Homegrown productions left a big mark in the play categories

Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton make red carpet debut at the 74th Tony Awards 2021

The Tony Awards concert is being hosted by ‘Hamilton’ star Leslie Odom Jr. The four-hour, multi-platform featured a starry line-up of celebrity presenters and musical performances.

The full list of winners and nominees is below:

Best Play

• “The Inheritance” – Matthew Lopez — Winner
• “Grand Horizons” – Bess Wohl
• “Sea Wall/A Life” – Simon Stephens and Nick Payne
• “Slave Play” – Jeremy O. Harris
• “The Sound Inside” – Adam Rapp

Best Musical

• “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” — Winner
• “Jagged Little Pill”
• “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”

Best Revival of a Play

• “A Soldier’s Play” — Winner
• “Betrayal”
• “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune”

Best Book of a Musical

• Diablo Cody – “Jagged Little Pill” — Winner
• John Logan – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical”
• Katori Hall, Frank Ketelaar, and Kees Prins – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play

• Andrew Burnap – “The Inheritance” — Winner
• Ian Barford – “Linda Vista”
• Jake Gyllenhaal – “Sea Wall/A Life”
• Tom Hiddleston – “Betrayal”
• Tom Sturridge – “Sea Wall/A Life”
• Blair Underwood – “A Soldier’s Play”

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play

• Mary-Louise Parker – “The Sound Inside” — Winner
• Joaquina Kalukango – “Slave Play”
• Laura Linney – “My Name Is Lucy Barton”
• Audra McDonald – “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune”

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical

• Aaron Tveit – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” — Winner

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical

• Adrienne Warren – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical” — Winner
• Karen Olivo – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical”
• Elizabeth Stanley – “Jagged Little Pill”

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play

• David Alan Grier – “A Soldier’s Play” — Winner
• Ato Blankson-Wood – “Slave Play”
• James Cusati-Moyer – “Slave Play”
• John Benjamin Hickey – “The Inheritance”
• Paul Hilton – “The Inheritance”

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play

• Lois Smith – “The Inheritance” — Winner
• Jane Alexander – “Grand Horizons”
• Chalia La Tour – “Slave Play”
• Annie McNamara – “Slave Play”
• Cora Vander Broek – “Linda Vista”

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical

• Danny Burstein – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” — Winner
• Derek Klena – “Jagged Little Pill”
• Sean Allan Krill – “Jagged Little Pill”
• Sahr Ngaujah – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical”
• Daniel J. Watts – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical

• Lauren Patten – “Jagged Little Pill” — Winner
• Kathryn Gallagher – “Jagged Little Pill”
• Celia Rose Gooding – “Jagged Little Pill”
• Robyn Hurder – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical”
• Myra Lucretia Taylor – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”

Best Direction of a Play

• Stephen Daldry – “The Inheritance” — Winner
• David Cromer – “The Sound Inside”
• Kenny Leon – “A Soldier’s Play”
• Jamie Lloyd – “Betrayal”
• Robert O’Hara – “Slave Play”

Best Direction of a Musical

• Alex Timbers – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” — Winner
• Phyllida Lloyd – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”
• Diane Paulus – “Jagged Little Pill”

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics Written for the Theatre)

• Christopher Nightingale (music) – “A Christmas Carol” — Winner
• Paul Englishby (music) – “The Inheritance”
• Fitz Patton and Jason Michael Webb (music) – “The Rose Tattoo”
• Lindsay Jones (music) – “Slave Play”
• Daniel Kluger (music) – “The Sound Inside”

Best Choreography

• Sonya Tayeh – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” — Winner
• Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui – “Jagged Little Pill”
• Anthony Van Laast – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”

Best Scenic Design of a Play

• Rob Howell – “A Christmas Carol” — Winner
• Bob Crowley – “The Inheritance”
• Soutra Gilmour – “Betrayal”
• Derek McLane – “A Soldier’s Play”
• Clint Ramos – “Slave Play”

Best Scenic Design of a Musical

• Derek McLane – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” — Winner
• Riccardo Hernández and Lucy MacKinnon – “Jagged Little Pill”
• Mark Thompson and Jeff Sugg – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”

