Are you ready to watch the Tonys tonight? Catch up on everything you need to know about before showtime, from the brand-new red carpet livestream to the list of Broadway performances you can expect to see.
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, informally known as the Tony, is a pretty little silver disc, and the ultimate dream of Rachel Berrys everywhere. It’s the greatest American celebration honoring live theater, nominating and rewarding productions of the highest professional level — that is, of course, Broadway. Presented by the American Theater Wing and the Broadway League, the Tonys are, quite simply, the Academy Awards of stage acting, and the biggest night of the year on any Broadway fan’s calendar. Due to the increasing crossover in Broadway and Hollywood celebrity, the Tonys gain mainstream popularity every year and are becoming required viewing for many awards show obsessees.
The 69th Annual Tony Awards take place tonight, June 7, at 8 p.m. ET. This year’s ceremony will take place at Radio City Musical Hall and will be broadcast live on CBS. If you’re not totally up to date with your Broadway news, read on to bone up on everything you’ll need to know in advance of the show!
The Red Carpet
The Tonys, like all good awards shows, are preceded by a spectacular red carpet, but this year the ceremony’s kicking off on a bigger and more exciting scale with the first ever “Live! From the Red Carpet” pre-show event being streamed online. The red carpet special will be hosted by everyone’s favorite wizard-cum-Warbler, Darren Criss — currently turning heads in Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway – and two-time Tony nominee Laura Osnes, who received her Best Lead Actress nominations for Bonnie & Clyde and Cinderella. Laura and Darren will be supported by a team including Broadway star Sierra Boggess, Playbill.com editor Blake Ross, fashion designer Emilio Sosa, Randi Zuckerberg as the tech/social correspondent, and George Takei as the official fan correspondent. Also for the first time ever, a group of 130 Tony presenters and nominees are being professionally styled with the help of PR agency KCD and several fashion publications, so you can expect a more chic and fashionable turnout than ever before! Tune in to the Tony Awards “Live! From the Red Carpet” on TonyAwards.com, CBS.com, Playbill.com or TimeOut.com from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET.
The Hosts
The Tony Awards hosting gig is usually given to a veteran Broadway actor who also possesses a bit of mainstream celebrity sparkle to appeal to the masses, and this year is no different as Kristen Chenoweth and Alan Cumming prepare to take the stage to emcee Broadway’s biggest night. Both of these actors are former Tony winners — Alan in 1998 for Cabaret, a role now synonymous with him which he recently reprised, and Kristen in 1999 for You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, though she’s also earned herself a nomination this year as well! They’re also both known to the American public via television, with a handful of Emmy nominations between the pair of them. The right hosts can make or break an awards show, but the Tony Awards have a big advantage in this department, because — unlike some Hollywood screen actors — everyone who succeeds in the theater industry has got to possess the ability to be performative and captivating to a live audience. A Tonys host rarely flops, and this year will be better than ever, with not one but two fan-favorite hosts working in tandem to carry the ceremony. You can expect to see Alan and Kristen taking part in performances throughout the night, including a dedication to Tommy Tune, this year’s Lifetime Achievement recipient.
The Presenters
The Tonys have got to be one of the most fun events on any celebrity’s social calendar, so it’s no wonder that every year, stars from stage, television, film and music accept the opportunity to present an award. Most big names that attend are attached to the Broadway community either past or present, but others are just fans of the genre. This year, the Tony Awards confirmed presenters include Jason Alexander, Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Chlumsky, Bradley Cooper, Misty Copeland, Bryan Cranston, Larry David, Taye Diggs, Sutton Foster, Neil Patrick Harris, Marg Helgenberger, Joe Manganiello, Debra Messing, Jennifer Nettles, Jim Parsons, David Hyde Pierce, Thomas Sadoski, Amanda Seyfried, Taylor Schilling, Corey Stoll, Kiefer Sutherland, Sting, Ashley Tisdale, Tommy Tune and Rita Wilson.
The Nominees
The Tony Awards celebrate the best that Broadway has to offer each season — both in terms of traditional plays and musical theatre. To be recognized for any given season, the show in question must have opened during the twelve months preceding a certain eligibility cut-off date — usually sometime in April, with the ceremony taking place in June. The Tonys divide their nominations for plays and musicals into two further categories — Best Play and Best Musical, which honors new works that have come to Broadway for the first time in the past year, and Best Revival, where the nominees are fresh productions of shows that have appeared on Broadway sometime in the past or, if it never quite made it to the Great White Way, is known as part of the common theater repertoire worldwide. You can view a full list of the 2015 Tony nominees here, but read on for some details about the big frontrunners!
