NEW YORK — “Hadestown,” the brooding musical about the underworld, had a heavenly night at the Tony Awards, winning eight trophies Sunday, including best new musical and handing a rare win for a female director of a musical.
Playwright Jez Butterworth’s “The Ferryman” was crowned best play. In the four lead actor and actress categories, Bryan Cranston won his second acting Tony, but theater veterans Elaine May, Santino Fontana and Stephanie J. Block each won for the first time.
The crowd at Radio City Music Hall erupted when Ali Stroker made history as the first actor in a wheelchair to win a Tony. Stroker, paralyzed from the chest down due to a car crash when she was 2, won for featured actresses in a musical for her work in a dark revival of “Oklahoma!”
“This award is for every kid who is watching tonight who has a disability, who has a limitation or a challenge, who has been waiting to see themselves represented in this arena,” she said. “You are.”
Rachel Chavkin, the only woman to helm a new Broadway musical this season, won the Tony for best director of a musical for “Hadestown.” She became only the tenth woman to win as director of either a play or a musical on Broadway and told the crowd she was sorry to be such a rarity.
“There are so many women who are ready to go. There are so many people of color who are ready to go.” A lack of strides in embracing diversity on Broadway, she said, “is not a pipeline issue” but a lack of imagination.
Cranston seemed to tap into the vibe when he won the Tony for best leading man in a play award for his work as newscaster Howard Beale in a stage adaptation of “Network.”
“Finally, a straight old white man gets a break!” he joked. The star, who wore a blue ribbon on his suit to support reproductive rights, also dedicated his award to journalists who are in the line of fire. “The media is not the enemy of the people,” he said. “Demagoguery is the enemy of the people.”
The respect for women’s work got a boost when Butterworth, who asked the crowd to give his partner, actress Laura Donnelly, a round of applause for giving birth to their two children while working on the drama, handed his best play trophy to Donnelly.
The awards cap a season that showed Broadway is in good shape. The shows this season reported a record $1.8 billion in sales, up 7.8 percent from last season.
