NEW YORK (AP) — No script? No problem!
There was plenty of uncertainty in the run-up to this year’s Tony Awards, which at one point seemed unlikely to happen at all because of the ongoing Hollywood writer’s strike.
But the ceremony went off without a hitch on Sunday night. The event was scriptless, to honor a compromise with striking writers, but chock-full of high-spirited Broadway performances drawing raucous cheers from an audience clearly thrilled just to be there at all.
It was a night of triumph for the small-scale but huge-hearted musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” about a teenager with a rare aging disease, but also a night notable for inclusion: Two nonbinary performers, Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee, made history by winning their respective acting categories.
The ceremony also touched on the specter of antisemitism in very different places: World War II Europe, with best play winner “Leopoldstadt,” and early 20th-century America, with “Parade,” winner for best musical revival.