Best Costume Design of a Play

• Rob Howell – “A Christmas Carol” — Winner
• Dede Ayite – “Slave Play”
• Dede Ayite – “A Soldier’s Play”
• Bob Crowley – “The Inheritance”
• Clint Ramos – “The Rose Tattoo”

Best Costume Design in a Musical

• Catherine Zuber – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” — Winner
• Emily Rebholz – “Jagged Little Pill”
• Mark Thompson – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”

Best Lighting Design of a Play

• Hugh Vanstone – “A Christmas Carol” — Winner
• Jiyoun Chang – “Slave Play”
• Jon Clark – “The Inheritance”
• Heather Gilbert – “The Sound Inside”
• Allen Lee Hughes – “A Soldier’s Play”

Best Lighting Design of a Musical

• Justin Townsend – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” — Winner
• Bruno Poet – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”
• Justin Townsend – “Jagged Little Pill”

Best Sound Design of a Play

• Simon Baker – “A Christmas Carol” — Winner
• Paul Arditti and Christopher Reid – “The Inheritance”
• Lindsay Jones – “Slave Play”
• Daniel Kluger – “Sea Wall/A Life”
• Daniel Kluger – “The Sound Inside”

Best Sound Design of a Musical

• Peter Hylenski – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” — Winner
• Jonathan Deans – “Jagged Little Pill”
• Nevin Steinberg – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”

Best Orchestration

• Katie Kresek, Charlie Rosen, Matt Stine and Justin Levine – “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” — Winner
• Tom Kitt – “Jagged Little Pill”
• Ethan Popp – “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”

The awards power of British theatre producers on Broadway was cemented once more last night in a classy Tonys ceremony stocked with nominees that originated in the United Kingdom.

Producer Sonia Friedman continues her indomitable form. Three years in a row, this producing powerhouse has taken the Best New Play prize for one of her productions: Matthew López’s The Inheritance, which was first seen at the Young Vic before transferring to the West End and, subsequently, Broadway, earned the prize last night; the statue will sit nicely alongside her Best Play Tonys for Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman (2019) and Jack Thorne’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2018).

As for The Inheritance, the huge drama picked up four prizes, including Best Director for Stephen Daldry. It was an important moment when López recognized that he was the first Latinx playwright to win a Tony Award for Best Play, and how severely underrepresented the community was on Broadway. Change, he stressed, must happen.

Few would have predicted that the Old Vic’s Yuletide staple – Thorne’s version of A Christmas Carol – would emerge so decisively victorious among the play design categories, picking up five wins from five nominations, though Matthew Warchus’ visually and aurally magnificent production has all the technical chops to bring home the bacon.

It was nice to see a Best Original Score win go to a play for the first time ever (Christopher Nightingale doing Dickens proud with an atmospheric festive fever dream). You do wonder if the producers made a mistake deciding not to reopen it on Broadway this holiday season; instead, it will play the West Coast, with Bradley Whitford as Scrooge in Los Angeles and other cities, and Francois Battiste as Scrooge in San Francisco.

With winners inevitably come losers: sweetheart of screen, stage and Marvel fandom Tom Hiddleston didn’t take home a prize for his turn in Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Betrayal, with Lloyd himself also losing out to Daldry. For Andrew Burnap to take the top Actor prize for The Inheritance was certainly a surprise, especially opposite actors like Hiddleston, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Tom Sturridge (the latter starred in British-born plays Sea Wall/A Life by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne).

On the musical side, the Brits had less of a sturdy night – not helped by the fact that a lot of homegrown productions: Six, Marianne Elliott’s revised Company, and the revival of Caroline, or Change had the openings disrupted, and Girl From the North Country, the last show to open prior to the shutdown, didn’t qualify because it hadn’t invited voters.

These shows now fall into what will inevitably be a traffic jam of an upcoming season, but at least Adrienne Warren of Tina didn’t have to go against Caroline’s Sharon D Clarke like she did at the Oliviers. Warren took it this year, Clarke has her eyes on the prize in June 2022 for sure.

With feminist Tudor queens, |the Lehman brothers, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella (which he said in recent interviews is hoping for a 2022 New York birth), and more chomping at the bit while waiting in the awards wings, the British invasion of Broadway looks set to continue apace. And what else is next? Everybody’s Talking About Jamie premieres in Los Angeles in January, while & Juliet and Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt head to Toronto next year. A Delorean may be the only way to find out.