Musicals
An American in Paris is the first stage adaption of the famous 1951 musical film, starring Gene Kelly. It follows the life of a war veteran trying to get by as an artist immediately following WWII. This show is tied with another Best Musical nominee, Fun Home, in terms of the most nominations for the entire night — they each received 12, including (for both) Best Lead Actor and Actress, Best Book (the award recognizing the script and story-line of a musical,) and Best Direction. Fun Home is based on writer Alison Bechdel’s unique comic book-style memoir about coming of age as a young lesbian and her relationship with her father. Something Rotten!, with ten nominations, is a musical comedy about a highly fictionalized medieval era and two brothers running a theater company, who are in bitter competition with William Shakespeare. Despite first being developed 15 years ago, The Visit is eligible in the “Best Musical” category as a new Broadway work. This satirical show is about one of the world’s richest women returning to her poverty-stricken hometown and offering to help them out in exchange for a small favor: murder.
In the “Best Revival of a Musical” category, there are three nominees this year. The most famous of these is Rodgers and Hammerstein classic The King and I, based on the true story of Anna Leonowens, the British tutor to the children of the King of Siam. The original musical won Best Musical in 1952, the 1996 production won Best Revival, and the film adaptation won several Oscars. On The Town features a score by famed composer Leonard Bernstein and follows three American sailors who have 24 hours of shore leave in New York City during the wartime 1940s. On The Town shares its lyricists, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, with the final Revival nominee, On the Twentieth Century. This show is a operetta-style screwball comedy, set in the 1920s and written in the 1970s, about the relationship between a temperamental actress and a bankrupt theater producer.
Plays
Wolf Hall Parts One & Two leads the charge for plays with eight nominations in total. The two-part production is an adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s bestselling Tudor novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, and it’s a direct transfer (British cast included) from the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, where it premiered. It follows the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell during Henry VIII’s reign. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, with six nominations, is also of British origin and based on the novel of the same name, about a teenage boy with autism trying to solve a murder mystery. Disgraced, which is about Islamophobia and the different ways Muslim-American citizens perceive themselves, has already had an extensive and acclaimed off-Broadway run, winning the 2013 Pulitzer for Drama, and Hand to God, the final Best Play nominee, is a rather bizarre comedy about a shy Christian ministry student and his possessed (and rather rude) hand-puppet.
Skylight, about a young teacher’s interactions with a family she lived with, was originally produced in the 90s and Bill Nighy is currently reprising the part he played in London in 1997. You Can’t Take it With You, which celebrates non-conformity, is a classic comedy from the 1930s about an eccentric New York family, and The Elephant Man is a famous semi-biographical play about the life of Joseph Merrick, a man with severe physical deformities in Victorian times. This is Our Youth has never been on Broadway proper before, but the Reagan-era drama about adolescence, maturity and choices has been staged many times worldwide since its premiere in 1996, hence its inclusion in the Revival category.
Actors
The awards for Best Lead and Best Featured Actor and Actress are split into musical and play categories, but this is where the casts of the new shows and revivals compete against each other — these nominations are selected from the entire pool of work being celebrated. Every year, the Tony Awards nominates and honors many wonderful theater actors who might not be familiar very well to the general public, but there’s usually a few A-list celebrities mixed in as well, as many well-known screen actors return to their roots or try out a new skill on the Broadway stage. Some of the biggest stars who received nominations this year include Bradley Cooper for The Elephant Man, Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan for Skylight, Helen Mirren for The Audience, Elisabeth Moss for The Heidi Chronicles, Christian Borle and Brian d’Arcy James for Something Rotten!, Ken Watanabe for The King and I, and this year’s host Kristin Chenoweth for On the Twentieth Century.
The Performances
One reason that a lot of fans love to tune into the Tony Awards is the opportunity to see musical numbers from the nominated productions sung live on stage — it’s rare chance to experience a Broadway performance without traveling to New York and sitting in the theater. This year, you can expect to see Something Rotten!’s “A Musical,” Fun Home’s “Ring of Keys, and medleys from the casts of An American in Paris and The Visit. The cast of On the Town will also do a medley of “ Lucky To Be Me,” “New York, New York” and “Times Square Ballet.” The King and I will present the classic and beloved numbers “Shall We Dance?” and “Getting to Know You,” and Kristin Chenoweth will also participate in a medley with her On the Twentieth Century co-stars.
You can also look forward to Vanessa Hudgens and the cast of Gigi singing “The Night They Invented Champagne” and Matthew Morrison, Kelsey Grammar and the Finding Neverland cast performing “Stronger.” The current cast of Jersey Boys will perform “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” to celebrate the show’s 10th anniversary on Broadway, and Josh Groban will also play a medley of show tunes from his album Stages.