Tony Award presenters Josh Groban and Sarah Ballerles
On the evening of June 10, US time, the 72nd Tony Awards ceremony was held in New York, and the dramatists gathered again once a year to celebrate. The ceremony was co-hosted by renowned singers Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles, both of whom were nominated for a Tony Award last year. Although the acting skills have not been affirmed, the singing all night is also considered to be brilliant and dedicated.
From 2017 to 2018, 31 million people entered the theater on Broadway, breaking the record of the past year, and this year's Tony Awards theme is also intended to pay tribute to the 8 year-round actor groups (especially the obscure group performances) and female practitioners every week, and at the same time, posting outstanding star childhood drama performance photos to encourage young people with stage dreams to realize their dreams. Musicals such as "Frozen", "Mean Girls", "The Band's Visit", and "SpongeBob SquarePants" all brought wonderful performance clips, but the performance was the most rustic and touching, with "Rent" brought by American high school students singing "Seasons of Love".
Although this season is almost all big IP movies, animated musical theater works, but this year's Tony Awards big winner is undoubtedly the small production musical "Band Visit", in the 11 awards nominated for the final won 10 awards including best musical, best musical script, best original score. The Disney musical "Frozen", which is based on a let It Go, the popular American cartoon adaptation of the musical "SpongeBob SquarePants", and the musical adaptation of the film of the same name created by American comedy star Tina Fey, "Mean Girl" are bleak, except for "SpongeBob SquarePants" winning a best musical theater stage design award, the rest of the works are grainless, which is undoubtedly a slap in the face to the big IP adaptation.
In recent years, the Tony Awards have actually been very much advocating small productions, such as "Dear Evan Hansen" last year, "Fun Home" in 2015, and "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder" in 2014, all of which are small productions, and like "The Band Visits", they first auditioned in non-profit theaters and then moved to Broadway. Resident performances in smaller theaters.
"Band Visit" is actually a film adaptation, but the film is also very independent and niche, which is completely different from the big IP adaptation idea. The story tells of an Egyptian folk orchestra who mispronounced a place name at a station and mistakenly enters a small Israeli village, is taken in for one night by local well-meaning people and helps them get to the right place. People from two different and even hostile cultural backgrounds, frankly expressing their views on many topics, have found a lot of new resonance. The whole play is only 100 minutes long, jazz and traditional Arabic musicals are fused, with both beautiful and exotic slow songs and very rhythmic Arabic folk music ensembles; the actors must sing and play.
Although it is a small production work, it contains unlimited creativity in composition, arrangement and presentation. At the same time, the rich and unique musical style is also very gripping, with the New York Times describing it as the "most intoxicating" musical. In the intoxicating evening wind, a song "Answer Me" pushes the plot to a climax, people from different worlds sing the same song, and the Jewish people and the Arab world appear on a simple, beautiful stage that has nothing to do with politics, which is much higher than the entertainment-oriented big IP works. Tony Shalhoub and Ari'el Stachel, who play the band conductor and trumpeter, won awards for Best Actor in a Musical and Supporting Actor respectively, making it invaluable in a social environment that generally links the Arab world to terrorism.
Ariel Stanshire, winner of the Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical, mentioned in his acceptance speech that he has always avoided his Middle Eastern identity, but "The Band Visits" gives himself a rare opportunity to tell the story of his own nation, and such a story needs more.
Similar to the sloppiness of musical composition, almost none of this year's new American drama works have been acclaimed and popular, so that in the awards season, only a few star re-rehearsal plays are still performed. On the earlier nomination list, the Best Drama, Best Drama Rehearsal and Best Drama Performance Awards (Male Lead, Female Lead, Male Supporting, Female Supporting) awards, British producers and actors accounted for more than 50%, and among the five Best Drama Director nominees, there were 3 British directors. On the just-unveiled list of winners, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, led by the famous British producer Sonia Friedman, and the all-star remake of the National Theatre, Angels in America, divided almost all the play awards.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has lived up to expectations since its opening in London in 2016, amassing a huge number of word-of-mouth and hard-to-find tickets, with a record 11 Olivier Award nominations in 2017 and 9 of them. Since the opening of Broadway in April this year, it has inherited The good reputation and audience popularity of London, and the momentum is very strong, and it has also received 10 nominations, and won 6 awards such as Best Play and Best Drama Director. While the Broadway edition follows the seven main casts from the West End, including three Olivier-winning actors Jamie Parker, Noma Dumezweni and Anthony Bolye, it defeated all three actors for Angels in America and Three Tall Women at the Tony Awards.
As the most anticipated and critically acclaimed rework in the UK last year, "Angels in America" produced by the National Theatre of the United Kingdom almost moved directly to Broadway. "Angels in America" is also the most important epic work of contemporary America, which has aroused great repercussions and resonance in American audiences and professional circles, and has received the most nominations for drama in the history of the Tony Awards - a total of 11. At the awards ceremony, actor Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane, who played the Republican deep-case lawyer, won the Tony Award for Best Actor and Supporting Actor respectively, and the play also won the Best Drama Rehearsal Award. In the acceptance speech, the actors and crew thanked the special groups who had struggled and are still walking on the road to equal rights, and called for broader attention to special groups.
This year's Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play was won by Glenda Jackson, an 82-year-old British actor, for her performance in Edward Albee's Pulitzer-winning play "Three Tall Women." Granda Jackson, a two-time Academy Award winner and a member of parliament for 30 years, has returned to the theatre stage in the last two years and has been very active, playing King Lear himself in Shakespeare's classic "King Lear" rearranged at London's Old Vic Theatre last year. Laurie Metcalf, who plays with her, won this year's Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Play, and last year she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for "Doll's House 2."
Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play Granda Jackson in the play Three Tall Women
This year's Tony Awards also presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and 2-time Tony Award winner Chita Rivera. In his acceptance speech, Weber mentioned that the Rogers Hamostein musical film "South Pacific" planted a musical theater seed for the 10-year-old, who wanted to be Richard Rogers all his life, and today finally got such an honor; and Zita Rivera, although over eighty years old, still expressed his desire to continue acting.
Every year, the Tony Awards ceremony is also a dojo of faith advocacy, and this year coincides with the MID-term elections in the United States. The famous actor Robert De Niro made anti-Trump gestures at the podium and called on everyone to vote in November, "Angels in America" playwright Tony Kushner also called on everyone to save the country with practical actions; Melody Herzfeld, a drama teacher from Florida who won the Tony Award for Best Drama Education, encouraged students to insist on themselves, express themselves bravely, and called for gun control. On February 14 of this year, a school shooting at her high school killed 17 people.
The 72nd Tony Awards has come to an end, and those who have not won the award are planning the next step, but a large wave of new productions has been on the road, including the big IP adaptation of musicals "King Kong", "Moulin Rouge", etc., as well as the Classic West End drama "The Ferryman", "The Executioner", and the new American works starring stars, such as Amy Hammer ("Call Me By Your Name") Broadway debut "White Straight Man"... The Tony Awards have always been criticized for being too commercial and the limitations of the scope of the awards themselves, but the different plays that stand out every year are still exciting, and the glory that the awards ceremony itself brings to all theater people and the signal conveyed by the industry is always gratifying.