods to: director Alex Timbers; featured actor Danny Burstein; choreographer Sonya Tayeh; set designer Derek McLane; orchestrators Justin Levine, Matt Stine, Katie Kresek and Charlie Rosen; sound designer Peter Hylenski; and lighting designer Justin Townend. Catherine Zuber’s costumes also won, making Zuber’s eighth Tony, a record-breaking number.
In one of the more unusual contests, Moulin’s Aaron Tveit won for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. He was the only nominee. Still, he was no shoo-in; under Tony rules he had to receive affirmation from at least 60% of the ballots.
Among other prizes, Jagged little Pill picked up two: Lauren Patten for featured actress and Diablo Cody for the show’s book. The Best Leading Actress in a Musical went to Tina’s Adrienne Warren.
The awards struck another of its unusual notes when Best Original Score prize went to a straight play, A Christmas Carol with music by Christopher Nightingale. None of the three nominated musicals featured an original score.
There were a number of non-competitive awards. Special Tonys went to two concert-type Broadway productions: American Utopia and Freestyle Love Supreme. One also went to the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, a group looking for more racial inclusion and equality.
Director/choreographer Graciela Danielle was honoured for lifetime achievement in the theatre.
Perhaps most significantly, the Tony Awards show, usually a three-hour-plus special televised nationally by the CBS network, was reformatted. Its first two hours were streamed exclusively on Paramount+, a subscription service affiliated with CBS. During those two hours, hosted by Audra McDonald, most of the awards were handed out, leaving three major awards – Best Musical, Best Play and Best Play Revival – for the final half. (No show was eligible for the Best Musical Revival prize.)
Those last two hours, broadcast nationally by CBS television and hosted by Leslie Odom Jr., were primarily designed, however, as a concert, studded with marquee names, of Broadway music. The message was loud and clear: Broadway Is Back after an 18-month pandemic shutdown – and it wants – needs – its audiences back. Interspersed were a number of calls for greater racial inclusivity in all aspects of theatre-making.
Ron Cohen
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