Red Mill! The Musical sashays home with 10 Tony Awards

The show about the events at a turn-of-the-century Parisian nightclub, updated with tunes like Single Ladies and Firework alongside blockbuster Lady Marmalade, won 10 Tonys. The record is 12, won by The Producers.

Producer Carmen Pavlovic struck a philosophical note in her acceptance speech, sharing the prize with all the shows that have struggled in the last 18 months of shutdown.

“It seems a little strange to me to refer to a show as the best musical. I think every show from last season deserves to be considered the best musical, ”she said.

“The shows that opened, the shows that closed so as not to come back, the shows that almost opened. And of course, the shows that have stopped and are lucky enough to be reborn – the best musical is all of these shows. “

Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance was named Best New Play and won three other awards, and Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play won Best Play and Performance.

Lopez’s two-part, seven-hour epic uses Howards End as the starting point for a play that examines gay life in the early 21st century.

It also reported victories for Andrew Burnap as Best Actor in a Play, Stephen Daldry as Best Director, and Lois Smith as Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play.

Thomas Kirdahy, a producer, dedicated the award to her late husband, playwright Terrence McNally.

Lopez, the first Latin writer to win in the category, called for more plays to be produced by the Latin community. “We have so many stories within us that can’t wait to come out. Let us tell you our stories, ”he said.

The pandemic-delayed broadcast kicked off with an energetic You Can’t Stop The Beat performance from the original members of the Broadway cast of Hairspray and Ali Stroker sang A Chorus Line’s What I Did For Love.

Jennifer Holliday also took the stage to deliver an unforgettable rendition of And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going from the musical Dreamgirls.

The singers performed in front of a masked and grateful audience in a crowded Winter Garden theater.

Host Audra McDonald received a standing ovation when she took the stage. “You can’t stop the beat. The heart of New York, ”she said.

Red Mill! The musical won the award for stage design, costumes, lighting, sound design, orchestrations and a starring actor Tony for Broadway favorite Danny Burstein.

Sonya Tayeh won the choreography award in her Broadway debut, and Alex Timbers won the trophy for best directing in a musical.

In a surprise to no one, Aaron Tveit won the award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for Moulin Rouge! The Musical, because he was the only nominee in the category.

He thanked a long list of people, including his parents, brother, agents, manager, cast and crew. “We are so privileged to be able to do this,” he said, gushing. “Because what we do changes people’s lives. “

David Alan Grier won the Star Actor in a Play award for his role in A Soldier’s Play, which dissects entrenched racism as well as internal divisions within the black military community during World War II.

Adrienne Warren won the Tony for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her electric turn as Tina Turner in Tina – The Tina Turner Musical.

Mary-Louise Parker won her second Tony Award for Best Leading Actress, for playing a Yale professor who cherishes great literature but has made no room in her life for someone to share that love with in The Sound Inside.

The sobering musical Jagged Little Pill, which takes over Alanis Morissette’s groundbreaking 1995 album to tell the story of an American family gone out of control, came into the night with 15 Tony nominations.

He walked away with victories for Best Book and Lauren Patten won the award for Best Starring Actress in a Musical.

A Christmas carol cleaned of five technical prizes: scenography of a play, costumes, lighting, sound design and score. But no one from production was on hand to accept any of the prizes.

This season’s nominations were drawn from just 18 eligible plays and musicals from the 2019-20 season, a fraction of the 34 shows from the previous season. For most years there are 26 competitive categories. This year, there are 25 with several sold out.