NEW YORK — New location? No script? No rehearsal? No sweat.
Welcome to the 2023 Tony Awards, a present with an additional jolt of electrical energy this time as a result of Hollywood writers’ strike.
Unpredictability has been inserted into what’s normally an upbeat, protected and chummy evening. The strike has left Broadway’s largest evening with out a script, in a brand new venue removed from the theater district.
A 1 1/2-hour pre-show on Pluto TV from 6:30-8 p.m. Eastern, hosted by Julianne Hough and Skylar Astin, will then throw to the three-hour foremost occasion led by Ariana DeBose on CBS and Paramount+ beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern.
A complete of 26 Tony Awards shall be handed out Sunday for a season that had 40 new productions — 15 musicals, 24 performs and one particular engagement through the first post-pandemic full season.
Broadway had some very severe works this season, like the brand new performs “Cost of Living” and “The Kite Runner” and revivals of “Topdog/Underdog” and “Death of a Salesman,” led by Wendell Pierce. A revival of “Parade,” in regards to the lynching of a Jewish businessman starring Ben Platt, was additionally effectively obtained.
The season additionally had a component of the fantastical in a puppet-heavy adaptation of the lifeboat e-book “Life of Pi,” satire in “The Thanksgiving Play” and pure silliness in “Shucked” and “Peter Pan Goes Wrong.”
“Just like the country and the world is resetting, I think our storytelling and how we get our stories out there is resetting as well,” stated Kenny Leon, who directed “Topdog/ Underdog” and “Ohio State Murders” this season. “The positive I take away is the variety of the material, from a Black-led ‘Death of a Salesman’ to new plays like ‘KPOP’ and ‘Ain’t No Mo” and ‘Leopoldstadt’ and ‘Prima Facie.’ I felt the variety in virtually each approach — racially, generationally.”
“Some Like It Hot,” a musical adaptation of the traditional cross-dressing film comedy that starred Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, goes into the evening with a number one 13 Tony Award nominations. For the highest crown, it’s pitted in opposition to “& Juliet,” which reimagines “Romeo and Juliet” and provides among the largest pop hits of the previous few a long time, “New York, New York,” which mixed two generations of Broadway royalty in John Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and “Shucked,” a light-weight musical comedy studded with corn puns.
The crucial musical darling and intimate, funny-sad “Kimberly Akimbo,” with Victoria Clark enjoying a teen who ages 4 instances sooner than the typical human, rounds out the very best musical class.
The greatest new play class is a contest amongst Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” which explores Jewish identification with an intergenerational story, and “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-winning adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” set at a Black household’s barbecue within the fashionable South.
The remainder of the class is made up of “Ain’t No Mo,’” the short-lived however crucial applauded work by playwright and actor Jordan E. Cooper, Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Between Riverside and Crazy” and “Cost of Living,” parallel tales of two caretakers and their respective sufferers.
The solutions to some intriguing questions pend: Can Audra McDonald ( “Ohio State Murders” ) lengthen her file as probably the most awarded actor in Tony Awards historical past? Will both J. Harrison Ghee (“Some Like It Hot”) or Alex Newell (“Shucked”) turn into the primary nonbinary particular person to win a Tony for performing? (Last yr, “Six” composer and author Toby Marlow grew to become the primary out nonbinary winner.)
Performances are slated from the casts of “Camelot,” “Into the Woods,” “& Juliet,” “Kimberly Akimbo,” “New York, New York,” “Parade,” “Shucked,” “Some Like It Hot” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
In addition, Joaquina Kalukango — the winner of final yr’s Tony for greatest lead actress in a musical — will sing, as will the casts from “A Beautiful Noise” and “Funny Girl.” That means there’ll be loads of star energy, from Josh Groban to Lea Michele.
It will all happen on the United Palace Theatre, within the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan — a brand new venue for the ceremony, many miles from Times Square and the theater district.
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